Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

Ses s i on 3: Modern i t y , Pos t -Modern i t y , and the Chur ch Today 65

era, in which mankind was finally coming of age. All other past histories and peoples were considered inferior to the present age.

~ Geoffrey W. Bromiley. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia . Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001, c1979-1988, S. 3:743).

a. Notions of the individual

b. Emergence of toleration of all religions: no religion gains primacy

c. Deistic notions of the divine; generic

d. Assertions against the divine rights of kings

e. The germinations of the republic

f. Political revolution

3. New philosophies undermine hegemony of past religious ideology: in other words, new ideas call absolutized Christian faith of whatever stripe into serious question!

4. Serious assault on the possibility of knowing the unknowable: e.g., Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason

B. Protestant Liberalism

1. Protestant liberalism, and the history of religious schools in Germany