Christianity Theory And The Origin Of Idea Of Modernity

Since the 19th century, it gradually comes to light that Christianity has been foundational premise of modernization and modernity. The thesis centers on the question that how the tradition of Christianity influence the idea of modernity. And the thesis will be developed under the grounds of Christian thought history. It means that we should not trace back the origin of modernity on the history of metaphysical concept but on the tense of history and reality firstly.It is an identical view that the idea of modernity has close relationship with Christian thought. The "hope "in early Christian Messianism provided new linear pattern of time, which differentiated from cyclical pattern in ancient Greek that became the model of idea of modernity. Furthermore, the research of relationship between modernity and Christian theory must be developed not only on the angle of "time" but also on the significant form of former one. In other words, we should pursue the key through the vicissitude of "history" in real life.Hebrew is the founder of time culture. The early Christian Messianism opened up the idea of "Salvation history" between the human and God for the first time. And in the New Testament, St.Paul reformed the idea of "testament" in the Christian doctrine and improved the idea of "salvation" and "hope". This ideology not only had produced great influence on the intellectuals and ruling class but also became the motive power to the social movement.The forms of Christian thought are very complicated. During its development, it vacillated between the "mysticism" and "church tradition" all along. So the two branches built their " theology of history" respectively. The "City of God" of St.Augustine was the fruit that Christianity looked for new undertaker of "Salvation history" after confronted with the secular history. The two-world model in "City of God" and resisting attitudes to the earth life portrayed the image of western thought in later ages radically.Joachim's "Trinity" theology of history heavily struck the tradition of St. Augustine. The theory of the "Holy Spirit Kingdom" transformed the vertical relationship of two worlds into the plane relationship. Through the way of secularizingthe holy history, the secular history possessed the significance, and idea of historical progress came into being. On the other hand, the theology of the Reformation carried on the tradition of St. Augustine and took great turn in the theology. The principle of Protestant theology ("sola fide", "sola Scriptura") promoted the transformation from the out-of-the-world individual to the in-the-world individual and provided ferment for idea of modernity latently.From Niccolo Machiavelli on, all the modern philosophers have tried their best to resist the providential view by secular idea of progress in order to establish legitimation of "history". But it was not proper to take the happiness and progress on the material layer (modernization) for whole significance of historical progress. This train of thought secularized the humanistic belief of modern society thoroughly.The Enlightenment showed sudden changes of the spirit of modern times. In the modern ideological space that founded on the anthropomorphism, the idea of "history" which enlightenment held on to and the blueprint of "the heavenly city on the earth" all indicated that the entire frame of modernity has been restricted by the dual natures of Christianity to this day.However, the question is that if the honour of secular world doesn't brake away from daily time and come into the infinite time, which undertake the significance of history, it still can't establish the secular historic belief to modern society. This theoretical predicament helped to bring about the modernity critique of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau thoroughly criticized the idea of modernity by the idea of "nature"; meanwhile he advanced modernity even more profoundly yet. Following in Rousseau's foot, the modern Christian thought and critical philosophy intersected at the spot of Immanuel Kant's t...