This is the first of five talks I gave on the problems with modern thought and how Lutherans should respond to these challenges. Here I discuss Pierre Charron and the birth of modern skepticism.
Just and Sinner Podcast
The Rise of Skepticism (What's Wrong with Modern Thought 1)
[ Music ] >> All right. Well, thank you so much. It is really great to be here with all of you. And so, the task that I have this morning in this series of talks is a bit difficult because there is a lot to cover. And I have time this morning, and then I have a time later today as well, I believe it's three hours. Is that correct to have this morning? >> Three hours, one, two, and three hours. >> Perfect. >> Okay. So, I've got three hours here. It's nine o'clock, so I hope that I won't put you to sleep at least within the first hour here. I may do some little breaks in between. So, basically, I set this up as a series of five talks, and what I was asked to talk about was the kind of the rise of modern modern philosophy, and how it is that we are to respond to that as Christians. And this can get quite complicated, and I understand that. So, I'm going to try to boil this down to some of the most basic things here, and it may not sound like it would be basic to do this for three hours. But the goal of this is, and the structure of this is that I'm going to begin with a discussion of modernity and modern philosophy for three hours this morning, and then we're going to give the response, and how do we answer these kinds of questions later? Before I even -- sorry about that. Jump into this. I just want to speak just briefly about why it is that the subject is important at all, because we're talking about things like philosophy, or we're talking about what goes on in the academy. We may just think, well, that's kind of a bunch of just abstract questions. That stuff has no relevance to my life every day, and that stuff has no relevance certainly to the life of the church. But I contend that that's just not the case. We may want that to be the case. However, a lot of the changes that we are seeing in our society today, a lot of the challenges that we are facing, that we're seeing on a regular basis, are rooted in philosophical changes. They're rooted in changes in the academy, changes in ideas. There's more to it than just -- yes. >> What is the academy? >> Yeah. What is the academy? Sure. So when we're talking about the academy, I don't mean a specific kind of university. What I really mean is the realm of ideas. The -- what we would think of as perhaps intellectuals and discussions among intellectuals. And there's a distinction between an intellectual and a scholar, and what I would say as a scholar is one who takes wisdom in the past and studies it tries to understand older figures. We've kind of moved past that toward the age of the intellectual, and the intellectual -- the term intellectual is -- rises in its usage in the late 19th century among a lot of French intellectuals, but generally refers to the process of trying to abstract reality through a process of reasoning. Not really relying so much on the wisdom of the past, but trying to construct some kind of logical or rational approach to the world. And I think that's pretty key as we move forward. So the issues we're facing today in terms of gender, how you understand the human person, all of those issues go back to certain philosophical discussions. So my hope is that I can boil this down to give you a concept and understanding of how it is that we got to where we are. And I think it's hard to face these challenges if we don't understand some of the roots of what the challenges that we're facing are today. Because I think what a lot of people see is, well, I kind of know this is wrong, or just by means of common sense. And that's good, but sometimes it is helpful to go back and say, why is it wrong? Why do we have this inclination that these things are wrong? What we're actually going to see and what we're going to start with is what is a move away from the reliability of common sense, that's intentional. There is a reason why there is this divide between the intellectual and what the intellectual class believes and then what is generally accepted by the populace of any Western nation today who may not have, perhaps, any higher education at all. OK, so I'm going to start our story here with the Middle Ages to say, what's kind of going on that leads to the rise of what we call modern philosophy or modernity, which is the basic ideas that show up in the post-reformation era. And not all of them, but distinct ideas. Well, quick, broad overview. What's going on at the end of the Middle Ages that leads towards the rise of what we're calling modernity or modern philosophy? Well, there's some very significant movements. And if you know anything about the history of the reformation, you probably know something about humanism. Humanism, by that we don't mean secular humanism. What we mean is an interest in the humanities. The humanist movement in Europe begins around 1350 and goes through the 1500s. And humanism is defined by one particular phrase, "ad fontes," which means "back to the sources." And the humanists were interested in engaging classical sources and materials. So yes, that meant going back to reading the Greek philosophers, but it also meant going back to many of the other classical writers, whether it's historians or Homer and other various ancient works. Now, what is important for the beginning of our story here is that there are certain questions the humanists start to ask that start to raise some doubt in the people in Europe more generally. And that is that there are certain truths that are accepted truths by the majority of people in the Middle Ages that the humanists start to question. And here I'm going to say rightly so, and the reformation is going to draw on this. Just let's talk about one particular example. There is a document that has a lot of influence, 13th century, especially onward, that's referred to as the donation of Constantine. And the donation of Constantine is a document, it's a fraudulent document, but it's a document that claims to be from Constantine, and there was this act where Constantine delegates the authority of the Western half of the Roman Empire to the Pope. And this, of course, did not happen. But this was used in a lot of the arguments for the papacy that you see within medieval theology, especially later medieval theology. There actually was some questioning of this document around like 1000 AD, but eventually this kind of just got accepted, well, Constantine did this. Therefore, the Pope has this rightful authority, it was given to him by the emperor. Well, the humanists, with this new methodology they're developing in going back to sources, they start to ask certain questions of, like, do we really know that the author actually wrote this? Like, what are the evidences we have that this was written by, who had said it was written by? Because we have all sorts of documents in the Middle Ages that say they're written by all sorts of people. And it's very easy to simply say, well, I want my ideas to be trusted, so I'm going to slap some biblical name on it, and as soon as you do that, you say, well, you know, the apostle said this, or somebody was taught by the apostle said this, or the Pope said this, so, you know, it's not me. The Gnostics did the same thing in the early church as well. So what that means, when the humanists start to question some of these documents, and now, I mean, nobody accepts this as valid. I shouldn't say that, there's probably some, you know, tread, cath on line somewhere, saying that we should, you know, reclaim this document or something, but nobody really believes that such is the case today. So there is some questioning of things that were accepted at the time, and scholarship starts to lead towards some kind of questioning of accepted truths. Now, that can be, again, in very good ways, but it can also then lead toward a more skeptical attitude in a broader sense. So another thing that happens at this time is there is just a rise in literacy rates. People are reading a lot, and people are reading a lot more than they used to. There are reasons for this kind of twofold. One is a growth of education, more people are being educated. There are more universities that are being opened, you know, beyond just the priest or monastic orders. Look at Luther's work at Wittenberg University, that was a new university. There were a number of newer educational institutions that were being formed at this time. But then we also, along with this growth in education, had the invention of the printing press. And the printing press changed culture in such massive ways, similar to what we see with the rise of the internet. And what people are saying now we're going to see with the rise of AI. We'll see about that. But because of this, people have access to books. And if people have access to books, that means people have also access to things that they can use to question accepted authorities. So no longer are people simply willing to just say, "Well, because I've been kind of told this, I guess that's true." Now they can actually look at the sources themselves. There's more of a questioning of some of these accepted truths. Now, I think most people think literacy rates are good. I actually had an interesting encounter at a conference that I spoke at when this Eastern Orthodox fellow made a comment that the problem with modern societies that literacy rates have grown too much. And that's led to Solis Scriptura, which has destroyed the West. So I guess there are some people that don't think that literacy rates should be high. But generally we think that that is a good thing. But there are also other changes scientifically in our understanding of the world. So we have figures like Copernicus or Galileo, who have findings scientifically regarding the nature of the universe. There is a challenging of geocentrism, this idea that the earth is at the center of the universe. And those stories are very famous, and hopefully you certainly know some of those basic names. But this leads toward what is a questioning of Aristotelian science. So if you look at the ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, they spoke about all sorts of things. They spoke about ethics and things that we generally refer to in the broader categories of philosophy. But they also said a lot about science. Philosophy and science were not distinct disciplines. Philosophy is really just love of knowledge and growth and knowledge in all sorts of different ways. So with that, when there's a questioning of Aristotle's science, that also means that there is a questioning of the accepted world, your way of looking at reality that was taught by Aristotle. Which then can lead toward a view that says, well, if he was wrong about science, maybe he was wrong about everything else too, and maybe we need to kind of start from square one and figure things out once again. There then is the Protestant Reformation. Now, I'm not going to be making the case that the Reformation caused the roots of all of these issues. Of course, there is a very popular narrative that shows up that is that the Reformation, because of the division in the church with the Reformation and Sola Scriptura, this led to questioning of authorities, which therefore led to the decline of the Western world and all the problems we face are due to Martin Luther. There's a narrative that says that. This narrative is completely wrong. And I hope to show you that this narrative is wrong, because I'm going to show you the roots of modern skepticism in a Roman Catholic French priest named Pierre Chiron that we're going to talk about. And my argument is that the rise of skepticism within the Western world was maybe not exclusively, but significantly among French Jesuits, who were opponents of the Reformation. So this kind of narrative of the Reformation causing these issues that simply does not hold up when you look at the sources. But I think with that being said, we do have to acknowledge that the Reformation has a role to play here, in that with the Reformation, now we have different claims to what is Christianity, and different claims to who has the