Standing up for truth

Not coincidentally, I recently taught an English class to a flourishing company. One text was entitled, 'E pur si muove' (And yet it moves!), which legend says are the words muttered by Galileo Galilei at the end of his infamous trial in 1633 in which he was condemned by the church for heresy. While historians don’t believe he actually said it, the catchphrase has taken on a meaning all its own in the modern vernacular. In short, it tells us that something can be true even if the vast majority doesn’t believe it.

Truth rejected

Galileo was a genius and a devout Catholic until the end of his life, though he spent what remained of his years under house arrest for teaching what we now all know to be the most fundamental truth of our solar system, heliocentricity. That is, the sun is the center and our planet revolves around it. What was the controversy? The then-belief that the earth didn’t move, but everything else around it did. Why? Because of the misinterpretation of one verse which states 'The earth is fixed and cannot be moved' (Psalm 93:1). 

Today we understand this verse to mean that the earth has been established and is secure. But in Galileo’s day, such a thought was nearly punishable by death. The Roman Catholic church tried to silence him further by forbidding the circulation of his books. Incredibly, the papacy never officially recognized Galileo’s discovery until 1992, and then it took another eight years before apologising.

Seeking out the true senses of scriptural texts

Graciously yet poignantly, Galileo defined the folly of the matter in his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. 'In Augustine we read, "If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there." ...It is the function of expositors to seek out the true senses of scriptural texts. These will unquestionably accord with the physical conclusions which manifest sense and necessary demonstrations have previously made certain to us.' (Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake [New York: Anchor Books, 1990]).

His lesson is far reaching and we may be facing a similar scenario today in distinguishing what is really at stake in the debate between creationism, intelligent design and theistic evolution versus atheistic evolution. And although no theist would deny the act of creation, enumerable Christians disagree as to the meaning of the biblical text that points to it.

Natural revelation 

Now before you label yours truly, I am not here stating my position but my ambition. That is, before we condemn a variant Christian view as heretical, perhaps we ought to examine what we have accepted to be the only possible approach to a text. This would ensure that we subject our understanding of the written revelation to the scrutiny of the less-arguable natural revelation around us. 

The goal of biblical exegesis