Rejecting Reason

51. When the Fathers entered into a discussion, they did not simply reject reason.

In disputations with the pagans, they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to reason, and how the Christian religion has the better of it on that side also.

Origen showed Celsus how reasonable Christianity is and why, notwithstanding, the majority of Christians should believe without examination.

Celsus had jeered at the behaviour of Christians, ‘who, willing’, he said, ’neither to listen to your reasons nor to give you any for what they believe, are content to say to you: Examine not, only believe, or: Your faith will save you; and they hold this as a maxim, that the wisdom of the world is an evil.’

52. Origen gives the answer of a wise man, and in conformity with the principles we have established in the matter.

For reason, far from being contrary to Christianity, serves as a foundation for this religion, and will bring about its acceptance by those who can achieve the examination of it.

But, as few people are capable of this, the heavenly gift of plain faith tending towards good suffices for men in general. ‘If it were possible’, he says, ‘for all men, neglecting the affairs of life, to apply themselves to study and meditation, one need seek no other way to make them accept the Christian religion.

For, to say nothing likely to offend anyone’ (he insinuates that the pagan religion is absurd, but he will not say so explicitly), ’there will be found therein no less exactitude than elsewhere, whether in the discussion of its dogmas, or in the elucidation of the enigmatical expressions of its prophets, or in the interpretation of the parables of its gospels and of countless other things happening or ordained symbolically.

But since neither the necessities of life nor the infirmities of men permit of this application to study, save for a very small number of persons, what means could one find more qualified to benefit everyone else in the world than those Jesus Christ wished to be used for the conversion of the nations?

I would fain ask with regard to the great number of those who believe, and who thereby have withdrawn themselves from the quagmire of vices wherein before they were plunged, which would be the better: to have thus changed one’s morals and reformed one’s life, believing without examination that there are punishments for sin and rewards for good actions; or to have waited for one’s conversion until one not only believed but had examined with care the foundations of these dogmas?

Were this method to be followed, few indeed would reach that point whither they are led by their plain and simple faith, but the majority would remain in their corruption.’

53. M. Bayle (in his explanation concerning the objections of the Manichaeans, placed at the end of the second edition of the Dictionary) takes those words where Origen points out that religion can stand the test of having her dogmas discussed, as if it were not meant in relation to philosophy, but only in relation to the accuracy wherewith the authority and the true meaning of Holy Scripture is established.

But there is nothing to indicate this restriction.

Origen wrote against a philosopher whom such a restriction would not have suited. And it appears that this Father wished to point out that among Christians there was no less exactitude than among the Stoics and some other philosophers, who established their doctrine as much by reason as by authorities, as, for example, Chrysippus did, who found his philosophy even in the symbols of pagan antiquity.

54. Celsus brings up still another objection to the Christians, in the same place. ‘If they withdraw’, he says, ‘regularly into their “Examine not, only believe”, they must tell me at least what are the things they wish me to believe.’

Therein he is doubtless right, and that tells against those who would say that God is good and just, and who yet would maintain that we have no notion of goodness and of justice when we attribute these perfections to him.

But one must not always demand what I call ‘adequate notions’, involving nothing that is not explained, since even perceptible qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us such notions. Thus we agreed that Mysteries should receive an explanation, but this explanation is imperfect.

It suffices for us to have some analogical understanding of a Mystery such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, to the end that in accepting them we pronounce not words altogether devoid of meaning: but it is not necessary that the explanation go as far as we would wish, that is, to the extent of comprehension and to the how.

55. It appears strange therefore that M. Bayle rejects the tribunal of common notions (in the third volume of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, pp. 1062 and 1140) as if one should not consult the idea of goodness in answering the Manichaeans; whereas he had declared himself quite differently in his Dictionary.

Of necessity there must be agreement upon the meaning of good [104]and bad, amongst those who are in dispute over the question whether there is only one principle, altogether good, or whether there are two, the one good and the other bad.

We understand something by union when we are told of the union of one body with another or of a substance with its accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the place with the moving body, of the act with the potency; we also mean something when we speak of the union of the soul with the body to make thereof one single person.

For albeit I do not hold that the soul changes the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the soul, and I have introduced the Pre-established Harmony to avoid this derangement, I nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body, which makes thereof a suppositum. This union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a union of influence would belong to the physical.

But when we speak of the union of the Word of God with human nature we should be content with an analogical knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with the body is capable of giving us. We should, moreover, be content to say that the Incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the Creator and the creature; and further we should not want to go.

56. It is the same with the other Mysteries, where moderate minds will ever find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would be necessary for understanding. A certain what it is (τι εστι) is enough for us, but the how (πως) is beyond us, and is not necessary for us.

