The times are evil, and trials are many, and Christians should guard against sins against the world's one and only true (Christian) faith, including incredulity, apostasy and heresy.
Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. Apostasy is total repudiation of the Christian faith. Heresy is the holding of a belief contrary to orthodox Christian doctrine while claiming it as orthodox and while boasting the name of Christian. It includes obstinate post-baptismal denial or doubt of some truth(s) which must be believed with whole or catholic faith, and refusal to accept correction.
Among the sins against the faith, heresy is the most subtle and persistent and dangerous because fallen human nature craves, above all, validation as good whilst in wicked rebellion against God.
In the two millennia since the Incarnation, the Catholic Church has declared no fewer than 87 beliefs heretical, including Protestantism, which "sinned" by denying the magisterium of Church-set dogma. Reformers, of course, had already declared Catholicism heretical; citing Scripture over tradition, faith over works and grace over merit. And against Catholic dogma and tradition, Reformers have insisted on the Five Solae as the governing core of orthodoxy: sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"); sola fide ("by faith alone"); solo gratia ("by grace alone"); solo Christo ("through Christ alone); and soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone").
But significantly, apart from condemning one another, Catholics and Reformers have been -- for 500 years now -- in basic agreement about the other heresies and the other heretics. Historically, both groups have condemned, for example, the Arians and Pelagians and Socinians and Arminians and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, with fervor that's been complementary, if not always equal. And when, in the 18th Century, both were confronted with an atheistic and rabidly anti-Christian "Enlightenment" intellectualist movement, Catholics and Reformers -- with cautious univocality on Christian essentials -closed ranks against the common foe.
Over the centuries, zeal among the orthodox faithful, which Augustine called fire from heaven, has ebbed and flowed according to God's plan -- in direct proportion to vigilance about heresy. While Scripture tells the Church to expect outbreaks of heresy, in seemingly multitudinous forms, until the Judgment, only the most perceptive Christians, in every generation, have recognized and appreciated the Providential, iron-sharpening-iron role of heresy in history (Prov. 27:17).
As the Apostle says, 'Heresies are necessary, to show which of you are in a sound condition' (1 Cor. 11,19). And meditating on this verse, Augustine says, '... many matters of importance to the Catholic faith are canvassed by the feverish restlessness of heretics, and the result is that they are carefully examined, more clearly understood, and more earnestly propounded, with a view to defending them against heretical attack, and thus an argument raised by an adversary turns out to be an opportunity for instruction.' (City of God, Bk XVI, Ch. 2).
But heresy is far more than intellectual divergence from the bullet points of orthodoxy: it is fundamental, soul-imperiling, spiritual divergence from God: So the true Christian may know the heretic both by his words and by his manner of living. For in the Gospel we are told: 'You will recognize them by their fruits' (Matt. 7, 20). So reminded now that heresy involves both intellectual and spiritual divergence from God, let us consider, with Augustinian appreciation, the cogitations of a man of the "Enlightenment" who, with extraordinary philosophical gift from God, made so bold as to defend -- as necessary and healthy, and as good in themselves -- the anti-Christian heresies.
As regards heresy, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) holds special place. First, Hume is distinguishable from the countless, unoriginal subscribers to pre-existing heretical doctrines. Next, he is distinguishable even from men, like Arminius and Pelagius, who authored particular heresies. Hume's peculiar distinction and genius was to defend ALL anti-Christian heresies — past, present and future -- by world-inverting, reality-warping philosophical argument.
Being himself an unbelieving philosopher, Hume resented how Christianity, since the First Coming, had become philosophical and theological. (Here I refer the reader to a previous work of mine, "Christian Revelation and the Advent of True Philosophy".) Naturally hostile to (and perhaps ignorant of) the Divine command, issued in Scripture (2 Cor. 10:5), for Christians to take all thought captive, Hume — wielding his unregenerate imagination -- fancied that he understood the Christian religion better even than the early Church Fathers and the greatest theologians. He conceived of Christian religion, apart from philosophy and theology, as a mere set of 'sacred' stories and traditions, devoid of animating, saving and sanctifying Divine power.
In his work titled The Natural History of Religion, Hume — wielding his unregenerate reason -- expressed his preference for "mythological" religion, a collection of "sacred stories and traditions", that makes no pretence of being philosophical. He said: "The greatest and most observable differences betwixt a traditional, mythological religion, and a systematical, scholastic one, are two: The former is often more reasonable, as consisting of a multitude of stories, which, however groundless, imply no express absurdity and demonstrative contradiction; and sits so easy and light on men's minds that tho' it may be as universally received, it makes no such deep impression on the affections and understanding." Among the "groundless" elements in Biblical stories Hume is referencing are, of course, the wondrous and certain miracles wrought by the Lord as reported in Scripture.
According to Hume scholar Donald Livingston: "By 'deep impression' Hume means that a traditional religion based merely on sacred stories does not and cannot conceive of making a strong claim to dominion over all thought, action and sentiment that a philosophical religion does. Whatever other absurdities it may contain, it will be free of the self-deceptions and distortions of experience that a corrupt philosophical theorizing in the form of theology always brings with it" (D. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy, p.106.).
So Hume argued that, not only error, but absurdity follows merely from the attempt of original (Christian) sacred story to become "philosophical" (NHR). According to Livingston: "Hume describes the theologians of the Reformation as the bearers of a corrupt form of (philosophical) reflection: these 'wretched composers of metaphysical polemics' worked tirelessly to instill their 'speculative and abstract principles' into the unguarded minds of the credulous multitude" (D. Hume, The History of England, vol.3). To Hume, Luther and Calvin and Knox were greater 'sinners' even than 'scholastics' like Aquinas and Duns Scotus. More 'sinful' perhaps because more influential in Hume's native Scotland.
We note in passing, as a subject for another day, how, in Hume writings, there is abundant evidence that Hume the unbeliever dreaded a Providentially developed philosophical and theological Christianity that would expose as erroneous all unbelieving philosophy. Specifically, as we just saw, the unbelieving Hume, on an intellectual level, resented the claim of what Bonaventura (1217-1274) called an all-
encompassing Christian wisdom to a right to dominion over created man's thoughts, sentiments and actions. On a moral and spiritual level, Hume dreaded the "deep (and potentially compelling) impression" that a systematic and philosophical Christian theology, rooted in and contained by Scripture, makes on men's minds.
Desperate to escape and to defy the Christian wisdom that declares its right to rule over all thought, feeling, and action — including philosophy, in both its true and false forms -- Hume attempts a fundamental inversion of reality concerning heresy.
According to Livingston (PMD, pp. 106-107), "Hume interprets the heresies of Christianity as instances of the prejudices of common life in rebellion against the dominion of philosophical paradox that informs the interpretation of Christianity's sacred story. [Hume] suggests the hypothesis that when a controversy is started in Christianity, one can predict at the outset that the position most in line with the prejudices of common life will be declared the heresy. 'Anyone ... that has but learning enough of this kind to know the definition of Arian, Pelagian, Erastian, Socinian, Sabellian, Eutychian, Nestorian, Monothelite, etc. not to mention Protestant, whose fate is yet uncertain, will be convinced of the truth of this observation'(NHR)."
Let us now explore Hume's extraordinary claim that the various heresies are just so many natural and healthy and righteous rebellions by what he calls "prejudices" of the common life against a philosophical and theological Christianity. But it is precisely this philosophical and theological Christianity -- wielding methods and language and other analytical tools borrowed from the West's philosophical tradition -- that has taken to identifying and policing heresies that, if left unchecked, would undermine orthodox faith and the Church. (It is reported that Hume maintained on his deathbed "that he had not yet finished the great work" of freeing his countrymen "from the Christian Superstition." No wonder then that a hostile unbeliever like Hume would seek to rob the Christian faith of its Providential philosophical shield.)
But to accurately and fairly assess Hume's claims about the common life and heresy, we must first understand how Hume conceived the former.
Hume correctly held that, in ANY earthly society, authoritative morals emerge spontaneously from a pre-reflective order of common life. Humean common life, endemic to every human society (by God's Providence), is an evolving order of customs and traditions infused with moral and religious precepts that command general respect and obedience from human participants in that society.
Livingston cites and rounds out a characteristic passage from Hume's Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding: "All the philosophy, therefore, in the world, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy,' are impotent to find a grounding for morals beyond the prejudices of common life." So, according to Hume, all true ethic or guidance in moral matters can come only from evolving common life, not from revelation correcting fallen nature or creation.
But Hume was a Scot philosophizing in the 18th Century. The European common life(s) with which he
was most familiar were Protestant Britain (including Presbyterian Scotland) and Catholic France. So
Hume, in his moral philosophizing, seems to have missed how thoroughly over ten centuries of Christian proselytization and teaching had saturated the common life of those formerly pagan regions with revealed Christian morality and ethos.
Hume tended toward the view that the moral elements of common life the world over are universal. But that is true only at a very general and indeterminate level. So one wonders how the unbelieving Hume, safe and secure in his study in Christendom, would assess by comparison the respective moralities embedded in the customs and traditions relating to Aztec human sacrifice and Carib cannibalism. Such comparisons, had they been made, would surely have awakened a serious and otherwise circumspect moral philosopher like Le Bon David from his dogmatic slumber.
But fallen nature, with fallen humanity as its center, generates morally fallen common life. And as a leaven, Biblical teaching, suffused with Christian revelation and ethic, tends to perfect fallen nature in individual men and fallen common life across whole societies and nations. This Providential transformation is what Hume and so many others have missed. Indeed Hume himself wrote a tome or treatise on human nature (1738-40), thick and heavy but fundamentally defective because devoid of all acknowledgment of the Fall of nature in general and of man in particular.
Having critically examined Hume's concept of common life, let us consider his hypothesis that positions more in line with common life are declared heresies.
The Arian heretic sees only the man Jesus, not the Divine Son. The Pelagian sees only "nature" but not fallen creation, a "good" human nature and not fallen man who sins continuously in thought, word and deed. The Erastian is overawed by visible human government, and renders onto Caesar what is God's. The Socinian denies the Trinity; blinkered by carnal deduction and imagination, and therefore unable to see by faith the Three in One. The Arminian wants salvation determined by visible, tangible humans and not by an invisible, intangible God the Father. The Gnostic aspires to transcendence by an esoteric knowledge via unregenerate reason and intuition, not to salvation by faith through grace.
So, as Christians surveying this sampling of heretical claims, we understand Hume's perspective because we remember how we, by God's grace and power, once put off the old man, who was spiritually dead in trespasses, with his crawling, groping, drooling and unregenerate heart and mind. Recalling our former, unregenerate perspective, we see how indeed, as Hume says, the heretical "positions" are closer to fallen common life than to revealed truths about God and man. Thus does common life -- rooted in fallen nature, and unleavened or unredeemed by Christian revelation -- necessarily generate "righteousness" that is filthy rags (Isa. 64: 4-9).
So we agree with Hume that the heresies are so many rebellions; but unlike Hume, we understand them aright as rebellions by unregenerate flesh against the God-Man Jesus Christ, the moral ideal for created man. (And this is true even of the Donatist who, at first blush, appears as an exception to fleshly rebellion. In the end, however, the Donatist' rebellion from revealed truth and toward asceticism, priestly purity and martyrdom is from discernibly fleshly motives.) And so, because as orthodox Christians we have been given eyes that can see and ears that can hear, with the love of Truth having been implanted in us by the Lord in His saving act, we naturally — or rather, supernaturally -- disagree with Hume about the fundamental metaphysical and moral facts of the one and only (Triune) God and the Fall.
As Christians, our disagreement with Hume and other unbelievers-is an ultimate disagreement, a disagreement about the fundamental nature, structure and content of reality. So, in this earthly life, a state of epistemological polylogism, to use von Mises' term, exists between believers and unbelievers, who reason in fundamentally different ways, from different world-views — starting from different premises or assumptions and ending with different conclusions. This gulf or chasm, of course, generates and explains the two groups' mutual frustration, and excites antagonism, especially among the inherently less patient and loving unbelievers. And in this earthly (polylogistic) state, the believer can, by memory and empathy, understand the unbeliever, having once "been there and done that" as an unbeliever himself; but the unbeliever qua unbeliever, having never experienced transformative faith by grace, can comprehend neither the faith nor the faithful.
But, to the Christian reader, I now warn against blithely ignoring or dismissing the works of David Hume. Instead, Christians, as their lights allow, should take on the Augustinian challenge presented by Hume's philosophical skepticism.
Without doubt, there is great value in studying Hume; and, without question, there are many nuggets of genuine insight scattered about in his writings, especially in the prudential political conservatism of his historical work and essays. Hume is weakest on metaphysical and religious subjects, especially in his failure, as an unbelieving outsider, to grasp the Christian faith and to descry both the deeper nature and providential role of philosophy. These failures, in turn, misled Hume into certain fundamental misunderstandings of the history of philosophy and of the nature and the value of skepticism.
Hume admirers, in every generation, have fallen into two basic categories. First, there are the fellow-travelling infidels bent on shoring up their own apologies for infidelity. Then, there are the philosophically inclined but religiously confused who are charmed by Hume's urbane and highly-crafted prose style. Among the latter, the pretension and occasional posturing in Hume's style is often mistaken for deeper substance, philosophical profundity and true eloquence, which is in truth, not graceful style and florid language, but wisdom written and spoken.
David Hume was ultimately a tragic figure, as are all gifted men who shine their lights to peers and posterity but who depart this life without God-given faith. He was at bottom a false philosopher who believed himself in possession not only of true philosophy but of a definitive explanation and dialectic of all true and false philosophy.
Learned, highly gifted, urbane, but fundamentally blind because unbelieving, Hume, providentially, ends as a foil for true, Christian philosophers. Lacking faith, he was, at critical junctures, unable to ask the right questions and to avoid the wrong conclusions. He is a paradigmatic example of a genius, replete with common-grace gifts, but bereft of the deeper insight and wisdom that can come only by saving and sanctifying grace. Still Hume, if read correctly, is instructive and valuable because, in many ways, he took unregenerate reason and imagination to their full philosophical limits.
