does Descartes tries to do for theology what Euclid did for geometry.

Question

 Descartes tries to do for theology what Euclid did for geometry.

Answer 1

This is an interesting question that, I think, can be understood a couple different ways. If you mean "did Descartes try to systematize theology using a fixed set of propositions like Euclid did in geometry," then, in some ways, the answer is yes. However, this is exactly the sort of thing the field of systematic theology tries to do; and coming up with ultimate, unchanging truth-claims about God was especially the general approach to all theology through the Enlightenment.

If you mean "did Descartes try to use a mathematical-style reasoning for theology like Euclid did in geometry," then the answer is, again, in some ways yes. Since a major facet of all Cartesian thought is the subject-object dichotomy, where the subject is distinguished as the "thinking-thing" (res cogitans), and the object as the "extended-thing" (res extensa), then all of Cartesian thought, including his theology, is influenced by this paradigm. The difficulty is which side of the dichotomy should God be placed. In his Meditations, it appears that God is placed on the subjective side, as an idea of the "good" used to combat the thought experiment of an evil demon which is deceiving the mind. However, as many recent scholars have pointed out, God seems to be presupposed by Descartes, and come from some place outside the subject-object dichotomy. Jean-Luc Marion, for example, argues for a use of a phenomenology of "givenness" in Descartes; Bruce Ellis Benson argues along similar lines.