Strange Gods

by Susan Jacoby

  A Theologico-Political Treatise

  Containing certain discussions

  Wherein is set forth that freedom of thought

  And speech not only may, without prejudice

  To piety and the public peace, be granted;

  But also may not, without danger to piety and the public peace, be withheld.15

  Spinoza consistently rejected the claim that only supernatural punishments and rewards could induce humans to behave virtuously, and this struck at the heart of all Christian belief. Replying to one of many who criticized him for his nonbelief in heaven and hell, Spinoza wrote, “I see in what mud this man sticks. He is one of those who would follow after his own lusts, if he were not restrained by the fear of hell. He abstains from evil actions and fulfills God’s commands like a slave against his will, and for his bondage he expects to be rewarded by God with gifts far more to his taste than Divine love, and great in proportion to his original dislike of virtue.”16

  Spinoza also rejected the doctrine that the desire to sin is as evil as the actual commission of a sin, and this rejection had obvious political as well as religious implications. If looking on a woman with lust is essentially the same as actually committing adultery, then it follows that religious authorities have every right to inquire into and judge a man’s beliefs—to, in Elizabeth I’s words, “make windows into men’s souls.” And if thinking about the deficiencies of one’s civil rulers is equivalent to chopping off their heads, then it follows that a government has both a right and a duty to gain access to the thoughts of its citizens. Religious and governmental authorities have that right because their power is derived not from the consent of the governed but from a divinity. Yet Spinoza insists that men be judged, whether by church or state, according to their actions alone and not their thoughts—whether suspected or publicly expressed. “If we hold to the principle that a man’s loyalty to the state should be judged, like his loyalty to God, from his actions only—namely, from his charity towards his neighbours; we cannot doubt that the best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of religious belief.”17 But the religious loyalties of men were not judged only by their charitable or uncharitable actions but by their beliefs, or in many instances suspected beliefs, about supernatural matters having nothing whatever to do with natural charity. From this passage alone, it is easy to understand why Spinoza was considered an atheist and a dangerous political as well as antireligious radical.

  Spinoza would not have become the philosopher he became in a less liberal atmosphere. He might conceivably have been the same man, with the same beliefs (although that too seems doubtful), but his thoughts would certainly not have been published, circulated, and debated in the same way had they only been written “for the drawer.”*8 The same might be said of Locke. When he arrived in Amsterdam at age fifty-one, Locke had published nothing. During what was clearly a transformational period, he used his time in Holland to talk with other independent thinkers who had been hounded into exile by the governments and churches of their own countries. Although Spinoza was dead, Locke certainly met many of the philosopher’s admirers and enemies. He was well acquainted with nonconformist Protestant Collegiants, and his later writings would advocate complete toleration for all forms of Protestantism.

  At the time of Locke’s death, his library contained all of Spinoza’s published works as well as many political and religious disputations, in many languages, in which Spinoza’s ideas were vigorously debated. Locke, like Hobbes, Adam Smith, and David Hume, is much more widely recognized than Spinoza in the United States as an influence upon the Enlightenment views of the American founders, but the more radical Spinoza’s voice can be heard in both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It is not surprising that Thomas Jefferson’s library contained Spinoza’s collected works, which were more readily available at the end of the eighteenth century than in Locke’s time. Goldstein observes: “We can hear Locke’s influence in the phrase ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ (a variation on Adam Smith’s Locke-inspired ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of property’), we can also catch the sound of Spinoza addressing us in Jefferson’s appeal to the ‘laws of nature and of nature’s God.’ This is the language of Spinoza’s universalist religion, which makes no reference to revelation, but rather to ethical truths that can be discovered through human reason.”18

  It is generally agreed that Locke’s first two complete works—his Essay Concerning Human Understanding and A Letter on Religious Toleration—were published and widely circulated in England in 1689. The date—so soon after his period of exile in Holland—leaves little doubt that they were the product of his contacts with tolerationist thinkers in Amsterdam and that his studies abroad had not been disturbed (or unduly disturbed) by English politics. But Locke had already expressed his unequivocal opposition to forced conversion in a 1667 Essay Concerning Toleration that was not as widely circulated as his later works.

  …the forcible introducing of opinions keeps people off from closing with them by giving men unavoidable jealousies, that it is not truth that is thus carried on, but interest and dominion that is sought in making proselytes by compulsion. For who takes this course to convince anyone of the certain truths of mathematics? ’Tis likely ’twill be said that those are truths on which depends not my happiness. I grant it, and am much indebted to the man that takes care I should be happy, but ’tis hard to think that that [which] comes from charity to my soul should bring such ill usage to my body, or that he is much concerned I should be happy in another world who is pleased to see me miserable in this….

