ABSTRACT

Theism permeated European intellectual life during the Early Modern era, just as it had for centuries before. But by no means was theism taken for granted. The Reformation of the sixteenth century challenged longstanding assumptions about our relation to God and spawned a long period of religious innovation and strife that played out in churches, learned salons, and on the battlefield. It was uncertain whether the new science that emerged in the seventeenth century, with its elevation of individual reason and revival of pagan metaphysics, would invigorate traditional theism, transform it, or sweep it away forever. In 1600 the natural philosopher Bruno was burned in Rome for voicing heterodox opinions about God and the structure of the world. In 1811 the young poet Shelley was temporarily “sent down” from Oxford for openly publishing “The Necessity of Atheism” (Shelley 1993). Yet despite two centuries of nearly continuous and mounting pressure, theism remained a dominant and vigorous intellectual force at the dawn of the Romantic era. By this time, theism was no longer monolithic and mandatory for intellectuals, however, and the other sciences were no longer, as Aquinas (ST, 1a.1.5) put it, the mere “handmaidens” of theology.