The natural man believes his own reason can discover truth and does not need a God to reveal truth. Moreover, like the rich man who does not need God to supply his physical needs, he soon concludes he does not need God at all. This period marked the end of the dominant influence of the church in Western culture. Religion came to be divided into either natural religion or revealed religion. Natural religion was based on the God of nature and the moral laws accessed through human reason. Revealed religion was based upon the Bible and church doctrines that had been believed for centuries. In the end, natural religion won the day and miracles were lost. The God of nature gave way to Nature and human reason. The supernatural was branded as superstition. Eventually, God was declared dead.
The Modern era gave humans a new role in society and the individual human new power. The phrase “knowledge is power” became popular. By the 18th Century, the idea that the human mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) at birth gained prominence. Philosopher John Locke wrote that the mind of individuals was born blank without any rules for processing data and that data is added and rules for processing formed solely by one’s sensory experience. From this, according to Locke, it follows that individuals have the freedom to author their own souls and define the content of their character but cannot deny they are humans. The idea of a free self-authored mind combined with an unchangeable human nature lead to Locke’s doctrine of “natural rights” which we hear so much about today. The “blank slate” theory entered into the theories of psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud in the 19th and 20th Centuries. He believed that psychological problems could be traced back to what was entered on that blank slate during childhood.
The knowledge acquired by the human mind empowered humans to make human life better with the hope that life would get even better and that meant progress. The knowledge gains in the sciences, especially medical science, and technology gave hope of humans being able to master the world. The Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th Centuries brought forth new machines and manufacturing processes, and steam power to fuel new transportation modes that made more of the world accessible to people. Personal income and population growth increase in the West.
Things were looking good and there was a bright hope for an even better future. By the end of the 20th Century, man had even gained control of the human evolutionary process. However, even before then, man was exalted to the throne of his own life. In 1875, William Earnest Henley wrote a poem called Invictus, which is Latin for “undefeated.” In it, he caught the spirit of Modernity.
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
In all of man’s gaining of knowledge in the Modern era, he did the most foolish thing man can do—he gave up his knowledge of God. If all the progress of the Modern era had been guided by God’s word, Modernity would still be modern. The main thing that scientists, sociologists, and psychologists overlooked in the Modern era was the fallen nature of man and how sin affected man’s mind. Technology was used to make weapons of war and increased income only showed the selfishness and self-centeredness of man. Maybe Modernity did not work out so well after all
The death of God in human reasoning left some questions unanswered. Questions like Where did we come from? Why are we here? What happens when we die? These were answered in God’s revealed truth, the Bible, now needed new answers. The answers came in the form of scientific theories that could not be proven but had to be believed because they had become the new revealed truth. Charles Darwin came up with the theory that man evolved from lower life forms and those lower life forms evolved from even lower life forms, and those…etc., all the way back to the first single-cell life form that sprang to life in some primordial slime. But where did the slime come from? Like everything else, it sprang into being out of nothing, but without God’s help. Therefore, man is only a link in a chain of evolutionary chance and time and when his time is passed, he is nothing again. His life is nothing and means nothing and is headed nowhere. Man looks at the world and sees that there is no hope for him.
If we look at my definition of culture (man trying to get his needs met apart from God) it is no wonder that Modernity is seen as a failure to deliver on its promises. It was man-centered. Man was the master and the master is flawed. It is a culture in which man will not be content and the deepest human needs will go unmet. Only a culture that is centered on God can meet basic human needs because it can only be done by a personal relationship with God.. In the next post, I will look at the culture in which we currently live more than two decades into the twenty-first century.