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to the sources." McGrath says that Ad Fontes was what characterized and fueled the imagination
of academia across the disciplines. In theology it stimulated the expectation that a more vibrant,
and more authentic Christianity could be accessed by going back to the Hebrew and Greek
sources.
2

This late medieval period was also a time of heightened folk religious activity. McGrath states
that even certain humanists were actively promoting magic and superstition.
3
The masses often
felt helpless against the ravages of disease, poverty and death. Magic practices and rituals
designed to protect people against the effects of sickness and poverty were mixed with Christian
religion. Indeed, so deep rooted were these beliefs and practices that the Reformation was not
able to remove them.
4

The philosophes of the Enlightenment came against magic, superstition, and the Church with a
furry. This is not to say that there were not benefits to Western culture that came with the
Enlightenment, because there certainly were. And there was certainly thinking and excess in the
church which were in need of correction. But the effect of the Enlightenment "corrective" was to
throw the baby out with the bathwater. Roy Porter explains:
What seems clear is that its true radicalism lies in making a break with the Biblical, otherworldly
framework for understanding man, society and nature, as revealed in the Scriptures, endorsed by the
churches, rationalized in theology, and preached from the pulpit and in schools.
5

The Biblical worldview, or the "otherworldly framework", was severely attacked with
devastating consequences. For example, in our day when a Western Christian reads the Bible
and sees that the author of Job understands Satan to be the cause of Jobs sickness (Job 2:7), it
would be quite easy for her/him to be able to filter out the possibility that Satan could be a cause
of sickness today. That kind of biblical worldview is not a natural part of public culture in the
West. Luke explains that the eighteen year illness of the woman Jesus healed in Luke 13:11 was
caused by a spirit.
Luke 13:11 (NASU) And there was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a
spirit; and she was bent double, and could not straighten up at all.

Why is it difficult to adjust our thought patterns in such cases to the worldview of the Bible and
see an application of it in our day? The answer lies in large measure to the way Enlightenment
thinking has gotten into the foundation of our worldview. Concerning the causes of sickness
Porter explains:
Thus, the physician and philosophe Erasmus Darwin deemed it absurd to suppose that the Devil
caused disease . . .
6
2
A. E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999) 39-45.
3
McGrath, Reformation, 43.
4
McGrath, Reformation, 29, 31.
5
R. Porter, The Enlightenment (London: Mcmillan Press, Ltd., 1990) 72.
6
Porter, Enlightenment, 66.