Ranting to /dev/null

The peace of the city

The jumping-off point for this post is Paul's excellent post, referenced in his comment here.

I believe a significant difference of opinion exists between he and I on the moral nature of the state, a difference I shall attempt to explore and describe below.

The main thrust of Paul's post and the gist of his comment to mine seems to hinge on the moral actions of states. Before starting, I would ask him to clearly describe what rules (and kind of rules) states are subject to, and what it means for a state to act in a truly "moral" fashion. What does it mean for a state to be moral? Is it actually possible?

I believe Paul and I are on different sides of a metaethical divide. Paul consistently uses the terms "moral" and "ethical" as honorifics, so what he really seems to intend is "morally/ethically good". I, on the other hand, am not convinced that states are, in fact, the kinds of things whose actions have any kind of moral status at all (or if they do, they're evil).

I am increasingly convinced that it is efficiency, so-called realpolitik, that is the guiding principle for states, not any kind of abstracted moral system. I find myself in the company of legal positivists and pragmatists such as Posner, whose Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy I am currently enjoying. This means I probably also have at least a similar attitude as such political theorists as Hobbes, Mill, Bentham, and Dewey, though I have not as yet pursued their philosophies enough to have a discussion about them, and I believe my ethical formulations remain distinct.

I explored some of these ideas on my own in the summer of 2004 in this post which uses Frank Herbert's Dune as a starting point for the discussion (a book which I am coincidentally rereading).

Paul seems to believe, like many Westerners and especially Christians, that the state is intended and designed to bring about justice. I do not believe this, at least not in the way most Westerners and Christians talk about justice. That isn't why the state is there. The state exists to ensure stability, prosperity, and security for its citizens, to make functioning in a public community predictable, possible, and to the extent that it is feasible, equitable, i.e. to keep the Hobbsian state of nature at bay. The state does not exist to create justice in the Platonic or the Christian sense.

The key understanding upon which this is founded is a refusal to conflate the city of God with the city of man. When God instructs his people to seek the welfare of the city into which he has sent them as captives (Jer. 29), I do not believe that he is talking about heavenly welfare. The passage does not indicate that he is doing such, as it talks about normal, everyday, and largely secular activities: get married, have kids, plant gardens, and build houses. And though God certainly does use the state to punish evildoers (Rom. 13), thereby accomplishing part of his will, this does not mean that the state is a moral agent intended to bring about God's will on earth. God used the Assyrians, a wicked pagan nation that he ultimately destroyed, to accomplish his will for Israel, but they were merely a tool, not an instantiation of his kingdom.

Which is exactly the point: the state is not the Kingdom of Heaven. If you are looking to the state for moral and ethical actions, you're barking up the wrong tree. Not only is that a huge non-starter on a political level (Whose morality? Which justice? And why even bother?), you're asking something from an entity which was never designed to produce such. The state is designed to produce order, not justice.

This is why criticizing the actions of the state for being immoral or counter to principles of Christian charity are so wrongheaded. Of course states go to war with each other for what Christians would judge to be insufficient reasons. It's what they do. Wars and rumors of wars, and whatnot. This is just the way of things. More to the point, the state is, no matter how it may be constituted or who may be in charge, ultimately opposed to the rule of Christ (Rev. 13). It makes war on the saints, and conquers them. Though it may prove useful from time to time, it is ultimately our enemy. Asking it to be moral isn't just asking an old dog to learn new tricks, it's asking, well, the lion to lay down with the lamb.

And now I'll quote myself:

"This may sound like fatalism and/or defeatism, but it isn’t. The understanding and acceptance that all political systems are eventually doomed is not cause for despair, but grounds for exceptional flexibility. As representation is no more likely than dictatorship to usher in the final rest, neither seems to me to be morally superior, let alone necessary. The question becomes one of expediency and preference for one’s family and descendents."

The welfare of Athens is not the same as the welfare of Jerusalem. And while there are those of us who do live in Jerusalem, we are currently held captive in Athens. Our peace while in Athens is bound up with the fate of that city, but our peace as citizens of Jerusalem is in no way connected to our earthly home.

Bringing it back to the discussion at hand: it isn't that I think that the deaths of civilians in Israel or Lebanon represent morally good actions. But since I believe all actions of the state to be ultimately opposed to Christ and his church, I'm not all that concerned about it. States do terrible things, but sometimes those terrible things benefit the church. I believe this is one of those times. Ergo, bombs away.

Posted by ryan at August 10, 2006 07:11 AM | TrackBack