Galileo (1564-1642)
READ: Psalm 19; 2 Timothy 2:15
Galileo was neither a missionary,
nor a monk, nor a martyr. He was an astronomer. Galileo was a sky-studying
scientist and a Catholic. Today, Christians in science look to his example as
they stand firmly for the existence of God and the accuracy of the Bible in an
increasingly hostile environment. So many today try to disprove God and the
created world through scientific reasoning. But when we go back to the founding
fathers of science, we see many individuals who loved science and Scripture, and who sought to glorify
God through their studies.
Ironically, however, Galileo was not esteemed by the church in his day.
In fact, the church put him under house arrest for the last nine years of his
life. Galileo’s study of the sky had confirmed Copernicus’s theory that the
earth revolved around the sun – up until this time, the accepted view was that
the earth was the centre of the universe and that all the other celestial
bodies revolved around her. The Catholic Church took Galileo’s views as a
threat to the Scriptures, which they believed affirmed that the earth was fixed
in the sky.
Galileo was not without his
faults. He fathered three children out of wedlock with a woman whom he never
married. But Galileo was a staunch believer in the inerrancy of Scripture – he
believed the Bible to be the absolute, true word of God. Though he knew the
Bible to be a book about salvation and theology and not a scientific textbook,
He knew God as Creator and therefore knew there could be nothing scientifically
inaccurate in the Scriptures. This
sets him and many other fathers of modern science apart from those in later
years. Charles Darwin, for example (the father of the evolutionary theory), was
taught that the Bible was good for moral
principles but was wrong on matters of science. This infiltrated his worldview
so that he looked at the world apart from the God of the Bible. Galileo knew
that the Bible and nature, both finding their source in God, could not
contradict each other. With this worldview, he used his God-given mind and
genius to discover the mysteries of the universe. In some of the last words he
penned, we see him as a man of faith who used well what God had given him: “To the Lord; whom I worship and thank; that
governs the heavens with His eyelid to Him I return tired, but full of living.”
JOURNALING AND PRAYER
1. Where do you feel weak in your faith?
2. Ask God how He wants to grow your faith this summer. What does He want to do in your heart?
3. Thank God for what He has shown you, and pray that it would become a reality in your life.
