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Just wanted to try and come to some kind of conclusion regarding Christopher Insole’s The Politics of Human Frailty: A Theological Defense of Political Liberalism (see here, here and here for previous posts on this topic).

In his concluding chapter Insole wants to clarify what the defender of political liberalism is and isn’t committed to. He says:

The position I have been circling around in this book is that there is order, meaning and participation, but that it comes to us in ways that are fragmented, graced, unbidden and hidden. I have argued that a refusal to conflate the visible and invisible Church leads us to endorse some strands of political liberalism, while cultivating an aversion towards global invocations of new (or ancient) world-views and divinely sanctioned political activism. On the other hand, the Church – because of the specific and theological nature of its endorsement of political liberalism – is always called to resist liberal triumphalism and global revolutions and wars in the name of ‘liberty’, when these campaigns ride roughshod over the fallenness and complexity of our shared human condition. (p. 170)

Insole concedes that such a position may risk falling into a complacent acceptance of the status quo. But, he argues that the 20th century experiments in “transformative projects” – such as communism and fascism – give us good reason to appreciate anew liberalism’s prosaic virtues. And Insole’s brand of liberalism can, he thinks, provide a check on the more millenial version of “crusading liberalism” that seeks to impose one model of political and economic life on the entire world:

An aversion to political liberalism, one suspects, is frequently motivated by a profound discomfort at the ravages of late global capitalism; such a discomfort I would suggest is the driving force behind Milbank’s self-styling as a Christian socialist. If nothing else, this book should show that there is a tradition of political liberalism that is much older than global capitalism, and that is conceptually quite distinct from it. Political liberalism is motivated by the desire to preserve the liberties of the individual within a framework of law and fair institutions. A sense of the frailty of human individuals and their vulnerability to the enthusiasms of other individuals leads the political liberal to adopt a cautious attitude when presented with attempts to plan society on the model of a unifying common good, a ‘political community’. (p. 172)

He notes that the liberal as such isn’t committed to any particular view of political economy; “liberal” views range from the relatively laissez-faire of F.A. Hayek to the rather extensive degree of redistribution and regulation envisioned by John Rawls. Nor must the liberal demand that “market values” be extended to every sphere of society – i.e. that all professions, communities, etc. be “run like a business.” Burke, though a fan of Adam Smith’s economic theories, certainly didn’t think that the “little platoons” of family, community, church, college, etc. should consist entirely of contractual relationships. And neither is the liberal committed to the global extension of a particular social and economic model that runs roughshod over indigenous customs and institutions.

The essence of the liberal view of political society is that it is (to use Michael Oakeshott‘s terms) a nomocracy and not a teleocracy. In a nomocracy, the job of government is to establish a set of rules under the constraint of which people can pursue whatever goals they choose. A teleocracy, by contrast, seeks to direct its subjects to a particular goal or purpose. For instance, when people talke about America’s “mission” or “purpose” they’re speaking teleocratically. Which is not to deny that the various communities within liberal society – churches, schools, associations of various sorts – may be legitimate teleocracies. The crucial distinction for the liberal is that political society has the power to impose a particular ordering of values, whereas these other bodies can only propose.

Critics of liberalism sometimes charge that it celebrates an essentially empty notion of freedom without taking a stand on which choices we should make. But for the political liberal that’s as it should be, because political liberalism isn’t a comprehensive theory about the good life, but a doctrine about the proper limits of political authority. The liberal wants the discussion about the proper ends of life to be hashed out in the essentially non-coercive sphere of civil society rather than being imposed from above by government.

Which is not to say that there aren’t versions of liberalism that do propose (or maybe presuppose) a comprehensive theory about the good life. There is a strain in liberal thinking (perhaps derived from J.S. Mill) that sees the development of individual personality without restraints as the highest good, period. This “expressive individualism” is what critics of liberalism often have in mind I think. Since it denies the existence of an ordering telos of human life it is inconsistent with more robust accounts of what makes for a good human life (including religious ones). But what Insole and other political liberals want to say is that political liberalism can exist independently of liberalism as a comprehensive view about the good life.

