Gordes, France
William Edgar
Not atypically, in my latter years I am reviewing my life. Much of it has been marvelous, I am happy to say. But I have also assessed a number of my failures. One of them may surprise you. During our time working at the FLTR (now Faculté Jean Calvin) in Aix-en-Provence the French Revolution was commemorated. Exactly 200 years before the commemoratives, July 14, 1789, one of the greatest events in modern history had occurred.
Being an academic institution, and being French, we held a colloquium on the subject. The meetings were fascinating. We had invited a cast of remarkable scholars to present their analysis of the Revolution. A bit intimidated, I was urged to give a lecture. I did so before a packed house. At the end, one of my dearest friends rather sheepishly told me I had not realized this event was so important for the French, even for Protestants that he felt I had been unfair.
The essence of my talk was indeed that the French Revolution had a nefarious effect on European history. I relied heavily on two sources. The First was a classic in my field of apologetics. Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer’s work Revolution and Unbelief, 1847 (in English translation from the Dutch) is a long book explaining that the fundamental cause of the French Revolution was not in recent famines, nor even in the resentment of the aristocracy, but in secularism.[1] Groen was one of the architects of the Dutch revival, and a key influence on Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper (1837-1920) is sometimes known as “Father Abraham” because of his remarkable influence on Christian worldview thinking.
The second is a powerful book called Fire in the Minds of Men. Written by James Billington, it is a study of the modern revolutionary spirit, including long sections about the French Revolution.[2] Among other things Billington examines the spiritual forces that underlay all revolutions. He describes the atmosphere at the Palais Royale with its cafés, symbolic of a modernist mentality. The Café Mécanique provided its service using robots. The Café Foy was the hub for revolutionary journalists. Jumping up on a table at Foy Camille Desmoulins called on the crowd to storm the Bastille.
In agreement with these studies, my lecture argued that the origins of the French Revolution were religious, though negative. Today I still stand by my diagnosis. Why then was my friend offended? The answer is found in a remarkable book by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Voyage dans la France d’avant.[3] Giesbert is a public intellectual, a remarkable writer, and currently editor-in-chief of the popular newsweekly Le Point. This book in intended to be the final volume in his series on the history of the Fifth Republic, one that he observed close up and personal.
Giesbert devotes several chapters to the French Revolution. He agrees that the causes were not primarily a famine, nor the errors of the aristocracy, so many of them put to death by the Guillotine, the instrument of the eradication of some two million people during each phase of the Revolution. Giesbert goes into grisly details about the cruelty of the Revolutionary leaders, especially Maximillien Robespierre (1758-1794). But he asks why the Revolution means so much to so many French people. “Pourquoi les Français ont-ils toujours le culte de la Révolution?”[4]
To be sure, Giesbert exhibits no sympathy with the overall picture that can be painted. But his carefully argued answer is that to understand the French both then and now one must understand their frustration with the slow pace of any social improvements. He suggests Louis XVI committed the serious error of honoring his opponents by giving them a voice. What exactly is wrong with that? The two sides had no way to discuss the issues with civility. Something had to give. It did, ending in catastrophe. The “Restoration” was an attempt at moving forward, while correcting the excesses of the Revolution.
Today, there still exist two sides, the one favoring change using violence if necessary, the other wanting to preserve the status quo. Hopes had run high in the Revolutionary spirit, but they were dashed. My error? I did not sufficiently appreciate the legitimacy of those hopes. No doubt they were insufficiently oriented. Only in Christ can our hopes be guaranteed to yield good results. Still, I should have paused to realize how the hopes of French people are a fundamental component of being human.
The colloquia on the Revolution are spent. I will not be able to rewrite my lecture. I do believe I know better and wish I could go back and do that. I’ll bet that if I re-read Groen and Billington I would find more positive notes than I did at the time.
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[1] A modern version of this book, translated by Harry Van Dyke, is available from Lexham Publishers, a division of Baker Book House.
[2] Now available from Routledge in Boston, MA.
[3] Paris: Gallimard, 2025.
[4] Why do the French hold to the worship of the Revolution?