by The following historical analysis aims to prove that Christian theology and wide learning, including scientific information, are not incompatible, and that the first Christian millennium witnessed the fertile intersection of various disciplines, including what we currently call science-engaged theology. Considerations about the Christian School of Nisibis in Mesopotamia and some of its representatives will serve as my concluding case-study.
I begin by describing the original project concerning Christianity as a school, which accounts for the early Christians’ openness to multidisciplinary learning. Then, I introduce two fascinating late antique narratives, produced by the Greek Neilus the Ascetic of Sinai (d. after 430), and the Assyrian Barhadbeshabbā ‘Arbāyā, a teacher of the School of Nisibis (died in the early seventh century). These narratives view Christianity as continuing the ancient philosophical quest (in Neilus’ appraisal) and as central to the divine pedagogy in history, which operated through the mediation of successive schools (in Barhadbeshabbā’s understanding). I will then sketch a chronology of Christian universities, from the end of Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, all of which illustrated multi- if not interdisciplinary approaches, and practised science-engaged theology. The paper will continue by introducing the curriculum of the School of Nisibis, which established the multidisciplinary educational pattern later replicated by Western universities. For all, science-engaged theology was the norm, not an exception. I will conclude by stating the obvious, that thinking theologically in conversation with the scientific culture of a given age came naturally to ancient and medieval Christians, long before the modern culture wars.
The time is now to address Christianity as a school. Contrary to the modern view of Christianity as religion, the early Christians were convinced that theirs was a philosophical ethos and that their communities were schools under the guidance of the supreme Teacher, Christ. Their claim was that theirs was the true philosophy, both as discourse and as a way of life. And given that ancient religions were ritualistic, liturgical, the early Christians did not see themselves as religious people. They abhorred the idea of religion, which they identified with the Roman and the Persian public displays of state religion. Specifically, Christians emulated the philosophical schools of antiquity, concerning themselves with teaching and learning, and with generating a literature that reinterpreted ancient ethics and rituals in the light of the Teacher’s doctrine. This interpretative activity—that is, redrafting old practices and texts in the language of truth, reason, wisdom, and the noble life—was common across the philosophical spectrum of Antiquity and Late Antiquity. Following this pattern, Christianity resembled even more the ancient schools. But the early Christians also walked in the footsteps of their Jewish predecessors, whom they considered genuine philosophers. What matters is that Christianity emerged in history as a philosophical school, albeit a different one, not a religious movement. As philosophers, or disciples, from the outset, the early Christians were committed to embody their faith in the parameters of any given culture, including scientific cultures, which they engaged in order to communicate their message meaningfully.
Against this backdrop, it should not come as a surprise that the two late-antique Christian thinkers mentioned above, Neilus and Barhadbeshabbā, represented Christianity as a philosophical school and as integral to a long history of divinely established schools, respectively. Thus, in his Ascetic Discourse, Neilus introduced Christianity as the culmination of the philosophical quest that Greek and Jewish philosophers had undertaken centuries earlier. After describing the achievements and the weaknesses of the philosophers who preceded Christ—especially the problems they faced, such as vain pursuits, hypocrisy, and the failure to obey God—Neilus presented Christ as the Teacher and Sage par excellence, indeed the source of all knowledge and wisdom. Furthermore, Neilus depicted the Lord’s disciples as faithful students who passed on unadulterated the teaching of their Master. For him, Christ’s Gospel was the fulfilment of all philosophical quests, the proof of which being the sublimity of its doctrine—which unlocked the mysteries of reality—and the anchoring of doctrine in a corresponding way of life, philosophical, by the ancient standards. As we read in the prologue of the Discourse, “philosophy is an ethical state allied with the discourse regarding the true knowledge of reality.” As the highest philosophy, Christianity did not ignore either the natural world or the disciplines that studied it; rather, Christianity understood them correctly, facilitating a lifestyle based on the knowledge of things, not on ignorance and hearsay. The rest of the Discourse has little to say in terms of cultural engagement, but the framework for doing so is there, clearly outlined.
Recording of the actual presentation, followed by questions from Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson
Echoing this representation of Christianity as integral to the quest for knowledge and wisdom, in his Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, Barhadbeshabbā broadened the perspective, seeing this pursuit as part of the grand design of divine economy is history. He depicted God’s pedagogy as operating throughout the ages by a series of schools, the scope of which being to assimilate and to communicate divine wisdom. Chronologically, these schools were as follows: Of the angels, the paradisal one, of the patriarchs and the prophets, and of Zarathustra and the Greeks. Then came Jesus’ school and the apostolic ones—with Paul’s earning special mention—then the schools of revered early Christian theologians, especially affiliated with the traditions of Alexandria, Edessa, Antioch, and Nisibis. Later schools drew upon previous ones and ultimately on God’s wisdom, but their methods varied regarding the way they tapped into divine wisdom. Some drew upon God’s teaching directly, others indirectly, whereas most of them absorbed the knowledge and the wisdom of the ancients, as well, including the available scientific information.
No wonder that Barhadbeshabbā’s book begins with chapters on epistemology, where theology, exegesis, and natural philosophy cross paths creatively. To give one example, he notes that “the creator established this corporeal world [of beings] and … divided it up into genera and species and distinguished it by figures and activities, and he conferred upon it individual properties. He brought it [that is, this world of beings] in and set it in this spacious gulf between heaven and earth” (Cause 344-345). This abbreviated passage deploys Aristotelian concepts to discuss the animal realm that unfolded between the heaven and the earth of the narrative of creation. Specifically, it weaves Aristotelian concepts into the texture of Genesis 1, implicitly allowing scientific information to ground theology’s discourse in accepted cultural norms. The passage does so with ease, not bothering to clarify why scientific information is needed to explain the natural world, a world which Scripture usually depicts by metaphors. This is a case of implicit science-engaged theology, common to most early Christian theologians. To give a relevant example from the same Assyrian tradition and the earliest known teacher of the School of Nisibis, Ephrem the Great (d. 373) viewed the animals of Genesis 1 as “produced” by the waters and the earth, respectively, not as created (Commentary on Genesis 2.32). Specifically, while exegeting the scriptural narrative of creation, he deployed a naturalist explanation of the generation of terrestrial lifeforms, doing so as implicitly as Barhadbeshabbā did three centuries later.
It is at this juncture that I move to the chronology of the earliest Christian universities. Indeed, both Assyrians, Ephrem and Barhadbeshabbā, illustrated a venerable Christian tradition of multidisciplinary, university learning.
While modern Eurocentric accounts refer to scholasticism in the High Middle Ages as the origin of universities, where disciplines from across the spectrum were and still are taught—from the hard sciences to the humanities, including theology—the scholastic model was not original. Long before the eleventh-century university of Bologna, Christian schools of this kind were established in the Near and the Middle East. Multidisciplinary schools—genuine universities—functioned from the ninth century on in Constantinople, albeit discontinuously. Earlier, the monastic school of Gaza, which operated in the fifth and the sixth century, prescribed the study of philosophical disciplines of all kinds, including natural philosophy; what we currently call science. Earlier still, in the second century, independent teachers of Christian philosophy, as they called themselves, such as the Palestinian Justin Martyr and the Greeks Pantaenus and Clement, opened small multidisciplinary schools in Rome and Alexandria, respectively, while the Assyrian Bardaiṣan established a similar centre of learning in Edessa, in Mesopotamia’s North-West. It is true that these schools functioned during the lifespan of their founders, but the principle on which they were based generated lasting institutions from the end of the fourth century on.
