Prophets and prophesy in the Bible and in Leibniz's time

If we look at the first definitions of ‘prophet’ in an unabridged dictionary, we usually get the following ones

Only at the end of this list of definitions (and in a few following) is there an explicit reference to biblical prophets being prescient: i.e. able to see the future through divine inspiration. The prophets in the Hebrew Bible were not expected to predict the future: remember the story of Jonah where the inhabitants of Nineveh repent and so avoid the doom and destruction prophesied by him. The biblical prophets usually talked about what would happen if people did or did not follow God's word. They threatened the believers with a dismal future so that they would follow the right path. The role of the prophet was admonitory, not eerily clairvoyant; he was primarily a scolder – not a seer. The role of the prophet in the Hebrew Bible was to serve as a mouthpiece for God in order to guide the lives of the believers, not to mouth ineluctable predictions.

This leads to a paradox, at least linguistically, because it means that the primary role of the biblical prophets was not to prophesy! The latter term is defined primarily as predicting the future. Note the first definitions of the verb to prophesy in the same dictionary: ‘1. to foretell or predict. 2. to indicate beforehand. 3. to declare or foretell by or as if by divine inspiration’.Footnote ¹² However, these same biblical texts and prophets later did take as a primary role the accurate prediction of future events. This change took place in large part because of the advent of Christianity. The texts of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, had to be shown to be prophetic or predictive of the New Testament, and hence the New Israel.Footnote ¹³ Leibniz himself did not dwell on typologies (intimations or prefigurements of the New Testament in the Old)Footnote ¹⁴ – a favourite pastime of Christian theologians and exegetes. However, he accepted the standard Christian view of the Hebrew Bible serving as the textual basis for the supersession of the Old Israel (i.e. Judaism) by the New. The fulfilled truth of the New Testament proved the prophetic nature of the Old.Footnote ¹⁵ The revelation of the Hebrew Bible is genuine because it is truly prophetic or ‘future-telling’. Leibniz approvingly cites Father Pierre-Daniel Huet's efforts at proving the supernatural origin of the Hebrew Bible. Huet is

While the above argument concerning the Old Testament could be used against Judaism, in turn, the prophecies in the New Testament also had to be fulfilled at some time in the future to testify to its supernatural origins. If the prophecies related in the New Testament were to be used as the basis for the argument for the exclusive truth of Christianity, they had to be fulfilled at some time in the future. Only in this way could the Christian world argue for the superior nature of Christianity over other religions – pagan or monotheistic. The correct interpretation of these prophecies became a paramount issue in Leibniz's day, not so much as an argument against Judaism or other non-Christian religions, but as a means for defending mainstream Christianity from the millenarians and enthusiasts who were undermining its authority by invoking their own interpretations of the ‘prophecies’ of Scripture, especially those based on The Revelation of St John (popularly known as ‘The Apocalypse’).

When we turn to Leibniz's time, abstract distinctions between the different meanings of the nouns ‘prophet’ and ‘prophecy’, the adjective ‘prophetic’ as well as the verb ‘to prophesy’, take on more concrete and variegated forms. A good example of this is Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who became one of the ‘French Prophets’ yet was a close friend of Isaac Newton (defending him against Leibniz in the calculus controversy). In differentiating them, Mandelbrote writes:

Newton (like Grotius before him) concentrated his ‘prophetical writings’ on understanding and verifying ancient biblical texts and the events they portrayed. Newton did not look at the texts as Fatio and Whiston (Newton's successor at Cambridge) did, i.e. primarily as a means to predict future events. For Newton, the interpretation of the Book of Daniel and Revelation meant, as Popkin says, ‘a post-facto analysis of historical events, to show that, after they occurred, the wise can see that they are the very events predicted in the prophetic passages in the prophetic works’.Footnote ¹⁸ Thus, the key difference between the various approaches to understanding scripture was not only when its prophecies were to be fulfilled, but the nature of the evidence that validated them as prophecies.Footnote ¹⁹

