Disturbing Revelation : Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible [1 ed.] 9780826271969, 9780826218360

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Disturbing Revelation

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Disturbing Revelation Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible

John J. Ranieri

University of Missouri Press

Columbia and London

Copyright © 2009 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ranieri, John J., 1956– Disturbing revelation : Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible / John J. Ranieri. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Ranieri shows how Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin drew on biblical texts in their philosophies to explore the relationship between religion, politics, and violence while maintaining a deep ambivalence about the Bible’s vision of life and its influence on politics and finally compares their thought with that of René Girard”— Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-8262-1836-0 (alk. paper) 1. Religion and politics. 2. Violence—Religious aspects. 3. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. Strauss, Leo. 5. Voegelin, Eric, 1901–1985. 6. Girard, René, 1923– I. Title. BL65.P7R36 2009 220.6092'2—dc22 2008048475

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Design and composition: Jennifer Cropp Printer and binder: Integrated Book Technology, Inc. Typefaces: Minion and Bodoni

In memory of my mother, Marion Haring Ranieri, who gave of herself as did the widow in the Gospel:

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” —Luke 21:1–4

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

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1. Beyond “Scripture”: The Quest for Biblical Origins

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2. Transcendence and Imbalance: The Ambiguous Legacy of the Bible

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3. Athens versus Jerusalem

103

4. Metastasis and Modernity

131

5. The Triumph of the Biblical Orientation

158

Conclusion: The Bible, Philosophy, and Violence

186

Bibliography

249

Index

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Acknowledgments

In July 2004, I participated in a weeklong seminar with René Girard held at Stanford University. The seminar was organized by Peter Thiel and Robert Hamerton-Kelly. It was the best academic experience I have ever had, and in some sense this book continues some of the discussions we had there.1 I am deeply appreciative of the encouragement I have received from James Alison, Gil Bailie, Sonja Bardelang, Andrew McKenna, Jozef Niewiadomski, and Nikolaus Wandinger, among the people I have met at gatherings of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. A special mention goes to Wolfgang Palaver for his advice, insight, hospitality, and friendship. I am particularly indebted to René Girard for his graciousness and interest in my work; he and his wife, Martha, have been most encouraging and welcoming. From my graduate-school days until now (and hopefully for some time to come), Fred Lawrence and Pat Byrne from Boston College continue to be the best of mentors. Most of this book was written during my sabbatical from January to December 2007. I thank Howard McGinn, Dean of Libraries at Seton Hall University, for allowing me the use of a scholar’s study, where I could work without distraction. Of course, sabbatical is a time to enjoy life as well, so I want to express my gratitude to my friends at Berta’s—Peter, Sandra, and Gepy Bernstein; and Joe and Peter. Working with the staff at the University of Missouri Press has been a pleasure. Special thanks go to Gloria Thomas for her editorial insight and suggestions. Finally, I am especially grateful to my family (Chris, Yvonne, Andrea, and Adam) and to Nigel for their love and support. 1. The papers from the seminar have been published as Politics and Apocalypse, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly.

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Disturbing Revelation

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Introduction

The question is sometimes raised whether those professing belief in the Bible as the revealed word of God are truly capable of doing philosophy. A question less frequently asked is whether philosophers are capable of doing justice to the Bible. Behind the first question is the concern that religious faith may interfere with the ability to be critical and objective. The second question suggests that philosophers may be inherently limited in their ability to understand the biblical text. This can be understood in two ways. One would be to assume that to the extent philosophers are not animated by the spirit of faith they cannot understand a document written in that spirit. According to this view, the Bible discloses its meaning only to those who accept its teaching as divine revelation. But it may also be the case that apart from any consideration of religious faith, there is present in the biblical writings an intelligibility that eludes philosophy. In other words, the Bible as a text accessible to all (and not just to those who approach it in faith) may embody a horizon foreign to that of the philosopher. If so, then philosophical attempts to interpret the biblical text will run the risk of consistently missing the point. For religious believers fearful of philosophy, and for practitioners of philosophy dismissive of religion and the study of religious texts, such questions are not worth considering. But for Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin these questions were inescapable. Both men realized that it is impossible to address the central concerns of political philosophy without coming to terms with the Bible. Their efforts to do this constitute the main focus of this book. In exploring the question I attempt to circumscribe the topic as much as possible. This is not a volume on Strauss’s treatment of Judaism, or Voegelin’s treatment of Christianity. Although obviously related, these are much broader topics than the specific issue of the use of the Bible in their thought. Also, in the case of Strauss, I am primarily interested in those writings in which he speaks about the Bible in his own voice, rather 1

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than his interpretations of how other thinkers understand the text. As much as possible, I avoid the question as to whether his understanding of Maimonides’, Machiavelli’s, or Spinoza’s use of the Bible is accurate. Nor do I presume that he shares the views of the authors whose biblical interpretations he cites. Because Strauss so frequently assumes the mantle of a commentator, it is often very difficult to tell when he is simply echoing the ideas of the author he is considering and when he is speaking for himself. I try to err on the side of caution, and I hesitate to attribute to Strauss the ideas about the Bible that he discovers in the work of others. For example, unless the context indicates otherwise, I will not assume that Strauss’s understanding of the prophets is identical to the one that he attributes to Maimonides in Philosophy and Law and elsewhere. However, where Strauss’s analysis of biblical texts appears to coincide with the perspective he attributes to another author, readers are on firmer ground in concluding that the author in question echoes Strauss’s own understanding. Even in these cases, though, in lieu of an explicit statement from Strauss indicating his agreement with the author to whom his comments refer, the evidence that Strauss shares the views he discusses is at best indirect. Nor do I consider the issue of Strauss’s or Voegelin’s personal faith to be particularly important for purposes of this study. With both men there has been ongoing speculation as to where each stood with regard to his ancestral religious tradition (for Strauss, Judaism; for Voegelin, Christianity). This consideration is relevant if one assumes that only those with faith can interpret the Bible. But I make no such assumption here. Reading the Bible as a member of a community of faith may allow the text to be encountered with additional layers of meaning and richness; it does not, however, cancel out or invalidate readings on the anthropological, literary, philosophical, or cultural levels. Independently of whether a reader believes the Bible to be the word of God, it can be seen as a collection of writings that can be studied by those seeking to discover whether it makes any sense, either as a whole or in its various parts. The issue then becomes one of trying to discern the intelligibility within the biblical data. In this regard the analyses of Strauss and Voegelin are worth considering regardless of where each man stood in terms of religious faith. Since first encountering their writings in graduate school, I have learned a great deal from both Strauss and Voegelin. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Voegelin, and in revised form it was later published as Eric Voegelin and the Good Society. Rereading his work in the course of writing this book has been illuminating—in some ways it has confirmed my earlier evaluations and criticisms of his thought, but I also found myself gaining a deeper admiration for the astonishing range of his thinking. In particular I was struck again and

Introduction

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again by his exceptional ability in analyzing texts that witness to experiences of transcendence. At the time I wrote my earlier book on Voegelin, his History of Political Ideas had not yet been published. I find it to be an extraordinary work, filled with numerous examples of Voegelin’s skill in articulating the essential issues behind the texts and ideas he examines. As a graduate student, I found Strauss’s understanding of the relationship between premodern and modern thought to be fascinating, and his presentation of the three waves of modernity has left a lasting impression on my own approach to this period. In recent years I have returned to the study of his work, only to discover how much richer and more difficult it is than I originally thought. This book is not, strictly speaking, a comparative study of Strauss and Voegelin, although I will often point out where they differ and what the consequences of those differences are for their study of the Bible. Chapter 1 sets out what might be best described as their methodological approaches to the text. Chapters 2 and 3 explore what Voegelin and Strauss take to be the essential teaching of the Bible, as well as their profound ambivalence toward this teaching. Because the crisis of modernity (as they understand it) is of central importance for Strauss and Voegelin, Chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on their respective understandings of how the Bible has contributed to the formation of the modern world. Readers will quickly notice that the chapters on Voegelin are longer than those devoted to Strauss. This should not be taken to indicate any judgment with regard to the relative importance of the two philosophers. The fact is that Voegelin wrote far more extensively about the Bible than did Strauss, so more space is needed to do justice to his analyses. The concluding chapter brings the thought of Strauss and Voegelin into conversation with that of René Girard. When I was introduced to Girard’s thought several years ago, I was then and continue to be struck by its capacity to demonstrate the anthropological and cultural relevance of the biblical text. The theoretical perspective he brings to the study of the Bible has been especially useful in helping me to articulate some of my criticisms of Strauss’s and Voegelin’s interpretations. This is not a matter of “proving” Strauss and Voegelin wrong and Girard right. But it is an entirely legitimate enterprise to raise questions with regard to how well a given approach is able to make sense of the disparate collection of materials that has come down to us as the Bible. My hope is that bringing Girard’s insights to bear on the work of Strauss and Voegelin will prompt readers to at least consider these questions. Finally, I recognize that even the use of the term Bible may be problematic for some. The Bible accepted by Jews is not the same as that accepted by Christians, and within Christianity itself there is disagreement as to which

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writings are to be considered canonical. For my purposes I will generally use Bible in the widest sense, as encompassing what for Jews is the Bible and what for Christians includes the Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament writings. I adopt this usage primarily for two reasons. First there is the fact that, regardless of one’s religious commitment, this particular collection of texts in its designation as the Bible has had a profoundly formative and constitutive effect on Western civilization. Its cultural influence transcends the boundaries of those communities for whom it represents the word of God. My second reason for speaking of the Bible as a book is that, despite the diversity of the writings out of which it has been formed, I believe there is a fundamental continuity of meaning among these disparate sources, enabling interpreters to speak legitimately of a biblical teaching or a biblical message. The terms biblical tradition, biblical morality, biblical influence, and so forth, will appear frequently throughout this work, so it may be useful to offer some sense of what this might mean. I do not think it is especially controversial to note how central to the Bible is a belief in a beneficent creator god who acts in history to save the human race and through this providential design bring humanity to its ultimate fulfillment. This plan took shape as God liberated Israel from bondage in Egypt, entered into a covenant with this people, gave them the Law, and called them to serve the Lord and to be a light to the nations. The prophets of Israel repeatedly reminded their people of their responsibilities before God. They warned of impending disaster when the covenant was forgotten and offered visions of final redemption to sustain their people in seemingly hopeless times. Israel’s sages reflected upon the paradoxes of the human condition and offered wisdom in light of their understanding of the divine. In the writings that constitute the New Testament, Israel’s hope is understood as having been fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Out of this conviction a community was formed whose members are dedicated to spreading and living out the gospel they have received. This, in brief, is the basic narrative of the Bible. Regardless of how one understands the canonical status of this collection of writings, they can be said to revolve thematically (and in varying degrees) around notions of creation, redemption, and community. Within the Bible these notions may be distinguished, but they are rarely separated—the God who redeems is understood as the God who creates, and who calls people into a community of worship. In the experience of biblical peoples as recorded in the texts they have bequeathed to us, it is redemption that comes first. Aware of themselves as saved by God, they come together in covenant and fellowship, and, in the context of their communal worship and life together, they reflect

Introduction

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upon the utter gratuitousness of the divine creativity and goodness. Their confidence in God’s faithfulness becomes the source of their hope for the future, leading them to look toward the day when God’s gracious sovereignty will exercise its rule over all human hearts and minds. The symbols of “the Kingdom of God” and “the Age to Come” give expression to this hope, and impart a deeply eschatological character to many biblical writings: The dynamic, forward-looking nature of biblical community eventually found an appropriate form of expression in eschatology, a perspective regarding history as being directed purposefully toward a final goal by God. . . . [The community] oriented its life toward God’s future, as the people called to participate in the inbreaking of a divine order into the imperfect structures of this world. . . . The most fundamental characteristic of such a notion of community thus seems to be based on the pattern of divine initiative and human response.1

It is also clear that the human response envisioned by the communities that produced the biblical texts is not directed solely toward a realm beyond the limitations of space and time; the Kingdom of God is both present and “not yet.”2 When Jesus proclaims the Kingdom, he is drawing upon the heritage of Israel: Jesus was quite in tune with his time in speaking of an age to come in contrast with the present age. . . . In this connection we must not think of “the world to come” as personal immortality, Greek-style. It was not even as simple as life after death in a bodily resurrection of the just. It was more the assurance based on hope that, since God was faithful to his word, God would bring those who lived faithfully under the law to fruition. The divine fidelity demanded it. This age or world was obviously not the scene of perfect justice. But the Lord had vowed justice. Therefore, death would somehow be overcome and a new era be inaugurated.3

This dimension of biblical thought will play an important part in the discussions that follow; here I would call attention to Michael Walzer’s insight into the possible relevance of this theme for politics:

1. Paul Hanson, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible, 3. 2. Hanson, The People Called, 10–29, 395–426. See also Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 62–79, 96–108; Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom, 53–57, 217–38; and Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus, 129–73. 3. Gerard S. Sloyan, Jesus in Focus: A Life in Its Setting, 59. See also Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life.

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Since late medieval or early modern times, there has existed in the West a characteristic way of thinking about political change, a pattern that we commonly impose upon events, a story that we repeat to one another. The story has roughly this form: oppression, liberation, social contract, political struggle, new society (danger of restoration). . . . This isn’t a story told everywhere; it isn’t a universal pattern; it belongs to the West, more particularly to Jews and Christians in the West, and its source, its original version, is the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.4

The relationship between the biblical vision and political philosophy will take up much of what follows. At this point it may be well to note a certain degree of wariness, evident in many biblical texts, toward any attempt to divinize the order of society. In marked contrast to Romulus, whose slaying of Remus is justified as a necessary step in the founding of Rome, Cain, the founder of the first city according to the Bible, is a murderer whose deed is in no way excused (Gen. 4:8–17). The Exodus is a departure from the oppressive environment of an Egyptian civilization infused with Pharaoh’s divinity (Exod. 1–15). An outspoken and influential element in ancient Israel strongly resists the institution of the monarchy, fearful that God’s people will become just like the other nations (1 Sam. 8). The prophets chastise both Israel’s leaders and its people, bemoaning the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable in the midst of the power and affluence of the kingdom (Isa. 3:13–15; Amos 6:1, 3–6; Mic. 3:1– 4). Jesus displays a remarkable indifference to political authority, an attitude that to varying degrees is passed on to the communities that continue his mission (Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26; John 19:8–12). Speaking of the earliest Christian communities, Sheldon Wolin observes: In the first place, the Christian political attitude expressed the mentality of a group that regarded itself as being outside of the political order. Irrespectively of how often the early leaders pleaded for the faithful to obey their political rulers or how strongly they insisted upon the sanctity of social obligations, they could not dispel the impression of an unbridgeable distance between the point from which Christians surveyed political affairs and the actual locus of affairs. . . . What is fundamental to an understanding of the entire range of Christian political attitudes was that they issued from a group that regarded itself as already in a society, one of far greater purity and higher purpose. . . . Thus it was the early Christians who, for the first time, converted disengagement into a fundamental challenge to political society. In place of the protesting individual Cynic or Stoic, the political order faced an unprecedented situation where the politically 4. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 133.

Introduction

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uncommitted had been gathered into a determinate society of their own and where political disengagement went hand in hand with the rediscovery of community, albeit one pitched to a transcendent key.5

The biblical narrative implies a certain way of life, and it is in this sense that we can speak of biblical morality or ethics. From the earliest to the latest strata of the biblical writings we find an emphasis on righteousness, compassion, and worship. A concern for social justice permeates the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Micah’s summary of the biblical way of life is justly famous: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8).6 In particular, there is in the Bible a decided tendency to depict God as taking the side of victims, with the expectation that God’s followers will do the same. This is not to ignore those instances in the Bible where violence is imputed to God or where people engage in violence under the belief that they are executing a divine command.7 It is, however, to point out a prominent trajectory within the Bible as a whole in the direction of an increased identification with the plight of victims. This concern can be found in every major section of the Bible. In the Torah it is obvious in the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, but it permeates all five books and the entire Hebrew Bible. The prophets regularly denounce those whose maltreatment of the poor, the widow, and the orphan transgresses both the letter and the spirit of the covenant. The Psalms give voice to the cries of individuals suffering unjustly, and the protagonist of the book of Job is a model of a victim asserting his innocence in the face of the accusations of the crowd. In the New Testament, the identification of God with the suffering victim could not be made more explicit than it is in the Passion accounts. These are not isolated passages of secondary importance, but exemplary texts reflective of the Bible’s central message of salvation.8 I will return to this theme with greater specificity in my Conclusion, but for now I would mention how, if René Girard is correct, the biblical concern for victims is at the very center of the moral thinking of the modern Western world. My intention in these opening remarks has been to suggest possible ways in which it is meaningful to speak of a “biblical” message or a “biblical” morality. 5. Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision, 89, 92. 6. See Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism, 127-59. 7. Perhaps the most detailed treatment of this topic is found in Raymund Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible. 8. See René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 103–36, 161–69.

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To speak of the “biblical” is to recognize how, despite the tremendous diversity present within the collection of texts designated as the Bible, there exists within and among these texts a notable commonality and continuity of vision. Consequently, I am very much of the view that the idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition is no abstraction. Why I believe this will hopefully become apparent in the course of what follows.

1 Beyond “Scripture” The Quest for Biblical Origins

Strauss and Voegelin approach the Bible with a spirit of inquiry that respects the fact that the text is held to be a source of divinely revealed truth for Jews and Christians. However, in light of their views on what it means to be a philosopher, they refuse to be bound or limited by such a claim. Neither man comes to the biblical text with an attitude of faith seeking understanding. This is not meant as a criticism, but rather as a partial description of how they see their work. Strauss goes in search of biblical meanings that have been obscured and covered over by centuries of misinterpretation, but he remains agnostic as to whether the meanings so recovered reflect anything more than the self-understanding of the communities that produced them. By contrast, Voegelin seeks to recover the experiences of transcendence that manifest themselves through the texts. If he is skeptical about the notion of “Scripture,” it is because he fears that the process of canonization of particular texts tends to replace openness to divine reality with a belief in doctrines. While both Strauss and Voegelin wrestle with the meaning of the biblical text, the use of the term Bible does not seem to be a controversial matter for either of them. Voegelin’s references to the Bible indicate that he accepts it in the Christian sense as the collection of writings comprising the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. He also tends to use Bible interchangeably with Scripture. More often than not, however, he does not use either term when discussing biblical material, preferring to speak of “Israel,” “Christianity,”

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“gospel movement,” and “Judaeo-Christian” or “Israelite-Christian” orbit. The reasons for this will be clarified later in this chapter. With Strauss, matters are more complicated. He sometimes uses the Bible as a substitute for Jerusalem, understood as the great alternative to Athens in Western civilization. According to this usage, Jerusalem and Athens symbolize the Bible and Greek philosophy, respectively.1 Around the same time he writes of how the “issue of traditional Judaism versus philosophy is identical with the issue of Jerusalem versus Athens,” thereby at least suggesting that he equates the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of traditional Judaism. Elsewhere he refers to the idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition as blurring and concealing “grave differences.” However, speaking as part of an interreligious dialogue, Strauss cites both Judaism and Christianity as examples of biblical faith.2 Strauss’s terminology is fluid, and appears to vary according to his intended audience. In a 1924 essay in a journal concerned primarily with intra-Jewish issues, he clearly distinguishes the Bible from the New Testament. He does the same twelve years later in his article “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” first published in Revue des Études Juives. However, he is not averse to using the Christian designation Old Testament when referring to the Hebrew Bible—in his late work Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy he does this several times. In Natural Right and History (1950) Strauss mentions the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible in the same paragraph.3 On the basis of the texts he cites and the manner in which he frames the central issues, it is fairly clear that when he speaks of the Bible it is more often than not the Hebrew Bible he has in mind, even when it is not explicitly stated. Exact or consistent use of terminology with reference to the Bible is of secondary concern for Strauss; what is crucial is his understanding of what the Bible stands for. This is borne out when we take note of the amount of space Strauss actually accords to the study of specific biblical writings. Compared to Voegelin’s, Strauss’s efforts in this regard are meager. Voegelin’s most extended and detailed treatment of biblical texts occurs in his monumental Israel and Revelation (1956), a five-hundred-page tome 1. Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,” 104; Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections,” 377. In the latter essay Strauss speaks of Jerusalem and Athens in terms of the difference between “biblical faith” and “Greek thought,” rather than the Bible and Greek philosophy. 2. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 20; Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” 31; Leo Strauss, “Perspectives on the Good Society,” 432. 3. Leo Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” 156; Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 138, 142, 178–79; Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 81.

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primarily devoted to a philosophical exploration of the Hebrew Bible. In addition there is a brief discussion of Israel in his History of Political Ideas (1939–1954).4 Voegelin’s work on the New Testament is much less thorough. He abandoned his original plan to include a volume on “Christianity and empire” in his multivolume Order and History (of which Israel and Revelation is the first volume). Instead we have two chapters dealing with New Testament Christianity in his History of Political Ideas; an essay, “The Gospel and Culture” (1971); and a chapter in The Ecumenic Age (the fourth volume of Order and History) titled “The Pauline Vision of the Resurrected” (1974). References to Christianity can be found throughout Voegelin’s work, but the aforementioned texts are the places where he offers his most concentrated treatment of the New Testament. By comparison, Strauss wrote just two essays analyzing biblical texts—“On the Interpretation of Genesis” (1957) and “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections” (1967). The focus of both of these essays is the book of Genesis. The “Genesis” essay is devoted almost exclusively to the creation accounts in the first two chapters, while “Jerusalem and Athens” follows the narrative into the time of the patriarchs, with a brief reflection on the prophets in the concluding section. The Bible as the antithesis to philosophy/Athens figures largely in “Reason and Revelation” (1948) and “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization” (1952). Strauss also deals with the Bible in an indirect way through his book and essays on Spinoza’s Bible science, his writings on Machiavelli, and his treatment of prophetism in Maimonides.5 It is noteworthy that Strauss hardly ever speaks in his own voice about the New Testament—as far as I have been able to determine, there seems to be no extended treatment of any New Testament text in his work. If the scattered references to the New Testament were removed from his writings, his treatment of the Bible would remain almost entirely unaffected. Of course, the question arises as to the reasons for this neglect. One possible explanation might be that Strauss believed that the New Testament has nothing to say about the realm of politics. But the opening chapters of Genesis do not directly address questions 4. Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 1, Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity, 108–19. 5. Leo Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 359–76; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 377–405; Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 141–80; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 87–136; Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion; Leo Strauss, “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” 181–234; Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” 140–72; Leo Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza and His Precursors,” 173–200; Leo Strauss, History of Political Philosophy, 296–317; Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law.

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of political order either, and yet they are accorded the most extensive analysis that Strauss brings to any biblical text. If the presence of material lending itself to political interpretation were the criterion for Strauss’s selection, one might consider the book of Exodus a more likely choice. The presence of explicitly social or political themes in biblical books does not seem to have been a factor in Strauss’s selection of biblical texts for analysis. Nor is it plausible that the absence of the New Testament in Strauss’s philosophy is a consequence of the fact that, since he was a Jew, the Christian scriptures had for him no canonical status. In a scholar’s view, one’s own religious tradition or affiliation does not determine the materials to be investigated—that determination comes about on the basis of the relevant questions regarding the subject matter under discussion. For someone like Strauss, for whom questions about the meaning and future of Western civilization were all-consuming, the omission of any serious discussion of the New Testament is striking. Apart from its status as revelation for Christians, the New Testament is an inescapable, constitutive element in Western culture. Ignoring it when reflecting upon that culture is puzzling, to say the least. Voegelin makes the same point in an epistolary exchange (1952–1953) with phenomenologist Alfred Schutz. Reacting to Voegelin’s New Science of Politics, Schutz expresses his concern that Voegelin seems to take his stand “wholly on Christian doctrine.” In his response Voegelin makes an important clarification: “Essentially my concern with Christianity has no religious grounds at all. . . . Whatever one may think of Christianity, it cannot be treated as negligible. A general history of ideas must be capable of treating the phenomenon of Christianity with no less theoretical care than that devoted to Plato or Hegel.”6 Elsewhere he makes the same point with even greater emphasis: The visions of the disciples in the days after the death of Jesus are the fundamental evocative acts of the Christian community. Historians of political ideas in many cases do not mention them, believing apparently that the visions belong to the field of “religion” and have nothing to do with “politics.” The belief is so pitiful that it is not worth any further argument. The Christian community has been, for the better part of two thousand years, the most important political force of the Western world, and the evocative acts that created it are the basis of all later political evocations that occurred in Western history—as far as it is Christian. To omit the visions of the disciples would be equivalent to an omission of the Declaration of Independence from a history of American political ideas.7

6. Eric Voegelin, “On Christianity,” 443, 449–50. 7. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:163–64.

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If Voegelin is correct, then Strauss’s neglect of the New Testament is of great significance. In Chapter 5 I will discuss in greater detail why I believe Strauss’s silence is meaningful. For now I would simply point out that this silence is of a piece with his reticence toward the entire prophetic-messianic tradition of the Hebrew Bible. To the extent that Christianity represents an offspring of these traditions, he avoids it. It is important, though, not to suggest that the difference between Strauss and Voegelin with regard to the New Testament is that Voegelin uncritically embraces its message while Strauss resists it. As I hope will become clear in the course of this book, the New Testament is a problematic text for both men—they differ primarily in how they deal with the problem. Strauss largely ignores the New Testament; in Voegelin’s case, his selective reading and the significant omissions in his treatment of New Testament writings prompt the question whether his analysis has the effect of altering the essential message of these texts beyond recognition.

Biblical Criticism: Useful Tool or Distorting Lens? On the issue of the usefulness of modern biblical criticism (or “Bible science,” as Strauss prefers to call it), both Strauss and Voegelin offer qualified acceptance joined to frequently sharp criticism. According to Voegelin, “When dealing with concrete problems, we have to rely on the results of Old Testament science; and even when the interpretation, in light of our principles, has to go ways of its own, the way moves through a field that is pre-empted by competent and astute scholarship.” Strauss has, perhaps, greater reservations, but accepts modern critical methods nonetheless. He believes that all those “who cannot be orthodox . . . must accept the principle of the historical critical study of the Bible.” Coming to the biblical text, he will “not take issue with the findings and even the premises of biblical criticism.” It is possible to do this because with regard to their points of departure, traditional and historical-critical approaches are similar: “We shall start from the uppermost layer—from what is first for us, even though it may not be the first simply. We shall start, that is, where both the traditional and the historical study of the Bible necessarily start. In thus proceeding we avoid the compulsion to make an advance decision in favor of Athens against Jerusalem.”8 To the extent that modern critical methods help to remove any encrustations that may have accumulated on 8. Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation, 190; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 380, 381–82.

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the biblical materials, Strauss and Voegelin view the methods favorably. At the same time, they both are quite critical of modern biblical criticism when its own philosophical presuppositions get in the way of this process. On this point they both are wary of the influence of Christian (especially Protestant) theology on the historical-critical method. Voegelin notes how, with regard to the study of the Hebrew Bible, “the debates are burdened to this day with the conditions of their theological origins.”9 Strauss contends that the modern science of religion reflects its Christian European origins and that the spread of this science profoundly affects and threatens traditional Jewish interpretation of the Bible. In the “new thinking” absorbed by a number of significant modern Jewish thinkers, Strauss sees “a secularized version of the biblical faith as interpreted by Christian theology.”10 From Voegelin’s perspective, the historical-critical method can be useful in the degree to which it deconstructs canonical “Scripture” and allows us greater access to the experiences that engendered the texts. Unfortunately, in his opinion, the method often exhibits an indifference to the deeper philosophical penetration of the biblical materials, and its deconstructive impulse never reaches the level where meaning emerges from experience.11 Voegelin criticizes the biblical scholarship of his time for, on the one hand, breaking down the biblical text into a series of fragments classified by their forms and disengaged from their engendering experiences; and, on the other hand, understanding the larger narratives from a modern literary perspective, where they are thought of as “books” with single “authors.” Voegelin is always interested in getting behind the text to the experiences that find articulation through the written word. In the case of the Bible, he is emphatic that the true object of analysis is not the text itself, but the experiences of transcendence that led to its creation. These experiences are inseparably intertwined with the concrete events of history in which believers worked out their relationship with the transcendent God. Voegelin considers it fruitless and foolish, when considering the experience of Israel, to try to separate a “pragmatic” from a “religious” history. Instead, he prefers to speak of a “paradigmatic” history that is no less true for its reluctance to carefully distinguish between “what really happened” and the interpretation of the same events as encounters with the divine: 9. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:190, 330. 10. Leo Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” 108; Leo Strauss, “Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion,” 153. 11. See, for example, his criticism of Charles Guignebert’s approach to the Gospels in History of Political Ideas, 1:151–52.

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We shall start from the observation . . . that Israelite sacred history cannot be discarded as unimportant even in pragmatic history, since by virtue of its possession Israel became the peculiar people, a new type of political society on the pragmatic plane. . . . Through the leap in being, that is, through the discovery of transcendent being as the source of order in man and society, Israel constituted itself the carrier of a new truth in history. . . . The constitution of Israel as a carrier of the truth, as an identifiable and enduring social body in history, could be achieved only through the creation of a paradigmatic record. . . . This record is the Old Testament. Precisely when its dubiousness as a pragmatic record is recognized, the narrative reveals its function in creating a people in politics and history. Hence there is an intimate connection between the paradigmatic narrative of the Old Testament and the very existence of Israel, though it is not the connection that exists between a narrative and the events which it relates.12

For Voegelin, the formative experiences constituting the people Israel are the proper object of a philosophical attempt to understand the Bible. In the previously cited letter to Schutz, Voegelin follows his remarks on Christianity with the observation that “philosophizing seems to me to be in essence the interpretation of experiences of transcendence.” Such experiences, though, admit of varying degrees of differentiation on the part of their recipients. If it is always the case that “God and man, world and society form a primordial community of being,” this fourfold structure of reality may be differentiated with varying degrees of clarity in different societies at various times in history.13 Such differentiation involves distinguishing and clarifying the relationships among these partners in being. Voegelin understands this process of differentiation as a fundamental constitutive element of the historical process. His attention to biblical materials springs from his conviction that we discover in them highly differentiated articulations of the transcendent dimension of reality. The analysis of experience, differentiation, and consciousness would become and remain the central focus of Voegelin’s later work. As his theory evolved, so would his understanding of the Bible. In particular, as Voegelin explored the contours of experiences of transcendence, he would become increasingly insistent that despite notable differences in differentiation, there is also a recognizable “equivalence” among them. This would have profound implications for his understanding of the relationships between the pairs reason/revelation, philosophy/theology, and Athens/Jerusalem. 12. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:196–200, 164–65. 13. Voegelin, “On Christianity,” 450; Voegelin, Order and History, 1:39.

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Voegelin was also conscious of the risks involved in bringing a theoretical framework such as his own to bear on biblical materials. For example, in Israel and Revelation he describes how we have spoken of history as the Israelite form of existence, of a historical present created by the Covenant, and of an Israelite historiography, while ignoring the fact that the Hebrew language has no word that could be translated as “history.” This is a serious matter, for apparently we have violated the first principle of hermeneutics—that the meaning of a text must be established through interpretation of the linguistic corpus. It is impermissible to “put an interpretation on” a literary work through an anachronistic use of modern vocabulary without equivalents in the text itself.

Nevertheless, Voegelin defends his use of the term history in discussing Israelite symbolism by appealing to the principles of compactness and differentiation. He allows that Israelite thinkers did not differentiate the idea of history “to the point of developing a theoretical vocabulary,” but “with due precautions, the modern vocabulary may be used without destroying the meaning of Israelite symbols.” Voegelin understands his usage to be legitimate because the idea of history stands in direct continuity with “the compact Mosaic symbolism of communal existence under the will of God.” He goes further in maintaining that using terms such as history, historical present, and historiography is “a matter of theoretical necessity,” although “extreme caution is necessary in [their] use.” Without the use of the more differentiated vocabulary, “there would be no instruments for critical analysis and interpretation.”14 While one may retain respect for the truth manifest in compact symbolisms, once differentiation occurs it is no longer possible to think in these compact terms, since the differentiation itself constitutes a new intellectual horizon. It is important not to read later-differentiated phenomena back into the past, but the past may now be interpreted in light of the new insights. Where Voegelin anticipates continuity among the data he is considering, he is more than willing to bring what he takes to be a more highly differentiated perspective to bear on more compact materials if he thinks the later insights shed light on the earlier material. This is the principle operative in his exchange with Schutz: to the extent that Christianity differentiates experiences of divine transcendence beyond previous symbolism, it must be taken into account in order to understand the tendencies inherent in the more compact symbols. 14. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:206–8.

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In the course of their correspondence, Strauss criticizes Voegelin’s willingness to make use of terminology not found in his sources in order to better illuminate them. In one instance Strauss objects to Voegelin’s mention of the “religious foundation of classical philosophy” because “there is no Greek word for ‘religion.’” It is clear from the exchange that there is more than a technical point at stake. Strauss fears that Voegelin is using concepts derived from the revelation-based traditions of the Bible to interpret texts to which such concepts are alien.15 In doing so he is violating what for Strauss is the cardinal rule of interpretation—that we try to understand the text exactly as its author understood it. Voegelin would wholeheartedly agree that in the process of interpretation we should adhere as closely to the text as possible, but he would also qualify this principle with the idea that a more differentiated understanding of experience can be useful in shedding light on more compact symbolism, and that as long as there is continuity at the level of experience, no violence is done to the symbol so illumined. Throughout the correspondence their disagreement over these matters becomes increasingly apparent as Voegelin comes to question traditional distinctions between philosophy and revelation while Strauss never ceases to highlight what he takes to be the fundamental opposition between Athens and Jerusalem. While Strauss does not reject modern biblical criticism, he never loses sight of the ways in which the spirit animating this criticism is at odds with the understanding of the biblical writers. According to Strauss, the true interpretation of the Bible is that intended by its authors: The task of the historian of thought is to understand the thought of the past exactly as it understood itself; for to abandon that task is tantamount to abandoning the only practicable criterion of objectivity in the history of thought. . . . New human experiences shed light on old texts. No one can foresee how, e.g., the Bible will be read one hundred years hence. Observations such as these have led some people to adopt the view that the claim of any one interpretation to be the interpretation is untenable. Yet the observations in question do not justify such a view. For the infinite variety of ways in which a given text can be under-

15. Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 77. Responding to Voegelin, Strauss maintains, “I deny that ‘the historical fact of the beginning of philosophy consists in the attitude of faith of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides,’ which you assume. Whatever noein might mean, it is certainly not pistis in some sense” (79); and “I do not say that someone who thinks in biblical concepts cannot understand Plato. I only say that one cannot understand Plato, if, in the undertaking of Platonic studies, one thinks in biblical concepts” (91).

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stood does not do away with the fact that the author of the text, when writing it, understood it in one way only. . . . And the true interpretation . . . is the one which restates and makes intelligible the Biblical history as understood by the Biblical author. Ultimately, the infinite variety of interpretations of an author is due to conscious or unconscious attempts to understand the author better than he understood himself; but there is only one way of understanding him as he understood himself.16

As the means to understand biblical texts, this hermeneutic principle creates as many problems as it ostensibly solves. Even if we accept the notion that the true interpretation is that intended by the biblical author, the question remains as to which author we have in mind. Is the true meaning that understood by the original creator(s) of a particular textual fragment or unit? Or is it perhaps the meaning intended by the redactor? There is also the further meaning to be ascertained when viewing a text within the context of the Bible taken as a whole, as a collection of canonical texts. The issue of authorship in the Bible is more complex than Strauss’s interpretive approach would allow. He writes as if the Bible as it has come down to us consists of writings by readily identifiable authors. But even if we are able to recover the authors’ original meaning, it is not necessarily the case that we thereby arrive at the only legitimate interpretation of the text. Nor is it obvious that a text admits of only one true meaning. Much depends on how one understands the idea of a text’s “true” meaning. Strauss operates with a notion of epistemological correspondence in which authorial intent lines up with textual expression “in one way only,” a notion that a single meaning emanates from the mind of the author and takes external written form. He then asserts that this is the only true interpretation of the text. Neither of these claims is self-evident. Certainly in the case of the Bible there may in fact be several ways in which a particular text may be interpreted, and all may be equally true in the sense that they faithfully reflect the meanings intended not only by the original author, but by the biblical redactors, canonizers, and later tradition. The biblical Song of Songs is a case in point. On one level it is a fine example of Hebrew love poetry, devoid of any explicitly religious meaning. But centuries of Jewish and Christian tradition interpret the text religiously as a representation of God’s love for Israel and the church. Acknowledging the literal understanding of the text as erotic love poetry does not invalidate the later religious interpretation; rather, as interpreted religiously the text takes on an additional layer of 16. Leo Strauss, “How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy,” 209–10.

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meaning. This does not make it any less valid an interpretation of the text than the literal one intended by the author(s). In this case, to limit the true meaning of the text to that intended by the original author(s) leads to an impoverished understanding. In the course of the development of a tradition, a text may unfold layers of meaning either unknown to or unintended by its original author/compiler. It is quite possible that these later understandings are judged by the tradition to be a deeper and richer grasp of a truth not yet fully apprehended by the actual author of the text.17 Strauss offers an important and useful warning about the dangers of attributing to biblical authors ideas and notions alien to their horizon. He insists on getting back to the authors’ meanings as understood within their original contexts. This is essential if we are to avoid projecting later and foreign understandings onto the biblical text. But in the process of redaction and canonization, the biblical tradition itself allows for the possibility of going beyond the original author’s intention as the text becomes understood in later contexts. Even if Strauss is correct in claiming that “there is only one way of understanding [the author] as he understood himself ” (a questionable claim in itself), there is little in the history of biblical interpretation to warrant his assertion that this is the only true meaning. Nor does discerning a meaning in the biblical text different from that intended by its original author imply that one is attempting to understand the author better than he understood himself. It is quite possible to understand an author as he understood himself and to recognize how, once written, a text may take on a life of its own within the tradition in which it is understood. The choice presented by Strauss—either authorial intent or endless relativism—is not borne out by the history of interpretation within the religious traditions that accept the Bible as a canonical text. Both church and synagogue have managed for centuries to allow for 17. Theologian Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), who by no stretch of the imagination could ever be taken for a relativist in these matters, makes the following observation with regard to the status of the original meaning intended by a biblical writer: “[It] is necessary to keep in mind that any human utterance of a certain weight contains more than the author may have been immediately aware of at the time. When a word transcends the moment in which it is spoken it carries within itself a ‘deeper value.’ This ‘deeper value’ pertains most of all to words that have matured in the course of faith-history. For in this case the author is not simply speaking for himself on his own authority. He is speaking from the perspective of a common history that sustains him and that already implicitly contains the possibilities of its future, of the further stages of its journey. . . . The author does not speak as a private, self-contained subject. He speaks in a living community, that is to say, in a living historical movement not created by him, nor even by the collective, but which is led forward by a greater power that is at work.” Jesus of Nazareth, xx.

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multiple “true” interpretations, all of which can be recognized as authentically biblical. In fact, if we were to adopt Strauss’s approach literally, the Bible as an intelligible whole would disappear, dissolving into a series of fragments representing the intentions of their original formulators. Whatever the difficulties with Strauss’s premise that the truest and most objective interpretation is that intended by the author, this interpretive principle is one that he frequently invokes when he comes to the Bible (even if he does not practice it consistently himself). Behind his application of this principle is the desire to recapture the original challenge posed by the biblical text. For the writers and compilers of the Bible, the events they were recording were written down as testimony to the presence and action of the living God in their history. This is how the authors understood what they were about, and Strauss refuses to flatten the Bible’s message by conceding validity to an interpretive method that evades these claims. Whether or not the Bible is in fact a record of encounters with God, its authors, compilers, and later adherents take it to be such, and interpreters must acknowledge this when approaching the text. However, this in no way implies any concession to belief on the part of the interpreter. It is not the agnosticism of modern biblical criticism to which Strauss objects as much as it is the method’s tendency to assume what in fact needs to be proved. He sees in modern biblical criticism a method that is rigidly agnostic if not atheistic with regard to the reality of God and revelation. It is based on “the dogmatic exclusion of the possibility of miracles and of verbal inspiration.”18 In its detachment from the “prejudice” of belief, such criticism understands the Bible in a way quite foreign to that of its creators. Nonetheless, to the extent that this agnostic/atheistic method investigates the various layers within the biblical text and achieves insight into how its message would have been understood by the original addressees, Strauss believes that it serves as a helpful aid in the recovery of the biblical meaning. Despite his reservations about the use of a method of criticism whose preoccupation with questions stemming from Protestant theology render it suspect as an effective tool in understanding the Hebrew Bible, Strauss acknowledges that it has aided Jewish scholars in elucidating “the real context from which prophecy derived.” Even though biblical criticism may be skeptical with regard to the traditional view of the Bible as “the true and authentic account of the deeds of God and men from the beginning till the restoration after the Babylonian exile,” and despite its tendency to conceive of the Bible as a fragmentary

18. Leo Strauss, “Biblical History and Science,” 132–34; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 128.

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collection of “memories of memories,” Strauss contends that this approach may in fact have a positive dimension in that “memories of memories are not necessarily distorting or pale reflections of the original; they may be re-collections of re-collections, deepenings through meditation of the primary experiences.”19 Confronted with “the infinite variety of ways in which a given text can be understood,” Strauss acknowledges that biblical criticism, when used judiciously, can help us understand the Bible as it was understood by its authors and redactors. Strauss clarifies his position by comparing it with that of Spinoza, the father of modern biblical criticism. He notes how “there is a certain agreement between Spinoza’s hermeneutic principle (‘the Bible must be understood exclusively by itself ’) and the principle to which we adhere (‘the Bible must be understood exactly as it was understood by its authors, or by its compilers’).” Strauss insists, though, on the fundamental difference between the two hermeneutical approaches. He faults Spinoza for arranging his treatment of biblical subject matter in a way that is foreign to the Bible’s own estimation of its importance, and for trying to derive definitions from the biblical material in face of the fact that biblical thought is not concerned with defining its subject matter. Taking the natural sciences as his model, Spinoza seeks out “the most universal or most fundamental teaching of the Bible as a teaching clearly presented everywhere in the Bible.” From Strauss’s perspective, Spinoza is guilty of trying to understand the biblical authors better than they understood themselves. By comparison, according to Strauss’s principle, the first questions to be addressed to a book would be of this kind: what is its subject matter, i.e., how is its subject matter designated or understood, by the author?; what is his intention in dealing with his subject?; what questions does he raise in regard to it, or with what aspect of the subject is he exclusively, or chiefly concerned? Only after these and similar questions have found their answer, would we even think of collecting and arranging the statements of the author regarding various topics discussed or mentioned in his book; for only the answers to questions like those we have indicated would enable us to tell what particular topics referred to in his book are significant or even central. . . . But is there any necessity, or even likelihood, that the most fundamental teaching of a book should be constantly repeated? In other words, is there any necessity that the most universal or most fundamental teaching of a book should be its clearest teaching?

19. Leo Strauss, “The Holy,” 76; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 380–82.

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Interpreters must take their cues from the biblical text and make the questions of the biblical writers their own. Spinoza’s rationalism and his typically modern conviction that the thought of his time is superior to that of the past shapes his belief that his philosophy provides the true, clear, and distinct account of the whole of reality. This is the attitude he brings to the study of the Bible and the source of his judgment concerning its unintelligible character. But in Strauss’s opinion, Spinoza’s overconfidence makes him impervious to the consideration of a possibility that is obvious to us today, “the possibility that the whole orientation of a period may give way to a radically different orientation, and that after such a change has taken place one cannot bridge the gulf between the thought of the later age and that of the earlier age but by means of historical interpretation.”20 Convinced that he provides the true account valid for all time, Spinoza is not sufficiently conscious of the limitations inherent in the modern horizon he inhabits. Consequently he does not consider the possibility that the Bible might contain a wisdom that challenges modern thought and that if this wisdom is to be recovered, it will be through a process of meticulous historical research and interpretation. Spinoza’s historical critical method is insufficiently historical. These observations about Spinoza provide an important clue to Strauss’s attitude toward modern biblical criticism by situating his concerns in the context of the relationship between modern and premodern thought. For Strauss, historical interpretation is, in the current situation, an essential tool in the effort to gain access to the thought of the past. The qualification in the current situation is crucial because it points to Strauss’s belief that the truth about premodern thought has been obscured by later developments. Because of this, a proper understanding of the relationship between philosophy and the Bible, between Athens and Jerusalem, has been lost. To recapture the meaning of classical philosophy and of the Bible, Strauss maintains that we must get past the reigning “pseudophilosophy” that has corrupted our appreciation of the past. He admires Friedrich Nietzsche tremendously for his efforts “to plumb the pre-‘Christian’ depths of the Jewish as well as of the Hellenic-European spirit.” It becomes increasingly clear in his own work how Strauss understands himself as taking up Nietzsche’s challenge.21 Strauss seeks “a more refined historical method as a desperate remedy for a desperate situation.” The tendencies 20. Strauss, “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” 185, 189. 21. Strauss, “The Holy,” 76. I have argued elsewhere at some length about the influence of Nietzsche on Strauss’s approach to “the Jewish question.” See John Ranieri, “Modernity and the Jewish Question: What Leo Strauss Learned from Nietzsche.”

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of modern thought have led to a situation in which “today the truth may be accessible only through certain old books. . . . It is conceivable that a particular pseudophilosophy may emerge whose power cannot be broken but by the most intensive reading of old books. As long as that pseudophilosophy rules, elaborate historical studies may be needed which would have been superfluous and therefore harmful in more fortunate times.”22 As Strauss understands the contemporary situation, historical studies take on tremendous importance in a context in which the wisdom of the past has been lost. Had this loss not occurred, these studies may not have been necessary. Historical criticism is a useful tool in the process of retrieval. To begin to seriously move toward a proper understanding of premodern traditions, modernity must be transcended. This will not be easy, because at the present time those who would understand tradition must ascend from not one, but two caves. The modern horizon constitutes a second, “unnatural” cave from which we need to be released before we can reach the level of the “natural” cave described by Plato: “To use the classical presentation of the natural difficulties of philosophizing, namely Plato’s parable of the cave, one may say that today we find ourselves in a second, much deeper cave than the lucky ignorant ones Socrates dealt with.”23 How is it that we find ourselves in this second cave? Strauss notes that “the difficulty of doing philosophy is fundamentally increased, and the freedom of doing philosophy is fundamentally reduced, by the fact that a revelation-based tradition has stepped into the world of philosophy.”24 At first glance it might appear as if Strauss, when speaking of a “revelation-based tradition,” has in mind both Judaism and Christianity. But such is not the case. As Strauss understands the three great monotheistic religions, it is clear that Christianity alone has “stepped into the world of philosophy.” Historically, in both Islam and Judaism, philosophy’s status has been more precarious because it remains in permanent tension with divine Law, but Christianity, by integrating philosophy with the study of theology, also hampers philosophy’s freedom.25 Subjecting philosophy to a higher control, Christianity creates an artificial, “unnatural” condition for thought. The thought resulting from 22. Strauss, “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” 184–85, 189–91. 23. Leo Strauss, review of On the Progress of Metaphysics, by Julius Ebbinghaus, 30; Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 136. 24. Michael Zank, introduction to Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), 31. Zank is quoting and translating a passage from Leo Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart.” 25. “The precarious status of philosophy in Judaism as well as in Islam was not in every respect a misfortune for philosophy. The official recognition of philosophy in the Christian world made philosophy subject to ecclesiastical supervision. The precarious position of

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the subjugation of philosophical inquiry to doctrinal truth is a “pseudophilosophy” that infects the entire horizon in which modern scholarship operates. This Christianized intellectual framework obscures the roots of both classical philosophy and the Hebrew Bible.26 Strauss envisions his task as an effort to transcend the “modern premises” that distort these earlier traditions in order to begin to emerge from the second cave in which modern men and women are trapped. In Nietzsche, Strauss finds a helpful guide: Through Nietzsche, tradition has been shaken to its roots. It has completely lost its self-evident truth. We are left in a world without any authority, any direction. Only now has the question pous bioteon [How are we to live?] again received its full edge. We can pose it again. We have the possibility of posing it in earnest. . . . But we cannot immediately answer on our own, for we know that we are deeply entangled in a tradition: we are even much lower down than the cave dwellers of Plato. We must rise to the origin of tradition, to the level of natural ignorance.27

Genuinely free inquiry into the origins of tradition opens up possibilities for quite untraditional interpretations: “We can no longer read Plato’s dialogues superficially only to puzzle over how much old Plato knew about such and such; we can no longer superficially polemicize against him. Similarly with the Bible: we no longer self-evidently agree with the prophets; we ask ourselves seriously whether perhaps the kings were right. We must really begin from the very beginning. . . . Tradition is utterly alien to us, utterly questionable.”28 Such passages illustrate the radical nature of Strauss’s project. In returning to the sources of the Bible, no orthodoxy is to be left unquestioned. To suggest the possibility that the biblical kings were right and the prophets mistaken is ——— philosophy in the Islamic-Jewish world guaranteed its private character and therewith its inner freedom from supervision. The status of philosophy in the Islamic-Jewish world resembled in this respect its status in classical Greece.” Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 21. See also Clark A. Merrill, “Leo Strauss’s Indictment of Christian Philosophy.” 26. “One simply cannot absorb somewhat deeper German things without absorbing along with them, among other things, a dose of specifically Christian spirit. Further, it should be kept in mind that the internal Jewish reaction to liberalism availed itself, entirely as a matter of course, of the weapons that Christian Europe had forged, during the period of restoration and even prior to it, against the spirit of the Enlightenment. Thus we see ourselves held fast on all sides in the German-Jewish world in which we have grown up spiritually. . . . It is imperative to get out of this world ‘somehow.’” Leo Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” 69. 27. Zank, introduction to Leo Strauss, 32–33. 28. Ibid.

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to move beyond the question of the relative importance of the divine Law and the prophets; it is, rather, an attempt to call into question the validity of the prophetic message, which, by any measure, is one of the constitutive elements of biblical tradition. To claim that tradition is “utterly alien to us, utterly questionable” and to say that the tradition has lost its self-evident truth is to radicalize the quest for origins. Strauss’s “recovery” of the tradition is, in fact, similar in spirit to Heidegger’s deconstruction of the history of ontology; it is meant to thoroughly shake foundations to uncover the roots for the first time. In the spirit of Nietzsche’s genealogical method, Strauss is essentially deconstructing tradition to reconstitute it in a fashion that better accords with his preferred narrative of the relationship between philosophy and the Bible. As we shall see in later chapters, the tradition thus reconstructed will be one that accords with Strauss’s political philosophy, one that is compatible with the requirements of political life as he understands them. With these considerations in mind we can better appreciate the intent behind Strauss’s well-known critique of historicism. As noted earlier, Strauss faults Spinoza for not recognizing the need for historical interpretation to adequately recover the meaning of the Bible in a modern context in which the original biblical teaching has been obscured. Historical interpretation is required in a distorted situation to get back to an adequate understanding of the sources, not because the teaching of the Bible (or of classical philosophy) is essentially “historical.”29 For Strauss, the latter view is part of the bias he associates with historicism. He believes that philosophers’ claims to possess knowledge of the whole or biblical assertions concerning the best way to live are to be met with further questions and arguments to determine whether or not they are true; they are not to be dismissed out of hand as impossibilities based upon historicist assumptions. Strauss criticizes historicism for assuming without proof that claims such as those of Spinoza (that his is the true account) are false; in Strauss’s view, fair-minded historical interpretation would consider the possibility that Spinoza was correct.30 Genuine historical criticism does not 29. Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 75. According to Strauss, “Classical philosophy is ‘ahistorical’ insofar as it is a search for the aie on, within which all history has taken or can take place, for the aie on in no way opens up through ‘history’: history is for classical philosophy infinitely unimportant, insofar as the decisive questions, the fundamental questions, necessarily relate to the aie on. . . . Historicizing means the forgetting of eternity. This forgetting must be understood in terms of the rejection of the classical concept of philosophy” (75). 30. In the case of Spinoza, Strauss does not dismiss his predecessor’s efforts in pursuing true knowledge of the whole, because in Strauss’s view this is precisely what philosophers

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succumb to modern historicist prejudice—it takes seriously the assertions by earlier authors that their thought transcends its time and place. As a case in point, Strauss notes how contemporary social sciences come to the study of Athens and Jerusalem with an attitude that regards the two great traditions as examples of “cultures”: “According to this concept there is an indefinitely large number of cultures: n cultures. The scientist who studies them beholds them as objects; as scientist he stands outside all of them; he has no preference for any of them; in his eyes all of them are of equal rank; he is not only impartial but objective; he is anxious not to distort any of them; in speaking about them he avoids any ‘culture-bound’ concepts, i.e., concepts bound to any particular culture or kind of culture.” Strauss points out that this method suffers from a number of flaws. First, the cultures thus studied often “do or did not know that they are or were cultures.” They “did not understand themselves in terms of cultures because they were not concerned with culture in the present-day meaning of the term.” To analyze them in this way, “the scientific student takes it for granted that he understands the people whom he studies better than they understood or understand themselves.” Further, the objectivity of such an approach is doubtful: However much the science of all cultures may protest its innocence of all preferences or evaluations, it fosters a specific moral posture. Since it requires openness to all cultures, it fosters universal tolerance and the exhilaration deriving from the beholding of the diversity. . . . It willy-nilly brings about a shift in emphasis from the particular to the universal: by asserting, if only implicitly, the rightness of pluralism, it asserts that pluralism is the right way; it asserts the monism of universal tolerance and respect for diversity; by virtue of being an ism, pluralism is a monism.

For Strauss the proper mode of approach is “to understand the various cultures or peoples exactly as they understand or understood themselves.” At the same time he is cognizant of how “our intention to speak of Jerusalem and Athens seems to compel us to go beyond the self-understanding of either.”31 In acknowledging this, Strauss is not acquiescing to the position he has just criticized. Rather than viewing Athens and Jerusalem as “cultures,” he attempts to achieve a valid interpretive stance by focusing on areas of commonality that ——— are expected to do (even if, as with Spinoza, they believe they reach their goal when in fact they do not). 31. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 377–79.

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form part of the self-understanding of both traditions. In the case of Athens and Jerusalem it is clear that both esteem wisdom and both are concerned with the meaning of divine law. Neither the Bible nor classical philosophy see themselves as offering one possibly relevant way of life among others; they each make claims, and to the extent that these claims come into conflict, those shaped by these traditions must decide where their allegiance lies. Before that can be done, however, those making the claims need to be clear about the essential issues involved. To accomplish this it is necessary to adopt a stance that avoids as much as possible the opposing dangers of uncritical acceptance of tradition and the equally dogmatic horizon of historicist relativism. This is the task Strauss sets for himself.32 In his view, “What we truly know are not any answers to comprehensive questions but only these questions, questions imposed upon us as human beings by our situation as human beings. This presupposes that there is a fundamental situation of man as man which is not affected by any change, any so-called historical change in particular. It is man’s fundamental situation within the whole—within a whole that is so little subject to historical change that it is a condition of every possible historical change.”33 Strauss wishes to recapture the meaning of these comprehensive questions as articulated within the profoundly differing horizons of Athens and Jerusalem. If the original meaning of the conflict between the two cities has been obscured, then historical studies take on tremendous importance in the effort to regain a sense of their profoundly different responses to the fundamental questions of human existence. Thus Strauss sees a place for modern biblical criticism in helping us to rediscover the thought of the biblical writers as they would have understood it themselves. As modern criticism,

32. In his preface to Strauss’s Jewish writings, Kenneth Hart Green maintains, “By attempting not to make ‘an advance decision in favor of Athens against Jerusalem,’ Strauss wants not to decide against traditional biblical faith, and hence for Greek philosophy, as modern biblical criticism would seem to presuppose or to require. However, he also does not decide simply for Jerusalem, which is why he claims still to ‘look at the text . . . from the outside.’ Strauss tries in a certain measure to stand beyond both antagonists. . . . [The] one thing which Strauss allows himself and seems to believe in from the beginning to the end of his studies . . . is history. And yet history, as Strauss views it, is not something higher than the two fundamental alternatives, but rather is something which helps to comprehend, and hence to choose between, the two fundamental alternatives. Thus, Strauss’s ‘postcritical’ approach to the Bible represents a new beginning in study of the biblical text, which is sympathetic to the Bible in the very fact of his viewing ‘the text . . . from the outside.’” “Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish Thinker,” xv. See also Ehud Luz, “How to Read the Bible according to Leo Strauss,” 270–72. 33. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 361.

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its results must be viewed with skepticism, since its agnostic attitude is at odds with the Bible’s fundamental orientation; but as simply criticism it can be of use in getting back to the original context of biblical thought. Strauss’s interpretive strategy oscillates among a sympathetic appreciation of how the biblical authors understood their work, a skeptical attitude with regard to the truth of their self-understanding, and an attempt to explain their self-understanding in nontheological categories. In attempting to revive a sense of the fundamental issues at stake in the encounter between Athens and Jerusalem, Strauss refuses to dismiss out of hand the truth claims of either. Modern historical criticism of the Bible is justified in a situation in which the perspective of the biblical authors has been lost. To the extent that such criticism helps to dissolve the accretions that smother the original, it is welcome; but in the degree to which its agnostic and historicist assumptions make it unreceptive to even the possibility that the teaching of the Bible may be true, its results must be regarded with skepticism.

Religious Experience and Biblical Interpretation The question remains, however, as to what it is that we “get back to” in the process of retrieval. While Strauss and Voegelin have deep respect for their respective ancestral religious traditions, neither of them is interested in serving as an apologist for either Jewish or Christian orthodoxy. Strauss defends the choice of “orthodoxy” against philosophical claims to have disproved its central teachings, but his use of the term is far more an expression of his political understanding of the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem than an expression of the specific traditions and practices of rabbinic Judaism.34 Despite his equation of the issues between traditional Judaism and Greek philosophy with those of Jerusalem and Athens, Strauss’s “orthodoxy” has very little content apart from its use as a foil in comparison to the philosophical life. He rarely if ever cites rabbinic sources to support his understanding of orthodoxy and the Bible. Strauss might well respond that this omission is entirely 34. Steven B. Smith points out, “For all his talk of a return to orthodoxy, Strauss surprisingly has little to say about the substance of orthodoxy either as a set of beliefs or as a way of life. Is it even possible to speak of orthodoxy as if it were all of one piece? . . . In fact Strauss’s peculiar conception of orthodoxy has nothing to do with the black hat Haredi community, but consists of a ‘Maimonidean’ strategy that combines outward fidelity to the community of Israel with a private or ‘esoteric’ commitment to philosophy and the life of free inquiry.” Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, 82.

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appropriate, since he comes to the texts as a philosopher. This response would be more convincing, however, if it were not coming from someone who criticizes other contemporary Jewish thinkers for having abandoned the traditional interpretation of the Bible. If these other thinkers are to be criticized for discarding tradition, it behooves Strauss to demonstrate their mistakes on the basis of that tradition. But Strauss is not really interested in doing this; he is more concerned with establishing a contrast between the “traditional view,” which, not surprisingly, coincides with his understanding of Jerusalem, and the philosophical way of life that he identifies with Athens. Apart from Maimonides, Strauss almost entirely ignores premodern Jewish sources when invoking the “traditional” interpretation of the Bible. It is not surprising, then, that Strauss’s work finds little resonance within contemporary Orthodox Judaism. According to one commentator, “Strauss does not search in the Bible for the living speech of God.”35 In Voegelin’s case, his distance from institutional religion manifests itself in sometimes-scathing critiques of the Christianity of the churches.36 Strauss and Voegelin come to the Bible as philosophers, and they do so without attempting to harmonize their analyses with the inherited doctrines or traditions of Judaism or Christianity. They are radical in the literal sense of trying to get to the roots of the biblical tradition prior to its canonization or codification as sacred text. Nevertheless, despite their similarities in refusing to use the Bible as a proof-text to defend orthodoxies of any kind, they differ significantly on the question of what it is that the Bible does in fact disclose. In one sense Voegelin adheres much more closely than Strauss to the Bible’s self-understanding, for he accepts the biblical text as an articulation of experiences of divine transcendence and a record of the human response to this revelation. He regards the historical narratives of the Bible neither as a book nor as a collection of books, but as “a unique symbolism that has grown into its ultimate form through more than six centuries of historiographic work from the time of Solomon to ca. 300 B.C.”37 To appreciate the symbolic nature of the biblical text is to bear in mind how a symbol is neither “a human conventional sign signifying a reality outside of consciousness” nor “a word of God conveniently transmitted in the language that the recipient can understand.” Rather, “it is engendered by the divine-human encounter and participates, therefore, as much in 35. Allan Arkush, “Leo Strauss and Jewish Modernity,” 125–26; Luz, “How to Read the Bible,” 264. 36. Eric Voegelin, “The Gospel and Culture,” 172–79. 37. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:145.

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divine as in human reality.” Symbols are “the language phenomena engendered by the process of participatory experience.” As human beings become more aware of the structure and movement of reality, they articulate their experience through symbols that reflect their awareness of the participatory character of human existence. From Plato, Voegelin borrows the term metaxy to describe this experience of participation in the divine-human “In-Between.” Symbols arise from within this process, illuminating its character as the “place” of divine-human encounter. As such, symbols do not “correspond” to objects encountered within reality; instead they give expression to the experiences out of which they emerge: Such terms as immanent and transcendent, external and internal, this world and the other world, and so forth, do not denote objects or their properties but are the language indices arising from the Metaxy in the event of its becoming luminous for the comprehensive reality, its structure and dynamics. The terms are exegetic, not descriptive. They indicate the movements of the soul when, in the Metaxy of consciousness, it explores the experience of divine reality and tries to find the language that will articulate its exegetic movements.

For Voegelin, the relationship between experience and symbol is twofold. By recovering the authentic meaning of symbols we gain access to the engendering experiences; in being attentive to experiences of transcendence we minimize the possibility of misconstruing the nature and purpose of symbols. This is why he insists that “the methodologically first, and perhaps most important, rule of my work is to go back to the experiences that engender symbols.” Proper appreciation of the role of symbols is essential, for where symbols become opaque to the experiences underlying them, human beings are cut off from the transcendent sources of order. The greatest danger to the proper understanding of experience is the reification of symbols and the realities they express.38 With this in mind we can better appreciate Voegelin’s critical attitude toward “Scripture.” By this term he understands “a layer of meaning, superimposed on a body of oral traditions and literary documents for the purpose of preserving it under the adverse conditions of the ecumenic-imperial society.” In the face of social disruption, conquest, and the encounter with competing forms of wisdom in a multi-civilizational world, the biblical recipients of transcendent experience attempt to preserve their insight in writing and thereby pre 38. Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 74, 97; Eric Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond,” 184–85.

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serve it as a sacred text. In the case of the Hebrew Bible, the “desire to protect a treasure of insight against loss in adverse political circumstances appears to have moved the priestly and scribal circles of Israel when they superimposed the word of Scripture over the word of god, heard and spoken by the prophets.” With the Torah, “by a remarkable feat of mythical imagination, a literary document assembled and organized in the postexilic period is construed to have been engendered by a divine-human encounter in the Mosaic period.”39 A similar process occurred in Christianity: [The] anti-Scriptural epiphany of the word in the flesh has to submit to Scripture when a collection of early Christian writings is canonized as the New Testament, complementing as the new Scripture the older one that now becomes the Old Testament, with all the attendant problems of verbal inspiration and literalist deformation, of allegoresis and prefiguration. The organization of the second Scripture had the same pragmatic motives as that of the first one: It was a protective device against the competing wisdoms in the surrounding ecumenicimperial society, especially against the Gnostic movements within Christianity.40

However well-intentioned, the process from experiences of transcendence to the creation of “Scripture” is, according to Voegelin, largely one of deformation, although that is understandable under the circumstances: If the metaleptic symbol which is the word of both god and man is hypostatized into a doctrinal Word of God, the device can protect the insight gained against disintegration in society, but it can also impair the sensitivity for the source of truth in the flux of divine presence in time which constitutes history. Unless precautions of meditative practice are taken, the doctrinization of symbols is liable to interrupt the process of experiential reactivation and linguistic renewal. When the symbol separates from its source in the experiential Metaxy, the Word of God can degenerate into a word of man that one can believe or not.41

In the formation of the Bible, Voegelin finds evidence of this tendency. The “divine word of the canonical Torah” is not the same as “the word of God revealed through the mouths of the prophets”; “the canonical Torah is the deformation of the prophets’ pneumatic word by the post-exilic creation 39. Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 4, The Ecumenic Age, 103–4, 97; Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond,” 181. 40. Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond,” 183. 41. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:105.

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and imposition of a sacred Scripture.” To adequately recapture something of the originating experience of Israel one must take into account “the deformations of meaning caused by rabbinical and Christian canonization and interpretations.” Further, “the Scriptural word of God freezes the literary records of real encounters and their historical circumstances into an impersonal block of truth that originates in the mythopoetic consciousness of priests in the sixth century B.C.” Voegelin concedes that experience of the encounter between God and human is not completely blocked by the “congealing of the word into the pseudo-compactness of Scripture.” He sympathizes with the biblical writers, who sought to preserve precious insights in difficult times, and he affirms that the work they created could “remain historically effective for two thousand years, because it could mobilize the experience of the comprehensive, pre­personal reality breaking forth into self-illuminating truth.”42 (Whether the biblical authors would accept this as a description of what they were doing is an entirely different matter.) Yet, the unfortunate consequences of the invention of “Scripture” reverberate still in the modern world: In the beginning was Wisdom; in the beginning was the Torah; in the beginning was the Word; in the beginning was Hegel with his Logik. With the egophanic deformation of the Symbol into the System . . . we are at the center of the ideological dogmatomachy which occupies the public scene with its murderous grotesque. . . . In our time . . . the deforming doctrinalization has become socially stronger than the experiential insights it was originally meant to protect. The return from symbols which have lost their meaning to the experiences which constitute meaning is so generally recognizable as the problem of the present that specific references are unnecessary. The great obstacle to this return is the massive block of accumulated symbols, secondary and tertiary, which eclipses the reality of man’s existence in the Metaxy.43

Voegelin accepts the Bible as a classic and valuable witness in its capacity as a symbolic record of divine-human encounter; he views it with deep ambivalence as scripture. Most striking in his analysis is his repeated characterizations of the formation of a biblical canon as a process of “congealing,” “freezing,” and “deformation.” Canonization is judged to be a form of defection from an original openness toward divine reality. The creation of a sacred text, however understandable as a protective device, is, in his view, a significant step 42. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:83–84; Voegelin, Order and History, 1:114; Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond,” 182, 183. 43. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:106–7.

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toward the replacement of transcendent experience with propositional truth. Voegelin appreciates the Bible as a symbolic articulation of differentiating insight into experiences of transcendent reality; he does not take the Bible to be a uniquely sacred or normative text. It becomes increasingly clear in his later work that wherever the experience of divine reality becomes luminous in human consciousness, there we have an instance of revelation. Whether this occurs in a Platonic dialogue or in the words of an Israelite prophet is of secondary importance—what is crucial is that the experiential openness to divine reality be preserved. Despite his wariness with regard to the Bible considered as a sacred text, Voegelin insists on the normative character of the experiences of transcendence articulated therein. Although the formation of a biblical canon is for him usually a sign of ossification of experience, he allows that at its best the Bible gives splendid expression to the truth of order. Contemplating the story told by Israel about itself, Voegelin remarks how historical form, understood as the experience of the present under God, will appear as subjective only, if faith is misinterpreted as a “subjective” experience. If, however, it is understood as the leap in being, as the entering of the soul into divine reality through the entering of divine reality into the soul, the historical form, far from being a subjective point of view, is an ontologically real event in history. And it must be understood as an event of this nature, as long as we base our conception of history on a critical analysis of the literary sources which report the event and do not introduce subjectivity ourselves by arbitrary, ideological surmising. If now the men to whom it happens explicate the meaning of the event through symbols, the explication will cast an ordering ray of objective truth over the field of history in which the event objectively occurred.

In a later essay Voegelin elaborates in more general terms the sense in which “objectivity” may be attributed to the types of experience he is describing. He does so by confronting the position of those who argue that “the experience is an illusion.” On one level, such an accusation stems from what is obviously a bit of “loose thinking”—experience as such cannot be an illusion. The real focus of the charge is that the one having the experience is mistaken about the content of the experience—what it is that the experience is an experience of. This can mean one of two things: “either, radically, that the object experienced by a subject does not exist at all; or gradationally, that the object exists but on closer inspection reveals characteristics different from those apparent in the object as experienced.” Voegelin then identifies the source of the problem: “The judgment of illusion rests on control experiences of the potentially or

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actually existent object outside the experience. . . . A judgment of illusion can pertain only to experiences of existent objects, not to experiences of participation in nonexistent reality.” The notion of “nonexistent reality” may sound like an oxymoron, but what Voegelin is trying to convey by this paradoxical formulation is how the judgment of illusion depends upon understanding human participation within reality according to the image of a detached subject gazing outward toward a realm of externally situated “already out there now real” things. Operating with this model, it is of course possible (perhaps even necessary) to raise the question whether my image of that which is encountered in experience actually “corresponds” to its reality. But Voegelin maintains that this model is fundamentally mistaken and, more importantly, quite foreign to the understanding of those who articulate these experiences. To some degree, his antagonism toward “Scripture” can be understood in light of these concerns. The creation of sacred texts leads to a preoccupation with correct doctrine; the doctrinalization of truth generates a climate in which people become obsessed with demonstrating how their propositions and dogmas alone are true. Language becomes disengaged from experience, and in the resulting battle of positions the originating awareness of divine-human encounter is lost.44 Compared to Voegelin, Strauss takes a more skeptical stance toward appeals to “experience” as the source of order. Consequently, he differs from Voegelin in his understanding of what it is that becomes accessible through the biblical text. Probably the closest Strauss comes to a Voegelinian metaphysical confession is the following: “Philosophy, in the strict, classical sense of the term, is the quest for the eternal order, or for the eternal cause or causes of all things. I assume, then, that there is an eternal and immutable order within which history takes place, and which remains entirely unaffected by history.”45 Voegelin would share Strauss’s view about philosophy as a quest for eternal order. But for Strauss this quest is far more intellectually perplexing and riddled with problems than it is for Voegelin. From Strauss’s perspective, the philosophical quest for knowledge of the whole, at its best, brings greater clarity as to the nature of humankind’s ignorance and the permanence of the problems confronting it. However, “one might realize the insoluble character of the funda-

44. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:130; Eric Voegelin, “Immortality: Experience and Symbol,” 67–70. 45. Leo Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 212. Elsewhere Strauss speaks of philosophy as the “quest for the true and final account of the whole.” As “the quest for the true beginnings of all things,” philosophy is the “attempt to replace opinions about these beginnings by genuine knowledge, or science, of them.” “Reason and Revelation,” 144–46.

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mental riddles and still continue to see in the understanding of these riddles the task of philosophy.” In Strauss’s thought there is a pronounced sense of human questioning’s stumbling up against the impenetrable mystery of the cosmos.46 With Voegelin, the experience of mystery is a marvelous anticipation of a destiny that transcends the human condition. Despite his misgivings about the eschatological heritage of the Bible, its influence on his conception of philosophy makes itself felt. His later thought is permeated with the imagery of a movement toward transfiguration (although, as we shall see, he tends to understand this almost entirely in mystical terms). This stands in stark contrast to Strauss. Because of the limitations of human understanding, Strauss feels compelled to “assume” the existence of an eternal and immutable order in which history occurs. By comparison, it is difficult to imagine Voegelin ever “assuming” the existence of such an order—divine reality is not inferred but rather disclosed to human beings, and this disclosure evokes the questing response that is philosophy. No more than Strauss does Voegelin believe divine reality capable of being encompassed by the human mind, but Voegelin allows for an anticipatory knowledge of transcendence given in the experiences of questioning and being drawn. Likewise, on the question of the relationship between the eternal and history, Strauss would no doubt be perplexed by Voegelin’s claim that “eternal being realizes itself in time.”47 Philosophy, for Strauss, is neither the analysis nor the recovery of experiences of transcendence; the quest for eternal order is based upon argument and demonstration. The correspondence between Strauss and Voegelin reveals the many ways in which they stand together against what they understand to be the deficiencies of modernity, but what also becomes evident is the growing, mutual incomprehension between them. In a 1951 letter, Voegelin succinctly identifies their differences after having read Strauss’s Philosophy and Law (1935): “I have the impression that you have retreated from an understanding of the prophetic (religious) foundation of philosophizing (with which I would heartily agree) to a theory of episteme, and that you refuse to see the problem of episteme in connection with experience, out of which it emerges.” Strauss responds by maintaining that his position has, in fact, not changed at all. He insists that, according to classical philosophy, the “truly human life is a life dedicated to science,

46. Leo Strauss, “Natural Right and the Historical Approach,” 119–20; Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 145–48. Epistemologically, Strauss is actually very similar to Kant. See Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 122; and Susan Shell, “Taking Evil Seriously: Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Political’ and Strauss’s ‘True Politics,’” 176–83. 47. Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, 312.

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knowledge, and the search for it,” whereas the Bible conceives of the best way to live in an entirely different fashion. In rejecting the idea of a religious foundation of classical philosophy, Strauss points out that, in the first place, there is no Greek word for religion. Certainly the Greeks speak of “the gods or of God or of the divine,” but before Voegelin’s claim could even be considered, “one would have to elucidate further which experiences of the divine the philosophers recognized as genuine.” In Strauss’s opinion Platonic myths are quite intelligible without postulating a “religious” experience underlying them; and as far as the existence of the gods, Plato and Aristotle demonstrate their existence “not from experience and customs but rather from the analysis of motion.” As far as Strauss is concerned, Plato was “less anxious to induce the better readers to believe than to induce them to think.”48 If Voegelin were more familiar with Strauss’s early writings, from the 1920s, he would recognize how Strauss’s conception of philosophy as science never involved an appeal to religious experience. But when Strauss contrasts Plato’s exhortation to think with the practice of belief, he appears to misunderstand what Voegelin means by speaking of a religious basis to philosophy. In this instance Strauss’s understanding of belief would seem to have more in common with what Voegelin would call doctrine or dogma. Voegelin would agree with Strauss in viewing such an attitude as having nothing to do with philosophy. For Voegelin, the “religious” nature of philosophy does not depend at all upon a system of beliefs, but it has everything to do with the openness of the human spirit to divine reality. Both religion and reason are grounded in experiences of transcendence. In Voegelin’s view, genuine theory or science is not possible if its underlying basis in experiences of transcendence is not acknowledged, and he is entirely comfortable referring to Plato and Aristotle as mystic philosophers.49 Strauss also appeals to the classical philosophers, but he conceives of the practice of philosophy as employing “the rationalist criteria of

48. Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 78–79. A few years prior to this exchange of letters, Strauss had gone even further in driving a wedge between religion and philosophy: “The difference between Plato and a materialist like Democritus fades into insignificance if compared with the difference between Plato and any doctrine based on religious experience. Plato’s and Aristotle’s attempts to demonstrate the existence of God far from proving the religious character of their teachings, actually disprove it.” “Reason and Revelation,” 146. 49. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, 149–51, 215; Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 257–59; Eric Voegelin, “Popular Education, Science, and Politics,” 86–90; Eric Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” 267–73.

