Historical and Critical Dictionary

39. M. Bayle paid particular attention in his Historical and Critical Dictionary to expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians, and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this Dictionary, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action.

I am persuaded (as I have said above) that the specious objections one can urge against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings or to turn the old to better account.

But M. Bayle seeks therein a usefulness quite the reverse of this: it would be that of displaying the power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of the faithful.

M. Nicole seems to call that ’the triumph of God’s authority over human reason’, in the words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third volume of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (ch. 177, p. 120).

But since reason is a gift of God, even as faith is, contention between them would cause God to contend against God; and if the objections of reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said that [97]this alleged article will be false and not revealed: this will be a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat.

Such is the doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us assume to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation.

40. Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions.

And persons whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to God a sacrifice of their curiosity: for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to listen to the objections.

As there are many people whose faith is rather small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it; that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly not withhold it as unobtainable.

41. The passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles I have just affirmed.

There appear in some objects of faith two great qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is incomprehensibility, the other is the lack of probability. But one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of saying that what one believes is indefensible:

For that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith. Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.

For instance (as I have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not illusions.

42. There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they are sufficiently verified. There is a little romance of Spanish origin, whose title states that one must not always believe what one sees.

What was there more specious than the lie of the false Martin Guerre, who was acknowledged as the true [98]Martin by the true Martin’s wife and relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time even after the arrival of the other? Nevertheless the truth was known in the end.

It is the same with faith.

All one can oppose to the goodness and the justice of God is nothing but appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified when they are applied to God and when they are weighed against the proofs that assure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes. Thus faith triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that have made us embrace it.

But it would not triumph if the contrary opinion had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive objections against faith.

43. It is well also to observe here that what M. Bayle calls a ’triumph of faith’ is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations.

For it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the Manichaeans are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology.

Supposing one surrendered to them Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the pains of hell and the other articles of our religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections:

For one cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering) and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it seems that justice demands.

There remains, then, this question of natural theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?

44. We have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a sole Principle of all things, entirely good and wise. Reason teaches us this by infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken from the course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only based on false appearances.

For, if we were capable of understanding the universal harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we should see, and should not believe only, that what God has done is the best.

I call ‘seeing’ here what one knows a priori by the causes; and ‘believing’ what one only judges by the effects, even though the one be as certainly known as the other.

One can apply here too the saying of St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 7), that we walk by faith and not by sight. For the infinite wisdom of God being known to us, we conclude that the evils we experience had to be permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or a posteriori, that is to say, because they exist.

It is what M. Bayle acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical illusions.

45. And it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in God, who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for his love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are an admirable exercise for the virtues of Christian theology, when the divine grace in Jesus Christ arouses these motions within us.

That is what Luther aptly observed in opposition to Erasmus, saying that it is love in the highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so unlovable, so harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and to condemn for evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at least in the eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false reasons. One may therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined by divine grace is at the same time the triumph of faith and love.

46. M. Bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he declares himself against reason, when he might have been content to censure its abuse.

He quotes the words of Cotta in Cicero, where he goes so far as to say that if reason were a gift of the gods providence would be to blame for having given it, since it tends to our harm. M. Bayle also thinks that human reason is a source of destruction and not of edification (Historical and Critical Dictionary, p. 2026, col. 2), that it is a runner who knows not where to stop, and who, like another Penelope, herself destroys her own work.

Destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.

(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol. III, p. 725).

But he takes pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose religion only that they may sacrifice them to [100]faith by a mere repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is brought against them. He begins with the New Testament.

Jesus Christ was content to say: ‘Follow Me’ (Luke v. 27; ix. 59). The Apostles said: ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved’ (Acts xvi. 3). St. Paul acknowledges that his ‘doctrine is obscure’ (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that ‘one can comprehend nothing therein’ unless God impart a spiritual discernment, and without that it only passes for foolishness (1 Cor. ii. 14).

He exhorts the faithful ’to beware of philosophy’ (Col. ii. 8) and to avoid disputations in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith.

47. As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the collection of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which M. de Launoy made (De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna, cap. 2) and especially to the passages from St. Augustine collected by M. Arnauld (against Mallet), which state: that the judgements of God are inscrutable; that they are not any the less just for that they are unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss, which one cannot fathom without running the risk of falling down the precipice; that one cannot without temerity try to elucidate that which God willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men, having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment.

48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a beautiful passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, Summ., qu. 22, art. 4) to this effect: ‘Our mind’, he says, ‘rests not upon the evidence of known truth but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. And as St. Gregory says: He who believes touching the Divinity only that which he can gauge with his mind belittles the idea of God.

Yet I do not surmise that it is necessary to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of God: but I think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the relation which exists between God and the event, or in respect of what connects the event itself with his prevision.

Thus, reflecting that the understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul’s repose only in ignorance. For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives.

I do not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine election and divine relation to all events. Nothing of all that interferes with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.’ This passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent to reach the heart of the matter.

49. Luther’s book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason. Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God. He declares in his treatise on predestination that God had just causes for damning some men, but causes unknown to us. Finally M. Bayle quotes sundry modern writers who have spoken to the same effect (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, ch. 161 et seq.).

50. But all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not prove that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as M. Bayle supposes.

The counsels of God are inscrutable, but there is no invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are unjust.

What appears injustice on the part of God, and foolishness in our faith, only appears so. The famous passage of Tertullian (De Carne Christi), ‘mortuus est Dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus revixit, certum est, quia impossibile’, is a sally that can only be meant to concern appearances of absurdity. There are others like them in Luther’s book on Freewill in Bondage, as when he says (ch. 174):

‘Si placet tibi Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.’ Which being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means: If you approve that God give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest.

To judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one only has to weigh these words of the same author taken from the same book: ‘In all the rest’, he says, ‘we recognize in God a supreme majesty; there is only justice that we dare to question: and we will not believe provisionally [tantisper] that he is just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall come when his glory being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has been and that he is just.’