ABSTRACT
WHAT classical pagan thinkers began, classical Christian thinkers continued—continued and also added to in ways which would give to the idea of progress a large and devoted following in the West and a sheer power that the idea could not otherwise have acquired. The Greeks contributed the seminal conception of the natural growth in time of knowledge, and accordingly the natural advance of the human condition. This emphasis upon knowledge, upon the arts and sciences, is, as we shall see, very much a part of the Christian philosophy of history; it became such indeed in the Age of the Church Fathers.
