Dialectical Democracy through Christian Thought

Individualism, Relationalism, and American Politics

D. Brockman

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137342539
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Dialectical Democracy through Christian Thought offers an accessible yet theologically groundbreaking intervention into the battle over the role of government in the market. This book shows that the fight over policy involves a fundamental disagreement about who we are as human beings: independent individuals, or essentially social creatures.

Chapter 1

Tensions in Christian Scripture

What does Christianity teach about human being? More specifically, what does it say about the individuality-relationality question: are humans basically separate and independent entities, or are we essentially relational and interconnected beings?1

A natural place to begin is with Scripture, the biblical texts. Of course, Christian teaching cannot be reduced to Scripture alone, for Scripture itself must be interpreted theologically in light of the shifting contexts and circumstances in which Christians find themselves and the particular questions those contexts and circumstances pose. Furthermore, our contexts and circumstances inevitably shape our interpretations of the biblical texts; there is no absolute, unmediated biblical “message.” That said, Scripture remains a baseline for Christian thought about human being. As Amos Yong writes, “Christian theology begins with Scripture, even if there is a dynamic, dialectical, and dialogical interplay between Scripture and tradition as well as between the canon itself and the horizons of the interpreter and reader of Scripture.”2 The biblical texts therefore remain the proper starting point for answering the question of what Christianity has to say about human being and about the relationship between individuality and relationality.

However, different Christians reach radically different conclusions when they look at the same Bible. Numerous American Christian voices, particularly from the evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant sectors, find that the Bible teaches individualism. For example, the Baptist pastor W. A. Criswell credits individualism to Christ himself: “The great thing Jesus did for us was to set forth the worth of the individual, the priceless gift of personality. He worked upon the principle that society derives its life from the individuals who compose it. The individual man remains forever separate. He is incapable of fusion.”3 Right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck recently opined that the gospel is only about individual rights and individual salvation, not social justice.4 As noted earlier, Pat Robertson claims that the Bible places “absolute importance on private property rights and wealth.”5

Other Christians draw a very different message from Scripture. Carter Heyward, for example, finds in the New Testament a profoundly anti-individualistic, relationalist message: “The JESUS story,” she writes, “is, more than anything, about our common body as people/creatures of God. As such, we are, in Paul’s words, a body of many members’ bodies, including JESUS . . . Yet we have many common needs and dreams, fears and hopes, which connect us.”6 Commenting on the High Priestly Prayer in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus prays “that they may be one, as we are one,” Heyward writes, “This JESUS sees a ‘oneness,’ a wholeness and unity, in the realm of God here on earth as well as beyond what we know as life. Moreover, this JESUS envisions a oneness constituted by the relational network of all who are ‘sanctified by the truth.’”7

So whose reading of the Bible is the right one—that of the individualists or that of the relationalists? In one sense, both readings are right; in another, both are incomplete. As we will see, Scripture does not offer a single, unified vision of human being. Instead, Scripture sends mixed signals about the individuality-relationality question. Some biblical texts suggest the kind of individualism asserted by Criswell and Robertson; others suggest the kind of deep relationalism that Heyward identifies. Still other texts present a third position, which I call prophetic relationality, that exists in the tension between individualism and relationality.

In the following sections, I will combine my own analysis with that of other scholars—principally Frank Stagg in his excellent, though dated, Polarities of Man’s Existence in Biblical Perspective.8

Individualistic Texts

One wishing to make a scriptural case for individualism faces numerous obstacles. Readers inculturated with the values of Western individualism are likely to find the Hebrew Bible especially strange territory. Many of its passages undermine individual autonomy by treating persons primarily as members of collectives (the concept of corporate personality, discussed in the next section).9 Paul E. Davies, who makes a plausible case for individualism (though not atomistic individualism10) in the Bible, allows that “Old Testament religion is communal in character, and deals with the corporate personality of Israel, the Chosen People of God . . . The individual is hidden in the nation and behind the uniformity of sacrifice. And all men [sic] within the nation share the common destiny. Says W. Robertson Smith: ‘The god was the god of the nation or of the tribe, and he knew or cared for the individual only as a member of the community.’”11

Nor do the difficulties for individualism disappear in the New Testament. According to Max Turner, the sense of personhood in the first-century Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament writers lived was markedly different from the contemporary emphasis “on the inner self, the subjective and all-too-readily individualistic pole of experience.”12 Instead, the concept of the individual person was “essentially relational and group-orientated,” focused on the person’s society and her place in it, her upbringing, and her accomplishments “in terms of public deeds.”13 Consequently, Turner claims, the category personhood, in the individualistic understanding common today, “simply was not available” to St. Paul and his contemporaries.14 As Paul E. Davies writes, the New Testament authors would not have recognized the term individuality; nor “did they think in terms of personality as we moderns do.”15

Despite these substantial roadblocks, there is nonetheless a case to be made for some degree of individualism in the Bible. As Davies writes, “when we examine the Old Testament material in detail, the solid life of the Israelite community casts up into prominence individuals all along the way, and individual religion probably played a constant part.”16 Similarly, Davies writes, “The individual was there in the [New Testament] picture, and the values of personality figured more boldly than we sometimes think.”17

I think Davies has a point. The Bible does indeed contain a number of texts that suggest a sense of human individuality. To begin with that “strange territory,” the Hebrew Bible, the covenant code in Exodus (Ex 20:13–17) places ethical responsibility squarely on the individual: as Stagg notes, “the commands are directed to the individual Israelite: ‘You shall not.’”18 Although another passage in Exodus would seem to overrule individual ethical responsibility by describing God as “punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex 20:5), the teachings of Ezekiel contradict the Exodus notion of collective guilt: “The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own” (Ez 18:20–21).19 Jeremiah 31:29–30 echoes this assertion that one is responsible for one’s own sin.

The New Testament offers more support for an anthropology of individual autonomy. Stagg notes Jesus’s concern for persons in their individuality: “Jesus reminded his disciples that not a sparrow falls to the ground without God’s notice and that even the hairs of one’s head are numbered (Mt 10:29–31). He assured them that they were of infinitely more worth than sparrows. God cares for ‘the last and the least.’ Each is of infinite worth.”20 As Stagg indicates, this message is particularly clear in Jesus’s various stories about lost sheep, “where ninety-nine sheep safely in the fold do not lessen the shepherd’s concern for the one that is missing (Mt 18:12; Lk 15:4, 7).”21 While these “lost sheep” stories alone do not necessitate an individualistic anthropology, they could be seen as supporting the libertarian belief that the value of the individual supersedes that of community and government.

An individualistic anthropology may also be supported by New Testament passages suggesting that personal identity persists beyond the death of the body. As Stagg notes, while the Bible does not explicitly say that the dead remain recognizable as individuals, “the implications are solidly in that direction.”22 He mentions two examples. In the story of the Transfiguration (Mk 9:4–5), the long-deceased Moses and Elijah are recognized as such, while in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31), “each person appears beyond death in recognizable form.” “Even if this [i.e., the Lazarus story] be taken as a parable,” Stagg observes, “it yet assumes that persons are recognized by name beyond death.”23 To Stagg’s examples we might add the account of the two criminals crucified alongside Jesus (Lk 23:39–43). While one criminal mocks Jesus, the other recognizes Jesus’s innocence, and Jesus assures him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The implication is that the “good” criminal will be saved, while the other will not; since they go to different fates, some form of personal identity seems to be preserved in the transition from this life to the next.24

In some New Testament texts, sin and salvation appear to be very much an individual matter. Paul warns the Romans that each human is accountable for her own sins (Rom 14:12); he (or the pseudonymous author) warns the Thessalonians of the individual consequences of individual sins, declaring that God will punish “in flaming fire . . . those who do not know God and . . . those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thes 1:8–9). The parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31–46) suggests a similar fate for those who do not care for the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner.

Davies argues that “Paul’s first concern is for the individual believer, how he [sic] comes to be a Christian, how he maintains his Christian life. This Christian life is personal from the start: ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ The central requirement of faith is personal and individual. Men actually believe one by one, they are forgiven one by one—one by one they experience God’s grace in justification, reconciliation, adoption.”25

While the Gospel of John is often cited in support of a relationalist message (recall, for instance, Heyward’s comments on the Johannine phrase “that they may be one”), C. F. D. Moule asserts that it is in fact “one of the most strongly individualistic of all the New Testament writings.”26 Moule notes the individualist message that emerges from that gospel’s numerous encounters between Jesus and single persons: “Life belongs to anyone who believes; such a one has passed from death to life . . . The true worshipper is the one whose worship is not localised in a temple but is inward and spiritual. And is it not, perhaps, significant that what appears to be, short of the death and resurrection itself, the greatest of all the [signs] . . . is the restoring to life of one individual, Lazarus?”27 As for the final resurrection, Moule argues that the Johannine Christ speaks of it on an individual scale: “This is in the sense not that in him the total resurrection of man is included, but rather that each individual who puts his trust in him becomes possessed of an unassailable life. It is a one-by-one salvation that is here envisaged.”28 “Even when Christ is the Vine,” Moule writes, “it is a matter for each branch, individually, to remain or to be detached.”29 Similarly, Davies argues that even in the Fourth Gospel’s picture of “a self-contained community separate from the world . . . the individual is the subject of religion. The act of believing, surely a personal act, is the prime requisite. The experience of being born again is, if possible, even more single and separate. The appeal is continually to the person: ‘If any man willest to do his will . . . ,’ ‘If any man love me.’”30 Whatever the overall merits of Moule’s and Davies’s arguments, they at least complicate the picture by suggesting that John is less relationalist than is sometimes assumed.

Finally, the New Testament texts treat individual characters as having unique and distinct qualities that set them apart from the crowd. For instance, Jesus singles out Simon Peter as the “rock” on whom the church would be built (Mt 16:18–19). Some argue that the rock Jesus mentions instead refers to Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, while others argue that he means Peter himself. Either way, Jesus clearly sees something in Peter that is special, unique, and exceeds the sum of his relations with others. Peter stands out as an individual, in the sense we commonly use the term today.

The same can be said of Mary of Bethany. In response to her sister Martha’s complaints, Jesus breaks with the social conventions of the day and insists that it is Mary’s “part” to sit as a disciple as Jesus teaches rather than to be concerned with the household chores (Lk 10:38–42). There is something about Mary that is special and unique. Similarly, Jesus treats the Samaritan woman at the well as a distinct individual by speaking to her particular circumstances (Jn 4:1–26), and he calls out Nathanael’s unusual character as “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (Jn 1:47). Like Mary of Bethany, these are not mere faces in the crowd; they are unique, distinct persons, and we can recognize them as such today, even if the category of personhood was not available to the Gospel writers.

While one should not build a full-blown theological anthropology on the basis of these scattered biblical texts alone, taken together they suggest a vision of the human being that recognizes the individual human against the community, values the individual at least as much as (and perhaps more than) the community, asserts individual moral autonomy, and suggests that individuals have different ontological destinies in the next life depending on their choices in this life.

Relationalist Texts

Yet as I indicated earlier, the Bible is by no means univocally or unequivocally individualistic, despite the tendency of some interpreters to read it that way. The thought-world of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament was heavily communal (and thus relational), even if something like what we today recognize as individuality can be detected. Many biblical texts paint a picture of human being that is quite different from the autonomous and disconnected individual assumed in contemporary Western culture. These “relationalist texts” depict human beings as bound up with the lives of others; they stress community rather than individual autonomy.

We should distinguish here between two types of relationality: ethical (or normative) and ontological. Ethically relationalist passages make normative claims about human behavior—for example, that we should have relationships with others or that it is good for humans to have relationships with others—without necessarily implying any particular ontological status. Ontologically relationalist passages suggest that the being of any human person is fundamentally constituted by her relations to other persons or beings. Both ethically and ontologically relationalist passages can be found in the bib...

Table of contents

• Other Works by David R. Brockman
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Impasse in US Political-Economic Discourse
• Chapter 1: Tensions in Christian Scripture
• Chapter 2: Tensions in the Western Christian Tradition
• Chapter 3: A Dialectical Approach to the Human Person
• Chapter 4: The Insights and Illusions of Libertarian-Individualism
• Chapter 5: The Insights and Illusions of Reform-Liberal Relationalism
• Chapter 6: Toward a Dialectical Democracy
• Notes
• Bibliography