The theological roots of modernity

What if these five centuries of wars and tragedies caused by secular powers' ambitions are a long story about the emergence of modernity, with its first chapter beginning after a Sunday mass in Avignon, where William of Ockham, Francesco Petrarch, and Meister Eckhart gathered, and from which they all emerged with an alternative metaphysical view to "academic realism," laying the first brick for modernity through "nominalist doctrine." What comes to mind for anyone hearing the word modernity is that it is a worldly, neutral view of religion in the world, free from theology and detached from its religious roots. However, Michael Gillespie, through tracing the origins and history of modernity, sees the opposite entirely. He believes that modernity has reached its current state because of its ability to incorporate theology into its philosophical structure, not to neutralize or separate it. Tracing its origin begins with the nominalist revolution that stripped concepts of their existential reality, passing through its battles with "scholastic" currents, the era of human centrality with Petrarch and William of Ockham, then the theology of fear at Hobbes, up to the secularism of the post-September 11 era. This historical tracing of theology within the structure of modernity allows us to create a philosophical dialogue based on the material and result that modernity is a series of religious interpretations that attempted to create a new, coherent metaphysics and theology to explain the world, far from religious texts and nature, closer to matter, the individual, and humanity. What we are experiencing now and have experienced throughout the growth and maturity of modernity over past centuries is a form of modernity that is less secular than we imagine, less liberated from religion and divine absolutes. It is, without a doubt... a theologically rooted modernity.