How Dare You Attack Obama!

Well, my experiment worked as predicted. Here is a response to my deliberately-provative attack on Obama from someone who illustrates perfectly what it is to be so caught up in Liberalism as to be unable to think outside the categories of left-wing liberalism and right-wing liberalism. This post is from a Presbyterian minister and the Third Vice Chairman of the Rowan County Democratic Party.

http://marvinlindsay.typepad.com/avdat/2008/05/i-emote.html#comments

Note how everything is reduced to "Right" and "Left" as the only two possible options. Liberalism is here assumed to be the fate of the West, as irreplacable as plastic, as inevitable as "progress." History is at an end (a la Fukuyama). The only question is whether you are going to fight "progress" or embrace it. Politics is divided into cowboys and Indians - black hatted Republican right-wingers and white-hatted Democratic left-wingers. This is exactly the level of thinking we saw from the Republican Party during the Reagan years. Reagan was such an icon of the Right because he reduced everything to black and white, good and evil, us and them. He seemed pure in his simple-mindedness. The same phenomenon is observable with Obama. Obama functions for the Democrats as did Reagan for the Republicans.

In this post, Marvin says,

"when times are bad, it is rational for voters to choose someone with a vision of change and the shorter resume. The latter often means that the candidate is not implicated in the policy failures that voters would like to change. Otherwise incumbents would always win re-election."

I find this kind of comment astonishingly naive. But this where the energy for the Obama Cult is coming from - he is the "Anti-Bush." The opposite of everything we hate about Bush is projected onto Obama. But my point is that Obama is so much like Bush that all this enthusiasm is misplaced and, frankly, ridiculous.

Why did Bush go to war in Iraq? Because of oil? Because he is an Evangelical Christian? No, because he is a Liberal. I believed it was all about oil until oil hit $120 per barrel. But now I believe it is simpler to take him at his word that the war is about extending democracy, liberty and freedom. That is certainly why most Americans support the war (regardless of the motivations of the leaders). It is a holy crusade extending their true religion around the world. The point is that Obama is as much a true believer in this religion as is George Bush. All their right and left wing differences are in-house quarrels - denominational disputes within the religion of liberalism.

My point was not that Obama won't bring change, but that he won't bring change in the right ways and on the right issues. He won't make America more Christian or more just; he will just make it liberal in a slightly different way. Instead of economic freedom for the few rich people and corporations, he will emphasize minimal economic freedom for the many through the re-distribution of income. But he does not disagree with liberal orthodoxy that the meaning of life is to have as much negatively-defined freedom as possible. On that fundamental point, he has no quarrel with Michael Novak. He may employ the rhetoric of justice, but his is a utilitarian version of justice that actually has no absolute prohibitions - no Divine command - just a committment to "freedom."

But since the "No Harm Rule" cannot be derived rationally from a negative conception of justice, (see my posts on Groarke), Obama cannot be counted on to be consistent in implementing the
"No Harm Rule." He will try to invoke it to justify universal health care, but forget it when it comes to abortion, euthanasia and eugenics.

Marvin also writes:

"Carter complains that he doesn't know what kind of change Obama would bring. Well, how about letting a black guy run the government? That's not enough change for you?"

To which I can only reply, "No, that is not enough change for me." That is just window dressing and identity politics and the opposite of debate on issues of policy and philosophical substance. I am more interested in the quality of a man's ideas than the color of his skin and, moreover, I think that any other point of view is either overtly or covertly racist. Most black people know this, which is why the phrase "Uncle Tom" was invented. I am on the pastoral staff (part-time) of a multi-racial church and I teach at one of the most multi-cultural Christian institutions in the world. I do sympathize with white American Christians who feel guilty about their history of racism, but not to the extent of letting optics triumph over substantial change. I think that to support a candidate just because he is a certain color is not real racial reconciliation, but a perpetuation of racism. Martin Luther King's dream does not come by racial quotas any more than it comes through violence. (But Obama is no Martin Luther King; he is more like Bill Cosby with Stokely Carmichael as his pastor!)

One of the comments on Marvin's post (link above) was illuminating. The person said:

"The more I read from Carter, the more I am disappointed with what he does with the Yoder/Hauerwas theology. I, for one, will be eager to see Obama as president."

First of all, there is no such thing as the "Yoder/Hauerwas theology." Yoder cannot be linked to Hauerwas in this way; it is just not respectful enough of the differences between the two. (I am not saying there are no continuities between the two, I'm just saying that to read Yoder through the grid of, especially the early Hauerwas, is to obscure how radical Yoder actually is. Hauerwas attacks liberalism; Yoder [like John Paul II] provides a serious alternative.)

Second, it is fascinating to ask why this commentator is disappointed with "what I do with" Yoder. I suspect that what I do is that I fail to reduce Yoder to the status of just another liberal theologian. Why does this disappoint? Well, I think it bothers some people to think that it is possible to be a radical Christian without simply swallowing modern, Western Liberalism - that is, without compromising the Gospel and embracing a Unitarian and Pelagian distortion of Christianity. And, not only is it possible to be radical without being Liberal, it is finally impossible to be radical and Liberal at the same time.

We are at an impass. One must choose either a radical stance that subverts modernity, Western Imperialism and Liberalism or one must compromise. Yoder remains strange and wild because he never compromised. Obama, on the other hand, is so important to Liberals because he enables them to imagine that they are radical, while they actually continue to uphold plain, old, conventional, Enlightenment Liberalism.

Obama the Pro-Abortion Standard Bearer

Now this is amazing. Naral Pro-choice America endorses Barack Obama for president even with a pro-choice woman running against him! See the press release.

http://www.naral.org/elections/election-pr/pr_05042008_obamaendorsement.html

I guess that this endorsement says it all. No moderation or middle-of-the-road stuff for Obama on abortion. He is an extremist when it comes to standing for absolutely no restrictions on abortion of any kind.

The Obama Cult

I recently read a blog post written by a leader in the "Emergent Church" that he is leaning toward voting for Obama because Obama promises "change." "Change"? What does that mean? What kind of change? Hitler brought "change." Lenin brought "change." The Islamic Revolution in Iran brought "change." One presumes that anyone who runs for high office wants to make changes; otherwise there is not reason to run except naked ambition for power. Even then, one can only assume that the person wants the power to do something. It seems to me that Obama's campaign is all about not communicating anything of substance.

What do we know about Obama? We know that he has the most liberal voting record in the US Senate. We know that he is a reasonably good public speaker. But what is he? What is his underlying political philosophy? How deep a thinker is he? What is his program? What policies would be his priorities?

How could the "World's Leading Democracy" get this far into the presidential selection process and know so little about the leading contender for the office? Or is that the point? Is it that he is so liberal that he is out of the mainstream, so the less the voters know about issues of substance the better? The Obama bandwagon is beginning to resemble the Oprah Show. (Oops, that was meant to be satire, but actually O. has been campaigning for him. The satirist's job just gets harder and harder.)

It is all glitz, glammor and emotive slogans and images. Everyone projects his or her own concerns and hopes onto him and is convinced he really cares about his or her particular issue. Will he end poverty? Certainly. Is his top priority fighting AIDS in Africa? Undoubtedly. Will he bring in universal heathcare. Of course. Will he end the war in Iraq without leaving Iraq in shambles? Without question. Is he really down deep most concerned about jobs and the economy? Yes, naturally. Is he patriotic? Of course. Is he committed to personal freedom? Is the Pope Catholic?

Obama is a symbol created by a marketing machine onto which individuals can project their anxieties and dreams. But who owns him? What drives him? What does he care about most deeply? Who knows? Does anybody care?

Here is a terrific article about the way the mainstream media is committing idolatry in puffing Obama by Gerrard Baker from the Times of London entitled: "Barack Obama: The New Great Redeemer: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article3941450.ece

Iain Benson on the Christian Horizons Decision

Here is an excellent opinion piece on the recent Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision against Christian Horizons that threatens the right of Christians to be Christian in public in Canada. The Center for Cultural Renewal is a respected organizations not given to hyperbole. (It's run by lawyers, for heaven's sake!) Benson urges Christian Horizons not to back down and to stand up for their rights. Good stuff.

http://www.culturalrenewal.ca/qry/page.taf?id=37&_function=detail&sbtblct_uid1=199&_nc=e17707b24a1323e9c24242e2f08cf4e4

Three Ways to be Liberal

Sometimes I think Evangelicals are liberal and sometimes it seems obvious that they are not. Sometimes I think that everyone is public conversation and debate is coming from a liberal perspective, but other times it seems clear that they are not. Why is this the case? Louis Groarke clarified what he calls "Theoretical Liberalism" in an article I recently discussed at length on this blog. Building on what he described as Theoretical Liberalism, I have been thinking that there is more than one way to be liberal today. In fact there are at least 3 ways.

1. Consistent Theoretical Liberalism
First, there is what we might call "consistent theoretical liberalism," using Groarke's definition of theoretical liberalism as based on a negative idea of freedom (freedom from constraint) as the first principle of political philosophy. Groarke effectively showed that this is an incoherent notion because if negative freedom is the highest good for me, then I must oppress the neighbour in order to achieve my highest good, which in turn limits him from achieving his highest good. No negative concept of freedom can limit the will because no negative concept of freedom can give me a reason why I should respect the freedom of my neighbour as being as important as mine. It can't be as important - if negative freedom (the freedom to do whatever I want at the time) is the highest good.

Very few people not named Nietzsche or Hitler are consistent theoretical liberals. It is not a very nice philosophy and people who hold it either become sociopaths or end up committing suicide - the ultimate act of personal freedom (if we define freedom negatively).

One type of contemporary political actor which comes close to theoretical liberalism is the libertarian type. No one is totally consistent, so we must imagine some sort of continuum here. Neo-liberals (also confusingly known as conservtives today) are one step from libertarianism and two steps away from totally consistent theoretical liberalism. But neither libertarians nor neo-liberals are really consistent, so they both belong in the next category.

2. Inconsistent Theoretical Liberalism
Secondly, there is inconsistent theoretical liberalism. This is what most modern, secular, Western people are. They have to be called liberals of a sort because they do not have any clear concept of the good for human beings that could serve as the basis for limiting personal freedom. Since they lack such a concept of the good for human being, negative freedom is really the first principle of their political philosophy. But they retain large amounts of human decency and various scraps of morality which prevent them from consistently implementing theoretical liberalism. (Think of chapter 1 of Alister MacIntyre's, After Virtue, in which a catastrophe has destroyed modern science and all people have left is bits and pieces of knowledge that once made sense in an overall context but now do not because only bits and pieces are left. This is how he characterised the state of contemporary ethics.)

People in this category usually tend to think that it is possible to assume (without argument) that it is self-evident that one person's freedom should be limited by other persons' freedom. Why this is so, they have no coherent idea. It just seems self-evident (probably because a vague notion of the Golden Rule seems like an obviously true intuition to them and because their mothers taught them to be nice and share as a way to make life happier for everyone).

