STEP ONE: pagans worship nature as a chaotic force without rules. They personify the forces they can distinguish and try to bribe them or manipulate them through offerings and rituals.
STEP TWO: The gospel is preached to pagans and they repent of their false gods and turn to the one true God who has revealed himself in Jesus.
STEP THREE: The Christians learn and internalize over time the idea that God is knowable and that creation can be studied in order to learn about His wisdom.
STEP FOUR: study of creation involve measuring, timing, and hypothesizing rules that describe nature accurately.
STEP FIVE: The Christians learn and internalize that nature is not chaotic but acts in predictable ways that can be described by “rules.”
STEP SIX: A rule governed impersonal mechanism is posited which does not allow miracles. God is abandoned because “everyone knows” that only witnesses lie; nature never varies.
From Dionysius to Jesus and Paul to Newton to Hume.
But the story is not over.