The Skepticism of Michel de Montaigne by Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez

Author:Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Many of these skeptical themes were later taken up and Christianized by St. Paul. Paul’s thought was deeply rooted in the traditions of the Old Testament and in the articulation of his Christian skepticism Paul frequently made use of older formulations. The main feature of Paul’s epistemology is that genuine knowledge is bestowed only by the grace of God through the mediation of Christ. Man is incapable of arriving at this truth through the exercise of the intellect alone.24 The only true knowledge, and the only true happiness, is through faith in Christ and in the divinely revealed teachings of the Prophets and Apostles. Paul was as or more suspicious of the “wisdom of this world” than the authors of Wisdom, Job and Ecclesiastes and frequently contrasted this fallible human wisdom with the revealed and certain preachings of the Apostles. For Paul, man can know with certainty only what God has revealed to him, all else is subject to doubt, and all of man’s other pretensions to knowledge, ultimately, are signs of his pride and his true ignorance. Philosophy, and the traditions of man, are nothing more than vain deceits. Man’s proper study and knowledge is God, and what man knows of God he knows only through the grace of Christ, the Living God. The thorny question of man’s debt to God, and of the precise nature or mechanism of salvation in Paul may be sidestepped here, for although there are clearly connections between Paul’s conception of knowledge, faith and grace and his teachings regarding salvation, the nature of his skepticism can be gleaned from an examination of his more straightforward epistemological pronouncements without reference to his statements on soteriology.25 Some of Paul’s most skeptical remarks are to be found in the first letter to the Corinthians and in the letter to the Colossians.

Paul was skeptical of the wisdom of this world and of the vain deceits of philosophy. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul said that “it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?’”.26 He said that God has “made foolish the wisdom of this world”.27 He contrasted this earthly wisdom with the teachings of the Apostles, saying that “for seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe”.28 The wisdom of this world cannot know God. God can only be known through special revelation. Paul tells us not to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are wise and urges those of us who think that we are to unlearn our supposed wisdom, “for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God”.29 He tells us that it is written, “I will catch the wise in their own craftiness”, and “the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain”.

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