The Neo-Calvinist Strain in Hume’s Philosophy of Religion

ABSTRACT

The relationship of Hume’s thought with Calvinism is complex and difficult to pin down. He is mordantly critical of the theology and morality of the “predestinarian doctors” and out of tune with the rational theology of Francis Hutcheson and even with that of his friends, Enlightened Ministers of the Church of Scotland such as Hugh Blair and Robert Wallace. Nevertheless, a few of his key philosophical tenets are almost indistinguishable from the main ideas advanced in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I argue that for this reason Hume’s philosophy of religion is an Enlightened form of Calvinism. These strongly parallel doctrines must be considered in any evenhanded interpretation of the chief principles of Hume’s philosophy of religion that are set forth in “Of Miracles,” in The Natural History of Religion, and in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This approach also opens a thoughtful understanding of the main conclusions of the Dialogues.

KEYWORDS:

• Hume
• Calvin
• Francis Hutcheson
• Robert Wallace
• morals
• theology
• faith
• God

Introduction

I have long been intrigued by Hume’s complex relation with Calvinist morality and theology. In previous works I noted that, although he severely criticizes some of its main doctrines along the lines of the Enlightenment, he retains in a modified or attenuated form key tenets of the Calvinist faith, and in that sense Hume’s own philosophy may be better characterized as an Enlightened Calvinism. Here I will try to show how Hume’s multifaceted view of religion—which is closer to Calvin’s than to that shared by most of his Presbyterian friends—informs key principles in “Of Miracles,” Section 10 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, The Natural History of Religion, and the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. If one does not lose sight of these Calvinist principles that are “silently” or implicitly adopted by Hume, especially regarding religion, reason, faith, and God, our assessment of his conclusions in the Dialogues may lead us to reject the usual atheistic and agnostic interpretations of his position and to adopt an open-ended, balanced interpretation that is more in keeping with his “mitigated” scepticism and the subtle manner in which Philo, the sceptic in the Dialogues, formulates those principles.

I. Hume’s Critique of Calvinist Theology and Morality

For many years after I began to study Hume’s philosophy, I accepted Norman Kemp Smith’s view that, in developing his theories on religion, Hume had been negatively influenced by the Calvinist faith on which he was raised,¹ and so I assumed that he summarily and completely rejected it. There were at least two reasons that led me to this conclusion. First, Hume consistently and unequivocally expresses his moral and intellectual repugnance for key doctrines of Calvinist theology, and objects to the strong version of the doctrine of original sin, and firmly rejects predestination—the decree of God’s will that preordains some humans to salvation and others to eternal damnation. Second, in works such as Books 1 and 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals, some of his Essays, the History of England, The Natural History of Religion, and the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as well, Hume raises compelling moral objections to the typical Calvinist beliefs and way of life.

Regarding those dogmas, Hume’s view of the doctrine of original sin is closer to Calvin’s than to that of most Calvinist Moderate Ministers and Enlightened philosophers who significantly watered it down. A typical case is Francis Hutcheson. When he enumerates in the System of Moral Philosophy the causes that incline humans to incur great harms to themselves and society, although he prudently adheres to the dogma in proper but vague terms, he points to more easily detectable empirical factors as the immediate root of evil. Thus, he suggests that the principal culprit of the iniquities which we are capable of committing is not the originally defective constitution we have inherited from our first parents, but rather the careless and damaging education we have been subjected to:

The causes of that vice and depravity of manners we observe, are pretty obvious. Not to say anything of causes not discoverable by the light of nature, mankind spend several of their first years, where there is not a careful education, in the gratification of their sensual appetites, and in the exercise of some lower powers, which, by long indulgence, grow stronger: reflecting on moral notions, and the finer enjoyments, and comparing them with the lower, is a laborious exercise. (italics added)²

Like Hutcheson, Hume rejected self-interest—the theological precursor of the doctrine of original sin—as the main foundation of morality. More clearly than Hutcheson, he recognizes external factors, which are very difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate, and which predispose humans to think and act badly: this is “the situation of external objects” in which there is a scarce bounty of natural and social goods available for distribution among human beings. But in the Natural History of Religion, Hume also clearly points to an original root of evil, to certain “qualities of the mind” that, like superstitious ideas of God, spring “from the essential and universal properties of human nature” (NHR 14.8; R 73)—the scarce kindness, or weak sympathy with public interest, coupled with a greater and commonly stronger concern for our own benefit: “The qualities of the mind are selfishness and limited generosity: And the situation of external objects is their easy change, join’d to their scarcity in comparison with the wants and desires of men” (T 3.2.2.16; SBN 494). It is this recalcitrant, harmful trait of humankind’s aptitude to misbehave that Hume’s view shares with the doctrine of original sin.

