Yet the concepts of health care we have today have roots in the Christian West. No one knew whence came the plague in medieval Europe. But everyone knew that the priest, the consoler, was not to leave town when it struck. Sisters and nuns, deaconesses and nurses pioneered in health care and invented voluntary associations to promote healing. Christian, arts of healing and agencies of care.
Intellectual productivity is fourth on the list of Christian achievements.
The temptation arises to question this because so often Christians have been inquisitors, suspicious of heresy and experiment. In East and West, however, Christians have tried to bring together the Athens of learning or the Rome of law with the Jerusalem of faith. The creeds most Christians recite combine Hebraic biblical narrative with Greek thought patterns. In the Middle Ages, the Christians founded Bologna and Oxford, Paris and Wittenberg as universities where scholars pursued more than theology. They have been teaching forces and spreaders of liberty.