Shayne Looper: A brief history of progress: Are we there yet?

In 1788, Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend: “I have sometimes wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid.”

Franklin expected that people in our day would be living as long as the antediluvian patriarchs, nearer to a millennium than a century. He could expect such a thing because he had a firm belief in progress. But the idea of universal, inevitable progress was fairly new in Franklin’s time.

The theory of progress didn’t enter secular society as a culture-shaping idea until the 18^th century. With science delving ever deeper into the physical nature of the universe, and scientific hypotheses proving true, the thought that humans could understand and progressively take control of the world took hold.

Ben Franklin was a contemporary of the Scottish philosopher David Hume who, in 1742 wrote an influential paper titled, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences." The lectures of another Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, widely regarded as the father of economics and capitalism, were framed by a conviction of the inevitability of progress.

During the late 1700s, two influential works by the French philosophers Jaques Turgot and Nicolas de Condorcet laid out theories of progress that argued that humanity is evolving, the world is getting better, and that this improvement can be expected to continue. De Condorcet argued that religion was an obstacle to progress that must be cast aside.

That idea was taken up in the French Revolution. Influenced by Voltaire, who claimed that “Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold the Christian religion in horror,” and d’Holbach who said, “It is only by dispelling these clouds and phantoms of religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason and Morality,” the revolutionaries outlawed religious practice and set out to destroy the Church.

Prior to the 18th century and outside Europe and America, most people did not believe in universal and inevitable progress. The vast majority of people who have lived on Earth have not thought of history as going somewhere. The farmer made progress in plowing the field (though next spring he would need to plow it again), but humanity itself had no all-encompassing goal toward which to make progress.

There is, however, a minority people group who have always believed the world was headed somewhere: the Jews. In Jewish thought, all humanity is moving toward a goal, which they called, “the day of the Lord.” This is a day of reckoning and of restoration, a day when justice would be established, and God’s rule would commence.

Christians, who inherited many of Judaism’s fundamental beliefs, also saw history moving toward one great goal. They believed in progress, but unlike many 18th-century philosophers, they did not think it could be attained by humanity’s rational faculties, but only by God’s actions.

This is a profoundly important distinction. Progress, according to Christian thought, is not measured by humanity’s achievements and goals. It is gauged by humanity’s proximity to God’s goal. But what is God’s goal?

It can be put in different ways. The goal, as originally stated in Genesis, is for his image-bearing humans to govern creation wisely and lovingly. It is, as the book of Revelation puts it, for humans to live with God once again, as they had done before the rebellion. It is for the creation of a new humanity that is conformed to the image of God’s son — people who think and act like Jesus Christ, who love like he loves and value what he values.

In a sweeping statement, St. Paul puts the goal this way: “to head up all things in Christ — the things in heaven and the things on earth.” This is the goal to which all things are inevitably progressing.

We can ignore this goal, or we can adopt it, but we cannot escape it. Earth is a ship on turbulent seas, but the Captain is at the helm. We can go where we choose while onboard, but the ship will go where the captain chooses and this is the port to which he steers.

— Find this and other articles by Shayne Looper at shaynelooper.com.

This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Shayne Looper: A brief history of progress: Are we there yet?