Name Isaac Jacquelot | ||
Isaac Jacquelot (also Jaquelot) (1647–1708) was a French Huguenot minister and controversialist.
Contents
Life
He was born in Vassy in Champagne where his father was a Huguenot pastor; he took over his father's position, but left France in 1685 on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He went to Heidelberg, and then took a position with a Walloon congregation at The Hague. Coming into conflict with Pierre Jurieu there, he left for Basel. He ended his life as court preacher in Berlin.
Views
Jacquelot was a leading figure in the rationaux, the Huguenot proponents of rational theology. Along with Jean Le Clerc and Jacques Bernard, they looked for reason and faith to come into balance, and supported religious tolerance. They found themselves opposing Pierre Bayle, after 1700.
Jacquelot supported Anthonie van Dale's rejection of the supernatural, as did Le Clerc, with some qualification. Their positions, with that of Benjamin Binet, marked out the moderate rationalism of the first half of the 18th century.
On theodicy, Isaac Jacquelot agreed with Gottfried Leibniz in his Conformité. On the other hand, he considered Leibniz's solution to the mind-body problem to be a less powerful variation on occasionalism. The two met in Berlin in 1702. Leibniz replied with his doctrine of pre-established harmony, which Jacquelot criticised on grounds of free will in a projected appendix to the Conformité, the Système abrégé de l'âme et de la liberté. After negotiation the Système abrégé appeared in a modified form.
Jacquelot used an argument from design in his Dissertations sur l'existence de Dieu, defending divine providence and revealed religion: observation can and will support the purposive nature of the creation of animals and Man. His exposition was much read subsequently.
Controversies
Jacquelot attacked the system of Benedict Spinoza, as did Samuel Clarke, by taking aim at what were perceived as key propositions in it.
During his time in Berlin, Jacquelot engaged in a final controversy with Pierre Bayle, who died in 1706 while the debate proceeded; he had frequently accused Bayle of declaring reason and faith incompatible by fiat. One contentious topic was the article on Manichaeism in Bayle's Dictionary. As part of the exchanges, Jacquelot declared in favour of Remonstrant (Arminian) views. Philippe Naudé attacked Jacquelot and Jean Le Clerc, and defended absolute predestination, in his La souveraine perfection de Dieu (Sovereign Perfections of God) (1708).
Jonathan I. Israel has characterised the outcome of the debate between Bayle and the rationaux as a serious setback for the latter. Jacquelot and Le Clerc were criticised by Jean-Nicolas-Hubert Hayer. The weakness in their approach, from a Christian perspective, was to claim too much for reason.