It was not only in the area of law but virtually every other kind of knowledge was mediated either by the Church or by Christians in their respective fields. It is often claimed that there was much knowledge in this country until fairly recent times of the classical literature, art and philosophy of the Greeks and the Romans. This is certainly the case but, as Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out, this was often a knowledge "purified" of the cruelty, promiscuity, inequality and idolatry of paganism. The encounter of Christian faith with Greek philosophy was providential, as the Pope has put it, for the intellectual history of Europe. However, we must be clear that it was Jerusalem and not Athens that provided the fundamental orientation for the flowering of a Christian humanism at the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation. As Western Europe regained Hellenistic learning from the Islamic world (which had itself gained it largely from oriental Christian clergy), it also developed a critique from the point of view of Christian belief. Basic teachings, derived from Hellenism, on the eternity of the world, the denial of personal immortality and the resurrection of the dead and the primacy of philosophy over revelation were rejected because they were contrary to the Word of God. 

One of the significant changes that has been noticed in the transition from the medieval to the modern period is the increasing emphasis on an ordered universe that has definite laws governing its workings. We can call this the "Newtonian Paradigm" and it is responsible for the great leap forward in the theoretical and experimental study of science. The great Sinologist Joseph Needham, in his lifelong study of the civilisation of China, asked why it was that its civilisation, which had been so far in advance of Europe, began to fall behind towards the end of the medieval and the beginning of the modern period. Very reluctantly, he came to the conclusion that it was because of the influence of the Christian view of an ordered universe, in which there was predictability, that European science advanced and the Chinese fell back. Nor is this a matter of merely antiquarian interest. I am informed by generally reliable sources that China remains interested in the effect Christianity has had on Europe, not only in the area of scientific development but also in the ordering of society and the management of change.

The Newtonian Paradigm has been under pressure not least from developments in science itself such as quantum physics. However, as Professor John Polkinghorne has pointed out, the world remains a cosmos whose orderly pattern we can observe and admire. This last point should not be neglected: the transparency of an ordered universe to our mental processes is itself a matter for wonder. We should be clear that while the laws of physics describe the universe as it is, they are not the cause of it. Both these laws and the universe they govern require a deeper explanation than that "they just are". The Judaeo-Christian tradition provides this in terms of a rational Creator, who is not only the creator of an ordered universe but of rational beings, such as ourselves, within it who can, even if in a limited way, seek to understand at least something of its immensity and complexity. 

Based on predictability, repetition, verification and falsification, the scientific method has been very successful, not only in identifying what it is that makes up the universe, but also in discovering how things work, as well as how they can be made to work for human advantage. Such a method, however, cannot answer the why questions, especially why there is something rather than nothing, or why the universe is not simply chaotic or ordered in a way not congruent with the workings of our own minds.