4b – 5-Fold Development of the Western Worldview

[1] Thus, existence is often pictured as snatching people (i.e. souls) from a house enveloped in flames (i.e. body/earth), and anything outside of leading people to a point of decision through praying “the sinners’ prayer” (i.e. “ticket to heaven”) is seen as superfluous, analogous to “straightening deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.” Moreover, since “heaven” is the ultimate redemptive end and since everything and all activities on the earth are going to be destroyed, the logical application is to focus on activities of the soul, which has birthed many Western Christian proverbs, such as, “He is so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good,” etc.

[2] Arthur E. Travis, Where on Earth is Heaven? (Nashville: Broadman, 1974), 16.

[3] As most clearly defined by Augustine, the Church universal became the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in the physical realm: “Therefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him…” (City of God, Book XX, Chapter 9; archived at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_City_of_God/Book_XX/Chapter_9; see also Chapters 6-10). Thus, the eschatological hope of the Kingdom was uprooted and planted in this age in context to fallen and wicked men. As the Church became the means of God establishing His dominion upon the Earth, with the pope as the “Vicar of Christ”, the imitation of and unification with the Roman Empire was inevitable.

[1] This attitude led to a basic revision of history. Before the Renaissance, history was generally seen as “dark” until the coming of Jesus Christ, who ushered in the age of “light.” However, during the Renaissance, the salvation of mankind shifted away from the Cross and toward Greco-Roman culture and philosophy. Thus, the real age of light existed until the Roman Empire fell in the 5^th century, which ushered in the “Dark Ages.” Thus, the Renaissance was the means of restoring light to the Earth, the beauty, dignity and potential of humanity, primarily expressed through the arts: painting, poetry, literature, philosophy, music, theatre, sculpture, architecture, etc.

[2] The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation were arguably a simple outworking of Renaissance humanism in the theological arena. With an influx of Byzantine-Greek scholars and their ancient Greek texts from the relatively recent fall of Constantinople (1453), a charge was led primarily by Erasmus, Luther and Zwingli to return to the original languages in an attempt to free the Church from the theological tyranny of Tradition.

[3] After retirement from a coloured career of diplomacy, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) began to work out his political theories, later published in The Prince (1532), which describe the arts by which a “Prince” (governor) can retain control of his kingdom, using any means necessary to secure the well-being of the state, i.e. “the ends justify the means.”

[4] With such military and navigational breakthroughs, the naval superpowers of the day, Portugal and Spain, went forth with little resistance, snatching up as much land and loot as possible. The intense rivalry forced the Pope to arbitrate, giving Spain the West (i.e. Americas) and Portugal the East (i.e. Africa). Exploration by Columbus, da Gama, Cabot, Vespucci, Pizarro, Magellan, Cartier, Cook and others thus fueled the corporate sense of European progress, superiority and domination.

[5] Raised by a Catholic bishop in Poland (his maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger) Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) initiated the most radical worldview change in Western history with the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543. No longer did the universe—and thus existence as a whole—revolve around the earth (i.e. geocentrism), but rather the sun (i.e. heliocentrism). This discovery was widely interpreted to mean the earth did not hold a unique position in the cosmos, which was thus interpreted to mean man did not hold a unique position on the Earth. It was this public interpretation of heliocentrism that resulted in the retaliation of the Catholic Church after Copernicus’ death, e.g. Galileo Galilei was convicted in 1633 of grave suspicion of heresy and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life for “following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture.” [“Papal Condemnation of Galileo, 22 June 1633” (translated from the Latin), in Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (University of Chicago Press, 1955) 306-10.]

