ABSTRACT
In the third century, the form that secular knowledge took was the Neoplatonic philosophy that Hellenistic culture of the time inherited from the Greeks, hence Tertullian's reference to "Athens." Tertullian, in effect, loses the argument about Athens and Jerusalem because they have been intertwined from the beginning of the Christian religion, from the time when the fourth Gospel was written. In modern times, however, secular knowledge has been represented not by ancient philosophy, but by modern empirical science, and the Athens-Jerusalem conflict has continued under the rubric of "religion versus science." Science, it is said, is skeptical, as if the whole purpose of scientific investigation is to throw doubt and to regard with suspicion every truth claim ever made by any human being. The triumph of science has also been obstructed by developments from within science itself, since some of its basic theories, especially in physics, have developed beyond the simple-minded materialism characteristic of nineteenth-century thinking.
