Ah, progression, yes, that gratification that humanity yearns deeply for. This constant, no, desperate desire to “move the needle” forward pushing the edge of society ever further. Since the dawn of civilization, we have seen immense progress in our society from the days of the hunter-gatherers to the Industrial Revolution, all the way to today. Most of these advances have had monumental benefits for humanity. Seeing these benefits, it is hard for anyone to go against the progress of society, albeit without good reason. Suddenly, Christ entered into the world around 2000 or so years ago, and an eruption in Europe followed. Paganism was run out, and a lot of Christian blood had to be shed to rid the world of this evil. Then suddenly at the peak of Christendom, humanity hit a wall, not a physical wall per se but a spiritual wall. The wall I am referring to is the “Enlightenment.”
I always find it ironic that the words we use to describe things can be the opposite of what the thing actually was. The “Enlightenment” did anything but enlighten because, in a sense, it turned out the lights and altered how people understood the world around them. The men who took part in the “Enlightenment” unfortunately created the secularized mind bubble that we, in the aftermath of Christendom, so readily have to fight today. The “Enlightenment.” would birth the Deist movement in the early 17th century. This is a major concern because many of these men who adopted Deism directly impacted how the West and, specifically, America would be formed in the years that followed it.
From John Locke to Voltaire, the revolt against Faith and, more specifically, the Church began to spread its gnarly roots in the dirt of secularized belief. This would start to shape the West, and the Deists would shape many of the Founding Fathers. While these men still believed that there was a God and that one ought to worship Him. “In general, Deism refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason and the rejection of religious knowledge when it is acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any church.” (Pailin and Manuel 2024). The Philosophers began to say that Faith was merely superstition. They ultimately failed to realize that the Faith they were rejecting to acknowledge was the illumination of every Law they found to be true. Philosophers of Deism argued that God had spun the world into existence and was completely absent after that. For the more serious Deist, this was a rejection of Christ and His Divinity; it reduced the life of Christ to that of a mere religious thinker akin to Mohammad, Buddha, and Confucius. However, when you remove who Christ was and what His sacrifice meant, you end up with two options, The Law or Paganism.
Here lies the crux of the matter that has taken a few centuries to arise; when you have removed the authority of God in our lives, there is no objective justification for why humans should have individual liberty and freedoms. This was and is the core of Paganism, which values the strong and crushes the weak. In a Pagan society, there is no saying we are all equal; The idea that everyone has equal value in society is uniquely Christian. The Founding Fathers themselves understood this at least a little bit. In his farewell address, Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”(George Washington’s Mount Vernon, n.d.). However, I say Washington benefited from growing up in a predominantly Christian society. Therefore, His beliefs and Religious views were still primarily impacted by the overthrowing of Paganism in Europe.
The Enlightenment philosophers unknowingly accepted Paganism by rejecting Faith and accepting the worship of reason. They of course would not live to see the effects of this ideology, because they were reaping the benefits of living in Christendom with all the Christian Morals still baked in. The philosophies they espoused resulted from Christian Morality, a Morality that individuals did not reason themselves to but a Morality instituted by a Divine Authority.
The aforementioned Deist ideology gained heavy footing during the “Enlightenment.” Before this, the scientific revolution came to explain God’s world and how He designed it to work. Enlightenment Philosophers elevated this reason above Faith and that idea would later be used as a hammer to explain how God does not exist. The ball of morality began to roll downhill, and the people began to question the authority of the Church, or any Church for that matter. Again, for men who still lived primarily in Christian society thanks to the Church and Faith from which they wanted to flee, Those morals that came from Christ and the Church were still readily enjoyed. On the surface, everything still seemed reasonable during the Enlightenment. However, When the very morals that made Western civilization so wonderful that the sheer gleeful mark of Christendom falls away, what then? Well, we need only look around at the current state of the culture to see the answer to that question, which is undoubtedly a resurgence of Paganism.
We have progressed into the past and come full circle on the wheel of the “Enlightenment.” all for this worship of reason alone that these philosophers would write about. The West has “Reasoned” ourselves back into the very thing Christendom shed so much blood to carve out of the world. The Pagans have returned, and human life has no inherent value. This is in its most accurate form regarding Abortion, the utterly indefensible act of killing a human secured in its mother’s womb, or so it should be. Now, I want to be extremely clear that I am not denouncing logic and reason, or science for that matter; none of these things are inherently evil or useless. My argument is that you cannot have reason separated from Faith, and you cannot have Faith separated from reason. Reason separated from Faith is Paganism; Faith separated from reason is the Law. You simply must have both, and that is Christendom.
In his encyclical “Fides et Ratio” (Faith and Reason). St. Pope John Paul II writes, “As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has finally appeared is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made because everything is fleeting and provisional.”(“Fides Et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II” 1998)
St. Pope JPII rightly observed, and wrote in this encyclical which I have linked below. That one must have Faith and Reason joined together never to be separated. All of the effort and work of these Philosophers accomplished was a darkening of the intellect for the generations that followed, and the Deist who brought us reason removed from faith ultimately kickstarted our return to Paganism. When you remove reason from Faith, you will ultimately be crushed by the inability to see the reality around you. When you remove Faith from reason, you will eventually be crushed by the inability to see anything at all.
Obediently yours,
G.T. Kinder
References:
- Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier. 1812. Reading of Voltaire’s Tragedy of the Orphan of China in the Salon of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin in 1755. Oil on Canvas. Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison,. France.
- “Deism and the Founding of the United States, Divining America, TeacherServe®, National Humanities Center.” n.d. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/deism.htm.
- “Deism One Nation Under a Clockwork God?| the Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site.” n.d. https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Spring09/deism.cfm.
- Duignan, Brian. 2024. “Enlightenment | Definition, Summary, Ideas, Meaning, History, Philosophers, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica. October 28, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/Enlightenment-European-history/Reason-and-religion.
- “Fides Et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II.” 1998. September 14, 1998. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html.
- George Washington’s Mount Vernon. n.d. “The Farewell Address.” https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/the-farewell-address#:~:text=%E2%80%9COf%20all%20the%20dispositions%20and,and%20morality%20are%20indispensable%20supports.%E2%80%9D.
- Pailin, David A., and Frank Edward Manuel. 2024. “Deism | Definition, History, Beliefs, Significance, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica. October 26, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Deism.
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