Galileo as a Bad Theologian?

Abstract

In the last chapter we saw that although Galileo was factually right in believing the thesis of the earth’s motion, there are legitimate questions that can be raised about whether his reasons for this belief were logically and methodologically valid. However, although such questions are legitimate, that is not to say that the corresponding anti-Galilean criticisms are themselves correct, either factually, logically, or methodologically. Similarly, although Galileo was substantively right in believing that Scripture is not a scientific authority, his supporting arguments can and should be questioned. But again, these questions have not yielded tenable criticisms of his hermeneutical arguments.

On the other hand, the controversy over Galileo’s hermeneutical views and arguments is more complex than the one over his cosmological views and arguments. For one thing, criticism of his hermeneutics has a longer history than the criticism of his astronomy. For another, it is harder to determine what his hermeneutical views were as compared with his astronomical views. Thus the hermeneutical controversy can more easily generate another genre of anti-Galilean criticism based on attributing to him views he did not hold; here the objection would be that he held theses that are substantively incorrect. This provides us with one reason why it will be instructive to examine the history of the substantive criticism of Galileo’s hermeneutics. But there is another reason.