Doug Wilson's broadside against David French and ... whatever it is he thinks French believes

Again, Greg, you are focusing on a point you want to make, which is fine. My point is that NT Christianity is based on religious freedom—the idea that you cannot coerce belief. Therefore, Christianity is about religious freedom. Some Christians have not lived up to that, and some non-Christians (I won’t grant your liberal definition at all) have claimed to be Christians and have not lived up to it. But NT Christianity recognizes that you cannot coerce belief, particularly by the power of the state.

Most people think “separation of church and state” is an American value and American ideal. It is no such thing. It is a biblical foundation for NT Christianity.

First, classical liberalism was radical and new when it made its appearance only a few centuries ago. You get some hints maybe in Aristotle and ancient Rome but not much elsewhere in history. So why did it take Christianity so long to come up with it? It seems that if it was Christianity-inspired, we would have seen it in history before the US came about.

Second, a good chunk of the thinking of classical liberalism was just flat out anti-God (thinking primarily Hume here but certainly he was one of the most critical early thinkers).

I’m not sure I can make myself sufficiently clear on all this… will try.

First, there’s a difference between discovering an idea or giving it a name vs creating the reality… the truth that was there all along.

Second, Hume contributed a bit to classical liberalism, sure. But what does that really prove?

Third, as I’ve already noted, you don’t have to arrive at Christian truth by a Christian route. Because God is the author of all truth, all truth (not all truth-claims) is God’s truth. Whenever anybody gets any idea right, it was grace, and it’s a small piece of the whole that is the Christian worldview.

Lots of people smarter than me have said it better. Take in CS Lewis, Francis Schaefer, RC Sproul… I’m sure others could expand the list.

On classical liberalism’s rise, it’s a big topic, but you have bits and pieces of it slowly falling into place starting at least as far back as the scholastics, arguably the Greek thinkers.

The reformers actually were for freedom of conscience, relative to their times. Separation of church and state, not so much; the seeds were there. The former really does ultimately require the later.

Why did it take Christians so long to get on board with religious liberty? Perhaps for similar reasons to why it took so long to initiate the fight against slavery. There is development of doctrine throughout the history of the church. But always it was slowly growing into what was already there, but not fully understood.

It isn’t less Christian for being long in coming or having some advocates and champions along the way who were godless.

… apologies for typos. Keying on a phone and probably going to fast.

Some easily accessible resources on what I’ve been trying to say. Not necessarily “persuasive,” but it may help readers understand how I’m looking at these things.

• On unity of truth. Wouldn’t agree with every detail, but some good work here
  • 10 Ideas Embedded in the Slogan “All Truth Is God’s Truth” Duane Litfin
  • Series: All Truth is God’s Truth — A Reformed Approach to Science and Scripture Keith Mathison at Ligonier
• On the Christianness of the idea of religious liberty

  • Did Christians pioneer the idea of religious liberty? A look at Robert Louis Wilken’s “Liberty in the Things of God” I haven’t read the book, but it sounds quite interesting. An excerpt from the review:

  • When Locke advanced the best-known argument for religious liberty (or at least toleration) in Western intellectual history, he was simply restating what Christians had been saying for millennia about the sacred rights of conscience. To Wilken, Locke was hardly an innovator, yet Locke obscured the debt he owed to Christian history for his argument in favor of religious toleration and the rights of conscience. Because of writers such as Locke, historians got the misguided notions that Enlightenment thinkers invented religious liberty, and that the concept was relatively secular in origin.

    • I’m skeptical… the claim is too large. And I don’t really see “origin” as all that important for measuring Christianess in ideas. (Because: Common Grace) Still, there might be some good food for thought there as far as ways Christian thought influenced the Enlightenment thinkers. There’s no doubt that the Christian worldview was the backdrop, and they were assuming large portions of it whether they knew it or not (even while overtly rejecting parts of it at the same time).
  • Video lecture the same book, at Heritage Foundation There’s some interesting context at the beginning of this video…. I’d rather see a debate or at least Q & A with the author. Maybe there is a video out there somewhere like that.
  • ERLC study p.16 talks a bit about the origins of the concept of religious liberty; might be more in there.
  • An interesting read on the whole topic of how Christian the founding of the U.S. was and wasn’t… Did America Have a Christian Founding? Found this observation in footnote 13 intriguing for ideas for further reading:

    • Some scholars argue that Locke’s political philosophy is sharply at odds with earlier Protestant resistance literature, but I believe it is best understood as a logical extension of it. In any case, the American Founders clearly thought Locke’s ideas were compatible with orthodox Christianity. For further discussion, see Hall, “Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos: The Influence of the Reformed Tradition on the American Founding.” An excellent example of Protestant resistance literature is Stephanus Junius Brutus, Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos, ed. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), Vol. 1, p. 426.

I would also plug, once again, Thomas Sowell’s excellent A Conflict of Visions for a lot of insight into what was going on among Enlightenment thinkers relative to human nature and the role of government… and how part of classical liberalism split off to eventually become leftism (essentially due to a false—not-coincidentally, unbiblical—view of human nature.)

Thanks for the links Aaron. This is an interesting topic for sure. I can see this debate from two contrary perspectives, assuming the following premise is correct.

Premise: From 100 AD until the birth of the US, there really is no significant example of religious liberty in western civilization in spite of Christian influence. (I could be wrong but I am not aware of any, and in spite of my repeatedly challenging people on this thread to provide some, none have been forthcoming.)

If the premise is correct, there are at least two possible explanations for classical liberalism/American government.

1) I think your explanation is that Christianity finally grew and matured to the point where a government could exist that represents true Christian ideals. It started with the US and quickly spread through to other countries. The eventual evolution to classical liberalism could not have occurred in a society that was not Christian.

2) The secular explanation would be that the US is actually the first secular country in that it managed to keep itself independent from religious control, and it is no coincidence that it is actually the first country that managed to establish religious liberty.

To be honest, I can see both sides of this. It is hard to reconcile the idea that the NT promotes religious freedom with the reality that Christianity (in name at least) failed to achieve anything resembling religious liberty for 1500 years even though it completely dominated western culture. I know a big question mark revolves around what kind of Christianity (or non-Christianity) was responsible for all the failure.

I don’t know what Aaron’s resources say on this, but often discussion of liberty (especially religious liberty) focuses on America because that’s what Americans do.

The struggle for liberty has a history in England as well, and even the French had something to do with it, though their experiments had some particularly bloody chapters. Anyway, it isn’t strictly an American phenomenon, though I would agree that America is the best representative.

I wonder if Will Durant’s history’s touches on this at all. I haven’t gotten through the whole thing yet, but have listened to the first three or four volumes. Fascinating insight, albeit not a Christian worldview.

1) I think your explanation is that Christianity finally grew and matured to the point where a government could exist that represents true Christian ideals. It started with the US and quickly spread through to other countries. The eventual evolution to classical liberalism could not have occurred in a society that was not Christian.

This is pretty close. I’d tweak it a little. It’s not just that Christianity finally grew enough, but also western civilization grew enough. So factors both within and without institutional Christianity developed.

Echoing to an extent what Don said, I’m not sure I’d say it started with the US. Though UK and France did not advance the ideas as far as the U.S. did (and in the case of France, did not constrain/root the ideas sufficiently… a really interesting case), the ball was rolling over there. It’s sort of like the founders took momentum from movements in Europe that had stalled and carried the reforms further. Locke and Montesquieu and all those guys had already done so much heavy lifting.

Edit: mixed my metaphor! Maybe I want to say Lock and M. et al had already done much of the driving… or something.

More importantly: the US founders not only took reforms further, but following Ed. Burke’s thought (and others), took reforms in a different direction than in France. There’s a bit of a course change…. partly because many of the founders had a much dimmer view of human nature both as individuals but especially in groups (See again Conflict of Visions). Hmm… I wonder where they got that dimmer view from….

….existed to a degree among the Dutch in the 1500s and 1600s, when of course they were fighting Spain tooth and nail for very existence, and the Pilgrims came to enjoy it. Now one might argue, perhaps with some reality, that the Dutch had religious tolerance precisely because they needed it to fight Spain, but they kept it up quite well for a while. So a little bit before the U.S. was founded (or even colonized), but not a lot.

I think what Wilson is trying to argue, more or less, is the point that de Toqueville is alleged to have made about our republic; that it is suitable to a moral and religious people only. I would dare say there is some truth to this whether he said it or not. One example from a hot button issue; can our society lose its rejection of fornication without risking far higher rates of sexual assault? We aren’t going to get good data on this, so we’ll never know for sure this side of Jordan, but I dare suggest when we go to the other side, we’re going to learn some very hard things.

[Don Johnson]

I don’t know what Aaron’s resources say on this, but often discussion of liberty (especially religious liberty) focuses on America because that’s what Americans do.

The struggle for liberty has a history in England as well, and even the French had something to do with it, though their experiments had some particularly bloody chapters. Anyway, it isn’t strictly an American phenomenon, though I would agree that America is the best representative.

I wonder if Will Durant’s history’s touches on this at all. I haven’t gotten through the whole thing yet, but have listened to the first three or four volumes. Fascinating insight, albeit not a Christian worldview.

Speaking for myself, while I might have referred to America a lot in this discussion, it is not because I think America is exceptional. I don’t think that at all. But America happened to be in the right place at the right time. It needed a new government and the founders just happened to be very influenced by Classical Liberalism. The whole three parts of government, etc is right out of John Locke; America’s founders may have tweaked Locke’s ideas but they did not come up with our government out of thin air.

So the US just ended up being a petri dish for ideas that would become successful. Very fortunate really.

[Bert Perry]

….existed to a degree among the Dutch in the 1500s and 1600s, when of course they were fighting Spain tooth and nail for very existence, and the Pilgrims came to enjoy it. Now one might argue, perhaps with some reality, that the Dutch had religious tolerance precisely because they needed it to fight Spain, but they kept it up quite well for a while. So a little bit before the U.S. was founded (or even colonized), but not a lot.

I think the Dutch are as good an example as any. They harbored a lot of religious radicals during that time as well as published a lot of religious materials that were banned by the Catholic church.

I have to wonder if the relative lack of religious freedom until relatively recently has a lot to do with the fact that Constantine set the precedent of having Christianity be an official state religion—and thus for centuries, all but a very few thought that it was quite natural that the state should help impose the “right” religious views. That followed many centuries of Roman rule where only “permitted” religions could be practiced.

Hence, religious liberty would wait, more or less, for a day when so many “dissenters” and “separatists” were on the streets, they could no longer be imprisoned (or worse, or whatever) without bankrupting the King. It happened in the U.S. (and the Netherlands) before other countries precisely because the King (of England and/or Spain) had supply lines that were too long to be maintained for such a struggle. (I’d guess the King of Spain’s supply lines became a lot more difficult as well because the Royal Navy not surprisingly took exception to free passage for Spanish galleons through the English Channel….so while not supporting religious liberty per se, London probably did help a touch)

Back to the subject, I used to be a fan of Wilson’s, but from questionable logic and evidence to plagiarism to picking a fight with #MeToo (including both Boz and the Denhollanders), he’s setting himself up as more of an enfant terrible than a serious thinker. It’s a pity, because I think he started well.

I’m a couple of chapters into a book that came out this summer on the whole topic of western intellectual history. I’m only two chapters in, but there’s quite a bit of attention to the enlightenment thinkers, the idea of personal freedom, the idea of religious liberty.

Focus is on the role of reason (and science) in relation to Christian faith in western civilization, which relates frequently to the intellectual history of the U.S.

It’s by Samuel Gregg, who is Research Director at Acton Institute.

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

It’s an important book, and the timing couldn’t be better either, now that there seem to be increasing conversations about “post-liberal” nationalism.

I don’t know where Gregg comes down on that question, or how close he’ll even get to touching on it in the book. But either way the volume provides much needed context for thinking about these questions.

I’ve obtained it both Audible and Kindle and hope to write a review after I finish at least the first reading. Might read it twice before I write.

Those interested in the debate may also find this helpful, over at Acton: Sohrab Ahmari’s biggest mistake

[Aaron Blumer]

I’m a couple of chapters into a book that came out this summer on the whole topic of western intellectual history. I’m only two chapters in, but there’s quite a bit of attention to the enlightenment thinkers, the idea of personal freedom, the idea of religious liberty.

Focus is on the role of reason (and science) in relation to Christian faith in western civilization, which relates frequently to the intellectual history of the U.S.

It’s by Samuel Gregg, who is Research Director at Acton Institute.

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

It’s an important book, and the timing couldn’t be better either, now that there seem to be increasing conversations about “post-liberal” nationalism.

I don’t know where Gregg comes down on that question, or how close he’ll even get to touching on it in the book. But either way the volume provides much needed context for thinking about these questions.

I’ve obtained it both Audible and Kindle and hope to write a review after I finish at least the first reading. Might read it twice before I write.

Those interested in the debate may also find this helpful, over at Acton: Sohrab Ahmari’s biggest mistake

I have read this book. To be honest, I was not very enthused by it. I think some of the key premises the author makes are quite easily refuted. However, I won’t go into that until if/when you finish reading and do your review.

There is a similar newer book out that I sort of liked: The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization