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From Chicken-Stuffing to Immortality Machines: The Faustian Bargain of Modernity

The scene feels like a grim parody of scientific progress: London, late March 1626. An aging Sir Francis Bacon, once Lord Chancellor of England, now fallen from grace but still crackling with intellectual ambition, jostles in a carriage through the snow near Highgate. Spying a chicken pecking scraps in a cottage yard, a sudden inspiration […]

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The Failure of the Modern Project: Part 2 of 4

“The modern world is not the triumph of reason, but the revenge of Prometheus.” In The Kingdom of Man, Rémi Brague presents a formidable critique of modernity not as the triumph of human reason but as the culmination of a metaphysical rebellion—one that sought to replace divine order with human sovereignty. Having already examined the medieval […]

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Natural and Supernatural Worlds in the Age of Revolution and Empire (1789–1920)

Between 1789 and 1920, the relationship between Christianity and the concepts of the natural and supernatural underwent dramatic transformations. As most historians have contended, this period saw the rise of modern science, the secularization of society, and a resurgence of supernaturalism in new forms. Understanding how Christianity navigated these shifts requires a careful consideration of […]

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Naturalism in the Christian Imagination

In Naturalism in the Christian Imagination, Peter N. Jordan examines the intellectual landscape of early modern England, where the realms of religion and natural philosophy were, perhaps surprisingly, inextricably intertwined. I say “surprisingly,” but most scholars in the field have long recognized the complex relationship between science and religion. But the key to Jordan’s contribution […]

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