Most of us agree society is adrift. The public square is full of shrill voices demanding our attention. We hear a lot of talk about “freedom” and “equality.” But we never seem to discuss what it means to be a people. Or to reside in a particular place. With a particular history. A place we call home.
In my last post, I questioned the sovereignty of universal claims. Which goes for both the “liberal” and “conservative” variety. And that’s not because they don’t presuppose the good.
For we human beings really do desire the good. We aspire to something more than what is, something better. We’re hardwired that way.
This is both a good thing and a not so good thing. It’s good because it pushes us to new discoveries and new horizons. It drives us to solve problems and make life better, not just for ourselves, but for others. It’s really what we want.
But the downside is that it also can cause us to place our confidence and hope in ideas or visions for the future that are false, that exist in the mind but don’t work when applied to real human beings and real-life situations.
The lure of the universal is one of those things. We all want to feel one with the world. In fact, it just may be the most primal of all desires. Anything that can bring us together is supremely attractive.
But, as with most things, the devil’s in the details.
During my childhood I tried to keep my middle name a secret. I knew once my classmates found out they’d jump all over it. Today, though, I’m more than willing to let it slip.
The name is Calvin. I thought it sounded old-fashioned and almost prissy. But I later learned I was named after my great-grandfather, The Rev. Thomas Calvin Leinbach. And because he had come from a line of reformed pastors, his middle name was a nod to the great Protestant reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564).
Calvin tends to get a bad rap these days, some of it deserved but mostly not. His idea of double-predestination, for instance, that some people are predestined for damnation, does take a bit of getting used to.
But he stood for something we today would do well to remember (and that includes the churches directly descended from him!).
And that is Original Sin. As opposed to Arminianism.
Jacobus Arminius, a Dutch reformer (1560-1609), rejected the idea of Original Sin and believed instead that human beings were perfectible. The older, diehard Calvinists blanched at the absurdity of it all.
But Arminius has had a great influence. Probably because we human beings don’t like to think we’re imperfect. It’s much more enticing to believe that with the right choices and the right application of human enterprise we can fix whatever ails us.
In retrospect, poor Calvin didn’t stand a chance, even though he was right. Human history would certainly seem to support his contention.
One of the most profound passages in all of scripture comes from the hand of the apostle Paul, who wrote, in Romans 7: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” What brilliant gobbledygook!
No matter how much good we earnestly seek to do, in other words, there’s something in the human soul that rebels against it, our good intentions notwithstanding.
Paul’s solution? Turn to Christ who alone saves the sinner.
But as history has shown, Paul, Augustine, and Calvin were decidedly up against it. They sound so “negative” to the modern ear. We’d much rather take the televangelists at their word: Think happy thoughts and it’ll all come true! Imagine it and you can achieve it!
When Alexis de Tocqueville came here in the 1830s, he found a very different America. Then, Calvinism, or Christian “orthodoxy,” held sway. Human nature was indeed capable of much good, orthodoxy asserted, but left to its own devices, expect things to go south, and rapidly.
This same Calvinistic orthodoxy informed the framers of the Constitution, who made a point of establishing a separation of powers to limit both government and its people. Having escaped the oppressive, centralized monarchies of Europe, the framers were saying, in effect, “Don’t trust us!” (Notably, George Washington flatly refused the offer to become king.)
Such an approach has been called “negative liberty” (Isaiah Berlin), as opposed to “positive liberty,” which seeks to empower human beings, not limit them. This Arminian strain, be it noted, has clearly won the day. And it comes in both “liberal” and “conservative” flavors. Our earliest settlers would be mortified.
This Arminianism can be found in the pretensions of all progressive strategies (“progressive” in that they promise a perfected world by means of human agency).
For the modern-day libertarian (conservative), this means unleashing (empowering) individual autonomy – the self-governing individual. Economic libertarianism, for example, assumes the unqualified merits of Darwinian competition. Unleash the individual, or the corporation, and they will usher forth a globalist heaven brimming with prosperity and all the good it generously bestows.
Never mind that this leaves many behind. For it assumes a level playing field where the successful deserve to be successful because they earned it. Conversely, those who fail deserve to fail! After all, they could have made it, too! (Our current elitist meritocracy betrays this curious belief.)
The opposite sort of Arminianism might be called “liberal” or “progressive” in today’s lexicon. It seeks to empower not the individual but government, which is required to enact bold political actions.
Here the instruments of government seek to clear away all impediments to freedom and success through what R.R. Reno calls “cultural redistribution.” Among other things, this requires abolishing pre-modern laws and social norms that limit freedom (Calvin). The idea is to equitably distribute moral, economic, and political assets, so that all are rendered “equal.”
This, however, results in governmental overreach and suppression of individual freedom by the state. And despite its outward appearance, liberal “empowerment” falls prey to the same Achilles’ heel as does conservative “empowerment.” For they both accept the false premise of human perfectibility, and of building heaven on earth. (Arminius, somewhere, is smiling .)
What Tocqueville found and celebrated in America, in contradistinction, was a free and autonomous people voluntarily constrained by a shared vision of Calvinistic prudence. This vision was inculcated by the pre-modern institutions of family, church, and other local institutions, those places where one learned to be both free and responsible.
Then again, we live almost 200 years hence. So, what’s to be done? I’ll take up this question next time.