What is the Enlightenment project and how did it impact upon Christian Theology - Essay Example

? ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT: IMPACT UPON CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX Theology is a wide discipline of study and it is like philosophy and psychology; it requires deep understanding of events and phenomena. Theology does not address history, nor does it address nature-it addresses and is addressed by these and other and other strata of reality that has the mandate of focusing on the different levels of being and showing how they are coherent with its overall vision of reality (McGrath 2002). Creative and critical thinking is an essential tool in analysis of theology, since all its aspects are related to the basic human understanding the origin of all creation and nature given the universal belief of a superior being. It is in this perspective that the philosophy of the holy trinity resulted in a deep examination of the biblical information and the church in general. Two different factions of Christians have come up, one group believes in the trinity that has God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This group is referred to as the Trinitarian group (Leupp 2008). The other group which believed that God is one distinct being has come to be referred to as the Non Trinitarian group. A heated debate has always ensued when the existence of the two groups is discussed or debated. The Trinitarian group can never visualize God as a single distinct person. Olson (2002, p. 113) argues that a non-Trinitarian creator God would need a world as his counterpart because personhood is a mystery of relationship. The Trinitarian theology follows the decree of the council of Chalcedon, which, under the direction of two leaders from Constantinople were united in the opinion in reference to a statement of faith that states that Christ is perfect God. The statement further says that man is equal with God and his Godhead and with humankind in his manhood. The existence of the two groups is actually the origin of Christian theology. As Christians realized that different groups had different beliefs, the early scholars dug deeper into the Bible history and in particular the different propositions it had. This started out as reflections on the implications and what the Christianity faith means. This insight started out as early as in during the era that the New Testament was written. Different episodes that Jesus taught on the Christian living guided the early church on the way they could live their lives in a way that their faith and convictions supported. Similar any other area of study, Christian theology has evolved from early introduction to Christian theology over the years, patristic theology, medieval Christian theology, western theology and ultimately into the modern Christian theology. It is in the context of modern theology, that the enlightenment project first emerged. The enlightenment project has dominated philosophy in the recent three hundred years promising a conception of rationality independent of historical and social context and independent of any specific understanding of man’s nature or purpose (Costa 2005).The enlightenment indicated tremendous changes which were known as the Copernican Shifts. These changes signified complete shifts in how the Christians viewed the world. These changes brought sharp differences between various scholars and Christian theology experts. People abandoned their earlier ways in the wake of the new beliefs. An aspect of the Christian living that changed is the revolution in thinking. This revolution brought about some significant shifts: A shift in authority. Before the enlightenment, two traditional sources of authority existed; the classics and the bible. A precursor to the beginning of enlightenment, there was another revolution referred to as the renaissance. During this time, scholars could not reject the scriptures completely, but they often sided with the classics as compared to the Bible. However, in the beginning of enlightenment, both the classics and the bible came under fierce attack. The main reason was due to the various scientific discoveries that were unraveled at the time. These discoveries raised several sensitive questions that seriously challenged the propositions of earlier philosophers and the appeal of the scriptures. Some of these discoveries were by Galileo Galilei and Copernican heliocentrism. The discoveries by the two forced men to rethink their beliefs at to look closely at the universe that they previously thought they had mastered. The earth now became rather insignificant and was termed to be just a planet or dust speck that was floating in the universe. The whole story of creation took a new turn. The time the earth has been in existence was discovered to be longer than the suggested time by Bishop Ussher where he had previously suggested that it was 5704 years. This was done through geological discoveries. The observers of these happenings failed to recognize that Ussher’s suggestion did not have an authority. The result was that this followed the questioning of the whole bible. Soon after, the scholars completely rejected the scriptures and this was a total turn around in the Christian theology history. For nearly two thousand years, Christianity has presented itself in the garments of religion but now the age of religion is supposedly disappearing or has completely disappeared (Braaten 1995) These scholars reasoned out that the doctrine of Jesus was surrounded by mystery, fallacious reasoning and the aim of the doctrine was to shock the so called reasonable thinkers and to subdue them into following blindly the aspect of Christianity. After the revolution, men now looked to