It is important to note that there is a very important difference between the biblical prophets and ‘prophets’ and chiliasts of Leibniz's days. In examining these latter-day ‘prophets’, it is tempting to rely on the template of the Hebrew prophets because they, like their predecessors, used striking natural and historical events to make their case. However, generally speaking, there is one enormous difference between them and those in Leibniz's time: while the latter-day ‘prophets’ were often scolders as well as seers, they generally did not offer hope to mankind if it changed its ways. All kinds of natural and human events of the day (comets; the fall of empires, the unprecedented spreading of knowledge, etc.) served as omens of what was to come, but unlike the biblical prophets, ‘the end of days’ was already determined. For many of them, especially Calvinists, the elected were already chosen and the damned condemned to their fate. Unlike the biblical prophets, the modern-day ones did not allow for a reprieve. If the ‘French Prophets’ (as well as such diverse personalities as William Whiston or Pierre Jurieu) erred in their calculations, generally it was because they had calculated wrongly, and not because God had changed His mind or because there was a change in the actual date of ‘the end of days’ due to changes in human behaviour.

Leibniz on the interpretation of biblical prophecy and on the latter-day ‘prophets’

During Leibniz's lifetime, the distinction between those who merely theorized that scripture had predicted events that had already come to pass, and those who acted upon their interpretation because the events predicted were imminent or in the near future, became paramount. Thus, the notion of prophecy in Leibniz's day became closely associated with those who presumed to predict the future accurately; these predictions were often accompanied by other miracles or signs that could only be explained if these latter-day prophets were indeed directly inspired by God. For example, the French Prophets ‘spoke in tongues’, thus demonstrating their enthusiasm in the literal (Greek) meaning of the term, i.e. of having God within them.

Leibniz's refusal to interpret biblical prophecy as in any way referring to events in his own day was grounded on several assumptions. First, it mirrored the orthodox position of Christianity back to St Augustine, which claimed that ‘the millennial reign of Christ described in the Book of Revelation, 20 was a spiritual reality’Footnote ²⁰ that had already occurred. Leibniz takes this position in his own commentary on ‘The Apocalypse’ – which was written expressly to counter the chiliasts of his day.Footnote ²¹ Thus, in the opening of his running commentary on the Book of Revelation, Leibniz stresses the view that the events referred to had already occurred:

Leibniz repeatedly questions whether any of the latter-day prophets or prophecies are indeed authentic and goes to great lengths to differentiate them from genuine prophets, by noting their inability to predict the future exactly. Leibniz stressed ‘future-telling’ as the only certain sign of supernatural inspiration. The sine qua non for distinguishing the ‘natural’ future-telling abilities of even enhanced, ‘superhuman’ rational agents (i.e. ‘angels’ or ‘genii’ as he calls them)Footnote ²³ from God's is that only God can ‘tell us precise details of the future’. Even ‘the devil’, Leibniz states categorically, ‘cannot do so’.Footnote ²⁴ Leibniz expounds on this point:

Leibniz even joked about the inaccurate predictions mouthed by the ‘prophets’ of his day,Footnote ²⁶ but was usually forgiving of the people who made them.Footnote ²⁷ He attacked these latter-day ‘prophets’ or enthusiasts – who saw ‘the imminent threat of the persecutory hand of God’Footnote ²⁸ – only if they threatened or actually upset the public order.Footnote ²⁹ These ‘prophets’ used their interpretations of biblical texts to foment disorder by claiming they had precise information on future events, often apocalyptic ones foretelling the end of the world.Footnote ³⁰ He also appealed to his fellow Protestants not to argue as some of these ‘prophetical’ interpreters were wont to do – on the basis of the Book of Revelation – that the seat of the Anti-Christ is in the Rome of his day. Such an open attack on the Pope invited further strife and undercut Leibniz's lifelong ecumenical efforts. In this and other cases, he argued that the original biblical texts, such as Revelation, were ‘obscure, like most prophecies’ (A, I, iv, 358).

Leibniz exhibited a combination of genuine scientific interest, thoroughgoing rationalism and a strain of ironic scepticism in his comments about such ‘prophets,’ such as the Cevennois (as many of the Protestant French Prophets were known because of their origin in the Cevennes region of France). This is illustrated, for example, in remarks he made in a letter to Pierre Coste, the French translator of Locke and other English writers. He says:

The most striking thing to note from the above quotation is Leibniz's apparent rejection of the prophecies or ‘miracles’ of the Cevennois on the basis of their presumed rarity. While Leibniz agrees here with Hobbes's view that ‘miracles now cease’, that, as Michael Ayers describes the period: ‘the age of miracles is past, in which case all or much of the relevant testimony is itself scriptural’,Footnote ³² Leibniz rejects the words and actions of these so-called ‘prophets’ on different grounds. Unlike many in his time, genuine miracles (including prophecy) are distinguished for him not by their rarity, but by their supernatural origin.Footnote ³³ Such strange or rare events (if indeed they did occur as described) are preternatural, not supernatural. Such ‘miracles’ exceed perhaps our understanding of the ordinary course of nature, but are capable of being performed by created beings without divine agency being directly involved at all. They may be beyond the operation or understanding of man, but other creatures (‘genii’ or angels) can perform them and/or do understand how they operate. They are miracles of ‘an inferior order’, not ‘of the highest order’.Footnote ³⁴ Miracles, as Leibniz puts it, ‘are perhaps not all of one and the same kind’ (GP, VI, 265;T §249).

Thus, prophecy may not be the direct product of divine inspiration. Enhanced rational agents might be capable of predicting the future, since the present – properly understood – is ‘pregnant with the future’. The role of a key doctrine of Leibniz's thought is in fact mentioned here by him: namely, that of pre-established harmony. All miracles – whether preternatural or supernatural – have already been programmed into the future. Furthermore, given his Principle of Sufficient Reason, such miracles including genuine prophecy did not ‘just happen’ – but were ‘embedded’ in the divine scheme of things. Just as those armed with the necessary historical and scientific background could understand what, why, and how certain things happened in the past, so enhanced rational agents could understand what, why, and how certain things will happen in the future, as we already do, for example, with eclipses. ‘Prophecy’, Leibniz says succinctly at one point, ‘is the history of the future’ (A, I, vii, 36). Like all histories, the interpretation of biblical prophecy must be grounded on a correct understanding of the biblical sources as well as the certainty that texts themselves survived more or less (given the distance in time from their actual composition) as we received them.Footnote ³⁵

Thus, while genuine prophecy is among the few supernatural (rather than merely preternatural) miracles for Leibniz, it must nevertheless be authenticated historically. As Leibniz puts it, ‘[I]f miracles of this character [i.e. prophecy], though performed long since, be attested by those arguments by which, in other cases, the truth of historical facts is legitimately proved, we are bound to believe them, just as if they were performed today’ (A, VI, iv, 2363; R 13). Finally, Leibniz raises another problem with miracles and prophecies, i.e. the quality of those who witnessed them. Leibniz reserves judgment on what Fatio himself might say (by now Leibniz had probably heard the rumours about that scientist's conversion to the ‘enthusiasm’ of the French Prophets). He is willing to accept the authenticity of such preternatural events, but only on the basis of unimpeachable witnesses, such as Coste himself.Footnote ³⁶ In the last sentences, he not only manages, as a good diplomat and courtier, to flatter Coste, but also to cast aspersions on the witnesses of such events, seeing them as impoverished fringe elements and malcontents.

Leibniz's cavalier attitude concerning the miracles and signs supposedly performed by the French Prophets should not be taken as an indication of his treatment of biblical prophecy for, as we have noted above, he accepted the genuine ‘future-telling nature’ of the Bible. However, to show that the Bible is indeed truly prophetic – i.e. telling the future in detail – required solid historical, linguistic, and scientific research. The authenticity of the miracle of revelation to mankind – and hence the truth of genuine prophecy – must be corroborated by proven historical fact. At least in principle, Leibniz allows for the possibility of post-biblical prophecy. He tells his patroness, the Duchess Sophie, that there could be present-day prophets who are endowed with ‘an infinite spirit’, and thus capable of predicting the future in detail: ‘And as prophecy is in effect the history of the future, I believe that every prophet who could truly give us the history of the forthcoming century would without doubt be inspired by God’ (A, I, vii, 36) Thus, even if any of the current-day prophets were indeed predicting the future, we have no way of determining at this time whether they are accurate and hence directly inspired by God; we must leave it to posterity to authenticate them.

