Faith or reason. Religion or science. Tradition or progress. This is how many people in our culture, today, think. They see these things in opposition.

But the history of the West is one of faith completing reason. The scientific revolution was ignited not in ancient Greece and Rome, but in Christian Europe.

Europe took off technologically and in many other ways because a set of Biblical truths had worked itself into the bones of the culture:  Creation is good, the created order is intelligible; The Creator is a God of reason and creativity; We are made in His image.

God became flesh because the created order is good. It’s not the ultimate good, and it’s been wounded by sin, but, nevertheless, God’s creation is worthy of study in its own right.

The lawyers, the philosophers, the theologians the farmers and merchants, the architects and artists and inventors, they all sparked a revolution that started in the Middle Ages.

And the founders of modern science: they were Christians, almost to a man. They believed that the universe was a rational work of a rational God and they believed they were made in his image. They believed they were free, rational and creative beings, creatures with a purpose