15. Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis. In volume 9 of The Great Ideas Program Adler and Cain look at two of his works of psychoanalysis. Here they consider his interpretation of religion. I plan to survey Freud’s life and work when considering the two works on psychoanalysis. Here I’ll consider just his interpretation of religion.

Adler and Cain consider two readings, the first two sections of Civilization and Its Discontents and the final lecture in The New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Despite the title of this article’s referring to just one of the two readings, I’ll consider both readings. In the first section of Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud reflects on a claim by a friends that the ultimate cause of religious sentiments is “a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of eternity, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded, something ‘oceanic.’” In the second section of Civilization and Its Discontents, he discusses the relation of religion to art and science and, after identifying the purpose of life as happiness, considers them and other activities as methods of achieving it. In the lecture from The New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud argues against religion as the foundation of a philosophy of life (he calls it a Weltanschauung) while considering the relation of psychoanalysis to the question of a philosophy of life. On the latter he argues that psychoanalysis doesn’t have to create a philosophy of life of its own because it is a branch of science and thus can subscribe to the scientific philosophy of life. Personally I don’t view psychoanalysis as a science.

Adler and Cain’s guide is divided into five parts. Part I focuses on Freud’s hypothesis of a prehistoric event in which the tribal father was killed by his sons and of the growth of social order, moral restrictions, and religious ritual from the ensuing feeling of guilt. Part II glances at Freud’s religious and antireligious background. Part III explains how Freud explains religion in terms of its psychological function, which he finds to be the relief of the feeling of helplessness felt by the human individual when confronting the external world. In Part IV, the longest part, Freud tries to demonstrate the superiority of science to religion in furnishing a true picture of the real world. Personally I think that both science (in which I don’t include psychoanalysis) and religion should play a role in forming a philosophy of life.

Part V asks and comments on these questions:

• Are religious beliefs necessarily illusions if they satisfy human wishes and emotional needs?
• Is it possible that wishes and needs may point toward an objective reality beyond the human mind?
• Does the “childishness” of a belief detract from its value, meaning, and truth?
• How does Freud handle the notion of religious experience?
• How does Freud’s analysis apply to the famous religious figures we have examined?
• What is the basis of Freud’s rejection of religion as an illusion?
• What virtues does Freud extol as against the religious virtues?

14. Dostoevsky’s “The Russian Monk”

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) “is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky). In volume 7 of The Great Ideas Program Adler and Cain consider his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Here they look at Book VI. The Russian Monk in it. (The text of “The Russian Monk” can be read at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/the-brothers-karamazov/constance-garnett/text/book-6.) I plan to survey Dostoevsky’s life and work when considering The Brothers Karamazov while working through volume 7 of The Great Ideas Program. Here I’ll consider just “The Russian Monk” and Adler and Cain’s guide to it.

Adler and Cain introduce their guide to “The Russian Monk” by telling how highly regarded Dostoevsky, a Christ-centred writer, is still regarded by Russian readers today despite the country’s official atheism. After giving its theme as “the real effect in the world of personal acts of love, humility, and confession, they identify several of the rich ideas that it contains, noting that all of them are conveyed through unforgettable persons and scenes: “the saintly elder as a young officer, kneeling to beg forgiveness of persons he has injured; the confession of the mysterious visitor; and the conversation of the dying elder with his disciples.”

The guide itself is divided into five sections. Part I considers Russian Orthodoxy, monasticism, and elders. Part II refers to other parts of The Brothers Karamazov which make “The Russian Monk” comprehensible, Part III summarizes Father Zossima’s story. Part IV summarizes Father Zossima’s commentary on his story. Part V asks and comments on six questions about “The Russian Monk.” Brief summaries of Father Zossima’s story and of his commentary on his story can be found at CliffsNotes (https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-2-book-vi) and sparknotes (https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section9/). The questions asked in Part V are:

• Can acts of love and humility produce real effects in the world?
• Do animals and inanimate things have religious value and significance?
• Does the religious idea of collective responsibility for sin conflict with the ethical notion of individual justice (“to each his due”)?
• Can a nation or a people have a unique religious role?
• Is the asceticism advocated by Zossima consistent with “joy in the world”?
• Does Zossima advocate a this-worldly religion?

13. Hume’s On Miracles

David Hume (1711-1776) is “generally regarded as on of the most important philosophers to write in English” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/). In volume 10 of The Great Ideas Program Adler and Cain consider his empiricism (the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense experience) as it is expressed in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Here they look at two sections of that work which focus on the attempt of philosophers and theologians to justify religious beliefs on grounds of reason and experience, Section X on miracles and Section XI on providence and an afterlife. (I plan to survey Hume’s life and work when considering his philosophy while working through volume 10 of The Great Ideas Program.) Here I’ll consider just Section X.

