The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699

183 Pages·1975·4.834 MB·English

by  Robert Todd Carroll (auth.)

THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION OF
BISHOP EDWARD STILLINGFLEET
1635-1699
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
77
ROBERT TODD CARROLL
THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
OF BISHOP EDWARD STILLINGFLEET
1635-1699
Directors: P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis).
Editorial Board: J. Aubin (paris); J. Collins (St. Louis Univ.); P. Costabel (Paris);
A. Crombie (Oxford); I. Dambska (Cracow); H. de la Fontaine-Verwey (Amsterdam);
H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier ~Paris); T. Gregory (Rome): T. E. Jessop (Hull);
P. O. Kristeller (Columbia Univ.); Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); S. Lindroth (Upsala);
A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Orcibal (Paris); I. S. Revah t (Paris); J. Roger (Paris);
H. Rowen (Rutgers Univ., N.J.); C. B. Schmitt (Warburg Inst. London); G. Sebba
(Emory Univ., Atlanta); R. Shackleton (Oxford); J. Tans (Groningen); G. Tonelli
(Binghamton, N.Y.).
THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
OF BISHOP EDWARD STILLING FLEET
1635-1699
by
ROBERT TODD CARROLL
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1975
To my mother and the memory of my father
which she and I share, though in our own separate ways;
and to Leslie, Allison, and Jennifer
for their love and patience
© 1975 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or
to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-J3:978-94-0JO-J600-J e-ISBN-J3:978-94-0JO-J598-J
DOI:JO.J007/978-94-0JO-J598-J
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgments VII
Chapter
One INTRODUCTION
I. Reason and Religion .
II. Chillingworth's Common-Sense Anglicanism 4
III. Chillingworth's Legacy 10
IV. Chillingworth's Influence 12
Two SOCIETY, POLITICS, AND RELIGION. 14
The Career of an Anglican Conservative
I. Education and Ecclesiastical Career 14
II. Irenicum 18
III. Toleration . 22
IV. Glorious Revolution 32
V. Stillingfleet's Conservatism 37
Three THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 39
Part One
I. The Common-Sense Defense of Religion 39
II. The Problem of Certainty 42
III. Anti-Catholic Writings 50
IV. Protestant Infallibility 57
V. Stillingfleet's Theory of Certainty 62
VI. Reasonable Faith . 67
VII. Miracles 70
VIII. Miracles (continued) 73
IX. Conclusion 77
VI CONTENTS
Four THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 80
Part Two
I. Divine Faith 80
II. Divine Mysteries 83
III. John Toland and John Locke 86
IV. Summary 100
Five THE DEFENSE OF NATURAL RELIGION. 102
I. Introduction 102
II. Reason and the Principles of Natural Religion 106
III. The Existence of God 114
IV. The Immortality of the Soul 135
V. Summary 149
Six CONCLUSION . 151
ApPENDIX A : An Essay on Biography 159
ApPENDIX B : Stillingfleet's Influence . 161
BIBLIOGRAPHY 163
INDEX OF NAMES 175
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Richard H. Popkin is a
much easier task than to enumerate the various ways-some intangible
in which he has aided and guided me in my philosophical studies. Professor
Popkin's influence on my work will be obvious to all who have had the
pleasure of working with him, and I shall always be indebted to him for
his profound kindness, patience, and scholarly guidance.
I would also like to thank Professors Thomas Mark, Andrew Wright,
and Curtis Wilson for their kind and helpful criticisms which have aided
in the elimination of many errors which otherwise would have found their
way into this work. The errors which remain are, of course,. my own
responsibility.
I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Stanley Moore whose
demand for excellence in both teaching and critical scholarship has
significantly affected the attitude with which this work was undertaken, if
not the work itself.
Finally, I would like to thank the librarians at the Huntington and
University of California, San Diego, libraries for their assistance in
obtaining much of the research material necessary for the completion
of this work.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
I. Reason and Religion
a
"Si on soumet tout la raison, notre religion n'aura rien de mysterieux
et de surnaturel; si on choque les principes de la raison, notre religion
sera absurde et ridicule",l In this passage from his Pensees Pascal
summarizes what is perhaps the most basic problem for the defender of
the reasonableness of Christianity: the necessity of upholding beliefs which
Reason is incapable of judging, while at the same time claiming that those
beliefs are reasonable. Pascal does not state the problem in precisely these
terms regarding the limits of Reason, yet it seems clear that the dilemma
he is indicating involves the question of the relation of religious beliefs to
the compass of Reason. He does not, however-at least in the passage
cited-indicate that the problem is a question of either/or: either Reason
and no Religion, or Religion and Irrationality. Rather, he seems to be
simply stating what he perceives to be a simple matter of fact. If Reason
is allowed to be the judge of all Religion, then all Religion must abandon
any elements that are either contrary to reason or cannot be shown to be
in accord with Reason. On the other hand, if Reason is not allowed to
judge Religion at all, then Religion will be absurd and ridiculous. The
solution to the dilemma, if there is one, would seem to lie in the discovery
of some happy middle ground where Reason and the absurd might be
reconciled, so that one might claim that regardless of the fact that one's
religion involved the belief in matters that were not capable of being judged
as true or false, one's religion was nevertheless reasonable.
Pascal might not object, as Kierkegaard or Tertullian would not, to
stating the solution in terms which do not try to disguise the irrational
element in Christianity under the cover of such terms as "mystery" or
"supernatural". Others, such as John Locke, would prefer to say that
several of the propositions believed by most Christians to be true involve
