Early Modern Epistemologies and Religious Intolerance

EARLY MODERN EPISTEMOLOGIES AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Abstract

There is a direct relationship between epistemology and one’s attitude toward those with whom one disagrees. Those who think that the truth is difficult to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to tolerate (in the sense of sympathizing with) those with whom they disagree, as the blameless victims of an opaque reality. Those who think that the truth is easy to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to be intolerant (in the sense of being unsympathetic) toward those with whom they disagree, who perversely refuse to acknowledge what should be clear to any well-intentioned inquirer. However, these tendencies toward tolerant or intolerant attitudes can be offset by other factors; and they do not, in any case, necessarily dictate whether one will favor tolerant or intolerant policies regarding those toward whom one feels tolerant or intolerant. The complex relationship between epistemology, tolerant or intolerant attitudes, and tolerant or intolerant policies is evident in the thought of prominent early-modern Protestant theologians who, under the pressure of rampant and violent religious disagreement, theorized tolerance.

Keywords: disagreement; fallibilism; religious pluralism; political epistemology; tolerance; toleration; John Calvin; Sebastian Castellio; Desiderius Erasmus; Sebastian Franck.

What is the relationship, if any, between epistemology and toleration? William Bouwsma $(1988,69)$ suggests that there is a direct connection between persecution and “epistemological optimism,” the view "that

^[1]

the human mind is capable of knowing what exists as it really is: as God might know it, so to speak." During the sixteenth century, he continues,

Abstract

The traditional conception was … absolutist and authoritarian. If our knowledge of things is of things themselves as they really are, there should be, in principle, no disagreement. Difference of opinion in matters of knowledge could only be construed as resulting from deficiency of mind or from perversity; a difference of opinion stubbornly maintained would, from this standpoint, be wicked. In any case the truth about things, especially in important matters, must be made to prevail. This position could lead to charges of heresy not only in religion but also in natural science or even history. (Ibid., 70)

If epistemological optimism went hand in hand with intolerance, we would expect that epistemological pessimism, in the form of positions such as fallibilism and skepticism, should have led to toleration. But while this straightforward logic might seem to explain the position of the great tolerationist Sebastian Castellio, it does not explain the positions of other advocates of toleration, such as Milton and many humanists, and later John Stuart Mill, who were optimistic that “truth will out” by means of rational persuasion, not force. Conversely, as Richard Tuck (1988) has pointed out, tolerationism did not follow automatically from epistemological pessimism, as shown by the fact that such radical pessimists as Montaigne, Lipsius, and Hobbes defended political absolutism.

In what follows, I will suggest that while epistemological positions need not lead straightforwardly to support for toleration or persecution, they do tend to lead straightforwardly to tolerant or intolerant attitudes. As J. W. Allen (1928, 77) put it nearly a century ago, “tolerance is a mental attitude, while legal toleration may express mere indifference or be a mere counsel of despair.”

The attitude of tolerance can be characterized as a posture of intellectual sympathy toward people with whom one disagrees, whom one treats as well-intentioned and rational but mistaken. It is fairly easy to see how a pessimistic epistemological stance can produce this attitude. The more one thinks that human beings are unlikely to have a good grasp of the truth in a certain domain, the more likely one will view with sympathy those with whom one disagrees in that domain: being only human, they have simply been led astray by the opacity of the truth. One might also be pessimistic enough to acknowledge that one’s own view in that domain could be wrong, so that self-doubt accompanies tolerance toward the

other. Conversely, if one is so epistemically optimistic as to think that the truth is self-evident, it will be hard to acknowledge rational disagreement, for this requires accepting that others can honestly fail to see what is selfevident. Therefore, those who appear to disagree with us must actually know that they are wrong, indicating that they are irrational or dishonest. In the latter case, they must, for some ulterior reason, be lying when they claim not to see the truth. One is unlikely to tolerate such behavior, either attitudinally or in one’s actions. Epistemological optimism, then, is likely to elicit fear (of the irrational), hatred (of the deceitful), and quite possibly persecution in response to these attitudes.

However, while epistemological optimism and pessimism may logically tend to produce attitudes of intolerance and tolerance, respectively, they do not necessarily lead to corresponding policies of persecution and toleration. As we shall see by retracing some of the most prominent arguments for and against toleration during the sixteenth century, one can go from epistemology to attitudes of tolerance or intolerance in surprising ways, and thence toward several different types of action. We may sympathize with our enemies as fallible yet rational seekers after a truth that is difficult to attain, yet nonetheless think it undesirable to allow people to express noxious or even wrong views. This, to oversimplify a bit, was Calvin’s position. Somewhat similarly, while Erasmus advocated both attitudinal tolerance and certain forms of ecclesiastical toleration, he allowed that the Church should be designated an expert theological body, but that it should stifle dissent only through excommunication, not execution. Conversely, one might combine an attitude of intolerance with a policy of toleration. One may, for example, demonize one’s enemies as perverse for not recognizing the self-evident truth, yet think they should be legally tolerated on the grounds that everyone has rights of conscience. This was roughly the position of the mystic Sebastian Franck. Finally, we might think that tolerance and toleration go hand in hand, the view of Sebastian Castellio.

I. CASTELLIO’S EPISTEMOLOGICAL PESSIMISM

The marriage between attitudes of tolerance and policies of toleration seems first to have been fully forged in the I 550 and I 560 by Castellio. He developed a fallibilist epistemology that emphasized the difficulty of ascertaining certain theological truths, from which he derived the conclusion that we should accept errors in these matters as only human and should refrain from persecuting those who disagree with us, who

are at worst mistaken and at best may be right-as we ourselves may be the mistaken ones.

Although there had been pre-Reformation precursors of this fallibilist justification for tolerance and toleration, they were brief and merely suggestive. ${ }^{1}$ Castellio’s pessimistic epistemology systematized that of Erasmus, who had begun the process of encouraging tolerant attitudes and pulling back from unlimited persecution. Erasmus, however, had argued that while the Church, as the spiritual authority, did not have the right to turn heretics over to the secular authorities to be killed, it did have the right to stifle dissent by excommunicating them. Moreover, civil princes may “butcher” heretics if their heresies should disturb the civil peace (Erasmus [1526] 1935, I7I and I75). The separability of tolerance and toleration is even starker in the case of two other probable influences on Castellio. Sebastian Franck, who advocated policies of ecclesiastical and civil toleration, nevertheless tended to adopt an intolerant attitude toward his theological enemies. And Castellio’s nemesis, Calvin, while advocating religious persecution, adopted a tolerant attitude towards his intellectual opponents. Paradoxically, then, both Castellio, who was for the most part an epistemological pessimist, and Franck, who was almost the ideal type of the epistemological optimist, favored toleration; while Calvin, who may have been even more epistemologically pessimistic than Castellio, favored persecution.

From Disagreement to Pessimism and Toleration

Castellio is best remembered for his 1554 De haereticis, an sint persequendi (Concerning Heretics, Whether They Are to Be Persecuted and How They Are to Be Treated), which he wrote after the 1553 execution of Michael Servetus for heresy in Geneva-an action that was condoned, albeit not ordered, by Calvin. ${ }^{2}$ As the subtitle puts it, Castellio’s book is $A$ Collection of the Opinions of Learned Men Both Ancient and Modern, and includes excerpts from Erasmus and Franck as well as Calvin. It also includes two “excerpts” thought to have been written by Castellio himself (using two different pseudonyms) and a dedicatory preface by Castellio (under a third pseudonym) in which he reconceptualized heresy as innocent error. He further developed this reconceptualization in his reply (1562) to Calvin’s Defense of the Orthodox Faith (1554), written to justify Servetus’s execution; and in a manuscript Castellio wrote shortly before he died, Concerning Doubt and Belief, Ignorance, and Knowledge (1563),

where he tried to theorize what can and should be doubted and believed, and how belief differs from knowledge.

It is important to note that in these works and two others (the I55I preface to his Latin translation of the Bible, and the I555 preface to his French translation of the Bible), Castellio also advanced non-epistemological arguments for legal toleration. Some of these arguments were: that there is no Scriptural warrant for killing heretics; that it behooves Christians to suffer persecution rather than to persecute; that killing heretics is an arrogant usurpation of God’s role as judge; that the essence of Christianity is love and sincerity, and does not require belief in unnecessary and obscure doctrines such as the Trinity or predestination; that killing heretics prevents them from repenting; and that persecution creates martyrs, whose ideas become more influential in death than they were in life. But Castellio’s most influential argument proceeded from his epistemological pessimism.

The premise of this argument was the resistance of the Bible to clear interpretation (something that had long been appreciated). In the preface to his French translation of the Bible, he explained that while he had tried to point out passages that he found difficult to comprehend, “I have not recorded all that I do not understand. There would be no end to it” (Castellio [1555] 1935, 258). The Bible, he noted, not only “contains discrepancies in both word and thought” (Castellio [1563] 1935, 288), but is often opaque and ambiguous. Thus, appeals to Biblical authority are unhelpful: “The question is not whether Scripture is true, but how it is to be understood” (ibid., 293). Since “all opinions are defended out of Scripture” (ibid.), adducing Scriptural passages as evidence for a given theological position exacerbates disagreement instead of dispelling it. ${ }^{3}$ Given the Bible’s opacity, rampant disagreements about its meaning were understandable. Logically, however, at least some of the competing interpretations must be wrong, perhaps even all of them. Disagreement entails at least some human error in the text’s interpretation. Castellio’s epistemological pessimism, then, is not the radically skeptical view that nobody can ever know the truth. It is the view that discerning the truth in the limited but crucial domain of theological (as opposed to moral) doctrine is difficult enough to produce intractable differences of opinion.

This pessimism led Castellio to distinguish between people who err innocently and obstinate heretics, who engage in blasphemous and immoral actions. Such actions can legitimately be punished because

moral truths, unlike Biblical truths, are “obvious” and define the essence of Christianity. The obstinate heretic therefore has no epistemic excuse for sinning (Castellio [1554] 1935, I3I). This distinction between innocent and obstinate error was an old one, yet by emphasizing that theological truth, as opposed to moral truth, is not obvious and that we are therefore prone to err, Castellio appeared to hollow out the category of “obstinate” heresies. The majority of religiously relevant errors, in his view, were likely to be innocent and thus excusable. For not only is the truth about Scripture itself not obvious, neither are most theological doctrines grounded in Scripture, such as “baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the invocation of the saints, justifications, free will, and other obscure questions” (ibid., I32). Thus, according to Castellio, erroneous theological beliefs are not, as had commonly been thought, symptoms of obstinacy or a deliberately corrupted will. They stem “solely from ignorance of the truth” (ibid.).

Castellio did not rest content with exculpating theological errors as innocent; he went on the attack against those who persecuted the errant. If error is (at least) as ubiquitous as disagreement, then it is likely that the persecutors will be among those who err. To be willing to label others heretics and kill them merely because one disagrees with them is to fail to recognize the fallibility of one’s own opinions. This attitude is the opposite of Christian humility (ibid., I22), and it has led to the death of many innocent and good Christians (as well as Christ himself). In the face of our fallibility, “Who will be judge?” (Castellio [1562] 1935, 28I). Thus, Castellio believed that we should allow not merely, as theologians tended to believe, the liberty of a correct conscience, but the liberty of an erroneous one (ibid., 125; 1555, 214; [1562] 1935, 272). His epistemological pessimism, then, led him to both tolerance and toleration.

The possibility of an erroneous conscience, and the question of what to do about it, had long troubled Christian thinkers. These were pressing issues because it was thought un-Christian to allow someone to persist in an error for which his soul might be consigned to eternal damnation. True Christian love required some attempt to correct others’ religious errors. In addition, while the soul of someone in error might prove to be beyond salvation, there was also the danger that his errors might mislead still more people, thus condemning their souls, too, to damnation.

Earlier theorists, such as Augustine ([387-88] 1964, 58-59) and Aquinas ([1265-I273] 1980), had suggested that conscience can err innocently. Augustine maintained that error provides the space from which God can draw Christians to him (Sorabji 2014, 57-57), and Aquinas saw errors in reasoning as explaining the mistaken conscience (ibid., 64). They both believed, however, that error is remediable, such that an admonishment or two should make the sinner see his mistake. ${ }^{4}$ By contrast, someone who obstinately persists in holding or acting upon a false belief, even after two admonishments, can no longer be said to be innocently ignorant. “After that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church, no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others” (Aquinas [I265-I273] 1980, 183). He is labeled a heretic and punished by either banishment (Augustine) or death (Aquinas). This conception of heresy relied on the assumption that there are two types of error. The first, which is caused by ignorance or flawed reasoning, is corrigible by mere exposure to the truth. The second type of error is caused by a corrupted, obstinate will. In this case, an erroneous conscience might be brought around by punitive (albeit loving) correction, which triumphs over the spirit of obstinacy.

As we have seen, Castellio dissented from the view that theological ignorance could be easily remedied, even if the spirit is willing, because he saw the cause of erroneous religious beliefs as the obscurity of the Bible and of the theological questions to which the Bible gives rise. This led him to see disagreement as inevitable. In the preface to his French translation of the Bible, he said that we can infer that we are living in a “night of ignorance” because “if it were day there would never be such diverse and even contrary judgments about the same color. Or if it is day, at least the good and the evil are so confused in the matter of religion that if one wishes to disentangle those who are at variance as to the truth there is danger lest the wheat be rooted out with the tares” (Castellio [1555] 1935, 257). The presence of diverse judgments indicates that all sides are probably confused about matters of doctrine, not that one side is deliberately hiding the truth. ${ }^{5}$ Thus, we can both sympathetically understand the drive to persecute and allow that persecution is likely to be futile, as disagreement is likely to be intractable. If error is not easily corrected, then we must accept that people can disagree in innocent sincerity, and we must accept, too, that theological disagreement is permanent. In that case, there is no reason to trust clerical authority to settle doctrinal disputes or to identify heretics, since clerics are as likely as anyone to err.

If we should not trust clerics and should not rely on the Bible as an arbitrator of disagreement, what are we to do? Toward the end of his life, Castellio tried to discover some rule or criterion of judgment that would allow us a means of “attaining concord” (Castellio [1563] 1935, 293). He settled on the rule of reason, or “sense and intellect [sensus et intellectus]” (ibid., 294; Castellio [1563] 1981, 59), which sets forth criteria that determine what we can and should doubt, what we can and should believe, what we can and should know, and that of which we can and must remain ignorant. We can know things that can be verified through sense experience and reason, and we should deny things that contradict our sense experience, such as “if one should say that fire is cold” (ibid., 296). In matters beyond the reach of experience and reason, we should believe things if they are “clearly set forth in Scripture. They are to be doubted if ambiguously explained, and to be left in ignorance if there is nothing recorded about them” (ibid., 296).

Castellio venerated reason as “the daughter of God. She was before letters and ceremonies, before the world was made; and she is after letters and ceremonies.” Reason, he continued, “is a sort of eternal word of God, much older and surer than letters and ceremonies” (ibid., 297). He argued that although we became morally corrupt when Adam ate from the tree of knowledge, original sin also enlivened our senses and intellect (ibid., 297-99). ${ }^{6}$ It is true that the human mind is beset with barriers to knowledge that stem from willfulness, from diseases that affect the senses, and from the illusions built into the world (such that we see red snow when we look at it through red glass); but reason is lively enough to correct some of the errors of sense impressions (such that we can discern that a stick that looks bent in water is not really bent) (ibid., 299). Reason can also, but with more difficulty, correct errors that arise from a diseased will, from “carnal affections” (ibid., 300), from “mental disturbances” (ibid., 30I), and from self-love (ibid., 302). Yet reason was given to us by nature so that we can “discern the true from the false, good from evil, the just from the unjust, and doctrine, led by reason, confirms nature and teaches that it is necessary to live according to nature and pronounces those who act this way just and those who act contrary [to it] unjust” (Castellio [1563] 1981, 20). ${ }^{7}$ Reason enables moral, not theological, discernment.

