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Society And its Purpose

Book 3 - Determining the End of Civil Societies

CHAPTER 17

How Christianity saved human societies by directing itself to individuals, not to the masses

476. There is, I think, another worthwhile reflection to be made on the great work done by Christianity in saving civil societies from irreparable ruin. We see, in fact, that the author of the Gospel and those whom he sent did not concern themselves immediately with societies, but directed their words to individuals amongst the human race. It can rightly be said, therefore, that Christianity saved societies by means of the reason in individuals, not through the reason of the masses. The explanation for this procedure is easily found in the essentially moral and religious nature of Christianity which, in positing virtue and intimate union with the divinity as the end of all human beings, provided the human race with an essentially individual, personal end. Goodness, merit and the fruition of the divine essence are all entirely personal things.

477. Important consequences result from this principle.

The first is an increase in human dignity, and the consciousness of this dignity in each individual. If, as the author of the Gospel taught,(212) there is only one true, absolute good, and this good can be obtained by each individual equally, it is clear that all are equally valuable, because all are ordered to this sublime end. No one, therefore, can be considered as a simple means for the will and happiness of others, whether others are taken singly or as united and forming a majority. It follows that once a common destination has been established equally for all human beings, everyone is assured of a certain portion of freedomwhich cannot be touched or violated by others, nor by any society whatsoever. Careful consideration will easily show that such Christian equality and freedom is both the firm foundation on which modern societies rest, and that which gives them legitimacy and sanctity.

478. Second, we have to reflect that the wisdom which undertook to reform or rather to remake civil societies would never have succeeded in its work by turning directly to societies themselves. It was totally necessary that individuals should be won over by projecting intelligence and virtue into them. The societies of antiquity, which rested on totally erroneous and immoral foundations, could only destroy, not correct themselves, and attempt to rebuild on their own ruins.

479. It is a very serious error, therefore, that many authors, who have eyes only for the type of civil societies which have perished forever in antiquity, should want modern societies to be modelled on the form of Greek and Roman societies. These authors simply do not know the nature of ancient and modern societies. Dreaming of the false glory of ancient societies seen through the immense lens of time separating us from them, they are unjust towards modern societies.

480. There is yet another obvious reason why Christianity could not reform civil societies except by directing itself to individuals. The radical defect of civil societies consisted in their lack of an ultimate, principal end, which is itself something essentially individual. This end of the individual had to be established immovably, or rather be given to human beings who lacked it. Only then would rehabilitated individuals be able to heal societies.

481. Nor would the restoration of civil associations have been more successful if Christianity had turned directly to family society, as the Mosaic law did to a great extent. First, the root of the evil was present in individuals, as we have said, because they lacked an individual end; second, civil society does not unite strongly unless domestic society is limited and restricted in many ways. As we noted, the strongest, most splendid societies were not formed by amassing families, but by adventurous individuals whose interests lay more in the new cities they founded than in their own as yet non-existent families. This explains why their families, which came into being after the cities, were modelled on the cities and governed by them.(213)

482. Christianity, therefore, began its reform with individuals, that is, with the very elements of political, communal living. It put the power for reformation in their hands in such a way that at first only twelve were destined to draw in their wake the whole world. After the twelve, others, but few in number, remained on earth to exercise governance with such effect that endless new nations marched in to surrender to these few disciples. By doing all this, Christianity laid the foundations of a universal government of humanity which was totally independent of human caprice and instability in its durability and norms. In ancient societies the tyranny of the masses, or of the majority, was inevitable. Christianity, in introducing ecclesiastical governance into the world, suppressed and condemned every kind of tyranny and despotism. (214) Indeed, the individuals whom Christianity destines as the teachers of mankind cannot teach as they please. They have a fixed doctrine which can never come into collision with truth or with natural justice precisely because Christian doctrine necessarily includes the obligation of following all truth and justice. Everything that is proved contrary to what is true and just would by that very fact be anti-Christian.

The masses did indeed need a guide, and Christianity placed individuals over them. These individuals are however prevented from becoming teachers of error or ministers of raw power through the condemnation they incur from the doctrine they teach whenever they undertake to inculcate what is less than true or less than just, or seek for something other than the simple betterment and true good of human souls. This is the great criterion given to the masses and applicable to every individual responsible for teaching the nations.

Other, more positive guarantees were given to the faithful so that the individuals who guided them in the name of Christ might not abuse their power. Jesus, who was able to found a Church which embraces the whole world, could also promise truthfully that his Church would be infallible, never defective, in its teaching. Consequently, every individual has a criterion of truth with which to confront the teaching of particular masters, each one of whom teaches true doctrine only when his own teaching accords with what all teach, that is, with the teaching and belief of the entire Church.

483. The transfusion of doctrine from a single master to a few disciples, and then always in the same way from the few to the many, conforms to the nature of mankind. It traces good, ordered government in its descent from God, the most simple of principles, to the point where it embraces the entire multitude of the human race.(215)

484. If now we want to discover, for the sake of our present subject, what the Bible teaches about the plan of divine Providence in the government of mankind, we shall easily see that the Gospel is shown as saving nations by saving individuals, the perfect and most considerate way of fulfilling its aim. We read in the Bible that mankind first fell into the corruption provoked by material voluptuousness. Once people had reached this state, they could not escape from it. Then the Lord said: `My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, because he has become flesh’(216) The first nations, who would have been irreparably lost in savagery, were drowned; one family alone was preserved, from whose roots other nations, better than the primitive peoples, would spring.

