On Tolkien's Developed Views on Geo-/Helio-question

Alex Naszados

The young Dominican who wrote this doesn't say anything Earth-shattering, and offers the standard idea of geocentrism as a spiritual reality, but not physical (I know someone who says he is a geocentrist who does not believe in literal geocentrism). I guess this is at least slightly better than people like David Palm and Karl Keating, who insist on confusing traditional Christian cosmology with pagan geocentrism (which interprets a central position with being the "anus" of the universe).

He did make some remarks about Tolkien that were new to me.

Overall, he doesn't seem overly polemical. And as someone who studied physics at Stanford, he should be interested in "The Principle" & "The Journey to the Center of the Universe".

Linked to Br. Anthony VanBerkum, O.P.

Recovering Geocentrism
Posted on October 14, 2015 by: Br. Anthony VanBerkum, O.P.
http://www.dominicanajournal.org/recovering-geocentrism/

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The comment about Tolkien was new to me too.

Citing Br. Anthony VanBerkum, O.P.

"Tolkien set the fictional world of his primary works, such as The Lord of the Rings, in a prehistory of our own world, and he used a geocentric cosmology within his stories to enhance their air of antiquity."

Hans-Georg Lundahl

This I did know.

Link to HGL/own blog

New blog on the kid : A Relevant Quote from J. R. R. Tolkien
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/p/a-relevant-quote-from-tolkien.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

However, here ...

Citing Br. Anthony VanBerkum, O.P.

"However, later in life he began to question this discrepancy. In his stories, cosmological knowledge comes primarily from the supernatural beings who created the entire universe and so know how the solar system is truly arranged; their geocentric cosmological accounts then seem to be blatant lies."

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Hmmm .... Joshua's Long Day? I mean, both God and solar angel, and if there had been such a thing as a "tellurian angel" (which heliocentrism would seem to require) would presumably also know very well what was happening and the Holy Spirit inspiring Joshua's daring would hardly have allowed to the words to be what they were, unless He were by Joshua confirming Sun and Moon are really ordinarily moving around us.

By now I hope Tolkien and wife have had a good look at the Tychonian workings of substellar parts of universe.

The two main Inklings do not always give the right answers (for some others one might say they are more into wrong ones) but they are posing the right questions (which is often true of the others as well).