Chapter
6.
Earlier Christians and Astrology
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Where do we go when we die? Wilhelm
Gundel remarks in a chapter called "The Firmament as the Eternal Home of
Mankind" that numerous myths about the stars support the idea that stars
once were persons, and that everyone will someday go to heaven -- to an
astronomical, not a metaphorical or theological heaven.
He relates, for example, a myth of an unspecified African group.
Once upon a time God forbid people to go up to heaven.
Nevertheless some people again climbed up to heaven from a high
mountain. Thereupon God made the
mountain sink so they couldn't return. Now
they lead eternal lives as star people. Thus
the heavens are filled with former people, or creatures like people, but for
later persons the way up to heaven is forever cut off.
Gundel remarks also on the German folk belief that when a child dies,
God makes a new star, and observes that Hellenistic astrologers repeatedly
said that those who believed in their teachings wholeheartedly would become
immortal after their earthly deaths, and live among the star gods.
(Wilhelm Gundel, Sternglaube, Sternreligion und Sternorakel,
1959, p. 25-26.)
2. And where did the angels come from?
In the New Bible Dictionary (1982, edited by J. D. Douglas et
al), under the entry "Angel" we find the blunt statement that man's
early thinking associated angels with stars.
St. Thomas Aquinas dealt at length with doctrines about the motions and
nature of the planets, and "throughout his many writings on these topics
(Litt gives more than a hundred and thirty passages on celestial influence
alone) his angelology is there, waiting in the wings, directing his thoughts,
it seems to me." (J. D.
North, "Medieval Concepts of Celestial Influence: A Survey", in Astrology,
Science and Society, Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p.
13; the work by T. Litt is Les Corps célestes dans l'univers de Thomas
d'Aquin (1963).) North
remarks that while Aquinas's theories were rational and systematic, they were
not, to some, in the best tradition of natural philosophy.
"But this," North says, "is just another way of saying
that one prefers light rays to angels."
(North, ibid., p. 14.)
3. The notion of angels was for some associated with the idea that all
stars are of the same kind, and for some Jews and Christians, the stars are
"angels of light" (Lichtengel), or, if the stars are not
themselves angels, they are governed by angels. (Gundel, ibid., p.
48.). Angels appear in the vision
of Enoch, in which Enoch sees "the sons of angels step into flames of
fire", their robes white and shining like snow. We read in the New Bible Dictionary
that Enoch was the son of Jared and father of Methuselah, and a man of
outstanding sanctity who enjoyed close fellowship with God.
He became a popular figure in the period between the end of Old
Testament prophecy and the coming of Jesus.
It appears that the legend of Enoch was elaborated in the Babylonian
diaspora as a counterpart to the antediluvian sages of Mesopotamian
legend. "So Enoch became the
initiator of the art of writing [why is writing so often associated with the
stars in ancient times?], and the first wise man, who received heavenly
revelations of the secrets of the universe and transmitted them in writing to
later generations. In the earlier
tradition his scientific wisdom is prominent, acquired on journeys through the
heavens with angelic guides, and including astronomical, cosmographical and
meteorological lore, as well as the solar calendar used at Qumran.
He was also God's prophet against the fallen angels.
Later tradition (2nd century BC) emphasizes his ethical teaching and
especially his apocalyptic revelations of the course of world history, down to
the last judgment. In the
Similitudes (1 Enoch 37-71) he is identified with the Messianic Son of
Man (71:14-17), and some later Jewish traditions identified him with the
nearly divine figure Metatron... Early
Christian apocalyptic writings frequently expect his return with Elijah before
the End." (New Bible Dictionary, 1982, under "Enoch").
4. In the apocryphal scripture Ecclesiasticus, Enoch is
mentioned in Chapter 44, the one which begins "Let us now praise famous
men, and our fathers that begat us."
This may be displaced from Chapter 49, and the Interpreter's
One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (1971, edited by Charles M. Laymon)
gives a conjectural reconstruction: "Few
like Enoch have been created on earth, an example of knowledge to all
generations. He walked with the
Lord, and also he was taken up from the earth."
(p. 575, slightly altered). In
the New Testament, in Hebrews 11:5, we have:
"By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and
he was not found, because God had taken him." (Revised Standard Version.) Genesis 5:21-24 has: "When
Enoch had lived sixty-five years he became the father of Methuselah.
Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred
years, and had other sons and daughters.
Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.
Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him."
365 days = 1 year, 365 years = ?
5. Gundel, in describing the structure of the Paradiso of
Dante's Divine Comedy (Gundel, ibid., p. 39), remarks that in the
European Middle Ages, Dante (1265-1321) above all made use of the residence of
men's souls in the stars. Each of
Dante's planets is a paradise of its own.
The souls in each planet praise God and sing songs honoring the Virgin
Mary. Pure light and flawless
brilliance make up the nature of the souls dwelling in the stars.
Their substance is described as being like shining cloud, but it is
much thicker than cloud, and hard and polished like diamond.
The souls are clothed in brilliant raiment, their faces shine
radiantly, with the colors of the planets.
Thus the souls on the Sun are like burning suns, and on Mars like
rubies in which flaming sunbeams glow. In
the Paradiso, Dante travels to the Empyrean realm through 9 spheres or
heavens: the 7 planetary heavens,
the heaven of the fixed stars containing the souls of the saints, and the primum
mobile, the first moving heaven, containing the angels.
6. Gundel observes that prayers to the sun, moon and stars are found in
the pyramid texts of the 3rd millenium before Christ, and are found in coffin
and temple texts through the following millenia up to the end of antiquity.
(Gundel, ibid., p. 55.) Probably
prayers to heaven -- physical heaven, to start with -- were among the earliest
of prayers, and they are, of course, still to be found among Christians, as
well as the members of many other religions.
Moreover, the boundary between prayers and appeals for intercession to
deities, on the one hand, and magical charms or incantations to spirits, on
the other, is sometimes indistinct.
7. In these and other ways Christianity shows aspects of astral
religion. Still, many Christians
have been opposed to astrolatry and astrology
from early on. One reason for
this is that it can be considered to be forbidden by Scripture.
In Genesis 1.14-18, we find:
"And God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the
heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for
seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the
heavens to give light upon the earth.' And
it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule
the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the
earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from
the darkness." (Revised Standard Version.)
8. In the New Oxford Annotated Bible (1973), a commentator,
Bernhard Anderson, remarks on this passage (p. 2): "The sun, moon, and stars are not divine powers that
control man's destiny as was believed in antiquity, but are only _lights_.
Implicitly worship of the heavenly host is forbidden."
Indeed, we find explicit condemnation of this practice in Deuteronomy
4, 2, Kings 23, Jeremiah 8, and Zephaniah 1.
In Deuteronomy 4.19,
we read: "And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and
when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you
be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God
has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven."
This might be interpreted as forbidding both astrology and astronomy,
in the modern senses of these words. Strictly
speaking, it appears to forbid worship of celestial objects.
One might use them for navigation, or to predict seasonal changes or
individual destinies, for example, without worshiping them, unless one
considers an intense devotion to the study of heavenly bodies for any purpose
whatever a form of worship.
9. In the Bible, host of heaven may refer to celestial bodies,
or to angelic beings. M. T.
Fermer writes: "This phrase
... occurs about 15 times, in most cases implying the object of heathen
worship (Dt. 4:19, etc.). The two
meanings 'celestial bodies' and 'angelic beings' are inextricably
intertwined..... No doubt to the
Hebrew mind the distinction was superficial, and the celestial bodies were
thought to be closely associated with heavenly beings.....
The Bible certainly suggests that angels of different ranks have charge
of individuals, and of nations; no doubt in the light of modern cosmology this
concept, if retained at all (as biblically it must be), ought properly to be
extended, as the dual sense of the phrase 'host of heaven' suggests, to the
oversight of the elements of the physical universe -- planets, stars and
nebulae." (M. T. Fermer,
article "host, host of heaven" in New Bible Dictionary, 2nd
edition, 1982, edited by J. D. Douglas, et al.)
Fermer goes on to say that the phrase Lord of hosts_ is used
nearly 300 times: "It is a
title of might and power, used frequently in a military or apocalyptic context
.... It is thought by some to have arisen as a title of God
associated with his lordship over the 'host' of Israel; but its usage,
especially in the prophets, clearly implies a relationship to the 'host of
heaven' in its angelic sense, and this could well be the original
connotation." (ibid.)
10. The reason given for not worshiping the stars in Deuteronomy
4.19 is that they aren't particular enough. One must worship the god of Israel, and not objects which belong
to everyone. The next verse
in Deuteronomy (4.20) reads: "But
the Lord has taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of
Egypt, to be a people of his own possession, as at this day."
Deuteronomy 17.2-5 prescribes strong punishment for sun, moon and star
worship: "If there is found among you, within any of your towns which the
Lord your God gives you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of
the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, and has gone and served
other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of
heaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it; then
you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an
abominable thing has been done in Israel, then you shall bring forth to your
gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that
man or woman to death with stones."
11. In 2 Kings 21:1-3, we are told about a phase in the struggle
of the Jews to replace earlier religions and to resist imposition of alien
religions. Manasseh became king
of Judah when he was 12 and reigned for 55 years:
"And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to
the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the
people of Israel. For he rebuilt
the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he erected altars
for Ba'al, and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped
all the host of heaven, and served them."
At which the Lord said by way of his prophets: "I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such evil that
the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle ... and I will wipe
Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down."
(2 Kings 21:12-13). 2
Chronicles 33:12-13 adds that Manasseh prayed to the Lord, "and
humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers."
God received his plea, and restored him to Jerusalem after a captivity
in Babylon. "Then Manasseh
knew that the Lord was God." But
Amon, the son of Manasseh, did the same as his father, and was killed by his
servants. (2 Kings
21:19-26, 22:1-22; Chronicles 33:21-25, 34:1-2).
The people of Judah killed the conspirators, and made Josiah, the son
of Amon, king. Josiah "did
what was right in the eyes of the Lord", and turned back to Yahweh.
12. In 2 Kings 23.4-5, we read that Josiah burned "all the
vessels made for Ba'al, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven" and
"deposed the idolatrous priests "who burned incense to Ba'al, to the
sun, and the moon, and the constellations, and all the host of heavens."
Jeremiah 8.1-2 has: "At
that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its
princes, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of
the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs; and they
shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which
they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and they have sought
and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be as dung
on the surface of the ground." In
the book of the prophet _Zephaniah_, doom is proclaimed for Judah, and
in _Zephaniah_ 1.2,5, we read: "I
will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth," says the
Lord", and among the priests to be destroyed are "those who bow down
on the roofs to the host of the heavens."
These condemnations of astral religion seem to be made chiefly on
behalf of eliminating competing gods, or at any rate competing priests and
kings.
13. It appears that there was a migration of Hebrews from the north,
perhaps from Palestine or the Syrian desert, to southern Arabia in the first
millenium B.C. or maybe much earlier. This
is the region now called Yemen, of which there are at present two separate
political entities. During the
first millenium, this region maintained a considerable trade in incense and
spices. According to one
tradition, the Queen of Sheba came from a section of this region called Saba.
The people of this civilization were known as the Sabaeans, Minaeans,
Qatabaneans and Hadramauteans.
14. "The evidence goes to prove," says James Montgomery,
"that the ruling classes which made the South-Arabian civilization came
from the north. There the Semitic
genius produced in a land of unique natural possibilities an artificial
civilization that compares with the civilization of Babylonia, only far more
wholly Semitic, for in Babylonia the Semites built upon the alien Sumerian
civilization." The religion
of this pre-Islamic culture was polytheistic.
The gods, or els, were similar to the baals of Canaan.
Pre-eminent among the gods was "a definite astral triad of highest
deities", consisting of "Moon, Sun, and Morning (or Evening) Star, a
family group of Father, Mother, and Son corresponding to the Babylonian
trinity, Shamash, Sin, Ishtar." (James
Montgomery, Arabia and the Bible, 1934, p. 151-2.)
15. What this "pure" Semitic religion of southern Arabia has
do with religions further north is hard to say. There has been much progress in archeological research in
this region since Montgomery wrote in 1934, but this hasn't resulted in much
light being shed on the religious practices of this culture.
The southern religion may have been related to that of the Canaanites
of the Bible, who preceded the Israelites in Palestine.
It may be that in some ways the Canaanite religion was a forerunner of
the Hebrew religion. John Romer
observes: "Just as the faith
of biblical Israel was housed inside the traditional architecture of [Bronze
Age] Canaan so some of the Old Testaments's oldest passages, its liturgy and
Psalms are also rooted in Canaanite literature."
(John Romer, Testament, 1988, p. 78.)
We may speculate that the astral component of Canaanite religion to
which the Hebrews were so opposed was similar to that of the Semites of
southern Arabia. Again, the
correspondence of the the south Arabian trinity with that of the Babylonians
suggests a link with ancient Mesopotamian religions.
For our purposes, we need not involve ourselves in the intricate and
frustrating history and pre-history of Palestine and Arabia. It is sufficient to know that there was a potent astral
religion throughout the "Old Testament"regions before Israel became
a nation.
16. Theodore Wedel characterizes early and medieval Christian attitudes
toward prediction by natural means in this way: "The Christians maintained, in general, that all
divinatory arts, and, above all, astrology, were inventions of the devil, and
could be carried on only by the aid of demons.
This theory arose early, and remained throughout the Middle Ages the
argument of last resort .... It
was an easy saving of argument, therefore, to admit at the outset the
possibility of astrological prediction, and, at the same time, to prohibit its
use by asserting that it could only be accomplished through diabolic aid.
But danger lurked in pushing this theory too far; for how could even
demons read the future in the stars unless it was written there?
(Theodore Otto Wedel, The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology,
Particularly in England, 1920, p. 16-17.)
17. The early Christian theologian Origen was opposed to the art of
casting horoscopes, and to the theory of the magnus annus, according to
which, when the celestial bodies all return
to their original positions
after the lapse of some thousands of years, history will begin to repeat
itself and the same events will occur and the same persons live over again.
Both of these views were attributed to Celsus by Origen in his Contra
Celsum (1st half of 3rd century A.D.).
Origen rejects them on the grounds that to admit their truth is to
annihilate free will. But, as
Thorndike says, Origen is far from having freed himself from astrological
attitudes toward the stars, and still shows vestiges of the pagan tendency to
worship them as divinities. He
grants reasoning faculties and a certain amount of prophetic powerr to the
stars, but refuse to permit worship of them.
Rather he believes that "the sun himself and moon and stars pray
to the supreme God through his only begotten Son" (quoted by Thorndike).
Elsewhere Origen says that stars can even sin. In a fragment of a commentay on Genesis, he holds like
Philo Judaeus that men were instructed in the meaning of the stars by the
fallen angels. He argues at
length that divine foreknowledge does not imply necessity.
Nevertheless, God instituted the stars as signs of the future, but he
only intended for angels to read them, and considered it best that people
remain ignorant of their futures. Evil
spirits, however, taught men the art of astrology. However, Origen believes that the art is so difficult and
requires such superhuman accuracy that the predictions of astrologers are more
likely to be wrong than right, "for it is a much greater task," he
says, "than lies within human power to learn truly from the motion of the
stars what each person will do and suffer." (Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental
Science, 1923-1958), v. 1, 1923, p. 456-458.)
18. Tamsyn Barton in her
description of the the position of Origen says:
"Origen (185/86 – 254/55), who remained immensely influential
despite his later condemnation, illustrates the nature of the struggle between
the astrologers and the church in his Commentary on Genesis.
