Enlightenment?

Enlightenment?

$1.25

Vol XCIII, No. 311

1648-1776

Trouble with Missions

Watch out for those Native Americans

What were the characteristics of the Enlightenment?

French Jesuits tried to evangelize to Native Americans in Canada, but many were martyred in the process

• John Eliot: Presbyterian minister who became “apostle to the Indians”

Missionaries would learn local languages and use imagery that was familiar to the people

Social Effects of the Religious Revival:

o Produced many great schools

o Rutgers, Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown, Columbia

o Social programs began

What the Enlightment looked like:

How did the Enlightenment shape the world?

Revival Fires

The impacts of the Enlightenment:

You can't stop the fire!

Make a list of the PROS and CONS of these three impacts of the Enlightenment.

Pros:

Cons:

Wesley brothers founded of Methodism

• Name came from rules and order
• In college, they began a “Holy Club”
• 1735: went to America
• Unpopular because of “sour demeanor” and “gloomy outlook”
• John Wesley had a conversion and preached “By Grace Ye Are Saved Through Faith”
• Organized converts into societies, classes, class leaders, and stewards
• John was Arminianist; split with George Whitefield because of theology

1. Efforts during Reformation to spread the Gospel actually inspired people to turn from religion to “humanistic” forms of faith

2. Peace of Westphalia (1648): ended the Thirty Years' War and brought religious and political conflicts of Reformation to an end

3. Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, was a time to critically reevaluate beliefs

The First Great Awakening: Religious revival that began in the Anabaptist and Moravian groups

• people preached the need for inner transformation, not just following Church rules

• Jonathan Edwards: most significant member of Great Awakening
• sermons were very powerful: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

1. Authority of the Church decentralized

2. World outlook changed to secular rather than religious

3. Christian revivals

4. The “epoch of belief and the epoch of incredulity”: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!

Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.

Frederick the Great

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Arminianism and Pietism

Deism

Catholic Movements

New Philosophies and the Churches:

Bring on the mushy stuff

The Watch-Maker God

From corporate body to individual

France and Germany:

Rationalism: treated philosophy as mathematics: worked out everything by reason

Rene Descartes

Baruch Spinoza

Gottfried Leibniz

Immanuel Kant

Reconciled empiricism and rationalism: existence of God = unprovable

Rationalism split morality, faith, doctrine from their roots in biblical revelation

Britain:

Empiricism: all knowledge based on sensory experiences

John Locke

George Berkeley

David Hume

Proved that the end of empiricism is skepticism: doubting the supernatural aspects of Christianity

Traditional Protestantism started to lose popularity only ONE century after birth: people wanted message of hope and compassion

• Arminianism was a reaction to harsh Calvinism and predestination
• Arminius: softened teaching and argued that God wants to save ALL but all do not accept

• Pietism was a response to rituals and formalism of Lutheran Church
• Self-discipline, need for personal relationship with Christ, importance of daily prayer and Scripture reading, bi-weekly Bible studies at his home
• Pietism helped transform other churches as well, including Catholic Church

1. Rise of Jansenism:

• Augustinian theology of grace revived through Cornelius Otto Jansen
• Book Augustinius prohibited by Pope Urban VIII because of theories like predestination
• Jansenists condemned Jesuits for optimistic teaching on man and how much they gave out absolution
• Blaise Pascal: mathematician, philosopher, scientist, Jansenist
• Believed in importance of personal relationship with God

2. Devotion and Service

• Quietism: belief that true Christianity lies in losing oneself entirely to God through prayer and meditation
• Formed from a bad marriage: woman had no choice but to devote herself to inner life
• Lazarist order: founded by Saint Vincent de Paul: tried to evangelize the poor and train priests
• Sisters of Charity: worked to alleviate poverty of peasants
• Literate Laity: increasingly educated lay people had access to new Bible translations, devotional literature, and schooling for all classes

Deism: the belief that a supreme intelligent being set the universe and natural laws in motion but has no control over daily activities, including personal human lives

1. John Locke: “Father of English Enlightenment”

• Christian with strong Deist leanings

2. Isaac Newton: scientist and mathematician

• Jesus was the redeemer but NOT divine

3. Voltaire: adversary of Christianity, influenced by Deists

• Hated Catholic Church and denied existence of a good and all powerful God

4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: blended Deism with love of nature

• theories impacted revolutions in France and America