Author: Lee M.

Plot your place on the political map (via Naked Villainy). Looks like I’m a shade to the right of Tony Blair and a bit of an idealist. (Though, why are Stalin and Hitler classified as “idealists”??)

(The continuation of a long-neglected series. See Part I here and Part II here.)

To deal with evil requires understanding and dealing with the sources of evil. Christians believe that human evil is rooted in a primal turning away from God. In rejecting God, we set the stage for all kinds of evil (cf. Romans 1). For instance, if I no longer find security in my relationship with the divine, I may try to create a sense of security by hoarding possessions. Or, if my sense of self-worth no longer comes from my status as a child of God, I might try to find it in a series of sexual conquests. The idea is that alienation from God is the root sin from which all other sins flow. The entire sordid human history of hatred, envy, domination, resentment, and conflict is simply the outworking of humanity’s rejection of our proper end, which is union with God.

If this is the case, then the solution to human evil will have to be radical in the etymological sense – it will need to get to the root of the problem. This is precisely what Christians believe God has done in the Incarnation and Atonement (which are really two aspects of a single divine action). In Christ, God has come into the world to heal the broken relationship between God and humanity.

The church has, probably wisely, never made a definitive pronouncement on how God accomplishes this. The New Testament contains a variety of images describing God’s action, and theologians down through the ages have constructed a variety of models to shed some light on this divine mystery. No single theory, however useful, should be identified as the definitive way to understand the Atonement. Still, some have had more staying power than others.

One of the more famous (and controversial) theories of the Atonement is the “satisfaction” theory propounded by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. In a nutshell, according to Anselm, human sin has disrupted the moral order of the universe created by God; by failing to offer God the obedience that is his due, we have alienated ourselves from him. Human beings are unable to make reparation (or satisfaction) for this disruption because we already owe everything we have to God and are therefore unable to offer any kind of supererogatory obedience. Thus, Christ the God-man comes to fill this gap by living a life of perfect obedience to the Father and going to his death on the cross. This heals the breach between God and humanity and makes a new relationship possible.

Let’s clear away a couple of common misconceptions about this account. First, it is often claimed that it paints an unflattering portrait of God the Father as a petty despot who insists that his honor be satisfied before he will save sinful humanity. Why can’t God simply overlook sin and let us off the hook? Wouldn’t this be the mark of a truly gracious God of the kind we meet in the teachings of Jesus?

It’s important to remember that for Anselm, “honor” doesn’t mean anything like personal vanity. Living in a feudal society, Anselm would have seen honor as key pillar of a stable social order. Giving one’s lord his due was a key requirement for ensuring that the lord would fulfill his duty to maintain law and order. So, in these terms, God’s honor might better be seen as the justice that God upholds in the cosmos. For God to simply ignore sin would be to fail to treat it with the seriousness it requires. More, it would be to treat us with less than full seriousness. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “God does not ‘overlook’ sin; that would mean not taking human beings seriously as personal beings in their very culpability.” God does better than overlook sin; he does something about it.

Another way of thinking about it is to replace the concept of honor with the biblical idea of “holiness.” Since God is completely holy no sin can exist in his presence. This is not simply a matter of God being personally offended, but is due to the very nature of things. In order for us to approach God, we have to be cleansed of our sin. By living a holy life for our sake, Christ makes it possible for us to approach God in a renewed relationship.

The second mistake to avoid is seeing the crucifixion as something that God the Father inflicts on God the Son. This has given rise to accusations that Atonement theology provides a kind of divine sanction for child abuse. But this concern can be defused by recognizing that there is no division in wills between the Father and the Son. It is God himself, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who becomes incarnate in Jesus and willingly lives out a life of perfect obedience “even unto death on a cross.” The cross is not a punishment inflicted by the Father on the Son, but the inexorable outcome of a perfect human life being lived out under the conditions of sin.

What God accomplishes in the life and death of Jesus, according to Christianity, is nothing less than a reconstruction of human nature. Human beings have strayed off course; Christ comes and lives human life as it was meant to be lived. And in his Resurrection he offers the definitive blow to the powers of sin and death. In doing so, he opens to us the path of genuine humanity lived in fellowship with God and each other. By uniting ourselves with Christ in faith, we can begin to be healed of our sin and set back on our proper course toward union with God. In the Atonement, God begins the process of pulling out evil by the roots.

Alan McCann at Via Fortunata takes issue with my post on St. Thomas and private property. He accuses me of “uncritical leftist thinking” in drawing the conclusion that Thomas would have endorsed a role for government in ameliorating the plight of the poor:

This is typical of a lot of uncritical, leftist thinking within and without the church: if something is morally right to do then it is ok for the government to force people to do it. This argument misses the point that forced behavior cannot, by definition, be moral behavior. At best, it is amoral.

Jesus didn’t force anyone to behave a certain way. He helped them to change their minds (metanoia) which would result in changed behavior. Christianity goes off the rails when it tries to enforce individual external moral behavior through the use of social or government force.



Now, I could take a cheap shot and say that this is typical of a lot of uncritical, rightist thinking within and without the church: that the church should not attempt to advance its moral precepts, especially those concerning economics, by means of public policy. But I won’t take that cheap shot.

What I will note is that, according to Thomas, caring for the poor is not a matter just of Christian charity, but on the contrary “whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.” (emphasis mine) That is, care for the poor is a matter of justice, not charity.

The State is the institution in society charged with securing justice. And justice is giving to each what is their due by law, so if those in dire need are due the superabundance of what others have, then making sure they receive their due is a proper concern for the public authorities. Those of us who aren’t anarchists (which is to say most of us), recognize that securing justice will require coercion. Note that Thomas says that the poor may legitimately take what they need, not ask politely for a handout.

Now, I think what measures governments should take to help the poor is certainly a matter of legitimate debate. And the principle of subsidiarity would seem to imply that those more immediate institutions (families, churches, local communities) have the greater responsibility in caring for the poor. Nevertheless, the State has a proper role in ensuring that these smaller communities fulfill their duty, and to step in if need be.

Though I opposed the Iraq war, I’ve always tried to take seriously the arguments of the war’s proponents. Nor do I assume that war advocates were arguing in bad faith or from ulterior motives. I’m not a pacifist, nor am I reflexively opposed to the use of American military power. In thinking about these matters I try to be guided by the tradition of just war thinking as it was developed by the Catholic Church, adopted by the magisterial Protestant reformers, and extended and modified by various modern and contemporary thinkers.

That being said, it might be worthwhile to consider what I take to have been one of the strongest arguments for going to war in Iraq, the so-called humanitarian argument.* In essence, proponents of this argument said that the U.S. had the right, if not the obligation, to put an end to Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule. This argument appealed to one of the fundamental principles of just war theory: that the protection of the innocent from certain harm can provide a reason for going to war. Saddam certainly posed a threat to the Iraq people, thus it was just to remove his government.

In my view, the problem with this argument is that it failed to heed one of the other essential components of just war: the chance for success in creating a lasting peace. Neither punishing Saddam for crimes he committed in the past nor preventing him from committing future crimes would be sufficient to justify going to war without the additional prospect of creating conditions that would be markedly superior for the people of Iraq. Since war entails significant evil in the form of death and destruction, the good to be achieved has to outweigh this evil for the war to be considered morally licit. If the end result doesn’t differ significantly from the status quo ante we would be guilty of inflicting great evil for the sake of no, or little, discernible gain. In this respect, just war theory dictates that we consider consequences and not just past violations of moral principles.

It’s precisely with respect to having reasonable assurance of success in creating a lasting peace that I think the Iraq war failed the test. Though it would be foolish to offer predictions, right now it seems that the likelihood of a stable, democratic, and somewhat liberal Iraq is a dim prospect indeed. Certainly it’s far less likely than some war supporters had led us to believe. At the very least, it seems no more likely than the prospect of a) a takeover by a secular strongman, b) an all-out civil war among Iraq’s various ethnic and religious factions, or c) the emergence of an Iran-style theocracy. Any of these outcomes seems to have the potential for creating as much suffering as the continued reign of Saddam. That being the case, it’s hard to see how a realistic assessment of the situation beforehand would have justified going to war on purely humanitarian grounds.**

However, the principles outlined above would seem to imply an obligation for the U.S. (preferably working in concert with allies) to pursue every realistic means to foster some kind of stable Iraq that respects basic human rights. In other words, even if the invasion was a mistake, rectifying the mistake probably doesn’t mean simply unilateral withdrawal. Indeed, by going to war we may have incurred a greater obligation to seek a tolerable outcome for the people of Iraq.

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*I won’t address here the arguments for going to war for reasons of national security. Suffice it to say, it seems in retrospect that Iraq posed less of a threat to the U.S. than even war opponents thought at the time.