Leibniz is apparently open-minded about the possibility of post-biblical ‘divine visions’ and ‘detailed prophecies’;Footnote ³⁷ however, after retailing various examples of such ‘inspired prophets’ in his own day (as well as earlier ones), he concludes: ‘But we find no cases … of successful predictions by such people’ (NE, IV, xix, §16, 508) Leibniz offers several reasons for his reluctance to believe that any genuine prophecies occurred in his day. First, as already noted, none of these prophecies had so far accurately and specifically predicted any future event. Second, he found that many of the enthusiasts and visionaries of his day disagreed among themselves as to the dates, as well as the nature, of these forthcoming cosmic events. Third, he feared that such prophecies would be used to undermine the doctrinal authority and historicity of the established church. As he curtly says: ‘And as for the dogmas of religion, we have no need for new revelations’(ibid., 509). But lastly, and most importantly perhaps, he expressed great concern at the political upheavals such prophecies might engender. He warns that ‘people have been misled by false or quite dubious interpretations of Revelation so that all sorts of elaborate schemes as well as rebellions and mutinies arise from them. Some dare … to dictate to kings and princes what they ought to do’.Footnote ³⁸

Natural vs revealed theology for Leibniz

Before analysing the concept of RevelationFootnote ³⁹ in Leibniz's writings, one must address the question – raised by many Leibniz scholars – as to whether Leibniz recognizes any meaningful distinction between the two recognized sources for knowledge of the divine. While the view that natural theology is an independent and sufficient source for salvation would not be acceptable to orthodox Christians (‘No salvation outside the Church’), Leibniz does not seem to be bothered by the prospect that one day a revealed theology will be completely reduced to a natural one.Footnote ⁴⁰ Some scholars have argued that a committed rationalist like Leibniz would reject any genuine distinction between natural and revealed theology.Footnote ⁴¹

The boundary between natural and revealed theology for Leibniz may have been a porous one, but the domain of revealed theology ultimately was rather narrow. Leibniz's general intent was to preserve, as much as possible, a rational basis for religion and morality in order to ‘prevent ourselves from falling back into a fanatical philosophy’. He prefaces this comment with a genuine concern for philosophy in his day:

A close examination of Leibniz's remarks on the various mysteries demonstrates that a metaphysical or scientific explanation might be possible for most of them. Thus while all mysteries are miracles for Leibniz, most mysteries – like most miracles – were not intrinsically beyond the reasoning power of enhanced rational agents. Maria Rosa Antognazza, in her defence of the mysteries, claims that for Leibniz; ‘To say that the mysteries are above reason is thus equivalent to admitting a domain of truth which human reason is unable to comprehend, a domain of truths which human reason is not and never will be able to demonstrate.’Footnote ⁴³

It is quite telling that Antognazza's argument concerns only the Christian mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and not, for example, the Resurrection or the Eucharist. While her position may be correct with regard to these two, it would be wrong to say that human reason can never demonstrate the truths of other strictly Christian mysteries. Here is an example of Leibniz's effort to do so with respect to Christ's ‘resurrection and ascension’:

Another example would be Leibniz's life-long effort to give a rationally acceptable explanation of the Eucharist. His later discussions with Des Bosses on transubstantiation, especially his notion of vinculum substantiale, are evidence of this.Footnote ⁴⁵ Later, I will argue why the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation may not be amenable to any strong type of explanation for Leibniz, while other distinctively Christian mysteries, like the Resurrection and the Eucharist, in principle are.

On prophecy and revelation

For purposes of this paper, I will restrict the word ‘revelation’ to God's word as revealed in Holy Scripture through His prophets. Leibniz is fairly consistent in his use of the terms ‘revelation’ and ‘revealed theology’. He does not appear to use them loosely, even though the truths of natural theology (i.e. the existence of God and the existence and immortality of the human soul) as well as the natural sciences and logic are a ‘revelation’ of God's nature and intent for Leibniz, and thus an alternative source for knowledge of the divine.

While the basis for some mysteries or other ‘revealed’ Christian doctrines may not literally be found in scripture, the interpretation of the latter is foundational for them. Revelation may be extended to other Christian dogmas, through the grace that God bestowed on later ‘prophets’ or ‘saints’, as well as the divinely inspired words of the spokesman of the Church (e.g. the Pope). But, as Leibniz notes in the Commentatiuncula §3, this is a particularly vexatious issue for Protestants, like himself, who reject the Catholic tradition of interpretation and the authority of the Pope to serve as the final arbiter (A, VI, i, 548). Protestantism endows scripture with the exclusive role of grounding and determining the nature of the mysteries (‘Sola Scriptura!’).

