The Free Thinker

"A World Without Barriers"

"Jesus was a refugee, pope says on world migration day" (Catholic News Service, 1/18/11, via Brothers Judd):

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jesus was a refugee -- a fact that should be remembered as societies deal with modern issues of emigration and immigration, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"Migration today sometimes is voluntary and at other times, unfortunately, is forced by wars or persecution, often in dramatic conditions," the pope said Jan. 16. From its very beginnings, the church has taken an interest in these situations, he said.

"The parents of Jesus had to flee their own land and take refuge in Egypt, in order to save the life of their child: the Messiah, the son of God, was a refugee," he said.

Throughout the centuries, he said, Christian populations have at times suffered the necessity to leave their homelands, impoverishing the countries where they and their ancestors had lived.

On the other hand, the pope said, the voluntary migration of Christians through the ages has increased the church's missionary dynamism and ensured that the witness of faith reaches new frontiers.

The pope made the remarks at the Vatican on a day that was celebrated in most countries as the World Day for Migrants and Refugees. Late last year, he issued a message on the theme of this year's celebration, "One Human Family."

The pope said he wanted his message to underline that in the church's vision, human migration has a unifying goal: to form a single human family that is enriched by differences but that lives without barriers.

Exactly, well said. I was thinking about the state of the immigration debate on this blog up till now. Tom and Nato mostly agree with me. Dissent has come from JM, MS, and SDS.

SDS seems mainly concerned that he perceived in me a judgmental attitude towards advocates of migration restrictions. It is never amiss to be told to love the sinner while hating the sin, for even if one has not fallen into hating the sinner, one may succumb to that temptation at any moment, and it is good to be warned. However, SDS's main grounds for claiming that I had fallen into it was my use of historical analogies that compared advocates of migration restrictions to fascists and to the slaveowning antebellum South. The problem with this line of argument is that if to compare nativists to fascists or slaveowning Southerners is to "judge their hearts," presumably the hearts of fascists and slaveowning Southerners have already been judged. And not only would that be contrary to "judge not that ye be not judged" and "hate the sin but love the sinner," but it would impoverish our historical understanding of fascists and antebellum Southerners if we simply "explained" their beliefs and behavior by saying that they were evil and we are not. I think we should recognize that we are not immune to letting veneration of the state blind us to the moral law; to desiring order more than our own freedom and especially that of others; to letting our perceived economic dependence on a system induce us to condone its violations of natural rights, in a spirit of cynical "realism." Americans are prone to feel that, because our country has historically behaved morally better than other great powers, that moral superiority is a sort of birthright. It is not that; it depends on our actions; and inasmuch as we imitate one of the most infamous practices of slavery by separating families by force...

Using Census data and figures released by the Pew Hispanic Center, the report estimates that just over 1 million family members have been separated from their loved ones by... deportations.

we risk forfeiting our moral superiority to societies which we view as cautionary tales.

JM offered the widest range of arguments against my positions, some of them monstrously bad. Among them was the worst, logically and morally, of all the arguments made against illegal immigration, namely the confusion of property with sovereignty, as if the entire territory of the United States were the private property of the US government, and for unauthorized foreigners to enter is some kind of trespassing. This is an argument worthy of pharaonic Egypt, to accept which is to repudiate in its entirety the heritage of liberty, which views man as a rational being with rights, and government as based on consent of the governed, and to make us all the slaves of the state. She also hinted at paternalistic arguments, suggesting that maybe not all those who say they would like to come to America would really benefit by coming. The idea that it is for the benefit of migrants that the migration decision be taken away from them and put in the hands of a State Department bureaucrat, who is not only not adequately incentivized to decide for the desiring migrant's good, but is not even trying to do so, is so absurd that one is reluctant to bring in the fact that most migrants to the US enjoy large income gains, lest by mentioning empirical evidence one seems wrongly to concede that the argument has enough prima facie validity not to be rejected at once. I was also struck by JM's claim that my advocacy of policies that don't involve separating families by force was an unrealistic desideratum, and she used the example of war. Now, first of all, JM may not be aware of this, but the United States does not practice conscription, so a polity that does not separate families by force in order to staff its armed forces is not only realistic, but a realized fact. Second, it might be appropriate to resort to a measure in emergencies when the survival of a society is threatened by a violent assault, but intolerable to make that measure a part of one's everyday policies. Third, even conscription has traditionally separated only fathers from their offspring by force, not mothers, and this I think makes a big difference, since the mother-and-child bond seems especially intimate and sacred. Slavery and migration restrictions, by contrast, will even separate a mother from her child. It is probably quite possible to have a society which never severs that bond, at least when the mother has not committed a crime; at any rate, we have to try. I recall another disappointing bit of sophistry from JM. I was arguing that migration restrictions are unique to our time, that comprehensive migration controls were never attempted before the 20th century, and certainly did not exist in the era she tends to admire, though of course travel was dangerous then and some were better able to engage in it than others. She said that some people could travel, it depended on who you were, just like today. She somehow glossed over this, I can't remember the exact artful formulation she used, but it was a bit like arguing that there is nothing unique about slavery, because there is always work to be done, and people can't be completely equal. (I remember she also once made the bizarre suggestion that my position on immigration is "defeasible pacifism." As it isn't any kind of pacifism-- not a general rejection of state violence; not a rejection of just war-- I can't make head or tail of this one.)

However, there was one argument that JM made which I found extremely interesting. Both JM and MS have often used "community" as a slogan with which to argue against open borders. This is a seeming nonsequitur, since (a) migration restrictions constantly divide communities, and/or prevent their formation, since actual and potential communities (including families!) regularly cross borders and are forcibly separated by migration restrictions, while on the other hand (b) how migration restrictions could possibly contribute to "community" even among native and naturalized US citizens is unclear, since the crossing of the Rio Grande by an illegal immigrant would seem to have no effect on the love and friendship and trust that any particular Americans have for each other. By pressing JM hard with this argument I provoked a very intriguing glimpse of the conception that might underlie this argument. From what I remember (it would take a while to find it), JM said that people need not only food, shelter, etc., but also community, friends, and that if everyone is friends with their neighbors then everyone has friends. It is a sort of social safety net in community: let everyone have, and fulfill, a moral obligation to know their neighbors, and while some people may have many more friends than others, yet no one will be completely friendless.

If this argument is accepted, there is a fairly plausible case for some kind of migration restrictions, because it might be necessary to ensure that one's neighbors are the kind of people one can make friends with, e.g., that they speak English, and have some degree of cultural similarity. The argument could be used even more plausibly to support some kind of domestic segregation, but I don't say that to delegitimize it. I would actually be very interested to see where a serious and consistent application of the argument that coercion is justified as a means of ensuring that people know their neighbors would lead. However-- and it's odd that JM doesn't seem to have seen this-- this is not at all a defense of the status quo, because in fact, nowadays hardly anyone seems to know their neighbors. I was particularly struck by this a few years ago when I visited a friend of mine in Louisville, KY, who is very community-oriented. He's choir director of the church, he's president of the local Hibernian Club (an Irish-American organization) and organizes the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, he keeps in close touch with many friends from Notre Dame, he grew up in Louisville and moved back to his home town. And we were having a conversation about community and the theme of how people don't know their neighbors anymore, and he said that he thought about that too, but that even he didn't know his neighbors, even though he is such a community-oriented kind of guy. Of course, he'd recently bought a house; probably he knows his parents' neighbors. Still, the point stands. A society in which no one is friendless because everyone lives next to someone and everyone is friends with his neighbors is not, at this time of day, a practicable proposal. It's far more utopian than my modest proposal to tax immigration rather than restricting it by force.

