13 Kislev, 5784 / 25 November, 2023

In the last few posts I have been reviewing “The Church beyond the Congregation” by James Thwaites (Paternoster Press, 1999). Click here for Part 1. Thwaites so far has been arguing that a faulty mindset and thus distorted way of viewing the created world shifted the Body of Christ away from a ‘this world focus’ into an artificially created removed realm (what I coin as the Platonic virus).

This faulty way of thinking split the universe into two leading in the Middle Ages to the upper story realm of revealed theology guarded by the priestly philosopher kings of the official church and the lower storey realm of the Renaissance powered by reason.

I apologise for the grand sweep of hundreds of years in a matter of a few paragraphs. Of course there are huge dangers in over simplifying historical trends and influences. History is an incredibly intricate and complex narrative. However, sometimes there is the need to zoom right out and gain a panoramic bird’s eye view of the monumental changes which swept through society.

When the Reformation dawned in 1517 and Luther nailed his opposition to Rome against the church door, the Word of God was put back at the centre of the Christian Church. With the help of reason, empowered by the Renaissance in the centuries before, a biblical rationalism was adopted by the Protestant reformers. Thwaites argues the restoration of this new spiritual freedom was a good thing. However….

The Enlightenment was born! The age of reason as it is nicknamed. Thinkers like the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650):

strongly inscribed the split universe into the core of Enlightenment thinking, ensuring it became the very foundation of the Western mind we think with to this day. Descartes used basically the same approach as Aquinas, drawing the line between faith and reason, spirit and world, revelation truth and scientific truth. (p18)

“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I think, therefore I am, therefore and so on and so forth until therefore God could sum up Descartes starting point of reason. The starting point for Descartes was not revelation from God but his own ability to reason.

In the Age of Reason the upper storey of the universe was no longer the dwelling place of the God of the Lord Jesus Christ; it was now home to the ‘god of the philosophers.’ (p18)

With reason as the new bully on the block this also infected how the Word of God was interpreted. Reformation leaders were strong in doctrine however this over reliance on reason became a stranglehold. Any God who was there gradually lost his personal identity in the age of scientific advance and technology. If there was a God, the conception was soon to become deistic. In other words, this God was at best the creator who had wound up the universe, set it in motion and then taken a long leave of absence. How different to the God of The Bible!

In scripture we see a God who creates but who then is intimately involved with his creation. Seeking out friendship with humanity, establishing a chosen nation, revealing His character throughout and eventually leaving Heaven’s throne and choosing to be born and live amongst us- fully God yet fully human in the person of Jesus Christ.

David Hume (1711-1776) dispatched even this deistic conception of God with his skepticism. Soon with reason gaining ever more ground, Emmanuel Kant (1724 -1804):

moved whatever understanding the Western mind though it might have had of the eternal God of heaven and earth. Kant said that God did exist but then told us that we could never know him – thanks a lot, Emmanuel! (p19)

As Modernity rolled into the 18th and 19th centuries the heavens continued to move away from man into the place Plato had long ago consigned them.

© Stephen Paul Jacob