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December 1989
Can We Be Good Without God?
On the political meaning of Christianity
by Glenn Tinder
WE are so used to thinking of spirituality as withdrawal from the world
and human affairs that it is hard to think of it as political.
Spirituality is personal and private, we assume, while politics is public.
But such a dichotomy drastically diminishes spirituality construing it as
a relationship to God without implications for one's relationship to the
surrounding world. The God of Christian faith (I shall focus on
Christianity although the God of the New Testament is also the God of the
Old Testament) created the world and is deeply engaged in the affairs of
the world. The notion that we can be related to God and not to the
world--that we can practice a spirituality that is not political--is in
conflict with the Christian understanding of God.
And if spirituality is properly political, the converse also is true,
however distant it may be from prevailing assumptions: politics is
properly spiritual. The spirituality of politics was affirmed by Plato at
the very beginnings of Western political philosophy and was a commonplace
of medieval political thought. Only in modern times has it come to be
taken for granted that politics is entirely secular. The inevitable result
is the demoralization of politics. Politics loses its moral structure and
purpose, and turns into an affair of group interest and personal ambition.
Government comes to the aid of only the well organized and influential,
and it is limited only where it is checked by countervailing forces.
Politics ceases to be understood as a pre-eminently human activity and is
left to those who find it profitable, pleasurable, or in some other way
useful to themselves. Political action thus comes to be carried out purely
for the sake of power and privilege.
It will be my purpose in this essay to try to connect the severed realms
of the spiritual and the political. In view of the fervent secularism of
many Americans today, some will assume this to be the opening salvo of a
fundamentalist attack on "pluralism." Ironically, as I will argue, many of
the undoubted virtues of pluralism--respect for the individual and a
belief in the essential equality of all human beings, to cite just
two--have strong roots in the union of the spiritual and the political
achieved in the vision of Christianity. The question that secularists have
to answer is whether these values can survive without these particular
roots. In short, can we be good without God? Can we affirm the dignity and
equality of individual persons--values we ordinarily regard as
secular--without giving them transcendental backing? Today these values
are honored more in the breach than in the observance; Manhattan Island
alone, with its extremes of sybaritic wealth on the one hand and Calcuttan
poverty on the other, is testimony to how little equality really counts
for in contemporary America. To renew these indispensable values, I shall
argue, we must rediscover their primal spiritual grounds.
Many will disagree with my argument, and I cannot pretend there are no
respectable reasons for doing so. Some may disagree, however, because of
misunderstandings. A few words at the outset may help to prevent this.
First, although I dwell on Christianity I do not mean thus to slight
Judaism or its contribution to Western values. It is arguable that every
major value affirmed in Christianity originated with the ancient Hebrews.
Jewish sensitivities on this matter are understandable. Christians
sometimes speak as though unaware of the elemental facts that Jesus was a
Jew, that he died before even the earliest parts of the New Testament were
written, and that his scriptural matrix was not Paul's Letter to the
Romans or the Gospel of John but the Old Testament. Christianity diverged
from Judaism in answering one question: Who was Jesus? For Christians, he
was the anticipated Messiah, whereas for traditional Jews (Paul and the
first Christians were of course also Jews), he was not. This divergence
has given Christianity its own distinctive character, even though it
remains in a sense a Jewish faith.
The most adamant opposition to my argument is likely to come from
protagonists of secular reason--a cause represented preeminently by the
Enlightenment. Locke and Jefferson, it will be asserted, not Jesus and
Paul, created our moral universe. Here I cannot be as disarming as I hope
I was in the paragraph above, for underlying my argument is the conviction
that Enlightenment rationalism is not nearly so constructive as is often
supposed. Granted, it has sometimes played a constructive role. It has
translated certain Christian values into secular terms and, in an age
becoming increasingly secular, has given them political force. It is
doubtful, however, that it could have created those values or that it can
provide them with adequate metaphysical foundations. Hence if Christianity
declines and dies in coming decades, our moral universe and also the
relatively humane political universe that it supports will be in peril.
But I recognize that if secular rationalism is far more dependent on
Christianity than its protagonists realize, the converse also is in some
sense true. The Enlightenment carried into action political ideals that
Christians, in contravention of their own basic faith, often shamefully
neglected or denied. Further, when I acknowledged that there are
respectable grounds for disagreeing with my argument, I had secular
rationalism particularly in mind. The foundations of political decency are
an issue I wish to raise, not settle.
CHRISTIAN LOVE
LOVE seems as distant as spirituality from politics, yet any discussion of
the political meaning of Christianity must begin by considering (or at
least making assumptions about) love. Love is for Christians the highest
standard of human relationships, and therefore governs those relationships
that make up politics. Not that political relationships are expected to
exhibit pure love. But their place in the whole structure of human
relationships can be understood only by using the measure that love
provides.
The Christian concept of love requires attention not only because it
underlies Christian political ideas but also because it is unique. Love as
Christians understand it is distinctly different from what most people
think of as love. In order to dramatize the Christian faith in an
incarnate and crucified God, Paul spoke ironically of "the folly of what
we preach," and it may be said that Christian love is as foolish as
Christian faith. Marking its uniqueness, Christian love has a distinctive
name, agape, which sets it apart from other kinds of love, such as philia,
or friendship, and eros, or erotic passion.
When John wrote that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,"
he illuminated the sacrificial character of divine love. This is the mark
of agape. It is entirely selfless. If one could love others without
judging them, asking anything of them, or thinking of one's own needs, one
would meet the Christian standard. Obviously, no one can. Many of us can
meet the requirements of friendship or erotic love, but agape is beyond us
all. It is not a love toward which we are naturally inclined or for which
we have natural capacities. Yet it is not something exclusively divine,
like omnipotence, which human beings would be presumptuous to emulate. In
fact, it is demanded of us. Agape is the core of Christian morality.
Moreover, as we shall see, it is a source of political standards that are
widely accepted and even widely, if imperfectly, realized.
The nature of agape stands out sharply against the background of ordinary
social existence. The life of every society is a harsh process of mutual
appraisal. People are ceaselessly judged and ranked, and they in turn
ceaselessly judge and rank others. This is partly a necessity of social
and political order; no groups whatever--clubs, corporations,
universities, or nations--can survive without allocating responsibilities
and powers with a degree of realism. It is partly also a struggle for
self-esteem; we judge ourselves for the most part as others judge us.
Hence outer and inner pressures alike impel us to enter the struggle.
The process is harsh because all of us are vulnerable. All of us manifest
deficiencies of natural endowment--of intelligence, temperament,
appearance, and so forth. And all personal lives reveal moral deficiencies
as well--blamable failures in the past, and vanity, greed, and other such
qualities in the present. The process is harsh also because it is unjust.
Not only are those who are judged always imperfect and vulnerable, but the
judges are imperfect too. They are always fallible and often cruel. Thus
few are rated exactly, or even approximately, as they deserve.
There is no judgment so final nor rank so high that one can finally attain
security. Many are ranked high; they are regarded as able, or wise, or
courageous. But such appraisals are never unanimous or stable. A few reach
summits of power and honor where it seems for a moment that their victory
is definitive. It transpires, however, that they are more fully exposed to
judgment than anyone else, and often they have to endure torrents of
derision.
Agape means refusing to take part in this process. It lifts the one who is
loved above the level of reality on which a human being can be equated
with a set of observable characteristics. The agape of God, according to
Christian faith, does this with redemptive power; God 'crucifies' the
observable, and always deficient, individual, and "raises up" that
individual to new life. The agape of human beings bestows new life in turn
by accepting the work of God. The power of agape extends in two
directions. Not only is the one who is loved exalted but so is the one who
loves. To lift someone else above the process of mutual scrutiny is to
stand above that process oneself. To act on the faith that every human
being is a beneficiary of the honor that only God can bestow is to place
oneself in a position to receive that honor. (That is not the aim, of
course; if it were, agape would be a way of serving oneself and would thus
be nullified.) Agape raises all those touched by it into the community
brought by Christ, the Kingdom of God. Everyone is glorified. No one is
judged and no one judges.
Here we come to the major premise (in the logic of faith, if not
invariably in the history of Western political philosophy) of all
Christian social and political thinking--the concept of the exalted
individual. Arising from agape, this concept more authoritatively than any
other shapes not only Christian perceptions of social reality but also
Christian delineations of political goals.
THE EXALTED INDIVIDUAL
TO grasp fully the idea of the exalted individual is not easy, but this is
not because it rests on a technical or complex theory. The difficulty of
grasping the concept is due to its being beyond the whole realm of theory.
It refers to something intrinsically mysterious, a reality that one cannot
see by having someone else point to it or describe it. It is often spoken
of, but the words we use--"the dignity of the individual," "the infinite
value of a human being," and so forth--have become banal and no longer
evoke the mystery that called them forth. Hence we must try to understand
what such phrases mean. In what way, from a Christian standpoint, are
individuals exalted? In trying to answer this question, the concept of
destiny may provide some help.
In the act of creation God grants a human being glory, or participation in
the goodness of all that has been created. The glory of a human being,
however, is not like that of a star or a mountain. It is not objectively
established but must be freely affirmed by the one to whom it belongs. In
this sense the glory of a human being is placed in the future. It is not a
mere possibility however, nor does it seem quite sufficient to say that it
is a moral norm. It is a fundamental imperative, even though all of us, in
our sinfulness, to some degree refuse it. This fusion of human freedom and
divine necessity may be summarily characterized by saying that the glory
of an individual, rather than being immediately given, is destined.
Destiny is not the same as fate. The word refers not to anything terrible
or even to anything inevitable, in the usual sense of the word, but to the
temporal and free unfoldment of a person's essential being. A destiny is a
spiritual drama.
A destiny is never completely fulfilled in time, in the Christian vision,
but leads onto the plane of eternity. It must be worked out in time,
however, and everything that happens to a person in time enters into
eternal selfhood and is there given meaning and justification. My destiny
is what has often been referred to as my soul.
Realizing a destiny is not a matter of acquiescing in some form of
relentless causality. If it were, there would be no sin. A destiny can be
failed or refused. That is why it is not a fate. True, the very word
"destiny" is indicative of necessity, but the necessity of a destiny is
not like the necessity that makes an object fall when it is dropped.
Rather, it is the kind I recognize when I face a duty I am tempted to
evade and say to myself, "This I must do." Yet my destiny has a weight
unlike that of any particular duty, since it is the life given to me by
God. As is recognized in words like "salvation" and "damnation," the call
of destiny has a peculiar finality.
The agape of God consists in the bestowal of a destiny, and that of human
beings in its recognition through faith. Since a destiny is not a matter
of empirical observation, a person with a destiny is, so to speak,
invisible. But every person has a destiny. Hence the process of mutual
scrutiny is in vain, and even the most objective judgments of other people
are fundamentally false. Agape arises from a realization of this and is
therefore expressed in a refusal to judge.
The Lord of all time and existence has taken a personal interest in every
human being, an interest that is compassionate and unwearying. The
Christian universe is peopled exclusively with royalty. What does this
mean for society?
TO speak cautiously, the concept of the exalted individual implies that
governments--indeed, all persons who wield power--must treat individuals
with care. This can mean various things--for example, that individuals are
to be fed and sheltered when they are destitute, listened to when they
speak, or merely left alone so long as they do not break the law and
fairly tried if they do. But however variously care may be defined, it
always means that human beings are not to be treated like the things we
use and discard or just leave lying about. They deserve attention. This
spare standard has of course been frequently and grossly violated by
people who call themselves Christians. It has not been without force,
however. Even in our own secularized times people who are useless or
burdensome, hopelessly ill or guilty of terrible crimes, are sometimes
treated with extraordinary consideration and patience.
The modest standard of care implies other, more demanding standards.
Equality is one of these; no one is to be casually sacrificed. No natural,
social, or even moral differences justify exceptions to this rule. Of
course destinies make people not equal but, rather, incomparable; equality
is a measurement and dignity is immeasurable. But according to Christian
claims, every person has been immeasurably dignified. Faith discerns no
grounds for making distinctions, and the distinctions made by custom and
ambition are precarious before God. "Many that are first will be last, and
the last first." Not only love but humility as well--the humility of not
anticipating the judgments of God--impels us toward the standard of
equality.
No one, then, belongs at the bottom, enslaved, irremediably poor,
consigned to silence; this is equality. This points to another standard:
that no one should be left outside, an alien and a barbarian. Agape
implies universality. Greeks and Hebrews in ancient times were often
candidly contemptuous of most of the human race. Even Jesus, although not
contemptuous of Gentiles, conceived of his mission as primarily to Israel.
However, Jesus no doubt saw the saving of Israel as the saving of all
humankind, and his implicit universalism became explicit, and decisive for
the history of the world, in the writings and missionary activity of Paul.
Christian universalism (as well as Christian egalitarianism) was
powerfully expressed by Paul when he wrote that "there is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female;
for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
Christian universalism was reinforced by the universalism of the later
Stoics, who created the ideal of an all-embracing city of reason--
cosmopolis. Medieval Christians couched their universalist outlook in
Hellenic terms. Thus two streams of thought, from Israel and Greece,
flowed together. As a result the world today, although divided among
nations often ferociously self-righteous and jealous, is haunted by the
vision of a global community. War and national rivalry seem unavoidable,
but they burden the human conscience. Searing poverty prevails in much of
the world, as it always has, but no longer is it unthinkingly accepted in
either the rich nations or the poor. There is a shadowy but widespread
awareness, which Christianity has had much to do with creating, that one
person cannot be indifferent to the destiny of another person anywhere on
earth. It is hardly too much to say that the idea of the exalted
individual is the spiritual center of Western politics. Although this idea
is often forgotten and betrayed, were it erased from our minds our
politics would probably become altogether what it is at present only in
part--an affair of expediency and self-interest.
The exalted individual is not an exclusively Christian principle. There
are two ways in which, without making any religious assumptions, we may
sense the infinite worth of an individual. One way is love. Through
personal love, or through the sympathy by which personal love is extended
(although at the same time weakened), we sense the measureless worth of a
few, and are able to surmise that what we sense in a few may be present in
all. In short, to love some (it is, as Dostoevsky suggested, humanly
impossible to love everyone) may give rise to the idea that all are worthy
of love. Further, the idea of the exalted individual may become a secular
value through reason, as it did for the Stoics. Reason tells me that each
person is one and not more than one. Hence my claims upon others are
rightfully matched by their claims upon me. Simple fairness, which even a
child can understand, is implicitly egalitarian and universal; and it is
reasonable.
Can love and reason, though, undergird our politics if faith suffers a
further decline? That is doubtful. Love and reason are suggestive, but
they lack definite political implications. Greeks of the Periclean Age,
living at the summit of the most brilliant period of Western civilization,
showed little consciousness of the notion that every individual bears an
indefeasible and incomparable dignity. Today why should those who assume
that God is dead entertain such a notion? This question is particularly
compelling in view of a human characteristic very unlike exaltation.
THE FALLEN INDIVIDUAL
THE fallen individual is not someone other than the exalted individual.
Every human being is fallen and exalted both. This paradox is familiar to
all informed Christians. Yet it is continually forgotten--partly, perhaps,
because it so greatly complicates the task of dealing with evil in the
world, and no doubt partly because we hate to apply it to ourselves;
although glad to recall our exaltation, we are reluctant to remember our
fallenness. It is vital to political understanding, however, to do both.
If the concept of the exalted individual defines the highest value under
God, the concept of the fallen individual defines the situation in which
that value must be sought and defended.
The principle that a human being is sacred yet morally degraded is hard
for common sense to grasp. It is apparent to most of us that some people
are morally degraded. It is ordinarily assumed, however, that other people
are morally upright and that these alone possess dignity. From this point
of view all is simple and logical. The human race is divided roughly
between good people, who possess the infinite worth we attribute to
individuals, and bad people, who do not. The basic problem of life is for
the good people to gain supremacy over, and perhaps eradicate, the bad
people. This view appears in varied forms: in Marxism, where the human
race is divided between a world-redeeming class and a class that is
exploitative and condemned; in some expressions of American nationalism,
where the division--at least, until recently--has been between "the free
world" and demonic communism; in Western films, where virtuous heroes kill
bandits and lawless Indians.
This common model of life's meaning is drastically irreligious, because it
places reliance on good human beings and not on God. It has no room for
the double insight that the evil are not beyond the reach of divine mercy
nor the good beyond the need for it. It is thus antithetical to
Christianity which maintains that human beings are justified by God alone,
and that all are sacred and none are good.
The proposition that none are good does not mean merely that none are
perfect. It means that all are persistently and deeply inclined toward
evil. All are sinful. In a few sin is so effectively suppressed that it
seems to have been destroyed. But this is owing to God's grace, Christian
principles imply, not to human goodness, and those in whom it has happened
testify emphatically that this is so. Saints claim little credit for
themselves.
Nothing in Christian doctrine so offends people today as the stress on
sin. It is morbid and self-destructive, supposedly, to depreciate
ourselves in this way. Yet the Christian view is not implausible. The
twentieth century not to speak of earlier ages (often assumed to be more
barbaric), has displayed human evil in extravagant forms. Wars and
massacres, systematic torture and internment in concentration camps, have
become everyday occurrences in the decades since 1914. Even in the most
civilized societies subtle forms of callousness and cruelty prevail
through capitalist and bureaucratic institutions. Thus our own experience
indicates that we should not casually dismiss the Christian concept of
sin.
According to that concept, the inclination toward evil is primarily an
inclination to exalt ourselves rather than allowing ourselves to be
exalted by God. We exalt ourselves in a variety of ways: for example, by
power, trying to control all the things and people around us; by greed,
accumulating an inequitable portion of the material goods of the world; by
self-righteousness, claiming to be wholly virtuous; and so forth. Self
exaltation is carried out sometimes by individuals, sometimes by groups.
It is often referred to, in all of its various forms, as "pride."
THE Christian concept of sin is not adequately described, however, merely
by saying that people frequently engage in evil actions. Our
predisposition toward such actions is so powerful and so unyielding that
it holds us captive. As Paul said, "I do not do what I want, but I do the
very thing I hate." This does not imply, of course, that I am entirely
depraved. If I disapprove of my evil acts, then I am partly good. However,
if I persist in evil in the face of my own disapproval, then I am not only
partly evil but also incapable of destroying the evil in my nature and
enthroning the good. I am, that is to say, a prisoner of evil, even if I
am not wholly evil. This imprisonment is sometimes called "original sin,"
and the phrase is useful, not because one must take the story of Adam's
disobedience literally but because it points to the mysterious truth that
our captivity by evil originates in a primal and iniquitous choice on the
part of every person. I persistently fail to attain goodness because I
have turned away from goodness and set my face toward evil.
The political value of the doctrine of original sin lies in its
recognition that our evil tendencies are not in the nature of a problem
that we can rationally comprehend and deliberately solve. To say that the
source of sin is sin is to say that sin is underivable and inexplicable. A
sinful society is not like a malfunctioning machine, something to be
checked and quickly repaired.
Sin is ironic. Its intention is self-exaltation, its result is self
debasement. In trying to ascend, we fall. The reason for this is not hard
to understand. We are exalted by God; in declaring our independence from
God, we cast ourselves down. In other words, sin concerns not just our
actions and our nature but also the setting of our lives. By sin we cast
ourselves into a degraded sphere of existence, a sphere Christians often
call "the world." Human beings belong to the world through sin. They look
at one another as objects; they manipulate, mutilate, and kill one
another. In diverse ways, some subtle and some shocking, some relatively
innocuous and some devastating, they continually depersonalize themselves
and others. They behave as inhabitants of the world they have sinfully
formed rather than of the earth created by God. Original sin is the quiet
determination, deep in everyone, to stay inside the world. Every sinful
act is a violation of the personal being that continually, in freedom,
vision, and love, threatens the world. The archetype of sin is the
reduction of a person to the thing we call a corpse.
THE MAN-GOD VERSUS THE GOD-MAN
WHEN the paradox of simultaneous exaltation and fallenness collapses, it
is replaced by either cynicism or (to use a term that is accurate but
masks the destructive character of the attitude it refers to) idealism.
Cynicism measures the value of human beings by their manifest qualities
and thus esteems them very slightly. It concludes, in effect, that
individuals are not exalted, because they are fallen. Idealism refuses
this conclusion. It insists that the value of human beings, or of some of
them, is very great. It is not so simplistic, however, as to deny the
incongruity of their essential value and their manifest qualities. Rather,
it asserts that this incongruity can be resolved by human beings on their
own, perhaps through political revolution or psychotherapy. Human beings
can exalt themselves.
We shall dwell in this discussion on idealism, partly because idealism is
much more tempting and therefore much more common than cynicism. Idealism
is exhilarating, whereas cynicism, as anything more than a youthful
experiment, is grim and discouraging. We shall dwell on idealism also
because it is so much more dangerous than it looks. The dangers of
cynicism are evident; that a general contempt for human beings is apt to
be socially and politically destructive scarcely needs to be argued. But
idealism looks benign. It is important to understand why its appearance is
misleading.
Idealism in our time is commonly a form of collective pride. Human beings
exalt themselves by exalting a group. Each one of course exalts the
singular and separate self in some manner. In most people, however,
personal pride needs reinforcement through a common ideal or emotion, such
as nationalism. Hence the rise of collective pride. To exalt ourselves, we
exalt a nation, a class, or even the whole of humanity in some particular
manifestation like science. Such pride is alluring. It assumes grandiose
and enthralling proportions yet it seems selfless, because not one person
alone but a class or nation or some other collectivity is exalted. It can
be at once more extreme and less offensive than personal pride.
To represent the uncompromising and worldly character of modern idealism
we may appropriately use the image of the man-god. This image is a
reversal of the Christian concept of the God-man, Christ. The order of the
terms obviously is crucial. In the case of the God-man, it indicates the
source of Christ's divinity as understood in Christian faith. God took the
initiative. To reverse the order of the terms and affirm the man-god is to
say that human beings become divine on their own initiative. Here pride
reaches its most extreme development. The dignity bestowed on human beings
by God, in Christian faith, is now claimed as a quality that human beings
can acquire through their own self-creating acts.
In using the concept of the man-god, I do not mean to suggest that
divinity is explicitly attributed to certain human beings. Even
propagandists, to say nothing of philosophers, are more subtle than that.
What happens is simply that qualities traditionally attributed to God are
shifted to a human group or type. The qualities thus assigned are
various--perfect understanding, perhaps, or unfailing fairness.
Illustrative are the views of three great intellectual figures, familiar
to everyone, yet so diversely interpreted that the fundamental character
of their thought--and their deep similarity--is sometimes forgotten.
Friedrich Nietzsche set forth the ideal of the man-god more literally and
dramatically than any other writer. Nietzsche's thinking was grounded in a
bitter repudiation of Christianity, and he devoted much of his life to
scouring human consciousness in order to cleanse it of every Christian
idea and emotion. In this way his philosophy became a comprehensive
critique of Western civilization, as well as a foreshadowing of an
alternative civilization. It is, as practically everyone now recognizes,
remarkable in its range, subtlety, and complexity; Nietzsche is not easily
classified or epitomized. It can nevertheless be argued that the dramatic
center of his lifework lay in the effort to overthrow the standard of
Christian love and to wipe out the idea that every human being deserves
respect--leading Nietzsche to attack such norms in the field of politics
as equality and democracy. If Christian faith is spurned, Nietzsche held,
with the courage that was one of the sources of his philosophical
greatness, then Christian morality must also be spurned. Agape has no
rightful claim on our allegiance. And not only does agape lack all moral
authority but it has a destructive effect on society and culture. It
inhibits the rise of superior human beings to the heights of glory, which,
we realize at last, are not inhabited by God. By exalting the common
person, who is entirely lacking in visible distinction and glory, agape
subverts the true order of civilization. The divine quality that Nietzsche
claimed for humanity was power--the power not only of great political
leaders like Julius Caesar and Napoleon but also of philosophers, writers,
and artists, who impose intricate and original forms of order on chaotic
material. Such power, in the nature of things, can belong only to a few.
These few are human gods. Their intrinsic splendor overcomes the absurdity
that erupted with the death of the Christian God, and justifies human
existence.
Karl Marx is perhaps not only as well known among Christian intellectuals
as even the most celebrated theologians but also as influential. The
familiar saying "We are all Marxists now" dramatizes the fact that Marx's
views on such matters as class and capitalism are part of the furniture of
the modern mind. Christian writers are not exceptions; spontaneously they
think in some measure in Marxist terms. A considerable number of them can
even be called Marxist Christians--an appellation fully justified in the
case of most liberation theologians. Marx has in that sense become a
familiar member of the Christian household. When he is thus domesticated,
however, we tend to forget what he really thought. We may forget that he
was as apocalyptically secular and humanistic as Nietzsche, even though he
disdained the kind of elevated and poetic rhetoric that abounds in
Nietzsche's writings. He called for the entire transformation of human
life by human beings, and this, in Marx's mind, included the
transformation of nature. The universe was to become radically--in its
roots, in its sources and standards--human. True, like the Christians he
scorned, and unlike Nietzsche, Marx was egalitarian. The transformation of
humanity and being was envisioned as the work of multitudes, the
proletariat, and not of exceptional individuals, and ahead lay justice and
community rather than glorious solitude, as in Nietzsche. Nevertheless,
Marx tacitly claimed for the proletariat qualities much like those
attributed in the Old Testament to God--omniscience, righteousness, and
historical sovereignty, all devoted to avenging past wrongs and
transfiguring human existence.
Sigmund Freud, of course, avoided both the rhetoric of redemption and the
thought; he regarded any great change in the character of human beings or
the conditions of human life as unlikely, and by intention was a
scientist, not a prophet or a revolutionary. He belongs among the heralds
of the man
god, however, because of the conviction that underlay all his
psychological investigations. Disorders of the soul, which for Christians
derive in one way or another from sin, and hence in their ultimate origins
are mysterious, Freud believed to be scientifically explicable. From this
conviction it followed that the healing work Christians believe to be
dependent on divine grace Freud could assign altogether to human therapy.
The soul was thus severed from God (for Freud a childish illusion) and
placed in the province of human understanding and action. Not that
psychoanalysis and Christianity are in all ways mutually exclusive; the
many Christians who have learned from Freud testify to the contrary. But
for Freud and his major followers, psychoanalysis is a comprehensive
faith, not merely a set of useful hypotheses and techniques. As a faith,
it attributes to humanity alone powers and responsibilities that
Christians regard as divine. Human beings are exalted by virtue of purely
human faculties. Freud's attitude of resignation was a matter mainly of
temperament; his methods, theories, and basic assumptions have reinforced
the efforts of human beings to seize the universal sovereignty that
Christians assign exclusively to God.
Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud represent a movement by no means restricted to
those who consciously follow any one of them or even to those familiar
with their writings. Not only are we "all Marxists now"; it could be said
with nearly equal justification that we are all Nietzscheans and
Freudians. Most of us have come to assume that we ourselves are the
authors of human destiny. The term "man-god" may seem extreme, but I
believe that our situation is extreme. Christianity poses sweeping
alternatives--destiny and fate, redemption and eternal loss, the Kingdom
of God and the void of Hell. From centuries of Christian culture and
education we have come habitually to think of life as structured by such
extremes. Hence Christian faith may fade, but we still want to live a
destiny rather than a mere life, to transform the conditions of human
existence and not merely to effect improvements, to establish a perfect
community and not simply a better society. Losing faith in the God-man, we
inevitably begin to dream of the man-god, even though we often think of
the object of our new faith as something impersonal and innocuous, like
science, thus concealing from ourselves the radical nature of our
dreams.
POLITICAL IDOLATRY
THE political repercussions are profound. Most important is that all
logical grounds for attributing an ultimate and immeasurable dignity to
every person, regardless of outward character, disappear. Some people may
gain dignity from their achievements in art, literature, or politics, but
the notion that all people without exception--the most base, the most
destructive, the most repellent--have equal claims on our respect becomes
as absurd as would be the claim that all automobiles or all horses are of
equal excellence. The standard of agape collapses. It becomes explicable
only on Nietzsche's terms: as a device by which the weak and failing exact
from the strong and distinguished a deference they do not deserve. Thus
the spiritual center of Western politics fades and vanishes. If the
principle of personal dignity disappears, the kind of political order we
are used to--one structured by standards such as liberty for all human
beings and equality under the law--becomes indefensible.
Nietzsche's stature is owing to the courage and profundity that enabled
him to make this all unmistakably clear. He delineated with overpowering
eloquence the consequences of giving up Christianity and every like view
of the universe and humanity. His approval of those consequences and his
hatred of Christianity give force to his argument. Many would like to
think that there are no consequences--that we can continue treasuring the
life and welfare, the civil rights and political authority, of every
person without believing in a God who renders such attitudes and conduct
compelling. Nietzsche shows that we cannot. We cannot give up the
Christian God--and the transcendence given other names in other faiths-
and go on as before. We must give up Christian morality too. If the God
man is nothing more than an illusion, the same thing is true of the idea
that every individual possesses incalculable worth.
It is true, as we have seen, that love and reason provide intimations of
such worth--but intimations alone; they provide little basis for
overruling the conclusions of our senses. The denial of the God-man and of
God's merciful love of sinful humanity is a denial of destiny, and without
destiny there is simply life. But life calls forth respect only in
proportion to its intensity and quality. Except in the case of infants and
children, we ordinarily look on those lacking in purposeful vitality with
pity or disgust. Respect we spontaneously reserve for the strong and
creative. If it is life we prize, then institutions that protect and care
for people whose lives are faltering are worse than senseless. It is hard
to think of anyone else, with the single exception of Dostoevsky, who has
understood all of this as profoundly as did Nietzsche.
Marx certainly did not. His mind was on matters of a different kind,
matters less philosophical. The result was an illogical humanitarianism.
Marx was incensed by the squalor in which the common people of his time
were forced to live and by the harsh conditions and endless hours of their
work. Marx sympathized deeply with the downtrodden and disinherited. But
this expressed his personal qualities, not his philosophy or faith. His
philosophy was a materialism that can be interpreted in differing ways but
that implied, at the very least, that reality was not created by and is
not governed by God; his faith was in science and human will. He provided
no philosophical or religious grounds whatever for the idea that every
person must be treated with care. In spite of Marx's humanitarianism,
therefore, there is a link between Marxist thought and the despotic
regimes that have ruled in his name. It is perfectly true, as his
defenders aver, that Marx adhered to political principles quite unlike
those manifest in the purges and prison camps of the Soviet Union. That
such practices should claim the authority of his name is thus outrageous
in a sense. Nonetheless, the connection between Marx himself and modern
Marxist despots is not entirely accidental. They share the principle that
a single individual does not necessarily matter.
If the denial of the God-man has destructive logical implications, it also
has dangerous emotional consequences. Dostoevsky wrote that a person
"cannot live without worshipping something." Anyone who denies God must
worship an idol--which is not necessarily a wooden or metal figure. In our
time we have seen ideologies, groups, and leaders receive divine honors.
People proud of their critical and discerning spirit have rejected Christ
and bowed down before Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or some other secular savior.
When disrespect for individuals is combined with political idolatry, the
results can be atrocious. Both the logical and the emotional foundations
of political decency are destroyed. Equality becomes nonsensical and
breaks down under attack from one or another human god. Consider Lenin: as
a Marxist, and like Marx an exponent of equality, under the pressures of
revolution he denied equality in principle--except as an ultimate goal-
and so systematically nullified it in practice as to become the founder of
modern totalitarianism. When equality falls, universality is likely also
to fall. Nationalism or some other form of collective pride becomes
virulent, and war unrestrained. Liberty, too, is likely to vanish; it
becomes a heavy personal and social burden when no God justifies and
sanctifies the individual in spite of all personal deficiencies and
failures.
The idealism of the man-god does not, of course, bring as an immediate and
obvious consequence a collapse into unrestrained nihilism. We all know
many people who do not believe in God and yet are decent and admirable.
Western societies, as highly secularized as they are, retain many humane
features. Not even tacitly has our sole governing maxim become the one
Dostoevsky thought was bound to follow the denial of the God-man:
"Everything is permitted."
This may be, however, because customs and habits formed during Christian
ages keep people from professing and acting on such a maxim even though it
would be logical for them to do so. If that is the case, our position is
precarious, for good customs and habits need spiritual grounds, and if
those are lacking, they will gradually, or perhaps suddenly in some
crisis, crumble.
To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many
centuries but no longer being replenished? To what extent are those
savings already severely depleted? Again and again we are told by
advertisers, counselors, and other purveyors of popular wisdom that we
have a right to buy the things we want and to live as we please. We should
be prudent and farsighted, perhaps (although even those modest virtues are
not greatly emphasized), but we are subject ultimately to no standard but
self-interest. If nihilism is most obvious in the lives of wanton
destroyers like Hitler, it is nevertheless present also in the lives of
people who live purely as pleasure and convenience dictate.
And aside from intentions, there is a question concerning consequences.
Even idealists whose good intentions for the human race are pure and
strong are still vulnerable to fate because of the pride that causes them
to act ambitiously and recklessly in history. Initiating chains of
unforeseen and destructive consequences, they are often overwhelmed by
results drastically at variance with their humane intentions. Modern
revolutionaries have willed liberty and equality for everyone, not the
terror and despotism they have actually created. Social reformers in the
United States were never aiming at the great federal bureaucracy or at the
pervasive dedication to entertainment and pleasure that characterizes the
welfare state they brought into existence. There must always be a gap
between intentions and results, but for those who forget that they are
finite and morally flawed the gap may become a chasm. Not only Christians
but almost everyone today feels the fear that we live under the sway of
forces that we have set in motion--perhaps in the very process of
industrialization, perhaps only at certain stages of that process, as in
the creation of nuclear power--and that threaten our lives and are beyond
our control.
There is much room for argument about these matters. But there is no
greater error in the modern mind than the assumption that the God-man can
be repudiated with impunity. The man-god may take his place and become the
author of deeds wholly unintended and the victim of terrors starkly in
contrast with the benign intentions lying at their source. The irony of
sin is in this way reproduced in the irony of idealism: exalting human
beings in their supposed virtues and powers, idealism undermines them.
Exciting fervent expectations, it leads toward despair.
IDEOLOGY AND AMBIGUITY
PRACTICALLY everyone today agrees that "being good," in a political sense,
depends on recognizing the measureless worth of the human being. When this
recognition is translated into ideological terms such as liberalism and
conservatism, however agreement vanishes. The main moral assumption
underlying the discussion above becomes controversial. Nevertheless, we
have to ask what the ideological implications of Christianity are, for
this is simply to inquire about the practical meaning of the ideas that we
have been discussing and thus to carry the argument to its logical
conclusion.
In asking about ideology, however, we immediately encounter something that
seemingly undermines any ideological commitment. This is an implicit
political ambiguity. This ambiguity is deeply rooted in Christian
principles, and must at the outset be taken into account.
In the Christian view, while every individual is exalted, society is not.
On the contrary every society is placed in question, for a society is a
mere worldly order and a mere human creation and can never do justice to
the glory of the human beings within it. The exaltation of the individual
reveals the baseness of society. It follows that our political obligations
are indeterminate and equivocal. If we recognize what God has done--so
Christian principles imply--we shall be limitlessly respectful of human
beings but wary of society. Yet human beings live in society, and we meet
them there or not at all. Hence we cannot stand wholly apart from society
without failing in our responsibilities to the human beings whom God has
exalted. So far as we are responsive to God, we must live within human
kingdoms as creatures destined to be fellow citizens in God's Kingdom.
This obligation gives rise to a political stance that is ambiguous and, in
a world of devastatingly unambiguous ideologies, unique: humane and
engaged, but also hesitant and critical.
Christianity implies skepticism concerning political ideals and plans. For
Christianity to be wedded indissolubly to any of them (as it often has
been, "Christian socialism" and Christian celebrations of "the spirit of
democratic capitalism" being examples) is idolatrous and thus subversive
of Christian faith.
Trying to take into account both the profound evil in human nature and the
immense hope in the human situation, as Christians must, leads inevitably
to what reformers and radicals--particularly those of the Third World,
surrounded as they are by impoverished multitudes--are apt to regard as
fatal equivocations. It leads, as I have already indicated, to a critical
spirit and to qualified commitments. It would be easy to charge that such
a posture reflects the self-interest and complacency of those who do not
suffer from the injustice characterizing existing structures.
Equivocation, it may be said, is one of the luxuries of bourgeois life in
the industrial world.
Still, a Christian in the United States, without being particularly
discerning or morally sensitive, can see at least two things not so
clearly visible to Third World Christian writers, particularly those
liberation theologians who long for immediate social transformation. One
of these is the universal disaster of revolution. There is perhaps not a
single example in our time of a determined effort to produce swift and
sweeping change which has not ended in tyranny; such efforts have often
also ended in abominations, such as those witnessed in recent times in
Cambodia, incalculably worse than those perpetrated by the old social
order.
The second thing a Christian in a prosperous industrial nation can see is
visible because it is near at hand: that life can be culturally vulgar,
morally degraded, and spiritually vacuous even under conditions of
substantial justice. Not that justice has been fully achieved in the
United States. But it has been approximated closely enough for us to begin
to gauge its significance. We can begin to see that justice does not
necessarily mean an entirely good society. The great masses of people in
the United States enjoy historically unprecedented prosperity, in stark
contrast with conditions in the Third World. Accompanying this prosperity,
however, are signs--too numerous and flagrant to need mentioning--of moral
cynicism, spiritual frivolity, and despair. If revolutions make plain the
power of sin--its ability to captivate idealistic reformers--mass society
displays the ingenuity of sin. Human beings in their passion for justice
have not devised institutions that they cannot in their pride and
selfishness outwit.
It may seem that the ideological meaning of Christianity is becoming
clear: Christianity is solidly, if covertly, on the side of the status
quo. It is conservative. There are good reasons for arguing, however, that
Christianity cannot logically be conservative but is rather--in its own
distinctive fashion--radical.
A HESITANT RADICALISM
THE Christian record in the annals of reform, it must be granted, is not
impressive. Christians have accepted, and sometimes actively supported,
slavery, poverty and almost every other common social evil. They have
often condemned such evils in principle but failed to oppose them in
practice. Faith does not necessarily conquer selfishness and is
particularly unlikely to do so when connected with an established religion
and thus with privileged groups. That Christianity has in various times
and places, and in various ways, been an established religion is perhaps
the major reason why it has been implicated in injustices such as slavery,
serfdom, and the oppressive wage labor of early capitalism.
Nevertheless, Christianity in essence is not conservative. The notion that
it is (the historical record aside) probably stems mainly from the fact
that Christians share with conservatives a consciousness of the
fallibility of human beings. The two camps occupy common anthropological
ground. But the consciousness of human fallibility is far keener among
Christians than among conservatives, for Christians are skeptical of human
arrangements that typically command deep respect in conservatives. Thus,
Christians cannot logically assume that the antiquity of institutions
provides any assurance of their justice or efficacy. They realize, if they
consult Christian principles, that long-standing customs and traditions
embody not only the wisdom of generations but also the wickedness--in
particular, the determination of dominant groups to preserve their powers
and privileges.
Christians are also mistrustful of aristocracies and elites. Conservatives
typically commend the rule of long-ascendant minorities, those certified
by the established order as wise and noble. But Paul, addressing early
Christians in Corinth, noted that "not many of you were wise according to
worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth."
New Testament passages indicate that Christ had a special concern for the
despised and disinherited, the ignorant and unsophisticated. "God chose
what is foolish in the world to shame the wise." The attitude expressed in
such a passage is remote from the topical conservative reverence for
minorities of inherited rank and traditional learning.
Conservatives (like non-Christian radicals) commonly assume that sin can
be circumvented by human skill. In the conservative view, allowing only
those institutional changes that are gradual and protracted, and according
authority to traditional elites, will accomplish this. For Christians, sin
is circumvented only by grace. It is certainly not circumvented by
society, the form that sinful men and women give to the fallen world.
In America conservatives believe that sin is effectively redirected to the
common good through the market. The alchemy of capitalist competition
transmutes sin into virtue. But it is difficult to see how any Christian
who fully grasps Christian principles can be an unqualified supporter of
capitalism. Insofar as the market governs social relations, people are
forced into acquisitive rivalry; to count in any way on a gift of "daily
bread" rather than on money in the bank would be the mark of a fool.
Acquisitive success is candidly equated with virtue and personal worth
naively measured in material terms. Charity is often bestowed on the needy
but it is a matter of personal generosity, not of justice or community;
and it is unsanctioned in capitalist theory. No principles could be more
thoroughly anticommunal than those of capitalism. Indeed, capitalism is
probably more anticommunal in theory than in practice, for human beings
cannot be as consistently selfish and calculating as capitalist doctrine
calls on them to be. Capitalism has one bond with Christianity--the
premise that human beings are ordinarily selfish. A system that enables an
industrial society to achieve a degree of order and efficiency without
depending on either human goodness or governmental coercion cannot be
entirely despised. Nevertheless, even if capitalism worked as well as its
supporters claim, it would by Christian standards fail morally and
spiritually.
But if Christians are more pessimistic about human beings and about social
devices like the market than are conservatives, how can they act on the
side of serious social change? How can they do anything but cling to all
institutions, however unjust, that counteract the chaotic potentialities
of human beings and achieve some sort of order? There are three answers to
these questions.
First of all, Christian ideas place one in a radical--that is, critical
and adverse--relationship to established institutions. The Kingdom of God
is a judgment on existing society and a symbol of its impermanence. Jesus
was crucified because his presence and preaching were profoundly
unsettling to reigning religious and political groups. Jesus did not seek
the violent overthrow of these groups, but neither did he show much
concern for their stability.
Further, these attitudes have to be acted on. This is a matter of
spiritual integrity. To anticipate the coming of the Kingdom of God is
merely sentimental, a private frivolity, unless one tries to reshape
society according to the form of the imminent community, a form defined by
equality and universality and requiring particular attention to the
disinherited and oppressed.
Finally, however, to take it for granted that all attempted reforms will
fail would be as presumptuous as to assume that they will succeed. It is
not only sinful human beings who are at work in history. Christians
believe, but God as well. Agape is not merely a standard of personal
conduct, powerless over events. In exalting individuals, it discloses the
inner meaning of history. To practice love is to be allied with the
deepest currents of life. From a Christian standpoint, a frightened
refusal of all social change would be highly inappropriate.
