Theological Origins of Modernity

344 notes to pages 224–225
60. Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), and his “Hobbes and the Renaissance studia
humanitatis,” in Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England,
ed. Derek Hurst and Richard Strier (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 71. For a more convincing discussion of Hobbes relation to rhetoric
see David Johnston, Th e Rhetoric of the Leviathan: Th omas Hobbes and the Politics
of Cultural Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
61. Skinner, “Hobbes and the Renaissance studia humanitatis,” 69.
62. Noel Malcolm, “Hobbes’ Science of Politics,” 153. Focusing on the watch analogy,
Tom Sorell argues that natural science puts nature back together while political
science constructs it anew. “Hobbes’ Science of Politics and his Th eory of Science,”
in Hobbes Oggi, 20–21.
63. Reik, Golden Lands, 15.
64. Martinich, Two Gods, 5. In recent years scholars have begun to recognize that
Reformation theology was particularly hospitable to the development of modern
science. On this point see Kenneth J. Howell, God’s Two Books: Copernican and
Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2002); and R. Hooykass, Religion and the Rise of Modern
Science (Grand Rapid, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972). Calvin in particular emphasized
the orderliness of God’s will, which gave a new religious sanction for the study
of nature. Equally important was his assertion that the account of creation in
Genesis was thus not necessarily literal. L. S. Koetsier, Natural Law and Calvinist
Political Th eory (Victoria, B.C.: Traff ord , 2003), 138–39. Calvin’s emphasis on the
mediating role of spirit also played an important role. As we saw, Luther put great
weight on incarnation as a divine act that Satan could not duplicate. Calvin accepted
this notion but emphasized the importance of the spirit in mediating not
merely between God and Christ, or even Christ and humanity, but also between
humanity and all the rest of God’s creation. Luther did not believe that this order
of nature was accessible to human reason aft er the Fall. Calvin, by contrast, was
convinced that while Adam’s sin had perverted nature, creation was still good
and refl ected the character of God. Humans thus could come to understand the
nature of God by examining his creation. Since the movements of nature are
governed by divine providence, humans thus could come to know God’s will
through an investigation of the natural world. Moreover, such an investigation
might aid man in re-sanctifying the world, in preparation for the end of time,
which he believed would include a restoration of the garden lost by Adam’s sin.
On this point, see Susan Schreiner, In the Th eater of His Glory: Nature and Natural
Order in the Th ought of John Calvin (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1991),
and Jason Foster, “Th e Ecology of John Calvin,” Reformed Perspectives Magazine
7, no. 51 (Dec. 18–24, 2005). Th e natural world was thus pictured no longer as
a vale of tears that we might eventually transcend but as a divine gift that can
regained by the elect through a process of sanctifi cation. Reformation thought
and Calvinism in particular promoted modern science and gave it a theological
justifi cation.