So now that we have an idea of the
status of Christianity, and thinking
through some statistics regarding
Christianity in contemporary society,
there are some historical things that I
want to examine-to think about how we
have gotten to the point where religion
in Western culture is kind of a
marginalized aspect of human life.
certainly in the Middle Ages that wasn't
the case. In the 16th and 17th century
that wasn't the case. Even in the 19th
century that wasn't the case, but
beginning in the 19th century up to the
present, religion has been more and more
marginalized as far as, you know, having a
place within the public square to, you
know, have a sufficient authority to make
certain claims, to make certain, you know, . . .
questioned certain aspects of culture,
politics, society, those kind of things.
And so one of the things that I think is
important is to see how this trajectory
has played itself out and why we are in the
position that we're in today with
respect to where religion fits into
society, in Western culture.
And as one of the ironies of history,
a lot of what we are experiencing today
has its antecedents in movements within
Christianity and the choices that
Christians made in the . . . even as back as
far as far as 13th century. The choices
that they made-the intellectual,
philosophical choices, have had
significant impact on this
marginalization of religion. As other
sources of knowledge became more
authoritative than Christianity or
religion, in general, and a lot of that
really can be traced to some
developments that took place within
philosophy in the latter part of the
Middle Ages and in the early modern
period. These developments were often
made and undertaken by people that would
have identified with create as
Christians people, that would have seen
themselves as orthodox Christians, but
because of some of the claims they made,
some of the steps they took
philosophically, it actually moved
Western society, Western culture, away
from Christianity as a significant,
if not the sole, source of knowledge and
understanding about reality. And so what
I want to do in this session is kind of
trace that trajectory, look at some major
philosophical developments, look at some
other historical developments, and 
see how that those those things have
participated in what we we see today. Now
in many respects we could start real . . .
really early in Christianity and point
to some things that developed that led
to this, but I think a major place to
begin
is an intellectual movement that started
around the 1200s known as Scholasticism.
Now essentially the idea behind
Scholasticism as it develops within the
Catholic Church was that reason . . .
that faith was reasonable, and
Scholastics . . . those thinkers that would
fit under the Scholastic label attempted
to use reason to justify faith so that,
you know, the emphasis is that there's a
rationality behind belief. Now often they
did so not in contrast to revelation, but
as a supplement to revelation, that what
we have here is the development of an
attempt to rationally make the case for
certain faith commitments-something like
the existence of God, for example. You're
trying to make that, you know, a
reasonable, rational claim. You know, we're
talking about a time when university . . . 
modern universities are really starting
to develop. We're talking at a time . . . we're
talking about a time where Greek
philosophy, particularly that of
Aristotle, is being reinvigorated. Right?
This kind of rediscovery of Aristotelian
views of reality, categories of thoughts.
There's a lot of things that are going
on, that are pushing it this way. The
study of law, particularly the law of the
church, but other aspects of the legal
field, all of these things are combining
to provide a foundation for this
philosophical approach to thinking about,
you know, having confidence in reason,
that that there are there's a
truthfulness to faith statements that
can be done solely through the reason
mostly without appeal to revelation.
Alright? So that you can make the case that
certain claims are rational without
saying well the Bible says that's so. One
of the key figures in this-not the only
figure, not the earliest figure but one
of the key figures in this-was a man
named Thomas Aquinas who becomes a monk
despite his family's opposition to him,
and he will eventually become a
professor in the University of Paris.
Very prolific author, does several works
on Aristotle, becomes a theologian to the
papal court,
and he's really known for a variety of
different works that really try to set
out this program of making faith
reasonable. One of his key developments
was taking something that had been
around prior but kind of really
codifying it and making it useful
in a rational way and that had to do
with the proofs for the existence of God.
In many respects we have to take the
existence of God on faith, and even the
Bible . . . when you look at the Bible, you
know, expects you to have a belief in God.
The very first verses of the Bible is
not there is a God and here's how you
know. Instead it is in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth. So there is
this assumption that you know God's
existence can be just immediately
accepted. We're not even going to try and
set out that God exists. But Aquinas and
other scholastics attempted to provide
philosophical arguments that would lay
out,
you know, the idea that you could believe
in the existence of God based on your
reason and rational arguments as opposed
to saying, well, the Bible says God exists,
and so he argued and other scholastics did
as well, but you could believe in the
existence of a God because of something
like cause-and-effect.
