Pluralism, Liberalism, and History
Anyone familiar with the books Anglo-American political scientists write, the seminars they run, or the conferences they organize will know that two sets of questions preoccupy Anglo-American political science today.
One set of questions arises from concern about diversity or difference and conflict: What is the most appropriate political response to the evidently wide diversity of all kinds—religious, ethnic, philosophical—that obtains in most of the societies of the world, including the global one? In particular, how is it politically possible, at one and the same time, to respect diversity and contain the radical conflict diversity threatens? What can it mean in political practice to give difference its due?
Another set of questions arises from concern about liberalism and liberal theory: What is, or should be, liberalism's center of gravity or non-negotiable core? Should liberalism's center of gravity be a set of purely political principles and institutions formulated and justified independently of moral, philosophical, and religious doctrines? Or should it be a set of unabashedly moral, philosophical and perhaps even religious ideals that justifies liberalism and its distinctive principles and institutions “all the way down”? What does liberalism really require?
This essay situates itself in the overlap of these two sets of questions. While seeking to advance neither the claims of liberalism nor the claims of diversity, I do seek to advance our understanding of the mutual relationship of liberalism and diversity, and hence of liberalism and diversity themselves, through a chiefly historical inquiry: How, in fact and in history, have liberalism and diversity interacted? How have liberalism and diversity, as real-world phenomena with flesh-and-blood analogues, antecedents, and advocates, influenced and constrained one another? If with historical inquiry as with most things the best place to begin is at the beginning, I begin by asking, Where and when did liberalism and diversity begin to interact? In fact, the interaction of liberalism and diversity is as old as liberalism itself: a certain kind of radical diversity was an essential background condition for the very invention of liberalism.
In seeking to explain the relative historical rarity of liberalism, Judith Shklar suggested in 1989 that “liberalism is a latecomer, since it has its origins in post-Reformation Europe. Its origins are in the terrible tension within Christianity between the demands of creedal orthodoxy and those of charity, between faith and morality.” Liberalism arose from within a divided and conflicted Christianity, split asunder as a consequence of the Reformation. Once Christendom was divided into rival confessions each of which claimed exclusive authority, the question for European Christians became: “How can we (Christians) of (any) one confession treat rival confessions and their members in a way faithful to the law of Christ—a law that demands, simultaneously, absolute fidelity to Christ's Truth and absolute obedience to Christ's Love?” On the one hand, how could fidelity to his Truth be reconciled with the spread of heresy and disunity? On the other hand, how could obedience to his Love be reconciled with the horror of inquisitions and religious warfare? In a divided Christendom, how could Christians make Truth and Love “embrace and kiss one another”?
I believe one thinker's singularly powerful, radical answer to this question laid the central conceptual foundations not only for liberalism but for the “Enlightenment Project”: Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). Before turning to Grotius, however, it is necessary to reflect further on why, aside from historical curiosity, we should take the time to do so.
At least two considerations compel a fresh examination of the origins of liberalism in the violent religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries. One consideration arises from the evident fact—clearly motivating contemporary Anglo-American political scientists' preoccupation with diversity—that radical difference and conflict dominate our political life. And one kind of radical conflict of special political importance today, around the world, is of course religious conflict. Perhaps a fresh look at how an original liberal such as Hugo Grotius tackled the problem of religious conflict will provide fresh insights into the resources as well as the limits of liberalism with respect to the challenge of religious diversity in particular. A second consideration arises from the apparent trajectory of liberal theorizing over the past generation or so. The sudden and dramatic liberal fixation on pluralism indicates that at least recent liberal theory has felt itself to be relatively poorly prepared to meet its challenges. A look at a founding liberal political theorist whose liberalism was formulated precisely as a solution to conflict born of pluralism might boost the theoretical confidence of contemporary liberals—or suggest the tensions and limits of liberalism.
My historical inquiry pursues two questions: (1) What is the relationship—historical and theoretical—between diversity and liberalism? Specifically, to what extent is there a characteristically liberal response to the problem of religious diversity in particular? That is, to what extent is there a characteristically liberal conception of how it is possible for a society marked by religious pluralism to remain over time just, free, and stable? (2) Insofar as there is a characteristically liberal solution to the problem of religious pluralism, to what extent is it adequate? My aim is to sketch an answer to each of these questions by way of a highly limited survey of the history of liberal political thought: I begin at the “beginning” of the story with Hugo Grotius, and then turn quickly to the “end” of the story (i.e., the present) by looking at the greatest living Anglo-American political philosopher, John Rawls. I turn to Rawls in order to track the extent to which even contemporary Anglo-American liberalism follows a Grotian approach to religious pluralism, and in so doing seek to discover the extent to which liberalism has adopted a characteristic approach to it.
To answer these questions, I first discuss how Hugo Grotius sought to quell religious conflict by reducing religion to ethics, while leaving religious beliefs diverse: he sought to show Christians of diverse confessions that it was possible, because theologically acceptable, to live with religious diversity. Grotius—one might say, anticipating Rawls—introduced the foundation of a liberal solution to the problem of pluralism: that of an “overlapping consensus” of diverse world-views around a minimal, non-metaphysical natural law. The overlapping consensus enables liberalism, in principle, to solve the problem of pluralism because it draws on citizens' deepest convictions and at the same time is widely shared. But Grotius also shows how this consensus must overcome significant conceptual barriers, especially theological ones, to take hold: the overlapping consensus is not simply found but must be self-consciously fashioned, and so must the theological opinions supporting it. Indeed, religion itself must be re-constituted so as to fit comfortably within the Grotian liberal consensus. I finally note that Grotius's solution appears to have had great contemporary influence, extending, for example, to John Locke, and resulting in the weakening of Calvinism. In fashioning an overlapping consensus, Grotius helped make the Christian world safe for liberalism but unsafe for religious pluralism.
Second, I discuss John Rawls's Political Liberalism and suggest that Rawls, too, in seeking to keep the world safe for liberalism in effect makes it unsafe for religious pluralism, suggesting that the tension between liberalism and religious pluralism was not unique to the seventeenth century but may be at the heart of liberalism.
The Containment of Religious Pluralism within Grotian Bounds: Making the Christian World Safe for Liberalism
If Grotius is a crucial part of the story of how a liberal approach to religious pluralism developed, it is above all because he sought to persuade Europeans of diverse and incommensurable religious points of view that religious division was not an evil but something they could and should live with. We can best understand Grotius's persuasive efforts by situating them in their tumultuous historical context.
The Protestant Reformation had a profound and politically unsettling effect on Grotius's own United Provinces. In the latter half of the 16th century, Calvinism spread to the Low Countries, which at that time were under Spanish (i.e., Catholic) rule. In 1568, violent resistance to Spain, led by the Calvinists, triggered an eighty-year struggle for independence. Religious diversity set off not only violent international conflict, which culminated in the Thirty Years' War, but civil war in several countries, including the United Provinces. While officially Calvinist since 1572, the United Provinces soon experienced dispute as to what range of theological opinion an established Calvinism should tolerate. With the conclusion of a truce with Spain in 1609, this dispute intensified and polarized.
On one side were “orthodox” Calvinists who demanded that the government impose uniformity within the official Reformed church and suppress or at least restrict religious groups—Catholics, Jews, and Protestant dissenters—outside the church. On the other side were the “Remonstrants,” followers of the famous Jacob Arminius: they disputed Calvinist predestinarianism, believed that the state church should be under government authority as well as broadly inclusive, and argued that the government should tolerate those outside the church. The rivalry widened to include the two pre-eminent political leaders of the United Provinces, Johan von Oldenbarnevelt, executive secretary of the States General of the United Provinces and effectively head of government, and Prince Maurice, de facto head of state. After 1609 Prince Maurice increasingly sided with the orthodox Calvinists; Oldenbarnevelt, appalled by religious extremism, leaned toward the Remonstrants.
The young Grotius became a close associate of Oldenbarnevelt, eventually becoming one of Rotterdam's representatives to the States-General. Believing on principle in a wide toleration and more inclusive Christianity (as we shall see), Grotius joined Oldenbarnevelt in opposing the orthodox Calvinists. By 1618, however, a majority of the States-General favored the orthodox Calvinists, and the opposition of Oldenbarnevelt and Grotius was more and more widely interpreted as both heterodox and treasonous. After seizing government control in a kind of coup d'état, Prince Maurice had them both arrested and tried for treason, and they were swiftly found guilty. In one of the two most spectacular political executions of the 17th century (the second would of course come almost precisely thirty years later), Oldenbarnevelt, at the age of 71, was beheaded in May 1619. Grotius was sentenced to life imprisonment—though he made a dramatic escape and eventually found his way to Paris, where he spent most of the rest of his life.
To appreciate the ingenuity of Grotius' liberal approach to religious conflict, it is first crucial to understand the profound conceptual reasons why the people involved in the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centureis could not have found liberalism and liberal toleration an acceptable (or in some cases even an imaginable) response to their situation. For the barriers to the rise of liberalism were in key part conceptual. To become religiously tolerant, in other words, what the age of Grotius needed was far more than mere hard historical “experience” or “exhaustion” but the overcoming of conceptual barriers. Experience, by itself, is mute, and exhaustion temporary. Neither, by itself, could have induced more than a temporary resignation to religious diversity, far short of reconciliation to it as an acceptable state of affairs. It is thus mistaken to think that the sheer experience of religious conflict “taught” Europe and the world the lesson of liberalism. The experience of religious conflict taught the anti-tolerationists Calvin, Justus Lipsius, Jean Bodin, and the Roman Catholic Church no such thing. An identical experience often teaches different people quite different things, and the religious diversity of post-Reformation Europe was particularly susceptible to a plethora of incompatible perceptions. The conceptual barriers to liberalism included diverse theological perceptions, according to which religious diversity was conceived not as something to be lived with but as something to be stamped out, and political-theoretical perceptions, according to which it was literally inconceivable that a religiously divided society could be stable.
Try, for example, to see the religious conflict of the 17th-century United Provinces from the point of view of an engaged participant such as an earnest Calvinist Reformer: you are trying to shore up an incipient and threatened movement whose mission is to purify Christ's church and make every societal sphere conform to Christ's laws. From your point of view “religious diversity” is no bare “sociological” fact. Rather, you see religious diversity qua “threat to the survival of Reform and hence to the purity of the true church,” and thus qua “evil as such,” to which one and only one remedy is appropriate, namely, state enforcement of Calvinist orthodoxy. If you are a Jesuit, seeking to restore the consensus fidelium, firmly and universally maintained across the centuries until shattered by obstinate schismatics, again you do not see religious diversity as a bare sociological fact but instead qua “schism and the dissemination of heresy,” or qua “the deplorable division of the Church's visible unity, the Body of Christ,” to which one and only one solution is appropriate, namely, a re-united Christendom under the Pope. On the other hand, if you are a Neo-Stoic humanist like Lipsius, you do not see religious diversity as having any transcendent religious significance but simply qua “sheer disorder” and “threat to political unity,” for, as Lipsius put it, “from a confused religion there always groweth dissension.” A Lipsius, moved not by religious zeal but political necessity, considered it imperative to destroy religious dissent and impose a uniform public religion wherever possible.
In examining these different responses to religious diversity, each of which had many devoted adherents in the 16th and 17th centuries, notice the compounded and conception-dependent character of each position's perception of religious diversity. The very nature of religious diversity is such that it consists in deep disagreement not only about fundamental questions of doctrine—e.g., Is the Pope the Vicar of Christ or the Anti-Christ?—but about how to conceptualize religious diversity itself. Religious diversity may be a fact, but the socially and politically relevant question is: How do we evaluate its significance? What does it mean? How we answer these questions and thus how we perceive the fact of religious diversity depends just as much on our basic religious conception as how we answer a fundamental question of doctrine. In other words, our interpretation of the fact of religious diversity seems to be just as conception-dependent as our assessment of, for example, the Pope's claim to be the Vicar of Christ.
Furthermore, these responses to religious diversity are not merely different from one another but incommensurable—just as incommensurable as their conceptions of one another's fundamental doctrinal claims. For example, even to describe post-Reformation Europe in seemingly neutral terms as characterized by “a diversity of religions” places Catholicism and Calvinism on a par in a way that neither the Calvinist nor the Catholic of the time could have accepted. And the incommensurabilty of these religious traditions' proposed solutions to the problem of religious division is obvious. In other words, when the religious disputants turn from the fundamental issues of disagreement to the fact of disagreement itself, they are not suddenly looking at something any less controversial than the fundamental issues of disagreement themselves. The great barrier to developing a common approach to the problem of religious conflict, therefore, was (and remains) that there was (and is) no neutral way of perceiving even the fact of religious diversity, much less any given solution. Religious diversity could thus become acceptable to the variety of mutually hostile religious confessions of the time, and hence something to which they could reconcile themselves, only if they could come to understand it in a new theological light—specifically, if they could come to see it under a fresh, commonly accessible, and shared theological description.
Making Religion Peaceable by Making Religion Moral
When Hugo Grotius sat down to write a theological treatise in 1610, at the height of religious controversy in the United Provinces, he believed he could present an account of Christianity that would be recognized as valid by diverse religious confessions, and at the same time radically transform how these confessions conceived of religious diversity: far from being an evil of one sort or another, he believed he could show that it was an acceptable state of affairs. Given the dependence of these conceptions of religious diversity on fundamental theological doctrine, however, Grotius could not transform them without undertaking to transform Christianity itself.
Grotius's treatise was the Meletius sive de iis quae inter Christianos conveniunt epistola [Meletius or Letter on the Points of Agreement between Christians]. Occasioned by Grotius's horror of the mutual animosity and even violent conflict that had become so prevalent among European Christians, including Christians in the United Provinces, the Meletius begins with an observation on the ironic fact that “in our age and in that of our fathers...not only indifference or rivalry, but also implacable hatred and anger, indeed—something almost unprecedented—wars are started under no other pretext than that of the very religion [i.e., Christianity] whose purpose is peace” (¶2). In the Meletius Grotius not only identifies the points of agreement between Christians of all sects and denominations but, more importantly and radically, argues that what Christians share is far more important from a theological point of view than what they do not. In this work Grotius sought to do nothing less than to give Christianity a new center of gravity, replacing dogma and creed with a morality oriented to social peace: a religion of other-worldly salvation would be molded to fit the needs of deeply divided societies and thus re-described as “the very religion whose purpose is peace.”
The foundation of Grotius's argument is his distinction between theological doctrines (decreta) and practical precepts (praecepta). According to this distinction, the sole point of decreta is to support praecepta. This distinction Grotius straightforwardly applies to religion in general:
Now religion, since it concerns those actions prompted by free will, all of which, however, are pre-determined by the intellect, necessarily consists of two parts, theoretical and practical. The former is made up of doctrines, the latter of ethical precepts.... Doctrines should be active in every field of science and not be irrelevant or redundant, but should either incite to action or to some extent make clear what must be done and how it must be done (¶19).
Applying this distinction to Christianity in particular, he argues that Christian dogmas should be reduced to those necessary for ethics: otherwise, there is occasion for needless controversy. And the foundation of his view that controversy about Christian dogma is needless is not skepticism: he fiercely opposed skepticism in ethics and religion, as is evident in many of his works. Rather, the foundation of this view is Grotius's radical claim that the fundamental part of religion is ethics: “Many [religious] controversies over dogmas are merely due to words which must be avoided for consensus to appear. With any further quarrels we have to check whether they concern matters which it is necessary to know. At this point we have, first of all, to correct the error that generally more dogmas are formulated than ethics require” [my emphasis] (¶90). The solution to the problem of superfluous dogma consists in “limiting the number of necessary articles of faith to those few that are most self-evident” (¶91).
