Asher K. Sisneros
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Western Civilization Since 1493
October 14, 1493
The basic backbone of the Enlightenment was the presupposition of the sovereignty of reason; more specifically, reason accompanied by empirical evidence. Man became the authoritative sovereign during this era and the definer of truth. Those who shared this belief ran contrary to the Church and denied the sovereignty of God. All the miracles in the Old and New Testaments were then put under scrutiny by those of the Enlightenment who gave themselves the authority to judge the truthfulness of God’s miracles in the Bible. Now it should be noted that Scholastics from the Middle Ages routinely used the process of logical inference to prove the possibility of miracles and even the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas, of course, was the most famous example to use this form of apologetic reasoning. But this was not enough for Enlightenment thinkers. They demanded empirical evidence in addition to reasoning. And it was from this basis that everything was judged.
Because of this presupposition of the sovereignty of man to declare what is true and untrue, Enlightenment thinkers also had a strong confidence in human nature. This, too, put them directly at odds with orthodox Christianity. The basic premise of the gospel is that man needs a Savior because human nature is at its core rotten and immoral. But the thinkers of this era like Diderot and Voltaire rejected this premise and instead believed human nature was good and could be perfected.
The ramifications of this philosophy—the belief in man’s sovereignty to judge truth and the inherent virtue of human nature—resulted in the rise of Deism in England and America, atheism in France, and a liberal plague that gripped the Presbyterian Church in Scotland
Asher Sisneros 