Dr. Gottfried’s judgment that the Enlightenment is a heresy derived from elements of Christianity seems both uncontroversial and well-established. In noting that “heresies destroy religious institutions much faster than an entirely different set of beliefs”, he stands on solid historical ground. While Islam has been Christendom’s greatest external foe, its origins lie in heretical Christian teachings, as St. John Damascene attested. Had the Cathar religion not been suppressed, it would have posed a deadly threat to the Christian faith and the life of Europe. Interestingly, medieval Bosnia was rife with similar cults prior to the Ottoman conquest, and it is likely for this reason the country was such easy prey for Islamic conversion campaigns.
The Enlightenment heresy has attained dominance in the West because it thoroughly infiltrated culture and seized political, economic and financial power from the 18th century onward. The quest for a perfect kingdom of this world, a “City of Man”, is a temptation that well predates the efforts of men like Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, though never has it exercised such power over humanity as in the contemporary era. An entire array of systems of thought and political movements are rooted in chiliastic heresy, the notion that man can bring about the divine millennial reign on earth. This way of thought has a lineage stretching back to figures like the monk Joachim of Fiore, proclaiming the Age of the Holy Spirit, and the various sects whose warfare scorched northern Europe during the fragmentation of Christendom in the 16th and 17th centuries. Even the driving force behind Renaissance pagan revivalism was a new deviation into humanist doctrines.
There’s no contradiction in stating that a major objective of modernity is the destruction of traditional Christianity and its replacement by a counterfeit religion. The proclamation of the “immaculate conception of man” results from a denial of our fallen nature. The new holy trinity of reason, will and desire and the belief in unceasing moral and material progress stem from a perversion of faith. The 19th-century Spanish statesman Juan Donoso Cortes gave a comprehensive exposition of the secular heresy in his letter to Cardinal Fornari:
The tree of error seems today to have reached its providential maturity. First planted by the original generation of audacious heretics, then tended by further generations, it bore leaves in our grandfathers’ time, flowers in the time of our fathers, and now, within our reach, it is laden with fruit…
Then humanity, who has no need for the Church, which is hidden in its sanctuary, nor God, chained to Heaven like Prometheus to his rock, turns his eyes earthwards and dedicates himself exclusively to the cult of material interests. This is the age of utilitarian systems, of the great expansion of commerce, of feverish industry, of the insolence of the rich and the impatience of the poor. This state of material wealth and religious indigence is always followed by one of those gigantic catastrophes which tradition and history etch permanently on the memory of man. The wise and talented meet in council to ward it off, but the hurricane which comes suddenly scatters their deliberations and carries them off together with their pleas.
Enlightenment ideals in their various developed forms provide man only a materialist parody of peace, order and brotherhood, a phenomenon appropriately termed Christianity without Christ. This abandonment of the Word, or Logos, can be veiled by social work and sentimentalism, as in liberal Christian churches. The apostasy may also be consciously realized and explicit- witness a Bakunin or Proudhon raising the banner of Lucifer’s rebellion.
Is the present liberal order, its end goal the total organization of man’s earthly happiness, much less brazen in its hostility to Christ, in its promotion of falsehood? Its cunning lies in the distortion of His revelation to advance the antitheist cause. Vladimir Soloviev’s Antichrist reveals his boundless pride and self-love, his desire to supplant Christ’s saving role, as he prepares to transform the world according to his will:
‘Christ,’ he said, “who preached and practiced moral good in life, was a reformer of humanity, whereas I am called to be the benefactor of that same humanity, partly reformed and partly incapable of being reformed. I will give everyone what they require. As a moralist, Christ divided humanity by the notion of good and evil. I shall unite it by benefits which are as much needed by good as by evil people. I shall be the true representative of that God who makes his sun to shine upon the good and the evil alike, and who makes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. Christ brought the sword; I shall bring peace. Christ threatened the earth with the Day of Judgment. But I shall be the last judge, and my judgment will be not only that of justice but also that of mercy. The justice that will be meted out in my sentences will not be a retributive justice but a distributive one. I shall judge each person according to his deserts, and shall give everybody what he needs.”
Modern universalism is in large part an outgrowth of Christian heresies, but this fact should not be construed as an attack on Christianity. Rather, it demonstrates the subtlety of the deception that grips our civilization- the inversion of the doctrine and principles of the Faith as a means to apostasy.
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The Cunning of Heresy
Dr. Gottfried’s judgment that the Enlightenment is a heresy derived from elements of Christianity seems both uncontroversial and well-established. In noting that “heresies destroy religious institutions much faster than an entirely … [Read More]
Posted by Mark Hackard on December 04, 2009
The Usual Suspects