Abū Hāmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Ghazāli: The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Michael E. Marmura translation. Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2000.

 

Born in 1058 and trained in Islamic law, al-Ghazāli is famous—in some circles, notorious—for claiming that Allah acts according to his will, not according to reason. He has been interpreted as teaching this by many Muslims, who have been known to abominate reason as the bringer of heresy and atheism. And it is surely true that the will plays a decisive role in al-Ghazāli’s understanding of Allah. As Michael E. Marmura remarks in his excellent introduction, the Asharite school of Islamic theology in which al-Ghazāli was trained regarded not only the original creation of the cosmos as an act of God but “regarded all temporal existents as the direction creation of God, decreed by His eternal attribute of will and enacted by His attribute of power.” That is, “what humans habitually regard as sequences of natural causes and effects are in reality concomitant events whose constant association is arbitrarily decreed by the divine will.” Miracles or divine disruptions of the apparently natural course of things are perennially possible, and the familiar Muslim coda, “God willing,” reflects this mindset. An examination of The Incoherence of the Philosophers suggests that the matter is more complicated than that. What is the status of reason according to al-Ghazāli, in this polemic?

“I have seen a group,” he writes, “who, believing themselves in possession of a distinctiveness from companion and peer by virtue of a superior quick with and intelligence, have rejected the Islamic duties regarding acts of worship, disdained religious rites pertaining to the offices of prayer and the avoidance of prohibited things, belittled the devotions and ordinances prescribed by the divine law, not halting in the face of prohibitions and restrictions.” For these duties, these rites, and the divine law they substitute “multifarious beliefs” produced by “speculative investigation, an outcome of their stumbling over the tails of sophistical doubts that divert from the direction of the truth”—mere “imaginings akin to the glitter of the mirage.” This group consists of philosophers, men who deny “revealed laws and religious confessions” and reject “the details of religious and sectarian [teaching], believing them to be man-made laws and embellished tricks.” In “disdaining to be content with the religious beliefs of their forebears,” however, they have only “mov[ed] from one [mode of] imitation to another”; that is, far from ascending from the cave of customary opinions where they worshipped the shadows of man-made idols to the daylight of nature, they have merely encamped in another cave. Worse, they have abandoned the true light of divine, not merely natural law, for a cave beneath the cave of mere heresy, the cave of atheism and materialism. There is no lower rank in “God’s world” than that of these men, as “imbecility is… nearer salvation than acumen severed from [religious belief]; blindness is closer to wholeness than cross-eyed sight.” Al-Ghazāli’s stated intention “is to alert those who think well of philosophers and believe that their ways are free from contradiction by showing the [various] aspects of their incoherence.” He does not deny that Muslim theologians also contradict one another, contenting himself with saying that this isn’t his topic here.

He accuses philosophers of obscurantism, of claiming that “the metaphysical sciences” are esoteric, accessible only to those well versed in the arcana of mathematics and logic. On the contrary, al-Ghazāli replies, mathematics has nothing to do with metaphysics and logical argumentation can be understood by many more than the very few men who become philosophers. He proceeds with twenty “discussions,” sets of arguments similar in form to the writings of Christian Scholastics, who present the arguments of their opponents followed by point-by-point refutations. Discussions 1-16 address metaphysics; discussions 17-20 pertain to physics or nature. The two metaphysical issues in dispute are the philosophers’ claim that the cosmos is eternal and that God knows only universals, not particulars, and therefore does not intervene providentially in the cosmos He has created. The physical or natural issue in dispute is the philosophers’ (but especially Avicenna’s) teaching on the human soul and his denial of the resurrection of the body.

In arguing that the cosmos is eternal, philosophers offer three proofs. First, they say, if God is eternal and has created a cosmos at some point in time, making a possibility into a reality, this must mean that God Himself changed from a non-creator to a creator. But this is a contradiction, unless religionists pretend that there has been a “proceeding of the temporal from the Eternal without a change of affairs in the Eternal by way of power, instrument, time, purpose, or nature.” To counter this, al-Ghazāli says that there is no contradiction if the world was created in time “by an eternal will that decreed its existence at the time in which it came to be.” To this view is not to think that the “willer” changed to such a degree that He was no longer Himself; eternity isn’t sameness. Nor is creation in, or before, time necessarily impossible, a fact defying reason, if the willer withheld His act of creation—especially if “duration and time are both created.” “It is incumbent on you [philosophers] to set up a demonstrative proof according to the condition of logic that would show the impossibility of this.” When conjoined with power, will “differentiates a thing from its similar.” Light and darkness are opposites; they contradict one another. But to will into existence two opposite things is not to exercise one’s will in a self-contradictory way if the underlying intention behind that act serves some overarching rational purpose. The idea of willed creation would only be a violation of reason if one claimed that the Creator created ‘blackwhite.’ If philosophers were to assert that the inability to create ‘blackwhite’ calls into question divine power, omnipotence, al-Ghazāli answers: “the impossibility of realizing what is not possible does not indicate impotence.”

Philosophers also claim “that whoever asserts that the world is posterior to God and God prior to it” means either that God is “prior in essence, not in time, in the way that one is prior to two” or that God “is prior to the world and time.” If the former, then the Creator-created relationship is causative in the way a person’s movement causes his shadow to move with him; but these events presume the coexistence both the person and the movement. If the latter, then there must have been a time in which the world did not exist but God did; “before the existence of time, infinite time would have existed, and this is contradictory.” 

Al-Ghazāli replies that “time is originated and created, and before it there was no time at all,” as “God is prior to the world and time.” “By priority we mean only the appropriation of existence to Himself alone.” God exists with or without the world. In terms of reason, not of will, “a first beginning that is preceded by nothing” is not “disallow[ed],” that is, it is not self-contradictory. This doesn’t prove that ex nihilo creation occurred, only that it is not an irrational concept. When philosophers argue that “it is impossible for [the world] to be impossible and then to become possible,” he answers that he world “is eternally possible” in the sense that God could conceive it at any time, but it only became possible when He made it so.

Philosophers also observe that every “temporal existent” consists of both form and matter. Matter is prior to form, thus prior to every temporal existent, since existence consists of some form, a form distinguishing it from all other existents, imposed upon matter. Since “matter does not have matter [receptive of it]”—because there is no pre-matter matter, matter must not originate in time. It must be eternal. Al-Ghazāli answers that the question “reverts to a judgment of the mind.” No self-contradictory judgment of the mind is possible, in the sense that no one can form a mental image or idea of ‘blackwhite.’ Why, then, assume that matter is eternal, rather than God? Or vice-versa, one might add, but al-Ghazāli does not need to prove the eternality of God, only the rational possibility of an eternal God rather than eternal matter. He can afford to leave the question of whether matter or God is eternal, so long as he can show that the claim that God is eternal, not matter, is not irrational. “As regards affirming the true doctrine,” instead of merely refuting the philosophers’ doctrine, “we will write another book concerning it after completing this one, if success comes to our aid, God willing, and we will name it The Principles of Belief.“

“To refer possibility, necessity, and impossibility back to rational judgments is correct.” In that, the philosophers are right. They are also right to say that “the meaning of the mind’s judgment is [its] knowledge and that knowledge requires an object of knowledge.” Their mistake is to assume that this means that this knowledge need be knowledge of matter—that matter is prior to mind. But, for example, “one cannot conceive in existence a color which is neither white nor black nor some other color. The form of being a color, however, is established in the mind without detailing [different species of color], and one says of it that it is a form whose existence is in minds, not in concrete things.” “If this is not impossible, then what we have mentioned”—namely, ex nihilo creation—is “not impossible.” 

Philosophers also claim that the world is eternal—indeed, “pre-eternal,” if eternity means perpetuity in time ‘going forward.’ That is, they claim that the world not only has “no beginning for its existence” but also has “no end.” It will “continue to be,” always. Al-Ghazāli replies to this claim with the same arguments he used against the anti-creation claim. “The bringing about of existence and annihilation obtains through the will of the one endowed with power”; in both creation and annihilation, God “in Himself does not change, what changes being only the act.” “So long as the occurrence of an event by an eternal will is conceivable, there is no difference in the state of affairs whether what occurs is a privation or an existence.” 

Al-Ghazāli accuses philosophers of “obfuscation” when they call God “the world’s enactor and maker”; “with them this is metaphor, not reality.” He defines “agent” as “a willer, a chooser, and a knower of what He wills,” but philosophers use that term to mean “not one who wills, but has no attribute at all,” and for them ‘God’ is really the eternal cosmos, which “proceeds by compulsory necessity.” Logic is a form of necessity; to the philosophers ‘God’ acts rationally but without will, and ‘God’-nature-cosmos causes all things to happen by rational necessity. This is why al-Ghazāli emphasizes the will of God, the freedom of God, and it is also one reason why he can be interpreted as considering will to be prior to reason.

But that is not the claim he makes here. On the contrary, “if we suppose that a temporal event depends for its occurrence on two things, one voluntary and the other not, reason relates the act to the voluntary.” This is why, if one man murders another by throwing him into a fire, we call the man the killer, not the fire; the man has agency. At the same time, unlike men, the creator-God always wills rationally; His acts have a rational necessity backed by His power, which gives them physical necessity, but He chooses what acts He takes freely. Whether before or after the creation of time and space, God chooses among a set of acts, any one of which must be rational because His intention is without self-contradiction. It is true that human beings—created, limited beings—cannot fully understand “the essence of God.” Therefore “do not think on the essence of God” but on His creation. But that doesn’t mean that God has no essence, nor that He is not essentially rational; it means that He is all-knowing, and you are not.

Having discussed the philosophers’ inability to prove that the creator-God does not exist, and that ‘God’ is really the eternal world or cosmos, al-Ghazāli next denies their ability to prove that God does exist, and that He is one, not many. The ‘God’ of the philosophers is a First Principle, an impersonal, unmoved mover. They argue that without assuming the existence of such a First Principle, one commits the fallacy of infinite regress. While affirming the logical necessity of avoiding an infinite regress, al-Ghazāli simply points out that positing the existence of a creator-God equally avoids it. Further, if the cosmos is eternal and necessarily generates individual things over time, would this not mean that the number of things is infinite? Yet how can physical things, even things as small as atoms, be infinite in number and still increase in number?

Philosophers attempt to prove the oneness of their ‘God’ by tracing causation back to an origin which necessarily must have been singular, inasmuch as there can be only one causeless Causer. Once causation began, plurality began, but not before that. “The basic point for understanding their doctrine consists in their saying [that] the essence of the First Principle is one, the names becoming many by relating something to it, relating it to something, or negating something of it.” “The existence of [what is] other than Him is from Him.” Their ‘God’ is Intellect; He is a being “aware of Himself” who “apprehends Himself.” “Hence, His essence is an intelligible,” devoid of matter. “The existing order is a consequent of the intelligible order in the sense that [the former] comes through [the latter”; “His knowledge of the whole is the cause of the emanation of the whole from Him,” the consequence of His self-knowledge. He is not really a ‘He,’ a person, at all, but an impersonal, all-powerful, self-knowing and therefore all-knowing power.

Muslim theologians take a very different view. “Our knowledge” has two “divisions”: “knowledge of a thing that occurs as a result of the form of that thing”; and “knowledge which we invent, as with something whose form we did not perceive but which we formed in our souls, then brought into existence, in which case the existence of the form would be derived from knowledge, not knowledge from [the] existence [of the form].” God’s knowledge is “in accordance with the second division.” Given their “shortcomings,” our lack of supreme power, “our conception is not sufficient to bring about the existence of the form but requires, in addition to that, a renewed will that springs forth from an appetitive power” that “moves the muscles and nerves,” which then attempt to make things happen. It might be said that human beings lack perfect knowledge, perfect power, and indeed perfect will, inasmuch as we do not unfailingly will the good. That is why human beings need God to rule them. 

By contrast, the philosophers deploy such terms as knowledge, power, and will in describing God only as metaphors, since in their opinion God is not a person. As an impersonal being, their ‘God’ ‘knows’ only universals, not particulars. That is, there is no providence in the Biblical sense, only a set of general laws that prevail in the cosmos as it proceeds in its course. ‘God’ therefore does not intervene on behalf of any individual or set of individuals. But again, al-Ghazāli maintains, they have no proof that this is necessarily the case. “The realities of divine matters are not attained through rational reflection—indeed… it is not within human power to know them.” It is within human power to know His creation, including his revealed law. That is, we know what He has willed, and what His will is, insofar as He has chosen to reveal those things to us. We are entitled, even obligated, to reason about those things. When we attempt to reason about His essence, however, we quickly come to the limit of our reasoning. This doesn’t mean that His essence is unreasonable or arbitrary, nor that His will is unreasonable or arbitrary. 

It also does not mean that human beings cannot entertain reasonable suspicions about God’s essence. He must have an essence because “existence without quiddity and a real [nature] is unintelligible.” For example, “A rational person would indeed by astonished by a party that claims to delve deeply into [the world of] the intelligibles but whose reflection in the end leads to [the conclusion] that the Lord of Lords and the Cause of Causes has basically no knowledge of what occurs in the world.” If that were true, “What difference is there between Him and the dead, except for His knowledge of Himself? And what perfection is there in His knowledge of Himself, with His ignorance of what is other than Himself?” On the contrary, “all things other than Him” have “originated from His direction through His will”; as an agent in the true sense of the term, God’s will entails God’s knowledge, “for that which is willed must necessarily be known to the willer.” Because all things “are willed by Him and originated in His will,” God is all-knowing. This includes self-knowledge, which is necessary for Him to know what He wills, to know His own will.

According to the philosophers, “God enacted the world by way of necessity from His essence, by nature and compulsion, not by way of will and choice. Indeed, the whole [of the world] follows necessarily from His essence in the way that light follows necessarily from the sun.”; The ‘God’ of the philosophers “has no power to stop His acts,” which means, as he has emphasized that the ‘acts’ of ‘God’ do “not at all entail knowledge for the agent,” which isn’t really an agent in al-Ghazāli’s fuller definition of the term. But they have no sound proof of that claim which does not assume what they are trying to prove, namely, the existence of ‘God’ as they define ‘Him.’

Philosophers argue as follows: God is unchanging; particulars change; knowledge of change changes the knower; ergo, God cannot know particulars, only universals. God knows that solar eclipses occur, but knows nothing about any particular eclipse. Such knowledge is ‘beneath’ Him. Similarly, God “does not know the accidents of Zayd, Amr, and Khālid, but only man [in the] absolute [sense] by a universal knowledge.” By this doctrine “they uprooted religious laws in their entirety, since it entails that if Zayd, for example, obeys of disobeys God, God would not know what of his states has newly come about, because He does not know Zayd in his particularity.” God would be incapable of punishing violations of His own law. In response, Al-Ghazāli simply repeats that no one, even a philosopher, can know the limits of God’s knowledge, if in fact there are any.

Having established the limits of human knowledge of God, al-Ghazāli turns from metaphysics to the natural sciences. These are “rational sciences”; “the religious law does not require disputing them,” but they are within human powers to dispute, to investigate, to reason about. There are eight rational sciences pertaining to nature: physics, astronomy, knowledge pertaining to generation and corruption, meteorology, geology, botany, zoology, and psychology (which includes the science of both human and animal souls). “There is no necessity to oppose [the philosophers] in terms of the revealed law in any of these sciences,” except in four areas: their claim that the relation between observable causes and effects is necessary, making miracles impossible; their claim that “human souls are self-subsisting substances, not imprinted in the body,” and therefore death permanently severs the soul from the body; their claim that souls cannot be annihilated; their claim that “it is impossible to return these souls to bodies.”

Regarding the first question, philosophers do admit that miracles or disruptions of “the habitual courses of nature do occur” in “three instances”: in prophecy, when the imagination becomes so powerful and accurate that it surpasses ordinary sensual perceptions; in intuition, especially the perception of the several steps of a logical argument before the argument has been fully laid out; and in the “practical faculty,” which induces the body to obey the soul—perhaps as the result of ascetic exercises, for example. 

Al-Ghazāli begins with a critique of our understanding of causation, a critique that anticipates the critique David Hume advanced nearly seven centuries later. “The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary.” We suppose that fire is necessary to burn cotton, but that is only because we have seen this occur so many times that we assume a cause-and-effect relationship. But “a thing’s existence with a thing does not prove that it exists by [the thing].” “The continuous habit of their occurrence repeatedly, one time after another, fixes unshakably in our minds the belief in their occurrence according to past habit.” But God might have caused the cotton to burn. “He knew that He would not do it at certain times, despite its possibility, and… He creates for us the knowledge that He will not create it at that time.” But that is all.

Al-Ghazāli’s choice of occurrences that are naturally uncaused are unfortunate, as he supposes that some animals are spontaneously generated from the earth, and not by sexual reproduction. He goes so far as to claim that such matters are “beyond human power to know.” He retreats to firmer ground by defining the impossible as that which “is not within the power” of being enacted. He offers several examples of genuine impossibilities, things impossible even for God. “Combining blackness and whiteness” is impossible. For an individual to put himself in two places at once is impossible. To truly will something without knowing what one is willing is impossible. And it is impossible “to create knowledge in inanimate matter” inasmuch as “we understand by the inanimate that which does not apprehend.” That is, a self-contradictory action is impossible. But if we read in sacred Scripture that God moved the hand of a dead man, this is against nature but not impossible, since although the previous willer of movement is dead the current willer is alive, knowledgeable, and powerful.

Nor is the human soul necessarily self-subsistent, a substance that does not occupy space—as suggested in the Platonic dialogues, for example. Al-Ghazāli makes no objection to the philosophers’ description of the attributes of the human soul into “motive” and “apprehending” parts. The “motive” parts, the ones that ‘make things happen,’ include the desires, the power to activate nerves and muscles, and the “discerning” part, which can consider theoretical and prudential matters. The “apprehending” parts of the soul include the imaginative faculty, which perceives forms and the “estimative” faculty, which perceives meanings; so, for example, a baby goat perceives the form of a wolf along with its meaning, that is, the fact that it is dangerous to baby goats. The third “apprehending” part of the soul is the “cogitative” faculty, which combines the forms the imagination perceives to envision a flying horse or a flying machine. It is the “discerning” part of the soul which discovers whether a flying horse or a flying machine is possible in principle and, if possible, how one might come into existence. The practical dimension of the discerning part also can be made to rule the bodily faculties; when it does so we say that the soul has virtues.

Notice that none of this assumes that God treats human beings as if they are puppets whose every movement He directs, as per Ash’arite doctrine. Rather, we Muslims only “object to their claim of their knowing through rational demonstrations that the soul is a self-subsistent substance.” “We deny… their claim that reason alone indicates” that this is so, that a human being could know this without the guidance of revelation, “the religious law.” At best, their proofs indicate probabilities. They cannot demonstrate such claims. Nor can they demonstrate the immortality of the human soul. It is indeed immortal, but we know this with certitude only by revelation, not by reason. 

As to the disposition of the human soul after death, philosophers hold that souls endure “everlastingly” in a condition either of indescribable pleasure or pain, the life of pleasure having been reserved for “perfect, pure souls,” the life of pain for “imperfect, tarnished souls.” A soul attains perfection in this life through knowledge, purity through action. Knowledge leads to perfection because it perfects the rational faculty, whereas “preoccupation with the body makes [one] forget himself,” fail to cultivate the distinctively human characteristic of his soul. We know that “the intellectual pleasures than bodily pleasures” because “ferocious animals and pigs” seek only bodily pleasures, and because men are ashamed when caught in the commission of acts of adultery or cowardice. Action—works and worship—are needed for “the soul’s purification,” as the undisciplined body will cause the soul to become preoccupied with bodily desires, pleasures, and pains.

