RSSA Conservative Liberal?
W.H. Chellis
After a few days of thinking about it, I concur with Caleb. If liberalism means that we root our intellectual heritage in Locke and Milton, I am out. If anti-liberalism roots us in Hooker, Burke, John Randolph of Roanoke, and R.L. Dabney, I am an anti-liberal.
But I am not a monarchist. I am a Republican. I believe in maximizing human liberty to the fullest extent compatible with biblical morality. Does this make a liberal conservative?
D Hart
June 7th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Bill, you don’t mean to say our entire intellectual heritage, do you? What about Paul, Calvin and Locke? Oh, Locke is too liberal, you might say. But are Burke and Randolph obviously more compatible with Paul and Calvin than Locke?
In other words, isn’t any political theoretical tradition going to be an odd fit with Reformed orthodoxy?
W.H. Chellis
June 8th, 2007 at 6:48 am
Well, we do have Johanus Athusius who I greatly admire. He was a 16th Century Reformed Political scientist and of great value.
Taking him along with Rutherford a couple things are noted in our political theory. One is solidarity which I have already written about. The other is subsidiarity which I have also written about. A third is the divisability of sovereignty.
That said, I will take Filmer to Locke any day. Hooker was Reformed and orthodox, no? Burke stands in Hooker’s shadow. O.K. maybe anglicans are not considered orthodox in the Reformed camp… but R.L. Dabney and here we find the fruit of the Hooker, Burke, tradition in Presbyterian soil.
Also, I think, Abraham Kuyper might be read profitably as a Reformed Burkean. He was, after all, a part of the Anti-Revolution party and his thought does show a number of points of contact with Burke. I would rather read Kuyper as a Burkean than in the light of those neo-calvinists who came after him.