The battle waged by the early Christians was not just against competing faiths but against the very notion of independent thought, which might undermine faith in the word of God. The idea arose that if you believed Christ was the savior sent by God for all mankind, this was the only truth you should ever care to know. “After Jesus Christ,” wrote church father Tertullian, “we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research.” Augustine referred to intellectual inquiry as “the disease of curiosity…to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our
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