Theological Underpinnings of the Modern Philosophy of Mathematics Vladislav Shaposhnikov Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, Faculty of Philosophy vladislavshap@gmail.com Abstract: A deep conviction of the majority of mathematicians on the brink of the 20 th century was that mathematics is or at least must be infallible, consistent, rigorous, certain, necessary and universal, as well as free and applicable to the world without restriction. This common belief needs to be explained. This very conviction or belief was responsible for a heated argument provoked by set- theoretic paradoxes which were interpreted as an indication of the foundational crisis of mathematics (Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik). The crisis caused the emergence of diverse programs for the foundations of mathematics. Those programs gave birth, on the one hand, to the contemporary philosophy of mathematics and, on the other, to the formation of a new research field within mathematics: mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. This paper proposes the hypothesis that mathematics, seen from the foundationalist perspective, served at the time as a substitute for theology. According to this approach, philosophy of mathematics mediates an impact between theology and mathematics. To confirm this hypothesis I consider the prehistory of such an absolutist account of mathematics and pay a special attention to theological and quasi-theological ideas of the key figures of the three main foundationalist programs (logicism, intuitionism and formalism). From the early Modern Era on and up to the last decades of the 19 th century an intimate coordination of an absolute character of mathematics with the Absolute was philosophers’ credo. Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and many other personalities of the Scientific Revolution shared a belief that can be visualized as the Theo-Cosmo-Anthropological Triangle (TCA- triangle). Figure 1: TCA-triangle This world and human beings in it have been created by one and the same God. Human mathematics differs from the divine one only in scope (extensively) but not in quality (intensively) (Galileo). This God is not a deceiver (Descartes) that is why the world (created according to divine mathematics) fits perfectly to mathematics of human reason. Even in the second half of the 19 th century this connection of mathematics with the divine nature was still alive, though primarily as a superficial level of religious rhetoric. The traditional philosophy of mathematics was “religiously tinged” (Cohen, 2007, p. 138). But the time was already ripe for a decisive secularization of mathematics. Not without reason Nietzsche diagnosed his epoch in the words “God is dead”. The TCA-triangle was discarded, while most of the traditional features of mathematics (infallibility, consistency, etc.) were preserved by force of habit. THEOS ANTHROPOS COSMOS