Within My Heart: The Enlightenment Epistemic Reversal and the Subjective Justification of Religious Belief - Paperback

by Michael A. Van Horn (Author), Paul Badham (Foreword by)

This book illustrates how Christianity in the modern era has been shaped in the direction of subjectivity. In the Enlightenment, after Locke required faith to submit to reason's judgment, Kant argued that religion should remain within the bounds of reason only. Schleiermacher shifted attention away from belief to devotion to Christ and a feeling of absolute dependence on God. Rejecting Hegel's system, Kierkegaard summoned his readers to a unique subjective approach to justification by faith. Revivalist Evangelicalism has been perceived, and portrayed itself, as a rejection of modernism. This study argues instead that the Evangelical-revivalist movement is unmistakably modern in its assumptions regarding the nature of faith. The Pietist impulse, fueled in part by modern anthropocentrism and subjectivism in religious belief, was appropriated by the Evangelical revivalists, such as John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and, later, Charles Finney. In short, Christianity today is a religion of the heart.

Author Biography

Michael A. Van Horn (PhD) has been a pastor at several churches, most recently Trinity Evangelical Covenant Church of Livonia, Michigan. He served as Professor of Theology at North Park Theological Seminary and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and has taught at Ashland Seminary, William Tyndale College, and the University of Detroit.