A broad overview of his broad overview:
William of Occam was the first to question the “via antiqua” of Augustine and Aquinas, which is that God loves us and knows us and that laws are for our benefit. William of Occam said that that limits God’s power, and that God’s laws arise from his will, not his intellect. God could’ve made murder a positive good, as a necessity for salvation. “Abba” became “Allah”. Occam said that “God could’ve crucified a donkey to atone for our sins.”Hahn recommends a book on this subject by Protestant author Arthur Holmes called "Fact, Values and God".
Corrupt popes then made sense. Power and law are threats to us, because they are arbitrary. Then Machiavelli came along and said “the end justifieds the means”. Why? Because God does. We are imitators of God. If, after all, God does the arbitrary to achieve his ends then why shouldn’t we?
Luther studied the nominalists. He once said, “I’m nothing if not an Occamist.” It’s popular to think of Luther’s scrupulosity as a problem of personality, a psychological thing, but Hahn sees it as possibly a theological distortion. If God is arbitrary and you never know what he’ll ask or do, then how do you know if you’re in a right relationship with such a despotic figure?
Luther chose faith as the attribute God (arbitrarily) chose that we would need to be saved. Not love or honor, but faith, and “thank God it’s that easy” was Luther’s sentiment. God not a father figure. And the Calvinistic theology of predestination again shows this arbitrary nature of God that was in vogue.
Of course the Church hasn’t been immune and is suffering along with everybody else. This image of law as limiting our freedom is in the water now, it’s in the air. The concept of mortal sin leads to the “via moderna”, the modern way, in that it makes us more slave than child, making us aim to avoid punishment rather than love. Pope John Paul II said, “Sin affects our intellect by exchanging a vision of God as Father to one as master.” That God's laws are for our personal fulfillment is mostly foreign to us because the last seven centuries have made law the opposite of freedom and personal fulfillment.
In the 1300s the revolution was intellectual. William of Occam and others. In the 1400s came the cultural revolution. Universities started becoming secularized and downplaying theology. Art became about nature rather than God. Nothing wrong with that at all, but to emphasize a lesser truth at that time was indicative of an agenda. In the 1500s there was a theological revolution. Papal authority discarded. In the 1600s there was a philosophical revolution. Truth claims were considered private, reason now trumps faith. Philosophers were greater than theologians, universities greater than seminaries, because reason was considered more important than faith. In the 1700s there were political revolutions. We’ll serve no monarch. French Revolution pushed state over church. Social contract now completely secular. We had a contract, not a convenant with our leaders. In the 1800s the scientific revolution of Darwin, Marx and Freud, all emphasizing power, with Freud attacking the father figure saying we must uproot paternity. By the 1900s there was the breakdown of marriage, the sexual revolution, the right to abortion. The social contract was extended to marriage; marriage became a breakable contract instead of an unbreakable covenant. And how can one deny homosexuals the right to marry if law is arbitrary anyway? If we’re suspicious of God, we’re going to be all the more of popes and priests and fathers. We see all power as suspect.
And yet the Creed got it right. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…”. “Father” precedes “almighty”.
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