[6] Though Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is most commonly known for his inductive methodology for “scientific” (Lt. scientia for “knowledge,” from scio for “I know”) inquiry, his primary contribution to Western consciousness is found in his belief in corporate progress—“Though it is hard to pinpoint the birth of an idea, for all intents and purposes the modern idea of technological ‘progress’ (in the sense of a steady, cumulative, historical advance in applied scientific knowledge) began with Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning and became fully articulated in his later works. Knowledge is power, and when embodied in the form of new technical inventions and mechanical discoveries it is the force that drives history – this was Bacon’s key insight… That history might in fact be progressive, i.e., an onward and upward ascent – and not, as Aristotle had taught, merely cyclical or, as cultural pessimists from Hesiod to Spengler have supposed, a descending or retrograde movement, became for Bacon an article of secular faith which he propounded with evangelical force and a sense of mission. In the Advancement, the idea is offered tentatively, as a kind of hopeful hypothesis. But in later works such as the New Organon, it becomes almost a promised destiny: Enlightenment and a better world, Bacon insists, lie within our power; they require only the cooperation of learned citizens and the active development of the arts and sciences.” (David Simpson, “Francis Bacon,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available from http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bacon.htm.)

Bacon first presented his method in Novum Organum (New Organ/Instrument, in contrast to Aristotle’s Organon) in 1620, a year before being indicted and barred from public office in 1621 because of vast corruption as Lord Chancellor under King James. The “Baconian method” is often referred to as the forerunner to the modern “scientific method.”

[7] E.g., see Dictionary of the History of Ideas, “Renaissance Humanism;” available from http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-19.

[8] The English word “nature/natural” derives from the Latin word natura, which corresponded with the Greek word phusis. Originally, both words simply referred to the inherent composition of a thing (see Online Etymology Dictionary, “Nature,” available from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nature; and Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon of Classical Greek, “fu,sij,” available from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?entry=fu/sis&display=Latin+transliteration&links=Perseus+Web+Texts&smk=1).

[9] See Online Etymology Dictionary, “Physical,” available from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=physical.

[10] See Online Etymology Dictionary, “Supernatural,” available from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=supernatural. Moreover, the concept of “religion” developed within this context (c.1535) to help define belief in that which exists beyond human perception (see Online Etymology Dictionary, “Religion,” available from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=religion. Thus, “religion” is a false concept since the metaphysical construct (i.e. metaphysical dualism) within which it was developed is false. All human beings simply have a worldview, a basic framework for their perception of their own existence—whether it be animistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, monotheistic, or atheistic.

[11] The Bible is completely void of any form of metaphysical dualism and its begotten concepts such as “natural” and “supernatural.” Phusis/phusikos universally refers the inherent nature of a thing (cf. Rom. 1:26f; 2:14; 11:21ff; 1 Cor. 11:14; Gal. 2:15; 4:8; Eph. 2:3; Jam. 3:7; 2 Pe. 2:12), and there is no word in the Hebrew language that can be even remotely translated as “nature” or “natural.” Likewise, the term “supernatural,” which is commonly used to describe the heavenly realms, is never used anywhere in the Bible. The consistent use of this term reveals the bedrock of the Hellenistic worldview in the Church today. Moreover, the Bible speaks nowhere of the modern concept of “religion” which assumes a naturalistic metaphysical construct (esp. in contrast to secularism). Though threskos (Jam. 1:26) and threskeia (Acts 26:5; Col. 2:18; Jam 1:26f) are commonly translated “religion” and “religious,” respectively, these words simply refer to an individual’s internal quality of piety and adherence to their belief system rather than an external metaphysical construct.

[12] The treaty effectively gave Lutheranism official status within the domains of the Holy Roman Empire. According to the policy of cuius regio, eius religio, the religion (Roman Catholic or Lutheran) of a region’s ruler determined the religion of its people. During a grace period, families could choose to move to a region where their faith was practiced (cf. Article 24). However, neither the Anabaptists nor Calvinists were protected under the peace, so many Protestant groups living under the rule of a Lutheran prince still found themselves in danger of the charge of heresy (Article 17: “However, all such as do not belong to the two above named religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it.”). It was ultimately intolerance towards the Calvinists which caused them to take desperate measures, the most notable of which was the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618), that led to the Thirty Years’ War (tolerance officially being extended at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648).

Reformed eschatology thus produced reformed missiology which mimicked previous Catholic missiology. However, with the addition of “theological progressivism” to the previously held Hellenistic/Augustinian eschatology, the new “apostles and prophets” were even less missiologically oriented, as the Counter-Reformation’s greatest apologist, Robert Bellarmine, pointed out: “C12: The effectiveness of its teaching. Heretics are never said to have converted either pagans or Jews to the faith, but only to have perverted Christians. But in this one century the Catholics have converted many thousands of heathen in the new world. Every year a certain number of Jews are converted and baptized at Rome by Catholics who adhere in loyalty to the Bishop of Rome; and there are also some Turks who are converted by the Catholics both at Rome and elsewhere. The Lutherans compare themselves to the apostles and the evangelists; yet though they have among them a very large number of Jews, and in Poland and Hungary have the Turks as their near neighbors, they have hardly converted even so much as a handful.” [Robert Bellarmine, Controversiae, Book IV; quoted in Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 2^nd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 188-189.]

[1] “Age of Enlightenment, a term used to describe the trends in thought and letters in Europe and the American colonies during the 18th century prior to the French Revolution (1789-1799). The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself, convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and a respect for humanity… During the Enlightenment, people came to assume that through a judicious use of reason, an unending progress would be possible—progress in knowledge, in technical achievement, and even in moral values… They saw the church—especially the Roman Catholic Church—as the principal force that had enslaved the human mind in the past… Nothing was attacked with more intensity and ferocity than the church, with all its wealth, political power, and suppression of the free exercise of reason… Many proponents of the Enlightenment were not philosophers in the commonly accepted sense of the word; they were popularizers engaged in a self-conscious effort to win converts. They liked to refer to themselves as the “party of humanity,” and in an attempt to mold public opinion in their favor, they made full use of pamphlets, anonymous tracts, and the large numbers of new journals and newspapers being created… During the first half of the 18th century, the leaders of the Enlightenment waged an uphill struggle against considerable odds. Several were imprisoned for their writings, and most were hampered by government censorship and attacks by the church. In many respects, however, the later decades of the century marked a triumph of the movement in Europe and America. By the 1770s, second-generation philosophes were receiving government pensions and taking control of established intellectual academies. The enormous increase in the publication of newspapers and books ensured a wide diffusion of their ideas.” [“Age of Enlightenment,” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2008 (Microsoft Corporation, 1997-2008); available from http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761571679/Age_of_Enlightenment.html.]

[2] “The Enlightenment brought to fruition the aspirations of two earlier periods of enlightenment, namely, classical Greece and the Renaissance and Reformation.” (Dictionary of the History of Ideas, “Enlightenment,” available from http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-10.)

[3] As human reason was exalted, divine revelation was conversely condemned. The Enlightenment thus overturned the accepted belief that mysticism and revelation are the primary sources of knowledge and wisdom, which was blamed for fomenting the political instability of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The product of this shift in the locus of reality was a radical distrust of authority and tradition (esp. Christian), which came under attack in the form of biting sarcasm and ridicule. Foremost in this attack was the French rationalist Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), i.e. “Voltaire” (known as the “prophet of progress”), who was known for shouting “Ecrasez l’infame!” meaning “Destroy the infamous thing!” Denouncing Christian doctrine and belief, he scoffed at the miracles in the Bible and made fun of traditional Christian saying, “If Jesus had been taken up to a hill where he could see all the kingdoms of the earth, why hadn’t he discovered America instead of Columbus?” Likewise, Kant summarized the Enlightenment like this: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage s man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’—that is the motto of enlightenment.” [Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784).]

[4] First conceived of in the winter of 1620 and later published in Discourse on Method (1637), the Latin phrase literally means “I am thinking/doubting, therefore I exist.” From this premise he proposed a philosophical framework for the natural sciences, attempting to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. By attempting to secure a certainty of knowledge based on human reason, Descartes radically shifted the locus of reality about humanity’s perception of it.

[5] Newton thus largely paved the way for modern “methodological naturalism,” the disciplinary method of investigation conducted as if nature is all that there is. When asked about the lack of mention of God in his works on physics, Newton replied with the now famous statement, “Hypotheses non fingo.” (“I do not make hypotheses.”) [Isaac Newton. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, General Scholium, Third edition (1726), trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (University of California Press, 1999), 943.] The centrality of Newton’s work in the development of the Enlightenment is immeasurable, as it provided the metaphysical framework for the functioning of multitudes of other disciplines. Many have summed up Newton’s role in the Enlightenment with English poet, Alexander Pope’ famous epitaph: “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.” [Alexander Pope “Epitaph. Intended for Sir Isaac Newton, In Westminster Abbey” (1730), The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (New Haven: Yale, 1966).]

[6] Lewis Hackett, “The Age of Enlightenment: The European Dream of Progress and Enlightenment,” International World History Project (1992); available from http://history-world.org/age_of_enlightenment.htm.

[7] Born in Königsberg, the capital of Prussia at the time, Kant enrolled at the University of Königsberg (where he would spend his entire career) at the age of 16. The bulk of his studies and early teaching career was focused on Newtonian physics and discussions of metaphysics surrounding it, even discovering the retardation of the rotation of the Earth, for which he won the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754. It was not until later in his career that he began to focus heavily on philosophical issues of the mind and reason. However, it is important to understand the naturalistic foundation that Kantian philosophy is built upon, which paved the way for the progression of naturalism to it present form, as Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”) reflects, “The sort of geological speculation to which I am now referring (geological aetiology, in short) was created as a science by that famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, when, in 1775, he wrote his ‘General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or, an Attempt to Account for the Constitutional and Mechanical Origin of the Universe, upon Newtonian Principles.’” [Thomas H. Huxley, Discourses: Biological & Geological (London: Macmillan and Co, 1869), 320.]

[8] Those who tried to hold on to some form of theocentrism had to resort to belief in a God completely independent of the natural realm, i.e. “deism.” This resulted in the common perception of God as a “Watchmaker,” who created the universe, wound it up, and left it to run on its own. Though Deism is generally considered to have died out as an influential school of thought by around 1800, the remnants of which have produced a “practical deism,” according to the modern sense of the term—“a person who believes that God created the universe and then abandoned it.” (HyperDictionary.com, “Deist,” available from http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=deist.) This metaphysical construct results in a “cosmic loneliness” that has bound the soul and consciousness of the West with a straightjacket of abandonment, producing a catatonic culture utterly hopeless in its struggle to gain victory over pain, suffering and death.

[9] “The human condition is not necessarily immutable or retrogressive owing to the Fall. On the contrary, undeniable and cumulative progress can be seen to occur in the fields of science, technology, and the applied arts. Progress [became] a fact of history.” (Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Hellmut O. Pappe ed., “Enlightenment,” available from http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-10).

[10] First developed by French scholar Jean Astruc and followed by the formal use of the term by German scholar Johann Eichhorn, “the father of modern higher criticism,” in the second edition of Einleitung (1787), this anthropocentric approach to the Bible is still the standard in all mainline Western training institutions. A notable application of this is seen in the “Jefferson Bible” or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, as it was formally titled by Thomas Jefferson. In an attempt to extract the true doctrine of Jesus, Jefferson simply removed sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists. Creating a single chronological narative by cutting and pasting passages from the Gospels, Jefferson begins with an account of Jesus’s birth without references to angels, genealogy, or prophecy. Miracles, references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus’ resurrection are also completely absent. The work ends with the words: “Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” (17:62-64; archived at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html.)

