Introduction This book represents not only the revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation, which I defended in 2004 at the University of Naples, but also a milestone in my research on British deism. I started to study the deists works in 1998-99, when I was an undergraduate and had to write my first degree thesis, which concerned philo- Semitism and religious toleration in early modern England. At that time, my advisors at the University of Naples, Professor Giuseppe Lissa and Professor Paolo Amodio, recommended that I read John Toland s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714), which was translated into Italian and published by Professor Paolo Bernardini and Dr. Laura Orsi, who, some years later, would become two of my dearest friends and colleagues at the Boston University Padua Program. I was impressed by Toland s theses on both religious toleration and Jewish culture and eventually read all his writings. From among Toland s works, Nazarenus sparked my interest the most. Actually, Nazarenus is aimed at justifying religious toleration not by means of liberal or mercantilist theories, but through the attempt to demonstrate that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have several sacred texts, numerous beliefs, and their historical roots in common. Toland s attempt was hence supported by a passionate and careful though certainly partial analysis of the history of positive religions and, above all, of the Scriptures, on which the major monotheistic religions are based. Thus, a large part of my first degree thesis was devoted to John Toland s theories on Judaism and religious toleration. Later, after earning my first degree and entering the Ph.D. program in Philosophy at the University of Naples, I continued to study Toland s thought and British deism, as I noticed that the role of British deism and British Enlightenment as a whole, in the intellectual and cultural history of Western civilization, was extremely significant.
10 Scripture and Deism In the last few years, I have published a number of articles concerning the deists, especially Toland and Herbert of Cherbury, and other English thinkers, such as Isaac Newton and the latitudinarians. I have also examined the works of Charles Blount, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and other authors whose philosophies I expose in this book. I have noticed that biblical hermeneutics represents one of the most significant fields to which the eighteenth-century deists applied themselves. The deists attempted to show that Christianity and all positive religions were based on anthropological, cultural, psychological, social, political factors and, hence, had human origins. Such attempts were aimed at demonstrating that any religious belief or philosophical idea that did not endanger peace and welfare had the right to be not only tolerated, but respected and defended by political authorities. Thus, according to the deists, no religious organization which was merely intended as a private association of free individuals, in accordance with John Locke s political theories could claim singularity or supremacy. The deists biblical criticism was hence one of the most significant and corrosive elements in the battle against the supremacy of the Anglican Church in England a battle fought by a number of skeptics, freethinkers, pantheists, and deists, and welldescribed in one of the most interesting books of the last two decades, Justin Champion s The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (1992), which I often mention in my work. The deists analysis of the history of religion and of the socalled sacred texts also represented an important part of the process of secularization that characterized Europe in the period between 1650 and 1750, the so-called Spinozan age, carefully examined by Jonathan Israel in Radical Enlightenment (2001). This process did not consist of the denial of religion tout court, but instead was characterized by various religious trends, such as pantheism and deism itself, which did not reject the idea of deity but questioned beliefs, concepts and dogmas based on mere tradition. In other words, the radical thinkers of the early modern age refused any
Introduction 11 concept that prevented people from using reason as a means and a rule to ascertain the facts regarding any matter and, hence, to determine the correct religious and philosophical doctrines. Thus, secularization consisted of a process aimed at fostering freedom of thought and speech, toleration, and the democratization of the political structures through the promotion of the rise of reason. This process was characterized by a rethinking of philosophy, science, politics and law, which were viewed as autonomous disciplines, independent of religion and theology, since no religious or theological doctrine enjoyed any absolute justification. Thus, in order to demonstrate that no religious association had the right to pretend any political or religious monopoly, it was necessary to show that the grounds upon which any positive religion, particularly Christianity, were based were merely human. These were the main goals of many radical thinkers in the early modern era, including the eighteenth-century deists. The deists aimed at demonstrating the human roots of Christianity. Indeed, liberal theses on religious toleration were sufficient and consistent in terms of rational analysis, but they were not persuasive enough if human history was taken into account. It was necessary to show that not only reason, but also history, especially the history of religion, demonstrated that freedom of thought and religious toleration should be defended. According to the deists, even original Christianity consisted of a doctrine that promoted freedom of conscience, toleration, and brotherhood. Thus, the deists studied the most ancient testimonies of the Christian religion and, in doing so, combined extremely different hermeneutical doctrines and methods, such as Spinoza s demistifying exegesis, the Socinian and Arminian theses on original Christianity and its corruption, and Richard Simon s and Henry Dodwell s theories on the historicization of the Scriptures and the corruptions they suffered over the centuries. The deists deprived some of these doctrines of their original pious intentions. Developing a radicalized and extremely coherent version of Locke s epistemology, deists such as Toland and Collins ultimately made reference to a sort of histori-
12 Scripture and Deism cizing reason as the main means by which to read and understand the origins and the history of Christianity and all positive religions. This was the significant contribution of the British deists to the process of secularization, that is, to the rise of reason in early modern Europe. There are a number of studies on British deism. The first important work on deism was the famous View of the Principal Deistical Writers by the eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister John Leland, who exposed the theories of the most important deists. Later, in the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, a number of interesting studies were published, such as Gotthard Lechler s Geschichte des Englischen Deismus (1841), Norman Torrey s Voltaire and the English Deists (1930), John Orr s English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits (1934), and Arthur Lovejoy s article The Parallel of Deism and Classicism (1948). Additionally, Leslie Stephen focused on deism in his famous History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876), in which he highlighted the irreligious potential of the doctrine of natural religion. In fact, until the second part of the twentieth century that is, until Rosalie Colie published her essays stressing the complexity of deism and Spinoza s influence on it deism was regarded as both the doctrine of natural religion and the philosophical movement that drew inspiration from this doctrine, which was rooted in Renaissance philosophy and systematized in the seventeenth century by Herbert of Cherbury. Later, especially from the 1970s to the present, a number of studies on eighteenth-century deism were published, but most of these works concern only authors such as Toland and Collins. Two very accurate and fascinating monographies on the latter exist: James O Higgins s Anthony Collins: The Man and His Works (1970) and Pascal Taranto s Du déisme à l athéisme: la libre pensée d Anthony Collins (2000). As for Toland, in the last few decades a large number of books and articles were published by historians such as Chiara Giuntini, Eugenio Lecaldano, Robert Sullivan, Stephen Daniel, Robert Evans, Manlio Iofrida, and Justin Champion.
Introduction 13 Regarding the history of deism, particularly some of its basic elements, there are two quite recent and very interesting works: Peter Byrne s Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion (1989), which analyzes the history of the doctrine of natural religion, and James Herrick s The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists (1997), which examines the rhetorical strategies of the deists. In addition, other works concerning early modern European and British philosophy, published in the last decades, take deism into account. For example, Margaret Jacob, in her masterpiece The Radical Enlightenment (1981) and in other excellent studies, examines the origins and characteristics of deism, with special focus on its relationship to Newtonianism, while the Italian historian Mario Sina focuses on deism in his L avvento della ragione (1976), which concerns the theme of reason and above reason in early modern British philosophy and religious thought. In addition, Jonathan Israel, in Radical Enlightenment, emphasizes the Spinozist roots of deism. On this point, it is nevertheless necessary to stress that also Locke s philosophy had an important role for the development of deism. Indeed, Locke s epistemology greatly inspired both Toland and Collins, who elaborated a very coherent version of Locke s way of ideas in order to use reason as best as they could, in their analysis of the Bible and of the history of religion. The eighteenth-century deists hence integrated Spinoza s exegetical method, several Socinian and Arminian theses, and other hermeneutical doctrines, such as Simon s and Dodwell s historical-critical theories, in a rational epistemology that was ultimately Lockean although authors such as Toland and Collins refuted some aspects of Locke s philosophy that were actually inconsistent with its own basic principles and were rather aimed at justifying the so-called supernatural. A large number of works concerning deism and the most important deist thinkers exist. No work, however, examines the eighteenth-century deists biblical criticism, its origins, principles and progress in order to highlight its great significance regarding the development of deism and Western philosophy. Thus, in this
14 Scripture and Deism book I intend to analyze and expound the deists biblical criticism and its importance in the broad context of early modern philosophy and hermeneutics. I take into account a large number of studies on deism and on the major British deists, which I discuss, mainly in the first chapter. This part of my book, which is introductory, combines an analysis of the origins of British deism in the seventeenth century with a description of the main theories concerning deism, focusing especially on the various meanings that the word deism has been given over the last three centuries. In doing so, I expose the doctrine of natural religion in relation to the ideas on deism that were formulated and propagated from the seventeenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. On this point, I also focus on Herbert of Cherbury s thought and Charles Blount s philosophy. I then examine the influence that both Spinoza s hermeneutics and Locke s way of ideas had on eighteenth-century deism. Finally, I expound the deists reference to various heterodox Christian hermeneutical doctrines, with particular emphasis on Socinianism, Arminianism, and Simon s and Dodwell s theses about the critical scrutiny of Scripture. The second chapter is devoted to John Toland, the most important deist thinker of the eighteenth century. Although Toland was concerned with a number of political, historical, social and cultural issues, in my work I focus on the development of Toland s views of the Bible and of other ancient religious texts. First, I explain the fundamentals of Toland s hermeneutics, which was always driven by political motivations, such as the intent to corroborate his liberal doctrines by means of historical analysis. I take into account Toland s most famous writing, Christianity not Mysterious (1696), deeply influenced by Socinian and Arminian doctrines and by Locke s theories on the reasonableness of Christianity. I also focus on Amyntor (1699), which shows that Toland borrowed from Simon and Dodwell in examining the formation of the biblical canon. Then, I focus on Toland s naturalistic interpretation of positive religions, the Old Testament, and original Christianity. I
Introduction 15 examine Letters to Serena, published in 1704, and Origines Judaicae, Hodegus, and Nazarenus, three works written between 1708 and 1710. Among these works, Nazarenus comes to the fore. In fact, this writing is aimed at founding religious toleration on the demonstration that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three elements of the same cultural tradition. Nazarenus thus represents the conclusion of Toland s efforts to strengthen his theories on religious toleration by means of historical and textual analysis. The third and final chapter deals with deistic hermeneutics after Toland. The first author that I examine is Anthony Collins. I illustrate his theory of reason by making reference to several of his works, but I especially focus on A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713) and A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724). In this writings, Collins expounds the basic principle of his radically rational and basically skeptical hermeneutics, and, especially in Grounds and Reasons, he effects a very corrosive analysis of the Old and New Testaments in answer to Newtonian thinker William Whiston s theses on the deliberate corruption of the latter. Collins demonstrates that the New Testament and, hence, Christianity are based on the Old Testament, and that both Testaments should be interpreted according to the allegorical method. But, since the allegorical method produces a number of wrong interpretations and is ultimately unreliable, Christianity enjoys no indisputable standing. After Collins, I examine Tindal s hermeneutics in relation to his doctrine of natural religion. Tindal left aside Locke s hermeneutics and instead referred to the innatist doctrine of natural religion, which had already been refuted by Locke himself and would be finally destroyed by David Hume. However, Tindal used natural religion to weaken revealed religion. He interpreted Christianity as a republication of the religion of nature, which is the only necessary and universal religion. Revealed religion, in Tindal s thought, becomes a mere confirmation of natural religion and is ultimately superfluous. Thus, according to Tindal s philosophy, the Scriptures lose their significance, since the Christian religion is eventually
16 Scripture and Deism founded on the religion of nature. Tindal strongly influenced authors such as Thomas Morgan, Thomas Chubb, and Peter Annet, all of whom reasserted his view of Christianity. Morgan s and Annet s works were also characterized by anti-scripturalist theses, which led both thinkers to formulate clearly anti-judaic theories. Additionally, Annet integrated a number of Toland s theses on the corruption of original Christianity with Tindal s Christian deism, and his writings greatly influenced Voltaire. However, the last deists works were much less original and advanced than Toland s and Collins s, and deism finally died down in the second half of the eighteenth century. Hence, in the last part of the third chapter I analyze the causes of the end of deism, but, at the same time, I highlight its importance and the importance of deistic hermeneutics regarding the progress of religious studies, the advancement of biblical criticism, and the rise of reason in the early modern age.