Muslims do not disagree with “most of these things.” The soul survives the separation from the body; certain pleasures are superior to others. “But we know this through the religious law,” not “by reason alone.” What Muslims deny is the philosophers’ contention that bodies are not resurrected along with souls. Life in God’s Paradise will offer “both kinds of happiness, the spiritual and bodily”; Hell will impose both kinds of misery. The one will be the more perfect pleasure, the other the more perfect pain. “What the religious law has conveyed [as true must be believed” if the soul would enjoy eternity in Paradise, avoid eternity in Hell. As usual, philosophers cannot disprove the possibility of the religious law’s teachings and commands by convicting it of self-contradiction.

In conclusion, al-Ghazāli calls the philosophers infidels on three main grounds. They claim that the world is eternal. They deny that God’s knowledge encompasses “temporal particulars”—i.e., they deny God’s providential rule. And they deny the resurrection of bodies on Judgment Day. He also calls philosophic doctrine “close to that of the Mu’tazila,” the main Islamic sect rivaling the Asharites.

With regard to the incoherence of philosophic doctrines—that they are not merely diverse but contradictory—al Ghazāli’s charge cannot be denied, any more than he would deny the countercharge that the doctrines of pious Muslims contradict on another. He shows the difficulty in formulating a logical proof of the existence either of God or of ‘God,’ leaning conspicuously on Koranic assertions to tip his argument in the direction of piety. Averroës replied in defense of Aristotelianism with his own polemic, The Incoherence of the Incoherence. 

 

 

 

William Shakespeare: Love’s Labor’s Lost.

 

In the royal park of the King of Navarre, Ferdinand outlines a singular policy to his three principal attendants, the lords Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine. Ferdinand is modeled after Shakespeare’s contemporary, Henry III of Navarre. By the time Shakespeare wrote this play, Henry had seized the throne of France and had been crowned Henry IV, the first of the Bourbon line. Navarre was a Huguenot sanctuary, but after assuming the kingship of France Henry abjured Protestantism for Catholicism as a means of consolidating his authority in a predominantly Catholic country. As a reader and friend of Montaigne, however, in 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, establishing toleration of Protestantism in an attempt to assuage religio-political animosities in the country. Shakespeare’s Ferdinand is also poised to ascend to the French throne, but by romantic rather than military means—means appropriate to comedy.

Berowne is Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron, a noted Protestant soldier called the ‘Thunderbolt of France; Henry made him Marshal in 1594, but despite this distinction his loyalty remained suspect; he was beheaded on charges of treason a few years after Shakespeare’s play was first staged. Longaville is Henry I d’Orléans, duc de Longueville, a Protestant soldier who had defeated Catholic forces in a 1589 battle; Dumaine is Charles, duc de Mayenne, an ardent member of the Catholic League and former rival of Henry for the throne (they reconciled in 1595). Henry’s court thus consisted of aristocrats representing the two religious sects which had very recently put their arms down after years of civil war. Ferdinand’s court at Navarre is already a miniature version of the French court at the time of the play. 

King Ferdinand needs to unite Navarre, especially its ruling class. For this, he seriously proposes a Renaissance version of a plan devised (with characteristic irony) by Plato’s Socrates, who said that unless philosophers become kings, or kings truly and adequately philosophize, a just political regime will prove impossible. As neither the king nor his attendants are philosophers engaged in reasoned inquiry into the conventions of their country, perhaps they can truly and adequately philosophize or, less ambitiously, become more thoroughly the liberally educated men Renaissance scholars and politicians alike esteemed. 

If they are not philosophers, lovers of wisdom, why would they do such a thing? The king appeals not directly to their logos but to their thumos. “Fame, that all hunt after in their lives, / Live regist’red upon our brazen tombs, / And then grace us in the disgrace of death; / When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, / Th’ endeavor of this present breath may buy / That honor which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, / And make us heirs of all eternity.” (I.i.1-7). He proposes a vast war, a war of the soul, but most emphatically not the kind of soul-war which has wracked Christian Europe. He will redirect his aristocrats’ souls towards becoming “brave conquerors” in the “war against your own affections,” the “huge army of the world’s desires” (I.i.8-10). “Navarre shall be the wonder of the world” (I.i.12), both a place of wondering and a place wondered at, esteemed, a Jerusalem of learning. “Our court shall be a little Academe”—a modern version of Plato’s school—”still and contemplative in living art” instead of roiling in war and vaunting in the art of war (I.i.13-14). 

To this end, the king has ordained that a comprehensive three-year fast, whereby he and his attendants—all young and unmarried—will abstain from strong drink, much food, and all women for the next three years. They will arm themselves for this psychomachia by pledging their honor with “deep oaths” now to be signed (I.i.23). The young king has a bit of ‘secularized’ Calvinism about him.

Longaville and Dumaine readily consent. For these three years, “the mind shall banquet, though the body pine,” Longaville avers, inasmuch as “dainty bits / Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits” (I.i.25-27). Dumaine, too, pronounces himself “mortified” against “the world’s delights,” intent rather on “living in philosophy” (I.i.32). Berowne has reservations. “Not to see a woman” in three years (I.i.37)? Harsh sumptuary laws? Even sleep deprivation in order to spend more time studying? “O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep” (I.i.47). His earlier, verbal, oath he had “sworn in jest,” but an oath in writing is a serious thing (I.i.54). “What is the end of study, let me know” (I.i.55).

Ferdinand answers that the end of study is “to know which else we should not know” (I.i.56). You mean, Berowne asks, “things hid and barr’d… from common sense” (I.i.57)? Yes, “that is study’s god-like recompense” (I.i.58). Oh, but of course, Berowne rejoins, I have no problem in swearing to do those sorts of things—to study where I might dine well, especially on days when I am forbidden to do so; or to “study where to meet some mistress fine, / When mistresses from common sense are hid”; “Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath / Study to break it, and not break my troth” by some exoteric show of compliance (I.i.63-66). This is (following Socrates’ own formula) to know what one doesn’t know. “Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no” (I.i.69). But mere book-learning will never do. “Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun, / That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks. / Small have continual plodders ever won, / Save base authority from others’ books.” (I.i.84-87). You, King, may aspire to Platonism but you will end in Scholasticism. [1] There is no real glory or honor in that. In this, Berowne plays the role of the girl who laughed at the philosopher who stumbled while gazing up at the heavens. Such “earthly godfathers of heaven’s light”—the astronomers—”have no more profit of their shining lights / Than those that walk and wot not where they are. / Too much to know is to know nought but fame; / And every godfather can give a name” to a star he can never reach (I,i.88-93). The Christian-Aristotelian peripatetics—those Roman Catholics who couldn’t beat the duc de Biron in battle—cannot make practical use of the phenomena they know merely by observation, in order to name. The end of the king’s new regime is as little likely as Socrates’ politeia. 

Ferdinand dismisses Berowne’s common-sense critique of Scholasticism as a self-contradictory effort “to reason against reading!” (I.i.94), and his loyalists concur. Berowne replies with an argument founded on nature as it is, obedient to the cycles of time. The king conceives of time as a death-dealing scythe against which only fame can triumph, a fame which only a three-year ‘regime’ of study governed by a uniform rule of conduct can win. But real nature is seasonal. “Why should proud summer boast / Before the birds have any cause to sing? / Why should I joy in any abortive birth? / At Christmas I no more desire a rose / Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows; / But like of each thing that in season grows; / So you, to study now it is too late, / Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.” (I.i.102-09). The king would require book-study of four men, including himself, who should instead be thinking of marrying, then of producing heirs to their estates. (The real King Henry would indeed die heirless.) “Study evermore is over-shot,” Berowne comments, after reviewing the king’s laws; “While it doth study to have what it would, / It doth forget to do the thing it should; / And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, / ‘Tis won as towns with fire—so won, so lost” (I.i.141-44). The king’s war for fame overlooks the conditions of life itself.

Nonsense, the king replies. He shall “of force dispense with this decree”; it will then rest “on mere necessity” (I.i.145-46). But, Berowne replies, such necessity will simply cause men in their weakness to fail in their compliance, “For every man with his affects is born, / Not by might mast’red but by special grace” (I.i.149-50). Spoken like a Protestant, but a prudent one. I shall sign your oath, my liege (Paul the Apostle also requires obedience to rulers), but I predict that I, who am the last to sign, “will last keep his oath” (I.i.158).

Meanwhile, Ferdinand offers a form of recreation to relieve his austerity regime. There is now in Navarre “a refined traveller of Spain,” a “child of fancy,” a man “in whom all the world’s new fashion is planted,” and so a fit object for courtly entertainment at his expense (I.i.161-62,168). This Quixote, named Don Adriano de Armado, will serve as court jester; Berowne and Longaville relish the prospect of mocking such a comical land-armada of a man.

But first the court must deal with the first arrested violator of the king’s decree, the rustic Costard, who arrives in the custody of Constable Dull with a letter from Armado. Costard has been caught speaking with a country wench, Jaquenetta; “such is the simplicity of man to hearken after / The flesh” (I.i.211-12), he confesses. The king reads aloud Armado’s verbose letter, in which he witnesses to Costard’s crime while professing to be “besieged with sable-colored melancholy” (I.i.225). Amused into mercy, Ferdinand sentences the malefactor to a week of bran and water and to the rule of Armado. Considering the evidence before him after the king and the other two attendants have left, Berowne tells Costard, “I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat / These oaths and law will prove an idle scorn,” to which the rustic can only reply with similar humor, “I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl” (I.i.287-291).

Costard won’t become Armado’s Don Pancho, as he already has one—his page, Moth. Armado wonders at his own melancholy; much badinage later (all of it to Moth’s advantage), he answers his own question, confessing his love for “a base wench,” none other than Jacquenetta (I.ii.57). His complaint against Costard was simply an attempt to eliminate his rival, a rival soon to be returned to him as a servant, despite his intention to get him out of the picture. Meanwhile, he begs Moth for examples of “great men” who “have been in love” (I.i.63). The examples the boy offers—Hercules and Samson—should be far from comforting. When Moth tells him that Samson’s beloved Delilah had a green complexion (for jealousy) and “a green wit” (an immature one), Armado insists that “My love is most immaculate white and red”—colors symbolizing purity and modesty (I.ii.86-87). This should be no source of confidence, master, as such colors mask “maculate thoughts” (I.ii.88). To illustrate, he breaks into a lyric, saying that blushing cheeks betoken faults, whiteness fear of their discovery. “A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red” (I.ii.103). Rhyme or poetry sets prudent limits on a too-schematic rationalism that readily ossifies into convention. 

When Constable Dull delivers Costard (Berowne evidently having delegated that duty), Armado decides to impose a fast on his rival and to take Jaquenetta to the royal park, where she’ll be the “day-woman” or dairy-maid (I.ii.125). He confesses his helplessness against Cupid, the boy-god whose “glory is to subdue men” (I.ii.167)—even men of physical strength such as Samson and Hercules, even a man of wisdom, Solomon. He can only appeal for strength to “some extemporal god of rhyme,” lest he “turn sonnet” (I.ii.169-70). Ex-temporal: beyond time. Turn sonnet: become transformed, as in an Ovidian poem, not into another form of nature but into a poem. Only prudence can save him now—a virtue absent from his moral repertoire.

Elsewhere in the royal park, a delegation has arrived from France, a delegation headed by the king’s daughter. The Princess (a fictional character, as King Henry III had no children) is accompanyied by attendant ladies Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine, Lord Boyet and two other lords. She has come to negotiate a dispute over the neighboring French province of Aquitaine, described tellingly by Lord Boyet as “a dowry fit for a queen” (II.i.8). Given the King of Navarre’s edict, she cannot approach him without permission, so she sends Boyet to request an audience. The Princess views Boyet with some suspicion, deprecating his flattery and telling him, when he says he is “proud of employment” in the mission, “All pride is willing pride, and yours is so” (II.i.35).

She prudently asks her attendants for character assessments of the principal members of the king’s court. Each has encountered one of them previously. Maria judges Longaville as “a man of sovereign parts, peerless esteem’d / Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms” (II.i.44-45), if a bit too sharp-witted, a man “whose edge hath power to cut” and does so too readily (II.i.50). Katharine considers Dumaine “a well-accomplish’d youth,” but one who has “most power to do most harm” because “least knowing ill” (II.i.56-58)—a certain hazardous naivete. As for Berowne, Rosalind admires his merry disposition and ready wit, his “sweet and voluble” discourse (II.i.76). The Princess suspects aloud that her ladies are “all in love” and, given Lord Boyet’s remark about Aquitaine being a fit dowry for a queen, the possibility of marriage indeed seems to waft in the spring air.

King Ferdinand, however, dampens the mood when he arrives in the park, failing to extend his hospitality by inviting his visitors to the castle, given his decree to keep women at arm’s length. He is all business. Having fought on France’s side in the religious wars during his father’s time, Ferdinand expects France to honor the agreement to pay the expenses, half of which France still owes. In the meantime, Navarre holds part of Aquitaine as surety. The problem is that a letter from the French king intimates that the money has already been paid, and so Navarre should yield back the territory; yet Ferdinand has no record of the payment. “Dear Princess, were not his requests so far / From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make / A yielding ‘gainst some reason in my breast, / And go well satisfied to France again.” (II.i.149-53). He requests proof of payment, but Boyet has none, promising that the diplomatic pouch containing them will arrive tomorrow. Please then, Princess, “deem yourself lodg’d in my heart, / Though so denied fair harbor in my house” (II.i.173-74). He leaves, but Berowne stays behind to flirt with Rosaline, who rejects him; Dumaine and Longaville soon return to confess their interest in Katharine and Maria, respectively. Boyet answers them with courtesy laced with irony, then suggests to the princess that the king is in love with her.

It is easy for romantically-inclined modern readers to overlook the stakes, although the courtly audience of Shakespeare’s play would not. There is the potential for a serious diplomatic incident, here. The French king does not likely send his daughter to head a mission to the bachelor king of Navarre without political intent. Does he hope to marry her off and cement the alliance? Or does he hope to evade a debt by sending such a charming delegation of ladies? What is love’s labor? How might it be lost? What will be the consequences if it is lost? With no war against common enemies to unite them, will France and Navarre (now with a foothold on French soil) turn on each other? This comedy might or might not end happily.

In still another part of the forest, Armado grants Costard his liberty and money in exchange for carrying a letter to Jaquenetta, evidently trusting that these boons will overcome any feelings Costard may still entertain for the girl. On the way, Costard meets Berowne, who gives him a letter for delivery to Rosaline. One cannot expect these arrangements to end well, given Costard’s mixed motives, to say nothing of his doltishness. 

In her part of the park, the Princess expects to leave soon, after proof of payment arrives. Meanwhile, she prepares, Diana-like, to hunt a deer, conferring with the forester who directs her to “a stand where you may make the fairest shoot” (IV.i.11). Pretending that he praises her beauty with the word “fairest,” she builds the exchange into a criticism of King Ferdinand’s policy. To accept praise for beauty would be vain; better to deserve praise for merit. Praise is a form of glory or fame, the ambition with which Ferdinand sought to fire the lords in support of his regime of austere pursuit of learning. But “Glory grows guilty of detested crimes, / When, for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part, / We bend to that the working of the heart; / As I for praise alone now seek to spill / The poor deer’s blood that my heart means no ill.” (IV.i.31-35). The quest for honor interferes with more natural loves, great and small. As for the greater hunt she and her attendants evidently have undertaken, however, “praise we may afford / To any lady that subdues a lord” (IV.i.41-42). In that case, honor honors nature.

Speaking of which, Costard arrives, misdelivering Armado’s letter to Jaquenetta while announcing it’s a letter from Berowne to Rosaline. Badinage about arrows and pricking ensues. The Princess, her attendants, and Boyet now know more about ongoing love aspirations than anyone in Navarre. They have achieved a substantial diplomatic advantage, thanks to superior intelligence-gathering. How will they exploit it?

The final pair of characters now enter the play. The schoolmaster Holofernes and his curate friend, Sir Nathaniel, are passing the time with Constable Dull, a man neither of great learning or of conspicuous piety. Costard and Jaquenetta enter with the love-sonnet letter they suppose to be from Armado. They need someone to read it to them. Holofernes does so; in recognizing the real author, he tells them to deliver it “into the royal hand of the King,” who will find in it evidence of Berowne’s disobedience (IV.ii.134). Sir Nathaniel approves of this charge as a thing done “in the fear of God, very religiously,” an act of deference to a ruler, as commanded by Paul the Apostle (IV.i..138). But Holofernes cares more about the author’s literary style, which he deems “very unlearned, neither savoring of poetry, wit, nor invention” (IV.ii.149-50). He promises a thorough critique at dinner.

Scholars have identified in ‘Holofernes’ a demi-anagram for the name ‘John Florio,’ the famous scholar who first translated Montaigne into English. They point to the contemporary debate over the question, ‘Love or Learning?’—the theme of the play. The eminent Cambridge University scholar Gabriel Harvey was the leading polemicist among the defenders of learning, called the ‘Artists.’ Cambridge University graduate and satirist spoke for the ‘Villainists,’ who argued in favor of love and of experience generally—Nashe contending, for example, that the debtors’ prison from which he had also graduated offered more useful instruction than the university did. Florio was a learned man who translated the learned Montaigne, a man who nonetheless commended experience, subtly praising Machiavelli rather than the Renaissance humanists, whose vast learning both Montaigne and Machiavelli could be said to have matched. Shakespeare, well-acquainted with Florio’s translation, would have noted the paradox. And he would have known Florio’s stricture, “It were labor lost to speak of love,” since there are so many books about it. Obviously, Shakespeare disagreed, and his Florio-figure is a figure of fun. But will Shakespeare side with Machiavelli’s understanding of the lessons of experience, given the framework of geopolitical plotting of the story he tells?

It’s now the Navarrians’ turn to learn the truth about one another, about how they fought love with the law and love won. Berowne soliloquizes about his losing attempt to conquer his desires. “By heaven, I do love,” he confesses to himself, “and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy”—the melancholy of the lover who knows not whether he’s loved in return, who must admit he cannot maintain his self-sufficiency, even in banding together with his peers in the study of books (IV.iii.11-12). Seeing the king approach, he hides, quickly seeing that Ferdinand too has turned sonneteer. In his poem for the Princess, the king takes up the traditional imagery of his lady’s eyes, which are something like the sun, making her lover’s tears shine in “thy glory through my grief” (IV.iii.33). “O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel / No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.” (IV.ii.36-37). The rhyme of love sets limits on the prose of reason.

The king himself now hides, as Longaville arrives, his own sonnet in hand, unwittingly to join the king’s “sweet fellowship in shame” (IV.iii.45). Against courtly and scholarly rhetoric, “the heavenly rhetoric” of Maria’s eye, “‘gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,” has “persuad[ed] my heart to this false perjury,” this evasion of the king’s law (IV.iii.56-58). If rhymes set limits on reason, they also set limits on love as “guards on wanton Cupid’s hose,” in attentive Berowne’s words (IV.iii.53). To make rhyme requires the speaker to set his passion to music, to give it measure, to form unreason to a rule of reason. Set to rhyme, love’s reason is not the king’s ‘rationalist’ or book-learned reason; it is rather the kind of reason right for loving and for lovers. For Longaville, poetry enables him to justify his love as lawful: “A woman I forswore; but I will prove, / Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee. My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; / Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me, / Vows are but breath and breath a vapor is; / Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, / Exhal’st this vapor-vow, in thee it is. / If broken, then it is no fault of mine; / If by me broke, what fool is not so wise / To lose an oath to win a paradise?” (IV.iii.61-69). Berowne immediately spots the fallacy, which consists of the argument’s false premise, “which makes flesh a deity / A green goose a goddess—pure, pure idolatry” (IV.iii.70-71). The argument will need a natural, not a theological premise, if it is to hold.

