DAY 127
CHALLENGE
“Doesn’t the star of Bethlehem imply the practice of astrology?”
DEFENSE
The fact that the Magi recognized the star’s significance implies that they practiced astrology, but it doesn’t imply we should.
The ancients did not know what the stars really are, and many regarded them as divinities that ruled the fates of men. Thus the sun, moon, and wandering stars (planets) had the names of deities: Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The names varied from culture to culture, but in paganism they were worshipped as deities.
This practice was explicitly condemned in the Old Testament (Deut. 4:19, 17:3; 2 Kings 17:16; Jer. 19:11–13; Amos 5:26–27), and the author of Genesis demythologizes it by describing the heavenly bodies merely as lights created by God (Gen. 1:14–16).
This does not mean God can’t use them as signs of major events in his plan. He is omnipotent and can do so if he chooses. Thus in the book of Joel God states: “I will give portents in the heavens. . . . The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood” (Joel 2:30–31).
In Acts, Peter interprets this in terms of the dawning of the Chris- tian age (Acts 2:14–21). It is noteworthy that darkness covered the land (“the sun shall be turned to darkness”) during the Crucifixion (Matt. 27:45), and—providentially—there was a lunar eclipse that made the moon appear red (“and the moon to blood”) on April 3, A.D. 33, the probable date of the Crucifixion.
If God chose to mark the death of his Son with an unusual celestial sign, then he might have done the same to mark his birth, and he may have further allowed the Magi to recognize its significance based on the ideas present in their culture.
However, this would be an exceptional event and not an endorsement of the practice of astrology in general. The stars are not divinities that rule our lives, and they have no power over us. God may providentially use them as markers of certain events in his plan of the ages, but that does not mean we can infer things about the events of our own lives from them. This is what the modern practice of astrology does, however, and so the Church rejects it (CCC 2116).