Disputation on the Ways of Knowing God: Part 4

By Gisbertus Voetius

About the Modes of Knowing God

Part 4

Respondent: Adrian Laeckervelt, Gorinchem, December 9, 1665.

§. 1. Jacob Revius, my son [Paulus Voet?] in his Philosophical Meditations, and David Stuart in the disputations he presented in 1664 and 1665, examined Descartes’ method, principles, and main ideas.[1] We also thoroughly examined, in accordance with orthodox theology, that dangerous assertion [of his] about doubt in the 3^rd part of our Select Disputations, under the section “On Faith … and Doubting.”[2] Descartes himself was not unaware that this offended theologians, Papal philosophers, and even the Jesuit teachers who taught him—you can see this in their objections to the Meditations, from [Pierre] Gassendi and the scheming of that Parisian Jesuit he complains about in his letter to Dinet. Whatever crazy stories, ignorant errors, and absurdities that man (like the fanatics and libertines David Georgius and Conrad Vorstius, along with the Paracelsians and Rosicrucians) claimed, or whatever contortions his defenders twisted themselves into with twists, turns, confusions, and distinctions—it was all a waste of effort. Their uproar will not make the ignorant and unstable crowd infer that, following the Cartesian method (which he says he has established), it is possible, nay, even necessary to doubt the existence of God. This was irrefutably and clearly proven by Jacob Revius in his Cartesiomania.[3] Last year, in 1664, at Leiden University, a theology student friendly to Cartesian philosophy gave a disputation on doubt that was read aloud by the chair, a Cartesian philosophy professor, who zealously defended it. It was printed, affixed to the academic doors in the usual manner, and copies were circulated, and are still in the hands of many—and it, without any ambiguities, clearly and distinctly stated that God ought to be doubted! But the ventilation of this monstrous and horrible disputation was prohibited by the vigilance and zeal of the renowned doctor [Johannes] Hoornbeeck, then Rector of the Academy, and the reverend theological faculty. The esteemed Synod of New Holland meeting in Amsterdam that year thanked the faculty for this. You can also consult what doctor Jacob Trigland [Sr.] said about the “miracles” of Cartesian philosophy (especially on his method of doubt and the natural knowledge of God) in the funeral oration for his colleague, doctor Constantijn l’Empereur.[4] I have thought it necessary to give these warnings on this occasion so that younger men devoted to study and the sacred ministry may attend to themselves and their own affairs, and not allow themselves to be led away from the philosophy traditionally taught in Reformed schools; that they not be drawn away from that study which especially serves the defense of the Christian faith and of the received orthodox theology into Descartes’ wilderness or labyrinths. As for using Cartesian philosophy in other fields, I will leave that to the experts. But for our theology and theological study, I will presently say nothing except that it is as useful as “a fifth wheel on a wagon”—a line I remember reading appended to a disputation published some years ago by the Leiden philosopher Adrianus Heereboord.[5] We should not assume he said that out of prejudice, ignorance, or malice towards Descartes or his method of philosophizing. After all, he always spoke so passionately in praise of Descartes and Cartesian philosophy.

These are what I was writing about Cartesian doubt back in December 1665. But afterwards the admirers of Descartes asserted publicly that the philosopher inquiring into the existence of God ought to doubt, namely, while and as long as he inquires.

§. 2. To return to Descartes’ explanation and proof of natural knowledge, you will find falsehoods, absurdities, uncertainties, doubts, perplexities, and contradictions in it—things that cannot be reconciled without falsehood, contradiction, or absurdity with the sound philosophy and theology as taught by the authors I mentioned, nor even with the writings of the Leiden philosopher Adrianus Heereboord. For although he thought he needed to argue much in favor of Cartesian philosophy against the theologians and other Leiden professors (as he discusses in the apologetic preface to his Meletema[6]), nevertheless, besides that corollary about the “fifth wheel on a wagon,” he explained and proved both innate and acquired knowledge so methodically, solidly, orthodoxly, distinctly, and clearly, without resorting to Descartes’ method, hypotheses, principles, demonstrations, or even mentioning once the “idea” (which for Descartes is the immediate and proximate medium of demonstration), that he can hardly be seen as dissenting at all from those on our side who explicitly defend this knowledge against its deniers. See his disputation on natural knowledge of God, page 154 of the 1650 12mo edition.[7] Yet in that same disputation, just as he is about to attach the “fifth wheel” to the wagon, after citing Thomas and his commentators, along with [Marin] Mersenne, [Tomasso] Campanella, he adds in the last 3 or 4 lines: “And the most subtle René Descartes proves an innate knowledge of God from the idea of God imparted to us by creation, as a mark impressed by an artisan on his work, in his First Philosophy, Meditation 3, and Responses….”[8] If he saw fit to tack on this irrelevant remark just to pander to that clever fellow [τοῦ δεινοῦ]—i.e. to Descartes (whom, after the Honorable Curators banned the use of the Cartesian name, they say he [i.e., Heereboord] and another zealot referred to [Descartes] by this name in lectures and public exercises)—then surely there should not have been such an outcry about the dangers against his colleagues, nor should others have done so against other orthodox men standing firmly against atheism, Socinianism, and heterodoxy. For if he clearly and distinctly perceives and judges that Descartes’ idea must be necessarily present for innate or acquired knowledge of God, or [that the idea] must be posited for both, (by which, when posited, the knowledge of God would be established either in the first or second act, and by removing [the idea], [the knowledge of God] would be removed), then he should candidly admit that all those who have attempted to explain an innate natural knowledge and demonstrate an acquired knowledge—such as the theologians mentioned earlier, and some cited by Heereboord himself, like Thomas, the Scholastics, Mersenne, Campanella, to whom Heereboord himself must be added for his concise, distinct, and clear explanation and proof of both kinds of knowledge in that disputation—have betrayed the cause to the atheists and Socinians. But if anyone thinks Descartes’ “idea,” just as it is stated, or as expounded by Descartes and his followers, can and ought to be reconciled with the common explanation and proof (which Heereboord also adopted in that cited disputation), let him gird himself for that task. Whoever accomplishes this will be to us another “Conciliator,” a title formerly given to some other philosopher in the Schools (Pietro d’Abano, unless I am mistaken). But whoever attempts this should beware lest, as the wheel turns, instead of the intended amphora, a tiny jug comes out. We have seen happen to the would-be reconcilers of Thomas and Scotus, Aristotle and Plato, Galenic and Hermetic-Paracelsian medicine, the Eastern and Roman churches, and all the opinions of Aristotle and Scholastic or Thomistic theology. Whatever the case may be, if that fifth “ideal wheel” is ever thought able or unable to be fitted to the wagon, at least the common, well-trodden path of theologians ought to be distinguished for now from the path leading to Socinianism and atheism. In short, either [Heinrich] Alting’s and Heereboord’s views (both of which I adopt) are incompatible with the Cartesian ones, being either per se false and absurd, or insufficient, or obscure, inaccessible, and imperceptible. The last, I think, they will not say. Therefore, the first or second must be the case.

If the first case: Then let the falsehood of their views be accurately, methodically, distinctly, and clearly demonstrated with meaningful terminology (according to the common meaning in Christian schools, or at least in the Papacy); and at the same time let the truth of the Cartesians be demonstrated, “so that it may be established among all in the future that these are proofs” (those are his own words in his letter to the Parisian theologians).[9]

If the second case: Then let it be shown exactly what the insufficiency is, of what kind, and how great it is, and whether the defect can be remedied, and consequently whether the presumed shortcomings can be absolved from the path and dangers of Socinianism and Atheism, if, while maintaining and retaining their doctrine, they at least to this extent pander to the honor of that clever fellow [τοῦ δεινοῦ] (if any student does not understand this expression, let him look it up in a Greek lexicon and compare the Hebrew “Ploni Almoni” [Heb: פְּלֹנִי אַלְמֹנִי] in Ruth 4:1), and his philosophy, so as to peacefully admit the disputed idea; reserving for themselves, however, the interpretation of the term, so that after all the chaos, after so many battles fought, after disrupting teachers’ and students’ studies, they might finally find peace in the asylum of questions about terminology.

Neither of these has yet been accomplished—least of all by Descartes himself, who could not have done such a thing. Nor by professor Heereboord, who nevertheless could have done it if he thought it possible while preserving his own metaphysics and Reformed theology. But that ingenious man, otherwise accustomed to exercising philosophical freedom in other matters, studiously abstained from that very fervent pro-Cartesian contention to which he had given such lavish praise in his dedicatory epistle to the Curators on page 71 of the 12mo edition.[10] Accordingly, in that disputation reprinted three times from 1643 to 1650, and in the one on God’s existence with the respondent Arnold van Elten of Gorinchem in October 1643, he completed his explanations and proofs without Descartes’ idea, principles, and demonstrations.[11] Instead, he followed the well-trodden, safe path of theologians so closely that if I knew he had seen Alting’s writings, whether in manuscript or in print, I would dare to call him “Philo Platonizes.”

What I have said about Heereboord is plain to the eyes of anyone who has examined his aformentioned disputation. But if someone objects that he later brought up the idea: I reply that he did not do so from his own philosophy and theology, but to help and excuse Descartes, lest Descartes’ concepts be seen as clashing with Reformed theology and sound metaphysics as held by the philosophical schools in Christendom and by professor Heereboord himself. So, he labored and strained, as best he could, to devise an explanatory fiction and attempted [its] reconciliation with Reformed theology and metaphysics lest Descartes might be suspected and censured at the outset on account of his doubt, his ill-constructed knowledge of God, and his shaky reasoning about atheism and skepticism; and as a result, his schemes and machinations for eliminating the commonly accepted method of philosophizing and introducing Cartesianism into the universities, especially Leiden and Utrecht, would go up in smoke. Not to mention at this point that professor Heereboord’s pro-Descartes advocacy against the Leiden professors, after he had previously elevated Descartes to the throne, gave ample occasion for apologetic interpretations and devised fictions. The long and short of it is that this clever fellow or Philosopher par excellence [κατ' ἐξοχήν], as they called him (i.e. Descartes), [supposedly] did not err or stumble. [It is] as if his genius were the canon and measure of truth, certainty, and evidence in everything which he fancied that he had clearly and distinctly perceived.

§. 3. But however certainly, clearly, and distinctly he perceived it in his mind and transcribed it onto paper, I leave it to any impartial reader to judge from the following evidence.

I. He does not divide natural knowledge into innate and acquired distinctly and evidently enough; nor does he explain preliminaries about the precise meaning and referent of each term. This was done by the aforementioned opponents of Socinus, and likewise by Heereboord in the cited disputation. This is something which should not have been omitted by him who is thought to have attained the pinnacle of certainty and evidence above all human intellects in such a weighty question and argument against atheists, and in defending it against adversaries (such as the author of the Program[12]). See the excerpts presented earlier in this disputation. His opponents noted the neglect or studied obfuscation of this distinction in Socinus’ disputation against natural knowledge of God. See Hoornbeeck cited above.[13]

II. He did not propose a distinct and evident demonstration of each kind of knowledge, as Socinus’ opponents and Alting in his Elenctica did, along with the aforementioned philosophers—especially Heereboord in that cited disputation.[14] Professor Heereboord’s genius, perspicacity, hermeneutical and methodical skill, and theological erudition could have shed more light on Descartes’ muddled, doubtful, and perplexing concepts on this issue than Descartes’ presumed “marvels” [θαύματα] could enlighten Heereboord’s orthodoxy, certainty, and evidence on the same question.

III. Descartes’ labyrinthine method and demonstration, proceeding from antecedent doubt, or after premised and deliberately acquired doubt, through the first principle “I think, therefore I am,” and the subsequent reasoning and inferring of unknown things from known ones, pertains to acquired, discursive, and demonstrative knowledge of God, but not to innate or congenital knowledge of God.

For there are three operations of the mind:

1. The apprehension of simple concepts.

2. Composition and division, as called in Aristotelian terminology; which others term noetic or axiomatic knowledge.

3. Reasoning; which others call dianoetic knowledge.

In the first operation, truth and falsity are not involved, as is well known.

But in the second, when it deals with simple assent to this truth or proposition “God exists,” this assent or knowledge is elicited from an innate faculty, which some call sense, others an impressed notion, others natural knowledge of God in first act, others a sense of divinity, and and others by other names. Professor Heereboord, in no way open to the suspicion of stupidity, ignorance, ill-will, or contentiousness toward that clever fellow or the Philosopher, rightly, concisely, and clearly explained this innate knowledge of God and distinguished it from discursive or acquired knowledge.

IV. Through ignorance of the terminology, or deliberate misuse and wordplay with it, he sows confusion for himself and the reader. Yet those refuting, correcting, or shedding new light on the common philosophy and theology of the schools—especially on this weighty issue—ought to speak according to the widely accepted meaning of terms. If they do otherwise, they commit the fallacies of homonymy, proving a different point [ἑτεροζητήσιος], and idle babble [ἀδολεσχίας]. The result is that neither the Cartesian philosophers themselves, or at least those initiated in Cartesian philosophy or nurtured in it, understand other theologians and philosophers, nor do others understand them. Below, God willing, we provide for students an example of ignorance, catachresis, confusion, or Cartesian sophistry in the use and explanation of the word “idea.”

V. He does not clearly and distinctly indicate whether this proof of God’s existence is solely, or at least primarily, meant to convince the doubter and thinker himself; or whether also for someone else, whether an ignorant non-doubter, an atheist, or a formal skeptic; or for both audiences. For some medium, principle, or testimony might serve to convince the thinker himself, which nevertheless could not rightly be applied to convincing another person who does not see or feel the inner operations of your mind. Just as our theologians affirm that each believer is made certain about Scripture’s divine authority by the internal testimony of the Spirit, yet they deny that this can properly be used to convince others. For we do not try to persuade atheists, unbelievers, enthusiasts, and libertines of Scripture’s divinity and authority with this argument: “The Spirit convinces me, and I am fully persuaded that Scripture is divine; therefore it is. And consequently, you too will most certainly and evidently be convinced by this testimony of the Spirit.”

VI. It is not distinctly established beforehand whether Descartes’ whole chain of principles and demonstrations merely generates certain and evident natural knowledge of divine existence, satisfying only the “whether [God exists]” question; or whether it also directly, immediately, and primarily also satisfies the “what [God is]” question, or at least those things which pertain to the divine attributes of the first kind, second kind, or both. Other authors did not overlook this issue in explaining natural knowledge, including Alting in the cited place.

VII. That whole process of demonstration—from doubt, through that first known thing or first principle (“I think, therefore I am”), up to our mind, then from our mind to the idea in the mind, from the idea existing within, implanted, and innate to the mind—contains some things that are either false, uncertain and doubtful, ambiguous, unknown and obscure, or highly controversial. Therefore, these are not so certain and evident that more certain and more evident things cannot be found by the human intellect. See the excerpts shown in part 3, section 4 of this disputation. If you ask what those false, uncertain, etc. things are:

I respond:

1. “I think, therefore I am.” We deny that this is the first known thing and first principle. Indeed, we say it is not even a principle at all, unless by “principle” he means something totally different from how all philosophers understand the term.

2. That the mind exists and is distinct from the body. This is presupposed or postulated here, and he proceeds from this to the certain and evident and clear knowledge of God’s existence (by moving from the known to the unknown). Yet that distinction ought to be demonstrated and known only after first demonstrating obtaining a certain knowledge of divine existence.

3. That the idea of God is innate to all minds and all necessarily perceive it in themselves once old enough to use actual reason. We will inquire about this idea, whether it exists and what it is, in the next part.

4. That among the ideas of things and non-things (e.g. angels, heaven, God, chimeras) which Descartes admits to having in his mind, only the idea of God is demonstrative, and from its existence God’s existence is certainly and evidently concluded.

5. That the spirit or mind is more known to us than the body, or known prior to and more certainly than the body.

6. That no certain knowledge [cognitionem] should be attributed to the senses.

7. That whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true. The truth, certainty, and evidence of this hypothesis and others would first have to be proven, and distinctly and clearly freed from objections of philosophers like Gassendi, Revius, both Stuarts, and my two sons. After all, demonstrations in first philosophy or natural theology should not be made like geometrical ones through assumed and feigned hypotheses; nor mere opinions, or στοχασμούς, [that is,] conjectures.

---

[1] Cf. Jacob Revius, Statera philosophiae Cartesianae (Leiden: The office of Peter Leffen, 1650); [The reference to his son’s Philosophical Meditations is odd. [Presumably,] Paulus Voet, Prima Philosophia Reformata (Utrecht: Johannes à Waesberg, 1657); The Stuart work cannot be found. I translated it so as to separate all.]

[2] Voetius, Selectarum Disputationum Theologicarum, vol. 3 (Utrecht: Johannes a Waesberge, 1659), pgs. 825–69.

[3] Revius, Καρτησιομανία, hoc est, Furiosum Nugamentum… (Leiden: 1654).

[4] Cannot find.

[5] Cannot find.

[6] Adriaan Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica… (Leiden: The office of Franciscus Moyardus, 1654).

[7] See Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica…, pgs. 14–17.

[8] Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica…, pg. 17.

[9] Descartes, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia … (Amsterdam: Daniel Elzevirius, 1670), Epistola. In translation: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, trans., John Cottingham, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pg. 4.

[10] [Cannot find this edition], however, the letter is presumably the same as the one found in Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica…, pgs. 1–20.

[11] The disputation on God’s existence: Heereboord, Disputationum Pneumaticarum Secundum, De Dei Existentia … (Leiden: Heirs of Johannes Nicolaus from Dorp, 1643).

[12] That is, Henricus Regius.

[13] Presumably, Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica…, pg. 23.

[14] Heinrich Alting, Theologia Elenctica Nova: sive Systema Elencticum in Inclyta Academia Groningae… (Amsterdam: Johannes Janssonsus, 1654); Presumably, Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica…, pgs. 22–26.