Christianity in Credo: Enlightenment & Revivalism

Arnauld, Antoine (b. 1612, d. 1694; French), theologian and philosopher, strongly associated with the controversial Port-Royal school.

British naturalist who revolutionized the study of biology with his theory of evolution based on natural selection. His most famous works include Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). One of the greatest naturalists who ever lived. He was not only the father of evolution but also a remarkable scientist whose ideas and discoveries about the earth's history resulted in new areas for ongoing research in geology, paleontology, biology, and anthropology.

Dutch Roman Catholic theologian. In Augustinus (1640) he defended the teachings of St. Augustine, especially on free will, grace, and predestination.

Hume was born David Home on 7 May 1711 in Edinburgh, and died there on 25 August 1776. When David Home (as his name was spelled then) entered the University of Edinburgh in 1723-25, his family expected him to pursue a career in the law. Hume, however, soon turned his attention to philosophy.

Term applied to the mainstream of thought of 18th-century Europe and America. The Enlightenment, a philosophical movement, rejected traditional social, religious, and political ideas and adopted rational thinking as a way to develop new theories accounting for human behavior and feelings. These new explanations were then applied to the social and political spheres, changing the way people viewed and thought about government, and directly influencing the development of the modern world. The scientific and intellectual developments of the 17th century fostered the belief in natural law and universal order and the confidence in human reason that spread to influence all of 18th-century society.

[Gr.,=knowledge or science], the branch of philosophy that is directed toward theories of the sources, nature, and limits of knowledge. Modern epistemology is the theory of how knowledge is possible, and is especially important in the history of science, where different paradigms of knowledge (Kuhn 1970) correspond to different scientific epoques: the age of Newton, the age of Einstein and quantum mechanics.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Christian teaching of Cornelius Jansen, which divided the Roman Catholic Church in France in the mid-17th century. Emphasizing the more predestinatory approach of St Augustine of Hippo's teaching, Jansenism was supported by the philosopher Pascal and Antoine Arnauld.

Branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of existence.

In Christianity, learning about God from creation, using reason alone. In Greek and Roman philosophy, it refers to discourse on the ‘divine’ nature of things, rather than their accidental or transient nature.

Period in European cultural history that began in Italy around 1400 and lasted there until the end of the 1500s. Elsewhere in Europe it began later, and lasted until the 1600s. As increasingly urban, educated, and secular populations became dissatisfied with medieval values—first (circa 1350) in the Italian republics and principalities and then later north of the Alps—they sought to recover the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world. A new and remarkable self-confidence in human agency resulted, and it sparked an intellectual, cultural, and artistic revolution known as the Renaissance.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
English Baptist preacher. He joined the Baptist communion in 1850. In 1852, at age 18, he took charge of a small congregation at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, and, at 20, went to London as pastor of the New Park St. Chapel.

From Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
Charles Grandison Finney was the American religious leader most closely associated with the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical revival that swept the United States in the 1820s.

English evangelistic preacher, leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church. At Oxford, which he entered in 1732, he joined the Methodist group led by John Wesley and Charles Wesley.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Series of religious revivals that swept over the American colonies about the middle of the 18th cent. It resulted in doctrinal changes and influenced social and political thought.

American theologian and metaphysician, b. East Windsor (then in Windsor), Conn. He was a precocious child, early interested in things scientific, intellectual, and spiritual. At Stockbridge, Mass., where he went to care for the Native American mission and to minister to a small white congregation, he completed his theological masterpiece, The Freedom of the Will.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
The doctrines, polity, and worship of those Protestant Christian denominations that have developed from the movement started in England by the teaching of John Wesley.

Religious movement begun in 1833 by Anglican clergymen at the Univ. of Oxford to renew the Church of England (see England, Church of) by reviving certain Roman Catholic doctrines and rituals.

Protestant denomination and international nonsectarian Christian organization for evangelical and philanthropic work.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
US religious evangelical revivalist movement, lasting from about 1800 to 1870. The Second Great Awakening permanently changed the face of religion in the USA.