Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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certainly different views about this, but these will serve our purposes.
The premodern worldview was one in which truth; authority and one’s basic
worldview were derived from metaphysical sources. Spiritual intermediaries like
Christian clerics and a variety of pagan shamans, guided people in such matters.
Christian clerics held considerable social sway, especially in [European] urban areas;
though it seems animistic beliefs were more popular among rural populations. Life was
generally seen as unchanging and the social order was strictly enforced. People had little
ability to make sense of the natural world around them, so superstition (i.e., animism) was
the norm. Even among Christians, the ‘blending’ of animistic beliefs with Christianity
was common.
Western civilizations made a gradual transition into the modern period after about
1400 AD. What made the modern period remarkably different from the premodern
period were the new mental and physical tools that enabled people to understand the
natural world as never before. The ‘real’ world was increasingly perceived as something
that could be known through empirical observation and rational thought (i.e., science).
No longer were people -- even the best educated -- helpless to explain their world without
resorting to superstition and myth. For example, outbreaks of killer diseases (e.g.,
smallpox) killed many because people did not yet have the mental and physical tools to
understand the microscopic realm in order to combat these dreadful diseases.
The ancient Greeks were animists, but some among them wondered if there was not a
more rational -- or, less superstitious -- way to think and live. These innovative Greeks
helped to establish the physical - metaphysical duality about which contemporary peoples
still wrestle. Socrates, for example, was forced to drink the hemlock (i.e., a form of
public execution) because of his ‘atheism’ -- a man who would not embrace the
mythological worldview of his culture. From Socrates, Plato went on to develop classical
idealism, “the view that the particulars of this world owe their form to transcendent ideals
in the mind of God” (Veith, 1994:30). Aristotle followed Plato, studying nature in a way
that would later inspire the empirical sciences. “Aristotle’s analytical method -- with his
distinction between means and ends, his relation of form to purpose, and his discovery of
absolute principles that underlie every sphere of life -- pushed human reason to dizzying
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa