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Robert Boyle on the diversity of religions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2008
Abstract
Robert Boyle's treatise, ‘On the diversity of religions’, remains a little-known work, and was unpublished during his lifetime. Nonetheless it is of considerable historical and philosophical interest. In it, Boyle attempts to answer the question of how one can hope to obtain religious truth amidst the many competing claims to revelation, a concern which had grown acute in the early modern period. In this paper I examine Boyle's arguments, considering along the way their relationship to the various contemporary debates on diversity and evaluating their present relevance.
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Notes
1 Robert Boyle ‘De diversitate religionum (on the diversity of religions)’, in Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (eds) The Works of Robert Boyle, 14 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), XIV, 237–265. All in-text references are to this work.
2 Hunter and Davis Works, XIV, xxviii–xxix.
3 See Peter Harrison ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 39.
4 For a summary, see Peter Byrne Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism (London: Routledge, 1989), 53–55.
5 Harrison ‘Religion’ and the Religions, 24–25, 59. Indeed, the Cambridge Platonists had an interesting soteriological perspective, one which Vatican II would later echo. For most of them, non-Christians could be saved even without an explicit knowledge of Christ, though that salvation would still be mediated by Christ.
6 Ibid., 127.
7 For further discussion see ibid., 137–155.
8 Frank E. Manuel The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (New York NY Atheneum, 1967), 58–59.
9 See Robert Boyle ‘The excellency of theology compar'd with natural philosophy’, Hunter and Davis Works, VIII, 42–43.
10 Boyle had read Pascal, and one is bound to be reminded here of the latter's comments on indifference. Yet the thrust of the two is somewhat different: Boyle is concerned about indifference with regard to testing the truth of one's own religious faith, whereas Pascal is worried about indifference to religious issues in general. I doubt Pascal would see any fault in a devoutly religious Christian who refrains from putting his faith to rigorous rational scrutiny, which is what Boyle is calling for. What Pascal would say about the devout Muslim or Hindu is less clear.
11 ‘And Indeed, when on the one side I consider the charitable design of the Gospel, and the candid simplicity that shines in what it proposes, or commands; and on the other side, what strange and wilde Speculations and Inferences have been father'd upon it, not only in the Metaphysical Writings of some Schoolmen, but in the Articles of Faith of some Churches; I cannot but think, that if all these Doctrines are parts of the Christian Religion, the Apostles, if they were now alive, would at best be but Catechumini’; Robert Boyle, ‘Some considerations about the reconcileableness of reason and religion’, Hunter and Davis Works, VIII, 247.
12 See Robert Boyle ‘The History of Fluidity and Firmnesse’, Hunter and Davis Works, II, 201.
13 Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions, 146.
14 At least, he does here. Elsewhere he inclines to the view that miracles are the best argument for the truth of Christianity: ‘the several Patefactions which God has been pleas'd to make of himself, to Man especially, those made by seasonably accomplish'd Prophesies, and by Miracles, do not onely demonstrate the Being, but the Providence, and divers of the Attributes of God. And indeed, methinks, the Divines we reason with may well allow these Patefactions to be capable of evincing the existence of a God, since they are sufficient, and, for ought I know, the best Arguments we have to convince a rational Man of the truth of the Christian Religion’; Robert Boyle ‘Some considerations touching the usefulness of experimental natural philosophy’, Hunter and Davis Works, III, 272. Since this work was written about twenty years prior to ‘On the diversity of religions’, it seems as if Boyle changed his view on the matter in the intervening years. Of course, the proviso ‘for ought I know’ may indicate hesitation, so it could be that no real alteration of his opinion is indicated.
15 Compare Locke's claim that miracles supporting an unreasonable or immoral doctrine cannot be accepted as divine, ‘because God having discovered to men the unity and majesty of his eternal Godhead, and the truths of natural religion and morality by the light of reason, he cannot be supposed to back the contrary by revelation’; John Locke ‘A discourse of miracles’, in The Works of John Locke, in Nine Volumes, VIII, 5th edn (London: Longman, 1794), 261–262.
16 Boyle makes the same point elsewhere; see ‘Some considerations about the reconcileableness of reason and religion’, 282. It should be kept in mind, however, that Boyle viewed the existence of God as permitting a stricter proof than many of the articles specific to the Christian faith. See ibid., 248. On the notion of certainty in Boyle, see Hendrik Gerrit Van Leeuwen The Problem of Certainty in English Thought 1630–1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963). For a more general discussion of Boyle's epistemology, see MacIntosh, J. J. ‘Robert Boyle's epistemology: the interaction between scientific and religious knowledge’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 6 (1992), 91–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Penelhum, Terence ‘Do religious beliefs need grounds?’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 40 (1986), 227–237Google Scholar.
18 I refer to him as a deist while recognizing that the application of the term to Herbert is in need of some provisos. See Harrison ‘Religion’ and the Religions, 61–63; see also Byrne Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion, 22.
19 Ibid., 28. It should be observed that later theorists found it difficult to uphold Herbert's idea. Harrison writes: ‘Later deists retreated from this view, granting that the majority seldom rose above superstition in their efforts to be religious, while insisting that in all ages there had been an exclusive group of philosophical bent who had believed no more and no less than the principles of natural theology … . Following [Charles] Blount's lead, the deists of the eighteenth century opted for exclusive but explicit belief in natural religion rather than the universal and implicit belief which Herbert proposed’; Harrison ‘Religion’ and the Religions, 86.
20 The last line likely refers to the first chapter of Galatians, where anyone who accepts a different revelation is anathematized, even should that revelation come from an angel. That, of course, would rule out Mohammad's alleged interaction with Gabriel. See Galatians 1.6–8.
21 Boyle gives a rather harsh assessment in ‘Some considerations touching the style of the Holy Scriptures’, Hunter and Davis Works, II, 452–454.
22 Boyle is, of course, mercifully writing before the advent of anti-realism in science.
23 The bracketed word is not present in the Latin version, but is supplied in the English translation.
24 For a recent piece advocating a perspective rather like Boyle's, see Netland, Harold ‘Natural theology and religious diversity’, Faith and Philosophy, 21 (2004), 503–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 I would like to express my sincere thanks to J. J. MacIntosh, the Editor, and an anonymous referee for this journal for their many helpful suggestions.