Theology and the Modern Age: Blumenberg's Reaction to a Baconian Frontispiece

Abstract

Hans Blumenberg has attempted to argue for legitimacy of modem age by presenting modernity as a second overcoming of Gnosticism.1 The Christian synthesis of Church Fathers, so Blumenberg's story goes, was a first, but unsuccessful, attempt at such an overcoming, with consequence that of Gnosticism surfaced once again at end of Middle Ages. The legitimacy of modem age consists precisely in its success with respect to this issue. But what is of Gnosticism that modernity seeks to overcome? In order to answer this question, Blumenberg turns first to way in which medieval period had its beginning in conflict with lateantique and early-Christian Gnosticism, so that the unity of its systematic intention can be understood as deriving from task of subduing its Gnostic opponent.2 In particular, Church Fathers faced problem of articulating a viable explanation for existence of evil in a world created by a benevolent God which failed to come to an end. Here dualism of gnostic explanations offered itself as an obvious competitor: by understanding world as itself an evil prison-house, and by separating this demiurgic creation from redemptive power of