Hume, however, seemed much distraught by the “dreadful” Calvinist version of predestination that was linked up with original sin.³ That is why he had some sympathy for an odd thinker such as the Chevalier Ramsay (Andrew Michael Ramsay), whose fanciful albeit generous eschatology (positing the universal salvation of humans and all other sensible beings) he could only smile at, but who dared to expose in writing the irrationality and inhumanity of the Calvinistic dogmas of predestination and eternal damnation of all but a few: his “humanity … rebelled against the doctrines of eternal reprobation and predestination.” Moreover, Hume apparently felt a revulsion for the common theological attempts to reconcile the dogmas of original sin and eternal predestination and condemnation with God’s infinite goodness and wisdom, and so he minces no words about his contempt for these “predestinarian doctors” who showed “that it is possible for a religion to represent the divinity in still a more immoral and unamiable light than he was pictured by the ancients” (NHR 13.7 n. 87; R 68 n. 1).⁴

Hume denounces Calvinism in particular (although he seems to have generalized this indictment to cover most historical religions) because it imposes almost unbearable demands on ordinary believers that tend to obscure their understanding, silence their moral conscience, and so to condemn them to live an unnatural or “artificial life.” The typical Calvinist faith is literally a profession because believers in those dogmas can barely assent to them or do so artificially. It is only through a continued exercise of self-deception that morally earnest and intellectually able persons can conceal from themselves and others the conflict they feel deep inside:

Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry … their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter. (NHR 12.15; R 60)

The devotees must, as members of a church, publicly declare their assent to certain creeds they do not really believe in and secretly abhor, since they cannot fail to detect their absurdity and/or ruthlessness. In the History of England Hume suggests that the sometimes cruel attempt by orthodox religionists to silence the voice of those who oppose their faith, or have none whatsoever, is really aimed at appeasing their own unresolved doubts: “But while men zealously maintain what they neither clearly comprehend, nor entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined faith, by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience, which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the understanding” (H 3.431–32). This violent and never entirely successful endeavor to suppress doubts about doctrines the faith in which is the condition to evade eternal damnation, condemns them to a life of simulation and hypocrisy: “The heart secretly detests such measures of cruel and implacable vengeance; but the judgment dares not but pronounce them perfect and adorable” (NHR 13.6; R 67). In “Of the Standard of Taste,” he says that the introduction of religious principles is a “blemish in any polite composition,” but that these principles are not “faults” in the character of its author if we cannot fairly accuse him/her of bigotry or superstition. However, “[w]here that happens, they confound the sentiments of morality, and alter the natural boundaries of vice and virtue” (E 23.35, 246). Hume would have probably classified some Calvinist principles as notable instances of “errors in religion” that “are dangerous” (T 1.4.7.13; SBN 272)—as superstitious beliefs that may corrupt our humanity. As he shows in “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” a few of these Calvinist dogmas are nothing but a mode of superstition which promotes a trust so excessive in priests or ministers that ultimately “renders men tame and abject and fits them for slavery” (E 10.9, 78). And so Hume contested these beliefs, because, like the “blind motions” of the affections without the direction of the understanding, they “incapacitate men for society” (T 3.2.14; SBN, 493); for once “the priest establishes his authority, [he] becomes the tyrant and disturber of society, by his endless contentions, persecutions and religious wars” (E 10.8, 78). It is true that Hume amended this essay in 1742 to include a long note distinguishing morally earnest and caring clergymen from morally objectionable, power grasping priests (E 10. Var. n. b, 619). Yet in “Of National Characters,” published in 1748, he abandons that dichotomy and makes even a stronger indictment of ministers: “The ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance and superstition and implicit faith and pious frauds” (E 21.3 n. 2, 200), which received unanimous, and sometimes virulently irate rebuffs from that order.⁵

Up to this point, we have seen that, although Hume recognizes the truthfulness of a key aspect of the doctrine of original sin, he chiefly exposes with irreverent sarcasm the demeaning human consequences of the principal Calvinist dogmas. Yet in what follows, I will attempt to show that he also puts forward views about faith, religion, and God that are surprisingly akin to the teachings propounded by Calvin.

II. The Calvinist Conclusion of Hume’s “Of Miracles”

It was by rereading Hume’s works in light of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion that I began to realize how much of the faith he sincerely and seriously professed during his early youth that he retained even in his own philosophy.⁶ I then saw very clearly that Hume’s expedite, seemingly non-Enlightened and controversial dismissal of religious testimony about miracles in Part 2, Section 10, of the Enquiry, was a sort of corollary of his implicit and moderate endorsement (i.e., mitigated by his sceptical doubts) of the manner in which Calvin conceived faith.⁷ Such a brisk rebuff is shown by a passage which follows Hume’s made-up story about the resurrection of Queen Elizabeth a month after she had been interred; this is a miracle that he would reject even if it were backed up by the best imaginable testimony, i.e. even if “all the historians who treat of England should agree” that it occurred (EHU 10.2.37; SBN 128):

But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men, in all ages, have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination. (EHU 10.2.38; SBN 128–29)

By upholding this conclusion, Hume is not strictly straying from Presbyterian orthodoxy. His harsh saying is consistent with and parodies Calvin’s celebrated reply in the Prefatory Address to Francis I, King of France, to the usual objection of Catholic theologians against his doctrine: “In demanding miracles of us, they act dishonestly. For we are not forging some new gospel, but retaining the very gospel whose truth all the miracles that Jesus Christ and his disciples ever wrought serve to confirm” (ICR 1.15; B 16–17; italics added).

Hume’s swift and forthright rejection of religious testimony for the occurrence of miracles will appear less unexpected and enigmatic if the last of the four considerations (“reasons”) which he offers to justify his claim is viewed against the backdrop of Calvin’s theology. On the one hand, he states that “in matters of religion whatever is different is contrary” (EHU 10.2.24; SBN 121); that is, the truth of one religion excludes that of all others. On the other hand, miracles are adduced to be proofs of the truth of one religion, but miracles abound in all religions. Hence, “all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies as opposite to each other” (EHU 10.2.24; SBN 122). In other words, the evidence for the miracles of one religion must cancel the evidence for the miracles of every other religion, so that the truth of none can be established by an appeal to miracles, as he states: “it is impossible [that] the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should all of them be established on any solid foundation” (EHU 10.2.24; SBN 121).

Hume’s fourth consideration mirrors Calvin’s reasoning about the nature of miracles and their connection with faith: As the “clear knowledge” (perspicua notitia) (ICR 3.2.20, 29; B 565)⁸ that God’s Word gives humans of His goodwill toward them and about what He requires from them as well, faith has as its foundation the “preconceived conviction” (praesumpta persuasio) in the divine veracity; that is, faith is built under the presupposition that God is trustworthy: “And it is not even enough to believe that God is trustworthy, who can neither deceive nor lie, unless you hold to be beyond doubt that whatever proceeds from him is sacred and inviolable truth” (ICR 3.2.6, 14–15; B 549).

It is because we presuppose that a miracle cannot be wrought without the assistance of the divine will, that miracles can become “seals” (signacula) or visible warranties of the truth of the doctrine in whose name they are realized. In other words, since only God can work miracles and he is trustworthy, the doctrine accompanied by the divine sign or miracle must be true. Thus miracles cannot be brought forward to confirm false doctrines. They are seals only of the true doctrine, and none, according to Calvin, may be adduced to certify a doctrine which is contrary to the Gospel of Christ, as Catholics do: “When we hear that they were appointed only to seal the truth, shall we employ them to confirm falsehoods?” (ICR 1, 16; B 1617).

This in turn leads us to deny the ascription of miracles to events which are presented to confirm doctrines whose falsity we have good reasons to assert. So Calvin dismissed Catholic prodigies as apparent miracles, like the marvels of magicians and enchanters (ICR 1, 16; B17). Likewise, Hume sarcastically pointed to George Campbell, Enlightened Minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and able Aberdonian common-sense philosopher, that “Mr John Knox and Mr Alexander Henderson did not work as many miracles,” because “[m]iracle-working was a Popish trick, and discarded with the other parts of that religion.”⁹ Campbell strongly objected to Hume’s dismissal of religious testimony: “No miracles recorded by historians of other religions are subversive of the evidence arising from the miracles wrought in proof of Christianity, or can be consider’d as contrary testimony.”¹⁰ Hume simply answered him in Calvin’s manner:

If a miracle proves a doctrine to be revealed from God, and consequently true, a miracle can never be wrought for a contrary doctrine. The facts are therefore as incompatible as the doctrines.¹¹

Calvin, generally speaking, held that faith in Scripture and Biblical miracles does not rest upon our trust in the veracity of the senses, because “in the mysteries of the faith common sense is not our adviser” (ICR 4.17.25, 377; B 1392), nor the testimony of human witnesses, but in the previous confidence we have in God’s veracity.¹² It is because we trust God entirely that we affirm with complete certainty that Scripture is true. If we already possess that certainty, or are convinced beforehand of its supernatural provenience—if, that is, we already have faith—then, and only then, can Scripture be confirmed by human testimony about miracles:

Unless this certainty, higher and stronger than any human judgment be present, it will be vain to fortify the authority of Scripture by arguments, to establish it by common agreement of the church, or to confirm it with other helps (adminicula) [i.e., human testimonies]. For unless this foundation is laid, its authority will always remain in doubt. (ICR 1.8.1, 71–72; B 81–82)

Thus, stripped of its theological-apologetic garb, Calvin’s claim is the same conclusion that Hume, the “infidel,” formulates in Section 10 “Of Miracles”: faith delivered by divine revelation is the only foundation for a “popular” or historical religion, such as Christianity, so that without this support (or “inward testimony” in Calvin’s terms), “no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion” (EHU 10.2.35; SBN 127).

III. Hume’s and Calvin’s Views on Religion

The natural origins of religion

For Calvin, religion, or human consciousness of, and response to God is a natural, that is, original, universal, and inseparable endowment of the human mind, and not a conventional, or merely fortuitous, contracted, and disposable mental construct:

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural inclination (naturalis instinctu), an awareness of divinity (divinitatis sensum). … God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. … And they who in other aspects of life seem least to differ from brutes still continue to retain some seed of religion. So deeply does the common conception occupy the minds of all, so tenaciously does it inhere in the hearts of all! (ICR 1.3.1, 37–38; B 43–44)

Hume at the beginning of the Natural History of Religion affirms that “this preconception”—the belief in divine beings—“springs not from an original instinct” (NHR Intro. 1; R 21); yet, at the end of that work, he expresses a view that parallels Calvin’s by recognizing that “the propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power” is “universal,” “being at least a general attendant of human nature” (NHR; 15.5, R 75).

