21 Comments

Anthony Sacramone
September 30th, 2009 | 9:43 am

First of all, it’s ludicrous to speak of “blame” for atheism. If faith is a gift, Protestants, with their emphasis on evangelism, can hardly be the grinches here. Why does someone believe or reject the gospel? Because the group demands it, or because the individual human heart has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit? Can that enlightenment be damped by the Enlightenment — and God still be sovereign? The rise of modern atheism has nothing to do with theological incoherence or lack of ecclesiastical authority — it has to do with what the STATE will tolerate. How many atheists were running around Elizabeth I’s England, when church attendance was mandatory? There may have been many, but they were well closeted. The vehement and vocal presence of atheism and atheists today has to do with what we will tolerate as far as civil sanctions against unbelief and blasphemy. Heretics, sectarians, and atheists there have always been. But they have usually kept their doubts and errant beliefs to themselves or risked their necks. Christians are slowly waking up to the realization that they are quickly becoming a minority in a polyglot heterodox world. And who’s in a worse state in relation to the gospel: an atheist or a thoroughly convinced pantheist who communes with the faeries and can feel the divine within himself (or a polytheist who has thrown Jesus into the pantheon for good luck)? Gimme the atheist any day. We think we should have “Christianized” the world by now. But by the time of the Edict of Milan in 325, what percentage of the empire was Christian? Ten percent? The West became Christian by STATE fiat, not divine. I realize that the author of the blog post Joe links to is not arguing for this, but just in case: Let’s learn from past mistakes and not seek any more power to impose conformity of belief than does God Himself, or a sad, semi-converted bunch of pagans we will be. Blame Protestantism, if you must, for ugly churches, the Left Behind series, or the health-and-wealth gospel, but not for atheism.

AML
September 30th, 2009 | 11:51 am

With Sola Scriptura and the concomitant rejection of both sacred tradition and scholasticism comes fideism. With fideism, the attempt to integrate faith and reason is acknowledged as a failure. Christianity consequently comes to seem unreasonable. David Hume, Pierre Bayle, Diderot, etc all come out of calveinist/janseinist backgrounds. Sola Scriptura along with the doctrine of total depravity are a rejection of reason. Christianity comes to seem unreasonable and Hume et al are the result. The link is pretty easy to see.

Selfreferencing
September 30th, 2009 | 12:06 pm

This is an absurd causal story. Suppose that there are ten necessary links between two events. Suppose that the first event is the split between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Suppose the final event is atheism. In the middle, we have the Reformation, which the split between East and West made possible because the Catholic Church centralized political power which arguably led to the corruption that generated the Reformation.

Here’s the question: Why pick the Reformation as the key event? Why not pick the split? Why not pick the Papal consolidation of power? It seems arbitrary to select Martin Luther as a causal origin. In fact, you could make further, similar choices downstream, such as the move away from Trinitarianism, or the actual development of foundationalism, or maybe, um, actual atheism.

Pastor Philip Spomer
September 30th, 2009 | 1:21 pm

Just one observation, because I hear this so often and I find it so exasperating. The Lutheran reformers did not advocate idiosyncratic hermeneutics. If they had, they would not have written the Confessions which, as with the ecumenical creeds, put forth an objective faith. If one interprets sola Scriptura as “decide for yourself” then one is saying that the words of the Bible (and for that matter all words) can be nothing more that a linguistic Roarschock test. If one brings that level of suspicion to a text, then no other authority could offer you clarity because such an authority will use words, words which will be subject to the same subjectivistic hermeneutic as one brings to the Bible.

Stephen M. Barr
September 30th, 2009 | 2:10 pm

Without pointing fingers of blame, an argument could be made that the fragmenting of Christianity has contributed to unbelief. There is some scriptural warrant for expecting such an effect. Christ himself said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And since 1054 and 1517 is not Christianity a house divided? And in praying that his followers “all be one”, Christ gave as the reason “that the world might believe.”

One effect of the division of Christianity was that it led to damaging polemics, in which one side would try to blacken the historical record of the other. The net effect, in the long run, has been to discredit the record of Christianity as a whole. The “black legends” concocted to gain advantage in the Protestant-Catholic struggle continue to circulate and have become ammunition against all Christianity and indeed against all religion. To take just one example of many that could be given, the myth propagated by Protestants that the Catholic Church has had an inveterate hostility to science has now merged into and supports the larger atheist myth that Christianity as such has been hostile to science. Each side magnified the faults of the other, and it is these highly magnified faults that are now held against us by the unbelieving world.

