People: Modern Theology--Breakdown Of Religion Of Reason

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Jean Jacques Rousseau

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1772–1778, French
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(1762) Emile
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Responsible for shifting the discussion of nature, humanity and God to reason combined with feeling and willing. Precursor to Romanticism.

Critical of positive religion, like deism, however, skeptical of reason isolated from emotion. Rejected original sin and divine revelation.

God is known only through religious feeling. "But the foundation of Rousseau's religious faith is natural conscience, and the fruition of that faith is moral action." Thus, he's a precursor to Kant who said only moral action, not simple reason, can bridge the gap between God and nature.

Concurrent with Joseph Butler in England.

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Joseph Butler

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1692–1752, England
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(1736) Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed
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Butler attacked Deism, seeking to advance the particular claims of Christianity. But as Butler's book exposed weaknesses in Deism through exposing the weakness in nature, it also exposed the weakness in revelation, namely, that it's unpredictable. This set the scene for David Hume's skepticism.

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David Hume

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1711–1776, England
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The Natural History of Religion
Treatise of Human Nature
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (specifically, "Of Miracles")
The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
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All judgment must precede from evidence. Evidence comes from witnesses and human testimony. Miracles by definition are beyond "uniform experience." As such, they resist evidence and therefore lack the probability, let alone proof, of being true.

Miracles are possible, but not probable and certainly not certain. Although this protected religion from rationalist (Deist) attacks, it also introduced skepticism into religion with respect to divine acts and God himself. He concludes that knowledge of God is an illusion.

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Immanuel Kant

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1724–1804, Königsberg, Prussia
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(1781) Critique of Pure Reason
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason
(1790) Critique of Judgement
(1793) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
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Pietistic background. Trained as Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalist.

Extended Hume's criticism of reason and devised a new approach to theology. Unlike empiricists Locke and Hume, who believe the mind functioned passively, Kant posited that it actively "imposes upon the material of experience its own forms of cognition, determined by the very structure of the human understanding." As a result knowledge is of things as they appear (phenomena) not as they are in themselves (noumena).

The external world could be objectively known through universal categories that the mind used to know.

Prior to experience, a person is legislated by moral law. This categorical imperative comes from the self. This morality eventually leads to religion.

Defended Christianity as the most rational moral faith. Jesus was the archetype of morality.

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Friedrich H. Jacobi

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1743–1819, German
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The Mercury
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Part of counter-enlightenment (Sturm and Drang "Storm and Stress") and precursor to Romantics.

Reacted against Spinoza, Lessing, and Schelling labeling them as pantheists. He reacted against Kant's destruction of metaphysics.

Redefined reason "as that faculty which makes immediately present to us supersensible realities such as God--as immediately p[resent as nature ins to our sensory faculties." (Sounds like incipient Schleiermacher). Essentially equates reason and belief.

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Johann G. Hamann

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1730–1788, Prussian
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(1759) Socratic Memorabilia
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Part of the Sturm and Drang ("Storm and Stress"). Influenced Kierkegaard.

Attached the rationalists and also Hume's skepticism. Faith and reason are different, therefore the latter cannot attack the former.

God can only be know through direct experience through nature and history. God condescends to speak to us through our senses. This is chiefly seen in the incarnation.

Conception of faith or belief rooted in Augustine's concept of God's prevenient grace. Everything is a gift of God.

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Johann G. Herder

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1744–1803, Prussian
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(1772) On the Origin of Language
(1802) First Dialogue Concerning National Religions
Letters Concerning the Study of Theology
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Influenced most by Kant and Hamann. Literary critic, poet, linguist, translator, and historian. Lutheran.

Rejected Hamann's view of the divine origin of language. Rejected Rousseau's view of that language is human invention. Language is innate in human but develops over time. Even more consciousness develops as language develops.

Religion develops in history through language, thus it is individual, as opposed to universal. History therefore must be judged against itself--the value of a culture is only known within is own context.

Pluralists, yet favors Christianity as the true religion.

Emphasis on history and language leads to extreme influence on biblical studies. The Bible is a human book, written in human language forge in human history.

Establishes principles for biblical interpretation that skirt between orthodoxy and rationalism. "Herder wants to free the reader from both the hidden fears of the orthodox and the scorn of the rationalists as they encounter the real humanity of the Bible."