Top 30 Apologetics Books (#8): Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Top 30 Apologetics Books (#8): Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Quotable
Christianity recognizes Jesus as its founder, and Islam deems him a major prophet. Together these religions encompass four billion adherents, more than half of the world's population. For this reason, if for no others, Jesus is a figure meriting significant attention among historians of antiquity, regardless of the historian's own religious horizons.
Yet it has not always been so. The primary interest of Roman historians in the early empire was Rome and incidents that directly impacted Rome, such as revolts in the provinces, wars on the borders, or the moral antics of emperors that often dominated political gossip. One crucified sage or rebel in a minor Asian province invited little attention until, a few decades later, his followers became public news in the Roman capital itself.
On a popular level, some writers dismiss all evidence for Jesus as inconsequential and view him as a pure creation of his followers. Even apart from the dismissal of many lines of evidence, this skeptical approach, if followed consistently for other topics, would make much of history unknowable. As in the case of other new movements, whether from disciples of Socrates, Muhammad, Buddha, or Joseph Smith, the life of the founder was initially of little interest beyond the circle of his own followers. The Dead Sea Scrolls revere the founder of their community, the Teacher of Righteousness, yet he appears nowhere outside their own literature.
Likewise, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus claims to have been a Pharisee, yet he nowhere mentions the Pharisaic sage Hillel, whom most subsequent Pharisaic traditions name as one of their central figures. Meanwhile, the Judean king Agrippa I, whom Josephus depicts as prominent even in Rome, merits only the barest passing mention in a Roman historian covering the period [Tacitus]. Another major Roman historian devotes little space even to Herod the Great [Dio Cassius].
By the same criterion of relevance, the earlier Greek historian Herodotus neglected not only Judea but Rome. And Josephus himself, despite his prominent role in the Judean war and as an interpreter of Judea for the gentile Greco-Roman world, merits no interest in later rabbis (who in fact show greater interest in Jesus).
This is not to imply that non-Christian reports about Jesus are altogether absent. Most scholars today recognize that the first-century Judean writer Josephus, who wrote about John the Baptist and Jesus's brother James, also wrote about Jesus himself. Josephus treats Jesus as a sage and wonder-worker executed by the governor, probably with the complicity of some of Jerusalem's elite. Many scholars argue that an early Arabic version also confirms the key points about Jesus that scholars have reconstructed as original (before scribal tampering) in Josephus's account. Possibly as early as forty-five years after Jesus's crucifixion, a Syrian philosopher named Mara bar Sarapion speaks of Jews executing their wise king, bringing judgment on Judea. (He probably heard this report from Syrian Christians.)
By the early second century, one historian includes a report, from just two decades after the crucifixion, about Jewish debates in Rome, apparently concerning the Christ [Suetonius]. Another, reporting the slaughter of vast numbers of Jesus followers in Rome roughly thirty-four years after the crucifixion, mentions that Jesus himself was earlier crucified under Pontius Pilate [Tacitus]. Rome itself had finally taken notice, because subsequent events had made Jesus's movement a matter of local significance. In fact, the movement had become more significant in Rome than was the governor who executed Jesus. Although Jewish sources and an inscription mention Pilate, this passage marks his only appearance in surviving Roman literature.
— Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2019), 2-5. (Footnotes omitted)
Note: Below, Dr. Rob Bowman continues his series on the 30 most important apologetics books in church history. See his earlier posts in previous weeks of Useful Things.
#8: Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
The medieval view that the earth was the unmoving center of the universe, known as geocentrism, was inherited from the ancient Greeks and systematized in the second century AD by the pagan astronomer Ptolemy. Although the Ptolemaic system was not actually taught in the Bible, it was easy for the medieval Christian world to read the idea into various biblical texts. The Scripture most commonly cited to prove the geocentric position was Joshua 10:13, which states that in answer to Joshua’s prayer “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.”