**I’m not claiming that humanitarian concerns were a primary, or even significant, reason that the Bush administration, with the approval of Congress, decided to go to war. While motives count, they are not the primary consideration in determing the justice of the war itself. It’s quite possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

An excellent illustration of the differences between libertarians and conservatives is supplied by this essay from Orthodox theologian David B. Hart in last month’s First Things:

The only sound premise for a people’s self-governance is a culture of common virtue directed towards the one Good. And a society that can no longer conceive of freedom as anything more than limitless choice and uninhibited self-expression must of necessity progressively conclude that all things should be permitted, that all values are relative, that desire fashions its own truth, that there is no such thing as “nature,” that we are our own creatures. The ultimate consequence of a purely libertarian political ethos, if it could be taken to its logical end, would be a world in which we would no longer even remember that we should want to choose the good, as we would have learned to deem things good solely because they have been chosen. This would in truth be absolute slavery to the momentary, the final eclipse of rational dignity, the triumph within us of the bestial over the spiritual, and so of death over life.

From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Daniel Culligan offered apologies at his sentencing in Bucks County Court yesterday but no explanation as to why he doused his cat with lighter fluid, set it on fire, and threw it from the deck of his Bristol Township apartment in December.

Judge David W. Heckler gave him six to 23 months in Bucks County prison to think about it.

“Your conduct went beyond a mistake, it went beyond misjudgment,” Heckler said. “You displayed a callous disregard for the enormous pain you caused another living creature.”

Culligan, 28, pleaded guilty in June to arson and cruelty to animals for torching the 9-month-old tabby named Chica on Dec. 14. He told police he was frustrated with the cat he had gotten for his son days before because it repeatedly defecated on the floor.

The origins of the just war tradition are usually traced back to the fourth century and St. Augustine’s masterwork, City of God. St. Augustine grapples with the undeniable anti-violent thrust of the Christian tradition, especially the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. He comes to the conclusion that wars of aggression and self-aggrandizement — like Rome’s imperial wars — are neveracceptable. But there are occasions when violence may be necessary. Violence is never a normative good. It is better for an individual who professes Christianity to suffer harm than to commit it. But public officials are charged with protecting the safety of a people: The shepherd must tend the flock. For St. Augustine, the most potent casus belli is protecting the innocent from certain harm — the innocent being those who are unable to defend themselves. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

A contradiction in terms? Not according to Chris Roach who offers a manifesto of sorts for hawkish paleocons.

A while back Bill Vallicella linked to this excellent post at the Big Hominid (n.b.: some bad language) on the topic of pluralism, truth, and religion. This sparked a series of equally interesting posts on the question of whether every religion should be understood as offering a path to salvation and/or liberation.

Rather than enter directly into this debate, I thought I’d use it as a convenient point of departure for some of my own thoughts on the matter of truth and pluralism in religion. For my part, I tend to be an exclusivist about truth, but a relativist about justification. In other words, I believe that the claims of classic Christianity are true always, everywhere, and for all, but showing to them to be true is a complicated, messy, and probably inevitably incomplete matter.

Part of the reason for this is that I agree with much of what sails under the flag of postmodernism insofar as I think the attempt to find a kind of universal starting point for argument, one that all rational beings would assent to, is a fool’s errand. Rather, I think arguments proceed in an ad hoc fashion and vary depending on the conversation partner. Much will depend on what, if any, shared assumptions or beliefs each party brings to the argument. This doesn’t require starting from “scratch,” but from where we happen to be.

With that in mind, I think it’s clear that there can be no fool-proof method for convincing others of our truth claims on pain of irrationality. That doesn’t mean we need to give up our commitment to the truth of our beliefs. To believe something just is to believe that it’s true, even if we can’t show it to be true in a way that will convince everyone. But it does perhaps mean we should display more humility in advancing our beliefs. In fact, I think the character of the arguer can be just as important in advancing a truth as the cogency of the reasoning. In the early years of Christianity, for instance, it was primarily the love displayed by Christians, for each other as well as outsiders, that attracted new converts.

For Christians, it may be that truth is an eschatological concept. We are assured that one day “every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord,” but for now “we see in a glass darkly.” In the world we live in, sorting through claims and counter-claims of truth is a messy business. This means recognizing that people of good will can come to different conclusions on these matters, even as we strive to lead lives of faithful witness to the truth as we have received it.

So says Alice Cooper about Springsteen, R.E.M., et al.:

“To me, that’s treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics.”

and

“If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal[sic].”