Castellio seems to have used “reason” in two different ways. First, it is a universal and intellectual apprehension present within each person, one that is unlikely to err about sensible and moral matters (although it can be

interfered with, such as by carnal passions). This is what Steven Ozment (1973, 197) has in mind when he says that Castellio’s “reason” should be seen as “the conjunction of eternal word and internal witness to truth,” or as “the synteresis or Seelengrund [ground of the soul] of medieval mystical theology.” The synteresis of reason “creates conscience, which is a present judge identical with the final Judge” (ibid.). Castellio did use “reason” in this sense, sometimes treating it as infallible, as in the traditional conception of synteresis, the infallible spark of God within man. But at the same time, he used “reason” in a second sense: as something that is used in different, contradictory, and highly fallible ways. Thus, he pointed out that people use reason to defend contradictory theological and Scriptural opinions (Castellio [1563] 1935, 296-97; Castellio [1563] 1981, 64-65), and that persecutors and persecuted alike rely on reason (ibid.). Because the use of reason, like the use of Scripture, cannot settle disagreements about obscure matters, reason is not absolutely reliable. Still, it is more reliable in its areas of competence than it is in interpreting the Bible, and it is more reliable than the human authorities who make up the Church. Further, if both the persecutors and the persecuted rely on reason to interpret Scripture and yet they disagree with one another, it would suggest that the relationship between reason and Scripture is not harmonious, since while reason might clarify the Bible, it might also obscure its meaning even more. However, for Castellio there was no choice but to use the rule of reason-the senses and intellect-for “other than the senses and intellect, no other instrument can be thought as given to man by nature for judging anything, so much so that if you remove these things from man, you remove all judgment about everything” (Castellio [1563] 1981, 62). ${ }^{9}$ The most important thing to do, in order to make the most of reason, is to “not be ashamed to confess your error” and to keep an open mind, since “above all a closed mind … impedes judgment … of all matters” (Castellio [1563] 1935, 30I). However, Castellio did not seem to think that people would be able to be consistently open minded or to doubt what should be doubted and believe what should be believed. Doubting is an art, as is believing, as the title of his Concerning Doubt and Belief makes clear (De arte dubitandi et confidendi, ignorandi et sciendi). ${ }^{\text {IO }}$

Given the limits of reason, Castellio thought that we should give up the quest for certainty in favor of believing in what is reasonable (Popkin 1979, 13). However, exchanging “reasonable” for “certain” does not get us very far. What counts as reasonable? Castellio did not

seem to recognize this problem. It is hard to imagine that anyone finds their own beliefs unreasonable, just as it is hard to imagine that anyone thinks that their religion is false. Disagreement about what is reasonable would appear to be just as intractable as disagreement about the Bible.

II. POSSIBLE INFLUENCES ON CASTELLIO

It would be good to know why Castellio was able to come up with this combination of epistemological pessimism, tolerance, and toleration. But tracing Castellio’s influence on later thinkers is easier than tracing the intellectual influences on him. ${ }^{\text {II }}$ Although we know little about his life, scholars tend to suggest that either the irenic humanism of Erasmus or the spiritualism of Franck, or both, gave him the resources to reconceive heresy as disagreement, and disagreement as an argument for tolerance and toleration. ${ }^{12}$ Focusing on epistemology allows us to speculate that Calvin, too, might have influenced Castellio. This might seem implausible at first, because Castellio, having worked with Calvin in the early I540s, soon became one of his most vociferous critics. Yet his critique targeted Calvin’s opposition to tolerationist policies, not his support for tolerant attitudes. While Erasmus and Franck may plausibly have contributed to Castellio’s support for religious toleration, then, Calvin’s epistemological position may have contributed, along with Erasmus’s, to Castellio’s fusion of tolerationist attitudes and tolerationist policies by way of a fallibilistic, pessimistic epistemology.

Erasmian Skepticism

Erasmus’s epistemological pessimism, which took the form of skepticism, usually seems to have functioned as a merely implicit background assumption in his work, perhaps because in the first half of the sixteenth century skepticism tended to be equated with atheism (Rummel 2000, 50). But in his famous debate with Luther about free will, Erasmus’s skepticism came to the fore: “So great is my dislike of assertions” he wrote, “that I prefer the views of the sceptics wherever the inviolable authority of Scripture and the decision of the Church permit-a Church to which at all times I willingly submit my own views, whether I attain what she prescribes or not” (Erasmus [1524] 1961, 6). Luther ([1525] 1961, 103) answered with an appeal to the Holy Ghost, who “is no Skeptic.”

Erasmus’s skepticism may have been a product, in part, of his adherence to the ideals of classical rhetoric, which included norms of politeness and civility and the ideal of arguing both sides of an issue (Remer 1996, 56; Rummel 2000, 6-7). Erasmus’s mention of skepticism in the debate with Luther, for example, seems to have followed the pattern of a standard introductory exordium of classical rhetoric, where it was seen as polite to be skeptical about one’s own position. Similarly, his introduction to the polemic against Luther on free will is taken up with the proper approach toward disagreement: Erasmus exudes tolerance toward his intellectual adversary, implying that his criticisms are not of Luther as a person, but only of his opinions, and that such criticism is in service of the truth. “It is therefore by no means an outrage to dispute over one of his dogmas, especially not, if one, in order to discover truth, confronts Luther with calm and scholarly arguments” (Erasmus [1524] 1961, 5). The style of disagreement, further, must be civil: though they are engaged in “battle,” “there will be no invective,” both because this is inappropriate Christian behavior, and because truth is often lost by “excessive quarreling” (ibid., 6). In contrast, when people “are so blindly addicted to one opinion that they cannot tolerate whatever differs from it,” then is not the fruit of such argumentation “that both contestants part spitting upon each other in contempt?” (ibid., 6-7). Instead of contemptuousness, Erasmus aims to exemplify the proper tolerant attitude toward disagreement. He indicates his open mindedness about the topic at hand, stating that he still lacks a “definite opinion,” that his opinions may be “mistaken,” and that he therefore wishes “to analyze and not to judge, to inquire and not dogmatize. I am ready to learn from anyone who advances something more accurate or more reliable” (ibid., 7).

Erasmus’s contemporaries tended to see in his disavowals of knowledge merely a humanist and rhetorical methodology rather than a genuine epistemology (Rummel 2000, 59-6I). Yet while his tolerant posture took a stylistic form, it seems to have been based on an epistemology that began with acknowledging both the possibility of areas of clarity and thus consensus, as in moral matters, and areas of obscurity and thus dissensus, as in theological matters.

Erasmus’s allowance for the possibility of theological disagreement may have been, in part, a reaction against the obscure doctrinal debates that marked Scholastic thought. Given that theological experts disagreed about many doctrines, how could ordinary Christians-or even

theologians-be expected to know what to believe? Erasmus may have concluded from the interminability of these disputes that it was best to adopt a skeptical attitude towards the doctrines at issue. He did not quite put it like that, but it is the impression given by In Praise of Folly, where he derides the abstruseness of philosophers and divines and recommends, in contrast, the “folly” of simple common sense (Erasmus [1517] 1964, I23).

Disdain for ongoing theological quarrels may also have been the impetus behind Erasmus’s Christian minimalism. Like Guillaume Postel and Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus boiled Christianity down to a set of universal moral rather than doctrinal truths that are apprehended by reason and are thus assented to by all rational beings (Skinner 1978, 244-45). This pared-down Christianity is summed up in Erasmus’s idea of “Christian philosophy,” an attempt to return to the simple and pure Christianity of the Gospels. External signs of belief, such as sacraments and ceremonies, as well as abstruse theological doctrines (such as the doctrine of free will), are secondary to ethical precepts, which are proved by Scripture and reason alike. What is important is faith in and imitation of Christ. Imitating Christ need not involve monasticism, but it does require, as Erasmus ([1518] 1964, 37) put it, a “practical piety” that consists of battling one’s carnal side and imitating Christ’s meekness, love, and peaceableness. “The whole philosophy of Christ,” Erasmus ([1516] 1997, I05) wrote, “argues against war.”

This was pessimism not about the existence of theological truth, but the ability of human beings-even (or especially) human beings who are dubbed “infallible”-to ascertain certain truths. Yet the conclusions that Erasmus drew from his epistemological pessimism were far from radical. His skepticism led not to a wholesale rejection of human authority but to a sober recognition of the need for it. In part, this is because his was not Pyrrhonian but “Christian skepticism,” skepticism that had certainty as its end, with authority and consensus serving as criteria of knowledge (Rummel 2000, 57). ${ }^{13}$ When theological knowledge is hard to attain, the Christian skeptic “admits the insolubility of the question, distances himself from any judgment, and substitutes for his own voice the voice of authority and decision by consensus” (ibid., 56; see also Remer 1996, 59). Indeed, in his debate with Luther, in the same breath in which Erasmus associated himself with skepticism, he also invoked the authority of the Church, suggesting that it is the refuge from skepticism ("the Church, to which I everywhere willingly submit

my personal feelings, whether I grasp what it prescribes or not"; Erasmus [1524] 1969, 37).

Erasmus turned to the Church and the authority of theologians partly for consequentialist reasons, to reduce discord. As Roland Bainton (1935, 35-36) puts it, “Erasmus was in search of certainty and could not find it in the infallibility of Scripture, or of the pope. The inspired man might be infallible, but there is no infallible way of knowing that he is infallible,” so “the authority of the Church is to be accepted … in the interest of public tranquility.” As Erasmus saw it, the need for peace required some modicum of agreement on basic Christian doctrine, as did the needs of Christianity itself. Luther mocked Erasmus’s skeptical dislike of assertions, contending that “one must delight in assertions to be a Christian at all! … Far be it from us Christians to be sceptics and academics!” (Luther [1525] 196I, I00-I0I). Erasmus responded that “It is you who are forcing us to take up the matter [of free will] all over again by calling into doubt, indeed by dislodging and demolishing, what has been fully approved, fixed, and immovable for so many centuries” (Erasmus [1526] 1999, I2I). And he clarified that his skepticism was consistent with the assertions required of Christians: “You immediately make a melodramatic uproar because I mentioned the Sceptics, as if I thought that nothing at all should be asserted,” but “I myself explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the church,” so that with regard to the articles of faith “I am so far from desiring or having a Sceptical outlook that I would not hesitate to face death to uphold them” (ibid., II7-II8). Moreover, on controversial matters, church authority delimited skepticism. On such topics, “I have no use for human arguments but rather follow the decision of the church and cease to be a Sceptic” (ibid., I19). The very longevity of Church authority should count as a reason to favor it: “Christian people have held this doctrine for fifteen hundred years, nor is it right to dispute about it, except in a restrained way and so as to better establish what the church has handed down” (ibid., I39). Thus, Erasmian skepticism led not to a rejection of clerical authority, but its bolstering. Although Erasmus began with the possibility of dissensus, he ended by suggesting that dissensus should be settled by (consensual) Church authority.

Castellio likewise began with the premise of dissensus but, unlike Erasmus, did not see the consensus of the Church as a viable response to it. Yet he, like Erasmus, tried to find ways of overcoming dissensus,

and followed him in treating reason as, at the very least, providing clear moral truths. Reason, for Erasmus, is the most potent and reliable of authorities-perhaps because God had “divinely engrave[d]” on reason an “eternal law” (Erasmus [1518] 1964, 44). This universality of reason led Erasmus, like Castellio, toward epistemological optimism about moral issues. There are certain things that God “wanted us to know with the utmost clarity, as for example, the precepts for a morally good life” (Erasmus [1524] 1961, 9-10). It is true that people might misinterpret the clear dictates of reason, as when they think that giving in to the body’s carnal desires is reasonable (Erasmus [1518] 1964, 45), but this does not invalidate the authority of reason.

For Erasmus, one of the most important commands of reason is the need for peace. In “The Complaint of Peace,” Peace asks, “How in the name of God, can I believe those beings to be rational creatures … [who] endeavor to drive me away from them?” (Erasmus [1521] 1917, 2-3). Peace follows from the fact that “a reasoning power” is “indeed common to all men” (ibid., 5). While peace is a state that should flow from both ecclesiastical and civil policy, the Church, which aims to improve the moral state of humanity, should especially seek such peace. Thus, in an excerpt from “The Reckonings of the Errors in the Censure of Beda” that Castellio included in De Haereticis, Erasmus argued that the Church should adopt a mildly tolerant policy towards heretics, excommunicating them rather than killing them (Erasmus [1526] 1935, 170).

However, Erasmus held that an ecclesiastical policy of toleration is important not only in order to follow the peaceable dictates of clear reason, but also because there are areas outside of reason’s jurisdiction. Reason is an absolute authority when it comes to moral truths, but is unreliable when considering “the distinction of persons in the holy Trinity, the manner of procession of the Holy Spirit, [and] the virgin birth,” issues that are “better committed to God” (Erasmus [1524] 1961, 10). In principle, a “mystic silence” is preferable to debating some of these issues (ibid., 9), but if they are to be debated, it should be in private, for “it is not only unsuitable, but truly pernicious to carry on such disputations when everybody can listen” (ibid., I2). This applies, for example, to the Lutheran view that the will lacks all efficacy for salvation, which is bound to promote moral turpitude in “despair of forgiveness” (ibid., 9). In such cases, moreover, the Church should be the ultimate authority. What this meant, for Erasmus, is not that the Church should persecute dissenters through

death (although excommunication is acceptable), but that Christians should cede their judgment about such theological issues and grant the Church the epistemological authority to decide them. At the same time, Erasmus allowed that civil authority may need to go farther than ecclesiastical policy, since the civil prince is responsible for maintaining social order. Hence his conclusion that, if civil peace is imperiled by heresies, princes may “butcher” heretics (Erasmus [1526] 1935, 175).

The notion of the Church as the ultimate epistemological arbiter was, of course, one of the ideas with which Protestants most strongly disagreed, as they elevated the authority of Scripture over that of the very human personnel of the Church. While Erasmus ([1518] 1964, 37) agreed that the Scripture is an important authority, and that the rule of faith is “to place great reliance on the Scriptures” (ibid., 53), he appears to have believed that its authority is not absolute, as it is often unclear. Some of the obscurity can be clarified through knowledge of the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, and through knowledge of philology and grammar. But even with such knowledge, the Bible can be misinterpreted, particularly when it is read literally (ibid., 36-37). Erasmus’s debate with Luther consisted of a collection of Biblical passages for and against free will, but such a method had its downsides, for, as Erasmus put it, “It is a fact that Holy Scripture is in most instances either obscure or figurative, or seems, at first sight, to contradict itself. Therefore, whether we like it or not, we sometimes had to recede from the literal meaning, and had to adjust its meaning to an interpretation” (Erasmus [1524] 1961, 93-94). Thus, reasonable disagreement about theological matters is to be expected. Such disagreement, for him, should lead Christians to surrender their judgment to the authority of the Church. However, the Church should not, by virtue of its having the final say, persecute dissenters, at least not by killing them, even if it could quell dissent by excommunicating dissenters. Thus, for Erasmus, tolerance and some form of ecclesiastical toleration went hand in hand.

