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Article: Two Books
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Science and Religion
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Two Books
Permeating the Western Christian tradition of natural theology is a metaphor expressing the belief that God is revealed in a complementary pair of sources: the book of scripture and the book of nature. The idea of nature as a book was used by early modern writers as shorthand for the design argument for God's existence. Thomas Browne (1605
–
1682), for example, wrote, "There are two books from whence I collect my divinity: besides that written one of God, another of his servant, nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all" (
Religio Medici
I.16).
Origins of the metaphor
The metaphor was born at the confluence of a number of ...