Truth Unites - What Galileo Would Say to Catholics, Protestants, and Atheists in 2025

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Gavin Ortlund draws three lessons from the Galileo Affair. While this episode is not a point for Protestants over Catholics, or secularism over religion, it is a cautionary tale about the need for humility in approach the relation of science and faith. Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

In the history of the relationship between science and religious faith, the Galileo affair is one of the most dramatic flashpoints, maybe the most dramatic flashpoint of all, maybe the thing you think of most of all when you think of science versus faith. Galileo, Galilei, sometimes called the Father of Modern Astronomy, or even the Father of Modern Science, as is well known, was tried and condemned by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633, in relation to his views on heliocentrism, the theory that the Earth, along with other planets, rotates around the sun. At that time, most people still were geocentrists, meaning they thought the Earth is in the center of the universe and the sun and other planets rotate around the Earth,

although this is very complicated because there's other views as well besides just those two. Nonetheless, this episode is sometimes misunderstood, but then sometimes even the misunderstandings get overcorrected. There's a lot we can learn from this. Short video, let's make three points that I'll throw it onto the table. And in the second of these, we'll really work through the narrative of what happened. So hopefully this will introduce this to you if you're not familiar. Number one, the Galileo affair is not a point for secularism over and against Christianity. Number two, the Galileo affair is not a point for Protestantism over and against Roman Catholicism. Number three, the Galileo affair is a reminder for all of us of the need for humility in the

conversation between faith and science. So let's start off. Why is this not a point for secularism and a point against religion or against Christianity. This is how the Galileo affair is often conceived at the popular level. Galileo represents the noble advance of free thinking, and he's being oppressed and tortured by dogmatic prejudice. And so this is kind of a point for secularism or irreligion and a blemish on religion. And when we address caricatures, we want to be careful not to overcorrect. We're going to talk about the danger of prejudice and, you know, what religious people like myself can learn from this. And there is a lot we can learn, but it's not helpful. It's simplistic and it's misleading to frame this as secular versus religious. First of all, what gets Galileo into trouble

is not just his ideas. There's a lot of politics and personalities involved as well. At one point, Pope Urban the 8th basically thought that Galileo was making fun of him, it seems. And so that's a factor. In his section on this, in his amazing book, Dominion, which I talk about a lot, Tom Holland, has maybe three or four pages giving a helpful overview, and he observes the entire debacle had been a concatenation of misunderstandings, rivalries, and wounded egos. So there's this human dimension to it all. But more basically, Galileo was himself a religious believer who desired to be a good Catholic. He ended his life as a Catholic. He routinely argued for the truthfulness of scripture. He nowhere set his theory against it. At the start of my book on Augustine on creation, I observed

that Galileo cited Augustine's writings more than 10 times in defenses of his own work, especially to establish that the scripture need not be interpreted in a literalistic way all the time. Galileo was very Augustinian in his approach to science and faith relationship. More basically, and even more than that, the entire tradition of which Galileo was just one part. Often at that time in history called natural philosophy was itself very much a Christian and And a good case can be made for this old idea that a lot of us have heard that Christianity played a kind of catalytic role in the emergence of what we call modern science. Many people today still have this old caricature from the Enlightenment of the medieval period

as the Dark Ages, this time of ignorance and brutality, and then secular enlightenment ideas kind of come out as a reaction against that. And I think this is very unfair to the medieval period, Tom Holland, of course, in Dominion is arguing for the opposite. I know some people push back on his case, but I think he's essentially correct. And you think of institutions like universities, for example, which are a medieval invention. They have a Christian story behind them, just as hospitals and orphanages and other institutions like this frequently do. One of my favorite books on medieval history that was helpful for me in my doctoral work

is Marcia Kolis' medieval foundations of the Western intellectual tradition. Amazing book. I remember reading through this carefully before. for doing my comprehensive finals, which is when you passed a stage two of your PhD. And she makes a great case that medieval Europe is the only traditional society known to history to modernize itself from within. And she says the foundations of Western intellectual history were laid in the Middle Ages and not in classical Greece and Rome or in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is something Chesterton argues a lot as well, is that the medieval era was not a backwards time. It was a time