Hume says: “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 as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

“The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), ‘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; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.’ When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”

Adler and Cain sum up Hume’s argument following the above: “Hume goes on to say that ‘there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence.’ We can never, he says, had enough witnesses of proper intelligence and character attesting to a miraculous event of a public and verifiable nature. He points to the human propensity to believe in the big lie, the ‘utterly absurd and miraculous’ tall tale, as against normal caution about ordinary absurdities. He points also to various possible motivations for telling miracle stories: self-deceit, the desire to promote a holy cause, vanity, and self-interest. And why is it, he asks us, that miracle stories are always about events far away and long ago, that usually occur in ignorant and barbarous times and places? ‘It is strange …. that such prodigious events never happen in our days.’

“…. Hume adds one more reason against believing in miracle stories, and he considers it decisive. It is the fact that all religions have such miracle stories. Hume assumes that only one religion can be the true one; hence all others must be false. If certain miracles prove the truth of one religion, then they must prove the falsity of all other religions and their miracle stories. Hence, if we consider the testimony of all the religions, they are mutually contradictory, and the testimony of any one religion is overborn by the weight of all the others.” (The Great Ideas Program, Volume 4, pages 218-19)

It would seem that from the above that Hume advocates disbelieving all miracle stories because they violate natural law and lack sufficient evidence to establish them. However because of his belief that Christianity is founded on faith rather than on reason, he remarkably concludes: “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 of 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 experience.”

In their consideration of Sections X and XI of An Enquiry of Human Understanding, Adler and Cain discuss these questions about Section X:

• If Hume’s view of causality is accepted, are violations of the laws of nature possible? Adler and Cain begin their discussion of this question by observing that future experience may turn up exceptions to the so-called laws of nature because the state of the world may change or facts may become apparent to us that were previously hidden.
• Would Hume’s criticism apply if miracles are not literally violations of the laws of nature? Adler and Cain focus on miracles being signs of the divine presence and power rather than being violations of natural laws.
• Do the miracle stories in the various religions disapprove one another? Adler and Cain conclude their discussion of this question by considering is God may demonstrate His presence and power in more than one time and place.

12. Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration

Can a civil community tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs and practices? Thomas Hobbes answered “No” on the grounds that such toleration endangers the civil community (see https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/8-hobbess-leviathan/). However John Locke, whom we met in https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/lockes-concerning-civil-government/ (see that article for information about Locke’s life and overall views), answered “Yes,” claiming that there should be religious diversity. Here I’ll quote a little of what he says in support of his claim in “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” which is included in volume 35 of Great Books of the Western World.

“The toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ … that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind as not perceive the necessity and advantage of it” (page 2).

“I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will always be arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.

“The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests. Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, and the like. It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by the impartial execution of civil laws, to secure unto all people in general and to every one of his subjects in particular the just possession of [these things]….

“[T]hat it neither can or ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls, these following considerations seem unto me abundantly to demonstrate. First, because the care of souls is not committed [by God] to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men…. In the second place, the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the outward persuasion of the mind, with0ut which nothing can be acceptable to God…. In the third place, the care of the salvation of men’s souls cannot belong to the magistrate; because, though the rigours of laws and the force of penalties were capable to convince and change minds, yet would not that help at all in the salvation of their souls. For there being but one truth, one way to heaven, what hope is there that more men would be led into it if they had no rule but the religion of the court [considering] the variety and contradictions in religion, wherein the princes of the world are as much divided as in their secular interests.” (pages 2-4)

Locke also considers toleration between individuals and within and between churches. To read what he says about it, see https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/toleration.pdf. If you do read what he says about it, feel free to comment on what he says in the discussion here of this article.

In their The Great Ideas Program consideration of A Letter Concerning Toleration, Adler and Cain discuss several questions, two of which I’ll pose here:
How would Locke’s view apply to present-day problems of church and state? One problem that they identify is the government’s requiring people to undergo vaccination or other preventative medical measures.
Is Locke’s attitude toward atheists and Catholics consistent with his views on toleration? Locke says: “[T]hose are not to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration” (page 18) and “[Those] who upon pretence of religion do challenge any matter of authority over such as not associated with them in their ecclesiastical communion, I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion” (pages 17-18; Adler and Cain say that Locke is referring to Catholics).

11. Pascal’s Pensees

I’ve finally resumed working through The Great Ideas Program after a break of over two years, beginning with Reading 11 in Plan 4: Religion and Theology of the program, Blaise Pascal’s Pensées. In their introduction to the reading, Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain observe that Pensées belongs to “that group of writings which describe man’s plight as he seeks God and at the same time doubts God and claim that it is “one of the greatest of such works.”

Blaise Pascal

For a brief account of Pascal’s life (1623-1662) and works, see https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/11-pascals-account-of-the-great-experiment-concerning-the-equilibrium-of-fluids/. For a fuller account of them, see Britannica.com or Wikipedia.
Here I’ll just record the English translation of his thoughts at the moment of his conversion in 1654 given at https://ccel.org/ccel/pascal/memorial/memorial.i.html. Called “The Memorial” it was found after his death sewn into the lining of his coat, where he carried it all the time.

The year of grace 1654,
Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,
FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
Not to forget your words. Amen.

Pensées

Shortly after his conversion, Pascal began reading and collecting material for what he planned to be an apology for the Christian faith, putting down his thoughts on scraps of paper. These were found, collected, and edited after his death. The version used in Great Books of the Western World is divided into fourteen sections, of which The Great Ideas Program considers Sections III and IV. Here I’ll just note what stood out most to me from Adler and Cain’s exposition of those sections and pose the questions which they discuss about them.

In Book III Pascal identifies three kinds of persons: “those who serve God, having found Him; others who are occupied in seeking Him, not having found Him; while the others live without seeking Him and without having found Him.” He explains why he thinks that the last group betrays a lack of virtue as well as of reason. He considers how the second group can find God, arguing that God is “hidden”—not being evident in nature, reason, or history —but is knowable to the pure in heart “through Jesus Christ, without whom all communion from God is cut off.”

In Book IV Pascal considers the relationship between reason and religion. He says that reason is one of the sources of belief but that is not enough, faith being necessary to believe that God is. In response to the question of how those who are in doubt to attain faith, he proposes wagering: “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”

The quotations above are ones quoted from Pensées by Adler and Cain.

Questions about the Reading

1. Is Pascal’s “wager” an offensive and invalid argument for faith?
2. Would the performance of religious acts without inner belief encourage hypocrisy rather than faith?
3. Why cannot reason know “the reasons of the heart”?
4. Is Pascal’s aphoristic style suited to his subject?

10. Milton’s Paradise Lost

This morning I finished reading another selection assigned in Religion and Theology, Reading Plan 4 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s The Great Ideas Program—Books I-III of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. This was at least my third encounter with Paradise Lost, my having studied it or part of it in grade XIII or first year of university (in 1955-56 or 56-57, I can’t remember which) and my having read it when working through The Great Ideas Program sometime after being given The Great Books of the Western World in 1967. The Great Ideas Program considers the whole poem in Reading Plan 7, Imaginative Literature II.
Of Milton and Paradise Lost, Encyclopedia Britannica says: “John Milton stands next to Shaekespeare among English poets; his writings and his influence are a very important part of the history of English literature, culture, and libertarian thought. He is best known for his long epic poem Paradise Lost, in which his ‘grand style’ is used with superb power; its characterization of Satan is one of the supreme achievements of world literature.” (Encyclopedia Britannica: The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974, volume 12, page 204)
Books I-III of Paradise Lost concern Satan’s plan to bring about the fall of man and are a good companion to our recent family reading about man’s fall in Finis Jennings Dake ‘s God’s Plan for Man (https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/the-dispensation-of-innocence-the-fall/). In Religion and Theology Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain introduce Paradise Lost; consider how Satan, God, and the Son are pictured in Books I-III of it; and discuss five questions about the three books. Here I’ll sketch Milton’s life, summarize what Adler and Cain say about Paradise Lost, and pose the five questions which they discuss.

John Milton

John Milton was born in London, England, on December 9, 1608. His father, who had been disinherited by his father when he converted to Anglicanism, was a successful scrivener. Milton was educated at home and at St. Paul’s School. He took to studies with a zeal, saying later, “From my twelfth year I scarcely went to bed before midnight, which was the first cause of injury to my eyes.” At the age of seventeen he entered Cambridge, where he worked diligently and by the time that he received his MA degree in 1632 had won recognition and esteem. Abandoning his original plan of entering the service of the Church, he spent the next six years with his father, studying classical literature, history, mathematics, and music. Then he spent fifteen months travelling in France and Italy, where he was widely received. He returned to England in 1639, settled in a house in London, and began taking in students.
In 1642 Milton, who was 33, married Mary Powell, the 17-year-old daughter of a Royalist squire. After a few weeks she returned home, but two years later she came back. They had three daughters and a son died in infancy before she died in childbirth in 1654. In the year that she left him Milton wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce asserting that marriage being a “private matter” could be dissolved in cases of incompatibility. Because he published it without a license, proceedings were instituted against him. He responded with Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, published the following year without a license.
After his wife’s death in 1654 Milton’s personal life was lonely. Totally blind at the time of her death, he was dependent on his daughters, who resented and neglected him. In 1656 he married Katherine Woodcock, who died in childbirth less than a year later. Then in 1663 he married the young and amiable Elizabeth Minshull. She brightened his life, which was passed in quiet study tempered with music and the company of friends. He died from complications of the gout on November 8, 1674, and was buried in St. Giles Cripplegate Church in London.
Milton was a prolific writer. While still at Cambridge he wrote “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” and while with his father he wrote the companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”; the masques Arcades and Comus; and an elegy for a college friend who had drowned in a shipwreck, “Lycidas.” (He wrote many other works while at Cambridge and with his father, but these are the most famous.) He returned to England with plans for an Arthurian epic, but for 1641-60 (a period including the English Civil Wars and government by the Commonwealth under Cromwell and ending with the restoration of the monarchy) devoted himself almost wholly to writing pamphlets in the cause of religious and civil liberty. He became totally blind in the winter of 1651-52, the great poem still unwritten.
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Milton was arrested and heavily fined for his writing on behalf of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, but he was released after a short while. At the age of fifty-two, after nineteen years of stormy political activity, he turned again to the studious and literary pursuits of his youth. To this last period of his life belong his greatest poetic achievements—Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671)—and a miscellany of scholarly and historical works.

Paradise Lost

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden…
(Encyclopedia Britannica: Great Books of the Western World, 1952, volume 32, page 93)
Thus Milton introduces Paradise Lost, in which he tells the story of Genesis 3. In doing so he imagines scenes that are not in Genesis. Like Paul, he presents the story of the fall in light of the crucifixion of Jesus, which he sees as atonement for and redemption from man’s original sin. He also introduces many pagan and mythological allusions that are out of date with regard to the story in Genesis. Moreover he introduces a Devil (Satan) and demons that are not in the Biblical account; those devils have definite names and characters and add colour to his story. [Adler and Cain note that you must read the whole poem to get the full sweep of Milton’s rendition of the story of Genesis 3, but they say that their discussion of its first three books will help get you started. I’ll consider the whole poem when doing Reading Plan 7 of The Great Ideas Program.]

The first three books of Paradise Lost describe the journey of Satan from the depths of Hell, where he has been cast for leading a rebellion against God, to Earth to tempt God’s new creation, man. Satan dominates this part of the poem, having more speeches and being displayed more forcefully than any other character. His opening speech to Beelzebub sets the stage:
“…What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me.…” (ibid., pages 95-96)
Satan’s mood is that he has just lost a battle and the war is to be continued. He gathers his chiefs together and proposes that they carry on the fight. He urges that they do it by guile rather than by war and they agree. He then offers to go alone on a mission to discover the new world and subvert man and they bow to his will.
Satan finds the gates of Hell guarded by a woman-serpent and a shapeless monster. The monster challenges Satan, who prepares to give it battle. However the woman-serpent tells Satan that the monster is their son, she being Sin and the monster being Death. Satan pleads with them to let him through the gates of Hell, promising them freedom and prosperity on Earth. They let him through and he begins the hard and risky journey to Earth.

From His throne the Father and the Son see the bliss of Adam and Eve in Paradise and Satan speeding to put an end to it. In their conversation the Father distinguishes Satan’s purposeful sin through self-temptation, which is unforgivable, and Adam’s sin through being tempted, which is forgivable. The Son urges mercy for man, but the Father answers that man cannot by his own power redeem himself from sin and so is utterly condemned unless someone suffers vicariously for him. The Son offers to do so.
The Father hails the Son as the new Adam and the redeemer of the world, proclaiming:
“And be thyself man among men on Earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth; be thou in Adam’s room
The head of all mankind, though Adam’s son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee,
As from a second root, shall be restored
As many as are restored, without thee none.”
(Ibid., page 141)
The Father goes on to say that the Son will be judged and die, will rise (and with him his ransomed brothers), and will rule over the universe until the final judgment. A hosanna by the heavenly host of angels follows.

Questions about the Reading

1. Is Satan like Prometheus? (See https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/1-aeschyluss-prometheus-bound/)
2. Is Satan’s fall analogous to Adam’s?
3. Why are sin and death linked in Milton and in the Bible?
4. Why is the portrait of Satan so much more vivid than that of God and the Son?
5. What is Milton’s portrait of Christ in this poem?

9. Montaigne’s The Essays

I’ve finally read another selection assigned in Religion and Theology, Reading Plan 4 of Encyclopedia Britannica’s The Great Ideas Program—Michel de Montaigne’s The Essays. It was my second look at a selection of Montaigne’s essays in my current reading from The Great Books of the Western World guided by The Great Ideas Program. The first was when I was working through Reading Plan 1, A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education. I introduced my report on that reading with this quotation from The New Encyclopedia Britannica: “In the 20th century, [Montaigne] is fully recognized in all his aspects as a great writer, and his public is worldwide. Most of his readers see him as friend, mentor, and master of the essay, of the ‘art of being truthful,’ and of the art of living.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974, volume 12, page 396)
In Religion and Theology Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain comment on three of Montaigne’s essays [I – XXXI on judging divine ordinances, I – LVI on prayers (their commenting separately on what he says in it about prayers and on what he says in it about the reading and the translation of the Bible), and II – XIX on liberty of conscience] and consider four questions about what he says in them. Here I’ll sketch Montaigne’s life, comment on the three essays guided by what Adler and Cain say about them, and pose the questions that Adler and Cain consider.

Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne was born Michel Eyquem on February 28, 1533, in the Château of Montaigne near Bordeaux. His father was a prosperous merchant and lord of the seigneury of Montaigne, and his mother was descended from a family of Spanish Jews that had recently converted to Catholicism. He was their third son, but by the death of his older brothers became heir to the estate.
Montaigne was brought up gently and until he was six was taught to speak only Latin. At that age he was sent to the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux. After seven disappointing years there, he studied law at Toulouse. In 1554 his father obtained a position for him in a new tax court in Bordeaux. In 1557 the court was abolished and its members were absorbed into one of the regional bodies that composed the Parlement of France, the king’s highest court of justice.
In 1565 Montaigne married Françoise de La Chassaigne, whose father was also a member of the the Parlement of Bordeaux. Although fond of women, he accepted marriage unenthusiastically as a social duty. However he lived on excellent terms with his wife and bestowed some pains on the education of their daughter, Léonore, the only one of six children to survive infancy.
In 1568 Montaigne’s father died, leaving him the lord of Montaigne. Two years later he sold his Parlement position, abandoned the name of Eyquem, and retired to his estate, intending to collect his ideas and write. While there (1571-1580) he wrote the first two books of the Essays, which were published in 1580 at Bordeaux.
The year after publishing the Essays Montaigne left the estate for extensive travel determined to find relief from internal disorders that had been troubling him. In 1581 while he was at La Villa in Italy, he learned that he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux. Returning there he served as mayor efficiently and was re-elected to a second term, which ended in 1585. He again retired to Montaigne but shortly after was driven from his estate by the plague.
Montaigne had begun revising the Essays almost immediately after their publication, perfecting their form and added new ones. While in Paris in 1588, he supervised the publication of the fifth edition of the Essays, the first to contain Book III. However he continued working on the Essays after returning to his estate, not writing any new books or chapters but adding numerous passages.
Sometime after returning to his estate in 1588, Montaigne was stricken with quinsy, which brought about a paralysis of the tongue. On the evening of September 13, 1592, he had his wife call together some of his neighbours so that he might bid them farewell. He requested mass to be said in his room and died while it was being said. He was 59.
The above is taken from the report which I made on the first selection of essays that I read from The Essays, https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/9-montaignes-the-essays/.

The Essays

On Judging Divine Ordinances
Montaigne classes as tellers of fables those who attribute reasons to God for the occurrence of our good and evil fortune, observing, “God, being pleased to show us, that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked something else to fear, than the fortunes or misfortunes of this world, manages and applies these according to His own occult will and pleasure, and deprives us of the means foolishly to make thereof their own profit. And those people abuse themselves who will pretend to dive into these mysteries by the strength of human reason.” (The Essays, in Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, volume 25, page 98). Adler and Cain agree with Montaigne, commenting, “From the religious point of view, the best thing is to accept whatever happens as the will of God, without presuming to know the inscrutable divine purposes and meanings behind events” (Religion and Theology, in The Great Ideas Program, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961, volume 4, page 146). I also agree with Montaigne, but I don’t agree with Adler and Cain that everything that happens is the will of God.

On Prayers
Montaigne encourages the use of the Lord’s Prayer and discourages our praying while our souls are impure and our praying for God’s help in our endeavours without considering whether what we want is just. Regarding the former, he notes that the Lord’s Prayer was the only prayer that he used regularly. Regarding the latter, he observes, “He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice, does as if a cut purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie” (The Essays, page 156). In agreeing with Mointaigne, Adler and Cain emphasize that prayer is a spiritual matter, concluding, “It is our whole life that attests to our devotion, repentance, at-one-ness with God. God finds the sacrifice of a contrite heart more pleasing than a stockyard full of burnt offerings or other outward show” (Religion and Theology, page 147). I also agree with Montaigne (and with Adler and Cain).
Midway in the essay, Montaigne comments on the increasing availability of the Bible. He criticizes the casual reading of it and affirms that only select people should study it and write about religion, observing, “A pure and simple ignorance and wholly depending upon the exposition of qualified persons, was far more learned and salutary than this vain and verbal knowledge [of ordinary people from translations into their own language], which has only proved the nurse of temerity and presumption” (The Essays, page 154). Adler and Cain observe that Montaigne was just supporting the policy of the Roman Catholic Church of his day and further on (in the questions about the reading; see below) consider whether ordinary believers can understand the Bible.

On Liberty of Conscience
Montaigne opens this essay by observing that in the current religious civil war good intentions resulted in vicious effects. He devotes most of the essay to a consideration of the noble qualities of Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor who renounced the Christian faith and tried to restore paganism. On the topic, he points out that although Julian allowed freedom of religion to inflame dissension between Christians with different beliefs so that they wouldn’t unite against him and paganism, the princes of Montaigne’s day allowed it to lessen dissension and thus to encourage peace, concluding, “I think that it is better for the honour of the devotion of our kings, that not having been able to do what they would [establish that the religion of country must follow that of its ruler, according to Adler and Cain], they have made a show of being willing to do what they could” (The Essays, page 326). Besides summarizing the essay, Adler and Cain observe regarding its focus on Julian, “Montaigne sees Julian as the prime example of the Christian tendency to approve all emperors who were pro-Christian and to condemn completely all emperors who were anti-Christian. Montaigne demonstrates that it is possible to give a perceptive and honest account of a man whom he considers ‘wrong throughout’ in religious matters” (Religion and Theology, page 149). I agree with them.

Questions about the Reading

1. Is religion, for Montaigne, a purely spiritual matter, without relation to the everyday, empirical world?
2. Does prayer have any effect?
3. How does Montaigne regard the social effect of religion?
4. Can ordinary believers understand the Bible?

8. Hobbes’s Leviathan

In an earlier article, https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/hobbess-leviathan/, I presented Thomas Hobbes’s view that a nation’s sovereign should have absolute power. In this article I’ll consider how he applies that view when civil law and religious belief are in conflict, guided by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain in the eighth reading of volume 4, Religion and Theology, of The Great Ideas Program (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961). The reading is on Chapter 12, “Of Religion”; Chapter 31, “Of the Kingdom of God by Nature”; and Part III (Chapters 32-43), “Of a Christian Commonwealth,” of Hobbes’s Leviathan. I’ll just share and comment on two of the quotations which Adler and Cain make from Leviathan and one of the questions which they raise at the end of the reading.

“I define a Church to be: a company of men professing Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign: at whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble.… [A] Church … is the same thing with a civil Commonwealth consisting of Christian men; and is called a civil state, for that the subjects of it are all men; and a Church, for that the subjects thereof are Christians. Temporal and spiritual government are but two words brought into the world to make men see double and mistake their lawful sovereign.” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, in volume 23 of Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952).

Hobbes viewed Christian sovereigns to be descendants of Abraham, Moses, the high priests (whom Hobbes claimed on the basis of Numbers 27:21 were sovereigns over Israel between Moses and Saul), and the kings who governed Israel by means of a covenant between God and the people of Israel. Thus he argued that Christians should obey them in both civil and religious matters, claiming that the role of the clergy is just to prepare people for the heavenly kingdom. He also argued that Christians should obey non-Christian sovereigns in the same way. How far he went is illustrated in this passage in which he considers what Christians should do if their sovereign forbids them to believe in Christ.

“To this I answer that such forbidding is of no effect; because belief and unbelief never follow men’s commands. Faith is a gift of God which man can never give nor take away by promises of rewards or menaces of torture. And … what if we were commanded by our lawful prince to say with our tongue we believe not; must we obey such command? Profession with the tongue is but an external thing, and no more than any other gesture whereby we signify our obedience; … whatsoever a subject … is compelled to in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men, but his governor, and the law of his country.” (Hobbes, Leviathan, pages 245-246)

Adler and Cain ask, “Do Scriptures support Hobbes’s contention that the civil authority should rule in religious affairs?” (Adler and Cain, Religion and Theology, page 138) They point out that in the Old Testament there were prophets who struggled against kings whom they condemned as godless men. They also refer to Jesus’s injunction, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21, ESV; all Scriptural quotations are from the ESV) and observe that in the early church staunch believers chose civil disobedience and possible martyrdom when imperial edicts conflicted with Christian faith. I agree with Adler and Cain that the Bible doesn’t support Hobbes’s contention. Moreover I think that the context of a Scriptural passage which he cited in support of it, Numbers 27:21 (see above), indicates otherwise, God’s telling Moses to “invest [Joshua] with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey” (Numbers 27:20). Thus God ordained that Joshua (and the judges) would have power in Israel as well as the high priest.

