IMPRIMIS Because Ideas Have Consequences and, therefore, were properly enslaved. Only tianity, modern socialist movements reject the persons of gold are truly to be treated as ends in stratification of citizens into gold, silver, and themselves. For Judaism and Christianity, on lead, as in Plato’s scheme. But, since they are the contrary, the God who made every single materialistic at root, their traditional impulse child gave worth and dignity to each of them, has been to pull people down, to place all on however weak or vulnerable. “What you do the same level, to enforce uniformity. This pro- unto the least of these, you do unto me.” God gram is inexorably coercive, unlovely, and identified Himself with the most humble and depressing. most vulnerable. Our Creator knows each of us by name, and Compassion understands our own individuality with a far greater clarity that we ourselves do; after all, He t is true that virtually all peoples have tra- made us. (Thomas Aquinas once wrote that ditions of compassion for the suffering, God is infinite, and so when He creates human care for those in need, and concern for beings in His image, He must in fact create an others. However, in most religious tradi- Itions, these movements of the heart are limited infinite number of them to mirror back His own infinity.) Each of us reflects only a small to one’s own family, kin, nation, or culture. In fragment of God’s identity. If one of us is lost, some cultures, young males in particular have the image of God intended to be reflected by to be hard and insensitive to pain, so that they that one is lost. The image of God reflected in will be sufficiently cruel to enemies. Terror is the human becomes distorted. the instrument intended to drive outsiders away In this respect, Judaism and Christianity from the territory of the tribe. In principle grant a fundamental equality in the sight of (though not always in practice), Christianity God to all human beings, whatever their tal- opposes this limitation on compassion. It ents or station. This equality arises because teaches people the impulse to reach out, espe- God penetrates below any artificial rank, cially to the most vulnerable, to the poor, the honor, or station that may on the surface dif- hungry, the wretched, those in prison, the ferentiate one from another. He sees past those hopeless, the sick, and others. It tells humans things. He sees into us. He sees us as we are in to love their enemies. It teaches a universal our uniqueness, and it is that uniqueness that compassion. It teaches people to see the dignity He values. Let us call this form of equality by even of those who in the eyes of the world have the clumsy but useful name, equality-as- lost their dignity, and those who are helpless to uniqueness. Before God, we have equal weight act on their own behalf. This is the “solidarity” in our uniqueness, not because we are the whose necessity for modernity Rorty perceives. same, but because each of us is different. Each In the name of compassion, Christianity is made by God after an original design. tries to humble the mighty and to prod the rich This conception of equality-uniqueness is into concern for the poor. It does not turn the quite different from the modern “progressive” young male away from being a warrior, but it or socialist conception of equality-sameness. does teach him to model himself on Christ, The Christian notion is not a levelling notion. and thus to become a new type of male in Neither does it delight in uniformity. On the human history: the knight bound by a code of contrary, it tries to pay heed to, and give respect compassion, the gentleman. It teaches him to to, the unique image of God in each person. learn, to be meek, humble, peaceable, kind, For most of its history, Christianity, like and generous. It introduces a new and fruitful Judaism, flourished in hierarchical societies. tension between the warrior and the gentle- While recognizing that every single person lives men, magnanimity and humility, meekness and moves in sight of God’s judgment and is and fierce ambition. equally a creature of God, Christianity has also rejoiced in the differences among us and A Universal Family between us. God did not make us equal in tal- hristianity has taught human beings ent, ability, character, office, calling, or fortune. that an underlying imperative of histo- Equality-uniqueness is not the same as ry is to bring about a law-like, peace- equality-sameness. The first recognizes our able community, among all people of claim to a unique identity and dignity. The sec- goodC will on the entire earth. For political ond desires to take away what is unique and to economy, Christianity proposes a new ideal: the submerge it in uniformity. Thus, modern entire human race is a universal family, creat- movements such as socialism have taken the ed by the one same God, and urged to love that original Christian impulse of equality, which God. Yet at the same time, Christianity (like they inherited, and disfigured it. Like Chris- Judaism before it) is also the religion of a par- 4 ticular kind of God: not the Deity who looks fore simultaneously present to all things. (In down on all things from an olympian height God there is no history, no past-present-future. but, in Christianity’s case, a God who became In His insight into reality, all things are as incarnate. The Christian God, incarnate, was if simultaneous. Even though in history carried in the womb of a single woman, they may unfold sequentially, they are all among a particular people, at a precise inter- at once, that is, simultaneously, open to His section of time and space, and nourished in a contemplation.) local community then practically unknown to Our second president, John Adams, wrote the rest of the peoples on this planet. Christian- that in giving us a notion of God as the Source ity is a religion of the concrete and the univer- of all truth, and the Judge of all, the Hebrews sal. It pays attention to the flesh, the particular, laid before the human race the possibility of the concrete, and each single intersection of civilization. Before the undeceivable Judgment space and time; its God is the God who made of God, the Light of Truth cannot be deflected and cares for every lily of the field, every blade by riches, wealth, or worldly power. Armed with of grass, every hair on the head of each of us. this conviction, Jews and Christians are Its God is the God of singulars, the God who empowered to use their intellects and to search Himself became a singular man. At the same without fear into the causes of things, their time, the Christian God is the Creator of all. relationships, their powers, and their purposes. In a sense, this Christian God goes beyond This understanding of Truth makes humans contemporary conceptions of “individualism” free. For Christianity does not teach that Truth and “communitarianism.” With 18th-century is an illusion based upon the opinions of those British statesman and philosopher Edmund in power, or merely a rationalization of power- Burke, Christianity sees the need for proper ful interests in this world. Christianity is not attention to every “little platoon” of society, to deconstructionist, and it is certainly not the immediate neigh- totalitarian. Its com- borhood, to the imme- mitment to Truth diate family. Our social “Better than the philoso- beyond human purpos- policies must be incar- es is, in fact, a rebuke nate, must be rooted in phers, Jesus Christ is the to all totalitarian the actual flesh of con- teacher of many lessons schemes and all crete people in their nihilist cynicism. actual local, intimate indispensible for the Moreover, by worlds. At the same working of free society.” locating Truth (with a time, Christianity capital T) in God, directs the attention of beyond our poor pow- these little communities toward the larger ers fully to comprehend, Christianity empowers communities of which they are a part. On the human reason. It does so by inviting us to use one hand, Christianity forbids them to be our heads as best we can, to discern the evi- merely parochial or xenophobic. On the other dences that bring us as close to Truth as hand, it warns them against becoming prema- human beings can attain. It endows human ture universalists, one-worlders, gnostics pre- beings with a vocation to inquire endlessly, tending to be pure spirits, and detached from relentlessly, to give play to the unquenchable all the limits and beauties of concrete flesh. eros of the desire to understand–that most pro- Christianity gives warning against both foundly restless drive to know that teaches extremes. It instructs us about the precarious human beings their own finitude while it also balance between concrete and universal in our informs them of their participation in the own nature. This is the mystery of catholicity. infinite. The notion of Truth is crucial to civiliza- “I Am the Truth” tion. As Thomas Aquinas held, civilization is constituted by conversation. Civilized persons he Creator of all things has total persuade one another through argument. Bar- insight into all things. He knows what barians club one another into submission. Civ- He has created. This gives the weak, ilization requires citizens to recognize that they modest minds of human beings the do not possess the truth, but must be possessed Tvocation to use their minds relentlessly, in by it, to the degree possible to them.