After our chapters on individual ethics or morality—two on the principles of virtue and law and two on the issues of marriage and war—we turn to the question of the good of the polis—the city or community—Saken as a whole. As we will see, the question about the relationship between faith and reason takes on very intriguing and nuanced contours when talking about politics. It will be difficult, however, to facilitate this encounter between theistic faith, philosophical reason, and politics, for political matters admit of a great deal of variation. One has to be content with making assertions about what is so “generally speaking” or “much of the time”. Almost all the general claims one makes have particular counterexamples, so we ask readers to accept the broad principles that follow in the spirit in which they are intended.
A. Religious Theism and Human Association
All three of the theistic faiths advocate for a certain form of common association. Islam argues for the importance of the umma, the group comprised of all those who submit to God in the manner prescribed through the prophet Muhammad. Islam also has a unique connection to the Arabic language, since that is the special language of the Qur’an, and emphasizes its connection to the holy places of Mecca and Medina. Judaism argues for the significance of the assembly of the Jewish people and emphasizes the Hebrew language and the importance of the city of Jerusalem and the temple, or what remains of it. Muhammad exercised political authority over certain tribes and groups; David established a monarchy among the Jews and fought to defend it. Most importantly, both Islam and Judaism have extensive legal codes that prescribe a relatively complete description of political life, as we pointed out in chapter 21. Attached to law, language, and even place, these two faiths tell their adherents how they are to live in political association.
The situation is rather different in Christianity. The Christian faith developed primarily within the Roman Empire, which means that the faith did not have access to political power at the beginning. Christ was powerless in the face of Roman hegemony and, indeed, died at the hands of the Romans; the earliest Christians sometimes imitated Christ in dying as martyrs. Since the Christian Church was originally established on the fringes of political society, it is not all that surprising that she did not originally have a very developed legal code. What held the Church together, according to the Acts of the Apostles and other early Christian texts, were the Holy Spirit and the sacraments, especially the Eucharistic liturgy. But even here the Church was on the edges of society, for certain parts of the sacrifice of the Mass were not open to public view but, rather, performed in secrecy. To be sure, this situation began to change when the Emperor Constantine embraced the Christian faith and when public preaching was developed through the skills of people like Ambrose, Augustine, and John Chrysostom. Still, Christianity never understood the Church as a complete political society. It was understood that the Church constituted a sort of assembly within the larger assembly and that therefore the Church should be able to survive within any sort of political regime. In short, there was always a distinction (not a separation) between the faith and political life. Certainly this distinction was greater or lesser at different moments, but it always existed. There was never a unity between the Church and political association analogous, say, to the unity of the Solomonic monarchy or the caliphate.
To be sure, Judaism survived without a political state through the experience of the diaspora, and Muslims have learned to live within political situations where they were not in authority; and of course Christians have in some times and places been the rulers of political regimes. Still, Christianity does not define a complete political life in the same way that Islam and Judaism do. This means that Christian faith seems to need philosophy’s reflections upon politics more than Islam and Judaism do, and thus it is not surprising that the relationship between faith, philosophy, and politics is rather different in Christianity from what it is in Islam or Judaism.
Before turning directly to the question of how theistic faith and rational philosophy relate to each other with respect to the question of politics, however, we need to consider what philosophy concludes about political life. Not surprisingly, we immediately discover that the philosophers, relying on reason alone, do not always say the same things regarding politics. It is possible, nevertheless, to group the philosophers into two main schools. This grouping is primarily based on differences with respect to their principal ideas about politics, but it has a basis in history as well, so we will refer to the groups as the “ancients” and the “moderns”.
B. Politics and Ancient Philosophy
Ancient philosophers tend to emphasize the necessity of political life for perfecting human life, and, as we have already seen, in their view the perfection of human life means the development of the human virtues. The goal of politics is then ethics, and ethics is conceived in terms of virtue. The purpose of politics is therefore to create virtuous citizens—citizens who are at least brave, moderate, just, and prudent.
A second characteristic of ancient philosophical thought about politics is that the form of the political regime is important for the development of virtue. The qualities developed in an oligarchy, for example, will often be quite different from the qualities developed in democracies or monarchies. The soul is therefore a reflection of the regime, as Plato famously concluded in the Republic. This means that, if we care about virtue, we have to care about the question regarding the best regime. The best regime will be the one that is most productive of human virtue, and therefore the best rulers in the best regime will be those who are wise and prudent—those who know best how to secure human virtue. The very best regime in theory, then, will be one in which the wisest rule absolutely. In practice, it will be hard for the wisest, who are few, to dominate the many, so the best regime that one can hope for in practice is probably a mixed regime in which the most virtuous citizens hold the balance of power even as every part of the city has some share in the rule of it.
A third feature of the ancient view is that the political society is all-encompassing—except for philosophy. The ancient philosophers usually accept the notion that the gods belong to the city, in the sense that the city establishes the gods and directs man toward the proper attitude with respect to these highest principles. Religion is not really transcendent to the city, then. What is transcendent is philosophy, for the philosophers ask questions that take them outside the horizon of the city and its gods. This means that there will always be a certain tension, not between religion and politics, but between philosophers and politics. The events of the life of Socrates exemplify an extreme case of this tension. By transcending the life defined by the city of Athens, Socrates tended to undermine the views of the Athenians about the highest things. The tension this created eventually boiled over in a manner unfortunate for Socrates.
C. Politics and Modern Philosophy
Modern philosophy has as its principal political goal not so much the attainment of virtue as the preservation of individual liberty. It is concerned first and foremost that this liberty be expressed politically in the giving of consent. If forced to choose between practicing virtue unwillingly and willingly consenting to living less nobly, modern philosophers tend to choose the latter. The political regime has to be established through consent, so the moderns often embrace what has come to be known as “the social contract”. In this view, the very existence of political association is established because the parties sign on freely to the foundational rules or constitution of the society.
With respect to the question of the form of the political association, because of the emphasis on consent, modern philosophers tend to favor democracy or the rule of the majority. This is not so in all cases; Hobbes, for example, imagines that it is possible for the participants in political society to promise willingly and freely to be obedient to a monarch. Still, most modern philosophers, in emphasizing free consent, tend to be biased in favor of democratic regimes so long as those regimes are tempered by the adoption of a code of natural rights that preserve individual freedom even in the face of tyrannically inclined majorities. This means that the modern school of philosophy favors limited government or that it insists that the authority of the political regime must be restricted in order to leave room for individual liberty.
Finally, just as the ancient philosophers thought that philosophy transcended political life, so modern philosophers think that natural rights or human rights transcend political life. In the ancient view, though, philosophers were a very small group, whereas the moderns insist that everyone has natural or human rights. The individual, then, in modern philosophy, can transcend the political association, and the political association must actually protect the individual’s freedom to do so. There is thus a tension within the modern view because it is possible for a conflict to arise between the individual’s free consent in agreeing to the social contract and the individual’s freedom to transcend that contract. What if, for example, a group of people freely agree to live as the slaves of an unscrupulous group of warriors? The only way around this problem would seem to be to have the natural rights and freedoms “built into” the contract from the very beginning. But if the contract is to be restricted by rights, then it seems that freedom or consent is, to that extent, likewise restricted.
D. Christian Theism and Philosophical Political Thought, Ancient and Modern
Assuming that there is something to be said for these very brief descriptions of what philosophy concludes about politics, it is now possible to begin to ask our question: How does theistic faith relate to the claims of reason about political association?
In this book, we will trace the answer to this question specifically in terms of Christian theism, but before turning directly to that, let us at least point out what was mentioned earlier—namely, that Judaism and Islam would seem to contain within themselves a more thorough account of political life than does Christianity. To be sure, there have been important Jewish and Islamic authors who have found either ancient or modern philosophizing about politics to be useful. Nevertheless, because of things like Mosaic law and the extensive Jewish commentaries on it, or Shari’a and the remarks of its commentators, Judaism and Islam have within themselves the resources needed to form political associations, and hence, all in all, they have tended to be less interested in philosophizing about politics. The Christians, though, lacking such resources, have tended to embrace either ancient or modern political philosophizing. In the views of some, this embrace is uncritical or even mistaken, but Christians need political philosophizing, it seems, far more than the other two theistic faiths.
And just what do Christian theists usually think about the conclusions of the political philosophers? Let us go through each of the three questions about political philosophy that we have been using in this chapter.
First, then, let us consider the question of the end or purpose of political life. We have said that the ancients usually conceived of virtue as the goal of political existence, whereas the moderns usually conceive of freedom as the goal. In talking about virtue in chapter 20, we saw that theists generally accept the claim of ancient philosophy about the importance of virtue but that they think there is a set of virtues superior to the moral or intellectual virtues discussed by the ancient philosophers. The Christian, then, can understand faith and reason as coinciding on the value of moral and intellectual virtue, but they think that faith alone can teach us about the theological virtues, which are the highest. We should remember, then, the Venn diagram of chapter 20, in which the theological virtues were “placed” in region 1 and the moral and intellectual virtues of the ancient philosophers in region 2:
What about the end of freedom that is prized so highly by the modern philosophers? Christian theism surely thinks that freedom is a good; Christians have an understanding of freedom that is very different from that of most modern philosophers, however. True freedom, the theist says, is freedom from sin and freedom for doing the will of God; cast in this light, the sort of freedom that modern political thought emphasizes is not necessarily good. That sort of freedom can be used to do base and vulgar activities—even sins. The conclusion would seem to be that the end or goal of modern political philosophy is only potentially good in the view of Christianity whereas the goal of ancient political philosophy is necessarily good, even if not the highest good. The implication is that Christianity, on this fundamental question at least, is more compatible with ancient political philosophizing.
On the question of the form of the political regime, we have said that ancient philosophy prefers an arrangement in which those few who are the wisest and most virtuous rule in an unimpeded manner but recognizes that oftentimes the only practical way to provide for the influence of the virtuous in politics is through a regime that mixes both virtuous and nonvirtuous elements. Again, we can easily see that Christian theism will readily accept the idea of the rule of the virtuous, but it will want to redefine who the virtuous are. Plato, for example, claims that philosophers are the most virtuous, so Socrates articulates in the Republic the famous claim that philosophers should rule absolutely. Christian theism, of course, thinks that intellectual virtue or wisdom is not the highest virtue, so Christians are inclined to think that the pious or the holy—those possessing theological virtue—are the ones who should rule. Because the holiest, like the wisest, will necessarily be few (for otherwise they would not be the wisest or the holiest), the Christians are comfortable enough with Christian aristocracies or Christian monarchies. Like Saint Augustine, though, they are not necessarily opposed to democracies—if the majorities within those democracies are holy people.
A word of qualification should be added, though, regarding Christian theism and the question of the form of the best regime. The ancient philosophers seemed to think this question crucial because the form or structure of the political regime is generally reflected in the form or structure of the individual human soul. Christians, of course, think that the individual human soul should reflect the sacramental life of the Church. If the Church is responsible, though, for the education of souls within the political society, the question of the form or structure of the political regime becomes much less significant. Hence, it is often the case throughout history that Christians exhibit a relative indifference to the question of the form of the best regime. The Church seems willing to exist within a monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy. Individual Christians might argue on the basis of reason that one or another has its advantages, but any regime permitting the Church to baptize and preach will do, so long as it can perform the basic tasks of any regime.
What about modern philosophy’s preference for majoritarian democracy tempered or limited by natural or human rights? From what we have already said, it will be easy to see that Christian theism has more in common with the position of the ancients, although it does not categorically reject democracy. The problem with majoritarianism is that, in the Church’s view, the majority may or may not be right; the many may love God, or they may not. The mere fact that the majority is the most numerous counts for relatively little when faced with the claims of truth. And although Christianity in recent times finds it tempting to state its claims in terms of “rights” language, in fact there are conceptual problems associated with the term “rights”. If we have a right to do something, then it seems somehow that it must be permissible for me to do that. But what if I exercise my “right” by doing something that is “wrong” or sinful? I may have a natural right to free expression, but what if I use that right to purvey pornography? I may have a right to property, but what if I use that right to become stingy? Rights insist that we possess certain natural liberties that are absolute, but the Church has to acknowledge that liberties can be misused. Our rights, in short, have the ability to take us away from God just as much as toward God. Our rights, then, can be at best relative goods, and hence their claims are necessarily lower than the claims of virtue. Again, then, there is a greater compatibility between theism and ancient philosophy than between theism and modern philosophy.
What about the third question, the question of “transcendence”? We have said that, in ancient political thought, religion did not transcend politics but that philosophy did, whereas modern political thought suggests that rights transcend politics. Of course the Church cannot accept that she is a “religion” to be defined and controlled by the city or the political regime. Certainly there have been moments in history where political authorities attempted to confine the Church in this way, but few Christian theists would accept such a situation as legitimate or preferable. To the extent that Christian theism would be compatible with ancient thought on this question, then, it would have to understand itself as having more in common with philosophy than with religion. And in the event, that is more or less the course chosen by early Christianity. It rejected the notion that it should appear as just one more form of religion and preferred to call itself the true philosophy, for Christians claimed to be the true “lovers of wisdom”. As such, the Christians, or at least the more sophisticated Christians, often felt a greater kinship with the philosophers than they did with the pagans.
Of course, ancient political thought also accepted the notion that there might be a permanent, built-in tension between philosophical thinking and political associations. In other words, cities might not always be very sanguine about permitting some of their most virtuous citizens to live in a manner that transcends the cities; we have already referred to the fate of Socrates. But Christians ought to be in a very good position to understand the constant possibility of martyrdom. They ought to know that if they are persecuted, Christ was persecuted first. They ought to be willing to accept that they are never truly at home in any political association.
As for modern thought, perhaps the Church can claim religious freedom as a right, and indeed that is something that has now come to the fore in Catholic Christianity and in most varieties of Protestantism. This approach has a certain plausibility, in that the Church has always claimed that she transcends the limits of politics even if she exists and participates in political life. There are legitimate questions about this solution, however, especially from the point of view of the political regime, for it would seem that the Christian cannot really give a wholehearted assent to the social contract. The theist will always be claiming that he must obey God more than man, and thus the Christian’s attachment to political society will always be suspect. Why should the political regime permit attachments to something that is ultimately foreign to itself? Why should it permit half-hearted attachments to itself? How can the Christians be good patriots? As a result of considerations such as these, some of the most famous statements of modern social-contract thinking have denied that there is such a thing as an unlimited right to religious freedom or even that there is such a right at all.
E. Conclusion
The conclusion seems to be that Christianity has more in common with ancient political philosophy than with modern political philosophy, with ancient reason than with modern. This, of course, does not prove that ancient philosophy is simply true in every respect and modern philosophy false. For that matter, perhaps there are still some as yet undiscovered rational arguments about politics that are superior to either of the main “schools” we have used for illustrative purposes in this chapter. The reflections contained here do seem to suggest, however, that it will at least be more difficult to work out an integrationist position with respect to Christian theism and modern political philosophizing than it will be to work out an integrationist position between Christian theism and ancient political philosophizing. In neither case will faith and reason relate to each other in such a manner that reason will establish all of faith’s claims about political life. It will be easier to show, however, that ancient political philosophy is compatible with Christian theism than it will be to show that modern political philosophy is.
As the search continues for the best way to integrate faith, philosophy, and politics, the theist presumably should, above all else, remember that the Church is not truly at home in any political regime but should nevertheless seek what good she can for the particular regime in which she happens to find herself at the moment, for the mandate to love the neighbor requires nothing less. Perhaps sometimes the only thing that one can do for one’s fellow citizens is to attempt to remind them that they have souls that seek God and that such souls require their serious attention. One is reminded always of the words of Jeremiah to the Israelites contemplating their situation in exile in Babylon:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer 29:4-7)