The following is from David Gress’ “From Plato to NATO”: “[Dominican friar Bartolome de] Las Casas, in 1551, decided to attack [humanist and classicist Juan Gines de] Sepulveda’s argument [in defense of colonial conquest of peoples who were by nature inferior] not at its weakest point, the Aristotelian claim that the Indians were by nature subordinate, but at its strongest point: the claim that any means available were justified in putting a stop to the absolute evil of mass human sacrifices. Las Casas began by noting that while it was true that cannibalism and human sacrifice were bad themselves, that did not necessarily entitle one to go to war to stop them, for such a war might be a worse evil than the evil it was supposed to remedy. He then claimed that, for the Aztecs, human sacrifice was the law of the land, and all people were required, by natural justice, to obey the law of their land.”
“Las Casas then entered upon an anthropological and philosophical argument that was sensational for its time. He concluded that using force to stop human sacrifice was wrong. He used two avenues to reach that conclusion. The first was that several instances in the Scriptures proved that God did not necessarily find human sacrifice detestable. Nor was cannibalism unheard of among Europeans, in case of dire necessity. The second avenue of argument was the more elaborate. This consisted in saying that the Indians like all human beings, had an inborn and instinctive sense of God. All people, granted this inborn sense of a supreme power, worshipped this supreme power according to their manner and devotion. The greatest gift one could make to the supreme power was the gift of life:
The most powerful manner of worshipping God is to offer him a sacrifice. This is the only act by which we show him to whom it is offered that we are his subjects, who are under obligation to him. Further, nature teaches us that it is right to sacrifice to God, whose debtors we are for many reasons, precious and excellent things, because of the excellence of his power. Now according to human judgment and truth, nothing in nature is greater or more precious than human life, the human being himself. That is why nature herself teaches and instructs those who have neither the faith, nor grace, nor doctrine, those who live by natural understanding alone, that without any positive law to the contrary they are bound to sacrifice human victims to the true God or to the false god whom they consider to be true, so that by offering him a supremely precious thing they can express their gratitude for the many favors they have received.”
I’m almost finished with the book, and I don’t highlight that because it is in any way representative, but because it was interesting. Perhaps distance from the 90s “culture war” of “western civ has got to go” makes me find the rest interesting, but particularly towards the end I became less enthusiastic about the book. I suspect many progressives will have little patience for his attempt to impart empathy towards traditionalists that veered toward illiberalism after, say, 1848. I know I did, and I spend an unusual amount of time reading self-described reactionaries. Perhaps rather than asking how to morally evaluate these figures he should have just said what their ideas were and why the reader should find them interesting (even if quite wrong). For my own part I was confused what was so bad about “the bourgeois pathology” that he repeatedly insists is not the totality of liberalism.
Entitled to an Opinion 
May 29, 2010 at 1:45 pm
> Las Casas began by noting that while it was true that cannibalism and human sacrifice were bad themselves, that did not necessarily entitle one to go to war to stop them, for such a war might be a worse evil than the evil it was supposed to remedy.
You were probably not intending to scrutinize the arguments themselves, but this one doesn’t seem to work without a high discount rate. If the Aztecs indefinitely sacrifice people, then they will sacrifice an arbitrary high number of people over time. Any war then is a net win.
May 29, 2010 at 5:40 pm
That is hilarious and awesome.
It also fits in well with Nagel’s idea of agent-relative and agent-neutral values. There is a utilitarian temptation to assume that ends justify the means (preventing human sacrifice justifies raping and killing the shit out of people; preventing birth justifies forced abortion).
But I think there is something moral about refusing to be the agent of an atrocity, even if the atrocity will supposedly prevent future atrocity.
May 30, 2010 at 11:50 am
What if you had a clearer view of consequences, such that the prevention of an immeasurably greater atrocity wasn’t merely supposed, but inevitable? Would the moral scent that you ascribe to an individual’s refusal to “be the agent of an atrocity” remain salient even under circumstances where said refusal can be known to open the way for a far worse outcome?
If so, why? If not, is there a tipping point? And if there is a tipping point that overrides a Kantian/Nagelian default, is it based on epistemological confidence or on the scale of the ledger imbalance that would result from one’s morally grounded refusal to perpetuate a lessor harm? Or something else?
May 30, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Chip:
I’m much more fuzzy regarding these questions. I see things in terms of, for lack of a better word, a personal moral ‘aesthetic’. That’s primary, and utilitarian notions flow from there. The ‘tipping point’ defines the edges my emotional sensibilities as I engage any particular moral question. I think I might be some flavor of a meta-ethical relativist, which in practice boils down to a simple situational ethicist, I suppose. I don’t mind overarching structures when it comes to ethical theory, but I always try to keep in mind that I accept or reject these according to my own moral-aesthetic proclivities. Hope this makes some sense, and sorry to butt in.
May 29, 2010 at 8:31 pm
The argument that “all human beings had an inborn and instinctive sense of God” and that “all people, granted this inborn sense of a supreme power, worshipped this supreme power according to their manner and devotion” is a characteristically late-medieval and Renaissance Catholic line of thinking. We see this same argument used by Ficino and Pico in their reverence for the prisci theologi, e.g., Hermes Trismegistus, whom they thought more ancient than Moses. It also entered into the Chinese rites controversy that arose from the Jesuit missions in the seventeenth and eigheenth centuries.
Ultimately the Catholic church rejected this theory of “natural religion.” Pope Clement XI decided against the Jesuit position in favor of accommodating native Chinese rites, and Pope Benedict XIV, in the bull Providas Romanorum of 1751, added the charge of natural religion to the reasons for condemning Freemasonry that had been advanced in the bull In eminenti fulminated by Clement XII in 1738.
Sturdy Protestantism never entertained the subtle reasoning of a Las Casas. Recall Napier’s remarks to the Hindustanis:
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom, and then we will follow ours.”
May 30, 2010 at 12:29 am
gwern, humanity over time will engage in an indefinite number of bad acts, thus our extermination (along with all life) is a net win.
Sister Y, for some reason I thought you were a utilitarian. Perhaps I confused you with David Benatar.
I think James Frazer said that there is an ur-religion of humanity that of which all religions are just particular varieties. I think Joseph Cambell said something similar. Haven’t read either.
Sir Charles James Napier apparently did not believe Christ was God.
May 31, 2010 at 1:03 pm
> gwern, humanity over time will engage in an indefinite number of bad acts, thus our extermination (along with all life) is a net win.
And an indefinite number of good acts. However, invading the Aztecs will not reduce the number of good acts the Aztecs will commit after the invasion. It’s still a win.
May 31, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Napier’s beliefs about Christ should not be surprising in a nineteenth-century Anglican.
Gorham was instituted vicar of St. Just in 1846, despite disbelieving in the salvific efficacy of baptism; Colenso was consecrated bishop of Natal in 1853 despite being to all intents and purposes a Unitarian. It is only a hop, skip, and jump from them to the Rt. Revd. John Shelby Spong, who cannot even be described as a theist. What one cannot expect of the Episcopacy, one can’t demand of the Epscopalian.
May 31, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Good response, gwern.
Protestants are a variety of Christianity, and I (along with many others) would say that belief in the divinity of Christ is a lowest common denominator for Christianity in a theological sense. Perhaps not in a social sense (“atheist Catholics” are not that unusual a phenomena), but we were discussing theology. Disbelief in Christ certainly can’t be considered compatible with “sturdy” Protestantism!
June 1, 2010 at 10:36 am
My point is that one scarcely needs to believe in God to be a member of the Church of England (which was, the last time I looked, a Protestant denomination).
Such is the case today, and practically was in the time of Gorham and Colenso, who were contemporaries of Napier. It will be recalled that the Gorham case seemed such a departure from Christianity to Archdeacon Manning that he defected to Rome (he was later made a Cardinal).
June 1, 2010 at 9:12 pm
John Derbyshire was a member of the episcopalian/anglican church. That didn’t make him a “sturdy Protestant”. We were clearly discussing theology (even if allowing for a “folk” variety), so don’t shift to a social definition now. Remember your original argument: Protestantism constrains the space of beliefs to disallow that of Las Casas. You are now arguing that it poses no constraint at all!
Gorham’s position was a Calvinist one. We might argue it is distinctively Protestant, whereas the Anglicans have long been closer to Catholicism. I will acknowledge that Unitarianism is more of a disqualification So Newton may be considered non-Christian if he wasn’t an Arian or Eastern Orthodox and we can more confidently reject as Protestant. His “Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture” does however praise Protestant theologians (plus Erasmus) while deriding Rome.