Knowledge of God

According to Calvin, original sin explains why faith in Christ is our only means of direct and certain access to God. But by contemplating the visible world and our situation in it, reason gives us a “confused” knowledge of God. No matter how diminished its discerning ability may be after the Fall, reason is not blind because it may be incapable of seeing “engraved upon his individual works unmistakable marks of his glory,” about which “even unlettered and stupid folk” cannot plead ignorance (ICR 1.5.1, 44–45; B 52). Reason becomes blind only because it is blindfolded or obfuscated by the limitless self-love and vanity that dwell originally in the hearts, not in the heads, of women and men, so they “had of necessity to stagger about in vanity and error” (ICR 1.6.4, 64; B 74). Briefly, not unsighted reason, but “blind self-love (caecus sui amor) is innate in all mortals” (ICR 2.1.2, 229; B 243).¹³

Owing to this impaired state of human nature brought about by original sin, which experience readily corroborates, there is an inherent, invincible tendency even in true historical ways of representing and worshipping divinity to inevitably degenerate into superstitious creeds and cults: “Yet that seed remains which can in no wise be uprooted: that there is some sort of divinity; but this seed is so corrupted that by itself it produces only the worst fruits” (ICR 1.4.4, 44; B 51).¹⁴

Hume, in the language reminiscent of Calvin’s, refers to this pivotal, but weakened and wavering, belief in divinity:

[N]othing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! How much is he degraded even below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue! (NHR 15.6; R 75).

The relation between religion and morality

Hume’s negative view of the relation between religion and morality is manifested throughout his works. In Sections 9 to 15 of the Natural History of Religion and at the beginning of Part 12 of the Dialogues, he argues that religion has had “a bad influence on morality” by magnifying the motive of self-interest which has almost eclipsed other features that also normally operate in it, such as sympathy with the needs of fellow humans, the thirst for peace and justice, and love of wonder: “the first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears, which actuate the human mind” (NHR 2.4; R 27). Neither at its beginnings, nor at any moment in its development, and not even at present, has its dominant mark been moral, selfless interest. Gods are the objects of our hopes and fears, rather than of our love; they are invariably imagined as invisible, intelligent, and powerful entities that devotees must put up with, either by invocation or conciliation, to preserve their well-being or avoid misery in their daily struggle for life. “A popular religion, in which it was expressly declared, that nothing but morality could gain the divine favor” is something that “never happens” (NHR 14.3; R 71). Quite the opposite, he insists, in all historical religions the ingrained and ineradicable motive has been self-love.

Calvin recognizes the same tendency under the name “concupiscence”—the actual state of a will vitiated by original sin in an endless and uneasy search for self-gratification in things of this world—that is, the conspicuous and indelible egotism and its dire effects in the history of all religions.¹⁵ No matter how prevalent it may be, a self-interested worship of divinity is not religion, but, as Calvin remarks regarding pagan and most actual worship, only “a vain and false shadow of religion” (inanis … et mendax religionis umbra) which idolizes only illusory products of human desires, fears, and hopes: “that fear first made gods in the world, corresponds well to this kind of irreligion” (ICR 1.4.43; B 50).

All things considered, Hume’s account of the genesis and development of religion could have allowed for a less sceptical attitude regarding the connection between morality and religion even in its very beginnings.¹⁶

IV. Faith and Knowledge of God’s Benevolence: Calvin, Hutcheson, and Hume

Hume’s sceptical attitude to religion is in one important sense more akin to Calvin’s view of faith than to that shared by his contemporary Calvinists, both his Evangelical foes and his Moderate friends: It is only by faith that we can discover that God desires what is good for us. By itself alone human reason can attain some imprecise but adequate knowledge of God’s power and wisdom. However, in our present condition, amidst great pain and suffering, we lack the same firm assurance regarding God’s justice and providence, even though “[i]n no greater degree is his power and his wisdom hidden in darkness” (in tenebris latent) (ICR 1.5.8, 52; B 61). So for Calvin it comes as no surprise that the ancient philosophers could not establish God’s kind regard toward us:

In short, they never ever sensed that assurance of God’s benevolence toward us (without which man’s understanding can only be filled with boundless confusion). Human reason, neither approaches, nor strives toward, nor even takes a straight aim at, this truth: to understand who the true God is or what sort of God he wishes to be toward us. (ICR 2.2.18, 261; B 277–78)

Whereas reason, “from contemplation of the universe,” gives us a blurred and vanishing glimpse of God such as is taken to be by Christianity, or “a slight taste of the divine” (modicum divinitatis gustum) (ICR 1.5.15, 60; B 69), faith illumined by the Holy Spirit provides us with a sensible awareness which, in comparison with the former, is a full taste of the divine—“a more direct and certain mark whereby he is to be recognized” (ICR 1.6.1, 61; B 70). Thus to those who have true faith, “Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God” (ICR 1.6.1, 60; B 70).

Hutcheson, on the one hand, outlines a traditional design argument, which from a general empirical survey of the order and regularity of the course of natural events, attempts to demonstrate not only the intelligence and power of its Author, but also his good will toward us.¹⁷ On the other hand, based on his reflection on “the Structure of our own Nature,”¹⁸ he takes our capacity to judge between good and evil as a sufficient premise to conclude that there is also moral goodness in the cause to which we owe our being: “Nay, this very moral Sense, implanted in rational Agents, to delight in, and admire whatever Actions flow from a Study of the good of others, is one of the strongest Evidences of Goodness in the Author of Nature.”¹⁹

For Calvin, the knowledge of God that we gain when we “contemplate him in his works,” shows us the enormity of pains and sufferings his sentient creatures endure, and also the disproportioned distribution of agonies for the many (especially righteous persons) and ecstasies for the few (particularly bad people). Hence, it offers us no proof that God will complete his moral government in this world; but it can “awaken and encourage” in those who are inclined to worship him “the hope of the future life” (ICR 1.5. 9–10, 53–54; B 62):

For since we notice that the examples both of his clemency and of his severity are inchoate and incomplete, doubtless we must consider this to presage even greater things, the manifestation and full exhibition of which are deferred to another life. On the other hand—since we see the pious laden with afflictions by the impious, stricken with unjust acts, overwhelmed with slanders, wounded with abuses and reproaches; while the wicked on the contrary flourish, are prosperous, obtain repose with dignity and that without punishment—we must straightway conclude that there will be another life in which iniquity is to have its punishment and righteousness is to be given its reward. (ICR 1.5.10, 54; B 62–63)

All in all, since reason is not able to reconcile God’s infinite goodness with the presence of evil in the world, Calvin only suggests that the latter is not necessarily inconsistent with the former. But, unlike Hutcheson, he does not transform the fact of our moral conscience into a first premise of an inductive proof of God’s benevolent disposition.

