Michel de Montaigne had a distaste for dogmatic judgments and fanatical beliefs. The events of his time confirmed him in his life long revulsion against narrow-minded bigotry. In that era Catholics and Protestants waged implacable warfare on one another to make their own faith dominant and to control the state. In France, Catholic supremacy was menaced by the Huguenot revolts: terrible massacres, such as that of St. Bartholomew's day, occurred; and horrible cruelties were committed on both sides.
Montaigne, himself a loyal Catholic, decided to withdraw from public life and live peacefully, as the only way to retain human decency and rationality. He sought tranquility of spirit and the cultivation of the mind. In his rural retirement he wrote essays which made him one of the great writers of the Western world.
When you read this religious essay, remember the whole country side around Montaigne was being devastated in an attempt to settle some of the issues he was writing about. These quiet, genial, direct writings on religious truth and inwardness represent a little oasis of peace and reason in a world of intolerance, cruelty, and passion. They are a permanent monument to a single individual's attempt to preserve human decency and moderation under the worst circumstances. In this essay, on judging divine ordinances, Montaigne warns us against something with which we are very familiar- the association of religion with success, or the claim to have God on one's own side in wars and other enterprises. Have faith, some preachers tell us, and you will be successful in all your earthly endeavors. This country, some people assert, is "under God;" thus we are bound to win out in any international conflict. This is the pragmatic view of religious faith.
Montaigne begins, and ends, by pointing out that we are being very presumptuous to claim that we know the secret works of the divine mind. He charges such a claim is impious. He closes with these words from the book of wisdom: " wo amongst men can know the counsel of God? Or who can think what the will of the Lord is?" ( Wisdom 9:13.)
He also charges that such a coupling of religious faith with material success is logically absurd. When we win, we conclude that God's approval of us is manifest; but when our enemies, win, we do not conclude that God planned it that way, save maybe as a fatherly punishment. God is never on the side of our enemies. When people whose religious doctrines are opposed to ours die in a horrible manner, we see the hand of divine judgment at work; but not so when people of our own views suffer similar fates. On the contrary , says Montaigne, God having shown us... ( that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked something else, than the 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 our own profit.) 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 meaning behind events. Montaigne would have approved of Abraham Lincoln's humble acceptance of the origin and result of the Civil War as the action of divine providence- not favoring either side, but a judgment on both. ( See Lincoln's Second Inaugural address).
Our second selection, on prayers, is perfectly consistent with the first one. It inveighs against the pragmatic use of prayer, to attain material ends, and urges that prayer come from purity of heart and genuine turning toward God. Now comes a discussion that can start a firestorm of whether the "Bible and "Theology" should be made available to the ordinary worshipper. This is like the answer to the question; ( Whose a better team-Yankees or Red Sox?).
Montaigne says that he is completely baffled by those people who are able to combine " devout" offerings and prayers to God with a life in which they do the very opposite of God's will. In deed, they even implore God's help in their nefarious enterprises. What goes on in the minds of people who can jump so easily from fervent religious affirmations to unethical acts?
They seem to be unconscious of their schizoid state. They are in what Montaigne calls " an indigestible agony of the mind," ( the original meaning of "agony" is conflict.")
Their theology is odd-one sided. They realize that God is supreme power, but they don't understand that He is supreme righteousness and justice. Montaigne sees the pragmatic attitude, the seeking of material results, at the bottom of such duplicity. The people who take such attitude either do not realize that prayer is a spiritual matter, concerned with inner "Holiness and Truth".
They simulate being in such a state in order to attain material rewards. Witness the man who told Montaigne that he had practiced a religion he detested solely to get ahead in the world.
The externalities of religious acts are easy to mimic, says Montaigne, because so much of it is mere routine, inane mumbling, and posturing. The fact that we fail to recognize that prayer is inwardness.
We do not recognize that we can only pray to be better, not have more. It is blasphemous to give one hour to God, the rest to the devil, says Montaigne. It is our whole life that attests to our devotion, repentance, at oneness with God. God finds the sacrifice of a contrite heart more pleasing, than any outward show.
Lets look at Montaigne views on the reading and translation of the Bible. Montaigne speaks as a good Catholic. He makes it clear from the beginning, although he claims only the status of personal opinion for his views. He supports the policy of the Church of his day in not making the scriptures available to the mass of the laity. He is aghast at the wide spread circulation, they have received as a result of the Reformation, and the translation of the Bible from Latin into the common tongues.
In the first place, he asserts, the Bible is something very special and sacred, and can only be approached with deep spiritual preparation. Secondly, what it has to say can only be understood by profound study, and is not a matter of merely literal meanings expressible in ordinary everyday language. Only a select, authorized few can understand the Bible.
( Neither is it a book for every one, but the study of select men set apart for that purpose, and whom almighty God has been pleased to call to that office and sacred function. The wicked and ignorant grow worse by it. Montaigne. The pure "Mysteries of piety" should not be "profaned by the ignorant rabble," a group Montaigne would include princes, as well as gabbling women and children who, he claims, discuss canon laws. He sides with the view that... all contentions and dialectic [disputations on theological subjects] were to be avoided, and to give into formulas of faith established by the ancients.
Indeed Montaigne would keep theology entirely separate from philosophy and the humanistic disciplines; sacred doctrine is not to be stained by contact with profane learning. He would approve an edict preventing anyone who is not a public "professor of divinity, " including himself- from writing unreservedly about religious subjects. He sets up as a model for our admiration a legendary Christian community whose inhabitants are a paragons of religious practice and ethical conduct, but" so simple that they understand not one syllable of the religion they profess and wherein they are so devout."
Does Montaigne in his last remark literally, or does he intend it ironically.
Montaigne refers to the situation in which he and his readers found themselves. It was a time of religious civil war. He was on the "Catholic" side, but felt uneasiness over the passion and violence and injustice of persons on his own side.
Montaigne, devotes the greater part of the end of this digression of the noble character of emperor 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 were anti-Christian.
Montaigne gives an honest account of a man whom he considers " wrong through out" in religious matters. He ridicules gently what he considers Julian's superstitiousness, but shows an open understanding of the man's religious attitude. He also demonstrates that striving for historical truth can accompany a firm Christian faith. He questions the authenticity of the legend that Julian recanted his "apostasy" at the time of his death. (referring to the suppose utterance), "Thou has conquered, O Nazarene."
The connection between discussion of "Julian the Apostate" and the problem of liberty of the conscience. Montaigne says: that Julian introduced freedom of worship in order to produce factions in the Christian Church.
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