Cambridge Platonism(s): John Sherman and Peter Sterry

Abstract

Scholarly treatments of Peter Sterry and the Cambridge Platonists often view their reception of Platonism as radically different from their Puritan or Calvinist contemporaries. This essay focuses on three individuals, John Sherman, Girolamo Zanchi, and Peter Sterry, in order to clarify the variety of opinions regarding the value of Platonism for Christian theology among Protestant theologians in the Early Modern period. An example of this comes from John Sherman’s use of the Reformed scholastic, Girolamo Zanchi in a treatise that he delivered in the Trinity College chapel in 1641. In this treatise entitled A Greek in the Temple, Sherman argues for a pious reception of pagan wisdom based on the concept of perennial philosophy, ideas which led the early twentieth century historian J.B. Mullinger to conclude that Sherman was the original influence behind Cambridge Platonism. Yet, Sherman claims to receive many of these ideas from Zanchi, an Aristotelian who recommends Ficino and Steuco’s works in his writings and refers to Plotinus as “homo Christianus.” Peter Sterry was likely familiar with Zanchi, though Sterry takes greater liberty in the ideas that he borrows from the Platonists and he rejects the Aristotelian method in favor of the method of coincidence similar to that used by Nicholas Cusanus.