Comments on: Medieval Liberalism vs. Dr. Pat Deneen’s Puritanical Aristotelianism

By: CJ Wolfe

CJ Wolfe — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:20:20 +0000

That’s a rather high “wall of separation” between church and state you’re claiming there, John. But I think if you take a closer look at the history (particularly Philip Hamburger’s book), you’ll see that a complete separation of church and state with no entanglments is a revisionist view of the original intent of the First Amendment

By: John C

John C — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:30:04 +0000

“If the founders didn’t care about promoting religion, why did they include freedom of religious clause in the First Amendement at all?” To make it plain that the federal government was not in the business of promoting religion or virtue. I don’t see how the words of the amendment collapses free exercise into freedom of association. You seem to want to turn the amendment on its head. What it appears to expressly prohibit you say it sanctions and encourages. Aside from the issue of federalism and the role of the states in doing what you ascribe to the First Amendment, the Founders, it seems to me, would suggest that once the federal government gets involved in such matters it necessarily becomes involved in a debate about the summum bonum and this is a recipe for a rather turbulent, and potentially tyrannical, system of government. The civil power is not in the business of the salvation of souls. After all, “The philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether the summum bonum consisted in riches, bodily delights, virtue, or contemplation: they might as reasonably have disputed whether the best relish were in apples, plums, or nuts.”

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:38:22 +0000

I’m not baptizing Locke (for one thing, I’m not about baptizing the dead) and Locke was actually baptized, I hear.

Locke agrees with the Christians–against Aristotle–that natural theology and civil theology are untrue because they can’t account for the free person. He disagrees with them in many other ways. If Jaffa and Jaffa-ites REALLY agree with the Christians on that point too, I’m really up for talking with them. They should, of course, as good Christians and/or good Lockeans lighten up about being all civil theological about the Declaration of Independence.

Keeping Locke in the Locke box has to do with his inability to account for the social and relational dimensions of being personal–and so for being unable to see, as the early Christians did, that LOGOS is PERSONAL. (And so that NOMINALISM is untrue etc.)

I agree that the Founders were about keeping government from intruding on institutional embodiments of religion. So they were about more than protecting private conscience. From Lee Ward I’ve learned that Locke was too–although, of course, probably not enough.

By: CJ Wolfe

CJ Wolfe — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:08:53 +0000

John C., if the founders didn’t care about promoting religion, why did they include freedom of religious clause in the First Amendement at all? Why not just protect freedom of religion through “freedom of association,” if the founders had a vacuous notion of what a “church” was. I think it’s clear that they considered churches to be special associations. Your argument reducing freedom of religion to freedom of association is the route that the liberal members of the Supreme Court want to take, by the way. It undoubtedly would allow the HHS mandate since one association is just as unimportant as another in comparison to the compelling state interest of providing affordable health care.

By: CJ Wolfe

CJ Wolfe — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:48:17 +0000

Sorry, I meant to say “Donald Drakeman,” the First Amendment scholar, not “Donald Davidson,” the analytic philosopher.

My point is that there is a whole different argument behind “freedom of conscience” vs. “free exercise.” Free exercise looks more to the churches with doctrines, but freedom of conscience looks more to the individual believer and gets into questions of sincerity of belief. Jefferson’s argument for freedom of conscience in the “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” is a wholly new basis not found in Locke at all. Even the epistmology is different, when Jefferson writes that:
“opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds,”
and includes religious belief among that evidence as opposed to sense-perceptions. Locke’s arguments on toleration rest on political or ethical premises, but the “freedom of conscience” is a different bird

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:46:35 +0000

Well, I look forward to Peter’s answer to John’s charge of being a new Jaffa-like baptizer of Locke, even though I know the gist of it.

But I would like to hear Peter explain this:

“So in my opinion the anti-ecclesiasticism of Madison’s MEMORIAL AND REMONSTRANCE (which roots conscience in the solitary individual) is not even properly Lockean.”

And I would even more like to hear what commenter Sara H. says about that, knowing Locke and the issue of religious freedom as well as she does.

By: John C

John C — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:54:08 +0000

“But following Donald Davidson, I’m of the opinion that the original understanding of the First Amendment was not Jeffersonian or Madisonian but Washingtonian. By “Washingtonian” that I mean the state promotes religion in a non-preferential way, in order to encourage virtue and serve the common good.” Why not just read the Amendment as written. It prohibits the government to make laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It says nothing about “promoting” religion or encouraging virtue. It also says nothing about what a church is.

Locke’s understanding of personal identity is in some ways closer to the Catholic understanding not because of Locke but because the Catholic understanding has been Lockeanized. I like your “keeping Locke in a lock box” more than this attempt to baptize Locke. You’re starting to sound like Michael Novak and Harry Jaffa.

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:37:59 +0000

So the freedom is freedom of the church as an organized body of thought and action.

By: CJ Wolfe

CJ Wolfe — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:31:16 +0000

This much of what Deneen says is correct: the right to conscience is not the proper argument against the HHS mandate. If you look at the First Amendment, you won’t find a right to “freedom of conscience” but a right to “free exercise” of religion. Right to conscience gets into much more confusion than free exercise does, because there is no way for me to look inside your conscience. The “freedom of conscience” claim is a Jeffersonian argument that can be found in his “Bill for Religious Freedom.” I agree with you Peter that it can also be found in a roundabout way in Madison’s “religion-blind” constitution, too. But following Donald Davidson, I’m of the opinion that the original understanding of the First Amendment was not Jeffersonian or Madisonian but Washingtonian. By “Washingtonian” that I mean the state promotes religion in a non-preferential way, in order to encourage virtue and serve the common good. Promotion of free exercise of religion is a good thing because it gives religion a special exalted status in the eyes of the government; the Church would be wise to defend free exercise. Freedom of Conscience is a much more subjectivistic right than free exercise