No time for that, as Longaville too hides and Dumaine (as he supposes) soliloquizes on Katharine. “Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit,” Berowne remarks (IV.iii.96). Dumaine is a man of fewer words than the others. His imagery isn’t sunlight or tear-water or the earth, nor does he attempt initially to reason either legalistically or theologically. For him, the ruling image is another element, air. “Love, whose month is ever May, / Spied a blossom passing fair / Playing in the wanton air.” (IV.iii.98-100). Love “wish’d himself the heaven’s breath,” so that he could blow on the cheeks of his beloved: “Air, would I might triumph so!” (IV.iii.106). The theology comes at the conclusion of Dumaine’s sonnet, not at the beginning, as he pleads, “Do not call it sin in me / That I am forsworn for thee,” since Jove himself loved Juno, “turning mortal” for her love (IV.iii.112-16). Like Dumaine, Jove loved one who resisted his advances. He won her heart by transforming himself into a helpless little bird, which the kindly goddess did love; he then transformed himself back into a god, and his lady’s love kept on. Dumaine’s sonnet is the intended bird, singing to his lady. He will send “something more plain,” too, more prosaic, “express[ing] my true love’s lasting pain” (IV.iii.117-18)—as pitiable, he hopes, as Jove in a form of helplessness.

In turn, each hidden man steps forward, Longaville to accuse Dumaine, Ferdinand to accuse Longaville, Berowne to accuse the king and the others. He justly rebukes their “inconstancy,” asking rhetorically, “When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?” (IV.iii.177). Right away, as it happens, as Costard and Jaquenetta pop up, his love-sonnet to Rosaline in hand.

This calls for a conference to settle on a change of policy and to formulate a justification for the correction. Fortunately, Berowne already had argued against the king’s regime, and so has an argument ready, this time addressing an audience eager to give its consent.

“Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace: / As true we are as flesh and blood can be,” he begins (IV.iii.210). Since “young bloods doth not obey an old decree” (IV.iii.213); since beauty makes old age feel “new-born,” giving “the crutch the cradle’s infancy,” being “the sun that maketh all things shine” (IV.iii.240-42); since all these things are true, Berowne is more than happy to fulfill the king’s request to “prove our loving lawful, and our faith not torn” (IV.iii.280-81). It is really quite simple, Berowne explains. For young men to swear “to fast, to study, and to see no women” in obedience to a king who rules by convention is nothing less than to commit “flat treason ‘gainst the kingly state of youth” (IV.iii.288-89)—that is, against nature, which ordains the seasons of life. His companions have spoken of nature’s light, earth, water, and air, but they have forgotten nature’s other element, fire. “From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: / They are the ground, the books, the academes, / From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire” (IV.iii.298-300). “Where has any author in the world / Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye” (IV.iii.308-09). Where did you, who came so recently to sonneteering, find “such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes / Of beauty’s tutors have enrich’d you with?” (IV.iii.318-19). Surely not in “leaden contemplation” (IV.iii.317). Love “first learned in a lady’s eyes / Lives not alone immured in the brain, / But with the motion of all elements / Courses as swift as thought in every power, / And gives to every power a double power, / Above their functions and their offices.” (IV.iii.323-27). Love is what sets the other elements of nature in motion, harmonizing and vivifying all the senses, and also every virtue, whether it be courage, wisdom, or moderation. Love civilizes the savage and, with respect to justice, “plant[s] in tyrants mild humility” (IV.iii.345) by teaching them the happiness of unforced reciprocity. Therefore, let us “lose our oaths to find ourselves” (IV.iii.357). As the Gospels teach, “charity itself fulfills the law, / And who can sever love from charity?” (IV.iii.360-61).

Having declared war on love, which he’d conceived as low, unworthy of the human mind, newly-converted King Ferdinand now declares war for Saint Cupid: “Soldiers, to the field!” (IV.iii.362). Newly respectful of nature’s time, and timing, the king urges haste in preparing for the campaign, “some entertainment for them in their tents” (IV.iii.369), “for revels, dances, masks, and merry hours / Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers” (IV.iii.375-76). He drafts none other than Quixote-Armado for the task, who in turn engages Latin-mangling pedant Holofernes and the English-bungling curate Sir Nathaniel for the task—men who “have been at a great feast of language and stol’n the scraps,” as impish young Moth remarks, men who “have liv’d long on the alms-basket of words,” as plain-speaker Costard puts it (V.i.35-38). Under Holofernes’ direction, they will present a pageant of the Nine Worthies, famous conquerors from Joshua to Pompey the Great. As there are nine worthies but only four players to represent them, Holofernes will play several. Never will so many owe so little to so few.

With the gentlemen absent, the ladies are beginning to bicker amongst themselves, with Rosaline and Katharine exchanging barbs. Pronouncing the exchange “a set of wit well play’d,” the Princess redirects their hostilities toward the suitors, asking them to compare the love-sonnets they’ve received (V.ii.29). Rosalind deprecates Berowne’s flattery: his “numbers” or metres are “true,” but his “numbers” or reckoning exaggerated; according to him, “I were the fairest goddess on the ground” (V.ii.36-37). With characteristically greater asperity, Katharine dismisses Dumain’s effort as “a huge translation of hypocrisy, / Vilely compil’d, profound simplicity” (V.ii.52-53). As for Longaville, Maria confines herself to opining that she wishes his poem shorter, the accompanying chain of pearls longer. The Princess finds the King Ferdinand’s poetry equally verbose, although she has kinder words for the diamond necklace he enclosed with it. (“We shall be rich ere we depart” [V.ii.1]). In all, “We are wise girls to mock our lovers so” (V.ii.59), and as for the young men, “none are so surely caught, when they are catch’d / As wit turn’d fool; folly, in wisdom hatch’d / Hath wisdom’s warrant and the help of school, / And wit’s own grace to grace a learned fool.” (V.ii.69-72). As one scholar has observed, in Love’s Labor Lost “the word wit is used more often than in any of the other plays” [2]; among other things, the play is a witty meditation on wit. When learning outpaces prudence it acts as an accelerant to “fool’ry’s” fire, providing false proofs of stupid thoughts (V.ii.76).

The lovers have arrived, Boyet announces, and they have disguised themselves as Russians. He overheard their planning session—quite by accident, or so he says. He advises the ladies to prepare their defenses, and the Princess is battle-ready: “Saint Dennis to Saint Cupid!” (V.ii.87). The Cupidians of Navarre will meet the forces of Saint Denis, the third-century martyr who brought Christianity to Gaul, was eventually named Bishop of Paris, then martyred by the Romans. One might have expected the Princess to invoke St. Louis, patron saint of the French monarchy, but instead she chooses the patron saint of the French people. A republican at heart? Perhaps rather a just sharer in monarchy. The real French king who preceded Henry of Navarre, Henry III, provoked a popular uprising after murdering his brothers; his criminal attempt to secure his authority undermined it. Under those circumstances it is better to invoke the saint of the people instead of the so-recently betrayed saint of a monarchy turned unsaintly.

Be this as it may, she tells her attendants to confuse the invaders by posing as—one another, masking themselves and claiming each other’s identities (Rosaline will play the Princess). Each man will woo the wrong woman. Crucially, based on Boyet’s somewhat slanted account, the women assume that the men come only to mock them. Just as there’s no fool like a learned man, so “there’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown” (V.ii.153). 

The Navarrians walk into the trap and exit soon after, verbally cut and bruised. “The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen / As the razor’s edge invisible,” Boyet gloats (V.ii.256-57). The Romans beheaded Saint Denis; his devotees have beheaded the followers of Saint Cupid. The Princess pronounces it to have been an unequal battle: “Better wits have worn plain statute-caps,” the headgear of commoners (V.ii.281). After his beheading, Saint Denis was said to have carried his head in his arm, continuing to preach sermons; Boyet predicts that the Cupidians will be equally resilient. When they do return, Rosaline advises the Princess, we should mock them for their silly disguises, and so they will.

Berowne has now understood Boyet, that “ape of form, Monsieur the Nice” (V.ii.325); he sees what the Princess had seen, that Boyet wears a mask of flattering words. When the king worries that the ladies see through the men’s disguises and now will “mock us downright,” Dumaine recommends, “Let us confess, and turn it to a jest” (V.ii.389-90). Very well, but this will only reinforce the ladies’ conviction that they are being toyed with. They in turn reveal their ploy of disguise to the still-unsuspecting men, to which intelligence Berowne can only scold Boyet: “Might not you / Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?” (V.ii.472-73). Boyet smirks, “Full merrily / Hath this brave manage, this career, been run” (V.ii.483-84). 

As the men prepare to retreat a second time, Costard arrives, announcing the approach of the Nine Worthies. When the king worries that the impending farce will only “shame us” further, Berowne cogently replies that that can scarcely happen, given the ignominy of their defeat. What is more, “’tis some policy / To have one show worse than the King’s and his company” (V.ii.509-11). As for the Princess, her appetite for watching men make fools of themselves has yet to be sated: “That sport best pleases that dost least know how” (V.ii.514); and most acutely, when “zeal strives to content, and the contents / Dies in the zeal of that which it presents,” such “confounded” form “makes most form in mirth,” as “great things laboring perish in their birth” (V.ii.515-18). “A right description of our sport, my lord,” Berowne tells Ferdinand (V.ii.519), and indeed it is a fine assessment of the nature of incompetence in love and poetry, to say nothing of philosophy, piety, and play-writing. The Princess has explained how love’s labor is lost, how any kind of labor can be lost.

As hapless Holofernes and his troupe essay their entertainment, the forces of saints Dennis and Cupid unite for the first time in heckling them. Eventually, the Princess takes pity on the poor players; she is less thoroughly merciless than she has seemed. Even Armado begins to see how silly he is. Player and audience alike have moved toward self-knowledge—the purpose of all true comedy, which holds up the mirror to human nature.

Human nature is political, and a messenger arrives to remind everyone of that. “Thou interruptest our merriment,” the Princess complains, but the news is grave: her father, the king of France, is dead. Graciously excusing herself from Navarre, with both an apology for any offense given and a reminder that the men had earned it, she thanks the King Ferdinand for granting her “great suit” for recovering Aquitaine (V.ii.727)—the first mention of it since the beginning of her embassy. She has successfully completed the diplomatic mission her father sent her to accomplish. The French ladies will leave in triumph.

Ferdinand now presses his own mission, the love-suits undertaken by himself and his attendants. Offering an apology in both senses of the word—a defense and an expression of regret—he argues that “your beauties, ladies, / Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humors / Even to the opposed end of our intents,” making we lovers seem both ridiculous and cynical (V.ii.744-46). This being so, “ladies, our love being yours, the error that love makes / Is likewise yours. We to ourselves prove false, / By being once false for ever to be true / To those that make us both” (V.ii.760-62). Our falsehood, our Russian gambit, admittedly was “in itself a sin,” but the true intent behind it purifies, “turns to grace” the foolish and sinful attempt at deception (V.ii.763-64). “Now, at the last minute of the hour, / Grant us your loves” (V.ii.775-76). Do not let the cormorant of time devour us.

The Princess repeats her own defense, that her party had interpreted the king and his court as mockers, pretenders in love. A most politic woman, she will not be pressured into a hasty decision, become an idolater of time. The last minute is “a time, methinks, too short / To make a world-without-end bargain in” (V.ii.777-78). She intends to observe the right form, to mourn her father’s death for the next twelve months. If you, King, will yourself retreat “to some forlorn and naked hermitage,” then I shall marry you at the end of that time (V.ii.782). Rosaline, Katharine, and Maria make the same guarantee—Katharine characteristically with more reserve (“then, if I have much love, I’ll give you some,” Lord Dumaine [V.ii.818]), and Rosaline characteristically with more rigor. Berowne is not merely to seclude himself but to reform himself, learn to bridle his sarcasm by visiting the sick and dying, to learn that “a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it” (V.ii.849-51). If Berowne finds his jesting ill-met by ill men, “throw away that spirit, / And I shall find you empty of that fault, / Right joyful of your reformation” (V.ii.855-57). Navarre is Protestant, a man of the Reformation; French Catholic Rosaline would reform the Reformer, who has too often deployed his wit to reform others, seldom turning it on himself. His love must become Christian, charitable.

Berowne reflects. “Our wooing doth not end like an old play: / Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy / Might well have made our sport a comedy,” but it hasn’t (V.ii.862-64). The men’s foolish and conventional love-labors have been lost, new and more austere love-labors imposed. As one scholar puts it, the ladies’ final commands, their final love-test, will discover whether the Navarrian aristocrats can love after they’ve endured a year outside courtly conventions. [3] The king is ready for the challenge; after all, a year is only one-third of the time his men had agreed to. Berowne remains as skeptical as ever in assessing such vows. “That’s too long for a play,” he concludes (V.ii.867). It is indeed too long for a theatrical play, a fiction, and also too long to sustain a self-deceiving vow. This love-test will uncover the reality of the men’s vows (and the women’s), one way or the other.

The play isn’t too long for a closing song. Newly-sobered Armado returns, this time with a shorter, simpler, and much more pointed performance by his players. During the time of the love-test, and for the rest of their lives if they pass it, the men will know the anxiety love’s exclusivity necessarily brings. The first song, sung by “Spring,” reminds them that in that season “The cuckoo then on every tree / Mocks married men, for thus sings he: ‘Cuckoo,'” cuckhold (V.ii.885-86), “a word of fear, / Unpleasing to the married ear” (V.ii.897-98). The second song, sung by “Winter,” “when icicles hang on the wall,” reminds them that in that season every night “the staring owl” sings “Tu-who, Tu-whit, Tu-who”—a “merry note” heard indoors, out of the cold (V.ii.900-07). While the anxiety of unknowing, unsure love comes with summer, winter brings men indoors, where they know, can say, can name (to-wit) those to whom they can truly address their love. To say ‘tu’ is to say ‘you’ with intimacy. It bespeaks knowing love of one’s own, one’s own household—the persons there, the warming fire, the food cooking on the stove. 

The song reprises Berowne’s prosaic initial critique of King Ferdinand’s planned regime, sets it to music. Nature imposes the cycle of seasons, over time. Both the not-knowing and the knowledge of love will occur and recur, throughout every human life. Contra Florio, there is always more to write about love, because love is the fire that moves the elements of nature, and nature cannot forever be denied by philosophers, theologians, or rulers. For commoners like Armado, Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, Jaquenetta, Costard, Moth, Dull, and the Forester, the outdoor nature of the summer meadow and singing birds and the indoor household amidst the winter snow (where “birds sit brooding” [V.ii.910]) will limit the pretensions of those who would rise above their station with self-inflating talk. For aristocrats like the Navarrian gentlemen and the French ladies, each season will limit the pretensions of those who would rise above their station as rulers, to suppose themselves Platonic philosophers minus Socratic irony, pretensions both impolitic and unnatural, ruinous both to rule and to philosophizing. For rulers, the harsh realities of war, territorial disputes, and succession crises jar them out of the pretensions peculiar to the prominent, the thought that their sayings must make things so.

“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo,” Armado says, to both sides (V.ii.917). Mercury’s words come from the gods; Apollo, god of music, makes reality seem sweeter than it is. And finally, Armado delivers himself justly of a thing he had longed to deliver unjustly and foolishly: a command. “You that way: we this way” (V.ii.918). You aristocrats, we commoners. You French devotees of Saint Denis, we Navarrian devotees of Saint Cupid. You Catholics, we Reformers. If unity comes, it will need to be an articulated unity, the hard-won unity of lovers who remain distinct from one another—not a rushed and thoughtless amalgamation but a unity founded on practical wit, not on the unsteady show-wit of learning for fame’s sake.   

 

Note

1. There may also be a critical glance at the Protestant emphasis on book-learning in the form of Book-learning, Bible study.
2. C. L. Barber: Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963), p. 99.
3. Barber, p. 112.

Jean Bodin: Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime. Marion Leathers Daniels Kuntz translation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

 

Note: The Latin title, Colloqium Heptaplomeres de Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis, literally means Colloquium of the Seven on the Hidden Secrets of the Sublime. By selecting the locution, “hidden secrets,” Bodin may imply that they will be revealed in the course of the book. I am grateful to Professor Joseph Garnjobst of the Hillsdale College Classics Department for calling my attention to this nuance in the Latin.

 

Born around 1530, probably in Angers, Bodin became a novice in the Carmelite Order but left it, eventually spending much of his life practicing law in Paris. He was associated with the Politiques there—monarchists who sought national unity and what they hoped would be a consequent decrease in the religious asperities which spark civil wars. He admired the Huguenot logician Petrus Ramus, himself a victim of religious hatred, who criticized the Scholastic form of Aristotelianism upheld by the Catholic Church and recurred to the less grand philosophic practices of Socrates. The Colloquium may be said to propose a way, if not to make the world or even France safe for Socrates, and Socratic Huguenots, at least to make private discussions among philosophic friends safe for such.

The “Seven” are a Catholic (Paulus Coronaeus), a Lutheran mathematician (Fridericus Podmicus), a skeptic (Hieronymus Senamus), a natural philosopher (Diegus Toralba), a Calvinist (Antonius Curtius), a Jew (Salomon Barcassius), and a Muslim (Octavius Fagnola).  Paulus Coronaeus superintends the discussion, perhaps because Bodin writes in Catholic France, and perhaps also because he wants to introduce more catholicity into the Catholic Church and, consequently, into French politics. This Paul, too, is an evangelist, although one of a different temper and possibly a different intention than those of the Apostle, whom Leo Strauss described as a highly spirited man. Bodin judges that spiritedness already has had its day in the religious sun, that a more irenic spirit is now more needed.

“Seven” of course has Biblical significance as the Creation week in the Book of Genesis. Professor Kuntz remarks that it also suggests musical harmony (as in the seven-stringed lyre). And it may allude to the seven-branched candelabra of Moses, an image Bodin’s contemporary Guillaume Postel “used in his book, Candelabri typici in Mosis tabernaculo …interpretatio, to indicate the universal significance of Israel and France in establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth.” Postel, she relates, aimed at a syncretistic religion combining Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Bodin extends the ambition to include two kinds of philosophers and three kinds of Christians. Kuntz also cites Ficino’s claim that ancient philosophers came from a common intellectual ancestor, Hermes Trismegistus, whose line then descended to Orpheus, followed by Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Philolaus, and finally to Plato. This suggests a philosophic syncretism matching religious syncretism—an ideational settlement complementing the spiritual settlement.

There are only six philosophers on Ficino’s list, although in Bodin’s dialogue a seventh, Socrates, becomes important. Any syncretic religious or philosophic doctrine might fall into the same kind of rigidity that Ramus deplored in the Church’s Christian Aristotelianism. The presence of ‘Socrates’ within such a syncretism might prevent that. At the same time, the rational character of Socrates’ enterprise can pull thinkers back from what we now see in ‘postmodernist’ vapor about ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness.’

Bodin divides the Colloquium into six books. The original Creation took six days, so the Colloquium evidently represents an act of creativity, of sorts. It would indeed take some carefully designed invention to realize the kingdom of heaven in France, but, as Kuntz notes, Bodin named his first son Elias, and even used the name “Elias Bodin” on the title page of one of his published writings—Elijah having been “assigned the task of bringing world peace and religious harmony to men.”

Bodin frames the dialogue as a letter to his friend “N.T.” This letter differs from a Pauline letter at first glance because it is much longer than all the Pauline epistles combined. Kuntz hazards no guess regarding N.T.’s identity, so I shall make one up: N.T. is a person standing in for a book, the Novum Testamentarum. Whereas Paul in the New Testament witnesses to the Holy God—the God separate from His creation, who proceeds to divide the waters from the sky, the earth from the waters, the night from the day—Bodin witnesses to the concordia discors, the harmoniousness of the whole composed of these differentiated elements.

On “my quest for educated and excellent men,” Bodin has arrived in Venice, “a port common to almost all nations or rather the whole world, not only because the Venetians delight in receiving strangers hospitably, but also because one can live there with the greatest freedom.” The great commercial republic of the day, the hub of Mediterranean civilization, trading in material and intellectual goods alike, Venice was a place where even the Athenian Stranger might have felt at home. “Whereas other cities and districts are threatened by civil wars or fear of tyrants or harsh exactions of taxes or the most annoying inquiries into one’s activities, this seemed to me to be nearly the only city that offers immunity and freedom from all these kinds of servitude.” Such civic peace, political, social, perhaps religious and intellectual freedom constitute “the reason why people come here from everywhere, wishing to spend their lives in the greatest freedom and tranquility of spirit, whether they are interested in commerce or crafts or leisure pursuits as befit free men.”

Fortune, if not Providence, led Bodin to meet Coronaeus, a man investigating “all the monuments of antiquity” who “had joined with the most scholarly men in an intimate society” in his home, “considered a shrine of the Muses and virtues.” Coronaeus “had an incredible desire to understand the language, inclinations, activities, customs, and virtues of different peoples”—a political-philosophic eros, so to speak. The Seven “were exceptionally well trained in the liberal arts,” yet “each seemed to surpass the others in his unique knowledge,” knowledge supplemented their “easy access to anything new or worthy of note in the world by means of letters from friends”—like this one, to N. T.—”whom they had made a point of acquiring in Rome, Constantinople, Augsburg, Seville, Antwerp, and Paris.” All of them “were not motivated by wrangling or jealousy but by a desire to learn.” Coronaeus’ vast library and archive, and his collection of musical and mathematical instruments featured the “pantotheca,” a box six feet square containing six square compartments per foot. “Thirty-six multiplied by itself produced 1296 small boxes,” each containing replicas of natural things duly divided according to their kinds. He selected the number six as the mathematical basis for the structure because it is the “perfect” number, “because most living things terminate in this number.” He may mean that the creation of most living things (but not God Himself, or the angels and demons) was completed to God’s satisfaction by the sixth and final day of creation. “Also in nature there are only six perfect bodies, only six simple colors, six simple tastes, six harmonious harmonies, only six simple metals, six regions, also six senses including common sense.” The Seven, then, seem eminently well equipped to consider nature, to consider this world if not Heaven. It may be that a city like Venice attracts a certain kind of Catholic, Lutheran, skeptic, natural philosopher, Calvinist, Jew, and Muslim—a kind animated by the philosophic quest, one manifestation of the desire to learn.

For this genial enterprise, Coronaeus proves a Socratic type indeed: “To preserve his strength he did not waste his time in writing or reading; rather he had developed the sharpest critical faculty by listening, discussing, and contemplating.” He does not walk like a Peripatetic, stand like a Stoic, recline like an Academic; he sits. He proposes six topics for discussion: nature and mathematics, the preeminence of laws and the best form of government, medicine and the reliability of history. The central pair, laws and the best regime, recall the topics of Plato’s longest dialogues. Bodin is Plato to Coronaeus’ Socrates. And ‘Coronaus’ suggests ‘crown’; the Socrates of Venice gently rules the dialogue as a philosopher-king. [1] If so, then Bodin acts as Plato to Coronaeus/Socrates, recording in writing a spoken dialogue. Each pair of topics corresponds to a pair of books in that written account, the Colloquium.

On the first day, the Seven resume an ongoing discussion of the immortality of the soul. Bodin who has been serving as the reader of texts for the group to discuss, has been reading from Plato’s Phaedo—specifically, the passage on “the power of immortal souls” and the subsequent discussion of Egyptian mummification. There Socrates claims that since a mummified body lasts a long time, the human soul, having no tincture of materiality, must last even longer, or even forever.

Salomon protests that they have discussed the matter sufficiently, and that “we”—we Jews—”have been persuaded for a long time of that immortality and that eternal rewards are fixed for the good and punishments decreed for the wicked.” Natural philosopher Toralba and skeptic Senamus demur, although Toralba admits that Epicurean atheism would have a bad effect: “For when the hope of rewards and the fear of divine punishment are removed, no society can endure.” The conversation evidently has reached an impasse.

But it continues because the account of mummification reminds Muslim Octavius of a ship voyage he took, smuggling a mummified Egyptian corpse stolen at the behest of a Genevan “empiricist” who coveted one because, he said, mummies ward off “almost all diseases.” Egyptian law prohibits the transportation of mummies because it stirs up storms. In this storm, Octavius recalls, “we had poured out our prayers in vain,” despite the many sailors from many nations, some of whom at least must have been praying to the true God. The storm subsided only after Octavius threw the mummy overboard. The point of the story isn’t to confirm the wisdom of the Egyptian law, based on a decidedly questionable theory of causation, but to recall the symbolism of mummies. In mummifying a corpse, the Egyptians remove the hear and replace it with a stone image of Isis, Egypt’s queen-lawgiver, who was taught by Hermes, the god-founder of philosophy. The Egyptian regime would keep philosophy to itself, prevent even its image from being brought to other countries. This clearly hasn’t succeeded, as Hermes also instructed Orpheus, a poet not a ruler, who transmitted philosophy to a line of Greeks.

When the storm subsided, “a venerable old man with white hair, extending his hands to Heaven and giving thanks to immortal God, forced the others by his example to praise God.” But are they not praying, unaware, to the god of the philosophers?

This prompts Coronaeus to raise three questions: Why should storms arise due to the transportation of Egyptian corpses? Are the seas stirred by demons, or “only from exhalations, as the physicists say”? “With such a variety of religions represented, whose prayers did God heed in bringing the ship safely to port?” The others want time to think about these matters, so Coronaeus adjourns the conversation until the following day.

At Coronaeus’ direction, Bodin switches from the Phaedo to letters from a merchant in Corcyra describing celebrations of the circumcision of the firstborn son of the Turkish king. These messages lead the Seven to take up the topic of messengers, and particularly the second question Coronaeus proposed. The Lutheran, Fridericus Podamicus, worries about “the wicked arts of magic,” which Plato makes punishable in the legal code proposed in the Laws. He credits stories about demon causation. Predictably, sceptical Senamus does not, demanding proof. Calvinist Curtius mediates: “The account of actions depends upon the senses the ‘that it is,’ but the proof of causes, namely, the ‘why it is,’ must be sought more deeply from the hidden secrets of philosophy.” Coronaeus asks natural philosopher Toralba to explicate “the mysteries of nature.” Toralba cautiously replies that although he can talk about natural causation, “the examination of the actions of demons and angels does not seem to me to pertain to natural science, but to those who study metaphysics, since it is evident that they take place by the will and power of demons.” He throws the topic back to Fridericus, who has studied both mathematics and the arts of magic.

This annoys the Lutheran, who rejects the implied connection between mathematics and magic. Picking up on the theme of Plato’s Laws and citing the Justinian Code, he criticizes lawgivers, lawyers, and judges for lumping practitioners of both as impious. In this he needles his rival Protestant, the Calvinist, a practitioner of the art of jurisprudence; that gentleman replies, in effect that the same degree of precision one expects in mathematics cannot possibly be matched by lawgivers. While agreeing that mathematicians shouldn’t be confused with magicians, he asks for a certain toleration of lawgivers’ errors: “Just as nurses are wont to baby-talk to babies, so it is inevitable that legislators often err along with the people.” That is, the art of legislation itself, intended for the government of the people, habituates lawgivers to ‘popular’—and thus inaccurate—ways of thinking.

This matter of what later philosophers might call epistemological hazard deepens when the Skeptic demands experiential proof that magicians and demons exist. The Calvinist says that the very act of observing them endangers the observer. The epistemological problem of ‘subjectivity’ matches another problem, that of ‘objectivity’: as the Seven discuss reported magical metamorphoses of men into asses, wolves, and other animals, it is obvious that if magic is real and nature so easily altered, nature itself, which philosophers attempt to understand, has no real nature at all. Accordingly, the Skeptic is the only one who outright denies the power of magic, calling it a craft aimed at producing illusions. The Natural Philosopher, who would seem to have at least as big a stake in the matter, contents himself by repeating that the question is for metaphysics, not physics, and adds, Socratically, “I realize that I do not know,” being “moved by reason alone, not by authority.” The Calvinist, who may be expected to question the authority of the Catholic Church, concurs, criticizing the ignorant, who live in “the cave of Socrates,” believing that they know what they do not know; “empty authority draws along many whom reason ought to have led.”

It is the Natural Philosopher who draws the theological point, criticizing natural scientists—that is, those who profess to know more than they do. “Of all the innumerable errors that our natural scientists can make, there is none more serious than to think that all things which are outside man’s power come from the necessary causes of nature or fortune. Those who think this try to snatch away free will from God.” Such self-described knowers “think it base to admit that they are ignorant of the causes of the things which fall under the senses.” Against the Scholastic Aristotelians, he argues that the First Mover “is bound by no necessity to act, but tempers all things with this freedom so that it can, if it wishes, restrain the attacks of men and beasts, control lifeless natures, keep fires from burning, shake the world at will or raise it up again.” That is, there isn’t necessarily any overarching Fate that rules the god. The Biblical God, for example, is ruled by nothing.  Consequently in the Bible, contra Aristotle, the world is not eternal; the work which depends on another’s judgment and will for its safety is not eternal.” Among philosophers, the Natural Philosopher prefers Plato to Aristotelians, Epicureans, and Stoics, as in both the Phaedo and the Statesman the possibility of divine providence is treated with respect.

Coronaeus adds that Aristotle’s opinions “leave no place for divine laws or authority.” It would seem that the Natural Philosopher’s critique of authority has led him to provide an opening for a defense of authority, albeit divine not human. Coronaeus takes this as evidence of the power of angels and demons “outside of or contrary to nature.” The Natural Philosopher remarks that Plato’s Socrates also affirms the existence of his own guardian daemon; the Jewish scholar cites rabbinical testimony that “each person has a good and a bad angel.”

The point having been settled to the satisfaction of all but the Skeptic, Coronaeus asks if the difference between angels and demons is restricted to the difference between good and evil, and what actions and affairs they involve themselves in. That is, having limited nature by the wills of God, angels, and demons, what are the limits of angelic and demonic action? What, exactly, are demons? The Lutheran student of demonology offers Apuleius’ definition: demons are “animal in kind, rational in nature, passive in soul, aerial in body, eternal in time,” then cites numerous other ancient writers who denied their immortality. For himself, the Lutheran agrees with the Natural Philosopher in thinking that “eternity is suitable for God alone,” not for demons or for “God’s lieutenants,” the angels. The Calvinist agrees, citing the testimony of Plutarch, via Eusebius, who tells the story from the time of the Emperor Tiberius, in which a voice from a god commanding a ship-master to announce that “Pan is dead.” Not only are angels and demons mortal, but there is evidence that they are physically constrained to certain regions. The Jewish Scholar is quick to intercede when the Skeptic ventures to allege that Jews assisted demons in possessing some Jewish girls who had converted to Christianity; demons “have always been hostile to Jews.”

The anecdotes multiply, and the Natural Philosopher prudently suggests that “it is easier to wonder at these stories than to ascertain the reasons for them.” For example, Hippocrates couldn’t tell the difference between demonic possession and epilepsy, but close observation had enabled modern physician to distinguish the symptoms of each. This is as far as natural philosophy can go. The Muslim goes a bit further, saying that “the authority of important men has the greatest influence in making faith more enduring than any opinion. However, as a few adopt this or that opinion because it pleases them to, most people wish to be convinced by necessary proofs to agree, as after a questioning, in order that by attaining knowledge they may throw off all opinion. Knowledge and opinion can no more exist at the same time than faith and knowledge.” This more than suggests that Octavius Fagnola, the Muslim speaker, has a bit of al-Farabi if not indeed of Averroës in him. Be that as it may, his astringent statement has the effect of turning the discussion from anecdote and appeal to distinguished authors, and toward a discussion of the more general philosophic questions the existence of angels and demons raises: such matters as the difference between corporeal and incorporeal substances, the limits that might or might not be placed on the latter.

Having insisted on the distinction between metaphysics and physics, the Natural Philosopher firmly rejects immanence, the notion that “the human mind is a particle of the divine mind.” On the contrary, “the human mind is not even like God, much less the same substance as God.” Crucially for the history of philosophy as the Seven conceive it, Hermes Trismegistus also denies that the human mind has been “cut away from the substance of God.” And the Book of Genesis confirms this, as the life-giving breath or spirit of God (Ruah) isn’t the substance of God, any more than the image of God, in which Man is made, is the substance of God. The Jewish Scholar readily concurs: “Wise indeed are those who have separated body altogether from the nature of God, for this is the principal point of our creed.” The Skeptic and the Calvinist alike concur on the point that this is why God can be properly contemplated only in silence, as no human words can truly describe Him. The Natural Philosopher concludes that only God, the first cause, has no parts because He alone is incorporeal and indissoluble. The Skeptic asks, how then is God said to have ears, eyes, nose, fingers, arms, and face? Because, the Jewish Scholar replies, “nurses and parents must stammer with babies and human attributes must be transferred to God, since divine things cannot be translated to men”—another example of exotericism, already noted in lawgivers. He adds that the senses of taste and touch are never attributed to God, as they require a body. [2]

Coronaeus is eager to hear a clear refutation of Epicureans, who avoid the problem of distinguishing the divine from all else by denying the existence of God altogether. The Natural Philosopher, who obviously doesn’t mind discussing metaphysics as long as it’s clearly separated from physics, replies with a refutation of Aristotle and Averroës instead. “It is as foolish for infinite essence to be joined to a finite little body in a finite manner as to assign infinite power to a finite nature, since there is the same discipline for opposites.” He and Coronaeus agree that the two philosophers are inconsistent on this point, although neither now considers the implications of this claim for Christianity. What the various distinctions the Seven have drawn do accomplish is to permit the Natural Philosopher to separate nature from the divine on the one hand and from chance on the other. “Action cannot be natural which happens either from God, with no help from lower causes, or from an angel or a demon or from the judgment of divine will or finally from chance. I call chance the union of many causes with unexpected effects; with these exceptions we shall say the rest are done by nature.” [3]

The Calvinist then takes the discussion in a political direction, urging that “this world ought to be ruled just as a republic after the image of a republic of this world, or rather our state ought to be a pattern of that exemplar and archetype of a mundane state”—God’s universe, in which “the provident parent of nature has ordained certain laws to be perpetual and inviolable,” with angels as messengers between God and men. When Fridericus remarks that Plato said something similar to this, Salomon insists that “Plato had received that secret as he did all the best things from the Hebrews.” This, the Calvinist observes, we also see “in a well-ordered state—namely, that laws are sometimes changed and extraordinary officers are appointed, instead of ordinary magistrates, for the safety of the state.”

As befits his role, the Skeptic is unconvinced of any of this. “Nothing seems good to me which happens outside of nature, as Aristotle writes.” The Jewish Scholar replies that “we should forgive Aristotle, who was ignorant of divine matters, even contemptuous of them.” “Then what keeps us from saying that all things which happen from nature are accomplished by demons and angels?” the Sceptic asks. To rescue the integrity of nature, and not incidentally the authority of God in creating it, the Jewish Scholar observes that natural things proceed gradually and regularly, as seen in the generation of plants, whereas events caused by angels and demons are abrupt. He complains that the Skeptic always “tries to direct everything clearly to natural causes.” Coronaeus agrees with the Jewish scholar, ascribing storms, falling stars, and earthquakes to demonic activity. The Skeptic observes that “many things are entangled with popular mistakes which we have finally seen explained.” If such violent occurrences “happen without demons because of a secret harmony of nature, it is consistent that those other things also depend on nature.” There are things in the heavens and on the earth that “possibly not really known by anyone.” This does not make them examples of the supernatural.

After listening to a series of further appeals to tradition and to what his interlocutors take to be the incoherence of Aristotelian natural philosophy, the Skeptic tries again. “You have explained these matters elegantly and charmingly,” but then (recurring to the Muslim’s original story, which sparked the discussion) why do demons pursue the bodies of Egyptians, in those sea-storms, rather than the bodies of Greeks? Because, the Lutheran explains, Greek bodies being transported have not previously been buried. The Skeptic confines himself to remarking that if demons cause so many things, there must be an enormous number of demons.

Coronaeus admits that “Senamus has proposed a very difficult but proper question,” and asks the Natural Philosopher to answer him. That gentleman demurs, referring it rather to the Jewish Scholar, inasmuch as the matter goes beyond physis. “We ought to seek an explanation of these things from the Hebrews, who drank divine secrets from those very fountains and sacred sources.” Moreover, he claims that both Aristotle and Porphyry wrote that “all things and hidden scientific knowledge had proceeded from the Chaldeans,” who were the original Hebrews; these “secrets of divine matters, treasures as it were,” have been “hidden” in “a certain occult discipline called Cabala which is inaccessible except to very few.” Salomon affirms that “the ancestors of our race were Chaldeans” who emigrated to Phoenicia. From there Cadmus “brought the alphabet to Greece.” “After our ancestors returned to Chaldea as prisoners”—the Babylonian Captivity—”they became acquainted with many things by divine communication.” “However,” he maintains (somewhat astonishingly) “we received nothing which has not been common knowledge throughout the whole world and available to everyone.” This speech meets with a respectful silence, the interlocutors not wishing “to disturb the elderly man” in his “honor and dignity.” Coronaeus finally speaks up, respectfully requesting that he reveal “only that which your customs, your discipline, your laws allow.” This account must wait for the third day.

In the first two days of creation, God separates light from darkness and the heavens from the waters. In the first two days of the dialogue, the interlocutors address the difficulties of separating knowledge from ignorance and the divine from nature. Of the three questions Coronaeus proposes at the outset, two are addressed explicitly, the last (which of the many religions addresses God effectively?) indirectly, through the tensions that arise among the Seven. The paramount question for both religion and philosophy is causation, and this points inquirers to the “hidden secrets” of philosophy and the “secret matters” of religion, in particular the Cabala. Salomon replaces the story of Hermes teaching Orpheus, who then brought philosophy to Greece, with the story of the Hebrews teaching the alphabet to Cadmus, who brings it to Greece, and rabbis teaching true doctrines to Plato, who refines philosophy in Greece, in part by following Socrates’ turn from the materialist natural philosophers to political philosophy. Even the Natural Philosopher here partakes of Socratism by knowing that he does not know, and by citing Socrates’ guardian daemon. For his part, Coronaeus resembles Socrates in conversing but not writing. The Calvinist is Socratic in invoking the image of the cave of conventional opinion Socrates invents in the Republic; the Calvinist also Socratizes by turning the discussion to politics, indeed to a regime he describes as a republic, one modeled on the structure of God’s creation, nature.

The distinction between God and man may be seen in the difficulty with which men struggle to separate light or knowledge from darkness or ignorance and even danger to the inquirer after knowledge and wisdom. It may also be seen in men’s struggle to clearly delineate the natural as distinguished from the supernatural. All agree that nature exists, but if the supernatural, especially in the form of angels and demons (as seen in the story of the Egyptian mummy), are taken to have power over nature, does nature really have a nature at all?

The central pair of books concern political philosophy with respect to the preeminence of law (the topic of Plato’s Laws) and the best form of government (the topic of Plato’s Republic.) Can the impasse seen in the first pair of books, the impasse Socrates noted in the thought of the natural philosophers who proceeded him, be approached Socratically, through the ‘epistemological’ approach of considering nature not directly but indirectly, by dialectical engagement with the opinions of men? Coronaeus, for one, evidently has some interest in doing this, given his fascination with the diverse customs of nations.

And so he begins the third day by returning to the Phaedo —specifically, to the passage at 107d when Socrates gives Simmias an account of the soul after death. Rather like Senamus, Simmias has expressed scepticism about the immortality of the soul. What men think of life after death has a moral implication, Socrates warns. If the soul is not immortal, bad men would welcome it as a release not only from their bodies but from their own souls’ defects. If the soul is immortal, then one should want to take care of it. Socrates goes on to say that after death the guardian daemon of each soul will guide that soul to the house of Hades. Impure souls will be shunned, and will wander for a time before being forced into the “proper dwelling place.” Pure souls will find gods for fellow-travelers and leaders, who will bring those souls to their proper dwelling place.

Coronaeus remarks, “The difficulty of this passage makes me wonder why the ancient Greeks and Hebrews veiled their writings with such obscurity that even a wise man cannot really understand these precepts which are remarkably useful, first of all, and then enjoyable.” Aesop, Pythagoras, the poets, and “finally the most ancient philosophers hid the principles of their wisdom under a veil obscurity,” and “even sacred writings are full of allegories.” Declaring that “nothing is more useful than clarity,” the Lutheran declares that “there is no fault in a writer worse than undue obscurity.” The Calvinist thinks, on the contrary, that the ancients chose not to cast pearls before swine, or “to cheapen most precious wisdom by its accessibility.” The Skeptic dismisses exotericism as an attempt to “affect obscurity in words to produce admiration” for the writer. The Jewish Scholar, who will dominate the discussion on this day, says that the Skeptic’s complaint applies to sophists, not to the wise, “and surely not against those who veiled the teachings of sacred wisdom in very obscure writings”—men such as Moses Maimonides.

Very well then, the Skeptic replies, “What does this saying—’The evil of man is superior to the goodness of women’—accomplish?” It is absurd on the face of it. But the face of it is not the meaning of it, the Jewish Scholar explains. “The blandishments of women,” even and especially those who are good in the sense of beautiful, “are worse than the harsh words of men.” “Likewise souls excel bodies.” In allegory, ‘woman’ means body. Further, “the intellectual faculty, however base it might be, excels lust, which is called the brute and mortal soul.” This teaching “cannot be understood literally,” inasmuch as the Bible features such good women as Deborah; it can only be understood allegorically. “The word man indicates natural form, and woman indicates matter, which also is often called in Proverbs meretrix (harlot), since, as a harlot takes pleasure in a number of men, so matter delights in a number of forms.”

The use of allegory entails not only moral but religio-political distinctions. “Just as the people worshiped in the courtyard of the temple separately from the Levites, the priests but not the other Levites had access within the curtain, and only the high priest approached that most sacred place where the Ark of the Covenant was housed.” Similarly, in the Torah such things as the Decalogue and other commands, along with customs are “clearly explained,” understandable “by all”; “the occult rites and sacrifices which have less to do with salvation are understood only by the learned”; “the knowledge of the natural mysteries, the Cabala, is understood only by the most learned”; “finally, the most difficult of all pertains to the chariot which is described by Ezekial in a wondrous portrayal of the heavenly bodies and most holy matters.”

The Skeptic asks, in his down-to-earth way, How is this useful? It will only stir resentment among the spiteful and confusion among the ignorant. The Jewish Scholar says it is useful in exercising the mind, inciting men to “abstain from faults and embrace true glory… seek health for the body, prudence and wisdom for the mind, and the closest union with immortal God.” Much of that, it should be noted, parallels what Socrates tells Simmias, with the exception of the last point. But as a man of the Bible the Jewish Scholar insists that “without divine aid” no one can understand “all things.” This is an indirect rebuke to the Skeptic: “In the discussion of divine affairs, first we must see that nothing escapes anyone heedlessly since nothing can be more serious or damnable. This usually happens to those who, inflated with pride in human affairs and subtleties of dialectics, think they can understand all things above, below, first and last with the sharp keenness of their own ability.” But “wisdom separates piety from impiety; intelligence separates the good from the evil; knowledge separates the true from the false, and art the useful from the useless.” Salomon’s namesake, the original Solomon, thus asked God for “intelligence, so that he could separate the base from the noble and thereby urge men to the fear and worship of God.” The keeping of secrets stimulates the ignorant and even the evil, the deformed souls, to seek the wisdom withheld. “Therefore [God] taught Moses and Isaiah by what arts they were to call back miserable men from their criminal and depraved lives to true honor and to restore them to salvation.”

Salvation is necessary because man is mortal and inclined to evil. The Skeptic accordingly remarks that “nothing has challenged me for a longer time than the allegory of the tree and the serpent.” The Jewish Scholar says that Greek and Latin interpreters “did not know this allegory,” but Philo did, and his interpretation can be found in the Legum Allegoria. There one learns that Adam or Man means the mind; Eve or Woman means “outward sense”; the Serpent means pleasure, and serves as the link between mind and outward sense. “Of all the passions the most mischievous is pleasure”; “the life of the wicked is governed by pleasure.” That is why the Serpent is described as the most subtle of all the beasts that are upon the earth—lying, deceiving, telling the outward sense that partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Life will be good, ‘planting’ doubts of the goodness of God’s command, and thus of the goodness of God. When the outward sense rules the mind and seeks pleasure, it will injure both itself and the mind; hence the enmity between Woman and the Serpent, after the Fall.

The Jewish Scholar explains guardian angels as guides to good men on earth. “If a good man has turned to a wrong thought, suddenly he recognizes in the recesses of his soul a teacher and guide who leads him away from the base thought.” This is what Socrates’ daemon did. Evil demons, by contrast, “are a torrent of flowing matter,” which, “with a blindness of soul and passion torture and blot out reason from those who insult God, the parent of all things, and do violence to the pious mother, the laws of nature.” Whenever Solomon says “Father” he means God; whenever he says “mother” he means nature. The torrent of flowing matter, then, by itself is bad, but God rules it within the entirety of His creation. Therefore, “we must not accuse angels and demons who bring no calamities unless ordered and follow only the decrees ordered by God. Furthermore, each man must accuse himself and admit his own faults,” whereby he has released the torrent of passions upon himself, to his own injury. “Those who fear demons commit a serious offense” because they ignore God’s rule over the whole of creation.

The Skeptic remains troubled by the problem of evil. If God created Leviathan, “the prince of corruption and death,” then is He not “the author of evil,” “the cause of the cause”? The Jewish Scholar first remarks that Plato is mistaken in identifying matter with evil. God saw His creation, including matter, and pronounced it good. The Natural Scientist concurs: “There is no sin in matter in the first place because the force of action is not in matter but in form, and in the second place matter has no substance at all of itself in nature.” The Jewish Scholar says that the source of this error is in thinking that evil is “something when it is nothing at all.” In separating light from darkness, God made darkness the privation of light; allegorically, this means that “evil is nothing other than the privation of good”; it “follows the removal of good.” Thus ‘evil’ demons, in tempting human beings to crime, serve God’s purposes, as He “never allows any crime to be permitted unless something better will come from it.” For example, He “steals away famous and brave men in the prime of life lest they suffer worse conditions in this life.” God is not, Coronaeus summarizes, “the author of evils,” but rather the permitter of them, for the good.

Coronaeus accordingly turns away from the problem of evil and asks the Jewish Scholar to address the Skeptic’s other point, namely, that there seems to be such a huge number of demons (and, Coronaeus adds, angels). This brings the discussion from morality to politics, to ruling and being ruled. The Jewish Scholar grants “that there is nothing more excellent in nature than the proper order,” and if so “there is no doubt that dominion and sovereignty exist in each order of angels and demons.” Leviathan rules the army of demons; Michael rules the angels, as seen in the Book of Daniel. Even the stars possess reason, understanding, contemplation and action, as suggested in a verse from the Psalms and another from the Book of Judges. The Muslim and the Calvinist affirm this claim. The Natural Philosopher finds in the orderly, slow movement of the stars evidence that they are natural beings, and the Jewish Scholar concurs. And the number of the stars is vast, the Lutheran adds, which would account for the huge number of celestial intelligences, conjoined with heavenly bodies even as intelligence is combined with bodies on earth. Intellect governs; nature is orderly, governed by intelligences.

Given the emphasis on allegorical interpretation of Scripture, the reader will wonder whether this account of the heavens should be taken allegorically. The Book of Genesis itself calls the stars, sun, and moon the heavenly “signs.” The analogy of the natural concordia discors with the republican regime has already been posited by the Calvinist.

It is also noteworthy that the third day of the Colloquium corresponds to both the third and the fourth days of creation. The Seven have considered the Biblical teaching that there is a vast sphere of water above the visible heavens, which accounts for the Flood, which occurred when God caused some of that water to pierce through the heavens and fall on the earth on the third day. They have said even more about the events of the fourth day, in which God created the heavenly bodies. The Jewish Scholar relates the sun and the moon to the active intellect, the angels, and the passive intellect (the human beings). The moon is “illuminated and derives its light in conjunction with the sun,” obscured “when it is separated from the sun’s orbit,” just as the human intellect is “enlightened by the attendance of an angel,” then “languishes and grows dull without the angel’s presence”—evil being the absence of good, as he remarked earlier. This is why Joshua “ordered the sun and moon to stand still so that he might utterly destroy the Moabites,” Israel’s evil enemies. He cautions that many of the ancient peoples erred in taking the lights of the heavens to be gods themselves, but the active intellect of the angels is not God; it derives from Him. Moreover, “the actions of angels as well as demons are attributed to God so that all may know that man must confess to eternal God alone, that He alone must be worshiped and feared,” not any part of His creation.

The Skeptic “acknowledge[s] that power has been handed down to each best man who is skilled in governing.” He then reverses his previous argument almost literally, turning the matter upside down. If there is such a plenitude of angels and demons, what accounts for the scarcity of good men, good rulers, on earth? At most this shows that there are many more demons than angels. Coronaeus again asks the Jewish Scholar for assistance.

Initially reluctant to continue to reveal wisdom revealed only to a few, the Jewish Scholar offers that the souls of evil men perish with their bodies. It is therefore unlikely that the heavens house so many demons as the Skeptic has ironically suggested. Those who do survive suffer “eternal dishonors,” the prophet Daniel testifies, paying justly for their crimes before perishing. In addition, the lives of the good on earth are lengthened by God, the lives of the bad abbreviated. “Certain boundaries for the life of each man have been established and decreed by God, and these can be extended according to the excellence of unusual virtues of each man. But the wicked diminish and contract the boundaries of time and life.” In these matters Catholic Coronaeus agrees, except of course regarding the doctrine of the mortality of souls.

The Skeptic then questions the doctrine of resurrection. The Jewish Scholar says that mind, though invisible, is corporeal, like air. It isn’t the fleshly body that is resurrected but the mind, a “heavenly and delicate essence rather than… a heavy and impure body”—”the soul leaping from the tomb.” When the Bible-literalist Lutheran demurs, insisting that the concrete body is resurrected, the Jewish Scholar cautions him not to take Jacob’s ladder literally. In this he finds support from the Muslim, who cites Christ’s reply to “certain Epicurean Sadducees” who “asked Christ whose wife was the woman who had married seven husbands in turn,” eliciting Jesus’ deprecation of “the corporeal pleasures of marriage” and His affirmation that “the blessed would be like to angels.” The Jewish Scholar concedes that recently-deceased, undecomposed, corpses might be resurrected by the power of God, as when Elijah “brought forth the son of the widow of Sarepta,” a phenomenon that even the Skeptic is ready to admit.

Coronaeus closes the discussion by begging his friends “by immortal God and for the right of our piety and friendship that we not allow ourselves to be pulled away by any enticing arguments from the established and accepted opinion of faith,” wandering into the profanation of mingling sacred and profane. He proposes a fresh but related topic for discussion on the fourth day: “whether it is proper for a good man to discuss religion.”

The Seven spend the following morning listening to Bodin read a tragedy written by the Muslim on the parricide committed by three sons of Prince Solimannus. This raises questions, however. Suleiman the Magnificent, a contemporary of Bodin (and therefore of the Seven) was not the victim of parricide. Quite the opposite: He caused the deaths of two of his three sons. Why the distortion? In terms of the Colloquium, the ‘father’ of all religions is Judaism. If one is a Muslim, one can surely say that Judaism has three ‘sons’ who have attempted parricide, namely, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. In addition, like Suleiman’s three sons, they harbored fratricidal tendencies, as well (as did many rivals for the Turkish throne, through the centuries). And there is an even more radical possibility. If, as the Jewish Scholar has said, ‘Father’ means ‘God’ throughout the Book of Genesis, the Muslim may imply that the three Christian sects are deicidal.

The piece receives universal congratulations for the craft with which it was composed ;the interlocutors are silent on its content. This seems to lead the Seven to take up the matter of musical harmonies, then harmonies generally. The Natural Philosopher speaks of the delight taken in “the blended union of opposites.” “Opposites when united by the interpolation of certain middle links present a remarkable harmony of the whole which otherwise perish if this whole world were fire or moisture”—the claim of the earliest Greek natural philosophers. The Skeptic continues to raise the problem of evil; in this concordia discors, such evils as disease, pain, and anxiety form part of the mixture. The Calvinist replies that “the poisonous toad in the garden or the spider in the house are as necessary for gathering poisons as the hangman in the state.” This begs the question of why the poisons need be there in the first place: Would not a state without evil men not be a happier state?

The Skeptic’s interlocutors continue to talk around the question, albeit in interesting ways. They discuss the balance of hostile factions within the state, as seen in Rome’s mixed regime of patricians and plebeians. The Calvinist says that although “nothing is more dangerous in a state than for citizens to be split into two factions, whether the conflict is about laws, honors, or religion,” if there are “many factions, there is no danger of civil war, since the groups, each acting as a check on the other, protect the stability and harmony of the state.” In this he looks back to Aristotle, who regards the mixed regime as the best practicable regime, and ahead to James Madison and his argument for the “extended republic” in the tenth Federalist. That is, conflict among the evil can generate good. The Jewish Scholar adds that even angels fight among themselves, even if these are conflicts “of virtues and noble souls.” There is no avoiding strife. The Muslim cites the example of the kings of the Turks and the Persians, who “admit every kind of religion in the state,” producing “a remarkable harmony” in “reconcil[ing] all citizens and foreigners who differ in religions among themselves and with the state.” The Jewish Scholar also endorses kingship, although he is thinking of the Lord of Heaven.

Should a state establish a religion, even if it tolerates other religions? If so, on what terms? (The Muslim neglected to mention that the religious toleration seen in Muslim country nonetheless subordinates non-Muslims, permitting them only the status of dhimmitude.) The Lutheran, Catholic Coronaeus, and the Jewish Scholar advocate a religious establishment; the Skeptic, the Muslim, and the Natural Philosopher are the religious pluralists. (The Skeptic argues that either all existing religions are false or one is true; if so, then none should be excluded since the right one might be among those.) The Calvinist takes a more moderate ground, advocating political pluralism but not religious pluralism, inasmuch as the practices of some religions, up to and including ritual homicide, are evil.

The Lutheran worries that “whoever admits a variety of religious differences seems to bestir an upheaval of the true religion.” Who, after all, “can worship God and a demon at the same time”? The Jewish Scholar would not have the state punish the impious, but simply refuse to reward them. “The piety of the nations is impiety toward God,” and while such Gentile piety should not be persecuted, neither should it be honored.

Among the pluralists, the Muslim is concerned not so much with heterodoxy (of which he himself might be suspected, by fellow Muslims); atheism is the danger, not heterodoxy. “I think that the man who scorns the true religion and false divinities, which are believed to be true, is guilty of the greatest impiety.” Coronaeus, no pluralist, nonetheless concurs with that sentiment, saying that he believes all of the Seven “are convinced it is much better to have a false religion than no religion,” because even a false religion holds wicked men to their moral and civic duties. Anarchy is worse than a regime founded on falsehood. He is thinking of his bète noir, Epicurus, who “committed an unpardonable sin because in trying to uproot the fear of divinity he seems to have opened freely all the approaches to sin.”

The Lutheran criticizes pluralism because if error in religion is excused, a “cowardly servant” could avoid a just flogging by pleading that he “neglected the commands of his master” out of error. That is, religious pluralism tends to dissolve all authority. The Skeptic ripostes that “Indeed this is so, if we agree with the words of Luke.” He doesn’t. “Who will be so unfair a judge, so cruel a tyrant who wishes to kill those who violate the prince’s edicts which have been secretly hidden?” He seems to suggest that the Christian commands Luke issues and the Lutheran endorses are unknown to many, that (for example) an eternity in Hell is unjust punishment for those who have never heard the Gospel. The Calvinist claims that the divine law has indeed been promulgated—often, and for a long time. “But if there are laws contrary to laws and lawgivers hostile to lawgivers, religion opposed to religion, priests warring with priests,” the Skeptic replies, “what will the poor subjects do when they are pulled here and there into the sects?” And when the Lutheran asks, rhetorically, “Who can doubt that the Christian religion is the true religion or rather the only one?” the Muslim has an easy rejoinder: “Almost all the world”—Asia, most of Africa, much of Europe. Yes, but “the best kind of religion is not determined by numbers of people, but by the weight of truth which God himself has commanded.”

Coronaeus rescues his friends, and their conversation, by recalling the question he had presented the night before: “Is it proper for a good man to discuss religions?” Should we be having this latter debate at all?

The Natural Philosopher says it is not proper, saying that “Plato was wise in saying that it is difficult to find the parent of the universe and wrong to spread it abroad when you find him.” It is not Plato who says this but Timaeus, a character in a Platonic dialogue; at least one character in Bodin’s dialogue does not understand the dialogue form. Be this as it may, what the Natural Philosopher and Timaeus (and quite possibly Plato) think is that philosophy isn’t for everybody. This point the Natural Philosopher does understand. As he puts it, with some acerbity, “The common herd whose eyes are covered with mist cannot comprehend the splendor of sublime kings,” and even those can comprehend it lack “the eloquence to describe the secrets of divine majesty,” about which even the wise may be in error. The Jewish Scholar regards “conversation about religion” as “dangerous,” as the discussants may offend God and, in addition, “it is wrong to uproot anyone’s opinion of piety, of whatever sort it may be, or to cast doubt by arguments on anyone’s religion unless you believe you will persuade him of something better.” Indeed, when the Hebrew high priest “tried in friendship to draw Florus to the worship of one eternal God and turn him from the worship of empty idols, he was unsuccessful, and he caused deadly hostilities with a powerful enemy.” [4] The Lutheran agrees with the Natural Philosopher that “it is both dangerous and destructive for the masses to engage in discussion about the accepted and approved religion unless one can control the resisting common people by divine power, as Moses did, or by arms, as Mohammed did”; this notwithstanding, “a private discussion about divine matters among educated men” is indeed “fruitful.” For his part, the Skeptic also argues against the introduction of any new religion, even if it were true.

