Reforma y Contrarreforma. El debate teológico en el umbral de la nueva ciencia

Abstract

The theological debate that gave rise to the religious Reformation undertaken by Luther, extended to the epistemological problematic of the new science. The controversy between Reformers and Counter-reformers in the search for the correct reading of the Holy Scriptures -either from the sources or from the doctrine-, led to the rethinking of the problem of the criterion or norm of truth to establish the correct reading and the method of interpretation to reach the revealed truth of the sacred scriptures. The problem of the criterion not only had an impact on the religious sphere, when transferred to the field of natural philosophy, forced the impostors of the new science to take positions around its epistemic status: approximate truths (moral certainty) or absolute truths (metaphysical certainty). Here the above-mentioned panorama is exposed, to make clear the correlation between the theological and the epistemological querella that, in one of its main angles, can be stated as the opposition to authority, whether to the papal —like Luther— or to the tradition scholastic, in the manner of Galileo. In both cases it is required to go to the source: the sacred book or the one of nature.