Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

With the dawn of the Enlightenment, a fresh urgency toward rationalism arose. The
church worked with the humanists to remove myth and (animistic) superstition from
Western life, a relationship that interestingly would re-fashion Christianity, and
encourage widespread resistance to the ‘supernatural’ Gospel, even within the Church.
“For so long, spiritual and religious thought were disparaged as archaic and intellectually
primitive” (Clifford, 2003:2). The efforts to remove animistic beliefs and practices were
less successful than hoped, more often suppressing, rather than removing them. “Many
books were written in this age against superstition, and all contained superstitions”
(Durant, 1957:233). Even the great Reformer, Martin Luther, was typical of the time,
believing “in goblins, witches, demons, the curative value of live toads, and the impish
incubi who sought out maidens in their baths or beds and startled them into motherhood”
(Durant, 1957:420).
By 1700, somewhere between thirty thousand
and several millions of witches had been tried
and executed. The Reformation, however,
launched a biblical attack on magical elements
in contemporary Christian practice, and on the
occult world outside the church, which began
to restrain the world of superstition... Peter
Gay, who contends that the Enlightenment
itself was a neo-Pagan revival, notes that in the
left wing of the movement, among libertines
such as the Marquis de Sade, sexual magic and
a semi-serious demonolatry were practiced in
places like the Hellfirse Caves of France and
England (Lovelace, in Montgomery, 1976:80).
Folk religions carried on in alchemy, astrology and magic, often variously blended
with Judaism, Islam or Christianity. The Kabala, a Jewish mysticism, became very
popular. The Hermetica was rediscovered during the Renaissance. Attributed to the
ancient mythic figure Hermes Trismegistus, its notions of secret spiritual knowledge
became popular, while religious notions rooted in magic and the occult became popular to
the French intelligentsia. People like, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), reinterpreted
Christianity, and created completely new religions (cf., Swedenborgianism). At the same
time, other religions were created based upon the study of ancient Greco-Roman religions
(Johnson, 2004). With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution came still more new
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa