How to be a Puritan Atheist

How and why did Christians in the 17th-century start wrestling with unbelief? What made these doubts so powerful?

A lecture by Alec Ryrie, Gresham Professor of Divinity 14 March 2019

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...

Early ‘atheism’ did not always mean angry rejection of religion. The most earnest believers were often ones who wrestled most seriously with doubts.

This lecture will look at how and why Christians in the seventeenth century first began seriously to wrestle with unbelief, whether troubled by feelings that God was absent, worries about religious variety or fear of damnation. What made these doubts so powerful was that their roots were not philosophical, but emotional.

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