Matthew Tindal

Matthew Tindal (* 1657 in Beer Ferrers , Devonshire , † August 16, 1733 in Oxford ) was a representative of deism in England during the Early Enlightenment .

life and work

Matthew Tindal studied from about 1673 at Lincoln College of Oxford University Law where he received his doctorate 1685th In the same year he converted to the Catholic faith and thereby gained the favor of King Jacob II. Under Wilhelm III. However, he returned to the Anglican Church in 1688 and began to spread deistic ideas.

The early Enlightenment called the Bible a document of natural religion and claimed that Christianity in the sense of a "natural religion" was as old as creation, the church, however, only an institution of the state. In 1710 the British House of Commons decided to have one of its works burned . His main publication Christianity as old as the creation, or the Gospel a republication of the religion of nature , published in 1730, achieved widespread dissemination and attention across Europe. The publication of a second part (the one published in 1750 is false) was prevented by the Bishop of London.

Tindal died in Oxford in 1733 as a senior at All Souls College .

Works

• The Rights of Christian Church, asserted against the Romish and all other Priests, who claim an independent Power over it (1706)
• An Adress to the Inhabitants of the Two Great Cities of London and Westminster. In Relation to a Pastoral Letter said to be written by Bishop of London to the People of his Diocess. Occasion 'by some late writings in favor of Infidelity (1729)
• Christianity as old as the creation, or the Gospel a republication of the religion of nature (London 1730; German by Lorenz Schmidt , Frankfurt am Main 1741)
  • Reprint 1967: Edited and introduced by Günter Gawlick , Frommann (Holzboog), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt

literature

• Gotthard Victor Lechler : History of the English Deism . Stuttgart 1841.
• Henning Graf Reventlow : Biblical Authority and Spirit of Modernity. The importance of the understanding of the Bible for the intellectual and political development in England from the Reformation to the Enlightenment . Göttingen 1980, ISBN 3-525-55135-5 .
• Christoph Schmitt:  Tindal, Matthew. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 12, Bautz, Herzberg 1997, ISBN 3-88309-068-9 , Sp. 156-159.
• Stephen Lalor: Matthew Tindal, freethinker. An Eighteenth-Century Assault on Religion . 2005, ISBN 0-8264-7539-6 .

Web links

• Short biography