The Enlightenment's important 17th-century precursors included
Centered on the dialogues and publications of the French philosophers
the Englishmen Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes,
the Frenchman Rene Descartes and
the key natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution,
including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Its roots are usually traced to 1680s England, where in the span of three years
Isaac Newton published his "Principia Mathematica" (1686) and
John Locke his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689)
These two works provided the scientific and philosophical toolkit
for the Enlightenment's major advances.
Locke argued that human nature was mutable
and that knowledge was gained through accumulated experience
rather than by accessing some sort of outside truth.
Newton's calculus and optical theories provided
the powerful Enlightenment metaphors for precisely
measured change and illumination.
( Voltaire,
Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and
Denis Diderot),
the High Enlightenment might best be summed up by one historian's summary
of Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary" as: "a chaos of clear ideas."
Foremost among these was the notion that everything in the universe
could be rationally demystified and cataloged.
The signature publication of the period was Diderot's "Encyclopedie" (1751-77),
which brought together leading authors to produce an ambitious compilation of human knowledge.
It was also a time of religious (and anti-religious) innovation,
as Christians sought to reposition their faith along rational lines.
Deists and materialists argued that the universe seemed to determine
its own course without God's intervention.
Locke, along with French philosopher Pierre Bayle, began to champion
the idea of the separation of Church and State.
Secret societies (like the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati and the Rosicrucians) flourished,
offering European men (and a few women) new modes of fellowship, esoteric ritual and mutual assistance.
Coffeehouses, newspapers and literary salons emerged as new venues for ideas to circulate.
The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment
vision of throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines,
but it devolved into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas
and led, a decade later, to the rise of Napoleon.
Still, its goal of egalitarianism attracted the admiration of many
and inspired both the Haitian war of independence
and the radical racial inclusivism of Paraguay's first post-independence government.
Enlightened rationality gave way to the wildness of Romanticism,
19th century Liberalism and Classicism, not to mention 20th century Modernism.
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era)
was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe
towards the end of the 18th century.
For most of the Western world, it was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850.
Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism
as well as glorification of the past and nature, preferring the medieval over the classical.
Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,
and the prevailing ideology of the Age of Enlightenment,
especially the scientific rationalization of Nature.
It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature;
and driven by those devoted to such pursuis.
resulted in a strong reaction which has mutated into the Evangelical movement.
This was supplemented by the need for stability and certainty
in a world racked by warfare and loss of a firm foundation.
The church retreated from reality into a protective shell
and, for the most part, remains there.
..
Liberal Christianity is a movement that interprets Christian teaching
by taking into consideration modern knowledge, science and ethics.
It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority.
Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and
theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Liberal theology grew out of the Enlightenment's rationalism and the Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was characterized by an acceptance of Darwinian evolution,
a utilization of modern biblical criticism and participation in the Social Gospel movement.
This was also the period when liberal theology was most dominant within the Protestant churches.
Liberal theology's influence declined
with the rise of neo-orthodoxy in the 1930s and with liberation theology in the 1960s.
By the 21st century, liberal Christianity had become a marginal ecumenical tradition,
including the more scholarly wings of both Protestant and Catholic churches.
Modernism denies many of the concepts of the Evangelical Church,
God's Nature
Modernism repudiates the traditional description of the nature of God.
The God of the Old Testament is seen as a hateful deity of vengeance and rejected,
and a different entity from that presented in the New Testament.
Creation
Modernism realises that the Mosaic story of creation is simply an ancient myth.
It denies that man has fallen from his holy estate into Original Sin,
but asserts that humanity has actually ascended via the evolutionary process.
Higher Criticism
Modernism adopts a critical attitude toward the Bible.
It asserts that Moses did not author the Pentateuch, nor Paul many of the Epistles,
and that the Bible includes much historical inaccuracy; is thus untrustworthy.
Biblical Miracles
Modernism seeks to de-mythologize the Scriptures.
Anything of a miraculous nature can be explained by some natural explanation
and is a product of ancient superstition and ignorance.
Bible Is Not a Moral Standard
Modernism asserts that human conduct cannot be regulated by a rule book such as the Bible.
Instead, one must individually make his own decisions on ethical issues, guided by such criteria.
These ideas, and their fellows, are anethema to the traditional church,
which sees them as infidelity to the faith of our fathers and scriptural Christianity.
We may wonder how such bounded opinions, as those binding the thoughts of othodoxy,
exist in the age of space exploration and social media,
and whether any religion dependent on them
has any realistic future.