Examination of the effects of Enlightenment induced skepticism from within Theological Scholarship.

Examination of the effects of Enlightenment induced skepticism from within Theological Scholarship.

 

McGrath, Alister E. Science & Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

Barbour, Ian G. Science and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Harper Collins, 2013.

 

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a philosophical movement that took place primarily in Europe and, later, in North America, during the late 17^th and early 18^th century. Its participants thought they were illuminating human intellect and culture after the "dark" Middle Ages. Characteristics of the Enlightenment include the rise of concepts such as reason, liberty, and the scientific method. Enlightenment philosophy was skeptical of religion — especially the powerful Catholic Church — monarchies and hereditary aristocracy. Enlightenment philosophy was influential in ushering in the French and American revolutions and constitutions.

 

Enlightenment rationalism is often considered to be the final flowering of the bud of English Deism. For our purposes, however, it is especially important to note the obvious consonance between Deism and the Newtonian worldview.

Rather than being content with blind faith, Enlightenment thinkers wanted proof that something was true. They tested popular notions with scientifically controlled experiments and personal experience, though skepticism of one's own senses was another factor in Enlightenment thought, and caused complicated philosophical conundrums, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

 

Enlightenment intellectuals were skeptical of the divine right of kings and monarchies in general, scientific claims about the natural world, the nature of reality and religious doctrine. "Theologians sought to reform their faith during the Enlightenment while maintaining a true faith in God," said Abernethy. The deist movement became popular during the Enlightenment. Deism holds that God exists but does not intervene on Earth. The universe proceeds according to natural, scientifically based laws. Several of America's Founding Fathers were deists, including Thomas Jefferson.

 

The Enlightenment set a new direction in the waning of deism. The waning of deism can be attributed primarily to its own inherent weaknesses. The Cosmic Designer, who started the world machine and left it to run on its own, seemed impersonal and remote—not a God who cares for individuals and is actively related to human life or a Being to whom prayer would be appropriate. It is not surprising that such a do-nothing God, irrelevant to daily life, became a hypothesis for the origin of the world or a verbal formula that before long could be dispensed with completely. In deism, God was a rational inference from the impersonal structures of nature, unrelated to personal experience. The arguments of natural theology did not move people to the kind of commitment and personal involvement that an active religious life requires.

 

The deists also attacked the institutional church; traditional Christianity was pictured as the enemy of the religion of reason. Miracles were rejected as primitive superstitions, and instances of cruelty and immorality in the biblical record were cited. Any creed, dogma, or ritual was suspect as out of keeping with new temper. Explorers and scholars were becoming more familiar with other world religions, and many of them accepted a cultural relativism that rejected exclusive claims for any one religious tradition. In England the attacks on traditional beliefs were moderate and restrained; in France they were often vehement and bitter, provoked by the church’s unbending orthodoxy and

repressive measures. Voltaire applied his wit to the ridicule of Christianity, though to his death he remained a deist. In America, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason found contradictions in the Bible and celebrated the victory of reason over superstition but defended the idea of God and the moral law. Jefferson, Franklin, and others among the “founding fathers” defended more moderate versions of deism.

 

The “enlightened” of the first generation supported both natural and revealed religion; those of the second adhered to natural religion but rejected revelation. By the third generation, there were skeptical voices calling for the rejection of all forms of religion. Baron d’Holbach denied God, freedom, and immortality and proclaimed that matter is self-existent. Nature alone is worthy of worship: “O Nature! Sovereign of all beings! And you, her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, and truth! Be ever our only Divinities.”

 

It was expected that humanity would rise to unprecedented heights and all evils would vanish if individuals and societies would follow the principles of reason. Far from being an age of skepticism, this was an age of great faith—in human capacities. Nature, God, and humanity were all approached in the same rationalistic spirit.

The dangers of Absolutism can be avoided if revelation is not identified with infallible scriptures, revealed doctrines, or authoritative institutions. If revelation occurs through the lives of persons, the human character of theology and the human
failings of the church can be acknowledged.

 

The effects of enlightenment induced skepticism from within theological scholarship. Some scholars started arguing that nature has its own factors to determine its nature out of God's sovereignty rule. It exerts this influence through its skeptical questioning of religious, metaphysical, and scientific dogmas. The Enlightenment begins by unleashing skepticism in attacking limited, circumscribed targets, but once the skeptical genie is out of the bottle, it becomes difficult to maintain conviction in any authority in terms of theological scholarship.

Our Theological Scholarship should never be shaken nor compromise with skepticism ideology.

 

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