The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx
Dominic Erdozain
Abstract
Histories of unbelief typically emphasize external challenges to religious faith, such as the natural sciences, historical criticism, or changes in social conditions and lifestyle. This study accepts much of the chronology of the traditional account of “secularization” but it proposes a very different cause: conscience. Tracing the liberation and expansion of the Protestant conscience from Martin Luther to Karl Marx, this book argues that Christian concepts of moral equity and personal freedom have consistently acted as the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy. Revealing links between ... More
Histories of unbelief typically emphasize external challenges to religious faith, such as the natural sciences, historical criticism, or changes in social conditions and lifestyle. This study accepts much of the chronology of the traditional account of “secularization” but it proposes a very different cause: conscience. Tracing the liberation and expansion of the Protestant conscience from Martin Luther to Karl Marx, this book argues that Christian concepts of moral equity and personal freedom have consistently acted as the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, this study demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of “natural reason” espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and “scientific materialism” in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a series of secular challenges to Christian faith, but a pattern of ethical protest against divisive renderings of religious orthodoxy. Conscience, not science, was the motor of unbelief.
Keywords:
conscience,
doubt,
reason,
unbelief,
Reformation,
Enlightenment,
secularism,
atheism,
humanism,
Christianity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199844616 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844616.001.0001 |
