What is it about the phrase “Why look ye into heaven?” that ties together a Bible Truth Camp, an opera, a telescope, the progress of science, and humanity’s place in the universe?

A World Premiere

Where shall I start? Let’s start with the opera.

In December 2023, Australian composer Richard Mills was retiring after more than a decade as Artistic Director of Victoria Opera. What better way to finish than with a World Premiere of his new opera, Galileo? I’d really enjoyed his previous opera, The Butterfly Lovers, and I was curious what he’d make of Galileo, so I went along.

Galileo’s heresy

I think most people have the idea that Galileo was punished for something to do with science and religion. But what were the details?

Wikipedia helpfully tells us:

Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” (though he was never formally charged with heresy, relieving him of facing corporal punishment), namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse and detest” those opinions.

Nowadays it seems obvious to us that our Earth isn’t at the centre of the universe (and neither is the sun). But I’m not actually sure it’s that obvious. It’s hard won knowledge put together from many observations by many people over the years, and we’re fortunate to inherit that rich legacy.

Galileo was one of many who was making those observations and drawing conclusions from them. Victoria Opera quoted him:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

-- Galileo Galilei

As a result, he’s often seen as emblematic of the struggle between science and religion, but I gather there was also a lot of politics involved. He embarrassed a key supporter, the Pope (quite possibly accidentally…), and his stance could be seen as undermining the authority of the church in a time of Protestantism.

Distinguishing the Bible from interpretation

There have been many comments from the Church over the years about the Galileo affair, but one caught my eye. Again from Wikipedia:

On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the Inquisition had erred in condemning Galileo for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun. “John Paul said the theologians who condemned Galileo did not recognize the formal distinction between the Bible and its interpretation.”

At first glance it seems sensible enough: The Bible can be interpreted in many different ways, and if the way you’re interpreting it disagrees with clear observations of the world, maybe you’re getting the interpretation wrong. And it sounds like Galileo would agree with that.

But it doesn’t really answer the authority question: Who gets to decide what comes from the Bible, and what is simply interpretation? I personally don’t have an answer to that.

What’s this got to do with Christadelphians?

As a denomination, Christadelphia started in the middle of the nineteenth century. By that time it was widely accepted that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe. As a result, as far as I know they never held the Earth as the centre of the universe, no matter what verses might suggest it (I certainly didn’t!)

Given they tend to be anti-Catholic, it wouldn’t surprise me if this story has been quoted as evidence the Catholic church was wrong and so can’t be trusted. But I can’t imagine most would be happy with John Paul’s comments on Bible interpretation. In my experience it’s far too common to insist on interpreting Bible passages literally, and scientific knowledge can be casually written off as “the wisdom of the world” or as “knowledge, so called”.

An unusual verse

In one section of the opera, Galileo’s opponents were using Bible verses to prove that the Earth couldn’t rotate around the sun. For example, there were verses about the Earth not being able to move, and other verses suggesting that the sun did move. Obviously I didn’t agree with those particular interpretations of those verses, but at least it made sense why they were being quoted.

But there was one verse that stood out. It was a verse I knew well - but I wasn’t sure sure what it had to do with the Earth rotating round the sun:

Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?

I looked it up later, and it turns out that it was actually a pun. Galileo sounds a lot like “Galilee”, and it was gazing into the heavens through a telescope that had led him to some of his heretical notions. It was part of a sermon by Tommaso Caccini, delivered on December 20, 1614.

A kingdom on earth, not in heaven

I’ve written before about the time I spent on mission work in India. Christadelphians (including former-me) tend to define themselves by their differences from other Christians, and focus on correct doctrine as the most important thing for a true believer (one might almost say “like the Inquisition did”…). In India, this meant that so-called “Bible Truth camps” were a key part of outreach.

When running such camps, one of the topics I would often speak on was “Bible Truth about the Kingdom of God”, and this verse was a key part of it.

Here it is with a little more context:

Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:9 - 11 (NKJV)

(for the record: I use NKJV here because the compact travelling Bible I had in India was an NKJV. It wasn’t a version I liked, so it’s probably the only time I ever used it…).

This passage would be used to prove that the promised Kingdom of Heaven was most definitely going to be set up here on Earth, and so you totally didn’t go to Heaven after you died. Looking at the wider passage, we could also see the need to spread the message of Jesus throughout the world (like we were doing in India…) and the importance of the kingdom being centered on Israel as a fulfilment of kingdom visions from the Jewish scriptures.

But when I look at this passage now, that’s not what I see. What I see is the difference between the words themselves and how I interpreted them (fortified by science, but still very much a Bible believer).

If you ask why Jesus floated up into the sky before he went to heaven, the most obvious answer seems to be “Heaven is somewhere up in the sky”. I suspect the original writer meant something like that, and that’s how his audience took it.

But if you’d asked child-me what happened, I’d have said something like “Jesus floated up into the air until he was above the clouds, and shortly after that he was teleported into the 100% spiritual realm called ‘Heaven’.” I guess then my expectation of his return was the reverse of that: At God’s chosen time, Jesus would be teleported back into our physical realm somewhere above the earth, and float down with his angels. There certainly are other passages that can be read as talking about a separate spiritual heaven - but I’m not sure this is one of them.

It’s easy to come up with other ad hoc explanations for why it might work the way I described: Perhaps there’s something about the spiritual teleport that means it can’t be done from ground level? Or perhaps it’s a very special process that isn’t meant to be seen by mere mortals?

But to me the important thing is, while I doubtless thought I was just reading the text of the Bible, my understanding was interpretation, not text. I knew what reality looked like, and I believed that as the inspired word of God the Bible was never going to be wrong, so I had to try and make my interpretation match reality.

What’s more, the interpretation came at least in part from that dread science. Galileo’s telescope - and the many improvements humanity have made since - have allowed us to see, not just to other parts of our solar system, but also to far distant galaxies. In all that heaven gazing, we’ve never come upon anything looking like, say, the Heaven of Revelation, so obviously it must be in a spiritual realm somewhere.

Yes, my worldview clearly also had a lot of magic in it - but at some subconscious level it still had to match reality.

A couple more passages

The passage from Acts had the idea of Jesus returning in the same way as he went (presumably floating down from heaven). We can find other verses suggesting similar things. Take, for example, this one:

“Look, he is coming with the clouds,”
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
So shall it be! Amen.

Revelation 1:7 (NIV)

Reading that verse, do you wonder how someone coming down from the sky to a round Earth can be seen by “every eye”? I remember wondering about it as a child.

This time, I think my interpretation was something like this: After coming in on teleport from spiritual Heaven, obviously Jesus could only be in one place. But God could easily project his image in enough places that everyone could see him at once. More magic, essentially.

Going along with that: There were stories in the gospels that could suggest that Jesus’ return would be perceived by some in daytime, and by others at night. That actually works well with our modern Earth where I can be working at mid-day while my UK colleagues are sleeping.

But again - that was my interpretation, based less on some unchanging Biblical idea and more on the understanding of the world that I’d got from science, not the Bible.

In Matthew, Jesus is keen to emphasise that his return is going to be a public spectacle, leaving no room for mistakes or false Jesuses:

“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
…
“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Matthew 24:26 - 27, 30 - 31 (NIV)

That image of lightning being visible from a distance sounds a lot like “sky Jesus will be in one place, and everyone will be able to see him”. Perhaps it meant some kind of flat Earth to the original readers?

But then there’s also the image of angels going out and gathering the elect. So perhaps in Australia I was to see Jesus through some projection magic, then be gathered to the skies above Israel with all the other believers? Or perhaps I would have been too far away to see Jesus directly, and so needed the “gathering” step before the “seeing” step? So many questions…

The Christadelphian version of “looking up”

Galileo, I think, looked up to the heavens for understanding. He was anchored in the present and in reality (or at least he tried to be).

Christadelphian “looking up” can be quite different.

Take this passage, parallel to the Matthew one already quoted:

“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”

Luke 21:25 - 28 (NKJV)

In Christadelphian circles, one thing this meant (though not always made explicit): disasters happening around the world were a good thing. People being worried about the world, not sure what was happening - that meant Jesus’ return was closer, which is a good thing, right?

When they looked up, it wasn’t about seeing the world as it is now, with its beauties and its joys and its sorrows. It was about looking for a saviour to come from outside and fix the world.

These verses were often mentioned in discussions about Signs of the Times, and about the importance of continuing to “watch” for Jesus’ return. Sometimes it seemed like those watchers spent a lifetime poring over the news, seeing the same patterns over and over again, and boldly declaring “This time it will be different! This time it’s for real! Isn’t our God wonderful?”. It was noticing this pattern, I think while still a teenager, that disillusioned me with Signs of the Times (though I didn’t give up on the kingdom and Jesus’ promised return for another decade or so).

Galileo’s looking up was far more successful. When he looked up, he literally saw stars and planets and moons. He was able to predict their movements fairly accurately, which then led him to conflict between what those observations showed him and the official Church interpretation.

Christadelphians are instead anchored in a fantasy of a promised (but somehow never realised…) future. Yes, they can look round them and see many disasters (though I’m not so sure about them correctly predicting those disasters). But no matter how frequently they look up, they’ve never yet seen a returning Christ, and I don’t think they ever will. It’s easy to keep saying “our redemption is drawing near - but they’ve given us no reason to believe it, and they certainly can’t predict when it will go from “near” to “actually happening”.

Keeping separate from the world

Let’s look at another passage:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 11:13 - 16 (NIV)

This passage is talking about past “heroes of the faith”, and is actually surprisingly candid about the fact that none of these people got the promised reward. In case you’re wondering, the reason given for that is that God put the reward on hold so that the people in New Testament times could share it. I look at it now and go “That was nearly 2,000 years ago and believers continue to die without receiving the promise - but sure, keep telling yourself that”.

To me, these verses are important for their effect on the present. They encourage separation from the rest of society, and looking to a Utopian future rather than accepting and enjoying (and perhaps trying to improve) the present. Growing up, we weren’t meant to be Australians - we were just temporary residents in Australia (who conveniently had the benefits of citizenship - though at least we also paid the taxes funding those benefits). And it was passages like this that contributed to my view that I shouldn’t vote - even though Australia has mandatory voting.

Perhaps by this point I’ve quoted too many passages (it’s certainly more than I intended when I started on this post!) But I want it to be clear that I’m not just relying on a cherry-picked verse or two. This future-focused viewpoint is a core part of the official Christadelphian lifestyle, and I think that’s a problem.

In practice, I’m sure there are many Christadelphians who aren’t as future-focused as they’re supposed to be. I’m also sure there are many Christadelphians who are curious about the world around them and who try to learn more about it. There are certainly Christadelphian scientists - even astronomers - and I myself was a math-science student in school (though I avoided biology).

I was fortunate that my future focus still allowed me in this present fallen world to get a degree, a stable job, and a house. Those three meant when I did finally quit the religion I wasn’t having to start from scratch as much as some have needed to do. But it’s bizarre, really, to grow up being told the return of Jesus is just round the corner, and still being encouraged to live a (somewhat) ordinary life here, including planning years ahead.

What Christadelphian beliefs might become discredited interpretations?

Think back to John Paul’s words. Christadelphians have, to the best of my knowledge, never accepted geocentrism or a flat Earth, no matter how much there might be verses that could be (and in the past have been) interpreted to support those viewpoints. But there are plenty of other beliefs and practices that they insist on as Bible truth. Will some of them in future come to be seen as just interpretation (and wrong interpretation at that…)?

I suggest the following three:

  1. The importance of special creation by a divine creator, preferably with a young Earth.
  2. The sinfulness of LGBT relationships.
  3. The dangers of women speaking or having leadership roles.

All three of them felt like standard teachings where I grew up, and my impression is they’re still fairly common. And for each of the three of them it’s not hard to find Christadelphians saying it’s Bible truth and quoting chapter and verse. I think all three of them have led to disfellowships somewhere in the Christadelphian world, too.

Some Christians (probably many?) would reject all three of these. And I believe there are some Christadelphians that do too, though as far as I can tell they’re on the fringes. Other Christadelphians may reject one of the three while insisting on the other two.

The one where I’ve heard the most appeal to the natural world is acceptance of evolution. Some Christadelphians lay out all the evidence for evolution - just as I might - and then say, like Galileo, that God can’t mean for there to be a conflict between what we observe around us and his revelations in scripture. Take for example these words from evolutionary creationism proponent Ken Gilmore (he even references Galileo…):

Those like myself who recognise that God has written two books of revelation also point out that they are complementary. We do not seek to divine a systematic theology from the natural world, but conversely we also point out that the Bible is not a science textbook. The example of Galileo should serve as the necessary reminder to avoid ignoring what the natural world says about itself and elevating human interpretation over that witness. (SOURCE)

If the message of the Galileo affair is to not privilege (our interpretation of) religious texts over what we observe in the world, it’s a message many Christadelphians need to take on board. In this particular instance, perhaps a time will come when a majority of Christadelphians accept the truth of evolution (though personally, I’m not holding my breath…).

The other two I mentioned are a bit different. Sure, it’s possible to make arguments from the natural world: LGBT people clearly exist, so if it’s so terrible why did God create them that way? (as some kind of special test for them?). And if we can’t find any biological characteristic which makes women incapable of leadership, why should we exclude them from leadership?

But in my experience, while arguments like these might be mentioned, in practice the debate hinges on the exact meaning of the texts involved. There are multiple different interpretations that have to be taken on their merits without the book of nature holding the casting vote. Like I’ve said, there are other Christian groups that are far more accepting of LGBT people and women in leadership than the Christadelphian mainstream, and some of them have very carefully thought through Bible interpretations to match. Perhaps those arguments will ultimately become the majority interpretation in Christadelphia, and perhaps they won’t.

I’m not going to get involved in the argument about what the true meaning of the Bible is (after all, part of the reason I quit was that I concluded there wasn’t such a true meaning…).

I treat the truth of evolution (and of most of our scientific understanding) as a question of fact, while I treat acceptance of LGBT people and women in leadership as a moral question. None of them need a religious text, and in fact they’re probably better off without one.

I just don’t think Christadelphians should assume that their current interpretation of the Bible will stand the test of time, no matter how many verses they produce or how forcefully they repeat them.

The joke’s really on them

So, thinking back to the Galilee verse I took the post’s title from, Tommaso Caccini managed to get his joke in. Very clever. Ha ha.

It was more than that though: Galileo’s writings were suppressed, and eventually he was hauled up before the Inquisition and sentenced to house arrest. His opponents won that round, I guess.

But when I look at the bigger picture, what I see is this: Tommaso was quoting a verse about the return of Jesus. As I said, a verse beloved by Christadelphians. At the time he quoted it, nearly 1,600 years had passed without the return of Jesus. Since then, more than 400 years have passed. Still no return of Jesus, but we have been able to learn more about our universe (like Galileo did).

We’ve not only built better telescopes, but we’ve actually been able to send spacecraft out to Jupiter and observe up close the moons Galileo could only see distantly.

We’ve realised that, not only is the Earth not the centre of the universe, but nor is the sun. In fact, our planet rotates about one not particularly large star in the spiral arm of a 100 billion star galaxy. We’ve also discovered we’re in an expanding universe containing many, many more galaxies.

Not a trace of Jesus there - must still be sitting in that spiritual realm outside the reach of our materialistic probes and scopes.

As we look across space we also look back in time, and similarly on our world we can look back in time and see the snapshots of constantly evolving life. None of these things necessarily disprove the existence of the God of the Bible - but I think they give us many reasons to question the story, and no new reasons to believe it.

These findings certainly contributed to me leaving both Christadelphia and Christianity. I believe we’ve discovered a world, and a universe, that make sense without a god. And it’s been the Galileos of this world, not the Tommasos, that have brought us to this point.

But doesn’t science get things wrong too?

It certainly does. We know of instances in the past, and I assume there are others in the present. But I strongly recommend reading Isaac Asimov’s excellent essay The Relativity of Wrong (which, as it happens, also uses the Galileo affair as one of its examples…).

I think the difference is in the approach. Science is trying to reflect our best understanding of the world based on what we’ve observed. As we learn more, we should try to improve our understanding. That doesn’t mean we have to reject all those who have gone before.

In the scientific approach, truth is out there in the world, and we’re trying to get closer to that truth through observation and calculation. In the Biblical approach (at least as I grew up with it), absolute truth is already there in the Bible. After all, it’s holy scripture and God’s perfect revelation. Some may grudgingly acknowledge that it can be misinterpreted - and in the past sometimes has been - but in the present they’ll still pound the pulpit and insist they’re presenting Bible truth.

So why do I look into heaven?

When I’m away from city lights and get a chance, I like to look at the stars. There seem to be so many more of them out there (though I realise it’s only a tiny fraction even of our galaxy’s stars). This isn’t a new thing, either - I used to do it on Bible camps in rural areas.

So I see their beauty - but I also see them as cold and unforgiving. To me, they represent a universe that largely doesn’t care about humanity, and conditions that are actively hostile to human life. Our planet is the exception: The world that we evolved on, and that for now continues to support us.

So also, when I look up I can look back into the past, seeing star light that left its star long in the past. Then when I look round I see the present. I don’t look in either place to see the future, because I believe that is still for us to write. It’s not predetermined by anyone, whether deity, fate, or devil, and it’s certainly not recorded in advance in a holy book.

I see no reason to believe there’s something out there coming to save us, nor do I think there’s a “Planet B” in our current range ready to be colonised. If we want the human race (and the rest of our incredible biosphere) to survive and thrive, this world is the best place to achieve it.

I’m not here to give false hope: The human race has a bunch of real concerns ahead of us, most of them well above my pay grade, and I’m not convinced we’ll make it. But I don’t think withdrawing from the world and looking up for a saviour to swoop in and rescue us helps.

Trying to better understand the universe we live in, like Galileo did, won’t necessarily save us either - but it can help, and I think it’s also part of what makes life worth living.

Heaven forbid that sacred texts get in the way of that!