Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution

James Eglinton, George Harinck

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780567667441
• eBook ISBN: 9780567656650
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

The French Revolution was the scene of much intellectual and social upheaval. Its impact touched a wide range of subjects: the relationship of the church to the state, social relationships, science, literature, fashion, philosophy and theology. Although the French Revolution's momentum was felt across Europe and North America, it met a particularly interesting response in the Netherlands, at that time the scene of a burgeoning neo-Calvinist movement. In that context, the likes of Groen van Prinsterer, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck responded to the French Revolution's ideals and influence in a variety of intellectual and practical ways.This book approaches that Dutch response from a range of historical and theological perspectives, and in so doing explores the relationship between the French Revolution and the development of neo-Calvinism. Beginning with historical portraits of Bavinck and Kuyper in relation to the Revolution, the perspectives offered also include, amongst others, the place of multilingualism in neo-Calvinism and the Revolution, neo-Calvinist and Revolutionary approaches to fashion, a dialogue between Kuyperian theology and Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy, and a contemporary neo-Calvinist critique of French laïcité. This book forms part of a wider Project neo-Calvinism supported by the Theologische Universiteit Kampen and the VU University Amsterdam.

Chapter 3

FROM BABEL TO PENTECOST VIA PARIS AND AMSTERDAM: MULTILINGUALISM IN NEO-CALVINIST AND REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT

James Eglinton

I Introduction

An area of discomfort often shared by Protestant Christian and French Revolutionary alike is that of multilingualism. Protestant Christians have often struggled to be reconciled to multilingualism as something inherently good. The French Revolution was a movement that attacked linguistic diversity, and instead imposed one language upon the French population. This chapter will explore the negative views on multilingualism found in revolutionary and (much) Protestant thought, and will contrast them with the positive defence of multilingualism offered by the Dutch neo-Calvinist theologians Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, a defence offered in response to the Revolution’s policy of monolingualism.

II Protestant linguistic consciousness

Genesis 11, the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, has historically exerted much influence on the ways many Protestants approach the issues of mono- and multilingualism.1 In Genesis 11, God judged the apparently monolingual Babelites by confusing their common tongue, thus scattering them across the earth. The factor of divine judgement, here associated with a movement from mono- to multilingualism, seems to have become fixed in much Protestant consciousness in associating multilingualism with sin and confusion, and monolingualism with pre-judgement ideals. Within this common consciousness, all post-Babel multilingualism is viewed as a continuation of this curse.

Empirical description of this ‘cultural consciousness’ is, of course, particularly difficult: Protestantism is not a univocal movement with a central organizational structure and a fully unified set of beliefs. Charting the beliefs held by individual Protestants is inherently problematic in that regard. In talking of commonly held Protestant beliefs on multilingualism, there is little choice but to make some recourse to anecdotal evidence. As scientific studies of beliefs regarding linguistics held by Protestant Christians are far from abundant, it is perhaps more fruitful to focus on the various factors responsible for the creation of the cultural consciousness in question. These can be charted somewhat more accurately, and go some way to demonstrating why many Protestants regard all linguistic diversity as sinful.

Such a negative view of multilingualism, of course, finds a place in Christian thought long before the advent of Protestantism. Isidore of Seville (c. 540–636) is generally credited with the standard account of linguistic development supported throughout Christendom until the early modern era.2 In this account, Hebrew was the original language given by God to Adam; only Hebrew was spoken until Babel, where God created new languages as a judgement upon the Babelites. In the myriad of languages descended from the new languages made at Babel, Isidore claimed that three retained a special connection to God – Hebrew, Greek and Latin – and that both sacred and vulgar versions of each of these could be found.

