It has been argued above that CT is, at its root, diametrically opposed to historic Christian beliefs about the nature of man as the imago Dei. The appropriate and effective response is to reassert with vigor and conviction the truths of the Bible, the historic Protestant confessions and ecumenical creeds, and catholic orthodoxy.

Introduction

[M]an’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills: as the Psalm says: “I am become as a beast (before thee) and I am always with thee.” If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it.[1]

So says Martin Luther in his famous work, The Bondage of the Will.[2] The German reformer was obviously concentrated on soteriology in his exchange with Erasmus of Rotterdam.[3] For Luther, the will was the stage upon which the drama of salvation was enacted. In the things of salvation, it is only to God that “free-will”, acting without compulsion, can be appropriately attributed. Luther’s aim in Bondage of the Will was to buttress his doctrine of justification by grace through faith, predestination, and divine election over and against his opponents’ suggestion of libertarian freedom in man to choose God. Luther argued that this was tantamount to ascribing divinity to man, “a delusion fraught with the most perilous consequences.” Man had no inherent power to act apart from God because he is a metaphysically and morally dependent creature, one now fallen and bound by sin. “Free will”, in this context, was an empty concept. Man’s eternal destiny depends on God alone, not his own striving or self-help, contra Gabriel Biel and late-medieval doctrine.[4] By Luther’s estimation (in this context), “[w]hat is sought by means of free choice is to make room for merits.” And if merits may justify, then Christ’s sacrifice was indeed foolish.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Lutheran and Reformed theologians alike typically bifurcated their discussions on the will’s place in the economy of salvation and its activity in the temporal realm.[5] Man’s disposition and ability as it pertains to what is above differs from its relationship to what is below. To this end, writers of the period often said that man’s will was “formally” free (and this formal freedom does not deny the brokenness of the ideal reflex of the mental faculties of lapsarian man).[6] Though all things fall out according to God’s providence and immutable will, He does no violence to the will of “the creature”, as the Westminster Confession (1646) states (3.1), “nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”[7]

Luther’s own view of the operation of the will outside of soteriological considerations was more complicated and out of scope here. But it was his polemic in the Bondage of the Will that has often garnered him a label of determinism.

However Luther’s soteriology should be characterized, there is no question that he still affirmed man’s moral responsibility as a free agent subject to God’s moral law. Affirming that point— that man is a free and knowing creature operating with spontaneous volition— is necessary to designate man inexcusable in his sin (Rom. 1:20). William H. Lazareth summarizes Luther’s position well, “Persons are relatively free as subjects/citizens to do some moral good in history; they are absolutely bound as sinners to do no saving good for eternity.” [8] In Luther’s words,

[W]e may still in good faith teach people to use it to credit man with ‘free-will’ in respect, not of what is above him, but of what is below him… However, with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, he has no ‘free-will’, but is captive, prisoner and bond slave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan.[9]

In fact, far from denying the operation of man’s will, Luther held that man acts out of necessity—depending on which cosmic being is in his saddle— not out of compulsion. “That is to say: a man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged to it… but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily.”[10]

Luther’s theology was wrapped up in the classical hierarchy of being. It was also profoundly Augustinian and more or less repeated through the ensuing centuries by the likes of John Calvin, William Ames, Petrus von Maastricht, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Spurgeon.[11] Only when the will is regenerated by the Spirit can man willingly turn to Christ and grasp his promises by faith unto salvation. Prior thereto, he was in bondage to sin by corrupt affections. Absent a regenerating work of God, man’s status is that of sin, he can do no other.

Though “God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil,”[12] post-fall “Man… hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation,” declares the Westminster Confession.[13] But,

When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by his grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.[14]

Thereafter, “The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only.”[15]Throughout, God’s grace does not violate but rather regenerates and sanctifies the nature of man.

Faithful Protestants have, for the past 500 years, continued to affirm Luther’s basic insight into the operation of the will and the enslaving power of sin, maintaining that the only route to salvation is a work of God’s free grace coming not from within but from without.

