ABSTRACT
In the second half of the eighteenth century a new understanding of the world
began to manifest itself, namely the Enlightenment, whose roots are to be
sought in Renaissance humanism (see p. 88), French and German philosophy
and in English natural science. A new faith in man and his potential was created;
it was promulgated with such great force, self-assurance and pathos that it
brought about a turning point in the history of Christianity. It was felt that the
principles governing morality and law which were common to all men were
inherent in man; hence reason and the voice of man’s conscience provided the
best guide for his life. In the realm of legal philosophy this led to the foundation
of natural law, which entailed the detachment of morality from divine revela-
tion. Furthermore, where people had previously spoken of the King ‘by the
grace of God’ (see p. 113), new ideas about the sovereignty of the people and the
secular state were now advanced. Philosophy was no longer to be subordinated
to theology. Science was to become an independent discipline; its explanations
were to be based on experience, observation and the principles of reason. In the
field of historical research this entailed that one was obliged to found his
knowledge on documents deriving from the time one sought to describe, rather
than on later accounts. Individual scholars began to apply the new source-
critical methods to the analysis of the lives of the saints, the biblical writings
and events in the history of the church, and an attempt was made to avoid
introducing God and the Holy Spirit as contributory causes in causal explana-
tions.
