Protesting a Secular Framing

THE CLASSICAL AND CHRISTIAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLITICS: POLITICAL THEOLOGY, NATURAL LAW, AND THE AMERICAN FOUNDINGBy Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022 Pp. vii + 256. Paper. $34.99. What was the character of the nation that was founded in the late Eighteenth century? In many so-called “narratives of decline” that seek to explain our contemporary cultural woes, much blame is laid upon the (supposed) subversive radicalism of the founding due to its alleged embrace of Enlightenment thought. These critics of the contemporary excesses of “liberalism” decipher the source of our modern problems in the founding itself, believing we are simply witnessing the full flowering of the seeds sown at the origin of our nation. These scholars, and the popular public opinions they inspire, know that America was founded upon a Deistic notion of natural rights, arbitrary freedom, and a religiously “neutral” state ordered merely to protect the private interests of individuals and to balance their competing subjective rights claims. This work by Cooper and Dyer asks: What if this “common knowledge” is false? The book's basic argument is that the background assumptions about public life during the founding era of America were derived from and compatible with the classical Christian natural law tradition. This reviewer is persuaded that Cooper and Dyer are more successful in their case that the founding of America is “compatible with” the classical Christian natural law tradition. Still, their argument that it is “derived from” that broad tradition is a bit less clear. The case would be stronger if Cooper and Dyer narrowed more explicitly on the Protestant inflection of that classical tradition, especially in its contributions to the development of resistance theory. I will return to this below, but it is clear that by attempting to make this case, Cooper and Dyer set themselves in opposition to both the pro-founding secular liberals and antifounding religious integralists. The primary conceptual target in the book is what the authors refer to as “Hobbism.” This refers to basic political principles in the thought of Thomas Hobbes, but, as Cooper and Dyer explain, these basic ideas are carried over into other radical political philosophies—all of which, they argue, are rejected by the leading lights of the American founding. Hobbism represents fundamental shifts in common conceptions of “sovereignty” in the modern era. Targeting Hobbism is important because many scholars have identified the American founding with Hobbes, often connecting the dots by presuming both the influence of Hobbes on early modern political theorists such as John Locke and then the influence of Locke et al. on the American founders. Hobbism, according to Cooper and Dyer, grounds political theory in the radical autonomy of individuals and conceives of no standard of goodness outside of the (arbitrary) will. Our authors echo other recent scholars who present modern political theory as centered in arbitrary rule and argue that this modern framework for politics emerged as a result of more basic shifts in theology and metaphysics in the late medieval period (e.g., Elshtain 2008; Gillespie 2008). According to these accounts, philosophers and theologians like William of Ockham and John Duns Scotus emphasized divine omnipotence, freedom, and will in their articulations of God's relation to creation, making much of the distinction between God's potentia absoluta and his potentia ordinata. This set the stage for Hobbes, who radicalized this theology in his apologia for the Stuart claims of royal absolutism. Thus, Hobbes refers to the sovereign ruler as a “mortal God.” The basic tenets of Hobbism are carried over in an inverted form in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who transfers this godlike power from monarchs to the demos, thus theorizing absolutist sovereignty in democratic terms. The “mortal God” is replaced by the “sovereign people” executing its “general will” unbounded by anything beyond this will. For both forms of Hobbism, liberty and license are indistinguishable, and human sovereignty is absolute and unbounded. The only fundamental difference between these forms is the identity of the sovereign. In contrast to the “Hobbist” interpretation, Cooper and Dyer argue that the founders' commitment to natural law reflects a rejection of the modern view of absolute sovereignty in all forms of Hobbism. Natural law, according to classical Christian thought, provides a nonarbitrary moral standard that precedes, stands above, and limits all human authority—whether monarchical or democratic. Cooper and Dyer accomplish their task by analyzing the references to God and expressions of natural law principles in the pamphlet debates leading up to the War of Independence, then also in the attempts to justify revolution and throughout the sessions of the First and Second Continental Congresses. They build upon the important work of scholars, such as Donald S. Lutz (1984, 1988), who have shown that the Bible, and particularly the book of Deuteronomy, was cited in the political literature of the founding era significantly more often than Hobbes, Locke, or any modern political theorist. Through this analysis, Cooper and Dyer successfully demonstrate that the founders generally had a shared natural theology that was an inheritance of classical Christian political reflection. To further support their argument that