Between Cartesianism and orthodoxy: God and the problem of indifference in Christoph Wittich's Anti-Spinoza (original) (raw)
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Church History and Religious Culture, 2023
The present paper analyzes Petrus van Maistricht's (1630-1706) critique of Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise found in his Novitatum cartesianarum gangraena (1677). The paper shows, first, that Mastricht regarded Spinoza's atheism as the inevitable outcome of the Cartesians' denial of philosophy's subordination to theology. Second, Mastricht, in refuting Spinoza, revised his earlier critique of Cartesianism. In his previous work, Mastricht had already pointed out the atheistic implications of Cartesianism, but in the Gangraena he could now clearly identify Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise as the atheistic consequence of Cartesianism. He was thus able to confirm his distinctive diagnosis of Cartesianism as a gangrene that would gradually worsen and eventually destroy the entire body of theology.
Spinoza and the Dutch Cartesians on Philosophy and Theology
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus contains a famous injunction to keep philosophy separate from theology. At first this might appear to place him in alliance with a group of Dutch Cartesians, who held that philosophy and theology must be separated because neither can fulfill the function of the other, and indeed neither is even relevant to the function of the other. It would also appear to place him opposition to his friend Lodewijk Meijer, who proposed that philosophy is necessary for the task of theology. However, in this paper I argue that Spinoza was in fact arguing for a third position, which he was at pains to distinguish from both that of the Dutch Cartesians and that of Meijer.
Spinoza’s Metaphysical Thoughts and the Theological Implications of Cartesian Metaphysics
I show how Spinoza developed Cartesian metaphysics in order to draw from it some very extreme theological implications, situating his work in his intellectual and political context. Many Dutch Cartesians wanted to separate theology from philosophy entirely. Metaphysics was a problem for them, since it had traditionally been a point of contact between theology and philosophy. Accordingly, they attempted to play down the metaphysical elements in Descartes' philosophy. Spinoza, by contrast, emphasised these elements, and in this move, I propose, we find the origin of the most theologically radical elements of his own mature philosophy.
A Diagnosis of Cartesian Atheism
Church History and Religious Culture
The present paper analyzes Petrus van Maistricht’s (1630–1706) critique of Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise found in his Novitatum cartesianarum gangraena (1677). The paper shows, first, that Mastricht regarded Spinoza’s atheism as the inevitable outcome of the Cartesians’ denial of philosophy’s subordination to theology. Second, Mastricht, in refuting Spinoza, revised his earlier critique of Cartesianism. In his previous work, Mastricht had already pointed out the atheistic implications of Cartesianism, but in the Gangraena he could now clearly identify Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise as the atheistic consequence of Cartesianism. He was thus able to confirm his distinctive diagnosis of Cartesianism as a gangrene that would gradually worsen and eventually destroy the entire body of theology.
A Trojan Horse in the Citadel of Orthodoxy: Samuel Maresius's Critique of Cartesian Theology
The Seventeenth Century, 2023
As a prominent theologian of Dutch Reformed orthodoxy, Samuel Maresius wrote De abusu philosophiae cartesianae (1670) to denounce the dangers of Cartesian theology. Despite its importance in the history of early modern Cartesianism, a crucial question about the work remains to be answered: which aspects of Cartesian theology did Maresius condemn as the most dangerous for Reformed orthodoxy? The present paper answers this question by selecting and analyzing four topics from De abusu: (1) freedom and grace, (2) the Trinity, (3) the world system, and (4) the origins of things. It shows that Maresius identified the danger of Cartesian theology as propagating heresies under the guise of benefiting the Reformed Church. He thus feared that Cartesian theology would destroy orthodoxy from within.
The Philosophical Forum, 2016
expertly chronicles the philosophical climate of Dutch early modernism. The work centers on the thesis that much of Spinoza's oeuvre attacks core tenants of his intellectual contemporaries-the Dutch Cartesians. While Douglas' objective at first appears narrow in focus his method of thoroughly situating the reader within the historical context insures insightful engagement with a wide variety of topics. By centering the work on Spinoza's disagreements with the tenants of the Dutch Cartesian, we are able to glean a novel perspective that avoids rehashing common anecdotes found in Spinoza scholarship that overly focus on his clashes with the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam and Talmud Torah congregation's writ of cherem (expulsion/excommunication), his failed business dealings, or his involvement with the Collegians sect. The book begins with the watershed moment, involving Dutch universities' struggle accepting Descartes' radical new worldview. The epicenter of this crisis was Utrecht University where Henricus Reguis and subsequent professors began promoting and adopting Cartesian physics to the great alarm of the Scholastics, led by Gisbertus Voetuis, who fought to maintain the hegemony of traditional natural theology based in Aristotle and scriptural interpretations. Remarkably, Douglas demonstrates that this conflict was sparked by an apparently minor point of contention: "How we are to understand actions of non-human living creatures?" 1 The traditional view was that animals are sentient, experiencing pain, pleasure, enjoyment, and suffering. Thus, God by providing for their needs demonstrates his benevolence. Whereas, the Cartesians believed in humanity's incapacity to prove that animals have rich inner