CHRISTIANITY: an enemy of progress?

– Corrado Gnerre

I recently saw the film Angels and Demons, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. It seems to me that after The Da Vinci Code, which denies the historicity of the Gospels, Angels and demons speaks of a Church that is always opposed to scientific progress. Is that really the case?

Dear reader, it is clear that we are facing yet another attack. Things are different from how the novel and the movie Angels and demons want them to appear. If the West is the West and if it has been characterized as the “ground” from which the true scientific-technological development started, it is precisely thanks to (and not despite!) Christianity.

There are at least two elements to consider. The first is historical. The second is theological-cultural.

For the first, it must be clearly stated that the “planetarization” process of the world started from the Mediterranean basin. There are those who say that it was Greek culture, and not Christian culture, that directed Mediterranean and European civilization towards the scientific and technological spirit. This is false and can be easily demonstrated. The contribution of Greek thought was certainly important, but not decisive. In the period in which this thought is a protagonist in the Mediterranean basin, in Mesopotamia there is a degree of development of the technique which is certainly not inferior (on the contrary, in some ways even superior) to the Greek and to that of the entire Mediterranean context. It was after the spread of Christianity that an acceleration of technological progress can be seen in the Mediterranean basin. In ancient Greece, scientific knowledge is not always accompanied by the need for research to improve the material conditions of life. This also applies to Aristotle and Archimedes himself, although the latter’s machines are very sophisticated and in some ways even modern.

Now we come to the theological-cultural fact, which is what it explains.

In Christian culture, due to a specific anthropology and the mystery of the Incarnation, the demonization of the body and material realities is absent. And technology is that manifestation of the human that serves precisely for the improvement of the material conditions of life. The mystery of the Incarnation is inserted into an anthropology – which is already that of Judaism – which values individuality and above all the unity of the individual. The “God said” and the “God saw that it was good” in the book of Genesis highlight the voluntariness of the creative gesture, in contrast to gnostic visions – widespread in pagan cultures – where the birth of the world and of corporeal realities figure as consequences of a “fall,” of an unwanted gesture on the part of the divine. This biblical anthropology is not limited to enhancing the positivity of creation, but also the centrality of man within creation … “And God said: ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,’” (Genesis 1) … and therefore the legitimacy of man to dominate nature: “and dominate the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky” (Genesis 1).

To this it must then be added that in Christian thought the acceptance of a realistic logic – for example the principle of non-contradiction – and therefore the recognition of the objectivity of truth, make it possible – and very much – for scientific inquiry. The astronomer Jaki states in his God and the cosmologists: “(Christianity, introducing the distinction between) the supernatural and the natural considered (all nature) to be governed by the same laws.” The pre-Christian era, convinced that nature is a manifestation of the divine, makes it (nature) “untouchable.” Not so with the Judeo-Christian conception, where nature presents itself as a created reality and, therefore, modifiable by man.

All this is confirmed by the fact that the lower Middle Ages, an era that was deliberately built on the Christian faith, were centuries of great scientific-technological development. A famous historian of science, the French Jean Gimpel, goes so far as to say that in this period there was a real industrial revolution. He writes: “The first industrial revolution dates back to the Middle Ages. The 11th, 12th and 13th centuries created a technology on which the industrial revolution of the 18th century was supported by its development…. In Europe, the Middle Ages have developed the use of machines in all fields, more than any other civilization. It is one of the factors that most determine the preponderance of the Western hemisphere over the rest of the world.” Therefore, Gimpel clearly says: thanks to the Christian Middle Ages, the Western hemisphere has predominated over the rest of the world. This is the truth, not that the Church is against science!