Murray and Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian Realism

Thanks to Mark for organizing and graciously hosting the John Courtney Murray conference at Villanova, and to Mark and Rick for posting on it.  There was a good deal of interesting exploration of concepts like the "freedom of the church" and Murray's positive but wary attitude toward American democracy.

I went in a slightly different direction, one more general but I hope still complementary and relevant to others' concerns.  I compared the approaches to Christian social ethics of Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Protestant theologian, Murray's contemporary, and proponent of "Christian realism."  (The continuing relevance of Niebuhr is exemplified by Sunday's NYT op-ed by Arthur Schlesinger, posted here by Michael Perry.)  I personally find great explanatory power both in the constructive ethical-political project of natural law that Murray defended and in Niebuhr's critical approach that emphasizes the effect of sin, self-interest, and partiality on all of our moral-political striving.  (That's probably why I'm a Protestant blogging, at my friends' gracious invitation, on a site devoted to "the development of Catholic legal theory.")

My paper argues that despite the differences between natural law and Christian realism, they actually share a umber of important commonalities and, with some qualifications, may be profitably combined in Christian moral-political analysis.  Our MOJ technical guru Rob Watson has just posted a draft in the "Papers" section to the right.  Here's an abstract.  (SUPPLEMENT: Thanks also to Patrick Brennan for his conference comments on the paper, which I'll be processing and using to make revisions.)

During the two decades after World War II, two Christian theologians of public life appeared on the cover of Time magainze:  Reinhold Niebuhr in 1948 and John Courtney Murray in 1960.  As their appearances suggest, during this time Murray the Catholic and Niebuhr the Protestant were America's most prominent Christian theologians concerning the relationship between religion, morality, and politics.  Niebuhr inspired not only two generations of Christian clergy and activists, but also numerous secular statesmen and thinkers who admired his hard-nosed policy and cultural analyses, and some of whom dubbed themselves "Atheists for Niebuhr."  Murray, of course, set forth the most prominent account of how faithful Catholics could affirm the American political system and laid the intellectual groundwork for the Church to embrace equal religious freedom as a moral ideal at Vatican II.

Murray and Niebuhr were on cordial personal terms, but each also engaged in polemics directed at the other's writings or school of thought.  Niebuhr criticized the Catholic natural-law tradition for rigidity and for elevating contingent features of pre-modern socieities "into the supposedly universal standards of human reason."  Murray, in defending the universal propositions of natural law, blasted Niebuhr's Christian realism as a theory that "sees things as so complicated that moral judgment bcomes practically impossible."

The thesis of this paper, though, is that Murray and Niebuhr, natural law and Christian realism, are not as far apart as they seemed.  Indeed, the philosophically deepest aspects of the American founding reflect elements both of natural-law reasoning (as Murray emphasized) and realist concerns to structure institutions so as to counter the inevitable tendencies to self-aggrandizement (as Niebuhr emphasized).

After summarizing Murray's natural-law arguments, Niebuhr's critique of natural law, and Murray's responses, I then suggest how the two approaches share significant features, at least once some qualifications and clarifications are made in each.  First, Niebuhr was more of a natural-law theorist than he admitted.  Although Christian realism emphasizes how moral-political assertions are typically tainted by partiality and self-aggrandizement, Niebuhr himself set forth a universal theory about the perennial dynamics of human nature, and he affirmed the universal validity of certain moral-political concepts sich as equality.  Second, although Niebuhr criticized natural-law theory for elevating historically contingent propositions to universal status, recent natural-law approaches have given much greater attention to historical contingencies and differences in the application of general principles.  I show how Murray exhibited this historical consciousness and often relied on arguments of prudence and pragmatics that a Christian realist should appreciate.  Third, although Niebuhr's appreciation for ambiguity and tension made him reluctant to rely on absolute rules in political matters, later Christian realists affirmed the need for rules precisely to limit the human propensities for self-aggrandizement.

I conclude that natural law and Christian realism both assert that moral-political principles and institutions should rest on assessments of human nature and what will promote human flourishing in the light of nature.  Both recognize real, objectively valid moral-political principles -- grounded ultimately in God the creator -- but both can recognize also that these universal principles tend to be general in nature and that applying them to concrete contexts will produce varying specific rules.  There remain many differences between natural-law and Christian-realist approaches, but often the differences complement each other, so that a full vision of Christian political ethics can benefit from both approaches.  For example, each approach can take account of human nature both in its ideal and its fallen aspects, but natural law will contribute more to explicating the proper ends of human beings, and Christian realism more to explicating humans' fallenness and its consequences.

I argue that at the very least, natural lawyers will give attention to and benefit from reading Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realists, and that those in the Christian realist tradition will give attention to and benefit from natural-law reasoning.  A combination of natural law and Christian realism suggests that a moral-political principle or institution is most solid when its justification rests on both the possibilities of human nature and on its negative tendencies.  For example, the most powerful case for democracy, in Niebuhr's words, is that "man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, and man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."  Similar double-barreled arguments have been be made for institutions such as a qualified free-market economy (by Michael Novak and others) and monogamous marriage (by Paul Ramsey and others).

I close the paper with a brief discussion of why the common project that Murray and Niebuhr shared remains of value in America today.  As Robin Lovin has put it, both Murray and Niebuhr argued that "biblical faith provides the ideas about human good and moral responsibility on which the liberal democratic consensus rests.  When that concensus is confused or threatened, recourse to the faith that sets its fundamental terms is a necessary part of its self-defense and self-renewal."  Moreover, both Murray and Niebuhr articulated their arguments in terms that others could access and evaluate without having already adopted the premises of the Christian faith.  Although I do not believe there is any general legal or moral obligation to present political arguments in such terms, nevertheless in a society characterized by religious disagreement, such arguments are more likely to be effective in political debate and lead to productive deliberation about political choices.

Tom B.