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Providence as Mystery, Providence as Revelation: Puritan and Anglican Modifications of John Calvin's Doctrine of Providence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ronald J. VanderMolen
Affiliation:
Professor of history in California State College, Stanislaus Turlock, California.

Extract

Acceptance of providence, the belief that an ultimate being determines the course of events, has always created problems for moralists and advocates of free will, and for obivous reasons. If any events has been foreordained, how can hemans be free? If all is determined, why should humans try to do what is right? Aside from the philosophical questions raised by a belief in provedence, however, scholars such as the distinguished economists Jacob Viner have begun to examine the doctrine of providence from the point of view of its broad ideological and social impact. Though Professor Viner modestly claimed that his study of providence was simply an intellectual history pursued for its own sake, he demonstrated many of the doctrine's implications for early modern thought and social structures. Similar emphasis on the significance of the early modern idea of providence is also found in Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1978

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References

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65. Ibid., p. 197.

66. Ibid., p. 198.

67. Gay, Peter, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America (Berkeley, 1966.)Google Scholar The basis for Gay's judgment is his view that “I regard critical thinking as essentially superior to mythical thinking” (p. 121). In his work Gay deals, as the subtitle indicates, with American Puritan historiography; however, in his first chapter he alleges that American Puritans were essentially pursuing an Augustinian, medieval view like that used in Foxe's Acts and Monuments. He further alleges that though European historiography changed to a more virtuous enterprise, that is, though it became critical and left myth behind, American Puritan historiography did not change. Dr. Gay does not explain why mythical thinking is inferior; nor does he give evidence of self-examination on the part of secular historians. This latter enterprise would be helpful in discovering modern myths which have made critical thinking so acceptable. Critical thinking is not wrong, obviously, but there surely are values based in modern “myths” which make it so desirable a quality. Though critical thinking is desirable, it did not necessarily elude the Puritans; neither is its application uniformly evident in modern historiography. Also see Howard's, Alan B.Art and History in Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation,” William and Mary Quarterly 27 (1971):240241.Google Scholar

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