One reason that I wish JM and MS would be more serious and systematic in thinking about "community" is that I think it would eventually become clear to them that while their concerns might motivate serious and far-reaching changes in our customs and policies, it certainly would not provide any basis for defending immigration control such as the US practices today. I think that even when reason is abused to defend the indefensible the results are sometimes good, because argument has a tendency to lead to truth even when that is not the motive of the arguer. I experienced this personally in my own life, when as a teenager my efforts to defend an indefensible religion, Mormonism, awakening my conscience and intellect in a way that eventually led me out of the Mormon church and to orthodox Christianity. I think the American South is another example: the libertarian, romantic, aristocratic conservatism that originally emerged there in part as an attempt to rationalize the indefensible institution of slavery lingered afterwards and changed, and became, much later, an important component of the American political instinct that enabled the United States to avoid the encroachment of the social-democratic state which is now slowly smothering Western Europe. Similarly, there may be a genuine need to revive and rethink the idea of community and make our society more conducive to its development and health, but not to shut out the foreign-born by force.

Finally, MS's main argument seems to be simply that I'm in a small minority and that it's just too improbable that I'm right. She hopes that I will "moderate" my views. The truth is that I am the moderate here, looking for practical and just solutions, the extremist position being the view that every single human being in the six-million-square-mile territory of the United States must be here only with the permission of a government bureaucracy. Oddly enough, it's not even clear which of us-- myself, or JM and MS-- is more critical of the status quo, since I, after all, want those who are here to be able to stay here, and to that extent am an advocate of the status quo over against the presumptive advocacy for mass deportation of JM and MS... though on the other hand, I'm not really sure whether either of them stand on the issue. Whatever It Takes is the title of a book by J.D. Hayworth and a co-author, which I certainly will not read, but the title is a useful summary of the immorality inherent in nativism/"enforcing the law." What would Hayworth say, if I said that nothing short of regular pogroms will sufficiently offset the economic incentives to come here (especially since there is no moral reason for foreigners to obey this particular law if it is not in their interests to do so)? Presumably, "whatever it takes." What about JM and MS? I would be glad if they would draw the line somewhere, if they would say, "we'll try to enforce the borders, but we won't resort to x." So far I don't think they have ever done that. Hopefully they would draw the line at murder, at least. It's hard to see where else they would draw it, since we're already separating families by force. As for whether I'm in the minority, that's not clear. Most ordinary Americans just don't seem to have any idea of what our immigration policies is; they'll complain about illegal immigrants, then say they just want them to come in legally, following the rules, as if they're under the impression that most or all illegal immigrants had the option of coming legally and just chose, for some reason, not to take it. Wir haben es nichts gewusst, said the Germans after the Holocaust-- "we didn't know." I'm not saying migration restrictions are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, of course, but there is a similar (wilful?) ignorance among Americans about what immigration enforcement involves. It's not clear in what sense a person who blames illegal immigrants for not using non-existent legal channels can be said to have an opinion about immigration policy at all. They have an opinion about immigration policy in an alternate universe. And it seems like most people, even some prominent pundits, are in exactly that situation. Moreover, if you were to poll the opinions of mankind about what US immigration policy should be, I might well find the vast majority supporting my position.

Still, MS's argument deserves serious examination. To what extent should one defer to the judgment of the majority? How likely is it that an individual is right and society is wrong? The multitude has more information, more experience than the individual, after all. And there is one area of life in which I think the value of deference to the general opinion of moralizing mankind in the teeth of one's own desires and reasoning can hardly be overstated: sexuality. Here the immediate mutual benefit seems so obvious and natural, the long shadow of negative consequences so impossible to explain, or rather, the explanations seem so threadbare and silly. Who can understand the mysterious interwovenness of body and soul, how deep the bonds and how potent their vengeance when violated? Who can foresee the way the pleasures of romance and of parenthood, so different and incommensurable, are yet bound together so that the latter must succeed the former for it to be complete? The wisdom of one's elders is invaluable here, for only those who have seen all the stages of a human life unfold can begin to appreciate how scarce a resource is youth's capacity for sexual love, and how prudently that resource must be spent. Nor is it easy for a young person to perceive and to credit the kind of stake that his or her family has in whom he or she marries, and why it ought to give them a say.

However, it is not tenable that deference to local majority opinion is always a better guide than an individual's judgment. After all, local majority opinion differs from time to time and place to place, and where there is disagreement at least one side must be wrong. For example, it is universally held today, at least among Americans and Western Europeans, that slavery is a horrible evil. But now think about this: for centuries, nay for millennia, slavery was practiced wherever mankind achieved a certain degree of wealth. I recently read Rodney Stark's account of how that ended, and in particular of the dominant role which religion played, from beginning to end, in the movement to abolish slavery. Slavery first disappeared from western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Later, when it was revived during the "Expansion of Europe" in the 16th and 17th centuries, it never penetrated Europe itself (at least not on a large scale), but instead was established in the New World and other overseas colonial possessions of Europe. The popes were unambiguously opposed to it from the beginning, even decreeing excommunications for those who enslaved others, but the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had greatly weakened them vis-a-vis secular rulers, and their opposition was mostly ineffectual, though-- Stark shows-- the Catholic Church did manage to ameliorate slavery by getting slave codes passed in Portuguese and Spanish colonies that were more lenient and humane than those in Protestant Barbados and North America. Yet in the end slavery lasted longer in the Catholic countries than in the Protestant countries, where abolition was pioneered by the Quakers, and later embraced by the Methodists and Protestant evangelists of the early 19th century like Charles Finney, and British abolitionists financed the antislavery movement in France.

Stark makes an important point which is relevant to the immigration question today. Slavery is by no means explicitly condemned by the Bible. Although the slave code of the ancient Jews, as described in the Mosaic law, is unusually lenient, the ancient Jews did practice slavery. The apostles, moreover, encouraged slaves to obey their masters, although in an epistle to Philemon, Paul seems to encourage him (but gently) to manumit a slave, Onesimus. So how could Christians come to the conclusion that slavery was sinful? Contra the biases of some historians, they certainly did not derive the concept from secular, liberal morality, for secular intellectuals mostly favored slavery: this idea began among Christians and became part of liberal morality later and as a side-effect. Rather, Christians derived this conclusion by reasoning from Biblical and theological premises:

[The 1754 Quaker anti-slavery pamphlet by John Woolman] was a model of gentle Quaker persuasion. He began by quoting Matt. 25:40: "For as much as ye did it to the least of my brethren, ye did it unto me," with the direct implication that to enslave a "Negro" was to enslave Christ. Although clearly aimed at slaveholding Quakers, it did not single them out but reminded all Quakers that "Negroes are our fellow creatures, and their present condition amongst us requires serious consideration," and that Friends are committed to justice, love, and the better of all humankind, not to self-interest. In his final paragraph he expressed his belief that while God has so far not intervened, he sees that "[Negroes] are trodden down and despised, yet he remembers them: he seeth their affliction," and soon God is apt to "humble the most haughty people" who prefer "gain to equity"...

[Later, under Woolman's influence, the Quaker Yearly Meeting] agreed to publish a tract of its own, constituting a far more direct attack on slavery: An Epistle of Caution and Advice, Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves.

Written by a committee, this statement began by asking whether it was consistent with the Golden Rule to deprive "our fellow creatures of the valuable blessing liberty," or to "grow rich by their bondage"... Then... the committee got to the clincher. "Finally, brethren, we entreat you in... Gospel love, seriously to weigh the cause of detaining them in bondage. If it be for your own private gain, or any motive other than their good, it is much to be feared that the love of God, and the influence of the Holy Spirit is not the prevailing principle in you."...

Not to be outdone, many Christian groups and luminaries took up the cause of abolition, and soon abolitionist societies sprang up that were not associated with a specific denomination. But, through it all, the movement (as distinct from those it made sympathetic to the cause) was staffed by devout Christian activists, the majority of them clergy...

