History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

In all this contention by Gregory and Lactantius there was nothing to be especially regretted, for, whatever their motive, they simply supported their inherited belief on grounds of natural law and probability.

Unfortunately, the discussion was not long allowed to rest on these scientific and philosophical grounds; other Christian thinkers followed, who in their ardour adduced texts of Scripture, and soon the question had become theological; hostility to the belief in antipodes became dogmatic. The universal Church was arrayed against it, and in front of the vast phalanx stood, to a man, the fathers.

To all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them it seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant enough to allow that a man might be saved who thought the earth inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of the fathers doubted the possibility of salvation to such misbelievers. The great champion of the orthodox view was St. Augustine. Though he seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the sphericity of the earth, he fought the idea that men exist on the other side of it, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam," he insists that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live there, since if they did they could not see Christ at His second coming descending through the air. But his most cogent appeal, one which we find echoed from theologian to theologian during a thousand years afterward, is to the nineteenth Psalm, and to its confirmation in the Epistle to the Romans; to the words, "Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." He dwells with great force on the fact that St. Paul based one of his most powerful arguments upon this declaration regarding the preachers of the gospel, and that he declared even more explicitly that "Verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." Thenceforth we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters of this geographical doctrine "give the lie direct to King David and to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost." Thus the great Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years that, as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side of the earth, there could be no human beings there.

The great authority of Augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural argument, held the Church firmly against the doctrine of the antipodes; all schools of interpretation were now agreed—the followers of the allegorical tendencies of Alexandria, the strictly literal exegetes of Syria, the more eclectic theologians of the West. For over a thousand years it was held in the Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," that there could not be human beings on the opposite sides of the earth, even if the earth had opposite sides; and, when attacked by gainsayers, the great mass of true believers, from the fourth century to the fifteenth, simply used that opiate which had so soothing an effect on John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century—securus judicat orbis terrarum.

Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge.

Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes are theologically impossible.

At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be expected—St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered over ancient thought in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his belief in the sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. As to the antipodes, the authority of the Psalmist, St. Paul, and St. Augustine silences him; he shuns the whole question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and declares that men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of the earth.(33)

(33)For the opinions of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see Lecky, History
of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1872, vol. i, p. 279. Also Letronne,
in Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1834. For Lactantius, see citations
already given. For St. Augustine's opinion, see the De Civitate Dei,
xvi, 9, where this great father of the church shows that the antipodes
"nulla ratione credendum est." For the unanimity of the fathers against
the antipodes, see Zockler, vol. 1, p. 127. For a very naive summary,
see Joseph Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Grimston's
translation, republished by the Hakluyt Soc., chaps. vii and viii; also
citations in Buckle's Posthumous Works, vol. ii, p. 645. For Procopius
of Gaza, see Kretschmer, p. 55. See also, on the general subject,
Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, pp. 96-97. For Isidore, see citations
already given. To understand the embarrassment caused by these
utterances of the fathers to scientific men of a later period, see
letter of Agricola to Joachim Vadianus in 1514. Agricola asks Vadianus
to give his views regarding the antipodes, saying that he himself does
not know what to do, between the fathers on the one side and the
learned men of modern times on the other. On the other hand, for the
embarrassment caused to the Church by this mistaken zeal of the
fathers, see Kepler's references and Fromund's replies; also De Morgan,
Paradoxes, p. 58. Kepler appears to have taken great delight in throwing
the views of Lactantius into the teeth of his adversaries.

Under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared for nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the sphericity of the earth had come to be generally accepted among the leaders of thought, and now the doctrine of the antipodes was again asserted by a bishop, Virgil of Salzburg.

There then stood in Germany, in those first years of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men—St. Boniface. His learning was of the best then known. In labours he was a worthy successor of the apostles; his genius for Christian work made him unwillingly primate of Germany; his devotion to duty led him willingly to martyrdom. There sat, too, at that time, on the papal throne a great Christian statesman—Pope Zachary. Boniface immediately declared against the revival of such a heresy as the doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized it as an assertion that there are men beyond the reach of the appointed means of salvation; he attacked Virgil, and called on Pope Zachary for aid.