How the Enlightenment made Christian belief impossible

In biology the end of teleology was necessary before real science could begin. In public life or the life of the individual, its lack produces the impoverishment of materialism and hedonism. While the immediate progress of the natural sciences is little affected, the humanities are robbed of the rich source of biblical metaphor and social analysis lacks the theological perspectives that name secular idolatry. The humanities must limp along stripped of 2000 years of cultural development. It is no wonder that many courses show the shallowness that this produces.

To say with Aquinas that the purpose and end of life is to seek happiness, and that the greatest happiness is to see God, is impossible for a society that has done away with God but is content with its own deadly secular gods. To say with the American Declaration of Independence that the purpose of life is to seek happiness, period, is to fall into the same trap of knowing that our purpose resides only in ourselves. Cut off from a substantive theological tradition we cling to the faint hope of freedom and feel free to entertain any frivolous notion that comes into our heads. The only alternative is an ungrounded duty to help others and the discovery that even this is fraught with the dangers of ego for the helper and humiliation and dependency of those who are helped. This is because we lack the theological tradition that would tell us that the neighbour is promise and never duty.

How can the church reinstate the word "God" to mean the source of all of our hope? The atheist clings to the straw man of theism unwilling to leave the concept behind for fear that he might have to think again. The theist clings to the great parent in the sky and refuses to look upon the hazard and impermanence of human life. Both of these positions were born of Enlightenment thought. The task of reclamation and renewal is daunting because everyone seems to know with certainty the nature of the god they either adhere to or avow. But we must remember that religion in Israel was always troubled and the event of Jesus marked the end of our religious aspirations.

The task ahead for the church is, as it has always been, theological. Reformed management may bring short-term gains but the central problem the church faces is that it has forgotten its message and lives in a sea of relativities and the dominion of the subject. The way ahead is clear, good theology is being written. To name a few authors: Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Buckley, William Placher, George Lindbeck. These stand on the shoulders of giants and the giant of the 20thC must be Karl Barth.

There are no quick fixes for the plight of the church, only the hard work of winning the hearts and minds of a population inoculated against theological thought. Best we get on with it.

Key aspects of this article were inspired by Nicholas Wolterstorff "The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics", in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Phylosophy of Religion, Ed Robert Audi and William Wainwright (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1986) and also by conversations with Canon Tom Sutton.