Yet, the contemporary proponents of identity politics and critical theory have imposed upon us a different sort of determinism; a new bondage of the will, we might say, and one that nears revocation of a uniquely human faculty and its operation in the things below. It is a bondage drawn not from Scripture and orthodox theology, but from an ideology of more recent vintage that has lately captivated public discourse, even in Christian circles.

I

Defining the Relationship

All the Rage

In their commendable new primer, Engaging Critical Theory and the Social Justice Movement, Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer note the pervasiveness of the language of identity politics in American culture.[16] Everyone from Rosie O’Donnell to Cher to candidates for the 2020 Democratic primary has wittingly or otherwise employed it. On multiple occasions, Beto O’Rourke has claimed without qualification that America is founded upon white supremacy and that he himself is a beneficiary of this.[17] This year, The New York Times began publishing, to much fanfare, a collection of essays known as “The 1619 Project.”[18] The lead essay in the initiative— named for the year in which chattel slavery was allegedly introduced to the American continent via the Jamestown colony— supports O’Rourke’s assessment, arguing that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were bold-faced lies, that the main impetus for American’s independence was to protect the decidedly sinful institution of slavery, and that America’s essence from the word go has been a struggle between white oppressors and oppressed minorities.[19]

One is tempted to summarily dismiss these examples as the nuisance of so-called “political correctness,” the mad ravings of social justice warriors, or an inordinate spillover of “wokeness” from academia. It might be equally tempting to breeze over recent stories like the one about teens in Argentina protesting “gendered” Spanish and presume them irrelevant, insular, and extreme instances of juvenile rage.[20]

But these quite natural reactions would be premature and miss the underlying, coherent ideology behind the socio-political, and even moral, vocabulary of the day— a vocabulary that is increasingly enveloping all areas of social life. Instead, Shenvi and Sawyer say, language of white supremacy, patriarchy, hegemonic power, and the like flows “out of a knowledge area known as critical theory, which seeks to understand human relationships through the fundamental lens of power.”

Critical Theory and its Roots

Shenvi and Sawyer coin the term “contemporary critical theory”— some have called it “applied postmodernism”[21]— to explain the most recent manifestations of a remarkably variegated tradition of thought which stretches back to the early 20^th century ideas of Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, the neo-Marxism of Antonino Gramsci, and the postmodernism of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Though myriad intellectual strands have come together to form contemporary critical theory—indeed, one of the chief characteristics of critical theory generally is that it is allergic to rigid definition— most agree that the Frankfurt School and the development of western or cultural (or some prefer “humanist”) Marxism—Marxist framework applied critique of western culture— played a foundational role in this origin story.

Disillusioned with classical Marxism’s inordinate (in their minds) fixation on economics—not to mention Marx’s notorious and numerous faulty predictions— and discouraged by the increasingly apparent crimes of Communism in eastern Europe, the members of the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University—what came to be known as the Frankfurt School—shifted their attention from the means of economic production to the means of cultural production, specifically in the west. Their contention was that Marxist-Leninism was too rigid and that the preexistent social theory dominant in political science could not account for the radical politics and upheaval of the 20^th century.

But they did not discard the basic Marxist framework—the oppressors-oppressed dichotomy and the language of alienation, exploitation, fetishism, and reification. The Frankfurt Schoolers merely altered the content and refocused the application of said framework. [22] To their credit, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and others were rightly critical of Nazi Germany, and fascism wherever it cropped up. But by their lights, the Third Reich was part and parcel of a larger problem.

Gramsci too denounced Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy. His famous, posthumously published Prison Notebooks, which espoused his revision of Marxism—viz., that civil institutions which imbedded capitalist ideology in western culture were to blame for the failure of Marx’s predictions—were a product of his incarceration for his communist leanings. Gramsci rejected as too simplistic Marx’s economic determinism—the contention that men are formed by their material environment rather than their consciousness; Gramsci held just the opposite.[23] Capitalism had taken root not only in men’s material world, but in their mental world too through “fetishistic illusions,” which, in turn, allowed capitalist material structures to dig in their heels. In the chicken and egg question faced at the outset by Marxists, Gramsci essentially ordered the superstructure before the substructure (material forces of production).[24]And so, it was Gramsci who cast the gaze of future Marxists toward the cultural institutions that construct the capitalist consciousness.[25] To that end, Gramsci directed his compatriots to infiltrate and transform (if not demolish) western schools, churches, and media, not to mention political and legal structures—a war on all moral and cultural hierarchies and their gatekeepers.

