This episode is titled, Kant.At the conclusion of episode 115 –Part 2 of The Rationalist Option, I said we’d return later to the subject of the philosophy of the Enlightenment to consider its impact on theology and Church History. We do that now.We saw that John Locke placed a wedge between faith and reason when his system of Empiricism said the only genuine knowledge was that of experience. But repeated experiences generated a kind of knowledge he called probability. Because we experience the same thing again and again, we have reason to assume the likelihood of it continuing to happen. I used the example of a friend we’ll call “George.” We see and hear George at least weekly. So, even when George isn’t in our immediate presence, we have good reason to conclude he probably still exists.Using the rule of probability, Locke regarded the Christian Faith as reasonable. His repeated experience of the world logically required a sufficient cause for it. He found the Bible’s explanation of creation and the subsequent course of history to align with his experience of it. But, Locke maintained, Christianity provided no knowledge a reasoned examination of experience would discover on its own.Then along came the empiricist David Hume who wielded Doubt like a cudgel. If Locke placed a wedge between faith and reason, Hume is the one who wielded the sledge and broke them apart. His skepticism went so far as to claim the common-sense notion of cause and effect was an illusion. He had nothing but disdain for Locke’s idea of Probability.Hume said all we can know for certain is what we are experiencing at that moment, but we can’t know with certainty that one thing gives rise to another, no matter how many times it may be repeated. It may in fact at some time and place NOT repeat that pattern. So to draw universal laws from what we experience is forbidden. Hume didn’t just regard faith as irrational, his critique cast doubt on reason itself. Empiricists and Rationalists were set at odds with each other.Hume and his Empiricist buddies weren’t without their opponents. A Scot named James Reid published An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in 1764. Reid argued for the value of self-evident knowledge or what he called “common sense.” His position came to be known as Common Sense Philosophy. It had many adherents among the growing number of Deists.In France, Baron de Montesquieu, applied the principles of reason to theories of government. He came to the conclusion a republic was the preferred form of government. Since power corrupts, Montesquieu said government ought to be exercised by three equal branches that would balance each other: the legislative, executive, and judicial. He proposed these ideas thirty years before either Americans or the French adopted them for their political systems.Shortly after Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau suggested what the rationalists called  Progress, wasn’t! Enlightenment thinkers generally regarded human history as a record of advance from lesser to greater sophistication = Progress! Societies were moving on from backward barbarianism to advanced civilization. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on Reason was evidence humanity was emerging from the pre-scientific belief in religious superstition into a new era of rationalism. But Rousseau argued much of what people considered progress was in reality a departure from their natural state that was contrary to human flourishing. He called the modern world of his day “Artificial.” Rousseau advocated a return to the original order, whatever that was. He lauded the noble savage who lived in a pure state unfettered by the conventions and inventions of modernity. Whatever government there was ought to serve rather than rule. Religion ought to be a thing of the lowest common denominator with no one telling anyone else what to believe or how to worship. Rousseau defined that lowest common religious denominator as belie