of great intellectual fertility. And what Kolis does is compare Western Europe in the medieval era to Byzantium and Islam. And she says those two sister civilizations get off to a faster start, but ultimately don't produce the kinds of institutions that lead to intellectual modernity. And she says if you could go back in time to the Mediterranean world and Northern Europe in the year 1,100 and ask, where would you expect culture and learning to appear? You probably wouldn't guess Western Europe, but that's exactly what happens. There's a reason why modern science originated where it did and when it did. It wasn't an accident. You can consider just the explicit vision

as it's articulated by many of the pioneers of modern science, like Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Blaise Pascal, Michael Faraday, Francis Bacon, Louis Pasteur, and these people are all believers themselves, but more than that, they're articulating and conceiving of the scientific project in terms of a specifically Christian worldview, the kind of worldview that predicts regularity and intelligibility in physical nature. If you believe that there's a rational God who made the world and then made us in his image to have dominion over the world, this is the kind of worldview that's likely to encourage an enterprise like science. And again, we take so much of this for granted today, but it's helpful to go to study history and realize this isn't how most people

have thought in other times of ancient history. My favorite short way to sum this up is Kepler's quote, science is thinking God's thoughts after him. If you want to get a more explicit flavor of this, go back and read, you can find them online, the Boyle Lectures. These were initiated in England in the 1960s for the purpose of furthering scientific knowledge about the world. They're fascinating. They're all like clergy, and these people are propounding these scientific theories, and at the same time, they're quoting the Bible, and they're kind of interpreting the science through

this very post-millennial framework. And it's just amazing how theology and science are right there at the start, and theology he's playing a catalytic role. Now, there's a lot more to say about that. If you want to do some more digging, by the way, there's a great new book out by from Zondervin called an introduction to philosophy. It has multiple authors. I'll hold it up here. I've been looking through this amazing resource. It's got a number of different sections. If I was going to recommend a book for someone who just wants to learn about philosophy, this is one I would recommend as an intro. And it has a section on the relation of philosophy and science and the philosophy of science.

And so this is a really helpful resource. It covers all kinds of great topics like you get a brief history of philosophy. You cover controversial areas like sexual ethics and bioethics, big issues like that in our time. And each chapter has suggestions for further reading, discussion questions, little explanatory sidebars and stuff. Great book. I'm going to, I'll put a link to that in the video description. So that's the first thing we're just trying to sum up here is this really isn't a point for secularism. Galileo was a Christian. And we'll see, even as After everything he endured, he remained a faithful Catholic, taking communion, going to confession to the end of his days. Second point, the Galileo affair is not a point for Protestantism over and against Roman Catholicism.

And this isn't because the Catholics are blameless in this. It's because the Protestants didn't do much better. And therefore, we've all got something to learn. Here's where we can review a little bit of what happened. We'll start on the Catholic side. But if you're getting annoyed, Catholic viewers, I know you do. Love you. we're trying five years in and we're if you're still watching after this all these years thank you

I'll get to the Protestants next so first of all around 1610 or a few years before that Galileo builds a telescope and he's probably drawing from some earlier models perhaps but he builds his own telescope and he publishes some of his observations some of which support the theory of heliocentrism if you get mixed up on these terms just heliocentrism Sun in the center. And this is very controversial at this time earlier back in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus had published a work advocating for heliocentrism over and against the established paradigm from Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic and Copernican models are both pretty complicated. You can see them on the screen here. And for a long time, people are resisting heliocentrism.

And in the church, it's considered very dangerous and subversive. It's perceived to go against scripture and tradition and some widely accepted ideas from Aristotle. And Galileo knew that coming forward with his own proposals in line with heliocentrism would be very controversial. Kepler and Galileo are writing letters back to each other before this, and they're both complaining of what they call the common herd, who don't really pay attention to scientific arguments. Kepler at one point is encouraging Galileo to come forward with his ideas to shout down the common herd, which really does not weigh the arguments very carefully. Galileo, in a letter to Kepler, is also complaining of the stupidity of the common herd. And he's aware of the blowback he will get. Sure enough, his ideas come

under the scrutiny of the Roman Inquisition. And things start spiraling up at some point in that period. So around 1613, Galileo writes a famous letter defending his ideas. And he's making his case for how to interpret scripture, how to deal with passages like Joshua 10, which is a big one where the sun famously stands still. And the letter is, it's very Augustinian. You can read it online. It's really interesting. But it's obtained by their Catholic authorities. And concerns are raised that this theology reflected in this letter runs contrary contrary specifically to the Council of Trent, because the Council of Trent had prohibited interpreting the Bible in ways contrary to the consensus of the church fathers in matters of faith and morals. And so one of the

