Ecclesiology and Ethics

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by Arne Rasmusson

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the idea was prominent that the unity of religion is necessary for the unity of the state. It is not important which religion this is, so long as its external form is one. For Thomas Hobbes only national churches subordinated to the state should be allowed. However, once the population has internalized the supremacy of the state and the privatization of religion, it is possible to accept religious pluralism, and the church can easily coexist with the state's claims of absolute supremacy.

This process of differentiation can also be traced in the making of modern ethics. Both the privatization of religion and the general critique of tradition make it seem necessary to develop an ethics separate from religion and custom -- that is, an ethics built only on reason. Ethics is thereby simultaneously universalized and individualized: if it is founded on reason alone, it is in principle available for anyone without training, and it is universal because we have a common human reason.

In this way the modern ethical project is also part of the emergence of the modern nation-state. The state, which represents neutral reason and the universal, thereby liberates the individual from the claims of particularist religions and other traditions. But it is important to see that this claim to universality is always qualified by the supremacy of the nation-state. The interests of the nation-state, although often legitimated by universal claims, stand above genuinely universal interests or values. Liberal moral and political theory have always found it difficult to make sense of the moral status of nation-states and national borders. Since most, if not all, are the results of wars, it is difficult to find a rational justification for them; and most recent moral philosophy and theology simply take existing nation-states and their boundaries for granted. The territorial domain of modern nation-states then becomes no more than fate or contingency, similar to being born more or less talented.(8) In practice, however, the nation-state has been the primary social context for liberal theory; thus, it is evident that the liberal principles of justice and equality are secondary to the primacy of the nation-state. This is seen especially clearly in immigration policy.

In this connection we also find a complex and manifold relationship between the rise of the modern research university as an instrument of the state and the development of philosophical ethical theory. Taking control of education was one element of the privatization of religion, and this included freeing the university from the church. Philosophy replaces theology as the queen of the sciences (though it soon loses that role), describing itself as a neutral and universal discipline in contrast to the particularity of theology. This process began in Prussia after the defeat by Napoleon. Berlin university became the model for a development which we have come to take for granted. German idealism became the ideological instrument defending this process under the name of freedom. As Randall Collins says, "with the characteristic enthusiasm of academics conflating their intellectual conquests with the topics that they are studying, they made this spirit of freedom into the ground of the universe".(9)