the shared political philosophy of the founders was continuous with the classical Christian natural law tradition, Cooper and Dyer trace how patriotic clergy and statesmen made a case for revolution on natural law principles and in light of how Romans 13 was interpreted in the Christian tradition. The authors draw attention to the fact that it is uniquely in the Reformed tradition—particularly through Theodore Beza, John Knox, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and the author of Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (and they could have also mentioned Samuel Rutherford)—that a robust resistance theory develops (with a brief aside on a similar theory emerging in the thought of Francisco Suarez around the same time). This leads to a critical question I will discuss toward the end of this review: Why was the Protestant character of the founding downplayed in this book? Even the patriotic clergyman they discuss at this point, Jonathan Mayhew, whose sermon, “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Nonresistance to the Higher Powers,” in 1750, represents a quintessential expression of patriotic interpretation of Romans 13 in service of making a biblical case for resistance to unjust government, was a Protestant. And the discussion of the language of “laws of nature” to show that the founders largely shared classical natural law views centers on James Wilson, who followed Richard Hooker almost precisely. Both were Protestants. Two key concepts are woven together in various ways throughout the book to explain how the leading American political theorists during the founding era combined a classical theological-metaphysic with a robust sense of personal agency: providence and secondary causality. “From the founding on,” argues Cooper and Dyer, “a dominant stream of American political thought and statesmanship understood the policy in providentialist terms” (122). But this was harmonized with an understanding of secondary causes, including the actions of human beings—through which God works to achieve his purposes. They discuss the “revolutionary providentialism” surrounding the Continental Congress, which shaped political addresses, newspaper articles, sermons, etc. The Congress itself reflected the “revolutionary mind” and had a “decidedly providentialist frame” (126). The combination of this “mind” and “frame” reflects core tenets of the classical Christian natural law tradition, which conceives of God's providence as compatible with free will since God, as the first cause, can work in and through persons without violating their freedom. The Congress also exhibited what Cooper and Dyer label a “judicial providentialism,” which conceives of the nation in covenantal terms such that God's favor or disfavor toward it is contingent upon the relative virtue in the nation's inhabitants. These two concepts are evident again in Cooper and Dyer's exposition of the people's “secondary sovereignty” in the mind of the founders. Leading political theorists in the founding era emphasized the metaphysical dependence of humanity, which implied that there are no absolute human sovereigns. Rather, humans and human institutions can serve as secondary causes. As moral, rational creatures, humans are granted a share in God's governance of the world. This commitment to metaphysical dependence was imprinted upon the founders' conception of popular sovereignty as a moral, dependent, and teleological character. And these principles, argues Cooper and Dyer, are essential to ordered liberty. This divinely grounded order both authorizes and limits the state while grounding natural rights and natural duties. Another target of their critique is the “subversive theology thesis.” This thesis has its origins in the writings by Leo Strauss on early modern political philosophy. It interprets references to terms like “nature's God” in the Constitution as a subversive rejection of a theistic creator who providentially orders and guides creation, replacing this classical conception with the “impersonal necessities” of nature. According to Cooper and Dyer, advocates of this thesis perceive an attempt “to pour the new wine of secular individualism into the old wineskins of the classical theistic nature law-tradition” (76). This thesis is exhibited in popular critical genealogies (e.g., Deneen 2018). Cooper and Dyer explain that even Thomas Jefferson's heterodox views fail to meet the criteria of the subversive theology thesis, much less so do the views of the more traditional founders. The concluding chapter, which bridges contemporary relevance and current debates in political theology, is constructive and promising. Cooper and Dyer provide a cursory overview of various “postliberal” movements that attempt to push back against the hegemony of the political liberalism of the past century that seeks to bracket questions of ultimate reality from public life. Our authors identify three different rivals to postwar, Rawlsian liberalism: progressive identity politics, Christian nationalism, and Catholic integralism. (Their discussion of Christian nationalism is the most underdeveloped and unclear, which raises other issues I will discuss below.) Cooper and Dyer argue that the proper, largely unexplored solution to democracy's present dilemmas is retrieving the classical and Christian elements of the founders' religious approach. They argue that such a solution would avoid the pressures toward religious identity politics and integralism. Here it is