Nigel Biggar: Does Theology Have a Role in Public Life?

How ‘Secular’ is the Public Square? Habermas versus Augustine

There is a view that the public square is ‘secular’ and that therefore religious believers should leave their baffling theology at home and learn to speak sensible, non-theological language in public. One well-known expression of this view came from the eminent German philosopher and public intellectual, Jürgen Habermas, who for a long time held that the onus is on religious people, when they speak in public, to translate what they have to say into common, non-religious terms.

There are a number of problems with this, I think. First, Western societies are not ‘secular’ in the sense of predominantly anti-religious or areligious. In fact, we comprise a plethora of different moral and metaphysical views, some atheist, others dogmatically religious, but most more or less agnostic, more or less religious. We are plural rather than ‘secular’ in the sense of being generally hostile or indifferent to religion.   

A second objection I have to the Habermasian view is that theological expressions are by no means uniquely baffling. Bafflement is a common feature of human conversation; the political left and right frequently baffle each other. Nonetheless, we ordinarily find ways of exploring viewpoints that initially nonplus us, to reach a measure of understanding, perhaps even to discover points of common ground. Many people who think and speak in theological or religious terms are perfectly capable of that—or at least as capable as anyone else.

For those reasons, I prefer Augustine’s concept of the secular to Habermas’s. For Augustine, the saeculum is the age between the Resurrection of Christ and its fulfilment at the End of Time. The ‘secular’ age is one of ambiguity and mixture, and a ‘secular’ society is a religiously and philosophically plural one, not one that is predominantly or systematically hostile to religion.

In such a plural society, it seems to me, religious believers should be free to speak their minds in their own terms—just like anyone else. They should be free to refer in public to such things as God, Jesus, the Bible, and the afterlife. That said, if they want to be understood, they will often have a lot of explaining to do.

John Rawls’ ‘Public Reason’

I find the thought of the leading English-speaking political philosopher, John Rawls, to be closer to the mark than Habermas’s. Rawls—who took a serious interest in theology as an undergraduate at Princeton—argues that ‘reasonable’ versions of humanism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam can all sign up to ‘public reason’ on their own terms. By ‘public reason’ he means a set of presuppositions and rules for governing public discussion, not least ‘fairness’. This is something, Rawls argues, that certain kinds of Christian theology—alongside certain other worldviews or ‘comprehensive doctrines’—can own and endorse. In that sense, ‘public reason’ does not require ‘reasonable’ Christians to leave their theology at home when they venture out into public, for ‘public reason’ is itself an expression of that theology—albeit not only of that theology.

So far, I agree with Rawls. Nonetheless, I think he underestimates the scope for divergence and disagreement within ‘public reason’. He is inclined to think that ‘public reason’, once endorsed by ‘reasonable’ worldviews, floats free of them, a common creed whose content is entirely independent of each of its supporting worldviews. I think that is a mistake. I think that ‘public reason’ contains difference, both in the sense of limiting it and including it. That is why I refer to it, not simply as a consensus, but as a tense consensus.

So, for example, suppose a common presupposition of ‘public reason’ is the idea of the dignity of the individual. A post-modern Romantic humanist will understand that dignity as consisting in the individual’s expression of the self’s inimitable genius. A Christian, however, seeing the human individual as a sinful creature, will suppose that there’s a lot in human selves that is not worthy of expression at all. Instead, what makes for the individual’s dignity is his investment in objectively given goods such as truth, justice, and beauty. For sure, this investment will express itself in a particular self’s inimitable manner. But the main point is this: for a Christian, human dignity consists in the individual’s responding to and expressing a moral order that is God-given. It does not consist in the individual staring into his own murky depths and bringing out whatever he finds there, willy nilly.

Rawls is correct that non-religious humanists and Christians share a common idea and value: the dignity of the individual. And that is good, for it limits disagreement. However, within those limits, it also contains difference and controversy. Rawls underestimated that. 

Theology in Public

As affirmed above, my view is that religious believers should feel free to make explicit references to God, Christ, the Parables, the Bible—as I have heard Anglican bishops do in the House of Lords. Some peers may be irritated by that, others might be baffled, but irritation and bafflement can stimulate thinking and rethinking, which is often no bad thing. And besides, anyone who claims to support a liberal society has no business resenting the expression of viewpoints he does not agree with. 

That said, how explicit or implicit theological expression should be depends on the circumstances. I am a Christian and a theologian trained to think in theological terms. I always intend to have my moral and political thinking derived from, or at least governed by, my Christian beliefs about God, Christ, the afterlife, etc. However, whether or how far I reveal the theological roots of my thinking depends on the nature and purpose of the gathering. In a church context, where I’ve been asked to talk about a Christian view of a certain topic, I will, of course, be explicit. But in a plural, public context where the topic is, say, the legalisation of assisted suicide, the surrender of the Chagos Island to Mauritius, or the banning of corporal punishment, I will make moral arguments that will not expose all or any of their theological roots. Why? Am I biting my theological tongue out of embarrassment? Not at all. I am merely reserving some of my thinking out of respect for my fellow citizens, who agreed to gather and discuss an ethical question, not to have a debate about the meaning and veracity of theological claims. I am merely respecting the purpose of our meeting. Should anyone tap me on the shoulder afterwards in the corridor or the bar and ask me to explain what my theology has to do with my ethical views, I would gladly tell them.  

All the same, the fact that I usually do not talk theologically in the public square does not mean that what I say there is not theologically informed. So, for example, my opposition to the legalisation of assisted suicide is shaped by my Christian view of human beings as finite and fallible creatures. This makes me realistically sensitive to likely practical result of implementing assisted suicide in a healthcare system constantly under financial pressure and run by harassed and impatient—and, very occasionally, malevolently sinful—creatures. In contrast, it seems to me that the proponents of assisted suicide are recklessly idealistic, assuming that healthcare professionals and relatives are gods and saints, not creatures and sinners. In a sense, then, when I express my views on assisted suicide, I am speaking theologically—or at least I am speaking out of my theological worldview—even when the theology is not apparent.     

A Theologian in the Culture Wars 

In recent years, to my surprise, I have found myself fighting in public for the right to free speech. I do so as a Christian and because of my theological anthropology. One consequence of that is that, whereas some other free speech advocates explain what they are contending for in terms of the individual’s right to self-expression, my rationale is different. A signal advantage of believing in God is that you are less inclined to mistake yourself for one. Believing as I do in God, I regard humans as creatures and not gods, sinners and not angels. Our understanding of what’s true and good and beautiful is often incomplete or distorted. So, in order to reach a better understanding, we need to be free to challenge and test reigning orthodoxies, because if those orthodoxies are false and if they misshape our schools and workplaces, and the policies of our police and government, then we all suffer. Therefore, we need the freedom to challenge prevailing views and call them to public account. We need the freedom to prophesy. In this way, my Christian theology inclines me to be liberal in the classical, Millian sense.

In addition to fighting for the right to free speech, I have also found myself fighting the corner of reason. Since religious believers are typically accused of being irrational, I take a lot of smug pleasure in playing such a role. I have found myself doing it mainly in relation to the public controversy over Britain’s colonial history, our involvement in slavery, and whether or not we owe reparations. One thing I have observed of the ‘progressive’ advocates of ‘decolonisation’ and slavery reparations is that their claims typically run out way ahead of the facts, evidence, and reason. Evidently, personal and political passions so possess them that they are driven beyond reason. And these passions render them absolutely unfree to do justice to critics such as me. So instead, they resort to personal abuse, smearing, misrepresentation, and political manipulation. Rather than reason, they resort to unscrupulous power. They behave like little tyrannical gods, and they behave like that because they are driven, possessed, … demonic.  

Observe: in order to explain the phenomenon of ‘progressive’ irrationality and illiberality, I have recourse to spiritual and theological terms: ‘gods’, ‘demonic’. And at the end of my books on colonialism and reparations, and in my next one on the culture wars, I am quite explicit about that. I turn explicitly theological because those terms illuminate something that other terms just do not.       

Theology in Virtuous Practice

But often, as I have said, the theology is, while still effective, nonetheless implicit. I think that one of the most important contributions that theologically-formed Christians can make to public controversy over colonial history—or racism or transgender identity or whatever—is to develop, exercise, and model virtues that are vital in keeping controversy civil and reasonable. These are virtues that make sense if you understand human beings to be creatures and sinners who find their fulfilment in aligning themselves with, and being answerable to, a moral order they did not create but is given to them.

These are virtues such as: courage in the face of ideas that are alien and threatening; strict justice in representing the views of others; charity in construing their ambiguities, preferring the strongest rather than the weakest possibility; docility in admitting the possibility that they might have something to teach; humility in admitting the possibility of correction by them;  forbearance and temperance in the face of the unfairness and provocation that opponents may perpetrate; and above all, such a love for the truth that one keeps on saying it—prophesying it—in the face of hostility.  

These virtues are not uniquely Christian. One can find many of them endorsed in Jewish, Muslim, and Confucian traditions. On the other hand, some are explicitly repudiated by the likes of Aristotle and Nietzsche, who did not recognise humility and compassion, respectively, as virtuous at all. So, my list of virtues is characteristically Christian and, as such, it is relatively distinctive. In general, my view is that authenticity is what is important, not distinctiveness. After all, how distinctive we are depends entirely on what issue is at stake and with whom we are being compared. As I have long said of myself, whether I am ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ depends entirely on what we are talking about and whom I am standing next to. Distinctiveness is relative.

Nevertheless, if the virtues I have mentioned are not uniquely Christian, they are rarely talked about in contemporary Western culture, where rights-talk so dominates as to push almost every other kind of moral vocabulary off the table. That is not to say that no one intuits virtue or exercises it. But it is to say that talk about it is so repressed that it is difficult to name, and being difficult to name, it is difficult to identify, communicate, and promote. The result is that vice flourishes unopposed.

Therefore, by developing, displaying, and naming intellectual and social virtues in the midst of no-holds-barred culture wars, theologically informed Christians have a very important role to play in giving voice to them and reminding their fellow citizens of their importance. In so doing, they will contribute to the vital task of defending and promoting a generously, responsibly, rationally liberal culture among us—and of preserving us from political bloodshed.

Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford.