I am now perusing the pages of an 1891 edition of Comentaria in scripturam sacram / Cornelii a Lapide.* Now, there is a problem with the access of the original text here. The work of Cornelius a Lapide seems to have been used as a wiki. You see, Cornelius lived 18 December 1567 – 12 March 1637, and Schelling lived 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854. Cornelius, like myself, was not claiming to be a prophet, just erudite. However, as we go to his commentary on the work of the Fourth Day, we find:
| Nostro certe tempore intelligentias motrices non cogitabat ille philosophus (Schelling), qui, quum astra appellavit animalia rationabilia, animalia beata, Deosque immortales stultitiae profecto, non vero sapientiae amicum se ostendit.
In our time that philosopher (Schelling) did not think there were intelligences moving [the celestial bodies], who, when he called the stars rational animals, blessed animals and immortal Gods, in fact showed himself the friend of folly and not of wisdom. |
Be it noted, that the previous lines have stated that the position of St Thomas - angels move heavenly bodies but are not their souls, and the text actually compares the angels moving stars to an auriga driving the cars, the biga, the two horse drawn cars - was always tolerated by the Church.
Be it noted that whoever in 1891 added a comment on Schelling to the text of Cornelius thought that Schelling should have preferred to consider stars driven by angels to considering them as blessed rational immortal animals which one could call Gods. And, I agree of course.
That said, the exact text of Cornelius a Lapide is not extant in the 1891 edition. Someone has been editing it as a wiki with added lines of text. I am very sure Cornelius was not writing about Schelling.
In the previous sections we have also learned that the position of Schelling was - excepting the qualification "Deos immortales" that of Philo Judaeus, Maimonides, Origen, St Jerome, and there is a discussion whether this position of Origen was or was not condemned by the Vth Council. What is certain is that it is regarded as a different position than the one of St Thomas. Which was always tolerated by the Church - i e never condemned.
If I hit a living body, its soul feels pain. If I hit a car its driver feels no pain - that is how different "animated stars" are from "stars driven by angels".** And it is only the "animated stars position" which has received censorship in the Catholic Church. By Vth Ecumenical Council perhaps, and certainly by Stephen Tempier bishop of Paris in Laetare Sunday of late 1276 (past December into start of March) or early 1277 (according to our later custom of saying it started already January 1:st).
Meanwhile, as Catholics are telling me I am taking a very unlikely option and a very unthomistic one, and naturalism must remain the philosophy of science and the astronomic method must be atheistic and anangelistic in order to remain science, one Krauss seems to be very close to embracing the position of Schelling. You know that guy who said "a star had to die, so that you could live" - meaning sulphur and iron and other necessary elements larger than hydrogen and helium wouldn't be in your body unless there had been a supernova earlier on.
And they think that it is I who am a threat to orthodoxy? Who dey kiddin?
Since the time when that writer who continued the commentary of Cornelius a Lapide as if it were a wiki said that many theologers were taking the angelic movers option as it seemed necessary for the philosophy of that time, but now the movements of all celestial objects "optime explicentur" (are explained very well) "simplicibus legis a Deo impositis" (by simple laws imposed by God), this overestimation of the intellectual superiority of gravitational explanations has been rocked by more recent discoveries. And, actually, I think that writer - quite distinct from Cornelius a Lapide, of course, though his text is found intermingled with the older Jesuit - was deeming it explained very well by two reasons: he was being sloppy in the assessment of how well or ill proven the modern explanation was, and he was feeling a social stigma if he were to defend the older doctrine. You see, in a previous session he had spoken about "rotationem terrenam" - rotation of Earth - and he was publishing his work in the Paris of the Third Republic where the Foucault Pendulum had given a false sign and wonder about Earth rotating. Parisiis means "in Paris" and 1891 in Paris is that particular context. One in which Heliocentric and astro-mere-corporal freemasons dominated the scene.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Ember Saturday
after Elevation of the Cross
20-IX-2014
PS, in Judges V, where the text of Cornelius has not been tampered with, he endorses angels moving the stars. Even in the Paris 1891 edition. I checked. See Tome III. The comments to that verse would to a modern literary sensibility evoke "fantasy novels". As I said elsewhere, these are more realistic than science fiction. None of the comments are coherent with stars being simply what modern astronomers tell you and not even angelic movers to them.
* Content list for tome I, each link making a pdf download:
Comentaria in scripturam sacram / Cornelii A. Lapide.
Tomo I Tabla de Contenido
http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080014741_C/1080014741_T1/1080014741_T1.html
And here is the overall link:
Comentaria in scripturam sacram / Cornelii A. Lapide.
Parisiis: Apum Ludovicum Vives, Bibliupolam Editorem, 1891.
http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080014741_C/1080014741_C.html
The Internet version is graciously provided by Universidad Autónoma de Nueva León. (Non hay dos nombres o apellidos A. Lapide, peró "a Lapide" quiere decir "de la piedra", como "de la Barca" constituye un solo apellido.)
** The text - by Cornelius a Lapide or someone later - gives this precise example as a criticism of how St Thomas deals with Platonics and their claim stars have souls. St Thomas had argued they meant no more than they had movers.
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