Andrew
September 30th, 2009 | 3:58 pm

Joe,

Thanks for the link! I posted a response to Kevin’s comments over at City of God:

Obviously I was not saying Protestantism was the only cause [my "the" notwithstanding--A]. I mentioned some others in that post. But the link between Protestantism and atheism is clearly more close than the link between the schism and atheism: almost 600 years passed between those two events without atheism becoming significant. But within a couple centuries (with some wars significantly caused [at least in the minds of the masses--A] by the Reformation) after the Reformation atheism has become a serious contender intellectually. It’s not unreasonable to draw a closer connection between those events than between events separated by over half a millennium.

Also, re: “In fact, you could make further, similar choices downstream, such as the move away from Trinitarianism, or the actual development of foundationalism, or maybe, um, actual atheism.”

How would atheism be the cause of atheism? That strikes me as an explanation that would be actually absurd…

Anthony:

I think you’re overlooking a significant socio-cultural change that occurred between the late middle ages and the Enlightenment. Something more than politics is going on.

AML:

But there was a significant scholastic tradition immediately after the Reformation, in both its Lutheran and Calvinist strands. I don’t think we can call the Reformation “anti-reason” fairly.

Andrew
September 30th, 2009 | 4:18 pm

Pastor Spomer:

I won’t get into debating Lutheran theology, though I think the postliberal/CCET approach to the Reformers is off the mark historically. ANS Lane’s approach, I think, is the best (though I think his approach to the earliest period of the Church may be overly certain): http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/vox/vol09/scripture_lane.pdf

As for sola scriptura as I understand it:

“If one interprets sola Scriptura as “decide for yourself” then one is saying that the words of the Bible (and for that matter all words) can be nothing more that a linguistic Roarschock test.”

This sounds ironic to me, since it was the Reformers who argued for the perspicuity of scripture. Whether they were wrong or not, they claimed the scriptures could in fact be understood by the proverbial plow-boy. They certainly would not be, like some postmodernists, claiming that all texts were unintelligible. Much the opposite in fact (Calvin was a humanist).

“If one brings that level of suspicion to a text, then no other authority could offer you clarity because such an authority will use words, words which will be subject to the same subjectivistic hermeneutic as one brings to the Bible.”

But the Reformers did not approach scripture with suspicion. They believed it was supremely authoritative and clear.

Ronald Devins
September 30th, 2009 | 4:55 pm

Atheists existed since before the times of the Greeks, so neither Protestants nor Catholics can be blamed. IMO, the key problem was not the Reformation but the Protestants wars between Catholics, and the worldliness and abuse of many in the clergy left a bad taste in many people’s minds, causing people like Diderot (who nearly entered the clergy) to state “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”.

Colonization and the widespread publishing of books and the discovery that non-Christians could be moral and even have a more peaceful society than Christian Europe also created skepticism about the legitimacy of Christianity, and encouraged Deism as a replacement as a universal God everyone could agree on (Deists thought knew less than they thought they did about other cultures).

Evolution strengthened the Deist case (never mind the fact that natural selection implies a Selector — survivability is not a selection criteria since bacteria live much longer, reproduce faster, and are more far resilient than fragile, short lived, low reproducing man). The Holocaust was the final straw. All of Hilter’s actions were blamed on Christians (instead of Social Darwinism and Materialism), and Christian Germany felt too guilty about its past persecutions of the Jews to deny it. As a result people wanted to have nothing to do with religion, and it was considered enlightened to be non-religious, or agnostic, or Deist.

There are tons of other things like Higher Criticism and Fideism which contributed. I don’t think you can pin it down to any one cause.

Andrew
September 30th, 2009 | 5:59 pm

I realized that there is a significant problem with my argument, though there’s still probably some truth to it: the Wars of Religion were not between Protestants. (The English revolutions were, though).

AML
September 30th, 2009 | 7:10 pm

I am only a lowly undergraduate with a limited grasp of protestant theology, so please correct me if I am wrong. But if I understand the doctrine of total depravity correctly, it asserts that due to the fall of Adam, natural reason is so clouded that any truth arrived at apart from the unerring Word of God as found in the scriptures is suspect. This atmosphere led to much of the skepticism of thinkers from protestant/janseinest areas e.g. Bayle, Hume, Diderot, etc. So in a sense, it could be argued that protestantism is anti-reason. Our only sure truth is in the Word of God. Natural reason is a corrupted faculty.

