God Is No Man's Debtor

Aug 28, 2022

The Nominalist Revolution

In 1326 a young Englishman, having just completed his studies at Oxford was called to Avignon to answer charges of Heresy. This young man was William of Ockham. Fifty-one of his assertions would be censured, but not outright condemned by the Church. What had the young Ockham written that got him into such hot water?

The crisis of Pre-Modernity emerged with the attempt to synthesize Hellenistic Paganism with Christianity. Some Christians felt uneasy with the Scholasticism of the medieval world, after all, Aristotelianism had been reintroduced by the likes of the Islamic theologian Averroes. Greek paganism was a known and tolerable evil, but Islam was a political and theological threat. This crisis ultimately culminates in an attempt by medieval Christians to reestablish an older, more authentic Christianity free from both Islam and paganism. Ockham was one of the most influential of these reformers, and its this that had him awaiting trial for heresy.

Ockham’s attempt to return Christianity to its roots involved a profound rethinking of the nature of God. Some 50 years prior to Ockham’s trial Aristotelianism was condemned by Etiene Temper, the Bishop of France in 1270 and then more fully in 1277. The condemnation emphasized God’s omnipotence as His cardinal characteristic. This was the radical new theology Ockham was beginning to develop, and it was about to upend the entire medieval world.

In contrast, Scholasticism emphasized God’s intellect as his chief characteristic - unsurprising considering the depth and scope of the Scholastic worldview. Keep in mind that Scholasticism, much like empiricism, is an inclusive term that covers a range of thinkers who often times disagreed with one another. Broadly speaking, Scholastics maintained an ontologically realist position on the question of universals.

Universals could be understood as divine reason made known to man through illumination or investigation. Medievals could articulate this experience in a syllogistic logic that they believed was a reflection of divine reason. God was therefore reflected in creation, and the investigation of nature could yield some understanding of the divine. Those thinkers who maintained a skepticism of the Aristotelean influence feared this kind of natural theology would undermine the need for scriptural revelation.

The problem medievals were trying to solve was how our general terms relate to particular things. For example, if all wheels are circular, then circularity may be considered a universal category of all wheels. Medieval philosophers, and many philosophers today agree that human beings can talk and think about universals, but disagree on whether universals exist in reality beyond mere thought and speech. Ockham’s project, what we call Nominalism, involved an attempt to simplify ontology.

According to Ockham, God could not create Universals because to do so would confine His omnipotence. If a universal did exist, God could not destroy an instance of it without destroying the universal itself. To give a more pressing example for 14th century man, God would be unable to damn any one person to Hell without damning all of humanity to Hell.

Therefore, there are no universals, and every being must radically individual, a unique creation made in the image of God, called forth out of nothing by His infinite power and sustained by that power alone.

The Consequences of the Nominalist Revolution

Nominalism called into question teleology, syllogistic logic, and science itself, but it also opened up a radical new understanding of human freedom.

Under a scholastic worldview, wherein divine purposes were realized, particulars became what they already potentially were in attaining some special end. Teleology is nonsensical under Nominalism, however. If there exists no universals, there could be no universal ends to be actualized. Thus, Nominalism came to reject both final and efficient causality.

Nominalism, in emphasizing God’s power as His cardinal attribute, concluded that God is under no obligation to make causality consistent. God created the laws of nature, and could therefore overturn them at will. Therefore, nothing guarantees that an observation made today will be made tomorrow. This makes science impossible.

Under Nominalism, names become no more than signs or signs of signs. Language thus does not reveal being but conceals the truth by fostering a belief in universals. In fact, all universals are merely second or higher order signs that we, as finite beings, use to aggregate individual entities into categories. These categories, however, do not denote real things. This makes syllogistic logic impossible.

Most importantly, however, were the consequences of Nominalism in relation to salvation, free will, and belief in God’s goodness. This is the primary concern of today’s essay.

Let’s start with a question: Is something good because God wills it to be good? Or does God will what is Good? This question illustrates a divide between Nominalists and Scholastics that could not be mended. If God is as radically omnipotent as the Nominalists conceived him to be, then God simply decides what is good and evil. What then, is stopping God from damning the Saints and saving the sinners? If God is all powerful, it would seem he could at any moment decide that what saved Man yesterday, damns Man today. He’s God, He can do whatever He wants. God does not respond to man, He does not save or damn you because of your actions, and there is only an accidental relationship between salvation and saintliness. The Nominalist God is free in the fullest sense, that is, He is free even from His previous decisions and past promises. The Nominalist God can overturn anything He has established, interrupt any chain of events, or even create the world all over. There is nothing outside of God’s Will. Thus, even biblical revelation seems questionable, because God can just decide to revoke His covenant with man. God did not even have to send His Son in the form of Man to save us. God does not owe Man anything, not even an explanation.

In short, Ockham’s project can be summed up by a witty phrase from Ockham himself,

“God is no man’s debtor.”

Needless to say, for whatever critiques the likes of Ockham had of Scholasticism, his worldview opened up a Pandora’s Box that could not be be shut. Medieval Scholasticism worked out an immensely impressive theology that ordered everything neatly and rationally. Ockham’s Nominalism threatened to turn the medieval world upside down. As the Scholastic worldview began to fall, it was the chaotic, unreliable God of Nominalism and the attempts to grapple with Him that eventually gave birth to Modernity. It is in this new world of discord and uncertainty, full of only individuals in which man can find no point of security, unsure of his salvation, that gave birth to Modernity. The Chasm between God and Man had widened. Two men, and two movements sought to bind this chasm. Would we elevate Man to God, or bring God down to the level of Man?

Humanism As A Response To Nominalism

“If the world slips into destruction, the crumbling ruins will find me fearless.”

In 1304, a young boy who would attempt to mend this chasm was born. He wrote of his birth,

“I, begotten in exile, was born in exile, with so much labor undergone by my mother, and with so much danger, that she was considered dead for a long time not only by the midwives but by the doctors. Thus I experienced danger even before being born and I approached the very threshold of life under the auspices of death.”

This was Francesco Petrarch. He was born after the cataclysm of Nominalism, where it might seem impossible to find ground for identity when God was incomprehensible, Man was straying further and further away from Him, and nature, cold and indifferent. The world around Petrarch reflected his internal state - born alongside a brush with death, always fleeing conflict alongside his parents - he longed for friendship and solid ground. When Petrarch and his family settled, friendship was the young Petrarch’s rock of stability in an otherwise chaotic world. Then, in 1348 the Black Death arrived and,

“All these friends…in no time at all were destroyed in almost one stroke. The year 1348 left us alone and helpless.”

Petrarch could not find solace in God, nor in Nature, or even in the company of loved ones, and so Petrarch attempted to find peace in something no one had yet done - himself. Francesco Petrarch is the grandfather of Humanism, and it was these circumstances in light of Ockham’s Nominalism that lead him down this path which he would walk until his death in 1374.

Petrarch’s Humanism was one attempt to grapple with the Nominalist God unleashed in Europe. Here, Petrarch diverged from both the Nominalists and Scholastics, frustrated at what appeared to be an increasingly out of touch metaphysical squabbles. Even still, it is not unfair to say Petrarch held a unique hostility towards the Scholastic worldview. He shared the basic Nominalist premise that there are no substantial forms and no natural ends. For Petrarch, Man is not just another member of the human species with essential characteristics and moral responsibilities, but instead a particular individual created uniquely by God. Thus, identity becomes a private journey. Man has to discover for himself what he is. Self-discovery then, is prior to all moral questions, because one must first come to know oneself before understanding what they ought to do. Further, Man is not just a willing being, but a self-creating being.

Inherently tied up with Petrarch’s individualism was his desire to inspire individuals to virtue. The problem in his lifetime was that there were no institutions that fostered virtue, and few good men to emulate. It’s here where Petrarch looks back to the ancients. He felt that Aristotle may have had the most profound understanding of virtue, but failed to provide the means to make men virtuous. Aristotle understood virtue better than anyone, but Aristotle could not inspire virtue, according to Petrarch. He then spent a great deal of time writing Epics, with Promethean heroes, in an attempt to inspire virtues among his sullen contemporaries. This ultimately failed.

Petrarch, feeling defeated, recedes into the private sphere, and it’s here where he decides the true path to virtue is a solitary life. He reads Augustine’s Confessions, and constructs his own version of the Confessions called “My Secret” or “The Soul’s Conflict With Passion.”

In “My Secret” Petrarch is in dialogue with Augustine - a twist on The Confessions where Augustine is in dialogue with God. At the end of the three dialogues, Petrarch concludes that the path to virtue is not through scholastic investigation, but through introspection. Self discovery is more than just understanding, but self-improvement and self-perfection. In his writings to the long dead Augustine, Petrarch is not throwing himself upon God’s infinite mercy but instead is hoping this inner reflection will free himself from his passions. His goal is not redemption through grace, but self-mastery through the human will. Therefore, despite his imaginary dialogues with Augustine, Petrarch’s ultimate solution to the anxiety caused by the Nominalist God is an ideal of undifferentiated moral perfection, ontologically Platonist and ethically Stoic. Petrarch’s Promethean ideal is by necessity a limitation of the powers of the Nominalist God, as Man finds salvation through his own will to moral perfection, rather than the sanctifying Grace and infinite mercy of God. To put the matter more generally, Petrarch sought out a synthesis between Augustine and the Stoics (dependent on his creator but still independent) but this can only be done in the solitary life of contemplation. This life is only possibly for an elite few.

At the time of his death, Petrarch was one of the most famous individuals in Europe. He has largely been forgotten by history. Why? Because Petrarch said nothing that we don’t already know - the ultimate measure of his importance - for his achievements are so universal it is difficult to imagine how things could ever be any different. Petrarch offered a new vision for how to be a Christian in a world caught in a state of crisis after the Nominalist revolution. The project for the Humanists after Petrarch was to assert the significance of the individual. A two fold path lie ahead of them,

1.) An inward life of contemplation of the self, where all passions and desires are seen as a reflection of each person’s individuality, and consequently deserved to be celebrated, expressed, cultivated, and enjoyed.

2.) A revival of the past, filled with relevant individuals who forged their own immortality by cultivating their individuality, such as Cicero, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, Seneca, etc.

These two paths converge, as the individual decides to retreat into himself, he is free to study the lives of other great individuals. The idea that individual human beings and their goals matter, that individuals have an inherent worth, dignity, and right to self-determination is paramount for the Humanist project. Central to Petrarchian Humanism is taking seriously the Imageo Dei - the idea that Man is made in the image of God. Because the Nominalist God is primarily a willing being, this concept of the Imago Dei places a much greater emphasis on the human will than the ancients ever had. If Man is made in the image of God, and God’s will is supreme, then Man’s will must also be of supreme importance.

Therefore, humanism can be seen as a shift in the Ontic priority of the West. Humanism places Man as the Ontic priority, the value of the individual as a guiding light that made the Renaissance possible.

For brevity, we’re going to skip over a lot of the developments of humanism made by the likes of Ficino, Pico, and Lorenzo Valla and focus on the Prince of the Humanists, Desiderius Erasmus.

Erasmus was born in 1466 in Rotterdam as the illegitimate son of Roger Gerard. As a youth, he spent time in Humanist schools and, when his parents died, an Augustinian monastery. He escaped his ascetic life through an appointment with the Bishop of Cambray where he traveled to Paris. He visited England and befriended Thomas More in 1499. When Erasmus was 58 he had received widespread praise from his fellow Humanists and scorn from clerics and monks, who he learned to dislike as a child. He had ascended his way to the upper echelons of European society, and in 1515 was appointed councilor to Prince Charles, who in the following year became King of Spain, and then in 1519 Emperor Charles V. Needless to say, Erasmus was a monumental figure, famous, and highly influential.

Like Petrarch before him, Erasmus lived in the shadow of the Nominalist God. He accepted ontological individualism without much thought. He agreed with the Nominalist conception of language as words as signs, however he saw language as a historical phenomenon that could be distorted against the common good. Rhetoric therefore was central to a moral and religious life, according to Erasmus. This was especially true for Christianity, which saw language not merely as the means by which men communicate with men, but men with God. For Erasmus, God communicates with Man only through the Word, which could be corrupted. Therefore Erasmus’s theology was essentially rhetorical. What was crucial for Erasmus was harmonizing human language with divine language. Finally, in reading scripture he believed individuals must enter into a discourse with one another, a kind of Socratic method for interpreting scripture. Erasmus’s intellectual enterprise may be summed up with what he called the Philosophy of Christ, attempting to combine the individualism of Italian humanism with an imitation of the life of Christ the human. Erasmus sought to turn the western mind away from the terrifying God let loose by Nominalism and instead turn to the Christ incarnated into Man, with all of his mercy, forgiveness, and selflessness.

Motivated by his Philosophy of Christ, Erasmus was a champion of reforming the Catholic Church, though he feared the process would devolve into violence and bloodshed. Because he himself was a modest, rather tepid, and meek individual, unlike the Promethean heroes of Humanism, he desired a gradual process of reformation. Erasmus believed the Institution of the Church had fallen into corruption, but doctrinally, Catholicism was still ideal. He had every reason to believe he and his fellow Humanists were on the verge of a new golden age, all it required was a Humanist education and a Socratic study of Scripture.

Humanism represents one path away from the anxiety brought upon the world by Ockham. By lifting up Man, and downplaying God’s omnipotence, Humanism sought to quell the fears spreading across Europe. From Petrarch to Erasmus, Humanism played a major role in how Europeans thought of themselves in relation to God. In a few words, Humanism faced the problem of Nominalism by shifting the Ontic priority from God to Man. A successful and peaceful reformation, motivated by the Humanists was within arm’s reach.

There was, however, another strain of thought, with an antithetical view of reformation, also within arm’s reach. The future of Europe would not be gold but iron, and peace would be threatened by war and destruction all because of one man.

The Reformation as a Response To Nominalism

"Help me, Saint Anne, and I will become a monk."

Having just turned twenty-five, and on his way back to University in the sweltering July heat in 1505, a would-be lawyer spots storm clouds on the horizon. As the wind howls, he looks around for shelter to find nothing. God unleashed a storm on this young man, and in response he would unleash a storm upon all of Europe. The down-pour engulfed him, thunder and lightning like precursors to the cannons and flashes of violence that would soon descend upon European civilization. He found a large granite rock to cling to, cried out to St. Anne, and promised in that moment that if God would spare his life he would leave law school and enter the monastery. God kept his end of the deal, and Martin Luther kept his. Luther entered St. Augustine’s Monastery 15 days after a lightning bolt nearly ended his life. He entered the storm as a bastard child of Humanism and left as the father of The Reformation.

Luther was educated at the University of Erfurt, a school known for its Humanist curriculum and a forefront of theological reform in Germany. It was also a hot-bed of Nominalist philosophy, and could be said to have first developed a “common core” of Nominalism. Despite Luther’s top rate education, it could not quell the greater spiritual crisis whirling about inside him. For Luther, the Nominalist God was a wrathful and unpredictable being, who made salvation a source of anxiety rather than a source of comfort. Luther was even afraid of receiving Holy Communion, lest he make a mistake and drop the living God. The God unleashed by the Nominalist Revolution was so alien and terrifying that it isn’t hard to imagine Luther wishing He didn’t exist.

In November of 1510, Luther had another eye opening experience. He was appointed to represent his monastic order in Rome, and what he discovered was widespread atheism, corruption, and in himself, a gnawing skepticism on the ability of the Church to intercede on Man’s behalf. As he climbed the holy stairway to Lateran Palace, trying to succeed in releasing his Grandfather’s soul from Purgatory, something broke inside of him. Luther was starting to believe the Devil was the true ruler of this world, time was short, Satan was strong, and God was judging him by standards that he found impossible to understand. Rather than mending the chasm between God and Man, Luther was slipping into it.

In 1515, in a state of what can only be called supreme agitation, Luther is re-reading the book of Romans, determined to hunch over the text until he was confident in his understanding of God’s justice. While reading, Luther reports in his autobiography, how he had a profound spiritual experience. God’s justice did not refer to something distant and incomprehensible, but to God’s justification to Man. In the same way, God’s Omnipotence, previously a problem to be overcome and a source of worry, was in fact the power by which God makes Man powerful. Therefore, Luther’s insight was a transformation of the alien and unknowable God of Nominalism into an inward power that comes to dwell in individual human beings. Faith arises with an encounter with God’s Word, brought upon through divine Grace. Luther writes of his own experience with Grace,

“Here I felt I was altogether born again and had entered a paradise itself through open gates.”

From this, Luther believes he has rescued salvation from the jaws of the Nominalist Revolution. He thus turns the principles of Nominalist theology against itself - no works can satisfy God, but no works are necessary. Luther transforms the Nominalist God, a chaotic and wrathful judge, into a merciful savior who asks only that you accept his sacrifice on the cross. For Luther, God’s righteousness was not a judgment, but a gift to Man. Therefore, God’s omnipotence is not something to be afraid of, in fact Luther magnifies His omnipotence, by turning it into the very source of salvation itself. As a whole, Luther’s theology rests upon Sola Fides, Sola Scriptura, and Sola Gratia. Man is saved through faith, scripture, and grace.