Both Erasmus and Castellio were pessimistic about our ability to gain access to most theological truths, but optimistic about the ability of Scripture and reason to illuminate moral truths. Yet Erasmus seems to have been more optimistic than Castellio in thinking it possible to achieve conciliation between disagreeing parties so long as they can agree on the “essentials,” suspend judgment on difficult matters, and trust ecclesiastical consensus instead. Sometimes Castellio ([1554] 1935, 216), too, advised “deferred judgment,” as "he who judges too quickly makes haste to rue

it." But he did not seem to think that most people would be able to follow this unnatural advice. For the most part, then, disagreement will be intractable, putting Castellio at a significant remove from Erasmus. Castellio generally argues that the only hope of achieving peace is to tolerate religious disagreements, not to try to force a settlement or even to broker one.

On the other hand, Erasmus seems to have been more pessimistic than Castellio about the feasibility of erasing human authority from the picture altogether, and thus did not attempt to place full trust in either reason or Scripture. Instead, he maintained that there comes a point where we must, however reluctantly, place intellectual authority in human hands. Castellio believed, in contrast, that both parties to a theological dispute will see reason as being on their side. This suggests that in practice, even the God-given objectivity of reason is filtered through fallible human minds, so intellectual authority should not be centralized in a single locus, such as the Church. Rather, disagreement must be tolerated.

Franck and Epistemological Certainty

Castellio might have been influenced, in the latter respect, by Franck, who completely rejected all external human authority. Yet while they both supported a policy of toleration, Franck tended toward attitudinal intolerance of his intellectual opponents, treating their disagreement with him as a product of insincere and evil conniving; while Castellio, like Erasmus, tended to treat his intellectual opponents as sincerely and innocently mistaken.

Both Castellio and Franck, like Erasmus, pointed to the limits of the human mind; unlike him, both rejected clerical authority. Both were also apprentices to the most important figures of the Reformation before breaking with them (Castellio having worked for Calvin, Franck for Luther). Both were also influenced by the mystical tradition. Franck wrote an extensive paraphrase of the Theologia Deutsch (1541-42), the anonymous mystical tract that Luther had first edited (and named) in 1516 and 1518; Castellio translated the tract into Latin in 1557. Both believed in the Theologia’s idea of an inviolable spark of God within each man, which Franck identified with conscience and Castellio with reason. Accordingly, both thought of the true church as an invisible one, both glorified the simple purity of a sincere and willing heart, and both believed that the sincere and willing tend to be persecuted for their goodness. As Castellio ([1554] 1935, 251) put it, "the godly are

ignoble, poor, unlearned, weak, mocked, harassed, peaceable, meek, humble, submissive, obscure, vile, abject, despised, and rejected."

However, Castellio thought that the godly are persecuted because it is the nature of the carnal to persecute the spiritual. The heretics-“those with whom the persecutors disagree”-are oppressed by those who arrogate to themselves the judgment of others’ damnation, which “is not to be passed by any save by Christ and not before the day of judgment” (ibid., 252, 253). Castellio seems to have been suggesting, then, that persecution is wrong because it arrogates the epistemic authority of Christ to the persecutors. Franck, in contrast, explained persecution as a product of both misunderstanding and, in other cases, an all-too-clear understanding, by the persecutors, of the fact that so-called heretics possess the truth. In those cases, he joined toleration as a policy with intolerance of the persecutors as liars and evildoers.

The intolerant moment in his thought may have stemmed from Franck’s epistemologically optimistic account of the infallibility of conscience, interpreted as the Holy Spirit located in man. While Franck thought that the temporal world is blind and full of darkness, he considered conscience the light of the spirit instantiated in each of us, making those illuminated by it infallible. As Susan Schreiner (2011, 252) puts it, Franck’s belief in the “experiential immediacy of Christ’s indwelling” in each of us “found expression in three familiar themes: authority, certainty, and deification.” When the spirit dwells in us we attain the authority and certainty of God himself. Conscience, then, can never be wrong, although people can be and often are hypocrites who ignore the revelations of the conscience.

Franck’s view that conscience is infallible coexisted-indeed, stemmed from-his view that the Scriptures are not clear. Like Erasmus and Castellio, Franck saw the Bible as a difficult document filled with paradoxes. Yet he adopted a rather different view of the opacity of the Bible than they did. He opened one of his earliest works, Paradoxa ducenta octoginta (Two Hundred Eighty Paradoxes), with what seemed to be a denunciation of the Bible as “a closed book with seven seals” (a reference to the Book of Revelation that also served as the title of yet another of Franck’s works); “the letter of Scripture,” he continued, “the sword of the antichrist, kills Christ.” But this is because the letter must be approached by way of the spirit. “Scripture is-without light, life, and interpretation of the spirit-a killing letter and dark lantern” (Franck I534, I). ${ }^{\text {I4 }}$ The paradoxes that pervade the

Bible are illusory, a product of reading only its letter, unilluminated by the spirit. Read in such a state, it is no wonder that “heresies and sects [arise] from the letter of scripture” (ibid). ${ }^{15}$ Yet this is no accident: the Bible is God’s attempt to use the letter to create discord and encourage people to seek the spirit behind the letter (ibid., 26).

Since Scriptural paradoxes were meant to be overcome, the disagreement that stems from the Bible is merely apparent-a product of reading it improperly. Read properly, the letter of the Bible should be subordinated to one’s conscience: “let every one weigh and test Scripture to see how it fits his own heart” (Franck I53I, 452b, quoted in Jones 1914, 50). In so doing, readers would find the truth: conscience is guided by the spirit and thus infallible. For Franck, simply being certain that one is right suggests that one really is right, as certainty must come from the Holy Spirit: “No one can believe and suffer steadfastly just because his interpretation is right, unless one has been assured and taught by the Holy Spirit and knows this firmly and senses it in his heart, that the understanding is light from light and from God” (Franck [1534] 1986, 384). Conversely, “whatever is not true cannot be believed, though one might fancy it for a while” (ibid., 382).

By ascribing infallibility to conscience and equating certainty with conviction, Franck was led to conclude that Christians are “commonly” accused of heresy not only because they “are not understood,” but also because they “are deliberately calumniated. Thus, Christ and the truth were always condemned by the world and held for heresy and a lie” (Franck ([153I] 1935, 184). Insofar as the truth is optimistically understood to be plain to mankind, persecutors can be characterized as evil men who wish to prevent others from knowing the truth. “Evil and malicious writers in positions of authority have perverted everything and have not written sincerely and honestly about those whom they hate” (ibid., 187). The epistemological optimism standing behind the moral pessimism is clear: “the Scriptures powerfully declare the works of God, which daily increase, if one has but the eyes to see” (ibid., 185, emphasis mine). The truth is clear, but those in power willfully close their eyes to it and then blind others to it.

Franck thus tended to assume that persecutors are not just dogmatic and perhaps wrong, but morally perverse. His attitude towards them, accordingly, was intolerant, even while he advocated toleration as a way to protect not just liberty of conscience, but the liberty of the truths guaranteed by it. By contrast, Castellio’s “Reply to Calvin’s Book” argued that

conscience should be free not because it is a privileged epistemic site, but because it is a privileged moral site: an arena of truthfulness, understood as sincerity. “Calvin killed Servetus because of the truth, since he would not lie, for if Servetus had been willing to recant and speak against his conscience he might have escaped” (Castellio [1562] 1935, 276). Servetus was sincere in believing that he knew the truth, but that does not mean his confidence was warranted:

Servetus denied that infants should be baptized. Did Servetus believe what he said or did he not? Calvin calls this an unbridled violation. By what right? An unbridled violation calls for conscious sin. But Servetus, if he sinned, sinned unconsciously. Did you then, Calvin, kill Servetus because he so believed or because he so spoke? If you killed him because he so spoke, you killed him on account of the truth, for the truth is to say what you believe, even though you are in error. … But if you killed him because he so believed, then you should teach him to believe otherwise, and you should show from Scripture that those who err and believe incorrectly are to be killed. (Ibid., 272)

Servetus spoke the truth in the sense that what he said accorded with what his conscience told him was true. But Castellio avoided attributing absolute authority to conscience, regardless of the certainty of one’s conscience. Therefore, he could acknowledge that Castellio was mistaken while affirming that the mistake was innocent. Since persecutors and persecuted alike tend to consider their own consciences to be inspired by the spirit, Castellio saw a greater need than Franck to distinguish between objective knowledge and subjective belief, a true conscience and an erroneous one. For Franck, in contrast, the infallibility of conscience collapsed the distinction between belief and knowledge. Although he occasionally wrote as if ignorance of the truth is possible, this happens when the killing letter, the Antichrist, dwells in the heart. He thus did not allow that an assured conscience can merely be a sign of unwarranted dogmatism rather than divine illumination. Castellio, however, recognized that it is possible to sincerely believe in what is wrong. “Who ever thought that he held a false religion?” he asked rhetorically (Castellio I562, 28I).

