The Common Good and an Uncommon Response
What’s at Stake?
Is
the common good a “dead issue” in the minds of most Americans today? Has toleration pushed questions of
morality and religion into the private and “non-public” realms of society? (see
pgs. 24-25) Does pursing a united vision of the common good risk neglecting or
even coercing the values of other religions or traditions? In many ways, the answer is “yes” to
these questions. But David
Hollenbach demonstrates in The Common
Good and Christian Ethics that even with these challenges, all is not yet
lost in regards to the common good. Hollenbach has hope that a Christian approach of “dialogic
universalism” can greatly contribute to a shared national and global vision of
the common good. And he has such
hope because of his basic conviction in the interrelatedness of human beings to
each other. This communal emphasis
on human nature provides a strong foundation on which to build a vision of the
common good. The paper will thus
argue that Hollenbach’s basic conviction of human nature provides a robust and
compelling way forward specifically in pressing urban and global issues of the
common good. Further, where
Hollenbach’s application may require further detail or nuance, the paper will
capitalize on Hollenbach’s own opening of the door to the resources of the
Calvinist and Lutheran theological traditions to suggest that Christian
disciples must play a decisive role in formulating and implementing a vision of the common good.
The Necessity of a
Vision of the Common Good
Hollenbach
argues in chapter 2 that the problems of urbanism and globalism are too big for
the Western dominant values of tolerance and non-judgmentalism. While toleration has helped form a
society committed to equality, it fuels a suspicion that pursuing a stronger
notion of the common good will lead to oppression and violence (pg. 32). While carefully recognizing the
inherent dangers of the common good in terms of coercion, Hollenbach
demonstrates that historical examples of such coercion need not negate the
positive possibilities of the common good. What’s more, a vision of the common good is necessary to
take our nation and world beyond the stalemate of tolerance. For example, while tolerance has done
much to open avenues of healing and opportunity among some of the urban poor,
it has also left too many political and economic structures in place that
continue to exclude the urban poor from participating in the fullness of
life. In terms of race, Hollenbach
points out that even after the great gains of tolerance and acceptance from the
Civil Rights Movement, there is a paradox in America today: “it is the best of
times for the black middle class but among the worst of times for the poor
blacks in America’s central cities” (pg. 41). Tolerance has removed many of the personal barriers of
racism, but it has left intact – and perhaps even strengthened – mentalities
and structures that keep the poor ever poor. Tolerance can perpetuate injustice through beliefs like “we
make our own fate.” For when the
urban poor face the dire obstacles of inferior education, jobs with wages that
cannot meet living standards, and the related behaviors of despair like
drug-use, “making your own fate” can simply be too difficult a task. A vision of the common good, however,
can be strong enough to break even the societal structures that keep all but a
few from making their own way.
We
need a vision of the common good because our current national values system is
not up to the task of solving the problems we face as a society. Hollenbach’s proposal of the common
good can be a successful alternative because it is foundationally based in a
strong conviction of what it means to be human. Hollenbach traces the long tradition of the common good back
through Ignatius, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Cicero, and Aristotle. In these thinkers, the common good is
based on how humans are connected to each other to form a society. In Cicero’s republic, for example, it
is presupposed that “persons are envisioned as bound together by strong
connections” (pg. 65). Hollenbach
provides a theological explanation of Cicero’s insight, and in so doing shows
how the common good can be both a Christian and universal concept. In fact, he argues in chapter 5 that
the promotion of a strong understanding of the civic good and full commitment
to Christian faith are “essentially related” (pg. 113). Augustine, for example, makes this
argument using the concept of differentiation in The City of God: the Christian community is separated from the
public square “without being either isolated from or dominant over it” (pg. 121). Augustine is not looking for the church
to control polity but he is also not interested in the church withdrawing from
society. Instead, the church, by
its nature, strongly supports the virtues and values that are required in a
republic (pg. 122). The common
good of the commonweal can only be realized when the people are “bound together
by a love whereby each citizen loves his neighbor as he loves himself, for love
of neighbor is the active work in the moral domain that gives expression to
love of God” (pg. 123). But
Augustine is careful to distinguish what can be accomplished for the common
good on earth and what is the eschatological hope of the city of God. Hollenbach explains that Augustine’s
emphasis on the transcendence of God rightly desacralizes politics; “it
distinguishes what can be achieved politically from what Christians ultimately
place their hope in” (pg. 125).
Certainly such an understanding is necessary to protect against the
religious coercion that is one of dangers of pursing a notion of the common
good.
There
is more to the church, however, than loving God and neighbor. Thomas Aquinas (and Jacques Maritain’s
social-political development of Aquinas’s ideas) can provide helpful grounding
for a Trinitarian understanding of human nature and community. Maritain, for example, “concludes that
the essential relationality of personhood has its supreme exemplification in
the unity of the three persons of the divine Trinity. He follows Aquinas in affirming that the divine persons are
“subsistent relations” – persons whose very identity as persons is their relationship one with the
other” (pg. 131). Now we begin to
see the possibilities of deep theological interaction with the notion of the
nature of persons as it relates to the common good. If a defining attribute of personhood is contained in being
in relation to the other (as it is in the Trinity), then, the common good
becomes not just an idealistic pursuit, but a necessity. If the Trinity serves as analogia entis, then we can rightly
couple this with the Great Commandment to love God and love others to pursue a
vision of the common good. Now,
certainly theologians debate whether Aquinas provides the best understanding of
the Trinity, but, however we nuance the Trinity, it seems to me that if we try
to base our understanding of personhood on anything less than God’s image, our
pursuit of the common good can do nothing but fall short.
Implications of
Intellectual Solidarity
Hollenbach
rightly places a great emphasis on the Catholic tradition of the common
good. His insights into the
reforms of Vatican II, in particular, I think are incredibly valuable
contributions to real solutions to the urban and global problems we face. The Catholic idea of “dialogic
universalism” does much to affirm the unique contributions of Christianity
while affirming the necessity of deep intellectual and cultural exchanges (pg.
152ff). I want to affirm
Hollenbach’s work and suggestions in this area. But I also want to pry open the door a bit more in terms of
Hollenbach’s passing suggestions that Protestantism has some key resources to
contribute to the notion of the common good, especially in the Calvinistic and
Lutheran traditions. Hollenbach
briefly mentions these two traditions (see pages 116 and 150), but does little
to engage their ideas. Rather than
fault him for this oversight (you can’t do everything
in a book, after all), I want to pick up on his methodology and offer a few
suggestions for how evangelicals might look to their own Protestant tradition
for resources to help shape the vision of the common good. What Hollenbach does affirm are the
ideas of “orders of creation” and “common grace” in Calvin and Luther (even
though their followers, he says, “are less confident in our ability to discern
[these structures in creation] without the aid of revelation than are
Catholics”) (pg. 150). But I would
argue that an evangelical appropriation of the common good that has a strong
commitment to revelation would be an asset. The Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition of Abraham Kuyper and
Herman Bavinck, for example, relies significantly on the notion of common grace
to affirm the pluriform structure of society. In that God has revealed himself as sovereign over all, his
grace sustains creation and supports human flourishing. The role of the church is to shine its
light brightly and broadly in the world and for the world. But the church need not coerce the
world to be the church. God’s
sustaining grace also affirms its multiform existence. The church witnesses, but it also
contributes to the “intellectual solidarity” of the global conversation of the
common good.
We can also look to the Lutheran
tradition for similar insights. In
Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
appropriates the Lutheran concept of the orders of creation to propose the four
divine mandates of church, state, marriage and family, and culture. The four mandates are not an outgrowth
of history, or an expression of human power, but express “the reality of God’s
love for the world and for human beings that has been revealed in Jesus Christ”
(Bonhoeffer, Ethics, pg. 391). Bonhoeffer coins the term “Christonomy”
to explain the implications of his understanding of the mandates. Christonomy, at its base, is a way to
overcome the conflicting pressures of autonomy and heteronomy. An autonomous view of reality, as
Kuyper would also have contended, finds its triumph as each individual acts on his
or her own free will. On the other
hand, heteronomy understands that actions are based upon external forces and
obligations, like a principled Christian ethic. Neither of these worldviews was, for Bonhoeffer, an accurate
interpretation of reality. Rather,
reality is in Jesus Christ, and so individuals and societies are finally
liberated and free to be with-one-another, for-one-another, and
over-against-one-another. The
divine mandates exist to manifest this reality of freedom. And this reality of freedom is a key to
the formation of an understanding of the common good. For Bonhoeffer, there is freedom and liberation for the
church when it exists with, for, and over-against the state. Likewise, the state flourishes when it
can support culture, be in culture, and yet receive and incorporate culture’s
critique. All four mandates –
church, state, family, and culture – and thus the major structures of society,
reach their full potential when they operate in the reality of Jesus Christ,
who is with, for, and over-against the world. There are vast implications here for Christian discipleship
in and for the world. And my last
word for Hollenbach would be that perhaps a greater emphasis on just this kind
of for-others discipleship is the catalyst needed to address the political,
economic, and societal structures plighting the poor and marginalized in our
cities and across the globe. A
uniting notion of the common good can give vision to what’s possible, but
Christian disciples have a unique obligation to make something of that vision.
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