Pizhuhish nāmah-i intiqādī-i mutūn va barnāmah hā-yi ̒ulūm-i insāni (Critical Studies in Texts & Programs of Human Sciences)

A Critique of the Book "Theological Roots of Modernity" from Theological Roots to Secular Fruits

Document Type : Research

Authors

Fatimah Bahjat 1
Asghar Islami Tanha 2

1 PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Seminary and University Research Instiute, Qom, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Faculty Member, Department of Cultural Studies and Communication, Baqerul Ulum University, Qom, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30465/crtls.2025.47519.2811
Abstract
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.
 

Keywords

Theology
Modernity
Determinism
Will
Nominalist
Subjectivity
Secularization

Subjects

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  • Receive Date 05 January 2025
  • Revise Date 22 February 2024
  • Accept Date 12 April 2025

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