While both Franck and Castellio emphasized the distinction between spirit and letter, for Franck this distinction was both moral and epistemological: to be on the side of the spirit is to want to do good, and it brings infallible knowledge, while to be confined to the letter betrays an

ignorance that results, in some way, from evil. For Castellio, on the other hand, the distinction between letter and spirit seems to have been primarily moral, not epistemological. The letter is carnal, while the spirit enables us to act morally. But to choose the spirit does not grant us epistemological insight. We can infer this from the fact that the spirit, instantiated in conscience, dwells in persecutors and persecuted alike.

Calvin: Skepticism and Its Solution

Why might Castellio, who shared so much with Franck, have been so much more consistently pessimistic about theological knowledge claims, and therefore so much more tolerant of those who made theological errors, including those whose persecutions of heretics were mistaken?

At least two hypotheses suggest themselves. First, Castellio was nearly a generation younger than Franck, who was a contemporary of Luther. Castellio was born two years before the 95 Theses were posted, and came of age after religious conflict had already begun to tear Europe apart. This may have made it easier for him to take sincere disagreement as his starting point. Second, Castellio may have moved in an epistemologically pessimistic direction because of his close contact with Calvin.

Calvin, like Franck and Castellio, tried but failed to avoid relying on human authority to resolve theological disputes. Like Erasmus, Calvin trusted Scripture as an alternative to human authority, even if he found its authority more absolute than had Erasmus. Like Franck, Calvin believed that our consciences provide us with direct access to theological truths. Unlike Franck, however, he recognized the possibility of unwarranted certitude. And like Castellio, his epistemological pessimism led him to allow that his intellectual opponents might be wrong yet nevertheless sincere and desirous of the truth.

Given Castellio’s denunciation of Calvin for endorsing the execution of Servetus, and his subsequent attack on Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, Castellio and Calvin are generally seen as so antagonistic to one another that it may seem outlandish to think that Calvin influenced Castellio. And it is true that their beliefs about some of the most fundamental theological matters were thoroughly incompatible. Castellio believed, as did so many others, that Calvin’s doctrine of predestination represented God as unmerciful. Furthermore, according to the doctrine of predestination, human beings do not have wills that are free enough to earn their

salvation, while for Castellio, as for Erasmus and Franck, God in his mercy allows us some degree of efficacy in working towards our salvation. Most obviously, Castellio and Calvin took diametrically opposed positions on toleration as a policy. But their epistemological assumptions are more similar than it might appear.

After university in Lyons, Castellio went to Strasbourg in I540, presumably to meet Calvin, who in I 536 had published the first edition of The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Castellio stayed with Calvin briefly (Hunt 1933, 96), later working for him as a preacher in Geneva from I 54 I to I 544 , a period in which two disagreements came to light. Unlike Calvin, Castellio thought of the Song of Solomon as a lascivious poem that was not divinely inspired. And unlike Calvin, he did not agree with the depiction of Christ’s descent into hell in the Apostles’ Creed (Bainton 1963, I49). While the issues may now seem minor, they implicated the authority of the Bible. In calling one of its books immoral, and arguing against the legitimacy of a creed that was based on it, Castellio was willing to challenge what was considered part of the authoritative canon. ${ }^{16}$ In this respect he threatened what R. N. Carew Hunt (1933, 16I) calls “the central principle of the Reformation, the absolute authority for the Bible,” which would have deprived Calvin “of his strongest argument against the Catholics.”

Apparently these matters led Castellio to leave or to be sent away from Geneva (albeit with a letter of recommendation from Calvin; Schaff 1997, 537). Yet despite their differences, Castellio and Calvin agreed that it is difficult for human beings to gain direct access to theological truth. For Calvin ([I559] 1975, 347), simply being human tends to lead to error about theological matters. “In the heavenly mysteries, opinion humanly conceived, even if it does not always give birth to a great heap of errors, is nevertheless the mother of error.” This dark view led him to have even less faith than Castellio that disagreement can be resolved. Castellio ([I 563] 1935, 292) contended that there was a consensus not just among Christians but among all people that there is a God, but Calvin maintained this meants precious little, as people have so many different conceptions of God.

Hence arises that boundless filthy mire of error wherewith the whole earth was filled and covered. For each man’s mind is like a labyrinth, so that it is no wonder that individual nations were drawn aside into various falsehoods; and not only this-but individual men, almost, had their own

gods … an idol or specter in place of God. … Hence one may conclude that the minds of men which thus wander in their search after God are more than stupid and blind in the heavenly mysteries. (Calvin [1559] 1975, 345)

The presence of disagreement, then, suggested to Calvin that even the most basic of theological truths is hard to get right. ${ }^{17}$ Calvin, like Castellio, took disagreement to be sincere, not fake. Even the ancient philosophers disagreed with one another, and they were the “most excellent” of men, who “tried with reason and learning to penetrate into heaven” (ibid.). The “shameful” diversity of opinions among the philosophers suggests that the truth is indeed difficult to ascertain (ibid.). This is the case even though God gave everyone, including the pagan philosophers, an eternal law “inscribed” and “stamped” “on the hearts of all men. … This law is none other than conscience, which is a witness within us of the things which we owe to God, and which shows to us what is good and what is bad, and thus accuses us and holds us guilty, while we are conscious in ourselves that we have not performed our duty” (Calvin 1536, 269-70). The fact of disagreement shows that the human mind has trouble fully comprehending the truth despite the manifest clarity of the eternal law as manifested in conscience. ${ }^{18}$ To remedy human fallibility, God gave us a written law, which is “nothing else but the witness of the natural law,” but is apparently easier for human beings to grasp (ibid., 270). The written law, like the natural law it reflects, comes directly from God and can thus be trusted to be absolute and objective, especially in comparison to the fallibility and subjectivity of human beings.

Calvin ([1559] 1975, 358) acknowledged that there is no “rational proof” that Scripture is the word of God. Its only proof is “the inward testimony of the Spirit” (ibid.). Scripture, then, “has its authority from God, not from the church” (ibid., 354) and not from reason, and one can be certain of this through a form of divine inspiration. Yet even though the testimony of the Spirit affirms the divine origins of Scripture, and even though the written law might be easier to understand than the natural law, the Bible remains difficult to understand. This does not mean that it is unclear, any more than the eternal law is unclear. Rather, the human mind is weak, so correctly understanding God’s word requires preparation.

In this Calvin followed Erasmus, but he suggested a different form of preparation: not reading moral works by the pagans, but reading Calvin’s Institutes. The purpose of the Institutes, he informed readers in a

French edition, was to provide the “key and entrance … to understand holy scripture well and rightly” (Calvin [154I] 2009, 4). “Someone who does not have very much practice in using it needs some guidance and direction to know what to look for in it, in order not to go astray and wander here and there but to keep to a certain path, so as to arrive finally where the Holy Spirit calls him” (ibid., 3). Presumably, the Institutes can clarify the Bible because Calvin himself had received testimony from the Spirit that he had understood the Bible correctly (although there were parts of it, such as the Book of Revelation, that he found mysterious).

