The Problem of Evil
The Enlightenment Critique of Traditional Theology
The Enlightenment criticism of many traditional Christian beliefs was based upon the principle of the omnicompetence of human reason. A number of stages in the development of this belief may be discerned.
First, it was argued that the beliefs of Christianity were rational and thus capable of standing up to critical examination. This type of approach may be found in the English philosopher John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) and within some philosophical schools of thought in early eighteenth-century Germany. Christianity was a reasonable supplement to natural religion. The notion of divine revelation was thus maintained.
Second, it was argued that since the basic ideas of Christianity were rational, they could be derived from human reason itself. There was no need to invoke the idea of divine revelation. Christianity, according to John Toland in his Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) and Matthew Tindal in his Christianity as Old as Creation (1730), was essentially the republication of the “religion of nature.” It did not transcend natural religion, but was merely an example of it. All so-called “revealed religion” was actually nothing other than the reconfirmation of what can be known through rational reflection on nature. “Revelation” was simply a rational reaffirmation of moral truths already available to enlightened reason.
Third, the ability of reason to judge revelation was affirmed. As critical reason was omnicompetent, it was argued that it was supremely qualified to judge Christian beliefs and practices, with a view to eliminating any irrational or “superstitious” elements. This view, associated with Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) in Germany and many eighteenth-century French rationalist writers (often referred to collectively as les philosophes), placed reason firmly above revelation. This view of reason was symbolized in one of the landmark events of the French Revolution – the enthronement of the Goddess of Reason in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in 1793.
Having sketched the general principles of the Enlightenment challenge to traditional Christian thought, we may now explore how these impacted on specific doctrinal themes. The rational religion of the Enlightenment found itself in conflict with several major areas of traditional Christian theology. The following are especially important.
The Notion of Revelation
The concept of revelation was of central importance to traditional Christian theology. While many Christian theologians (such as Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin) recognized the possibility of a natural knowledge of God, they insisted that this required supplementation by supernatural divine revelation, such as that witnessed to in Scripture. The Enlightenment witnessed the development of an increasingly critical attitude to the very idea of supernatural revelation. In the first place, it was unnecessary. In the second, it lacked the universality of human reason. Everyone had access to reason; only a select few had access to revelation. The phrase “the scandal of particularity” was used by Enlightenment writers in expressing their concerns about the traditional notion of revelation at this point.
The Status and Interpretation of the Bible
Within orthodox Christianity, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, the Bible was still widely regarded as a divinely inspired source of doctrine and morals, to be differentiated from other types of literature. The Enlightenment saw this assumption called into question, with the rise of the critical approach to Scripture. Developing ideas already current within Deism, the theologians of the German Enlightenment developed the thesis that the Bible was the work of many hands, at times demonstrating internal contradiction, and that it was open to precisely the same method of textual analysis and interpretation as any other piece of literature.
The Identity and Significance of Jesus Christ
A third area in which the Enlightenment made a significant challenge to orthodox Christian belief concerns the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Two particularly important developments may be noted: the origins of the “quest of the historical Jesus” and the rise of the “moral theory of the atonement.” Each of these significant historical developments is linked with key themes of the Enlightenment worldview.
Deism developed the thesis that there was a serious discrepancy between the real Jesus of history and the New Testament interpretation of his significance. It was argued that a simple human figure, a glorified teacher of common sense, lay hidden behind or underneath the New Testament portrait of the supernatural redeemer of humanity. While a supernatural redeemer was unacceptable to Enlightenment rationalism, the idea of an enlightened moral teacher was not. Reimarus and others argued that it was possible to go behind the New Testament accounts of Jesus and uncover a simpler, more human Jesus, who would be acceptable to the new rationalist spirit of the age. This view was developed within the German Enlightenment of the later eighteenth century, with writers such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) and Reimarus arguing for a fundamental disconnection between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.”
The second aspect of traditional theological accounts of Jesus to be challenged by Enlightenment thinkers concerned the significance of his death (an area of theology often referred to as “theories of the atonement”). For orthodoxy, the death of Jesus on the cross was interpreted from the standpoint of the resurrection (which the Enlightenment was not prepared to accept as an historical event) as a way in which God was able to forgive the sins of humanity. During the Enlightenment this “theory of the atonement” was subjected to increasing criticism, as involving arbitrary and unacceptable hypotheses such as that of original sin.
The death of Jesus on the cross was now reinterpreted in terms of a supreme moral example of self-giving and dedication, intended to inspire similar dedication and self-giving on the part of his followers. Where orthodox Christianity tended to treat the death of Jesus (and resurrection) as possessing greater inherent importance than his religious teaching, the Enlightenment marginalized his death and denied his resurrection, in order to emphasize the quality of his moral teaching.
The Doctrine of the Trinity
The doctrine of God as a trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – was widely ridiculed by Enlightenment thinkers, who held it to be logically absurd. How could any rational person accept such mathematical nonsense? Under the pressure of rationalist criticism, many orthodox Christian thinkers de-emphasized the idea, believing that it was impossible to mount an effective defense of the doctrine, given the spirit of the age. It is important to note that the revival of the doctrine of the Trinity dates from the twentieth century, as the influence of the Enlightenment began to wane. The American Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was one of the few Christian theologians of the eighteenth century to emphasize both the intellectual legitimacy and spiritual relevance of this doctrine.
Throughout the period of the Enlightenment, rationalist pressure led to many Christian theologians developing approaches to the doctrine of God that came close to Deism. God was the supreme governor of the universe, the creator of all things. This approach is especially evident in eighteenth-century English theology, which saw God as the “divine watchmaker,” the constructor of an ordered and regular universe. Trinitarian theology went into hibernation for much of the Enlightenment period and only reemerged in the early twentieth century, as confidence in the Enlightenment worldview began to collapse after the trauma of the First World War and theologians such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner began to reassert the doctrine in intellectually compelling ways.
The Critique of Miracles
Much traditional Christian apologetics concerning the identity and significance of Jesus Christ was based upon the “miraculous evidences” of the New Testament culminating in the resurrection. The new emphasis upon the mechanical regularity and orderliness of the universe, perhaps the most significant intellectual legacy of Newtonianism, raised doubts about the New Testament accounts of miraculous happenings. David Hume’s famous discussion of miracles in his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) was widely regarded as demonstrating the evidential impossibility of miracles.
Hume’s influential critique of miracles depends on his understanding of a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature” or “a transgression of a law of nature by particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.” Yet there is an obvious inconsistency here within Hume’s own thought. Hume argued that a universal law of nature can only be established inductively; since the possibility of a future observation that disconfirms this cannot be excluded, these “laws” are to be seen as provisional and partial, not universal and necessary. By Hume’s own criteria, a “miracle” might be a violation of a law of nature – but it might instead represent a disconfirmation of the universality of that law.
Hume also emphasized that there were no contemporary analogs of New Testament miracles, such as the resurrection, thus forcing the New Testament reader to rely totally upon human testimony to such miracles. For Hume, it was axiomatic that no human testimony was adequate to establish the occurrence of a miracle, in the absence of a present-day analog. Similarly, the French rationalist writer Denis Diderot (1713–1784) declared that if the entire population of Paris were to assure him that a dead man had just been raised from the dead, he would not believe a word of it. The past was analogous to the present and the absence of resurrections in the eighteenth century was a telling argument against any hypothetical resurrection in the first. “Miracles” were thus excluded due to the homogeneity of history.
The Rejection of Original Sin
The idea that human nature is in some sense flawed or corrupted, expressed in the orthodox doctrine of original sin, was vigorously opposed by the Enlightenment. Leading figures of the French Enlightenment – such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) – criticized the doctrine as encouraging pessimism with regard to human abilities, thus impeding human social and political development, and encouraging laissez-faire attitudes. German Enlightenment thinkers tended to criticize the doctrine on account of its relatively late historical origins in the thought of Augustine of Hippo, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries, which they regarded as suggesting that it was not an integral aspect of early Christianity.
The Problem of Evil
The Enlightenment witnessed a fundamental change in attitude toward the existence of evil in the world. For the medieval period, the existence of evil was not regarded as posing a threat to the coherence of Christianity. The contradiction implicit in the existence both of a benevolent divine omnipotence and of evil was not regarded as an obstacle to belief, but simply as an academic theological problem. Suffering was seen as part of the “givenness” of human existence; the Christian response to suffering was not a rational explanation of its existence, but enabling believers to cope with it through faith in a suffering savior.
The Enlightenment saw this situation change radically: the existence of evil metamorphosed into a challenge to the credibility and coherence of Christian faith itself. Voltaire’s novel Candide (1759) was one of many works to highlight the difficulties caused for the Christian worldview by the existence of natural evil (such as the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755). The term “theodicy,” coined by the German philosopher Leibniz, derives from this period, reflecting a growing recognition that the existence of evil was assuming a new significance within the Enlightenment critique of religion. As the continued growth in literature dealing with the theme of theodicy makes clear, this issue remains part of the modern mindset.