The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

by Stephen Greenblatt

There was danger in conjuring up lives so powerfully. For Bayle, as for Milton, the compelling vividness of the first humans called attention to the cracks that had always existed in their narrative. This is certainly not the outcome Milton wanted, and it is probably not what Bayle wanted either. But what did Bayle want? Milton was confident, in spite of everything, that he could justify God’s ways to man, but Bayle had no comparable confidence, and he saw the rage that his writing aroused. As a consequence of the questions he was asking, he had brought persecution down on his family; he had been driven into exile; he had turned his erstwhile friends and supporters into bitter enemies; he had suffered what we would now call a nervous breakdown. Though he had every reason to try to do so, he could not silence his doubts. And where—after the mighty wrestling with the problem of evil in the Garden of Eden—did he finally end up? Buried in a footnote to a footnote, deep in the 6 million words, is what he called his best answer. “The best Answer that can be naturally returned to the Question, Why did God permit that Man should sin? is this, I don’t know.”