the New Pantagruel

Why Attack Liberalism?

I applaud the New Pantagruel but, with respect, Liberalism is not the enemy of Christianity or Western Civilization. The true enemy is the same this century as it was in the last, as well as in the 17th Century. The enemy is the evil in the world that tempts most men into abandoning self-control and surrender to idol worship which, of course, leads to nihilism. What difference could Liberalism make to this virtually timeless problem?

Is the idolatry of hiphop, stock options, pornography or militant and resentful Islam any different at core than the idolatry of the Golden Calf or the Roman cinerary columbarium? Moses still gave the law in his time and Jesus defeated Roman death in His. The idolatry and hyper materialism of our time comes simply from our failure to live in obedience to grace, not from Liberalism.

Liberalism, as the late Walter Lippmann noted, is older than all existing constitutions and more deeply rooted than any formulation that can be put into words. Lippmann wrote, and I understand, Liberalism as simply “the philosophy that holds that enduring governments must be accountable to someone besides themselves. Liberalism is the idea that there must be a reasonable method of changing governments without wrecking the state.” Liberalism is simply a reflection of a higher law that men, crowds, and churches must not be arbitrary toward challenging people, ideas or situations. Liberalism need not mean that man has inalienable abstract natural rights and is essentially good. As narrowly defined, Liberalism is demonstrably a force for good which, with fits and starts along the way, has generated reforms freeing humans from bondage both physical and mental.

The expedient 18th Century Liberal (Whig, actually), Edmund Burke, argued for change from circumstance and worked consistently to wrest absolute power from the few but was, nevertheless able to say: “the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged.” It is Burkes’ pragmatic Liberal and even utilitarian thinking which should guide our journey into tomorrow.

Burke would have said freedom of speech? Good. Freedom of religion? Good. But, if he were confronted with pornography capable of harming the society or a militant, murderous, ideology capable of undermining an otherwise just and efficient state, he would draw the line. Is too much freedom the child of Liberalism? More likely, a cowardly and lazy return to worshipping the Golden Calf. Only this time the calf has been constructed by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. The modernist calf is the “idea” of a priori abstractions in the form of “rights.” Burke would say, as do I, this is nonsense. Man has a priori (and practical) boundaries, not rights. Rights are evolved from the reasonable, and hopefully temperate, power shifts which occur, thanks to Liberalism, over time.

Western society has become over tolerant, but this is likely due to our human tendency to focus on the golden calf of societal utopianism rather than focus on our potential personal perfectibility. God could have made us perfect but, as Irenaeus saw, He chose not to because we were not capable of receiving that gift. Instead God created us with great potential; we can choose to grow toward perfection. Liberalism simply allows the growth to proceed both from within our hearts, as we are moved by the Holy Spirit, and from without as we move our minds to new frontiers.

Imagine, if you will, the possibility of some miraculous time transcending potion. By taking a dose, our minds could be transmogrified in a way that the world of Augustine or Aquinas or even Chesterton would seem to us comfortable and acceptable; we would feel at home. But, in the face of the “progress” and innovation we have seen, even in our lifetimes, would anyone of us honestly want to drink? Would we be willing to leave our time? The place where we have arrived and from where we may flower from potential into perfection? We live in a post Hegelian, post Marxian world where the liberal dialectic, though not always to our taste, at least flourishes. From here, we can still hope to see our Father’s kingdom come. I do not argue, as Schleiermacher or Tillich, that Christianity should link itself to, or flow with mass culture, however, Christians must proceed into the 21st Century confronting its challenges, spreading the good news, and providing light in the darkness.

A sincere example of Christian virtue and humility which we can set today and tomorrow, will be as moving for our contemporaries as the witness, sacrifice, and even martyrdom of our Christian forbearers was in the past. Today, for example, a Christian lawyer may choose a kind of martyrdom by agreeing to submit himself or herself before cynics sitting on a judiciary committee intent upon destroying persons committed by conscience and free will to the natural law. Teilhard de Chardin said that “we have only to believe, and the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately we must believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more human arms.”

Your project is laudable; go forward with the humanism and the humor of Rabelais’ Pantagruel and Shakespeare’s Falstaff, but keep going forward. Do not become lost in the Epicureanism of the Koheleth and the cycles of Vico or even Voegelin. Contra Voegelin, there is a gnosis that is good, in fact, divine and it is hidden in the parables of Jesus and it is nothing less than the key to the Kingdom of God. In fact, among the last lines of Ecclesiastes we find a most important message: “here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” The gospels tell us the good news and command Christians to live differently from the world and to carry out the Great Commission. Now is our time in the desert, our time to resist temptation before evil and before God. It is now our duty to make the ideas of our time and our circumstances consistent with the commands of God. We may now use the tool of Liberalism to unlock the gates to His Kingdom for the 21st Century. This can be done in humility and with the deepest regard for the tradition–humanist and otherwise–which leads us to this time; this new circumstance before the unfolding future where God waits.

Seamus McCracken

Topeka, Kansas