Prepared for Delivery at the conference "Liberal Democracy and Religion" in Lisbon, Portugal - June 21-25, 2000 (Sponsored by the Catholic University of Portugal and Michigan State University)
What is the relationship of liberal democracy and the political teaching of the Bible? Today, the status of this question is unclear. It is unclear why we raise it or even that we should bother to do so. This was, of course, not always the case.
Once upon a time, it was an open, important, even an urgent and decisive question. That day was some 300 to 350 years ago when liberal democracy was first openly and seriously proposed as the best way to organize political life. The first proponents of liberal democracy regarded the political teaching of the Bible as practically speaking one of the two most important topics to be addressed. But is it so any longer? Is this question perhaps now and forevermore a closed question, an historical question. As such it may well be an interesting question, perhaps the most interesting question or framework for considering where we have been and how we liberal democrats came to be what we are. But it will not be an urgent question, a question about where we are to go today, as the slogan of Microsoft would have it. Still less about where we will go tomorrow. It is a subject we must and will reserve for times of leisure. But this might be as much to say never. For to judge by the present experience of the United States, the world's oldest and most successful liberal democracy, leisure is in short supply, thanks to at least one of the founders of liberal democracy, John Locke. Formally leisure still exists. We Americans still have a Sabbath. Indeed in good liberal democratic fashion we have two. But we find it useful and appropriate to employ our Sabbaths on other matters. We present day American liberal democrats believe in motion rather than rest, motion towards the bright future rather than leisured reflection on the past, even our own more or less immediate past, let alone anything more remote, like Biblical antiquity. There is perhaps nothing which better embodies the peculiar status of our question than the ambiguous meaning of the Sabbath in present day liberal democracy.
For reasons I will indicate, the political teaching of the Bible may not exactly be the closed story it appears. Indeed, liberal democracy may need to call upon it. But to consider this possibility as well as to discuss that political teaching itself it is useful to review how we have reached this moment and what this moment is.
As I mentioned before our subject became urgent some 300 to 350 years ago when liberal democracy was first openly and seriously proposed as the best way to organize political life. According to its first proponents, most importantly Benedict Spinoza but also John Locke, it was absolutely necessary, indeed the first order of business, to address the political teaching of the Bible.1 But according to Spinoza and Locke, having addressed that question, they had also settled it, at least in principle. Most importantly, the settlement they proposed was the repudiation of the political teaching of the Bible.
In a way, that was almost required by definition. The Bible's political teaching appeared and was understood to be monarchic and thereby to support monarchic rule both generally and even specifically through such doctrines as the divine right of kings. To propose democracy, let alone liberal democracy, as the best form of political rule it was necessary to remove the support that the Bible apparently gave to monarchy.
Of course to propose the liberal version of democratic rule presented additional Biblical complications. As originally understood by Spinoza, the most important feature of liberal democracy was the absence of theocratic rule or as we nowadays put it, the separation of church and state. In contrast, the politics of the Bible were understood to represent the original and perhaps most perfect form of theocracy. Though the separation of church and state proved, especially in the hands of Locke, not to be the only important feature of the liberalism of liberal democracy all others depended in one way or another on the absence of Biblical theocracy.
To reach the conclusion that they did, both Spinoza and Locke were obliged to argue, each in his own way, that such force as the political teaching of the Bible had once had no longer existed. Spinoza in particular argued that this teaching had only applied to the ancient Israelite nation and when this nation had ceased to exist its political teaching had lapsed along with the law with which it was associated. One could now dispense with it altogether and should with a view to the bright prospect of a new form of political rule, liberal democracy. The most prominent benefits of liberal democracy would be greater security or peace, greater freedom and greater prosperity. Altogether this would provide greater justice than was heretofore available in human life and solve man's age-old problems.
It is fair to observe that the arguments of Spinoza and Locke did not immediately and completely settle the matter and could not, even for them. The struggle to establish liberal democracy was not easy. It had to overcome the past and the long entrenched opinions, habits and institutions bequeathed by it. It had to overcome older, often Biblical views of justice and man's rights and responsibilities. All this took a long time to accomplish and faced many obstacles along its path. So long as that was the case their question and mine might reasonably be considered still open and even urgent. What they claimed to have settled in principle required also, by virtue of being a political proposal, a settlement based in the concrete facts of political life and action. It required above all the founding of an actual liberal democracy which was first accomplished through the founding of the United States of America more than two hundred years ago (1787). It required "really existing liberal democracy," to borrow a neo-Marxist formula.
Strictly speaking even that did not settle the matter. For the force of their arguments ultimately depended upon the long term success of America. Would America, and other liberal democracies like it, prove to be the most successful form of political rule or not? That was an open question for a long time, 204 years to be exact. For the obstacles to liberal democracy were not only Biblical but modern alternatives, beginning with the French Revolution. It was still open as recently as 10 years ago and seemed especially doubtful only 20 years ago when Soviet communism seemed ascendant and America in decline. But it is now closed, closed through the triumph of the West and America in the Cold War in 1991. Through that victory, America and liberal democracy generally have been revealed to be the most successful form of modern political life and perhaps the most successful in history simply. The case finally seems closed on the merits of liberal democracy and therewith the practical import of the political teaching of the Bible.
