On the Origin and Nature of Political Authority: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff
Jeanne Heffernan Schindler
At the midpoint of the last century Hannah Arendt ruefully observed that we had such trouble understanding autonomy partly because we lacked an adequate understanding of authority. The problem she identified then yet lingers. And the particular political dimension of the problem of authority—namely, the question of “What accounts for the authority of the state?”—still requires attention. Nicholas Wolterstorff’s analysis is thus a timely one. It is especially relevant to an age marked by a deep cynicism about authority of all kinds, but especially political authority. Politics, when stripped of its rhetorical and symbolic trappings, appears to many as it did to Thrasymachus long ago: it is little more than an exercise in self-assertion—”the advantage of the stronger.”[1] When such cynicism threatens to undermine the very legitimacy of government, it is time to return to first principles in search of the basic foundation of state power. Nicholas Wolterstorff has done just that.
From the outset, Wolterstorff makes clear the particular kind of authority he is concerned with. He is not attempting to account for the mere fact of the state’s legal authority to issue orders and compel obedience; rather, he is concerned with the origin of the state’s moral authority to issue dictates to its citizens that place them under a corresponding moral obligation to obey. Wolterstorff rightly notes the difficulty in justifying this kind of power, which upon examination reveals itself to be quite an extraordinary one. The political theories on offer in the modern period fail to do it justice. As he correctly observes, neither the conventionalist nor the contractarian approach yields genuine state authority, since the goods promised by each can be secured without truly obligating the citizens. Even the sophisticated consent theory proposed by Leslie Green, which Wolterstorff sees as the leading humanist contender for a plausible account of political obligation, fails since the stringency of its requirements make it unworkably limited in application; it is thus an unconvincing ground of political authority.
A more plausible case, Wolterstorff argues, is found in a theistic account of state authority, and he offers such an account. His specific proposal consists in a philosophical elaboration of key biblical tenets, drawn from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures alike, on the origin and nature of governmental power. This theistic account of political authority, he points out, differs from rival humanist theories insofar as “it regards the authority of the state to do certain things as transmitted to it from someone who already has that very authority.”[2] That someone, of course, is God.
In specifying what this transmittal of authority entails, Wolterstorff carefully distinguishes between a deputy versus a delegate model of transmission. His criticism of the deputy model is compelling, and it bears special relevance for our time in light of the political theology of religious fundamentalists. Whatever their differences, these groups often endorse some form of theonomy, and the political regimes they establish, however barbaric their practices, derive their claims to legitimacy and unqualified obedience from their putatively divine origin. The danger of this view is obvious, and the abuse of power it has occasioned has led not only to its own disrepute in scholarly circles but to the repudiation of all theistic accounts of political power. It is here that Wolterstorff’s alternative, his delegate model, is especially important. The modesty of its claims about the relationship between state authority and divine intention serves to distinguish it fundamentally from the much-maligned deputy model and thereby to re-open a serious consideration of theistic political theories.
Another strength of Wolterstorff’s proposal is the subtle way in which it treats the question of legitimacy. His appeal to the divine transmission of authority establishes the basic legitimacy of the state without, in turn, conferring legitimacy upon the directives of said authority or upon any given occupant of a political office. Each must meet the criteria for moral legitimacy in order to engender obligations in the citizenry; both the occupant and his directives must conform to the divine intentions underlying the transmission of authority. Government established “from above,” then, is not insulated from moral evaluation; rather, the occupancy of political office and the exercise of political power are bound by strict standards. Wolterstorff explains that, for such matters, God’s rules are the moral rules. Wolterstorff’s careful treatment of the question of legitimacy is so compelling because it offers at once a strong foundation for political authority and a means by which to critique any actual regime. This is particularly needful in an age when the well-publicized corruption of political figures can appear to put the authority of the state per se in jeopardy.
Though Wolterstorff’s argument has many strengths, it also has some limitations. The first limitation would likely be remedied by a fuller elaboration of his account. (Indeed, the author admits that he has provided a sketch, rather than a fully articulated case.) The problem is this: as the argument stands it fails to show how the transmission theory—in contrast to its rivals—obligates. Wolterstorff has not adequately specified what it is about the divine origin of state power that obliges. What is it precisely about the distinctive origin of the state in this schema that yields an obligation of obedience, as distinct from a rationally self-interested motivation for conformity or the recognition that even an anarchist might make, namely, that it is a “morally good thing” for citizens to obey the law? To make his case compelling, Wolterstorff would have to elaborate upon what his argument seems to presuppose, namely, that God has genuine authority.” Specifying what that authority is and how it can be transmitted and exercised by human beings would seem to be an important feature of the argument.
While the above limitation stems from incompleteness, there is a more substantial problem with the argument. Recall that Wolterstorff’s task is to show the origin and nature of political authority. When he discusses the latter, he largely focuses upon the negative functions of the state. In keeping with Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous observation that “government is a necessary evil, required by the Fall of man,”[3] Wolterstorff emphasizes the state’s correction of injustice and its coercive power. In so doing, he fails to penetrate the heart of political authority.
This criticism is distinctly influenced by the work of the political philosopher Yves Simon. In Simon’s major treatise on political authority, The Philosophy of Democratic Government, he adopts a divine transmission theory similar to Wolterstorff’s. But, in addition, he persuasively argues that political authority is not per se a consequence of sin; it is not fundamentally a remedy for human deficiency. Its correction of injustice and its coercive power—those dimensions stressed by Wolterstorff—reflect an important but distinctly secondary (indeed, non-essential) function that is remedial of sin.
By contrast, government’s essential function is rooted in the creation order in its integrity. The essential function of political authority, its raison d’être, according to Simon, is to coordinate the common good, selecting the means to the common good when those means are not univocal—a likely circumstance, given the nature of creation and the nature of practical reason. Even in a perfect world, in an Edenic state, the intellect could perceive a multiplicity of means to the achievement of the same end. (Think, for instance, about how to design a beautiful building: the truly informed architect knows a whole variety of styles, but the owner must exercise authority in choosing one over another.) This is why Simon argues that the basic function of political authority springs from human plenitude and why Aquinas contends that political authority would have been necessary even before the Fall. Following St. Thomas, Simon insists that the practical intellect and the will are not uniquely determined with respect to particular goods, and this is a perfection, since, as he puts it, “The more a being is elevated in the ontological hierarchy, the more it is self-sufficient, and independent of the particular means in the achievement of its perfection.”[4] In the context of society, when common public action is required, the authoritative judgment of political authority is necessary to choose from among a multiplicity of genuine means to a given end. This would hold true even in a perfect community; it, too, would require “a public reason and a public will”[5] to make and execute judgments, though it would not require coercive power to enforce them. Thus, Simon would strongly qualify Wolterstorff’s claim that force is an indispensable component of the authority of the state by noting that potentia is not intrinsic to the essence of government; it is an accidental function consequent upon sin.
Simon’s positive account of the nature of political authority is arguably a more adequate way of accounting for what Wolterstorff calls the normative power or potestas of the state than those accounts that regard the state as a dispensation for human deficiency. Why? Because, all things being equal, a positive case in favor of an institution and its capacity to obligate is stronger than a negative one.[6] If Simon is right, the normative power of the state stems not only from a divine command of transmission, as Wolterstorff describes, but also from the deep structure of creation.
This has important practical ramifications. If a citizen, especially a Christian citizen, understands that political authority is not incidental to God’s creation, is not simply a temporal remedy for human faults, but is rather a constitutive dimension of social life, then it would seem to command a different kind of obligation and merit a different kind of attention. If one views an institution as indispensable to social life because of its goodness, one views it sympathetically; its functions seem worthy of time and concern. If, on the other hand, one views an institution as fundamentally rooted in human sinfulness, designed to corral corrupt self-interest, one might well view it with suspicion, if not outright disdain; it is for the sinners, not the saved. History proves the point. Sectarian perfectionists over the centuries have viewed political authority this way and have seceded from the political community as a result. They have failed to recognize political life as rooted in the kingdom and, apropos of Wolterstorff’s concern, have failed to grasp the normative power of human government.
In closing, Nicholas Wolterstorff has argued that to account adequately for the state’s normative power requires a divine transmission of authority; humanist attempts to justify it “from below” fail. His criticism of these attempts is compelling, and his proposal of an alternative, theistic foundation for political authority is promising. In order to for it to be persuasive, however, it would require elaboration, as the author himself recognizes. Specifically, it would have to account for the obligating character of divine authority itself and the means by which it is transmitted. Further, his argument would be strengthened if it incorporated Yves Simon’s distinction between the essential and non-essential functions of authority and recognized that the potestas of state power rests, in the first place, not upon a divine order to remedy sin but rather upon the very nature of human community as God created it.
1. Plato, Republic, 343C5.
2. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “‘For the Authorities Are God’s Servants’: Is a Theistic Account of Political Authority Still Viable or Have Humanist Accounts Won the Day?” in Theology and Public Philosophy: Four Conversations, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso and Cecilia Rodriguez Castillo (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2012), [5.68].
3. Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light, Children of Darkness (New York: Scribners, 1944), 91.
4. Yves R. Simon, “Beyond the Crisis of Liberalism,” in Essay’s in Thomism, ed. Robert Brennan, O.P. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942), n. 9, 412.
5. Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 48.
6. An analogy might elucidate the point. Recall St. Paul’s reflections on marriage. In 1 Corinthians, he counsels members of the early church to embrace celibacy so as to devote themselves single-heartedly to evangelization and preparation for what he expected would be Christ’s imminent return. “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7:8–9). Gratefully, the church has a wealth of resources beyond this fragment from Paul upon which it has built a sacramental theology of marriage that recognizes the intrinsic goodness of marriage and its place in the order of creation, not only its remedial function with respect to the sexual appetite. If the church had not developed its theology of marriage, the institution of marriage would arguably be degraded; those possessed of sexual self-control might view it as an inferior mode of discipleship, a dispensation for human weakness, rather than a bona fide vocation. So, too, if one views political authority as a dispensation for human weakness, one might regard politics as an inferior activity to private pursuits, rather than recognizing the intrinsic value of the political “vocation.”