Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and its Intellectual Background

All of a sudden the Lisbon Earthquake ("Quake" or "Earthquake") of 1755 is "in" again. Several articles in a recent number of the European Review, for example, talk about various 18th century reactions to that event. This focus on the Earthquake makes sense, especially in the context of global disasters like the Christmas tsunami in SE Asia in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And, if Americans keep building expensive properties on cliffsides and on the ocean's shore, we can be assured that costly disasters will continue to happen. The purpose of these several essays is to set the intellectual context or background for understanding the Lisbon Quake and its aftermath, to understand a few facts about the Quake and its results, and then to speak briefly about the literary jousting between two of the most visible writers of the time, Voltaire and Rousseau, as a result of the Quake. Much information about the Quake is online, but I hope to put together these three subjects in a way that hasn't yet been presented online.

Understanding 18th Century Europe's "Mind"

The Quake occurred in a time of considerable intellectual ferment in Europe, and it provoked the issue of theodicy, or how one was to understand the disaster in light of God's purposes for the world. We need to begin on this point because it seems rather foreign to many in our world today. Global explanations for phenomena in mid-18th century Europe still had to take God into consideration. It might be that God was quickly dismissed or shown the door, but God had to be dealt with. God to the 18th century was like economics to the 21st. Can you imagine ANY kind of disaster today without people trying to assess the economic effects of it? Well, 18th century Europeans didn't first add up the damage and go to the insurance companies, which were few and far between. It cleaned up, rebuilt, and, as it was doing these things, asked where God was in all of this. In order to understand exactly how cultured Europeans talked about God at this time, however, we need to understand three things: (1) the nature of traditional belief (Catholic and Protestant) at the time; (2) the emergence of a theology of "reason" or "natural religion" emerging in the late 17th/early 18th century; and (3) the philosophical influence of Leibniz, whose theory on optimism (a word first coined in French in 1737) would receive its most famous English-language instantiation in Alexander Pope's 1733-34 Essay on Man. Let's take these influences one at a time.

(1) Traditional Theology

We underestimate the power of traditional theology and religion in the 18th century to our peril. Though scholars write books about this time being the "Age of Reason" in Europe, they give the wrong impression if they think that traditional theology was in the minority. It wasn't. It was the majority belief--by a long way. In this regard, Western Europe was divided in mid-18th century between Protestants and Catholics. Though it is a gross oversimplification, the former could be broadly divided into the Reformed and the Lutheran traditions, while the latter had several inner debates, the most famous of which was between the Jansenists and Jesuits (captured brilliantly in the Pascal's 17th century work Provincial Letters). The point to be made, however, is that all traditional Christians at the time would assert that God not only created the world but was actively involved in its management. The traditional Christian doctrine to describe this is the providence of God. Using Scriptural language, God not only knows when the sparrow falls, but He also numbers the hairs on our head. A good and brief expression of the doctrine of God's providence, which would be affirmed by all traditional Christians, comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith, the basic confessional document of the Reformed Churches. From Ch. 5 of that document:

"God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy."

The reason the 1755 Quake would cause such a problem for traditional believers, then, was because it directly challenged this doctrine of divine providence. Or, to put it slightly differently, if one wanted to continue to assert a traditional view of divine providence, you might have major questions to answer about divine goodness. This, then, was the first influence swimming around in the European intellectual background.

"Reasonable" Christianity

The second force flexing its intellectual muscle at the time of the Quake was the emphasis on a "reasonable" or "natural" Christianity, supplemented by the hard-headed deism or inclinations to atheism of the multi-volume French Encylopedie, published over 21 years beginning in 1751. The three leading English-language writers on the subject were John Locke, Matthew Tindal, and John Toland. Locke, who contributed massively to many areas of thought, wrote a small book entitled The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). The significant point stressed by Locke is not that Christianity and its truth can be discovered by reason but that it is compatible with reason. The revelation of God, miracles, prophecy, the incarnation--all of these things were, when you really think about it, "reasonable" beliefs.

By so arguing, however, Locke was subtly changing the terms of the traditional debate. Whereas traditional Christians wouldn't deny the power of human reason, they would emphasize the divine revelatory work, especially in Christ, the Bible and the tradition of the Church. When Locke said that Christianity was a "reasonable" religion, he was opening he door to a future thinker who would use "reason" to be the judge of what was good or bad in Christianity. That is, once you bring reason to the front and center of religion ("Christianity is reasonable"), reason can easily become the criterion of truth. Thus, a century later, Thomas Jefferson could not only follow Locke's philosophy with great eagerness in penning the Declaration, but he would also be influenced by Locke's emphasis on reason and publish his own (Jefferson's, that is) expurgated version of the Gospels, with all the unreasonable stuff (like miracles and teachings about Hell), excised. "Reason," therefore was in the air, and Christianity was not only a reasonable religion but, eventually, it had to conform to what 18th century people thought was reasonable.

Well, I still am not finished on this subject, so, take a deep breath, and let's continue.

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