THE GREAT APOSTASY OF THE WEST
The Genealogy of Philosophy from the Reformation Churches to Modern Moral Collapse
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened Romans 1:20-21
Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ Col 2:8
Division → Decay → Apostasy → Collapse
A map showing how English-speaking philosophy departed from the foundation truths of God, general revelation, Scripture, man’s chief end, and the way to reconciliation with God.
FOUNDATION
QUESTIONS
How is God known?
God is known as He reveals Himself to us in His works and Word.
Departure: Word and works → reason alone → sentiment → skepticism → denial.
Who is God?
Reformation answer: the living, triune Creator, known by general and special revelation.
Departure: distant lawgiver → moral sentiment → unnecessary hypothesis → rejected.
What is man’s chief end?
Reformation answer: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Departure: happiness → sympathy → autonomy → self-expression.
How is the chief end attained?
Reformation answer: by grace, through Christ, according to God’s revealed moral law.
Departure: reason → nature → sentiment → will → social construction.
THE INSTITUTIONAL
SHIFT
I. THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ERA
(Pre–1700)
Foundation publicly acknowledged.
The Church—Anglican in England,
Presbyterian in Scotland—frames knowledge.
II. DIVISION ERA
(1700–mid 18th century)
Reason, nature, and moral sense begin
to separate from theology while still
using Christian moral capital.
III. DECAY ERA
(mid 18th – late 18th century)
Moral philosophy runs parallel to the church.
Religion becomes useful or respectable,
but no longer foundational.
IV. APOSTASY ERA
(late 18th–20th century)
Philosophy becomes independent of the church and increasingly critical of it.
V. COLLAPSE ERA
(20th century–present)
Metaethics attempts to preserve moral language after rejecting its foundation and fragments into competing theories.
POINTS 1–7
INTEGRATED
IN THIS MAP
1. Pre-Locke Generation
Academics are ministers / theologians.
Philosophy is part of theology.
2. Teachers of Locke, Shaftesbury,
Hutcheson, Hume — mostly ministers or
theologians in universities and pulpits.
3. “Philosopher” identity emerges
(1700–1750). Moral philosophy begins
to detach from theology.
4. Separation deepens
Hume is the decisive break from natural theology.
5. Replacement systems appear
Kant and later thinkers ground morality in reason, autonomy, history, utility, or analysis.
6. Post-1800 critique
Philosophy often critiques or replaces religion as the public account of morality.
7. Modern aftermath
Metaethics divides into realism, anti-realism, non-cognitivism, and error theory.
Division → Decay → Apostasy → Collapse
ANCIENT
FOUNDATIONS
(All within a
The City of Man with its philosophers who suppress what is clear about God
worldview)
Plato
c.427–347 BCE
Academy (Athens)
Demiurge, Forms, Reincarnation, The Good
→
Aristotle
384–322 BCE
Lyceum (Athens)
Unmoved mover, world from eternity, contemplation
→
Stoics
(Zeno, Chrysippus)
c.300–200 BCE
Resignation and eternal
virtue, duty
→
Cicero
106–43 BCE
Roman statesman
Academic Skepticism
→
Ammonius
c.175–242 CE
School of Alexandria
Eclectic synthesis
Scholasticism: reason vs. faith
→
Plotinus
204–270 CE
Neoplatonism
Monism: “All is One”
Mysticism
→
Porphyry
234–305 CE
Neoplatonist
Deification / ascent of the soul
SCHOLASTICISM
(Medieval Development)
Augustine
354–430
Natural theology reveals the God of the Bible against pagans
→
Scholasticism
Medieval Universities
Theology as queen of the sciences
→
Aquinas
1225–1274
Reason shows the world has existed from eternity, divides faith and reason on this
→
Bonaventure
1217–1274
Franciscan
Mystical / Platonic
→
Duns Scotus
1266–1308
Reason cannot prove beginning of world
→
William of Ockham
1287–1347
Nominalism
Only particulars exist. Separates reason and faith Voluntarism.
EARLY MODERN
THEOLOGICAL
AND
PHILOSOPHICAL
SOURCES
(15th–17th Cent.)
Augustine
354–430
Natural theology reveals the God of the Bible against pagans
→
Scholastic Tradition
(Universities in Church)
Medieval Universities
Paris, Oxford, St. Andrews
Theology is “Queen of the Sciences”
→
Aquinas
1225–1274
Philosophy/reason show world existed from eternity, divides faith and reason
→
The Reformation
16th Century
Scripture & Faith
Protestant Traditions
→
John Calvin
1509–1564
Geneva
Theology, Natural Law
→
Protestant Orthodox
17th Century
Systematic Theology,
Moral Theology
→
Natural Law Revival
(Christian Framework)
Suárez, Grotius
Christian Rationalism
→
Early Modern Science
R. Boyle, I. Newton
Natural Theology
Law of Nature
PRE-LOCKE
GENERATION
(Teachers, mostly
Ministers /
Theologians)
William Perkins
1558–1602
Anglican Minister
Cambridge
Puritan Theology
Richard Cumberland
1631–1718
Bishop of Peterborough
Cambridge
Natural Law Theology
William Chillingworth
1602–1644
Anglican Clergyman
Cambridge
Religious Latitudinarian
Ralph Cudworth
1617–1688
Cambridge Platonist
Clergyman
Natural Religion
Robert Boyle
1627–1691
Anglican Gentleman
Natural Philosopher
(Christian)
Samuel Clarke
1675–1729
Anglican Clergyman
Leibnizian
Metaphysics
ENLIGHTENMENT
THINKERS
Christian Enlightenment (Stuart Era to mid
18th Century) Denied Clear General Revelation and then Necessity of Scripture
John Locke
1632–1704
Christ Church, Oxford
(Trained in Theology)
Wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity
DEPARTURE:
God becomes moral lawgiver behind natural rights; reason increasingly mediates moral obligation.
Anthony Ashley Cooper,
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
1671–1713
Private Education
(John Locke’s pupil)
DEPARTURE:
Virtue shifts from obedience to God toward harmony, taste, benevolence, and human nature.
Francis Hutcheson
1694–1746
University of Glasgow
(Studied Theology)
Taught Moral Philosophy
DEPARTURE:
Moral knowledge shifts from divine law and revelation toward innate moral sense and sentiment.
Thomas Reid
1710–1796
Church of Scotland
Minister then Professor at Aberdeen/Glasgow
Common Sense Seeds
David Hume
1711–1776
University of Edinburgh
(Studied for Ministry)
DEPARTURE:
Natural theology collapses into skepticism; morality becomes sentiment, custom, and convention.
Lack of clarity
• Locke: divine command → reason / natural rights
• Shaftesbury: obedience → moral harmony and benevolence
• Hutcheson: law / revelation → moral sentiment
• Hume: natural theology → skepticism and sentiment
• Reid: common sense → everyone believes in God
Divsions comes from the unabilty to show it is clear God exists so that unbelief is without excuse.
THE BREAK & AFTER
Progressive/Dialectic is monist, Skepticism about God, Allegoricalize Scripture or deny it altogether (mid 18th Century
onward)
THE DECISIVE BREAK: HUME & THE END OF NATURAL THEOLOGY
Immanuel Kant
1724–1804
Königsberg (Prussia)
Religion within Reason
DEPARTURE:
Autonomous reason replaces God as the public source of moral law.
→
G. W. F. Hegel
1770–1831
Berlin University
DEPARTURE:
Ethics becomes rational life of Spirit and history rather than obedience to revealed law. British Idealism like Bradley
→
J. S. Mill
1806–1873
Utilitarianism
DEPARTURE:
The chief end becomes happiness, utility, and liberty rather than the glory of God.
→
Benjamin Jowett
1817–1893
Balliol College, Oxford
Literae Humaniores (“Great Books”), Master of Balliol
Translator of Plato
→
Henry Sidgwick
1838–1900
Cambridge
Ethical Methods
DEPARTURE:
Ethics is systematized as method after its theological foundation has been weakened.
→
G. E. Moore
1873–1958
Cambridge
DEPARTURE:
“Good” remains objective but is detached from God and treated as non-natural.
→
Bertrand Russell
1872–1970
Cambridge
DEPARTURE:
Analytic skepticism and secular critique intensify philosophy’s distance from Christian doctrine.
MODERN
METAETHICS
Good Without God, Scripture, or Historic Christianity (Post–1800)
MORAL REALISM (Objectivist Line)
G. E. Moore
1873–1958
Good without God
→
H. A. Prichard
1871–1947
Oxford (Balliol)
Intuitionism
Self-evident moral knowledge
→
W. D. Ross
1877–1971
Oxford (Oriel)
Prima facie duties
Objective duties without grounding in God
→
Derek Parfit
1942–2017
Reasons Realism
T. M. Scanlon
b. 1940
Contractualism
Christine M. Korsgaard
b. 1952
Kantian Constructivism
ANTI-REALISM (Non-Cognitivist Line)
A. J. Ayer
1910–1989
Morals as emotion
→
C. L. Stevenson
1908–1975
Emotivism
→
R. M. Hare
1919–2002
Prescriptivism
Moral language as universal commands
→
Simon Blackburn
b. 1944
Quasi-realism
Allan Gibbard
b. 1942
Norm expressivism
ERROR THEORY / NIHILISM (Skeptical Line)
J. L. Mackie
1917–1981
All moral claims are false
→
Richard Joyce
1966–
Error Theory
CONSTRUCTIVISM / SOCIAL MORALITY
John Rawls
1921–2002
Harvard
Justice as fairness
Morality from agreement
→
Christine M. Korsgaard
b. 1952
Harvard
Kantian constructivism
Morality from autonomy
→
Jürgen Habermas
b. 1929
Frankfurt School
Discourse ethics
Morality from communication
Michel Foucault
1926–1984
Power / knowledge
Morality as social control
Critical Theory
20th c.
Frankfurt School
Morality as ideology
Evolutionary Ethics
20th–21st c.
Morality from survival / biology
THE BIG INSIGHT
(Point 7)
Modern philosophy is the aftermath of denying the clarity of God and man's chief end to reason. It is only the latest battle of the City of Man agaisnt the City of God
Realism, anti-realism, non-cognitivism, error theory, constructivism, critical theory, and evolutionary ethics are attempts to account for morality once it is no longer justified by God, revelation, or the Church.
CENTRAL THESIS: English-speaking philosophy after the Reformation increasingly divided from its theological foundation. It denied clear general revelation of God's eternal power and divine nature and denied the need for redemptive revelation in Scripture. Deism, Unitarism, Spiritual Dialectic, Material Dialectic, Subjectivism and Power. That division produced decay, then apostasy, and finally collapse: modern metaethics is the attempt to preserve moral language after rejecting the God who makes morality intelligible. The majority of philosophers in this last stage actively argue against Christianity. The solution is found in Romaans 1.