In a recent article at Themelios, Robert Smith expertly traces the intellectual development from classical Marxism to Gramsci to the Frankfurt School, and eventually, to critical theory. Smith also includes helpful assessments of key thinkers (i.e. György Lukács and Erich Fromm) not covered here.[26] Accordingly, that detailed history will not now be fully reiterated.[27] Suffice it to say, out of the work of the Frankfurt School—essentially a cocktail of neo-Marxism, Darwinism, and Freudianism, with some Kant sprinkled in for good measure—an entire field, and sub-fields, of study emerged, namely but not exclusively, critical theory and so-called cultural studies.[28]

Westward Expansion

It must be admitted that the period of history in which the Frankfurt School, founded in the wake of World War I during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), sprouted up was a good, or at least understandable, time to be pessimistic about western civilization.[29] During the nightmare years, as William Shirer called them, that was the reign of the Third Reich, most of the scholars at the Frankfurt School were forced to flee Germany. Hitler also understood the power of cultural institutions and did not take kindly to communists or Jews—most of the original Frankfurt Schoolers were both—spouting off their subversive ideas in German universities. By 1935, the Frankfurt crew had relocated, after a pitstop in Geneva, to the Institute for Social Research in New York.[30] Marcuse taught in America for the rest of his career and enjoyed considerable influence in the academy, and the sexual revolution and anti-war protests of the 1960s.[31]

Despite the early presence of the Frankfurt School at key universities, critical theory (CT) took root in the American academy most acutely in law schools and the critical legal studies movement (CLS) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which in turn, spawned critical race theory (CRT).[32] CT has made a notable showing of late in education theory (i.e. critical pedagogy[33]) but is prevalent in older disciplines like sociology, history, and the humanities.[34] Additionally, new areas of study have been hatched for the purposes of applying and expanding the insights of CT. We now have gender studies,[35] post-colonial studies,[36] queer theory,[37] ethnic studies,[38] family theory,[39] and other relative newcomers to academia cropping up in niche journals and course lists at elite universities.[40]

From the start, CT has been interdisciplinary, and in the case of CLS, this was necessarily so since the basic premise of the movement was that western jurisprudence, far from being based on any transcendent moral law, has been developed for the protection of the structural interests of those in power. To CLS scholars, like the so-called “realists” before them, law does not possess its own integrity or independence.[41] Accordingly, it is economics, sociology, and literary criticism that provides insights into what law should be in the pursuit of equity.[42] The unofficial mantra of CLS has always been that law is politics by others means, a play on the famous quote from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War.[43]

Contemporary Critical Theory: Its Concerns and Emphases

In general, contemporary CT “divides the world into oppressed groups and their oppressors along lines of race, class, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical ability, age, weight, and a host of other identity markers.”[44] The goal of this approach to the world is liberation (primarily political and cultural) of the oppressed groups—a distinctly Marxist modus operandi—especially in terms of oppression proliferated through structural or systemic conditions. Liberation is accomplished by undermining the status quo via comprehensive social critique, and highly cynical critique at that. In other words, deconstructing “hegemonic narratives”— especially historical ones— and concomitant social, political, and economic structures that allegedly justify the dominance of oppressor groups in society.[45] It is to Gramsci that the idea of cultural hegemony is attributed.

As Shenvi and Sawyer rightly point out, the CT tradition, begun (more or less) by the Frankfurt School and Gramsci, served as the philosophical basis for the post-war New Left, which includes thinkers as diverse as Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, and Jürgen Habermas—all contributors in their own right.[46]

Mentioned already is the fact that the sheer number of notable thinkers connected to CT attests to the impossibility of neat definition. It is the case with any intellectual tradition that its proponents will not be monolithic in their thought. The thinkers of the Frankfurt School and their CT progeny present no exceptions to the rule. Nevertheless, a basic core to the CT tradition can be identified, and an attempt at such is further pursued below.

