What I'm Reading

Part II: Calvinism and the Success of Liberal Democracy - The Calvinist Conception of Man

John Snyder

The beginning point of any meaningful question about what civil government ought to be is the first question of anthropology: what is man's nature? And what "ought" man to be?

It may not be obvious at this point, but without knowing what man is and what he ought to be... we simply cannot indulge in any meaningful conversation about the nature of government and what it "ought" to be. Why? Because governments exist for the purpose of assisting us in becoming and living in some manner closer to what we are intended to be like. If one accepts any other proposition, then government is whatever the will of men want it to be... and that can be... frankly... anything. Anarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, tyrannies, despotisms, nepotisms, military states... whatever just happens to pop into your head. But if you believe that there is a proper relationship between what man is and what government ought to be... bingo! We have a basis for discussing the problem of human government.

In other words, if man has a nature, a government's purpose exists relative to men's purpose. Or perhaps I should state it this way... if government has a nature... it can only be understood in relation to man's nature. What government ought to be is directly related to the question of what man ought to be.

Now, left to our own devices our "natural" instinct is to say that government should maximize our freedom and leave us alone. But this is to trivialize and misunderstand the purpose of government. If government were to maximize freedom and leave us alone... well... what's the point of government? Certainly we would have maximum freedom without any government at all. Each man and woman would assert the totality of his free will to any purpose he or she desired.

And, of course, that is the definition of chaos.

Which brings us to the point: Freedom has no real meaning outside of order. Or more precisely, liberty can have no real substance if it does not exist within the limits and functions of lawful society, in other words, government. Not only is government necessary, it is good! It is not a necessary evil. Government is positively necessary for us to live in the way we were intended to live. Or rather men, in order to live as they "ought" to live must exist within a scheme of ordered liberty. This means that there are limits to freedom. And what is more, those limits to freedom are the proper purpose of government.

This is not a popular idea. Indeed, it is politically incorrect to assert any idea that limits individual liberty. But, alack, this is the intellectual vacuity of modernity. A liberty without constraint is only the right of your neighbor to hit you over the head when he wants to. That kind of freedom is meaningless.

So let us re-examine what man is. The intellectual world of universities and modern liberalism sees man as naturally good. Man really is not in need of much government of all. This is Rousseau's noble savage. Happy men are frolicking in nature without the corruption of modern social order. Unconstrained by the evils of society or the unbridled markets, "natural" men tend to live and do and act in ways that benefit him and society. He is at peace with other men and nature. Man is rational and well behaved. This is the modern liberal notion of man. And he is in good company. Muslims also believe that man is naturally good. And for that matter, so did Confucius.

And this is nonsense.

The problem is that evil exists and where did it come from? If it doesn't come from us... then it must come from things. Things like... government, families, economic systems, religions, guns, social norms, false morals, false consciousness, the material universe.

You see, Christians do not embrace this notion of human nature or accept these things as the source of evil or human unhappiness. Their ideas are less sanguine when it comes to the goodness of men. Indeed Christianity asserts a series of contrary notions. Man is fallen. Man has a strong propensity to evil. Man is in rebellion against God. Humanity is corrupted by sin. Well, gee whiz... who wants to embrace this dark assessment of himself? And so it is the tendency... even among Christians... to discount the effects of sin on our lives, in our society and in history. Rather men are disposed to plaster a bright golden happy face over the festering reality of human wickedness.

So even within Christendom, there are various ideas about the effects of sin nature on man. To be a Christian, one must accept the fall and human sin nature, but that does not mean that there is a universally accepted definition of what this means in the totality of its effect or its importance in human society and history. There is within Christianity broad differences of opinion in regard to the effects that sin play on human nature. For instance, Thomist Catholics are less disposed to believe that sin has corrupted us totally.

This is where the Puritans, or more precisely, the Calvinists... contributed something unique in the history of self-government. Calvinists believe in "total depravity". In other words, sin has devastated man so severely that no human faculty escaped the corruption of sin. Sin has damaged every part of us, our minds, our spirits, our capacity to love, our reasoning. Everything. Man is a total mess. Of every brand and denomination of Christianity... the Calvinist had the absolutely lowest opinion of human nature. And so Calvinists are portrayed as dour unfriendly men who do not smile and who wore unpleasantly dark clothing and black hats.

That's the picture that history paints of our Puritan forefathers. This is unfair. But what is very, very, fair and very, very true is that Calvinists did not trust at all men with power to rule themselves, either in the form of princes or kings, wise men or rich men, even as voting members of a democracy.

So why is this important to the question of liberal democracy? Remember that our idea of government will follow logically from our idea about human nature. More to the point, our idea of proper human government will follow as an inexorable corollary to what is "natural" for man. Why? Because without a correct answer to this question we cannot address the problem of what government ought to be or how it should be properly constructed.

Christians and particularly Calvinists are operating on an entirely unique conception of human nature, one that is simultaneously pessimistic and unique. Consequently the Calvinist developed a distinctive approach to the problem of human government based on a conception of man otherwise unknown in the history of the world. Remember what I said earlier. The classical Greeks believed that man was naturally good. Chinese culture believes that man is naturally good. The Muslims believe that man is naturally good. So in the history of philosophy and psychology the idea that man, left to himself, will only get into more trouble, is really a very unpopular and only a narrowly held idea.

What Christians assert is strikingly different than the wisdom embraced by the world. Christians and particularly Calvinists are saying that something is "naturally" and fundamentally wrong with man. And considering the failures of human history, of classical Rome and Greece, the failures of Asian culture and Islamic culture and all other cultures to create democracies independent of Christian influence... one is obliged to consider the wisdom and insight of the Calvinist model of human nature and therefore, government.

Now that's a challenge! How do we make a government of men, when men are all messed up, and especially if we believe that every human faculty has been degraded by sin? Well, that's the problem! And the solution to that problem is the gigantic intellectual accomplishment of Protestant thinkers. It is the story of the Puritan Revolution and the America Revolution which grew out of it. These stories are the first lessons in the wonderful story of the Calvinist development of liberal democracy.