Social Contract or Covenant Community?
Introductory Comment: I am not a political theorist. I want to be up front about that as this post will have some political theory discussion in it and I am no expert in that area at all. So although I think there is some truth to the following statements (maybe a good deal of it!) I am also aware that I am alomst entirely out of my area on this, although the covenant word gives me some credibility. Okay, on with the post!
Liberal democracies (like the US and England) seem to be founded on the principle of "social contract." This was first set down in systematic fashion by John Locke and is the founding principle behind a good deal of our governments. But in dealing with issues of community and Trinitarian participation I am a little concerned that the notion of contract is not something we Christians should be buying into at all. Explaination:
Social contract seems to me to be set almost on entirely selfish principles. To give it a rough definition, social contract is the "deal" made between a group of individuals which allows for the maximum benefit of all parties as they co-operate together. This sounds reasonable at first and is unduly effective in the States, but the foundation must be examined. It is based on two principles: individualism and self-interest.
The social contract assumes that we all come as autonomous entities and run into each other, much the detriment of society. So in order to help progress and production, we all join in some contract together with certain stipulations and regulations because it will be in our best interest. It might be in the community as a whole's best interest, but this is only insomuch as it is in the best interest of the individual members of that community. First and foremost is the individual's needs, wants, and desires, his or her quality of life; secondly is the benefit to the whole. The reason individual's enter into contract with one another is not primarily to make society a better place, but to make it a better place for them, else why would they even bother? The root motion of the contract to me than is an inward pointing movement, the social contract brings benefits first and foremost to me. It happens that this also brings benefits to others like me, but that is secondary in the decision to enter. We enter the social contract so that we can live in a better society as individuals. Unless we had this we would always be running into each other and hurting one another. So in essense it seems that the social contract is a self-centered notion of community: it is based on individuals seeking their highest good which hopefully is also the highest good of the community as agregate.
If we are really not autonomous beings, if we are really all related in community and away from ourselves in our basic humanity as a continual particiaption with the Triune God, does this social contract make any Christian sense? I am inclined to say it is actually the antithesis of Christian community. So what is the alternative? Something that might seem quite similar at face value: the covenant.
"Let me conclude by characterizing an alternative Christian account of the social ontology of communities, drawing on early Calvinist theorizing rooted in a distinctive notion of covenant. On this account, covenant is seen as established among responsible human associates, directed toward a distinctive moral purpose rooted in created human nature, and entered into under God. A Calvinian covenantalism is profoundly different from the individualistic liberal contractarianism that was its secualarized offshoot." - Jonathan Chaplin (ICS)
The notion of covenant is not only supremely Biblical and Reformed (are the two identical?) but is other-centered instead of self-centered. I submit that this version of social community relatedness is a more Christian approach to society, namely because it opposes the two principles of contract: selfishness and individualism. The covenant is a basic relation in the economy of God, it starts out with the principle of relations. We are not a bunch of individuals who happen to run into each other and therefore need to set up some contract to exist. We are naturally and primarily in communion with one another: the covenant presupposes and establishes that community. It is therefore more basic and proper than the contract. But more importantly the covenant is other-focused. It is not an inward movement towards the individual's desires and goals, it is a responsibility to the other as outside and of significance to me own existence. The covenant is a promise to do to the other because it is the right way to relate, not because it will be beneficial to myself. The finish to the sentence "I will do this because..." is not "it does this for me" but "I am required to be." The covenant is about outward promises to all others, but primarily God as keeper and regulator of the covenant.
"The covenant is not merely a voluntary congress of autonomous individual persons, but is grounded upon supra-personal authority." - Graham Maddux
The covenant is then not something which is a decision to make after our existence, it is a requirement of our full humanity. If we want to be human in the fullest sense, we must enter into relationship with God and one another by means of covenant. We are beings in relation, in community as primary, not secondary. Social contract starts from the notion of individual existence and moves to community relations, though still focused on the individual. Covenant starts from relationships and seeks to bring them in proer order, not in the sense of bringing properity and benefits to individuals, but in the sense of restoring the image of God and the relationship with all parties.
"The common character of all associations in Calvinist political literature ... is neither individualist nor absolutist. It begins neither with the self-evident rights of individuals nor with the a priori authority of rulers. Rather it asks what is the vocation (or purpose) of any association, and how can this association be so organized as to accomplish this essential business. Authority (or rule) becomes a function of vocation." - Frederick Carney
Covenant is not based on individuals deciding what works best for them, nor on the idea of some absolute monarch - for even God is in covenant. It is based on the essential character of existence: relatedness with others. Covenant is therefore a much more Christian social understanding of relationships, one not based on the inherent individualism of humans but on the total relatedness of Creator and creatures. It is outward focused with a overarching purpose or teleology - the vocation of bringing the reign and rule of God to this earth. This Calvinian notion of covenant then finds its home in the Trinitarian understanding of existence as relationship - participation with God as three persons united by love and giving between them and with us involved.
Note: I am not advocating a form of socialism or the rejection of capitalism. I am not an expert in this field but do not see an absolute rejection of the latter in seeking the former. I am only questioning the secular conception of contract which we have so heartly accepted in liberal democracies. Capitialism and democracy are not (as far as I can see) at odds with covenant. They may need some reshaping and re-storing with the rest of social order, but they need not necessarily be thrown out. My only desire is to ask whether contract is allowable with a created for and in relationship understanding of existence - my contention is that it is not.
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 1:16 am
7 comments
7 Comments:
Hans,
this is an excellent premise. It points toward some key questions that need continued exploration.
Modern anthropology tilts on the distinction between "mine" and "thine." Participation, therefore, is pragmatic, not essential. Once we arrive here, it is not surprising to see how many "bible-believing" men and women begin to interpret the covenants themselves as nothing more than "social contracts" entered into by equal and autonomous participants.
Here's Cavanaugh summarizing Milbank:
"...modern politics is founded on the voluntarist replacement of a theology of participation with a theology of will, such that the assumption of humanity into the Trinity by the divine logos is supplanted by an undifferentiated God who commands the lesser discrete wills of individual humans by sheer power. The older theology will say that Adam and Eve acted against their true good, which God commands not from sheer will but because God cannot command in any other way than for the good of humanity. In other words, God's will is inseparable from the good. The loss of a theology of participation is therefore a loss of teleology, the intrinsic ends of human life. Hobbes will interpret Adam's disobedience as punishable simply because it contradicts God's arbitrary will. Locke too assumes that the state of nature is already characterized by formal mechanisms of will and right, subject to the superior will of God. Thus in the state of nature, each individual is formally discrete and equal, 'unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another'...this mythos establishes human government not on the basis of a primal unity, but on an assumption of the essential individuality of the human race. When Rousseau says that humanity was born free, he primarily means free from one another; by way of contrast, in the Christian interpretation of Genesis, a condition of true human freedom is participation in God with other human beings."
The question remains then;
If liberal democracies, built from the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, are to be seen as somehow indifferent to a traditional Christian anthropology, how is this the case? What does liberalism (both market and political) look like when participation in the Good is seen as the truest/final telos?
Keeping in mind that liberalism (again using the traditional definition) is at its core a soteriology. Capitalism and Democracy within this framework is the pragmatic outworking of a false Genesis narrative. They exist to counter-balance the bellum omnis contra omnem. Might we say, then, that such socio-economic structures are positioned against the coming Kingdom? Just a thought.
I quite like this essay on The Restoration of the Sacred Commumity.
1. www.dabase.net/restsacr.htm
John
"Rather it asks what is the vocation (or purpose) of any association, and how can this association be so organized as to accomplish this essential business."
Who determines this, or how is it determimed? The individualist would respond that the purpose of any association is always free exchange for mutual benefit. I think any time you see associations as atomic and attempt to deconstruct them to a purpose, you're entering into the realm of modernist rational individualism. Relational anthropology would probably resist any attempt to separate a person from his/her associations, but rather attempt to reframe the discussion in light of the community, saying that the person is both involved in and defined by their associations, and that their associations are involved in the associations of others, and so it's impossible to reduce any one association to any single "purpose" without serious and detrimental generalization.
Erik,
this is an excellent comment. I would totally agree with you that socio-economical structures are inherently against the kingdom ethics of Milbank and others. My only question is whether we should take the Fall and broken human nature into consideration when "doing" socio-economic stuff. I mean, we need to be careful of utopianism, right? The kingdom is coming in power, but is it here yet? More pointedly, will ditching capitalism as such help bring in the kingdom or is it throwing pearls to swine? I stuggle with this, but then I get back to theoretical theology, my main discipline.
Hans,
I would say that Christians are never to be satisfied with the systems at hand precisely because the Kingdom has not yet arrived. I agree that we are to take fallen humanity into account. Yet taking such a thing into account should not involve the Church lending itself to the false soteriologies that are modern politics.
This does not mean that I find capitalism "evil," but neither does it mean that I find it "necessary." As the Body of Christ we must persistently subvert those institutional bodies (or certain aspects of them) that proclaim a false Genesis and offer a weak salvation.
We, therefore, do not "ditch" anything. Why would we need to? We proclaim the Kingdom Come as we live in community as the Body of Christ. It is not a Christ and... It is a Christ + nothing. Is it perfect? No. Nor does it claim to be. That is the worlds business, striving for Utopianisms. We strive for Christ which is a participation in reconciliation and regeneration. And in that I find it to be a damn good politics.
Hans,
Very nice post! As someone who is neither a political theorist nor a theologian - but nonetheless has never let that stop me before - I have a few thoughts. First, I think that the modern role social contract theory is pretty seriously misunderstood. I think most politicians, editorialists, etc. still basically think that social and political theorists “buy” Locke’s argument (as they themselves do). In reality, my sense is that Locke and Marx are in basically the same camp these days, namely that they are thought to give an account of origins (of our current political society) and have put us on the right track, but aren’t really helpful at all in helping us understand social and political life. They serve as reference points, not as explanatory theorists.
So, let me address one of your objections here, perhaps as an illustration of my above point and as a way to move forward:
“We are not a bunch of individuals who happen to run into each other and therefore need to set up some contract to exist. We are naturally and primarily in communion with one another: the covenant presupposes and establishes that community.”
I think almost every political and social theorist would acknowledge that, as society normalized and political/social life centered on the institutional more and on the “cult of personality” less (see Weber’s Politics as a Vocation), social contract theory could no longer account for how humans participated in and operated under societies. Institutions cannot be accounted for in a strict Lockean account of political life. In an institutionalized society with structural components that are not dominated by or bound to any individuals or groups of individuals, social and political life seem to naturally look more similar to your covenant society. In this climate (our own and others), we are born into and socialized into political/social life such that we are formatively “trained” to be social creatures who learn the rules of our particular society. We aren’t free, autonomous, self-directing individuals, we are social, malleable, socialized individuals bound to cultural notions that predate us.
I think e. twist asked a really important question:
“If liberal democracies, built from the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, are to be seen as somehow indifferent to a traditional Christian anthropology, how is this the case? What does liberalism (both market and political) look like when participation in the Good is seen as the truest/final telos?”
First, I don’t think the liberal democracies either are rooted in Enlightenment philosophies (we should probably go back to the Renaissance to find some roots) or are still influential in how we order liberal society. That said, I think that liberal society/politic are anything but indifferent to “a traditional Christian anthropology.” Rather, I think that they propose an entirely new anthropology, a new “Good,” and a new telos. Listen to Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair talk about democracy sometime, it sounds incredibly religious (the god-term being “progress” or “freedom” or “equality” or something). For more on that issue, I would recommend Patrick Deneen’s “Democratic Faith.” It really gets to the heart of this issue.
For serious criticism of liberal democracy and it’s foundations (and for a form of “covenant society” theory – although as a Thomist he would shudder at calling it that - that predates Milbank et al.) I would recommend anything by Alasdair MacIntyre.
ps – I seem to remember that Augustine of Hippo wrote a book once, something like “The City of God”…. Maybe we should check that out?
"If we are really not autonomous beings, if we are really all related in community and away from ourselves in our basic humanity as a continual particiaption with the Triune God, does this social contract make any Christian sense? I am inclined to say it is actually the antithesis of Christian community."
Pierre Manent offers an excellent critique of social contract theory from the perspective of a Catholic who is a former Marxist--see An Intellectual History of Liberalism.
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