ABSTRACT
Judging from the literature of the period, at least 25 comets appeared in Europe during the first part of the 17th century. These comets were noted because writers felt compelled to interpret their theological significance or meaning. While numerous factors were involved, the shift from viewing events in nature as theological signs to regarding them as non-communicative occurrences explained through natural causality was influenced in part by the rise of a Newtonian picture of the world, in which comets reflect God’s general ordering of nature and their paths can be predicted in advance. The authors agree with Ritchie and others in the field of science and religion that it is incumbent upon theologians to take the natural sciences seriously. Many Christians historically have also seen God as intimately involved in nature, and their scriptures seem to give few reasons to see nature as an orderly realm filled with regularities explicable through natural causes.
