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A Divorce of Faith and Reason

Hypatia of Alexandria (Photo: turmarion.wordpress.com)

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By Tim Gehart

March 29, 2025
3:17 pm
Los Angeles, CA

In the 4th century A.D., at the far reaches of the Roman Empire was the sprawling city of Alexandria, Egypt. It was the center of learning in philosophy, mathematics, the sciences, and in faiths. Hellenics, Jews, and the new religion of Christianity intermingled. It was here that Hypatia, the Roman mathematician and philosopher relentlessly interrogated the cosmos, pleading for it to reveal its secrets of life. It was also where the ecclesiastic flair of early Christianity emerged. The Christian Bishop Cyril taught absolute faith, dogma, where questioning and ponderance in the gospel was strictly forbidden. For Hypatia and her Hellenic peers, questioning was seen as a way to come to a greater understanding of, and a greater assimilation to the Oneness of Creation. Their Neoplatonic philosophy emphasized completeness or

For Hypatia and her Hellenic peers, questioning was seen as a way to come to a greater understanding of, and a greater assimilation to the Oneness of Creation. Their Neoplatonic philosophy emphasized completeness or wholeness (eudaimonia, the highest good). Whole notes in music were seen as pure, as were whole numbers. The human quest to them was to reach wholeness by acting in accord with what they considered pure actions and thought. Moderation and temperance in all things was seen as a virtue.

Studying Mathematics and the sciences were also an inseparable part of reaching Eudaimonia. The physical world was an integral part of Creation. The human body and mind were an element of Creation. By Hypatia plotting the ellipsis motion of the planets, she concluded the Earth was also moving. Earth’s gravity being strong enough to counteract the small centrifugal force created by its rotation. She came to a truer understanding of herself in relation to the universe. Married with a philosophy of virtue, her advances in math and science aided humanity in the ancient world (see astrolabes and hydrometers). The emphasis to the Neoplatonic practitioners was on temperance, moderation, and virtue.

In Alexandria, there was a stark contrast between the pagan Neoplatonic philosophers and their fledgling Christian counterparts under Cyril. After having been persecuted for over 300 years, Christianity took off in popularity under emperor Constantine as he legalized it in the 3rd century A.D. Constantine massaged much of the Christian gospel to better subjugate and pacify the plebs, effectively turning the faith into a religion. (one where questioning or pondering the gospel turned into questioning the state). Genesis, though pulled and altered from earlier Mesopotamian legend (see Manetho, Greek historian compiled history from ancient civilizations) had to stand as is, as did every word and interpretation of the gospel by the Emperor by lethal force.

Cyril (as the story goes) saw the Neoplatonist probing of things to be blasphemy of the Christian faith and said Genesis legends. That or Hypatia was a woman… Either way, he worked up a mob to attack Hypatia. She had been tortured to death. Cyril had been declared a Saint for his zeal. The rest is history.

Hypatia’s death was seen as the death of the Classical era. It also marked the separation of the sciences and learning. We have compartmentalization of subjects as a residue so as to keep these things away from the untouchable gospel. The perversion of the Christian faith by Constantine and Cyril echoes today where technology and the sciences are removed from morality and virtue that would have otherwise accompanied them. The sciences stand alone, faith and philosophy stand alone. Where they were once married in beautiful harmony, they are now divorced in an un-amicable polarity.

Will we return to this long-lost unity of faith and reason? We shall have to ponder that for a good while.