Coleridge and Scepticism free download ebook

(1)

(2)

OX F O R D E N G L I S H M O N O G R A P H S General Editors

hel en barr christo pher butl er katherine duncan-jones hermione lee

(3)

(4)

Coleridge and

Scepticism

Oxford English Monograph

B E N B R I C E

(5)

1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxfordox2 6dp

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi

New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

_{Ben Brice 2007}

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 2007

without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate

reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,

Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available

Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk

ISBN 978–0–19–929025–3

(6)

(7)

(8)

Acknowledgements

This book emerged from an M.Phil. and then D.Phil. undertaken at Linacre College, Oxford, between 1997 and 2003. I want to thank the AHRC (then AHRB) for funding my doctoral research, and the Principal and Fellows of Linacre College for awarding me a Mary Blaschko graduate scholarship.

Many people have assisted me before, during, and after my doctoral research in Oxford. I want to start by thanking Professor John Haffenden and George Botterill at the University of Sheffield for early advice and encouragement. I also want to thank Dr Timothy Chesters, Professor Paul Hamilton, Professor Alister McGrath, Professor Jon Mee, Professor Lucy Newlyn, and Dr Seamus Perry for their invaluable help and guidance at various stages of this project. I want to thank my examiners, the late Professor A. D. Nuttall and Professor J. B. Beer for giving the thesis the benefit of their great learning and insight, and for their constructive observations on how it might be developed into a book. My greatest intellectual debt, however, is to my supervisor Dr Fiona Stafford who has helped me immeasurably throughout my time in Oxford. I cannot imagine a better or more generous teacher.

At OUP I would like to thank Andrew McNeillie for commis-sioning and generously supporting the publication of the book, and Jacqueline Baker for providing professional and efficient guidance at various stages of the publication process. I would especially like to thank the two anonymous readers from OUP who offered extreme-ly perceptive and practical advice on developing the thesis into a book.

I would like to thank the librarians and staff at the Bodleian library, the English Faculty library, the Philosophy Faculty library, the Theology Faculty library, and the Radcliffe Science library in Oxford.

(9)

viii Acknowledgements

(10)

Abbreviations

Boyle,Works R. Boyle,Works of Robert Boyle, ed. M. C. W. Hunter and E. B. Davis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999– )

CL Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956–71)

CN The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Merle Christensen (London and Princeton: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957–90)

(12)

Introduction

There is in Form … something which is not elementary but divine. The contemplation of Form is astonishing to Man and has a kind of Trouble or Impulse accompanying it, which exalts his soul to God.¹

Coleridge’s theory of symbolism was an attempt to describe and explain a triadic analogy that he perceived to exist between the underlying laws of the natural world, the underlying laws of human reason, and their divine architect and source: the seminal Word of God. The theory aimed to account for his powerful poetic and religious intuition that human reason and the poetic imagination were finite echoes of the divine Reason, or Logos, out of which the natural world was created and then sustained. This divine Logos which, according to theGenesisaccount in the Old Testament, had called the language of nature into being and provided it with its deepest grammar and significance, was analogous to the organic form and unity of the poems Coleridge wished to write in praise of nature. His theory of symbolism was an effort, therefore, to connect human language and reason to the ‘intelligible’ language of divinity incarnate in the natural world, and to explain the relationship of reciprocity that exists between poems aboutnature and the divine poetryinnature that they ideally mirrored.

After about 1805, Coleridge developed a ‘sacramental’ account of symbolism regarding the divine Logos as both immanent within and

(13)

2 Introduction

transcendent of the language of nature. Fearing either a panthe-ism that would entirely identify God with the finite language of nature, or an agnosticism that would entirely separate them, Coleridge always maintained that the Logos principle could be nei-ther reduced to nor separated from the finite language of God in nature, whose meaning and being was sustained by God’s intelligible speech.

This, at least, was the theory. In practice, Coleridge was less con-fident in his own developing theory than some of his poetry and prose works would suggest. In letters, notebooks, and sometimes even within the body of his published works, Coleridge attempt-ed, and failattempt-ed, to fully affirm the Logos doctrine, and he likewise failed to find experiential confirmation of his theory of symbol-ism. It may be legitimately argued that doubts expressed about this theory within ostensibly private notebooks and letters cannot undermine Coleridge’s published thoughts on the subject. It may be further argued that it is methodologically unsound to treat dif-ferent evidential sources as if they had an equal weight, even as part of an attempt to give a comprehensive picture of a writer’s views on a particular subject. These are important theoretical con-siderations; however, I do not use private evidence of Coleridge’s uncertainty about his theory of symbolism to suggest that the let-ters and notebooks can entirely undermine the affirmations of his published works. I argue, instead, that these unpublished para-texts provide us with legitimate evidence to show that he was not always entirely convinced by ideas affirmed in his published works.

It must also be acknowledged that Coleridge on many occasions planned to destroy his notebooks, and even some letters, in order that certain of his thoughts should not be disclosed to posterity. In a notebook entry written in December 1804, for instance, he pleads directly to a future reader, who he hopes may not exist, to offer a charitable interpretation of his private anxieties and self-doubts:

I verily am a stout-headed, weak-bowelled, and O! most pitiably weak-hearted

(14)

Introduction 3

only as a means of escaping from pains that coiled round my mental powers, as a serpent around the body & wings of an Eagle!²

Coleridge reasonably expects that he should not be condemned by, or confined to, the doubts and uncertainties he expresses within his notebooks, but he also acknowledges that these views are one authentic expression of his intellectual and emotional life: ‘O friend! Truth! Truth! but yet Charity! Charity!’ I hope to approach these sources employing the principle of interpretative charity and caution that Coleridge here recommends.

The central question that this book is concerned to answer iswhy

Coleridge was privately, and sometimes publicly, sceptical about his theory of symbolism. Scholars and critics of Coleridge’s work have fully explored both his theory of symbolism and the hermeneutic anx-iety that plagued him in connection with this theory over the course of his life. This book offers a new account of why this hermeneutic anxiety was present in Coleridge’s published and unpublished writ-ings, and why it happened to be explicitly connected with his theory of symbolism.

Coleridge’s anxieties about his ability to perceive the symbolic presence of God in nature cannot be fully understood in isolation from the intellectual precursors whose work engaged him. I argue that in order to fully understand Coleridge’s theory of symbolism and his doubts on this subject, it is necessary to situate him within two important intellectual traditions. The first is a tradition of ‘epistemological piety’, which informs the work of predecessors such as Kant, Hume, Locke, and Boyle and is connected to Protestant critiques of post-lapsarian natural reason. The book begins with an examination of John Calvin’s views on the devastating ‘noetic’ effects of the Fall. According to Calvin, one of the consequences of Adam and Eve’s rebellion and disobedience was that our reasoning powers had been vitiated and almost entirely destroyed by inherited original sin.

Calvin argued that while God still revealed himself in an accom-modated form in the ‘book’, or ‘theatre’, of nature, mankind was now incapable of discerning this divine revelation. Only the Elect, guided by the ‘spectacles’ of a Biblical faith and illuminated by the Holy Spirit,

(15)

4 Introduction

could discern the legible marks of God’s presence in nature. The vast majority are blinded to this divine revelation, and are only capable of perceiving idolatrous substitutes for the one true God. These argu-ments concerning the effects of the Fall on our unaided reasoning powers had a powerful afterlife in the philosophical writings of Boyle, Locke, and even Hume. These thinkers, for pious Christian reasons in the case of Boyle and Locke, and strategic reasons in the case of Hume, tended to stress the divinely ordained limits of the human understanding, and to situate human knowledge within a vast abyss of ignorance and darkness.

This tradition of Protestant-inflected epistemological scepticism, directed against the presumption that one can read God’s handwriting in nature without the assistance of a Biblical faith provided by divine Election, had a powerful and disabling impact on Coleridge’s theory of symbolism. Scholars have thoroughly explored Coleridge’s many pained reflections on himself as being a fallen individual, and they have connected these ideas to well-known biographical events such as his persistent addiction to opium, his clandestine love for Sara Hutchinson and his own loveless marriage. I will argue that Coleridge’s sense of being fallen can partly explain why he was uncertain about his ability to perceive God’s presence in nature. I explore Coleridge’s detailed familiarity with this tradition of epistemological piety in Chapters 3 and 4 of the book, and argue that while he could dismiss sceptical arguments in the writings of the ‘infidel’ Hume, for instance, he could not dismiss similar arguments when piously expressed in the writings of Calvin, Locke, Boyle, and Kant. I will conclude that Coleridge’s sense of being fallen generated a powerful, though pious, Christian doubt in his own ability to confidently read the divine language of nature; and that, correlatively, his inability to confidently read that divine handwriting reinforced his sense that he was indeed a fallen being, hidden from God.

(16)

Introduction 5

an ‘intellectualist’ tradition, like St Thomas Aquinas, had argued that there are certain external constraints on any expression of God’s power (his other attributes of Justice, Mercy and Good-ness and the principle of non-contradiction, for instance) and that the created order must necessarily be an expression of all God’s accommodated attributes.³ Late medieval theological voluntarists, like William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, however, emphasized the arbitrariness and contingency of the created world as simply being one possible expression of divine omnipotence. Theological voluntarists consequently denied the idea that nature can be regard-ed as necessarily embodying, incarnating, or symbolizing divine truths.

While theologians in this tradition stressed God’s radical tran-scendence of His creation, they also emphasized the finiteness and remoteness of our reasoning powers from those of God. Although Calvin made some disparaging remarks about theologians in this tradition, he would often stress God’s radical transcendence of the human understanding, particularly when trying to defend patently

(17)

6 Introduction

anti-rational and barbaric doctrines such as absolute double predesti-nation. At these moments, Calvin affirms divine ‘Justice’, ‘Mercy’, and ‘Goodness’ in all His dealings with mankind, while frankly acknowl-edging that there is no intuitive connection between these divine qualities and our own creaturely understanding of mercy, justice, and goodness. Furthermore, when Calvin turned to God’s providential work in human history, he would often acknowledge that God’s handiwork appears a labyrinth to our minds, and that we must simply and piously affirm God’s benevolent role in history even if history seems, to our fallen minds, to be the handiwork of a lunatic.

Many natural philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Catholics, like Gassendi and Descartes, and Protestants, like Boyle, Locke, and Newton, were theological volun-tarists. In Chapters 1 and 2 of the book I explore this tradition in detail. The methodological axioms for reasoning in experimental philosophy developed by Boyle and Newton, and later exploited by Hume, are guided by the sense that, while human beings are obliged to try and formulate provisional scientific explanations for the law-like regular-ities and physical properties of the natural world, they should piously refuse to speculate about the hidden metaphysical Cause or causes of those ordained physical laws, and to admit the possibility that the laws of nature may be revised by God in the future. Because philoso-phers are acquainted only with the effects of divine omnipotence (the physical laws and properties of the natural world) and are prohibited from gaining insight into their Cause, it is very difficult to ‘read’ the language of nature as offering necessary truths about the mind and will of God. Coleridge was exposed to this tradition through his reading of Boyle, Locke, Newton, and Hume.

(18)

Introduction 7

metaphysical and theological foundations of eighteenth-century nat-ural religion. The sceptic Philo, in the Dialogues, poses as a pious Christian philosopher adverting to the blindness and infirmity of nat-ural reason and attacking the presumption of the Newtonian theist, Cleanthes, who thinks that he can discern the craftsmanship of God in the natural world. Philo is aided in this pursuit by the character Demea, whose fideism and mysticism leads him to also reflect on the corruption of natural reason and the radical transcendence of God. Philo sides with Demea to attack the anthropomorphic basis of Cleanthes’s natural religion, and then sides with Cleanthes in order to attack the agnostic impasse that Demea’s fideism results in. In short, Philo ‘forks’ the respective positions of Demea and Clean-thes in order to argue that natural religion leads inevitably to either anthropomorphism or agnosticism.

While Coleridge never ceased to attack the ‘infidelity’ and cor-ruption of the atheist Hume, he could not easily dismiss Hume’s arguments against natural religion, because they were couched in the language of ‘epistemological piety’ practised by Christian philoso-phers like Boyle, Locke, and Newton. Also he could not dismiss Hume’s arguments because they were founded on a shrewd strategic exploitation of the methodological axioms of Newtonian ‘experi-mental philosophy’ and the theological voluntarism they embodied. In pointing out how little can be safely inferred about God from a study of the natural world, and how little inferential reasoning can in general be trusted, Hume again disguised himself in the language and theory of pious Christian scepticism.

Coleridge attempted to establish Hume as his own neme-sis, but Hume’s scepticism entered his own intellectual speculations through his immersion in Kantian aesthetics. I suggest that Kantian aesthetics were a kind of Trojan horse through which Hume’s scepti-cism breached the citadel of Coleridge’s piety. After 1802, Coleridge repeatedly and frankly acknowledged his intellectual debts to Kant, and yet Kant’s writings on religious symbolism and the sublime in the

(19)

8 Introduction

negatively, through the inability of the imagination to find adequate ‘sensible’ illustrations of Ideas of Reason. The imagination is in fact always humiliated in its attempt to ‘see’ noumenal realities embodied in the language of nature, and Kant diagnoses the desire to see such embodied Ideas as both psychological fallacy and fanaticism. Kant accepts the Humean fork of anthropomorphism and agnosticism and settles for the latter option: it is precisely because the imagination fails in its attempt to ‘see’ a world of spirit embodied in matter, that the existence of such a noumenal realm can be secured from doubt. While Coleridge tried to distinguish between the ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’ of Kantian aesthetics, both the letter and spirit of Kant’s writings were ultimately destructive of the premises of Coleridge’s theory of symbolism, which required the sacramental incarnation of spirit in the language of matter.

Chapters 1 and 2 explore these two intellectual traditions of epistemological piety and theological voluntarism in detail. They provide the necessary intellectual context for a full understanding of Coleridge’s theory of symbolism and the doubts he had concerning it. In Chapters 3 and 4, looking exclusively at Coleridge’s writings, I examine some of the notebooks, letters, poetry, and prose works he wrote between 1795 and 1805, and 1815 and 1825. The book offers, therefore, an interpretation of two chronological phases of Coleridge’s thinking on these topics, rather than an analysis of his career as a whole.

In Chapter 3 I begin by discussing a range of writings in which Coleridge explores his uncertain faith in his ability to read the handwriting of God in nature. I then turn to hisLectures on Revealed Religion(1795), in which his early debts to post-Newtonian natural religion are made explicit, before discussing, in detail, his poem, ‘Religious Musings’. I then turn, in conclusion, to a discussion of three ‘Conversation’ poems: ‘Fears in Solitude’, ‘France: an Ode’, and ‘Frost at Midnight’ published together in 1798, which together reveal Coleridge’s religious uncertainty, and its connection with his sense of being fallen. Finally, in Chapter 4 I discuss some aspects of Coleridge’s published prose works written between 1815 and 1825, includingThe Statesman’s Manual(1816),Biographia Literaria (1817),The Friend

(20)

Introduction 9

(21)

1 Theological Voluntarism and Protestant

Critiques of Natural Reason

I hold it as a settled axiom, that nothing is more unsuitable to the character of God than for us to say that Man was created by Him for the purpose of being placed in a condition of suspense and doubt

(Calvin)

As early as 1802, Coleridge considered writing accounts of the major theologians of the Reformation, including Calvin.¹ In a notebook entry listing projected works for the future, Coleridge mentions, among others, ‘Luther & Lutheranism, Calvin & Calvinism (with Zwinglius) … [,] Presbyterians & Baxterians in the times of Charles 1 and 2nd—George Fox—& Quakerism/Socinians & Modern Uni-tarians’.²Coleridge read Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion

(1559) and an English translation of his commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels, which included a separate translation of his commentary on St John.³In Coleridge’s marginalia to Andrew Fuller’sThe Calvinistic

¹ See John Beer, ‘The Development of Coleridge’s Religious Thought’, inAids to Reflection, ed. John Beer, Bollingen Series, 9 (London and Princeton, 1993), pp. xlii–lxxviii.

² CNi. 118.

(22)

Protestant Critiques of Natural Reason 11

and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared(1793), which he prob-ably read in 1807, he upbraids Fuller’s work for conflating authentic Calvinism with Priestleyan materialism:

I have hitherto made not objection to, no remark on, any one part of this Letter; for I object to the whole—not as Calvinism, but—as what Calvin would have recoiled from. How was it that so good and shrewd a man as Andrew Fuller should not have seen, that the difference between a Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in this:—the former not only believes a will, but that it is equivalent to theego ipse, to the actual self, in every moral agent; though he believes that in human nature it is an enslaved, because a corrupt, will.⁴

InAids to Reflection(1825), Coleridge again attempts to distinguish Calvin’s authentic views on predestination from those ‘Fathers of Modern (or Pseudo-) Calvinism’, such as Jonathan Edwards and Edward Williams.⁵ In August 1827 Coleridge declared his ‘great respect’ for Calvin, noting that he was ‘undoubtedly a man of talent’.⁶ In 1836, he criticized Jeremy Taylor because he ‘never speaks with the slightest symptom of affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great reformers’. In the same year, Coleridge defended Calvin’s posthumous reputation against the charge that he had been solely responsible for the death of Miguel Servetus.⁷

Calvin’s profoundly pessimistic views on natural theology and the capacities of natural reason after the Fall are detailed in his Old and New Testament commentaries, and in the final expanded

The Holy Gospel of Iesus Christ, according to Iohn, with the commentary of M. Iohn Calvine: faithfully translated out of Latine into English by Christopher Fetherstone, student in divinitie. 2 pts in 1 vol. (London, 1584). See Coleridge,Marginalia, ed. George Whalley, 5 vol. Bollingen Series, 12 (London and Princeton, 1980–), i. 476–7.

⁴ Coleridge,Marginalia, ii. 801. ⁵ Coleridge,Aids to Reflection, 159.

⁶ Coleridge, Table Talk Recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge (and John Taylor Coleridge), ed. Carl Woodring, 2 vols., Bollingen Series, 14 (London and Princeton, 1990), ii. 397.

(23)

12 Protestant Critiques of Natural Reason

edition of hisInstitutes of the Christian Religion.⁸Calvin maintained a constant duality of perspective in his writings on natural theology. He argued that while God’s accommodated attributes are witnessed objectively in the order, beauty, and workmanship of the visible universe, the Fall had deformed our natural reasoning powers to such an extent that natural theology had been rendered impossible. He was convinced that, although the human intellect had a considerable sphere of worldly competence, it was incapable of ascending to knowledge of spiritual truths through the contemplation of nature.⁹ The only reliable, redemptive knowledge of God was contained within the Sacred Scriptures, and disclosed to God’s Elect through the mediation of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, Calvin’s radical Pauline and Augustinian view of the effects of the Fall on human reason served to dismantle that triadicanalogybetween human reason, the natural world, and the nature of God, which provides one of the key theological premises of Coleridge’s theory ofnaturalsymbolism. Human beings are incapable of perceiving God in the ‘book of nature’, because the spiritual analogy or ‘likeness’ between God and mankind (imago Dei) has been vitiated and nearly destroyed by human sin.

A DA M I C R E A S O N

Three gradations, indeed, are to be noted in the creation of man; that his dead body was formed out of the dust of the earth; that it was endowed with a soul, whence it should receive vital motion; and that on this soul God engraved his image, to which immortality is annexed.¹⁰

⁸ John Calvin,Institutes of the Christian Religion(1559), ed. John T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (London, 1961). The 1st edn. of the Institutes of Christian Religionwas published in 1536. Calvin completed his Commentaries on the New Testament Epistles between 1539 and 1551. Until 1548, Calvin probably used Simon de Coline’s 1534 edn. of the New Testament; this was then replaced by Erasmus’sNovum Testamentum Omne. See C. Schw¨obel, ‘Calvin’, in R. J Coggins and J. L. Houlden (eds.),A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation(Philadelphia and London, 1990), 98–101.

⁹ See John Morgan,Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640(Cambridge, 1988), 43–4.

(24)

In the Institutes, Calvin argued that the human soul is created immortal, and divine; and that even in its fallen state, it is still endowed with certain divinely implanted gifts of natural reason. Among these gifts of reason, Calvin noted our capacity to distinguish good from evil (conscientia), our ability to investigate the physical structure of the natural world (tota physica scientia), our memory and general inventiveness, as well as a universal ‘sense of divine judgement’ (sensus divinitatis).¹¹These noetic gifts are ‘unfailing signs of divinity in man’, since they have been ‘implanted’ or ‘engraved’ on the soul by God and cannot ‘be defaced’.¹² According to Calvin, there are two principal sources for our knowledge of God: the revelation of His will in the created order (including providential history), and the redemptive knowledge of His will revealed by the Sacred Scriptures and incarnate in Christ.