truth in Christianity. And you could see how this would cause confusion. I mean, if somebody's looking around and says, well, we've got the Reformed churches, we have the Lutheran churches, and we have the Roman Catholic one. You've got the Anabaptists, but nobody takes them too seriously. So which are you going to choose? And there's this kind of crisis that people have, because it had been kind of easy for them in the past. And so there is the questioning of, well, maybe we can't know anything at all. Maybe it's too hard to figure out what's right and what's wrong, so maybe we should just kind of go into this with the kind of skepticism. And this is a very, I think, relatable thing that we see today. I see a lot of people bouncing from church to church trying to find out which one is the true church. And I think one of the blessings in the Lutheran church is that we don't condemn everybody who's not part of our institutions as, you know, we don't condemn them to hell. But when you do have people in Eastern Orthodoxy and traditionalist Roman Catholicism, making that argument, there's a bit of a crisis that I think people can have because of that. So that does lead towards some questioning of what is really true. Then we have just new discoveries in the world. The Americas are discovered, which starts to lead people to say, well, maybe there are a lot of things about the world that we really just don't know. And as the growth in communication between cultures grows, the recognition also grows that there are many people that don't share our Christian convictions at all. And some of those people are quite intelligent people. So there is this wrestling, well, how do we even know, to some extent, how do we even know if Christianity is true at all, if we have these competing visions of what is real or what is true. We also then have, and I won't spend time on this really here, we have a move toward the notion of the will as being really primary. This starts within theology where you have something called volunteerism, which defines God largely by his freedom of will or his own freedom of decision making. This is eventually going to translate, I think, over a number of centuries into a focus on humans being determined also by our wills in our free decisions. Okay, so we're going to talk now about where all of this starts, where the skepticism starts, in light of all that stuff that we just set up here. And we're going to start with this figure I mentioned named Pierre Chiron. Now Pierre Chiron is a figure that like is not well known. Does anybody know who Pierre Chiron is? Why say that? Has anybody heard? Okay, besides my podcast on him. Okay. He's not, he's not that well known at all. I first discovered Chiron in a Jesuit journal article, and I was looking at like the roots of Descartes philosophy. Descartes, René Descartes is generally seen as the father of modern philosophy. And in this journal, there was an article basically trying to show that this priest was really the root of a lot of Descartes ideas. And they did some further exploration and I've done a bit of reading on this figure. And he's still, he's not very well known, but he's very influential. Okay, and I'll try to go through this rather quickly for the sake of the amount of, you know, time we have here, but Chiron's year is 1541 to 1603. So he is like just, you know, post-reformation, the contemporary of, you know, Martin Kennitz during the time of the, you know, writing of the formula of Concord and the publication of the book of Concord. He is a French priest. He is a friend of Montaigne. Montaigne is a French essayist, very well known. He was really kind of an arched skeptic, certainly non-Christian figure, but I'm not going to go back to Montaigne. We could, I guess, you know, keep going back and say, well, who taught Montaigne? I guess you could kind of do this forever, but we're starting here with Chiron. Chiron was a well-respected theological authority in his time. He was appointed Grand Vicar and Theological Canon by the Bishop of Cajor, and was then appointed as deputy to the general assembly of the clergy. Now, those particular titles probably are not ones that we are too familiar with. The, this general assembly of the clergy was an assembly of French priests that occurred every five years or so. And so he had a significant voice there, and he was kind of the basically priest that was in some way kind of overseeing the other priests in his area, especially in theological matters in particular. So in other words, he wasn't just a random priest somewhere that had no impact that was saying these things. He was somebody that had significant influence. So his influence includes primarily Descartes that we're going to be talking about here, but he influenced a number of other influential figures. Lamont-Voyet was another Roman Catholic Jesuit priest who had some questionable ideas, and then he had an influence on the rise of the Janssenists. And again, another movement that you've probably never heard of, but it was quite influential in French theology. They became quite a controversial group. They were kind of Calvinistic Roman Catholics in some way. So I'm going to talk, though, about this one particular book of Charon's called de Las Vegase, which means "on wisdom." And this is a reformulation of what the concept of wisdom is away from what was accepted in the Platonic or Aristotelian view, meaning the kind of inherited views of what wisdom was in the western world at this time. If you don't know much about Plato, Aristotle, that's okay. You should still be able to follow this. So what is the nature of wisdom? Well, Charon's primary goal here, as he starts, is to divorce wisdom from dogmatism. Dogmatism means a rigid conviction of what is true and what is untrue. And Charon believed that the church at this time, and he's speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, but in the Middle Ages, was too dogmatic. It was too insistent upon what was true. And that wasn't just in theological terms, but largely, actually, in kind of scientific ones or in other ways of understanding the world. And in order to