In 1833 leading abolitionists formed the American Anti-Slavery Society. Led by the fiery agitator and editor of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), the group adopted and published a ringing Declaration of Sentiments, filled with religious justifications. Noting that to hold a human being "in involuntary bondage" is, "according to Scripture" stealing, the docuemnt proclaimed it a certainty that "the slaves out instantly to be set free, and brought under the protection of law." Furthermore, all current laws "admitting the right of slavery, are therefore, before God, utterly null and void... an audacious usurpation of Divine prerogative" and "a presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments."...

The American Roman Catholic Church faced not serious internal conflict over slavery because it had few Southern parishes, and, at least by the start of the nineteenth century, the clergy followed the pope in opposing slavery. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Pope Pius VII (1800 to 1823) demanded the suppression of the slave trade. Then, in 1839, Pope Gregory XVI (1831 to 1846) sent an Apostolic Letter to the Provincial Council of American Bishops in which he condemned slavery. It began with a fine example of theological "deduction." In his opening paragraph the pope admitted that the Apostles counseled slaves to obey their masters, but went on to note (as Woolman had also done) that just as Christ declared that whatever was done to the least of all humans, it was done to Him, "it naturally follows" that Christians should treat slaves as their brothers. He then pointed out that "In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people have been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity... there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations." Unfortunately, there were "among the Faithful" men who were "shamefully blinded by their desire for sordid gain," and who went to distant countries and there "did not hesitate to reduce to slavery Indians, Negroes, and other wretched people." Then, desiring to remove such a shame from all Christian nations" and "walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors," the pope demanded an end to slavery...

The larger point is that abolitionists, whether popes or evangelists, spoke almost exclusively in the language of the Christian faith. And although many Southern clergy proposed theological defenses of slavery, pro-slavery rhetoric was overwhelmingly secular-- references were made to "liberty" and "states' rights," not to "sin" or "salvation." This was conclusively demonstrated by Auping, who performed a content analysis of writings by randomly selected samples of prominent abolitionists and defenders of slavery. The abolitionists were far more likely to invoke God, and the difference persisted even when only clergy were compared...

But there is another and far more persuasive tack taken to minimize the importance of religion in abolishing slavery. It is argued that many sincere Christians were quite able to square slavery with theology-- as Francis Asbury, first Methodist bishop of the United States, put it in 1798, "Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians... in the highest flights of rapturous piety, still maintain and defend [slavery]." This being the case, the argument goes, it must have been not religion per se but something else that prompted some Christians to conclude that it was a sin to hold humans in bondage. But, as Asbury was fully aware, that conclusion misses the point. The case against slavery is theological, not revelational. Had Moses been given a commandment against slavery, then only heretical Jews and Christians could have owned slaves. Or had Jesus proclaimed that no slave master shall enter heaven, there would have been no ambiguity as to what Christians must do. But theology is based on human interpretations, and therefore sincere and brilliant seekers may reach opposite conclusions. Asbury did not propose that those who accepted slavery were ignorant of revelations, but that they had drawn incorrect theological conclusions, that they had neither "a sufficient sense of religion nor of liberty."

Abolition was not inherent in Christian scripture; it was only a possible conclusion... I do not propose that monotheism or even Christian culture was a sufficient basis for deeming slavery to be a sin. Instead, I propose that it was a necessary basis, in that only those religious thinkers working within the Christian tradition were able to reach anti-slavery conclusions (with the exception of two Jewish sects). (Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God, pp. 340-345)

The immigration issue today seems to be in a similar place.  It is not that the Bible unambiguously condemns immigration restrictions or declares for freedom of migration, although particular episodes, like the Exodus from Egypt, are suggestive.  But reasoning from Biblical premises cannot but strongly point towards open borders, particularly when the existence of illegal immigrants and their families on US soil transforms the issue into one of what kind and degree of violence will be resorted to in order to enforce a law which can be given no basis in justice.  The Golden Rule is certainly sufficient to condemn migration restrictions, for who of us can seriously say that if he had illegally entered the United States in order to feed his family, or earn enough to provide medical care for a child, he would wish to be deported?  And yet Matt. 25:40 makes the Golden Rule far more powerful, for while the Golden Rule seems abstract, Matt. 25:40 compels us to imagine that what we do to our fellow man we do to Christ. The fact that, as Pope Benedict observes, Jesus and the Holy Family were refugees, drives the point home. Current US law would deport the Holy Family to be executed by the agents of Herod. "Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

C.S. Lewis on "Mere Christianity"

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, argues that Christian divisions are less important than they seem and that there is a large substantive core of Christianity which can be defended without additional commitment to any of the particular Christian denominations. Nonetheless, he makes the following disclaimer:

I  hope no  reader will  suppose  that  "mere" Christianity is here put
forward as an alternative to the  creeds of the  existing communions-as if a
man could adopt it in preference  to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or
anything else. It is more like a hall  out of  which doors open into several
rooms. If  I  can bring  anyone  into  that hall  I shall have done  what  I
attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and
chairs and meals. The hall  is a place to wait in, a place from which to try
the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the
rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.

It  is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for
a considerable  time, while  others  feel certain almost  at once which door
they must knock at. I  do  not  know why there is this difference, but I  am
sure  God keeps no one  waiting unless He  sees that it is good  for  him to
wait. When you do  get into your room  you will  find that the long wait has
done you some kind of good which  you  would not have had otherwise. But you
must  regard  it  as waiting, not as  camping.  You must keep on praying for
light: and, of  course,  even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the
rules which are common to  the whole house. And above all you must be asking
which door is the true one; not which  pleases  you  best by  its paint  and
paneling.

In plain language, the question should never be: "Do  I like that  kind
of  service?"  but  "Are these doctrines  true:  Is holiness  here?  Does my
conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this  door due
to  my  pride, or  my  mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular
door-keeper?"

When you have reached your own room, be  kind to those  Who have chosen
different  doors and to those who are still in the  hall. If they  are wrong
they  need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you
are  under orders to pray for them. That  is one of the rules common  to the
whole house.

N.T. Wright, in Simply Christian, engages in the same exercise, giving a robust defense of Christianity, which is certainly not a defense of "liberal" Christianity in the sense of Christianity that makes concessions to modernity on doctrinal essentials, though some of Wright's heroes, like Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, are figures liberals admire. I think the reason I find it easy to read such books with unreserved approval is that Orthodoxy is mere Christianity. Roman Catholicism is Christianity-plus-papal-infallibility; Protestantism is Christianity-plus-the-Enlightenment; but Orthodoxy is simply Christian.

Mark Steyn:

Last month, during the Vatican’s Easter vigil, Magdi Allam, the deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, converted from Islam to Catholicism. And not for the first time I was reminded of an old joke I modified for America Alone:

A ten-dollar bill is in the center of the crossroads. To the north, there’s Santa Claus. To the west, the Tooth Fairy. To the east, a radical Muslim. To the south, a moderate Muslim. Who reaches the ten-dollar bill first?

Answer: The radical Muslim. All the others are mythical creatures.

Signor Allam is merely the latest mythical “moderate Muslim”. There are, to be sure, millions of Muslims who just want to get on with their lives, raise their families, do their jobs, get a nice house in the suburbs, and practice as much or as little Islam as they can get away with. But there is no “moderate Islam” to provide any institutional support for such individual Muslim moderation, and there is an acute shortage of western Muslims who can plausibly demonstrate to their coreligionists a viable balance between Islam and the western world, and who can act as a counterweight both to the explicitly jihadist radicals and to the lavishly endowed Muslim lobby groups who more discreetly share their aims. Magdi Allam was a key figure in the “Secular Islam” summit held in Florida a year ago, and one of several prominent signatories of the “St Petersburg Declaration” issued at its conclusion. He was by that point being reviled by Tariq Ramadan as a Copt – ie, a Christian – which wasn’t true: On the eve of his 40th birthday, he accompanied his mother on pilgrimage to Mecca. Yet he has now, and very publicly, found Christ, and so retrospectively confirmed Tariq Ramadan’s point – that Magdi Allam was never a credible model for 21st century Islam.

