Theological Origins of Modernity*
Modernity was an attempt to find a new metaphysical solution to the question of the nature and relation of God and man in the natural world. It was a series of attempts to constitute a new coherent metaphysics and theology. The idea of modernity was a move away from the ancient distinction of understanding reality and universals. Via Antiqua was the older realist path, which saw universals as ultimately real. In comparison, the Via Moderna was the newer nominalist path that saw all individual things as real and universals as mere names. And these logical distinctions provided the schema for a new understanding of time and being.
This metaphysical shift from how one sees the world was not due to a change in knowledge but rather a change of understanding time, seeing that time is not as circular and finite but as linear and infinite. Understanding what change meant as a continuous natural process that free human beings could master and control through the application of science became the way for humanity to become masters of their world. The rise of modernity was due to a deep-seated belief in human autonomy. Modernity intended to demonstrate its superiority to its predecessors, so the idea of progress was the extension of this idea of autonomy, which was at the heart of the modern project. And the best hope of a revival was through platonic Christianity to bring renewal to modern thought.
But the origins of modernity lie not in human self-assertion or reason but in the great metaphysical and theological struggle that marked the end of the medieval world that transformed Europe in the 300 years that separated the medieval and the modern world. This metaphysical change came about due to the idea of nominalism[1] that arose in the late medieval period. For the nominalists, all real being was individual or particular, and universals were mere fictitious words that did not point to real universal entities. Still, we are merely signs useful for human understanding. The God of nominalism was unsettling in that a frighteningly omnipotent God was so far beyond his creatures, posing a constant threat to the well-being of humanity. Moreover, human words could never capture this God and could be experienced only as a titanic question that evoked awe and dread. The god of nominalism stands at the origin of modernity.
As man questioned the god of nominalism, disagreements arose regarding what has priority—the human, divine, or the natural. The tension between these three became apparent during the Humanistic and Reformation movements, steeped in a battle between nominalism and the modern world. Both accepted the ontological individualism that nominalism proclaimed but differed fundamentally about whether man or God was ontically primary. The Reformation began with God at the center and viewed man from that perspective. Modernity, however, did not start with man or God but that of nature, thus giving rise to naturalism.
The god of nominalism is understood to be indifferent, and no natural or rational standards for good and evil guide or constrain his will. What is good may be good simply because he wills it, so God may one day say evil is good and good is evil. Nominalism is grounded in unbridled omnipotence, where omnipotence is what God can do disassociated from God’s good moral character. It made God into a tyrant who had no concern for his creatures whatsoever. The God of nominalism revealed that he was no longer the benevolent and reasonably predictable God of Scholasticism. The gap between man and God had considerably widened. God could no longer be understood or influenced by human beings; he simply acted out of freedom and was indifferent to the consequences of his actions. Nominalism presented a new vision of God and what it meant to be human, placing greater importance on the human will.
Scotus and Ockham asserted the radical freedom of the divine will, but this gave new prominence to the human will since humans were made in the image of God. Therefore, being in his image, being like God, they were principally willful rather than rational beings. While free choice plays a role in mundane matters, orthodox Christianity denied that humans were free to accept or reject justificatory grace. For many nominalists, humans were truly free; therefore, they could choose to act in a manner that would increase their chances of salvation. However, the emphasis on a human’s ability to will his own salvation came up against the nominalist understanding of the absolute, predestinating will of God. So, while their doctrine seemed open for complete human freedom, their commitment to absolute omnipotence negated it.
In holding to this view of divine determinism, nominalism avoided Pelagianism. Still, the price was high for the notion of predestination, which not only relieved humans of all moral responsibility but also made God responsible for evil. Nominalism ultimately results in a capricious God. A nominalist perspective of God dominated the Middle Ages. However, Scholasticism did not fade away. Some revived it at various times. Francisco Suarez, Aquinas’s greatest offender, was ontologically a nominalist. Though he supported Thomas, he asserted that individual being was a universal, which will have more implications later on.
While the theological battle between Ockham and the pope continued to rage on, a new movement was beginning nearby in Avignon. A Florentine exile was starting a lifelong project that would help define the modern age. His name was Francisco Petrarch. He rejected Scholasticism as an overly rationalized method of theology. But he was also repulsed by the nominalist’s endless arguments about terms and what he saw as mere speculation about divine power. Petrarch was well aware of the corruption in the church. A renewal was needed that married Christian practice with ancient moral virtue. He envisioned a new kind of man with new virtues grounded in Christianity, but he wasn’t a citizen of a city-state or a republic, but he was a being, whole and complete in himself. Petrarch envisioned that such individuals would surround themselves with friends or join others as citizens. Still, he was convinced this could only be effective if humans first understood themselves as autonomous individuals. And this was the ideal that inspired the humanist movement.
The idea of humanism was not about putting humans at the center but rather the individual human being. In this respect, there was a deeper ontological debt to nominalism than to antiquity. For humanism, the individual is not a rational animal standing at the peak of creation. Instead, free will characterizes human beings. There is no natural form or end to the individual, for he is not a created will, but he self-creates. God grants humans this capacity, and they can make themselves into whatever they desire. And like the nominalist view of God, man can create for himself whatever he wants as an artisan whose most significant work is himself. This view of man became the hope for a new golden age, continuously improving for all time.
So, we can see that humanism grew alongside and out of nominalism. Humanism offered a solution to the problem of divine omnipotence. It narrowed the ontological difference between man and God, which helped rectify humanity as one in control of himself, as an individual, and as a willful being who is successful because he was made like God. So, glory, not humility, was this man’s goal. The world of nominalism was chaotic, and therefore, the refashioning of humanity purposed to reclaim this world, showing that man can govern himself by his own powers and take control of his own destination.
However, humanism was not a secular movement as many suppose today. It was not antagonistic to religion, and it was not a form of atheism. At its center, it was always considered Christian. Humanism emphasizes moral practice over faith or ceremonies. Humanists acted upon Christian belief but wanted to separate themselves from the nominalist revolution. This shift, this intellectual movement, was also a response to nominalism serving as the impetus of the Reformation.
Martin Luther, the spearhead of the Reformation, originally was an Ockhamist. But the impenetrable God of nominalism tormented Luther, constantly leaving him uncertain of his own salvation. Luther’s response to the nominalist God was that God saves. Faith alone saves. He accepted the nominal notion of man as a willing being but transformed “this notion by reconfiguring the relationship of divine and human will.”[2] According to Luther, faith is the will to a union with God. It becomes the means for one to know God, but it only comes from God through Scripture. Faith in Scripture, therefore, guarantees salvation. And Luther’s redemption of the God of nominalism is that God speaks directly to man through his Word. Faith comes by hearing the voice of God. God’s power is no longer distant or abstract but in and through us. In this way, Luther transformed the terrifying God of nominalism into a power within individual human beings.
The Christian is reborn in God because God is born in him. With a redeemed man now becoming the dwelling place of God, man’s will conforms to God’s will. God becomes the center of the Christian life, the Christian conscience, and the Christian experience. And therefore, man can know what God’s will is and is no longer left in the darkness as to what God is and who he is. But as the Reformation moved forward, humanism could not sustain its position. Humanism could not uphold a doctrine of strict omnipotence, with man completely free to create himself as he pleased. The Reformation could not uphold free human will if God was completely sovereign. These two were antithetical, creating a paradox where there is no escape. And this sharp disagreement appears in the debate between Erasmus and Luther over the freedom or the bondage of the will.
In getting back to the metaphysics of this issue, the scholastic perspective saw “God as the highest being and creation as a rational order of beings stretching up to God.”[3] But the nominalist saw that each being is radically individual and that God is not a being in the same sense as all created beings. The chasm between God and man existed, but nobody explored it further. But the great thinker Meister Eckhart, deeply influenced by Neoplatonism, saw that humans were nothing without God. So, in a sense, these beings are God; God must be in human beings in some way; otherwise, without him, they would be pure nothingness. So, he suggests in a different sense, using nominalist terms, that “God is pure willing, pure activity, or pure power and the world, in its becoming is divine will,”[4] is this God. In modern terms, we would see this as the world being the ceaseless motion determined by the divine will understood as “efficient or mechanical causality. The world is the incarnation, the body of God, and he is in the world as the soul is in the body, omnipresent as the motive principle.”[5]
This pantheist/panentheistic conceptual shift is a drastic turn away from the metaphysics deeply embedded in traditional Scholasticism and classical theology. God “is not the ultimate whatness or quiddity of all beings but their howness or becoming. God is now in the world in a new and different sense. To discover the divinely ordered character of the world, it is thus necessary to investigate becoming, which is to say, it is necessary to discover the laws governing the motion of all beings. Theology and natural science thereby become one and the same.”[6] The motion of nature, therefore, “is the motion of God, and nature’s laws are the forms and structures of divine will. Rationalist science thus is theologically grounded not in Scripture but in the deduction of the laws of motion from transcendental”[7] will or freedom. Rather than looking to what was outdated and to any traditional authority, reason and scientific discovery led to a focus on becoming. Doubting everything was the path to specific knowledge.[8] In such a perspective, dogma, miracles, and supernatural revelation are excluded.[8] Rational man does not need to look to God or religion for moral absolutes; rather, “he could attain his ends in the world by pure logos,”[10] the foundation of reason. “The center of the story moved from God to human beings,”[11] and “the world had been ontologically purged of transcendence.”[12]
*This post discusses some key points in the first chapter of the fascinating book by Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
[1] “The theory of knowledge that denies the objective reality of universal principles, maintaining that “universals” are mere concepts with no reality apart from their existence in the mind of the individual.” Grenz, Stanley, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999.
[2] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 33.
[3] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 35.
[4] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 35.
[5] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 35.
[6] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 36.
[7] Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, 36.
[8] Lex Newman, “Descartes’ Epistemology,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016. (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016), accessed October 6, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/descartes-epistemology/.
[9] Gene Edward Veith Jr, Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Crossway, 1994), 33.
[10] “Models of Man: The Admission of Transcendence,” Margaret S. Archer, in Margaret S. Archer, Andrew Collier, and Douglas V. Porpora, Transcendence: Critical Realism and God, first edition (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 65.
[11] William C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction, 1st ed., (Westminster John Knox Press, 1983), 238. However, Stanley J. Grenz, in contrast to the rise of modernity, notes, while [t]he Renaissance laid the foundation for the modern mentality , . . it did not establish the individual ego as the self-determining center of the world.” Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 2nd Edition, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 60.
[12] Archer, “Models of Man,” 67.
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