More to the point, the influence of this multifaceted way of thinking on contemporary culture is undeniable, even in evangelical Christianity.[47] The contemporary version— the brand being championed at the popular level— maintains the basic framework and outlook of its predecessors; it has not wandered far. The simplest insight to remember going forward is that critical theory divides society along oppressed-oppressor lines.

Hence, per Shenvi and Sawyer, “many critical theorists insist that our identity as individuals is inextricably bound to our group identity.” Knowledge of “truth,” morality, the very experience of reality itself is strongly shaped by group membership. What matters is one’s affiliation with either subordinate or dominant groups— groups defined most often in our immediate context by traits like skin color, ethnicity, gender, age, and physical (or mental) ability. Group membership is by and large, though not exclusively, trait-based—even if the “traits” in question are socially constructed to constitute groups, the organizing principle remains primarily trait-based (with a few notable exceptions such as class)—and imposed upon people involuntarily. The “dominant” group is the one that is afforded preference by the (self-serving and nefarious) structures, norms, and narratives of society. In essence, the dominant group has intricately constructed, and continues to control, how a society makes sense of itself and perceives its purpose, customs, and origins in a way that benefits itself and preserves its status.

The dominant group(s) are the oppressors, subordinate (or “subaltern”) groups are the oppressed. The act of oppression does not merely invoke the colloquial definition of arbitrary or unjust exercise of power, though it is certainly no less than that. Rather, “oppression” is synonymous with the dominant group’s ability to force everyone else to submit to its norms and values (“hegemonic power”), thus necessarily ostracizing the nonconformist “Other”, which strips the Other of power. It is a “soft” oppression that is exercised by the oppressors. Their preferences are ingrained in societal experience.

This is why people perceived to associate with the oppressor group(s) are often referred to as colonizers. Not only does this pejorative link them to the ills of historical colonialism, but also subtly invokes the idea of cultural hegemony. The oppressors have colonized the norms of society through everything from its art to social niceties. Even the very thought patterns of the oppressed are not unaffected by the supposed ubiquitous influence of dominant groups. Some CT practitioners even suggest that American schools themselves are products of (epistemic) hegemonic power by way of oppressor control of “learning culture.”[48] This is especially the case in history, economics, and the humanities, but STEM disciplines are not unmarred by oppressor culture and ways of thinking.[49] Evangelical Christians might be interested to know that theorists of critical pedagogy have written about the oppression and “harassment” that Christian evangelism imposes upon minority religions (i.e. “Christian hegemony”). This is especially the case, they say, when evangelism is integrated with school curriculums.[50]

For critical theorists, hegemonic power is manifested in heteronormativity, cisgenderism, ableism, racism, and sexism, to name a few.[51] Members of oppressor groups wittingly or unwittingly (it makes no real difference) preserve their dominant status by upholding, or at least not combating, oppressive structures and norms—the status quo. For this reason, it is membership in the dominant, hegemonically powerful group that determines one’s complicity in this system, not one’s individual conduct per se (though the latter can certainly compound guilt). Likewise, it is membership in an oppressed group that defines one’s measure of innocence and, conversely, one’s virtue.

The oppressed also, ironically, have privileged access to superior knowledge. In the CT paradigm, it is the deconstruction of false, oppressive narratives that liberates truth—”truth” being conveniently redefined by Horkheimer as “whatever fosters [emancipatory] social change.”[52] It is the oppressed, then, who, by way of their “lived experience” as the Other, have achieved a gnostic-like transcendence of the lies of hegemonic power to higher truth. CRT in particular features the concept of “double consciousness” which affords people of color the power of second sight from the perspective of anti-black prejudice.

It is this aspect of CT that has so confused contemporary debates in the public square. According to contemporary CT, appeals to “reason” and “objectivity” are concealed bids for power by oppressors; a covert means of maintaining dominant thought patterns. Hence, the relatively ineffective efforts of historians to poke factual holes in the openly revisionist historical accounts peddled by the 1619 Project. Arguments containing appeals to objective standards of evidence and the like are couched as dog whistles for racism, misogyny, sexism, and etc.

A public discourse of distrust is the predictable result of this outlook because every statement is interrogated for its embedded, hidden bid for power rather than for its truthfulness.[53] Not only are the responses of majority culture members to claims of racism, oppression, and the rest presumed guilty of what has just been described, but it is further believed by the purveyors of CT that any effort by the marginalized to educate their oppressor counterparts will be ineffective and therefore futile. The subconscious, implicit bias and inbred self-interest (by way of his class membership) of the oppressor will not allow him to fairly consider the claims and explanations of the marginalized, critical theorists suggest. So, why try?[54]

Those of the oppressor class, being ignorant of the subconscious ideologies that protect their systemic power, are therefore cordially invited to “stay in their lane” when it comes to the ever-growing list of topics about which oppressed people have superior competence via lived experience in a hegemonic regime. Social location controls knowledge (or at least perception) of truth.[55] “Lived experience” is a special, indispensable hermeneutical tool possessed by the oppressed. They therefore deserve deference in their judgments. Recently, even evangelical Christians have begun to adopt this sentimentality regarding Biblical interpretation and application.[56]

Given that there are multiple “lived experiences,” even within the oppressed class, the uninitiated observer might be puzzled as to how any single “lived experience” is prioritized over another. Does not some tiering system need to be inserted? So glad you asked.

The Linchpin

How does one determine at the ground level one’s group membership? Enter intersectionality. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins defines intersectionality—a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to analyze the unique experiences of black women[57]—as an “analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and age form mutually constructing features of a social organization,” which, in turn, shape the experiences of minorities.[58]

As Barbara Smith explains, these experience-shaping, intersecting (or mutually reinforcing) oppressions cannot be separated; they are “intimately intertwined.”[59] Collins concurs: “Race, class, gender, and similar systems of power are interdependent and mutually construct one another.”[60] Ashley J. Bohrer recently clarified,

In its most basic form… intersectionality is the theory that both structurally and experientially, social systems of domination are linked to one another and that, in order both to understand and to change these systems, they must be considered together.[61]

It is with the mechanism of intersectionality that relative oppression status is assessed based on intersecting traits of victimhood relating to sex, gender, race, ethnicity, and etc. Intersectionality serves as the measuring stick. For example, a black man is more oppressed than a white man, but an Asian lesbian is more oppressed than either. Her sexual preference and gender give her the edge. An ethnic minority, transgender person would top all three, and so on the analysis goes.

This is the necessary tiering system by which “lived experiences” are measured in terms of their priority. They also determine the authority of a speaker. The person with the most intersectional points, the most perceived victimhood, rules the day. More structurally important, it is via intersectionality that the high-level, binary divide between oppressor and oppressed is informed by lower-level, (socially constructed) trait-based affiliations. Top to bottom the analysis hinges on involuntary group membership.

On this basis, the CT world is organized for the purpose of deconstruction of interlocking oppressive systems of social domination and liberation therefrom.[62] It is this approach to social life that has, in part, produced what is commonly known as identity politics—which can be engaged in by both the left and the right—wherein political capital is acquired in two ways: 1) by the self-flagellation of oppressor class members,[63] and 2) by assertion of victim status (via intersectional analysis) by members of the oppressed class. In both instances, it is a race to the bottom.

It is essential for Christians to grasp that the central purpose of CT is decidedly not merely explanatory. It is, rather, heavily indebted to its predecessors (namely, Sartre and Lukács) for its “totalizing” outlook (see interlockingoppressions). As David French suggested last year in a presentation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, if all intersectionality endeavored to do was to describe the distinctiveness of the individual and the discrete peculiarities of human experience then no quarrel would be found.[64] In that hypothetical case, intersectionality would just be a fancy way of confirming the priority and dignity of the individual, an idea preached by the western tradition for centuries. To assert that women have concerns and challenges distinct from men, or that black people face unique challenges in America, or that immigrants often undergo social ostracization, or that a majority culture (in any society) can become insular is not particularly revolutionary.

