The Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries

The chapter examines the transformation of European Christianity from the consolidation of confessional divisions in the seventeenth century to the Church’s confrontation with modernity in the nineteenth century. It analyses the impact of the Enlightenment, rationalism, deism, and the development of the natural sciences on traditional understandings of Revelation, religion, and ecclesiastical authority. Particular attention is given to philosophical developments associated with Kant, German Idealism, Feuerbach, and Marx, which posed new questions concerning the knowledge of God and the place of religion in culture. Catholic apologetics and neo-scholasticism developed in response to these challenges as attempts to provide a rational defence of the faith. The chapter presents this period as a gradual reconfiguration of the relationship between the Church, science, philosophy, and modern society.