As I said before, the matter proves, even at this late date, to be a bit more complicated. Nevertheless, for the reasons just cited we are uniquely situated to examine this question.
In providing this overview of the question and history of liberal democracy I have, to put it literally, skipped over a great deal which is appropriate to this subject. I have focused on liberal democracy's beginnings in philosophic thought and jumped to the most recent experience of the most complete and successful fruit of that thought, America. This is open to some objections of which I am aware. Nevertheless, it is justified, in my opinion, by several considerations: First liberal democracy, as a political undertaking, must be understood and judged in the light of political experience. America provides that experience more completely and purely, some would say too purely, than any other polity.
Second, though many factors went into the founding and experience of America, it is to a remarkable, even amazing degree, the product of human thought. In particular, it is the product of the minds of men like Spinoza and Locke, to whom we might add Francis Bacon, Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, all of whom contributed some feature or other which has proven important to the constitution, literal and figurative, of liberal democracy as it is embodied in America.
Indeed, one might say that American liberal democracy is a polity which was imagined many years, even hundreds of years, before it existed. It was imagined as a new Rome, one which would replace, not to mention improve upon, two other Romes, the pagan Rome of antiquity and the Christian Rome of the middle ages. This new Rome first made its appearance in the dreams of the men to whom I referred, dreams which one is tempted to call prophetic, in light of the present day success of America whose only historical analog is its Roman predecessors.
In fact, if all these great men were alive today and able to observe present day America, they might be tempted to speak to us as God spoke to Jeremiah when he said, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you emerged from the womb I sanctified you and gave you as a prophet to the nations." (Jer 1:5) They would claim to see in us a great deal of their handiwork and they would be right. They would point to our political principles and institutions, and the freedom and security they provide. They could also take credit for our market economy, our technological innovation and progress, and the extraordinary prosperity they provide. They would point out that these features of contemporary life were the offspring of their extraordinary minds, of human reason, and that their success had been achieved through at least some kind of liberation from the strictures of the teaching of the Bible as they had come to be applied in Western Europe, prior to their efforts. Spinoza and Locke in particular could point not only to their political proposals but to their role as the founders of a new and amazingly successful form of Biblical interpretation. They might even claim that their success was due to a liberation from the Biblical teaching altogether, a claim more easily expressed openly in our time than in their own. At all events, they would observe that America having achieved its own success is fast becoming a prophet to the other nations. If this prophecy, like Jeremiah's, is not always welcome, it, unlike Jeremiah's, appears to be proving to be irresistible. Like ancient Rome, America seems poised to embrace and transform all other nations, not, of course, immediately but nonetheless ineluctably.
It is this situation, the extraordinary success of America as the result of a vision whose inspiration was human rather than divine, which places the utility of our subject in doubt. But precisely insofar as America must be taken to be the embodiment of that vision, we can and are indeed obliged to wonder whether that vision has been realized exactly as they expected. In particular we are obliged to wonder whether the teaching, even the political teaching, of the Bible is a settled matter.
The most obvious source of our wonder is the fact that the vast majority of America's citizens remain attached to religion, and in particular, for the time being, to religion grounded in the Bible. This is most striking not merely because America is a liberal democracy. After all it is now only one among many and the situation elsewhere, especially here in Europe, is very much different. Rather the difficulty is that America is the most advanced and successful of liberal democracies, the most liberal of liberal democracies and the most economically and technologically advanced. Thus the peak of liberal democracy is attended by a most vigorous attachment to the Bible. We seem obliged to face the fact that liberal democracy, at least as it is represented by America, remains a puzzle and a mystery, precisely because it remains somehow still entwined with the Bible and its mysteries.
To be sure, the survival of private religiosity is by itself not sufficient to cause a modification of the classical understanding of liberal democracy of men like Spinoza and Locke. After all they may be said to have provided for and even encouraged this outcome precisely by founding liberal democracy, whose creation of a private sphere allowed for the private cultivation of religious belief and practice. Moreover, they themselves offered theological teachings ostensibly grounded in the Bible as potential theologies of the citizens of a liberal democracy. Finally, men like Spinoza were very sensible of the temptations of what he called "superstition." The chief source of that temptation was the risks to which human life and prosperity are exposed. Modern life has tried very hard to provide for those risks. But even such great achievements as the insurance company cannot remove all risk. Besides today we are asked to think of risk-taking as a good thing.2
Observations like these might be sufficient to dispose of the matter if, in America, religious folk or at least religious issues remained private rather than matters of politics, if they kept to their tents the way the young Jacob did. But they don't as the slightest acquaintance with the current campaign for the American presidency shows. Much evidence could be adduced but I will limit myself to one observation: As matters stand now, both the Republican and Democratic candidates have publicly affirmed the political importance of their religious faith. Gov. Bush, the Republican candidate, has declared that he regards Jesus as the most important political philosopher. Vice-President Gore, the Democratic candidate, has announced, for his part, that in governing he will be guided by the motto "What Would Jesus Do?"
This, it is more than fair to say, is not exactly what Spinoza had in mind. In fact we can state with some, if not complete, precision how different it is. Vice-president Gore's invocation of the principle of "What Would Jesus Do?" is, in a way, taken up in Chapter 19 of the Theological-Political Treatise. There Spinoza says as follows: "It is certain that religious duty towards a person's country is the supreme religious duty he can render, for if political authority is destroyed, nothing good can remain, but everything is at risk... From this it follows that you can render no religious duty to a neighbor which does not become impious if some harm to the state as a whole should follow from it. Conversely, you can do nothing impious to anyone, which would not be ascribed to religious duty if it should be done for the sake of preserving the state. For example, if someone contends with me and wants to take my shirt, it is a religious duty to give him my cloak also [Matthew 5:40]. But when it is judged that this is fatal to the preservation of the state, it is, on the contrary, a religious duty to call him to judgment, even though he is to be condemned to death."3
This is strong stuff and was meant to be. It was meant to eliminate the claims that the virtues of humility and charity might place upon political life. Alternatively, it was meant to affirm the singular and decisive importance of the claims of justice, the political virtue par excellence, and to constrict political deliberation to the requirements of justice, as understood by modern natural right teaching.
Now, it is unlikely, to say the least, that the example Spinoza discusses is literally an issue that either the future President Gore or President Bush will be taking up in their administrations. Americans, however faithful, are unlikely to present just such examples of pious humility and charity or, as Spinoza would have it, impious humility and charity. But some are likely to be concerned with the presence or absence of these virtues, at least in some form. Citizens of America seem to think that the classical formulations of liberal democratic politics are too narrow and require some supplement. Such a supplement or correction might take many different forms. In the last two centuries many have been proposed and implemented, including socialism and nationalism, and sometimes national socialism. But these have not proven to be successful, let alone happy, alternatives. What has succeeded is American liberal democracy. And in America, at least, many, both on the left and right, purport to find that supplement in the spirit, and sometimes the letter, of the Biblical teaching. As America is a democracy, our politicians have obliged, whether sincerely or not.
Hence a fair observer of American liberal democracy would have to wonder whether in order to describe it properly, one must have recourse to some other Biblical verses than the ones I cited earlier. I have in mind, for example, God's remark to Rebecca when she was pregnant with Jacob and Esau and the two struggled in her womb, causing her great pain. He told her that "two nations [thereafter called Israel and Edom] are in thy womb. From your bowels two peoples will be separated and one people will be stronger than the other; and the elder will serve the younger." (Gen 25: 23) Perhaps the same is true of American liberal democracy. Perhaps it contains within itself a modern democratic nation and a Biblical nation, a modern Rome or Edom (the Rabbinic term for ancient Rome) and a modern Israel, separate yet joined in some complicated way. Perhaps liberal democracy became and could only become most successful by reaching an accommodation with the Biblical nation.4 Perhaps the political teaching of the Bible retains some of its ancient vitality.
The issue today seems to turn most immediately on the status and value of the virtues of humility and charity within the political economy of contemporary liberal democracy. Someone might object that the contemporary appreciation of and hankering after these virtues is the preserve of a minority, even in America. Moreover, this minority may grow smaller still. The appreciation of these virtues might constitute no more than part of a lingering traditional moralism which will evaporate in the fullness of time. It will yield to the moral posture known as non-judgmentalism and to the new virtue of self-esteem, a virtue which is meant to replace the Biblical moral framework defined by humility and pride. Indeed it already has to a very considerable degree. (Such is the view of America's most distinguished contemporary sociologist, Alan Wolfe; see One Nation After All, 1999; see also Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption. 1999 and David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise. 2000) Perhaps, to borrow from the Apostle Paul, we have not yet fully put away childish things. But we will.
I confess I do not know how this will turn out and it is safest to assume that Biblical virtue will not fare well in the future. However, at the conclusion of this paper I will offer some unsentimental reasons, some hard-headed reasons, for thinking that the Biblical nation may be with us for some time to come. This is appropriate both to the hard-headed requirements of politics in general and to the political teaching of the Bible, which is nothing if not hard-headed.
For the moment let me turn to the Biblical nation itself or the political teaching of the Bible, to the whole political teaching of the whole Bible, Hebrew and Greek. Let me turn to the Biblical nation as it is or was by itself without modern admixture. Let me turn to what it would say about itself and for itself if it were free to do so.
One might suppose that the breadth of this compass would not be strictly speaking
necessary. The issues which I cited, humility and charity, that bring the Bible to the fore today are what we are inclined to call ethical, that is issues which are in some respect sub-political. Yet as Spinoza sometimes reminds us, when he is not arguing the contrary, the Biblical teaching has an organic unity. Even thought which is not scientific "weaves consequences," as Hobbes put it. This is especially true of the Bible, whether Hebrew or Greek, which affirms the unity of all creation and above all the desirability and potential wholeness of human life. Moreover, as Spinoza also reminds us, the issue from his point of view was not only humility and charity, but their relationship to justice. From this we understand why Spinoza and men like him felt obliged to assault the whole edifice of the Bible's political teaching. We also see why it is necessary to consider the whole of that teaching and its treatment of justice as well as other virtues.
Needless to say, however, I can only offer a brief sketch of that political teaching and must limit myself to some essential points.
It is most appropriate to begin with the character and status of political life as the Bible understands it. That view proves to be somewhat paradoxical. According to the Bible, the establishment of political life was a human innovation and this fact has far-reaching consequences. In particular, it was founded by Cain in the aftermath of his murder of his brother, which he committed out of wounded pride. Given its founder, political life almost could not help but be an expression of the evil of that act. In fact, it compounded it because it amounted to a further act of disobedience on Cain's part. To punish Cain, God condemned him to a life of wandering, the way of life of his dead brother who was a shepherd. But Cain refused to submit himself to this life, just as he had refused to restrain or control his pride before he murdered Abel. In founding the first city he necessarily settled down. (Gen 4:1-17) Politics then, according to the Bible, has its roots in man's prideful rebellion. It is one of the first tangible expressions of man's fatal acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil and his turn towards evil. Moreover, it is a most egregious expression of this turn insofar as politics is the realm of rule, a realm which is particularly connected with the flourishing of pride and self-love which are the principal source of human evil as such and the effective meaning of the knowledge of good and evil. It would appear from this that politics would be especially repugnant or that the political teaching of the Bible would be anti- or apolitical. Human politics which has its source in the gravest of evils seems unlikely to be the solution to the problem of evil. But as one rather quickly sees this is only the Hebrew Bible's first word not its last.
For remarkably. God Himself becomes a politician or more properly founder and statesman. He founds a nation, organizes its governance, provides it with laws and does so with the express intention of reforming human life. (Gen 12:2-3) Indeed he is the founder or cause of national life altogether through his division of mankind into nations after the Flood on the occasion of the building of the tower of Babel, (Gen 11:1-8) This division is only one kind of politics and implies a critique of some others, in this case imperial politics. It was in the first instance no more than an expedient, a necessary evil, designed to restrain human power and the capacity to do even greater evil.
It would also seem to be a critique of such politics as is based on the city, insofar as nations are quasi-familial and the city in its origins violated familial attachment. The doubtfulness of city life was first suggested by the origins of the first city, Cain's city. It is reinforced by the second city to be mentioned, Babel, and still more by the account of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 19) It is confirmed by a decided Divine preference throughout the Bible for shepherds, the men who lead the simplest way of life, as opposed to those who pursue the sophisticated arts of agriculture, which are the indispensable foundation of the still more complicated life of the city. Indeed at the outset, the Bible has a general hostility to all the arts, including the fine arts, such as poetry, all of whose founders are descendants of Cain. (Gen 4:19-22) For the arts, like politics, are an expression of man's pride and nurture its power. Even poetry makes its first appearance in the Bible as the instrument by which a man, Lamech, may boast of the fact that the number of murders he has committed surpass those of his ancestor Cain. (Gen 4:23-24)
Yet as in the case of political life generally, these features of the Biblical teaching are only its first word not its last. The nation which God chooses to found, the nation of Israel, whose origins lie with nomadic herdsmen, is destined by God's will to settle down in one place to an agricultural life. In the fullness of time and the fullness of its establishment, it is also destined to look to a city, Jerusalem, the city of faithfulness, as the center of its life. For it is the place where God will eventually establish His dwelling and even build a house, through the skillful application of the arts.
We are so used to these aspects of the Bible that we tend to forget how paradoxical they are. Hence, we may also overlook the necessity of trying to understand this paradox and its implications for the political teaching of the Bible.
There are several grounds or principles which underlie these paradoxes. First, despite the human capacity for evil which expresses itself in political life. God commits himself to addressing the problem of human evil within the given character of human life, as man has devised it, from at least the time of the Flood onward. The Flood itself offered God an opportunity to start over again completely and He almost availed himself of that opportunity. The effects of the Flood nearly return the world to its condition at the dawn of creation as the whole face of the earth was entirely covered once again with water. (Gen 8:20) But the preservation of the ark and the men within it means that the world has not fundamentally changed. The Bible brings this out with particular force by providing two divine pronouncements on human character, which though not simply identical, both declare that the devisings of the human heart are evil. (Gen 6:5 and Gen 8:21) These pronouncements frame the account of the Flood and thus indicate that human character did not change after the Flood. God's efforts, then, to overcome human evil, to reform men, accept and operate within the framework men have invented. God is, as we would say, politic which ultimately means political. His approach to the reform of human life accepts and affirms the freedom with which he endowed man and accepts within limits its consequences.
We do not know God's reasons for approaching human evil in this fashion and in particular His acquiescence in man's acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil. But one may point out that the possession of that knowledge, whose most general characteristic is moral self-consciousness, is a necessary condition for the possibility of humility, the highest, if rarest, virtue of which man is capable. (Compare Gen 3:7 with Numbers 12:3-8)
At all events, once man has become self-conscious and has become concerned with his relative status and place, the question of ruling and being ruled becomes crucial as the fullest expression of that concern. God must somehow operate within a political framework. The Bible thus indicates its agreement with what we may call the tradition of political philosophy that politics is the comprehensive framework for understanding man and his problems. This is not to say that the Bible abandons the standard of perfection first enunciated and embodied in man's pre-self-conscious and pre-political condition in the Garden of Eden. Rather it seeks, however paradoxically, to adapt political life to this standard.
This is the second premise of the Bible's qualified endorsement of politics - the possibility of adapting human inventions including politics, whose original impulse is evil, to good. Human freedom and action has the capacity to be devoted to good rather than evil if properly guided and formed. In the case of politics, the realm of rulership, it requires acknowledgment that the true title to rule belongs to God. In the pursuit of that end. God's initial engagement with politics proves to require two things: The first is the repudiation, and in particular the humiliation, of all rival claimants. This was accomplished in one fell stroke by the utter defeat and humiliation of the Pharaoh of Egypt, who regarded himself as divine and as therefore possessing a supreme and absolute right to rule.(Ex 3:18; Ex 4:22, Ex 5:1-3; Ex 7:1-2) He represented in principle the most extreme challenge to the notion of God's rule. God, in this case, dealt in the most common coin of politics, honor and power, emerging with a great name, the greatest name. (Ex 8:6; Ex 9:15-19; Ex 15:1-19; see also Jethro's remarks at Ex 18:11)
The second requirement is to found a nation, which will serve to embody God's title to rule and put on display for all men to see the best form of political life. In light of its principle of rule, the divine rule of a Holy God, this nation will be a Holy Nation and a Nation of Priests, as we might say a priestly democracy. It is precisely such a nation that God attempted to found in the desert around Mt. Sinai. (Ex 19:5) This effort was not entirely successful at Mt. Sinai. Not every or even most of the Israelites of that era, the era of liberation from slavery, proved able or worthy of becoming a priest in the strict sense of the term. Instead God was obliged to select a single tribe and to some extent a single family to serve as priests. The embodiment of Divine rule proved to require human rule in a more formal and normal hierarchical sense, at least in the short run. (Ex 2 8:1)
This account of the status of political life in the Bible does not quite explain why this nation will ultimately be an agricultural nation, whose economy can and does support the great city of Jerusalem. One might suppose that a semi-nomadic nation which derived its livelihood from herding would satisfy the goals of Biblical politics without incurring the liabilities of political life in the full sense. Not only would it enjoy greater simplicity but it would be essentially tribal which is to say familial. As a result, it would seem to have a greater prospect of achieving the virtue of humility, that virtue whose singular importance follows from both the fact of Divine rule and the greatest obstacle to the reform of human evil, human pride and self-love.
Several considerations prove to require a different, and as we would say more developed, form of political life. The first is that a national politics of a merely nomadic and tribal form is not likely to have much impact on the wider world. This is a significant factor, for after all God is the creator of all men and the benefactions of His politics are, in the long term, intended for all men. (Gen 12:3)
Second, tribal or familial life, even of the simplest sort, are not as such inherently free of evil, even the greatest evils. We learn this from the Bible itself which is, beginning with Cain and Abel, replete with accounts of the evils which may afflict families, evils which derive from the core of human evil - self-love, envy and malice. This is true even or especially of the family whence the holy nation derives, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Filial piety restrains me from a full account but the charges include lying, cheating, stealing, kidnaping and attempted murder.) Primitive or as we might say natural family life is as much in need of reform as political life and the two reforms may be intimately related. God declares as much when he first announces his intention to reform human life through an association with Abraham. He tells him that through him He will secure a blessing for both families and nations, all families and all nations. (Gen 12:2-3 and Gen 18:18) The family requires a blessing because it is not intrinsically blessed. If the Bible is the family book par excellence, as is so often said, it is so because it affirms family life by reforming it radically, of which the most obvious sign is the fifth commandment. I stress this because in our own time this is not only not properly appreciated, it is often completely ignored and denied.
In the end then, since God's reform of human life is meant to be comprehensive it cannot avoid taking a fully political form. Nor can it limit itself to a focus on the virtue of humility. It must seek to establish justice as well. Indeed, God's reform begins by starting with the problem of human justice. (Gen 6:12-13; Gen 14:23; Gen 15:14-16; and especially Gen 18:19-33 with Gen 20:9-11) It may, even thereafter, choose to give its efforts on behalf of justice special prominence since the need for justice is more readily and widely appreciated by all men. When through the establishment of the Holy Nation, other men become aware of God's strictures and see them in operation, they will appreciate their "wisdom and understanding," as Moses says in Deuteronomy. (Deut. 4:6) They will see that no other nation has "statutes and judgments as just as all of this Torah." (Deut 4:8 emphasis added.) They will thus come to see that no other nation is as "close to God." (Deut 4:7) On the basis of that appreciation they may come to appreciate the full requirements of the Bible's political teaching which are to do justice and walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8) If so, they will probably have come to appreciate the Bible's view that there is a close connection between these two virtues and in particular that it is difficult, if not impossible to achieve the virtue of justice without the virtue of humility as well. They may also see that the cultivation of humility ultimately requires the appropriation of the quality of holiness and sanctity in some form. The nation of Israel may thus serve as an exemplary model to the rest of the nations, as a light to the nations, as it was subsequently put.
Of course for the Holy Nation itself, the Bible cannot and does not rely on the hope that these teachings will be adopted simply through an act of reflection and understanding. The Holy Nation, which is to serve as a model, lacks one of its own and is therefore to be instructed through law and through an appreciation of the merits of the rule of law. The aim of this law, which in Hebrew is usually designated by the word Torah, is like all law partly to define good and evil action and to promote the former and restrain the latter. But it also aims to cultivate the virtues from which good action naturally flow, to form and educate the soul so that it achieves its fulfillment in true knowledge of good and evil which is more or less identical to whole- hearted love of God. The ultimate goal of Biblical politics is then the formation of men who will love
God with all their hearts, soul and might. (Deut 6:5) It its through this that the original problem of human life might be overcome, that man might become whole and perfect again as he was before he acquired knowledge of good and evil. Such a goal requires politics and the law to be educative as well as prescriptive and punitive, to be Torah, whose original and primary meaning in Biblical Hebrew is instruction and guidance rather than law.