And so it goes. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a phenomenally brave woman but she is not a “moderate Muslim”: she is an atheist. Irshad Manji is a brilliant dissecter of Islam’s pathologies but she is not a “moderate Muslim”: she is a lesbian and, thus, to almost all her co-religionists, cannot be any kind of Muslim. Dr Wafa Sultan is the Californian psychiatrist who at huge personal risk intellectually clobbered an A-list Sunni scholar live on Al Jazeera, crushed every one of his arguments, and yet nevertheless lost. Why? Here’s the answer:

“I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew,” Dr Sultan told her interrogator. “I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural…”

“If you are a heretic,” scoffed Dr Ibrahim al-Khouli, “there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran.”

In their debate, Wafa Sultan won every point but lost the match. Her innumerable aces only confirmed her opponent’s argument – that to embrace “modernity” (in the western sense) is to lose your faith: Dr Sultan is an incisive intelligent rational woman – and she is no longer Muslim. Signor Allam held out longer than most before concluding that the intellectual straddle required of a “moderate Muslim” is beyond even Larry Craig’s wide stance: “I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a ‘moderate Islam’,” he said, “ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.” The most “extraordinary and important encounter” in his decision to abandon Islam and embrace Christianity was the Pope’s address at Regensburg – the one that prompted Mr Allam’s (former) co-religionists to demonstrate outside Westminster Abbey calling for the Pontiff’s beheading. The newly baptized Christian knows that he will be targeted for murder, but he was already targeted for murder as a “moderate Muslim”, and, as he sees it, it is better to die for truth than for a tortured contradiction.

I'm not sure whether Steyn is right or not, but the claim is certainly consistent with what I've heard about Islamic law, and its political incorrectness readily explains why you don't hear this kind of thing much in mainstream discourse or from experts.  Joyless Moralist thinks it's possible to dispute the case for Christians to support religious freedom; to me that case seems overwhelming; but surely JM wouldn't deny that it's at least tenable, or suggest that a Christian's support for religious freedom might call into question the sincerity of his Christianity.  It may be that in Islam this just isn't the case.  Muhammad said apostasy = death.  What more can be said?

Lately I'm torn about blogging.  I've started to feel it as more a vice than anything, at best a distraction, at worst a temptation to get angry and polemical.  And yet it's a social outlet of sorts, too, a way of being a presence, of keeping in touch with people... it's remarkable how easily one can publish online and be, in a way, everywhere: in every corner in the world one's thoughts are only a click away (albeit most people don't know it).  I hardly ever go back and read my old posts, though I like the fact that they're there, just in case I do think about one of them and want to read it.  Apparently a few other people do find them worth reading.  But writing is probably better when it follows the Golden Rule: write what you want to read.

The authors to whom I owe the most are intellectual apologists for Christianity: C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dostoyevsky.  It's partly in imitation of these intellectual heroes that I've begun to do more religious blogging lately, taking my cue from the Bible.  I would like to do more than that someday, to write religious novels or histories or a simple apologia for the faith...  I was in a conversation some time ago (about a year) in which I explained that I'd left the Mormon church because it wasn't rationally tenable, and this led to an exchange in which there was an element of mutual surprise that I've remembered ever since.  The surprise was evoked, on my interlocutor's side, by my evident belief that Orthodoxy was rationally defensible, and, on my side, by the fact that my interlocutor could have supposed, as her questions seemed to suggest, that it wasn't.  She is a devout believer herself, and from this exchange I got the feeling-- but I might have misunderstood her-- that she is one who has accepted that faith and reason are at odds (which I would deny).  Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.  Lots of educated people think the same thing.  And of course it wouldn't have surprised me coming from an agnostic or atheist, but in that case I would have pigeonholed it as a function, ultimately, of some combination of ignorance and self-interest.  Christianity is full of things that are superficially paradoxical or absurd, and there are a thousand sophisms which can be used to dismiss it if one wishes to do so, e.g., if God is omnipotent, can He make a rocky so heavy that He cannot lift it?  Maybe the word "sophisms": that's what they look like, once one has seen through them, but they can look like serious questions to a novice in inquiry about God.  Certainly a person might honestly be turned aside from the faith by the problem of evil or the problem of how prayers can be efficacious.  But of course, Christians have answers to such objections.  I could certainly understand someone, at the end of an argument, remaining unconvinced by Christian claims, in the sense of withholding judgment, as opposed to regarding it as refuted.  And of course there are a lot of people who feel perfectly justified in dismissing Christianity for superficial reasons because they mistakenly believe they have some other firm ground to stand on which an intelligent Christian-- a C.S. Lewis, say-- can easily expose as hollow by a skeptical attack.  Since people with such prejudices and complacencies dominate many university faculties and to some extent mainstream liberal culture, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that a college-educated Christian might have picked up the idea that Christianity was at a disadvantage on the plane of argument.  But I was surprised.  It made me think, in a way, of how much work there is to do.

When one shifts from the negative defense of Christianity-- showing that arguments purporting to refute Christianity fail-- to the positive defense of Christianity, there's an element in Christian writing that I have sometimes wondered at myself, and about the psychological reaction to which, on the part of atheist readers, I am very curious.  That is the confidence of Christian writers.  How does C.S. Lewis, say, although in this case most other Christian writers, St. John of Kronstadt or Thomas a Kempis or John Chrysostom, exhibit the trait still more strongly, dare to write so boldly about God and virtue and salvation, and on the other hand about devils?  Even if one cannot disprove them, even if one finds oneself tentatively in sympathy with their claims, how do they know?  I think I've begun to understand this better with time.  If one begins seriously to approach God, one starts to understand a little of His nature and His plan; more than that, one starts to understand much more of oneself; and one starts to perceive the sources of resistance to our approach to God, both our own fear and frailty and attachment to earthly goods (which are good, please note, though they can become evil if we prefer them to higher things), but also something else, the tugging of other wills towards pride and discontent and darkness...

But here's where I come up short.  For as soon as I start to write about holy things, I immediately feel that I am such an unworthy messenger that I can achieve only the opposite of my intent.  No, I'm not a murderer, I don't plot seductions or go to prostitutes, I am not a rich miser or a thief or a corrupt politician, I am not insanely cruel or a compulsive liar or a drunkard.  But my life is a mess, and through my own fault, I relentlessly pursuit of obscure ambitions from pride and anxiety for the future, I lose my temper, I am prone to ennui and despondency, I'm addicted to petty pleasures, hot baths and chocolate and probably half again as much food as I need, and I have done so few good works...  If I were to stand up and preach the Gospel, a just rejoinder might be, "If you believe it, why don't you practice it?"  (To which my answer could only be: "Partly because I can't figure out how, and partly because even when I do realize something about how I ought to live, I forget all my resolutions within an hour...")  And: "Who are you to teach us?"  