7. Dante’s The Divine Comedy

At rare moments in a cultural tradition, great works are created which sum up all the strands of thought and imagination that have gone into the making of that tradition. Such a unifying work is usually the work of a poetic genius. In the case of Western Christendom, that moment comes in the early part of the 14th century; the work is The Divine Comedy, and the poet is Dante Alighieri. (Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain, Religion and Theology, volume 4 of The Great Ideas Program, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961, page 109)

Thus Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain introduce their guide to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which I’ve now reached in my rereading of selections from Great Books of the Western World guided by The Great Ideas Program. They conclude their introduction to The Divine Comedy with this claim regarding it, “The result is both a literary masterpiece and an unforgettable view of man’s spiritual nature and destiny” (Adler and Wolff, page 110).

Adler and Wolff go on to: (I) consider the purpose and subject of The Divine Comedy; (II) survey its first two sections, “Hell” and “Purgatory;” (III) introduce the assigned reading, “Paradise;” (IV) identify and explain the significance of the figures that Dante meets in his ascent through Paradise; and (V) discuss three questions which they ask on Dante and The Divine Comedy. Here I’ll sketch the life of Dante, note what Adler and Wolff say about the purpose and subject of The Divine Comedy, and pose the three questions asked by Adler and Wolff.

Dante
Dante was born in Florence, Italy, in 1265. He received a rich education in classical and religious subjects. His idealized love for a beautiful girl, Beatrice Portinari, provided much inspiration for his writings. However, although grief-stricken by her early death, shortly afterwards he married Gemma Donati and they had at least three children.
Dante was active in the political and military life of Florence. He became involved in a political dispute between two groups, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. A group within the Guelphs that was hostile to Dante gained control of Florence about 1300 and banished Dante. He spent the last few years of his exile in Ravenna, where he died in 1321.
Dante began working on The Divine Comedy in about 1308 and completed it in 1321. It was his masterpiece, but his other works also “hold an important place in the history of Italian literature and make their essential contribution to the formation of a literary awareness and tradition, establishing new literary forms and new aims of thought” (The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974, volume 5, page 481).

The Purpose and Subject of The Divine Comedy
The original title of the work was The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, with “comedy” referring to its happy ending at the throne of God. “Divine” was added in the 16th century, expressing admiration for its high quality as well as indicating its sacred theme. Dante’s aim was to affect human character and action. In a letter to his patron he wrote: “The subject of the whole work, taken merely in its literal sense, is the state of souls after death, considered simply as a fact. But if the work is understood in its allegorical intention, the subject of it is man, according as, by his deserts and demerits in the use of his free will, he is justly open to rewards and punishments.” (Adler and Wolff, page 111)

Questions asked by Adler and Wolff:
1. Are we to take Dante’s story as an imaginative fiction or as an allegory of religious truth?
2. Who was Beatrice? What does she represent in the poem?
3. What are Dante’s theological views?

6. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica

In my rereading of selections from Great Books of the Western World guided by The Great Ideas Program, I’ve come to Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. The only systematic theology in the original Great Books of the Western World (Encyclopedia |Britannica, 1952), it occupies two volumes (19 and 20) of the 54 books in the set even though parts of it are omitted. (The 1990 edition of the set also includes selections from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.) It constitutes the sixth reading in the fourth volume of The Great Ideas Program, Religion and Theology, by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961).

Adler and Cain conclude their introduction to Aquinas’ Summa Theologica in The Great Ideas Program by observing that although it was questioned and even attacked as heretical in some of its doctrines in its day, “this synthesis of reason and revelation has become in modern times the accepted intellectual structure of the Roman Catholic Church” (Adler and Cain, Religion and Theology, page 86). They go on to consider: (I) its sources and form of exposition; (II) First Part, Question 1: The Nature and Extent of Sacred Doctrine; (III) Second Part, Part II, Treatise on Faith, Hope, and Charity, Question 1: Of Faith; (IV) Second Part, Part II, Treatise on Faith, Hope, and Charity, Question 2:Of the Act of Faith and Question 3: Of the Outward Act of Faith; and (V) six questions which they ask on the reading.

Here I’ll sketch Aquinas’ life, summarize the first section in Adler and Cain’s guide, pose the questions which they ask on the reading, and summarize briefly how they answered the questions.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas was born in 1224/25 near Naples and entered the University of Naples in 1239. In 1244 he joined the Dominicans, who immediately assigned him to study theology in Paris. Opposed to his doing so, his family abducted him on his way to Paris. However finding that nothing could shake his determination, they released him the following year.

Arriving in Paris in 1245, Thomas began studying theology at the Dominican convent under Albertus Magnus, a champion of Aristotle. When Albertus was appointed to organize a Dominican house of studies at Cologne in 1248, he took Thomas with him. After four more years of study, Thomas received his bachelor’s degree in 1252 and returned to Paris to teach and to train to become a master in theology, which he became in 1256.

Although only a little more than thirty-one, Thomas was appointed to fill one of the two chairs allowed the Dominicans at the university. However, in 1259, after three years of theological teaching there, he returned to Italy, where he remained nine years, teaching and writing. Suddenly, in 1268, he was called back to Paris to combat both those who were opposed the use of Aristotle in theology and those who were presenting an Aristotelianism seemingly incompatible with Christianity.

In 1272 Thomas was recalled to Italy to reorganize all the theological courses of his order. He went to Naples, where he taught at the university and continued to write. However his writing career came suddenly to an end on December 6, 1273. While saying mass that morning a great change came over him, after which he stopped writing. Urged to complete Summa Theologica, which he had begun in 1267, he replied: “I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and I now await the end of my life” (quoted in Great Books of the Western World, volume 19, page vi).

The following year Thomas became ill on his way to attend the Council of Lyons, stopped at the Cistercian monastery of Fossanova, and died on March 7, 1274.

Summa Theologica

“The Summa Theologica is a systematic exposition of theological knowledge, compiled from all available sources with the master purpose, of course, of setting forth and defending Christian doctrine” (Adler and Cain, page 87). Theological knowledge includes knowledge about man and the world as related to God as well as knowledge about God. The sources of Summa Theologica include classical Greek (especially Aristotle) and medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers as well as Christian thinkers.

Summa Theologica consists of three parts divided into treatises. (The Second Part is also divided into two parts.) Each treatise is divided into questions, which are divided into articles. The title of each article gives the question in affirmative form. It is followed by a general negative answer, introduced by “We proceed thus to the [number of the article] Article,” and a listing of specific negative points called “Objections.” Then Aquinas summarizes the opposite view, introducing the summary with “On the contrary.” The body of the article, introduced by “I answer that,” gives Aquinas’ judgment on the various views. Finally Aquinas replies to the numbered objections in order. According to Adler and Cain, this form was typical of the day.

Questions

Is the God of philosophical reason the same as the God of religious faith?
Adler and Cain give three possible answers‒the first affirming that “philosophy provides an objective norm for the religious view,” the second affirming that “religious faith gives the only true picture of God’s nature and attributes,” and the third affirming that “both the philosophical and religious views do justice to the divine reality” (Adler and Cain, page 102)‒and ask which view Aquinas takes. In Question I, Article 1, of the First Part Aquinas speaks favourably of both the philosophical doctrine and the divine revelation about God, suggesting that he takes the third position. However in the same article he affirms that “besides the philosophical sciences discovered by reason there should be a sacred science obtained through revelation” for “man’s salvation, which is in God” (Great Books of the Western World, volume 19, page 3), suggesting that he takes the second position.

Is a man free to refuse the gift of faith?
Adler and Cain suggest seeing Question VI, Article 1, of Part II of the Second Part. In it Aquinas says that two things are required for faith: that the things which are of faith be proposed to a person and that the person assent to the things which are proposed to him or her. He also says that for a person to believe his or her will needs to be prepared by God with grace. However he doesn’t specify whether or not a person can refuse the gift of faith.

How can sacred theology be a science if its origin is faith, and its aim salvation?
Adler and Cain note that Aquinas deals with this question in Question I, Articles 2 and 4, of the First Part. In Article 2 Aquinas compares sacred theology, which draws its first principles from divine revelation, with the sciences of perspective and music, which draw their principles from mathematics, and in Article 4 he decides that sacred theology primarily provides theoretical knowledge about God rather than practical knowledge about what people should do. However Adler and Cain claim that “the question is still an open one for us, since Aquinas’ answers are in terms of medieval notions of science and are inconclusive” (Adler and Cain, page 103).

How does a believer know that what he believes is divine revelation?
Adler and Cain observe, “The traditional answer is that he knows this through faith,” but continue, “But faith involves the gift of divine grace. How do we know that it is a genuine faith we have, and not mere conformity to what has been handed down to us?” (Adler and Cain, page 104). Aquinas claims that miracles and “the inward impulse of the Divine invitation” confirm the authority of Divine teaching but admits that the believer “has not…sufficient reason for scientific knowledge” (Great Books of the Western World, volume 20, page 399).

Is it legitimate for theology, as a scientific discipline, to use figurative expressions?
Adler and Cain note that Question I, Articles 9 and 10, of the First Part deals with the interpretation of scriptural symbols. In Article 9 Aquinas argues, “It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths under the likenesses of material things” (Great Books of the Western World, volume 19, page 9). In Article 10 he considers different senses that a word may have in the Bible‒historical or literal, allegorical, tropological or moral, and anagogical.

Does “faith” mean anything besides intellectual assent to propositions?
In Question II, Article 1, of Part II of the Second Part Aquinas concludes that “to believe is to think with assent” (Great Books of the Western World, volume 20, page 391; on the previous page he defined “to believe” as “the inward act of faith”). However Adler and Cain distinguish between faith as intellectual assent to propositions and as personal trust in God.