Richard Baxter and the mechanical philosophers

353 Pages·2017·2.018 MB·English

by  Baxter, Richard, Sytsma, David S

Richard Baxter and
the Mechanical Philosophers
OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY
Series Editor
Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary
Founding Editor
David C. Steinmetz †
Editorial Board
Irena Backus, Université de Genève
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-W ilhelms- Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia
MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE
JUSTIFICATION Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in
Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism the Netherlands
Brian Lugioyo John Halsey Wood Jr.
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church,
J. Warren Smith 1536– 1609
Scott M. Manetsch
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE
EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas The Act and Object of Saving Faith
Amy Nelson Burnett Richard Snoddy
READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION HARTFORD PURITANISM
The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God
1500– 1620 Baird Tipson
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH
SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660– 1714 A Reading of the Anti- Donatist Sermons
Variety, Persistence, and Transformation Adam Ployd
Dewey D. Wallace Jr.
AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE
THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM A Study in the Development of Pro-N icene Theology
OF ALTON Gerald Boersma
Timothy Bellamah, OP
PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET
MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations
IMAGINATION Phillip N. Haberkern
The Evangelical Wonder Book
in Reformation Germany JOHN OWEN AND ENGLISH PURITANISM
Philip M. Soergel Experiences of Defeat
Crawford Gribben
THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING
Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval MORALITY AFTER CALVIN
and Early Modern Germany Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor and Reformed Ethics
Ronald K. Rittgers Kirk M. Summers
CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE THE PAPACY AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST
Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis A History of Reception and Rejection
Michael Cameron Edward Siecienski
MYSTERY UNVEILED RICHARD BAXTER AND THE MECHANICAL
The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England PHILOSOPHERS
Paul C. H. Lim David S. Sytsma
Richard Baxter and
the Mechanical
Philosophers
z
DAVID S. SYTSMA
1
1
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For Hiroko
There is a good measure of knowledge necessary to make some
men to know their ignorance. What can shew a man his error,
but the contrary truth? This is it therefore that hinders men’s
conviction, and makes them confident in their most false con-
ceits; seeing they want both that Light, and that Humility which
should take down their confidence. We have as much ado to
make some men know, that they do not know, as to make them
know, that which they know not, when once they will believe that
they do not know it.
— RichaRd BaxteR, The Arrogancy of Reason
against Divine Revelations, Repressed
Contents
Preface  ix
Abbreviations  xi
1. Richard Baxter as Philosophical Theologian  1
2. Baxter and the Rise of Mechanical Philosophy  22
The Reception of Gassendi’s Christian Epicureanism in England 26
Baxter’s Early Response to Hobbes’s Leviathan 44
The Beginning of Baxter’s Restoration Polemics 47
Matthew Hale and the Growth of Baxter’s Polemics 57
On the “Epicurean” Ethics of Hobbes and Spinoza 62
Baxter and Henry More 64
Conclusion 69
3. Reason and Philosophy  71
Works on Reason 75
The Nature and States of Reason 77
Reason and Will 81
Reason in the State of Sin 84
Reason and Revelation 92
The Use of and Limits of Philosophy 98
Conclusion 103
4. A Trinitarian Natural Philosophy  105
Theological Motivations 106
God’s Two Books 106
Mosaic Physics 112
viii Contents
Vestigia Trinitatis 118
Trinitarian Analogy of Being 127
Trinities in Nature 134
Baxter’s Eclectic Reception of Tommaso Campanella 134
Threefold Causality 136
Passive Nature 140
Active Nature 144
Conclusion 150
5. A Commotion over Motion  151
Copernicanism 154
The Nature of Motion 158
Substantial Form 163
Descartes’s Laws of Motion 176
Henry More’s “Mixt Mechanicall Philosophy” 183
Conclusion 188
6. The Incipient Materialism of Mechanical Philosophy  190
Mechanical Philosophy and the Immaterial Soul 191
Henry More’s “Slippery Ground” and Pierre Gassendi’s
“Feeble” Proofs 196
Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Willis, and the Material Soul 202
Conclusion 214
7. From “Epicurean” Physics to Ethics  216
Baxter and Reformed Natural Law Theory 219
The Specter of Necessitarianism 233
The Problem of Naturalistic Natural Law 239
Conclusion 247
8. Conclusion  249
APPENDIX A: Chronology of Baxter’s Post- Restoration Writings on Philosophy  259
APPENDIX B: Richard Baxter to Joseph Glanvill, 18 November 1670  263
APPENDIX C: Richard Baxter on Thomas Willis, De anima brutorum (1672)  266
Bibliography  287
Index  333
Preface
the pResent study is the fruit of an intellectual journey that began as a stu-
dent at Calvin Theological Seminary. It was there, through course papers on
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Priestley (seminal figures in the development of
eighteenth-c entury Trinitarian heterodoxy), that I first took notice of the theo-
logical importance of changing notions of substance and causality generated by
seventeenth- century mechanical philosophy. This initial sentiment was confirmed
by further study of Edward Stillingfleet’s debate with John Locke in a course with
Daniel Garber at Princeton University. Having already explored late seventeenth-
and eighteenth- century developments, I wished to study the interaction between
theology and philosophy during the earlier seventeenth-c entury period of transi-
tion when varieties of both the older Christian Aristotelianism and mechanical
philosophy were in play. The result of this inquiry was my doctoral dissertation
on Richard Baxter, written under the kind supervision of Elsie McKee and Ken
Appold of Princeton Theological Seminary, which now, in significantly revised and
expanded form, constitutes the present book.
All historical research is in a sense actus entis in potentia, and the present book
represents a further actualization of my dissertation. I have added and revised
entire chapters, while incorporating additional primary sources, both in manu-
script and print. These changes have not only helped to clarify more precisely the
chronology of Baxter’s works under discussion, but also reinforced my opinion
that Baxter’s mind is in many respects a moving target. Baxter’s correspondence
with Matthew Hale, for example, shows him changing his mind on matters of
substance (literally!) under the force of Hale’s reply. In light of the importance of
chronology to Baxter’s intellectual development and engagement with philosophy,
I have included an appendix on the chronology of Baxter’s post- Restoration writ-
ings relating to philosophy. As every student of Baxter’s large corpus of printed
and manuscript works is aware, a complete comprehension of his works is an
elusive goal. I have focused on a narrow set of topics that seemed relevant to the
present study. Further evidence relating to the topics of the present book will no
doubt surface over the course of time. I ask the reader’s indulgence for what is