The first book to challenge the geocentric system was written by Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish church official and physician. His book “On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres” (1543) did not overturn the geocentric system overnight. What has come to be known as the Copernican revolution was fully set into motion by another astronomer about 70 years after Copernicus’s death. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), an Italian professor of mathematics, in 1609 constructed a telescope and used it to look at the heavenly bodies. Galileo saw, among other things, four moons orbiting Jupiter, proving that not all heavenly bodies were orbiting the earth.
When Galileo published his findings in 1609, the intellectual establishment accused Galileo of false doctrine as well as erroneous science, and they goaded various religious leaders into attacking Galileo. One priest, Caccini, reportedly preached a sermon against Galileo using a slightly twisted version of Acts 1:11, “Ye men of Galileo, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” The main text, though, used against Galileo was the reference to the sun standing still (Joshua 10:13), mentioned earlier.
Galileo responded to these theological criticisms in the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615). Galileo argued in this letter that biblical passages such as Joshua 10:13 spoke in ordinary language and described physical events as they appeared to human observers. That the event in Joshua occurred and was a miracle, Galileo did not doubt; but that the Bible meant to specify precisely how the event occurred, and to teach a particular system of astronomy, Galileo pointedly denied. In his view “the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word,” so that God is no less “excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible.” Galileo pleaded eloquently for the freedom to study the facts of nature unhindered by theological interpretations of the Bible. To disallow such inquiry, Galileo warned, “it would be necessary to forbid men to look at the heavens,” and would implicitly impugn the many Scriptures which teach that God is revealed “in the open book of heaven.” Throughout his life Galileo upheld the complete truth of the Bible and its authority.
The Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina is the first great modern work on the relationship between science and theology. It remains worth reading to this day.
—Rob Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of over sixty articles and author or co-author of thirteen books, including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook.
Oiling the Hinges
By Edgar Andrews
C. H. Spurgeon famously likened the Bible to a caged lion. To defend it, he said, all we need to do is let it out. But this requires us to open the cage door, and that is no trivial task. In the first article (extending Spurgeon’s allegory) I suggested that to open the door involves three steps: (1) we must find the key, (2) we must oil the hinges, and (3) we must open the door wide enough for the lion to get out. In the first article we saw that the key is the Bible’s own doctrine of Scripture, namely, that “all scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). Unless we embrace the inerrancy of the Bible (in its original autographs, of course), the door will remain obstinately shut, however hard we try to force it open using the crowbars of weaker doctrines.
Let us now consider how to oil the rusty hinges. A correct doctrine of Scripture is a necessary foundation, but unless we are capable of “rightly dividing [or handling] the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15) the door will still not open. Oiling the hinges, then, represents what I shall call “biblical apologetics”— and since the word “apologetics” covers many disciplines, I need to define my terms. By “biblical apologetics” I mean what Paul intended when he declared his commitment to “the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7), an activity that clearly has both reactive and proactive dimensions. Jude, likewise, found it “necessary to write appealing to [his readers] to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Here “the faith” means a body of biblical truth—what is elsewhere called “the apostles’ doctrine [teaching]” and “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 2:42; 20:27).
Mighty Weapons
My point is this. We easily overlook the strong element of argumentation (or reasoning) that runs through the Bible as its authors and characters wrestle with objections, ignorance, falsehood, misunderstanding and “hostility from sinners” (Hebrews 12:3). If you need convincing, read the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), the book of Job, Psalm 2, or the Lord’s gospel-call in Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us reason together … Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
But biblical argumentation really blossoms in the New Testament. It appears in Jesus’ frequent debates with the Pharisees, in the appeal of the four Gospels to OT Scripture, and frequently in Acts. For example, at Ephesus Paul spent his time “reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God,” both in the synagogue and the school of Tyrannus (Acts 19:8-9). With what result? “All who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.” Paul’s powerful address to the Athenian philosophers in Acts 17 may well represent the pinnacle of biblical apologetics in the book of Acts.
