ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Western Concepts of God Renaissance Thought ====================== God moved out of the intellectual center of knowledge as faith was no longer grounded in reason and reason was no longer supervised by faith. The power of the church waned and society found inspiration in the classical world. Interest in this life and the world drove interest in science, which soon uncovered mathematically describable physical regularities.

This development shaped the concept of God in a way that further undermined the Aristotelian world view, with its emphasis on such things as divine purpose. Regularities such as those discovered in Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Newton's laws implied a supreme engineer.

Early in these developments, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) emphasized God as immanent in the universe as an active principle, a trend in the conception of God that would increase along with the ever more detailed understanding of natural processes to be achieved in the scientific revolution. The Reformation period saw an emphasis on divine sovereignty over human affairs as a corollary to its emphasis on fallen humanity's inability to achieve a right standing with God.

If humans cannot come to God unaided, then it is God who must choose some to be right with him. Since the Reformers affirmed that divine choice cannot be based on merit, love must be the central divine attribute operating in salvation. This view of divine predestination brought new questions, both theological and philosophical, about the relationship between the human and divine wills.

The question of how people could be free and responsible if predestination ultimately determines fate was resolved in John Calvin's (1509-64) tradition partly by distinguishing between God's irresistible and resistible will. The latter consists of human choices which God allows (for a higher divine purpose) to run counter to his perfect will. Thus God is entirely sovereign and humans are responsible for their deeds.

James Arminius (1560-1609) objected that Calvinism made God responsible for sin, and he proposed instead that God predestined those whom he foresaw would repent. The Reformers' emphasis on the fallenness of the will led to their distrust in reason as a source of information about the spiritual realm, including God. An unfallen mind would see God everywhere through His creation, but our fallen minds cannot find God.