But intersectionality is by its own admission not interested in simply asserting individual human dignity and describing observable social phenomenon. The decidedly comprehensive character and activist purpose of intersectionality, as attested to by Bohrer above, must not be missed. This activist instinct connects it again to its Marxist lineage. For it was Marx who criticized philosophers for monotonously interpreting the world rather than seeking to change it.[65] To their credit, the intersectionists are not armchair intellectuals. They are self-consciously activist.

It is difficult, therefore, to be fair to CT (along with its concomitant mechanisms) as a discipline and its self-described objective, and simultaneously refer to its methodology as a set of neutral analytical tools that can be cherry picked at will simply for observatory (which is to say arbitrarily limited) ends.[66] The mechanism of intersectionality, for example, explicitly rejects piecemeal application; the whole point is to identify and evaluate intersecting points of oppression for the sake of frustrating the source(s) of oppression thereafter. Intersectionality is certainly an analytical tool, but it is not merely an analytical tool. Rather, it is, by intent of the designers, the vehicle by which the insights and aims—shall we say, worldview—of CT are transported to the ground level. It makes the theory of CT (and especially CRT) practical. Intellectual honesty and fruitful theological evaluation on the part of the Christian demands conceiving of CT on its own terms according to its self-prescribed ends.

None of this is to say, of course, that all insights produced by critical theorists or even classical Marxists are erroneous. It can readily be admitted, for instance, that capitalist societies are prone to inordinately commodifying all areas of human life, including the family and children. It must also be acknowledged that racism, misogyny, and the like exist; and that people really are subject to oppression (whether from their own sin or the sinful behavior of others). But these true insights are not unique to CT, and nor do they demand the characterization and response that CT propounds.

On Group Identity

In a recent talk put on by the British magazine, The Spectator, cultural commentator Douglas Murray and novelist Lionel Shriver discussed the advent of identity politics and intersectionality, and the self-proclaimed omnicompetence of its proponents on both sides of the pond.[67] The event surrounded Murray’s latest book, The Madness of Crowds (2019), which expertly deals with the subject matter at hand. The cultural prognosis given by Murray and Shriver is not a hopeful one. Indeed, the latter suggested that the corrosion of the public square at the hands of identity politics can only be stifled by some catastrophic event that distracts everyone from their previous squabbles. Despite the dejected tone, both contributors presented valuable insight. The whole talk is worth listening to.

Toward the end of the discussion, Murray argued that group identity based on race, gender, or sexual orientation are reductive and inadequate to provide meaningful affiliations that are likely to foster social cohesion. The way that identity politics groups people, said Murray, communicates to people that they only have something in common with others socially, sexually, and ethnically like themselves. Groupings based on a nation or a religion, on the other hand, connect people with those unlike them by uniting them in common cause and mutual obligation. Murray, at this point, invoked the late philosopher Roger Scruton’s argument that the nation is the highest possible expression of the first-person plural— an idea introduced in Scruton’s The Soul of the World (2014)— that a society can achieve. Religion serves a similar function.[68]

This concept— the voluntary affiliation of individuals— creates a compound moral person and is indispensable to healthy politics.[69] Emer de Vattel (1714-1767) taught us that this conception of society and nations is what makes the entire post-Westphalian order possible.[70] A state, once constituted by individuals in a state of nature (a hypothetical pre-societal, totally free existence) spontaneously contracting together, stands in for the constituting individuals as a new “person” in relation to other like bodies.[71] The state becomes the individual writ large.[72] Like people themselves, the state is a living organism, so to speak. But this process cannot continue ad infinitum. The nation-state is the highest workable expression of such. Any claim to universal jurisdiction frustrates it. The studies of John Figgis and Otto von Gierke proved that international law as a basis for inter-state relations was not possible until the universal jurisdiction of the Papacy was fractured, and the medieval dream of the Holy Roman Empire laid to rest.[73]

Vattel was not innovating. The conviction that in a pre-political, pre-state condition all men are by nature free (excepting the inescapable, concreated compulsion of the natural law) and equal had compelled political writers, especially Calvinist ones, since the late 16^th century—most notoriously by the anonymous Monarchomach authors of the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579)— to argue that it is the people who freely constitute societies, form governments, and confer power to rulers. And because governments are formed by free contract (or covenant), the powers of governments must be constitutionally limited and, if abused, revocable (hence Protestant resistance theory). Tyranny is antithetical to this theory of society and government.

