For the common believer in medieval Europe, this world is not one’s home; rather, the believer looks forward to eternal perfectibility in Christ in the next world. In contrast, the philosophes of the Enlightenment advanced their own doctrine of progress and perfectibility of humanity through a radical regeneration of morality and social institutions. For the philosophes the quest for modernity was to transform the Biblical notion of the Garden of Eden and the eternal heavenly city into an earthly egalitarian society and cultural utopia.
William D. Dennsion. Dutch Neo-Calvinism and the Root for Transformation.
