The purpose of this article is to critically review and evaluate the book "Theological Roots of Modernity" written by Alan Gillespie. The work is one of the successful socio-theological texts. The author develops his idea in the book with an optimistic stance towards modernity. His main concern is to prove the role of theology in the formation of modernity. A claim that has no place in the narrative of the Age of Enlightenment. Gillespie believes that not only is the antithesis to religion not the basis of modernity, but modernity has a religious origin and emerged in a theological dialogue; it is not a new issue. The conflict over the issue of the will of God and man, and the combination of the duality of determinism and free will, shape subsequent philosophical conflicts in every era. From the nominalist revolution to Petrarch's invention of individuality, the subsequent insoluble contradictions between Erasmus and Luther over the consequential problem of the contradiction between the will of God and the will of man provided the ground for Descartes to establish the semantics of subjectivity that has formed the basis of modernity and the present West. Gillespie analyzes modern evil as the transfer of divine attributes to man or the secularization of these attributes. Thus, he speaks of the disappearance of secularization and attributes the responsibility for the disasters of world wars and other modern evils to the secularization of divine attributes and their transfer to man and social forces.
The purpose of this article is to critically review and evaluate the book “Theological Roots of Modernity” by Alan Gillespie. This book is one of the successful socio-theological texts. The author develops his idea in the book with an optimistic stance towards modernity. His main concern is to prove the role of theology in the formation of modernity. This idea has no place in the narrative of the Enlightenment. Gillespie believes that not only is the antithesis to religion not the basis of modernity, but modernity has a religious origin and emerged in a theological dialogue, and is not a new issue. Michael Alan Gillespie bases his opposition to modernity on his opposition to the thesis of secularization; he sees all of modern science as based on the subject of autonomy and self-understanding to the extent that it has transferred the attributes of the infinite God to finite man and has made the divine attributes secular in a hidden way. He calls the concealment of secularization the beginning of all the contradictions and evils that can be revealed by tracing the theological roots of modernity. Gillespie believes that humanists did not deny God; they sought to elevate man from a helpless and forced nominalist being to a creative being, which was itself dependent on the existence of God, in the sense that the path to knowing God passes through man. The conflict over the question of the will of God and man, and the combination of the duality of determinism and free will, shape the fundamental philosophical conflicts in every era. From the nominalist revolution to Petrarch’s invention of individuality, the subsequent insoluble contradictions between Erasmus and Luther over the consequential problem of the contradiction between the will of God and the will of man provided the ground for Descartes to establish the semantics of subjectivity that has formed the basis of modernity and the current West. In Gillespie's accounts, the debate between Descartes and Hobbes in the Objections and Replies to the Meditations is reminiscent of the debate between Erasmus and Luther, which was a dispute over free will and divine omnipotence; but between Descartes and Hobbes, the debate is over nature and man, with nature taking the place of God. Descartes considers man a natural divine being, and Hobbes considers man a completely natural being. Descartes makes room for human will, and Hobbes rejects human will. Gillespie considers these contradictions to be equally insoluble. He considers the basis of the contradiction between Descartes and Hobbes to be a contradiction in Kant's third dialectical proposition. Kant believes in dialectical arguments in issues such as will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God, in the sense that these propositions can neither be rationally proven nor simply rejected. Gillespie does not distinguish between these controversies and contradictions and reduces them to their theological roots. He attempts to analyze modern evil in terms of the transfer of divine attributes to man or the secularization of these attributes, and he attributes the responsibility for the disasters of world wars and other modern evils to the secularization of divine attributes and their transfer to man by social and historical forces. For Descartes and Erasmus, man has free will, and for Hobbes and Luther, the only thing behind the movement of matter is the absolute power of God as the final cause. This is the same issue of the relationship between human will and divine absolute will that was problematic in the very beginning of Christianity and is now resurfacing at the center of modernity. The modern ontological turn from man and God to nature confronts man with the same issue that Hobbes and Descartes’ successors in the modern tradition were struggling with. Kant's polemical propositions clearly show this issue. There is a clear distinction between Karl Lewit's and Gillespie's perspectives on modernity. This is because Gillespie's idea is opposed to the anti-Enlightenment thought that criticizes modernity with a negative and pessimistic approach. Gillespie considers modernity, which stems from humanism, to have theological roots and analyzes the historical course of modernity in the context of contradictions and challenges of the debate about human will and agency. He is opposed to the thought that traces the roots of humanism and modernity to ancient Greek culture and pre-Christian works. Alan Gillespie has many aspects in common with Karl Lewit's thought. However, Gillespie never seeks to illegitimate or misrepresent modernity and has an optimistic perspective on modernity due to its theological origins. But Levitt criticizes modern thought with a pessimistic view, since it is secularized in theological concepts, lacking any kind of independent knowledge. The neglect of ancient Greek and pre-Christian ideas in finding the roots of the epistemological nature of modernity is evident in Gillespie's thought. On the other hand, the progressive and advancing understanding of history, with the occurrence of the human tragedies of the twentieth century, has revealed more than ever the evil of reason itself, the foundation of modernity. The existence of such tragedies brings to mind a contradiction with the idea of the theological roots of modernity and the transfer of the attributes of a benevolent God to man, which remains unanswered in Gillespie's thought. On the other hand, the reduction of modernity to its theological roots plunges modernity into serious difficulties and closes the way to the inclusive world of modern reason. If we consider Judeo-Christian theology as the necessary antecedent to the emergence of modernity, we diminish modernity and confine it to an inherently Western time, and modernity is stripped of its universality. In this case, modernity will be local, not universal, and we must inevitably submit to a refusal to repeat the experience of modernity in contexts and times that lack this theological background.