From Jerusalem to Silicon Valley - by Alpha - MUSE

I. The Tertullian Moment What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Such was the question posed by Tertullian, the founder of Western theology and a Roman African living in 3rd century Carthage. It is a deceptively unrelated juxtaposition. On the one hand sits Athens, the paradigmatic birth place of Western Philosophy and an archetypal model for the search of knowledge, wisdom, and the production of culture. On the other stands Jerusalem, the holy city from which originated Judaism, Christianity and the birth place of Theology and the study of God. One is the City of Reason. The other is the City of Revelation. In contrasting the two, Tertullian was signaling a shift. Where Athens once represented a particular mode of mankind's relationship with truth and knowledge—namely philosophical questioning and the inquiry of man relative to the natural world—Jerusalem, according to him, had superseded the Greek city as the center of this line of questioning through the discovery of the monotheistic God. In other words, Theology had overcome Philosophy.

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• Gabriel Galer