Clearly the immediate political aims of Christians are not necessarily
different from those of secular radicals and reformers. Their underlying
attitudes are different, however. The Christian sense of the depth and
stubbornness of evil in human beings, along with the faith that the
universe under the impetus of grace is moving toward radical re-creation,
gives a distinctive cast to the Christian conception of political action
and social progress.
Secular conceptions of reform are apt to be characterized by optimistic
oversimplifications and distortions. American reformers. for example,
typically assume that human beings are both reasonable and just and that
beneficent social change is therefore easy. The main thing necessary,
after identifying a problem, is to devise and propagate a rational
solution. Poverty, crime, class conflict, war, and all other great social
evils can gradually but surely be eliminated. Good will and intelligence,
well organized and fully informed (through the studies of social
scientists), will suffice. Such illusions stem from a dilemma noted above.
It is difficult for secular reformers to reconcile their sense of the
dignity of individuals with a recognition of the selfishness and
perversity of individuals. They are thus led persistently to exaggerate
human goodness. Trying to match their view of human nature with their
belief in human dignity, they fail to see how human beings actually behave
or to understand the difficulties and complexities of reform.
Tocqueville suggested approvingly that Christianity tends to make a people
"circumspect and undecided." with "its impulses...checked and its works
unfinished." This expresses well the spirit of reform inherent in
Christian faith. Christianity is radical, but it is also hesitant. This is
partly, of course, because Christianity restrains our self-assurance.
Efforts at social transformation must always encounter unforeseen
complexities, difficulties, limits, and tragedies. Caution is in order.
But Christian hesitancy has deeper grounds than prudence and more
compelling motives than wariness of practical blunders. Hesitation
expresses a consciousness of the mystery of being and the dignity of every
person. It provides a moment for consulting destiny. Recent decades have
seen heroic political commitments in behalf of social reform, but
hesitation has been evident mainly in the service of self-interest.
Christian faith, however, suggests that hesitation should have a part in
our most conscientious deeds. It is a formality that is fitting when we
cross the frontier between meditation and action. And like all significant
formalities, it is a mark of respect--for God and for the creatures with
whom we share the earth.
SOME will dislike the implication that "being good" consists in being
radical; others will think it strange to link radicalism with hesitation
or religious faith. I suggest, however, that the main task facing
political goodness in our time is that of maintaining responsible hope.
Responsible hope is hesitant because it is cognizant of the discouraging
actualities of collective life; it is radical because it measures those
actualities against the highest standards of imagination and faith.
Whether so paradoxical a stance can be sustained without transcendental
connections--without God--is doubtful.
We live in a disheartening century--"the worst so far," as someone has
said. There have never before been wars so destructive as the series of
conflicts that erupted in 1914; never have tyrannies been so frenzied and
all-consuming as those established by Nazism and communism. All great
political causes have failed. Socialism has eventuated in the rule either
of privileged ideological bureaucrats or of comfortable, listless masses;
liberal reform in America has at least for a time passed away, leaving
stubborn injustices and widespread cynicism; conservatism has come to
stand for an illogical combination of market economics and truculent
nationalism. Most of the human race lives in crushing poverty, and the
privileged minority in societies where industrial abundance undergirds a
preoccupation with material comfort and an atmosphere of spiritual
inanity.
It is not just that hope itself is difficult to maintain in our situation.
One is forced, so to speak, to hope alone. After all that has happened, in
what party or cause or movement can one find a hope that can be
unreservedly shared? Inherent in the disheartenment of our century is the
impossibility of believing any longer in political commitment. And to draw
back from commitment is to face political solitude. The individual must
find a way of standing for authentic values with little or no human
support. A radicalism that is hesitant must also be solitary.
If the great causes and movements all have failed, and unqualified
political commitments have become impossible, why not, as Paul asked, eat
and drink, since tomorrow we die? This is a question that secular reason
should take far more seriously than it ever has.
It is a question to which all of us need an answer. The need is partly
political. There can be no decent polities unless many people can resist
the historical discouragement so natural in our times. The consumer
society and fascism exemplify the possible outcome when nations are
populated predominantly by people incapable of the hesitation in which
reality needs to be faced or the hope in which it must be judged and
reshaped.
The need is also personal. In its depths the life of an individual is
historical and political because it is one with the lives of all human
beings. To despair of history is to despair of one's own humanity. Today
we are strongly tempted to split the individual and history, the personal
and the political. When this occurs, personal being is truncated and
impoverished. People in earlier times of bewilderment and disillusionment,
such as the era of the downfall of the ancient city-state system, were
similarly tempted, and a standard of life first clearly enunciated by
Epicurus in the aftermath of the Macedonian conquest of the city-states is
still, in the twentieth century. attractive. Epicurus called for
withdrawal from public life and political activity; he argued that
everything essential to one's humanity, such as friendship, can be found
in the private sphere. Personal life thus is salvaged from the raging
torrent of history. But it is also mutilated, for it is severed from the
human situation in its global scope and its political contours.
The absorption of Americans in the pleasures of buying and consuming, of
mass entertainment and sports, suggests an Epicurean response to our
historical trials. The dangers--erosion of the grounds of political health
and impairment of personal being--are evident.
Being good politically means not only valuing the things that are truly
valuable but also having the strength to defend those things when they are
everywhere being attacked and abandoned. Such strength is exemplified by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor and theologian, who
uncompromisingly opposed the Nazi regime from the beginning, even to the
extent of returning to Germany from a guaranteed haven in America to join
the anti-Hitler resistance. Arrested by the Gestapo, he was killed at the
end of the war. One of Bonhoeffer's prayers, composed in prison, was,
"Give me the hope that will deliver me from fear and faintheartedness."
Much that I have tried to say in the preceding pages might be summarized
simply in this question: If we turn away from transcendence, from God,
what will deliver us from a politically fatal fear and faintheartedness?
Copyright 1989 by Glenn Tinder. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; December 1989; Can We Be Good Without God?; Volume
264, Number 6; pages 69-85.
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