Furthermore, it is the contractual basis of society and government that enables subsequent generations to both defend the inherited good and simultaneously adapt to new challenges. In short, it accounts for the freedom of participation. A socio-political outlook based on something other than popular sovereignty and the related doctrines above affords no such freedom—at least not in an intellectually coherent way—to persons not present at the initial founding. Indeed, practically none of the 17^th and 18^th century theorists had really experienced the hypothetical state of nature, certainly not in a pure sense.[74] Yet, it was a key theoretical mechanism to understand human nature and the nature of societies, locate the foundational source of governmental authority, and limit the distribution of power.

To summarize, a nation or state is the voluntary unification of persons for a common interest. It is a collective, volitional act, and one that must be tacitly affirmed by every generation. Each nation so formed subsequently acts by analogy as an individual as it interacts with other nations. This is the highest level of organization of this kind because any more expansive, global government would necessarily confound the basis of the original, constitutive contract which forms a society and state. In short, people would become members of a society and a government by way of simply existing apart from any exercise of volition.[75]

Human v. Inhuman Categories

As Murray was outlining his objection to group affiliations based on sexual, racial, or ethnic identity, Lionel Shriver interjected. In her estimation, it is more proper to conceive of human affiliations in terms of volitional and non-volitional, whereas identity groups based on race or gender involve no exercise of the will. By contrast, nation-states and a religion not only permit the exercise of the will inside their confines to determine their shape and meaning but are at their very inception products of the will.

I heartily concur with Shriver. But I would add a further qualification. I would opt for organizing affiliations or attachments based on a human v. inhuman distinction depending on whether they are volitionally based or not. As alluded to above, the dual concepts of, 1) the natural equality of men in a hypothetical state of nature, and 2) the idea of man as a voluntary moral agent, undergird western political systems including our own. They are the basis of popular sovereignty, the rule of law, freedom of expression, and more. It is difficult to conceive of western political norms enduring within a cultural environment that no longer respects the values that support it.

But on a more fundamental, and chilling, level— one that gets at why I favor an associational distinction between human and inhuman designations— the bondage (or negation) of the will advanced by identity politics and CT challenges the very dignity, and unique status, of human beings. That prospect should startle Christians into having a care before they adopt the language and concepts of CT presently in vogue.

The best antidote to new challenges is to look backward. History, or rather, an older, forgotten theology can explain my contention, and help us navigate unchartered waters and reassert a Christian anthropology contra the new counter narrative.

II

What is Man?

Samuel Willard, Forgotten Puritan

Samuel Willard (1640-1707), a Puritan, congregationalist theologian and preacher of the highest order, is almost totally forgotten today. But in his own day, Willard was, along with Increase Mather, the leading intellectual light in New England, vice-president of Harvard, and a long-time pastor of one of the Old South Church (Third Church) in Boston.[76] His posthumously published A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726)— a compilation of 250 expository lectures on the Westminster Shorter Catechism— is the closest thing to a systematic theology that any New Englander of the 17^thcentury produced. Accordingly, as American Puritanism’s summa theologica, it serves as a window into the Reformed orthodoxy maintained by those noble people who embarked upon an errand into the wilderness.

And yet, as early as the 19^th century, Moses Coit Tyler lamented that Willard’s Compleat Body had been confined to the dust bin of history. Tyler sardonically quipped that the book might still serve to “make men good Christians as well as good theologians— if only there were still left on the earth men capable of reading it.” [77] At over 900 folio pages, Willard’s compendium is not for the faint of heart. It is methodical, but it represents a lifetime of rich, faithful preaching, and can, per Tyler’s advice, still offer guidance today. Willard’s anthropology, which was totally conventional—indeed, the view of man imbedded in the minds of the authors of the great confessions—during the High Orthodoxy period (1620-1700) of Reformed theology,[78] is of especial interest here.[79]

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