The Triumph of Christianity

most religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition do not posit a creation at all. The universe is said to be eternal, without beginning or purpose, and never having been created, it has no creator. From this view, the universe is a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and (perhaps) arbitrary. For those holding this view, the only paths

because God has given humans the power of reason it ought to be possible for us to discover the rules established by God. Indeed, many of the early scientists felt morally obliged to pursue these secrets, just as Whitehead had noted. The great British philosopher concluded his remarks by noting that the images of God and creation found in the non-E

Whitehead had recognized that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science, just as non-Christian theologies had stifled the scientific enterprise everywhere else. He explained that “the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement [was] the inexpugnable belief... that there was a secret, a secret whi

SCIENCE AROSE ONLY IN Europe because only medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his creation.

Science did not suddenly burst forth in the sixteenth century. It began centuries before in the Scholastic commitment to empiricism, and it was nurtured in the early universities as scholars pursued systematic efforts to innovate. Moreover, the truly remarkable aspect of the rise of science is that it happened only once.19 Many societies pursued al

The Scholastic commitment to empiricism was one of the vital keys to the rise of science. Although the aim of science is to formulate theories to explain natural phenomena, it requires that theories be put to and survive empirical tests.

According to Edward Grant, “the introduction [of human dissection] into the Latin west, made without serious objection from the Church, was a momentous occurrence.”

Scholastic Empiricism The early Scholastic scientists did not just sit in their studies and think about the world; they increasingly relied on careful observations of the matters involved, that is, on empiricism. For example, the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and Chinese mostly based their “knowledge” of human physiology on philosophy and introspection,

Christian Scholastics invented the university and gave it its modern shape. The first two universities appeared in Paris (where both Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas taught) and Bologna, in the middle of the twelfth century. Then, Oxford and Cambridge were founded in about 1200, followed by a flood of new institutions during the remainder of the