Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 7.1
What you will learn
- Describe what the Enlightenment was and name some of its leading thinkers.
- Explain how deism, Hume on miracles and biblical criticism challenged traditional teaching.
- Summarize several Christian responses, including Pietism, evangelical revival and rational apologetics.
- Identify both the harm and the benefit that Christians have seen in the Enlightenment.
The big idea
The Enlightenment was a European movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that put human reason, evidence and individual judgment ahead of inherited authority. It grew in part from weariness with the religious wars. It produced new science and ideas of toleration, and it also produced pointed challenges to the Bible, miracles and church teaching. Christians responded in very different ways: some adapted, some resisted, and some renewed the faith through the heart as well as the mind. The questions it raised still shape debate about faith today.
Key terms
- Enlightenment
- An intellectual movement, roughly 1650 to 1800, that emphasized reason, science and criticism of tradition and authority.
- Deism
- The view that God exists and made the world but does not intervene in it through miracles or special revelation. Reason and nature are the guides.
- Historical criticism
- The study of the Bible with the methods used for other ancient texts, asking about authorship, date, sources and original setting.
- Miracle
- An event understood as an act of God that goes beyond the ordinary course of nature.
- Toleration
- The practice of allowing people to hold and practice religious views different from the official ones.
- Pietism
- A movement within German Lutheranism, from the late seventeenth century, that stressed personal faith, Bible study in small groups and holy living.
- Evangelical revival
- A movement in the eighteenth century, including Methodism in Britain and the Great Awakening in America, that emphasized conversion and personal faith.
Background
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were marked by religious war, culminating in the Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648), which devastated parts of Germany. Many thinkers concluded that appeals to church authority could no longer settle disputes, and sought a basis for knowledge that all rational people could share. Descartes tried to build knowledge from indubitable foundations. Newton described a universe governed by natural laws. Locke argued for religious toleration and wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity, which argued that the core of Christianity is simple and agrees with reason.
The new science and philosophy did not at first oppose religion, and many of its leaders, including Newton, were devout. But the habit of testing claims by reason and evidence began to be applied to Scripture and doctrine. By the eighteenth century, in France, Britain and Germany, some writers openly doubted revelation. Others, such as the American Benjamin Franklin and many British writers, held to a general belief in God without traditional doctrine.
Not everyone in the Enlightenment was hostile to Christianity, and not every Christian was hostile to the Enlightenment. A student should avoid a picture of a simple war between faith and reason.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Deism and natural religion
Deists argued that the true religion is the one available to all by reason: there is a God, he is to be worshipped, virtue is the main duty and there is a reward and punishment after death. Special revelation, miracles and doctrines like the Trinity were thought unnecessary or false additions. Writers such as Matthew Tindal in England and Voltaire in France spread these views.
Christian writers answered at length. Bishop Joseph Butler, in The Analogy of Religion (1736), argued that the difficulties in revealed religion are like those in nature, so that a person who accepts one should not reject the other on that ground. William Paley later built an argument for God from design in nature.
Step 2: Hume and miracles
David Hume, in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748), argued that a wise person proportions belief to evidence, that the evidence for natural laws is as strong as can be, and that reports of miracles, which go against that experience, rarely if ever outweigh it. Critics have replied that his argument assumes what it needs to prove, that the same reasoning would rule out unusual events in general, and that probability is not so simply used. Philosophers such as C. S. Lewis and John Earman have criticized it at length, while others defend it. The argument remains a subject of serious philosophical debate.
Step 3: Biblical criticism
Scholars began to study the Bible as a historical document. Baruch Spinoza, in 1670, argued that Moses could not have written all of the Pentateuch. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, whose writings were published after his death by Lessing in the 1770s, argued that the apostles had changed the message of Jesus. David Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1835) treated the Gospel stories as myths. Throughout the nineteenth century, scholars developed theories about sources behind the Gospels and the Pentateuch.
These studies raised questions that had to be faced. Some Christians rejected the method as hostile. Others adopted it, arguing that careful study of the text is compatible with faith. Catholic scholars were restricted for a time and then encouraged by Pope Pius XII in 1943 and the Second Vatican Council. Evangelical scholars have used much of the method while criticizing its assumptions. Albert Schweitzer in 1906 showed how often scholars had made Jesus in their own image.
Step 4: Christian responses
The Pietists and the evangelical revivals answered with the heart: they stressed the new birth, personal assurance, and holy living. Jonathan Edwards in America combined philosophical skill and revival preaching. John Wesley and George Whitefield preached across Britain and America. Their movements appealed to many who found cold reason unsatisfying, and they led to new forms of church life.
Other thinkers accepted much of the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant argued that religion should rest on moral reason and be kept within the limits of reason alone. The next lesson takes up how Schleiermacher and others tried to find another ground for faith. Catholic authorities were often cautious, and in the nineteenth century condemned several modern ideas, as in the Syllabus of Errors of 1864.
Step 5: What the Enlightenment gave and took
Christians today debate the net effect. Many value the Enlightenment’s contributions: toleration, freedom of conscience, careful historical study, science and critique of abuses such as slavery, to which both Enlightenment writers and Christian reformers contributed. Others see in it the roots of secularism, skepticism and individualism that weaken the community of faith. Many writers hold a mixed view. A careful student recognizes that Enlightenment ideas have shaped almost every church, including those that oppose it.
- Why did religious wars make appeals to church authority less persuasive to some?
- What would count as good evidence for a miracle?
- How is studying the Bible as history different from reading it as Scripture, and can both be done?
- What did the Pietists and revivalists see as missing from cool rational religion?
- What would you add to or take from the list of Enlightenment gains and losses?
- Which Christian response seems to you most persuasive, and why?
Examples
A watchmaker God
A deist might say that God made the world like a watchmaker making a clock, and then left it to run. A Christian respondent, such as Butler, would ask whether a God who made persons would not also speak to them.
A scholar with a lamp
A nineteenth century scholar compares the first three Gospels line by line and notices the same wording in different places. He proposes that one used another or that they shared a source. This kind of observation is the root of modern Gospel studies and, in itself, did not require rejecting the faith.
A field preacher
George Whitefield preached outdoors to crowds of thousands in Britain and America. His message was that every person needed to be born again. Such preaching reached people who rarely went to church and whom Enlightenment elites often ignored.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic reactions ranged from condemnation in the Syllabus of Errors to the approach of Vatican II, which spoke of the church engaging the modern world. The Church affirms the harmony of faith and reason and now encourages historical study of Scripture within the context of the Church’s tradition.
Orthodox
The Orthodox world, under Ottoman and later Russian rule, experienced the Enlightenment unevenly. Some Orthodox thinkers welcomed science and education, and others saw Western rationalism as a threat to the mystery of the faith. In the twentieth century, Orthodox theologians have both critiqued and engaged modernity.
Protestant
Protestants divided. Liberal Protestants embraced criticism and adapted doctrine. Evangelicals and fundamentalists defended traditional teaching and the authority of the Bible, using reason in apologetics while rejecting skeptical conclusions. Many mainline churches try to hold both.
Secular and scholarly views
Many secular scholars see the Enlightenment as the origin of modern science, human rights and toleration. Others, including some postmodern critics, say that the Enlightenment’s confidence in reason hid assumptions of its own. Historians stress that the movement was diverse and that many Enlightenment figures were religious.
Why it matters
The questions of the Enlightenment are everyday questions now: how to weigh evidence, whether miracles are credible, how to read an ancient book, and whether religion and reason fit together. Reading the history makes it clear that these were not invented recently, and that Christians have already given many serious answers.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The Enlightenment was simply a war between science and religion.
Correction: Many leaders of the new science were devout, and many Christians welcomed learning. The conflict was more complicated and varied by place.
Misunderstanding: Hume proved that miracles cannot happen.
Correction: Hume argued that testimony for miracles is seldom strong enough. Philosophers continue to debate whether the argument succeeds.
Misunderstanding: Historical criticism necessarily destroys faith.
Correction: Some critics reached skeptical conclusions, but many Christian scholars use the methods with confidence in the faith. The question depends on the assumptions brought to the method.
Misunderstanding: Revivalism was anti-intellectual.
Correction: Edwards and Wesley were serious thinkers, and revival movements founded schools and publications, though some preachers did distrust learning.
Knowledge check
What is deism?
Deism is the view that God exists and made the world but does not intervene through miracles or special revelation. Natural reason and morality are the guides. Deists in England and France argued that traditional Christian doctrines were additions to a simple natural religion.
What was Hume’s argument about miracles?
Hume argued that a wise person proportions belief to evidence, that experience gives strong evidence for natural laws, and that testimony for miracles seldom outweighs it. Critics reply that the argument assumes what it must prove and that rare events need not be rejected. The debate continues.
What is historical criticism of the Bible?
It is the study of the Bible with the methods used for other ancient writings, asking about authorship, date, sources and setting. It began to grow in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Christians disagree about its assumptions, though many use it while holding the faith.
How did Pietists and evangelical revivals respond to the Enlightenment?
They stressed the new birth, personal assurance, Bible study and holy living, appealing to the heart as well as the mind. Figures such as Spener, Edwards, Wesley and Whitefield led movements that reached many people and shaped the churches that grew from them.
Think it through
- Which of your beliefs rest on reasoning and which on trust? How do you tell?
- What would persuade you that an unusual event had happened?
- Is it possible to read the Bible both as a historian and as a believer?
- Which Enlightenment idea do you think Christians should welcome most, and which most resist?
Independent assignment
A short critical reading
Read a short summary of Hume’s argument on miracles in the library’s Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Hume on religion. In your notebook, restate the argument in your own words in about 150 words. Then write 200 words on the strongest reply you can think of, and 100 words on what, if anything, the argument would leave unaffected in Christian faith. Aim for 450 to 500 words.
Further study
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hume on Religion Read the section on miracles.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Religion and Science A background on the relation between religion and science.
- John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions Read a sermon to see how the revival addressed ordinary believers.
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God A modern historical argument about the resurrection.
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées A seventeenth century response from a scientist who spoke of the reasons of the heart.
- 1 Corinthians 15:14 A passage on the centrality of the resurrection.
- Acts 17:11 The Bereans searched the scriptures daily.
- John 3:3 Except a man be born again.