One such university was the School of Nisibis, East from Edessa, established in 350 by the city’s bishop Joseph, where one of the teachers was the famous Assyrian poet and theologian, Ephrem, earlier mentioned. The fact that historical circumstances led to the relocation of this school to Edessa, in 363, did not mark the school’s end. There, under Ephrem’s guidance for the last ten years of his life, the School of Nisibis, rebranded as the School of the Persians, incorporated further disciplines from the Hellenised curricula of Edessa and Antioch. No wonder that, once returned home, the school functioned as a genuine university, having two departments, of theology and of medicine. Operating continuously for centuries thereafter—well into the Arab and the Mongol eras—the School of Nisibis is the oldest and one of the most consequential Christian universities. In fact, considering when it was established—despite its functioning in Edessa until 471, when it returned home—this university is the oldest in the world, preceding by decades the Indian one of Nalanda, which was established in 427 CE. From its relocation to Nisibis in 471, under the leadership of Narsai (d. 502), another major Assyrian theologian and poet, sponsored by Bishop Barṣaumā, the school continued to operate for many centuries. It constituted a bridge between Greek science, philosophy, and theology—the West, that is—and the Persian and the Arab cultures.
This leads me, finally, to the multidisciplinary curriculum of the School of Nisibis. Not much is known to us about the way the disciplines were taught and studied there. The relevant sources had been edited and analysed by Arthur Vööbus in the 1960s, being recently retranslated, together with related documents, by Adam Becker, in the 2000s. Several other analyses are also available, all of which attempt the reconstruction of the curriculum out of scanty and indirect information. Nevertheless, the existence of the two departments of the school, with distinct rules of organisation, give us a sense of the studies undertaken there. Furthermore, the works of Barhadbeshabbā—and other alumni and teachers of the school like Babai the Great (d. 628)—suggest that the curriculum of Nisibis prescribed the study of the classical languages, mathematics, and philosophy, including of the natural or scientific kind, for example, astronomy, medicine, and pharmacy—in addition to theology, exegesis, and liturgics. No wonder, then, that a late seventh-century spiritual author, Simeon d-Taybuteh, employed medical language in his writings to address the healing experienced during the spiritual quest. In turn, Barhadbeshabbā and Babai practised implicit science-engaged theology, showing deep knowledge and great dexterity in straddling a variety of disciplines, theological and scientific alike. To give another example, in an explanation of the incarnation, Babai inserted in the exegesis of the Lukan narrative a reference to the medical knowledge of the time, saying that Christ’s humanity was formed in stages, first the body, which was then ensouled in the fortieth day after conception (The Book of Union: Treatise 2.8.30). The examples can continue for ever.
It is this legacy of multidisciplinary study and science-engaged theology that was conveyed to the West in the Middle Ages, through multiple channels, such as the contacts between Nisibis and Constantinople, with the academics of the latter then migrating to Italy and bringing with them teaching experience, curricular programmes, and manuscripts. Another channel was the Western Arab caliphates, which benefitted directly form the scholarship of Nisibis, in the form of research and translations. Lastly, when the crusaders plundered the Orient, they undoubtedly brought back to Western Europe—together with the riches that boosted the development of learning—scholars and resources from the various schools of the East, including Nisibis.
The study of these early developments in terms of university culture is still in its infancy. What matters at this stage is that, remaining faithful to the original understanding of Christianity as a school of Christ’s students, the early schools of the Near and Middle East—with their multidisciplinary curricula and experience in the ways of science-engaged theology—inaugurated now forgotten approaches that prove Christianity’s intrinsic capacity for interacting, creatively, with culture, including the scientific culture of any given age. Relearning about these beginnings could catalyse a radical shift in the current understanding of the situation, putting an end to the culture wars and presenting a different face of Christianity, of a scientifically invested and culturally credible school.
Acknowledgment Talk given for ISCAST’s 15th Biennial Conference on Science and Christianity COSAC 2026 Entangled Worlds: Seeking Understanding Through Faith and Science, 6–8 November 2026 Melbourne, Australia.
7 November 2026 © AIOCS
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