The Challenge of Enlightenment

The Challenge of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment (a) Insisted on Historical
Readings and (b) Attempted Thereby to Undermine
Orthodox Christianity through Rationalism –
a New Twist to ‘Reason’

We are all children, grandchildren or at least stepchildren of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and have cause to be both grateful for the consequent privileges and anxious about some of the consequent problems. (Even those parts of the world not originally affected by the Enlightenment, which was basically a phenomenon of western Europe and North America, have now been well and truly brought within its scope through the energetic globalization of trade, finance, television and tourism.) As it has become fashionable to question the assumptions and activities of the Enlightenment, it is worth saying from the start that it brought many blessings to the world. Science and technology have worked wonders (nobody wants to be treated by a pre-modern dentist) as well as catastrophes (gas chambers and atom bombs would have been technically impossible 300 years ago). More particularly, its insistence on asking and researching historical questions has produced floods of light on many areas of vital importance to Christian thought, even though the negative side of this same insistence has often been a rationalistic skepticism which has chipped away at the very foundations of Christianity itself...