In other words, Buridan introduced the concepts that would lead to Newton’s first law of motion, that a body at rest would stay at rest and a body in motion would stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by another force. The pantheistic worldview never would have led to such an idea because it was fundamentally and institutionally opposed to it.

Buridan was of course not the first Christian to oppose Aristotle on the eternity of the world. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 codified the dogma that there is “only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, Father, Son and holy Spirit, three persons but one absolutely simple essence, substance or nature . . . one principle of all things, creator of all things invisible and visible.” [371] The Condemnations of 1277 in the generation that preceded Buridan identified Aristotle’s errors that were contrary to the Christian dogma of creation out of nothing and with a beginning in time, and to the common experience of objects in motion. Buridan was not a theologian, but a man with a brilliant scientific mind.

His assent in faith to the tenets of the Christian Creed guided him to assert the most critical breakthrough in the history of science, the idea of inertial motion and impetus.