In his church history, William’s devotes several pages to Michel de Montaigne, who, I confess I had never heard of. I had heard plenty of Pascal, who apparently took a lot of cues from him. (Update: Apparently, most Christian’s don’t consider Montaigne one of the good guys. Some of Pascal’s writing is rebuttal of some of Montaigne’s work.) Despite that, I really like his (Montaigne’s) quotes how how reason is not sufficient to comprehend God.
“All the principles of stoics, sceptics, atheists, etc. are true. But their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also true.”
“Our soul is cast into a body where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nautre necessity, and can believe nothing else.”
This indeed, as one might say, “is talking.” Reason is driven to call this communicated nature necessity, upon which necessity she erects her instruments. It is the old trouble which the wise Greek had seen so long ago: “Give me an inch of earth to stand on and I will move the world.” But there is no inch of earth; there never has been; there never – though “the heart has its reasons that the head does not know” – can be.
-Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p.197
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April 28th, 2009 at 7:22 PM
Christians don’t like Montaigne? Wow — I hadn’t heard that. But then I guess most of my Christian colleagues have never heard of him (much less read him). I think he’s great. I don’t know that I’d consider him an orthodox Christian, but I think he has some very good observations that we could all profit from pondering. Anyway, I think Pascal was more annoyed at Descartes (with good reason). It’s interesting how his comment about “necessity” could wreak havoc with Cartesian (and perhaps Kantian?) epistemology….
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 PM
I hadn’t heard of Montaigne, but then, I’m not very well read in this area at all.
It seems that most of his fans were other members of the secular enlightenment, not orthodox Christians.
That’s why it’s been worth it to read Charles Williams.
He’s kind of quirky and doesn’t always call on the usual suspects.