1 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, pensee 273, in (Euvres de Blaise Pascal, ed. Leon Brunschvicg,
14 vols. (1904; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1965), XIII, p. 199.
2 INTRODUCTION
matters which are "above Reason". Only those matters which could be
demonstrated to be "contrary to Reason" could properly speaking be
called irrational or absurd. Thus, Christianity could be reasonable-as
Locke proclaimed in the titles of several works on the subject 2-even
though it involved the belief in matters which Reason was not competent
to judge.
The question of the relationship of Reason to Religion is, of course,
one that still haunts us, though it is not debated with the intensity and
fervor that such questions once generated. In the seventeenth century,
however, scarcely anyone in the intellectual mainstream could afford to
ignore the problems associated with Religion's claim to reasonableness.
Needless to say, some interesting and controversial solutions were worked
out by several seventeenth century philosophers. In England an Anglican
common-sense tradition developed in an attempt to defend the reason
3
ableness of Protestantism against the irrationality which, according to the
Anglicans, permeated the Catholic religion. The Anglican-Catholic
controversy centered around the question of the rule of faith, but the
debate quickly and naturally extended to include discussions on the nature
of the Church, infallibility, God, human Reason and a host of other
related topics. During the course of the seventeenth century the Anglicans
and Roman Catholics found little difficulty in producing a number of
able and competent adversaries. Few, however, are remembered today for
any contributions they might have made to the history of philosophical
thought. Yet, John Locke, who towers above his contemporaries in the
history of philosophy texts, had very little to say on the religious questions
of the period that had not been said before by his lesser contemporaries
if we may be granted the liberty of extending the term "contemporary" to
include those who were writing in their mature years while Locke was
still a young man with promise. In short, Locke wrote at the end of the
seventeenth century as well as at the end of an Anglican common-sense
tradition from which he derived a number of his opinions on Religion.
And although Locke's philosophy was viewed by several of his "pious"
contemporaries as having pernicious implications for Religion, it seems to
me that Locke's views were in general conservative, and whatever was
pernicious about them had been implicit in the mainstream of Anglican
theology throughout the century.
2 The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures (1695), A Vindication
of the Reasonableness of Christianity from Mr. Edwards' Reflections (1695), and Second
Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1697).
3 See Henry G. Van Leeuwen's study of this tradition, The Problem of Certainty in
English Thought,' 1630·1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970).
REASON AND RELIGION 3
It was Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), the Bishop of Worcester from
1689 until his death ten years later, who first called attention to the
implications for religion inherent in Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. In 1696 the Bishop devoted the tenth chapter of his
Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity to an attack on the work of a
self-proclaimed protege of Locke's: John Toland's Christianity not
Mysterious (1696).4 Locke took Stillingfleet's criticisms personally and in
a long letter set out to defend his religious orthodoxy. Stillingfleet replied
with an equally long letter in which he attempted to persuade Locke that
he did not question the philosopher's personal religious convictions and
that what was actually at issue were the implications for religion in the
Essay, implications which Stillingfleet believed Locke obstinately refused
to admit. Locke replied with another letter, longer than the first, defending
both his orthodoxy and his lack of obstinacy. Rather than being satisfied,
however, with Locke's defense, Stillingfleet was now convinced that Locke's
opinions-at least on the question of the relation of faith to reason-were
not orthodox after all, and that Locke was actually advocating a form of
fideism which left religion unreasonable and irrational. Locke replied with
a five hundred page defense in which he defended his fideism both on its
own grounds and through numerous appeals to Church authorities, ancient
and modern. Stillingfleet's death in 1699 prevented the controversy from
continuing, and one is left to wonder how many volumes Locke would
have needed to reply to one more letter from the Bishop.5
The Stillingfleet-Locke controversy is interesting in its own right, as it
pitted England's foremost philosopher of the day against her foremost
theologian. Yet, the debate itself, in all its richness and significance, can
only be partially and inadequately understood without placing it in its
historical context. The issues which came to the fore in the exchange of
letters between Locke and Stillingfleet at the end of the seventeenth
century had been bandied about by numerous lesser luminaries throughout
the century. Stillingfleet, in fact, had gained his reputation as the foremost
apologist for Protestantism in England by carrying on a variety of contro
versies in which he attempted to present Anglicanism as a reasonable
4 Locke denied having any but the most casual acquaintance with Toland, and he
rejected as slanderous the attempt to link Toland's "Socinian" ideas with his own
"orthodox Anglicanism." On Locke's claim to orthodoxy see his Letter to the Bishop
of Worcester in the Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (1823 : reprinted by Scientia Aalen,
Germany, 1963), IV, p. 4. The term "Socinian," as it was used in England during this
period, did not refer to an organized or systematic Religion or Church (such churches
did exist on the continent), but rather the term was used as an epithet for liberal theolo
gians or anti-trinitarians. "Free-thinker" would be an apt synonym in most cases.
5 Locke's letters to Stillingfleet comprise volume four of his Works.