he found the evidence for his belief in nature rather than in the Bible; he doubted a good bit of traditional doctrine—and he didn’t treat religion all that seriously.
Revivals but at heart a move from God to human beings
science seemed to being moving from one accomplishment to another …
nationalism taking root, centralizing power
at the very time of success in discovery and technology, reason seemed to reach its end of life
Descartes to Newton
Newton on religion
Newton: God’s "immensity" stretching infinitely in all directions and unchanged for all eternity (cp. changing metaphor) (cp. Borges)
what was most important about religion was its morality – cf. Jefferson's approach (206)
while retaining religion, it is no stripped of the "supernatural"
"natural religion" (206)
Church of England would keep its theology vague enough to include as many groups as possible and tolerate the presence of some dissenting groups like Anabaptists and Quakers, though not Catholics
Borges
Universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors
changing metaphor from Anselm to Descartes
Locke and Deists
Nearly all the attitudes of the time came together in John Locke (207)
Many Deists brought to bear on the biblical miracle stories all the prestige of the scientific discovery of laws (209)
Deists distrusted appeals to authority and the miraculous, but they also turned away from anything beyond natural religion in part for moral reasons.
Religion of Reason
Descartes argued that knowledge would come only from doubting everything
can a religion be built on Doubt?
No man shall ever be kept out of Heaven … if he had but an honest and good heart, that was ready to comply with Christ’s commandments (205)
God is more inward to us than our very souls (205)
Pietists and Methodists
"Enthusiasm" was a dirty word in the eighteenth century. (210)
story begins in Germany, where Lutheran orthodoxy had increasingly defined faith as assent to a set of doctrines
Lutherans suspect any call to moral improvement as a move toward works-righteousness.
rise of Pietism (210)
Moravians and J. Wesley intersect (211)
Methodism with a "method" for holiness
Wesley and Whitefield changed the shape of popular religion in England and North America, but they made little impact on the attitudes among most intellectuals
The end of Age of Reason
Hume
skeptic of scientific inference producing absolute knowledge
apply skepticism to argument from order; miracles; and others …
Rousseau
doubting even civilization – cf. Emile raised as a natural child
follow self & respect others (214)
Lessing: story of 3 rings (214)
Kant
seeking necessity of religion apart from historical evidence
Pietist upbringing
his arguments begin with ethics – universal imperative
like much of enlightenment thinkers: accepting God but nothing to do with most doctrine