[11] This is why “revival history” always starts with the “First Great Awakening” (c.1730s-1740s) under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, etc.—all self-professed postmillennialists. Revivalism is found nowhere in the Bible (though many misinterpret Peter’s reference to the resurrection of the dead in Acts 3:19), and it is a poor explanation for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Because of this misinterpretation, burnout and disillusionment has followed every major revival, which is the little known dark side of revival history.

[1] With a mechanism in place to produce the complexity of existence, the necessity of an intelligent designer became obsolete. The existence of the universe in its present form, and the complexity of the life therein, could be rationally explained with complete independence of any external force or intervention. Thus, the natural universe became self-existent, self-conscious, self-sufficient, self-determining, etc.—i.e. existential deification (cf. Ex. 3:14-15). The natural universe is thus God, and God is the natural universe. Herein is the ultimate form of idolatry (i.e. worship of a false god), and humanity claims the highest form of existence within this deification.

[2] Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, 8^th ed. (Amherst: Humanist Press, 1997), 126; available at http://www.corliss-lamont.org/philos8.htm.

[3] As a product of European Enlightenment thought, Hutton laid out his uniformitarian ideas to undermine the authority of the Bible, for if the Bible was a fairy tale or myth, then the king didn’t actually receive his authority from God. This anti-monarchy expression of the Enlightenment led to the political revolutions in Europe and the Americas during the late 18^th-early 19^th centuries, such as the American Revolution (1776), French Revolution (1789), Polish Constitution (1791), Spanish Revolution (1823), Polish Revolution (1831), Italian Revolution (1848), and the German Revolution (1848), with ramifications on the Latin American revolutions: Haiti (1791-1804), Bolivia (1809-25), Argentina (1810-17), Chile (1810-18), Colombia (1810-19), Mexico (1810-21), Paraguay (1811), Venezuela (1811-22), Peru (1821), Ecuador (1822), and Brazil (1822).

[4] Lyell’s ultimate mission in life was the establishment of Hutton’s uniformitarianism (still highly controversial at the time), as the full title of his book reveals, Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation.

[5] “Evolve” (from L. evolvere, “unroll,” originally meaning “unrolling of a book”) was first used in the modern scientific sense by Lyell in Principles of Geology. Darwin used the word only once, in the closing paragraph of The Origin of Species, preferring the description “descent with modification.” Herbert Spencer and others eventually popularized the term “evolution.” (Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper ed., “Evolve,” available from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=evolve.)

[6] There is debate as to what Darwin meant by “favored races.” The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1928) gives a fairly clear definition of the Darwinian concept of race: “A group of persons, animals, or plants, connected by common decent or origin.” Though race is not only related to humans, it is most clearly seen in the different races of men, ranging from “civilized” to “savage.” Darwin’s encounters with the natives of the Tierra del Fuego on his Beagle voyage convinced him that civilization had evolved over time from a more primitive state, as is seen in his later work The Descent of Man (1871): “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2^nd ed. (New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1874), 178)

Though hinting at an application to man’s evolution at the end of Origin (e.g. “[Much] light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”—p. 407), Darwin intentionally refrained from a direct application to man because of the obvious social ramifications. It seems clear that Darwin viewed his Origin as a two-part series, Origin/Descent, and that once hecompleted his total task, he intended that Origin should never be read without Descent. Thus, in Origin he was merely laying thegroundwork for Descent, and only by reading both his theory of descent with modification (Origin) and its application to humanity (Descent) can Darwin be fully, or “rightly,” understood.To regard Descent as merely an afterthought, or as a separate collection of subsequent thoughts, would be to miss the whole point Darwin was trying to make: that all plants and animals had a common ancestor, and conversely that humans were the most advanced descendant of all plants and animals.

