✦ From Theocentrism to Secular Science: God’s Role Then and Now ✦

✦ 1. God’s Role in the Medieval Era

During the Medieval period (roughly 5th–15th century CE), God was considered the foundation of all truth and the center of intellectual life:

➤ Theology as the “Queen of the Sciences”:

Medieval universities (Paris, Oxford, Bologna) placed theology at the top of the curriculum. Other subjects (philosophy, law, medicine, mathematics, astronomy) were viewed as handmaidens to theology. All knowledge was understood as pointing toward God.

➤ Integration of Faith and Reason:

Philosophers such as Augustine (4th–5th c.) and later Thomas Aquinas (13th c.) taught that reason and revelation work together. Aristotle’s philosophy was adapted into Christian theology to show that rational inquiry could deepen understanding of divine truths.

➤ Providence in Natural Philosophy:

What we would now call “science” (then natural philosophy) was pursued as a way to better understand God’s creation. The study of the cosmos, the human body, or mathematics was not separate from religion but an act of worship, uncovering the divine order built into creation.

➤ Sacralized Society:

Political authority was often legitimized by divine sanction. Kings ruled “by the grace of God,” and the Church was the dominant intellectual and cultural force. Even history itself was interpreted as the unfolding of God’s providential plan.

✦ In short: in the Medieval imagination, all reality was theocentric (God-centered).

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✦ 2. Why God Was Excluded from Contemporary Science

The exclusion of God from modern science results from deep intellectual shifts beginning in the Renaissance and especially the Scientific Revolution (16th–17th c.):

➤ Methodological Naturalism:

Modern science adopted the principle of studying natural causes without appeal to divine action. This doesn’t deny God’s existence—it simply brackets Him out of the method, focusing on repeatable, observable phenomena.

➤ Reaction to Scholasticism:

Some early scientists (like Galileo, Descartes, Newton) were themselves deeply religious, but they sought a universal language of mathematics and experiment that could work independently of theological disputes.

➤ Rise of Secular Philosophy:

Enlightenment thinkers emphasized human reason, autonomy, and empiricism. God increasingly became seen as unnecessary for explaining natural processes (e.g., Laplace telling Napoleon, “I have no need of that hypothesis”).

➤ Specialization of Knowledge:

As disciplines professionalized, theology and science split into separate domains. Science explained how nature works; theology (for believers) explained why. By the 19th–20th centuries, many saw them as unrelated spheres.

➤ Cultural Shifts:

Secularization in Europe, the decline of ecclesiastical authority, and the rise of materialism and positivism meant that God was viewed by many as outside the scope of legitimate “scientific” explanation.

✦ Thus, while God was once seen as the ground of all knowledge, modern science emerged by deliberately excluding the divine from its explanatory framework, focusing instead on natural causation.

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✅ Summary:

• Medieval era → God was the source and goal of all knowledge, theology reigned supreme.

• Modern science → Excludes God not necessarily as denial, but as a methodological choice to study nature on its own terms.

— Azahari Hassim

Founder, The World of Abrahamic Theology