The Idolatry of Modernity and the Impossibile State

In the concluding chapter of his book The Impossible State, Wael B. Hallaq argues that the crisis of the Muslim world is not a uniquely Muslim crisis, but is the crisis faced by all of humanity in our present times. This crisis stems from modernity, from Enlightenment philosophy, from a humanism that says “man is the measure of all things”.

Hallaq presents two worldviews in fundamental contradiction to one another. On the one hand, we have a theology that says we live in a universe saturated with moral values, with reasons that make normative demands of us (165). These moral demands transcend human subjectivity: they are part of the created world in which we live, and they come from God, the only Sovereign. On the other hand, we have a humanism that says we live in a value-free universe, and that the only moral constraints on us have their origin in human Reason.

Nonviolence and Community Life: The Value of Accommodation

Another connection with regard to the value of accommodation for the stability of a society in which regular, serious ethical disagreement will (inevitably) occur (cf. Wong, Natural Moralities, p. 64).

I read this years ago online, and the sentence I've emphasized (in boldface) below has stuck in my head ever since: (This is from a Christian Century article on "Alternative Christian Communities" by Jason Byassee.

Something of a different animal from Reba is the Church of the Servant King in Eugene, Oregon. Many of its members are evangelicals who originally joined a parent congregation of the same name in 1978 in Gardena, California. The Eugene congregation was planted in 1987. Most of its key leaders have been living together in intentional community since the ‘78 founding.

Servant King started as an evangelical effort to live out scripture’s vision of the church. A commitment to nonviolence evolved slowly, partly as members read the works of Stanley Hauerwas, partly as they decided who would clean the bathrooms. Peace is not merely about a position on the war in Iraq; it is about how one relates to one’s neighbor, one’s spouse and one’s adversary in the community. Community leader Jon Stock points out that most intentional Christian communities that are not committed to nonviolence don’t survive, because when arguments erupt, someone has to win -- and the community loses. The Gardena congregation that planted Servant King has had such a rupture and is now on strained terms with its ecclesial offspring in Eugene.

(http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3286)

Reflections on The (Moral) Goodness of God

"Morality is partly a system of norms and reasons that human beings have developed in order to work and to live together. One of its functions is to regulate cooperation, conflicts of interest, and the division of labor and to specify the conditions under which some people have authority over others with respect to cooperative activities." (David B. Wong, Natural Moralities, p. 37)

It struck me as I read this sentence that some Christian philosophers might take issue with the anthropocentric notion that morality is something developed by human beings. They might rather say that morality is developed by God, for human beings. Or, would Christian philosophers have to disagree still further and deny that morality is for human society?

So, I ponder this:

If morality is for human society -- specifically, to enable cooperation bewteen individuals and groups by regulating conflicts of interest, etc. -- can God be moral?
And, does it make sense to talk about the moral goodness of God apart from consideration of God's relationships with human beings (or other created beings)?

To say God is (morally) good is to say, in part, that God's actions are limited. If there are no limits to divine activity (for example, if we cannot say that God would not torture an innocent person for no purpose but God's own pleasure), then God is not a morally good being. (It may well be the case that a good God does just whatever God wants to do, if all that God wants to do is good. So, it it need not be the case that there are limits external to God's desires or will or character-dispositions that place restrictions on how God acts).

I have difficulty imagining what a non-contigent Being, in a world that contains no other beings with which this Being might relate, might do that could be morally wrong. Such a solitary Being could not even have moral vices such as greed (there is nothing to covet) or selfishness or pride.

I am less certain in my intuitions on this point, but it also seems difficult to imagine what such a solitary Being might do that is morally good.

However, in Christian theology, we may draw upon the concept of the Social Trinity. Christian tradition does, indeed, use the concept of the Social Trinity to justify the theological claim that God is Love, in essence, and that God does not need to create any other beings in order to be a loving Being. InterPersonal relationships are part of the essence of the divine Being, and so God can be morally good in terms of these relationships. (The Father loves the Son, the Son loves and obeys and honors the Father, etc.)

In the Biblical narrative, the morality God gives to human society (specifically, the human society of the descendents of Israel gathered at Sinai) is a morality for human beings with the function of regulating their social relationships. The Christian philosopher might say that a good and true morality is one that reflects, or is analogous in the right way to, the social-ethical relationships within the economy of the Trinity. How does the moral goodness of God figure into the morality of ancient Israelite society? God does not stand apart from this society, but is one member of it (albiet a unique and important member--the one who calls the society into being in the first place: "The LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt"). The moral goodness of God, in this social context, has to do with God's fulfilling God's covenantal obligations to Israel. Throughout the pages of the Hebrew scriptures, human beings (Abraham, Moses, Job, and the psalmists, for example) call upon God to maintain His reputation, to act according to His good moral character (that is, for the sake of His Name). These human beings appeal not only to God's covenantal promises, but also to the inherent mercy, grace, and lovingkindness in God's character. So, the moral goodness of God does involve more than what is specified in the social contract of Sinai (or with Abraham or Noah). But these other character attributes of God which constitute God's moral goodness: mercy, lovingkindness, justice are also character attributes that have to do with the way God relates to God's People, or to the nations.

So, when we say God is (morally) good, we are (typically) describing the way God relates (socially) to human beings. We are describing limits to how God might and does act, in relation to creatures. An account of morality, therefore, that characterizes morality in terms of its functions to promote social cooperation and harmony in relationships between individuals and between groups, can sensibly be applied to statements about the goodness of God.

2.

I ended the last entry with a question:

What is and ought to be the relationship between Christianity and politics, between church and state, now that the secularist vision of the Radical Reformers has taken its current form in “Western” nations?

In the Introduction to his Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (1992), Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder describes a common view: that a chasm divides “church” and “politics”, “worship” and “ordinary life”, and that a bridge is needed to cross this chasm.

He then describes two perspectives on how this chasm is to be bridged.

On what Yoder calls the “liberal” perspective, and what I will call the “head” perspective, from worship we gain concepts, ideas, understandings, or insights. The way we act outside of church, in politics or in other aspects of ordinary life, is then informed by these thoughts. The practical import of worship for ordinary life is cognitive.

On what Yoder calls the “pietist” perspective, and what I will call the “heart” perspective, worship transforms our insides: our “heart”, our feelings, our motives, our will. Christians thus internally transformed by worship behave differently outside of church. The practical difference worship makes for ordinary life is affective.

So, on the “heart” model, we see that the Christian worshiper has a Christian impact on the world because she is a godly person. Good deeds flow naturally from a heart changed by Christ. The worshiper is also, outside of church, a philanthropist, politician, social worker, activist, professional, parent, or teacher, or has some other secular, “political” role in the world. How she performs her worldly role is affected by her changed heart. Worship may make her, for example, more compassionate, or more ready to forgive herself and others—this will affect her relationships in the world.

And, on the “head” model, the worshiper has a Christian impact on the world because she applies ideas (propositional concepts) to her secular activities, such as: “Every person I meet is my neighbor, whom I am to love as part of my self,” or “God demands that God’s people do business justly, without deception or favoritism”.

The “heart” model is more akin to an ethics of character virtue; the “head” model is more akin to an ethics of principles. Yet both models see the individual worshiper as the bridge between the realm of the church (where “worship” happens), and the realm of the world (where “politics” happens).

I am tempted for a moment to regard the “heart” model as better fitting a form of worship that is less socially engaged, and the “head” model as better fitting a form of worship that explicitly tackles social issues. But in fact, whether the focus of worship is changing the head or the heart, worship may or may not limit itself to “spiritual” things (such as grace, forgiveness, and the adoration of Christ), and may or may not directly and explicitly engage “social issues” such as global warming, the presidential election, health care reform, or the wealth gap. We might engage our emotions, not our principles, while showing photography that depicts economic or ecological injustice. And we might intellectualize about theological ideas with no reference to this-worldly concerns.

I suspect, then, that there is little if any difference in pragmatic meaning between these two models. The distinction depends entirely on the cognitive/affective dichotomy, a philosopher’s artifice that has in my opinion a limited usefulness.

--

Yoder points out that it is more important what these two perspectives have in common: the notion that the “nonpolitical” realm of the Word of God, the realm of worship is both (1) wholly separate from and (2) prior to the “political” realm of this-worldly social issues.

Yoder also points out that in many Christian ethicists’ discussions of politics, the values, principles, and rules of the political realm are seen as autonomous (self-governing). That is, the Word of God preached and received in worship is unnecessary for the right functioning of the political realm outside of the church. He calls this “the doctrine of creation” (page viii). The idea is that that God has given human beings two vehicles of revelation: the special revelation of the Word (Christ and/or the scriptures), and also the natural or general revelation of the World. Moral and political norms, according to “the doctrine of creation”, are grounded in Nature, and these norms thus may be known apart from receiving the Word in Christian worship. (Proponents of this “natural law” view may often cite Romans 2:14-15: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the [Mosaic] law, do by nature things required by the law…they show that the requirements of the law [ethics] are written on their hearts….”). 

We have two rather different perspectives, here: on one view, Christian worship makes a difference in what it means to rightly engage in political/social/this-worldly concerns, whether because worship changes our heads or our hearts. On the other view, natural law is the source of right and wrong in this world, and so Christian worship has nothing to add to the realm of politics.

Yoder responds to this potential confusion not by taking one side or the other on the questions: “How do the separate realms of worship and politics relate to one another?” and “Does worship make a practical difference to Christians’ political engagement in this-worldly concerns or not?”, but rather by taking the position that the confusion is prior to our asking these questions. The problem is in the way we have conceived of “politics” as something that is separate from and not immediately relevant to the activity of the church.

Instead, we should begin by recognizing that the church itself is a political reality.

This, then, is how Yoder begins his project in Body Politics:

Instead, this study will pick up the topic of the church as body, for its own sake, from the beginning. The Christian community, like any community held together by commitment to important values, is a political reality. That is, the church has the character of a polis (the Greek word from which we get the adjective political), namely, a structured social body. It has its ways of making decisions, defining membership, and carrying out common tasks. That makes the Christian community a political entity in the simplest meaning of the term.

1. Secularism and Questions about Christianity and Politics

One of the marks of Anabaptism, as I have come to understand it in recent years, is what I might call “secularism”, or the political doctrine of the separation of church and state. The members of the Radical Reformation in Europe came to be called “Anabaptists” (lit., “re-baptizers”) because they regarded the baptism of infants into a state church whose membership is determined by birth nationality as illegitimate and unbiblical, and they practiced instead the baptism of adult believers into a faith community whose membership is determined by voluntary association. For this, the Anabaptists were slandered and persecuted.

Note that the issue of baptism is really, for the Anabaptists, an issue of what defines or determines church membership, or religious identity. The Anabaptists broke with the (at that time normative in Christian Europe) State Christianity model, according to which the Church and the King work together to govern the spiritual and worldly affairs of the kingdom. In a Christian kingdom (or, nation-state) membership in the church (a particular Christian religious identity) is mandatory, for the good of the social order. In a secular nation (as some at least regard the U.S. today) membership in the society (i.e., citizenship) and membership in the church (i.e., one’s religious identity) must be kept separate. This secularism is good for the social order because it means all citizens are ruled by the same laws, regardless of their religious identity. And, this secularism is good for the Christian faith community because it means all are free to respond to the call of God in a genuine decision to follow Jesus, accepting baptism as his disciple, and becoming part of the faith community. The church is thus made up of voluntary disciples of Jesus, not of those who are compelled to join for other reasons (for example, in order to be eligible for employment). (See John 1:12-13)

I would argue that secularism and religious pluralism provides a more ideal context for mission than does a “Christian nation”.

If we Anabaptists are secularists, this raises questions about whether and, if so, how, we should involve ourselves in politics: that is, concerns of social and legal policy in the larger society of which we are citizens alongside our Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, and Presbyterian (etc.) neighbors. At least some of the early Anabaptists seem to have rejected involvement in the affairs of the state: refusing to take public office, as well as refusing to bear arms on behalf of the state. And the most visible communities of Anabaptists to many Americans today are the Amish, whom Americans imagine as living separate from the rest of the world, refusing connection to the larger society whether by the electrical power grid or by access to Social Security.

Anabaptists are not the only Christians in North America who ask questions about the propriety of our involvement in politics. Until the birth of the “Religious Right” as the “Moral Majority” in the hey-day of Jerry Falwell and others, it was the most common position for American Protestants (at least white fundamentalists) to keep themselves uninvolved in American politics: many did not even vote. In black churches, too, at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, religious leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced some criticism for calling for the church to engage in direct political action (I need to verify this fact).

It seems today that there is a growing trend within the world of white, North American evangelical Christianity (including the Mennonite Church) that sees our faith and theology as having necessary political consequences. We argue and preach that good Christian theology means caring about ecological justice, international relations, human rights, hunger, AIDS, economic inequality, and other issues beyond the Religious Right’s bugbears of abortion and “the homosexual agenda”. We say that followers of Jesus cannot fail to care about political matters outside of the church. I have made a habit of reciting: “All theology is politics and all politics is theology.”

What is and ought to be the relationship between Christianity and politics, between church and state, now that the secularist vision of the Radical Reformers has taken its current form in “Western” nations?