In this light the racial implications of evolutionism are clear. As anthropoids evolved in different areas of the world, some evolved faster than others, since interbreeding was impossible due to geographic distance. The “savage races,” such as negroids and aboriginals, were those who had been isolated and fallen behind in their development. Thus, it became the responsibility of the more evolved Europeans, i.e. “the white man’s burden” (originally taken from a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling), to civilize the savages through education, medicine, technology, etc. As the discipline of anthropology came into its own in the mid-19^th century, technological development became to standard of human evolution, which generally moved through three stages: 1) “stone age” (c.3500BC+), 2) bronze age” (c.3500-1000BC), and 3) “iron age” (c.1000BC-Industrialization). This technologically-based condescension toward non-Western ways and culture is still deeply rooted in the Western worldview.

[7] “It is a truly wonderful fact—the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity—that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other.” [Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (New York: The Modern Library, 1859), 170.] The complexity of existence was thus the result of an impersonal force (i.e. natural selection), which dictated the gradual evolution of all organisms, resulting in the appearance of design seen in the world today.

[8] Assuming denial of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch by Eichhorn and others, German historian Julius Wellhausen published Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1878), in which he introduced the concept (known as the “documentary hypothesis”) of the evolutionary development of religion in the Old Testament, proposing that a redactor (R) composed the Pentateuch by combining four earlier source texts (J, E, D and P) of progressing/evolving religious complexity and refinement.

Moreover, evolutionism powerfully validated the growing liberal ideas first put forth by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) that Jesus was simply a human being who had fully attained “God-consciousness.” Likewise, all human beings are on a similar path toward full recognition of “utter dependence” upon God.

[9] Ontologically, man is simply a random conglomeration of matter within time and space—no different from the rest of the animals, since all evolved from a common ancestor. Darwin considered Ernst Haeckel’s (1834-1919) work in embryology “by far the strongest single class of facts in favor of [his theory].” [Charles Darwin, “September 10, 1860, letter to Asa Gray,” The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, ed. Francis Darwin (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1896)] Haeckel is most famous for his “biogenetic law,” summarized it in the now-famous phrase, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” He coined the terms “ontogeny” to designate the embryonic development of the individual, and “phylogeny” to designate the evolutionary history of the species. He believed that embryos “recapitulate” their evolutionary history by passing through ancient adult forms as they develop. In other words, the development of an embryo (ontogeny) is a speeded-up replay of the evolution of the species (phylogeny).

[10] Moreover, the end of the “Great Century” of Christian missions (c.1800-1900) was ultimately the result of the integration of Darwinian evolution into Western missiology. As naturalistic pantheism was integrated into the Western worldview, the missions movement redirected its efforts to help people survive by provision of naturalistic necessities, i.e. food, water and shelter. Since missionaries generally carried the bulk of the educational burden in the context of Western colonialism, the “Great Century” of missions did more, long-term, to establish naturalism around the world than any other single factor. Though most missionaries were genuine and sincere in their motives, they none-the-less carried with them their worldview, expressed in “the white man’s burden,” which saw the peoples of the earth as “savages” who needed to be “civilized” by Christianity.

[1] “Continental thinkers [general set of post-Kantian traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe, in contrast to “analytic philosophy”] like to take as the starting-point of modern thought man’s three ‘humiliations,’ namely, the recognition that the earth is not the center of the universe [i.e. Renaissance]; that man, rather than being created in the divine image, is a creature of nature like the other animals [i.e. Evolutionism]; and that his reason is subject to the passions and subconscious urges [i.e. Freudian Psychology].” (Dictionary of the History of Ideas, “Enlightenment,” available from http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-10.)

[2] Peter Gay, “The TIME 100: Sigmund Freud,” TIME Magazine Online, 29 March 1999; available from http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/freud.html. See also Dave Breese, Seven Men Who Rule the World from the Grave (Chicago: Moody Press, 1990).