What the Gospels Say about the Church

In the comments of a recent post, I was startled by Joyless Moralist's reading of the Gospel and Acts:

It does seem worth noting that Christ never sat down and wrote/dictated a book, while on the other hand he *did* give serious attention to the organization of a church...  One has the impression [why?] that more organization may have been done in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, but admittedly no real detail is given about what went on during that time. What is certainly true, though, is that a kind of organization began to form fairly rapidly in the years following Christ's ascension...  Immediately after the Ascension the Apostles already understood themselves to be a governing body invested with authority by Christ...  There is nothing ad hoc about the way Matthias is chosen, nor about the way Peter (Peter!) initiates the action...  Why didn't Jesus pick Judas' successor himself? Because that was the Apostles' right and responsibility. Jesus chose the original twelve, and after that left it to those he had chosen to perpetuate the organization. They are no longer fledglings under Jesus' wing; it's *their* job now to build up the Church, and they immediately begin doing so, purposefully and with a clear sense of mission...  [In response to me: "You wouldn't get the idea from Acts that he's superior in authority to Paul, or indeed to any of the apostles."]  Actually, I think that's exactly the idea one would get from an impartial reading of the Gospels and Acts. That aspect of Catholicism always made perfect sense to me, long before I seriously considered being a Catholic. In the Acts, Peter takes charge at once, and others defer to his authority. It's true that Paul stands up to him once, but this is the exception that proves the rule; Paul is clearly taking a bold step here, and his attitude is exactly what one would expect of an underling taking a stand against the man in charge...  Think of the Church as being a bit like a branch of a larger company with a CEO that occasionally steps in and gives a direct order or takes charge of a project himself. Most of the time they're expected to work things out for themselves, though always in keeping with the company's general goals and with certain resources that they can turn to when they need extra help. Once in awhile the CEO might step in personally and change the course of operations in a larger way. Now, in a sense it might undermine the authority of the branch manager when the CEO steps in, because it shows that he isn't the top of the hierarchy, but it doesn't necessarily undermine him in a substantial way, because it was always a clear part of his identity that he was subject to a higher authority. Meanwhile, it's perfectly possible that the CEO (especially in the early days when he's getting a new manager started) might cede certain tasks or decisions to him: it's *your* job now, so you decide!

Joyless Moralist seems to look on the history of the early church as a business school case study.  Again and again, the words "organization" and "authority" appear.  The question I find myself asking is: Where did JM get this paradigm that she's imposing on the Gospel and Acts.  At one point in the Gospels the disciples have a quarrel over pre-eminence:

Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be the greatest. And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him. And said to them, "Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great." (Luke: 9:46-48)

 Or in Matthew:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?" Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, "Assuredly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will be no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18: 1-3)

Or another episode, in Mark:

They said to Him, "Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking"... And when the ten heard it, they began to be greatly displeased with James and John. But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever desires to be first shall be slave of all."

In short, Jesus refuses to put one apostle above the others, to define ranks or hierarchies among them. Their requests for such information are misguided and show that they don't understand what He's about. Joyless Moralist seems to have a rather less evasive answer to the apostles' question: Peter was the greatest of the disciples, the branch manager, the man in charge, to whom the others were underlings. Now, there is one verse in Scripture of which I would say a superficial reading does tilt slightly to this interpretation.

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the son of Man, am?" So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock [petrus is related to the Latin word for rock, so some say there is a pun here] I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ. From that time on Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!" But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:13-23)

I've extended this quote a bit longer than the Catholics typically do, because I think the episodes are closely connected. Anyway, Father Michael Pomazansky, an Orthodox priest, in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, writes of this passage by quoting a letter to the Fourth Ecumenical Council from St. Juvenal, Patriarch of Jerusalem: "On this confession the Church of God is made firm, and this Faith, given to us by the holy Apostles, the Church has kept and will keep to the end of the world." That is, the "rock" is Peter's confession, not Peter himself. This is certainly plausible, but the Roman Catholic interpretation-- that with these words Christ names Peter personally the rock on which the Church will be built-- does seem semantically tenable. Though the image that puts in one's mind is a strange one. For one does not, please note, build a church or other structure on a single rock. When I think of the Roman Catholic view, I can't help imagining an enormous cathedral balanced awkwardly on a single tiny rock. Actually, that image expresses what's wrong with the view of a monarchical church, too: it is too fragile, too imbalanced, depending as it does on a single individual. If we focus again on the words of the passage, it appears that Jesus's naming of Peter as "the rock" is a response, almost an impulsive response, to Peter's declaration that "You are the Christ." If one of the other apostles had spoken first, one feels that Jesus might have said the same thing to him; or that if another apostle expresses the same declaration then or later, Jesus would have declared him, too, to be a "rock." Of course, they did confess that in due course. And that makes the architectural metaphor much more satisfactory, for a church finely balanced on one foundation stones might, it would seem, tumble at the slightest breeze, but there's no reason a church built on twelve foundation stones could not withstand a hurricane. Still, at least to my ears (biased perhaps because I've lived in the West and spent a lot of time with Catholics) this passage does have a slightly Roman Catholic ring to it.

But nothing else in the Gospel or Acts does. Before addressing the appointment of Matthias, it's worth looking at some of the many images of the Church that the Gospels present. From John:

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." (John 15:1-6)

I find it amazing how apt this passage is if read as a theory of history. Every human civilization has grown old and withered except the Christian one. Christianity is forever young; it gives rise to sciences and literatures and ideologies and states and nations and ethics and institutions, and these all ossify, weaken, wither, and die when they cut themselves off from Christianity: this is the lesson of the past 2,000 years, indeed of all history, since before Christianity mankind was bound to the wheel of growth and decay and "there was nothing new under the sun." But I digress. What does the vine-and-branches metaphor imply for Church organization? First, it is consistent with hierarchy, for branches may branch off of branches and not only from the trunk of the vine. But it does not at all suggest monarchical organization, since many branches, not just one, will communicate directly with the vine.

Also in the Gospel of John, Jesus uses the metaphor of a shepherd and a flock:

I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:14-16)

(The "other sheep" are generally taken to be the Gentiles, I think.)  Since sheep are famous for following each other, this metaphor is again consistent with the idea that some follow Jesus more closely, while others, not as close to Jesus themselves, follow other Christians; and in that sense, it is consistent with a certain degree of hierarchy.  But it does not suggest any fixed hierarchy, and certainly not a single highest hierarchy.  Indeed, the idea of some "chief sheep" leading the other sheep is absurd.

In the middle of the Gospel of Matthew there is a wealth of images by which Jesus describes "the kingdom of heaven."  For purposes of argument take "the kingdom of heaven" to refer to the Church, although I don't think that identification is, theologically, the whole story.  First (Matthew 13:24-30), he compares the kingdom of heaven to "a man who sowed good seed in his field," but his enemy came and planted weeds. No idea of hierarchy here: stalks of wheat grows side by side together.  Next Jesus says:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." (Matthew 13:31-32)

This image seems to contain a prophecy, for it was indeed to transpire thereafter that the tiny beginnings in Judea were to swell into a great movement which converted whole kingdoms, first the Roman empire, as well as Georgia and Armenia, then Ireland and the European "barbarians" beyond the old Roman frontier, then the Slavs, and more recently Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, much of South Korea, now tens of millions of Chinese, etc.: the tiny seed became a great tree. Again, there is an idea of growth, and of fruitfulness, and I think of holiness (to me, the "birds of the air" seem imaginatively to evoke angels), and even perhaps of a limited degree of hierarchy since some branches are stronger than others and some branch off of others.  But not of hierarchy, unless the pope is the trunk of the tree.  Then Jesus says:

"The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened." (Matthew 13: 33)

This is a beautiful and wise metaphor for the way the Church spreads. Again, there is nothing top-down here, no organization: instead, growth comes from the autonomous and decentralized actions of many tiny organisms. So with Christianity: it spreads by this kind action and that good friend, by a song or a story; it is not planned from above by an "organization." Two more parables highlight the initiative of the seekers for truth who come to the Church:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)

It is interesting how often Jesus uses commercial metaphors.  These parables communicate the ideas of there being something of great value and of making great sacrifices for its sake.  That individual initiative is so prominent here contrasts, perhaps, with the Good Shepherd metaphor in John.  Of course there is again no suggestion of hierarchy, or of organization.

Aside from the "rock"/"keys" passage, there is one other explicit mention of "the church" in Matthew (and no others in the Gospels):

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that 'by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.' And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)

This passage suggests that "the church" has authority, but it gives no indication of the structure of the church. Certainly no church leaders are mentioned: Jesus does not say to tell it to a priest or a bishop or an ecclesiastical court. On the contrary, the progression from "you and him alone" to "one or two more" to "the church" suggests that the church is a large body of people, who somehow-- and this is the important point!-- are presumed to be able to form a collective judgment.

Joyless Moralist says that Christ didn't dictate a book, but he did found an organization. While it's true that He didn't dictate a book, He did teach, and the Gospels are (generally taken by Christians to be) first- or second-hand accounts of His teaching. But it's not exactly true that he founded an organization either. In particular, He does not establish authority structures, resisting pressure by the apostles to do so. What He founds is a church, an assembly, a community of love. The Church is something new. He warns the apostles not to model it on the secular authority structures of the Gentiles. He describes this new thing with many rich and beautiful images. Most of them-- the field, the flock of sheep-- are strikingly egalitarian, seeming to put the believers on an equal footing and directly in touch with God. One can derive from some of the parables-- the flock perhaps; certainly the vine-- enough suggestions of leadership and hierarchy to be consistent with the commonsense needs for at least some structure and leadership if any organization which is in this world even if not of it is to manage its affairs, remain coherent, make necessary decisions; but scarcely even that and certainly not more.  If Christ did not found an organization, neither do the apostles seem to have done that, exactly. They taught the Gospel, made occasional decisions in an ad hoc way; their own authority, if that's what it was, as apostles, they communicated to no one, and that office died with them; they created a few offices and set precedents that became the basis of others.  The tremendous amount of traveling that Paul at least, and according to tradition all the apostles, did, was the ideal way to fulfill the command to "go and make disciples of all nations" but seems hardly compatible with running an organization.  Christians needed organizational structures, as they needed bread and clothing and roofs, for mundane practical reasons; but to think that that organization is the Church is a profound error.  As Father Michael Pomazansky writes: "The life of the Church in its essence is mystical; the course of its life cannot be entirely included in any 'history.'  The Church is completely distinct from any kind whatever of organized society on earth."

Finally, one of the things that saddens me about JM's view of "Petrine authority" is that it seems to make it impossible to appreciate Peter for who he was.  Consider again the appointment of Matthias in the Book of Acts.  Luke writes that "Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples"-- a striking phrase.  Peter says that some passages from the Psalms were prophecies about Judas.  Were they?  Does it matter?  Anyway, based on these Scriptures he concludes that another should take Judas's place among the Twelve.  Two candidates, Matthias and Barsabbas, are chosen, and they draw lots to decide whom to appoint, seemingly a way of ascertaining the Divine will; but if one is inclined to believe that the lot fell to Matthias by mere chance, there is not a word in the Book of Acts to gainsay it.  There is no other mention of Matthias in the New Testament.  However, soon afterwards another apostle, the extraordinarily eloquent and energetic Paul, is appointed by a miraculous vision and conversion on the road to Damascus.  So, if Peter's goal was to ensure that the number of apostles was twelve, the appointment of Matthias actually achieved the opposite of this, raising the number to thirteen.  Mightn't it have made more sense to wait and let Paul take the place of Judas?  This is not to say anything against Matthias of course.  Rather, I want to draw attention to what it shows about Peter's character.  Peter is forever impetuous.  He is present at the Transfiguration, and babbles: "Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" (Luke 9:33). Luke adds explicitly, and amusingly, that "he did not know what he was talking about."  He is the only one of the disciples to walk on water at Jesus's invitation; but he quickly loses faith and begins sinking.  He is the first to declare "You are the Christ!" but a moment later he plays the part of "Satan" by tempting Jesus not to face crucifixion, to "let this cup pass," to quote Jesus's own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane when (and I hardly dare to write this even though it is written in the Gospels) Jesus seems Himself to have felt a powerful temptation.  (In thise sense, Peter was even a greater tempter than the dread spirit in the wilderness, for none of the dread spirit's temptations seems to have gone as close to Jesus's heart as Peter's words did.)  On the eve of the Crucifixion, Peter boasts that "I will lay down my life for Your sake," (John 13:37) then denies Him three times before the cock crows.  Just before that, when Jesus washes the disciples' feet, Peter first cries "You shall never wash my feet!" then, when Jesus says that "if I do not wash you, you have no part with Me," he goes to the other extreme and declares "Lord, not my feet only, but almost my hands and my head!" and earns another gentle reproof for his enthusiasm.   When Jesus is arrested, Peter takes a sword and cuts off the high priest's ear: Jesus heals it and tells him to sheathe his sword, saying "all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).  After the Resurrection, Peter runs to the empty tomb.  Was that necessary?  Later in Galilee, when John recognizes Jesus on the shore:

Simon Peter put on his outer garment (for he had removed it), and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat... dragging the net with fish. (John 21:7-8)

Did Peter need to leap into the sea and swim to Jesus?  Mightn't it have been just as well to help his fellows bring in the haul of fish?  And yet it is these details that bring Peter to life.  He is nothing like a branch manager or an executive.  That is not the sort of role for which he is suited.  His best actions, you could not deduce from a moral code; they are not generically good but expressive of a peculiar goodness that is distinctively Peter's and the more precious for that.  He might never have existed; and yet now that he has lived and been the man he was, he seems necessary, one feels that the whole universe would lose something if he were not.  "Eternity is in love with the creations of time," as William Blake wrote.  In his impetuosity and volubility Peter often makes missteps, yet his love for, his joy in the Lord, always shines through, and is contagious.  I love Peter.  Praise God for Peter!  What joy it would be (will be, I hope) to meet him!  But when you consider Peter's whole character, as displayed over and over again in the Gospels and Acts, it is not at all difficult to see the episode with Matthias as another instance of Peter's, as it were, jumping to conclusions, leaping into a course of action which, though in this case not harmful, is not particularly... optimal.  It may be another case where Peter's missteps turn out well.  One feels, particularly in the phrase "Peter stood up among the believers," that Peter set the church in motion, that the event made an impression and was remembered, even if it received no confirmation by revelation or miracle and nothing in particular came of it, and even if the real awakening of the church came not then, at Peter's initiative, but just afterwards, at divine initiative, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, though of course Peter plays a leading role in that episode too, giving a great speech and converting thousands.  Later, when Peter converts Cornelius, a Roman, Acts says:

And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, saying "You went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them!" But Peter explained [and recounts vision in which God told him to do so]... (Acts 11:2-3ff)

Note here that "those of the circumcision" don't seem shy about confronting Peter.  The passage does not suggest that Peter had "authority" over them.  Peter does lead, but, as in the appointment of Matthias, by persuasion, namely by appeals to Scripture in the first case and to personal revelation in this case, not by claiming ecclesiastical authority.  Christ is the vine, and Peter is one of the branches. 

Monasticism

My article, "The Economics of Monasticism," was just published at the ARDA Working Paper Series, see here: http://www.thearda.com/workingpapers/monasticism.asp.  Here's the abstract:

Since their emergence in ancient times, Christian monasteries have proven to be among the most durable of all human institutions, and in the medieval centuries made enormous contributions to the emergence of Western civilization. They are organized internally on socialist lines: monks own no property and owe total obedience to the abbot, making the monastery a miniature ‘centrally planned economy.’ A puzzling contrast exists between the longevity of monasteries and the transience of secular socialist communes. This paper presents a theoretical model which shows why voluntary socialist communes might be viable despite ‘shirking’ problems, yet fail due to turnover, and how worship, which induces people with high ‘spiritual capital’ to self-select into the monastery and then grows that spiritual capital through ‘learning-by-doing,’ can solve the turnover problem and make a worship-based socialist commune—a monastery—stable. Monasticism, like the market, is a form of ‘spontaneous order,’ but unlike the market, it does not depend on third-party enforcement (e.g., by a state) to function: this explains why monasticism (unlike capitalism) was able to thrive in the anarchic Dark Ages. Monasteries, in principle and largely in practice, are a form of society based on consent of the governed, unlike liberal states which preach but do not practice consensual governance, and it is interesting to juxtapose the real, live ‘social contracts’ of the monasteries with the notional social contracts of liberal political theory.

