Scanners Set To Discernment: The Progression Of Worldviews Leading To The Acceptance Of Extraterrestrials (Part 4)

The Renaissance was sparked through a reacquaintance with the Greco-Roman sources of antiquity brought about through increased contact with the Muslim world. Through the study of this literature, its enthusiasts came to question the enforced dictates of an ecclesiastical hierarchy that had grown too concerned with maintaining a hold on its own status and prestige in the name of preparing the greatest number for the next life, which for most people came considerably sooner than to what those now living in the developed world are today accustomed. To adherents of the Renaissance perspective, this world and life in it were worthy of consideration as ends in themselves. This emphasis upon man, his endeavors, and improving upon these to the greatest extent possible was known as Humanism. And though at that time the term was not quite the synonym for a militant and activist form of unbelief that it is today, the wheels to a degree were set in motion by this movement that would ultimately result in Western civilization being less explicitly Christian in terms of its overall prevailing orientation.

Though the Italian Renaissance is recalled in the public consciousness for its more earthly manifestations such as art and poetic literature, the so-called Humanistic academic methodology of seeking inspiration by going back to original sources took a different route in the northern parts of Europe. For whereas the Italian part of the movement tended to look towards the Greco-Roman background of the Mediterranean past, scholars in the North tended to get back to the Biblical roots of the Christian faith. By reemphasizing Scripture rather than the organizational traditions that had accrued onto the religion in the centuries since its founding and textual codification, thinkers such as Martin Luther, Phillip Melanchthon, and John Calvin realized that the church was in serious need of reform if the Bride of Christ was to be made upright, forgiven once more, and prevented from taking additional steps into what they considered spiritual adultery.

What the Reformers did for the Christian faith was to reprioritize the emphasis back to the individual’s direct relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ with good works serving as evidence of salvation rather than a necessity in order to be granted it. This idea was fraught with a number of implications in terms of worldview. For starters, though the institution would still play a pivotal cultural role as the assembled body of believers and often the venue through which the Christian learned the specifics of the faith, in the minds of those adopting this renewed perspective, the church institutional would no longer be viewed as the dispenser of the means of grace. As such, whether for good or ill, other institutions such as the state and nation were elevated in terms of prestige and power.

Granted, a door had been reopened with the possibility of granting man more freedom than he could have ever before imagined while bringing him closer still to a truer and more direct relationship with his Creator and Redeemer. The thing of it was, when there was so much riding on the line in terms of sociocultural power (as well as formidable intellects and personalities psychologically vested in insisting upon that something so fundamental as their respective conceptions of God were indeed the right one) it became very easy for each side to lose sight of the loftier principles for which each originally stood up to defend. This resulted in what historian Glenn Sunshine wittingly refers to in “Why You Think The Way You Do” as "Killing For The Prince Of Peace" (103). It is easy to take sides in regards to these conflicts if one is devout dependent upon where one comes down along the Protestant/Catholic divide. However, if one strives to retain a sense of historical objectivity in regards to the total scope of this period, one has to admit at times the response on either side of this dispute was not exactly always the finest hour of the Bride of Christ.

For example, in Protestant settings where early founders made appeals to the sanctity of individual conscience to decide matters of faith, it was not uncommon to legally penalize those refusing membership in formalized state churches. The situation within Catholic lands and territories was pretty much the same as authorities there also felt it was a Christian obligation to make those unwilling to recant as uncomfortable as possible. Eventually, both sides would come to blows in a series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War where, in the name of international intrigue and rivalry all wrapped up in the veneer of enthusiastic religious devotion, nearly a third of the population living within the Holy Roman Empire was wiped out. To this day in Germany, the conflict is remembered as being more devastating than World War I and World War II despite the heavy losses suffered during those particular conflagrations that would cast their respective shadows across the geopolitical face of the twentieth century (Sunshine, 107).

This particular spilling of unfathomable gallons of human blood at the commencement of the Modern Era would have a profound impact on the intellectually sensitive and astute of that time as well. Thinkers in the years following this historical tragedy wanted to avoid the same thing from happening again in the future but were not quite ready to turn their back on God or at least the acknowledgment that God got the cosmos started. Intellectuals of this particular philosophical inclination came to be known as Deists. Having seen their world shattered as a result of a heated dispute over insistence as to what side had the minutest details regarding God the most correct, the European intelligentsia set out in the hopes of establishing a number of assumptions or principles that all rational men could agree upon. At first, this did not necessarily result in blatant unbelief or an outright denial of fundamental Christian doctrines.

By Frederick Meekins