One may say concerning the explanations of Mysteries which are given out here and there, what the Queen of Sweden inscribed upon a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, ‘Non mi bisogna, e non mi basta.’ Nor have we any need either (as I have already observed) to prove the Mysteries a priori, or to give a reason for them; it suffices us that the thing is thus (το ‛οτι) even though we know not the why (το διοτι), which God has reserved for himself. These lines, written on that theme by Joseph Scaliger, are beautiful and renowned:

Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,

Quaecumque libris vis Prophetarum indidit

Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo:

Nec operta sacri supparo silentii

Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri.

[105] Nescire velle, quae Magister optimus

Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.

M. Bayle, who quotes them (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol. III, p. 1055), holds the likely opinion that Scaliger made them upon the disputes between Arminius and Gomarus. I think M. Bayle repeated them from memory, for he put sacrata instead of afflata. But it is apparently the printer’s fault that prudenter stands in place of pudenter (that is, modestly) which the metre requires.

57. Nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines contain; and M. Bayle is right in saying (p. 729) that those who claim that the behaviour of God with respect to sin and the consequences of sin contains nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to the mercy of their adversary.

But he is not right in combining here two very different things, ’to account for a thing’, and ’to uphold it against objections’; as he does when he presently adds: ‘They are obliged to follow him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead them, and it would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if they were to admit that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely all the objections advanced by a philosopher.’

58. It seems here that, according to M. Bayle, ‘accounting for’ comes short of ‘answering objections’, since he threatens one who should undertake the first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the second.

But it is quite the opposite: he who maintains a thesis (the respondens) is not bound to account for it, but he is bound to meet the objections of an opponent. A defendant in law is not bound (as a general rule) to prove his right or to produce his title to possession; but he is obliged to reply to the arguments of the plaintiff.

I have marvelled many times that a writer so precise and so shrewd as M. Bayle so often here confuses things where so much difference exists as between these three acts of reason: to comprehend, to prove, and to answer objections; as if when it is a question of the use of reason in theology one term were as good as another.

Thus he says in his posthumous Conversations, p. 73: ‘There is no principle which M. Bayle has more often inculcated than this, that the incomprehensibility of a dogma and the insolubility of the objections that oppose it provide no legitimate reason for rejecting it.’

This is true as regards the incomprehensibility, but it is not the same with the insolubility. And it is indeed [106]just as if one said that an invincible reason against a thesis was not a legitimate reason for rejecting it. For what other legitimate reason for rejecting an opinion can one find, if an invincible opposing argument is not such an one? And what means shall one have thereafter of demonstrating the falsity, and even the absurdity, of any opinion?

59. It is well to observe also that he who proves a thing a priori accounts for it through the efficient cause; and whosoever can thus account for it in a precise and adequate manner is also in a position to comprehend the thing.

Therefore it was that the Scholastic theologians had already censured Raymond Lully for having undertaken to demonstrate the Trinity by philosophy. This so-called demonstration is to be found in his Works;

Bartholomaeus Keckermann, a writer renowned in the Reformed party, having made an attempt of just the same kind upon the same Mystery, has been no less censured for it by some modern theologians. Therefore censure will fall upon those who shall wish to account for this Mystery and make it comprehensible, but praise will be given to those who shall toil to uphold it against the objections of adversaries.

60. I have said already that theologians usually distinguish between what is above reason and what is against reason. They place above reason that which one cannot comprehend and which one cannot account for. But against reason will be all opinion that is opposed by invincible reasons, or the contrary of which can be proved in a precise and sound manner. They avow, therefore, that the Mysteries are above reason, but they do not admit that they are contrary to it.

The English author of a book which is ingenious, but has met with disapproval, entitled Christianity not Mysterious, wished to combat this distinction; but it does not seem to me that he has at all weakened it. M. Bayle also is not quite satisfied with this accepted distinction.

This is what he says on the matter (vol. III of the Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, ch. 158). Firstly (p. 998) he distinguishes, together with M. Saurin, between these two theses: the one, all the dogmas of Christianity are in conformity with reason; the other, human reason knows that they are in conformity with reason. He affirms the first and denies the second. I am of the same opinion, if in saying ’that a dogma conforms to reason’ one means that it is possible to account for it or to explain its how by reason; for God could doubtless do so, and we cannot.

But I think that one [107]must affirm both theses if by ‘knowing that a dogma conforms to reason’ one means that we can demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction between this dogma and reason, repudiating the objections of those who maintain that this dogma is an absurdity.

61. M. Bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing. He acknowledges fully that our Mysteries are in accordance with the supreme and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with reason in general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that part of reason which man employs to judge things.

But this portion of reason which we possess is a gift of God, and consists in the natural light that has remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in accordance with the whole, and it differs from that which is in God only as a drop of water differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from the infinite. Therefore Mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be contrary to it.

One cannot be contrary to one part without being contrary to the whole. That which contradicts a proposition of Euclid is contrary to the Elements of Euclid.

That which in us is contrary to the Mysteries is not reason nor is it the natural light or the linking together of truths; it is corruption, or error, or prejudice, or darkness.