The Crisis of Causality: Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature and Change

This text deals with the reaction of the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) to the New Philosophy of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline. Apart from an analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book also offers perspectives on related subjects such as 17th-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It is intended to be of interest to students of 17th-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.