16
June 1752 A.D. (CoE)
Bishop Joseph Butler Died in Bath, UK
Graves, Dan. “Bishop Butler Died in Bath.”
Christianity.com. May 2007.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/bishop-butler-died-in-bath-11630259.html.
Accessed 3 May 2014.
Joseph Butler was in Bath. He
hoped that the natural hot springs would do him good, for he was not feeling at
all well. Just in case the remedy should prove unsuccessful, he gave orders
that his speculative, unfinished manuscripts be burned.
A Bishop of the Church of
England, Butler had written the most famous apologetic of his age. This was the
Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the
Constitution and Course of Nature. A religious philosophy known as Deism agreed
that God had made the world but denied he had used prophets, visions, angels or
revelations to teach men about himself. Deists attacked the Bible, saying it
had imperfections that proved it wasn't from the hand of God. Butler's book was
written to answer the Deists.
Centuries earlier, the Greek
theologian Origen had said, "Those who believe the author of nature to be
also the author of scripture must expect to find in scripture the same sorts of
difficulties that they find in nature." Butler's Analogy used Origen's
argument.
For example, a Deist might
complain that scripture says God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generation. How could that be fair? Butler
replied that nature does the same thing. To give a modern example, a pregnant
woman takes LSD. Her daughter is born with deformities and in turn she gives
birth to another defective child either because of carrying LSD-mutated genes
or because of labor difficulties owing to her own malformation. It was
unreasonable to accept nature as coming from God but to deny the revelation
that affirmed the very principle that we see in nature. The point is, our
decisions do affect other people and so we should endeavor to make decisions
that take into account the interests of others.
This is just what the scripture
teaches, although it adds grace to the equation--God often breaks the cycle of
nature and sets things right. The natural equivalent of grace would be for the
daughter or grandchild to receive medical attention that corrects the problem.
Butler argued that nature itself
suggests man is immortal. Some things make sense only if this life is a
probationary period. The existence of conscience is a strong support for the
Christian claim that there is a moral law, he said. The Analogy was a cool and
reasoned piece of writing, so much so that Butler scarcely discussed sin or
Hell.
Did Butler get infected with the
disease he was trying to cure? After he met John Wesley, he condemned "the
pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Spirit" as
"a horrid thing--a very horrid thing." He also described revelation
is a "horrid thing," which seems a peculiar statement for a defender
of Divine revelation to make! But, while acknowledging that the great doctrines
of Christianity cannot be proven by philosophy,
Butler showed that Christianity has enough probability to make its acceptance a
reasonable response.
Butler died, after all, while at
Bath, on this day, June 16, 1752. Just as he had requested, his manuscripts
were burned.
Bibliography:
1. Bagehot, Walter. Literary
studies. London, Dent; New York, Dutton, 1911.
2. Butler, Joseph. Analogy of
Religion. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856.
3. "Joseph Butler
(1692-1752)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/butler.htm
4. Various internet and encyclopedia
articles.
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