At the end of the 16th century (the 1500s), the West was divided into to camps, both of them “Christian.” Northern Europe, England and Scotland, were Protestant, committed to a Biblically based Christianity. Southern Europe was Roman Catholic, committed to an eclectic Christianity based on the Bible, the writing of the church fathers, tradition, and the Aristolean theology of Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics. But whether Protestant or Catholic, intellectual life was dominated by the ecclesiastical establishment.
But as the 17th century unfolded secular winds began to blow. These winds had been felt once before during the Renaissance, but were interrupted and stilled for a season by the Reformation. But new discoveries in the natural sciences and new perspectives in philosophy were giving birth to what Frank E. Manuel refers to as, “An independent secular class of popular philosophers.” These new popular philosophers would give birth to a powerful movement known as, The Enlightenment and a way of viewing the world known as, modernity.
By the 18th century the foundation of modernity had been laid by four great giants of the 17th century: Newton, Bacon, Descartes and Locke. According to Manuel, these four powerful thinkers “provided the massive pillars for the erection of a towering new philosophical edifice that began to crowd out the traditional Medieval Catholic as well as the Protestant world view.”
By the 18th century the average intellectual would have come to believe in four foundational principles.
- He would have believe that Newton’s laws of motion and his world-system was a model directly applicable to the science of man as well as to the physical sciences.
- He would have believed that Francis Bacon’s inductive experimental method was the only true path to knowledge.
- He would have believed in Descartes’ conception of reason as clear, and ideas founded on methodical doubt as clear and distinct from the intellectual authority inherited from the past, especially that of Aristotle and of the scholastic philosophers.
- He would have embraced John Locke’s denial of the existence of innate ideas. Instead he would have believed that all we know has its origins in simple impressions written on the “clean slate” of the mind.
Manuel writes that, “Sometimes working in isolation and sometimes organized in powerful cliques, the eighteenth-century intellectuals raised the curtain on a new world.” He continues:
- “They took a fresh and brazen look at reality”
- “They ranged over the whole field of knowledge which had once been the province of the Church, and presented a different view of the physical world, the nature of man, of society, of religion and the world.”
- They argued among themselves about the details they “expressed a common temper.
- They were deliberately affecting a revolution in the fundamental beliefs of mankind
- They “were joined in a conviction that the past, particularly the Middle Ages, had been dark and that they were the new dawn – the age of enlightenment.”
- “They raised questions about man and his soul…about the origins and character of religion; about the sanctions of the social order; about the source of state authority.”
But in order to gain acceptance this new system of thinking had to meet certain basic intellectual needs. This meant they had to offer a plausible account – a replacement of Genesis – of the past of mankind. They also needed to provide a theory and a tactic of social reform. And finally, it had to offer a vision of the future of mankind on earth, instead of in heaven. And the intellectuals of the eighteens century felt that they were up to the task. The first battle was a battle raged around the idea of original sin.
While there were many differences between Catholics and Protestants, both believed in the historic fall, and both agree that man after the fall was naturally corrupt; and that from the time of Adam this corruption had been passed on to every successive generation (Among other things, this doctrine explained the existence evil and suffering in the world)
In contrast, the secular intellectuals of the 18th century intellectuals all held the conviction that man was by nature good, or at least neutral. But if he was neutral then he could easily be persuaded to the good by education. There was not innate viciousness to overcome.
But their explanation had a problem; If man was basically good, then where did evil come from? The answers varied.
Some believed that since we “[have] a natural benevolence and sympathy for other men we would become gentle, loving, and unwarlike if given the proper environment. Others held to the notion that we operate out of self-interest. But they insisted that if allowed to function freely without the intrusion of alien political and religious influence, the natural harmony of selfish interests would create an ideally good society.
But whether or not they could solve the problem created by their new view of man, they were agreed that sin was not his problem. And so this new view of human nature and the human problem gave birth to a new optimism concerning the future of the human race, and faith in a new god; PROGRESS
It should be noted that many of the founding fathers of the United States accepted some of these principles, but they were tempered by the strong orthodox Christianity (primarily of the protestant variety) of many of their brethren.
And so, to the chagrin of Thomas Jefferson the first country to embrace these new principles in their totally was not the United States, but France. But to Jefferson’s astonishment, the experiment went poorly. It resulted, first, in the of the French Revolution, and ultimately in a tyrant to restore order.
The French experiment with secularism should have served as a warning to the rest of the world that these new ideas, in spite of their bright and optimistic promises, had a dark side. Sadly, it did not have that affect.
By the middle of the 19th century the thinking of the Enlightenment had become the intellectual consensus of continental Europe. By the end of the 19th century it had become the dominant world view of England as well. By the beginning of the 20th century it was fast becoming the dominant world view of American intellectualism too.
One of the primary reasons for the widespread acceptance of the Enlightenment world view in Europe after the wars of the Napoleonic Era was that it seemed to be working. I believe that the reason for this was that unlike the French Revolution, which threw God out immediately, the rest of Europe threw him out more gradually and in a far less radical manner. Thus the full consequences of the Enlightenments dark side would be felt more slowly. Although the more thoughtful among them – men like Dostoevsky and Nietzsche — could see the storm clouds coming.
But slow or fast, this new “enlightened” way of thinking “struck at the foundations of organized religion and eventually, both Catholics and Protestants were faced with an ancient dilemma: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” – Psalm 11:3
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