Hopeful realism or patient hopefulness?

Last month three esteemed colleagues of mine published a statement in Public Discourse: the Journal of the Witherspoon Institute: Hopeful Realism: Renewing Evangelical Political Morality. The authors, Jesse Covington, Bryan McGraw, and Micah Watson, I know from conferences we have all attended. Last May, during my visit to Calvin University, I was privileged to have coffee (well, tea actually) with Watson, who teaches political science there. This article was a collaborative effort, and I recommend a close reading of their argument, which is that the future of evangelical politics lies in a recovery of the natural law under the broad rubric of a hopeful realism. The authors outline four principles of a hopeful realism:

1. Confessional Plurality and Religious Liberty: In the present age we can expect that our earthly polities will be characterized by a diversity of communities following different religious beliefs. This reality makes necessary a defence of religious liberty.
2. The Common Good and Civic Friendship: Despite our differences on ultimate issues, we are blessed to share a common theatre of action with our other-believing neighbours. This provides a basis for "real civic friendship" and the achievement of an imperfect justice, even as it necessarily falls short of God's perfect justice.
   
3. Democracy and Decentralization: Here I can do no better than to quote the authors' defence of a robust localism: "The shared objects of love for a large political community will be thinner, more limited. In contrast, the civic commonwealth 'thickens' as it goes closer to the local, as shared objects of love increase in scope and the compromise of wills includes more goods of earthly peace. This concept has significant affinity with the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity, without necessarily requiring the same ontological hierarchy that extends beyond the political." Excellent!
   
4. Restraint and Liberty: Finally, we must recognize the limits of politics, the need for political prudence, humility, and "a certain detachment from guaranteeing outcomes."
   

I appreciate the authors' efforts to rein in the unrealistic expectations many evangelicals bring to the political sphere. We will not usher in the kingdom of God by political or other means. Yet we are agents of God's kingdom in every sphere of life, necessarily content to leave the outcomes of our actions in his hands.

Three days after Covington, McGraw, and Watson released their statement, Public Discourse posted three separate responses by Jordan J. Ballor, Bradford Littlejohn, and Andrew T. Walker. Ballor expresses appreciation for the statement while observing that an affirmation of natural law is only the beginning rather than the end of moral reasoning and thus of political renewal. Littlejohn believes that the authors are too reticent in speaking of religion's relationship to the public good. Accordingly, they could stand to draw on a postliberal approach which recognizes in "liberal democracy," not just a neutral order, but one which, in its current condition, is based on "an ideal of freedom as radical autonomy and self-definition." Walker suggests that the authors' emphasis on natural law needs to be deepened by reference to Jesus Christ and his redeeming work.

I will add to the three responses by affirming most of the original statement while pointing to a perennial problem with appeals to natural law. Natural law is not itself a reality but constitutes a theoretical attempt to account for our shared creational space. This theory is heavily dependent on the underlying religious worldviews of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, the Stoics, and ultimately Plato, in so far as positive law is deemed an imperfect reflection of a more perfect higher law. In this respect we need to take care not to conflate our theories with the realities they describe. All human beings are embedded in God's creation and are subject to its norms, whether we recognize them or not. A political order binding on people of different ultimate convictions is possible because of our common status as creatures made in God's image. 

But how much of this notional shared space is due to our creaturely status, and how much originates in a common cultural heritage? For those of us living in the western world, we may inadvertently identify our own cherished principles with the supposed universal character of the natural law. In other words, our appeal to what we think is natural law may in reality be to a culturally specific norm that once commanded more assent in our society than it does now.

This is not to deny that there are norms that God has built into his creation. In so far as we obey these norms, we are more likely to flourish than will those who flout them. I believe it is possible to demonstrate from history that following the precepts of the Decalogue will lead to a healthier social fabric than embracing any of the alternatives. For example, professed Marxist regimes are notorious for perpetrating outright lies and murdering innocents on a massive scale for the elusive goal of liberating the oppressed from their supposed oppressors. Liberal regimes countenance and even encourage covetousness as conducive to economic growth. We easily see the fruits of such worldviews as they play out in the larger society.

After the Sexual Revolution upended societal sexual mores in the 1920s and the 1960s, the biblical prohibition of adultery became tremendously unpopular, not only in the entertainment industry and the press, but even in the more progressive churches. This overturning of social norms favouring monogamy and marital faithfulness has definitely had its negative effects, although pointing these out publicly is now frowned on in the salons of ostensibly enlightened opinion. In such cases, an appeal to natural law will likely have little effect in changing the hearts and minds of contemporary people of secular faith.

Of course, some of my difficulty with natural law could simply be semantic. I definitely affirm the reality to which it points, but I would prefer something along the lines of creation order, normative order, or common grace, the last being Abraham Kuyper's expression. These norms include those governing the legitimate development of a culture over time, something which natural law, in its classic formulation, appears not easily to take into account. 

Yet even my preferred appeal to a normative order rooted in God's creative intention is unlikely to persuade those captive to one or more ideological agendas which deny that order. This already makes conversation across spiritual boundaries difficult. As our western societies become ever more divided, and as the influence over political deliberations of our once shared patrimony diminishes, appeals to a universal normative order will become less persuasive than in the past. Yet God's norms do reassert themselves over time. A society cannot simply ignore the precepts of the Decalogue without incurring negative consequences.

This suggests that the project that Covington, McGraw, and Watson recommend to us, even if we were to change their terminology, is fraught with challenges at the very least. Rather than expect to be heard by our conversation partners, we may have to wait for the fruits of disobedience to take their toll in the larger society and hope that these will eventually elicit a change in heart, if not in this generation, then perhaps in the next. In the meantime, we must ready ourselves to help pick up the fragments and reknit what remains of value into something more cohesive over the long term. Perhaps more than hopeful realism we need a patient hopefulness for the future as we look to the God who has redeemed his creation in Jesus Christ.