There are, of course, other important aspects of the Bible's account of politics, up to and including the establishment of the monarchy. In light of earlier censures of ordinary political life this political turn is surprising. Does Israel need a monarch and therewith a politics like all the other nations? Is not its politics supposed to be different from and better than ordinary politics? This question or critique was famously raised by the prophet, judge and priest Samuel, at the moment of the founding of the monarchy. (Samuel I 8:6-18) The answer in this case proved to be yes because the rule of many judges, priests and prophets, though not Samuel, had proved to be inadequate and left men free "to do what was right in their own eyes." (Samuel I 8:3-5 with Judges 21:25) This situation, which obtained before the establishment of the monarchy, was by and large not a prescription for justice let alone humility, as the Biblical narrative amply shows. It was a prescription for the political life of Sodom. (Compare Judges 19 with Gen 19)
This qualified endorsement of monarchy is more or less justified by the career of one, and perhaps only one, occupant of the throne, King David. His career is not without blemish and does not in the short term solve the problem of politics, as understood by either God or men. He does not in his lifetime overcome the selfishness and injustice of men nor guarantee their unification into a political whole which serves the interests of justice among men and humility before God. But he does bequeath a vision of politics which might accomplish that goal, especially the paradoxical union of humility with politics.(See David's behavior and remarks to his wife Michal, Samuel II 6:14-23) He also bequeaths one abiding means of pursuing it - his art, his sacred music or as we now say poetry. I mean of course the Psalms. These songs, like all music, have the capacity to induce passions in the human heart, indeed several hearts at the same time. At the peak of its politics, the Hebrew Bible acknowledges the unique power of the art of music to create unity among men by making its political hero a king who is also a poet. Of course David's particular virtue as a poet is that his songs are devoted to a passion for justice and a love of God. David manages to combine the lyre and the sword, justice and humility, in a remarkable way.
This overview of the core of the Hebrew Bible's teaching is regrettably but necessarily too brief to do justice to its teaching on politics. Above all it does not detail the ways in which the law conceives of justice and humility, how it means to nurture them and how that will resolve the problem created by man's knowledge of good and evil by recreating human wholeness. But for our purposes, the supplement it most immediately requires is a discussion of the modifications of that teaching introduced by the Greek Bible. For it is the two together which constitute the religious component of the politics which Spinoza and Locke sought to overturn.
Two changes stand out. The first concerns the law, and especially the moral law, which is to guide the conduct of the Holy Nation and eventually all the nations. As Pope John Paul II has recently said, the Greek Bible presupposes and adopts the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus declares in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy but to fulfil. For truly I say to you, until the heaven and the earth pass away, not one iota or point of the law will pass away, until all things come to pass." (Matthew 5:17-18) Accordingly, the Sermon on the Mount embraces and extolls the virtues championed by the Hebrew Bible, above all justice or righteousness, humility and mercy. Nonetheless it insists more visibly than the Hebrew Bible that the fundamental good is the virtues themselves rather than simply good behavior. This renders the effective practical demands of the law more severe. Not only are murder and adultery sins but so too are anger and lust.(Matthew 5:21-22, 5:27-28) Moreover, it places somewhat greater emphasis on humility than justice, on the virtue which places the greatest and most difficult demands on the human soul.
The change in the presentation, if not the content, of the moral law can be linked with another change - the depreciation of the realm of politics. This was expressed most famously in Jesus' statement that one should "render the things of Caesar to Caesar and those of God to God." (Matthew 22:21) But it is also consistent with the more explicit demands for moral and psychological purity, in particular the attack on anger, and a certain displacement of the virtue of justice.
These differences between the Greek and Hebrew Bibles lead and have led to the
question of whether or not the political teachings of the two books are or are not continuous. This is a profoundly important and interesting question. It is also a very long, complicated and delicate question. It is not a question which can be addressed now. Nor need it be. For both books share at least one fundamental thing in common which jointly affects their relationship to liberal democracy. They share the demand that man and all his doings be seen in the light of the goal of human perfection and wholeness, in the light of a potential life which is ultimately free from contradiction and evil. They share the demand that human life work towards that goal, the goal of resolving the problem opened up by man's acquisition of self-consciousness and the knowledge of good and evil.
These demands put them in opposition to the theory of liberal democracy as propounded by its founders. From the beginning the latter proposed to replace human perfection with human perfectibility, that is progress away from the past; a past conceived not as enjoying the blessings of the Garden of Eden in which man was perfect and whole, but a past where man was conceived as cursed, cursed with both labor, the labor of subsistence and childbirth, and with death. This was to be accomplished through individual self-expression and effort; through looking forward rather than back, through the promotion of the spirit of innovation over the spirit of tradition. It was to be accomplished by embracing rather than regretting our knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge which had been said to make us like God. This embrace was not intended to lead to humility but to pride, pride in our capacity as creators. This proposal did not promise, as did the Bible, that all human longings might be satisfied and all contradictions resolved. According to Spinoza, human life will never be free of what he called "inconveniences." It is the better part of both wisdom and virtue to accept those inconveniences even if they include foregoing not only some human longings but the deepest and most important for the more easily attainable liberty, security and prosperity that liberal democracy might provide. Certainly conceived in this fashion the founders of liberal democracy understood correctly the problem that the Biblical teaching presented for their enterprise.
