Preference for learning and contempt for institutional religion became extremely popular among early modern thinkers. And, indeed, remains so today. But this belief in the self-autonomy of humanity, this mechanical image of man and creation, has only led to the destruction of both nature and human identity.

If its origins are neither found in the Bible nor in the early church, from where did this notion of “dominion” or “control” of nature come from? Perhaps surprisingly, if not ironically, it is a fairly modern view, and one found among thinkers of the scientific revolution.

Science and Religion, Friends or Foes?

Some history of science and religion is in order here. Recall for a moment the Augustinian approach to “natural philosophy” (what we now call “science”). Augustine argued that knowledge of the natural world could serve as a “handmaid” to theology. “If those who are called philosophers,” he wrote, “have said things that are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared; rather what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use.” This was the common practice of early apologists, taken from Origen’s advice to “plunder the Egyptians” every good thing that could serve to advance Christianity.

But with the rise of the great universities in the thirteenth century, a new sense of self-autonomy and rationality was beginning to emerge among its professors, and with it attempts to move beyond the Augustinian model. The Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1219-1292), for instance, considered by many the “first true scientist,” argued that the latest discoveries in nature and the new learning must be used to understand Christianity itself. “Plundering the Egyptians” for Christ was thus subtilty reversed to “we must plunder the Egyptians in order to understand Christ.”

Then came the “nominalism” of English Franciscan William of Ockham (1285-1347), which ultimately severed the continuity between visible and invisible worlds. With Ockham the growing conflict between the via antiqua and via moderna becomes more pronounced. Ockham maintained that the world is how it is not because God has woven universals into it, but because God willed it to be just as it is. Ockham’s “nominalism,” his belief that there are no forms or universals or archetypes, is often cited as engendering the empiricism of modern natural science since it claims we must learn about nature by observing it case by case, making generalizations only afterwards. At the same time, Ockham’s position uproots the cosmos from its deeper moorings, allowing nature to be seen as sheer artifact, an aggregate of natural substances without any deeper, inner coherence or dynamism.

Ockham’s vision prevailed, leading to a growing de-sanctified sense of nature. But while nature became increasingly desacralized, emancipated from religious and theological assumptions, humanity was becoming more divinized. This more hopeful and optimistic view of human nature occurred following a period that saw the rages of famine, pestilence, war, and revolt. To this we may also add the spiritual decay of the Avignon Papacy (1309-1378) and the subsequent Great Schism (1378-1417). After such grim realities, humanity started making a comeback in the 1400s.

During this “rebirth,” we see thinkers like the German philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), whose thought defies easy classification, but in various works, and particularly his De pace fidei (1453), proclaimed an optimistic, almost utopian vision of humanity and its future. According to Ernst Cassirer, in his classic The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927), Cusanus ignored the doctrine of Original Sin in favor of “man’s freedom, for only through freedom can man become God-like.” For Cusanus, humanity reigns autonomously and becomes more and more conscious of his own divinity as he conquers the natural world. Cusanus had thus encouraged a new relationship between God, nature, and humanity. As Cassirer put it, the “predicates claimed by divinity” were now “equally attributable to the human soul.”

Oswald Spengler, in his massive two-volume Decline of the West (1918-1922), characterized western culture as a “Faustian spirit” yearning towards the “Apollonian ideal.” The mysterious figure of Johann Georg Faust (1480-1540) emerged from the shadows during the Quattrocento, willing to bargain away his soul in exchange for knowledge. This Faustian drive, the yearning for learning, impelled many men onward in a phrenetic search for knowledge, human and divine.

During the Renaissance, such figures as Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Coluccio Salutati, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, many of whom at best only feigned religious orthodoxy, brought together an eclectic mix of individualism, paganism, sensualism, and skepticism. In their work we find a new and exhilarating view of human potential and prowess that made the scientific revolution possible. Most of these figures called for a reformation not only of religion but also natural philosophy, with the conviction that creation could be brought back to a prelapsarian state. While no doubt Faustian in spirit, what we actually find in many of these thinkers is a Dionysian rather than Apollonian ideal, with characteristics of excess, irrationality, and unbridled passion.

God on Earth

Thus a sort of “anthropological revolution” had occurred. A more optimistic view of human nature along with a positive attitude toward life and the ability of humans to change and improve their world and themselves. But unlike Patristic authors, the biblical notion of “dominion” began to take new meaning among Renaissance thinkers. A much fuller mastery, deeper and broader, was envisioned. The Quattrocento had combined the Imago Dei with the Prometheus motif of Greek myth, claiming that humanity shared in the most fundamental activity of God—the activity of creation.

The humanist Petrarch (1304-1374), who never took religion very seriously, greatly valued the life of the here and now. In his Remedies for Fortunes (1366), Petrarch argued that God gave man superiority over all other creatures. Similarly, Ficino (1433-1499), who labored all his life to reconcile Platonism and Christianity, promoted the position that God gave humanity full dominion over all creation. In his Platonic Theology of 1474, Ficino offered a vision of man as its own savior, something that was inconceivable in Augustinian theology. Pico (1463-1494), the wunderkind of the Florentine Academy and pupil of Ficino, proclaimed in his famous Conclusiones (1486), which was later renamed “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” that man was a “miracle” because his creator had endowed him with the capacity to become whatever he wished. Pico argued that man is the “maker and moulder of thyself,” with the liberty “to have what he wishes, to be whatever he wills.” While they recognized that man is finite, Petrarch, Ficino, and Pico all firmly believed mankind was capable of self-mastery and perfection.

Furthermore, according to Florence politician Manetti (1396-1459), “The world and all its beauty seemed to have been first invented and established by Almighty God for the use of man, and afterwards gratefully received by man and rendered more beautiful much more ornate and far more refined.” Most orthodox Christians would have praised the world God created, but it was something new to suggest that humanity might improve on God’s work! As Charles Trinkaus argued in his study, In Our Image and Likeness (1970), themes of likeness to God, immortality, and the mastery of all arts and sciences, were widespread among Renaissance writers.

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