The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought

Chapter 7: Pierre Bayle

• Chapter 7 • Pierre Bayle A “Complicated Protestant”   The expression “complicated Protestant” needs some explaining. It comes from Antony McKenna’s response to the invitation from a certain university to speak on Pierre Bayle. McKenna had to decline but instead proposed the names of two colleagues: Gianluca Mori and myself . Mori, he wrote, “interprets Bayle as a crypto-materialist,” while Bost views him “as a complicated Protestant.” I found this characterization as to how I interpret Bayle to be right on the mark, since my reading of him aims to do away with all simplistic ones. To take just one example, in the crux interpretum of the relationship between faith and reason , my view fully admits Bayle’s complexity and allows one to place a reading that would favor fideism side by side with one that tends more toward atheism. But why is Bayle a “complicated Protestant”? It is because, in his life and in his thought, the question of Protestantism took different forms at different stages and in different contexts. I will list a number of these factors before grouping them under three broader rubrics: • Confessional adherence. Bayle’s adherence to Protestantism comes both from his education (as son of a pastor) and from a personal 185 186 • Hubert Bost choice (he returned to it after, at one time, renouncing his childhood religion). • Position in a social group. Wherever he goes (with the exception of his stay at Toulouse), Bayle never ceases to frequent Protestant networks, but this does not prevent him from connecting with Catholics wherever he goes as well. • The strong solidarity he shows with the Protestants when they suffer persecution and exile, as expressed in his correspondence and other writings from the time immediately preceding and following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. • The critical—at times even conflict-laden—relationship Bayle has with certain representatives of his church on a philosophicopolitical or theologico-political level over such events as the Revocation or the Glorious Revolution—as illustrated especially in the affair of the “cabale de Rotterdam” that broke out with his Avis aux réfugiés. • The thankless battle against any and every form of religious hijacking of politics. This criticism evolved throughout the course of Bayle’s life. At the beginning of his literary career, it comes to expression in his condemnation of superstition and the constraints of the conscience, but later it grows in intensity and is instead directed against the inspirations of the Enthusiasts and all other fanaticist manifestations. The initial anti-Catholicism gives way, at least in terms of intensity, to a criticism that is internal, directed against deviations within the Protestant camp. • The demand of epistemological coherence with respect to doctrine and the theologians who are supposed to defend it. This demand results in a clear and oft-repeated distinction between the method, objectives, and regulating authority of theology on the one hand and his own work as historian and philosopher on the other. • The question as to whether on the literary level there is such a thing as a “Protestant writing” or perhaps a “Reformed style,” which I will not treat here, but which is all the same most pertinent , as Roger Zuber and Ruth Whelan have recently shown at a conference in Paris.1 The above complexity of Bayle’s relationship to Protestantism becomes even greater when one considers the impact of certain personal circumstances. Bayle is also a “complicated Protestant” in that his status as Protestant, his adherence to Protestant doctrine, is never unaccompanied by torments and upheavals. When it comes to torments, we must think of the hundreds of pages Bayle devoted to the persistent problem of evil, an issue that surfaces particularly in Reformed theology because of its insistence on the sovereignty of God.2 With upheaval , we have in mind Bayle’s polemics and conflicts with a number of theological leaders (e.g., Jurieu or the “rationalists”), or even those affairs that on two occasions earned him an appearance before the consistory of the Walloon Church in Rotterdam. I will attempt to account for all the issues above by uniting them under three broader rubrics: • Biographical: This part considers the existential choices Bayle makes in his journey to belong to a particular social group and the conflicts that these choices cause. • Historical and political: Here we find the ideas Bayle forms concerning the evolution of Protestantism...