As well as defending the created and immortal nature of the soul in theInstitutes, Calvin was concerned to trace what he called a ‘two-fold knowledge of man’, referring to knowledge of the soul in both its pre-lapsarian and post-pre-lapsarian states. Book I, chapter 15, of theInstitutes

is devoted to human nature in its unfallen state, while the theme of Book II, chapters 1 to 5, concerns human nature in its fallen and now ruined state.¹³In its unfallen state, we are told, the human soul was in a state of harmonious order with the senses and ‘affections’ both tempered and controlled by reason: ‘to begin with, God’s image was visible in the light of the mind, in the uprightness of the heart, and in the soundness of all the parts’.¹⁴The purpose of the Adamic intellect, Calvin argues, was to allow the ‘creature’ to ascend to knowledge of the Creator, through the contemplation and praise of the visible universe:

texts can be consulted inJohannis Calvini: Opera Selecta, ed. P. Barth and W. Niesel (Munich, 1928–62; hereafterCO), xxiii. 18–19.

¹¹ Calvin,Institutes, III. 19. 15, p. 848. _¹² Ibid. I. 5. 5, p. 57.

¹³ Mary Potter Engel argues that Calvin continually makes perspectival shifts in his writings: moving from man’s fallen to his pre-fallen understanding, and shifting between the perspective of the redeemed to that of the damned. It is therefore important to clearly distinguish between Calvin’s conception of the soul in its fallen and pre-fallen states, before discussing his views on natural theology. Mary Potter Engel,John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, (Atlanta, GA, 1988). See also Derek S. Jeffreys, ‘How Reformed is Reformed Epistemology? Alvin Plantinga and Calvin’s ‘‘Sensus Divinitatis’’ ’,Religious Studies, 33 (1997), 419–31.

(25)

Accordingly, the integrity with which Adam was endowed is expressed by this word [imago], when he had full possession of right understanding, when he had his affections kept within the bounds of reason, all his senses tempered in right order, and he truly referred his excellence to exceptional gifts bestowed upon him by his Maker. And although the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and heart, or in the soul and its powers, yet there was no part of man, not even the body itself, in which some sparks did not glow … . From this we may gather that when his image is placed in man a tacit antithesis is introduced which raises man above all other creatures and, as it were, separates him from the common mass.¹⁵

The natural world was a ‘mirror’, ‘theatre’, ‘painting’, or ‘book’ that displayed and reflected an otherwise hidden God.¹⁶God accommo-dated Himself to our finite understanding in the ‘visible language’, ‘garment’, and ‘fabric of the world’, so that ‘all people might know and praise him’.¹⁷ Even after the Fall, Calvin argued, the ordered structure of the universe still bears witness to the divine attributes of its author. Similarly, despite the ‘blindness’ of natural reason after the Fall, mankind is still able to attain a very limited knowledge of God through its study.

A detailed consideration of pre-lapsarian natural theology can be found in Calvin’s Commentary on John(1553).¹⁸In his exegesis of the Johannine Prologue, Calvin conventionally suggested that, ‘the Word (Sermo) was, as it were, hidden there before He revealed Himself in the outward workmanship of the world’.¹⁹Through His

¹⁵ Calvin, I. 15. 3, p. 188.

¹⁶ Ibid. I. 5. I ; I. 5. 10; I. 6. 1–2; I. 14. 20;Argument to Genesis,COxxiii. 8;Comm. On Gen. i. 6;COxxiii. 18. Susan Schreiner notes that the idea of thevestigia Deiwas a traditional theme throughout the Middle Ages. Susan Schreiner,The Theater of his Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin(Durham, NC 1991), 141–2. See also Ernst Robert Curtius, ‘The Book as Symbol’, inEuropean Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask, (Princeton, 1953), 319–26. See also Peter Harrison,The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science(Cambridge, 1998), 64–107.

¹⁷ Calvin, Commentary on Psalms, 104: 1, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, tr. James Anderson, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1847), iv. 145;COxxxii. 85;Institutes, I. 6. I.

¹⁸ Calvin,The Gospel according to St John, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance,Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, iv, tr. T. H. L. Parker, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1961).

(26)

accommodated revelation in the natural world, God displayed His will and intentions towards Adam in a manner that his unfallen reason could comprehend: ‘the Word of God came forth to outward action immediately from the creation of the world. For having been previously incomprehensible in His essence, He was then openly known by the effect of His power’.²⁰Discussing the famous words from verse 4 of the Prologue, ‘[i]n him was life, and the life was the light of men’, Calvin explained that God’s ‘life’ and the effects of His ‘power’ are manifestedobjectively by the ‘stable and settled order of nature’, andsubjectivelyby ‘that part of life in which men surpass the other animate creatures …the light of understanding’ (my italics).²¹

Through the light and clarity of his unfallen intellect, Adam was able to discern a parallel light reflected in the harmony of the visible universe. From this twinned ‘light’ reflected in reason and in the natural world, he could ascend to knowledge of its single divine source: the eternal Word of God.²²Human reason and the external world were both reflective effects of the seminal Word of God, created as finite ‘mirrors’ of God’s infinite and transcendent perfections. Adam was meant to praise the wisdom of God, witnessed in the ‘stable and settled order of nature’, so that the ‘mute’ creation would become articulate and conscious in his praise.

Calvin insisted that God could not reveal His essence (essentia) in the world, because it ‘transcends man in every respect’, and is ‘infinitely exalted above the comprehension of our understanding’. Through contemplation in the ‘mirror’ of the natural world, Adam discovered only God’s virtutes, a refracted or accommodated sense

work into French. Finally, in 1584 the work was translated into English by Christopher Fetherstone bearing the titleThe holy Gospel of Iesus Christ, according to John, with the commentarie of M. Iohn Calvine: Faithfully translated out of latine into englishe by Christopher Fetherstone, student of divinitie. This was the translation owned and read by Coleridge and Wordsworth.

²⁰ Calvin,Commentary on John, 1: 3–4, p. 10;COxl. 7.

²¹ Calvin,Commentary on John, 1: 3–4, pp. 10–11;COxl. 7.

(27)

of God’s paternal intentions toward him. As Calvin put it, God ‘is shown to us not as he is in himself, but as he is toward us: so that this recognition of him consists more in living experience that in vain and high-flown speculation’.²³ Even in an unfallen state, the soul knew God only from His works and from the divine intentions (virtutes Dei) that these works revealed. God’s real nature, His essentia, remained ‘infinitely exalted’ above the meagreness of human understanding.

T H E N O E T I C E F F E C T S O F S I N

As Adam at his first creation had received for his posterity as well as for himself the gifts of divine grace (divinae gratiae dotes), so by falling from the Lord, in himself he corrupted, vitiated, depraved, and ruined our nature—having lost the image of God (abdicatus a Dei similitudine), the only seed which he could have produced was that which bore resemblance to himself (sui simile). We have, therefore, all sinned, because we are all imbued with natural corruption, and for this reason are wicked and perverse.²⁴

Adam and Eve’s rebellion was ‘the subversion of equity, and of well-constituted order’, according to Calvin, because it was instigated by a creature ‘lower than themselves’ and directed against a presence infinitely higher than themselves.²⁵ By refusing to recognize his spiritual giftsasgifts, and his nature as a mirror of God, Adam sought an unjustified equality with his creator:

Unfaithfulness, then, was the root of the Fall. But thereafter ambition and pride, together with ungratefulness, arose, because Adam by seeking more than was granted him shamefully spurned God’s great bounty, which had been lavished upon him. To have been made in the likeness of God seemed a small matter to a son of earth unless he also attained equality with God—a monstrous wickedness!²⁶

²³ Calvin,Institutes, I. 10. 2, p. 97.

