Science and historyDraft · awaiting advisor review

Did Christianity cause the Dark Ages?

In short

Most historians no longer speak of “Dark Ages”, and they trace Rome’s fall in the West to many causes, not mainly to Christianity. Christians did sometimes destroy pagan temples and distrust pagan learning. But monks also copied much of the classical Latin writing we still have, and the Christian East kept Greek learning alive for another thousand years.

The Objection

Christianity became Rome’s official religion in the late fourth century, and within a century the Western empire had collapsed. Emperors banned pagan worship, and temples such as the Serapeum in Alexandria were destroyed in 391. Hypatia, a philosopher, was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Tertullian asked what Athens had to do with Jerusalem. Faith replaced inquiry. As Edward Gibbon put it, Rome saw “the triumph of barbarism and religion”.

Put as its strongest advocates would put it.

The Christian Case

Historical evidence
Historians usually explain the fall of the Western empire in the fifth century through invasions, civil wars, economic strain and failing taxation. The Eastern empire was just as Christian, yet it survived until 1453 and kept Greek learning alive. Most historians now avoid the term “Dark Ages”, an idea that goes back largely to Petrarch in the fourteenth century.
Historical evidence
Much classical Latin literature survives because monks copied it, especially around 800 under Charlemagne. Greek works were translated into Syriac and Arabic, often by Christian scholars such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq in Abbasid Baghdad. From the twelfth century, universities grew up in a church setting and put Aristotle at the heart of study.
Scripture
Paul quoted Greek poets when speaking in Athens, and told believers to test everything and think on whatever is true and excellent. He also wrote that worldly wisdom cannot find God, a passage some later used to distrust learning, though its point is about the cross, not study.
Christians differ
Early Christians disagreed about pagan learning. Tertullian was suspicious of philosophy; Justin Martyr and Augustine saw truth in it worth using, Augustine likening it to Israel taking Egyptian gold. Christians still differ in judging the medieval church: Protestants long called it a dark age of corruption, while many Catholic and other historians stress what it preserved and built.
Philosophical argument
Two things happening at the same time does not show one caused the other. Christianity spread just as the Western empire weakened, but so did many other changes. Some argue further that belief in a rational Creator gave people reason to expect an orderly world worth studying. That is an argument, and historians debate how much weight it carries.

Where the Evidence Is Weaker

The record is not clean. Christian emperors banned pagan sacrifice, some temples were destroyed violently, and Hypatia’s murder was real. Much ancient writing was lost because no one chose to copy it, and religious priorities shaped those choices. Literacy and city life shrank sharply in the West. The claim that Christianity helped make science possible is debated, and some historians think Christians give their faith too much credit.

Arguments to Avoid

Claiming Christians burned the great Library of Alexandria: it declined over centuries, and how much the Serapeum still held in 391 is unclear.
Saying medieval people believed the earth was flat: educated medieval Europeans knew it was round, and the myth spread mainly in the nineteenth century.
Claiming the church single-handedly saved civilisation, which ignores Byzantine, Syriac Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars.
Denying or excusing real Christian violence against pagans and their temples.

Read for Yourself

Acts 17:16–34

¹⁶Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. ¹⁷Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. ¹⁸Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. ¹⁹And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? ²⁰For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. ²¹(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) ²²Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. ²³For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. ²⁴God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; ²⁵Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; ²⁶And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; ²⁷That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: ²⁸For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. ²⁹Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. ³⁰And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: ³¹Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. ³²And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. ³³So Paul departed from among them. ³⁴Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

1 Corinthians 1:18–25

¹⁸For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. ²⁰Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ²¹For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. ²²For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: ²³But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; ²⁴But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. ²⁵Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Philippians 4:8