Wandering off topic, I am not sure how a plow boy could arrive at a proper notion of the Trinity based on scripture alone. I think it took a lot of trial and error in the early Church to arrive at the definitions given by Nicea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, etc. But maybe this is why unitarianism popped out of protestantism and its just a hop skip and a jump to atheism from there.

Anthony Sacramone
September 30th, 2009 | 9:41 pm

Andrew:

Thanks for your response. But let me say, I have been a student of the Reformation for many, many years. I understand its roots in the anti-ecclesiastical peasant “crusades” of the Middle Ages, the rise of the nation-state, the role (much overemphasized) of nominalism, Augustinianism, etc., etc.

Here’s my point: What causes someone to believe the gospel? An ideal set of socio-cultural markers? A greater emphasis on Tradition and Mother Church and less on the individual alone with his Bible? Or the illumination of the Holy Spirit? Is faith a mere choice among other choices — now made more difficult by a different set of philosophical presuppositions? Or the power of God? If the latter, than I will argue that there were as many functional atheists in the 12th century as there are today. They merely cloaked it because (a) they didn’t have a nonreligious vocabulary to express their doubts and frustrations and (b) there were severe social/political ramifications for rejecting church authority.

The secular state merely revealed what was always there.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that this is the best of all possible worlds. Far from it. Life is going to become increasingly difficult for Christians of all stripes, and in all parts of the world (albeit for different reasons). I just have no illusions about the past.

Mollie
September 30th, 2009 | 10:10 pm

I wrote up a brief history of atheism for the magazine Modern Reformation a few years ago. I didn’t try to place blame with anybody in particular — that’s beyond my pay grade. But I don’t find the argument above terribly compelling. As has been pointed out, atheism predates both Protestantism and Catholicism.

However, atheism is parasitic (as the name implies) on theism and I do think that the Christian view that truth is known through reason and faith developed into an overzealous differentiation of theology from philosophy and science (a view that really took root under Franciscan logician John Duns Scotus in the 13th and early 14th centuries). Scotus thought that theologians and philosophers study separate subjects and that only theologians should study God since revelation was a matter of faith rather than natural experience. And then William of Ockham (of razor fame!) furthered that divide. And this realignment of faith and reason had some benefits but also I think we see that the strict separation of faith and knowledge means that the two have too little to say to each other.

The separation of the supernatural and natural, firmly established in mainstream Christian thinking for hundreds of years — including the time prior to Luther, of course, created a situation where reason could tackle the natural world without any input from faith.

Anna
October 1st, 2009 | 1:33 pm

Tocqueville, interestingly, seems to have thought something similar:

“Who does not see that Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire made use of the same method [of submitting tradition to individual reason], and that they differ only in the greater or lesser use that they claimed one might make of it?”

(See Democracy in America, Volume 2, part 1, chapter 1.)

Paul Jones
October 1st, 2009 | 4:30 pm

As has been pointed out above, atheism preceded Christianity by a great number of years, so the short answer is “no.”

Perhaps the question could be fruitfully narrowed as follows: did the philosphical, theological, and ecclesiological foundations of Protestantism lead necessarily to the destruction of Christianity’s cultural dominance in the West?

Anthony Sacramone
October 1st, 2009 | 8:27 pm

The answer to Paul Jones’ question is most definitely yes. The fractiousness of Protestantism, the antipathy for or at least suspicion of “sacred” spaces/objects, and the emphasis on freedom of conscience and separation of church and state (we know to whom Jefferson was writing when he spoke of that “wall”) certainly played formative roles in the secularizing of the public square. The more denominations in the marketplace, each offering its version of “authentic” Christianity, the more likely “none of the above” is going to be the box checked by burned-out consumers. That does not make them atheists. Nor does a secular space does not create atheists; it merely creates a safe playground for them. When one dominant denomination with a highly centralized authority is also backed by the power of the government (church and state each offering the other its imprimatur), how can you not enjoy cultural hegemony? But how that culture, over time, devolves into a syncretistic, ersatz, kitsch machine! The religion may be wide, but how deep? Like water poured on a stone — it glistens but does not penetrate.