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sense evidence and the logical idea of episteme set forth in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics.” Philosophical questioning for Strauss is motivated by doubt, and he consistently contrasts thought and belief.50 As we shall see in Chapter 3, Strauss’s approach to the Bible and to the question of the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens revolves around just such a contrast. Voegelin’s ongoing attention to experiences of transcendence leads in a quite different direction, for as he comes to notice greater and greater commonality at the level of experience he finds that his previously held understanding of the differences between the Bible and classical philosophy must be abandoned. Much more than Strauss, Voegelin accepts at face value textual evidence testifying to experiences of divine reality. This is not due to naïveté or gullibility on Voegelin’s part; nor does it proceed from faith in the Bible as the word of God. Where Strauss’s ideal of science emphasizes demonstration and argument rooted in empirical evidence (where empirical seems to be synonymous with sensory), Voegelin believes that the normative quality for a science of society is inseparable from experiences of the transcendent. Voegelin would further argue that such an approach is entirely empirical, albeit empirical in a sense much broader than that recognized by Strauss. On the matter of “proving” the validity of these normative experiences, Voegelin argues that the nature of man is openness toward transcendence. By no amount of science can you find anything overriding openness toward transcendence. . . . It has nothing to do with proof. Either the openness is a reality and then you can’t prove it—you can’t prove reality; you can only point to it—or it isn’t. Well it is. We know—we have documents of the experiences, they are in existence: the dialogues of Plato, the meditations of Saint Augustine on time and space, or the thornbush episode in Exodus. Here are the documents of the openness toward transcendence. You can’t have more. There’s nothing you can prove or disprove.51

Voegelin’s empiricism rests upon an appeal to classic literary, philosophical, and religious symbols and texts, whose diversity cannot disguise their similarities at the experiential level. In the course of his work Voegelin comes to an ever-deepening appreciation of the “equivalences” of experience underlying the most varied symbolic expressions. With this in mind he devotes himself 50. Frederick Lawrence, “Leo Strauss and the Fourth Wave of Modernity,” 135, 141; Thomas L. Pangle, “Platonic Political Science in Strauss and Voegelin,” 334–36. 51. Eric Voegelin, “In Search of the Ground,” 241–42.

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to reconstructing the “fundamental categories of existence, experience, consciousness, and reality” on the basis of a careful exegesis of symbols and texts. He and Strauss make common cause in their commitment to the recovery of the authentic meaning of classic texts in the face of what they consider to be modern deformation. However, in the process of retrieval Strauss arrives at a rather different experiential ground than does Voegelin. Just as Strauss sees an important role for historical studies in the undertaking of this project, Voegelin finds in modern historical, philological, and anthropological scholarship a “peculiarly backhanded” means of “regaining a spiritual ground” not found “on the dominant level of our universities and churches.” Through the exploration of Stone Age symbolisms, the Bible, apocalyptic and Gnostic movements, classic Chinese and Hindu civilization, Egyptology, classical philology, and so forth, Voegelin finds reason for hope in the work of scholars whose analysis of the relevant texts and artifacts brings them ever closer to the engendering experiences.52 This appeal to the normative character of experiences of transcendence is problematic for Strauss. In an exchange of letters between Strauss and Voegelin concerning the nature of revelation, the latter identifies revelation with “the contents of certain literary documents, which are canonized as ‘scriptures.’” Voegelin further notes how those who establish these canons must be in possession of certain criteria by which they determine what is and is not revelation— “the problem of revelation seems thus to be inseparable from the problem of recognizing revelation as such.” In Voegelin’s view the fundamental criterion determining genuine revelation is the experience of being addressed by God: Through this experience of “being addressed,” the essential contents of revealed knowledge are given: (1) a man who understands himself in his “mere” humanness in contrast to a transcendental being; (2) a world-transcendent Being who is experienced as the highest reality in contrast to all worldly being; (3) a Being who “addresses,” and therefore is a person, God; (4) a man who can be addressed by this Being and who thereby stands in a relation of openness to Him. In this sense I would venture the formulation: the fact of revelation is its content.

Strauss agrees with Voegelin that a “‘psychologizing,’ that is to say, atheistic interpretation of revelation leads to confusion,” and that one “has to assume something coming from God happens to man.” But Strauss also expresses his reservations about Voegelin’s claims. This “something coming from God” is 52. Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 96; Voegelin, “Immortality,” 56–57.

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“not necessarily to be understood as call or address; this is a possible interpretation.” That being the case, the acceptance of this interpretation, therefore, rests on faith and not knowledge. I go further; there is a fundamental difference between the call of God itself and the human formulation of this call; what we face historically is the latter (in case one does not accept verbal inspiration, which one can, but need not). Either the human formulation is radically problematic, and then one ends up in the desert of Kierkegaard’s subjectivism . . . or, the human formulation is not radically problematic—that is to say, there are criteria that permit a distinction between illegitimate (heretical) and legitimate formulations.

But if one accepts the latter possibility (as does Voegelin), then one abandons the realm of philosophy for the realm of faith: It is with some reluctance that I as a non-Christian venture on this intra-Christian problem. But I can do so precisely because I can make it plain to myself that the problem, and the whole problem area, is, exactly, a Christian one, and through an appropriate extension, also a Jewish one; but then precisely it is not a “universal-human” one. That means that it presupposes a specific faith, which philosophy as philosophy does not and cannot do. Here and here alone it seems to me lies the divergence between us—also in the mere historical.53

For Strauss, the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate formulations of revealed truth are always tradition specific; hence they are alien to the spirit of philosophy, which refuses allegiance to any particular tradition. Not surprisingly, the correspondence between Strauss and Voegelin largely peters out after this exchange—the unbridgeable distance between them has now become evident. Strauss insists on speaking of the relation between faith and knowledge in disjunctive terms. Voegelin does not accept this, and he would likely respond to Strauss that faith and philosophical knowledge arise from the same kind of originating experience and should not, therefore, be contrasted to one another. In addition, Voegelin argues that revelation as the experience of “being addressed,” the event of “being called” by God, is given in the experience itself, and is not a matter of interpreting the experience from a particular point of view. Faith is constituted in the experience; it is a response to the call, not an interpretive perspective brought to bear on an otherwise indeterminate experience of transcendence. As Voegelin conceives of this type of encounter, the 53. Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 80–82, 88–89.

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recipients of revelation experience it as call; for Strauss, a particular experience is interpreted as call on the basis of faith. Strauss insists that every experience of this sort arises within and is interpreted within an already given horizon, while Voegelin argues that these underlying experiences are constitutive of the horizon itself and are the source of any authentic criticism and reform. It appears as if one of the things that worries Strauss about appeals to “experience” is their vagueness and indeterminacy. In the preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (which was added to the English translation published in 1965), he points out how, for Buber and Rosenzweig, the God encountered in experience turns out to be remarkably similar to the God of Israel; but he also notes how Heidegger makes a similar appeal to experience and is “led far away from any charity as well as from any humanity.” Strauss is clearly concerned with the problematic character of attempting to make normative judgments on the basis of such indefinable experiences. In the case of modern Jewish thinkers who adopt this approach, Strauss observes how reliance on “the absolute experience . . . will not lead back to Judaism . . . if it does not recognize itself in the Bible and clarify itself through the Bible.”54 The “turn to experience” encounters the biblical God only when the experience is interpreted from a biblical perspective. To this observation Voegelin would likely reply that the Bible itself is an articulation of the experience of encounter and that any normative standard derived from the Bible is ultimately rooted in this originating experience. Thus, for Voegelin, the key to human authenticity lies in the careful exegesis of and meditation upon the classic texts articulating experiences of transcendence. Whether reading of these experiences leads toward a commitment to a particular religious community is not especially important to Voegelin; in the case of the Bible he is far more interested in the text’s capacity to open out in the direction of a universal spiritual vision. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the difference between Voegelin and Strauss on the matter of revelation is not that Strauss insists on bringing reason to bear on revelatory experiences while Voegelin does not. The two men disagree because Voegelin believes that the “reason” of the philosophers has its basis in the same kinds of experiences of transcendence as those articulated by prophets and saints, whereas Strauss continues to insist that the manner in which one interprets experience is already shaped by one’s loyalty to either Athens or Jerusalem. As Voegelin’s investigation of transcendent experience deepens, his understanding of revelation broadens as well. He eventually comes to the conclusion that the

54. Strauss, “Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion,” 146–47.

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Greek philosophers, much like the great figures of the Bible, understood themselves as responding to an address from the divine beyond. Voegelin insists that the “divine Beyond” or the “God beyond the gods” is somehow (however inadequately) cognized in an anticipatory fashion in the human-divine act described by Plato as opsis, or “vision.”55 For Strauss, whatever conception of divinity may have been entertained by Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, their commitment to the philosophical life bars them from ever accepting revelation in the manner of Moses and the prophets. From Strauss’s perspective, Voegelin’s preoccupation with “experience” blurs the distinction between philosophy and biblical faith without doing justice to either. Classical philosophers were not visionaries, but rational thinkers whose path to God was made clear by argument and demonstration. The notion of “participation” in divine reality weakens the sense of distance between God and human so fundamental (in Strauss’s view) to the biblical conception of the relationship between creature and Creator. The biblical writers were not interested in “religious experience,” but in the sovereign and inscrutable God who created the heavens and the earth. In this regard, Strauss seems to admire Rudolf Otto’s work precisely because it avoids the temptation of explaining religious experience as Voegelin would, as participation of the human in the divine and the divine in the human. Strauss speaks approvingly of Otto’s emphasis on religion as “the experience of the wholly other, of the ‘opposite to everything human.’” One result of Otto’s analyses is the recovery of a notion of God “beyond experience,” “beyond life,” and “beyond ideas.” Thus, for Strauss, Otto’s writings are useful in recapturing the absolute otherness of God, in the face of “the concatenation of Enlightenment critique and romantic reinterpretation.” The understanding of God as being beyond experience allows for the “primacy of God over religion,” thus providing support to traditional theology: “If God is a being in Himself, independent of His being experienced by man, and if we know about this being from what is revealed in Torah and prophecy, then the theoretical exposition of that which is known is possible in principle, which means theology. To this extent, theology is the expression of simple and

55. On the term vision Voegelin explains, “[Vision] is the comprehensive mode of man’s cognitive participation in reality. . . . The Vision is man’s participatory experience of ‘seeing’ the paradox of a reality which depends for its existence, formative order, and luminosity on the presence of ‘the god’ who, as distinguished from the Olympian gods, is a non-present Beyond of the being things in which he is present.” “The Beginning and the Beyond,” 230. See also Eric Voegelin, “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme: A Meditation,” 362.

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unambiguous piety.”56 Even at this early stage in his career (1923), the opposition between Jerusalem and Athens is beginning to take shape in Strauss’s thought. God is wholly other than the human, disclosing only that which the divine will decides to reveal “in Torah and prophecy.” The theologian accepts this revelation out of a sense of piety and obedience, something the philosopher as philosopher can never do. Not surprisingly, Voegelin criticizes Otto for precisely the reason that prompts Strauss’s admiration—that Otto’s emphasis on the “wholly other” nature of divine reality allows little room for divinehuman participation: Now what does participation mean? What it actually means you can experience, of course, only in meditative experience. . . . If you introduce into a diagram man and God, you can say: In participation there is first a relation of identity because they must have something in common, a sort of area of overlapping; the same relation also does not hold true because they are not identical; when you get these relations and nonrelations of identity you can call the whole thing together: participation. . . . [If] you leave out identity completely, then you get the radical difference between God and man that expresses itself in, for instance, Rudolf Otto’s analysis of the Divine as a tremendum beyond, totally different from, man—a situation quite close to that of a deist like Voltaire for whom God is reduced to a concept, functionless in human existence, and who is then horrified when the first generation of his pupils suddenly becomes atheist.57

Understanding the Bible as he does makes Strauss suspicious of modern reappropriations of biblical writings that focus on the “inner” meaning of the text while downplaying that which was essential (in his view) for the original authors and compilers. Throughout his career, Strauss is critical of those interpreters who try to smooth over the obvious areas of conflict between the Bible and the scientific spirit of modernity by means of an “internalization” of biblical claims. For Strauss, such reinterpretations are unfortunate concessions to the very modern horizon responsible for obscuring the original meaning of the biblical text. According to the Bible, God actually created the world and continues to exert direct control over it. Strauss takes this as an illustration of the unavoidable conflict between the Bible and modern science (which knows nothing of the creator god). If the Bible insists that God controls nature, then

56. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” 111; Strauss, “The Holy,” 78. 57. Eric Voegelin, “Conversations with Eric Voegelin at the Thomas More Institute for Adult Education in Montreal,” 252–53.

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it stands in opposition to the arguments of modern science.58 For Strauss this conflict is inescapable, and those who would attempt to evade it are guilty of misunderstanding the nature of the biblical claims: “[The] alternative cannot be avoided by ascribing to philosophy and revelation different spheres or planes—for: they make assertions about the same subject: about the world and human life. (Cf. the controversies about Darwinism, biblical criticism etc.: conflict is, not only possible, but actual.)” With reference to the biblical accounts of creation, Strauss notes, “The famous refutation of Genesis 1 by modern geology—the wrong answer is: the Bible is not a scientific book, but concerned only with matters of faith and manners—for: faith and science overlap, e.g. in the question of miracles. . . . The good and decisive answer is this: all scientific arguments against the Biblical account of creation etc. presuppose the impossibility of miracles (events which according to science must have required billions of years, are miraculously possible in a split second)—i.e. they beg the question.”59 Attempts to evade this confrontation by dividing reality into a spiritual—that is, “internal”—sphere, where the biblical claims may be true, and a material, external world, in which the laws of science apply, are instances of using modern categories to explain away the biblical challenge: It seems to me that this kind of theology identifies the genuinely Biblical distinction between the spirit and the flesh with apparently similar, but actually entirely different distinctions that originate in modern philosophy: the distinction between mind and nature, between history and nature, between the existential and the merely real (i.e. between the being of responsible and responsive beings and the being of facts or things or affairs). Using the distinction between history and nature, a modern theologian has said that faith in revelation requires the truth of certain historical facts and that therefore a conflict between historical criticism and Biblical faith is at least possible, whereas faith in revelation implies no assertion regarding nature, and therefore no conflict between science and Biblical faith is possible. The solution suggested by many present-day theologians is apt to lead to the consequence that the assertions of faith have a purely inner meaning, that the truth ascribed to them is a purely emotional and moral truth, and not a truth simply. There exists therefore the danger that only the

58. “What I am driving at is this: while faith is not of the world, it necessarily issues, not merely in actions in the world, but in assertions about the world. Faith implies the assertion that the world is created. In consequence of the distinction between God and the world, Gogarten has tried to limit the thesis of creation to the creation of man: the thesis of creation does not say anything about extra-human beings. This is an obvious absurdity.” Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 158. 59. Ibid., 158, 171, 173.

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intrinsic value of the experience of faith distinguishes that experience from any hallucination or delusion.60

According to Strauss, those who employ this type of biblical hermeneutic all too easily succumb to the tendency to distinguish between “central” and “peripheral” biblical teachings, sorted out on the basis of how well they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of their “inner” meaning. What results is a weakening of the starkness of biblical teaching as its embarrassing, “external” historical claims are interpreted away as manifestations of primitive consciousness or as a “mythical residue.” Further, to distinguish between the central and peripheral teachings, the interpreter would obviously be making use of criteria extraneous to the Bible itself, which makes no such distinction. In violation of the biblical authors’ understanding, the question, did this really happen? is reduced to a matter of secondary importance, replaced by the modern interpreter’s own criteria of relevance.61 Strauss keeps returning to the fundamental fact that the Bible asserts that God acts in history: “Now Scripture describes the fortune of Israel—mind you: Israel’s external political fortune—as the reward for her obedience, and conversely it describes her misfortune as the punishment for her apostasy. Thus it is written. And one who denies this causal nexus . . . also declares by this denial that not everything that is written in Scripture is true. He thus denies the verbal inspiration of Scripture.” These issues would continue to trouble Strauss throughout his life; the tensions that characterize his attitude toward the Bible are already present in 1925: Let us assume, then, that verbal inspiration has been rendered obsolete, and that this dogma no longer crushes free inquiry. . . . Granted that the Bible, and especially the Torah, is the deposit of a centuries-long development (as indeed everyone basically assumes today) and did not have its peculiar origin in a diktat from Mt. Sinai. Still, the central difficulty remains that Scripture speaks unequivocally, adamantly, and compellingly of God’s agency: God loves, chooses, rewards, punishes, he is Ruler of the world, also and especially of nature. Science knows nothing, and can know nothing, of all these things since it does not permit itself to believe. What does science do when it encounters the Bible? It has no right to speak of a factor or an active power called “God.” Of course, it must speak of the fact that Scripture speaks of God. But for science the history of

60. Ibid., 157–58. 61. For Strauss’s critique of modern Jewish thinkers along these lines, see his “Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion,” 146–58.

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God’s rule necessarily turns into a history of theophany; it must become psychology. It must understand in what ultimate experiences talk about “God” is grounded. It must analyze “God.” God is not a subject; for science God remains merely an object. . . . The atheism of present-day Bible science is obvious. If it is not obvious to the point that everyone can grasp it, then this is due to the accidental fact that this science happens to be predominantly in the hands of professors of theology; that the inclination to react to “God” implanted in the human heart from time immemorial, cannot be uprooted overnight; that no atheist emerges unscathed from reading the Psalms and the prophets; mostly however, that this science has its seat in Germany, the land of “reconciliations” and “sublations.”62

I have quoted this passage at length because it embodies all the ambiguities characteristic of Strauss’s relationship to the Bible. Where the Strauss of 1925 uses the word science, one could easily substitute philosophy without significantly altering the meaning of the text. Although he has not yet formulated the hermeneutic principle that will inform his later work, his commitment to be faithful to the self-understanding of the biblical authors is evident. If biblical science is not able to speak of God, it must still come to terms with the fact that “Scripture speaks of God.” Perhaps most poignant (and, I would add, most typical) is Strauss’s placing of the term God in quotation marks, while simultaneously speaking of an inclination to react to this questionable reality that is “implanted in the human heart.” If Strauss seems to suggest that this inclination that “cannot be uprooted overnight” might one day in fact be overcome, he likewise recognizes the profound impact of the Psalms and the prophets on the hearts of those who find belief impossible. This tension is present throughout Strauss’s writings. It is especially evident when he comes to consider the status of biblical revelation. His is not the way of Voegelin, with its concentration on the recovery of experiences of transcendence. Instead we find Strauss seriously undertaking the task of understanding the Bible from the perspective of its compilers, without showing his hand as to whether he accepts their testimony as true. According to Kenneth Hart Green, Strauss “searches for an intellectually defensible position which permits him to remain free of traditional premises either debilitated or refuted by biblical criticism, yet which also permits him to exploratively presuppose the ‘cognitive value’ of the Bible precisely as an exact historical interpreter, a presupposition dogmatically disallowed by biblical criticism.”63 The ambiguity of this for 62. Strauss, “Biblical History and Science,” 132–33. 63. Green, “Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish Thinker,” xv.

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mulation aptly reflects Strauss’s conflicted attitude toward the Bible. For with Strauss it is not especially clear what the “cognitive value” of the Bible is—consequently his thought oscillates among views such as “This is an accurate rendering of what these people believed,” “We must allow for the possibility that what they say is true,” and “Of course we cannot tell if it is true.” Voegelin insists that the Bible provides access to foundational, normative experiences; Strauss holds open the question as to what it is that lies at the basis of the biblical text: Hardly any researcher takes seriously the claim that events happened in biblical times just as the sources want us to believe: that because of their piety, the pious judges and kings were successful, and conversely, that the impious ones, because of their lack of piety, were unsuccessful. . . . It goes without saying that strength is not identical with superiority in numbers and armaments. For example, “zeal for God” is, objectively speaking, quite an essential factor in the morale of an army, and thus of its strength, regardless of whether God exists and helps or does not. . . . [The] biblical sources themselves give us the possibility of arriving at a— perhaps not deep, but nevertheless accurate—conception of the beginnings of our people. We are thereby urged to assume that the theological conception of these beginnings may derive from a time in which there was no longer any political life, and therefore also no longer any political understanding.64

Written in 1925, this passage anticipates the direction Strauss’s thought would take with regard to the Bible. In the 1930s Strauss would turn his attention to the study of Maimonides and the medieval Islamic philosophers. From them he would begin to develop an appreciation of the important distinction between exoteric and esoteric writing, and his thinking would move toward a more radical understanding of biblical revelation in political terms.65 Whether or not the biblical God exists, Strauss is acutely aware of the profound impact that belief in this God has had on Western civilization. In fact, writing in 1964

64. Strauss, “Biblical History and Science,” 135. 65. Daniel Tanguay argues that at the time of the publication of Philosophy and Law (1935), Strauss is still wrestling with the question of the supernatural status of revelation, but that his increasing familiarity with the work of Maimonides and especially Farabi leads to a significant change in his thought. In Philosophy and Law the relative superiority of prophet (and of the revealed Law) and philosopher is not entirely clear, a situation Tanguay attributes to Strauss’s belief at the time that Maimonides insisted on the superiority of the prophet. Even then, however, “the revealed law is considered as a given that one must take into consideration, but the question of its supernatural origin is not raised. The Law reveals certain speculative truths, but Strauss strongly underlines the essentially political meaning of revelation.” But after Philosophy and Law, “these differences between the Maimonidean understanding of prophetology and that of the Islamic Aristotelians

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Strauss would remark how the theological-political problem had been the theme of his investigations since the 1930s.66 Consequently, for him, a serious consideration of the meaning of the Bible is a matter of the utmost importance for the future of modern society. On this point Voegelin entirely agrees with Strauss. But because he comes to the study of the Bible without Strauss’s skepticism and with a different understanding of the relationship between philosophy and revelation, he frames the relevant issues differently. Voegelin’s thought evolves in the direction of an appreciation for the experiential equivalence reflected in philosophical and religious texts, while Strauss develops a sharp juxtaposition between Athens and Jerusalem. These differences, though, should not be allowed to obscure the ambivalence with regard to the Bible’s teachings that the two men have in common.

——— disappears from Strauss’ texts. . . . Henceforth he interprets Maimonides in light of the doctrine of the Islamic Aristotelians, and above all of Farabi. One then witnesses a politicization of theology and an almost complete effacing of the cognitive value proper to religion. This deepening of the theologico-political meaning of prophetology is accompanied by the rediscovery of the art of esoteric writing. It is in fact because of their political understanding of prophetology and the Law that the Islamic and Jewish philosophers practiced a peculiar art of writing.” Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, 67–68. 66. Leo Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft,” 453.

2 Transcendence and Imbalance The Ambiguous Legacy of the Bible

Despite his admiration for the salutary effects of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, Voegelin’s relationship to the Bible is an uneasy one. We have already noted his reservations about the very notion of “Scripture.” But his concern about doctrinalization is part of his wider preoccupation with the sins of the doctrinaire. Much more directly than Strauss, Voegelin addresses the role of the Bible as the source from which ideological movements have drawn to sustain their socially disruptive fantasies. To appreciate the importance of this question for Voegelin, we must first understand what is at stake in his philosophy of order. Issues concerning order and disorder permeate his thinking throughout his career. Even after he develops his theory of consciousness and reality in his later writings, the effort is intended to have a therapeutic effect on the surrounding societal disorder. His focus on experiences of transcendence is always understood as a means of reminding his readers of the normative, transcendent sources of order. On the basis of such experiences their recipients are moved to reorient their lives. It is no exaggeration to say that the tension brought about in the lives of those who undergo these experiences is the central theme of Order and History, a tension stemming from the discrepancy between the perfection of divine reality and the imperfection of life in the world. As the partners within being (divine, human, world, and society) become increasingly differentiated in consciousness, the transcendence of the divine partner is increasingly recognized. Throughout history there are sev-

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eral great moments in which humankind achieves a notable advance in differentiating insight. At the time he is writing Order and History, Voegelin refers to these great breakthroughs as “leaps in being.” More specifically, a leap in being is an “epochal event that breaks the compactness of the early cosmological myth and establishes the order of man in his immediacy under God.” A leap in being constitutes, in the consciousness of its recipients, a before and after in which earlier symbolizations of order are demoted or even rejected as misleading and inadequate. The experience of a leap in being creates the conditions for “a turning around, the Platonic periagoge, an inversion or conversion toward the true source of order.”1 Two of the most significant leaps, according to Voegelin, occur in ancient Israel and classical Greece. In Israel (and later in Christianity), the emphasis within the experience falls on the awareness of the divine source of reality, whereas in Greece the focus remains on the questioning response of the human partner in the experience of being drawn by the divine. For the Greek philosophers, God is the “unseen measure” approached in the questing search of the philosophers, whose properly ordered souls in turn become the measure by which the order of the polis is to be judged. In the biblical world, revelation is the experience of being directly addressed by God and being formed into a people by this revelation.

The Dilemma of Israel From Voegelin’s perspective the greatest strength of the leap in being articulated in the Bible, that is, its profound experience and symbolization of divine reality, is also the source of its potential dangers. Because of the intensity of the biblical experience of transcendent reality, the tension between the desire for attunement with the divine and the exigencies of mundane existence becomes especially acute. So overwhelmingly powerful is the encounter with divinity that those who undergo the experience may lose their balance in terms of understanding the limits of life in this world. For some, the experience will lead to a withdrawal from a society now perceived as unbearably corrupt into what Voegelin would consider an irresponsible abandonment of political responsibility. Far more dangerous, though, is the tendency to engage in 1. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:47–50; Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 2, The World of the Polis, 67; Voegelin, Order and History, 1:48. Subsequent page citations from Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation, will be given parenthetically in the text using the abbreviation IR.

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activity designed to realize divine perfection on earth. Whether one remains tied to the idea of divine inspiration and guidance, or embodies a secularized variant of biblical zeal, Voegelin views such movements as threats to civilization. As a philosopher of order, he spends a significant part of his career analyzing them and doing what he can to counter their influence. However, these dangers represent only one side of the biblical legacy. The intensity of the biblical experience is always potentially disordering, but the reality so encountered remains the transcendent source of order. Hence Voegelin’s concern for societal stability, which makes him wary of the ways in which biblically inspired experience can inspire socially destructive forces, also draws him back to the Bible as a source of both personal and civilizational order. Well aware of the ways in which society can fall prey to the illusions propagated by activist utopians, he is also convinced that the most effective guarantor of a good society is the presence within it of people who take seriously the life of the spirit and who seek to live in accord with divine reality. Bearing in mind its twofold character as a seedbed of disorder and as a witness to divine revelation, it is easy to comprehend why the Bible is problematic for Voegelin. Nowhere else is the transcendent source of order revealed so starkly, and nowhere else are the sources of social disorder to be found in such protean form. Voegelin must find a way to keep the former alive as formative and therapeutic, while doing what he can to safeguard society from the effects of the latter. Whether this can be done while still doing justice to the integrity of the biblical message is, I believe, the central issue in Voegelin’s treatment of the biblical text. In a sense Voegelin is forced to deal with the Bible in ways in which Strauss is not. Strauss’s skepticism and apparent agnosticism with regard to revelation, as well as his criticism of appeals to religious experience by those who take the Bible to be authoritative, allow him to avoid Voegelin’s dilemma. Voegelin is always trying to evoke and recapture for his readers the “experience behind the text” as a therapy of order. Therefore, when confronting what he takes to be the socially disruptive consequences of revelation, he cannot simply dismiss this phenomenon as a result of individual or collective delusion. He is compelled to ask what it is about the experience itself that can lead to such disruption. Voegelin’s difficulties with the biblical leap in being involve questions having to do with its precise nature and consequences. Given the experiences of the biblical writers, what are the implications of these experiences for life in society? In the case of Israel, the leap in being brings into existence “a new type of people, formed by God . . . set off from the civilizations of the age by the divine choice” (IR, 153–54). Compared to Greece, where the wisdom gained through the leap in being “remains generically human,” “when God is in search

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of man, as in Israel, the responsive recipient of revelation becomes historically unique” (IR, 550). Writing to Strauss in 1951, Voegelin is clear about the difference: “Plato propounds no truth that had been revealed to him; he appears not to have had the experience of a prophetic address from God. Therefore no direct announcement.” Operating within a horizon strongly determined by cosmological myth, Plato and Aristotle speak of the soul that “reaches out toward divine reality,” but “does not meet an answering movement from beyond.” Further, the character of the Israelite leap of being is of such immediacy, intensity, and fullness that, in relationship to the parallel occurrence in Greece, “the two experiences differ so profoundly in content that they become articulate in the two different symbolisms of Revelation and Philosophy.”2 Israel received a divine revelation allowing the truth of order to become strikingly apparent. This revelation, however, demanded a response on the part of the people. As a result, Israel emerged as a society oriented toward the future—a future in which its capacity for transformation lay hidden in the mystery of a gracious and faithful God who intervenes in ways that can bring about the envisioned change. This vision accounts for the abundant imagery within the Hebrew Bible pointing to an “age to come” in which God will abolish suffering and death and usher in an age of perpetual peace. An important aspect of the biblical legacy, then, involves humankind’s always finding itself in the position of “catching up” to a revelation incapable of being fully realized within this world: Here was a people that began its existence in history with a radical leap in being; and only after the people had been constituted by that initial experience did it acquire, in the course of centuries, a mundane body of organization to sustain itself in existence. This sequence, reversing the ordinary course of social evolution, is unique in history. . . . A society is supposed to start from primitive rites and myths, and thence to advance gradually, if at all, to the spirituality of transcendent religion; it is not supposed to start where a respectable society has difficulties even ending. . . . Nevertheless, the mystery of Israel’s start at the wrong end of evolution must be accepted. . . . In this one case the sequence actually was reversed; and the reversal was the cause of Israel’s extraordinary creativity in the realm of symbols. For the disorderly beginning of existence with a leap in being provided the experiential motivations for the people to respond to its gradual descent into Sheol with the creation of symbols that would preserve its attunement with transcendent being on each new level of mundane involvement. Each 2. Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 87; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 150; Voegelin, Order and History, 2:67.

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step of further adjustment to the pragmatic conditions of existence had to be measured by the standards of the initial existence as the Chosen People under God. (IR, 365–66)

This is a splendid description of the fundamental issues Voegelin tackles in Israel and Revelation. And his reference to Israel’s origins “at the wrong end of evolution” offers a hint about the problematic character of Israelite order. By comparison, the Hellenic consciousness of history and the discovery of the truth of order were motivated not by the reception of divine revelation, but by the experience of a society in crisis. Out of an experience of social disorder, Aeschylus, Socrates, and Plato could begin to move toward the “unseen measure” by which their societies may be judged. Certainly in the first three volumes of Order and History, Voegelin is clear about the “essential difference” between a society brought into existence through the experience of revelation and a society that evolves through an encounter with philosophy: The Hellenic consciousness arrives, through the understanding of disorder, at the understanding of true order. . . . The Israelite consciousness begins, through the Message and Decalogue from Sinai, with the knowledge of true order. The word, the dabar, immediately and fully reveals the spiritual order of existence, as well as its origin in transcendent divine being, but leaves it to the prophet to discover the immutability and recalcitrance of the world-immanent structure of being; the philosopher’s love of wisdom slowly dissolves the compactness of cosmic order until it becomes the order of world-immanent being, beyond which is sensed, though never revealed, the unseen transcendent measure.3

The question remains as to the precise nature of the changes effectuated by the leap in being. In the introduction to Israel and Revelation, Voegelin asserts that the leap in being is not simply an increase in knowledge concerning the order of being; rather, “it is a change in the order itself ” (IR, 48). The response to the “act of grace” that is revelation changes the very structure of society’s participation in being, “with consequences for the order of existence”; and while “nothing happens externally when man beholds God and the leap in being occurs in the soul, a good deal happens afterwards in the practice of conduct” (IR, 48–49, 476). It would seem that the experience of revelation and its concrete, practical consequences are closely intertwined. The leap in being and its social incarnation, while distinct, appear to be inseparable. Yet however true this may be, it stands in need of serious qualification. Voegelin reminds his 3. Voegelin, Order and History, 2:118.

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readers that the leap in being is not a leap out of existence, and that the recipients of revelation must “remain adjusted to the order of mundane existence” (IR, 49). This warning occurs in a context in which he distinguishes between the area of existence affected by the leap in being “and the much larger area that remains relatively unaffected.” Nor is the leap itself “an unqualified good” relative to earlier cosmological symbolisms, which despite their comparative lack of differentiation also embody a healthy respect for conditions of life in the world (IR, 124). This stands in contrast to the social order based upon the revelation given at Sinai: “The conditions of existence in the world, which in fact were sorely disregarded in the covenant order, would then be considered factors of reality which can be changed in such a manner that the existence of a society under the covenant, and nothing but the covenant, will become historically possible. If we take that position, however, we have introduced the prophetic vision of a new mankind in a realm of peace into the premises of our interpretation. And that is impermissible in a critical philosophy of order and history” (IR, 350). Here we come to the crux of the problem. Beginning at the wrong end of social evolution turns out to be not much of a blessing after all. Revelation is a light and a guide; yet it is also the cause of the frequent oscillation “between the righteousness of a life in obedience to divine instructions and the organization of a people for existence in history” (IR, 229). Controversies over the establishment of the monarchy, confrontations between kings and God’s messengers, periods of defection from the divine ways followed by fervent attempts at reform—all are manifestations of the difficulties faced by those who would live in accordance with the word of the Lord. Nowhere does this dilemma become more evident than in the travails of Israel’s great prophets. Voegelin sympathizes with the prophets, but they are also the object of some of his sharpest criticism. But to understand Voegelin’s attitude toward the prophets, we first must understand how he conceives the problem to which the prophetic movement is a response. Israelite prophecy points out the failures of kings, priests, and people with regard to observation of the covenant. The prophets, according to Voegelin, experience the transcendent truth of order intensely and are therefore profoundly conscious that “existence under God means love, humility, and rightness of action rather than legality of conduct” (IR, 493). Yet they are also the inheritors and faithful sons of a particular communal, covenantal tradition. As a result, their efforts at reform most often appeal to Israel’s experience at Sinai as a means of reconstituting the life of the people in a present under God. In this they join forces with the creators of Israel’s great law codes in their attempts to translate the life of the spirit into social form. Voegelin discerns in

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the formation of the “Book of the Covenant” (Exod. 20:22–23:19) an enterprise very much in harmony with the prophetic call for greater “knowledge of the Lord.” This creation of the Elohist author manifests a genuine concern to get beyond obedience to the letter of the law: “From the words, the ordinances, and the counsels we return to their origin in the present under God at Mount Sinai. That present has not become past, but is a living present through the Messenger whose voice is with the people right here and now in the work of the Elohist” (IR, 385). However, by the time of the period in which the Deuteronomic Torah is formed, much has changed. While acknowledging the importance of the Deuteronomic reform in helping to preserve the Sinaitic tradition, Voegelin’s assessment of its impact on Israel’s originating experience of God is largely negative.4 As an example of reforming zeal, the Deuteronomic efforts “stiffened disastrously” resistance to Babylon and thereby hastened Judah’s demise. A more lasting result is that “the existence in the present under God has been perverted into existence in the present under the Torah” (IR, 414). From Voegelin’s perspective, the transition from the Book of the Covenant to Deuteronomy entails a significant loss of immediacy and flexibility in relation to Israel’s experience of God. In the Book of the Covenant the authors write “on the basis of the traditions, in continuity with the events themselves”; “no Moses is interposed as a speaker between the author and the events narrated. . . . Yahweh, Moses, and the people are the actors in the drama from which Israel emerges as the Chosen People in the present under God.” By contrast, in Deuteronomy “the history of the berith is no longer told in continuity with the traditions. Moses is now the fictitious historian who tells his people his and their own history. . . . The words and ordinances that in Exodus emanate from Yahweh, flow in Deuteronomy from the authority of Moses. The author of the people . . . has become the author of a book.” While conceding Gerhard von Rad’s point concerning the emphasis that Deuteronomy places on the notion of receiving the divine message “today,” Voegelin insists that the “today” in question is no longer the immediacy of the present under God, but an awareness that the written Torah remains with the people always: “The actual constitution of Israel in historical form through God has become in Deuteronomy a story of the past on which is grafted the legislative authority of the fictitious Moses.” In Voegelin’s view, the Moses of Deuteronomy occupies a position not entirely unlike that of Pharaoh in Egypt’s cosmological order—as the mediator through whom the divine substance is concretized in the statutes governing the order of society. And 4. See Aaron Mackler, “Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation after Forty Years: A Jewish Perspective.”

