RSSSocial Contract liberalism?
I wonder if a missing peace of this discussion revolves around the social contract. Darryl (along with R.Scott Clark and Steve Z.) seem to think of a community or nation as a collection of individuals… the parts greater than the whole. I find this most odd coming from Darryl whose Agrarian tendencies would suggest a more organic view of communities and nation as somthing of an extended family.
The Locke, Hobbes, Roussou crowd tell us of a social contract that binds otherwise autonomous individuals through the mechanism of consent. The individual has primacy… King Conscience. Burke suggests an older vision of the social contract as a community of souls binding the dead, the living, and the unborn. Life is not a sprint but an integenerational marathon.
Now, this older view of a nation leads to a recognition that a community or nation is a moral person. Like a corporation, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It has a corporate life of its own and it is responsible for its moral decisions. This seems the heart of our disagreement. Are nations moral persons or just collections of individuals actors?
If the latter it would be hard to understand how Christianity could have much of an impact upon them, but if the former… that is a different story. Thus, I conclude, If a nation is a moral person it is responsible before God and should govern itself accordingly.
D Hart
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 am
Bill, and what does your sympathy for anti-federalism do to the nation as moral person argument? I see nothing in my views that explicitly involves individualism, unless it is my not conceiving of the nation or the collective in the same way as you. But surely there’s some room between me and Hobbes. (By the way, the Communists loved anti-individualists.)
I affirm social and covenantal bonds. I believe in the importance of local communities, families, and churches. But I don’t see why those commitments would require me to read through the Shorter Catechism and apply justification, adoption and sanctification either to the Harts or to Levittown. Even at the corporate level of the church I’m having trouble identifying a collective understanding of justification. Wait a minute. I can. It is Federal Vision.
Now I get it. Bill is a closet Federal Visionary. What’s good for the implied goose is good for the implied gander.
W.H. Chellis
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Darryl. I love your response comments. The last was a classic.
More seriously, your post makes an interesting point. If you agree that communities, families, even nations, are moral person with corporate personalities I will agree that such moral persons cannot be justified at a corporate level.
Although I think I can affirm that the church as the body of Christ is corporately justified without becoming a F.V.? As long as the Church is viewed in real/mystical union with Christ (however this has nothing to do with politics).
Andrew Matthews
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Bill, if families and nations can in some sense be considered part of the Church, why can’t they be corporately justified?