Two constitutionalisms in the 18th century

Three theories competed to explain the British constitution in the 18th century: divine right, the original contract, and the ancient constitution.

Most of us are familiar with the "divine right of kings," of course, so I won't bother to elaborate on that. The second theory in this list, the "original contract," was the belief that the British constitution was the result of a social compact, an agreement by which the people had handed over some of their freedom to a government so that it would protect their interests. Last, the "ancient constitution" was the belief that Britain was governed according to venerable customs; the people had liberties, but these liberties were theirs because of historical precedent rather than because of natural rights.

According to H.T. Dickinson, the first of these theories began losing importance after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and had largely disappeared from British thought by the middle of the 1700s. The second, articulated most notably by John Locke around 1690, gained the support of some radicals in the second half of the 18th century but was not very influential in the first half. The last theory, the ancient constitution, was the only one to receive "overwhelming support" during the 1700s, even among Whigs.

Yet although the original social contract was a minority view in Britain, it seems to have had widespread following on the other side of the Atlantic during the same period. Bernard Bailyn notes that Enlightenment natural-rights theorists, including John Locke, were so widely accepted by the time of the American Revolution that "everyone, whatever his position on Independence or his judgment of Parliament's actions, cited them as authoritative." Right up to the time that independence was declared, American loyalists rarely rejected the views of Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, "or even Rousseau"; in fact, sometimes they cited Locke to justify their loyalism. By the 1760s, it seems, the colonists generally accepted a contractarian account of government -- a view that was still relatively unusual in the home country.

I'm going to cite several 18th-century American sermons and political pamphlets to illustrate that discrepancy and trace the influence of the social contract theory in the colonies during the century. I think I have an explanation for the early and widespread acceptance of contractarianism in America. Two factors in particular seem to be responsible for allowing the language of contract to capture the colonial imagination so easily: Puritan covenant theology in New England, and colonial experiences with self-government. These elements facilitated the enthusiastic reception of Lockean ideas, and thereby helped to create a distinct American view of the British constitution.

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Fixing Tolkien

A week ago, Peter Chattaway spread the word that not only does MGM still exist after all; it is hoping to make "one or two installments of The Hobbit" within a few years, probably with Peter Jackson.

Two days ago, Chattaway found proof of his suspicion that this is a very bad idea.

Jackson hadn't actually been approached with the idea by the studio, apparently, when he did this interview. And he claimed to be too busy to do The Hobbit anytime soon, if anyone did ask him. But here's what he would do if he were asked to direct the film:

If I was doing The Hobbit I'd try to get as many of the guys back as I could. I mean, there's actually a role for Legolas in The Hobbit, his father features in it, obviously Gandalf and Saruman should be part of it. There's things that you can do with The Hobbit to bring in some old friends, for sure. I have thought about it from time to time ... Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen could all feature. Elves have lived for centuries. Part of the attraction would be working with old friends. I wouldn't want to do it unless we could keep a continuity of cast. [...]

Yeah, we're supposed to be writing The Lovely Bones, but of course Phil, Fran and I read the thing on the net and spent most of this morning talking about The Hobbit. We think the two film idea is really smart. One of the problems with The Hobbit is that it is a fairly simple kids story, and doesn't really feel like The Lord of the Rings. Tonally I mean. It's always may be a little worried, but with two films that kinda gets easier. It allows for more complexity. At that implied stuff with Gandalf and the White Council and the return of Sauron could be fully explored.

That's what we talked about this morning. Taking The Hobbit and combining it with all that intigue about Sauron's rise, and the problems that has for Gandalf. It could be cool. That way, it starts feeling more like The Lord of the Rings and less like this kids book. You could even get into Gollum's sneaking into Mordor and Aragorn protecting The Shire. That's what we'd do. Love to work with Viggo again.

"God is not pleased," addendum

I suppose my previous entry failed to address, at least directly, the charge actually aimed at Benedict XVI by most Western critics. That charge seems to be simply that the inflammatory Manuel II Paleologus quotation was unnecessary, whether or not Benedict personally agrees with the Byzantine emperor.

Now, unless the pope is a liar, he does not agree with Manuel in thinking that Mohammed brought into the world only "things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." But since I cannot prove that the pope is not a liar, I will content myself with asking myself whether the quotation was necessary.

And I conclude that yes, it was necessary. Or rather, it was much more responsible of the pope to include it, in some form or another, than it would have been to exclude it.

In any kind of intellectual history, it is essential to understand what a thinker was arguing against in order to understand what he was arguing for. In this case, as long as Benedict wanted to highlight Manuel's argument for rationality and toleration at all (and I happen to think it was a cool thing to highlight), he had to place it in an historical context.

If he had not mentioned that Manuel II Paleologus was making a Greek and Christian argument against the ideas of a Persian Muslim, the pope would have done little justice to Manuel's thought. So I find it astounding that some otherwise historically-minded people are claiming that Benedict should have censored the upsetting bits out of his intellectual history.

Are there any other topics that a religious leader should shy away from when talking about the worldviews of past thinkers? Should we be making a list?

"God is not pleased by blood"

Benedict XVI seems to have outraged people again. And once again, some people who were not personally offended are getting offended on behalf of other people.

I find this situation very strange. The pope is now being criticized for saying that Christianity is more peaceful and reasonable than Islam, an allegation that seems to offend many Muslims. Many secular observers seem to think it was bad form for Benedict to say this. Perhaps I am missing something, but isn't it generally a good thing to have religions arguing over which is more peaceful and reasonable?

Here's how the pope's remarks, delivered at a university in Bavaria, unfolded [please see the update at the bottom of the post for a significant qualification]:

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.

Now, I agree that Benedict, citing Khoury, is oversimplifying Muslim beliefs. Islam is not monolithic; it has multiple rich traditions of Quranic interpretation. As Juan Cole points out, some of these traditions actually played a central part in the development of Catholic scholasticism. And surah 2:256 cannot be explained away as easily as Benedict's "experts" tried to do.

However, we should also remember that European Christian impressions of Islam have always been shaped by memories of Muslim wars of conquest, just as the Crusades have tended to shape Muslim impressions of Christianity. Benedict is highlighting one medieval Christian's philosophical response to that context. That response was a rejection of violence as a means of conversion.

The fact is, Benedict was describing a book he read recently. He was using it as "the starting-point" to discuss faith and reason, tracing (however imperfectly) developments in the relationship between Christianity and philosophy across the centuries. And in a world where both Muslims and Christians have frequently been guilty of religious coercion, is it not encouraging to hear the pope denounce religious violence as "contrary to God's nature?" And is it not encouraging that Muslim spokesmen around the world are implicitly agreeing with him?

If the pope's speech is significant for its characterization of Islam as violent, then this controversy is silly because the characterization is nothing new. (Kuwaiti politician Haken al-Mutairi is particularly mistaken in calling Benedict's remarks "unaccustomed and unprecedented." Nothing could be less true; in fact, the question is only in Benedict's speech because it was an important part of a debate in the 14th century!) On the other hand, if the address is significant because it stresses that tolerance and reason are mandated by the law of God, then the controversy is a very healthy sign. I could get used to having religions try to outdo each other on tolerance and rationality, I really could.

All that is left is to criticize the pope for oversimplifying Islamic philosophy -- just as he necessarily oversimplified every other perspective that shows up in the speech. The Vatican has admitted as much, and Benedict seems to have been genuinely displeased to find his address interpreted as an attack on Islam. In fact, here's how his speech ended:

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. [...] It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

How many other "profoundly religious cultures" do you think Benedict had in mind, if he was somehow excluding Islam from his "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions"?

Update: According to Horace Jeffery Hodges, the Vatican's preliminary English translation of the pope's remarks tends to obscure the extent to which Benedict tried to distance himself from the words he was quoting. In the original speech, Benedict emphasized that Manuel II spoke "with an astonishing brusqueness, for us an astounding brusqueness, bluntly" and that he "expressed himself so very forcefully."

The wisdom of the ancients

One of the more obvious tendencies of the American revolutionary generation was a penchant for classical references. Of course, the republican vibe worked well with allusions to Greece and Rome, and American writers resorted frequently to ancient history for evidence in favor of their positions.

Every once in a while, I find myself sympathizing with one Martin Howard, Jr., a loyalist who in 1765 chastised another American pamphleteer:

But there is something extremely weak and inconclusive in recurring to the Grecian and Roman history for examples to illustrate any particular favorite opinion: If a deference to the ancients should direct the practice of the moderns, we might sell our children to pay our debts, and justify it by the practice of the Athenians. We might lend our wives to our friends, and justify it from the Example of Cato, among the Romans. In a word, my dear Sir, the belly of a sow, pickled, was a high dish in ancient Rome; and I imagine, as you advance in the refinements of luxury, this will become a capital part of a Rhode Island feast, so fond you seem of ancient customs and laws.

Instead of wandering in the labyrinth of ancient colonies, I would advise his honour to read the debates in parliament in the year one thousand seven hundred and thirty-three, when Mr. Partridge, your agent, petitioned the commons against the then sugar-bill; he will there find more satisfaction upon the subject of colonies, than in Thucydides's history of the Pelopennesian war.

"A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax," in Tracts of the American Revolution 1763-1776, ed. Merrill Jensen (Bobbs-Merrill, 1966; reprint by Hackett Publishing, 2003)

Carried away

Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is by turns fascinating, amusing, irritating, and utterly boring.

Particularly in its first 50 pages or so, the book articulates vividly the general principles of Burke's conservatism: "A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement." These pages make for good reading, even as Burke attacks his English opponents rather more forcefully than one might think necessary.

However, in his passion, Burke keeps writing much longer than necessary. And in his enthusiasm for the old order, he occasionally seems to lose his wits entirely. When he suddenly turns to the topic of the Queen of France (about 75 pages into my copy of the book), all good sense gives way:

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, -- glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

Were Louis still in a position to do such a thing, one suspects he might have wanted to keep an eye on Mr. Burke.

Spoken word

Just this evening, I ran across a podcast series from the University of Sydney. The list of speakers is promising; I've been listening to a lecture by Quentin Skinner (MP3), who is presenting a "genealogy" of British and German concepts of individual freedom. I recommend it.

A permanent state of mutual self-defense

"I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, and declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community -- which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality.

"Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can't point out one. In times of need -- and politics are chronically in a time of need -- the rulers were always able to evoke 'exceptional circumstances,' which demanded exceptional measures of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism. ..."

-- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1940, trans. Daphne Hardy)

The novel is based on the Moscow Trials, in which leading original Bolsheviks were purged by Stalin's regime. In this scene, Ivanov is a cynical interrogator trying to persuade a prisoner (the "sacrificial lamb") to confess for the good of the state.

I find this scene intriguing because in the irony of Ivanov's soliloquy, the author may be trying to do one of two different things. Perhaps the author agrees with his character that a mixture is impossible, and therefore is arguing for absolutely deontological and individualistic ethics; or perhaps he agrees with his character that deontological ethics cannot be implemented consistently, and so is arguing that there must be a mixture of ethical principles in government.

In the former case, the passage would be thoroughly moralistic, libertarian, and pacifistic. In the latter case, the passage would be an argument not as much for individual rights as against inflexible ideology. (Either way, of course, the author rejects Ivanov's absolute consequentialism and statism.)

Given what I know of Koestler's life, and given the paradoxical title of the novel (it was Zero and Infinity in France), I am inclined toward the latter interpretation.

Bulwer-Lytton 2006

The results of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced! The contest honors the memory of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the writer famous for this opening salvo:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The winners of the contest are those who submit the most impressive "opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."

Jim Guigli won the grand prize this year:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

(HT: UD)

Ah, those celebrated French writers

Today, reading America's Appeal to the Impartial World, a 1775 sermon-pamphlet attributed to Moses Mather, I came across a line that struck me as strangely familiar:

Most justly then did a celebrated French writer, treating of the English, and the excellence of their constitution, say, that England could never lose its freedom, until parliament lost its virtue.

I'm not totally sure who Mather had in mind, but I hazard a guess that it was Montesquieu. But that sentence reminded me of that infamous Tocqueville "quotation":

America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

I doubt that there is any direct connection between the two. In fact, in context, the two epigrams have almost opposite meanings. Mather's parliamentary "virtue" is a long way from Pseudo-Tocqueville's popular "goodness." And while Mather is emphasizing the importance of political institutions, Pseudo-Tocqueville is actually denigrating it.

Mather:

The English constitution, like other imitations of nature, was a system of consummate wisdom, and policy, the balance of power, being so judiciously placed, as to connect the force, and to preserve the rights of all; [...] and no laws could be made, or taxes imposed, but such as were necessary, and in the judgment of the three estates in parliament, for the common good, and interest of the realm. Most justly then did a celebrated French writer, treating of the English, and the excellence of their constitution, say, that England could never lose its freedom, until parliament lost its virtue.

Pseudo-Tocqueville:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers -- and it was not there ... in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there ... in her rich mines and her vast world commerce -- and it was not there ... in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution -- and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

The sentiments expressed in the latter are quite different from the analysis presented by Mather (who I think, again, was borrowing from Montesquieu).

But I wonder if the similarity is due to a deeper connection. Perhaps we can view both passages simply as the cognitive stepchildren of the old classical and humanist doctrine that personal "virtue" (however defined) is the key to political success. In that case, we could easily assume that the Tocqueville quotation gained so much acceptance not because it is unusually perceptive, but rather because it is so ordinary.

Or maybe the American collective unconscious just likes attributing that sort of thing to the French.

Dun dun dun!

An article from USA Today:

As a waypoint on the ancient Silk Road, the metropolis of Palmyra had it all, broad towers, impressive temples and enviable trade. Water from local wells even contained fluoride, limiting that scourge of the ancients -- tooth decay.

But just as the wealth of Palmyra vanished, leaving behind ruins in the Syrian desert, a new study suggests its waters may also have been ruinous in the end for the city's inhabitants. [...] the Palmyrans' symptoms, along with discolored teeth, point to "fluorosis," a skeletal and enamel-damaging syndrome caused by ingesting too much fluoride over a long time, the researchers note.

No doubt certain sorts of people will find this story highly significant. Partly for that reason, I wish the opening paragraphs were not so melodramatic; readers could easily get the impression that fluoride caused the city's fall.

Via Mirabilis.

Stet

This morning, I had a brief exchange with an odd person. Having spoken with this person before, I knew I could expect odd things. In this case, our conversation took an unexpected historiographical turn.

He asked about my school situation. I explained that I'm now out of college and will pursue a doctorate in history. He nodded. Then he developed a facial expression suggestive of indigestion.

"History's good," he said, very seriously. "Just don't try to rewrite it."

I could not recall expressing any particular desire to do such a terrifying thing. But he continued, "History is what it is." That seemed to end the conversation, as far as he was concerned. He headed for the door.

I could hardly have argued with that last comment. History is, indeed, what it is. So are poetry and the moon and bunny rabbits and paint swatches.

Thinking things over after he left, I came up with how the conversation should have gone. "Just to clear things up, sir, which history do you forbid me to rewrite?" I would have asked. The one where the Confederate states seceded to protect slavery, or the one where they were lodging a protest over tariffs? The one where John Kerry was decorated for valor, or the one where he was practically a draft dodger? The one where thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans were imprisoned wrongfully, or the one where that measure was justified by American national security?

I have a strong hunch about which position he would take on each of those questions. And in each case, his hypothetical version of history is the newer one, the one written as a partisan backlash against the dominant interpretation.

Who started this "revisionist history" meme, anyway? And why do so many electricians and accountants think they can tell me how to be a proper history student?

Just to set things straight as well as I can: The past does not change except by piling up. History, however, is a flawed human attempt to imagine what the past was like (in terms we can understand today), and to explain how it got that way. Until our historians reach omniscience, history will remain open to revision.

Martin Luther on liberty

After looking at Thomas Aquinas' reading of Romans 13:1-7 yesterday, I wanted to examine a competing interpretation today. So I picked up my copy of Martin Luther's Commentary on Romans and turned to the appropriate chapter.

(Unfortunately, my copy is not a great text. I am using a translation by J. Theodore Mueller [1959] that was prepared primarily for devotional reading. It will have to serve for now.)

Whereas Thomas, in his Commentary on the Sentences, interprets Romans 13 as requiring obedience only to the legitimate commands of legitimate authorities, Luther here allows no such room to maneuver. He dismisses the idea that the passage applies only to certain kinds of rulers, or applies only under certain conditions. Instead, he takes the opening verse as a seal of divine recognition on all earthly authorities:

The powers that be are ordained of God (13:1). [...] for there is no government that is not instituted [by God]. Governments are only usurped and managed in ways not ordained. So also other blessings are misused, and yet do not lose their value. Money, for example, does not become evil through theft. Hence we must explain the words thus: Wherever there is governmental power, there it is instituted by God. That is, wherever governments exist, they are ordained solely by God. The meaning is the same as: "There is no power, but of God." Therefore, where powers exist and flourish, they exist and flourish because God has ordained them.

I find the monetary analogy interesting because I am not sure it supports Luther's case at all. That is, we do not have to recognize a bearer's claim to stolen money; so why should we recognize a bearer's claim to usurped power? (Also, Luther's remark that money is inherently a blessing seems suspect, given such New Testament passages as Matthew 6:24 and 1 Timothy 6:10.)

Yet while Thomas, in his Commentary on the Sentences, is determined to reconcile Scripture with the community's right to earthly liberty, Luther is determined to demonstrate that Christianity provides a superior type of freedom altogether. He interprets Romans 13 according to his conviction that political liberty is not a proper concern for Christians. The faithful already have a spiritual freedom that liberates them, as it were, from the need for civil freedom. The paragraph quoted above follows this:

By faith the Christian makes all things subject to himself; for he is neither ruled by them, nor does he put his trust in them. He compels them to serve his glory and salvation. That is what it means to serve God and rule as kings. That is the spiritual rule, of which we read in Revelation 5:10: "Thou hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth."

The world is conquered and subdued in no better way than by despising it. The spirit of the believer therefore is subject to no one, nor can it be subject to anyone. It is exalted with Christ, and all things lie subdued at his feet. The "soul" is the same as the "spirit" of man, but inasmuch as it lives and works, and serves the visible world and earthly things, it must be subject "to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake" (1 Peter 2:13). By this subjection it obeys God and desires the same as God. By this subjection it overcomes the temporal world even now.

So the command of Romans 13 should not be feared as a potential source of slavery but instead embraced as a source of liberation from worldly concerns.

To understand why Luther defends the prerogatives of temporal government so strongly, however, I think we must move a little further on in the commentary. It appears that Luther is not concerned with the behavior of individual Christians, nor with the potential for popular rebellions, as much as with the behavior of the Catholic Church. In his discussion of 13:4, Luther begins a direct assault on worldly churchmen:

One is amazed at the impenetrable gross darkness that prevails today. There is nothing that angers the clerics, these widely opened mouths avariciously coveting temporal things, more than when the freedom of the churches, with their rights, their possessions and their powers is attacked. Against such transgressors they hurl their anathemas. They declare them to be heretics and publicly and with an alarming arrogance condemn them as enemies of God, of the Church, and of Peter and Paul. [...] One's transgressions may even cry to high heaven; nevertheless, he is a most pious Christian, as long as he protects the rights and liberties of the Church. But if anyone should ignore them, then he is no longer a faithful son and friend of the Church.

This practical application to present-day circumstances is very profitable for the understanding of the text.

Indeed. It seems that the "rights and liberties of the Church" are an important reason for Luther's insistence that Christians must submit completely to civil rulers. He is not thinking about the loss of the republics in Greece or Rome. He is thinking about the corruption of the Church, and the secular authorities' loss of sovereignty, in his own day. The result is his defense of sovereign secular power as a divinely ordained institution.

Thomas Aquinas on the right to resist

I think the one New Testament passage that has caused the most trouble for Christian political philosophers -- especially those who spend much time on the dangers of tyranny -- over the centuries, is Romans 13:1-7. These verses, addressed to a persecuted Christian minority in the first century, seem to command absolute submission to earthly rulers:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. (ESV)

Many theologians have interpreted this as requiring Christians to submit to every governing official in every particular, refusing to obey only when commanded to commit a sin. Of course, this interpretation prohibits any form of organized resistance or revolution. This view is still influential; I have occasionally heard evangelical Christians discuss anxiously whether the American War for Independence was a violation of Romans 13. (I hasten to add that the War for Independence is nevertheless very popular among American evangelicals.)

Thomas Aquinas also addressed the questions raised by this passage. I think we can see how a medieval analysis like his, reconciling classical political theory with the New Testament, could be important to later Christian revolutionaries. In the 1500s, in fact, some of the more radical Protestants resorted to arguments the scholastics had been using for centuries, as an alternative to the original and highly inconvenient Lutheran condemnation of popular resistance. I am not even slightly qualified to analyze scholastic thought, but I'm going to try anyway.

In his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (book 2, dist. 44, quest. 2, art. 2), Thomas takes due note of the command in Romans 13. But he writes that this biblical injunction applies not to just anyone with coercive power, but only to authorities that meet certain conditions and thus actually derive their power from God. (That is, he defines Paul's "authorities" so that Romans 13:2a is a tautology.) He helpfully offers an explanation of factors that may render an earthly ruler illegitimate:

But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it.

There are two ways in which the first case may occur. Either because of a defect in the person, if he is unworthy; or because of some defect in the way itself by which power was acquired, if, for example, through violence, or simony or some other illegal method. The first defect is not such as to impede the acquisition of legitimate authority; and since authority derives always, from a formal point of view, from God (and it is this which produces the duty of obedience), their subjects are always obliged to obey such superiors, however unworthy they may be. But the second defect prevents the establishment of any just authority: for whoever possesses himself of power by violence does not truly become lord or master. Therefore it is permissible, when occasion offers, for a person to reject such authority; except in the case that it subsequently became legitimate, either through public consent or through the intervention of higher authority.

With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey.

To clarify Thomas' discussion, I have prepared a simple flowchart. In my chart, the various questions and their answers lead, eventually, to a determination either that disobedience is permissible or that it is sinful. (One of the questions, the one asking whether disobedience would cause more problems than it would solve, technically comes from several other places in Thomas Aquinas' works. However, I believe the qualification is consistent with the passage quoted above.)

Anyway, I find it interesting that this passage does not make any clear distinction between the right to disobey passively and the right to resist actively. This stands out to me, of course, because that distinction has been vitally important to some other Christian theorists. On the contrary, Thomas here conflates disobedience and revolution. He asserts that rulership obtained through violence is illegitimate: "it is permissible, when occasion offers, for a person to reject such authority," and furthermore (citing the story of Julius Caesar a few sentences after the passage quoted above), "in such a case, one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded." Thomas certainly does not go out of his way to differentiate between tyrannicide and less drastic forms of disobedience.

This is because the key question for him is simply whether a particular ruler is legitimate -- that is, whether the ruler is actually a ruler under the meaning of Romans 13. If a ruler is legitimate, then Christians must obey (to the extent that the ruler's commands are also legitimate); if not, they may disobey without violating Scripture. Because Thomas reads classical theory into the text, furthermore, illegitimacy and tyranny are closely related ideas in his system. His central concern is not to detail exceptions to God's command, but rather to justify the belief that tyranny is not covered by Romans 13 at all. He does this in part to reconcile Romans 13 with other New Testament passages that seem to him to guarantee liberty to baptized Christians (such as Matthew 17:26).

Taken together with other writings by Thomas, this passage implies that only rulers who actually protect the good of the people are legitimate in God's eyes. Thomas later wrote elsewhere that "the welfare of the community" is the reason for a ruler's authority (Summa Theologica quest. 42, art. 2; cf. De Regimine Principum book 1, ch. 15). A reader might be forgiven for inferring, therefore, that to make commands contrary to the public welfare is to make commands contrary to "the object for which that authority was constituted" -- which, according to the text at hand, nullifies such commands' legitimacy. So rule harmful to the community is not rule at all. In such cases, disobedience may even be a moral obligation.

Also interesting is the implication that, at least in some cases, popular consent is the means by which divine authority is conferred upon a temporal ruler. In the event of usurpation, Thomas writes, the usurper need not be obeyed as God's representative -- unless a higher temporal ruler or public approval later establishes that authority as legitimate. So while the express consent of the governed may not be necessary to establish a proper (God-given) government, it is not an entirely irrelevant concept, either.

My quotations come from the translation of J.G. Dawson, in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (edited by A.P. D'Entrèves, 1959). I have added paragraph breaks.

Christians at the movies

"Novels and movies were once generally suspect in evangelical eyes," according to a Marvin Olasky article in this week's World, "but now the emphasis is on discernment." To celebrate such cultural involvement, Olasky asked 30 influential evangelicals to list their favorite contemporary films and books.

The results might be surprising. As much as conservative Christian publications like World tend to complain about the prevalence of the R rating in Hollywood, it seems many of the people they admire actually enjoy that sort of fare.

The respondents -- including preachers, screenwriters, and journalists -- named a total of 97 different film titles. Of these movies, according to my tally, the largest number have R ratings. In fact, the less family-friendly a film's classification, the more likely the title is to be on the list at least once. Here is the breakdown:

G -- 4

PG -- 24

PG-13 -- 29

R -- 34

No US rating -- 6

I bet World is going to get some nasty letters from families who go out and rent Magnolia or Eternal Sunshine after reading that article.

How to write tendentious history

Bias and spin in historical writing are very big topics in the blogosphere, so I have decided to write down some helpful tips for anyone trying to get started as a Partisan Historical Hack. I'm not sure anyone could follow all of these suggestions ... but I'm sure someone has tried.

* First, make no effort to develop historical research and interpretation sensibilities apart from your particular ideological project. Jump right in.

* Evaluate the reliability of any source according to whether it corroborates your opinions.

* Make no distinction between facts and interpretation. In any case, remember that the truth of the latter determines the truth of the former.

* Assume that ulterior motives lie behind the work of any scholars who disagree with you.

* Project today's political battles onto your ancestors' lives.

* Use nice round numbers. Then round them again. With enough rounding, any number will support your position.

* Either adopt a position of total relativism or ignore context altogether. Switch sides as appropriate.

* Blame historical figures for failing to take into account what you know but they did not.

* Remember that a lack of acceptance or publicity is always evidence of a conspiracy.

* When characterizing your opponents' work, employ the term "revisionist" a lot. At the same time, obsess over how wrong the conventional understanding is.

* Remember that "left," "right," and other sweeping political labels always provide accurate insight into individual opinions. Everyone within the Left or the Right thinks and acts alike, for all practical historical purposes.

* Always think of yourself as politically incorrect. At the same time, always think of your detractors as fringe radicals.

* If you must read the things your opponents write, read only the stuff that uses the most pejorative language. This will provide inspiration and spice up your prose, as well.

* Never, ever consider the remote possibility that your detractors are intelligent people speaking in good faith.

Anybody have other suggestions?

Pen pals

Ian Hacking describes "the pen-friend approach to the history of philosophy":

A few heroes are singled out as pen-pals across the seas of time, whose words are to be read like the work of brilliant but underprivileged children in a refugee camp, deeply instructive but in need of firm correction.

Philosophy in History, 103.

An observation

It can be strangely difficult, even in the age of the Internet, to find intelligible explanations of certain concepts in historiography -- especially concepts that tend to go by longish German names. A Google search supposedly limited to English-language sites tends to return only German-language results -- and not particularly relevant-looking results, at that.

If even Google can't find it, how am I supposed to understand it?

Patronizing our elders

In an essay collected in Philosophy in History (Rorty, Schneewind and Skinner, eds., 1984), Richard Rorty distinguishes among different genres of the history of philosophy. He argues that there are multiple valid ways to approach past thinkers. First, he notes that it is often helpful to avoid anachronism when reconstructing the work of a philosopher:

There is nothing wrong with self-consciously letting our own philosophical views dictate terms in which to describe the dead. But there are reasons for also describing them in other terms, their own terms. It is useful to recreate the intellectual scene in which the dead lived their lives -- in particular, the real and imagined conversations they might have had with their contemporaries (or near-contemporaries). There are purposes for which it is useful to know how people talked who did not know as much as we do -- to know this in enough detail so that we can imagine ourselves talking the same outdated language. [...] There is knowledge -- historical knowledge -- to be gained which one can only get by bracketing one's own better knowledge about, e.g., the movements of the heavens or the existence of God. (50)

That seems reasonable enough, although plenty of his contemporaries would object to Rorty's "better knowledge" about God's existence. But Rorty goes on to advocate an ahistorical approach in addition to the genuinely historical approach described above:

But we also want to imagine conversations between ourselves (whose contingent arrangements include general agreement that, e.g., there are no real essences, no God, etc.) and the mighty dead. We want this not simply because it is nice to feel one up on one's betters, but because we would like to be able to see the history of our race as a long conversational interchange. We want to be able to see it that way in order to reassure ourselves that there has been rational progress in the course of recorded history -- that we differ from our ancestors on grounds which our ancestors could be led to accept. The need for reassurance on this point is as great as the need for self-awareness. We need to imagine Aristotle studying Galileo or Quine and changing his mind, Aquinas reading Newton or Hume and changing his, etc. We need to think that, in philosophy as in science, the mighty mistaken dead look down from heaven at our recent successes, and are happy to find that their mistakes have been corrected. (51)

This is tangential to Rorty's purposes for the article, but I want to quibble. I see a problem here. Such "rational progress" in philosophical history is a fiction. I think Rorty implicitly admits as much, but I seem to differ from him by thinking that this fiction tends to be a harmful one. At least where prescription and spiritual matters (rather than empirical science) are concerned, we should not imagine that ignorance accounts for the differences between us and our predecessors.

The history of republicanism might be a useful illustration of the danger. There has been no sure progress in republicanism over the centuries. Generalizing grossly for the sake of convenience, I could say that the ancient Romans believed in republican government; so did the 15th-century Italians; so did the 17th-century English. But each of these groups faced opposition from viable philosophical opponents, even within its own ranks, and each favored republicanism for a different reason. Furthermore, the 20th-century Russians, claiming to represent historical progress, embraced a republican model that quickly turned into the most absolute autocracy ever seen. Me, I would happily swallow whole the worldviews of any number of medieval philosophers before I would adopt that particular modern philosophy. And I would disagree with anyone who claimed to see rational progress from the more ignorant Locke to the more knowledgeable Marx. Yet that is exactly what many Marxists claimed to see.

This is not to say that progress -- improvement of the ideas considered orthodox in a society or even considered correct by individual thinkers -- never happens; I simply believe that it does not happen reliably, and encouraging ourselves to believe in it is counterproductive. Progress is no more helpful a concept than degeneracy; both let us write thinkers off too easily. When we say that philosopher X was wrong about question Y, it is rarely wise to flatter ourselves with the notion that it was only because of ignorance of what we now know. Even if we do need such "reassurance," as Rorty says, I think we should resist the urge.

Language, empire, and hope

Interestingly enough, Augustine's City of God includes a passage (XIX.7) that begins as a reflection on the diversity of human languages, and ends as an apparent condemnation of imperialism.

The passage falls in the middle of book XIX, which discusses "the opinions of the philosophers regarding the supreme good, and their vain efforts to make for themselves a happiness in this life." According to Augustine, the world's different languages produce political divisions that frustrate any efforts to achieve universal temporal peace:

And here [in the world], in the first place, man is separated from man by the difference of languages. For if two men, each ignorant of the other's language, meet, and are not compelled to pass, but, on the contrary, to remain in company, dumb animals, though of different species, would more easily hold intercourse than they, human beings though they be. For their common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; so that a man would more readily hold intercourse with his dog than with a foreigner. But the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace, so that interpreters, far from being scarce, are numberless. This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity!

So Augustine says that peaceful intercourse (which he takes as the goal of human government) is impossible without a common language, but the Roman empire imposes a common language by force, which itself thwarts the cause of peace in the world. He continues:

And though these [wars of conquest] are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come. For though there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description -- social and civil wars -- and with these the whole race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set?

So the imperial effort to impose peaceful government outside Rome is, paradoxically, producing new wars all by itself. This, to Augustine, is clearly an evil:

But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wrong-doing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man's wrong-doing. Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.

So even when war is just, it is never desirable; the fact that war is sometimes permissible should not make anyone feel better about it, since it is not actually a solution to human problems. Ultimately, war merely substitutes one problem for another, and the fact of just war should be a painful reminder of the world's evils.

These paradoxes, Augustine says (in XIX.1), show that it is "evident, not only from divine authority, but also from such reasons as can be adduced to unbelievers, how the empty dreams of the philosophers differ from the hope which God gives to us, and from the substantial fulfillment of it which He will give us as our blessedness."

Update: Nathanael Robinson provides a more nuanced description of the spread of Latin among subject peoples.

Cars

Pixar's latest release has been getting mixed reviews. Most critics like it, but a few have been very harsh in their appraisal. I tried to keep an open mind when I watched it in the local theater yesterday.

I am not telling people not to see the movie. On the contrary, many people love it, and I agree that the film is fairly good in the middle and has lots of beautiful scenery. The problem is that the movie starts shallow and ends maudlin, and the characters mostly seem pretty flat.

In short, the problem is that Cars is an animated sports movie. It follows the traditional pattern of all sports movies, indulging in clichés throughout. Here is the plot: Lightning McQueen is a rookie racecar with a lot of star power and a ridiculous ego. En route to a career-defining race in California, he gets lost in the desert, winding up in a nearly deserted old town that lies on the legendary Route 66. There, he learns that respect and friendship are more important than glory, and that ignorant hicks can be wonderful human beings -- er, sentient automobiles. After that ... well, I don't want to give away the ending, but it has something to do with lots of cheering fans.

Let me explain in more detail the problems in this plot.

First, because the film opens in the middle of a race, the narrative gets off to a bad start. Our introduction to three of the main characters, including the protagonist, comes from the inane chatter of the television commentators at the racetrack. It takes a long time for the movie to dig any deeper than that into the Lightning's mentality; for much of the film, he is a depressingly two-dimensional automobile.

Second, what makes the poor start worse is the fact that Lightning is not a very sympathetic character. In fact, he is a manifest jerk. We know he's a jerk from the beginning, but he does not. So we really don't care for him much until he finally figures out that this is a bad thing -- about an hour later. Meanwhile, the only reason the filmmakers give us to care about him is the same celebrity aura that makes him so annoying in the first place.

Third, the protagonist is not the only character who could use more depth. Some of the other cars are stock characters from children's movies. We have the world-weary mentor -- two of them, really -- as well as the spunky young female with a crush on the bad boy. Still other characters are predictable because of their packaging: the VW van is a hippie, the Jeep is a drill sergeant, and the lowrider is Latino. That's about all we know about them. These cars are cute, but Pixar's greatest successes have been due to less predictable characters: paranoid monsters, sharks in rehab, unionized superheroes, cowardly tyrannosaurs, thrill-seeking turtles.

Fourth, a related problem: because every living thing in the movie is a car or some other form of transportation, the Cars ecosystem lacks the diversity it needs to sustain interest. There are only so many ways to spin puns from automotive work. Every character consumes the same things; each has roughly the same mission in life; each shares the same basic design. The film thus lacks the rich variety of the best Pixar productions.

Finally, Lightning's eventual moral transformation is too abrupt, and the end of the film is overdone. These scenes have occasional traces of originality, but not enough.

The film is very pretty, and it has a lot of clever bits. But with this film, I think, Pixar made the same mistake that George Lucas made when he started playing around with CGI: they let spectacle overwhelm verisimilitude. Cars is full of gorgeous scenery and exciting effects, but a lot of it is a distraction from the storytelling.

I do think the desert portion of the film was based on some great ideas, though. I fervently wish the execution were better; a sort of Finding-Nemo-meets-The-Last-Picture-Show story could have been brilliant.

I think I am becoming a god

According to the LA Times (get a login here if you need it), the state of Florida has ordered American historians to be infallible and omniscient.

"The history of the United States shall be taught as genuine history and shall not follow the revisionist or postmodernist viewpoints of relative truth," declares Florida's Education Omnibus Bill, signed by Gov. Jeb Bush. "American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed."

Uh ... we'll get right on that. Just as soon as we figure out what the heck the "revisionist viewpoint" of history is.

Update: An important correction to the article is here.

Unfortunate associations

I recently started on Quentin Skinner's The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, which is a study of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation political philosophy. So far, I've been reading Skinner's analysis of 12th-15th century Italian scholarship, observing the efforts of the city republics to explain their resistance to papal, imperial, and plutocratic domination. I've reached and nearly finished the chapter on the Florentine Renaissance; next up is "The Age of Princes."

And you know what? Several times over the last few days as I've sat with the book, I've gotten the urge to watch The Godfather. Isn't that terrible? Apparently I think almost exclusively in terms of an unfortunate stereotype of Italian culture. I cannot read a book with names like "Bruni" and "Salutati" and "Pico della Mirandola" without also thinking of Michael and Vito. It's disgraceful.

In my defense, of course, one could easily argue that the brutal patronage politics of medieval Italy were not much different from the system depicted in the movie. Very little separates the Five Families from medieval dynasties.

In related news, Lee has been posting photos from a recent trip to Italy at verbum ipsum. Rome is here, here, here, here, and here. Florence is here and here.

Conflict and comprehension

In the recent Patrick Henry College controversy, the central theme of the dispute was not necessarily academic freedom, although that's what outsiders (including me) talked about the most. The central question for those actually involved was the proper Christian attitude toward the liberal arts. Two PHC professors, Kevin Culberson and David Noe, chose that topic for a student magazine article they wrote just before resigning.

The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, they told the PHC community, does not mean that evangelical