Lindberg and Numbers God and Nature
11/05/08: David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. God & Nature (Berkley: University of California, 1986).
Gary B. Deason, “Reformation theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature, in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. God & Nature (Berkley: University of California, 1986), 167-191.
The mechanical worldview of the seventeenth century rested on a single, fundamental assumption: that matter was passive. Because matter was seen to be passive, it possessed no active, internal forces. In seventeenth century conceptions, matter possessed only the attributes of size, shape, and impenetrability. Motion, in seventeenth century, consisted of only the laws of impact and the relatively new principle of inertia. Laws of nature were seen as external constraints governing change, which prescribed movement for material bodies without themselves being part of the inherent nature of matter.
Richard S. Westfall, “The Rise of Science and the Decline of Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Kepler, Descartes, and Newton,” in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. God & Nature (Berkley: University of California, 1986), 218-237.
Descartes was, for all intents and purposes, a deistic pantheist. His God was the God of the philosophers, and not the God of Judeo-Christian theism. Descartes deemed it true that God revealed himself in the eternal, unchangeable laws that He ordained. Isaac Newton denied the divinity of Christ.