²⁴ Calvin,Commentary on Romans, 5: 12,The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, vii, tr. Ross Mackenzie (Grand Rapids, 1960), 111–12. This commentary was published in Latin in 1540, in French in 1550, and in English in 1577 and 1583.

²⁵ Calvin,Commentary On Genesis, 3: 1, p. 144;COxxiii. 55.

(28)

The consequences of Adam’s unfaithfulness included the complete effacement of the soul’s spiritual gifts (faith, holiness, charity, and the love of God), as well as an almost complete corruption of the soul’s natural gifts in relation to spiritual knowledge. The once harmonious and ordered soul has now become disordered and blinded by sin, so that men and women no longer refer the excellence they witness in the natural world, and in themselves, to God.²⁷In short, we can no longer perceive God in the ‘book of nature’, or grasp His presence reflexively through the exercise of natural reason.²⁸

The image of the ‘book’ of nature is flexible enough to convey both a fallen and pre-fallen understanding of it. In its pre-fallen state, the natural world had an established, though accommodated, affinity with the attributes of God; it was a medium through which the ineffable Wisdom, Goodness, and Power of God were translated into an idiom that human beings could universally comprehend. After the Fall, mankind is incapable of perceiving that spiritual and rational analogy between nature and God. Human beings no longer refer the excellence they still perceive in the natural world (opera Dei) and in their soul (imago Dei) to God. Thesymboliccharacter of the natural world is also lost since nature, at least in mankind’s fallen perception, no longer points beyond itself to a divine creator. After the Fall, objects in the natural world are just so many dead letters, whose spiritual meaning and ultimate frame of reference has vanished.²⁹

²⁷ As Brian Gerrish puts it, ‘the blindness of sin effectively negates God’s self-disclosure in nature and prevents it from leading man to a saving knowledge of his Maker’. Gerrish,Old Protestantism and New, 142.

²⁸ According to Bouwsma, like Valla and Erasmus, Calvin ‘rendered Logos as sermo, God’s ‘‘speech’’;oratiorather thanratio, rhetorical rather than philosophical discourse’. W. J. Bouwsma,Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York and Oxford, 1988), 125. In theInstitutes, Calvin argued that God ‘revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. Indeed, his essence is incomprehensible; hence, his divineness far escapes all human perception. But upon his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent that even unlettered and stupid folk cannot plead the excuse of ignorance’. Calvin,Institutes, I. 5. I, p. 52.

(29)

Perhaps the most terrible aspect of the Fall, from Calvin’s per-spective, is that, despite our spiritual blindness, we are still driven by a ‘sense of divinity’ to seek God in nature.³⁰ Even within our ‘perverted and degenerate nature’, he thinks, some sparks of divinity ‘still gleam’; but the ‘mirror’ of nature through which mankind could formerly perceive God, has now become a dark and opaque medium to our fallen understanding: ‘[i]t is therefore in vain that so many burning lamps shine for us in the workmanship of the universe to show forth the glory of its Author. Although they bathe us wholly in their radiance, yet they can of themselves in no way lead us into the right path.’³¹We have not lost our desire to seek God, but we have lost our spiritual and rational capacity to find Him. Natural theology is condemned after the Fall, even if the divinely implanted urge that motivates it still remains. Calvin suggests that, without illumination by scriptural revelation, the mind simply becomes idol-atrous, conjuring a phantasmal ‘crowd of Gods’ in place of the one hidden God.

In Calvin’s Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians (1540), he constantly adverts to the blindness of natural reason and to the idolatrous nature of post-lapsarian natural religion. Discussing Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 1: 18 (‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men’), Calvin argues that, ‘although the structure of the world and the most splendid ordering of the elements ought to have induced man to glorify God, yet there are none who discharge their duty’.³²Discussing Romans 1: 20 (‘For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made’), Calvin

³⁰ ‘Hence arises that boundless filthy mire of error wherewith the whole earth was filled and covered. For each man’s mind is like a labyrinth, so that it is no wonder that individual nations were drawn aside into various falsehoods; and not only this—but individual men, almost, had their own gods’; Calvin,Institutes, I. 5. 12, pp. 64–5. In the 13 cent. Arnulfus Provincialis, Master of Arts at Paris, argued that Adam was originally endowed with perfect virtue and knowledge (scientiae). After the Fall, Adam’s ‘eye of understanding’ (hisoculus intellectualis) was blinded and darkened, and he ceased to have a true vision of things. Arnulf argued that theology was born as a consequence of this blinding. See G. R. Evans,Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages(London, 1993), 8–11.

³¹ Calvin,Institutes, I. 5. 14, p. 61.

(30)

acknowledges the Apostle’s apparent recommendation of natural theology. ‘God is invisible in Himself’, Calvin writes, ‘but since His majesty shines forth in all His works and in all His creatures, men ought to have acknowledged Him in these, for they clearly demonstrate their Creator.’ However, he goes on to claim that after the Fall the revelation of God in creation serves only to condemn mankind who, in their blindness and arrogance, have manifestly rejected it:

We must, therefore, make this distinction, that the manifestation of God by which He makes His glory known among His creatures is sufficiently clear as far as its own light is concerned. It is, however, inadequate on account of our blindness. But we are not so blind that we can plead ignorance without being convicted of perversity. We form a conception of divinity, and then we conclude that we are under the necessity of worshipping such a Being, whatever His character may be. Our judgment, however, fails here before it discovers the nature or character of God. Hence the apostle in Heb. 11. 3 ascribes to faith the light by which a man can gain real knowledge from the work of creation. He does so with good reason, for we are prevented by our blindness from reaching our goal. And yet we see just enough to keep us from making excuse.³³

We are able to ‘form a conception of divinity’ and to ‘conclude that we are under the necessity of worshipping such a Being, whatever His character may be’. Apart from these few fragmentary and vague intuitions, however, our understanding fails. Calvin concludes that, ‘we are prevented by our blindness from reaching our goal’ even though we see enough ‘to keep us from making excuse’.³⁴Switching from the perspective of the damned to that of the saved, Calvin goes on to argue that only those illuminated by the revelation in Scripture, through the mediation of the Holy Spirit, are able to make inferences about God from the structure of the natural world: ‘the apostle in

³³ Ibid. 1: 20, pp. 31–2.

