Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

diminished” (Bosch, 2000:6). The early humanism was quite different from the
humanism we are familiar with today, as Alister McGrath notes:
When the word ‘humanism’ is used by a
twentieth-century writer, we are usually
meant to understand an anti-religious
philosophy which affirms the dignity of
humanity without any reference to God.
‘Humanism’ has acquired very strongly
secularist -- perhaps even atheist -- overtones.
But in the sixteenth century, the word
‘humanist’ had a quite different meaning...
Humanists of the fourteenth, fifteenth or
sixteenth centuries were remarkably religious,
if anything concerned with the renewal rather
than the abolition of the Christian church
(McGrath, 1993:40).
Certainly, not all that happened in Europe during this period was good or positive. A
number of small wars were waged, religious and political persecution was all too
frequent, and the Borgia Popes became infamous. The advent and growth of the new
‘enlightened’ worldview also produced pockets of societal regression to the former Asian
[Oriental] worldview (Newbigin, 1996:68). This shift was gradual, yet in some places
gained support rapidly, as the innate human desire for individual freedom accorded well
with the humanist worldview. In time, even the supernatural beliefs of Christianity were
discounted as irrational foolishness, and likened to the myths and superstitions of pagans.
“In due course the sufficiency of reason was confidently affirmed, and the whole content
of Biblical theology was relegated to a marginal status of comparative insignificance”
(Cragg, 1960:13).
From the Renaissance (15 th Century) and Reformation (16 th Century), to the
Enlightenment (18 th Century) spans about four hundred years, and is usually considered
the cradle of modern thought. While it is certain that contemporary Catholicism is a
product of the middle ages, “Protestant theology took its form from the Reformation in
the sixteenth century, and the modern secular outlook from the rational, enlightened
philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (Brown, 1968:37). The
Enlightenment effectively advanced what had begun during the earlier Renaissance
period, advocating even more aggressively, intellectual rationality as a means to
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa