The Plane Truth, by Bob Schadewald (© 2015)
The Fathers of the Church and Flat-Earthism
Few modern Christians understand how thoroughly early Christianity
was dominated by the Near East. Of the early Fathers, most wrote in
Greek. At first, Alexandria, Egypt, was the intellectual center of
Christianity, followed by Antioch and Rome (last). Later,
Constantinople emerged as a rival. The Latin Fathers did not reach
parity with the Greek Fathers until about the 4th century. Indeed,
the 4th century was the great intellectual flowering of early
Christianity. After centuries of struggle and occasional
persecution, the Christians won with Constantine. That left them
free to fight among themselves and persecute each other in the
process of hammering out an orthodoxy.
For example, John addressed his Revelation to “the seven
churches which are in Asia”—Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos,
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. All of these cities
were in western Asia Minor (now western Turkey). According to the
book, John had his vision on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea,
just off Asia Minor. Canonical Epistles were explicitly addressed to
Christians in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae,
Thessalonica, and Galatia (a region). Except for Rome, all these
were either in Greece or Asia Minor.
All of the important councils of the early church were held in Asia
Minor. The first four ecumenical councils were Nicaea (325),
Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451)—cities
in what is now western Turkey. Not until 1123 was an
ecumenical council held in the west (at the basilica of St. John
Lateran in Rome).
While there is nothing explicitly spherical in the canonical Bible,
one of the Apostolic Fathers, Clement of Rome, seemed to reveal
Ptolemaic leanings in his noncanonical First Epistle to the
Corinthians. (Clement reputedly was a disciple of Peter and later
served as Bishop of Rome.) Clement wrote: “The ocean,
unpassable to mankind, and the worlds that are beyond it, are
governed by the same commands of their great master” (Clement 9:12).
This is not necessarily Ptolemaic, but the concept of lands beyond
the ocean was part of Greek astronomy and anathema to the known flat-earthers among the Fathers,
It is intriguing that the flat Fathers seem to have completely
ignored the Book of Enoch as support for their views. It is not
clear whether that was due to unfamiliarity, rejection, or both. Of
the Fathers who did refer to the Book of Enoch (Tertullian, for one),
none endorsed its cosmology.
Antioch was founded as a Greek city in about 300 B.C. by Seleucus
Nicator, one of the heirs of Alexander the Great. In time, Antioch
rivaled Alexandria in prestige and power, and the Romans tended to
favor it over Alexandria because it was more centrally located. It
was one of the first gentile cities evangelized by Christians, and,
according to tradition, St. Peter was the first bishop of Antioch,
before he moved on to Rome. By 400 A.D., the population of Antioch
was 200,000, but that count probably didn’t include slaves. By the
4th century, the Patriarch of Antioch ranked third after Rome and
Alexandria in all of Christendom. It would eventually be eclipsed by
Constantinople before its fall to the Saracens in 635.
Antioch gave its name to a school of theology that insisted on a
literal interpretation of the Bible and the human limitations of
Jesus. Antiochene theology sometimes opposed and sometimes agreed
with Alexandrian theology. Generally, the Antiochene theologians
rejected the allegorical interpretation of the Bible favored by the
Alexandrians and insisted on a more grammatical and literal
interpretation. The Antiochene viewpoint was Aristotelian and
historical; the Alexandrian was Platonic and mystical. Antiochenes
sought the meaning intended by the writer rather than some obscure,
hidden meaning. They also held some parts of the Bible to be more
valuable than others. Except perhaps for that, they were much like
modern fundamentalists.
Under “Antiochene Theology,” the Oxford Dictionary of
the Christian Church explicitly lists Paul of Samosata (3rd
century), Lucian of Antioch (d. 312), Marcellus of Ancyra (d. c. 374),
John Chrysostom (347–407), Theodore of Mopsuestia (c.350–428),
Nestorius (d. c. 451), and Theodoret (c.393–c.458). Elsewhere,
it also identifies Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) and Severianus of
Gabala (fl. 400–408) as Antiochene theologians. Of the nine so
identified, at least four—Theodore, Diodorus, Chrysostom, and
Severianus—were dyed-in-the-wool flat-earthers, and I am not
aware that any Antiochene explicitly endorsed a spherical earth. It
seems that flat-earthism may have been a de facto doctrine of
the Antiochene school.
Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) has been called “the father of
Biblical interpretation.” His biography is sketchy, but he was
a native of Antioch, and he studied in Athens as a young man. After
returning to Antioch, Diodorus headed a monastery outside of town,
and his theology students at the monastery school included John
Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia. In his theology, Diodorus
followed the Antiochene tradition, and he insisted on a literal and
historical exegesis of the Bible and the complete humanity of Jesus.
He was the founder of the cosmological argument for the existence of
God, and he opposed the doctrine of eternal punishment. Diodorus
reportedly upheld the tabernacle shape of the universe and blasted
the “atheists” who accepted the geocentric system in his
book Against Fatalism. The reputation he earned in Antioch
was such that he was consecrated Bishop of Tarsus in 378.
In about 400, one Severianus was made Bishop of Gabala, a city on
the northern part of the Syrian seacoast, about fifty miles south of
Antioch. An Antiochene theologian, he is best remembered for his
political machinations. With Serapion and Theophilus of Alexandria,
Severianus conspired against Chrysostom, who had formerly been his
friend. He also was a strong opponent of the sphericity of the
earth.
In his Six Orations on the Creation of the World, Severianus
insisted that God made the highest heaven on the first day, “not
the visible heaven, but the one above it, for the visible was made on
the second day. God made the higher heaven—the heaven of
heavens to the Lord, and it is higher than this visible heaven,
and, as in a house of two stories, between it and the earth another
heaven is interposed. God having thus created the world as one
house, placed this visible heaven as a roof in the middle, and the
waters above it.” At the beginning of the second day, water
lay over the earth, but God said, “Let there be a firmament in
the midst of the water (Genesis 1:6).” According to
Severianus, “thereupon a solid ice-like substance was produced
in the midst of the waters, which made lighter the upper half of the
water, and left the other half underneath.” Elevated, this
solid firmament became the roof of the lower world. To save this
firmament from being damaged by the heat of the sun, moon, and stars,
“He spread over the upper surfaces of heaven those sea-like
expanses of water.” This layer of water also prevents the heat
of the sun from rising and being lost, illustrating once again “the
wisdom of the Architect.”
Severianus held that the sun, moon, and stars were made out of light
created on the first day. He noted that the Bible says that “The
sun goeth out upon the earth” and “from the end of heaven
is his going forth, and at the end of heaven is his goal.” He
concluded that the sun does not return by a route under the earth,
but rather via the north, apparently outside the vertical walls where
the firmament comes down to earth.
As for those compromisers who would allow a spherical heaven,
Severianus had nothing but contempt: “He made therefore the
heaven, not a sphere, as those vain babblers conceive—for He
did not make a rolling sphere, but, as the prophet says: Who hath
made the heaven as a vaulted chamber and stretched it out as a tent
to dwell in; for none of us is so impious as to be persuaded by
these triflers, and not by the words of the Prophet, which declare
that the heaven has a beginning and end.”
Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis (c.315–403), was another outspoken
flat-earther from the same period and area. A native of Palestine,
Epiphanius founded a monastery in Judea in about 335. A scholar of
some ability, Epiphanius wrote a valuable treatise on Hebrew weights
and measures and another half-finished work on gems, but he is best
remembered for his Panarion, also known as A Refutation of
All Heresies. The latter is a hammer-and-tongs job better known
for its heat than for the light it sheds on the views of those
Epiphanius considered heretics. As the Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church put it, “His unbending rigidity, his want
of judgement, and his complete inability to understand any who
differed from him, were reflected in his writings no less than in his
life.” Epiphanius was elected Bishop of Cyprus in 367 and
(perhaps later) was made Metropolitan of the island, and he
apparently remained in his see to the end of his long life.
Like Severianus, Epiphanius claimed that the higher heaven was
created on the first day, and likewise the waters and angels. The
second day was entirely devoted to the creation of the firmament.
The quotes from Cosmas seem in perfect agreement with his quotes from
Severianus.
John Chrysostom (347–407) was the most famous Antiochene theologian—indeed,
the most famous of all the Greek Fathers of the Church (some would say Origen).
Born to a wealthy Antioch family in
either 345 or 347, John and his friend Theodore of Mopsuestia studied
together under the great pagan orator Libanus at Antioch (law and
rhetoric, respectively). In 369, however, the two friends abandoned
worldly pursuits and together entered the school of Diodorus (later
Bishop of Tarsus) in a monastery at Antioch. Diodorus was then the
leader of the Antiochene school of theology and presumably already a
vehement flat-earther.
John and Theodore of Mopsuestia remained friends until the former
died. Both were outspokenly Antiochene in their theology, which
means that they insisted upon a strict grammatical–historical
interpretation of the Bible, and they flatly rejected the allegorical
interpretations put forth by the Alexandrian school.
Regarding Chrysostom’s views, Cosmas wrote, “He places the air
first, then the moon, then the sun; in the next place, the firmament,
then again, the heaven of heaven, without saying there are more than
two heavens, and he ridicules those who say that it is a sphere, and
maintain that it is in motion.”
In Homily vii, Chrysostom wrote, “[W]ouldst thou learn about
the earth? What dost thou know? Tell me. How great is its measure?
What is its size? What is its manner of position? What is its
essence? What is its place? Where does it stand, and upon what?”
Further: “Again, concerning the sea? But certainly you will
be reduced to the same uncertainty, not knowing where it begins, and
where it ends, and upon what it is borne, what supports the bottom of
it, and what sort of place there is for it, and whether after it
there is a continent, or it ends in air and water.” The last
clauses in each quote are consistent with a flat earth and seem
impossible to reconcile with a sphere.
Homily xiv on Hebrews deals with the Tabernacle. It is a commentary
on Hebrews 8:1–2: “Now of the things which we have spoken
this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on
the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens: a
minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord
pitched, and not man.” Regarding the last part of this
passage, Chrysostom asked rhetorically, “Where are they who say
that the heaven whirls around? where are they who declare it is
spherical? for both of these notions are overthrown here.”
The Tabernacle fixation apparently began with Clement of Alexandria
(c.150–215), but (being Alexandrian) he didn’t take it literally.
Others did. Chrysostom’s Homily xv is on Hebrews 9:1–5, and it also
deals with the Tabernacle. He wrote, “‘For’ (he says) ‘there
was a tabernacle made; the first, which is called holy, wherein was
the Candlestick, and the Table, and the Shewbread.’ These things are
symbols of the world.” This quote of Hebrews 9:2 and its
treatment gives the impression that Chrysostom really did take
the Tabernacle as a model of the world.
Theodore of Mopsuestia (d.c. 428) was a flat-earther who taught the
tabernacle theory and had angels keeping the stars in motion.
Together with John Chrysostom, he studied in Antioch, first under
the pagan orator Libanus, and then at the monastery school of
Diodorus of Tarsus, where he studied for ten years. In 392, he
became Bishop of Mopsuestia, and he remained in his see for the rest
of his life. A prominent Antiochene theologian, Theodore gained a
reputation for his learning and ultraorthodoxy. His works were
especially influential among the Nestorians, and some regard him as
the real founder of the sect (Nestorius was his disciple). The
so-called Nestorians carefully distinguished between the human and
divine natures in Christ, and they refused to call Mary the Mother of
God.
Mopsuestia was in Cilicia (now southern Turkey) on the Pyramus (now
Jihun) River, whose mouth is at the northeast corner of the
Mediterranean. Some of Chrysostom’s letters to Theodore have been
preserved. According to the introduction to two of the letters, John
and Theodore remained good friends from their student days until
Chrysostom died in 407. They studied together under Diodorus of
Tarsus, who was a flat-earther.
Theodore apparently set forth his flat-earth view in a work on
creation that has not survived. Fortunately, the work was attacked
by Johannes Philoponus, a late 6th century grammarian of Alexandria,
who defended sphericity in a book on the creation of the world.
Apparently, Theodore quoted the Bible to prove that the heaven is not
spherical and that the stars are moved by angels.
The name of Nestorius is attached to a popular “heresy”
that sprang up in the 4th century and essentially took over the
church east of the Euphrates River. Several sources agree that the
true founder of Nestorianism was Theodore of Mopsuestia, an outspoken
flat-earther who counted Nestorius among his disciples. The
Nestorians held that there were two separate persons in the incarnate
Christ, one human and one divine, and they refused to call Mary the
Mother of God. The Nestorian Church gradually formed after the
council of Ephesus, and its intellectual center was at first Edessa
(known as the Athens of Syria). A school of Nestorian theology arose
there under Ibas, who became Bishop of Edessa in 435. Several
Persian kings supported them, but the Nestorians were expelled from
Edessa in 489. By that time, a strong school had arisen at Nisibis,
which became the center of Nestorian culture. The Patriarchate
(Catholicos) was centered at Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris. After
498, the title was Patriarch of the East. The Nestorians
proselytized widely, and they established Christian communities in
India and China.
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