(31)

Heb. 11. 3 ascribes to faith the light by which a man can gain real knowledge of creation’.³⁵

According to the redeemed perspective, which Calvin now assumes, ‘[n]o conception of God can be formed without including His eternity, power, wisdom, goodness, truth, righteousness, and mercy’. God’s eternity is said to be ‘evidenced by the fact He holds all things in His hand and makes all things to consist in Himself’. God’s wisdom is apparent ‘because He has arranged all things in perfect order’.³⁶These conventional elements of the argument from design, which became so popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only become apparent, Calvin insists, after scriptural revelation and through the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit. Such truths are not available to pagans and philosophers, who are fearfully aware of the existence and absolute dominion of God (sensus divinitatis), but cannot discern His essential attributes. The acknowledged weakness of the argument from design as a source of Christian knowledge is exposed when Calvin rehearses the empirical evidence for the divine attributes of Justice, Goodness, and Mercy. God’s ‘Justice’ is said to be apparent from the fact that God ‘punishes the guilty and defends the innocent’. His ‘Goodness’ is said to be evident ‘because there is no other cause for His creation of all things, nor can any other reason than His goodness itself induce Him to preserve them’. Finally, God’s ‘Mercy’ may be inferred from the fact that ‘He bears the perversity of men with so much patience’.³⁷All of these truths about God may be inferred from the revelation in creation, Calvin argues, but only

afterthe faithful Christian has been enlightened by the revealed truths contained within the Bible. In fact, when Calvin points to the attributes of God revealed by the creation, his vision is always mediated by this prior scriptural revelation. At no point does he suggest that natural theology can proceed independently of this scriptural revelation, nor does he accept that any substantive knowledge of God can be attained by those who are not illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

In hisCommentary on the Acts of the Apostles(1552), Calvin argues that the ‘one rule of true godliness’ is that ‘believers cast away all

³⁵ Morgan,Godly Learning, 56.

(32)

confidence in their natural powers, and submit themselves wholly to God’.³⁸Noting the propensity of mankind to lapse ‘into various superstitions and depraved cults’, Calvin argues that ‘the examples of all periods of time teach how miserably blind are those, who are not enlightened by the Word of God’.³⁹All certain knowledge of God is confined to the ‘Biblical Revelation in Jesus Christ’ because, as Calvin observes in the Institutes, ‘he is the one fit witness to himself, and is not known except through himself’.⁴⁰Those who seek knowledge of God must become ‘disciples of scripture’, Calvin insists, and seek knowledge of ‘heavenly doctrine’ only within its pages:

Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.⁴¹

The clarity and vividness of the scriptural revelation is set against the ‘dimness’ and ‘confused knowledge’ of God provided by natural reason. The revelation in creation cannot of course contradict scrip-tural revelation (since both manifest the Word of God). Instead, the scriptural revelation corrects the blindness of our sinful perception by allowing the faithful to perceive the revelation in creation through the ‘spectacles’ of their faith.⁴²Edward Dowey suggests that the scriptural

³⁸ Calvin,Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 14: 16;Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, iii, tr. John W. Fraser, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1966). The first part of this commentary was published in Latin in 1552, the second part appeared two years later.

³⁹ Calvin,Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 14: 17, p. 12.

⁴⁰ Calvin,Institutes, I. 13. 21, p. 146. ⁴¹ Ibid. I. 6. 1, p. 70.

(33)

revelation ‘supplements’ the revelation in creation by connecting observed events in the natural world (available to all) to the will and creative acts of God (discernible only by the Elect).⁴³Pointing to the orderliness and beauty of nature, empirical events open to believers and non-believers alike, the special revelation in Scripture supplements this natural knowledge of events by revealing them to be the visible effects of God’s Wisdom, Power, Goodness, and Justice. In order to understand the ‘mysteries of faith’, Calvin argues, ‘we must especially strive to become disentangled from our own reason, and devote and give ourselves entirely to the obedience of His word’.⁴⁴ Discussing Romans 4: 18, Calvin insists that ‘[t]here is nothing more inimical to faith than to bind understanding to sight, so that we seek the substance of our hope from what we see’.⁴⁵

Calvin’s use of sceptical arguments in his reflections on the uncer-tainty and blindness of natural reason, were not without precedent at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In The History of Scepti-cism: From Savonarola to Bayle, R. H. Popkin discusses the revival of Greek scepticism throughout the sixteenth century. Prior to the first printed edition of theHypotyposesof Sextus Empiricus by Henri Estienne in 1562, there were a number of other sources of information about ancient scepticism. Discussions of academic and pyrrhonistic scepticism could be found in Cicero’sDe AcademicaandDe Natura Deorum, Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, as well as in Lucian and Galen. Sceptical arguments were also rehearsed in the writings of anti-rational Muslim and Jewish authors such as Al-Ghazzali and Judah Helevi. The Latin word ‘scepticus’, which produced the French ‘sceptique’ and English ‘sceptic’, first appeared in a Latin translation of Diogenes from 1430, as well as in two ‘unidentifiable Latin translations of Sextus from a century earlier’.⁴⁶ According to Popkin, ‘[t]he extended discussions of scepticism in the

⁴³ Edward A. Dowey,The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (New York, 1952), 50.

⁴⁴ Calvin,Commentary on the Epistles to the Romans, 3: 5, p. 62.

⁴⁵ Ibid. 4: 18, p. 96.

(34)

early sixteenth century, with the exception of that of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, all seem to be based on information in Cicero, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, or Galen’.⁴⁷

Calvin could acknowledge and indeed affirm a profound scepticism concerning natural reason, without putting his own Biblical faith in doubt. In Book I, chapter 5, of the Institutes, Calvin relates the anecdote of Simonides from Cicero’s De Natura Deorum. He uses the story as a means of deflating the pretensions of natural reason, while simultaneously demonstrating the necessity of the scriptural revelation:

Some praise the reply of Simonides, who, asked by the tyrant Hiero what God was, begged to be given a day to ponder. When on the following day the tyrant asked the same question, he asked for two days more, and after having frequently doubled the number of days, finally answered, ‘The longer I consider this, the more obscure it seems to me’.He wisely indeed suspended judgment on a subject so obscure to himself. Yet hence it appears that if men were taught only by nature, they would hold to nothing certain or solid or clear-cut, but would be so tied to confused principles as to worship an unknown God [my italics].⁴⁸

Because Simonides was ‘taught by nature alone’ and therefore deprived of the scriptural revelation, it was ‘sensible’ of him ‘to suspend judgment on a subject he found obscure’. Calvin advocates a form of mitigated scepticism in regard to the use of natural reason in matters of religion.

In his commentary on St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians

(1546), Calvin notes that even the Elect, guided as they are by the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit, are still incapable of fully fathoming God’s intentions for Man through study of the Bible or the book of nature:

[T]he mode of knowledge which we now have is appropriate to our imperfect state, and what you might call our childhood; because we do not have a clear insight into the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we do not enjoy the unclouded vision. In order to bring that out Paul uses yet another comparison, viz. that the only way we see now is as in a mirror, and

(35)

therefore blurred. He conveys that indistinctiveness by the use of the word ‘enigma’.⁴⁹

T H E DA R K E N E D M I R RO R : P ROV I D E N C E A N D P R E D E S T I NAT I O N

‘[T]he splendour of the divine countenance … , is for us like an inex-plicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word.’⁵⁰For Calvin, the effects of the Fall were clearly manifest in the course of human history. He employed typological tropes of engulf-ing waters in order to describe human society drownengulf-ing in a ‘flood of iniquity’. The wicked threaten society with violence and misrule, while the perpetual fall of governments and the triumph of injustice and vice in the world present themselves as potent symbols of God’s enduring wrath and the ‘hiddenness’ of His providential purpose. When Calvin looked into history he saw that ‘everything is mixed up such that one can say nothing except that things are confused in this world, … that everything goes into confusion, that there is disorder so great that we are astonished’.⁵¹In the historical sphere, as opposed to the ordered natural sphere, God remains entirely hidden from Mankind and ‘still allows things to be confused in the world’.⁵²This does not mean, of course, that God has abandoned human history, but only that a cloud has settled between His providential wisdom and our own fallen perception. According to Calvin, human history is disordered by sin, and our perception of history is distorted by sin. Accompanying Calvin’s appreciation of the visible orderliness of the natural world was an apprehension, and indeed dread, about the ‘sheer enigma’ and ‘impenetrability’ of God’s providential role in history.⁵³Calvin’s doctrine of providence, like that of the revelation

⁴⁹ Calvin,Commentary on the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 1: 13,Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, ix, tr. John W. Fraser (Grand Rapids, 1960), 281.

