My Steady Drift Toward Calvinism

I've been in the midst of a bit of a theological crisis since arriving here, where I've been drifting all over the board. It's been a little bizarre. I've always considered myself a mild Calvinist insofar as it has made logical sense to me that God would have some idea of who was and wasn't "saved." If you accept He is omniscient, it's about the only conclusion that makes any sense. However, since arriving in Egypt I've found myself more sympathetic to Calvinist notions of sin, which I didn't expect in the least.

I've read quite a bit of Reinhold Niebuhr since arriving. For those unfamiliar, he is the one who came up with the serenity prayer that is displayed prominently in many hospitals around the country nowadays. I find him fascinating as an intellectual because of the radical changes he made within his belief systems over the course of his life. He went from a communist to a fervent supporter of Israel and the American use of power abroad, which has mirrored (though to a far greater extent) my own shift from far left to moderate left (though with moderately hawkish foreign policy views), so I feel an element of kinship with him in that regard. I started with reading The Irony of American History, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It challenged the notion of American exceptionalism, which I've always had my doubts about, and argued that it can be outrightly dangerous to the maintenance of American power. But on a personal level, Niebuhr has had a profound effect on my beliefs about mankind.

At least since arriving at college, I've been very distrustful of notions that assume humans will act with anyone in mind but themselves. I've moved from being sympathetic to the Lockean tabula rasa view of mankind, which states man is only corrupted by society, not innately, to believing there is something fundamentally "wrong" with mankind. Fromme identifies the fundamental struggle of mankind as being rooted in the realization all men experience that there is a dichotomy between the mind and instinct that causes them to ponder their existence in a way no other species does. Our inability to reconcile our human and animal natures complicates our lives beyond all compare and makes it near-impossible to find grounding in the real world. Having personally struggled with this disconnect between my mind and the reality that surrounds it, I tend to be sympathetic to Fromme's view. And deriving from this is the notion that the only way I can mentally reconcile these twin natures of man is via something that exists outside the self, whether it be God or a sense of purpose. In spite of my professed faith, I do not feel as though I have bridged this gap and still feel a disconnect between myself and the world around me. Thus, I have accepted the notion of "religion," again in Fromme's sense that religion constitutes devotion to something outside the self that may not be divine and may not require faith, as a fundamental facet of my existence.

This Frommean notion of religion has combined with the classical Calvinist notion of man's nature that has led me to believe in God more strongly than before. I believe man is evil, though not always intentionally, and not always in a way that is "evil" in the sense we traditionally think about it. Lars Svendsen argues in A Philosophy of Evil that because of events like the Holocaust, we are prone to differentiating between "bad" and "evil" so as to absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions. While not advocating a black-and-white perspective on evil (in fact, doing the opposite), Svendsen seeks to provide us a context in which we can discuss the evils of daily life. By accepting that I can behave evilly, I can thus seek to expunge said evil from my life by acknowledging it for what it is and struggling against it. This notion I do not dispute at all and have fully accepted it as a part of my daily life.

What I am currently struggling with is Niebuhr's extension of this acceptance of evil, that being that man is fundamentally evil and incapable of good. Niebuhr does not argue as Calvin did that man is incapable of good acts. Niebuhr instead argues that man can perform good acts, though these actions lead to pride, which is the loftiest of sins. Thus, even acts of charity can devolve into sin when they lead to excessive self-confidence, which he argues they inevitably do. While I do not necessarily think on the individual level these actions lead to pride, within institutions they can evolve into a sort of culture that is dangerous. This is alluded to by Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and the plethora of critiques of empire. A sense of exceptionalism, which is developed in any organization that feels it is doing a particularly divine good within the world, leads to decline and immorality. Thus, institutions are incapable of true moral good (in the long-run). Human existence is thus rendered brutal, and only via God can true morality be attained, and even then not necessarily (or at all) in daily life. God is thus solely a means to salvation in this sense. While I absolutely agree with Niebuhr's critique of hubris, I do not yet know if I believe that institutions cannot do any good in the moral sense of the word, and even if I accept this notion, if I believe institutions are incapable of practical good.

This blog post came out of nowhere and is basically just me sorting out thoughts on a topic I'll probably never sort out and will probably think differently about tomorrow. So in sum, I have no idea whether or not I believe good men must gird themselves against evil at every turn, perhaps committing evil to do so, or whether or not man himself is fundamentally evil. I suppose I'll have a better idea when I finish up Moral Man and Immoral Society.