Coronaeus attempts to coax the Jewish Scholar into further discussion. He refuses, on four grounds: he is prohibited by Jewish laws and customs because Jews do not want to disturb needed certainties; he is too old to change his opinions; at least one of his interlocutors, the Lutheran, refuses to be converted in accordance with his own principles; God would disapprove if Salomon were to convert to another religion. The Skeptic, the Muslim, and the Natural Philosopher lend the Jewish Scholar their support in this.

The Lutheran persists: “But what if the reason [for discussion] is for teaching or learning?” This draws a thorough reply from the Natural Philosopher. Religion is grounded either in knowledge, opinion, or faith. If grounded in opinion, that opinion will often waver “between truth and falsehood” during a heated discussion, undermining piety. If grounded in knowledge, religion must rest on first principles “which admit no discussion of this kind.” “Moreover, there is no one, in my opinion, who has devoted himself to the proofs of each religion,” only those who have sought to prove their own religion—rather like the Seven themselves. Finally, if grounded on faith, religion will be injured by discussion because “faith is destroyed if it must rely on proof and science.” Science means knowledge; “knowledge alone can check the mind drawn here and there in different directions,” as it is when ruled by opinion. But “the theologians believe that faith is pure assent without proof.” Science and faith are therefore incompatible. For example, “whoever agrees with a teacher of geometrical theories and does not understand geometry has faith, not knowledge. But if he understands geometry, he obtains knowledge, but at the same moment loses faith.” Theologians call faith a virtue “which has God as its only proof and object,” a proof “granted by divine gift and concession,” not by ratiocination or even noetic apprehension by the divinely unassisted mind. Further, rational proofs proceed by logical necessity; one cannot not accept the Pythagorean theorem once having understood the proof of it. If, however, “faith is based on free assent, it is the greatest impiety to try to tear away from anyone by human arguments the instruction which God has bestowed from his bountiful goodness.” And that is why “we must abstain altogether from discussions about religion.”

Catholic Coronaeus will have none of that. Discussion of religion can proceed, argumentation can occur without great risk, if the arguments are grounded on reason, authority, tradition, knowledge, and clear proofs.” Such discussion ought to be undertaken “in the interest of the union of humanity and love that man has with man.” This is the first invocation of Christian love in the dialogue. It fails to convince the others. The Calvinist speaks up for the first time, observing that “Mohammedans and Jews refrain from discussions about religion because they cannot see the clear light of Christian truth with bleary eyes”—an accusation that by itself tends to block inquiry.

The provocateur Skeptic wants to know who would arbitrate such a discussion. The replies illustrate the difficulty: the Lutheran cries, “Christ the Lord!”; the Catholic says, the Church; and the Jewish Scholar says, the Israelites. As the Skeptic politely puts it, “Necessarily, the religion which has God as its author is the true religion, but the difficulty is in discerning whether He is the author of this religion or that religion. This is the task and the difficulty.” It is so great a difficulty that the Lutheran himself, a man of no small certitude, wishes “that a certain Elias in sight of kings and people would prove by a heavenly sign which religion from so many is best.” [5] The Jewish Scholar, who well knows the difficulties Elijah encountered, says that even that wouldn’t work: “No miracles and signs move the wicked.” “Elias” Bodin has turned to other methods.

A discussion of demonic deceptions and the unreliability of dreams ensues, followed by the assertion by the Natural Philosopher and the Jewish Scholar that the oldest religion is the best. Since religious novelty has been conceded to be disruptive, and since the oldest religion is the closest one to God, there is no need for either new arguments or new revelations, especially since arguments are perennially questionable and unsettling, revelations suspect as possibly demonic or delusional.

But what is the oldest religion? The Natural Philosopher considers “natural religion” the oldest, the one consisting in the law of nature. The Jewish Scholar of course holds up divine law, which consists of moral law (worship of God and the duties of men), ritual law, and political law. Citing Philo, he avers that “there is no sacrifice, no sacred verses, no rites which do not contain the most beautiful secrets of things hidden in the treasure chest of nature.” That is, Jewish law encompasses the natural law, which can be discovered by Philo’s allegorical way of interpreting Scripture. Thus “the first tablet of the Decalogue pertains to the higher faculty of the soul which is the mind itself [symbolized, one recalls, by ‘Adam’ or ‘Man], to which the laws of the first tablet about divine worship are related; the second tablet is related to the lower part of the soul by which we are taught to control anger, to restrain passion, to master desire, to keep our minds, eyes, and hands from another’s possessions”—the soul’s right relation to the body, ‘Eve,’ ‘Woman.’

The Natural Philosopher proves receptive to this claim. He remembers having been told by “a Jewish astrologer” that each of the Ten Commandments refers to one of the ten “celestial orbs.” The first commandment, to worship God alone, honors “the supreme author of universal nature’; the second commandment refers to “the second orb which is called by the Hebrews desert-place because no star is contained in this heaven,” paralleling the prohibition of graven images; the third commandment, forbidding His people to take His name in vain, corresponds to the planets and the stars, which we must swear oaths by; the fourth, establishing the holiness of the Sabbath “is related to the orb of Saturn to whom also the seventh day of Saturn is vowed”; the fifth, commanding children to honor parents, refers to Jupiter, the “helping father” among the Olympians; the sixth, prohibiting murder, refers to Mars, the man-slayer and destroyer of cities; the seventh, prohibiting “adulteries and lusts, is fitting to Venus’ orb”; the eighth, prohibiting theft, “is in the sphere of Mercury whom the ancients made the god of traders and the originator of gain”; the ninth, forbidding lies, “is attributed to the sun about which Vergil said, ‘Who can say that the sun lies?” and stands for esteem for the  truth and mercy of God; finally, the tenth orb, that of the moon, that inconstant body which symbolizes our desires, which “we are ordered to restrain.” To all of this the Jewish Scholar simply adds that the Decalogue was God’s renewal of the natural law, which had been violated by human sins and crimes. “All the secrets of the highest matters and the hidden treasures of nature are concealed in the divine laws” (emphasis added).

The Natural Philosopher agrees, except on one point. The “divine law is altogether consistent with nature except for the Fourth Commandment, on the Sabbath. While the Jewish Scholar concedes that this commandment was “a token between God and His chosen people,” it nonetheless serves a natural purpose, enabling us to fill our bodies with strength and to increase our wisdom in study. To those who object that the Sabbath rendered Israelites helpless against their enemies, he replies that “vengeance against the powers of the air” protected them. On the mundane level, the Sabbath may be broken if necessary, for example in self-defense against enemy attack, because “the laws were not made for the safety of the laws but for the safety of men.”

The Jewish Scholar then goes on the attack himself, criticizing Catholics for worshiping saints, which he regards as a sort of polytheism. Coronaeus wants to reply but holds back, “lest I seem to have hampered anyone’s liberty of speaking.” In this he is no Socrates, but he is a wise ruler of the colloquium. Does this suggest that the paradoxical character of the philosopher-kings sketched by Socrates in the Republic—that the intrepid inquiry of the philosopher doesn’t fit well with prudential decisions needed to rule well? And if there were no philosopher-kings, but kings did philosophize—perhaps by reading the Colloquium—how would they manage such inquiries in civil society?

A discussion of prayer and other religious customs brings the Muslim to a lengthy defense of Islam. It transpires that he is a convert from Christianity, a fact that the Lutheran wonders at. In his apologia, the Muslim discovers himself as a highly selective adherent to the faith. He cites with approval Averroës’ dismissal of the Muslim Heaven as “a paradise for pigs”—itself an adaptation of Glaucon’s complaint in the Republic, that Socrates and Adeimantus have proposed a city for pigs, not for real men. The Muslim does praise the Koran, but only if the “empty fables” in it are excised. His reason for conversion to Islam evidently was his desire for liberation from slavery, inasmuch as Christianity does give some support to the maintenance of slavery: “Many are accustomed to embrace Mohammed and allow themselves to be circumcised in order to obtain freedom.” This more than suggests a certain deviation from full belief in the content of Islam. It comes as no shock when he later endorses the Platonic and Xenophontic recommendation of the noble lie, regarding both Heaven and Hell as examples thereof.

And this has been true of many if not all among the Seven, with their allegorizing interpretations of Judaism and Christianity. The Natural Philosopher asserts, “If true religion is contained in the pure worship of eternal God, I believe the law of nature is sufficient for man’s salvation. We see that the oldest leaders and parents of the human race had no other religion” than this “oldest and best of all” religions, namely, the natural religion. Both the Jewish Scholar and the Muslim concur, although the Calvinist understandably remains more severe, especially with regard to Catholicism and Islam.

But the agreement between the Natural Philosopher, the Jewish Scholar, and the Muslim on the basis of the natural religion must be considered a breakthrough. If representatives of those three stances can come to an agreement on a shared foundation for a political regime, a city like Venice has the potential to endure and continue to thrive as a regime where commerce in material and intellectual goods has found a home.

These two central books of the Colloquium illustrate the Socratic approach to some advantage, even when attempted in a regime, indeed a civilization, which now sees prophetic religions rather than the ancient civic religions Socrates saw. Part of the solution to the religio-political problem in modern times is Socratic-Platonic: exotericism, respect for the secrets of the sublime, seen in Plato’s noble lie as recommended by the Muslim. Part of the solution to the political problem is not so much Platonic as Aristotelian, although none of the interlocutors, all of them inclined to criticize Aristotle, says so. This is the mixed-regime republicanism the Calvinist recommends, which dilutes factional conflict, even among evil men.

In view of the Muslim’s defense of the noble lie, Coronaeus sets the following question for the discussion after dinner: “Whether it is right for a good man to feel otherwise about religion than he confesses publicly.”

Book V begins with the after-dinner discussion on the fourth day of the colloquy. Bodin has continued reading the Muslim’s play about Suleiman the Great. But the focus of attention now is a basket full of natural and artificial fruit Coronaeus has placed on the table. The artificial fruits are so lifelike that it’s hard to distinguish them from the real ones; comically, it is the somewhat dogmatically-inclined Lutheran who bites into one of the fakes. If the senses are so easily deceived in such an insignificant matter, Coronaeus asks, how can we have “certain knowledge of difficult and sublime matters?” Wounded, the Lutheran deplores dissimulation, presumably including noble lies.

Later on, the Jewish Scholar will reveal that the center of the Book of Genesis contains the key teaching of that book. It so happens that the discussion of the distinction between art and nature occurs at the center of the Colloquium. There he says, “Art is the ray of man, but nature is the ray of God; moreover, art is so far from conquering or equaling nature that it cannot even imitate it.” This amounts to a denial of the modern philosophic project as outlined by Machiavelli and, and few decades after Bodin, by Bacon. The wisest of the Israelites, the Jewish Scholar’s namesake, outsmarted the wily Queen of Sheba, who tried to deceive him with artificial flowers. Solomon commanded that bees be brought in, and they foiled the deception. Animal instincts can be more reliable than human opinion, if that opinion does not marshal animal instincts wisely.

Still smarting from his Catholic host’s playful deception, and by no means lacking Martin Luther’s thumotic temper, the Lutheran wishes that men “who know very keenly how to simulate the false and conceal the true with such happiness be exposed.” But Coronaeus disagrees. The power of omniscience is “proper to God alone.” “For if every wish and thought of all men were exposed to all, good men would not be able to protect their innocence against the power of wicked men”—who would know their intended victims all too well—”nor could just punishments be meted out for the wicked, because according to human laws, wicked thoughts do not merit punishment.” In human beings were omniscient, bad men “would always try to trap good men, but good men would never try to tap the wicked.”

The Lutheran nonetheless deplores the ways of religious hypocrites, who do one thing while thinking and feeling another, secretly. The Skeptic responds with a typology of religious and irreligious men. He identifies seven classes of religious men: those who practice public and private worship of the eternal God, without fear; those who practice private worship and decline public worship of idols; captives who publicly worship idols but privately worship the eternal God; public worshipers of idols who do so in order to avoid losing their wealth or being exiled; private worshipers of “domestic gods” who shun the temples of the civic gods; those who worship “private gods and a false religion” both privately and in public; private doubters who worship in public. There are four classes of atheists: deceivers who want the reputation of piety; magicians and sorcerers who worship publicly but mentally curse God while thinking Him real; those who openly “follow like animals their lustful desires”; mockers of religion—”the most loathsome of all” atheists.

The Skeptic’s colleagues discuss these options. The Lutheran and the Calvinist support public confession of faith. The Muslim defends the noble lie, if necessary: “When two wrongs are proposed the greater must be avoided”; public worship and private disbelief is bad, but private belief coupled with public worship of idols is less bad. The Jewish Scholar disagrees, saying that idolatry is worse than atheism because idolatry unites God with created things, a violation of the Second Commandment.

What of those who simply know no better than to worship idols? The Natural Philosopher says that this is excusable in the uneducated and the mis-educated, “but there is no just cause of error for those educated and especially for those who have been imbued with a knowledge of natural things, from which they could have drawn the clearest ideas about the nature, power, and goodness of one God, as Paul himself openly declares” in his well-known ‘argument from design.’ The Jewish Scholar agrees that “there is a remarkable power of nature inserted in the minds of men which awakens them to piety, justice, and all virtues,” but “it is no more possible for man to attain divine knowledge without God’s inspiration than for a picture in a dark place to seem distinct without a clear light,” no matter how well-painted it may be. Otherwise, prophecy would be superfluous.

The Skeptic advances the most latitudinarian view, that all the religions represented by the Seven “are not unpleasing to eternal God and are excused as just errors” because religiosity itself leads to virtue. The Natural Philosopher disagrees. He, the Muslim, and the Jewish Scholar all agree that “the true religion is the natural religion.” “What is the need for Jupiter, Christ, Mohammed, mortal and fictile gods?” He cites Job as his exemplar. “Who likewise entwined more secrets of natural and divine things in allegory than he? Who of mortal men has worshiped eternal God more purely?” An Arab who predated Moses, and “who lived by no other law than the law of nature, the law of Abel,” Job nonetheless merited God’s praise as the most just, pious, and pure mortal. Further, “Job neither hoped nor ever thought that Christ, who was born two thousand years afterwards would come—much less Mohammed.” Job never worshiped such natural phenomena as the sun and the stars, worshiping God alone. For this reason, the Natural Philosopher prefers “clear arguments” to authoritative books.

How do you differ from “the philosophers?” the Lutheran quite understandably wants to know. The Jewish Scholar amplifies his earlier assertion about the need for divine revelation. Because human reason is insufficient to understand God—one might observe that Job speaks with Him—and because in today’s world divine prophecies are “very rare,” we need the Book. He cites the some many Christian and Islamic sects as evidence that human beings should recur to the Torah and abandon religious speculation undisciplined by it.

The two Protestants protest. The Lutheran insists that Christian sectarians agree on basic doctrine. The Protestant concedes that God chose the Israelites as His people, but they eventually denied God (i.e., Jesus) and brought down God’s wrath upon themselves. The Jewish Scholar rejoins that the Chaldeans killed more of their descendants, the Israelites than Christians have done, five hundred years before Christ. Further, Christians have suffered martyrdom, too. Why, then, were attacks on Jews by Christians a sign of God’s displeasure, and why is Christian martyrdom not such a sign? He explains calamities inflicted on Jews as punishment for failing to hold themselves separate from other nations, not for amalgamating with them. “Good men must not fear harsh fates.” Moreover, God’s punishment of Jews “is the very greatest proof of divine love for us,” as “prudence is obtained by punishments and griefs.” By scattering Jews around their empire, the Romans inadvertently spread the critique of the idolatry of their own civil religion; “those to whom heaven has fallen do not need land,” and indeed the Jews’ very landlessness now only enhances their holiness or separation from the concerns of nations that have land to defend.

The Hebrew language itself “has been granted to the race of men by a divine gift. The other languages… are illegitimate and fashioned by the will of men. This language alone is the language of nature and is said to give names to things according to the nature of each,” as Adam did, at God’s command, in Eden. This alone shows that Jews constitute “the true church of God.”

This is all too much for the Calvinist, who charges that Jews killed their own prophets, Christian apostles, and even Christ Himself, through whom members of the true Church can only be only be chosen, as seen in Jesus’ statements, “No one comes to Me unless the Father shall have drawn him” and “No one comes to the Father but through Me.” Jews, Romans, and Ismaelites (Muslims), pagans, and Epicureans “separated themselves of their own accord from the roll of the church.” The Jewish Scholar denies that there can be such an invisible church, inasmuch as ‘church’ means “a coming together” that can be seen, not an “invisible church of the elect.”

The Lutheran attempts to falsify Judaism by citing predictions of the coming of the Messiah and the several false Messiahs who were Jewish. The Jewish Scholar explains that the ancient Greeks and Latins “did not sufficiently comprehend” what the word ‘Messiah’ (translated into Greek as Christon) means: simply an anointed king or prince. Both Samuel and David “call themselves Messiahs.” “Therefore, those who think there is or will be only one Messiah are mistaken,” and even “more dangerous” is “the error of those who think that this messiah, who we hope will come, will be God” and indeed “the savior of the human race.” Jews rather expect a Messiah in the sense of “a strong leader” who will bring “the Israelites, scattered here and there, into Palestine and their ancestral homes and free them from the high-handed domination of others.” Jesus did not liberate God’s people from Roman servitude. He deprecates Jesus as “a dead leader.”

The Calvinist says, “I receive this answer very coldly.” He denies that rabbis have come to a consistent teach about the term, ‘Messiah.’ Both Protestants charge that Jews have distorted the meaning of their prophets’ own words. “You see what deplorable ignorance of the sacred language has driven the Christian theologians,” the Jewish Scholar replies, to which the Lutheran responds, “The Jews stir up amazing subtleties not as much out of ignorance as out of obstinacy so that they may color the clear passages of sacred scripture with inky darkness.” After more philological dispute, the Jewish Scholar continues to maintain that “it is necessary to return to the springs of the Hebrews if there is any ambiguity in the Greeks.” In doing so, not only the meaning of Hebrew words but their placement in the books of the Bible must be heeded if the secrets of the sublime are to be understood. The middle passage of Genesis—”You shall live on your sword”—is crucial, as are the middle passages of other books, including the Psalms. [6] The Hebrew Bible was composed with scrupulous care. But “no one can say what kind or whose writing the New Testament is.” “The written tablets of the Old Testament are most certain; their testimonies are most authentic according to the consensus of not only Hebrews but also Christians and Ismaelites. But what faith can there be in the Gospels which the Hebrews and Ismaelites rightly reject?”

The Calvinist answers that “if you reject the evangelical testimonies, it is as if you denied the principles of the sciences, without which not even the geometricians will have any proof.” The Muslim objects: “The principles or postulates of the sciences lie open to all the understanding of all men and are clear to the minds of the unlearned. But on what principles do these things which are contrary to nature rely?”—that is, the virgin birth, the new star that stood in the sky over Bethlehem when Mary gave birth.

The Muslim also contends that the Gospels are full of contradictions, sparking a debate over these alleged contradictions. The Lutheran, who earlier called the whole discussion of language “very subtle, or should I say futile,” now intervenes to say, “Trifling critics and those who split hairs find everywhere an infinite variety of readings and times.” This spells crisis for Socratic philosophy in circumstances when prophetic religions dispute. To claim a divine revelation delivered in words poses a problem that Socrates did not need to face, namely, which language was used to convey that revelation, and how (or even can) that language be accurately translated? This puts a premium on those who ‘rule’ the chosen language. This controversy would enter philosophy some four centuries after Bodin, with Heidegger, who claimed that one can philosophize adequately only in Greek or German.

