Abstract

This chapter re-examines the status and role, in Bayle’s reflection, of the dualistic objections to the goodness of a monotheistic God. Bayle’s conclusion that these objections are insoluble by reason alone has been taken as an indication that his aim was to undermine an essential tenet of biblical revelation, with the result that his turn to faith to solve the problem of the existence of evil rings hollow. A closer examination of the historical context and logic of these objections, however, reveals that the charge of dualism (especially Manichaeism) was commonly leveled against the Calvinist doctrine of predestination by Catholics and other Protestant denomina tions throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On a purely philosophical level, Bayle could have drawn the dualistic objections he needed from Plutarch, whom he knew well and quotes in the same discussions. If he invokes the ghosts of Mani and Zoroaster in his turn, it is to prove that the accusation of Manichaeism directed against Calvinist orthodoxy can be reversed against the attackers. The opponents’ own answer to the problem of evil, which in all its variants rests on the responsibility of the human will, does not solve the problem and exposes them no less than the Calvinists to the charge of making God the author of sin. This strategy is the reason why Bayle places so much emphasis on the question of free will in these discussions. His intention, however, is not to draw out this kind of mutual finger-pointing, but, on the contrary, to prove that these controversies are sterile and endless, and to suppress them as they do more harm than good to Christianity.