The Church's Debt to Science

Extract

‘To the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, I am a debtor.’—Rom. I, 14.

In this declaration of St. Paul there seems no sign of humiliation, but something rather of pride. He does not mind at all that he should owe so much to the teaching of others: he seems rather to consider it an advantage to himself. He had indeed stood in the midst of the culture of his time, in the three great streams of it, and he had gained from it at every point. In his own Tarsus he had been in touch with the exquisite beauty of the balanced Greek theories of .art and die ideal poise of the athlete and the prudent management of life. His Roman citizenship had given him a width of tolerance which no mere Greek could know. His Jewish faith had given him a power of insight, a delicacy of conscience, a passion for divine things, a wisdom, a flaming love of God that melted his Greek and Roman heritage into a living sense of rapture, entranced by the comeliness of Christ.

Indeed, the sudden illumination that shone upon him on the Damascus road made him all the more grateful to the earlier knowledge which had led him to this more excellent knowledge and enabled him even better to appreciate it: Greek and Barbarian, wise and simple, all had been his schoolmasters to Christ.

The Greek beauty, the Roman tolerance and quiet dignity, the Jew’s passionate adoration of God—all had been leading him into captivity to the Crucified.