Mathematical Theologies

The writings of theologians Thierry of Chartres (d. 1157) and Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) represent a lost history of momentous encounters between Christianity and Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. Their robust Christian Neopythagoreanism reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory, challenging our contemporary assumptions about the relation of religion and modern science. David Albertson surveys the slow formation of theologies of the divine One from the Old Academy through ancient Neoplatonism into the Middle Ages. Against this backdrop, Thierry of Chartres's writings stand out as the first authentic retrieval of Neopythagoreanism within western Christianity. By reading Boethius and Augustine against the grain, Thierry reactivated a suppressed potential in ancient Christian traditions that harmonized the divine Word with notions of divine Number. Despite achieving fame during his lifetime, Thierry's ideas remained well outside the medieval mainstream. Three centuries later Nicholas of Cusa rediscovered anonymous fragments of Thierry and his medieval readers, and drew on them liberally in his early works. Yet tensions among this collection of sources forced Cusanus to reconcile their competing understandings of Word and Number. Over several decades Nicholas eventually learned how to articulate traditional Christian doctrines within a fully mathematized cosmology-anticipating the situation of modern Christian thought after the seventeenth century. Mathematical Theologies skillfully guides readers through the newest scholarship on Pythagoreanism, the school of Chartres, and Cusanus, while revising some of the categories that have separated those fields in the past.

Auteur

David Albertson is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California.

Contenu

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Toward a Genealogy of Christian Neopythagoreanism PART ONE: The Genesis of Neopythagoreanism: A Synopsis 1. Platonic Transformations of Early Pythagorean Philosophy Mathematics as Philosophy in Philolaus and Archytas Mathematics as Mediation in Plato Mediation and First Philosophy in the Early Academy 2. The Neopythagorean Revival: Henology and Mediation The Origins of Henology in Eudorus and Moderatus Henology on the Margins of Middle Platonism Mathematical Theology in Nicomachus of Gerasa 3. The Late Antique Preservation of Neopythagoreanism Iamblichus, Proclus, and the Legacy of Nicomachus Augustine and the Number without number Boethius and the Fate of the Quadrivium PART TWO: The Pearl Diver: Thierry of Chartres's Theology of the Quadrivium 4. Thierry's Trinitarian Theology in Context The Status of Mediation in Twelfth-Century Platonism The Problem of Bernard's Gloss Thierry on Quadrivium and Trinity 5. The Discovery of the Fold Attempts at a Universal Theory of Science The Achievement of the Modal Theory Thierry as Neopythagorean Theologian 6. Thierry's Diminished Legacy Confusion about Mediation An Augustinian Censor A Late-Medieval Refutation: Word or Number? PART THREE: Bright Nearness: Nicholas of Cusa's Mathematical Theology 7. The Accidental Triumph of De docta ignorantia A Patchwork of Conflicting Sources Experiments in Chartrian Theology The Christological Double Synthesis 8. Chartrian Theology on Probation in the 1440s An Agenda for the 1440s in Two Sermons The Neopythagorean Counterexperiment Two Paradigms of Mediation 9. The Advent of Theologia geometrica in the 1450s The Restoration of Thierry's Modal Theory A New Foundation for Mathematical Theology The Word as Number and Angle 10. Completing the Circle in the 1460s New Impulses in the Late Works Incarnation and Neopythagoreanism Figurae mundi Epilogue Notes Bibliography