It’s relatively easy to create a political and legal system that is designed to please God if there is a consensus as to who He is and what He wants. When that consensus breaks down, however, politics and morality inevitably tend to focus more on people than the meaning of scripture. So it was in Western Europe after the inconclusive end of the religious wars.
The prevailing Enlightenment attitude was that people should be free to develop their talents, pursue their interests, and express their opinions as long as they didn’t injure others. You see this in the reference to the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. You also see it in recent Supreme Court opinions regarding gay rights; if the record doesn’t show any concrete harm to society from consensual sexual practices, they have been found to be protected by the Constitution, regardless of what tradition tells us.
What we have here, then, is a battle between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. How do the two interact, and is there any common ground? I will discuss this tomorrow.