While rationalism took hold as a result of the philosophical work of Ren‚ Descartes, the tendency to make man the measure of all things certainly did not originate with his philosophy. This tendency characterized some of the leaders of the Renaissance, who were also often anthropocentric, or humanistic, in outlook.
Even in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas made a distinction between nature and grace. This idea took hold and became the basis for (1) the tendency in science to differentiate between natural causes and secondary causes, (2) the distinction that developed in theology between natural religion and revealed religion, and (3) the distinction made by Immanuel Kant between the noumenal and the phenomenal.
The idea that the natural world is in some sense divorced from the supernatural world often quickly resolves itself into a materialistic world view according to which there is no supernatural at all. In other words, as Francis Schaeffer has observed, "nature eats up grace."1
The distinction between nature and grace, unfortunately, became one of the underlying assumptions of many of the leaders of Renaissance humanism. And, as the word "humanism" implies, very often man and his thinking were considered authoritative rather than God and his revelation as given in the Scriptures, or man's thinking guided by revelation. To a large degree, this was done on an unconscious level by those who affirmed the complete infallibility of the Bible and upheld its complete authority. Yet, with the development of humanism during the Renaissance, there was an increased emphasis upon man.2
Thus, Alexander Solzhenitsyn state in the commencement address for Harvard University on June 8, 1978:
There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. They are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. . . .The American intelligentsia lost its nerve, and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. . . .
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world, which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression in the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists. . . .
This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. . . .
Two hundred, or even fifty, years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West: a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries. . . .
All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could imagine even as late as in the nineteenth century.3
1 Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1968), p. 9.
2 Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1976), p. 62.
3 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Exhausted West," in D‚tente: Prospects for Democracy and Dictatorship (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1980), pp. 10-15.