find other sources of authority. They had to fall back to their own capacity to think and to reason as a source of authority. Therefore, man recognized reasoning as the sole source of authority. Another shift occurred in the epistemology discourse. The origin of the word "epistemology" is Greek and it refers to the study of knowledge (Hahlweg 1989). This means that this shift was initiated by the changes in knowledge. Rene Descartes made attempts to prove the case of reality and appearance by carefully examining the existence of all the physical and metaphysical things that mankind believes in. Rene argued that all knowledge is in the mind and education only helps in bringing forth or drawing the knowledge from the mind. All this was before the enlightenment. With the enlightenment, scholars in the league of Sir Francis Bacon argued that knowledge was a factor of all impressions brought to the mind for processing through the human senses. This meant that all that cannot be perceived using the five senses could not be known. The argument here was that it could exist but be unknown. The case of God a questionable idea according to them since the scriptures does not give any scientific evidence citing the existence of God and there is no one that can prove that they can perceive God through their five senses. This effectively deepened the scholars’ reasons to reject the scriptures. Another significant shift that occurred during this time was the outlook of anthropology. Previous views of man were far too pessimistic. The scripture portrayed man as a sinful creature. As a result, the church including even the reformers of the time taught that sins deformed human beings totally. This view indicated that man could not relate well with God and could not respond positively God’s will. This is because all men had sinned and so they had fallen short of God’s grace. Many theologians of the time held the belief that the world would soon end due to the continued sinning nature of man. They preached repentance and overlooked man as a doomed creature unless he was saved. However the Enlightenment rejected this view terming it as pessimist. They argued that man could use his reasoning capacity and make any situation better. They presented that man could relate well with nature. Man and nature were ‘good and benevolent’. They agreed that environment had the ability to shape man, but they also proposed that man could also change the environment and thereby improving himself. Pertaining to sin, these scholars proposed that resulted from ignorance. In this case, sin could therefore be eradicated by educating people. This view led to Christians embracing the world as if there was no other world as good as the one they lived in. Every Christian was encouraged to better the world for their own benefit and for everyone else. They travelled the world to preach to all mankind so as to eradicate ignorance so that everyone knew about sin and repented in a view of making the world a better place. The impact of the above shifts was so huge that the enlightenment remains in the books of history as one that changed how the church viewed creation and the foundations that the early Christian theology was built upon. Christian Theology scholars of the time, for example, Emmanuel Kent agreed that all knowledge pertaining to religion could only be found within man himself. This is because it had been proved that reason could not be advance as proof that God existed. The remedy to these discoveries rested with man, whereby he had no option but to move from the existing realm into another realm known as ‘faith’ The enlightenment project brought a dualistic approach in the explanation of the man’s nature and his perception of the universe. Conception of a phenomenal world is the first approach. This approach portrayed the world as a world of senses experiences. This is the approach that advanced the belief that the world could only be understood through reason. The second approach was the concept of the world as a noumenal world. This is world whose existence is beyond the human sense experience. This world can only be perceived and understood by faith. This approach cannot be proved nor disapproved since no man can use the sense or experience to explain it. Without such physical evidence, the approach does not raise so much concern and that is the essence of faith itself. Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen (Green 2009). The definition of faith clearly indicates that there is no hard evidence when dealing with matters of faith. The knowledge of God, as known to man, is therefore based on moral conscience as opposed to any sense experience. The attitude of Man towards God and the responsibilities of God to man can reasonably be explained the commitment to duty and sense of virtue that comes with self drive. The argument that says that one has to do good for themselves and for the good of others that they live with is phenomenal. In this scenario, man will therefore strive and carry out activities that bring happiness and make the environment he is in better. However, the problem is that not all that makes man happy is the path of virtue. This indicated that there exists a soul whose being and form extends beyond the physical death. In this light, God must therefore exist so that he ensures that the souls lead a life of virtue and happiness in the next life after the present. Man cannot possibly know God and as such he remains as an inference, a projection or hypothesis to man. Morality from the enlightenment project is the only way to prove God’s existence. There was an idea that God must exist because morality exists and can be proved. This perspective of the existence of two differing approaches resulted to numerous outcomes. The most prominent is the development of anti-supernaturalism. Since it had been argued that the two separate worlds could not be integrated, the aspect of God could come into the world of sense and reason and vice versa. This followed the existence of God that was associated with supernaturalism it was not acceptable in the world of sense experiences. Since no aspect of God could come into the sense experience world, then no aspect of God could go to the world of knowledge. This argument advanced that it is difficult to know God and the best one can do is to make theories and concepts in regards to God. In this time, theories that proposed that religious knowledge could be based on feelings. Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, a theologian who at that time was considered one of the formulators of the theory that “a religion is not a set of beliefs and obligations based on the authority of the church, but as the result of man's feelings of absolute dependence in a majestic universe in which he is but a small entity (Schleiermacher 1963). Schleiermacher also suggests that: religious knowledge is not in knowing or doing but comes as an immediate self-consciousness. Mankind has been in this context thought and viewed to having held a dependence feeling. The possession of this feeling of complete or partial dependence to a source of power that is external. The need to lean on someone and have someone to care for them, mankind, has risen from this. It can be explained from God’s existence. Only God can make that feeing universal, given his characteristics, for example, omnipresence, he has the capability of being the only one who can be there for all mankind. From the above, the enlightenment project pointed out that man can only know that feeling but cannot know God. So, when anyone says that they know God, it is actually the feeling that he knows but not God himself. A significant concept of religion being God’s search for man, and man’s search for God came up. The religion concept took on a completely new turn. It was concluded that religion was based on human’s reflections and on the actions of mankind’s feelings. It came to be seen that religion was inclined more to feelings than action. Schleiermacher (1963) personally said that Christian philosophies are happenings of the religious affections advanced in his speech. Following his assertions, the bible can be said to have religious feelings of man put into a single collection. The scholars presented those who wrote the bible, as much as some of them knew Jesus personally; most of them wrote the bible based on their feeling towards God the son; that is the New Testament. However the theologians of the time termed as the modern theologians observed that they had better experiences than those theologians of early times and therefore they could produce a much superior product. The enlightenment project also brought about changes in other fields of theology such as ecclesiology. Stanley Hauerwas, an ethicist and also a world renowned Christian Theologian was actively involved in ecclesiology is an example of a theologian’s work that was heavily influenced by the studies and results of the enlightenment project. His engagement with the liberalism that emerged from the enlightenment project provoked and continued sustaining the development and shaping of his distinctive ecclesiology (Thomson 2003). Dietrich Bonheoffer another theologian of the time had a rough time presenting his views on Christian theology that eventually led to his untimely and unprecedented death in the hands of the ruthless German Nazi soldiers. Expressions like ‘religion minus Christianity’ and ‘the world has come of age’ were Bonheoffer’s attempt to describe a new understanding of God’s relation to the world that would dispense with concept of God as a ‘working hypothesis’, ‘stop-gap’ or ‘tutor’ (Braaten 1995). This was part of a revolution that came about with the enlightenment project. The overall result of the enlightenment project was a historical one. It represented a new revolution in the ways that man thought about God, himself and the Bible. This revolution was only possible because theology is one discipline that cannot be tested or proved, and it is also not possible to weigh or experiment with it. This means and suggests that it can only be examined or judged from within one’s inner self. Costa (2005, p. 26) asserts that the enlightenment trajectory in part accounts for the demise of Trinitarian theology and Christian practice in rendering and reconstructing the world within the grand narratives of philosophy. The project end result was the assertion that the philosophy of Christianity is not founded on God, but it is instead founded on the feelings of mankind towards God. References McGrath, A. E 2002, A scientific theology, T & T Clark, London. Hahlweg, K., & Hooker, C. A. 1989, Issues in evolutionary epistemology, University of New York Press, Albany State. Leupp, R. T. 2008, The renewal of trinitarian theology: themes, patterns, & explorations, IVP Academic, Downers Grove. Braaten, C. E., & Jenson, R. W. 1995, A map of twentieth-century theology: readings from Karl Barth to radical pluralism, Fortress Press, Minneapolis. Thomson, J. B. 2003, The ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas: a Christian theology of liberation, Ashgate, Aldershot. Schleiermacher, F. 1963, The Christian faith, Harper & Row, New York. Costa, G. 2005, Theology in the public square: church, academy and nation, Blackwell Pub, Malden, MA. Olson, R. E., & Hall, C. A. 2002, The Trinity. Grand Rapids, W.B. Eerdmans, Michigan. Harris, J. G. 2001, Christian theology: the spiritual tradition, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, England. Read More