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while this does not indicate a wholesale regression from Israel’s original leap in being, there has definitely been a decline from the symbolization of Exodus. For Voegelin, “the word of God had become the Book of the Torah, written by a Moses who had become a Pharaonic mummy” (IR, 413–15). Despite his harsh evaluation of the Deuteronomic reform, Voegelin views its occurrence as understandable given the conditions of Israelite society. He realizes that, to find acceptance, any adaptation of the instructions of the Book of the Covenant to the needs of a changed social situation must be integrated into the preexisting narrative. In this sense Israelite efforts to reawaken an appreciation of its constitutive experience remain tied to the particular circumstances of Israel’s history. It is this particularity of circumstances, or what Voegelin refers to as “the mortgage of Canaan,” that conditions the creation of Israelite symbols. Although quite conscious of the hold these conditions have on the emergence of symbols, Voegelin also maintains that “the mortgage of the historical circumstances of revelation could have been gradually reduced, if the men who were willing and able to do it had found followers.” He cites the examples of a number of the prophets who tried to “break the parochialism of Israel through the universalism of a mankind under God and its collectivism through the personalism of a berith that is written in the heart.” However, in the process leading up to the creation of Deuteronomy, Voegelin finds evidence of what he takes as the prevailing (and unfortunate) tendency in Israel—“to make the mortgage permanent by including the circumstances of revelation into its contents.” In the case of the Deuteronomic Torah this meant “including the organization of the Kingdom of Judah in the seventh century in the contents of revelation.” Voegelin criticizes the Deuteronomic authors because he finds “they freeze the historical form of existence in the present under God as it has been created by Moses potentially for all mankind, into a constitutional doctrine for the people of Judah.” He concedes, though, that such a development is to be expected given the difficulty of living according to the spirit without institutional support: For its survival in the world, therefore, the order of the spirit has to rely on a fanatical belief in the symbols of a creed more often than on the fides caritate formata—though such reliance, if it becomes socially predominant, is apt to kill the order it is supposed to preserve. With all its dubious aspects admitted, Deuteronomy is still a remarkable recovery of Yahwist order . . . and when held against the alternative of a complete destruction of Yahwist order through the Exile and the dispersion of the upper class, it has proved to be its salvation in the form of the Jewish postexilic community. (IR, 418–20, 427)

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Voegelin cites Walter Eichrodt’s interpretation approvingly, seeing the Deuteronomic codifiers as having “successfully translated the divine order of love into an institutional model, counteracting thereby the apotheosis of the state, as well as the conception of a secular order of law and government in isolation against spiritual order” (IR, 428). In Voegelin’s estimation, the legacy of the Deuteronomic reform is highly ambiguous. This is the context in which the problem confronted by prophets is to be understood. Later centuries may see the prophets as visionaries who looked toward the day when Yahweh would be recognized as the one God of all humanity, sovereign over nations and history. But this prophetic universalism exists in a dialectical relationship with their role as mediators of the divine message to a particular people under particular historical circumstances. The prophets were “torn by the conflict between spiritual universalism and patriotic parochialism that had been inherent from the beginning in the conception of a Chosen People” (IR, 407). Because of this Voegelin believes the prophetic appeal to the Decalogue may actually have undermined the achievement of their goals. Such an appeal is unavoidable, since the Decalogue was the standard for Israel’s conduct. Yet once the expansion of the Decalogue into covenantal codes and the Deuteronomic Torah became recognized as a valid unfolding of its meaning, there arose the possibility of conflicting interpretations. By citing the codes to call the people back to the present under God, the prophets also had to contend with those who interpreted the code in ways that thwarted the prophetic intention. Voegelin notes how a person stung by the prophetic critique might very well respond with the defense “that he had not committed murder or theft when he used his business acumen to increase his property at the expense of an unwise peasant who had gone into debt too deeply” (IR, 491–92). Taking their stand on the level of decalogic norms, the prophets risked being outmaneuvered by fellow Israelites operating within the same religious horizon, who may in complete sincerity have believed their own interpretation of the Law to be superior to that of the prophet. The prophet Jeremiah’s indictment of his society not only offended many who viewed themselves as abiding by the guidance of the Torah, but directly attacked an institutional order that saw itself as the legitimate embodiment of the Sinaitic Covenant and Decalogue. Invoking the Decalogue lent authority to the prophetic criticism while simultaneously obscuring the real issue “that the prophets judged conduct in terms of its compatibility not with fundamental law but with the right order of the soul” (IR, 487). The prophets, in Voegelin’s view, do not escape the mortgage of Canaan. In Voegelin’s reading, the prophetic difficulties derive to some extent from the nature of the Decalogue itself. Its compact quality does not allow for a

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clear delineation between the core existential issues it addresses and the particular contingent formulation of the norms expressing this fundamental orientation. Voegelin applauds the prophetic struggle to disengage the existential issue from its decalogic form. Consequently, despite the prophets’ invocation of the Decalogue, he interprets the prophetic movement as a struggle against the Law (IR, 500n1). The prophets know well that at the heart of the Decalogue are “the injunctions to restrain self-assertiveness with regard to God and man.” However, this core belief is rendered in the Decalogue in terms of a prohibition against idolatry—“the positive relation between God and man, man and God was expressed negatively in the injunction not to have other gods in the face of Yahweh.” Voegelin sees in the railings of the prophets against the idolatrous practices of their people an instance of the peculiar tensions of the prophetic vocation. Living in the nearly unbearable intensity of God’s presence, they called their society to account in light of the truth of order. At the same time, Voegelin considers the prophets to have been handicapped by the limitations of the decalogic symbolization and its lack of a differentiated theology. As a result, the awkward situation arose in which the people were berated for violating a commandment they did not understand, because its “spiritual meaning had remained inarticulate” (IR, 492–93). Confronting incomprehension and resistance from both the people and their leaders, the prophets became increasingly aware of the tremendous gap that had opened between the truth of order and the actual society in which they lived. Their reactions to this situation and their attempts to resolve the tension in which they lived would lead to strident criticism—that of the prophets against their people and that of Voegelin against the prophets. While understanding of the prophets’ plight, Voegelin, for the most part, considers their message to be an example of the flight from reality to which the Israelite leap in being is prone. The unyielding stance of the prophets when confronted with the seemingly reasonable accommodations of Israelite society to the demands of mundane existence is especially perplexing to Voegelin in that it seems to violate the common sense necessary for survival in a world of aggressive empires. While he may approve of the prophets’ effort “to disengage the order of the soul under God from a mundane order that was formed by the myth,” “their rejections of the mundane order remain an oddity.” He believes the prophets were either unable or unwilling to find a way “from the formation of the soul to institutions and customs they could consider compatible with the knowledge and fear of God” (IR, 500). To illustrate his point Voegelin cites the episode from Isaiah, chapter 7, in which the prophet tells King Ahaz to forgo political alliances and military preparations at the time of the SyroEphraimic War. The king is told to trust in Yahweh and all will be well. Much

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has been written about this famous scene and its meaning; here I wish to focus on the conclusions Voegelin draws from the episode.5 In Isaiah’s advice to Ahaz, Voegelin notices a variation on the same sort of distortion he finds in the Deuteronomic Torah. With the prophet, the inscrutable will of God becomes the knowable will of God identical to the will of Isaiah. Just as the Deuteronomic Torah links the original Sinaitic revelation to the constitution of Judah, Isaiah ties God’s will to Judah’s pragmatic victories in the sphere of politics. Isaiah’s advocacy captures the profound tension, characteristic of prophetic existence, between the experience of revelation and the always-imperfect concrete social situation. But in this case Isaiah “has tried the impossible: to make the leap in being a leap out of existence into a divinely transfigured world beyond the laws of mundane existence.” The resolution of the tension at the heart of Israel’s historical experience is accomplished through faith that God will transfigure the world. While remaining the world with which we are familiar, it will now be freed of the perennial problems afflicting the human race—the world “will change its nature without ceasing to be the world in which we live concretely.” The truth of order will be brought to earth by an act of trust in God. Voegelin employs the term metastasis to describe this “change in the constitution of being” envisaged by the prophets. Despite their legitimate aims—to revive a sense of the divine presence in the lives of their people and to denounce social injustice—the prophets’ “ontological denial of the conditions of existence in the world” was unacceptable. Voegelin’s conclusion illustrates how philosophers are also capable of prophetic thundering when provoked: The constitution of being is what it is, and cannot be affected by human fancies. Hence the metastatic denial of the order of mundane existence is neither a true proposition in philosophy, nor a program of action that could be executed. The will to transform reality into something which by essence it is not is the rebellion against the nature of things as ordained by God. . . . The metastatic faith, now, though it became articulate in the prophets, did not originate with them but was inherent, from the very beginnings of the Mosaic foundation, in the conception of the theopolity as the Kingdom of God incarnate in a concrete people and its institutions. (IR, 506–7)

Metastasis, then, is not a uniquely prophetic phenomenon, but is present in the very origins of Israel. If, as Voegelin indicates, metastatic faith is inherent in Israel’s founding, a number of consequences follow. For one, it is now clear 5. I have treated this episode more extensively in my book Eric Voegelin and the Good Society, 146–56.

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that the metastatic problem is to be found throughout the entire range of Israel’s history.6 From its very beginning, Israel was burdened with a certain liability in terms of its capacity to strike the proper balance between faithfulness to the divine commands and to the exigencies of life in the world. While Voegelin specifically cites the idea of the Israelite theopolity as the source of metastasis, in doing so he comes very close to claiming that metastatic faith is an essential constituent of Israel’s order from the start. If it is the case that Voegelin does not apply the term metastatic carelessly, he strongly suggests that Israelite order exists in a state of intrinsic disharmony with the constitution of being. If, as Voegelin believes, the later struggles of Israel’s history are already present in embryonic form in its metastatic origins, then what is the purpose of its existence? Is Israel nothing more than history’s preeminent example of an inherently flawed solution to the problems of truth and order? Toward the end of Israel and Revelation, Voegelin considers the existential impasse at which Israel arrives: The concern of the prophets goes beyond the Chosen People, organized as a kingdom for survival in the pragmatic power field, toward a society which, though in some manner derived from the present people through survival and expansion, is certainly not identical with it. There is no answer to the question: Of which society are the prophets speaking when they envisage the carrier of true order? It certainly is not the society in which they live; and whether any concrete society that has formed in history since their time would be recognized by them as their object may be doubted. . . . Nor is there an answer to the second question: What kind of order will the society have? For it will be the transfigured order of a society after the metastasis. And a transfigured order was no object of knowledge to the prophets, nor has it become an object of knowledge to anybody since their time. Since neither the identity of the society nor the nature of its order can be determined, the suspicion will raise its head: Does the movement of the prophets make sense at all? (IR, 544)

For Voegelin, there are no answers to these questions. Nonetheless, the realization that the goal of the prophetic effort is “not a concrete society with a 6. “[When] we undertake the Exodus and wander into the world, in order to found a new society somewhere, we discover the world as Desert. The flight leads nowhere, until we stop in order to find our bearings beyond the world. . . . This mode of existence was ambiguous and fraught with dangers of derailment, for all too easily the goal beyond history could merge with goals to be attained within history. The derailment, indeed, did occur, right in the beginning. It found its expression in the symbol of Canaan, the land of promise. . . . The ambiguity of Canaan has ever since affected the structure not of Israelite history only but of the course of history in general” (IR, 153–54).

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recognizable order” leads to the important insight that “there are problems of order beyond the existence of a concrete society and its institutions.” Even the phenomenon of metastasis can serve as a useful reminder of the “gulf between true order and the order realized concretely by any society, even Israel” (IR, 507, 544–45). Perhaps Israel’s historical travails are to be understood as “something in the nature of a model experiment in the creation of symbols of mundane existence under the conditions of an already enacted leap in being.” While the symbols created in this process survive the collapse of the kingdom and enter into the life of Western civilization, Voegelin wonders whether “it had been the destiny of Israel, during the short five centuries of its pragmatic existence, to create an offspring of living symbols and then to die” (IR, 365–66). The ultimate disappearance of Israel is anticipated in the evolution of prophetic insight. Isaiah’s futuristic projections give way to the more realistic vision of Jeremiah. With Jeremiah, Israel’s defection has become so grave that true order has literally shrunk to the person of the prophet, who suffers grievously from the knowledge that his people have passed the point of no return— “the Chosen People [have] been replaced by the chosen man” (IR, 520). This symbolism is continued in the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah: “Redemption has been experienced by the prophet for Israel, as its representative. Israel has become the perfected one, because in its midst the revelation has found response in at least one man.” The universal implications of revelation begin to emerge as Israel is called upon to engage in an anguished exodus from itself (IR, 555, 563–64, 567). The preaching of the message of redemption to the entire world coincides with the disappearance of the empirical Israel. From the perspective of Voegelin’s philosophy of order, Israel’s exodus from itself is hardly surprising. In his schema, the tension between the truth of order and the order of any given society can be dealt with in two ways. The wiser and more prudent way is to recognize the inherent imperfection of life in the world, and to allow knowledge of these limits to serve as a guide in determining how much of the truth of order can be realistically embodied in a community’s institutional order. In Voegelin’s view, this approach is best exemplified in the work of Plato. The other way of responding to this tension is to try to overcome it by bringing social reality into line with the divinely revealed order. But the order glimpsed in experiences of transcendence is not capable of incarnation in the always-imperfect order of society. Obviously the temptation to overcome the tension will be greater in those societies and among those individuals whose experience of transcendence is more intense. This is precisely what happened in Israel, which began its history with a radical leap in being and therefore experienced the tension more acutely than have

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other peoples. In Voegelin’s reading, Israel emerged on the historical stage with a predisposition toward bridging the gap between earthly and transcendent orders with solutions that did not and cannot work. According to the logic of Voegelin’s thought, the disappearance of the empirical Israel was implicit in its metastatic foundation. The choice, then, would seem to be between a vision of society in which the demands of earthly existence are balanced in relationship to the appeal of transcendent reality, and a vision that tends to disregard the limitations given with life in the world in order to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. However, Voegelin’s posing of the fundamental alternatives with regard to the realization of order is problematic. His appeals to “balance” and his critique of Israel operate with an unspoken assumption. For this position to be compelling, those who espouse it would have to be (or believe themselves to be) in possession of knowledge concerning the existential limits present in any given social reality. In other words, they would have to know what is and is not possible in the realm of society and politics. In Voegelinian terms, this would involve having knowledge of the “laws of mundane existence” governing the social realm. Whoever would assail the prophets for their “ontological denial of the conditions of existence in the world” (IR, 508) must already have a firm grasp of what these conditions are, as well as specific ontological criteria by which their denial can be recognized. Unfortunately, no such criteria are forthcoming from Voegelin. While he does not hesitate to make judgments, he never makes clear what exactly the “laws of mundane existence” are or how they are known. He simply asserts that in the case of Israel they are frequently violated. Voegelin faults Israel for its metastatic faith, without providing an answer to the question, metastatic relative to what standard? Warnings about Israel’s violating the order of being tell us nothing more than that Voegelin wraps his judgments in the language of metaphysics. He charges that the laws of being have been transgressed, but the precise nature of these laws is not made clear. Nonetheless, Voegelin’s judgments are not entirely arbitrary. He may well be in a class by himself in creating an elaborate taxonomy of spiritual pathologies.7 Few thinkers focus so extensively on the diagnosis of spiritual derailments and their implications for life in society. Problems arise, though, when a determination of deformation is made in a concrete instance. It is one thing to describe metastasis, its conditions for growth, and its characteristics. It is 7. See Michael Franz, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt; Michael Franz, “Brothers under the Skin: Voegelin on the Common Experiential Wellsprings of Spiritual Order and Disorder”; and Glenn Hughes, “Balanced and Imbalanced Consciousness.”

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quite another to claim that a particular case merits this designation. One may argue, as Voegelin does, that a metastatic thinker is someone who is in rebellion against the structure of reality, and that this rebellion is indicated by a vision of the world freed from the evils that afflict us. But this definition immediately raises questions with regard to human efforts to reduce suffering and to bring about a relatively better order of justice. Are all such efforts to be dismissed as metastatic dreams? If not, how are we to tell which (if any) are feasible and which are manifestations of derailment? Of course, if the structure of the order of being were self-evident, then comparing the proposed course of action to this structure would easily solve the problem. Detecting metastasis would be as easy as telling blue from yellow. Voegelin’s specific judgments with regard to metastasis and other forms of spiritual deformation are frequently marked by precisely this sort of attitude. He speaks from a perspective that seems to presume a sufficiently lucid knowledge of the ontological structure of the world, enabling him to determine which political decisions are indications of spiritual bankruptcy and which are acceptable. In fact, though, the ontological judgments follow upon the political ones. Voegelin judges where other thinkers stand in relation to reality on the basis of their particular political or social prescriptions. The offending political position is taken as proof that its proponent has lost contact with reality. Voegelin brings to his analysis certain unstated ideas about what can be accomplished in the political/societal realm, and then declares various thinkers, movements, and courses of action at odds with the structure of reality on the basis of these judgments. The presuppositions of his particular form of political realism become the criteria by which contact with reality is measured. Political convictions blend with ontological claims in determining what is and is not possible in the social sphere. To return to the case of the prophet Isaiah, Voegelin never makes clear exactly which law of mundane existence has been violated by the prophet’s counsel to the king. Is it a law stating that every threat of force must be matched by an equal threat? If so, how is that law known, and what is the evidence for its binding quality? Voegelin gives no indication except to say that Isaiah’s specific advice to Ahaz demonstrates the prophet’s metastatic thinking and his rebellion against the structure of reality. In another revealing passage, Voegelin raises a series of questions about the intentions of the prophets. After citing several passages from the prophetic books,8 he offers the following observations:

8. Hosea 8:14, 10:13–15; Jer. 9:23; Isa. 2:12–17, 3:16, 24.

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If one isolates the complaints of the prophets . . . one is inclined to wonder what the servants of Yahweh wanted. Should Israel have submitted to the Philistines instead of creating a king and an army? Should the ships of Tarshish stay in port? Should the cedars of Lebanon grow only half size? And should the daughters of Zion be dowdy? It is important to realize that no prophet has ever answered a question of this kind. If such were the complaints of the prophets, we may say, the people could well have answered that the prophets had no respect for the beauty of God’s creation, that they did not permit man to unfold his God-given faculties of mind and body, and that they could not distinguish between pride and joy of life. And the countercharges would have been justified indeed—if the people had been able to articulate such charges at all. (IR, 497–98)

By interspersing imagery taken from human affairs with that drawn from nature, Voegelin reinforces his charge that the prophets fail to understand the laws governing mundane existence. The literalism with which he cites the prophets’ reference to the cedars of Lebanon is apparently intended to serve as yet another indicator of their foolishness. It is difficult to believe that Voegelin does not realize that the prophetic reference to the height of the cedars of Lebanon is a symbolic evocation of human arrogance. Yet he formulates his questions in a way that implies that the prophets are so detached from reality that they would alter the natural processes governing the world. By suggesting that the prophets would prefer that the cedars of Lebanon grow to half their size, he inclines his readers toward the view that the prophets’ social criticism is equally far-fetched and similarly at odds with reality. Likewise, it is hard to take seriously the suggestion that the prophets were concerned with the appearance of Israelite women, and not with the meaning of the ostentatious display of wealth in a society bedeviled by chronic poverty and economic injustice. Despite what Voegelin would have us believe, it is not very difficult to understand what the prophets wanted—a society marked by social justice in accordance with the demands of the covenant. There is no question that the prophets’ speech is often “an octave too high” for their human hearers, but far from being a symptom of detachment from reality, as Voegelin would have it, it is equally possible to consider it a reflection of profound intimacy with God.9 Theologian Robert Doran’s comments are especially pertinent in this regard: Eric Voegelin would tend to place at least some anagogic symbols under the radical suspicion of being metastatic, of displacing the tension of existence in the

9. Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets, 1:3–26.

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Metaxy through an imbalance of consciousness. A distinction is in order here. The genuine anagogic symbol serves not to displace the tension of consciousness . . . but precisely as symbol, to heighten the tension and release the psyche for cooperation with the divinely originated solution to the mystery of evil. . . . Voegelin, I think, consistently misses this point.10

In my earlier work on Voegelin I argue that his philosophical approach to problems of social order is marked by a certain emphasis on the necessity of social processes and by an epistemological/ontological dualism. This dualism is Platonic/Augustinian in inspiration and formulated within an equally dualistic epistemological context influenced by Kant.11 Reality consists of a realm of consciousness and a realm of the mundane and pragmatic. Events such as the leaps in being occur primarily in the consciousness of their recipients, leaving largely unaffected the “external,” phenomenal world governed by the laws of mundane existence. Voegelin must then deal with the same problem faced by Kant—the fact that social reality partakes of both realms. Kant’s noumenally free yet phenomenally determined subject is an inhabitant of Voegelin’s world as well. The rhythms of nature blend with the “laws” governing what is possible in the social and political sphere. Isaiah’s advice to Ahaz is declared to be as divorced from reality as if he has told the king to disregard the law of gravity. Prophetic denunciations of human pride are misrepresented as commands to the cedars of Lebanon to stunt their growth. The apparent necessities governing the natural world are projected onto those areas of life in which human activity is to a certain degree constitutive of reality. Voegelin is emphatic in his assertions that nature (whether human or nonhuman) cannot be changed, but he is far less convincing in explaining what kind of social or political change is possible or acceptable.12 Once again Doran is worth quoting: Human praxis is constitutive of being: not originally creative of its elemental structure, but responsibly constitutive of the character of the human world as good or evil. . . . Surely the movement from the real human world as it is to the

10. Robert M. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History, 272–73. 11. Ranieri, Eric Voegelin and the Good Society, 124–25, 141–42, 178–92. 12. Some of his most sympathetic interpreters wish Voegelin had been clearer on these issues: “[Voegelin] rejects as ‘second reality’ constructions any political views which hold out the hope or prospect of fundamentally altering domestic power relations—the power of elite rule—or of transcending the ‘necessities’ of international relations and the use of military force. It is unclear how much room for maneuver political reality affords in Voegelin’s philosophy for the creation of a relatively more decent and humane world.” Dante Germino, “Eric Voegelin’s Anamnesis,” 87–88.

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good human world as it ought to be is grounded in a transformation of ourselves; but self-constitution is coincident with world-constitution. A philosophy of world-constitutive praxis need not violate the order of the soul masterfully disengaged in Voegelin’s retrieval of classical sources.13

Voegelin’s dualism develops in a Platonic/Augustinian direction; he frequently draws contrasts between the spiritual area of reality affected by the leap in being and those mundane areas of existence that remain essentially untouched: The emphatic partnership with God does not abolish partnership in the community of being at large, which includes being in mundane existence. Man and society, if they want to retain their foothold in being . . . must remain adjusted to the order of mundane existence. Hence there is no age of the church that would succeed an age of society on the level of more compact attunement to being. Instead there develop the tensions, frictions, and balances between the two levels of attunement, a dualistic structure of existence which expresses itself in pairs of symbols, of theologia civilis and theologia supranaturalis, of temporal and spiritual powers, of secular state and church. (IR, 49)

This perspective informs Voegelin’s treatment of the Hebrew Bible. The theopolitical idea of a people living in the present under God was liable to distortion from the start, making it difficult for even the prophets to look beyond the concrete Israel to a universalism of the spirit. References to the “disengagement” of the spirit from its earthly shell occur with some regularity throughout Israel and Revelation (IR, 153, 394, 495, 499, 555, 564, 567). Central to Voegelin’s account of Israelite experience is “the struggle of the spirit for its freedom from encasement in a particular social organization” (IR, 228). The “true” Israel would seem to be the purely spiritual bearer of divine revelation, while the attempted incarnations of that revelation in the life of the Chosen People at Sinai, through the monarchy, the prophetic movement, or as a people living under the Torah, form a series of failures to transcend the particularity of Israel’s institutional forms.14 While Voegelin praises the prophets for moving in the direction of a greater spiritualization and universalization of the meaning of revelation, he still expresses dismay at what he takes to be their sometimes crude understanding of the eschatological reversal to come. He notes how Amos envisions the coming Day of the Lord as bringing about 13. Robert M. Doran, “Theology’s Situation: Questions to Eric Voegelin,” 83. 14. Mackler, “Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation,” 106, 118–20.

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“a peasant’s paradise,” and he is surprised to find even in a late prophet like Trito-Isaiah evidence of a “massive materialism” in which existing social relations will be transformed. In the songs of the Suffering Servant, Voegelin finds similarities to Jeremiah’s covenant written on the heart, but he also detects hopes for “grossly materialistic victory.”15 He writes movingly about the “order of redemption” as evoked by Deutero-Isaiah; yet the context for this development is the exodus of Israel from itself—the movement toward redemption is simultaneously a movement away from the concreteness of existing Israelite society. Voegelin is surely being faithful to his biblical sources when he notes how the great prophet of exile is able to look beyond the present situation and encourage his people with a vision of God’s redemptive purpose. Nor is he mistaken when he recognizes the ways in which national identity and status before God could become confused in ancient Israel. The analysis becomes problematic, however, when future redemption is interpreted in such a vague and spiritualized fashion as to lose continuity with the empirical Israel. Notable in Voegelin’s account is the recurring, contrastive tone between the inner, spiritual, and universal on one hand, and the exterior, carnal, and particular on the other. Israel and Revelation ends with Israel’s exodus from itself, and given Voegelin’s reading of Israel’s experience it is difficult to understand how it could be otherwise. He takes the view that Israel’s adherence to the idea of a theopolity has the unfortunate effect of preventing its evolution toward distinct spiritual and temporal orders (IR, 294–95). Since for Israel this solution is blocked, the resulting tension gives way in the direction of the disappearance of the empirical Israel and the emergence of its successors in Christianity and Judaism. It is important to realize how Voegelin’s interpretation of the disappearance of Israel does not stem from any theological or doctrinal position on his part (although he does seem to share some of the supersessionist views of the biblical scholars upon whom he relies), but follows consistently from his philosophical perspective. Like every society, Israel must deal with the discrepancy between the demands of transcendent reality and life in the world. However, the intensity of this people’s revelatory experience inclines it toward an ultimately and necessarily futile belief that revelation can be embodied in the structures of society. The inherent limitations of a world governed by the laws of mundane existence make this impossible. If this tension is to be resolved, Israel as a concrete society must disappear. From Voegelin’s philosophical perspective, Israel’s exodus from itself is understandable, and this is not unrelated to his judgment that part of the 15. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:115, 117.

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difficulty confronting Israel is its inability to break through to philosophy (IR, 286–87, 378, 419, 492–93, 500, 512). In particular, the emergence of the individual soul as the sensorium of divine transcendence never fully occurs in the Israelite context. Voegelin attributes this to two interrelated facets of Israel’s experience—wariness with regard to notions of immortality that would appear to blur the distinction between divine and human, and the firm hold of a sense of collective identity within Israelite society: Life eternal was understood as a divine property; afterlife would have elevated man to the rank of Elohim; and a plurality of elohim was excluded by the radical leap in being of the Mosaic experience. As a consequence, the eroticism of the soul that is the essence of philosophy could not unfold; and the idea of human perfection could not break the idea of a Chosen People in righteous existence under God in history. (IR, 377)

Through revelation Israel is constituted as a people under God. For Voegelin, this compact, “collective” aspect of Israel’s existence is a limitation when evaluated from the perspective of the philosophical differentiation of the soul. He contrasts the “fierceness of collective existence” with the “freedom of individual souls” (IR, 409). Arguing against the view that the Davidic monarchy was the primary deformation of Israel’s founding experience, Voegelin maintains that the very idea of Israel as a collective Son of God, as articulated in Exodus, is itself a deformation. To overcome this distortion, the symbol of the Son of God must “become personal again, without becoming a pharaoh, in order to break the collectivism of Israel and to release the universalist potentialities of the Yahwist order” (IR, 448). In the work of the prophets we find evidence “for the tendencies to break the parochialism of Israel through the universalism of a mankind under God and its collectivism through the personalism of a berith that is written in the heart” (IR, 419). If Deutero-Isaiah points the way toward greater universalism, it is Jeremiah who, in Voegelin’s view, best exemplifies the prophetic approximation of the philosophical differentiation of the soul. Confronted with the intransigence of his people, he does not allow metastatic impulses to carry him beyond mundane reality to an unrealizable future paradise. Instead he turns his attention to the desperate situation of his people. The order of Israel is again rooted in the present; but since this order is absent from the surrounding social reality, it takes shape in the individual existence of the prophet. On the verge of disappearing altogether, the empirical Israel shrinks into the person of Jeremiah. Jeremiah transfers important constitutive symbols of Israelite order (such as the Son of God and Moses) to himself as the Chosen People are replaced by

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the chosen man. In Jeremiah “the human personality had broken the compactness of collective existence,” and by rejecting the idea of the “holy nation” he prepares the ground for a universalism that recognizes Yahweh as Lord of all nations (IR, 520, 539). The biblical text certainly supports the view that Jeremiah is forced by the actual circumstances in which he finds himself to look beyond the historically contingent society of which he is a part.16 The idea of Jeremiah as the single voice of divine order within an overwhelmingly corrupt environment permeates the entire book of Jeremiah as well. But it is also the case that Voegelin poses the issue in a way that best accords with his philosophical horizon. Voegelin reads the prophets as occupied in an effort to disengage the spiritual and universal from the concrete and particular. But in doing so he may be inferring more than is warranted about the prophets’ denunciations of their societies. Because the prophets condemn their own particular societies and even envision their disappearance from history, it does not mean that they abandon the belief that God can bring about a new concrete society that, however different, is in continuity with the old. In other words, the prophetic critique retains a strong sense of communal identity; if there is a universal dimension to the prophetic message, it is inseparable from the notion of a restored Israel. This notion is certainly underemphasized in Voegelin’s thought. Instead, the standard by which he evaluates Israel’s symbols is an “abstract, spiritual individualism,” as Aaron Mackler describes it.17 For Voegelin, the preferred model of human authenticity is that of the individual attuned to a divine order beyond the contingencies of history. To the extent that Jeremiah (or any prophet) fits this model he is evaluated favorably. But the Jeremiah who calls his people back to faithful adherence to the laws of the covenant is understood to be engaging in an ultimately futile enterprise, an enterprise that might have been avoided if only he had had the advantage of philosophy. Comparing Hosea and Plato, Voegelin contends that both prophet and philosopher recognize the root of the crises in their respective societies as want of knowledge concerning matters divine. Plato is able to address the problem through “an analysis of the right order of the soul through its attunement to the unseen measure.” Hosea, lacking such a notion of the soul, must address the problem by means of a “renewed conformity of human conduct to the measure as revealed in the ‘word’ and the ‘law’ of God.” Voegelin concludes, “Not the advance toward philosophy but the return to the covenant and the law was the 16. Jer. 30–33. 17. Mackler, “Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation,” 111.

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Israelite response to the challenge of the crisis” (IR, 378). The intense experience of divine reality pushes the prophet in a direction that transcends the Law, but no viable alternatives exist in the prophet’s environment. Without philosophy, the prophetic effort is deflected back to a life that centers on fulfillment of the commandments, a life that, as we have seen, is in constant danger of derailment. Israel is hampered by a lack of theory: [At] a time when a theory of the psyche and a theology would have been required to unfold the meanings implied in the Sinaitic legislation, the prophets were badly handicapped by the want of a positive vocabulary. They had at their disposition neither a theory of the aretai in the Platonic-Aristotelian sense so that they could have opposed character to conduct in human relations, nor a theory of faith, hope and love in the Heraclitian sense so that they could have opposed the inversion of the soul toward God to ritual observance of his commandments. (IR, 492–93)

This passage wonderfully captures the perspective Voegelin brings to his discussion of Israel and the Bible. The prophets are critiqued from the point of view of classical philosophy. Lacking a positive—that is, philosophical— vocabulary, the prophets are unable to unfold the full meaning of the Word received at Sinai. The way of Isaiah and the way of Plato are not simply alternate routes to the same goal of living in the light of the truth of order; the prophetic effort is inherently limited in its ability to realize the balance achieved by Plato. Deprived of a theory of faith, hope, and love, their only recourse is a return to “ritual observance” of the commandments. The convergence of Israel’s actual historical disappearance and its misfortune in not being able to break through to philosophy sheds light on Voegelin’s treatment of rabbinic Judaism. The impasse experienced by the prophets eventually gives way in two directions—the emergence of the postexilic Jewish community and the advent of Christianity. Yet the tension depicted so profoundly in Deutero-Isaiah’s magnificent symbol of the Suffering Servant is “dissolved anticlimactically in the restrictive reforms of Nehemiah and Ezra” (IR, 407). This is entirely consistent with Voegelin’s understanding of the relationship between prophecy and the Law: “We interpret Prophetism as the struggle against the Law, as the attempt to disengage the existential from the normative issues. That this is indeed the essential core of the prophetic effort is confirmed by the Talmudic interpretation, which has for its purpose the reversal of the effort and the assertion of the supremacy of the Torah. On this subject cf. Nahum N. Glatzer, ‘A Study of the Talmudic

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Interpretation of Prophecy’” (IR, 500). A reading of Glatzer’s essay suggests that Voegelin overstates his case. It is certainly true that according to Glatzer, “the transformation of the biblical prophet into a teacher and interpreter of the Law becomes a decisive characteristic of talmudic-midrashic prophetology.”18 Glatzer also observes (and Voegelin cites this explicitly) how the Talmudic-midrashic reaction to the prophets is conditioned both by the polemic with early Christianity and by the rabbinic attempt to moderate what they see as potentially disruptive features of the phenomenon of prophecy. But nothing in Glatzer’s essay indicates that the rabbinic authors were interested in reversing the prophetic efforts. Criticism and reappropriation of the prophetic effort are not reversal. But what is perhaps most interesting is that Voegelin, having criticized the prophets for their rejection of mundane reality, does not applaud rabbinic efforts to adapt the prophetic word to life in the world, as one would think he would. In other words, the Talmudic interpretation of prophecy would seem to be aiming at just the sort of balance between adherence to divine instruction and adaptation to the exigencies of worldly existence that Voegelin finds absent from the prophetic movement. Yet Voegelin construes the developments from the prophets to the era of Nehemiah and Ezra as a process of decline. From Voegelin’s perspective, rabbinic Judaism is a descendant of the Deuteronomic Torah, and as such it is for him a form of doctrinalization and ossification of Israel’s originating experience. In the creation of the Torah, “the Israel that had been chosen to receive the revelation of God for mankind has contracted into the unique society that ultimately came to be called the ‘Jews.’” Despite its status as the “magnificent sum of the Sinaitic tradition,” the Torah is also “a contraction of the universal potentialities” of that tradition “into the law of an ethnic-religious community.” Life under the Law may bring a sense of liberation and peace of mind, but “the living order of Israel was now buried in the religion of the book” (IR, 422–23, 428). In Judaism, the tension at the center of Israel’s existence surfaces again: “The retrospective interpretation from the rabbinical position makes it clear that the disturbing factor in the Israelite historical form had been the ambiguity of Canaan, that is, the translation of a transcendent aim into a historical fait accompli.” With the end of the dream of a paradisiacal Canaan, there emerges “the community of the Jews who would preserve their past as an eternal present for all future.” However, Voegelin believes that such communal identity has been purchased at a great

18. Nahum Glatzer, Essays in Jewish Thought, 32.

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cost: “For, from the postexilic community there emerged, surviving historically to this day, the branch of Talmudic Judaism—at the terrific price of cutting itself off, not only from the abortive Maccabeean nationalism, but also from its own rich potentialities that had become visible in Hellenization, the proselytizing expansion, and the apocalyptic movements. The representative separation of the sacred line through divine choice petered out into a communal separatism.” By contrast, the successful branch of Israel’s heritage was a “Jewish movement that could divest itself not only of the territorial aspirations for a Canaan, but also of the ethnic heritage of Judaism.” Relegating its Jewish roots to a matter of secondary importance, the new movement was able to “absorb Hellenistic culture, as well as the proselytizing movement and the apocalyptic fervor, and to merge it with the Law and the Prophets. In Christianity the separation bore its fruit when the sacred line rejoined mankind” (IR, 186–87). The exodus of Israel from itself as described by Voegelin has a parallel in the disappearance of Israel from his thought. Again this should be understood as a consequence of the development of his philosophical vision. The precise nature of the change in Voegelin’s later work has been the object of some discussion among his readers, but several developments are relevant to his treatment of Israel and the Bible. First, the notion of a “leap in being” disappears from Voegelin’s analyses. Instead we find a focus on “differentiations of consciousness.” At the time he is writing Israel and Revelation, Voegelin speaks of “participation” in reality; with the publication of Anamnesis he does not abandon his earlier concerns, but rather expands and develops his insights into the structures of consciousness that constitute such participation. The change is important, for the evolution of Voegelin’s theory of consciousness is accompanied and in some sense inspired by his attempts to more clearly delineate those areas of reality affected by what he had previously referred to as a leap in being. In The Ecumenic Age, the fourth volume of Order and History, Voegelin carefully delimits the effects of the prophetic and philosophic breakthroughs: I have circumscribed the structure of the event as strictly as possible, in order to make it clear how narrowly confined the area of the resulting insights actually is: The new truth pertains to man’s consciousness of his humanity in participatory tension toward the divine ground, and to no reality beyond this restricted area. The human carriers of the spiritual outbursts do not always realize the narrow limits of the area directly affected by the differentiating process. . . . The differentiation of existential truth does not abolish the cosmos in which the event occurs.19 19. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:53.

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Israel’s leap in being becomes the “pneumatic differentiation of consciousness,” with its emphasis on the inrush of the divine spirit, whereas the great philosophic leap, in which the soul as sensorium of transcendent reality is articulated, is now referred to as the “noetic differentiation.”20 In both cases, differentiation is a matter of greater insight into humanity’s relationship to transcendent reality; and while Voegelin does not deny that a differentiation of consciousness is in fact a change in reality (to the extent that consciousness is not apart from the reality it illumines), the emphasis is clearly on the changes occurring in consciousness. It becomes evident that the structure of reality may be illuminated with varying degrees of clarity, but it cannot be changed.21 Cosmic process remains what it is, including the laws of mundane existence so stubbornly resisted by the prophets.22 Along with the shift to the language of differentiations of consciousness, Voegelin also comes to understand how his earlier view of the emergence of order and its symbolization as a sequential series of advancing leaps in being is not adequate in accounting for the manifold of historical data. Although it is still possible to speak of advances in differentiation, Voegelin realizes that differentiations cannot be neatly arranged on a time line. Historical intelligibility turns out to be far more complicated and refractory than anticipated, with similar lines of meaning and symbolization appearing in cultures widely separated by place and time. This insight leads Voegelin to revise his earlier understanding of the nature of history. One such revision is his abandonment of the idea that “the conception of history as a meaningful course of events on a straight line of time was the great achievement of Israelites and Christians who were favored in its creation by revelatory events, while the pagans, deprived as they were of revelation, could never rise above the conception of a cyclical

20. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture”; Eric Voegelin, “The Meditative Origin of the Philosophical Knowledge of Order.” 21. John W. Corrington comments on the fourth volume of Order and History, The Ecumenic Age: “What was not present in the previous volumes was the kind of language that required the reader to understand that the subject of Order and History was, indeed, the history of order as it emerged in human consciousness—and nothing else.” “Order and Consciousness/Consciousness and History: The New Program of Voegelin,” 159. Ellis Sandoz reads Voegelin as emphasizing that “being is being: the nature of being does not change.” The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction, 121. 22. The idea that the structure of the cosmos is not affected by differentiations of consciousness is not new to Voegelin’s thought. Well before he begins to use the language of “differentiations,” he insists on the stability of the world as given to us (see Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 12, 86–87). The major development in the later work is that Voegelin better clarifies where the change does occur—in consciousness.

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time.”23 Concomitant with this new understanding of the process of history/ differentiation is a focus on “equivalences of experience.” Symbols may differ, but they frequently exhibit a notable similarity at the level of the experience. For Voegelin this means “not the symbols themselves but the constants of engendering experience are the true subject matter of our studies.”24 History can no longer be understood as a single, unfolding process of advancing differentiation; correlative to this insight is the awareness that the intelligibility of order is discovered at a level of experience and symbolization deeper than previously imagined. What appeared to be distinctive and distinguishing symbols reflective of differences at the level of experience turn out to have more in common than previously thought. Nowhere is this evolution in Voegelin’s thought more apparent than in his changing attitude with regard to the relationship between philosophy and revelation. Up to and including the first three volumes of Order and History, Voegelin is quite explicit about the difference between Israel and Greece on the question of revelation—Israel was the recipient of a direct revelation from God in a way that the Greek philosophers were not. The symbols of philosophy and revelation emerge to give expression to experiences that differ profoundly at the level of content. However, after 1970, with his increased concentration on equivalences of experience, Voegelin’s judgment changes significantly: In Christian theology there is the encrusted conception that revelation is revelation and that classic philosophy is the natural reason of mankind unaided by revelation. That is simply not true empirically. Plato was perfectly clear that what he is doing in the form of a myth is a revelation. He does not invent it by natural reason; the God speaks. The God speaks, just as in the prophet or in Jesus. So the whole conception which is still prevalent today, not only in theological thinking but penetrating our civilization: “on the one hand we have natural reason and on the other hand revelation,” is empirically nonsense.25

For Voegelin the realities referred to by the terms revelation and natural reason both fall within what he would understand as the experience of participation in the “metaxy” or “in-between.” To distinguish revelation and reason in terms of relatively higher and lower forms of knowledge is to fracture the divine and human movements that merge and are illuminated in 23. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:51. 24. Eric Voegelin, “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History,” 115. 25. “Conversations with Eric Voegelin,” 301. Also Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 187–88; and “The Meditative Origin,” 385–86.

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consciousness of participation within an encompassing reality. The “truth” of existence, that is, the articulation of the structure, tensions, and modes of participation within reality, may be more fully differentiated, but “there is no alternative to the symbolization of the In-Between of existence and its divine Beyond by mythical imagination.”26 Formulations such as this are frequently accompanied in Voegelin’s later philosophy by a renewed emphasis on the superior sense of balance to be found in the noetic differentiation of consciousness. Although criticism of the Israelite tendency toward imbalance is already present in Israel and Revelation, the contrast with philosophy becomes more pronounced as Voegelin’s thinking develops. Unlike the prophets’, “the epochal consciousness of the classic philosophers did not derail into apocalyptic expectations of a final realm to come.” In contrast to the prophets, the philosophers “preserve the balance between the experienced lastingness [of the cosmos] and the theophanic events in such a manner that the paradox becomes intelligible as the very structure of existence itself.” Nor is this balance due to the philosophers’ lack of revelatory experience. Voegelin insists that Plato was just as conscious of being the recipient of divine revelation as was Isaiah—the difference between philosopher and prophet is that the former deliberately chose to preserve the balance of consciousness and not to indulge in metastatic fantasies.27 This evolution in Voegelin’s thought illuminates the judgment reached at the conclusion of Israel and Revelation: that it was the fate of Israel to undergo an exodus from itself. While Voegelin still maintains that the pneumatic differentiation proper to the Judeo-Christian orbit more fully distinguishes the divine pole within reality, he denies that this is the case because of a revelation unavailable to philosophers. With the rejection of the distinction between reason and revelation, Voegelin’s view of Israel as uniquely constituted by revelation is no longer sustainable. For if the noetic differentiation is also revelatory, then Athens and Jerusalem can no longer be distinguished on the basis of divine revelation. Israelite symbols may better express something of the nature of the divine partner experienced in the act of participation, but this is not due to Israel’s being granted a revelation denied to philosophers. The fundamental difference in the content of experience, requiring the distinct symbolizations of Revelation and Philosophy, gives way in Voegelin’s thought to the essential sameness of experience, differentiated with varying degrees 26. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 188. 27. Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” 266; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:291– 92, 295–96.

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of clarity. The revelation to Israel is one variant of the encounter with divine reality; and the possibility must be considered that there are other societies in which this same kind of experience does not lead to imbalance. In classical Greece Voegelin finds a line of thinkers who, while cognizant of being addressed by the divine, retain the requisite balance between transcendent truth and the demands of earthly life. Anaximander is cited as a philosopher operating within a relatively compact, undifferentiated horizon, acutely aware of the limitations constitutive of the human condition. Plato builds upon this wisdom, using carefully constructed philosophical myths to moderate the intensity of revelation in order to protect the balance of consciousness. Voegelin extols the philosophers for having understood human finitude and the boundaries set to human achievement by the structure of reality.28 During the time he is writing the early volumes of Order and History, Voegelin is still operating with the assumption that revelation is the source of Israel’s difference. Once he abandons this belief and comes to the understanding that the Greek philosophers were equally gifted by the divine, we are confronted with the possibility that what distinguishes Greece and Israel is that the former, in giving birth to philosophy, leaves a legacy of successful mediation of the tension of existence, whereas Israel does not. If this is so, there would be little reason to continue to study Israel’s experience as a source for a philosophy of order. This is clearly the conclusion Voegelin has come to in his later work. References to Israel become increasingly rare, and when they do appear they are frequently critical. 29 Voegelin recalls Isaiah’s confrontation with Ahaz in the last two volumes of Order and History to remind readers of the dangers of prophetism and to serve as a contrast to Plato’s more balanced response in similar situations. The tendency to render the experience of Israel in philosophical language derived primarily from the Greeks becomes more pronounced as well. References to Israel in The Ecumenic Age and the writings that follow, when not critical of its inclination toward metastasis, seem to have passed through the prism of Voegelin’s mature 28. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:274–81. 29. The index to The Ecumenic Age contains a combined total of sixty-one references to Anaximander, Hesiod, Plato, and Aristotle. By contrast, there is one reference to Jeremiah, two to Isaiah, four to Deutero-Isaiah, seven to Moses, and nine to Daniel. In the final volume of Order and History, In Search of Order, which Voegelin believed to be the key to all his other works (see the foreword by his wife, Lissy Voegelin), the absence of Israel is even more apparent: there are twenty-five references to Hesiod, Plato, and Aristotle; one reference to Isaiah; one to Deutero-Isaiah; and four to Genesis. Of the eighteen references to the prophets in these late works, at least half are warnings about the dangers of metastasis.

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theory of consciousness. In Israel and Revelation, Voegelin is cautious about reading metaphysical concepts into the revelation of the divine name described in Exodus 3:1–15. He follows Étienne Gilson in his judgment that while there is no metaphysics in Exodus, it is legitimate to speak of a metaphysics of Exodus. Later medieval philosophical propositions derived from the passage are seen as unfolding meanings compactly contained in the revelatory experience. But at this stage in his thought Voegelin does not yet speak of equivalences of experience; rather, he recognizes in Exodus 3 “the primacy of the divine esse, in opposition to the Platonic primacy of the divine bonum.” He further accentuates how in God’s encounter with Moses “revelation and historical constitution of the people are inseparable,” and how, if we refrain from introducing extraneous philosophical categories into our interpretation, the name of God refers to “the one who is present as your helper” (IR, 461–64). When this same passage is analyzed in The Ecumenic Age, there is a noticeable change in emphasis: “Unless we want to engage in extraordinary theological assumptions, the God who appeared to the philosophers, and who elicited from Parmenides the exclamation ‘Is!,’ was the same God who revealed himself to Moses as the ‘I am who (or: what) I am,’ as the God who is what he is in the concrete theophany to which man responds.” In Israel and Revelation Voegelin is at pains to avoid introducing philosophical language into the analysis of the Mosaic encounter with God; in The Ecumenic Age he warns about allowing “extraordinary theological assumptions” to blind us to the equivalence of experience in the revelation to Moses and that to Parmenides. The interpretation of the divine name as “the one who is present as your helper” disappears; instead, the “differentiating revelation of the divine source of authority in depth finally leads to the revelation of the impersonal name of God as the ‘I am.’” In a similar act of reinterpretation, the assertion of the inseparability between revelation and Israel’s constitution as a people, so prominent in the earlier volume, is nowhere in evidence.30 Another instance of Voegelin’s philosophical rendering of biblical material is his treatment of the creation accounts of Genesis in In Search of Order, the final volume of Order and History. Some continuity with Israel and Revelation remains—Voegelin situates the accounts within the salvation history of Israel, and he retains the understanding that they reflect Israel’s belief in “the attunement of human history to the command of the pneumatic Word.” But the focus has shifted decidedly toward an analysis in terms of Voegelin’s final

30. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:292–93.

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formulation of the “complex of consciousness-reality-language.” After noting how “theological conceptions of ‘revelation’ would be of little help” in understanding these texts, he argues that the authors of Genesis were attempting to express “the experience and structure of what I have called the It-reality.” Voegelin’s term It-reality refers to the encompassing, dynamic process/whole “that comprehends the partners in being, i.e., God and the world.” The creative divine word is a “power in reality that evokes structures in reality by naming them” (emphasis added). The authors of Genesis have “differentiated the formative force in the It, as the evocative power of the spirit and its word” (emphasis added). They were “conscious of beginning an act of participation in the mysterious Beginning of the It” when they began their chronicle; and the biblical narrative as a whole shows how “through Israel, the history of man continues the creational process of order in reality; it is part of the comprehending story of the It.” Since the genuine accomplishment of the writers of Genesis is to have illuminated the structure of the It-reality on the basis of the pneumatic differentiation of consciousness, we can better appreciate it as “one of the great documents in the historical process of advance from compact to differentiated consciousness.” To lose sight of this would be a misfortune, since it would prevent us from understanding “the equivalences between the symbolization of the Beginning in Genesis and its symbolization as the imposition of form on a formless chora in Plato’s Timaeus.” To misunderstand this equivalence of symbolization is “to lose the possibility of recognizing in the pneumatic differentiation of Genesis the compact presence of the noetic structure of consciousness.”31 The Yahweh who initiates the history of redemption in a free act of creation is nowhere to be found. Even if, as most biblical scholars concede, there is no explicit doctrine of creation ex nihilo in Genesis, the very fact that this question became such a crucial one reflects a deep concern within the biblical tradition that the distinction between Creator and creature should never be blurred, and that the God of Israel cannot be reduced to a “partner” within an encompassing divine whole or It-reality. I believe it is fair to say that Voegelin too often comes to the Bible with questions its authors do not ask and with a philosophical perspective alien to their thought. We must consider whether Voegelin’s seemingly neutral language of

31. Voegelin, Order and History, 5:31, 33, 37, 38. As we will see in the following chapter, Strauss also focuses on Genesis. In both cases these philosophers gravitate to the cosmological themes within the Bible. This is no coincidence; rather, it shows a tendency on the part of both Strauss and Voegelin to concentrate on those texts most amenable to philosophical analysis.

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“equivalences” in fact disguises a philosophical reduction and evacuation of that which is distinctively biblical.32 When one considers the cumulative effect of Voegelin’s treatment of Israel and its historical record as expressed in the Hebrew Bible, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that references to Israel could be omitted from his work without causing any significant change. The contribution of Israel is not essential to his philosophy of order; if anything, it serves as a foil to the greater balance achieved by the philosophers. When he begins Order and History Voegelin plans to proceed chronologically; he is also of the view that Israel is the source of the idea of history as a linear course. By the time he writes The Ecumenic Age he no longer accepts this; the original reasons for dealing with Israelite sources have largely disappeared, and with them have gone any serious or extensive treatment of Israel. If Israel retains any importance for Voegelin, it is because he believes the Hebrew Bible is essential in understanding Christianity. As perhaps the clearest example in history of the tension between the transcendent truth of order and its social implementation, the experience of Israel encapsulates the issue at the center of Voegelin’s enterprise. As his entire philosophy is an attempt to articulate the proper balance between transcendent order and pragmatic existence, it is no exaggeration to say that the problems posed by Israelite order are at the center of his thought. But whether in the form of the prophetic movement or of life under the Torah, he considers Israel’s response to this situation to be deficient. In his reading, the Israelite attempt to incarnate transcendent wisdom in social reality inclines toward imbalance and narrowness. In working through these problems Voegelin comes to the conclusion that, compared to Israel, Plato, Aristotle, and earlier Greek philosophers more successfully struck the needed balance. Difficulties arise, though, with the realization that the reality of Israel does not fit comfortably within a Platonically inspired approach to the problem of order. As a result, Israelite solutions have to be explicitly rejected, effectively ignored, or somehow approximated to a language of experience and symbolization derived from philosophy. This is precisely what occurs as Voegelin’s thought evolves. We are left with the question whether the philosophical framework Voegelin employs is capable of

32. Biblical scholar Bernhard W. Anderson raises similar questions about Voegelin’s interpretation of biblical material. See his “Politics and the Transcendent: Voegelin’s Philosophical and Theological Exposition of the Old Testament in the Context of the Ancient Near East” and “Revisiting Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation after Twenty-five Years,” 33–45, 51–57.

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doing justice to biblical experience. The biblical understanding of salvation is not the same as philosophical illumination; and there is more than a verbal distinction between Platonic “vision” and prophetic “hearkening.” Abraham Heschel captures something of the difference in his classic work on the prophets: “Human affairs are hardly worth considering in earnest, and yet we must be in earnest about them—a sad necessity constrains us,” says Plato in a mood of melancholy. He apologizes later for his “low opinion of mankind” which, he explains emerged from comparing men with gods. “Let us grant, if you wish, that the human race is not to be despised, but is worthy of some consideration.” . . . To the prophet, however, no subject is as worthy of consideration as the plight of man. Indeed, God Himself is described as reflecting over the plight of man rather than as contemplating eternal ideas. His mind is preoccupied with man, with the concrete actualities of history rather than with the timeless issues of thought. . . . Prophetic sympathy is a response to transcendent sensibility. It is not, like love, an attraction to the divine Being, but the assimilation of the prophet’s emotional life to the divine, an assimilation of function, not of being.33

It is concern for the “concrete actualities of history” that accounts for the focus on social justice in the Hebrew Bible. Voegelin’s analysis is especially weak in this regard; any hints in Israel and Revelation concerning the social implications of revelation are absent from his later work.34 There is no question that Voegelin is profoundly sensitive to those aspects of Israel’s experience that reflect the people’s growing awareness of the love of God as operative in the formation of the individual soul. Likewise, it would be difficult to deny that what has been described as the “prophetic movement toward personalism” analyzed in his work has strong ethical overtones.35 Voegelin is acutely conscious of the relationship between the given health of a society and the personal authenticity of its members. However, the demands of justice do not always wait upon personal conversion. Voegelin has deep respect for the spiritual achievement of Israel, yet its particular genius and its greatness, as past exemplar and living reminder of our collective responsibility to attempt to bring about justice on earth, seems to escape him. He is ever alert to the ways in which human efforts along these lines can go wrong, and he is harshly critical of those who, in his judgment, ignore 33. Heschel, The Prophets, 1:5, 26. 34. Maurice Hogan, introduction to Israel and Revelation, 9–10. 35. Marie Baird, “The Movement toward Personalism in Israel and Revelation and Emmanuel Levinas’ Ethics of Responsibility: Toward a Post-Holocaust Spirituality,” 152–53.

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the laws of mundane existence. In Israel he sees a society that tries to bring heaven to earth—in some cases by crudely identifying the Kingdom of God with its own institutional order, or more dangerously by obstinately holding to the belief that earth can become as heaven. I believe, though, that in his criticism, Voegelin misses something terribly important about Israel’s abiding relevance. Jacques Maritain well describes this role: “Israel is here . . . to irritate the world, to prod it, to move it. It teaches the world to be dissatisfied and restless so long as it has not God, as long as it has not justice on earth. Its indestructible hope stimulates the life forces of history.”36 No doubt Voegelin would join with Maritain in praising Israel for reminding the world “to be dissatisfied and restless so long as it has not God.” But where Maritain understands Israel to be a permanent presence in human history, pressing humanity toward an evergreater realization of divine mercy and justice in the world, Voegelin is more concerned about the potential dangers of metastatic faith. However legitimate his concerns, he allows them to so color his approach to the Hebrew Bible that in the course of his analysis its distinctive voice is in danger of being lost.

Gospel Answers to Philosophical Questions Israel and Revelation concludes with the words the good news of Jesus (IR, 570). The impasse reached by Israel in its struggle to live out the tension of existence is, from Voegelin’s point of view, more successfully negotiated in Christianity. In Jesus Christ the openness of the individual soul toward divine reality achieves maximum clarity, and the movement he founded is able to successfully disengage the life of the spirit from its embodiment in any particular society. But these differences should not be exaggerated; the peculiar problems confronting communities under the influence of the pneumatic differentiation of consciousness are part of the New Testament’s inheritance from Israel: In Christianity the logia of Jesus, and especially the Sermon on the Mount, had effectively disengaged the meaning of faith, as well as of the life of the spirit, from the conditions of a particular civilizational order. The separation was so effective indeed that the loss of understanding for the importance of civilizational order was a serious danger to many Christians. While the prophets had to struggle for an understanding of Yahwism in opposition to the concrete social order of Israel, a long series of Christian statesmen from St. Paul to St. 36. Quoted in James V. Schall, S.J., Jacques Maritain, 181.

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Augustine had to struggle for an understanding of the exigencies of worldimmanent social and political order. The prophets had to make it clear that the political success of Israel was no substitute for a life in obedience to divine instructions; the Christian statesmen had to make it clear that faith in Christ was no substitute for organized government. The prophets had to stress that status in the social order of Israel did not confer spiritual status on a man before God; the Christian thinkers had to stress that sacramental acceptance into the Mystical Body did not touch the social status of a man. . . . The prophets had to explain that social success was not a proof of righteousness before God; the Christian thinkers had to explain that the Gospel was no social gospel, redemption no social remedy, and Christianity in general no insurance for individual or collective prosperity. (IR, 227)

The differences cited here ought not to obscure the essential issue—in Voegelin’s analysis both Israel and the gospel movement exist in a tense relationship with “the exigencies of world-immanent social and political order.” In both cases the fundamental question remains the same: what are the social and political consequences of the encounter with the living God? As with the case of the Hebrew Bible, Voegelin’s reflections on the Christian texts are part of his overall effort to explore the issues arising from the discrepancy between transcendent and mundane order. Yet it remains the case that he does not give the same sort of concentrated, extended attention to New Testament writings as he does to the Hebrew Bible or to the Platonic dialogues. The primary places where Voegelin analyzes the Gospels are the first volume of History of Political Ideas and the 1971 essay “The Gospel and Culture.”37 The only other extensive treatment of the New Testament comes in the chapter “The Pauline Vision of the Resurrected” in The Ecumenic Age. In Voegelin’s judgment, the gospel movement and classic philosophy share a common noetic core, “the same consciousness of existence in an In-Between of human-divine participation, and the same experience of divine reality as the center of action in the movement from question to answer.” The gospel goes beyond philosophy in its more pronounced differentiation of the “unknown God” in the person of Christ. The relationship of the “divine Beyond” to each individual soul achieves unsurpassed clarity in the gospel movement. This differentiation “is so much the center of the gospel movement that it may be called the gospel itself.” To the highest degree, Jesus Christ embodies the 37. Other places where Voegelin discusses the Gospels are Order and History, vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle, 280–81; Order and History, 4:58–66; and “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,” 365–71.

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truth that the divine Beyond is present in each person.38 According to Voegelin, the constitutive orientation of each human being to transcendent mystery is nowhere more clearly displayed than in Christianity. In The New Science of Politics he still operates with the belief that classic philosophy is incapable of the breakthrough found in the gospel. In fact, the distinctiveness of the Christian insight is such that it warrants a separate category as “soteriological truth,” to be distinguished from the more compact “cosmological truth” of the ancient empires and the “anthropological truth” of the Greek philosophers: [The] Platonic-Aristotelian complex of experiences was enlarged by Christianity in a decisive point. . . . The Christian bending of God in grace toward the soul does not come within the range of these experiences—though, to be sure, in reading Plato one has the feeling of moving continuously on the verge of a breakthrough into this new dimension. The experience of mutuality in the relation with God, of the amicitia in the Thomistic sense, of the grace that imposes a supernatural form on the nature of man, is the specific difference of Christian truth.39

However, as Voegelin’s thought evolves in the direction of a focus on “equivalences,” the differences between gospel and philosophy become less clear. While the hold of cosmological myth on the philosophers is still acknowledged, its role as an obstacle to an awareness of “the God beyond the gods” is considerably downplayed. Plato’s knowledge of the unknown God is now understood as equal to that of Jesus; and the reason for Plato’s reticence in speaking more clearly about this God is his concern to avoid the destabilizing effects that often accompany theophanies.40 Voegelin reads the gospel in terms of the pulls and counterpulls he finds delineated in Plato and Aristotle. One may well agree with Voegelin that there is a spiritual dynamism common to both gospel and philosophy, while at the same time recognizing the ways in which he neglects the crucial dissimilarities. As with the Hebrew Bible, when Voegelin discusses an area where gospel and philosophy diverge, philosophical insights are used to correct a perceived pneumatic tendency toward imbalance.41 Upon closer examination these general observations are borne out. In the introduction to The Ecumenic Age, Voegelin discusses the Gospel according to 38. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 188, 194, 198, 208. 39. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 150. 40. “Conversations with Eric Voegelin,” 281, 301, 325–26; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:295–96; Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 187–88. 41. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 208–12.

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John. The discussion is preceded by a description of the “tension of consciousness” as it becomes manifest in Plato, Aristotle, and Israel. The tension refers to the difficulties experienced by those whose awareness of a divine reality beyond the cosmos, the “God beyond the gods,” comes into conflict with the earlier, more compact symbolization of the divine as intracosmic gods. Divine reality is one, but it is experienced in the two modes of the Beginning (the divine as mediated through the structure of the cosmos) and the Beyond (the divine as a movement reaching into the soul). The increasingly differentiated awareness of the Beyond must not be permitted to lead its recipients into believing that they can somehow transcend the limits of existence in the cosmos. Striking the proper balance between the two modes requires the use of the revelatory language of consciousness as well as the mythical language of creator-god, or Demiurge. Plato does this through the creation of a “philosopher’s myth,” an “alethinos logos” that strives to eliminate the less differentiated and dangerously misleading depictions of the Olympian gods contained within the tradition he has inherited, while simultaneously preserving the pre-philosophical insight that recognizes that humans must live within the limits imposed by the structure of the cosmos. It may be possible, Voegelin believes, to move beyond the primary experience of the cosmos in consciousness, but apart from this, the boundaries set by cosmic order, the “laws of mundane existence,” must be respected.42 Unlike his biblical counterparts, Plato never succumbs to the metastatic or apocalyptic temptation to try to transfigure or abolish the cosmos. It is within this context—that is, one determined by the question concerning the “tension of consciousness” and its proper balance—that Voegelin analyzes the Gospel of John. The epiphany of Christ in a cultural context in which the noetic differentiation has already taken place means that the evangelist benefits from both Hebraic and philosophic insights. Given the fact that an especially acute anticipation of the Beyond characterizes the pneumatic differentiation, the question is whether the evangelist will be able to establish the proper balance between Beginning and Beyond. As Voegelin understands the Gospel: “The god who has the word that he is makes all things by speaking it: ‘All things were made by it; and without it nothing was made that was made.’ For the creative word was ‘life,’ and its life was ‘the light of man.’ At this point, the creative word of the cosmogony blends into the presence of ‘the light that shines in the darkness’ of man’s existence with such intensity that the darkness cannot overcome it.” Because the “oneness of divine reality and its presence in man is 42. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:56–58, 291–302.

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experienced with such intensity” by the evangelist, “even an extraordinary linguistic sensitivity may not suffice to guard him against using the two symbols indiscriminately in his articulation of the two modes of presence.” What this indiscriminate use of language means in practice is that the Gospel writer “lets the cosmogonic ‘word’ of creation blend into the revelatory ‘word’ spoken to man from the Beyond by the ‘I am.’” The author of the Gospel has been overwhelmed by the presence of divine reality in Christ and has allowed the word of the Beginning to be absorbed by the word of the Beyond. The beginnings of imbalance are already present. By blurring the distinction between the God of the Beyond and the God of the Beginning, the Johannine writer is confronted with the dilemma of a divine reality that both overcomes the world and creates it: “However, since the Christ who in his death is victorious over the cosmos does not care to be glorified into the word that creates it, he must return, beyond creation, to the status of the word in the creative tension ‘before there was a cosmos’” (John 17:5). Voegelin is perplexed by this and wonders what the author could mean. Is the evangelist a Gnostic who views creation as an evil from which it is necessary to be freed? Voegelin does not think so, “for the Christ sends his disciples into the cosmos, as he has been sent into it, to convert still others to the truth of the word, so that the divine love can become manifest in them.” Nonetheless, a “shadow” has been cast on the cosmos by the author’s symbolization, and Voegelin concludes his reflection on the Johannine prologue with an expression of worry about the potential consequences of the evangelist’s ambiguities.43 As is his tendency when interpreting biblical texts, Voegelin reads the prologue to John within a framework derived from classical philosophy. The apparent confusion in John results from the evangelist’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish clearly (as Plato does) between the language that articulates the Beginning and that which articulates the Beyond. By comparison, Plato’s more careful handling of this distinction enables him to preserve the balance of consciousness in exemplary fashion. But Voegelin’s entire discussion assumes that the symbols of the Beginning and the Beyond are, in fact, the “unsurpassably exact expression” of the structure and movement of divine reality, and that the “tension of consciousness” is the problem arising from a consideration of their relationship. These are the presuppositions he brings to his analysis, and as such they predetermine the way in which he questions the Gospel text. Obviously, how one poses questions conditions the kind of answers one

43. Ibid., 59, 63–66.

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receives. Voegelin comes to the Gospels with noetic questions; but the Gospels give biblical answers. He is left with the options of correcting or rejecting these answers, acknowledging areas of agreement while downplaying that which is distinctively biblical, or assimilating the biblical witness to Greek thought by showing how the Gospels are asking the very same questions and offering similar answers. All three options are found in Voegelin’s discussion of the New Testament. The chapter in The Ecumenic Age titled “The Pauline Vision of the Resurrected” begins by noting how “Plato kept the theophanic event in balance with the experience of the cosmos. He did not permit enthusiastic expectations to distort the human condition.” The previous chapter, “Conquest and Exodus,” provides the context for this statement by calling attention to the way in which the saying of Anaximander constitutes the “noetic field of consciousness in which the philosophers’ debate about reality moves.”44 Unlike DeuteroIsaiah’s tripartite division of history culminating in the perfect realm, Plato’s myth of recurrent cosmic catastrophes acknowledges the “primary rhythm of birth and death” and thereby avoids imposing an “apocalyptic finality” on history. Conscious of divine reality, Plato is aware that there is “more to reality than the process of things that come into being and perish”—reality itself is involved in a movement toward immortalizing transfiguration. Theophanic events reveal reality “as moving toward a state undisturbed by forces of disorder.” The effect of these experiences is to raise perplexing questions, described by Voegelin as the “mystery of meaning”: Though we can experience the direction as real, we do not know why reality is in such a state that it has to move beyond itself or why the movement has not been consummated by an event of transfiguration in the past. . . . The event, as it can happen any time, hangs as a threat or hope over every present. . . . In the cosmological style of truth, the anxiety of existence over the abyss of nonexistence engenders the rituals of cosmogonic renewal; in the style of existential truth constituted by the theophanic events, the anxiety of falling into the truth of disorder can engender the vision of a divine intervention that will put an end to disorder in time for all time. When the conflict between the revealed order of truth and the actual disorder of the times becomes too intense, the traumatic experience can induce the transformation of the mystery into metastatic expectations. 44. Ibid., 54, 303, 277–78, 294. Voegelin’s translation of Anaximander reads as follows: “The origin of things is the Apeiron. . . . It is necessary for things to perish into that from which they were born; for they pay one another penalty for their injustice according to the ordinance of Time” (277–78).

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As experienced by prophets, philosophers, and saints, reality is alive with theophanies, but in light of these events the philosopher is entrusted with an important responsibility: “The philosopher must be on his guard against . . . distortions of reality. It becomes his task to preserve the balance between the experienced lastingness and the theophanic events in such a manner that the paradox becomes intelligible as the very structure of existence itself. This task incumbent on the philosopher I shall call the postulate of balance.” The core of theophanic encounters is “experientially unstable”; consequently, revelation requires protection against revelation itself.45 This sets the tone for what follows—Voegelin will read Paul in light of Plato’s success in preserving the balance of consciousness. Plato, as conscious of the theophanic nature of his experience as any prophet, does not succumb to metastatic dreaming. But what of the Christian saint? I would argue that, between the time of writing History of Political Ideas and The Ecumenic Age there is a shift in emphasis with regard to Voegelin’s evaluation of Paul. In History, Voegelin can refer to Paul as a statesman who was able to “transpose the community of the perfect with Christ into an idea that took into account the practical problems of a community that did not at all consist of perfect saints.” Paul’s letters present “the momentous step from radical perfectionism to the compromise with the realities of the Christian community in its environment.” Voegelin speaks glowingly of Paul’s achievement: The theory of the Christian community as it was developed in the Pauline circle is a climax. The great history of Christianity as a world force had yet to come, but into this history were introduced new factors that turned the course of Christian evolution away from Pauline ideas. Paul had found the essential compromises with the world. The theory of charismata, of the different spiritual gifts in the one body of Christ, had prevented Christianity from becoming a religious aristocracy and given it a broad popular basis; potentially, mankind as a whole could be organized in the new community. The recognition of the existing social structure, furthermore, had made the community compatible with any society into which Christianity would spread, influencing social relations only through the slowly transforming force of brotherly love. And finally, governmental authority was integrated into the community as being ordained by God, making the community compatible with any form of government. The outlines were given for the creation of a new people out of the Spirit of Christ, of a people that would grow deeper and deeper into the existing world, slowly transforming the nations and civilizations into the kingdom of God. 45. Ibid., 275–76, 283, 286–87, 289, 291–92, 296, 300, 303–4.

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Even though Voegelin detects potentially explosive undercurrents in the Pauline idea of spiritual brotherhood and his neglect of problems connected to property and social order, he clearly understands Paul as a largely successful mediator between transcendent experience and the requirements of life in this world. In relationship to the radical eschatological demands of the gospel, Paul’s function is similar to that which Voegelin attributes to Plato in The Ecumenic Age—a politically astute thinker who is able to make the necessary compromises so that the encounter with divine reality does not disrupt the social/ political order. In Plato and Aristotle, he makes the parallel explicit: the evolution of Plato’s thought from the Republic to the Laws mirrors the transition from Jesus to Paul.46 By the time Voegelin comes to write The Ecumenic Age, his perception of Paul has changed. Instead of the prudent mediator who resembles Plato in his ability to balance the experience of transcendence with the demands of earthly existence, the saint is now juxtaposed to the philosopher. The metastatic tendencies in Paul’s thought are highlighted, only to be contrasted with Platonic sobriety. According to Voegelin, Paul shares with Plato an awareness of the dynamic within reality that finds its expression in the mystery of meaning; like Plato, the evolution of Paul’s thought is determined by his fascination with the implications of theophany: The Pauline analysis of existential order closely parallels the Platonic-Aristotelian. That is to be expected, since both the saint and the philosophers articulate the order constituted by man’s response to a theophany. The accent, however, has decisively shifted from the divinely noetic order incarnate in the world to the divinely pneumatic salvation from its disorder, from the paradox of reality to the abolition of the paradox, from the experience of the directional movement to its consummation. The critical difference is the treatment of phthora, perishing. In the noetic theophany of the philosophers, the athanatizein of the psyche is kept in balance with the rhythm of genesis and phthora in the cosmos; in the pneumatic theophany of Paul, the athanasia of man is not to be separated from the abolition of phthora in the cosmos.47

It is especially noteworthy that Voegelin identifies the central difference between Plato and Paul as having to do with the issue of phthora, or perishing. Where Plato keeps the wisdom of Anaximander ever in mind, Paul lets the “imagery of a genesis without phthora interfere with the primary experience of 46. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:169–73; Voegelin, Order and History, 3:281. 47. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:305.

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the cosmos.” Voegelin notes Paul’s tendency to treat death as if it were a minor incident, reduced to nothing more than “the twinkling of an eye” along the road from imperfection to perfection. For Paul, the vision of the Resurrected is more than a theophanic event in the metaxy—it is the beginning of transfiguration itself. Commenting on 1 Corinthians 15:51–52, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet,” Voegelin observes how “the metastatic expectation of the Second Coming has begun its long history of disappointment.” Through his vision of the Resurrected, Paul differentiates the divine Beyond reaching into the metaxy, as well as the directional movement of reality beyond the metaxy, in a way that is superior to that of the philosophers. Nonetheless, Voegelin worries that the “mythopoetic genius of Paul is not controlled by the critical consciousness of Plato.” In fact, Paul, like Isaiah, is a metastatic thinker who wishes to “abolish the tension between the eschatological telos of reality and the mystery of the transfiguration that is actually going on within historical reality.”48 It would seem, then, that Voegelin’s criticism of Paul has much to do with the apostle’s apparent disregard for the role of perishing in determining the human condition. In this sense Voegelin appears to have correctly diagnosed a crucial difference between the philosophers and the saint. But because he thinks the position of Anaximander and Plato is correct, he misconceives the nature of this difference. Voegelin follows these classical philosophers in taking the reality of perishing for granted, so the issue becomes one of who best “balances” the tension between genesis and phthora. Reality may be moving in a direction beyond this tension, but it remains an inescapable part of the order of things, invested with a sacrality that Plato respects and Paul disregards. From Plato’s perspective this order partakes of divinity: “[The] Anaximandrian experience of the Apeiron extends its balancing effect into the symbolization even of the God behind the Olympian gods. It is not surprising, therefore, when the monogenes, the firstborn whom Plato’s Father God chooses for his incarnation, is not a man as in the Gospel of John (1:14) but the cosmos itself (Timaeus).”49 Plato accepts perishing as part of the divinely constituted order. Voegelin concurs in this Platonic view, and he believes a person’s refusal to recognize this constitutes proof that his or her contact with reality is precarious. His evaluation of Paul as a metastatic thinker derives from this judgment. What is important to emphasize, though, is that the judgment is made from the 48. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:306, 312–15, 337. 49. Ibid., 294.

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perspective that holds Plato’s framing of the issue to be correct. On this basis, Voegelin judges Paul to be mistaken. Of course, as long as Paul is evaluated within this philosophical framework, such a judgment seems unavoidable. But what is lacking in this insight is the extent to which Paul would reject the very manner in which the philosophers have framed the issue. For Paul, the question is not how best to preserve the balance of consciousness within a divinely constituted order in which genesis and phthora are a permanent feature. Rather, the apostle has come to realize that God has nothing at all to do with death. The raising of Jesus from the dead testifies to this. From a Pauline perspective, Anaximander and Plato (and Voegelin) are mistaken in having the divine involved in any way with perishing. James Alison captures the significance of Paul’s claims: There is a first step to this recasting of God through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and this is the demonstration that death itself is a matter of indifference to God. . . . This marks a decisive change in the understanding of God . . . since if God has nothing to do with death, if God is indifferent to death, then our representations of God, all of which are marked by a human culture in which death appears as, at the very least, inevitable, are wrong. . . . If God can raise someone from the dead in the middle of human history, the very fact reveals that death, which up till this point had marked human history as simply something inevitable, part of what it is to be a human being, is not inevitable. That is, death is itself not simply a biological reality, but a human cultural reality marking all perception and a human cultural reality that is capable of being altered. . . . This is an anthropological discovery of unimaginable proportions.50

Voegelin is correct: Paul does treat death as something to be mocked, and he shows little interest in balancing his vision in light of the reality of perishing. But this is precisely because what has been revealed through the resurrection of Jesus is the way in which all human cultures have been previously entrapped within a horizon marked by an acceptance of the inevitability and power of death. It is also true that by Voegelin’s standards, Paul is indeed a metastatic thinker, for the apostle was convinced that the Resurrection was the fulfillment of Jewish hopes, marking the inauguration of the promised “age to come,” the Kingdom of God. With the realization that God has nothing to do with death comes a tremendous freedom and liberation, as it becomes increasingly clear the myriad ways in which our relationships, cultures, religions, and

50. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes, 116, 118–19.

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institutions; our economic, social, and political structures reflect our involvement with death. Understanding how wrong we have been about the nature of God has profound consequences for how we understand ourselves; hence Alison’s observation that the Resurrection implies “an anthropological discovery of unimaginable proportions.” To the extent that Anaximander, Plato, and Voegelin associate phthora in any way with divinity, philosophy remains within a horizon structured by death. From Paul’s perspective, then, Voegelin’s framing of the issue misses the essential meaning of the Resurrection. It would be another instance of a philosophical misconstrual of a biblical insight. Again, my point here is not to argue whether Paul or the philosophers are correct with regard to claims about death and resurrection, but to raise questions concerning Voegelin’s philosophical analyses of biblical texts. To attempt to determine who is more “balanced” in acknowledging the sway of death over human life is to ignore the fact that for Paul (and the other New Testament authors) the Resurrection reveals how death need no longer be considered as possessing such power over human persons. Of course if Anaximander and Plato are correct, then Paul is, in fact, an unbalanced thinker. But that would be to use philosophical criteria to evaluate a New Testament perspective that understands philosophy as part of the cultural horizon whose involvement with death makes it blind to the truth revealed in the Resurrection. In discussing the relationship between Paul and the classical philosophers, Voegelin evaluates the Pauline perspective within a context informed by philosophical questions concerning cosmic order. But these are not the important questions for Paul. Voegelin takes the primary issue to be the lasting and passing of things within an encompassing reality that is itself in the process of movement toward immortalizing transfiguration. The content of Paul’s theophany is described as a “vision of the God who has become man, of the God who has entered the Anaximandrian Time with its genesis and phthora and having gone through the pathemata of existence, has risen to the glory of aphtharsia.”51 In Voegelin’s formulation, the Christ rises to an imperishable state after having temporarily taken on the burden of mortality. He gives significant attention to the Pauline vision of the Resurrected, but largely ignores the paradox of the cross, which “made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 1:20), and which for Paul is inseparable from the Resurrection. Strikingly absent is any indication that Jesus goes to the cross as a result of having lived his life in the conviction that the God he describes as Father has nothing to do with death and consequently nothing to do with violence. Reading Voegelin on Paul, one 51. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:303–7.

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would hardly be aware that the cross is the interpretive lens through which the apostle understands the human condition, or that the Resurrection is for him a confirmation of the life culminating in Jesus’s crucifixion. It is this particular way of life (and not simply the fact that a divine being takes on and suffers from the mortal condition) that Paul finds affirmed in the Resurrection. It is not at all surprising, then, to discover that Voegelin takes little note of what for the New Testament witnesses is a fact of tremendous importance—that the Risen One is simultaneously the Crucified One. For the most part, Voegelin’s analysis does not engage Paul on his own terms, but evaluates the apostle’s vision from the perspective of a philosophy of order whose exemplar is Plato.52 Let me emphasize that what is at issue here is not whether Voegelin’s reading of Paul is in accord with church doctrine. Theologians and church authorities can determine whether Voegelin’s account of Paul’s encounter with the Risen Christ is compatible with Christian dogma.53 The question is whether Voegelin’s interpretation does justice to the self-understanding of the biblical texts he analyzes. One does not have to accept any confessional orthodoxy to understand that for Paul it is unthinkable to separate the resurrection of Jesus from his death on the cross, and that it is this specific “Christ event” that he understands to be the source of meaning in history. It is entirely legitimate for Voegelin as a philosopher to bring a philosophical perspective to bear on biblical texts in order to discover areas of agreement or disagreement. It is quite a different matter to use that perspective to determine what these texts mean and to judge them by a standard that is not obviously superior. In Voegelin’s case, he treats as secondary certain aspects of the New Testament texts considered to be of decisive importance by the earliest Christians. Voegelin’s philosophical interpretation sometimes misses what the New Testament writers place at the center of their proclamation. As a further example of this tendency, Voegelin is impatient with questions concerning the “historicity” of the New Testament accounts. As with his treatment of Israel, the concrete and particular appear as limits to be transcended in the direction of greater universality and further differentiation of 52. One of Voegelin’s most sympathetic readers comments of Voegelin’s chapter on Paul, “It seems that this once Voegelin has approached a great spiritual reality from a standpoint extraneous to it.” Gerhart Niemeyer, “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy and the Drama of Mankind,” 35. In similar fashion Bruce Douglass maintains that “the effect of Voegelin’s interpretation is to make Christian eschatology not substantially different from the philosophy of history he claims to find in Plato and Aristotle.” “A Diminished Gospel: A Critique of Voegelin’s Interpretation of Christianity,” 148. 53. An excellent treatment of these issues can be found in Michael P. Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence: The Theology of Eric Voegelin.

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consciousness. Voegelin is primarily interested in the visions of Paul and the other disciples. He makes clear that such visions are actual events occurring in the metaxy, irreducible to psychological states or hallucinations—“there is no ‘object’ of the vision other than the vision as received; and there is no subject of the vision other than the response in a man’s soul to divine presence.”54 Whether such an interpretation adequately describes the experiences of the New Testament followers of Jesus is open to serious question. Narratives that insist on the fact that the risen Christ eats fish with his followers and offers his pierced hands and side for their inspection are not easily rendered as differentiations of consciousness emerging from the metaxy. It seems difficult to evade the impression given in the New Testament sources that the disciples understood themselves to have encountered Jesus as physically present to them as an individual with whom they could converse and whom they could touch. To interpret the earliest proclamation in this way is not to embrace biblical fundamentalism; rather, it is to remain close to the self-understanding of the community that produced the New Testament, for whom the post-Resurrection encounter with the very same Jesus they had come to know and to love prior to his death was a sure sign that the “age to come” had arrived, demonstrated by the fact that God raised Jesus bodily from death. Even in the case of Paul, who was not privy to the immediate post-Resurrection encounters shared by the other disciples, the apostle’s language reflects a conviction that he had actually seen the risen Jesus.55 Certainly Voegelin’s analysis captures something of the divine-human encounter experienced by Jesus’s followers through his ministry, death, and resurrection, and his reflections on these experiences are profound and nuanced. Nonetheless the philosophical framework he brings to bear on New Testament texts encourages a highly selective reading that tends to approximate the language of early Christianity to that of philosophy. This tendency is quite evident in the essay “The Gospel and Culture.” Voegelin detects recognizable parallels between the symbolism of classical philosophy and that of the Gospels. He further identifies areas of commonality at the 54. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:307–8. 55. “Paul was adamant, in referring to his conversion experience, that he really had seen Jesus. . . . The language he uses is not the language of mystical vision, of spiritual or religious experience without any objective referent. . . . This fact must be stressed because Paul’s awareness of Jesus as having been bodily raised from the dead is of paramount importance in understanding the significance of what happened to him on the road to Damascus. . . . The significance of Jesus’ resurrection, for Saul of Tarsus as he lay blinded and perhaps bruised on the road to Damascus, was this. The one true God had done for Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle of time, what Saul had thought he was going to do for Israel at the end of time.” N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 35–36.

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level of experience. But he frequently takes these common characteristics to be the very core of the Gospels, and in so doing he overlooks some important and distinctive features of the Gospel text. Take, for example, his reflection on the “double meaning of life and death” as it appears in Greek philosophy and the Gospels. Voegelin quotes Euripides’ saying “Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead is to live” and notes how these lines reappear toward the end of Plato’s Gorgias. He also recalls Socrates’ observation in the Apology: “I go to die, and you to live. But who goes to the better lot is unknown to anyone but the God.” These quotations are then likened to Matthew 16:25, “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Voegelin then adds that this “universal truth of existence” (discovered by Greek tragedians and philosophers) “had to be linked with a representative death: the dramatic episode of John 12 is the Christian equivalent to the philosopher’s Apology.” John 12 is said to express a “Hellenistic-ecumenic conception of the drama of existence, culminating in the sacrificial death of Christ,” while the appearance of a group of Greeks in the same chapter reflects humankind’s readiness “to be represented by the divine sacrifice.” Reinforcing the parallel and continuing the approximation of the Gospel to Greek thought, the failure of Socrates’ daimonion to warn him of impending danger is said to be equivalent to the reflection of Jesus as he faces death: “My soul is troubled now, yet what should I say—Father, save me from this hour? But it was for this that I came to this hour.”56 Voegelin focuses on the fact that neither Jesus nor Socrates seeks to avoid death, but he does not consider the significance of their very different reactions to what awaits them. This is surprising, especially since John states clearly that Jesus was “troubled” at the thought of his death. The description of Christ as “troubled” is the Johannine equivalent of Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemani as recorded in the synoptic tradition. Death, in the biblical tradition, is viewed with horror, since it means separation from all that is good in this life, considered as blessings bestowed by a gracious God. In his anguish and terror at the thought of what awaits him, Jesus reacts in a way entirely consistent with the biblical understanding of death. It is precisely this anguish that highlights the goodness of the life he will lose. Because life as a gift from God is truly valuable, one parts with it only with great sorrow. It is Jesus’s willingness to part with this tremendous good for the sake of others that demonstrates the depth of his love. Socrates, by contrast, is dispassionate in the face of death, agnostic as to whether the life he will leave behind is of much value. This difference is indicative of the gulf that exists between a bib 56. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 180–82.

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lical tradition that moves in the direction of an ever-increasing awareness that God, as the fullness of life, has nothing to do with death, and classical philosophy, which confronts death in a spirit of fateful resignation or as liberation from the travails of life in this world. Voegelin correctly grasps the importance of the respective deaths of Jesus and Socrates in illustrating the paradox that an unjust life can be a form of death, while one’s own death may in fact be a path to new life. In terms of his philosophical vision he draws out beautifully the poignancy of these two exemplary lives oriented to the divine Beyond. But he makes little of the difference between the Jesus whose agony when facing death is such that his sweat is likened to drops of blood (Luke 22:44) and a Socrates who faces his end with sublime serenity. If Voegelin likens the savior to the philosopher in their confrontation with death, he continues the approximation of the gospel to philosophy by transforming the philosopher into a savior. Discussing the Parable of the Cave from the Republic, he explains: “If we accept this suffering of being dragged up as a realistic description of the movement, the parable evokes the passion of Socrates who tells it: his being dragged up to the light by God; his suffering the death for the light when he returns to let his fellowmen have their share in it; and his rising from the dead to live as the teller of the saving tale.”57 Even if we allow for the obviously poetic and rhetorical character of this passage, there is still something disconcerting here. Life and myth blend uneasily, as Socrates rises from the dead to tell the “saving tale.” Whether one lives on in myth or in fact is of little consequence; whether one is beaten, dragged about, and crucified figuratively or literally has little bearing on the truth of the “movement.” What becomes clear once again is how much the validity of Voegelin’s understanding of the Gospels depends upon his being able to avoid dealing with the status of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels could not be more emphatic in their claim that Jesus was unjustly and brutally murdered and that God raised him from the dead. For his followers, these were events to which they were witnesses; their “saving tale” was meaningful because it was rooted in the claim that the same Jesus who had been killed had now come back to life. No such claim is ever made about Socrates. Again, this highlights what is perhaps Voegelin’s greatest failure in interpreting the New Testament—the lack of attention given to the meaning of the cross. The most concrete and brutal dimension of the New Testament witness is scarcely touched upon. This is especially striking when we consider that the Passion narratives constitute the original core of the Christian community’s written proclamation. Discussing John 12:32, Voegelin refers to Jesus’s being 57. Ibid., 184–85.

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“lifted up” but omits the line that follows: “This statement indicated the sort of death he had to die.” To be fair, Voegelin acknowledges that “the God who plays with man as a puppet is not the God who becomes man to gain his life by suffering his death.” But in Voegelin’s reading, the suffering of the God who becomes human is nearly indistinguishable from that of the philosopher in Plato’s Parable of the Cave. Like Socrates, Jesus pays with his life for responding faithfully to the pull of the divine cord within reality. To follow the divine cord is “life”; to yield to the counterpulls always present in existence (anthhelkein) is to choose “death.” In Voegelin’s reading the “passion” of Socrates and Jesus stems from the realization that despite enlightenment, the cave remains a permanent feature of human existence, and that those who bring this enlightenment to others will eventually come to harm. The “saving tale,” whether in the form of philosopher’s myth or gospel, gives expression to the possibility of living in attunement with divine reality despite threatening opposition; but Voegelin makes it equally clear that the preservation of the tale in no way affects the permanence of the cave.58 Salvation is a matter of believing in the truth of the tale and becoming savior to others by offering them its insight: Plato concludes the Republic with the admonition, put in the mouth of Socrates, that this story that just has been told of the last judgment is a story that had to be saved from forgetfulness through the man who brought it back from there. And we are saved in our mortality, and on the way to the immortality in the consciousness of that tension, if that tale—in this case, the story (the mythos) of the last judgment and of the descent into Hades—is saved from the dead (referring to the death of Socrates). If that is the result—if on such an occasion as the death of Socrates one recognizes that he died living in that tension and refusing to surrender to it—then the story of that death saved will make Socrates a soter . . . a savior for those who follow him in his discovery of that openness and tension.59

An appreciation of the nature of the saving tale also enables us to dispense more easily with questions concerning the historicity of events referred to in the New Testament: So the “saving tale,” as Plato calls his story, must be saved from death. And I mention this understanding of the saving tale that is to be saved from death, because we have on the Christian side . . . always the terrible problem of the historicity of Jesus, of the reality of the things told there, and so on. And it would be of considerable help in understanding a Christian story, in this case a Gospel, if one would 58. Ibid., 183–86. 59. Eric Voegelin, “Structures of Consciousness,” 367–68.

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apply to it, first of all, the term developed by Plato on the occasion of his gospel on the occasion of Socrates’ [death], that it is a saving tale, saved from the death of a [man] optimally illuminated by divine presence. So not an ordinary myth, but a saving tale saved from death.60

The distinction between meaning and existence blurs; what is important is that a saving tale about this man “optimally illuminated by divine presence” has been preserved for posterity.61 In contrast to the Platonic language of pulls, counterpulls, and saving tales, the Passion narratives focus on the revelation of the biblical God as disclosed through the scandalous death of Jesus. I shall develop this point further in the concluding chapter, but for now I would simply note how for the evangelists, the execution of Jesus is understood as an emphatic confirmation of the biblical insight that God takes the side of victims. The evangelists understand the death and resurrection of Jesus as revealing God as being entirely alien to death and consequently foreign to any form of victimization.62 I would emphasize again that this line of criticism has nothing to do with whether Voegelin’s evaluation of the Gospels is in line with later Christian orthodoxy. As with Strauss, the real issue concerns how well Voegelin adheres to his own stated commitment to allow his sources to speak with their own voice. The Gospels are written in light of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Voegelin, however, reads them in light of his mature theory of consciousness and symbolization. I would argue that this is very much at odds with his own stated methodological approach, which strives to avoid imposing any preconceived “grid” on the texts he is considering, and to enter deeply and meditatively into the experiences out of which they emerged. It remains to consider possible reasons for his hesitancy in approaching the Gospels on their own terms. The relevant clues are not difficult to find: “The Saving Tale can be differentiated beyond classic philosophy, as it has historically happened through Christ and the gospel, but there is no alternative to the symbolization of the In-Between of existence and its divine Beyond by mythical imagination.” The Gospels may represent an advance in differentiation, but the truth about the 60. Ibid., 368. 61. Along these same lines Frederick D. Wilhelmsen contends that “Eric Voegelin is a Platonist, and for Platonists there is no ultimate distinction between being and meaning. This error of theirs is rooted in a failure to distinguish between the way in which ‘things’ exist in the mind and the way in which they exist in the real. . . . But, Dr. Voegelin, ‘if He be not risen’—in the words of St. Paul—then I for one don’t give a damn about St. Paul’s experience of Him.” “The New Voegelin,” 35. 62. See Alison, Joy of Being Wrong, 116–19; and On Being Liked, 17–46.

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human condition as life in the metaxy is best captured by the language of the philosopher’s myth. As already noted, in his later work Voegelin maintains that Plato is just as aware of the “unknown God” as Jesus, but Plato deliberately introduces uncertainties into his account of divine reality to guard against the destabilizing effects of revelation.63 Given that Voegelin acknowledges the superiority of the Gospels’ differentiation in terms of clarity and intensity, we are left wondering whether he means to suggest that the mark of a superior differentiation such as Plato’s is its ability to obscure a potentially disruptive truth. Voegelin never loses sight of the fact that the Gospels are part of a continuum extending back to the metastatic faith of the prophets. Because of this, his attitude toward the Gospel text is marked by ambivalence: The movement that engendered the saving tale of divine incarnation, death, and resurrection as the answer to the question of life and death is considerably more complex than classical philosophy; it is richer by the missionary fervor of its spiritual universalism, poorer by its neglect of noetic control; broader by its appeal to the inarticulate humanity of the common man; more restricted by its bias against the articulate wisdom of the wise; more imposing through its imperial tone of divine authority; more imbalanced through its apocalyptic ferocity, which leads to conflicts with the conditions of man’s existence in society.64

To a significant degree the fundamental problem with the gospel movement is identical to that which Voegelin detects in the life of Israel. The implementation of gospel teaching in the life of society would be as seriously disruptive of order as the metastatic visions of the prophets. One need only consider Voegelin’s treatment of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7) to grasp the continuity from prophecy to gospel: “It demands a change of heart and imposes rules of conduct that have their meaning for men who live in the daily expectation of the kingdom of Heaven. It is not a doctrine that can be followed by men who live in a less intense environment, who expect to live out their lives and who wish to make the world livable for their families. Following the doctrine of the sermon to the letter would in each individual case inevitably entail social and economic disaster and probably lead to an early death.” Voegelin believes that, followed literally, “the counsels of the Sermon . . . would be suicidal.” To survive in the world “man has to pay his debt to nature and is obliged to commit acts in violation of the sermon.” The sermon is written from a perspective in which it 63. “Conversations with Eric Voegelin,” 281, 301; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:295–96. 64. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 189.

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is anticipated that “the end of the world and the kingdom of God will come in fourteen days.” Voegelin argues that Matthew intentionally “spiritualizes” the teaching of the sermon “to preclude aberrations from the eschatological meanings of the sayings to reflections of a social nature.” In relation to society, “the rules of the sermon are not a code that can be followed like the Ten Commandments. The radicalism of the demands precludes their use as a system of social ethics.” For Voegelin, “neither the Decalogue nor the Sermon on the Mount has anything to say about social order in a world of power politics.” In fact, we must confront “the great problem that there is no ‘Christian’ theory of political order at all; in order to construct a ‘Christian natural law,’ we have to return to classical politics.” At the same time, Voegelin appreciates the regulative function of the spiritual ideals contained in the sermon; it remains “a standard that can be invoked against the institution that is supposed to represent it.” Even when the exigencies of life in the world require its violation, the teaching of the sermon is well to bear in mind: “[In] hitting back, he will do good, as a Christian, to remember the sermon, and to be aware that in defense he is involved in guilt and that the man who struck him may have had quite as excellent ‘worldly’ reasons for the attack as he has for the defense. Both are involved in a common guilt, both are engulfed in the inscrutable mystery of evil in the world, and in their enmity both have to respect in each other the secret of the heart that is known only to God.” The influence of the sermon creates a permanent tension in every society in which it gains a foothold: Any set of rules that is accepted by a Christian society as the standard of conduct will inevitably fall far short of the teaching of the sermon. As a consequence, social and political life under the sway of Christianity has a considerable elasticity, resulting in a range of political phenomena that we do not find in other civilizations. The tension between the accepted standard and the eschatological sermon serves as a permanent regulative force. Whenever the standard sinks, it can be pulled up again through a reorientation toward the radical demands. Through the political history of Christianity runs wave after wave of reformations with the climax in the great Reformation of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, when the swing toward the eschatological demands goes too far, the civilizational structure, which is based on a compromise with the natural gifts of man, is imperiled. . . . The eschatological character of the sermon is a source not only of spiritual and ethical reformation but also of civilizational destruction.65 65. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:158–62; Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 8, Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man, 280–82; Eric Voegelin, “The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society,” 117–19; Voegelin, Order and History, 3:280.

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Although written with reference to the Sermon on the Mount, these remarks capture well Voegelin’s ambivalence toward the Bible as a whole. On one level it would be difficult to disagree with the caution he displays here. The translation of biblical teaching into action always depends on the ability and willingness of people to live it out; and this capacity will vary widely. Bringing the gospel to bear in particular circumstances always involves a process of mediation and an ability to distinguish how it might best be appropriated in the personal, social, and political realms. Nor can there be any question that the nonviolent ethic of the sermon would be profoundly disruptive of cultural and social orders that rely on the judicious use of violence to ensure their stability and preservation. As a political philosopher, Voegelin is acutely aware of this. At the same time it is possible to read his comments on the sermon with a sense that something essential to the gospel has been missed. While clearly concerned with the possible political implications to be derived from the sermon, he seems to go beyond this when he uses terms such as suicidal to describe even individual attempts to live in accordance with its message. In Voegelin’s view, the Sermon on the Mount is not only impractical, it is unlivable. There is a recurrent sense in his treatment of biblical texts that the vision of prophets and saints exists in a state of dislocation from reality, always in need of balance and correction by philosophy. But this sidesteps the question as to whether the philosophical framework Voegelin brings to his analysis is equal to the task of comprehending the meaning of the Bible in the first place. He gives little consideration to the possibility that philosophy may itself benefit from a critique grounded in a biblical perspective. His insight into the regulative function of the sermon is astute but incomplete. He does not show much appreciation for the biblical conviction that the experience of divine reality is deeply transformative, not only of individual persons, but of social reality. Voegelin readily cites the Christ who insists that his kingdom is not of this world, but the Jesus who prays for the Father’s will to be done on earth is noticeably absent.66 When Voegelin writes of the sermon’s role in calling attention to our “common guilt” in the face of the “inscrutable mystery of evil in the world,” he seems to invest violent reciprocity with a permanence and inevitability that is explicitly and intentionally challenged by the teaching of Jesus. Criticizing those who would attempt 66. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 216; Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 4, Renaissance and Reformation, 165, 168. On this point Douglass notes, “What is principally at issue in Voegelin’s critique of Christian eschatology, I would submit, is the notion that God is actively present in the world, transforming it in anticipation of the consummation of his kingdom.” “A Diminished Gospel,” 149.

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to bring about a realm of perfection on earth, Voegelin suggests that they consider “the Christian solution,” “namely that the world throughout history will remain as it is and that man’s salvational fulfillment is brought about through grace in death.”67 While he is surely correct in recognizing Christianity’s affirmation of the human person’s ultimate fulfillment beyond the limits of this world, the question remains whether the notion of “grace in death” adequately encompasses the biblical understanding of what it means to share in divine life. Voegelin’s insight into “the Christian solution” is an important but partial truth. Contrary to Voegelin’s view, much contemporary biblical scholarship would maintain that central to the preaching and teaching of Jesus is a confidence that through the intervention of God in history, the world will be profoundly changed. As Ben Meyer notes, “What is happening in the public career of Jesus? Restoration of the ideal order of things! . . . The challenge of God’s will and the transformation of the community were equally eschatological. Challenge made transformation necessary; transformation made meeting the challenge possible.” With specific reference to the Sermon on the Mount, Meyer adds, Why this radical condemnation of judicious measure? The answer, once again, lies in Jesus’ central proclamation. The reign of God was God’s supreme and climactic gift to Israel and the world, not just goodness but boundless goodness. . . . Nothing was to be left as it was. The eschatological reversal of fortunes was matched by an eschatological transvaluation of values. . . . The teaching of Jesus had no other point than to realize the Torah’s inmost spirit of self-forgetfulness in its full purity, fierce and flawless.68

Voegelin does not dispute the presence of these eschatological sentiments in Jesus’s teaching, but he consistently interprets them as having validity only under conditions of an expectation of an imminent end to the world, and consequently as “incompatible with any idea of social or economic reorganization of society.”69 Few would question the claim that an attitude of eschatological expectation is to be found in the New Testament. Yet by the time the Gospels were written, the Christian communities were already adjusting to ongoing life in the world, and the ethics articulated in their writings were intended for communities that were conscious of the fact that the end of the world may 67. Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 297; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:166. 68. Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 140, 142–46. 69. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:156–61.

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have been indefinitely postponed. The ethical teaching of the New Testament flows from a deep conviction that through the death and resurrection of Christ new possibilities for ordering life in this world had become available, not primarily from a belief that the world was about to end.70 Meyer draws out the distinctively biblical character of this eschatological vision by comparing it with Plato’s handling of the discrepancy between the truth of order and life in the world. He remarks how Plato’s attitude of “accommodation to a defective world” stands in contrast to that of Jesus, who understood such accommodations as temporary measures that would be brought to the fullness of God’s intended purpose with the coming of the Kingdom.71 In this regard Voegelin follows Plato, and even when he speaks of what biblical scholars would describe as “realized eschatology” (the notion that the Kingdom is both a present and a future reality in the world), he interprets it along Platonic lines. For Voegelin, the shift within the New Testament from an eschatological to an apocalyptic vision is a transition from Gospel perfectionism toward a more practical adjustment to the reality of mundane existence. The evolution of New Testament thought, in this reading, is similar to the movement from the Republic to the Laws.72 At the very least, this is a highly questionable interpretation, which disregards the fact that some of the later New Testament writings (for example, the Johannine corpus as well as the book of Revelation) exhibit more radical tendencies than those written earlier. I would also argue that Voegelin’s abandonment of the notion of Paul as the great compromiser and his reinterpretation of the saint as a profoundly eschatological thinker probably gets closer to the truth about the historical Paul. Overall, the notion that the New Testament evolves in the direction of greater and greater accommodation to the world is difficult to sustain, and it is more a function of Voegelin’s Platonism than of a careful analysis derived form the sources themselves.73 Where Plato adjusts his vision to the nature of the cosmos, the Bible looks beyond “nature” to the possibilities offered to humanity when it is open to divine grace. Bernard Lonergan 70. Much has been written on the relationship between New Testament eschatology and its implications for ethics and politics. Two contemporary treatments are Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament, 81–89, 168–96; and Horsley and Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom. Useful overviews can also be found in Raymond E. Brown, S.S., and David M. Stanley, S.J., “Aspects of New Testament Thought.” 71. Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 140. 72. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:166–70. 73. See, for example, Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Community of the Beloved Disciple; Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination; Horsley and Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Becoming Human Together: The Pastoral Anthropology of St. Paul; and Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said.

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articulates a fundamental biblical insight in observing how when the “problem of evil is met by a supernatural solution, human perfection itself becomes a limit to be transcended.”74 It is precisely this sort of insight that accounts for the development of the distinction between the pairs natural/supernatural, nature/ grace, and reason/revelation. Biblical peoples became acutely aware of how it was not by their own efforts that they were liberated from slavery, sin, and ultimately death. Notions such as “grace” and the “supernatural” are attempts to articulate something of the experience of the “breaking in” of a presence that enables people to understand how wrong they have been about the nature of God, themselves, and their relationships with others. In the “joy of being wrong” they recognize the insight they have received as “revelation,” as a message bearing what previously were inconceivable possibilities for human life. All other knowledge is then evaluated from within this graced horizon. Concepts such as grace and the supernatural become necessary with the advent of revelation, as human language struggles to catch up with a profoundly new awareness of salvation. Taking the perspective of philosophy as normative, Voegelin dispenses with the distinctions between natural/supernatural, nature/ grace, and reason/revelation. This is not surprising, given that these distinctions are intelligible only in a context in which the superiority of the philosophical life has been called into question from a perspective that claims to transcend it. In those traditions deriving from the Bible, revelatory knowledge has come to be understood as superior to merely “natural” reason because it sheds light on the pervasiveness of human blindness and thereby calls into question the previously assumed goodness of what is taken to be “natural.” Those who take the Bible to be revelation do so in part because its message illuminates the ways in which reason itself is in need of transformation. For Voegelin, however, we need philosophy to balance and contain the excesses of biblical vision. But assimilating the Bible to a philosophical perspective involves the risk that its specific character may be lost. It also skirts the question as to whether philosophy itself is in need of a critique rooted in insights derived from the biblical text.

74. Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 749.

3 Athens versus Jerusalem

As philosophers of crisis, Strauss and Voegelin would agree that the modern world has lost its way, and that our present turmoil is the product of a lengthy process of decline.1 As Strauss contemplates the situation of contemporary humanity, he observes how “all the hopes that we entertain in the midst of the confusions and dangers of the present are founded positively or negatively, directly or indirectly on the experiences of the past. Of these experiences the broadest and deepest, as far as we Western men are concerned, are indicated by the names of the two cities Jerusalem and Athens. . . . In order to understand ourselves and to illuminate our trackless way into the future, we must understand Jerusalem and Athens.” The relationship of Jerusalem and Athens embodies the tension between the Bible and classical philosophy: “Western civilization consists of two elements, has two roots, which are in radical disagreement with each other. We may call these elements, as I have done elsewhere, Jerusalem and Athens, or to speak in nonmetaphorical language, the Bible and Greek philosophy.” In other places, Strauss describes the relationship as one of “antagonism,” “fundamental tension,” or “fundamental opposition.” Jerusalem and Athens stand for “opposite” and “incompatible” claims.2 1. See Ted V. McAllister, Revolt against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Search for a Postliberal Order. 2. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 377, 380, 397–98; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 104, 117; Strauss, “Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History,” 72; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 74.

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At the basis of Western civilization there is permanent conflict. However, this conflict need not be viewed negatively; rather, “we must be aware of the fact that the vitality and the glory of our Western tradition are inseparable from its problematic character.” For Strauss, the struggle between the two cities gives life to the West: “The recognition of two conflicting roots of Western civilization is, at first, a very disconcerting observation. Yet this realization has also something assuring and comforting about it. The very life of Western civilization is the life between two codes, a fundamental tension. There is, therefore, no reason inherent in Western civilization itself, in its fundamental constitution, why it should give up life. But this comforting thought is justified only if we live that life, if we live that conflict.” Living in a state of conflict may not be the ideal situation for human beings, but we must accept our fate, with the realization that “it is not the worst fate which men could imagine.” For Strauss, living the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem forces us to confront questions concerning our fundamental orientation: But this is indeed the question: whether men can acquire the knowledge of the good, without which they cannot guide their lives individually and collectively, by the unaided efforts of their reason, or whether they are dependent for that knowledge on divine revelation. Only through the Bible is philosophy, or the quest for knowledge, challenged by knowledge, viz, by knowledge revealed by the omniscient God, or by knowledge identical with the self-communication of God. No alternative is more fundamental than the alternative: human guidance or divine guidance. . . . In every attempt at harmonization, in every synthesis however impressive, one of the two opposed elements is sacrificed, more or less subtly, but in any event surely, to the other.3

Nor can the problem be evaded by consigning philosophy and revelation to different realms of knowledge: “[The] alternative cannot be avoided by ascribing to philosophy and revelation different spheres or planes—for: they make assertions about the same subject: about the world and human life.” Because of this it is not enough to simply recognize differences and tensions between the two traditions; they cannot both be right about the best way to live: The legitimacy of philosophy does not seem to be a serious problem for the philosopher as long as he is confronted only with pagan myths and laws. . . . The situation of philosophy becomes fundamentally changed as soon as philosophy is 3. Strauss, “Thucydides,” 72; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 116, 121; Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 149–50.

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confronted with the Bible. . . . If it is confronted with the claim of revelation, and only if it is confronted with the claim of revelation, philosophy as a radically free pursuit becomes radically questionable. Confronted with the claim of revelation, the philosopher is therefore compelled to refute that claim. More than that: he must prove the impossibility of revelation. For if revelation is possible, it is possible that the philosophic enterprise is fundamentally wrong.

Given this scenario, a compromise between the two cities is not possible: “Philosophy is incompatible with revelation: philosophy must try to refute revelation, and if not revelation, at any rate theology must try to refute philosophy.”4 These passages from Strauss’s 1948 lecture “Reason and Revelation” are a particularly forceful expression of his views concerning the relationship between philosophy and revelation. Whether Strauss actually believes that philosophy can refute revelation is another matter. Four years after this lecture, he appears to adopt the stance that the best philosophy is able to do is to defend itself against theological criticism, but that philosophy “suffers a defeat as soon as it starts an offensive of its own, as soon as it tries to refute, not the necessarily inadequate proofs of revelation, but revelation itself.” But if philosophy cannot refute revelation, then philosophy’s claim to be the right way of life is questionable and rests upon a premise that is not obvious. The choice for philosophy, then, would itself be an act of faith: “If philosophy cannot justify itself as a rational necessity, a life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge rests itself on an unevident assumption—but this confirms the thesis of faith that there is no possibility of consistency, of a consistent life without faith or belief in revelation.”5 Heinrich Meier takes the view that Strauss accepts neither this decisionistic understanding of philosophy nor the conclusion that the conflict between philosophy and revelation necessarily ends in a stalemate. Meier believes Strauss adopts the seemingly decisionistic position as prudent rhetorical strategy meant to placate his nonphilosophical readers while spurring on the truly philosophical to the task of refuting revelation.6 I think Meier is basically correct in interpreting Strauss as favoring Athens over Jerusalem, but I do not think the difference in Strauss’s position between 1948 and 1952 is best understood as a rhetorical ploy. On the issue of the possibility and status of revelation, Strauss’s epistemological skepticism cuts both ways. On one hand he argues that the very limitations of human knowledge 4. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 141, 148, 150, 171. 5. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 128, 131; Strauss, History of Political Philosophy, 296–97; Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 175. 6. Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 23–24.

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mean that “the possibility of revelation cannot be refuted, and the need for revelation cannot be denied.” On the other hand, “philosophy is the highest possibility of man, if there is no revelation; but there is no revelation, because there can never be evident knowledge of the fact of revelation.” Strauss’s thinking goes back and forth on this question, and where he actually stands is a matter of dispute.7 But his conception of the limits of philosophical knowledge would suggest that he ultimately finds the task of refuting revelation to be beyond philosophy’s power. Given his understanding of philosophy as preoccupied with articulating the perennial problems of human existence, and his skepticism with regard to philosophy’s ability to solve or to give definitive answers to these dilemmas, there is little likelihood that he would expect philosophy to be able to prove the impossibility of revelation. But this does not mean that philosophy cannot seriously impugn or weaken the case for revelation. Nor does it prevent defenders of philosophy from portraying it as a supremely attractive way of life when compared to biblical faith. In fact, I believe this is the strategy Strauss adopts. There are ample indications in the 1952 lecture suggesting that the failure of “present day” philosophy to undermine the claims of revelation does not mean that classical philosophy, properly understood, could not accomplish the task. Hence the critical need, in Strauss’s estimation, to recover the original meaning of classical philosophy, as well as the thought of those medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers who understood the true nature of that philosophy and its relationship to revelation.8 In “Progress or Return?” Strauss insists that under present intellectual conditions philosophy is forced to admit the possibility of revelation. But he qualifies this admission in a significant way, by quickly adding how he uses the term philosophy here “in the common and vague sense of the term where it includes any rational orientation in the world, including science and what have you, common sense.” Philosophy so understood must allow for revelation, but Strauss makes no such concession with regard to philosophy in its original sense. Modern philosophy, that is, philosophy under the spell of modern science, attempts to refute revelation by offering a scientific and comprehensive account of the whole in which miracles could not occur. By eliminating the possibility of miracles, the possibility of revelation, the greatest of miracles, would be eliminated as well. Since such a “true and adequate account . . . 7. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 174, 176; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 120–32. 8. For an excellent discussion of the evolution of Strauss’s thought with regard to medieval rationalism and his understanding of it as providing a means to deny the superiority of revelation over philosophy while at the same time offering an exoteric, politically prudent teaching acceptable to the city, see Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 49–98.

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is certainly not available, . . . philosophy has never refuted revelation.”9 Strauss leaves open the possibility, though, of challenging the claims of revelation by other means. I believe he does this in two related ways. One approach is to interpret biblical revelation in such a way that, while claiming to take it seriously, he conveys an impression that life under divine guidance is unappealing and unnatural when compared to the vision of human flourishing provided by philosophy. Strauss does this by offering what I would consider to be an exaggerated, highly fideistic understanding of revelation in which belief is divorced from intelligence—an understanding, I would add, that is alien to both mainstream Judaism and Christianity. If this first manner of approaching the Bible draws out the implications of understanding it as revelation, Strauss’s other manner of proceeding tries to account for belief in biblical revelation in purely human terms, as a consequence of a particular people’s adherence to its ancestral law. From Strauss’s perspective, philosophy looks foolish when it tries to refute the possibility of revelation from within the horizon of modern philosophy, because modern philosophy is itself captive to a scientific method incapable of dealing adequately with the Bible’s claims. But philosophy properly understood may be able to “refute” revelation, not by proving its scientific impossibility, but by indicating how, in comparison with the philosophical life, the biblical teaching is unattractive and superfluous.

The Problem of Divine Law Essential to understanding Strauss’s interpretation of the Bible is the recognition that while Athens and Jerusalem represent clearly divergent paths, they do so in response to problems and questions common to all human beings. As symbols of the two great premodern traditions of the West, Athens and Jerusalem share notable similarities when contrasted with modernity. Specifically, Strauss observes how premodern thought would reject modernity’s anthropocentrism, its shift in moral orientation from duties to rights, and its emphasis on the historicity of human existence. Both traditions refuse worship to human beings, and classical philosophy, while not achieving the same level of insight as the Bible, tends toward monotheism. However much the two may differ as to the basis of morality, Strauss finds the biblical tradition and Greek philosophy to be in agreement on the importance of morality, the content of morality, and morality’s ultimate insufficiency. Both Athens and Jerusalem look to realities 9. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 131.

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beyond the human to ground morality. In both cities justice is extolled as the highest virtue and is identified with obedience to divine law. In each city there exists a corresponding awareness that such obedience will be costly for those who accept its discipline.10 Most important from Strauss’s perspective is the fundamental role of divine law in providing the common ground between Athens and Jerusalem.11 More precisely, in both traditions the problem of divine law is central. Starting from this common ground, the Bible and Greek philosophy move in sharply divergent directions. To understand these differences it is necessary to clarify the exact nature of the problem of divine law. Consistent with his approach to the quest for origins, Strauss will not allow himself to be guided by theological claims. He assumes nothing about the reality of God, but he is very much interested in investigating how belief in God may have come about. He also seems to be aware that such an approach is not in keeping with the Bible’s self-understanding. In the course of his 1952 lecture “Progress or Return?” he remarks to his audience that “it can well be questioned whether what I am going to say can in truth be called an attempt at understanding, and so you can take it as a kind of illustration from the point of view of, say, social science.”12 This may seem puzzling coming from someone committed to understanding the biblical authors as they understood themselves. In fact, though, it is entirely in keeping with Strauss’s stance toward the Bible. As mentioned in the first chapter, Strauss’s insistence on understanding the biblical authors as they understood themselves involves no commitment on his part with regard to the truth of their claims. His defense of the biblical perspective is motivated primarily by his dissatisfaction with a modern view that would dismiss the biblical accounts out of hand on the basis of an Enlightenment prejudice that believes (wrongly, in Strauss’s view) it has already demonstrated the impossibility of revelation and the miraculous. Strauss’s position would appear to be that while the possibility of revelation cannot be ruled out, it need not be included in one’s interpretation if the biblical text can be explained by other means. The perspective of the biblical writers must be acknowledged, but not necessarily believed, especially if there are alternate explanations. If an “illustration from the . . . social science[s]” can account for the biblical data, it may not demonstrate the impossibility of revelation, but it can help to explain it away. The case for philosophy over and against revelation is thereby indirectly strengthened. A comparison with Voegelin in this 10. Ibid., 102–4, 105–7. 11. Ibid., 107. 12. Ibid., 111.

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regard may be helpful. Unlike Strauss, Voegelin generally accepts the testimony of the biblical writers in describing their encounters with God, and he understands his task as a matter of entering into and recovering these experiences. Voegelin is actually a more consistent practitioner of Strauss’s hermeneutical method than Strauss himself. Strauss may not be interested in delving into revelatory experiences, but he certainly wishes to understand how belief in revelation has come about. Four years prior to the 1952 lecture, Strauss attempts to describe the process in which the problem of divine law evolves into revelation. To do so he sketches a genealogy intended to show by philosophical means “how the original (mythical) idea of the theos nomos is modified by the radical understanding of the moral implication and thus transformed into the idea of revelation.”13 In a series of pithy, sequential phrases, he lays out in concise fashion the essentials of the argument presented more fully in “Progress or Return?” This sketch is unique in his writings, and it is created during a period in which Strauss becomes acutely conscious of the challenges to his conviction concerning the “right and necessity of philosophy.”14 Within the context of the lecture in which it occurs, this genealogy is part of his attempt to respond to what he believes to be theology’s most impressive argument in its own defense—that philosophy does not sufficiently account for belief in revelation. If Strauss can offer a plausible philosophical explanation of the transition from divine law to revelation, he will contribute to the refutation of revelation by philosophy. The genealogy begins by recognizing the human need for society and for law. More specifically, society has a need for good law. In both the 1948 and 1952 lectures this law is equated with ancestral custom. Custom, or “way,” is the prephilosophical equivalent to the idea of nature, because the routine of custom embodies the observable fact “that things behave in a regular manner, that they have customs of behaving and ways of behaving.” The ways of the ancestors have been tested over time and have proven themselves capable of preserving the stability of the community. The wisdom of the ancestors is of such surpassing goodness that they are as gods to their people: “The ancestors are superior, and therefore the ancestors must be understood, if this notion is fully thought through, as gods, or sons of gods, or pupils of gods. In other words, it is necessary to consider the ‘right way’ as the divine law, theos nomos.”15 .

13. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 165. 14. Meier, Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 29. 15. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 111–12. The 1948 lecture makes the same point in a sketchier manner, where Strauss lists the following phrases: “absolute superiority of the ancestors: superhuman beings, divine beings—divine law: the first things, /the sources of our being are gods.” “Reason and Revelation,” 166. See also Natural Right and History, 82–86.

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Living within a closed society, the question as to which is the correct way does not arise, because it is assumed that “our way” is the true way. However, when societies come into contact with one another, the situation alters significantly. The problem of divine law arises not only from the multiplicity of divine codes, but also from their contradictory assertions on the most important matters. Confronted with this difficulty, Athens and Jerusalem offer alternatives that, according to Strauss, are deeply at odds. In light of the variety of conflicting divine codes, questions arise with regard to the equation of ancestral with divine law. The belief that the law is divine because it is ancestral no longer goes unchallenged. But if that is the case, what might be the ultimate source and ground of the law? This sort of speculation leads to the more fundamental question of humanity’s place within the cosmos. In answering these questions, the Bible and Greek philosophy arrive at significantly different conclusions. To transcend the conflict among divine codes, the Greeks proceed on the basis of inquiry. To obtain knowledge of the “first things” it is necessary to begin with that which is accessible to all human beings, and by means of further questions and demonstration, to comprehend something of the order of things. In the course of this process, the authority of divine law is diminished: Because the quest for the beginning, for the first things, becomes now philosophic or scientific analysis of the cosmos, the place of the divine law, in the traditional sense of the term (where it is a code traced to a personal god), is replaced by a natural order which may even be called, as it was later to be called, a natural law—or at any rate, to use a wider term, a natural morality. So the divine law, in the real and strict sense of the term, is only the starting point, the absolutely essential starting point for Greek philosophy, but it is abandoned in the process.16

The parting of the ways between philosophy and revelation is due in part to the questionable status of the latter as a reliable form of knowledge. As Strauss conceives the issue, “The quest for the first things is guided by two fundamental distinctions which antedate the distinction between the good and the ancestral. Men must always have distinguished between hearsay and seeing with one’s own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. But the use of this distinction was originally limited to particular or subordinate matters. As regards the most weighty matters—the first things and the right way—the only source of knowledge was hearsay.” Philosophy, 16. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 113–14.

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according to Strauss, challenges this reliance on hearsay in dealing with matters of fundamental importance: Judgment on, or assent to, the divine or venerable character of any code or account is suspended until the facts upon which the claims are based have been made manifest or demonstrated. They must be made manifest—manifest to all, in broad daylight. Thus man becomes alive to the crucial difference between what his group considers unquestionable and what he himself observes. . . . By virtue of the universal application of the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one’s own eyes, a distinction is now made between the one true and common world perceived in waking and the many untrue and private worlds of dreams and visions. . . . When it was demanded that the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one’s own eyes be applied to the most weighty matters, it was demanded that the superhuman origin of all alleged superhuman information must be proved by examination in the light . . . of such criteria as ultimately derive in an evident manner from the rules which guide us in matters fully accessible to human knowledge.

Strauss is a careful writer, and his choice of the word hearsay to describe the difference between revelation and philosophically derived knowledge furthers the impression of the superiority of the philosophical way of life. After all, the knowledge gained in the practice of philosophy rests upon that which is viewed with one’s own eyes and is therefore accessible to all who can see, in contrast to revelation, which depends on what is “merely heard from others” and is therefore not easily distinguished from “the many untrue and private worlds of dreams and visions.” If divine law retains any significance for philosophy, it does so only in a political sense, “for the education of the many, and not as something which stands independently.”17 The philosophical life, then, originates in a questioning of divine law and of those authorities who support it. Politically, philosophy will make use of the idea of divine law for the sake of those who are incapable of a philosophical life. 17. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 86–88; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 114. See also Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 172–74: “The philosophic necessity to proceed by means of examination, to verify de visu and for oneself the truth of an assertion, is radically opposed to the manner in which religious truth is received. . . . For the Bible, the privileged mode of knowledge is knowledge by hearsay. . . . This Word is heard by means of a tradition that relates God’s acts from generation to generation. . . . The demand for knowledge de visu applied to the first things shatters the harmony originally coming from the Word as heard and transmitted. Knowledge de visu calls into question the visions and dreams based on the divine codes. . . . Whereas the Bible rests on knowledge by hearsay and argument from authority in order to vindicate its superhuman origin, philosophy demands that one examine these proofs by means of knowledge based on perception and reasoning.”

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By contrast, the Bible adheres to a particular divine law, and insists that this law alone is true. All other codes are false, human inventions. This acceptance of one code as uniquely divine does not allow for independent questioning in the manner of philosophy. According to Strauss’s genealogy, the idea of one and only one truly divine law demands full and unequivocal obedience. The last six of the genealogy’s eleven numbered points begin with the phrase full obedience, and Strauss has emphasized full in each case. Love of God and of neighbor are derived from the obligation to full obedience; they are not, according to the logic of Strauss’s account, the source of obedience. Notions of sin, mercy, grace, and divine incarnation are all presented as consequences of a belief in one divine code. But Strauss offers little in the way of explanation for the Bible’s uncompromising stance. As he presents the problem of divine law, it would appear as if the Greeks follow the natural human tendency to ask questions when confronted with this dilemma, while biblical peoples react to the same situation by asserting the superiority of their law code, convinced of its uniquely divine origin. The Greeks encourage people to ask questions, while the Bible demands “full obedience.” The biblical authors, in Strauss’s view, were wise enough to understand the implications of their claims, and with bold consistency they drew out the consequences of their assertions: [The] author or authors of the Bible were aware of the problem of the variety of the divine laws. In other words, they realized—and I am now speaking not as a theologian but as a historian—they realized what are the absolutely necessary conditions if one particular law should be the divine law. How has one to conceive of the whole if one particular, and therefore contingent, law of one particular, contingent tribe is to be the divine law? The answer is: it must be a personal God; the first cause must be God; He must be omnipotent, not controlled and not controllable. But to be knowable means to be controllable, and therefore he must not be knowable in the strict sense of the term. . . . The biblical solution, then, stands or falls by the belief in God’s omnipotence. The notion of omnipotence requires, of course, monotheism, because if you have more than one God clearly none of them can be omnipotent. Only the biblical authors . . . understand what omnipotence really means, because only if God is omnipotent can one particular code be the absolute code. But an omnipotent God who is in principle perfectly knowable to man is in a way subject to man, insofar as knowledge is in a way power. Therefore a truly omnipotent God must be a mysterious God. . . . But if man has no hold whatever over the biblical God, how can there be any link between man and God? The biblical answer is the covenant, a free and mysterious action of love on the part of God; and the

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corresponding attitude on the part of man is trust, or faith, which is radically different from theoretical certainty.18

Instead of attempting to bridge the divide between human questioning and divine mystery by means of philosophical argument, the Bible speaks of the covenant God makes with his people. While God freely enters into this relationship, it is not accurate to speak of the covenant as free from the perspective of the human partner, because the chosen people were commanded, not asked, to fulfill the divine laws. In the passage just cited the biblical authors are presented as thinkers who create ideas about God on the basis of their understanding of what is required conceptually by the assertion that theirs is the divine law. Adherence to the divine law is the starting point; the Bible is written from the point of view of what must be the “absolutely necessary conditions” for this to be the case. The notion of one divine code requires a personal, omnipotent God; this omnipotence in turn requires monotheism, and so on. Strauss invests the biblical writers with a self-conscious awareness of the need to draw out the conceptual framework demanded by an adherence to one divine law. Strauss’s qualification that he is speaking as a historian rather than as a theologian evades the issue, because any historian could come to the biblical text and conclude that whether or not the God of Israel exists, believers took their ideas of law from their experience of the reality they addressed as God. Strauss would have his readers believe that when speaking as a historian one must imagine the biblical writers as thinkers who, in a sense, invent beliefs understood as necessary for a community which holds only one code to be divine. In his genealogy, revelation is ultimately an outgrowth of social need. But speaking as a historian necessitates no such interpretation, and is in fact at odds with the Bible’s own clear testimony showing the experience of God as creator and redeemer preceding the giving of the law. Strauss is a historian in much the same way as Nietzsche is a historian of the Bible in On the Genealogy of Morality. Much like Nietzsche, Strauss depicts the authors of the Bible as deliberately creating ideas in order to defend their way of life. The spirit of Kant is also in evidence here; for in Strauss’s reading, the reality of God appears almost as a necessary postulate derived from an insight into the requisite conditions associated with belief in a singular divine code. This seems a far cry from the apparent understanding of the biblical authors themselves, for whom the living God encountered at Sinai is the source of the law. “God” is not the outcome of reflection on what is 18. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 114, 119.

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entailed by belief in one divine code. Once again we are reminded of the profound difference between Strauss and Voegelin in this regard. Precisely as a philosopher, Voegelin wishes to get back to the experiences of transcendent reality reflected in the biblical texts, whereas Strauss’s philosophical analysis reduces claims concerning such experiences to a set of ideas creatively derived from assertions about the unique truth of a code of law. I believe Strauss’s strategy, like Nietzsche’s, is deliberate. Its effect is to advance philosophy at the expense of the Bible. On occasion Strauss is quite forthright about this. Confronted with “the incompatible claims of Jerusalem and Athens to our allegiance,” “we are open to both and willing to listen to each.” But “by saying that we wish to hear first and then to act to decide, we have already decided in favor of Athens against Jerusalem.”19 This judgment occurs toward the beginning of the essay “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections,” and is nowhere rescinded in the remainder of the text.20 In “Progress or Return?” Strauss makes a similar point when analyzing the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. To deal with the issue properly he proposes that “we go back to the common stratum between the Bible and Greek philosophy,” a stratum that “can be assumed to be common to all men.” According to Strauss’s own epistemological standard, though, that which would be common to all would be that which is capable of being “seen” by anyone who has eyes to see; hence, the proposed starting point is philosophical. Strauss readily admits this, recognizing how “it is easier to start from philosophy, for the simple reason that the question which I raise here is a scientific or philosophic question.” The quest for beginnings, for the first things, is, in Strauss’s opinion, an essentially philosophical pursuit, and this is the framework within which he analyzes his biblical sources.21 Again 19. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 380. 20. Susan Orr sees Strauss as in fact rescinding this judgment, if not explicitly, at least through the unfolding of his argument. Orr observes how “Strauss has found a neutral ground that will allow all of us to consider the Bible seriously. . . . Thus at the close of the section on biblical criticism, he rescinds his determination to make an advance decision in favor of Athens. We have come full circle. It is now possible to consider Jerusalem reasonably.” Jerusalem and Athens: Reason and Revelation in the Works of Leo Strauss, 56. Whether or not Jerusalem can be considered reasonably is not Strauss’s standard in determining whether one has sided with Athens or Jerusalem. His point rather seems to be that the very act of considering which city to follow is an act that already betrays a commitment to the life of questioning characteristic of Athens. Not only is this view never rescinded, but the symbol of Athens as the home of free inquiry is used repeatedly as a foil in comparison to the “absolute obedience” Strauss finds to be typical of the biblical orientation. 21. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 111.

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it appears as if he violates his own criterion for interpretation, that is, understanding authors as they understood themselves, by beginning his analysis of the Bible with questions that are admittedly nonbiblical. Strauss comes to the Bible with questions he considers to be within the proper provenance of philosophy. Philosophical questions determine his approach to the biblical writings. He evaluates the Bible on the basis of its answers to questions emerging from philosophy. Heinrich Meier underlines the fundamentally philosophical orientation of Strauss’s efforts to account for revelation: The philosopher knows how to explain faith in revelation insofar as he knows how to link revelation to the theios nomos and think both ideas himself, that is, insofar as he is able to trace them back to their underlying necessities and to grasp them in light of their developmental possibilities. . . . [In] other words he can determine their limits and understand their logic. His understanding is furthered by the fact that both the theios nomos and revelation point to philosophy. Philosophy is for both the alternative. It is inscribed in both as the way of life that they negate in themselves, or in whose negation their contours become most sharply visible.22

The philosopher can decode biblical revelation because revelation, as a possible solution to the problem of divine law, takes shape as a rejection of philosophy. The contours of biblical thought “become most sharply visible” against the background of questions arising within the philosophical quest. This becomes apparent in Strauss’s treatment of Genesis.

Reading Genesis: Life in Obedience or Life in Freedom? In his introductory remarks to his lecture “On the Interpretation of Genesis” (published posthumously), Strauss announces, “I began with the beginning because this choice seems to me to be least arbitrary.” This is hardly a convincing explanation given Strauss’s insistence that in interpreting a text we begin with the author’s concerns. To focus on the first book of the Bible simply because it is first is, if not arbitrary, certainly at odds with the order of importance stressed by the biblical authors. Sequentially Genesis may be first, but in terms of the overall structure of the Pentateuch, it is a relatively late product stemming from the priestly circles who speak of the world’s creation through 22. Meier, Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 41.

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the prism of the gracious deeds wrought by God in behalf of God’s chosen people. For these authors, the biblical accounts of creation were meaningful within the wider narrative of salvation, which has its center in the events of exodus, law, and covenant.23 They did not come to their work animated by questions concerning the nature of the whole in which they found themselves, but as witnesses to a saving God, whose goodness to Israel manifested itself from the very beginning of creation. Philosophical questions regarding origins were of secondary interest to the biblical writers. Strauss begins with Genesis because its cosmological themes best accord with the central themes of philosophy.24 Bringing a philosophical perspective to bear on the interpretation of the Bible is certainly a legitimate and perhaps even illuminating academic exercise, but it is not the same as understanding the biblical writers as they understood themselves. Strauss violates his own professed standard of interpretation by approaching Genesis as if it is the Hebrew version of philosophical reflection. Theologian James Alison offers helpful insight in this regard, by distinguishing between what he refers to as the “order of logic” and the “order of discovery” in the interpretation of biblical writings. The order of logic resembles the approach taken by Strauss—“we begin with creation and the fall, we move on to salvation, and from there to heaven.” But when treating biblical sources, Alison suggests that we would be closer to their intended meaning if we allowed them to unfold in accordance with the logic of discovery: That is to say, I consider that what is first in the order of our knowledge is an intuition of salvation, first worked out and elaborated over many centuries of ups and downs by the Jewish people. . . . It is starting from this intuition of salvation that a critical understanding of creation was worked out, and not the other way around. . . . The reason for insisting on this is as follows: if we 23. “In the Old Testament, creation is the beginning of history, which means it is the first of the saving deeds of Yahweh. The Israelites do not ask questions about creation for its own sake; creation and nature are integrated in the history of salvation wrought by Yahweh.” John L. McKenzie, “Aspects of Old Testament Thought,” 745. “It cannot be too much emphasized that this doctrine [concerning origins] was, historically, a secondary development with the Israelites. . . . In a word, the Israelites knew Yahweh as savior, as redeemer, before they came to think of him as creator.” R. A. F. Mackenzie, Faith and History in the Old Testament, 47–48. This view is typical of the scholarly consensus concerning the meaning of creation in Genesis—it is Strauss’s interpretation that is idiosyncratic. In itself, this would not be problematic, but Strauss insists that he wishes to understand the Bible as it was understood by its authors. 24. It is likewise no accident that in the final volume of Voegelin’s Order and History, the only extensive treatment of biblical materials focuses on the creation accounts in Genesis (Order and History, 5:33–41).

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consider salvation as “fitting in” to a story which starts with creation, then we remain stuck at the mercy of an a priori view of creation by imagining that we have some independent way of knowing what happened “in the beginning.”25

The philosophical a priori Strauss brings to his interpretation of Genesis takes cosmological reflection to be the starting point of all human questioning: “All human thought, even all thought human or divine, which is meant to be understood by human beings, willy-nilly begins with this whole, the permanently given whole which we all know and which men always know. The Bible begins with an articulation of the permanently given whole; this is one articulation of the permanently given whole among many such articulations.” That “all human thought . . . begins with this whole” is an assertion that Strauss does not attempt to demonstrate. But its effect is to portray the origins of human thought as coinciding with the concerns of philosophy. On the basis of this a priori, he evaluates the Bible in terms of how well it speaks about the whole. Following a careful description of the various and evolving degrees of separation involved in the world’s creation as depicted in Genesis 1, Strauss remarks, The clue to the first chapter seems to be the fact that the creation consists of two main parts. This implies that the created world is conceived to be characterized by a fundamental dualism: things which are different from each other without having the capacity of local motion, and things which in addition to being different from each other do have the capacity of local motion. This means the first chapter seems to be based on the assumption that the fundamental dualism is that of distinctness, otherness, as Plato would say, and of local motion.

Strauss’s delineation of the process of creation thus reveals an intelligible pattern. From the perspective of cosmology the Bible passes the intelligibility test. Such considerations lead him to the conclusion that it would be unreasonable to speak of biblical thought as mythical or prelogical: “The account of the world given in the first chapter of the Bible is not fundamentally different from philosophic accounts; that account is based on evident distinctions which are as accessible to us as they were to the biblical author. Hence we can understand that account; these distinctions are accessible to man as man.”26 The Bible agrees with philosophy by starting with that which is “accessible to man as man.” Strauss believes this to be entirely understandable, since every cosmogony presupposes “an articulation of the world, of the com 25. Alison, On Being Liked, 47. 26. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 361, 366, 368.

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pleted world, of the cosmos, that is to say, a cosmology.” Biblical cosmology deals with created things “accessible to man as man regardless of differences of climate, origin, religion, or anything else.” Again, there is nothing unreasonable in analyzing Genesis by investigating its subject matter in terms of what is strictly accessible to human cognition. But there is also something artificial about such an approach, something that may inhibit the biblical text from disclosing a richer and more distinctly biblical form of intelligibility. This form of investigation fails to distinguish between the order of logic and the order of discovery. At times this artificiality becomes apparent in Strauss’s analysis. At one point he anticipates possible objections to the fact that Genesis speaks of a light that precedes the creation of the sun. Strauss’s answer reveals the lengths to which he is willing to go to approximate biblical cosmology to that of philosophy: “But do we not all know a light which is not derivative from the sun, empirically, ordinarily? I say yes: lightning. And perhaps there is a connection between what the Bible says about the light and the biblical understanding of lightning. The Bible starts then from the world as we know it and as men always knew it and will know it, prior to any explanation, mythical or scientific.”27 The Bible must be approximated to philosophical inquiry into the cosmos, with that which is accessible to human observation, even if this implies that Genesis 1:3 would be better rendered as “God said, ‘Let there be lightning.’” In this instance, understanding the text in a philosophical fashion results in a strangely forced interpretation. Strauss is also aware of how his interpretive stance departs from the self-understanding of the biblical authors. He raises the objection himself with regard to his downplaying of the themes most important to the biblical writer: “But you will say, and quite rightly, that what I have discussed is the least important part or aspect of the first chapter. The cosmology used by the biblical author is not the theme of the biblical author. That cosmology, that articulation of the visible universe, is the unthematic presupposition of the biblical author. His theme is that the world has been created by God in these and these stages.”28 Strauss offers no explanation in answer to this objection. We are left only with his reminder that “it is easier to start from philosophy” since the question of origins is in fact a “scientific or philosophic question.” He concentrates on “the least important part” of the text from a biblical perspective because this is where the Bible’s teaching best comes into focus against the backdrop of philosophy. If the Bible and philosophy are to 27. Ibid., 368. 28. Ibid.

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be compared, this must be done in a way that has the Bible responding to questions set by philosophy, rather than vice versa. The contrast between Athens and Jerusalem can be spelled out once the philosophical a priori is in place. Therefore when Strauss turns to what he views as distinctively biblical aspects of the text, the analysis operates within a context structured by cosmological reflection on the whole. In doing so he apparently adopts the same method he criticizes in Spinoza—taking as central those matters which for the biblical author are secondary, and arranging his treatment of biblical subject matter in a way that is foreign to the Bible’s own estimation of its importance. In developing his account of Genesis, Strauss notes how of all the things named by God, only human beings and the heavens are not designated as good. In the case of human beings this is unnecessary, since we are made in the image of God. But in the case of the heavens, this can only mean that the biblical author wishes to demote them in importance—“Heaven is depreciated in favor of the earth, life on earth, man.” For cosmology, “heaven is a more important theme than earth, than life on earth. . . . The human thing is a word of depreciation in Greek philosophy.” Strauss then lays out the consequences of these differences: “There is then a deep opposition between the Bible and cosmology proper and, since all philosophy is cosmology ultimately, between the Bible and philosophy. The Bible proclaims cosmology is a non-thematic implication of the story of creation. It is necessary to articulate the visible universe and understand its character only for the sake of saying that the visible universe, the world, was created by God.”29 The textual evidence within the Bible as a whole overwhelmingly supports an interpretation stressing divine concern for human beings, so Strauss is certainly on firm ground in highlighting the relative depreciation of the heavens as compared with the human as it appears in Genesis. What is less certain is the conclusion he draws from this regarding the opposition between the Bible and philosophy. The conclusion would seem to be valid only as long as one accepts Strauss’s view that, in the final analysis, all philosophy is cosmology. But that is a debatable proposition.30 Yet even if we assume that Strauss is correct, the depreciation of the heavens in the Bible calls out for explanation: “[With] what right is the horizon of cosmology—of the things we see, describe, and understand—transcended? Or, in other words, what is wrong 29. Ibid., 369. 30. See, for example, the exchange between Strauss and Karl Löwith, in which Strauss argues for philosophy as “the attempt to replace opinions about the whole with genuine knowledge of the whole,” and criticizes Löwith for reducing philosophy to the “self-understanding or self-interpretation of man.” Leo Strauss and Karl Löwith, “Correspondence concerning Modernity,” 111.

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with cosmology? What is wrong with man’s effort to find his bearing in the light of what is evident to man as man? . . . What is the right life of man?”31 It is this last question which, according to Strauss, animates the second creation account, in Genesis 2. There, human beings are portrayed as ambiguous creatures, gifted with freedom, but unsure how to use it. This ambiguity has repercussions as to the stance taken with regard to questions concerning the heavens: “There is a connection between the ambiguity of man, the danger to which man is essentially exposed, and heaven, with what heaven stands for, the attempt to find one’s bearing in the light of what is evident to man as man, the attempt to possess knowledge of good and evil like the gods.” The question of the right way of life, the question separating Athens and Jerusalem begins to make itself felt here. Strauss rather easily assimilates the notion of “heaven” to the philosophical procedure of moving toward fuller knowledge on the basis of what is “evident to man as man.” He further equates this knowledge with the “knowledge of good and evil” prohibited in Genesis. More specifically, Strauss does not believe that the original transgression of the human race is simply the desire for knowledge of good and evil, nor is it a desire to transgress the divine command. Rather, human disobedience takes the form of a desire for autonomous knowledge of good and evil. The first chapter of Genesis depreciates the heavens, while the second chapter questions the pursuit of the knowledge of good and evil; Genesis 1 questions the primary theme of philosophy and Genesis 2 questions the intention of philosophy. The two are intimately connected: Heaven is a primary theme of cosmology and of philosophy. The second chapter contains this explicit depreciation of the knowledge of good and evil, which is only another aspect of the thought expressed in the first chapter. For what does forbidden knowledge of good and evil mean? It means ultimately such knowledge of good and evil as is based on the understanding of the nature of things, as philosophers would say; but that means, somewhat more simply expressed, knowledge of good and evil which is based on the contemplation of heaven.

Similar to the contrast he establishes between the Bible and philosophy on the assumption that philosophy is ultimately cosmology, here Strauss’s point has merit as long as we accept his equation of the biblical notion of “knowledge of good and evil” with philosophical reflection on the cosmos. Once again an interpretation claiming to be in accord with the Bible’s self-understanding hinges on a prior understanding of what the “philosophers would say,” even 31. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 371.

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if, in this case, the biblical authors would have had no access to philosophical thought. Strauss knows this is a problem, but he believes it can be overcome with relative ease: “The biblical authors, as far as we know, did not know anything of philosophy, strictly so-called. But we must not forget that they were probably familiar with things . . . —in Babylon for example—which are primitive forms of philosophy, contemplation of heaven and becoming wise in human conduct through contemplation of heaven. The fundamental idea is the same as that of philosophy in the original sense.” Earlier we noted how Strauss understands all philosophy to be ultimately a form of cosmology. Here, to bring out further the opposition between the Bible and philosophy, he suggests that all cosmology is philosophy. In this particular example the question is not whether Genesis represents an implicit critique of Babylonian creation myths (there seems to be a good deal of scholarly consensus that it does), but whether this critique is directed against what Strauss understands as philosophy. In his view, what philosophers esteem as the highest way of life the Bible condemns as disobedience. For Strauss, this is the lesson of Genesis: “The Bible, therefore, confronts us more clearly than any other book with this fundamental alternative: life in obedience to revelation, life in obedience, or life in human freedom, the latter being represented by the Greek philosophers.”32 The cumulative effect of Strauss’s presentation of Genesis is to present the Bible as interfering with the natural human desire to raise questions, and as calling into question the validity of the entire philosophic enterprise. Both the Bible and philosophy begin with what is accessible to all human beings at the level of experience. With the Bible, however, the spontaneous process of questioning is brought to a halt; whereas in philosophy, it is treasured as the highest form of life. As an articulation of a particular cosmology, Strauss shows the intelligible character of the biblical creation accounts. But he affirms this only to point out how the Bible arbitrarily forbids the full development of human intelligence when confronted with the mystery of the cosmos. He makes it clear that the Bible understands the pursuit of further knowledge of the whole to be a dangerous temptation. As a specification of cosmological reflection on the whole, philosophy fosters the human tendency to pursue questions to their ultimate ground. The Bible prohibits this quest in the name of obedience to a mysterious and incomprehensible God: What to the classical philosophers appeared as the perfection of man’s nature, is described by the Bible as the product of man’s disobedience to his Creator. When

32. Ibid., 371, 373.

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the classical philosophers conceive of man’s desire to know as his highest natural desire, the Bible protests by asserting that this desire is a temptation. To the philosophic view that man’s happiness consists in free investigation or insight, the Bible opposes the view that man’s happiness consists in obedience to God. The Bible thus offers the only challenge to the claim of philosophy which can reasonably be made.33

The “highest natural desire” humans possess is viewed with deep suspicion by the biblical authors; if Strauss is correct it would appear as if the teaching of the Bible is, at least in this regard, profoundly unnatural. In Strauss’s reading of Genesis the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens is not that of grace building on nature and thereby fulfilling the natural human capacity for wonder. Rather, revealed religion forbids and suppresses that which is most characteristically human. The Bible rests upon assertions rather than an appeal to intelligence: The Bible is distinguished from all philosophy because it simply asserts that the world is created by God. There is not a trace of an argument in support of this assertion. How do we know the world was created? The Bible declared it so. We know by virtue of declaration, pure and simple, by divine utterance ultimately. . . . In other words, the fact that the world has a certain structure is known to man as man. That the world is created is known by the fact that God speaks to Israel on the Horeb; that is the reason why Israel knows that the sun and moon and the stars do not deserve worship. . . . There is no argument in favor of creation except God speaking to Israel.34

“Because God said so”—in Strauss’s reading, this belief is at the core of the biblical vision. In his view, the idea of a personal God is evidence of the chasm that separates belief from philosophy: “There is only one objection against PlatoAristotle: and that is the factum brutum of revelation, or of the ‘personal’ God. I say factum brutum—for there is no argument whatsoever, theoretical, practical, existential . . . not even the argument of paradox from the agnoia theou, which characterizes the genuine philosopher, to belief.”35 Argument versus assertion: from Strauss’s perspective this constitutes one of the central features separating Athens from Jerusalem. He is no doubt correct in pointing out how the Bible does not offer arguments in defense of creation by God. But there is also at work in Strauss’s presentation the tendency 33. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 149. 34. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 369–70. 35. Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence concerning Modernity,” 108.

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to heighten wherever possible the contrast between the careful, verifiable, and reasoned method of philosophy, and the stark, rationally indemonstrable claims of the Bible. Here too the disagreement between Strauss and Voegelin concerning the nature of philosophy becomes evident. Voegelin is no fonder of dogmatic assertions than is Strauss, yet when he engages the biblical text he takes its assertions as an invitation to seek out the underlying experiences behind the text. And he does so, as we noted earlier, precisely in his role as a philosopher. Strauss draws a line between the doctrinaire assertions of the Bible on one hand, and a philosophical life of open inquiry on the other. For Voegelin the distinction is not to be drawn in this fashion, for he recognizes how dogmatism may be found in the world of philosophy as well as in that of revealed religion.36 Likewise, Voegelin finds the unfolding of wonder to be present in both philosophy and the Bible, although the accents within the experience of being moved by divine reality will differ in Athens and Jerusalem. Strauss would likely view Voegelin’s preoccupation with experiences of transcendence as yet another example of the modern tendency to “internalize” the traditional “external,” “objective” understanding of revelation. It also seems fairly clear from their correspondence that, from Strauss’s perspective, Voegelin has not escaped the temptation of interpreting classical philosophy within a horizon contaminated by biblical ideas.37 As discussed in Chapter 1, Strauss is skeptical of attempts to interpret biblical doctrines in terms of religious experience. But the suspicion remains that his insistence on the external quality of revelation has more to do with the overall contrast he wishes to emphasize between Jerusalem and Athens than with any desire on his part to defend what he understands to be the “traditional” view. For example, he criticizes what he describes as the “internalization” of the biblical doctrine of creation largely because he thinks it weakens the Bible’s unreasoned assertions, assertions he takes to be typically biblical. Appeals to religious experience may reveal areas of commonality that would soften the contrast between the Bible and philosophy so essential to Strauss’s interpretation. As their correspondence makes clear, Voegelin’s talk about “mystical philosophers” and the “prophetic (religious) foundation of philosophizing” makes Strauss uneasy because it confuses what in his view are two separate enterprises and thereby lessens the tension he wishes to maintain between Athens and Jerusalem. If, as I believe, Voegelin sometimes moves too far in the opposite direction by blurring the distinctions between philosophy and the Bible, his engagement with the same materials and issues stands as a challenge to Strauss’s claims. Taking the Bible as a repository 36. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:83–107. 37. Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 72, 76–78, 91.

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of assertions to which the believer piously submits is essential to the opposition Strauss wishes to preserve between Athens and Jerusalem.

A Paradoxical Book Strauss’s conception of the God of the Bible fits perfectly with his understanding of the text as a summons to unquestioning obedience. The biblical deity is omnipotent, inscrutable, omniscient, mysterious, incomprehensible, unpredictable, willful, and free. While the biblical God is, like the god of Aristotle, a “thinking being,” Strauss consistently stresses divine will. As noted earlier, the image of the biblical God, as presented by Strauss, is very much tied to the requirements demanded by belief in the unique status of Israel’s divine law. Strauss affirms the compassionate character of God as portrayed in the Bible, but it is certainly not the image in the forefront of his interpretation. When he mentions it, he usually (as is the case with all the divine attributes) presents it as another necessary consequence of belief in the uniqueness of Israel’s law. As Strauss reads the Bible, God’s will is beyond human grasp, although it is exercised with the welfare of God’s people in mind. Unlike the gods of the Greeks, this is a loving and merciful God who makes promises to the chosen people, including the promise of ultimate redemption. But in a strikingly candid moment, Strauss points to the historical experience of the Jews as proof of the absence of redemption, thereby suggesting that the saving God is the product of the wishful thinking of a noble and suffering people.38 If the contrast between Athens and Jerusalem is to be maintained, the capricious and even cruel character of the biblical God must be underscored. To that end Strauss highlights the manner in which the God of the Bible is capable of punishing in a disproportionately harsh manner those who disobey divine commands, even when such disobedience seems to spring from an evidently moral or even noble response to the situation at hand. Saul disobeys God’s command and does the noble thing by sparing King Agag’s life. Because of this, Saul is rejected by God and Agag is slaughtered by the prophet Samuel. David’s wife, Michal, criticizes David for dancing before the Lord, and she is punished with sterility. Reflecting upon the biblical account of the destruc 38. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 359–60, 374–75; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 393, 396–97; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 114–15; Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 140; Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 166–67; Leo Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 327. See also Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, updated edition, 44–48.

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tion of Sodom and Abraham’s appeal to divine mercy on the city’s behalf (Gen. 18:22–32), Strauss comments how “even if all Sodomites were wicked and hence justly destroyed, did their infants who were destroyed with them deserve their destruction?” On one level, he certainly has a point—according to the biblical account, God destroys the city. What is lacking, though, is an appreciation of how, in this instance, the biblical text is obviously wrestling with a conception of God as punitive. Through Abraham’s intervention, God would have spared the city if only ten good people had been found there. The passage clearly focuses on divine forbearance and moves in the direction of showing the lengths to which God will go in order to spare the innocent. Strauss does not read it this way; instead, he raises questions about a deity who would slaughter infants in the process of punishing their parents. In Strauss’s hands the story serves as further evidence of the inscrutable nature of a God who is capable of inordinate cruelty when dealing with the human race, a God whose will confounds any sense of moderation and decency. Where the biblical authors appear to be raising questions about the notion of a God who punishes, Strauss employs the story to show the harshness with which the Lord treats those who disobey the divinely given ordinances. God’s treatment of Adam and Eve is also invoked to support this interpretation. In Strauss’s account, the first human beings rather innocently and unintentionally violate God’s command; “nevertheless God punished them severely.” God’s commands must be obeyed, however unintelligible or contrary to morality they may seem.39 Fear of God is a significant theme in Strauss’s analysis of the Bible. He notes how, “humanly speaking, the unity of fear and pity combined with the phenomenon of guilt might seem to be the root of religion.” In the case of the Bible, “God, the king or judge, is the object of fear; and God, the father of all men makes all men brothers, and thus hallows pity.” Whereas the Greek philosophers consider these feelings to be demeaning and unworthy of superior souls, this is precisely the attitude in which biblical morality reaches its fulfillment: “According to the Greek philosophers . . . it is understanding or contemplation. Now this necessarily tends to weaken the majesty of the moral demands, whereas humility, a sense of guilt, repentance, and faith in divine mercy, which complete morality according to the Bible, necessarily strengthen the majesty of the moral demands.” The stringent demands of biblical morality create an atmosphere in which men and women live in “fear and 39. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 387, 391–92; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 107, 109.

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trembling,” but these believers also live in hope because of the divine promise of final redemption. This is not the case with the philosopher, who “lives in a state above fear and trembling as well as above hope,” resulting in a state of “peculiar serenity,” a serenity rooted in resignation. Strauss observes how, “according to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, the beginning of wisdom is wonder.” The Bible teaches that human beings are to live in “child-like simplicity and obedience to God.”40 The appropriate human response to the biblical God is one of trust and loving submission regardless of the content of the divine command. Within the biblical horizon, God’s love frequently manifests itself in ways that defy human comprehension. Strauss contrasts the exemplary philosophical man, Socrates, with Abraham, a model of biblical piety. Faced with an unintelligible command to sacrifice his son, Abraham obeys without question. Socrates, confronted with a far less morally problematic command from Apollo, questions whether the god’s command makes any sense.41 Here again Strauss arranges his examples carefully, in a way intended to show philosophy in as favorable a light as possible; as a parallel to the Socratic questioning of Apollo he might just as easily have cited Abraham’s questioning of God concerning the destruction of Sodom. But of course this comparison would not serve his purpose nearly as well as the morally disturbing command to sacrifice one’s offspring. As Strauss understands the biblical perspective, the apparent unintelligibility of the demand placed upon Abraham to sacrifice his son is “disposed of by the consideration that nothing is too wondrous for the Lord.” That the command to slay Isaac violates the biblical prohibition against the shedding of innocent blood merely points to the discrepancy between divine and human justice— “God alone is unqualifiedly, if unfathomably, just.” Biblical morality, on this interpretation, is entirely dependent on the arbitrary will of God; revelation discloses little or nothing about the divine nature other than that God can do and command whatever God chooses. Abraham, in Strauss’s view, epitomizes the characteristically biblical response to such a divinity. Abraham’s obedience is attributed to “his supreme trust in God, his simple, single-minded, child-like faith.”42 No doubt the “binding of Isaac” is a classic biblical tale, and it is certainly legitimate for Strauss to make use of it. However, it is equally pertinent to question Strauss’s overall selection, arrangement, and use of biblical citations. 40. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 107–9; Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 166; Leo Strauss, “On the Euthyphron,” 206; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 379–80, 385. 41. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 110, 119. 42. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 392–93.

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For the most part, they are chosen with an eye toward depicting the Bible as a text primarily concerned with absolute, even unthinking, obedience to a fearinspiring God. Strauss speaks of the mysterious nature of this biblical God in a way that stresses divine unpredictability and paradox. In response to the charge that divine omniscience is incompatible with human freedom, he points out, “But all criticism of this kind presupposes that it is at all possible to speak about God without making contradictory statements. If God is incomprehensible and yet not unknown, and this is implied in the idea of God’s omnipotence, it is impossible to speak about God without making contradictory statements about him. The comprehensible God, the God about whom we can speak without making contradictions, we can say is the God of Aristotle and not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” To the extent that the incomprehensible God is able to communicate with the human race in a way that prompts a human response, the humanly formulated message will be riddled with contradictions. Faith, then, is the trusting response assumed by believers when confronted with these contradictions. This comes through strongly when Strauss discusses attempts to disprove divine omnipotence. Those who would argue from experience to make their case will inevitably be unsuccessful, since appeals to experience can show only “that the conclusion from the world, from its manifest order, and from its manifest rhythm, to an omnipotent Creator is not valid.” The best they can hope to do is to show how “biblical faith is improbable.” But for Strauss this would be a hollow victory, since “the improbable character of biblical belief is admitted and even proclaimed by the biblical faith itself.” In his estimation faith would have no merit “if it were not faith against heavy odds.”43 Faith, according to this understanding, is the proper cognitive response to the manifold contradictions within the biblical text. The difference between mystery and unintelligibility becomes almost indistinguishable in this account. As Strauss understands the Bible, “the mysteries of the Torah are the contradictions of the Torah; the mysteries of God are the contradictions regarding God.” In its literary form the Bible reflects “the inscrutable mystery of the ways of God, which it would be impious even to attempt to comprehend.” Despite this reverential nod, we are also reminded how the character of the biblical text reflects the Bible’s rejection “of autonomous knowledge and everything that goes with it.” For the Greeks a book is a work of art, which at its best reflects the perfection to which the philosophical quest aspires: “The perfect book is an image or an imitation of that all-comprehensiveness and perfect evidence 43. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 360.