While Calvin denied that there is rational proof that the Bible came from God, and while he affirmed that the Bible requires training to understand it, none of this meant, for him, that true theological knowledge is impossible. Rather, it meant that such knowledge is not rational but divine in origin. We have this knowledge when we have faith. Faith, as the testimony of the Holy Spirit, is more certain and more true than reason, which, while given by the Holy Spirit, nevertheless has to work through our limited minds. Castellio criticized this position by distinguishing between knowledge and belief. Faith, according to Castellio (1563, 29I), is nothing but subjective belief: “to believe, and faith is the same thing. … Where knowledge begins faith ends. He who once said, ‘I believe,’ now says, ‘I know’” (ibid.). Yet it is faith, not knowledge, that is a virtue (ibid.), as one shows trust in God when one believes without proof. By contrast, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination required him to argue that faith and knowledge are equivalent. Faith, for Calvin, is a gift from God, and it would be blasphemous to think that this gift produces a mere fallible opinion. Likewise, Calvin held that religion is possible only if its tenets come straight from God. Otherwise, religion, including Scripture, would be based on mere opinion. As he put it in his “Defense of the Orthodox Faith” (his case for the killing of Servetus):

Another fanatic … calls Servetus his best brother and for that reason denies that heretics are to be punished on the ground that each may forge the sense of Scripture to his liking, since the certain truth lies hidden in clouds… What will become of religion? By what marks will the true Church be discerned? What will Christ himself be if the doctrine of piety is uncertain and in suspense? (Calvin [1554] 1935, 267)

Thus, he felt compelled to limit his epistemological pessimism by finding a secure foundation on which to rest true religion: the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Although Calvin asserted that “faith is knowledge,” he also felt compelled to acknowledge the problem of unwarranted false certainty. Even if the truth is accessible to some degree, how can we know whether we have found it? That is, what is the relationship between real knowledge and false “knowledge” (that is, opinion)? A clear and direct relationship between the two is called into question when people are dogmatically certain that what they believe is true, even when it is not.

In response to this problem, Calvin distinguished between “formed” and “unformed” faith ([I559] 1975, 382-98). Formed faith is objective, “higher” knowledge (ibid., 389), justifying certainty; unformed faith is baseless conviction, mere belief. But how can we tell them apart? The issue was particularly acute for him, as he recognized that even those of true faith have moments of doubt. Thus, it is not easy to know when one’s feeling of certainty is based on true knowledge and when it is itself an unjustified belief.

Calvin addressed the issue by suggesting that with the aid of the Holy Spirit, we are able not only to recognize the truth, but to recognize that we recognize it. That is, faith is not simply a type of knowledge; it is also “certainty,” confidence that what is believed is knowledge (Calvin [I559] 1975, 391). The consciences of those who are falsely certain will eventually falter, but for the truly certain, “faith ultimately triumphs” (ibid., 395). The feeling of conviction is more constant when one has the truth than when one has hold of a false belief; the nature of truth is such that it eventually makes itself known by the constancy of its conviction. Thus, when people do not have the truth, their consciences will eventually convict them of hewing to falsehood and their certainty will shrivel. In this way, Calvin painted himself into a position that was fundamentally at odds with his epistemological pessimism. Even though, in his doubt that even the existence of God is rationally self-evident, he began from a stance that was even more epistemologically pessimistic than Castellio’s position, he ended up agreeing with Franck that durable conviction is a sign of having ascertained the truth.

Castellio argued, by contrast, that the feeling of conviction produced even by false faith is so strong and constant that the likes of Servetus are willing to martyr themselves for the sake of an error, so certitude cannot be trusted. If “to believe … is to give credence to what is told[,] whether true or false,” and if “sometimes the false is believed no less than the true” (Castellio [1563] 1935, 292), then we are unlikely to know whether our subjective convictions are true or false. Indeed, there is no difference of

conviction between the persecutor and the persecuted. Castellio therefore criticized Calvin for thinking that he, Calvin, was in possession of the truth simply because he was certain that he had the truth-and, indeed, for concluding that this certainty entitled him to support the death sentence for those who disagreed with him. In this, he suggested, Calvin had failed to learn the lesson of history, including the history of religious conflict since Luther upended the old order:

Do we think that we have sufficient knowledge to read the secrets of hearts which Paul said would not be revealed before the day of the Lord? … May it not happen that in killing such men we kill also some of the godly just as it has always happened hitherto? If we say that we cannot make a mistake, we are saying only what those who killed the godly have always said. … The Jews erred in persecuting Christ and the apostle. The gentiles erred who persecuted the Christians. The pope erred in persecuting Lutherans and Zwinglians. Henry, king of England, erred in killing Papists, Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptsists. Luther erred when he called the Zwinglians devils and damned them to hell. Will the Zwinglians and Calvinists alone be free from error? (Ibid., 278-89)

Given this perspective, Castellio had little choice but to see resolutions of disagreement as boiling down to the question, “Who will be judge?” (ibid., 28I). There is no outward or inward sign that would allow us to identify which of the certainties that have motivated religious disagreement are unjustified, for all religious disputants are sincerely convinced that they are right.

All sects hold their religion as established by the Word of God and call it certain… Calvin says he is certain, and they say the same… Calvin wishes to be judge, and so do they. Who will be judge? Who made Calvin judge of all the sects, that he alone should kill? How can he prove that he alone knows? He has the Word of God, so have they. If the matter is so certain, to whom is it certain? To Calvin? (Ibid., 28I-82)

It is unlikely, of course, that Calvin thought that he was judge on his own authority, as opposed to the authority of Scripture. But Castellio argued that Scripture should not be an absolute authority when it comes to matters about which people disagree:

Why does no one write a book to show that homicide and adultery are crimes? Because this is certain. Why does no one suffer himself to be burned for a denial that Scripture is true? Because everyone is agreed on

this point. Why, then, do some men, who accept and revere Scripture, suffer themselves to be killed on account of rebaptism and the like? Is it not because these questions are controversial? And if Calvin is so sure, why does he not wait until others see as well? (Ibid., 282)

Given the obscurity of Scripture, attempts to assign intellectual authority to its dictates in place of the thoughts of fallible human beings must fail. “Anabaptists are commanded to be killed not on the authority of Scripture, but of Zwingli” (ibid., 274).

III. DISAGREEMENT, TOLERANCE, AND TOLERATION

Calvin, however, had his own take on the history of religious conflict. As Hunt (1933, 218) puts it, Calvin, along with the other Protestant leaders, did not “believe that because truth was great it would of necessity prevail. Indeed, their whole experience inclined them to the contrary opinion. What had prevailed for more than a thousand years was not truth but error, and had it not been for themselves, it might have prevailed for ever.” It was precisely Calvin’s pessimism about people’s propensity to discern the truth on their own that led him to think that toleration is an unwise policy.

Calvin’s position confirms Tuck’s observation that epistemological pessimism does not, in itself, entail toleration. But it does seem to lead to tolerance, as was also exemplified by Calvin. He sympathized not just with the excellent but misguided classical philosophers, but with Servetus, whose sincerity Calvin never questioned. It is both strange and chilling that, in contrast, Franck, who opposed all persecution, tended to impute foul motives to the persecutors, which is to say that he was more intolerant of them than Calvin was of the man whose death he justified. Yet eons of religious error suggested to Calvin that he needed to impose the truth, by force if necessary, while he had the chance.

This may seem, but is not, hypocritical. So long as one’s pessimism is not radically skeptical, one will feel entitled to hold opinions, at least sometimes. Even if one holds one’s opinions in awareness of their fallibility, they remain truth claims, and truth claims about important questions may justify political enforcement. This is the situation in which we presently find ourselves, at the dawn of what may be a new age of quasi-religious conflict, in which political polarization seems to be spiraling out of control.

