Frontpaged at My Left Wing.
The Argument for Religious Freedom: Part 4 in a series based on the entry for Liberalism in the Dicionary of the History of Ideas.
In the introductory diary, I made a series of big points. In Part 2, I made just one big point: that liberalism developed as a pragmatic response to the context of the modern state.
In Part 3, a similar point: that liberty of conscience–starting with and centered on religious belief–emerged as a liberal value in response to historical developments.
Here we look more at the detailed working out of what has already been described more broadly-that tolerance developed first as pragmatic necessity, then as a positive principle.
On close inspection, the positive principle of tolerance was there from the beginning of the Reformation, but it was highly ambiguous, and was sharply contradicted in practice. It was only after the pragmatic necessity was realized that the positive principle firmly took root.
My commentary here takes the form of seven major points.
II. IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS ABOUT FREEDOM
SINCE THE REFORMATION.1. The Argument for Religious Freedom.
It is often said that the modern idea of freedom first appeared, or at least first became formidable, in the Reformation. The first of its champions to make a mark in the world was Luther, who asserted the “priesthood of all believers,” and who said that “God desires to be alone in our consciences, and desires that His word alone should prevail.”
Certainly, implicit in some of Luther’s utterances is the principle that the believer is responsible to God alone for his religious beliefs. Long before Luther, Socrates had felt an inner compulsion to teach what he believed was the truth, and had held fast to his truth when accused of corrupting the youth of Athens. But he had not proclaimed the right of anyone who felt as he did to act as he had done. His accusers, in any case, were not concerned to forbid the teaching of error, nor yet to uphold true beliefs “necessary to salvation,” but to maintain outward respect for conventional beliefs and manners. They no more saw themselves as champions of a true faith than Socrates saw himself as a martyr for liberty of conscience.
And long before the Reformation, there were Christians who said that the believer must be allowed to follow God’s Word without hindrance from the temporal magistrates, and there were accusations of heresy made against some priests by others (even subordinates in the hierarchy) and by laymen. Defiance of the church’s authority in matters of faith did not begin with the Reformation. Yet Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers was new and formidable. Though there were traces of it before his time, it was his version of it that excited and disturbed Christendom in the West.
(1) Luther’s “preisthood of all believers, though it had precursors, signaled a new departure, radically recentering religious authority within the individual consceince.
It is arguable that Luther’s hold on his own doctrine was not altogether firm, and that he failed to see its full implications. In practice, he sometimes denied to others the right to publish religious beliefs widely different from his own, and it is far from certain that he did so only because he thought the beliefs dangerous to the social order and not because he thought them false and abhorrent to God.
In any case, the doctrine of the priesthood of believers is ambiguous. It invites the question: Who is to be reckoned a believer? Is anyone a believer who says that Holy Scripture is the Word of God, no matter how he interprets it? In that case, a man might be a Christian though his beliefs differed more from those of other Christians than from the beliefs of Mohammed. And if outrageous or absurd interpretations are condemned as insincere, and the believer’s claim to be recognized and tolerated as such is rejected on that account, are not those who reject it saying that, after all, he is answerable to his fellow men for his beliefs, and not to God alone?
Luther never put to himself such a question as this; he merely took it for granted that there are limits to what professed “believers” can be allowed to read into the Scriptures. In practice he was no more tolerant than Erasmus or than several other great writers of the age who never broke away from the old church.
(2) Luther’s hold on his own principle was ambiguous and contradicted by his own practice. In a way, this was inevitable. The principle, though a foundation of individualism, is a social principle, nonetheless-this is how we ought to live together. A priesthood, after all, is a form of fellowship, not merely a collection of isolated individuals. It requires a society that has embraced and practiced such precepts to hold itself accountable-even its leaders who don’t always live up to their ideals. This is another reason why society matters, and why liberalism is fundamentally a social philosophy: individual liberty can only be preserved and flourish where it is firmly established as a social value.
(3) The extreme “relativism” of today-even to the point of post-modernist interpretations-was present at the beginning with Luther, though of course not realized. This is not some later invention, as conservatives (including conservative Lutherans, naturally) would like to claim. The invention was Luther’s, even if it was inadvertant. Those who came later brought profound changes, to be sure, but they did this based on working out implications that were already there from the beginning.
Perhaps the finest plea for toleration made in the sixteenth century is Castellion’s De haereticis, an sint persequendi, published in 1554. Belief, to be acceptable to God, must be sincere, which it cannot be, if it is forced. God is just, and therefore does not make it a condition of salvation that men should hold uncertain beliefs long disputed among Christians. Only beliefs that Christians have always accepted can be necessary to salvation; and to hold otherwise is to doubt the goodness of God.
To punish men for beliefs they dare to avow is to risk punishing the sincere and to allow hypocrites to go unpunished. Castellion’s arguments were directed at Calvin, who only a few months earlier had had Servetus burned to death as a heretic. Castellion’s plea was not only for a wide toleration; he condemned extreme measures against any heretic. He was concerned for the quality of faith, for the spiritual condition of the believer. Yet he did not advocate full liberty of conscience; he did not put it forward as a principle that anyone may hold and publish any religious beliefs, and may worship God as he pleases, provided he does not propagate beliefs and indulge in practices that endanger the peace and the secure enjoyment of rights.
(4) Castellion may be regarded as possibly the first authentic modern religious liberal. This is because
Castellion’s defense of tolerance was supported by explicitly liberal ideas. This is true despite the fact that he did not advocate full liberty of conscience. He had a distinctively liberal attitude, even if he did not follow it all the way. Thus, it is fair to say that Luther’s idea give birth to a liberal view, but Castellion embodies a liberal view-though not fully realized..
There are three liberal arguments Castellion advances, which we can amplify as follows:
(5) God is merciful, and nurturant. He does not punish men for not meeting impossible standards. To doubt this-to demand orthodoxy-is to doubt the goodness of God. Thus, one could argue, it is the strident orthodox believer who commits clear heresy, when he accuses an unorthodox believer of the same. It’s the old mote-beam thing.
(6) We can’t substitute ourselves for God. Belief must be sincere, to be acceptable to God. But only God can know who is sincere. Human punishment risks punishing the sincere-the righteous-while letting hypocrites go. It is arrogant on our part to believe we know God’s will. Separation of church and state is thus rooted in proper humility before God. Bringing them together is based on pride and arrogance. It is the path of Lucifer.
(7) The spriritual condition of the believer is a prime concern. It cannot simply be trumped by claiming “true faith.” All that we can do, as mortals, is to try to support one another in our own spiritual quests. We may do this by encouragement, persuasion, even questioning, but not by such coercive means that would interfere with sincere belief. There is no Strict Parent “right way” that can trump the Nurturant Parent concern for the individuals own spiritual condition.