Paul Jones
October 2nd, 2009 | 12:51 pm

I thank Mr. Sacramone for his answer, which contains pointed criticisms of both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, neither without some validity. I may be mistaken, but I believe that he interprets my question as merely another way of asking, “Did the foundations of Protestantism necessarily imply the destruction of Catholic Christendom?” This might be a silly question, although I would mention that, before secularism was reached, the first “stop” of Protestant thinking was at a new Christendom — one in which the state (or states) endorsed and enforced a particular sect’s doctrines, which of course were the true universal doctrines.

American Protestantism seems to demonstrate the two possible long-term outcomes for Protestantism, only one of which could (more fairly) be called “irreligion” — “atheism” being far too strong a word for the outcome, in the majority of the population. If we take the individual’s best understanding and judgement of a [translated] text [transmitted over centuries from dramatically different cultural and historical circumstances] as the standard for authentic Christianity, evidently we splinter whenever controversial questions arise which are not clearly and unambiguously resolved (in only one way) within the body of that text. Each splinter then claims that its interpretation alone is correct. Mr. Sacramone argues that long-term observation of these contending claims leads the majority to conclude that none of them are really true. I would agree that the “secular space does not create atheists,” but I would argue that the conclusion that the splinters’ claims of sole authencity are false, combined with criticism and analysis which degrade the authority of the founding text itself, inevitably replaces Protestant Christendom with the irreligious state, and Christianity with actual or functional irreligion.

In a contrasting outcome, though, certain splinters declare that the text is free of internal contradiction, inerrant, and beyond analysis, and that their own interpretations enjoy the same status. If these splinters nonetheless deign to respond to questioning or analysis, they will ultimately, if implicitly, appeal to the priority of faith over reason. I suggest, however, that they really appeal to “tradition” (in a certain sense), and that they form, or are attempting to establish, a traditional culture — one in which the foundation of morality is the veneration and emulation of the practices of our predecessors and ancestors. Given that the “traditions” of Protestantism arose within (and greatly contributed to) the modern philosophical environment, it remains to be seen whether it is really possible for these Protestant splinters to permanently “secede” from modernity in this way. The Amish, among others, are certainly making a go of it. But while there are broad similarities to the development of Sunni Islam, particularly in Arab lands, I do not think that Protestantism is as plausible a foundation for a self-perpetuating traditional culture.

I’ll leave aside the issue of the merits of a traditional culture, as against those of a “historical” one. And I’ll certainly concede that for the majority, Catholicism often became functionally as traditional a culture as the types of Protestantism discussed in the preceding paragraph — what Mr. Sacramone characterizes as a “syncretistic, ersatz, kitsch machine.” This type of characterization is commonly made by reformers. It was made by Catholic reformers long before Luther, who complained that the people had been insufficiently “converted,” evangelized, catechized, what have you, who complained that the Church was corrupt, or complicit in corruption. Western Christendom, before modern Europe came into being, had a long history of such reformist movements, as anyone learned in medieval history can affirm.

These movements, and the “wide” religion that they moved within, formed parts of a viable and unified Christendom, one in which the culture itself was philosophically Christian, even if its members were often impure, and its institutions often corrupt. It was from and within this culture that even the most committed (if surreptitious) medieval agnostic or atheist lived. But Protestantism, as opposed to Reformation, seems to lead inevitably to a culture which is not Christian, even if this is the opposite of its initiators’ intent. Indeed, it seems eventually to create cultures which are philosophically anti-Christian.

Stephen M. Barr
October 2nd, 2009 | 5:36 pm

Anthony,

You consider only two alternatives: multi-denominational Protestantism, or a single Church backed by state power. What about a single Church not back by state power? The phrase “syncretistic, ersatz, kitsch machine” is pretty harsh. I wonder whether these are the exclusive or inevitable consequences of Catholicism. I have seen an awful lot of both Protestant and Catholic forms of kitsch. Lots of “ersatz” religion too. At the poorly catechized fringes of the Catholic world, one sees syncretism, to be sure. But, my impression is that one finds some pretty exotic variants of Christianity arising as sucker growths on Protestantism, as well. In Africa, for instance, I am given to understand that there are many small “indigenous churches” which are syncretistic. The U.S. has been fertile soil for hybrids such as Mormonism, Christian Science, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ersatz? The prosperity gospel is pretty ersatz, isn’t it? Not penetrating the culture? Anthony, do such invidious comparisons get us anywhere?