Such people can be regular busybodies by constantly seeking to impose a host of rules and regulations on their fellow citizens in the name of creating more freedom for others. (They are especially annoying to libertarians - eg. on seatbelt legislation.) The liberal rationale for high taxation is the need to redistribute income so everyone can be - you guessed it - free. Even socialism is justified on the basis that it creates more individual liberty for people than other systems, which create more liberty for the few, but not even a minimal amount for the many. It all comes back to individual freedom, defined negatively. In a materialistic, hedonistic culture like our own, freedom is often defined in terms of consumerism and this is just as true of "global socialism" as it is of "global capitalism." A case can be made that a major reason for the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe is that if failed to "deliver the goods" - literally.

This is quite different from believing that each human being is created in the image of God and therefore has inherent dignity and rights that need to be respected by everyone else. But the need to make everyone "free," (i.e. unconstrained) is made to do as a basis for a social program that is hard sometimes to distinguish from one based on inherent human dignity. Abortion, however, is a dead give away. To support abortion is to implement theoretical liberalism with a chilling consistency. Most liberals are inconsistent, therefore, implementing theoretical liberalism on some occasions and not doing so on other occasions.

3. Practical Liberalism
Thirdly, there is a kind of liberalism which is not theoretical, but practical. By practical liberalism, I mean living as if liberalism were true, while also believing things that are utterly incompatible with theoretical liberalism. There is tremendous pressure on people today to conform to liberalism by dividing life into the "public/private" and "fact/value," spheres. So one might believe that Jesus is Lord of the Universe, but go along to the President of the United States when he asks Christians to join in an unjust war in Iraq, to which Jesus is clearly opposed. To do so is to believe something incompatible with liberalism, but to live in a liberal way.

Churches which conform to modernity emphasize the private spiritual needs of their members and stay out of politics. Much of the rage against the Religious Right arises from a perception that Evangelicals should stay out of politics (i.e. not mix politics and religion). But no one gets upset when a liberal religious leader gets involved in politics because that leader is probably following the script written by secular liberalism in the first place (i.e. taking the "right" positions on the issues). Evangelicals get slagged because they 1) deviate from the script by taking the wrong position on issues (like abortion) and 2) they do so explicitly in the name of God (which is mixing private and public).

It is a lot easier as a preacher to avoid controversy by refraining from bringing the implications of the Gospel to bear on a host of issues - except of course those ones in which one's stand is certified and approved by the New York Times (the Vatican of liberalism). So it is OK for Rick Warren to fight AIDS, but not OK for Charles Colson to fight abortion and Colson is wrong because "mixes religion with politics" (whereas presumably Warren does not). This is confusing and illogical until you understand that liberalism requires religion to be separate from politics unless it functions in a chaplaincy role as a kind of civil religion reinforcing the liberal political philosophy that is the real religion of most Westerners. By "real religion," of course, I mean some form of either theoretical or practical liberalism.

If I were to ask the question "Which of these ways is best to be liberal?" I would be asking a ridiculously leading question from my perspective because I think Christians cannot be liberals of any kind and remain good Christians. But this is precisely the question that defines most political discourse in the modern West. Are you Republican or Democrat? Conservative or liberal? Fox or New York Times? Marxist or Liberal? All these questions are versions of the same "What kind of liberal is it best to be?" question. Unless Christians extricate themselves from this debate and change the terms of the discussion, there can be no witness to the Gospel.

The Liberal Reading of Yoder

Not all those who cry "Yoder, Yoder!" are really followers of the historical Yoder. Among Mennonites seeking an entry into the upper middle class world of mainline Protestantism there is a strong tendency to read Yoder in a liberal way, as if he were merely reinforcing the social ethical views of the children of the Niebuhrs and Troletsch and restating the theology of modern liberal Protestantism. Non-Mennonites are also tempted by the liberal reading of Yoder, especially liberal Protestants who read him in such a way as to assimilate him to their "peaceandjustice" agenda. Some Evangelicals, especially those from the conservative side of the spectrum, (understandably) use such a reading of Yoder as an excuse to reject him.

But the liberal reading of Yoder is wrong. It is not understandable or debatable. It is a deliberate act of violence toward Yoder, for it distorts him without hearing him and that is to fail to treat him with the dignity that one's debating partners deserve, especially one who presents himself as an ecumenical, orthodox, historically-aware Christian.

The liberal reading of Yoder views him as a theological liberal and as a political liberal; in fact, it views him as a political liberal precisely because it views him as a theological liberal. I don't have time to develop the details of this reading and give examples, but here is a brief overview of how it runs.

1. Pacifism becomes a principle - which results in a low Christology
A few years ago I met the last of the Dutch Mennonites. Their denomination is liberal, aging and literally about to disappear from Holland. They were WCC "peaceandjustice" advocates and in thier books Jesus was an OK kind of guy because - well, you know - he was for "peaceandjustice." Insofar as pacifism played a role in their thinking it was more of a 60's anti-war, flower power kind of pacifism, rather than a realistic, ecclesial discipline. They were the kind of pacifists who firmly believed that war could be eliminated soon, easily and through the application of reason and common sense - and through the use of poetry and flowers.

Unsurprisingly, they were unitarians in theology. They saw Jesus as a human example - kind of like Ghandi - of how good humans can be at their best. "Jesus, you are an inspiration to us all!" After a few days I realized that there was nothing specifically Mennonite about them; they were generic liberal Protestants and had moved beyond orthodox Christianity. For them, pacifism was an ethical principle, not a person.

John Howard Yoder, by contrast, argued in Nevertheless that his kind of pacifism was distinct from all other kinds in that only for his kind of pacifism was the person of Jesus Christ absolutely necessary. It is imperative to see that if Jesus was only a human with a highly developed God-consciousnesss, then Yoder's pacifism collapses.

2. Pacifism becomes a program - which results in an over-realized eschatology
Secondly, pacifism becomes a program, that is, a human project to be planned, implemented and perfected by human action. There is a Marxist version of this program and also a liberal democratic version, but both are Christian heresies and have more in common with each other than either has in common with historic Christian orthodoxy.

For Yoder, pacifism was a matter of obedience and discipleship. For him, there was (ironically) an almost military kind of discipline invovled. We don't give orders; we take orders. God has told us not to fight; God is capable of dealing with evil and enemies without our taking matters into our own hands. Our's is not to reason why, but to obey. It was a matter of living "out of control" but also of knowing that God is in control and that history is not "just one damn thing after another" (Henry Ford), but purposeful even if we can't observe God's ways and comprehend them in this life.

Yoder's pacifism was characterized by patient waiting; not by revolutionary siezing of the levers of violence in order to take control of history and make it come out right by force and reason. Our job is to bear a witness, not right all wrongs by any means necessary.

3. Dissent against sin in the name of obedience to the command of God becomes rebellion against authority in the name of the autonomous self
Thirdly, in the liberal reading of Yoder, dissent becomes rebellion against authority in the name of the autonomous self, instead of dissent against sin in the name of obedience to the command of God. As Karl Barth so eloquently explains in The Christian Life, the Christian life does involve rebellion against the sinful structures, habits and ways of the world. There is a proper Christian rebellion, but it is a rebellion against sin, not against God, human nature, law and the good for human beings.

Liberalism is rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Like Eve eating the forbiden fruit because she wanted to be able to decide when to obey and when not to obey for herself, to be the law-maker instead of the law-abider, and like Augustine stealing pears just for the thrill of stealing
("our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden." Confessions, Book 2.4), liberalism derives a sense of authenticity, power and fulfillment from rebellion. It is not the cause, the goal, the injustice that is the focus - it is the pleasure of rebellion against authority itself that is the point. (See the earlier post on Groarke's article on freedom).

Liberalism has an heretical idea of freedom, which is rooted in a heretical anthropology and a Stoic conception of a unitarian, immanent God. The human being is conceived as an individual and as the universe come to consciousness with no constraints and no law above. The liberal man is the Man-God; the Lastman, Value-creating Will. For liberalism, freedom has no object, no direction, no good; rather, freedom is simply negative freedom, freedom from constraint of any kind. Such a concept of freedom is anti-humanistic and inherently violent. All around we see its fruits. John Paul the Great labelled it "the culture of death."

Yoder's theology is radical and iconoclastic when it comes to the Constantinian deformations of the Gospel that proliferate in late modernity. So it is, I suppose, natural that his iconoclasm should be mistaken for liberal rebellion and his radical stance for an amoral individualism. But only those who read Yoder through the grid of their own (largely unexamined) prejudices and presuppositions can ever find liberalism in his writings.

Yoder and the Christian Case for Democracy 2

In the last post, I set the stage for the consideration of Y's use of analogy in "The Christian Case for Democracy" in The Priestly Kingdom, chapter 8.

Y. structures his analogy around three sayings of Jesus:
1. "The rulers of the nations lord it over them."
2. Those who exercise authority let themselves be called benefactors."
3. "But it shall not be so among you; you shall be servants because I am a servant."

Y. then asks if there is any valid way to generalize the contents of these sayings for the "marketplace" and if the language of kingship can be related in any way to the "age to come." He has a nice chart on p. 161, which I can't reproduce here. But I will try to give the gist of it.

If we ask what "kingship as beneficience" could mean we could give 3 answers:
1. To the Nations - The tyrants let themselves be called "benefactors"
2. To the Faith Community speaking to the nations - Appeal to the tyrant's language to make him less of a tyrant
3. To the Faith Community speaking internally - Servant leadership in the way of the cross

If we ask what it would mean for society as a whole as the moral agent, we can agains give 3 answers:
1. For the nations - fill all the slots so society can run.
2. The Faith Community speaking to the nations - Stewardship investing skills where most significant
3. The Faith Community speaking internally - Every member has a distinct charisma

If we ask what it would mean for Caesar, we can again give 3 answers:
1. For the Nations - How would this work out if you were Caesar?
2. For the Faith Community speaking to the nations - How would this work if you were his victim?
3. For the Faith Community speaking internally - How would this work if you were the brother/sister for whom Christ died?

If we ask what it would mean for everyone as moral agent, we again get 3 answers:
1. For the nations - You can't ask moral heroism of everyone.
2. For the Faith Community speaking to the nations - You can ask civilty of almost everyone
3. For the Faith Community speaking internally - You do ask love of everyone.

The strength of the analogical approach to social witness is that what the church has to say to the world takes into account the doctrine of sin (so we don't ask unconverted people to pursue Christian perfectionism), but also grounds what the church has to say in something specifically Christian (which makes it a witness to the Gospel instead of a rehash of what the world already knows on other grounds).

The weakness of the analogical approach to social witness is that it is easy for the Church to reduce #3 to #2 as it tries to teach its members to be good citizens and good Christians simultaneously. One senses that something has to give in the push and pull of #2 and #3.

On. p. 163, Y. alludes briefly to a Barthian logic of analogy, in which the "governmental language" within the Church becomes the norm for the wider culture. Y. develops this idea in "Why Ecclesiology is Social Ethics: Gospel Ethics versus the Wider Wisdom" (in The Royal Priesthood, pp. 102-26). There Y. discusses Barth's notion of "True Church Law" in CD IV/2, 719-26. In this lecture Y. emphasizes that the Church is the foretaste/model/herald of the kingdom. Y. points out that Barth is the first major theologian in centuries to take seriously the fact that the political authorities do not acknowledge the Lordship of Christ and the Church does, which makes him a kind of "sectarian" theologian. In this paper, Y. argues that the Church can only be a foretaste of the future by being simultaneously a political and a doxological community.

Y. argues that modern government encompasses such a wide swath of life (much more so than in the ancient world) that much of it deals with the administration of services. So to reject the sword need not mean renouncing all involvement in government. He writes:

"The assumption that commitment to a minority ethic, derived from a minority faith, must issue logically in withdrawal from significant involvement in the social process, including the refusal of office holding or adversary roles, is itself an outworking of the establishment axioms which I am challenging." (PK, 165)

Y. also argues that advocating democracy can be done from below by a minority faith community without embracing Constantinianism. The key to resisting Constantinianism is the separation of Church and state. He writes:

"In summary: if we claim for democracy the status of a social institution sui generis, we shall inflate ourselves and destroy our neighbours thorugh the demonic demands of the claims we make for our system and we shall pollute our Christian faith by making of it a civil religion. If on the other hand we protect ourselves from the Constantinianism of that view of democracy, we may find the realistic liberty to foster and celebrate democratization as one of the prophetic ministries of a servant people in a world we do not control." (PK, p. 165-6)

Y. goes on to ask what happens when the church finds itself in a situation "where thier numbers, or their virtues, or their friends, or their good luck should give to Christians a chance for positive model building." (PK, p. 166) This section is short and should be read in conjunction with the longer chapter on William Penn and the Pennsylvania experiment in War, Peace and Revolution. Here he is dealing with the situation that arises ("properly arises" he says) when the response to the preaching of the Gospel is highly positive, as it has been at various points in history in various places. (What do you do as a missionary/evangelist if they all seek baptism and then want to know how to govern themselves as Christians?)

Here Y. is ambivalant. He mentions the English Revolution but says the Cromwellian adventure was "sure to fail." But Y. acknowledges the truth in A. D. Lindsay's thesis that the origin of democracy lies in Puritan and Quaker meetings where everyone had a chance to speak.

So Y. thinks (in summary) that a minority can use the tyrant's "benefactor language" against him as leverage to increase tolerance for dissent and he thinks that when Christians constitute a majority (or large group) they can exert a positive influence by a "ripple effect" and by constructing analogies. He argues that neither of these two approaches is "the Enlightenment affirmation that 'the people' have the same voice as God, that the majority is right, or that the structures of oppression can be used for good if taken over by the other side." (PK, p. 168)

I want to raise the question of why the Church can be an exemplary community from which analogies can be constructed to apply to the wider social structures. The key, I think, is that Y. is saying that the reason why the Church is the bearer of the meaning of history is that it is a doxological community in which God is praised and proclaimed and Jesus Christ is acknowledged as Lord. Only in such a community can true human sociality be lived out and only on the basis of such community can analogies be devised that will actually move the wider society closer to the kingdom of God. Only out of the verbal proclamation of the Gospel can come authentical Christian social ethics. This is partly because the wisdom comes not only from Christian communal success, but even more importantly from Christian communal failure (as seen in confession of sin, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation).

I believe that the reason why John Paul the Great had such a great social witness (as opposed to the lame, conformist, bland witness of liberal Protestant leaders of the same era), is that he never separated the proclamation of the Gospel of the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus Christ from his call to governments to respect human life, hold free elections and care for the poor. He spoke out of worship into politics, rather than separating them into their own discrete planes or spheres or insitutions. He was always ready for a revival to break out with mass conversions and he was ready with Roman Catholic social teaching for discipleship.

Evangelicals tend to be drawn into the liberal trap of separating the Gospel from politics because they are intimidated by liberals who accuse them of being oppressive fanatics. But one can make the case for democracy without Constantinianism. The key is the rejection of violence and the refusal to separate the good news about Jesus from our social ethical witness. Yoder modelled a "sectarianism" without "separatism" and a "pacifism" without "liberalism." He made a compelling case - for all who hear the Word and believe.

Yoder and the Christian Case for Democracy 1

John Howard Yoder patiently endured being caricatured repeatedly (sometimes by people who ought to have known better) as representing a theological position that could not possibly have anything to say to governments, politicans, voters or to the public at large. He was accused of being "sectarian," "separatist," and "pacifist" by people who used such labels as ready-made containers in which to trap his thinking and relieve themselves of the burden of really listening hard to what he had to say. What he had to say was almost always more nauanced and complex than what his interlocutors had to say, which I think accounts for the vast influence his thought continues to exert.

Even some of the people who were convinced of the truth of Y's account of the "politics of Jesus" labeled Y. in these ways and accepted the necessity (as they saw it) of taking up the separatist, apolitical journey. The most sophisticated of these people denied that they were being apolitical because they argued that, following Y., the church itself is a politics ("the church does not have a social ethics; it is a social ethics: has now become a slogan). However, the problem is that modern congregations that focus exclusively on the individualistically defined "spiritual" needs of modern people are hardly what Yoder meant by a "church."

So both those who accepted the "separatist" road and ceased voting and trying to have any influence on public policy and those who focussed their "political" activity within the church or denominational ethos ended up conforming to modern, liberal individualist culture insofar as they accepted in their actions (without necessarily admitting it in words) the public-private, fact-value split. Thus, the Hutterites can make a claim to be political in a way that the Vineyard cannot. (This tendency, by the way, is one of the main factors in what I call the "liberal reading of Yoder," about which I intend to blog soon.)

From the publication of his early book, The Christian Witness to the State, (in 1964), to the Stone Lectures given at Princeton (in 1980) and the publication of The Priestly Kingdom (in 1984) to the late book, For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (in 1997), Yoder consistently argued that the radical Protestant position can speak coherently into the public debate. Whether anyone will listen depends on several factors, primarily the work of the Spirit in converting listeners to the Gospel, and not primarily on the pure logic of the words spoken.

In my book on Yoder, I think I demonstrate conclusively that, for the most part and compared to most other thinkers, Yoder exhibited very little change in the main lines of his thought over a four decade writing career. When Yoder was asked why he didn't write a "big book" to "pull it all together" he protested that there was no "scratch" from which to begin and he had to write with a specific audiance in mind. But he was a relentlessly logical thinker and I would suggest one unmentioned reason that he did not feel the need to write the "big book" is that his thought has been elaborated in extenso in his many publications already and is there for those who seek it.

So in this brief essay I will examine his essay "The Christian Case for Democracy" in The Priestly Kingdom (hereafter PK) and I will unapologetically do so in the light of The Christian Witness to the State (hereafter CWS) and "Why Ecclesiology is Social Ethics: Gospel Ethics Versus the Wider Wisdom," which is the opening lecture of his Stone Lectures. (It is reprinted in The Royal Priesthood, p. 102f)

The essay "The Christian Case for Democracy" was first published in 1977, five years after The Politics of Jesus in 1972 (hereafter PoJ) and it was republished in PK in 1984. PK was Yoder's first book since PoJ and was published by University of Notre Dame Press. (In the 12 intervening years there was a 2nd ed. of Nevertheless in 1976 and a number of articles, incuding ones on taxes on elections and several on Karl Barth). At the time PK was published, Y. was moving simultaneously into FT teaching at Notre Dame and more definitely into ethics, rather than historical theology. It is fair to say that in the years following PoJ he was responding to a lot of criticism about "sectarianism" and PK represents a response to such criticism. (Y. makes this explicit on p. 1 of the Introduction). Barth is barely mentioned in PK, however, but Barth does play a larger role (as always) in Y's thought than is apparent. The Stone Lectures demonstrates how Barth functioned.

All this is preamble. In tomorrow's post, I will examine Y's use of analogical reasoning in "The Christian for Democracy" and how he applies it to two different cases: one in which Christians are a barely tolerated minority and another in which Christians have a large presence and many friends.

Christianity and Liberalism: A Problematic Relationship 2

Some of my dialogue partners are scandalized by my advocacy of "Christian Democracy" in the first post of this title a few days ago. I admit that this term is far from ideal, but I'm wrestling with what else to use. Here are some of the complicating factors.

1. I agree that the liberal state project is a rival religion to Christianity. The liberal state in the modern West is a false church presenting a false way of salvation. This is why I reject the option of saying that, as Christians, we agree with liberal democracy.

2. I also agree that the distinction of John Courtney Murray between civil society (which is characterized by various associations representing various religions and ideologies) and the liberal state (which is a set of neutral mechanisms that function as a level playing field for the completing ideologies) is highly problematic, primarily because this view allows the liberal state to be considered neutral, but nothing in all creation can be neutral with regard to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

3. I also reject the Marxist one-party state in which the party elite sieze power and govern ostensibly for the good of the people, but really as totalitarian dictators. Whatever else we say, we should not give aid and comfort to the positon that Marxist totalitarianism is morally equivalent to democracy. I want to say that democracy is less bad that totalitarian dictatorship. (Anyone who disagrees with that needs to explain to people who have actually lived under Marxist dictatorships why that is so; personally, I would not want to try doing that.)

4. To say that Christians are indifferent to the political system by which we are governed is a luxury that North Americans can indulge in while enjoying the relative benefits of democracy. But it is bound to sound completely bizarre to people living in today's Zimbabwe. It is all well and good to say that the state is an alternative soteriology, but if we cannot make prudential judgments about political systems on the basis of Christian view of humans as created in the image of God and therefore with rights and dignity, we are in bad shape. The end of dicatatorship and the coming of democracy would not immediately solve all problems but it would help with some issues.

5. To speak simply of democracy with no modifier, however, could be taken as implying that democracy can be neutral in the Murrayite sense described above. When a nation of evil people form a democracy, the result is much worse that when a nation made of up Christians and non-Christians who agree on certain basic principles of justice form a democracy. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily superior to anything else. This is why Bush's justification for the Iraq war as being to spread democracy does not make sense. A tribal country with no traditions of democracy who have democracy thrust upon them by a colonial power will not necessarily be better off. They could be better off with a democracy if they eventually learn how to tolerate each other's differences and live in peace. But democracy alone is insufficient.

6. This reasoning led me to speak of "Christian Democracy" as the least bad of all the bad political options around, not in the sense that the state is actually Christian, but in the sense that even a non-Christian state can recognize that certain Christian beliefs are good for organizing society, eg. solidarity and subsidiarity. A society that adopts democracy, solidarity and subsidiarity as its underlying political philosophy, other things being equal, will be better than one that does not.

7. The term "Christian Democracy" unfortunately suggests a theory of the state, rather than an ad hoc, prudential judgment that having more people involved in making decision-making is less oppressive than not. Secondly, the term "Christian Democracy" could be interpreted as implying that Christians desire to take over the state and reinvigorate a Constantinian arrangement that is now a fading memory. Of course, that is far from what I meant. I never meant to imply that a Christian Democracy was the kingdom of God, nor that only Christians should have the vote. And it never occured to me for that anyone would presume that in a democracy a tiny minority of Christians could actually take power. Maybe that is a function of my Canadian social location where the threat of Martians taking power is more likely than Evangelicals taking power. All in all, however, perhaps it is the case that, for these reasons, the term "Christian Democracy" should be abandoned.

8. So if we cannot speak of "Christian Democracy" can we still make a Christian case for democracy? John Howard Yoder thought we could. In the next post, I will examine his reasoning in the essay: "The Christian Case for Democracy" in The Priestly Kingdom.

Christian Horizons Appeals

A story in the Toronto Star today says that Christian Horizons has appealed the ruling of the Human Rights Tribunal. Stay tuned.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/422525

Here is an editorial comment by Michael Coren from the Sun titled: "Disabling Charity."
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Coren_Michael/2008/05/03/5459116-sun.php

A Review of Augustine and Modernity by Michael Hanby

This is a great book because it combines an in-depth analysis of Augustine's Trinitarian and Christocentric theology (especially Confessions and De Trinitatae) with a wide perspective on the historical importance of Augustinian theology in the developent of Western thought, especially at the origins of modernity.

Hanby is currently Assistant Professor of Biotechnology and Ethics at the Pope John Paul II Institute of Marriage and Family Studies in Washington, DC. This book is published as part of the Routledge "Radical Orthodoxy" series. It might be well to say a word about the relationship of Roman Catholic scholars, such as Hanby and Tracey Rowland who have both published in this series, to RO. A number of Roman Catholics have participated in the Radical Orthodoxy movement since its inception, but if RO is to be understood as basically an Anglican movement, then scholars such as Hanby and Rowland should be understood as having one foot in it and the other foot in the Roman Catholic Communio school. My understanding of the difference between the Communio school and RO is that both aim to recapture ancient orthodoxy as the foundation for developing a Christian culture, but where RO is is dialogue with continental postmodern philosophy, Communio theology is in dialogue with the patristic theology. One crucial difference this makes is that the recovery of patristic exegesis gives the Communio school an exegetical basis and a biblicist tint that one misses in RO. In any case, if RO can be a means by which Communio thinking is diseminated into Protestant theology, that is all to the good.

The thesis of the book can be stated on a number of levels. On one level, it is an historical argument against the so-called "continuity thesis" of Stephen Menn and others, which views Augustine as the source of Descartes' vision of the self - the autonomous, self-conscious self of modernity. Hanby argues instead that Descartes' self is the self of the ancient Stoicism that Augustine had consciously rejected in the Pelagian controversy. Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the development of modern Western civilization is wrong to see Descartes as the logical working out of impulses and ideas contained in Augustine. The implications of this are huge: 1) that modernity is not the necessary fate of the West and 2) that modernity is not the logical development of Christianity.

On another level, the thesis is that modernity is a recovery of and development of ancient, pre-Christian Greco-Roman paganism. The view of God in Stoicism and Cartesianism is of a totally immanent God, which is unitarian not Trinitarian. This means that there is no room for an historical incarnation. Although Hanby does not mention it, one surmises that it might be no coincidence that the deep roots of the historical-critical method of biblical studies are increasingly being exposed as lying in Spinoaza, who shares many of these views with Descartes. Perhaps it is the view of God in modern rationalism that is the motivating force behind the implulse to study Scripture by utilizing a naturalistic methodology.

On yet another level, the thesis of the book is that the notion of will contained in Descartes' notion of the self is not only Stoic, but also quintessentially modern and that that notion of will is fundamentally a response to the crisis of late Medieval nominalism. Augustine's notion of will is very different. For Augustine, voluntas is "the site of our erotic participation in an anterior gift, and it is at once self-moved and moved by the beauty of that gift." (135) In this manner, Augustine shows how the will can be both our's and also not self-moved. By contrast, Descartes' will is defined as the undetermined decision - that is - free because unconstrained by anything external to it. The potential for will defined in this manner to degenerate into nihilism is obvious.

For Augustine, the search for God always begins in medias res - as soon as we become conscious of God we realize that he has been calling and wooing us. There is no "scratch" from which to begin (Yoder) and so the Calvinist-Arminian debate over free will and determinism is a peculiarly modern debate in which both sides assume that the human will and the divine will are in direct competition because they are both sovereign. The striking thing about Descartes' notion of will is how closely it is modelled on that of God's will.

Chapter 1 A Grim Paternity?
The opening chapter is devoted to an examination of the case against Augustine as the forerunner of modernity. Philosphers Charles Taylor, Eric Alliez, Stephen Menn and Wayne Hankey plus theologians such as Colin Gunton and Catherine LaCugna pass in review, all with complaints against Augustine. Hanby follows the reading of Augustine developed by Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes, among others, and has little trouble demonstrating that the textbook myth of Augustine beginning with the oneness of God and never quite figuring out how to express the threeness adequately is just plain wrong. He shows that God's essentia is the Father, Son and Spirit - there is nothing else. (14) Hanby acknowledges that the anxiety over the de-Trinitarianization of God in the West is well-founded, but not to be laid at the feet of the Bishop of Hippo. (16)

In the closing section of this chapter, Hanby also interacts with Eric Alliez' postmodern critique of Augustine in which "The Reformers' destructive blows, Descartes' mathematical mastery of nature, and the Weberian rational calculation all lie latent in the soul laid bare in the Confessiones and the City on pilgrimage to God." Alliez' grand ambition is "to uncover the metaphysical figure of capitalism." (19) For Hanby, Alliez' project fails because of Alliez' disregard for Augustine's Trinitarianism (21) and Alliez' failure to analyze Augustine's understanding of the erotic relationship between the will and the enconomy of beauty. (25) Hanby concludes: "In his neglect and supression of the Trinity, the economy of beauty, and Augustinian volition, it is Alliez and not Augustine who is more truly the Cartesian." (26)

Chapter 2 De Trinitate and the Aesthetics of Salvation
This long chapter is clearly the heart of the book and defies easy summary. Hopefully, I will just say enough to persuade you to read it for yourself. In this chapter, Hanby follows Lewis Ayres' revision of R. P. C. Hanson's influential but misleading narrative of fourth century theology and re-situates Augustine the Christian theologian in the ethos of fourth-century pro-Nicene theology, rather than in the Neo-platonist and Stoic context in which his if often (mis)read.

The first part of the chapter shows how Augustine's cosmology is an aesthetic soteriology in which the divine beauty draws human creatures toward God. The second part looks at the generation and procession of the Trinitarian personae and shows how theis aesthetic soteriology is "coextensive with Augustine's understanding of the Trinity as transcendent love." (27) The third section looks at Augustint'e Christology and ecclesiology and shows how Christ is the focal point of the manifestation of God's beauty in the economy and the mediator between the creature whose desire is purified through contemplation of the divine beauty and God, the source of the beauty that all creation desires.

Chapter 3 Christology, Cosmology and the Mechanics of Grace
This chapter examines the Pelagian controversy in the light of De Trinitate and shows that "The 'Pelagian question' as we have inherited it, is therefore both historically and theologically inadequate . . . because it imposes definitions upon the debate which have not come under the discipline of historical scrutiny." (73) Hanby shows that the real issue between Pelagius and Augustine revolves around whether God is really Triune and how human agency should be understood in the context of Trinitarian action and Christological mediation. Pelagianism is found to be incoherent as a moral psychology and as a philosophy of action because it imports a Stoic concept of God into Christianity.

Chapter 4 The Subtle Triumph of Pelagianism
In this chapter Hanby argues that the heretical concept of the self and the will in Pelagianism, with its accompanying non-Trinitarian ontology, was rejected but not destroyed by Augustine. In fact, it lived on in what came to be called "Augustinianism" of all places! Hanby also argues that a stoic Christianity, unchastened by the criticisms of stoicism in De Civitate Dei, along with the neostoicism of the Renaissance, fed into Descartes' "alleged Augustinianism and to the advent of a metaphysics that realizes the nihilistic implications of the stoic first principle." (107)

Chapter 5 An Augustinian Parody: Descartes and Modern Stoicism
Finally, Hanby arrives at his goal and focuses in this final chapter on Descartes himself. Here Hanby recalls the consideration of the grand narrative of the story of modern origins widely accepted today in which "Augustine's place in this narrative is crucial as one of the pillars of the 'Western metaphysical tradition' that concludes in the birth of Cartesian subjectivity, a tradition which has fallen into disrepute in the wake of Nietzsche, Heidegger and their disciples." (135) Hanby makes explicit what is at stake:

"Since Augustine is the father of the Western church par excellence, the discrediting of this tradition as intrinsically nihilistic is thought, by those inclined toward such unmaskings, to expose the intrinsic nihilism of Christianity." (107)

Hanby's point is nothing less than the contention that the nihilism of modernity originates, not in Augustine or Christianity, but in the revival of ancient paganism in modernity. He does this by recasting the story in theological terms; that is, by contrasting Augustine's Trinitarian account of salvation with the stoic conception of will that informs Cartesianism.

This argument has enormous and far-reaching implications for how we understand what John Paul the Great labelled in his encyclical The Gospel of Life the "culture of death." That is John Paul's term for modern nihilism and his genius as a thinker was to place in the sharpest contrast this nihilism and its fruits with the Gospel and the fruit of the Spirit. Hanby's book serves many purposes, not the least important of which is to undergird and extend by means of believing scholarship the point John Paul was making.

So, to summarize: Hanby offers us a new reading of Augustine (which is really old, but new to many moderns), a new understanding of the origins of modernity (in ancient Stoicism, not in Augustine) and a new proposal for healing the crises of modernity by returning to the Trinitarian theology of Augustine (and although Hanby does not say so explicitly, the pro-Nicene theology of 4th and 5th centuries in general). Hanby recovers Augustine the theologian and rescues him from those who have treated him as if he were just another philosopher of late antiquity whose theological and biblical convictions were just so much decoration and quaint embriodery compared to the (suppposedly) much more significant philosophical convictions he held in common with Stoicism and Platonism. It turns out that Augustine was really a Christian. Who knew!