Whether in speech or in writing, the revealed word of God must be made concrete, especially for Christians who see the core of Christianity as the ‘Word being made flesh’ – that is incarnate in Jesus ChristFootnote ⁴⁶ – as the ultimate divine revelation. The standard argument for justifying the truth of revelation and thus the truth of Christianity is an appeal to miracles. But the existence of these miracles is based on a revealed text, the Bible, which is itself the product of a miraculous, that is supernatural, revelation. Thus, we are caught up in an infinite regress, giving us no solid ground for our belief. Furthermore, the Bible warns of false prophets who also can perform miracles (Deuteronomy, 13.1–3; Matthew, 24.24). In the ‘Dialogue between a theologian and a misosophist’, we have the following colloquy with Leibniz playing the role of the ‘theologian’:

Besides the scriptural warning about false prophets and their miracles, Leibniz subscribed to the view that biblical miracles can usually be explained on purely rational grounds and hence are not miracles at all. Examples of this abound, especially concerning the miracles of the Old Testament, such as Bileam's talking she-ass (he was dreaming at the time) the sun ‘standing still’ at Gibeon (Scriptura humane loquitur), and so forth.Footnote ⁴⁸ If they are indeed miracles, then they are of an inferior sort performed by the natural power of some higher, but nevertheless created being.Footnote ⁴⁹ A fortiori, the ‘prophets’ of his day as well as their ‘miracles’ can be accordingly explained, as we saw in his discussion of the Cevennois.

One cannot use the revealed word of God as proof for the authenticity or truth of Revelation without begging the question. Leibniz's strategy for justifying scripture as the revealed word of God is to argue that what is revealed in scripture is genuinely prophetic and thus miraculous in the strong sense of the word. Only God – or His direct mouthpieces – the biblical prophets – can predict the future in detail, and such predictions are truly miraculous. Entailed in such a strategy is the need to show that the Bible is indeed genuinely and truly prophetic – i.e. telling the future in detail. This requires undertaking solid historical and linguistic research to demonstrate that the prophecies related in scripture have a genuine historical basis, and thus that they happened more or less (given the distance in time from their actual occurrence) as we received them. In a word, Leibniz may doubt that any miracle in the Bible is a genuine one, but not the Bible itself!

Prophecy as the only genuinely proven miracle

Given Leibniz's scepticism about the supernatural nature of virtually all miracles in the Bible, how can he justify prophecy as a miracle ‘of the highest order’? We have seen that the defining characteristic of genuine prophecy is that it predicts the future precisely. However, while genuine miracles accompany – and certify to the genuineness of – any prophecy or Revelation, the Bible warned against such accompanying phenomena. Leibniz himself strongly argues that genuine revelation does not need any accompanying miracles, certainly in his own day. ‘And as for the dogmas of religion, we have no need for new revelations: if we are presented with rules which are conducive to salvation we are bound to obey them, even if the person who presents them performs no miracles’ (NE, IV, xix, §16, 509).

How was a rationalist and anti-enthusiast like Leibniz, who apparently denied the reports of contemporary miracles rather vigorously, yet wished to preserve the miracle of the genuine prophecy of the Bible itself, especially the New Testament, going to proceed? To repeat, we are not talking of the individual miracles related in the Bible – either in the Old or New Testaments. We have seen that Leibniz virtually denies their supernatural nature, including even such miracles as the Resurrection.Footnote ⁵⁰ We are talking about the miracle of genuine prophecy. Leibniz, like others of his day, found the solution in seeing the validity of biblical prophecy in its precisely fulfilled nature in the long term, i.e. even centuries later. ‘[O]ne cannot’, Leibniz says, ‘make a large number of correct and detailed predictions of the changes that will take place after several centuries, unless one is a prophet sent by God.’Footnote ⁵¹ In other words, Leibniz grants a privileged status to biblical revelation only because it was verified centuries later!

By appealing to a post-facto demonstration for the validity of the future-telling prophecy of the New Testament,Footnote ⁵² one does not have to argue for the supernatural nature of the accompanying miracles (which Leibniz denied anyway). Nor did he have to rely on the nature of the witnesses of the time, which would require extensive historical research to authenticate, according to Leibniz, a solid historian in his own right. In this way, the privileged nature of the miracle(s) of biblical prophecy and revelation could be maintained, even if all the miracles in the Bible became suspect. Peter Harrison sums this position up well in his discussion of later English thinkers' response to Hume's argument against miracles.

