Book contents
- Naturalism in the Christian Imagination
- Reviews
- Naturalism in the Christian Imagination
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Setting the Scene
- Part II Expanding the Explanatory Scope of Natural Causality
- Part III Curtailing the Explanatory Ambitions of Naturalistic Philosophies
- Chapter 5 Atomism
- Chapter 6 Theories of the Earth
- Part IV Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - Theories of the Earth
from Part III - Curtailing the Explanatory Ambitions of Naturalistic Philosophies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2022
- Naturalism in the Christian Imagination
- Reviews
- Naturalism in the Christian Imagination
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Setting the Scene
- Part II Expanding the Explanatory Scope of Natural Causality
- Part III Curtailing the Explanatory Ambitions of Naturalistic Philosophies
- Chapter 5 Atomism
- Chapter 6 Theories of the Earth
- Part IV Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter delves into early modern theories about a key scriptural story, that of Noah’s flood, and the theological implications of explaining the flood in a largely naturalistic manner through appeal to laws of nature. Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes used laws of nature as the basis for a naturalistic account of the creation of the world, and others followed suit. This chapter analyses two accounts of the world’s creation and subsequent dissolution in the flood written in England in the closing decades of the seventeenth century that drew on laws of nature: Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth, and William Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth. Burnet and Whiston each explore how those early events in the earth’s history might be accounted for through natural processes, making their treatises among the earliest explicit attempts in England to explain key scriptural events chiefly in terms of natural causality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Naturalism in the Christian ImaginationProvidence and Causality in Early Modern England, pp. 146 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022