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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2009
During Leibniz's lifetime, interest in the interpretation of the Bible and biblical prophecy became central to the theological and political concerns of Protestant Europe. Leibniz's treatment of this phenomenon will be examined in the light of his views on the nature of revelation and its role in his defence of Christianity. It will be argued that Leibniz's defence of the miracle of revelation (and its vehicle, biblical prophecy) – unlike his arguments on behalf of the core Christian mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation – is demonstrable by purely natural and scientific means, especially the verification of history.
1. The following abbreviations have been used: A=Academy of Sciences of Berlin (eds.) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, series 1–8 (Darmstadt, Leipzig, Berlin: Akadamie Verlag, 1923–): cited by series, volume, number (N) of item or page; GP=C. I. Gerhardt (ed.) Die Philosophische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, 7 vols (repr. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1960–1961): cited by vol. and page; GR=G. Grua (ed.) G. W. Leibniz, Textes inédits d'après les manuscripts de la Bibliothéque Provenciale de Hanovre, 2 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948); AG=R. Ariew & D. Garber (eds.) G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays (Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 1989); NE=P. Remnant & J. Bennett (eds and trs) G. W. Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982): cited by original book, ch., section, and page; R=C. W. Russell (ed. and tr.) System of Theology (London: Burns & Lambert, 1850); T=A. Farrer (ed.) & E. M. Huggard (tr.) G. W. Leibniz: Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil (La Salle IL: Open Court, 1951): cited by original para. nos).
2. Richard H. Popkin ‘The religious background of seventeenth-century philosophy’, in D. Garber & M. Ayers (eds) The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), I, 394.
3. Idem ‘The third force in 17th century philosophy: scepticism, science and biblical prophecy’, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, 3 (1983), 46.Google Scholar
4. Popkin mentions several personalities who were ‘centrally concerned with the coming Millenium … [in] [t]heir interpretation of Scripture’, (Ibid., 36) among them Joseph Mede, John Dury, Samuel Hartlib, Henry More, and Lady Ann Conway.
5. Scott Mandelbrote ‘The heterodox career of Nicolas Fatio de Duillier’, in J. Brooke & I. Maclean (eds) Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 264.
6. See Harrison, P. ‘Miracles, early modern science, and rational religion’, Church History, 75 (2006), 493–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. On Leibniz's specific views on these issues, see D. J. Cook & L. Strickland ‘Leibniz and millenarianism’, in F. Beiderbeck & S. Waldhoff (eds) Pluralität der Perspektiven und Einheit der Wahrheit im Werk von G. W. Leibniz: Beiträge zu seinem philsophischen, theologischen und politischen Denken (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009), and D. J. Cook, ‘Leibniz on enthusiasm’, in A. P. Coudert, R. H. Popkin, & G. M. Weiner (eds) Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 107–135.
8. Robert Sleigh ‘Remarks on Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil’, in E. J. Kremer & M. J. Latzer (eds) The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 165.
9. As Peter Harrison notes, ‘from the middle of the seventeenth century the argument from prophecies increasingly takes a dominant role in the rational defences of the Christian revelation’; Harrison, Peter ‘Prophecy, early modern apologetics, and Hume's argument against miracles’, The Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. ‘But – you say – the Sacred Scripture, in the very least, cannot be the judge of its own authenticity. That is correct: indeed the text itself – for instance, “There are those who provide testimony” (St John, 1. 5–8) – cannot be the judge of its authenticity. Indeed, this must be proven by reason and history, just as the Sacred Scripture's divinity cannot be, in general, gathered from itself, since in such cases its own testimony is not acceptable. Even though it declares itself to be GOD's word, this should be proven another way’; Commentatiuncula de Judice Controverisiarum, §16; A, VI, i, 548; M. Dascal (tr. and ed.) G. W. Leibniz: The Art of Controversies (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 10 (emphasis mine).
11. J. Stein & L. Urdgang (eds) The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition (New York: Random House, 1967), 1153.
12. Ibid.
13. The prime mover in this regard was Augustine, who ‘transformed [the Old Testament] into a repository of testimonies foretelling the coming of Christ and … stripped [it] of much of its literal and historical meaning’; F. Manuel The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), 14.
14. One of the few places he mentions these is in his Examination of the Christian Religion (formerly known as the System of Theology). See A, VI, iv, 2457, 2476, 2478–2479 passim.
