Kantian Christianity

__"The Christian Democracy of Glenn Tinder and Jacques Maritain," by Robert P. Kraynak, in Perspectives on Political Science (Spring 1998), 1319 18th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036–1802.__

For much of its 2,000-year history, Chris-racy. Today, however, virtually all churches tianity was indifferent or hostile to democ-and Christian theologians are its champions. Christianity’s central moral teaching, according to the modern view, is the dignity of the individual person, and a commitment to democratic government necessarily follows. Kraynak, a political scientist at Colgate University, begs to differ.

The modern view, he says, has been expressed by Glenn Tinder, a Lutheran, in The Political Meaning of Christianity (1989), and by French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), in Christianity and Democracy (1945) and other works. Tinder claims that the conception of "the exalted individual" underlies Christian social and political thinking, while Maritain defends the "dignity of the human person" and a political theory of "personalist democracy." The outlook of the two philosophers, argues Kraynak, amounts to "Kantian Christianity," in which Immanuel Kant’s theory of human dignity is imported into Christian theology. (Maritain was an avowed opponent of Kantianism, Kraynak allows, but his Thomistic thought "ends with a Kantian or liberal notion of freedom.")

Kant’s moral ideas, Kraynak notes, have many aspects that strongly appeal to Christian thinkers: "the universalism of the categorical imperative and the lofty notion of duty pitted against selfish inclinations, the emphasis on individual free will, and the idealism of striving for perpetual peace based on a just world order. Underlying these ideas is Kant’s notion of the duty to treat everyone as a ‘person’ rather than a thing—to see the infinite worth and dignity of all persons and to respect their autonomy." The political imperative then becomes to create democratic government that promotes human rights and individual autonomy.

There is a nobility in this modern view, Kraynak admits, especially when it is used to defend liberal democracy against totalitarianism. But, he maintains, exalting the individual "often encourages a debased democracy of self-expression rather than a more noble or more spiritual society."

The traditional Christian view, Kraynak believes, had a less exaggerated notion of human dignity and a more realistic appraisal of human depravity. The view of Saint Augustine and the other great theologians of the past, he says, rested on the traditional Christian doctrine of the "Two Cities," the City of God and the Earthly City. "All regimes of the Earthly City are tainted by original sin and are more or less corrupt," Kraynak explains. "Accordingly, the goal of politics in the fallen world should be lowered: ‘the tranquillity of order’ rather than justice."

Such an approach need not rule out democratic government, Kraynak points out. Indeed, it enables the case for democracy to be made on firmer, more realistic grounds. As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, "Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."