Cosmic Time and the Theological View of World History / Le temps cosmique et la vue théologique de l'histoire mondiale

To Christian people of the Middle Ages and the Reformation era, history contained the narrative of God's dealings with humanity, located within and related to the history of the Christian Church. During the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, people tried to make sense of what was happening within world history and the divine plan. Scholars, including Luther and Melanchthon, interpreted history in terms of the four-monarchies system derived from the Book of Daniel. They discovered in Scripture not only divine governance of political affairs, but also affirmation of their theological principles. Swiss theologians, such as Oecolampadius and Bullinger, understood God's relations with humanity as an eternal covenant, expressed in different transient forms. The quest for ever greater precision in the seventeenth century eventually discredited the providential, scriptural view of world history. It proved to have been one of those transient cultural movements within Christian experience.