“In the Bible we find two major images of God, one, monarchical, and the other, familial. In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is most often imaged as “King”; whereas in the New Testament “Father” is dominant…Jesus is never depicted as addressing God as King, and there is no indication that he spoke about God in that way. He always spoke to and of his, or our, Father (Abba)…The Greek phrase that we translate as “kingdom of God” is basileia theou. A basileia is a politically defined region. It could be a kingdom, and indeed most of them were, but the term does not include that as part of its meaning. If you suppose in advance that God is like a king, then the basileia of God will certainly be a kingdom. But if God is like a father, then his region or land will not be a kingdom. We might describe a father’s basileia better as the family estate. Depending on the kind of father we are talking about, that might be governed in various ways. When we consider how Jesus talked about God, the answer is that it would be managed for the sake of all who lived there with special concern for the weak and needy. We have no word for this, but my proposal is “commonwealth.”” –John Cobb, Jr., Process Theologian

The above passage comes from John Cobb’s book, Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed. The book came to mind recently while I was viewing an episode of the Ben Shapiro Show that a friend had sent to me and asked me to watch (we were involved in an online political discussion). I reluctantly agreed to watch the episode. But after watching it and reflecting on it a bit it’s reminded me once again that there really is a strong connection between conservatism (political and religious) and a fascination (conscious or unconscious) with kings and kingdoms.

The episode featured guest Jonah Goldberg (apparently another alt-lite hero like Shapiro; I’d never heard of him before…) talking about his new book (which seems to have gotten horrible reviews) and also treated the viewing audience to Shapiro and him discussing things like nationalism, how Trump is doing, and the Enlightenment. At one point Goldberg does make a good point with regard to the difference between the French enlightenment and the Scottish/British enlightenment; he points out how the French developed a more aggressive approach to separation of church and state, which is true. Instead of merely keeping religion out of state affairs, French secularism did condemned religion’s influence on political culture in general as pernicious. In doing this secularism essentially became a new religion. Famously, Carl Schmidt perhaps makes this most clear with his observation that “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development – in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent god became the omnipotent lawgiver – but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts.” It’s for this reason that I think studying theology is critical (I do credit my amateur study of theology and religion for allowing me to clearly see the parallels between politics and theology).

Immediately after this Goldberg goes into a whole spiel about the benefits of religion and how humans are homo religio (which I totally agree with) and naturally engage in acts of reciprocity. He then even goes so far as to say that “we are far closer to communists in our own families” (around the 24:30 mark), sharing resources and taking care of each other: each according to their need and each according to their ability. I was very surprised to hear him admit this and was really on board with him at this point! Societies all the way down, baby! He then references Hayek’s concept of the microcosm and explains that the values of the microcosm are not based on contracts and rationality or anything related to the market, but that they’re based on powerful notions of solidarity and mutual obligation. So far so good.

Goldberg then goes on to talk about Hayek’s notion of the macrocosm. This is where he starts to go off the rails!

The macrocosm, Goldberg insists (again, channeling Hayek ((I think he cited Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit, which I have not read so it’s hard to say if he’s getting Hayek right))), is the domain of the market, the world where you deal with strangers (as opposed to kin, family, and friends). Goldberg says that “one of the beautiful things about capitalism is that it turns strangers from existential threats into customers.” I seriously laughed out loud when he said this. Wtf! I mean, first of all where is the cutoff?!? Seriously, where does the microcosm end and the macrocosm begin? That’s not at all clear to me and never will be.