[3] His fundamental idea concerning human consciousness was that it was divided into two “selves” or parts: the conscious and the unconscious (in which potent sexual/aggressive drives and defenses against them struggle for supremacy). It is the conflict between these “selves” which brings about all mental illness. “Defense mechanisms,” such as “denial,” are the natural processes of the conscious trying to “repress” traumatic thoughts into the unconscious. Within this naturalistic view, there are no mere accidents in mental procedures. The most nonsensical notion, the most casual slip of the tongue, the most fantastic dream, must have a meaning and can be used to unriddle the often incomprehensible maneuvers we call thinking. Thus, “free association,” saying whatever comes to mind, was the basis for his psychoanalytic observation.

[4] Monism generally refers to “the doctrine that reality consists of a single basic substance or element.” (HyperDictionary.com, “Monism,” available from http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=monism) Thus, “anthropological monism” refers to the doctrine that human beings consist of a single basic substance or element. “Naturalistic anthropological monism” assumes that substance to be a random conglomeration of matter within a naturalistic universe. This is distinguished from Freud’s psychological dualism of conscious vs. unconscious, which is simply a subcategory within his overarching view of anthropological monism.

[5] The five stage of human development being: Oral Stage (0-1 yrs), Anal Stage (1-3 yrs), Phallic Stage (3-6 yr), Latency Period (6 yrs-puberty), and Genital Stage (puberty-maturity).

[6] After graduating magna cum laude from Bowdoin College with degrees in biology and psychology, Kinsey went on to get his Sc.D. in entomology from Harvard University (1919), introducing the gall wasp to the scientific community and laying out its phylogeny. Joining the department of zoology at Indiana University Bloomington in 1920, Kinsey spent the next 16 years gathering specimens and researching the evolutionary history of gall wasps, publishing a monograph on the origin of the species in 1930, The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips: A Study in the Origin of Species. Kinsey initially became interested in the different forms of human sexual practices around 1933, and in the years following he developed the Kinsey Scale, which measured sexual orientation ranking people from 0 to 6, where 0 is exclusively heterosexual and 6 is exclusively homosexual.

After obtaining research funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey commenced his extensive research on human sexuality and founded the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction (1947) at IU, culminating with the Kinsey Reports—the first publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 followed by Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953. In them Kinsey claimed that Americans are 10% to 47%, more or less, homosexual (thus, most homosexual activists today cite Kinsey as the man who made the homosexual movement possible. [See Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement, ed. Mark Thompson, Stonewall Inn Edition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 22, 59-60, 102, 164; note also the father of the homosexual “civil rights” movement, Harry Hay, and his wide circulation of Kinsey’s 10% figure, urging that homosexuality be seen no longer as an act of sodomy but as a 10% minority class (Judith Reisman, “Kinsey and the Homosexual Revolution,” The Journal of Human Sexuality (Carrollton: Lewis and Stanley, 1996), 21.).]

Moreover, as an ardent student of Freud, he argued that humans are fundamentally sexual in nature and that children are sexual from birth (note his molestation of 317 children in chapter five of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Tables 30-34, presenting data on children’s orgasms, beginning with five-month-old infants). Thus, deviant sexual activity is normal and natural, and society should not stifle any form of sexual activity. Kinsey’s Reports naturally led to a storm of controversy and are generally regarded as the primary trigger for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

[7] “The evolutionary idea that Freud relied on most heavily in the manuscript is the maxim that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,’ that is, that the development of the individual recapitulates the evolution of the entire species.” (“Lost Paper Shows Freud’s Effort to Link Analysis and Evolution,” New York Times, 10 February 1987, c4.) Born an Austrian Jew, Freud became an aggressive atheist after becoming infatuated with Darwinism at the University of Vienna (1873-1881), which became the basic metaphysical framework for the development of his psychological theories.

[8] See Steven J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 158-9.

[9] Freud’s application of his psychoanalytic theory to anthropology and religion found its culmination the year before he died in Moses and Monotheism (1938).

[10] Brad Holland, “God vs. Science,” TIME Magazine, 13 November 2006 (Vol. 168, No. 20), p. 50.]

