Every religion has a political theology, which is as much a product of cautious doctrinal reflection as it is a product of the social, political and intellectual milieu it dwells in. That is why religious thought is always dynamic and adaptive, no matter how much its theological declarations claim an unchanging nature. This point is often missed in public discussions on religious political thought since it is always tempting to hold the essentialist view of a particular religion as hopelessly far away from accommodating contemporary norms and standards. In this essay, Dr Leonard Taylor* offers a brief genealogy of how Christian thought, particularly Catholic, evolved in its understanding and relationship with the sovereign, state, law and human rights. All views expressed are that of the author.
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Catholic political thinkers often suggest that Catholicism has no particular political philosophy. The papal encyclical Fides et Ratio reaffirmed the idea that Catholicism has no affinity to any one political programme or philosophy. The unfolding of sacred history rather than temporal affairs is the concern of religion. This may lead to a particular moral and critical realism about creating legal or political utopias. The early Christian theologian Tertullian made the now infamous observation, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ A question he poses to defend his belief in the authority and superiority of Christian scripture over philosophy. He asked ‘[w]hence spring those "fables and endless genealogies", and "unprofitable questions", and "words which spread like a cancer?"’ Why should Christianity be concerned with the affairs of law or politics at any point in history? Alternatively, is a search for a genealogy to human rights project in the Christian and Catholic tradition worth undertaking?
From the Medieval to the Early Modern period, scholastic lawyers used the Christian gospels to underscore a unique source for the relationship between Christianity and the state. The initial reference point appears in the Gospels of Matthew (22:21), Mark (12:17) and Luke (20:25), which is the New Testament injunction to render to Caesar the [secular] things which are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. The Christian admonishment that they should “not conform to this world” gives rise to the desire to accentuate the distinctiveness of Christian dual-citizenship, belonging both to the world and to the kingdom of God.
Christians had initially rejected identification with the state, and therefore a concern with its laws. Tertullian had proposed, ‘Nobis...nec ulla magis res aliena quam publica. Unam omnium rem publicam agnoscimus, mundum’ (no-thing is more foreign to us than public matters. We acknowledge one public thing, the world). Much like the earlier pre-Christian Greek cynic movement, early Christians instead emphasised an identity similar to the cynics’ universal citizenship of the cosmos (kosmopolites). Early Christian utopianism was positioned in a cosmopolitan identity that transcended the world, preceded the state, and later incited accusations of atheism or at least a hatred of the world (‘odium generis humani’). It certainly seems ironic that today it is often Christians, and particularly Catholics, who defend the worthwhileness of international law, and international projects like the United Nations or the European Union. Yet they are to the forefront in presenting many of the most internationalist of arguments for those institutions, often on the assumption that universal values located in modern international law are a natural fit for Christianity’s ideals. The reason are diverse but can be identified by the convergence of religion and the state over many centuries.
Developments in Christian thought
There were a number of developments in early Christian ideas about the state and the laws governing their relationships, which are all noteworthy: the development of a place for human dignity, the move towards the distribution of power between the sovereignty of the Church and the state (“two swords”), which in turn guaranteed various liberties and independence to religion. Those are ideas that filter down into modern international law, and not without the tensions and problems that such ideas sought to resolve. For example, Pope Innocent X infamously responded to the treaties of Westphalia in the 17th century by stating that it was ‘null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and devoid of meaning for all time’. Older conceptions of sovereignty had implied the ruler or sovereign would “share his kingship” rather than pursue a path of autonomy, including autonomy from religion.
In the 1930’s Catholic theorists sought to reconstruct democracy, and human rights, from within a Christian theological framework. In fact, their understanding of Christian traditions in international law (jus gentium), and international relations, provided them with a platform to experiment with the political form of the state and thereby reformulate concepts such as human dignity and human rights, as useful concepts in different political contexts. Even though the state would not be confessional or be folded into a temporal theological project as expected in the late 19th century, future Christian democrats could experiment in articulating concepts of law and politics integrated with Christian values. Where Catholic political thought had grown stagnant by its reliance on authoritarianism in the early 20th century, then the renewal of theological reflection on the nature of the state by Jacques Maritain and others allowed new possibilities.
