A secret that is often carefully guarded is that it was the Reformation that provided the necessary spark for the fire of the scientific revolution. Too often Christians, ignorant of the Christian origins of science, feel that science is threatening to the faith they cherish. But Christians need not fear the discovery of truth from any source, since all truth, if indeed it is truth, is God's truth. So let us see how the Ref­ormation transformed people's con­ception of the world around them so that they felt confident to explore it.

In the Middle Ages, prior to the Reformation, nature was feared. Each physical object, whether it be a tree, an animal, a stream, or a stone, repre­sented a spiritual being. To investigate nature involved engaging in sorcery, because one being must be subjected by another. As you can imagine, such a world view hardly promoted the scientific enterprise.

But that wasn't the only factor which rendered the soil of the Medieval Era barren to the seed of the scientific revolution. The philosophy of the Mid­dle Ages was dominated by Greek thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle and their followers. So in­tellectual speculation, but not actual hands-on experimentation, was the fashionable thing for the educated per­son to do. In fact, for a person to do any sort of work with his hands was degrading. Only the poor engaged in manual labor; they had to, to keep themselves alive. That meant that on­ly the uneducated had any contact with the real physical world.

However, the doctrine of Luther (1483-1546) and Calvin (1509-1564) was like water to the shrivelled seed of science.

• They said, first, that God was the Creator and Sustainer of the world. So it was to be expected that the world would exhibit an orderliness and con­stancy, in keeping with the faithfulness of God. Why, God himself had prom­ised to maintain constancy on earth:

While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night|Shall not cease.Genesis 8:22, New American Standard Version

• Secondly, people were again made aware of the exciting truth that they were created in the image of God. This newly grasped doctrine suggested, among other things, that people would be capable of understanding, although imperfectly and incompletely, the mind of God. The natural world was the creation of the Word of God and so to investigate it was one way to en­joy man's unique dignity as the image of God.

• Thirdly, the Psalmist's statement: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God, And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands." Psalm 19:1 was understood to be an invitation to study nature. And the precious fruit of such a study was expected to be none other than a deeper knowledge of God and the ability to glorify Him more intelligently.

• The fourth factor was that key doctrine of the Reformation, namely, the priesthood of all believers. This doctrine meant that not only those whose vocation was the church, but all those with faith in the Christ of Calvary were responsible, according to their individual talent, to study both the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. A corollary to the doctrine that every believer is a priest was the elevation of every occupation to the level of honorable service of God. The farmer tilling the field, the potter at the wheel, the housewife cleaning house, or the minister preaching on Sunday, could all, equally, do their work "as to the Lord" (Ephesians 6:7). Now there was no longer a separation be­tween the religious and the secular; the task of the carpenter was potentially just as praiseworthy as that of the minister. Now the educated person need not feel he was degrading himself if he got his hands dirty; it was an honorable obligation, even an adven­ture, to do scientific experiments.

• Finally, the Reformers were loud in their proclamation of sola scriptura: Scripture was the only authority. Life and thought was no longer guided by Scripture plus Plato plus Aristotle plus tradition. Reformation man was free at last from the intellectual shackles of the Greek philosophers.

We see, then, that science began as a search for God's truth as He revealed it in the book of Nature. To­day's scientists remain dedicated to the same search. However, with the Chris­tian foundation of our culture removed, or at least eroded, people are inclined to seek for the nature of ultimate reality in the discoveries of science. However, it is the book of Scripture that God provided to answer our "Why?" ques­tions. Science cannot tell us why we are here nor can it provide clues to our in­trinsic nature.