"Is There a Christian History of Science?"

In Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, ed. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 63-75.

Abstract: Is there a Christian history of science? I will answer this question by refining it, as follows. First, I will ask: is history of science more like history or science? I conclude that it is now more like history. Then I ask, is there a Christian history? I conclude that there is not, at least not for most leading contemporary Christian historians; however there are several questions that tend to interest Christian historians more than they interest other historians. At this point I ask: is there a Christian history of science? Here, in the longest section of the paper, I examine several candidates for what a Christian history of science might look like, choosing representative scholars in each case. I note that non-Christian historians of science have contributed in major ways to some of these positions, so that it is problemmatic to call them "Christian" in clear, unambiguous ways, though some might be called more "Christian" than others, in the sense that they draw favorable conclusions about the relationship between Christianity and the development of modern science. Overall, these views tend to unite around their opposition to the "warfare" school, according to which Christianity and science are engaged in a protracted battle for cultural and intellectual dominance. Finally, I ask: is there a role for the Christian scholar in doing history of science? This is the easiest question to answer, and I suggest what that role might be.