(Please read my previous post first, if you haven’t.)
Try to follow me here: Christianity, I was arguing, necessarily implies an ambivalence towards any moral-political culture. On the one hand, it reinforces much conventional moral content by declaring it to be the object of a divine command: Thou shalt not steal, commit adultery, etc. At the same time, Christianity wrenches that moral content out of a practical, immanent world, a functional economy of need and hierarchy, and in fact declares that world to be fallen, prideful, devoid of spiritual meaning. The tendency is evident already in Augustine: since our true home is the Heavenly City, the City of Man (the political world) has no higher purpose but to enable compromise regarding the necessities of mortality. Radical Augustinians from Calvinists and Jansenists (including Pascal) through Kierkegaard and Catholic postmodernists such as Jean-Luc Marion emancipate this gesture of radical transcendence from the Platonic moorings still at work in Augustine.
Of course I am aware that there are other Christian theological traditions than the radical Augustinian, most notably the Thomist, but I confess my doubts as to whether natural law can withstand the depreciation of the political. (But that’s another, longer discussion.) It is no accident that the radicals of transcendence tend to prevail, since their message of the transience or relativity of merely political (social-moral-cultural-economic) order is only a half-truth, but it’s a compelling half, easy to grasp and apt to “inspire.” The easiest thing to grasp about the City of God is that it is not the City of Man – that is to say, that all existing moral-political authority is all-too-human, and that every individual represents some promise, some meaning, some destiny far beyond anything that can be represented in the economy of an actual political-cultural world.
The men who took the woman in adultery were corrupt. I gather they were not following the Torah in various ways; most notably they had failed to accuse the male offender. Christ wrote something on the ground (some evocation of Torah?) that convicted their conscience and thus undermined their authority. But here is the hard question I am trying to ask: if all the authoritative Jews (or Rolmans, or Christians, or upright ruling persons generally) were thus convicted and demoralized (as well they might be), then where would we be?
Liberals, to be sure, do not like to be reminded that Christ commands the woman to “go and sin no more.” So the category of sin appears intact. But, again, here is what I am asking: can the category of sin effectively subsist without that of crime, without, that is, an authoritative moral culture (that is, a functional political community) that thinks enough of its own righteousness and judgment (that is, that sustains enough healthy hypocrisy) to … cast a stone now and then? Can virtue be completely severed from honor, and vice from shame?
Christianity offers conventional political-cultural morality divine sanction (in certain of its essentials), but at the same time it undermines the worldly meaning of that moral economy. At the limit, we are asked to hold that adultery is an awful sin in the eyes of God, and at the same time that our most deeply felt and socially anchored judgments of right/wrong stand convicted from the standpoint of a transcendence we cannot grasp.
Let us switch to a more contemporary example. Say an unmarried teen-aged girl in our Christian congregation is pregnant. She has been taught a thousand times by her parents and her Church leaders the virtue of chastity. But she is pregnant. Now, should we exclude her from the activities of the other teen-aged girls in the congregation? No, we should, while hating the sin, show love for the sinner, right? What’s most important is to rescue “the one” (as opposed to the 99), to show love and forgiveness, and certainly not to exclude the girl from the group and thus practically guarantee that her soul will be lost.
But then, what is the practical lesson to be learned by the other girls in the small Christian group? They may still assent in principle to the doctrine that unchastity is a grave sin – but it hardly seems so portentous now, does it? The sin without the crime, the vice without the shame, becomes pretty abstract. It is obvious that there are perfectly good and normal, well-accepted, regular people who “sin.” So sin is just what people do, no?
Compare the harsh response that was routine in Christian societies not long ago: see the Marcel Pagnol film, recently remade with/by the incomparable Daniel Auteuil, La Fille du Puisatier (The Well-Digger’s Daughter). An unmarried pregnant daughter is a shame beyond bearing, and there is no resort but to banish the daughter.
The Puisatier’s response is unimaginably cruel for us. For me to respond in that way to one of my own daughters is for me literally unthinkable. But how cruel is our kindness, or compassion? Can we reach out to “the one” without demoralizing the 99? Can we extend compassionate forgiveness without relativizing the social morality that actually has teeth, that informs our habits and sensibilities, that structures our political-cultural world?
(Apply this same analysis to the problem of homosexuality, if you dare.)
My thesis: Politics (an authoritative and hierarchical moral-cultural world) is the Rule, Christianity the Exception. The Exception (grace) presupposes and depends upon The Rule (nature). Virtue rises above mere honor, and reaches out with compassion to the dishonored. The Exception interrupts, softens, convicts the Rule.
But the Exception must not, cannot, completely relativize, eliminate The Rule.
For us late-liberal-democrats, the Exception is the New Rule. Grace has been naturalized. Tolerance is on the verge of becoming the only politically authorized and socially-culturally instantiated morality. This is not an authentic consequence of Christianity, but it is still a consequence of a deep impulse abetted by Christianity, that of relativizing all worldly moral authority.
What then is to be done? To sustain the very meaning of virtue and sin, must Christians change sides and take up the cause of worldly honor and shame? And of the always necessarily (at least to some degree) unjust hierarchy implicit in any world of honor and shame? Must Christians be more clear-sightedly political than the men and women of the world? Who will throw the first stone?
December 11th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
[...] Politics and Christianity: The Rule and The Exception (Continued)First Things (blog)Try to follow me here: Christianity, I was arguing, necessarily implies an ambivalence towards any moral-political culture. On the one hand, it reinforces much conventional moral content by declaring it to be the object of a divine command: Thou shalt … [...]
December 11th, 2012 | 5:57 pm
Awesome post. How does the awesomeness of our God not get lost to us when our worship is casual, and our social forgiveness too easy? And yet, the extremes possible when we try to rectify these are apparent to those who know church history, or even Christianity’s present variety. The non-Christian elements of those extremes are part of what makes them scandalous. The reasoning behind the expulsion of the well-digger’s daughter, for example, seems more in tune with pagan texts, I’m thinking of Livy especially as read by Machiavelli, than those of the New Testament.
I’m not accepting this, though: “…and in fact [Christianity also] declares that world to be …devoid of spiritual meaning.”
December 11th, 2012 | 7:49 pm
I think a big part of what you’re saying here pertains to how Christians should view punishment for injustice: retributive, deterrent, or reformatory. Many times with Christians the retribution and deterrents go by the wayside, and put themselves in the role of the reforming and rehabilitating parent, which is the way they see God.
It may seem too simple an answer, but I think Christians should interpret the mandate to “Render unto Caesar” as a mandate from Christ to know your place and role as a human in this life. We can’t forgive and achieve justice in this life with the perfect Misericordia of God. One of my Cathechists told me growing up, “God forgives and forgets the sins we tell at confession. Human beings at most will can forgive sins committed on them by other people.” We can’t fully forget sins because of our human nature, and the nature of evil since its effects go on and on. As the band Iron Maiden once sang, “The Evil that Men Do Lives On and On”
December 11th, 2012 | 8:06 pm
“The men who took the woman in adultery were corrupt. I gather they were not following the Torah in various ways; most notably they had failed to accuse the male offender. Christ wrote something on the ground (some evocation of Torah?) that convicted their conscience and thus undermined their authority.”
Jesus Christ, ACLU Superstar! i.e. translation: Jesus made a due process argument.
“But here is the hard question I am trying to ask: if all the authoritative Jews (or Rolmans, or Christians, or upright ruling persons generally) were thus convicted and demoralized (as well they might be), then where would we be?
Exactly where we are! Namely prosecutors very much inclined to follow due process. That no guilty party may ever yet again escape on a technicality or loop hole!
Ralph, quit trying to get republicans in trouble! The concept of “healthy hypocrisy”, or undue process simply feeds aggregate demand for more Jesus Christ Superstars. In truth then we can simply say that the ACLU makes prosecutors more virtuous. In turn it is ironically the prosecutors that make the people more virtuous. At least theoretically.
I also think you need to update your views of the ACLU and liberals. I am pretty sure that 99% of them would sign on to a petition for the proposition that you should “go and sin no more”. I am pretty sure of this, because I am pretty sure most of them realize they are just rooting out undue process or “healthy hypocracy”, as a result the “next time”…the prosecutor will be better and really will get you. Prosecutor, minus healthy hypocracy, equals right side of History. Go and sin no more, because you are innocent due to a mistake on the part of the prosecutor…but next time the prosecutor will come back stronger than ever, purged of “healthy hypocracy” and he will bury you. In fact the prosecutor is a very mean person, and by sinning you are just stimulating aggregate demand for prosecutors. Don’t you want revenge for being brought to justice in the first place? Do your part to make sure the prosecutor starves…go and sin no more!
Also in terms of political economy, what you are saying opposing christianity to the world strikes me as similar to the teachings of Bernard Mandeville. I maintain that it isn’t liberals or really the ACLU who opposes the idea of “go and sin no more”…but rather Bernard Mandeville.
The ACLU certainly doesn’t oppose the idea of “Go and Sin no more”, in part because to do so would be way too ambulence chaser, and in truth it is against public policy, legal ethics, et al.
So anyways, that is fairly off topic perhaps.
December 11th, 2012 | 10:48 pm
In the case of the pregnant girl, how do you know that because there is sin without crime there is also vice without shame? No doubt her parents who love her expressed that they were disappointed. I doubt the youth pastor celebrated her in front of the other girls, so that to the others it would seem that teenage sex was all fun and no cost. She surely wasn’t excited by the news. The absence of a fixed judicial response to the sin doesn’t preclude considerable embarrassment and shame.
The crux is whether the pregnant girl values her place in the community and respects her parents/peers/co-religionists. If she does, then her pregnancy is a rebuke to her behavior in and of itself and she has to bear her shame (which raises the point of abortion. If we don’t build in a second sin to get her out of the consequences of her first sin, then her promiscuity does have repercussions). If she doesn’t, then not even an enforceable law will solve the deeper problem she and her community face.
If postmodernism has taught us anything, it is that all worldly moral authority IS relative, especially the closer that authority comes to political, coercive power, where the inevitable human failings of egoism enter in. For Christians to enforce morals that in the here and now they consider absolute, then they have to do it through persuasion and through having a community that is desirable enough that wayward individuals will submit to discipline voluntarily because of the greater good they see in being a part of Christian faith.
December 12th, 2012 | 12:20 am
Oops, I missed a question: “can the category of sin effectively subsist without that of crime.”
Of course I more or less assume that sin and crime are identical. But you made me do it, since you jumped to the idea that liberals/ACLU/ defense attorneys are somehow all about encouraging sin as something that is good for business. That Mandevillian possibility is forclosed by legal ethics. In this sense of course neither liberals nor the ACLU are concerned with sin that is not also a crime. I was answering the question in terms of “sin” that is also “crime”.
Technically speaking liberals say: Go and commit crimes no more. On the other hand given the fact that lawyers tend to er on the safe side, they might also say: Go and Sin no more. Also lets not underestimate the ego effects of echoing Jesus.
So “Sin” really encompasses a much broader field of behavior than “crime”… also who is to say that liberals shouldn’t be all about the blasphemy of “Go and sin no more”…after all blasphemy is a “sin”, but not a crime*!
Actually some forms of blasphemy are potentially crimes against toleration, albeit I might lump them more into the trademark or the reputational intellectual property sphere, as a crime against reputation…or in this case as the evil “liberal” ACLU purposefully trying to dilute the “brand” of Jesus, by echoing an invocation to go and sin no more! So Blasphemy is dilution?
In what sense do you want to make sin a crime? Very generally it seems that we have made those sins a crime which cause harm to a specific person. Murder cause harm to a particular person, but blasphemy in point of fact doesn’t touch God, but at best harms a property interest some faction has in ascribing to God certain exclusive characteristics. In this sense what you call toleration, vis a vis blasphemy isn’t far off from unfair competition.
If sin can’t exist outside of crime(or a criminal structure), how can blasphemy exist under the first ammendment? There exists a whole world of sin, that no one needs to recognize, or that grew up outside the american legal framework.
Also an objection:
“At the limit, we are asked to hold that adultery is an awful sin in the eyes of God.”
False, adultery is an awful sin in the eyes of pre-modern Man. To some extent also in the eyes of modern man. blasphemy is a sin against God…but adultery is a sin against your parents capacity to contract you out, in an arranged marriage for a dowry. It is actually a sin against your own reputation, or your servicemark. If someone else owns you as property and is in the act of alienating you for a dowry, then adultery is a sin against “God” (albeit here I would argue that you are engaging in blasphemy), because in truth you are using “God” in a rather instrumental way to advance your interests.
Adultery is punishable in large measure by the reputation of being a slut. (where is the guy, Jesus would say?) Hypothetically it is bad “servicemark”. In many cases adultery is presumed to be bad servicemark, and thus grounds for blackmail…so in cases where you actually are an important person, i.e. your servicemark matters more…you can get entwined in complex legal difficulties from being adulterous. case in point: General Petraeus.
So Adultery is a crime against your own servicemark, going to your capacity for restrain and self discipline. Having such a servicemark/reputation is much worse for generals, and almost imperative for porn stars.
So Blasphemy is a sin against God’s servicemark, and Adultery is a sin against your own servicemark.
December 13th, 2012 | 12:41 am
For me, the most interesting question asked and addressed in this post was: ‘Can virtue be completely severed from honor, and vice from shame?’ I think that honor and virtue, as defined here, are independent, yet they influence each other, as do shame and vice. For them to be completely severed may be possible, yet not advisable for a community of people.
This does bring up some interesting questions.
To say that our actions in relation to this world are ‘devoid of spiritual meaning’ is mistaken; I, however, read the sentence containing that phrase to mean that the author means the functional, heirarchical, economy of need is factual, and value-neutral.
Can virtue be severed from honor? I think of honor in this context as the political, or social value accorded to a particular act by a particular person.
One fundamentally good thing I see in having virtue not be severed from honor, but rather honor being modeled after virtue (true virtue- the earthly laws modeled after the heavenly, if you will), is NOT that an honor (from men) will convince a person that they do right, but rather, if a man does right (hopefully) men will ‘honor’ that person.
December 13th, 2012 | 1:07 am
It does seem a little harsh that we are to do as Jesus would do, but do it as imperfect persons, and therefore always as hypocrites of a sort.
But is it Christian to “tolerate” the unrepentant? It seems obvious to me that it is not (for example, an unrepentant child molester.) Certainly we are not to hold personal grudges, but when a sinner poses a threat to another, physical or spiritual, it seems right that we should seek to minimize the damage.
I think that is actually what Jesus was doing with the woman taken in adultery.
With all the this-world-ly evidence we have that sexual sin is damaging individuals and in particular depriving children of their just claim to orderly parenting, it seems to me that standing against the tide of sexual license is a godly virtue, though it will be assigned lots of worldly shame. In our day, it is the sexual license advocates that would like to (legally) stone the “traditionalists” for various sins occurring in “traditional” families. I believe were Jesus among us, He would do what He could to prevent that.
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