There are profound consequences for Luther’s Reformation. If faith alone saves, then church sacraments are not necessary. If faith is born of an immediate contact with the Word of God, then priestly intercessors are not only unwarranted, they are actually a barrier to a true encounter with God. The priestly caste can therefore be discarded. Luther instead imagined a priesthood of all believers, making his theology a democracy. And finally, if God spoke to Man privately via scripture, individuals may make their own decisions about what constitutes Christian dogma. Luther himself was appalled by some of the more radical elements of The Reformation and attempted to distance himself, but nonetheless he opened Pandora’s box, just as Ockham did, and as we know, there is no way of closing it.

Luther’s new theology is also radically divergent from its predecessors. There exists in his new theology a much larger distinction between a created being and a divine being, and consequently a greater emphasis on the incomprehensibility of divine being. There is no divine continuum that connects creator and creation, and thus no hierarchy of ontological perfection imagined by the Scholastics. There is also no divine spark imprisoned within created beings striving to return to the Creator as imagined by the Neoplatonists. For Luther, Man cannot rise to God by purging themselves of corporeality. What then, if anything, unites God to Man in this new theology? For Luther, the answer is the Incarnation. Christ bridges the divide between creator and creation in a wholly mystical and inexplicable manner. Christ unites Man and God, but does so in a way that is incomprehensible, therefore, the fundamental truth of being is accessible only by faith - but faith is not chosen, it is granted to Man by God through his infinite mercy. Trying to reason our way to God is a dead-end, and any claims regarding the essence of God are by nature blasphemous products of human pride.

“For as in His own nature God is immense, incomprehensible, and infinite, so to man’s nature He is intolerable.”

We must abstain even from pondering God’s majesty, because as it says in Scripture,

“No man may see me and live.”

God thus conceals himself so as to not destroy us, and becomes a - Dues Absconditus - a Hidden God. The God of Nominalism, the one that so terrified the young Martin Luther, is never truly eliminated. This Hidden God remains the controlling and incomprehensible force behind all of existence, and Luther merely suggests we not think about Him for too long. Instead, we ought to turn to a theology of the cross, as God reveals himself in Scripture. In the Incarnation, this Hidden God manages to reveal himself, and it is He who breaks the shackles of fear, and acts as the mediator between Man and God. Therefore, the God of The Reformation is distinct from the God of Nominalism. God is not a distant and unfeeling being, because God became Man in the form of Christ, and understood to the bitter end what it meant to be human. It is the Crucified Christ then, that becomes the God of The Reformation, in all of his humanness.

Luther’s new theology has profound consequences for the Western man’s conception of himself. According to Luther, humans are not free and powerful, but weak slaves of Satan without any real ability to make their own choices. You are either subjugated by Satan, or subjugated by God. There is no third option.

Luther’s thought originates out of a deep spiritual crisis from his encounter with Nominalism, and his thinking is radically different from his predecessors. Luther’s insights are formed by his emphasis on the Incarnation, and this new theology produces with it a new view of Man, God, and the natural world. Central to all of this is Luther’s insistence upon faith through scripture and the weakness of Man without God. In short, Luther’s core doctrine saw God as everything and Man as nothing. This was the point of certainty on which everything turned. The Reformation therefore sought to keep God as the Ontic Priority. This position, however, is directly at odds with Prometheanism of Humanism. Is it any surprise then, that these two great movements would clash? The result of this collision produced the greatest debate of the 16th century. The debate was a matter of words, but words were not enough. Pens would be replaced by swords, and ink - with blood.

Erasmus V. Luther

It’s wrong to characterize Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus as foes from the outset. The Humanists and The Reformation had similar goals and a similar philosophical outlook stemming from their Nominalism. Erasmus and Luther were on good terms, and both men respected one another. Erasmus frequently defended Luther, and attempted to mediate his feud with the Pope. However, Erasmus was soon suspected of being a secret Lutheran. Luther knew this, and suggested in a cordial manner that he would not attack Erasmus so long as Erasmus did not attack him. This only deepened the suspicion that Erasmus was a Lutheran. Now it looked as if they had a pact with each other. In order to put such suspicions to rest, Erasmus decided to write a public statement regarding his disagreement with Luther. It was framed as more of a discussion than anything else, certainly not a hit piece. Erasmus even avoided the divisive topic of papal supremacy. Did this count as an “attack?” Erasmus didn’t think so, after all, Erasmus wrote so timidly and modestly that Luther could not possibly take offense to it. Luther was furious the very second it crossed his desk.

Erasmus published his diatribe On the Freedom of the Will as a form of discussion with Luther in an attempt to reconcile differences between The Reformation and Humanism. This was but the surface however, the subterranean truth of the debate was that it was about the heart of Christianity - the relationship between divine and human wills.

Erasmus’s claim that he’s writing as an impartial truth seeker, attempting to get answers out of Luther - answers he may even agree with - is nonsense. Erasmus is rhetorician, and he was using tactics perfected by the Academic skeptics against Stoicism. What Erasmus was really doing was trying to tie Luther up in all kinds of logical knots.

Erasmus is skeptical of a few things. Firstly, that scripture can be interpreted with the certainty Luther claims. Erasmus attempts to call into question Luther and his follower’s subjective interpretation of scripture. What about others who read scripture and come to contradictory conclusions? What about those who, like Luther, are certain God is directing them to certainty, but contradict other supposedly certain interpretations? What if Satan is the one filling you with this sense of certainty?

