Humanist Politics

O’Donovan and O’Donovan offer an insightful summary of the contribution of northern European Humanists (More, Erasmus) to early modern political theory ( From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought , 554-5).

Their principles sound proto-Hauerwasian: “Firmly anchored in the Franciscan tradition, [Erasmus and More] both considered Christ’s example and teaching to be the whole normative revelation of human nature, the beginning and the end of human thought and action, and of morality in every sphere.” This was the basis for rejecting scholastic political theory:

Political institutions “could never be self-contained moral goods, belonging to a ‘nature’ independent of Christ and subject to laws that could be analyzed apart from his commands. They condemned the complacency of such analysis, which could never fully bring to light the folly and evil in which these institutions were implicated.” Like Luther, they considered medieval politics an “unholy marriage of Aristotelian and civilian theory,” one that “suppressed the teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount by pronouncing the blessing of nature on the repulsion of force with force.” In particulars, their judgments were often identical to those of the scholastics, but they reached them by a different theological and methodological route.

Yet this Christocentric framework created some ambiguities in their political ethics. Erasmus “condemned war as the most unchristian and unnatural of human pursuits” but then acknowledged that war might be justifiable in some circumstances. It’s not clear, in short, that they offered Christ’s commandments as a social ethic.

The Humanists left a major imprint on the Anabaptists and on the early Luther. Both these heirs took the Humanist perspective in a fresh direction. Luther split the Humanist perspective into the unregenerated civil community and the spiritual kingdom of the church, while Anabaptists took up the Humanist emphasis on the teachings of Christ and its suspicion of power and war. Humanists believed, contra both, that human society could be leavened with the virtues of the gospel, that kings could rule in accord with the teachings of Jesus. Against Luther, they held a more optimistic view of fallen humanity; against the Anabaptists, they considered Christians responsible to remain within society rather than to withdraw. They were inner-worldly Franciscans.