485. The new nations did indeed come forth from the Noachian root, but the decline of nations abandoned to themselves was inevitable and fatal. Passing more or less swiftly through the four social stages, they finally came to perdition in the abyss of ultimate corruption. In the Bible we find that God, leaving other nations to run the course that human nature prescribed, according to their different circumstances, reserved his supernatural guidance for a single family, and for the people who sprang from it.

We see from this experience that all other nations gradually wasted away without leaving behind a graft or germ from which they could flower again; one nation alone, divinely supported, would never perish entirely. On the contrary, from it would issue unexpected salvation to all the others. This sacred counsel was described in writing many centuries before it occurred. The Scriptures show how all the peoples were eaten up by corruption, all rendered useless and valueless in the eyes of the Almighty:

The ancient promises are addressed to this Redeemer, `called the Holy One of Israel’; the glory and the durability of this miraculous nation are summed up in him. He is called `the expectation of the nations’,(220) that is, the object whom the people sought for their contentment, but in vain. He is also called the `head of the nations’.(221) The nations will be inherited by him like something deprived of its possessor through death, without anyone to dispose of them.(222) He will rule over them because dominion will be his; all the ends of the earth will remember him and turn to him; all the families of the peoples will adore in his presence.(223) He will preserve and restore intelligence to the world because he will be the light given to the peoples to open the eyes of the blind;(224)

the peoples shall come to your light
and kings to the brightness of your rising.(225)

He will `lead the blind in a way that they know not’,(226) and with a glance sweep away the old nations.(227) All those who do not serve him will perish;(228) but he will bring together and restore the dispersed and lost.(229) In a word, the durability of civil associations will be founded in the durability of the Church of Christ, to which they will submit themselves.

486. Such is the biblical teaching about humanity. Those who do not believe in the Bible should compare it with history and explain how such sublime events could have been written so many years before they happened. Anyone who considers impartially the state of dissolution in which the nations were found at the coming of Christ, and their renewal through the work of Christianity will have to admit that it is God the Almighty who `multiplies nations, and destroys them, and restores them after they were overthrown’.(230)

Notes

(212) `What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and then suffer the loss of his own soul?, or what shall he give in exchange for his soul?' These astounding words of Christ come to this: the supreme evil for every human individual is purely personal evil; it is not shared with anyone else.

(213) Livy is a witness that the Roman family was modelled on the type offered by the Roman republic.

(214) It is odd to see how Tocqueville, who spoke with such truth about the tyranny of the majority, allows himself to be taken in by common errors while combating them in others with all the finesse proper to his genius. One of the errors which seems to have escaped his vigilance is concerned with the true basis of human freedom, that is, with justice, which of its nature is as independent of the whole human race as truth is. Justice is eternal; it is not formed, even by God himself, who reveals it from the depth of his being. Who would have believed that Tocqueville would have described justice as something dependent on a human majority and thus reduce it to something human? He first writes memorably: `I regard as impious and detestable the maxim which states that in matters of government the majority of a people has a right to do whatever it pleases.' But then almost inconceivably he continues: `Nevertheless, I posit the origin of all powers in the will of the majority.' He tries to reconcile the two obviously contradictory propositions in this way: `There is a general law that has been made, or at least accepted, not by the majority of a given people but by the majority of mankind as a whole. This is the law of justice. Justice, therefore, forms the limit of the right of every people' (T. 2, c. 7). But I repeat with respect that justice is not made by the majority of mankind. Even if this majority were to have rejected justice, justice would nevertheless be the only source of legitimate powers. The majority is not the source of just powers; the majority, like the minority, can only submit to and obey justice. Acting contrary to this, the majority usurps powers which are not its own, and merits condemnation. Saying otherwise can only lead to inevitable caprice and tyranny.

(215) Pure democracy, which by means of the vote calls each individual to equal influence in public deliberations, is in part founded on the pseudo-principle that `all intelligences are equal.' This is obviously a false supposition, belied by the universal nature of things. A government founded on such an error of fact is itself radically vitiated. It is impossible for human beings to oppose nature with their own artifices or tell themselves that nature is different from what it actually is. Consequently, pure democratic government, which appears to be government by all, is always government by a party, that is, the party elected by the less intelligent because it is certain that in any nation whatsoever the less intelligent form the majority.— All this is true, without taking account of another difficulty inherent in democracy, that is, the way in which the majority of the less intelligent governing class is easily manipulated by a few more intelligent and far-sighted demagogues for their own advantage.

(216) Gen 6: [3; `has become': Rosmini's own translation]. There is no shorter or more forceful way of expressing the corruption produced in the world by abandonment to sensual delight than that used by Scripture when it says: `Man has become flesh'. This phrase shows vividly the extinction of human intelligence, which renders the evil irreparable.

(217) Is 40: [15, 17]; 41: [29].

(218) `The haughty looks of man shall be brought low
and the pride of men shall be humbled;
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day' (Is 2: 11).

(219) Is 41: [8, 10–11, 14].

(220) Gen 49: [10].

(221) Ps 18: 43.

(222) `Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession' (Ps 2: [8]).

(223) `All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations' (Ps 22: [27–28]).

(224) `I have given you as — a light to the nations
to open the eyes of the blind' (Is 42: 6; 49: 6).

(225) Is 60: [3].

(226) Is 42: [16]).

(227) `He looked and shook the nations' (Hab 3: 6). — `Because the day of the Lord is over all the peoples' (Obad 15 ). —
`But fear not, O Jacob, my servant,' says the Lord,
for I am with you.
I will make an end of all the nations to which I have driven you,
but of you I will not make an end, etc.' (Jer 46: [28]).

(228) `For the nation and kingdom
that will not serve you shall perish;
those nations shall be utterly laid waste' (Is 60: 12).

(229) Job 12.

(230) Job 12: [23 Douai].

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