Debating Divinity: Cicero’s Theological Dialogues in Enlightenment England

The unrivalled influence of Cicero on pre-modern Western thought is well-known, yet there remain spheres where the Roman’s significance has been left unexplored. Debating Divinity recovers for the first time the essential role played by Cicero’s theological dialogues – De natura deorum and De divinatione – in the religious debates of Enlightenment England. As early modern thinkers wrestled with the challenges posed to religious orthodoxy by heterodox wielding of nature, science and reason, Cicero’s theological dialogues became the surprising field on which new ideas were contested. Combining evidence from both the scholarly tradition and the wider discourse, Debating Divinity reconstructs in full the fascinating place of these dialogues in English intellectual history.