concerns with Galileo is, hey, you can't interpret the scripture in this way. That's kind of similar to the Protestant errors. And a Dominican named Niccolo Lorini wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Inquisition, and he's summarizing what he and several of his colleagues had concluded concerning the so-called Galileists. And one of the concerns is they expounded the Holy Scriptures according to their private lights, and in a manner different from that of the common interpretation of the fathers of the church. The controversy grows. Eventually, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine gets involved. This is one of the most respected Roman Catholic theologians of this time. By this point, he's an older man well into his 70s, and Bellarmine takes the view that it's fine

to consider heliocentrism as a hypothetical matter, but it shouldn't be advocated for without conclusive proof. And in one of his correspondences, he also makes this appeal to scripture and the consensus of interpretation. The Council of Trent forbids the interpretation of the scriptures in a way contrary to the common opinion of the Holy Fathers. And then he references other commentaries on these books in his own day and so forth. So I want us to feel this appeal, because this is going to be, we need to understand here. This is not just a matter of a couple of Bible verses. This is the teaching of scripture in its literal sense, as they understand, that, and then the interpretation of those scriptures that is a consensus view, or at least

perceived to be a consensus view, among the Church Fathers, and then also the consensus of the contemporary theologians. And whether or not that's correct, that's the nature of the argumentation against Galileo. Ultimately, in 1616, the Inquisition commissions a group of theologians to investigate, and the verdict is that heliocentrism is declared to be a formal heresy. And note the concern that I've underlined here. since it explicitly contradicts Scripture, according to its literal meaning and the common interpretation of the fathers and doctors of theology, remember that adverb explicitly as we are about to get to the Protestants. So Galileo is at this point instructed to abandon heliocentrism, not to teach it, not to discuss it on threat of imprisonment. And Pope Paul V instructs Bellarmine to deliver that result to Galileo and also some of the Copernican texts are banned with the Pope's approval.

In Germany, Kepler's writings are banned. And after this, Galileo stays out of trouble for a while. But later in his life, he's an old man by this point. He's about 70 years old, and he writes a dialogue called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This is the work that offends the then Pope, Urban the 8th, and he, and Galileo loses papal support. And at this point, things start to go south for him.

In 1633, he's brought before the Inquisition. I'll put up a famous painting of this. This is not a pleasant process. At one point, toward the end, he is threatened with physical torture. There are also reasons to think that one of the documents used, you know, used against him may have been fabricated. There's discussion about that in the literature. I'm not sure about the conclusion,

but that's one of the things that people are working at. There are also reasons to think that Galileo didn't know how badly this was going to go. The older book, The Crime of Galileo, published by University of Chicago Press, narrates this for about three pages. The first session on April 12, 1633, between Galileo and the chief inquisitor, Vincenzo Makulani. And they're going back and forth. And as you're reading it, and then the author here is giving his sort of commentary, what you're seeing is Makulani starts pressing Galileo about the certificate that Belarmean had given him back in 1616. And all of a sudden you can feel Galileo is starting to get nervous. And he's realizing the

situation he's walked into. It's dawning on him, the trouble that he's in. And he's trying not to walk into a trap. and he you know the the suggestion of this book is his signature that is found there is with a shaking hand you can tell this is this is scary you know it's exactly what you would expect it to be when you're standing before the inquisition again it's like let's not go against the caricatures too much and act like this was just a happy safe fun event no it wasn't all of this wears on him already in may even before the worst of it in june and july his inquisitor maculani had reported that galileo of Galileo that the poor man has come back more dead than alive. Because he knows, you know, all that is at stake, and he knows it's starting to go south. And probably the most injurious part of it is to his

reputation. Just imagine. We'll talk about his state of mind after this in just a second. Ultimately, under this pressure, Galileo concedes and offers an abjuration of sorts, which may well have spared him from being burned at the stake. Even so, he was found vehemently suspect of heresy, as opposed to being formally declared a heretic, which is why his punishment falls short of the death penalty. Let me read a bit from the sentence. Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei Florentine, aged 70 years, were denounced to this holy office in 1615 for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the earth is the center of the world and motionless. And the earth moves, even with diurnal motion, for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine, for being in

correspondence with some German mathematicians about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's going on for a while. It proceeds to narrate the events of 16, 15, 15, 16, 16. The sentence here points out that his recent dialogue runs contrary to what was commanded of him back in 1615 and 1616. Then it recounts the process of the inquisition, and then it concludes that he is vehemently suspected of heresy, which is the charge that you can see here on the screen. Ultimately, they condemn him to formal imprisonment at their pleasure.