In his uneasy compromises he shows that astrology was a serious rival.
Origen summarizes his arguments as follows:
'1) How our freedom is safeguarded when God knows in advance for all
eternity the acts that each man is judged to have accomplished.
2) How the stars are not agents, but
19. Among the ancient Greeks, Carneades (c. 213-129 B.C.), founder of a
school of philosophy called the New Academy, argued against fatalistic
astrology on a number of grounds. Although
Carneades, like Socrates, wrote nothing, his oral arguments have been
preserved by others. He used the
familiar argument that twins, although born under the same signs, need not
have the same destiny. It was
noted early that the stars move very quickly around the earth, and twins are not
in fact born under quite the same planetary influences.
However, Carneades might have replied to this with another of his
criticisms, that it is humanly impossible to fix the exact time of
birth or conception. Carneades'
argument based on the destruction of morality had an especially forceful and
lasting influence on neo-Platonists and Christian theologians.
He held that astrological fatalism must be wrong, since if it were
right, it would be the ruin of morality and piety, of responsibility as well
as irresponsibility, of laws and justice and punishment, of virtue as well as
vice, of praise as well as blame, of modesty as well as shame.
Since these exist, fatalism fails.
One might reply to this with the argument of Zeno the Stoic:
moral as well as immoral acts are preordained, and so are
responsibility and irresponsibility, the passing and obeying and breaking of
laws, justice and punishment, virtue and vice, praise and blame, modesty and
shame. Nevertheless, Carneades'
arguments against astrology were repeated by a legion of Christian
theologians, as has been traced by David Amand (David Amand, _Fatalisme et
libert dans l'antiquit grecque, Recherches sur la survivance de
l'argumentation morale antifataliste de Carnéade chez les philosophes grecs
et les théologiens chrétiens des quatres premiers siêcles, 1945).
20. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Amand says,
following the blossoming of Stoicism, the heart-breaking nightmare of
the heimarmene -- the absolutely necessary and indissoluble succession
of causes and effects in the past, present and future -- terrified masses of people
devoted to the official polytheistic cults, and led them to seek deliverance
in the mystery religions, and it terrified innumerable Christians who in the
secrecy of their consciences were led to doubt their redemption by Christ.
Many philosophers and theologians of antiquity, other than Stoics, were
deeply committed to proving that our wills are free, and to refuting the
demoralizing theory of sidereal fatalism.
Christian doctors, in particular, defended with great vigor human
freedom of choice as a most excellent -- but most perilous -- gift of God.
"The cultural history of antiquity in its decline would be
incomplete," says Amand, "without a chapter entitled: 'The bad dream
of the astrological heimarmene and the battle for moral freedom.'"
(Amand, ibid., p. 587-588 and p. 7.)
For Christians, the problem was complicated by the doctrine that while
men may not know the future, God does.
21. St. Augustine, for example, says that when ordinary men hear the
word 'fate' "ordinary usage leads them to think of nothing but the
influence of the position of the stars at the moment when a child is born, or
conceived." Augustine
continues: "Those, however,
who believe that the stars, apart from the will of God, determine what we do,
what goods we have, or what evils we suffer, must be thrown out of court, not
only by adherents of the true religion, but also by those who choose to
worship gods of any sort, false gods though they be.
For what is the effect of this belief except to persuade men not to
worship or pray to any god at all?..... As
against these rash assertions, blasphemous and irreligious as they are, we
Christians declare both that God knows all things before they happen, and that
it is by our own free will that we act, whenever we feel and know that a thing
is done by us of our own volition. But
we do not say that all things come to pass by fate.
No indeed, we say that nothing comes to pass by fate.
For the word fate is commonly used of the position of the stars at the
moment of conception or birth, and we have shown that word means nothing, but
is the frivolous assertion of an unreality ....
It is not true, then, that there is no reality in our will just because
God foresaw what would be in our will .... Therefore we are in no way
compelled to abolish free will when we keep the foreknowledge of God, or
blasphemously to deny that God foreknows the future because we keep free will.
Instead we embrace both truths; with faith and trust we assert both.
The former is required for correct belief, the latter for right living.
And there is no right living if there is no correct belief in God.
Far be it then, from us, in order to enjoy free will, to deny the
foreknowledge of him by whose assistance alone we are free, or shall ever be
free..... Nay, it is precisely
because of foreknowledge that there is no doubt that man himself sins when he
sins. For he whose foreknowledge
cannot be mistaken foresaw that neither fate, nor fortune, nor anything else
but the man himself would sin. If
he chooses not to sin, he certainly does not sin, and this choice not to sin
was also foreseen by God." (Augustine,
Civitate Dei contra paganos, City of God
22. The limits of free will must be carefully observed, says Augustine.
He writes in a letter to Hilarius: "... our free will is able to
perform good works if it is helped from above, which happens as a result of
humble petition and confession; whereas, if it is deprived of divine help, it
may excel in knowledge of the Law, but it will have no solid foundation of
justice, and will be puffed up with impious pride and deadly vanity.....
This free will will be free in proportion as it is sound, and sound in
proportion as it is submissive to divine mercy and grace.
Therefore, it prays with faith and says:
'Direct my paths according to thy word, and let no iniquity have
dominion over me.' It prays, it does not promise; it confesses, it does not
declare itself; it begs for the fullest liberty, it does not boast of its own
power." (Augustine, Letters,
translated by Sister Wilfrid Parsons, 1953, v. 3, p. 321, 323-324.)
23. Mircea Eliade says:
"Of course, astrology, the hope that one can know the future, has
always been popular with the rich and powerful -- with kings, princes, popes,
etc. -- particularly from the Renaissance on.
One may add that the belief in the determination of destiny by the
position of the planets illustrates, in the last analysis, another defeat of
Christianity. Indeed, the
Christian Fathers fiercely attacked the astrological fatalism dominant during
the last centuries of the Roman Empire. 'We
are above Fate,' wrote Tatian; 'the Sun and the Moon are made for us!'
In spite of this theology of human freedom, astrology has never been
extirpated in the Christian world. But
never in the past did it reach the proportions and prestige it enjoys in our
times." (Mircea Eliade, Occultism,
Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions, 1976, p. 59.)
It is doubtful that astrology, and astral
24. Eliade speculates on reasons for the popularity of astrology:
"... the discovery that your life is related to astral phenomena
does confer a new meanng on your existence.
You are no longer merely the anonymous individual described by
Heidegger and Sartre, a stranger thrown into an absurd and meaningless world,
condemned to be free, as Sartre used to say, with a freedom confined to your
situation and conditioned by your historical moment.
Rather, the horoscope reveals to you a new dignity: it shows how
intimately you are related to the entire universe.
It is true that your life is determined by the movements of the stars,
but at least this determinant has an incomparable grandeur.
Although, in the last analysis, a puppet pulled by invisible ropes and
strings, you are nevertheless a part of the heavenly world.
Besides, this cosmic predetermination of your existence constitutes a
mystery: it means that the universe moves on according to a preestablished
plan; that human life and history itself follow a pattern and advance
progressively toward a goal. This
ultimate goal is secret or beyond human understanding; but at least it gives
meaning to a cosmos regarded by most scientists as the result of blind hazard, and it gives sense to the
human existence declared by Sartre to be de trop. This parareligious dimension of astrology is even considered
superior to the existing religions, because it does not imply any of the
difficult theological problems: the existence of a personal or transpersonal
God, the enigma of Creation, the origin of evil, and so on.
Following the instructions of your horoscope, you feel in harmony with
the universe and do not have to bother with hard, tragic, or insoluble
problems, At the same time, you
admit, consciously or unconsciously, that a grand, through incomprehensible,
cosmic drama displays itself and that you are a part of it; accordingly, you
are not de trop." (Eliade, ibid., p. 61.)
One may wonder to what extent resistance to notions or the existence of
free will and indeterminism, especially in human affairs, is motivated by
yearnings for
25. The Church continued to vigorously oppose astrology throughout the
Middle Ages, and since astrology and astronomy were intertwined, the
opposition sometimes spilled over to astronomy.
Pierre Duhem says, speaking of medieval Italian astrologers:
"To deny human freedom, to deny the miraculous action of
Providence in the world, to use superstitious divinations and magical
operations, was to contradict all Christian teaching and to contravene the
most strict prescriptions of the Church.
Among the adepts of astrology, then, and the ministers of Catholicism,
a struggle was inevitable. Sometimes it was violent.
The unbelieving astrologers who enlivened the spirit of the Court of
Naples harshly attacked orthodox doctrine; and the mendicant monks, Dominicans
and Franciscans, zealously defended dogma.
The Church raged against impenitent error with the toughness which was
the rule of the time, and over the history of Italian astronomy in the Middle
Ages the flame of the stake sometimes threw its bloody gleam."
(Pierre Duhem, Le Système du Monde, 1913, v. 4, p. 187-188.)
26. The prime example used by Duhem of such a Neapolitan astrologer is
Guido Bonatti (born before 1223, died 1296 or 1297), who wrote a popular book
on astrology, and was vigorously opposed by a celebrated preaching friar, John
of Vincence (Jean de Vicence). One
can't help noticing that Bonatti lived to an old age, unpunished by the
Church. Pico della Mirandola
later (1495) characterized Bonatti's work as puerile and only suitable for
fools. However, Duhem describes
Bonatti's arguments, meant to show that the possible, which lies between the
necessary and the impossible, is not the contingent, as Aristotle and Abu
Ma'shar had said, but something like the necessary while it is still
potential. This may be wrong, but
Bonatti's arguments, as quoted by Duhem, don't sound foolish.
27. Duhem himself speaks admiringly of the views of Avicenna (985-1036
A.D.) and Al Gazali (1058-1111 A.D.) in which a more subtle version of this
idea is embedded in an elaborate philosophical and theological system, which
was of paramount influence in the Muslim world, and had considerable effect in
the Christian world. A basic
motive of Avicenna and Al Gazali was to elucidate the relations between God,
the celestial intelligences belonging to the heavenly spheres, and the bodies
and souls of the sublunary world. Duhem
says: "For Aristotle, in any
substance of the sublunary world, there is a matter which exists potentially
and a form which exists actually. For
Avicenna and Al Gazali, in all being after the First Cause, there is an
essence which is simply possible and an existence which a creative cause makes
necessary." (Pierre Duhem,
ibid., v. 4, p. 495.)
28. In this last formulation, the First Cause and creative cause are
allowed for, and a mechanism for turning the possible into the necessary is
furnished, but the underlying intent to show that everything has a cause
(First Cause excepted) resembles that of Bonatti.
Furthermore: "Like
Peripatetism [Aristotelianism], like Stoicisn, like Hellenic Neoplatonism, the
Arabic Neoplatonism makes all of its metaphysics lead to the justification of
the principle which the astrologers claim for themselves.
With what rigor Avicenna develops it!
With what care he submits to it everything which happens in the world,
even what seems to happen by chance, even the decisions of our wills."
The principle, in brief, is that everything for which existence has
been preceded by non-existence, including voluntary decisions, has a cause;
and that terrestrial events arise from celestial ones, which in turn proceed
in a necessary manner from the necessity of the divine will.
(Duhem, ibid., p. 493-494.)
29. Despite Christian opposition to astrology, there were Christian
writers who promoted it from early on. For
example, there was Firmicus, more completely Julius Firmicus Maternus, who
converted to Christianity in the time of the first Christian emperor,
Constantine the Great (4th century A.D.). He wrote a work called Mathesis, on the casting of
horoscopes, which was well-known throughout medieval times and later.
As we would expect of a Christian, he was not a fatalist, and he
believed in one supreme God. According to Thorndike: "Firmicus provides not only for
divine government of the universe and creation of the world and man, but also
for prayer to God and for human free will, since by the divinity of the soul
we are able to resist in some measure the decrees of the stars.
He also holds that human laws and moral standards are not rendered of
no avail by the force of the stars but are very useful to the soul in its
struggle by the power of the divine mind against the vices of the body."
(Lynn Thorndike, ibid., v. 1, p. 531.)
Thorndike remarks that the astrologer Hephaestion of Thebes, who wrote
later in the fourth century, seems also to have been a Christian, so Firmicus
seems not to have been a solitary case or an anomaly. (p. 535.)
30. Firmicus makes specific predictions which Thorndike takes to be
revealing of the state of the society around Firmicus.
For example, the evidence of the Mathesis suggests that most
people in what we see to have been declining Rome were not conscious of the
the intellectual decadence and lack of interest in science generally imputed
to them. (Thorndike, ibid., p.
538.) It seems that mathematics
and medicine were important factors in 4th century culture, along with the
rhetorical studies whose role may have been over-estimated in recent times,
perhaps by scholars uninterested in the sciences.
31. During the flowering of Arabian culture in the couple of hundred
years after the rise of Islam, there were many Arabian astrologers, and some
of their writings strongly influenced Christians
during the European Middle Ages, chiefly starting from around 1100.
Alkindi and Albumasar (Abu Ma'shar) (9th century A.D.) are two
especially famous names. Another,
somewhat lesser known, was Thebit ben Corat (or Thabit ibn Kurrah, Abu Al
Hasan, etc., etc.), (also 9th century A.D).
Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1292) alludes to him as "the supreme
philosopher among all Christians [!], who has added in many respects,
speculative as well as practical, to the work of Ptolemy."
However, Thorndike says he was not a Mohammedan, but a heathen or
pagan, a member of the sect of Sabians, whose chief seat was at his
birth-place, Harran. These are
presumably descendants of the Sabaeans of southern Arabia we mentioned
earlier.
32. The Sabians, Thorndike says, appear to have continued the paganism
and astrology of Babylonia, but also to have accepted Hermetic traditions from
Egypt, and some Gnostic and Neo-Platonic doctrines. They laid special stress on the spirits of the planets, to
whom they prayed and made sacrifices and suffumigations. Days on which planets reached their culminating points were
celebrated as festivals. They
observed houses and stations of the planets, their risings and setting,
conjunctions and oppositions, and their rule over certain hours of the day and
night. Some planets were
masculine, others feminine, some lucky, others unlucky.
They were related to different metals, and different members of the
human body were placed under different signs of the zodiac.
Each planet had its own appropriate figures and forms, and ruled over
specified climates, regions and things in nature.
Most of this, however, is astrological commonplace, whether of pagans,
Mohammedans or Christians. It was
only in worshiping the spirits of the planets and denying the existence of one
God, and in their practice of sacrificial divination, that the Sabians could
be distinguished as heathen or pagan. Thebit
became one of the Caliph's astronomers in Bagdad, where he founded his Sabian
community. He was famed above all
as a philosopher, but most of his philosophical works are lost.
Some geometrical treatises by him are extant, also a work on weights,
and four astronomical treatises, evidently of no great originality.
He was also the author of a work cited by numerous medieval
authorities, on the construction of astronomical or astrological images for
various ends. This was said by
Thebit, on the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy, to be the "acme of
astrology". (Thorndike,
ibid., v. 1, p. 661-662.)
33. Theodore Wedel observes that in the astrological treatises of such
Arabian writers as Albumasar, Abenragel and Alchabitius, judicial astrology as
Ptolemy had described it occupied a position of minor importance. Instead,
emphasis was on interrogationes and electiones.
For the interrogationes, rules were given with which an
astrologer could answer questions about such matters as identifying a thief,
the location of missing objects or persons, trustworthiness of an associate,
or the wealth of a prospective marriage partner.
For the electiones, rules were given for determining propitious
moments for actions. These might
be applied to even small details, such as the proper time for boarding a ship,
writing a letter, or cutting one's fingernails.
(Wedel, ibid., p. 53-54.)
34. Richard Lemay has argued that a work of Albumasar, whose name more
accurately and completely was Abu Ma'shar Ja'far ben Muhammad ben 'Umar al-Balkhi,
was very likely the single most important original source of Aristotle's
theories of nature for European scholars, starting a little before the middle
of the 12th century. (Richard Lemay, Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism
in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy through
Arabic Astrology, 1962.) It was not until later in the 12th century that the original
books of Aristotle on nature began to become available in Latin.
The works of Aristotle on logic had been known earlier, and Aristotle
was generally recognized as "the master of logic".
But during the course of the 12th century, Aristotle was transformed
into the "master of those who know", and in particular a master of
natural philosophy, or the scientific theory of natural things.
It is especially interesting that the work of Abu Ma'shar in question
is a treatise on astrology. Its
Latin title is Introductorium in Astronmiam, a translation of the
Arabic Kitab al-mudkhal al-kabir ila 'ilm ahkam an-nujjum, written in
Baghdad in the year 848 A.D. It
was translated into Latin first by John of Seville in 1133, and again, less
literally and abridged, by Hermann of Carinthia in 1140 A.D.
35. Lemay says: "Genuine
peripatetic [i.e., Aristotelian] doctrines in the Introductorium are
hopelessly mingled together with empirical notions common among psychologists,
physicians and other popular practitioners of Oriental society while, on the
other hand, an Aristotelian 'scientific' basis is very cleverly set up in
support of astrology." (Lemay, ibid., p. xxix.) Thus, to begin with, the Christian scholars of Europe
associated the natural science of Aristotle with astrology. This sheds light on the nature of the condemnations of
Aristotle by Church authorities early in the 13th century, which emphasized
pernicious doctrines of astrological fatalism and pantheistic cosmology, and
on the later integration of Aristotle into Christian doctrine made by such
scholars as Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.
Lemay goes so far as to say that "during the thirteenth century,
the authority of Abu Ma'shar on astronomy-astrology, and on cosmology,
disputed the first place with Aristotle himself",
and quotes a marginal note in a medieval manuscript to the effect that
Ptolemy in the Almagest is the authority for the courses of the
planets, and Alfraganus for their geometry, but on the nature of the planets
and their influence on the lower world, Abu Ma'shar is set above Aristotle.
(Lemay, ibid., p. xxxv.)
36. During the course of the 12th century, most of the translations
into Latin from Arabic made by European scholars were of astrological
material. As a result, says Lemay:
"Astrology became a superior branch of physics, a sort of
provisional metaphysics to be modified and displaced only in the thirteenth
century at the time of the full adoption of Aristotle's
37. It appears, then, that the partisans of natural science in the 12th
century, Christians included, were saturated with astrology.
Lemay says: "The
names of Adelard of Bath, John of Seville, Hermann of Carinthia, William of
Conches, Bernard Silvester, Roger of Hereford, Daniel of Morley, Raymond of
Marseilles, Robert of Chester, Alfred of Sareshel, Alanus de Insulis
and Raoul of Longchamp. are all associated one way or another with the rising
interest in the natural Aristotle; all were firm believers as well in the
validity of astrological science. Twelfth
century scholars have long been studied with the conviction that they were
entirely absorbed in logical disputes, or bent on finding in nature a
preordained imitation of biblical or theological concepts.
Dispassionate examination of the rich manuscript materials remaining
from this period has resulted in nothing less than a re-discovery of some
major aspects of twelfth century intellectual life.
Whether in astrology or alchemy, in medicine or mathematics, in
geometry, botany or mineralogy, etc., the intellectual pursuits of twelfth
century scholars appear to have ranged well beyond the pale of religious
thought; theirs were the permanent interests which men of all times have shown
in the physical laws of their natural habitat.
The dedication of astrologers to their discipline represented a far
more serious preoccupation than the mere mention of their science would
incline modern historians to imagine. It
has always been a great mistake of historians of medieval thought to minimize
or totally to overlook this field of inquiry as of nor importance or having
negligible bearing upon the intellectual outlook of the time."
(Lemay, ibid., p. xxiv-xxv.)
38. In the 8 volumes of his A History of Magic and Experimental
Science (1923-1958), Thorndike discusses the attitudes toward astrology of
a host of medieval writers and leaders. For
example, there is Saint Hildegard (1098-1179) of Bingen.
At first sight, she is a strong opponent of astrology.
She calls the mathematici "deadly
instructors", and warns that men "should not seek signs of the
future in either stars or fire or birds or any other creature".
On the other hand, she emphasizes the influence of the moon on natural
phenomena, and also the passions of men via their "humors" (fluids),
which determine to some fair extent their character and even something of
their fates. There is, in her Causae
et curae, a list of predictions for each day of the moon of the type of
person who will be conceived on that day. (Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, 1923, p.
148-151.)
39. John of Salisbury (1120?-1180) was thoroughly opposed to astrology,
but got into some difficulty trying to reconcile God's omniscience and
foreknowledge with fatal necessity. (Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 164-167.)
Of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204), Thorndike says:
"That Maimonides was well acquainted with the art of astrology may
be inferred from his assertion that he has read every book in Arabic on the
subject. Maimonides not only
believed the stars were living, animated beings and that there were as many
pure intelligences as there were spheres, but he states twice in the Guide
for the Perplexed that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of
generation and corruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the
celestial spheres. While their
influence is diffused through all things, each star or planet also has
particular species especially under its influence." (ibid., p 211.)
For some reason, Maimonides identified the control of human destinies
by the constellations with the rule of blind chance. Maimonides also believed that God has planned all things in
advance, and that this is incompatible with things occurring fortuitously.
John of Salisbury, on the other hand, attacked both Epicureans and
Stoics on the ground that the former believe in blind chance and the latter in
strict necessity, and both are wrong. It's
not clear from Thorndike's description whether he was talking about everything
happening by chance for Epicureans, and by necessity for Stoics, or just about
some things for each.
40. Robert Grosseteste (1168?-1253) was Bishop of Lincoln.
A Franciscan chronicler, Salimbene, regarded him as one of the greatest
clerics in the world. Matthew Paris, a Benedictine chronicler, even though he was
in some ways not well disposed to Grosseteste, referred to him as a saint, and
Grosseteste was indeed put forward for canonization. Some say the nomination was unsuccessful because of the way
Grosseteste had fearlessly criticized the temporal organization of the Church,
especially in connection with awarding benefices to unsuitable office seekers.
Roger Bacon, sometimes acclaimed as a scientific thinker of great
originality, praised him as the most illustrious scientist and translator of
the Schools, and even ranked him with Solomon, Aristotle and Avicenna.
For Grosseteste "mathematics" includes astronomy, and
astronomy includes astrology.
41. Thorndike says of Grossesteste's De artibus liberalis:
"Grosseteste accepts astronomy or astrology as the supreme science
and says in his treatise on the liberal arts that natural philosophy needs its
aid more than that of the others. There
is scarcely any operation whether of nature or of man, such as the planting of
vegetables, or transmutation of minerals, or cure of diseases, which can
dispense with astronomical assistance. For
inferior nature does not act except as celestial virtue moves and directs it.
He then goes on to detail the effects of the moon, Saturn, and Mars on
the hour of planting, and then to emphasize the importance of selecting the
favorable hours astrologically in medical practive and in alchemy where he
associates the seven planets with seven metals.
He also argues that the harmony of the movements of the celestial
spheres is found also in their effects upon the inferior world.
Therefore he who knows the due proportion of the elements in the human
body and the concord of the soul with the body, can restore any lack of
harmony in the same to its proper state.
In other words, diseases and even wounds and deafness should be curable
by music based upon a knowledge of astrology and mathematics, and one should
also be able to control such emotions as joy, grief, and wrath."
(Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 445.)
42. In another treatise, De impressionibus aeris seu de prognosticatione,
on weather prediction, Grosseteste discusses such things as the power of the
zodiacal signs and planets, including such technical matters as house,
exaltation and aspect.
On the question of free will, he holds that the human body is subject
to two forces:
"as part of the world of cause it is changed in many ways by the
movements of the stars, but it is also subject to the control of the mind
especially in voluntary actions." (idem, p. 446.)
He follows Augustine in The City of God in denying that all
our actions which seem freely willed are predictable from the stars.
J. D. North says:
"In his Hexameron [commentary on the first 6 books of the
Bible], Grosseteste's final position on astrological belief is stated at some
length.
Superficially it is hostile -- astrology books are written at the
dictation of the devil, and should be burned -- but his hostility has to do
with the issue of determinism, free will, and theological values.
His belief in celestial influence was as strong as ever.
He thought that the science of the astrologers must fail because
the influences they sought are so precisely focussed in accordance with the
momentary stellar configuration, that even the most accurate astronomer would
not find them.
They were real enough, in Grosseteste's view."
(J. D. North, "Medieval Concepts of Celestial Influence: A
Survey", in Astrology, Science and Society, Historical Essays,
1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 11.)
43. Grosseteste was a great supporter of the use of geometry in
explaining natural phenomena. Thorndike
observes that in his treatise De lineis, angulis et figuris,
Grosseteste holds that not only light but every natural agent sends forth its
virtue to the object affected and acts on sense or matter along geometrical
straight lines. This doctrine of
radiation or emanation of force seems to date back at least to Plotinus, and
Alkindi among the Arabs in his treatise on Stellar Rays says that the stars
and all objects in the world of the four elements emit rays of this sort. (Thorndike,
ibid., v. 2, p. 443.)
44. James McEvoy considers Grosseteste's masterpiece, and most original
work, to be his De luce (On Light). McEvoy says that according to Grosseteste:
"The entire world-machine was created in the beginning from first
form and first matter. Light multiplied itself from a single point infinitely and
equally on all sides to form a sphere, and extended matter into the dimensions
of the actual universe..... Though
the propagation of light and the consequent expansion of matter, beginning
from the primordial point, takes place equally in every direction, of
necessity the outermost reaches of extended matter are more sparse and
rarefied than are the inner, which remain capable of further rarefaction. The farthest limit of extension is reached when no further
rarefaction of matter is possible; the ultimate capacity of matter being
realized, the area immediately bounded by
the outer spherical surface is incapable of further physical change.
A perfect body had come into being, the firmament having in its
composition only first matter and form. The
most simple body in essence, it is the greatest in quantity and the container
of all subsequent bodies." (James
McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (1982), p. 152, 154.)
Shades of the Big Bang, and Expanding Universe!
45. McEvoy concludes from his examination of the De luce that
Grosseteste "aimed consciously at producing a synthesis of the cosmogony
of Genesis and the cosmology of the De Caelo [of Aristotle]"
(ibid., p. 167.) As to
Grosseteste's place in the history of science, McEvoy says:
"His intuition led him to the conviction that mathematics, far
from being an abstraction from aspects of the physically real, is the very
internal texture of the natural world, presiding over its coming to be and
controlling its functioning; that, in the words of Kepler, 'Ubi materia,
ibi geometria' ['Where there's matter, there's geometry'].
Of course, this faith was metaphysical; but then so too was much of the
high-level inspiration of scientists in the seventeenth century.
It was abstract, because the mathematical structure of reality is not
given to the senses, but intuited or believed in by the mind.
What it afforded was not so much scientific results as delight in the
pure understanding of the essence of things, and, what Grosseteste valued most
of all, a glimpse beyond the beauty of the
46. Here Grosseteste employs a mathematics different in kind from the
numerology found at times among the Church Fathers. McEvoy suggests that the patristic numerology might have been
pursued with the expectation that it would reveal a coherence and harmony in
creation. However, Grosseteste's
idea of God as Numerator generates expectations of a more mathematical
type, the kind of expectations which fulfil themselves in the sciences. This
happens, McEvoy says, "...
when an inner need for meaning and form sharpens the eye and encourages it to
read upon the screen of ideal reality the after-image of the programme that
determined the innermost structure of things.
In scientific inquiry, evidence turns up to answer inner needs of the
questioning mind, if they are insistent enough and sufficiently clear and
coherent; for in this respect nature is not parsimonious or ungenerous; she is
ample enough to suit different tastes."
(ibid., p. 214-215.) McEvoy
is making a distinction similar to the one I made earlier between applied and
appliqued mathematics.
47. However, Grosseteste also indulged in numerology at times.
McEvoy describes Grosseteste's proof that the universe is a complete
and harmonious thing: "In the most simple body there are four things to be
found: form, matter, composition, and the composite.
Form is totally simple and corresponds to the mathematical unity.
Matter is the dyad, due to its binary qualities of receptivity and
divisibility. Composition
corresponds to the number three, for in it are informed matter, immattered
form, and the property itself of composition.
'Four' comprehends whatever the composite is beyond these three.
The aggregate of these numbers is ten, contained in the quaternity of
the first body (which virtually contains all the others), and mirrored in the
number of bodies in the world -- for the four elements form together a single
terrestrial body. Manifestly, ten
is the perfect number of the universe and is possessed by every whole and
perfect thing. Clearly, too, only
the five proportions found in the first four numbers are adequate for the
composition and harmony that sustain every composite being; they are the
foundation of harmony in musical sound, gesture, and rhythm."
(ibid., p. 157-158.)
48. With Grosseteste, we have in the same person an understanding of an
intrinsic mathematical nature of nature, and an imposition on nature of some
numerology. We also have in the
same person a devotion to astrology, and a cosmogony and cosmology based on
light which bears a faint resemblance to current cosmologies of the "big
bang" type. McEvoy says:
"In the rational and scientific cosmology of De luce two
basic ideas are enthroned, namely, the continuity of nature and action through
the material world, and the ultimate unity of matter.
Both of these bear some resonance of the half-magical world of
astrology and alchemy...... The
influence of astrology and alchemy made it natural for Grosseteste in the
earlier stages of his philosophical itinerary to look for continuity of nature
and action between the heavens and the earth." (ibid., p. 182, 187; cf.
also p. 165-166.) It appears that
we have here an example of the confluence of influences out of which the
European scientific revolution of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries was
eventually to grow.
49. Wedel argues that the most decisive factor in the development of
the doctrines on astrology of many university scholars -- scholastics -- was
the works of Aristotle, whose complete canon had been made accessible in Latin
translations in the first quarter of the 13th century.
In his De generatione et corruptione (On growth and decay),
Aristotle had taught that the processes of earthly growth and change depend on
the stellar spheres. These were the "crystalline" spheres in which the
stars and planets were said to be embedded, a theory proposed, it seems, by
Eudoxus, presumably to explain why these objects had such regular motions.
Wedel says: "And
astrological theory had, since the days of Ptolemy, become so inseparable a
part of Aristotelian cosmology that the Christian theologians, in welcoming
the one, were inevitably compelled to offer a favorable reception to the
other. A modification of such
importance in the traditional doctrine of the Church could not take place
without a struggle..... In
effecting a compromise between the verdict of the early Church and the new
astrology, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas faced a problem of no slight
difficulty." (Wedel, ibid.,
p. 64.)
50. Thomas Bradwardine (1290(?)-1349) was a Christian theologian of
Oxford who published in 1344 a work called De causa Dei (God's
Cause), and was archbishop of Canterbury at the end of his life (victim of
the Black Plague). Gordon Leff
says that De causa Dei was
a response of faith to scepticism, notably that of William of Ockham (d. 1349,
victim of the Black Plague). It
came from a person for whom theology was the apex of the sciences (in the
general sense of the word), and was meant to cut away at outlooks which start
from men rather than from God. There
are, Bradwardine says, two views of fate.
One is fate as inevitable necessity, in general due to the heavenly
bodies, and more specifically due to individual celestial objects, ruling
those born under their influences. The
other view of fate is as a certain disposition, and guidance
from above. The first view,
according to Bradwardine, cannot be accepted by Christians at all.
If, however, the necessity is withdrawn, and fate governed by
the stars is seen rather as a disposition and inclination in man, then the
fate of the stars need not be rejected -- for divine fate must be
recognized. Is it not written,
Bradwardine says, "He spake and it was done?"
We only call things fortuitous when we don't know their causes.
In fact, just as with fate, God is the cause of everything.
But Providence, God's active governance, has nothing in common with
necessity imposed by the stars, or with pure chance.
51. In Leff's view: "...
with Bradwardine, God's will is not to be regarded in the way the Arab
philosophers saw it, as a universal and impersonal first cause acting
implacably through a hierarchy of secondary causes, such as planets and
celestial spheres. Bradwardine's
God is essentially personal and immediate; the whole of his view of divine
participation flows from His direct presence ... Bradwardine's view of
creation may be likened to a precise machine devoid in itself of any direction
or movement. Its workings are
beyond its own knowledge and power. It
needs the constant current of God's will to infuse it with life and purpose.
It cannot, therefore, be judged in itself, for without God's impulsion
it is like a propeller without an engine.
Nothing can be left to its own resources."
(Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians, A study of his 'De
causa Dei' and its opponents, 1957, p. 11, 53-54, 95.)
52. But there were also Christians who tried to square fatalistic
astralism with Christian doctrine. Before
the time of Bradwardine, Bernard Silvester, a Christian university teacher, in
his poem Cosmographia (c. 1145), said:
"The heavens ... write by means of the stars and prefigure
everything which is able to arise by means of the law of fate.
They presignify by what mode or tenor the sidereal motion impels the
passage of history. The order of
events lies hidden in the stars; a longer and more ordered succession of time
will explain it." (quoted by
Brian Stock in his Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century, A Study of
Bernard Silvester, 1972, p. 131.)
53. Stock comments: "This
view, it should be noted, is not a complete acquiescence to determinism.....
It is a position in which God's effective power is translated into
causal terms as Bernard understood them.....
It indicates that God is placed beyond the universe which magnifies his
spirit and suggests as well, as do Firmicus and Abu Ma'shar, that history is
entirely predictable from the stars.....
[It is part of Bernard's position that:] The heavens reveal in their
motions and changes the pattern of human cultural and social history.
Thus the unfolding of creation, including Noys' part in it, is to be
understood as the revelation of a pre-existing order."
(ibid., p. 131-132.) Noys
is "God's providence" (p. 14),
evidently not to be confused with nous, intelligence, although
this is what Thorndike takes noys to be in another work by Bernard (A
History of Magic and Experimental Science, v. 2, p. 105.)
Bernard also wrote a narrative poem called Mathematicus, in
which a Roman knight and lady consult a mathematicus (astrologer)
"who could learn from the stars ... the intentions of the gods, the mind
of the fates, and the plan of Jove, and discover the hidden causes and secrets
of nature." (quoted by
Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 106.)
54. Such views are not unlike those of certain physicists (now, it
appears, in a minority) who contend that nothing is really left to
chance, although human limitations may require us to describe phenomena
probabilistically. Abraham
Pais says in his biography of Einstein: "Everyone
familiar with modern physics knows that Einstein's attitude regarding quantum
mechanics was one of skepticism. No
biography of him fails to mention his saying that God does not throw dice.
He was indeed given to such utterances (as I know from experience), and
stronger ones, such as 'It seems hard to look in God's cards. But I cannot for a moment believe that He plays dice and
makes use of "telepathic" means (as the current quantum theory
alleges He does)'..... [Einstein's]
was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet
he lived by a deep faith -- a faith not capable of a rational foundation --
that there are laws of Nature to be discovered.
His lifelong pursuit was to discover them.
His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark:
'Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not' ('Raffiniert ist der
Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht') ..... "
(Abraham Pais, 'Subtle is the Lord ... ', 1982, p. 440 and p.
vi.)
55. Einstein, in the early years of the 20th century, was the foremost
creator of relativistic mechanics. Kepler,
in the early years of the 17th century, was one of the foremost creators of
classical mechanics. Kepler, it
turns out, had already said much the same as Einstein about God playing dice:
Richard Westfall says: "When
we turn to Kepler's natural philosophy, we find a conception of nature that
directly supported his religious position.
Of foremost importance is the fact that the universe remained for him a
cosmos. It is well known that
much of Kepler's significance in the history of science stems from the impulse
he gave to causal analyses of phenomena and to the concept of mathematical
laws. Kepler's laws were never
impersonal laws, however, and the universe in which they worked was not for
him the chance product of their blind operation.
It was an ordered cosmos consciously contrived.
Giordano Bruno's speculative system, "that dreadful
philosophy," represented to him the blind operation of impersonal causes.
He feared the very idea and fled from it.
Where means are adapted to definite purposes, Kepler insisted,
"there order exists, not chance; there is pure mind and pure
Reason." "The
Creator," he informed Maestlin, "does nothing by chance."
(Richard S. Westfall, "The Rise of Science and the Decline of
Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Kepler, Descartes, and Newton," in God
and Nature, Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and
Science, 1986, p. 221; the quotations from Kepler come from Kepler's
Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, The Six-Cornered Snowflake,
and a letter to Maestlin, 2 Aug 1595 in Johannes Kepler,Werke 13:27.)
56. To return to the European Middle Ages, and in particular to the
compromise of scholastics with astrology:
Thorndike points out that a number of passages in the works of St.
Thomas Aquinas ascribe an important place to astrological theory in natural
science. Aquinas refused to
explain magic as worked by the stars, but he accounted for occult works of
nature and natural divination by astral influence.
He grants nobility and incorruptibility to the heavenly bodies, but
regards them as made of material substance, even though Plato and Aristotle
attributed souls and intelligence to them.
But he regards the stars as media between angelic intelligences and
us. He is inclined to answer
affirmatively the question, do the angels move the stars?
He frequently affirms that God rules inferior creatures through
superior ones, and earthly bodies by heavenly ones.
According to Aquinas, no wise man doubts that all natural motions of
inferior bodies are caused by the movement of the celestial bodies.
Reason and experience, saints and philosophers, have proved it over and
over again.
57. In this connection, Aquinas cites two passages from Augustine and
Dionysius which don't seem so sweeping as his own assertion.
Augustine affirms merely that "grosser and inferior bodies are
ruled by subtler and superior ones according to a certain order," and
Dionysius simply says that the rays of the sun aid in the generation of life
and nourish and increase and perfect it.
Indeed, says Thorndike, throughout his arguments for astrology,
Aquinas, like his teacher Albert, seems to stretch authorities on a
Procrustean bed of citation and to make church fathers who are famous for
their attacks on astrologers seem to favor a limited rule of the stars over
all nature. Aquinas further
considers an art of judicial astrology possible. He asserts that besides the crude prognostications which
sailors and farmers make from the sky, it is feasible "by some other more
occult observations of the stars to employ judicial astrology concerning
corporeal effects." (Thorndike,
ibid., v. 2, p. 609-610.)
58. Nevertheless, Aquinas declares that the human will is free and that
the soul -- being an intellectual rather than a material
substance, cannot be coerced by corporeal substances, and in particular by
celestial objects. He also is of
the opinion that many occurences are purely accidental, "as when a man
digging a grave finds buried treasure."
And he says "no natural agent can incline one to that which
happens accidentally." Aquinas
is also aware, however, that the astrologers themselves agree that the wise
man rules the stars. Conversely,
he recognizes that man is not purely an intellectual being, that he often
obeys sensual appetites, and that even the mind derives its knowledge from the
senses and in a condition disturbed by phantasy, and that therefore the stars
may indirectly affect the human intellect to a considerable extent. (Thorndike, ibid.)
