The Theology of Liberalism

The Theology of Liberalism by Eric Nelson

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This book starts with a dive into the historical theological issue of Pelagianism and ends with a broadside leveling the dominant philosophical underpinnings of modern politics.

It is quite a ride.

Author Eric Nelson starts with the Protestant treatment of Pelagianism. Pelagianism is the theological doctrine that human effort can merit by itself the reward of salvation. In the fourth century, the great opponent of Pelagianism was St. Augustine who maintained that God's grace was pre-eminent in determining who was saved. According to Augustine, God would dispense that grace without necessary regard to human effort. This position becomes the substratum of orthodox Christianity. In Catholicism, no human could merit initial justification, albeit God would reward subsequent good works because of his essential justice. In some forms of magisterial Protestantism, everything was a matter of grace, and grace itself was a matter of predestination.

Nelson points out the quandary this left Christians in with respect to justice. If everything was a matter of predestination without regard to human action, then where was the justice in condemning some to Hell? Salvation and damnation become morally arbitrary. Accordingly, Pelagianism made a return in the thinking of what Nelson calls “protoliberals,” such as John Milton, John Locke, Leibniz, Rousseau, and Kant, who affirmed that God was just and assigned rewards based on deeds, rather than being morally arbitrary.

The ur-issue of justice and punishment involves the Fall and original sin. In what way is it just that Adam's descendants suffer for his sin? Calvinists adopted the position that humanity was represented by Adam in the Fall because his essence constituted a representation of humanity. This position was rejected by, inter alia, Locke. According to Nelson, the competing position was that humans were bound by what they actually agreed to, a position which became “liberalism.” (p. 48.)

It seems a substantial leap to go from 17th-century political philosophy to modern politics, but the linkage is provided by the senior thesis of the leading political philosopher of the late 20th century, John Rawls. Rawls' senior thesis argued against Pelagianism by exploring the concept of moral arbitrariness. Rawls would come to lose his faith in Christianity and become a strong advocate against moral arbitrariness.

Nelson discusses the powerful modern philosophical position known as “luck egalitarians.” In essence, luck egalitarians argue that every inherited social difference is “morally arbitrary.” An heir did nothing to earn his inheritance. In fact, at its logical extreme, every difference is morally arbitrary since all differences are based on inherited personality traits and therefore morally arbitrary. If you work hard and become wealthy by your hard work, your wealth is “morally arbitrary” because you simply had the good fortune to have the genes or upbringing that made you a hard worker.

This position is clearly the beating heart of Socialism. If everything possessed by anyone is only theirs in a morally arbitrary sense, then how can they complain about rectifying the injustice of inequality - taking for granted, as we must in modern liberalism, that inequality is unjust - by donating their excess to those who can make the grand adjustment to equality? It is equally clear from this that Socialism is essentially totalitarian; it denies that there can be any possible competing view: everything possessed by anyone, money, good lucks, intelligence, integrity, etc. is not really theirs but only accidentally theirs by way of a morally arbitrary distribution of fortune.

Rawls was, of course, a prime exponent of something like this view with his argument about the “original position.” In Rawls' view, people pre-exist in an original state as essentially fungible entities without property, status, parents, identity, or character. They choose in this original position to a just system that will leave everyone equal unless the inequality makes the worst-off better off.

Nelson takes a leaf from debates about theodicy during the 17th-century to deconstruct “luck egalitarianism.” Theodicy is the term for Christian approaches to explain how a just and loving God can permit evil to happen in the world. Nelson argues that proponents of the argument that the existence of evil must show that there is no possible way the amount of evil in the world as it exists to be inconsistent with the maximum goodness in the world. This is impossible because we do not have a Godlike perspective. For all we know, our present world may be the best of all possible worlds.

Nelson applies this insight to luck egalitarianism. Luck egalitarianism treats the distribution of assets, resources, and benefits as a “cosmic lottery.” However, while egalitarianism assumes that equality is the first virtue, even egalitarians must acknowledge that some differences enrich everyone. For example, having one supergenius among the population is better than having a population of average dull people. So, luck egalitarians find themselves in the same position as anti-theists, namely, they cannot show that the current distribution of wealth, resources, assets are unjust because, for all they know, the current distribution might be the only just distribution.

Nelson's arguments reach further than I can essay here, but this is an amazing book. Nelson has exposed the seams of modern totalitarian liberals and deconstructed them. Nelson deserves kudos for bravery in this censorious period in intellectual history.

Nelson goes on to undermine the modern fascination with restitution for various historical crimes. As a philosophical proposition, Nelson notes that there is no end to historical injustice. One might argue from this that picking one group as the beneficiary of restitution for past injustice is itself “morally arbitrary.” But further, given the dynamics of history and society, there is no neat way of identifying the oppressors from the oppressed. Intermarriage and social mobility quickly moot any such distinction.

This is a fascinating book. It is something of a work of stealthiness. Nelson never comes out and reveals that he is engaged in a subversive attack on the dominant philosophy of modern political science and philosophy departments. It is also incredibly important at this time.