Primary Authors & Sources
From British empiricism through Hume’s skepticism to Kant’s critical turn, students read the Enlightenment debate over knowledge, morals, and the limits of reason. John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding resets modern epistemology: ideas, experience, and the rejection of innate speculative systems. George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge presses idealism against material substance—perception and God where Locke left matter obscure. David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with his moral Enquiry close beside it) brings empiricism to the edge of skepticism on causation, miracle, and the self. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason answers that crisis with the critical limits of pure reason—what we can know and what we must think. Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion answers Enlightenment naturalism from within Anglican moral theology, training students to weigh probability, conscience, and revelation together. Together they serve apologetics and dogmatics awake to modernity’s questions.
What You Will Study
Students examine Enlightenment empiricism, rationalism, and critical metaphysics from Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant alongside Christian responses in Butler, Reid, and early evangelical philosophers. The course analyzes how Enlightenment thought challenged revelation, miracle, and church authority while claiming to liberate reason from superstition. Readings include primary philosophical texts and Reformed critiques defending biblical theism against skepticism and deism prevalent in Anglo-American culture. Students evaluate which Enlightenment insights common grace affirms and which assumptions contradict creatio ex nihilo, sin, and special revelation. Attention falls on epistemological foundations necessary for apologetics and theological method in post-Enlightenment house churches and seminary-trained ministry.
Course Objectives
Objectives include summarizing Lockean empiricism, Humean skepticism, and Kantian critique of natural theology, explaining how Enlightenment thought influenced Deism and liberal theology, evaluating Reformed epistemologies of revelation against autonomous reason, and writing essays on faith and reason after Kant. Students will articulate presuppositional and evidential responses to Enlightenment challenges. The course cultivates intellectual defenses of Christianity in university-shaped culture. Students will connect Enlightenment assumptions to contemporary debates about science, morality, and religious knowledge. Assessments require primary source engagement and apologetic position papers grounded in confessional standards.
Ministry & Life Application
Enlightenment philosophy explains the default worldview of educated Americans who treat Christian faith as irrational or optional. Pastors equipped in this material can preach and counsel with awareness of hidden assumptions about evidence, autonomy, and progress. House church evangelism across the Florida Keys encounters retirees, military personnel, and students formed by Enlightenment categories even when they cannot name them. Pastoral ministry gains apologetic seriousness without surrendering Scripture's authority to modern epistemological fashions. Congregations are strengthened when leaders can unmask skepticism's faith commitments and present Christ as the true light enlightening every person.