{"content":[{"text":"Understanding and appreciating the Trinity is perhaps more difficult today than \n ever, because we live in a rationalist scientific age. Everything we seek to say to \n describe God leads only to greater wordlessness. The Trinity does communicate \n a vital aspect of Christian belief – that God is relational and ‘in’ communion. God \n is not a remote or isolated ‘being’, rather God is a living word, experienced in our \n own humanity and in the spirit that creates, frees and sustains life. It isn’t the fact \n that God the Father or Creator is God, and others (Son and Spirit) are \n subordinate. They are three expressions of God, not persons as we understand \n persons.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.091132,"width":0.6997420000000001,"height":0.156321}},{"text":"While no single event ever leads on its own to a new worldview, the Black Death \n in 1347 certainly had a major influence. The Plague killed one quarter of people in \n Europe (twenty-five million people) and outbreaks continued for three hundred \n years. Popular preachers of the time, just like fundamentalists of our own era, \n were convinced that the plague was a punishment from God, and in ensuing \n years, the fear of hell became as popular in art as it was in preaching. People \n looked to heaven ‘in the next life’, for relief from their tragic sufferings.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.268102,"width":0.709627,"height":0.12147200000000002}},{"text":"People were encouraged to ‘buy’ God’s favour and clergy handed out salvation for \n a ‘price’, by selling indulgences. Collections for cathedrals and palaces including \n St Peter’s Basilica were principally funded by donations for which people were \n granted indulgences. At one time, ten days out of purgatory was offered for \n people remaining until the end of Mass! Superstition and piety resulted in \n practices and beliefs, aimed at avoiding eternal damnation. In the ensuing one \n hundred and fifty years, two hundred Gothic cathedrals were built to ‘reach God’. \n Whatever the worldview, there was little or no hope offered in this life, and out of \n this misery, the Renaissance was born.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.407496,"width":0.712942,"height":0.156321}},{"text":"Reason began to replace faith. Popular subjects included literature, history, \n philosophy and art. Renaissance art was dominated by Michelangelo, Raphael, \n and Leonardo da Vinci and they had enormous influence. Italy was repeatedly \n invaded by armies from France, Germany, and Spain from 1494 to the early \n 1500's and the invaders were dazzled by the beauty of Italian art and architecture \n and returned home deeply influenced by Italian culture. Visitors to Italy, such as \n merchants, bankers, diplomats and young scholars sought to acquire the basic \n tools of humanistic study and they began to spread their influence throughout \n parts of Western Europe.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.581738,"width":0.7057640000000001,"height":0.15632100000000004}},{"text":"Following the separation of religion and science, humans came to see God like a \n clockmaker, who, having fashioned and completed creation, now sat back and \n observed, occasionally interacting to fix ‘mechanical’ problems. This view led to a \n belief that the laws pertaining to nature could be identified and even controlled. \n Issac Newton’s mechanistic view of the world coincided to the rise of massive \n economic growth including mass literacy and urbanisation . There was a \n conviction that science, technology and reason would overcome all human \n problems and religion would fade away.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.755981,"width":0.7030070000000002,"height":0.138745}},{"text":"2","bbox":{"left":0.841961,"top":0.938102,"width":0.010905000000000054,"height":0.016927000000000025}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}