The obvious basis for the belief that God’s original design for human culture was monolingual, of course, is found in the seemingly clear statement of global monolingualism found in Gen. 11.1 (‘The whole world spoke but one language’). Although the Hebrew word here rendered ‘earth’ (‘èrèts) has a broad semantic range (perhaps better translated in Gen. 1-11 as ‘the land’, rather than ‘the planet’),3 and the full phrase found in Gen. 11.1a, kol ha’èrèts, might be more accurately (idiomatically) translated as ‘everybody’ (thus referring to the totality of a people group, rather than a geographical space),4 the practice of translating kol ha’èrèts as ‘the whole earth’ is almost universal in English Bible translation.5 The noted English-language exception is the Wycliffe Bible, which renders Gen. 11.1 as, ‘Forsooth (all) the land was of one language, and of the same speech.’6 It should be acknowledged that the same translation issue is found in Gen. 11.9 (‘Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of kol ha’èrèts. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of kol ha’èrèts.’)

The translation of kol ha’èrèts in Gen. 11.1 as ‘the whole earth’ in the Bibles read by the vast majority of Orthodox Protestants is a significant factor in the creation of a common linguistic consciousness among said Christians. The popular beliefs that monolingualism was God’s original linguistic ideal for humanity, that human language remained static from Adam to Nimrod, and that Babel is the sole reason for all subsequent multilingualism in human culture, join this translation of kol ha’èrèts to form a common Orthodox Protestant set of values regarding language. Monolingualism is seen as somehow good or godly, whereas multilingualism is perceived as somehow chaotic, confusing and ungodly.7

The explanation of Babel, and the explicit connections made between God’s judgement there and the presence of multiple languages in the present day, offered in popular Protestant children’s Bibles, serves as a useful example of this. In The Jesus Storybook Bible, the linguistic confusion introduced at Babel is explained as the reason multiple languages now exist in the world. Its explanation of Babel begins with, ‘Now, back then, everyone spoke exactly the same language so you didn’t need to learn Swahili or Japanese or anything because you could say “Hello!” to anyone and they knew what you meant.’8 And in drawing this story to a conclusion, it states, ‘After that, people scattered all over the world (which is how we ended up with so many different languages to this day).’ The Dutch children’s Bible, Mijn Eerste Bijbel, offers the same explanation of Babel’s significance for the development of multiple modern-day languages.9 In both, the linguistic confusion brought by God at Babel is offered as the Biblical explanation of the phenomenon of multilingualism. As such, it is inextricably linked to a negative set of connotations: sin, a culture-wide rebellion against God, confusion and judgement.

Although this chapter characterizes a generally negative view of multilingualism as typical of much Protestant cultural consciousness, it is nonetheless noteworthy that commentators dealing with Gen. 11 do not univocally present the text as Scripture’s account of all subsequent multilingualism. Indeed, although some present the text as asserting a pre-Babel global monolingualism,10 commentators are far from united in asserting that kol ha’èrèts should be translated as the whole earth,11 or that the text actually conveys that the common tongue spoken referred in Gen. 11.1 was the only language spoken in the world at that time.12 Van Wolde has argued that Gen. 11 does present an ‘origin of languages’ account, but also interprets Gen. 1-11 as a single textual movement outlining God’s act of creation, which closes with the divine creation of linguistic diversity and the divine act of compelling humanity to fill the earth.13 (As such, van Wolde represents a postmodern interpretation of Babel whereby the introduction of linguistic pluriformity is read as a blessing, rather than a curse.)

Against that backdrop, it is perhaps important that the general Protestant consciousness referred to in this chapter (based on the common translation of kol ha’èrèts in Gen. 11, and the use of Babel as an explanation of the origins of multilingualism disseminated in Protestant popular culture) be distinguished from the handling of Gen. 11 by exegetes.

