"Archeologists believe they've discovered the mystery factor that has allowed Roman buildings to continue standing for 2,000 years," according to a recent post by Daniel Payne over at Not the Bee. As it turns out, a particular variety of quicklime was added at high temperature to form compounds in the concrete which allow for a self-healing regenerative process to take place within Roman concrete.
So also, I think here of a conversation my dad, eldest son, and I had last night after watching Top Gun: Maverick for our weekly family movie night. More specifically, we were discussing how Nazi Germany made some incredible technological advances, particularly in rocketry, which made much of modern air transportation and the space program possible, as German scientists were taken in by the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the close of World War II.
There is no denying that Germany in the early 20th century made incredible technological breakthroughs, and could boast being home to the leading universities, research laboratories, and scientists of the world. The downfall, I would argue, despite these incredible facts, was to be found in the erosion of Christian faith in Germany, due in large part to the undermining and arguing away of the authority and infallibility of The Bible as God's inspired Word.
Simultaneous to this erosion, or else a consequence to the vacuum it created, which nature reliably abhors, as we all know, the rise of neo-paganism, and the desire to return Germany to the worship of the old Norse gods - Odin, Thor, Freyr, and the like - meant that country was unable to sustain its hyper-aggressive progress, and that it destroyed itself as a result.
By contrast, it was Christian faith that gave rise to, inspired, and stabilized the restoration of science, both physical and metaphysical, natural and philosophical, in the West, particularly after the fall of the Romans to the barbarians who had become more proficient at imitating Latin success than the biological heirs of Romulus and Remus, what with their self-indulgence and folly.
As Herman Bavinck explained in A Christian Philosophy of Science, the Christian worldview and message, with its emphasis on faith, confession of sins, repentance, and grace, set the stage for what we know of as the scientific method, where explanations for the relationship between phenomena are speculated on, hypothesized, tested, and then converted into practical theories.
In our day, tragically, this is almost entirely forgotten and denied. Like a daily and cumulative fulfillment of what happens to most modern concrete when it has been exposed to sun's rays and the rain for a few seasons, cracks appear in our scientific pursuits, apart from the stabilizing agent of Christian faith. And the results are much the same, that pathways, driveways, roadways, and buildings of all kinds keep on breaking down, either to eventual destruction, or else requiring constant and costly maintenance.
But this is to say that The Northman religion is a far cry from even the vestiges of ethos which remain in Top Gun: Maverick, as we are still living in a kind of Roman ruins which do not wear out so quickly without intentional dismantling, sabotage, and vandalism.