The critics, on the other hand, think that political liberalism will bleed into the rest of social life, dissolving all social bonds into relationships based on contract and consent, and promoting a nihilistic denial of any good beyond the preferences of individuals. That is, they think that political liberalism will inevitably lead to a society of expressive individualism and moral nihilism (critics like Alasdair MacIntyre think that our society has already reached such a point).

While I think Insole has done a good job showing that political liberalism is conceptually distinct from liberalism more broadly conceived, I doubt the critics would be convinced that there isn’t still a slippery slope from one to the other. On the other hand, I think he’s done a good job reminding us of some of the virtues of liberalism at a time when perhaps there are neo-traditionalists and communitarians itching to have society reflect a prescribed set of values. And for all their polemics, I don’t think the theological critics of liberalism want to see the replacement of the liberal political order with a confessional state, so maybe there’s less substantive difference here than some of the rhetoric might lead us to think.

Zod in 2008! (via Unqualified Offerings)

But wouldn’t this require amending the constitution? (I believe he’s an immigrant, after all.)

I don’t usually agree with John McCain, but props to him for calling for an investigation into new allegations of torture of prisoners in Iraq.

Y’know, it’s funny (not ha-ha funny) that after all the tortured arguments (pardon the expression) about whether it would be justified in various contrived “ticking bomb” scenarios, the actual torture that has taken place has been done for no good end, but rather out of what looks like a spirit of sheer sadism.

In today’s paper the story of Cindy Sheehan getting arrested at the White House was right next to the story of five Shi’ite elementary school teachers being lined up against a wall and executed by Sunni terrorists. Intentional or not, it’s enough to make me question the wisdom of the “get out now” crowd.

One popular argument on the anti-war side has been that the presence of the U.S. actually exacerbates the violence in Iraq and that it will only begin to subside if U.S. troops leave. However, it’s hard to see why there will be fewer instances of things like the slaying of those five teachers if we leave. I’m not sure we should assume things can’t get worse than they are.

But there is a more pessimistic argument for leaving – namely, that Iraq is going to descend into increasing violence and sectarian strife no matter what we do, so we might as well leave now and spare ourselves the additional casualties. The more positive spin on this course of action is the “declare victory and get out” strategy that some have advocated; we toppled Saddam and made sure there were no WMD’s – mission accomplished!

I just wish I could be as sure what the right thing to do is as a lot of other people seem to be.

This quiz has been making the rounds: You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an… Economic Conservative (60% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

The AP interviews Huston Smith (via Godspy) on his new book The Soul of Christianity. I’ve always enjoyed Smith’s writing, even though I have fairly substantial disagreements with him. He’s very good on debunking “scientism” and pointing out that science does not give us an exhaustive account of reality, as the article mentions.

Where I depart from Smith is in his religious pluralism. He tends to view each of the “great” religions as expressions of a kind of “perennial philosophy,” each one teaching us essentially the same important truths about ourselves, God and the universe. To his credit, he’s not a kind of metaphysical reductionist – if anything he probably has a more robust ontolgy than most contemporary Christian theologians! But he doesn’t think the particular claims of individual religions are essential to the truth that they all affirm.

My problem with that kind of pluralism is that it assumes a kind of privileged epistemic position from which we can determine what constitutes the “essential” core of each religion. But how do we determine which aspects of, say, Christianity or Hinduism or Islam are “essential” and which are “inessential”? To take the most obvious example, the Christian claim that Jesus is the unique incarnation of the Son of God is essential to Christianity, but pretty clearly unacceptable to adherents of other religions. But pluralism can’t allow that kind of exclusive claim. So, the ostensibly humble and tolerant pluralist often ends up being quite intolerant of the particualristic claims made by individual religions.

I think a better position is one of epistemic humility. We should affirm the truth-claims of our tradition, but recognize that our knowledge of ultimate things is likely partial and distorted. “We see in a mirror dimly” and could be mistaken in what we affirm. And because these matters are difficult to discern, it may well be that adherents of other traditions are justified in what they believe, even if we think that what they believe is, at least partly, false.

Robert Novak reports (from an elite gathering in Aspen) that the ultra-rich are turning on George Bush:

For two full days, George W. Bush was bashed. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.

The Bush-bashing occurred last weekend at the annual Aspen conference sponsored by the New York investment firm Forstmann Little & Co. Over 200 invited guests, mostly prestigious, arrived Thursday night (many by private aircraft) and stayed until Sunday morning for more than golf, hikes and gourmet meals. They faithfully attended the discussions presided over by PBS’s Charlie Rose on such serious subjects as “global poverty and human rights” and “the ‘new’ world economy.” The connecting link was hostility to President Bush.

[…]

I was surprised that the program indicated the first panel, on stem cell research, consisted solely of scientists hostile to the Bush administration’s position. In the absence of any disagreement, I took the floor to suggest there are scientists and bioethicists with dissenting views and that it was not productive to demean opposing views as based on “religious dogma.” The response was peeved criticism of my intervention and certainly no support. (emphasis mine)

Now I obviously think there are sound reasons for being peeved with President Bush’s performance in office, to say the least. But I think one thing this highlights is the ongoing tension between the super-rich donors and supporters of the GOP and the socially conservative base. In particular, the divide over “life” issues.

There is a long history of the rich supporting population control and eugenics, with abortion-on-demand as a key plank in the platform. Big foundations like Ford and Rockefeller are well-known for their support of groups like Planned Parenthood. And rich individuals such as Ted Turner and George Soros are very involved in the population control efforts of the UN. To put it mildly, this puts them at odds with the social conservatives who support the President on these issues.

Some sharp thinking from Matthew Yglesias.

Apropos of nothing in particular, here are some thoughts of mine on St. Athanasius’ classic work On the Incarnation, which I sat down with the other night.

Athanasius has a rather noetic understanding of sin (and, consequently of salvation). This really isn’t that surprising considering that many of the Fathers were deeply influenced by Platonic philosophy. According to Athanasius, sin consists in turning our gaze away from God, in ceasing to contemplate him. As a result we are attracted by finite goods and come to be mired in our attachment to them, which leads to all kinds of sin. Nevertheless, the original turning away is an act of will, so sin is not attributable to ignorance, as it seems to be in some versions of Platonism.

And since God is the source of all being, to turn away from the contemplation of God is to turn toward non-being or corruption and death:

For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good.

As a result, a large part of Christ’s work for Athanasius is to restore fallen humanity’s knowledge of God. You might say that he comes in the flesh to paint a picture for us of what God is like so we will turn back to contemplation of and communion with God.

There are, he thinks, other sources whereby we can come to know God:

God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known. Nor was this all. Man’s neglect of the indwelling grace tends ever to increase; and against this further frailty also God made provision by giving them a law, and by sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they were tardy in looking up to heaven, they might still gain knowledge of their Maker from those close at hand; for men can learn directly about higher things from other men. Three ways thus lay open to them, by which they might obtain the knowledge of God. They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them, they could converse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, the Father of Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of all impiety. Or else, in the third place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good life merely by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, nor was it solely for their sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that they were sent and by the Jews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.

However, our sin was so great that even this isn’t sufficient to bring us to knowledge of God:

Yet men, bowed down by the pleasures of the moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up their heads towards the truth. So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word.

[…]

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.

But sin and salvation are not strictly matters of knowledge, because in turning away from God we incur guilt and fall under the law of death. Yet it’s not entirely clear to me whether Athanasius understands death as a punishment for turning away from God, or just the natural and inevitable consequence of our sin. Maybe the best way to resolve the tension is to say that becasue in God there can be no division between his will and his nature that the distinction between punishment and inevitable consequence disappears?

Here’s what Athanasius says:

We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption.

This makes it sound like God is bound to sentence humankind to death because that was the consequence he stipulated for eating the forbidden fruit. Again though, does the consequence only contingently follow from man’s disobedience, or is it a necessary consequence? To say that it would “have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die” makes it sound contingent since it is a matter of God not going back on his word. But of course, in some sense, God can’t go back on his word since that would presumably violate the divine nature.

In any event, the fact that humankind is now under the law of death makes it necessary, according to Athanasius, that someone else has to die in man’s place. We’re so used to the familiar typology of atonement theories that attributes the “Christus Victor” view to the early church that it’s somewhat surprising to see Athanasius use language that sounds a lot like penal subsitution:

The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required.

But for Athanasius, this is not just a matter of accepting the punishment due to humankind for their transgressions, it’s also a matter of effecting an ontological change in human nature. For human nature, by turning away from God, has become corruptible. It doesn’t just need forgiveness, but needs healing:

Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

By becoming united to our human nature, the Word of God heals the corruption and proneness-to-death that followed as a result of sin. (We might ask if this implies a kind of universalism. If human nature as such has been healed of corruption, how can the benefits not accrue to all individual humans?) And Athanasius is careful to point out that it is the love of God which impels the Incarnation and Atonement. There is no hint of an angry God who has to be appeased by the sacrifice of his Son.

This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people’s neglect. Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man.

Of course, for the contemporary reader this raises some problems. Most of us don’t think of “human nature” as a substantial thing in which individuals “participate.” So for us it’s hard to see how the Word becoming united to “human nature” can effect a change that makes a difference for us. We tend to think more in relational and moral, rather than ontological, terms about these things. This may be why, despite objections, the penal substitution and moral influnce theories remain popular (though usually with different people). Neither one requires us to think in terms of the Incarnation and Atonement directed primarily toward an abstract human nature, and it’s easier to see how it affects individuals (whether through removing our guilt, or providing us with a powerful revelation of God’s love).

Addendum. I should add that whatever misgivings we might have about some of Athanasius’ metaphysical baggage, I do think his emphasis on contemplation of/communion with God is something we could stand to recover. So much of modern Christianity (especially Protestantism) seems to have an almost exclusively moralisitc understanding of sin and salvation. The beatific vision seems to have largely faded into the background in our thinking and piety.

Maybe it’s bad blog etiquette to elevate one of my own comments to the status of it’s own blog post, but, well, it’s my blog after all.

Anyway, in a comment to this post I said (comments slightly edited):

It seems there can be at least three “levels” of morality:

1) Specifically Christian morality

2) The “minimal morality” that is accessible to everyone (natural law?)

and

3) The morality that can or should be enforced by the government/law.

Do we want to say that 2 is a subset of 1? Or might 1 and 2 actually conflict in places? And do we want to say that 3 is a subset of 2? (i.e. only moral truths that can be agreed to, in principle, by everyone are candidates for state enforcement, but not necessarily all of them?)

This seems relevant to the topic of liberalism since what’s at issue is whether there is an ethic that “moral strangers” (i.e. people who disagree about questions of religion, the good, the meaning of life, etc.) can agree on and that offers a sufficient underpinning of a tolerable, decent society. Despite whatever qualms we may have about “secularism” it seems to me that this kind of pluralism is simply a fact of modern societies, and we need some way to negotiate our interactions with others who may not share many of our assumptions about morality.

UPDATE: Joshie sez:

I’m sort of treading on unfamiliar ground here, so bear with me. I don’t how helpful thinking of subsets and the like is, but if pressed I would say 1 is a subset of 2.

Both 2 and 1 are from God. I would hesitate to call 2 natural law, since I think Paul makes it clear this is a law on the heart of every person (and perhaps creature), it comes from God (thru Gos’s Wisdom, thru the Spirit) into the person testified to by that person’s conscience, not from God to nature to the person.

1 is a hightened, clarified, completed version of 2 due to the highened clarified, completed level of communion with the Spirit one experiences in the church. This is a fuller revelation through the Spirit via the preaching and teaching of the Word, study, dialogue, and meditation on the scriptures and the rest of the tradition, and personal revelations trough prayer (ALWAYS clarified and controlled by the tradition and teaching of the church, and intended for the church at large, not a secret intended for one or a select few).

As for 3, just laws should A. be a reflection of 2; B. be a reflection of the culture and C. deal with the problem of sin and the limitations of human knowledge and action. Those are my unrefined thoughts at the moment.