The NT epistles are filled with argumentation, as a forest is filled with trees. Paul reveals how central to his ministry is this form of communication when he declares: “The weapons of our warfare are … mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
Unless we are equipped and prepared to reason with people from the Scriptures, and confront the arguments of unbelief by rational argumentation of our own, the lion will remain trapped in its cage. This is not only the responsibility of preachers but of every Christian. As Peter says: “always be ready to give a defense [apologia] to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).
Joined Up Biblical Thinking
I am not asking anyone to immerse themselves in arcane or technical disciplines. My appeal is simply for more joined-up biblical thinking. Too often we read our Bibles piecemeal, consuming devotional snacks without seeing, or even wanting to see, the big picture of God’s eternal plan. Jesus called the disciples on the Emmaus road “foolish” for failing to understand the essentially Christological character of their Old Testament Scriptures. Perhaps they had an excuse for this failure, but in the light of New Testament revelation, we do not.
Preachers and teachers are also frequently at fault when they fail to bring the full light of Scripture to bear on their text, or even to expound it in its context. In instructing others, we should teach them by our own example, first to think and then to argue rationally from the Scriptures. Only thus can we equip them with a reasoning faith—the spiritual weaponry that can breach the strongholds of unbelief.
There are some fine non-technical books that will help us understand and employ apologetics. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis is a classic, of course, but there are many more modern works, among which I would specially recommend Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace. For deeper reading, a comprehensive apologetics reading list can be found at whomadegod.org under “Articles and Multimedia.”
—Edgar Andrews is Emeritus Professor of Materials Science in the University of London, England. Formerly Head of Department and Dean, he holds PhD and DSc degrees in physics and has published over 100 scientific research papers. In retirement, he serves as co-pastor of the Campus Church, Welwyn Garden City, UK. He is the author of Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything and What is Man? Adam, Alien or Ape?
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Book Highlight
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Demonstrates the reliability of the canonical gospels by exploring the genre of ancient biography
The canonical gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources.
Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day. In Christobiography he explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the ministry of Jesus. Keener’s Christobiography has far-reaching implications for the study of the canonical gospels and historical-Jesus research.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1. Biographies about Jesus
2. Not a Novel Proposal
3. Examples and Development of Ancient Biography
4. What Sort of Biographies Are the Gospels?
5. What Did First-Century Audiences Expect of Biographies?
Part 2 Biographies and History
6. Biographies and Historical Information
7. What Historical Interests Meant in Antiquity
8. Luke-Acts as Biohistory
9. Sources Close to the Events
Part 3. Testing the Range of Deviation
10. Case Studies: Biographies of Recent Characters Use Prior Information
11. Flex Room: Literary Techniques in Ancient Biographies
Part 4. Two Objections to Gospels as Historical Biographies
12. What about Miracles?
13. What about John?
Part 5. Memories about Jesus: Memories before Memoirs
14. Memory Studies
15. Jesus Was a Teacher
16. Oral Tradition, Oral History
17. The Implications of This Study
Praise for Christobiography
— Richard Bauckham
University of Cambridge
“I have long thought that what we need is to be able to place the Gospels much more precisely within the wide spectrum of ancient biographies. Keener has mastered the literature, primary and secondary—as one would expect.”
Craig A. Evans
— Houston Baptist University
“Craig Keener’s sophisticated knowledge of the classical world is in evidence in his impressive Christobiography. He not only knows the sources; he asks of them the proper questions, such as what first-century readers expected of biographies. Keener rightly focuses on the biographies of the early Roman Empire. He also rightly takes into account the important fact that the New Testament Gospels were composed within living memory of their subject and that this tradition arose from the disciples of Jesus, who by definition were committed to learning their master’s teaching and recalling his deeds. Keener’s book makes a much-needed contribution to a very important topic.”
Available from Amazon, Eerdmans, and other online booksellers
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