To counter the Jewish Scholar, the Calvinist relies on an argument from exotericism in the Gospels. “Christ spoke one way to the Apostles another way to the Scribes and Pharisees who customarily maligned his words.” It might be added that Jesus commended both the innocence of doves and the prudence of serpents, before sending His disciples out into the world.

Abandoning philology for logic, the Jewish Philosopher says, “I do not understand what divinity there can be in Christ,” since “what is more alien to divine power than for God to be tormented by a demon?” Additionally, God is omniscient, yet “unless the Gospel is strongly distorted one cannot deny that Christ did not know many things.” How then could Jesus ask His Father why He was forsaken? The Calvinist recurs to traditional Christian doctrine: “Christ was not only true God but also true man, nor had each nature been mingled in him.” Further, Christ has been given authority to judge the world, and only God can have that.” He reaffirms the spiritual necessity of “never allow[ing] ourselves to be separated from the acknowledged faith,” regardless of any troubling arguments against that faith. That is, faith is faith.

Looking ahead to the next day’s discussion, Coroneaus tells the Calvinist, “Indeed you have spoken most correctly, Curtius. However, it is not enough to have explained that Christ is true God and man, as we are persuaded, unless we know what is the unity of each nature and of what sort it is.”

The discussion recorded in the sixth book is Friday, the fifth day of the colloquium; to go further in the week would be to violate the Sabbath of the Jewish Scholar. The fifth day and sixth book parallel the fifth and sixth days of the Creation week, wherein God created first the “moving creatures that hath life”—those that move in the air and those that move in the water—all “after their kind,” then the land animals, each “after his kind,” and finally man, after His “image” and “likeness,” with rule over all the other moving creatures. “Male and female he created them,” and all of these creatures are blessed with the capacity to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Human dominion over the other moving creatures is on display almost immediately in Book Six, as the Skeptic twits Coronaeus for observing Catholicism’s Friday fast by eating fish, a food once regarded as a delicacy fit for kings. The Seven briefly discuss animal sacrifices.

They are much more interested in discussing the nature of man and his relation to God. The Skeptic and the Lutheran as if the reports of men’s great longevity, as reported in the early books of the Bible, are plausible. The Natural Philosopher suggests that God granted long life to give men time to establish the arts and sciences, the exercise of reason; the Calvinist suggests that God intended to grant time to propagate the human race, a thought closer to the teaching of revelation. Given that Bodin began the meeting by reading from a tragedy he wrote on a high priest and interpreter of the divine law who “atoned for the death of three leaders by begging remission from God,” readers are led to suppose that the interpretations of divine revelation that follow, whether naturalistic or spiritual, have life-and-death significance, and may expose the interpreters to the need for divine pardon when they are done interpreting.

A discussion of fasting leads to a consideration of the varieties of religious custom generally, including dancing, the use of musical instruments, and songs. But it isn’t long before the Natural Philosopher and the Muslim renew their criticisms of the Christian doctrine which holds that Christ is both man and God. The Natural Philosopher insists that God can only be spoken of not as what He is (as we do of natural beings) but as “what He is not”—not created, not mortal, and so on. The Jewish Scholar agrees that it is wrong “to join the incorporeal God to any creature,” as this fails to conform “to the nature and essence of God” and is “also contrary to the honor of His majesty.” The Muslim sneers that it wasn’t hard to convince Greeks and Latins that God took on human flesh because they were accustomed to stories of gods mating with mortals.

The Lutheran replies that “the remarkable acts of Christ and His wondrous deeds furnish that which the weakness of the human mind cannot grasp,” but the Muslim dismisses these acts by likening them to magicians’ tricks. Coronaeus says that no magician has attracted a following that has spread so widely and endured so long. “A monkey is a monkey, though clothed in purple, so a magician, however he presents himself, will always be like himself,” and eventually found out. The Skeptic refutes this argument by observing that paganism lasted for centuries longer than Christianity has lasted so far, and was “considered most religious” for all that time; mere longevity is no valid evidence of truth. The Jewish Scholar adds that in any event Judaism has endured longer than Christianity, and longer than many paganisms.

Coronaeus returns the discussion to the question of how the “divine and [the] human” could have been united in the person of Christ. The Natural Philosopher goes on the attack. A creature “is able to be and not to be,” but the divine person is immortal.” Therefore, in Christ “the will of God was to produce only a creature, not only a person divine and uncreated.” The Lutheran points to Christ’s dual nature; “in Him it is necessary that contradictions be true at the same time,” since the purpose of each nature was different. The Calvinist warns that “we have entered an inextricable labyrinth,” which defers the debate, temporarily.

The Skeptic raises a more manageable problem. In commanding His disciples to pray for their enemies, Jesus contradicted the teachings of David and the prophets. The Jewish Scholar heartily concurs. While it is true that “there is no greater or better antidote against the lust of raging vengeance and the desire for revenge than to pour it all into the bosom of God Himself who would receive no vengeance except the most just,” the “new lawgiver,” Jesus, “detract[s] from the divine law” by commanding His disciples to turn the other cheek if struck. “All divine and human laws have always allow and will always allow one to repel an unjust blow from his head in an honorable manner”; to say otherwise is “absurd,” as “the wicked would be allowed to do everything against the good, and the good would be allowed to do nothing against the wicked.” The Lutheran remarks that Jesus’ precept isn’t comprehensive but rather a commendation of patience with and goodwill toward one’s enemies.

The Calvinist goes further in defending Jesus, saying that He surpassed the prophets of the Old Testament, as testified by those prophets themselves, who anticipated the advent of a Messiah. The Jewish Scholar rejects this claim as well, affirming that God reserved “the salvation of all” to Himself; “He did not say through His Son Jesus.” The Calvinist responds by turning the discussion back to the combination of divine and human in Christ’s person. Jesus was “called Savior not as a man, but as a Creator”; “the divine essence was not mingled with the human mind.”

What, then, is the character of this union? The Natural Philosopher again invokes the principle of non-contradiction. Finite and infinite cannot be united, unless “a certain third nature [was] established from both”—as Hegel would argue, much later. Not only does this disprove the possibility of a God-Man but it also disproves the possibility of God as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Coronaeus “see[s] no contradiction in these pronouncements: God is one, God is not one, because they are not in the same order. The first is in the order of essence; the second is in the order of persons.” No, the Natural Philosopher says: “It is not possible that things which are united to one third thing are not united among themselves, and things which are to one thing the same among themselves are the same, according to the very principles and decrees of philosophy,” all founded on the principle of non-contradiction. “Therefore, if the divine mind is united with the human mind and the human mind to body, it is necessary that there will be the same union of divine mind and body. This is ridiculous; therefore, the former is.” The limited human mind cannot “combine with eternal God into a unity” because God’s infinitude precludes such a unity. The Jewish Scholar cites Maimonides on this point: “Moses Rambam thinks that he who believes there is anything corporeal in God is guilty of a more serious blasphemy than he who worships idols.”

The Lutheran dismisses this last point with an ad hominem argument. “Talmudic theologians” are “subverters of the Christian religion, who try by every means to snatch deity away from Christ, and reason, memory, and will which He shares in a certain way with man from God.” There is a real argument embedded in this: To say that Jesus was both God and man does mean that He was God and man at the same time, for 33 years, but it doesn’t mean that He was God and man with respect to the same ‘part’ of Christ. An infinite being could manifest itself in bodily form while remaining infinite in its essential being; an omniscient mind could restrict itself within that manifestation while remaining omniscient ‘in Heaven,’ that is, in its ruling capacity over that locally self-limited mind.

The Calvinist brushes past the arguments, saying simply that “faith is needed.” He cites Plato’s Laws (V. 738c), where the Athenian Stranger, in the Calvinist’s words, “orders the things which have been handed down by the elders to be believed without proof.” In the Laws itself, the Athenian Stranger discusses what should be done in founding a new city or in re-founding an old one that has become corrupted—either of which might apply to Jesus’ founding of his Ecclesia, as He conceives it. The Athenian Stranger says that an intelligent founder will not try to change what has been laid down by the three main Greek oracles—the ones at Delphi, Dodena, and Ammon; nor will he alter what has been ordained by the “ancient sayings” of those oracles. This is consistent with Jesus’ insistence that He changes not one jot or tittle of Jewish law, for Jews.

“That may be so for Christians,” the Natural Philosopher replies. If, as the Lutheran says, “There is one Father, unborn, and one Son, born from time eternal,” then, the Natural Philosopher says, that means “the substance of the Father and Son is different.” Even if one says, as the Lutheran does, that “hypostasis is is different from essence”—that is, the three Persons of God differ from the essence of God—”nothing begets itself nor can be the cause of itself.” If it could beget itself, this would mean that it was incomplete, not a whole. And in that case the Son “is different from the Father, not in the respect of persons but in the whole order of substance, as seen in what he says John has Jesus say in John 14:24: “The Father who sent Me is of another kind.” (As it happens, that isn’t what John has Jesus say; He says, “the word which you hear is not mine, but that Father’s which sent me.”)

The Natural Philosopher recurs to his core argument. “Nothing is so alien to God as to grant a part to Him or to take away a part, since His own nature cannot have parts; otherwise [His nature] would be bodily and indeed divisible.” The Lutheran counters, “in divinity God is not the efficient cause of the Son, but the essential cause, which is very different from the efficient cause.” To say the Father “begot” the Son is not to say that He begot Him in the way a natural father begets a son, as the planter of his ‘seed,’ but as an emanation of Himself. As Coronaeus explains it, “the Father is eternal without a progenitor and the Son also eternal but with a progenitor,” just as fire and the warmth it generates are simultaneous, or as the sun and the light it generates are simultaneous.

In that case, the Natural Philosopher says, they are not the same. Further, you can’t say that Christ was born but is also eternal. The Lutheran goes back to the Calvinist’s earlier insistence that these matters must be accepted on faith, inasmuch as “God cannot be comprehended in the hovel of the human mind.”

There are at least two questions here, a fact that explains the philosopher and the Christians are ‘talking past one another.’ Coronaeus isn’t saying that Father and Son are simply the same—else why distinguish them in the first place? He is saying that the Father’s generation of His Son, like heat from fire and light from the sun, is simultaneous with His being, which is eternal. It is not self-contradictory to say that heat and fire, light and sun, are ‘essentially’ the same in the sense that it’s ‘of the essence’ of fire to generate heat, sun to generate light.

On the other hand, the invocation of faith by the Christians doesn’t suffice. If I say, ‘I hold in my hand a round object,’ you can believe me, have faith in what I say, or disbelieve me, either by denying my claim outright or by asking for proof of it—’atheism’ or ‘agnosticism,’ respectively. If I say, ‘I hold in my hand a square object,’ the same responses are possible. But if I say, ‘I hold in my hand an object that is a round square,’ you cannot possibly believe what I say because you don’t know what I’m talking about. You might believe that I am holding something I am calling a round square, but that’s as far as you can go. You can’t believe something that is inconceivable, and that is what a truly self-contradictory statement is.

The Jewish Scholar intervenes, telling the Lutheran that his animadversion concerning the limitations of the human mind assumes what needs proof, namely, that Jesus is God. The Muslim cites II Corinthians 33:14, in which the Apostle John associates Jesus with grace, God the Father with love, and the Holy Spirit with communion. The Natural Philosopher concludes that there cannot be three essences or substances of God. “Who can seriously think that [God] that He is God who owes the principle of His origin, His essence, and power to another?” To these charges, Coronaeus can only repeat that “we must consider not three eternal, not three infinite, nor three gods, but one God, eternal and infinite, yet distinguished by a certain property appropriate to each Person.”

He goes on to observe that in the Old Testament has several names, but the Jewish Scholar disputes this, giving as an example the three “persons” mentioned in Zachariah 4:1-5, two of whom are actually cherubim. Losing his patience, he says that “when the Hebrew theologians write in earnest about Jesus, they do not even dignify him by calling him by name but scornfully refer to him as the one who was hanged.” When the Apostle John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he simply lapsed into incongruity. Neither the display of impatience nor the critique of John’s sentence fazes the Lutheran, who replies that whatever is in God is His essence; to say that the Word of God ‘is’ God means only that.

The Natural Philosopher takes up this latest charge of contradiction by asking, “Who would be so foolish as to say that he thinks the ordinances, the laws, the actions, and words which proceed from out of the man are the essence of the man?” The Calvinist would: “When John says that the word of God is the son, he understands not an utterance but His intimate essence, wisdom, and mind,” “for if wisdom had been created, there would have been a time in which wisdom not yet was,” but the wise  King Solomon himself said, “These things have been ordained from eternity, from the beginning, from the ancient days of the world.” The Lutheran concurs: “Nothing in the Trinity is before or after in time, but only in the order of relation; nor is the Creator less Son than Father, or less the Holy Spirit than either.” The first word of Genesis, bereshit bara’ (in the beginning, He created), that is, in the beginning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created; for the word of three letters, bara’, signifies three Persons, namely, av, ben, ruah, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.” Surely the Jewish Scholar “will not deny that this is drawn forth from the holy secrets of the Hebrews and the holier Cabala.” But of course he does deny it. “Who does not see that very diverse sentences can be fashioned from those same letters? Indeed our elders never strongly approved of that kind of Cabala. It would be much more likely to contrive a quaternity from the same Tetragammaton than a trinity.”

Such an argument reveals the ambiguity, the inconclusiveness, of reasoning about texts when the reader demands certitude, feeling an urgent need for it. The Skeptic therefore asks another question: Granted the Christian doctrine of Trinitarianism, why did the Son “assume human flesh”? And why was that necessary for human salvation? The Muslim adds, “Why was there need of so great a change, so cruel a punishment for a most innocent man?”

The Calvinist says it was because “it pleased Him”—God the Father—”to do so.” That is, God’s will is self-justifying, and human beings have no authority to bring Him to the bar of their own sense of justice. Coronaeus gives two reasons: Jesus’ death on the Cross “recalled us from the defilement of faults to virtues”; and it was done “to increase our love for him.” When the Natural Philosopher again raises the problem of whether it is even possible to conceive coherently the combination of divine and bodily nature, the Lutheran picks up the Calvinist’s point, charging the Natural Philosopher with “think[ing] that divine matters must be verified by the scales of philosophers.” What is more, “even if he knew the clear truth of the matter, he would still oppose it by subtle arguments.”

The Jewish Scholar asks why Jesus was not sent earlier. When the Calvinist says he was, in the sense that there were several ‘types’ of Christ, prefigurations of Jesus, among the Israelites, the Jewish Scholar denies it. The previous messiahs—Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, and the others—did not die for their people’s sins; “no one of these was killed as an expiation for the people.” “It is entirely unheard of that good men are sacrificed for wicked men.” The Natural Philosopher agrees: “It was fairer for each man to pay the penalty for his own sin,” and to worship dead men as gods is “insane madness.” The Calvinist has his answer ready: “All men are guilty of sin” except for Jesus; “therefore, why is it strange that God wished this victim who was most pleasing to him to be sacrificed?” That is, God requires of all sacrificial offerings to be unblemished.

The Muslim judges it “absurd” to think that “God, angered with mankind, exacts vengeance from Himself.” Coronaeus meets that assertion by denying that God acted out of vengeance. “The death of Christ not only was beneficial in atoning for the sins of the wicked”—what greater sacrificial act of atonement could there be?—”but also keeps us the more willingly from sin when we realize that immortal God was so displeased by the sins of the wicked that He wanted His dearest Son to undergo the most loathsome death because of the sins of others.” Customarily, an act of sacrificial atonement is undertaken by the sinner. In this case, the act was undertaken by the sinless Son of God Himself; human beings can then align themselves with that sacrifice, make it their own, by confessing their sinfulness and aligning their own wills anew, in accordance with God’s love and laws.

The Muslim worries that this doctrine is “very dangerous,” as “each most wicked man can fortuitously accept” the divine pardon: “What is this except to provide impunity for all and a wide path to all impieties for each most daring man?” I could live a life of crime, confident that my deathbed confession would spare me an eternity in Hell. The question would then be the moral and spiritual status of such a confession, inasmuch as it was calculated in advance. But the Lutheran doesn’t answer that way, saying rather that “the death of Christ was especially necessary for mankind to purge the foulest Fall.”

This raises the topic of original sin, which the Natural Philosopher regards as impossible because “there is no sin unless it is voluntary.” You can’t inherit sin. And if you can’t, all the problems surrounding the Trinity and the Incarnation and the Resurrection are meaningless. The Jewish Scholar regards Adam as a sinner, “but not because he plucked the forbidden fruit, or tasted it when his wife offered it to him, as people imagine in their childish error.” The right interpretation of the story is that “he sinned because he allowed his mind, led away from the contemplation of intelligible things”—naming the plants in the Garden according to their kinds—”to be enticed and overcome by the allurements of sensual desires.” The woman symbolizes the body, the serpent pleasures. “But in whatever way Adam sinned, why did that sin spill over to his innocent posterity?” No, “parents do not hand on to their descendants any virtues” or vices.

Coronaeus identifies this as the Pelagian heresy, “repudiated by the complete agreement of the theologians and driven out by the decrees of the councils” of the Roman Catholic Church. He quotes David as acknowledging having been conceived in sin and Paul as understanding that God’s curse was death and indeed damnation for all men. On the contrary, the Jewish Scholar insists, “the divine laws very clearly forbid that a son be bound by a fault of his parents” (Ezekial 18:1-23). “Each man suffers punishment for his own sin, not for another’s.” He then explains the fact that God punishes down to the third generation as a deterrent to sin in parents, who would not want their children and grandchildren so injured.

The Natural Philosopher vindicates nature and God alike. “Surely those who blame the nature of any sin relate the sin not to themselves but to the parent of nature, and nothing is more deadly than this.” But there is no sin “without the total will of the sinner.” Since an infant can neither avoid such an inheritance, if it exists, nor knowingly will sin, “no sin can be charged to an infant,” and no punishment “ought to be sought”. The Lutheran again takes this as an opportunity to deplore philosophy. “If we give assent to the subtleties of philosophers, we must reject faith and piety.” Adam knowingly sinned, incurring punishment, and as for us, his descendants, “with whatever color the root is imbued, it imbues the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits with the same flavor, odor, color, and poison.” By the grace of God we can transform our own destiny, if not our own nature entirely, by heeding the Gospel: “Believe and you will be saved.” (I John 1:8) Coronaeus modifies this according to the Catholic teaching, imputing redemption to baptism. This sets the framework for the subsequent disputation on the topic, with the Natural Philosopher rejecting Scriptural authority and the three Christians disputing its exact meaning.

After listening to them talk, the Jewish Scholar argues ad hominem, attributing “all this discussion about the Fall” to “the leaders of the Christian religion,” who invented the notion “in order to draw the souls of unlearned men to themselves.” The story of Adam in the Garden is “an elegant and divine allegory,” not to be taken literally. After God’s rebuke, Adam “returned from the delight of the senses to the contemplation of intelligible things, which is to say, he enjoyed the tree of life, which Solomon interprets as true wisdom,” fathering Seth, “clearly a divine man,” and eventually dying—but surely not suffering “eternal death.” Far from it. God “even indicated to Adam a salutary remedy when He said: ‘Perhaps he will pluck the tree of life and live forever.'” This contradicts the context of God’s statement, which is presented as His reason for driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden, precisely to prevent that “remedy.” (Oddly, the Christians interlocutors fail to mention this.) The Jewish Scholar goes on to argue that Noah, Enoch, Job, Moses, Samuel, and Elijah were “greatly praised by God himself” and showed little or no evidence of pollution by original sin. Abraham, “father of our race,” was favored with “many and so great benefits” when God “opened the founts of divine goodness to all people because of him.” How sinful could Abraham have been?

