Abstract

Modern mathematics has been shaped by the process of secularization of science. Yet even some present-day mathematicians use religious terms behind the (mathematical) scenes. How essential this is remains debatable. Before modernity, everything, including mathematics, was perceived from a religious perspective. Deeper connections existed for Pythagoreans, and nowadays there is a revival of Pythagoreanism. Mathematics was used by medieval theologians, and even the founders of modern science – for instance, Newton, Leibniz, Boole, Cantor – referred to religion. From the present perspective, those theological aspects seem mostly irrelevant. The concept of actual infinity had a fundamentally religious meaning before the nineteenth century. Now, only a few see mathematical infinity as a notion common to mathematics and theology.Religious origins of some mathematical concepts can be detected, for example, Indian origins of zero, possible Christian sources of the initiation of the algebraic approach, the creative function of naming applied to infinite entities. On the other hand, mathematical illustrations of theological concepts are possible, even though genuine mathematical models do not seem to be essential or testable. Generally, religious needs and motivations played a role in the development of mathematics, and mathematical metaphors helped theologians. To perceive this connection as relevant now requires sensitivity to the realm of the religious.