Sunday, December 4, 2022

Rossell Hope Robbins on the Satanology and Demonology of Balthasar Bekker

  

Bekker, Balthasar. The Dutchman, Rev. Dr. Balthasar Bekker (1634-98) in his De Betoverde Weereld, or The World Bewitched (1691), “openly assaulted the doctrines of witchcraft and of the devil. . . . As a reward for his exertions to enlighten his fellow-creatures, he was turned out of the ministry, and assaulted by nearly all the writers of his age”—Chares W. Upham. Bekker followed Descartes and another Dutch rationalist, Simon Stevin, who rejected belief in miracles. He was the last of the Dutch thinkers from Johan Weyer to Grevius who had kept Holland free from the abuses of the witch hunters. The liberal climate thus engendered had made Holland the only country where Reginald Scot had been translated. In 1683, Bekker had attracted attention by publishing his Inquiry into Comets, showing that they were not portents of evil. In 1691, first in Dutch, then in 1693 in German, he published his attack on belief in witchcraft, on the only logical basis possible: that spirits either good or bad (the existence of which Bekker did not deny), could exercise no influence over human affairs; nor should seemingly paranormal effects be attributed to witchcraft. Since the belief in the influence of spirits had crept into Christianity from paganism, Said Bekker, there was no reason to credit the pact between the witch and the Devil, the core of the theory. In fact, Bekker added, the theory of witchcraft was invented by the papacy “to warm the fires of purgatory and to fill the pockets of the clergy,” who burned witches to confiscate their property and to pay the salaries of the inquisitors.

 

The English translation (1695) put it:

 

It has come to that pass that men think it piety and godliness to ascribe a great many wonders to the devil, and impiety and heresy, if a man will not believe that the devil can do what a thousand persons says he does. It is now reckoned godliness, if a man who fears God fear also the devil. If he be not afraid of the devil, he passes for an atheist, who does not believe in God, because he cannot think there are two gods, the one good, the other bad. But these, I think, with much more reason, may be called ditheists. For my part, if, on account of my opinion, they will give me a new name, let them call me a monotheist, a believer of but one God.

 

As Bekker had foreseen, he was himself called an atheist for questioning the whole system of the witch delusion, and was attacked by the Calvinist divines. “They protected the survival of superstitions of the pagan past in order to save the further from losing faith in the revealed word of God”Adrian J. Barnouw. Refusing to recant, on August 21, 1692, Bekker was expelled by the Reformed Dutch church, expelled by the Reformed Dutch church, but the Amsterdam, magistrates prevented a public burning of his book and continued to pay his ministerial stipend. He was still outside the church at his death, June 11, 1698.

 

Many writers engaged in a war of words, attacking and defending Bekker’s views, especially his denial of demoniacal possession. Bekker himself refused to participate in the debate, but in 1692 defend himself in Die Friesche Godgelehrheid. After his death, rumors circulated that he changed his views, but this suggestion was repudiated by his son, Jan Hendrik Bekker. Balthasar’s stand was continued by Christian Thomasius. (Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology [New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1959], 45-46)

 

Blog Archive