The Natural Philosopher raises the question of free will, saying that the doctrine of original sin abrogates it, thereby ruining the basis for morality. Coronaeus agrees with him, remarking that the Catholic teaching does not go so far as the Protestant teaching does, regarding the alleged helplessness of man in the face of sin and the doctrine of predestination. The Calvinist responds by denying free will to man not only after the Fall but before it. Divine foreknowledge precludes free will for human beings. If free will really existed, “eternal God’s foreknowledge would depend on the changeable and fallacious opinion of men, which is absurd.” But God has no need to opine, to guess what his creatures will do, or to adjust his intended actions to their latest freaks. To this, the Natural Philosopher doesn’t deny divine foreknowledge (“Providence cannot seem to hang from” changeable human will), “but it foresees your future changes and therefore free will has not been removed from each man.” That is, God’s foreseeing in no way deprives you of your choice. The Jewish Scholar traces free will not to logic but to Scripture—specifically, to Moses’ admonition to his people, to choose to obey God’s commandments: “Choose life that you may live.” The divine law is the true Tree of Life.

The Calvinist asks if “anyone can obtain salvation from the law,” even if the doctrine of free will is granted. “I still deny that anyone except Christ could satisfy divine law,” and only he could “absolve us from the antiquated laws of Moses.” Since Moses said that he does not “exactly perform the letter of the law” shall be cursed, and because the Israelites consented to this, Paul “concludes that those who have placed their salvation in the actions of law are subject to this curse.” Christ redeemed our sins; only God could have done so.

The Jewish Scholar replies that “often Paul is caught cutting out words of the law and prophets or adding words or plainly changing the interpretation.” In this case, words Moses uses mean, “Be cursed who does not have the fixed words of this law that he might follow them.” But even a man who sinned as gravely as David was pardoned by God, precisely because he did know the fixed words of the divine law, repented of his sins (which included adultery and homicide), and then “gave compensation in part” for his deeds, in accordance with that law. The Calvinist replies with several New Testament citations, emphasizing redemption through faith in Christ, effective thanks to his grace. The obvious problem is that the Jewish Scholar denies the authority of the Christian Bible because he denies the accuracy of the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible by the Christian apostles.

The Natural Philosopher rebukes both men. “If you continue to lead out with authorities, I shall summon all the families of philosophers who easily conquer those insignificant theologians by the excellence of the erudition and training.” Better “to argue with the senses and clear reasons.” Yes, the Jewish Scholar admits, “except in obscure and ambiguous matters in which the human mind can find no way out”—that is, except when considering the secrets of the sublime. At the same time, one must be cautious, inasmuch as to rely on authorities does resemble the practice of tragic poets, who call down the deus ex machina to extricate their characters (and thus the poets themselves) from the plot tangles they, the poets, have plotted. Religious sectarians do exactly that, “hear(ing) divine oracles from the mouths of the prophets and from the sacred books which the theologians, not only Hebrew, but also Christian and Ismaelite, have now for a long time approved, each in his own religion.” Not only does this show why Bodin had two of his own characters, the Muslim and ‘Bodin’ the lector, read tragedies—why he introduced the theme of tragic poetry into his Colloquy—but it also shows why the Jewish Scholar has sided with those among the Seven who advocate religious toleration.

The Natural Philosopher deems it “utterly alien to all reason to confess with simple assent that Christ died for the salvation of the human race in order to secure not only pardon for immense disgraces”—why should these be pardoned?—”but also supreme praise for justice and integrity”—how can the Man of grace be considered just, strictly speaking?—”but to avow that just men” such as Socrates, Plato, and the Catos “are tormented as if by the wicked and sinful eternal flames of hell and the most cruel punishments.” The Skeptic states the same thought ‘positively’: “I believe that each man is blessed by his excellent acts,” that the more such acts he commits “the more he will be pleasing to immortal God, although he worships foreign gods in good faith and just error.” Whereas the Natural Philosopher finds the sure ground of conduct in reason, the Skeptic finds it in morality.

To this, and to the Christians’ recurrence to the several doctrines of their several sects, the Jewish Philosopher answers that “it often happens that a man most wicked in God’s sight is considered most just in men’s opinion. But in order for God to take away from men this arrogance and haughtiness, Gods clearly says: ‘No one of the living will be justified before Me.'” (Psalm 143:2) The Natural Philosopher, a Platonist or neo-Platonist, concurs: only the ideas are pure; nothing material is.

The Muslim intervenes to assert the superiority of Muslims to Christians in acts of virtue. Dependence on faith alone can only lead “far and wide to a destruction of states.” This confuses the path of salvation with the path or ‘way of life’ of a state, and Coronaeus immediately denies that he, as a Catholic, depends on faith alone for this-worldly conduct: “Surely all divine and human laws would perish if there were no rewards for deeds performed well and no punishments for sins.” The Lutheran stoutly resists, on grounds momentous not only for German religion but for German (and eventually Western) philosophy and politics. “No reward is owed for a duty.” The just man simply does his duty; “indeed, a reward is contrary to duty.” However, “he who does wicked things acts contrary to duty” and does deserve punishment. He derives these principles from the status of Christians as servants or slaves to God (Acts 16:17; Romans 6:16, 22; I Peter 2:16). In this the reader will see the lineaments of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, with its strict rejection of ‘eudaimonianism’ in ethics, and its consequent need to derive moral right not from nature or even from God but from the categorical imperative.

The Jewish Scholar “grant[s] that no one is made just by actions, however worthy they may be, much less by an empty belief in a dead Jesus,” but by the blessing God gives for those just and honorable actions. And indeed, “if no one except the just is blessed, no one would ever be blessed,” as “no one is free from stain and impurity”—as both the Bible and neo-Platonic philosophy insist. Rather, one is blessed or cursed insofar as one commits acts of justice and honor. Further, “the divine law commands nothing which you cannot easily do if you wish.” Paul himself “boasts that he was blameless in the justice of the law.” (Philippians 3:6) “What lawgiver was ever so cruel that he commanded his people to do something impossible?” (He may be pardoned for having failed to anticipate the ‘ideological’ tyrants of the twentieth century.) But Paul also writes that the sinner stands condemned to Hell-fire for eternity (Hebrews 10:26), leaving no “room for confession or repentance” apart from Christ. “Yet there are those who think the divine law is harsher than the Christian law!” The Lutheran explains, or perhaps explains away, Paul’s threat as “hyperbole to frighten the wicked.” The Jewish Scholar, having carried his point with these interlocutors, then in effect endorses Jesus’ summation of the divine law. “What is the total justice of the law? It is for man to love God more than himself, but his neighbor as himself; a thing which each can do.”

The Christians fall into a debate over the Catholic practice of venerating saints and icons, treating them as intercessors with God. The Natural Philosopher, the Skeptic, and the Muslim scorn the practice as fodder for “the untutored masses,” as the Muslim puts it. The Jewish Scholar explains that when God ordered Moses to make a bronze serpent, the sight of which was to cure the Israelites from the poison of the fiery serpents God had sent among them as punishment for their sins (Numbers 21:8-9), God only wanted them “to see the serpent, but not to worship it, because of a remarkable secret in the serpent.” The sublime secret of the serpent was “to indicate that we should extinguish in us the mad desire for delicacies (which is indicated by the word for serpent) and would thus attain eternal life.” Since “the chief power of the serpent is in its teeth,” God used the symbol of the serpent not as a talisman but as a reminder that the Israelites must “eat the purest manna which had fallen from heaven and forget their old delicacies.” Once such a symbol has served its immediate heuristic purpose, it may be safely destroyed, lest it be worshiped (as Kant would say) as ‘a thing in itself.’

Despite his own noteworthy powers when it comes to allegorizing Scriptural stories in search of the secrets of the sublime, the Jewish Scholar adds a caveat: “I am accustomed to be amazed at the secrets of divine things which I understand less, and we ought not to be too inquisitive concerning them.” He therefore “consume[s] the secrets of difficult matters which I cannot understand with the fire of divine love”—also a theme of Coronaeus’ understanding of God. However, unlike a Catholic, the Jewish Scholar “wonder[s] whether or not God’s presence depends on the will and power of the priest, as they say.” He finds himself repelled especially by the sacrament, and indeed by the worship of Jesus Himself, both of which practices he likens to the Israelites’ forbidden worship of the golden calf; like the Israelites, who worshiped God in “the appearance of a calf,” Christians worship in the appearance of a man or worse, in the appearance of bread and wine.

The Muslim likewise deplores that the One worshiped as God “is torn by hands and teeth” in the partaking of the sacrament. “Averroës used to say that it seemed very strange to him that Christians were greedily swallowing so many thousands of gods whom they boasted they created in a moment under the appearance of piety.” What is more, “there is no greater poof of severity and hatred than to eat the flesh of an enemy.” Christians are cannibals of God. Coronaeus brushes off Averroës: “May the name of the atheist Averroës be abolished by eternal oblivion.” But this only returns the discussion to the issue of eternal punishment.

What justifies the concept of mortal sin?  “Christ clearly announced that eternal punishment had been decreed for the depravity of willful men,” (Matthew 18:32-35), and the Skeptic confirms that “these punishments are useful also or the terror of the wicked,” as does the Calvinist. The Natural Philosopher objects that those who commit the kinds of sins deemed mortal “believe that those terrors have been proposed for the ignorant and the womanish”; others “believe in the punishments of hell” but “despair of attaining pardon,” growing “old in perpetual wickedness.” In either case, the deterrent power of the doctrine is doubtful. More fundamentally, the doctrine of mortal sin is unjust. “With this reasoning, not only are all sins infinite, because one always sins against God”—which the Lutheran characterized as an “infinite” or mortal sin—”but also all sins are equal, since all infinite things are equal among themselves.” What is more, the whole notion of infinite sin makes no sense, as God is infinitely good, and the power of evil is never held to equal the power of God by Christians.

The Jewish Scholar disputes the Christian doctrine by saying that “divine punishment is always lighter than the sin” because God’s harshness is never “more severe than the transgression,” or “more lasting.” Coronaeus goes so far as to say that with God the punishment fits the crime, but not all crimes merit eternal punishment. The Calvinist and the Muslim alike insist that there is no middle ground. Salvation or damnation, those are the alternatives, and God will decide which to apply to which souls. The Calvinist adds that the Catholic doctrine of a gradation of sins serves the priestly interest in selling indulgences. For his part, the Natural Philosopher sides with Plato, who regards absolution by prayers and entreaties “dangerous” and “deadly,” instead proposing an afterlife not of punishment but of purgation of sins, with light at the end of the tunnel of Hades.

The dialogue has consisted of a long series of such impasses. The Natural Philosopher says, “I see that Jews differ from both Christians and Saracens in the key point of religion,” that “Saracens” or Muslims “have serious controversies among themselves about faith,” as do Christians and Jews. “In short, almost everyone is at odds with everyone; all are angry at all with curses and ill words for all.” Is it “not better to embrace the most simple and most ancient and at the same time most true religion of nature, instilled by immortal God in the minds of each man from which there was no division”? By that religion the “heroes dearest to God,” from Abel to Jacob, lived. The Jewish Scholar, who has worked toward religious tolerance throughout the dialogue, only demurs because “if we were like those heroes, we would need no rites nor ceremonies,” but “the common people and the untutored masses” need stronger restraints than “a simple assent of true religion” can provide. This suggests, however, that men such as the Seven might well form a society so founded.

Coronaeus also sees that the discussion has played out. Stating his belief in the Apostolic Succession, he concludes that “although I cannot persuade you of this which I do not despair will come to pass, I shall not cease praying to Christ, true God and man, and His hallowed parent, the honor of virgins , all the hosts of angels, martyrs, and confessors, and the orders of all saints that they render eternal God propitious to you and bear entreaties for your salvation.” The Jewish Scholar returns the benediction: “We owe unusually great thanks to Coronaeus for so many kindnesses and especially for his exceptional piety and love toward us, which we in turn must imitate and pray, each one for the other, to eternal God that He lead us in the right path of salvation, purged from all the brambles and thorns of errors.”

The Skeptic “approve[s] all the religions of all rather than to exclude the one which is perhaps the true religion,” drawing the Jewish Scholar to question whether it is “possible to defend the religions of all at the same time, that is, to confess or believe that Christ is God and to deny that He is God.” The Natural Philosopher, like the the Skeptic, “wish[es] neither to agree lightly nor deny rashly the things which the theologians turn upside down in doubtful discussion,” and observes that in contemporary Jerusalem eight Christian sects, Jews, and Muslims worship in separate temples but nonetheless “cherish the public tranquility with supreme harmony.” The Jewish Philosopher remains doubtful that such a harmony can endure among “such a great variety of religions.” The Calvinist warns that “to protect publicly the authority of different religions in the same city has always seemed to me the most difficult matter of all,” especially since “the common people” whipsaw their princes with religio-political animosities; at the same time, it is even more dangerous to ‘privatize’ religion, as that drives the sects underground, where they plot “secret conspiracies of citizens, which finally at some time erupt into destruction of the state.”

Coronaeus points not to Jerusalem but to Venice, where Jews and Orthodox Greek perform public ceremonies but other foreign religions are not allowed that privilege. “However, it is possible for each man to enjoy liberty provided he does not disturb the tranquility of the state, and no one is forced to attend religious services or prevented from attending.” The Muslim calls this “a wise judgment” by the city’s aristocratic regime because “in this kind of state no more dangerous pest can arise than civil discord.” The rule of the few may be wise and just, but remains vulnerable to the passions of the many and the conniving of would-be tyrants who exploit those passions.

After some discussion, the Seven agree that compulsion in religious matter is, as the Jewish Scholar puts it, “an insult against God,” “since no one can approach Him in love with a soul sufficiently eager.” Love can’t be coerced, but love is what the God justly expects from His creatures, as all Christians, Jews, and Muslims maintain, and as the Natural Philosopher feels toward his ‘god,’ Nature. “Henceforth,they nourished their piety in remarkable harmony and their integrity of life in common pursuits and intimacy. However, afterwards they held no other conversation about religions, although each one defended his own religion with the supreme sanctity of his life,” enjoying a seventh, Sabbath day of conversations that stretched out, evidently, for many years.

The Colloquy a Platonic dialogue in the sense that all the characters are ‘types’ as well as individuals, and their natural virtues and vices have been in certain ways shaped by the ‘type’ that their religious ‘regimes’ have inclined them to be. Coronaeus, for example is both Catholic in religion and catholic in temperament. [7] He defends Church doctrine, but in a spirit that earns the gratitude of the elderly Jewish Scholar, who has lived long enough to see instances in which Jews were not so well-treated by Catholics. Intellectual catholicity for French Catholicism will require less philosophic-theological system-building, more philosophizing as Socrates philosophized. Thomism, yes, but an opened-up Thomism, one never allowed to calcify into doctrinairism, much less persecution. What will bind such a reformed (if not ‘Reform’ or Protestant) church together?

The Seven move toward an appreciation of Coronaeus’ understanding of Christian love as the bond of their society. Agapic love looks to the good of the person in front of view, the one with whom you are conversing. It does not speak with asperity, having learned the patience which did not come naturally to thumotic Apostle Paul.

Coronaeus’ hospitality provides a framework in which reason and revelation may meet and even, to some extent ally. In this regard the alliance between the Jewish Scholar and the Natural Philosopher becomes crucial. They are the spokesmen for the two oldest ‘religions’: the worship of the Creator-God of the Bible and respect for, if not worship of, nature. The Jewish Scholar regards the divine law as the law governing God’s creation, nature; to that extent, divine law is natural law. The Decalogue renewed man’s cognizance of the natural law he had violated. At the same time, as the Jewish Scholar insists, although revelation is rational the God who reveals His intentions keeps certain sublime secrets, speculation concerning which must be undertaken only with the greatest caution and equanimity toward those whose attempts to ‘solve’ divine mysteries have resulted in conclusions at odds with those of Judaism, and at odds with each other.

Two cities show how such a spirit might prevail in the modern world. The ancient city of Jerusalem currently exhibits religious toleration, although not without tensions which might be aggravated in a destructive way. The modern city of Venice, called a commercial republic but really an aristocracy, the city where the Seven meet at Coronaeus’ house, might be described as a ‘New Jerusalem’—a commercial regime in the comprehensive sense, trading in goods of all kinds, and located in Mediterranean, the center of Western Civilization from antiquity until Bodin’s day. Perhaps if the French Catholicism and monarchy heed Bodin, Paris will rise still further in the firmament of world civilization. And not to leave the Protestants aside, the Calvinist advocated republicanism while remaining a critic of ‘the people’—of democracy, which gets carried away with its own passions, religious and other. The Calvinist is the one who wants to see a mixed and extended republic, the one who anticipates the American of the American Founders.

The final ‘Sabbath’ achieved by the Seven for their own intimate, private society within the Venetian political regime enables them to strive for the purpose of the Sabbath as understood by Judaism: “to increase our wisdom with study.” With insoluble sublime secrets discreetly set aside, all of the Seven can continue their shared inquiries.

 

Notes

1. In Greek and Roman mythology, King Coronaeus is indirectly associated with the goddess of wisdom, Athena. In Ovid’s telling, the king’s daughter, Coronis, was assaulted by Poseidon as she walked along the seashore. Athena rescued her by metamorphosing her into a crow, enabling her to fly away. Ovid elaborates, saying that Athena chose Corona as her life-companion, only to toss her aside for Nyctimena, another maiden Athena changed into a bird, the ‘Owl of Minerva.’
2. This is not necessarily correct, inasmuch as God is said to savor the smell of the smoke produced by sacrifices as they burn.
3. Very roughly, what the Natural Philosopher calls chance corresponds at least in part with what later philosophers will call history. For him, however, there are no laws of history.
4. As related by Josephus, Gessius Florus ruled Palestine under the Emperor Nero, “fill[ing] Judea with abundance of miseries.” By imprisoning Jewish petitioners and several other oppressive acts, he provoked the First Jewish Revolt in 66 AD.
5. Professor Kuntz notes that “Elias” means the prophet Elias (Elijah) to the Lutheran, but may also mean ‘Elias’ Bodin or even ‘Elias Pandocheus’ (which means ‘Who-Reveals-All), a.k.a., Guillaume Postel.
6. The Jewish Scholar refers to Genesis 27:40. The passage forms part of the story of Isaac and his sons, Jacob and Esau. In collusion with his mother, Rebekah, Jacob has deceived Isaac, who gave him a blessing, that he will prosper and rule over his brethren; even the nations will bow down to him. When Esau and Isaac learn of the deception, Esau asks him for another blessing. “And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of the heaven from above; And by thy sword shall thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.” If this passage is understood not only as literally but thematically central to the Book of Genesis, then it appears to make armed liberation superior to clever calculation in God’s order of creation. But this seems to be belied by the fact that it is Jacob who ascends the ladder to God in his dream, and it is Esau who becomes the father of the Edomites, enemies of the Israelites.
7. For a spirited recently-published argument holding that Coronaeus and Catholicism form the center of Bodin’s dialogue, see Thomas F. X. Varacelli: “Coronaeus and the Relationship between Philosophy and Doctrine in Jean Bodin’s Colloquy.” (Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture June 2017). As argued above, I maintain that Bodin himself functions as Plato to a Coronaeus who resembles Socrates in some ways, but cannot finally be considered the spokesman for the thoughts of Bodin himself.