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The writings of St Paul had a particularly strong influence on Montaigne’s understanding and creative use of the doctrine of Christian folly. The paradox on which the doctrine rests is that one opposite can be achieved by means of another, in other words, that the infinity and eternity of God can somehow be known through the fmitude and diversity of the created world. In Romans 1. 20, the verse which lies at the heart of natural theology in the Renaissance, Paul says.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

Following St Paul and, of course, Sebond, Montaigne signals to his reader in the ‘Apologie’ that the ‘creation’ also includes our entire selves, our bodies and our souls:

Aussi n ’est-il pas croyable que toute cette machine n ’ait quelques marques empreintes de la main de ce grand architecte, et qu’il n ’y ait quelque image es choses du monde rapportant aucunement à l’ouvrier qui les a basties et formées [...]. C’est ce qu’il nous dit luy mesme, que ses operations invisibles, il nous les manifeste par les visibles [...]. Le ciel, la terre, les elements, nostre corps et nostre ame, toutes choses y conspirent. Il n ’est que de trouver le moyen de s’en servir, (p. 424)

Montaigne may have been remembering the words of Nicholas of Lyra, the thirteenth-century scriptural commentator. In his commentary on Romans 1. 20, Nicholas put forward the idea that when Paul spoke of ‘the things that are made’, he was referring to man, the ‘creature o f the world’ par excellence.^

Deceptively simple though they may seem, Montaigne’s words, ‘il n’est que de trouver le moyen de s’en servir’, are of vital importance to his central theme. At the beginning o f the ‘Apologie’ Montaigne is adamant that human

reason plays a part, in conjunction with divine grace, in the acquisition of knowledge o f God. In accordance with Christian doctrine he states that ‘c’est la foy seule qui embrasse vivement et certainement les hauts mystères de nostre religion’ (pp. 417-18), but he does not concede to the authors of the first objection to Sebond’s book that Christians do wrong to buttress their faith with human reasons: ‘mais ce n ’est pas à dire que ce ne soit pas une très-belle et très- loüable entreprinse d ’accomoder encore au service de nostre foy les utils naturels et humains que Dieu nous a donnez’ (p. 418). Having cited Romans 1. 20 in full a few pages later, Montaigne says that when faith comes to the aid of the human themes of Sebond and throws her light on them, she makes them firm and solid, capable o f serving as an elementary guide that sets an apprentice on the road to knowledge (p. 425). For Montaigne, therefore, our reasoning faculty is the material taken up and animated by the grace of God: ‘or, nos raisons et nos discours humains, c ’est comme la matière lourde et sterile: la grace de Dieu en est la forme; c ’est elle qui y donne la façon et le pris’ (pp. 424-25). The question to which he devotes the rest of the ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond’ is what we may do with our reason in order to predispose it to such an honourable use.

The answer to this question is found in the words of St Paul, the essence of which is embedded in the text o f the ‘Apologie’ and of the Essais as a whole:

‘if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise’ ( 1 Corinthians 3. 18). Man must turn his reasoning faculty, his inquisitive mind, back on himself if he is to know God. The paradox of the doctrine o f Christian folly according to St Paul is that those who are worldly wise are fools in the eyes of God, while those who make themselves as fools are wise

in the eyes of God. A closer reading of the Epistles reveals the underlying meaning o f this paradox: what Paul means by ‘foolishness’ is the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the individual. In I Corinthians he explains that the apostles have received the spirit of God through which God reveals knowledge o f those things he has prepared for those who love him, and which the carnal man cannot perceive (2. 9-12). Thus the wisdom of God is spoken in a mystery, a hidden wisdom (2. 7), ‘but the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned’ (2. 14).

Throughout the Epistles, St Paul presents the notion o f developing an inner and spiritual dimension within oneself so that one might become a fool. We are told to purge out the old leaven of presumption in order to become a new unleavened lump, making ourselves empty before God (I Corinthinans 5. 7). We are also told that we were buried into death with Jesus by baptism; our old man was crucified with him, ‘that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6. 4). Paul beseeches us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12. 1). Such exhortations are meant to be interpreted not literally, but in a higher, spiritual sense. The Christian must humble himself, making war against his presumption so that he has room to cultivate the inner, spiritual values of faith, charity, goodness, meekness and poverty of spirit.

True wisdom, according to Paul, therefore, is the ability to open oneself up to the providential aspect of the divinity, the Holy Spirit, and to follow its instructions in one’s interpretation not only of the Bible (which is guided.

according to the Catholic religion, by the teachings of the Church), but also of one’s own being and the events in one’s own life. Like the image of God turning his back in order to reveal his being without harming his creation, the Holy Spirit is the ‘foolish’ version of God’s eternal wisdom:

Eventual access to this perfect knowledge is vouchsafed to man through God’s baby-talk, so to speak, through that ‘foolishness’ which is all of God’s wisdom that man can take. Such foolishness is the wisdom of God revealed, in ways that man can grasp, in the Bible. The highest manifestation of that foolishness - that divine Wisdom made intelligible to man - is Christ: God made man.^

In this context the person of Christ may be interpreted as a symbol of God’s providence in the world and of his presence in the most mundane aspects of the lives of human beings. This is precisely the argument that Montaigne presents through the theme of bestise in the Essais: if we make ourselves like animals,

cultivating the spirit of Christ within us, then it will be granted to us to perceive God’s presence in our own existence.