Bekker’s Opponents: Confessionalism under Siege and Cartesianism in Crisis

Abstract

The earliest and most heated opposition to The World Bewitched came from the conservative, confessional wing of the Reformed church. Heirs of Gomarus and Voetius, these dogmatic Calvinists saw the Bekker controversy as an important battle in their campaign to protect the Reformed faith from the corrosive influences of Cartesian philosophy and the exegetical methods associated with it. The confessionalists targeted Bekker’s biblical exegesis for their harshest criticism, arguing that his figurative interpretation of scriptural passages dealing with spirits cast into doubt the veracity and authority of the entire Bible. They also attacked Bekker’s Cartesian ideas and charged that it was his allegiance to the new philosophy that led him into his exegetical errors. In their assault on Bekker’s ideas conservatives armed themselves with the biblical literalism that formed the intellectual foundation of Dutch Reformed confessionalism. Again and again they mustered biblical passages that they believed showed the devil’s power and the actions of spirits on bodies. Any attempt to interpret passages in a context larger than that provided by the words themselves was anathema to the confessionalists, and violent verbal assaults on Bekker often accompanied these arguments.