and he has to recite seven penitential psalms per week for three years. On the following day, he's put into house arrest, and he remains there for the rest of his life until he dies. Also, his dialogue is banned, and the publication of other books is forbidden. By the way, none of this is binding on Catholics today. We're always used to, if we say anything critical, someone is going to say, but that's not infallible. Correct.

We know this is not infallible. This is not binding on Catholics. Starting in the 18th century, the Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in the early 90s, Pope John Paul I second acknowledged the wrongdoing here. So that is fair game. Just as we Protestants will need to acknowledge our own wrongdoing. But it's disputed exactly what is his psychological state in these final years. Some people make much of this and exaggerate the disgrace and humiliation of it.

But one of the things I've kind of gotten the impression of is that actually he had a sense of the calculated nature of his abjuration and that it wasn't this totally shameful thing. he wasn't like a broken, defeated man or something like that. Sometimes he's portrayed like that. But in his own words, in the aftermath of this, he certainly testifies to feeling utterly assaulted and attacked. He spoke of the war against me that continually restrains and undercuts me in all directions, the flood of attacks, exposures, derision, and insult coming from all sides. Can you imagine? I don't think I can. I mean, I've been through some hard things in my life. I know what it's like to feel betrayed and those things. but can you imagine how alone he must have felt? And just the psychological dynamics of this, tough.

He retained his Catholic faith till the end of his life. He desired to be a good Catholic. He kept going to communion, going to confession. He did regard the actions against him by the Inquisition as wrong. Now, Protestants might look at this and say, look, this is why the Catholics are wrong and the Protestants are right. Look how bad the Inquisition is. The problem is the Protestants really didn't fare that much better on these kinds of issues. In terms of the violence, there's a tremendous amount of violence among, especially between Protestants over issues like baptism. I always talk about my own conviction of separation of church and state in relation to that. Those horrific events are one of the reasons I really value that as a belief of mine,

and that's something I'd like to maybe talk about more sometime. But on these science issues, the fact is that the Protestants were also extremely sluggish, shamefully, may I just say, arrogant in dismissing heliocentrism. And I think I just got to say that. I don't know another nicer way to say it. Luther is reported to have referred to Copernicus as a fool who invents something new just to be clever, though this is just a report, and it's sometimes disputed on this quote on the screen if he meant Copernicus or just one of his followers, but not.

Know what I emboldened here. You see the reference to Joshua. This is a frequent appeal, the book of Joshua where the sun stands still in other texts as well. The Protestants you can feel from their psychology in these passages, they think they're defending the Bible. They think they're standing on God's truth versus this new worldly threat. Melanchthon continues the Lutheran opposition to heliocentrism over the course of his career,

lest I pick on Lutherans. Boy, after made my last video criticizing Lutherans, I'm always mindful. Lutherans are, feel sometimes a little offensive. But let me, so let me pick out the reformed, who are far worse. Calvin, okay, his opposition to Copernicus, the language of it is, he's preaching a sermon on First Corinthians, and he's referencing those who are so deranged that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth with shifts and turns. And you can see from what I've embolded on the screen here, he's literally calling the heliocentrists, monsters, demon-possessed, insane. Okay, it's like, you can see why I'm not using this as a point against the Catholics.

This is a blight on all of us. And because though the Protestants don't have the same ways of sort of affecting this response, it's still just as problematic and there's still the fundamental problem. Now you might say, well, the Protestants came around really quickly. This was just because it wasn't proved yet. But unfortunately, it took a long time. You know, in the next sense, John Owen, who lives way after Galileo all the way till 1683. John Owen is perhaps one of the greatest of the Puritan theologians in the 17th century. And in his commentary on Hebrews, he lists the planets and then he references the late hypothesis, fixing the sun is the center of the world, built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against the evident testimonies of Scripture.

