Theological Origins of Modernity

270 chapter eight
of modernity reprise in a surprising way the earlier issues in the debate between
Erasmus and Luther. Th is is not accidental. Both debates in fact are
a refl ection of contradictions that are intrinsic to the metaphysical inheritance
within which modernity unfolds. Granting ontic priority to nature
directs attention away from the question of the superiority of the human
or the divine but it does not eliminate it. In fact, it merely conceals the
question within the naturalistic worldview that science articulates. However,
this is not a question that can be long concealed, if only because it
is the question of the nature of the being who poses questions. In fact, it
is this question that in the late eighteenth century reemerges in all of its
power and brings the Enlightenment to an end.
secularization or concealment?
Th e persistence of the question of the nature and relationship of the human
and the divine from Luther and Erasmus through Hobbes and Descartes
to Kant points to the deeper question of the enduring importance of theology
for modernity. In the preceding chapters, we have seen that the series
of transformations that brought the modern world into being over a three
hundred year period were the result of repeated (though ultimately unsuccessful)
eff orts to develop a consistent metaphysica specialis that could
account for the relationship between man, God, and nature within a nominalist
ontology. While the importance of theology in this development
is relatively clear, its continuing relevance to the further development of
modernity is less obvious. Indeed, many would argue that religion in general
and theology in particular have become increasingly less important
for the modern world. From this point of view, the problem of explaining
the relationship between the three traditional realms of being within a
consistent metaphysica specialis is “solved” in modernity by excluding the
divine from the equation. As a result, knowing ceases to be conceived as
metaphysics and is reconceptualized as a universal science that consists of
only physics and anthropology. Th eology is no longer regarded as a form
of knowledge and becomes an expression or interpretation of faith, more
akin to rhetoric or poetry than science. 23
Th is decline in the importance of religion and theology in modern
times has been characterized as the process of secularization. Secularization
refers in the fi rst instance to the development of a secular or nonreligious
realm alongside the world informed by religion, but during the
course of modernity it has come to mean the expansion and dominance of
the secular realm and the concomitant diminution or disappearance of the