Providentialism Flashcards
Steven Fuller
Calvinist theology associated with Providentialism; ‘humans try to understand their fate in the hands of a creative but inscrutable deity by discerning an overarching trend’
‘originally providentialism helped to explain the epistemic gap between the human and divine mind’
Allanya Ward
‘The Tudor period saw the character ‘Fortune’ transformed from a benign example of God’s omnipotence to an official explicator of sin and damnation, and this transformation may be traced alongside the humanist trajectory of Divine Providence in Tudor Christianity’
Identifies a tension - no coherent way to reconcile Fate and Providence, especially consdering humanist idealisation of free will/reason
What does Mervyn James argue increased literacy caused?
An increased belief that one could learn ‘right understanding and right action’ and thereby reduce the impact of ‘the rule of Fortune upon history and events’
How does Mervyn James argue that providentialist thought affected behaviour?
behaviour based on courting the ‘continuing favour of Providence, which itself depended on the moral quality of social and political life: its inner orderliness, its obedience to law, human and divine’
According to Mervyn James, how did Renaissance individuals seek to control Fate?
‘conformity and purity, seen as the means of containing the unpredictable pressures of Fate and Fortune’; not just for individual but for whole structured State