Earlier in the interview, while discussing the enlightenment, Goldberg began making this really contrived comparison between Rousseauian and Lockean philosophy favored in France and England respectively during the enlightenment (Locke apparently being more rational and Rousseu appealing more to passion/emotion ((a simplistic summation that I’m not really buying btw))), and he eventually says this: “there is something very Rousseauian about being an Orthodox Jew who is part of a larger community, no criticism of that whatsoever. What I have a problem with is when you take that Rousseauian religious spirit, that affiliation, and you try to get out of politics what is only rightly reserved for religion.” Goldberg’s point is that the microcosm (reserved for close kin, family, friends, and religious community) must be kept separate from the macrocosm (strangers and customers and politics); he insists that one cannot take the values of the microcosm and impose them on the macrocosm without destroying liberty. He also says that one cannot take the values of the macrocosm and apply them to the microcosm “without destroying the values and moral creating engine that is the family and civil society.” In other words, “we would destroy our family if we treated it like a business enterprise,” says Goldberg. “On the other hand,” he continues, “if you treat the extended order of liberty like it’s a family, where the president is our father, you’re gonna destroy liberty.”

First off, I actually kind of agree with Goldberg’s assessment here. I’ve used the family before as a practical way to think about the abstract concept of a society. I think it works really well. And Hayek’s concept of microcosm and macrocosm can be pretty useful. I even agree that applying the values of the market/macrocosm (e.g. cold, contractual, meritocratic rationality) to your family would no doubt destroy it. And get ready: I also agree that applying the values of the family/microcosm may somewhat inhibit liberty/freedom.

But here is where I differ with Hayek and Goldberg:

1. we have different understandings of liberty/freedom
2. we have different understandings of the role government can and should play
3. perhaps most important, we have very different understandings of God

One of the long standing and unanswered responses to Hayek’s criticism of socialism is that he has a very minimalist, anemic, and parochial definition of freedom; specifically, for Hayek (and Goldberg I assume) “freedom” means freedom from coercion, i.e. conservatives like Goldberg don’t want “big government” interference in their private economic affairs. The idea of “free will” is closely associated to the conservative notion of freedom and, as philosopher Chenyang Li points out in his paper The Confucian Conception of Freedom, it “has a specific cultural origin” that “came into prominence in the West largely due to the work of Saint Augustine, who Hannah Arendt has called the ‘first philosopher of the will.'” In his paper Li describes how Augustine adapted Epictetus’ concept of the “will” for his theological purposes. Apparently, for Epictetus, the will is “an independent power and is naturally free.” Li conintues:

“When Epictetus stated that the good is within the power of the will and that nothing is good or bad besides the will, he came close to the view that only the will is capable of committing evil. Nevertheless, it was Augustine who drove the notion to prominence.”

And if it’s not completely obvious, Augustine drove this notion of “free will” to prominence because he wanted to get God off the hook for evil. Augustine’s goal was to show how human wrong doings do not affect the goodness of God. He did this by developing a very strong and abstract concept of human free will. Consequentially, Li explains that “by developing his theory this way, Augustine has given free will a life of its own; no longer the soul, not even the intellect or reason, it is the free will that is ultimately responsible for human action.” Li goes on to say that “In the ways in which the concept has been discussed, free will is like a little man stuck in a person’s head making all decisions for the person. This little man cannot be shut off from outside. But, then, you wonder whether there is an even smaller man in the head of this little man, so on and so forth. The notion of free will has been infested with a world of problems with determinism. These problems cannot be resolved. An alternative is to get out of the trap set out by Augustine and his followers. We should not think of human agency in terms of free will, but to look for a holistic notion of human freedom.”

Li cites feminist philosophers, Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, and their concept of relational autonomy, and I agree that it can be very helpful for us. Autonomy and freedom are very closely related concepts. Autonomy generally means self-ruling, but it emphasizes a person’s internal capacity to make decisions for oneself. Freedom is often associated with the environment of action and with action itself. So a free environment is a precondition for autonomy. A person cannot be autonomous without a free environment, even though a free environment does not necessitate personal autonomy. Mackenzie and Stoljar explain that relational autonomy is built on

“the conviction that persons are socially embedded and that agents’ identities are formed within the context of social relationships and shaped by a complex of intersecting social determinants, such as race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus the focus of relational approaches is to analyze the implications of the intersubjective and social dimensions of selfhood and identity for conceptions of individual autonomy and moral and political agency.”

This is very similar to Whiteheadian and Confucian ideas (which is the direction Li goes in his paper) of freedom. As Whitehead says in Process and Reality: “But there is no society in isolation…The environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to more general characters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part.” In other words, personal autonomy is NOT free from socialization. As Li puts it: “The relevant question here is not how persons can be free of socialization, but rather what kind of socialization is conducive to personal autonomy.”

Once again, the simple question to ask here is where does the microcosm end and the macrocosm begin? Someone please show me because I seriously can’t tell. An attempt to keep them separate (like conservatives and libertarians say they want to do) seems to  run up against the problem of philosophical vagueness very quickly (when does a pile of sand become a heap?). Why should we not expand our scope of concern to include those beyond our tiny bubbles? Why should we not take Jesus’s and Paul’s teachings about welcoming strangers seriously (“Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”) and think about our fellow citizens (strangers or not) as part of our fellow human family? I know the answer Goldberg gave is that imposing the values of the microcosm onto the macrocosm inhibits liberty, but as we can hopefully now understand our liberties, our autonomy, have already always been inhibited; we self-sacrifice for the ones we love, don’t we? We’re not completely free because we’ve always had social obligations and responsibilities. Always. This doesn’t stop at the edge of our little bubbles either (wherever those edges are…). Goldberg is right that the President shouldn’t be thought of as our authoritarian father (trust me, when it comes to anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism I’m as hardcore as the come). So let me say this very simply:

No one wants an abusive, authoritarian government,  just like no one wants an abusive, authoritarian parent! So why would anyone worship an abusive, authoritarian God?

Here we go, people. As above, so below:

God is not a king with great power. God is a loving, relational, sensitive, caring, parent who has a special concern for the weak, vulnerable, marginalized, and needy. Because God is not an all powerful monarch in the sky, God does not have all the power, God is NOT an omnipotent coercive dictator. God does not impose God’s will upon us. As John Cobb says, “The normal relation of the father to the infant is one of tenderness and unconditional love. It was unconditional love rather than controlling power that dominated Jesus’ understanding of God.” God relates to us, provides us with possibilities, and then persuasively lures us, beckons us, and implores us to make good decisions, like a good parent should. Because God is a good parent God self-sacrifices so all of God’s children can be more free (God demonstrates that our freedom is found in being last).

Likewise, our various levels of democratic government should be a reflection of God’s commonwealth. Governments are not abstract entities but unions of real people created by the people for the people, and their goal is not to violate or torture or rule or oppress, but to increase freedom, to increase personal autonomy, by providing new possibilities and expanding social goods: better social conditions, better education, more just distribution of resources, higher overall quality of life, etc. Our governments should be like God’s commonwealth in that they should defend the liberty of non-elites against the coercions of well-­organized local power brokers, e.g. a government making it illegal to own slaves can be viewed as a loss of some freedom from the perspective of slave owners, but it is simultaneously an expansion of freedom/liberty from the slave’s point of view.

Families are small societies. And Goldberg is right: we are far closer to communists in our own families, and it should stay this way. Small children are dependent on their parents; they’re weak and vulnerable and require parents to self-sacrificially care for them. Good parents take care of their children, they are the parent’s beneficiaries and parents provide them with social goods by sharing resources with their children, regardless of if that child is able to reciprocate or work to pay back their parents or to contribute to the household. The parent does this, sacrifices without question, out of unconditional love for the child. And yes, perhaps one day, the child will grow up to be a healthy human and a good citizen who does reciprocate by becoming the benefactor of the parent and who ultimately contributes to the larger society in amazingly beneficial ways.

Conservatives are communists in their own families, like Goldberg says, but they stop there. Political conservatives seem to insist on democracy in every aspect of their lives (personal, familial, political) except the workplace. Likewise, conservative religious people seem to despise abusive authoritarianism in every aspect of their lives (personal, familial, political) expect their religious and economic lives. Both political and religious conservatives seem content submitting to and defending a king in their economic lives (their boss or Little Lord) and religious conservatives go a step further and seem content defending and worshiping a God who is their cosmic king and powerful authoritarian ruler; this is nothing if not obvious. It’s also confusing, painfully subjugating, and awfully sad.