Erroneous Assumptions

A reader writes:

Here is my question: How do we square the divine inspiration with the fact that in Genesis (and through all the Bible) the Earth is assumed to be flat?

You just said the key word: "assumed." If you had said "asserted," and if you were right that the Bible asserted this, then we would indeed have a problem. But it didn’t, and you didn’t, and so we don’t.

Lemme ‘splain:

First, though, lemme lodge an objection that I will raise anew at the end: I don’t see any compelling evidence from the text (in Genesis or elsewhere) that indicates that the biblical authors literally thought that the earth is flat. Since you don’t name any specific texts, I can’t interact with what you may be thinking of (I invite you to e-mail me again on this point), but I am unaware of any texts that unambiguously indicate an assumption that the earth is literally flat.

That being said, let’s assume that you are right and that the biblical authors did assume this in a way detectable in the pages of Scripture. How would one regard that?

The doctrine of divine inspiration does not mean that everything the biblical authors assumed is protected from error. It means that everything they asserted is protected from error. Here is what the Vatican II decree on divine revelation had to say on the matter:

In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation [Dei verbum 11].

The operative word here is, again, "asserted." An assertion is a statement that, taken in its literal sense (not in a literalistic sense), is intended to declare a particular fact.

Now, many things that we say are not assertions. "Hello" is not an assertion. Neither is "Goodbye" or "Look out!" or "Help me bring in the groceries from the car" or "Was it his refusal t write more stories and consequent poverty and poor nutrition that caused H. P. Lovecraft to get stomach cancer at an abnormally young age?"

None of these things is intended to declare a particular fact.

Even when we do have an assertion, we have to be careful about what we infer from the statement. For a start, we have to distinguish between the literal sense of the assertion (what it is intended to mean by the one who makes it) and the literalistic sense one might give it.

For example, the statement "They really rolled out the red carpet for the new pope when he visited America" is definitely an assertion. It states a fact. But one is not to take this statement literalistically and so infer that the U.S. has a single red carpet that was physically unrolled for the new pope. "To roll out the red carpet" is a figure of speech that means that great efforts were made to honor a visiting individual. (I’m told that the equivalent idiom in Spanish is "Throw the house out the window.")

The literal sense of the statement is that great efforts were made to honor the new pope when he visited, not that a carpet of a particular color was unrolled. Thus, despite the statement’s reference to a red carpet, it is not being asserted that a red carpet was unrolled.

Now, another distinction that has to be carefully parsed is the difference between assertion and assumption. Whenever we talk, we operate using a large number of assumptions. (Which is the only way we manage to ever get anything said. If we had to spell out all our assumptions and do a full brain dump every time we wanted to say something, we’d never say anything.)

Often it is possible to tell what a person’s assumptions are based on what he says. For example, if you read a newspaper column and it says that the new pope is "a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth" then you know that Maureen Dowd is throwing another tantrumsomething about the author’s views of the pope–namely that she despises him. She isn’t asserting that, though. She doesn’t come out and say "I despise the pope."

Instead, what she’s doing is asserting (what she perceives to be) facts in hopes that you will come to share her view of the pope. Her assertions are all about details regarding the pope: his age, his theological outlook, his resume, and his boyhood affiliations. None of these is an assertion offering a bottom-line assessment of the personal character of the pope. None of them says "The pope is a despicable individual." That’s a view that Mizz Dowd holds and that she wants us to adopt, but it’s an assumption that she’s making as she describes the pope, not something she asserts. It’s assumed. Not asserted.

It is possible in a text for everything that is asserted to be true even though the author’s assumptions are not true.

Suppose, for example, that Tantrum Queen had instead written that the pope is "a 78-year-old I regard as a hidebound archconservative and who ran the office that used to be called the Universal Inquisition and who once belonged to the Hitler Youth."

In this case, all of the assertions would be true. Some of them would be grossly unfair. (What does it matter what the CDF used to be called for purposes of evaluating the person of Benedict XVI? And why no mention of the fact that membership in the Hitler Youth was compulsory at the time and that the young Ratzinger went to great lengths to avoid attending its meetings?) But they at least would all be true.

The author’s assumption that the pope is a despicable man would still, however, be false.

So it’s possible for an author’s assertions to be true even though her assumptions may be false.

Now let’s flip this into the biblical sphere.

God has vouched for certain things regarding Scripture. Among these is that everything asserted by the sacred author is true. He has not, however, vounched for everything believed by the biblical author.

For example. Suppose that St. Paul believed that Julius Caesar was a bad man.

God doesn’t vouch for that.

St. Paul never in his writings asserts that Julius Caesar was a bad man. Indeed, he never even mentions Julius Caesar. The divine inspiration of Sacred Scripture thus in no way means that God vouches for St. Paul’s personal assessment of Julius Caesar.

This is a case where the belief of the sacred author is remote from the text of Scripture since Julius Caesar is never even mentioned in St. Paul’s writings. (Jules died years before Christ was even born.) But the same would be true of assumptions of St. Paul that are much closer to the text.

F’rinstance: There are a number of passages that make it look like the apostle Paul may have assumed (at certain phases of his career) that the world would be ending in (his) near future. God eventually revealed that this was not the case (Revelation 20 provides for at least a thousand year period before the end of the world), but one can look at certain passages in Paul and think that he may have assumed it.

That’s okay.

God doesn’t vouch for the assumptions of the biblical author, only his assertions. (Though I would point out that the same passages have alternative interpretations that do not require a nearby end for the world.)

S’ppose that I had the ability to magically make someone always tell the truth when he makes an assertion (sorta like in thet thar film Liar, Liar). S’ppose that this individual also happened to harbor the belief that the next time it rains it means that the pope is about to issue an encyclical. One day the individual rushes in and tells me, "It’s raining! It’s raining!"

Since he’s under a truth spell, I’m quite confident that it is, indeed, raining.

But since the truth spell only protects his assertions, not his assumptions, I’m not at all persuaded that the pope is about to issue an encyclical (however much he may be persuaded of this).

This is how it is with Scripture: God protects and vouches for the assertions of the sacred authors, but not their assumptions.

To bring this full circle (pun intended!) to flat earthism, there are three things to note regarding the verses in the Bible that one might take as suggesting this:

1. These verses may have been using figures of speech (like "roll out the red carpet"). Specifically: They may have been using a figure of speech known as "phenomenological language," which involves describing things according to their appearances (e.g., "The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening"). Since the earth appears flat from the perspective of a normal person standing on its surface, one can speak using phenomenological language as if it is flat, even though one knows it is really (largely) spherical.
2. The ancients were more sophisticated than we tend to think today. Many people in the ancient world knew that the earth was round. Other at least suspected it. In view of this, we shouldn’t be too quick to read their statements that might suggest a flat shape for the earth as being meant as assertions. Even if they were not personally convinced of a spherical shape for the earth, they may well have heard of the idea or at least have had doubts in their minds regarding flatness. They may, thus, have meant their statements as going along with a conventional mode of speech even though they did not meant to assert it literalistically (the way that we go along with speaking of "sunrise" and "sunset" without meaning that the sun literalistically moves around the earth).
3. Some (or all) of the biblical authors may have assumed that the earth is flat. Fine! God doesn’t vouch for their assumptions, only their assertions. One has to draw the line somewhere, and that is where God drew it.

I’d also add one other point: To my knowledge, the argument that the biblical authors assumed a flat earth view is remarkably weak. As I mentioned above, I can’t think of any texts that clearly assume this. There are certain texts that could be construed that way, but quite implausibly as far as I can tell. I therefore would encourage you to e-mail me with specific references.

Thanks, and God bless!