59. Thomas Litt gives this summary
of Thomas Aquinas's views on astrology:
"(1) He affirms as absolutely certain the entirely general
principle of a universal influence of celestial bodies on all corporeal events
on earth, including physiological events involving animals and people.
This is for him an absolute philosophical certainty; besides that, it
is a common sense truth and it is also a truth taught by the "authority
of the saints"; he cites notably Denis [Dionysius] and St. Augustine.
(2) He affirms with just as much certainty that the influence of the
celestial bodies on human acts is indirect and never necessitating.
He very often adds that the contrary opinion is heretical, since it
excludes human free will.
(3) He never asks once if the fundamental
astrological axiom or postulate is well founded or not:
the decisive importance on the whole future of a person of the
configuration of the heaven at the moment of birth (the topic of geniture).
We have found only once in St. Thomas the word nativitas in the
sense of the topic of geniture: in the citation of the Centiloquium [of
Ptolemy] which we presented [earlier]. This
citation is moreover the only concrete astrological prediction which we have
encountered and it it introduced with a formula expressing much doubt.
He does mention one other time the stellar patrons of the seven days of
the week, but this is in order to observe that one can, without peril to the
faith, adopt or reject this theory.
(4) He admits that in principle astrologers correctly predict the
future of people ..... [Litt summarizes 10 references showing this]
(5) On the licitness of astrological divination, we have six texts, in
which the teaching remains constant throughout the career of St. Thomas,
without one being able to discern an evolution to either greater or less
severity. The doctrine amounts to
this: It is not superstitious or
illicit to try to predict by the stars droughts, rains, etc.
It is superstitious and illicit to try to predict by the stars free
human actions and, according to the authority of St. Augustine, the devil
often involves himself in this kind of consultation, which becomes by way of
this a pact with the devil." (Thomas Litt, Les corps cèleste dans l'univers de Saint
Thomas d'Aquin (1963), p. 240-241.)
60. The Albert referred to above as a teacher of Aquinas is Albertus
Magnus, Albert the Great (1193-1280), the leading figure in Latin learning and
natural science in the 13th century.. The
Speculum astronomiae (Mirror of Astrology) is usually attributed to
Albert, and is said by Thorndike "to be one of the most important single
treatises in the history of medieval astrology". (ibid, p. 692.)
The book is chiefly concerned with judicial astrology, which is
distinguished from astronomy proper as "the science of the judgements of
the stars". Thorndike quotes
the author: "He declares
that [astrology] turns man's thoughts toward God, revealing as it does the
great Source of all things. Furthermore,
it is the bond between natural philosophy and mathematics.
'For if the most high God in His Supreme wisdom so ordained this world
that He, who is the living God of a lifeless heaven, wills to work in created
things which are found in these four inferior elements through deaf and dumb
stars as instruments, and if concerning these we have one science, namely,
mathematics which teaches us in things caused to consider their Creator, and
another natural science which teaches us to find by experience in created
things the Creator of creatures; what is more desirable for the investigator
than to have a third science to instruct him how this and that change of
things mundane is brought to pass by the change of things celestial?'"
(Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 697.)
61. Of the term judicial astrology, Richard Lemay says:
"... beginning in the
twelfth century, and stabilizing in the thirteenth, we find newly invented
labels to designate various sciences to study the heavens.
There is a general 'science of the stars' (scientia stellarum)
as the discipline dealing with the knowledge of the whole heavens, and then
the 'science of the movements' (scientia motuum) for astronomy,
together with a 'science of the judgments' (scientia iudiciorum /
judicial astrology) for astrology."
(Richard Lemay, "The True Place of Astrology in Medieval Science
and Philosophy", in Astrology, Science and Society, Historical Essays,
1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 64.)
62. Lemay observes that in the Speculum astronomiae of Albertus
Magnus, there is a distinction between astronomy, which is
"mathematical", and astrology, which is "judicial",
although the two are inseparable parts of one science of the stars.
This distinction can be traced backed to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos,
but according to Lemay, Albertus Magnus took it directly from the Introductorium
Maius in Astronomiam of Abu Ma'shar (786-866), which had been translated
from Arabic to Latin during the first half of the 12th century.
Abu Ma'shar (or Albumasar) was a leading authority in astrology in
medieval times, and according to Lemay translations of his works were a main
source of the new interest in astronomy/astrology in the Latin world at the
beginning of the 12th century. Using
the term "judicial astrology" to designate the kind of
astronomy/astrology which prognosticates is traced by Lemay to the Latin
translation by John of Seville in 1133 of a word
in the Arabic title of Abu Ma'shar's Introductorium Maius.
An Arabic word signifying something like "authoritative
pronouncements by a learned person" was translated by a word which could
mean "authoritative pronouncements by a judge".
(Lemay, ibid., p. 67-68.)
63. Of Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1292), Thorndike says:
"Bacon believed that by means of astrology not only could the
future be in large measure foretold, but also marvelous operations and great
alterations could be effected throughout the whole world, especially by
choosing favorable hours and by employing astronomical amulets and characters
-- in other words, by the arts of elections and of images.
As the babe at birth receives from the stars that fundamental physical
constitution which lasts it through life, so any new-made object is
permanently affected by the disposition of the constellations at the moment of
its making." (Thorndike,
ibid., v. 2, p. 673.) Bacon also
connected astrology to the power of words.
Thorndike says that for Bacon: "Words are the soul's most
appropriate instrument and almost every miracle since the beginning of the
world has been performed by using them.....
The rational soul influences the voice, which in turn affects the
atmosphere and all objects contained therein.
The physical constitution of the speaker also has some influence, and
finally the position of the stars must by all means be taken into account.
All this reasoining is equivalent to accepting the power of
incantations, for as Bacon states [in the Opus Maius], 'They are words
brought forth by the exertion of the rational soul, and receive the virtue of
the sky as they are pronounced..... Although
the efficacious employment of words is primarily the function of the rational
soul,' nevertheless 'the astronomer can form words in elect times which will
possess unspeakable power' of transforming natural onjects and even inclining
human minds to obey him. Thus
Bacon's 'astronomer' is really a magician and enchanter as well ..."
(Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 665, 674.)
64. Thorndike observes further that hardly any class or group of men in
the later middle ages were more given to astrology and even to some other
occult arts and sciences than the friars.
This is a noteworthy point, says Thorndike, because they furnished a
majority of the theologians of the period and had a practical monopoly of the
office of inquisitor, although inquisitors and theologians have often been
regarded as the bitterest and most inveterate foes of astrology and related
arts. (Thorndike, l.c., v. 3
(1934), p. 213. Thus Thorndike's
view may conflict with that of Duhem who speaks, as we saw above, of the
Dominicans and Franciscans as zealously defending Catholic dogma against
attacks by astrologers. Perhaps
none of the friars Thorndike had in mind were of these orders.
65. Nicolas Oresme (1325-1382) delivered a number of extended attacks on astrology. One of his most fascinating works (to a mathematician) is concerned with whether or not the movements of the heavenly bodies are commensurable or incommensurable, in a treatise called De commensurabilitate [or, in some manuscripts, incommensurabilitate] motuum celestium. In the translation by Edward Grant, instead of one or the other, the title contains commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate, so the title may be translated as On the commensurability or incommensurability of celestial motions. (Edward Grant, Nicole Oresme and the Kinematics of Circular Motion, 1971). In Part I of this work, Oresme gives 25 propositions which will be true if the celestial motions are commensurable, and in Part II, 12 propositions which will be true if they are incommensurable. He then asks which of these is the case. In more recent terms, it appears he was investigating whether or not the “motions” were all expressible as rational (in the sense of rational numbers, or fractions with integer numerator and denominator) – rational multiples of some unit (i.