⁵⁰ Calvin,Institutes, I. 6. 3, p. 73.

⁵¹ Calvin,Sermon on Job, 24: 19–25;COxxxiv. 397–8.

⁵² Calvin,Sermon on Job, 5: 3–7;COxxxiii. 221.

(36)

in creation, relies heavily on the ‘spectacles’ of faith to correct our ‘natural’ vision. For Calvin there is no immediate empirical evidence for the presence of design or purpose in the progress of history, indeed much of the available evidence points to an absence of design in the historical realm, and to the inscrutability and hiddenness of God’s will. Without the illumination of law and gospel, through faith, there is only an abyssal knowledge of nature and history:

And it is, indeed, true that in the law and the gospel are comprehended mysteries which tower far above the reach of our senses. But since God illumines the minds of his own with the spirit of discernment … for the understanding of these mysteries which he has deigned to reveal by his Word, now no abyss is here; rather, a way in which we ought to walk in safety, and a lamp to guide our feet … , the light of life … , and the school of sure and clear truth. Yet his wonderful method of governing the universe is rightly called an abyss, because while it is hidden from us, we ought reverently to adore it.⁵⁴

Natural reason naturally balks at the revealed truths of scripture, truths which nonetheless ‘ought reverently to be adored’.⁵⁵At no point is this fideistic disparity between reason and religion more apparent than in Calvin’s discussions of absolute double predestination. In his commentary on Romans 9: 19 (‘Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he still find fault? For who withstandeth his will?), Calvin admits that ‘the flesh rages’ when it learns of absolute double predestination.⁵⁶ Nor does he seek to evade the fact that we naturally impute an arbitrariness and caprice to the will of God on hearing of this stark Pauline doctrine: ‘[t]here are some, too, who allege that God is greatly dishonoured if such arbitrary power is bestowed on Him. But does their distaste make them better theologians than Paul?’⁵⁷While Calvin admits that Paul does not explicitly refute the objections of the ‘ungodly’ with regard to this doctrine, he interprets Paul’s silence on the matter to mean that ‘God determines to deal with men as He pleases’. Calvin suggests that Paul couldhave produced arguments

opinion, those things which it is certain take place by God’s will, are in a sense fortuitous’; Calvin,Institutes, I. 16. 9, p. 208.

⁵⁴ Ibid. I. 17. 2, p. 213.

⁵⁵ For a full discussion of Calvin’s use of the terms ‘abyss’ and ‘labyrinth’, see Bouwsma,Calvin, 46–7.

⁵⁶ Calvin,Commentary on the Epistles to the Romans, 9: 19, p. 208.

(37)

that would have vindicated God’s Justice, but he decided instead to remain silent because he knew ‘they would not have been understood’. Calvin bifurcates human and divine concepts of Justice, Mercy, and Goodness, in order to maintain God’s transcendent perfections while admitting that they do not clearly intersect with our own ‘creaturely’ notions:

In short, the apostle did not introduce into his discussion what he could have said, but what our ignorance would accept. Conceited men are resentful, because, in admitting that men are rejected or chosen by the secret counsel of God, Paul offers no explanation, as though the Spirit of God were silent for want of reason, and does not rather warn us by His silence—a mystery which our minds do not comprehend, but which we ought to adore with reverence. In this way he curbs the perversity of human curiosity. Let us know, therefore, that God refrains from speaking to us for no other reason than that He sees that His boundless wisdom cannot be comprehended in our small measure. Thus having pity on our frailty, He summons us to moderation and sobriety.⁵⁸

Attached to this process of showing God’s essential transcendence of every human concept is an obvious danger: the analogy between human reason, the natural world, and the nature of God—established in the Johannine Prologue—seems to break down irrevocably. If there is no correspondence established between human and divine concepts of Justice, for instance, then there seems to be no way in which to ascend to knowledge of God through the investiga-tion of His creainvestiga-tion. This in turn implies that there can be no unequivocal means of describing God, since His attributes are utterly remote from our own. Discussing Romans 11: 33–6 (‘O the depth of the riches both of his wisdom and the knowledge of God!’), Calvin observes:

After having spoken out of the Word and Spirit of the Lord, and overcome at last by the sublimity of so great a mystery, Paul can do nothing but wonder and exclaim that the riches of the wisdom of God are too deep for our reason to be able to penetrate them. If, therefore, we enter at any time on a discourse concerning the eternal counsels of God, we must always restrain both our language and manner of thinking, so that when we have spoken soberly and within the limits of the Word of God, our argument may finally end

(38)

in an expression of astonishment. …Let us then learn not to make inquiries concerning the Lord, except so far as He has revealed them by Scripture[my italics].⁵⁹

Revelation seems to amount to the acceptance of a doctrine that the believer can neither explain nor comprehend, and which places an abyss between our understanding and that of God; even to speculate about doctrines of faith using reason alone is, Calvin argues, to ‘enter a labyrinth from which retreat will not be easy’.

C A LV I N A N D T H E O LO G I C A L VO LU N TA R I S M

Reviewing the work of ‘the most eminent Schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Occam’, in hisLectures on the History of Philoso-phy(1819), Coleridge was ‘persuaded that to the Scholastic philosophy the Reformation is attributable’.⁶⁰Both Reardon and McGrath, in part, agree, tracing the source of Calvin’s thinking concerning divine omnipotence back to the late medieval theological voluntarism of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.⁶¹ The theological concerns which motivated late medieval voluntarists can be usefully illustrated by a brief consideration of the views of Scotus and Ockham on the relationship between the moral and meritorious value of human actions.⁶²McGrath contrasts the theological assumptions of volun-tarists—who posited an arbitrary connection between the moral and meritorious aspects of a human act—with those who adopted an ‘intellectualist’ approach to the same questions of justification and salvation:

⁵⁹ Ibid. 11: 33, p. 259.

⁶⁰ Coleridge,Lectures 1818–1819 on the History of Philosophy, ed. J. R. de J. Jackson, Bollingen Series, 8 (London and Princeton, 1999), 466–7; see also his Table Talk for 31 Mar. 1830, p. 95.

⁶¹ McGrath argues ‘[t]he pervasiveness of such a voluntarism, both in ethics and theology, suggests an important degree of continuity between early Reformed theology and the late medieval tradition, in that the early Reformed theology appears to demonstrate such a voluntarism’. Alister McGrath,Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford, 1997), 85.

