On the Nature of God’s Existence, Wisdom and Power: The Interplay Between Organic and Mechanistic Imagery in Anglican Natural Theology — 1640–1740

Abstract

According to one of the most widely read and admired accounts of the relationship between early modern scientific and religious developments, Richard Westfall’s Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England, the chief spur to the Seventeenth Century Anglican reinvigoration of natural theology came from the mechanical philosophers, “who tried to construct a theory picturing nature as a machine running by itself without external aids.”1 One feature of this “mechanical” nature was that it was “indifferent to the existence of thinking beings”2 and another was that it “contradicted the assertion of miracles and questioned the reality of divine providence.”3 Finally, because of the obvious antagonisms between the new mechanistic science and the old Christian beliefs, the key problem of seventeenth century Christian scientists was to reconcile the two; and “reconciliation came more and more to mean the adjustment of Christian beliefs to the conclusions of science.”4