A person can be a God-fearing Christian on Sunday and a working scientist come Monday morning, without ever having to account for the partition that seems to have erected itself in his head while he slept.[1]
The above quote from Sam Harris represents the popular belief that Christianity and science are always at odds with each other. This “partition” between science and Christianity only exists in the mind of a few as historically the separation has been far from the norm. Not only are science and Christianity not in conflict, they actually are very much connected, and have been throughout history.
In the Middle Ages, most people were educated in what was called the “classical tradition.” This means they were schooled in the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid; adding the teachings of Ptolemy and Galen later. As most people believe, it is correct that some of these classical tradition teachings caused suspicion, hostility, and condemnation from the church. But more often, critical reflection about the nature of the world was tolerated and even encouraged by medieval religious leaders. Many of the church fathers – for example Paul, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement, and Tertullian - had been educated in the classical tradition before converting to Christianity; they had acquired habits of rational inquiry prior to agreeing with and defending the teachings of Jesus.
According to David Linberg in the 2003 book When Science & Christianity Meet, the church fathers used the tools they learned through the classical method to further develop Christian doctrine and to help defend the Christian faith against its’ detractors.[2] For example, Aristotle’s concept of the “unmoved mover” can be used to rationally argue for the existence of God. Many of the church fathers expressed at least limited approval of the classical tradition. The early Christian teachers and theologians actually knew, used, and generally agreed with the science of day
The first, second and third century Christian writers all found Greek philosophy (part of which was science) a useful tool in the defense of Christianity. The Apostle Paul accepted and knew all the science of the day; teaching that knowledge of the natural world will point you to the correct Creator. Much of Paul’s speech to the Epicureans and the Stoics at the Areopagus in Athens seems to allude to Stoic beliefs. The Stoics could be reasonably be described as the logic teachers and physicists of the day, so Paul using their teachings reflects sympathy with pagan customs. Paul appeals for a new examination of divinity from practical engagement with the world; he doesn’t ask them to throw out their science, he instead asks them to look at it with new eyes to see that nature points to God. In Romans, Paul champions natural theology and a critical reflection of the natural world.
Justin Martyr held Greek philosophy in high esteem; teaching that they were inspired by the incarnate Christ. Irenaeus defended the Christian faith against the Gnostics, who held beliefs that would stop science all together. The Gnostics thought that matter and the world were evil and therefore had no reason to study a vilified creation. Irenaeus fought against this belief; affirming that nature and the world were both real and good creations of God, so therefore could be studied. Athenagoras used the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics to argue for monotheism. Clement of Alexandria did attack the earliest Greek philosophers for their atheism, but also acknowledged that these classical philosophers bore testimony to the truth and that their wisdom came from God. He taught that philosophy was a “schoolmaster” to bring the Greeks to Christ and used Greek philosophy to bring clarity to the early creeds to Christianity. Tertullian had some of the harshest criticisms of the classic teachings but did view the Christian religion as the complete fulfillment of Greek rationality, and he both advocated and engaged in philosophical activity.[3] Origen also found Greek philosophy a useful tool in the defense of Christianity.
Harris’ “partition” was not there with the Christian leaders in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries; science and Christianity were not in opposition! The early church fathers on the whole deeply valued Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen and the classical tradition; disagreeing with Aristotle and other teachers when philosophy was used to argue for atheism. They believed that the teachings on logic, reason, and the science of the day could be used to support and argue for Christianity.
In the classical tradition, knowledge about the world of nature (science) was an integral part of the larger philosophical enterprise: natural science was not separate from philosophy! Theology and religion were regarded as legitimate participants in the investigation and formulation of truths about the nature of the world. In the first three centuries of Christianity, knowledge of the natural world and acceptance of the science of the day was the normal state of affairs. It was in this environment over the next few centuries that the foundation for modern science was built. The work of Christian leaders in the fourth through the eighth century set the stage for modern science to flourish by establishing some crucial and basic ideas that we still use today to do science!
In the fourth century, Basil of Caesarea, now called Saint Basil, was well educated at Constantinople and Athens. Like most of the earlier church fathers, he devoted his life to Christ after his education. He adopted much of Greek science, like Aristotle’s elements of earth, air, fire, and water. But Basil disagreed with Aristotle’s special fifth element, the thought that the heavens were made of a special material that was incorruptible. Basil argued, for example, that stars in the heavens were just made of the same elements – in this case, fire - we observe here on Earth! This is a crucial concept that we still use in science today; the assumption that all physics principles are universal, that physics and chemistry operate the same everywhere in the universe!
Basil also thought that the laws of Aristotle were God’s laws – not eternal self-sufficient principles, as Aristotle thought. This makes physical laws contingent; God could have created the universe with different physical laws then what we are observing! To discover these laws, we need to test and consider multiple possibilities; Basil’s theology provided the impetus for this basic modern scientific process! Christianity, not Greek thought, provided the backdrop to allow us to consider multiple possibilities and then test those possibilities to see which one is correct! Basil also compared the motions of planets to a child’s top: God got them moving, and the planets continue to obey this initial command of God. St. Basil had the beginning idea of the law of conservation of momentum in the fourth century.
Augustine of Hippo, now St. Augustine, was one of the most important Christian church fathers during the 4th and 5th century. He wrote at length about the connection between the Genesis account in the Bible and the natural sciences contained in the classical tradition. Augustine had no problem using natural science to help interpret scripture. He also was a convert to Christianity after being educated in the Classical Tradition! Augustine was confident that we could use our reason and experience to read the book of nature because it was created by God. He wanted the interpretation of scripture to stay consistent with the cosmology and physics of the classical tradition and used the natural sciences in his role as a theologian and bible interpreter.
Augustine argued that the pagan learning of the classical tradition was an essential resource, capable of offering essential services to theology and the church. The science of the day posed no threat to Christianity and instead could serve as a faithful “handmaiden of religion.” Faith and reason, in Augustine’s view, complement each other. Scripture and Creation are two “books” that should be read together for understanding of the fullness of God’s self-revelation; science is a God-given tool for discerning the handiwork of God in Creation and is fully compatible with God’s Word revealed in Scripture. Augustine helped to embolden medieval thinkers that believe that nature was intelligible and that there was a unity of truth; science in harmony with Christianity.
Augustine was worried, however, that Christians would express absurd opinions on cosmological issues and provoke ridicule among informed pagans, bringing the Christian faith into disrepute. “It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics (astronomy, natural science); and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”[4] Augustine valued natural science; it was not something to love and worship, but instead it was something to use – but as Christians we should know it so we can use it correctly.
In terms of actual science, Augustine argued in Confessions that time itself is part of the created order and that the universe was created out of nothing;[5] two ideas that modern science didn’t agree with for over 1500 years. The idea that time began simultaneously with the beginning of the physical universe is consistent with the view held by modern cosmologists.
Another Christian in the late 5th and early 6th century, the Roman senator Boethius synthesized Plato’s philosophy with Christian theology to establish a foundational scientific concept that we now call “natural laws” by expressing how inanimate nature obeys God’s rules.[6] Work done by the English monk Bede in the late 7thand early 8th century “became a model for a purely physical description of the results of the divine creation, devoid of allegorical interpretation, and using the accumulated teachings of the past, both Christian and pagan.”[7] Both Boethius’ and Bede’s Christian worldview was not at all in conflict with a mechanistic universe governed by natural cause and effect.[8]
The work of Christian leaders in the fourth through the eighth century set the stage for modern science to flourish by establishing three crucial and basic ideas that we still use today to do science! First, and most important, they established the idea that the world is comprehensible to us; that we can study and understand a set of natural laws imposed by God and comprehend the material that God created. We can do this only because we are also created by God; made in God’s image, having, at least in a small part, a similar mind to God, which allows us to investigate God’s creation and comprehend it. Second, the early Christian leaders established the unity of heaven & earth; that physical laws are the same everywhere. This oneness of the universe was lacking in Greek thought, so the correction spurred by Christian theology was extremely important for the advancement of science! Lastly, the early Christian leaders established the relative autonomy of nature; that nature has its’ own rules and laws. Christian theology teaches that the universe was created by God, but is at the same time, something other than God. There is a rule-giver, so there are rules to figure out. This provided the impetus for the modern idea of proposing different possibilities and then testing each one to see what explanation is the best! Even in the so called “Dark Ages” science and Christianity have traditionally complemented each other and in fact have been intimately connected throughout history. Christian leaders in the Dark Ages, and continuing through the Medieval Period, provided the foundations necessary for modern science.
The university was a Christian idea. Beginning with the University of Bologna in 1088, followed by Paris and Oxford before 1200, and then many other universities following Paris, the invention of the church supported university was the impetus for the “Scientific Revolution” of the sixteenth century. These universities were supported by Christians and run by Christians.
Roman colonizers of Greek and Arab societies left their works largely untranslated. It was the Christian universities that provided the stimulus to translate the ancient Greek and Arabic texts – many of which concerned the knowledge of nature - into Latin. “If European Christians had been closed-minded to the earlier work of pagans, as the [“Dark Ages”] myth alleges, then what explains this ferocious appetite for translations?”[9] The Christians were the ones that translated these crucial texts into a language that was accessible to the general public; adding a tremendous amount to the scholarship level of the university student. Dark Age and Medieval Christians were open to earlier works of Greek and Arab pagans.
Roger Bacon’s work from the 13th century, Opus Majus, is evidence enough that medieval Christians did much to advance science! Bacon, who was a Christian – in fact, a Franciscan cleric – read much of the newly translated material and then used it to write his opus on the science of light and optics, as well as model the beginnings of modern experimental science.
