Ideas on Liberty

BY EDMUND A. OPITZ

AROUND the turn of the century a great scholar named Max Weber produced a noteworthy study of the Reformation, and its aftermath, entitled The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Among other topics, Weber explored the religious idea of a “calling,” or “vocation.” The German word is Beruf.

During the centuries which antedate the Reformation we associate with the names of Luther and Calvin, the imperatives of a religious vocation drew the man or woman who felt the call to withdraw from worldly concerns and the workaday world into something like monastic or ascetic life. The Reformation, Weber contended, produced a dramatic broadening of spiritual orientation and outlook. The Reformation idea was to bring religion into the marketplace and forum; it “gave everyday activities a religious significance,” as Weber put it. This new attitude toward our mundane and secular existence means that the craftsman or laborer who earns his daily bread by turning out honestly constructed and useful products is just as obedient to the will of God as is the man or woman in holy orders. This is a novel attitude toward economic life; industry and trade are now seen in a new light. From now on, as Francis Bacon put it, we do our daily tasks “. . . for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.”

All useful work and every worthy occupation or profession may be invested with religious significance, that is, transformed into a “calling,” by the worker’s attitude toward whatever he does. Describing this attitude, Weber writes, “. . . every legitimate calling is exactly the same worth in the sight of God.” The sixteenth-century poet George Herbert captures the mood in his oft quoted couplet, “Who sweeps a room as for Thy Laws/Makes that and th’action fine.”

Weber and his thesis came to mind as I reflected on Paul Poirot’s attitude of quiet dedication and his low-keyed manner as he coped with the chore of editing The Freeman. He worked a seven-day-a-week job for thirty years.

For three hundred and sixty consecutive months this 64-page journal went out to tens of thousands of readers all over the world. This adds up to about twenty-one thousand pages of reading matter, more than ten million words, packaged attractively as more than three thousand solid, informative essays and about eight hundred book reviews. To give the journal permanence, bound volumes of The Freeman, carefully indexed, appeared annually. This six-foot stack of bound volumes is a compact but comprehensive little reference library of the freedom philosophy.

Such is the visible product, the effect. The cause operates backstage, so to say. Working behind the scenes, month after month for a generation, Paul had to sift through mounds of manuscripts to weed out the few that were publishable, soothe rejected authors with gentle rejection slips, edit the manuscripts he accepted, work with artists and printers who gave the journal eye appeal, put the issue to bed—and then, take a deep breath and start all over again on what would be next month’s issue! And he did this without fanfare but with quiet dedication, fidelity to purpose, and philosophical integrity—every month for thirty years! If this does not have all the earmarks of a religious “calling” or “vocation,” I do not know what does. Webster’s Unabridged bears me out, offering a definition of “religious” which reads, in part, “scrupulously faithful or exact . . . conscientious.” Some may object to the term “religious” in this broad, non-specific sense. So permit me to offer some speculations on the issues involved.

The average person hears the word “religion” and the image that comes immediately to mind is some variety of organized religion’s formal expression, such as the red brick church on Main Street, or the white steeple house on the New England common, or the gray stone Gothic structure in the suburb. Or, the word may bring to mind such exotic world religions as Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, or Confucianism.

Organized religion in the United States is rooted mainly in the Bible, and comes packaged in three major branches: Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism. These are theistic religions, that is, they affirm the reality of a sacred order that transcends the natural and social orders: a reality better characterized by a Thou than by an It. Theistic religions are rooted in the conviction that God is, and that God is spirit.

This is one answer to the question about the nature of ultimate reality; there are others. About a generation ago one of the signers of the original 1933 Humanist Manifesto, penned a pamphlet entitled “The Fourth R.” The author coyly refers to the three traditional faiths of America—Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism—as our three “R’s.” But now, he argues, there is a fourth “R,” Humanism, a religion which dispenses with God. Which is something like playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark! But Humanism does have other earmarks of a religion; its own creed, its own literature and liturgy, its own clergy and meeting places. The American Humanist Association is the denominational structure of this fourth “R,” and its very existence broadens the term “religion” far beyond what the seventeenth-century Puritan understood by religion.

Humanism is avowedly secular, but it is somewhat churchy and it does operate within the cultured and humane norms we associate with Western civilization. But no one would call secular Humanism a dynamic faith. There is, however, a dynamic faith on the move in today’s world. The most widespread, fervent, fanatic, proselytizing, persecuting religion of the twentieth century is Communism. This is an evil religion for which men and women have died, and for which they are prepared to kill. Communism inspires in its votaries a dedication which other faiths might envy, but it is a destructive dedication to something less than the Most High—first-class dedication to a third-rate goal.

If Communism is a religion it is obvious that religion is not a thing limited to clergymen and church members. Virtually everyone has a “religion,” not only those with ecclesiastical connections. This is not to say that everyone has what most people think of as religion. It is obvious that they don’t, and the statistics bear this out. Nor am I saying that it is desirable that everyone have a religion; in the case of Communism and other fanatic creeds religion is undesirable, and even deadly.

Cosmic Concerns

In virtue of our very humanness, every man and woman is confronted with cosmic concerns, unique to our species, and demanding a response. There at least five such concerns, which may be best understood as questions. 1) What is the nature of this strange universe in which we find ourselves? What are its basic constituents? 2) What are the defining characteristics of the human species? What is our nature, really, and what is our destiny? 3) How shall we assess the fact of consciousness, mind, and reason in a largely material universe which is mostly devoid of anything like the mental? 4) What is right and what is wrong? 5) Does human life have a discernible meaning and purpose?

The people who wrestle with these questions are typically called philosophers and theologians, but the man in the street may work them over too. There are schools of thought grouped around the differing answers that have been given to questions like these, and virtually everyone has adopted one set of answers or another. Religion, then, may be defined as the basic response the human species works out to these five questions and their corollaries. Virtually every human being lives his life on the basis of his response to these urgent concerns, and thus almost no one is without a religion. But if it is not an intelligent response the results may be devastating.

Responses to these five concerns vary over a considerable spectrum, but here we can touch only briefly on the polar opposites, bearing the neutral labels theistic and non-theistic respectively.

1) What is the nature of the universe? The theistic answer runs somewhat as follows: There is in this universe a conscious, primal, creative thrust operating with intelligence, power, and purpose. This is the Divine Creativity, usually called God. In the material universe God is revealed in the orderly cause and effect realm of physical nature, where the laws of physics and chemistry reign. God discloses more of his workings in the biological realm of plants and animals; in the vitality, exuberance and adaptability of things that live. The most telling revelation of all is the human person, a work of divine art created in God’s image, that is, gifted with the faculty of creative choice and the capacity for knowing his true nature and proper end.

2) and 3) What sort of a creature is man, and what is the status of mind, reason and free will? The theist maintains that man embodies a portion of the divine creativity, and thereby possesses free will. The primordial, purposive intelligence evolves man’s brain and nervous system as a vehicle for his mind. His gift of reason is an ordered response to a rationally structured universe. The non-theistic alternative bows the knee to “omnipotent matter.” In the oft quoted words of a famous philosopher, “Blind to good and evil, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way.”

It follows, according to the non-theistic premise, that man is the accidental byproduct of physical and chemical reactions, as inexorably locked into nature’s causal sequences as any other chemical compound. Human reason, then, is nothing but an irrational fact, the chance end result of the interaction of natural forces; and free will is an illusion. If man’s will is not free, it follows that there is no human action; man can only react.

If something analogous to that in ourselves which we know as our own mind is not a fundamental fact of the universe, if mind is reduced to something engendered, willy-nilly, we know not how or why, from “omnipotent matter,” then we have stripped mind of its credentials, discrediting any conclusions we might hope to reach by taking thought. Philosophers who strive to demonstrate that the mind is competent only to prove itself incompetent are a curious object for contemplation.

4) Right and wrong. The universe has an ethical dimension; it is so constructed, says the theist, that there is a right way for humans to live, and a wrong way. The moral distinction is not arbitrary, it cannot be altered, and it may be discovered by rational inquiry. The ages-old human quest for righteousness has left verbal deposits, such as the Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, and similar documents.

The non-theist envisions a universe of material particles, in the final analysis. Such a universe has no moral dimension. In the Marxist version of materialism the will of the party is supreme, and it is the party which decides what is right and wrong.

In the milder, Western version of materialism the pursuit of “enlightened self-interest” as a moral principle has had many advocates. If a person is advised to pursue his own interest he cannot be denied the right to decide for himself wherein his self-interest consists. For if A is allowed to define B’s self-interest for him then B will be acting out A’s interest and not his own. And of course no one would admit that his own interpretation of his self-interest is unenlightened! So everyone does “his own thing.”

If the pursuit of self-interest is to seek one’s good while staying within the rules, one has no quarrel with it. But the inordinate stress on self-interest gained its ascendancy precisely because of the decline of belief in a universe with a moral dimension; what some call the Natural Law. And that gets us into trouble. If every individual pursues his own interest, or seeks his private advantage, or does his own thing, it is impossible from this starting point to arrive at any sort of a general rule, or principle, or ethical norm. X might call something a principle or norm, but only because his self-interest dictates that he do so; or doing so gains him some private advantage. And if there are no rules, why should A, having been told to pursue self-interest, refrain from initiating force when his rational calculation of costs and benefits determines that the benefits of aggression far outweigh any costs that may accrue. Tomorrow, the situation may have changed and, in this new situation his self-interest may dictate that he inveigh heavily against the initiation of force! When the crunch comes there is no substitute for the time-tested moral code whose mandates form the necessary foundation of a free society: Don’t murder; Don’t steal; Don’t assault; Keep your word; Fulfill your contracts.

5) “Into this universe, and why not knowing / Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing.” So sang old Omar, echoing the ancient non-theistic conclusion that man is a chance excrescence thrown up on the surface of the earth by forces he cannot even comprehend, let alone control to further his own purposes. According to the non-theistic or materialist philosophy there is nothing in the universe that shares man’s values or responds to his aspirations. Man is a waif in an alien universe, buffeted by forces he cannot comprehend, doomed at last to complete his pointless journey with as little distinction as he began it, his proudest achievements reduced to dust and forgotten. The mood of our time is begotten by this world view, and the mood is a compound of sadness, resignation, rebellion, defiance, and despair.

There is no reason to assume that our species will ever know more than a fraction of what there is to be known: “We see as through a glass, darkly,” wrote the early Paul nearly two thousand years ago. Questions about the meaning and purpose of human life are not to be resolved after the manner of a Euclidean demonstration, nor is there any conceivable scientific experiment that might tell us whether or not life is worth living. The theistic world view, in short, has no prepackaged answers, but it does tell us that the human species is meaningfully linked to the Creative Intelligence which transcends all things. Choose to live so as to strengthen that link and a kind of divine alchemy causes the universe to respond and confirm the wisdom of our decision.

The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the senior staff of The Foundation for Economic Education, a seminar lecturer, and author of the book, Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies.