Co1in Brown

Introduction 9

PART I. PHILOSOPHY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

1. Socrates and Pre-Socratic Philosophy 19

The Milesian School 20

The Pythagoreans 22

Heraclitus 23

Parmenides 24

The Atomists 25

Socrates and the Sophists 26

2. Plato's Vision of Reality 29

The State 29

Theory of Forms 31

The Soul and Immortality 32

Plato and Religion 33

3. Aristotle and the Physical World 39

Logic 40

Physics and Metaphysics 41

The Unmoved Mover 43

Human Nature and Ethics 48

4. Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics and Cynics 51

Epicureanism 51

Stoicism 54

Skepticism 57

Cynics 60

5. From Greeks to Gospel 63

Philo of Alexandria 64

The Apostle Paul and Ancient Philosophy 66

The Gospel of John 71

The Letter to the Hebrews 72

Retrospect 74

PART H. FROM CHURCH FATHERS TO MEDIEVAL SCHOLASTICS

6. Philosophy and the Church Fathers 79

The Mystery Religions and Gnosticism 79

Platonism, Neoplatonism and Their Rivals 82

Two Christian Approaches to Philosophy 88

Augustine 93

Postscript 99

7. Early Medieval Philosophy 101

The Changing World of Christendom 101

Boethius and the Era of Transition 104

Pseudo-Dionysius 106

Realism and Nominalism 107

Islamic and Jewish Philosophy 108

Anselm and Early Medieval Philosophy 111

8. Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophy 119

Aquinas and His Age 119

The Five Ways 123

Analogy 129

Alternatives to Thomism 134

Scotus, Occam and Biel 135

PART III. FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

9. Philosophy and the Reformers 143

Renaissance and Reformation 143

The Agenda of the Reformation 146

Luther and "the Devil's Whore" 148

Calvin and Classical Philosophy 151

Retrospect and Prospect 154

10. Old Questions and New Crises 159

Molina, Suarez, Banez and Arminius 159

Pyrrhonian Skepticism 166

11. The Age of Rationalism 173

Galileo and the Copernican Revolution 174

Descartes 178

Spinoza 185

Leibniz 189

Pascal 192

12. Rational Religion and the Era of Deism 197

Hobbes 198

The Cambridge Platonists 202

English Deism 203

Replies to Deism 207

Repercussions 212

13. The Rise of British Empiricism 215

The Empirical Tradition 216

Locke 220

Berkeley 227

14. The Skeptical Empiricism of Hume 235

Knowledge 238

Miracles 242

The Existence of God 250

Hume's Achievement 256

15. Scottish Common Sense and Early American Philosophy 259

Thomas Reid and the Scottish Common Sense School 259

Early American Thought 268

Jonathan Edwards 271

Deism in America 280

16. Enlightenment and Skepticism in France 285

The Age of Enlightenment 285

Voltaire 289

Rousseau 294

17. Enlightenment and Skepticism in Germany 301

Lessing, Reimarus and the Quest of the Historical Jesus 301

Kant 309

PostScript 329

18. Retrospect and Prospect 331

The Sociology of Knowledge 333

Philosophy and Philosophizing 335

Foundations and Methods 336

Notes 341

A Note on Books 423

A Note on the Role of Women in the History of Western Thought 426

Select Index 442

"What is real?" "What is true?" "How do we know?" Time and again people have found these questions harder to answer than they are to ask. In one of his more whimsical moments C. S. Lewis imagined a modern materialist at the end of the world. He envisaged a scene like that described in Revelation with the heavens rolled up, the great white throne appearing and the materialist himself going through the sensations of being hurled into the Lake of Fire. The materialist, Lewis suggested, would regard the whole experience as an illusion, preferring rather to seek explanations in psychoanalysis and cerebral pathology. For seeing is not believing, and complex questions cannot be settled simply by appealing to experience. Lewis went on to argue: "Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it."'

Whether we fully agree with Lewis or not, there can be no doubt that what we see is always filtered through the twin lenses of our experience and our understanding. This applies to the things of everyday life. I can recognize a rose bush because I have seen other rose bushes. I know that the thin metal object in my pocket is the ignition key of my car because I have seen it and used it before. It fits into the pattern of my experience and understanding. We apply the same kind of procedure to the deeper, more complex questions of life. We judge that this action is right and that action is wrong in the light of our scheme of moral values. We decide for or against such notions as free will and life after death not because of a single item of evidence or a simple experiment that we can perform. Any new item has to be assessed in relation to the fabric of beliefs and values that each of us has been weaving from birth.

If we are inclined to use fancy, quasi-technical language to describe all this, we might talk about how people's perceptions are affected by their Weltanschauung. But this is only a more obscure way of saying in German what the words "world view" say in English. More recently, it has become fashionable to talk of paradigms and paradigm shifts. The latter term was given currency by philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn in his description of what happens in a scientific revolution. Kuhn rejects the idea of scientific neutrality. Instead, he argues that "an apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time.2 The beliefs of the community in question constitute the paradigm which defines the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.'

In ancient times people came to think that the world was made up of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. This way of thinking provided the paradigm for thinking about the physical world. Another paradigm was supplied by the view that the course of human destiny was in the hands of the gods. In time scientific thinking came to be dominated by Aristotelian physics. In the Age of Enlightenment this gave way to Newtonian physics, which in modern times was further modified by Einstein's relativity. Kuhn argues that in any given era the practitioners of science operate within the accepted paradigms. But every now and again the paradigm proves to be inadequate to cope with the new understanding of reality. It is then that a paradigm shift comes about in order to accommodate the new approach.

This book is about the changes in preconceptions, world views and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people have thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular in the Western world. Although it is written from the standpoint of someone who is deeply committed to the Christian faith, this book is not an essay in apologetics. Its aim is not to present a defense of Christianity against all comers. Rather, it is a historical sketch, written to help students-and anyone else who might be interested-to get a better grasp of the lovehate relationship between philosophy and faith that has gone on for close on two thousand years. This is not to say that I have deliberately suppressed my own views. I have regularly chanced my arm and entered the fray of debate by way of offering comments on the strengths and weaknesses of different views. However, I have not attempted to present my own brand of philosophy. Still less have I sought to force what I see into some kind of pattern of development. I have just called 'em as I see 'em. Readers will judge for themselves whether I have called 'em right.

Twenty years ago I wrote a book entitled Philosophy and the Christian Faith: A Historical Sketch from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. It was written with the fire and passion of youth-or at least the fire and passion of an aspiring scholar in his thirties writing his second book. Since then the book has gone through more than a dozen printings in America and Britain. It has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese; and an Indonesian translation is underway. Numerous people have told me that this was the book that helped them get through philosophy at college, university or seminary. To be told this is both encouraging and humbling. In the meantime InterVarsity Press invited me to undertake a revision to make the book more useful for the present generation. As I worked on the revision, I could not suppress the growing feeling that tinkering about with the original book would ruin whatever was good in it. If I did anything at all, I needed to write a completely new book. There is much in Philosophy and the Christian Faith that I still stand by. There are many passages which-try as I may-I cannot improve upon. For all that, I feel a growing kinship with Saint Augustine who toward the end of his career wrote his Retractations. I have therefore written what is virtually a new book on the same basic theme.

In the past two decades I have been reading and rereading both primary sources and some of the massive flood of secondary literature which has poured from the academic presses on both sides of the Atlantic. I must confess that when I wrote Philosophy and the Christian Faith I had never heard of Pyrrhonism. If I had paid more attention to the texts of Pascal, Hume and their contemporaries, I might have known better. But I did not. My ignorance may perhaps be partially excused by the paucity of references to Pyrrhonism in the standard histories, textbooks, and reference works. Even The Encyclopedia of Philosophy lacks an article on Pyrrhonism, though this deficiency is later remedied by the article on Skepticism. I now see that Pyrrhonism was not only a significant movement in its own right but a key to understanding the minds of Descartes and Pascal and the direction taken by European thought in the seventeenth century. The positions adopted by Descartes and Pascal cannot be properly appreciated unless we see them as responses to Pyrrhonian skepticism. Accordingly, I have included in this new book a section devoted to Pyrrhonian skepticism. This in turn has drastically affected my account of Continental rationalism and other philosophical movements.

I have made countless changes in my exposition and assessment of numerous thinkers and movements. I have introduced many matters which are absent from my earlier book. As someone who has not only changed his country of residence but also his nationality between writing the two books, I have also changed some of my perspectives. In a small way this is reflected by paying more attention to philosophy on the American side of the Atlantic. But the biggest change of all is the inclusion of a discussion of philosophy in the ancient world, the early centuries of the Christian church and in the Middle Ages.

Philosophy and the Christian Faith began with a cursory account of medieval philosophy, which amounted to miscellaneous thoughts chiefly on Anselm's ontological argument, Aquinas's five ways and the doctrine of analogy. The previous history of philosophy was passed over in a scant five pages. These handicaps placed serious limitations on the usefulness of the work as a textbook, not only on account of the missing subjectmatter, but also on account of the foreshortened, limited perspective and its failure to see important connections between later philosophy and earlier philosophy.

Perhaps this shortsightedness may be put down to the facts that Philosophy and the Christian Faith was a product of the 1960s, and that its author was a child of the age of linguistic analysis. That era was already passing, but its children were still being taught that the main problems of philosophy were reducible to the problems of the meaningfulness of language. So far as the history of philosophy was concerned, modern philosophy (i.e., the only worthwhile philosophy) began with Descartes. Descartes himself-so the story went-mistakenly thought that philosophy should be founded on the specious certitude proferred by the notorious cogito ergo sum. Prior to the twentieth century, seven philosophers were deemed worthy of serious attention in the philosophy curriculum: three Continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) and three British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume), followed by Kant (the one to whom all roads led). Each of these-so the tradition wentdemonstrated the egregious mistakes of his predecessor. The prize for smartness was usually awarded to the skeptical Hume. Then came Kant's elaborate but vain attempt to salvage what he could from the ravages of Hume. Such was the standard tale. But philosophy in the 1980s is in a different world from that of a mere twenty years ago. All the classical questions are being examined with renewed vigor. Nothing falls under the taboo of the analytical philosopher. There is an astonishing amount of interest in both the major and the minor thinkers of all ages. Inevitably, the map of the landscape has changed.

I have chosen to call this book Christianity and Western Thought. The title carries with it the risk of appearing to offer more than I actually give. However, my subtitle makes it clear that my central interest lies in the interaction of philosophy with Christian faith. I have opted for the broader title, partly because I wish to include certain topics which lie outside the strict confines of philosophy, and partly because philosophy itself has always been influenced by matters which lie outside it.

Although I would have liked to have written a single-volume work for the non-specialist student and general reader, these remain my target readers. However, I am deeply committed to the importance of quoting sources and giving references. This has a double value. On the one hand, it forces the writer to stick to what someone has said rather than give the writer's version. On the other hand, it enables readers to check out for themselves and follow through the ideas that are presented to them. Inevitably this has meant a bigger book. The additional material and the extensive endnotes have turned the idea of a single-volume work into an impossible dream. But truth to tell, my original book Philosophy and the Christian Faith was not really a single-volume history of philos ophy. By beginning as it did with its cursory account of medieval thought, it was really the second volume of a two-volume history, the first volume of which was never written.

The present volume is intended to give a basic, introductory account of Christianity and Western thought from the ancient world to the Age of Enlightenment. In other words, it covers the vast period from preSocratic philosophy in the sixth century B.C. to the close of the eighteenth century A.D. A second volume will deal with philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is obvious that the two volumes are not evenly balanced, and that no attempt has been made in this present first volume to give equal space to everyone. The divisions of the two books and the choice of topics within the books are alike determined by the arbitrary, but only possible, criterion of what seems to be important. There is a sense in which the end of the eighteenth century marks the big divide in history. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century religious belief and metaphysical commitments provided the dominant paradigms for Western thought. From the middle of the eighteenth century secularism makes increasing claims to provide the paradigms for thought and both private and public behavior. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the streams of secular paradigms have become a flood. The flood has also brought forth Christian responses. However, this must remain the theme for the next volume.

Histories of ideas tend to be written from a male point of view, and the contribution of women can be easily overlooked. To help remedy this defect, I have inserted at the end of the book a retrospective survey entitled "A Note on the Role of Women in the History of Western Thought."

This book is written by a non-specialist for non-specialists. Doubtless a trained, professional philosopher would have handled things differently. My own professional training and expertise, such as they are, lie in the area of theology. However, I have several excuses to plead for writing this book. The first is that most professional philosophers appear to be uninterested in writing a historical survey of this kind. I marvel at their expertise in handling logical problems and in writing for each other. But by and large they are specialists who fulfill their vocation within their area of specialization. More positively, however, as a theo logian I am convinced that good theology cannot be done without an awareness of the philosophical dimensions of theological questions. The questions that confront us today cannot be understood without an understanding of the philosophical background of the past and the philosophical horizons of the present. I am therefore content to remain an amateur among the professionals. Not everyjogger aspires to be an Olympic athlete. But you do not have to be an Olympic athlete to get some benefit out of jogging. It is the same with philosophy. You do not have to be a professional to get benefit from reading philosophy.

There is one other major difference between the present book and Philosophy and the Christian Faith. The latter gave references in the form of footnotes at the bottom of the page. The present book uses endnotes. The inconvenience of having to turn to the back of the book for a reference is outweighed by a double advantage. On the one hand, the reader who is not interested in the details of the argumentation can read through the book without distraction. On the other hand, the endnotes have given the writer the freedom to give information without having to worry about cluttering up the main text with technical data. I have used the endnotes not only to give references, but also to give bibliographical information. Readers who desire such information will find it in the appropriate endnote, relating to the beginning of the discussion of the writer or topic in question. Because this book is intended to be a basic introduction, I have confined the bibliographical information to books published in English. Readers who want information about journal articles and works in foreign languages will find them in the sources referred to. I have generally avoided giving references in the endnotes to dictionary and encyclopedia articles and discussions in standard histories. However, information about standard histories and reference works is given in the note on books which I have appended to this book.

It remains for me to express my warm gratitude and deep appreciation to many people who have helped me with this book. James Hoover, the academic editor of InterVarsity Press, is ultimately responsible for its origin. Several years ago, it was he who suggested revising and updating Philosophy and the Christian Faith. I thank him and the staff of InterVarsity Press in the United States for their patience and encouragement as they have witnessed and taken part in a modest revision that became the creation of a completely new book. I wish to thank Janet Gathright of the Word Processing Department of Fuller Theological Seminary for processing my original typescript, and Sandy Bennett and David Sielaff who worked on the numerous revisions. I wish to pay tribute to the staff of the McAlister Library of Fuller Theological Seminary; without their help and the library's resources, the writing of this book would not have been possible.

Dr. L. Russ Bush of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary made numerous helpful suggestions for improving this volume and also its sequel. I am especially grateful to the readers of the first draft of my text who drew my attention to many specific points where changes needed to be made: Professor Arthur F. Holmes of Wheaton College; Dr. Kelly James Clark of Gordon College; and Dr. Peter Hicks in England. Needless to say, the responsibility for the remaining faults and idiosyncracies remains mine alone.

My greatest debt of gratitude is to my wife, Olive, for her selfless help and loving critical comments at every stage of this work. Though I did not know it at the time, she was among those students who used Philosophy and the Christian Faith to get through her philosophy exams at university. It is to her that I dedicate this book.

Center for Advanced Theological Studies, School of Theology

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California

In the ancient world people were doing philosophy long before anyone thought up the word.' But, according to the first great historian of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius, it was the Greeks who began it all. In Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers he noted the belief that philosophy had its beginnings among the barbarians. He mentioned the magi of the Persians, the Chaldaeans of Mesopotamia, the gymnosophists among the Indians, the druids of the Celts and Gauls, and the priests and prophets of the Egyptians. But for Diogenes Laertius, it was with the Greeks that philosophy began. He identified Musaeus as "the first to compose a genealogy of the gods and to construct a sphere." Musaeus believed that "all things proceed from unity and are resolved into unity." However, the first man to use the term philosophy and to call himself a philosopher was Pythagoras,2 the thinker and mathematician who lived in the sixth century B.C.

To Pythagoras the term philosopher was evidently a term of modesty. It is made up of two Greek words. The Phil- part of the word means "love." The Greek words sophia and sophos mean "wisdom" and "wise" respectively.' Pythagoras declared that no one was wise except God. He himself disclaimed the title of being "wise" and preferred to be known as a "philosopher" or "lover of wisdom." The subject that we today call philosophy was the study of wisdom. Sometimes it was called simply wisdom. Its early practitioners were known as wise men, sages (sophoi) or sophists (sophistoi)."

Diogenes Laertius went on to observe that philosophers could be divided into two classes: dogmatists and skeptics. The dogmatists were "all those who make assertions about things assuming that they can be known." The skeptics included "all who suspend their judgment on the ground that things are unknowable."5 Diogenes Laertius may well have been a skeptic himself. He lived in the third century A.D. and so was separated by centuries from many of the thinkers he was writing about. He freely used traditions and material from earlier writers. Nevertheless, his work provides important testimony to ways of thinking in the ancient world.

Today a dividing line is often drawn between pre-Socratic philosophy and the classical philosophy which came later. The line is marked by the life and thought of Socrates who lived in the fifth century B.C. Although he left behind him no philosophical treatises, Socrates exerted an enormous influence on Plato and his generation. Although some may regret it,' philosophy was never quite the same after Socrates.

No complete work by any pre-Socratic philosopher has survived.7 Some thinkers, including Socrates himself, did not write books at all. The views of others we know only from fragments or accounts given in later writers. The earliest proper philosophy had its beginnings in the commercial centers of Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor in the sixth century B.C. The region gave its name to the Ionian School, also called the Milesian School after the city of Miletus. From Miletus came Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes.

All three thinkers sought to understand the nature of reality. In their different ways each of them was concerned to discover what it is that underlies everything. What is the world really made of? Thales replied that the world was really made of water.' To our ears the answer sounds strange. But Thales had his reasons for saying this. The land which is surrounded by the sea appears to rest on water. Plants, animals and human beings need water in order to survive. Nutriment requires moisture in order to be consumed and assimilated. Moreover, the semen of living creatures is moist. By reflecting on what he observed, Thales came to the conclusion that water was the first principle of things. The importance of Thales lies not so much in his conclusions as in the kind of questions that he asked and his motive for asking them. In the words of a modern historian of science, "If he had championed the cause of treacle as the sole element, he would still have been rightly honored as the father of speculative science."9

Thales is important in at least two other ways. He believed that the soul was the "motive force" of the body.10 In teaching this he belongs to the long line of Greek thinkers who drew a sharp distinction between soul and body as two separate entities. Thales also taught that "all things are full of gods."" From our distance in time it is tempting to dismiss this pronouncement as an example of a crude, outworn belief in polytheism. But perhaps we need to be reminded that when sophisticated Greek thinkers used the word theos, they did not necessarily mean an individual "god" or deity as in the Judeo-Christian tradition.12 The word theos could also suggest a power that is more than human, a force that is not subject to death, a reality which was there before we were born and which will continue after we are gone. On this reckoning the soul was also divine, since it was a power or force which moved and transcended the body. The goal of classical Greek philosophy was to discover the nature of the forces which governed the world and human life.

Anaximander was a younger friend of Thales. In some ways his view of reality was very modern. He believed that the world was cylindrical like a drum, but not resting on water-as Thales believed, for Thales' view raised the question of what the water rested on, and so on. Anaximander believed that the earth rested on nothing. It was suspended in a spherical universe, equidistant from all other points, held in a kind of tension which prevented it from falling in any one direction.

Anaximander taught a theory of evolution well over two thousand years before Charles Darwin. He saw the world as the product of a conflict between qualities which were always in mutual opposition. Four of them were primary: hot and cold, wet and dry. The perpetual conflict between these opposites is seen in the changing seasons. It may also be seen every time that the sun's heat dries up water and water quenches fire. The process has a cyclical character to it. Thales had traced things from a single first principle, but Anaximander rejected this. If water were such a principle, there could be no heat or fire. For fire does not come from water, but destroys it. Anaximander imagined an original state of formless matter which gradually evolved into the universe as we know it. Things came into being through a process of separating out. Living things originated from a primeval slime. Although different early writers gave different accounts of Anaximander's teaching, he seems to have believed that human beings originally came from fishlike creatures.

The third member of the Milesian school, Anaximenes, taught an alternative view of primary substance. He returned to the idea that everything derives from a single substance, but suggested that the substance was air. Anaximenes' doctrine was taken a step further in the fifth century B.C. by Diogenes of Apollonia, who believed that the air inside both human and animal bodies constitutes their souls. "Mankind and the other animals live on air, by breathing; and it is to them both soul and mind.""

In his account of the history of Greek philosophy Diogenes Laertius noted two original schools." One was the Ionian or Milesian school. The other was the Italian school under the sixth-century teacher Pythagoras, who worked for most of his life in southern Italy where he had fled as a refugee. Whereas the Ionians were motivated by scientific curiosity, the Pythagoreans were a religious brotherhood. By the time of Plato, Pythagoras had already become a figure of legendary proportions. He came to assume a semi-divine stature. It is not easy to discover what Pythagoras exactly taught, not least because his followers came to regard it as a pious duty to ascribe new doctrines in the school to the founder himself.

In Pythagorean teaching religion and philosophy merge into each other in ways which anticipate Plato but which are radically different from Christianity. The Pythagoreans believed that the soul was by nature immortal. Souls existed not only in human beings but also in animals. Through a series of incarnations in animal and human bodies, souls were purified by the wheel of existence. This doctrine of the transmigration of souls was also bound up with a view of the kinship of all life. The aim in life was to become pure by removing the taint of the body and rejoining the universal spirit. In this process, it was important not to injure other souls or become further tainted. For this reason the Pythagoreans enjoined various taboos. The eating of animal flesh was prohibited, lest one eat the flesh inhabited by a kindred soul. Also prohibited was the eating of beans. Among the reasons put forward for this prohibition was the belief that beans resembled genital organs, the gates of Hades and the form of the universe.15

Pythagoreanism was a form of pantheism. The universe was a single whole which displayed order, fitness and beauty. Just as the universe was a kosmos, so each person was a kosmos in miniature. Pythagorean interest in the orderliness of the kosmos was bound up with a deep interest in mathematics and music. Pythagoras may well have discovered the theorem in geometry which bears his name. He is reputed to have made the discovery that the chief musical intervals are capable of being expressed in mathematical ratios. In Pythagorean thought mathematics came to be seen not only as the key for understanding nature; it also provided the impetus for directing the soul to eternal reality. Mathematical knowledge was not simply a tool for research; it was a quasi-religious means of initiation into the mystery of being. Whereas things in the world come and go, numbers appear to have a constancy which is beyond change. The Pythagorean view of the importance of mathematics was endorsed by Plato, who observed that the study of arithmetic "strongly directs the soul upward and compels it to discourse about pure numbers, never acquiescing if anyone proffers to it in the discussion numbers attached to visible and tangible bodies."" Likewise, geometry was for Plato "the knowledge of the eternally existent.""'

If Plato took over some of the beliefs and doctrines of the Pythagoreans, he was also open to the ideas of others. Among them was the archopponent of Pythagoras, Heraclitus of Ephesus. Heraclitus lived sometime during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Little is known about his life. Scholars dispute whether he actually wrote a book. What we know of his thought is gleaned from the study of fragments which propound ideas in the form of enigmatic oracles. His teaching earned him the nicknames of "The Obscure One" and "The Riddler."

Heraclitus scoffed at the Pythagorean ideal of a peaceful harmonious world. "War," he said, "is father of all and king of all, and some he reveals as gods, others as men, some he makes slaves, others free."" The pronouncement both evokes and contradicts the titles that Homer ascribed to Zeus, the king of the gods. The supreme deity is not Zeus, but conflict. To Heraclitus everything that happens comes about through strife. Reality is in a constant state of flux. The point is vividly illustrated by his famous remark "You cannot step into the same river twice."19 But the primary symbol for reality was fire which is constantly changing, and thrives by consuming and destroying. The kosmos, or world-order, is the same for all, both gods and humans. It is "an ever-living fire which is kindled in measures and extinguished in measures."20 The divine fire is also the logos, the word or reason, which governs everything. It is to this divine fire that the fire in the virtuous human soul eventually returns.

While to Heraclitus reality was characterized by change, to Parmenides reality consisted of a single unchanging substance. Parmenides of Elea lived in the fifth century B.C. His approach to doing philosophy marks a break with his predecessors. Parmenides expressed his ideas in a poem of which more has been preserved than any other pre-Socratic philosophical writing. The poem was in two parts, the "Way of Truth" and the "Way of Seeming." In the "Way of Truth" Parmenides reflects on the meaning of existence. To say that something "is" is to say that it exists. He claimed that "what is not" is unthinkable and unknowable. Change involves passage from "what is" into "what is not. 112' But the notion of "what is not" is unintelligible. Therefore, movement is impossible. Things only appear to move and change, but this is due to the deceptiveness of our senses.

According to one of the leading contemporary authorities on Greek philosophy, W. K. C. Guthrie, the significance of Parmenides lies in the fact that "he started the Greeks on the path of abstract thought." He set the mind working "without reference to external facts," exalting its results above those of sense-perception. "In this the Greeks were apt pupils, so much so that according to some their genius for abstract thought and for neglecting the world of external fact set European science on the wrong track for a thousand years or so."" This verdict may seem somewhat harsh in view of the contribution to scientific thought made by the atomists, by Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, by the Epicureans, but it is not without some truth.

Parmenides figures in the rather obscure dialogue by Plato which bears his name as a title." He appears to raise serious questions about the teaching of the young Socrates who ends by acquiescing in the teaching of his famous opponent. In the Sophist Plato raises serious objections to Parmenides' method of argument and the fallacy of assuming that a person must be saying something, even though he may actually be saying nothing.24 Nevertheless, Plato's thought was much indebted to Parmenides. The debt was twofold. On the one hand, there was the metaphysical idea of immutable or changeless being. On the other hand, there was the epistemological view that true knowledge comes about through the mind's contact with this reality. What we perceive with our senses is the transitory world, but true knowledge is the mind's grasp of that which lies behind the world and which does not change. This view of reality and knowledge is summed up in Plato's Timaeus, where Timaeus insists on making a fundamental distinction by asking:

What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.25

Not every Greek philosopher drew this conclusion. The pluralists argued that the world consists in a plurality of existents. Among them was Empedocles, who appeared to have combined the roles of physician, wonder-worker, philosopher and Pythagorean mystic. He devoutly believed in the transmigration of souls and in the power of his knowledge to control nature. Empedocles believed that there were ultimately four elements. Sometimes he called them by divine names, and sometimes he used alternative terms, but essentially the four elements were fire, water, earth and air.2fi Although this doctrine was questioned by the atomists,27 it continued to hold sway well into the Middle Ages and beyond.

The atomism of Leucippus of Miletus and his younger contemporary, )emocritus of Abdera, who both lived in the fifth century B.C., was an attempt to reconcile Parmenides' thesis that matter is unchangeable with the evidence of sense experience. Leucippus was the originator of the theory, but it was Democritus who developed it. Democritus agreed with Parmenides that qualitative change was unintelligible and impossible. But it was different with quantitative change. Democritus believed that the physical world was made up of innumerable indivisible, unchanging entities or atoms. (The word atom comes from the Greek atomos, which means "indivisible.") The properties of objects derived from the arrangement of their atomic constituents, and change was due to the rearrangement of their configuration. The atoms themselves possessed shape and solidity, but not properties like warmth, color and smell.

Later Greek atomists modified the theory in two ways. Some allowed for qualitative differences between atoms. Others, including Aristotle, held that even the atoms could be further divided, though it was agreed that there had to be some limit to divisibility. Despite the attractiveness of atomism in the hindsight of modern knowledge, atomism failed to supplant its rival theories about the physical world. This was in part due to the influence of Plato and Aristotle, and, more importantly, in part due to the fact that Democritus's followers failed to develop his insights. The Greek philosopher Epicurus and his popularizer, the Latin poet Lucretius, took over his scheme of thought more or less as he left it.

To many people the views of Parmenides strained belief beyond endurable limits. But the teaching of his opponents was scarcely more acceptable. Many people wanted something more practical, and this need was met by the Sophists. The Sophists of the fifth century were itinerant teachers of practical wisdom who imparted their knowledge for an appropriate fee. They were concerned with what worked, whether it happened to be the winning of arguments or making things. A key topic was arete, a word which is commonly translated as "virtue." But virtue in this case meant first and foremost "skill." The Sophist Hippias provided a walking advertisement for his craft by turning up at the Olympic Games wearing nothing which he had not made himself, right down to the ring on his finger.28 If the Sophists had lived in the twentieth century, they would have been the authors of best-selling books and videos on how to succeed in business, make money, lose weight and keep fit. On a more serious level was the social-contract theory of Protagoras.29 He argued that societies came into being on account of the need of people to protect themselves against wild creatures and also in order to advance their standard of living. Laws and conventions were needed for the mutual benefit of the members of a society. Otherwise anarchy would prevail. In order to avoid this, laws were devised in which the strong pledge themselves not to attack the weak. But the laws could be changed when people thought fit. Protagoras's position was summed up as follows:

I hold that whatever practices seem right and laudable to any particular state are so, for that state, so long as it holds by them. Only, when the practices are, in any particular case, unsound for them, the wise man substitutes others that are and appear sound. On the same principle the Sophist, since he can in the same manner guide his pupils in the way that they should go, is wise and worth a considerable fee to them when their education is completed."

Today Protagoras is remembered for his dictum "Man is the measure of all things. 1131 It was evidently intended to be a sheer statement of fact. It certainly appears to fit Protagoras's views on laws and society. But the words contain more than a hint of relativism and skepticism. They not only imply that human beings must use their minds to determine truth and decide issues. They also suggest that what may be true or valuable for someone under one set of circumstances may not be so for someone else under different circumstances. When pressed further, this line of thought leads to the conclusion that right and wrong are just names which can be manipulated according to one's purpose. It was this kind of thinking that earned the Sophists the reputation for being cynical pragmatists. It was this outlook which Socrates sought to combat as being both morally harmful and thoroughly wrongheaded.

Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) was born in Athens where he spent most of his life. His life, like that of his fellow countrymen, was overshadowed by the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) which ended in victory for Sparta and disaster for Athens. Although he served in the army, Socrates remained on the fringe of political life. In old age he was accused of introducing strange gods and of corrupting youth. He was sentenced by the Athenian Assembly to die by drinking hemlock. Refusing to compromise his views and rejecting the possibility of escape, Socrates drank the hemlock thirty days after his condemnation.32

Socrates himself wrote no books." What we know of his teaching is derived mainly from the numerous dialogues of Plato in which Socrates is a prominent figure. It is a matter of academic debate how much the ideas put forward in Plato's dialogues are those of Socrates himself or whether they are more the work of Plato. It is widely thought that Socrates' influence on Plato was at its strongest in Plato's earlier writings. Socrates' mother was a midwife, and Socrates saw his role as a teacher as being like that of a midwife.34 He disclaimed having any sort of wisdom himself, and repudiated the idea of having intellectual offspring of his own. His task was to assist at the birth of wisdom in his partners through dialogue. The wisdom itself came from heaven.

Socrates' role in teaching was to enable people to discover wisdom by themselves from within. To this end he employed dialectic. The Greek word dialektike means discussion by question and answer. Socrates went about his work doing just that. By relentless questioning of ideas he sought to distinguish truth from mere opinion and faulty thinking. The dialogue form in which Plato presented his teaching was the appropriate medium for his philosophy. Truth was not something that could be learned by knowing the right techniques. The learner had to see it for himself. It was apprehended through a process of learning and inquiry. Once the learner had grasped it, the teacher ceased to be important. Last but not least is the spirit in which the dialogue is conducted. The Sophists practiced eristic, polemical disputation with a view to winning the debate. Socrates could be tough in his comments and questions, but his goal and his method was the disinterested pursuit of truth in which he and his partners in dialogue joined.

Plato (c. 427-347 B. C )' was born into a leading Athenian family some four years after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. It is open to question whether Plato was actually a pupil of Socrates, but there can be no doubt about the high esteem in which Plato held him or about the impact of Socrates' death on his mind. As the war went on Plato witnessed a succession of changes of government in Athens, and came to be disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of democracy and the tyranny of oligarchy. Plato paid several visits to Italy and Sicily, where he got to know members of the Pythagorean school. As a result of his experiences, Plato came to the conclusion that the constitution of all existing states was bad and that their institutions were all but past remedy.2 The only hope lay in developing a "correct philosophy" and in creating a new society governed by philosopher-rulers who appreciated philosophy. It was to be an ordered, educated society in which the citizens fulfilled functions according to their natural aptitudes. At some time in the 380s Plato founded his famous Academy which was the forerunner of the modern university. Plato's best-known work, the Republic, paints a picture of a utopian society and the education of its rulers in accordance with Plato's vision of reality.

Like all of his other major writings, except his letters and Laws (which appears to have been conceived in the form of a series of addresses), the Republic was written as a dialogue. It begins with a discussion of justice, in which the ideas of the Sophists are rejected. Justice is not a matter of gaining personal advantage but of doing what is right. For example, in medicine the just physician is not the one who pockets the largest fee for the least work, but the one who applies his skills to curing his patient.' In a society each member has work to do. Justice lies in fully discharging that vocation.

In many ways Plato's theories about education, personality and the welfare state anticipated and inspired a good deal of modern thinking. Plato's division of education into the three stages of primary, secondary and higher education corresponds to general Western practice today. His views on state control, including the regulation of property and the family,' anticipated socialism. A line may be drawn from Plato's ideal society to the Marxist totalitarian state controlled by those who ostensibly know best.' But to appreciate Plato's position, we must remember that, like the attractions of Marxism for many people today, it grew out of disillusionment with existing forms of government. Plato himself was of aristocratic descent. But his bitter experience of the government of Athens under oligarchy, tyranny and democracy forced on him the conclusion that all existing forms of government were evil.

As the Peloponnesian War dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that the democracies of Athens lacked truly capable and responsible leaders, and those in charge were all too easily swayed by the desire to please the populace. The last straw was the treatment meted out to Socrates by the Athenian democracy. Plato saw three main elements in human psychological make-up. There was reason, the faculty which calculates and decides; desire or appetite, which has to do with the instincts; and ambition. In every human being all three are normally present, but in each person one of these elements predominates. Corresponding to these elements, Plato saw three main classes in society. In the ideal just state the peoples' roles would correspond to what kind of people they were. The bulk of society would constitute the third class which was made up of farmers, manufacturers and traders. Above them was the class of auxiliaries who function like a police force or army, enforcing the decisions of the rulers. The highest class of all were the rulers who had been trained in mathematics and philosophy and who would have preferred to spend their days on these pursuits but for their sense of obligation to the state which prompted them to accept the role of rulers.

Plato believed that the philosopher-rulers would acquire wisdom through study, especially of the higher subjects like mathematics and philosophy. He believed that most human beings were preoccupied with material things. What they needed was to have their thoughts turned to the immaterial reality behind the world, and thus be weaned away from the objects of their lower passions. To Plato truth had an objective reality which was grounded in the nature of things. The world was more than a world of appearances. Behind each particular thing is the idea or form of the thing. Moreover, the ideas or forms are all ultimately related to the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is like the sun which not only gives visibility to objects but sustains them and causes living things to grow, without itself being part of the earthly process. The Good is not only the source of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their existence and reality.'

Plato divided our ideas and beliefs about the world into two main categories which were each subdivided into two more categories.' The two main categories were knowledge and belief. Plato's use of these terms was almost exactly the opposite to that of our modern, secular, materialistic society. When Plato spoke of belief, it had to do with our ideas of the material world. When he spoke of knowledge, it had to do with the immaterial reality behind the material world. Belief covered the two subcategories of opinions or beliefs about physical things and illusions or mistaken ideas about such things. Knowledge, on the other hand, covered the two subcategories of mathematical reasoning and intelligence or understanding of the Forms. It was the latter which was the highest form of knowledge.

Plato compared the human condition to a cave in which the prisoners could see only the shadows of objects cast in the light of a fire.' The prisoners in the cave mistook the shadows for reality. But if some of the prisoners were released, they would see that the shadows were not real objects and that the shadows were not the whole of reality. As their eyes gradually grew accustomed to the outside world, they might even be able to look directly at the sun and see it as the sustainer of everything. But if the escaped prisoners were to return to the cave and tell their former companions what reality was like, the others would think them mad and try to kill them.

This last point was evidently an allusion to the fate of Socrates. In the famous story about the cave Socrates is made to present the account as a vision of reality. It is not demonstratively proved but told as a picture to help the reader understand.

And if you assume the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to hear. But God knows whether it is true. But, at any rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have caught sight of this.'

True wisdom and wise action required not only an understanding of the nature of the world in relation to the Forms. It also required an understanding of the soul. Plato believed that the soul was an immaterial entity which in some ways was like the Forms. In the dialogue entitled Meno an uneducated slave boy is brought in, and in response to Socrates' questions shows himself capable of doing geometrical theorems. Where did the boy get his knowledge? The answer lies in Plato's doctrine of recollection. The boy already had it in his soul. He simply needed to be reminded of it by being asked the right questions. From this Socrates concludes that "if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul must be immortal, and one must take courage and try to discover-that is, to recollect-what one doesn't happen to know, or, more correctly, remember, at the moment."" The same applies to virtue. It cannot be taught or acquired by techniques, as the Sophists argued. It is in the soul already.

In the dialogue entitled Phaedo Plato gives an account of Socrates' beliefs about the immortality of the soul, which explains why Socrates did not fear death. The soul is not perishable like the body. Just as day follows night and the seasons follow each other, so life follows death. When death comes, the immortal part of a person retires to another existence." If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon to the wicked. But the wicked have no escape. The only way of escape for the soul is by becoming "as good and wise as it possibly can."12 Those who are good find ultimate release from the body in a higher existence. Those who have not been particularly good or bad undergo further purification. The wicked are cast into the torments of Tartarus.

The tenth and final book of the Republic closes with an even more elaborate account of the fate of the soul at death. Socrates tells the story of Er, a soldier killed in battle who returned to life and told of what he had seen.13 His tale appears to draw on the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the imagery of Orphism, the Greek mystic religion of purification and reincarnation. Souls are successively reincarnated in the bodies of humans, animals and even birds, until they are purified. The very wicked, however, are tormented eternally in Tartarus. The fact that human beings do not appear to remember their previous existences is simply explained by their being compelled to drink from the River of Forgetfulness. The foolish drink more than their measure! But all fall asleep and are wafted away to be born again in another form.

Platonism in one form or another exerted great influence on Western thought. Here we have been able to do no more than touch on a few of the ideas that appear in a few of Plato's many writings. We may, however, pause to ask whether-as many people down the ages have maintained-Plato offers some kind of philosophical underpinning for Christian faith. After all, his doctrine of the Forms and especially his view of the Form of the Good clearly reject a skeptical and materialistic view of reality. The Form of the Good might even be identified with God. Moreover, Plato clearly taught a doctrine of life after death which was linked with rewards and punishments.

But having said this, it is also clear that there are major differences between Plato's teaching and the Judeo-Christian tradition of the biblical writings. Perhaps the nearest that they come to each other is in their use of narrative, dialogue and story in order to communicate moral and religious truth. But Plato makes no claims of divine revelation. The truths that he finds are truths which come from within the human soul by recollection and rational reflection.

Plato's doctrine of Forms presents several problems. In Christian thought God is not a Form or Idea which is somehow related to all other Forms or Ideas in the world. Even in Plato's writings there are a number of unanswered questions. In the Timaeus Plato speaks of God as the Demiurge (artisan or craftsman) who makes the world according to the model of the Forms." But it is unclear whether in Plato's thought God was ultimately the creator of the Forms or whether the Forms already existed, or indeed whether all of this was not just a highly figurative way of speaking.

Plato's Timaeus also mentions a world-soul which the demiurge or creator put into the world. Plato argued that intelligence could not be present in anything which was "devoid of soul."

For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he [the demiurge] put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best. On this wise, using the language of probability, we may say that the world came into being-a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God.15

It is far from clear how all this relates to the rest of Plato's thought, not least because there is a lack of agreement among scholars as to where to place the Timaeus in relation to Plato's other writings. Some experts think that it is late and represents Plato's final thoughts, while others place it somewhere in the middle of Plato's writings. In this case it might not be Plato's last word on the subject. Perhaps this is to be found in the Laws, in which he gives a form of the cosmological argument.'s Plato's concern here is to refute atheism. But this belongs to a wider concern which is to establish that the principles of justice are not simply the inventions of the politicians, but are there by nature and are therefore binding upon all human beings. Plato argues that no one ever broke laws intentionally, unless they believed that the gods do not exist, or that they are not concerned with human affairs, or that the gods are easily appeased by prayers and sacrifice. The whole argument turns on the existence of the gods, which Plato seeks to prove by showing that there must exist a soul which is the cause of all motion, including those souls that human beings call gods. As the argument reaches its climax, Plato asks rhetorically:

Of all the planets, of the moon, of years and months and all seasons, what other story shall we have to tell than just this same, that since soul, or souls, and those souls good with perfect goodness, have proved to be the causes of all, these souls we hold to be gods, whether they direct the universe by inhabiting bodies, like animated beings, or whatever the manner of their action? Will any man who shares this belief bear to hear it said that all things are not "full of gods?""

The question receives the reply: "No man, sir, can be so much beside himself." Thus Plato's form of the cosmological argument is used in the service of vindicating polytheism. This still leaves open the question of how all this relates to the doctrine of the Forms.

Although the doctrine of the Forms is widely held to be a major characteristic of Plato's thought, the doctrine occupies a relatively small place in the corpus of Plato's works and is absent altogether from some of them. In the Sophist and Parmenides it is handled critically. In the latter work the old philosopher Parmenides takes the young Socrates to task for his sloppy thinking, using arguments similar to those that Aristotle used against Plato. Is there a Form corresponding to each individual thing in the world? If so, it would require a separate world of conceptobjects. What about largeness and smallness? Are they Forms? Are there such things as Forms of hair and mud? Socrates is pressed to admit that "we do not possess the forms themselves, nor can they exist in our world. ... So beauty itself or goodness itself and all the things we take as forms in themselves are unknowable to us."18

Further differences between Plato and Christian thought emerge when we compare their differing attitudes to human nature and ethics.19 As Arthur F. Holmes puts it, "In his Republic Plato assumes that those who know what is good will love and desire it. But he also recognizes that moral virtue is of itself a prerequisite to knowing the good. So I must both know the good in order to desire virtue, and be virtuous in order to know the good. In order to break into this vicious circle Plato proposes to organize society in such a way that those who do not know the good will be ruled by those who do. But the question remains, why ought those who know the good do it? They may want to, but ought they? Whence comes the obligation?"20

We might also ask about those who are ruled and who may lack the rulers' perception of the good. Does Plato's philosophy have anything to tell them other than that they should obey those who know better? There appears to be other unresolved tensions in Plato's thought. Right living is somehow bound up with service to the gods. But it is not clear how the gods relate to goodness. In Euthyphro Socrates declares that "apparently the holy is that which the gods love. 112' However, it is not clear whether something is right because the gods command it, or whether they command it because it is right.

In the Laws, which Plato wrote toward the end of his life, the issue remains unresolved. As we have just seen, Plato recognized that there were atheists in his day. There were also those who believed that the gods were indifferent to human conduct, or that they could be lightly placated by prayer or sacrifice. Although Plato recognized the strength of the atheist's arguments, he was convinced that the atheist could not be a good citizen and warned against the impiety of unbelief.22 Religious piety and morality somehow go together. But within Plato's polytheistic framework of thought, it remains unclear not only how the two are related in practice, but also how they are related theoretically. The Christian can point out that morality is grounded in the righteous character of God, the Creator and Redeemer. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, human beings are to be holy because God is holy (Lev 11:44-45; 19:2; Eph 1:3-5; 1 Pet 1:16). But no clear answer as to how morality and religion are related can be given by a philosophy which tries to combine enlightenment with polytheism.

Plato's doctrine of the soul also has its difficulties. It poses, rather than settles, the question of how we should think of human nature.2' The idea of reincarnation is a theory for which there is next to no evidential support. It founders on the fact that there is no solid, reliable testimony to experience of previous existences in the form of memories, comparable with memories of our earlier life .2' The doctrine of recollection in Plato's Meno is patently fallacious, for the ability to work out geometrical theorems under the direction of a teacher does not indicate knowledge that only an eternal soul could have acquired. All that it requires is a certain degree of intelligence and the guidance of a teacher who knows the right questions to ask. Plato's view of human improvement through education and salvation through personal goodness is a world apart from the Christian message of redemption by a loving, personal God.

Greek thought reached its climax with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), whose writings brought a new depth and profundity to the study of logic, psychology, natural history, physics, metaphysics and ethics.' Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, court physician to the king of Macedonia. In about 367 B.C. Aristotle entered Plato's Academy in Athens, where he remained until Plato's death in 347. The headship of the Academy did not, however, pass to Aristotle, but to Plato's nephew and heir, Speusippus. No doubt the event was a factor in Aristotle's decision to leave Athens. In 342 B.C. Philip II of Macedon made Aristotle the tutor of his thirteen-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. Aristotle's supervision of Alexander's education lasted some three years. In 355 B.C. Aristotle opened the Lyceum, which became a rival to the Academy and attracted some of the latter's most distinguished members. Whereas the Academy had stressed mathematics, the Lyceum laid emphasis on biology and scientific research. Aristotle sought to build up a major library. Instruction was given in a covered portico (peripatos). Aristotle's habit of pacing up and down while teaching gave rise to the term peripatetic, which came to be used to denote Aristotle's followers. On the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. there was a resurgence of anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens. Aristotle withdrew with some of his followers to Chalcis, where he died the following year at the age of sixty-two.

In his earlier years Aristotle followed Plato in casting his books in dialogue form. But apart from a few fragments that have been preserved by later writers, the dialogues have been lost. The treatises that have been preserved are essentially textbooks based on Aristotle's own notes or memoranda prepared for his students. Twentieth-century students of Aristotle have keenly debated the question of whether a pattern of development can be discerned in his thought. Werner Jaeger saw a gradual development which began with an enthusiastic endorsement of Plato and ended with the abandonment of Platonic metaphysics. However, different dating of certain books and different interpretations of key passages have led others to disagree with this view. It now seems clear that Aristotle became increasingly critical of Plato. He rejected outright some of Plato's views. Aristotle's own philosophy was an attempt to formulate more satisfactory and systematic views of physical and metaphysical reality.

In his treatise on Topics Aristotle divided knowledge into three divisions: theoretical, practical and productive.' Although Aristotle changed his mind from time to time as to which precise subjects should fit into which division, his classification of subjects has continued to influence thought down to the present. The theoretical division includes logic, metaphysics and mathematics. Included in the practical division are such scientific subjects that could be studied for the sake of practical action and also ethics. The productive division included rhetoric and poetry. In other words, it included what today would be called literature. We shall not attempt to review here the whole range of Aristotle's thought in its divisions. Instead, we shall simply note a number of points that bear on our central theme.

Aristotle's work on logic laid the foundation of all later work on the subject. The term logic comes from the Greek word logos. Its meaning includes "reason," "speech," "discourse" and "word." In a broad sense logic is the study of the structure of reasoning and argument. However, Aristotle's preferred name for the subject was not "logic" but "analytics." He regarded it as a preliminary study to all branches of knowledge, calling it an instrument (organon) of study. The term Organon was later applied to the collection of Aristotle's logical treatises which included his Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations. At the heart of Aristotle's work on logic was his study of syllogisms. Syllogisms are usually thought of as a three-step argument, with a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion which follows from the truth of the premises. A frequently cited example is the following:

All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Aristotle himself thought of syllogism as a logical deduction. He defined it in broad terms.

A deduction [syllogtsmos] is a discourse [logos] in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so. I mean by the last phrase that it follows because of them, and by this, that no further term is required from without in order to make the consequence necessary.3

The question of what constitutes legitimate logical deduction occupies a major part of Aristotle's writings on the subject.

In his treatise on the structure of science, the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle argued for the autonomy of the various disciplines. He rejected the idea of a common methodology for all disciplines. A demonstration in a discipline like geometry could not simply be transferred and applied to another discipline like arithmetic. One cannot prove anything by crossing like this. To do so would be to commit what today would be called a category mistake. Aristotle called it a metabasis eis allo genos, "a crossing over to another genus."' Aristotle's argument is a significant warning of the danger of confusing categories.

Aristotle's scientific writings ranged from a number of works dealing with physics to a series of treatises on the parts, movement, progression and generation of animals. The four major works dealing with physics are his Physics, On the Heavens, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, and Meteorologics. In these works Aristotle rejected both the pre-Socratic notions of being and the Platonic idea of Forms. In their place Aristotle developed a systematic view of causation which he further developed in his Metaphysics.

The title Metaphysics seems to have come into being only after Aristotle's death. According to tradition, the term gained currency through Andronicus Rhodius, the Peripatetic philosopher of the first century B.C. who sought to revive interest in Aristotle's thought. Andronicus is said to have arranged the order of Aristotle's works, and placed the Metaphysics after the Physics (meta to physika). The Greek word meta has a variety of meanings which include both "after" and "beyond." Already in early times two rival explanations were put forward for the term. One was that metaphysics was a subject which was to be studied after physics. The other was that metaphysics was the study of those things which lie beyond the physical realm. To explore the range of Aristotle's thought on the subject is impossible here. But three topics call for attention: potentiality and actuality, the notion of causes and the idea of the Prime Mover.

Aristotle's understanding of potentiality and actuality5 made a significant advance on previous Greek ideas about the nature of things. Actuality (Greek: energeia) is a mode of being in which something can bring about other things or be brought about by them. Potentiality (Greek: dynamis) is the power to effect change or be changed. The point can be put like this: If we think of a tree growing in a forest, the sum total of its material exists in the mode of a tree. But its wood has the potentiality to be made into a house or furniture. When this happens, the tree has ceased to be a tree and taken on other modes of being. But potentially the house and the furniture are also firewood which could be turned and transformed into heat. The same could be said of anything in the world, including living creatures and human beings. A child is potentially an adult and a parent. The actual parent is no longer a child, but is potentially a grandparent, and so on.

Three observations may be made at this point. The first is that a thing, an animal or a person cannot be potential and actual in the same respect at the same time. The tree is either a living tree or timber, but not both simultaneously. The child is either a child or an adult, or something in between, but not all at once. The second observation is to point out that in order to bring about a change from potentiality to actuality there has to be some outside agent or agents. Trees do not become timber, houses and furniture on their own. Children do not grow up to become adults without the nurture and care of others and the life support provided by their environment. The third observation is simply to say that the changes that we have noted do not necessarily take place. Whether a tree ends up as part of a house, a piece of furniture, paper pulp or remains in the forest until it dies and decays, depends on a whole range of factors, often beyond all human prediction. On the other hand, nothing in this world is immune from change of one kind or another. Things are in constant transition from potentiality to actuality and from actuality to potentiality.

Book 1 of Aristotle's Metaphysics contains a critique of previous Greek philosophers down to Plato. The latter's doctrine of Forms may have been an improvement on previous notions, but it raised more problems for Aristotle than it solved.' Was there a corresponding Form for each actual entity or perhaps even more than one Form for each entity? Does each human being have a Form and a separate Form for each organ? Do the Forms exist apart from entities? If so, how do they relate to entities? How do numbers relate to Forms? Instead of a theory of Forms on Platonic lines, Aristotle put forward a theory of causes. Aristotle argued that, when we look at something, we can think of it in terms of different kinds of causes. Aristotle identified four types of causes.' These were clearly not all of the same kind, as can be seen from Aristotle's own examples. We shall call them here by the terms which were given to them later.

The first type of cause is the material cause. It consists of the'matter from which something is made-for example, the bronze of a statue or the silver of a saucer. The second type of cause is the formal cause, which is the form or pattern which the thing takes. It is the shape of the statue or the saucer. The third type of cause is known as the efficient cause. It designates the agent which initiates the change, the maker of the thing made and the producer of the changing. In the case of a statue the efficient cause is the sculptor who made it. In the case of the birth of a child the parents constitute the efficient cause. The fourth type of cause is the final cause, the end or purpose for which one does something. At this point Aristotle anticipated the modern fitness movement by talking about health. Health may be said to be the final cause of walking, for people walk in order to become healthy. Thus the desired goal may be said to be the cause of an action. Diet, exercise and medicine, on the other hand, may all serve as efficient causes which promote health.

Aristotle's views of potentiality, actuality and causation led him to his doctrine of the Prime, or Unmoved, Mover." For something to change from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality there has to be an agent or agents of change. Nothing that we see or know of this world is its own cause. There has to be a cause or causes which set any given change in motion. But how were the myriads of causes that we can think of, and the many more that we cannot think of, set in motion? Aristotle's answer is that the whole process would not start or come into being without a Prime, or Unmoved, Mover that is ultimately the source of all causation and movement. Such a Prime Mover must be different from all other types of causes. For all other causes have prior causes. Even the heavens require something which moves them. "And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality."9

Aristotle's argument is an early form of the cosmological argument which argues for the existence of God as the cause of the cosmos. We shall look at the argument several times in the course of our survey. Instead of examining its strengths and weaknesses at this point, it might be helpful to make four observations.

The first observation concerns Aristotle's method of approach. Aristotle's basic method of approach is to make observations and to work backwards by means of rational reflection. He is concerned with the nature of substances. By thinking critically about experience, he arrives at conclusions about what lies behind experience. In so doing the method of approach is like what was said earlier about Aristotle's view of the syllogism. Beginning with what can be observed, Aristotle deduces a conclusion about something which cannot be directly observed. He believes that the causes of different things bear analogy to each other, and that the Unmoved Mover bears some analogy to the causes that we infer from our ordinary experience of cause and effect.

The second observation is to note that the argument posits the existence of the Unmoved Mover as the presupposition of causation and movement. The Unmoved Mover is not seen directly. He is invoked as the necessary ground of all finite or contingent causes.

The third observation is to note that Aristotle's argument involves both causation and contingency. Contingency denotes the property of not having to exist. It characterizes all finite beings. Aristotle's Unmoved Mover is a being that has to exist. Otherwise, all the secondary or inter mediate causes would not have come into existence.

The fourth observation is to note that Aristotle's Unmoved Mover is not, as is sometimes imagined, a static being. The Unmoved Mover is not moved by any cause external to himself. But this is not the same as saying that the Unmoved Mover is motionless. Rather, the Unmoved Mover is a different kind of entity from the kinds of causes and agents that we find in the world which are themselves caused causes. The Unmoved Mover is an uncaused cause. He may be said to be pure actuality. He is not potential but actual. He is the ground of change, without being changed himself or undergoing change in the process. Or in Aristotle's words, "There is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality."10 The point has bearing on discussions of the immutability of God. This idea does not mean, as some people have imagined it to mean, that God exists in some kind of eternally frozen immobility. Rather, it means that God's being is unique in that he is eternally alive and active, but without being subject to the changes of growth and diminution that belong to all finite agents and causes.

However, when all this has been said, a number of questions still remain. What sort of God did Aristotle believe in? Is Aristotle's Unmoved Mover personal in any sense? How does the Unmoved Mover relate to the world? As Aristotle describes God at the end of his Physics, "the first mover causes a motion that is eternal and causes it during an infinite time. It is clear, therefore, that is indivisible and is without parts and without magnitude."" The Unmoved Mover is not like the Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus, who is a craftsman who produces his crafted objects in time. The Unmoved Mover transcends the world and is a being of a different order from any other being. To this extent, at least, Aristotle's God is more compatible with the biblical notions of God than is Plato's God.

Elsewhere, Aristotle seems to suggest that divine activity consists in thought and contemplation. In the Metaphysics Aristotle represents the Unmoved Mover as the final cause (but not apparently the efficient cause) not only of the eternal heavens but of all things.

There is then, something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first heavens must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary object of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of wish. But desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire; for thinking is the starting point. 12

This passage seems to make the Unmoved Mover the goal toward which all things are drawn. As such, the Unmoved Mover is their cause. It is a thought which invites comparison with the biblical idea of God as the goal of all things. But in biblical thought, God is the origin as well as the goal, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Rom 11:36; Rev 1:6,21:6,22:13).

Aristotle goes on to describe the Unmoved Mover as "a first princi- ple,"13 which, because it thinks, has life.

And thought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same. For that which is capable of receiving the object of thought, is thought. And it is active when it possesses this object. Therefore the latter rather than the former is the divine element which thought seems to contain, and the act of contemplation is what is most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's essential actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal being belong to God; for this is God."

Aristotle's view again invites comparison with the biblical view of creation by the Word of God, which in the New Testament is expressed christologically. The divine Word which brought the cosmos into being is the same divine Word which was made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, the redeemer of creation, whom God the Father has made Lord of all (Gen 1:3-26; Ps 33:6; Jn 1:1-14; Rom 14:10-12; 1 Cor 15:20-28; Phil 2:5-11; Col 1:15-20; Heb 1:1-4).

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle develops the theme of divine activity as consisting in contemplation in a passage which extols contemplation as the highest form of activity. Human nature is not self-sufficient for this activity; it needs other things. But with the gods, it is different. They are self-sufficient. This leads Aristotle to the thought that the contemplative person is dearest to the gods.

For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they delight in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e. the intellect) and that they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly. And that all these attributes belong most of all to the wise man is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way the wise man will more than any other be happy.'5

It is clear that there are here marked differences from the Judeo-Christian conception of God. The latter is strictly monotheistic, whereas Aristotle can speak both of the Unmoved Mover and also of the gods. Although the wisdom literature of the Bible can praise the wise person, wisdom there is more than the contemplative life. It consists in meditating on the Word of the Lord and in walking in his ways." If the idea of a unique personal Creator who is both the agent and goal of creation is lacking in Aristotle, there are nevertheless aspects of his thought which are compatible with Christian thought and capable of adaptation, as Thomas Aquinas was to show centuries later. Not the least of these is Aristotle's method of reflecting on questions posed by our experience of the world, and his notion of the Unmoved Mover as a being of a different order from other beings, the self-sufficient, living source of all life and energy.

Aristotle's approach to theological questions was Platonic in the broad sense of insisting that the material world that we apprehend with our senses depends upon a different kind of reality which exists independently of it. But Aristotle's explanation of that reality was very different from Plato's. In the course of time both Plato and Aristotle were to find followers in the Christian church who made use of their ideas in order to provide a philosophical framework for expressing their faith.

Aristotle's view of human nature had some things in common with Plato's, but there were important differences. Like Plato, he disapproved of the Sophists. But the Form of the Good seemed to Aristotle to be an empty metaphor. Nor did he share Plato's view of the transmigration of souls. To Aristotle the soul (psyche) "is in some sense the principle of all animal life."" He even took the view that every living thing had some kind of a soul (psyche). What distinguishes the human soul from all other kinds of souls is its rational capacity.1e Humanity is both a rational animal and a political animal.19 This means more than just that human beings live together like bees and other gregarious creatures. "It is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state .1120

Aristotle's ethical teaching appears in three treatises, the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics and the Magna Moralia.Y1 The word ethics transliterates the Greek work ethika. In modern usage ethics have to do with the standards which regulate behavior. But Aristotle's understanding of ethics had more to do with habit and character. He was concerned with arete and eudaimonia. The former term often has the sense of "virtue," and the latter of "happiness." But in Aristotle's ethics arete has more the sense of "excellence." It is something which characterizes both passions and actions.22 Just as we can ask what makes an excellent axe or an excellent argument, we can also ask what makes human excellence. Aristotle replied in terms of eudaimonia. This was not happiness in the sense of the satisfaction of physical needs and desires, but the actualization of what human beings are capable of. The highest activity lies in contemplation, but not at the expense of health and material needs. The wise person is "dearest to the gods."25 For if the gods care about human affairs, as they are thought to do, they will care most for those who care for the same things as they do. And those who are dearest to the gods will presumably be the happiest.

In order to prepare for the happy life of excellence, human beings need training in the development of habits in a society governed under the right laws. They need to act rationally and live according to the mean. Wisdom and virtue lie in the avoidance of extremes.24 Bravery lies between cowardice and foolhardiness. Temperance avoids the excesses of profligacy and asceticism. In saying this, Aristotle was not so much providing procedures for making moral decisions, but was making what might be called meta-ethical statements about the form of moral concepts. Virtue lies in between opposite extremes. Aristotle's teaching laid the basis for what came to be known as the doctrine of the Golden Mean.25

In contrast with much modern thinking which focuses on the subjective individual, and which fails to see any overall structure and purpose in the world, Aristotle was concerned with the discovery of objective truth and purpose. His starting point was the conviction that "every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. 112' To Aristotle virtue was not something that could be separated from character. "Moral excellence," he observed "comes about as a result of habit."27 By the word habit Aristotle meant an inward characteristic or ability. This observation led Aristotle to make a complex analysis of the relationship between human action and character formation. Moreover, action and character could not be separated from life in the context of society.

In the Middle Ages Aristotle provided conceptual tools for Thomas Aquinas in the development of his ethical thinking in the second part of his Summa Theologiae. In recent years it has provided impetus to Christian ethicists like Stanley Hauerwas28 and Alasdair Maclntyre29 in their endeavors to present a rational and coherent account of ethics for the present age, which faces the confusion and lack of character of liberal individualism."

The golden age of Plato and Aristotle was followed by the age of Hellenistic philosophy. The word Hellenism is connected with the Greek word for a Greek, Hellen. Originally the word Hellenismos denoted the dominance of the "common Greek" language. But later on Hellenism came to denote the period in which Greek power and culture dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world. Some writers have attempted to give chronological precision to the Hellenistic age by dating it from 323 B.C., the year of the death of Alexander the Great, to 30 B.C., when the Romans overthrew the last Greek empire. But ages cannot be dated with absolute precision. The period was in the making before Alexander's death. His expeditions to the East were already extending Greek influence. Nor did that influence suddenly terminate with the ascendency of the Romans. Hellenism in general was a complex phenomenon in which Greek power and culture infiltrated the East, but in turn was influenced by the East. Part of this phenomenon was the interaction of Greek and Jewish culture and religion which provided the milieu for the rise of Christianity. In the realm of philosophy the age was characterized by the emergence of new schools of thought. Athens remained the center of Greek philosophy. The Aristotelian tradition was continued by the Peripatetics. But onto the scene came the rival schools of Epicureans, Stoics and Skeptics.'

Epicureanism is the philosophy associated with Epicurus (c. 341-270 B.C.). However, his teaching has survived only in fragments and letters. From the days of Epicurus himself down to modern times, Epicureanism has been alternately admired and despised. When the disciples of Epicurus preached their message to Rome, around 170 B.C., the ruling aristocracy, whose power was founded on authority and tradition, had them expelled as dangerous subversives. However, a century later when Greek culture had penetrated Roman society more deeply, Epicureanism won more converts. Among them was the poet Lucretius (99/94-55/51 B.C.) whose great poem On the Nature of Things presented a major exposition of Epicurean doctrine. Classical Epicureanism survived into the third century of the Christian era,' but was revived in more modern times. In the Renaissance Lucretius was rediscovered as a poet. In the seventeenth century the rationalist scientist and priest, Pierre Gassendi, put forward an atomistic theory of the universe based on the Epicurean model which he derived from his study of classical Epicurean texts. In the eighteenth century materialistically inclined thinkers-among them David Hume and Thomas Jefferson-made professions of Epicureanism. In many respects the empiricism of modern times may be seen as a linear descendent of classical Epicureanism.

The age which saw the birth of Epicureanism and Stoicism was an age of uncertainty and unrest. The democratic ideals of the city-state had lost their appeal amid the political power struggles and the economic crises of the times. The great minds of the previous century-Plato and Aristotle-seemed to have no message for the disillusioned and the skeptical. The temples and the deities remained, but people were beginning to question them. It was in such an age that the Epicureans and Stoics presented their competing world views as answers to the questions that were troubling the hearts and minds of the thoughtful.

In a sense, Epicurus was the forerunner of the modern empiricist. He taught that all our knowledge derives from the sensations we receive from the use of our senses. Repeated sensations give rise to general concepts which enable us to make judgments. Using Epicurus's own example, we are able to recognize a horse, a cow or a man because our present perceptions fit the previous perceptions which we associate with these words.' Whether a judgment is correct or not must be confirmed by evidence in the light of closer inspection.

Epicurus went on to say that the world is made up of indivisible elements which move about in a void. These atoms are infinite in number, and are in continual motion. Sometimes they swerve at random. This guarantees a certain indeterminacy and freedom to human action. The atoms collide and form objects. Our world is one of an infinite number of worlds, some of which resemble our world and some of which do not. Particular objects and our world itself change and perish. But the atoms are indestructible and do not change. They continue to exist in different configurations.'

As Epicurus pondered the subject of nature, he came to accept a doctrine of the survival of the fittest. He rejected the idea of destiny and divine providence. Epicurus allowed that the gods exist, but insisted that popular conceptions of the gods were mistaken.,' For one thing, there were not as many gods as people believed. For another thing, the gods do not interfere in the affairs of the world. There is no such thing as an afterlife. Death is simply the end of human life, and with it the end of our experience of good and evil.' For with the death of the body, our senses also die. And so we lose our capacity to feel pleasure and pain. Death, therefore, is not to be feared as an evil.

Few people today study the thoughts of Epicurus, but his name survives in the term epicure. It is a term which conjures up the image of persons who pride themselves on their good taste, especially in matters of food and wine. It suggests someone who elevates material pleasure in personal consumption to a fine art. Although one can draw a line of descent from the modern idea of an epicure back to Epicurus himself, the modern image of the epicure is not exactly what Epicurus himself had in mind. Admittedly he viewed the world as essentially material. He regarded pleasure as `bur first and kindred good,'17 and saw pain as an evil. In making decisions, the one should be measured against the other. But Epicurus recognized that bread and water could sometimes give more pleasure than the most expensive food. Real pleasure was "the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul."' Indulgence in either sex or gourmet food could cause both of these. The greatest good was therefore prudence, for from it sprang all the other virtues. The prudent person was capable of enjoying the pleasures of the mind and dismissing the dark thoughts of fate, chance and the fear of death, which afflict the rest of humanity.

The school of Epicurus was as much a commune as an academy. Epicurus himself was a kind of secular evangelist who preached a gospel of nature. He presided over his community, which included both men and women. The sect practiced a certain austerity, though it was not immune from charges of indulging in orgies and sexual license. The Epicurean communities offered their members an escape from ordinary society and an alternative lifestyle, guided by the teachings of their master. Epicurus rejected some of the traditional ideas of education. He warned against assuming heavy responsibilities like marriage and having children. It is better to be independent, he said, and enjoy the security of a quiet life withdrawn from the multitude.

A major rival to Epicureanism was Stoicism, which was a dominant philosophical force for five hundred years.' Whereas Epicureanism won a following among the elite and cultured, Stoicism had a much broader appeal. Stoicism began in Greece but was eventually embraced by some of the best Roman minds. It spans a time frame from the third century B.C. to the second century A.D. Stoicism got its name from the poikile stow, the Painted Porch, in Athens where Zeno of Citium began to teach round about 300 B.C.10 The place was actually a colonnade containing paintings or frescoes, and was more or less the equivalent of the National Gallery of ancient Athens. Zeno attracted a considerable following. In due course all kinds of honors were showered on him. Not the least of these were a golden crown and a bronze statue. The term Stoic eventually replaced the earlier term Zenonian as a title for Zeno's followers.

Stoicism went through three main phases. The term Early Stoa is given to Zeno and his immediate successors, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and other followers down to Antipater who died in 129 B.C. Only fragments of their writings remain, though Diogenes Laertius gives an extensive account of them in Book 7 of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Zeno appears to have stressed the need for strength of character in personal ethics and politics. Cleanthes was a poet and religious visionary. He was the author of the celebrated "Hymn to Zeus,"" which depicts human beings as the children of Zeus, the universal Word or logos which sustains all things. Chrysippus was responsible for turning Stoicism into a system. It was said of him that "if the gods took to dialectic, they would adopt no other system than that of Chrysippus."12 However, his reputation was tarnished by the story of his being somewhat unsteady on his legs at wine parties. On a happier note it was said that "but for Chrysippus, there would have been no Stoa." Diogenes Laertius gave him the following obituary:

Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus; he spared not the Stoa nor his country nor his own life, but fared straight to the house of Hades.13

The Middle Stoa flourished in the second and first centuries B.C. Its most distinguished members were Paenetius of Rhodes and his pupil Posidonius of Apamea. Under Paenetius it began to win a following among Roman intellectuals. Among them was Scipio. Posidonius developed a golden age theory of history and theorized about cosmology.

The Late Stoa belongs to the Roman world of the Christian era. Its three greatest representatives were Seneca, Epictetus and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Seneca (c. 4 B.C.-A.D. 65) was an orator and tragedian. With Seneca the diatribe acquired renewed popularity as a vehicle for expressing ideas and teaching. The term comes from the Greek diatribe, meaning discourse or short ethical treatise. It had been developed by Zeno and Cleanthes, and became a characteristic vehicle for Stoic and Cynic teaching. Seneca served as tutor, political adviser and minister to Nero. A man of the world, some people found it difficult to reconcile his practices with the moral teaching of his treatises. Seneca found it increasingly difficult to condone the crimes of Nero and retired from public life. Eventually he was obliged to relinquish his vast wealth to the emperor. He devoted his last years to the study of philosophy and the company of friends. In A.D. 65 he was forced to commit suicide on account of alleged conspiracy against the emperor. Jerome and Augustine both mention correspondence between Seneca and the apostle Paul, but the letters that have been preserved are apocryphal and spurious." There is also the wider question of whether Paul's writings made use of the literary technique of the Stoic diatribe, which we shall explore in the next chapter.

Epictetus (c. 50-c. 138) was a freed slave of a member of Nero's bodyguard. He remained in Rome until A.D. 90, when the emperor Domitian expelled philosophers from the city. His teaching is preserved in the Discourses taken down by his pupil Arrianus, who also compiled Epictetus's Enchiridion or Manual. Like Seneca, he was chiefly concerned with ethical matters. He believed in innate moral predispositions which could either be left to decay or actualized by education.

The last of the great Stoics was Marcus Aurelius (121-180), who became emperor in 161. He was the author of a series of Meditations which he wrote in Greek on the marshes by the Danube while struggling against the barbarians. He had a profound distrust of logic and cosmology. Like earlier Stoics, Marcus Aurelius distinguished between the body, the soul or life and the mind (nous).15 He agreed with Epictetus in saying that the mind was the spark of divinity in everyone. God was thus in everyone. However, the nous will perish in the conflagration which brings the cosmos to an end. In his moral teaching he stressed inward self-control and useful citizenship. Life should be faced rationally with Stoic calm, regardless of whether there is a purposeful providence or chaos.

Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why dost thou resist? But if there is a Providence which allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in thyself a certain ruling intelligence. And even if the tempest carry thee away, let it carry away the poor flesh, the poor breath, everything else; for the intelligence at least it will not carry away.16

Marcus Aurelius was widely regarded as a great emperor. But it was the values that he himself prized that caused him to despise the Christian church. His reign witnessed persecutions in different parts of the Roman Empire, and a number of writers addressed apologies to him.

Today the word Stoic suggests people who do not set their hopes too high or allow their fears to overwhelm them. To face life stoically is to make oneself as immune as possible to joy and distress. It is to embrace the outlook recommended by Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. But historical Stoicism was more than that. It embraced a range of ideas not only in the field of ethics, but also in logic and physics. From the stand point of religion, the most significant aspect of Stoicism is what has been called "a `mundanization' or materialization of the divine, or, on the contrary, a divinization or spiritualization of matter."17 Zeno and his followers taught that

there are two principles in the universe, the active principle and the passive. The passive principle, then, is a substance without quality, i.e. matter, whereas the active is the reason [or logos] inherent in this substance, that is, God. For he is everlasting and is the artificer of each several thing throughout the whole extent of matter.1'

Zeno could also say that "God is one and the same with Reason, Fate and Zeus; he is also called by many other names."19 The term kosmos could likewise mean God himself, the orderly arrangement of the heavenly bodies, or the sum total of God and the universe together .2' The Stoics had various arguments for the existence of God. But perhaps the most basic one was the belief that people everywhere have a sense of God's existence. As Cicero summed it up in his treatise On the Nature of the Gods: "The main issue is agreed among all men of all nations, inasmuch as all have engraved in their minds an innate belief that the gods exist."21

Although classical Stoicism came to an end with Marcus Aurelius, its ideas continued to make themselves felt in the sixteenth century and beyond. The New Testament presents the apostle Paul drawing on and responding to Stoic teaching (as we shall see in the next chapter). Echoes of Stoic teaching can be found in such an unlikely pair as Calvin and Spinoza. Calvin could speak like Cicero of a sense of God engraved on the hearts of men. Spinoza's idea of the single reality of God or nature is a restatement of the Stoic view of reality. But these are questions that we shall have to look at more closely later on.

The first skeptics were not called skeptics. They were called Pyrrhoneans after the name of their master, Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-c. 270 B.C.).22 The Greek word skeptikos originally meant an "inquirer." But from the time of Pyrrho it acquired the overtone of casting doubt on the claims of people to know facts and of questioning whether facts are knowable at all. Pyrrho himself left behind no writings. What is known about him and tiis ideas is gleaned chiefly from the writings of Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus, both of whom lived in the second or third centuries of the Christian era. Sextus Empiricus was certainly a skeptic, and Diogenes Laertius may well have been one too. The early skeptics believed in what they called epoche, which meant suspension of judgment about things which were not evident. One early skeptic pushed this suspension of judgment to its logical conclusion, when he challenged the propriety of calling the movement by the name of Pyrrhonism. After all, no one could be sure what Pyrrho himself intended, and without knowing that the skeptics could not call themselves Pyrrhonists.2' However, it was agreed that one could call oneself a Pyrrhonean if one's lifestyle resembled Pyrrho's.

The stories told about Pyrrho suggest that he tried to avoid all theories about the nature of reality or even thinking about the future. For theorizing only led to frustration, and wondering about what might happen simply made one worry. Pyrrho's goal, like that of his followers down to Sextus Empiricus, was to attain ataraxia, the state of being unperturbed. The story is told about Pyrrho that he was once on a ship in a storm. The other passengers became unnerved, but Pyrrho "kept calm and confident, pointing to a little pig in the ship that went on eating, and telling them that such was the unperturbed state [ataraxia] in which the wise man should keep himself."24

It fell to Pyrrho's successors to codify the teaching of skepticism. In the meantime the Academy at Athens went the way of skepticism. Following the death of Plato there was a backlash against Platonism. In the third century B.C. Arcesilaus inaugurated what came to be known as the Middle Academy. Its skeptical approach lasted for two centuries. Arcesilaus himself urged a return to Socrates. Instead of imparting knowledge and accepting the dogmas of the philosophical schools, one should follow Socrates and devote one's energies to the refutation of erroneous thinking. The Middle Academy gave way to the even more skeptical New Academy. A major object of attack was Stoicism. In particular, the Academicians attacked such matters as our criteria for knowing, dogmatic ideas about the nature of the universe, belief in fate and beliefs about the nature of the gods.

Round about 80 B.C. the Academy reverted to dogmatism. But soon afterwards a skeptical school was founded at Alexandria which revived Pyrrhonism. In the course of time this school forged links with the empirical school of medicine. The empirical school of medicine laid stress on observing symptoms, describing syndromes, and noting connections between them. This was in contrast with the theoretical or logical school of medicine, which went in for elaborate theorizing about the hidden causes of disease. The greatest representative of the alliance between the skeptical school of philosophy and the empirical school of medicine was the man who came to be thought of as the codifier of Greek skepticism, Sextus Empiricus.

Sextus Empiricus lived in the last half of the second century and the first quarter of the third century of the Christian era. He knew Athens, Rome and Alexandria, but no one today knows exactly where he taught. Two of his major works have survived. Together they constitute the only complete, firsthand account of classical skepticism. His Outlines of Pyrrhonism appear to contain introductory lectures which define the key terms of skepticism and attack the dogmas of Stoicism. Against the Dogmatists uses skeptical techniques to refute philosophers and scientists. In logic Sextus Empiricus tried to show that syllogisms were really vicious circles, since the truth of the conclusion was already contained in the major premise.25 His own general position was equally opposed to the dogmatism of the Stoics and the hardline skepticism of the Academy. He took the view that in the light of conflicting arguments the proper course of action was to suspend judgment. A case in point is that of the existence or non-existence of the gods. "For different people have differing and discordant notions about them, with the result that it is possible neither to believe all of them, as they are conflicting, nor to believe some of them, on account of their being of equal force."26

The skepticism that Sextus Empiricus advocated belonged to what might be called the soft variety. It did not extend to everything. Suspension of judgment (epoch) applied only to claims about reality behind phenomena. It was a means to attaining the state of being unperturbed, ataraxia. Even the arguments of the skeptic laid no claim to absolute validity. Sextus Empiricus thought of them as a kind of mental laxative.

In regard to all the Sceptic formulae it must be understood in advance that we make no assertions to the effect that they are absolutely true. We even say that they can be used to cancel themselves, since they are included in those things to which they refer, just as purgative medicines not only remove the humours from the body but expel themselves together with the humours. Also, we do not pretend that in setting up these formulae we are revealing the real nature of the things for which they are used. On the contrary, we use them indifferently and (if you will) loosely.27

Sextus Empiricus was well aware of the problems that he would create for himself if skepticism were pushed to its limits. The only outcome would be a mental paralysis, brought about by doubt about everything. Instead of producing a state of unperturbedness, it could result in inner turmoil and panic caused by mental and moral inertia. Sextus Empiricus was the last major skeptic of the ancient world. The above quotation highlights the uses and limitations of skepticism. Critical scrutiny of claims and counterclaims is useful. But to take refuge in the existence of conflicting opinions on any matter is to confuse the problem with the solution. The pursuit of knowledge requires careful examination of conflicting views and the evaluation of them. The soft type of skepticism advocated by Sextus Empiricus was skeptical about metaphysical questions but shrank from consistent application of skeptical techniques to more mundane questions. It has commended itself to thinkers over and over again. But it has never succeeded in carrying complete conviction. For the cut-off point at which one stopped being skeptical had an air of being arbitrary. Moreover, to live on a diet of skepticism is like living on a diet of laxatives.

Skepticism was still sufficiently important in Augustine's day for the saint to write a refutation in the form of his treatise Against the Academicians. Interest in skepticism and the thought of Sextus Empiricus resurfaced in the sixteenth century, and played a major part in shaping the course of European philosophy. But of this we shall have more to say in a later chapter.

Among the contemporaries of the Stoics and the skeptics were the Cynics. The Cynics never really amounted to an organized school, but they form part of the world of ancient philosophy and the background of the New Testament. Their history goes back to the colorful figure of Diogenes of Sinope (c. 400-325 B.C.), whose outrageous behavior earned him the nickname kyon or "dog." The term Cynic is formed from the adjective kynikos or "dog-like." The story is told of how he once heard Plato conversing about the Forms, using words like "tablehood" and "cuphood." Diogenes commented: "Table and cup I see; but your tablehood and cuphood, Plato, I can nowise see." To this Plato replied: "That's readily accounted for, for you have the eyes to see the visible table and cup; but not the understanding by which the ideal tablehood and cuphood are discerned." To Plato, Diogenes was a "Socrates gone mad. 1121

Numerous epigrams were attributed to Diogenes. The love of money was "the mother-city of all evils."29 Good men were "the images of the gods, and love the business of the idle."" There was a touch of the actor in him. He lit a lamp in broad daylight, and as he went about he said, "I am looking for a man."" Greed, pretentiousness and folly were constant targets of his wit. His underlying message was that happiness is to be found by satisfying one's natural needs in the simplest, cheapest and most basic ways. The result was a philosophy of life which combined selfsufficiency with shamelessness. Conventions which he deemed unnatural could be flouted. He could praise the value of having laws, but saw nothing wrong in having a community of wives, or for that matter, a community of sons."

The Cynics flourished in the third century B.C. and helped to shape Stoic thought." In the writings of Epictetus, Diogenes is no longer the showman and master of repartee, but an ennobled detached ascetical teacher. For a time the Cynics faded out, but the movement saw a revival in the first century A.D. Cynicism was a movement of extremes. On the one hand, there were the wandering preachers of simplicity who went about Greece with stick and knapsack proclaiming that one could live happily in the midst of turmoil by renouncing possessions and keeping aloof from social entanglements. On the other hand, there were the somewhat disreputable Cynic beggar-philosophers who became familiar figures in Rome and the Orient, and who survive in literature into the sixth century."

How does all this tie in with Christian faith and practice? Not all that long ago it was fashionable to draw sharp lines between Greek philosophy and Jewish and Christian ways of thinking. Greeks were said to believe in the immortality of the soul; Christians believed in the resurrection of the body. Greeks were said to think abstractly; biblical writers were said to think concretely. Greeks were thought to share a cyclical view of time; the Jews had a linear view. The grammar of the Greek and Hebrew languages was said to have played a basic part in shaping the ways that Greeks and Jews thought about things. But from what we have seen here in this quick sketch of Greek thinkers, it is clear that the Greeks did not think alike.

It is now evident from linguistic studies that the argument about different grammatical patterns shaping different outlooks is grossly exaggerated.' It is also clear from the study of Jewish history in the centuries preceding the birth of Jesus that Judaism was far more pervasively influenced by Hellenism than had been acknowledged.2 But the question remains: How does New Testament Christianity relate to Greek philosophy? To answer this question adequately is a major field of study in itself. Scholars spend their lives exploring the many facets of the New Testament in the light of the culture, ideas, and history of the ancient world. Such an undertaking lies outside the scope of this book .3 However, we can pinpoint some key issues. But before we do so, it will be helpful to take note of a Jewish writer who was a contemporary of Jesus and Paul and who drew extensively on Greek thought to interpret the Jewish faith-Philo of Alexandria.

It has been said that "the history of Christian philosophy begins not with a Christian but with a Jew, Philo of Alexandria, elder contemporary of St. Paul."4 To this could be added the further paradox that nowhere in his voluminous writings does Philo mention Christianity. Very little is actually known about Philo's life (c. 20 B.C.-c. A.D. 50).5 He appears to have belonged to a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish family. He acted as a customs agent, collecting dues on all goods imported into Egypt from the East. He seems to have been given Roman citizenship. He once headed a delegation to the Roman emperor to seek redress for wrongs inflicted on the Jews. He also made a visit to the Jerusalem temple. But beyond such bare facts his life is shrouded in obscurity. On the other hand, he left behind him over thirty books which show what could happen when Greek philosophy came into contact with Jewish tradition.

Philo has been variously seen as a great thinker, a rigid proponent of Jewish orthodoxy, and as a simple-minded exegete of the Jewish Scriptures who was dazzled by the glitter of Greek philosophy and culture. Certainly he was not an original philosopher, but the gaps in his education are now seen to lie more in his lack of Jewish training than in his philosophical reading.' Although his writings were cast largely in the form of biblical interpretation, Philo seems to have relied almost exclusively on Greek translations of the Bible, being apparently unable to consult the Hebrew original. Philo wrote as a Jew in a Gentile world. He was thoroughly conversant with Greek literature and the prevailing philosophies of his day-Platonism, Stoicism and Neopythagoreanism. Perhaps he may be best described as a Jew who was deeply committed to the institutions of Judaism, and who wrote "to deliver his Jewish compatriots from an oppressive sense of inferiority that came from living in the shadow of a pervasive, powerful and alluring hellenistic culture." Turning the tables, he sought to show that `Judaism was superior to Hellenism-that Plato took his great insights from Moses and that the Hebrew Scriptures were both compatible with and superior to Hellenism."'

Philo's name is linked with allegorical interpretation of Scripture, which was widely followed in the Christian church down to the present day. Basically this was an attempt to discern deeper truths and spiritual implications behind the more obvious sense of the text. But the method itself was much older than Philo. It was already used in the sixth century B.C. by Theagenes of Rhegium to explain Homer. It was employed by the Cynics and Stoics to demythologize the gods. The method can be seen in Cicero's account of how the Stoics explained the gods as natural forces.

This subject was handled by Zeno and was later explained more fully by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For example, an ancient belief prevailed throughout Greece that Caelus was mutilated by his son Saturn, and Saturn himself thrown into bondage by his son Jove: now these immoral fables enshrined a decidedly clever scientific theory. Their meaning was that the highest element of celestial ether or fire, which by itself generates all things, is devoid of that bodily part which requires union with another for the work of procreation!

Philo adapted the technique of allegorical interpretation to explain the Jewish Scriptures. His exegetical writings are divided into three main categories.' The first consists of Questions and Answers to Genesis and Exodus in which a brief literary answer is followed by lengthy allegorical explanation. The second category deals with the Allegory of the Law, and consists of treatises giving detailed exposition of Scripture. The third deals with broad themes under the general title of Exposition of the Law.

Here we can give only one out of countless examples of Philo's allegorical method. Psalm 46:4 speaks of "a river whose streams make glad the city of God." Now Philo knew full well that no river runs through Jerusalem. He, therefore, argued that the passage must be taken allegorically to "show something different from the obvious." The river refers to "the impetuous rush of the divine word," which gladdens the whole universe.10 Philo's language combines the Old Testament idea of the Word of the Lord with the Stoic concept of the Logos in an interpretation which sees a philosophical and mystical meaning in the psalm.

Elsewhere Philo could speak of "the saintly company of the Pythagoreans" and "the sacred authority of Plato."" His account of creation pictured God fashioning the world in accordance with ideas which had "no other location than the Divine Reason, which was the Author of this ordered frame. "12 Whether Philo believed in creation from nothing or creation from some form of primary matter is open to question. So too is the question of whether the world had a beginning or whether it was eternal. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Philo's thought was a conscious synthesis which drew on a wide range of Greek ideas in order to interpret the teaching of the Jewish Scriptures. In the judgment of a leading modern authority on Philo, David Winston, "In Philo's philosophy, the Logos is the Divine Mind, the Idea of Ideas, the firstbegotten Son of the Uncreated Father, eldest and chief of the angels, the man or shadow of God, or even the second God, the pattern of all creation and the archetype of human reason. The Logos is God immanent, holding together and administering the entire chain of creation .... and man's mind is but a tiny fragment of this all-pervading Logos.""

The chief followers of Philo were not Jews but Christian intellectuals of the second and third centuries. Perhaps one reason for this was the extent of Hellenistic influence on Philo's mind in an age when the catastrophes which befell Judaism caused Jews to turn back to their Jewish roots and specifically Jewish traditions. The Jews followed the rabbinic interpretation of Scripture as set out in the Mishnah and later the Talmud. As a consequence, Philo seems to stand closer to the Christian philosophical theologians of Alexandria, Clement and Origen than he does to either the rabbinic tradition or the apostle Paul.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find only one reference to the word philosophy and just one reference to "philosophers." The latter comes in Acts 17:18, which mentions the apostle Paul's meeting with some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at Athens. To some it seemed that Paul was preaching foreign divinities because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. The encounter leads to Paul's Areopagus address. What is striking about this address is the fact that Paul assumes a point of contact. There is no need for him to attempt to demonstrate the existence of God. That point is not an issue. The Athenians are in every way "very religious" (Acts 17:22). It is the character and actions of God, on the one hand, and the appropriate human response, on the other hand, that are the key questions. But here too there is a point of contact. For Paul goes on to give two quotations from Greek authors in support of his contention that God is not far from each one of us. "For `In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, `For we are indeed his offspring' " (Acts 17:28 RSV).

The whole passage has been the subject of much discussion." The Areopagus address may well follow the pattern of the rhetorical model of the day. But our special interest here lies in this: Paul bases his argument on the fact that Greek thinkers have genuine insights into the existence and character of God. The quotations from Greek authors, when placed in their context, address God as Zeus, the principal deity as understood in the Stoic tradition.15 As such, he is the father of humankind and the source of all life. God is, therefore, not to be thought of as a finite being that dwells in a shrine. The deity should not be thought of as an image. But this is as far as natural knowledge goes. It is supplemented by the gospel of Christ, which calls all people everywhere to repent because God "has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:31 RSV). Mention of the resurrection had a triple effect. It caused some to mock, others to want to hear more at a later date, and some to believe.

It has been argued that Paul's strategy at Athens was a mistaken failure in view of the modest handful of converts he left behind. Certainly there was no major church in Athens comparable with the other churches that Paul founded in the course of his missionary journeys. The absence of such a church is seen by some as proof of the failure that results from deploying philosophical arguments instead of preaching the gospel. Others have seen this presumed comparative failure as tacit testimony to the weakness of natural theology as compared with the power evangelism associated with the signs and wonders which accompanied the apostolic preaching of the gospel.

But both these conclusions are premature and false. Closer examination of Paul's earlier missionary strategy in the churches of Asia Minor and Greece shows that his success was frequently mixed and that Paul did not found a major church everywhere that he preached. In and of itself public response to an idea is not a measure of its truth and validity. However, it is worthwhile to reflect further on Paul's argument in its historical context. For Paul had already used a similar argument at Lystra, and he went on to repeat it in his letter to the Romans.

At Lystra the preaching of Paul and Barnabas led to a remarkable incident in which a lame man was enabled to walk (Acts 14:8-20). The citizens of Lystra greeted the event as an act of divine intervention, believing that the gods had come down to earth in the persons of Paul and Barnabas. They hailed Barnabas as Zeus, the chief god and guardian of human beings and also the god of weather, presumably because Barnabas remained silent. As Paul was doing most of the talking, they hailed him as Hermes, the messenger of the gods, on the assumption that he was acting as spokesman for Barnabas. The priest of Zeus, whose temple lay outside the city, even wanted to offer sacrifice to them. But Paul and Barnabas tore their garments and rushed among the people crying:

Men, why are you doing this? We also are men, of like nature with you, and bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways; yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. (Acts 14:15-17 RSV)

Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, notes that with these words, they scarcely restrained the populace from offering sacrifice to them. However, there was a sudden reversal of fortune. Hostile Jews came along from Antioch and Iconium and urged the people to turn against Paul, who was stoned and dragged from the city in the belief that he was dead.

Two things stand out from this episode. The first is Paul's contention that nature bears witness to the goodness and greatness of God. Nature herself bears ample testimony to the fact that the Creator should not be confused with the creature. But this leads us to the other thing that stands out, the power of preconceptions and world views over the way people perceive things. This power is so great that it can distort not only the way people think about nature at large but about the ways people see particular events. It was evident to those present that a remarkable healing had taken place through the agency of Paul. But the citizens of Lystra saw the event in the light of their world view with its beliefs in the ancient deities of Greece. The protestations of Paul and Barnabas had a temporary restraining effect. But all this was swept away with the arrival of hostile Jews from Antioch and Iconium who succeeded in defaming the character of the apostle. It was not that the basic fact of the healing had changed; it was the way that this fact was interpreted in the light of the preconceptions that were brought to bear on it. First, there were the preconceptions which led the citizens of Lystra to treat Paul and Barnabas as gods in human form. Then there was Paul's interpretation which countered this view. Finally, there were the representations of Paul's Jewish opponents which produced a complete reversal of the original interpretation. From being venerated as a god Paul was treated as a evildoer worthy of death.

The teaching attributed to the apostle Paul on these two occasions described in Acts 14 and 17 was evidently adapted to gentile audiences. When Paul preached to Jewish audiences, he emphasized themes which addressed the Jewish religious situation.'s Nevertheless, this appeal to revelation in nature and a natural awareness of God is not isolated and unique. It could well be that Paul's experience of preaching in Greece, particularly at Lystra and Athens, underlies his teaching in his letter to the Romans. This letter was evidently written from nearby Corinth, either immediately after he had moved on from Athens or more likely during his last stay there." At any rate Paul sets out the same basic argument in the opening chapters of Romans that we have already noted in his preaching at Lystra and Athens. Paul uses it as testimony to the goodness and greatness of God and as the foundation of his argument that human beings are accountable to God. But as in the preaching described in the Acts of the Apostles, this knowledge of God through nature is supplemented by the gospel.

In Romans 1:19-20 Paul writes: "What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse" (RSV). Here too Paul is not arguing that God exists; he is arguing about the notions of God that we should have and the kind of response that we should make in view of human experience in the world. The Creator should not be confused with the creature. The one who is mighty enough to bring all things into being should not be reduced to the level of the creature. But this is just what human beings have done in their folly, and the present plight of humankind is the result of human failure to respond to God.

In Acts Paul drew on Greek authors in support of his argument. In Romans 1 he draws on the Wisdom of Solomon 13, which likewise speaks of the inexcusable human folly in failing to respond to the works of God in creation. Here and elsewhere Paul can draw on both Old Testament teaching and outside thought, including Stoic ideas,1B in order to make his point. But whenever Paul does this, he is not simply embracing Greek philosophy. He can draw on Philo and Hellenistic Jewish thought, and he uses the language of Stoicism. He can acknowledge that Stoics and others have genuine insights and correct ideas. But his message tells of something that cannot be found in philosophy, the gospel of Jesus Christ.19 Moreover, philosophical ideas need to be corrected in the light of the truth that Paul found in Christ.

How does all this tie in with the apparent denigration of philosophy in Colossians 2:8, which is the only place in the New Testament where the word philosophy is actually mentioned? Here the readers are warned: "See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ" (RSV). Scholars see in this admonition a warning against a variety of possible philosophies, ranging from the pursuit of wisdom, through sundry Jewish sects, to incipient gnosticism, and the worship of the elements of earth, fire, water and air .21 On the other hand, it is possible that there is an element of irony here. The following verses do not explicitly address philosophical questions. Instead, they talk about matters like circumcision, food, feasts, the sabbath and angel worship. All these were matters of importance to Jews, but which Paul now sees to be made obsolete and irrelevant by Christ's death. They are, in fact, a form of bondage from which Christ has made the believer free. It may be, therefore, that Paul is ironically calling these practices "philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition." To put trust in such things is like trusting some empty alien philosophy which is the product of human tradition.

Before we leave these brief comments on the apostle Paul and ancient philosophy, it is important to note the change of approach that has taken place in the interpretation of Paul. In the earlier part of the present century Paul was repeatedly represented as a kind of Platonist. Typical of this view was George Holley Gilbert's claim that:

In his view of man's constitution the apostle stands with the Greek philosophers rather than with the Hebrew Scriptures. With Plato he thinks of a human being as consisting of an outer man and an inner man (2 Cor. 4:16), and with Greek philosophy in general he thinks of the body as the prison of the spirit (Rom. 7:24; 8:23). With the Orphic faith he holds the doctrine of original sin and locates the evil principle in the "flesh," where it has been enthroned since the hour of Adam's transgression (Rom. 5:12). The dual aspect of this thought comes to its classic expression in Rom. 7:15-18.21

In response to these claims, two comments are in order. On the one hand, close examination of what Paul actually wrote shows that this claim cannot be substantiated. Modern biblical exegetes see Paul's understanding of human nature as diametrically opposite to the Platonic Greek dichotomy of body and soul.22 On the other hand, recent research into the life and thought of the apostle Paul has increasingly stressed Paul's thoroughly Jewish character.21 Paul's understanding of human nature is to be seen in the light of the Old Testament Scriptures. If Paul could on occasion use the language of Greek philosophy, it was the language of Stoicism, rather than that of Platonism. But in such cases Paul's purpose was not to teach philosophy, but to communicate the gospel in the language of the contemporary world of his day. The message itself was a reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Another major battleground is the Gospel of John, and nowhere is the fighting more fierce than the conflict over the interpretation of the socalled prologue to the Gospel (Jn 1:1-18). John's Gospel opens with the declaration: "In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1 RSV).24 It goes on to say that all things were made by the Word, and that this Word became flesh. The influential American philosopher John Herman Randall, Jr., saw in John's Gospel Paul's basic concern with redemption. But he saw John's interests as "much more intellectual and philosophical" than Paul's. John was consciously attempting to appeal to the Hellenistic mind in his attempt to explain redemption to the Greek world. "In his Prologue about the word, the Logos, " Randall observed, "he is adopting Philo Judaeus' earlier Platonization of the Hebraic tradition."25

Whether John was trying to be more intellectual and philosophical than Paul is open to question. This way of putting it appears to identify being intellectual with a certain style of philosophizing. It also overlooks John's Jewishness and closeness to Jesus' life and times.26 Moreover, it is apt to distort the perspective of John's prologue by directing attention to Philo's idea of the divine Logos and away from the parallels between John and the Old Testament.

The prologue to John deliberately echoes the opening of the Book of Genesis with its account of creation by the word of God. It is possible that John was using language which had meaning to readers who were attuned to Stoicism and Philo. If so, we have here another example of the kind of thing that Paul was doing. It is to take language and ideas which are valid for the hearer as a means for communication. The Hellenistic Jew and the Stoic understood creation by the divine logos. But John uses the idea to communicate something more. The logos which was there in the beginning, which created all things, and which enlightens everyone, became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14).27

Another book which has been the subject of much controversy is the letter to the Hebrews. A number of scholars believe that they have detected in it evidence of Platonism and of Philo's exegetical style. This has prompted the suggestion that the author was a converted Philonist. The letter reflects on Jewish history, the priesthood, and the sacrifical ritual associated with the tabernacle and later the temple in Jerusalem. In particular, it focuses on the annual Day of Atonement ritual, in which the high priest offered sacrifice and entered the Holy of Holies. The letter argues that the entire ritual cult was really a foreshadowing of Christ, who by his death made atonement, and then entered the Father's presence as our true high priest. Typical statements include the following:

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. (Heb 9:23-24 RSV)

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near. (Heb 10:1 RSV)

Despite the plausibility of the claim that Hebrews was a product of Platonism and Philonism, an emerging consensus of scholars sees the claim as too simplistic. F. F. Bruce acknowledges that "it is natural to recognize the influence of Platonic idealism in our author's thought and language, mediated through Philo and Alexandrian culture in general; and such influence need not be ruled out."28 But Bruce goes on to point out that the idea of the earthly sanctuary as a copy of God's dwelling place goes back far beyond Plato. Moreover, the author does not use allegory in the same way as Philo. Philo treated Old Testament characters, institutions and events as allegories setting forth eternal principles of ethics and metaphysics, whereas the author of Hebrews treats them as historical foreshadowings of the fulfillment which has taken place in history.29 More recently, Harold W. Attridge has observed:

The extreme and simplistic positions positing a direct and exclusive dependence of Hebrews on either Philo or the Essenes have been easily refuted. Hebrews does not display the same elaborate allegorical exegetical techniques as Philo. Neither does the text, despite its rhetorical deployment of commonplace philosophical categories, display the same, more or less consistent philosophical interpretation of Jewish traditions as does Philo. Furthermore, the seriousness that Hebrews accords to the eschatological expectation clearly separates him from the Alexandrian. At the same time . . . there are undeniable parallels that suggest that Philo and our author are indebted to similar traditions of Greek-speaking and -thinking Judaism.... there is no single strand of Judaism that provides a clear and simple matrix with in which to understand the thought of our author and his text.90

When Christianity came into the world, it did not invent a new language to be spoken only by Christians. The first disciples and converts from Judaism spoke Aramaic like their fellow Jews. As Christianity spread in the gentile world, the followers of Jesus spoke Greek, the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean lands. Sometimes they used new words, and sometimes they used old words with new meanings. But they did not invent whole new languages. They used and adapted what they found. The same was true of culture and philosophy. The early church responded to, used and adapted what it found.

The two dominant philosophies of the first century A.D. were Epicureanism and Stoicism. Later centuries were to see revivals of other styles of doing philosophy, especially Platonism and Aristotelianism, but for the moment other ways of thinking got more attention. But even when we speak of Epicureanism and Stoicism, or any other sorts of -ism, things are apt not to be quite so clear-cut as a label might suggest. For every -ism has a history, and most of them draw on other -isms for ideas and inspiration. Here, as everywhere else when we come to assess ideas, the important point is not to identify the idea as coming from this or that -ism, but to ask whether it is true and useful, and to ask what counts to make it true and useful. Of course, it is helpful to know where an idea comes from. If we know where an idea comes from, we can understand and assess it better. But what counts in the end is truth.

Our quick look at the encounter of philosophy and the Christian faith in the New Testament shows something that we shall see repeated over and over in the course of the succeeding centuries. It is the love/hate relationship that exists between philosophy and faith. The New Testament church never turned to philosophy for a foundation for its faith. It did not try to prove the existence of God by a series of philosophical arguments and then build an edifice of theology on the philosophical foundation. It did not turn to philosophy to give its beliefs academic sanction and an aura of intellectual respectability. It certainly did not attempt to convert the faith and practice of Christianity into a philosophical system. When it encountered philosophies with fundamentally different outlooks from its own, the church was not afraid to challenge them. On the other hand, Paul and others were not afraid to acknowledge the philosophical insights of pagan thinkers. Nor did they disdain to use the language of philosophy in order to communicate their message.

If we look in the Acts of the Apostles at the account of Paul's preaching at Athens and at his argument in the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, the apostle does not seem to fit very well into the rival schools of modern apologists and their ways of thinking. The foundationalist tries to lay a philosophical foundation for faith by demonstrating certain basic truths, such as the existence of God. The presuppositionalist rejects this approach in favor of trying to show that the presuppositions of his opponents are invalid and that his own are preferable. But Paul followed neither tack. Instead, he acknowledged that people are aware of the existence of God and that there are genuine insights outside the faith that he preached. On the other hand, there are also a great many confused and even perverse ideas. He urged his audience to use their reason to reflect on why these ideas were wrong. Only when he had done this did Paul proceed to tell his audience about something that philosophy on its own could never tell them-the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To Paul rational thinking was important. Without it the unbeliever and the believer alike could bring disaster upon themselves. Philosophy could be used, but not as a substitute for faith and discipleship. To Paul and other New Testament writers philosophy was what it was to many other great Christians in later ages-a good servant but a bad master.

The period from the church fathers to the medieval scholastics spans fourteen centuries. It begins in an age when the Christian church was a minority sect. At his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth had been condemned for blasphemy. To the Jewish community the followers of Jesus were dangerous upstarts who were desecrating the Law and the sacred traditions. To the educated Roman politician the church was a disreputable sect which constituted a threat to law and order. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the Christian church found itself frequently scorned and repeatedly outlawed and persecuted during the first three centuries. But gradually the church won recognition and respect.' It moved from the status of being barely tolerated to one in which it became the dominant religion in Western Europe. All kinds of factors were at work in this process. Not the least of them was the ability of the church's teachers to present their faith in forms which met the challenges of their day.

The world of the early centuries of the Christian era resembled the modern world in one respect at least: it was a world full of different religions and philosophies which competed for the hearts and minds of men and women. These included the mystery religions which offered ritual, purification, religious experiences and initiation into the divine mysteries.' The evidence for the mystery religions is largely fragmentary. Much of it consists in brief references and allusions in ancient authorsmany of whom were bound to secrecy or loathed the subject that they were treating-inscriptions, and sundry art works. The mystery cults took many different forms. But running through them was a common dread of evil and a desire to be set free. Salvation meant escape from destiny, release from corruption, and renewal of life. To do this, the initiate participated in the secret rites of the cult, with a view to entering into mystical communion with a deity and receiving immortality. Mystery cult myths included the death and restoration to life of the savior-god, who became the Lord of his devotees.

In addition to the mystery cults there was Gnosticism, whose formidable challenge to the church provoked weighty replies from church fathers like Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement and Epiphanius.' At one time Gnosticism was thought to be an acute form of the secularization of Christianity through the church's contact with the Hellenistic world.' But continued research on the basis of various discoveries, especially at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the 1940s, has transformed the picture.

Gnostic teaching has to be reconstructed from numerous sources. Among them are the various replies to gnostic teachers by early church fathers. Another source is the so-called Hermetica, a collection of Greek and Latin religious and philosophical writings, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the Thrice-Greatest, a name given to the Egyptian god Thoth, who was believed to be the father and protector of knowledge. These writings date from the middle of the first to the end of the third centuries of the Christian era. They are thus generally much later than the New Testament, though some scholars think that they preserve ideas that were current in New Testament times.

The writings contain a mixture of Platonic, Stoic, Neo-Pythagorean and Eastern religious elements in the form of Platonic dialogues. Their aim was to impart deification through secret knowledge. In most of them Hermes himself, or a similar divine figure, communicates this knowledge to a disciple. The first and most important of the essays, the Poimandres, contains visions of the origin of the universe, an account of the archetypal man and the present state of humanity, and the way of salvation. Leaving behind everything mortal and corruptible, the soul passes through seven spheres. It finally enters into God himself, and so becomes divine. The disciple is then charged to preach the beauty and piety of knowledge. It would seem that Hermetic philosophers were engaged in an evangelistic enterprise which rivalled that of the Christian church.

The library of Coptic writings, discovered at Nag Hammadi, belonged to a sect which turned Christianity into a form of Gnosticism. Most of the forty-five separate writings have some Christian element in them. In some cases it is quite strong. Among the texts is the non-Christian Eug- nostos the Blessed and a gnostic Christianized version of the same writing entitled The Sophia of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Thomas is not a Gospel like the New Testament Gospels, but a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. The collection drew heavily on the Gospel tradition. But it includes new sayings which have a definite gnostic flavor, and other sayings have been edited with a gnostic slant. The Gospel of Truth is not a Gospel like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which tell about the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a homily which reinterprets Jesus in terms of a gnostic scheme of thought.

The other principal sources of knowledge of Gnosticism are the Man- daic writings, the chief of which is the Ginza or "Treasure." The Mandeans descended from a community east of the Jordan in the first or second centuries, and survive today in Iraq and Iran. Their surviving writings date from the seventh and eighth centuries, and have affinities with Manichaean dualism. They represent an oriental development of Gnosticism.

The term Gnosticism is connected with the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge" or "insight." A leading contemporary authority, Kurt Rudolph, describes Gnosticism as "a dualistic religion, consisting of several schools and movements, which took up a definitely negative attitude toward the world and the society of the time, and proclaimed a deliverance ('redemption') of man precisely from the constraints of earthly existence through `insight' into his essential relationship, whether as `soul' or `spirit,'-a relationship temporarily obscured-with a supramundane realm of freedom and of rest."5 Gnosticism has certain affinities with earlier Greek thought, but the dualism of the spiritual and the material is pushed in Gnosticism to the point of hostility to the world. In the twentieth century Rudolf Bultmann has argued that Gnosticism played a major part in shaping New Testament Christianity. But it now appears that Bultmann's position was anachronistic, and that key ideas which he believed Christianity drew from Gnosticism, were in fact derived by Gnosticism from Christianity.' To quote Kurt Rudolph once more, "The gnostic movement was originally a non-Christian phenomenon which was gradually enriched with Christian concepts until it made its appearance as independent Christian gnosis."'

The main impact of Gnosticism on the church was to provoke the church fathers to develop orthodox Christian teaching in order to refute what had become a rival heresy. Whereas the Gnostics traced human ills to the material character of the world, the church fathers stressed the goodness of creation. Whereas the Gnostics speculated about series of emanating deities and attributed the world's existence to the activity of an evil lesser deity, the fathers taught that it was the same good God who was both the creator and redeemer. Redemption was not a form of spiritual illumination which enabled the spiritual person to escape from the thrall of the material world with the help of a redeemer who only appeared to be human. The church fathers insisted that the root cause of human ills was sin, and that redemption was made possible only by God himself becoming a real human being, dying a real death and rising again from the dead.

While Gnosticism was trying to take over the church, the traditional philosophies of Greece and Rome continued to compete for attention. In the world of the early church, popular philosophy was regarded as a "way of life." Sometimes it had a religious tinge. The modern historian Robert L. Wilken describes how "adherents often came to resemble doctrinaire proponents of inherited views rather than inquiring philosophers. In some cases, members of a particular school exhibited an almost religious veneration of the founder, celebrating his memory with a festival that included religious sacrifices, a banquet, and readings from his works."' The scene described by Wilken pictures philosophers behaving like hucksters and traveling evangelists, addressing crowds on street corners and in the marketplace. They would offer advice on how to live one's life and deal with personal problems. Appealing less to logic and argument, the popular philosopher would direct his hearer's attention to the wondrous accomplishments of the school's founder and the high esteem in which the school was held.

The scene was captured by the second-century satirist Lucian in his dialogue Philosophies for Sale.' The action takes place in a slave market in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the opening scene Zeus gives the order for benches to be arranged for the prospective buyers, and tells an attendant to "bring on the philosophies and put them in line; but first groom them up, so that they will look well and will attract as many as possible." The word that Lucian uses for "philosophies" here is bious, literally "lives," that is, ways of life. Lucian proceeds to poke fun at a Pythagorean, a Cynic, a Democritean, a Heraclitean, a Platonist, a Stoic and a Skeptic, who are in turn paraded before the buyers and questioned about what they can do for their owners.

When it comes to the turn of the Skeptic, the buyer asks why he is carrying a pair of scales. The Skeptic replies: "I weigh arguments in them and make them balance one another, and when I see they are precisely alike and equal in weight, then, ah! then I do not know which is the true."10 Is there anything else that the Skeptic can do fairly well? He replies that he can do everything except catch a runaway slave. Why cannot he do that? "Because, my dear sir, I am unable to apprehend anything." While Lucian lampooned the philosophical schools, his contemporary, the physician and philosopher Galen (c. 129-c. 199) gave more sober but scarcely less critical assessment.

People admire this or that particular physician or philosopher without proper study of their subject and without a training in scientific demonstration, with the help of which they would be able to distinguish between true and false arguments: some do this because their fathers, others because their teachers, others because their friends were either empirics or dogmatics or methodics, or simply because a representative of a particular school was admired in their native city. The same applies to the philosophical schools: different people have for different reasons become Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics or Epicureans."

Galen himself had studied Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Epicureanism. While learning from all of them, he refused to become an adherent of any. A prolific writer who rose to eminence in his native Pergamum and later in Rome, his medical works continued to dominate Western medicine until the Renaissance. Unlike earlier observers, Galen did not regard Christianity as an alien cult or superstitious sect. He treated both Judaism and Christianity as philosophical schools on the same footing as Greek philosophy." He was the first pagan of whom we know who had anything good to say about Christianity. Galen could even praise Christians for their moral lives, self-control and their pursuit of justice which had reached a pitch "not inferior to that of genuine philosophers." Nevertheless, he faulted the followers of Moses and Christ for teaching their pupils "to accept everything on faith." He further complained that most people were "unable to follow any demonstrative argument," but needed parables about rewards and punishments in a future life.'3

In the meantime the Platonic tradition survived in cities where higher education was given, especially in Alexandria on the Nile Delta in Egypt. The form of Platonism which flourished between 80 B.C. and A.D. 220 is known as Middle Platonism.14 This was the Platonism which influenced the Christian philosophical theologians of Alexandria, Clement and Origen. It was also the philosophy of one of Christianity's sharpest critics, the philosopher Celsus.

About the year 170 Celsus composed a treatise with the Greek title Alethes Logos. The title has been translated as The True Word and also True Doctrine. The different translations bring out different shades of meaning of the word Logos. The book was evidently influential, for some eighty years later the Christian theologian Origen felt that it was important enough to merit a line-by-line refutation. Celsus's work has not survived, but his argument can be reconstructed from quotations to which Origen replies in his book Against Celsus.15

Origen initially depicted Celsus as an Epicurean, but the picture of Celsus the Epicurean is gradually replaced by that of Celsus the Platonist. In Graeco-Roman society to call someone an Epicurean was like calling someone a Communist in the McCarthy era of American politics. It carried with it the impression of an atheist who was undermining society's For his part, Celsus evidently knew Christianity first-hand and subjected it to a wide-ranging critique. He saw the church as a kind of counterculture which threatened the foundations of society. The Christian movement had transgressed the law of Judaism, the tradition from which it sprang, and was threatening to destroy Hellenistic culture. For Celsus "true doctrine" was the same as the ancient doctrine of such sages and "divinely inspired men" as Plato."

Celsus's work may have been designed to reply to Christian writers like Justin Martyr. The latter had argued that the divine Logos which had inspired the Old Testament prophets and illuminated the great philosophers had been made flesh in the person of Christ. Celsus sought to counter this by arguing that "there is an ancient doctrine [logos] which has existed from the beginning, which has always been maintained by the wisest nations and cities and wise men."" Celsus respected the Jews for their form of this doctrine in their religion and culture. For that matter, he could tolerate a wide variety of beliefs and practices, so long as they were traditional.19 What he could not stand was a religion which made unique claims about the Logos becoming flesh and being revered as Lord above the Roman emperor. For then there would be nothing to prevent the emperor from being "abandoned, alone and deserted "'21 and the order of the Roman world would be replaced by chaos. What really offended Celsus about Christianity were its unique claims for Jesus and its recognition of an authority above that of the state.

We shall turn to Christian attitudes to philosophy shortly. But before we do, we need to note a new philosophical synthesis which took over the earlier forms of classical philosophy. In the course of the third century of the Christian era, Middle Platonism was superseded by the philosophy that is now known as Neoplatonism. It was a form of Platonism developed by Plotinus which also embraced elements of Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, and Stoicism, and combined them into a religious philosophical system.21 In its early phases it was centered at Alexandria in Egypt, which had long since displaced Athens as the intellectual center of the Roman world. It soon spread to Rome, and by the fifth century it had got a firm footing in Athens.

Plotinus (205-270) was born in Upper Egypt. He studied philosophy under Ammonius Saccas under whom Origen also studied. Eventually Plotinus made his way to Rome, where he opened a school of philosophy and began to write. His writings were posthumously edited by his disciple Porphyry, who arranged them into six groups of nine, and who also wrote a Life of Plotinus in which he explained his method of editing. Plotinus's works are known as the Enneads, which comes from a Greek word meaning "group of nine." Plotinus himself seems to have been fairly informal in his teaching. The arrangement of the Enneads into arbitrary divisions was the work of Porphyry.

For Plotinus reality was essentially spiritual. What in our common sense approach to life we call matter was to Plotinus something like the thoughts of the mind. Plotinus distinguished three hypostases or forms of reality: the Soul, Intelligence and the One. Sometimes Plotinus spoke of souls as individual entities which could become embodied. At other times he could speak as if all souls form only one Soul. Plotinus's notion of intelligence corresponds to Plato's realm of Ideas or Forms. But he saw the Ideas as the Ideas of God, and insisted that such thoughts do not exist outside the intelligence. The highest form of reality was the One, which was absolutely above everything.

Plotinus's doctrine of the One involves several ideas which are important for later thought. The things that we know in everyday life all have different parts. But because the One is one, it does not have different parts. It cannot be resolved into several constituents. The One is utterly self-sufficient. It is not defective in any way, or dependent on anything else in order to exist. Because the One transcends everything, the One cannot accurately be described. Plotinus, therefore, uses what may be called a negative theology. All language is inadequate to describe the reality that transcends language. In trying to speak about the One, we must speak as if our language were accurate, but we must realize that it is not. We should not even speak of the One as Good. "It is the Good in a different sense, transcending all other goods."22

Two other ideas are bound up with Plotinus's view of the One. The first is his mysticism, which involves a leap that enables the soul to be blissfully one with the One.21 The second is Plotinus's view of evil.44 In one respect it was similar to the view of Augustine who was in fact influenced by Neoplatonism, but in another respect it verged on Gnosticism. Insofar as Plotinus thought of evil as non-being-meaning something which is not created but is an absence of the good-his thought was akin to Augustine's. But insofar as matter represented the end of the creative process and has no good in it, Plotinus's thought appears to come close to Gnosticism.

Neoplatonism presented the ancient world with a rival interpretation of reality to that of Christianity. The fact in itself is significant. Earlier critics of the church could dismiss the Christian faith as a dangerous superstition. Neoplatonism was an attempt to revive and restate classical philosophy as a viable alternative to the Christian faith. Under lamblichus (c. 250-c. 325), Neoplatonism received further systematic elaboration. An element of ritual magic became a feature. But lamblichus' teacher, Porphyry, was not content with merely developing an alternative philosophy. He launched the most formidable intellectual onslaught on the Christian faith to date. Several generations of Christian writers down to Augustine found it necessary to respond to Porphyry.

Porphyry (c. 233-c. 305)25 was born and raised in the city of Tyre on the Eastern Mediterranean. As a young man, he made his way down the coast to Caesarea in order to hear Origen, the leading Christian intellectual of the first three centuries. The experience proved to be disappointing. He complained that:

Origen, a Greek educated in Greek learning, drove headlong towards barbarian recklessness; and making straight for this he hawked himself and his literary skill about; and while his manner of life was Christian and contrary to the law, in his opinions about material things and the Deity he played the Greek, and introduced Greek ideas into foreign fables. For he was always consorting with Plato, and was conversant with the writings of ... the distinguished men among the Pythagoreans; and he used also the books of Chaeremon the Stoic and Cornutus, from whom he learnt the figurative interpretation, as employed in the Greek mysteries, and applied it to the Jewish writ- ings.26

Porphyry then went to Athens and later to Rome, where he met Plotinus and embraced his teaching. Shortly before the latter's death he went to Sicily, where he wrote many of his philosophical works. Toward the end of his life he returned to Rome, where he taught with much success and had lamblichus among his pupils.

Porphyry's attack on Christianity was two-pronged. One prong took the form of a massive critique of the way in which Christian teachers like Origen interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures. This critique appeared in the fifteen books of his treatise Against the Christians. The work is now lost, but numerous fragments of it have survived in various places. The other prong of the attack was Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles, a work written in three books. It was not a treatment of Christianity as such, but a restatement of traditional pagan religion and belief in one high God. Prophyry's strategy was, in the words of Robert L. Wilken, "to sever the link between Christianity and Hellenism by showing that Christians had abandoned worship of this God in favor of the worship of Chri st."27 It was a strategy which Augustine felt it necessary to counter a full century after Porphyry's death. Augustine regarded Porphyry as "the most learned of philosophers." Nevertheless, Porphyry's argument was spe- CIOUS.28

Despite its initial hostility to Christianity, Neoplatonism seemed to some later Christian thinkers to offer a basis and a framework for formulating Christian teaching. By the middle of the fifth century there were two main schools of Neoplatonism. The one at Alexandria became Christian, while the one at Athens was pagan. Neoplatonism continued into the thirteenth century as a dominant philosophical system in Europe. Its downfall came about partly through the revival of interest in Aristotle. But its influence continued to be felt long afterwards.

In view of all the conflicting ideas which they found around them, it is not surprising that Christian intellectuals found themselves in two opposing camps.29 There were those who endorsed philosophy and made use of it, and there were those who said that it was of the devil and were utterly opposed to it. An important factor which helped to decide which camp one was in was the role that philosophy played in one's spiritual pilgrimage.

Justin Martyr (died c. 165) had turned to philosophy in his search for God.3° He first tried a Stoic teacher, but got little help. He then turned to a Peripatetic, but the latter asked for a fee, and Justin concluded that the man was not a philosopher at all. A Pythagorean teacher insisted that he must first study music, astronomy and geometry. Justin then found a Platonist who led him to an overpowering perception of immaterial things. But Platonism could not take him further than that. Finally, he met an old man who introduced Justin to the Scriptures, and who told him that only prayer could open the way to God. Justin came to see the Christian faith as "the only reliable and profitable philosophy."3' From that point onwards Justin began to teach that Christianity was the culmination of all true philosophies. He continued to wear the gallium, the philosopher's cloak, and argued that Greek philosophy was a preparation of the pagan world for the coming of Christ. It was the divine Word or logos which had enlightened thinkers like Socrates to see the errors of paganism. Those in the pagan world who lived according to the divine logos within them were unconscious Christians .12

Justin's idea of the logos provided him with the conceptual tools for seeking to understand the divinity of Christ. How could Jesus be both God and man? How could God remain God and also be personally present in Jesus? Justin replied that when we utter a word (logos) and so give expression to our mind, the word is in a sense separate from us. But at the same time it remains our word without diminishing the power of thought within us." Justin used this idea as a kind of model for understanding how the divine reason or word which created all things (Gen 1; Jn 1) and which is present in human rational thought could be present in Jesus Christ. His point is summed up in a passage in which he defends Christians against the charge of atheism in view of their rejection of the deities of the ancient world. Justin writes: "For not only among the Greeks did reason [logos] prevail to condemn these things through Socrates, but also among the barbarians were they condemned by reason [or the Word, logos] himself, who took shape and became man, and was called Jesus Christ."-"

The logos doctrine ofJustin and the Apologists played a significant part in the thinking of the early church about the identity of Jesus and the formulation of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. With Justin the doctrine was firmly anchored in biblical teaching. It was not something to be detached from the Scripture and the faith of the church. Nor was it to be pressed beyond its limitations. If, as Justin believed, the divine reason is thought of as being active wherever it is present, and not separated from God, Justin's idea is helpful. As such, Justin's use of philosophical reflection is an example of the endeavor to understand on the basis of faith which characterizes the best of early church and medieval thought. If, however, an idea is detached from its context and made the basis of speculation, the result can have the opposite effect. This happened in the case of the Arians who, following Origen, believed that the Word or reason is somehow separate from God, and is thus a creature or created thing. For them the Word incarnate was a creature of some kind and Christ could not be worshipped as God incarnate.

The Alexandrian theologians Clement (c. 150-c. 215) and Origen (c. 185-c. 254) went even further in their respect for philosophy. Clement's Stromateis set out to prove that Christian gnosis is superior to other forms of gnosis. In the course of his discussion Clement tried to show that Greek philosophy had borrowed extensively from the philosophy expounded by the Old Testament prophets. Both Clement and Origen drew on Philo's allegorical method of interpreting Scripture." Their intention was not to turn the Christian faith into a form of contemporary philosophy but to show the true meaning of the text. Origen argued that just as human beings have body, soul and spirit, so does Scripture. Corresponding to the body was the literal meaning of the passage. Corresponding to the spirit was its moral meaning. But highest of all was the spiritual significance. Thus on the literal level, the story of the healing of the two blind men at Jericho (Mt 20:29-34) was an account of their healing. On the moral level it meant that our eyes must be opened by the Word of God and that we must come out of our Jericho. On the spiritual level the story taught that the two beggars are Israel and Judah, and that Jericho is the world.96

Origen's view of God, the Incarnation and salvation was a tour de force in its combination of Middle Platonism and the teaching of the Christian church." But it proved disastrous for the church. Origen's insistence that the Father alone was divine, in the strict sense of the term, prepared the ground for the Arian controversy in the fourth century. His account of the Incarnation united the Platonic idea of pre-existent souls with biblical teaching about the Fall and the Incarnation. Like Plato, Origen believed in the pre-existence of the soul. All souls except one fell and became united with human bodies in the form of sinful men and women. But one soul did not fall. This was the soul of Jesus, which was united with the divine Logos in perfect love. When that soul became incarnate, the result was Jesus Christ. Like Plato, Origen believed in successive purifications after the present life. It led him to his doctrine of the universal salvation of all, including Satan. Origen's teaching was an attempt to present Christian belief using the philosophical tools of his day. But instead of solving problems, it gave rise to a series of controversies which resulted in his condemnation as a heretic in the sixth century.

By contrast with the Greek fathers that we have been looking at, the Latin writer Tertullian (c. 155-c. 220) held a downright hostile attitude toward philosophy. The doctrines of humankind were "the doctrines of demons." In a passage which became a battle-cry for later denunciations of philosophy, Tertullian asked:

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from "the porch of Solomon," who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought with "simplicity of heart." Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.38

If, however, we look behind Tertullian's rhetoric, three facts stand out. The first is the fact that Tertullian sees philosophy as an amalgam of rival world views, which are based on premises which are very different from the biblical revelation. In the passage which follows the above quotation Tertullian observes that the opinion that the soul dies comes from the Epicureans, the idea that matter is equal to God comes from Zeno, while the denial of the resurrection of the body is taken from sundry philosophical schools. If given the choice between philosophy and faith, Tertullian chooses faith without a moment's hesitation. The second fact that stands out is Tertullian's conviction that "heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy." In particular, he blames Valentinian Gnosticism on Plato and Aristotle. He thinks that Paul's warning against philosophy in Colossians 2:8 sprang from Paul's contact with philosophers at Athens.

But there is a third fact which stands out from a wider perusal of Tertullian's writings. It is his own tacit use of philosophical ideas, in particular Stoic ideas, when it comes to formulating Christian teaching.S9 On occasion Tertullian could grudgingly admit that philosophers had sometimes said the same thing as Christians. But where similarities existed, he resorted to the strategy of saying that pagan thinkers stole such ideas from the Old Testament. Seneca was quite often on the side of truth, but generally philosophers were mistaken and wrong.40 A modern authority on Tertullian sees him as a Christian sophist, a master of the Cynic diatribe and rhetoric, who showed "that a Christian can take his pagan intellectual inheritance with him into his new faith."4'

Tertullian's exposition of the Trinity combined biblical teaching with secular thinking. Like Plato's Form of the Good and Aristotle's Prime Mover, Tertullian's God stands above all change. For Tertullian the impassibility of God-i.e., the view that God cannot suffer-was a cardinal doctrine.42 He could allow that Jesus suffered as a man, but God the Father was above all change and suffering. The divine element in Jesus did not suffer. It was only his human nature that suffered. By way of illustration Tertullian gave an example from what today would be called ecology. If a river is polluted, the pollution affects the river from the point of pollution onwards. But the spring above the pollution remains pure. So it was the divinity which remained untouched by the human sufferings of Jesus.

It is to Tertullian that the Western church owes some of its basic theological vocabulary. Tertullian restated in Latin the logos doctrine of Justin and the Greek Apologists. But in doing so he gave theology a new precision. He was the first to use the terms persona ("person") and trinitas ("trinity").43 He also gave theological currency to the word substantia ("substance"), a term which in Stoic thought denoted a highly rarified species of matter.44 Tertullian could say that the Son was "of one substance with the Father," and that the Son and the Spirit were "consorts of the Father's substance."" He could also say that the Son was composed of two "substances," that is, the divine and the human.46

In using terms like these, Tertullian was both solving and creating a problem. The terms themselves were not biblical. They were drawn from the secular world, where they could be used in philosophical contexts with somewhat different meanings. Tertullian used the terms in order to express his understanding of the truth of the Christian faith. They translated into the language of his day the implicit significance of statements that are to be found in various parts of Scripture. This act of translation meant synthesizing the ideas of different texts and expressing them by means of terms which came from elsewhere. The justification for this procedure lay in the fact that the texts themselves both demanded interpretation and also contained the materials which warranted it. By this means Tertullian reached his understanding of the divinity of Christ and the Trinity. It thus solved the problem of how to think about these questions. But in so doing it raised the question of whether it was legitimate to go beyond the language of the Bible to express biblical truth. It raised the further questions of whether Tertullian's answers were the correct ones, and of what constituted legitimate justification for embarking on the enterprise of formulating Christian teaching.

For over two hundred years after Tertullian's death, the church found itself locked in a series of combats over the formulation of Christian belief. The strife gave rise to the great ecumenical councils which defined Christian belief about the divinity and humanity of Christ. In the end the church followed the same path as Tertullian. The Council of Nicea (325) affirmed belief that Christ was "consubstantial" with the Father with regard to his divinity. This decision was ratified and amplified by the Council of Chalcedon (451), which went on to assert that the Son was also consubstantial with us with regard to his humanity. To explore these issues further would take us away from our main theme, but one observation may be made. Tertullian did not invent the problem. It was already there. It arises as soon as anyone asks what they should think about Jesus. To give an answer at all we have to engage in the enterprise of translation. And that in turn raises philosophical questions.

Augustine (354-430) was one of the great thinkers of all time 47 He was also one of the most personal thinkers. Augustine does not fit into the philosophical mold which tries to keep the personal life of the thinker as detached as possible from his thoughts. In Augustine's case, life and thought, and philosophy and theology are inseparably intertwined. For this reason we shall approach his thought through an account of his life.

Augustine was born in North Africa in the country which is now Algeria. His mother was a Christian but his father was a pagan. In his youth he rejected Christianity. Through reading Cicero, he felt led to seek wisdom. His spiritual pilgrimage took him by a long, circuitous route before he finally became a Christian. His problems were both intellectual and personal. On the intellectual level, he could not see how the existence of evil could be reconciled with the good God proclaimed by the church and the Scriptures. For a time Augustine embraced the dualistic teaching of the Manichees, which claimed that there were two ultimate principles. One of these was responsible for good and the soul, and one was the source of evil, including matter and the body. On a personal level, Augustine was dominated by sexual and other passions which he found impossible to overcome. At the time Manichaeism seemed to offer a convenient explanation, by allowing him to claim that it was not he who was responsible for his sin, but something else in him.48

For a time Augustine taught in Carthage, but then moved to Rome and Milan, where he became a professor of rhetoric (384). By this time he was beginning to lose faith in Manichaeism. He was impressed by the skepticism of the Academy.49 But he also came across "certain books of the Platonists" which Marius Victorinus had translated into Latin.50 The books probably included Plotinus's Enneads. Victorinus, who has long been neglected, played a significant part in the history of Western thought. He wrote a number of treatises and was responsible for translating Neoplatonic writings and some of Aristotle into Latin. He thereby mediated Greek thought into Latin. In later life Victorinus himself became a Christian. His theological writings paved the way for the adaptation of Neoplatonism to Christian thinking.

Victorinus deeply impressed Augustine both for his Neoplatonism and his Christian faith. Neoplatonism convinced Augustine of two things." First, it convinced him that there could be and was in fact a spiritual reality. Secondly, it convinced him that the existence of evil could be reconciled with the doctrine of creation. Augustine came to see that evil was not a positive, created, actual thing. It was a privation or lack. By this he did not mean to say that evil was all in the mind or just an illusion. It had a reality. But it was not a created thing. Blindness, for example, is not an illusion. It is a terrible affliction. But it is not something that God created as such. Blindness is the lack of sight. Moral evil is certainly real. But it is not a created entity. It comes about through the way people choose and act. It involves an absence of the right in the human will. In putting forward this view of evil, Augustine was not attempting to set out a comprehensive account of evil. What he was doing was to provide a more realistic and convincing account than that of the Manichees. It was an account which held human beings responsible for their own actions. It was an explanation which showed how the existence of moral and physical evil in the world is compatible with belief in a good Crea- tor.52

Neoplatonism was not the end of Augustine's pilgrimage. It was more like a stepping stone to faith. For Neoplatonism did not solve Augustine's personal moral problems. His conversion to Christianity came about through the preaching of Ambrose of Milan, his own study of the New Testament, and through reading about the conversion of Victorinus and the life of Anthony of Egypt. For a time he continued in turmoil, deeply impressed by the intellectual truth of Christianity, attracted by the Christian lifestyle, but reluctant to give up his own questionable way of life. In his Confessions Augustine described how, at the height of his inner turmoil, he overheard a child repeat the words: "Take up and read. Take up and read." He opened the writings of the apostle Paul by chance at Romans 13:13-14: "Let us behave decently.... not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature" (NIV). He felt no need to read further "for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.""

Augustine was baptized by Ambrose at Easter in 387. He returned to Africa the following year. He was ordained priest in 391, and became a bishop four years later. He succeeded to the see of Hippo in 396. He died while the Vandals were besieging the city. Augustine's years as bishop of Hippo were tremendously fruitful. His writings laid the foundation not only for later Western theology but also for a good deal of later philosophy. Augustine's Confessions, which were written between 397 and 401, created a new literary genre. They were not simply a chronicle of events, but an epoch-making work of psychological and spiritual self-analysis. Augustine's numerous writings against the Manichaeans, including his three books On Free Will (388-95), set out a doctrine of creation, evil and the human will which was a superior alternative to the type of thinking that had attracted so many to Gnosticism and Manichaean dualism. Augustine's response to the Donatist schism in the church set the pattern for the Western doctrine of the church. His writings on the subject of Pelagianism clarified, as no one before him and few after him, the crucial issues in the question of grace and free will.54 His many theological writings included his major work On the Trinity (399-419), which presented better models for thinking about the Trinity than those of the Greek fathers. Augustine's book On the City of God (413416) was a reply to those who blamed the church for the declining fortunes of the Roman Empire at the hands of the barbarians. It gave both a panoramic view of history and a theology of history in terms of the basic conflict between the divine society and the earthly society.

It has often been said that both Catholicism and Protestantism can be traced back to Augustine. Certainly the Catholic stress on the church and the Protestant emphasis on free grace can be found in him. But, as with all generalizations, oversimplification can bring with it distortion. It would be absurd to assume from this that the Catholic church had no conception of grace and Protestantism had no concern for the church. What cannot be denied is the enormous influence that Augustine had on later thought. Nor was this influence limited to strictly theological issues. Augustine put forward a theory of time which Bertrand Russell pronounced superior to earlier views and much better than the subjective theory of Kant.55 Augustine's account of how we learn language provided Wittgenstein with the starting point for his Philosophical Inves- tigations.56 In answering skepticism Augustine put forward an argument which anticipated Descartes's cogito ergo sum without falling into the pitfalls commonly associated with the argument.-`

With regard to faith, reason and the existence of God, Augustine developed the position commonly associated with Anselm's formula credo ut intelligam-"I believe that I may understand." To put the point this way is to risk sounding anachronistic. For Anselm was really echoing Augustine on this matter, as he did on sundry other matters, including the celebrated ontological argument for the existence of God.58 Augustine believed that faith and reason belong together, and that both play their part in acquiring knowledge. As he put it at the end of one of his sermons: Intellige, ut credas, verbum meum; crede, ut intelligas, verbum Dei- "Understand, so that you may believe my word; believe, so that you may understand the word of God."59

Augustine explained the point more fully in a letter in which he observed that reason is a God-given faculty. It is reason which distinguishes human beings from animals. Augustine urged that "we must refuse so to believe as not to receive or seek a reason for our belief, since we could not believe at all if we did not have rational souls." He went on to say that there are some things which bear on our salvation which are for the present beyond the grasp of reason. In such cases it is reasonable to let faith precede reason. Referring to prophetic utterance in Isaiah 7:9, Augustine observed:

Therefore the Prophet said with reason: "If you will not believe, you will not understand"; thereby he undoubtedly made a distinction between these two things and advised us to believe first so as to be able to understand whatever we believe. It is, then, a reasonable requirement that faith precede reason, for, if this requirement is not reasonable, then it is contrary to reason, which God forbid. But if it is reasonable that faith precede a certain great reason which cannot yet be grasped, there is no doubt that, however slight the reason which proves this, it does precede faith."

For Augustine, knowledge of God is a basic, intuitive perception. But this knowledge is compatible with experience, and it is confirmed by rational reflection on the nature of things. The God who speaks through his Word is also the God to whom creation testifies. For creaturely finitude attests the existence of the Creators' Human finite existence cries out for God; it requires an explanation which is ultimately theological.

In an Easter sermon Augustine depicted the philosophical quest. Ultimately this quest is a quest for beatifying truth-the truth which makes human life truly blessed. The desire for truth is more than an expression of intellectual curiosity, though sometimes it might not rise above that level. Deep down, human beings are driven by the search for a reality beyond the material world which satisfies the needs of the whole person. But here again human sinfulness often holds people back and causes them to seek satisfaction in things which do not ultimately satisfy. Re flection on beautiful things in the world prompts the question "Who made these beautiful things unless it be the unchanging Beauty?" Reflection on human nature as body and soul has brought philosophers "to the knowledge of God through the things which He has made."62

However, philosophy which does not glorify God is vain. Philosophy needs a reality beyond itself, and philosophical notions about the body and soul need to be corrected in the light of the gospel of the resurrection. Augustine believed that philosophical reflection may correct mistaken notions, lead to a grasp of truth and serve to clarify belief. But philosophy is not a substitute for faith, and rational reflection is not a substitute for the beatific vision of God. For it is the apprehension of God as love which transforms human life and alone satisfies our deepest needs.

Like all philosophers, Augustine was a child of his age. He used the conceptual apparatus of his age. In particular he was deeply influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism. But Augustine was never simply a Platonist. Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas observed that "Augustine, who was steeped in the doctrines of the Platonists, whenever he found anything in their statements consistent with the Faith he accepted it, but amended what he found hostile .110 Augustine's view of the soul stands in the Platonic tradition, but he repudiated the doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration, and his psychological analysis goes deeper than anything in Platonism. Augustine's view of transcendent spiritual reality might also be said to have affinities with Plato, but Augustine's approach was not an attempt to erect an edifice of Christian theology on either Platonic or Neoplatonic foundations. Very few of his writings were philosophical in the strict sense of the term. Philosophical ideas were at best ways of seeking to express the truth of Augustine's spiritual vision of reality.

Augustine recognized that "all that are called philosophers are not lovers of the true wisdom." For true wisdom was the love of God. "Now if God be wisdom, as truth and Scripture testify, then a true philosopher is a lover of God.""' Such a view could be held only by someone who was convinced that a view of reality that was not related to God was incomplete and defective. It was a view which corresponded to Augustine's view of human existence. As Augustine put it at the beginning of his Confessions, "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee."65 As human creatures we come from God, and to God all life is directed. For Augustine and for Christian medieval thought after him, this conviction was basic.

Robert L. Wilken, the astute observer of paganism and Christianity in the Roman world, has noted that since the Age of Enlightenment it has been fashionable to set Christianity in opposition to classical antiquity. But, as Wilken goes on to point out, there is something strange about attacking Christianity because it was supposed to have supplanted reason by faith. To Wilken, the best refutation of this view is the ongoing dialogue between pagans and Christians. In the early days Christianity was regarded as a superstition and form of atheism, in view of its rejection of pagan religion. But once the Christian apologists got going, the pagan and the Christian intellectual found themselves playing on the same turf. Both of them appealed to reason and used reason in order to defend their world views, which were ultimately religious. Wilken comments: "No one can read Celsus's True Doctrine and Origen's Contra Celsum and come away with the impression that Celsus, a pagan philosopher, appealed to reason and argument, whereas Origen based his case on faith and authority. One of the things pagans resented most was that Christian thinkers had adopted Greek ideas and methods of thinking to expound Christian teaching. Porphyry said Origen `played the Greek,' and Celsus complained that Christians had adopted the technique of allegory, an achievement of Greek reason, to interpret the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Indeed, one might legitimately argue that the debate between paganism and Christianity in antiquity was at bottom a conflict between two religious visions."6' If pagan philosophy was ultimately religious, Christian thinking had become increasingly philosophical. Philosophy was like language. It was the medium of thought. It provided the means to friends and foes alike to express their thoughts and work out their implications. Christianity was always more than a philosophy. But from now on, philosophy in one form or another was here to stay as a means for exploring the meaning and truth of the Christian faith.

The period that we shall be looking at in the next two chapters ends with the fifteenth century.' It takes us to the close of the Middle Ages and the end of Scholasticism. By this time Christianity had long been established as the majority religion in Europe, though politically it was being threatened by Islam, and intellectually it was being challenged by both Islamic and Jewish philosophers. We shall look at this challenge and the way that Christian thinkers responded to it in due course. But before we begin this part of our survey, it is worthwhile to comment on the terms Middle Ages and Scholasticism.

The term Middle Ages covers the period from the time of Augustine in the fifth century down to the end of the fifteenth century. It is arguable whether Augustine himself should be regarded as the last of the early church fathers or the first medieval thinker. It is not a question that I shall attempt to answer here. What is perhaps more important is that Augustine was already witnessing the breakup of the Roman Empire, though he did not live long enough to see the fall of the Western Empire in 476. It was a time of transition both politically and intellectually. In the latter respect Augustine himself was a major catalyst of change. The notion of a Middle Age (medium aevum) is already found toward the close of the period itself. It occurs in the writings of the Italian humanist historian Flavio Biondo (1392-1463) and was in established use shortly after his death. Flavio Biondo used the term to describe the thousandyear period between the end of the ancient world (which he dated from the sack of Rome in 410) and the Italian Renaissance. At one time the Middle Ages were seen as an age of stagnation which held up all real progress until it was superseded by the Renaissance and the Reformation. Today they are widely regarded as one of the most fertile periods in human history which left a rich heritage and also set the agenda for later ages to work through.

The term Scholasticism is often treated as a rough equivalent for medieval thought. Strictly speaking, however, Scholasticism denotes the educational tradition of the Medieval Schools.2 In a broad sense it is used of the medieval approach which combines philosophical and theological speculation in order to attain deeper understanding of Christian doctrine. The foundations were laid by Augustine and Boethius. In a sense it was Augustine who set the agenda for Scholasticism by his insistence on the need for dialectics in the study of Christian doctrine. For Augustine "belief is nothing else than to think with assent." Augustine would have nothing to do with the kind of piety which divorces faith from reason. On the other hand, he believed that it was equally wrong to start with ourselves and then supplement our thinking by referring to God. In order to know God, we must reflect on what God gives us. The way we know an object is determined by the nature of the object. The way we know God is determined by God's own nature. To know the living God we need to respond in faith and by using our reason. Augustine himself summed it up like this:

It is necessary that everything which is believed should be believed after thought has preceded; although even belief itself is nothing else than to think with assent. For it is not everyone who thinks that believes, since many think in order that they may not believe; but everyone who believes, thinks,-both thinks in believing, and believes in thinking.'

In taking this position Augustine was laying down the basis for Anselm's formula credo ut intelligam-"I believe in order that I may understand."' Or to put it the other way around, Anselm's famous formula was essentially a restatement of the Augustinian position.' A further step toward the development of Scholasticism was taken by Boethius and his successors who developed the notion of the Seven Liberal Arts as the basis for secular and sacred learning. The Liberal Arts came to be divided into two groups. The Trivium consisted of the three basic arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. The Quadrivium consisted of music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. This choice of subjects for study has clear affinities with pre-Christian philosophy. No doubt it contributed to greater philosophical precision. But its neglect of the natural sciences also contributed to the lack of progress in certain obvious fields.

The developed Scholasticism of the eleventh and twelfth centuries asserted both the right and the duty of reason to inquire into revealed truths. It was not that reason and philosophy provided an independent foundation for establishing such truths as God has made known. Rather, to understand what God has communicated about himself was a way of glorifying God. A feature of developed Scholasticism was the technique of the Quaestio or question. The method was to take a question and look at its different sides in the light of various authorities and what previous thinkers had said. The question was analyzed and answered by means of philosophical reflection on the received truths of the faith. The method had a certain rigor which is sometimes lacking in other methods of discussion. It required objections to be stated and answered.

In the early Middle Ages the centers of learning had been the monastic and cathedral schools. The latter half of the twelfth century saw the emergence from these of what came to be called universities. The universities were religious and Christian in origin.6 Initially a key factor was the assertion of the right of Christian clerical scholars to regulate curriculum and educational conditions and to license teachers independently of secular and local authorities. The Italian universities were soon followed by the creation of the Universities of Paris and Oxford early in the thirteenth century. To this era belongs a renewed interest in the writings of Aristotle, whose thought radically affected the way people like Thomas Aquinas set about doing theology. Two types of instruction emerged in the universities. One was the lecture, which originally was not simply an instructional discourse delivered before a class. The lecture involved a preliminary reading of a prescribed text with explication of obscure passages. Perhaps more important was the Quaestio, or disputation, in which problems were debated in set form by students and master before being resolved by the master. The universities sponsored public disputations on certain feast days. In addition there were open disputations, known as Quodlibital disputations-from the Latin quodlibet, meaning "whatever"-in which scholars disputed whatever burning issue of the day presented itself. The emergence of the universities inaugurated a new era.

Alongside the ecclesiastical authorities they gained growing prestige as arbitrators of the truth. Initially the universities belonged to the church and served the church. Philosophy served theology, which was the queen of the sciences. Scholars were monks and friars who professed the Christian faith and owed allegiance to the church. But with the creation of the universities an unconscious step was taken in a process which over the centuries led to the separation of faith and knowledge. With the secularization of the modern university, faith became the province of the church and knowledge the province of the university.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire brought with it a decline in classical culture. The single empire that at one time stretched from Britain to North Africa and from Spain to the Holy Land was split into unconnected states. With the political split came a cultural and intellectual fragmentation. But the so-called Dark Ages from the fifth to the eleventh centuries were not an era of total darkness. The intellectual traditions of the past were kept alive in the monasteries of Europe, which became centers of a new culture and learning.

A figure who forms a bridge between the classical past and the Middle Ages was the Roman philosopher-statesman Boethius (c. 480-524).' Boethius was a high-ranking official under Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths in Italy. In his early years he was sent to Athens, where he came into contact with Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism and Stoicism. On returning he rose to the position of friend and advisor to the king. In the midst of his political commitments Boethius found time to translate some of Aristotle's works on logic into Latin, as well as works by other thinkers in the Aristotelian tradition. He also wrote philosophical commentaries, a treatise On the Holy Trinity and one on Christology, which he entitled Book against Eutyches and Nestorius. At the height of his career he fell foul of Theodoric, who himself was an Arian. He was accused of treason and perhaps was suspected of practicing astrology. While in prison Boethius wrote his most famous work, On the Consolation of Philosophy. He was eventually beheaded.

We have already noted the fact that the medieval educational concept of the Quadrivium was indebted to the educational theories of Boethius. Boethius is now recognized as a great student of logic. But his writings present a number of enigmas. Among them are questions concerning the authenticity of his different works. Another is the question of whether some of his works were lost for a time and rediscovered later on in the Middle Ages. But perhaps the most intriguing question of all is why Boethius makes no explicit reference to Christianity in his great work, On the Consolation of Philosophy. The work was popular among the learned in succeeding centuries. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. It describes how the soul attains the knowledge of the vision of God through philosophy.

On the Consolation of Philosophy gives a picture of Boethius in prison. Filled with self-pity, Boethius is visited in his cell by the personification of philosophy. Having given Boethius the opportunity to show his innocence, she reproves him for blaming fortune for taking away the gifts she gave. For the material gifts in life cannot be enjoyed for long or without alloy. The wise person will not value them highly. Philosophy then argues that, in their search for the partial and imperfect goods of this world, human beings are really searching for the highest Good, though they are misled by their ignorance. The highest Good is to be identified with God.

Toward the end of the book, Philosophy discusses fate, providence and divine foreknowledge. As in Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, the universe is seen as a nexus of cause and effect. Chance events are really the coincidence of previously unconnected causes and effects. Fate is the chain of cause and effect. But fate is under the control of divine providence which arranges everything for the best. With regard to divine foreknowledge, Boethius saw God as existing outside the process of time. Therefore, things which appear to us as past, present, and future, are known to God at once, as if it were an event taking place in the present.

Some scholars think that Boethius lost faith in religion and turned to Platonic philosophy for consolation, perhaps in the absence of support from the church in his hour of need. On the other hand, the work does not advocate a return to paganism. The work shows numerous parallels with Augustine's approach to philosophy. Perhaps the most apt judgment is that of Henry Chadwick who observes that "the Consolation is a work written by a Platonist who is also a Christian, but is not a Christian work."'

The ideas of Boethius commanded the attention of major medieval thinkers, including Aquinas. His influence on the eleventh and twelfth centuries was second only to that of Augustine. But his appeal did not endure. His style of thinking held no appeal for post-Reformation rationalists and empiricists, and from a Christian standpoint his thought could not be compared with that of Augustine for devotional richness and theological insight.

A sixth-century contemporary of Boethius was the writer known today as Pseudo-Dionysius.9 To the medievals he was thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite who became a disciple of the apostle Paul (Acts 17:34). He is now known to have belonged to the Byzantine world, and probably lived in Syria. Among his works that have survived are treatises on Mystical Theology, Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and Divine Names. His letters set out a system which combines theology with Neoplatonism.

As with Augustine, God is the center of all speculation. But the method of approach of Pseudo-Dionysius was both positive and negative. The positive method is termed cataphatic-in Greek, kataphatike, meaning affirmative or positive. God, as the efficient cause of everything, is the highest thing that can be known. To that extent one can attribute to God all the perfections known through the study of his creatures. But God is transcendent, and therefore the higher one goes, the more one must use the negative method, which goes under the term apophatic methodin Greek, apophatiki, meaning negative. Using the positive method, God may be called goodness, being, light or unity. But because God is not a being with physical attributes, like the beings that are in the world, the negative method must take over. From this point of view, God should be called non-being. The highest knowledge of God is a mystic ignorance. Pseudo-Dionysius paved the way for numerous medieval successors to draw up elaborate hierarchical tables of reality. His thought influenced the West through the translation by John Scotus Erigena (c. 810-c. 877). His mysticism inspired many others to attempt to describe the soul's mystical ascent to God.

In the meantime, the problems and world views inherited from classical Greek philosophy continued to exercise the philosophically minded. John Philoponus (c. 475-c. 565)1° attacked the view of the Aristotelians that the world was eternal. But the question which provoked the longest debate in the Middle Ages was the question of universals." The question goes back at least as far as Plato's theory of Forms. It has to do with the relationship between the abstract and general concepts that we have in our minds and particular things. What, for example, is the relationship between the idea of a pine tree and a particular pine tree growing in a forest? Two extreme viewpoints emerged. The realists followed Plato in insisting that universals were things or realities-in Latin, res-with a real existence apart from the individuals or particulars in which they are embodied. An extreme form of realism flourished from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. Among its proponents were John Scotus Erigena, Anselm and William of Champeaux. The opposite extreme was nominalism which replied that universals were just names-in Latin, nomina. They have no objective existence apart from that fabricated in the mind. The individual is the only existing substance. Nominalism reached its climax with William of Occam in the fourteenth century and Gabriel Biel in the fifteenth. In their hands nominalism removed religion almost entirely from the area of reason and made it a matter of faith beyond the comprehension of reason.

The two extremes of realism and nominalism proved unsatisfactory. Realism in its most rigorous form posited two separate realities-the abstract world of universals and the concrete world of particular objects. But the nominalist alternative, which denied common characteristics apart from their existence in our thought, was, if anything, even worse. Between the two extremes a more moderate form of nominalism was proposed by Peter Abelard (1079-1142) who, though critical of the idea of the separate existence of universals, nevertheless believed that re semblances among particular things justified the use of universals for establishing knowledge.12 Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus favored a moderate realism which rejected the view that universals exist apart from individual entities in favor of the view that they do indeed exist, but only in actual entities.

The Christian church was not the sole heir of the legacy of classical philosophy. Both Islamic and Jewish thought was affected by the study of ancient philosophy. The results were important in their own right, but in turn they also provided a fresh stimulus to Christian thinkers to respond to the challenge of Greek thought translated into the sphere of Islamic and Jewish thinking.

Islam came into contact with Greek philosophy as the Islamic conquest of Europe spread." Many of the conquered people were Hellenistic in culture. At first elements of popular philosophy were absorbed. But by the eighth century many Islamic scholars were engaged in translating Greek texts into Arabic. The prime motive was an interest in Greek medical writings which was prompted by the concern of the Islamic rulers for their health. But in the course of time the major works of Aristotle were also translated.

The Greek work which made the greatest impact on early Islamic thinking was the so-called Theology of Aristotle. Despite its title, it was more Neoplatonic than Aristotelian. The founder of Islamic philosophy was al-Farabi (870-950). He is said to have been the author of more than a hundred works, most of which have perished, though some survive in Latin translation. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle, but he was also deeply influenced by Plato's Republic. His major surviving work is a commentary on the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.14

From the standpoint of the Christian West the two most important Islamic philosophers were Ibn Sind and Ibn Rushd. Ibn Sind (980-1037) or Avicenna, as he was known in the West, made substantial contributions to both medicine and philosophy. He related how he read Aristotle's Metaphysics forty times without comprehending it, until he came across a commentary by al-Fdrdbi. His own philosophy drew on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, which he used to interpret the Islamic under standing of God. Following Aristotle, he taught that God was a single necessary being on whom the world depended. But in Neoplatonic fashion, he maintained that there was a hierarchy of emanations from God. Of these the most important is the "active intellect" which he thought of as an entity in a Platonic world of ideas. The "passive intellect" is the individual human mind which acquires ideas by contact with the "active intellect."

Ibn Rushd (1126-98) or Averroes, as he was known in the West, was born into a Mohammedan family in Cordoba, Spain. He served both as judge and as physician to the caliph, who was the head of state. His commentaries on Aristotle earned him the title of "The Commentator." He venerated Aristotle as the greatest genius of all time. But like other Arabic philosophers, his own thought showed traces of Neoplatonism. Like Aristotle, he saw God as the Prime Mover. But God was entirely separated from the world and exercised no providential guiding influence. Between God and human beings are a series of intelligences. Among his other doctrines were the eternity of matter and monophy- sism, the view that all human beings participate in one single intellect. He rejected personal immortality. While retaining a literal interpretation of the Qu'ran for ordinary people, his own interpretation was allegorical. In the century after his death the theories of Averroes attracted the attention of leading Christian scholars. Albertus Magnus wrote an attack on his view of the intellect, as did Thomas Aquinas. The study of Aristotle had become part of the curriculum in the University of Paris, but the leading interpreters of Aristotle were the Islamic philosophers. The work of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas on the subject of the intellect appeared too late to deter Siger of Brabant and others from embracing a mixture of Christian and Averroist ideas. In 1270 Stephen Tempier, the bishop of Paris, issued a condemnation of Averroism in thirteen propositions. Among the condemned propositions were: "That the intellect of all men is one and numerically the same" (# 1); "That the world is eternal" (# 5); and "That God cannot grant immortality or incorruptibility to a corruptible or mortal thing" (# 13).15

Within Judaism two philosophical trends may be noted: the Cabala and the adaptation of Judaism to Greek philosophy.16 The Cabala, or perhaps more accurately Kabbalah, gets its name from the Hebrew word for "tradition." It was a Jewish form of mysticism, whose roots reached back into Persian thought, Neoplatonism, Neopythagoreanism and Gnosticism, not to mention some Christian influence and borrowings from Islam. God in his essence is unknowable. Between him and the world is a series of emanations. Because all substance emanates from God, the Kabbalah was pantheistic. The emanations served as an itinerary to the mind of God. The Kabbalah combined speculation with Jewish piety. Among the chief works of the movement are the Book of the Pious (Sefer Hasidim) and the Book of Splendor (Sefer Ha-Zohar). The Jewish pietistic movement of modern times known as Hasidism has its roots in the Kabbalah.

The Jewish medieval assimilation of Greek philosophy took place chiefly in Spain under Arab rule. The Jewish philosophers were indebted to their Islamic counterparts. But there was one major difference. Whereas the Islamic thinkers were interested in the whole range of philosophy, Jewish philosophers were concerned above all with the philosophy of religion. Their most famous representative was Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), who was called Maimonides by Latin authors and Rambam among Jewish writers-from the consonants formed from the initial letters of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon.17 Maimonides was born in Cordoba, the son of a distinguished scholar. Religious persecution at the hands of an extreme Muslim sect caused the family to flee to North Africa. Eventually the family settled in Egypt, where Maimonides became a court physician and leader of the Jewish community. The scope of Maimonides' writings ranged from commentaries on the Mishnah in Arabic and Hebrew, a treatise on logic, and several works on medicine, to theological writings. His chief work was his Guide to the Perplexed (1190).

The perplexed in question were Jews who did not question the existence of God, but thought about him in anthropomorphic ways. Drawing especially on Aristotle, Maimonides produced a synthesis of Jewish faith and the findings of reason. The book falls into three main parts. The first part deals with the idea of God; the second with his existence, the creation of the world in time and prophecy; and the third with the problem of evil, the end of the world, providence and divine knowledge. Maimonides developed four main arguments for the existence of God.18 The first two argued for the existence of a Prime Mover. A third argu ment is a form of the cosmological argument, arguing from the existence of things to a necessary being as their cause. The fourth argument turns on the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality, arguing for the existence of a being who is wholly actual and who constantly causes the transition from potentiality to actuality. Although Maimonides believed that God's existence could be proved, it did not follow from this that we could have any positive knowledge of God's essence. We can attain to God only by recognizing what God is not. The Guide to the Perplexed was written in Arabic, but was translated into Hebrew during Maimonides' lifetime. A Latin version followed within ten years of his death. His thought was thus available to the Christian theologians of the West. His synthesis of Jewish biblical teaching and Aristotle served as a model and guide for Thomas Aquinas, whose own arguments for the existence of God-the so-called Five Ways-followed Maimonides, even sometimes using the same wording,19 though with much greater brevity.

If we retrace our steps and go back to the eleventh century, we come across a thinker whose argument for the existence of God is generally considered fallacious but nevertheless continues to fascinate philosophers down to the present time. The ontological argument was propounded by Anselm, though he himself did not call it by that name. 21 Anselm (c. 1033-1109) was an Italian by birth. His coming to Britain as archbishop of Canterbury was one of the byproducts of the Norman Conquest of Britain. He had succeeded Lanfranc as Abbot of Bec in Normandy, when Lanfranc became archbishop of Canterbury, and on Lanfranc's death he succeeded to the archbishopric. Anselm is recognized as one of the truly great occupants of the see of Canterbury. He was also the greatest Christian thinker between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. His writings range from treatises on logic to an explanation of the divine inner logic of the atonement in Cur dens homo.21 On his deathbed he expressed the hope that he might live long enough to settle the question of the origin of the human soul, for he feared that no one would be able to solve it after his death.22 It was a hope that was denied him. He died peacefully in faith on Palm Sunday as the Gospel story of Christ's passion was being read to him.

Anselm stood in the tradition of Augustine and Platonic realism. Like other medieval thinkers he drew no sharp distinction between philosophy and theology. For him theology was the enterprise of exploring the divine logic behind created reality and the acts of God. He did so from the standpoint of the Christian faith. His method of approach was not to look around for evidence from which he could draw inferences, but to seek to penetrate the divine logic which underpinned the Christian church's view of things.

In his first systematic treatise, written at the age of thirty-one, the Monologion, Anselm put forward a series of arguments for the existence of God. Starting from the fact that beings exist, Anselm explored the idea of the hierarchy of being and deduced the existence of a highest, necessary being.23 But the famous ontological argument first appears in the brief Proslogion, where it is stated four times in chapters two, three and four. Whether the different forms of the argument are all the same and contain the same flaws is a matter of keen debate among philosophers. In the past it had been assumed that the form of the argument in chapter two was the basic form. Moreover, the context of the argument-which is actually a prayer-was largely ignored. The upshot was that the argument was taken to be an attempt to deduce the existence of God from the abstract notion of God. In what follows I will attempt to state Anselm's argument in its first form. I will then look at some of the ways that this argument has been understood. Finally, I will attempt to set it in the wider context of Anselm's thought, and make some observations of my own.

Unlike a good deal of philosophy both before and after Anselm, Anselm's argument is set in the context of prayer. In fact, there are two prayers. First, there is the prayer in chapter one which provides the overarching context for the whole work. Anselm cries to God: "Let me find You in loving You; let me love You in finding You." He goes on to say that he is not seeking to comprehend God in his sublimity, for his intellect is not equal to the task. But he yearns to understand some measure of God's truth, which his heart believes and loves. "For I do not seek to understand in order to believe but I believe in order to understand [credo ut intelligam]. For I believe even this: that I shall not understand unless I believe."24 In other words, Anselm's position is not one of doubt or agnostic neutrality. He is rather following in the footsteps of Augustine in seeking to understand the truth of what he believes in.

The ontological argument itself is introduced by a second prayer: "Therefore, Lord, Giver of understanding to faith, grant me to understand-to the degree You deem best-that You exist, as we believe, and that You are what we believe You to be." This prayer leads immediately to a confession of faith which contains a definition-or, perhaps more accurately, a designation-of God: "Indeed, we believe You to be something than which nothing greater can be thought." It is upon this designation of God that the whole argument turns. At this point Anselm recalls the statements of Psalms 14:1 and 53:1 that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God. How is it logically possible for the fool to say this? Anselm's argument seeks to give an answer.

As Anselm states it in chapter two of the Proslogion, there are three basic steps in the argument. In step one Anselm observes that the fool surely understands what he hears. In step two Anselm draws a distinction between understanding a notion in the mind and understanding that the notion actually exists. By way of illustration Anselm gives the example of a painter who has an image in his mind of a picture he is about to paint. After he has painted the picture, the painter not only has the image in his mind, but he also knows that the image exists in reality in the painting. Even the fool who says in his heart that there is no God must at least have the notion in his mind and understanding. In step three Anselm contrasts the notion in the mind with the notion that exists in reality. If "that than which a greater cannot be thought existed only in the understanding, then that than which a greater cannot be thought would be that than which a greater can be thought!" But this is surely impossible. For to exist in reality is greater than to exist merely in the understanding. "Hence, without doubt, something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the understanding and in reality."

With this sudden conclusion the modern reader is apt to be left feeling that he has been listening to a fast-talking automobile salesman. From Anselm's day right down to the present many a reader has had the same gut-level feeling that something was wrong somewhere. Is there some sleight of hand which prevents the reader from seeing the fatal flaw? Anselm's contemporary, a monk named Gaunilo of the convent of Mar- moutier near Tours in France, thought that he had detected the flaw and wrote a reply On Behalf of the Fool. In it Gaunilo said that he could imagine a perfect Lost Island, but that does not mean to say that such an island actually exists. Anselm wrote a reply to Gaunilo which simply brushed the objection aside. Perfect islands are not perfect in the same sense that God is perfect. Anselm's argument applies only to God. A perfect island is not that than which nothing greater can be thought, and therefore the argument cannot apply to the island. It applies only to God.25

From that day to this philosophers have been divided about the merits of Anselm's argument. Some, like Descartes26 and Leibniz,27 have restated it and adapted it to suit their own philosophies. Others, like Thomas Aquinas28 and Kant,29 have dismissed it as fallacious. While the argument continues to fascinate thinkers, most philosophers today reject the argument on three main counts. The first count has to do with the nature of definitions, the second with existence, and the third with the nature of necessity.

First of all, many philosophers would agree with Gaunilo and Kant in saying that definitions do not tell anything about reality, unless they are confirmed by observation. Merely to define something does not mean to say that it exists. Nor does the definition of something as existing entail its existence. As Kant remarked, to define something as existing is just like a merchant adding a series of noughts to the figures on his balance sheet. No matter how many noughts he might add, his balance remains the same unless there is some reality which corresponds to the figures. This reality cannot be discovered merely on the basis of definition.

This leads us to the second line of objection. The argument appears to treat existence as if it were a quality or predicate. But existence is not one quality which an object may or may not have alongside others, and yet still continue to be there. The point is brought out by G. E. Moore's celebrated comparison of the two sentences: "Some tame tigers don't growl" and "Some tame tigers don't exist."" The latter sentence is nonsense. But in order to make its point, the ontological argument appears to treat existence as a quality which makes the actual existing "that than which nothing greater can be thought" greater than the mere idea of "that than which nothing greater can be thought."

The third line of objection has to do with the nature of necessity. The argument presents God as the one being who necessarily exists. However, it has been objected that necessity is a logical concept and does not apply to beings, hence all existing entities exist contingently. If this is so, the argument is actually a disproof of the existence of God."

If the ontological argument has produced a harvest of objectors, it has also produced not a few defenders. The defenders tend to argue that the standard objections may well be true in themselves, but they miss the target because Anselm's argument was different from what the objectors supposed it to be. Charles Hartshorne, for example, has revived the argument and deployed it in support of process theology.52 In his view God is unsurpassable by anything else, but God is continually surpassing himself. Hartshorne's argument is certainly astute. However, few philosophers have found it convincing. It prompted E. L. Mascall to say, "There is indeed something paradoxical in the assertion that, while almost everyone since Anselm has radically misunderstood the nature of Anselm's argument, Anselm himself radically misunderstood the nature of God."g9

Another scholar who thinks that Anselm's argument has been misunderstood is Karl Barth, whose book Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931; Eng. tr. 1960) is a line-by-line exposition of the Latin text of the argument. Barth's title, which means "Faith Seeking Understanding," is taken from a title which Anselm himself toyed with before finally settling on Proslogion. Barth rejected the picture of Anselm as a rationalist philosopher engaged in a natural theology which sought to prove the existence of God by reason alone. He drew attention to the context of prayer in Anselm's work, the importance of credo ut intelligam, and the fact that the objection to God's existence was taken from the Psalms. Moreover, Barth drew attention to the forms of the argument in chapters three and four of the Proslogion.

How is it, then, that the fool can say in his heart that there is no God? Barth's answer was to say that Anselm's definition of God was based on the faith of the church. It was not an abstract piece of rationalism but a description of the church's faith in the God who has revealed himself. What the fool is denying is not the living God who is known to faith and who necessarily exists, but his own notion of God. In other words, An selm's argument is a medieval anticipation of the twin Barthian themes of the necessity of God's self-revelation and the barrenness of natural theology. What the fool "can prove is this and only this, that he does not know him whose Existence he denies. And it is not his denial, but his not knowing, that constitutes his folly."" Anselm never set out to provide a proof of God outside the church's faith. "God gave himself as the object of his knowledge and God illumined him that he might know him as object. Apart from this event there is no proof of the existence, that is of the reality of God.""

Barth's interpretation has the appearance of being a tour de force, which most subsequent writers comment on but which few accept. To most of them it seems to be a case of the Barthianization of history, a process by which history is rewritten on Barthian lines. Its strength lies in its acknowledgment of the role of faith in Anselm's philosophical theology. Its weakness lies in the way that it makes Anselm a Barthian before Barth. It presents Anselm as a fideist who rejects all attempts to prove the rationality of faith in favor of reliance upon biblical revelation. In fact, however, Anselm was not attempting to expound biblical teaching about revelation so much as to show the rationality of belief in God.

Several modern philosophers have questioned whether Anselm is really guilty of the fallacies entailed by the standard objections.36 Others have argued that even if the first form of the argument is fallacious, the remaining forms are not open to these objections. Thus, Norman Malcolm has argued that the arguments in Proslogion chapter three and the Reply chapter one show that God's existence is necessary existence." In an article which examines the historical objections to Anselm's argument, Malcolm contends:

What Anselm has proved is that the notion of contingent existence or contingent nonexistence cannot have any application to God. His existence must either be logically necessary or logically impossible. The only intelligible way of rejecting Anselm's claim that God's existence is necessary is to maintain that the concept of God, as a being greater than which cannot be conceived, is self-contradictory or nonsensical. Supposing that this is false, Anselm is right to deduce God's necessary existence from his characterization of Him as a being a greater than which cannot be conceived.38

In short, the argument is about whether God's existence is impossible or necessary. Malcolm clarifies his point by contending:

Necessary existence is a property of God in the same sense that necessary omnipotence and necessary omniscience are His properties. And we are not to think that "God necessarily exists" means that it follows necessarily from something that God exists contingently. The a priori proposition "God necessarily exists" entails the proposition "God exists," if and only if the latter also is understood as an a priori proposition: in which case the two propositions are equivalent. In this sense Anselm's proof is a proof of God's existence."

Although Malcolm thinks that the argument as such is valid, he does not regard it as an argument which would convert someone into a believer. The only effect that it would have on Anselm's "fool" would be to compel him to recognize that he could no longer meaningfully say or think "there is no God."" Without a deeper inclination to believe, he would still remain an atheist. The refinements of Malcolm's reinterpretation of Anselm's argument have been widely applauded, but they have failed to find general acceptance. To Alvin Plantinga the argument is still flawed.

It is a necessary truth that if God exists, then there is a being who neither comes into nor goes out of existence and who is in no way dependent upon anything else. But from this it does not follow, contrary to Malcolm's argument, that the proposition There is a being who neither comes into nor goes out of existence and who depends upon nothing is necessary; nor does it follow that God exists is necessary. Malcolm's reconstruction of the ontological argument therefore fails."

Anselm's argument makes most sense in the context of a realist philosophy which posits the reality of universals in a way similar to the way Plato treated the reality of the Forms and the Form of the Good. Thus the argument may be seen as an attempt to distinguish God's being which necessarily exists from other notions, including false notions of God. God is not a particular created entity like an island, or even a universal, but a reality beyond our conception. In a sense Anselm may be answering the Neoplatonic agnosticism which says that we can say nothing positive about God. Strictly speaking, Anselm does not define God, for he knows that God is beyond all human comprehension. His designation of God as "something than which nothing greater can be thought" is open-ended. It is like saying "x stands for God." But the x in question is not an empty term. This x is differentiated from all other entities by being unsurpassable. It is a different sort of entity from the rest on account of its greatness and necessary existence. Anselm's argument was not a piece of natural theology designed as a knock-down proof of God's existence, and drawn from an abstract idea of God. As such it is not convincing. But as one recent commentator has put it, "Anselm is no philosophical magician pulling a real rabbit out of a conceptual hat. Reality is in a sense there from the beginning."42 Anselm's vision of God is that of supreme reality to start with. His argument is an exploration of what is entailed by the believer's awareness of God. It is an argument which continues to exercise some of the best philosophical minds of our own day.

By common consent the greatest philosophical theologian of the Middle Ages was Thomas Aquinas. He is also perhaps the most misunderstood, especially by evangelical Protestants. Aquinas has been compared with a lake into which many streams have flowed and from which many have drawn, but which was not a spring.' Others have laid at his door the responsibility for the fateful separation of philosophy from revelation, which allowed philosophy "to take wings, as it were, and fly off wherever it wished, without relationship to the Scriptures."2 Both views are misleading. The former hardly does justice to the creativity with which Aquinas met the intellectual challenges of his day. The latter misrepresents the function of philosophy, as Thomas saw it. Thomas himself warned against two opposing errors. On the one hand, there is the error of thinking that philosophy provides some kind of autonomous vantage point from which people can get at ultimate truth apart from revelation. On the other hand, there is the error of falling into the opposite trap of denying that nonChristians have genuine insights or knowledge. "The study of philosophy," Aquinas observed, "is not done in order to know what men have thought, but rather to know how truth herself stands."

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)* was born in his family's castle at Roccasecca in southern Italy. He was the youngest son of a feudal noble family that was in decline. At the age of five he became an oblate in the Benedictine monastery at Monte Casino. This meant that he was offered to God by his parents for the monastic life. It was not that he became a monk as a child. Rather, it ensured his education in the monastery with a view to entering the religious life at the age of discretion. Doubtless, his family had in mind the possibility of him becoming the future abbot of Monte Casino. However, political rivalries made the monastery unsafe, and Thomas was sent at the age of fourteen to study at the new University of Naples. Here he embarked on the study of the trivium, and probably began to read Aristotle together with the commentaries of Avicenna. It was at this time that Thomas decided to join the Dominican Order of Preachers, which like the Franciscans stressed poverty and obedience but unlike them stressed the importance of intellectual life. Initially, his family was opposed to the move and forcibly retained him in the family castle for a year. Eventually, the family relented, and Thomas became a Dominican friar.

For a time Thomas studied in Paris and then in Cologne with Albertus Magnus, where he deepened his knowledge of Aristotle. In 1252 he returned to Paris, where he began his teaching career as a professor at the Dominican Convent of St. Jacques. Paris was now the theological and philosophical center of Europe. The university had grown out of the cathedral school of Notre Dame and the theological schools of the monasteries of St. Victor and Mont Ste. Genevieve. Thomas was required to lecture on Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a standard compilation of Christian doctrine which contained a wealth of quotations from the church fathers.-' But increasingly Thomas was drawn into the critical debates of his day. By this time Plato was known only through the imperfect translations of the Timaeus, the Phaedo and the Meno, though Neoplatonism was much better known. As we have already seen, Islamic and Jewish thinkers were much better acquainted with Aristotle, and for nearly two centuries they had been wrestling with questions posed by Aristotelianism to religious faith. For Aquinas and his Christian contemporaries the issue was doubly acute. On the one hand, there were the questions posed by Aristotle's way of thinking. On the other hand, there were the answers already given by Islamic and Jewish thinkers which were hardly acceptable to a Christian thinker. Aquinas decided to face the problem head-on. He made his own study of Aristotle, on whom he wrote extensively. He also made his own study of non-Christian thinkers. He subjected all ideas to rigorous scrutiny, giving due recog nition to the truth of ideas, wherever they came from, but giving his own evaluation of every issue, point by point.

The years 1259 to 1268 saw Thomas back in his native Italy, where he taught in a number of Dominican houses. It was in this period that he completed his Summa Contra Gentiles and began his greatest work, the Summa Theologiae. The word summa means a "compend" or "handbook." Prior to Thomas, a summa was a collection of "sentences" which aimed at presenting the truths of Christian doctrine. It contained the testimonies of the church fathers and other ancient writers. But in the course of time the summa evolved into a literary work which set out concisely a given field of knowledge, which organized the objects of this field in a synthetic way, and which as such could be used for teaching students.' The Summa Contra Gentiles was a Christian apologetic, designed for the cross-cultural situation posed by the presence of Islam in Europe, and especially in Spain. The Summa Theologiae is Thomas's statement of Christian doctrine in the light of Scripture, the interpretations of the church fathers and ancient and modern philosophy.

In 1269 Thomas was sent back to Paris where he was caught up in the controversies posed by Aristotelianism. At one end of the spectrum was the rector of the faculty of arts, Siger of Brabant, who was an Averroist. At the other end was the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, who issued a condemnation of Siger, and who eventually also posthumously condemned Thomas himself in 1277.' Thomas returned to Italy in 1273, where he continued to teach, to work on the Summa Theologiae, and to write commentaries on Aristotle and on Scripture. Suddenly in December 1273 Thomas ceased to write. He told a friend that he could not go on because "all that I have written seems like straw to me." Whether Thomas had suffered a brain hemorrhage or had experienced a mystical vision-or both-is a question discussed by scholars.' The following year, at the age of forty-nine, Thomas died on his way to attend the Council of Lyons.

The teaching of Thomas was a matter of rivalry between the Franciscan and Dominican orders. For a time the Franciscans forbade their members to read Thomas, but the Dominicans embraced it as the official teaching of their order. The condemnations of Thomas were soon reversed, and in 1323 he was made a saint. In the course of time Thomas came to be hailed as the Common Doctor (or teacher) of the Catholic Church and as the Angelic Doctor. In an effort to stem the rising tide of liberalism and secularism Pope Leo XIII published in 1879 an encyclical letter, Aeterni Patric, asserting the permanent value of his teachings, and urging Catholic philosophers to draw their inspiration from it. Not all have done so. The fortunes of Thomism have waxed and waned over the years. In the 1960s they were at a fairly low ebb, and Pope Paul VI used the occasion of the new edition of the Summa Theologiae to say that Thomas's teaching "is a treasure belonging not only to the Dominican Order but to the whole Church, and indeed the whole world; it is not merely medieval but valid for all times, not least of all for our own."9

In all, Thomas produced about a hundred different writings. His work ranged from philosophical commentaries to hymns. He was helped by secretaries who took down his dictation. Even so, his accomplishment is phenomenal, especially in view of his travels, which he was obliged to make on foot as the regulations of the Dominican Order required. In a survey like the present one it is impossible to examine the whole range of Thomas's thought. At the risk of making an invidious choice, we shall focus on just two of the many issues that Thomas treated: the five ways, or proofs of the existence of God, and his doctrine of analogy. The five ways themselves occupy little space in relation to the Summa Theologiae as a whole. But they became very important in later Thomist thought, and they are widely regarded as a major but succinct statement of arguments for the existence of God. The doctrine of analogy focuses on the crucial question of what kind of meaning words have when we apply them to God.

Before we examine these two questions, it may be useful to make some comments on Thomas's method of procedure in the Summa Theologiae. The Summa Theologiae is divided into three main parts. The first part deals with God and the going out of all things from him. The second part deals with the return of all things to God as their home. The uncompleted third part deals with Christ and the sacraments. This division is further complicated by the fact that the second part is subdivided into the first part of the second (psychology, morality, law, sin and grace) and the second part of the second (virtues, vices, gifts of the Spirit, the Christian life, contemplation, action and perfection). The whole work is di vided into questions, which are in turn subdivided into articles.

Each article has the same basic form, which the reader needs to keep in mind in order to see what Thomas is doing. The article has three main parts. The first part of the article states the problem in the form of one or more objections to the position that Thomas himself is going to take. The objections are introduced by the words Videtur quod, or "It seems that...." Here Aquinas states briefly the problems posed for the Christian view of things. The next section is introduced by the words Sed Contra, or "But on the other hand." Here Thomas quotes a passage from Scripture or some statement from an authority which he himself accepts but which is apparently at odds with the objections and difficulties already noted. This is followed by the third part of the article, which is introduced by the word Responsio, or "Reply." It is in this part of the article that Thomas gives his own view of the question. He first states his general view of the way the issue may be resolved and then he turns to the specific objections and difficulties which he noted at the outset and states how he resolves them.

Thomas's way of proceeding does not exactly make for light bedtime reading. But it has a rigor and succinctness which few have emulated. As its title indicates, the Summa Theologiae is a work of theology. Philosophy certainly enters into it. Aristotle is referred to not by name but simply as "the philosopher." But in all this, Thomas does not see philosophy as an alternative track to theology which enables him to prove rationally and intellectually items of faith which ordinary people have to accept simply by faith. Rather, it is a tool for clarifying issues. Despite its size, the Summa Theologiae was not a definitive system in which theological truth was set in concrete for all generations. It was more a series of exercises in thinking aloud on current questions. It took into account different views, both ancient and modern, and resolved questions by showing how they could be analyzed and answered.

The five ways of Aquinas occupy less than three pages of printed text, but like Anselm's equally brief ontological argument they have generated endless discussion.10 They appear in the Responsio of the Summa Theologiae 1, Q 2. art. 3. Thomas has already rejected the ontological argument on the grounds that God's existence is not self-evident." God's existence, Thomas argues, is self-evident to God himself but not to us. For we do not see God directly, as God sees himself. What we in this life see is not God himself but his effects. Aquinas sees this to be Paul's meaning in Romans 1:20 where Paul says that the hidden things of God can be clearly understood from the things that he has made. Therefore, we have to start with the effects in order to form some idea of their cause.

This leads to the question in article 3 of whether God exists. Thomas begins by noting two objections which have a definitely modern ring to them. The first is bound up with the existence of evil. If God is infinite, how can evil exist? But evil does exist, therefore God does not. The second objection is bound up with our view of causes. If natural causes can be found for natural effects, and human action can be explained in terms of reasoning and the will, what need is there to look for further explanations? There is therefore no need to suppose that a God exists. God would seem to be a superfluous hypothesis. This brings Thomas to the Sed Contra. The book of Exodus represents God as saying "I AM WHO I AM" (Ex 3:14). This in turn leads to the Responsio which states that "there are five ways in which one can prove that there is a God." The five ways themselves clearly draw on Aristotle's view of causation, actuality and potentiality.'2

The first way is based on motion or change. It is clear that many things around us are in process of change. Such change is never purely spontaneous. It is always the result of outside factors. A piece of wood would not burn if it were not caused to ignite by something else. The piece of wood itself is potentially fire. But it must be actually wood and potentially fire or actually fire and no longer wood. The same thing cannot be actually x and potentially x at exactly the same time. In order to bring about the change, there has to be an agent of change. The world is a series of such changes brought about by agents of change. But one has to posit a first agent of change. For otherwise the whole process of change would never start. "Hence one is bound to arrive at some first cause of change not itself being changed by anything, and this is what everybody understands by God."

The second way has a similar form, and the question has been asked whether the second way is not simply a restatement of the first way, which uses the idea of efficient causes instead of motion or change. In a series of efficient causes, one has to posit a first cause which is not antecedently caused by any other cause outside itself. Otherwise, the process of causation would never stan. This leads Thomas to the similarly worded conclusion: "One is therefore forced to suppose some first cause, to which everyone gives the name `God.' "

The third way explores the notion of contingent being. None of the things that we observe in the world last forever. They spring up and die away. None of them is necessary in the sense that they must eternally exist. But if all being is contingent, we have a problem. "If nothing was in being nothing could be brought into being, and nothing would be in being now, which contradicts observation." As in the two previous ways, Thomas sees a problem in the idea of an infinite regress. To put it in modern language, it is like a series of dominoes falling. Each one that is knocked over is itself knocked over by another domino. The dominoes have been so set up that, when the first domino falls, it knocks over the next domino, and so on. The line of dominoes may be long, and the pattern of their arrangement intricate. The whole process is triggered off by the fall of the first domino. But the first domino will not fall, unless there be some agent outside the series of falling dominoes to knock it over. Otherwise, the process of knocking over would never start. Moreover, this first agent has to be of a different kind and outside the series. In order to explain contingent being, one has to posit a necessary being. Thomas concludes, "One is forced therefore to suppose something which must be, and owes this to no other thing than itself; indeed it is the cause that other things must be."

The fourth way is based on gradation and has a ring of AristotelianPlatonic metaphysics about it. The argument assumes that there must be an exemplary cause for all gradation. Thus, there must be something that is hottest which is the exemplification and cause of all hot things. The name that is given to the exemplary cause of all gradation is God. Broadly speaking, the first four ways are forms of the cosmological argument which posits an ultimate cause for the universe.

The fifth way is a form of the teleological argument which, as the Greek word telos, "goal" or "purpose," suggests, looks at evidence of purpose in the world." Thomas begins by noting that there is evidence of order in nature. This is so even in inanimate objects and living things that lack intelligence. There is a certain constancy in nature which is too frequent to attribute to accident. Things which lack awareness do not tend toward a goal unless they are directed by an agent "with awareness and understanding." If we were to see an arrow flying through the air toward a target, we would assume an archer, even if we could not see him. Aquinas concluded that "everything in nature, therefore, is directed to its goal by someone with understanding, and this we call `God.' "

With this Thomas returns to the two original objections which introduced the argument. In reply to the objection that evil is incompatible with the existence of an infinite God, Thomas observes that it is a mark of God's limitless goodness that he can permit evils to exist and draw good out of them. In response to the idea that God is an unnecessary hypothesis, Thomas pointed out that, while finite causes explain finite effects, they themselves require explanation in terms of an ultimate cause which brought them into being.

Estimates of the value of the five ways vary wildly. At one end of the scale, there are those who say that when they are properly understood and carefully restated, the five ways provide a rational foundation for Christian belief in God." At the other end of the scale, there are those who think that they are so full of flaws that they are worthless. One thing that is clear is the fact that the arguments were not particularly original. In form at least they add little to what Aristotle, the Islamic philosophers and Maimonides had to say on the subject.'5 This fact has even prompted the suggestion that Thomas himself had no great enthusiasm for the arguments, but was merely summarizing current opinions without seriously committing himself to any of them."

If we treat the arguments as proofs of the truth of the Christian understanding of God, a number of major cracks in the arguments can easily be spotted. First of all, there is the problem of demonstrating that the first cause is the same as the Prime Mover and the Great Designer, and that all of them are one and the same as the God of Christian faith. Logically, we are not entitled to attribute to a cause any capacities other than those necessary to produce the effect in question." That is, when we try, as the arguments do, to get at the causes simply by looking at the effects, we cannot say that the different effects must have been produced by the same cause. If for the purposes of argument we grant the existence of a first cause, the proof does not entitle us to say that he, she or it is the same as the designer. The maker and the designer are not necessarily identical. Nor do the arguments themselves furnish this missing link of proof, unless (as some people suspect) they are really disguised forms of the same argument. But in that case we have not five different proofs, but only one.

The irony is that the more "proofs" we have of this kind, the more the difficulty is intensified. It reaches its climax when we try to identify the different gods of the different arguments with the Trinitarian God of the Christian faith. As David Hume put it later on, "A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several Deities combine in contriving and framing a world?"" We seem to be left with what has been called a celestial Council of Five. But is Thomas really guilty of sloppy thinking which he tries to cover up by the ambiguity of the word god, which he introduces in the punch line of each of the five ways? How does all this square with the fact that Thomas himself acknowledged that the Trinity19 and creation20 were both doctrines of faith rather than reason?

The argument about design raises a number of issues. For one thing, no human being is able, merely from looking at the world, to say what the goal or purpose of the world is as a whole. To do this we would have to put ourselves in the place of God.21 Christians believe that they know something of the purposes of God, but they do so on the basis of their understanding of revelation. The question of design is further complicated by the issue of evolution, which we shall look at more closely in volume two of this work. For the moment, however, one or two brief observations may be made.

Thomas is not claiming to know by rational reflection what is the overall goal of the universe. He is merely observing that things in our experience appear to obey natural laws. There seem to be no exceptions. If we introduce the question of evolution, we are at once confronted by a paradox. To many thinkers today, evolution seems to have destroyed forever the idea of an overall purpose in the universe. And yet science itself operates with the assumption that the world exhibits structures that are amenable to rational inspection. As philosopher of science Stanley L.Jaki has eloquently put it, "Water molecules, so many marvels of exact rationality, are never seen by the naked eye. They hide their marvels in the apparent irrationality of muddy puddles, torrential rains, and stormy oceans, so many symbols of the flood of errors by which man can be overwhelmed."22 To Jaki, despite the many pointers to chaos, waste, and suffering, there are also "pointers of purpose." However, evidences of nature's rationality "can be secured only if one is receptive to them, an attitude that takes one beyond what is simply revealed to the senses." In his own way, Thomas Aquinas was making a similar point. He maintained that, even if the world had its origin in what the ancients called "primary matter, 1121 there were certain pointers of order in things which "lack awareness" which pointed to an intelligence outside them.

What then was Thomas trying to do? Was he trying to lay a foundation for Christian theology by what he called "natural reason"? Was Aquinas, the classical foundationalist who saw Christian truth like a two-story building, laying the foundations by reason and completing the rest of the building by faith from materials supplied by revelation? If this is so, the result is very unsatisfactory, for the foundations will not bear the weight of the building. Faith and reason so conceived do not fit very well together. Moreover, this view of Thomas does not fit too well with his own stress on revelation and faith which comes out over and over again in the Summa Theologiae. Nor, for that matter, does such a view of the five ways fit too well with the appeal in the Sed Contra to Exodus 3:14, which represents God as saying, "I AM WHO I AM."

It has been observed that the word God at the end of each of the five ways is not a proper name. It is not as if Thomas, by metaphysical sleight of hand, was trying to convert it into the proper name of the Christian God. It is at most a minimal designation for the being presupposed by the phenomena examined in the argument. Such a being is not actually seen directly as one phenomenon among the many observable phenomena. But then, neither do Christian believers claim to observe God directly as one phenomenon among the many other phenomena in the world. E. L. Mascall has observed that the five ways are not to be seen as five different arguments but "as five different ways of exhibiting the radically un-self-sufficient character of finite beings and so of leading us to see them as dependent on a transcendent self-sufficient creative Cause."24 Reason reflecting on the structure of finite being points us in the direction of such a Cause. But closer knowledge of this Cause comes through faith. The self-sufficient creative Cause that is adequate to answering the un-self-sufficiency of finite beings is the God of the Christian faith. The being that we call God and who is worshipped in the Christian church is the mysterious reality who is adequate to answer the problems of finite existence exhibited by the five ways.

If this interpretation is correct, Thomas Aquinas was more of a presuppositionalist than he has normally been credited with being. He was also engaging in what Paul Tillich has called correlation. He was relating philosophy and theology, and reason and faith in such a way as to give rational philosophical reflection a legitimate role in analyzing questions, while at the same time recognizing that the answer to those questions lies outside the realm of philosophy and reason. He did not imagine that either philosophy or theology could or should eliminate the mystery of God's being. No human being sees God directly. Our knowledge of God is always indirect and imperfect. For this reason Thomas could say that "we cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him."25 This did not mean that Thomas was at heart an agnostic. It meant rather that our apprehension of God is always mediated through a medium which itself is not God. In other words the divine mystery is apprehended through the created order. And with this we come to Aquinas's doctrine of analogy.

Aquinas's teaching on the subject of analogy is a theory about the meaning of words when we apply them to God.26 It is especially relevant today in the light of the fierce debate on the meaning and nature of language-particularly religious, metaphysical and moral language-which dominated philosophical discussion in the mid-twentieth century. It was the common complaint of agnostic philosophers that, because they could not read into religious statements the same testable meanings that they found in secular language, religious utterances were either meaningless or disguised pieces of wishful thinking. But it should also be seriously noted that the subject of analogy is also relevant in the light of complaints that biblical and theological language is riddled by male sexism, and that God is commonly assumed to be a male.

We shall look at the question of religious language more closely in volume two. In the meantime it is worth noting that the problem of speaking meaningfully about God had already had a long history before Aquinas. Thomas's response to it bore in mind what Neoplatonist, Islamic and Jewish thinkers had had to say on the subject. Thomas's view steered a middle course between a Neoplatonism which held that we can say nothing positive about God at all because God is so utterly different from creatures, and a simplistic literalism which naively supposed that religious language meant exactly the same when applied to God as it does when applied to human beings. Thomas's doctrine of analogy was never intended to be a complete account of religious language. It was more a series of observations about the meaning of words, when we apply them to God.

The Neoplatonists had followed what was known as the Via Negativa, or "negative way," which insisted that God was not like a human being or, for that matter, like anything in the world. Thomas agreed with this up to a point. Our human language needs to be purged of wrong ideas. If we speak of the wrath of God, it does not mean that God is spiteful and perpetually bad tempered. But when pushed to its logical conclusion, the negative way ended up with saying nothing at all about God. For, if God is utterly different, there is nothing more to be said. Thomas believed that the Via Negativa must be complemented by the Via Positiva ("positive way") or Via Affirmativa ("way of affirmation"), which meant that some things could be said positively about God. But in so doing he recognized that when we use bodily words for God (e.g., the hand of God, the eyes of the Lord, or God speaking), such language is metaphorical, because God does not have a body.' Thus, when one of the prophets says "Thus, says the Lord ... ," the statement does not mean that God has a tongue, teeth, lips and vocal cords, which are prerequisites for human speech.

Thomas noted that words are often used in a univocal and in an equivocal sense. But neither option was open to Christians when they want to speak about God. In the case of univocal words, the words have the same form and meaning whenever they are used. If words used for God were univocal, these words would mean exactly the same when we use them about God as when we use them in ordinary contexts. If, for example, we think ofJohn the Baptist's description ofJesus as "the Lamb of God" (John 1:29), we are not intended to think that Jesus was literally a four-legged, woolly animal. When Christians call God their Father, they do not mean to say that he is a human being, existing in time and space, who has brought children into the world by natural procreation. On the other hand, Christians do not think that their language is equivocal. In that case, their words would mean something on the human level, but something entirely different on the religious level.

If words about God belonged to the former category, we should be reducing God to the level of an object or being, existing in time and space. If they belong to the latter category, religious language would be meaningless. For what we might say on the human level, the divine reality would be utterly different from the sense of our words as we understand them. Aquinas believed that users of religious language need not be impaled on either of the horns of this dilemma, even though we cannot avoid using human language in speaking about God. He suggested:

Some words are used neither univocally nor purely equivocally of God and creatures, but analogically, for we cannot speak of God at all except in the language we use of creatures, and so whatever is said both of God and creatures is said in virtue of the order that creatures have to God as to their source and cause in which all the perfections of things pre-exist transcendentally.28

Thomas further distinguished two types of analogy. In the first, a word could be used for two things, because each of them is related to a third thing. For example, we can use the word healthy of both a diet and of someone's complexion because both are related to human health. The first (the diet) is the cause and the second (the complexion) is the sign of health. In the second type of analogy, the same word is used for two things because of a relation between them. The word healthy can be used for both a diet and a person because the diet is the cause of that health in the person.

In the hands of Aquinas the doctrine of analogy is both a warning about the limitations of language and assurance that, despite the limita- "ons, language is still meaningful. It clearly means that terms used in analogy have to be balanced against each other. The use of male language about God does not mean that God is literally a male. If God can be called "our Father" in the Lord's Prayer, he can also be described in female language in the parable of the lost coin (Lk 15:8-10), the mother hen and her brood (Mt 23:37), and the figure of God's wisdom (Prov 8). On a literal level the images conveyed by different analogies cannot be reconciled together in a single picture. We cannot form a single composite picture of Christ as the Lamb of God, the light of the world, the bread of life, the vine and the shepherd. For no human being can be these literally and simultaneously. But analogy points us to an apprehension of divine reality which is beyond our comprehension. The doctrine of analogy has been vigorously debated. Some philosophers have objected that analogy involves us in an infinite regress. In order to explain the point of an analogy we have to use further analogies which themselves require explanation by means of still more analogies. Thus, we never get to the plain, bare meaning. But this kind of objection is an objection to pretty well all language. Moreover, in the case of God it involves a demand which cannot be met-at least in this life. We do not encounter the pure presence of God in this world. God's presence is always mediated by words, people, situations and forms of worship, and Aquinas's teaching gives due recognition to this fact.

It is not as if we can stop the world and get off, so that we can look at our language and compare it with God, and see if the language is appropriate. Such a process is conceivably possible. It has been given the name eschatological verification.29 A more simple way of describing it would be to call it dying and entering into the presence of God. But such a step is irrevocable, and is not an option open to the philosopher of language who wishes to report back on his findings. At best the claim that religious language may be open to eschatological verification is an attempt to identify conditions under which such language might be verified. As such it fends off the positivistic claim that religious language is in principle unverifiable, and is thus factually meaningless. However, to talk about eschatological verification does not help us very much in explaining how religious language relates to what it purports to describe. But to say this is not to concede that the doctrine of analogy is in the end meaningless. For it is the common experience of believers down the ages that religious language, though not literal, is a medium through which they apprehend the transcendent God.

It has sometimes been suggested that the doctrine of analogy implies an analogy of being, analogia entis, between God and creatures. By assuming that God and creatures both share common characteristics of being, it has been argued that the Creator was thereby reduced to being just a scaled-up creature. To some this has suggested that the doctrine of analogy could be used as a basis for human speculation which resulted in humans making God in their own image. But such thoughts were far removed from the mind of Aquinas. He was adamant that "the resemblance of creatures to God is an imperfect one ... for they do not even share a common genus."30 His doctrine of analogy was not based on a speculative metaphysic of being but on the doctrine of creation. The God who made the world made it in such a way as to permit "the invisible things of God" to be "made known by those things that are made.""

The doctrine of analogy is by no means a complete account of religious language. In Thomas's hands it was not the elaborate ontology of being that it became in later thinkers. It was a semantic theory which suggested kinds of meaning that words might have when applied to God. Without such a theory it is difficult to see how talk about God could have any meaning.

If it is a mark of a great thinker that his ideas continue to stimulate later generations, then Aquinas belongs to the great thinkers of the world. In the past twenty-five years evangelical scholars have embarked on a process of rediscovering Thomas Aquinas. This is not to say that they have bought into his theology uncritically. But they have begun to understand him better and see how some of his ideas and ways of approaching questions may help us today. When Aquinas spoke of nature and grace, he was not attempting to create two separate, autonomous realms. The realm of nature was itself the work of grace in creation. But to appreciate this, one needs to see creation from the standpoint of revelation. The Summa Theologiae has to be read as a compend of theology-not as a compend of philosophy. Rational reflection on the world serves Thomas as a preamble to faith. It does not function as the philosophical foundation for the theological building. Nor is philosophy a substitute. As we leave this brief and very selective account of Aquinas, perhaps we should let him have the last word on the subject of philosophy and faith.

Christian theology issues from the light of faith, philosophy from the natural light of reason. Philosophical truths cannot be opposed to the truth of faith, they fall short indeed, yet they also admit common analogies; and some moreover are foreshadowings, for nature is the preface to grace."

And it is well to take warning here, to forestall rash attempts at demonstration by arguments that are not cogent, and so provide unbelievers with the occasion for laughing at us and thinking that these are our reasons for believing the things of faith.g"

If we step back and look at the broad sweep of intellectual development, we can see Aquinas as a Christian thinker who stood in the empirical tradition in philosophy. It is a tradition which reached back to Aristotle and stretched forward to the empiricism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and modern science. This tradition stressed the importance of observation in acquiring knowledge. Reason by itself cannot lead us to know reality. It has to have something to work on. That something is provided by our senses. In taking this stand, Thomas Aquinas was adopting a very different approach from Anselm and also from his contemporary, Bonaventure (1221-74)." The latter was a Franciscan theologian who taught at Paris before being made cardinal bishop of Albano shortly before his death. Bonaventure had little sympathy with Aristotelianism, and was much less open than Thomas to the new ways of thinking. He put a higher premium on the ability of reason than did Thomas. Bonaventure could even argue that reason could demonstrate that the world was created in time. On the other hand, Bonaventure had a mystical approach to divine knowledge. Whereas Aquinas taught that our knowledge of God is mediated via the created order and our words for God are analogical in character, Bonaventure laid emphasis on mystical illumination which God sheds on faithful believers. By contrast with this illumination, all human wisdom is folly.

Arabic philosophers were interested in medicine and mathematics, and Thomas's Aristotelianism was certainly open to the encouragement of science. But it was in Britain that scholars began to push further Aristotle's interest in natural science. At Oxford, in addition to the traditional disciplines of philosophy and theology, languages, mathematics and the natural sciences were studied. A key figure in this development was Thomas's older contemporary Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253).55 Grosseteste had taught at Oxford before becoming bishop of Lincoln, which was then the largest diocese in England. As a bishop, he was committed to church reform. He witnessed the confirmation of the Magna Carta in 1236. He also translated Aristotle and performed scientific experiments, though his views on nature were more like those of Augustine and the Arabic Neoplatonists than those of Aristotle.

Another leading thinker of the thirteenth century was the Franciscan Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92),x6 who found himself the frequent object of suspicion and persecution by his superiors. His ideas were condemned by Bishop Tempier of Paris. According to some sources, he was even thrown into prison for his views. In the course of his stormy career he was credited with inventing a rudimentary telescope, gunpowder and the thermometer. Bacon recognized three modes of knowledge: authority, reason and experience. Both authority and reason needed the confirmation of experience. The latter was twofold: external and internal. The external experience of our senses was needed to confirm scientific ideas. But the highest experience of all was internal experience which leads to mystical knowledge of God. To Bacon, philosophy and science were important but subordinate disciplines. Their function was to explain the truth of God revealed in sacred Scripture.

One of the greatest intellects of the later Middle Ages was John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308).57 As his name suggests, he was born in Scotland, where he entered a Franciscan convent. He taught at Cambridge, Oxford and Paris, and died prematurely in Paris where he had been transferred to teach. In later ages he was known as the Subtle Doctor. His family name was Duns, but on account of his subtle teaching it became a term of ridicule in the form of dunce. However, there was nothing dullwitted or stupid about Duns Scotus, as anyone who has ever attempted to study his extensive writings will quickly find out. Nevertheless, they present a paradox, or perhaps a series of paradoxes. On the one hand, Scotus makes heavy intellectual demands on his readers. On the other hand, he downplays the intellect. Of all the discussions of the existence of God by medieval theologians, that of Duns Scotus is the most elab- orate."e Nevertheless, Scotus insisted that love and the will held prior place over the intellect. He also insisted on our human need of revelation in addition to our natural knowledge."9

Scotus had a genius for speculation, but he considered speculation merely a means to an end. He could say that "thinking of God matters little, if he be not loved in contemplation." Like Thomas, he could appeal to Aristotle as the philosopher. But he could also appeal to "our philosopher, Paul" who taught that love, when directed to God, makes human beings truly wise.40 Nevertheless, the writings of Scotus vividly illustrate a widening gulf between philosophy and theology in later medieval thought. Scotus thought of himself primarily as a theologian of the church. His ultimate goal was theological in character. Nevertheless, there appears in his writings a separation between the philosophical and the theological. In Thomas Aquinas the two are intertwined. In Scotus theology is increasingly reduced to what is given us to believe by supernatural means in revelation. The domain of philosophy, on the other hand, is whatever comes within the scope of natural reason.

This process of separation was carried even further by William of Occam (c. 1300-c. 1349)" and his German disciple, Gabriel Biel (c. 142095) 42 Occam and Biel were leading figures in a new school of thought which came to be known as the via modern ("modern way"). The term implies a deliberate contrast with the via antiqua ("old way"), which was used to denote the teaching of Albertus Magnus, Aquinas and Scotus. The via moderna represented a continuation of the nominalist tradition, though perhaps the term nominalist is misleading. For it suggests a single school of thought, preoccupied with denying the universals. In point of fact, the term nominalism embraces a number of schools of thought, though it is perhaps best reserved for thinkers of the twelfth century. Occam himself was not generally regarded as a nominalist by his contemporaries, though his followers were dubbed nominalists by their opponents.

Frederick Copleston suggests that a better name for them would be terminists.13 For while they were critical of realism, the logicians of the new movement were more concerned with the logical status and function of terms. "The nominalist spirit, if one may so speak," adds Copleston, "was inclined to analysis rather than to synthesis, and to criticism rather than to speculation." Moreover, the new movement was not, as it has been represented in the past, a bankrupt form of extreme scholasticism. It is important as a theological movement in its own right and as a forerunner of the Reformation."

William of Occam was probably born in the village of Ockham near London. He became a Franciscan at an early age and studied at Oxford. He was prevented from receiving his license to teach through charges of heresy brought against him by the chancellor of the University of Oxford. Occam was summoned in 1324 to the papal court at Avignon to defend himself. During his stay there, he became embroiled in a controversy between the pope and the Franciscan order concerning the Franciscan view of the life of poverty. He concluded that the pope was contradicting the Gospels, and therefore was not a true pope. In 1328 he fled to Pisa, where the emperor, an opponent of the pope, was residing. Excommunicated after leaving Avignon, Occam stayed at the imperial court, enjoying the emperor's protection. Occam died in Munich, perhaps of the Black Death. Occam's voluminous writings fall into two well-defined groups. Prior to his flight from Avignon, he devoted himself to theological and philosophical works. After the flight, Occam turned to polemical defenses of the Franciscan order and of the emperor, and condemnations of the pope for heresy and abuse of spiritual power.

To Occam the realist view that universals are real things, and not just names, was "the worst error of philosophy."45 Most philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had been won over by Aristotle's arguments against Plato, and held a moderate realism which, in Occam's words, maintained that "the nature, which is somehow universal-at least potentially and incompletely-really exists in the individual." To Occam this was still unsatisfactory. He taught that universals had no reality in things, or even in the mind of God. They were simply abstractions of the human mind, which enabled human beings to identify and classify things. Science was not the science of things, but the science of signs and symbols which are called universals.

Occam has often been pictured as pushing nominalism to the verge of skepticism. However, in her recent magisterial study of his thought, Marilyn McCord Adams has portrayed him as a Franciscan Aristotelian, who was much more conservative in both philosophy and theology than is commonly supposed." As others before him had done, Occam drew a distinction between the knowledge possessed by the blessed in heaven who see God and that possessed by the pilgrim believer on earth who lacks such vision. For the pilgrim believer there are truths which are naturally knowable (e.g., God exists) and truths which are supernaturally knowable (e.g., God is three in one and God is incarnate). In emphasizing this distinction, Occam was drawing a line between natural and revealed philosophy more clearly than his predecessors had done. At the same time he was also contributing to the separation of philosophy from theology.

Gabriel Biel was one of the most important theologians of the late Middle Ages. After lengthy study in the arts faculty at Heidelberg, he studied theology at Erfurt, a center of the via modern which favored Occam to the exclusion of Thomas and Scotus, and at Cologne, where Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus remained the honored scholars. Biel thus was fully conversant with both the via modern and the via antiqua. In later life, although he remained a dedicated Occamist, he criticized narrow rivalry between the schools and drew on the teaching of Scotus and Thomas. In the middle part of his life he served as cathedral preacher and vicar in the Rhineland city of Mainz. He later went to Wurttemberg to assist with the establishment of new houses of the Brethren of the Common Life. In 1484 he was appointed to the theological faculty of the newly founded University of Tubingen, where he served both as a professor and as the university's rector. At one stage Biel was seen as the embodiment of the disintegration of late medieval thought, the man whose misrepresentation of Catholic teaching misled Luther and his followers. More recent research has presented a different picture. Biel has emerged as a teacher who links medieval theology with post-Reformation Catholicism. Moreover, whereas Occam devoted his considerable mental powers to theoretical questions in theology, Biel explored the pastoral applications of Occamism.

Outside the world of philosophy, Occam's name lives on in the term Occam's Razor. It is preserved in the Latin formula entice non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. It means that "entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." As such, it is a principle of economy which has applications in science, philosophy, theology and elsewhere. Although the basic idea is there, this particular form of words is unfortunately not to be found in the works of Occam that have survived. Moreover, Occam did not invent the idea. It can be found in Scotus and others, and may be traced back to Aristotle." As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance and the Reformation, Occam's Razor proved to be an idea whose time had come. Whether the growing separation of philosophy and theology was a good idea depends on one's viewpoint. To some the separation of philosophy and theology marks the beginning of modern secularism. To others it marks the end of an unfortunate confusion and the beginning of the possibility of allowing philosophy and theology to have their proper functions. What is beyond doubt is the fact that the debates of the fourteenth century set something in motion the after-effects of which are still being felt today.

The period from the Reformation to the Age of Enlightenment spans three hundred years. Looking back on these years, it is now clear that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the cradle of modern thought. Roman Catholicism took its decisive shape from the Middle Ages. Protestant theology took its form from the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and the modern secular outlook from the rational, Enlightenment philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This is not to say that the eighteenth century contributed nothing to Christian theology, or that later secular thought appeared like a bolt from the blue. The Evangelical Revival, led by men like John Wesley (1703-91) and George Whitefield (1714-70), brought new life to the churches and gave to many a sense of God in their personal experience. But like the Puritan movement a century earlier, the revival was essentially a continuation of the Reformation. On the other hand, there were active rationalists in the Reformation Era, like Faustus Socinus (15391604), who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity in favor of Unitarianism and condemned the doctrine of atonement as immoral and irrational. The Reformation itself owed not a little to that rebirth of secular learning and quest for knowledge which blossomed in the fourteenth century and which is known as the Renaissance.

The idea of a rebirth of literature and the arts originated in the fourteenth century. Eventually the French word renaissance became the ac cepted designation for the cultural movement that began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The term carries with it an implied negative verdict on the Middle Ages, which were seen by Renaissance writers as a kind of interlude between the glories of the classical past and the renewed appreciation of them in their own age.' One of the features which marked off the Renaissance from the Middle Ages was a rebirth of interest in the philosophy of Greece and Rome. Works which had been neglected for centuries were made accessible to a wider public by the invention of printing. Among the most important, from a philosophical point of view, were Lucretius's On the Nature of Things and Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods.

The main philosophical stream during the Renaissance continued to be Aristotelianism. But in the field of science, Aristotelianism began to be challenged though not replaced. Interestingly enough, when Francis Bacon became dissatisfied with Aristotelian science and looked for new ways of exploring nature, he did not altogether abandon Aristotle. He turned instead to the rhetorical method derived from Aristotle in order to question nature. However, in Italy Platonism began to take a new lease on life after centuries of comparative neglect, during which it was known chiefly through Aristotle's critique of it. Major factors in this revival were Marsilio Ficino's translations of Plato into Latin, and the academy he founded on the model of Plato's academy. Neoplatonism also enjoyed renewed interest, partly due to the fact that Ficino's translations of Plato also included translations of Proclus and Porphyry. Florentine Platonism gave new impetus to natural religion.

A number of Renaissance writers tried to gloss over the differences between Plato and Aristotle, claiming that there were no essential differences between them. Though few thinkers professed Stoicism, Stoic ideas were well known through new editions of Cicero, Seneca and Greek commentators on Aristotle. Medieval writers had followed the church fathers in repudiating Epicurus as an atheist. Anyone who believed that the soul perished at death was apt to be described as an Epicurean. Renaissance writers adopted a more friendly view of Epicureanism, due in part to the appeal of Lucretius's poem. But it was not until Gassendi in the seventeenth century that Epicurus's theory of atoms was taken seriously.2 Perhaps even more significant in the long run than the renewed interest in Stoicism and Epicureanism was the rediscovery of classical skepticism. We shall look at this in the next chapter.

Alongside the interest in classical thought went an interest in the occult. Strange as it may seem to the modern mind, the Renaissance was perhaps more receptive to the occult than were the Middle Ages, especially to writings purporting to contain ancient wisdom. The Hermetic literature attributed to Hermes Trismegistus' enjoyed great prestige.

In one sense the Reformation was an outgrowth of the Renaissance.4 The critical study of ancient texts helped to facilitate the study of the Scriptures and the church fathers. The printing presses which produced classical literature were also used to print Bibles and theological works. But in another sense the spirit of the Reformation was more akin to that of the Middle Ages, though it was characterized by a different focus of interest. Medieval thought had viewed all life in relation to God. But the intense debates caused by the Reformers' understanding of justification by faith shifted the focus away from metaphysical analysis and speculation and onto personal experience and the role of Scripture in the believer's knowledge of God.

Luther's colleague, Philip Melanchthon, put the point graphically in his Loci Communes (1521), the first textbook of Reformation theology. Melanchthon complained at the way that previous theologians had philosophized too much, preferring to pile up opinions rather than set forth the meaning of Scripture. He asked rhetorically whether Paul had philosophized about such matters as the mystery of the Trinity and the mode of the Incarnation. To Melanchthon there were two issues at stake. One had to do with matters beyond human understanding; the other had to do with practical importance.

Just as some [doctrines] are altogether incomprehensible, so there are others which Christ has willed the universal body of Christians to know with the greatest certainty. We do better to adore the mysteries of Deity than to investigate them.... But as for the one who is ignorant of other fundamentals, namely "The Power of Sin," "The Law," and "Grace," I do not see how I can call him a Christian. For from these Christ is known, since to know Christ is to know his benefits, and not as they teach, to reflect upon his natures and the mode of his incarnation.'

In point of fact, Melanchthon's denigration of scholastic concerns came back to haunt him. For within a generation the Lutherans were bitterly arguing among themselves and with other varieties of Reformers about the very issues that Melanchthon had judged obscure and irrelevant. There was something inevitable about this, for sooner or later, practical matters raise theoretical questions. Nevertheless, the theoretical questions raised by Reformed teaching did not displace the renewed awareness of the personal reality of God which lay at the heart not only of the Reformation, the Puritan movement and the Evangelical Revival, but also of Catholic spirituality. The theological and philosophical conflicts of this period grew out of the fundamental practical question of the relationship of human beings to God.

The first major figure of the continental Reformation was Martin Luther (1483-1546).6 For most of his life he was a professor of theology at Wittenberg, a university which by sixteenth-century standards ranked as rather upstart and second-rate compared with the venerable universities founded in the Middle Ages. In his student days Luther had abandoned the study of law to seek peace with God by entering an Augustinian order of monks. He found it, but not in the way he had expected. The traditional ways of the church-the sacramental system, the penitential discipline and the study of medieval Scholasticism-only made God seem more remote and hostile.

The turning point came through the advice of his superior to study and teach the Scriptures. Through them, Luther encountered God not as an alien but as a friend, not as judge but as a Savior who forgave those who turned to him in simple faith. This new insight found expression in the doctrine of justification by faith which became the keystone of the Reformation. It featured prominently in the Confession of Augsburg (Art. 4, 1530), which became the classic statement of the Lutheran position:

Men cannot be justified in God's sight by their own strength, merits or works; on the contrary, they are justified freely on account of Christ through faith, when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are remitted on account of Christ who by his own death made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in his own sight. Rom. 3 and 4.7

The rediscovery of justification by faith marked the beginning of the continental Reformation. For Luther it meant that everything must be looked at afresh in the light of the Word of God in Scripture. It meant not only changes in his private life and devotions; it meant the reformation of the life, thought and worship of the whole church. At first Luther cherished the fond hope that the authorities would prove sympathetic. But his appeals for reform and protests against indulgences and other abuses in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517 and other works only served to entrench them in their positions. His writings were condemned, and he himself was excommunicated and even placed under the imperial ban. Yet despite enormous opposition the Reformation cause went from strength to strength.

Without Luther the Reformation would have taken a different course, but it would have happened all the same. Elsewhere, persons of independent minds and working independently of Luther felt the same call from God to seek reformation in the light of the Word of God. Like Luther, they were often accused of being upstarts and innovators. But also like him, their consciences were captive to the Word of God.

In Switzerland the Reformation was led by Zwingli (1484-1531) at Zurich and Calvin (1509-64) at Geneva. Both had come from backgrounds colored by Renaissance humanism, but both became convinced that humanism alone was not enough. Like Luther, they were scholars. But again like him, they found themselves compelled by events to be practical. One of the most striking things about the teaching of all the leading Reformers was its broad unanimity. There were differences of emphasis, especially on the Lord's Supper, but they were united in taking the Word of God in Scripture as their primary datum for thinking about God. There was, however, one way in which Calvin differed from Luther and Zwingli. The writings of the latter were largely occasional, dashed off to meet the needs of the moment. Calvin also turned his hand to this important but ephemeral kind of work. But he also tried to summarize Reformed teaching in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. It began life as a small handbook, but over the years successive editions greatly increased its size. The final Latin edition of 1559 was still no rival in bulk to the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas. But its influence over succeeding generations was scarcely less; and, like the Summa, it continues to be translated and reprinted today."

Whereas on the Continent the Reformation was first doctrinal and then political, in England it was the reverse. The occasion was Henry VIII's desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon which finally drove him to take the affair out of the hands of the pope and into his own. But the cause of the religious reformation was the same as on the Continent. So long as Henry VIII remained on the throne, the official religion of England was virtually Catholicism without the pope. But all the time such men as Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer felt the call to reform life and thought in the light of the Word of God. For each of these three their faith brought them martyrdom. It fell to their successors to establish the Protestant faith in England.

The approach of the Reformers can be studied in summary form in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1571)9 which may readily be compared with other sixteenth-century confessions of faith.10 In the next century the classic statement of Protestant faith was the Westminster Confession (1646), which became the normative statement of Presbyterian teaching. Whereas the latter differed from the Anglicans on matters of church government, their approach to truth was basically the same." This also applies to the Evangelicals of the eighteenth century, many of whom (including the original Methodists) were Anglicans. What they sought was not a new approach to truth, but a fresh application of the truth they already had in Scripture to contemporary life. All this may seem to be a far cry from contemporary, or for that matter from classical, philosophy. Is there any connection at all? And if so, what?

Luther's last sermon at Wittenberg has gone down in history as a classic invective against reason, "the Devil's Whore."" But it is by no means an isolated attack on philosophy. Those who have taken the trouble to comb through the indices of Luther's collected works have experienced little difficulty in finding references to Aristotle as a "destroyer of pious doctrine," a "mere Sophist and quibbler," an "inventor of fables," "the stinking philosopher," a "billy-goat" and a "blind pagan .1113 The list could easily be extended. This sort of thing has earned for Luther the reputation of being an irresponsible irrationalist. It has also contributed to the widespread impression that philosophy and biblical theology have nothing to do with each other.

But this is only half the picture. In a less heated moment Luther reflected: "When I was a monk they used to despise the Bible. Nobody understood the Psalter. They used to believe that the Epistle to the Romans contained some controversies about matters of Paul's day and was of no use for our age. Scotus, Thomas, Aristotle were the ones to read."" Circumstances change, and the academic world has its fashions like anyone else. We might substitute for the names of Scotus, Thomas and Aristotle those of Sartre, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. But the situation Luther is describing is not all that far removed from that in the Western universities today. Philosophy has seemed to make the Bible irrelevant, and reason has taken over the place of revelation.

For a man of Luther's temperament, living in that age and under such pressures, it is not surprising that he expressed himself in the way he did. But as modern research has shown, Luther was not condemning reason as such. He himself employed it with great effect. The real target of his attacks was the abuse of reason, situations where philosophy had crowded out the truth of the Christian faith. Reason had its legitimate place in science and everyday affairs. It had its true function in grasping and evaluating what was set before it. But it was not the sole criterion of truth.

For Luther there were three lights which illuminated human exis- tence.15 There was the light of nature where reason and common sense sufficed to solve many of the questions of everyday life. There was the light of grace by which the revelation in Scripture gave humanity knowledge of God which was otherwise unattainable. And there was the light of glory which belonged to the future. For there were many questions which Scripture left unresolved. There were apparent contradictions, like the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man for his actions, to which both Scripture and Christian experience testified but which neither Scripture nor reason resolved. Luther believed that the right approach was not to let these antinomies cancel each other out, but to hold both in tension and leave it to the light of glory to resolve them.

In the meantime God had revealed all that people needed-or could bear-to know of themselves in Christ. "It is perilous," Luther said:

to wish to investigate and apprehend the naked divinity by human reason without Christ the mediator, as the sophists and monks have done and taught others to do.... There has been given to us the Word incarnate, that is placed in the manger and hung on the wood of the Cross. This Word is the Wisdom and Son of the Father, and He has declared unto us what is the will of the Father toward us. He that leaves this Son, to follow his own thoughts and speculations, is overwhelmed by the majesty of God.'s

What Luther is talking about here is the distinction between what he called the theology of the cross and the theology of glory. The theology of glory meant to attempt to know God as he is in himself by speculation or by mystical contemplation. Luther flatly rejected such an approach. God has revealed himself in Christ and his cross. Therefore, the only way open to human beings who wish to seek God is to seek him in the way that God has lovingly dealt with human beings, by sending his Son Jesus Christ to live among them and die for them. The only true theology for Luther is therefore the theology of the cross. It was a theology that was based on the Bible and which tried to avoid philosophical speculation. Nevertheless, it did not altogether succeed in avoiding philosophical questions.

One of the questions that Luther's theology raises is the question of how good Luther's knowledge of philosophy was. Luther bitterly attacked Thomas Aquinas. But did he really know Aquinas, or was his knowledge largely secondhand? The answer seems to be that Luther regularly lumped Thomist teaching on grace with Scotist and Occamist views, and that he read Thomas through the eyes of others, especially those of Gabriel Biel." Moreover, late medieval knowledge of Aquinas seems to have been based more on his commentaries than on the Summa. Even so, the question remains whether Luther's theology would have been different if he had possessed a firsthand knowledge of Thomas. The answer remains doubtful. In general, however, the attitude of the Reformers to Aquinas was not uniformly negative. Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi remained Thomists after their conversion to the Protestant cause. Melanchthon read Thomas with profit while writing his lectures on John. Recently, attention has been drawn to the similarities between Calvin and Aquinas.1e

Another question that Luther's theology raises for us is that of how far Luther's interpretation of Scripture was influenced-consciously or unconsciously-by philosophical ideas. As a student, Luther had been schooled in the allegorical method of interpretation, which as we saw earlier had its roots in ancient philosophy.19 By Luther's day the method had been elaborated into a fourfold method of interpreting Scripture, which students memorized by means of a Latin verse. The literal sense tells what happened. The allegorical sense tells what the Christian must believe. The tropological or moral sense gives the moral application of the passage. The anagogical sense speaks of things to come. Luther came to reject this way of understanding the meaning of Scripture. In his Lectures on Galatians (1535) he noted that according to this method, Jerusalem in Galatians 4:26 "literally signified the city of that name; tropologically, a pure conscience; allegorically, the church militant; and anagogically, our heavenly fatherland or the church triumphant. 1120 But he went on to dismiss this approach, complaining that such foolish fables "tore Scripture apart into many meanings" and robbed people of sure instruction. Nevertheless, when we look at the way Luther himself expounded Scripture and saw Christ in all kinds of places in the Old Testament, we cannot help wondering if in his hands the allegorical method survived under another name.21 Despite the enormous number of studies on Luther, the full account of his relationship with philosophy has yet to be given.

Although philosophy recedes into the background in the writings of the Reformers, it certainly did not disappear. Scholars continued to ponder the writings of Aristotle and weigh his merits against those of Plato and other writers of antiquity.22 Aristotelian philosophy continued to feature in the curricula of the European universities. The age of the Renaissance and the Reformation witnessed a decline in medieval Scholasticism and a renewed interest in the writers of antiquity and the early Christian era. This phenomenon left its mark on the mind of Calvin. A glance at the index of the 1559 version of the Institutes reveals a handful of references to Bonaventure, Scotus, Biel and Occam, but rather more to Aristotle, Plato and Cicero. Aquinas and Peter Lombard figure more prominently. But Augustine vastly outnumbers them all. Luther was wrestling with the problems inherited from the medieval church. Calvin was doing this too, but he was also seeking to state the Christian faith in the wider context of a culture which maintained a continuity with the world of classical antiquity.

Calvin's approach was less colorful but more systematic than Luther's. In essentials it was, however, the same. Calvin spoke of a twofold knowledge of God .23 On the one hand, there is an awareness of God which is shared by human beings in general. This is not a matter of Scholastic proofs that can be followed by those who have the necessary philosophical background. It is a profound inner awareness of God, which Calvin described as "a sense of deity" or "a sense of divinity."24 It may not be well defined or easy to pin down. Nevertheless, it is there. Furthermore, the glory of the created order reflects God's own glory.25 But in spite of all this, human beings are so far gone in sin that their spiritual sense has become blunted.26 This knowledge is at best a knowledge of the Creator, though on account of sin it does not amount to very much. On the other hand, God has revealed himself through Scripture not only as the Creator but as the Redeemer in Christ.27 In Scripture God has spoken and revealed himself in a way which is significant for all ages. To Calvin Scripture not only provided information which could not be found elsewhere, but also was like spectacles which put things into focus.28 The value and use of spectacles can best be appreciated by using them. So it is with Scripture. Its value emerges in the light of its capacity to convey knowledge of God and to see ourselves in his sight.

For Calvin the Bible was the Word of God, and therefore all our thinking about God must be based on the Bible. Calvin could even say that "we owe to Scripture the same reverence that we owe God; because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it."29 On the face of it, it would look as if Calvin's theology sought to be an expression of biblical theology, restated in systematic form for the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, it raises a number of philosophical questions. For one thing, there is his claim that human beings in general have "a sense of deity." Some readers may find it puzzling that, when Calvin talked about this, he did not bring forward any biblical argument for it, whereas on other matters he habitually did. On the other hand, it could be argued that if people really have a sense of deity, scriptural proof is simply not needed. If they have got it, they have got it! In point of fact, Calvin's argument is in part an echo of a widely held view in the ancient world. As a sheer matter of fact, people believed in God. Calvin observed, "Yet there is, as the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God." The "eminent pagan" that Calvin referred to was Cicero, who made this observation in his book On the Nature of the Gods as he discussed the views of Epicurus." But for Calvin such bare knowledge of God is not enough if it does not lead to fear and reverence, and teach people to seek God and acknowledge him as the source of all good.

Modern research into Calvin's writings shows that he had an extensive knowledge of classical philosophy." He could frequently criticize philosophers for falling short of true insight and for preferring intellectual argument to repentance, faith and worship. But he could also condemn as "superstitious" those "who do not venture to borrow anything from heathen authors. All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God. 1132 Calvin himself made extensive use of Aristotelian ideas, not least in his doctrine of election and predestination." A case in point is Calvin's explanation of predestination in Ephesians 1:5, in which he drew on Aristotle's fourfold notion of causation. Calvin wrote: "Three causes of our salvation are mentioned in this clause, and a fourth is shortly afterwards added. The efficient cause is the good pleasure of the will of God; the material cause is Christ; and the final cause is the praise of his grace."" The remaining fourth cause is detected by Calvin in Ephesians 1:8, where he identified the "formal cause" with "the preaching of the Gospel, by which the goodness of God flows out to us. For by faith is communicated to us Christ, through whom we come to God, and through whom we enjoy the benefit of adoption.""

What is interesting in this passage from the standpoint of philosophy is the fact that Calvin adopts without question Aristotelian categories in order to express his understanding of biblical teaching. Moreover, he used the term "Sophists," taken from ancient Greek philosophy, to designate adversaries who have taken a different view." On the subject of philosophy in general Calvin was eclectic. He could use Aristotelian ways of thinking, when they seemed appropriate. He could also endorse the insights of Epicurus, Plato, the Stoics and Cicero, when he found them to be true." On other issues Calvin was in basic agreement with Thomas Aquinas .8e However, in all this, Calvin did not seek to lay a single rational or empirical foundation for his thought in the manner of later foundationalism. Rather, he acknowledged truth where he found it, giving reasons why he believed it to be truth. On the other hand, he believed that the greatest insights of the philosophers fell far short of the truth revealed in Scripture. Even so there remains the tantalizing but important question of whether Calvin's theology was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by philosophical ideas. Calvin believed that his teaching on divine sovereignty, election and the predestination of the elect to salvation and the wicked to damnation was lifted straight from the Bible. But could it be that his notions of sovereignty, election and causation were influenced by unconscious models, philosophical ideas and sixteenth-century ways of thinking about the physical world, so that the outcome was not purely and simply biblical theology? Despite all the work done so far on Calvin's thought, still more research needs to be done on Calvin and philosophy.

In one sense the Reformation belongs to the world of the late Middle Ages. In another sense, it marks the beginnings of modern thinking in religion. The practices and beliefs that the Reformers were protesting against were practices and beliefs that the sixteenth century had inherited from the Medieval church. To that extent the agenda of the Reformation was set by the Middle Ages. Moreover, from what we have seen of Luther his approach to the interpretation of Scripture did not represent a complete break with medieval methods. It was more a modification of the allegorical methods of the past than an anticipation of historical, philological and critical methods of later times.

It is arguable that the thought-world of the German Reformation was more medieval than modern, despite the Lutheran repudiation of Scho lasticism. If we were to explore Luther's sacramental teaching, as set out, for example, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church (1520), and pursue the bitter sacramental controversies of the age, we would find a repudiation of medieval teaching and an attempt to return to Scripture. But the problems discussed and the ground rules of the discussion were shaped by the teaching handed down by the Middle Ages.

Calvin presents a contrasting picture. We have seen that he too inherited Aristotelian ways of thinking, and we have noted recent research which suggests that he had more in common with Thomas Aquinas than had previously been imagined. But Calvin was also conversant with the ancient philosophy that had come to the fore in the culture of the Renaissance. Though Luther was not ignorant of the classical culture discovered by the Renaissance and took a view of it similar to Calvin's,89 the world in which Calvin moved was penetrated more deeply by the Renaissance than was Luther's. In both Luther and Calvin, familiarity with ancient philosophy is perhaps most evident in those places which are concerned with the vindication of basic religious beliefs in the face of skepticism.

Reformation theology could draw on ancient philosophy and acknowledge its insights without embracing it in toto or endorsing any one particular philosophy. In the sixteenth century the cultures of the Renaissance and the Reformation shared a common milieu and overlapping interests. It was an age in which science and learning still came under the aegis of the church. Such early great pioneers of science as Copernicus and Galileo were Catholic. Modern science had begun prior to the Reformation. But the Reformation also contributed indirectly to the growth of science in that Reformed teaching on creation enabled the natural order to be seen in its own right as God's creation and not simply as material for metaphysical speculation.''

Despite the deep and bitter tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism, these two forms of Christianity shared the common belief which viewed all life in relation to the God of the Christian revelation. But even at the height of the Reformation signs began to appear which threatened this world view. Copernicus's heliocentric account of the universe was taken by Catholics and Protestants alike as a threat to the biblical account of creation-with the earth and human beings as the pinnacle of everything. In due course, it was realized that this problem was more imagined than real, and that it had arisen through misconceptions about the implications of creation. But it was not science which in the end posed the biggest challenge to the Christian world view. It was the philosophical interpretations of the world which had their roots in the ancient pagan philosophy rediscovered in the Renaissance.

The main stream of Protestant and Catholic thought reached back through the Middle Ages and the early church to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. But alongside this there emerged rival world views which drew on ancient pagan philosophy and encouraged the growing secularization of thought which culminated in the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. This thought was not entirely irreligious. But such religion as it had tended to bear increasingly less resemblance to Catholic and Protestant Christianity.

Karl Barth has drawn attention to the way this process has worked out in the two classic revolutionary documents of the eighteenth century, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America of July 1776 and the Statement of Human and Civil Rights ratified by the French National Assembly in August 1789." Both retain a veneer of religion, but in many places it is worn so thin as to be almost non-existent. The French one speaks of the Supreme Being in its preamble, and the American one makes passing acknowledgment of the Creator. But neither has much time for God. Both are concerned with humanity and with what seems to be so obviously right in itself. The rights they assert are believed to be natural. The French were concerned with freedom, property, security and the right to protect oneself from violence; the Americans with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no question of obligations toward God, except in the most general terms. Law is the expression not of the mind of God but of the will of the people. Governments derive their authority not from the Almighty but from the consent of the governed. The happiness that the framers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind was not the beatitude described in the Sermon on the Mount, but the kind of happiness envisaged in the Greek philosophers' vision of the good life.

In so far as there is religion here at all, as Barth remarks, it is Calvinism and Catholicism respectively gone to seed. To modern secular eyes this is not a bad thing. What has happened is that humanity has become more rational. People have thrown off outmoded beliefs. They have rejected, if not God, then at least the ritual and paraphernalia of the churches. It is all part and parcel of humanity's coming of age and living a life of its own. The seeds of this secularization are to be found in the Renaissance. In the chapters that follow we shall trace the course of their growth.

In this chapter we shall look at two lines of development which affected both Catholic and Protestant thought. They both reach back into antiquity, and bring to bear the thought of the past to current questions of the day. But they do so in different ways.

At the risk of oversimplification, it may be said that the first line of thought introduces us to theologians who were wrestling with questions which were internal to the Christian faith. Here we shall look briefly at Molina, Suarez, Banez and Arminius. At issue was the question of how to reconcile their understanding of the sovereignty of God with human freedom, responsibility and God's saving grace. As such, these questions were questions of Christian belief within the wider context of the Christian belief system. The issue had become acute under pressure from the Renaissance understanding of human freedom. But the questions themselves and the handling of them belong to a tradition which went back through the Middle Ages to the age of the early church.

The thinkers concerned with the second line of development-those linked in one way or another with Pyrrhonian skepticism-were raising fundamental questions about the validity of the Christian belief system itself. In the first instance, the issue was one of vindicating the rival truth claims of Protestantism and Catholicism. But soon the question was broadened into whether any system of thought could be validated. The impetus for this line of thinking came not from the Middle Ages, but from the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient, pagan skepticism.

The questions of God's omnipotence and omniscience have exercised great minds down the ages. In point of fact, they form two sets of separate, but related, questions. One set of questions concerns God's power, and the other set concerns God's knowledge. Both vitally affect how we think of the sovereignty of God, and of God's relationship with the world and human beings.

It might seem obvious to say that God is omnipotent and omniscient, in order to mark God off from other beings. But if we say that God is all-powerful, what does this do to human freedom? If God is the sovereign Creator and Ruler of the universe, does it mean that he causes everything both good and evil-whether it be something small and beautiful like the fluttering of a butterfly's wings or something unthinkably horrendous like the Holocaust? Is everything preprogrammed? Do human beings have any choice in how they act? Is human freedom of action merely an illusion?

Similar problems arise when we say that God is omniscient. If God knows everything, does he know events because he causes them to happen? If so, we would seem to have a divine determinism on our hands. Or does God know things only when they happen? If so, it would seem that we have reduced God to being in the role of a spectator who is not in control of events.

These kinds of questions have had a long history. Among the highlights in the great conflicts of the past over God's sovereignty are Augustine's controversy with the Pelagians,' Luther's conflict with Erasmus over the bondage of the will,2 and Calvin's battles over the question of predestination and providence.' The controversy flared up again in a sixteenth-century Catholic dispute between religious orders, which in time spread over into Protestant theology.

In the Catholic Church both the Dominican Order and the Society of Jesus looked to Thomas Aquinas as their "Doctor," and still regarded Aristotle as the Philosopher. Even before the Reformation, a revival of Thomism was led by the Dominican theologian Cajetan, with his commentary on the Summa Theologiae. Cajetan himself was the first teacher to take the Summa as a theological textbook instead of the Sentences of Peter Lombard."

On the subject of predestination, Aquinas himself was solidly Augustinian. He took Augustine's opinion that "predestination is a prevision of God's benefits" as a fixed point for his conclusion: "Foreknowledge is not in the things foreknown, but in the foreknower. Neither, then, is predestination in the predestined, but in the one who predestines."5 Whereas Cajetan and the Dominicans tended to be conservative in their handling of Aquinas, there were others, especially the Jesuits, who felt no such constraint, especially where their understanding of the nature of divine sovereignty was concerned.

Under pressure from the Renaissance desire to give greater recognition to the role of human autonomy and achievement, theologians of the Jesuit Order felt constrained to develop a modified Thomism. They sought to avoid a divine determinism in which all events were fatalistically predetermined by God, and allow for a certain human freedom and autonomy. At the same time, they did not wish to abandon God's sovereignty or rule out divine predestination.

The new approach was developed by the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600), who devoted years to the writing of his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobation [The Concord of the Free will with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination, and Reprobation] (1588). Molina concluded that the grace of God becomes efficacious when the human will freely cooperates with it. At the same time he believed that God's providence governs not only things in general but also particular things.

In order to reconcile his view of human freedom with God's providence and foreknowledge, Molina introduced the notion of scientia media ("middle knowledge").' The term was coined to designate God's knowledge of futuribilia, knowledge of things which do not yet exist but which would exist if certain conditions were realized. Such things are intermediate between mere possibilities and actual future events. The kind of knowledge that God has of such events stands in between God's "natural knowledge" (God's knowledge of all possible worlds) and his "free knowledge" (God's knowledge of the actual world).

Molina's theory held that God knows infallibly how any human will would react in every conceivable set of circumstances. This knowledge forms the basis of the divine ordering of all things. Middle knowledge has been compared with a dress rehearsal in which people rehearse various parts before they actually play them.' In such a rehearsal, given the appropriate circumstances, a Peter might deny Jesus, or a Judas might betray him. Because God knows what they would do of their own free will under the circumstances, he chooses to effect what he foresaw.

Molinism was further developed by the Spanish Jesuit Francisco de Suarez (1548-1617),8 who introduced the idea of Congruism. According to Suarez, God does not (as in Thomism) cause human free acts.' In virtue of his scientia media, God brings about the salvation of the elect by giving them grace which, by his foreknowledge, he foresees that they will put to good use. Such grace is congruous with, or suited to, the circumstances of the case and obtains the free consent of the elect. In working out his position, Suarez adopted a style of writing which had more in common with the Renaissance than traditional Scholasticism. But the problem and the proposed solution were, despite their novelty, essentially a continuation of medieval Scholastic thought.

The leading adversary of Molinism was the Spanish Dominican Domingo Banez (1528-1604), who was a strict Thomist. He accused Molina of making the power of divine grace subordinate to the human will. In his opinion, Molina's scientia media was a mere term which had no corresponding reality. Banez maintained that God knows the future, including conditional future free acts, in virtue of his divine decrees, which predetermine all events. He insisted on beginning with metaphysical principles. As the first cause and Prime Mover, God must be the cause of all human acts. Banez sought to safeguard the reality of human freedom by insisting that God moves every finite being in a manner appropriate to its nature. God moves non-free agents to act necessarily and free agents to act freely, whenever they act as free agents.

By the end of the sixteenth century the dispute between the Dominicans and the Jesuits had become acrimonious. Putting it at its mildest, the Bannezians accused the Molinists of teaching a faulty metaphysics, which subordinated God's grace to the human will, and whose novel doctrine of scientia media was an empty term. The Molinists conceded that the notion was hypothetical, but preferred the hypothesis to a view which appeared to eliminate free choice and make God responsible for sin. The controversy became so acute that Pope Clement VIII set up a special Congregation in Rome to examine the disputed issues. The Con- gregatio de auxilliis sat between 1598 and 1607. The outcome was a de cision to permit both viewpoints, and in fact the two positions have coexisted in a kind of cold war down to the present. But in order to dampen the hostility, the Dominicans were forbidden to call the Jesuits Pelagians, and the Jesuits were ordered not to call the Dominicans Cal- vinists.10

In the meantime, the same basic dispute was being acted out in the Reformed Church. It focused on the teaching of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609)." Arminius was a widely travelled scholar, having studied at Marburg, Leiden, Geneva, Basel, Padua and Rome, before receiving a call in 1587 to ministry in Amsterdam. In 1603 he was appointed to the vacant chair of theology at Leiden, where he was opposed by the strict Calvinist Franciscus Gomarus (1563-1641). Arminius's earlier studies on Paul's letter to the Romans had led to accusations of Pelagianism. To renewed charges of Pelagianism were added further charges of Socinianism. However, Arminius managed to clear himself, though for the rest of his life he was embroiled in controversy.

Arminius sought unsuccessfully to obtain revision of the two chief documents of the Dutch Calvinistic Church, the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. After his death, the Arminian position was set out in a brief document entitled Arminian Articles or Remonstrance (1610).12 Against the rigorous, deterministic logic of strict Calvinism, the Remonstrance proposed a modified Calvinism. In place of double predestination, the Remonstrance made belief in Christ the decisive factor in salvation (Art. 1). Appealing to John 3:16 and 1 John 2:2, it taught universal atonement and redemption which, however, required appropriation by faith to be effective (Art. 2). Human beings do not have saving grace in themselves; they need to be born again in Christ, through the Spirit, and be renewed in order to understand, think and will what is good (Art. 3). Human beings need "prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace," but grace is "not irresistible" (Art. 4). Divine grace is sufficient to prevent Satan or any power from plucking the believer out of Christ's hand On 10:28), but it is nevertheless possible for someone to forsake the faith and turn back to the world (Art. 5).

The initial opposition to Arminianism was led by Gomarus. The situation was further complicated by accusations against the Arminians that they were a pro-Spanish party. In 1618-1619 the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht) was convened to resolve the theological issue. Although the synod was primarily an assembly of Dutch theologians, it was attended by a number of foreign delegates from different Reformed churches. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Two hundred Arminian clerics were deprived. The great Arminian scholar Hugo Grotius was sentenced by the States General to life imprisonment (though his wife contrived his escape in a box of books, and he settled in Paris). J. van Oldenbarneveldt was less fortunate, and was beheaded on a false charge of treason.

From a theological viewpoint the teaching of the Synod of Dort was of lasting significance. The Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism were reaffirmed, and the Canons of Don laid down under five "heads of doctrine" the position of orthodox Calvinism which has endured to the present." The first head of doctrine dealt with predestination, teaching unconditional election (there are no grounds in us-not even our faith-to cause election) and double predestination (insisting that the "decree of reprobation" which determines the damnation of the wicked does not make God responsible for their sin). The second head dealt with atonement and redemption, insisting that because redemption is effectual, atonement must be limited. Christ died only for the elect. The third and fourth heads were linked together, teaching total depravity (sin extends to all human acts and affections) and irresistible grace (God is the sole author of salvation, producing "both the will to believe and the act of believing also"). The fifth head taught the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints (those who are truly regenerate will persevere, because God is faithful). The argument of the Canons of Dort was set out in much more detail than the Remonstrance, and each point was supported by appeals to Scripture.

The questions that we have been looking at in this chapter continue to be burning issues among philosophers and theologians. Process philosophers like Charles Hartshorne see notions like omnipotence and omniscience as major theological mistakes, and put forward process philosophy as a better alternative to traditional theism. But critics of process thought see process thought itself as fatally flawed, and have presented vindications of traditional ways of viewing the divine attributes." A number of scholars, including contemporary evangelical philosophers, find the idea of middle knowledge to be a viable notion for today.'-' But as the twentieth-century Dominican philosopher R. Gamgou-Lagrange observed, Molina's theory of middle knowledge contains an internal contradiction. Garrigou-Lagrange endorsed the traditional objection of the Thomists that:

the middle knowledge conceived to safeguard the freedom of the human will, virtually implies a denial of it. How can God see in a cause, which by its nature is undetermined as to whether it will act or not, that it will defacto act? The supercomprehensive knowledge of a cause cannot enable anyone to see in it a determination which is not there. And if, in reply, we are told that this determination is known through the circumstances in which the free will would be placed, the theory ends fatally in Determinism, which is the denial of free will. The foreseeing of the circumstances may enable one, indeed, to form conjectures, but not to have an infallible knowledge of the conditionally free acts of the future.16

If the Molinist "middle knowledge" theory fails to escape determinism, so does the Augustinian orthodoxy of Geneva and Rome. At least, that is the view of J. R. Lucas, who traces modern determinism back to Augustine. Lucas's own solution lies in the radical suggestion that God (in his omnipotence) has deliberately limited his omnipotence in order to permit human freedom. Similarly, he has limited his infallible knowledge in order to let human beings be independent of him. God still knows what is going on, but it is by means of fallible knowledge. "Fallible foreknowledge is enough to enable God not to live only from day to day, but to foresee the likely course of events and to take such actions, consistent with human freedom, as will work out for the best in the context of those decisions men are likely to take."" To the traditional theist, this view sounds all too much like a deistic restatement of Pelagianism. A more attractive proposal is that of Peter Geach who sees his view as compatible with that of Aquinas, but incompatible with the determinism later propounded by Jonathan Edwards. Like Aquinas, Geach suggests that God knows the future by controlling it. However, God controls it, not by predetermined divine decree, but by his actual involvement in the world. God acts like a supreme chess player who is able to produce his desired outcome, regardless of the moves made by the other players. Geach writes:

God is the supreme Grand Master who has everything under his control. Some of the players are consciously helping his plan, others are trying to hinder it; whatever the finite players do, God's plan will be executed; though various lines of God's play will answer to various moves of the finite players. God cannot be surprised or thwarted or cheated or disappointed. God, like some grand master of chess, can carry out his plan even if he has announced it beforehand. "On that square," says the Grand Master, "I will promote my pawn to Queen and deliver checkmate to my adversary": and it is even so. No line of play that finite players may think of can force God to improvise: his knowledge of the game already embraces all the possible variant lines, theirs does not.18

On the theological front, the questions raised by Molina and Arminius continue to divide Christians as they have done ever since the seventeenth century.19 The Presbyterian tradition has followed the teaching of Dort, while the Methodist tradition has embraced Arminianism. To explore the issues would take us beyond the scope of this book. But as we leave this debate, one cannot help wondering whether the protagonists on both sides have not fueled the fires of controversy by reading their systems into Scripture, and by thinking of God's action in history in terms of physical force rather than the power of love.20

In many ways Reformed theology and sixteenth-century rationalism seem to be worlds apart. They appear to be absorbed by completely different issues. And yet there are certain links which until fairly recently have been overlooked. The Reformation was not simply a reformation of practices in the church. It inaugurated an intellectual crisis which shook Christendom to its foundations, for the theology of the Reformers implied a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the questions of authority, the sources of knowledge and methods of thinking. The clarion call of cola Scriptura-"by Scripture alone"-was not exactly new. It had been used in the Middle Ages and by theologians and reformers ever since to assert the authority of Scripture over councils, popes and church fathers. But the Reformers' appeal to Scripture raised the question of knowledge in theology to a new pitch of intensity. The theological debates concerning authority and the source of our knowledge of God coincided with a revival of interest in ancient Greek skepticism and the publication of classic texts on the subject. Already in the 1520s in his debate with Luther on the question of free will, Erasmus protested that the issue was so obscure that he would prefer to avoid assertions and take refuge in the opinion of the skeptics wherever Scripture and the decrees of the church permitted. To this Luther replied:

Permit us to be assertors, to be devoted to assertions and delight in them, while you stick to your Skeptics and Academics till Christ calls you too. The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, and it is not doubts or mere opinions that he has written on our hearts, but assertions more sure and certain than life itself and all experience.21

For those who shared Luther's experience of the Spirit this reply was unanswerable. Yet there were Catholics who preferred to remain agnostic on controversial matters and to take refuge with Erasmus in the teaching of the church as the divinely appointed guardian of theological truth. To them Luther's appeal to the Holy Spirit was a dubious and dangerous form of subjectivism. So too was Calvin's claim that "the highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it."22 Was not this a circular argument?

My own reply to this question would be to counter it by making three observations. First, there is nothing intrinsically absurd or self-contradictory about such a claim. Secondly, in the very nature of the case the situation could not be otherwise. For in the last analysis only God can attest to God. To claim that Scripture contains a lot of true facts about history or geography does not amount to a demonstration that it is the Word of God. It only proves that (like other books) it contains reliable information about things and people. But this falls far short of the claim that it is the Word of God. Thirdly, if however men and women experience what they can only describe as God speaking to them through Scripture and if this brings light and meaning to their lives, then we may have a circle of truth, but this is very different from a subjective circular argument which confuses premises with conclusions. As Karl Barth put it in our own time:

The doctrine of Holy Scripture in the Evangelical Church is that this logical circle is the circle of self-asserting, self-attesting truth into which it is equally impossible to enter as it is to emerge from it: the circle of our freedom which as such is also the circle of our captivity.23

The appeal to Scripture was perhaps the most fundamental issue which precipitated the intellectual crisis of the Reformation. To those who thought like Calvin, the Word of God in Scripture was basic to their thinking, beliefs and the conduct of their lives. But many who remained Catholic felt unsure about this and preferred to stay with the old ways. The situation was intensified by the renewal of interest in ancient skepticism by Renaissance thinkers in the sixteenth century and the application of skeptical ideas to the theological battles of the day.24 There were three main sources of access to ancient skepticism: Diogenes Laer- tius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers, the writings of Cicero, and those of Sextus Empiricus. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, Sextus Empiricus had remained in obscurity. By the end of the seventeenth century he was hailed as the founder of modern philosophy, which was dated from the rediscovery of his thought.25

The new skepticism came to be known as Pyrrhonism on account of Sextus Empiricus's discussion of the ideas of the first Greek skeptic, Pyrrho, in his book Outlines of Pyrrhonism. The Pyrrhonists took over from Sextus Empiricus a skepticism about the reliability of the senses and the inability of reason to discover ultimate truth. Armed with arguments that they found in his writings, they proceeded to assail claims to knowledge made by Scholastics, Platonists, Renaissance naturalists, Aristotelian scientists and Calvinists. If the senses were unreliable, then so too was Aristotelian science. If reason and experience were unreliable, there were only two options in religion: utter skepticism or fideism. According to the former, nothing could be known with certainty, though it was permissible to conform with the conventions of both church and state for the sake of public order. According to the latter, ideas which could not be established by reason and experience could nevertheless be accepted by faith. With this in mind, some Pyrrhonists called themselves "Christian skeptics."

Pyrrhonism provided an arsenal of weapons for religious apologists. In the hands of Catholic apologists like Gentian Hervet, Jean Gontery and Francois Veron (who taught philosophy and theology at the Jesuit College de la Fleche while Descartes was a student there), the so-called New Pyrrhonism became a "new engine of war" forged for the destruction of Calvinism. But Protestant apologists soon found that the same weapons could be turned against Catholicism. Among them were DavidRenaud Bouillier, Jean La Placette and the Anglican divine and erstwhile Catholic convert, William Chillingworth.26 They showed that the claim of the Catholic church to be the guardian of theological truth was itself highly vulnerable in view of the fact that it rested ultimately on the Catholic Church's own word.

The leading Pyrrhonist of the sixteenth century was the French nobleman Michel de la Montaigne (1533-92). In childhood he had been taught by a German tutor who knew no French, so that he might learn Latin as his mother-tongue. In later life he had slogans and phrases from Sextus Empiricus carved into the woodwork of his study so that he could brood upon them. He adopted the motto Que spaisJe?-"What do I know?" Montaigne came to believe that no certainty could be reached by rational means. He claimed that wisdom never benefited anyone and that the natives of Brazil (at that time recently discovered) were nature's noblemen who "spent their life in admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without religion of any kind."27 He argued that the Christian message was about the cultivation of ignorance in order to believe by faith alone.28 In support of this extreme form of fideism Montaigne appealed to Paul's teaching on God's destruction of the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 1:19). Whether this was the point that Paul had in mind in writing to the Corinthians is quite a different mat- ter.29 The text served Montaigne's purpose at the time of writing. Whether Montaigne's argument was a defense of Christianity or a cynical attack in disguise is also another matter.30 It is a point that students of his writings have debated from his own day down to the present.

In the seventeenth century the true heir to Pyrrhonism was the skeptical professor of philosophy and history at Rotterdam, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Nominally he remained a member of the French Protestant church, and on his death he professed to die "as a Christian philosopher." However, his antagonism of the church cost him his professorial chair in 1693. His relentless arguments proved to be "the Arsenal of the Enlightenment" in the eighteenth century. Bayle's most famous work was his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1695-97; 2nd enlarged edition 1702)." It was a kind of Who's Who of people and movements from Abimelech and King David in the Old Testament down to his own contemporary, Spinoza. He also included articles on such diverse topics as Japan and Jupiter. The latter, he observed, was "the greatest of all the gods of paganism.... There is no crime that he did not commit." The concise, elegantly written articles were furnished with a series of notes in which Bayle took the opportunity to ponder on the significance of points that he had raised and drew skeptical lessons from them.

In the meantime a more moderate Pyrrhonism was advocated by two leading French intellectuals, Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Both were clerics. Gassendi was a professor of philosophy at Aix, but became a professor of mathematics in Paris in 1645. In his earlier work he claimed that knowledge of the real nature of things was impossible. Later he changed to a more moderate skepticism. He conceded that we could not know what things are in themselves. But even the skeptics had to concede that we know something about appearances, and interpretations of appearances could be tested by seeking to verify predictions. Gassendi's own view of the universe was a form of atomism based on the Epicurean model.

Gassendi's close friend, Marin Mersenne, was also a lifelong friend of Descartes, with whom he had been a pupil at La Fleche. Theoretically, he was a Pyrrhonist, but he shrank from the application of rigorous skepticism to practice. He conceded that we cannot prove that there was nothing certain in physics, and that even some of the most common effects, like the cause of light, could not be explained. The truths of mathematics were only conditional. If there were such entities as triangles, the truth of certain theorems necessarily followed. But only on that condition. Nevertheless, scientific achievement did not depend upon some unshakable system of metaphysics. Science was not necessarily a true and absolute picture of the real world. It was a means of organizing and using knowledge. Hence science could be detached from metaphysics without loss.

It was thus that Pyrrhonian skepticism set the agenda for rationalism with its quest to show the underlying rationality of the universe. But it also set the agenda for empiricism, which was an attempt to correct rationalism and give better answers to the questions posed by the problem of knowledge. Deism was in part an answer to Pyrrhonism and in part an alternative to orthodox Christianity. It purported to present a reasonable account of religion based on rational ideas and free from superstition. The thought of Pascal was a Christian alternative form of orthodoxy which sought to give due place to the separate disciplines of science and faith. But to appreciate the seventeenth-century scene we need to look at the scientific revolution that was taking place and the views of the philosophers who were engaged in it.

In everyday language rationalism has come to mean the attempt to judge everything in the light of reason. Bound up with this is the assumption that, when this is done, reason will have completely disposed of the supernatural, and that we will be left with nothing but nature and hard facts. But in the technical, philosophical sense of the term, rationalism denotes a more particular and certainly less atheistic approach. The rationalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed widely among themselves in the way they worked out their different systems. But common to all was a belief in the rationality of the universe and the power of reason to grasp it. Behind all the complex machinery of nature there was a rational mind, and this could be known by the right use of reason. Given the right premises, it was possible to lay bare the underlying structure of reality, provided that one made the correct logical connections.

Rationalist philosophy came into being in response to several factors. Essentially, it was an attempt to develop a way of doing philosophy that would be adequate to the modern world of the seventeenth century. As such, it was partially a response to the Pyrrhonian skepticism, which we noted in the last chapter. Pyrrhonian skepticism raised questions not only about the validity of religious beliefs; it also raised doubts about the results and foundations of the scientific revolution that had been gathering momentum since the Renaissance. Rationalist philosophy sought to meet the challenge of skepticism by providing an account of reality, which would show the universe to be a rational whole, accessible to rational thought. It was a philosophy which embraced both the world of the scientist and that of the religious believer as it endeavored to bring the two into relationship with each other and at the same time place scientific thought and religious belief on a rational basis.

If we compare the ethos of rationalism with that of the Protestant and Catholic religious worlds of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras, the difference is striking. Protestant and Catholic theologians might be bitterly opposed to each other, but they shared a common concern for reaching a correct understanding of righteousness, faith, salvation, the church, the interpretation of the Scriptures and authority in religion. As the seventeenth century dawned, the question of free will, human responsibility and God's sovereignty was becoming increasingly acute for Catholic and Protestant theologians alike. But the minds of the rationalist philosophers were focused on different questions. It was not that they had no place for God in their schemes of thought. Rather, the burning issue for them was to discover the right way to think about the world and God under the impact of scientific knowledge and scientific ways of thinking and the challenge of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

It would be a mistake to think of rationalism as something totally new. Some of the ideas and arguments that it drew on had a long history, reaching back through the Middle Ages to the early church and ancient philosophy. But these ideas and arguments were put to new use in the interests of working out a philosophy that would embrace the needs of science. The leading rationalist thinkers were deeply interested in science, especially the field of mathematics to which Descartes and Leibniz made notable contributions. The rationalists were impressed by the role of mathematics in science and by the rational structure of the world revealed by science. The procedures of mathematics, and especially of geometry, seemed therefore to be appropriate in the realm of philosophy not least when thinking about God. The idea of God figured in all the great rationalist philosophies-but in different ways, ranging from the deistically inclined Catholicism of Descartes through the rational pantheism of Spinoza to the mechanistic Protestantism of Leibniz and Wolff. Before we turn to the rationalists themselves, we need to look briefly at the changing world of science.

Today it is all too commonly assumed that everyone prior to Copernicus believed that the earth was flat, and that when Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, there was thought to be a real danger of his sailing over the edge. In point of fact, medieval scholars widely held that the earth was a sphere. They combined the biblical story of creation with Aristotle's view that the heavens were a series of perfect spheres with the earth as the center. This traditional view derived from the theories of the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy in the second century of the Christian era. Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, Ptolemy explained the apparent motion of the sun, moon and planets on the assumption that the earth was stationary. The medieval view was given poetical expression by Dante (1265-1321), whose Divine Comedy located hell inside the earth which lay in the center of the spheres.

The medieval scheme was challenged by the father of modern astronomy, the Pole Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543).' Copernicus had pursued his studies at Cracow, Bologna and Rome, before settling in Prussia, where he became a canon of the church. Copernicus rejected the Ptolemaic system in favor of the startling view that the center of the planetary system was the sun. He argued that it was improbable that a large body like the sun should move around a small body like the earth. His account offered a better explanation of the variation of the seasons, the equinoxes, and the motion of the planets. Copernicus's brief outline of his theory, the Commentariolus (1531), won the approval of Pope Clement VII. However, his major treatise, Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, was not published until the year of his death. By then he was unable to prevent the inclusion of a preface by the Protestant theologian Osiander, warning readers that they should treat the author's conclusions as hypothetical. The authorities of the Catholic Church became increasingly alarmed, and in 1616-over seventy years after its author's death-Copernicus's work was placed on the index of prohibited books, where it remained until 1757.

Copernicus's work was taken up by the German astronomer Kepler and the Italian astronomer, physicist and mathematician Galileo. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) became acquainted with Copernican theory at the University of Tubingen. In 1601 he became court astronomer in Prague, where he developed his account of the laws of planetary motion under the influence of Neoplatonism. Despite his recognition of the authority of Scripture, Kepler's understanding of the world was at heart pantheistic (although at the time the term had not yet been coined). He viewed the world-order as the expression of the being of God, particularly in the relations between the sun (the image of the Father) and the planets.

The outlook of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was more orthodox, even though eventually he was pronounced a heretic.' Galileo was born at Pisa. Poverty prevented him from completing his degree at the University of Pisa, but after a period of private study he was appointed professor of mathematics there in 1589. In 1592 he assumed the chair of mathematics at Padua, where he remained for eighteen years. Here he discovered the law of free-falling bodies, but his attention was drawn away from mechanics by the discovery of the telescope in Holland. Galileo made his own improved telescope and in 1610 published The Starry Messenger, which described the mountainous character of the moon, the existence of countless stars, and the four satellites of Jupiter. Shortly afterwards he received an appointment to the Duke of Tuscany.

Galileo's Discourse on Bodies in Water (1612) rejected the Aristotelian theory of elements. His Letter on Sunspots (1613) aroused theological opposition by its support of Copernicus and its assertion of the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun. In reply to his critics, Galileo insisted that interpretations of the Bible should not be allowed to prejudge scientific observation. Nevertheless, he saw no fundamental contradiction between science and faith. In a letter to Fr. Benedetto Castelli dated December 21, 1613, Galileo observed: "Holy Scripture and nature equally proceed from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as the very faithful executor of God's commands."3

In 1616 the Copernican theory was condemned at Rome, and Galileo was forbidden to teach it. For several years Galileo refrained from publishing. However, in 1623 he published The Assayer, where he attacked current Aristotelian thinking and set out a theory of atoms which was inspired in part by reading Lucretius's poem On the Nature of Things. The following year, 1624, Galileo received permission in Rome to write on the Copernican and Ptolomaic systems, on the condition that he did so impartially. The result was Galileo's controversial Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which finally appeared in 1632 after prolonged difficulties in obtaining the necessary license for publication. Galileo was summoned to Rome the following year, forced to recant under threat of torture and condemned to prison on suspicion of heresy. After some months he was released and allowed to return to Florence, where he continued his scientific observations under house arrest. His work on physics, Two New Sciences, was smuggled to Holland, where it was printed in 1638. The official condemnation of Galileo has remained until modem times.'

Galileo's trial is widely seen as a landmark attempt of the church to control science. As such, Galileo's opponents are represented as reactionaries resisting the evidence of empirical science in the interests of a world view based on a combination of a literal interpretation of Scripture and an obsolete understanding of science. However, the traditional view of Galileo's trial has recently been challenged by Pietro Redondi, who has discovered documentary evidence which suggests that the charge of Copernicanism was really a cover-up for an even more serious charge of heresy concerning the Eucharist. According to Redondi, Galileo's theory of atoms posed an even greater threat to Catholic theology in that it undermined the doctrine of transubstantiation.

The doctrine was an attempt to explain how Christ could be present in the celebration of the Mass. Drawing on Aristotle's theory of substance, it held that the substance of bread and wine in the Eucharist are changed through the act of consecration into the body and blood of Christ, though the "accidents" (i.e., outward appearance and characteristics) of bread and wine remain. The doctrine had been repudiated by the Protestant Reformers, but was reaffirmed in the Council of Trent in 1551, and was central to Catholic theology and piety.'

Although Galileo created no new philosophical system, his influence on philosophy was marked, not least in his separation of science from philosophy, his rejection of authority as a criterion for scientific truth, his stress on empirical observation, and his skepticism concerning received opinions. Galileo's criticisms of Aristotle were more symbolic than substantial. Aristotelianism was the accepted philosophy of his opponents. Whilst rejecting some of Aristotle's scientific views, Galileo regularly boasted that he was a better Aristotelian than his opponents, and he drew heavily on Aristotelian arguments in the Dialogue in order to support Copernican theory.'

Galileo's advocacy of Copernican theory introduced one of the great paradigm shifts in the history of thought. The world lost its place as the center of the universe. Copernicus's theory not only inaugurated a change in the way people thought about the relationship of the earth to the sun; it also involved a change in the way people thought about the relationship of science to philosophy and theology. The revolutionary change came about not simply because the Copernican theory fitted the facts, whereas the Ptolemaic theory did not (for both theories maintained some inconsistency with observations). Nor was it that the Copernican view was more simple, more probable, or even more capable of predicting individual novel facts than its rival. In and of itself the Copernican view does not seem to be indebted to the Renaissance, the Reformation, or to the Counter-Reformation. It would seem that, in the end, the theory triumphed because of its greater predictive power and fruitfulness for further discovery.' In this respect not least, the theory pointed the way to the future.

The first of the great rationalist philosophers was the French mathematician and scientist Rene Descartes (1596-1650).' His dates make him a contemporary of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, of Kepler, Galileo and Harvey. Descartes received his education not at a university but at the Jesuit College of La Fleche in Anjou. But this proved no detriment, for he was given a better grounding in mathematics than he could have otherwise got at most universities at the time. Seeking leisure to pursue his studies, Descartes found it for a time by embarking upon a military career. He saw service in Holland, Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. Eventually he retired to Holland, a country which in the seventeenth century afforded refuge for a number of thinkers whose thoughts would have led them into trouble elsewhere. He lived in Holland for twenty years. But in 1649 he went to Sweden at the request of Queen Christina who (as Bertrand Russell has remarked') thought that, as sovereign, she had the right to waste the time of great men. The queen could only spare the hour of five in the morning for her daily lessons, and this, coupled with the rigors of the Scandinavian winter, cut short the philosopher's life.

Descartes seems to have made a sustained effort to keep up the appearances of a gentlemanly amateur. He is said to have worked short hours and read little. He tried his hand at various sciences, including medicine. But his main contributions were made in the fields of geometry and philosophy. In the former he invented co-ordinate geometry. In the latter he pioneered rationalism, and in the minds of many people his name is indissolubly linked with Cartesian doubt and Cartesian dualism. While in Holland, Descartes wrote a major treatise, The World, but withheld publication after the condemnation of Galileo in 1633. However, some of its key ideas were stated in his Principles of Philosophy (1644), including the view for which Galileo had been condemned: the earth's rotation around the sun. Descartes was the author of a series of Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1628) and a treatise on The Passions of the Soul (1649). But he is best remembered for his Discourse on Method (1637) and his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).

In the Discourse Descartes recorded his intellectual testimony. Chronologically, it began a few months after the conclusion of the Synod of Dort, but the problems that Descartes was wrestling with were vastly different from those which had occupied the best theological minds of Dutch Calvinism. Descartes recalled how in the winter of 1619/20 he entered a stove10 and spent the day in meditation. It is tempting to say that when he entered, his philosophy was half-baked, and that when he emerged, its basic form was set. As a first principle he resolved "never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it." His second rule was to divide each difficulty into as many pans as possible. Thirdly, he sought to proceed in an orderly manner, beginning with the simplest and advancing to the most complex. Finally, he sought to make enumerations so complete and reviews so comprehensive, that he could be sure of leaving nothing out. Descartes's ideal and method was modelled on mathematics, as he went on to explain:

Those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that all things which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the same way. And I thought that, provided we refrain from accepting anything as true which is not, and always keep to the order required for deducing one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in the end or too well hidden to be discovered."

To Descartes the process of reconstructing his philosophy was like rebuilding a house.12 It was not enough to tear down the old building, or even to get together an architect and the materials. One needed somewhere to live, while the house was being built. Descartes solved the problem of what to do while rebuilding his philosophical house by deciding to accept the laws and customs of his country and the religion he had been brought up in. He would be decisive in action even under pressure of doubt until a clearer way presented itself. He would seek to master himself rather than his fortune and change his desires rather than the order of the world. Finally, he would seek the occupation best suited to him. In other words, for nine years Descartes solved the problem practically by carrying on as before. It was not until he went to Holland in 1629 that he found the peace and tranquility that enabled him to devote himself "solely to the search for truth."

There were three major steps in the reconstruction of Descartes's philosophical edifice. The first step was to discover a first principle for his philosophy. He began with the resolve to "reject as if absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I was left believing anything that was entirely indubitable." After all, geometricians sometimes committed logical fallacies. In dreams people experience things as if they were real. Could everything be just an illusion? At this point Descartes was struck by a thought.

But immediately I noticed that while I am trying thus to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth "I am thinking, therefore I exist" was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.13

Thus the famous cogito, ergo sum ("I am thinking, therefore I am") be came the first principle of Cartesian philosophy. Descartes went on to observe that there was nothing in that proposition to assure him that he was speaking the truth except that he saw "very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist." This led him to "take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true." The only problem here lay in recognizing which things were conceived very clearly. Again there was the problem of doubt. Descartes needed further reason for the veracity of human perception. He found it by taking the second major step, which was to establish rationally the existence of God as the perfect being.

In taking this step, Descartes recognized the conditional character of geometry. However, he insisted that the existence of God as the perfect being was not like a deduction from a hypothetical premise.

For example, I saw clearly that the three angles of any given triangle must equal two right angles; yet for all that, I saw nothing which assured me that there existed any triangle in the world. Whereas when I looked again at the idea I had of a perfect being, I found that this included existence in the same way as-or even more evidently than-the idea of a triangle includes the equality of its three angles to two right angles, or the idea of a sphere includes the equidistance of all the points on the surface from the centre. Thus I concluded that it is at least as certain as any geometrical proof that God, who is this perfect being, is or exists."

Descartes's third major step was to recognize that the rule that "everything we conceive very clearly and very distinctly is true is assured only for the reasons that God is or exists, that he is a perfect being, and that everything in us comes from him.""

Descartes could describe God as a substance. By this he meant a reality which subsists by itself. Strictly speaking, God was the only substance that fitted this description." But created substances also exist in view of the "concurrence of God." Each substance has a principal attribute. That of the mind is thought, while that of the body is extension in space." In the last analysis there were for Descartes two kinds of reality: the mental and the material. The mental included the mind or soul and its thoughts (including God's mind and thoughts). The material was the sphere of physical existence. On account of these two types of reality Descartes's thought is often described as dualistic. Descartes himself was well aware of the enormous problems raised by dualism. How is the mental related to the physical? How is the mind related to the body?

Descartes responded to these problems by insisting that there are in us "certain primitive notions" like existence, number, duration, which apply to everything we can conceive. With regard to the body we have the notion of extension and the consequent notions of shape and movement. With regard to the soul we have the notion of consciousness. "Finally, as regards the soul and body together, we have merely the notion of their union; and on this there depend our notions of the soul's power to move the body, and of the body's power to act on the soul and cause sensations and emotions."" Descartes put forward the further suggestion that the soul was located in the pineal gland in the brain. The soul thus received the perceptions of the senses via the brain. "And conversely, the mechanism of our body is so constructed that simply by this gland's being moved in any way by the soul or by any other cause, it drives the surrounding spirits towards the pore of the brain, which direct them through the nerves to the muscles; and in this way the gland makes the spirits move the limbs."19 Although this part of Descartes's view is no longer taken seriously, Descartes's approach to the body/mind question continues to find repercussions today. Gilbert Ryle dismissed the Cartesian understanding of the soul and derided it as "a ghost in a machine." To Ryle the notion of the soul or mind was as redundant as that of presuming that a machine needs some kind of a spirit to keep it in operation. However, other thinkers have not been so reductionistic and have refused to reduce the human mind to the operations of the physical brain.20

Descartes is widely regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. At the same time it is recognized that he owes much to the past, and his thought forms a bridge between the pre-scientific world and the modern age. Descartes's body-soul dualism sounds like an echo of the body-soul dualism of Plato and early Christian thinking. His main argument for the existence of God was a restatement of Anselm's ontological argument. Even the celebrated cogito ergo sum was not new. It had been put forward in different forms by Augustine. Perhaps Descartes had come across it during his days at La Fleche, and it had lodged unconsciously in his mind until he lighted on it as the first principle of his philosophy. Years later his attention was drawn to Augustine's use of the idea, whereupon Descartes checked the reference in a library but insisted that his use of it was different from Augustine's. Whereas Augustine used it in developing his doctrine of the Trinity, Descartes protested that his own use was "to establish that this conscious I is an immaterial substance with no corporeal element."21

From Descartes's own day the cogito ergo sum has been argued over by philosophers. It figured in the series of Objections and Replies occasioned by Descartes's Meditations. For example, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes objected that one might just as well say "I am walking, therefore I exist."22 In modern times Hobbes's objection has been echoed by Bertrand Russell, who pointed out that if Descartes had really wanted to start with doubt, his initial premise should have been "There are doubts." Descartes was not entitled to infer from this the existence of a personal self, an "I" with all the qualities that we take for granted in everyday life.23 To Hobbes and Russell the latter were smuggled into the argument unnoticed. Other philosophers have objected that the argument was a disguised tautology, merely repeating the same premise in different words. As A. J. Ayer observed, "If I start with the fact that I am doubting, I can validly draw the conclusion that I think and that I exist. That is to say, if there is such a person as myself, then there is such a person as myself, and if I think, I think."24

There remains, however, the possibility that the cogito ergo sum is neither a dubious syllogism nor a disguised tautology but the expression of an unshakable basic conviction, possessed by Descartes and human beings in general. For Descartes it was a given fact of existence that we have the incorrigible intuition of ourselves as thinking persons. It may also be that his use of the ontological argument was not the deduction of the existence of God from the hypothetical notion of God but the expression of a basic perception of a God whose existence he could not doubt. If this is so, Descartes's perception of God is much closer to Calvin's than is often imagined. Admittedly, Descartes's God is a "philosophical God." Yet even here we must ask with Alexandre Koyre, "What else can a philosopher's God possibly be?" In a philosophical interpretation of reality-as distinct from preaching or the believer's daily walk with God-the concept of God must be treated philosophically. Even so, Descartes's God is not a pale lifeless abstraction. As Koyre observes, "He is even the Christian God, as nobody can doubt who has read the texts Descartes left us."25

In one of his more whimsical moments Archbishop William Temple was once tempted to ask himself which was the most disastrous moment in European history. The answer he came up with was the day Descartes shut himself up in his stove.26 In saying this, Temple was not so much thinking about Descartes's view of God but about the trend he set in European thinking. It epitomized a shift of concern. It symbolized a retreat into the individual self-consciousness as the one sure starting point of philosophy. As a matter of fact, Temple went on to lump Luther together with Descartes as the religious counterpart to the latter's philosophical individualism. But neither judgment was historically accurate. When Luther was confronted by the ecclesiastical authorities, he took his stand, not on his individual, private conscience, but upon the Word of God to which his conscience was captive. Luther's authority was outside himself.

Likewise Descartes was not the founder of rugged philosophical individualism. In a sense he was not even the founder of Cartesian doubt. When Descartes resolved to doubt everything that he could legitimately doubt, he was not the original pioneer of elevating doubt into a methodological principle. Rather, he was accepting the premises of the Pyrrhonian skeptics who had already done this and was answering them with their own weapon. He was, in fact, arguing that there were a number of things that could not be doubted. Among them was the fact of the existence of the doubter. Another indubitable fact was the existence of a perfect and veracious God.

To some of Descartes's contemporaries this reply looked like dogmatism. To others, who felt uncomfortable with the idea of such basic perceptions, it looked like a form of skepticism dressed up as a positive answer. On this view, Descartes could be described as a skeptic in spite of himself.27 What is clear is that the questions that Descartes touched on were questions which set the agenda not only for continental rationalism and British empiricism but for Western philosophy in general down to the present day.

Baruch (or Benedictus de, to use the Latinized form of his name which he later assumed) Spinoza (1632-77)28 was born in Amsterdam of Jewish parents. Some years before his birth the Netherlands had proclaimed freedom of thought and in so doing had become a haven for all those who sought refuge from persecution or who had found that they could not get their books printed anywhere else. Although brought up as ajew, Spinoza's free thought resulted in his expulsion from the synagogue in 1656. By expelling the young Spinoza for his unorthodox ideas, the Jewish authorities were in fact absolving themselves from responsibility for views that were no less repugnant to the Christian civil authorities. Spinoza spent much of his life in seclusion, apart from a small circle of friends, his letter writing and occasional contact with some of the great thinkers of his day. He earned his living by grinding and polishing lenses. His premature death from consumption was aggravated by the dust from the grinding. In 1673 he was offered a chair of philosophy at Heidelberg. However, he declined, fearing that teaching would interfere with his research and that his unorthodox views might result in his freedom being curtailed.29

Spinoza admired Descartes, but thought that his views needed correction. In 1663 he published an exposition of the French philosopher under the title Parts I and II of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy, Demonstrated in the Geometric Manner. It was the only book published during his lifetime that bore his name on the title page. It was followed in 1670 by a treatise on politics and religion, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which among other things pioneered biblical criticism.30 But his chief work was published posthumously in a collection of his writings-Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order and Divided into Five Parts. This too was written in Latin and was set out in quasi-geometrical form with definitions, axioms, propositions and proofs (to which Q.E.D. was duly appended). It began with a lengthy discussion of the nature and existence of God, and concluded with the claim that the knowledge and love of God is the greatest human good.

Spinoza has been variously described as a hideous atheist and as Godintoxicated." In fact, he was (to use a term later coined by the British Deist John Toland) a pantheist. But Spinoza was not the kind of pan theist of the romantic, poetical imagination. His was a rational pantheism, soberly worked out from premises akin to those of Descartes. Like the latter, he began with clear and distinct ideas, notions which he thought to be self-evidently true. Their truth could be seen merely by stating them properly. Unlike Descartes, he did not treat the cogito ergo sum as a basic intuition which could serve as a first principle of philosophy. He began rather with a notion of substance, taken over from Descartes, which he defined as "what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed."" He treated this idea as self-evidently true. "If someone were to say that he had a clear and distinct, i.e., true, idea of a substance, and nevertheless doubted whether such a substance existed, that would indeed be the same as if he were to say that he had a true idea, and nevertheless doubted whether it was false (as is evident to anyone who is sufficiently attentive)."" From here Spinoza went on to argue that there was only one substance 3' and that "whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.""

Taken at face value, this statement like numerous others in Spinoza's writings could be understood in a Christian theistic sense. But one does not have to probe very deeply in order to discover that he did not think of God as a personal being who exists over and above the world and on whom the world depends for its existence. Spinoza thought of God as dens sive natures-"God or nature." Since God was infinite, no other substance could exist outside God. "God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of things."" Whether we say God or nature, we are really talking about the same thing. To speak of God draws attention to the ground or cause of reality; to speak of nature points to the outward effect of that cause.

Spinoza's teaching was worked out in considerable detail. In the course of his discussion he argued for determinism57 and denied that God could love human beings in a personal way.98 Religion was the intellectual love of God. This too was given a pantheistic interpretation. "The Mind's intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human Mind's essence, considered under the species of eternity, i.e., the Mind's intellectual Love of God is part of the infinite Love by which God loves himself.""

Spinoza's philosophy has been described as both skeptical and anti- skeptical.40 It was anti-skeptical in the sense that it purported to offer a rational metaphysics which could be seen to be true by anyone with the necessary rational capacities and patience to follow the deductive reasoning. It gave a place to God but at the price of questioning the validity of religion as practiced in both Judaism and Christianity. The locus of truth was not religion itself but reason. However, the other side of this anti-skepticism was profound skepticism about the truth and importance of biblical religion. Spinoza recognized the place of the latter in history, but rejected its foundational importance. "The sphere of reason is ... truth and wisdom; the sphere of theology is piety and obedience .1141

This stance enabled Spinoza to adopt a critical approach to prophecy, the authorship of Scripture and its authority in the Tractatus Theologico- Politicus. He rejected the traditional Christian appeal to fulfilled prophecy and miracles as objective divine attestation of revelation.42 To Spinoza "the universal laws of science" were the decrees of God which followed from "the necessity and perfection of the Divine nature." Hence, any event which contradicted the laws of science was ipso facto a contradiction of the divine decree and God's own perfection. To claim an event as a miracle was tantamount to claiming that God had acted against his own nature. Thus, miracles were by definition impossible. Spinoza did not go so far as to deny the historicity of all biblical miracles. Rather, he insisted that when an alleged miracle occurred, there must be a rational and natural explanation. In speaking of natural laws as divine decrees, Spinoza was echoing the language of the Calvinistic divines at the Synod of Don. His deterministic view of reality also had something in common with high Calvinism. But although he spoke of God, Spinoza had something very different in mind from the Calvinistic theologians.

Some scholars have seen in Spinoza's philosophy links with the Jewish Kabbalah of the Middle Ages, but others stress the profound difference in temper and outlook between Spinoza and earlier Jewish philosophy.4' Whereas earlier Jewish philosophers sought to interpret the Jewish tradition by means of different philosophical schemes, Spinoza sought to judge biblical religion in the light of his rational metaphysics. Reality was a rational system which was open to a rational explanation. In so doing, it proferred an alternative view of God. God was no longer the personal, transcendent Creator of the universe. God was the name given to the immanent rationality which was the ground of all things and which manifested itself in all things. However, Spinoza's system raised the perennial problems that all pantheistic schemes raise. If all reality is the manifestation of God, then evil must also be a manifestation of God. This applies to both physical evils like natural disasters and moral evils running the whole range of evil from petty theft to genocide. Good and evil are alike expressions of the divine nature. The idea of free will is likewise illusory, for in a pantheistic system all human actions are ultimately divine actions. No room is left for human autonomy of any kind. Nor is any place left for human autonomy in the process of acquiring knowledge, for the human mind is part of the Divine Mind which thinks its thoughts through human minds. This conclusion would seem to be required in pantheism, despite the apparent absurdity of different human minds thinking contradictory thoughts on the same subject and attributing the whole process to the Divine Mind thinking out its ideas through them.

Spinoza's views found little following in his own day. But in the Age of Enlightenment he attracted a growing number of supporters. Toward the end of his life Lessing professed to be a Spinozist. In the Age of Romanticism Schleiermacher spoke of "the holy, rejected Spinoza" who was pervaded by "the high World-Spirit." Later still D. F. Strauss remarked that if the key themes of the first part of Schleiermacher's Christian Faith were translated into Latin, they would turn out to be formulations of Spinoza.44 In due course Spinoza found admirers among the English Romantic poets. But no Spinozist school ever emerged. In a sense Spinoza marked a parting of the ways. To some his philosophy opened up the possibility of an atheistic rationalism. To others it was a philosophy which required modification in the direction of Idealism. To Hegel Spinozism was an important stepping stone toward his own form of Absolute Ideal- ism.45 But to others it marked a dead end. It failed to do justice to the living reality of religion, and the attempt to give an account of reality by means of deductions from allegedly self-evident definitions was nothing more than a case of building abstraction upon abstraction.

Descartes was a Roman Catholic, and Spinoza a free-thinking Jew. An eminent Protestant thinker who was indebted to both but critical of both was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)."1 Leibniz was a universal genius. He combined the career of mathematician, logician and philosopher with that of international diplomat. He invented a calculating machine (which earned him membership of the Royal Society in England). He was a member of the Paris Academy, and the Prussian Academy was largely his creation. He corresponded with and met many of the most eminent thinkers in Europe. His schemes included a plan for reuniting the Christian churches. His thought encompassed a theory designed to give an account of the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. He even composed a Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese. From the standpoint of theology, however, his most important works were his Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil (1710) and his Monadology (written in 1714 and published in 1721). The latter was a brief outline of his views on the nature of reality. Leibniz discovered the differential and integral calculus. However, his final years were clouded with controversy over whether he or Sir Isaac Newton should be credited with this achievement. He died in obscurity.

It has been said that the role played in Descartes's philosophy by the veracity of God is played in Leibniz's thought by the intelligibility of the universe." For Spinoza God was the name for the underlying essence of things. But with Leibniz we come back to a theism which combines conviction about the essential rationality of existence with belief in the transcendence of God. Indeed, it is the God who is worshiped in the Christian religion who is the Creator of the universe and thus the ground of rationality. Science is grounded ultimately in theology, for scientific explanation is possible only because of the order imposed on the universe by God. Leibniz observed that human reasoning was founded on "two great principles."

The first is the principle of contradiction, by virtue of which we consider as false what implies a contradiction and as true what is the opposite of the contradictory or false.

The second is the principle of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we hold that no fact can be true or existing and no statement truthful without a sufficient reason for its being so and not different; albeit these reasons most frequently must remain unknown to us.48

Leibniz went on to draw a further distinction between two kinds of truth. It was a distinction that was to play an important role in subsequent philosophy.

There are also two kinds of truths: those of reason, which are necessary and of which the opposite is impossible, and those of fact, which are contingent and of which the opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, the reasons for it can be found through analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until one comes to prim- itives.49

Leibniz maintained that mathematics exemplified the analytical method. However, a sufficient reason had to be found also for contingent truths or truths of fact. Ultimately the sufficient reason must lie outside the succession or series of contingent particulars.

Consequently, the ultimate reason for all things must subsist in a necessary substance, in which all particular changes may exist only virtually as in its source: this substance is what we call God.50

In his numerous writings restatements of the ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments may be found.51 His arguments converge in a view of God as the necessary being who is the sufficient reason for the existence of all contingent beings. Leibniz's later thought made use of the idea of the monad which he defines as "a simple substance, which enters into the composites."52 God himself was the original monad or "simple substance, of which all the created or derivative monads are products, born, so to speak, every moment by continual fulgurations from the divinity, and limited by the capacities of creatures, to which limitation is essential."55 Leibniz envisaged a perfect harmony between the causes in nature and God's ultimate purposes. God was both "the architect of the machine of the universe" and "the monarch of the divine city of the spirits."54 The processes of nature serve the purposes of grace. "Thus sin must entail punishment according to the order of nature and as the very result of the mechanical structure of the universe; and, analogously, good actions will attract their rewards through machine-like corporeal processes. Of course, these results cannot be and ought not always to be obtained as an immediate consequence."55

This vision of the world as a rationally ordered machine which brings about moral results was anticipated many years earlier in Leibniz's Theodicy. Here Leibniz argued that God had weighed up all possible systems for the world and had chosen the best.56 Leibniz did not wish to deny the existence of evil. He certainly did not wish to blame God for all the evil in the world. Physical ills were the result of the physical characteristics of the world we live in. Moral evil is the result of the misuse of human freedom. God is able to bring greater good out of evil. However, before God decreed anything he considered all the possible consequences. He envisaged the Fall and also redemption through Christ. "God grants his sanction to this sequence only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon everything and compared it with other possible sequences. Thus God's pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply decrees its existence."57

In this way Leibniz endeavored to preserve an orthodox Christian view of God and the world in the tradition of Augustine. He sought to maintain human freedom by saying that human freedom was genuine and that God had decreed it. At the same time he preserved the Reformed/Augustinian emphasis on God's sovereignty by saying that God anticipated everything and decreed what he anticipated. It was as if God possessed a supercomputer which printed out an unlimited series of programs, and God chose the best. Another way of looking at it is to see it like alternative scripts for a play in which the characters exercise their freedom, but when the author finally decides on which plot to keep, the actions of the characters are fixed forever. Leibniz's view was certainly an alternative to that of Spinoza. It combined rationalism with Christian orthodoxy. But in the end it was scarcely less deterministic. It leaves us admiring the brilliance of Leibniz and at the same time wondering at the adequacy of the rationalism of his day to accomplish what he wanted it to do.

In the next century the idea of the world as the best of all possible worlds was held up for ridicule by Voltaire in his novel Candide. The hair-raising adventures of Candide and his companions at the hands of unscrupulous enemies (both professed Christians and infidels) were de signed to show the vacuity of the notion. Leibniz's ideas received more sympathetic treatment from Christian Wolff (1679-1754),58 the rationalist philosopher of the German Enlightenment. Wolff had corresponded with Leibniz during the last twelve years of the latter's life. Although he rejected Leibniz's doctrine of monads, he drew heavily on both Leibniz and Descartes. Wolff sought to present a synthesis of human knowledge. The entire enterprise was to be organized in a formal plan, controlled by the deductive methods of rationalism. In his heyday Wolff enjoyed enormous prestige in Germany. There were also Wolffians in France and elsewhere. But even before his death his influence was beginning to be undermined by those who favored the ideas of the French Enlightenment and Newtonian natural philosophy. It fell to Kant to administer the coup de grace to German rationalism in the Wolffian style. But before we turn to Kant we need to consider the competing philosophies of a number of thinkers. As we shall see, some of them were passionate believers, while others were bitterly hostile to traditional Christianity.

It may seem odd to include Pascal in a chapter on rationalism, but there is at least one good reason for doing so. Not only was Pascal a contemporary of the great rationalists, he also shared their scientific interests. Moreover, his approach to reason and philosophy serves to bring out the differences between rationalism and the kind of Augustinian thinking that Pascal presented.

Blaise Pascal (1623-62)59 was a junior contemporary of Descartes and a slightly senior contemporary of Spinoza. Before he was twenty he had invented a calculating machine to assist his father in his post as Commissioner of Taxes in Upper Normandy. He thus pioneered the modem calculator. Pascal also made major contributions to geometry, probability, number theory and the philosophy of mathematics. His physical experiments demonstrated the existence of the vacuum and successfully challenged the idea that nature always abhors a vacuum. Pascal's scientific work helped to banish the occult from science and to establish the mechanistic view of the physical world. At the same time Pascal's growing commitment to the Christian faith led him to develop an alternative approach to Pyrrhonian skepticism and to philosophical rationalism.

In his younger days Pascal had led a worldly life. But in 1646 he came into contact with Jansenism, a Catholic movement with a strong Augustinian emphasis on humankind's need of divine grace. Jansenism was bitterly opposed by the Jesuits, and was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1649 and by Pope Innocent X in 1653. In 1654 Pascal had a conversion experience which he described on a piece of parchment that was sown into his clothing as a perpetual reminder. It contained the following words:

Fire

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob," not of philosophers and scholars.

Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.

God of Jesus Christ.

God of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

"Thy God shall be my God."

The world forgotten, and everything except God.

He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels ....

Let me not be cut off from him for ever! "And this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. ...60

Pascal was increasingly drawn into the Port-Royal circle in Paris, which was the center of French Jansenism. His sister had earlier become a nun there. Pascal's Provincial Letters (1656-57) were a brilliant defense of Jansenism and an attack on current Jesuit theories about grace and moral theology. In 1656 Pascal began collecting material for what he intended to be an Apology for the Christian Religion, putting down his thoughts on scraps of paper. His premature death at the age of thirty-nine prevented the work from becoming anything more than a series of disconnected thoughts. Nevertheless, these thoughts-or Pensees (as they are termed in French)-remain one of the great classics of Christian meditation and apologetics.

Pascal's Pensees present an alternative to Pyrrhonian skepticism which doubts everything and philosophical rationalism which tends to relegate God to a term of philosophical explanation. At the same time they give a profound analysis of the human condition. Pascal looked deep into the human heart and challenged his readers to consider their real situation. He saw the boredom and anxiety pervading human life. "Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness. And at once there wells up from the depths of his soul boredom, gloom, depression, chagrin, resentment, despair."" Sport, entertainment, fashion, art and society are so often pursued not because of the pleasure they bring, but to take our minds off ourselves.62

Pascal had little use for the hypothetical God of philosophical argument. Among the sayings attributed to Pascal, one went so far as to say: "I cannot forgive Descartes: in his whole philosophy he would like to do without God; but he could not help allowing him a flick of the fingers to set the world in motion; after that he had no more use for God."" To Pascal the standard proofs of the existence of God were at best questionable and at worst irrelevant.

The metaphysical proofs for the existence of God are so remote from human reasoning and so involved that they make little impact, and, even if they did help some people, it would only be for the moment during which they watched the demonstration, because an hour later they would be afraid they had made a mistake.

What they gained by curiosity they lost through pride [Augustine, Sermons, 1411.

That is the result of knowing God without Christ, in other words communicating without a mediator with a God known without a mediator.

Whereas those who have known God through a mediator know their own wretchedness.64

If rationalist philosophy could not answer the deepest human needs, neither could Pyrrhonian skepticism. On the one hand, consistent skepticism was impossible. On the other hand, reason needed a foundation outside itself. It was impossible to prove beyond doubt that one was awake, for when one dreams, one dreams that one is awake. "There is no certainty, apart from faith, as to whether man was created by a good God, an evil demon, or just by chance, and so it is a matter of doubt, depending on our origin, whether these innate principles are true, false or uncertain."65 The arguments of the rationalists were vulnerable to the skeptics, but consistent skepticism is impossible to carry through and it is also impossible to live by.

What then is man to do in this state of affairs? Is he to doubt everything, to doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched or burned? Is he to doubt whether he is doubting, to doubt whether he exists?

No one can go that far, and I maintain that a perfectly genuine skeptic has never existed. Nature backs up helpless reason and stops it going so wildly astray 66

Pascal's answer to this dilemma was to insist that one should live by faith, and make faith the basis not only of the spiritual life but of science and philosophy. Knowledge for Pascal is not simply a matter of drawing rational inferences.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

I say that it is natural for the heart to love the universal being or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against either as it chooses. You have rejected one and kept the other. Is it reason that makes you love yourself?

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason 67

In taking up this position Pascal realized that he was not immune from the questioning of the Pyrrhonian skeptics. But skepticism was itself vulnerable for reasons already noted. The alternative, therefore, was to face the challenge of Pascal's famous "Wager."68 In it Pascal confronted his readers with the fact that they had to take a risk. They were in fact risking their lives and the possibility of eternal salvation. On the other hand, there was no evading the risk and the choice. For life is relentlessly moving on, and the decision not to make a choice is itself an act of making a choice.

In addition to the philosophical questions addressed by the Pensees, Pascal devoted a good deal of his work to theological questions. He found a place for discussion of prophecy and miracles in Scripture. His argument followed traditional apologetic lines in appealing to fulfilled prophecy and miracles as grounds for believing in Christ. However, he recognized that they were not proofs which would convince the unbeliever of the truth of the Christian faith. Prophecy and miracles did not provide hard, factual foundation for establishing the truth of the Christian belief-system. Rather, they function within the belief-system to indicate the identity of Jesus as Messiah.69

Sometimes Pascal's teaching is classified as a kind of voluntarism, the implication being that he sets greater store by the will than by the intellect. It has even been represented as a kind of self-inflicted brainwashing, in which the will to believe is allowed to banish all intellectual considerations. But this is a caricature. It neglects to mention that the idea of the wager was addressed to the sporting men of the day, reminding them of a game played at infinitely greater odds. It does not take into account the attention and energy that Pascal devoted to analyzing the scope and limitations of reason, showing that skepticism could not be lived by and that rationalism was not an adequate answer. At the same time he realized, "What a long way it is between knowing God and loving him!"" The challenge presented by Pascal was a challenge to question the fashionable philosophies of his day in the name of the God of the Bible. His alternative to Pyrrhonian skepticism and dogmatic rationalism was not only a tenable philosophy on the intellectual level; it also spoke to the human condition at its deepest psychological level.

Pyrrhonian skepticism and philosophical rationalism were like stones dropped into a pond which sent out ever-widening ripples. The ripple-effect continued throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It produced two kinds of response. On the one hand, there was the response which carried further the effects of skepticism. On the other hand, there was the response which attempted to refine in different ways the rationalists' attempt to give a coherent account of the real nature of things. In the following chapters we shall see both tendencies at work. At the same time the lines between skepticism and whatever was advocated in opposition to it became more and more entangled. For one person's dogmatism was another's skepticism. Different thinkers chose to be skeptical about different things. The practice of skepticism went hand-inhand with a quest for certainty, even if it was only a certainty that one's opponents were wrong. Nowhere was this more true than in the realm of religion.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed many bitter theological battles. Sometimes they were acrimonious, as in the Arminian controversy within Calvinism and the conflicts surrounding Puritanism in Britain. Sometimes they were bloody in the most literal sense of the term. On the continent of Europe Protestants fought Catholics in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). In Britain Protestants fought Protestants in the Civil War which led to the beheading of Charles I (1649) and the establishment of the short-lived Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. In all the theological and political turmoil it is not surprising that fanatics and zealots arose on every side and that others sought refuge in the avoidance of extremes. The politics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave added impetus to the drive toward skepticism and to the quest for certainty in the realms of philosophy and religion.

A combination of skepticism and rationalism in religion found expression in the thought of the English thinker Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).' Hobbes was born in the Elizabethan Age, apparently prematurely as the Spanish Armada approached the English coast. In later life he remarked, "Fear was my twin." His father was a profligate country parson who deserted his family and disappeared after a brawl outside the church door.

An uncle enabled Hobbes to be educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, at a time when the college was under Puritan administration. Here he distinguished himself at Latin and Greek. As a young man, Hobbes became secretary to Sir Francis Bacon. In 1634, on one of his trips to the Continent, he met Galileo in Florence. Hobbes began to contrast the scientific methods of Galileo and the Padua School (of which Galileo had been a member) with the older medieval views which were still being taught at Oxford.

Hobbes lived through the English Civil War, the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, and the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy and the Anglican Church under King Charles II. For a time Hobbes had been Charles's tutor in France during his exile there. On an earlier visit to France in 1640 Hobbes had lived in a convent presided over by Mersenne. At Mersenne's suggestion, he submitted to Descartes a series of objections to the latter's Meditations. From that point onwards relations between Descartes and Hobbes went downhill.'

Hobbes was a prolific author. The philosophy that he wanted to write had three pans. The first part would deal with matter, the second with human nature, and the third with society. In the event, however, the third part came to be written first in the form of the Leviathan, which Hobbes wrote during the turbulent times of the English Civil War. The other parts of Hobbes's philosophy are contained in various other writings. Today Hobbes is remembered chiefly as a political theorist on account of the Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651). In it Hobbes depicted human life in its natural state as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."' In order to alleviate the human condition, Hobbes argued for the absolute sovereignty of the political state and the need for conformity in religion. The book's title was taken from the creature mentioned in the Old Testament. Hobbes applied it to the state, which he described as a kind of "artificial man," brought into being for the defense and protection of citizens." Hobbes rejected the idea of the divine right of kings to rule (which Charles I had vainly appealed to in his conflict with Parliament). In its place Hobbes proposed a theory of natural law as the basis of all laws, a representative theory of government and the absolute authority of the state to which all citizens were bound by a form of social contract. Hobbes believed that civil war could be averted permanently only if a new view of government, based on a scientific study of humankind, could be worked out.

Hobbes was fascinated with the idea he found in Greek thought that everything is in motion. It was reinforced by the vision that he caught from Galileo of a universe in perpetual motion. What Galileo had done by way of explaining the movement of physical bodies, Hobbes sought to do in his explanation of human nature. Human beings, like physical objects, were governed by the laws of nature. To Hobbes, "A law of nature, lex naturalis, is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved."5

Such a view of law is very different from the older prescriptive view of moral law, which set out what ought to be done, either because it was God's will or because there was some intrinsic ethical obligation. Although it was presented as an attempt to treat the study of human behavior on the model of the natural sciences, Hobbes's view of natural law in the realm of ethics was not based on observation and controlled experiment. Rather, it was a construct that Hobbes placed on his pessimistic and materialistic view of human nature.

Hobbes's definition assigns an absolute value to the self-preservation of the individual, and treats the prescription for self-preservation as a description of the causes which govern human conduct. Hobbes went on to describe the human condition as one of "war of every one against every one." In the circumstances, it was mutually advantageous "to seek peace and follow it, " which was "the first and fundamental law of nature." Hence followed the second natural law: "that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. "s

Although Hobbes's writings contain references to God and religion, the system of philosophy that he preached was the forerunner of modern materialism. The universe, as he saw it, "that is, the whole mass of all things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body ... and consequently every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe: and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere."'

To Hobbes, therefore, it made no sense to talk about the soul as some kind of separate entity. Human beings were just living bodies, and death was simply the cessation of bodily functions." In Hobbes's mechanistic scheme of things, free will was defined so as to make it compatible with determinism.9 The final chapters of Leviathan contain a discussion of religion under the overall heading "Of the Kingdom of Darkness." Here Hobbes anticipated twentieth-century criticism of religious language in his attempt to show that certain beliefs were not unscriptural or even false (as other contemporaries might have done), but were incoherent and absurd.10

Although attempts have been made to present Hobbes as a believer of sorts," and it certainly cannot be denied that in his scheme of things Hobbes left a place for religion, it is equally clear that religion was not central in Hobbes's thinking. Nor did it occupy a place of honor. The kind of philosophy that Hobbes advocated was an attempt to work out a world view and a prescription for human conduct and public life in secular terms. Hobbes himself saw it as a version of rationalism in which geometry was seen as a model for reasoning, conducive to the discovery of "general, eternal, and immutable truth. 1112 He excluded from philosophy all appeals to experience (for experience had no part in "original knowledge") and to supernatural revelation (for knowledge alleged to be attained by such means was not acquired by reasoning). On the subject of miracles, Hobbes's somewhat veiled discussion implies that, where a miraculous event had actually happened, there must be a rational expla- nation.'3 In the end, religion was a matter of private belief and public conformity to whatever was authorized by the state.

A private man has always the liberty, because thought is free, to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefit can accrue, by men's belief, to those who pretend or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies. But when it comes to confession of that faith, the private reason must submit to the public; that is to say, to God's lieutenant."

What Hobbes said here about belief in miracles in particular applied to religious belief in general. In an age of passionate religious convictions and bloody religious wars, it is not surprising that Hobbes found himself in conflict on all sides. His magnum opus was published in the early years of Cromwell's dictatorship, and although its author managed to make peace with the government, it was at the price of retiring to private life. In both France and England he was suspected of atheism: in France, because of his criticism of the Catholic Church; in England, because of his materialism. When the Stuart monarchy replaced Puritan rule, Hobbes gained the royal favor of his former pupil King Charles II, but he continued to alienate public opinion. His relationships with the scientific community of the newly founded Royal Society were strained on account of his contempt for their inductive methods of research and the scholars' rejection of Hobbes's mathematical theories. The upshot was that Hobbes was excluded from the Royal Society.

The Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London the following year were seen by some as acts of divine judgment on a country which tolerated Hobbes's secularism. The Leviathan narrowly escaped suppression by Act of Parliament, and Hobbes never received permission again to publish anything to do with religion and ethics. His later Latin works were brought out in Amsterdam, and many of his writings only appeared posthumously. Hobbes lived to the age of ninety-one. But his thinly veiled secularism did not die with him. It was only one-albeit the most blatant to date-of the many versions of secularism that were to appear in the years to come.

Continental rationalism and aversion to theological extremism gave rise to that form of rational religion known as Cambridge Platonism." However, unlike Hobbes's thought, Cambridge Platonism was an attempt to express a temperate form of Christianity. Indeed, it was partly an attempt to answer Hobbes by using reason to defend orthodoxy. The founder of the movement was Benjamin Whichcote (1609-83), the Provost of King's College and the eloquent Sunday-afternoon lecturer at Holy Trinity Church. Other members included Nathanael Culverwel (1618-51), John Smith (1616-52), Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) and Henry More (161487). At the time Cambridge University was a citadel of Puritanism. The Cambridge Platonists came from this background, but rejected the theology of high Calvinism, especially the doctrine of predestination. Their thinking was influenced not only by Dutch Arminianism's but by rationalist philosophy. They were impressed by Descartes, but raised questions about his separation of the material from the spiritual and his tendency toward mechanism. But Spinoza was seen as an atheist and materialist. If anything, Hobbes was even worse, for the thrust of his thought was directed against theism, and his occasional professions of belief were nothing but calculated hypocrisy.

The term Cambridge Platonists is not strictly exact. They were steeped in classical learning and drew heavily on Plato's dialogues for their views on the role of ideas, the nature of the soul, the place of reason and moral concepts. But they also drew on other classical sources, and quoted Plotinus even more often than Plato." They saw Plotinus as carrying forward Plato's teaching, which to them was very relevant to the issues of their own day. An anonymous contemporary observer noted their intention of bringing the church back to "her old loving nurse, the Platonic philosophy."" In this they saw themselves as carrying on the tradition of the Alexandrian church fathers.

Materialism and atheism were synonymous to the Cambridge Platonists. The root error, Cudworth observed, lay in the fact that it dethroned mind as the originating principle behind all things and replaced it with arbitrary chance or unthinking matter.19 Reason, on the other hand, was the answer both to materialistic atheism and to religious fanaticism. As Benjamin Whichcote said, "To go against reason is to go against God; it is the selfsame thing to do that which the reason of the case doth require and that which God himself doth appoint. Reason is the divine governor of man's life; it is the very voice of God. 112' To Culverwel the human understanding was "the candle of the Lord." By it human beings discover:

First, that all the moral law is founded in natural, and common light of reason; secondly, that there's nothing in the mysteries of the Gospel contrary to the light of reason, nothing repugnant to this light, that shines from "the candle of the Lord. 1121

Such optimistic sentiments were not shared by the Calvinists. As events turned out, the Calvinists felt that their suspicions were amply justified in view of the use made of this argument by the Deists.

In his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Dr. Samuel Johnson defined Deism as "the opinion of those that only acknowledge one God, without the reception of any revealed religion."22 The term (which comes from the Latin deus, "god") has been traced back to the sixteenth century in connection with an unidentified group who professed belief in God but rejected Christ and his teaching. Among those who professed such beliefs was the erstwhile convert to Judaism, Uriel da Costa, who is sometimes regarded as a precursor of Spinoza. However, Deism in the strict sense of the term applies to a small number of writers, most of whom are generally regarded as scholars of the second, if not the third, rank, who lived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Their influence was out of all proportion to their numbers. They may rightly be seen as the pioneers of biblical criticism2' and the initiators of the quest of the historical Jesus.24 Their arguments against miracles anticipated David Hume's famous argument25 and adumbrated the secular interpretation of religious history of Edward Gibbon and his successors. The outlook of such founding fathers of the American constitution as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson was at heart Deistic. In Europe Deism reached full flower in the French and German Enlightenment.

The man who is generally credited with being "the father of English Deism" was Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648).26 Lord Herbert served for a time as English ambassador in Paris, where he became personally acquainted with the "new Pyrrhonians" and the attempts of the rationalists to counteract them.27 In 1624 Lord Herbert published in Latin his treatise On Truth, as it is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False.28 It was in part a reply to Pyrrhonian skepticism and in part an alternative to Protestantism and Catholicism. Like the rationalists, Lord Herbert believed in innate ideas. He maintained that common to all religions were five such innate principles or common notions which did not depend on any special revelation: the existence of God; that God should be worshipped; that virtue is the chief element of worship; that repentance is a duty and that there will be rewards and punishments after this life. The book was well received, though before long Gassendi criticized its indefensible dogmatism whilst Descartes attacked it for its inadequate dogmatism. Later still John Locke denounced Lord Herbert's argument as being vague and failing to satisfy Lord Herbert's own criteria for what actually constituted a common notion. In language which echoed the vocabulary of Calvin (albeit in a hostile way), Locke complained: "It will scarce seem possible that God should engrave principles in men's minds, in words of uncertain signification, such as virtues and sins, which, amongst different men, stand for different things."29

In the meantime Lord Herbert published an enlarged edition of his book (1645) which included an explicit attack on revealed religion. The rational, generally acknowledged common notions were not simply central truths of institutional religion. They now served as a kind of launching-pad to attacking religion based on revelation. He urged that all religion should be investigated historically and be tested by the common notions. He criticized bibliolatry, and denounced the idea of an infallible church. The attack on revealed religion in the name of reason, morality and historical truth was the central theme of Deism.

Lord Herbert found few followers during his lifetime, but he had a posthumous disciple in the person of Charles Blount (1654-93). Some of his writings were little more than restatements of the thoughts of Lord Herbert and Thomas Hobbes. The tract generally attributed to Blount, Miracles No Violations of the Laws of Nature (1693), was virtually a paraphrase of Spinoza's argument in the Tractatus. But in one important respect Blount mounted a new type of attack on Christianity. Drawing on his classical learning, he used the literature of pagan antiquity, especially of the post-Christian era, in an attempt to undermine Christian claims to uniqueness. In 1680, he published The Two First Books of Phi- lostratus Concerning the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, written originally in Greek, with philological notes on each chapter. The significance of this lay in the fact that Apollonius was a reputed holy man and miracle worker who lived roughly at the same time as Jesus.

From this point onward the figure of Apollonius has repeatedly been brought forward either as an example of a holy man whose deeds seem to diminish the uniqueness of Jesus or as evidence of ancient hagiography said to exemplify tendencies at work in the New Testament. In the background is the hint of guilt by association. If Apollonius was a sham, then perhaps Jesus was too. Philostratus's work was written early in the third century A.D. at the request of the empress Julia Domna. There is reason to think that the work itself was originally intended to be anti-Christian propaganda, drawing on the stock-in-trade of historical romances of the time.30 In which case there is no real parallel at all. But this has not deterred liberal and radical theologians down to the present day from trying to make capital out of Apollonius of Tyana.

The year following Blount's death an event occurred which was to have far-reaching consequences for freedom of thought in Britain. In 1694 the Licensing Act was allowed to lapse. Although stringent libel laws remained-including the blasphemy laws which continued to be applied-the event heralded a new era of free speech which was marked by hundreds of books and pamphlets dealing with matters of religion. In Germany it took another hundred years before such freedom of expression was permitted. The first major Deistic work which availed itself of the new freedom was John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious, Showing that there is Nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, nor above it; And that No Christian Doctrine can properly be Call'd a Mystery (1696).' Toland (1670-1722) depicted Jesus as a preacher of a simple, moral religion. The so-called mysteries of Christianity were ascribed to the fateful intrusion of pagan ideas and priestcraft. In a succession of writings Toland amplified and modified his views, eventually combining them into a form of pantheism (a term which owes its currency to Toland).

While Toland's Deism was evolving in the direction of pantheism, Anthony Collins (1676-1729) was preparing to mount an attack on the foundations of traditional Christian apologetics. Collins was a younger friend of John Locke and was named trustee in Locke's will. Whereas Locke (as we shall see in the next chapter) used his empiricism to develop the traditional argument that miracles and fulfilled prophecy functioned as divine accreditation of revelation, Collins attacked the credibility of this argument.12 Already in his Discourse of Free Thinking (1713) Collins argued that people have a moral obligation to think about religious questions. He sought to meet this obligation in his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) and its sequel, The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Consider'd (1727). Collins argued that a number of key prophecies like Isaiah 7:14 (cf. Mt 1:23) and Hosea 11:1 (cf. Mt 2:15) were not originally predictions of Jesus as the Messiah. They had a fulfillment within the lifetime of the prophets who made them. Therefore, they could not be used as supernatural predictions of Jesus. The Christian use of such prophecies, Collins argued, was based on rabbinic methods of allegorical interpretation. Christianity was based on allegory, rather than on solid history. What Collins overlooked was the possibility that prophecy in the Gospels might be neither simply literal and predictive nor allegorical but typological.'

Having dealt with prophecy, Collins then announced his intention of turning to the question of miracles, thus completing the work of undermining the other pillar of the traditional apologetic argument that prophecy and miracles served as supernatural proof of Christian truthclaims. However, it fell to the erratic Cambridge scholar Thomas Woolston (1670-1727) to undertake the completion of the second half of Collins's plan.

Woolston approached the task with a history of controversy behind him. He had already been deprived of his college fellowship, and an attempt had been made to prosecute him for his heterodox writings. Woolston's stormy career reached its climax with the publication of a series of six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727-29). Each of the pamphlets was dedicated to a bishop of the Church of England. Woolston argued that the miracles could not be treated as historical events, but were allegories comparable with the allegories detected by Collins in the New Testament use of prophecy. He compared the star of Bethlehem with a will-o'-the-wisp. He complained that if Apollonius of Tyana had performed a miracle of turning water into wine, people would have reproached his memory with it. If the healing miracles were at all genuine, there must be a natural explanation. But Woolston's harshest criticism was reserved for the accounts of Jesus' resurrection, which he denounced as a romance which put him in mind of Robinson Crusoe. It was the most manifest, barefaced, most self-evident imposture "ever put upon the world." Woolston's explanation was that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, having bribed the soldiers guarding the tomb. It was not the resurrection but belief in it that was the true miracle.

Among the later Deists were Peter Annet, who wrote a series of pamphlets defending Woolston's point of view, Thomas Chubb and Thomas Morgan. However, Deism received its most authoritative statement from the pen of Matthew Tindal (1655-1733). This Oxford scholar was already past seventy when he published the work which became known as "the Bible of Deism," Christianity as Old as the Creation; or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). It was not without significance that the title was drawn from a sermon of the renowned orthodox bishop Thomas Sherlock. Similar statements abounded in the utterances of the learned divines of the day. But whereas Sherlock and his colleagues proceeded to draw inferences akin to those of Locke, Tindal inverted the argument. The gospel, he insisted, must not be made to teach anything beyond the grasp of reason and nature. Since orthodox Christianity and rational religion are not coextensive, Tindal proposed to jettison certain expendable doctrines of the former. High on the list were those of the Fall and original guilt, and the atonement. True religion consisted of moderation and of acting according to one's nature.

Unlike many armchair philosophers, Woolston became a martyr for his views. In 1729 he was tried for blasphemy by the Lord Chief justice and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £100. Unable to pay the fine, he spent the remainder of his days serving his sentence. Despite the efforts of orthodox churchmembers like Samuel Clarke to procure his release, he remained under a form of house arrest at the time of his death. A less savage, but more effective, reply came from Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761), bishop of Bangor (and later of Salisbury and London). Sherlock was one of the bishops to whom Woolston had dedicated his Discourses. Sherlock had already published his sermons replying to Collins under the title of The Use and Intent of Prophecy (1725). In his next major work he showed himself to be a kind of eighteenth-century C. S. Lewis. His Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection (1729) went through many editions both in England and on the continent of Europe.

The book reopened Woolston's case in the form of a private discussion of gentlemen of the Inns of Court. But this time it is the witnesses of the resurrection that were put in the dock. The testimony, the motives and the plausibility of the actions of the participants were subjected to close questioning. The conclusion was drawn that, whatever else they were, the disciples were sincere in their testimony. But was such testimony credible? In the case of a unique historical event it was impossible to go back in time. The only evidence was whatever happened to remain.

At this point Sherlock introduced an argument earlier put forward by John Locke." He recognized that when we try to judge the credibility of a piece of testimony, we have to ask whether it is feasible. We try to answer the question by asking whether it could happen, in other words whether it fits our understanding of the laws of nature and of the way things work. But in his summing up, the judge in Sherlock's book ruled that in this case it was not enough to appeal to "the settled course of nature." For our knowledge of nature is limited. If people living in the eighteenth century had lived all their lives in a tropical climate, they would have said that no one could walk on water. But anyone living in Northern Europe knew full well that water freezes, and if the ice is thick enough it is possible to walk on it. In the ordinary course of human experience, the dead do not come to life again. But this did not rule out the possibility of resurrection, since from our limited human perspective we just do not know what God could do. We may be right to say from our experience that resurrection is highly unlikely. But logically we are not entitled to say that it is impossible.95 In Sherlock's Tryal of the Witnesses the jury duly acquitted the apostles of giving false evidence.

Another work which belongs to the era of Deism is Handel's Messiah (1741). Handel composed the music to words based on Scripture texts, generally thought to have been selected by Charles Jennens. In its conception the work was innovative and yet at the same time deeply traditional. Handel had already set sacred themes to music, as had Bach and many other composers. The novelty lay in presenting the life and death of Christ as an oratorio, performed in music halls and secular buildings by professional singers as an entertainment. In London the work had to be advertised simply as A Sacred Oratorio. An anonymous writer in The Gospel Magazine expressed his sense of incongruity at the prospect of a performance at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden of the life and death of Jesus set to music for public entertainment with "orange wenches and whores ready as usual .1116 It was partly due to the good offices of Bishop Sherlock that the work was performed at all in London.

And yet the music and development of the theme of the Messiah was a profound reaffirmation of the Christian message in an intellectual and cultural climate which was emerging from the Deistic controversy and which was about to witness the evangelical revival. As in traditional apologetics the first part of the work begins with prophecy of the coming of Christ. But as the work progresses it becomes less and less an account of Christ's life and becomes a soul-stirring meditation on Christ's redemptive work and eternal hope.' Like the evangelical preaching of John Wesley and his contemporaries, Handel's Messiah answers skepticism with a reaffirmation of belief by addressing the heart.'

On an intellectual level there were numerous responses to Deism, but the most enduring reply of all was Joseph Butler's The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736).9 The work was written while Butler (1692-1752) was the vicar of a country parish in northern England. Later on he became bishop of Bristol, dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and bishop of Durham. In his lifetime he came to be regarded as the greatest thinker in the church; modern assessments have not overthrown that verdict. Butler refrained from dealing with his adversaries by name, but his philosophy was a response to the naturalism and skepticism in British thinking from Hobbes to Toland. The latter called him "the judicious Mr. Butler." Whereas the Deists had drawn a sharp distinction between natural and revealed religion, using the former to criticize the latter, Butler argued that there was an analogy between the two.

Today Butler's style and language sounds quaint, but his ideas are anything but quaint. In a number of ways he anticipated modern thinking. Butler drew attention to the role of probability in thought. He acknowledged that probable evidence only enables us to form approximate ideas. To an infinite intelligence everything would be certain. But human beings do not possess infinite intelligence. Therefore, for them "probability is the very guide to life."40 In saying this Butler recognized that human conclusions are at best interpretations, made by beings of limited intelligence on the basis of a limited selection of evidence, which is in turn interpreted in the light of an unknown number of hypotheses, most of which they have never examined personally. In other words, he was saying that all facts are theory laden.41 But this point applies to the skeptic no less than to the believer. Moreover, the Deists' arguments against Christianity could equally well be leveled against natural religion.

Although Butler alluded to proofs for the existence of God, his case was built on a form of presuppositionalism. He argued that the presupposition of "an intelligent Author and Governor of nature" was the necessary condition of belief in the rationality of the universe and in the genuine objectivity of moral values.42 Moreover, the Christian scheme of things was not incompatible with the obvious physical and moral facts of the world. Indeed, Christianity was able to account for the phenomena that natural religion sought to account for. But it also did more, in making human beings aware of realities which could not be discovered by reason alone.41

Butler's approach to apologetics could be described as holistic. It was an approach comparable with his picture of the network of scientific theories which together seek to give an account of the physical world. The account does not stand or fall by the discovery of a single decisive fact, but by the feasibility of the overall comprehensive picture.

Turning to the subject of miracles, Butler did not attempt to examine specific cases as Woolston had done. Instead, he reflected on the underlying philosophical issue of their probability. He observed that while scientific laws contain an element of predictability, there is a presumption of millions to one against most common facts. For example, we can predict in general that tomorrow objects that are heavier than air will fall to the ground because of the law of gravity. On the other hand, I cannot predict with anything like the same degree of certainty what I shall do tomorrow. The chances that I will drink this particular cup of coffee at breakfast rather than later are incalculable from even a moderately remote distance in time. Butler suggested that if there was a presumption against even ordinary particular events happening, the presumption against miracles happening was no greater. It was unreasonable to reject miracles before even examining the evidence for them. Moreover, if religion is able to suggest how miracles might fit into the overall pattern of God's purposes, there is even greater reason to give credence to them.

Critics of Butler's argument have claimed that Butler was confusing two types of events. They have pointed out that there is a difference between the normal range of experience which determines what kinds of events are probable and improbable, on the one hand, and claims about what is unique and without parallel in our experience, on the other hand. But Butler's defenders have replied that this was the point that Butler was making. Normal experience (which itself is incapable of making exact predictions of specific events) should not be appealed to in order to determine the possibility of reported events that are outside its range, especially in cases where our overall world view is able to give feasibility to the event in question.

As a scholar and thinker, Bishop Butler was treated with great respect in his own day. He hovered in the background of Hume's writings on religion, serving as a model for the figure of Cleanthes in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion." His thought also figured in Hume's Natural History of Religion, a work which knocked a final coffin nail into English Deism, with its reminder that savages were not enlightened Deists. But to many people today Butler is remembered most for his painful encounter with John Wesley, whom he forbade to preach in his diocese. The bishop saw Wesley as an enthusiast. He sent him away on the grounds that pretending to have extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Spirit was "a very horrid thing." But Wesley stayed, claiming that his business on earth was to do what good he could wherever he could; and at that time he thought that he could do most good in the bishop's diocese.45 Perhaps the two were talking at cross purposes. There are indications that the bishop's personal faith was nearer to Wesley's than this encounter suggests,46 and certainly Wesley did not overlook the importance of scholarship in the service of the gospel.47 But clearly Wesley and Butler had different vocations. In his youth Butler had confessed to Dr. Samuel Clarke: "I design the search for truth as the business of my life." He was, in the words of Ian T. Ramsey, "a proper prelate for the age of reason; for he laboured to establish the conviction of the reasonableness of Christianity."48

The English Deists were never more than a handful of individual writers who were united by their hostile attacks on institutional Christianity in the name of natural, reasonable religion. By the 1750s they were virtually an extinct breed. Their ideas, however, took root in fields far and wide. The most pervasive of all was the idea that the supernatural cannot be admitted as a factor in history. This idea lay behind the Deists' attacks on prophecy and miracles in the New Testament. It gave impetus to the belief that the real, historical Jesus was radically different from the Christ depicted in the pages of the New Testament. It was a thought which (as we shall see in our final chapter) helped to launch the so-called quest of the historical Jesus.

In the meantime, nearer home, an Anglican scholar by the name of Conyers Middleton published a book on early church history. He entitled it A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are Supposed to have Subsisted in the Christian Church, from the Earliest Ages through Several Successive Centuries (1748).49 It was a detailed study which worked its way through Christian writers from the close of the New Testament period down to the fifth century. He noted that in case after case Christian writers of repute did not claim to have performed miracles themselves. Often it was a case of knowing someone who knew someone else who testified to a miracle. Middleton made fun of miracles stories connected with the bones and relics of the saints which wrought greater wonders than the saints themselves during their lifetime. But underlying everything was the concerted attempt to replace supernatural explanations by natural explanations. It may have been something of an exaggeration when David Hume remarked that all England was in a ferment on account of the book. But at any rate John Wesley felt that Middleton had contrived to "overthrow the whole Christian system," for the main arguments that Middleton had deployed against the church fathers could well have been turned against the New Testament.50

Scarcely more than a quarter of a century after Middleton's work there appeared the first of six volumes of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88). It was a work written in much the same spirit as Middleton's Free Inquiry, Hume's essay "Of Miracles" and the Deists' critique of the supernatural. There was, however, one important difference. Gibbon did not attack the miraculous element in Christianity directly. Instead, he chose to mock it with elegant irony in passages like the following:

The supernatural gifts, which even in this life were ascribed to the Christians above the rest of mankind, must have conduced to their own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. Besides the occasional prodigies, which might sometimes be effected by the immediate interposition of the Deity when he suspended the laws of nature in the service of religion, the Christian church, from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophesy, the power of expelling daemons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead. The knowledge of foreign languages was frequently communicated to the contemporaries of Irenaeus, though himself was left to struggle with the difficulties of a barbarous dialect, whilst he preached the gospel to the natives of Gaul.51

Underlying this whole approach to history were three basic assumptions. First was the assumption that sacred history must be treated no differently from secular history. The same criteria and methods must be used for both. Second is the assumption that there must be an analogy between the types of events which happen now and the types of events which happened in the past. Our understanding of the way in which things happen now is the measure of how things happened in the past. Moreover, what does not fit our understanding may safely be discarded as myth, falsehood or pious fabrication. Third is the assumption that history consists of a network of homogeneous events which may be described in terms of finite causes and effects. They became part and parcel of the way of doing secular history and also biblical studies in later ages.52 They came to the fore in the era of Deism.

The impact of Deism on thought in America and Europe was deeper and broader than anything experienced in Britain. In America Deism achieved status and influence thanks partly to the reputation and vigor of its advocates and partly to the appeal of its political implications. The Deistic repudiation of institutional religion chimed in with the philosophy of those leaders of the revolution who sought to separate church and state by establishing the Constitution of the United States on rational, secular principles. In Europe leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, like Voltaire in France and Reimarus in Germany, were well acquainted with the writings of the English Deists.53 English Deism gave renewed vigor to the skepticism which dated back to the sixteenth century. When looked at more closely, the religion of the Enlightenment was none other than Deism in slightly different dress. But these are issues which we shall deal with in our final chapters.

In philosophy the term empiricism stands above all for a British movement which emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which challenged the rationalism of Descartes and his successors on the continent of Europe. It is linked with the names of three thinkers, an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman: Locke, Berkeley and Hume.' There are a number of oddities and ironies in the situation. None of the three were professional philosophers. Locke had a medical degree, though he did not practice medicine as a profession. He spent much of his time in diplomatic and public service. Berkeley was a bishop of the Anglican Church. Hume twice failed in bids to obtain chairs of philosophy in Scotland. He held a variety of positions, but in his lifetime he owed his fame and fortune to his now-no-longer-read History of England.

Another irony of the situation is the fact that the term empiricism, as a description of the style of doing philosophy associated with Locke, Berkeley and Hume, did not become current until after their time. Initially, it carried with it negative overtones, associated with the empirical school of medicine in the ancient world. The empirics confined themselves to observation and remedies which worked. They were skeptical of general, theoretical explanations. With the revival of interest in the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the sixteenth century, the term was linked with skepticism. The Greek word empeiria means "experience" and the adjective empeiros means "skilled." But by the sixteenth century "empirical" was already being contrasted with "scientific," and it degenerated into a term of abuse as an alternative to charlatan or quack.

In the narrower, philosophical sense of the term (as a style of doing philosophy from Locke onwards), empiricism has a negative and a positive side. Negatively, empiricism rejects the rationalist view that the mind is furnished with a range of ideas and perceptions which owe nothing to experience. The positive side to this is the doctrine that all knowledge depends upon experience which comes to us via the senses. Statements (apart from those of logic) can be known to be true only from experience.

In a broader sense, empiricism was part of a tradition which went back for centuries. Kant regarded Aristotle as "the chief of the empiricists, " and saw Locke as a latter-day follower of Aristotle.2 What they had in common was the attempt to derive "all concepts and principles from experience." However, Kant found fault in them for trying to go beyond experience, bounded by time and space, by attempting to prove such metaphysical ideas as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Kant found Epicurus more consistent, insofar as he did not attempt to draw inferences beyond the limits of experience.

In the sense that Thomas Aquinas rejected the rational deductive approach of Anselm in favor of an Aristotelian emphasis on reflection on the basis of observation, Aquinas could be said to have had an empirical approach. However, empiricism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was more closely related to the rise of science in England with its stress on observation, experiment and inductive reasoning.' This approach was pioneered by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the essayist, orator, lawyer and amateur philosopher-scientist. In the course of his colorful career Bacon rose to the position of Lord Chancellor only to fall in disgrace amid charges of corruption. Alexander Pope described him as "the brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind."' Bacon died in the depths of winter following a chill caught as a result of an experiment. He had the idea that flesh might be preserved through preserving it in snow just as well as by the then customary method of preserving it in salt. He obtained a hen which he proceeded to stuff with snow. But the experiment brought on the fatal chill.

The episode characterizes his approach to knowledge as set out in works like the Novum Organum (1620), a title which recalls Aristotle's Organon. Bacon tried to improve existing notions of scientific method. He argued that induction was not simply a matter of enumeration. Syllogistic logic was not a means of empirical discovery. It served rather as an aid to show what could be deduced from what was already known. Bacon stressed the need to check generalizations by looking for "negative instances." He believed that scientific laws were established on the basis of observation, but went beyond Aristotle in his insistence on the need to test conclusions by examining possible counter-instances. In so doing, he recognized that the laws of nature could never be conclusively verifiable, for perfect induction is possible only in cases where complete access is possible to a limited subject. On the other hand, Bacon appreciated the importance of testing conclusions by trying to falsify them by means of conducting experiments to show that they were wrong. Bacon also discussed what he called the "idols of the mind" which were persistent beliefs and opinions which stood in the way of knowledge.

Bacon brought prestige to the study of the natural world, and began a process which was continued by King Charles II's patronage of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge.' In its early years many of the leading figures in the Royal Society were also prominent clergy of the Church of England. Among the leading lay scientists were Sir Isaac Newton, who served as president from 1703 until his death in 1727 and Robert Boyle (1627-92), whose memory is preserved in the immortal phrase "the father of chemistry and son of the Earl of Cork." Boyle's book The Sceptical Chemist (1661) divorced chemistry from alchemy by repudiating the still prevalent Greek view of the four elements. Boyle insisted that the nature of material substances must be based on experimental evidence. His view was summed up in the motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in Verba, which conveys the idea of being bound to nothing by mere authority.' Boyle was also a student of Scripture and a devout believer. In his will he left the sum of £50 a year for a series of lectures against unbelievers to be delivered in a London church-the "Boyle lectures."

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)' was a slightly junior contemporary and friend ofJohn Locke. Isaac Newton was educated at Grantham Grammar School, where he followed in the footsteps of Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist and inveterate opponent of Hobbes's materialism. More spent most of his career as a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1661 Newton entered nearby Trinity College, where he was elected a Fellow in 1667. In his student notebooks Newton referred to "the excellent Dr. More." More was, in fact, one of the first Englishmen to appreciate Descartes. He was also, like Cudworth, an early member of the Royal Society.

Although the Cambridge Platonists believed in the rational structure of the world, they were generally ill-equipped in mathematics and lacked the scientific competence to develop a scientific case for their theism. It was otherwise with Isaac Barrow, the Greek scholar and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, and his pupil at Trinity College, Isaac Newton. Barrow, who had strong affinities with the Cambridge Platonists, had made Trinity College the center of mathematics at Cambridge. In 1669 Barrow resigned his chair in favor of his pupil, Newton. As an ordained clergyman, Barrow felt the call to devote himself to the ministry of the gospel. He went on to become a famous preacher, and eventually became Master of Trinity College. In the meantime, Newton began to emerge as the leading scientist of the age. In 1694 he moved to London, and was appointed Master of the Mint in 1699. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705. He had been a member of the Royal Society since 1672, and was its president until his death in 1727.

Newton's scientific achievements include the formulation of the laws of motion and gravitation, the discovery (apparently coincidentally with Leibniz) of differential calculus, and the first correct analysis of white light. Newton's laws of motion helped to establish the mechanical view of the universe which dominated physics down to modern times. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) gave an account not only of the motion of bodies on the earth but throughout the universe. Newton's views raised big questions for theology. Where did God fit into this mechanistic world? Newton himself believed that his theory of universal gravitation supported belief in a deity, whom he described in the preface to his Principia Mathematica as "the most perfect mechanic of all." Newton believed that time and space had an absolute fixed character.' Thus whatever happens in space and time is determined by the characteristics of space and time. But Newton rejected the idea that the world was the body of God or a way of thinking about God (in the manner of Spinoza). Newton thought of infinite space as the divine sensorium in which God perceives his creatures.'

Newton's view of the laws of nature pointed him to the divine lawgiver. He supposed that such irregularities that could not be explained in terms of laws were due to the direct intervention of God. Newton's views of God's relationship with the world brought him into conflict with Leibniz. The latter complained that Newton's view was like a watch which needed to be wound up, cleaned and repaired every so often. He felt that such a view reflected badly on a God who lacked the foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Leibniz himself preferred to think of "the same force and vigor" always remaining in the world, passing perpetually from one part to another in accordance with the laws of nature and "the beautiful pre-established order." To Newton's defender, the Anglican divine Samuel Clarke, this view smacked of materialism and fate. It seemed to exclude God's providential care and concern which-far from being a diminution-was "the true glory of his workmanship.""

Sir Isaac Newton was deeply interested in theological questions. Newton's Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John were published posthumously in 1733. Other theological writings were not published until modern times."

Newton's private papers reveal a mind of considerable theological learning. Newton had a high regard for the Bible, but questioned some points of the church's creeds. He believed "that religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy nor philosophical opinions into religion." "What cannot be understood," he remarked, "is no object of belief. 1112

Newton's scientific work posed major questions for philosophy. What sort of philosophy was appropriate for the science of the eighteenth century? Descartes's thought provided a stimulus, but Newton found in him much to criticize. He saw his own method as empirical and inductive. The British empirical philosophers took up the task of working out the philosophical implications of Newtonian science. The common agenda was dictated by the question of knowledge. But the answers they gave were wildly contradictory. This was true not only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but also of nineteenth-century thinkers like J. S. Mill, and twentieth-century followers of the empiricist tradition like Bertrand Russell and the Logical Positivists. The first major philosopher to undertake this task was John Locke.

John Locke (1632-1704)' was the son of a small country land-owner and lawyer. He went up to Oxford when Puritanism was in its heyday and the university was under the vice-chancellorship of the great John Owen. Among other things Locke studied medicine and was eventually awarded an M.D. John Locke was also a semi-public figure. But in the last years of the Stuart monarchy he found it prudent to live in Holland, and did not return until after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. While in Holland he enjoyed the company of Dutch Arminian theologians, and had the time and leisure to complete his major philosophical treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), and his first Letter on Toleration (1689). Locke subsequently published further letters on the same subject, and treatises on education and civil government. The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) was followed by the posthumous Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1705-7) and A Discourse of Miracles (1706). In his later years Locke served as a Commissioner of Trade in London, living with the Masham family in Essex. He was a member of the Anglican Church. On his deathbed Lady Masham (the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist) read psalms to him.

Locke was the most brilliant creative thinker of his age. His thought embraced the new science, political theory and Christian theology in a creative synthesis which re-examined the philosophical basis of thought in these areas. His solutions to contemporary questions sought to reaffirm Christian thinking, while addressing the political and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century.

Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) justified the revolution of 1688 which deposed King James II and brought William of Orange to the English throne. Locke was nineteen years old when Hobbes's Leviathan was published. His Two Treatises of Government were not directed against Hobbes, but against Hobbes's contemporary, Sir Robert Filmer, who shared some of the latter's absolutist views on government." Sir Robert, who died a prisoner in 1653 during the the English Civil War, had been an ardent defender of the divine right of kings. His Patriarcha; or the Natural Power of Kings had been composed in the 1630s and circulated privately in manuscript form. Its publication in 1680 kept alive his views, and prompted Locke's response.

Sir Robert insisted that it was unnatural for the people to govern or choose governors. He ridiculed the idea of a society based on a social contract, and rhetorically asked how an assembly convened for the purpose of making a universal contract could make a valid vote. What about the rights of women, servants, children, the sick and those who were either absent or not granted a vote? Sir Robert's alternative view purported to represent the teaching of Scripture. Every individual, he argued, is bound to obey absolutely a country's established political authority, because that authority enjoys by divine decree the powers conferred upon Adam at creation. Sir Robert also believed that society was hierarchically ordered, with males superior to females. Property and political power were distributed in accordance with the patriarchal decrees of the Old Testament, and belonged absolutely to the person who inherited them.

Locke's Two Treatises of Government rejected the absolutist views of Hobbes and Filmer in favor of a democratic view of government. He vindicated the overthrow of the Stuart kings by appealing both to natural law and to the teaching of Scripture. Filmer's argument was nothing but an argument for slavery, and his reasoning was a mere "rope of sand." Locke dismissed as "glib nonsense" the idea of the hereditary kingship of Adam and its imagined descent to modern rulers.

Locke pointed out that not even Adam had absolute rights. In any case, no existing ruler (least of all the English kings) could trace his claims to sovereignty back to Adam. In place of this view Locke put forward his theory of the social contract. In order to preserve the rights and order mandated by the law of nature, civil governments were instituted in accordance with an implied social contract. The contract is not between the ruler and the ruled but between all free persons. Its purpose is to preserve the lives, freedom and property of all, as they belong to all under natural law. If persons, such as monarchs, try to get absolute power, they put themselves in a state of war with the people. If no redress can be found, the people may resort to revolt. The aim of such a rev olution is not to return to the state of nature, but to establish a new and just government.

In the course of time Filmer's Patriarcha and Locke's reply to it in his First Treatise ceased to be read, except by historians. But Locke's Second Treatise, which set out his political theory, became one of the seminal works which shaped the course of history. In Britain it helped to establish the constitutional monarchy which has been the keystone of British government from Locke's day to the present. In America and France it played a significant part in the political thinking behind the great revolutions of the eighteenth century. Its ideas were formative in the minds of many who attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and who took part in the framing of the American Constitution.

In his student days the brand of philosophy taught at Oxford was scholastic Aristotelianism. To Locke it seemed to be confused by obscure terms and useless questions, and had little to do with the discovery of truth. The reading of Descartes was like a breath of fresh air. With the rationalists Locke could insist that "reason must be our last judge and guide in everything."15 Locke valued the importance of "clear and distinct ideas."" Like the Cambridge Platonists, Locke regarded reason as "the candle of the Lord."" But, although human beings are endowed with reason, Locke rejected the rationalist idea that the mind had stamped on it from birth certain primary, self-evident notions.18 He likewise repudiated the idea, found in Cicero by Calvin and his followers, that human beings have a sense of the deity inscribed on their hearts.i9 Instead, Locke pictured the mind as a blank which received all its impressions from outside. In his characteristic seventeenth-century rhetoric Locke propounded his thesis that experience is the source of all knowledge. Or, to be more precise, all ideas come from sensation or reflection on sensation.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.20

In other words, what we know is either ideas (impressions in the mind derived from sense-experience of "yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities"21) or the mind's own reflections on them.22 From this Locke drew the conclusions that the human mind "hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does and can contemplate,"23 and that "knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas."24

In arguing this, Locke was advancing what is sometimes called the representative theory of knowledge. The mind itself has no direct knowledge of the outside world, for it is never able to by-pass the senses, upon which it gets to work. The senses represent the world outside us to the mind, and the mind provides an interpretation. In propounding this theory of knowledge Locke set the agenda for generations to come. Later philosophers would question Locke's use of the word idea. The term had a long and venerable use dating back to Plato's and classical philosophy. But Locke's use was poles apart from Plato's. Whereas Plato saw Ideas or Forms as the eternal models or archetypes of things in the world, to Locke ideas were sense data occasioned by experience. Locke's theory pointed critics like Hume and Kant in the direction of skepticism. But to Locke himself this theory of knowledge was part of a larger structure which linked everyday knowledge with scientific knowledge and the knowledge of God.

Locke distinguished faith from reason. He defined the latter as: the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has got by the use of its natural faculties, viz. by sensation or reflection. Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any proposition not thus made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication. This way of discovering truths to men we call revelation. 25

A page or two previously Locke had laid down the further distinction between that which was according to reason, that which was above and that which was contrary to reason.

1. According to reason, are such propositions whose truth we can discover, by examining and tracing those ideas we have from sensation and reflection; and by natural deduction find to be true or probable.

2. Above reason, are such propositions whose truth or probability we cannot by reason derive from those principles.

3. Contrary to reason, are such propositions as are inconsistent with, or irreconcilable to, our clear and distinct ideas. Thus the existence of one God is according to reason; the existence of more than one God contrary to reason; the resurrection of the dead, above rea- son.26

Thinkers may disagree as to what should be put into these three pigeonholes. I myself would want to qualify further what I mean by reason and being reasonable. An idea is reasonable if we can demonstrate it logically beforehand. An idea may also be called reasonable if it is warranted by experience. It may be that it contains implications which have not been fathomed or that we are incapable of examining at the moment. Nevertheless, if observation and experience warrant the conclusion, the idea may be said to be reasonable. It is in this sense Locke held that the existence of God is according to reason. But there are many aspects of the Christian faith which, as Locke points out, are above reason. Locke's method was to accept such items on the basis of authority which he had established by reason.

Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, the Fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties; Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God.27

What Locke was doing here was to combine the traditional apologetic approach, which stressed fulfilled prophecy and miracles as divine attestation of Christian truth claims, with his empirical approach to knowledge. The argument is summed up in the Discourse of Miracles: "Where the miracle is admitted, the doctrine cannot be rejected; it comes with the assurance of a divine attestation to him that allows the miracle, and he cannot question its truth."28 In taking up this position Locke was adopting a form of foundationalism which argued that there had to be a rational foundation for belief. Acceptance of divine revelation was rational because there were rational grounds for believing that the revelation (understood in terms of unverifiable propositions) had come from God. If we cannot verify the propositions themselves because they are above reason, we can at least verify the credentials of their source. It was therefore important to Locke to be able to identify divinely wrought miracles as historical events. Accordingly, he defined a miracle as "a sensible operation, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and in his opinion contrary to the established course of nature, is taken by him to be divine."29

Locke was well aware of the problems that belief in miracles raised for the educated mind in the world of Newtonian physics. His definition of a miracle involves an element of inference. The spectator does not actually see God act directly as the cause of the miracle. What is seen is one state of affairs before the miracle and another after it. The spectator observes effects and infers a divine cause. Locke's position allowed for mistakes and differences of interpretation. Locke recognized that one person might regard an event as miraculous, while another saw the same event as an ordinary occurrence. He was also aware of the counterargument that raised doubts about Christian truth-claims associated with miracles by drawing attention to miracles in other religions.

Locke's response to all this was to point out that in some religions, like Islam, truth-claims were not linked with miracles, while in polytheistic religions truth-claims were not a burning issue. In the case of Jesus' miracles it was not any single miracle that provided conclusive evidence. It was rather the cumulative effect of them. Moreover, miracles should not be treated as isolated events designed to impress by their sheer stupendous character.

For this reason Locke further qualified his definition of a miracle by making three further stipulations.S° (1) No mission supported by a miracle which detracts from the honor of God or is "inconsistent with natural religion and the rules of morality" can be regarded as divine. (2) God cannot be expected to perform miracles in order to attest something trivial or inform people about things which can be discovered by the use of their natural faculties. (3) Genuine miracles are not trivial events, but are events which exhibit the over-ruling power of God in connection with the revelation of "supernatural truths relative to the glory of God, and some great concern of men."

Examination of Locke's position shows that Locke recognized the importance of contexts. He did not value miracles for their abnormality but for their supernatural character which was congruent with what could be known about God from other sources. The miracle thus has to be feasible as an act of God. It also had to be feasible-even if incomprehensible-as a physical act. A miracle could be contrary to experience, but our limited experience can only help to determine the degree of probability within the context of that experience. The point is illustrated by Locke's story of the King of Siam and the Dutch ambassador.' The ambassador told the king that in his country people could walk on water. Even an elephant could do so. The king replied: "Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I look upon you as a sober fair man; but now I am sure you lie." What the king could not appreciate, because he had no experience of it, was the fact that in European winters water can freeze and become ice. If reports of miracles are judged solely by normal experience of the non-miraculous, one would have to say that they are so improbable that the report is more likely to be mistaken than that the event in question actually happened. But if miracles belong to a wider context which enables the accounts of them to be seen as manifestations of God's power and grace, the dynamics of the argument are significantly changed. They remain incomprehensible, but they become feasible within the wider context.

The argument from miracles figures again in The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures, where Locke saw Jesus' miracles as a fulfillment of messianic expectation (John 7:31).32 Here it is set in the context of Locke's apologetic for what today might be called the Christian world view. Locke's work is a theological rationale for the Christian belief in the restoration of humankind from its fallen condition by Jesus Christ. God has dealt with human beings "as a compassionate and tender Father." He has given them "reason and with it a law, that could not be otherwise than what reason should dictate." But con sidering the frailty of human beings, God "promised a deliverer, whom in his good time he sent; and then declared to all mankind, that whoever would believe in him to be the Saviour promised, and take him now raised from the dead, and constituted Lord and judge of all men, to be their King and Ruler, should be saved.""

The Christian faith was not just an intellectual system for Locke. It was a source of hope, renewal and meaning in life. Nevertheless, it was related to a connected system of beliefs which, as a system, were reasonable and could readily be grasped by anyone. The Christian church was not a kind of "Academy or Lycaeum" which admitted only those capable of following abstruse arguments. The truth of the gospel was "plain and intelligible," capable of being grasped by "the bulk of mankind," including the illiterate laborer and humble plowman. In addition, for Locke miracles were not the foundation of belief in God. They had a part to play in establishing the truth-claims of special revelation.

In the last chapter we saw how the Deists attacked those claims. We shall presently see how David Hume carried on this assault. In both cases the issue at stake was not simply the theoretical possibility of miracles. Underlying all the arguments was the deeper question of the truth of Christianity as a whole. On this issue Locke himself stood at the parting of the ways. Locke was an advocate of rational religion. He had developed an empirical case for the rationality of the belief system of the Christian religion which was in tune with the scientific, empirical attitude of the age. At the same time he maintained his connection with the Anglican Church. Nevertheless, some of his readers, like the country parson John Edwards and the Bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet, detected in Locke's writings a position which came suspiciously close to Unitarianism. Locke evidently believed in God, but what sort of a God did he really believe in? Different readers gave different answers. Some thought that his approach supported belief in the deity of Christ and the divine Trinity, while others concluded that his views fell short of these beliefs. In the years that followed his death Locke's writings provided a legacy of ammunition for both believers and skeptics.

The truth of Christian beliefs and the nature of reality were questions which received novel and ingenious answers from George Berkeley (1685-1753).54 Berkeley was born in Ireland and entered Trinity College, Dublin when he was fifteen. By 1707 he had become a fellow of the college, where he lectured intermittently on Greek, Hebrew and divinity. As a student, Berkeley had studied Locke and the French philosophertheologian, Nicholas Malebranche. The latter had developed his own form of Cartesian philosophy which proved to be both a rival and a stimulus to the philosophies developed by Locke, Berkeley and the next generation of British thinkers .35

Most of Berkeley's philosophical writing was done in his twenties during the tenure of his fellowship at Trinity College. His Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) was a discussion of how we perceive objects. It was shortly followed by A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). The latter, which was intended as a semi-popular version of the Principles, revived the classical dialogue form of Platonic philosophy. The names of the central characters were also evocative of the world of ancient Greece. Philonous (as its Greek derivation suggests) is the "lover of mind," while Hylas is the materialist. Some twenty years later, while the Deistic controversy was at its height, Berkeley published yet another dialogue in the classical mold as a reply to skepticism, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732).

In the meantime, Berkeley's career had taken several turns. In 1724 he had become Dean of Derry. It was a position he continued to occupy for ten years, though he never actually took up residence there. In the 1720s Berkeley was preoccupied with a project to found a missionary college in Bermuda. He sailed to Newport, Rhode Island, with a collection of books intended for the college library. However, he never set foot on Bermuda. Government funds he had counted on never materialized. He did, however, make contact with the American philosopher Samuel Johnson, who taught at Yale and who became the first president of King's College (later renamed Columbia University). While on Rhode Island, Berkeley wrote his Alciphron.

When the failure of the missionary project became evident, Berkeley donated his collection of books to Yale College and sailed back across the Atlantic. In 1734 he became Bishop of Cloyne, where he devoted his energies to the work of the church and the alleviation of the economic plight of the people. In his later years he earned a reputation as advocate of the virtues of tar-water as a remedy for a wide range of ills from indigestion to smallpox.

Berkeley's philosophical reputation rests upon his unique form of empiricism. It was inspired by Newton and Locke (both of whom Berkeley greatly admired), but at the same time was critical of them. Berkeley's criticism is already hinted at in the full title which he gave to his major work on the theory of knowledge. He called it A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired into.

The root error which Berkeley detected in the scientific thought of his day concerned matter. The Newtonian world depicted space and time as the containers of material objects. To Berkeley, the Newtonian account was unsatisfactory. It seemed to lend support to the idea of the independent existence of corporeal matter, which Berkeley perceived to be "the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreli- gion."36

Moreover, Locke's account of knowledge failed to redress the situation. According to Locke's representative theory of perception, material objects are perceived mediately by means of ideas. The mind does not perceive the material object directly, but only through the medium of the ideas formed by the senses and reflection on them. To Berkeley, this presented a problem. If we know only our ideas, we can never be sure whether any of them are really like the material qualities of objects, since we can never compare the ideas with them." Indeed, how is it possible to answer skepticism on such a view?'8 In any case, Locke's position failed to deal adequately with the nature of matter. Berkeley thought that a better explanation was called for. Locke was like a man trying to see things through a mist.99 He had failed to explain the nature of the reality perceived by our senses. In fact, Locke had failed to do justice to common sense. According to Berkeley, common sense told people that neither ideas nor objects had any existence apart from minds which perceive them.49

If Berkeley was opposed to Locke's form of empiricism, he was even more opposed to rationalist metaphysics. In his notebooks Berkeley wrote a memorandum to himself: "To be eternally banishing Metaphis- ics &c & recalling Men to Common Sense."" Over and over again Berkeley's starting point is his analysis of the act of perception. The Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous concludes with Philonous pointing to a fountain rising into the air and falling down in accordance with the principle of gravitation. `Just so," he observes, "the same principles which at first view lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense."42

The common-sense view that Philonous had in mind was not any new notion. He thought of it as an endeavor "only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth, which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of the opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that the things immediately perceived, are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which two notions put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance.""

Early on in his Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley formulated both the problem and his answer in the following manner:

The table that I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say that it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.... For as to what is said about the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seem perfectly unintelligible. Their else is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence, out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them 44

With this statement we are introduced to Berkeley's central doctrine which is summed up in the Latin formula: esse est aut percipi aut percipere ("To be is either to be perceived or to perceive").45 Berkeley came to this doctrine as the result of his analysis of what it means to say that something exists.

But if to exist is either to be perceived in some way (that is, by being seen, heard, touched, smelt or thought), what happens when we are not around to perceive things? Do they cease to exist? Berkeley has already anticipated the question in his example of the table in his study. The table still exists, when he (or for that matter, another human being) is not around to see it, because it is seen by some spirit. Ultimately the only spirit capable of holding the universe in being by perceiving it simultaneously is God. In the Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous the question is asked and answered in the following way:

HYLAS. Not so fast, Philonous: you say you cannot conceive how sensible things should exist without mind. Do you not?

PHILONOUS. I do.

HYLAS. Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible, that things perceivable by sense may still exist?

PHILONOUS. I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny sensible things an existence out of mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is then some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true, with regard to all other finite created spirits; it necessarily follows, there is an omnipresent eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules as he hath himself ordained, and are by us termed the Laws of Nature.46

With this single bold master-stroke, Berkeley had redefined the concept of matter and demonstrated the existence of God. If Berkeley's notion of matter is accepted, the existence of God necessarily follows. Moreover, Berkeley's view makes matter dependent upon being perceived by God, and thus he solves the age-old problem of whether matter is eternal.

Berkeley's argument has been captured in more modern terms by Ronald Knox in his pair of limericks about a student who was puzzled by Berkeley's view of matter as dependent upon the perceiver."'

There was a young man who said, "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY

Dear Sir:

Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by

Yours faithfully,

God.

From Berkeley's day to our own, Berkeley's teaching has been seen as a denial of matter. A decade after his death the issue was the focus of a memorable incident involving Dr. Samuel Johnson. One day after visiting a church where they had spent some time in prayer, James Boswell found himself discussing with Dr. Johnson the Bishop Berkeley's "ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal." Boswell recalls how

I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I shall never forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till it rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."48

In point of fact, Dr. Johnson's action was not a refutation of Berkeley's claim, for on Berkeley's view the Doctor's act could be construed as an action perceived by the Doctor's mind. Berkeley had already anticipated such a move by his claim that "nothing properly but persons i.e. conscious things do exist, all other things are not so much existences as manners of the existence of persons."49 Dr. Johnson's response was more an expression of his conviction that the bishop could not be right.

Today Berkeley is generally recognized as a brilliant philosopher who proposed some ingenious answers to the questions of his time. Tribute is given him for his insight into the part played by the perceiving subject in the way we think of things. The nature of matter continues to be debated by both scientists and philosophers. Bertrand Russell's definition of matter as "what satisfies the equations of physics"" is in some respects a modification of the position of Berkeley. The continued pro duction of learned studies of Berkeley is testimony to the esteem in which his thought is held. Nevertheless, philosophers continue to discuss the possibility of hidden fallacies lurking in Berkeley's teaching. Granted that I with my finite mind can perceive objects, but how do I know that they are the same objects you perceive? How do we know that they are the same objects that God perceives? Berkeley stopped short of the view held by Malebranche that what we perceive are the ideas of God. He preferred to think that God willed that people should have these ideas, but they were not God's eternal perception of them.51 But if so, do we not end up with something like a Platonic dichotomy between the world of pure ideas (God's) and the world of corporeal ideas (ours)?

To critics of empiricism, like E. L. Mascall, the line of thought begun by Locke and continued by Berkeley makes the objects of our perceptions hollow.52 On this view, what we perceive with our senses is sense data. But what lies behind sense data? When we talk about reality are we talking about anything more than a series of hypothetical constructions that we place on our sense experience? The representative theory of knowledge seems to put us on a path which leads to solipsism, the view that the only knowledge possible is the knowledge of ourselves and our perceptions. There is no way of getting outside this. For we cannot stand outside ourselves and the data provided by our senses. We have no way of showing that things or people have any existence independent of our minds. On the other hand, however relentless the logic of this line of thought appears to be, no one actually appears to believe it. The solipsist who tries to convince anyone of the truth of his position implicitly denies the truth of what he professes to believe. Although Berkeley put forward his philosophy in the name of common sense, he was in fact repudiating the common sense distinction between the existence of objects and our perception of them.

Berkeley's view collapses objects into sensation. E. L. Mascall suggests that the problems posed by Berkeley's philosophy would have been avoided if sense datum had not been treated as the direct object of perception but as the indirect object through which the intellect perceives intelligible reality outside itself. Contrasting his own approach with that of the empiricists, Mascall writes:

Now against this assumption I wish to put forward the view, which has a very reputable ancestry though its existence has been ignored by most modern philosophers, that the non-sensory or intellectual element in perception does not consist simply of inference, but of apprehension. According to this view, there is (at any rate normally, for we are not at the moment concerned with mystical experience) no perception without sensation, but the sensible particular (the senseobject or sense-datum or, as the scholastics would say, the sensible species) is not the terminus of perception, not the objectum quod [object which], to use another scholastic phrase, but the objectum quo [object through which], through which the intellect grasps, in a direct but mediate activity, the intelligible extramental reality, which is the real thing.53

What Mascall is advocating here is a Thomistic form of empiricism which leads to a critical realism that seeks to do justice to ordinary experience, modern science and religion. It is a philosophy which avoids the pitfalls of the skeptical empiricism propounded by David Hume.

Of all the British philosophers none has been more discussed than David Hume (1711-76).' Certainly no British philosopher has been more controversial. Whether he was truly great or whether he was (in the words of A. E. Taylor) merely a "very clever man"2 is a question that continues to be argued over. The answers that people give to this question depend on their own philosophical standpoint. In life and in death Hume continued to provide puzzles. The standard view of Hume sees him as pushing empiricism to its logical limits and showing its inherent skeptical consequences. Yet a recent commentator rejects this on the grounds that Hume "hardly seems to have thought about the foundations of this view at all."' Certainly Hume was committed to a form of empiricism, but he also had firsthand knowledge of Continental skepticism. In some respects Hume was an eighteenth-century Epicurean,' who was broadly empirical, skeptical about human knowledge, but determined to enjoy life. His writings give the impression of an author at pains to present himself as a reasonable man. But they leave behind the feeling of arbitrariness. Having opened Pandora's box of skepticism in the interests of attacking religion and rival philosophies, Hume found that he could not close it. In the end, he had to fall back on "nature" and make a virtue out of the necessities of his skepticism.

To us in the twentieth century it may seem strange that one of the ablest philosophers of all times twice failed in his bids to obtain professorships. But this has to be seen against the background of the times. Hume may have been an engaging dinner guest and a convivial companion for an evening of argument. In appointing men of lesser talents to the chairs of philosophy at Edinburgh and Glasgow, the authorities knew well what they were doing. They had no desire to appoint a skeptic and an infidel to a teaching position in universities where Christianity was still the official religion. They were not the only ones who did not appreciate Hume. A contemporary observed that "the Corpulence of his whole Person was far better fitted to communicate the Idea of a Turtleeating Alderman than of a refined Philosopher."5 However, the same writer went on to excuse Hume's unphilosophical appearance, consoling himself with the thought that "the Oracles of old were often delivered by a Stick or a Stone." In the brief account of My Own Life that Hume compiled shortly before his death, Hume described himself as "a man of mild Dispositions, of Command of Temper, of an open, social, and cheerful Humour, capable of Attachment, but little susceptible of Enmity, and of great Moderation in all my Passions. Even my Love of literary Fame, my ruling Passion, never soured my humour, notwithstanding my frequent Disappointments."6

Hume did achieve literary fame, though not in his lifetime, for his philosophical writings. His early career was, to say the least, checkered. He entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of twelve, and left some two or three years later though without taking a degree. He tried studying law, but soon gave up the attempt. He tried his hand in business, but gave up after a few months. He then went to France, where he eventually settled in the small town of La Fleche in Anjou. It was at the Jesuit College at La Fleche that Descartes had received his education over a century earlier. La Fleche was still a center of Cartesianism. The philosophy and the theology of the Jesuit fathers, the ample library of the college and the leisure that Hume enjoyed at La Fleche, provided the stimulus and the occasion for Hume to work on his Treatise of Human Nature' which he published anonymously in 1739 on his return to England.

It was at La Fleche that Hume first propounded his argument against miracles while in conversation with a learned Jesuit about a miracle said to have happened at the college. The Jesuit replied that Hume's objections would apply equally to the Gospel miracles. To this Hume acknowledged that they did." The argument was not as original as many have supposed.' The main points had already been aired in the course of the Deist controversy. Hume had intended to include his argument on miracles in his Treatise. However, he was dissuaded from doing so on the grounds that its controversial character would damage his reputation. He eventually inserted it in his Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1748) which were republished in 1758 under the title An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.10

In the meantime Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, which eventually became a classic work of philosophy, proved to be a disappointment to its author. As Hume observed in later life, "Never literary Attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of human nature. It fell dead-born from the Press; without reaching such distinction as even to excite a Murmur among the Zealots."" For a time Hume earned his living by serving as a tutor to the mentally unstable Marquess of Annandale. This was followed by a term as secretary to General St. Clair on a military expedition to Brittany and a diplomatic mission in Turin. During this period Hume donned the uniform of an officer which did little to enhance his appearance. Attributing the failure of the Treatise to its literary form, Hume resolved to recast the argument and publish it in the volume now known as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This time he included the essay on miracles. But Hume's second major work fared little better than the first, and the discussion of miracles, which was designed to attract attention, was overshadowed by Conyers Middleton's work. Hume observed: "On my return from Italy, I had the Mortification to find all England in a Ferment on account of Dr. Middletons Free Enquiry; while my Performance was entirely overlooked and neglected."" Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), which anticipated the utilitarianism and the modern subjective, emotive view of ethics, met with scarcely more success.

Hume never held any academic position. His appointment as keeper of the Avocates Library in Edinburgh gave him the leisure and resources to write his multi-volume History of England (1752-57) which, according to Bertrand Russell, was devoted to proving the superiority of the Tories to the Whigs and of Scotsmen to the English." It was this work which established Hume's reputation as a man of letters and also helped him to secure financial independence. Hume toyed with the idea of devoting his remaining years to philosophy. Instead, he turned to diplomacy, serving as secretary to the British ambassador in Paris and even for a time as British charge d'affaires. In Paris Hume became a familiar figure in the world of culture. On returning to London he brought with him Jean Jacques Rousseau. The latter proved to be an unstable friend and put out stories that Hume had designs on his life. Hume's last public office was as undersecretary in the Northern Department. In his lifetime Hume the historian received more attention than Hume the philosophical writer. Hume published only one small philosophical piece in later life, and this was partly historical. Hume entitled it The Natural History of Religion (1757)." Somewhat earlier (probably before 1752) Hume composed his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.i5 However, Hume withheld publication and kept on revising them until the year of his death. They were published posthumously by his nephew in 1779.

Toward the end of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume reviewed the options available in philosophy. He observed that "a Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not only be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on his mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society."" The arguments of the Pyrrhonist might be momentarily impressive, but ultimately they were destructive of all thought and action. Hume himself preferred what he called a "mitigated skepticism," which was, in fact, a compromise between the destructive logic of Pyrrhonism and the need to come to terms with nature and everyday living.

Another species of mitigated scepticism which may be of advantage to mankind, and which may be the natural result of the Pyrrhonian doubts and scruples, is the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it. A correct judgement observes a contrary method, and avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility, that anything, but the strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it."

If there was a single uniting theme in Hume's philosophical writings, this was it. To Hume, philosophical decisions were "nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected." Philosophers, therefore, will "never be tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations."" If there were inconsistencies in Hume's thinking, it did not matter. In fact, Hume was able to make a virtue out of them. The presence of inconsistencies might have given other thinkers pause to wonder whether their approach was right. Hume, however, met this problem in his own philosophy by behaving as if the problems that his thought posed merely served to show the limitations of the human mind and the general unwisdom of indulging in metaphysics.

What in fact Hume's approach did show was the inadequacy of the representative theory of knowledge as an account of how we know the world around us, ourselves and God. For Hume human knowledge is a series of constructs placed on sense data. Thus to speak of substance was not to speak of an existing entity, but only of phenomena of sense data.

The idea of a substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination, and have a particular name assigned to them, by which we are able to recall, either to ourselves or others, that collection.19

We perceive the data of our senses, but we cannot know what, if anything, lies beyond them. Hume took this a step further in his celebrated discussion of causation. Hume observed that there is a certain necessity which appears to us when we observe that two and two make four and when we see that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. But this necessity "lies only in the understanding, by which we consider and compare these ideas." In the same way the notion of cause and effect "belongs entirely to the soul, which considers the union of two or more objects in all past instances." " 'Tis here that the real power of causes is plac'd along with their connexion and necessity." Hume went on to observe:

I am sensible, that of all the paradoxes, which I have had, or shall hereafter have occasion to advance in the course of this treatise, the present one is the most violent, and that 'tis merely by dint of solid proof and reasoning I can ever hope it will have admission, and overcome the inveterate prejudices of mankind. Before we are recon- cil'd to this doctrine, how often must we repeat to ourselves, that the simple view of any two objects or actions, however related, can never give us any idea of power, or of a connexion betwixt them: that this idea arises from the repetition of their union: that the repetition neither discovers nor causes any thing in the objects, but has an influence only on the mind, by that customary transition it produces: that this customary transition is, therefore, the same with the power and necessity; which are consequently qualities of perceptions, not of objects, and are internally felt by the soul, and not perceiv'd externally in bodies?2o

Hume's discussion of cause and effect has frequently been taken to be a denial of the whole idea of causation. Hume makes the point that all that we can observe is objects and sequences. Simply by looking at an object, we cannot see causes. To speak of one thing causing another involves an inference that the mind makes from observing constant or similar conjunctions of events. If Hume were really denying the notion of causation and attributing it merely to habits of mind, he would indeed be undermining the basis of science. On the other hand, there is reason to think that Hume saw his work as the philosophical equivalent of the experimental method employed by Newtonian physics and that he believed he was providing a philosophical basis for the modern understanding of reality.27 What he achieved was not a denial of causation (to which Hume himself freely appealed in dealing with the cosmological argument and miracles) but an account of how we come to think of causation. It was an account which shrank from drawing metaphysical conclusions about the nature of reality by concentrating on what can be perceived by the senses. In fact, Hume was unwittingly drawing attention to the inadequacy of the representative theory of perception as an ac count of how we see and understand things. Hume chose to retain the theory and lament the limitations of human knowledge. An alternative course of action would have been to replace the theory and press beyond the impasse that it posed.

To Hume the soul or the self was equally elusive. In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume makes the following observation which is in effect a reductio ad absurdum of the whole idea of the soul or the self.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself, tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.22

The argument runs parallel to Hume's discussion of substance and of cause and effect. What is perceived is a series of sense impressions. Since the self is not an item of sense data like a feeling or a sensation of pleasure or pain, Hume rhetorically casts doubt upon its existence. But again it is the viability of Hume's method that is really in question. The fallacious premise is the implicit claim that only sense data and the physical objects which give rise to sense data are real, though even the latter are suspect in view of the fact that the only things that can be known directly are sense data. On the other hand, the number of times which Hume uses the word I in the above quotation serve as a warning that all was not well with the theory. It might in fact alert us to some of the logical peculiarities of the self. It suggests that the self is not an object alongside other objects which may be known objectively in the way that physical objects are known. It suggests rather that the self is a subject, and that we become aware of the self subjectively. But this was not an issue which Hume chose to pursue. It was sufficient for his purposes to cast doubt upon a major tenet of Christian belief.

Hume's celebrated discussion of miracles occurs in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 29 To some readers, including the distinguished Victorian editor of Hume's work, it has been a puzzle why Hume should choose to place a study of the miraculous in the context of a book ostensibly devoted to the human understanding.24 But the issue remains a puzzle only so long as we fail to appreciate the role of miracles in the Christian apologetics of Hume's day. Miracles were seen as credentials of truth-claims. They served as supernatural attestation of the truth of certain claims. Catholics appealed to ongoing miracles in the Catholic church as proof of the truth of Catholic teaching. Protestants appealed to biblical miracles as divine attestation of biblical teaching. If Hume could undermine the credibility of the testimony to miracles, he was in effect undermining the basis for accepting the truth-claims of teaching which could not otherwise be verified.

It was an argument which he believed served equally well against Catholics and Protestants. Hume saw his argument as a defense against the "impertinent solicitations" of the bigots and the superstitious. "I flatter myself," he wrote, "that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will with the wise and learned be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane."25 Hume believed that the argument could be applied equally well to prophecy which was also a form of miracles used as "proofs of any revelation."26 Hume's argument was not that miracles were impossible (although at times he behaved as if he had established this point). Rather, his essay was a series of variations on the claim "that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish."27

Hume's argument fell into two main parts. The first was a general argument about the laws of nature (which, if it proved anything at all, proved the impossibility of miracles). The second consisted of four observations about the nature of testimony and what could be drawn from it. In neither part did Hume talk directly about the Gospel miracles, though his allusions were unmistakable. His argument was more of an attempt to undercut Christian truth claims by means of general reflections about the issues involved.

The first part of the argument contained a definition of miracles which was in effect a denial of their possibility.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.28

Hume recognized that scientific laws were based on statistics. But in his view the statistics were against miracles. In fact, experience of life and events conforming to the laws of nature were so uniform that no testimony to the miraculous could shake his expectation of continuing conformity. Hume could find no fault in the reasoning of "the Indian prince" who refused to believe in ice, for all his past experience indicated that water could not become solid.29 For in assessing testimony to events outside our experience we have to be guided by how the reported event bears "analogy" to the events of our "uniform experience."

In the second part of his argument Hume turned to the kind of testimony advanced in favor of the miraculous and asked what it amounted to. He made four main points. First, he described the kind of witness that he would deem credible.S° Such a person must be of "such unquestioned good-sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves." On top of this they must be utterly beyond suspicion, and must have a great deal to lose in the event of their being detected of falsehood. Moreover, the attested facts must be performed "in such a public manner and in so celebrated part of the world, as to render detection unavoidable."

Secondly, Hume drew attention to the human fondness of gossip and exaggeration.' He asked half-rhetorically, "Do not the same passions, and others still stronger, incline the generality of mankind to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence and assurance, all religious miracles?"

Thirdly, Hume noted that miracles "are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people may be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend received opinions.""

Fourthly, Hume argued that the miracles of rival religions cancel each other out." By appealing to miracles as divine attestation of their truthclaims, different religions undermine themselves. For they cannot all be true. Hume concluded that this not only undermined the truth-claims, but that it cast serious doubt on the veracity of the miracle stories themselves.

This prompted Hume to embark on a series of reflections, all of which were designed to cast doubt on the veracity of the Gospel miracles, though without directly mentioning any particular Gospel story. Hume began by noting Tacitus's account of a healing attributed to the emperor Vespasian, exonerating the latter of all pretensions to dishonesty and inflated claims to divinity and praising the former as a writer "noted for candour and veracity, and withal, the greatest and most penetrating genius, perhaps, of all antiquity."" From here Hume proceeded to more recent times, noting the cures performed in Paris at the tomb of the Jansenist Francois de Paris.55 What is more, many of the alleged cures "were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world." Moreover, the Jesuit opponents of the Jansenists were unable to refute the stories or detect fraud. In other words, the reports in question actually met the criteria specified by Hume, and were apparently free from the taint of suspicion attending other miracle stories. But in response to all this Hume doggedly refused to believe the accounts. In words which echoed the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hume asked himself:

And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation."s

Thus Hume asked and answered the question of the credibility of miracle stories in the same breath. He had, in effect, said that no amount of testimony, even though it met his criteria, would suffice to overthrow his conviction that miracles were impossible, because the laws of nature could not be violated. But Hume was not quite through with the subject. His crowning example was a hypothetical one which was designed to discredit the resurrection accounts in the Gospels. It did so by offering a conjectured parallel which was ostensibly better attested.

He supposed that all historians were agreed that Queen Elizabeth I had died and that her death was publicly ascertained and attested. Then after a month's internment, she reappeared, resumed the throne of England and ruled for three years. Even assuming that all this was well attested, Hume would reply that "the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit so signal a violation of the laws of nature.""

It remained for Hume to draw the conclusion that "our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure."" If the first half of this sentence sounded like an endorsement of piety, the second half removes any doubt about Hume's heavy irony. Hume went on to add that the same argument applied equally well to prophecy, which was really a form of miracle. He thus removed the other pillar of traditional apologetic argument in support of Christian truth-claims. Hume's parting shot was a further ironic salvo which was aimed at the final destruction of apologetic claims that Christian faith could be established rationally by appealing to history.

Upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us to its veracity. And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and ex- perience."9

If Hume's discussion of miracles was temporarily obscured by that of Conyers Middleton, it eventually established itself as the classic attack. Even though many of Hume's points had already been aired by Spinoza and the English Deists, Hume's essay came to be seen as fundamental, not least because Hume addressed the underlying issues and criteria rather than particular phenomena. In due course replies to Hume appeared in print. Among the ablest was George Campbell's Dissertation on Miracles (1762), which was an expanded version of a sermon preached before the synod of the Presbyterian Church. Campbell was a fellow Scot, and a friend of Thomas Reid and other members of the Scottish Common Sense school of philosophy. John Wesley thought highly of Campbell's work, and Hume himself acknowledged Campbell to be "certainly a very ingenious man, tho a little too zealous for a philosopher."40

If we stand back from Hume's essay and ask what he has actually accomplished, it is clear that Hume has not proved that miracles could not happen. His aim was to show that in the light of the modern scientific understanding of the world and common experience, miracle stories were so improbable as to be unworthy of rational credence. As such, they could not serve to establish religious truth-claims. The strength of Hume's argument lies in its plausibility. Miracles are indeed contrary to the experience of most educated Westerners. What Hume says about miracles being testified to by the less educated, about them occurring in obscure places and about human fondness for gossip and exaggeration, applies to a great many miracle stories. And yet, as a total argument, Hume's essay is seriously flawed. A. E. Taylor was surely right when he observed that "on the face of it, there would seem to be something amiss with reasoning which proceeds from the principle that 'a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence' to the conclusion that in a vast, if not too well defined, field, the `wise man' will simply refuse to `consider the evidence' at all."" Moreover, there is a certain incongruity in Hume's appeal to the laws of nature in order to reject miracles in view of his previous reservations on the subject of cause and effect. On Hume's premises, Taylor notes, "Properly speaking, there are no laws of nature to be violated, but there are habits of expectation which any of us, as a fact, finds himself unable to break."42

Close examination of Hume's observations about the nature of testimony shows that none of the points that he makes could be extended to serve as a universal criterion in historical research. His demand that events must be witnessed by educated witnesses who had a great deal to lose in the event of a possible falsehood being detected, coupled with his insistence that the event should occur in "a celebrated part of the world" would rule out much of history prior to the Renaissance outside certain urban centers of culture. Historians cannot confine their interests and researches merely to those of similar education and outlook as themselves. Hume's point fails to distinguish between the education and social standing of a witness and the witness' veracity. The two are not necessarily connected. Hume's second observation about the nature of testimony is also too wholesale. It assumes that witnesses to miracles are all subject to the love of exaggeration and enlarging upon the truth. A more precise historical method would have sought to determine what kind of people the witnesses are. If it could be shown that the witnesses were initially inclined to doubt, their testimony to the alleged event is all the more impressive.

Hume's third point is also too imprecise to be capable of general application. His claim that miracles "are observed chiefly to abound among the ignorant and barbarous nations" and that the civilized people who admit them generally have no direct experience of them is clearly barbed. It can be taken to apply to the educated Christians of Hume's day who, though never having experienced miracles for themselves, gave credence to them on the basis of Christian tradition. The latter could take the form of reports of miracles performed elsewhere in the church (as in Catholic tradition) or of the Gospel stories themselves, which were originally transmitted by the disciples in Galilee who approximated to Hume's description.

The plausibility of Hume's fourth and final point depends upon a number of unstated assumptions. To begin with, it assumes that different religions base their truth-claims on miracles. But in point of fact, many of them do not. Although in traditional Christian apologetics, as practiced by John Locke and others, the Gospel miracles are thought to function in this way, it is far from clear that this is their function in the New Testament.48 Moreover, for Hume's argument to work, it is not enough to say that different religions have miracles and therefore they cannot all be true. One would have to put forward similar miracles in support of similar, but conflicting, truth-claims in order to reach Hume's desired conclusion. For example, Christianity regards the resurrection of Jesus as a foundational truth. If another religion were to produce a counter example of its messiah being similarly raised after a similar death, Hume's point would have substance. The advocates of the rival religions would then be obligated to examine the veracity of their resurrection beliefs and evaluate the related truth-claims accordingly. But in point of fact, such a conflict has not actually arisen. The most readily accessible evidence about conflicting miracles has to do with healings which are attested among rival religious groups. Even here Hume's argument is less conclusive than it might appear. For it is not part of the Christian message to claim that God's goodness is limited to those who acknowledge him, or that healing can take place only through Christian agents. Just as natural healing may take place outside a specific religious context, it is no less conceivable that supernatural healing could also take place in different religious contexts. As such it might not be related directly to particular truth-claims, but rather may be a manifestation of divine goodness at large.44

A further aspect of Hume's discussion is the fact that he confines his attention to verbal testimony and omits other kinds of evidence such as changed behavior and attitudes. He thus neglects an important part of the Christian evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, which turns on the changed attitude of the disciples after the death of Jesus. In view of the condemnation of Jesus, the emergence of the church is difficult to conceive, unless something had happened to cause the first Christians to risk life and limb by proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus in defiance of the religious and civil authorities.

Not the least questionable part of Hume's discussion is his concept of miracle. The idea of miracles as violations of the laws of nature seems at first sight to be acceptable. After all, if miracles were not in some sense different from ordinary events, there would be no reason to distinguish them from the latter. For an event to qualify as a miracle there must be grounds for thinking that it had actually happened and that it was different from normal events. Miracles can qualify as miracles only if they stand out from the regularities of normal experience. But the term violation suggests an element of randomness and arbitrariness that is mis leading. In a footnote Hume himself put forth a second definition when he wrote: "A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."45 This second definition still has the possible connotation of arbitrariness, but in fact it contains an important new element which is necessary for such an event to take place. The word transgression is itself ambiguous. On the one hand, it could imply arbitrary suspension of natural causes. On the other hand, it could also imply that the agent in question overlooked a particular law by invoking some other (known or unknown) law, force or power, to achieve a particular end. What Hume has given here is a definition which is not a reductio ad absurdum of the idea of miracles but an indication of the conditions that would apply if a miracle were to happen!

Perhaps the real significance of Hume's discussion lies in the way he draws attention to the importance of the considerations that we bring to the assessment of issues. If we presuppose that our everyday experience is normative and if we reflect on the fact that the source of our knowledge of the Gospel miracles is limited to at most four books, perhaps drawing material from each other, it would be logical to go along with Hume and adopt a skeptical attitude. On the other hand, there are other factors to be taken into consideration which change the dynamics of the argument. If we have reason to think of God as a God of compassion who is concerned not only with the natural order but also with history, the situation is changed. As Richard Swinburne has observed, if such considerations have any weight:

we would need only slender historical evidence of certain miracles to have reasonable grounds to believe in their occurrence, just as we need only slender historical evidence to have reasonable grounds for belief in the occurrence of events whose occurrence is rendered probable by natural laws. We take natural laws to show the improbability of violations thereof because they are well-established parts of our overall view of how the world works. But if they are relevant for this reason, then so is any other part of our overall view of how the world works. And if from our study of its operation we conclude that we have evidence for the existence of a God of such a character as to be liable to intervene in the natural order under certain circumstances, the overall world-view gives not a high prior improbability, but a high prior probability to the occurrence of miracles under those circum- stances.46

Strictly speaking, Hume had not ruled out the possibility of miracles. Rather, he had formulated a series of difficulties which he placed in the path of anyone who appealed to miracles in order to convince someone else of the truth of his religious beliefs. In short, Hume was extending to religion the same skepticism that he applied to other systems of thought. Hume applied this skepticism both to particular forms of religion and to philosophical arguments about God. Toward the end of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume compared the cosmological and teleological arguments with a scientific hypothesis. They were defective, not least because (unlike a valid scientific hypothesis) they could not yield useful results.

While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a particular intelligent cause, which first bestowed, and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle, which is both uncertain and useless. It is uncertain; because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience. It is useless; because our knowledge of this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature, we can never, according to the rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause with any new inference, or making additions to the common and experienced course of nature, establish any new principles of conduct and behaviour."'

A few pages later Hume put the matter more succinctly: "I much doubt whether it be possible for a cause to be known only by its effect."48 Even if we posit a divine, creative mind, nothing more can be said.

The Existence of God

The theme of causes and effects continued to play a part in Hume's reflections on religion in the writings of his later years. Despite his reservations on the subject, Hume still found it useful to appeal to the notion to defend himself against religion. Large parts of Hume's History of England were concerned with the moral and political effects of religion. Hume's brief study of The Natural History of Religion addressed the question of the causes and effects of religion on a broad canvas. In attacking the view that the original religion of humankind was a rational, moral monotheism, Hume was undermining the foundations of Deism and also a belief that many Christians attributed to the book of Genesis. The work was presented as a kind of study in religious anthropology, although Hume was no more of an anthropologist than his adversaries. What he did was suggest a kind of evolutionary hypothesis. By dint of drawing on his knowledge of the classics, Hume argued that the gods and goddesses of polytheism (who were simply magnified human beings) were progressively credited with different attributes until they were eventually rolled into one and credited with fidelity. Side by side with this process went a growth in fanaticism. The more unique God became, the more bigoted were his devotees (whether Mohammedan or Christian). Religion presented an enigma from which philosophy provided an escape, as Hume's closing remarks suggest.

What so pure as some of the morals, included in some theological systems? What so corrupt as some of the practices, to which these systems give rise?

The comfortable views, exhibited by the belief of futurity, are ravishing and delightful. But how quickly vanish on the appearance of its terrors, which keep a more firm and durable possession of the human mind?

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.49

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were a kind of modern version of Cicero's dialogues On the Nature of the Gods.50 This is indicated not only by the form of the work, but also by its theme. Like Cicero, Hume professed to be concerned not with the existence of God but with "the nature of the divine Being; his attributes, his decrees, his plan of providence."" Moreover, Hume gave his protagonists classical names. Philo was the name of the skeptical founder of the New Academy, the teacher of Cicero and also of Cotta, the skeptic in Cicero's work. Cleanthes was the successor of Zeno as head of the Stoic school, and in Cicero's work he is the teacher of Balbus, the representative of Stoicism. In Hume's work Cleanthes is the representative of accurate philosophy, Philo of "careless scepticism," and Demea of "rigid inflexible orthodoxy."52

There has been much discussion as to what the three protagonists represent and who (if any) represents Hume himself. The problem is not settled by the narrator's conclusion "that PHILO'S principles are more probable than DEMA'S; but that those of CLEANTHES approach still nearer the truth."55 For Hume's urbane style and dramatic necessities regularly disguised his intentions. In the end, the discerning reader is left to judge who gets the best of the argument. Underneath the classical disguises we may detect Demea as the spokesman for the kind of orthodox theology advocated by Samuel Clarke, Cleanthes as a philosophically minded believer in the mold of Bishop Butler and Philo as the reasonable skeptic modelled on Hume himself.54

Hume's Dialogues elaborated the skeptical views concerning the design argument for the existence of God which Hume had already put forward in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. All the partners in the dialogue take it for granted that God exists, but as the conversation proceeds the impression is given that nothing much may be said beyond that. Moreover, such minimal belief makes no practical difference to human conduct. Nor does it help to give human beings any clear ideas about their destiny. Of the three protagonists Demea is presented as having the weakest case and loosest grip on philosophical argument. Cleanthes puts up a good case. But by allowing Cleanthes to lapse into inconsistency and by not putting into his mouth replies to Philo's strongest arguments, Hume gives the impression that Philo's skepticism is in the end unanswerable.55 As the Dialogues wend their way to their conclusion, Cleanthes is made to say that Philo:

from the beginning, has been amusing himself at both our expence; and it must be confessed, that the injudicious reasoning of our vulgar theology has given him but too just a handle of ridicule. The total infirmity of human reason, the absolute incomprehensibility of the divine nature, the great and universal misery and still greater wickedness of men; these are strange topics surely to be so fondly cherished by orthodox divines and doctors.56

This admission represents a retreat from Cleanthes' earlier position which compared the world with "one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines."

All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, we do prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.57

Between these two statements Hume gives a number of objections which anticipate the debates of modern times. The argument is said to be at best an imperfect analogy.58 Even so, Philo is quick to show the limitations of the analogy. "A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in raising a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several Deities combine in contriving and framing a world?"59 However, the world looks less like something designed and finished, like a machine or a house, than something living like an animal or vegetable. Philo draws the distinction between things which proceed from nature and things which "arise from reason and contrivance."

A tree bestows order and organization on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order: an animal, in the same manner, on its offspring: a bird, on its nest: And instances of this kind are even more frequent in the world, than those of order, which arise from reason and contrivance. To say that all this order in animals and vegetables proceeds ultimately from design is begging the question; nor can that great point be ascertained otherwise than by proving a priori, both that order is, from its nature, inseparably attached to thought, and that it can never, of itself, or from original unknown principles, belong to matter."

Hume anticipated evolution by suggesting that the world could have attained its present form through "innumerable revolutions" which produced "at last some forms, whose parts and organs are so adjusted as to support the forms amidst a continued succession of matter."" The design argument (claims Philo) contains a flawed anthropomorphism.

In all instances which we have ever seen, ideas are copied from real objects, and are ectypal, not archetypal, to express myself in learned terms: You reverse this order, and give thought the precedence. In all instances which we have ever seen, thought has no influence upon matter, except where that matter is so conjoined with it, as to have an equal reciprocal influence upon it.62

We may note in passing that for Hume ideas are constructs which the human mind places on experience. Hume did not deny that there were analogies between the works of nature and human artifacts. His point was that the analogies were too weak and remote to be pressed. He went on to insist that "necessary existence" is a concept which has no meaning, and to suggest the absurdity of inquiring for "a general cause or first Author" in tracing "an eternal succession of objects."" The problem is further compounded by the existence of evil. Philo maintains that the old questions of Epicurus about God remain unanswered: "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?""

In the Dialogues Philo is given the last word. Once more he allows that natural theology may point us in the direction of a cause or causes of the universe which may bear some remote analogy to human intelligence, but he denies that we can press further and that this conclusion yields any useful truth.

If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular expli cation: If it afford no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections which lie against it?65

Such thoughts may be entertained as items of dogmatic belief, but it is impossible to "erect a complete system of theology by the mere help of philosophy." Indeed, "to be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian."" This concluding advice can only be understood ironically. For having (at least to his own satisfaction) demolished natural theology and having elsewhere undermined the pillars of the traditional apologetic argument for the truth claims of revelation, Hume was confident that theology could safely be relegated to an intellectual limbo.

Taken together, Hume's various arguments and observations on religion combine to form a strategic defense against certainty and dogmatism in religion. They do not rule out the feasibility of belief, but raise a series of questions about the status and logic of belief and commitment. Hume's discussion of miracles came to be regarded as the landmark critique of their plausibility. His treatment of teleology highlighted the difficulties of attempting a demonstrative proof of God on the basis of observation of the world (though it did not rule out the kind of approach we noted in discussing Thomas Aquinas67). Hume's discussion of natural religion raised serious questions against the eighteenth-century idea of the noble savage. Religion in general did not arise from a lofty quest for truth, beauty and goodness. Rather, it was the reverse.

Those who undertake the most criminal and most dangerous enterprizes are commonly the most superstitious; as an ancient historian remarks.... To which we may add, that, after the commission of crimes, there arise remorses and secret horrors, which give no rest to the mind, but make it have recourse to religious rites and ceremonies, as expiations of its offences.68

During Hume's lifetime and in the years that followed his death, there has been no lack of those who have offered replies. In the next chapter we shall look at the important criticism of Hume's contemporary Thomas Reid, who challenged Hume's basic approach to knowledge. In the second volume of this book we shall note further replies and attempts to establish foundations for belief by erecting a comprehensive world view on the basis of an indubitable foundation. But as we shall see in the discussion of Thomas Reid and in the concluding chapter of the present book, foundationalism presents serious difficulties.69 Moreover, these problems do not belong exclusively to the realm of religious belief; they also apply to schemes of thought and world views generally. If there is anything that can be learned from the study of Hume, it is the difficulty of trying to develop a philosophy by starting with some item of alleged empirical evidence. For what we call evidence is rarely some self-evident fact, but something which is interpreted within a web of beliefs. This point raises the issue of the appropriate methods and approach in philosophy and theology. It is a question to which we shall return when we review modern trends in philosophy and theology in the second volume of this study.

What had Hume achieved? J. C. A. Gaskin thinks it inaccurate to apply to Hume such conventional ascriptions as "atheist," "agnostic," "materialist" and even "skeptic," for none of these catch the complexity and range of his thought."' Instead, Gaskin prefers to speak of Hume's "attenuated deism." Perhaps it would be no less accurate to call Hume an eighteenth-century Epicurean."' Not only did Hume speak of Epicurus in admiring terms. Like Epicurus, he conceded (at least hypothetically) the existence of a god or gods, but insisted that popular conceptions were mistaken. The gods did not interfere with the affairs of this world, and death was the end of human existence. In a conversation with James Boswell-Dr. Johnson's famous biographer72-shortly before his death, Hume professed that he "never had entertained any belief in Religion since he began to read Locke and Clarke." If there was such a thing as immortality, it must be "general." But the idea of living forever was "a most unreasonable fancy." Hume himself expected "Annihilation."

Earlier on in his career Hume found refuge from pessimism and skepticism in a manner not unlike the ancient Epicureans.

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther."

To his dying day Hume did not radically depart from this credo, which permitted religious and philosophical skepticism to be mitigated by the activities and pleasures of everyday living. Over the years Hume's tone mellowed. Although the suave irony of the Dialogues replaced the caustic rhetoric of the Enquiry, the message remained the same. Hume concluded his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by consigning theology to the realm of faith and revelation and by pronouncing morals to be matters of "taste and sentiment." Real knowledge was limited to mathematics and the experimental sciences.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

In the 1930s the youthful A. J. Ayer saw in this declaration an anticipation of the program of Logical Positivism."' Bertrand Russell was less sanguine about Hume's views. "Hume's philosophy," he observed, "whether true or false represents the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century reasonableness."76 More recently Roger Scruton has suggested that the root trouble lies in Hume's method. "Hume finds himself trapped within the sphere of his own experience without even the assurance of a self to whom that experience belongs. The loss of the object seems to bring the loss of the subject in its train."77 Hume himself wryly observed that "nature is always too strong for principle."78 For Hume the outcome was his own peculiar blend of empiricism and skepticism in the form of an eighteenth-century Epicureanism. For others it invited a fresh examination of principles.

Scottish Common Sense and early American philosophy are two separate but related themes. Both belong roughly to the same time-frame, the eighteenth century. Both were concerned with issues raised by British empiricism. Although early American philosophy was concerned with more than that, it was in the course of time deeply affected by the thinking of the Scottish Common Sense School of philosophy.

Thomas Reid (1710-96) is one of the neglected figures in the history of philosophy.' He was perhaps responsible for the tradition which saw the history of eighteenth-century philosophy in terms of Berkeley undermining Locke, and of Hume undermining Berkeley.2 Reid and his successors were scornfully dismissed by Kant for what Kant perceived to be their failure to understand Hume and their naive faith in common sense.' Kant's verdict virtually ensured that Reid and the Scottish Common Sense Philosophy could safely be consigned to oblivion on the continent of Europe. It is only relatively recently that philosophers have come to see Reid as an important thinker in his own right and as a philosopher whose methods were akin to those of modern analysis and who might have something to say to the twentieth-century world.

Thomas Reid was a contemporary of David Hume, whom he outlived by nearly twenty years. Both were born in Scotland, and both served for a time as librarians. But unlike Hume, Reid succeeded in his ambition to become a professional philosopher. For fourteen years Reid served as a parish minister, and it was during this period that he was aroused by his study of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. In 1751 he was elected to the chair of philosophy at Aberdeen, where he remained until 1764. In that year he succeeded Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. The same year marked the publication of his first book, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. This theme was further elaborated by Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785). The Essays were a major critique of the empiricist theory of knowledge. Reid's last major work was his Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). Here the object of his attack was the subjective approach to ethics advocated by Hutcheson and Hume.

Early on in his career, Reid had been a convinced follower of Berkeley, believing that "all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind."" But the more he read Hume and the more he thought about the skeptical consequences of this view, the more he came to question it. Eventually he came to reject the whole tradition of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Their theory of ideas which underlays this tradition was not supported by evidence, and in fact rested upon a confusion. Moreover, it did not perform the function for which it was introduced, since it left the question about the veracity of perception unanswerable in principle. Hume's Treatise had "drowned all in one universal deluge."5 The root error was the hypothesis

That nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceived it: That we do not really perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas.'

If this were so one could not "infer the existence of anything else." Reid therefore devoted his energies to refuting this hypothesis which "overturns all philosophy, all religion and virtue, and all common sense."

Reid argued that it was an elementary confusion to mistake the means of perception for the thing perceived. Moreover, perception is a personal activity which posits a personal subject. Reid's basic approach and style of arguing can be seen if we place together two extracts. The first of the extracts comes from Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind.

In this passage Reid gives an analysis of everyday language, and asks what is the difference between two types of statements, "I feel a pain" and "I see a tree." His answer is that grammatically they look alike; both have a subject, an active verb and an object. But the verb and its object function differently in the two statements. In the first sentence the distinction between the act and the object is not real but grammatical, whereas in the second sentence it is not only grammatical but real. From his analysis of different kinds of sensation and perception Reid concludes that in cases of perception, the mind and its object are not only distinguishable but unlike in their natures. In short, this means that Berkeley's and Hume's analysis of perception is confused and misleading.

The most simple operations of the mind, admit not of a logical definition: all we can do is to describe them, so as to lead those who are conscious of them in themselves, to attend to them, and reflect upon them; and it is often very difficult to describe them so as to answer this intention.

The same mode of expression is used to denote sensation and perception; and, therefore, we are apt to look upon them as things of the same nature. Thus, I feel a pain; I see a tree: the first denoteth a sensation, the last a perception. The grammatical analysis of both expressions is the same: for both consist of an active verb and an object. But, if we attend to the things signified by these expressions, we shall find that, in the first, the distinction between the act and the object is not real but grammatical; in the second, the distinction is not only grammatical but real.

The form of the expression, I feel pain, might seem to imply that the feeling is something distinct from the pain felt; yet, in reality, there is no distinction. As thinking a thought is an expression which could signify no more than thinking, so feeling a pain signifies no more than being pained. What we have said of pain is applicable to every other mere sensation. It is difficult to give instances, very few of our sensations having names; and, where they have, the name being common to the sensation, and to something else which is associated with it. But, when we attend to the sensation by itself, and separate it from other things which are conjoined with it in the imagination, it appears to be something which can have no existence but in a sentient mind, no distinction from the act of the mind by which it is felt.

Perception, as we here understand it, hath always an object distinct from the act by which it is perceived; an object which may exist whether it be perceived or not. I perceive a tree that grows before my window; there is here an object which is perceived, and an act of the mind by which it is perceived; and these two are not only distinguishable, but they are extremely unlike in their natures.'

The second extract comes from Reid's Fssays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Here again Reid examines instances of perception, and implies that the empiricists' analysis of the act of perception involves confusing different kinds of actions, which in common experience people habitually distinguish.

Perception must be the act of some being that perceives. The eye is not that which sees; it is only the organ by which we see. The ear is not that which hears, but the organ by which we hear; and so of the rest.

A man cannot see the satellites of Jupiter but by a telescope. Does he conclude from this, that it is the telescope that sees those stars? By no means-such a conclusion would be absurd. It is no less absurd to conclude that it is the eye that sees, or the ear that hears. The telescope is an artificial organ of sight, but it sees not. The eye is a natural organ of sight, by which we see; but the natural organ sees as little as the artificial.

If anything more were necessary to be said on a point so evident, we might observe that, if the faculty of seeing were in the eye, that of hearing in the ear, and so of the other senses, the necessary consequence of this would be, that the thinking principle, which I call myself, is not one, but many. But this is contrary to the irresistible conviction of every man. When I say, I see, I hear, I feel, I remember, this implies that it is one and the same self that performs all these operations; and, as it would be absurd to say that my memory, another man's imagination, and a third man's reason, may make one individual intelligent being, it would be equally absurd to say that one piece of matter seeing, another hearing, and a third feeling, may make one and the same percipient being.'

In making this point about perception Reid did not claim to be pro pounding some new philosophical doctrine. He saw himself as standing in a long line of philosophers, stretching back to Cicero and beyond, who took a similar view.' His approach was in a broad sense inductive.'0 But this does not mean that all knowledge was inferential. In fact, there are many instances when knowledge is not inferential. Much of our everyday perception is of this kind. Reid observed: "When I hear a certain sound, I conclude immediately, without reasoning, that a coach passes by. There are no premises from which this conclusion is inferred by any rules of logic. It is the effect of a principle of our nature, common to us with the brutes."" Sensations are a mode of sensing. The function of sensation is to "suggest" the reality that has produced it. Sensations are "signs" of things signified. 12

This should not be taken to mean that Reid was committed to a naive belief that there was a corresponding object to every sensation. In fact, his writings display careful analysis of what constitutes fallacies and pseudo-problems. Nor was Reid an apologist for common sense as a kind of oracle of truth. Reid's philosophy was an alternative to skeptical empiricism which he believed to be fundamentally flawed. In place of the empiricists' representative view of perception, Reid proposed a view which may be called "indirect realism,"" which sought to give an account of the function of the senses in suggesting the reality behind sensation.

As Reid saw it, David Hume was an "ingenious author" who, following the principles of Locke, "hath built a system of scepticism which leaves no ground to believe any one thing rather than its contrary."" Hume's position was destructive not only of Christian faith, but also of science and of common prudence. Underlying Hume's skepticism was the apparently reasonable and enlightened claim that we are "to admit nothing but what can be proved by reasoning." Reid's immediate response was to retort, that if this be so, "then we must be sceptics indeed, and believe nothing at all."" However, he wryly observed that Hume himself could not keep to this principle either in his daily life or in his philosophy. Nor, for that matter, can any skeptic. Over and over again, Reid pointed out that men could not live by skepticism alone. "If a man pretends to be a skeptic with regard to the informations of sense, and yet prudently keeps out of harm's way as other men do, he must excuse my suspicion, that either he acts the hypocrite, or imposes upon himself""

Reid's point is more than a palpable hit in a verbal fencing match. It raises the question of what constitutes justified belief, and it is this question which (as Nicholas Wolterstorff has cogently argued) constitutes the central concern in Reid's writings." Since rationality consists in being intellectually justified in one's belief, Reid's answer to skepticism consists in analysis of the nature of rationality. Basic here is what Wolterstorff calls belief dispositions, by which he means that at any point in our lives we each have a variety of inclinations, propensities or dispositions to believe certain things.18 Our beliefs are to be accounted for by the triggering off of one or other disposition. Reid himself spoke of "the principles of common sense" and "the first principles of natural philosophy." Such principles are used and presupposed by all normal human beings in their ordinary thinking and living, even though they might be unable to give a reason for them.19

Reid compared these principles with the "common principles or axioms" of Sir Isaac Newton, "the greatest of natural philosophers," and contrasted them with the axioms of mathematics.

It may, however, be observed that the first principles of natural philosophy are of a quite different nature from mathematical axioms: they have not the same kind of evidence, nor are they necessary truths, as mathematical axioms are. They are such as these: That similar effects proceed from the same or similar causes; That we ought to admit of no other causes or natural effects, but such as are true, and sufficient to account for the effects. These are principles which, though they have not the same kind of evidence that mathematical axioms have; yet have such evidence that every man of common understanding readily assents to them, and finds it absolutely necessary to conduct his actions and opinions by them, in the ordinary affairs of life.20

Reid believed that certain belief-dispositions, such as the tendency to believe what we are told, were simply endowed by the Creator, "the wise Author of nature."21 In due course, this disposition becomes more refined, as we learn from experience whom and what to trust or not. Here induction plays a part. Indeed, Reid contended that the inductive principle was itself a natural disposition to acquire belief-dispositions.22

The question of God does not figure as a major topic in the writings that Reid published during his lifetime. Nevertheless, the notion of God is pervasive, even though it is something of an exaggeration to say with Louise Marcil-Lacoste that "there is hardly one page of his works without a mention of God. 112' Reid's philosophy was one which readily fitted within the framework of an enlightened Christian theism. For Reid "the laws of Nature are the rules by which the Supreme Being governs the world."24

One might have expected that Reid's view of dispositions might have led him to endorse Calvin's view that human beings are endowed with a "sense of divinity" which, when triggered by experience, yields the belief that the world was created and is sustained by God. But Reid does not appear to cite any theistic propositions as principles of common sense.25 Over against Hume, Reid reiterated the design argument for God's existence, which in the light of the advances of knowledge, was even more convincing in his day than in previous centuries.26 A similar view is presented in the Lectures on Natural Theology,21 where Reid developed a theme which had echoes of Locke, the Cambridge Platonists and enlightened Christianity.

It is no doubt true that Revelation exhibits all the truths of Natural Religion, but it is no less true that reason must be employed to judge of that revelation; whether it comes from God. Both are great lights and we ought not to put out the one in order to use the other. Revelation is of use to enlighten us with regard to the use of Natural Religion, as one Man may enlighten another in things that it was impossible could be discovered by him, it is easy then to conceive that God could enlighten Man.... Revelation was given us not to hinder the exercise of our reasoning powers but to aid and assist them. Tis by reason that we must judge whether that Revelation be really so; Tis by reason that we must judge the meaning of what is revealed; and it is by Reason that we must guard against any impious, inconsistent or absurd interpretation of that revelation.28

There is, perhaps, something paradoxical in Reid's position here. As Wolterstorff notes, "The `testing' that Reid, in his attack on the skeptic, disavows as necessary for our native noetic faculties, is necessary for our acceptance of revelation."29 Perhaps the explanation is to be found in Wolterstorffs suggestion that Reid "was carefully scrutinizing and defending the inference which, in intuitive fashion, leads the ordinary adult person to God, rather than constructing an argument for a belief which is characteristically arrived at immediately."" However, in the writings which Reid himself thought fit to publish, the central concern is not with natural theology but with knowledge, and in particular with the justification of beliefs which belong to knowledge-claims. Empiricism had weakened those claims; Reid's philosophy challenged empiricism, and sought to offer a better alternative.

Although he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, Reid's agenda was set not by the need for a philosophical articulation of Reformed theology but by the epistemological issues raised by empiricism. Reid's response was that of a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. But Reid was not simply the child of his age. Nor was he an advocate of common sense as the antidote to everything. Although Reid is remembered as the founder of the Common Sense School of philosophy, common sense does not figure quite as much in his writings as that designation might suggest. In some ways Reid anticipates the concerns and techniques of twentieth-century post-positivistic philosophy. His method was to analyze the structure of everyday language with a view to exploring the structures of experience and of human selfhood.

Attention has been drawn to the similarities between Reid and the twentieth-century Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore.' The Oxford philosopher H. H. Price acknowledged that his own position "with regard to the nature and the validity of perceptual consciousness is in essence identical with that maintained by Reid against Hume .1112 However, Price went on to say that Reid did not carry his analysis far enough by failing to distinguish clearly between acceptance and assurance.

More recently, contemporary American philosophers have taken up Reid's ideas and have seen relevance in them to current questions. Roderick M. Chisholm sees in Reid a better approach to the questions of knowledge than in skepticism or empiricism." Alvin Plantinga has paid tribute to Reid's work in drawing attention to different sources of belief or belief-producing mechanisms, such as perception, memory, testimony and reason. Plantinga notes that "the history of philosophy since Hume is littered with the wreckage of attempts to justify the deliv erances of sense perception on the basis of self-evidence and introspection. Reid argues-correctly, I believe-that the deliverances of sense perception don't need justification or certification in terms of such other sources of belief as introspection and self-evidence. Suppose sense perception cannot be certified in terms of those sources: there is nothing epistemically defective or improper in accepting its deliverances as basic.""

Nicholas Wolterstorff sees certain shortcomings in Reid's work, but these are far outweighed by his achievements.SS Among the shortcomings are Reid's failure to distinguish clearly between first principles understood as belief-dispositions and first principles understood as beliefs; his omission of discussion of criteria for justified belief; his omission of discussion of how awareness of God fits into his understanding of perception; the inconsistency between his stance on perception in general (where testing by reason is not a necessary precondition) and his stance on revelation (where testing by reason is deemed necessary); and the narrowness of his account of the sources of belief. Here Reid attends to what might be called the noble sources of belief. The economic and psychological factors addressed by Marx and Freud do not enter into Reid's discussion. Nor does he discuss the nature and effects of sin. In this Reid remains a child of the Enlightenment.

But these omissions do not diminish Reid's positive achievements. Reid's philosophy presents a radical alternative to the classical foundationalism of the West, which has sought to erect comprehensive systems of philosophy based upon a foundation of certainty." In particular, Reid has presented a theory of situated rationality. Wolterstorff contends that rationality is always situational. He argues: "In general we cannot inquire into the rationality of some belief by asking whether one would be rational in holding that belief. We must ask whether it would be rational for this particular person to hold it, or whether it would be rational for a person of this type in this situation to hold it."" In addition to this, Reid, more than any other philosopher in history, set his theory of rationality within the context of a theory of human nature which explored the psychology of being human. Finally, Reid's non-classical foundationalist theory presents a penetrating reply to skepticism. In contrast to Kant's view of knowledge, which claimed that we can know nothing of reality apart from how it appears to us, Reid's account preserves the world by permitting genuine knowledge of reality outside ourselves.

If Reid did not pursue the implications of his views in answer to the questions that we have today, he nevertheless left behind him a fruitful line of approach. It was an approach which was taken up, though perhaps with less originality and distinction, by Reid's immediate contemporaries and successors. Among them were James Oswald, James Beattie and Dugald Stewart. The turning-point in the common sense revolution came in 178558 with the publication of Reid's first set of essays and the fourth edition of his Inquiry. It marked a transition from the appeal to common sense in polemics to the recognition of its place in scholarly, scientific inquiry. In the same year Dugald Stewart began to popularize Reid's approach in his lectures at Edinburgh. Stewart went on to publish his views in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (3 vol., 17921827) and his Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793). By the 1790s the ReidStewart analytical approach to psychology, epistemology and metaphysics which used everyday experience as its starting point gained ascendancy in Scottish intellectual circles. It was a tradition which was carried on by Sir William Hamilton in the nineteenth century. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1859-60) drew on Reid, but modified his position in the light of Kant's teaching. In the meantime, Scottish common sense philosophy attracted not a little attention in France and Germany, especially among moderates who were opposed to the radical skepticism of the Enlightenment. In America the kind of philosophy advocated by Reid and his successors provided philosophers and theologians with an arsenal of weapons in their ongoing war with skepticism and Deism.39

Early American Thought

One of the great contemporary historians of religion in America, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, has observed that the history of theology in America is marked by three characteristics.40 The first is its diversity. New England Congregational thinking was chiefly English in derivation. The Presbyterian tradition, which was strongest in the mid-Atlantic region, relied heavily on Scottish thought, supplemented by Continental Reformed Scholasticism. Lutheran theology was characteristically German. Although these traditions sometimes touched each other, they were frequently autonomous. The second characteristic of American religious thought is its highly derivative character. This was bound up with the fact that the American people are largely an immigrant people who brought their culture and intellectual traditions with them. In the absence of a longstanding intellectual tradition of their own, it was inevitable that those concerned with intellectual issues should turn to Europe for inspiration and help. Ahlstrom's third characteristic is a refinement of his second. It consists in the observation that the first quarter of the nineteenth century marks a watershed in the flow of theological influences. Up till then British influence was the most important. After 1815 German influence became increasingly strong, even though it was sometimes mediated by English and Scottish writers.

Early American Protestant thought was stamped by the Reformed and Puritan outlook. Even those churches like the Anglican and Baptist, which did not recognize the Synod of Dort (1619) and the Westminster Confession (1647), shared a common ethos in which redemption and salvation were major concerns. Seventeenth-century theology was concerned with these themes; but it also felt the need to vindicate the ways of God and demonstrate their rationality. The publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) and Locke's Fssay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) gave new impetus to the quest for ordered simplicity and demonstrated reasonableness. Just as Newton had explained the universe in terms of rational laws, preachers and religious writers began to move toward an enlightened form of Christianity. Originally at least, this did not mean the kind of attempt that the Deists in England were making to reduce Christianity to a natural, rational religion. This came later, as Deism began to affect American thinking in the second half of the eighteenth century. Rather, it took the form of an endeavor to express Christian beliefs in terms of law and reasonableness. Traditional Calvinism remained the dominant theology, but it was restated with the help of new philosophical thinking that came from Europe.

By common consent the two most notable early American philosophers were Cotton Mather and Samuel Johnson. Cotton Mather (16631728) was the eldest son of the Massachusetts Puritan Increase Mather. He entered Harvard College at the age of twelve and graduated at fifteen. A speech impediment made him feel unequal to the task of preaching, and so he turned to the study of medicine. However, he overcame his stammer and became the assistant to his father at the Second Church of Boston, where he remained for the rest of his life. Having failed in his bid to succeed his father as the president of Harvard, he threw his energies into the founding of Yale College, which he hoped would more truly embody the Calvinistic faith. He was finally offered the presidency of Yale in 1721, but declined on account of his advancing years. Mather published over 450 writings, but his chief philosophical work was The Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature, with Religious Improvements (1721)." His purpose was to show that `Philosophy is no Enemy, but a mighty and wonderous Incentive to Religion. "42 It was in fact the first comprehensive treatise on science written in America.43 Mather's use of the term philosophy carries with it the archaic sense of "natural philosophy" (i.e., natural science). At the same time it presents the first comprehensive exposition of natural. theology to be written in America.44 As such, it attempted to show the harmony between Christian belief and the modern scientific understanding of nature.

Mather lived in an age when plagiarism was widely accepted and even acknowledged as a sign of learning. In this respect The Christian Philosopher was a product of its times. Although Mather himself was a contributing member of the Royal Society in London, his review of the state of science was drawn largely from the Boyle lecturers and the Newtonian physico-theologians who had gone before him. Everything in nature has its purpose and function-even insects and vermin. Lest even these creatures exceed their function, providence has ordained other creatures to keep them in bounds. The animal world exhibits a "cunning" which is quite beyond the capacity of the animals themselves. In short, "the Divine Reason runs like a Golden Vein through the whole Leaden Mine of Brutal Nature. "45 Mather's review of the natural world culminated in an account of human nature in its complex harmonious order. No one who had studied the human eye "could abandon himself to any speculative Atheism. "46 Indeed, the study of nature leads to the conclusion:

Atheism is now for ever chased and hissed out of the World, every thing in the World concurs to a Sentence of Banishment upon it.... A BEING that must be superior to Matter, even the Creator and Governor of all Matter, is every where so conspicuous, that there can be nothing more monstrous than to deny the God that is above.17

But Mather did not stop with this general conclusion. The God that he believed in was not merely a philosopher's God, invoked to provide a rational explanation of the complex order of nature. Reflection on nature was itself a reasonable incentive to faith in the invisible, triune God of Christianity.48 In developing this theme Mather marked out a path which has been followed by the orthodox, Protestant, evangelical Christians in America down to the present day.

The other early American philosopher of importance was Samuel Johnson (1696-1772)-the namesake and contemporary of the English lexicographer and writer, Samuel Johnson. The American Samuel Johnson was one of the first colonials to read Bacon, Locke and Newton. He abandoned the rigid Calvinism of his upbringing and received Anglican orders. He became a friend and follower of George Berkeley when Berkeley came to Rhode Island. Later he collaborated in the founding of the University of Pennsylvania and of King's College (later called Columbia University), where he was the first president. Johnson's writings include his Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1731) and his Elementa Philo- sophica (1752). Johnson argued for the existence of God by reason of the presence of eternal truths in human minds. Since these truths do not depend on the human mind or on existing objects, they must be communications of the mind of God. Human beings know these truths when they are illuminated by the divine mind. Johnson recognized the applicability of Newton's laws to the physical world, but insisted that the human spirit was not so bound. In opposition to his former pupil, Jonathan Edwards, Johnson defended the freedom of the will and rejected the Calvinistic doctrine of individual predestination. If human beings were not free, moral laws, rewards and punishments were meaningless.

The prime mover in the process of restating traditional Calvinistic theology by means of the new philosophy from Europe was Jonathan Edwards (1703-58).49 To many Edwards remains the greatest American philosophical theologian. In his own day he was a thinker ahead of his time. In the words of Perry Miller, "When Edwards stood up among the New England clergy, it was as though a master of relativity spoke to a convention of Newtonians who had not yet heard of Einstein, or as though among nineteenth-century professors of philosophy, all assuming that man is rational and responsible, a strange youth began to refer, without more ado, to the id, ego, and super-ego."" What Miller is referring to here is the way in which Edwards absorbed and assimilated the ideas of John Locke and used them to articulate his Calvinistic theology.

Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut. As a boy he wrote precocious essays on the habits of spiders, the rainbow and colors (showing familiarity with Newton's Opticks), and a demonstration of the immateriality of the soul. In 1716 he entered Yale, where his tutor, Samuel Johnson, introduced him to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In later life he recalled how at the age of fourteen he "had more Satisfaction and Pleasure in studying it, than the most greedy Miser in gathering up handfuls of Silver and Gold from some new discovered Treasure."51 After graduation in 1720, he spent two further years at Yale studying theology in preparation for the ministry. During this time, he underwent a profound religious experience. Later in his Personal Narrative (1739) he told how he received a new awareness of God's absolute sovereignty and omnipresence and of his own complete dependence on God. The experience and consequent outlook indelibly affected Edwards's thought.

After a brief pastorate in New York, Edwards returned to Yale as senior tutor. In 1727 he became assistant minister to his grandfather, the renowned Solomon Stoddard, in Northampton, Massachusetts. On the Tat- ter's death in 1729, Edwards took over. For some twenty years Edwards enjoyed a remarkable ministry, playing a vigorous part in the New England Great Awakening whilst continually engaged in theological writing. He jotted down numerous reflections which were intended as a first draft of "A Rational Account of the Main Doctrines of the Christian Religion Attempted." This monumental work was never completed. Edwards attacked Arminianism in a famous sermon preached in Boston on "God Glorified in Man's Dependence" (1731). His preaching against Arminianism was instrumental in the revival. He gave an account of it in his Narrative of Surprising Conversions (1736). The Great Awakening of the 1740s produced cases of hysterical enthusiasm. Edwards examined religious experience in A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746).

Throughout his ministry, Edwards was embroiled in controversy. As the 1740s drew to a close, opposition mounted. Criticism of the revival combined with parish strife over Edwards's salary and strict disciplinary attitudes led to his removal. In 1751 Edwards accepted a call to Stockbridge, a town which was then virtually on the frontier of civilization. Here Edwards ministered to a small group of Indians and whites. He now had time and leisure to write his major philosophical treatise on Freedom of Will (1754) and its sequels on The Nature of True Virtue and The End for Which God Created the World. He also began The History of the Work of Redemption, but his labors were interrupted by a call to become president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He had hardly resumed his duties when he died following a smallpox injection.

Edwards's training was influenced by Puritan Platonism, which in turn was an offshoot of Cambridge Platonism in England. It was an outlook which proclaimed that the spiritual world is the ultimate reality. But in the case of Edwards, this outlook was modified by the empiricism of Locke and the science of Newton. As one modern writer has put it, "From Locke he took the notion that all our ideas originate in sensation; from Newton, the conception of space as the divine sensorium."52 The Newtonian, Platonistic, idealist side of Edwards's thought appears in his notes "Of Being," where he argued that Being possesses the attributes of eternity, omnipresence, omniscience and infinity. In other words, Being is God himself. God is, in fact, identical with space. The universe proceeds from God as light proceeds from the sun. The universe is a revelation of the divine to created minds. Although some of Edwards's ideas suggest the influence of Bishop Berkeley, it would seem that Edwards reached them without having read the bishop's works.55 Edwards's notebook on Images or Shadows of Divine Things presents nature as a symbol of God. It is a panorama of shadows and images of the divine mind and will. The contemplation of the traces of God in nature is a sublime and delightful activity.

If all this suggests a kind of pantheism or panentheism akin to the rationalism of Spinoza, it may also be said that Edwards's understanding of human freedom was not dissimilar to that of the pantheistic rational- ist.54 However, the road which Edwards took to reach his destination led him through a different terrain. His goal was not to devise a speculative account of the will for its own sake but to crush the Arminian objections to Calvinism. It was a goal required by the sovereign grace of God in salvation, lest any part of salvation be ascribed to human endeavor. The vehicle for doing this was Locke's empiricism which appeared to Edwards to be admirably suited to the defense of Calvinism.55 Just as in Locke's view of knowledge the mind is essentially passive, receiving all its ideas from outside, so it is in Edwards's view of the will. Human beings are determined by causes outside themselves. Ultimately these are all to be traced back to God who alone is free in the sense of being able to determine his own volitions.

The full title of Edwards's great work on free will is A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. At the outset Edwards observed that the whole debate about free will was muddled by misconceptions and inadequate definitions. Edwards declined to think of the will as some kind of semimetaphysical entity that resides somewhere inside human beings, controlling their actions. He insisted that the will

is plainly, that by which the mind chooses anything. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power or principle of mind by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.56

Edwards found endorsement in Locke's statement that "the will signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose."57 In other words, the will is the person choosing. Freedom or liberty is "that power and opportunity to do and conduct as he will, or according to his choice."58 It involves the absence of constraints and restraints which would prevent a person from acting according to his or her will. But for Edwards this is not the same as saying that a person acts without any motive. Indeed, a basic theme of Edwards's argument is the contention that "the will is always determined by the strongest motive."59

By the word motive Edwards meant "the whole of that which moves, excites or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly."60 He explained the way in which such motives work in terms of Locke's theory of knowledge, insisting that " 'tis most evident, that nothing is in the mind, or reaches it, or takes any hold of it, any otherwise than as it is perceived or thought of."61 He further explained his notion of determination:

If strict propriety of speech be insisted on, it may more properly be said, that the voluntary action which is the immediate consequence and fruit of the mind's volition or choice, is determined by that which appears most agreeable, than the preference or choice itself; but that the act of volition itself is always determined by that in or about the mind's view of the object, which causes it to appear most agreeable. I say, in or about the mind's view of the object, because what has influence to render an object in view agreeable, is not only what appears in the object viewed, but also the manner of the view, and the state and circumstances of the mind that views 62

The outcome of Edwards's deliberations was the paradoxical conclusion that human beings were both free and determined. They were free in the sense that their choices and actions were really their own. They were thus truly being themselves. But they were determined in the sense that, "if it be so, that the will is always determined by the strongest motive, then it must always have an inability ... to act otherwise than it does."63 Thus Edwards saw freedom not as some kind of indeterminacy, unaffected by circumstances, character, past choices or habits. To him such a notion was a figment of the imagination, out of touch with reality. Human actions were determined by antecedent factors, whether they be circumstances or whether they be the good or bad character of people which affects the way that they view things and act. Human actions are not random events, but the product of whatever motivates them. In the last analysis, the decisive factor is "the strongest motive."

Edwards linked this idea with a form of psychological hedonism which taught that no one ever does or can do anything except to further his or her own pleasure. The alcoholic who cannot pass up another drink does so because it is "most agreeable to him."" If, however, the alcoholic manages to avoid taking another drink, it is because the "lesser pleasant pleasure" of getting drunk is outweighed by the more agreeable prospects of avoiding a hangover and of being delivered from alcoholism. The same basic principles apply to all human actions. Christians are no exception. In their case, "the strongest motive" is the hope of heaven, the fear of hell and the love of God. It is this which enables them to deny the world, the flesh and the devil in order to seek salvation.

A substantial part of Edwards's book on Freedom of Will was devoted to answering the arguments of the Arminian preachers and the ideas of the English Deist Thomas Chubb. To explore the ramifications of his reply would take us too far afield. But two points must be noted. The first is Edwards's argument that his view does not undermine human responsibility. Edwards's opponents argued that, if our actions are determined by antecedent causes, we cannot be held responsible for what we do. Edwards stood this objection on its head, and argued that it is precisely because human beings will to do the things that they do, that their actions may be praised or blamed.65 Motivation does not remove voluntary action. The fact that we act in accordance with what seems most agreeable to us makes us responsible. The other point to be noted has to do with God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Edwards's critics argued that Edwards was teaching a kind of divine determinism which undermined human responsibility. Edwards met this challenge head-on. It was a fixed point in his thinking.

God orders all events, and the volitions of moral agents amongst others, by such a decisive disposal, that the events are infallibly connected with his disposal. For if God disposes all events, so that the infallible existence of the events is decided by his providence, then he doubtless thus orders and decides things knowingly, and on design."

This reply was bound up with Edwards's Calvinistic view of God's sovereign grace in salvation. Without God's help from first to last, no human being could be saved.67 But it was also bound up with Edwards's view of divine immutability and foreknowledge 68 For if God were to change, it would mean that he was less than perfect. His divine decrees must therefore be immutable. God's foreknowledge rests upon God's knowledge of his own decrees. "Because the connection between the event and certain foreknowledge, is as infallible and indissoluble, as the event and an absolute decree."69

The question of free will continues to exercise philosophers and theologians.70 It remains a point of contention between Calvinists and Arminians in contemporary debate. But it also figures in the deliberations of the behavioral scientists and in the philosophical questions raised by psychotherapy. There can be no doubt that Edwards's understanding of an act of the will as an act of choosing marks a definite advance on the nebulous view of the will as some kind of autonomous faculty. Similarly, his view of freedom as the power and opportunity to act according to choice is more realistic than the assumption that freedom consists in not having to make choices. Edwards's account is important for its attempt to give recognition to motivational factors. Nevertheless, Edwards's solution to the problem of free will raises a number of acute questions. In its day it was impressive for the way in which it restated Calvinistic theology in terms of the most modern philosophical tools available (i.e., those furnished by John Locke). However, the question cannot be evaded whether the conceptual framework which made it modern two hundred years ago renders it obsolete today. Locke's view of the mind as essentially passive, receiving its knowledge and motivation from outside, readily fitted a theology which stressed humankind's need of grace from first to last. But the price Edwards paid for this harmonization of Calvinism with a world view drawn from Newton and Locke was the adoption of a deterministic, mechanistic view of causation, which traced every single action back to God's immutable decree.

In the last analysis, no action, thought, feeling or event could have been otherwise than what it was because it followed by necessity from the divine decree. The freedom that Edwards ascribes to human beings turns out, on closer inspection, to be their compliance with their own actions which are always determined by "the strongest motive." To put it another way, history is like a long-running soap opera on TV in which all the actors act out parts that are determined for them. The determination is on two levels. On the level of the segment of the story in which they find themselves, their words and actions are determined by the plot to date, which includes the character played by the actor. Whatever the character does is essentially determined. The actor who plays the part has no freedom to change anything. But the whole story is determined on an even higher level by the fact that God wrote the entire script before anything happened at all.

One does not have to think for more than a few moments to realize that the notion of total, absolute freedom for human beings is a figment of the imagination. Human choices and actions are certainly affected by a whole range of factors which severely limit possible courses of action. One cannot change the past. One cannot change one's sex or race. Past choices and actions clearly affect the way one thinks and chooses. And so on. It is this consistency of action which forms habits and characters. But human beings have the incorrigible feeling that not all of their actions are predetermined. In some cases at least, we have a deep-down feeling that we might have acted otherwise than we did.

We can agree with Edwards and say that if we look back at the past, whether it be our own past or the past in general, it seems reasonable to say that all actions were determined by "the strongest motive." It is plausible to think of the past as a web of causes and effects. It is certainly a major activity of the historian to attempt to discern the actual causes and effects from mere guesswork and popular assumptions about them. Indeed, it is legitimate to try to discern what were the strongest causes and motives. But this can be done only because the past is actually past and therefore fixed. The present and the future do not appear to share the same necessary, determined character. It is, in fact, a tautology to say that human actions are determined by "the strongest motive." It says no more than the statement: "The strongest motive is the strongest motive." It is impossible to predict in advance which of the various possible motives will turn out to be the strongest. This is not simply because of the vast range of motives and factors, both known and unknown. It is also because choosing, deciding and acting play a part in making any given motive "the strongest motive." In such instances, it would seem that the act of choosing itself transforms what might otherwise have been a weak or medium-powered motive into the motive which turned out to be the strongest and decisive one.

Edwards's hedonism appears to be no less problematic. For to say that our actions are prompted by whatever appears most agreeable does not explain what finally makes some things most agreeable and other things less agreeable. It leaves out of account the variable factor in human make-up which transforms (for better or worse) the intrinsic value of things and reassigns values in a personal, self-referential way. Edwards's scheme of thought treats this factor as just another item in the deter mined sequence of cause and effect. Since God is the ultimate author of all things, by whose decree everything comes to pass, Edwards's scheme of thought makes God the author of evil. On his premises it is impossible to resist the conclusion that God not only willed moral evil in general, but willed all evil human actions as well as all good actions. In this respect, Edwards's account of reality shares similar features with those of Spinoza and Leibniz. Common to them is a rationalistic determinism which interprets human action in terms of necessary sequence, of a piece with the necessary sequences exemplified by the natural science of the day.

It was the genius of Edwards to combine a high Calvinistic theology (which to him was a celebration of the greatness of God) with the new philosophical thinking that came from Europe. The synthesis that he produced was a form of Calvinism which not only spoke the language of the Age of Enlightenment but sought to justify Calvinism by means of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. This achievement made Edwards the leading orthodox Christian thinker in the Age of Enlightenment in America. But the price he paid for this was to propound a solution to the free-will question which raised more problems than it solved. Perhaps the root of the problem lay in the terms in which it was set. Edwards thought of it in terms of powers and forces comparable with the way powers and forces were thought of in the physical world. By posing the problem in quasi-physical terms Edwards ensured an answer in those terms. But perhaps this is the wrong model. Perhaps the way to a better answer lies in thinking of it in terms of grace, personality and love."

The theological tradition begun by Edwards came to be known as the New England Theology. His immediate successors were his personal friends, Joseph Bellamy (1719-90) and Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803),72 whose teaching was termed the New Divinity. The Calvinistic tradition continued to be strong in the nineteenth century. However, Nathaniel W. Taylor (1786-1858) introduced a reversal at Yale which came to be known as the New Haven Theology. He rejected Edwards's teaching on the will, arguing that human beings have a natural power of free choice. In the meantime other philosophical ideas from Europe had filtered into American thinking. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century Deism gained a firm foothold in American religious and political thought."

Deism provided the inspiration for works like Ethan Allen's Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784)," which ridiculed the Bible and blasted the church. The outlook of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and some of the other framers of the American Constitution was thoroughly Deistic. Jefferson compiled a slim volume which came to be known as The Jefferson Bible. It was almost as close as one could get to a scissors-and-paste production. Jefferson himself called it The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & Eng- lish.75 What Jefferson did was to take four copies of the Gospels in these languages and cut out the verses he wanted in order to paste together the life and teaching of Jesus. In so doing he discarded all references to the supernatural and miraculous. He included the accounts of Jesus' birth, but cut out all mention of the Holy Spirit. In the same fashion he omitted mention of the Holy Spirit at Jesus' baptism and elsewhere. He kept some of the teaching of Jesus, but omitted the healings and nature miracles. The work concluded with the burial of Jesus, but contained no hint of the resurrection. Jefferson never published the work, though he toyed with the idea of a version for the use of native Indians.

Jefferson was reluctant to state his religious beliefs in public. Wouldbe writers on the subject were informed: "Say nothing of my Religion: it is known to myself and God alone."" But in private it was another matter. He confessed to John Adams that he could never worship Calvin's God. "If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points, is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of a malignant spirit."" To another correspondent Jefferson confessed to being an Epicurean. Epicurus was "our master." In his teaching, classical philosophy had reached its zenith. Epicurus had provided the quintessential philosophy. In Jefferson's scheme of things Jesus figured as a reformer of Judaism. He was in no sense divine. His role in history was to supplement the teachings of Epictetus and Epicurus.

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of His own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really His from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of His biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable He did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others.78

In America Deism enjoyed much more widespread popularity than it did in England. Attempts were made to organize Deism into something like a religious denomination through the formation of Deistic societies. This was due to the efforts of men like the former Baptist preacher Elihu Palmer, who had been expelled from his pulpit for preaching against the divinity of Christ. Palmer's book on Principles of Nature (c. 1801) came to be regarded as the Bible of American Deism. The most enduring of the Deists in America was Thomas Paine (1737-1809), who was born in England but who emigrated to America and became an American citizen.79 Following Sir Isaac Newton, he argued that since the laws of mechanics cannot explain the origin of motion, there must have been an external first cause to set the planets in motion. He also believed in eternal rewards and punishments. But on the question of the Bible he was scathingly skeptical. His tract on The Age of Reason (2 parts, 1794-95) was a compendious attack on the Bible in the name of reason. As the work wound its way to its conclusion, Paine made the following pronouncement:

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

Instead then of studying theology, as is now done out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the Bible of the Creation. The principles we discover there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.80

Deism made an impact at several levels of American life. In the minds of some it was associated with revolutionary fervor. The revolt against authority in religion in the name of reason went hand in hand with the political revolt against alien authority. This, bound together with the association of Deism with science and what was deemed to be the truth behind history, succeeded in giving Deism a far wider hearing in America than it received in England. In the political arena men of Deistic persuasion like Jefferson and Franklin forged an alliance with more orthodox Christian believers in building the separation of church and state into the American Constitution." The Deists wanted a minimal acknowledgement of God and the exclusion of particular religious beliefs. The more orthodox believers likewise did not want foisted on them the practices and traditions of other churches. They or their ancestors had come to America in the first place in the search of freedom to practice their faith and way of life. The Constitution that was hammered out gave formal recognition to God, but its republican philosophy was inspired by a combination of ideas drawn from classical antiquity, the British constitution (minus the monarchy) and more recent political thinkers. It established a delicate mechanism designed to check by the rule of law the ills that flow from human passion.

On another level Deism had the effect of mobilizing the opposition of the churches to Deistic beliefs and Deistic influence in education. In a letter to the president of Yale written in 1759, Ezra Stiles mused aloud on the subject of liberty of thought and the progress of Deism.

It is true with this Liberty Error may be introduced; but turn the Tables the propagation of Truth may be extinguished. Deism has got such Head in the Age of Licentious Liberty, that it would be in vain to try to stop it by hiding the Deistical Writings: and the only Way left to conquer & demolish it, is to come forth into the open Field & Dispute this matter on even Footing-the Evidences of Revelation in my opinion are nearly as demonstrative as Newton's Principia, & these are the Weapons to be used.... Truth & this alone being our Aim in fact, open, frank & generous we shall avoid the very appearance of Evil.82

Stiles was not alone in sensing the danger and in turning to the weapons of scholarship to repel the enemy. In 1768 John Witherspoon accepted the call to the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton College). In theology a high Calvinist and in philosophy a follower of the Scottish Common Sense School, Witherspoon soon dismissed the college's tutors who favored Berkeley's immaterialism. The latter philosophy was no match for Deism. It was "an evil and ridiculous attempt to unsettle the principles of common sense" and "which never produced conviction even in those who pretend to espouse it." Witherspoon's strategy was "to meet the infidels upon their own ground and show from reason itself the fallacy of their principles."" When in 1812 the Presbyterian Church founded at Princeton its first seminary for the training of ministers, the Princeton theologians were called upon to show "the right use of reason in religion" and also the need for biblical revelation. The seminary's "plan" provided that every student "must have read and digested the principal arguments and writings relative to what has been called the deistical controversy. Thus he will be qualified to become a defender of the Christian faith."84 In a curious roundabout way Deism left its mark on evangelicalism and Protestant orthodoxy. From the days of Ezra Stiles onwards, mainstream American evangelical Protestantism was stamped by a conscious need to demonstrate the rationality of its belief and the historical factuality of the contents of the Bible.

The Age of Enlightenment grew out of the Age of Rationalism. It came to full flower in the movements that we have been discussing in the last three chapters-Deism, empiricism and the various movements noted in Scotland and America. It is clear that not everyone who lived in this age was hostile to religion. In Britain Locke, Butler and Berkeley were just as truly sons of the Enlightenment as were the Deists. In America Jonathan Edwards is the classic example of an orthodox believer who reinterpreted orthodoxy in terms of enlightened ideas. On the other hand, David Hume provides the classic example of a British enlightened skeptic.

As we bring this book to its close, we shall devote the next two chapters to looking at four leading Continental thinkers who present critical but contrasting attitudes to religion. Two of them belong to the culture of the French-speaking world: Voltaire and Rousseau. Two of them were German: Lessing and Kant. However, before we examine their ideas, it will be helpful to pause and reflect on the idea of the Age of Enlightenment and see how it transcended international frontiers and cultures.

In 1784 Immanuel Kant wrote a magazine article in which he asked himself the question "What is Enlightenment?" His reply was:

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is the tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"-that is the motto of enlightenment.'

Kant pictured human history as a process of growing up. Children have to do what they are told to do because their elders are assumed to know better. In bygone ages whole societies behaved like children. They did what they were told to do by the state and by the church. But so long as a society acts in this way, it remains immature. It needs to grow up, think for itself, and take charge. Kant did not think that the Prussia of his day was already an enlightened age. Censorship was still in force. The lives of many citizens were molded by habit, custom, tradition and unthinking obedience to the dictates of the state and the dogmas of the church. But the age of Frederick the Great was the Age of Enlightenment. The dawn had broken and people were beginning to throw off their erstwhile bondage. Admittedly, Kant did not think that reason could solve everything. Reason had its limitations. Nevertheless, it remained the best guide that human beings had. The resolve to submit everything to the scrutiny of reason was the basic item on the agenda not only for Kant but for the Age of Enlightenment in general.

Kant was not the only one to discuss the nature of enlightenment. The Berlin Monthly, the journal that carried Kant's article, also published an article on the same subject from the pen of the leader of the Jewish Enlightenment in Germany, Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, who was the grandfather of the composer, was a widely respected figure in intellectual and cultural circles. People called him "the Jewish Socrates." Nevertheless, his Jewish background prevented his admission to the Berlin Academy. On the question of enlightenment Mendelssohn believed that enlightenment lay in intellectual cultivation, which he distinguished from the practical. On the question of religion Mendelssohn opted for an enlightened Deism, which he developed into a universal religion of reason which he believed to be identical with the true spirit of Judaism.2

Kant and Mendelssohn mark the pinnacle of the German Enlightenment. It was an age which was already beginning to pass when they penned their attempts to define what it was. Kant and Mendelssohn represent two of the many faces of the Enlightenment. What they shared was the view that the rational intellectual could get beyond received opinions, tradition, custom and dogma, and attain a superior understanding through critical reasoning. However, they differed over how far this should affect practice. Mendelssohn's intellectual aestheticism was a world of its own into which the cultivated might enter and enjoy its delights. Kant, on the other hand, took the view long before Karl Marx thought of it that the duty of the philosopher was not simply to understand the world, but to change it. It was a view that was shared by other enlightened thinkers before him.

When Kant declared that the motto of enlightenment was Sapere aude (literally "Dare to be wise") he was in fact echoing a slogan that had been around for a long time. In 1736 the Society for the Friends of Truth had adopted it as its motto. Societies like this played an influential part in the German Enlightenment. In one such society members were required to pledge themselves not to accept or reject any belief except for a "sufficient reason."' But the motto Sapere aude is much older still. It comes from Horace, the Latin poet of the first century B.C.' The enlightened challenge to be wise and bring everything subject to the judgment of critical reason led some thinkers to a benign, though condescending, attitude to institutional religion. In the case of Kant it produced a thinly veiled contempt for institutional Christianity. In France especially, dogmatic atheism was extolled and the Catholic Church condemned.

Curiously enough, some of those who denounced the rites of the church found themselves attracted by the ritualism of Freemasonry. Whereas the Christian sacraments were repudiated as the product of priestcraft, the arcane mysteries of Freemasonry were hailed as the symbolic path to virtue and the means of achieving universal brotherhood. The eighteenth-century vogue of Freemasonry found musical expression in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (1791). However, the extravagant, allegorical tale which Mozart set to sublime music did not please everyone. Instead of receiving commendation for his presentation of Freemasonry as the embodiment of the loftiest human ideals, Mozart found himself rebuked for disclosing to the world secrets which were supposed to be reserved for the initiated. Worse still, he had done it in the form of childish, light-hearted entertainment.

The three guiding lights of the Enlightenment were reason, nature and progress. Helvetius's work Concerning the Mind (1758) argued that all human beings have roughly equal powers of understanding. Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Human Mind (1794) depicted Western society standing on the threshold of entering a wholly reasonable world. The idea had already been outlined by the philosophe Turgot in a speech at the Sorbonne "On the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" (1750). The French word philosophe acquired a quasi-technical significance in the eighteenth century when it was appropriated by a number of intellectuals who believed in the educational value of philosophy, the general benefits to humanity of natural science, free inquiry into religion, and social and political toleration.

A major project which drew on the energies of the philosophes was the great Encyclopedia (1751-1765) edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond D'Alembert.5 Some of the philosophes were Deists like Voltaire. Others were atheists. Their foremost exponent was Baron D'Holbach (17231789). D'Holbach's System of Nature, of Laws of the Physical World and of the Moral World (1770) presented the most comprehensive defense of materialist atheism. The idea of the soul was a pure illusion. Human beings were the product of nature which was subject to the laws which govern the physical universe. D'Holbach's atheism had already been anticipated by La Mettrie's L'Homme machine (1747) which, as its title suggests, presents the human as an organic machine.'

Julien Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751) was a leading physician in his day. His numerous writings included a defense of Epicureanism. His lifestyle and offensive views brought him many enemies, and he was forced into exile. La Mettrie found a protector in the person of Frederick the Great of Prussia. But D'Holbach's atheism was too strong even for that monarch, who composed a personal refutation, as did Voltaire in the form of an article on "God" which he featured in his own Philosophical Dictionary.

The Age of Enlightenment was by no means an age of uniformity. Alongside the intellectualism of the philosophes existed the anti-intellectualism of Rousseau. Belief in reason and progress was tinged with a certain pessimism. Some twenty years before Kant's famous essay on enlightenment, a correspondent wrote to Voltaire asking, "Is this the century of Enlightenment which you embellish and which you enlighten? Alas, times and men are like each other and will always be like each other."' Paradoxically, Voltaire himself managed to combine a Deism based on the divine ordering of the world with a profound pessi mism about human nature and natural evil.

Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was born in Paris to a well-to-do family. He was given a fine classical education by the Jesuits. His father wanted him to study law, but Francois-Marie was quickly lured away from this vocation in order to pursue his literary bent and enjoy the pleasures that society had to offer. The ire of his father and the hostility of the authorities (on account of his defamatory poems) led to several banishments from Paris, a brief exile in Holland and eleven months in the Bastille (1717-1718). It was about this time that he adopted the name of Voltaire.' Perhaps the best explanation is the suggestion that Voltaire is a rough anagram of Arouet L J., short for Arouet Le Jeune (i.e., Arouet the Younger). This is possible if the "u" is transformed into a "v" and the 'J" into an "i", as they often are in classical texts.

The course of Voltaire's career was only marginally less checkered than that of the hero of his satirical novel Candide. At an early age Voltaire was hailed as the best playwright in France, the equal of Corneille and Racine. Although few of his works merit performance today, Voltaire's plays dominated the French stage for fifty years. He enjoyed favor at the royal court, but rapidly acquired a number of deadly enemies, among them the Chevalier de Rohan. Voltaire went into hiding and took fencing lessons in order to challenge the Chevalier to a duel and kill him. When this was discovered Voltaire found himself once more in the Bastille. The imprisonment turned public opinion once more to Voltaire's favor, and the authorities commuted the prison sentence to a period of exile in England.

There is something to be said for the view that Voltaire came to England as a man of letters and returned to France as a philosopher. Voltaire was in England for nearly three years (1726-1729). In his homeland he had absorbed the skepticism and critical spirit of earlier generations of free thinkers, but in England he learned to admire the empiricism of Locke and the science of Newton. Voltaire was in England at the peak of the Deist controversy. He not only got to know at first hand the burning issues, but in the course of time acquired a substantial personal library of Deist literature which he carefully read and annotat- ed.9 In due course the names of English Deists began to appear in his writings, where he made use of deistic criticism of the Bible. But this was not until 1763. In the meantime he published his Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), which were composed as if Voltaire had written them from England in 1728 in order to acquaint his fellow countrymen about the state of religion, politics, philosophy, science, economics and culture on the other side of the English Channel. The work was retitled the following year as Philosophical Letters (1734). The new title was perhaps made necessary by the inclusion of an attack on Pascal's Pensees.10

The Philosophical Letters met with such hostility that Voltaire was obliged once more to flee from Paris in order to avoid arrest. The next fifteen years were spent mostly at Cirey in Lorraine, where Voltaire studied physics, metaphysics and history in the company of his learned mistress Mme. du Chatelet. In 1738 he published his Elements of the Philosophy of Newton with the purpose of acquainting the French public with the exciting world of Newtonian physics. The same year both Voltaire and Mme. du Chatelet wrote dissertations on the nature of fire for a prize offered by the Academy of Science. But their efforts did not meet with success. However, Voltaire's endeavors in the field of history were rewarded by his being named Historiographer of France, and in the following year he was elected to the Academie Francaise.

In 1750 Voltaire went to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, serving as a philosopher-poet in the capacity of Chamberlain to the King. After three years, he quarreled with the King and found himself obliged to travel. In 1755 he acquired a chateau in Geneva, which he named Les Delices. Today it is the home of the Voltaire Institute and Museum. Here he wrote his Essay on Manners (1756) and Candide (1759). In 1759 he acquired an estate over the border in France at Ferney, where he eventually settled for the rest of his life. The situation of the peasants quickened his concern for social reform. By this time Voltaire had acquired vast wealth. At Ferney Voltaire was hailed not only as France's great literary figure but as the champion of humanity. In his eightyfourth year (1778) Voltaire returned to Paris, where he received numerous ovations.

Prior to his death Voltaire had made a recantation of his attacks on the church in order to secure a Christian burial. But his efforts failed to satisfy the church authorities, and Voltaire was buried in obscurity. Some time after the burial D'Alembert succeeded in arranging an elaborate ceremony in Voltaire's honor at the Masonic lodge. Eventually his body was brought in triumph to the Pantheon, the former Catholic church which had become a secular national shrine in the French Revolution. In due course the mortal remains of Rousseau were also installed in the Pantheon. However, when the caskets were opened some years later, they were both found to have been pillaged.

Estimates of Voltaire vary wildly." Some detractors see his work as nothing but superficial common sense. He has been said to have failed to scale the summit of any art, just as he failed to plumb the depths of anything. In addition to being a playwright, Voltaire was a noted historian. In this respect he was like a French Edward Gibbon and David Hume rolled into one. Whereas Gibbon and Hume between them covered the history of the Roman Empire and Great Britain, Voltaire wrote at enormous length on the whole sweep of European history. Moreover, he did so from a secular, antireligious perspective. Voltaire has also some claim to be regarded as a moralist, but the claim is tarnished by his personal sexual life and the manner in which he accumulated his vast fortune. He went to great lengths to rehabilitate the name of Jean Calas, who had been unjustly condemned and cruelly tortured to death. Voltaire waged a relentless war against fanaticism, and yet the ways in which he pursued his own vendettas were not entirely free from the taint of fanaticism. A.J. Ayer has observed that "it is one of Voltaire's great merits that he was an uncompromising advocate of freedom of speech, but the form of this freedom which he primarily arrogated to himself was the freedom to expose, ridicule and denounce the past and current abuses of organized religion. 1112

Voltaire's claim to fame as a philosopher rests largely on his Philosophical Dictionary. But as Professor Ayer has pointed out, the title was something of a misnomer.' Few of the articles were philosophical in the modern sense of the term, and their only claim to form a dictionary resided in the fact that they were presented in alphabetical order. As the years went by, Voltaire expanded the original 118 articles to over 600. He ranged widely over the fields of physics, biology, etymology, anthropology, medicine, politics, law, morals and biography. But a recurring theme is religion. Voltaire used every opportunity to attackjews in general and the Old Testament in particular. He repeatedly professed shock at the wickedness of King David and other Old Testament characters and denigrated the savagery of primitive religion. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was really a vast collection of essays which afforded their author the opportunity to air his views on whatever took his fancy.

In the last fifteen years of his life, Voltaire became increasingly obsessed with attacking religion. To that end he devoted scores of miscellaneous pieces and Dictionary articles. He adopted the motto Ecrasez l'infame. The infamy that was to be eradicated was superstition and fanaticism, especially where they were to be found in the church. Voltaire defined fanaticism as "the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the passions."" As such the definition appears to allow a legitimate place to religion, but in Voltaire's account of Scripture and church history there was no age which had not succumbed to fanaticism. For what it was, Voltaire's own religion took the form of an intellectualistic deism which acknowledged the existence of God, but denied to the deity any active part in the world's affairs. Just as the existence of a watch points to a watchmaker, so the existence of order in nature points to a creator.

If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of day, I will then admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go by the name of a final-cause-finder-in plain language fool-to the end of my life.'5

However, once the clockmaker has made the clock, his services are no longer needed. On the other hand, atheism, Voltaire protested, was scarcely better than religious fanaticism. It was "a most pernicious monster in those who govern ... although less to be dreaded than fanaticism, it is almost always fatal to virtue.""

Within this deistic framework of belief Voltaire assigned to Jesus a place of honor among the great sages of the world alongside Socrates, Pythagoras and Zoroaster. His message was much the same as theirs: "Love God with all your hearts, and your neighbor as yourselves; for that is all."" For the rest, Voltaire averred, "There is not a single dogma of Christianity that was preached by Jesus Christ.""

The problem of evil was an issue which dogged Voltaire continually. Like David Hume, Voltaire stated the problem in the words of Epicurus:

God can either take away evil from the world and will not; or being willing to do so, cannot; or He neither can nor will; or, lastly, He is both able and willing. If He is willing to remove evil and cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can, but will not remove it, then is He not benevolent; if He is neither able nor willing, then is He neither powerful nor benevolent; lastly, if both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?19

The problem of evil was brought into sharp focus by the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 which Voltaire celebrated in a poem the following year. Voltaire returned again to the problem in his tale Candide, Or the Optimist (1759), where he relentlessly ridicules Leibniz's notion of the world as the best of all possible worlds. In Candide the advocate of this view is the pathetic Dr. Pangloss, who refuses to be shaken from his belief. At the end of the tale Pangloss keeps saying to Candide:

All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds; for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunegonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pis- tachios.21

To this Candide replies that this is well-said, "but we must cultivate our garden."

On this somewhat enigmatic note Voltaire concludes his tale. Many have felt that this was an anticlimax,21 but in fact the ending fits both the book and Voltaire's attitude to life. For him the problem of evil defies all solutions. God is not affected by evil. Neither does he concern himself with human wretchedness and misery. There is no Garden of Eden or Paradise to be restored. Human beings have no alternative but to enjoy what they can while they can and cultivate their gardens (as Voltaire himself did at Ferney) for their personal enjoyment and the mutual profit of their fellow human beings. In a sense what Voltaire advocated and practiced was his own enlightened brand of Epicureanism. In this respect it was a revival of a philosophy of the ancient past. But it also anticipated the growing secularism of the future. Later generations would find Voltaire's writings to be too inextricably enmeshed in his vendettas against the church and the concerns of his day to have enduring value. To the agnostic, Voltaire's deism seems like an unwarrantable aberration. There is little in Voltaire's thought that cannot be found elsewhere. His writings were characterized by breadth rather than depth. Philosophy made no major new development with Voltaire. But no one in the Age of Enlightenment preached the gospel of secularism so indefatigably, so clearly, or so engagingly as Voltaire.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)22 was a man of many parts. Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His mother died shortly after his birth. His erratic father taught him to read through the medium of sentimental novels and Plutarch's Lives. Eventually he was befriended by Mme. de Warens, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Rousseau's emotional dependence on her proved to be an abiding influence. He was born a Protestant, became a Catholic and ended up a Deist (after his own style).

In the course of his restless life he offered himself for the Catholic priesthood, but was rejected. He devised a new system of musical notion which failed to find acceptance. He wrote an opera which was performed before Louis XV, but his refusal to be presented before the king deprived him of all chance of procuring favor and financial support. He was in turn an educationist, political theorist, novelist and man of letters. He made and broke numerous friendships with the famous and not-sofamous. To many he was and is an enigma. His educational theories continue to influence paedogogical thinking to the present day, though Rousseau himself never received any formal education.

He was one of the most eloquent exponents of the dignity of humanity, and yet his personal relationships were pathetically sordid. He deposited his own five illegitimate children, born to him by an illiterate servant girl, Therese Levasseur, in a foundling home. He justified the action partly on the grounds that it was in line with the recommendations for bringing up children in Plato's Republic. Years later he married Therese, but he continued to be tormented by guilt over his actions.

Rousseau's literary career began in 1750 with his Discourse on the Scien ces and the Arts, a prize essay for the Dijon Academy, in which he argued the thesis that progress corrupts human morals. This theme was amplified and elaborated in various subsequent writings. Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was a novel which attacked the conventions of society which divorced love from marriage. The subtitle and the storyline evoked memories of the affair of Abelard and Heloise in the Middle Ages. The book also afforded Rousseau an opportunity to defend natural religion based upon an allegedly undogmatic reading of the Gospels.

With The New Heloise Rousseau reached the pinnacle of his success. His next major work Emile, or On Education (1762) brought mixed reactions. It extended his fame among his admirers, but roused such opposition among opponents that the book was banned and burned, and its author obliged to flee from France. The book is a series of lengthy disquisitions on educational theory, tied together by the story of Emile's education. The theory underlying Rousseau's views is announced in the opening words: "God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. 112' This leads Rousseau into head-on conflict with the traditional educational theory of his day. Instead of forcing children to learn rules and regulations, nature should be allowed to take its course. Children should be allowed to follow their natural instincts, freed as much as possible from external constraints and the corrupting influence of society. The young Emile is to be brought up in a kind of quarantine, where harmful influences are kept well at bay. Among the latter are toy weapons and church bells. Both are symbols of decadent society, through which the evils of war and institutionalized religion might corrupt the young. Food is to be kept natural and simple. Among the works Emile is permitted to read is Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with its idealized picture of life on a desert island. Emile himself is to be brought up in the country under the watchful eye of a private tutor who will see to it that his natural instincts are naturally led in the right direction.

The fourth of the five books which make up Emile contains a lengthy excursus on religion entitled "The Creed of a Savoyard Priest." The passage purports to be the profession of faith delivered by an elderly priest to a young enquirer as they spend a day together surrounded by the splendor of the Alps. The priest disclaims all pretensions to be a great philosopher. What he has to offer is "a certain amount of common sense and a constant devotion to truth."24 If he has made mistakes, they are honest mistakes. His hearer is invited to consult his heart and listen to the voice of reason. The discourse falls into two distinct parts. The first part deals with "natural religion." Here the old priest urges that matter, being inert, requires an extraneous cause (God) to set it in motion. The laws of the physical world point to God as supreme Intelligence. Evil is the result of the dualism of body and soul. Freedom is the basis of happiness and immortality. Conscience is the ultimate principle of the moral life and the source of true happiness and virtue.

Having laid the foundations of this positive deism in the first part of the discourse, the priest uses the second part to deploy his deistic arguments against revealed religion. Claims to revelation produce irrational intolerance. It is impossible for any single revealed religion to establish its claims to truth. Although the priest professes admiration for the Gospels, the Christ that he believes in is essentially "the teacher and pattern" of "pure and lofty morality." Jesus is certainly no fiction of the imagination. His actions are better attested than those of Socrates. "If the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God."25 But the priest clearly does not intend this to be understood in any traditional, orthodox sense. Human salvation cannot be made dependent upon anything so particular as faith in another historical human being, and the claims of Christianity should not be pressed upon Jews and Mohammedans. Dogmas should be judged by their moral relevance. The young hearer is exhorted to love God, to be honest and humble, and to "learn to be ignorant." "Dare to confess God before the philosophers; dare to preach humanity before the intolerant.""

What Rousseau was urging upon his readers was his own version of a deistic undogmatic dogmatism. The reader is exhorted to "seek honestly after truth" and to bring all that he has ever been taught "to the bar of conscience and of reason."27 At the same time no doubt is left as to what the desired result will be. To place any reliance upon miracles and events in the past is to plunge everything into uncertainty.28 God, in the last analysis, is not a fit subject for argument and debate. He is known already in the depths of our being. It is dangerous to speculate; it is much better to repose in God.

If I have succeeded in discerning these attributes of which I have no absolute idea, it is in the form of unavoidable deductions, and by the right use of my reason; but I affirm them without understanding them, and at bottom that is no affirmation at all. In vain do I say, God is thus, I feel it, I experience it, none the more do I understand how God can be thus.

In a word: the more I strive to envisage his infinite essence the less do I comprehend it; but it is, and that is enough for me; the less I understand, the more I adore. I abase myself, saying, "Being of beings, I am because thou art; to fix my thoughts on thee is to ascend to the source of my being. The best use I can make of my reason is to resign it before thee; my mind delights, my weakness rejoices, to feel myself overwhelmed by thy greatness.29

In the same year that Rousseau published Emile, he also published The Social Contract which set out his theory of the state and society. The laws of a state are not a matter of divine appointment. They are not to be based upon divine law but upon the will of the people. Church and state should be kept separate." The only valid basis for a society is for its members to agree to a social pact which will combine freedom with just government in the interests of the majority. Rousseau's essay was a seminal work of modern, secular democratic thinking and played no small part in paving the way for the French Revolution.

The outcry provoked by Emile caused Rousseau to flee from France, partly for his own safety and partly to avoid embarrassing his patrons. A warrant was issued for his arrest. The book was condemned by the archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, in a Pastoral Letter. Later on Emile was also condemned in Geneva. In due course Rousseau wrote a reply in the form of an open letter to the archbishop (1762). Together with his Letters written from the Mountain (1764), which replied to the Genevan authorities, the letter served to complement the Confession of Faith in Emile.

During this period Rousseau found himself not only in conflict with both Catholics and Protestants; he found his relations with the Encyclopedists also increasingly strained. To the former he was too irreligious, to the latter he was too religious. For a time he lived under the protection of Frederick the Great of Prussia. But alarmed by the mount ing hostility, Rousseau decided to accept the invitation of David Hume to make his home in England. In England Rousseau's behavior became increasingly erratic. He became convinced that Hume was plotting his downfall, and after a violent quarrel he fled in panic back to France. He continued to be haunted by the fear of persecution. The principal works of his last years were his Confessions (1772) and The Reveries of the Solitary Stroller (1778). In a sense, the two were complementary. The former is a massive, introspective piece of autobiography, a striking secular counterpart to Augustine's work of the same title. The latter was Rousseau's spiritual testament.

To Immanuel Kant, Rousseau was one of the great philosophical liberators of the modern age. He ranked him alongside Newton. What Newton had done in the sphere of natural science Rousseau had done in the field of the study of humanity.

Newton was the first to discern order and regularity in combination with great simplicity, where before him men had encountered disorder and unrelated diversity. Since Newton the comets follow geometric orbits. Rousseau was the first to discover beneath the varying forms human nature assumes, the deeply concealed essence of man and the hidden law in accordance with which Providence is justified by his observations."

Rousseau stands with Voltaire as the foremost French thinkers of their age. Although the latter might qualify as a kind of universal genius, the thought of Rousseau was more seminal. The two were in fact archenemies, though they attacked each other at long range. Ironically, their (now empty) tombs stand together in the Pantheon. But the two rivals never met, and their teaching pulled in opposite directions.

Like other representatives of the Age of Enlightenment, Voltaire could be described as an eighteenth-century Epicurean. At heart he was an optimistic materialist who prided himself on his open-minded rationality, who cherished enlightenment, and who prized the value of empirical observation.

Rousseau was both a child and a foe of enlightenment. He had profound misgivings about the onward march of civilization and the contribution of science. With his stress on feeling, the heart and his pleading for a return to nature, Rousseau anticipated the Romantic Movement and its criticism of the Enlightenment. But Rousseau's writings contain more than an echo of classical Stoicism.92 He not only drew on Stoic literature, but developed a post-Christian form of Stoicism for his times. It was a Stoicism which grappled with the problem of evil. It allowed for belief in the divine, but sought to remedy the ills of society by cultivating the inner self. It extended the cultivation of the individual self to society at large by means of the modern myth of the social contract. Kant thought of Rousseau's achievement as a kind of counterpart in the field of educational and social theory to the scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. But the two were not quite on a par. Rousseau's work could hardly claim the scientific rigor that Newton had brought to his investigations. Rousseau's post-Christian philosophy was no more scientific than was pre-Christian philosophy. In any case, to have his work hailed as a scientific achievement would hardly have been gratifying for Rousseau. But it had one thing in common with the scientific thinking of his day. It marked a significant further step in the continued secularization of modern life.

From the standpoint of the history of Christianity and Western thought the German Enlightenment reached its climax in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It had two focal points. One of them was Lessing's publication of the anonymous writings of Reimarus which launched the quest of the historical Jesus in Germany. The other was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

The name of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)' is one which figures more often in the annals of German literature than in histories of philosophy. Lessing played a leading part in founding the modem German theater with plays like Emilia Galotti (1772), Minna von Barnhelm (1767) and Nathan the Wise (1779). He helped to free German drama from slavish imitation of French classical tragedy and introduced the novel practice of writing plays about the middle class instead of kings, the nobility and characters from the world of antiquity. But Lessing's contribution to the rising tide of skepticism was no smaller than, even though somewhat different from, that of Voltaire and Rousseau. His forays into the theological world proved to be a major turning point in the history of theology.

The son of a pastor, Lessing was brought up in an atmosphere of orthodox piety. In his student days at Leipzig he had studied theology before turning to philosophy and literature. The theological writings of his later years reveal an acute mind that was able to take on the professional theologians on their own terms. In 1767 Lessing came to Ham burg as consultant and resident critic of the short-lived National Theater. It was here that he got to know the family of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768). The Reimarus home was a center of culture and enlightenment in the city of Hamburg. This tradition was maintained by the daughter, Elise, and the son, Johann, who was Lessing's physician. It was Lessing's contact with the Reimarus family that led to a series of events which changed the course of theology.

Hermann Samuel Reimarus was widely known as a respected, if somewhat rationalistic, religious writer. In his younger days he had spent some time in Holland and England during the period when the Deistic controversy was approaching its climax. Reimarus spent the last forty years of his life as a teacher of oriental languages in Hamburg. The formidable list of his learned, though now unread, publications indicates his respect for reason and for Christianity as a rational religion. Reimarus combatted the materialistic atheism of La Mettrie and the pantheism of Spinoza. However, Reimarus's published works give little hint of the doubts that he had long been nursing about revealed religion, the historical worth of the Bible, and the origins of Christianity. These doubts were reserved for his magnum opus, written to express his personal doubts but deliberately withheld from publication on account of its contents. Reimarus entitled his manuscript Apology, Or Defence of the Rational Worshippers of God.

Lessing was admitted to the intimate circle of those who were permitted to see the text, and succeeded in obtaining a copy. On leaving Hamburg he assumed the post of librarian to the duke of Brunswick at the ducal library in Wolfenbiittel. In this capacity Lessing proceeded to publish a series of works On History and Literature from the Treasures of the Ducal Library at Wolfenbiittel. The series afforded Lessing the opportunity to begin publication of Reimarus's Apology. At that point in time religious censorship was in force, and German authors did not enjoy the same freedom of speech as their English counterparts. This was doubtless a major factor in the decision to withhold the manuscript from publication. Lessing surmounted this obstacle by making two significant moves. First, he obtained exemption from censorship for his series on the grounds of its intrinsic historical interest (though this freedom was eventually forfeited on account of the ensuing controversy). Secondly, he published Reimarus's work, Fragments of an Unnamed Author,' which he released in the form of extracts spread out over a period of time. To throw heresy hunters still further off the scent, Lessing suggested that the author might have been the well-known Deist Johann Lorenz Schmidt, who had spent the last years of his life at the court in Wolfen- biittel.

Lessing published seven Fragments between 1774 and 1778. The topics ranged widely from a piece advocating toleration for the Deists to critical attacks on the veracity of the Old Testament and the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. It was, however, the seventh and last Fragment which provoked the greatest controversy. It was an account of Jesus entitled On the Intentions ofJesus and the Evangelists.

It presented Jesus as a sincere but misguided religious reformer. In a manner evocative of the English Deists, Reimarus denied that there were any mysteries in Jesus' preaching. Jesus did not intend to introduce any new teaching or novel ceremonies into the Jewish religion. Rather, he sought to purify Judaism and call it back to true Jewish piety. Unfortunately, Jesus made a number of moves which were to prove fatal. He allowed himself to be sidetracked into embracing political messianism. He came to think of the kingdom of God as a political entity which was just around the corner. At first Jesus thought that it would come about through his preaching and calls to repentance and holiness. But then he became desperate, and he decided to force the issue at all costs. Jesus chose the Passover time to display his hand and force a decision. Unfortunately he had miscalculated the strength of popular support. The crowds welcomed him as he rode into Jerusalem, but Jesus had already alienated the authorities. The disturbance that he created in the Temple simply confirmed the authorities in their decision to liquidate him. At the crucial moment all his followers deserted him. Jesus died a broken man. His last words express his disillusionment with God who had failed him.

The entire Christian religion might well have ended then and there but for the imagination and duplicity of Jesus' disciples. At first they were terrified and went into hiding. But when it became clear that the authorities did not intend to persecute them, they hit on a bold master plan. They put out the story that Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them in private. The story was further embellished by the claim that the kingdom of God which Jesus had talked about would materialize when Jesus returned to earth. Such were the disciples' powers of persuasion that they built up a following. The church managed to weather the trials and tribulation which came its way. The Second Coming of Jesus kept on being postponed. The church has flourished for nearly eighteen hundred years, but few have noticed that the whole edifice of Christianity was built upon fraud.

Following the lead of Albert Schweitzer some eighty years ago, generations of scholars have assumed that the publication of Reimarus's Fragment On the Intentions of Jesus and his Disciples marked the beginning of the quest of the historical Jesus. The idea that the real Jesus of history was different from the Jesus depicted in the New Testament and the desire to get at the facts have been the central issue in theology from that day to this. Schweitzer went so far as to hail Reimarus's work as "perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological."' What Schweitzer had in mind here was Reimarus's contention that Jesus believed that he was living in the endtimes, and that Jesus cannot be understood apart from this notion of the kingdom of God.

To Schweitzer, Reimarus appeared like a bolt from the blue with no predecessors and no successors. Today it is clear that this verdict cannot stand. Reimarus himself was in England while the Deistic controversy was raging. His personal library contained copies of important Deistic writings, and close study of his work shows his indebtedness to the Deism that emanated from England. Not only was Reimarus familiar with the corpus of Deistic literature, but so too was the intellectual reading public for many years prior to the publication of the Fragments. Sundry works had already been translated into German, and those who had not read the books themselves had been kept abreast of developments abroad by journals which informed their readers about what was going on outside the German-speaking world. Nevertheless, Reimarus's work marked a turning point, partly because of the controversy that it unleashed and partly because it was a work evidently written by a German author which cast grave doubts about the historical foundations of the Christian faith.

The opening shots in the pamphlet war were fired as early as 1777. In that year J. D. Schumann restated the traditional arguments from miracles and prophecy for the truth of Christianity. J. H. Ress defended the authenticity of the resurrection narratives against the criticism of the Fragmentist. Lessing himself joined the fray by publishing a series of Counter Theses in his capacity as editor and by responding to the writings of Schumann and Ress in pamphlets of his own. The main target of Lessing's writings was the pastor of the Lutheran Church of St. Catherine in Hamburg, J. M. Goeze. The weightiest work in the entire controversy came from the pen of J. S. Semler (1725-1791), who is now widely credited with being the founder of the historical study of the New Testament. In 1779 Semler published a massive Answer to the Fragments of an Unknown Author, which analyzed the Fragments almost line by line, exploiting the faulty logic, the self-contradictions, and the inadequacies of the historical interpretation of the Fragmentist. Semler's work has never been translated into English. It is a far more substantial and impressive work than Albert Schweitzer's summary of it might suggest. With its publication the immediate controversy began to subside. Within two years Lessing himself died, and other things began to occupy the public's attention.

Throughout the controversy, Lessing behaved like a German Voltaire. He disowned the views of the unnamed Fragmentist, but asserted the author's right to state them. He professed to think that the unnamed author was too extreme, but what if he were right? What difference would it make? The main thrust of Lessing's own contributions to the debate was directed at fundamental questions which the Fragments posed. Can the truth of a religion be established by appealing to history? Can any religion show from history that it is uniquely true? In 1777 Lessing published a reply to J. D. Schumann's argument from prophecy and miracles for the truth of Christianity. Lessing entitled his own pamphlet On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power. The title deliberately echoes the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:4. Lessing's strategy was to try to outflank the question of history by denying its relevance. If Lessing had lived at the time of Christ and had seen prophecy fulfilled and miracles performed before his own eyes, then of course they would have weighed with him. But now we have only reports of such fulfillments and such phenomena. Reports do not have the same compelling powers as the events themselves. Lessing crowned his argument with the celebrated axiom:

If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truths.

That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.'

Evidently Lessing felt that he had made a real score here. In fact, he was not saying anything particularly new. Moreover, his argument begged the question. To say that historical statements are not of the same order as, say, the proposition that two plus two make four, is simply to state an obvious truism. Two plus two make four is self-evident. Once we understand the meaning of the words in this proposition we can see its truth. No further observation or historical inquiry is necessary. On the other hand, the truth of historical statements depends upon the credibility of the supporting testimony. In propounding his axiom Lessing was restating a basic dogma of rationalism that had been around since the days of Descartes, that only clear and distinct, self-evident ideas may serve as the basis for a system of thought. The ideal form of knowledge was geometry with its self-evident definitions, axioms and logically necessary deductions. This ideal was exemplified in Spinoza's Ethics (1677). Leibniz had explained the point underlying Lessing's distinction in numerous places, including his essay on "Necessary and Contingent Truths" (c. 1686) and his Monadology (1714).5 Lessing's distinction between "accidental truths" and "necessary truths" corresponds to the distinction that Kant made between "synthetic" and "analytic judgments" in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which was published in the year of Lessing's death.6

On the basis of this distinction Lessing urged that historical claims belong to a different category from metaphysical and moral ideas. There was an "ugly, broad ditch" between the two categories over which Lessing could not jump, however much he might wish to.' Despite his protestations of desire to jump over the ditch, Lessing saw no need to jump. For the basis of religion did not lie in history at all. The value of any religion (Christian or otherwise) depends upon its capacity to transform life through love. Lessing gave dramatic expression to this last point in his play Nathan the Wise (1779). By the time that he wrote it, Lessing had been forbidden to publish anything more on religion. He resolved to get around this by returning to what he called "his former pulpit," that is, the stage. The play was set in the time of the Crusades, but the characters in the play bore marked resemblance to several of the persons involved in the Fragments controversy, including Pastor Goeze. The hero, Nathan, was modelled on Moses Mendelssohn. The three great religions are represented by three main characters: Nathan the Jew, Saladin the Moslem and the Knight Templar.

At the heart of the play, in the middle of the third act, Lessing drew upon a tale found in Boccaccio's Decameron. Saladin asks Nathan which of the three religions is true. Nathan replies with the allegory of the three rings: There was once an ancient ring which had the power of bestowing on its owner the gift of being loved by God and man. The ring was passed on to successive generations, continually bestowing its wondrous power. At last it came into the possession of a man who had three sons, each equally dear to him. To resolve the problem of who should get the ring, the old man had two replicas made. Each son got a ring, and no one could tell the rings apart. As with religion, the original could not be traced. Each claimed to have the truth. At last the sons appealed to a judge who suggested in exasperation that none of the rings might be genuine. Perhaps the father wanted to destroy the tyranny of the ring. It was clear that none of the brothers was loved by all. Perhaps none of them had the true ring. In the circumstances the judge advised the brothers each to behave as if he possessed the true ring and thereby prove the truth of his claims. The play ends with the discovery of mutual kinship and joyful reconciliation.

Nathan the Wise was not quite Lessing's last word on religion. In his essay On the Education of the Human Race (1780) Lessing spelled out the message that was implicit in the play. The world's religions represent merely phases in the progress toward a universal religion of love in which humankind will be perfected.8 The Old Testament is seen as an "elementary primer" in the education process. Jesus is hailed as "the first reliable, practical teacher of the immortality of the soul." For Lessing history was at best a series of occasions for grasping truths which belonged to a different order from historical truths. As he said elsewhere, "Religion is not true because the evangelists and apostles taught it; on the contrary, they taught it because it was true. The written traditions must be interpreted by their inward truth and no written traditions can give religion any inward truth if it has none."9 Lessing's theme has a lofty ring about it. It echoes a refrain that can be found in the English Deist Matthew Tindal.10 But it must be asked whether it is as true as it must appear at first sight. Lessing's overall position makes the gratuitous assumption that religions are more or less all about the same thing, and are merely passing phases in the world's onward progress. It assumes that history cannot have decisive importance for religion, because no human being or event in time can affect the central questions of religion.

Lessing's position makes certain assumptions which an Enlightened thinker like himself would accept without question, but which many would challenge today. He assumes that demonstrable, necessary propositions not only belong to a higher order than other sorts of propositions, but that such propositions can serve as a basis for a belief system. But it may be questioned whether the views that Lessing himself was advocating had been so demonstrated, or indeed whether any beliefsystem or world view could be demonstrated as being established by "necessary truths of reason."

There is, of course, a profound sense in which it can be said that the evangelists and apostles taught religion because it was true. They bore witness to the action of God in history, as they encountered it in Jesus Christ. The fact that such an encounter is not reducible to a rationally self-evident proposition does not make it any less compelling. At the heart of Lessing's complaint against orthodox Christians was the charge that they were making category mistakes by confusing different kinds of truth. But in fact it was Lessing himself who was making the category mistake by allowing only two types of truth-accidental truths of history and necessary truths of reason-and by failing to see that history can provide the means of apprehending a reality which transcends these categories."

About the time that he wrote his essay On the Education of the Human Race, Lessing made some remarks about Spinoza which were taken to mean that he himself had embraced Spinozism. This action gave grave offense to Moses Mendelssohn and resulted in what came to be known as the Pantheism Controversy. Whether Lessing was actually a pantheist is still being debated. There are certain passages in his writings which suggest that he was.12 What is beyond dispute is the fact that from this time onwards an increasing number of writers professed admiration for Spinoza. Among them are names celebrated in the history of German literature, philosophy and theology-Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Schelling. As the Age of Enlightenment was succeeded by the Age of Idealism, the Deism of the Enlightenment came to be replaced by a pantheism which viewed God as the pervasive, divine spirit of the world. Inevitably this affected the way that people thought about Christianity. At the same time the historical skepticism of the Enlightenment continued to thrive. But the story of this belongs elsewhere.'

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)14 was one of the most acute and influential philosophers of modern times. The course of his life was outwardly uneventful, but his writing and teaching changed the course of Western thought. It marked the climax of two-hundred years of European philosophy and shaped the course of what was to follow. Kant was born and died at Konigsberg, the capital city of East Prussia (now annexed to the U.S.S.R and renamed Kaliningrad). He was the son of a poor harnessmaker of Scottish ancestry and had a pietistic upbringing. He was small in physique-evidently never growing taller than five feet two inches or weighing more than one hundred pounds. In his youth it was taken for granted that he would study theology and become a Lutheran pastor. But Kant fell in love with Latin, and was captivated by Lucretius's poem On the Nature of Things. Even late in life Kant could recite long sections of it from memory. Lucretius helped to turn Kant's thoughts away from religion toward a naturalistic view of the world. Kant was a student at the University of Konigsberg and, apart from a period as a private tutor, spent the rest of his life there. In 1755 he became an unsalaried lecturer and continued in that capacity for the next fifteen years. In 1770 he was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics, and despite his weak constitution he continued to be active in that post until 1796, when his faculties had begun to show signs of decline.

Kant's life presents a paradoxical picture. Today Kant is known as a major philosopher, but he owed his early reputation to his views on the nature of the universe. His position at the university required him to lecture on a wide range of subjects, and his earliest publications were mainly in the field of science and natural philosophy.i5 The most important of these early works was Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,16 which contains the first correct explanation of the appearance of the Milky Way. Kant went on to picture the universe as an infinite, hierarchically ordered system of galaxies which he linked with a theory of the evolution of planetary systems and a theory of atoms. In his preface he acknowledged similarities between his views and those of Lucretius, Epicurus, Leucippus, Democritus and Sir Isaac Newton. But he defended himself against charges of reviving ancient paganism and naturalism, protesting that his conviction of "the infallibility of Divine truth" was so potent that he would hold everything that contradicted it "as sufficiently refuted by that truth." At this stage in his career, Kant professed to value the proofs from the beauty and perfect arrangement of the universe for a supremely wise Creator. At the same time he expressed the wish that the defenders of religion would not use those proofs "in a bad way" so as to perpetuate the conflict with the advocates of naturalism."

Kant also lectured on anthropology and geography. He was fond of books on travel, but never travelled far. He enjoyed company and frequently entertained guests at his midday meal (his sole meal of the day). He liked female company (so long as his lady guests did not pretend that they understood his Critique of Pure Reason). He twice contemplated marriage, but put off making a decision until it was too late. The pattern of his daily life was strictly regulated. His servant awoke him at five. He worked at his desk in nightcap and robe until seven. After his morning lectures he returned to his study, donning once more the nightcap and robe. After his midday meal he took a solitary walk. The poet Heinrich Heine put out the story that the housewives of Konigsberg could set their clocks by the regularity of Kant's afternoon walk. Kant had no ear for music, and had an intense dislike of noise. On one occasion he urged the police authorities to stop the inmates of a nearby prison from consoling themselves by singing hymns. His own highly regulated personal life was shaped by considerations of practical utility and well-being and by a profound awareness of the dictates of duty.

Any adequate understanding of Kant's thought must grapple with his great Critiques, especially the Critique of Pure Reason. But there are two relatively minor writings which help to put Kant's philosophy in perspective. We have already noted one of these writings-Kant's journal article of 1784 which addressed the question "What is Enlightenment?"" Kant's answer was that enlightenment was the determination to think for oneself and not accept anything on authority. If the world was not yet an enlightened world, Kant had already given proof of his determination to be an enlightened philosopher with the publication in 1781 of his Critique of Pure Reason (2nd edition, 1787). It was a work which reappraised the process and scope of human knowledge. The other writing which puts Kant's thought into perspective came a dozen years after the journal article. It was a letter which Kant wrote to C. F. Staudlin, who was a professor of theology at the University of Gottingen. In this letter Kant writes of his great plan for an enlightened reappraisal of the main areas of human activity.

My longstanding plan for the reappraisal, incumbent upon me in the field of pure philosophy centered on dealing with three tasks: (1) What can I know? (Metaphysics) (2) What should I do? (Ethics) (3) What may I hope? (Religion); whereupon the fourth should follow: What is man? (Anthropology; on which I have annually delivered a course for more than 20 years). With the accompanying book Religion within the Limits etc. I have sought to complete the third division of my plan. In this work conscientiousness and true respect for the Christian religion, but also the proper principle of freedom of thought, have led me to conceal nothing. On the contrary, I have presented everything openly, as I believe I see the possible union of the latter with the purest practical reason.19

The work that Kant referred to in this letter was Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). The work did in the sphere of religion what Kant's other great Critiques had done in other spheres. His great work on ethics, the Critique of Practical Reason, had been published in 1788. It was followed by a major study of aesthetics, the Critique ofJudgment (1790). The long-awaited enquiry into Anthropology finally appeared in 1798. Kant supplemented these major treatises with a number of shorter writings. Among them are his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) and Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

In a wide-ranging historical survey like the present book, it is impossible to give more than the barest outline of a thinker's ideas. The difficulties are infinitely compounded in the case of a philosopher of the stature of Kant. We shall confine our attention to four aspects of his thought: (1) Kant's view of knowledge; (2) his rejection of the traditional proofs of the existence of God; (3) his moral approach to God; and (4) his reappraisal of Christianity.

1. Kant's View of Knowledge. Karat's view of knowledge was a mixture of rationalism and empiricism. He had been educated in the rationalist tradition, but fairly early on he had read David Hume who (in his own phrase) had interrupted his "dogmatic slumber. 1120 Hume's discussion of cause and effect and his views on the limited scope of reason shook Kant's faith in rationalism. But Hume's discussion of reason proved to be unsatisfactory, and over the years Kant worked out his own critical philosophy which sought to determine the role and scope of reason in the acquisition of human knowledge. Kant agreed with the empiricists in saying that "all our knowledge begins with experience," but differed from them in insisting that "it does not follow that it all arises out of experience."2' The "raw material" of knowledge comes from outside us, but the mind also plays a part in processing that material by means of its own built-in concepts and ways of thinking. Kant's aim in the Critique of Pure Reason was to examine this process and determine the scope of human knowledge.

Kant formulated the central question of the Critique of Pure Reason in the following words: "How are a priori synthetic judgments possible?"22 To grasp what Kant means we need to grasp the basic meaning of two sets of terms. The first is the distinction between synthetic and analytic. In his introduction to the Critique Kant provides the following explanation:

In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought ... this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something which is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies outside the concept A, although it does indeed stand in connection with it. In the one case I entitle the judgment analytic, in the other synthetic.21

If we try to translate this abstract terminology into everyday language, we could say that the statement "A rainy day is a wet day" is an example of an analytic statement. The notion of "wet day" is already contained in that of "rainy day." Such a statement is also said to be necessary. It is necessarily true. To deny it would involve a contradiction in terms. There cannot be a rainy day which is not also a wet day. However, to make a statement of this kind is merely to offer a definition of terms. Definitions of this kind merely unpack whatever is contained in the terms. They do not refer to any particular state of affairs. On the other hand, if we say that "Tuesday was a wet day," we are making a different sort of statement. It belongs to the class of statements which Kant terms synthetic. Such statements are not necessarily true. For Tuesday could have been a dry day or any other kind of day. In synthetic statements the predicate says something about the subject which was not already contained in the notion of the subject. To deny it is not to involve oneself in a contradiction of terms. The truth or falsity of the statement depends on whether what is said corresponds with observable facts. In other words, to test whether a synthetic statement like "Tuesday was a wet day" is true, you have to check on what people remember about Tuesday.

The other set of terms which require definition is a priori and a pos- te7io7i.24 Kant defined a priori knowledge as knowledge that is "absolutely independent of all experience." He contrasted it with a posteriori knowledge which denotes empirical knowledge of the world gained through the senses. Such knowledge is gained "solely from experience." To some extent, the two pairs of concepts that we have noted overlap. Synthetic knowledge is also a posteriori knowledge, for it involves observation and experience through the senses. Kant believed that knowledge of the world was also both synthetic and a priori. Hence the central question of his book. His aim was to examine the factors involved in this kind of knowledge. It affected both metaphysical and physical knowledge. For before one could safely embark on these enterprises, it was necessary to embark on a preliminary critique of pure reason. By this term Kant meant "the faculty of reason in general" viewed "independently of all experience. " "A priori modes of knowledge are entitled pure when there is no admixture of anything empirical."

Thus Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was devoted to examining the scope and limitations of human thought by means of a prior examination of human reason. Kant ventured to claim that his inquiry had been so complete that "there is not a single metaphysical problem which has not been solved, or for the solution of which the key at least has not been supplied."25 As we shall see shortly, this boast was not intended to open the door to a new age of metaphysical speculation. Quite the reverse. Kant believed that traditional metaphysics involved self-contradictory speculation about illusory entities which (if they existed at all) lay beyond the scope of the human mind.

Kant's view of knowledge may be summed up by saying that its raw material consists of sensible impressions which is processed by the human mind. In processing this raw material the mind employs the Forms of Intuition of space and time.26 Neither space nor time represent properties of things in themselves. Space is nothing but the form of all appearances of outer sense, whereas time is the form of inner sense. Time and space belong to our intuition of objects. But Kant believed that they belong to our a priori intuition. As such "they apply to objects only insofar as objects are viewed as appearances, and do not present things as they are in themselves. This is the sole field of their validity; should we pass beyond it, no objective use can be made of them ."21

In addition to the forms of intuition Kant argued that the mind employs Categories or Pure Concepts of the Understanding. 28 Kant identified twelve such categories of understanding which he groups into four groups of three: Quantity (Unity, Plurality, Totality); Quality (Reality, Negation, Limitation); Relation (Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Community) and Modality (Possibility-Impossibility, Existence-Non-existence, Necessity-Contingency). The categories of understanding enable the human mind to classify and interpret the objects of experience. They' make human understanding possible. However, the mind does not actually perceive things as they are in themselves. As Kant remarked with regard to the forms of intuition, "While much can be said a priori as regards the form of appearances, nothing whatsoever can be asserted of the thing itself, which may underlie these appearances."29 In other words, the Thing-in-Itself (German, Ding-an-sich) is unknowable.

If Kant was skeptical about the possibility of knowing material things as they are in themselves, he was doubly so about realities which allegedly transcend the material. Use of the forms of intuition was "valid only for objects of possible experience."" As soon as the human mind tries to press beyond the material world, it lands itself in Antinomies or irreconcilable self-contradictions.91 For the concepts that the mind seeks to apply to the metaphysical realm are concepts which are applicable to the physical realm. And even here the human mind has to live with contradictions. A case in point is the belief in free will. Kant believed that the laws of nature preclude human freedom, for science posits an explanation of all events in terms of causal sequence. Thus the idea of human freedom is illusory. On the other hand, Kant maintained that it was rational to believe in "absolute spontaneity," for without it no series of causes could ever begin. Moreover, freedom was necessary to morality. For if human beings were not free to respond to moral imperatives, the whole basis of morality would be undermined. As we shall see shortly, Kant could postulate freedom as a prerequisite for moral thought and action because ethics required it. But he insisted that the human mind could not attain any understanding of the reality of such postulates. In short, the realm of metaphysical inquiry was off-limits because the human mind is not equipped to penetrate beyond the physical world.

In a sense Kant's view of the human mind is like someone looking at a black-and-white TV set. The TV set can pick up signals sent out by different stations. But what the screen shows is a two-dimensional picture in various shades of gray. The set decodes the signals, but the picture on the screen is not identical with the reality that it represents. Moreover, the viewer cannot get behind the TV screen and see what really lies behind the picture.

Ever since Kant's own day the merits of his views have been hotly disputed. One of Kant's contemporaries was the fellow citizen of Konigsberg, J. G. Hamann (1730-1788). Hamann admired Kant's abilities, but rejected his views. In a letter to the poet and theologian Herder (who had been a student of Kant), Hamann remarked that Kant "certainly deserves the title of a Prussian Hume.... Our countryman keeps on chewing the cud of Hume's fury against causality, without taking this matter of belief into account. 11-12 At the same time Hamann wryly observed that "without knowing it, his [Kant's] enthusiasm for the intellec tual world beyond space and time is worse than Plato's." Hamann had read the proofs of Kant's great Critique even before Kant himself had done so. He was the first of many who thought that Hume had given to Kant the problem of knowledge, and Kant had given it back as if it were the solution. On this view Kant vainly draws on the rationalist view of innate ideas which reappear in his philosophy under the guise of the forms of intuition and the categories of understanding. But in the end what we call knowledge is really a construct that we place on our sense experience. What lies behind that sense experience is unknowable.

Echoes of this discussion continue to be heard today. On the one side stand admirers of Kant like Roger Scruton and Lewis White Beck who defend his epistemology against modern versions of the charges that Hamann levelled against it. On the other side stand critics like Stanley L. Jaki who sees Kant's work as a monumental failure. Scruton exonerates Kant of being a kind of cryptic Humean. Nor was he, for that matter, a throwback to Leibniz. Kant, he believes, must be understood on his own terms. Scruton does not accept the view that Kant thought of transcendental objects as real things. His final summation makes Kant sound curiously modern and innocuous. Kant's theory of knowledge boils down to the claim that "there is no description of the world that can free itself from experience. Although the world that we know is not our creation, nor merely a synopsis of our perspective, it cannot be known except from the point of view which is ours. All attempts to break through the limits imposed by experience end in self-contradiction, and although we may have intimations of a `transcendental' knowledge, that knowledge can never be ours.... Philosophy, which describes the limits of knowledge, is always tempted to transcend them. But Kant's final advice to it is that given in the last sentence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: that whereof we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."" In similar vein Lewis White Beck downplays the skeptical implications of Kant's epistemology. "Hume's skeptical doubt as to our knowledge of nature is thereby removed, while it is found to be justified as to metaphysical speculation.""

Alongside of these positive affirmations of Kant maybe placed a series of negative verdicts. Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, which has been accepted without question by so many succeeding philosophers, is increasingly being called into question. On the face of it the distinction appears to be plausible. But examination of alleged examples of the two types of statements, like the ones given above (analytic: "A rainy day is a wet day"; synthetic: "Tuesday was a wet day"), shows how difficult it is to draw a sharp dividing line between the purely logical and the purely factual components. For the examples contain both components. Contemporary American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine sees the distinction as one of the "dogmas of empiricism." He concludes that: "for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith."" If this distinction, which is basic to Kant's theory of knowledge, is questionable, serious doubts are inevitably raised about the theory built on it.

Contemporary American philosopher of science Stanley L.Jaki is even more scathing in his comments on Kant's work. Jaki sees little merit in Kant's ventures into the realm of science and rejects Kant's claim to fame as the inaugurator of a Copernican revolution in philosophy and as the philosophical interpreter of Newtonian physics. To Jaki there is something profoundly un-Newtonian and un-Copernican about Kant's work. Whereas Newton's scientific writings present a series of interlocking proofs of the validity of the initial presuppositions, Kant's Critique is a work of a very different character. The heart of the book is Kant's argument for the validity of a priori synthetic statements. But this covers only a page or two; the rest is amplification and deduction, but not further corroboration. At best Jaki sees Kant as an "amateurish Newtonian" who failed to see beneath the surface of Newton's work. Kant's comparison of himself with Copernicus was, if anything, even less apt. Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the universe involved a shift in humankind's cosmic position, but it did not imply a shift in epistemological perspective. Jaki maintains:

That shift was grafted on Copernicus's perspective by Kant, the high priest of epistemological geocentrism, an error far more destructive for science than physical geocentrism could ever be. For if the imagined structure of the mind determines the structure of things that are outside the mind, then the raison d'etre for experimenting and ob servation will hardly ever become a compelling reason.... The Kantian knowledge of things was a construction by the mind of the semblance of things and not a natural grasp of intelligibility embodied in them. As a result, whatever Kant's longing for an intellectual touch with things other than his own mind, the Kantian impossibility of being in touch with the Ding an sich meant being trapped within one's own mind.96

2. Kant's Rejection of the Traditional Proofs of the Existence of God. Having examined the scope of reason in the earlier part of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant turned his attention to the question of whether God's existence can be proved. He maintained that there were basically only three such proofs: the ontological, the cosmological and the teleological (or, as he called it, the physico-theological) proof." Of the three it is the ontological proof that is not only pivotal but fatally flawed.

In dealing with the ontological argument, Kant pointed out that it just will not do to assume (as he thought Descartes did) that the mere definition of a necessary being implies its existence in the same way that the definition of a triangle implies that it has three angles. The argument only works if we assume the existence of the being in question in the first place."8 For the purposes of his exposition of the argument Kant defined God as the ens realissimum (i.e., a being that possesses "all reality"). The question which Kant addresses is the question whether such a being could be denied without self-contradiction. For "all reality" is presumed to include existence, and "existence is therefore contained in the concept of the thing."

Kant's strategy is to unmask the argument as "a mere tautology." If we speak of God as the most real being, the ens realissimum, and then claim that God's existence is entailed in this definition, we must ask whether we are making an analytic or a synthetic statement. Here Kant drew on his earlier distinction, which held that true analytic statements were true by definition only, whereas the truth of synthetic statements depended on empirical confirmation. By trying to show that the ontological argument was essentially analytic in character, Kant thought that he had shown it to be no more than an abstract definition which had no basis in reality.

We must ask: Is the proposition that this or that thing (which, whatever it may be is allowed as possible) exists, an analytic or a synthetic proposition? If it is analytic, the assertion of the existence of the thing adds nothing to the thought of the thing; but in that case either the thought, which is in us, is the thing itself, or we have presupposed an existence as belonging to the realm of the possible, and have then, on that pretext, inferred its existence from its internal possibilitywhich is nothing but a miserable tautology.... But if, on the other hand, we admit, as every reasonable person must, that all existential propositions are synthetic, how can we profess to maintain that the predicate of existence cannot be rejected without contradiction? That is a feature which is found only in analytic propositions, and is indeed precisely what constitutes their analytic character.59

The point of this line of argument was to show:

"Being" is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment.40

We do not add to a thing by asserting that it exists. Whether a thing exists or not is not determined by definition but by the discovery of grounds from which its existence may be inferred. In short, the argument no more proves the existence of God than the thought of having a hundred dollars in the bank implies that one must actually have such an amount. "We can no more extend our stock of theoretical insight by mere ideas, than a merchant can better his position by adding a few noughts to his cash account.""

Turning to the cosmological argument, Kant formulated it like this: "If anything exists, an absolutely necessary being must also exist. Now I, at least, exist. Therefore an absolutely necessary being exists. The minor premise contains an experience, the major premise the inference from there being any experience at all to the existence of a necessary being."42 Kant noted that the argument had a certain plausibility. He saw it as a form of Leibniz's argument from the contingency of the world. But he pronounced it to be fraught with many "pseudo-rational principles."" In particular it had to make tacit use of the worthless ontological argument in order to convert the mere notion of a necessary being into an actual necessary being." Moreover, "the principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion for its application save only in the sensible world."45 Nor is it possible to conceive what such a being would be like. There are many forces in nature which "manifest their existence through certain effects, [but which] remain for us inscrutable; for we cannot track them sufficiently far by observation."46

The teleological argument, which Kant had professed to admire in his early work, still commanded respect. It gives purpose and meaning to life and to scientific investigation. In the world we find clear signs of order and purpose. They are such that the things in this world could not have devised for themselves. They seem to point beyond themselves to a wise, intelligent and free being that ordered them. In view of the reciprocal relations that exist between different parts of the world, it may be inferred that there is only one such being and not several." But in Kant's analysis the teleological proof was really only another form of the cosmological proof, and the latter "is only a disguised ontological proof."48 The arguments therefore do not afford rational, compelling proof of the existence of God.

But if the objective reality of God cannot be proved, it "also cannot be disproved by merely speculative reason."49 Although Kant pronounced the use of speculative reason in the area of theology to be "null and void,"" he did not close the door altogether on God. He saw his work as a solemn reminder "that all those conclusions of ours which profess to lead us beyond the field of possible experience are deceptive and without foundation; it likewise teaches us this further lesson, that human reason has a natural tendency to transgress these limits."" Basic to Kant's philosophy was his conviction that "reason is never in immediate relation to an object, but only to the understanding; and it is only through the understanding that it has its own [specific] empirical employment. It does not therefore, create concepts (of objects) but only orders them, and gives them that unity which they can have only if they be employed in their widest possible application, that is, with a view to obtaining totality in the various series. 1112 Thus, ideas like God, freedom, and immortality are not constitutive for the nature of reality. Rather, Kant saw them as regulative ideas which human beings use in order to organize their thinking.

Kant insisted that if we ask "whether there is anything distinct from the world, which contains the ground of the order of the world and its connection in accordance with universal laws, the answer is that there undoubtedly is. For the world is a sum of appearances; and there must therefore be some transcendental ground of the appearances, that is, a ground which is thinkable by the pure understanding."55 But if we go on to ask "whether this being is substance, of the greatest reality, necessary, etc., we reply that this question is entirely without meaning. For all categories through which we can attempt to form a concept of such an object only allow of empirical employment, and have no meaning whatsoever when not applied to objects of possible experience, that is, to the world of sense."54 If we further ask "whether we may not at least think this being, which is distinct from the world, in analogy with the objects of experience, the answer is: certainly, but only as an object in idea not in reality, namely, only as being a substratum, to us unknown, of the systematic unity, order, and purposiveness of the arrangement of the world-an idea which reason is constrained to form as the regulative principle of its investigation of nature."55

Thus the idea of God is a useful and even necessary concept for organizing our thoughts about the world. Such a notion is a presupposition formed by analogy with our experience of human intelligence. Kant summed up his view in the following way:

But the question may still be pressed: Can we, on such ground, assume a wise and omnipotent Author of the world?

Undoubtedly we may; and we not only may, but must, do so. But do we then extend our knowledge beyond the field of possible experience? By no means. All that we have done is merely to presuppose a something, a merely transcendental object, of which, as it is in itself, we have no concept whatsoever. It is only in relation to the systematic and purposive ordering of the world, which, if we are to study nature, we are constrained to presuppose, that we have thought this unknown being by analogy with an intelligence (an empirical concept); that is have endowed it, in respect of the ends and perfection which are to be grounded upon it, with just those properties which, in conformity with the conditions of our reason, can be regarded as containing the ground of such systematic unity. This idea is thus valid only in respect of the employment of our reason in reference to the world. If we ascribed to it a validity that is absolute and objective, we should be forgetting that what we are thinking is a being in idea only; and in thus taking our start from a ground which is not determinable through observation of the world, we should no longer be in a position to apply the principle in a manner suited to the empirical employment of reason.56

Kant's criticism of the traditional proofs of the existence of God has been widely followed, especially in Protestant circles. Although the ontological argument continues to be discussed by philosophers, the main line of criticism has tended to follow Kant. In general, thinkers after Kant have been cautious about using the cosmological and teleological arguments. But there is disagreement over whether Kant was correct in saying that the latter proofs were dependent upon the flawed ontological proof. Among those who detect a fallacy in Kant's argument is Frederick Copleston, who observes that Kant's argument "is convincing only on one assumption, namely that the argument based on experience brings us, not to an affirmation of the existence of a necessary being, but only to the vague idea of a necessary being.... If, however, the argument based on experience brings us to the affirmation of the existence of a necessary being, the attempt to determine a priori the necessary attributes of this being have nothing to do with the ontological argument, which is primarily concerned with deducing existence from the idea of a being as possible, and not with deducing attributes from the idea of a being the existence of which has already been affirmed on other grounds than possibility."" Despite assumptions to the contrary, Kant had not said the last word on the question of arguments for the existence of God.

3. Kant's Moral Approach to God. Kant subjected ethics to the same enlightened, rational scrutiny that we have seen him bringing to the question of knowledge and to philosophical theology. If modern people are to live as if they have come of age, they must throw away all external and pseudo authorities. They must do what reason tells them is right. People have no need of God in the capacity of either a heavenly adviser or of a provider of incentives. They must realize that ethics is like science. The latter is concerned with the laws of nature; the former is concerned with the laws which govern behavior. In neither case does God directly enter into it. This is the theme of the opening words of Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.

So far as morality is based upon the conception of man as a free agent who, just because he is free, binds himself through his reason to unconditioned laws, it stands in need neither of the idea of another Being over him, for him to apprehend his duty, nor of an incentive other than the law itself, for him to do his duty."

Nevertheless, Kant believed that his conception of ethics pointed toward God. Before we ask how Kant was pointed in this direction, we need to step back and take a look at Kant's view of ethics. Even though few people today would take Kant's ethics in the form in which Kant propounded them, the kind of secularist ethics that Kant proposed has been absorbed in the bloodstream of modem humanism. Kant sought a basis for morality which was independent of religion, custom and social pressures. A right action was not one which was prompted by expectation of personal gain or the desire to avoid trouble or pain.59 The real test of an action was to see whether it conformed to an "objective principle." In the moral sphere such "objective principles" take the form of imperatives.

The conception of an objective principle, so far as it constrains a will, is a command (of reason), and the formula of this command is called an imperative.

All imperatives are expressed by an "ought" and thereby indicate the relation of an objective law of reason to a will which is not in its subjective constitution necessarily determined by this law. This relation is that of constraint. Imperatives say that it would be good to do or to refrain from doing something, but they say it to a will which does not always do something simply because it is presented as a good thing to do so

In short, if I ought, I can. Kant went on to distinguish two kinds of imperatives: the hypothetical and the categorical.

All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The former present the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to achieving something else which one desires (or which one may possibly desire). The categorical imperative would be one which presented an action as of itself objectively necessary, without regard to any other ends'

In other words (though they are not Kant's), the hypothetical imperative takes the form of a recommendation like the following: "If you want to practice karate, get a good teacher."

Characteristic of this type of imperative is the fact that not everybody wants it. Nor does everybody have to do it. It is not binding upon all. It is relative to individual desires, needs and circumstances. The categorical imperative is very different. Kant believed that it embodied a rational moral principle that was valid under all circumstances and was universally binding. He formulated it in two ways:

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law....

Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.12

This was not simply a case of acting according to conscience. For the pain that we feel which we call conscience may be conditioned by habits and circumstances. It was rather a matter of coldly and deliberately following a rational principle. The categorical imperative has with Kant that same status that clear and distinct ideas have for Descartes and the rationalists. Kant accepted it as self-evidently true and valid.

As instances of how it works out, Kant mentions suicide, laziness and self-seeking. In practice the categorical imperative means: "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only."" On these grounds Kant concludes that it is wrong to mutilate, corrupt or kill anyone. This includes oneself. Therefore suicide is wrong. The same principle extends to the other actions that we have just mentioned.

It is clear that actions like committing suicide, lying, being lazy and self-seeking cannot be universalized. If everyone did them, life would be impossible. But whether Kant's views provide a really adequate basis for ethics is another matter. At best they seem to provide general rules for moral action. Even so, they do not seem to cater for all contingencies. Both supporters and opponents of abortion and euthanasia could justifiably appeal to Kant's principles to legitimize their case. For both could claim that what they deem proper for themselves would be proper for others. As Hegel pointed out, the categorical imperative "in itself contains no principle beyond abstract identity and the `absence of contradiction.' "S" In other words, it instructs us to "act so as not to contradict ourselves." But in that case, we could end up doing nothing!

Kant's position has the merit of making the virtue of an action not dependent upon its consequences. For an action can be well meant and yet misfire. It recognizes the sense of obligation that people feel that it is right to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves. This obligation does not depend upon circumstances and personal likes or dislikes. But in the last analysis it does not say why we should act in this way. It appears to take it for granted. For Kant it is something that is just given. It is bound up with his notion of "the autonomy of the will as the supreme principle of morality." By this Kant meant that

Autonomy of the will is that property of it by which it is a law to itself independently of any property of objects of volition. Hence the principle of autonomy is: Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition as a universal law.65

But this still leaves us with the question of why we should act in this way.

If the reply to this question is that we should obey the categorical imperative because society needs law and order in order to function, then it must be said that the categorical imperative is only a disguised form of the hypothetical imperative. The only difference is that it operates on a grander scale. It is desirable that society should function, and obedience to the imperative is the way to secure it. If this is the case, it is not something that is intrinsically universally binding, but simply an expression of what the speaker happens to think desirable. But if it be said that we should obey the categorical imperative for its own sake, then we are guilty of oversimplification. For it is not enough simply to ask what we should do. The imperative also raises the question of what kind of authority it is that stands over and above me which demands that I should behave like this.

Kant's description of it as an autonomous principle of the will further confuses the issue." For he makes it appear as if the imperative is the result of the individual's resolve to act in accordance with a principle that the individual has evolved. If this is the case, we are back again with a disguised form of the hypothetical imperative. In that case the imperative would be the outcome of a value judgment on the part of the individual who has decided that acting in this way is a good thing. If, however, the imperative is the expression of the recognition of a moral obligation which comes from outside us, we are no longer autonomous in the sense of being self-legislating. Although Kant strenuously resisted the idea of heteronomy-subjection of oneself to an authority or law from outside ourselves-it would seem that the categorical imperative has to be heteronomous, if it is to avoid relapsing into a form of the hypothetical imperative.

It is worthwhile to compare Kant and Jesus at this point. At first sight they may appear to be saying the same thing, but there are fundamental differences. Jesus taught that the second great commandment was to love one's neighbor as oneself" In saying this, Jesus was not formulating an autonomous rational principle, but summarizing the teaching of the Old Testament fi8 At the same time he was giving expression to an awareness of obligation which people feel generally, whether they are religious or not. But Jesus reminded his hearers of an even higher obligation-to love God with their whole being."' This too was the basis and theme of the Old Testament Law."' As Calvin, Cicero and many others have observed, people generally have an awareness of God and of their obligation toward him."' This is true not only of Christianity but of other religions. It is true whether people take this obligation seriously or not. It is something which is there at the back of their minds, and it is something that Kant discreetly ignored in developing his philosophical system.

Nevertheless, Kant did not rule out God entirely from his philosophical scheme. In his Critique of Practical Reason Kant explained how God fitted into the picture. God is given (together with the notions of freedom and immortality) the status of a postulate of pure practical reason.72 In Kantian terminology "practical reason" is reason as it "deals with the grounds determining the will." As such, it is distinct from the theoretical use of reason which is concerned with "the objects of the merely cognitive faculty."

Freedom, immortality and God are not for Kant "objects of the cognitive faculty." The freedom of the will is not something that can be demonstrated objectively. From a scientific standpoint human actions are subject to the laws of causality which affect all physical entities. But obligation introduces a new factor. Obligation implies freedom to obey or disobey the moral law. Ought implies can. In this sense we transcend our spatio-temporal existence. But the notion of freedom, Kant believed, does not entitle us to erect a complete metaphysical system upon it. Freedom is a presupposition of ethics. As such, it is a postulate of pure practical reason.

Kant discussed God and immortality in the context of what he termed the summum bonum, the highest good. It is the ideal state of affairs where virtue and happiness coincide. However, it is all too painfully obvious that the two do not coincide in this life. Moreover, human attainment of it is conceivable only if humanity is granted an infinite existence.75 In order to unite happiness and virtue "the existence is postulated of a cause of the whole of nature, itself distinct from nature, which contains the ground of the exact coincidence of happiness with morality.... The postulate of the possibility of a highest derived good (the best world) is at the same time the postulate of a highest original good, namely, the existence of God. 1174

What Kant offered was a duty-based theory of personal ethics, which separated morality from religion by making ethics autonomous, ostensibly based on self-evident rational truths. If religion had any public function at all, it was (as Kant would explain later in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone) subservient to ethics. The role of religion was to inculcate ethics. In this respect, Kant's ethics was both an expression of the Age of Enlightenment in which it was conceived and also a portent of things to come in the modern world.

4. Kant's Reappraisal of Christianity. Kant's earlier view of God is reechoed in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Morality does not need religion, but it points to it. It leads to the idea of "a highest good in the world for whose possibility we must postulate a higher, moral, most holy, and omnipotent Being which alone can unite the two elements of the highest good" (i.e., duty and happiness).15 This is the starting-point for Kant's reappraisal of Christianity. As his title suggests, his aim is to strip Christianity of such extras as faith and belief in a supernatural God who personally intervenes in human affairs. In its place he puts a sober religion, ready for use by the modern enlightened person. The result is a full-blown Deism, adapted for the German culture of his day.

The traditional Christian view of revelation-of God revealing himself in history and personal experience through events and his Word-is replaced by reason. Bible stories are all right for the ignorant masses. They represent a graphic way of teaching them morality. But in the last analysis it is "universal human reason" which is "the supremely commanding principle."76 The Christian view of grace and salvation-that God has done for human beings what they could not do for themselves by blotting out their sins and restoring them to fellowship with himselfis replaced by an unbending religion of self-help.

True religion is to consist not in the knowing or considering what God does or has done for our salvation but in what we must do to become worthy of it ... and of its necessity every man can become wholly certain without any Scriptural learning whatsoever."

Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become.71

In Kant's version of religion Jesus is "the personified idea of the good principle," the incarnation of moral good who "has come down to us from heaven."79 In Kant's hermeneutic of the New Testament this is the true meaning of such passages as John 1:1-13; 3:16; Hebrews 1:3; Philippians 2:6. Curiously enough, neither here nor elsewhere in his writings does Kant seem to have been able to bring himself to pronounce the name of Jesus. Instead, he talked abstractly about one who represents "the ideal of a humanity pleasing to God" and "the archetype of the moral disposition in all its purity."80 Occasionally, Kant could speak of "the Master" and "the wise Teacher."81 He could reprove the author of the Wolfenbi ttel Fragments for imputing unworthy motives to the Master.82 At the same time he could insist that we need "no empirical example to make the idea of a person morally well pleasing to God our archetype; this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason."83

If Kant's discussion was replete with biblical allusions, his account of Christ and Christianity was secularized, rationalized and demythologized in all but name. Kant's own term for this process was to describe it as divesting the vivid, popular mode of representation of its "mystical veil." When this was duly done, Kant claimed that it is "easy to see that, for practical purposes, its spirit and meaning have been valid and binding for the whole world and for all time, since to each man it lies so near at hand that he knows his duty towards it. Its meaning is this: that there exists absolutely no salvation for man apart from the sincerest adoption of genuinely moral principles into his disposition."84 As Kant brought his work to its conclusion, he returned to the theme of "The Christian Religion as a Natural Religion."85 He concluded with an attack on clericalism. Although Kant made no express references to the Deists, his own critique of institutional Christianity and his restatement of what he considered to be the essence of religion was thoroughly Deistic in spirit.

Postscript

By the time of his death in 1804 Kant had come to enjoy enormous prestige in Germany. In the century that followed, the impact of his thought was felt throughout Europe and the New World. No serious thinker could afford to neglect Kant or remain neutral. At the same time Kant's philosophy was felt to be profoundly unsatisfying. Despite Kant's massive attempt to develop a rational philosophy, there were those who thought that Kant's work was a monumental failure. Among them was the leading philosopher of the next generation, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who complained that "Kantian criticism" was "only a philosophy of subjectivity, a subjective Idealism." It differed from empiricism only with respect to the question of what constituted experience. However, it was in basic agreement with empiricism in its contention that "reason apprehends nothing beyond sensation, nothing rational and divine. It remains in the finite and untrue, namely in an apprehension that has only subjectively an externality and a Thing-in-itself as its condition, which is the abstraction of the formless, an empty beyond."86

Hegel's alternative to Kant was his version of absolute idealism. It was a philosophy which proved to be no less influential and no less controversial than Kant's. Nor was it any nearer to orthodox Christianity. But these are matters for discussion in the second volume of this work. One does not have to be a Hegelian to feel the force of Hegel's objection to Kant's procedure of demanding "a criticism of the faculty of cognition as preliminary to its exercise." To Hegel this was like "the error of refusing to enter the water until you have learnt to swim."87 Kant believed that he had solved the basic problems of metaphysics by proclaiming that the whole subject was off-limits. What Kant bequeathed to posterity was not the solution to the problem but a double agenda. On the one hand, there is the question of how do we know. On the other hand, there is the question of what do we know. These questions were being asked centuries before Kant, and they are still being asked today."'

In Europe the Age of Enlightenment came to its end with the death of Kant. The proliferation of alternative philosophies in the nineteenth century is eloquent testimony both to its shortcomings and to the fact of its demise. But the legacy of the Enlightenment lives on in continued separation of the sacred from the secular. Where the sacred was admitted at all, the modern mind tried to relegate it to the realm of private beliefs and to keep all the important aspects of daily life and thought firmly in the realm of the secular. In the period following World War 2 considerable excitement was generated in religious and academic circles by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's remarks about the world coming of age. The notion was greeted as a brilliant new insight that Bonhoeffer had attained while pondering on the state of the world as he languished in a Nazi prison.89

Bonhoeffer himself was under no illusions either about the origin of the term or about its significance. As he jotted down his random thoughts, which were eventually collected and posthumously published as Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer was well aware of the fact (as any German theological student of his generation would have been) that it was Immanuel Kant who had first spoken of the world coming of age in his article on "What is Enlightenment?" But what to Kant was the dawning of a new age in which people were learning to live independently of external authorities had become a grim reality during the dark days of World War 2. It was not that the world had become mature and responsible. Far from it. Humankind had become a law unto itself and was reaping the bitter harvest. To Bonhoeffer the solution did not lie in trying to put back the clock and live as if the events of the past two hundred years had not happened. It was rather to wrestle with how we should think about God, Christ, the world and religion. That was the question for Bonhoeffer in the post-Enlightenment world. It remains the question for us today.

As human beings we need many things food, shelter, companionship, love, a sense of belonging, purpose and fulfillment-to name but a few. But we also need what perhaps, for want of a better word, is called a world view. The term world view is apt to suggest rather more than what it often really is. For few people have highly sophisticated and integrated views of the world which take into account all the major academic disciplines. It is doubtful whether there is such a thing as a single world view which is broad enough to embrace everything that is important in a single perspective. Perhaps the term world view indicates no more than the habitual outlook that people bring to things. On the other hand, people cannot help having views about the way things are. Moreover, human beings have a deep need for deepening and refining their views of the world and reality. Christian philosopher Arthur F. Holmes sees this need as fourfold: "the need to unify thought and life; the need to define the good life and find hope and meaning in life; the need to guide thought; the need to guide action."'

The preceeding chapters have taken us on a conducted tour of the history of the way various thinkers from pre-Socratic times down to the Age of Enlightenment have sought to meet this need. Like all conducted tours this particular one has been selective. It has focused on religious questions, especially those which affect the Christian faith. It has been an intellectual history rather than a social history. By this I mean that attention has deliberately been given to challenges and issues, as seen by both skeptics and believers. I have not tried to assess the social impact of their ideas on the church or on society at large. Still less have I sought to assess what rank-and-file members of the church thought about things down the ages. My account is therefore vulnerable to the charge of being elitist. It is a charge to which I am content to plead guilty. I freely confess my belief that there is a need to examine the history of thought from a social point of view, and explore the question of what people on different levels of society believed at different periods in different cultures. But this has not been the purpose of the present book. My aim has rather been to try to listen to what the great thinkers of the past have had to say about questions of belief. What is striking in all this is how deeply questions of belief are intertwined in the history of Western thought.

In his book The Closing of the American Mind,' Professor Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago accuses the American universities of a reprehensible failure to introduce students to the great thinkers of the past. He finds alarming evidence of closed minds in the higher levels of education, which he attributes to this neglect of the past. As a remedy, he calls for renewed engagement with the major thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition. Professor Bloom's book has sent ripples through American academia. But whether it will have any lasting or beneficial effect is too early to say. His own analysis is certainly different from the present writer's. His preference is for a return to the teaching of Rousseau and the thinkers of the American Enlightenment. My recommendations also urge renewed study of the intellectual history of the West. For without such a study we can hardly expect to understand the questions of the present, or even what various competing truth-claims mean or how they might be tested.

There are two main reasons why we should study the great thinkers of the past. The first is that such a study helps us to understand how and why people think as they do. The study of the intellectual traditions of the past helps us to appreciate better the way people thought not only in ages that are more or less remote from ours but also how their thought has contributed to the shaping of the way people think in the present. This in itself would make the study of the past worthwhile. But the second reason is even more important. It consists in the fact that each generation is confronted by the challenge to think through its basic beliefs, assumptions and attitudes. It is the mark of the closed mind to ignore this challenge. But in the end, nothing is more important than the basic beliefs-whether religious or not-that human beings embrace. For beliefs shape attitudes and ultimately affect the way that we think and the way that we lead our lives. Whether our basic beliefs are religious or irreligious, the great thinkers of the past challenge us to join with them in examining our beliefs and ideas. It is a challenge posed not only by those with whom we might disagree but also by those with whom we might agree. If our thoughts and ideas are wrong and mistaken, we are better off by discarding them. If our thinking is on the right lines, we cannot but be enriched by listening to those who have thought more profoundly and widely than ourselves.

The Sociology of Knowledge

My account of the history of Christianity and Western thought has not been a social history; I have not attempted to identify and analyze the social factors which accompanied the many changes in Western thought since the time of the pre-Socratics. Nevertheless, the foregoing pages bear testimony to the sociology of knowledge.' No philosophy was ever worked out in a vacuum. The assumptions and concerns of different ages shaped the questions that people asked and the answers that were given. The post-Socratic philosophers thought differently from the preSocratic philosophers. The great Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages thought yet differently. Western thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, influenced as it was by the Reformation, the rediscovery of pagan antiquity that we call the Renaissance, the rise of modern science, and the attendant political and social changes, turned to new questions and saw old questions in a new light. In all this, changes in Western thought were related to changes in society.

The history of science reveals a progress of knowledge in which later thought supersedes earlier thought. But theology and philosophy-in common with other liberal arts-is not like science. It is not a case that the discoveries of the present make obsolete the views of the previous generation. The latest play on Broadway or the West End of London does not make the plays of Shakespeare obsolete. Modern verse does not supplant the poetry of Wordsworth or Milton. The music of Bach, Mozart and Brahms is not surpassed by twentieth-century compositions. We cannot successfully imitate the past. The present should have its own integrity. But that integrity requires us to listen to what the past has to offer.

One of the things that this study has shown is the remarkable enduring power of ideas and ways of thinking. Ideas which may long lie dormant have a way of coming to life again centuries later. We can see this in the way that forms of Platonism affected early Christian thought. Aristotelianism enjoyed a revival in the Middle Ages, affecting Islam and Judaism, as well as Christianity. Later ages witnessed a renewed interest in Epicureanism and classical skepticism. In each case it was not a matter simply of returning to the past but of seeing some value in the way people thought in the past and in adapting past thought to present needs.

This is not the place to attempt some kind of adjudication which would rank the various thinkers and movements in order of merit. I have offered my comments on what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of different ideas and arguments as I went along. To go beyond that would be an exercise in folly and futility. Nor do I wish to anticipate what I want to say in the book on philosophy and theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which I plan as a sequel to the present book. Nevertheless, it is not inappropriate to offer some concluding observations that arise from our survey as it has brought us to the end of the eighteenth century.

One of the things that strikes me is the perennial presence of pluralism. Today we are often reminded of the fact that we live in a pluralistic society. It is society characterized by instability produced by conflicting cultures, values, beliefs and social change. Sometimes people look back wistfully to some previous golden age that was free from such turbulence. But in reality all the periods that we have been examining have been characterized by change, conflict and competing world views.

The conflicting philosophies that we have looked at are themselves products of cultural change. Inevitably, every important philosopher and every new philosophical movement drew on previous thought. Plato drew upon Pythagorean and pre-Socratic thought, and Aristotle modified Plato. Aquinas drew on Aristotle, Plotinus and the church fathers, not to mention Jewish and Islamic philosophy. Descartes was indebted to medieval thought as well as the skepticism and scientific thought of his own day. Empiricism was essentially a response to rationalism. Although it rejected the rationalist view of innate ideas, there were many things that empiricism held in common with rationalism. The fact is that philosophies do not exist in isolation from each other. There is much overlapping and mutual borrowing. Moreover, philosophies interact not only with each other but with the culture, science and religion of their times.

It is arguable that philosophy does not exist as an autonomous entity. It is not a subject like physics, astronomy, medieval history or American literature, each of which have a subject matter of their own. Philosophy as such does not have its own subject matter. In a sense, philosophy is always the "philosophy of' something else. It is the something else which provides the subject matter for philosophy. We can speak of a philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), a philosophy of morals (ethics), a philosophy of science, a philosophy of religion and so on. In each case philosophy is not some kind of short cut which will enable those who master the appropriate techniques to avoid the arduous labors of the practitioners in the field in question. Rather, philosophy is a kind of pars-discipline which asks questions about questions. It is concerned with testing ideas and the validity of the way questions are asked and answered. As such, philosophy performs a valuable service to those engaged in the discipline in question. But as such philosophy can be a good servant but a bad master.

Over two hundred years ago Immanuel Kant remarked that nothing had caused so much damage in philosophy as the imitation by philosophers of the methods of geometry." What he had in mind was the assumption that one academic discipline enjoyed the prerogative of having the right methodology, and the further assumption that all other disciplines should stand in line behind it and model their methods on its methods. By the time that Kant made this observation the weaknesses of rationalism were becoming apparent. Early on in the seventeenth century Descartes had been fascinated by the logical rigor of geometry and had held up geometry as a model for philosophy to follow. Spinoza had gone a step further and had set out his philosophy like a series of geometrical theorems. But the British empiricists had shown that deductive logic alone was an inadequate guide to our knowledge of the world around us. Kant realized that knowledge had an empirical component as well as a rational component. But whether Kant's own proposals were more adequate than those of his predecessors is doubtful. Kant himself has been faulted for substituting his own version of Newtonian physics for geometry as the paradigmatic role model for philosophy. The result has been described as an act of jumping from the frying pan into the fire, where philosophy could only burn to ashes.'

The history of Western thought can be read as a story of the relentless conflict between belief and skepticism. But it can also be read as a history of a quest for right methods and right foundations. Immanuel Kant believed that he had succeeded in combining skepticism with the right methods and philosophical foundation in a book which he published in 1793, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. In it he asserted the right of reason to be the judge of religion. The picture of religion that Kant painted was that of a Christianity pressed into the service of inculcating ethics. It was a thinly disguised form of Deism teaching enlightened morality.

The result was inevitable, given Kant's view of reason. But nearly two centuries later Kant's title and ideas have been turned around by Nicholas Wolterstorff in his book Reason within the Bounds of Religion (1976). In this programmatic essay Wolterstorff throws down two major challenges. The first of these challenges is a challenge to foundationalism. As Wolterstorff sees it, a great deal of Western philosophy has been devoted to foundationalism in one form or another. The goal of the foundationalist, says Wolterstorff, is "to form a body of theories from which all prejudice, bias, and unjustified conjecture have been eliminated. To attain this, we must begin with a firm foundation of certitude and build the house of theory on it by methods of whose reliability we are equally certain."s The idea has proved to be seductively attractive to a long line of Western thinkers from Aristotle in the ancient world to the logical positivists in the twentieth century. Among its devotees Wolter storff names Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz and Berkeley. It would not be difficult to extend the list by adding non-Christian philosophers like Spinoza who were seeking to erect their systems on indubitable rational premises and skeptics like Hume and Kant who devoted their energies to undermining the foundations of Christian theistic systems. In a sense Kant was a foundationalist of a new breed in that he endeavored to base his philosophy on the critical rational powers of the enlightened individual.

Despite its attractions, Wolterstorff pronounces foundationalism to be an illusion and a failure. For in reality human knowledge and human theorizing are not based on a foundation of indubitables.7 This is not to say that there is no objective reality independent of our conceptions and beliefs. Nor is it to say that we cannot attain to true beliefs concerning objective reality. Rather it is to admit that our knowledge of entities outside ourselves is not based on a rational scheme of a kind imagined by the foundationalist. To quote Wolterstorff as he reflects on the way knowledge is gained in the world of science:

The conclusion is this: even if there is a set of foundational propositions, no one has yet succeeded in stating what relation the theories that we are warranted in accepting or rejecting bear to the members of that set. Even if there is a set of foundational propositions, we are without a general logic of the sciences, and hence without a general rule for warranted theory acceptance and rejection.'

What then is the alternative to foundationalism? Wolterstorff maintains that in weighing a theory we need to distinguish between data beliefs, data-background beliefs and control beliefs. It is not a case that any one of these sets of beliefs provides the foundation. Rather, they function in a way that is relative to a given person's weighing a given theory on a given occasion.

What functions as a data-background belief, or as a control belief, in a given person's weighing of a given theory on one occasion may on another occasion be the theory under consideration. On a given occasion Newton's laws of motion may be the theory which is being weighed and certain beliefs about the optical features of telescopes may remain as a background to the data. On another occasionperhaps because of the observation of some anomaly within astron omy-the Newtonian theory may be moved into the background as unproblematic and various assumptions about the optics of the telescope may be moved into the foreground for weighing and testing. What also happens sometimes is that a belief which on a given occasion functions as a data belief against which a theory is weighed is on another occasion itself weighed by taking the theory as unproble- matic.9

On this view it could be said that theories, beliefs, world views and outlooks are tested not by appeal to single observable facts or by a failure to refer them to some indubitable foundation but by what has been called "a death of a thousand qualifications."10 Such qualifications occur when the tension between data beliefs, data-background beliefs and control beliefs becomes intolerable. Something somewhere has to give, and it can be any of those three sets of beliefs. Conversely a theory, belief, world view or outlook may be said to be well formed when there is a coherence between these three sets of beliefs.

In assessing the philosophies of the past and the present we need, therefore, to examine the data that they appeal to, the background beliefs against which the data is seen and the control beliefs which underlie the general approach of any given thinker. The shifts of emphasis and approach which have characterized the history of Western philosophy have come about through a shift in one or more of these factors. Perhaps the most important of these factors is that of controlling belief, for it is the underlying beliefs which affect the questions people ask, the data that they think to be significant, and how they view that data. In the ancient world belief in the gods and the nature of the elements profoundly shaped the questions that people asked. In the early centuries of the Christian era, control beliefs were supplied by the Christian faith as it struggled with the challenges of the Hellenistic world. In medieval philosophy the Christian faith again supplied the control beliefs, though this time the major challenges came from Judaism, Islam, and the philosophy of the ancient world which was itself preserved within the Christian tradition. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the control beliefs of Christianity received their major challenge from a skepticism which had its roots in the ancient world. It was a challenge not only about belief in the existence of God but about the way the data of modern science should be viewed.

Earlier we noted that Professor Wolterstorff's book on Reason within the Bounds of Religion contained two major challenges. The first was his challenge to foundationalism and its right to determine the agenda for philosophy. Although we may disagree over whether some of the philosophers that Wolterstorff identifies as foundationalists were quite as dedicated to that view as he thinks," his general point is well taken. His other challenge is a challenge to the Christian scholar. It is a challenge to allow religious beliefs to function as control beliefs within the Christian scholar's devising and weighing of theories.12 In one sense this is not a new challenge. In my view this is what Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin and even Descartes were doing, not to mention Locke, Berkeley, Butler and Jonathan Edwards. This is not the place to assess whether they were all equally successful in this enterprise. In any case I have offered my views on that score in the course of my discussion. What needs to be stressed here is the fact that the underlying conflict, as we bring to a close our account of philosophy at the end of the Age of Enlightenment, is ultimately a conflict over control beliefs. It is a conflict that we shall see renewed and deepened in the sequel to this book in which we shall look at philosophy and theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Introduction

'C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 24-25.

'Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2nd ed. 1970), p. 4.

'Kuhn, Structure, p. 10. The term paradigm indicates an example or pattern. In grammar it denotes an example of a conjugation or declension showing a word in all its inflections. Knowledge of the paradigm shows how similar words behave in their various grammatical forms. For a discussion of Kuhn and other contemporary thinkers in the area of the philosophy of science, see W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (London-Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). In the light of Kuhn's view of paradigm shifts I myself would question the correctness of Lewis's argument about the modern materialist. I would think that the sensation of being hurled into the Lake of Fire would be sufficient to initiate some kind of paradigm shift!

Chapter 1: Socrates and Pre-Socratic Philosophy

'Students pursuing Greek philosophy should consult W. K C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962-81). Guthrie's account goes as far as Aristotle. It is supplemented by A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). On the classical world generally, an important reference work is N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1960). Among the shorter works is: W. K C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbook, 1960). Other studies include Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, one edited by John P. Anton and George L. Kustas, two edited by John P. Anton and Anthony Preus (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1971, 1983); Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy. From the Origins to Socrates, ed. and trans. John R. Catan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987); A. H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 3rd ed. 1981); Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Gifford Lectures 1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947); A. H. Armstrong and R. A. Markus, Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy (London: Dar-ton, Longman and Todd, 1960); Robert S. Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981). Texts of classical writers in Greek or Latin with English translation on the facing page may be found in the volumes of the Loeb Classical Library, which is published jointly in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Harvard University Press and in London by William Heinemann. Hans Urs von Balthasar has traced the development of metaphysics from early Greek poetry through Plato, Neoplatonism down to Thomas Aquinas in The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. John Riches (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989).

2Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 1.12 (Loeb edition trans. R. D. Hicks, 1:13).

'In earlier Greek Sophia meant "cleverness" or "skill," and sophos "skilled."

'From the fifth century B.C. onwards, the word sophist was used to denote a wise man or someone who was skilled at some activity. It then came to be applied to people who made a job of being wise and was used to denote professional itinerant teachers who went from place to place giving instruction for fees. Some taught "virtue" which was the ancient Greek equivalent of "how to succeed" teaching which finds such a ready market in America. Others taught memory training and rhetoric. In view of the emphasis placed on success, the sophists acquired a reputation for winning arguments and succeeding at any price, regardless of the truth.

'Lives 1.16 (Loeb edition, 1:17).

'In the twentieth century Martin Heidegger has urged a return to a pre-Socratic notion of being and truth (see Heidegger's An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim [Yale University Press, 19591). The physicist Werner Heisenberg has discussed the importance of early Greek thinking in Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958).

7A selection of the most important texts is given in G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, eds., The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). A major critical discussion is given by Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, The Arguments of the Philosophers, 1979). In view of the fragmentary character of the texts Catherine Osborne urges an alternative methodology in the study of pre-Socratic philosophy in her book Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

'See the account of his teaching in Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.3.983b20-27 (Works 2:1556).

9W. P. D. Wightman, The Growth of Scientific Ideas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 10.

"Aristotle De Anima 1.2.405a20 (Works 1:646).

"Aristotle De Anima 1.5.411a9-10 (Works 1:655). Plato expresses a similar view to that of Thales in Laws 10.899b (Dialogues, p. 1455).

12See Guthrie, History 1:65-66; Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers, pp. 10-11. An important study of the relationship between philosophy and religion in the ancient world is F. W. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952). See also W. K C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).

"Fragment 4; cited from Guthrie, History 1:129.

'*Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 1.13 (Loeb edition 1:15).

"Diogenes Laertius citing Aristotle's lost work On the Pythagoreans (Lives and Opinions 8, 34 [Loeb edition 2:349]); see also Guthrie, History 1:183-95.

"Republic 7.525d; cited from Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series 71, 1985 reprint), p. 758. See also the discussion in Plato's Timaeus 34ff. (Dialogues, pp. 1165ff.).

"Republic 7.527b (Dialogues, p. 759). These observations come in the course of a discussion of the ideal curriculum of higher education for the philosopher ruler.

"Fragment 53; cf. Guthrie, History 1:446.

"The saying is widely attributed to Heraclitus by several ancient authors. Although its authenticity has been questioned, its genuineness seems well established (Guthrie, History 1:488-92).

2'Fragment 30; cf. Guthrie, History 1:454. Fragments relating to his logos doctrine are given in C. K Barrett, The New Testament Background; Selected Documents (Revised edition, London: S.P.C.K 1987, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 59-60. Barrett does not think that Heraclitus's logos doctrine had anything to do with John's logos doctrine or any other New Testament doctrine.

21See especially Fragments 7 and 8; Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 271-75.

"Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers, p. 49.

"Parmenides is one of Plato's later dialogues (text in Dialogues, pp. 920-56).

"Sophist 237e (Dialogues, p. 981).

Y'Timaeus 27d (Dialogues, p. 1161).

26Fragment 17; see discussion in Guthrie, History 2:138-47.

"For brief surveys and literature see A. G. M. van Melderen, "Atomism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1: 193-198; and C. E. R. Lloyd, "Leucippus and Democritus," Encyclopedia of Philosophy 4: 446-451. Leucippus is known largely through references to him in other sources, and only fragments of Democritus have survived. Democritus was the first to develop a naturalistic system of ethics, as opposed to supernaturalistic ethics. Karl Marx received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841 for a treatise on Democritus.

28Plato, Hippias Minor 368b-d (Dialogues, p. 206); cf. Guthrie, History 3:283.

"He is the central figure in Plato's dialogue Protagoras (Dialogues, pp. 308-52). For his social contract theory see Guthrie, History 3:136-38.

"The words occur in Socrates' summary of his views in Plato's Theaetetus 167c (Dialogues, p. 873).

"The dictum is preserved in Fragment 1. It apparently formed the opening of Protagoras's work on Truth (Plato, Theaetetus 161c [Dialogues, p. 867]). See further Guthrie, History 3:183-92.

32Plato gives an account of Socrates' defense at his trial in his Apology (Dialogues, pp. 3-26). Plato's Crito (Dialogues, pp. 27-39) discusses the options open to Socrates. The Phaedo (Dialogues, pp. 40-98) purports to review Socrates' last days and gives his thoughts on the immortality of the soul. On Athens see J. W. Roberts, City of Sokrates: An Introduction to Classical Athens (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).

"For accounts of Socrates and his teaching in classical and early Christian writers, see John Ferguson, Socrates: A Source Book (London: Macmillan for the Open University Press, 1970). Recent discussions of Socrates' teaching include Gregory Vlastos, ed., The Philosophy of Socrates: A Collection of Critical Essays (reprint Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, Modern Studies in Philosophy, 1980); Gersimos Xenophon Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, The Arguments of the Philosophers, 1979); James Beckman, The Religious Dimension of Socrates' Thought (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1979); and Kenneth Seeskin, Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986).

'*Plato Theaetetus 149-161 (Dialogues, pp. 853-67).

Chapter 2: Plato's Vision of Reality

'Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato has now been superseded by The Collected Dialogues of Plato including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series 71, 1985 reprint). It may be noted, however, that this edition includes some of Jowett's translations. A new translation with analysis of The Dialogues of Plato is being made by R. E. Allen (vol. 1, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Recent surveys of Plato's thought include: I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962-63); G. C. Field, The Philosophy of Plato (London: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1969); R. M. Hare, Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Gilbert Ryle, Plato's Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Gregory Vlastos, Platonic Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd ed. 1981); Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1971); Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Charles L. Griswold, Jr., ed., Platonic Writing, Platonic Reading (London and New York: Routledge, 1988). Studies of the religious aspect of Plato's thought include: Paul Elmer More, The Religion of Plato (1921, reprint New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970); James K Feibleman, Religious Platonism: The Influence of Religion on Plato and the Influence of Plato on Religion (1959; reprint Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971); and John E. Rexine, Religion in Plato and Cicero (1959, reprint Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1968).

2See Letters 7 and 8; widely, though not universally, held to be authentic (Dialogues, pp. 1574-1603).

'Republic 1. 341-42 (Dialogues, pp. 590-93).

'Education and the possession of property are discussed in Book 4 (Dialogues, pp. 661-88). Slaves existed, but do not come into the reckoning as citizens. Of the citizens, only the Third Class (those engaged in economic activities) were allowed to have private property. The Guardians were to ensure that there was neither excessive wealth nor poverty. They also controlled the educational curriculum. The Guardians themselves were to have neither property nor normal family life, which were presumed to be distractions. In Book 5 (Dialogues, pp. 688-720) Plato discusses women and the family. Women may perform the same jobs as men. In order to satisfy sexual instincts and produce good citizens, Plato proposed mating festivals. The Guardians were to arrange appropriate mates so that only the best breeds should survive. Weaker strains should be allowed to perish. Children should be brought up in state nurseries.

'Plato's views have been subjected to devastating criticism by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 5th ed. 1961). Vol. 1 examines Plato's teaching and vol 2. compares it with that of Karl Marx.

'Republic 6.509ab (Dialogues, p. 744).

'Republic 6.509-11 (Dialogues, pp. 744-47).

'Republic 7.514-17 (Dialogues, pp. 747-50).

'Republic 7.517bc (Dialogues, pp. 749-50).

10Meno 86b (Dialogues, p. 371). Earlier Greek thought had distinguished two types of soul. The free soul was identified with the individual, but lacked psychological attributes. It was active outside the body in dreams, semi-conscious states and after death. The body soul endowed human beings with life and consciousness. Gradually, the two kinds of souls were replaced by the idea of a single soul. On this see Jan Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

"Phaedo 106e (Dialogues, p. 88).

12Phaedo 107cd (Dialogues, p. 89).

"Republic 10.614-20 (Dialogues, pp. 839-44).

14Timaeus 27-30 (Dialogues, pp. 1161-63). For further discussion of Plato's views of God, see William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Barnes and Noble; London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 1-19.

15Timaeus 30bc (Dialogues, pp. 1162-63).

"Laws 10.884-889e (Dialogues, pp. 1440-55).

"Laws 10.1455b (Dialogues, p. 1455). The view that all things are "full of gods" derives from Thales. For discussion see above, p. 21.

"Parmenides 134bc (Dialogues, p. 928).

"For brief comparison see Leslie Stevenson, Seven Theories of Human Nature (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1980), pp. 27-52; and Arthur F. Holmes, Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions (Downers Grove, Illinois, and Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1984), pp. 69-78.

"Ethics, pp.69-70.

21Euthyphro 15b (Dialogues, p. 184). The work is an inconclusive attempt to define piety, and takes the form of a discussion outside the law courts between Socrates, who is on his way to be tried, and Euthyphro, who is on his way to prosecute his own father for murder.

22Laws 10.885-888 (Dialogues, pp. 1440-44).

"For a recent discussion of the problem, see Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Swinburne rejects the dualism of Plato and Descartes which teaches that the soul has a nature such that it will survive "under its own steam" whatever happens to the body. He believes that there cannot be any justified general account of the nature of the soul. Under normal conditions the soul requires the functioning of the body. However, Swinburne does not reject the notion of the soul. He argues for what he calls a "soft dualism" in which souls exist in an embodied form (p. 10). "The soul is like a light bulb and the brain is like an electric light socket. If you plug the bulb into the socket and turn the current on, the light will shine. If the socket is damaged or the current turned off, the light will not shine. So, too, the soul will function (have a mental life) if it is plugged into a functioning brain" (p. 310). Swinburne believes that his view is compatible with Christian orthodox teaching on the resurrection body, but that it is incompatible with Plato's view of the natural immortality of the soul and views of disembodied existence (pp. 311-12).

21 See the discussions of reincarnation in John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, paperback reprint, 1980), especially pp. 297-396, 41219; Hans Kung, Eternal Life? Life after Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem (New York: Doubleday, 1984), pp. 59-66. Counterparts to Plato's teaching may be found in various Eastern religions. It would seem that Plato's teaching represents just one form of a very widespread belief which Plato incorporated into his teaching.

A modern form of belief in reincarnation is held by Scientology, which purports to provide therapy to treat inhibiting unconscious memories acquired in previous existences. For example, L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. A Handbook of Dianetic Procedures (Los Angeles: Publications Organization, 1950); Have You Life Before This Life? A Scientific Survey. A Study of Death and Evidence of Past Lives (Los Angeles: Publications Organization, 1950). For a critical examination of Scientology, see Roy Wallis, The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

Chapter 3: Aristotle and the Physical World

'The standard English translation of Aristotle was published by the Oxford University Press in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It has now been reissued in revised form under the title The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series 71.2, 1984). Barnes has also written a brief introduction, Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Modern studies of Aristotle include Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1948); Marjorie Grene, A Portrait of Aristotle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); Abraham Edel, Aristotle and his Philosophy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Anthony Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Stephen R L. Clark, Aristotle's Man: Speculation upon Aristotelian Anthropology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); Felix Grayeff, Aristotle and his School: An Inquiry into the History of the Peripatos with a Commentary on the Metaphysics Z, H, L and TH (London: Duckworth, 1974); Franz Brentano, Aristotle and his World View, ed. and trans. Rolf George and Roderick M. Chisholm (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978); Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Scofield, Richard Sorabji, eds., Articles on Aristotle, 4 vols. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975-78); Giovanni Reale, The Concept of the First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, ed. and trans. John R. Catan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1980).

'Topics 6.6.145a15 (Works 1:244).

'PriorAnalytics 1.1.24b19-22 (Works 1:40).

'Posterior Analytics 1.7.75a38 (Works 1:122).

'Metaphysics 5.12.1019a; 12.5.1071a4-15; and the discussion in Book 9 (Theta) (Works 2:1609, 1692, 1651-1661).

'Metaphysics 1.6-9.987a29-993a10 (Works 2:1561-69).

'Metaphysics 5.2.1013a24-101a25 (Works 2:1600-1).

"Metaphysics 12.1-10.1069a18-1076a4 (Works 2:1688-1700). For further discussion see Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 20-47, where attention is drawn to Aristotle's thoughts on the motion of the heavens; and D. W. Hamlyn, "Aristotle's God," in Gerard J. Hughes, ed., The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in Honor of Frederick C. Copleston (London: Search Press; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987), pp. 15-34.

"Metaphysics 12.7.1072a23-26 (Works 2:1694).

'°Metaphysics 12.7.1072a 25 (Works 2:1694).

"Physics 8.10.267b 24-27 (Works 1:446).

"Metaphysics 12.7.1072a21-29 (Works 2:1694).

"Metaphysics 12.7.1072b 11 (Works 2:1694).

"Metaphysics 12.7.1072b20-31 (Works 2:1695).

'5Nicomachean Ethics 10.9.1179b24-32 (Works 2:1863-1864).

"See, e.g., Psalms 1; 119; Proverbs 8. For further references and literature, see the article on "Wisdom, Folly, Philosophy" in Colin Brown, ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978), 3: 1023-37. In the New Testament Jesus is presented as the personal embodiment of wisdom (e.g., Matthew 1:18-19; 11:28-30 [cf. Sirach 51:23-27]; 12:41-42; 23:34-37). For further discussion see M. Jack Suggs, Wisdom, Christology and Law in Matthew's Gospel (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971); R. G. Hamer-ton-Kelly, Pre-existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man: A Study of the Idea of Pre-existence in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). Paul presents Christ as the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30; 8:6; Colossians 1:15-20). For an account of Paul as a teacher of Christian wisdom, see Peter Stuhlmacher, "The Hermeneutical Significance of 1 Corinthians 2:6-16," in Gerald F. Hawthorne and Otto Betz, eds., Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 328-47.

"On the Soul 1.1.402a7 (Works 1:641).

"On the Soul 3.3.427a19 (Works 1:679).

"Politics 1.2.1253a4 (Works 2:1987).

YOPolitics 1.2.1253al5-18 (Works 2:1988).

"The Nicomachean Ethics was so called because it was issued by Aristotle's son, Nicomachus. It was long regarded as the definitive statement of Aristotle's ethics, in preference to the version compiled by his pupil Eudemus the mathematician. However, recent scholarship has somewhat revised this view (see Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics). The Magna Moralia is widely thought to be a later Peripatetic compilation.

R2Nicomachean Ethics 3.1.1109b30 (Works 2:1752).

2'Nicomachean Ethics 10.8.1179a30 (Works 2:1863).

24Eudemian Ethics 3.1-7.1228a23-1234b13 (Works 2:1945-55). See also Guthrie, History 6:352-76.

25The idea of the Golden Mean appears in Horace who wrote: "Whoso cherishes the golden mean [auream mediocritatem], safely avoids the foulness of an ill-kept house and discreetly, too, avoids exciting envy" (Odes 2.10.5-8, Loeb Classical Library, 1952, p. 131).

26Nicomachean Ethics 1.1094a1 (Works 2:1728).

27Nicomachean Ethics 2.1103a16-17 (Works 2:1742).

"Stanley Hauer-was, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Notre Dame: Fides Publishers, 1974); Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1975).

29Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Whose Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).

"For a recent discussion see Robert B. Kruschwitz and Robert C. Roberts, eds., The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987).

Chapter 4: Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics and Cynics

'The writings of Epicurus have not survived apart from fragments and letters. Diogenes Laertius gives an account of his teaching in book ten of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, which is the chief authority for his teaching. Diogenes Laertius is also a primary source for the Stoics, Skeptics, and Cynics. Epicurus's extant writings are included in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, ed. Whitney J. Oates (New York: Random House, 1940). Another sourcebook is Gordon H. Clark, Selections from Hellenistic Philosophy (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960). A more recent critical edition of texts is A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1 Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary, 2 An Annotated Collection of the Greek and Latin Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1988). A primary source for Epicurean teaching is the didactic poem of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. For a modern prose translation see Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, trans. R E. Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951). For brief extracts of Stoic and Epicurean teaching, see C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (Revised edition, London: SPCK, 1987; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 65-81. For overviews, see Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 3 The Systems of the Hellenistic Age, ed. and trans. John R. Catan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985); A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1987). For specialist studies of religion into the Christian era, see R van den Broek, T. Baarda, J. Mansfield, eds., Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988).

An important collection of authoritative articles dealing with various aspects of philosophy in the Roman world, both before and during the Christian era, may be found in the relevant parts and volumes of Aufstieg and Niedergang der romischen Welt (= The Rise and Fall of the Roman World), ed. Wolfgang Haase, pt. 2, vol. 36 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987 onwards). Many of them are in English. ANRW 2.36.1 deals with Platonism. ANRW 2.36.2 concludes Platonism, and goes on to discuss Aristotelianism. ANRW 2.36.3 reviews Stoicism. ANRW2.36.4 embraces Epicureanism, Skepticism, Cynicism and other themes.

A major attempt to correct traditional misunderstandings about Epicurus has been made by Norman Wentworth DeWitt in his Epicurus and his Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954; paperback, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1967). However, some scholars think that DeWitt's account is somewhat extravagant in its enthusiasm. Other studies include R. D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962); A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2nd ed. 1986); A. J. Festiguiere, Epicurus and his Gods (New York: Russell & Russell, reprint 1969); J. M. Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); On the impact of Hellenism see Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounters in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (London: S.C.M. Press; Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1974); Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 1, History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, paperback reprint 1987).

'Diogenes Laertius Lives 10.9 (Loeb edition, 2:539).

'Lives 10.33 (Loeb edition, 2:563); cf. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, 1.6- 1036, trans. Latham, pp. 130-62.

'Lives 10.55 (Loeb edition, 2:585); cf. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, 1.146- 634; 2.1-1174, trans. Latham, pp. 31-45, 60-95.

'Lives 10.123 (Loeb edition, 2:649); cf. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, 5.91- 415, trans. Latham, pp. 172-75.

6Lives 10.124-126 (Loeb edition, 2:651-53); cf. Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, 3.1-1094, trans. Latham, pp. 96-129.

'Lives 10.129 (Loeb edition, 2:655).

'Lives 10.131 (Loeb edition, 2:657).

'For texts and works which deal with both Stoicism and Epicureanism, see above n. 1. English translations include Epictetus, Discourses and Enchiridion, trans. T. W. Higginson with introduction by I. Edman (New York: Walter J. Black, 1944); Marcus Aurelius and his Times: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity, with introduction by I. Edman (New York: Walter J. Black, 1945). Important studies include Edward Vernon Arnold, Roman Stoicism, Being Lectures on the History of the Stoic Philosophy with Special Reference to its Development within the Roman Empire (1911, reprint Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), which despite its title is very valuable for Greek Stoicism; David E. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977); Benson Mates, Stoic Logic (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961);J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. Studies in the History of Christian Thought 24-25 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985).

10Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.5 (Loeb edition, 2:115).

"Translation in Oates, The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, pp. 591-92. The Hymn opens:

12Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.180 (Loeb edition, 2:289).

"Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.184 (Loeb edition, 2:293 slightly emended).

"Text edited by A. Kurfess in E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (London: Lutterworth Press, 1965), 2:133-41. See furtherj. N. Sevens- ter, Paul and Seneca, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 4 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961).

"Meditations 3.5; 5.10; 12.1-36; cf. Epictetus Discourses 1.14 (Oates, The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, pp. 504, 522, 579-85; cf. 250-251). See further Arnold, Roman Stoicism, pp. 238-72, especially pp. 242-43.

'6Meditations 12.14 (Oates, p. 581).

"P. Merlan in A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, p. 124.

'BDiogenes Laertius Lives 7.134 (Loeb edition, 2:239).

"Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.135 (Loeb edition, 2:241).

YODiogenes Laertius Lives 7.137-38 (Loeb edition, 2:241-42).

21 Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 2.4.12 (De Natura Deorum, Academica, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Rackham, 1933, p. 135). Cicero goes on to say, however, that there are various opinions about the nature of the gods. He notes that "our master Cleanthes" spoke of four causes that account for the formation of the notion of the gods: (1) foreknowledge of future events; (2) the benefits of the earth; (3) the awe inspired by natural phenomena; (4) the uniform motion and revolution of the heavens which compel one "to infer that these mighty-world motions are regulated by some Mind" (2.5.13-15, pp. 137-38). Cicero himself was an eclectic thinker who compiled the opinions of Greek thinkers for the benefit of his Roman readers. He rejected Epicureanism and leaned toward the skeptical Academy. But here, as in other places, he was impressed by the Stoics (cf. 2.59.147-2.77.168, pp. 265-85). Seneca argued that there was no race that had departed so far from the laws and customs that it did not believe in some kind of gods (Letter 117.6). See further Arnold, Roman Stoicism, pp. 223-33.

22Diogenes Laertius Lives 9.69 (Loeb edition, 2:483). The chief source of knowledge of Pyrrho is Book 9 of the Lives and the writings of Sextus Empiricus (trans. R. B. Bury, Loeb Classical Library, 4 vols., 1933-49). A modern translation by Sanford G. Etheridge has been published under the title Scepticism, Man, and God: Selections from the Major Writings of Sextus Empiricus, ed. Philip P. Hallie (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1964). References below are to this edition. Studies include Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics (1913, reprint New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959); Mary Mills Patrick, The Greek Sceptics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); Charlotte L. Stough, Greek Skepticism: A Study in Epistemology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969). On the influence of skepticism on later European thought, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979).

23Diogenes Laertius Lives 9.70 (Loeb edition, 2:483).

2'Diogenes Laertius Lives 9.68 (Loeb edition, 2:481).

25"For if a person is worthy of credence when he makes an assumption, then we shall in each case also not be less worthy of credence if we make the opposite assumption. And if the person making the assumption assumes something which is true, he renders it suspicious by taking it on assumption. But if what he assumes is false, the foundation of what he is trying to prove will be unsound. Moreover, if assumption conduces at all towards proof, let the thing in question itself be assumed and not something else by means of which he will then prove the thing under discussion. But if it is absurd to assume the thing in question, it will also be absurd to assume what transcends it" (Outlines 1.15; Scepticism, pp. 74-75).

"Against the Dogmatists, vol. 3 (= Against the Physicists 1.192; Scepticism, p. 215).

21Outlines 1.28 (Scepticism, p. 86).

28Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.53-54 (Loeb edition, 2:55).

29Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.60 (Loeb edition, 2:53).

80Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.51 (Loeb edition, 2:53).

"Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.41 (Loeb edition, 2:43).

®2Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.72 (Loeb edition, 2:75).

"Some writers use the expression "Stoic-Cynic" as if to denote some kind of compounded conception. More recently, however, warnings have been given against the use of the hyphen which suggests something which did not actually exist (cf. Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition, SBL Sources for Biblical Study 12, Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977, p. 2). Although they valued inner freedom, hardiness, and asceticism, the Stoics frowned upon the Cynic mendicant way of life, and the squalid appearance and insulting manners of some of the Cynics (Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, p. 234).

34A number of scholars have detected similarities between Jesus and the wandering Cynic teacher. Burton L. Mack observes: `Jesus' wisdom incorporated the pungent invitation to insight and the daring to be different that characterized the Cynic approach to life.... Using metaphors such as king, overseer, physician, gadfly, and teacher, Cynics understood themselves to be `sent' by God to preside over the human situation. Epictetus even refers to the Cynics' vocation as a reign (basileia, "kingdom") in order to catch up the challenging aspects of representing publicly a way of life grounded in the divine laws of nature.... [Jesus] themes and topics are much closer to Cynic idiom than to those characteristic for public Jewish piety" (Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988, pp. 69-73). However, other scholars think that this view utterly fails to do justice to the Jewishness of Jesus and the demonstrable similarities between Jesus' teaching methods and other Jewish teachers. An important study, yet to be translated into English, which deals with Jesus' teaching methods in their Jewish context is Rainer Riesner,Jesus als Lehrer. Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien- Uberleiferung, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 7 (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1981).

For a compilation of source material see F. Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition, JSOT Manuals 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988). Whereas some Christian teaching and practices bear some resemblance to the Cynic lifestyle, Downing's collection reveals profound differences. For criticism of the hypothesis that the Jesus movement was a form of Cynic philosophy and lifestyle, see Richard J. Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989), pp. 43-64, 11619. Horsley notes that the Cynics and Jesus' disciples had very different "callings." The former sought to be individual paradigms of virtue; the latter were charged as catalysts of a broader movement based in local communities. The Cynics lived without home and possessions as an intentional "way of life"; the leaving of home and possessions by Jesus' envoys was necessitated by their mission. The Cynics were vagabond beggars moving from house to house; the disciples were instructed to stay in local houses and receive what was provided for them. The Cynics prized individual self-sufficiency; the Jesus movement led to the formation of communities in the form of churches dependent on the grace of God and bearing witness to Christ's atoning death and resurrection life.

In the social and religious context of Palestinian Judaism Jesus appeared much closer to the tradition of the prophets, apocalyptic teachers and charismatic leaders. To his enemies Jesus appeared, not as a Cynic philosopher, but as a false charismatic prophet who performed signs and wonders in order to lead the people astray. As such he was put to death for blasphemy so that the land might be purged of his evil (see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1984], pp. 293-325; Brown, That You May Believe: Miracles and Faith-Then and Now [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1985], pp. 95-175; Brown, "Synoptic Miracle Stories: A Jewish Religious and Social Setting," Foundations and Facets Forum 2 [1986]: 55-76; Brown, History and Faith: A Personal Exploration [Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1987], pp. 78-85).

Chapter 5: From Greeks to Gospel

'For an example of thinking which sees radical differences between Greek and Jewish thought, see Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (London: S.C.M. Press, 1960). For a critique of this line of approach, see James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).

2Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (London: S.C.M. Press; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974).

'Basic surveys of Christianity in relation to the ancient world include A. D. Nock, Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964); Frederick C. Grant, Roman Hellenism and the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962); Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Dallas: Probe, 1984); Ramsey MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Calvin J. Roetzel, The World that Shaped the New Testament (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985); Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 1, History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age; vol. 2, History and Literature of Early Christianity (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, Paperback reprint 1987). A major series which explores the Jewish and Graeco-Roman contexts of Christianity is The Library of Early Christianity, general editor Wayne A. Meeks (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 8 vols.). Among the volumes in this series which are particularly relevant to our present concern are: Robert M. Grant, Gods and the One God (1986); James L. Kugel and Rowan A. Greer, Early Biblical Interpretation (1986); Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, a Greco-Roman Sourcebook (1986); Wayne A. Meeks, The Moral World of the First Christians (1986); David E. Aune, The New Testament in its Literary Environment (1987); Stanley K Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (1987). For documents relevant to the world of the New Testament, see C. K Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (Revised edition, London: S.P.C.K, 1987; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).

"Henry Chadwick in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, p. 137. Chadwick's account of Philo (pp. 137-57) is concise but very well documented.

'The Loeb Classical Library edition of Philo runs to twelve volumes. Selections from his writings are given in Nahum H. Glatzer, ed., The Essential Philo (reprint New York: Schocken Books, 1971); and the more up-to-date critical Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections, trans. with introduction by David Winston (New York: Paulist Press, The Classics of Western Spirituality, 1981). The foundational studies by H. A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 3rd ed. 1962), and Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961) need to be supplemented by more recent work. These include Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to AD. 220 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 139-83; the work of Winston and the literature that he notes above; and the Studia Philonica published by the Philo Institute (1972-).

'Winston, Philo of Alexandria, p. 3.

7Roetzel, The World that Shaped the New Testament, p. 81.

'On the Nature of the Gods 2.24.63-25.64 (Loeb edition, p. 185).

'Winston, Philo of Alexandria, pp. 6-7.

10On Dreams 2.247 (Loeb edition, 5:553).

"Every Good Man is Free 1.2.13 (Loeb edition, 9:11, 13).

'20n the Creation of the World 1.20 (Loeb edition, 1:17).

" Winston, Philo of Alexandria, p. 26.

"See Grant, Gods and the One God, 19-28, 49-51; F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles, The Greek Text (London: Tyndale Press, 2nd ed. 1952), pp. 330-41; Bruce, The Book of Acts, Revised Edition, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 328-44; Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 514-41; Bruce, "The Speeches in Acts-Thirty Years After," in Robert Banks, ed., Reconciliation and Hope: Essays Presented to L. L. Morris (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1974), pp. 53-68; D. W. Kemmler, Faith and Human Reason: A Study of Paul's Method of Preaching as Illustrated by 1-2 Thessalonians and Acts 17, 2-4, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 40 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975); and the literature noted in these works.

"The first may come from a lost work attributed to Epimenides the Cretan (c. 600 B.C.) which, however, was written at a late date, and which appears to be quoted in Titus 1:12 as that of a Cretan prophet. The second is taken from Aratus (b. 310 B.C.), Phainomena 5, which in turn may have drawn on Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus (see above, ch. 4, n. 11).

"For a discussion of the themes of preaching in the early church, noting the differences between preaching to Jewish and Gentile audiences, see Colin Brown, "The Structure and Content of the Early Kerygma," in Colin Brown, ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978) 3:57-67.

"Acts 18:1; 20:2-3; cf. Romans 15:25. For discussion see (e.g.) W. G. Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), pp. 311-320; Ralph P. Martin, New Testament Foundations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 2:190.

18Giinther Bornkamm, Early Christian Experience (London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 47-70, 105-111; Sevenster, Paul and Seneca, passim. For discussion of Paul's literary techniques and his possible links with the Stoic diatribe, see Stanley Kent Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul's Letter to the Romans, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 57 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981); Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity; Aune, The New Testament in its Literary Environment.

In a striking recent study of Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), Abraham J. Malherbe has argued that Paul's missionary strategy was influenced by the Hellenistic philosophical schools with which his converts were familiar. Malherbe sees a direct link between Paul's model of pastoral care and philosophical practices. Like Seneca, Paul offered himself as a paradigm for the community. Like the Stoics, Platonists and Epicureans, Paul encouraged mutual concern. Paul's emphasis on the quiet life has links with those of the philosophers, as does his moral exhortation. But unlike the philosophers, Paul encouraged his readers to be "taught by God" rather than be "self-taught." Moreover, in encouraging the Thessalonians to "work with your hands," Paul was distancing himself from the Epicurean contemptuous disengagement from society and from the Cynic way of life.

In Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989) Malherbe explores other letters by Paul and notes numerous allusions to different forms of popular philosophy. He sees Paul as a Christian apostle who knew contemporary philosophy firsthand. Paul did not openly discuss the philosophical traditions in his letters, but he addressed the issues that they raised. Paul frequently used philosophical language, but shrank from the Cynics' preoccupation with the individual. Unlike the Cynics, who had no communities, Paul was concerned to found Christian communities in the form of the churches that he established and nurtured. In his communal concern Paul was closer to the Epicureans. In his pastoral care Paul had absorbed the traditions that he had met and could even behave like a philosopher in the fulfillment of his apostolic vocation.

19For further discussion see J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), pp. 51-76. Dunn observes that the argument "is obviously the deliberate echo of the Adam narratives (Gen 2-3) in vv 1925.... The use of more widely known Stoic categories, particularly in vv 1920, 23, and 28 ... would increase the universal appeal of the argument. Equally significant, however, is the fact that in v 21 and overwhelmingly from v 23 onward Paul speaks as ajew and makes use of the standard Hellenistic Jewish polemic against idolatry; the influence of Wisd Sol 11-15 is particularly noticeable," p. 53. Commenting on Romans 1:20, Dunn observes: "Paul is trading upon, without necessarily committing himself to, the Greek (particularly Stoic) understanding of an invisible realm of reality, invisible to sense perception, which can be known only through the rational power of the mind. With Philo he presumably would not want to say that the rational mind is able to reach or grasp God. And he ensures that his language, however indebted to Stoic thought, should not be understood in terms of Stoicism by giving prominence to the thought of creation (`from the act of creation ... the things which have been made'; 'Paul speaks not of Ideas, but of things and events which manifest God's power' [Schlatter; cf. Acts 14:17]), and by setting it within an apocalyptic framework (the revelation of divine wrath from heaven)," p. 58.

"For reviews of the possibilities, see R. P. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, New Century Bible (Greenwood, SC: Attic Press, 1974), pp. 9-19, 79; Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia (Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 9499. On the question of whether there really was a Colossian heresy, see Morna D. Hooker, "Were there False Teachers at Colossae?" in Barnabas Lindars and Stephen D. Smalley, eds. Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, Studies in Honour of C. F. D. Moule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 31531.

It may be noted that the Jewish historian Josephus said that the Jews had from ancient times "three philosophies pertaining to their traditions": the Essenes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees (Jewish Antiquities 18.11; see also 13.171- 173; and Josephus, The Jewish War 2.119-166). He may, of course, be using the term philosophy to make the three sects more intelligible to non-Jewish readers. However, elsewhere he compared the Essenes with the Pythagoreans (The Jewish War 15.371) and the Pharisees with the Stoics (Life 12). Hellenistic philosophy was concerned not only with theoretical ideas but with ways of living. Josephus's description of the practices of the sects brings out the connection between beliefs and lifestyle. Josephus also mentions a more recent fourth "school of philosophy" begun by Judas the Galilean and Saddok (Antiquities 18.9 and 23-25).

In an impressive recent study Eduard Schweizer has argued that the term translated as "elemental spirits of the universe" (Greek, to stoicheia tou kosmou; literally, "the elements of the world") refers to the traditional elements which made up the world (earth, water, air and fire). This is the meaning that the term had in the literature of the day. Thus the passage is addressing fear of the elements, and pagan and Jewish ways of trying to control the elements and avert disaster through sundry rites and practices (both pagan and Jewish). The passage contrasts the futility of such practices with the power of the crucified and risen Christ. (See Eduard Schweizer, "Slaves of the Elements and Worshipers of Angels: Gal 4:3, 9 and Col 2:8, 18, 20," Journal of Biblical Literature 107 [1988]: 455-68.)

"George Holley Gilbert, Greek Thought in the New Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 85. For other literature and a critique of this view, see Ronald Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), pp. 56-64.

12 See (e.g.) the comment of Ralph P. Martin on 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Yet his `inmost self' (Rom 7:22, RSV) is undergoing renewal-not by absorption, as in hellenistic and gnostic thought, but by the hope of resurrection which entails a future for the outward person in his bodily existence. This is an important observation, marking off Pauline anthropology from Plato, Rep. IX 589A, Epictetus, Diss. II 7.3, 8.14, and even Philo, Quod Det. Pot. 22f., all of whom make the human person a composite of a material shell and a precious kernel, the soul, which aspires to be immortal. No such dichotomy is really to be found in Paul who, in this passage, comes closest to making the human being a hybrid of body and soul" (2 Corinthians, Word Biblical Commentary, Waco, Texas, 1986, p. 91). Similarly, J. D. G. Dunn sees no traces of Platonism in Romans 7:24 and 8:23, but understands these passages in terms of Christ and Adam, and the Christian believer's hope of ultimate deliverance through resurrection (Romans, pp. 396-97, 489-91). For a detailed discussion of Paul's teaching about the body, see Robert H. Gundry, SOMA in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

"See (e.g.) F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit (Exeter: Paternoster Press; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977); E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; London: SCM Press, 1977); Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

"See the discussion of logos in C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), pp. 263-85; Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 71-126; James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), pp. 213-50; Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World, pp. 81-88.

25John Herman Randall, Jr., Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 157.

26For an important reappraisal of the Fourth Gospel, which stresses the closeness of John to Jesus and his times, see J. A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John, ed. J. F. Coakley (London: SCM Press; Bloomington: Meyerstone, 1985).

27J. D. G. Dunn concludes his detailed examination of Philo with the observation: "The language of philosophy, Stoicism in particular, agreed at this point with the language of Jewish prophecy in providing the most useful term for talk of this experience of revelation and `right reason'-logos-and by means of allegorical interpretation this divine Logos could be shown to have a wide-ranging symbolical expression within the Torah. But in the end of the day the Logos seems to be nothing more for Philo than God himself in his approach to man, God himself insofar as he may be known by man" (Christology in the Making, p. 228). Other Old Testament passages in which creation is attributed to the Word of God include Ps 33:6; 107:20; 147:15, 18. In the Jewish Wisdom tradition, creation is attributed to God's wisdom, where wisdom is patently a variation of the word theme (Prov 8:22-31; Wisdom of Solomon 9:1-2, 17). For examples of Logos-teaching in Heraclitus, the Stoics and Philo, see C. K Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (Revised edition, London: SPCK, 1987; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 59-60, 66-67, 70, 72, 254, 262-65.

48F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), p. lvi.

29Bruce, Hebrews, pp. 1-1i; see also Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World, pp. 89-112. Similar reserve concerning possible links between Hebrews and Philo is shown by S. G. Sowers in The Hermeneutics of Philo and the Hebrews (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1965) and by Ronald Williamson in his massive study of Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970). On New Testament interpretation generally, see Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1(J75).

"Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. Helmut Koester, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 29-30. I have omitted from the quotation the numerous scholarly references cited by Attridge in support of his view, and also his allusions to the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and earlier Jewish traditions.

Chapter 6: Philosophy and the Church Fathers

'Recent accounts of the thought-world of the Roman Empire include Ramsey MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). On the rise and fall of the Roman world, see the massive encyclopedia Aufstieg and Niedergang der romischen Welt, in which many of the articles are in English. On Christianity and pagan religion in the Roman Empire before Constantine, see volume 2.23.2, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980).

'For an account of Christianity and the mysteries, see Devon H. Wiens, "Mystery Concepts in Primitive Christianity and in its Environment," Aufstieg and Niedergang der romischen Welt, 2.23.2:1248-1284. For texts see Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries, A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World (San Francisco, Harper & Row: 1987); and more briefly C. K Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (Revised edition, London: SPCK, 1987; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 120-34.

'For sources see Werner Foerster, ed., Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, I, Patristic Evidence; 2, Coptic and Mandean Sources (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, 1974); the volumes of the Nag Hammadi Studies published in Leiden by Brill; James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 3rd ed., 1988); and more briefly C. K Barrett, The New Testament Background pp. 92-119. For an authoritative discussion and details of other works, see Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1984; paperback edition, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).

'Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma (paperback reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1961), 1:223-66.

'Rudolph, Gnosis, p. 2.

'On Bultmann, see Colin Brown, "Bultmann Revisited," The Churchman 88 (1974): 167-87. On the question of Gnosticism and the New Testament, see Edwin M. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidence (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2nd ed. 1983) and the literature noted by him.

'Rudolph, Gnosis, p. 276.

BWilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 74.

'Lucian, ed. and tr. A. M. Harmon (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1915), 2:449-511. See also Lucian's Hermotimus (Loeb edition 6:260-415).

'°Lucian 2:507-508. The slave's name is Pyrrhias, a pun on a common slave name and the name of Pyrrho, the founder of skepticism.

"De ordine librorum suorum 1; cited from R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 19-20.

12Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, p. 43.

"Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, p. 15, citing fragments dealing with the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato which have survived only in Arabic translation.-

"See John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C.-A.D. 20 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977); Robert M. Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition, Brown Judaic Studies 69 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984).

15For a translation of Origen's work, see Origen: Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). R. Joseph Hoffmann has attempted to reconstruct Celsus's work in Celsus: On the True Doctrine, A Discourse against Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For discussion of Celsus see R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, pp. 94-125.

16Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 95.

"Against Celsus 7.58 (trans. Chadwick, pp. 444-45); cf. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, pp. 121-22.

"Against Celsus 1.14 (trans. Chadwick, p. 17).

"Against Celsus 5.35 (trans. Chadwick, p. 292).

20Against Celsus 8.68 (trans. Chadwick, p. 504).

"There are several complete and edited versions of Plotinus. Among them is the Loeb Classical Library edition, edited by A. H. Armstrong in 7 vols. (1966-88). Armstrong has also edited Plotinus, Selections (London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Humanities Press, 1953). Other selections include: Grace H. Turnbull, The Essence of Plotinus (reprint Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976); Joseph Katz, The Philosophy of Plotinus (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950). Studies include: Emile Brehier, The Philosophy of Plotinus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); A. H. Armstrong, Plotinian and Christian Studies (London: Variorum Reprints, 1979); J. O'Meara, ed., Neoplatonism and Christian Thought (Norfolk, VA: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1982); David T. Runia, ed., Plotinus amid Gnostics and Christians (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1984); Stephen Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, 2 vols., Publications in Medieval Studies 23/1-2 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). For an account of Porphyry's criticism of Christianity, see Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, pp. 126-63.

22Enneads 6.9.6.

23See Rist, Plotinus, pp. 213-30.

24See John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 46-49.

21 On Porphyry see Anthony Meredith, "Porphyry and Julian against the Christians," ANRW 2.23.2: 1120-1149; R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, pp. 126-163; Kathleen O'Brien Wicker, tr., Porphyry the Philosopher: To Marcella (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).

"Quoted from a fragment preserved by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History 6.19, trans. H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton (London: SPCK, 1927), p. 192.

27The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 151.

"Augustine replied to Porphyry's monotheistic claims by pointing out that the Romans had often served evil demons. But the God whom Christians serve is not only the God of the Scriptures which prophesied of Christ. He is also "the very God whom Varro, most learned of the Romans, thought to be Jupiter, albeit knowing now what he said.... Finally, he is the very God whom Porphyry, the most learned of philosophers, though the most bitter foe of the Christians, confesses to be a mighty god, even in accordance with the oracles of those whom he takes to be gods" (The City of God against the Pagans 19.22, trans. W.C. Greene, Loeb Classsical Library, [Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Heinemann, 1960], 7:215).

In the following chapter Augustine went on to discuss Porphyry's use of pagan oracles in order to condemn Christianity. In answer to the question of whether Christ were God, the oracle of Hecate had replied: "You know that the immortal soul advances after it leaves the body; but when it is sundered from wisdom it wanders for ever. The soul in question [i.e., that of Jesus] is that of a man preeminent in piety; they [i.e., the Christians] worship it because they are estranged from the truth" (The City of God 19.23; Loeb edition 7:219). Augustine dismissed this with the comment: "Who is so foolish as not to understand that these oracles either were invented by a shrewd man, and one most hostile to the Christians, or were the responses of impure demons of like design? Of course by praising Christ they hope to convince men that their vituperation of Christians is reliable, and so, if possible, to shut off the way of everlasting salvation, whereby the individual becomes a Christian.... We, for our part, can approve neither Apollo's vituperation of Christ nor Hecate's praise." (7:221-223).

29An older but still important study is Charles Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1913). A recent study of early Christian relationships with the Hellenistic world is R. M. Grant, Greek Apologetics of the Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988). On early Christian teaching generally, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, revised paperback edition, 1978); Berthold Altaner, Patrology (Freiburg: Herder; Edinburgh, London: Nelson, 1960); Johannes Quasten et at., Patrology, 4 vols. (Utrecht, Antwerp: Spectrum; Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, Christian Classics, Inc., 1966-1986). For accounts of Christology, see Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 1, From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451) (London: Mowbrays, 2nd ed. 1975); Frances Young, From Nicea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).

"Justin gives an account of his pilgrimage in his Dialogue with Trypho 1-8.

"Dialogue 8.

"First Apology 5, 46; Second Apology 8, 13. Justin's thought seems to bear the marks of Stoic influence. He clearly did not teach universalism. He repeatedly pointed out that it was one thing to be given enlightenment, but another to respond to it.

"Dialogue 61.

"First Apology 5.

R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen's Interpretation of Scripture (London: SCM Press, 1959); C. Kannengiesser and W. L. Peterson, eds., Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); Henri Crouzel, Origen (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 61-84.

56Origen, Commentary on Matthew 16.9-11; see Hanson, Allegory and Event, pp. 23536.

"See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 128-37, 153-58.

On the Proscription of Heretics 7 (The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:246). See also Tertullian's discussion of Plato and philosophical ideas in his treatise On the Soul. His tract On the Pallium justified the Christian wearing of the garment, however.

S9Quasten, Patrology 2:321.

400n the Soul 2, 3, 20 (The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:182-84, 200-1).

"Timothy David Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 231.

42Against Praxeas 29, 30 (Ernest Evans, ed., Tertullian's Treatise against Praxeas, London: SPCK, 1948, pp. 176-79).

49Quasten, Patrology 2:325; Evans, pp. 38-75, for general discussion of Tertullian's trinitarian terminology, much of which is to be found in Against Praxeas.

"Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 114. On the history and validity of the term, see Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).

"Against Praxeas 2, 3 (Evans, pp. 131-3).

Against Praxeas 27 (Evans, p. 174).

"There are numerous translations of Augustine's main writings, including nineteenth-century translations in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and a modern version in The Fathers of the Church. Selections of his works may be found in The Library of Christian Classics and in Whitney J. Oates, ed., Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1948). An old but still valuable account is Eugene Portalie, A Guide to the Thought of St. Augustine (London: Burns & Oates, 1960); Gerald Bonner, St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies (London: SCM Press, 1963); Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (New York: Random House, 1960); Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967); R. A. Markus, ed., Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972); Henri Marrou, Saint Augustine and his Influence through the Ages (New York: Harper Torchbooks; London: Longmans, 1957); Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970); Henry Chadwick, Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

"Confessions 5.10.18.

"Against the Academicians is a reply to the skepticism of the Academy. It is among the first surviving works of Augustine as well as being among the few works of Augustine that are strictly philosophical.

"Confessions 8.2.3.

51Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 28.

52For discussions of Augustine's position, see Hick, Evil and the God of Love, pp. 43-95; G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

"Confessions 8.12.29.

"Sometime round about A.D. 410 Augustine learned that the scholarly British monk Pelagius had been attacking Augustine's prayer (which, in the context of his Confessions, is a prayer for continence): "Give what You order, and order what You will" (Confessions 10.29 [40]). Pelagius objected that Augustine was undermining the fabric of morality, because Augustine seemed to be cutting out human responsibility. Pelagius was supported by Julian of Eclanum, who saw Augustine's view of human depravity as Manichaean. Augustine devoted a number of writings to the controversy, including his last major work, Six Books against Julian (428-430) and their incomplete sequel.

Augustine's teaching was profoundly influenced by his own experience of sin and grace. He taught that Adam was created with certain supernatural gifts, which were lost by the Fall. Metaphysically, sin is a defect of being, a failure to cleave to God. Ethically, it is culpable, because Adam chose to disobey God by his own free will. Although sin does not deprive human beings of free will, it deprives them of the ability to do the will of God. They are under a "cruel necessity to sin." They are thus guilty before God and unable to save themselves. They can be saved only by the grace of God. Humankind without God's saving grace is a mass of the damned. Yet, in his inscrutable wisdom and irresistible mercy, God has predestined some to salvation. God's will with regard to the elect, who have done nothing to deserve salvation, is active. With regard to the rest, God's will is passive. God permits them to pursue the way they have chosen. Inevitably, this means that they are predestined to perdition.

By contrast Pelagius denied the reality of original sin, maintaining that the Fall affected only Adam, that sin and death were not connected, that Christ came to set a good example and that grace is given to those who merit it. Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy at the Council of Ephesus (431), and again at the Second Council of Orange (529). It disappeared in the second half of the sixth century, though forms of semi-Pelagianism have emerged from time to time. For works dealing with Augustine's thought, see above, n. 47. On Pelagius see John Ferguson, Pelagius (Cambridge: Heffer, 1956); Robert F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (London: A. & C. Black; New York: Seabury Press, 1968); Evans, ed., Four Letters of Pelagius (London: A. & C. Black; New York: Seabury Press, 1968).

"Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946), p. 374, commenting on Augustine's discussion of time in Confessions 11.

56Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd ed., 1958) I #1, p. 2; cf. Confessions 1.8.13. Wittgenstein comments that "Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of words." The implication is that each word has a meaning which corresponds to an object. Such an oversimplification pays no attention to rules and conventions which govern the use of words. However, Copleston points out that in the Confessions Augustine was merely describing how as a child he learned to speak (History, p. 41). In other works he put forward a more complex view of language. In On the Master Augustine had already pointed out that we cannot point to objects signified by prepositions like ex ("out of," "from"). In his Principles of Dialectic Augustine distinguished between the spoken word, its meaning as grasped by the mind, its use as a sign for itself, its use as signifying objects and its effects on the hearer.

"Augustine put forward an argument which anticipated Descartes's cogito ergo sum in response to the skeptics of the Academy (cf. Cicero Academica Priora 2.13.40-42). The skeptics had questioned whether we can trust our senses or even know that we exist. Augustine replied: "Where these truths are concerned I need not quail before the Academicians when they say: `What if you should be mistaken?' Well, if I am mistaken, I exist. For a man who does not exist can surely not be mistaken either, and if I am mistaken, therefore I exist. So, since I am if I am mistaken, how can I be mistaken in believing that I am when it is certain that if I am mistaken I am" (The City of God 11.26, Loeb Classical Library 3, trans. David S. Wiesen, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1968, p. 533). The argument is not used as the foundation for a metaphysic of being. Rather, it draws attention to the absurdity of extreme skepticism. For other statements of the argument, see Augustine, On Free Will 2.3.7; On True Religion 73; Against the Academicians 3.11.25-26; Soliloquies 2.1.1; On the Blessed Life 2.2.7; On the Trinity 10.10.16; 15.12.21. For discussion of Descartes's use of the argument, see pp. 180-84.

"In his work On Christian Doctrine 1.7.7, Augustine argued that even those who believe in more than one god still attempt to conceive "the one God of gods" as "something than which nothing more excellent or more sublime exists [ut aliquid quo nihil melius sit atque sublimius illa cogitatio conetur attingere]. " F. C. Copleston comments: "No doubt St. Anselm was influenced by these words of Augustine when he took as the universal idea of God in the `ontological argument-that than which no greater can be conceived' " (A History of Philosophy 2:70; cf. also Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, New York: Random House, 1960, p. 326).

"Sermon 43.7.

"Letter 120.3 (Augustine, Letters Volume 2 [83-130], trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953, p. 302).

"Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q. 84 an. 5 (Blackfriars edition 12:31). This view is endorsed by Gilson, Christian Philosophy, p. 70.

"City of God 8.1. In this book Augustine says why he prefers Platonism to other philosophies, but he also notes the warnings of Col 2:8; Rom 1:19-23; Acts 17:28 (8.9).

"Confessions 1.1.

"The ultimate goal of human life is the vision of God, which Augustine discussed in numerous places including a lengthy letter to the noble Christian lady Paulina. He summed up his understanding of the vision of God at the conclusion of the letter. " `But the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father' [John 1:18] without sound of words declares the nature and substance of the Godhead, and therefore to eyes that are worthy and fit for such appearance He shows it visibly. Those are the eyes of which the Apostle says: `the eyes of your heart enlightened' [Ephesians 1:18] and of which it is said: `Enlighten my eyes that I never sleep in death' [Psalms 12:4]. For the Lord is a spirit [2 Corinthians 3:17; John 4:24]; therefore, `he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit' [1 Corinthians 6:17]. Consequently, he who can see God invisibly can be joined to the Lord incorporeally" (Letter 147.37; Augustine, Letters Volume 3 [131-164, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, Fathers of the Church, New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953, p. 205). For an account of Augustine's view of the vision of God in the context of his spiritual pilgrimage, see K E. Kirk, The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum, The Bampton Lectures for 1928 (London: Longman, 2nd ed., 1932), pp. 319-416.

65The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, pp. 200-201.

Chapter 7: Early Medieval Philosophy

'Surveys of medieval philosophy include: Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955); Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought: St. Augustine to Ockham (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958); Maurice de Wulf, History of Mediaeval Philosophy, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the End of the Twelfth Century (New York: Dover Publications, 1952); Armand A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1962; 2nd ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982); Joseph Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy (London: Faber and Faber, 1961); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London: Longmans, 1962); F. C. Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480-1150): An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1983, paperback 1988); A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy from the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Peter Dronke, ed., A History of Twelfth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). A comprehensive anthology of writings is given by Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh, eds., Philosophy in the Middle Ages: The Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2nd ed., 1984).

2The Latin schola (Greek schole) meant leisure from work, and hence learned leisure, learned conversation, debate, dispute and thus a place where learned disputations were carried on.

'On the Predestination of the Saints 5 (A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 5:499).

4Anselm Proslogion 1. See pp. 112-18.

'See the stress on the priority of faith as the precondition of understanding in (e.g.) Augustine, Sermon 43, 7; Letter 120, 3; On the Trinity I.I.I. Augustine's first work after his conversion, Against the Academicians, was a rebuttal of skepticism. His treatise On Christian Learning urged the need for dialectics and secular study in the articulation of Christian doctrine. His late work On the Predestination of the Saints outlined the program adopted by Scholasticism.

'For an account of the universities, see Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 3 vols., ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936). On religion and the universities in Britain, see V. H. H. Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London: SCM Press, 1964). On the emergence of theology as an academic discipline, see G. R Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).

'Editions of Boethius's works may be found in the Loeb Classical Library. Modern studies include Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of his Importance in Medieval Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935); Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Eleonore Stump, Boethius's De topiciis differentiis, translated, with notes and essays on the text (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978); Eleanore Stump, Boethius's "In Ciceronis Topica". An Annotated Translation of a Medieval Dialectical Text (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); Margaret Gibson, ed., Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); Edmund Reiss, Boethius (Boston: Twayne, 1982).

'Chadwick, Boethius, p. 249.

'For literature and a translation of one of his major works, see Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, trans. and annotated by Thomas L. Campbell (Lanham: University Press of America, 1981).

"Christian Wildberg has attempted to reconstruct Philoponus's lost treatise in Philoponus: Against Aristotle, On the Eternity of the World (Ithaca: Cornell Univer sity Press, 1987). For recent research see Richard Sorabji, ed., Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

"See Meyrick H. Carre, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). The question of universals continues to excite scholarly interest. D. F. Pears has argued that any attempted comprehensive explanation of naming is necessarily circular ("Universals" in Antony Flew, ed., Logic and Language, Second Series, Oxford: Blackwell, 1953, pp. 51-64). Nicholas Wolterstorff includes a theological assessment of the question in On Universals: An Essay in Ontology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970). For a review of the question and details of other literature, see A. D. Woozley, "Universals," Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8:194-206.

"See Martin M. Tweedale, Abailard on Universals (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1976). A brief work which contains many of Abelard's ideas is his Dialogue of a Philosopher with ajew, and a Christian, trans. P. J. Payer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1979).

"On Islamic philosophy see Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press; London: Longman, 2nd ed., 1983); F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York: New York University Press; London: University of London Press, 1968); Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988). For discussion of Islamic philosophical arguments for the existence of God, see William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 48-126; Herbert Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

'*Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Mushin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, revised paperback edition, 1969).

"James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, new edition, 1983), p. 276. For a recent study see Oliver Leaman, Averroes and His Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

"Surveys of Jewish philosophy include Joseph L. Blau, The Story ofJewish Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1962); Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962); Colette Sirat, A History ofJewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). On arguments for the existence of God, see Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 127-57; Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God. The most extensive account of the Kabbalah is Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); but see also Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

"On his life see Abraham Joshua Heschel, Maimonides: A Biography (New York: Farrer, Straus, Giroux, 1982). Translations of his works include: The Guide to the Perplexed, trans. with introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines and an introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); and Rambam: Readings in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides, trans. with introduction and commentary by Lenn Evan Goodman (New York: Viking Press, 1976). A modern reassessment containing papers read at a conference commemorating the 850th anniversary of his birth is Eric L. Ormsby, ed., Moses Maimonides and his Time, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 19 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989).

18The Guide to the Perplexed, pp. 235-317.

"Craig, The Cosmological Argument, p. 152. See also Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, "Medieval Biblical Commentary and Philosophical Inquiry as Exemplified in the Thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas," in E. L. Ormsby, ed., Moses Maimonides and His Time, pp. 101-20.

20The term "Ontological Argument" seems to date from the time of Kant who spoke of "The Impossibilityof an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God" (Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., 1787, Transcendental Dialectic, Book 2, chapter 3.4). The term ontology is derived from the Greek word on which means "being." Ontology is the theory of being. The ontological argument is an argument about the being of God as distinct from the mere idea of God. It may be noted that Kant's discussion does not refer directly to Anselm, but examines later forms of the argument.

The text of Anselm's argument may be found in many anthologies of philosophical theology. Two sources especially may be noted for statements of Anselm's argument and subsequent discussion. They are Alvin Plantinga, ed., The Ontological Argument from St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers (London: Macmillan, 1968); and John Hick and Arthur McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God (London: Macmillan, 1968). Hick and McGill set out the argument in its various steps. A critical edition is given by M.J. Charlesworth, ed., St. Anselm's Proslogion with A Reply on Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilo and The Author's Reply to Gaunilo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). Other important studies include: Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 196-221; and in a more popular form God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), pp. 85-112; Charles Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection, and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1962); Hartshorne, Anselm's Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Proof of God's Existence (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1965); Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum; Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme (London: SCM Press; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1960); Jonathan Barnes, The Ontological Argument (London: Mac millan, 1972); R. A. Harrera, Anselm's Proslogion: An Introduction (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979); Richard Campbell, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm's Proslogion on the Existence of God (Canberra: Australian National University, 1976); E. L. Mascall, The Openness of Being: Natural Theology Today, Gifford Lectures, 1970-71 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971), pp. 36-58; Gillian R. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Evans, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); T. Morris, Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).

The present discussion draws on the translation in jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, editors and translators, Anselm of Canterbury, 4 vols. (London: SCM Press; Toronto and New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1974-76). An account of his life was written by his chaplain Eadmer, The Life of St. Anselm: Archbishop of Canterbury, edited and translated by R. W. Southern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprint ed., 1979). On his contribution to logic, see Desmond Paul Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).

"The title is generally translated Why God Became Man. But other alternatives include Why the God Man and Why God Became a Man. For discussion see Anselm of Canterbury 3:253-54. There is a similarity of method here with that of the ontological argument. It consists in discovering the reasons for belief on the basis of what is given and believed.

22Eadmer, Life, p. 142.

2SAnselm of Canterbury 1: 1-86.

24Proslogion vol. 1 (Anselm of Canterbury 1:93). Both the credo ut intelligam and the ontological argument were derived from Augustine, see above, pp. 96-97.

25Hick and McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument, p. 23.

"Meditations 3 and other writings (see Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 3149).

2'Monadology 45 states briefly what Leibniz argued more fully elsewhere (see Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 54-56).

"Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 2 art. 1 (Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 28-30).

29See above n. 20 and Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 57-64. For further discussion see below, pp. 123-24, 181, 186, 190, 318-22.

50G. E. Moore, "Is Existence a Predicate?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 15 (1936), reprinted in Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 71-85. Kant had earlier rejected the idea that existence is a predicate.

"So J. N. Findlay, "Can God's Existence be Disproved?" Numerous objections have been made to Findlay's argument, pointing out that logical necessity is not the only kind of necessity, and Findlay himself later modified his stance. For Findlay's argument and rejoinders see Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 47-75. See also Mascall, The Openness of Being, p. 53.

'See above, n. 20. On process theology see volume 2.

"The Openness of Being, p. 54.

"Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, p. 168.

"Barth, Anselm, p. 171.

"Thus Plantinga observes: "We have no reason to believe ... either that existence in reality cannot be predicated of a being presupposed to exist in the understanding, or that Anselm's argument necessarily involves predicating real existence of such a being. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that we do not yet have a general refutation of Anselm's ontological argument" (God and Other Minds, p. 63).

"Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments" (The Philosophical Review 69 [1960]:41-62; reprinted in Plantinga, The Ontological Argument, pp. 136-59; and Hick and McGill, The Many-Faced Argument, pp. 301-20).

38The Ontological Argument, pp. 145-46.

"The Ontological Argument, p. 147.

40The Ontological Argument, p. 159.

"God and Other Minds, p. 94; c£ The Ontological Argument, pp. 160-71; John Hick in The Many-Faced Argument, pp. 341-56; Mascall, The Openness of Being, pp. 5758.

"Campbell, From Belief to Understanding, p. 221.

Chapter 8: Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophy

'James Denney, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (London: James Clarke, reprint ed., 1959), p. 84.

2Francis Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968), pp. 11-12.

'In libros de coelo et mundo expositio, lecture 22; cited from Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 28. See below, n. 4.

4The standard English edition of Thomas's Summa Theologiae with Latin text and English translation on facing pages is the Blackfriars edition in 60 vols. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964-). The Summa Contra Gentiles appears in a 5-volume translation (reprint Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). Selections from his writings are given by Anton C. Pegis, Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1945); and more briefly in Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Modern Library, 1965); Thomas Gilby, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical Texts and St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Texts (reprint ed., Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1982); Christopher Martin, ed., The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Introductory Readings (London: Routledge, 1988). Gilby's work draws widely from his many writings and arranges Thomas's thought thematically under subject headings. Also valuable is Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings, translated, edited and introduced by Simon Tugwell, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). Details of other writings are given in the following general introductions: Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1956); M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964); Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas (reprint ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); F. C. Copleston, Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955); Ralph Mclnerny, St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). The standard biography is James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works (updated reprint, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983). A brief but important study from the standpoint of reassessing Thomas's significance for Protestant thought is Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans for Christian University Press, 1985). Specialist essays on aspects of Thomas's thought are given in Anthony Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (reprint ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). Other specialist studies on the five ways and analogy are noted below.

'Peter Lombard (c. 1100-60) taught at the cathedral school in Paris, where he became bishop shortly before his death. The four books of the Sentences contain an account of Christian doctrine illustrated from Latin and Greek fathers. Despite early rejection, it became the standard theological textbook of the Middle Ages, though eventually it was superseded by the Summa Theologiae. On Thomas and Peter Lombard see W. J. Hankey, God in Himself Aquinas' Doctrine of God as Expounded in the "Summa Theologiae" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Hankey also stresses the continuing importance of Neoplatonist in Thomas's teaching about God.

'See Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, pp. 298-301. Summa Theologiae means "Compend of Theology." This title is thought to be more authentic than the later commonly used title Summa Theologica ("Theological Compend").

7Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino, pp. 333-44.

'Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino, pp. 320-23; Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas (New York: Pantheon, 1953).

'From the account given at the beginning of each volume of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae.

'°For the text see Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars edition, 2:13-17. An earlier version is given in the Summa Contra Gentiles 1, 13 (1:86-96). For classical discussions of the issues, see Donald R. Burrell, ed., The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967). Modern discussions are given in E. L. Mascall, He Who Is: A Study in Traditional Theism (London: Longman, 1943); Mascall, The Openness of Being; Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969); Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Ox ford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Norman L. Geisler, Philosophy of Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974); William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz; A. G. N. Flew, God and Philosophy (London: Hutchinson, 1966); J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

"Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 2, an. 2 (Blackfriars edition, 2:9-11).

"See above, pp. 42-48.

"Modern discussions of the teleological argument are given in F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, 2, The World, the Soul and God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930); Thomas McPherson, The Argument from Design (London: Macmillan, 1972); and the general works dealing with the existence of God noted above in ch. 7, nn. 13 and 20.

"Cf. Geisler, Philosophical Theology, pp. 87-102.

"Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 195-96.

"Victor Preller, Divine Science and the Science of God: A Reformulation of Thomas Aquinas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 24.

"Cf. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 11, #110. See above, p. 250.

"David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 5, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (reprint ed., Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, n.d.), p. 167.

"Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 32, art. 1 (Blackfriars edition 6:103).

20Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 45, art. 2 (Blackfriars edition 8:79).

21Hume, Enquiry, Section 11, #113; c£ Dialogues, Parts 8, 12.

"Stanley L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God, The Gifford Lectures 1974-75 and 1975-76 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 297.

"Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 44, art. 2 (Blackfriars edition 8:9-15).

2'The Openness of Being, p. 61; cf. also Mascall, Existence and Analogy: A Sequel to "He Who Is" (London: Longmans, 1949), pp. 78-79.

"Summa Contra Gentiles 1. 30 (Notre Dame edition 1:141). Compare this with the Neoplatonist element in Aquinas's thought stressed by W. J. Hankey, God in Himself, pp. 36-86, 136-42, 143-61.

26Thomas's views of analogy are given in Summa Contra Gentiles 1. 28-34 (Notre Dame edition 1:135-48); Summa Theologiae vol. 1. Q. 13 (Blackfriars edition 3:46- 97); and in sundry other passages given in Latin in an appendix to George P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960). Discussions are given by Frederick Ferri, Language, Logic, and God (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962), pp. 67-77; E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy, pp. 92-122; Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Analogy and Doxology," in Basic Questions in Theology (London: SCM Press, 1970), 1:212-38; Humphrey Palmer, Analogy: A Study of Qualification and Argument in Theology (London: Macmillan, 1973); Ralph Mclnerny, The Logic of Analogy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961); McInerny, "Analogy and Foun dationalism in Thomas Aquinas," in Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright, eds., Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 271-88; Colin Brown, Karl Barth and the Christian Message (London: Tyndale Press, 1967), pp. 47-54; David Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973); Gerard J. Hughes, "Aquinas and the Limits of Agnosticism," Richard Swinburne, "Analogy and Metaphor," and Janice Thomas, "Univocity and Understanding God's Nature," in Gerard J. Hughes, ed., The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in Honor of Frederick C. Copleston (London: Search Press; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987), pp. 35-64, 65-84, 85-100.

2'Summa Theologiae 1. Q. 13, art. 3 (Blackfriars edition, 3:57-59).

28Summa Theologiae 1. Q. 13, art. 5 (Blackfriars edition, 3:65).

''The idea of "eschatological verification" was mooted by I.M. Crombie in a paper on "Theology and Falsification" in Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 126; and developed by John Hick in Faith and Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 2nd ed. 1967), pp. 176-199; and in "Theology and Verification," in John Hick, ed., The Existence of Cod (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964), pp. 253-274. The idea has provoked considerable discussion among philosophers and theologians. Hick lists numerous responses and replies to criticism in "Eschatological Verification Reconsidered," Religious Studies 13 (1977): 189-202.

SOSumma Theologiae 1. Q. 13. art. 5 (Blackfriars edition, 3:67); cf 1. Q. 4. an. 3.

"Romans 1:20, cited in Summa Theologiae 1. Q. 13, art. 5 (Blackfriars edition 3:65).

"Opuscula 16, Exposition, On the Trinity 2.3 (cited from Gilby, ed., Aquinas: Philosophical Texts, p. 30).

"Summa Theologiae 1. Q. 46, an. 2 (Blackfriars edition, 8:81).

"For writings in translation see The Works of Bonaventure, Cardinal, Seraphic Doctor and Saint, 5 vols. (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960-70). On his thought see Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965); J. Guy Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1964); Robert W. Shahan and Francis J. Kovach, eds., Bonaventure and Aquinas: Enduring Philosophers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976).

"Recent studies include James E. McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

"His characteristic thought is contained in The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, Eng. trans. Robert Belle Burke, 2 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, reprint ed., 1962). For a general survey of Bacon's thought, see Stewart C. Easton, Roger Bacon and his Search for a Universal Science: A Reconsideration of the Life and Work of Roger Bacon in the Light of his own Stated Purposes (reprint ed., Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970).

"For extracts from his writings dealing with God and the soul, see John Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings: A Selection, trans. with an introduction by Allan Wolter (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, reprint ed., 1980). On his thought see Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus: The Basic Principles of his Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961); John K Ryan and Bernardin M. Bonansea, John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 3 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1965).

"For discussion and literature see Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 205-35.

39See Nathaniel Micklem, Reason and Revelation: A Question from Duns Scotus (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953).

40See Allan Wolter in Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2:436.

"Recent discussions include Gordon Leff, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Doctrine (Manchester: Manchester University Press; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975); Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols., Publications in Medieval Studies 26 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, eds., From Ockham to Wyclif, Studies in Church History: Subsidia 5 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). See also William Ockham, Predestination, God's Knowledge and Future Contingents, translated, with Notes and Appendices by Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2nd ed. 1983).

"See Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Philosophy: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 3rd ed. 1983); John L. Farthing, Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel: Interpretations of St. Thomas Aquinas in German Nominalism on the Eve of the Reformation, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988). On the transition from the Middle Ages to the Reformation, see Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986); A. H. T. Levi, "The Breakdown of Scholasticism and the Significance of Evangelical Humanism," in Gerard J. Hughes, ed., The Philosophical Assessment of Theology, pp. 101-28.

"A History of Philosophy 3:11.

"See above, n. 42 and also E. J. D. Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching: A Study ofJohn Geiler of Strassburg (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966); H. A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, Illustrated by Key Documents (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); Oberman, Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of the New Intellectual Climate in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Alister E. McGrath, lustitia Dei: A History of the Doctrine ofJustification, 1, From the Beginnings to 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

"Quoted by Adams, William Ockham 1:13.

46For an extensive account of his theology, see Adams, William Ockham 2: 9031347.

"Leff, William of Ockham, p. 35.

Chapter 9: Philosophy and the Reformers

'See above, pp. 101-102. Classic studies include Jacob Burckhart, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon; New York: Oxford University Press, reprint ed., 1944); and Jan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (reprint ed., New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967). More recent accounts include Wallace K Ferguson, The Renaissance (reprint ed., New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961); Ferguson, Renaissance Studies (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 1963); Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1948); G. R. Potter, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History, I The Renaissance, 1493-1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). For other literature and a concise overview, see Neal W. Gilbert, "Renaissance," Encyclopedia of Philosophy 7: 174-178. On Renaissance humanism see The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948).

'See above, pp. 52, 170.

'See above, p. 80.

'General accounts of the Reformation include J. S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition: Essays in Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955); G. R Elton, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History, 2 The Reformation, 1520-1559 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Wilhelm Pauck, The Heritage of the Reformation (Glencoe, Ill: Beacon Press, 2nd ed., 1961); G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe, 1517-1559 (London: Collins, 1963); Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1964); Franz Lau and Ernst Bizer, A History of the Reformation in Germany to 1555 (London: A. & C. Black, 1969); Steven Ozment, ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550; An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); B. M. G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation (London: Longman, 1981); Wilhelm Pauck, From Luther to Tillich: Reformers and Their Heirs, ed. Marion Pauck (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984); J. Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma, 1300-1700 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984); Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 1517-1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985); A. G. Dickens and John Tomlin with Kenneth Powell, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988). On the Radical Reformation see Walter Klaassen, ed., Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources (Kitchener, Ontario, and Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1981); E. G. Rupp, Patterns of Reformation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969). G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972).

'Melanchthon and Bucer, Library of Christian Classics 19, ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 21-22.

'For source documents see Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Reformation in its Own Words (New York: Harper & Row; London: SCM Press, 1964). On Luther's career and thought, see James Atkinson, Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism (Har- mondsworth: Pelican Books, 1968); Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther in Mid-Career, 1521-1530 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966); Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

'For an account of Luther's teaching on justification in its historical setting and the subsequent debates, see Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2 From 1500 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

'The first edition (1536) of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion has been translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986). For an English translation of the final Latin (1559) edition with critical notes, see Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics 20-21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: SCM Press, 1961).

'The articles are to be found in The Book of Common Prayer. The date given above is that of their Elizabethan form, but their substance goes back to earlier English versions which were in part indebted to continental statements of faith. On the teaching of the English Reformers generally, see Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965).

"The most comprehensive collection of Christian creeds is still Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (1877, reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977). See also Arthur C. Cochrane, Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century, edited with historical introductions (Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: SCM Press, 1966); Wilhelm Niesel, Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962); Eric Routley, Creeds and Confessions: The Reformation and its Modern Implications (London: Duckworth, 1962). For Christian and non-Christian creeds in America, see J. Gordon Melton, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988).

"On post-Reformation theology see Heinrich Heppe, ed., Reformed Dogmatics, Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources (London: Allen and Unwin, 1950); Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 3rd ed. reprint n.d.); Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1 Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987). Muller's Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985) not only gives clear definitions of terms but also illustrates the continuity of Reformed thought with earlier theology and philosophy.

"Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 51:371-80.

"See B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 1-2.

14Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 36, citing Luther's table talk.

"The Bondage of the Will (1525), Eng. trans. J. I. Packer and 0. R. Johnson (London: James Clarke, 1957), p. 317; see also Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Eng. trans. E. Gordon Rupp, Philip S. Watson et al., The Library of Christian Classics 17 (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), pp. 331-32; Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 171.

"First Disputation against the Antinomians (1537), quoted from Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (London: Epworth Press, 1947), p. 95.

"Steinmetz, Luther in Context, pp. 47-58; Denis R. Janz, Luther and Late Medieval Thomism: A Study in Theological Anthropology (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1983); John L. Farthing, Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel: Interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas in German Nominalism on the Eve of the Reformation, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1988).

"Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985).

19See above, pp. 64-66, 90.

"Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1963), 26:440.

"For Luther on Scripture see Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp. 72102. On his exegetical methods see the discussion of Wilhelm Pauck in the introduction to his edition of Luther: Lectures on Romans, Library of Christian Classics 15 (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971), pp. xvii-lxvi.

22On the continued interest in classical philosophy and especially on the ongoing influence of Aristotle, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper & Row, 1961); Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).

"Institutes (1559) 1.2.1. On Calvin's approach see Edward A. Dowey, Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin's Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); T. H. L. Parker, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Study in the Theology of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1952); B. B. Warfield, "Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God," in Calvin and Augustine, ed. by S. G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 29130. On Luther's views see Watson, Let God be God!, pp. 73-101; Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp. 15-102. For a general overview see Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979).

24lnstitutes 1.3.

"Institutes 1.5.

"institutes 1.4.

2Institutes 1.2.1; cf. 1.6-14 for further discussion of Scripture, and Book 2 for Calvin's account of the knowledge of God the redeemer in Christ.

"Institutes 1.14.1.

"Commentary on 2 Tim. 3:16 quoted from Calvin's Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Eng. trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint ed., 1948), p. 249.

"Institutes 1.3.1, alluding to Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.16.43, where Cicero is discussing the views of Epicurus and his follower, Velleius (see above, p. 57). Calvin's knowledge of Epicurus seems to have come via the writings of Cicero.

"See Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 14 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977). For a discussion of Calvin in the context of the thought-world of sixteenth-century culture and religion, see William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

"Commentary on Titus 1:12, quoted from Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, pp. 300-1.

"See Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins, Studies in Historical Theology 2 (Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 1986), pp. 17-38.

'4Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, Eng. trans. T. H. L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), p. 126.

SSThe Epistles, p. 128.

"The Epistles, p. 127.

"Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, pp. 105-25.

"See Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985). Vos examines such issues as faith, the existence of God, and nature and grace. He concludes that Protestants have frequently misunderstood Aquinas, and that the differences between Aquinas and Calvin on certain basic questions were not as great as have been frequently imagined.

"Luther observed that "there are people like the Epicureans, Pliny, and others who deny it with their mouths [that there is a God]. But they must force themselves to do so; and by trying to extinguish the light in their hearts they act like men who plug their ears and close their eyes so that they may neither see nor hear. This does not solve their problem, however, for their conscience tells them something else" (WA 19, 206). In this connection, Luther was familiar with Cicero, claiming that the pagans "know from experience that there has never been a man of great deeds or any extraordinary man who had not been specially inspired by [sine afflatu] God" (WA 51, 222). These passages are cited from Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp. 15, 442.

4'Reijer Hookyaas, Philosophia Libera: Christian Faith and the Freedom of Science (London: Tyndale Press, 1957). On the course of the relationship between science and religion, see Colin A. Russell, ed., Science and Religious Belief: A Selection of Recent Historical Studies (London: University of London Press, 1973).

"Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its History and Background (London: SCM Press, 1972), pp. 49-50.

Chapter 10: Old Questions and New Crises

'See above, pp. 54, 362-63.

'See above, pp. 149-50, 376.

'See above, pp. 153-54, 377.

'Thomas de Vio (1469-1534) was known as Gaetano ('Cajetan'), from the Latinized form of the name of his birthplace, Gaeta. He taught philosophy and theology at Padua, Pavia and Rome. He was general of the Dominican Order (1508-18), cardinal (1517) and bishop of Gaeta (1519). He sought to dissuade Luther in a momentous confrontation (1518) and played a major part in political and religious events. His commentary on the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas (1507-1522), which contains a restatement of the doctrine of analogy, remains a classic of Scholasticism. In his later career he turned to biblical interpretation in response to the interpretations of the humanists and the reformers.

'Summa Theologiae 1. Q 23, art. 2, citing Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance 14 (Blackfriars edition, 5:113). For discussion of Aquinas's view in the context of his times, see Tamar Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985).

6Scientia media is thought of as a form of divine knowledge which lies in between God's natural knowledge of everything that can be and his simple, direct vision of what will be. The term was coined by Pietro de Fonseca, the Jesuit theologian and teacher of Molina. It is explained by R. Garrigou-Lagrange as follows:

This knowledge is called middle by reason of its proper object, which is the conditional future or the conditionally free act of the future. It is intermediate between the purely possible which is the object of God's knowledge of simple intelligence, and the contingent future which is the object of God's knowledge of vision. By this middle knowledge, according to Molina, God knows previous to any determining decree, how a free will would act if placed in certain circumstances, and how in certain other cases it would decide otherwise. After that God decides, according to His benevolent designs, to render this free will effective by placing it in those circumstances more or less favorable or unfavorable to it (God, His Existence and His Nature: A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1947, 2:82).

'Anton Pegis, "Molina and Human Liberty," in Gerard Smith, ed.,Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance: Essays Presented to John F. McCormick (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1939), p. 99. See also Gerard Smith, Natural Theology: Metaphysics II (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 273-77.

'Suarez taught at several Spanish colleges of the Jesuit Order, the Roman College and the University of Coimbra. His style was influenced by the Renaissance, but the substance of his teaching was a modification of Aristotle and Aquinas. His departure from Thomism is so radical that some scholars regard "Suarism" as a separate system. See further Jorge J. E. Gracia and Douglas Davis, The Metaphysics of Good and Evil According to Suarez: Metaphysical Disputations X and XI and Selected Passages from Disputation XXIII and Other Works, Translation, with Introduction, Notes and Glossary (Munich, Hamden, Vienna: Philosophia Verlag, 1989).

'According to Thomism, God's knowledge is the cause of all future events (See Smith, Natural Theology, pp. 193-208).

'OF. Copleston, A History of Philosophy 3:344.

"The incomplete nineteenth-century translation by James and William Nichols of The Works of Arminius has been reissued with an introduction by Carl Bangs, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986). Carl Bangs has also written Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1985). The traditional picture of Arminius has been substantially modified by the researches of Richard A. Muller, who has drawn attention to the links between Arminius and Molina and Suarez in "Arminius and the Scholastic Tradition," Calvin Theological journal 24 (1989): 263-77, and in a forthcoming monograph, God, Creation and Providence in the Thought of Jakob Arminius. Muller has shown that Arminius not only possessed major works by Molina and Suarez, but that passages in his own writings are clearly indebted to them. The continuity between Arminius and previous Scholasticism is much closer than has been suspected. On the subsequent history of Arminianism, see A. W. Harrison, The Beginnings of Arminianism to the Synod of Dort, 2 vols. (Lon don: University of London Press, 1926); Harrison, Arminianism (London: Duckworth, 1937); and Howard A. Slatte, The Arminian Arm of Theology: The Theologies ofJohn Fletcher, first Methodist Theologian, and his Precursor, James Arminius (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979).

"Text in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom 3:545-49.

"Text in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom 3:550-97.

"See Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984); John C. Moskop, Divine Omniscience and Human Freedom: Thomas Aquinas and Charles Hartshorne, with a foreword by Charles Hartshorne (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984). A critique of process thought will be given in volume two. For recent discussion of divine attributes, see Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); Alfred Freddoso, ed., The Existence and Nature of God, University of Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 3 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); Ronald H. Nash, The Concept of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983); James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen, eds., Alvin Plantinga, Profiles 5 (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985).

"See William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge with Human Freedom (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987); William Lane Craig, The Problems of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents: From Aristotle to Suarez, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988). For a brief overview of different viewpoints, see Ronald Nash, The Concept of God, pp. 51-66.

"R. Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and Nature 2:82-83; see also the discussion in Brian Davies, Thinking about God, Introducing Catholic Theology (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), pp. 173-199. Davies observes that "it seems that the whole notion of scientia media rests on a misguided premise, viz. that there can be knowledge of what people would do if created, and that this knowledge can be had without knowledge of what people do as created" (p. 189).

17J. R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 76.

"Peter Geach, Providence and Evil, The Stanton Lectures 1971-72 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 58.

"For modern statements of the Arminian position, see Clark H. Pinnock, ed., Grace Unlimited (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975); Pinnock, ed., The Grace of God and the Will of Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989). For statements of the Reformed position, see J. I. Packer, "Arminianisms," in Robert W. Godfrey and Jesse L. Boyd III, eds., Through Christ's Word: A Festschrift for Dr. Philip E. Hughes (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 121-48; Paul K Jewett, Election and Predestination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985).

"Cases in point are the ways in which theologians have argued that Paul's teaching in Romans 8-11 must be understood as referring to the election of individuals to salvation rather than to God's overall purposes for humankind (cf. K Grayston, "The Doctrine of Election in Romans 8, 28-30," in F. L. Cross, ed., Studia Evangelica [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964] 2:574-83). For details of the vast literature on the subject, see J. D. G. Dunn, Romans, Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols. (Dallas: Word Books, 1988). Likewise, the many references to election in the letter to the Ephesians are commonly read as if they refer to the election of individuals. But close examination of the text shows that the "we" that Paul is talking about are Jew and Gentile, and that the mystery hidden for generations but revealed is "how the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the same promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Eph 3:6). For the argument that models of physical power instead of love and personality have been wrongly used in the discussions of the past, see John Oman, Grace and Personality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917).

"Erasmus made the observation in his Diatribe on Free Will (1524) which provoked Luther's answer in The Bondage of the Will (1525). For the above quotations see Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, trans. and ed. E. Gordon Rupp, Philip S. Watson, in collaboration with A. N. Marlow and B. Drewery, Library of Christian Classics 17 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 37 and 109. It would seem that the Latin word scepticus which gave rise to the English word skeptic first appeared in the fourteenth century in Latin translations of Diogenes Laertius.

22lnstitutes 1.7.4.

29Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), p. 535.

"For an account of Pyrrhonian skepticism and literature on the subject, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979). For another aspect of skepticism, see Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). On the atheistic implications of the thought of seminal thinkers of this period, see Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

25Popkin, The History of Skepticism, p. 19, alluding to Bayle's article on Pyrrho in his Historical and Critical Dictionary. On Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus, see above pp. 57-60.

26For an account of his thought, see Robert R. On, Reason and Authority: The Thought of William Chilling-worth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).

27Popkin, The History of Skepticism, p. 46, citing Montaigne's "Apology for Raimond Sebond." This piece is sometimes omitted from editions of Montaigne's Essays (e.g., the translation of J. M. Cohen, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958). See further I. D. McFarlane and Ian Maclean, eds., Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); Montaigne, In Defense of Raymond Sebond, trans. Arthur H. Beattie (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959).

21Popkin, The History of Skepticism, p. 47.

"On this issue see Peter Stuhlmacher, "The Hermeneutical Significance of 1 Cor. 2:6-16," trans. Colin Brown in Gerald F. Hawthorne and Otto Betz, eds., Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 328-47.

"Similar questions could be asked about Francois Rabelais (c. 1494-1533), the former monk, admirer of Erasmus, Renaissance author. His colorful tales about giants satirized both the papacy and Protestantism. They contain professions of belief in Christ, as well as elements of Stoicism and Platonism. See A. J. Krailsheimer, Rabelais and the Franciscans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth-Century Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982).

"See Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, trans. with introduction and notes by Richard H. Popkin, with the assistance of Craig Bush (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965).

Chapter 11: The Age of Rationalism

'On Copernicus and his background see Hans Blumberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1987). On the general background of scientific ideas, see Charles Singer, A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900 (London: Oxford University Press [ 1959] paperback reprint, 1963); Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Imre La- katos with Elie Zahar, "Why did Copernicus's Research Programme Supersede Ptolemy's?" in Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers, ed. John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) 1:168-92.

'English translations of Galileo include his Dialogue on the Great World Systems, in the Salusbury Translation, revised, annotated and with an introduction by Giorgio De Santillana (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953); and Two New Sciences, Including Centers of Gravity and Force of Percussion, trans. with introduction and notes by Stillman Drake (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974). On Galileo's thought and historical significance, see Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Drake, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press; New York: Hill and Wang, 1980); William A. Wallace, Prelude to Galileo: Essays on Medieval and Sixteenth-Century Sources of Galileo's Thought, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 62 (Dordrecht, Boston, London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981); Wallace, Galileo and his Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Wallace, Reinterpreting Galileo (Washington, D.C., University Press of America, 1986); Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Paul Cardinal Poupard, ed., Galileo Galilei: Toward a Resolution of 350 Years of Debate, 1633-1983, with an epilogue by John Paul II (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987); Maurice A. Finocchiaro, ed., The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1989).

'Quoted by Pope John Paul II in Poupard, Galileo Galilei, p. 198; see also Stillman Drake, Galileo, pp. 90-91.

'On November 10, 1979, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Science marking the centenary of Einstein's birth, Pope John Paul II spoke on the theme of "Faith, Science and the Galileo Case" (see above, n. 3). In it the pope paid tribute to Einstein and to Galileo and put forward arguments in his defense. The pope said that the Catholic Church had no desire to violate the autonomy of science in research matters and called for a re-examination of the Galileo case. On May 9, 1983, Pope John Paul II delivered an address on the church and science, marking the 350th anniversary of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (trans. in Origins 13/3 [1983]: 50-52). In it he acknowledged that Galileo had "suffered from departments of the church." He spoke of "the indispensable need for a frank and open dialogue between theologians, scientific specialists and those who exercise leadership in the church," and noted the encouraging process in the study of the Galileo question. In the fall of 1989 The Christian Century reported that the pope, speaking in Pisa, said, "Galileo Galilei's scientific work was imprudently opposed at the beginning, but now it is recognized by all as an essential stage in the methodology of research ... and in the path toward understanding the world of nature" (The Christian Century, October 25, 1989, p. 952).

'The doctrine of transubstantiation received classical formulation by Thomas Aquinas, who drew on Aristotelian categories for its formulation in the Summa Theologiae 3, Questions 73-78 (Blackfriars edition, vol. 58). The doctrine was made an article of the Catholic faith at the Lateran Council (1215) and was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in its Decree Concerning the Most Holy Eucharist, Session 13, October 11, 1551 (text in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom 2:126-139). Although there is a tendency among contemporary Catholic theologians to seek alternative terminology, the term transubstantiation continues to represent the official Catholic position (Eucharisticum Mysterium, May 25, 1967, see Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975 and reprints, p. 104). For Redondi's argument see above, n. 2. Redondi notes that the corpuscular theories of Descartes and Gassendi eventually came under the same condemnation (pp. 307, 320).

'Stillman Drake, Galileo, pp. 86-87; cf. also Encyclopedia of Philosophy 3:266.

'Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, 1:188-89.

8For an overview of rationalism see John Cottingham, The Rationalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). The new standard translation of Descartes is The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-85); also in separate editions Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies, trans. John Cottingham, with an introduction by Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdock with an introduction by John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Among the shorter selections, mention may be made of Descartes: Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach, with an introduction by Alexandre Koyre (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1954). Studies include Jacques Maritain, The Dream of Descartes (London: Editions Poetry, 1946); Albert G. A. Balz, Descartes and the Modern Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952); Norman Kemp Smith, New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes (London: Macmillan, 1952); Willis Doney, ed., Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays (reprint ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968); Tom Sorrell, Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

9Histo7y of Western Philosophy, p. 582.

"Discourse, Part 2 (Philosophical Writings 1:116). The event is thought to have taken place on November 10, 1619 in a village near Ulm in southern Germany. The "stove" is often taken to mean a stove-heated room. It was probably a large stove with a built-in seat.

"Discourse, Part 2 (Philosophical Writings 1:120).

12Discourse, Part 3 (Philosophical Writings 1:122-26).

'Discourse, Part 4 (Philosophical Writings 1:127).

"Discourse, Part 4 (Philosophical Writings 1:129). See also the longer discussion of the existence of God in Meditations 3 (Philosophical Writings 2:24-36).

In Meditations 5 Descartes returned again to the argument: "Since I have been accustomed to distinguish between existence and essence in everything else, I find it easy to persuade myself that existence can also be separated from the essence of God, and hence that God can be thought of as not existing. But when I concentrate more carefully, it is quite evident that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the fact its three angles equal two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle, or than that the idea of a mountain can be separated from the idea of a valley. Hence it is just as much of a contradiction to think of God (that is, a supremely perfect being) lacking existence (that is, lacking a perfection), as it is to think of a mountain without a valley" (Philosophical Writings 2:46). Elsewhere, he ex plained that "a mountain without a valley" meant an uphill slope without a downhill slope.

Clement Dore has defended Descartes's argument against its critics, claiming that the argument turns on conceptual truth rather than on logical truth. It is a conceptual truth that God exists. Conceptual truths (unlike mere logical truths) depend for their truth on the peculiar properties of their material, nonlogical terms. See Clement Dore, "Descartes's Meditation V Proof of God's Existence," in Alfred J. Freddoso, ed., The Existence and Nature of God, University of Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 3 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 143-160; Dore, Theism, Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy 30 (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984), pp. 82-103.

"Discourse, Part 4 (Philosophical Writings 1:130).

""By substance we can understand nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence. And there is only one substance which can be understood to depend on no other thing whatsoever, namely God. In the case of all other substances, we perceive that they can exist only with the help of God's concurrence" (Principles of Philosophy 1.51; [Philosophical Writings 1:210]).

"Principles of Philosophy 1.53 (Philosophical Writings 1:210-11).

"Letter to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, May 21, 1643 (Anscombe and Geach, eds., Descartes: Philosophical Writings, p. 276).

"The Passions of the Soul (1649) 1.34 (Philosophical Writings 1:341). The work grew out of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth.

20See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949; reprint ed., Peregrine Books, 1963). For different views from Descartes onwards, see G. N. A. Vesey, ed., Body and Mind: Readings in Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964); Vesey, The Embodied Mind: Readings in Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965). For views from classical philosophy to the present, see Antony Flew, ed., Body, Mind, and Death (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1964). Contemporary studies include C. C. Chappell, ed., The Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962); Peter Geach, God and the Soul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); C. V. Borst, ed., The Mind-Brain Identity Theory (London: Macmillan, 1970); Antony Flew, A Rational Animal and Other Essays on the Nature of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); William Barrett, Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer (New York: Doubleday, 1987).

"Letter dated November 1640 commenting on Augustine's use of the argument in On the Trinity 10.10 and 12 (Descartes: Philosophical Writings, ed. Anscombe and Geach, pp. 263-64). In a letter to the Marquis of Newcastle, dating from March or April 1648, Descartes described it as "a proof of our soul's capacity for receiving from God an intuitive kind of knowledge" (p. 301). Other instances of Augustine's use of the idea are On Free Will 2.3.7; On True Religion 73; Against the Academicians 3.11.25-26; Soliloquies 2.1.2; On the Blessed Life 2.2.7; On the Trinity 10.10.16; 15.12.21. See above, p. 96.

22Objections and Replies, Third Set (Philosophical Writings 2:122).

13 History of Western Philosophy, pp. 589-90.

"The Problem of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1956), p. 46.

"In Descartes: Philosophical Writings, ed. Anscombe and Geach, p. xxxiv.

26Nature, Man and God, Gifford Lectures 1932-34 (London: Macmillan, 1934), p. 57, in a chapter on "The Cartesian Faux-Pas."

27Popkin, The History of Skepticism, pp. 193-213.

28The old translation by R. H. M. Elwes of The Chief Works of Spinoza, 2 vols. (London, 1883) is published in paperback (New York: Dover Publications, 1951, 1955 and reprints). A new translation of The Collected Works of Spinoza based on critical editions of the text is in process of translation by Edwin Curley in 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, vol. 1, 1985). Studies include H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954-58); Richard McKeon, The Philosophy of Spinoza: The Unity of his Thought ([1928] reprint ed., Woodbridge, CT: Oxbow Press, 1987); Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1951); Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965); Marjorie Glicksmann Grene, ed., Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973; reprint ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979); J. G. van der Bend, ed., Spinoza on Knowing, Being and Freedom (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974); James Collins, Spinoza on Nature (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984); Roger Scruton, Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Y. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

29Letter 54 (48) dated March 30, 1673 (Chief Works 2:374-75).

"Spinoza was influenced by Isaac La Peyere (Popkin, The Rise of Skepticism, 21448). He questioned the authorship of the Pentateuch and claimed that Jewish belief in election and the law was a political rather than a religious issue (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 8). He went on to advocate a historical-critical approach to Scripture generally. See further Emil G. Kraeling, The Old Testament since the Reformation (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955, pp. 45-46).

"Pierre Bayle treated Spinoza as an atheist (Historical and Critical Dictionary, pp. 288-338). Hume referred to the "hideous hypothesis" of his atheism (Treatise of Human Nature 1.4.5). Hegel discussed the question in his History of Philosophy 3.2. But the Romantic poet Novalis described Spinoza as "a man intoxicated by God" (Miscellaneous Fragment 15, in Novalis: Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings [New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960] p. 72).

"Ethics 1, Definition 3 (Collected Works 1:408).

"Ethics 1, Definition 8, Scholium 2 (Collected Works 1:414).

"Ethics 1, Definition 14 (Collected Works 1:420).

"Ethics 1, Definition 15 (Collected Works 1:420).

"Ethics 1, Definition 18 (Collected Works 1:428).

"Ethics 5, Definition 6 (Collected Works 1:599-600).

"Ethics 5, Definition 17: "Strictly speaking, God loves no one, and hates no one. For God ... is not affected with any affect of joy or Sadness. Consequently ... he also loves no one and hates no one" (Collected Works 1:604).

"Ethics 5, Definition 36 (Collected Works 1:612).

40Popkin, The Rise of Scepticism, pp. 229-48.

41Tractatus 15 (Chief Works 1:194).

44Tractatus 6 (Chief Works 1:81-97). For discussion see Colin Brown, Miracles and The Critical Mind, pp. 30-34. In speaking of divine decrees, Spinoza was using the language of Calvinism to argue for his scientific pantheistic determinism.

`Cf. Copleston, History of Philosophy 4:209-10, with Julius Guttmann, Philosophies ofJudaism, pp. 265-85; and Joseph L. Blau, The Story ofJewish Philosophy, pp. 25560.

"For details see Colin Brown,Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860, pp. 23, 33, 37, 68.

"Hegel discussed Spinoza at numerous points in his writings. He gave him a prominent place in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy 3. 2, Eng. trans. E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson (reprint ed., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press, 1968), 3:252-90.

"Extracts from Leibniz's writings may be found in Philip P. Wiener, ed., Leibniz: Selections, The Modern Student's Library (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951); Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, ed. G. H. R. Parkinson, trans. Mary Morris and G. H. R. Parkinson, Everyman Library (London: J. M. Dent, revised edition, 1973); Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays, trans. Paul Schrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker, Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967). For the Theodicy see Theodicy: Essays, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrar, trans. E. M. Huggard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951). Other works include New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. G. Langley (La Salle: Open Court, 3rd ed. 1949); Philosophical Papers and Letters, trans. and ed. Leroy E. Doemker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 2nd ed. 1976); Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese, Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy 4, trans. with introduction, notes and commentary by Henry Rose-Mont, Jr. and Daniel J. Cook (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977); H. G. Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Together with Extracts from Newton's Principia and Opticks (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956).

Recent studies include R. W. Mayer, Leibniz and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution ([1952] reprint New York: Garland Publishing, 1985); Ruth Lydia Saw, Leibniz (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1954); Nicholas Rescher, The Philosophy of Leibniz (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967); C. A. van Peursen, Leibniz (New York: Dutton, 1970); Leroy E. Loemker, Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth Century Background of Leibniz's Synthesis of Order and Freedom (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972); Ivor Leclerc, ed., The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1973); John Hostler, Leibniz's Moral Philosophy (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975); C. D. Broad, Leibniz: An Introduction, ed. C. Levy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Harry G. Frankfurt, ed., Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1972; reprint ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976); David E. Mungello, Leibniz and Confucianism: The Search for Accord (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977); Stuart Brown, Leibniz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); G. MacDonald Ross, Leibniz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

47Paul Schrecker in Leibniz, Monadology, p. xxiv.

48Monadology 31, 32 (trans. Schrecker, p. 153).

49Monadology 33 (trans. Schrecker, p. 153). Leibniz made the point in various other works, e.g., his study of "Necessary and Contingent Truths" (c. 1686) (Philosophical Writings, ed. Parkinson, pp. 96-105). In this piece Leibniz applied the distinction to our knowledge of God and God's decrees.

50Monadology 38 (trans. Schrecker, p. 1, 54).

5iCf. the chapter on "The Knowledge that we have of God" in New Essays Concerning Human Understanding with Monadology 39-45 (trans. Schrecker, pp. 15455). For discussion and literature see Craig, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 25781.

52Monadology 1 (trans. Schrecker, p. 148).

59Monadology 47 (trans. Schrecker, p. 155).

54Monadology 87 (trans. Schrecker, p. 162).

55Monadology 89 (trans. Schrecker, p. 163).

56Theodicy 224, 225 (trans. Huggard, pp. 267-68).

57Theodicy 84 (trans. Huggard, p. 168).

"On Wolffs place in German philosophy, see Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). There is a modern German edition of Wolffs voluminous writings, but little is available in English. However, Wolff s approach can be studied from his Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, trans. Richard J. Blackwell (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963).

"There are numerous translations of Pascal's writings. Richard H. Popkin, ed., Pascal Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1989) contains both scientific and religious writings. A. J. Krailsheimer's translation of the Pens'ees (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966) is based on modern critical work on the French text. References below are to this edition. Krailsheimer has also translated Pascal's Provincial Letters (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967) and written a study of Pascal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Other studies include J. H. Broome, Pascal (London: E. Arnold, 1972); J. Miel, Pascal and Theology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969); Antoine Adam, Grandeur and Illusion: French Literature and Society, 1600-1715 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Basic Books, 1972); John Barker, Pascal in England during the Age of Reason (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980); Robert James Nelson, Pascal: Adversary and Advocate (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1981); Anthony R Pugh, The Composition of Pascal's Apologia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Sara E. Melzer, Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal's Pensees (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986).

60Pensies, #913, p. 309.

61Pensees, #622, p. 235.

62Pensies, ##77-79, 132-39, pp. 50-51, 66-72.

69Pensees, p. 355.

64Pensies, #190, p. 86.

65Pensees, #131, p. 62.

66Pensies, #131, p. 64.

67Pensees, ##423, 424, p. 154.

68Pensees, ##418-26, pp. 149-55. For discussion of the implications of the "wager," see Nicholas Rescher, Pascal's Wager: A Study of Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).

69See (e.g.) Pennies, ##189, 832-58, pp. 85-6, 284-94, and the discussion in Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 36-40.

70Pensees, #377, p. 137.

Chapter 12: Rational Religion and the Era of Deism

'There are numerous reprints of the Leviathan, but not all of them include the discussion of religion and miracles. However, this discussion may be found in the edition of Nelle Fuller in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 23 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952). General studies on the subject include Richard Peters, Hobbes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1956); Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962); Ralph Ross, Herbert W. Schneider, Theodore Waldman, eds., Thomas Hobbes in his Time (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974); D. D. Raphael, Hobbes: Morals and Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1977); Tom Sorrell, Hobbes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); J. Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 48-69.

2Hobbes's fifteen objections, which dealt with doubt, figure in the "Third Set of Objections with the Author's Reply" (Descartes, Philosophical Writings 2: 121137). Although Descartes described the author of the objections as "a celebrated English philosopher," he curtly dismissed them.

'Leviathan 1.13, ed. Fuller, p. 85.

'Leviathan Introduction, ed. Fuller, p. 47; cf. Job 3:8; 41:1; Psalms 74:14; 104:26; Isaiah 27:1.

'Leviathan 1.14, ed. Fuller, p. 86

'Leviathan 1.14, ed. Fuller, p. 87.

'Leviathan 4.46, ed. Fuller, p. 269.

'Leviathan 4.46, ed. Fuller, p. 270.

'Hobbes stated his position succinctly in Leviathan 2.21: "Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel; so likewise in the actions which men voluntarily do, which, because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty, and yet because every act of man's will and every desire and inclination proceedeth from some cause, and that from another cause, in a continual chain (whose first link is in the hand of God, the first of all causes), proceed from necessity" (ed. Fuller, p. 113). Hobbes's views brought him into prolonged conflict with Bishop John Bramhall, whom he had met when both were exiled in Paris. Bramhall's Vindication of True Liberty (1655) was directed against Hobbes's materialism and determinism. Hobbes replied with his Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance (1656), which provoked Bramhall's Castigations of Hobbes' Animadversions (1658) with its appendix on "The Catching of Leviathan, the Great Whale." See further Ralph Ross, "Some Puzzles in Hobbes," in Thomas Hobbes in his Time, pp. 42-60.

"A case in point is his rhetorical discussion of transubstantiation. Instead of putting men "in mind of their redemption by the Passion of Christ, whose body was broken and blood shed upon the cross for our transgression," the priest "pretends that by the saying of the words of our Saviour, 'This is my body,' and 'This is my blood,' the nature of bread is no more there, but his very body; notwithstanding there appeareth not to the sight or other sense of the receiver anything that appeared not before the consecration" (Leviathan 4.46, ed. Fuller, p. 249).

"See Herbert W. Schneider, "The Piety of Hobbes," and Paul J. Johnson, "Hobbes's Anglican Doctrine of Salvation," in Thomas Hobbes and his Time, pp. 84101, 102-125.

12Leviathan 4.46, ed. Fuller, p. 267.

"Leviathan 3.37, ed. Fuller, pp. 190-91. For discussion of Hobbes's views on miracles, see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 34-26.

"Leviathan 3.37, ed. Fuller, p. 191.

"For selections from their writings, see Gerald R. Cragg, ed., The Cambridge Platonists, A Library of Protestant Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); C. A. Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists, The Stratford-upon-Avon Library 5 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970).

"On the Arminian connections of Cambridge Platonism, see A. W. Harrison, Arminianism (London: Duckworth, 1937), pp. 157-84. The dominant Calvinism at Cambridge began to be challenged in the 1730s by several of the nominees appointed by Archbishop Laud who were opposed to the rigorous positions of Calvinism. In Harrison's judgment kinship between the Remonstrants in Holland and the Cambridge Platonists was not due to the common influence of Arminius upon both schools. "Where the Cambridge men accepted Arminian views they had arrived at them independently" (p. 168). However, the writings of the Remonstrant leader, Simon Episcopius (1583-1643), were a real influence on the Cambridge Platonists. The English Arminian, John Goodwin, dedicated his Redemption Redeemed (1651) to Whichcote.

"Cragg, The Cambridge Platonists, p. 14.

18"S.P.," A Brief Account of the New Sect of the Latitude Men, p. 9 (Cragg, p. 15).

19Cragg, p. 22.

"Aphorism, #76 (Cragg, p. 18).

21Culverwel, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1652), ch. 1 (Cragg, p. 60); cf. Whichcote, Sermons, p. 449; Aphorism # 916 (Patrides, pp. 1112, 18, 50, 197, 334). The Cambridge Platonists linked Proverbs 20:27 ("the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord") with reason. However, they also compared the limited light given by the candle with the light of the sun.

22A number of major Deistic works and replies by opponents noted in the following discussion have been published in facsimile reprint by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York. They include Thomas Woolston, Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Savior, and Defences of his Discourses, 1727-1730 (1979); Thomas Sherlock, The Tryal of the Witnesses, 1743, and The Use and Intent of Prophecy, 1728 (1978); and Conyers Middleton, A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, 1749 (1976). For selections of extracts from Deistic writers, see Peter Gay, ed., Deism: An Anthology (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1968); E. Graham Waring, ed., Deism and Natural Religion (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1967). An old but still useful account of Deism and the eighteenth century in general is Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. ([1876] paperback reprint of 3rd ed. [1902] with preface by Crane Brinton, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.; London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962).

While the Deists criticized revealed religion, they all professed some kind of religious belief. However, it may be asked how far these professions were really genuine or whether they were tongue-in-cheek expressions of covert atheism. Like David Hume after them, Collins, Toland, Tindal and Blount were all skilled in inserting protestations of belief in passages whose general tenor favored disbelief. See David Berman, "Deism, Immortality, and the All of Theological Lying," in J. A. Leo Lemay, ed., Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1987, pp. 61-78). Other studies in this volume explore the background and ramifications of Deism in Britain and North America.

"Henning Graf Reventlow's The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (London: SCM Press, 1984; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985) is a massive study of the part played by British writers, especially the Deists, in the beginnings of biblical criticism.

"'Colin Brown,Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860 (Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 1985), pp. 29-55.

"See R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981); Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1984), pp. 47100 and William Lane Craig's discursive study of The Historical Argument for the Resurrection during the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion 23 (Le- wiston-Queenston: Edwin Mellon Press, 1985).

"'This view dates from Thomas Halyburton's Natural Religion Insufficient, and Revealed Necessary to Man's Happiness in his Present State (1714) which contains a detailed account of Lord Herbert and his disciple Charles Blount.

27Richard Popkin, The Rise of Skepticism, p. 151.

28An English translation of Lord Herbert's De Veritate was made by Meyrick H. Carre from the 1645 edition (University of Bristol Studies 6, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1937).

29An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1.3.19.

"See John Ferguson, The Religion of the Roman Empire (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 182. For literature and further discussion of Apollonius of Tyana, see Colin Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought, pp. 37, 41, 206, 283, 289; Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (see index). For an assessment of Jesus as a miracle worker in the light of contemporary beliefs, see Colin Brown, That You May Believe: Miracles and Faith, Then and Now (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1985), pp. 81-178.

"Recent studies of Toland include Robert E. Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982) and Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984). Toland's checkered career brought him to Germany where for a time he served as secretary to the court at Hanover. He was introduced to the court at Berlin. He got to know Leibniz. However, he alienated many friends and patrons and died in poverty, having lost everything in the South Sea Bubble in 1720.

12 See S. G. Hefelbower, The Relation of John Locke to English Deism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918) for a comparison of ideas and attitudes. Hefelbower sees Locke and the Deists as "co-ordinate parts of one and the same general movement" which was rationalistic in character (p. 183). For a discussion of Collins which concludes that he was not a Deist but a speculative atheist, see Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain, pp. 70-92.

"Examination of the passages concerned indicates that traditional apologetics from the patristic period onwards have been too hasty in treating such prophecies as simply predictive. Hosea 11:1 is evidently referring to the nation of Israel as God's son. Isaiah 7:14 refers to the birth of a child from a woman presently a virgin which will be a sign of God's presence. Before the child is weaned the current danger will be a thing of the past. Examination of Matthew's Gospel suggests that Matthew's view of fulfillment is not simply that of a prediction coming about. Rather, it involves multiple or deeper fulfillments, in which an event in the past, present or near future anticipates another event of greater magnitude. In other words, Matthew's notion of fulfillment is typological rather than simply predictive or allegorical in Collin's sense.

"The argument about the credibility of ice occurs in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.15.5. It was also taken up by Joseph Butler in The Analogy of Religion, Introduction #3; David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 10, #89 and J. S. Mill, A System of Logic (edited edition, London: Longmans, 1925), p. 411. For fuller details see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, p. 335 and the discussions of these thinkers in that book.

S5The Works of Bishop Sherlock, ed. T. S. Hughes (London: Valpy, 1830), p. 216.

"Cited from a letter dated March 13, 1761 in The Gospel Magazine 2 (1775) 6772, reprinted in Robert Manson Myers, Handel's Messiah: A Touchstone of Taste (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 120-24.

37Part 3 of Messiah was based largely on Scripture passages which figure in the Burial Service of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The work as a whole focuses on the central themes of the Christian Year.

"For an account of the background of Handel's Messiah, his other oratorios and of public reactions, see Christopher Hogwood, Handel (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), pp. 140-231. Hogwood observes that "the present-day standing of Messiah makes it difficult for us to realize that for Handel its composition was an offbeat venture, unsure in its rewards and probably unrepeatable. It is the only truly `sacred' oratorio he ever wrote, it was the only one performed during his lifetime in a consecrated building, and yet it was intended, in Jen- nens's words, as 'a fine Entertainment' " (p. 167).

Many devout people, especially Methodists, continued to regard the work with suspicion in view of its performance in places of entertainment. John Wesley, however, became an admirer of the work. After a performance in Bristol Cathedral, at a time when Messiah had become widely accepted, Wesley observed: "I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance. In many parts, especially several of the choruses, it exceeded my expectations" (Journal, August 17, 1758).

"There are numerous reprints of the Analogy, including that in the first volume of The Works of Joseph Butler, D.C.L., ed. W. E. Gladstone, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896). Studies include E. C. Mossner, Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason: A Study in the History of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1936); William J. Norton, Jr., Bishop Butler, Moralist and Divine (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1940); Austin Duncan Jones, Butler's Moral Philosophy (Harmonds- worth: Pelican Books, 1952); Terence Penelhum, Butler (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). For Butler's views on miracles and other literature, see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 58-63.

"Works 1:5. A similar position had already been argued by Berkeley and others (G. R. Cragg, Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964], pp. 110, 115).

41Cf. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 6th impression, revised 1972), pp. 59, 423.

12 Works 1:177.

"'Works 1:188.

44E. C. Mossner, Bishop Butler, pp. 164, 181.

45For an account of the episode, see Rupert E. Davies, Methodism (Harmonds- worth: Pelican Books, 1963), pp. 75-76.

46For Butler's beliefs see the sermons in vol. 2 of his Works, and also E. C. Mossner, Bishop Butler, pp. 165-76; Alexander Whyte, Bishop Butler: An Appreciation (Edinburgh: Oliphant, 1903).

47See (e.g.) John Wesley's detailed reply to Conyers Middleton, noted below (n. 50).

4e1an Ramsey,Joseph Butler 1692-1752, Some Features of His Life and Thought (London: Dr. Williams's Trust), p. 21.

49For analysis and discussion see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 64-72.

'!Journal, January 28, 1749. Wesley wrote an extensive personal reply to Middleton (The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, AM., ed. John Telford [London: Epworth Press, 1931], 2:312-88). Hume's remarks about Middleton's book occur in his account of "My Own Life" (see ch. 14, n. 6).

"History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (reprint edition New York: Peter Eckler, 1923), pp. 148-49.

52See Colin Brown, History and Faith: A Personal Explanation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1987), pp. 44-50.

"On French Deism see Norman L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930; reprint ed., New York: Archon Books, 1967); C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France: From the so-called 'deistes' of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire's 'Lettres philosophiques' (1734) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984). On Reimarus and Deism see Colin Brown,Jesus in European Protestant Thought, pp. 36-55.

Chapter 13: The Rise of British Empiricism

'Details of works by and on Locke, Berkeley and Hume are given separately below. For a general anthology see A. J. Ayer and Raymond Winch, eds., British Empirical Philosophers: Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and J. S. Mill (reprint ed., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968). For a recent overview see R. S. Woolhouse, The Empiricists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). On the religious background see G. R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason: A Study of the Changes in Religious Thought within the Church of England 1160-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950); Cragg, Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); Roland N. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954); Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (London: Chatto and Windus, 1934); Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London: Chatto and Windus, 1940); John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660-1750 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). On key philosophical questions see Jonathan Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); Anthony Kenny, ed., Rationalism, Empiricism, and Idealism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

'Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 667.

'For writings see Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, ed. Hugh G. Dick (New York: The Modern Library, 1955). Modern studies include Catherine Drinker Bowen, Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1963); Jonathan Marwil, The Trials of Counsel Francis Bacon in 1621 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976); Anthony Quinton, Francis Bacon (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980); Jerry Weinberg, Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age, A Commentary on Bacon's Advancement of Learning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).

"Essay on Man (1734) 4.

'On science and religion in this period, see R. S. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958); Henry G. van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630-1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963); Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981); Margaret J. Osler and Paul Lawrence Farber, eds., Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

6The motto contracts a line from Horace, "Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri" ("Not bound to swear allegiance to any master") (Epistles 1.1.14).

7Editions of his scientific writings include Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selections from his Writings, ed. H. S. Thayer (New York: Hafner, 1953); Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and Optics etc., Great Books of the Western World 34 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1952). Studies include Richard S. Westfall, Force in Newton's Physics: The Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century (London: MacDonald, 1971); Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). On Newton's links with Cambridge Platonism and the developments on Newtonianism, see Arthur Quinn, The Confidence of British Philosophers: An Essay in Historical Narrative, Studies in the History of Thought 17 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), pp. 8-79.

a"I. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.

"II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space; such as the dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space, determined by its position in respect of the earth. Absolute and relative space are the same in figure and magnitude; but they do not remain numerically the same. For if the earth, for instance, moves, a space of our air, which relatively and in respect of the earth remains always the same, will at one time be one part of the absolute space into which the air passes; at another time it will be another part of the same, and so, absolutely understood, it will be continually changed" (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy [1687], Definitions, cited from Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and Optics; and Chris- tiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light, Great Books of the Western World 34, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, pp. 8-9).

"`And the instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful, ever-living agent, who being in all places, is more able by His will to move the bodies within His boundless sensorium, and thereby to form and reform parts of the part of the Universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our own bodies. And yet we ought not to consider the world as the body of God, or the several parts thereof as the parts of God. He is a uniform Being, void of organs, members or parts, and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to His will; and He is no more the soul of them than the soul of man is the soul of the species of things carried through the organs of sense into the place of sensation, where it per ceives them by means of its immediate presence, without the intervention of any third thing" (Optics, Book 3, Part 1, edition quoted, pp. 542-43).

"The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Together with Extracts from Newton's Principia and Opticks, ed. H. G. Alexander (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 14. Clarke originally published the exchange in 1717 under the title of A Collection of papers which passed between the late Learned Mr. Leibniz and Dr. Clarke in the years 1715 and 1716 relating to the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Religion, With an Appendix.

"Sir Isaac Newton, Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1950). See also Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, The Freemantle Lectures 1973 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).

"Theological Manuscripts, p. 17. See also Newton's "Queries regarding the Word 'Homoousios' " (pp. 44-47).

"Editions of Locke's works include An Essay concerning Human Understanding, abridged and edited by A. S. Pringle-Pattison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924 and reprints) and the revised edition edited by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); The Reasonableness of Christianity with A Discourse of Miracles and part of A Third Letter concerning Toleration, edited by I. T. Ramsey (London: A. & C. Black; Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1958); The Correspondence ofJohn Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer, 8 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976-). For an account of his life see Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (London: Longman, 1957; paperback reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). For overviews and details of other studies, see Richard I. Aaron, John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1955);J. D. Mabbott,John Locke (London: Macmillan, 1973); John Dunn, Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). On Leibniz and Locke see Nicholas Jolley, Leibniz and Locke: A Study of the New Essays on Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984; paperback, 1987).

"See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, With a Supplement Patriarcha by Robert Filmer, ed. Thomas I. Cook (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1947). Editions of Locke include The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas P. Peardon (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1952); and Second Treatise of Civil Government: An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government; A Contemporary Selection, abridged and ed. Lester DeKoster (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978). Filmer's Patriarcha and Other Political Works have been edited by Peter Laslett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1949). Studies include John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Geraint Parry, Locke (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978); John Dunn, Political Obligation in its Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); W. von Leyden, Hobbes and Locke (London: Macmillan, 1981).

"Essay 4.19.14.

'6Essay 2.29.1-16.

"Essay 1.1.5; 4.3.20. See above ch. 16, n. 10. The Cambridge Platonist Benjamin Whichcote was Locke's favorite preacher.

"Essay 1.1-4.

19Essay 1.4.9-12; cf, his criticism of Lord Herbert in Essay 1.3.19 (see above, p. 153). In The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures, Locke stresses ignorance of God and the moral law, which is aggravated by sin, as reasons why human beings differ so much in their views (Works 11th ed., 1812, 7:133- 47).

"Essay 2.1.2.

"Essay 2.1.3.

"Essay 2.1.4-5.

2'Essay 4.1.1.

"Essay 4.1.2.

2SEssay 4.18.2.

26Fssay 4.17.23.

27 Essay 4.19.4. Although Locke's argument is a basic restatement of the traditional apologetic argument from prophecy and miracles, some of Locke's readers accused him of Socinianism. Among them was John Edwards and Edward Stillingfleet (Maurice Cranston, John Locke, pp. 409-416; I. T. Ramsey, ed., A Discourse of Miracles, pp. 8-19). Socinianism was a popular term for the Unitarian view of God, which denies the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, and is so called after Faustus Socinus (1539-1604). Critics of Locke's position could argue that a miracle might attest the one who wrought it as a bearer of revelation, but it did not necessarily show that such a person was divine. Locke himself rejected the charge of Socinianism.

28A Discourse of Miracles, ed. Ramsey, p. 82.

29A Discourse of Miracles, ed. Ramsey, p. 79.

30A Discourse of Miracles, ed. Ramsey, pp. 84-85.

"Essay 4.15.5.

"The Reasonableness of Christianity, #58, ed. Ramsey, p. 37.

"The Reasonableness of Christianity, #252, ed. Ramsey, p. 75.

"The standard edition is The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 vols. (London: Thomas Nelson, 1948-57). George Berkeley, Philosophical Works, Including the Works on Vision, with introduction and notes by M. R. Ayers (London: Dent; Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield, 1975) is based on texts from the edition of Luce and Jessop. Modern studies include J. D. Wild, George Berkeley: A Study of his Life and Philosophy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1936); A. A. Luce, The Life of George Berkeley (London: Nelson, 1949); G.J. Warnock, Berkeley (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1953); George Pitcher, Berkeley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong, eds., Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1968); Harry M. Bracken, Berkeley (London: Macmillan, 1974); J. 0. Urmson, Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Edwin S. Gaustad, Berkeley in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); J. Foster and H. Robinson, eds., Essays on Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Jonathan Dancy, Berkeley: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). For other works see T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography of George Berkeley (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973).

"Locke wrote a refutation of Malebranche. His influence on British thinkers is discussed by A. A. Luce, Berkeley and Malebranche (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934); Charles J. McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).

""For we have shown the doctrine of matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion. Nay so great a difficulty hath it been thought, to conceive matter out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of these who maintained the being of God, have thought matter to be uncreated and coeternal with him. How great a friend material substance hath been to atheists in all ages, were needless to relate. All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary dependence on it, that when this corner-stone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground; insomuch that it is no longer worth while, to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of atheists" (Principles of Human Knowledge 92 [Works] 2: 81, where the editors note that the doctrine of the eternity of matter was taught by the pre-Socratics and Aristotle, On the Heavens 2.1.283b26 [Works] 1: 470). Plato, however, regarded time as "the moving image of eternity," Timaeus 38b6 (Dialogues, p. 1167), and put the corporeal on the same level. Most physicists of Berkeley's day assumed the eternity of matter.

37Principles of Human Knowledge 18 (Works 2:48).

"Principles of Human Knowledge 86 (Works 2:78).

"Philosophical Commentaries 567 (Philosophical Works, ed. Ayers, p. 306).

"Principles of Human Knowledge 3 (Works 2:42).

"Philosophical Commentaries 751 (Philosophical Works, ed. Ayers, p. 324).

"Third Dialogue (Works 2:263).

"Third Dialogue (Works 2:262).

"Principles of Human Knowledge 3 (Works 2: 42).

"In his notebooks Berkeley expressed it as "Existence is percipi or percipere" (Philosophical Commentaries 429; Works, p. 290).

'Third Dialogue (Works 2:230-31).

"Cited from Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 673.

48The incident took place in 1763 outside a church in Harwich prior to a voyage to Holland. Boswell went on to note that Johnson's action was "a stout exemplification" of the "first truths" of Claude Buffier or the "original principles" of Reid and Beattie, "without admitting which, we can no more argue in me- taphysicks, that we can argue in mathematicks without axioms" (James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. G.B. Hill [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891], 1:545).

49Philosophical Commentaries 24 (Philosophical Works, ed. Ayers, p. 254).

"History of Western, Philosophy, p. 684.

°'Cf. Urmson, Berkeley, p. 63; Pitcher, Berkeley, pp. 163-79.

'2E. L. Mascall, Words and Images: A Study in Theological Discourse (London: Longman, 1957), pp. 30-33.

"Words and Images, p. 34.

Chapter 14: The Skeptical Empiricism of Hume

'The standard biography is Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1980). Studies include H. H. Price, Hum's Theory of the External World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940); Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan, 1941); J. A. Passmore, Hume's Intentions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952); Antony Flew, Hume's Philosophy of Belief: A Study of his First Inquiry (New York: Humanities Press, 1961); V. C. Chapell, ed., Hume (London: Macmillan, 1968; reprint ed., Notre Dame, n.d.); D. C. Stove, Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Nicholas Capaldi, David Hume: The Newtonian Philosopher (Boston: Twayne, 1975); James Noxon, Hume's Philosophical Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1975); Terence Penelhum, Hume (London: Macmillan, 1975); Jonathan Harrison, Hume's Moral Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Donald W. Livingston and James T. King, eds., Hume: A Re-evaluation (New York: Fordham University Press, 1976); Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); J. C. A. Gaskin, Hume's Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed., Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Humanities Press, 1988); A. J. Ayer, Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); J. L. Mackie, Hume's Moral Theory (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); John Bricke, Hume's Philosophy of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Tom L. Beauchamp and Alexander Rosenberg, Hume and the Problem of Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Robert J. Fogelin, Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985); M. A. Stewart, ed., Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

2A. E. Taylor, "David Hume and the Miraculous," Philosophical Studies (London: Macmillan, 1934), p. 365.

'Robert J. Fogelin, Humes Skepticism, p. 3. See also A. J. Ayer's criticism of the standard view which he dates from Thomas Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764) (Hume, pp. 15-34).

'Hume put forward a defense of Epicureanism in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 11. On Epicureanism see above, pp. 50-54.

'The future Earl of Charlemont describing Hume when he was attached to the British embassy in Turin in 1748 (Mossner, Life, pp. 213-14).

6Mossner, Life, p. 615. The complete text of My Own Life is given on pp. 61115.

'References are to Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

BMossner, Life, p. 101.

'See the discussion of R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981), and the conclusion on p. 141.

"References below are to Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).

11 Mossner, Life, p. 612.

12Mossner, Life, p. 612.

"History of Western Philosophy, p. 686.

"References below are to Hume, The Natural History of Religion, ed. H. E. Root (London: A. & C. Black, 1956).

"References below are to Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill reprint n.d.). This edition includes a modernized version of My Own Life.

'6Enquiry #128, p. 160.

"Enquiry #130, p. 162.

"Enquiry #130, p. 162.

"Treatise 1.1.6, p. 16.

20Treatise 1.3.14, p. 166.

"Treatise, introduction, pp. xii-xix; Enquiry, # 9, p. 14; cf. Capaldi, David Hume, pp. 49-70.

22Treatise 1.4.6, p. 252.

"Enquiry, Section 10, ##86-101, pp. 109-31. For detailed discussion and literature, see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 79-100, 340-42.

24L. A. Selby-Bigge, ed., Enquiries, p. viii.

"Enquiry #86, p. 110.

26Enquiry #101, pp. 130-31.

27Enquiiy #91, pp. 115-16; cf. #98, p. 127.

"Enquiry #90, p. 114.

"Enquiry #89, pp. 113-14. See above, pp. 208 and 226, for the views of Locke and Sherlock on this point.

"Enquiry #92, pp. 116-17.

"Enquiry #93, pp. 117-19.

12 Enquiry #94, p. 119.

"Enquiry #95, p. 121.

"Enquiry #96, p. 123; cf. Tacitus Histories 4.81.

"Enquiry #96, p. 124. Following the death of Francois de Paris (1690-1727), his tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and numerous cures were reported (see C. Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 63-64). For literature and discussion of events, see B. Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

"Enquiry #96, p. 125; cf. Heb 12:1.

"Enquiry #99, p. 128.

"Enquiry #100, p. 130.

"Enquiry #101, p. 131.

40Mossner, Life, p. 292, quoting a letter to the Rev. Hugh Blair.

"Philosophical Studies, p. 332; cf. Enquiry #87, p. 110.

42 Philosophical Studies, p. 349.

"Apologists sometimes make the mistake of confusing evidence with the report of evidence. The two do not have the same compelling force. It is one thing to witness an event and to be convinced that it actually happened; it is another thing to receive a report of the event. In the latter case one may or may not be in a position to examine its credibility. In the New Testament the miracles ofJesus are sometimes described as signs (e.g., Jn 2:11; 20:30-31; Acts 2:22). But there is a difference between a sign and a proof. Signs indicate something, but they do not conclusively demonstrate the truth of what they point to. The New Testament presents the miracles and other actions ofJesus as prophetic signs which illustrate and embody the message, work, and person of Jesus. See further Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 281-325; Brown, That You May Believe, pp. 95-175; Brown, "Miracle," ISBE 3 (1986): 371-81.

44Just as God gives his sun and rain to the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45), he also sends health and healing. Acts 14:8-20 tells of a case of healing which was attributed to pagan deities. The exorcism of demons was not limited to Jesus and his own disciples (Mt 12:27; Lk 11:19; cf. Mt 7:22-23; Mk 9:38; Acts 19:13- 19).

"Enquiry #90, p. 115.

46The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 68-69.

"Enquiry #I 10, p. 142.

"Enquiry # 115, p. 148.

"The Natural History of Religion, p. 76.

"Norman Kemp Smith, ed., Dialogues, pp. 60-63; J. V. Prince, "Sceptics in Cicero and Hume,"Journal of the History of Ideas 25 (1964): 97-106.

"Dialogues, p. 128; cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 1.1.

"Dialogues, p. 128.

"Dialogues, p. 228.

54Cf. the interpretation of Norman Kemp Smith (Dialogues, pp. 57-75) with the review of the more recent interpretations by J. C. A. Gaskin (Hume's Philosophy of Religion, pp. 209-218). Gaskin concludes that he finds it difficult to see that Kemp Smith's position has been seriously disturbed. "Hume is still Philo except when Cleanthes refutes Demea. Not every single sentence fits this formula, but most of the Dialogues do, and that is sufficient identification for the sympathies of their author in a Ciceronian dialogue" (p. 218). Hume lifted material for Cleanthes' speeches from the works of the Scottish Newtonians, George Cheyne and Colin Maclaurin.

55See Norman Kemp Smith, Dialogues, pp. 62-63, 120-23.

-"Dialogues, Part 11, p. 213.

57Dialogues, Part 2, p. 143.

"Dialogues, Part 2, p. 144.

"Dialogues, Part 5, p. 167.

'Dialogues, Part 7, p. 179.

3'Dialogues, Part 8, p. 184.

"Dialogues, Part 9, p. 186.

"Dialogues, Part 10, p. 190.

"Dialogues, Part 10, p. 198. The Christian writer Lactantius gives a longer version of this saying of Epicurus in On the Anger of God, 13.

"Dialogues, Part 13, p. 227.

"Dialogues, Part 13, p. 228.

17 See above, pp. 125-29.

"The Natural History of Religion, pp. 72-73, alluding to Diodorus Siculus's Library of History 20.43.

69See below, pp. 259-68 and 336-39.

70Hume's Philosophy of Religion, p. 229.

71On Epicurus see above, pp. 51-54.

7'Boswell's journal, March 3, 1777, reproduced in an appendix by Kemp Smith, Dialogues, pp. 76-79.

"Treatise, 1.4.7, p. 269. The remarks come at the conclusion of Book 1, following Hume's discussion of skepticism with regard to reason, the senses of ancient and modern philosophy, of the soul and personal identity.

"Enquiry #132, p. 165.

"Language, Truth and Logic (London: Gollancz, 2nd ed. 1946), p. 54.

76History of Western Philosophy, p. 698.

77From Descartes to Wittgenstein, pp. 132-33.

78Enquiry #128, p. 160.

Chapter 15: Scottish Common Sense and Early American Philosophy

'References below are to The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., ed. Sir William Hamilton with an account of Reid's life and writings by Dugald Stewart, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart, 7th ed. 1872).

Reid's Inquiry and Essays are available in a paperback edition, ed. Ronald E. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983). This edition contains an updated bibliography. Other editions include An Inquiry into the Human Mind, ed. Timothy Duggan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) and the facsimile reprint of Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of Man (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977). Reid's Lectures on Natural Theology (1780) have been transcribed and edited by Elmer H. Duncan with a new essay by William R. Eakin on "Reid: First Principles and Reason in the Lectures on Natural Theology" (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981). Studies include S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); S. F. Barker and T. L. Beauchamp, eds., Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations (Philadelphia: Philosophical Monographs 3, 1976); William J. Ellos, Thomas Reid's Newtonian Realism (Washington: University Press of America, 1981); Louise Marcil-Lacoste, Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982); Nicholas Wolterstorif "Thomas Reid on Rationality," in Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983), pp.43-70; Paul Helm, "Thomas Reid, Common Sense and Calvinism," in Rationality and the Calvinian Tradition, pp. 71-89; M. Jamie Fer- reira, Skepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid, and Newman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Marvin Dal- garno and Eric Matthews, eds., The Philosophy of Thomas Reid (Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989).

2A. J. Ayer, Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 17). The discussion of Locke, Berkeley and Hume is a recurrent theme in Reid. See, for example, the introduction to his Inquiry (Works) 1:97-104) where he traces their ideas through to Pyrrho, "the father of this philosophy."

'Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), introduction, trans. ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), p. 6. It is widely assumed that Kant had never actually read Reid. However, there is reason to think that he had at least read a French translation of Reid's Inquiry. Moreover, a strong case has been made out for thinking that Reid and Scottish Common Sense Philosophy provided a positive stimulus to Kant and German philosophy in the last third of the eighteenth century (see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987).

4Works 1:7.

'Inquiry 1.7 (Works 1:103).

6lnquiry Dedication (Works 1:96); cf. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature 1.1.

'Inquiry 6.20 (Works 1:182-83).

'Essays 2.2 (Works 1:246-47).

'Essays 2.2; cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.20 (Works 1:247).

"Louise Marcil-Lacoste, Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid, p. 145.

"Inquiry 4.1 (Works 1:117).

12Fssays 2.21 (Works 1:332).

"A. D. Woozley, Encyclopaedia Britannica 19:77.

"Inquiry, Dedication (Works 1:95).

"Inquiry 5.7 (Works 1:126).

161nqui7y 6.20 (Works 1:184); cf. also p. 183; Inquiry 7.4 (Works 1:209); Essays 2.5 (Works 2:259).

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 45.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 47.

""If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them-these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd" (Inquiry 2.6 [Works 1:108]).

Y0Fssays on the Intellectual Powers of Man 1.2 (Works 1:231).

s'Fssays 6.5 (Works 1:450).

12Wolterstorff, Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, pp. 48-49, citing Reid's example: "When I hear a certain sound, I conclude immediately, without reasoning, that a coach passes by. There are no premises from which this conclusion is inferred by any rules of logic. It is the effect of a principle of our nature, common to us with the brutes" (Inquiry 4.1 [Works 1:117]).

Reid agreed with Hume that "our belief of the continuance of nature's laws is not derived from reason." He explained the belief by referring to "an instinctive prescience of the operations of nature, very like to that prescience of human actions which makes us rely upon the testimony of our fellow-creatures; and as, without the latter, we should be incapable of receiving information from men by language, so, without the former, we should be incapable of receiving information of nature by means of experience." Similarly, he appealed to the inductive principle in response to Hume's doubts about causation:

It is from the force of this principle that we immediately assent to that axiom upon which all our knowledge of nature is built, That effects of the same kind must have the same cause; for effects and causes, in the operations of nature, mean nothing but signs and the things signified by them. We perceive no proper causality or efficiency in any natural cause; but only a connection established by the course of nature between it and what is called its effect. Antecedently to all reasoning, we have, by our constitutions, an anticipation that there is a fixed and steady course of nature: and we have an eager desire to discover this course of nature. We attend to every conjunction of things which presents itself, and expect the continuance of that conjunction. And, when such a conjunction has often been observed, we conceive the things to be naturally connected, and the appearance of the one, without any reasoning or reflection, carries along with it the belief of the other (Inquiry 6. 24 [Works 1:199]).

21Marcil-Lacoste, Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid, p. 145.

24 Essays 7.3 (Works 1: 484; cf also pp. 209, 330, 416).

25Wolterstorff, Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 60. On Calvin see above, pp. 152-53; and also Charles Par-tee, "Calvin, Calvinism, and Rationality," and Dewey J. Hoitenga, Jr., "Faith and Reason in Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God," in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, pp. 1-15 and 17-39.

"Essay 6.6 (Works 1:460). "The argument from final causes, when reduced to a syllogism, has these two premises:-First, That design and intelligence in the cause, may, with certainty, be inferred from marks or signs of it in the effect. This is the principle we have been considering, and we may call it the major proposition of the argument. The second, which we call the minor proposition, is, That there are in fact the clearest marks of design and wisdom in the works of nature; and the conclusion is, That the works of nature are the effects of a wise and intelligent Cause. One must assent to the conclusion, or deny one or other of the premises" (pp. 460-461).

"Lectures on Natural Theology, p. 51.

"Lectures on Natural Theology, pp. 1-2.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 64.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 63.

"Cf. Ronald E. Beanblossom's introduction to Reid's Inquiry and Essays, pp. xliiixlvii.

52H. H. Price, Perception (reprint ed., London: Methuen, 1961), p. 203.

"Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2nd ed. 1977, pp. 131-132; Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 68-69.

"Cited from Plantinga's "Self-Profile" in James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen, eds., Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), p. 63.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, pp. 52-64.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 64. For further discussion of foundationalism and Wolterstorffs critique of it, see pp. 336-39.

"Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, p. 65.

"Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 318.

"On Reid's influence and its eventual decline, see George Marsden, "The Collapse of Evangelical Academia," in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983, pp. 219-64).

"Sydney E. Ahlstrom, "Theology in America: A Historical Survey," in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., Religion in America, I, The Shaping of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961 [pp. 232-321], pp. 234-35). Ahlstrom's account is supplemented by the anthology he edited, Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967); his magisterial survey, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life (New York: Scribner, 2nd ed. 1973); and the older but still valuable work by Frank Hugh Foster, A Genetic History of New England Theology (1907; reprint ed., New York: Russell and Russell, 1963). For a survey of American philosophy see Elizabeth Flower and Murray G. Murphey, A History of Philosophy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Capricorn Books, 1977). For extracts from a variety of writers, see Paul Kurtz, ed., American Thought before 1900: A Sourcebook from Puritanism to Darwinism (New York: Macmillan, 1966). An important series of reprints of major works is American Religious Thought in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, edited by Bruce Kuklick and published by Garland Publishing, New York.

"The work was actually first published in London in 1720, though it bears a 1721 imprint. Facsimile reproduction with an introduction by Josephine K Piercy (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968). For an appraisal see Winton U. Solberg, "Science and Religion in Early America: Cotton Mather's Christian Philosopher," Church History 56 (1987): 73-92.

''The Christian Philosopher, p. 1.

"Winton U. Solberg, Church History 56 (1987): 75.

"The first book to have "Natural Theology" as a title was that of the Spanish philosopher Raymond of Sebonde, Theologia Naturalis (1484). The book argued that it was possible to discover the contents of the Christian revelation in nature alone. The work achieved posthumous fame in the sixteenth century through the translation by Montaigne, who championed its ideas. Although some Catholic writers esteemed it, the work was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. See above, p. 169.

"The Christian Philosopher, p. 161.

"The Christian Philosopher, p. 245.

"The Christian Philosopher, p. 294.

"The Christian Philosopher, pp. 296-304.

"There are numerous editions of the writings of Jonathan Edwards, including Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, ed. Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson (New York: Hill and Wang, 1935 and paperback reprints); and a paperback edition of Freedom of the Will, ed. Arnold S. Kaufman and William J. Frankena (Indianapolis: Bobb-Merrill, 1969). The new standard edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards is published under the general editorship of Perry Miller and John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957-). The many studies of Edwards's thought include Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (1949; reprint Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973); Douglas J. Elwood, The Philosophical Theology ofJonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); Alfred Owen Aldridge,Jonathan Edwards (New York: Washington Square Press, 1964); Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966); William J. Scheick, ed., Critical Essays on Jonathan Edwards (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980); Norman Fiering,Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thought and its British Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Robert W. Jenson, America's Theologian: A Recommendation ofJonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); R. C. DeProspo, Theism in the Discourses of Jonathan Edwards (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985); Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout, eds., Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); San Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology ofJonathan Edwards: A Dispositional Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will. A Century of American Theological Debate (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).

50Miller, Jonathan Edwards, pp. 63-64.

"Quoted from the anonymous The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1765), p. 4.

"Armand Maurer, "Edwards, Jonathan," Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2:460. See above, p. 219.

"Miller, Jonathan Edwards, p. 61; cf. Fiering, Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thought, p. 35.

54Paul Ramsey in his introduction to Freedom of the Will (Works 1:13); cf. Scheick, ed., Critical Essays, pp. 73, 79, 114, 115, 199. The term panentheism was coined by the German idealist philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (17811832) to describe his own view that God or the Absolute Being was one with the world, though he is not exhausted by it. Douglas J. Elwood detects a pan- entheistic tendency in Edwards's thought which he finds illustrated in Edwards's conclusion:

The whole universe, including all creatures, animate and inanimate, in all its actings, proceedings, revolutions, and entire series of events, should proceed from a regard and with a view, to God, as the supreme and last end of all; that every wheel, both great and small, in all its rotations, should move with a constant, invariable regard to Him as the ultimate end of all; as perfectly and uniformly, as if the whole system were animated and directed by one common soul; or, as if one possessed of perfect wisdom and rectitude, became the common soul of the universe, and actuated and governed it in all its motions (Edwards, God's End in Creation, in Works [New York edition] 2: 202-3; cited by Elwood, The Philosophical Theology, p. 59).

"In his Freedom of the Will Edwards protested that "the term `Calvinist' is in these days, among most, a term of greater reproach than the term 'Arminian'; yet I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction's sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in everything just as he taught" (Preface, Works 1: 131). See above, pp. 151-54. 163-66.

"Freedom of Will 1.1 (Works 1:137).

"Freedom of Will 1.1 (Works 1:138; cf. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2.21.17).

"Freedom of Will 1.4; cf. 1.2 (Works 1:160, cf. 1:142).

"Freedom of Will 1.4; cf. 1.2 (Works 1:160, cf. 1:142).

"Freedom of Will 1.2 (Works 1:141).

"Freedom of Will 1.2 (Works 1:142).

"Freedom of Will 1.2 (Works 1:144).

"Freedom of Will 1.4 (Works 1:160).

"Freedom of Will 1.1 (Works 1:143).

55Freedom of Will 3.1-7 (Works 1:275-333).

"Freedom of Will Conclusion (Works 1:434).

"Freedom of Will 2.12 (Works 1:269).

"Freedom of Will 2.11-12; cf. 3.7 (Works 1:239-69; cf. 333).

"Freedom of Will 2.12 (Works 1:261).

"For a critique of Edwards's view from a modern Arminian standpoint, see James D. Strauss, "A Puritan in a Post-Puritan World," in Clark H. Pinnock, ed., Grace Unlimited (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975, pp. 243-64). An important philosophical and theological study is Austin Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, Gifford Lectures 1957 (London: A. & C. Black, 1958). Modern philosophical discussions include Donald M. Mackay, Freedom of Action in a Mechanistic Universe, Eddington Memorial Lecture, 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); J. R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Brian O'Shaughnessy, The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).

"See the argument of John Oman in Grace and Personality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917; reprint ed., London: Collins, Fontana, 1960). This is not to endorse all that Oman says. However, his plea for thinking about personality in terms of love rather than physical forces presents an alternative model which has not yet been adequately pursued.

72A recent important study is Joseph A. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans for the Christian University Press, 1981).

"See Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934; reprint ed., New York: Russell & Russell, 1960); G. Adolf Koch, Religion of the American Enlightenment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968; originally published in 1933 under the title Republican Religion).

"Reprint ed., New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970.

75For critical edition see Extracts from the Gospels, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series, ed. Dickinson W. Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

76Robert M. Healey, Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, Yale Publications in Religion 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962, p. 25). For an account of Jefferson's religion see Charles B. Sanford, The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984).

"Letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. A. Bergh (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, [1903] 4:363). For extracts of Jefferson's correspondence dealing with philosophy and religion, see Kurtz, American Thought before 1900, pp. 150-59. The five points to which Jefferson alludes were not formulated as such by Calvin. They refer to the doctrines of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the preservation of the saints. These doctrines were formulated by the Synod of Dort (1618-19) in response to the Remonstrance presented by the followers of Arminius (1610). For the text of both documents see P. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom 3:545-97. See above, pp. 163-66.

"Letter to William Short (October 31, 1819), The Writings of ThomasJefferson, ed. P. L. Ford (New York: G.P. Putnam [ 1892-99] 10:143-46).

79For writings see The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner, 2 vols. (New York: Citadel Press, 1947). For discussion see Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959).

"Complete Writings 1:601.

81The secular character of the Constitution is illustrated by the three-volume work by John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the second President of the United States, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, against the attack of M. Turgot, in his letter to D. Prince, 22 March, 1778 (1787-1788). See the discussion of Andrew J. Reck, "The Philosophical Background of the American Constitution(s)," in Marcus G. Singer, ed., American Philosophy, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series 19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 272-293). On the relationship of church and state, see Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

"Quoted from Koch, Religion of the American Enlightenment, p. 239.

"Rogers and McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, pp. 245 and 246.

"Mark A. Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921: Scripture, Science, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, p. 57). See also Rogers and McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, p. 269.

Chapter 16: Enlightenment and Skepticism in France

'Quoted from the translation of Lewis White Beck in his edition of Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment? (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), p. 85. Studies of the Enlightenment include: J. M. Robertson, A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern to the Period of the French Revolution 2 vols. (4th ed. reprint London: Dawsons, 1969); J. H. Brumfitt, The French Enlightenment (London: Macmillan, 1972); Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (reprint ed., Boston: Beacon Press, 1960); Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932 and numerous reprints); Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 16801715 (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1964); Hazard, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century: From Montesquieu to Lessing (London: Hollis and Carter, 1954); R. O. Rockwood, ed., Carl Becker's Heavenly City Revisited (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958); J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London: University of London, The Athlone Press, 1960); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 1 The Rise of Paganism, 2 The Science of Freedom (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967-1970) (containing extensive bibliographies); Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). For an insightful study of the eighteenth century as background to later theology see Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (London: SCM Press, 1972), pp. 33-421. Selections of texts may be found in Crane Brinton, ed., The Portable Age of Reason Reader (New York: Viking Press, 1956) and J. F. Lively, ed., The Enlightenment (London: Longmans, 1966).

2Mendelssohn,Jerusalem, Or on Religious Power andJudaism, 2 vols. (Berlin: 1783). A major modern study is Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).

'Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: The Belknapp Press of the Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 260.

'Horace, Epistles 1.2.40.

'The work was perhaps the most famous but only one of many such works in this period (see William Gerber, "Philosophical Dictionaries and Encyclopedias," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 6:170-99).

6French text and English translation together with the eulogy of Frederick the Great read before the Berlin Academy at his death in La Mettrie, Man A Machine (LaSalle: Open Court, 1974).

'A. Owen Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (Princeton: Princeton Uni versity Press, 1975), p. 302.

'There are a number of translations of Voltaire's more popular works like Candide and Zadig. The most complete edition of his writings remains the edition of Tobias Smollett and others, The Works of Voltaire, 42 vols. (Paris, London, New York, Chicago: E. R. Du Mont, 1901). This is supplemented by Theodore Besterman, ed., Voltaire's Correspondence, 107 vols. (Geneva: Musee de Voltaire, 1953-1965). Selections include Ben Ray Redman, ed., The Portable Voltaire (New York: Viking Press, 1957); Theodore Bestermann, ed., Select Letters of Voltaire (London: Nelson, 1963); Norman L. Torrey, Voltaire and the Enlightenment: Selections from Voltaire (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1931); Paul Edwards, ed., Voltaire Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1989). Modern editions of his more philosophical writings include Philosophical Dictionary, trans. and ed. Peter Gay, 2 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1962) and Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. Ernest Dilworth (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961). Studies include A. Owen Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); A. J. Ayer, Voltaire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986); C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France: From the so-called `deistes' of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire's 'Lettres philosophiques' (1734) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984); William F. Bottiglia, ed., Voltaire: A collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968); Henry N. Brailsford, Voltaire ([1935] reprint Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); John H. Brumfitt, Voltaire Historian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958); Peter Gay, Voltaire's Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959); Bernard N. Schilling, Conservative England and the Case Against Voltaire ([1950] reprint ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1976); Norman L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists ([1930] reprint ed., New York: Archon Books, 1967); Torrey, The Spirit of Voltaire ([1938] reprint ed., Oxford: The Marston Press, 1962); Mina Waterman, Voltaire, Pascal and Human Destiny (New York: King's Crown Press, 1942).

9Voltaire's library was acquired by Catherine the Great of Russia and transferred to St. Petersburg. His use of the English Deists and the writings of Conyers Middleton forms the basis of Torrey's study of Voltaire and the English Deists.

"Voltaire selected for discussion sixty-five of Pascal's Pensees in the 1734 edition of his Philosophical Letters and added eight more in a note dated 1738. For a comparative analysis of some of the main points at issue, see Ayer, Voltaire, pp. 64-81. It may be noted that Ayer's outlook makes him more sympathetic to Voltaire, though he is not uncritical of him.

"See Bottiglia, ed., Voltaire, pp. 130-31.

"Ayer, Voltaire, p. 172.

13Ayer, Voltaire, p. 108.

'*Article on "Fanaticism," Philosophical Dictionary (Works 9:5).

"Article on "Final Causes," Philosophical Dictionary (Works 9:82). For similar arguments see the articles on "Atheism" (Works 6:105-28); "Atheist" (Works 6: 128 40); and "God-Gods" (Works 9:212-52); Paper "On the Existence of God" (Works 38:238-44).

"Article on "Atheism" (Works 6:126).

"Article on "Religion," Philosophical Dictionary (Works 13:71).

"Article on "Miracles," Philosophical Dictionary (Works 11:297). The article is an ironical discussion of the notion of miracles as violations of the laws of nature in the interests of a favored few. Voltaire used the occasion to review the work of Thomas Woolston, and note the fate of such critics as jean Meslier and Nicholas Anthony.

"Article on "Optimism," Philosophical Dictionary (Works 12:82-83). The article on "Good" (Works 9: 259-68) adopts the same basic standpoint.

20Cited from Voltaire, Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories, trans. Donald M. Frame, (New York: The New American Library, 1961, p. 101). On Leibniz see above p. 191.

"For discussion see William F. Bottiglia, "Candide's Garden" in Bottiglia, ed., Voltaire, pp. 112-130.

s2There is no standard complete critical edition of Rousseau's writings in English. There are, however, numerous translations of his best-known works. They include the somewhat flawed translation by Barbara Foxley of Emile, with a brief introduction by A. B. de Monvel (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P Dutton, 1911 and numerous reprints); The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913 and reprints); The Social Contract, trans. M. Cranston (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968); Confessions, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1953) and Maurice Cranston, ed., Rousseau Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988). Rousseau's various writings on religion have been brought together in the original French with an English introduction by Ronald Grimsley in his edition of Rousseau, Religious Writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). The standard biography isJean Guehenno,JeanJacquesRousseau, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). Studies include Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe (reprint ed., New York: Harper & Row, 1963); John Charvet, The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Sir Gavin De Beer,JeanJacques Rousseau and his World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972); Ronald Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Grimsley, The Philosophy of Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973);j. C. Hall, Rousseau: An Introduction to his Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1973); Ann Hartle, The Modern Self in Rousseau's Confessions: A Reply to St. Augustine (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); Asher Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987); Ramon M. Lemos, Rousseau's Political Philosophy: An Exposition and Interpretation (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1977); Vincent A. McCarthy, Quest for a Philosophical Jesus: Christianity and Philosophy in Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986); Kennedy F. Roche, Rousseau: Stoic and Romantic (London: Macmillan, 1973); Robert Wokler, Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Wokler, Social Thought of f. J. Rousseau (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987).

"Emile, trans. Foxley, p. 5.

R4Emile, p. 272.

"Emile, p. 272.

YoEmile, p. 277.

27Emile, p. 261.

28Emile, p. 261.

29Emile, pp. 248-49.

"Rousseau's view of Jesus here bears some formal resemblance to that of traditional Christianity, but the resemblance is superficial. "Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth; this kingdom, by separating the theological system from the political, meant that the state ceased to be a unity, and it caused those intestine divisions which have never ceased to disturb Christian peoples" (The Social Contract, trans. Cranston, p. 178). Jesus is here the same exemplary teacher of spiritual values that he is in Emile.

"Fragments 8:630; cited from Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe, p. 18.

32Roche, Rousseau: Stoic and Romantic, pp. x, 1-21.

Chapter 17: Enlightenment and Skepticism in Germany

'The more important theological pieces by Lessing may be found in Henry Chadwick, ed., Lessing's Theological Writings: Selections in Translation with an Introduction (London: A. & C. Black; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956). A recent study of some of the issues raised by Lessing is Gordon E. Michalson, Lessing's "Ugly Ditch": A Study of Theology and History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985). For a critical discussion of Lessing and the controversies he provoked, see Colin Brown,Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860 (Durham, North Carolina: The Labyrinth Press, 1985; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), pp. 1-55.

'Two modern translations of the final Fragment have been made: George Wesley Buchanan, trans., The Goal of Jesus and His Disciples (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970); and Ralph S. Fraser, trans., Reimarus: Fragments, ed. Charles H. Talbert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970; London: SCM Press, 1971). Major German editions of Lessing's works include all the Fragments. Reimarus's work was published in its entirety only relatively recently by Gerhard Alexander, eds., Apologie oder Schutzschrift fur die vernunftigen Verehrer Gottes, 2 vols. (Frankfort: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972). Although at the time of publication a few people correctly guessed the identity of the author of the Fragments, the issue was not finally settled until Dr. J. A. H. Reimarus donated copies of the manuscript to the state library in Hamburg and the university library in Gottingen in 1814. The version used by Lessing does not appear to have survived.

'Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, with an introduction by James M. Robinson ([1910]; reprint ed., New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 22-23.

'Lessing's Theological Writings, p. 53.

'See above, p. 190.

'See above, pp. 312-13.

'Lessing's Theological Writings, p. 55.

'Lessing's Theological Writings, pp. 82-98, see especially pp. 92, 96.

9Lessing's "Counter Propositions" in Lessing's Theological Writings, p. 18.

10"Christian Deists ... believe not the Doctrines because contain'd in Scripture; but the Scripture, on Account of the Doctrines" (Matthew Tindal, Christianity as the Creation ([1730]; reprint ed., New York: Garland Publishing, 1978), p. 371. The remark comes in the context of a discussion of different kinds of doctrines, some of which are "in their own Nature, necessarily, and demonstrably" whereas others are "in their own Nature, indifferent, or possible, or perhaps, probable to be true" (p. 370). Tindal's use of necessity in relation to doctrine suggests that he was working with a different concept of necessity from Lessing's. However, it may be noted that Tindal's work was translated into German by J. L. Schmidt (1741) who lived in Hamburg and finally settled in Wolfenbuttel. Schmidt also produced a German translation of Spinoza's Ethics.

"For discussion of this see Colin Brown, History and Faith: A Personal Exploration (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987).

12Lessing's Theological Writings, pp. 94, 99-101. On the Pantheistic Controversy see Colin Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought, pp. 22, 33, 283.

"See Colin Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought for discussion of later developments.

"Although Kant's major works have been translated into English, many of his writings remain untranslated. The standard edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is that of Norman Kemp Smith ([1929] reprint ed., London: Macmillan, 1973 and often). An older translation of Kant's ethical works is that of T. K. Abbott, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics (London: Longmans, 1879 and reprints). More recently Lewis White Beck has translated the following: Critique of Practical Reason (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956); Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What Is Enlightenment? (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959); Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950). Lewis White Beck has also edited Kant Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988). Kant's Critique of Judgment has been translated by J. C. Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928). Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone has been translated with introduction and notes by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson ([1934] paperback reprint ed., New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960). Kant's Lectures on Philosophical Theology have been translated by Allen W. Wood and Gertrude M. Clark (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).

Studies of Kant include: Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960); Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969); Beck, ed., Kant Studies Today (La Salle: Open Court, 1969); Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); J. F. Bennett, Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Bennett, Kant's Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Ermanno Bencivenga, Kant's Copernican Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought, with introduction by Stephan Kdrner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Donald W. Crawford, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974); A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Methuen, 1938); Stephan Kdrner, Kant (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1955); H.J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative (London: Hutchinson, 1946); Roger Scruton, Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966); Ralph C. S. Walker, Kant, The Arguments of the Philosophers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978); Keith Ward, The Development of Kant's View of Ethics (New York: Humanities Press, 1972); W. H. Werkmeister, Kant: The Architectonic and Development of his Philosophy (La Salle: Open Court: 1980); Robert Paul Wolff, ed., Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1968); Allen W. Wood, Kant's Rational Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978); Ping Cheung Lo, Treating Persons as Ends: An Essay on Kant's Moral Philosophy (Langham, MD: University Press of America, 1987).

I have discussed aspects of Kant's religious thought more fully in Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. 103107 and Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860 (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), pp. 58-67.

"See Kant's Inaugural Dissertation and Early Writings on Space, trans. John Handyside (Chicago: Open Court, 1929).

"'The first two parts are contained in Kant's Cosmogony, As in his Essay on the Retardation of the Rotation of the Earth and his Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. W. Hastie, revised and edited by Willy Ley (New York: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1968). The third part of the Universal Natural History has been translated by Stanley L. Jaki in A.D. Breck and W. Yourgrau, eds., Cosmology, History of Science, and Theology (New York: Plenum Press, 1977), pp. 387-403. Jaki gives a critique of the work in The Road of Science and the Ways to God, Gifford Lectures 1974-75 and 1975-76 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 112-24.

"Kant 's Cosmogony, p. 7.

''See above, p. 284-85.

"Author's translation of Kant's letter dated May 4, 1793 (Gesammelte Schriften 11:429, Letter # 574).

2OProlegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, introduction and trans. Beck, p. 8; cf also p. Xi.

21Critique of Pure Reason, introduction, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, p. 41.

"Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, p. 55.

21Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, p. 48.

24Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, pp. 42-43.

"Critique of Pure Reason, preface to first ed., p. 10.

Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," pp. 67-91. In this context Kant used the word transcendental to refer to "all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori" (introduction, p. 59).

21 of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," p. 80.

"Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," pp. 111-19.

Y1 Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," p. 87.

"Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," p. 91.

"Kant expounded four main Antinomies (corresponding to the four types of categories): that the world was both finite and infinite; that every substance is made up of simple parts and that nothing is made up of simple parts; that we must posit freedom and that the laws of nature preclude freedom; that the world posits a necessary being and that an absolutely necessary being does not exist (Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Aesthetic," pp. 396-421).

12 Letter to Herder dated May 10, 1781 cited from Ronald Gregor Smith, J. G. Hamann, 1730-1788: A Study in Christian Existence with Selections from his Writings (London: Collins, 1960), p. 244.

"Roger Scruton, Kant, p. 94.

"Lewis White Beck's introduction to Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, p. xviii.

"Willard van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 2nd ed., 1963), p. 37, from the reprint of Quine's 1951 article on "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (pp. 20-46).

"Stanley L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God, pp. 118-19.

"Critique of Pure Reason, "Transcendental Dialectic," p. 500.

S"Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 501-02: "The absolute necessity of the judgment is only a conditioned necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the judgment. The above proposition does not declare that three angles are absolutely necessary, but that under the condition that there is a triangle (that is, that a triangle is given), three angles will necessarily be found in it. So great, indeed, is the deluding influence exercised by this logical necessity that, by the simple device of forming an a priori concept of the thing in such a manner as to include existence within the scope of its meaning, we have supposed ourselves to have justified the conclusion that because existence necessarily belongs to the object of this concept ... we are also of necessity ... required to posit the existence of its object."

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 504.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 504.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 507.

42Critique of Pure Reason, p. 508.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 509.

44Critique of Pure Reason, p. 511.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 511.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 514.

"'Critique of Pure Reason, p. 521.

41Critique of Pure Reason, p. 524.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 531.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 528.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 532.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 532-33.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 565.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 565-66.

"Critique of Pure Reason, p. 566.

Critique of Pure Reason, p. 566-67.

"'Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 6:298.

"Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, preface to first ed., p. 3.

"Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 19.

80Foundations, p. 30.

"'Foundations, p. 31.

62Foundations, p. 39. In Kant's terminology a maxim is a moral principle that one adopts for oneself as distinct from the underlying law which is valid for everyone.

6SFoundations, p. 47.

"Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Part 2, 3, 135, trans. T. M. Knox (reprint ed., Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 47.

"Foundations, p. 59.

"'The concept of each rational being as a being that must regard itself as giving universal law through all the maxims of its will, so that it may judge itself and its actions from this standpoint, leads to a very fruitful concept, namely, that of a realm of ends.... We can think of a whole of all ends in systematic connection, a whole of rational beings as ends in themselves as well as of the particular ends which each may set for himself" (Foundations, p. 51).

"Matthew 22:39; cf. 19:19; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27. For Kant's own discussion of this see Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 85-86 and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 148.

68Leviticus 19:18; cf. the last six of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:12-17; Deut 5:16-21).

61Matthew 22:37-38; Mark 12:29-30; Luke 10:27.

"Deuteronomy 6:4-9; cf. the first four of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-11; Deut 5:6-15).

"See above, pp. 57, 152-53 and ch. 11 n. 21.

"Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 117-39.

"Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 126-28.

"Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 129-30.

"Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, pp. 4-5. I have given more extended discussions of this book in Miracles and the Critical Mind, pp. 103-07; and Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860, pp. 60-67.

"Religion, p. 152.

"Religion, p. 123; cf. p. 110.

"Religion, p. 40.

"Religion, p. 54.

"Religion, p. 55.

"Religion, pp. 54 and 55.

"Religion, p. 76.

"Religion, p. 56.

"Religion, p. 78.

"Religion, p. 145.

86G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), # 33 (author's translation from Si mtliche Werke, Jubilaumsausgabe, reprint Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag, 1956, 6:46). For a comprehensive account of the whole range of Hegel's criticism, see Stephen Priest, ed., Hegel's Critique of Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

17 The Logic of Hegel, translated from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, by W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1892), # 42, p. 84.

88For an alternative critical epistemology see Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 3rd ed. 1958). See pp. 339-42 for Lonergan's comparison of his own position with Kantian analysis.

89See (e.g.) Ronald Gregor Smith, ed., World Come of Age: A Symposium on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Collins, 1967), p. 9, where the editor identifies the phrase as belonging to "the best known of his coinages." For Bonhoeffer's own thought on the subject, see his Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. E. Bethge (Enlarged edition, London: SCM Press, 1971), pp. 341, 360-61, 380-84 and passim. On Kant's view see above, pp. 284-85.

Chapter 18: Retrospect and Prospect

'Arthur F. Holmes, Contours of a World View (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 5.

2Allan David Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

'On the problems of writing a history of philosophy, see the reflections of Fred Copleston, the doyen of contemporary historians of philosophy in On the History of Philosophy and Other Essays (London: Search Press; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979), pp. 3-39.

'Immanuel Kant, "Enquiry concerning the Clarity and Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics" (1763), in Kant: Selected Pre-Critical Writings and Correspondence with Beck, translated and introduced by G. B. Kerferd and D. E. Walford, with a contribution by P. G. Lucas (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1968), pp. 5-35; discussed by Stanley L Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God, pp. 116-117.

SJaki, The Road of Science, p. 117.

'Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, [1976] 2nd ed. 1984), p. 28.

'Reason within the Bounds, p. 56.

'Reason within the Bounds, p. 45.

'Reason within the Bounds, pp. 69-70. I do not think that Wolterstorff falls into the trap which Jaki sees Kant and others falling into, i.e., of assimilating philosophical method to one particular discipline like geometry. Rather, he is reflecting on the way knowledge is acquired generally. Philosophical method should not be determined a priori by making it conform to some arbitrary method. On the other hand, it is appropriate to ask how knowledge is acquired in various fields and to reflect on what is involved in the procedure. I have attempted to offer a similar approach to Wolterstorffs in the area of historical knowledge in my study of History and Faith: A Personal Exploration (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987).

1°Antony Flew in Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 97.

"My account of (e.g.) Aquinas and Descartes raises the question of whether they were as committed to foundationalism as they are commonly assumed to be. See above, pp. 128-29, 183.

'2Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds, p. 70. The point is developed in the ensuing discussion.

The purpose of this note is to draw attention to various reference works and histories of philosophy which I have generally not referred to in the course of my account. The reason for this omission was simply to avoid repetition. Details of studies of individual thinkers, philosophical movements and particular questions will be found in the endnotes. A review of books on particular issues will be included in the sequel to this volume.

Reference Works

A major authoritative source of information is The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, originally published in 8 volumes but reprinted unabridged in 4 combined volumes (New York: Macmillan and Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan [1967] 1972). On a much smaller scale, but indispensable for the student of philosophy, is Antony Flew, ed., A Dictionary of Philosophy, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984). Also useful are William L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought (New Jersey: Humanities Press; Sussex, Harvester Press, 1980); and Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy (New York: Paragon House, 1989). For an up-to-date annotated bibliography see William L. Reese, ed., The Reader's Adviser: A Layman's Guide to Literature, vol. 4, The Best in the Literature of Philosophy and World Religions, 13th ed. (New York and London: RR Bowker Company, 1988). On philosophy and religion in the ancient world and the early centuries of the Christian era, see the massive multivolume encylopedic treatment of the rise and fall of the Roman world Aufstieg and Niedergang der romischen Welt, ed. Wolfgang Haase et al. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter) which is currently in process of publication. Many of the articles are in English.

A number of theological dictionaries give information on matters of philosophical and general interest. The most comprehensive of these is The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and A. E. Livingstone (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1974, reprinted with corrections and some revisions, 1983). Other dictionaries which are directed more to the general reader, but which also contain material not included in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, are Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985); Alan Richardson and John Bowden, eds., The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983) which is published in England as A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1983); Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984); and Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, eds., New Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove and London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988). The Oxford Companion to the Mind, ed. Richard L. Gregory with the assistance of O.L. Zangwill (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) contains numerous short articles of topical and biographical interest. For terms and scholars connected with biblical interpretation, see Richard N. Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, Second Edition (Revised and Augmented) (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981).

General Histories and Source Books

The most comprehensive history by a single author is Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy, 9 volumes (London: Burns and Oates; Search Press; Westminster, Md.: Newman Bookshop, 1946-74; paperback reprint Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1962). Other modern multivolume histories include Emile Brehier, The History of Philosophy, 7 volumes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 196369); Ralph M. McInerny and A. Robert Caponigri, A History of Western Philosophy, 5 volumes (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963-71); Anders Wedberg, A History of Philosophy, 3 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982-84); and A History of Western Philosophy, a paperback series designed for general readers currently in process of publication by Oxford University Press in 8 projected volumes.

The one-volume history which is generally judged to be the most entertaining, though somewhat idiosyncratic, is Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster, [1946], 2nd ed. 1961). An authoritative work which brings together the contributions of a variety of distinguished philosophers is D. J. O'Connor, ed., A Critical History of Western Philosophy (Glencoe: The Free Press; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964); paperback, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985). For a narrative history up to the Middle Ages, see James N. Jordan, Western Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1989). Other overviews include Julian Marias, History of Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1967); Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985); D. W. Hamlyn, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Viking, 1987; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988); Wallace I. Matson, A New History of Philosophy, 2 vols. (San Diego, York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987); Bryan Magee, The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); BenAmi Scharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of their Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, paperback edition, 1989).

Standard works which combine historical, critical introduction with a wide selection of texts arranged under topics are Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap, eds., A Modern Introduction to Philosophy: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources (New York: Free Press; London: Collier-Macmillan, [1965] 3rd ed. 1973); L. Russ Bush, Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics AD. 100-1800 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983); and David Stewart and H. Gene Blocher, eds., Fundamentals of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 2nd ed. 1987). Albert B. Hakins, ed., Historical Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1987) provides an extensive anthology arranged chronologically. A more personal history which is liberally laced with shorter extracts from a great number of philosophers is Antony Flew, An Introduction to Western Philosophy: Ideas and Arguments from Plato to Sartre (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971). A recent general introduction is John Perry and Michael Bratman, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). For anthologies dealing specifically with religious questions, see John Hick, Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, [1964] 2nd ed. 1970); Baruch A. Brody, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach (En- glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974 and reprints).

On the role of women in the history of Western thought, see Ethel M. Kersey and Calvin O. Schrag, consulting editors, Women Philosophers: A Bio-Critical Source Book (New York; Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1989); Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 1 Ancient Women Philosophers, 600 B.C.-500 AD.; 2 Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers A.D. 500-1600 (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987, 1989). Further projected volumes are vol. 3 Modern Women Philosophers, 1600-1900 and vol. 4 Contemporary Women Philosophers, 1900-Today. On women in the history of the church, see Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academie Books, 1987).

Accounts of the history of philosophy and theology tend to be male-oriented. This is bound up with the fact that most of them have been written by men from a male point of view. But it is also bound up with the domestic role assigned to women in society and with the fact that the intellectual agenda has largely been set by men. The purpose of this note is to offer some observations and to draw attention to some relevant literature.'

The Ancient World

In general women lacked the educational opportunities that were open to men, and were not treated as intellectual equals. This was particularly true of the ancient world.' However, there were exceptions. Women were admitted to the Pythagorean society on an equal basis. Fragments of their thought have survived. Plato's mother, Perictione, may have been a Pythagorean. Diogenes Laertius mentions a number of women in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and devoted a whole chapter to Hipparchia the Cynic (c. 300 B.C.),' who dressed and behaved like the male Cynics.

The priestess and teacher Diotima of Mantinea appears in Plato's Symposium,' where Socrates declares that she taught him "the philosophy of Love." Her method was to proceed by question and answer. Love (eros) is "neither beautiful nor good." It is a powerful spirit halfway between the mortal and the immortal, which drives humans to generate and conceive the beautiful. There is a debate among scholars, whether the figure of Diotima in the Symposium is a mere literary device, or whether (as was usual in Plato's dialogues) it was based on a real person. In his Republics Plato advocated equal status and educational opportunities, and approved of women as Guardians. But this has to be set alongside his disapproval of the family. In the Republic Plato recommended its abolition, but backtracked in his Laws, where he observed that "the native disposition" of women was "inferior to man's."s

Aristotle also thought that "the male is superior to the female."' He observed that in common with other animals "the female is softer in character, is sooner tamed, admits more readily to caressing, is more apt in the way of learning."' The female "is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the menstrual fluids are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul."9 In human beings the female provides the matter, the body; the male provides the principle, the soul.i0 Although Aristotle advocated education for women, it was for the pragmatic reason that women needed some education in order to run their households and bring up their offspring."

The New Testament and the World of the Early Church

The prevailing male dominance in the Graeco-Roman world coexisted with devotion to female deities and the cult of the feminine divine." By contrast the Jewish tradition was patriarchal and monotheistic." The Christian church presents both continuity and discontinuity with the culture, religion, and traditions of Judaism and the Hellenistic world." Although women were not numbered among Jesus' twelve disciples, they figured prominently in his ministry and in the accounts of the resurrection.11

The apostle Paul profoundly influenced the attitude of the church, and the subsequent course of Western thought. Frequently he is represented as the archetypal misogynist and retarder of the cause of women. 1 Timothy 2:11-12 states: "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent" (RSV). The reason given for this prohibition recalls the story of Genesis 2 and 3. Adam was formed first, though it was actually Eve who was deceived by the serpent and Adam foolishly followed Eve.10 Paul takes it as a salutary warning. The practice stated here is in line with what he recommended elsewhere (1 Cor 14:34-35; but see also 11:5; Acts 21:9). In this respect Paul was consistent with his declared policy of being a Jew to Jews and under the law to those under the law, though he himself was not under the law (1 Cor 9:19).

Elsewhere Paul stands out ahead of his time as a pioneer of women's rights. In conversing with Lydia (Acts 16:13-14) he did what few rabbis would have done. He warmly acknowledged the work of a number of women, including Phoebe, the deacon of Cenchreae, to whom he evidently entrusted the carrying of his letter to the church in Rome (Rom 16:1). He named Priscilla and Aquila as outstanding "fellow workers in Christ Jesus" (Rom 16:3). This couple are also mentioned in Acts 18:26 as teachers of the learned Apollos. Another woman named by Paul as a prominent Christian wasJunia (Rom 16:7)."

As in other matters, like faith and works, gospel and law, bondage and freedom, Paul's teaching presents a subtle dynamic. Paul speaks of the male as the head (1 Cor 11:3), but in the context of the marriage relationship each partner is ruled by the other (1 Cor 7:4). This dynamic is present even in those passages where Paul urges wives to submit to their husbands (Col 3:18; Eph 5:22). His teaching is to be seen in the overall context of mutual submission out of reverence for Christ (Eph 5:21; Col 3:12-13). The exhortation to wives is counterbalanced by an exhortation to husbands to love their wives. When Paul describes the headship of the husband, it is a primacy of self-giving modelled on the selfgiving of Christ (Eph 5:22). In Paul's gospel the divisions of race, society, and sex are transcended: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28 RSV; cf. Col 3:11)

There were many outstanding women in the church of the early centuries, but the church fathers did not favor women bishops or women theologians. Women enjoyed prominence as teachers in Gnosticism,18 certain fringe groups, and in Montanism, but not among the orthodox.19 There are a number of possible explanations.R° It may have been that female leadership was so closely associated with heresy that the church could not countenance it within its ranks. It has also been suggested that, as the church became upwardly mobile, it accepted the social roles assigned to women by the middle-class culture of the day. Such social factors would be reinforced by theological considerations. When isolated pronouncements by Paul were wrenched from the wider context of his thought, and coupled with statements from Plato41 (and later from Aristotle) about male superiority, the case for female subordination seemed unassailable.

Women intellectuals were not unknown in the early centuries of the Christian era. However, they tended to belong to the upper strata of society. Among them was the empress Julia Domna (170-217), second wife of Septimius Severus, the soldier emperor who forbade the church to make conversions, and mother of the tyrant Caracalla. Julia Domna was the daughter of a Syrian pagan high priest. She assembled a circle of intellectuals and sophists which included Galen and Diogenes Laertius, who may have dedicated his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers to her. Hailed as "the philosopher Julia" by Philostratus, she commissioned the latter to write The Life of Apollonius of Tyana'2Y which may have been a form of anti-Christian propaganda. In the fifth century the empress Eudocia enjoyed a reputation for learning. She was taught by her father, a sophist, and later converted to Christianity, changing her name from Athenais ("Maid of Athens").

A number of women were attracted to Neoplatonism. Porphyry records that Plotinus lived in the house of a certain Gemina and that she and others "had a great devotion to philosophy."" The leading woman philosopher of the early centuries was Hypatia (c. 370-415), who succeeded her father as head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria. The form of Neoplatonism espoused by Hypatia stressed science, mathematics and philosophy, and does not appear to have been openly hostile to Christianity.24 Hypatia enjoyed a great reputation, attracting students from far and wide. Letters addressed her as "the Muse" and "the Philosopher." Her disciple and convert, Synesius of Cyrene, considered her to be the greatest living exponent of Platonic, Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy. Even after he became a convert to Christianity and was made a bishop, Synesius continued in his devotion to Hypatia's Neoplatonism.25 Hypatia's philosophical writings have been lost, but two of her mathematical treatises have survived.26 Hypatia was involved in a political power struggle with Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, who was jealous of her influence over the prefect of police. The church historian Socrates records how Cyril had her brutally murdered, bringing the greatest opprobrium not only upon himself but also upon the church in Alexandria.21

The Middle Ages

Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in seeing the female as a defective male.RB His explanation reflected the current state of biological knowledge, and did little to change existing attitudes. Thomas explained that the defect did not apply to "the species as a whole." However, he conjectured that the active seed of the male which produced a female might be defective or damaged in some way. Thomas saw life as hierarchically ordered, with man placed above all other creatures, having been given the "nobler function ... of understanding things." Woman had been created to help man, not by doing work which a man could do, but by helping him in procreation. The woman had originally been formed from man's rib as a symbol of companionship?' If she had been taken from his head, she would have had authority over man; if she had been taken from his feet, she would have been his slave.

In the Middle Ages women found themselves marginalized in the affairs of church and society.80 The options open to them were severely limited. In the early and central Middle Ages especially, their acquaintance with the world of learning came through the religious life of the cloister. A number of women emerged as spiritual writers and mystics. Some of their writings indicate a profound grasp of philosophical issues. However, this grasp appears not in the form of treatises of the kind written by the theologians of the church, but in contemplative works which approached the great questions of life in a spiritual key. The cloistered life was a way open to the daughters of the aristocracy, some of whom found it a welcome alternative to a loveless marriage and a life of childbearing. To middle-class women medieval society offered no recognized role except marriage. However, widows and spinsters from the middle class found outlet in the late Middle Ages in the form of marginal movements like the Beguines.81 Some Beguines lived with their families, while others lived as wandering mendicants. Most of them formed unofficial religious communities, sharing a passionate desire for intense mystical experience.

Among the early medieval nuns who were philosophers are the dramatist Hrotsvith of Gandersheim (c. 935-1001), the mystic Hildegard of Bingen (10981179), and the abbess Heloise (c. 1101-1164).91 The writings of the English mystic Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c. 1413) suggest that she was familiar with the thought of Aquinas. Her mysticism is, however, closer to Neoplatonism, Scotus and Occam. Julian lived at the time of the Black Death, when waves of the bubonic plague swept across Europe. She lived a contemplative life, dwelling in a small cell built into the wall of St. Julian's Church in Norwich. She taught that Divine love, which transcends human reason, provides the key to the problems of human existence. Her references to God as "our Mother" anticipate feminist theology by five hundred years. Little is known about her life. Her reputation as a spiritual teacher rests on her Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love or Showings, as she preferred to call them." The description that she gives of herself as "a woman, lewd, feeble and frail" is seen by scholars as an attempt, perhaps ironical, to parry criticism by the male clergy." In justification of her writing she asked whether, because she was a woman, she should not tell of the love of God. When people see God's goodness, they will forget her and contemplate Jesus, who is everyone's teacher.

The Age of the Renaissance and of the Reformation

Although traditional notions of the subordinate role of women continued, the status and lot of women slowly began to change in the Renaissance.95 In Italy daughters of the aristocracy and the upper middle class were encouraged to acquire learning. Girls in such families received the same education as their brothers, but marriage or the cloister remained the main options for the educated woman. Some thirty women intellectuals have been identified in Renaissance Italy, among them Dorotea Bocchi (fl. 1390-1430), the daughter of a professor of medicine and moral philosophy, who succeeded her father at the University of Bologna." At this time women were not allowed to attend classes in the university, but on rare occasions were granted doctorates and allowed to teach. Giovanni d'Andrea, the famous professor of canon law at Bologna, had several well-educated daughters. According to an anecdotal but well-attested story, his daughter Novella lectured in his absence, but behind a curtain lest the students be distracted." In Spain Beatrix Galindo (1474-1534) taught philosophy, rhetoric and medicine at the University of Salamanca. Oliva de Nantes Barrera Sabuco (1562-1625) wrote a treatise on New Philosophy (1587) which was destroyed by the Inquisition but later republished.

The Reformation era saw women play prominent parts on both the Protestant and Catholic sides." Through accident of birth several women found themselves as monarchs shaping the destiny of nations. A number of women were martyred for their outspoken testimony. The education of women continued to be a low priority except where Renaissance ideals and privilege enabled the daughters of the titled and wealthy to be tutored alongside their brothers. The topics studied brought the writings of classical antiquity once more to the fore. In England Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), who was Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII, advocated a classical education for daughters of the aristocracy. His own daughters received the same education as their brothers. His eldest daughter, Margaret Roper (1505-1544), is reputed to have been the first learned woman in England. Two of the wives of Henry VIII were noted for their learning, Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr. His daughter Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was the most learned of the English queens. She spoke fluent Latin, and translated numerous works from Greek, Latin and French, including The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. She also wrote a commentary on Plato."

In the year that Elizabeth I assumed the English throne the Scottish Reformer John Knox delivered The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558). The blast was directed against Mary of Guise, but it was felt equally by her daughter Mary Stuart, who assumed the Scottish throne in 1561, and by Elizabeth I. Knox's opening words leave no doubt as to where he stood: "To promote a Woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion, or empire above any Realme, Nation, or Citie, is repugnant to Nature; contumlie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance; and finallie, it is the subversion of good Order, of all equitie and justice."40 Despite this, Knox was not the anti-feminist that he has been made out to be. His correspondence with numerous women, especially Mrs. Anna Lock of London, shows his respect for their wisdom and spiritual counsel, and deep pastoral concern.41

Women, including Luther's wife, the former nun Katherine von Bora, played a significant part in the Lutheran and other churches."' There were also female "preachers" in the Catholic Reformation," though they did not receive much encouragement. The papal nuncio Sega described the Carmelite nun and mystic Teresa of Avila as "a restless, gadabout, disobedient, contumacious woman who promulgates pernicious doctrine under pretense of devotion.... She is ambitious and teaches theology as if she were a doctor of the Church in spite of St. Paul's prohibition."" Evidently he took 1 Timothy 2:12 to be a blanket prohibition, as many have done before and after him" In this respect the papal nuncio might have found himself in agreement with Calvin, who believed that teaching (apart from family instruction) was an office committed only to men" With regard to the status of women in general Calvin was ambivalent " On the one hand, he defended the subordination of women as part of the divinely constituted order of creation. On the other hand, he believed that with the passing of the present order women like men would be renewed in the image of God.

Rationalism, Empiricism and the Age of Enlightenment

The year following the death of Calvin saw the birth of Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645).48 While still in her teens she was struck by Montaigne's Essays, and became obsessed by a desire to know their author. During the last four years of Montaigne's life (1588-1592) she became his "spiritual daughter." She devoted the rest of her life to editing his works and defending his views.

In the seventeenth century female participation in intellectual affairs was confined to a relatively small number of royalty, aristocracy and the privileged. University education remained beyond reach. Queen Christina of Sweden (16261689) carried on a philosophical correspondence with Descartes. She not only studied his writings, but required her advisors to do so as well. The queen brought Descartes to her court for personal instruction. But the 5 a.m. lessons (held at that hour because the queen's mind was then at its freshest and she was less likely to be disturbed) and the rigors of the Scandinavian winter brought about the philosopher's premature death. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (16181680) was a German disciple of Descartes with whom she had a lifelong correspondence. Descartes dedicated his Principles of Philosophy (1644) to her.49 In later life she became the abbess of Hervorden Convent.

An acquaintance and contemporary of Descartes was the Dutch scholar Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678), who in the course of her career made a pilgrimage from feminism to pietism.50 She had been tutored with her brothers, and was taught Greek and Hebrew by Voetius, the professor of oriental languages and theology at Utrecht where she spent most of her life. Known as "the star of Utrecht" and "the Minerva of Holland," she had a phenomenal command of languages and was probably the most erudite woman of the age. Her Latin Dissertation on the Natural Capacity of Women for the Sciences (1638) defended the Bible from the charge of anti-feminism." She joined issue with Lecretia Marinella's The Nobility and Excellence of Woman (1600), which had argued for the superiority of women over men, and the more moderate essay of Marie le jars de Gournay on The Equality of Men and Women (1622). Anna Maria van Schurman preferred not to address the question of equality, being content to argue the issue of education. She had a firsthand knowledge of Descartes and his thought. But her mistrust fostered by Voetius was intensified when Descartes published his Discourse on Method (1637). The break became final when Descartes suggested that there were no "clear and distinct ideas" in the Bible. In later years she came to think that Tertullian was right when he said that Christianity has nothing to do with philosophy. She joined an extreme pietistic sect, and found refuge from persecution with her friend, Elisabeth of Bohemia.

In France women disciples of Descartes became known as "femmes philosophes." Among them was Mme. Grignan, daughter of the celebrated letter writer Mme. de Sevigne 54 Moliere's comedy Les Femmes Savantes (1672) addressed the contemporary debate about equality and education, poking fun at the pretensions of would-be learned women. When women were not made fun of on account of their pretensions, they were apt to be treated as unique prodigies and ornaments to be admired. They owed their education to the good fortune of being born into families of title and wealth, or to having scholars as fathers. Denied the opportunity of university education and membership of elite bodies like the Academie Francaise and the Royal Society, educated society women surmounted the problem through their patronage of the salon where the titled, the brilliant and the not-so-brilliant could converse. In eighteenth-century England cultured women were given the nickname of "blue stocking," though the term originally included men, indicating eccentricities of dress and behavior. French government decrees of 1609 and 1724 required the appointment of male and female teachers in all parishes, and education up to the age of fourteen became in theory compulsory for all. But the decrees were never fully enforced, and it was not until the nineteenth century that women were admitted in France and elsewhere to universities and centers of higher learning.

In England university education was confined to the privileged. Graduates of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge had to be male members of the Church of England. The majority of the fellows of their constituent colleges had to be ordained clergymen. Women who were fortunate enough to receive a good education acquired it through tutors. Inevitably this was a privilege of the relatively affluent. A number of titled women were deeply interested in philosophy and science." Among them was Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), wife of the Marquis and later Duke of Newcastle. Along with Thomas Hobbes, the couple belonged to a group of English royalist emigres known as "the Newcastle circle" which resided in Paris during the 1640s. During this period they got to know Descartes and Gassendi. With the restoration of Charles II to the English throne, the Cavendishes returned to England. Lady Margaret's eccentricities earned her the nickname of "Mad Madge." She sought to popularize atomism in crude verse which she published under the title of Poems and Fancies (1653), and later advocated a mechanistic view of the world in Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668).

A woman scholar who is taken more seriously is Anne Viscountess Conway (1631-1679). Like Margaret Cavendish, she was privately tutored and self-educated. Her posthumous work on The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modem Philosophy (1690)54 influenced Leibniz and anticipated some of Wittgenstein's ideas. She was well acquainted with ancient philosophy as well as with the thought of Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. She was a personal friend of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More. Her own philosophy was a form of vitalism, arguing that nature was a unity of spirit and matter, with Christ an intermediary between God and nature.

Another learned English woman was Lady Damaris Masham (1658-1708). She was educated in the classical tradition by her father, the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. However, she became a disciple of John Locke, whom she first met in 1682. After an initial romantic involvement, the relationship became a lifelong friendship, and Locke spent the last thirteen years of his life as a paying guest in the home of Lord and Lady Masham. She defended Locke's Christian empiricism against the attacks of the Platonist and feminist Mary Astell," and wrote a biography of Locke. Lady Masham was one of several women disciples of Locke. Others were Catherine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749), Lady Mary Chudleigh (1656-1710), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), and Hannah More (1745-1833).56

The first woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy was Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Pisciopia (1640-1684) who received her degree from the University of Padua after giving a public defense of two theses from Aristotle dealing with logic and science 57 In the eighteenth century a number of notable women made significant contributions to science and philosophy. Laura Maria Caterna Bassi (1711-1778) was awarded a doctorate by the University of Bologna for a dissertation on Cartesian thought and an oral defense of propositions from Aristotle. She taught philosophy and physics at the university until her death. Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) was a saintly scholar who held the chair of philosophy at Bologna for some years, after which she retired in order to devote her life to the care of the sick and poor. Her Analytical Institutions (1748), which treated the thought of Newton and Leibniz, was translated into French and English.

In Germany Sophie (1630-1714), the younger sister of Elisabeth of Bohemia who became Electress of Hanover and mother of George I of England, was interested in philosophy and theology. She was an admirer of Leibniz who was her teacher and adviser. Her daughter, Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia (16681705), for whom the Berlin district of Charlottenburg was named, was also a patron and disciple of Leibniz. She encouraged her husband to create the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1700) with Leibniz as perpetual president. In Russia, Catherine the Great (1729-1796), who came from German stock, was a philosophical disciple of the French Encyclopedists. She sought to foster French culture in her adopted country, and had a profound admiration for Voltaire with whom she carried on a lengthy correspondence. On his death she acquired the philosopher's library which was brought to St. Petersburg.

In eighteenth-century France especially women began to play a major part in the worlds of art, learning, science and politics." Perhaps the most accomplished woman scientist and philosopher was Mme. du Chatelet (1706-1749) who married the Marquis du Chatelet at the age of twenty and after seven years of marriage entered a liaison with Voltaire which endured for the rest of her life 59 Her major work, Institutions of Physics (1740), rejected Locke's empiricism in favor of Leibniz's metaphysics as a better basis for Newtonian physics. Mme. Roland (1754-1793)60 was a woman intellectual who was thoroughly conversant with contemporary philosophy. She was attracted to atheism, but came to believe in a form of natural religion. Rousseau's writings turned her thoughts to revolutionary politics. She was one of the women guillotined in the French Revolution, and is remembered for her cry: "0 Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" Her younger contemporary, Mme. de Stael (1766-1817), was also a political activist, achieving fame in the salons of revolutionary France. Her father was a Swiss banker and finance minister to King Louis XVI. She was tutored by her mother along the lines of Rousseau's Emile. She wrote a number of novels and treatises, including Germany (1810), in which she reviewed the current state of literature and philosophy. Mme. de Stael was exiled by Napoleon who clamped down on the political activities of women. In so doing he was consolidating a move which had begun already during the Revolution, and which in fact coincided with the outlook of Rousseau. The latter had exalted women, but for their wifely and maternal roles, but excluded them from the civil, political and economic activities that he championed for men. In so doing, the advocate of enlightenment reverted to a form of patriarchalism in which women were qualitatively different but still subordinate to men s'

Retrospect

This brief survey has tried to take note of the roles that women have played (and been denied) in this history of Western thought. One does not have to be a militant feminist to recognize the ways in which women have been marginalized in intellectual life. The exceptional achievements of a number of women serve to highlight the fact that they were exceptions rather than the rule. Here as in other matters the church reflected society at large. Over the centuries the church has been confronted by countless issues and numerous philosophies, and has had to work through them in order to articulate its faith and its mission. The apostle Paul wrote to the Galatian church that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free person, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. The church is still working on the implications of this agenda.

Notes

'On women philosophers see Ethel M. Kersey and Calvin O. Schrag, Consulting Editors, Women Philosophers: A Bio-Critical Source Book (New York; Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, 1989); Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., A History of Women Philosophers, 1 Ancient Women Philosophers 600 B.C.-500 AD., 2 Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Philosophers, AD. 500-1600 (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987, 1989). For excerpts from philosophers giving their views on women see Mary Briody Mahowald, Philosophy of Woman: Classical to Current Concepts (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1978). On the role of women in the church see Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academie Books, 1987). Gilles Menage (Ae- gidius Menagius), Historia Mulierum Philosopharum (1690) has been translated by Beatrice H. Zedler with the title The History of Women Philosophers (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1984).

'On education in the Greek world see Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1945). On the role of women see John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, eds., Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Helene P. Foley, ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, London, Paris: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1981); Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), and Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (New York: Schocken Books, 1984); Judith P. Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

'Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 6.7 (Loeb edition, 2:99-103).

'Symposium 201 d-212b (Dialogues, pp. 553-63).

'Republic 5. (Dialogues, pp. 688-720), see above, chapter 2, n. 4. Women were theoretically allowed to perform the same work as men, including service in the army. They could also exercise in the gymnasium and compete in games.

'Laws 6.781b (Dialogues, p. 1356). See further Dorothea Wender, "Plato: Misogynist, Paedophile, and Feminist" in Peradotto and Sullivan, eds., Women in the Ancient World, pp. 213-28; Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, pp. 15-70.

'Parts of Animals 2.648a14 (Works 1:1008).

8History of Animals 9.1.608a22-24 (Works 1:948).

'Generation of Animals 2.3.737a27-30 (Works 1:1144).

"Generation of Animals 2.4.738b20-27 (Works 1:1146).

"See Aristotle's discussion of education in Politics 7.17-8.1-7.1336a3-1342b34 (Works 2:2119-2129); cf. Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, pp. 73-96.

12See Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979); Christine Downing, The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine (New York: Crossroad, 1981); Judith Ochshorn, The Female Experience and the Nature of the Divine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981); Carl Olson, ed., The Book of the Goddess: Past and Present (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Pamela Berger, The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985); P. E. Easterling and J. V. Muir, eds., Greek Religion and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); R. M. Grant, Gods and the One God, Library of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986); David Kinsley, The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Richard Caldwell, The Origin of the Gods: A Psychoanalytic Study of Greek Theogonic Myth (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

"The God of the Old Testament is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who has bound Israel to himself through covenants made with the patriarchs which were renewed on successive occasions. Only men could be priests, and only men could receive the covenant sign of circumcision. However, a number of exceptional women figure in the story of Israel. Three outstanding prophets are mentioned: Miriam (Ex 15:20-21); Deborah (Judg 4:4-6); and Huldah (2 Kgs 22:14-20). Other prominent women include Ruth and Esther who are the central figures in the books that bear their name. Occasionally, God is depicted in female imagery (Num 11:12; Deut 32:18; Is 42:14; 46:3-4; Jer 31:22; Hos 11:1- 4). Wisdom is depicted as a woman (Prov 3:13-18; 4:5-13; 8:22-31). See further Barbara J. MacHaffie, Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).

"On women in the New Testament see Ben Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus: A Study of Jesus' Attitudes to Women and Their Roles as Reflected in His Earthly Life, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 51 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Witherington, Women in the Earliest Churches, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 59 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

"See (e.g.) Matthew 27:55-56, 61; 28:1-10; Mark 15:40-41; 16:1-8; Luke 8:1-3; 23:55-24:11, 24; John 20:1-18. The Gospels represent them as the first witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Jewish tradition would not accept the testimony of women as witnesses, which may account for Paul's omission of the women in his reference to the appearances of the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:4-7).

"On the influence of Genesis 3 on thought see Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988).

"Junia(s) was almost certainly the wife of Andronicus who is mentioned with her. Although it has often been assumed that Junias was male, there are no other instances ofJunias as a male name U. D. G. Dunn, Romans 9-16, p. 894).

18See above, p. 100; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 48-69; Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Female Fault and Fulfilment in Gnosticism (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

19For accounts of women in the patristic church see G. H. Tavard, Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973); Jean Laporte, The Role of Women in Early Christianity (New York, Toronto: Edwin Mellon Press, 1982); Elisabeth Schdssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). In the late patristic period women figure prominently in asceticism (Rosemary Ruether, "Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age" in Women of Spirit, pp. 71-98).

"See Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, p. 100.

"Augustine even had to argue against those who appealed to Ephesians 4:13 and Romans 8:29 in support of the contention that women would lose their sexual identity in the resurrection (City of God 22.17). He replied that God who made us male and female would raise us up male and female. Augustine's own views reflect the influence of Plato as mediated by Plotinus. For extracts from Augustine, The Trinity 12 and other discussions of women and marriage see Ma- howald, ed., Philosophy of Woman, pp. 71-77.

22Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Greek text with English translation by F. C. Conybeare, 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1912). On the role of this work in anti-Christian polemics see above, p. 205.

"Porphyry, The Life of Plotinus 9 (cited from Plotinus [Loeb Classical Library] 1:31).

44Jay Bregman, Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 20, 22, 36-39.

25Bregman, Synesius, p. 156, citing Epistle 105.

26Extracts in Waithe, A History of Women Philosophers 1: 169-95.

27Historia Ecclesiastica 7.15.

"Summa Theologiae 1 Q. 92 art. 1 (Blackfriars edition 13:35); alluding to Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.3 737a27 (Works 1:1144).

29Summa Theologiae I Q. 92, art. 3 (Blackf Tars edition 13:43); cf. Genesis 2: 22).

"See Joan Morris, The Lady Was a Bishop: The Hidden History of Women with Clerical Ordination and the Jurisdiction of Bishops (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1973); reprint under the title Against Nature and God: The History of Women with Clerical Ordination and the Jurisdiction of Bishops (London, Oxford: Mowbrays, 1974); Rosmarie Thee Morewedge, ed., The Role of Women in the Middle Ages (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975); Eileen Power, ed., Medieval Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Susan Mosher Stuard, ed., Women in Medieval Society (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976); Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1984); Patricia H. Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York: New York University Press, 1980).

"See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957), pp. 166-68.

92Heloise was seduced by her tutor, Peter Abelard, who was castrated by her uncle's servants. Heloise took the veil, and Abelard became a monk. They met some ten years later, and Abelard helped her to establish a convent. Her correspondence with Abelard shows her to have been a woman of considerable learning. Abelard observed that she was a woman "wholly dedicated to philosophy in the true sense," but that she had "left logic for the Gospel, Plato for Christ and the academy for the cloister" (Letters of Abelard and Heloise [Har- mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974], p. 278).

"Julian of Norwich, Showings, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978).

54Waithe, A History of Women Philosophers 2:192; cf. short text in Showings 6 (p. 135) from which the following quotation is taken.

"See Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1980); Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex, passim; Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation, Contributions in Women's Studies 38 (Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, 1983).

"Kersey, Women Philosophers, p. 8.

"Oskar Kristeller, "Learned Women of Early Modern Italy: Humanists and University Scholars," in Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex (pp. 91-116), p. 102.

"See Roland H. Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971); Bainton, Women of the Reformation in France and England (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1973); Bainton, Women of the Reformation from France to Scandinavia (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1977); Joyce L. Irwin, Womanhood in Radical Protestantism, 1525-1675 (New York, Toronto: Edwin Mellon Press, 1979); Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation, passim.

"Hersey, Women Philosophers, p. 10; Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Biography (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), pp.16-20. Elizabeth's tutors included Dr. Richard Cox, Provost of Eton, and several Cambridge scholars, including Sir John Cheke, Regius Professor of Greek and later Master of St. John's College, who was a key figure in the English Reformation and Renaissance.

The ill-fated Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554), who, along with her husband, Guildford Dudley, was beheaded following an abortive plan to make her Queen of England, was reputed to have been an accomplished scholar.

40Knox, The Monstrous Regiment of Women (The Works of John Knox, 6 vols., ed. David Laing [Edinburgh: James Thin, 1845] 4:374).

4'See Works vol 6 for Knox's letters, including more temperate, solicitous correspondence with Queen Elizabeth I. Vol. 3 contains correspondence with Knox's mother-in-law and her daughter, Elizabeth, and Marjory Bowes, revealing his deep pastoral concern.

42Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy, pp. 19-164; Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, pp. 171-200.

"Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, pp. 200-206.

44Quotation from Bainton, Women of the Reformation from Spain to Scandinavia, p. 56. As a spiritual writer, Teresa was the first to draw attention to different states of prayer, and to give a careful description of the life of prayer from meditation to so-called mystic marriage. Recent editions of her writings include The Interior Castle, introduction by Kieran Kavannaugh, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1979); and A Life of Prayer, ed. James M. Houston, introduction by Clayton L. Berg (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1983).

45For discussion of theological issues see Paul K Jewett, Man as Male and Female: A Study of Sexual Relationships from a Theological Point of View (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975); Jewett, The Ordination of Women: An Essay on the Office of Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); Willard M. Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation (Scottdale, PA, and Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 1983).

"Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), p. 67.

"For Calvin's views see Jane Dempsey Douglass, Women, Freedom and Calvin (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985); John L. Thompson, "Creata ad Imag- inem Dei, Licet Secundo Gradu: Woman as the Image of God according to John Calvin," Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988): 125-43.

"Marjorie H. Isley, A Daughter of the Renaissance: Marie lejars de Gournay, Her Life and Works (The Hague: Mouton, 1963).

"Descartes, Philosophical Writings (ed. Cottingham et al.) 1: 177-291; Dedicatory Letter, pp. 190-92. For the exchange of letters dealing with the relation of soul and body, and with conditions for good judgment see Philosophical Writings, ed. Anscombe and Geach, pp. 274-86.

"See Kersey, Women Philosophers, p. 188; J. Irwin, "Anna Marie van Schurman: From Feminism to Pietism," Church History 46 (1977): 48-62.

51The work appeared in English under the tide of The Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar (1659). She wrote an autobiography, Eukleria (1673), and published her correspondence.

"Letters from Madame la Marquise de Sevigne, trans. and ed. Violet Hammersley (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956). A number of the letters discuss Cartesianism.

"See Gerald D. Meyer, The Scientific Lady in England, 1650-1760 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1955); Robert Hugh Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); Hilda Smith, Reason's Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). For details of writings see Hilda L. Smith and Susan Cardinale, Woman and the Literature of the Seventeenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography Based on Wing's Short-title Catalogue (New York: Westport, CT, London: Greenwood Press, 1990).

"Latin text and English translation with an introduction by Peter Lopston (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).

"On Mary Astell (1666-1731) see Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987). For a brief account of the controversy see Kersey, Women Philosophers, pp. 47-49, 154-56.

56Sheryl O'Donnell, "Mr. Locke and the Ladies: The Indelible Words on the Tabula Rasa," Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 8 (1979): 151-64; Kersey, Women Philosophers, pp. 78, 79-81.

"Kersey, Women Philosophers, p. 85; Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Learned Women of Early Modern Italy: Humanists and University Scholars;" and Patricia Labalme, "Women's Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case," in Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex, pp. 91-116; 129-52.

"See Samia I. Spencer, ed., French Women and the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

"Ira Owen Wade, Voltaire and Mme. du Chatelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941); Wade, Studies on Voltaire with Some Unpublished Papers of Mme. du Chatelet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947); Linda Gardner, "Women in Science," in Spencer, ed., French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, pp. 181-93.

80Gita May, Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).

"Claire G. Moses in French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, p. 409; cf. Gita May, "Rousseau's `Antifeminism' Reconsidered," pp. 309-17; Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought, pp. 99-194.

Table of Contents

Introduction

PART I. PHILOSOPHY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

1. Socrates and Pre-Socratic Philosophy

The Milesian School 20

The Pythagoreans 22

Heraclitus 23

Parmenides 24

The Atomists 25

Socrates and the Sophists 26

2. Plato's Vision of Reality

Theory of Forms

The Soul and Immortality 32

Plato and Religion 33

3. Aristotle and the Physical World

Logic 40

Physics and Metaphysics 41

The Unmoved Mover 43

Human Nature and Ethics 48

4. Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics and Cynics

Stoicism 54

Skepticism 57

Cynics 60

5. From Greeks to Gospel

Philo of Alexandria

The Apostle Paul and Ancient Philosophy 66

The Gospel of John 71

The Letter to the Hebrews 72

Retrospect 74

PART H. FROM CHURCH FATHERS TO MEDIEVAL SCHOLASTICS

6. Philosophy and the Church Fathers

Platonism, Neoplatonism and Their Rivals 82

Two Christian Approaches to Philosophy 88

Augustine 93

Postscript 99

7. Early Medieval Philosophy

Boethius and the Era of Transition 104

Pseudo-Dionysius 106

Realism and Nominalism 107

Islamic and Jewish Philosophy 108

Anselm and Early Medieval Philosophy 111

8. Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophy

The Five Ways 123

Analogy 129

Alternatives to Thomism 134

Scotus, Occam and Biel 135

PART III. FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

9. Philosophy and the Reformers

The Agenda of the Reformation 146

Luther and "the Devil's Whore" 148

Calvin and Classical Philosophy 151