ABSTRACT
In the early modern period, 'Nature' became a key point of reference on the most diverse social and cultural planes. The interpretation of nature in terms of salvation was associated not just with a religious charging of the natural world, and to some extent also a sacralization of nature, but also with a central interest in deciphering the salvific 'facts' that God conveyed through nature. The meaning of changing ideas about salvation among Lutheran Protestants for their understanding of Nature has received little attention up until now. Johann Arndt, Johann Rist and Friedrich Christoph Lesser all devoted their main energies to their profession as pastors. With the exception of Lesser, who was an important representative of the physico-theological movement, they were not known to contemporaries for their natural philosophical discourses. The advent of works of natural theology as a sort of mass literature in Germany was accompanied by the beginnings of a definite stabilization of social conditions.
