Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Patrick Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Books III-V.

 

In these books, Bossuet addresses the “nature and properties of royal authority,” identifying its four principal characteristics: it is sacred; it is paternal; it is absolute; and it is subject to reason (III.i). 

The sanctity of royal authority derives from God’s establishment of kings as His ministers; God reigns through them, “His lieutenants on earth” (III.ii.1). This “All power comes from God”; “He governs all peoples, and gives them, all of them, their kings; though he governs Israel in a more particular and announced fashion” (III.ii.1). Accordingly, kings’ persons are sacred; it is sacrilege to “attempt anything against them” (III.ii.1). This is why they are called “Christs,” having been anointed by God to rule. And it follows from this that subjects must obey the king not because they fear his punishment but out of conscientiousness. By anointing them, establishing them as kings, “God has put something divine into kings” in addition to the divine spirit he breathed into man, uniquely among His creations (III.ii.2). This “second majesty,” flowing from God’s primary majesty, renders even bad kings, even infidel kings, sacred.

Conversely, the gift of sanctity entails moral responsibility. “Kings should respect their own power, and use it only for the public good” (III.ii.4). “Their power coming from on high…they must not believe that they are the owners of it, to use it as they please: rather they must use it with fear and restraint, as something which comes to them from God, and for which God will ask an accounting of them” (III.ii.4). Using their God-given power for evil should be a thought that makes them tremble. They must govern their subjects as God governs kings and subjects alike, in “a way that is noble, disinterested, beneficent—in a word, divine” (III.ii.4).

In describing the household, Aristotle distinguishes parental rule from both masterly and political rule. Masters rule their slaves for the good of the masters; husbands and wives rule one another reciprocally; parents rule their children for the good of the children. This is how Bossuet understands the paternal rule of kings. Kings are great, but only because they are good. God, who is good, “places an image of his greatness in kings” in order to oblige them to imitate His goodness (III.iii.1). Having placed His divine image into all human beings, God “has not established between them so many distinctions as to make (on one side) the proud and (on the other) slaves and wretches” (III.iii.1). God has not established kings as masters. On the contrary, “He made the great only to protect the small; he gave his power to kings only to procure the public good, and for the support of the people” (III.iii.1). [1] The prince is not born for himself but for the public, as when God authorized Moses to lead His people while stipulating that Moses “forget himself” (III.iii.2). God “wanted him to know that he did not work for himself, that he was made for others,” and indeed Moses “died without the slightest earthly reward” (III.iii.2). We don’t even know what became of Moses’ family. “He was a public person born for the good of the universe; but that is also true greatness” (III.iii.2).

Therefore, the prince must provide for his people’s needs, acting as their shepherd—a point upon which both Homer and the Bible are agreed. “Be among them as one of them” (III.iii.3). Your greatness is no cause for pride, as you are made of the same flesh; do not suppose, as the rulers in Plato’s Republic pretend, that you are “made of other metal than your subjects” (III.iii.3). Agapic or charitable love looks to the good of all, working to supply whatever may be “lacking to the people of the state” the prince rules (III.iii.3). The last should be first; his weakest subjects have greater need than the great. “Nothing is so royal as to be the help of him who has none” (III.iii.4), as seen in the graciousness of the King of kings. It is the tyrant, “the bad prince,” who “think[s] only of himself,” and “the Holy Spirit demands an accounting from him” (III.iii.5). In this, Scripture pronounces more forcefully what Aristotle teaches: that the king rules for the good of the ruled. The prince who willfully fails to work for the people’s good will be punished by God as surely as the designedly evil tyrant. Libido dominandi is a sin, but so is sloth, the vice of “those useless servants who do not make the most of the talent [God] has placed in their hand” (III.iii.6). One may suspect that Bossuet has his student, Monseigneur le Dauphin, particularly in mind. The prince’s beneficence must not waver even if his people feel no gratitude for his efforts on their behalf. “No one was ever so ungrateful to Moses as the Jewish people,” even as “none was ever so good to the Jewish people as Moses” (III.iii.7). The prince may resent this, but he should never act on that resentment, instead exercising clemency, enjoying “the sweetness of taming his anger” with those who shrug off his best work (III.iii.8). He should even show clemency to outright criminals, sparing human blood. “There is nothing that agrees less with the protector of the life and well-being of the whole people, than cruel and violent men,” who will find God as “pitiless” in His judgment of them as they have been toward others (III.iii.10). On the contrary, good princes risk their lives in order to protect their people, preserving that safety out of love for them. “The prince should be fearsome only to the evil” (III.iii.12). 

Such mildness in rule, such courage, justice, and moderation, enable the prince to exercise reason, prudence. Moses, for example, “never failed to listen to the people,” to seek to understand them (III.iii.12). This in turn will incline his people to love him. Contra Machiavelli, “princes are made to be loved,” and “nothing is easier than for him to make himself loved passionately” by them (III.iii.13). The prince who instead makes himself hated, to be “viewed not as a man, but as a ferocious beast,” risks being hunted down and killed, like any dangerous predator (III.iii.14). The wise prince even restrains himself from verbal abuse of his subjects, “restrain[ing] his language, whose wounds are often no less dangerous” to him than the physical wounds he inflicts (III.iii.15). Mockery out of the prince’s mouth evinces pride, even as he should tolerate no “scandal-mongering and outrageous raillery” from his courtiers (III.iii.15).

Royal authority is absolute, but absolute rule is not arbitrary rule. It is true that the prince need account to no one for what he commands, that no subject has the right to demand an explanation for his actions. That is because without such absolute authority “he can do no good nor suppress evil; his power must be such that no one can hope to escape him; and, in fine, the sole defense of individuals against the public power must be their innocence” (IV.i.1). The prince is the supreme judge of his people; “no one has the right to review after him” (IV.i.2). “One must obey princes as if they were justice itself, without which there is neither order nor justice in affairs”; indeed, princes “are gods, and share in some way in divine independence,” subject only to the judgment of the King of kings (IV.i.2). Disobedience merits death, as it threatens the “public peace and human society” (IV.i.2). “The prince can correct himself when he knows that he has done badly, but against his authority there can be no remedy except his authority” (IV.i.2). 

He and he alone is entitled to wield absolute coercive force for the purpose of maintaining right order. “In the state only the prince should be armed, otherwise everything is in confusion, and the state falls back into anarchy” (IV.i.3). This principle of sovereign exclusivity applies not only to arms but to the general care of the people, including public works, decrees and ordinances, and honors. No public assembly may be convened “except by his authority” (IV.i.3). Bossuet cites Scripture: “No man may serve two masters” (IV.i.3). And since kings are ordained by God, obeying both God and king is not obeying two masters. Only the king is “above small interests”; only the king’s personal greatness is identical to the national interest (IV.i.3).

This does not mean that the king must not obey the laws. He is not entitled to rule arbitrarily. Tellingly, however, kings “are not subject to the penalties of the laws” (IV.i.4). While the people must fear the prince, the prince must only fear doing evil, which Bossuet, again tellingly, defines as refusal to obey the commands of the priest (IV.i.6).

The prince must never fear the people, for “if the prince fears the people, all is lost” (IV.i.6). The prince also must never fear the great, the aristocrats, usually the most dangerous challengers to his rule. “The public peace obliges kings to keep everyone in a state of fear—the great still more than ordinary individuals, because it is from the side of the great that the greatest troubles come” (IV.i.7). And the prince must hold firm against his own council and his favorites “when they want to make him serve their individual interests” (IV.i.10) All this notwithstanding, “one owes no obedience to kings, against God” (IV.i.8). Does this mean that the people, the great, the councilors and favorites too, must obey the commands of the priest?

Softness, irresolution, and “false firmness” cause princes to fail (IV.ii.1). “Only a firm and resolute will” can command effectively, as “it is only in virtue of acting ceaselessly that one assures the success of [the prince’s] plans” (IV.ii.1). Stubbornness is false firmness, the hardness of Pharaoh. Such princes are ruled by their passion. “He who lets himself go at the beginning,” he who loses command of his own passions, “will finally wind up with a foot on his throat,” as “he who wants never to bend, breaks all at once” (IV.ii.2). Self-government is prior to all other forms: “The first of all empires is the one that one has over his desires”; “this is the source and the foundation of all authority” (IV.ii.3). Just as the prince must rule in part by fear, he must never allow himself to be ruled by it, as “it is the greatest of all weaknesses, to fear appearing weak” (IV.ii.3). The fear of appearing weak leads to stubbornness or false firmness, in turn leading to ruin. Contra Machiavelli, the prince should fear none but God, eternal in being, anger, power, and memory.

Fear God, but also govern by reason. As the title of Book V announces, “royal authority is subject to reason,” as well as to God. Although “all men are capable of understanding,” it is “principally you”—the prince—upon whom “reposes the whole nation, you who should be the soul and intelligence of the state, whom must be found the first reason for all its movements: the less it is necessary for you to justify yourself to others, the more you must have justification and intelligence within yourself” (V.i.1). Bossuet does not mean theoretical reasoning but prudential reasoning, and his example is Solomon, who prayed to God for wisdom, and rightly so: “wisdom is the sole grace that a prince should ask of God” (V.i.1). Wisdom alone “draws all other goods” to kings (V.i.1).

Upon prudence or practical wisdom, in addition to courage, Bossuet’s much-recommended virtue of firmness depends. Such wisdom enables the king to see a steady course and to maintain himself on it. Prudence prevents both stubbornness and irresolution. The people under his rule take notice. Under the wise prince, “wars succeed; peace is established; justice reigns; the laws govern; religion flourishes, commerce and navigation enrich the country; the earth itself seems to produce its fruits more willingly” (V.i.3). By these fruits the people know him and love him. By them, his foreign enemies respect and fear him.

What is political wisdom? It consists first of understanding the laws, then of the prudence which enables the prince to apply the laws, and of the “broadened knowledge” which understands “the difficulties and minutiae of public affairs”—of matters the laws do not cover, specific and often extreme circumstances such as often occur in wartime (V.i.6). Bossuet is quick to affirm that “God alone gives all this,” since He is the only truly wise being (V.i.6). Still, while “it is true that God gives it…he alone gives it to those who look for it” (V.i.7). Wisdom “is good, she is accessible: but one must love her, and work to possess her” (V.i.7). This work will not consist primarily of book-learning, Bossuet modestly observes. The prince’s “main book is the world; his study is to be attentive to what goes on in front of him, in order to profit from it” (V.i.8). Of all books, “above all let him read the Gospel, and let him meditate on it”—the first of all laws (V.i.8). After that, Deuteronomy, wherein he will learn “the great principles of justice” (V.i.9). The good prince is an homme sérieux who “ceaselessly meditate[s] on the law” (V.i.9).

As to that broadened knowledge, the prince must assess the circumstances in which he rules. “All things depend on time,” and “the science of time is thus the true science of [public] affairs, and the true work of a wise man,” the one who ‘times’ his actions, often long meditated, for maximum effect (V.i.11). The wise prince also knows men. It is “his most important business to know what to make of men, and what they are fit for,” regardless of their “earthly stations” (V.i.12). “One should pay no attention to social status: the truth always preserves its natural authority in any mouth whatsoever” (V.i.13). In this, “the prince who chooses badly is punished by his own choice” (V.i.12). Still, “of all the men the prince must know, the one it is most important for him to know is himself,” to “know what he is fit for” (V.i.13) (emphasis added). For this, find “a faithful friend” who will know your faults and tell you what they are (V.i.13). “The wise man views all those who prudently reveal his faults as men sent by God to enlighten him” (V.i.13).

Knowledge beyond knowledge of the laws also includes what we now call ‘intelligence’: accurate information about what is happening within and outside the kingdom. “Under an able and well-informed prince, no one dares to do evil. One believes him always present, and ever the diviner of thoughts.” (V.i.14). The prince must know how both to speak appropriately, choosing the right time and occasion, and also “how to keep quiet” (V.i.16). “Secrecy in deliberation is an imitation of the deep and impenetrable wisdom of God,” and “knowing how to keep quiet is the mark of wisdom” (V.i.16).

“It is not enough for the prince to see,” however; “he must foresee” (V.i.17). He exercises precaution, “which keeps bad fortune from taking us unprepared,” giving thought to the small things upon which great things depend (V.i.17). The greatest foresight consists of consideration of posterity: “You will die, but your state must be immortal” (V.i.17). 

Finally, the prince must be a teacher. Himself “possessed of reason,” he should impart it first of all to his ministers, personally instructing them in the laws, and then to his people, who can only obey laws they know (V.i.18). Deliberation upon what laws, and what policies, should be enacted is rightly held in secret but laws once enacted must be public. This distinguishes absolute authority from arbitrary rule. 

Very well, then, if the prince must know so much, how will he learn? Bossuet next addresses the issue of the prince’s education. “The first means of knowing the truth which the prince has, is to love it ardently and to show that he loves it: then it will come to him from all sides, because everyone will know that it gives him pleasure to be told it” (V.ii.1). Many princes instead fill their hearts “with error and flattery,” but attitude of jesting Pilate scarcely serves themselves or their states (V.ii.1). Love of learning will issue in careful attention, as the wise prince will know that “it is vain that one has the truth before his eyes: if he does not open them, he does not see it” (V.ii.2). Men disguise themselves; only thoughtful attention can unmask them. To do so, “the surest course is to observe everything, but to believe only in works” (V.ii.2).

While guarding himself against manipulation, the prince should give his counselors “full freedom” to speak; King David “was always listening, and entering into the thoughts of others, not at all obsessed with his own” (V.ii.3). Princes who are self-obsessed become “intractable, cruel, and furious” (V.ii.3). In choosing his counselors, the prince should choose only a few, as “secrecy is the soul of a counsel” and “the number of those who are capable of such a charge are rare,” loyalty being even rarer than prudence (V.ii.4). How to recognize such true friends? “There is no surer tie of friendship than the fear of God,” who is Himself the best counselor (V.ii.4). At the same time, while restricting the number of counselors, keep your circle of informants wide, diverse, so you won’t be ‘captured’ by your royal council. With all, “beware of false reports”; their number may be reduced by punishing liars (V.ii.6).

Since “time confirms good counsels,” consult your own experience and the histories that tell you of experiences undergone by earlier kings (V.ii.7). “Pay no attention to those vain and limitless arguments which are not grounded in experience” (V.ii.7). Over-subtle arguments are the stuff of deception, and they often signal evil intent. Saul exhibited “pernicious subtlety” in his attempt to ruin David; David exhibited true wisdom in taking precautions against his machinations (V.ii.10).

Perhaps above all, decide for yourself. “One must, then, first of all, know how to decide” (V.ii.8). Consult counselors, inquire broadly, consult personal and historical experience, but deliberate on all of these before deciding. Do not get lost in deliberation, however, as “men of great deliberation and great theories” who do nothing “lose everything” (V.ii.8). You will never achieve certainty in political affairs; prudential wisdom isn’t the same thing as mathematical wisdom.

The necessary limitations of human knowledge drive some princes to “strange and superstitious consultations” with “soothsayers and astrologers” (V.iii.1). Don’t let France become the next Babylon, that “mother of astrologers” (V.iii.1). Do not fear eclipses, comets, planetary motions or the horoscopes devised in accordance with them. “All these things—which rest on nothing better than pompous words—are at bottom reveries which frauds sell at a high price to the ignorant” (V.iii.1). God “hands over to seduction those who look for it” (V.iii.2). Better to consult God through prayer, humbly asking Him for wisdom, never pretending that your reputation as ‘a wise king’ ultimately comes from any other source. And after doing so, remember that “whoever consults God for wisdom must on his side do all that he can” to increase and to use that wisdom, to gather information and to act upon it (V.iii.3).

Bossuet concludes this suite of three books by describing royal authority in one word: majesty. Majesty is anything but pomp, “that external show which dazzles the vulgar” (V.iv.1). “Majesty is the image of the greatness of God in a prince” (V.iv.1). He represents the whole state and the will of all the people, “hold[ing] the whole kingdom in position just as God holds the whole world” (V.iv.1). Remove him, and it is as if God removed Himself from the rule of the world: “all lapses into confusion” (V.iv.1). “Nothing is more majestic than all-embracing goodness, and there is no greater debasement of majesty than the misery of the people caused by some prince” (V.iv.1). Exercise your power boldly but with humility, knowing that however powerful you may be, you remain a sinner, mortal, answerable finally to God.

The Aristotelian moral virtues of magnanimity and magnificence form part of true majesty, as “with the highest greatness are associated the highest virtues” (V.iv.2). In contrast, “base thoughts” animated by the small-souled passions of vengeance and resentment debase the prince who yields to them (V.iv.2). The great-souled man accepts ingratitude with equanimity, praise when it is just; Bossuet’s example of this kind of man is King David, a prince “moved only by truth,” most of the time (V.iv.2). “To magnanimity corresponds magnificence, which joins great expenditures with great plans,” as did Solomon’s Temple (V.iv.2). Walking into a cathedral in Europe, experiencing the enlargement of soul that goes with the vault of the building, the light filtering through the stained glass, the carefully wrought carvings, affirms the truth of Bossuet’s bond between the architecture of a building and the architecture of the soul.

In considering Bossuet’s divine-right absolutism, one sees how difficult it must be to bring it off. The balance between royal authority and prudence, humility and magnanimity, strikes one as a rare achievement. It is easy to see how later thinkers and political men designed republican institutions to provide a more reliable sense of balance to their countries.

 

 

 

Note

1. Charles de Gaulle described “the man of character” in the same way: see The Edge of the Sword, Gerard Hopkins translation, New York: Criterion Books, 1960. 

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Patrick Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Books I-II.

 

Bossuet dedicated his book, which he never quite got round to finishing, to Louis, eldest son of Louis XIV, heir apparent to the throne. If Bossuet never finished the book (published in 1709, completed by a nephew, it appeared five years after his death), Monseigneur le Dauphin never began his reign, predeceasing his long-lived father by four years. This may have been just as well. Le Monseigneur was a bit of a dullard, intimidated by his formidable sire and overwhelmed by Bossuet’s tutoring, which began in 1670, when the lad was nine years old. That he ever read the book is unlikely, and as things turned out he didn’t need to.

In his epistle dedicatory, Bossuet observes that God, being the King of kings, has the authority “to instruct them and to rule them as his ministers.” He does this primarily through His Scripture, and indeed the future Bishop of Meaux, a Gallican Catholic to the core, draws his lessons from the Bible, filtering little through traditional Church theologians. It is conceivable that he intended to leave as little room for Protestant criticism as possible. Scripture is “better than other histories” in showing “the original principles which formed empires” by revealing the goodness and badness of the human heart, what sustains and overthrows kingdoms, what religion can do to establish kingdoms and what impiety can do to destroy them.” Scripture even shows “the natural character of the other virtues and vices” (emphasis added), those that do not have direct implications for politics. That is, the Bible reveals not only God’s commands, revelation, but teaches its readers about human nature, which very often does not heed those commands.

Politics is nonetheless Bossuet’s topic. In ancient Israel, “one sees the government of a people whose legislator was God himself; the abuses which he reprimanded and the laws which he established—which comprise the finest and justest polity that ever was.” Unlike the laws of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Egypt, the laws of Israel contain the highest “wisdom,” truly divine wisdom. “There was never a finer state constitution” or regime “than that under which you will see the people of God.” In sharp contrast to Machiavelli, who regards the laws of Israel as the laws of Moses, equating Moses with Solon, Lycurgus, and other regime founders, Bossuet regards Moses and Joseph as having been “inspired by God.”

Nor does Bossuet neglect the revelations of the New Testament. “Jesus Christ will teach you, by himself and by his apostles, all that can make states happy; his Gospel renders men more fit to be good citizens on earth”—this, in direct contradiction to Machiavelli’s accusation—and “teaches them by that means to render themselves worthy of becoming citizens of heaven” (emphasis added). This suggests that contra most Protestant teachings, works count toward your salvation. That may be dubious theologically, but it might have a salubrious effect upon the mind of a young and reportedly sluggish student. By so teaching, Bossuet counters both Machiavellian atheism and Protestant fideism by insisting that works make Christians both capable of defending themselves and well-prepared for the life that awaits them after death.

In sum, God, “by whom kings reign, forgets nothing that may teach them to reign well.” Kings therefore “cannot be too attentive to the rules upon which they will be judged by an eternal and irrevocable sentence.” Those like Machiavelli in the past and Voltaire in the future “who believe that piety enfeebles politics will be confounded.”

Bossuet devotes the first of his ten main sections or “books” to a discussion of the basic principles of human society. First, man is made to live in society; he is a ‘social animal.’ Second, this human society “gives birth to civil society,” to states, peoples, and nations (I.ii); the social animals realize their potential as ‘political animals’ by virtue of their natural sociality. Third, to form nations and unite the people, government is necessary. Fourth, government perfects itself by establishing laws. Fifth, among these laws are the laws of nations, customs and practices shared by all sovereign nations, by “the general society of mankind,” across political boundaries (I.v). And finally, the countries so established deserve the love of their citizens, patriotism.

With respect to human sociality, Bossuet derives his claim from six propositions or premises. Men have but one and the same end and one and the same object, God (I.i.1). This in turn implies that the love of God obliges us to love one another “because we must all love the same God, who is our common father”; “his unity is our bond” (I.i.2). That is, “we should love in each other the image of God”; the two obligations are “alike” (I.i.2). (Bossuet goes so far as to claim that even beasts will be required to give account before God for the human blood they have shed.) From these first two propositions, it follows that all men are brothers, the only creatures made in God’s image; all others are made according to their “kind” (I.i.3), by which Genesis apparently means what we call ‘species.’ Although Bossuet doesn’t remark it, this is the basis for man’s rule over the animals and over the Garden generally. Since Woman was drawn from the body of Man, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” as Man acknowledges, marriage gives divine and civil sanction to the understanding that two have become “one flesh” (I.i.3). The brotherhood of man also makes friendship possible. “God forbid that kings should believe themselves exempt from this law, or that they should imagine that it diminishes the respect which is due to them” (I.i.3). Such false belief, such forgetting of human fraternity, their common, innate divine image, provoked God to destroy almost all of mankind in the Flood. To this day, murderers rightly suffer capital punishment for violating the law of human brotherhood.

Further, no man is a stranger, a foreigner, to another man, despite the differences among nations. There can even be a good Samaritan, wicked though so many Samaritans were held to be. Each man ought to take care of other men, out of divinely commanded agape or caritas, the love the English Bible denotes as compassion or fellow-feeling. Finally, not only compassion, a form of selflessness, obligates men to help one another; so does self-interest, as “strength is multiplied by society, and by mutual assistance.” (I.i.6). “God, having willed to establish society, has established that each one shall find in it his well-being, and remain attached to it through that interest,” each understanding his God-given talents as complementary to the talents of other and as making him a good part of the whole (I.i.6). One sees this in the Christian regime itself: “Jesus Christ, in forming his Church, established unity on this foundation, and shows us what are the principles of human society” (I.i.6). 

“We see, then, human society supported upon these irreversible foundations; one same God, one same object, one same end, one common origin, one same blood, one same interest, one mutual want, alike for the affairs, as for the enjoyments of life” (I.i.6). Nothing could be further from the teachings of Machiavelli and Hobbes. 

Human sociality results in civil society. Although God Himself was the bond of Eden’s two-person civil society, in disobeying God, separating himself from Him, Adam sowed division into his own family, resulting in the murder of Abel by Cain. “The whole of the human race was divided” into the children of Seth, children of God, and the children of Cain, “the children of men” (I.ii.1). Bossuet means that disobedience to God liberates the passions which, being “insatiable,” sets the children of men against the children of God and against one another (I.ii.1). This makes it impossible to trust, to find safety in, men.

This division in turn divided humanity into many nations. Each nation has its own ruling passion or passions. God further divided the children of men by imposing different languages upon them, punishing the passion of pride as seen in the Tower of Babel. This notwithstanding, the earth human beings inhabit together serves as a bond amongst men, a weaker bond than godliness but a bond, nonetheless. Each nation loves the land on which they dwell, “a sentiment natural to all people,” very much including the Israelites who happily returned to the Promised Land after their captivity in Babylon (I.ii.3). Love of a particular spot on earth is a universal human sentiment. Bossuet thus tacitly endorses the Peace of Westphalia, part of the law of nations.

Government is necessary to form nations and unite the people. Because the impassioned children of men divide into factions, even within the same nation, only the authority of government puts a bridle on the passions and on the violence the passions cause. The “authority and subordination” of the several “powers” within the kingdom restrains human licentiousness (I.iii.2). It is by the authority of government—legitimate government, government itself restrained by sound laws—that social and political union can be made to prevail over impassioned factitiousness. In Israel, when the nation went into battle “as one man”; “behold, such is the unity of a people, when each one renouncing his own will, transfers and reunites it to that of the prince and the magistrate” (I.iii.3). In this, Bossuet argues like a Christian Hobbes, teaching that under such a regulated government each individual renounces the right of occupying by force what he finds usable or pleasurable. Since God initially gave the earth to all humanity, “indiscriminately,” “no one has a particular right to any thing whatever, and every thing is the prey of all”—Hobbes’s war of all against all (I.iii.4). Not so under a regulated government, where the sovereign magistrate distributes the property; “in general all rights should come from the public authority” (I.iii.4). The Christian Leviathan dispenses rights; the laws of nature and of nature’s God ordain human sociality and civism but not property rights. This power of government is good because it is by the government that each individual becomes stronger, his person and property secured by the government. In turn, the sovereign magistrate rightly has at his disposal “all the strength of the nation, which submits to, and obeys him” (I.iii.5). Despite the individual sacrifices this entails, “the people gain” from it because they have “all the strength of the nation reunited to assist them” (I.iii.5). Reunited: Bossuet understands lawful government to heal, at least to a substantial degree, the consequences of Adam’s disobedience, even if it cannot lift the curse of Adam pronounced by God.

As with Hobbes, the regime Bossuet advocates to accomplish this is monarchy. “In the person of the prince [the individual] has an invincible defender” because the prince’s self- interest “in guaranteeing by force every other individual” requires the defeat of “any other force than his own,” a force or combination of forces which would threaten his own authority and indeed his life (I.iii.5). “Thus the sovereign is the natural enemy of all violence,” so long as he rules as a legitimate prince, abiding by the laws of Scripture (including the protection of “widows, orphans, wards even infants in the cradle”), of civil society and of nations (I.iii.5). The worst enemy of humanity is anarchy, as “when there is no master, every one is master; where every one is master, every one is a slave” (I.iii.5).

Finally, a well-designed government perpetuates itself, making the state “immortal” or at least long-lasting. “The prince dies, but authority is immortal” (I.iii). A good government is a stable government, and a stable government provides for the orderly transfer of authority from one generation of rulers to the next—a lesson understood, famously, in the United States by the young Abraham Lincoln.

Law is obviously indispensable to Bossuet’s conception of monarchy. The laws must be joined to the government to perfect it. “It is not sufficient that the prince or the sovereign magistrate should regulate cases as they occur, according to circumstances”—necessary as such attention must be, as Aristotle appreciates; “it is necessary that they should establish general rules of conduct, in order that the government may be constant and uniform” (I.iv.1). Legal first principles must be fixed, and “the first of all laws” is the “law of nature, that is to say…right reason and…natural equity” (I.iv.2). As Paul the Apostle acknowledges, even the Gentiles get this right, as we see in how they “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts within themselves accusing them, or else defending them” (I.iv.2). The laws that reinforce public order themselves should be orderly, founded upon the principles of fearing God, keeping His commandments, and doing unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Where does the prince fit it? He explains the character of the laws, observing that unlike men, the law has no interest and no passion. “In the laws are collected the purest light of reason,” rewarding the law-abiding and punishing those who do unto others what they would never want done to themselves (I.iv.4). God pronounced His judgement on Babylon: “She had spared nobody, spare her not: she has made others suffer, let her suffer” (I.iv.5). With respect to rewards, the same principle applies: “Whoever serves the public or individuals, the public and individuals ought to serve him” (I.iv.5).

Civil laws derive from “a covenant and solemn treaty,” a social contract not among the people, simply, as in Hobbes and Locke, but among the people “by the authority of princes” (I.iv.6). Bossuet makes himself clear: “We do not mean by this that the authority of the laws depends upon the consent and acquiescence of the people; but only that the prince who by his character has no other interest than that of the public, is assisted by the experience of past heads of the nation, and supported by the experience of past centuries” (I.iv.6). In Israel, the ‘prince’ was of course God Himself, who used Moses as His mediator—needing, as the Creator, no need of human consent. “The covenant” between God and the Israelites “has a double effect: it unites the people to God, and it unites the people in themselves,” something the people themselves, being impassioned sons of men, could not do by themselves (I.iv). Such union could never have been accomplished if it “had not been originally made in the presence of a superior power, such as that of God, the natural protector of human society, and the inevitable avenger of every contravention of the law” (I.iv.7). That is “why all nations have been desirous to give to their laws a divine origin; and those which did not have it, pretended to have it” (I.iv.7).

As Aristotle (and Lincoln) also insist, it is impossible to change fundamental laws and even dangerous to change, “without necessity,” laws which are not fundamental (I.iv.8). “We lose a veneration for the laws when we see them often changing”; a nation who falls into that habit becomes dizzy, falls (I.iv.8). Bossuet here points to the people of Samaria, “who, having overset order, forgot the law, established a religion, and an arbitrary law,” thereby sacrificing the very “name of a people” (I.iv.8).

Beyond and above the law, the division of property in civil society and the division of territory among nations should not “alter the general society of mankind” (I.v.1). Moses himself reminded God’s chosen people that even as God was their common father and earth their common mother, “the nurse of all men,” foreigners must be respected, not arbitrarily injured (I.v.1). “He recommends particularly, in judgments, the stranger and the fatherless, honoring in all the society of mankind” (I.v.1). “We must not then imagine that the limits which separate the lands of individuals, and of states, are made to cause division in mankind; but only that they should not attempt anything against each other, and that each one should respect the peace of the other,” leaving to sit under his own vine and fig tree, unafraid. The law of nations ordains such “common principles of society and concord” as commerce, fidelity to treaties, and the inviolability of ambassadors in peace and war alike (I.v.1). “Nations that do not know these laws of society are inhuman and barbarous, enemies of all justice and of mankind; to them Scripture applies this odious charge, ‘without affection, without fidelity'” (I.v.1). The Biblical law of love rules international politics, although Bossuet cautions that charity begins at home. “As we cannot serve all men, we ought to attach ourselves principally to serve those who place, time, and other similar circumstances unite to us in a particular manner, as by a sort of destiny” (I.v.1).

In the sixth and final article of Book I, Bossuet discusses the love of country. Self-love, love of family and of friends all reunite in that love. “This is why the seditious, who do not love their country and bring division into it, are the execration of mankind” (I.vi.1). More, we should be “ready to sacrifice for our country,” “even without hesitation expose our lives” for it, there being “no more joy for a good citizen when his country is ruined” (I.vi.1). His examples, drawn from Old Testament accounts of Israelite valor, nonetheless (and contra Machiavelli) apply to Christians today because they are now the people of God, and should follow the example of the first people of God. Bossuet goes so far as to maintain that “Jesus Christ established, by his doctrine and by his example, the love that citizens ought to have for their country,” fulfilling the duties of charity to all men, the duties of “a good son toward his parents,” and “those of a good citizen, recognizing himself ‘sent to the sheep that are lost in the house of Israel'” (I.vi.2). His fellow Jews acknowledged this, cheering Him as he entered Jerusalem; even as he was tortured to death on the Cross, he told the women nearby not to weep for Him but for themselves and their children. He lived his life as “an exact observer of the laws and praiseworthy customs of his country,” even allowing Himself to be crucified, never interfering with the authority of magistrates, “faithful and affectionate, to the end to his ungrateful country, and to his cruel fellow citizens” (I.vi.2). In shedding his blood for humanity, but “with a particular regard for his nation,” Jesus “willed that the love of country should find a place” in the world (I.vi.2).

His disciples followed His example. Despite a century of “pitiless persecution” by the Romans, “never were there better citizens, nor any more useful to their country, nor who served more willingly in their armies, provided that they were not to become idolators” (I.vi.3).  And, as Tertullian observed, despite this persecution, no Roman emperor ever died at the hands of a Christian. 

Bossuet concludes Book I by saying that human society may be considered in both of two ways: as “one great family” under the fatherhood of God or as divided into nations, “peoples composed of many particular families, having each their rights” (I.vi.3). Seen through the latter prism, civil societies protect human life, affording citizens peace. Love of mankind, yes, but also love of “the civil society of which he forms a part” obligates every Christian as well as all other human beings (I.vi.3).

In the Second Book, Bossuet argues that the best regime is hereditary monarchy. Nature itself has its King, whose “absolute empire” has “for its original title and foundation the Creation” (II.i.1). Having “drawn everything out of nothingness,” everything is rightly “in his hand” (II.i.1). More specifically, the Bible reveals that God has “visibly exercised a personal authority over men” as their “sole king” by such acts as favoring Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s, his judgment of Cain, and by His reservation of vengeance for such crimes to Himself alone—all “functions of public power” (II.i.2). More, God “publicly exercised a sovereign empire over his people in the desert,” acting as the Israelites’ king, legislator, and leader (II.i.2). And “it is he who established kings” from Saul through Samuel (II.i.2). “This is why the throne of the kings of Israel is called the throne of God” (II.i.2).

Human societies rightly follow this structure, beginning with the family, “the model and principle of cities and of the whole of human societies” (II.i.3). Unlike Aristotle, who finds in the reciprocal rule of husband and wife the nucleus of political life, Bossuet locates political life in the strictly patriarchal family—a small monarchy. “The first idea of command and of human authority has come to us from paternal authority” (II.i.3).

Aristotle takes his bearings from the polis or ‘city-state,’ arguing that families united to form such cities because individual families could not thrive without assistance from other families. Bossuet regards the ancient cities with suspicion, along with the kind of politics found there. The founder of the first city, Cain, not only “violated human fraternity by a murder” but “was the first to withdraw himself” from paternal rule (II.i.3). Most men lived not in cities but in the countryside, “having for the law the will of their parents and the ancient customs”; this was the way of life seen in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (II.i.3). Abraham, for example, was not a king but a pastoral patriarch.

Kingship derived from that model, established either by popular consent or by arms, by the “right of conquest” (II.i.4). In the first instance, “men who…saw the image of a kingdom in the union of several families under the leadership of a common father, and who had found gentleness in that life, brought themselves easily to create societies of families under kings who took the place of fathers” (II.i.4). In the second instance, pioneered by Nimrod, child of cursed Ham and mighty hunter before the LORD, an “ambitious and violent disposition soon spread rapidly among men,” leading to the establishment of “unjust and tyrannical” empires (II.i.4).

Bossuet thus follows Aristotle in distinguishing good monarchic regimes from bad ones. He acknowledges regimes other than monarchy, particularly democracy and aristocracy, both of which he calls “republics,” following Cicero’s broad, literal definition of a republic as a ‘public thing,’ any regime ruled by more than one person. The Israelites for a time had “a kind of republic, but one which had God for its king” (II.i.6). When they called for a human monarch, God was displeased by the affront, but granted the request. Monarchy is, after all, “the most common, the most ancient, and also the most natural form of government” (II.i.7). Ancient Greek cities, Rome, and such modern Switzerland, Netherlands, and “even Venice, which prides itself on having been a republic since its origin,” in fact began as monarchies (II.i.7). “Men are all born subjects”—subject to one God and to one natural father—and “the paternal empire, which accustoms them to obey, accustoms them at the same time to have only one leader” (II.i.7). Monarchy is not only the most natural but also the most durable, and strongest regime, the one “most opposed to division, which is the essential evil in states” (II.i.8). Military necessity inclines all states to monarchy, inasmuch as “military government needs to be exercised by one person alone” (II.i.8).

Among the several good monarchies, hereditary monarchy is best, the one closest to the patriarchal family. “It is the natural order that the son succeed his father,” “the order that best rolls on by itself,” the regime that lends itself least of all to faction and anarchy (II.i.10). [1] Monarchy also designates as the political authorities those “who are most interested in their”—that is, the royal family’s—own “preservation”; the king loves ‘his own’ and, animated by that love, rules in order to defend his country (II.i.10). As “the most natural object of public veneration,” monarchy is the regime best able to maintain its dignity in the eyes of the people (II.i.10). “The jealousy that one naturally feels against those whom one sees above him here turns into love and respect; the great themselves obey without repugnance a house which has always looked masterly, and which one knows will never be equaled by any other house” (II.i.11).

What if a people have established a republican regime? Should it be changed to a monarchy? Not necessarily. There being “no form of government whatsoever, nor any human institution, which does not have its disadvantages,” it is better not to disturb a decent regime (II.i.12). Bossuet cites the Apostle Paul’s adjuration to remain subject to higher powers, although he qualifies it by saying that “God takes under his protection all legitimate governments, in whatever form they are established” (II.i.12).

As to monarchies or other regimes founded by conquest, even they can be made legitimate. For example, Jacob conquered land from the Amorites, an enemy of Israel and therefore an enemy of God. That is, conquest in a just war legitimates rule, monarchic or otherwise. However, the conquering nation can only make its right of conquest “incontestable” if it follows its battlefield victory with “peaceable possession” following a peace treaty, “a friendly coming to terms” (II.ii.2). “Thus one sees that this right of conquest, which begins with force, transforms itself as it were into common and natural right by the consent of peoples, and by peaceable possession,” a consent seen in “the tacit acquiescence of subject peoples, whom one accustoms to obedience by honorable treatment” (II.ii.2). “God is a God of peace, who wants tranquility in public affairs” (II.i.12).

Bossuet concludes the Second Book by announcing that, since God has commanded no particular regime for the human race, people should follow the government established in their country. Since monarchy is the regime established in France, and since he is writing for the benefit of the Dauphin and his fellow Frenchmen, he shall henceforth “turn all the instruction which we draw from Scripture toward the kind of government under which we live” (II. Conclusion). The Third, Fourth, and Fifth books address the nature of royal authority.

 

 

Note

1. Bossuet deprecates the custom of allowing women to inherit the crown. “The dignity of reigning houses seems to be insufficiently sustained in the person of a woman, who after all is oblige to recognize a master when she marries” (II.i.11).

Michael Bauman: Pilgrim Theology: Taking the Path of Theological Discovery. Manitou Springs: Summit Ministries, 2007.

 

By “pilgrim theology,” the late Michael Bauman doesn’t mean the theology of the Pilgrims. He has a different journey in mind, a pilgrimage of the soul for Christian theologians. “Christian theology is an activity for those en route, and it should be conducted so as to aid those who study it and practice it to travel more efficiently and effectively toward truth. Theology ought to be, in other words, both a statement of present belief and an explorer’s compass for further intellectual navigation.” Regrettably, too many prefer “fortress theology,” system-building, structures whose inhabitants seek to guard themselves against enemy assault, expending their energies in elaborating their defenses instead of ranging out for new discoveries, “open[ing] the door to truth, to beauty, and to goodness.” By contrast, the theological pilgrim achieves not certitude—sure feeling about his convictions—but certainty—reasoned confidence in the steadfastness of the Person in whom we trust and in the convictions we have arrived at, concerning Him.

Our confidence should be reasoned because reason corrects mistakes, which human beings are prone to make. “We have a very good excuse for our distorted perceptions: we ourselves are distorted.” As Jonathan Swift had occasion to observe, human beings are only capable of reason, not entirely, or even very, rational. For this reason, when reading God’s revealed Word, we should try to follow its meaning, not attempt to fit it into a theological system we’ve thought up for ourselves, as if each insight were a stag’s head placed neatly on an inner wall of the castle. In that “fortress” approach, “rather than the theologian having a theology, the theology has him.” “We must not allow our theology to be turned into a hermeneutic,” a system for reading that will likely ignore God’s indications of His intent which do not fit into one’s ‘method.’ Readers should open themselves to words, not pull up the drawbridge of a structure that, however impressive, remains human, all-too-human.

Thus Bauman reprises a contrast seen in the practice of philosophy, the contrast between system-builders and Socratics. He favors the Socratics. As for philosophy itself, “I want simultaneously to endorse [it] and to identify its danger.” As a means of “skeptical debunking” in light of the principle of non-contradiction, “philosophy can disabuse us and our opponents of intellectual hubris and baseless self-assurance because it can strip away error.” In so doing, however, it cannot “supply us with much of the raw data we need for proper theologizing”; philosophy, too, must be undertaken with humility. Its zetetic or skeptical character should not be allowed to shade over into sheer denial, which is no more rational than unthinking affirmation. “Methodological skepticism must be informed by, and tempered by, objectivism, the common sense belief and practice that the working relationship between mind and senses is fundamentally valid and reliable”; “the basic dependability of mind and senses (when the function normally) cannot be denied without self-contradiction and epistemological collapse.” “Objects are what they are quite independent of anything we might say about them.”

Socratic philosophers investigate nature, beyond the cave of opinions, of conventions. Theologians investigate God, who, “unlike nature,” is “not merely passive to our investigations.” “The process of theological knowing entails both the work of the mind, on the one hand, and God’s active desire to be known, on the other.” God intentionally reveals Himself, through His Word. A theologian should respond with “a skeptical and tolerant biblicism”—the skepticism aimed at our own thoughts and those of others, the tolerance offered to those who disagree with us, the biblicism intended as the most reliable window into God’s revelation to us, affording the best view of what He wants us to know about Him. Theologians who refuse to do think this way “have never learned to distinguish between good thoughts and their own thoughts.” They often seek disciples, not students, having stopped learning themselves. “Professors and theologians” like that “have transformed institutions of higher learning into institutions of higher indoctrination,” and not always all that high, either. “Academic freedom has its dangers,” but “no ne loom so large as its abandonment.”

Bauman accordingly recommends three rules for Pilgrim Theologians: “statements of faith should be used as a base from which to explore,” not as a wall against contradictory claims; courage and candor rule out ad hominem attacks and require careful consideration of opposing views (“he who knows only his own side of the case probably knows little even of that”); “the only choice a scholar has is between truth and rest,” as “you cannot have both.” This means that a Christian theologian not only shouldn’t confine his thoughts to the creed of his sect but that he shouldn’t confine his thoughts to Christianity. That is, while remaining a Christian, he should not overlook interpretations of Christianity advanced by non-Christians. It can be illuminating to see oneself, and one’s opinions, as others see us, and them. Otherwise, he is “transform[ing] personal salvation into a way of knowing,” assuming “that one can move only from faith to understanding, but never from understanding to faith.” But “neither faith nor ecclesiastical commitment are a means of knowing” because “the proper functioning of the human mind when it does theology is not fundamentally different from its proper functioning when it does political theory or medical ethics,” for example. 

The Bible is authoritative for Christians. “I am not challenging the accuracy or authority of Scripture, which is inviolable, but rather, I am questioning our methods of defending and propagating it, which are not.” “We evangelicals” make several “tactical errors” in that regard. For example, some evangelicals argue that since God inspired the Bible and God does not lie, the Bible must be without error. But “other beings than God have had their way in the matter.” Some evangelicals also say that if you admit that one element of Scripture is wrong, you must throw it all into question, a practice no one follows in considering any other document. Instead of arguments founded upon theological deduction, evangelicals should focus “on the accuracy and reliability of the Biblical data,” the only kind of arguments that non-Christians are likely to “listen to patiently.” After all, “if we counsel our opponents to be open-minded, teachable, objective, and patient scholars of good will, scholars who can feel the weight of the other side’s case, then I believe we ought to insist upon the same qualities in ourselves and our colleagues.”

What, then, does Pilgrim Theology look like, in practice? Bauman shows us by doing some, beginning with the Person of Christ, necessarily the center of any doctrine called ‘Christianity.’ Human beings need to understand God in order to understand themselves. Unlike all other creatures, made “according to their kind,” human beings we “were made ‘in the image and likeness of God,'” which establishes “a reciprocity and kinship” between God and Man “not found anywhere else.” As “living pictures and partners of God,” human beings should not dismiss God as “irrelevant and insignificant in our quest for self-knowledge,” since “to know who we are is first to know who He is.” 

The God we therefore want to know is not simply an ‘I’ but an ‘us.” “Let us make man in our image,” He says. He ‘talks to Himself,’ engages Himself in what “we learn later” to be a Trinity consisting of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He does this as He makes, “mak[ing] worlds with words.” So do we, when we make, especially when we make families, tribes, and political communities. We, too are “communal and communicative”; “togetherness, not aloneness, is our natural condition,” and God makes Woman as Man’s companion in accordance with His own Personhood. This notwithstanding, to be like God, to be made in His image, is not to be God or even to be His equal, as Man and Woman quickly learn when they make their attempt to know something God doesn’t want them to know. In disobeying His authority, we defied our just subordination, inasmuch as “we come from the will, and mind, and Word of God,” not the other way around. At the same time, insofar as we are like God, insofar as we are persons, we are responsible for our choices and actions. He gave us “dominion” over the earth but we disobediently gave that rulership away, allowing ourselves to be overthrown by ‘the Satan,’ that is, the enemy of ourselves and of God.

We retain, however, some of the power of speech and of reason with which God endowed us. “God created us not only by his Word, but for his Word,” rightful recipients of that Word. “We were intended for dialogue with God,” and with one another, male and female. “When we fulfill our duty, we are doing what we were made for, doing what leads to our blessing and fulfillment,” whereas “in rejecting or neglecting our duty, we are turning from God and from our soul’s health.” If “we live lawfully with Him,” we fulfill our own purpose. We also fulfill our own need, especially now that “we are fallen and need everything.” “God is to us what water is for fish, what air is for birds, and what earth is for animals—He is our proper environment, our natural habitat,” although to say it in those words is to translate it into un-Biblical, or at least un-Genesislike, language, which does not speak of environment and nature. 

As the “Second Adam,” the second sinless man, Jesus Christ shows Christians “both what we are now”—inferior to what we were intended to be—and “what we shall become”—not only forgiven for our sin but cleansed of it. The New Testament promises that “we shall see Christ as he is, for we shall be like Him,” “partakers of the divine nature,” as the Apostle Peter puts it. As a student of theology, “if you ask what is God like, the answer is that he is not like anything. But, if you ask who is God like, the answer is he is like Jesus.” Therefore, “to know God is to know Christ.” To know Christ is also to know ourselves, as “without Christ, we don’t understand rightly the horrifying depth and breadth of our depravity.” We have divine assistance in this task of self-knowledge, still another Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. 

Christians who define themselves in opposition to the world, the flesh, and the Devil do themselves a disservice. They have inflated the importance of those things and that person instead of looking to the real standard, Christ. “The negation of a snapshot of the Devil is not a portrait of Christ” and “being out of step with the Pharisees is not the same as being in step with God.” “Christ is the center and standard of Christian existence,” not the apostles, not any segment of the Christian ecclesia, nor the ecclesia taken as a whole. It is important to know ‘about’ God, to gain some of the theologians’ knowledge, but this should not be confused with knowing God as a person. I might be able to know a lot about you, know your height, weight, form, genetic composition, mannerisms. That isn’t knowing you. Knowing God as Jesus Christ is to see how He was indeed innocent as a dove, prudent as a serpent, whether it came to carpentry or verbal combat. Everyone notices his agapic love, but this “shows up in the form of his diligent perceptivity, his resolute teachability, and his train-stopping shrewdness.” As for ourselves, opening ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we “must learn to grow as he grew before we can hope to do as He did and be as He was.” Mere admiration is not enough.

In reading the Gospels we are reading stories. They are the ‘data,’ the ‘evidence’ Christian theologians begin with. But “theologians must always bear in mind that the highest and clearest revelation God ever gave us of himself was as a Person, not as either a proposition of a story.” Persons are never as ‘parsable’ as propositions or stories. Martin Luther was right to say that “God hides not only in his revelation but behind it as well.” This being so, theologians need to approach their task with humility, “not contentiousness and bickering about such unknown, and unknowable, things as the functional relationship either between the divine ousia and the divine energies, on the one hand, or that between deity and humanity in the hypostatic union, on the other.” Such matters are beyond our intellectual pay grade. “Because persons are not reducible to propositions, no man, much less a God-man, can be fully or exactly captured in words or ideas, even inspired words or ideas.” For example, the Christian Fathers attempted to press Jesus into a “family of Greek concepts.” This “yield[ed] great insight,” up to a point. But “no theological road goes on forever.” 

So, for example, the Christian fathers ruled out the claim of the monothelites, “who said that the will native to the divine nature and the will native to the human nature coalesced into one will.” This cannot have been so, given Christ’s prayer to His Father at Gethsemane, in which He begs to be relieved of physical and spiritual torture on the Cross. But in claiming that Christ “had two natures and hence two wills,” while remaining “only one person,” they implied “that natures will, not persons, and that willing pertains not to persons but to natures, as if a human will and a human nature ever existed without a human persons and as if human nature and human person are (and ought to be considered) a distinct in extra-mental reality as they are in some people’s thought.” In willing, human nature must (as it were) go through human personhood, as human nature can manifest itself only in a person, even as it is recognizable in all human persons. 

Beginning with the historical record in the Bible, the Christian theologian should take care not to become a “historicist,” by which Bauman means a historian only. Similarly, he “must be rational, but not a rationalist”; Christ’s prudence is practical reasoning, not a form of theoretical system-building. In examining the Biblical text, we should follow Alexander Pope’s advice: “to read every work of wit in the same spirit as its author writ.” Again, objectivity: After all, is “meaning is the prerogative of the reader and not the author, no professor can properly prevent any student from giving the professor’s course syllabus, the professor’s lectures, the professor’s assignments, or the professor’s test questions whatever meaning the student sees fit.” ‘Deconstruction,’ indeed. We should not “confuse the role of the interpreter with that of the author.” 

Some theologians attempt to bend Christianity into a rationalist system with political intent. One such attempt is ‘liberation theology,’ which puts Christianity into a Marxist or neo-Marxist framework. Bauman is well aware of the defects of Marxist ‘critique’ itself; he knows that free markets outperform command economies, the colonialism didn’t cause Third-World poverty. “Democratic capitalism succeeds where other systems fail because it is more firmly rooted in the inescapable facts of economic scarcity, of incomplete knowledge, and of human imperfectability”—all observation one easily gathered from the Bible as well as from experience. However, it is Marxism’s incompatibility with the Bible that he calls upon his fellow theologians to attend.

Considered Biblically, Marxists commit five “cognitive failures.” First, they do not see that human institutions cannot fundamentally change human nature, that “notoriously intractable” thing. As the prophet Jeremiah and the Apostle Paul both affirm, the human heart is desperately wicked. “Marxism cannot succeed because it has no way to harness human depravity for the service of others,” supposing instead that a radical revision of human institutions will eliminate human depravity. Marxism also assumes that economic conditions “shape everything and everyone.” But in fact “public policy and political theory are enacted only by real and identifiable human beings, not by any alleged impersonal forces of change set loose in the world at large.” By overlooking individuals and seeing only aggregates—imperialists and revolutionaries, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—Marxists “applaud or condemn millions of individuals for no other reason than that those individuals happen to fall into one or the other artificial category. For such ‘offenses’ millions of people, quite literally, have died.”

Third, Marxists entertain a faulty view of justice, making it “synonymous with equality.” The Bible never claims that socioeconomic equality is possible on earth, or even desirable there. Hence charity as manifested in uncoerced redistribution of wealth. “Christ indicates that God’s just judgment of human beings is based upon their wise stewardship of the varied gifts (financial and otherwise) that he has entrusted to them., not upon either the allegedly egalitarian initial allocation of those gifts or upon their egalitarian final disbursement.” Additionally, Marxists take a mistaken view of private property. “By abolishing private property rights, Marxism has cut economic rewards loose from risk taking, from effort, and from saving.” But the New Testament shows that when early Christians attempted to hold goods in common, the experiment failed, leading to “complaints and to divisions among believers (Acts 6:1).” “Socialism is a system that not even the apostles themselves could make work.” Moreover, human beings do not belong to themselves, either individually (as libertarians claim) or collectively (as per Marxism). We belong to God. This being so, human beings cannot claim the right to dispose of their property, including themselves, in any manner they please. This is what rules out suicide and abortion. My right to ‘control my own body,’ to swing my own fist, ends not only at or near the point of your nose but at the destruction of my life or of any life that has done no harm to me or to my family or country.

Finally, Marxism misunderstands the nature of wealth, neglecting the conditions of production and the human capacity for inventiveness in its transfixion on redistributing the products we generate. Capitalism or private ownership of the means of production does indeed recognize human selfishness, which is ineradicable with or without capitalism. But it also requires consideration of others. “If you neglect your neighbor’s needs; if you reuse to put your time, talent, and treasure to work providing for his convenience; your enterprise comes to nothing,” whereas “if you carefully consider and then appropriately satisfy your neighbor’s need you will enjoy the fruit of your labors.” In this way, “the marketplace is a school for virtue” in a way that the strictures of socialism can never be.

Marx’s atheist materialism alone makes it hard to combine with Christianity. But what about Christian leftism—seen, for example, in the writings of Jacques Ellul? Ellul is a Christian anarchist who claims that the Old and New Testaments are anti-political. “As is almost embarrassingly obvious, the Old Testament never impugns ‘political power in itself’ among Gentile nations”—as Ellul asserts—it rather “excoriates the abuses those powers sometimes perpetrate.” Nor does it “challenge Gentile regimes” in terms of their legitimacy or in terms of the regimes themselves; God vigorously condemns their idolatry, but not their origin or their regime form. As for Israel, the Book of Deuteronomy specifies an elaborate legal code and, as far back as Genesis 9, God prescribes and delegates capital punishment as a power to be enacted by human beings “at their discretion.” With respect to I Samuel 8, where the Israelites call for a human king, their fault lies in their rejection of divine rule, not “because political power is always and everywhere inescapably evil, or because monarchy is inherently vile.” Nor does Jesus reject political rule. On the contrary, he considers the rule of Pilate to be divinely ordained (John 19:11).

When it comes to politics, Jesus offers no counsels of perfection. Christian political theory instead “seeks that form of government that is attended with the fewest and most pardonable shortcomings, and it knows that anarchism is not that form which it seeks,” inasmuch as “Christian political theory deals with possibilities, not with unreachable goals.” In this, Ellul falls into self-contradiction, failing to understand that “the abolition of power can be accomplished, imposed, and maintained only by means of power,” inasmuch as “it takes a power to check a power.” “Without political power,” freedom is impossible, which is why the ‘ancients’ understood liberty to mean civic participation and why (some of) the ‘modern’ demand representative government and federalism in the modern state. Otherwise, “freedom without law endures as long as a lamb among hungry wolves.” To defend freedom, one needs not the absence of power but a right way of wielding it. Hence the importance of regimes and also of citizen virtue. “The various coercive powers of family, of church, of state, and of school are not inimical to virtue; rather, they help secure it and make it possible.” 

Ellul presents the unusual spectacle of a thinker who accepts the Marxist critique of modern society and the Marxist expectation that the modern state can, should, and will ‘wither away,’ while refusing to accept the socioeconomic and political means by which Marxists intend to get from here to there. He decries human alienation, capitalism, money; he embraces determinism (although he prefers neo-Marxist cultural determinism to the economic determinism of Marx and Engels), dialectics, and revolution. Perhaps because he is a cultural determinist, not an economic determinist, a materialist, he supposes that cultural revision can replace coercion.

An even more extreme form of ‘cultural’ politics may be seen in contemporary feminism, which weaponizes words. For his part, Bauman “will defy all those who insist on taking the language and the literature of Western tradition to the verbal veterinarian in order to have them neutered.” In theology, feminists attempt to substitute God, Jesus, and the Spirit for Father, Son and Holy Ghost, “as if the Son were not God, as if the revelation in Scripture could be altered at will, and as if heresy were a trifle.” Jesus almost always spoke of God as Father, “not merely continu[ing] the patriarchal theology of the Old Testament” but intensifying it, inasmuch as God is rarely described as “Father” in the Old Testament. “The feminists, in other words, are fighting with Christ, and they must be made to realize this,” if they do not already. Jesus insists that “no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals Him, and the Son has revealed Him to us as Father. If you reject that revelation, then, in some profound fashion, you can not know God.”

Another way feminists describe the Trinity is as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. This replaces the personhood of God with a set of functions—a variation of the Sabellian heresy, “modalism,” which “denied that God is authoritatively revealed to us as three Persons, but which affirmed instead that God merely fulfills three functions and plays three roles.” To this, feminists add a second well-known heresy, the one advanced by Marcion, who “rejected the authoritative witness of the Hebrew Scriptures,” denigrating the God revealed in them. In their version of Marcionism, “feminists reject the God of the Jews because they think He is merely the culture-bound product of a political an sexist agenda. I reject the God of the feminists for precisely the same reason.”

That agenda includes legalized abortion, again by an act of “linguistic sleight of hand.” To call the murder of babies the ‘abortion’ of a ‘fetus,’ feminist words hide “the real nature (murder) of their action and the real identity (baby) of their victim”; some even go further, calling this the ‘termination of a pregnancy,’ which artfully re-centers the question on the condition of the woman, not the life of her child. This act is done on the basis of the claim that a woman has the right to control her own body. Indeed she does, “but that is not the issue here.” “It is not her body, after all, that is being murdered; it is someone else’s,” and the body of a human being at that—having “twenty-three sets of paired chromosomes,” a set different from her own. “It is not something she may do with as she pleases.” “I do believe in abortion rights. I believe that it is the right of every human being not to be murdered by abortion.”

More controversially, in turning to the foundations of ethical thought, Bauman argues that no firm morality can be sustained without fidelity to God. His target appears to be a form of Aristotelianism that attempts to incorporate modern evolutionary theory into its teleological account of nature. This neo-Aristotelianism holds that human nature has a purpose and that ethical conduct consists in habituating the soul in ways that conduce to fulfilling that purpose. [1] On the contrary, Bauman writes, “one must not contend that human nature and human flourishing yield moral absolutes, properly so-called, because such a theory fails to account for (1) the origin of human nature, (2) changes in human nature, and (3) the selection of ‘flourishing’ as a category of moral discernment.” 

With respect to human origins, “if nature arose as the chance result of mindless evolutionary process, a process behind which exists no divine mind and no divine plan, then moral absolutes disappear” because right and wrong themselves must be “accidents, not moral absolutes.” That is, such a theory runs squarely into Hume’s ‘is/ought’ problem. It amounts to “a system of biological relativism.”

Similarly, if changes in human nature occur as the result either of evolutionary theory’s natural selection or of humanly-designed transformation (for example, manipulation of the human genome to get rid of, say, aggression), then that “is the death knell of any and all moral absolutes supposedly rooted in human nature.” What will be produced will no longer be “fully human”; the means will have destroyed the end. Further, as such changes occur, over time, “which version of human nature supersedes the other and is to be considered the fountain from which all right and wrong arise?” We will then present ourselves with “the logical contradiction of having a number of competing sets of moral absolutes.” 

Finally, “why flourishing (and not something else) should be the measure of virtue, cannot be proven.” “Flourishing” is a squishy category; Bauman charges that it leaves us with the chaos of personal preferences, whereby there is no real way to choose between the morality of Jesus of Nazareth and the morality of the Marquis de Sade. In arguing as C. S. Lewis does in The Abolition of Man, that there exists among the nations “substantial agreement…about the rules of right and wrong,” and that “therefore these rules of right and wrong are moral absolutes,” makes consensus the “measure of morality.” But “‘majority’ is no synonym for ‘morality.'”

Given these observations, Bauman concludes that “virtue is not known by reason alone, but by revelation and by Providence.” “If there is no God, there is no good.” 

The conclusion doesn’t quite follow from the premises, however. The logical contradiction of having a number of competing sets of moral absolutes occurs as well among sets of religious persons as it does among atheists. Substitute ‘piety’ for ‘flourishing’ in the formulation above and you see what I mean. Indeed, Christian moralists are among the first to charge that a man like de Sade has made a (false) god out of his pleasure, especially in the satisfaction of his libido dominandi. And rightly so, one might well argue, but that doesn’t remove the problem of moral pluralism until you can show the falsity of all gods but God. And if one says that reason can’t show that but revelation can, that to know God is to know Him as a Person, noetically by means of His Holy Spirit, not logically as the conclusion of a proof, that still doesn’t show that an atheist can’t sustain a theory of virtue.

Why not? Because a proponent of virtue as flourishing can reply, ‘I base my ethics on a meaning of ‘good’ that differs from yours. There are at least two ways of calling someone or something good. One is on the basis of the judgment of some superior being; I say, “good dog” or “bad dog” depending upon whether the dog obeys me, as its master. The other is on the basis of whether the dog fulfills its nature, instances the characteristic qualities of its species and breed. A good human might well be good (or as good as humans get) in the eyes of God; a good human might also be good according to the standard of human nature. This might include not only bodily health but a rightly-ordered soul, a soul that exhibits the distinctively human characteristics of speech and reason. 

Having disposed to his satisfaction of nature as a source of morality, Bauman turns to another putative source of morality, history. He views it favorably, not as a source of morality (in the manner of ‘historicists,’ who tend to claim that the course of events points not only onward but finally upward) but as a source of vicarious experience, from which one’s native prudence may be enhanced. “The history of mankind is a narrative of frauds and deceits,” the storybook of evildoing and evil-saying. “An acquaintance with the ways of evil…engenders for us a protection”; “we need not fall prey to the same old ploys our fathers did.” History provides us with “a treasure trove of wisdom, gleaned from thousands of years of experience and thoughtful reflection.” History also “enables us to make informed predictions about the likely outcome of various possible courses of action.” One comes to beware those who tell us (for example) that the dictatorship of the proletarian vanguard may be harsh but it will yield sweet fruit. Still another benefit of historical study is the study of human reasoning. As Bauman has himself demonstrated, “most current philosophical and theological disagreements stem from presuppositions that reach far back into the history of ideas.” Listening to the latest ‘opinion maker’ or ‘thought leader,’ one almost always finds unoriginality. Intellectual shock tactics become less shocking if you know where the argument is going because you know where it’s been taken before. And the study of history itself delights, “afford[ing] both the excitement of discover and the satisfaction of acquired mastery.”

Still another source of morality is quite familiar to any theologian, pilgrim or otherwise. It is eschatology, a form of prophecy that can be much abused. In keeping with his personalism, Bauman turns away from “macro-eschatology” or “God’s plan for the nations and the world” toward “micro-eschatology” or “God’s plan for individual people.” The latter is “more suitable for a theological pilgrimage,” as Scripture “is more clear and accessible” in this realm than in the Book of Revelation (to take the most striking example). The Bible’s vision for individual Christians is that “they shall be like Christ,” and Christ is the embodiment of a telos on a human, not a ‘world-historical’ scale. As what the world Christians will live in with Jesus will be like, “I don’t know.” He will surprise us.

The final source of moral authority in the modern world Bauman addresses is science, which claims not to prophesy but to predict, with ever-increasing rigor, because it can make its predictions come true, with ever-increasing power. He considers scientists to be more like theologians than scientists care to admit, at least in terms of their cosmological theories, although the theories themselves vary more than Christian theological orthodoxy does. That may be because God assists theologians in their quest to understand him more than nature assists scientists in their quest to understand it: “unlike nature, God wills to be understood and actively reveals Himself to us,” given Christian revelation a finality not seen in scientific theologizing. At the same time, scientists “tend to resist the overthrow of their cherished beliefs” as much as anyone else, they can be as stubborn as theologians in resisting such challenges, albeit with less warrant, since they make so much of experimentation and revision of opinion.

Their claims to empiricism are also misplaced. “Many of the issues of science are neither purely scientific nor genuinely empirical,” inasmuch as scientific presuppositions and procedures are inescapably philosophical and, indeed, empiricism itself rests of philosophic grounds. “If, as some scientists insist, real science is truly empirical and reduces only to empirical methods and to the conclusions reached by using them, then there is no real science, because the theory-independent observation, analysis, and conclusions needed to establish such empirical premises are simply not possible.” “Physics always has its metaphysics.” On the basis of science so conceived, scientists can’t say why science is good.

Nor can it say what it is. To ask, ‘What is science?’ begs a philosophic, not an empirical answer “because the question itself presupposes and requires a vantage point from outside science.” 

What has this to do with Christ, as distinguished from philosophy? Science is procedurally a-theist, non-theistic. It implicitly “denies that Christ is Lord of the universe, an inescapably theological denial.” “Because Christ is foundational to the universe, He is foundational to science,” providing the rational ground upon which the sciences stand. By claiming “that only those things that are testable under controlled laboratory conditions qualify as hard knowledge,” that “all else is merely opinion,” scientists assume an empiricism that cannot confirm its own validity. In the moral and political realms, preeminently realms of opinion, this leaves only force, that empirical thing, as the only arbiter. 

To make a Person, Christ, the foundation of the universe, indeed its Creator, does not, however, require one to accept Bauman’s own radical personalism. He regards all taxonomies as artificial, even if “helpful and serviceable.” “While the beings that populate those categories most emphatically do exist, the families, orders, classes and phyla into which we have pigeon-holed them do not.” Such categories “do not exist outside the taxonomists mind.” This nominalism is little more than empiricism in disguise. It is also un-Biblical, given Adam’s God-given task of naming the plants and animals in the Garden according to their kind. The many nouns Bauman uses in the course of his book and the logical arguments he makes neither help nor serve any person (except by accident) if they exist only in his own head. Such wise sentences as “Because human nature is what it is, without great volumes of enforceable, law, freedom is impossible” fall into the void.

Bauman ends with a vigorous polemic against the mentality of the New Left of the 1960s, which he once admired. “Those who loved the sixties own today,” having occupied authoritative institutions in the universities, the media, and governmental bureaucracies. But this pilgrim has moved on. “My desire for you is that you throw off the vestiges of leftist cultural subversion” and “become the faithful and ardent friend of God.” That is the true liberation, which the liberationists of the Sixties had not achieved because they could not achieve it on the road they chose to take.

When he wrote this book, Michael Bauman had left that road, although he may have left a shoe behind on it, never having re-shod his thinking with a realism that recognizes not only persons and things as real but kinds as real, too. He was a colleague of mine for fifteen years, and it is one of my regrets that I didn’t read his book until after he had died. I wish I had given myself the chance to talk to him about it.

 

Note

1. An example of this claim may be found in Larry Arhhart: Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.)