proceed with this project, Charon makes this very sharp divide between theology and wisdom. Theology, he says, is kind of relegated to the supernatural. We receive revelation for Charon as a Roman Catholic. That's going to be through the church and through Holy Scripture. But wisdom is something that is more practical. And really, everything else relates to the quest for wisdom. So there's this strong divide. Theology is kind of this totally separate truth that's over here that doesn't really interact with the rest of reality over here. Very different from the common medieval view that theology is the chief of the sciences, meaning that everything flows from our knowledge of God. Everything that we believe in every field is connected to the triune God who has created knowledge, who has revealed knowledge, and the incarnate son, whose scripture tells us, is wisdom. The wisdom that comes from God. And so he rejects natural theology. Natural theology being the idea that we can gain knowledge about God from nature and from reason. And traditionally in theology, and I'll get more into this this afternoon, but there's a distinction between a supernatural theology and then a natural theology. Natural theology says that there is still, even though the human mind is falling, a reason cannot by itself come to perfect theological conclusions, certainly not in terms of the gospels we're going to talk about later. But human reason can bring us to certain truths. You can reason from the nature of the world that God exists. You can reason from the nature of the world that certain things are right, and certain things are wrong. And Sharon moves away from that altogether. And says we, in our human minds, really cannot attain any knowledge of truth at all. So there's a complete rejection of the concept of natural theology. All right, then we have what he praises at, Sharon praises at is at the center of wisdom, which is a pocket. What this means is a suspension of judgment. So what Sharon says is that to really be wise is to suspend your judgment and not say this is true or this is false. We just say, well, maybe we look at the evidence, we examine the evidence. But we never for Sharon come to some clear conclusion about what is true and what is untrue. This is taken from the very famous statement of Socrates, the teacher of Plato, who says that the wise man is the one who admits that he knows nothing. And this saying is certainly not always been understood in this way, but there was an ancient Greek school that was called the skeptics that did read him in this way, who Sharon is relying on here. So generally, this has been understood to say that the wise man is the one who doesn't just say, well, I have all of the answers. It cares about seeking the answers, and that's very true. But the way that these French skeptics take this is that, well, then we never get the answers. If this isn't the beginning of a search for truth, this is just what the wise life looks like. Well, Sharon here then promotes, this is really key, a resistance of what appears to be true with versimilitude. Versimilitude, again, probably not common vocabulary. I mean, I use it in most conversations. Versimilitude means that which has the appearance of being real. So whatever just seems kind of obvious. And this is what I've talked about with common sense at the very beginning, to say that essentially for Sharon, the way that you gain wisdom is by doubting your common sense, by saying, well, it might seem to be true, but that doesn't mean that it is true. So let's try to kind of purge ourselves from all of our assumptions about the world, and then approach this quest for wisdom or this quest for knowledge, as if none of that was true at all. So to some degree, you can see how this would make sense with some of the scientific findings that have occurred at this time. Certainly, it kind of appears to be true that the sun revolves around the earth from our vantage point. I mean, that's kind of like the most natural thing if you're just looking up at the sky. And at this time, people did not actually believe the earth was flat, by and large, in the Middle Ages. That's kind of a myth about the Middle Ages, but that could be a kind of thing where you say, well, it all kind of looks flat when I look around me, so I just kind of assume that that's true. And yeah, you can have assumptions about what's true that are wrong. But for Sharon, that's more than just a principle of we have to be willing to critique perhaps things that might seem to be true, but to say that ultimate wisdom kind of suspends all judgment of anything we might assume to be true as a whole. I imagine that probably most people are willing to suspend judgment about the shape of the earth, for example, to say, well, maybe it kind of appears to be flat, but it's clearly not for various reasons. And therefore, we acknowledge that that's true. But you can probably do that without then stepping back and doubting the existence of your own mind. But for a lot of the skeptics and philosophy here, we see this with the way Descartes answers this, that is what they're doing. Like, they're doubting everything that you assume to be true. So wisdom begins for Sharon, really, with this doubting of common sense. What this does is it really undermines any argumentation we can make for the truth of Christianity. Like, there are no apologetic arguments if you don't have this. Yes, he did. And some of the other Jesuits later, post-Chiron, start to actually use this to their advantage. And it sounds strange, yes. But how is this the case? Pascal uses him, to some extent, to make his arguments for Christianity. So he's critical. But what the Jesuits do, it sounds strange. But what the Jesuits do is say, well, if our reason is so fallen, and we really can't understand reality as it is, that's just more reason why the Protestants are wrong. Because if we can't really understand things, and we can't really understand scripture, and therefore we need to all submit to the Pope as our highest authority, because we can only get this supernatural knowledge that's perfect. So that's the attempt is