While Hume did not criticize Hutcheson’s moral-empirical argument in his published philosophical works, in a letter to Hutcheson, dated March 16, 1740, he questioned his claim that our moral sense is most likely the effect of divine benevolence. And in parts 10 and 11 of the Dialogues, he seemingly rejects the possibility of proving God’s infinite goodness empirically. He argues that “allowing certain suppositions and conjectures” (such as Calvin’s preceding conjectures encouraged by his “hope of the future life”), the existence of evil in the world may be consistent with the idea “of a very powerful, wise, and benevolent Deity”; yet such a consistence “can never afford us an inference concerning his existence” (D 11.5, 204). A Deity who possesses “infinite benevolence, conjoined with infinite power and infinite wisdom” is a being “which we must discover by the eyes of faith alone” (D 10.37, 202). These words that Philo, the sceptic in the Dialogues, directs at Cleanthes, the deist who pretends to prove empirically the existence of a not all-powerful but perfectly good Deity, show that Hume’s robust rejection of Hutcheson’s attempt to prove empirically the existence of a morally perfect Deity is similar to Calvin’s view of religious faith that does not rest on any rational knowledge, presumably given by ancient philosophy or Scholastic natural theology, but on the “knowledge” which God’s Word provides:

[T]he Word itself, however it may be imparted to us, is like a mirror in which faith may contemplate God (Deum intueatur). … In understanding faith it is not merely a question of knowing that God exists, but also—and this especially—of knowing what is his will toward us. For it is not so much our concern to know who he is in himself, as to what he wills to be toward us. Now, therefore, we hold faith to be a knowledge of God’s will toward us, perceived from his Word. (ICR 3.2.6, 14–15; B 549)

But could we not presume, as Hutcheson apparently did, that the world is also like a mirror in which reason may, no matter how partially and confusedly, contemplate not only God’s wisdom and power, but also his good will toward us? Not really, because for Calvin “understanding mixed with doubt” (dubitatione mista intelligentia), which characterizes the rational knowledge of God based on our experience of this world, is to be excluded (ICR 3.2.7, 16; B 551). But concerning God’s benevolence, Hume’s view is no more sceptical than Calvin’s faith: “Yet far indeed is the mind of man, blind and darkened as it is, from penetrating and attaining even to perception of the will of God!” (ICR 3.2.7, 16; B 551). In short, Calvin’s view differs from Hutcheson’s still-too-rationalist belief in God’s benevolence and is more akin to Hume’s in the Dialogues.

V. Hume’s Neo-Calvinist Conclusions in the Dialogues

Philo’s view of true worship parallels Calvin’s

Hume, as noted earlier, denied that reason could prove the existence of a benevolent God. But reason may nevertheless lead us to infer that only a morally perfect Being would be a genuine object of worship. So Cleanthes recommends “genuine Theism, which represents us as the workmanship of a Being perfectly good, wise, and powerful” (D 12.24, 224). This is also clear when Philo says that “to know God … is to worship him” (D 12.32, 226). Certainly, he quotes Seneca’s dictum to point out to Cleanthes the self-conceited, absurd, and superstitious nature of most religious adoration. But at the same time, he echoes a central theme of Calvin’s theology—that knowledge and worship of God are inseparable, for the disclosure of his existence as the inexhaustible source of all perfection gives us an unmistakable assurance that we must worship him. In such terms, Calvin describes “piety”:

[A]lthough our mind cannot apprehend God without rendering some honor to him, it will not suffice simply to hold that there is One whom all ought to honor and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of every good, and that we must seek nothing elsewhere than in him … no drop will be found either of wisdom and light, or of righteousness or power or rectitude, or of genuine truth, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause. … For this sense of the powers of God is for us a fit teacher of piety, from which religion is born. (ICR 1.2.1, 34–35; B 40–41)

In sum, Calvin, like Hume, asserts that God’s benevolent providence can only be known by faith, and also that reason is able to acknowledge God’s goodness in his worldly works only in a grumbling manner, because this dim insight is perpetually assaulted by inner misgivings and countless complaints: “until human reason is subjected to the obedience of faith … it grumbles (obstrepit humana ratio), as if such proceedings were foreign to God’s power” (ICR 1.14.2, 154; B 161).