Where does that leave us and the Biblical teaching today, now that as liberal democrats we enjoy the liberty, security and prosperity we were promised? Liberal democracy as so conceived has been amazingly successful. Yet the survival of Biblical religion, at least in the United States, suggests that it is somehow incomplete. But perhaps, as I suggested earlier, that is just a way station. Since the triumph of liberal democracy is very recent, the future will remove, for all practical purposes, any remaining attachment to the Bible and its teaching. This, as I suggested earlier, would be equivalent to the universal embrace of the virtue of self-esteem, contemporary liberal thought's solution to the problem of human self-consciousness, a solution which is thought to be final. (See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992.)
Let me conclude by discussing a problem which obliges us to reserve judgment about what might happen in the future, a grave problem which calls into question the whole liberal democratic enterprise. It is the problem of the future itself, whether we and liberal democracy have a long-term future on the basis of contemporary liberal democracy itself and its dynamic.
There are at least two aspects to this problem.
The first is the status of the family. Many things have changed in the way we regard the future. But there is one thing that has not changed. Now as in the past, the future, any future depends upon the existence of future generations, otherwise known as children. Among other things, they are, to put it in the economic terms so common today, the precondition of any future growth in goods and services. But in all contemporary liberal democracies, children are now in short supply. This is obvious and well-known in Europe. It is also true in America. It is less obvious because in America we meet this problem by importing children and their parents through immigration, legal and illegal and also by adoption. We can do so because we are a liberal democracy. But we are also obliged to do so because under liberal democracy, and probably because of liberal democracy, our families have become weak in many ways. Indeed at this point in America, it could be said that the family exists only in practice rather than principle.
For we have lost any meaningful distinction between parents and children, the supposed maturity, wisdom and hence superiority of the former and the immaturity, ignorance and inferiority of the latter. We are all, children and parents alike, autonomous selves with autonomous desires. (See Kay Hymowitz, Ready or Not: Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future and Ours. 1999) It is doubtful that the family principle can be reestablished on this basis or without a conception of human beings which can distinguish between the mature and the immature. One such conception is, of course, the Biblical view.
The second is an aspect of contemporary liberal democracy which is often considered to be able to solve all our difficulties in a completely modern way. This is technological progress. Among the problems it might solve is the one to which I just referred, the problem of future generations. Through biotechnology we will grow or rather create future generations. Indeed, through cloning, future generations may be ourselves or rather new and improved selves. We will through controlling nature improve on nature, above all human nature. But here we encounter a difficulty. Can the beings we will produce be regarded as either natural or human? Will they in fact be post-human, a term more and more frequently in currency? What will this exactly mean? Does it mean superhuman or subhuman or are some other categories necessary? What will this mean for the question of ruling and being ruled, the fundamental political question? At this early stage, it is difficult for mere humans to know. But one can already discern some grave problems which may beset liberal democracy as we presently know it.
This is beginning to occur to the very men who have been preparing that future, the
scientists of information technology and bio-technology. Let me cite as one example, a recent article in Wired Magazine (April 2000.) written by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. This article was ominously entitled "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." It is a review and speculation upon the most powerful technologies of the foreseeable future - robotics, genetic engineering and nanotech. The promise of these technologies is that they might at last remedy our mortality, the one remaining curse which was attached to our knowledge of good and evil.
He discusses a variety of developments which might lead to the following consequences: "the surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals," or the creation of "spiritual machines" which will be superior to humans or the engineering of "ourselves into several separate and unequal species using the power of genetic engineering." As Joy correctly concludes any or all of these would "threaten the notion of equality that is the very cornerstone of our democracy." At the extreme they would also threaten the future of the human species altogether. Thus the quest for immortality might result in terminal human mortality. This would not, of course, be the first time in recent memory when we have been forced to wonder whether technological progress is a curse rather than a blessing.
Of course, before we reach this pass, we will surely try to address it by a variety of means, ethical, political and otherwise. But the question is where will find appropriate principles and guidance. Joy speaks of "a necessary humility that we, with our early 21st century chutzpah, [Hebrew for arrogance] lack at our peril." Joy is not sanguine about the prospect that the scientists will discover and acquire such humility through their science. He quotes revealing statement from Robert Oppenheimer, who built the first Atomic bomb: "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge they cannot lose."
One may add that even before Joy's nightmare is upon us, liberal democracy may be subject to some strain. As has recently been observed, the new technologies and the new economy they have created has produced a new elite. (See David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, 2000.) That elite may be described and understand itself to be meritocratic; it enjoys its superior status by right of intellect, skill, daring and creativity. Its individual members and their families are the victors in the vast and unceasing competition which is certainly the hallmark, and said to be the blessing, of contemporary liberal democratic life. At the moment, it is proposed that this elite, through its opinions and morals, represents the resolution of all former contradictions of liberal democracy and the bourgeois capitalism which sustains it. But as yet, this elite, being too new, has not fully embraced political rule. One is, therefore, entitled to wonder what that embrace will mean in the long term. As "winners," how will they view the "losers," the terms in which we Americans now inevitably discuss these distinctions? How will the former see their relationship to the latter and vice-versa? Will self-esteem continue to be a viable framework for moral understanding? If not what will take its place? Will these be compatible with liberal democracy as we know it? Or will the whole question of ruling and being ruled be reopened once again and require a new answer?
All this considerations suggest that the Bible and its teaching, or something like it if such a thing exists, may come in handy in the future. I need not stress what the classic texts on humility are. But I should point out that there is no contemporary form of modern philosophy, or rather post-modern philosophy, which is capable or even willing to defend the first principles of liberal democracy, the dignity, equality and freedom of each human individual as human. Humanity and even truth have become suspect terms. They have come to be seen as constructed and thereafter deconstructed. Liberal democrats, more or less gentle souls that we are, have only begun to embrace these views. For the moment liberal democracy enjoys the substantial support of its present utility and our habit of it as our way of life. But as Joy observes, through technological progress the calculation of utility may change and habits, having becoming old and stale, may be displaced. As matters now stand, only the Biblical teaching, among contemporary forms of thought enjoying any adherence and vitality, affirms on principle the principles of liberal democracy.
All this suggests the peculiar notion that though liberal democracy was born out of a rebellion against Biblical teaching, the future of liberal democracy, that is its very survival in all senses of the term, may somehow depend upon the teaching of the Bible and especially the political teaching of the Bible. For we may need that teaching to revitalize our understanding and appreciation of the principles of justice as well as those of humility.
This would mean that we have somehow to be citizens of two nations, the nation of
Israel, who was Jacob, and the new nation of Rome, who was Esau.
Is this possible? Can the modern demand for infinite perfectability or progress yield or at least compromise with the Biblical demand for and standard of perfection? Can modern right yield to or compromise with Biblical duty? Can pride make way for or be tempered with humility? I confess I do not know and given the horrors of the past century no one is entitled to any optimistic expectations. I can, however, point to the fact which I brought out in my account of the political teaching of the Bible, that the Bible does not ignore but presupposes that human politics has its origins in prideful rebellion, has dealt with it on that basis ever since and that it is in its own way a democratic teaching. This capacity to be politic in the service of what it would otherwise regard as most dubious human characteristics must be at least partially the source of the force it has exerted and continues to exert in human history.
I must also confess that I do not know what the revival of the Biblical teaching would mean concretely. It almost goes without saying that we cannot look forward, either with fear or hope, to the revival of the Holy Roman Empire or the Puritan Commonwealth. Under the conditions of liberal democracy such a revival will and must be by and large a private matter and will inform public undertakings in a somewhat indirect way. Even so the dynamic of private life in contemporary liberal democracy often resists where it does not simply obstruct the concrete application of the Biblical teaching.
For the moment I may suggest only the following small and perhaps inconsequential things: Some time in the future, we might find ourselves inclined to put our Sabbaths to different purposes than today, if only out of exhaustion with the frenzy of our lives. Perhaps this will be especially tempting to our new elite, whose lives are currently the most frenzied and restless of all. At the same time we might have tired of our current taste in music, otherwise known as rap, and whatever, God help us, which might succeed it. At that moment we may rediscover and find renewed inspiration in sacred music, for example the music of King David. One exemplary song goes as follows:
"Lord, our Master ...
When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars You have established
[I wonder] what is man that You should keep him in mind
What is the son of man that You should pay attention to him
[But] You have made him lack but a little of the divine
And You have crowned him with glory and honor
You have given him rule over the works of Your hands
You have put everything under his feet." (Psalms 8: 1, 3-6)
Perhaps we will accept this beautiful Biblical invitation to reflect on the question of ruling and being ruled. Perhaps we will feel absolutely compelled to new and harsh necessities for which the triumph of liberal democracy has not completely prepared us. Perhaps, in unforeseen ways, we may even find the Biblical teaching instructive and helpful. At all events the Bible teaches from its beginning to its end that our fundamental and unavoidable problem is the question of ruling and being ruled.
END NOTES
1. In the case of Spinoza, this is altogether clear. In the case of Locke it is indicated by the fact that the first of the Two Treatises on Government, which form a single work, is devoted to the political implications of the Bible.
2. The issue of risk may be a very important factor in explaining the vitality of religion in America. However, since risk-taking is now said to be crucial to the success of liberal democracy religious faith of some sort may be an essential component of true liberal democracy. This was Tocqueville's view some 150 years ago.
3. This passage is cited from the draft translation of Edwin Curley which I had the privilege to use some years ago in a seminar on Spinoza, taught with my colleague Nathan Tarcov of the University of Chicago.
4. If so, this would not be the only political proposal of Spinoza's which proved to require an accommodation with Biblical faith. Such was the fate of political Zionism, which was also originally proposed by Spinoza. See Leo Strauss' account of how and why this happened in "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion," in Liberalism, Ancient and Modern. Basic Books, 1968, pp.228-230.