Grotius' proposal is radical. If what “it is necessary to know” is limited to those theological dogmas that “ethics require,” theology has in effect become a hand-maiden to ethics, and ethics has displaced theology as the queen of the sciences. Grotius thus specifically and self-consciously sought to promote an inter-Christian “consensus”—note his use of precisely this word—focused around ethical precepts elevated to a pre-eminent place. To facilitate the establishment of this overlapping consensus, Grotius encourages a parsimonious Christianity, reduced to its ethically relevant essentials. The outcome of the Grotian reduction of Christian dogma to the requirements of ethics may rightly be called “religion within the limits of morality alone,” and this reduction indeed seems to anticipate the similar Kantian reduction of Christian dogma to rational morality.
But which few articles of faith are “most self-evident”? In answering this question, the “Kantian” character of Grotius's argument comes further into view. For he additionally argues that ethics is prior to dogma not only in importance but epistemically. Ethics comes first not only in that it is in effect the point of theology but in that it is grasped with greater certainty: ethical precepts in fact are the “most self-evident” elements of Christian faith. Indeed, this fact enables praecepta to play a regulative function in relation to decreta: from the firm ground of praecepta the necessity of the various decreta is assessed. Grotius makes a distinction among praecepta that demonstrates that not all praecepta are equally unequivocal but at the same time confirms that moral rules are uncontroversial in a way that religious dogmas are not:
Now when there is a fight over precepts, it hardly ever involves ethics—for those have definite and unequivocal rules—but deals with those matters which everybody establishes for himself for the sake of preserving order, and in which a short cut to concord is to leave every man to his own discretion.... For how often did not at some time in the past dissensions arise from the fact that Easter was celebrated on different days by different people? (¶90)
Specifically moral praecepta Grotius describes in the Meletius as including, above all, charity, along with respect for matrimony, temperance, as well as the duties to God taught by all religions, such as public worship and prayer. These moral praecepta alone follow “definite and unequivocal rules.” Praecepta regarding the details of ecclesiastical polity and liturgy, on the other hand, are variable and relatively unimportant, “rank second in importance to those rules which describe the duties of love,” and are thus to be left to the discretion of Christians and their communities for the sake of “concord.”
Among the most radical teachings of John Locke's 1685 Letter Concerning Toleration, addressed to his friend Philip von Limborch while a political exile in Amsterdam, may be found in its first sentence: “I esteem that Toleration to be the chief Characteristical mark of the True Church.” Anticipating Locke by some seventy-five years, Grotius makes a similar teaching the core doctrine of the Meletius:
No reason for discord [among Christians] can be so important that it would not be surpassed by that very reason for concord, to wit that we follow a single teacher, indeed him who acknowledges no disciples but those who devote themselves to concord [my emphasis]. That is why, in the face of new conflicts every day and ever-regenerating disturbances, I usually find solace and new strength by reflecting on those things which God's goodness has kept intact for the Christians to this day; things which, by virtue of their being the greatest, the most certain and the most valuable, naturally mean so much to me that while I consider them, I put aside for the time being the other things which are of minor importance, less certain and less valuable. May these privileges, if I may call them that, at least prove to us that we are citizens of one community [Grotius's emphasis] (¶3).
If the true followers of Christ are those who “devote themselves to concord,” the chief mark of true Christianity has in effect become “peaceableness,” which amounts to much the same thing as Locke's “toleration.” More likely, however, it amounts to something even more radical. For Grotius's comprehensive, peaceable Christianity most certainly included Catholics, whereas Locke's toleration did not. In what sense Grotius's peaceable Christianity could include atheists, which Locke's toleration also excludes, can be seen in the most famous passage of Grotius's De iure belli ac pacis [On the Law of War and Peace] (1625). After showing that individuals, simply by reflecting on their social nature, are capable of apprehending principles of natural law sufficient for establishing a peaceful social order, Grotius goes on to say that “[w]hat we have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should concede [etiamsi daremus] that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to Him.” The moral truths at the heart of the Christian consensus are essentially accessible not just to non-Christian believers but to atheists.
Combining Grotius's foundational claims about the priority of moral precept to religious dogma with the claims of the above passage concerning concord leaves no doubt about what features of Christianity Grotius considered “the greatest, the most certain, and the most valuable”—namely, its moral precepts, along with those theological dogmas that in some way support them. Once Grotius had reductionistically “moralized” Christianity in this way, the extent to which even atheists could join Grotius's overlapping Christian consensus is remarkable—suggesting that very little distinctively Christian remains of Christianity once confined within Grotian bounds. The Grotian consensus of “Christians” seems well on its way to the Rawlsian political not metaphysical consensus of the “reasonable.”
The aid Grotius's theological work offers to liberalism is unmistakable. If Christians could take this theological re-description of their differences to heart, significant motives to impose religious uniformity and destroy liberty of conscience would disappear. More than that, a positive theological motive to respect other Christians—since to be a Christian is in essence to love concord—would be established; hatred and even (mere) tolerance would give way to a sense of shared citizenship in the “one [Christian] community” (¶3). Religious diversity would not disappear: doctrinal distinctions among Calvinists, Catholics, and Arminians, and others, would remain. But these different Christians, Grotius hoped, would come to see their doctrinal diversity as relatively insignificant and thus come to see one another as essentially co-religionists. If Christians could come to see that their highest calling is concord and that their points of agreement concern the greatest things, then Christianity would become peaceableness itself, paving the way for deep and effective religious toleration.