Philo’s key contentions

First, his mitigated confession of faith:

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes every where the most careless, the most stupid thinker; and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, as at all times to reject it. That Nature does nothing in vain, is a maxim established in all the schools, merely from the contemplation of the works of Nature, without any religious purpose; and, from a firm conviction of its truth, an anatomist, who had observed a new organ or canal, would never be satisfied till he had also discovered its use and intention. One great foundation of the Copernican system is the maxim, That Nature acts by the simplest methods, and chooses the most proper means to any end; and astronomers often, without thinking of it, lay this strong foundation of piety and religion. The same thing is observable in other parts of philosophy: and thus all the sciences almost lead us insensibly to acknowledge a first intelligent Author; and their authority is often so much the greater, as they do not directly profess that intention. (D 12.2, 214)

Philo’s assent is mitigated, because the irony with which he talks about “a purpose,” “an intention,” “a design” that impresses “the most careless, stupid thinker” makes it clear that he denies that the existence of an intelligent cause is the valid conclusion of an empirical rational proof. The role tacitly assigned (“without thinking of it”) to that belief is heuristic: it is a principle that allows us to think of nature as a realm absolutely ruled by regular laws, and in that sense guides the scientific investigation of nature.

Second, his comments on Galen, the “infidel” physician: Philo mentions Galen to emphasize that belief in God is a natural belief, and not merely a conviction of the Jewish-Cristian-Islamic tradition:

It is with pleasure I hear Galen reason concerning the structure of the human body. The anatomy of a man, says he, discovers above six hundred different muscles; and whoever duly considers these, will find, that, in each of them, Nature must have adjusted at least ten different circumstances, in order to attain the end which she proposed; proper figure, just magnitude, right disposition of the several ends, upper and lower position of the whole, the due insertion of the several nerves, veins, and arteries: so that, in the muscles alone, above six thousand several views and intentions must have been formed and executed. … The further we advance in these researches, we discover new scenes of art and wisdom: but descry still, at a distance, further scenes beyond our reach; in the fine internal structure of the parts, in the economy of the brain, in the fabric of the seminal vessels. … And if the infidelity of Galen, even when these natural sciences were still imperfect, could not withstand such striking appearances, to what pitch of pertinacious obstinacy must a philosopher in this age have attained, who can now doubt of a Supreme Intelligence! (DNR 12.3, 215).

Calvin himself, in arguing that the divine wisdom is shown everywhere and can be seen by all, expressed this with an eloquence comparable to Philo’s rendition of the same contention:

There are innumerable evidences both in heaven and on earth that declare his wonderful wisdom; not only those more recondite matters for the closer observation of which astronomy, medicine, and all natural science are intended, but also those which thrust themselves upon the sight of even the most untutored and ignorant persons. … Yet ignorance of them prevents no one from seeing more than enough of God’s workmanship in his creation to lead him to break forth in admiration of the Artificer. … Likewise, in regard to the structure of the human body one must have the greatest keenness in order to weigh, with Galen’s skill, its articulation, symmetry, beauty, and use. But yet, as all acknowledge, the human body shows itself to be a composition so ingenious that its Artificer is rightly judged a wonder-worker. (ICR 1.5.2, 48; B 53–54)

Indeed, Philo’s exclamation is as forceful as Calvin’s:

Could I meet with one of this species (who, I thank God, are very rare), I would ask him: Supposing there were a God, who did not discover himself immediately to our senses, were it possible for him to give stronger proofs of his existence, than what appear on the whole face of Nature? (D 12.4, 215)

And although we can never be sure about the accuracy of a casual remark Hume made to his friend Adam Ferguson, one cannot avoid noting how strikingly similar it is to Philo’s preceding exclamation:

One clear, beautiful night, as Adam Ferguson and he were walking home, Hume suddenly stopped, looked up to the starlit sky, and exclaimed: “Oh, Adam, can anyone contemplate the wonders of the firmament and not believe in a God!²⁰

If agnosticism excludes belief, Hume’s words cannot be subsumed under that label, for what he intimates to Ferguson is that the suspension of judgment about the existence of a God is hardly possible on beholding the awesome order of the visible world. This dialogue might have never occurred, but Philo’s preceding words are so similar that it is reasonable to affirm that his position, too, excludes agnosticism.

All these passages attest that the search for order in realms of nature by the sciences such as physics, astronomy, medicine, without the intention of demonstrating the existence of an intelligent creator, is guided by the tacit belief that such an order is the product of wisdom. In light of Philo’s allusion to Galen’s way of investigating the means-to-end relations and the coherence of parts in the structure and functioning of the human body and other natural organisms as if they were intelligently ordained, we may soundly conclude that such a conception of God is either the effect of the inquisitive observation of nature,²¹ or a condition that makes such an inquiry possible.²² Either way, the belief in an intelligent Artificer would be a natural belief.

Faith as a “foreign instructor” or “further aid”

Pamphilus, the narrator of the Dialogues and “the friend of everybody,” as his name suggests, delivers the final verdict. To him, Philo directs his last comment: “To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian” (D 12.33, 228). Pamphilus is a disciple of Cleanthes; however, Philo addresses him not to make him change his opinion about Cleanthes’ teaching,²³ which is clearly deistic, but to make him see that his conclusion—the view of faith which he proposes—is more truly Calvinist than the strong fideist and a priori rationalist belief defended by the seemingly ultra-orthodox Demea. In short, although Philo does not intend to make Pamphilus abandon Cleanthes’ empirical approach to God’s existence, he urges him to see that supernatural faith, as a “further aid” or “foreign instructor,” supplements reason without contradicting it (which is why it is “sound”), and also that it is the only way in which we are able to gain a view, or somehow perceive the moral attributes of the God that he and his friends, Cleanthes, Demea, and Philo, worship. Such is also Calvin’s understanding of faith. Since Hume’s life-long quest was to be “a man of letters,” Philo’s words allow us to ascribe a mitigated Calvinist view of faith to Hume himself. “Mitigated” because by no means can it be supposed that Hume would have welcomed that “foreign instructor.” What I claim is something else. First, that the Dialogues establish an open-ended conclusion allowing for reasonable belief (theism) as well as reasonable disbelief (atheism) and reasonable unbelief (agnosticism) in God, especially because it is not possible to establish the moral attributes of God amidst the many ills his creatures undergo in this world. Second, that Philo’s declaration permits us to say that Hume recognizes that a “sound” faith, or one that is directed by the understanding, is a reasonable option for Enlightened men of letters who may be not only common believers but even Ministers of the Church.

