Bayle's syllogisms

I answer Bayle’s syllogisms found in Chapter 151 of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (vol. III, pp. 900, 901). This is to negate his objections.

SYLLOGISM 1

‘God can will nothing that is opposed to the necessary love which he has for his wisdom.

‘Now the salvation of all men is opposed to the necessary love which God has for his wisdom.

‘Therefore God cannot will the salvation of all men.’

The major is self-evident, for one can do nothing whereof the opposite is necessary. But the minor cannot be accepted, for, albeit God loves his wisdom of necessity, the actions whereto his wisdom prompts him cannot but be free, and the objects whereto his wisdom does not prompt him do not cease to be possible. Moreover, his wisdom has prompted him to will the salvation of all men, but not by a consequent and decretory will. Yet this consequent will, being only a result of free antecedent acts of will, cannot fail to be free also.

SYLLOGISM 2

‘The work most worthy of God’s wisdom involves amongst other things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.

‘Now God wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom.

‘He wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.’

The major holds good, but the minor I deny. The decrees of God are always free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not compulsion in the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone, as I have observed so many times, is opposed to freedom.

238. I shall not examine the syllogisms that M. Bayle urges in objection in the following chapter (Ch. 152), against the system of the Supralapsarians, and particularly against the oration made by [274]Theodore de Bèze at the Conference of Montbéliard in the year 1586. This conference also only served to increase the acrimony of the parties. ‘God created the World to his glory: his glory is not known (according to Bèze), if his mercy and his justice are not declared; for this cause simply by his grace he decreed for some men life eternal, and for others by a just judgement eternal damnation. Mercy presupposes misery, justice presupposes guilt.’ (He might have added that misery also supposes guilt.) ‘Nevertheless God being good, indeed goodness itself, he created man good and righteous, but unstable, and capable of sinning of his own free will. Man did not fall at random or rashly, or through causes ordained by some other God, as the Manichaeans hold, but by the providence of God; in such a way notwithstanding, that God was not involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.’

239. This system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted to show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of God; and happily it is almost abandoned to-day. If there were not other more profound reasons capable of inducing God to permit guilt, the source of misery, there would be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the reasons alleged here do not suffice. He would declare his mercy better in preventing misery, and he would declare his justice better in preventing guilt, in advancing virtue, in recompensing it. Besides, one does not see how he who not only causes a man to be capable of falling, but who so disposes circumstances that they contribute towards causing his fall, is not culpable, if there are no other reasons compelling him thereto. But when one considers that God, altogether good and wise, must have produced all the virtue, goodness, happiness whereof the best plan of the universe is capable, and that often an evil in some parts may serve the greater good of the whole, one readily concludes that God may have given room for unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as he has done, without deserving to be blamed. It is the only remedy that supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. These thoughts have already been favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of Eve what the poet said of the hand of Mucius Scaevola:

Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus.

240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious book on the origin of evil, some passages of which were [275]disputed by M. Bayle in the second volume of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, while disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have upheld here and appearing to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of God did not follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary determination, independent of the representation of the object; this bishop, I say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own. He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say:

Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas.