This article surveys the emergence and usage of the redefinition of man not asanimal rationale(rational animal) but asanimal religiosum(religious animal) by numerous English theologians between 1650 and 1700. Across the continuum of English Protestant thought, human nature was being redescribed as unique due to its religious, not primarily its rational, capabilities. This article charts said appearance as a contribution to debates over man's relationship with God; then its subsequent incorporation into the discussion over the theological consequences of arguments in favor of animal rationality, as well as its uses in anti-atheist apologetics; and then the sudden disappearance of the definition of man as animal religiosum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article hopes to make a useful contribution to our understanding of changing early modern understandings of human nature by reasserting the significance of theological writing in the dispute over the relationship between humans and beasts. As a consequence, it offers a more wide-ranging account of man as animal religiosum than the current focus on “Cambridge Platonism” and “Latitudinarianism” allows.

中文翻译：

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大约在英语宗教写作中将人定义为动物宗教。约 1650 年 1700

本文考察了对人的重新定义的出现和使用，而不是作为动物理论（理性动物）但作为动物宗教（宗教动物）在 1650 年至 1700 年间由众多英国神学家提出。在英国新教思想的连续体中，人性因其宗教而非理性的能力而被重新描述为独特的。这篇文章将外表描述为对人与上帝关系的辩论的贡献；然后它随后被纳入关于支持动物理性的论点的神学后果的讨论，以及它在反无神论护教学中的用途；然后在 18 世纪初，人作为动物宗教的定义突然消失。在这样做，这篇文章希望通过重申神学写作在人与兽关系之争中的重要性，对我们理解早期现代对人性的改变的理解做出有益的贡献。因此，它提供了比当前对“剑桥柏拉图主义”和“纬度主义”的关注所允许的更广泛的关于人作为动物宗教的描述。