(39)

The early Dominican and Franciscan schools adopted an intellectualist approach to the relation of the moral and meritorious realms, recognizing a direct correlation between the moral and the meritorious value of an act, the transition between the two being effected by grace or charity. The use of terms such as ‘aequiparari’, ‘associatio’, ‘comparabilis’ and ‘proportionalis’ in the discussion of this question indicates how initially the meritorious value of an act was understood to be directly correlated with its moral value: the divine intellect recognizes the latter, and the divine will thence effects the former. … The origins of the voluntarist position may be traced to Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, who emphasized the radical discontinuity between the moral and meritorious value of an act, the latter being understood to rest entirely upon an uncoerced decision of the divine will.⁶³

According to the ‘intellectualist approach’ to questions of merit, God ‘recognizes’ the intrinsic moral quality of certain human acts and effectively endorses them. This suggests certain external constraints upon God’s freedom to act, beyond the principle of non-contradiction recognized by voluntarists like Ockham, since it implies that God is obliged to recognize and reward the intrinsic moral value of certain human actions. Voluntarists, on the other hand, argued for a ‘radical discontinuity’ between the moral and the meritorious value of an act (the latter based solely on the extrinsic denomination of divine acceptance). An act is meritorious, voluntarist theologians argued, solely because God has determined that such an act shall be considered meritorious. As McGrath argues, ‘the decision as to what may be regarded as meritorious or demeritorious lies solely within the orbit of the divine will’.⁶⁴God has no external ontological constraints on the exercise of His will, nor is He bound by any internal necessity to ‘recognize’ or ‘accept’ acts as meritorious beyond those that he has freely ordained to be meritorious. God cannot be constrained by ‘created principles of morality’, since this would clearly violate His absolute freedom and omnipotence. By placing so much emphasis on the divine attribute of Omnipotence, as opposed to His other attributes of Justice, Wisdom, and Mercy, the voluntarists were exposed to the charge that they had turned God into an arbitrary tyrant, who exercises His will without reason or restraint.

⁶³ A. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation(Oxford, 1987), 84.

(40)

Although Ockham does not claim that the moral and meritorious value of an act is necessarily discontinuous, he does claim that there are no ontological constraints (either ‘internal or ‘external’) upon the will of God, which would force Him to ‘endorse’ actions because they conform to a ‘creaturely’ paradigm of morality. This suggests a radical, even unbridgeable gulf between the inscrutable attributes of God, and our own contingent principles of justice, morality, and knowledge. Although God is necessarily Just, Benevolent, and Wise in His dealings with mankind, there is no guarantee of ‘compatibility’ or ‘proportion’ between these divine attributes and their created counterparts.

In theInstitutes, Calvin would not ‘advocate the fiction of ‘‘abso-lute might’’ ’, and he strenuously denied that God is ever arbitrary or capricious in His actions and dealings with mankind.⁶⁵ Calvin insisted that God’s acts are always a manifestation of His essential nature, and are thus as much an expression of His Wisdom and Goodness, as they are of His Power. However, while God is always Just, Wise, and Reasonable in his actions, those essential attributes are often inaccessible to human reason, Calvin argued. As was noted in his exegesis of Romans, Calvin refers to a Reason above human reason, and a Mercy above human mercy when theological doctrine is in open conflict with common sense; but this expedient, while preserving God’s essential attributes, only underscores an essential incompatibility and discontinuity between natural and supernatural realms. In fact, Calvin’s voluntarism is remarkably similar to those of the ‘Schoolmen’ he criticizes: ‘The predestination of God is truly a labyrinth from which the mind of man is wholly incapable of extricat-ing itself. … God determines to deal with men as He pleases. Yet men rise up in their wrath to contend with Him, but to no avail, because He assigns whatever fate He pleases to His creatures by His own right.’⁶⁶ In his discussions of double predestination, Calvin posits an insur-mountable gulf in moral understanding between God and His creatures, which has potentially disastrous metaphysical and con-ceptual consequences. After all, what can God’s Justice, Goodness, and Wisdom mean if human standards of rationality and virtue

⁶⁵ Calvin,Institutes, III. 23. 2, p. 950 n. 6.

(41)

(determined by our blinded and corrupt faculty of reason) are not applicable? Calvin’s response is to suggest that that the condition of anxiety and doubt any rational person is liable to experience on hearing of this unbridgeable divide between the inscrutable will of God and our creaturely standards of equity and justice, is a symptom of the sure fact that God has abandoned us: ‘But he that doubteth is condemned. Paul uses a single well-chosen word to express the state of mind which wavers and is uncertain of the necessary course of action’. The Elect, on the other hand, have an unswerving conviction in their hearts as God’s chosen remnant:

The wordfaithhere means a constant persuasion of mind and an unshaken certainty—and not just any certainty, but that which is derived from the truth of God. Confusion, therefore, and uncertainty spoil our actions, however fair they may otherwise be. … The first principle, therefore, of upright living, if our minds are not to be in continual uncertainty, is to rest with confidence on the Word of God, and go wherever it calls us.⁶⁷

Ockham made a distinction between the ‘two powers’ of God: His absolute power (potentia absoluta) and His ordained power (potentia ordinata). According to voluntarist theologians, God was hypothetically free, prior to the actual creation, to have created anything he wanted so long as He did not violate the law of non-contradiction. From an initial set of unactualized possibilities, God chose to actualize a subset of those possibilities in the creation of the world. While God was entirely free to create any possible world, once He had created the actual world, He was under a self-imposed obligation to respect His creation. God therefore chooses to act in an absolutely reliable manner. This ‘covenantal’ account of causality retains the contingency of the created world in relation to God’s absolute power, while preserving the future reliability of the creation.⁶⁸This, however, threatens the principle of symbolism motivating natural theology. If the natural world is an arbitrary expression of the otherwise inscrutable attributes of God, then it seems impossible that one should be able to ascend to knowledge of God through its study. Natural reason is still perhaps a mir-ror of ‘nature’ (as ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects of the one

(42)

creation), but neither nature nor human reason necessarily mirrors the hidden and transcendent attributes of God. The consequences for natural theology of this strict bifurcation between the Cre-ator and His creation, was pointedly summarized by the late Amos Funkenstein:

The Terminists could not but object to any attempt to see God symbolized in nature because the order of nature was, in their eyes, so utterly contingent upon God’s will. Not only was the physical order of things in relation to each other (ordo ad invicem) changeable at any time through God’s absolute power (de potentia Dei absoluta), even the order of salvation was in no way necessary. …Of the many logically possible universes, ours is neither the best nor otherwise the product of a particular, discernible aim representative, thereby, of God’s image. The Nominalists had to reject the doctrine of analogy because they had already desymbolized the universe (as well as history) almost completely [my italics].⁶⁹

In denying that the universe was ‘the product of a particular, dis-cernible aim representative, thereby, of God’s image’, the Nominalists undermined the metaphysical foundations of natural theology. If the physical universe clearly manifests only the omnipotent will of God—rather than exemplifying His Wisdom or Goodness in a com-prehensible manner—then natural reason becomes a redundant tool in matters of religious knowledge. If the physical universe is just one arbitrary and contingent expression of God’s will, then its study can yield no reliable knowledge of its creator.⁷⁰

⁶⁹ Amos Funkenstein,Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century(Princeton, 1986), 57–8.