Human rights ideas were part of this general genre of Christian social thought of the pre-War and post-War era but also used rhetorically by Catholic democrats against “godless Bolshevism”. Thereby turning to Christian foundations helped secure a comprehensive alternative in contrast to the physical threat of Communism on the boarders of Europe but also towards the ideological threat of Marxism within. Human rights ideas assisted in contrasting the achievements of an ascending European Christian democracy over and against Communist collectivism that had rejected human rights as “bourgeois” values. To Samuel Moyn this very conservative Christian idea of human rights had significant influence on the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, leading to a suspicion of secular and communist theories. Most interestingly, Moyn’s writing challenges the standard account of human rights that proposes it developed from a post-War revulsion towards the Holocaust, and alternatively proposes human rights became a bulwark against the expansion of the modern state. The latter point is one that is very much in keeping with the tradition of scepticism towards the state found in earlier Christian thought.
New Christian humanism
Many notable European intellectuals were products of both a Christian and a humanist education, and this included those founders of the European project after the Second World War. Consequently, it no surprise that Maritain’s book Integral Humanism (1936) drawing on a modernised Neo-Scholasticism, became ‘the blueprint, or in the French phrase “petit livre rouge” (little red book), of a whole generation’ of Christians democrats in Europe and the Americas. McCauliff argues that this generation moved into positions of responsibility after World War II and ‘constructed a new Christianity according to Maritain’s inspiration’. Maritain's Integral Humanism had in a positive sense ‘put the values of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution into a Christian framework’.
Maritain proposed to locate a “secular democratic faith”, as a foundation to Catholic political thought, and yet reject a temporal or secular utopia. Maritain’s orthodox Catholic thought worked on drawing on universal neo-Thomistic constructs of natural law to accommodate the Catholic Church to democracy and human rights, and to present human rights as the ideological glue for a common prisca theologia. Following the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Catholics would require judicial accommodation for religious belief and religious freedom, to secure the place of religion in the liberal state, and to secure a negotiated humanism located in the concept of human dignity. The relationship between law and religion demanded solutions through the rule of law, which did not always, or necessarily, correspond with the Christian utopia of the perfect society. Defence of human dignity also implied respect for the secular search for truth, including the rejection of religious truth. This point turned on its head the 19th century notion that “error has no rights”, leading to acceptance of religious tolerance, and of competing religious and secular worldviews.
In the mid and later 20th century, the political philosophy of Catholicism would thereby imply political restraint, and to promote participation in the modern liberal project of democracy and human rights. Therefore, we can situate Catholic political thought within the secular and liberal ordering of the modern political state, while also retaining its historically rich history of standing outside the temporal political sphere with a commitment to religious truth. Its political philosophy became one of structuring the relationships of power between church and state on the basis of consensus and shared sovereignty. It may not have been a return to Respublica Christiana, as the Popes of the 19th century had wished but the pluralism of international law and international relations, at least had for a time, had made room for the Catholic vision of political and religious order. Today that may not always be the case but there are plenty of indications from history of how Christianity and law have usefully interacted in the past. The experience of Catholicism can offer valuable lessons in conceptualising how other world religions encounter and negotiate their relationship with modern liberal democratic states.
* Dr Leonard Taylor is a recent doctoral graduate of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Leonard is a researcher with expertise in International human rights law, and the political and social theory of Catholicism. The interaction of religion and law shaped Western culture and its legal tradition, and therefore is the focus of his academic research. In his spare time, Leonard keep a dozen colonies of Buckfast honeybees, which brings plenty of entertainment and honey to his
friends and family.
Maritain, Jacques ((1936) 1973), Integral humanism; temporal and spiritual problems of a new Christendom (Notre Dame University of Notre Dame Press).
--- ((1951) 1998), Man and the state (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press) vi, 219 p.
McCauliff, Catherine (2011), 'Jacques Maritain’s Embrace of Religious Pluralism and the Declaration on Religious Freedom', Seton Hall Law Review, 41 (2).
Moyn, Samuel (2010), The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Kindle edn.; London: The Belknap Press).
Murry, John Middleton (1939), 'Towards a Christian Society. True Humanism by Maritain, Jacques (author) ', The Times Literary Supplement, 28th January.
Witte, John (2006), God's joust, God's justice : law and religion in the Western tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich. ; Cambridge: Eerdmans) xiv, 498 p.