Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais: Essay on indifference in matters of religion, volume III

Lamennais’ argument for taking Christianity as the true religion was based on four characteristics the true religion should have: unity, universality, perpetuity and sanctity. I talked about Lamennais’ case for the unity of (Catholic) Christianity, which meant essentially just that Christianity did not tolerate any other religions. Even if we accepted such intolerance as a characteristic of the supposed one true religion, the problem is that many other religions share the same characteristic.

Lamennais’ case for the universality of Christianity is based on an almost opposite justification, namely, on the supposed similarity of aspects of other religions with some dogmas of Christianity. Lamennais goes to great lengths in quoting authorities on other religions to show that e.g. belief in one divine creator and an idea about an upcoming savior are accepted throughout the world. Lamennais wants to say that other religions are mere modifications of Christianity and its dogmas. The obvious problem with this line of attack is that one might think Christianity itself is just a modification of the true religion, which might be one of the other religions having these supposedly universal characteristics. This problem is augmented by the fact that some distinctly Christian dogmas, such as trinity or incarnation, are not as universally accepted.

If by universality Lamennais tried to emphasise that Christian dogmas could be found all around the globe, by persistence he meant to say that Christianity, in one of its forms, could be found at all times. This characteristic tied in with Lamennais’ insistence on a chain of authority running through the Catholic tradition, all the way to the supposed creation of humankind. In fact, Lamennais even stated that such a chain could be found in other traditions and noted that many religious thinkers and philosophers emphasised the ancient religious customs as the purest and most suitable for worship of divine. In case of these other traditions, this chain just had at some point broken, by idolatry and materialistic philosophy.

Lamennais’ case for the perseverance of Christianity is, of course, based strongly on the assumption that Bible is a reliable history. We obviously cannot expect that Lamennais would have had any idea of the future findings of archaeology, which make it rather clear that many Bible stories cannot be literally true - e.g. there probably was no great migration of Hebrew nation from Egypt. Even so, many of his arguments for the reliability of Bible are quite full of holes. For instance, Lamennais finds it unconvincing that Jewish nation would have suddenly forgotten its history, when it had been handed from parents to children in an unbroken succession. The obvious problem here is that even if this line would be unbroken, the message might well change, like in a game of Chinese whispers. Indeed, Lamennais notes this possibility in case of e.g. Indian traditions, which shows a clear double standard on his part.

Just as unconvincing as Lamennais’ defence of the reliability of Bible is his defense of Biblical prophecies, especially of those that have concerned events which are now past - because these prophecies came to be true, Lamennais thinks that we can trust that the other prophecies will also. The clear problem is that Lamennais takes it as granted that these prophecies derive from the era of the supposed author of the texts, for instance, that the prophecies of Daniel concerning the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms were reported at a period before these risings and falling had occurred. Yet, one might well make the assumption that such prophecies were actually written after the events mentioned, and in fact, in case of Daniel’s prophecies, it seems clear that their author knows much more about this future history than about the time when Daniel was supposed to live.

The unreliability of Bible in general and prophecies in particular affects also Lamennais’ case for the fourth characteristic of the true religion or sanctity - that is, if Bible and prophecies are full of falsities, it makes it questionable that they and Christianity as a whole would be divinely inspired. We shall return in more detail to the case of the sanctity of Christianity in the next and final post on Lamennais’ work.

Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais: Essay on indifference in matters of religion, volume II

With the second volume of his essay, De Lamennais enters the region of epistemology. It is especially the question of the foundation of all certainty that interests him. He considers three possible answers to the question, all of which he finds wanting. First of these answers is the classical empiricism, in which certainty is based on sensations - Lamennais calls this possibility materialism. His criticism is predictable: sensations give us no certainty on anything, because we do not know how or even whether they are connected to a thing existing independently of sensation.

The second answer Lamennais considers is idealism, which he says to be exemplified by Berkeley and Kant. This pairing might raise some eyebrows and even more suspect is Lamennais’ suggestion that such an idealism based certainty on sentiment. Lamennais does not offer a serious justification of this characterisation, but one might suspect that it is especially the post-Kantian idea of intellectual intuition as the method of philosophy, which lies behind his suggestion. In any case, Lamennais can quickly note just that sentiment is no better a foundation than sensation, because different people have diverse sentiments of same topics.

The final answer is Cartesian dogmatics, which in Lamennais’ opinion bases everything on reasoning. Although Lamennais regards dogmatics most favourably of the three answers, he is quick to point out that all reasoning must have some starting point or use some axiom which is not based on further reasoning. Thus, even reason is no final answer to the question of certainty and Descartes must accept the bane of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

Having denied the validity of these three answers, Lamennais introduces his own solution. Certainty, he says, cannot be based on thoughts of a single individual, but this does not mean that it couldn’t be based on a group of individuals. Indeed, Lamennais insists, whenever we are arguing and come to a standstill, we ask the opinion of other people. In other words, it is the intersubjective criterion of authority, which Lamennais takes as the foundation of certainty. There is certain feasibility in this ideas, since e.g. when discussing a difficult scientific theory, we are more likely to accept the opinion of an expert than that of a layman with a clear feeling about the correct solution, because the expert is more of an authority than the layman. Still, what we could consider an acceptable authority and what Lamennais considers it to be are two different things.

It is then no wonder that when Lamennais starts to consider the existence of God that he uses the common opinion of all humanity as a proof of this existence. He does mention more meatier proofs, notably what Kant called an ontological proof - surely God must exist, since he is just “that who is” or the epitome of all existence, which must exist, never mind what else there is. So convinced Lamennais is of his authorial justification that he puts all the other proofs he uses in a footnote.

The existence of God is not just some very theoretical statement, which doesn’t concern human life, Lamennais thought. Instead, a number of important truths follow from the existence of God, he said. Notably, humans, created by God, must have some laws governing their nature, just like all things, and furthermore, they must follow these laws of their nature, if they are to find true happiness. For instance, Lamennais noted, human beings need to know the truth, but as he supposedly showed, all truth is based on authority and ultimately on authority of God himself, who is supposed to know all the truth.

The purpose of Lamennais’ argument is then clearly to show that human beings need a relation to God, in order to satisfy their own yearning for truth. The relation of human being to God, then, is obviously meant to be the defining moment in religion. Yet, not just any relation to God satisfies Lamennais, but he insists that there is only one proper religion, since the natures of human being and God are not variable - they are like two puzzle pieces that can be combined in only one manner. This means that all the other supposed religions are then just falsifications of the one true religion.

The next question is obviously then what criteria we should use for discerning this true religion and distinguishing it from all false religions. Lamennais considers again the possibility to use sentiment or reasoning as a criterion - apparently sensation just has nothing to do with religion in Lamennais’ eyes. Both possibilities are easily shown to be unfeasible. Sentiment cannot be the basis of one religion, since different cultures have had different feelings about the true religion, while reason is again incapable of fending off doubts even about the simplest truths.

The only possible option left, Lamennais insists, is authority, this time of the society. God has created human being as an essentially social entity, who has to find his certainty through education given by others. Since this flow of education cannot be infinite, it must end at a stage where human beings were directly educated by God himself - hence, the need for revelation.

It is to be expected that the true revealed religion Lamennais has in mind is Christianity in its Catholic form. In the next post I shall enter into more details of the justification Lamennais gives for this thesis, but we can already note the emphasis on the unity on religion - a clear statement against any tolerance of opinions. Indeed, Lamennais is quick to dismiss all pagan religions because of such a tolerance of different viewpoints, which appears to be the worst form of idolatry. Furthermore, he regards almost all non-Christian religions as such an idolatry. The only exceptions are Judaism, which Lamennais thinks was just a temporary phase in the development of true religion and is now just a lifeless husk, and Islam, which he considers to be just another heretical form of Christianity.