Does the Bible Teach a Flat Earth?
Deacon Frederick Bartels | 28 March 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw85zLuNdqM
Based on tons of scientific evidence, the vast majority of people believe the Earth is a sphere.
I would say you are only speaking of educated people in the Western world.
Some Hindus are so anti-Portuguese, they will call Magellan a fraud, I suppose. And that could be the tip of an iceberg.
However, no, it's actually based on tons of GEOGRAPHIC evidence, including the flight between Sydney and Santiago de Chile etc.
Geography isn't a science or an episteme, it's, like history, a historia. I hope you are familiar with the distinction. You can deduce from first principles how bright a light bulb is at so and so many Ohm, with so and so many Ampère and Watt going through, because electromagnetism and related are "cognitio certa per causas" ... you cannot deduce from first principles where Landsend in Cornwall is. That tip of a land could have ended closer inward or closer outward.
the earth is set on pillars.
These are identifiable within the tektonic plates, literally true, without any flat earth.
It can never be moved.
Geocentrism unlike Flat Earth isn't refuted by Geography. Unless you count galactic geographies in Star Wars as documentaries (I have a hunch they are fiction, and so useless as proof of modern cosmology).
It is also true. There are even better proof texts for Geocentrism, than this psalm, like Romans 1 and John 5:17.
But has nothing to do with Flat Earth. (OK, all FE are GC, but at least one can very well be GC and not FE, like St. Thomas and Riccioli).
In fact, the ancient Hebrews had a view of the earth that follows that pattern.
Possibly true. However, this does not constitute the literal sense of the passages. The existence of pillars in tectonic plates and the fixedness of earth suffice, without flatness.
To give a parallel, one can well consider St. John saw a gematria counted in ASCII, like V=86, L=76, A=65, D=68 etc, since God is above time, even if his audience would certainly have imagined something like M=40, N=50, E=5, P=100, O=70, Y=400, A=1 (one can really speak of honest Nerva, if he was the one St. John sent the Apocalypse to, and he made himself the saint's mailman to seven churches despite an apparent designation of himself as 666).
Therefore, King David can well have spoken of pillars in tectonic plates and of fixedness of a globe earth, even if his audience imagined a flat one.
The key element here is that we need to understand what the human authors intended to assert.
No, both to you and to the weasel Ratzinger.
If a thing is at all stated, rather than for instance quoted or hypothesised as a question, the author intended to assert it.
It is also not to the point to ask about "teach science" since it is a moot point whether the questions even belong to science in the ordinary sense, as electromagnetism is a science.
They put down in writing everything God wanted them to write, no more and no less.
Exactly. By the way, dictation theory is not outside Catholic theology, even if it's out of fashion.
The pillars of the earth and its non-movement ... this is a pun by the way, "earth" referring to two different senses of eretz ... are truly part of what God intended to convey.
given the belief some people have that scripture teaches the earth is flat, we have to ask whether God intended to teach the earth is flat as a matter of salvation.
God intended to teach that Earth is fixed, to avoid errors like the one soon to be promoted by Spielberg. [Ironically, the above video runs a commercial for Disclosure Day]
God also intended to teach land plates have pillars and land has four outer corners, so as to make this credible.
The Biblical text never ever stated that the earth is flat, nor anything that even implies it indirectly.
Nor did the authors of scripture intend to make scientific cosmological statements about the shape of the earth or the actual position of the stars in the universe etc.
The four corners are an accurate GEOGRAPHIC descriptor of the shape of the LAND, as opposed to sea.
The four corners are against the Pacific, which fills the other side of the globe.
The fact is the authors of the Old Testament had no concept of modern science or cosmology
You speak of them as of uninspired human writers, who are not above time, nor inspired by the one Who is.
And what a lot of "modern science" referred to in your CCC § 283 is concerned, the MAIN author of the OT, Jesus, said what needs to be said in Mark 10:6, just as He did of divorce and of "gay marriage".
Since God is truth, truth found in the Bible cannot contradict those truths which reason correctly discovers about the universe.
Key word: correctly discovers.
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