Over my brief tenure contributing to Vox Nova, I have written myself into a rather harsh polemic between Liberalism on the one hand and something else on the other. What this “something else” is exactly, of course, is the question. Facing this question, I want to continue to defend the dialectic I have presented several times now, but I also think that I should spend less time defending myself and more time explaining what my intuitions and intentions are in the first place. I am confident that none of this will be sufficient, but it might be a start.
One of the most frequent commenters here, Ronald King, raised a critique of my earlier post, Don’t Forget, Liberalism is Bad, that I found surprising. He rejected the notion that as Catholics we should desire the Reign of God. I empathize with the sentiment of his comment but, upon further contemplation, I think that this desire for the Reign of God begins to clarify what it is that we ought to desire other than Liberalism—the elusive “something else.”
Before I get to that, allow me to clarify something that is fundamental to this ongoing theme: There is a difference between what is desired and what there actually is. To desire true love is one thing, to receive it is another thing entirely. While different, our desires frame our sense of what is possible. Without the desire for employment, for example, the possibility of getting a job is nonexistent.
This is crucial to understanding why it is that I believe that we ought to broaden our political appetite and imagination. Far too many people desire te status quo (e.g. liberalism, secular nation-states, and alike) thereby making the possibility of something else nonexistent—even the possibility of the existence of God.
It is my view that we need to develop an appetite for something that is both present in our desires and not yet the case in actuality. We cannot let Liberalism, or whatever else we take as the horizon of political possibility, stake a claim to autarky and monopolize our sense of what is good, beautiful, and true—and possible.
This brings me back to Ronald King’s objection. He is on to something. Presenting the Reign of God as an alternative to the politics of the day has a ring to it that is off-putting and smells like an opening to religious oppression. If that is what I mean, then, I most certainly am a dangerous lunatic. But this is not what I intend to convey.
What if this theocracy—this Reign of God—was the reign the mysterious God who is love? In other words, informed by the theological challenges to knowing God and the political need for a good and just social order, we may find that seeking the Reign of God is the only alternative to all other problematic political ideologies; especially Liberalism. Maybe Aristole “best of the worst” way of speaking hides the fact of the “best of the best” from us.
What would this politics be like? Well, it would seem to be a monarchy where the Sovereign is a lover. It would be a kingdom where the reign of the Sovereign would be best described as a reign of love. Consequently, the social order would be held accountable to the ordo amoris, the order of love.
This is a rather opaque sketch of the meal that I think that we need to learn to crave, but it is my belief that if we truly craved the Reign of God in this particular way, we might begin to imagine and expect anew what politics should and can be like. This, of course, is not only a matter of politics. It raises eschatological questions of the now-and-not-yet, the here-and-to-come, of the Kingdom of God.
Isn’t this the water we should be swimming in politically?
I think you are going to have to say something concrete. If I understand you correctly, you believe that the Enlightenment was a step backwards. Clearly you are not saying that if we could just go back to pre-Enlightenment times, everything would be okay. But you are implying that at least something was better before the Enlightenment. What? And for whom?
By what system do you get a king (or queen) or sovereign who is a lover? Would the office be hereditary? Would sovereigns be elected? Are you talking about a world government in which the pope rules?
It seems to me that the Kingdom of God is a very murky concept in general, and even within Catholicism. The Catechism: “1042 At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul.” So what you’re talking about would seem to be trying to make progress toward the Kingdom of God with the realization that it’s only going to be fully achieved after the end times. But apparently you seem to believe that during the last few hundred hears, at least, movement has been in the wrong direction.
In any case, mysteries may be fine for theology, but when it comes to setting up a political system, distant visions and mysteries won’t do. You’ve got to give at least some reasonably specific ideas of the kind of real-world political arrangement you are thinking about.
David: First of all, I appreciate your consistent engagement with my writing here.
Regarding your comment, and others like it, the answer is ‘no.’ I do not think that the Enlightenment was bad and life before that was good. I also am not advocating for a pre-Enlightenment way of living. What I am advocating for might even be called a hyper Enlightenment, i.e. an Elightenment that doesn’t end. This is the major flaw of the Elightenment: It seems that we take its products—secular nation-states, Liberalism and so on—to be “the Light.” Moving beyond the Enlightenment politcally does not mean to return to the Middle Ages.
As for the concrete and the mysterious, I find very little that is concrete about the politics of the day or yesteryear. Where do they come from? What makes them legitimate? Politics of any kind are steeped in mystery, as I see it. But here is a bigger problem: We should not (in my view) divorce theology from politics, or anything else for that matter. This is one of the main aspects of secularism that I reject.
Sorry I cannot give more details as of yet, I see these posts as opening moves to begin a conversation.
Most people writing here have very little idea or appreciation of the “Age of Faith.” They actually have been brainwashed by “liberalism” and the “Whig Theory of English history” into believing that the very concept of Christian monarchy was inherently wicked.
Obviously they’ve never really understood Hamlet or Macbeth or Oedipus Rex, if they make a statement like this:
“I find very little that is concrete about the politics of the day or yesteryear. Where do they come from? What makes them legitimate?”
What made a Christian monarch “legitimate” was the Christ-like willingness to sacrifice himself for his people. This pre-disposition was necessarily built into the theoretical framework of divinely-ordained monarchy. It’s part of King David’s concept of his own “legitimacy,” and it should be, in principle, perfectly possible for a society with a democratic ethos, to have a constitutional monarch.
So I will say what nobody else here dares to say, obviously: a constitutional monarchy (and all of them until the Age of Absolutism were; it’s complete misconception of medieval monarchy to allege that the sovereign’s powers weren’t limited)IS, indeed, superior to the corrupt, plutocratic and ersatz republic in America that calls itself a “democracy” and is willing to kill people the world over for not “democratizing” their political and economic systems.
dingby: I that you misunderstood what I meant. Even when the source is God, the disclosure in revelation is hard to figurte out. Heck, the being of God is abundantely mysterious!
Having said that I am reading Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” and he has a real appreciation for the Age of Faith that I find very appealing and comforting. I am not sure why you said that I—and other phantom writers—don’t.
As for your thesis, I don’t think its so “out there” or taboo. I don’t bring it up not for fear but because I don’t find it compelling as you do.
I agree that an Age of Faith is a challenge to our Secular Age, I am proposing an Age of Love.
drive by comment: sam, you should check out eric gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love. he’s an augustinian civil liberal
The language that we use is critical for understanding the message. Reign is the human construct of power. Love does not reign. Love attracts us and creates a union out of isolation.
I must leave for work.
We must explore what is and what is not love before depending on a system that we create out of imperfect love which is not love anyway but a competition for power.
[...] bring this up because, in my recent writings against liberalism—here, here, and here—I think that endearment with or against the word has garnered more attention [...]