This is secondary to Erasmus’s primary contention. The crux of the debate is back to the Omnipotent God of Nominalism. Luther had asserted that God was responsible for all things, before and after The Fall. Therefore, free will is not only “completely fictitious” but also “the teaching of Satan” according to Luther. He justifies his determinism by referencing the heretic John Wycliff and the fatalistic pagan poet Virgil. This places Luther outside of the previous Christian tradition altogether. Luther’s position has no scriptural basis, no basis in scholastic theology, or even in the writings of church fathers. Erasmus points this out, and then delivers his most salient point - Luther’s theology makes it so God is the source of evil. If God is in control of absolutely everything, and evil exists, then God is responsible for evil, and thus not all good. Further, if humans are not responsible for their actions how can a just and merciful God punish them? What incentive would there be to act virtuously if your salvation is not ultimately up to you? Erasmus therefore lessens the significance of The Fall, saying to Luther,

“You make lost health into death.”

Erasmus ultimately believes that humans owe the beginning and end of their salvation to God, but the middle is dependent on the individual. Christ’s sacrifice gave us the opportunity to accept or reject grace. This however does not fully restore us to our pre-fallen state, and humans are still inclined to wickedness. Erasmus establishes God’s goodness, but he does so at the expense of God’s omnipotence. The Humanist project must de-emphasize the absolute sovereignty of God, and elevate Man’s will as the source of salvation.

Luther responds by turning Erasmus’s dialogue into a judicial proceeding. He entitles his response, On the Bondage of the Will. While Erasmus confronts Luther with a passive disagreement, Luther confronts Erasmus with divine judgment, and attempts to convict Erasmus as an unrepentant sinner. On the deepest level, Luther sees this debate as a debate with Satan himself. He begins by declaring that Erasmus is not a Christian at all. Luther’s fire-and-brimstone fury does not however downplay his rhetorical and theological skill. In fact, when On the Bondage of the Will was published, Erasmus believed it had to have been ghost-written. He was both impressed and shaken by Luther’s wit.

Luther immediately accepts Erasmus’s rhetorical tricks, and even turns it around on him. Luther was painfully aware of the kind of rhetoric being employed by Erasmus - attempting to conflate Luther’s theology with Stoicism, and he does not deny the comparison. In fact, he openly suggests he wishes Christians to be as inflexible as the Stoics were. Luther then points out the enemy of the Stoics - the Academic Skeptics, and throws Erasmus in with them. He therefore accepts Erasmus’s framing, but turns Erasmus into a skeptic and an atheist, going so far as to say,

“The Holy Spirit is not a skeptic.”

To the central question of the debate, Luther maintains his theological fatalism. God is everything and Man is nothing. God is all powerful and Man stands totally powerless before Him. Luther is uncompromising on this. All things outside of God are therefore contingent, ontologically and inevitably. In one of the key passages of the work, Luther makes his position crystal clear,

“Thus the human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills, as the psalm says: ‘I am become as a beast [before thee] and I am always with thee.’ If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it.”

Luther saw the world as a war between God and the devil. Humans were mere cannon fodder in this war. Human beings are beasts, saddled by God or Satan. Salvation then, is when God takes control of us beasts, out of the control of Satan. Furthermore, humans can not even choose between God and Satan, they cannot know what is good, they cannot will what is good, and they cannot even obey God’s commandments without God taking control of us. All of existence for Luther is thus a struggle between God and Satan. This too, is misleading and does not get to the true darkness of his theology. If God is as powerful as Luther suggests he is, and the devil is still snatching up souls left and right, is not Satan himself a puppet of God? The war between God and Satan is revealed to be a sham. God is so powerful that even the devil is entirely in his control, and consequently God is responsible for evil. Lurking behind Luther’s gracious redeemer is the incomprehensible God of Nominalism, in all his power.

The practical consequences of Luther’s theology is not peace, but war. Erasmus accuses him of this and Luther freely accepts. Because all things are contingent upon God, war itself is God’s will. The war unfolds between Catholics and Protestants, and to sit on the sidelines like Erasmus tried to do, made him a pawn of Satan refusing to fight in God’s holy war against evil. When Erasmus accused Luther of dogmatism that could lead to the triumph of evil, Luther responded by saying,

“As to your saying that a window is opened for impiety by these dogmas, let it be so.”

Humanism rescues God’s goodness by downplaying His Omnipotence. The Reformation rescues God’s omnipotence by downplaying His goodness. For those caught in the middle of this debate, it may seem that God can be all-good or all-powerful, but He cannot be both. The clash between these two attributes of God, throws humanity tumbling down into Modernity.

Descartes’ Mask and the Arrival of Modernity

“As actors put on masks in order not to show their blush when cued in the theater, so, as I am about to ascend onto the great stage of this world, having been only a spectator until now, I advance masked.”

Descartes is alone, huddled by a stove to keep the chill of winter off. On the outside he’s like every other young soldier, but on the inside something troubles him deeply. He looks out of the frost bitten window. Outside is a Medieval German village, and Descartes thinks the whole village looks like a mess. He notices all the houses are huddled together like a cold soldier to a warm stove, but without any guiding principle or reason for their placement. The whole town is there because of an incalculable number of uncoordinated decisions. This little German village was built by custom and happenstance rather than the light of reason. Descartes comes to the conclusion that the reason for this miserable war he’s stuck in and the horrible, cobbled-together village outside is actually the same thing. The chaos he’s bound up in is a result of men acting presumptuously without a uniform method for guiding their rational faculties. Descartes then sets out to gift the world with his Method, but he must do it, behind a mask.

From 1628 to 1633 Descartes developed a manuscript entitled, The World. He describes the aim and content of the manuscript as such:

“Rather than just explaining one phenomenon I have decided to explain all the phenomena of nature, that is to say, the whole of physics.”

Descartes was nearing his publication date, excited to be the one who would overturn Aristotelian physics. Then, he learned of the condemnation of Galileo. From then on, Descartes knew he could not provide an adequate foundation for his science without first addressing fundamental metaphysical questions. It is in this sense that Descartes dons a mask. He was not new to concealing himself from public and institutional authorities, however. Descartes’s spiritual mentor, Isaac Beeckman, introduced him to all kinds of Hermetic texts and his sympathy for Hermeticism only grew when he met the Rosicrucian mathematician Johannes Faulhaber. The Rosicrucian influence on Descartes is apparent immediately. Rosicrucians divided the world into thinking substances and extension. They thought nature’s secrets could be revealed to them via investigation and by banishing deceptions from their minds. Nature does not give up her secrets willingly - she must be tortured by our scientific instruments - in order to discover the truth. The Goal of the Rosicrucians was the improvement of humanity, life extension and potentially immortality, and the elimination of want and disease. The final rule of the Order of the Rosy Cross was to keep the organization a secret for one hundred years. Descartes returned to Paris in 1622 to find he had been accused of being Rosicrucian, on account of his published material and his reclusiveness. He did not remain in Paris long. When Descartes says he is appearing before the world masked, he means he is concealing his less than palatable philosophical views under the guise of orthodox Catholicism. This makes some of Descartes writing complicated, and there is always suspicion that he is not truly saying what he means. With his mask on, Descartes is ready to upend Aristotelian physics and the traditional view of metaphysics in one fell swoop. The only thing standing in Descartes' way is the God Ockham released upon the world almost 300 years prior.

Descartes' original idea of an axiomatic science rested on the eternal truth of mathematics. However, the God of Nominalism had not been tamed by Luther or the Humanists and Descartes’ foundation for his new science rested upon shaky grounds. If God created eternal mathematical truths, he could uncreate them. While Luther feared his salvation in the face of the Omnipotent God of Nominalism, Descartes feared for the possibility of certain knowledge. Thus begins Descartes’ methodological doubt. He begins not by rejecting skepticism, but wholly embracing it, in search of some thing he could not possibly doubt. Truth for Descartes is therefore synonymous with indubitably. Descartes’ skepticism was so fierce he imagines the existence of an evil demon who makes his sense perception suspect, and even his understanding of mathematical truths. In essence, there could be a being who is deceiving him about everything, or, almost everything. Only in the shadow of Nominalism could a man doubt his way into solipsism, and the evil deceiver which throws into question the possibility of science starts to look a lot like the God of Luther.

Some may argue Descartes does not come to his radical doubt because of his belief in God’s omnipotence because he believed God is bound by the law of non-contradiction. However, Descartes in his private correspondence seems to believe the opposite:

“The power of God can have no limits. God cannot have been determined to make it true that contradictions cannot be together, and consequently He could have done the contrary.”

He later explains that God can create mountains without valleys, as an example. Descartes does however believe that God does not change His laws, only He could if He wished to. His reason for believing this is shaky, and rests purely on hope. If God is Omnipotent and incomprehensible, Descartes finally admits that he can’t know for certain if God will change the very laws his science is seeking to investigate. There are two traditional answers to Descartes’ skepticism - Luther’s piety and atheism. Descartes rejects both. He denied that faith in God can alleviate uncertainty because God himself is the source of the uncertainty, and the more powerful we imagine God to be, the easier it is to imagine the possibility that he can deceive us. Descartes rejects atheism because he thinks the possibility that we are accidentally constituted in such a way as to be continually deceived is an even greater possibility than the possibility of a deceitful God. Descartes devises his own answer, his famous Cogito Ergo Sum. Descartes doubts the existence of absolutely everything, from the sky above him to the floor below him. The terrible upheaval and destruction of the Wars of Religion disappear in the face of Descartes’ doubt. He finds that the only thing he cannot possibly doubt, the only indubitable thing, is the fact that he is thinking. To doubt is to think, therefore something is doubting, something is thinking. I think, therefore I am. Anyone who’s taken an entry level philosophy course knows this, but there are deeper consequences to Descartes’ Cogito. To understand why, we first must understand how Descartes understood cognition and how he understood God.

In Cartesian thought, thinking is a form of willing. I think therefore I am suddenly takes on a new meaning. What Descartes actually means is, I will, therefore I am. For Descartes, the subject is necessarily posited or willed in every act of thinking. All thinking is self-thinking, or more bluntly, all consciousness is self-consciousness. The self wills itself in the act of thinking. This is an important turn in the history of philosophy, because Descartes’ Cogito places Man as the ultimate standard of truth, not God. While Luther struggled with God’s existence for the fate of his salvation, Descartes struggles with his own existence, for the salvation of God in the face of skepticism. Descartes lays out his proof for God, but he does so only after first establishing Man as the source of truth, and in doing so the West faces a world historic epistemological shift. But this world historic epistemological shift is only the basis for an even more cataclysmic shift in ontology.

With the Cogito established as the fundamental principle and the standard for all preceding truths, Descartes moves on to the question of God’s existence and whether God is a deceiver. The traditional view goes like this: Descartes takes note of the fact that within him is the idea of infinity, but that he himself is finite. Descartes reaches the conclusion that the idea we have of infinity is the effect of an actual infinite being, God. In other words, finite beings can not possess the idea of infinity unless an infinite being exists, who put it there. He then equates an infinite being with a perfect being, arguing that perfection is a property only of existent things. Therefore, if infinity and perfection go hand in hand, a perfect being must exist, as existence is a prerequisite for perfection. Further, he concludes that a perfect being cannot be a deceiver, as deception and fraud depend on some defect. Thus, an infinite, perfect, non-deceptive God must exist.

There is more to the story. Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God is likely a mask, and his actual view of God is more unorthodox. When Descartes asserts that we have in ourselves an idea of infinity, yet we are not ourselves infinite, he believes it is this moment where self-consciousness emerges. Finite beings recognize themselves as distinct from other beings when they are confronted by the infinite. Infinite beings come to no such realization. In other, more grim words, God cannot become self-conscious. His will is never impeded, never limited by what it is not. God cannot distinguish himself from all that is.

Descartes’s proof of God’s existence is therefore proof of his impotence. Descartes tames the God of Nominalism by reducing him to pure unconscious infinite will. God is causality itself. He is the mechanism at the heart of mechanistic nature. God is not a what, but a how. He is the source of the motion of matter. Therefore, whether or not God exists, nature operates in much the same way and we must use the same mathematics to understand it. Thus, Naturalism is born.

The goal of science is to master the causality at the heart of nature, or more bleakly, the goal of science is to master God. Nature thereby falls outside of God’s hands and into the impertinently probing fingers of Man and his instruments. Because Man’s will and God’s will are equal, the only thing standing in the way of our own deification is the rational application of our will to the mastery of nature. Humans are god-like but not yet God, but they can be with science.

Hobbes, the Virtuous Coward

“Mother dear did bring forth twins at once, both me, and fear.”

No man in history has ever gone to such great lengths to prove his own cowardice as Thomas Hobbes. Indeed, Hobbes turns cowardice into a virtue. When his mother was giving birth to him, it was likely not the pain of childbirth on her mind, but the Spanish Armada. The year 1588 was a fearsome time. A Papist invasion of England was a real threat, and for Hobbes’ Calvinist family, they might end up slaughtered like the Huguenots.

For Luther, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. For Hobbes, fear of violent death is the beginning of wisdom. Our goal should therefore be to eliminate chaos and violence, not suppress our rational fear of death. Hobbes’ project then is to deliver us a science that will promote human flourishing and eliminate violence. Hobbes’ sets about to answer questions of physics, anthropology, and politics. At the center of Hobbes’ thought however, is the God of Nominalism.

Nominalist ontology is at the heart of Hobbes’ physics. Hobbes believed there was but a single kind of change in the universe. This change was simply the result of one body colliding with another. One billiard ball hits into another, and that’s it. In a few words, motion has no other cause than motion. God is the source of motion, the first cause. Hobbes however does not believe God is the “unmoved mover” and instead identifies God with change itself. Motion is God’s ungoverned, omnipotent will. It is unguided by reason or purpose, therefore bodily motion has no natural end, no telos. In essence, Hobbes’ conception of God is very similar to Descartes’. God is causality.

In traditional Aristotelian metaphysics, there exists four kinds of causes - material, formal, efficient, and final. Material causes are the substance an object is made of. Efficient causes are the source of an object’s change or lack thereof. Formal causes are identified by an object’s essence. And final causes are an object’s telos. Hobbes only recognizes material and efficient causes. His rejection of final and formal causes furthers the arrival of ontological naturalism and the practical consequences of this are that the world of matter in motion is governed by an indifferent, omnipotent creator who is unconcerned with our well-being. By now, Deism is fast approaching. It is appearing just over the horizon. Not all is lost however, God does provide an impulse towards self-preservation. This impulse is our fear of death, and will be the basis for Hobbes’ science which aims to make Man the master and possessor of nature. Science therefore makes it possible for Man to survive in the chaotic and dangerous world of Nominalism. Hobbes therefore is not concerned with the salvation of our souls, but in ensuring our souls are not sent to Heaven early. Hobbes’ science is designed to improve life on Earth.

Hobbes’ anthropology follows from his physics. Unlike Descartes, who proposed a dualistic cosmology composed of mind and matter, Hobbes makes no such distinction. For Hobbes, all of reality is composed of one substance - matter. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter in motion, not a spiritual substance that exists elsewhere. Because humans are composed of nothing but matter, we too are bound by the laws of causality and cannot be said to have free will. In this view, humans are nothing more than automata. Humans are like clocks, wound up, spring loaded. What we perceive to be actions are only reactions, determined necessarily by prior causes. For Hobbes, much like Luther, belief in the freedom of the will is dangerous, but for different reasons. Belief in our own freedom isn’t dangerous because we risk eternal damnation, but because we risk chaos and destruction here on Earth. Hobbes however attempts to turn this humiliation into our salvation. In giving up our freedom, we realize it isn’t moral perfection, or fame, or piety that make us happy, but satisfying our desires. Our most base desire is to stay alive, and it is this that Hobbes chooses to emphasize. In the shadow of Nominalism, Hobbes believes we are all unique individuals, and even though we all desire to exist, what we all want out of existence is highly specific. Each man’s joy is dependent upon his power to attain his desires, and power can only arrive from our ability to master nature. In this sense, our freedom is dependent upon our power, which is attained through science.

Consider how Hobbes departs from both the Reformation and the Humanists in this regard. We are not enslaved, weak-willed beasts ridden by Satan, nor are we Demi-gods. We are human, all too human. Morality is transformed from here, and Good is what pleases us while Evil is what displeases us. Evil hinders our motion, Good reinforces it. Good is the increase in our powers, Evil is a decrease. Every individual is therefore self-interested, seeking to pursue his own unique ends. This places us into competition with each other, and in our mastery of nature we also must master other human beings as well. In the state of nature, it is a war of all against all, and our primary threat is other human beings. The state of nature can only be overcome by the construction of an artificial world, the commonwealth, ruled by an absolute sovereign. It is he who waves the white flag, putting an end to the war of all against all. This is the basis for Hobbes’ politics. Even if we can eliminate our fear of violent death, Hobbes knew that religious fanatics would not fear death if they believed salvation awaited them in some other life. Therefore, the sovereign must rule the church as well as the state. In this sense, the omnipotent God of Nominalism, disposed of his powers by both Descartes and Hobbes, reappears not as the King of Heaven but as an Earthly King.

In summation, Hobbes’ God is such that he cannot do anything other than what he has already done in setting the laws of motion into action. Hiding behind Hobbes’ naturalism is a creeping Calvinism - predestination becomes determinism. In Calvinistic fashion, Hobbes believed that what we did in this life is irrelevant to our salvation in the next. Prayer does not move God, because he is no man’s debtor. Prayer is merely a form of praise. Even religion cannot quell the fears of this life, and it ought not to, because fear is essential to our liberation. We must therefore turn our eyes toward our Earthly existence, give up our own freedom and grant absolute power to a sovereign. It is only then, when the Leviathan reigns supreme and brings peace, that Man can construct a science which will increase his power and improve his fleeting time here.

As it was inevitable that Luther and Erasmus would clash, almost as a result of causality itself, it was so too that Descartes and Hobbes would clash. Hobbes and Descartes would return to the question of free will, only now it was not the omnipotence of God that made free will impossible, but a mechanistic nature.

Descartes V. Hobbes

At the time of their great debate, Hobbes was a political exile while Descartes was revolutionizing philosophy and science. It was Marin Mersenne, who brought the two into conflict. Although the debate was a reflection of the debate between Erasmus and Luther, it lacked the severity and seriousness of these two men. Probably because Luther wasn’t around to slam his fists and threaten Descartes with eternal hellfire. No, this debate was reverent, and both men respected one another. If it were a boxing match, Luther would be in Hobbes’s corner, coaching him. Descartes would return to his corner, sit down on his stool, and listen to the careful rhetoric of Erasmus. The match would end in a draw, but the audience would not therefore walk away in disappointment. It is precisely this draw, this contradiction between free will and divine omnipotence that tore the premodern world apart, that would reappear as the contradiction between free will and natural necessity.

Hobbes wrote a series of objections to Descartes’ writings, and it is the twelfth objection that gets to the heart of the contradiction at the heart of the modern project. Descartes argues that the human will is a mirror of God’s will, not only free, but infinite. Man’s will is a product of his mind, which is a separate and distinct substance, irreducible to matter in motion. Hobbes argues the exact opposite and the debate can go no further. If the debate between Erasmus and Luther is understood, there is no reason to retread old ground. In the two centuries between these debates, what occurred was the swapping out of the word “God” for “nature.” With the arrival of modernity, it is no longer Luther’s God who restrains free will with his omnipotence, but a clock-work mechanical causality. The modern project therefore grants Ontic priority to nature and conceals the contradiction within its naturalistic worldview while God is simply defined out of existence. Concealing a contradiction does not do away with it, however. At the heart of the Enlightenment is a contradiction which has been naturalized.

Modernity in the Shadow of Theology

Over the course of hundreds of years, the series of transformations that brought the modern world into being were a product of repeated attempts to bridge the gap between a free human will and an all powerful God. Both the Humanists and Reformers offered comprehensive attempts to resolve this contradiction, but the two sides of this debate denied the grounds of their opponents. The Humanists gave Man Ontic priority over God and nature. The Reformers granted God Ontic priority. Neither side was willing to budge. Erasmus begins his account with Man as a free being and God’s omnipotence is compromised. If one begins with God, like Luther does, then human freedom is compromised. But neither the Humanists or the Reformers were willing to eliminate God or Man from the equation. It was not until the Enlightenment that a third attempt to solve this contradiction was developed. Thinkers such as Descartes and Hobbes, though unconsciously, sought to remove both God and Man as Ontic priority, and place nature atop the hierarchy of the realms of being. Enlightenment thinkers reimagine the world not as a divine artifact or the playground of a Promethean human will, but as a purely natural, material object. For Descartes, Man is part natural and part divine. It is this divine spark within Man that grants him freedom from the bondage of natural causality. For Hobbes, Man is a purely natural object just like nature. Man is still bound by the laws of causality and there is no room for human freedom. The debate between Descartes and Hobbes then, is an echo of the debate between Erasmus and Luther. All of these attempts were unsuccessful, and modernity rests in the shadow of these failures. Indeed, the modern project has carefully concealed the fact that it has yet to overcome this contradiction. In fact, modernity conceals this contradiction within a naturalistic framework.

God does not die, as Nietzsche suggests. Rather, God’s attributes, essential powers, and capacities are transferred to other realms of being. Disenchantment is for that reason an enchantment of Man and nature, in that God’s infinite will is passed on to Man, and God’s omnipotence is transferred to nature. In the modern age, natural science which analyzes all motion in terms of efficient causes, is unintelligible without a freely acting first cause, but such causality through freedom is incompatible with natural necessity. Freedom therefore is both necessary and incompatible with natural necessity. More practically speaking, science is supposed to set us free, however science itself denies the possibility of freedom. In concealing the theological origin of this contradiction, the contradiction solidifies itself.

On January 21st, 1793 the 38 year old Louis XVI was found guilty of treason. He arrived at the scaffolding, loosened his scarf, adjusted his collar, and placed his neck upon the block of the guillotine. The blade severed his head from his body, and brought not only the end of his life, but the end of the cheerfulness of modernity. Within a few months, 30,000 Frenchmen would meet the same fate as their disgraced King. The Reign of Terror swept across France, and with it an anxiety of what had been done in this world historic moment. The unclean blade which killed Louis XVI also killed the hopes at the heart of the modern project - that reason would reign supreme, that the March of history was away from an oppressive and benighted past to a glorious future, and that the Enlightenment would usher in a Utopia. Was this the fruit of universal reason? Was this the future we find ourselves marching towards? Was this the Utopia we longed for? The crowd chanted, almost in meek reassurance, “Viva la Rèvolution” and in the rain and cold of that January day, it was understood that what they had opened up may not be the gates of Heaven, but the gates of Hell.

“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,

Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat

That we must change for heav'n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so since he

Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid

What shall be right: Fardest from him is best

Whom reason hath equaled force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell happy fields

Where joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, Hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell

Receive thy new possessor, one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.