During the early stages of the Renaissance, when intellectuals (for example, Voltaire) aimed their critical disregard at the Church, several men wrote effectively against deism. Yet none of them proved more effective than Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752). His monumental work, The Analogy of Religion, virtually ended the debate for thinking people. Skirmishes continued for years, but after Butler it was clear that all the fundamental issues had been settled.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Joseph-Butler, Renaissance, Voltaire[/tags]

(1509-1564)

John Calvin (aka. Jean Cauvin) played an important role in the Protestant Reformation—perhaps second only to Martin Luther in importance.

Calvin wrote the deeply influential Institutes of the Christian Religion (published in 1536, see also the Britannica summary), developed the "presbyterian" model of church government, and has been called the "organizer of Protestantism" because of his pastoral work organizing churches in Strassburg and Geneva.

He was born on July 10, 1509 in the city of Noyon in Picardy, France (where his childhood home is now a museum), was raised with children of the aristocracy, adopted the Latin "Calvin" as a young scholar. His father was the Bishop's secretary serving the cathedral in Noyon, and he ensured that Calvin was well educated. At age 14, Calvin enrolled at the University of Paris and later attended the College de Montaigu there. Calvin studied theology and in the

(1898-1963)

Clive Staples Lewis became the most popular defender of orthodox Christianity in the English speaking world in the mid-twentieth century. Lewis was born in Belfast in 898 and was brought up in the Christian faith. He was educated at Malvern College and then privately under a tutor whose atheism had such an influence on him that by he time Lewis went up to Oxford University in 1917 he was himself an unbeliever.

Having been elected to a fellowship in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, he held the post till 1954 when he became the Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Litrature at Cambridge. Over the years he wrote a number of works of literary criticism which are classics in their field.

Lewis was converted in 1931, his conversion triggered a rich variety of creativity. His international bestseller, The Screwtape Letters (1942), won him a reputation for being able

The word means "re-birth" and refers to the recovery of the values of classical Greek and Roman civilization expressed in literature, politics and the arts. The differences in the Reformation and the Renaissance lie in their differing views of man. The Reformers preached the original sin of man and looked upon the world as "fallen" from God's intended place. The Renaissance had a positive estimate of human nature and the universe itself. The seeds of the Age of Enlightenment lie in the Renaissance.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Enlightenment, history, Reformation, Renaissance[/tags]