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In Towards a Reformed Enlightenment: Salomon van Til (1643–1713) and the Cartesio-Cocceian Debates in the Early Modern Dutch Republic, Matthias Mangold offers the first in-depth investigation into the theological and philosophical convictions of an influential, yet hitherto much neglected, Dutch theologian working around the turn of the eighteenth century. With its strong contextual approach, this analysis of Van Til’s thought sheds new light on various intellectual dynamics at the time, most notably the long-standing conflict between the Voetian and Cocceian factions within the Dutch Reformed Church and the reception of Cartesian philosophy in the face of emerging Radical Enlightenment ideas.
Dutch Reformed pastor Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698) has long been recognized as a key figure in the end of the witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe. With the publication of his monumental four-volume work The World Bewitched Bekker argued against the temporal activity of the devil and evil spirits as well as against the reality of witchcraft, sorcery, and spirit possession. Yet Bekker's ideas drew opposition from Dutch Reformed clergymen who charged that his use of Cartesian philosophy to reject the temporal activity of spirits threatened much of traditional religious faith. This book argues that it wa Bekker's exegesis of biblical passages in which spirits and spirit activity were ...
The conviction that Nature was God's second revelation played a crucial role in early modern Dutch culture. This book offers a fascinating account on how Dutch intellectuals contemplated, investigated, represented and collected natural objects, and how the notion of the 'Book of Nature' was transformed.