June 2, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Newton exhibited sufficient conformity to the Church of England to have matriculated at Cambridge, to hold office under the Crown, and to have been knighted – from all of which he would have been debarred had he not conformed. Napier, similarly, could not have held his Army commission had he not conformed.
The closeness of Anglicanism to Catholicism is of fairly recent origin, really originating in the Oxford movement of Pusey, Keble, and Newman (before his defection to Rome). It is of no earlier date than the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and was bitterly fought by the hierarchy. Earlier high-churchmanship such as that of Andrewes and Laud, was primarily political, rejecting the Genevan model of congregationalism in favor of episcopacy. Theologically it reflected the moderate Calvinism of Jacobus Arminius.
I am afraid you have taken a comment made with at least a semi-ironic intent about Napier much too seriously. His ‘sturdy Protestantism” was the bluff, practical sort of a thoroughly conventional representative of his social stratum, for whom the Anglican church has always made ample room. As I said, the subtleties of a Las Casas would never have occurred to him; he acted to stop what he recognized instinctually as a barbarous and beastly custom.
June 2, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Newton superficially conformed, even if had let his actual religious beliefs be known he could not have obtained such a position.
The Church of England split because Henry VIII wanted a divorce (and also liked usurping the Pope’s authority within England). The split was not theological in nature (though the CoE may have subsequently wandered apart from Rome on such matters). The Puritans were denouncing the institution as Papist well before the Oxford Movement.
Your comment does make sense if “sturdy Protestant” is used to denote a character-type rather than religious stance.
June 3, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Queen Elizabeth I once said that the Church of England did not seek to “make windows into men’s souls,” to know their private beliefs or doubts. It demanded only their outward conformity, that under it, the people may (as the Prayer Book said) “be Godly and quietly governed.”
Henry’s political reasons for schism from Rome were not much different from those of the north German princes who supported Luther – they had in common a wish to end the independent authority of the Church, to subject it to their will, and to expropriate its wealth. The history of Swedish Lutheranism, which retained its episcopal polity, also has much in common with Anglicanism.
Theologically, however, Cranmer and the first bishops of the Church of England were in sympathy with the continental reformers, and were particularly influenced by Bucer and Melanchthon. When, after the accession of Elizabeth I, the Anglican hierarchy was restored, the new bishops were all more or less Calvinists. The Thirty-nine Articles are Calvinist in essence; see for example Art. X., “Of Free-Will,” Art. XII., “Of Good Works,” and Art. XVII., “Of Predestination and Election.”
The points on which the Puritans denounced the C. of E. as “papist” were political, i.e., related to church polity, rather than theological – i.e., its retention of bishops, and the centralization of authority through them; its dictation of fixed forms of prayer, its requirement of licensure to preach, etc. Such aspects of church polity were intimately connected with secular politics – as James I understood, and Charles I found to his expense, no bishops meant no king. Anglicans had politicized their theology from the time of Henry VIII; the Puritan element, which sought the kind of ecclesiastical independence that Knox achieved in Scotland, accordingly theologized their politics.
To the extent that London merchants resented economic dirigisme and non-Parliamentary taxation under Charles I, they sided with the Puritans. To the extent that country squires resented the efforts of the Laudian church to reclaim properties leased to them on highly favorable terms, they sided with the Puritans. Lord Dacre (Hugh Trevor-Roper) is the historian to read on this period.
After the Restoration of Charles II, these controversies disappeared. There was no effort to reimpose the absolutism of Charles I, or the ecclesiatical policies of Laud. What high-church inclinations there were amongst some of the bishops had little effect at the level of the parishes, and in any event was utterly expelled temp. Will. III, when Sancroft, Ken, and the other nonjurors were deposed from their sees. High Anglicanism then became a schismatic movement of its own, identified with Jacobitism.
So, effectively, the C. of E. was latitudinarian from the restoration of Charles II and completely so after 1688. Its tradition was blunt and anti-intellectual, in common with that of most other Protestant denominations. The Oxford movement was a shock to it and was resisted by most Anglicans throughout the nineteenth century.
It is a mistake to think the Episcopal Church of the USA (formerly “Protestant Episcopal Church…”) completely reflects the C. of E. English bishops refused to consecrate bishops for North America throughout the colonial period. They did so for thoroughly secular reasons – independent bishoprics on this continent would have deprived the bishop of London of revenues from North America. Seabury, the first Episcopal bishop in the newly-formed United States, was consecrated by bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which descended from the nonjurors of 1688. This led to a comparatively “high” theological and liturgical position on the part of PECUSA/ECUSA, which was at the time, and remains to this day, untypical of the Church of England.