The Franciscan cleric and university scholar Roger Bacon read much of the newly translated work … By evaluating this past work and introducing some controlled observations – what we now call experiments – Bacon brought the science of light to its most sophisticated stage of medieval development.[10]
If you need more evidence that Christianity advanced science in the middle ages, consider that thirty percent of the medieval university liberal arts curriculum addressed what we would call science.[11] As undergraduates at these Christian run schools, students had to discuss the scientific ideas of the day; for example, they had to make arguments for and against Aristotelian science. The organizational model for knowledge at the medieval university had theology at the center; theology was positioned as the beginning of all knowledge, with philosophy connecting theology to all the other scientific disciplines. This is why experts in a particular discipline are awarded a PhD, a Doctor of Philosophy. This environment, with theology at the center of all knowledge, set the stage for modern science.
Most “histories” about the “rise of science” begin with Copernicus in the 15th century and how his work brought about a drastic change in how people thought about the universe. This fiction ignores the fact that Copernicus received an excellent education at some of the best Christian universities of the time (Cracow, Bologna, Padua). It also assumes that the idea of the Earth orbiting the sun came to him out of the blue, instead of simply being the next implicit step to what the Christian scientists had formulated and to what the Christian universities had taught for the past two centuries.[12]
To the Greeks, continuous motion required continuous force; this thought about the heavenly bodies continued through Aquinas in the 13th century. Because of his belief that space was a vacuum, William of Ockham broke from this tradition in the 14th century by arguing that a body in motion may not require continuous pushing and once a body had been set in motion by God, it would remain in motion.[13] This was an extension of the idea of St. Basil of Caesarea from the 4th century. Jean Buridan, rector at the University of Paris, extended on this idea, anticipating Newton’s First Law of Motion.
[When moving the celestial orbs, God] impressed upon them impetuses which moved them without His having to move them any more … And these impetuses which He impressed in the celestial bodies were not decreased nor corrupted afterwards because there was no inclination of the celestial bodies for other movements. Nor was there resistance which could be corruptive or repressive of that impetus.[14]
Buridan then proposed that the Earth turns on its axis. Objections to the Earth moving, such as why there is not a constant wind and why arrows do not land far away from their origin, were addressed in the 14th century by both Nicole d’Oresme and Albert of Saxony with explanations that sound a lot like Newton’s inertia.[15] In the 14th century, Christian university professors began to teach that sunrise and sunset could be caused by the rotation of the earth; in the 1300’s it was no longer necessary to assume that the sun circled the Earth![16]
Nicholas of Cusa took the next step in the 15th century:
[Nicholas] noted that, “as we see from its shadow in eclipses, … the earth is smaller than the sun” but larger than the moon or Mercury, Nicholas went on to observe (as had Buridan and d’Oresme) that “whether a man is on the earth, or the sun, or some other star, it will always seem to him that the position he occupies is the motionless centre, and that all other things are in motion.” It followed that humans need not trust their perception that the earth is stationary, perhaps it isn’t.[17]
This idea of relative motion is another basic tenet of modern science. All of the theorizing of Ockham, Buridan, d’Oresme, Albert, and Nicholas was known prior to Copernicus and taught at the Christian centered universities! The scientific revolution did not begin with Copernicus, he simply took the logical next step from what was already being taught in theology centered universities.[18]
Science and Christianity have traditionally complemented each other and have been intimately connected throughout history. Science was not “held back” during the so-called “Dark Ages” and Medieval Times. In fact, scientific thought continued to move forward, even foreshadowing Newton’s Laws and providing the scaffolding needed for Copernicus, a canon in the Catholic Church, to make his contribution to science.
If the medieval church had intended to discourage or suppress science, it certainly made a colossal mistake in tolerating – to say nothing of supporting – the university. In this new institution, Greco-Arabic science and medicine for the first time found a permanent home, one that – with various ups and downs – science has retained to this day. Dozens of universities introduced large numbers of students to Euclidean geometry, optics, the problems of generation and reproduction, the rudiments of astronomy, and the arguments for the sphericity of the earth.[19]
Christians see God as a Lawgiver, as a rational mind, and as the Creator. Because of this, the world must be rational, must follow prescribed laws, and must have a reason for its existence. Science is the way we study the world, the laws, and the reasons. Christian theology also teaches that man was created in the image of God, so we also have the ability to comprehend God’s laws and reasons. From the first century and continuing all the way through dark and middle ages, the teachings of Christian leaders and Christian run universities provided the foundation for modern science.
Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as His personal creation, thus having a rational stable structure, awaiting human comprehension. Christians developed science because they believed it could be done and they thought it should be done.[20]
[1] Sam Harris, The End of Faith, Norton, New York, 2004, page 15
[3] David C. Linderg, When Science and Christianity Meet, University of Chicago Press, 2003, page 12
[4] St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis
[7] Bruce S. Eastwood, “Early-Medieval Cosmology, Astronomy, and Mathematics,” in Cambridge History of Science: Volume 2, 307
[9] Ibid, page 37
[12] Rodney Stark, For The Glory of God, Princeton University Press, 2003, page 135
[13] Ibid, page 136
[14] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid, page 138
[18] Ibid
[19] Michael Shank, as quoted by Michael Newton Keas, Unbelievable, ISI Books, 2019, page 37
[20] Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God, Princeton University Press, 2003, page 147
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