what they're trying to do. Which sounds odd. So, but... Yeah, so why would you go back to like Plato and Aristotle you're saying, essentially? Yeah, well, and we will have time for more questions later too, so I want to make sure we get to that. No, no, you're good. So, but there will be time for questions. I'm going to get into some of that in my talks this afternoon, but just really quick. Plato and Aristotle have... speak about certain things that just aren't in scripture. And that's not because there's additional revelation in some supernatural sense, but it's just because scripture doesn't answer every question, every philosophical question. So when we're dealing with broader, just broader issues of like, I don't know, an ethics obviously is one that scripture speaks to very clearly, so that's not a good example. But there are some questions of what's called metaphysics, that scripture doesn't like explicitly give the answer to. This is why, for example, Philip Melanchthon in the apology of the Oxford Confession says of Aristotle's ethics, he says, "Nothing better has ever been written on the subject." And he taught from it. Well, why is that the case? Because what we're looking at is just the question of kind of practical wisdom in the world, in some specific ways that scripture doesn't directly address. So, it's... we have to be careful in how we use those kinds of sources. We certainly don't make them our determinative theological sources. That would be a major issue. But in terms of like things like apologetic argumentation, you know, some of Aristotle's convictions can be used very well, apologetically. And there are hints of some of that in the New Testament, but that's not the purpose of the New Testament to lay out those kind of arguments. So, it just... it's just a matter of delegating those things to their proper spheres. Yeah. But we will get to more of that, hopefully, to fill some of that in here. Okay. So, there are three connections between human nature and wisdom that Sharon makes that are referenced here. And this is by a book. The last name is Nito, an author. Oh my gosh. And I didn't write his first and middle name down, so I apologize for that. But N-E-T-O is his name. He's got a book on academic French skepticism, which sounds very exciting. I know. But I'm giving him credit here because I didn't pull these three out. So, but he mentions these three things that connect human nature in his conception of wisdom. First, reason does not have access to first principles and causes. So, this is going to be really essential for kind of trying to dismantle arguments for the existence of God. Because when we argue for the existence of God, we argue that, well, if things exist, there must be a cause for their existence. Very basic kind of summary of arguments that we make. Well, he says, we can't... we have no way to reason toward causes. All we can say is the way things are, we can never make an argument for how things kind of got to be that way in some sense. Historically, perhaps, but not in any kind of metaphysical sense, meaning finding like God within the mix there. He says that reason can only access phenomena. What that means is that reason cannot actually find the essence of reality. What reason can do is speak toward phenomena, which refers to the kind of sense experience that you have. So, reason can give you access to say how something feels, how it smells, those kind of things, what you see, the patterns that you see, but it can't actually give you access to reality as it actually is. Just kind of how you're experiencing it or how humans experience it. So, reason tells you more about yourself and your own experience of the world than it does objective reality in the world itself. Second, he says that humans do not make decisions purely on account of reason. And I think this is true, but where does he go with this? He says therefore, the human will should attempt to suppress what may seem to be obvious in order to free the rational mind to act in accord with reason. So, what he says is essentially that because we don't make decisions just on a rational basis. And that's true. I think people are not as rational as we like to think we are. But he therefore says that's why we have to kind of suspend all that we think we know because real rationality is something that's kind of divorced from all of our experiences and divorced from all of our preconceptions. Third, and this is going to be really key here, and this is a reason cannot discover indisputable truth, but it can critique, inquire, and overcome superstition and bias. So, reason is really used more critically than it is constructively. We're not really using reason to construct what reality is, but to say what's wrong with other systems. What might be deemed as superstition or bias? Ideas that we still hear a lot in the academy. I mean, this is what drives a lot of academic work is using the academy in order to critique or find bias rather than to construct a positive vision of what reality is. So, there is a move with Sharon away from metaphysics. Now, just to give you a definition of what metaphysics is for those who aren't familiar with some of these categories in philosophy, generally philosophy is divided into three separate disciplines. One is ethics. That one's pretty self-evident. Most people know what ethics are. The other is epistemology, which is the question of how do we know anything? How do we know the world around us? And then the other is metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study essentially of what is reality. What is real? And the ancient Greek philosophers, if you look at a Plato in Aristotle, are really concerned with the questions of metaphysics. It's in metaphysics that you get discussions of the nature of God, the existence of the soul, purpose in nature. Those are all metaphysical questions. Questions that even if you don't know the term or wouldn't use the term, you ask on a regular basis to some degree. So, what Sharon does is starts to move philosophy away from those questions of what is real and says that we just simply can't know those things by use of our reason at all. We just, reason doesn't do that. I can't find those types of truths. So, he says that the purpose or the benefit of using our rationality is really more for practical living than it is anything else. And it's here that he gets a lot of critique from Christian theologians and other clergy at the time because he really derives his ethics not directly from Scripture, but he derives his ethics from this rational basis. So, what he's done is he's divorced ethics from theology so that they're kind of totally unrelated disciplines. What happens in modernity is as you get the move that you start to see in in Chiron of certain disciplines away from theology, theology just becomes this kind of smaller and smaller and smaller circle where eventually it's kind of off right in the corner over here and it's kind of this little discipline, but we can we can do with basically all the other human questions without any consideration of that theological stuff. Secularism comes very easily when you've already done that because then you start to say well why do we even need this whole theology thing in the first place. For able to just understand everything as it is anyway through a reason why why use it. Part of Chiron's the theological aspect of his argument here and what he's saying is he says that there is this kind of great distance between God and man in terms of their their being which is true God is infinite we are finite creatures of course, but he uses that to then say well if that's true he says well God has all truth God knows everything comprehensively but we do not therefore there is a kind of human arrogance to claim that we know truth as it is. If I say that I have knowledge in some way I am claiming to maybe be God right God is the one who has knowledge I am a I am a creature I am limited I have limitations therefore they see Chiron would argue that this kind of skeptical attitude is really an attitude of humility humility and saying there are many things that I don't know there are many things that I don't simply don't have access to this is divine knowledge this is not is not human knowledge. So the path of the wise man then is one of simply seeking but not really finding we seek wisdom but we don't really find wisdom and wisdom is found within the seeking itself. I see a lot of echoes of this of this today it's not about the destination it's about the journey we're just kind of all humans on this journey and learning and and you know doubt is a part of faith and it's a beautiful part of faith because it's humility and not knowing where we are you hear this kind of language quite a bit and that is prominent here in Chiron and that is going to be kind of filtered into the modern world through a number of other of other figures here. So Chiron is going to say that we do have some there is one kind of knowledge that we have that's much clearer than other kinds of knowledge we can be a little more certain about and that is self knowledge. So I can know myself much more than I can know the world and so reason has this purpose then of self reflection it causes us to reflect on ourselves reflect on who we are and we can learn truths about our own self through through reason. Okay then topic I have here is probability versus dogmatism in Chiron and what he's going to as I mentioned Chiron rejects dogmatism dogmatism in his view being this idea that we can have certitude of what is what is true and what is not. Instead Chiron says we work with probability the enquirer or the wise man that Chiron speaks of can attain certain views as probable through use of reason. There's a probability perhaps but he's not really speaking of this in the way that we think of probability and statistics. Chiron isn't saying that well we can kind of achieve a 95 probability that say Jesus rose from the dead by the use of historical evidence. He's not using that methodology to say something like that. Instead he's saying he's using in a broader sense more of well it's probably true not to statistical certainty because to him that would be a kind of I think dogmatism even by itself to make those kind of claims. But the benefit of speaking of probabilities instead of absolutes for Chiron is that we have this kind of relative detachment from our own convictions. And this detachment from truth claims for Chiron is virtuous. This is really the essence of the wise man is we don't make strong claims about what is true or what is not. And so we are detached. That means if our truth claims fall apart it's not going to really harm us in any way. It's kind of a some way a stoic type of mindset here kind of like oh well if I'm wrong oh well because I'm not that attached to it anyway. I suppose it's one way to kind of deal with the anxiety that's going on at the reformation of which which position is right to just separate yourself from it and just kind of say well I have to worry about it. There are two principles of wisdom that's Chiron repeats if you're going to just summarize the Chironian view of wisdom here. And that is first examine everything. So be critical of absolutely everything. Everything that you may seem to think is self-evident, examine it, question it. The second principle ascends to nothing. So you see how this changes the just the discipline of philosophy but I'm just speaking about academic inquiry in a broader sense away from seeking truth and promulgating truth and yes of course being open to correction when you're wrong but ultimately with an end of moving toward what is true what is good and what is beautiful toward now using reason to tear apart truth without actually being able to commit to anything yourself definitively at least. The wise man that's becomes basically just a constant critic who will not assent to anything at all with certitude. He would be really annoying to have a conversation. I have like this one who's like done debates every once in a while you run into someone who the worst people to debate are those people who won't commit to anything because they'll just go after everything that you say and they'll pick apart little things that you say but I think