June 3, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Yes, Henry VIII’s dispute was political and the princes who supported Luther had a similar perspective. But not Luther himself! Lutheranism is Lutheranism after all, not Frederick IIIism. Luther compared Islam to Catholicism in its falsehood (though he did not think God commanded their extermination or anything like that).
Puritans were generally Congregationalists rather than Presbyterians, but their stance on the structure of the church polity was not their defining feature (so the signatories of the Millenary Petition expressly denied they intended to shake that up). They were called Puritans because they wanted to purify the church of leftover aspects of Catholicism they saw as unbiblical. They called themselves “the godly” and were also called “precisian” at first.
June 4, 2010 at 2:02 pm
The question, then, is whether Anglicanism more reflects the secular politics of Henry VIII or the reforming position of Cranmer and other early Anglican prelates. There can be no question that the latter was the case, after the death of Henry VIII. Henry, after all, had not permitted the liturgy to be translated from Latin. The Book of Common Prayer, which has been central to Anglicanism since the time of Edward VI, is clearly a reformed liturgy. Gibson, the editor of the Everyman’s Library edition of the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552, notes that the second prayer book contained ‘changes… which were undoubtedly introduced to make the book acceptable to the Zwinglianizing party in the Church.” After the Marian resumption of Latin services, with the accession of Elizabeth I, the second prayer book was brought back into use with a few changes. The book was later revised in 1604 and 1662 which have “given it a far more Catholic character than it possessed when it left Cranmer’s hands.” Even so it was far less Catholic than the Tractarians wanted it to be!
The Puritans in England possessed both a Presbyterian and an Independent (Congregational) party. In “Hudibras,” the eponymous knight was
“…Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and fun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.”
The line “apostolic blows and knocks” was probably intended as a swipe at the Scottish Presbyterian, John Knox – whom Swift similarly caricatured in “A Tale of a Tub” as “Knocking Jack of the North.”
Sir Hudibras’s squire, Ralpho, on the other hand, was an Independent:
“His knowledge was not far behind,
The Knight’s, but of another kind,
And he another way came by ‘t:
Some call it GIFTS, and some NEW-LIGHT;
A liberal art, that costs no pains
Of study, industry, or brains.
…
Whate’er men speak by this New Light,
Still they are sure to be i’ th’ right.
‘Tis a dark-lanthorn of the Sprit,
Which none see by but those that bear it:
A light that falls down from on high,
For spiritual trades to cozen by,
An Ignis Fatuus that bewitches
And leads men into pools and ditches…”
In 1647 Parliament was still undecided about the monarchy, and a majority sought a settlement that would restore Charles I and reorganize the Church of England along Presbyterian lines. Cromwell was an independent and rejected this idea; the Parliamentary army did also. Certainly the modern Congregational churches (in the US now largely absorbed into the United Church of Christ) are descendants of English puritanism, but it is an historical mistake to suppose that the puritans of the seventeenth century were uniformly or even generally congregationalist.
Whatever you may call them, the aspects of the Church of England that the puritans saw as the left-over remnants of Catholicism had much less to do with theological issues such as predestination vs. free will or the nature of the eucharist (on which the 39 Articles are solidly Calvinistic) than they did with the centralization of religious authority in the bishops and the crown, and with traditions of the church that were theologically insignificant, as being ordained only by man’s authority for the purposes of edification. They thus related to polity rather than to theology, and are properly called “political” in the purely ecclesiastical sense.
June 6, 2010 at 8:56 am
Many of the traditions they complained about may strike us as “theologically insignificant”, but I don’t think the Puritans themselves would have agreed.
June 7, 2010 at 11:55 am
Of course they didn’t think they were theologically insignificant – but, then, as I noted, they theologized their politics. Again I suggest that a reading of Trevor-Roper will shed much light on the reasons for the rise of Puritanism, and its essentially political rather than theological origins.
May 30, 2010 at 11:32 am
René Girard’s “Violence and the Sacred” takes a related view of ritualistic sacrifice, though his emphasis is more on the role of sacrifice in promoting structural stability.
November 3, 2010 at 11:35 pm
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