On Reading Doubt, A History
At the end of 2007 I finished reading Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt, A History : The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickenson (New York : HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, 551 pages). What a fun book it was to read, too! I thoroughly enjoyed both the reading and the having read. Here is my book note.
Her subject is religious doubt–really it is, and it's a fascinating history that touches not only on religion but on culture and science and a dozen other things. Ms. Hecht found just the right amount of detail, anecdote, and analysis for my taste to keep things moving along at a good pace and to keep my interest stoked. I found it a very stimulating book to read, with lots of insight and, in addition to its own provocative ideas, ideas that provoked ideas in me. There's my recipe for a good read. It was one outstanding and influential book for me in a year full of outstanding and influential books.
There were some sections I wanted to excerpt, as usual.
First, word origins:
In 270, the year that Constantine was born, a Christian Syrian farmer named Anthony did what preachers in that area of the world had long done: he gave up the world. This meant celibacy and a wandering, lonesome life, and the name such people earned, monachos–which became monk— simply meant solitary one. Anthony wandered into the desert and stayed for decades, emerging about 310 as the first "man of the desert," erémétikos, which became hermit, a Christian monk. Christians in the West found this a fascinating option of total commitment. [p. 188]
Then there's this idea that mere belief became a target of doubt that I find fascinating. (I included this in the book note, too.)
By the time we get to the thinker who most shaped Christianity for the six centuries of the early Middle Ages [Augustine, 354-430 AD], orthodox Christianity had already had to reconcile itself not only with the ancient philosophers but also with diverse variations of the Christian vision. Furthermore, although Paul had insisted on faith over law and words, various factors—most notably the influence of the Manichaean religion—had placed faith in the context of strict physical challenges, beginning with chastity, poverty, and fasting and eventually including self-flagellation and the wearing of hair shirts. Christianity inaugurated a harrowing new form of doubt: doubting one's ability to believe "enough", and to enact that belief in dramatically painful processes. The story of doubt would now include all those who struggled to meet those challenges and who, at least for a while, found that they could not do it. It was doubt's time for dark nights of the soul. [p. 193]
Now, a tiny little observation tucked away in a discussion of Christian doubt in its early days.
There was never an original time when everyone believed the same thing in Christianity, as if it were as obvious as the rocks and the trees. [p. 200]
Here she quotes Augustine's brilliant argument for his own existence. I wish I'd thought of this one.
"I am quite certain that I am, that I know that I am, and that I love this being and this knowing. Where these truths are concerned I need not quail before the Academicians [Skeptics] when they say: "What if you should be mistaken?" Well, if I am mistaken, I exist. For a man who does not exist can surely not be mistaken either, and if I am mistaken, therefore I exist." p. 201]
And now, a moment spoken on behalf of doubt. She's writing about the book Of Wisdom, published in 1601 by Pierre Charron:
For centuries the book would be described as a seminary of atheism. Right away, it was a triumph: it was put on the Index of Forbidden Books fast, in 1605, but it sold like hotcakes right through the century. Charron even came out with a mini version of it the next year. Here he dealt with his surprise that people could find doubt uncomfortable. Charron said of doubt:
It alone can provide true repose and security of our spirits. Have all the greatest and most noble philosophers and wise men who have professed doubt been in a state of anxiety and suffering? But they say: to doubt, to consider both points of view, to put off a decision, is this not painful? I reply, it is indeed for fools, but not for wise men. It is painful for people who cannot stand freedom, for those who are presumptuous, partisan, passionate, and who, obstinately attached to their opinions, arrogantly condemn all other….Such people, in truth, know nothing. They do not even know what it is to know something.
It was a claim that doubt can make you happy, can ease your pain, and can be a home. It may have been the first time anyone in modernity spelled it out like that. [p. 307]
Now, a brief note on the decline and fall of a certain civilization, often thought to have declined and fallen at the hands of you-know-who:
Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire inaugurated the development of a new, careful, secular history. Before it, the accepted understanding was that Christianity took over the Roman Empire because it was ordained by God, that the horrible Roman emperors martyred the early Christians in droves, and that Christians prevailed through the power of God. In this model, Rome was the best humanity could do until we had further revelation, then God stepped in, fixd the world, and Rome sank away. Not only did Gibbon tell the story without any intervention from God, he also told the story of Rome's decline as due to the disease of Christianity's spreading through the roman Empire and rotting it. This was powerful stuff. [p. 354]
Finally, a brief history lesson about myths of the Christian origin of the United States.
In Cold War America, atheist meant communist. In 1954 a law was passed changing the national motto of the United States from "E Pluribus Unum" to "In God We Trust." In 1955 another law required the new motto to be on all U.S. currency (it had been there occasionally since 1863), and in 1956 yet another law added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. These laws had largely been initiated yb Lyndon Johnson when he was Speaker of the House, and were put through by Presidents Nixon and Eisenhower. The Congressional Record shows that Congressman Charles G. Oakman supported the laws because: "Our belief in God highlights one of the fundamental differences between us and the Communists."
The well-known Reverend George Docherty preached a sermon in favor of God in the Pledge, and Eisenhower listened. Congressman Louis C. Rabaut, sponsor of the law on the Pledge (House Joint Resolution 243), cited him later, saying: "You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political, economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God." Rabaut added, "Unless we are willing to affirm our belief in the existence of God and His creator-creature relationship to man, we drop man himself to the significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression. An atheistic American, as Dr. Dochert7y points out, is a contradiction in terms." Rabaut clearly did not know his history of doubt: "This country," he claimed, "was founded on theistic beliefs, on the belief in the worthwhileness of the individual human being, which in turn depends solely and completely on the identity of man as the creature and son of God." [p. 467]
As you can tell from the page number, a lot has already happened in the book to make Congressman Rabaut sound more than a little ridiculous. The more things change….