3 - Cosmological fragments

Summary

Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder,

Holdes Blütenalter der Natur!

Ach, nur in dem Feeland der Lieder

Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.

Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,

Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blicke,

Ach, von jenem lebenswarmen Bilde

Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.

Lovely world, where are you? Come back now,

Nature's gorgeous prime!

Only in the faery land of songs

Does your fabled trace live on.

The fields are now grey; they grieve,

And no god meets my gaze.

From that image, living and warm,

Only the shadow remains.

Friedrich Schiller, Die Götter Griechenlands

We make no assumptions, in general, about the createdness of the world, nor do we understand, in the main, our own faculties to be intrinsically ordered to the divine Creator. The world-view of our own day is radically different from that outlined in the preceding chapters. But the transition from the one to the other was only gradual, taking place over centuries, and is not easily traced. It would be wrong, for instance, to think that the new rationalism of the seventeenth century was inherently atheistic or even hostile to Christianity in its traditional forms. And yet it was in this period that the seeds were sown of the enormous revolution which was to redefine Christianity and its intellectual contexts, and which continues to the present day.