Naturens talende taushet: En analyse av Godfrey Goodmans ireniske prosjekt i Creatvres Praysing God: or, the Religion of dumbe Creatures (1622)

Abstract

Does meditation and experience of nature have any consequences for how human beings behave? This question was crucial for the dean of Rochester and later bishop of Gloucester, Godfrey Goodman (1583–1656). In Creatvres Praysing God: or, the Religion of dumbe Creatures (1622), Goodman argued that nature – the created world – communicates with God in distinct and different ways, regardless of the capability of humans to understand the voice of nature. This thesis is an analysis of how Goodman encourages his readers to listen to what he believed to be the message of nature, and how this message could be interpreted within the context of religious and political tensions in England in the early seventeenth century. Using conceptual analysis and genre analysis, I demonstrate how Goodman’s Creatvres may be understood as an irenical project, thereby proposing a more nuanced interpretation of Goodman’s authorship than emphasised in other readings. I analyse how Goodman changes the emphasis of concepts such as naturall theology and naturall religion in order to enhance the relevancy of natural theology to his contemporaries. In the genre analysis, I argue that Goodman’s argument for the exemplarity of nature may be interpreted according to the genres that Creatvres makes use of. Finally, I demonstrate how it is possible to unite the conceptual analysis and the genre analysis in order to demonstrate how the irenical project of Goodman’s Creatvres may be understood in relation to other irenical ideas in his own time.