Rationalism

Rationalism

The names rationalist and rationalism have been used in so many senses within the past three hundred years that they cannot be said to stand quite definitely for any type or school of philosophic thought. For Bacon, a rationalist or rationalis was a physician with a priori views of disease and bodily function; and the Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school were named rationalistas about the same period by their opponents. A little later some Continental scholars applied the name to the Socinians and deists; and later still it designated, in Britain, types of Christian thinkers who sought to give a relatively reasoned form to articles of the current creed which had generally been propounded as mysteries to be taken on faith. The claim to apply reason in such matters was by many orthodox persons regarded as in itself impious,[Pg 2] while others derided the adoption of the title of rationalist or reasonist by professing Christians as an unwarranted pretence of superior reasonableness. Used in ethics, the label rationalism served in the earlier part of the eighteenth century to stigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought to make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of natural religion. Later in the century, though in England we find the status of rational claimed for orthodox belief in miracles and prophecies as the only valid evidence for Christianity,[1] rationalism became the recognised name for the critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to reduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of natural events misunderstood; and several professed histories of modern rationalism have accordingly dealt mainly or wholly with the developments of Biblical criticism in Germany. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 31941
Author: Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Release Date: Apr 11, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English