Bishop Joseph Butler

While we have already considered the complete naturalization of theology in the form of Deism, it is important to note that tendency to appeal more to the book of nature over the book of scripture in search of God and His will was by no means isolated to those who rejected Christianity. In this post we will see how this environment set the stage for Bishop Joseph Butler’s argument that human nature, including what those things which “happened” to, according to God’s design, produce pleasure and pain in us, were also expressions of God’s will for us and thus a ground for human morality.

Following Newton’s example, the new philosophers saw themselves as learning the designs and purposes of God by way of their studies of the natural world. Discovering the laws of nature was considered to be a process of discovering laws which God had instituted and therefore desired. In other words, science was considered to be an investigation into not only the “mind” of God, as Stephan Hawking would later put it, but rather it was an investigation into the will of God. Indeed, the power and majesty of God was seen to be not so much in His miraculous interventions which the Biblical record attested to, but rather, following Spinoza’s lead, in the harmony and beauty of the laws which nature is seen by every person to follow.

Such a change of view regarding nature in general was bound to influence the common view of mankind’s nature as well. It should be kept in mind that prior to the 17th century the widely accepted view of man’s nature was pessimistic to say the least. According to Christian tradition there were two forms of happiness which man could attain to: blessed bliss (beatitudo) and earthly pleasure (felicitas), the latter being but a corrupt and fallen imitation of the former. If a person allowed the latter to govern their lives and the decisions they made in it, to that same extent they were seen to be a fallen and sensual individual, led by the desires of the flesh. Such a view, however, had changed by the 18th century, and felicitas and the mechanisms by which it was attained were seen to be chosen and ordained of God, and therefore highly commendable.

Doing that which produced pleasure had come to be seen as “natural.” Of course at this point we need to tease apart the (at least) three possible meanings of “natural.” The first meaning, and least normative is that something is not supernatural, but is instead a part of the natural world. The second meaning which can be ascribed to “natural” is that something is the statistical norm, for instance it is natural for dogs to have four legs and unnatural, but not impossible, for a dog to have only three legs. The third and most important meaning for our purposes is meant as a description of one’s essence, especially in how it differs for the nature of other things. For instance it is part of man’s nature to speak and reason, while it is part of a fish’s nature to swim.

It is at this point that Bishop Butler steps on the scene, arguing that the third “natural” has a normative aspect to it, due to its having been purposefully determined and designed by God. Accordingly, it was purposefully designed by God that happiness should be available to us in this life and that the mean by which happiness is attain was also purposefully designed by God. Thus, it is in our pursuit of happiness, a quest which was seen to be ordained by God’s determination of our nature’s which impel us, that we are led to the good.

Thus, in Butler we can see a radical departure from the pessimistic views of human nature advocated by both Calvin and Hobbes as well as traditional Christianity (born in sin and shaped in iniquity). Indeed, Butler sees self-love as being a virtue both harmonious with benevolence and worthy of cultivation, for how can we love others as we love our selves if we do not love ourselves? Butler saw there to be no inconsistency or contradiction at all in our interests of duty and our interests of personal happiness, for he saw happiness as being a God-given right.

While Bishop Butler himself was obviously not a deist, it should not be at all hard to see how the deists had little difficulty in reconciling their religious views with Butler’s claims, at least those which we have considered so far. It should be noted, in all fairness to the Bishop, that he saw the Christian doctrine of reward and punishment in the afterlife as both reinforcing the happiness which we should seek, as well as a corrective to any and all failures on the part of virtue in this life to produce happiness.

Perhaps of greatest consequence for Americans is the influence which these views produced upon the deist Thomas Jefferson. While Locke, as we have seen, held that all men had the God-given right to life, liberty and property, it was only after Bishop Butler that Thomas Jefferson would write:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”