  But, after all this, could persecution not only now and then conquer a tender faint-hearted fanatic, which yet it rarely does and that usually by the loss of two or three orthodox, could it I say at once drive in all dissenters within the pale of the church, it would not thereby secure but much more threaten the government and make the danger as much greater as it is to have a false, secret but exasperated enemy rather than a fair open adversary….At least this is certain that compelling men to your opinion any other way than by convincing them of the truth of it, makes them no more your friends, than forcing the poor Indians by droves into the rivers to be baptised made them Christians.19

  Despite Locke’s opposition to all forced conversion, his overall appeal for toleration had definite limits. The first cautionary boundary was drawn around Catholics, because the Catholic Church did not recognize the religious rights of non-Catholics. “Papists are not to enjoy the benefits of toleration because where they have power they think themselves bound to deny it to others,” he wrote. “For it is unreasonable that any should have a free liberty of their religion, who do not acknowledge it as a principle of theirs that nobody ought to persecute or molest another because he dissents from him in religion.”20 Unlike the judge at Penn’s trial, Locke was not calling for a counter-Inquisition as a way of limiting the rights of Catholics. But he certainly was implying that the state has the right to regulate, if not the private worship, the public proselytizing of a religion that would, if it ever regained power, persecute non-Catholics.

  Then there is the famous “atheist exception” to Locke’s general argument for toleration. This passage is of particular importance in the United States, because it is the main argument used to this day (albeit by many who have doubtless never read Locke himself) to buttress the political position that the American government was founded on religion rather than on the separation of church and state. Locke could not have been more explicit about the atheist exception in his writings on toleration, and he never recanted this position (although there is some evidence in his later works that he accepted the possibility that atheists might be good citizens even if their ideas about morality were not based on religion). But he clearly laid out his basic objection to tolerance for atheists in his 1689 letter. “Lastly,” he emphasized, “those are not to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are th
e 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 atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”21 Again, this passage does not suggest that Locke wanted to burn atheists, any more than Catholics, at the stake. Opposition to forced conversion, from the standpoint of both civil peace and religious freedom, was an enormous step forward, coming as it did from advocates of tolerance who were not atheists but religious believers themselves. Locke would doubtless be described as a “moderate” in today’s political parlance (although that wishy-washy term, generally used by members of the mainstream media who believe devoutly that truth is always equidistant from two points, does not do justice to him). Spinoza would probably be considered a radical or an “extremist” by today’s pundits—as he was in his own time.

  The ground on which Locke and Spinoza undeniably do converge places them both on the right side of a history that was just beginning to assimilate the foundational principle of the age of reason—the right of people to think for themselves. In this new world, human beings might change their religious or political opinions, but they could not and might not be forced to do so. The philosophers of the early Enlightenment recognized that anyone who converts to a new ideology because his or her property or person has been threatened is most assuredly lying, and that any religious or civil government presiding over such forced conversions can only fear the communion of liars it has created.

  * * *

  *1 Religious intermarriage in the seventeenth century, even in the Netherlands, the most tolerant country in Europe, was a serious matter that nearly always involved the conversion of one spouse to the other’s faith. Little is known about Vermeer’s life, and the extent of his devotion to his adopted faith remains a matter of dispute among scholars, but he lived in the house of his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, in an area of Delft known as Papists’ Corner. The Vermeers, who had fifteen children (eleven of whom survived infancy), named one of their sons Ignatius, after the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola. Maria Thins had many connections among Jesuits in Holland—some of them wealthy enough to be art patrons.

  *2 The boy who would one day be known as the “Sun King” was crowned at age fifteen, in 1654, but his rule as an absolute adult monarch, unanswerable to a chief minister, began in 1661 and continued until his death in 1715.

  *3 Seven is the age at which the church historically deemed children to be morally responsible for their actions. Catholic children made their First Communion, and were also obligated to take part regularly in the sacrament of Penance, when they reached that age. To the modern mind, it may be somewhat unclear why this was used as a rationale for wrenching children from their parents, but the general idea was that at seven a child would be capable of “freely” choosing Catholicism if exposed to Catholic teachings—which, of course, would be impossible in a Huguenot family.

  *4 The law, De Heretico Comburendo, was aimed at the Lollards, followers of John Wycliffe. Wycliffe translated the Bible into Middle English, and his was the first vernacular translation to be widely used by those who could read. The literate population at the time consisted almost entirely of priests, monks, and some members of the nobility. Nevertheless, making the Bible available to even the small numbers of the literate, about forty years before the invention of the printing press, was considered a serious threat to religious orthodoxy.

  *5 There are many, especially in the Anglo-American world, who would include Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Hobbes’s writings in old age—he went on publishing prolifically until his death at age ninety-one—did show certain affinities with Spinoza. However, the views presented in Leviathan (1651), which endorses many kinds of censorship by the sovereign and provides wide latitude for deeming ideas subversive, could not be further from either Spinoza or Locke.

  *6 The word “freethinker” in English dates from the seventeenth century and was often used to describe not only the antireligious but denominations, such as Quakerism and, later, Unitarianism, whose members were committed to freedom of conscience for all.

  *7 The Tractatus was first published anonymously, but the real identity of the author was known to many intellectuals in Amsterdam.

  *8 This expression was used by Russian writers during the Soviet period to describe writing that could never be officially published in their own country. Eventually, frustration with writing “for the drawer” gave rise to the samizdat phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s.

  12

  MIRACLES VERSUS EVIDENCE: CONVERSION AND SCIENCE

  IN AUGUST 1663, Baruch Spinoza received a letter from Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the recently founded Royal Society in London. The Society, established in 1660, was England’s first organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge.*1 Oldenburg expressed the hope that Spinoza might join intellectual forces with Robert Boyle (1627–91), the chemist and physicist who was then the most prominent English scientist, and “unite your abilities in striving to advance a genuine and firmly based philosophy.” He urged Spinoza “especially, by the acuteness of your mathematical mind, to continue to establish basic principles, just as I ceaselessly try to coax my noble friend Boyle to confirm and illustrate them by experiments and observations….”1

  Boyle, born in Ireland, was the youngest son of the first earl of Cork, who was also the lord high treasurer of the English-ruled island (and, as such, the epitome of the class of overlords most hated by the Irish). He became a prolific experimental scientist, interested in everything from the improvement of agricultural methods to the possibility of preserving foods through vacuum packing, and is best known in the history of science for his experiments on the nature of air and the relationship among gases.*2 Along with Robert Hooke, another member of the Royal Society, Boyle invented a vacuum pump to carry out his experiments.*3

  Boyle was also a devout Christian, whose theological writings were as prolific as his scientific work. The relationship among Boyle, Oldenburg, and Spinoza is one of the more revealing episodes of the rapidly changing and increasing international body of religious and scientific interchanges throughout the seventeenth century. Boyle and Spinoza indirectly conveyed their irreconcilable views about the relationship between faith and science, as well as about the limits of individual experiments in explaining the natural world, to one another via their mutual friend Oldenburg. The correspondence sheds light on the challenge posed both by experimental science and by reason-based philosophy to religious orthodoxy, and on the many contortions used by men of reason to accommodate faith (and vice versa).

  The Royal Society’s motto, Nullius in verba, which may be translated as “take no one’s word for it,” was unintentionally ironic in that it was a true emblem of the challenge that real science—including both experiments and naturalistic philosophy—posed to orthodox religion. Many members of the Society (including Boyle and Oldenburg) held theological beliefs incompatible with the motto, because their faith depended entirely on the sacred, unchallengeable, unverifiable accounts in the Bible.

  The German-born Oldenburg (1619–77) was not himself a scientist but had studied theology. As a tutor (mainly for English boys), he traveled widely throughout Europe and became a master of networking for scientists and philosophers who wished to communicate their findings and opinions to one another. That is how he knew Spinoza, and it explains why Spinoza and Boyle used him as an intermediary.

  These informal networks connecting scientists of different countries, and enabling them to share findings through unofficial channels, posed a formidable challenge to the attempt of churches to control knowledge. A Galileo might be forced by the Inquisition to recant his views on the heliocentric solar system officially, but scientists throughout Europe knew about and discussed those views. Oldenburg was one of many who facilitated such communication.

  In his role as head of the Royal Society’s network,
Oldenburg was frequently the recipient of communications from scholars who disagreed about science as well as philosophy and theology, and, as so often occurs with go-betweens, he was frequently blamed for the conflicts and misunderstandings of others. (He was long held accountable for the hostility between Isaac Newton, who developed the theory of gravity, and his competitor Hooke, who formulated the theory of planetary motion. Oldenburg was largely absolved by late-twentieth-century scholars, who not only noted the gigantic egos of Newton and Hooke but blamed the conflict on the seventeenth-century procedure of “knocking men’s heads together to make the intellectual sparks fly…that the truth might emerge from the conflict of rival views.”2)

  Yet it is difficult to imagine that Boyle and Spinoza could ever have agreed on what constituted truth—or even the proper method of searching for truth. Boyle was more than devout; his was not the pro forma behavior of a man who could publicly accept the practices of an established church while carrying on, in untroubled fashion, with scientific experiments that might call into question the very existence of a purposeful Creator. Boyle had undergone what he described as a conversion at age thirteen, during a terrifying, unseasonal December thunderstorm in Switzerland. This was not a conversion from one faith to another but from the reflexive, tepid observances of the Church of England, in which he, as the son of a Protestant noble appointed by the monarch, had naturally been baptized, to an ardent form of faith—what would be seen by later standards as a “born-again” awakening. (Boyle’s experience certainly qualifies as a conversion by my standard of a shift in faith that radically changes one’s way of life. Most born-again Christians today do not call themselves converts unless they were not Christians at all before they developed a personal relationship with Jesus as their savior. Yet the difference between a born-again Christian whose faith requires him to take every word of the Bible literally, and one who simply regards the Bible as a human document depicting beliefs of a particular period in time, could certainly be deemed greater than, say, the difference between many Unitarians and Reform Jews.)