Mertcan Bulak
@MBulak
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Ağustos 2020 tarihinde katıldı
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The most aggressive opposition to the Jesuits came from a movement called Jansenism. Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) was a Dutchman who had adopted St. Augustine’s views of sin and grace at the University of Louvain. He came to believe that the best way to defend Catholicism against the Calvinist challenge was to return to the doctrines of the great North African and establish a rigorous moral code for the Catholic clergy to combat the easygoing ethics of the Jesuits.
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The God of the deists has sometimes been called the watchmaker God, who created the world as a watchmaker makes a watch and then winds it up and lets it run. Since God was a perfect watchmaker, there was no need for him to interfere with the world later. Hence the deists rejected anything that seemed to be an interference or intervention of God with the world, such as miracles or a special revelation through the Bible.
Many in the next generation, the first of the eighteenth century, felt fewer obligations to the Christian past, so instead of trying to harmonize nature and Scripture, they simply set aside revelation. Many intellectuals claimed that the parts of the Bible that agree with reason are clearly unnecessary. The parts that contradict reason—the myths, miracles, and priestly elements—are simply untrue. This more militant attitude against the faith was especially evident in France.
This sudden access to the mysteries of the universe seemed to magnify the role of human reason. If the universe is a smooth-running machine with all its parts coordinated by one grand design, then we only have to think clearly to find life’s meaning and true happiness. This fundamental idea, that we have the ability to find the truth by the use of our senses and reason, gave rise to the label Age of Reason.
Alexander Pope wrote:
Nature and Nature’s laws
lay hid in night;
God said, “Let Newton be!”
and all was light.
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