Book Review: The Causes and Cure of Unbelief by N. J. Laforêt

Book Review: The Causes and Cure of Unbelief by N. J. Laforêt

It can be easy to assume that old books don’t say much. The books themselves often serve as rustic decorations. I’ve definitely been guilty of buying old books with the primary intent of showing them in my collection and a secondary intent of actually reading them. But when I bought The Causes and Cure of Unbelief last fall, I knew I wanted to eventually read the whole thing. After doing so, I learned why some ideas best remain forgotten.

If you look carefully at the cover, you’ll see that someone specified that it was not written by Cardinal Gibbons, but only revised by him. As a matter of fact, tracking down where this book first originated was about as difficult as finding the sources that Tim Keller uses for his arguments for God. Let the rabbit trail commence!

I found out that the original author, Nicolas Joseph Laforêt, first published the work in 1864 in Belgium under the title Pourquoi l’on ne Croit Pas, or Why Men Do Not Believe. That book was translated into English in 1869, and you can even read a digitized version here. (It’s really cool!) In 1909, a Catholic bishop from Massachusetts named James Gibbons published a revised, enlarged, edited, and renamed edition: The Causes and Cure of Unbelief. (That’s the book I have.) The publisher Roman Catholic Books decided to not only reprint the book in 1980 but to re-rename it as well, this time titled Curing Atheism. Finally, the second part of the book was most recently reproduced in 2016 by John L. Barger under the title Unbelief: Its Causes and Cures. For over 150 years, men have been trying their hardest to get Laforêt’s words in front of as many people as they could, and I couldn’t begin to tell you why.

Although the evolving titles seem straightforward enough, the book takes quite a winding path to make its point. Part One follows the conversion stories of Justin Martyr, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas before absolutely railing on Martin Luther and Protestantism. Laforêt leads into Part Two with some of his twisted definitions of worldviews like materialism, pantheism, sophistry, skepticism, and spiritual rationalism. He spends Part Two turning around in circles as he tries to define what unbelief is and whether it is really caused by the will or only by the understanding.

I have never read anyone so self-righteous as Laforêt. Maybe his language is just a product of his time, but throughout the book, he described non-Catholics of all colors using words like “unhappy victims of error,” “darkened intelligence,” and “weakness of the will and of the understanding.” His ad-hominem attacks carry an even richer irony when he quotes on page 121, “We attack books, not men,” before quoting thus of his ideological nemesis Voltaire not three pages later:

“Voltaire behaved here like a consummate scoundrel and cheat, and I paid him off as he deserves. He is a wretch, and for the honor of genius I am sorry that a man who has so much should be so full of mischief. Voltaire is the most wicked fool I have ever known: is only good to read. You cannot imagine what duplicity, cheating and villainy he practiced here.”

N. J. LAFORÊT, The Causes and Cure of Unbelief, p. 124

Laforêt’s inability to make up his mind is a theme throughout the book. Possibly his greatest point of confusion is whether or not the will or the understanding is the driving force of unbelief; in other words, he is grappling with whether atheism is ultimately a choice. He begins this deliberation with a characteristically winding definition of the word faith and how it relates to the will and the understanding. Laforêt says, in no shortage of words, that to believe is “an act of the understanding, because the object of Faith is Divine Truth, and truth in itself is the object of the understanding, and not of the will.” But, he says, the will can move the understanding to accept “truth” or not; therefore, faith is a choice.

The full page for context.

I thought that this was enough going back and forth on this, but it comes back up until the very end of the book when he blames unbelief ultimately on an “evil-disposed will” and essentially on a rotten soul. There are some clues, however, that show me why he is so tortured over this twisting of processes that lead to unbelief. If we back up two pages to page 149, we find the following on why Laforêt is so immovably sure that his Catholic belief is correct, and I think it is worth quoting in full. (Laforêt often allows quotes to extend for pages, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me doing the same.)

The Divine Word, which the Church does but repeat and explain to men, cannot deceive. God is Truth, and the Truth does not lie. When it is once thoroughly established that a doctrine comes from God, it would be absurd to demand other proofs of the truth of this doctrine. People do not ask Truth if it speaks the truth. Our Faith, resting on the authority of the Divine Word, is therefore sheltered of all error; the foundation on which it rests is immovable. It is supremely reasonable, for it depends on the veracity of God himself, who is infinite reason.

We are certain that the doctrines to which we adhere by Divine Catholic Faith really come from God. We do not admit lightly or without cause the fact of Divine Revelation; we believe it on the authority of truths whose evidence in our eyes is absolutely incontestable, and twenty times more striking than that which surrounds the best authenticated historical facts.

N. J. LAFORÊT, The Causes and Cure of Unbelief, p. 149

So… Laforêt’s belief in God is correct because God exists because he says he exists, and God says that whatever he says is true. Foolproof. It would be funny if Laforêt didn’t actually believe that this is foolproof logic.

According to Laforêt, the prime cause of unbelief is ignorance of religion. But he acknowledges on page 197 that there are some “infidels who are not ignorant of Catholic belief.” He gives the example of original sin, saying that it shocks the reason of unbelievers. These unbelievers tend to draw the conclusion from original sin that “infants who die unbaptized are punished eternally in hell like the greatest criminals[.]” Laforêt says that nowhere does the Catholic church claim this, and it is a monstrous travesty. But is that not the natural conclusion anyone would reach when thoroughly following the logic of original sin? If this doesn’t follow, then what does?

Laforêt does the same thing with the idea that there is no salvation outside the Catholic church. He says that saying so would be “as absurd as it is odious,” and that no Catholic theologian has ever said this. But isn’t eternal suffering for unbelievers the logical conclusion if you follow Christian reasoning in regards to how to get to heaven? Laforêt blames these doubts on prejudice alone, saying that if unbelievers do not suffer from ignorance, then they at least suffer from prejudice. It seems that at bottom, Laforêt makes these excuses to bury his own despair that the entire doctrine of hell actually is “as absurd as it is odious.”

This brings me to a little conspiracy theory that I gathered throughout reading The Causes and Cure of Unbelief. I think that Laforêt is a closet atheist. He might not even know it. But the whole book makes much more sense in that light, from the title to the last page, in which he (finally) prescribes the cure for unbelief in just praying harder.

I think that the unbeliever here is the author himself. The doubts are his doubts. His wandering question of whether faith comes from the will or the understanding is his way of trying to decide whether he is guilty or not in his unbelief. He reminds himself that he must believe, because if he doesn’t, he’s both a villain and a bumbling idiot. His long-winded sermon on Catholicism being Divine Truth justifies his belief in his religion. At least, that’s what he tells himself when he wonders if God really exists, and if God does exist, then it justifies how he can allow so many horrible demises.

But hey, that’s just a theory. I want to know if you agree!

0 thoughts on “Book Review: The Causes and Cure of Unbelief by N. J. Laforêt

  • April 5, 2020 at 9:05 am
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    Methinks he doth protest too much. And the claims of the church of the past have become calcified in people’s minds. This is called “Church Tradition” as opposed to “Church History” and tradition is basically a euphemism for “the way we have always done it.” So, these preachments devolve to “we have said this over and over for centuries, it must be true.”

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  • April 5, 2020 at 10:49 am
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    I remember my last, all-in effort to keep the Faith was to get on word press and show these idiots that my arguments were solid and sound. Well, here I am. But I’m not sure what it was that caused honest introspection. One has to be all in and dismiss every jot and tittle, for one admitted chink in the armor you begin quickly to realize how many lies we’ve told ourselves as a way of life to prove we were right.

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    • April 12, 2020 at 5:10 pm
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      I kinda wondered what triggered honest introspection in myself too. For me, it might’ve been anger that triggered the initial spark. I started to look for views alternative to those which were parroted around me all the time. Or maybe it was because we just couldn’t handle believing in Christianity’s absurd teachings anymore, that can’t be healthy.

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  • April 5, 2020 at 2:21 pm
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    Ok, some might be willing to concede that truth can’t lie. But leaps of logic and other things are ever present in every revision of the Bible – it’s no more truth than allegory.

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  • April 5, 2020 at 3:27 pm
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    Good review. I was baptized Roman Catholic on August 8, 1946. I grew up in the tradition. The timing is interesting regarding church history in France. And I love your theory. He would not have been the only closeted atheist of the time.

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    • April 6, 2020 at 2:52 am
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      The husband who does not trust himself, beats his wife. The Christian who does not trust his faith, beats on Atheists. 👿

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  • April 6, 2020 at 1:10 pm
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    I put forth a similar critique of the common apologetic claim that atheists just want to continue living immoral lives, or don’t want to be under any kind of authority. I try to avoid making assumptions about people’s motives and though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the author may actually be an unbeliever, I do think that these kinds of claims are sometimes a mechanism for deflecting doubts by framing the opposing view as irrational.

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  • April 12, 2020 at 5:02 pm
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    His ‘views’ are like a product of a different time, echoing what many other Catholics believe. It is their way or the highway, because they said so, and there is no arguing that. It’s not like today where Christian’s try (badly) to appeal to potential converts to win then over. But Laforêt has enough self awareness to realise there is a big problem with Hell, which he deals with by flipping it under a rug, because that’s what you’re supposed to do apparently. Which begs the question, how much of what he’s saying does he really believe? Interesting theory indeed. I’m not really a fan of Christian books but this has me curious.

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  • April 12, 2020 at 10:12 pm
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    This is a very interesting and entertaining post. Its what I call confusionment. Many believers go through this. Before, I transitioned out of religion it was a part of me. Its like talking out of both sides of your mouth.lol

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What do you think?