Leibniz in effect took this line of argument, though he was not as vocal about it as the later British thinkers, given his cautious nature and his desire not to openly undermine popular piety. Pre-empting Hume's later objections to miracles, Leibniz in effect argued that rather than make biblical miracles the foundation for the truth of biblical prophecy/revelation, let us reverse matters and make the genuine miracle of fulfilled prophecy the foundation for historical research aimed at justifying the accuracy and authenticity of the Bible and thus, hopefully, enhance the credibility of some of the events central to Christian doctrine witnessed therein. Factually speaking, biblical prophecy becomes the only miracle that has been authenticated by history. By relying on fulfilled prophecy as corroborating the truth of Christianity, rather than on miracles (biblical or otherwise), one avoids basing one's faith on possibly unreliable ancient testimony or breaches of the laws of natures, but rather on the demonstrated march of history.

The ‘other’ mysteries: the Incarnation and the Trinity

As we have noted above, Leibniz attempted to explain the various individual miracles in the Bible on purely naturalistic or rational grounds, using various approaches (historical, linguistic, and scientific). The same is true for other ‘mysteries’ such as that of the Eucharist. Leibniz attempted early on in his career to give a metaphysical, if not a physical, explanation of virtually all the mysteries – for apologetic as well as irenic reasons – in order to forward his own developing metaphysics.Footnote ⁵⁴

However, before turning to the core Christian mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity, the miracle of CreationFootnote ⁵⁵ must be addressed, since Leibniz explicitly includes it among the mysteries.Footnote ⁵⁶ Yet Creation occupies a special place in Leibniz's system and cannot be seen primarily as a Christian mystery as the other two must be.Footnote ⁵⁷ It is the foundation of his whole metaphysics and hence not an esoteric mystery. Leibniz did believe that ‘Creation is an act of divine revelation’, as Leroy Loemker says,Footnote ⁵⁸ but one open to all rational beings, not just believing Christians. Even though – perhaps because of the popular nature of the work – Leibniz in the Theodicy (Preliminary Dissertation §23) lumps Creation (and pre-established harmony as well) with the Trinity as examples of truths above reason (rather than against reason and thus absurd), he obviously cannot consider the former simply as Christian mysteries, otherwise his whole metaphysical system would collapse! Creation may be a miracle ‘of the highest order’, but it is one that can be defended on deductive (e.g. Leibniz's cosmological arguments) or naturalistic (i.e. scientific) grounds. Leibniz would have been happy to know that recent cosmologists (Hawking, Smoot) have argued that a theory of creation is the best hypothesis for a coherent cosmogeny.Footnote ⁵⁹

However, all the strategies mentioned above (linguistic and historical research; scientific/naturalistic explanations; internal or logical analyses) will not work for Leibniz when dealing with the two core mysteries of Christianity, the Incarnation and the Trinity.Footnote ⁶⁰ These dogmas are not anchored in, nor certified by, any specific miracle that is open to any naturalistic explanation or historical verification for Leibniz. They are based on the interpretation of various NT passages concerning the nature of God and Jesus. It is these two dogmas in particular that are, in fact, the basis for his efforts in the Theodicy to develop a different kind of defence to justify them, one not based on appeals to nature, history, or deductive reason. The various arguments from ‘soft reasoning’ (to use Marcelo Dascal's term) are employed by Leibniz (e.g. ‘presumption of truth and ‘reasoning from analogy’) in defending the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation.Footnote ⁶¹ These are the true Christian mysteries, and indeed are the ones that are distinctive to Christianity. Doctrines of creation, divine foreknowledge, the physical resurrection of the dead, an afterlife and so on are, of course, found in many religions, not only the other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam. Like other miracles, they are open to reason, provable either through metaphysics (most conveniently by Leibniz's own!) and/or the deductive operations of natural theology.Footnote ⁶²

Thus, prophecy and revelation are among those mysteries – like most others – that can be in large part be justified for Leibniz on purely rational or empirical grounds. Those that cannot in principle be so explained are not anchored in specific events that could be historically proven, scientifically explained, or grounded in a priori reasoning. Furthermore, one cannot prove the truth of the Incarnation or the Trinity through specific passages in scripture. Leibniz admits this when he says, ‘I am afraid that we cannot satisfactorily evince the Holy Trinity from scriptures, without invoking tradition, … ’.Footnote ⁶³