Every effect must have a cause,
Aquinas would have reasoned something
like this, but to have an infinite series
of causes isn't reasonable. So there must
be a first cause, that is uncaused, that
causes the existence of everything else.
So, you know, this idea of cause and
effect. Another idea for Aquinas would be
the idea of what he . . . what he would have
called in English contingent beings.
As human beings, we are not . . . I mean there
is no necessity to our existence. We
exist because other beings created us,
Something brought us into existence.
Again, ultimately, of course, Aquinas would
have argued there would have been . . .  there
had to have been some necessary being
that was not contingent, did not rely on
some something or someone else for
existence, and that being is what we
would call God.
A third argument would have been the
argument from morals or values.
Values exist. Morals exist. So there must
be something within itself which is true,
good, noble, that causes us to have these
values. There are other arguments for God,
some of which Aquinas used, some of which
others used-things like, you know, the
universe exhibits design so there must
be a designer, things like that. So while
these
proofs for the existence of God . . . these
rational proofs have been very helpful
in trying to philosophically think about,
why is God's existence a rational idea,
what we have here is an appeal to a
source of authority outside of the Bible-
the human reason-
that there is power in the mental
capacities of a human being, that
can determine truths in such a way that
appealing to God,
in the sense of God has to tell me this
or God has to reveal this, right, so
instead of saying God told me this, I am
able within myself
and within my mental powers to make the
determination of truth.
So while Aquinas kind of sees himself as
fully Christian and the Catholic Church
accepts him-both then and now as
fully orthodox, Catholic, Christian; even a
lot of non-Catholics would have said, you
know, some very good things about his
teaching-what he is providing is the
foundation for a source of authority in
contrast to, separate and distinct from
revelation from the Bible.
We'll jump a little bit because, I mean,
in some sense of a lot of things take
place in this intervening time between
the 13th century and the 17th century
that kind of foster this as well. The
Protestant Reformation in the 16th
century kind of flowers again this idea
. . . some ideas that will take place,
but we're particularly focusing on
philosophical developments. And so in the
17th and 18th century there were new
ways of thinking about what a person is
and how do people relate to society, and
many of these started within
Christianity and were shaped by
Christianity and the people that
participated in them saw themselves
as as Christians. One of those was a man
named Rene Descartes. Descartes had, of
course, some very important influences in
mathematics-the Cartesian system of
mathematics,very important-but also had
some important philosophical
developments. Descartes had been educated
by the church, the Catholic Church,
and was really intrigued by the
certainty of mathematics-that there was
a philosophic . . . that there was a a
certainty of truth within mathematics
that was very comfortable for Descartes.
And in many respects his philosophical
contributions draw out of this interest
in mathematical certainty and trying to
be . . . trying to develop a method by which
one could be as certain philosophically
as one was mathematically. And so he's
trying to find in the 17th century-the
1600s-he's trying to find a method by
which he can determine the reality of
things, reality . . . the criteria for making
claims about reality.
So as he writes this out, he makes the
claim that the process he's going to
undertake is to start with
a rejection of anything,
unless it could be decisively shown to
be true. I'm going to disbelieve
everything, Descartes says, unless I can
be certain that it is true.
And so his process is I'm going to doubt
everything, but in the process of
doubting everything, Descartes claims,
there was something that had to be doing
the doubting-something or someone had to
doubt that everything existed. And so the
famous phrase that comes out of this Descartes
says, I think; therefore, I am.
Essentially what he's saying is that, you
know, there has to have been something to
think about doubting, so therefore, I must . . .
there must be an "I" that exists in
order to doubt the existence of even
myself. How can I doubt the existence of
myself, if there is not a self to do the
doubting?
So the idea is here: I've doubted the
existence of everything unless I can be
absolutely certain that it's true. What
can Ibe absolutely certain of? I must be
absolutely certain of the idea . . . that I
must be absolutely certain that I exist
in order to engage in this entire
process. Now he takes that
and moves on to the idea, okay, so there
is an "I,"
so
as this "I"
engages the world around them there are
things that I can clearly and distinctly
perceive,
so if I can be certain about my
existence and I can clearly and
distinctly perceive other things, those
things . . . there must be a reality to those
things. Now my perceptions can be
misguided or misleading, the sun is not a
disc, but it is a globe. Alright? But it
looks like a disc-right-so it looks
like a flat circle, but it's actually a
sphere. So perceptions can be wrong, but
there still must be something there for
me to proceive.
So the world around me . . . there must be a
reality around me because I interact
with it. He then moves on to the idea of
God-right-and I can conceive of a
perfect being despite my imperfection, so
who could have imagined God unless God
actually existed? Now there's a lot of
philosophical problems with that and
what's known as the ontological argument
is often attacked because of its
fluidity as a philosophical proof, but
essentially what Descartes is trying to do
here is to assert certain things about
reality, about the existence of God, that
are independent of Scripture. Kind of
taking it even further then what Aquinas
would have done, what these scholastics
would have done, because the scholastics
still didn't fully have . . . it didn't have a
problem with appealing to scripture,
appealing to church authorities, you know,
in determining truth, that there were
some things that had to be revealed but
what Descartes is doing here in developing
a philosophical school, later known as
Rationalism, is, you know, kind of setting
up that the source of authority is the
human mind,
and it is the human mind that develops
the categories of understanding the
world around us, So much so that it is
even the human mind that makes the
determination of whether God exists or
not. So a continuation here of what what
the Scholastics were doing . . . the
scholastic project, but going even
further beyond where the Scholastics
would have been, even though Descartes,
you know, would have thought of himself
as a Christian. Around the same time, a
little bit later, but doing, you know, . . .
developing another philosophical system
that also does something similar was a
man named John Locke. Descartes was
from France. Locke from England had, you
know, . . . his father was a country attorney.
He had a classical education, and in his
education he becomes very interested
in political philosophy.
And from that and thinking about . . .I mean,
Locke is, of course, very influential in . . . among
the founders and thinking about their
political philosophy things-like the
consent of the governed, the pursuit of
life, liberty, well, for Locke, it was
life, liberty, and property, were those
inalienable rights, of course, in the
Declaration of Independence 
its life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, but Locke is making a
transition in that while Descartes kind
of talked about the categories of the
human mind, Locke said, we develop
categories and think about the world
around us, not from innate ideas but from
our sensory experience.
And so we we experience the world around
us-this becomes later known as empiricism-
we experience the world around us, and as
we experience through our senses, the
world around us that allows us to
develop ideas. Descartes more suggested
that there were ideas that we, then, used
to talk about the reality around us.
So what we have here, of course, is two
different approaches, both of which,
though, center the judgment of reality in
human experience, not in revelation, not
in God.
Furthermore because of the importance of
reason for Locke, especially,
Locke argued that reason should even be
applied to faith,
right? And so, while other people would
have said faith should be a guide for
reason, Locke was even saying, well, you
know, we can make . . . we must examine faith-
which for Locke,
faith wasn't trust in God. It wasn't
trust in the Bible. Faith was
agreeing with knowledge derived from
revelation.
Faith was saying, yes, those things
happened. We can trust those things
happened. So certain elements of
Christianity, we can believe in because
of eyewitness testimony, for example-right-
the people . . . people saw those things,
and then testified, and then I agree with
their testimony. So, therefore, that's faith
It's agreeing with the testimony of others.
But
reason and faith are kind of . . .  reason
and revelation and faith intertwined
with all this is providing him an
opportunity to say
that religion is more of a matter of
conscience than it is of revelation from
a divine God, in the sense of-alright-the
individual,
while Locke believed certain things
religiously,
each individual has to come to those
conclusions herself or himself.
So what needs to be the political
approach to all of this, for Locke, is
religious toleration. Because religion is
a matter of conscience and because each
individual must come to her or his own
conclusions, the state should not limit
the freedom of religion because it is a
personal decision.
Religion, for Locke, did not . . . should not have
coercive power but only persuasive power.
People should not be forced to
believe certain things. They should be
persuaded that . . . they can be persuaded to
believe certain things. And so religions
must be tolerated in society and not
enforced.
Now Locke's living in a time where the
Church of England is taxing a variety of
non-Anglican churches, sometimes
forbidding the existence of some
churches, imprisoning some people who
belong to groups outside the Church of
England, right? So this is a very
important political statement, as well as
a religious one. But what we have here,
very importantly, is a transition to say
that religion is a matter of conscience
not any sort of objective truth, that
everyone should be encouraged to believe.
And as I said, you know, Locke, of course, is
very influential politically on the
founders of the United States, and
that has an impact in their-[cough] excuse me-
has an impact in their religious views as
well.