So there's the appeal. evident testimonies of Scripture, as opposed to these fallible phenomena, you know, and arbitrary reasons. Now, again, to understand, these are the best theologians of the time. These are not bad theologians. And they're saying the Bible is clear. We need to defend the clear testimony of Scripture over and against these fallible new arguments. The word evident there recalls to mind the 1616 report and the language of explicit contradiction. You can hear Nixie in the background. We're watching our parents' dog. My kids must have gotten home from school.

Finishing off here. Let's just understand this. Why did they say this? And here's where we're going to feel what I will put forward as a takeaway for us, and that's the need for humility here. The Protestants, the Catholics, they all appealed the scripture here. They had a battery of scriptural quotations that they could deduce, seemingly proving geocentrism. I'll put up just a couple examples.

I've already mentioned Joshua, but here's a few from the Psalm. all effectively saying the earth shall never be moved. And they can make the same kind of simplistic appeal to a proof text that people will do today in other contexts. You just say, look, it's so clear. It's the evident testimonies of Scripture. It's explicit in the Bible. The earth doesn't move right there.

Not only that, they had the momentum of church tradition and contemporary opinion also on their side and the view they were defending seems kind of intuitive. It's like, look around. It doesn't look like it's moving, right? And so you can understand if you try to get back in their mindset how this could have made sense to them and how heliocentrism could have seemed so threatening, so worldly, and just so obviously wrong, because it's going against everything that they would appeal to as authoritative. Here's the lesson. Let's not look back on this and say how dumb these people were.

We would have probably done the same thing if we were in their time period. The lesson is how easy it is for this to happen to any of us. the legacy of failure with Copernicus stands as a reminder and caution to us about the danger of rejecting genuine scientific advance too quickly when it doesn't fit into our theological framework. Science can sometimes correct our theology, correct our interpretation of Scripture, not because the scripture is fallible, but because we are fallible in the way we understand it. The task of relating God's two books, general revelation and special revelation, is more complex. than we sometimes realize. May I just say, I don't know how to say this other than just to say it.

If it doesn't apply to you, just move it to the side. That's fine. I'm astounded and dismayed at the arrogance today of people who they are so confident. They've opened up their Bible in English translation. They've read a passage. They've never studied other ancient literature from that time period. They've not studied ancient Hebrew and Greek. They've not read deeply and widely. They're just reading it in English translation and saying, I know exactly what that means. And now I'm just going to use it as a club to denounce people. And it is, the value here is to see how easy it is for us to make mistakes. It's not the fault of Scripture. Scripture is flawless, but we can err in our interpretations and we need humility. We need more Augustinianism in our approach

to the relation of Scripture and science. The Scripture is without flaws, but it's not intending to speak. Sometimes we bring our own questions to the Scripture. And we're, we're expecting it to speak in our categories. And we have to be so humble to say, what is the scripture's agenda? What are its questions? What is it trying to say? For example, I'll put these three verses from the Psalms back up. These verses, it's not their intention to adjudicate between Copernicus and Ptolemy. That's just not what these verses are designed to do, and we can misuse the scripture so easily. This is something we need to be careful of. This is a passion of mine. I hate to see people lose their faith over times where people have insisted to be a Christian, you have to believe this.

and then they point to the verse in the Bible. General rule of thumb, I guess I could speak to my own tribe here at the end of this video among evangelicals who are especially in danger of a fractiousness that can justify itself and an individualism and a populism and an anti-intellectualism that can justify itself by appealing to Scripture as the final authority. But really, I'm just going off my one quick drive-by reading in English translation. So a basic takeaway, if we're looking for what to do with all of this, is I would say, let's make every effort to strive. Ephesians 4 talks about striving to maintain the unity of the body, to strive to interpret and read scripture, not as an individual, but in the context of the church.

That's a simple point that we can take away. That means four things. Number one, reading church history saying, what did other Christians at other times think about this verse? number two it means reading it under the authority of my own local church what does my pastor have to say about this number three it means being aware of what christians and other tribes have to say about a particular passage and number four it means studying you know looking at the commentaries looking at study bibles there's great resources today but there can be an anti-intellectualism and individualism in the way we read scripture as evangelicals that's a real danger so let's continue to hold up the

scripture is our supreme north star, but let's read it humbly and in community with the rest of the church. That's my basic appeal. There's much else we could say about the Galileo affair as well. Maybe we'll talk about this more sometime. If you're interested in these topics and you want more, I have a creation playlist for more on this. So check that out. And don't forget to check out. I'll put a link to this great intro to philosophy in the video description. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you in the next one.