The parties to polarized disputes think (of course) that they know the truth, so it is natural for them to want to impose it. Castellio would have responded by asking “who should judge?” and by advising the disputants to reflect on their own fallibility. Like Erasmus, he suggested the very presence of dispute suggests that the topic in question is a difficult one, to which clear answers are unlikely to be available. But there is another way of viewing these disputes-the one that tends to be taken by polarized disputants. In this view, the truths defended by one’s own side are so glaringly obvious that those on the other side must be evil to deny them (or claim to deny them). (This, in part, was Franck’s view.) Our political opponents are mendacious, not just mistaken. They “spew misinformation” rather than being inadvertently ignorant of what we take to be the truth, which we do not truly acknowledge as difficult to know.

This leaves us with only an abstract commitment to toleration as a policy, unanchored by a deeper commitment to tolerance as an attitude appropriate to our political opponents. This abstract commitment is vulnerable to collapse when the stakes are high enough. Should a “right” to believe or say anything license the spread of misinformation about pressing matters of public health, or hateful thoughts and words? It is difficult to maintain that it should, lacking a theological warrant for the sanctity of the inner Spirit.

The fallibilism with which Castellio approached theological matters can robustly ground tolerance as an attitude, which may lead to toleration as a policy. This type of fallibilism is predicated on the view that it is hard to know the truth, despite the fact that, of necessity, everyone considers their opinions to be true. If truth is distinct from conviction, one might be sincerely wrong even if one is convinced that one is right. This applies both to one’s opponents and, of course, to oneself. Castellian fallibilism is reflexive in allowing that the strength of one’s convictions do not certify the truth of one’s beliefs. In urging us to distance ourselves from our certitudes, fallibilism prompts the thought that, even when they err, our opponents may be good people who simply haven’t been exposed to whatever intellectual influences have persuaded us of what we think of as the truth.

Neither fallibilism nor the tolerance that it encourages, however, lead ineluctably to toleration as a policy. When, as always in politics, one or another view has to be imposed, our beliefs about the truth have to override our awareness of the fallibility of these beliefs, and our awareness of

the fallibility of our opponents merely explains why they are wrong. And in some cases, it will be necessary to go beyond enacting a policy that they wrongly think should be opposed; it may also be necessary to silence them. The fact that we acknowledge that the opinions thereby suppressed might be right cannot stand in the way. Intolerant policies can be just, at least in principle.

But it is easy to overestimate the frequency with which this is the case. The fallibilism that leads to tolerance also serves to caution us against the possibility of such overestimation: the possibility of our false certitude. And the caution that we may be wrong can be legitimately strengthened if we ask ourselves if there are not rational explanations for the beliefs of those with whom we disagree. This is a form of caution that is all too frequently missing in contemporary politics.

NOTES

I. In the eleventh century, Bishop Wazo of Liège had argued for toleration on skeptical grounds, by interpreting the parable of the tares to mean that persecutors may not know who is really a heretic (a tare), and might thus mistakenly harm true Christians (the wheat) (Moore 1975, 22-24). In the fourteenth century, Boccaccio’s Decameron (third story of the first day) used a different parable-a father who, before he dies, gives each of his three children a ring, only one of which is genuine-to convey a message of toleration in light of human uncertainty about which of the three Abrahamic religions is true. Both of these pleas for toleration on pessimistic epistemological grounds are briefBishop Wazo’s argument takes place in a two-page letter to the Bishop of Châlon (reproduced in Moore 1975), and Bocaccio’s story runs to less than three pages-and are not systematic.
2. Strictly speaking, Servetus was killed for being a false prophet, not a heretic, since the death penalty for heresy had been revoked in Geneva roughly twenty years earlier (Hunt 1933, 217). His death sentence was decided by the Geneva Council, not by Calvin himself (although almost certainly with his endorsement) (ibid.).
3. Nevertheless, Castellio often relied on select Scriptural passages to prove his point.
4. See Titus 3:IO.
5. Ernst Troeltsch (1931, 763), in contrast, concludes that Castellio’s toleration was “not the toleration of skepticism or of opportunism, but the tolerant spirit of mysticism, which regards every kind of dogmatic formulation as merely approximate knowledge.”
6. A view he may have borrowed from Franck.
7. “Nam et natura homini rationem indidit, qua verum a falso, bonum a malo, iustum ab inuisto discernat, et doctrina, ratione duce, naturam confirmat docetque vivendum esse secundum naturam et, hoc qui faciunt, iustos, qui contra, iniustos pronunciat.”
8. Castellio saw ratio (reason) as identical with sermo (speech), for ratio is eternal and internal speech (sermo or oratio), and both refer to the Greek logos (Castellio

[1563] 1981, 66). Thus, for example, in his Latin translation of the New Testament, Castellio translated logos not as verbum (as Jerome had done) but sermo (Castellio [1551] 1697, Novi foederis, I39). Guggisberg 2003, 225-26, provides a brief overview of several competing views of what Castellio means by “reason,” without adjudicating among them. Elisabeth Feist Hersch (1981, 5-6) suggests that ratio should be translated not as “reason” but “critical intellect.”
9. “Ne quidem cogitari potest ullum aliud instrumentum ulla de re iudicandi homini a natura datum quam sensus et intellectus, adeo, ut, si haec homini sustuleris, omne omni de re iudicium sustuleris.”
10. Rummel 2000, ch. 3, provides an account of the negative reception of the ars dubitandi in the sixteenth century.
II. Castellio’s work may have affected the thinking of later figures, such as Dirck Coornhert, and it was particularly influential in the 1604 dispute between Jacob Arminius and Franciscus Gomarus in the United Provinces, and during the Remonstrant and Counter-Remonstrant controversy from around 1610 to 1620 (Guggisberg 2003, 242-43).
12. However, Troeltsch (1931, 762) asserts (without much argumentation) that Castellio was “never an Erasmian.”
13. While Rummel $(2000,56)$ suggests that Erasmus’s skepticism was not the Ciceronian one of seeking probability rather than certainty, Erasmus often uses the criterion of probability rather than certainty (e.g., Erasmus [1524] 1961, 16, 30, 76, 94; [1526] 1999, 210-11, 223).
14. While Paradoxa was written in German, it begins by listing five statements in both Latin and German and presents each paradox in both tongues. Without modernizing the German, the three I quoted are: “Scriptura liber septem signaculis clausus, ob signatumque aenigma/Die Schrifft ist ein verschlossen Büch mit siben sigil”; “Litera Scripturae Antichristi gladius, occidit Christum/Der Büchstab der Schrifft des Antichrists schwert tödt Christum”; and “Scriptura sine luce, vita & interprete spiritus, obscura lucerna & occidens litera/Die Schrifft ist on das liecht, leben und außlegung des gaists ein todter Büchstab und finstere latern.”
15. “Haereses & sectae ex secta litera scripturae/Netzerey unnd Secten auß dem Büchstaben der Schrifft.”
16. This was a departure from Erasmus, who thought that the seemingly immoral parts of the Bible have to be read metaphorically; it is more in line with a Spiritualist view of the Bible. Perhaps by 1544 Castellio had encountered writings by the Spiritualists, and was influenced by their looser attitude towards Scripture. Ozment (1973, 198-99) contends that Jean Bauhin and David Joris introduced Castellio to mystical writings when Castellio was in Basle, which means some time after 1544. This, however, does not preclude Castellio from having encountered some of the Spiritualist writings earlier. Franck, for example, who died in 1543, published most of his work in the 1530 s.
17. Calvin ([1559] 1975, 347) also did not see consensus as a guarantee of truth, as “the custom of the city or the agreement of tradition is too weak and frail a bond of piety.” It is not clear, however, whether he thought that the consensus only of custom or tradition is insufficient, such that other types of consensus, achieved by reason or revelation, might indicate a convergence on the truth. He wrote, for example, that “there was no pure and approved religion, founded upon common understanding alone” (ibid.), suggesting that if a religious consensus were founded upon understanding, it might be trustworthy.

18. While Calvin often speaks of the eternal and written law as being “clear” and “manifest,” he means that they are clear and manifest in themselves, i.e., to God, not to human beings.

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