Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”
Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”
After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.

• Acts 8:9-25

They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

• Acts 13:6-12

“Empedocles was a member of a high-ranking political family in the then-Greek colony of Sicily. His knowledge of the natural world led to him being credited with miraculous powers, such as the ability to cure diseases and control the weather. He reasserted the notion of Heraclitus that we live in an ever-changing world, as opposed to Parmenides’ theory that everything is ultimately one fixed entity. He believed that four elements-fire, water, earth, and air-continually combine, move apart, and recombine in a finite number of ways. This idea remained part of Western thinking up until the Renaissance period.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Empedocles (494BC-434BC) was a Sicilian philosopher.  The dates and age are based on Aristotle, but other writers say he may have lived as long as 109 years.  He created a philosophy of cosmogony that lasted as the primary thought, outside the biblical narrative, regarding the origins of the universe, the cosmos.  He felt that the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water were indestructible and the intermingled with each other in various forms.  He also postulated two external forces that could cause the four elements to change: love and strife.  He believed in reincarnation, and spoke out about the eating of animals or even some plants, as he tried to use some kind of ancient “psychology” to understand the essence of these animals and plants.  I wonder what he ate.

In a strange way, he stumbled over the laws of Physics and Thermodynamics that say that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.  Einstein’s famous equation is utilizing the bond energies with an atom’s nucleus.  But when you burn a bit of wood that is made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all those elements are still there in the form of carbon dioxide and water vapor.  Nothing is destroyed, it just changes form, and the energy (heat) produced was a potential energy in the wood being released through the chemical reaction of combustion.

But the quote from the book on philosophy says that he could heal people and control the weather.  The book speaks of no teacher nor a noted student.  Thus, it seems to me that he was in the realm of Bar-Jesus and Simon the Magician in those fields.

He knew enough about the weather to do some predicting, but he made the people think he was controlling the weather.  The simple idea that Jesus mentions that a red sky in the morning is probably going to lead to rain and bad weather.  A red sky at night was a good sign.  Living on Sicily, an island, these observations that Empedocles made could be very valuable information when considering all imports and exports were by ship.

As for the healing, some simple diseases could be healed by herbs and potions, carried down from generation to generation.  Again, if the knowledge became the power of Empedocles, he loses that power if he lets people know his secrets.

What ideas that he did share are interesting, but by the Renaissance they jettisoned his ideas for something more “scientific.”  His contributions led to an Italian volcano being named after him, but otherwise, the philosophy books, outside cosmogony, have left his ideas as a mere footnote.

It seems to me that if he had students that built upon his knowledge, the fields of medicine and meteorology could have advanced more rapidly.  God tells us to not hide our light.  That is in reference to the Good News, the Gospel of Christ Jesus, but when we have useful information that can be of use to others, we should share it.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.