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Apologia A Journal of Christian Thought Spring 2010, Volume 4, Issue 2
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Morality: Two Views Christianity and Culture, Lessons from China Eugenics and Its Ethical Implications Revisited
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odern academia is a maze of compartmentalization. The corpus of human knowledge is divvied up among more ďŹ elds and specializations than any one of us is capable of exploring. John Sommerville, author of The Decline of the Secular University, points to this phenomenon as a symptom of a fundamental deďŹ ciency in the modern educational experience. Considering that there is widespread agreement on the value of our academic pursuits, as evidenced by our willingness to expend vast quantities of time and money on them, one would expect to ďŹ nd a similar consensus on the ultimate purpose of these endeavors. But this consensus is conspicuously absent, and none is likely to be found without a conscious redirection of our academic eorts  toward the determination and acquisition of absolute values. Many academics reject the idea of absolute values altogether, like the ghostly bishop in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. The bishop, having arrived at the edge of heaven, is met by an old friend. The friend tells him, “I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.â€? But the ghost replies, “For me there is no such thing as a ďŹ nal answer. The free wind of inquiry must alwayss continue to blow through the mind‌ to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.â€? The friend replies, “If that were true and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for.â€? By ignoring his destination, the bishop has deprived his intellectual journey of value. Likewise, if our values are not rooted in ultimate fact, then all of our eorts  toward intellectual integration and progress will be mired in futility. Unless we question the purpose of our academic pursuits, life and thought will be proff itless, and if our questions about purpose cannot be answered with ďŹ nality, we have no reason to hope for fulďŹ llment. Therefore, Sommerville concludes, “Anybody who has achieved a unifying view of all of life and all of thought will have something like a religious view‌ [Everything they do or think] will be integrated in some highest concern.â€? The only way to achieve a fulďŹ lling, integrated intellectual life is by tracing our individual goals to a ďŹ xed reality of purpose and meaning, something like God. At The Apologia, we believe that “Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.â€? This journal seeks to present Christianity as the message of Eternal Fact and Supreme Value, as a foundation for all of life and thought. We hold that our intellectual abilities are properly directed to experiencing and understanding the ďŹ nal, deďŹ nite, and unchangeable reality of the human condition, which we are convinced was embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. Having recognized that Christ’s claims are so expansive that one cannot consider them properly while they remain conďŹ ned to “organized religion,â€? we discover that all of our beliefs and actions are necessarily informed by our religious commitments. Therefore, we strive to integrate faith and free inquiry by applying academic rigor to our spiritual convictions and spiritual insight to our academic pursuits.
Spring 2010, Volume 4, Issue 2
Charles Clark ‘11 Sarah White ‘11 Bethany Mills ‘10 Peter Blair ‘12 Brady Kelly ‘12 Elli Kim ‘13 Alex Mercado ‘11 Suiwen Liang ‘13 Daniel Choi ‘13 ! Kelsey Carter ‘12 Robert Cousins ‘09 Grace Nauman ‘11 Emily DeBaun ‘12 Lee Farnsworth ‘12 Suiwen Liang ‘13 Brendan Woods ‘13 Fr. John Corbett ! ! Gregg Fairbrothers, Tuck Richard Denton, Physics Eric Hansen, Thayer Eric Johnson, Tuck James Murphy, Government Leo Zacharski, DMS
Council on Student Organizations The Eleazar Wheelock Society Andrew Schuman ‘10 Robert Philp
Charles Clark Editor-in-Chief
We welcome the submission of any article, essay, or artwork for publication in The Dartmouth Apologia. Submissions should seek to promote respectful, thoughtful discussion in the community. We will consider submissions from any member of the community but reserve the right to publish only those that are in line with our mission statement and quality rubric. Blitz “Apologia.�
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Front cover image by Bethany Mills ‘10
The opinions expressed in The Dartmouth Apologia are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect those of the journal, its editors, or Dartmouth College. Copyright Š 2010 The Dartmouth Apologia.
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n September 2, 1979, Mu En Church in Shanghai, China opened its doors for the first time in three decades. Although no public Christian service had taken place in Shanghai since the Communist Party took power in 1949, one thousand Chinese citizens from all walks of life crowded into the church for worship.1 Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) voted to allow religious worship in 1979, Christianity in China has experienced an unexpected boom. Membership in both registered churches and illegal “house churches” has swelled to over 80 million Chinese, according to the most recent Associated Press reports2—a figure over twenty times higher than the number of Christians in China before the CCP took power. This phenomenon has raised important questions for sociologists of religion, since the growth of Christianity in China has occurred simultaneously with its economic development. This trend runs contrary to conventional wisdom and development theory, which hold that as a society becomes more technologically and economically developed, its population tends to lose interest in religion. Furthermore, many observers have been surprised that Christianity should thrive in China because of China’s cultural separation from traditional Western centers of Christianity. The present state of Christianity in China
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“Chairman Mao Has Come to Our Factory,” Chinese Communist Party political poster
indicates that in both cases the accepted wisdom may be in need of revision, and religion may be neither opposed to material progress nor based purely upon cultural biases. The history of Christianity in China has been marked by several false starts and subsequent declines. The first Christian mission in China came in 635 with the arrival of Nestorian missionaries. Arriving at the height of the Tang Dynasty’s cultural and economic achievement, the Nestorians were tolerated by China’s rulers and were even able to establish bishoprics in Chang-an and other cities. Around the year 900, civil unrest and the collapse of the Tang Dynasty led to the abolishment of the missions, and the religion was virtually extinct in China for a period of over 300 years. In the 13th century, Franciscans led the next wave of missionaries into China. The Franciscans were banished from China when the Ming Dynasty took power in 1365, and it was not until the arrival of the Jesuits in 1601 that missionary activity truly took root in China. Over the next three and a half centuries, China became the largest mission field in the world. The Western Christian presence in China swelled to include eight thousand missionaries from Protestant sects alone in 1926. This
success was not to last, however. With the beginning of CCP rule in 1949, the results of three hundred and forty-eight years of missionary efforts were all but extinguished. Historian G. Thompson Brown describes the effects of the Cultural Revolution thus: Four years from the time Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, all missionaries had either left China, were in jail, or under house arrest. Within sixteen years not a single Christian Church was open in that vast land.3
It is hard to understate the effect of the Cultural Revolution on religious groups in China. While the Constitution officially provided for the freedom of religious belief, in reality the CCP’s policies virtually wiped out public religious practice. Mao described the Party’s views on religion in a report entitled On Coalition Government. In the report, Mao said that although there may be times when it is advantageous to partner with religious groups in order to pursue certain goals, “we can never approve of their idealism or religious doctrines.”4 The CCP’s policies on religion crippled many Christian groups, having a particularly
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disastrous effect on the Roman Catholic Church in an independent Chinese Church that would be comChina. CCP officials shut down Catholic seminaries, patible with socialism. The Manifesto took an anticlosed churches, and incarcerated clergy. Church lead- Western position, proclaiming the necessity “to purge ership was particularly hard hit in the CCP’s purge; the imperialistic influence from within Christianity itself.”6 Archbishop of Beijing during the Cultural Revolution Despite these concessions to the government, it was spent twenty-two years in prison, the Archbishop of Shanghai >P[O P[Z NYV^PUN ZWPYP[\HSP[` HUK YPZPUN U\TILY thirty years, and the Archbishop VM *OYPZ[PHUZ *OPUH HWWLHYZ [V IL KPZWYV]PUN of Shanghai’s successor twentyseven. In an effort to adapt to [OL T`[O VM ZLJ\SHYPaH[PVU [OLVY` Communist rule, Christian churches went through a period known as “theological not until 1979 that the CCP announced that “normal” reconstruction.”5 Christians launched what came to be religious activity would once again be permitted.7 ironically known as the Third Opium War, an effort to Now, thirty-one years after the legalization of limited convince the CCP that religion was not the opiate of religious observances, there are three unique aspects of the masses as Marx had claimed. A group of Protestant the church in China that have made it a focus of study leaders published a “Christian Manifesto” calling for from both religious and nonreligious perspectives. I have already referred to the first Mu En Church in Shanghai, China of these, the staggering growth in the number of Chinese Christians. Even in the face of the persecution of the Cultural Revolution, the number of Christians in China has grown by several orders of magnitude. It is estimated that there were around three million Christians in China in 1949 just before Mao and the Communist Party took power. Now official government estimates admit the number to be at least 15 million,8 and China scholars and news agencies put the figure closer to 70-80 million. The second interesting characteristic is the cultural independence of the Christian Church in China from its Western branches. CCP policies have guaranteed that Western influence in Chinese churches is minimal.9 The influence of the West on the unregistered underground churches known as “house churches” is even less.10 Indeed, Chinese Christianity has taken on a distinctly indigenous flavor—a University of Wales study revealed that 56 percent of Chinese Christians combined certain indigenous practices, such as enshrinement, with otherwise orthodox Christian worship.11 The third significant point is the types of people Christianity has attracted in China. According to the University of Wales study, a surprising 14.3
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percent of Chinese Christians are members of the CCP or its youth affiliate, a number roughly in line with the percentage of the general population.12 Christians do not appear to be isolated to one particular area or demographic. Christianity is growing in urban as well as rural areas, and amongst both professional and bluecollar workers. As is the case everywhere, Christianity has spread quickest to the most vulnerable members of society; the poor make up a disproportionately large share of Christians, as do minority groups such as women and young people.13 Overall, however, the data indicate that Christianity has been spreading to all members of society, including groups that are not typically associated with Christianity in the West. As Christianity enters what many are calling its golden age in China, the nation means more and more for the field of apologetics. Because China is such a unique case—a country that is experiencing rapid Christianization even in the midst of strong attempts to suppress it—it offers a new perspective on many of the theories surrounding religious geography. Most notably, it provides a significant counterargument to secularization theory. First mentioned by Max Weber in 1930, secularization theory holds that as countries become more developed socially, culturally and economically, the importance of religion to that society will diminish.14 Karl Marx anticipated this theory in his work “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” Marx claims that religion wrongly centers man’s focus on spiritual matters, and that mankind will be better off when economic progress finally forces people to focus on themselves.15 Clearly, this is not the case in China. China is the fastest growing major economy in the world,16 and from 1985 to 2006 its citizens saw their average income grow almost seven-fold.17 Despite the growing economy and the attendant materialism that is finding its way into Chinese culture, regular Chinese appear
Chinese appear to be searching for a different philosophical foundation. With its growing spirituality and rising numbers of Christians, China appears to be disproving the myth of secularization theory. The Chinese Church also provides an interesting perspective on another theory of religion, that of memetic inheritance. This theory, popularized by author Richard Dawkins, holds that religious beliefs can be considered packets of cultural information called memes. Dawkins likens memes to genes and contends that they are passed down through a process similar to Darwinian selection. According to Dawkins, memes can be passed vertically, through inheritance from one’s parents, or horizontally, between individuals or groups. In order to spread horizontally, he says, memes often require an “infective agent,” a charismatic leader like St. Paul or Jonathan Edwards.20 They also require the presence of a “memeplex,” or a set of related cultural factors that enable the meme to assimilate into the “host culture.” Dawkins’ point is to characterize religion, and Christianity in particular, as a cultural relic that has survived due to tradition.21 Dawkins explains his theory in this way: It is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Instructions to genuflect, to bow towards Mecca, to nod one’s head rhythmically towards the wall, to shake like a maniac, to ‘speak in tongues’—the list of such arbitrary and pointless motor patterns offered by religion alone is extensive—are obeyed, if not slavishly, at least with some reasonably high statistical probability.22
Memetic inheritance theory misses many sociological trends occurring in the world today. Christianity is the majority religion in places as diverse as subSaharan Africa, South Korea, Oceania and South America.23 The vast differences between these areas
;OL WPJ[\YL VM *OYPZ[PHUP[` [OH[ JVTLZ V\[ VM *OPUH PZ [OH[ VM H K`UHTPJ MHP[O VUL [OH[ ZWYLHKZ TVYL K\L [V [OL \UP]LYZHSP[` VM P[Z TLZZHNL [OHU [OL ^VYRPUNZ VM L]HUNLSPZ[Z VY TLTL[PJ PUOLYP[HUJL to be opening up to Christian ideas. Although only 2.6 percent of the population is officially Christian, 11 percent say that they “should follow the way of the Christian God.”18 Chinese appear to be warming up to spirituality in general in even greater numbers. 78 percent believe that “goodness will be rewarded,” and 41 percent responded positively to the statement “We must do our best in life to glorify God/Lord of Heaven/Buddha/ancestors.”19 Instead of embracing the materialist ethos spawned by China’s growth, the
make it very difficult to apply memetics to the case of Christianity. The cultural conditions in each of these places and the diversity of Christian groups taking root suggest that the memeplexes in each of these situations are different and probably opposing. This presents a serious obstacle to Dawkins’ theory that Christianity spreads only to those areas with which it is most compatible. The example of China is further proof that the accepted model of religious transmission by culture is, at best, overstated. If religion really were the static
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Adam Schall and Matteo Ricci, Jesuit missionaries, with map of China, 1667
entity that Dawkins assumes it is, one would expect it to only pass in two ways: vertically, from parents, or horizontally, through some sort of infectious agent. Christianity in China does neither—the birthrate is not high enough to account for Christianity’s growth by virtue of inheritance, and China’s laws against foreign missionaries, and even against evangelization by its own citizens, mean that no religious leader has been able to gain prominence in the country. Instead, the picture of Christianity that comes out of China is that of a dynamic faith, one that spreads more due to the universality of its message than the workings of evangelists or memetic inheritance; a religion that is able to adapt to the culture it finds itself in, and at the same time to maintain the orthodoxy and universality of its doctrines. 1
G. Thompson Brown, Christianity in the People’s Republic of China (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1986) 7. 2 Christopher Bodeen, “Fast-growing Christian Churches Crushed in China,” The Associated Press, 11 Dec. 2009. 3 Brown 10.
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Daniel Bays, Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) 351. 5 Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang ed., Chinese Religiosities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) 165. 6 Bays 344. 7 Ibid. 161. 8 Daniel Bays, “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today,” The China Quarterly 174 (2003). 9 Xinzhong Yao and Paul Badham, Religious Experience in Contemporary China (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007) 72. 10 “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today.” 11 Yao and Bedham 79. 12 Ibid. 75. 13 “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today.” 14 William Swatos Jr. and Kevin Christiano, “Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept,” Sociology of Religion 3 (1999). 15 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, ed. Joseph O’Malley, trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) 132. Marx says, “The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.” 16 The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 4 Feb. 2010 <https://www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world-factbook/index.html>. 17 The World Bank, China Quick Facts, 2010, The World Bank Group, 4 Feb. 2010 <http://web. worldbank.org/cn>. 18 Yao and Badham 9. 19 Ibid. 40-41. 20 Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain (New York: First Mariner Books, 2003) 143. 21 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) 191-198. 22 A Devil’s Chaplain 136. 23 The World Factbook.
Brendan Woods ‘13 is a Government major from Glastonbury, Connecticut.
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I would say morality is about moving towards completion of happiness. Morality is a response to the question of happiness, rather than a response to the question of obligation. Obligation should be understood in the context of happiness, rather than the reverse. /V^ JHU TVYHSP[` VY ILPUN ]PY[\V\Z THRL \Z OHWW`&
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Morality by itself doesn’t make us happy. I suppose we should say that it is not acting justly, for example, that makes you happy in itself, but possessing the good that justice directs you toward. This is complicated, but St. Thomas Aquinas asks the question of whether happiness is a good of the soul, and he gives a nuanced answer to that. On the one hand, happiness is not a good of the soul. Why? Because the soul is directed to something beyond the soul; the soul isn’t its own final end. St. Thomas talks about the soul as a potentiality, and a potentiality is something that could be, is by its very definition on its way to being, and therefore by its definition not yet complete. So insofar as the soul is unrealized potentiality, happiness can’t be the good of the soul. So happiness is about something that takes you beyond the soul, into something which is good— for Thomas at least—subsistently good and satisfying. Now, happiness is the good of the soul because you possess the good through the soul, through your own mind, through your body. You become connaturalized to the good, you become good yourself, and in that sense happiness is the good of the soul.
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There are a couple of ways of approaching it. One is by just pure reason, and the other is by experience. By reason you can show that money, for example, or power, can’t be the final good of a human life. Power is always power to do. So power by itself is incomplete; power is only itself when it engages in performing or doing something. Besides, power can be wielded, St. Thomas says, by good people or bad people. There are some very monstrous people who have had quite a lot of power and wouldn’t be, by any sane person’s definition of the term, happy. So is that reasonable? Sure. Does that persuade somebody who is really interested in acquiring power? No. As an argument it will fail. Why? Because the arguments are defective? No, but because if a good doesn’t find an echo or answer in somebody’s desire, your arguments are going to fall flat. You have to already be in love with a good before arguments about that good will appeal to you. So the only way, if you’ve got somebody who says that power is the final good or somebody who says that making a lot of money is the final good or somebody else who says that being famous is the final good—there are a lot of people who would try to find happiness in one of those—all you have to do is say, “Go for it. Give it your best shot,” and then, “Are you happy?” And the answer will be, “No, there’s something missing.” Happiness is always about the something more. ( JVTTVU JYP[PJPZT VM *OYPZ[PHUP[` HUK *OYPZ[PHU L[OPJZ VY TVYHSP[` PZ [OL JVTWSHPU[ [OH[ P[ HJ[\HSS` Z[PÅLZ OHWWPULZZ [OH[ P[ PZ H YLZ[YPJ[PVU VU `V\Y MYLLKVT HUK H YLZ[YPJ[PVU VU `V\Y OHWWPULZZ *VU JLP]PUN TVYHSP[` HZ H ZLHYJO MVY OHWWPULZZ OV^ ^V\SK `V\ YLZWVUK [V H JYP[PJ ^OV OHK [OH[ ]PL^&
I would concede the point in the short term; I would contest the point in the long term. Charles Taylor has written a book called A Secular Age; it’s worth reading. It’s a description of the conditions of unbelief in our society. In his account of the history of this, he says that most societies will have a conception of what he would call hyper-good, and that’s distinguished from ordinary goods, goods of ordinary flourishing. For example, in our society that would be having friendships, family life, a satisfying job—these would be ordinary goods that most people would be happy to find. But then there are hyper-goods, goods that are considered to be incomparably more worthy than the other goods and also costly. Now Christianity has such a hypergood in mind: the kingdom of heaven, friendship with
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Jesus, eternal life. That requires that we treat each other with justice and fidelity, and that requires restraint. 6UL VM [OL [OPUNZ WYVWVULU[Z VM ]PY[\L L[OPJZ VM[LU TLU[PVU PZ [OL KPMMLYLUJL IL[^LLU OHWWPULZZ HUK QV` /V^ ^V\SK `V\ KLZJYPIL [OH[ KPZ[PUJ[PVU&
There’s a difference between sensual pleasure and joy, happiness. Pleasure stimulates the body, but that can’t make a human person happy as such because we are so much more than a body. If that weren’t the case, then we could just be fed and petted to happiness. :V KVLZ [OL JSHZZPJ ;OVTPZ[PJ ]PY[\L L[OPJZ PKLH YLX\PYL [OH[ PTTVYHSP[` HS^H`Z SLHKZ [V \UOHWWP ULZZ MVY H WLYZVU&
Eventually, immorality will make you unhappy. Substantially even from the very beginning, but experientially over time. You can think you are happy and not be, but persist in vice long enough and the experience of unhappiness will become part of your conscious experience, too. The same thing is true with living a good life. You may not know that you are good—“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” well, they don’t look very blessed to themselves. Happiness is lost on them for the moment, but the promises, the real objective safety and goodness of their position, will become clear even to themselves as they know they are dependent upon God, trust him, love him, are saved by him, and all of that. If you really know that, if that’s really in your soul, then it eventually gets to your body as well. @V\ [HSR H SV[ HIV\[ [OL PKLH VM IHZPJ O\THU NVVKZ PU [OL ^YP[PUNZ VM ;OVTHZ (X\PUHZ >OH[ HYL [OL O\THU NVVKZ HUK OV^ KV [OL` PUMVYT [OL TVYHS SPML&
There’s a kind of hierarchy that he talks about in question ninety four, article two, primus secundaa of the Summa Theologicaa where he talks about natural law. The basic orientation is just to be. It is good to be. That’s something that exists on the inanimate level as well. Things naturally resist their own destruction. You translate that into human consciousness, and you get moral intuitions like it’s wrong to kill, it’s wrong to commit suicide. Then you have the whole area of what we share with animals and not just boulders, and that’s reproduction. For an animal, being prolongs itself through reproduction. For a human being, it does that physically, but also psychologically and spiritually when we have children. We tend to hand on what we are to someone else, give ourselves to something else who is both from us and yet different from us. So that’s children and that’s part of the natural good. And it’s not only having them—it’s not just sex, but having children, and it’s not just having children, but raising
raising them as human beingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you know, reason, language, faith, whatnot. Then thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reason, goods of reason that involve sociability, being together. To be human is to learn how to be human together. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learning to live together, with justice and with charity, and you learn that by doing it, just by living with other people. And ďŹ nally thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mystery. We are of course technically curious, we all have some degree of technical curiosity about how things are put together and how they work, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a thirst for a deeper wisdom, which is why they work. How and why are two diďŹ&#x20AC;er ďŹ&#x20AC; ent questions. How is one level of intelligence; why responds to another. And I think the deepest mystery of the human person is faced when we ask the question why: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why am I here? Why is there a world? Why is there something rather than nothing?â&#x20AC;? These are things that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t admit of technical solutions, but you are faced then with the mystery that we call God. And to face that, to think about that, to live in that, is purely a really human thing to do. Those are all diďŹ&#x20AC;erent ďŹ&#x20AC; goods that we respond to in diďŹ&#x20AC;erent ďŹ&#x20AC; ways in becoming more fully a human being, which is another way of describing what morality is: becoming more fully a human being.
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It has to do with the relationship between freedom and inclinations. A freedom of indiďŹ&#x20AC;erence ďŹ&#x20AC; would say that you are free in spite of your inclinations. In other words, the only cause of your action as a free person is the will itself. On the other hand, for St. Thomas, free choice is born of a conjunction between our natural inclination of our mind for what is true and the natural inclination of our will for what is good. Free choice is born from those natural inclinations; we only have free choice because we are already, before free choice, spontaneously ordered to what is good. So for St. Thomas we are free because of our inclinations, not in spite of them. That means that desire is not the enemy of the good. But for Aquinas, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no other reason to act at all other than the desire to be happy. So we are free because of our inclinations, and we ďŹ nd our deepest happiness when we are in a way not free to choose anything else. That is when we see God. There will be no question of a choice to turn away from God, and yet weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be deeply free and happy, because our most spontaneous inclination and desire has been fully satisďŹ ed.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
! ! " ! ! # !
Yes, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not what this is about. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why this kind of thingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even though itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about who you are rather than what you doâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is actually at the end of the day more practical, because it comes from an experience of just being attuned to the good. ! ! !
Well, it depends upon whether he wants to or not. He might not want to. But most people do want to on some level or another. The thing is, most people have bad taste in many areas of their lives. The point is that you start with what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got right and then you build on it. I mean you might have very little sense of generosity, but you might have a feel for what is fair. Alright, then you be loyal to what you know about being fair; sooner or later youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be led to generosity. I think it goes that way. You work with what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got, and then it gets better.
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The Christian Integration by Peter Blair
I
n his essayy â&#x20AC;&#x153;W Whyy I am not a Christian,â&#x20AC;? Bertrand Russell wrote, â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are a great many ways in which at the present moment the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inďŹ&#x201A;icts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnec1 essary suďŹ&#x20AC;ering.â&#x20AC;? ďŹ&#x20AC; He goes on to explain that Christian morality is harmful â&#x20AC;&#x153;because [the church] has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all.â&#x20AC;?2 This is a common indictment of Christianity: that it puts people in a moral straightjacket, enslaving them to an outdated moral system, and thereby greatly diminishes their happiness and even inhibits the progress of the human race. According to this view, Christians are by nature priggish, puritanical moralists. But the Bible, which Christians believe is divinely inspired, is full of statements that present a very diff ferent view of Christianity than the one Russell oďŹ&#x20AC;ers. ďŹ&#x20AC; In his Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul writes that â&#x20AC;&#x153;it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.â&#x20AC;?3 In the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is recorded as saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I came that they may have life, and have it to the full.â&#x20AC;?4 Echoing this biblical message, Christians throughout the ages have expressed a great joy that derives from their faith. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Joyâ&#x20AC;Ś is the gigantic secret of the Christian.â&#x20AC;?5 C.S. Lewis titled the spiritual autobiography that detailed his conversion to Christianity Surprised by Joy. The message of the Bible is one of freedom and liberation, and the experience
Saint Augustine
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Left: Bertrand Russell Right: G.K. Chesterton
of many Christians throughout history has been one of irrepressible and uproarious joy. What, then, explains the enormous gap between the Christian idea of liberation and the popular perception of Christianity, as expressed by Russell? How can these two views of Christianity be reconciled? The popular view articulated by Russell does contain a grain of truth. Christianity does have a moral code that it enjoins upon all its adherents, and its code is in some ways stricter than the codes offered ff by other philosophies and worldviews. Furthermore, Russell’s view is not without some empirical basis. There have been, and continue to be, self-identified Christians who approach their faith in a highly legalistic and moralistic way, who conform joylessly to a moral code they don’t fully understand or even agree with, who look and feel enslaved, and who even take a perverse delight in destroying the happiness of others. However, the salient question is not whether some self-identified Christians have such an attitude, but whether Christianity as a belief system logically implies and requires such an attitude. When the issue is examined, it seems that rather than imposing such an attitude on believers, Christian moral thought is characterized by a desire for happiness, freedom, and beauty. The prejudice against Christianity’s moral claims is due in part to a general human tendency to resent all rules and restrictions—religious, political, or otherwise—as unfair and destructive of liberty. However, as Tim Keller notes in his book The Reason for God, d “In
many cases confinement and constraint is actually a means to liberation… freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities, and a deeper joy and fulfillment.”6 The idea of “liberating restrictions” may seem paradoxical, but Keller uses several examples to make his point. He discusses the condition of a pet fish taken out of its fishbowl. The fish has thus been freed from the limits of the fishbowl, from restrictions of place and movement—but removed from its proper environment, the fish will die. Because the fish is free to live and move only when it is limited to a bowl full of water, the restrictions placed on it are essential to ensuring its freedom, flourishing, and survival. This example illustrates why it is that restrictions can simultaneously bind and free; it is only in being bound by some rules that we can live at all or enjoy any kind of meaningful freedom. Just like the fish, all things have their proper environments, and if the barriers keeping things in their environments are destroyed, so too is the ability to thrive. Keller uses a pianist as a further example of this principle. If somebody has natural musical aptitude and wishes to develop that aptitude in order to become an accomplished pianist, he or she must endure relatively great restrictions on his or her time, because lots of practice is necessary to develop musical skills. The aspiring pianist must give up absolute freedom over the
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ral desire) will have to be controlled anyway, use of his or her time in order to achieve, as Keller says, 7 unless you are going to ruin your whole life.8 “a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things.” In this example, we see that the development of a skill Lewis argues that all people have codes of behavior or an art requires accepting some restrictions on one’s that limit them because everybody—in practice if not time and one’s freedom. The end result of these regu- in theory—understands that some restraints are neceslations, however, is not a lesser freedom but a greater sary for happiness and freedom. And that is precisely freedom: in this case, the ability to play piano pieces the claim that Christianity makes about its own moral excellently whenever one wishes. One has acquired a code. Christianity does not seek rules for the sake of new skill, and the ability to freely practice that skill rules, but for the sake of true happiness and freedom. brings joy and contentment. Example upon example could be added to ways in which our everyday life depends upon this idea of “liberating restrictions.” When we think politically, the vast majority of humans recognize the need for limits and rules. We recognize that anarchy—the complete absence of governmental authority—is not a desirable political arrangement, and that the restrictions on our freedom enforced by laws and taxes actually allow for human prospering and flourishing in a way that anarchy never could. In all these cases, it is restrictions, limits, and rules that actually free a person; in these situations, limits liberate us and actually give us more to do by restricting what we can do in certain ways. This is the general idea behind both government and piano practice: by allowing everything, you effectively destroy everything; but by forbidding some things, you allow everything else. True freedom is only possible where freedom is limited. Yet this idea of “liberating restrictions” implicit in so much of our life is somehow forgotten when the object Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, which contained the most complete summary of his of discussion is the Christian moral moral teaching. code. Christianity is thought to be It seeks rules for the same reason that everybody seeks oppressive and legalistic simply because it makes moral rules: in order to allow us to survive and flourish. demands. But as C.S. Lewis points out in his book Moralism or legalism, that is, rules for the sake of Mere Christianity, rules, is much more an intellectual attribute of secular
thought than of Christian thought. The 18th-century secular philosopher Immanuel Kant is the clearest example of secular legalism. He espoused a duty ethics which emphasized the necessity of obeying moral laws and held that morality had to be opposed to happiness because any action that gave happiness was a selfish one, and thus immoral. This Kantian deontology is emphatically not the Christian view. Christianity, because it believes that true freedom proceeds from our natural longings for truth, goodness, perfection, and
For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary... every sane and civilized man must have some sort of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others. One man does this on Christian principles, another on hygienic principles, another on sociological principles. The real conflict is not between Christianity and nature. For ‘nature’ (in the sense of natu-
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Scene from Stories of Moses, fresco by Raphael in the Loggia di Raffaello, 1516-1519
happiness, holds that the moral life is the way to happiness. Because the secular worldview deprives man of any transcendental purpose or destiny, it can offer very little guidance on what the purpose of rules is. As Lewis writes, I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.9
Secularism denies the existence of that “something beyond,” and so the best it can do is offer a kind of pragmatic justification for rules centered on the need for social cooperation. That is fine as far as it goes, but it can easily degenerate into an unhappy legalism. On
the other hand, because Christian morality is animated by an understanding of mankind’s natural longing for goodness, happiness, and perfection, the Christian view sees rules as a means for achieving a more fulfilling existence.10 In the examples used above to illustrate the idea of “liberating restrictions,” the implied idea was that one restricts one’s freedom in order to achieve a greater good and a fuller unfolding of freedom. It suggests an idea of freedom which Servais Pinckaers, in his book Morality: The Catholic View, calls freedom for excellence or the freedom to act excellently. The problem that many people have with Christianity is that they cannot see what greater good the Christian moral code purports to direct one to. What kind of excellence does it aim to effect? If Christianity is not about laws for the sake of laws, but instead about laws for the sake of a greater good, what is that good? Christian thinkers tend to answer these questions by saying that Christianity’s moral code is not an end in itself, that it has no intrinsic value. Its value is purely instrumental, meant to aid one
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in attaining goodness and happiness and to succeed in becoming a good and happy person. There is much skepticism about this claim that morality, especially Christian morality, could ever be connected to happiness. The position one takes on this, however, turns on one’s definition of happiness. Many people today would define happiness as mere pleasure, as the temporary and ephemeral experience of neurochemical stimulation. However, there is a quite different way of looking at happiness, one that defines it in terms of joy. St. Augustine, the great Christian theologian, once defined happiness in this way: “Thus all agree that they want to be happy, just as they would, if questioned, all agree that they want to rejoice, and it is joy itself that they call the happy life. The happy life is joy born of the truth.”11 Father Pinckaers explains the essential differences between joy and pleasure: Pleasure is an agreeable sensation, a passion caused by contact with some exterior good. Joy, however, is something interior, like that act that causes it. Joy is the direct effect of an excellent action, like the savor of a long task finally accomplished. It is also the effect in us of truth understood and goodness loved. Thus we associate joy with virtue, regarding it as a sign of virtue’s authenticity…pleasure is brief, variable, and superficial, like the contact that causes it. Joy is lasting, like the excellence, the virtues, that engender it. Sense pleasure is individual, like sensation itself, it decreases when the good that causes it is divided up and shared more widely; it ceases altogether when this good is absent. Joy is communicable; it grows by being shared and repays sacrifices freely embraced.12
a deeper joy in being able to live a virtuous life. There are many reasons for this intrinsic connection between the moral life and happiness, between goodness and joy, but in terms of simple empiricism, it is also an easily observed phenomenon. Numerous Christians throughout the centuries, from St. Augustine to St. Francis of Assisi to G.K. Chesterton, have testified to the ability of the moral life to instill joy. The joy of the Christian life, however, arises not only from the satisfaction of a morally excellent life, but also from the particular religious teachings of Christianity and the practical effects of those teachings in one’s life. Part of the confusion about Christian morality is a result of the fact that Christian moral teaching is so often presented in isolation from its spiritual or religious teachings. Though there are many thinkers, such as Princeton professor Robert George, who will argue for the rational superiority of Christian morality quite apart from religious revelations, the fact remains that the joy that Christians throughout the ages have associated with the Christian life is very difficult to understand apart from the messages and teachings of Jesus. You cannot disconnect Christian morality from Christianity in general. If somebody urged you to brush your teeth twice a day but you had no prior knowledge of the importance of dental care, you might wonder at it and dismiss it as an irrational imposition on your life. But certainly if you learned that brushing your teeth twice a day will actually prevent your teeth from decaying later in life, you would readily adopt the practice. The cause of Christian joy is precisely God Himself. Christians believe that God came to earth as a man in
When happiness is under- *OYPZ[PHUP[` KVLZ UV[ ZLLR Y\SLZ MVY [OL ZHRL VM Y\SLZ stood in terms of lasting joy, instead of temporary I\[ MVY [OL ZHRL VM [Y\L OHWWPULZZ HUK MYLLKVT pleasure, the way in which Christian morality can be said to be compatible with order to free mankind from its sins and reunite manhappiness becomes clear. Though a Christian must, kind with Himself. That is the principle message of from time to time, forgo certain temporary pleasures, the Gospel, and it is called the Gospel (which means the Christian moral life instills a deep and irrevocable “good news”) for a good reason. As Keller notes in his book, for the idea of “liberating restrictions” to make joy. The attainment of a virtuous character, one that can any sense, the restriction must fit our nature and cirgive rise to morally excellent actions at all times, is a cumstances. He writes, “Discipline and constraints, joy-giving accomplishment, in part because we natu- then, liberate us only when they fit with the reality rally desire goodness (though we often forget what of our nature and capacities.”13 Christianity teaches goodness actually is). Keller’s example of the piano that the one thing that fits with our true nature above player, discussed above, is helpful in understanding everything else is love. Love is the most sublime huthis concept. Just as attaining the skill of piano-play- man emotional state, and it is something that everyone ing requires surrendering some freedom to that task, yearns for. It is the proper environment for mankind, so too does attaining the skill of living a virtuous life. just as the fishbowl is the proper environment for the And just as one finds happiness and contentment in fish. Yet the seeming contradiction of a loss of freedom being able to play the piano well, so too does one find that liberates is clearly demonstrated with regard to the
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Saint Augustine Altarpiece by Jan Van Scourel, ca. 1520
experience of love. Love, Keller argues, is simultaneously the most liberating thing and the most restrictive thing a human being can experience; it demands the most, but it also gives the most. “To experience the joy and freedom of love,” Keller writes, “you must give up your personal autonomy.”14 Keller’s statement neatly summarizes the whole basis for Christian morality. Christians believe that we were made for love—for love of each other and love of God. Furthermore, they believe that God loved us first,
that He loved us when He created us and He loved us when He underwent unspeakable suffering for us on the cross. Because Christ loved us and sacrificed much for us in order that we could be with Him again, we are filled with joy and gratitude, and we respond to Him in love for what He has done for us. By its very nature, love means giving things up, sacrificing for the other, the object of your love. Removed from the context of love, those sacrifices might seem painful and absurd, but within the context of a love that gives joy, freedom,
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and meaning, they begin to make perfect sense. This is why the central statement of Christianity is not “follow rules” but, as Christ says in the Gospels, “Follow me.”15 It is not about a relationship with a set of rules, but about a relationship with a person. Therein lies the meaning of the biblical passages which I referenced at the beginning of this article. God came and suffered on earth to restore us to a loving relationship with Him, our Maker, and it is in that ultimate relationship of love that we are most free and joyful, no matter what sacrifices it might call on us to make. It is not about automatically and mindlessly obeying rules that mean nothing to us and that only trample on enjoyment. It is about the true joy and liberation that comes from living in love. The Christian message is not oppressive. It is not animated by a hatred of pleasure or fun or by a desire to put people in a straightjacket. It is animated by the spirit of love, which is the spirit of God. We all seek to live in relationships of love and to live in a world characterized by love. Christianity offers exactly this, but it also specifies what is necessary for such a world to come about. Christians desire above all to be near to God, to live in a relationship with Him. In fulfilling that desire, we must sometimes reject our secondary desires when giving in to them would separate us from God. We believe that He has freed us not only from the punishment due to our wrongdoings, but from the wrongdoings themselves, and that He will grow this freedom from wrongdoing in us more and more each day. The struggle, furthermore, is more than worth it, for the freedom and joy that comes from a relationship with God is truly the “pearl of great price.”16 Pope Benedict XVI put it this way in his inaugural homily: Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom?… No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive
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a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ—and you will find true life.17
If one doubts this idea, the Christian may answer along with Chesterton that for the doubter, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”18 Those who have tried it down through the ages, however, have overwhelmingly testified to a deep and profound joy. Morality for them has not been an imposition, but rather a way of expressing their love for and gratitude to Christ, for deepening their union with Him, and for achieving a joyful life. The most important “liberating restriction” of all is the love of God, come to set us free. 1
Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian and Other Essays (New York: Simon and Shuster Inc., 1957) 21-22. 2 Ibid. 3 Galatians 5:1. 4 John 10:10. 5 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995) 167. 6 Tim Keller, Reason for God (New York: Penguin Group, 2008) 45-6. 7 Ibid. 46. 8 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Granite Publishers, 2006) 100-1. 9 Ibid. 149. 10 For a complete exposition of this idea, see Morality: The Catholic View. 11 Augustine, qtd. in Pinckaers 77. 12 Servais Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View (Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001) 78. 13 Keller 46. 14 Ibid. 48. 15 See Mathew 4:19, Matthew 9:9, Luke 9:23. 16 Matthew 13:46. 17 Pope Benedict XVI, “Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI,” Vatican: The Holy See, 24 April 2005, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 9 Feb. 2010 < http:// www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/homilies/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_iniziopontificato_en.html>. 18 G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994) 37.
Peter Blair ‘12 is from Newton Square, Pennsylvania. He is a Government and Classics double major.
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alter Sinnott-Armstrong begins his recent book, Morality Without God? God?, ? with an explanation of its title. He writes, “There really is no question about morality without God. There is just plain morality.”1 The book contains Sinnott-Armstrong’s systematic explication of his secular conception of objective morality, which is based on the premise that it is morally wrong to cause harm. He writes, “Many theists claim that God is necessary for objective morality, so atheism implies nihilism or, at least, the denial of objective morality. The next two chapters argue for the opposite conclusion: Morality does not depend on God.”2 This article will evaluate Sinnott-Armstrong’s conception of morality, which, I will argue, falls short of providing a coherent secular grounding for making moral judgments.
Sinnott-Armstrong’s first move towards defining objective morality apart from God is to establish a point of near universal agreement on a moral question. He writes, “Consider rape. Rape is immoral. I hope you agree. Everyone I know—whether theist or atheist or agnostic—agrees that rape is morally wrong.”3 Starting from this common ground, Sinnott-Armstrong offers an explanation of the immorality of rape. According to Sinnott-Armstrong, a secularist can conclude that rape is morally wrong because “it harms the victim for no adequate reason.”4 Of course, this definition raises a host of philosophical questions, which he then goes about answering. Sinnott-Armstrong begins by defining harm as death, pain, or disability. He states, “Most people agree that harms include death, pain, and disability.
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Disability includes loss of freedom and maybe also false beliefs insofar as false beliefs make people unable to achieve goals. Just imagine trying to buy a car
is subjective. Therefore, their immorality would be subjective as well. However, Sinnott-Armstrong seems to overlook this point. He writes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;What makes these
when you believe that cars are sold at grocery stores.â&#x20AC;?5 Sinnott-Armstrong is not explicit in his deďŹ nition of â&#x20AC;&#x153;adequate reason,â&#x20AC;? but suggests that harm is justiďŹ ed by adequate reason if the beneďŹ ts resulting from its commission outweigh the harm itself or prevent greater harm in the future. He acknowledges, Of course, these harms sometimes bring beneďŹ ts in their wake. Death can end pain. Pain and disability can build character. Nonetheless, these harms are bad at least when they bring no beneďŹ tâ&#x20AC;Ś Doctors cause harm when they amputate limbs. But those harms are caused in order to prevent greater harm in the future. That is why these acts are not immoral. 6
This deďŹ nition of â&#x20AC;&#x153;adequate reasonâ&#x20AC;? is the basis for my ďŹ rst objection to Sinnott-Armstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moral framework. How are we to evaluate the beneďŹ t and detriment of an action to determine whether it is justiďŹ ed by adequate reason? For example, a selďŹ sh person might hold that it is permissible to weigh beneďŹ t for oneself more heavily than detriment to others. That person could commit all sorts of traditionally immoral acts including theft, rape, or murder without ever violating Sinnott-Armstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conception of morality. People can disagree about what constitutes â&#x20AC;&#x153;adequate reason.â&#x20AC;? Therefore, one must appeal to a higher standard of morality in order to condemn someone for wrongly judging the Walter Sinnott-Armstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reason for which he or she Morality Without God?? was causes harm. published in July 2009. In the next step of his argument, SinnottArmstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claim that he is explicating an objective morality quickly begins to unravel. In order to provide an objective grounding for his system of morality, he needs to show that harms are objectively bad. Only upon these grounds can he argue that they are objectively morally wrong, because if harms are not intrinsically bad, then their harmfulness
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harms bad? That is another tough question that I do not need to answer here. It is enough for my argument that these harms are bad, even if it is not clear what makes them bad or what it means to call them bad.â&#x20AC;?7 This is a rather baďŹ&#x201E;ing claim, tantamount to a bare assertion. It is critical to Sinnott-Armstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s argument that he demonstrate that harms are objectively bad if he is to claim that their inďŹ&#x201A;iction is objectively wrong, and yet he declines to justify this premise. Anticipating this objection, Sinnott-Armstrong cites the work of Professor Bernard Gert, who deďŹ nes consequences as bad if it would be irrational to seek them or not avoid them. Of course, relying on this deďŹ nition requires that Sinnott-Armstrong address the meaning of â&#x20AC;&#x153;irrational.â&#x20AC;? He claims that â&#x20AC;&#x153;one sign that an act is irrational is that you would never advise anyone you care about to do it.â&#x20AC;?8 This structure is highly suspect. Sinnott-Armstrong is attempting to deďŹ ne harm. He argues that harms are bad because it would be irrational to seek them and that irrational actions are those which we would not advise people we care about to do. However, why would we advise people we care about not to do irrational actions, unless their irrational actions might harm them? SinnottArmstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s deďŹ nition of harm begs the question by using an impulse to prevent harm to deďŹ ne harm. This undermines both the validity of his argument and its claim to establish an objective morality. It is also unclear from this argument why harmfulness implies wrongness, though this is the foundation on which his whole case rests. Why must we accept Sinnott-Armstrongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea that to cause unjustiďŹ ed harm is immoral? Arthur LeďŹ&#x20AC;, ďŹ&#x20AC; a professor of law at Yale Law School, published an essay entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Lawâ&#x20AC;? in which he argues for the necessity of an objective moral evaluator to establish normative moral claims: A statement in the form â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;you ought to do X,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;it is right to do X,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; or â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;X is goodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; will establish oughtness, rightness, or goodness only if there is a set of rules that gives the speaker the power totally to determine the question. But it is precisely the question of who has the power to set such rules for validating evaluations that is the central problem of ethicsâ&#x20AC;Ś There is no one who
can be said a priori to have that power unless the question being posed is also being begged.9
By making normative statements about what is bad and therefore morally wrong, Sinnott-Armstrong is presupposing a moral evaluator. Because he has ruled out God, Sinnott-Armstrong’s moral evaluator must be some person or group of people. Thus, when Sinnott-Armstrong extends his discussion of harm from self to others, he relies on the force of public opinion in settling certain actions as morally wrong. Take, for example, an argument which SinnottArmstrong claims should convince everyone: It is morally wrong for [some person] to hit you for no reason. If that is morally wrong, then it is also morally wrong for you to hit him for no reason. Therefore, it is morally wrong for you to hit him for no reason. The only way around this conclusion is either: (a) to admit that everyone in the world is allowed to hit you on the nose whenever he or she feels like it or (b) to claim that you are allowed to hit others when they are not allowed to hit you. Response (a) is abhorrent. Response (b) is arbitrary.10
But this line of argument can never satisfactorily answer what Leff calls “the grand sez who?”11 SinnottArmstrong assumes that everyone will agree that we ought not to be victims of unjustified violence and therefore concludes that we ought not to commit unjustified violence either. Unfortunately, that agreement
Objective morality requires an evaluator who is “the unjudged judge, the unruled legislator, the premise maker who rests on no premises, the uncreated creator of values.”12 By definition, no human-created system can be that “uncreated creator.” According to Leff, himself an agnostic, this is why God is the necessary grounding of any system of objective morality. If God exists, then we and the moral order in which we find ourselves are defined by Him. As Leff puts it, “Our relationship to God’s moral order is the triangle’s relationship to the order of Euclidean plane geometry, not the mathematician’s.”13 It necessarily follows from God’s nature that His statements are true and effectual. Under what other circumstances can the unexamined will of anyone else withstand the cosmic “says who” and come out similarly dispositive? There are no such circumstances… No person, no combination of people, no document however hallowed by time, no process, no premise, nothing is equivalent to an actual God in this central function as the unexaminable examiner of good and evil.14
In this way, Christianity provides a coherent framework for objective morality that is impossible without God.
1
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) xi. 2 Ibid. 56. 3 Ibid. 57. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 58-59. 6 Ibid. 59, 71. 7 Ibid. 60. 8 Ibid. 61. 9 Arthur Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” Duke Law Journal 1979.6 (1979): 1232. 10 Sinnott-Armstrong 63-64. 11 Leff 1230. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 1231. 14 Ibid. 1232.
º6\Y YLSH[PVUZOPW [V .VK»Z TVYHS VYKLY PZ [OL [YPHUNSL»Z YLSH[PVUZOPW [V [OL VYKLY VM ,\JSPKLHU WSHUL NLVTL[Y` UV[ [OL TH[OLTH[PJPHU»Z » ·(Y[O\Y 3LMM does not explain or justify any objective, normative moral claim. The judgment of the moral evaluators on which Sinnott-Armstrong relies can be challenged. One cannot even define genocide as objectively wrong without raising the question, “Sez who?” In an effort to base normative moral judgments on normal moral beliefs, Sinnott-Armstrong sidesteps foundational elements of his theory. He attempts to forge unimpeachable propositions from a cultural consensus, but in order for his basic propositions to be unimpeachable, the source of those basic propositions must also be unimpeachable. This is a standard that no person or group of people, no matter how strong the consensus, can possibly meet. Moral norms vary from time to time and place to place. How should we ever decide between them without appealing to some higher moral order?
Lee Farnsworth ‘12 is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a Government and Philosophy double major.
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by Sarah White and Charles Clark
Revivalism and Reform in Early 19th-Century America
The Good Samaritan by Domenico Campagnola, ca. 1530
T
he civil rights movement and women’s suffrage ff have radically changed the face of American society and have succeeded in changing the way most Americans think about the issues that they addressed. But while these reform movements of the twentieth century spring easily to mind, we are apt to forget that the demand for social reform has been an ever present force in the evolution of society. Consequently, we often underestimate and misunderstand the social reform movements of the more distant past. The foundation for modern reform movements was laid in the early nineteenth century. According to historian Timothy Smith, “the crusade for humanitarian reform” was sparked by leaders in the Christian church.1 Inspired by the revivalist movement that spread across the United States, unprecedented numbers of Americans began to fight for change in their society. Among these early reform movements
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were the temperance movement and the movement for equal education for women and African Americans. The impetus for the revivals of the early nineteenth century came largely from the disestablishment of off ficial state churches in New England. Despite the Bill of Rights’ prohibition of the regulation of religion by the national Congress, several New England states continued to have a state-supported church for many years.2 Historian Daniel Walker Howe comments on the unprecedented nature of this reform: “Ever since Constantine the Great had made Christianity the established religion of the Roman Empire, the Western world had typically connected church and state. Now, the Americans undertook to experiment with their separation: Religion would be purely voluntary.”3 Many Christians were dismayed by these changes, but in fact, “The results astonished both friends and foes of Christianity.”4 According to revivalist Lyman Beecher,
“They say ministers have lost their influence; the fact in 1784. In it he wrote, “Thus we see poverty and misis, they have gained… By voluntary efforts, societies, ery, crimes and infamy, diseases and death, are all the missions, and revivals, they exert a deeper influence natural and usual consequences of the intemperate use than ever they could” as a state institution.5 Once in- of ardent spirits.”13 dependent from state support and regulation, church Another looming social problem was the unleaders “devised means of influencing public opinion equal education available to women and to African outside of politics.”6 According to Howe, “The reli- Americans. Of course, slaves were forbidden to learn gious institutions they created some- 0U [OL LHYS` UPUL[LLU[O JLU[\Y` HSJVOVSPZT ^HZ times displayed ÄYZ[ YLJVNUPaLK HZ H ZLYPV\Z ZVJPHS WYVISLT more democracy than the nation’s civic ones”7 because churches and religious institutions to read and write, and strict laws existed to punish gave positions of authority to immigrants, women, and anyone who attempted to educate a slave. According African Americans long before these groups were able to Fredrick Douglass, this was because “education and to participate in politics.8 The separation of church slavery were incompatible with each other.”14 When from state in the early nineteenth century in fact gave he was a boy, Douglass’ mistress began teaching him the newly independent churches the freedom to reach to read but stopped when her husband told her that out to all levels of society, facilitating revivals and the it would ruin him for slavery. Douglass took this observation to heart, and having realized that education reform movements that followed them. In the early nineteenth century, alcoholism was first was a form of liberation, he thereafter taught himself recognized as a serious social problem. According to to read, saying that he “understood the pathway from Thomas Pegram, “Drinking, long accepted as an es- slavery to freedom.”15 Once able, he read the literasential component of daily life and social interaction… ture of abolition, “a powerful vindication of human began to be seen as a cause of disorder and a barrier to rights,”16 and became convinced of the truth that progress.”9 In this period, binge drinking and a pref- slavery was not his proper destiny. David Walker, an erence for hard liquor over beer became increasingly African American freeman, likewise condemned the typical. During the forty years between 1790 and 1830, injustice of keeping blacks in a state of ignorance in his Americans “consumed each year between 6.6 and 7.1 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. d He observed gallons of pure alcohol,” more than double the amount that unequal education made it easy for white society consumed today.10 As Mark Edward Lender points to treat not only slaves but all blacks as second-class out, the social fact of heavy drinking “made it relatively citizens. easy for anyone prone to alcoholism to get into real Women too found it almost impossible to receive trouble.”11 Of course, the social consequences of alco- the same education as their male peers. It was popularholism have not changed significantly since the early ly held that women ought not to be educated because nineteenth century, and “although socially tolerated, they were intellectually inferior or even because educadrunkenness frequently generated violence, especially tion would be physically harmful to them.17 Indeed, domestic violence, and other illegal behavior.”12 Abigail Adams wrote that “it was fashionable to ridiMany contemporary observers recognized the cule female learning [in] the best families,” where girls growing problem of alcoholism in American society. were taught only writing and basic arithmetic skills.18 Benjamin Franklin remarked on the economic con- Benjamin Franklin writes in his Autobiographyy of a sequences of alcohol addiction in his Autobiography, Dutch widow who was able to save her family from noting that heavy drinkers were less productive and ruin by running the family business after her husband’s death. Franklin adds, “I mention this af(UV[OLY SVVTPUN ZVJPHS WYVISLT ^HZ fair chiefly for the sake of recommendeducation to our young women [OL \ULX\HS LK\JH[PVU H]HPSHISL [V asing… likely to be of more use to them and ^VTLU HUK [V (MYPJHU (TLYPJHUZ their children… than either music or dancing.”19 However, society at large was had difficulty financing their costly habit. Benjamin not inclined to take Franklin’s advice. For example, a Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of public high school education was not available for girls Independence, published a pamphlet called An Inquiry in Boston until 1852 and in Philadelphia until 1893,20 into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors upon the Human and almost all colleges denied women admission. Body, and Their Influence upon the Happiness of Society
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With the disestablishment of official churches and were his parishioners. His first step was to prepare recthe advent of religious revival in early nineteenth- ommendations for the church on how to address the century America, the prospect of broadly addressing problem of intemperance. Within a year of the publithe root causes of these societal ills became increas- cation of Beecher’s report, temperance societies began ingly achievable. While spreading the Gospel, the to be founded. These societies provided support for rerevival movement was able to reach out to society in covering alcoholics and encouraged others to commit other ways, encouraging the repentance of destructive to temperance. They provided speakers who were rehabits and the service of the underprivileged. Charles formed alcoholics and published and distributed tracts Finney, a leading revivalist, recognized the reforma- on the subject. Beecher and others in the revivalist movement did tive power of a renewed love for God. He wrote that “Revival breaks the power of the world and of sin over not try to punish people for their intemperate lifestyles, Christians. It brings them to such vantage ground that they get a fresh impulse toward heaven.”21 Finney thought that revival would lead not only to the internal transformation of the believer, but that the believer’s love for God would overflow into love for others, making him an agent of the external transformation of society. This view was shared by Joshua Bradley, a contemporary observer of the revival movement who wrote, “Pure religion is of infinite importance to man. It not only discloses the odiousness of sin, but the benevolence of God in sending his Son into the world to save all that believe.”22 His phrase, “pure religion,” is taken from the book of James in the New Testament. James writes, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself View of Oberlin College, the first co-educational and racially integrated college in unstained from the world.”23 This America, during the tenure of Charles Finney, with revival meeting in progress ideal of religious life combines compassion and morality in a way exemplified in the person and unlike later movements, they did not seek the of Jesus Christ, who “committed no sin”24 and “did not statutory prohibition of alcohol. Instead, they encourconsider equality with God something to be grasped, aged people to abstain from hard liquors and binge but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a drinking because temperance offered a better way of servant.”25 This spirit of revival was the catalyst for so- life. This approach came directly out of their undercial reform, and the first of these reforms to gain wide- standing of man’s spiritual condition and of sin. Paul writes in the book of Romans, “Do you not know that spread support was the temperance movement. The first successful campaign to encourage the if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, responsible use of alcohol was founded by Lyman you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, Beecher, a New England minister and revivalist. which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to Beecher took up the cause of temperance in 1812, and righteousness?”27 Revivalists saw addiction to alcohol within ten years, “one million Americans enrolled in not as a personal failing but as a form of enslavement more than six thousand voluntary associations had from which people needed to be freed by the liberating pledged themselves to abstain totally from the use of power of the Gospel. The message that the revivalists spirits.”26 Beecher’s involvement in the movement be- preached was essentially the same as that Paul wrote to gan when he witnessed the damage that whiskey trad- the Ephesians: “You were taught, with regard to your ers were doing among a Native American tribe who former way of life, to put off your old self, which is
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being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made evening classes and establish schools for both freemen new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the and escaped slaves in Cincinnati. Some citizens of the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness city, however, became angry that the students were “taking seriously the antislavery doctrine concerning and holiness.”28 The temperance movement was revitalized in 1825, equality,”35 and Lane’s trustees enacted policies to diswhen Beecher gave his Six Sermons on Intemperance. In courage student involvement in the African American these sermons, he described intemperance’s “woes and community against Beecher’s wishes. This led some sorrows” and “the helplessness of its victims,”29 adding students to split from Lane. Many of the abolitionist students who left Lane that “The injurious influence of general intemperance upon national intellect, is equally certain, and not less joined Oberlin College, an interracial and coeducato be deprecated.”30 The grassroots efforts of the re- tional college run by Beecher’s friend and fellow revivalists were consolidated in 1826 with the founda- vivalist, Charles Finney. Finney had been invited to tion of the American Temperance Society. By the 1840s become the professor of theology at Oberlin before the effects of the temperance movement were becom- he assumed the position of president, and he accepted ing clear, and the consumption of hard liquor in the on the condition that “we be allowed to receive colUnited States had fallen by more than two-thirds from ored people on the same conditions that we did white its rate in 1825. This wave of social reform was both people; that there should be no discrimination made motivated and facilitated by the revivalist message of on account of color.”36 As one of Finney’s biographers new life in Jesus Christ. points out, Finney and the founders of Oberlin beSeveral prominent revivalists were also advocates for lieved that “all of life is under God,” and they were t Beecher wrote, therefore compelled to offer an equal opportunity for educational equity. In Plea for the West, “But if this nation is, in the providence of God, des- education to the members of society who were typitined to lead the way in the moral and political emanci- cally denied.37 pation of the world, it is time she understood her high Oberlin College was founded in 1833 by a group calling, and were harnessed for the work.”31 He was of Presbyterian revivalists. From the beginning, it was convinced that education was essential to this mission. “noted for its abolitionist stance, for its acceptance of While clergy traditionally received good educations, Beecher believed ;OLZL LHYS` YLMVYT TV]LTLU[Z ^LYL that “not only did ministers have to WYVWLSSLK I` H ZWPYP[ VM *OYPZ[PHU YL]P]HS be properly educated; alll of society required schools and colleges, news- M\LSLK I` [OL YLKPZJV]LY` VM [OL .VZWLS papers and books, to educate citizens of a democracy and to prepare them to work on behalf black students, and as a pioneer in coeducation for of righteousness and morality.”32 Additionally, his wife women.”38 In the first year of the college, one hunRoxana ran a girl’s academy for many years, which, dred and one students were accepted, of whom thirtyaccording to Howe, “demonstrated the Beechers’ eight were women; 1864 was the first year when the commitment to developing the intellectual potential enrollment of women exceeded that of men.39 James of women,”33 including their four daughters, one of Fairchild, who succeeded Finney as president of the whom, Catharine Beecher, later founded the Western college, writes in his history of the school that the Female Institute, a secondary school for women in founders’ original plan was for women to be enrolled Cincinnati. in a separate department of Oberlin’s preparatory When Beecher became the president of Lane school. However, they ultimately decided that women Theological Seminary, he insisted that both white should receive equal treatment and attend the same and African American students be admitted to Lane, classes as men. A few years later, women were also addespite opposition from some students and commu- mitted into Oberlin’s Theological Seminary. Fairchild nity members. Beecher wrote on the subject, “Our adds, “It is not necessary to say that in scholarship the only qualifications for admission to the seminary are young women have held an honorable place… the best qualificationss intellectual, moral, and religious, with- scholar, in any branch of study, is just as likely to be a out reference to color, which I have no reason to think young woman as a young man.”40 Oberlin College’s exwould have any influence here, certainly never with ample of providing an education to anyone, regardless my consent.”34 Beecher intended Lane to educate the of race or gender, demonstrates the sincerity of revivalinstruments of revival and reform, regardless of their ists’ dedication to creating opportunity for the underclass or race. During Beecher’s tenure at Lane, students privileged and underrepresented members of society. formed an Anti-Slavery Society and began to hold
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These early reform movements were propelled by a spirit of Christian revival, fueled by the rediscovery of the Gospel. As Charles Finney wrote in his essay “What is Revivalism,” a revival consisted of Christians who were newly inspired in their love for God and their desire to live in obedience to his word.41 Christ’s example of service to others and the Bible’s call to the “pure religion” of caring for the least regarded members of society led revivalists to work to change the lives of those who were trapped in alcoholism or denied an education. By addressing the underlying problems and prejudices that led to social injustice and discontent, revivalists helped people change their hearts, as well as their lives. The success of their movements testifies to the efficacy of their methods, has had a lasting impact on American society, and offers a model for Christians who would pursue reform today. 1
Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1967) 36. 2 Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 164. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Lyman Beecher qtd. in Howe 165. 6 Howe 169. 7 Ibid. 166. 8 Ibid. 9 Thomas R. Pegram, Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800-1933 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1998) 3. 10 Ibid. 6-7. 11 Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1982) 60. 12 Howe 167. 13 Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Mind and Body (Boston: James Loring, 1823) 12-13. 14 Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass: A Slave (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995) 22. 15 Ibid. 20. 16 Ibid. 24. 17 Marion Talbot, The Education of Women (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1910) 18. 18 Ibid. 16. 19 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916) 177. 20 Talbot 16. 21 Charles Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 6th ed. (New York: Leavitt, Lord, & Co., 1835) 1415.
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Joshua Bradley, Accounts of Religious Revivals in Many Parts of the United States from 1815 to 1818 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1980) v. 23 James 1:27. 24 1 Peter 2:22. 25 Philippians 2:6-7. 26 Pegram 16. 27 Romans 6:16. 28 Ephesians 4:22-24. 29 Lyman Beecher, Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance, 2nd ed. (Boston: T.R. Marvin, 1827) 2. 30 Ibid. 49. 31 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West, 2nd ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835) 11. 32 Jerald C. Brauer, “Editor’s Preface,” in Vincent Harding, A Certain Magnificence: Lyman Beecher and the Transformation of American Protestantism, 17751863 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1991) xvii. 33 Howe 168. 34 Lyman Beecher, qtd. in Harding 338. 35 Harding 353. 36 Charles Finney, Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1876) 333. 37 Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996) 178. 38 Ibid. xi. 39 James Harris Fairchild, Oberlin: The Colony and College, 1833-1883 (Oberlin, OH: E.J. Goodrich, 1883) 176, 170. 40 Ibid. 184. 41 Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion 14-15.
Sarah White ’11 is from Chapada dos Guimaraes, Brazil. She is an English and Russian Studies double major.
Charles Clark ‘11 is from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He is a Classical Archaeology major and an English minor.
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Designed
Perfect
Love
by Robert Cousins
By Jen Freise ‘12
T
he human conception of love is con stantly changing. Cultural understanding and representation of this most distinctly human emotion is enduringly expressed through literature. Indeed, literature often functions as a mirror held up to society, illuminating this or a bygone era. Medieval literature, for instance, features numerous examples of what is today called “love at first sight.” Two characters are introduced to each other and instantly fall in love. Their marital happily-ever-after is a foregone conclusion. There is no depth to the relationship, no apparent impetus save serendipity. One early
instance of this motif arises in the 11th century Welsh folktales The Mabinogi. The first branch of The Mabinogi, “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed,” sees the titular Welshman encounter the goddess Rhiannon while out in the country. She is “dressed in brilliant gold silk brocade” and Pwyll’s first impression of her is that, “The faces of all the maidens he had ever seen were unpleasant compared with her face.”1 After exchanging merely five lines of conversation, including introductory pleasantries, Pwyll declares to Rhiannon, “If I could choose from all the women and maidens in the world, ‘tis you I would choose.”2 Soon thereafter, the two marry and start a family.
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Pwyll and Rhiannon, without any prior acquaintance, fall instantaneously in love with each other and move quickly toward settling down together. This episode is representative of many of the courtships that take place in medieval literature. Ubiquity suggests cultural acceptability. If poems and folktales contain consistent depictions of love, then this representation must strike a familiar chord with the audience. If love were portrayed in an unreasonable or foreign way, there would surely be some kind of backlash against the poets. The fact that there was no change in literary convention speaks volumes. Contemporary culture departs dramatically from medieval times in its perception of romantic love. Love is placed on a rarified pedestal, shrouded in mystique and exalted to the point of becoming a societal fascination. This enthrallment has grown to such heights that romantic fulfillment is now embodied in the “soul mate,” the perfect person who is absolutely compatible on every possible level of desirability. Whereas
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medieval lovers would fall in love and marry following a chance encounter, the search for the perfect partner has grown to nearly obsessive proportions in modern times. Prospective mates are now scrutinized and evaluated for suitability before any lasting emotional commitment is extended. A potential partner must possess a preponderance of desirable qualities. Popular dating website Eharmony.com, for example, boasts that it matches its clients based on “29 Dimensions” of compatibility.3 This is the byproduct of a culture that proceeds warily, wading rather than falling into love and marriage. Providential meetings between two strangers, leading to lasting love at first sight, are simply no longer the romantic standard. The stark difference between these approaches is not the result of any dynamic quality intrinsic to romance. Rather, the shift from one end of the spectrum to the other represents mankind’s collective dissatisfaction with the various versions of romantic love that
have developed. What we have had, quite simply, has not worked. Over the centuries and across cultures, humanity has mounted a quest for a new, better way to understand love. But perhaps the answer is not a new and better way to understand love, but rather a new and better love to understand. Sheldon Vanauken, author of the National Book Award-winning autobiography A Severe Mercy, once wrote to C.S. Lewis with the observation that happiness was found in timelessness. It was the pressure of time—always passing, always weighing on you— that stood in opposition to true Joy. Lewis’s reply to Vanauken, who was not yet a Christian, also sheds light on the question of mankind’s dissatisfaction with the seemingly inconstant essence of love. He writes, Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time . . . why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.4
Lewis identifies Vanauken’s unease with time as evidence that he, and indeed all of humanity, had not always been and would not always be living within time. Indeed, man was created for eternity. But in order for this creation to take place, there must first have been a Creator who Himself dwelt in eternity. Lewis’s mode of analysis applies equally well to love. If his exchange with Vanauken points to the existence of a Creator, then examining love similarly can shed light on His character. Consider the broad evolution of mankind’s perception of romantic love. If human beings were intended to aspire only and always to earthly romantic love, then why do we feel such gnawing discomfort with it? The answer is that humanity was not intended to experience romance as the highest form of love. Just as Vanauken’s resistance to time demonstrates that man was originally designed for timelessness, our modern resistance to past forms of romantic love shows that we were created to experience love as something greater. And when considering that for which we were created, it is wise to start with the Creator Himself. The apostle John writes, “Love comes from God… because God is love.”5 Indeed, love is the driving force of the entire Gospel narrative. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”6 Love is an intrinsic part of God’s character. Whatever earthly imitation we are able to muster will never perfectly reproduce its source, but we can still actively participate in God’s divine love all the same.
During the Upper Room Discourse after the Last Supper, Jesus gave his disciples instruction in doing precisely that. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.”7 Not only did Jesus emphasize the self-sacrificial nature of love, though, but he lived out this teaching too. He demonstrated the fullness of self-sacrificial love—and its union with divine love—by dying on the Cross to pay the penalty for mankind’s sins. Obedience to God and His commands is the primary duty of every human being. But this goes far beyond simple subservience; obedience to God’s commands is how we demonstrate our love for him. “He who has my commands and obeys them,” Jesus tells the disciples, “he is the one who loves me… he who does not love me will not obey my teaching.”8 We may not be able to generate the holy, divine love that God bears us, but we can fully participate in that love through study and obedience to God’s Word. This standard helps to put our collective dissatisfaction with erotic love into better perspective. Undeniably, romance has an abundance of pleasant and positive qualities. Chief among these, however, is actually our awareness that romance is ultimately inadequate to meet our thirst for being known and loved. Through this realization, we are given poignant evidence that humanity was created to enjoy a greater, perfect, divine love, that of union with God Himself. 1
The Mabinogi, trans. Patrick K. Ford (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977) 42, 45. 2 Ibid. 45. 3 eHarmony, 2010, eHarmony, Inc., 1 Dec. 2009 <http://www.eharmony.com/>. 4 Clive Staples Lewis, “Letter to Sheldon Vanauken,” 23 Dec. 1950. Reprinted in Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) 93. 5 1 John 4:7-8. 6 John 3:16. 7 John 15:13-14. 8 John 14: 21, 24.
Robert Cousins is from Chappaqua, New York. The former executive editor of The Apologia, he graduated in 2009 with an English degree.
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and its Eugenics g
Ethical Implications p
Revisited
by Grace Nauman
A
lthough it seems unimaginable today, a casual glance through academic texts, sociological treatises, and legislation from the early 20th century quickly reveals that the ideas of eugenics and Social Darwinism were, in the words of Thomas McCarthy, “omnipresent in scholarly and popular discourse by the end of the nineteenth century.”1 In the 1970s, G.R. Searle wrote, “Indeed, it requires something of an imaginative effort ff to realize that earlier in the century eugenics was… an important challenge to politicians and academic theorists alike.”2 Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, eugenics—the idea of using controlled breeding to improve the human race— “quickly developed… into a political movement” of surprising success and dominance.3 Its most notorious expression was Nazi Germany’s Final Solution, a genocide designed to create an Aryan master race by euthanizing 11 million “undesirables.”
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But Nazi Germany was far from the only nation to adopt eugenic policies—most nations had adopted or at least considered eugenic legislation by the mid-20th century. In the United States, for instance, thirty states enacted laws that permitted authorities to forcibly sterilize those considered “feeble-minded” and “unfit to propagate,” frequently the mentally ill or poor.4 More than 64,000 Americans were sterilized under these laws. These policies enjoyed great popular support. California’s first sterilization law passed with just a single nay vote in both the state’s Senate and its House of Representatives.5 These policies purported to be “the direct application of the laws of physical science,”6 incontrovertibly rooted in scientific fact,7 and so they commanded uncontested intellectual hegemony. Decades earlier, Charles Darwin had proposed that life on earth developed by the selective inheritance of beneficial traits through natural selection. Almost immediately, philosophers and political activists
Logo for Second International Eugenics Conference, held in 1921 at the American Museum of Natural History, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State
proposed that if people could learn to better understand this process, they could harness it to improve the human condition. This prospect was understandably appealing, and it met with little resistance. What little resistance there was came primarily from the Roman Catholic Church and a few other bastions of “mainstream Christianity,” who opposed eugenics on the grounds that it conferred “dangerous powers upon the state or other social agencies”8 and displayed an unacceptable “contempt for human rights.”9 At the time, these factions were an embattled minority who seemed to be rejecting science for outdated prejudices. And yet in a matter of decades, the horrors of the Nazi eugenics program shocked the world into abandoning the hope of breeding a better human race, and changing science had all but removed Social Darwinism and eugenics from intellectual discourse, except as a historical phenomenon. The rise and fall of Social Darwinism provides an opportunity to reexamine the appropriate relationship between religion and science. In “The Flattening of the Earth,” Charles Clark demonstrated that the thesis that science and religion are naturally opposed was created by historians John Draper and Andrew Dickinson White in order to promote a naturalistic worldview.10 This and other articles published in The Apologiaa have
argued that religion need not oppose the scientific pursuit of knowledge. However, the eugenics movement offers an example of how the ethical influence of religion could have regulated the application of new scientific knowledge and perhaps have curbed the excesses of Social Darwinism. Darwin’s theories promised a powerful new way to alter the world, but they were by nature “non-teleological and non-directive.”11 That is, Darwinism could not define its own purpose, and its application required an ethical framework external to the theory itself. Christianity offered moral guidance, but many Social Darwinists and eugenicists claimed that encouraging the process of evolution should be an end itself, “an object of first-class importance,”12 one that should supplant former considerations of humanity’s innate dignity and divine purpose. Social Darwinism is difficult to define. Historian Linda Clark’s definition, “the application of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the struggle for existence to the evolution of human society,”13 is about as precise as it is possible to be. Darwin’s theory does not single out any one method for its application, so it could be used by virtually any intellectual and political movement to claim legitimacy by proving that the movement was part of Darwinian evolution and thus the “natural order of things.” However, nearly all of
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Left: Portrait of Charles Darwin by John Collier Top right: Portrait of Sir Francis Galton by Charles Wellington Furse Bottom right: Portrait of Herbert Spencer by John McLure Hamilton
these discourses advocated taking steps to “improve” the human race. Though Darwin himself was not particularly interested in applying his own theories to human society, he “was not free from ambivalence and hesitations on these matters”14 and famously worried in his Descent of Man about human behavior that would impede natural selection: “We civilized men… do our utmost to check the progress of elimination… the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”15 Darwin felt that desire to aid the weak and helpless was one of humankind’s finest characteristics, the “noblest part of our nature,”16 but at the same time could not help but worry that this noble nature’s tendency to indulge itself would have negative effects. Other Darwinists, including his two most important intellectual heirs, Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton, would take this reasoning further and demand stronger measures to protect the human race from injury. Spencer, who coined the term “survival of the fittest,” began his philosophical career before Darwin published The Origins of the Species, but he found that Darwin’s work fit well into his belief that the entire universe was advancing towards greater perfection.17
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Spencer was happy to find a model of biological progress that fit his theory of the rest of the world and was eager to understand how he and his society could help promote this cosmic evolution. Subscribing to the Lamarckian idea that evolutionary success came from “direct adaptation and the inheritance of acquired characters,” he believed that human society should be hostile and competitive so that only the families and races that could adapt and succeed would continue.18 Commerce and warfare were the two fields on which this competition would take place, and charity, though permissible, should be limited so as to “not encourage the procreation of the unworthy.”19 He believed that “This harsh discipline had enabled humanity to achieve its present level of development”20 and maintaining it would ensure “a constant progress towards a higher degree of skill, intelligence, and self-regulation… a more complete life.”21 But soon developing theories of genetic inheritance discredited Lamarckianism. Weismann’s germ plasm theory and the resurrected theory of Mendelian genetics showed that organisms did not pass on traits acquired in their lifetimes.22 Previous theories of Social Darwinism had thought that social conditioning could advance evolution and improve the human race, but now it was revealed that an individual’s
social conditioning was not transferred to his children. From this discovery, “eugenicists drew the moral that true progress could only be achieved through racial progress; the level of intelligence, health, energy or beauty could only be raised by breeding.”23 Social Darwinists were forced to conclude that the only way to improve the human species in an effective, lasting way was through artificial selection. They hoped “to ‘breed out’ certain grave hereditary ailments… in the way that Mendelian geneticists had learned to breed ‘rustiness’ out of wheat.”24 Any of the whole range of human characteristics could be modified as the eugenicist saw fit, so long as he could supply an evolutionary justification. The founder of the eugenics movement was Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton. Believing that “the improvement of our stock seems one of the highest objects that can be reasonably attempted,”25 Galton became particularly interested in tracking the inheritance of various traits and ultimately aiding nature in “supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains.”26 He developed a science of statistics, known as biometry, to track the heredity of such traits, which would allow researchers to plan selective breeding programs. Although Mendelian genetics would later overshadow his work, he was correct to realize that researching inheritance patterns of specific traits was the necessary first step to any eugenics project. Galton’s contributions to eugenics were political as well as scientific. He worked to advance eugenics in the academic community, giving lectures, personally endowing a Eugenics research fellowship, and providing an endowment to establish a Eugenics chair at the University of London.27 Galton foresaw a future where eugenic ideas would replace former systems of values and become, as
Illustration of the Lamarckian conception of inheritance
he wrote in Nature, “an orthodox religious tenant of the future,” and he worked throughout his life to bring this about.28 The prominence of the intellectual field of eugenics was recognized by nearly every political movement.29 Just as Lamarckian ideas of social conditioning had previously done, eugenics now offered to be a powerful social and political tool to create a new, custommade society. But being only a tool, it could not offer a specific vision for its users to follow. Instead, social activists across the political spectrum saw how these methods could be used to alter the very fabric of society, its members, to suit their agendas. The number and variety of these agendas that cited Darwinism for support is staggering but not surprising. As Paul Crook points out, “as a worldview, Darwinism is a powerful rhetoricall instrument. Its persuasive and flexible rhetorical resources derive from the existence of indeterminaciess within the worldview itself.”30 The Social Darwinists and eugenicists failed to recognize that our scientific understanding of evolution by natural selection cannot provide us with a deontological system of ethics by which to evaluate our application of that science. Darwin himself never fully outlined what kind of worldview must come out of his scientific discoveries,31 and so his ideas were vulnerable to any ideology that could utilize his language. Indeed, attempting to derive imperatives for human behavior from Darwin’s worldview was doomed to fail, because Darwin’s theory is merely a description of a biological process. It is an account of how life is lived, not an account of how life should be lived. It does not offer moral advice in and of itself, so instead it served as a “wellspring of a continual supply of metaphors”32 that could be used to demonstrate that any and every political or social agenda “had science on its side.”33 In most cases, these agendas were nothing new— Plato considered eugenics34—but by using the Darwinian rhetoric they gained fresh legitimacy. This lack of ethical foundation drew criticism from Christians. In Eugenics and Other Evils, written in the golden age of Social Darwinism, G.K. Chesterton rightly pointed out that eugenicists could rarely offer a clear vision of what their efforts would accomplish.
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Photograph of AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camp in Poland by Raymond Depardon
Galton himself admitted that even though men had a “religious duty” to aid the course of evolution,35 “we are ignorant of the ultimate destiny of humanity,” and the actual direction of evolution “must first be worked out sedulously.”36 Chesterton argued that such inexactitude would inevitably lead to unintended consequences, especially once it made its way into public policy: “If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.”37 History has proven him right—in full practice, eugenic policies led to abuses that have appalled the world. Chesterton also objected that eugenic policies allotted too much power to fallible humans, who did not have any right to decide which human traits had more right to exist than others. Ultimately, these decisions were “a matter of taste,”38 and there were a “hundred cases of… instant divergence of individual opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to propagate.”39 Chesterton believed that it would be impossible to decide upon adequate eugenic criteria, for the simple reason that people prefer different traits. Moreover, the Christian doctrine that all humans are formed in the image of God made it impermissible for any few humans to decide whether or not another person was worthy of reproducing. As Chesterton said, In the matter of fundamental human rights, nothing can be above Man, except God. An
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institution claiming to come from God might have such authority; but this is the last claim the Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to rule men in such matters is like a man’s right eye claiming to rule him, or his left leg to run away with him.40
Other Christian writers, like C. S. Lewis, objected to the careless way eugenicists abandoned traditional ideas of morality, “ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious”41 to shape humanity in their own image. These objections went unheeded, legislation spread, and academic discourse became dominated with Social Darwinist ideas. Anthropology devoted itself to deciphering the hereditary characteristics of the different races, while “social Darwinism… contributed significantly to shaping the emerging human sciences, particularly sociology and psychology.”42 Mike Hawkins writes, “Social Darwinism was an omnipresent reality for the practitioners of the social sciences during this period. Even when not adopting it as such, theorists sometimes found it difficult to avoid (or resist) the language of selection and survival of the fittest.”43 Sociological and political texts started describing rural farmers,44 poor slum dwellers, and colonized peoples as “degenerate races,”45 echoing the eugenics discourse. Before long, though, the scientific foundation of Social Darwinism had shifted once again. Although ultimately it was the specter of Nazi atrocities that “finally drove even the most recalcitrant scientists,
14
Crook 40. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (New York: American Home Library Company, 1902) 180-81. 16 Ibid. 17 Hugh Elliot, Herbert Spencer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1917) 233. 18 Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 85-87. 19 Ibid. 86. 20 Ibid. 85. 21 Herbert Spencer, qtd. in Hawkins 85. 22 Searle 2. 23 Ibid. 6. 24 G.R. Searle, qtd. in Crook 20. 25 Francis Galton, “Eugenics, its Definition, Scope, and Aims,” Nature 70:1804 (1904): 82. 26 Galton, Nature 1. 27 Searle 2. 28 Galton, Nature 1. 29 Crook 26. 30 Ibid. 17. 31 McCarthy 75. 32 Ibid. 76. 33 Ibid. 77. 34 “And, in consequence, chucked the notion.” Chesterton 10. 35 Galton, Inquiries 198. 36 Galton, Nature 1. 37 Chesterton 16. 38 Ibid. 57. 39 Ibid. 53. 40 Ibid. 60. 41 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947) 48. 42 McCarthy 82. 43 Hawkins 13. 44 Adna Ferrin Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899) 422. 45 Searle 20. 46 McCarthy 82. 47 Ibid. 84.
scholars, and intellectuals away” from the ideas of eugenics,46 new discoveries in genetics appeared which undermined many theories that had been central to the practice.47 Scientific fact that had been considered incontrovertible and had served as the basis for all sorts of sociopolitical study was suddenly deemed morally bankrupt and factually inaccurate. People impatient to build social systems on a still-developing scientific framework found that there was really no substance to their Utopian visions. But the price of their hubris had been high. The history of Social Darwinism ought to remind us that our scientific knowledge is incomplete and dynamic, and that we should be deeply cautious about applying it to our humanity. It should also remind us that science and religion each have their fields of expertise. The Bible is not a biological treatise, and laboratory results cannot translate into moral principles. If successful cooperation between science and religion is to be achieved, each must look to the other for guidance.
15
1
Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 74. 2 G.R. Searle, Eugenics and Politics in Britain: 1900-1914 (Leyden, The Netherlands: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976) 181. 3 Ibid. 9. 4 Peter Irons, “Forced Sterilization: a Stain on California,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 2003, Los Angeles Times, 9 Feb. 2010 <http://articles.latimes. com/2003/feb/16/opinion/oe-irons16?pg=2>. 5 Paul Popenoe, “The Progress of Eugenic Sterilization,” The Journal of Heredity, Oxford University Press, 9 Feb. 2010 <http://jhered. oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/25/1/19.pdf>. 6 Searle 2. 7 McCarthy 77. 8 Paul Crook, Darwin’s Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism (New York: Peter Lang, 2007) 22. 9 G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and its Evils (New York: Cassell and Company, Limited, 1922) 51. 10 Charles Clark, “The Flattening of the Earth: How Two Men Forged the Conflict between Science and Religion from Bad History,” The Dartmouth Apologia 4.1 (2009) 20-25. 11 Crook 40. 12 Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1911) 211. 13 Linda Clark, “Introduction: Darwinism and Social Darwinism,” Social Darwinism in France (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1984) 1.
Grace Nauman ’11 is from Lebanon, Oregon. She is a Molecular Biology Major and an English Minor.
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Jonathan Swift’s
Satire of Hypocrisy in A Tale of a Tub
n A TALE OF A TUB, Jonathan Swift confronts hypocritical Christians for their abuses of religion while affirming the purity of the Gospel itself. Swift wrote this satire to address growing disillusionment with Christianity, which he saw as stemming from doctrinal corruption and hypocritical behavior within all major branches of the church. By exposing its faults, he intended to hold the church accountable for presenting an authentic, biblical account of the Christian faith. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. As a young adult, he moved to England, worked as a secretary to a former diplomat, and began to write. His early work primarily criticized the state of English prose and examined the relationships between different cultures,1 but he soon realized that these intellectual exercises
I
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by Emily DeBaun
were not enough to satisfy the calling of his faith. In 1694, Swift was ordained in the Anglican Church.2 He left his job as a secretary and went to minister in Ireland.3 At the time, Europe was still feeling the effects of the Protestant Reformation, during which religious dissenters who were frustrated with certain practices in the Catholic Church formed new churches based on differing ideas about the interpretation of scripture. Meanwhile, Britain was dealing with its own English Reformation, a time when its official Anglican Church was developed by a combination of elements from both Catholicism and Protestantism.4 There was a great deal of argument over what constituted “true” Christianity and what was the best way to go about following Christ.
Portrait of Jonathan Swift by Francis Bindon
of the Protestant Reformation. Swift does not take sides in the religious conďŹ&#x201A;ict, but criticizes each of the factions, exposing how each one abuses religion.8 His strongest condemnation is for Christian leaders who value selfpromotion over the core principles of faith, an example which had led many to see Christianity as irrelevant and uninspired. A Tale of a Tubb tells of three sons named Peter, Jack, and Martin whose father has recently died. Their sole inheritances are simple but well-made coats, which their father has asked that they enjoy and carefully preserve for all of their days. Their fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will is ďŹ lled with instructions on how to care for the coats and rules about what his sons may or may not do with their coats. The brothers carefully maintain their coats for seven years until they fall in love with three royal women named Money, Pride, and Ambition. They then begin to resent the plainness of their coats, certain that more ornate, stylish apparel will help them gain the ladiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; favor. They are aware that the will strictly forbids any addition to the coats, but they so badly want to conform to the styles of the period that they twist and reinterpret the words of the will in such a ridiculous way as to allow exactly the practices against which their father had warned them. This ďŹ rst violation sets the stage for the brothers to consistently disregard their fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will whenever it contradicts their own desires.9 This beginning to Swiftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Talee sets up a very thin allegory for the history of the Christian church. The father represents Christ, the will is the Bible, the
Though the Reformation occurred primarily during the sixteenth century, the conďŹ&#x201A;ict between Catholics and diďŹ&#x20AC;erent ďŹ&#x20AC; groups of Protestant Dissenters was still very much alive when Swift was ordained.5 The ten sion between authoritative, politicized religious organizations and the common public, who were inclined to reject their faith because of their religious leadersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;dullness and pedantry,â&#x20AC;?6 was one of the many problems that the English church faced at this time. The church failed to present coats are Christian faith, and each son represents one the foundational message of the Gospel to the middle major branch of the Christian church following the class; instead, the general population saw the church Reformation. Peter represents the apostle Peter, and as a place of power struggles and politics. As someone therefore the Catholic Church; Jack is named for in a unique position to bridge the worlds of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;con- John Calvin and represents Puritanism; and Martin temporary reading publicâ&#x20AC;? and the church, Jonathan represents Martin Luther and the Anglican Church, Swift addressed these issues by writing an exceedingly as Swift considered Luther the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Father of the English controversial work titled A Tale of a Tub, published in Reformation.â&#x20AC;?10 1704.7 In this piece, Swift gives an allegorical account
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What is notable about the beginning of A Tale of a Tubb is the way in which all three men fall into error together. There is not one particular brother who deviates from the fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will ďŹ rst. In fact, the brothers are not even called by individual names during this ďŹ rst chapter of the satire. All three of the brothers are seduced by society to a point where, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Resolved, therefore, at all hazards to comply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters together, and agreed unanimously to lock up their fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will in a strong-boxâ&#x20AC;Ś and trouble themselves no farther to examine it.â&#x20AC;?11 Swift argues here that the initial deviation from the teachings of the Bible was a unanimous and simultaneous act by all three parties. The brothersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; human passions,
in which they abuse their coats. In other words, the perceived problems of religion are the result of humans prioritizing worldly things over the will of God, while still claiming authority in the church. Since human depravity is at fault, there is no reason to believe that the will is an inadequate basis for faith. In the opening chapter of his satire, Swiftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s message to readers is that the â&#x20AC;&#x153;self-interested stage-priestsâ&#x20AC;? who were the public face of the early eighteenth-century religious scene in England were not representative of the true message of Christianity.12 As the Talee continues, Peter assumes power over the kingdom, pushing his brothers out of public view. He earns the respect of his constituents but quickly
Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521, painting by Anton von Werner
represented by their lust for the ladies Money, Pride, and Ambition, as well as their desire to ďŹ t in with societal standards of dress, win out over their desire to follow their fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will. The problem is not with the will itself, or with the wisdom of their deceased fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s instructions, but rather with the brothers and the way
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begins to abuse his power by deceiving his people. This deception is most blatant when Peter feeds his subjects bread crusts, all the while insisting that they are actually sumptuous cuts of meat. When two of his subjects protest this absurd disparity, he exclaims, â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;Ś it is true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall
Market; and God confound you both eternally if you offer to believe otherwise!”13 Peter wants to maintain control over his people without carrying out his real duties. When his subjects protest that they have not received what was promised, Peter’s absolute power is brought into question, and he resorts to threats of divine judgment. This portion of the tale is Swift’s allegory of what he sees as corruption in the contemporary Catholic Church. Peter’s rise to power over the kingdom is meant to suggest that the Catholic Church had become allied with state power.14 Swift also intends for us to link Peter’s threats to his insubordinate subjects with the violent suppression of heresy during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, exemplified by the Spanish Inquisition and the reign of Bloody Queen Mary of England. Swift believes that by refusing to tolerate any dissenting views, Peter, and the eighteenth-century Catholic Church by analogy, pretends to excessive authority. Peter’s desire to keep power for himself fosters his belief that he is capable of taking over responsibilities that belong to God. As a result, his subjects are misinformed and mistreated. The Bible, represented by the father’s will, is ignored. Though his father’s original message to Peter has not changed— just as Christ’s initial instructions to the church remain the same—people’s pride and inadequacies lead them to corrupt or ignore the instructions they have been given. Swift thought it was important to convey to the English public that the mistreatment of the people by the church is by no means part of pure faith or a true following of the scriptures. A little later in the Tale, Jack also begins to depart further from the desires of his father. When he and Martin discover that Peter is acting self-interestedly, they decide to seek their father’s wisdom, so they find his will and begin to read it again. As they read, they realize how much the gaudiness of their coats has deviated from their original instructions on how to care for them. They commit to removing the decorations and living in alignment with their father’s will. Martin gently removes each ornament from his coat. Jack, however, exclaims, “Ah! My good brother Martin… do as I do, for the love of God; strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off all that we may appear as unlike that rogue Peter as possible.”15 He furiously tears off the ornaments so that
the coat is torn to shreds in the process. In his attempt to follow his father by disassociating himself from his wayward brother, Jack destroys what his father has left to him.16 In Swift’s story, Jack’s fall from obedience mirrors the development of Puritanism in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In an effort to show his dissatisfaction with the practices of the Catholic and Anglican Churches, Jack attempts to pursue an ascetic way of life in opposition to his brothers’ excesses. His zeal for reform and obedience drives him toward legalism, where his dogged commitment to following the instructions in his father’s will turns his focus to following rules rather than following God.17 In the process, he neglects Christ’s commandments to love his brother and to correct him gently, rather than with furious passion. Like Peter, Jack allows his excessive zeal to take precedence over the real message of the will. The problems that result from his behavior are of his own creation and a result of his human failures; they do not come from any fault or failing of the will. At the time A Tale of a Tubb was published, there were still many Christians in England who chose to adhere to a Puritanical lifestyle. By using Jack to show the legalism and lack of charity that often result from such a
Saint Peter