I think that Hume’s position is similar to that of his Moderate friend, Robert Wallace, who, like him, was a “man of letters.” In a manuscript that Wallace never published, he respectfully rebukes Hume’s comments attributing the foibles and vices of the clergy to the character or work routines of their profession. He thinks that Hume provides insufficient evidence to sustain such a harsh indictment, and by doing so, has not been true to the scepticism he normally practices. Wallace addresses Hume as a “Brother,”—a fellow sceptic, that is, a “moderate Freethinker.”²⁴ In an early sermon, in which he rejects the deism of Matthew Tindal, his way of describing free-thinking comes close to Hume’s scepticism:

Free-thinking … in the true Sense of the Word, is very noble and generous, being nothing else but this; The hearkening to the Voice of sound Reason, the examining impartially both sides of the Question, with a Disposition always to adhere to the strongest Side, and to embrace the Truth wherever it appears, in spite of all Prejudices, of all the Opposition and Authority of Men: this is what I can never censure, or apprehend capable of being carried to an Extreme.²⁵

This is the thinking that anyone must cultivate to become, like Hume, a reasonable inquirer, but also to become, as Philo says, “a sound, believing Christian.” This methodical approach by Reverend Wallace can be likened to that of Philo, the sceptic, who may be reasonably viewed as recommending taking a middle course on religious matters; that is, a “philosophical” or “mitigated” scepticism (EHU 12.3.1; SBN 161) that distances itself from dogmatic, irrationalist fideism that is grounded only on trust in an external authority and “will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity,” from equally dogmatic, rationalist deism—“the haughty dogmatist, persuaded that he can erect a complete system of theology by the mere help of philosophy” (D 12.33, 227).

VI. Closing Observations

That Hume was not simply an infidel but “the great Infidel” appears to have been the public image most of his contemporaries shared, particularly in Scotland and England.²⁶ But that was not the opinion of his friends among the Scottish Moderate clergy such as Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, and especially Robert Wallace. They were aware that Hume had been carelessly irreverent in his writings about religion, and of Christianity in particular, ridiculing or doubting doctrines cherished by most churchgoers, disparaging the typical religious attitudes of Catholics and Protestants, and even harshly criticizing early Protestant Reformers as well.²⁷ But since for Moderate Ministers the most pious worship of God was to behave morally, “to do the will of God in all things and to live godly, righteously, justly, charitably, temperately & regularly in the world,”²⁸ they could tolerate heterodox opinions within the Church. They certainly believed that human reason could know about God more than Hume ever thought possible, but they overlooked his speculative doubts because, like Wallace, they thought that “evil works were worse than evil opinion,”²⁹ and he was “well bred & of a sober & honest character in common life.”³⁰ Hence they remained on friendly terms with Hume, even though Hugh Blair, a leading Moderate Minister, theologian and renowned writer on rhetoric and belle lettres, and Hume’s close friend as well, could not avoid saying—in a pamphlet published in 1755, in defense of Hume against Ministers such as George Anderson and John Bonar, who were raucously asking for his excommunication—that “every fair reader must admit, and regret, that there are to be found in the writings of this elegant Author some principles by no means consistent with sound doctrine.”³¹

From the rationalist stance shared by Moderate Ministers like Blair, Hume’s ethically negative comments on “popular” or historical religion in general and Christianity in particular, and his sceptical critique of natural theology, had to appear “unsound.” Nonetheless, I have attempted to show that, whether sound or unsound, some of Hume’s distinctive philosophical doctrines parallel key aspects of Calvin’s theological views.

List of Abbreviations of Hume’s Works

D	=	Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
EHU	=	An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in both the Clarendon and the Selby-Bigge Nidditch (SBN) editions
H	=	The History of England, 6 vols.
L	=	The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols.
NHR	=	The Natural History of Religion, in both the Clarendon and the Root (R) editions
T	=	A Treatise of Human Nature, in both the Clarendon and Selby-Bigge Nidditch (SBN) editions

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Miguel A. Badía Cabrera

Miguel A. Badía Cabrera is professor (now retired) at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico. His main areas of interest are the philosophy of religion and early modern philosophy, Descartes and Hume, in particular Hume’s philosophy of religion and ethics, and the Scottish Enlightenment, especially Francis Hutcheson, Robert Wallace, and George Campbell. In various articles and books, he has also pondered over Hume’s complex stance concerning Calvinist theology and ethics.

Notes

^1. Kemp Smith, “Introduction” to Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1–8. Hereafter references to Hume’s works are cited in the text using the abbreviations listed above. See also, Mossner, Life of David Hume, 20–34. In “Hume and the Bellman,” 9–28, Emerson formulates a view opposed to mine: for him, the number of passages in Hume’s writings in which he professes adherence to faith and divine revelation are ironical, and ultimately insincere declarations the real purpose of which is to avoid the censure of controversial books whose main tenor is heterodox, and perhaps even impious. Broadie, in The Scottish Enlightenment, 131, expresses a view akin to mine: “I do not wish to argue that Hume was a crypto-Calvinist—that would be several steps too far—but I shall suggest later that there are features of Hume’s attack on religious belief with which the Calvinists could feel at home if they paused to consider his position with due care.”

^2. Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy, 1.22, 37.

^3. This is Calvin’s own characterization of predestination in the Institutes of the Christian Religion (hereafter ICR): “The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess (Decretum quidem horribile, fateor). Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree” (ICR 3.23.7, 401; B 955). The pagination is from the 1559 Latin edition of ICR, followed by book, chapter, section, and page number in Joannes Calvinus, Opera selecta, vols. 3–5. The English quotations are from the McNeill edition, translated by Battles, hereafter cited in the text as B followed by page number.

^4. Hume’s comment precedes a long quotation in note 87 of Ramsay’s Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, vol. 2, 403–6.

^5. In my exploratory study of Wallace, The Necessity or Expediency of the Churches, 24–78, I assess the main charges brought against Hume by the principal clergymen who, around the years 1755–1756 asked for his excommunication.

^6. Hume apparently says so in a letter to his close friend, Gilbert Elliot:

Any Propensity you imagine I have to the other Side, crept in upon me against my Will: And tis not long ago that I burn’d an old Manuscript Book, wrote before I was twenty; which contain’d, Page after Page, the gradual Progress of my Thoughts on that head. It begun with an anxious Search after Arguments, to confirm the common Opinion: Doubts stole in, dissipated, return’d, were again dissipated, return’d again; and it was a perpetual Struggle of a restless Imagination against Inclination, perhaps against Reason. (L 1, no. 72 [1751], 153)

^7. For a detailed discussion of Hume’s argument, see Badía Cabrera, Enlightenment and Calvinism, 221–47, and 249–73.

^8. Calvin states: Faith is “a firm and certain knowledge (firman certamque cognitionem) of God’s benevolence toward us (nos benevolentiae), founded upon the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (ICR 3.2.7, 16; B 551).

^9. Hume, L 1, no. 188, to Hugh Blair (1761), 350.

^10. Campbell, Dissertation on Miracles, 160–79.

^11. Hume, L 1, no. 188, 351.

^12. Calvin: “Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be in vain if, as secondary aids (adminicula) to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But those who wish to prove to themselves that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known” (ICR 1.8.13, 81; B 92).

^13. Calvin: “Indeed, vanity joined with pride can be detected in the fact that, in seeking God, miserable men do not rise above themselves as they should, but measure him by the yardstick of their own carnal stupidity, and neglect sound investigation; thus out of curiosity they fly off into empty speculations. They do not therefore apprehend God as he offers himself, but image him as they have fashioned him in their own presumption” (ICR 1.4.1, 40–41; B 47; italics added).

^14. Hume upholds a view, especially in NHR, sec. 7, “Flux and Reflux of Polytheism and Theism,” which, on empirical grounds alone, is similar to Calvin’s. See Badía Cabrera, Hume’s Reflection on Religion, 86–152, for an analysis of Hume’s account of the origin and historical development of the belief in divinity.

^15. Calvin, “Those who have said that original sin is ‘concupiscence’ have used an appropriate word, if only be added—something that most will not concede—that whatever is in man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and crammed with this concupiscence. Or, to put it more briefly, the whole man is of himself nothing but concupiscence” (ICR 2.1.8, 238; B 252).

^16. See Badía Cabrera, “Hume’s Scepticism,” 99–114, and Hume’s Reflection on Religion, 153–72.

^17. I analyze Hutcheson’s general design argument and Hume’s critique in Enlightenment and Calvinism, 120–70. Hutcheson gave various renderings of this argument in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, and A System of Moral Philosophy.

^18. Hutcheson, Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, sec. 6, 117.

^19. Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas, sec. 7, 196–97. See Badía Cabrera, “Hume’s Rejection of Hutcheson’s Moral Theology.”

^20. Graham, Scottish Men of Letters, 42.

^21. See Tweyman, Scepticism and Belief in Hume’s Dialogues, 131–33.

^22. See Badía Cabrera, Hume’s Reflection on Religion, 299–302.

^23. Philo asks Cleanthes to forgive him “for interposing so far in the education and instruction of his pupil” (D 12.33, 228).

^24. Wallace, A Letter from a Moderate Freethinker to David Hume Esquire, 55 [folio 3].

^25. Wallace, Regard due to Divine Revelation, 30.

^26. Graham, The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume. The traditional view of Hume pervades this biography.

^27. See Hume, History of England, Foreword, vol. 1, xiv–xv, for Hume’s comments (deleted from the second edition of 1756) on the fanatical and violent character and deeds of the early Reformers.

^28. Wallace, “Papers on Enthusiasm,” 5.

^29. Wallace’s words in a 1724 Sermon delivered in Glasgow, reviewed in Robert Wodrow, Analecta vol. 3, 167–68.

^30. Wallace, Necessity or Expediency of the Churches, 55 [folio 59].

^31. Blair, “Observations upon a Pamphlet,” 22.