Less obvious, though directly related, is that the ultimate effect of Grotius's theological re-description is the flattening of genuine pluralism. While the theological scheme of Grotius's Meletius allows for ongoing confessional differences, a little reflection suggests that its widespread acceptance would cause over time the weakening of Christian sects centrally defined by beliefs or doctrines lying outside of Grotius's moralized Christianity. Think of Catholicism, for example. If Catholics were to come to accept Grotius's view of Christianity, Catholicism, with its distinctive and constitutive doctrines on “peripheral,” non-ethical matters (i.e., church authority and structure), would essentially collapse into Protestantism—or at least Grotius's version of it—even though it might persist in a nominal form. In a letter to his moderate Calvinist friend Antonius Walaeus concerning the Meletius, Grotius revealingly indicates that if his conception of Christianity gained currency, this is exactly what would happen to “Papism”: “[I]t follows that if Religion is reduced to what all Christian churches at all times have believed in, then Papism collapses, for it is made up of isolated opinions.” What Grotius failed to point out to his Calvinist friend is that Calvinism—or any Christian sect defined by “isolated opinions,” which for Grotius included predestination—would collapse for the same reason.
Though the bolstering of liberalism might be expected to be the result of Grotius's flattening of Christian pluralism, did Grotius himself intend this anti-pluralist connection? In almost his last theological work, Grotius shows that he had long believed that for the essentials of liberalism to be secured, theological systems like Calvinism would have to be changed or destroyed. When Grotius was rebuked by a Leiden theologian for having given insufficient credit to the Calvinists for their role in the revolt against Spain, he replied in the strongest terms, referring first to Prince Maurice's Calvinist coup of 1618 and then to the instigation by Calvin himself of the burning of the anti-Trinitarian heretic Michael Servetus in 1553:
William the Silent said that there were two reasons for the Revolt: safeguarding the constitution and liberty of conscience. The constitution was never so openly violated by the Spaniards as by Calvin's followers in 1618, at the instigation of the ministers...Liberty of conscience was safeguarded not only by the writings of Prince William, but by the Pacification of Ghent...and later by the Union of Utrecht, and by many other agreements made with particular cities; all true Calvinists are professed enemies to such liberty, as is shown by what happened to [Michael] Servetus at Calvin's hands.
Grotius was deeply persuaded that Calvinism and liberalism were utterly incompatible. Being an earnest partisan of republican self-government, constitutionalism, and liberty of conscience, he therefore made the task of weakening “true” Calvinism one of the defining projects of his life.
Grotius's Liberal Legacy
Though Grotius circulated the Meletius among friends—one of whom rightly appraised it as “entirely novel”—and remained convinced of its value and importance, Grotius felt that, given the acrimony of the theological controversy of the time, it would fall on deaf ears or, worse, fan the flames. He therefore decided not to publish it. Still, it was historically influential in at least two respects and probably in one other.
First, it laid the groundwork for a theological work Grotius did publish, which became wildly popular throughout Europe, the De veritate religionis christianae [On the Truth of the Christian Religion] (1627). The De veritate has much the same aim and structure as the Meletius, though it has the additional aim of converting Pagans, Muslims, and Jews to Grotius' minimal Christianity. Jean Le Clerc, an eighteenth-century editor and vigorous promoter of Grotian theology, describes its aim in accurate and revealing terms: “[T]he main object of [the De veritate] is to place in a clear light the truth of the Gospel, totally unconnected with the bias of any party or sect whatsoever; and that solely with a view to generate virtue, evangelical virtue, in the minds of men.” For the sake of consensus, the “truth of the Christian religion” again comes to consist primarily in Christian morality. In fact, the De veritate was sharply criticized throughout the 17th century for failing so much as to mention such fundamental theological doctrines as the Trinity and the Atonement.
The influence of the De veritate was nevertheless stunning. During Grotius's lifetime five translations appeared—an English translation, two German translations, and two French translations—and its posthumous success was overwhelming. No less than 144 Latin and translated editions of the work have been published since 1645 (including at least one Welsh edition I found in the Bodleian Library). In the 17th century its influence was immense, in the United Provinces as well as in England; after the Restoration, Anglican bishops and theologians had an extremely high regard for it. In the same period, in 1663-1664, a young Censor of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, John Locke, was reading the work and recommending it to students. The De veritate became known in Grotius's lifetime as the “golden booklet.” As well-known as Grotius's international law-book was in his time and as famous as it would become, Grotius was in his own century undoubtedly more widely known as the author of the De veritate than the De iure belli ac pacis. Given Grotius's ambitious aim of making religious diversity theologically acceptable to Christians of diverse points of view, this was the popularity for which he would have hoped.
Second, though Grotius's Meletius was unpublished, a copy of the manuscript somehow ended up in the hands of Philip von Limborch, the great Dutch Arminian theologian. Limborch of course became a close friend of John Locke during the latter's exile in Holland and was, as we noted above, the original recipient of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration. Interestingly, there are strong resemblances between the Meletius and Limborch's Theologia Christiana (1686). And Limborch's Theologia Christiana almost certainly influenced Locke's later Reasonableness of Christianity (1695).
Third, there is good reason to believe that the Meletius paved the way for religious toleration in this more definite sense: it probably had a direct influence on Locke before and during his composition of his Letter Concerning Toleration. We have already noted one instance of substantial agreement between the two works that would suggest this influence. A further instance is the prominent place each work gives to the radical teaching that sincere inner conviction can suffice for salvation, even when the object of this conviction is heresy. If there were such an influence, an explanation of how it might have occurred is obvious: given the close connection between Limborch and Locke (Locke came to regard Limborch as the “best of friends” and the “best of men”), which began in 1684, Limborch discussed Grotius's manuscript with Locke or possibly even showed it to him. Though (as far as I know) there is no documentary proof of this, the length of Locke's stay in Holland (1683-1689) and the closeness of Locke's association with Limborch throughout this period make it probable that Locke was exposed to the Meletius at some point. Indeed, it seems almost impossible that in frequent discussions of theological matters Limborch could have refrained from discussing Grotius and the Meletius in particular—especially given Locke's documented interest in Grotius's De veritate while at Oxford, an interest Locke had ample occasion to convey to Limborch.
In any case, there is powerful evidence that within only fifty years of his death Grotius's writings—particularly the De veritate religionis christianae—were having a transformative impact on Christianity and an enervating impact on Calvinism. In 1676, the Genevan pastor Pierre Mussard was sent into exile by Geneva's orthodox Calvinists because of his belief in universal salvation. He subsequently went to London, where he was shocked and delighted by what he found: unlike in his native Geneva, the theological authority of Calvin had been displaced. Writing to a friend back home in Geneva, Mussard noted with no little satisfaction that in London “[p]oor Calvin is extremely odious” and that “Grotius has acquired all the esteem here that one used to have for Calvin. I have even found that Grotius is cited from the pulpit with the accolades 'divine' and 'incomparable.'” Grotius, “cited from the pulpit,” thus exerted an influence well beyond universities and private studies. By the beginning of the 18th century, hardly a generation later, Grotius' influence had widened yet further: a profound admiration for Grotius is evident among a number of theologians even in the house of Calvin, Geneva itself. The vehemently critical reaction of Calvinist theologians to this trend is telling evidence of Grotius' popularity. The Calvinist Elie Merlat, for example, professor of theology at the Académie de Lausanne, hotly opposed the widespread adoration of the “incomparable” Grotius among his fellow theologians in Geneva. In 1704, when a Genevan theologian had insisted in a letter to Merlat that he did not know anyone who would refuse Grotius the most fulsome praise, Merlat fired back:
I have proof in my hands of the impiety of Grotius, and of his mocking spirit towards holy things; and his treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion is not at all capable of exculpating him in this regard, but can even serve to convince one of this.... I am sure of what I say, that never was there a man, in my view, either so learned as Grotius, or so great a corrupter of the Christian religion....
The end-result of Grotius' strikingly influential theological efforts was an overlapping “Christian” consensus designed to solve what John Gray has termed the “liberal problem”: “that of specifying terms of peaceful coexistence among exponents of rival, and perhaps rationally incommensurable, world-views....” This is a liberal problem because liberals, in seriously contending that rival world-views should be allowed to co-exist both freely and peacefully, must also hold that it is somehow possible for them to do so: ought implies can. Through his overlapping consensus Grotius specifies the basis on which diverse religious conceptions—even non-religious ones—can co-exist peacefully and harmoniously. In an important article on Rawls, Leif Wenar supposes that “[t]he idea of an overlapping consensus is Rawls's own....” “[I]t seems unanticipated in the history of political theory...” I have in effect suggested that Wenar's historical supposition is incorrect: while Grotius did not of course have the idea of an overlapping consensus in the full-blown Rawlsian form, he did anticipate it. More importantly, I have tried to show that while Grotius's overlapping consensus was an astonishingly creative solution to the “liberal problem,” it could not succeed without radically constraining religious pluralism.
Someone might object, however: Did the liberal solution to the problem of religious pluralism really require the constraint (if not “corruption”) of Christianity along Grotian lines? Has liberalism remained committed to, and does it really require, the radical constraint of religious pluralism? Is not the least that can be said that liberalism is better than any going alternative in accommodating radical diversity? With these questions in mind, we turn from the Grotian to the Rawlsian consensus—from liberalism and pluralism then, to liberalism and pluralism now.
The Containment of Religious Pluralism within Rawlsian Bounds: Keeping the World Safe for Liberalism
To show that the liberalism of John Rawls also regards the constraint of religious pluralism not just as an unfortunate side-effect of liberalism but as necessary to its success, it is almost sufficient to note a highly revealing passage in Rawls's “Introduction” to Political Liberalism, in which he presents his own historical account of liberalism's development:
[T]he success of liberal constitutionalism came as a discovery of a new social possibility: the possibility of a reasonably harmonious and stable pluralist society. Before the successful and peaceful practice of toleration in societies with liberal institutions there was no way of knowing of that possibility. It is more natural to believe, as the centuries-long practice of intolerance appeared to confirm, that social unity and concord requires agreement on a general and comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine. Intolerance was accepted as a condition of social order and stability. The weakening of that belief helps to clear the way for liberal institutions. Perhaps the doctrine of free faith developed because it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe in the damnation of those with whom we have, with trust and confidence, long and fruitfully cooperated in maintaining a just society [my emphasis].
Certain religious beliefs—belief that (some of) one's fellow citizens are (or may be) damned to hell, for example—are not considered by Rawls realistically compatible with liberalism. Their gradual passing away, far from being regrettable, cleared the way for liberalism.
Rawls thus demonstrates his agreement with Grotius (as well as Rousseau, interestingly) that certain religious beliefs stand in the way of liberalism and, whether by direct persuasion or gradual attenuation, have to be overcome “to clear the way for liberal institutions.” Note that Rawls's example is not of a belief that is political as such or in any definite way runs counter to liberal ideals: contra Rawls (and Rousseau, whom he is implicitly following here), it hardly follows from one's believing in the doctrine of eternal damnation that one can be expected to molest, harass, or coerce, or in any way fail to cooperate politically with, those one supposes will be damned. Embedded in Rawls's historical account is evidently a set of psychological and sociological assumptions about the relationship between religious belief and political behavior, according to which some religious beliefs are considered congruent with liberal citizenship, others not. This set of assumptions leads Rawls to conclude that there is a conflict, perhaps absolute—note the phrase “if not impossible” above—between a traditional and not uncommon religious belief (damnation), on the one hand, and liberal citizenship, on the other.
Of course there is a great difference between retrospectively acknowledging the happy consequences for liberalism of the disappearance of certain religious beliefs, on the one hand, and intending the disappearance of these beliefs by means, for example, of a program of religious propaganda or mandatory government education, on the other. Liberalism may happily result in the attenuation of certain religious beliefs over time, but this does not mean that liberalism is committed to taking active measures to restrict those beliefs. It is clear that Rawls believes that the disappearance or attenuation of some religious beliefs was good and even necessary for liberalism. But does he believe that liberal governments should actively “clear the way” for liberalism by limiting the diversity of religious beliefs?
In another revealing passage, Rawls leaves no doubt as to his answer to that question: “Political liberalism...supposes that a reasonable comprehensive doctrine does not reject the essentials of a democratic regime. Of course, a society may also contain unreasonable and irrational, and even mad, comprehensive doctrines. In their case the problem is to contain them so that they do not undermine the unity and justice of society” [my emphasis] (xviii-xix). What are the democratic essentials which citizens must believe if they are not to be considered “unreasonable and irrational” or worse? What does Rawls mean by “irrational” or “mad” comprehensive doctrines? Whatever they are, Rawls says in an ominous afterthought that they pose so serious a threat to the “unity and justice” of society that the problem is to “contain” them; at another point, he notes that such “doctrines” may be likened to “war and disease,” and that their very existence “gives us the practical task of containing them” (64 n. 19).
In applying the agitated Cold-War language of “containment” to “unreasonable,” “irrational,” and “mad” comprehensive doctrines, Rawls is not referring to militant fundamentalisms or revolutionary religions, at least not primarily. For Rawls's “reasonableness,” the central concept of Political Liberalism, is in fact a remarkably high standard. To qualify as reasonable, a comprehensive doctrine must accept much more than the principle of religious liberty, for example, or basic democratic institutions, or the ideal of fairness. All that is not enough: comprehensive doctrines must also accept the “burdens of judgment.” To do so, a comprehensive doctrine must accept that reasonable people disagree about a variety of questions of judgment and fact. The result is a mild form of fallibilism: to be reasonable, a comprehensive doctrine must in effect acknowledge that there are good reasons for denying its own truth-claims, because there is much to be said on all sides.
What makes Rawls's liberalism remarkably exclusionary if not “sectarian,” as Wenar rightly notes, is that “the burdens of judgment displace firm religious faith.” According to various religious orthodoxies, of course, religious truth is mediated by revelation through faith, yielding an unshakable confidence. The main historical religions, which Rawls says he hopes can embrace his political conception of justice (170), therefore cannot accept the burdens of judgment. It follows that on Rawls's view these widely practiced religions are unreasonable and would thus be unable to enter an overlapping consensus on justice as fairness and, perhaps, would even need to be “contained.” For fundamental to Rawls's political theory is his view that the only just and stable society is the uniformly “reasonable” society made up of uniformly “reasonable” individuals, who are not divided or conflicted in their loyalties but rather “wholehearted” liberal citizens. Such citizens do not merely obey the laws of liberal society but do so “for the right reasons”—which they can do, of course, only if they are “reasonable.”
Whatever Rawls's intentions, Rawlsian liberalism's implications for religious pluralism are clear: it requires the containment of religion within the bounds of “reasonableness.” Of course, Rawls does not spell out how this could be carried out consistently with liberal principles. However, at a minimum, presumably the stability of the institutions embodying these principles could be seen as justifying, for example, the use of mandatory government schooling to “contain” the influence of “unreasonable” religious opinions. Perhaps containment might extend to the suppression of political parties organized around “unreasonable” and hence “undemocratic” doctrines—a practice not unheard of in the United States. Political liberalism would seem to support, if not require, the ongoing and active containment of religion in order to keep the world safe for liberalism.
To put the point more sharply: despite Rawls's vigorous efforts over many years to adapt his liberal theory to the real-world circumstance of deeply divided societies, it is striking how unsuitable it remains even for the society whose political intuitions, institutions, and history it is meant to reflect most: the United States. The structure of Rawls's liberal theory suggests an explanation: with certain narrow goals and premises locked into place at the start, particularly concerning reasonableness, political justification, and the overriding importance of political values, it is not surprising that pluralism—the real pluralism that obtains in the real world—should ultimately be regarded as a threat to be contained. This is particularly true regarding religious pluralism. Rawls has thus followed the characteristically liberal path, blazed by Grotius, and paved by Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, and others: that of forcing the vast diversity of actual religious professions and practices into the uniform liberal mold of “peaceableness” or “reasonableness.” The historic liberal path remains widely followed, even though its radical inadequacy has long been noted: commenting as early as 1677 on the larger homogenizing project of early modern liberalism, of which the containment of religious pluralism was but one component, Leibniz replied to Hobbes and Pufendorf (two of Grotius' greatest disciples) that no known political society exhibited the cultural and institutional uniformity they took for granted.
Beyond the Conflict between Grotian Liberalism and Religious Pluralism
Grotius was the first evangelist of a new gospel. And the Grotian gospel and its radical solutions to the “liberal problem” proved widely influential in the long run—if his striking “anticipations” of the liberalisms of Locke, Kant, and Rawls are any indication of influence.
Until Grotius, the fundamental orienting vision of political society had been the ethic of the Gospel; with Grotius it became the gospel of ethics based on a new natural law, one oriented not to salvation or the supreme good but to commodious self-preservation in society. Until Grotius, the heart of Christianity was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as he had been consummately revealed in Jesus Christ; with Grotius, the heart of Christianity became ethical principles accessible to all rational people. The sovereign authority of one form of life and thought, in time, displaced another. The supreme law and source of our non-negotiable, perfect duties became a minimal natural law; the formerly absolute divine law became the source of our merely imperfect duties, and was relegated to organizing our merely private morality. For as Grotius not so subtly put it: “Those who seek to further peace among Christians are obliged to destroy those dogmas that disturb political peace. It is better to be a good citizen than a good Christian.” Or as Rawls not so subtly puts it: the political values that “govern the basic framework of social life” or “the very groundwork of our existence” “normally have sufficient weight to override all other values that may come in conflict with them” (138, 139).
Not long ago Charles Taylor noted that our preoccupation with radical diversity is such that “the agenda of Grotius, Hobbes and Locke—the great founders—sounds tremendously relevant today.” This paper has been an inquiry into both the original foundations and historical continuities of liberalism, and its purpose has been to explore how and why the agenda of the great founders of the liberal tradition is in fact so relevant to us and our profound concern with religious diversity. The paper has focused on the “founder of the founders,” Hugo Grotius, and in particular has shown that his agenda turns out to be remarkably similar to the agenda of contemporary Anglo-American liberal political theorists, who have sought to define a convergence on core principles that can ground social unity in pluralistic contexts. In addition, Grotius's thought, so like the political thought of Rawls and formed largely in response to religious conflict, and so historically influential, can help explain the continuing conflictual relationship between liberalism and religious pluralism: understanding liberalism properly means, in part, understanding liberalism historically, and properly understood, liberalism is not and has never been neutral but has always fought vociferously to make the world safe for a certain kind of morality, a certain kind of personality, a certain kind of society.
It might be noted in conclusion that these findings are of acute relevance not only to the politics of Western countries but to the politics of countries across the globe. At the beginning of this essay we noted Judith Shklar's observation that liberalism originates “in the terrible tension within Christianity between the demands of creedal orthodoxy and those of charity, between faith and morality.” Only when this tension was resolved decisively in favor of charity and morality, and Christianity re-oriented to social peace, could the business of making the world liberal safely begin. It is noteworthy that little has changed. For a terrible tension evident in our world today is a tension quite similar to the one described by Shklar: that between the demands of globally resurgent, muscular, and revivalist religions and the demands of liberal democracy.
In the face of the world-wide “revanche de Dieu,” it is unclear how the ongoing business of making the world safe for liberalism can proceed—as, for example, in countries with large Islamic fundamentalist populations. How partisans of liberalism and would-be global democratizers are best to understand and address the contemporary “Islamic Resurgence” in particular remains far from clear. According to Samuel Huntington, the single best guide to understanding the politicized Islamic Resurgence of today is Michael Walzer's 1965 book on the politicized Calvinism of the seventeenth century, The Revolution of the Saints. If so, and if we are convinced of the “reasonableness” of the business of making the world safe for liberalism, perhaps the single best guide to what may need to be done to tame “unreasonable” Islam today is the work of the man who contributed as much as anyone to the taming of “unreasonable” Christianity then: Hugo Grotius.
But if we are not convinced of the reasonableness of the liberal project, it may be because we have concluded that it is more humane and less utopian to resist any project to resolve definitively this terrible tension, one way or another. If that is our conclusion, then our search will be for a politics that somehow preserves, not resolves, the tension between religious pluralism and political liberalism. Such a politics will lean less towards liberalism and its discourse of philosophical authority and more towards democracy and its presumptive respect for all non-violent forms of political participation and all political participants who respect the minimum conditions of democracy. These conditions are aptly described by Alfred Stepan as the “twin tolerations,” according to which, in effect, the state is not to be made a mere instrument of the church and the church is not to be made a mere instrument of the state. An otherwise open democratic politics—open to the irreducible plurality of human goods, open to the irreducible plurality of religious and cultural communities, open to the diverse constitutional possibilities for respecting these goods and these communities—will avoid the pitfalls of a self-defeating strategy of liberal containment, which, after all, can keep the lid on religious pluralism for only so long. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolphs' vivid account of India's “cultural federalism,” whereby Indian law balances universalism with a pluralism that attaches legal identity to distinct religio-cultural communities, and James Tully's work on “constitutional dialogues” among distinct cultural groups in North America, show in their different ways what such a politics might look like. Particularly in religiously diverse societies, a politics that in these and other ways makes as much room as possible for what Stepan calls “democratic bargaining” as against the limited discourse of “liberal arguing” is in fact more likely to capture the properly liberal spirit: generosity.
