Historical and Theological Sources of Secularism and Secularisation

Abstract

This article proposes a new way of approaching the roots of secularism and its outcome that is secularization. The fact that this phenomenon arises precisely in a Christian world, which ultimately leads to a complete emancipation of that what is worldly toward religion, profanum toward sacrum, is astonishing. The process of European secularism has its beginning in the 11th century, when the so-called dispute about reason was initiated resulting, in the next epochs of human history, in an intensifying departure from transcendence in favour of a secular interpretation of reality. What ensued is a fading away of the classical understanding of truth as a “compatibility of entities with intellect” (adaequatio rei et intellectus), that is compatibility of understanding and reality, replacing understanding with one’s own crafting of reality, making of a new society. An examination of the history of the European secularization can contribute to a rise of a new humanism, which rests upon reasonableness that originates at the deepest basis of the Logos.