[11] “Within the New Age one theological affirmation [of four primary universal themes] has found popular support, the identification of the individual as a one in essence with the divine. Underlying this notion, which finds a wide variety of forms is a monistic world in which the only reality is “God,” usually thought of in predominantly impersonal terms as Mind or Energy.” (J. Gordon Melton, “New Age: An Introduction,” in The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions, ed. James R. Lewis (Prometheus Books, 1998); archived at http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/newage_intro.html.)

[12] If the parameters of reality are defined by each individual, then reality itself is logically relative to each individual. This is the driving force of relativism in the Western world—“The philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations involved.” (HyperDictionary.com, “Relativism,” available from http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=relativism.) Relativism finds its expression primarily in three ways (in logical declination): 1) epistemologically, i.e. there is no universally true knowledge, but only diverse interpretations of it, 2) existentially, i.e. there is no universally true belief system concerning existence, but only diverse interpretations of it, and 3) morally, i.e. there are no universally true standards of ethical conduct, but only the cultural norms of particular societies.

[13] This contradicts the Biblical view of the human person as dichotomous (two parts) or trichotomous (three parts). Like the Tabernacle and the Temple, the human person has two primary parts: the outer, material man, or “body,” and the inner, immaterial man, or “soul.” (cf. Mt. 10:28) Moreover, like the tabernacle/temple, this “soul” is further divided into the inner man (~holy place) and the innermost man (~most holy place), divided only by a thin veil. Thus, the human person can be seen as dichotomous (body & soul) or trichotomous (body & soul-spirit). Of greater import is the annihilation of belief in the imago dei, (i.e. man being created in the image of God). Since human consciousness is simply a higher developed continuation of the consciousness of other animals, humans exist in the image of previous animal ancestors, rather than the image of God. The loss of our identity as being created in the image of God produces a corresponding and proportionate sense of meaninglessness in our existence. Likewise, being created in the image of our animal ancestors, the logical conclusion is to assume their moral ethic, i.e. “survival of the fittest,” resulting in the explosion of youth violence.

[14] This thus confounds the three-fold progression of the human person in salvation: 1) justification—the filling of the innermost being with the Holy Spirit at the New Birth, 2) sanctification—the purification of the mind, emotions and will in the inner being by the progressive dominion of the Holy Spirit, and 3) glorification—the resurrection of the body by the complete regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Man became a “living being” (Gen. 2:7) at creation by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and he will experience the restoration of original glory only through an existential union with the Holy Spirit resulting in the resurrection of the body.

[15] It is believed that though we have made significant functional mistakes in the 20^th century, we have learned from them, and humanism will ultimately triumph over tyranny. Moreover, naturalistic ontological death is soon to be overcome through nano-technology. It is believed that in the years to come microscopic nano-machines, “nanobots,” will be injected into the human body to perpetually repair and regenerate it. For an introduction to the fields of transhumanism and technological singularity see Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough To Live Forever (Rodale Press, 2004); also Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Penguin, 2005). Kurzweil, as well as Richard P. Feynman, K. Eric Drexler, and Robert A. Freitas, are leaders in the field of transhumanist nanotechnology (part of a larger field called “technological immorality”), and major organizations involved include the World Transhumanist Association (www.transhumanism.org), Extropy Institute (www.extropy.org), and Immortality Institute (www.imminst.org).

[16] Within this highly individualistic, heavenized eschatology, “church growth” has become the dominant missiology of the West, proliferating mega-churches throughout the earth. Such a “seeker sensitive” approach to salvation, generally rooted in pop-Freudian psychology, has abandoned the original proclamation of the Church, i.e. the coming Day of the Lord and judgment of Messiah (cf. Acts 2:21; 10:42; etc.), and the urgent need of universal repentance (cf. Acts 2:38; 3:19; etc.). The original themes of the apostolic gospel are not so much ignored or disregarded as they are simply unheard of.