Enlightened Chains, pg. 6
law, Moses agrees that being the sole judge of God’s will for man will exhaust him and that a codified law was necessary. Then the law can be taught to everyone, and everyone can police himself. Lesser judges can be set to judge simple disputes, and Moses can operate as a type of one-man Supreme Court for those cases lower judges are not able to decide.
The direct ancestor of all three men holds more fertile soil for investigation at the reason the Enlightenment is seen as pitting Religion against Reason. Much of the French Enlightenment’s ideas build upon those of Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza, a member of the Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam, was excommunicated for his critique of doctrine - a critique which birthed modern Biblical criticism. His great heresy was to equate “God” with “nature”. He compounded this insult by insisting that the Bible is written as an extended metaphor, to be interpreted for greater lessons, rather than as a literal history. He believed that human behavior was deterministic, based on necessity. Freedom was not found in deciding what to do, but rather in deciding why it was necessary.
It is in Spinoza’s writing that the greatest threat to the Catholic Church lay. It attacked the very basis of religion - that man was responsible for his sin by willful disobedience of God’s laws. Rather than Adam literally being the first man of humanity, created by God as a potter creates a plate, Spinoza’s theories held that Adam was simply an archetype. The Fall from Grace, rather than being man’s disobedience, was simply man behaving as was necessary. In that reading, the punishment promised by the Bible for sinful existence seems rather harsh and arbitrary.
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The direct ancestor of all three men holds more fertile soil for investigation at the reason the Enlightenment is seen as pitting Religion against Reason. Much of the French Enlightenment’s ideas build upon those of Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza, a member of the Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam, was excommunicated for his critique of doctrine - a critique which birthed modern Biblical criticism. His great heresy was to equate “God” with “nature”. He compounded this insult by insisting that the Bible is written as an extended metaphor, to be interpreted for greater lessons, rather than as a literal history. He believed that human behavior was deterministic, based on necessity. Freedom was not found in deciding what to do, but rather in deciding why it was necessary.
It is in Spinoza’s writing that the greatest threat to the Catholic Church lay. It attacked the very basis of religion - that man was responsible for his sin by willful disobedience of God’s laws. Rather than Adam literally being the first man of humanity, created by God as a potter creates a plate, Spinoza’s theories held that Adam was simply an archetype. The Fall from Grace, rather than being man’s disobedience, was simply man behaving as was necessary. In that reading, the punishment promised by the Bible for sinful existence seems rather harsh and arbitrary.
Next Page
© 2004 by Xpatriated Texan
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