At the heart of the paper is a fairly simple economic model of monasticism.  It starts from individual utility maximization, and builds up to show (on certain assumptions) why monasteries can "compete" for members with "the world," and why only voluntary socialist communities with a religious basis are likely to prove stable, which is consistent with the facts.  And yet the paper is very ambitious in a vague and somewhat noncommittal way.  If you wanted to take a maximalist interpretation of its message it suggests that everything that sets the West apart from the rest, technology and economic growth and political freedom, is an effect of Christianity in general and in particular the nexus of monasticism that lay at the heart of it for over a thousand years.  Though I don't use the phrase, it expresses an idea that has haunted me for a long time, the Christian republic, an entity that is even in a sense political-- it has laws, loyalties, and leaders-- yet wholly, or if not wholly then at least typically and characteristically, noncoercive, and prophecied in various sayings of Our Lord: "My kingdom is not of this world"; "Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it"; "Heaven and earth shall not pass away, but My words will not pass away."  And indeed, so it has turned out.  Yet it is in the nature of monasticism to flee from the world, and if the Church doesn't exactly do that, nonetheless if one looks at it from the point of view of secular history, it never has as high a profile as the conquerors who have come and gone while the Church remains.  And it is in the monastic rules that order without coercion is embodied par excellence.  I think one could read my article and even agree with my hypothesis without accepting either the truth or the importance of Christianity... but I think the paper just my shake an agnostic's faith slightly.  However, at this point it's at the level of theory.  How I would like to use the theory as a means of writing a history of monasticism!  Someday...

C.S. Lewis on Religious Persecution

From God in the Dock:

Question 15: In the past the Church used various kinds of compulsion in attempts to force a particular brand of Christianity on the community. Given sufficient power, is there not a danger of this sort of thing happening again?

Lewis: Yes, I hear nasty rumors coming from Spain. Persecution is a temptation to which all men are exposed. I had a postcard signed 'M.D.' saying that anyone who expressed and published his belief in the Virgin Birth should be stripped and flogged. That shows you how easily persecution of Christians by the non-Christians might come back. Of course, they wouldn't call it Persecution: they'd call it 'Compulsory re-education of the ideologically unfit,' or something like that. But, of course, I have to admit that Christians themselves have been persecutors in the past. It was worse of them, because they ought to have known better: they weren't worse in any other way. I detest every kind of religious compulsion: only the other day I was writing an angry letter to The Spectator about Church Parades in the Home Guard!

The best part of this is Lewis's remark that Christians should have known better than to be persecutors. It is a bit hard to understand how a religion whose central narrative is the Crucifixion could so often have emulated Caiaphas.

The Economics of Monasticism

Just turned this in...

Why are there monks and nuns?  Why do some men and women under the influence of this motive take vows of poverty, chastity (celibacy) and obedience?  Why do communities of such people adopt peculiar economic arrangements which prohibit individual private property?  And why have such institutions been so successful historically, lasting for generations, sometimes under such adverse circumstances that few or no other institutions have been able to survive, and made wide-ranging contributions to learning and law, agriculture and architecture, and technology?  Clearly, the quintessential motive for a monk or nun is to worship God.  But simply to say monks and nuns exist because people want to worship God is an incomplete explanation, for two reasons. 

First, that human beings desire to worship is not a phenomenon that can be readily explained in terms of biological motives, as for example, human desires for food, sex, or shelter, can be.  So one might ask: Why do humans want to worship God?  That, however, is not a question for an economist.  Economists generally treat what people want as an exogenous factor.  Since the desire to worship God, or some other supernatural entity or entities, is not limited to monks and nuns but is felt (applying the method of “revealed preference”) by most human beings, we may take it as a given part of the human “utility function.”  Following Becker and Stigler (1977), differences in taste for worship can be accounted for in terms of different endowments of a special kind of “capital,” which can be called “spiritual capital.” 

The second problem is that, granting that people want to worship God, it is far from obvious what connection there might be between the worship motive and the monastic lifestyle.  Why do some adopt celibacy for God’s sake, while other people, in some cases probably just as devout, choose to marry instead?  Why is celibacy correlated with the practice of eschewing worldly occupations, even as devout religious householders pursue them?  And why do celibate religious communities adopt economic constitutions which internally abolish private property?  Questions like these deal with the links between “micro-motives and macro-behavior,” and thus seem especially suited to economic analysis.

Some readers may think there is an obvious non-economic explanation of monasticism: religious authority.  People adopt the monastic lifestyle because the Church tells them that God wants them to.  By this account, monasticism would have its origins in the religious doctrines and hierarchies that tell the faithful what God wants, and the individual’s role would consist not so much of choice but obedience.  The appropriate mode of explanation would consist of an examination of the theology and doctrine of the Church to see why the monastic lifestyle was adopted as an ideal, and/or a psychological study of why people believe in and submit to religious authority.  By this account, to treat monks and nuns as rational agents, faced with choices, maximizing utility, subject to cost and opportunity constraints, like consumers in a market, would be to misconceive the problem.

There are (at least) two problems with a theory of this kind.  First, religious people often fail to do what the Church tells them, and they (say they) believe, is God’s will, when faced with incentives to do otherwise.  There are Mormons who drink alcohol, Amish who drive cars, Hindus who eat beef, Muslims who eat pork, and Catholics who divorce or abort babies.  Given the infinite promises (Heaven) and threats (Hell) that religions offer to motivate believers, one might expect believers to have what economists call ‘alphabetic preferences’ for doing God’s will, but it appears that at least many of them do not.  And given that religious people sometimes break the rules, it seems legitimate to take into account normal economic factors of cost and benefit as potential influences on whether and when they do so.  A man who believes God forbids him to hire a prostitute may still be more likely to hire her if her price is low than otherwise.  Likewise, a man who believes that entering a monastery is his surest way to salvation may still be more likely to do so if by doing so he gets some of the things that ordinary men value in life: adequate food, music, study, sleep, economic security, and easy labor. 

Second, at least if we focus on the Christian case, the monastic way of life was not originally imposed by Church authorities or present ab initio in sacred scripture.  Nothing like a plan for a monastery appears in the Bible, although monasticism did emerge from the efforts of devout people to live by Gospel teachings.  Nor did popes or bishops invent the monastic life and prescribe it to their flock.  Odd as it may sound, given monks’ reputation for hierarchical organization and rigid discipline, monasticism is a case of what the Austrian school of economics calls spontaneous order.  It emerged in Egypt in the 3^rd century B.C. when hermits like St. Anthony fled to the desert and attracted followers, then it evolved and spread throughout the Christian world and beyond.  Monasticism was first lived, then codified, most famously but not only in the Rule of St. Benedict, and thereafter remained dynamic, with new monastic orders appearing and competing with each other.  No one planned monasticism.  It was a pattern emerging without design from individual choices, as a price emerges in the marketplace.

Some features of monastic life, especially the absence of internal private property, resemble the ideas of modern socialism.  That is not to say that monasteries resemble Communist states like the Soviet Union, but rather that they bear some resemblance to small, voluntary socialist communes, like the utopian experiments at Brook Farm and New Harmony in the United States, or the Israeli kibbutzim.  This similarity is puzzling, because secular socialist communal experiments have generally been transient, dissolving within a few years or at most after a generation.  Monasteries, by contrast, have exhibited a durability which virtually no other human institution, apart from the Christian Church itself, can match, often lasting for centuries, with some stretching back more than a millennium. 

The perennial irony of monasticism is that monks are always fleeing the world, while the world is always following them.  Or, to state the point more tendentiously, monasticism is frequently corrupted by the prosperity which its piety creates, and then reformed from within by zealots who want to recover pristine ideals.  For example, the late medieval Cistercians, who sought agricultural self-sufficiency by fleeing ‘the world’ into the uncultivated wilderness, ended by acquiring large holdings of land, and became some of Europe’s leading sheep farmers, viticulturalists, and builders and operators of water-mills, the great power source of that time.  They engaged in international trade and even developed a reputation for wealth and greed.  To an economist, this is a record to inspire admiration.  To historians sympathetic to the pristine ideals to which the early Cistercians aspired, as well as to some later monastics in the Cistercian and other orders, the same process may seem like a sad story of decline.  However it is evaluated, monasticism’s capacity both to endure, to achieve success in almost every field of human endeavor, to preserve and advance civilization in manifold ways, calls for explanation.

A further characteristic of monasticism is of special interest.  Political philosophers for centuries, especially John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and James Buchanan, have imagined a “social contract” as the basis for the legitimacy of government, and the virtue of “consensual” government is habitually acknowledged by modern liberalism.  Yet no modern democracy actually asks the consent of its subjects (individually, that is) to govern them; no one really signs a social contract.  Citizenship in a modern democracy, and subordination to its laws, is not based on consent; but membership in a monastery, and subordination to its rules, is, being a result of an explicit vow made by a consenting adult.  It is interesting, therefore, to contrast the real social contracts of monasticism with the fanciful ones of the philosophers.

That's the intro...

Christianity and Biblical Ethics

This usefully naive remark on Biblical morality from Tom merits comment:

It offers a much more satisfactory account than any theology I've encountered. For instance, Christianity preaches that everyone is a sinner, and makes little to no distinction between severity/degree of sin. In fact, all one needs to do to claim ever-lasting happiness in the afterlife is to affirm the divinity of Jesus. Are you a serial killer? Well, as long as you find Jesus before you die, you're good to go. What if you're Mother Theresa and have doubts about your faith near the end of your life? Sorry, you go to hell. Claiming that everyone is a sinner is not a morally nuanced position... 

Frankly, morality as is described in the bible is horrifying. Most of the lessons of the bible are ignored, to society's benefit. Morality has evolved so much over the millennia that what used to pass as a good moral standard is now comical. "Thou shall not take the lord's name in vain" is just one example.

Some of this is actually true.  A lot of the morality described in the Bible is horrifying, for example.  In many cases the Bible describes horrible behavior in order to condemn it, for example, the Crucifixion of Jesus, or the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt.  But some of the horrible behavior in the Old Testament seems to receive divine sanction.  The polygyny of Jacob, King David, and others is apparently condoned.  It seems that the Israelites are sometimes commanded by God to commit genocide against some peoples who stand in their way.  The old Jewish law sometimes seems hideously harsh.  For example:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." Then all men of his town shall stone him to death. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

If one judges Jewish law by the standards of the time, however, it doesn't look so bad. Roman fathers, too, had power of life and death over their families, Carthaginians sacrificed children, and human sacrifice was practiced all over the ancient world. Jewish law had provisions for the liberation of slaves (though not foreign slaves) and forgiveness of debts. And the Ten Commandments laid the foundations of human rights and freedom of contract, while banning pagan superstitions.

"The morality described in the Bible" is not unitary.  The relationship of the old Mosaic Law to the teachings of Christ is a difficult question, but that there is moral progress from the often brutal tales of the early books of the Bible to the sublimity of the teachings of Jesus can hardly be doubted.  Moral evolution has continued, and one practice that is condoned in the New Testament, though not in the Gospels, we now rightly reject: slavery.  But it is historically myopic to use this as an argument against the Bible, because it is precisely Bible-believing Christians, and no one else, who made an end of slavery.  Christian Europe softened Roman slavery into medieval serfdom, and then let the serfs evolve into free peasants.  Later, when the newly empowered secular states of the Renaissance era allowed the slave trade to revive (though for the most part not on the actual territory of Europe, but abroad, where Portuguese and Spaniards learned it from the Africans), the popes fought it ineffectually, and later, more effectively, the British, impelled by a powerful Christian anti-slavery lobby.  In the United States, too, it was Christians, e.g. Quakers, who formed the backbone of the abolitionist movement.

Modern secularists inherit the morality that Christianity made while discarding the theology, and then use that morality to reproach Christianity for what Christians have done or condoned in the past.  What this ignores is that everybody, not just Christians, behaved that way in the past.  What distinguishes (ancient Jews and) Christians is that they overcame, often much more slowly than we might wish, the evils which modern secularists now condemn.  To some extent this modern morality, though rooted in Christianity, can sustain itself even if doctrinal, organized Christianity fades away.  Post-Christian Europeans do not re-establish slavery.  Except when they do.  The Nazis and Soviets practiced slavery on a scale, and with a degree of cruelty, that far surpassed the slavery of, say, the Roman Empire.  The historical record is often more scanty than we would like, but it seems likely that the atrocities of the 20th-century faiths of mass atheism have no peer in the history of the past.  Post-WWII Europe initially enjoyed a religious revival, and then, when the influence of religion faded after the 1960s, they could hardly have revived the bad old days if they had wanted to, living as they did under US hegemony.  In the US, of course, Christianity is still the dominant worldview, so the moral merits of US society can't be credited to the atheist/secularist minority.  Secularists can swim in the moral waters of a Christian society well enough, but whether secularism can supply that morality is unclear.

Yes, Christians claim that everyone is a sinner, and, contrary to Tom's assertion, that is a morally nuanced position. It is precisely because of the height of Christian moral aspirations that everyone falls short. It requires moral vision even to glimpse the moral perfection to which every Christian must aspire. And it requires much soul-searching to understand all, or even a substantial portion, of the ways in which we fall short. Yes, Christians believe that even serial killers can change and be saved; and this is generally and rightly felt to be an inspiring and awesome witness of the love of God. But not easily: repentance is required. Yes, Christians tend to believe (setting aside those who believe in the doctrine of "assurance of salvation") that everyone, even the best of us, can fall. It's not just a function of believing in the divinity of Jesus though. There are passages in the New Testament that could be read a little bit like that but it is never put so baldly as that. If one believes in Jesus, one should live by His teachings, or at least make some attempt. In any case, belief is not wholly voluntary; it is through a life of active love that one's faith flourishes.

'Woe to You, Chorazin! Woe to You, Bethsaida!'

Joyless Moralist, commenting on a recent post, brought up a passage from the Gospel of Luke which some have found troubling.  Jesus is speaking, at the time when He is sending out His apostles to preach the Gospel the first time-- not after the Resurrection, but while He is still alive.  In cities that receive them with joy, they are to heal the sick and say 'The kingdom of God has come near you.'  But:

whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, 'The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.' But I say to you that it will be more tolerable that Day [meaning the Day of Judgment?] for Sodom [a notoriously wicked city from the Old Testament which was destroyed by the wrath of God after its inhabitants tried to gang-rape three travelers, among other sins] than for that city.

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. (Luke 10: 10-15)

How is all this consistent with God's justice, let alone His mercy?  Surely a merciful God would not desire to bring cities down to "Hades" (which I think is the same as the Jewish Sheol, and perhaps as the Christian Hell; I don't know the relationship between Hades, Sheol, and the "fiery gehenna" and "outer darkness" mentioned elsewhere).  And on what grounds would a just God punish cities which merely declined to receive certain itinerant preachers, or which did not regard the occurrence of certain miracles as an inducement to change their lifestyles?

But this may the wrong question.  For does Jesus actually curse or merely predict?  The "woe to you" sounds a bit like a curse, but can be read, I think, as a sorrowful prediction of the consequences of their failure to repent (of actions which they knew by conscience, and not merely by revelation, were evil, even if they had lost their awareness of it to some extent through the dulling effect of sin on conscience).  And indeed, without Christ, who of us is not destined to be "brought down to Hades" in due course?