Friday, February 28, 2025

It is the 28th of February 2025, Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

It’s a Friday! It’s that strangest of 28th’s- the last of February, and I will use this as an excuse to reflect a little (and that means I got to read a lot more) on one of my favorite historical characters. In fact, when I was reminded that today, the 28th of February was the birthday of the great French Essayist Michel de Montaigne (say it as you wish) I was certain I had covered this character on the nearly 2,000 shows here on the Almanac. And I had, exactly 5 years ago, when I was still stuffing two characters into each show.

He was Michel de Montaigne, born on this day in Montaigne in 1533, that is the south of France near Bordeaux. He would become a magistrate, he is a counselor in the local government, where he meets Etienne de La Boetie, they will be fast friends and Michel’s first work will be a publication of Etienne’s works. But Etienne dies young, depriving Michel of his great companion, his later works are in many ways one side of the conversation he used to have with his dear friend.

Michel would marry, his father would die and leave him the estate, but all of this was, in some way, cluttering his goal of better understanding himself and the world he lived in. And it was a revolutionary world, the Reformation began, and while he was a faithful son of Rome, some in his family would join the Huguenot (Protestant) party, and he himself would be associated with both the Catholic king Charles IX, as well as the Protestant Henry IV.

Amidst the furor of the Reformations he would famously build a tower on his property where he would begin his famous “Essays”- he invented the word- a kind of portmanteau of the words for “weigh” and “try”- like his old conversations with Etienne they were not meant to be the final word, but rather explorations. And there was nothing he would not write about- from education, solitude and books to cannibals and thumbs and laughter.

If I can give a shoutout from this last one, one of my all-time favorite quotes from Montaigne reminds us “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness”.

But if I were to just quote Montaigne for the rest of this show you might accuse me of what he himself said he did- “Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

But to best understand this Christian skeptic… that’s right, he belongs in a small but important category of early modern thinkers who believed in God and divine revelation but wanted to strip away as much as they could find that was extraneous- he wrote “What do I know?”… but not as a complete skeptic of a non-sequitur. He wanted to know “what do I know?” Because as he would later write “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”

Prefiguring the likes of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, Montaigne believed that we were inventors of gods and divinities and theologies… “Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

Theologically his most important essay is likely on the philosopher Raymond De Sebond- like many of his essays it will begin straightforward- a defense of Sebond’s natural theology (doing theology through nature/natural sciences) but it becomes much more a call for faith and humility in the face of those who he believed were overconfident- or in his way he would say “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”

He is a “skeptic” in that small fraternity of Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers who could question received knowledge without throwing all knowledge out, it was asking “what do I know” and attempting to play with both faith and reason. While he would become popular with the likes of Descartes, so too would he amongst the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau and even Nietzsche, such that he has become suspect amongst some. But we do best to remember him as a great “essayist” the first of his kind and as a Christian wrestling with problems of the mind and how it relates to the divine. He would die in 1592 amidst the French Wars of Religion, born on this day in 1533, he was 59 years old.  

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and more fun from Acts 10:

10 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2 He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3 One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”

4 Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.

The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

7 When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. 8 He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 28th of February 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who affirms that man cannot make a worm, but he can do the dance move, he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who was sure the most certain sign of wisdom was cleaning the lint trap in the dryer… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.