15. Thus, Leibniz sees ancient Judaism (the ‘Judaic Church’, as he calls it) as once indeed having been the true religion. ‘Cependant, j'avoue que l'Eglise Iudaique a cela de considerable, que les Chrestiens et les Mahometans sont obligés d'avouer que l'Eglise Iudaique a esté un jour la veritable’; A, II, i, 303.
16. GP, III, 191; A, I, xiii, 552. Leibniz is referring here to Huet's Demonstratio Evangelica ad Serenissimum Delphinum (Paris, 1679); also A, I, vii, 36; IV, iii, 217.
17. Mandelbrote ‘The heterodox career’, 272.
18. Richard H. Popkin ‘Newton's biblical theology and his theological physics’, in idem The Third Force in Seventeenth Century Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 182. (emphasis mine).
19. Newton qualifies as an excellent example of someone for whom ‘the interpretation of prophecy was most important’ to his own ‘interpretation of what was going on in the natural and human world’, to rephrase Popkin's words. Newton's purely theoretical concerns about the status of biblical history and prophecy were influenced by the interest and ‘enthusiasm’ of some of his teachers, his contemporaries, and his epigoni. See also R. H. Popkin's essay, ‘Predicting, prophecying, divining and foretelling from Nostradamus to Hume’, in idem The Third Force, 296–297.
20. S. Brachlow The Communion of Saints, Radical Puritans and Separatist Eschatology: 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 84.
21. Sonderbare Erklärung der Offenbarung, A, VI, iv, 2473.
22. Summaria Apocalypseos explicatio, A, VI, iv, 2475.
23. ‘so men's instinct … sometimes imitates the divinatory power of genii’; GR, I, 147.
24. A, I, xvii, 36 (emphasis mine).
25. A, I, iii, 356; R, 13, n.1 (changes in translation).
26. On Whiston, see GP, III, 313; on Jurieu, see A, I, xi, 369.
27. In the case of a local product, Rosamund von der Asseburg, who made quite a stir in the area, Leibniz explains away her ‘prophetic’ powers in a naturalistic fashion. Furthermore, she tended to ‘prophesy’ in general terms, rather than give detailed predictions. Being a cloistered aristocrat, her behaviour presented no danger to the public order, so Leibniz treated her quite sympathetically, likening her to a ‘rare cabinet piece’ worthy of preservation. See the Sophie–Leibniz correspondence on this episode and its aftermath in A, I, vii, NN 26, 28, 30–33, 36, 38. On Leibniz's attitude towards such enthusiasts (Schwärmer in German), see Cook ‘Leibniz on enthusiasm’.
28. Mandlebrote ‘The heterodox career’, 286.
29. See Cook & Strickland ‘Leibniz and millenarianism’.
30. It should be noted that while these enthusiasts cited passages in The Book of Daniel, they concentrated on the Revelation of St John, especially ch. 20. However, they explored and utilized many non-prophetic texts, such as the first chapters of Genesis: e.g. Fatio saw Moses as an adept at alchemy based on Genesis 1; Mandelbrote ‘The heterodox career’, 287.
31. GP, III, 403–404; AG, 195–196 (italics mine).
32. Michael Ayers ‘Theories of knowledge and belief’, in Garber & Ayers The Cambridge History, 1033.
33. ‘[I]t is not usualness or unusualness that makes a miracle properly so called, or a miracle of the highest sort, that is, one which surpasses all created powers’; ‘Leibniz's Fifth Letter to Clarke’, §107; AG, 343. Earlier, Leibniz tells Antoine Arnauld that: ‘It seems to me that the idea of a miracle does not consist in its rarity … a miracle differs from an ordinary action intrinsically, by the very nature of the act itself, and not by the extrinsic accident of frequent repetition’; GP, II, 92–93.
34. ‘It may be said that angels work miracles, but less properly so called, or of an inferior order’, but such a miracle ‘is not a miracle of the highest order, for it may be explained by the natural powers of angels, which surpass those of man’; Leibniz's ‘Fifth Letter to Clark’, §117; AG, 345. For more details on this key distinction between types of miracles, see R. M. Adams Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 94–99. For further analysis of this distinction between the two kinds of miracles for Leibniz's theology, see D. J. Cook, ‘Leibniz and the problem of miracles’, in H. Breger et al. (eds) Einheit und Vielheit: Proceedings of the VIII International Leibniz Congress (Hanover: G.-W. Leibniz Gesellschaft, 2006), I, 149–156.
