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Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

George L. Mosse
George L. Mosse
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

The relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment presents a subtle and difficult problem. No historian has as yet fully answered the important question of how the world view of the eighteenth century is related to that of traditional Christianity. It is certain, however, that the deism of that century rejected traditional Christianity as superstitious and denied Christianity a monopoly upon religious truth. The many formal parallels which can be drawn between Enlightenment and Christianity cannot obscure this fact. From the point of view of historical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the faith of the Enlightenment was blasphemy. It did away with a personal God, it admitted no supernatural above the natural, it denied the relevance of Christ's redemptive task in this world. This essay attempts to discover whether traditional Christian thought itself did not make a contribution to the Enlightenment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 424 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1960

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