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lifestyle, Swift wanted to counteract the alienation that on, Martin accrues considerable power and gains both the common people felt toward zealots who claimed to constituents and land.18 According to Swift, Martin’s have a true knowledge of God. flaw is his moral flexibility – his willingness to comThough Swift presents the third brother, Martin, as promise. He is all too ready to bend the standards of the most docile and levelheaded of the three broth- morality that call for monogamy in order to satisfy his ers, he does not exempt him from an exposure of his potential followers. Martin’s objection to Peter’s sale of remedies paralimperfections. When Martin and Jack leave Peter, Martin gains popularity for decrying Peter’s prac- :^PM[ YPZRLK OPZ WLYZVUHS ZLJ\YP[` [V YLHJO tice of selling his subjects [OL WLVWSL ^P[O [OL TLZZHNL [OH[ O\THU expensive—and ineffective—remedies for various MHPS\YL KVLZ UV[ ULNH[L *OYPZ[»Z TLZZHNL maladies. Martin soon becomes recognized as an advocate for Peter’s subjects; as lels Martin Luther’s sixteenth-century campaign against part of this advocacy, Martin agrees to do what Peter the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences,19 which was a would not: he performs second marriages for Peter’s major factor in the start of the Protestant Reformation. Similarly, Swift uses Martin’s willingness to perform polygamous marriages to represent the birth of the Anglican Church in 1534 because its split from the Catholic Church was prompted in large part by King Henry VIII’s demand for a divorce that would allow him to marry another woman.20 The newlyformed Anglican Church granted him the divorce that the Catholic Church had refused to give him. Swift saw this willingness to compromise the standards of the church in the face of political pressures as a deviation from scripture’s instructions to “stand firm”21 in the faith and to “not be conformed to this world.”22 Martin’s desire to avoid conflict and his fear of worldly institutions, along with his desire to gain subjects and land of his own, take precedence over the principles that he once upheld. This part of the tale carried the most personal risk for Swift. In attacking the Anglican Church’s political character, he was taking on the flaws of his own institution. After his satire was published, Swift faced major backlash from a number of powerful figures within the church. He was accused of blasphemy and prevented from ever holding higher stations within the Anglican Church.23 Nevertheless, Swift refused to retreat from his original purpose of exposing the abuses of religion to help his readers gain an understanding of the true meaning of Christian teachings. This is made clear in the “Apology” he published with the fifth edition of A Tale of a Tub, where he declares that, “The abuses of Religion, he proposed to set forth” and states that, “It is manifest Illustration from the 1710 edition of A Tale of a Tub. The brothers by the reception the following discourse hath met review their father’s will. Courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library. with, that those who approve it, are a great majority among the men of taste.”24 In these lines, Swift subjects who want to practice polygamy. Martin gains communicates both the firmness of his mission and a large following of people who want to participate in his respect for his target audience, the common people this practice, and many of Peter’s former subjects de- among whom A Tale of a Tubb was incredibly popular. cide to submit to Martin’s rule instead. As time goes Though Swift’s career in the Anglican Church never
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(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) 2-4. 3 “Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745.” 4 “The Reformation,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 2010, Oxford University Press, 30 Nov. 2009 <http://www.oxford-christianchurch.com/ entry?entry=t257.e5776>. 5 Ibid. 6 David Bywaters, “Anticlericalism in Swift’s Tale of a Tub,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 36.3 (1996): 579. 7 Ibid. 8 “Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745.” 9 Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Electronic Texts Collection, 2003), 16 Nov. 2009 <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu. au/s/swift/jonathan/s97t/>. 10 Phillip Harth, Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961) 14-16. 11 Swift, A Tale of a Tub. 12 Bywaters 579. 13 Swift, A Tale of a Tub. 14 Geoffrey Nathan, “Remapping the Landscape: Early Christianity and the Graeco-Roman World. A Review Article,” Journal of Religious History 32.3 (2008): 362. 15 Swift, A Tale of a Tub. 16 Ibid. 17 “Puritans,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 2010, Oxford University Press, 24 Nov. 2009 <http:// www.oxford-christianchurch.com/entry?entry=t257. e5663>. 18 Swift, A Tale of a Tub. 19 “The Reformation.” 20 Ibid. 21 2 Corinthians 1:24. 22 Romans 12:2. 23 Judith Mueller, “Writing Under Constraint: Swift’s “Apology” for a Tale of a Tub,” ELH 60.1 (1993): 101-102. 24 Jonathan Swift, “An Apology” (Lehigh University, 1996), 25 Jan. 2010 <http://www.lehigh. edu/ ~amsp/tubb0-2.html>.
Portrait of John Calvin, 16th century
recovered from the damage it received after the publication of his piece, A Tale of a Tubb was widely circulated and enjoyed. Jonathan Swift was clearly a man burdened by the threat that Christian hypocrisy posed to the spread of the true Gospel. Seeing that the general public of England was estranged from church leaders and clergy, Swift risked his personal security to reach the people with the message that human failure does not negate Christ’s message. This concept remains significant today, as Christianity is commonly rejected because of Christians’ natural inability to adequately represent Jesus. Furthermore, the efforts of Swift and others like him helped to eliminate many of the abuses that he addressed in A Tale of a Tub. The churches as Swift knew them have undergone significant change and reform from within as Christians acknowledge their failings and seek to follow the will of God. Ultimately, true Christianity sweeps past the boundaries of human error, honestly acknowledging that man is imperfect and looking instead to the excellence of Christ for deliverance. 1
“Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745,” Literature Online Biography, ed. Clark Lawlor, 2000, Jalic Inc., 25 Nov. 2009 <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl/ openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2 &res_id=xri:lion-us&rft_id=xri:lion:rec:ref:2045>. 2 Louis A. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland
Emily DeBaun ‘12 is from Sandown, New Hampshire. She is a Physics major.
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Purpose, Meaning, and t h e necessity of
god by Suiwen Liang
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.’”1
T
hese lines open the book of Ecclesiastes. The “Preacher” is usually identified as Solomon, the richest and most powerful king in Israel’s history. Though he was famous throughout the Middle East for his wisdom and wealth, Solomon nevertheless found life empty and purposeless without God. The questions he asks in Ecclesiastes are similar to the doubts that the young nihilist Evgeny Bazarov also encounters in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons: “The tiny space I occupy is so small compared to the rest of space… Yet in this atom, this mathematical
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point, blood circulates, a brain functions and desires something as well—How absurd! What nonsense!”2 Both Bazarov and the Preacher hunger for meaning and purpose, just as people throughout history have also struggled with the question, “What is life’s meaning, and where does it come from?” Traditional Christianity asserts that the meaning of life is provided by God, but secular materialism has rejected this explanation and attempts to provide another consistent explanation for what, if anything, the purpose of life really is. But without God, logic leads to only two possible conclusions: the secular humanist must either deny that life has any purpose or create an illusory meaning for himself. This logical impasse is why the American atheist philosopher Will Durant wrote, “The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the
Solomon’s Royal Court, painting by Giovanni Demin
East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God.”3 Materialism, which “not only holds that there are no supernatural interventions in the course of nature, but that there are no divine beings of any kind,”4 is the philosophical underpinning of many forms of atheism. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of the American Atheists, affirmed that her organization accepted “the technical philosophy of materialism… that nothing exists but natural phenomena.”5 For the materialist, man is the product of millions of years of mindless interactions of matter and nothing more. Stephen Jay Gould, an eminent paleontologist, noted that “the world fared perfectly well without us for all but the last moment of earthly time—and this fact makes our appearance look more like an accidental afterthought than the culmination of a prefigured plan.”6 If this really is the case, then Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker, is right to point out that the only difference between human beings and rocks is our degree of complexity.7 A materialistic worldview offers man no intrinsic worth or objective purpose. If matter is all there is, then the fact of our existence is incidental. But even if we have no intrinsic meaning, Gould suggested that we could “construct these answers [to the meaning of life] ourselves—from our own wisdom
and ethical sense.”8 The existentialist philosopher JeanPaul Sartre believed that “one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action.”9 However, while the notion that we can create our own subjective meaning may be appealing, it is undermined by the tenuousness of our existence. It is the nature of our universe that there must be an end not only of each human individually, but also of the world itself. Physics foretells the final collapse of the universe due to heat death, cementing our race’s extinction and insignificance. As Bertrand Russell, the great materialist philosopher, observed, “All the noonday brightness of human genius, [is] destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.”10 All of our collective achievements, knowledge, and pleasures, even our sufferings will be obliterated by the passage of time. Not even the memory of them will remain. Clearly, immaterial meaning cannot be shaped from the material substance of a universe which is itself passing away. Confronting this reality, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote, “‘What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?’ It can also be expressed thus: Is there any
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Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, ? painting by Paul Gauguin
meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”11 His dilemma is echoed in Tom Stoppard’s existential comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, d in which the eponymous characters inadvertently wander into the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Eventually, the confused pair is charged with delivering Hamlet to England, but they are powerless to stop his escape and must suffer ff death as the consequence. Guildenstern laments, “We’ve travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.”12 As the title suggests, the characters are doomed, unable to alter their course. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent the human dilemma of drifting toward nonexistence. When God is excluded, man is left with no explanation for why this should be. Loren Eiseley noted that, “Man is the cosmic orphan. He’s the only creature in the universe who asks, ‘Why?’ Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Where am I going?’”13 Gould answered this inquiry with finality: “We may yearn for a ‘higher’ answer—but none exists.”14 The atheist Aldous Huxley found the logical conclusion that life is meaningless exhilarating: We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the politt ical and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in
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some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people at the same time justifying ourselves…we could deny that the world had any meaning.15
Aware that purpose was either objective or nonexistent, Huxley and his contemporaries exchanged purpose for greater personal freedom. He confesses later in Ends and Meanss that “those who, to be liberated from political or sexual restraint, accept absolute meaninglessness tend in a short time to become… much dissatisfied with their philosophy.”16 As Huxley found, a hedonistic approach to life’s purpose must ultimately disappoint. The Preacher from Ecclesiastes also claims to have tried hedonism and found it wanting: “I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.’ And behold, it too was futility.”17 Having abandoned the pursuit of objective purpose for the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, the hedonist arrives at a place of still greater emptiness. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”18 In order to live consistently with a materialist worldview, it is necessary to accept the inevitable meaninglessness of life. Christian theism, on the other hand, addresses the question of our age in a way that satisfies the mind and heart. The Bible claims that human existence is neither accidental nor finite. Created
the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rocksized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) 366-367. 8 Gould, qtd. in The Meaning of Life. 9 William Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life without God,” Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008) 78. 10 Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” Two Modern Essays on Religion (Hanover, NH: Westholm Publications, 1959) 25. 11 Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006) 58. 12 Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (New York: Grove Press, 1967) 121. 13 Craig 71. 14 Gould, qtd. in The Meaning of Life. 15 Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937) 316. 16 Ibid. 318-19. 17 Ecclesiastes 2:1. 18 G.K. Chesterton, qtd. in Ravi Zacharias, The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008) 39. 19 Zacharias, Can Man Live without God xvi. 20 C.S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1994) 101. 21 Tolstoy 58.
in the very image of God, we are destined to exist into eternity in companionship with Him. Eternity also endows our earthly choices and relationships with unmistakable importance. Moral choices will be judged, relationships will transcend time, and neither dies with the material body. Pleasure also finds its supreme expression in fellowship with God, and it is in that communion that meaning and consummate joy are experienced. No one can remain indifferff ent to the questions raised about materialism’s logical ramifications or the answers Christianity offers. ff As Ravi Zacharias puts it, whether or not man can live without God “must be answered not only by those who are avowedly antitheistic, but also by the many who functionally live as if there were no God and that His existence does not matter.”19 C.S. Lewis argued that “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”20 As we seek the answers for ourselves, we ought to consider the testimony of others who have faced the crisis of existence already. Leo Tolstoy, the same man who contemplated suicide as an alternative to a meaningless life, wrote after his conversion to Christianity, “God is that without which you cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing!”21 1
Ecclesiastes 1:1-2. Portrait of Leo Tolstoy Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans. Michael R. Katz (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996) 97. 3 Will Durant, On the Meaning of Life (New York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932) 23. 4 Keith Campbell, “Materialism,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, 2nd ed., ed. Donald M. Borchert (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2006) 14. 5 Madalyn Murray O’Hare, qtd. in Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live without God (Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 1994) 16-17. 6 Stephen Jay Gould, qtd. in The Meaning of Life, ed. David Friend, et al. (New York: Little Brown & Co., 1991) 33. 7 “On one planet, and possibly only one planet in 2
Suiwen Liang ‘13 is from Memphis, Tennessee. He is a Chemistry major.
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( 7YH`LY MVY +HY[TV\[O This prayer by professor of religion Lucius Waterman appears on a plaque hanging outside Parkhurst Hall. O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work, and for all its life. Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy word make known to them the hiding-place of power. Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them to be men right-minded and high-hearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live. Save the men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success, from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. The Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D.
;OL 5PJLUL *YLLK We, the members of The Dartmouth Apologia, affirm that the Bible is inspired by God, that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, and that God has called us to live by the moral principles of the New Testament. We also affirm the Nicene Creed, with the understanding that views may differ on baptism and the meaning of the word “catholic.”
We [I] believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We [I] believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We [I] believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
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The Dartmouth
Apologia A Journal of Christian Thought
The Dartmouth
Apologia A Journal of Christian Thought