In addition to this popular association with sin and judgement, multilingualism has also presented many Orthodox Protestants with problems in relation to evolutionary theories of linguistic development. From August Schleicher (1821–68) onwards,14 mainstream linguists have generally argued that living languages are constantly changing. When one group of people speaking a single language is divided in two (or multiple) groups, and when contact between those groups is broken or severely limited, the process of linguistic change will invariably set in: first, the language spoken in the isolated contexts will become a range of distinct (but nonetheless mutually intelligible) dialects of the original language; then, in time, those dialects will diverge to the extent that they will become separate languages. According to linguistic evolutionary theory, this will happen whenever the frequency of linguistic contact between scattered groups of humans is lessened.15

However, if one believes Gen. 1-11 to teach that from Eden to Babel, only one language was spoken, that language is inherently static, and that no linguistic development occurred (or was ever intended to occur) until God brought linguistic confusion as a judgement upon Babel, evolutionary linguistics (as a scientific explanation of multilingualism) will be an area within which one will feel distinctly uncomfortable. This is particularly so for many Orthodox Protestants, given Schleicher’s own overt adherence to Darwinian thought.16

Against this fluid, evolutionary model of language, much Protestant theology has posited an essentialist linguistic ideal, whereby monolingualism prevailed as a godly reality until God, acting in judgement, inflicted the world with the curse of non-static language.17 Reformed Christians who relate to Babel and multilingualism in that context perhaps also feel distanced from the warm reception of linguistic diversity found in Pentecostal Christianity’s generally more positive account of multilingualism. This Pentecostal openness to multilingualism is linked to a strong focus on the practice of speaking in tongues and exegetical engagement with the relationship of Babel and Pentecost.18

The website of the 2012 DRONGO conference – an academic linguistics conference held in Utrecht exploring the richness of multilingualism – provides a useful example of what appears to be this typically Protestant popular antipathy towards multilingualism grounded on a set of exegetical assumptions regarding the Tower of Babel. Under the main information page, the following comment was left by what one can likely suppose to have been a Protestant Christian.

I thought that the Biblical story . . . of the Tower of Babel had already given the definitive answer to the question whether multilingualism enriches or creates problems. . . . Monolingualism unites, multilingualism divides. Such division can be good, but there is absolutely no reason to be so euphoric about multilingualism.19

Although this is an anecdotal example, it nonetheless serves to represent the unease felt by many non-Pentecostal Protestants towards multilingualism, which one suspects is closely related to the general lack of a positive account of multilingualism in most Protestant theology.

In reality, of course, the understanding of multilingualism held by the bulk of Protestants most likely comprises a set of passively acquired, and not actively proclaimed, beliefs. These will present a positive affirmation of Babel as the origin of multilingualism, coupled with a general ignorance of linguistic theory. Stated differently, for most Christians Babel is presented as the genesis of multilingualism simply because it is the only account of linguistic origins with which they are familiar. Examples of Christians who actively deny any element of evolution in linguistics are far less common. It appears that such critiques are limited to t...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• ABRAHAM KUYPER AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• HERMAN BAVINCK AND THE NEO-CALVINIST CONCEPT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• FROM BABEL TO PENTECOST VIA PARIS AND AMSTERDAM: MULTILINGUALISM IN NEO-CALVINIST AND REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
• REVOLUTION, THEOLOGY AND THE REFORMED: LEARNING FROM HISTORY
• THE THEO-POLITICS OF FASHION: GROEN VAN PRINSTERER AND THE ‘TERROR’ OF FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DRESS
• LONG FILMS ABOUT LOVE: KUYPER AND KIEŚLOWSKI’S THREE COLOURS TRILOGY
• DUTCH ORTHODOX PROTESTANT PARTIES AND THE GHOST OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• KUYPER’S ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE
• ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ OR MYSTICAL DEPTH?: HERMAN BAVINCK ON THEOLOGY AS QUEEN OF THE SCIENCES
• FRENCH SECULARITY AND THE ISLAMIC HEADSCARF: A THEOLOGICAL DECONSTRUCTION
• ANOTHER REVOLUTION: TOWARDS A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE RISE OF NEO-CALVINISM
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Name Index
• Copyright