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Richard Baxter, one of the seventeenth century's most famous Puritans, is known as an author of devotional literature. But he was also skilled in medieval philosophy. In this book, David Sytsma draws on largely unexamined works to present a chronogolical and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-seventeenth-century England.
List of contents
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- I. Richard Baxter as Philosophical Theologian
- II. Baxter and the Rise of Mechanical Philosophy
- The Reception of Gassendi's Christian Epicureanism in England
- Baxter's Early Response to Hobbes' Leviathan
- The Beginning of Baxter's Restoration Polemics
- Matthew Hale and the Growth of Baxter's Polemics
- On the "Epicurean" Ethics of Hobbes and Spinoza
- Baxter and Henry More
- Conclusion
- III. Reason and Philosophy
- Works on Reason
- The Nature and States of Reason
- Reason and Will
- Reason in the State of Sin
- Reason and Revelation
- The Use and Limits of Philosophy
- Conclusion
- IV. A Trinitarian Natural Philosophy
- I. Theological Motivations
- God's Two Books
- Mosaic Physics
- Vestigia Trinitatis
- Trinitarian Analogy of Being
- II. Trinities in Nature
- Baxter's Eclectic Reception of Tommaso Campanella
- Threefold Causality
- Passive Nature
- Active Nature
- Conclusion
- V. A Commotion over Motion
- Copernicanism
- The Nature of Motion
- Substantial Form
- Descartes' Laws of Motion
- Henry More's "Mixt Mechanicall Philosophy"
- Conclusion
- VI. The Incipient Materialism of Mechanical Philosophy
- Mechanical Philosophy and the Immaterial Soul
- Henry More's "Slippery Ground" and Pierre Gassendi's "Feeble" Proofs
- Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Willis, and the Material Soul
- Conclusion
- VII. From "Epicurean" Physics to Ethics
- Baxter and Reformed Natural-Law Theory
- The Specter of Necessitarianism
- The Problem of Naturalistic Natural Law
- Conclusion
- VIII. Conclusion
- Appendix A Chronology of Baxter's Post-Restoration Writings on Philosophy
- Appendix B Richard Baxter to Joseph Glanvill, 18 November 1670
- Appendix C Richard Baxter on Thomas Willis, De anima brutorum (1672)
- Bibliography
About the author
David Sytsma is an assistant professor at Tokyo Christian University and research curator at the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research.
Summary
Richard Baxter, one of the most famous Puritans of the seventeenth century, is generally known as a writer of practical and devotional literature. But he also excelled in knowledge of medieval and early modern scholastic theology, and was conversant with a wide variety of seventeenth-century philosophies. Baxter was among the early English polemicists to write against the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi in the years immediately following the establishment of the Royal Society. At the same time, he was friends with Robert Boyle and Matthew Hale, corresponded with Joseph Glanvill, and engaged in philosophical controversy with Henry More. In this book, David Sytsma presents a chronological and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-seventeenth-century England.
Drawing on largely unexamined works, including Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681) and manuscript treatises and correspondence, Sytsma discusses Baxter's response to mechanical philosophers on the nature of substance, laws of motion, the soul, and ethics. Analysis of these topics is framed by a consideration of the growth of Christian Epicureanism in England, Baxter's overall approach to reason and philosophy, and his attempt to understand creation as an analogical reflection of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, understood as vestigia Trinitatis. Baxter's views on reason, analogical knowledge of God, and vestigia Trinitatis draw on medieval precedents and directly inform a largely hostile, though partially accommodating, response to mechanical philosophy.
Additional text
This book is a distinguished work of scholarship, and Sytsma's discussion and contextualization of Baxter's philosophical theology is remarkable. Sytsma's work is a welcome addition to the scholarship of Baxter and Reformed and Puritan theologians in the early modern period, and Sytsma makes a major contribution by analyzing a wide range of Baxter's unexamined theoretical works. I highly recommend it.
