A New Vision of Western History during the So-Called Enlightenment

Paradise and Utopia

In this reflection on an emerging post-Christian Christendom, Fr. John Strickland discusses two ways in which eighteenth-century philosophes—from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson—worked to subvert the paradisiacal culture of the old Christendom. He explores their use of photic imagery such as "enlightenment" and their introduction of the tripartite utopian model of history consisting of ancient, medieval, and modern periods. He concludes with a brief description of Edward Gibbon's famous and influential work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.