Andrew Sandlin
When Thomist
dispensationalist Norman Geisler during the Bill Moyers special on
reconstructionism stated that Christians want a moral nation, not a Christian
nation,1 he was speaking in the vein of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, arguably the
most influential political philosopher of the last three centuries. Rousseau,
defender of the infallible (and imaginary) "general will," of the
indivisibility of human sovereignty, and of social egalitarianism,2 was also
one of the first Enlightenment proponents of "civil religion," as set
forth in chapter 8, book 4 of The Social Contract. Rousseau recognized the
inescapably religious character of law and society, but deplored the influence
of Christianity and Christians on the commonweal. He had nothing but contempt
for a Christian citizenry:
. . . no State has ever
been founded without a religious basis [but] the law of Christianity at bottom
does more harm by weakening than good by strengthening the constitution of the
State.3
Rousseau depicted
Christianity as an impotent, vacillating, dualistic, masochistic faith:
Christianity as a religion
is entirely spiritual, occupied solely with heavenly things; the country of the
Christian is not of this world. He does his duty, indeed, but does it with
profound indifference to the good or ill success of his cares. Provided he has
nothing to reproach himself with, it matters little to him whether things go
well or ill here on earth. If the state is prosperous, he hardly dares to share
in the public happiness, for fear he may grow proud of his country's glory; if
the state is languishing, he blesses the hand of God that is hard upon His
people.
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If war breaks out with
another State, the [Christian] citizens march readily out to battle; not one of
them thinks of flight; they do their duty, but they have no passion for
victory; they know better how to die than how to conquer. What does it matter
whether they win or lose? Does not Providence know better than they what is
meet [suitable] for them? Only think to what account a proud, impetuous, and
passionate enemy could turn their stoicism! Set over against them those
generous peoples who were devoured by ardent love of glory and their country,
imagine your Christian republic face to face with Sparta or Rome: the pious
Christians will be beaten, crushed, and destroyed, before they know where they
are, or will owe their safety only to the contempt their enemy will conceive
for them. It was to my mind a fine oath that was taken by the soldiers of
Fabius, who swore, not to conquer and die, but to come back victorious-and kept
their oath. Christians would never have taken such an oath; they would have
looked on it as tempting God. . . . Christianity preaches only servitude and
dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by
such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do
not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.4
Rousseau considers any sort
of attempt to Christianize the state a reversion to paganism; for him the
gospel is wholly "spiritual." This is the temper of dualism, but
Rousseau nonetheless perceives that when Christians do subordinate the state to
Christ's authority, the "secular" state must dissolve-there can be no
compromise. The problem, as Rousseau notes, is that state and society without
religion are an impossibility. That religion, however, according to Rousseau,
cannot be Christianity, for if it is "gospel" (pietistic)
Christianity it is counterproductive to state interests, and if it is
"pagan" (virile) Christianity it is subversive of the state.
Rousseau's solution to this
alleged problem of a Christian state and citizenry is the replacement of
Christianity with a civil religion, "a purely civil profession of faith,
of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogma,
but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen and
faithful subject."5 That is, since civil government without religion is an
impossibility, but also since Christianity is counterproductive to or
subversive of civil government, the state must impose its own self-serving
religion, which occupies a merely utilitarian function.
Rousseau's dogmas formed
the ideational basis of virtually all political revolutions since the
eighteenth century, and it is an easy transition from Rousseau's civil religion
to Marx's estimate (borrowed from Heine) that religion is "the opium of
the masses." Marx realized that in Rousseau's interpretation religion
served a merely utilitarian function in society and expelled the latter's
abstract civil theism in favor of a concrete civil theism-the state is god
walking on earth. The Marxist society is no less religious than the
Christian-the true God has simply been replaced by a humanistic and
totalitarian idol.
What Rousseau really meant,
of course, is that virile, comprehensive Christianity (what he calls a
reversion to "paganism" [!]) is subversive of anti-Christian regimes;
and in this insinuation he is entirely correct. He is only partially correct in
asserting that "gospel" Christians (we call them pietists) are
counterproductive to the anti-Christian regime; for it is true that their
dualism cools any fanatical patriotism on which such regimes are fueled, but,
conversely, pietistic Christians' tacit acceptance of anti-Christian states
renders easy the maintenance of a statist stranglehold.
The similarity between
Rousseau's civil religion and modern evangelicals' preference for natural law
is most striking. Geisler abhors the abandonment of natural law theory,
correctly recognizing that the lack of any objective standard of morality
invites civic tyranny.6 The problem is that because of man's-especially
political man's-depravity, he will employ an amorphous natural law as an
instrument to subvert godly Christianity, just as Rousseau's ideological
disciples did in the French Revolution. Abstract "rights" secured by
natural law are fictive: they become (as they have in Marxist countries) means
of enhancing tyranny. Marxist countries, of course, repudiate natural law, at
least in its historic sense; but their "natural law" arises from the
nature of materialist man, as interpreted by philosophers and elitist social
engineers. Both "human rights" and "natural law" are no
impediments to this scheme-indeed, they are catalysts of it. For example, the
"rights" to employment, health care, and retirement benefits justify
the seizure of property by the state to supply those "rights."
The sort of civil religion
evangelicals covet-"good" and "fair" government, in the
words of Geisler, but decidedly not Christian-is in some ways more pernicious
than immediate and flagrant totalitarianism. Although all states are
inescapably religious, at least the religion of the state depicted in Orwell's
1984 is obvious; by contrast, under the guise of civil religion, states can
with impunity systematically subvert Christianity and rob true freedom from
their citizens. They begin by asserting dedication to Christian virtue without
the dogma of Christianity. They conclude by undermining godly culture while all
the while claiming to do God's work on earth. And they persecute all
"pagan" (i.e., non-pietistic) Christians who refuse to submit to
their religion. Such civil religion can tolerate all religions but the
intolerant:
The dogmas of civil
religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without explanation or
commentary. The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent Divinity,
possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the
just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the
laws: these are its positive dogmas. Its negative dogmas I confine to one,
intolerance, which is a part of the cults we have rejected.
Those who distinguish civil
from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken. The two forms are
inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned;
to love them would be to hate God who punishes them; we positively must either
reclaim or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it must
inevitably have some civil effect; and as soon as it has such an effect, the
Sovereign is no longer Sovereign even in the temporal sphere: thenceforth
priests are the real masters, and kings only their ministers.7
A prime stated goal of
civil religion, according to Rousseau, is to defang the exclusivity of robust
faiths that may compete with and supersede the statist faith. It is to
emasculate virile Christianity, to render it docile before the civil sovereign
who then can indeed become universal Sovereign, god on earth. In such a
scenario the state does not find active persecution of "gospel"
(i.e., pietistic) Christians necessary; if Christians can be rendered as
tractable as declawed cats in a mice reservation, they need not be
exterminated. It is just this sort of faith the evangelicals desire in the
political sphere; being consummate dualists, they want to worship the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the church, but a "good" and
"fair" god of their own imagination in the state. But Christians
devoted to the uninhibited Lordship of Christ are at war with all
idolatry-familial, ecclesiastical, or civil. They will war no less vigorously
against idolatry in the state than with idolatry in the church. It is this
godly "intolerance" that Rousseau and his modern disciples cannot
tolerate. Evangelicals will bow the knee to civil religion; we
reconstructionists will bow the knee only to the sovereign God of the universe
revealed in the Holy Scriptures.
The alternative to
atheistic raw statist politics is not hypocritical and cunning Rousseauian
civil religion. It is a full-orbed, red-blooded orthodox Christianity applying
the Crown Rights of Jesus Christ in all areas of life.
Christ is King; He will
abide no competitors.
1.Geisler observes
elsewhere: "Premillennialists, unlike postmillennialists, do not attempt
to set up a distinctively Christian government; they work rather for good
government. Premillenarians need not work for Christian civil laws but only
fair ones," "A Premillennial View of Law and Government,"
Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 142, Num. 567 [July-September], 1985, 256. Geisler
suggests that "good," "fair" government is built on natural
law and natural revelation, the "ultimate moral ground" of society,
ibid., 257-260. He does not demonstrate any relation between natural law and
Christian morality, or how non-Christian societies may be expected to interpret
natural law in a moral fashion.
2.For an explication of the totalitarian propensities of Rousseau's theories,
see J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1960),
38-49.
3.Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (Chicago, 1952), 436, 437.
4.ibid., 437-439.
5.ibid., 439.
6.Geisler, 260.
7.Rousseau, loc. cit.