35. ‘However, one must not neglect revealed theology as well, whose evidence is furnished by history and [the study of] languages’; A, I, xx, 287. For a detailed treatment of the importance of historical research for establishing the authenticity of biblical prophecy in Leibniz's earlier career, see Daniel J. Cook ‘The young Leibniz and the problem of historical truth’, in S. Brown (ed.) The Young Leibniz and His Philosophy (1646–1676) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 103–122.
36. Defending the credibility of witnesses became a major strategy for Christian apologetics later for gauging whether a key historical event – like Christ's Resurrection – did in fact happen as it was reported in the Gospels. The best-known example of this is Thomas Sherlock's The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus that went through fourteen editions in the early 1730s.
37. ‘Divine Visions do indeed contain truth, as can be discovered for instance when they contain detailed prophecies which are justified by events’; NE, II, xix, §1, 161.
38. Sonderbare Erklärung, A, VI, iv, 2473.
39. Henceforth, the term will be capitalized when referring to divine Revelation as understood in the Judaeo-Christian tradition in contradistinction to any generic or metaphorical usage.
40. In a letter to Sophie about the purported proofs for the mysteries by ‘an Austrian Count’, Leibniz – who is quite sceptical of his whole endeavour – nevertheless says: ‘In this way the entire revealed religion will become a completely pure natural theology. So much the better!’; O. Klopp (ed.) Die Werke von Leibniz (repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1970–1973), IX, 396.
41. For example: ‘Neither Leibniz nor Boyle made any fundamental distinction between rational and revealed theology, since both were convinced of the reasonableness of Christianity. Leibniz sought, as is well known, a universal instrument of reason which would confirm revelation completely – in the general interpretation accepted by the Council of Trent’; Leroy Loemker ‘Boyle and Leibniz’, in I. Leclerc (ed.) The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World (Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1973), 264. Loemker takes this position also in his Introduction to G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976), 49–50.
42. NE, Preface, 68; AG, 306. It is ironic that Leibniz himself must be included among those mentioned in his parenthetical remark!
43. Antognazza, Maria Rosa ‘The defence of the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation: an example of Leibniz's “other” reason’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 9 (2001), 286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar While Antognazza singles out the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, she argues that Leibniz's stratagems in defending these core mysteries can be extended to all the mysteries. Thus she says: ‘If applied to the cases of the Trinity and Incarnation (and to the case of the mysteries in general)’ (288). And later: ‘in a strict sense the presumption of truth which Leibniz is claiming for the mysteries in general and for the Trinity in particular’ (289). Antognazza takes the same view in her book, Trinità e Incarnazione. Il rapporto tra filosofia e teologia rivelata nel pensiero di Leibniz (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1999), which has just been translated into English: (tr.) G. Parks Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
44. A, VI, iii, 365, n. 5; quoted from E. Curley ‘Homo audax: Leibniz, Oldenburg and the TTP’, in I. Marchlewitz & A. Heinekamp (eds) Leibniz' Auseinandersetzung mit Vorgängern und Zeitgenossen (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 1990), 302–303.
45. For a comprehensive discussion on his earlier efforts on this issue, see Fouke, D. C. ‘Metaphysics and the Eucharist in the early Leibniz’, Studia Leibnitiana, 24 (1992), 145–159.Google Scholar In this article, as well as in his paper, ‘Dynamics and transubstantiation in Leibniz's System Theologicum’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 32 (1994) 45–61, Fouke outlines some of the reason for the various changes in Leibniz's strategy in his defence of, as well as his actual position on, this mystery over his philosophical career; Ibid., 47; ‘Metaphysics and the Eucharist’, 158
46. ‘So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth’; John, 1.14.
47. A, VI, 4; 2213–2214; Lloyd Strickland, Leibniz-Translations.com. Loemker summarizes the upshot of this passage: ‘since revelation itself rests on a previous miracle, it cannot be appealed to in justification of miracles; miracles must be justified by tradition, and this implies the authority of reason’; Leroy Loemker Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth Century Background of Leibniz's Synthesis of Order and Freedom (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 215.
48. For Leibniz's decidedly rationalistic treatment of such miracles, see D. J. Cook, ‘Leibniz: the Hebrew Bible, Hebraism and rationalism’, in D. J. Cook, H. Rudolph, & C. Schulte (eds) Leibniz' Stellung zum Judentum (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 125–127. For another example, see his explanation of Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt (it was really ‘coal tar’ [bitume] – she was so quickly burned to death), GP, II, 541.
49. See n. 34. An example of such a miracle for Leibniz is the ‘changing of water into wine at Cana’, which is the product of ‘angels … [who] act according to the ordinary laws of nature’, and thus is not ‘a miracle of the highest kind’ (T §249).
50. See n. 44.
51. A, VI, iv, 2260; M. Dascal The Art of Controversies, 179.
52. At the end of section I, it was noted that Newton also employs the ex-post-facto argument. However, unlike Leibniz, for whom the truth of biblical revelation has already been proven, Newton saw future events as continuing to verify the revealed truth of the Bible. Thus Popkin describes Newton's approach: ‘The study of prophetic fulfilment shows that the predicted has happened in exact detail over and over again. Hence, in studying the Scriptural text, one is also studying what remains to be fulfilled’; Popkin ‘Newton's biblical theology’, 183.
53. Harrison ‘Prophesy, early modern apologetics’, 249; 253.
54. Indeed, this statement pretty well sums up a large part of Christia Mercer's project in her book, Leibniz's Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
55. Henceforth used as a proper noun when referring to the creation of the universe (as well as the creation or annihilation of all the substances within it) for Leibniz.
56. For example: ‘But the Creation, the Incarnation and some other actions of God exceed all the powers of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed Mysteries’ (T, §249); also: ‘But there would be no absolute miracles in these things [i.e. substances], except the creation of things and the union of God with the first creature [i.e. the Incarnation]; the rest would happen by laws of nature’; A. Robinet (ed.) Malebranche et Leibniz: Relations personnelles (Paris: Vrin, 1955), 413; Adams Leibniz, 99 (with some changes). Leibniz sees such miracles as not only beyond the power of created beings, but also beyond their comprehension (see Discourse on Metaphysics, §16; GP, IV, 441).
57. As Adams says, ‘creation has the largest role in Leibniz's metaphysics’ Leibniz, 94. For a detailed treatment of this central notion in Leibniz, see D. J. Cook ‘Leibniz on creation: a contribution to his philosophical theology’, in Marcelo Dascal (ed.) Leibniz: What Kind of Rationalist? (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008).
58. Loemker Struggle for Synthesis, 88.
59. Leibniz even finds a strong belief in Creation among his two favourite pagan cultures: the Greek and the Chinese. Leibniz's arguments for Creation obtain whether or not it is ex nihilo. See Cook ‘Leibniz on creation’.
60. Such a distinction between two kinds of mysteries is often made. For example, Eric Cave opens his article on Leibniz and the Christian mysteries: ‘Belief in the so-called Christian mysteries is a central tenet of mainstream Christianity. Strictly speaking, the mysteries consist of two doctrines which describe the Christian God, the Incarnation and the Trinity. More loosely, the term may also encompass paradoxes of Christianity, such as the problem of divine foreknowledge, and miracles, such as the Resurrection and the substantial change involved in the administration of the Eucharist’; Cave, Eric ‘A Leibnizian account of why belief in the Christian mysteries is justified’, Religious Studies, 31 (1995), 463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
61. This, of course, is the basis for Antognazza's whole argument in ‘The defence of the mysteries’ as well as in her excellent discussion of the issue throughout Leibniz's writings in her book, Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation.
62. Indeed, some of the core doctrines – he even calls them ‘mysteries’ – of the Judaeo-Christian Revelation (e.g. providence, divine justice) can be generated for Leibniz by a purely metaphysical treatment, as we see in the title to the last section of the Discourse on Metaphysics, §XXXVII: ‘Jesus Christ has disclosed to men the mystery and the admirable laws of the Kingdom of Heaven and the greatness of the supreme felicity which God prepares for those who love him’; P. G. Lucas & L. Grint (eds and trs) Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), 62.
63. De Scriptura, Ecclesia, Trinitate, A, VI, iv, 2288–2289; cited from Antognazza, Leibniz on the Trinity, 217, n. 4.
64. See n. 16 above.
65. A, VI, iii, 367; Malcolm, N. ‘Leibniz, Oldenburg, and Spinoza, in the light of Leibniz's letter to Oldenburg of 18/28 November 1676’, Studia Leibnitiana, 35 (2003), 236.Google Scholar
66. The author would like to thank the Editor, Mogens Laerke, Michael Murray, Lloyd Strickland, and an anonymous referee for this journal for suggestions for improving this paper. He also wishes to acknowledge the aid of Strickland's website, Leibniz-Translations.com, for aid in locating and/or translating various passages in Leibniz's oeuvre.