they feel like they win by default because they won't commit to anything so you have nothing to critique and every time you critique some argument they make they say well it could be that but you could also use this argument or it could be this or it could be that. It's frustrating and I think those kind of people have always been around but this this gives a stronger reason I guess to be like that. So here is a summary and this is from Nido's book academic skepticism in 17th century France. I think that's the title. He says this on the one hand suspension of judgment absence of any previously held belief is a necessary condition for the full exercise of man's reason unbiased rational investigation. On the other hand universal investigation is necessary for the maintenance of the judgment suspended since an open endless and rigorous examination will inevitably undermine the plausibility of any belief or doctrine to which one might feel inclined to adhere. Basic summary of his ideas here. All right well I went through this first talk rather quickly more than I thought I was going to so that means I've got some time for some questions here so my goal was to aim these talks at about 45 minutes each which usually means it's going to be like much longer than that so but I got time just for a few questions. Okay so I'm going to take the question here over here first please. Yeah so what was he trying to achieve the question just if you didn't hear what was your own trying to achieve in terms of the assembly of priests that he's that he's leading or he's a part of here. I think a couple things one is in this for sure and I think this is the primary one is that he is really interested in these new tools of science these new scientific studies and I think his concern is that if we are too dogmatic about our own previously held beliefs about these things and the church is basically going to be behind in scientific findings so if we can essentially divorce what are theological claims from the claims of science well then we don't have the issue of the church's debate with you know Copernicus and Galileo because we've kind of relegated that to another field altogether and so in a way I think that was seen as something that would protect the church and I think you especially see this with his relationship to Montaigne because Montaigne was just a critic of the church and so he's trying to find a way to kind of say well we can hold on to kind of theological truths over here but then also buy into these developments in modern thought without it really affecting our theological commitments and that is a danger that people fall into today to constantly to kind of relegate theology to this little this little corner so that so that we can say well yes I agree with all of these things too and of course I think it had the opposite opposite effect ultimately yeah I and people have asked me to do Brad Gregory has this book the Unattended Reformation where he basic which which is the text that cited all the time to blame Luther for every problem we face in the world today and he's a historian and a very well-read historian I'm not a professional historian but I think that he's very limited in the sources that he uses I thought a lot of people asked me to write something some kind of response in depth to Gregory and that's something I would like to do at some point I just have to make sure that he's a real historian unlike me so I'm just a theologian who does some history on the side right so it's called the Unattended Reformation so so I hope to have some kind of fuller response to that in the future yes good question yeah I mean you actually do have very similar paradoxes that arise with a lot of modern thought is it is kind of self-contradictory right if you were to say nothing is true well then you're making a statement about truth right yeah yeah yeah I don't believe in creeds there's a great example oh okay well you just made one yeah and I I don't want to get to I don't want to peer too much into people's motives because because I ultimately don't know but I will say that among scholars who examine these these figures there are a lot of debates as to how committed they really were many of these figures really were to their faith and there is at least an argument to be made that many of them were priests but were not actually dogmatically christians in the fullest sense I do have to be careful and clear here to say though that not all the Jesuits agreed to this stuff their Sharon's views were condemned as as heresy by many of the Jesuits as well so they took different tracks to this but but many of them did grab on to this kind of skepticism and then as I said some of them start to use this as defense of the papacy against against the reformation even leading to some of the Jesuits arguing for errors in scripture to try to promote the papacy but I don't think that there is I don't think it's a coincidence that it is Jesuits today who tend to be the ones who try to undermine the Roman faith it does since this time the Jesuits have been the ones who have really been I mean they're they're modernists and they're in responding to the reformation what the Jesuits don't do is grab on to what is pre-reformation traditionalist Western Christianity they formulate something new in response to the reformation and the Jesuits are a kind of modernist organization in some ways which is why they tend to be the most progressive of Roman Catholic theologians today I mean look at your you know James Martin if you're familiar with him yeah well Pope Francis yeah Martin's even more more extreme but I guess he can be in his position but you know traditionalist Catholics don't like the Jesuits in my experience anyway because they're not a historic order so as much as you want to say like the reformation caused modernity really the Jesuits are at least in part causes of or a major part of the development of modernity and a lot of Jesuits pride themselves on that by the way too and not all of that's bad because you also have many Jesuits who are scientists who are who have discovered some very important things too so I'm not trying to say everything in the modern world is bad and we need to go back to live like we're in the 16th century yeah I think there are probably a lot of different motives for it some of it could be running away from authority some of it could be running away from a system of belief as you said some of it could be wanting to live in a way that is not consistent with divine revelation and wanting an excuse so the humility response seems to work very well I don't want to say that everybody who does this is doing that though because some of it I've seen just from people who have this ecclesial anxiety I've seen this from some people who just see a lot of decent arguments on all sides of things and I hear there's some people a lot who watch my videos who are like well you know I watch your videos and they make really compelling arguments and then I you know watch Gavin Orton and he seems to make really compelling arguments for the Baptist position some people look at all of these different sources and say look you've got these very intelligent people from all different perspectives the heck do I do how do I know and then people think well I'm not as smart as any of those guys so how am I supposed to determine what's right and wrong so so I think that's part of it too and and I think we have to recognize that so I don't want to put like bad motives on everybody to say like well anybody the only people who fall into this are are people who just kind of don't want the truth I think there are there's a genuine concern that that we have to be concerned with I think from a Lutheran perspective I think this makes it a little bit easier when dealing with people like that because don't get me wrong I'm going to argue for the veracity of the losing confessions all day it's it's kind of what I do all day so so I'm very passionate about that but what we don't have to do is we don't we're not in a position where we have to say well if you you know if you decide that you're going to become Russian Orthodox then you've been cut off from Christ and you're going to burn in hell for eternity we we don't have to say that to people so I think it puts us in a much better position but when you are dealing with people from those groups who are making those claims and you just say well I know I'm a Christian I know I believe in Jesus but I'm not sure what's right and if I'm wrong then I could go to hell because I haven't submitted to you know the right bishops which which is unfortunate so I think there's it's multifaceted regarding Romans 1 I tried to find something whether in this book or other articles and I couldn't find anything on that his works haven't really been translated everything's in French so it's like I'm sure that he would have had to have dealt with that but this has been a problem for a lot of theologians throughout modernity is that when you reject natural theology like you've got a very clear text that just says it um Carl Bart in the 20th century does the same thing and he has an exegetical treatment of Romans 1 and it's terrible but he does I just it's just not compelling but he does at least try to deal with the text but I don't know what he does with it yeah well you're getting ahead of me here because I have that whole quote in the later presentations so it's great no it's it's great Luther is so blunt and bold and he always is but I that's one of my favorite passages in Luther about the goodness of assertions uh Erasmus is a good example of this and and Erasmus is a great scholar very important for the development of of scholarship in the west so he's no slouch but man is Erasmus noncommittal on some issues uh and there are reasons for that some of it is to be honest I don't think Erasmus cared about this issue I really don't think he cared that Erasmus basically had pressure on him to to distance himself in the reformation and Erasmus is he's a scholar he's a humanist he's not really getting engaged in these kinds of of things it's not really what he's interested in and there's pressure on him to basically say are you gonna follow the reformation or are you not and Erasmus is just kind of like I don't want any trouble so I'm gonna write this little treatise and in the treatise dealing with this question repeatedly Erasmus basically just says that could be right it could be wrong and doesn't really you know but but this is why Luther's wrong I think it was more he felt like he had to do that than anything else um and then Luther you know kind of goes at him about it's uh and again it's a beautiful statement but um but I think there's that to some degree in Erasmus uh in in the humanists and they are questioning things but what I don't see in figures like Erasmus is really a kind of hard skepticism I don't think that's really what he's trying to do I think if Erasmus had cared more about this issue he may have been a lot less wishy-washy um to some degree their scholars have to question things like when you're in a position like Erasmus you to some degree have to question things but you don't you can't just accept whatever you're told in every sense uh and I think that what you need to have is a balance uh there there's a dogmatism that's unhealthy which is I don't think about anything and I will listen to no critiques of anything that I think because it's what I think and I'm right all the time that's unhealthy and you don't want to do that um but there's also the skeptical attitude that we've been talking about which is I'm going to throw out everything that I know I think you should have firm convictions but listen to evidence to the contrary and and I think that Erasmus promoted that to some extent now I'm not saying he wasn't too wishy-washy I think he was but I don't think it's it's probably not fair to kind of lump him in maybe with what you find later though as I said the humanism of Erasmus does kind of lead toward what you find in somebody like Chiron though I don't think Erasmus from my reading of Erasmus at least I don't think he would have gone near where Chiron does with it all right well we'll give you guys a little bit of a break five-minute break [BLANK_AUDIO]