Steve

Anthony Sacramone
October 3rd, 2009 | 8:08 am

Steve,

I deliberately did not mention the Catholic Church in either post because I know full well you will end up with pretty much the same mess no matter the ecclesial body with which you enbue such power and authority. (That’s why I referenced Elizabeth I’s England in my first post. That’s also why I referenced ugly churches, the Left Behind series [talk about kitsch], and the health-and-wealth gospel as just some of the detritus of pop-Protestantism.)

The denom of my youth, the LCMS, was born out of disgust with a confessionally syncretized state-backed church in Germany. This is, again, why I deliberately did not mention Catholicism — because I didn’t want my responses to be read as Catholic bashing. This tendency to deform true religion so as to capture the culture transcends denomination. (And various charismatic movements are too often — not always, but too often — the transmitters of foreign matter into the Christian faith traditionally construed.)

I don’t see an easy solution to the problem originally posed. What we have, admittedly, is not the best of all possible worlds (with apologies to Dr. Pangloss). But I refuse to lay the blame at the feet of one theological tradition — Protestant or Catholic. (Luther has been blamed for introducing irrationalism to faith, because he referred to “that whore Reason,” and being in league with Voltaire for elevating Reason above faith. Let’s just say he was a busy guy…)

Look at the environment in which the early church grew up: We are slowly finding ourselves in a similarly heterodox, confused, and incoherent situation — with many quasi-Christian sects and cults making life even more difficult for those who celebrate the Great Tradition, of which you and I are a part.

But God remains sovereign. A through-line from Calvary to the New Jerusalem appears to go missing from time to time, but it’s only buried under junk — and sometimes that junk has a deliberately Christian character. But we will get there. The question is whether we learn from past missteps and self-defeating detours.

Anthony

Stephen M. Barr
October 5th, 2009 | 11:10 am

Anthony, I misunderstood, because I took the expression “one dominant denomination with a highly centralized authority … also backed by the power of the government” as referring to the Catholic Church, due to the inclusion of the pharse “highly centralized authority”. I had assumed that Protestant Churches are less highly centralized.

I am somewhat skeptical of the claim that there was just as much atheism in the past, but that it was hidden. For example, if one looks at the great scientists of the seventeenth century (such Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle), most of them were sincerely
religious. The same, I think, is true through much of the nineteenth century. Now, however, religious belief is definitely the minority position among leading scientists of our day.

What there certainly was in the past was a great deal of “conventional piety”, people who believed because everyone more or less believed. But that is not the same thing as unbelief. It can be quite sincere. And it can lead people to genuine prayer and repentance.

In asking whether the Enlightenment can harm faith given that faith is a gift from God and God is sovereign (“Can that enlightenment be damped by the Enlightenment — and God still be sovereign?”), I think you are making an error of inbterpreting divine sovereignty in such a way that it would negate all worldly causality.
What about the parable of the sower? Does not Christ say that the seed of faith can die from being choked by thorns, or scorched by the sun, or by falling in poor soil, etc.? he explicitly interprets some of these things as “the cares of this world” and so forth. Of course, God is sovereign. But the things around us can affect our faith.

Fatedplace
October 5th, 2009 | 5:16 pm

Just to be a nitpicking Nancy, how is any of this different than what James Turner has argued in _Without God, Without Creed_?

Rod Blaine
October 5th, 2009 | 7:34 pm

Interesting argument. Let’s test it empirically. (Not that any of this will be picked up by the ten thousand Catholic blogs that will have run with this meme within the next 48 hours…)

1. Is there any evidence that atheists are less intractable when faced with matters on which all Christians agree? If, say, the Pope, RC Sproul, Katie Schnozz, Karen Armstrong, Rick Warren, Garner Ted Armstrong, and Rowan Williams all agree that “God exists”, does Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens retreat a single inch?

2. Let’s compare (a) historically Catholic countries with (b) high-Church Protestant countries (Britain, Sweden) (“sola Scriptura, yes, BUT you must still obey the king and his bishops”) and (c) low-church Protestant countries (“no bishop, no king!”).

In which of these sets of countries is atheism most advanced? Which remain the most religious?