Those who taught God may deceive

[NaphtaliPress]

In one of his sermons, James Durham alludes to those at that time that were teaching God may lie and deceive. He does not identify anyone or group beyond that; any ideas who he is talking about?

And to say (as some daring men of late have done) that God may deceive, if He will, is not only of harsh sound in Christian ears,....
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[Ask Mr. Religion]

Tricky to determine.

I generally start with Google's Ngram viewer and set the dates sometime around the publication in question:

https://goo.gl/NghYOi

Then at the bottom of the graph select some date ranges to see what texts are shown to identify authors that may be known to support the question at hand.

Perhaps your greater knowledge of the authors of the period in question will provide a clue.

Alternatively, use Google to search with predefined date ranges that must be entered in Julian calendar format:

"God may deceive" daterange:2312752-2326267

This may pinpoint something that jumps out at you.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Thanks; I was trying to do the latter; but wasn't seeing it. Durham is preaching in the 1650s and may predate Henry More but perhaps not all the Cambridge Platonists?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Looks like More only had about four publications in Durham's time. Only one of those looked promising:

• An Antidote against Atheism, or an Appeal to the Naturall Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether there be not a God, 1653 : 2nd edit. 'corrected and enlarged: With an Appendix thereunto annexed,' 1655.

Using the date range search above, the entry on the first page:A general dictionary, historical and critical: in which a


The 1739 dictionary contains some quotes from men making statements that God can deceive that are then disputed. You have to page backwards in the book from the search hit to see these, e.g., pg 733:

Mr. de Labadir, who, in the name of the Walloon Church of Middleburg, prosecuted Mr. de Wolzogue in the Walloon Synod, dared to accuse him of heterodoxy, for saying that God could not have an intention to deceive.

EDIT: scratch that, as it appears Wolzogue's book was published in 1667. Will probably have to download the dictionary in question and search it out more carefully to see if there are some hints prior to around 1658.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Could this be a reference to Descartes and the deceiver argument in his Meditations (Latin 1641) and works interacting with it? Philosophy is more than a bit beyond my study.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Yes. I assumed as much but thought Descartes was not within Durham's "men of late", so, like you, I was looking for men (such as these) contemporary with Durham who would be taking up Descartes' argument (below). Smith, Culverwell, Cudworth and More were among the first Englishmen to read Descartes, op sit.

1. We believe that there is an all powerful God who has created us and who is all powerful.

2. He has it in his power to make us be deceived even about matters of mathematical knowledge which we seem to see clearly.

therefore,

3. It is possible that we are deceived even in our mathematical knowledge of the basic structure of the world.

For those who would hold (as Descartes himself will later) that God would not deceive us, Descartes introduces an evil demon instead. And so on, per http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dcarg.htm

 

[NaphtaliPress]

So who actually holds to the view that God may indeed deceive us? The platonists; or are they arguing against that?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

After extracting the Rimini entry from Bayle's Vol. 8 dictionary (linked previously and attached below), I tracked this down:

See the entry here on John Labadie, 1610-1674, (a Jesuit flirting with Jansenism and Calvinism) starting on page 315, then go to page 320, finally to pages 323-326. Wikipedia entry on Labadie here. Seems that the Labadists could be those Durham had in mind.

View attachment Rimini.pdf

[Cautionary note to the reader: Bayle's dictionary volumes are interesting research material for various topics, not so much for the entries, but for the notes he adds to them as he proceeds, from a skeptic's perspective, to wail against anything that he saw as religious intolerance.]

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Not recall much French I'm not sure of the date Labadie's view could have come to Durham's attention. It may be Hobbes or simply the whole discussion interacting with Descartes?
http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/Descartes.M3.God.htm I need to date these citations to be sure but they seem to show a wider debate keyed to Descartes? http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/Descartes.M3.God.htm

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

After leaving the SoJ, Labadie became a reformed church member in 1650, so I can speculate Durham may have known of his views.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I need to tie down if his views were published to be able to infer or suggest that; so I'll have to revisit this when I finalize my note. Need to see if a work by Labadie promoting this view was published early to mid 1650s; Durham died in 1658. I may have misread but the actual controversy Labadie sparked by charging another minister on NOT affirming this error was in the 1660s.