History of the Modern Church:
Religious Philosophy of the Enlightenment and Its Child,
Protestant Liberal Theology
I.
Shift in Worldview, Practice and Fundamental Questions
A. Copernican Revolution: a Change in Worldview
1. Copernicus suggested that the sun, rather than the earth, was the center of the cosmos;
Galileo, who supported Copernicus’ claims against the RCC; Newton who posited the law of
gravity and the other three laws of motion
2. All three men, and others, started the scientific revolution
B. Practice: Reformation Impact on Christianity
1. Positive
a. Less distinction between the sacred and the secular: e.g. Monasteries turned to hospitals
and monks worked in the community rather than in the monastery walls
b. More justice in government, particularly with human/women’s rights
c. Value of family and marriage – no longer a second-rate choice to get married
d. Music and art to be used in worship; Bach saw it as his profession to be a musician and
composer
e. New understanding of science; nature is good, though corrupt; natural philosophy has a
role
2. Negative
a. Christianity shifted from a religion once practices (sacraments, church, etc.) to now just
something that we believe; a body of doctrines that differed for everyone; doctrinal
pluralism
b. Religious intolerance
c. Non-religious principles had to become the only basis for ordering society
d. Public sphere began to be seen as a religious-neutral territory; public institutions are
secular
e. Rise of secularism and marginalization of religion
C. Skepticism: What is true?
1. Place of the Bible and Biblical Revelation
a. Formerly, an authority was given to Scripture due to its illuminating work by the Holy
Spirit, the encounter one has with the Spirit in the text, and the knowledge for salvation
made clear through the text. All that the Scriptures spoke of were sufficient for
salvation, leaving no need for tradition, reason, experience, etc.
b. Our salvation was defined by something outside of us – the Trinity; in salvation we are
being conformed to a reality that is outside of ourselves by the Spirit that is working in
us.
2. Now that everyone disagrees on what the Bible says, there are religious wars over it, people
in the secular sphere deny it altogether, and science (natural philosophy) has become a focal
point, how can anyone know anything? What is truth? Who determines it?
a. Fideism - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) – said the uncertainty and weakness of natural
human knowledge is the indication of the necessity of faith
b. Evidentialism - Reason Authenticating Revelation
1) Revelation must be rationally supported; the question becomes: “is it rational” rather
than “is it revelation?” Reason determines the criteria for acceptable revelation,
based on the five senses.
c. Deism: God may be part of the equation as the “divine mover,” but then he starts the
process and lets it go based on natural revelation; True religion must agree with natural
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II.
reason and evidence; true Scriptural knowledge is coterminous with knowledge; Natural
criteria trump supernatural claims
1) School of Higher Criticism will arise from this – trying to get at the heart of the
biblical text apart from its supernatural/miraculous claims.
Enlightenment Reasoning
A. Definition of the Enlightenment:
1. A self-description of a movement in 18th-century thought that was critical of revealed religion
and its dogmas and insisted on the primacy of the individual and his/her own reason.
2. It arose in Britain (Locke and Hume), flourished in France (Voltaire) and was championed in
Germany (Kant).
3.
Their purpose was the re-establishment of unity throughout the populace: Unity will come
through the rational principles that apply to everyone. They can come out of doubt and
skepticism, established on a basis other than tradition and scripture, build a new edifice of
truth that will be plausible, universal, and their own.
4. What people believed for thousands of years was being swept away by this intellectual
revolution. There were whole new worlds to know, a universe to explore, and hundreds of
new questions to ask.
B. “Turn to the Subject”
1. A phrase designating any epistemology that begins by examining the nature of powers of
the self. “I know X.” “I” is the subject that perceived X, the object.
2. For the Reformation and previous, God was both subject and object. God reveals by the
spirit and he reveals himself. Knowledge of God came from the object: Objective revelation
of God.
3. For Enlightenment thinkers, they no longer looked “out there” for knowledge, but to the
self. The Subject becomes the ground for knowledge of God, becoming autonomous over
their knowledge of God; They know God because they are looking for God in their right
place and based on their own ways of thinking.
III.
Primary Enlightenment Thinkers
A. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) – Descartes’ method was to doubt everything he had ever been
taught and then figure out what he could be certain of by his own reasoning.
1. Either there is nothing certain, or there is something certain. If I am uncertain, I am
thinking. Therefore: cogito ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am.”
2. Established the foundation for epistemology – how we know. Grounds the existence of God
in his own thinking; because he has a clear idea of God, God must have put it in his mind,
therefore, God must exist.
B. John Locke (1632-1704) – Empiricism (5 senses) and the tabula rasa (“blank slate”). The mind
does not have innate ideas, therefore without the senses we know nothing.
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IV.
1. Everything is based on experience: We experience reality, the evidence of that experience
becomes reflections in my mind, which become more and more complex as we experience
more, until we develop propositions
2. There is an authority in the trustworthy witness of the apostles’ direct experience.
C. David Hume (1711-1776) and the return of Skepticism
1. His epistemology was empiricism – the five senses; Said religion came from the fears and
superstitions of the majority of mankind, who are not guided by reason.
D. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and the “Copernican Revolution in Epistemology”
1. Critiques Hume’s view and tries to resolve it; says God is not an object of knowledge, nor
can he ever be; This doesn’t mean we can’t know God, but simply that we can’t know him
like we know other realities, like science; We can’t know God, but we can still have faith in
God;
2. Talking about God within the moral and ethical realm is the only place to do so; the
religious a priori (innate truths) – we know God innately in our moral and ethical world
(why we do what is good) and in doing so, his revelation is confirmed in that experience.
Categorical Imperative. The subject confirms Christianity as being true because it already
has the structure in place for talking about God before he makes himself known in any way.
3. The moral law comes from God but it is also innately in our beings – God doesn’t have to
reveal anything, because we already know him – in a practical reason sort of way
E. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) – the Father of Modern Liberal Theology
1. Locates religion in the realm of feeling and immediate self-consciousness – Christian
theology is totally independent of science, because it is based on feeling, particularly a feeling
of absolute dependence.
2. This “feeling of absolute dependence” is what unites all people together in their
understanding of the religious a priori – the God/divine/whatever that is the basis for all
reality. He has to call this “feeling” something so he calls it God. – a God consciousness.
3. Christ leads us to see what was in us the entire time; he is not defining us, but making it
possible to see what was in us the entire time.
F. G. F. W. Hegel (1770-1831)
1. Hated Schleiermacher; said ultimate reality is an Absolute Spirit (mind), which comes to selfunderstanding through its workings in history.
2. Absolute Truth is a system of logically interrelated concepts that has developed in time and
space (the dialectic). Being + Nonbeing = Becoming + Quality = Unity + …
Classic Protestant Liberal Theology
A. Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889)
1. Argued that God could not be known in himself, but in his activities. Christians value
Christ as divine because he fully lived out the love of God. He redefined the Kingdom of
God as the trust in God’s love; salvation by imitation.
B. Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930)
1. Argued that Christian beliefs were molded by Greek thought. Protestants should recover the
original gospel from the useless synoptic gospels. He denied miracles and Jesus’ deity, but
taught the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Jesus focused on one thing –
love your neighbor.
2. Theology teacher for Karl Barth
C. Martin Kahler (1835-1912)
1. Started the search for the “historical Jesus” – finding who Jesus said he was rather than what
the church said he was. Differentiated between Historie (objective history) and Geschichte
(the significance and meaning of history); the person reconstructed by modern theologians is
a person who never could have existed in history.
D. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
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V.
1. Somewhat in agreement with Kahler, but focuses more on the Jesus not part of historie, but
that part of Jesus that defines him as the Christ; the spirit of Jesus, the kerygma, the thing
that the early churches focused on.
E. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
1. (Right wing response) - Counters Hegel’s focus on the Geist, History, Dialect, whatever, by
saying that we need to focus on the individual; said despair leads an individual to a place
where they realize who they are before God; says we can’t know God like a bug under a
microscope, but at the same time can’t keep him at arms length; he is a God who calls us to
make a decision for him; to really know an object is to be related to it as a subject; we
cannot know God through reason.
2. Christian existentialism – Life is meaningless, without relating to God.
F. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
1. Projection theory of religion: We are not satisfied with outselves so we seek to transcend our
imitations, creating from our projections God. The referent of our theology is an illusion,
not God. Theology is just anthropology looked at in a different way.
2. The resurrection reveals the desire for humanity to be reborn, that death is not the end. The
doctrine of the Trinity reflects that we want unity with each other; etc.
G. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
1. Primarily economist and sociologist.
2. Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature.
3. Religion is the “opium of the people.” – Drawing from Feuerbach, saying, if Christians
believe that Jesus is coming back, then they are kept subservient waiting for the day. So
rather than religions show us where we need help, they trap us; therefore, change the
economic conditions and it will change the need for religion.
H. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
1. The ‘Death of God’ – This God has always been dead, but now we know. God is replaced by
atheism.
2. “Whither is God?” he cried. “I will tell you – We have killed him—you and I. All of us are
his murderers.”
3. We now have a “blank canvas” that can be painted however we want it. We are no longer
constrained by the belief in God.
Principles of 19th century Liberalism
A. The Principle of Continuity
1. The rejection of God’s transcendence meant that the idea of God is imminent in nature.
2. The emphasis on Christ’s humanity destroyed the uniqueness of Christianity and led to the
equality of all religions.
3. The continuity between man and nature left no room for divine activity and little difference
between man and animals.
B. The Principle of Optimism
1. An optimism concerning man developed, made possible through evolution.
C. The Principle of Relativism
1. Skepticism regarding truth and authority
2. Acceptance of the authority of personal Christian experience.
D. The Principle of Redefinition
1. Theology was redefined to mean the accumulation of man-made traditions, equally valid.
2. God was redefined to mean man’s highest concern.
3. Christ was redefined to be the representative human being.
4. The image of God in man was redefined to mean the spark of divinity in every human man.
5. Salvation was redefined to mean the social recovery of all men (social gospel).
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