unclear if they perceive Christian nationalism as a Christian form of identity politics or a Protestant version of integralism. And this reviewer is persuaded that the authors have not dealt with the more serious cases of Christian nationalism. Furthermore, this neglect also serves to highlight some incoherent positions in the analysis and constructive proposals of Cooper and Dyer. They want, with the founders, to reject both “neutrality” and coercion with regard to religion. But, at the same time, they think religion is essential to the public good. They seem to restrict this largely to the private practices of individuals and some general promotion of “religion” in a pluralistic environment without any preference or privileging of some particular religion. The problem is that this is, as we are increasingly learning, impossible. Some ultimate vision of the good and views about fundamental realities will prevail. Though they present their retrieval of the founders as an alternative to the Rawlsian liberalism that brackets questions of ultimate reality from public life, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they have not entirely escaped it. Maybe they would reply that they want to permit questions about ultimate reality in the public sphere but still proscribe any and all answers. But again, this is logically incoherent and practically impossible. As the authors say at one point, some religions are toxic to the polity, and thus the state will have some say on religious matters. Therefore, absolute religious liberty is out of consideration. This, therefore, complicates their commitment to free exercise and religious equality. Inevitably, some religion(s) will be promoted, some will be proscribed, and some will be more or less privatized. The book would have benefited from more attention to the long tradition of theological-political reflection on the two powers (or two swords) and classic Protestant accounts of their relation. The work is a bit too dependent on Francis Oakley's genealogy (2010, 2012, 2015) of how the separation of church and state was the consequence of Christian desacralization of temporal government. This is all good as far as it goes. But the Gelasian dyarchy and classic Protestant “two kingdoms” doctrine envisions not only a distinction between the powers but also a cooperative relation. And such ideas seem to be present at the level of many, if not most, of the states early in the republic. Attention to these matters would allow Cooper and Dyer to countenance forms of establishment (at the state level) and classical Protestant accounts of religious “toleration” (as opposed to mere nondiscrimination). A classical Protestant two kingdoms understanding of politics combines the recognition of the public good of religion with robust protections for freedom of conscience while at the same time authorizing temporal power to limit public expressions of religion which strike at the foundations of society and political order. The magistrate receives a renewed dignity in classical Protestant theology—affirmed as both authorized directly by God rather than mediated through the church and as capable of interpreting the moral law that should guide its governance. Furthermore, the Reformed tradition also developed unique resources to conceive of resistance and revolution when the temporal powers failed to govern according to the natural law, and the American patriots availed themselves of these resources to justify the revolution without radically abandoning God's moral order increased into creation. Cooper and Dyer perform a great service in critiquing the Catholic integralist genealogies of American political life for the ways these conflate contemporary liberalism with Hobbism and then draw a direct line from contemporary Hobbism to the founding era. Such accounts grossly overstate Hobbes's influence on the founding. Cooper and Dyer also rightly affirm the duality between spiritual and temporal power while rightly rejecting the ways that integral implies that this duality should translate into the state serving as the secular arm of the church. This review suggests that such a duality without subordination is achieved in classical Protestant versions of something approximating what is now labeled “Christian nationalism.” The arguments of this book would benefit from closer engagement with that tradition and also by giving proper recognition to the Protestant character of the American founding. The work is underspecified on the God and religion affirmed at the founding. For the founders, it was always the Christian God that was in view, and the religion that was assumed was pan-Protestant. This is an important work contesting simplistic views of the founding from secular liberals who embrace it and religious integralists who oppose it. It is also a very serious engagement with classical Christian metaphysics. For those unfamiliar with classical theism, natural law, and the theology of being, there is much faithful exposition and metaphysical sophistication here. This work is a history of the political philosophy of the American founding that satisfies the theologian. It would benefit from more serious engagement with the Protestant character of the founding and the long tradition of Christian reflection on the two powers and the debates surrounding “Christian nationalism.” But its correction of Hobbist misreadings of the founding merits much acclaim and attention.

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