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of knowledge which is aspired to but not reached. The perfect book acts, therefore, as a countercharm to the charm of despair which the never satisfied quest for perfect knowledge necessarily engenders.” Given the biblical attitude toward the human pursuit of knowledge, “there cannot be a book in the Greek sense.” As inheritors of the holy writings, the biblical authors partake in “the mysterious character of the divine purpose.” In their work of assembly and redaction they “will exclude not everything that is not evidently necessary for an evident purpose, but only what is evidently incompatible with a purpose whose ground is hidden.” Since serving a purpose whose ground is hidden is a difficult task, the Bible may “abound in contradictions . . . whereas a Greek book, the greatest example being the Platonic dialogue, reflects the perfect evidence to which the philosopher aspires.” The perfect philosophical book is in harmony with the exigencies of human intelligence, whereas the obscurities of the biblical text reflect a perspective in which the pursuit of autonomous knowledge is considered sinful. Strauss describes the alternatives of faith and philosophy as a choice between a life of “obedient love” and a life of “autonomous understanding” or “free insight.”44 If, when one reads the Bible, its message appears contradictory, the response of faith is not to ask further questions, but to humbly submit to the mystery. The Bible should be read as teaching that “man is not meant to be a theoretical, a knowing, a contemplating being; man is meant to live in child-like obedience.” It appears as if for Strauss, there is little possibility of combining a life of inquiry with the way of faith. He creates the impression that while philosophy is for thoughtful, mature adults, faith is better suited to the simple and the childlike. In defending the Bible, Strauss simultaneously questions (although he never actually denies) its intelligibility; he notes that the Bible abounds with contradictions, but it is not entirely incoherent. This presentation serves to strengthen the contrast between Jerusalem and Athens that he wishes to maintain. Faith, in Strauss’s reading, is not just beyond reason, but at odds with it.45 He deflects scientific criticism of the Bible by conceding that it is not possible to speak about the biblical God without making contradictory statements, a “defense” that is no less damaging than the original criticism. He consistently interprets the Bible in a way that supports his view of the incompatibility of philosophy and revelation. It is, then, entirely in keeping with the spirit of his thought to find Strauss speaking of “the fundamental opposition of Athens at its peak to Jerusalem: the opposition of the God or 44. Ibid., 374–75; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 104; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 74. 45. See Dante Germino, “Leo Strauss versus Eric Voegelin on Faith and Political Philosophy.”

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gods of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the opposition of Reason and Revelation.”46 It follows that “no one can be both a philosopher and a theologian, or, for that matter, some possibility which transcends the conflict between philosophy and theology, or pretends to be a synthesis of both.” Between Athens and Jerusalem, no synthesis is possible, because “syntheses always sacrifice the decisive claim of one of the two elements.” Any alleged synthesis of the Bible and classical philosophy is, in fact, the subordination of one tradition to the other. Even when a synthesis appears successful, it will undoubtedly be the case that the subordinated element will rebel against the dominant partner. For Strauss, “Every synthesis is actually an option either for Jerusalem or for Athens.”47 Precisely where Strauss stands on the question of Jerusalem and Athens continues to be a matter of controversy.48 Perhaps Ehud Luz best captures Strauss’s ambivalence: All in all, a good non-Orthodox Jewish thinker is the kind of Jew who has in practice decided in favor of “Athens” but has found a way of living with the conflict between “Jerusalem” and “Athens” without denying the truth claims of each. Strauss believes that for modern Jewish thinkers, who cannot accept their ancestors’ faith, the most virtuous and authentic way to express their loyalty to the Jewish tradition is to live and to clarify the conflict as much as they can. . . . This is what he is doing in his writings: he suggests a fresh interpretation of the two main roots of Western culture, which, according to his view, have been either forgotten or covered over by historicism and modern philosophy.49

If Strauss’s position with regard to the relative importance of the two cities is to be inferred from the amount of attention he accords the representative texts of these traditions, then there is no question that Strauss’s primary interest and commitment lies with Athens. For all of Strauss’s insistence on the importance of the question of Athens and Jerusalem, his actual treatment of biblical books is highly selective, and not at all representative of the diversity of the biblical tradition. Those who wish to argue that Strauss actually sided with Jerusalem over Athens must come to terms with the striking absence of extended attention to 46. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 397–98. 47. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 104, 116; Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 373; Strauss, “Thucydides,” 72–73; Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 78. 48. I would say, however, that the movement of scholarly opinion tends to favor the view that ultimately Strauss sides with Athens. There are of course exceptions, with thoughtful scholars of Strauss’s thought arguing that he actually favors Jerusalem. See, for example, Orr, Jerusalem and Athens. 49. Luz, “How to Read the Bible,” 268.

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biblical texts in his work. Surely someone who is able to write three books on Xenophon should be able to devote more space in his writings to an actual consideration of the Bible, rather than a generic juxtaposition of Athens and Jerusalem where almost all detailed textual commentary and analysis is devoted to classical sources. Julius Guttmann, one of Strauss’s earliest critics, notes how Strauss shows little interest in the actual content of the biblical message—he is far more concerned with the implications of the existence of revelation.50 In fact, Strauss’s “Bible” is a curious amalgam of elements taken primarily from traditional forms of Orthodox Judaism, philosophical arguments derived from reflection on the problem of divine law, and the results of modern historical biblical criticism.51 His observation on Nietzsche’s having reopened the quest for the roots of tradition in a radical way must be taken with the utmost seriousness. Taking up Nietzsche’s challenge, Strauss articulates a vision of the Bible that is largely a construction, designed with the opposition to Athens in mind. The Bible, thus described, serves as a foil to a philosophical life depicted as being committed to free inquiry and human excellence. Strauss’s strategy is as much rhetorical as it is philosophical. Much like Voegelin’s works, the encounter between Athens and Jerusalem becomes primarily a philosophical critique of the Bible; in Strauss’s writings philosophy is never criticized from the perspective of the specifically soteriological message of biblical revelation. Instead, we are provided with an analysis in which the great conflict between Athens and Jerusalem unfolds in terms of the Bible answering questions that have their ultimate source in philosophical reflection. Strauss certainly recognizes how these two great traditions challenge each other on the most profound matters, but the context in which the issues involved are framed and discussed is ultimately philosophical. For purposes of argument one can maintain that Strauss presents the choice of Jerusalem as a legitimate one, but he depicts the differences between the two cities in such a way that it would be difficult for anyone who considers him- or herself to be relatively intelligent, open-minded, and reasonable not to side with Athens. Strauss apparently accepts the view that the choice to believe is reducible to the choice to obey, and he consistently contrasts faith and critical thought when dealing with biblical sources. If we accept this perspective, then a philosophical “refutation” of the possibility of revelation becomes redundant. 50. Meier, Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 20. 51. It is this peculiar combination that explains in part why few contemporary Jewish thinkers/biblical scholars pay much attention to Strauss’s writings on the Bible. See Arkush, “Strauss and Jewish Modernity,” 121–26.

4 Metastasis and Modernity

Writing in 1938, Voegelin argues that the political crises of the contemporary world are ultimately to be understood in religious terms. Bristling at the criticism that his treatment of Nazism is too “objective” and lacking in moral indignation, he reminds his readers that his is in fact a radical analysis, concerned with getting to the spiritual roots, the radix, of modern mass-political movements. Within a few years Voegelin would abandon the terminology of “political religions” in describing these phenomena, but the aberrations to which religious experience is prone and their relationship to modernity would remain a central focus of his work. In the 1950s he would state the issue in provocative terms—that the nature of Western modernity is essentially Gnostic.1 During these years Voegelin’s analysis of Gnosticism becomes a key element in his overall project of uncovering the roots of the various deformations of consciousness that undermine civilization. In keeping with the focus of this book, my intention here is not to provide a detailed description of these spiritual pathologies, but to understand their relationship to the Bible.2 If Gnosticism, its predecessors, and its variants are connected to the Bible, then the biblical sources of modernity can be better understood. Voegelin’s use of

1. Eric Voegelin, The Political Religions, 23–25; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 189, 193, 196, 221–22, 225–26, 247; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:65–67. 2. For a detailed account of Voegelin’s treatment of disordered consciousness, see Michael Franz, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt and “Brothers under the Skin: Voegelin on the Common Experiential Wellsprings of Spiritual Order and Disorder.”

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the term Gnosticism is replaced by other terminology in his later work, but these differences should not be allowed to obscure the essential continuity among the phenomena to which he applies such concepts. Whether he refers to them as Gnostics, metastatic thinkers, activist mystics, or parousiastic dreamers, those so designated have in common a profoundly distorted vision of the relationship between the structure of reality and the place of human beings within that structure. For my purposes, then, I am less interested in the specific nuances of classification with regard to the various species of spiritual deformation than in what they share as manifestations of alienation from reality.

The Biblical Origins of Contemporary Disorder In the preface to Israel and Revelation Voegelin comments on the fact that the contemporary world “contains as socially effective forces the sediments of the millennial struggle for the truth of order.” Among the threats emerging from this ongoing struggle, he contends, none is more dangerous to modern society than the metastasis (the notion that the world will change its nature while remaining the concrete world we know) bequeathed to us by the prophets of Israel: “Metastatic faith is one of the great sources of disorder, if not the principal one, in the contemporary world; and it is a matter of life and death for all of us to understand the phenomenon and to find remedies against it before it destroys us.” He then makes explicit the connection between this metastatic faith and modern ideologies: [The] prophetic conception of a change in the constitution of being lies at the root of our contemporary beliefs in the perfection of society, either through progress or through a communist revolution. Not only are the apparent antagonists revealed as brothers under the skin, as the late Gnostic descendants of the prophetic faith in a transfiguration of the world; it obviously is also of importance to understand the nature of the experience that will express itself in beliefs of this type, as well as the circumstances under which it has arisen in the past and from which it derives its strength in the present.3

In Voegelin’s view these metastatic visions of a terrestrial paradise to come are sometimes accompanied by a pronounced attitude of resentment and 3. Voegelin, Order and History, 1:23–24, 507–8. See also Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 121; and Voegelin, “The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society,” 90.

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a predilection for violence: “This element stems from the Old Testament. The turning of the tables and the reveling in dreams of bloody revenge begin to enter the sectarian movements with an increased knowledge of biblical texts beyond the Gospel in the late Middle Ages. . . . It has remained a frequent component in this type of movement down to modern totalitarian mass movements.” He believes these elements are carried over to the New Testament as well, with its “hostile attitude against members of the upper class,” and its “eschatological hardness” toward those who refuse to accept the good news: “The transition from the pure eschatological sentiment to the sentiments of compassion with the poor and of indifference or aversion against the rich, and back to eschatological hardness, not of Jesus toward the unbelieving, but of believers against the unbelievers, is of fundamental importance for the understanding of later political movements in the West. There is nothing in Hellenic antiquity that can be compared to these peculiar phenomena.”4 In his later writings Voegelin would introduce new distinctions and terminology when discussing these phenomena, but his judgment regarding their metastatic origins would remain essentially unchanged. Behind his extensive discussions of Gnosticism there always lies the more fundamental problem of metastasis. In fact one could argue that part of the reason Voegelin abandons the concept of Gnosticism as an analytic tool is that he comes to realize that it does not adequately describe the destructive tendencies he detects in modernity. Despite his shifting terminology, Voegelin never abandons his belief that metastasis represents the “most dubious element” within the Judeo-Christian tradition.5 There is a deep and direct connection, then, between Gnosticism and metastatic thinking. The evolution from metastasis to Gnosticism occurs as the desire for the transfiguration in the present encounters the recalcitrance of the structure of reality. Using the encounter between Isaiah and King Ahaz as an illustration, Voegelin explains the progression: When the transfiguration through a royal act of faith does not occur and the political disasters reach insurmountability, the metastatic type of speculation then gives way to the apocalyptic type, which expects disorder of catastrophic

4. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:148, 173; 1:158–60. 5. Eric Voegelin, “World-Empire and the Unity of Mankind,” 153. On Voegelin’s use of the term Gnosticism and its usefulness as a diagnostic category, see Russell Nieli, “Eric Voegelin’s Evolving Ideas on Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Modern Radical Politics”; Eugene Webb, “Voegelin’s ‘Gnosticism’ Reconsidered”; and James L. Wiser, “From Cultural Analysis to Philosophical Anthropology: An Examination of Voegelin’s Concept of Gnosticism.”

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magnitude to be ended by divine intervention. And when the divine intervention does not occur, the apocalyptic is paralleled and followed by the gnostic type, which construes the genesis of the cosmos with its catastrophes of ecumenicimperial domination as the consequence of a psychodramatic fall in the Beyond, now to be reversed by the gnostics’ action on the basis of their pneumatic understanding (gnosis) of the drama. The Beginning was a mistake to begin with and the end of the gnostic story will bring it to its End.6

As with metastasis, Gnosticism emerges in the context of an intense awareness of transcendent reality, but it is an experience in which these insights have gone awry. The Gnostic temptation, while undoubtedly a deformation, arises from questions that occur quite spontaneously when the Beyond has differentiated in consciousness. For if reality is experienced as engaged in a movement beyond its structure of genesis and perishing toward an eternal Beyond, then the reality of the Beginning may become problematic. What is the purpose and meaning of the existing world if we are meant to transcend it? The permanence of evils afflicting human existence further adds to the dilemma of why the cosmos exists at all. For the Gnostic, consciousness of the transcendent destiny of humankind turns this imperfect world into a prison. This explains the simultaneous presence within the Gnostic vision of a preoccupation with perfection accompanied by an experience of alienation. For the Gnostic, the evils of this world are unacceptable; consequently, the primary responses to this state of affairs are either withdrawal from the fallen world to the greatest degree possible or an attempt to bring the world into alignment with the image of perfection as it exists in the consciousness of the Gnostic believer. Consequently, Gnosticism can take the form of both a neglect of political responsibility as well as action to achieve social perfection by any means necessary. At the risk of simplification, Voegelin tends to find the former response to be more common in premodern Gnostic movements, while the latter is more characteristic of their modern ideological descendants. The question I wish to consider, though, is to what degree Voegelin understands the biblical tradition to have contributed to the rise of Gnosticism, and thereby to the creation of modernity. At a certain level the answer to the question has already been given—to the extent that Gnosticism is an outgrowth of metastasis, it has undeniable biblical roots. But this is not the same as to argue that Gnosticism is of exclusively biblical origin, and Voegelin will maintain that it is not. His evaluation of the biblical sources of Gnosticism is nuanced and 6. Voegelin, Order and History, 5:47–48. See also Order and History, 4:72–74.

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not without ambiguity. Apart from metastasis, Voegelin finds the anticosmism within the Israelite-Judaic civilizational orbit to be a contributing factor to the growth of Gnosticism. Anticosmism is a byproduct of the trauma suffered by societies engulfed by the violently expanding empires of the ecumenic age.7 The recipients of the great leaps in being, such as Israel and Greece, were swallowed up by imperial expansion, creating a situation in which there exists an encompassing order devoid of meaning (because it is based upon violent conquest alone). For societies devastated by conquest, meaningful social order is no longer to be found in pragmatic existence; the truth of order contracts into the lives of the rare philosophers or prophets: “Hence, the spiritual and intellectual lives of the peoples exposed to the events are in danger of separating from the reality of socially ordered existence. Society and the cosmos of which society is a part tend to be experienced as a sphere of disorder, so that the sphere of order in reality contracts to personal existence in tension toward the divine Beyond. The area of reality that can be experienced as divinely ordered thus suffers a severe diminution.” In these circumstances there easily emerges an anticosmism that understands the cosmos to be devoid of divine presence and order. In Israel this becomes evident in the transition from prophetic to apocalyptic eschatology. This anticosmism within a Judaic context is not surprising, since “the Mosaic and prophetic break with the cosmological form of empire had created a language of pneumatic consciousness that could be used, and further elaborated, in the encounter with the ecumenic empires.” Voegelin concludes that while it is impermissible to speak of a specifically Judaic origin of Gnosticism, the heritage of Israel must be considered an important genetic factor in its creation. Given the direct link between metastasis and Gnosticism, it is hard to conceive how this could be otherwise.8 Christianity, as an inheritor of the legacy of Israel, shares a similar relationship with Gnosticism: “Though Gnosticism is not a Jewish but a multicivilizational movement in an ecumenic empire, its peculiar fervor and secular momentum are hardly intelligible without the prophetic and apocalyptic prehistory, culminating in the epiphany of Christ, as an important genetic factor.” The coming of Christ is of crucial importance in the history of the Gnostic movement: “Considering the history of Gnosticism with the great bulk of its manifestations belonging to, or deriving from, the Christian orbit, I am inclined to recognize in the epiphany of Christ the great catalyst that made 7. As characterized by Voegelin, the ecumenic age extends roughly from the rise of the Persian to the fall of the Roman Empire. See Order and History, 4:67. 8. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:67, 69, 74.

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eschatological consciousness an historical force, both in forming and deforming humanity.”9 With regard to the Gnostic inclination to view the world as an alien place and to devalue life within it, Voegelin observes how the “tendency towards this imbalance is certainly present in the gospel movement.” The eschatological pronouncements of Jesus do little to encourage his followers to invest their energies in the development of the institutional order, and his assurances that he has come to fulfill rather than to destroy the law and the prophets is “difficult to distinguish from apocalyptic destruction.” The gospel’s lack of clarity on these issues makes the derailment into Gnosticism possible. Voegelin can praise the gospel movement for its concentration on the all-important insight that “the truth of reality has its center not in the cosmos at large; not in nature or society or imperial rulership, but in the presence of the Unknown God in man’s existence to his life and death.” But this essential truth can lead to difficulties if it is held at the expense of neglecting the need for attunement to mundane reality. Because the “full differentiation of the truth of existence under the Unknown God through his Son” occurs in Christianity, the possibility of anticosmism is also strongest in cultures that come under the gospel’s sway. The Gospel of John, with its recurring contrast between Jesus and “the world” (cosmos), is especially reflective of the tensions seized upon by Gnostics in every age.10 Nonetheless, however fertile a source the Judeo-Christian tradition may be for the creation of conditions in which Gnosticism can flourish, Voegelin insists that Gnosticism is not a necessary consequence of either Judaism or Christianity. The possibility of derailment exists wherever the Unknown God is in the process of being differentiated from more compact symbolisms. Such a structural possibility is not itself Gnosticism. We may legitimately speak of Gnostics only in those cases where the awareness of the Unknown God leads a thinker or a community to imaginatively contract the intelligible and meaningful structure of reality. Voegelin warns against the temptation to exaggerate the nature of the relationship between gospel and Gnosticism into a dependence of Gnosticism on Christianity. In fact, the presence of Gnostic influences in Paul or John would seem to indicate that they have absorbed elements from an already existing complex of Gnostic symbols.11 Gnosis, according to Voegelin, is an accompaniment of Christianity from its very birth, but this in no way proves the specifically Christian origins of Gnosticism. Yet, despite 9. Ibid., 65–66, 74. 10. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 209–11; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:63–64, 67. 11. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:69; Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 296–97; Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 211.

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his insistence on this point, Voegelin continues to affirm that once Christianity appears, most Gnostic phenomena derive from its orbit. The Gnosticism that will come to constitute Western modernity may be a deformation, but it remains for the most part a deformation of biblical sources. Voegelin’s description of Gnosticism in its historical unfolding and transformation is impressive. His most extended exposition is found in The New Science of Politics, but large sections of his History of Political Ideas from the 1940s (especially those dealing with medieval sectarian movements and the Reformation) are devoted to chronicling the transition from premodern to modern forms of spiritual pathology. As fascinating as Voegelin’s account is in its own right, I am primarily interested in how he understands the role of the Bible in these developments. The problems that would eventually create the conditions for Gnosticism go back to the very origins of Christianity and Judaism. Describing the threat posed by Christianity to the Roman Empire, Voegelin notes, “The Christians were persecuted for good reason; there was a revolutionary substance in Christianity that made it incompatible with paganism. . . . What made the Christian movement so dangerous was its uncompromising, radical, de-divinization of the world.” Gifted with the revelation of the God beyond the gods, Christians of the New Testament period were dismissive of the intracosmic gods of Rome. As noted earlier, the increased awareness of divine transcendence through pneumatic differentiation, by its very nature, can easily lead to a denigration of the “merely” material world; therefore the de-divinization of society is entirely in keeping with the Christian experience of God. What Voegelin understands is how, by rejecting the Roman divinities and de-divinizing society, New Testament Christianity also undermined the civil theology that was represented by these gods and was essential to the order of society. Social order generates and sustains its legitimacy at least in part through the sacralization of its order; when that sacrality is challenged, society enters a crisis. From Voegelin’s perspective the early Christians failed to understand fully the implications of what had happened to them—that the newly discovered awareness of the God beyond the gods was an event in consciousness, and that the institutional order of society still required some form of religious legitimation. Overwhelmed by their experience, they were not especially interested in creating symbols for the sustenance of social order. But very soon the gospel movement was forced to confront the discrepancy between eschatological anticipation and life in the world: The tension was given with the historical origin of Christianity as a Jewish messianic movement. The life of the early Christian communities was experientially not fixed but oscillated between the eschatological expectation of the Parousia

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that would bring the Kingdom of God and the understanding of the church as the apocalypse of Christ in history. Since the Parousia did not occur, the church actually evolved from the eschatology of the realm in history toward the eschatology of trans-historical, supernatural perfection. In this evolution the specific essence of Christianity separated from its historical origin. . . . [The] expectation of an imminent coming of the realm was stirred to white heat again and again by the suffering of the persecutions; and the most grandiose expression of eschatological pathos, the Revelation of Saint John, was included in the canon in spite of misgivings about its compatibility with the idea of the church. The inclusion had fateful consequences, for with the Revelation was accepted the revolutionary annunciation of the millennium in which Christ would reign with his saints on this earth.

This passage is tremendously important in understanding Voegelin’s attitude toward the New Testament and its relationship to Gnosticism and modernity. Here he makes a crucial distinction between ideas associated with the historical origin of the Christian movement and those that he describes as the “specific essence” of Christianity. The latter manifest themselves in the later history of the church, as the Christian community moves away from its Judaic origins. In a letter to Alfred Schutz, Voegelin clarifies his position further, insisting that “historically Christianity contains two main components which I have distinguished and identified as the gnosis of historical eschatology and as essential Christianity.”12 The former component is part of the prophetic messianic legacy of Israel, while the latter identifies the core of Christian belief with the notion of supernatural fulfillment beyond this world. Using Voegelin’s later terminology, one can say that the essence of Christianity is found in its differentiation of consciousness, rather than in Jewish notions of the imminent, transfiguring reign of God.13 For Voegelin, what is essential to Christianity is its orientation toward a supernatural destiny beyond history. Wherever this is recognized the Christian 12. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 169, 175–76; Voegelin, “On Christianity,” 452. See also Eric Voegelin, “The Spiritual and Political Future of the Western World,” 79–81. 13. On this same passage Theodore R. Weber points out, “The ‘specific essence of Christianity’ is defined in Greek terms by the opening of consciousness to transcendent being, not in Hebraic terms by the descent of God to be with God’s people in their history and to fulfill the promise of their liberation. Accordingly, Voegelin applauds the suppression of Jewish elements in Christianity and the decision by Augustine to move the eschaton from the end of history to a point of transcendence above history.” “The Philosopher’s ‘Slant’ on Christianity.”

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community is better able to relinquish its metastatic hopes and to adjust to the limitations of life in the world. Voegelin believes that, at its best, the church has understood this, and adapted accordingly. He also realizes that the distinction he is making between “eschatological” and “essential” Christianity is not likely to find acceptance in all quarters—for “sectarian movements and certain trends within Protestantism . . . eschatological Christianity is the essential one.” Nonetheless, Voegelin maintains that if the eschatological components of the New Testament are understood as the core of the Christian message, its cultural and philosophical value will be negligible: [For] a historical society can indeed derive little hope of survival from a religious attitude based on the assumption that the world will end tomorrow and that social order is therefore entirely irrelevant. If there were no more to Christianity than this radical eschatological expectation, it would never have become a power in history; the Christian communities would have remained obscure sects which could always be wiped out in the event that their foolishness seriously threatened the order of the state. . . . I consider it fantastic to see the essence of Christianity in this destructive component, while dismissing as unessential the Church’s factual evolution into a historical power.14

Again we find Voegelin’s inclination to identify eschatological sentiment in the New Testament with the belief that the end of the world is imminent; and again we must remind ourselves that this belief does not exhaust the meaning of New Testament eschatology. Voegelin’s judgments retain their validity as long as we accept his claim that the religious attitude of New Testament Christianity is “based on the assumption that the world will end tomorrow.” But this claim does not sufficiently account for the presence of diverse eschatologies within the New Testament. Even during the time Voegelin is writing The New Science of Politics and History of Political Ideas, the prominence of “realized eschatology” in the New Testament had already been discussed and defended, so his neglect of this phenomenon cannot be attributed to the absence of this theme in the biblical scholarship of his time.15 As already noted in Chapter 2, he does distinguish in his History of Political Ideas between eschatological and apocalyptic ideas, where apocalyptic is understood as an awareness that the messiah has already come and established a community on earth. But as was indicated 14. Voegelin, “On Christianity,” 453. 15. For a survey of New Testament eschatology and the evolution of scholarship on these questions, see Brown and Stanley, “Aspects of New Testament Thought,” 1360–64.

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in that earlier discussion, Voegelin understands this development precisely as setting the conditions for a movement away from the more fervent eschatological hope of the earliest Christian communities toward a greater accommodation with the world in the form of a powerful, institutional church. He seems to see the alternatives available to the New Testament communities as either an unrealistic eschatological vision based upon the conviction that the world will soon come to an end, or the more realistic course (in his view) of adapting to the laws governing mundane existence. It is doubtful, though, that these New Testament Christians would have accepted the alternatives as Voegelin poses them. For an essential component of the insight gained in light of the resurrection of Jesus would have led them to the conclusion that the “laws” of mundane existence are not laws at all, but particular cultural, social, and political structures reflective of a horizon that has not yet received the insight that God has nothing to do with death. James Alison suggests as much: “[Where] the heavenly reality of the crucified and risen victim is already present to the apostolic group, allowing the beginnings of a human life and sociality which are not marked by death, but whose members are free to live a life of self-giving in imitation of Jesus thanks to their faith in the death-less nature of God, then a continuity is already coming about between this age and the next.”16 Here it may also be helpful to recall Sheldon Wolin’s point that the political importance of New Testament Christianity does not lie so much in its indifference to the imperial order in which it was immersed, but in its conviction that the Christian community represented a new and more perfect type of society.17 Its rejection of the contemporary political order was just that—a rejection of the present order of things. It was not, as Voegelin construes it, an unrealistic repudiation of life in the world. Of course in all likelihood, Voegelin would consider the sort of society envisioned by these Christians as yet another manifestation of the metastatic worldview that was part of Christianity’s inheritance from Israel. These time-bound and unrealistic eschatological hopes must be clearly distinguished from the “essential Christianity” that lives in expectation of a future beyond this world while adjusting to the limitations of the present. Voegelin tends to frame these issues in starkly disjunctive terms— either an essential Christianity concerned with the destiny of the individual beyond the confines of mundane existence, or metastatic, Gnostic dreaming, whether in the form of irresponsible political disengagement or activist 16. James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, 127. See also Alison, Joy of Being Wrong. 17. Wolin, Politics and Vision, 86–93.

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destruction. Voegelin does not deny the eschatological orientation of the New Testament; but he is intensely concerned to avoid any suggestion that the perfection encountered in heavenly beatitude can be incarnate in the present. In the fervent hope for the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth, Voegelin locates one of the primary sources of the aberrations of modernity. His preoccupation with the possibility of the Gnostic derailment to which eschatological consciousness is prone makes him very suspicious of eschatological constructions of history: “The eschatological interpretation of history results in a false picture of reality; and errors with regard to the structure of reality have practical consequences when the false conception is made the basis of political action. Specifically, the Gnostic fallacy destroys the oldest wisdom of mankind concerning the rhythm of growth and decay that is the fate of all things under the sun.” And what is that wisdom? To illustrate his point Voegelin quotes from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) and finds in the preacher’s worldweary wisdom an always-relevant reminder that “what comes into being will have an end, and the mystery of this stream of being is impenetrable. These are the two great principles governing existence.”18 Voegelin approves the insights of this biblical author, no doubt because in this case the writer comes closest to the philosophical perspective of Anaximander. This reminder about the principles governing existence recalls our earlier discussion (in Chapter 2) of the mystery of genesis and phthora in Paul. Voegelin finds Paul to be lacking in balance when confronted with the mystery, and by not sufficiently guarding against the metastatic possibilities inherent to theophanies, the apostle helps to create the conditions for the emergence of the pathologies of modernity. A theophany, according to Voegelin, always creates turbulence within reality; because of this, great care must be taken in articulating these experiences, so as not to lose the balance of consciousness. Where balance is lost, that is, when either the structure of reality or the process of reality is overemphasized, there is a risk that the insights gained will become disengaged from their engendering experiences. If this happens, the insights may be reduced to mere definitions, with their recipients prepared to expend every effort in defense of their positions. Such distortions do not affect the fundamental structure of the reality in which they occur; “the dynamics of the tension in which the definitionally derailed symbols originate is still fully effective; the paradox in reality has not disappeared.” This presents a potentially dangerous situation in which the definitions “are in search of a ‘turbulence’ that will supply them with the meaning they lost when they cut loose 18. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 223–24.

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from the theophanic event.” In revolutions, this is precisely what occurs—“the revolution in ‘history’ is made to substitute for the theophanic event in reality.” The turbulence of the encounter between the divine and the human is transformed into the violent encounter between human beings. Those engaged in this violence expect it “to produce the much desired transfigurative, or metastatic, change of the nature of Man.” Voegelin cites Marx in this regard: “Revolutionary killing will induce a Blutrausch, a ‘blood intoxication;’ and from this Blutrausch ‘man’ will emerge as ‘superman’ into the ‘realm of freedom.’” What has any of this to do with the apostle Paul? Voegelin observes how “the magic of the Blutrausch is the ideological equivalent to the promise of the Pauline vision of the Resurrected.”19 Up to this point in his analysis Voegelin has been measured in his criticism of Paul. But nothing in the chapter prepares the reader for this sudden association of the Pauline vision with Marx’s Blutrausch. Certainly one can argue that Voegelin is not equating the two phenomena, since he speaks of Blutrausch as the ideological equivalent of the Pauline vision. Marx’s concept is therefore an aberration, a distortion of an originally theophanic experience. However, in Voegelin’s terminology, “equivalence” is more than an analogy; “the sameness which justifies the language of ‘equivalences’ does not lie in the symbols themselves but in the experiences which have engendered them.” Elsewhere he describes equivalence as the “recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized on various levels of differentiation.”20 For Voegelin there is something about the Pauline experience that has a clear potential to evolve in the direction of revolutionary bloodshed. As noted above, throughout the passage leading up to the Blutrausch comment, Voegelin emphasizes how the turbulence generated by theophany can degenerate into battles over definitions. As an example he offers the process by which the noetic insights of Aristotle become frozen into a definition of the human person as a rational animal. He then makes the point that these definitions may eventually find a meaningful mooring in the humanly created turbulence of revolution. Since the example is taken from Aristotle, the reader could reasonably expect that this will be followed by a discussion of how this noetic insight, having been transformed into a definition, is now appropriated as revolutionary violence. In other words, if the problem is that definitions in search of turbulence find a welcome home in revolutionary mentality and action, it would seem to make little difference whether the definitions proceed from the distortion of a noetic or a pneumatic 19. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:318–19. 20. Voegelin, “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization,” 115; Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 108.

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theophany. Given the structure of the passage, one would think that noetically derived definitions are just as capable of degenerating into a Blutrausch as are definitions proceeding from pneumatic experiences. Yet Voegelin does not draw this conclusion, even though his analysis moves in this direction. Instead we find a sudden shift back to Paul, as if to remind us that it is the pneumatic visionary who is the true source of danger. This impression is reinforced on the following page, where, after invoking the horrors of mass murder and concentration camps perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin, Voegelin offers comments that make ample use of imagery drawn from the apostle: “To this grotesquerie of libidinous obsession belongs the conception of ‘history’ as an area in reality in which aphtharsia for mankind can be achieved, if not in the twinkling of an eye, at least by the judicious acceleration of phthora for a sufficient number of human beings.” Several pages later, Voegelin does note how “a history constituted by the noetic and pneumatic theophanies of a Plato or a Paul . . . can also leave ample room for egophanic deformations of existence and the mass murder of human beings.” It is fair to say, though, that Voegelin allots much more space in his work to the problems associated with the pneumatic differentiation—one looks in vain for a comparable treatment of the dangers to which the noetic differentiation is prone.21 The link from the Pauline vision to twentieth-century violence has its remote origins in Paul’s belief that the Passion and Resurrection are the historical events with which the final transfiguration of the world begins: “The classic meaning in history can be opposed by Paul with a meaning of history, because he knows the end of the story in the transfiguration that begins with the Resurrection.” In the Letter to the Galatians the apostle speaks the language of the prophets of Israel, called by God to announce the impending transformation. An unfortunate consequence of Paul’s zeal emerges much later in history, as the anticipated realization of a transfigured world is carried forward in the modern period by an entire series of “new Christs” who retain a confidence in transfiguration while rejecting the theophanic reality that was so essential to the Pauline vision. In this category of “egophanic” thinkers, pride of place is given to Hegel, who Voegelin believes was quite conscious of the Pauline lineage of his thought. Nonetheless, Voegelin does not directly blame Paul for the misuse to which his vision has been put. The experience of theophany can hardly be said to lead necessarily to spiritual pathologies or mass murder. But to the extent that the balance of consciousness leans too far in the direction of a sense of movement beyond the realities of genesis and phthora (as it does in Paul), the conditions are fostered in which individuals and movements may engage in 21. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:320, 327.

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any conceivable atrocity in the interest of bringing about the imagined transformation. For this reason Voegelin never absolves the apostle of responsibility for the aberrations of modernity.22 The “troublesome constant” running from Paul to the activist dreamers of the twentieth century is the belief that the transfiguration of reality has begun and can be realized (at least to some degree) in the historical present. The apostle is part of a line of metastatic thinkers stretching back to the prophet Isaiah. In Paul’s case we find “an inclination to abolish the tension between the eschatological telos of reality and the mystery of the transfiguration that is actually going on within historical reality. The Pauline myth of the struggle among the cosmic forces validly expresses the telos of the movement that is experienced in reality, but it becomes invalid when it is used to anticipate the concrete process of transfiguration within history.” Voegelin resists any notion of transfiguration not limited to a deepening apprehension of the structure and movement of reality as experienced in consciousness within the metaxy. From this perspective, the religion of Israel and that of the communities that produced the New Testament are undoubtedly open to criticism, since the hope of transfiguration within history (whether described as the Age to Come or the Kingdom of God) is present throughout the Bible, whether in the book of Exodus, the writings of the great prophets, or the preaching of Jesus. Voegelin understands the consequences of this belief even as he warns against its dangers: Transfiguration is indeed in continuity the problem at issue from Paul to the new Christs. We have not moved so far away from Christianity as the conflict between the Church and modernity would suggest. On the contrary, the modern revolt is so intimately a development of the “Christianity” against which it is in revolt that it would be unintelligible if it could not be understood as the deformation of the theophanic events in which the dynamics of transfiguration was revealed to Jesus and the Apostles. The “history” of the egophanic thinkers does not unfold in the Metaxy; i.e., in the flux of divine presence, but in the Pauline Time of the Tale that has a beginning and an end.23

The Legacy of the Bible in Modern Politics My intention here is not to trace the evolution of metastatic thinking from Paul to the present day, but to illustrate how Voegelin conceives the relation 22. Ibid., 321–22, 324, 327–29, 333. 23. Ibid., 334, 336–37.

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ship between the biblical writings and the formation of the modern world. In his view, modernity does not begin with the Renaissance or the Reformation; nor can its emergence be tied to a particular thinker such as Machiavelli or Hobbes. Modernity’s roots are found in the eschatological consciousness that resurfaces in the work of Joachim of Flora24 and other medieval sectarians, but that is ultimately traceable to the messianic strain in the Bible: The origins of what Professor Talmon calls “messianism” obviously go back to Israel. . . . At the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the Aramaeans . . . the prophet Isaiah came to the king and asked him not to take up arms but to disarm and put his trust in God, believing that, with His help, their enemies would destroy each other or be decimated by an epidemic. . . . This sort of faith calls for a new term. I have provisionally proposed the term metastasis. . . . The various historical types of metastasis, which began with the history of Judaism, can roughly be broken down into two stages. The first opens after the exile, in apocalyptic times, when apocalyptic symbols were used to portray the coming of paradise on earth. These symbols passed over into Christianity through the revelations of Saint John . . . and are the sources of subsequent credos of this sort, particularly those at the basis of the “Puritan Revolution.”

Voegelin does not hesitate to draw a direct line from the Bible, through the sectarianism of the Middle Ages with its culmination in the Protestant Reformation, to the revolutionary mass movements of the modern world: Throughout the Middle Ages and up to our present, we meet with a sequence of movements that revive the eschatological spirit of the early Christian community. The members of the movements either withdraw from the world into smaller communities of “saints,” thus, if the movements gather momentum, threatening the civilizational structure that is not based on eschatological expectation but on a compromise with the world; or the saints, expecting an early turning of the tables, become aggressive, particularly when their sentiments are nourished by the more primitive forms of the earlier Israelitic eschatology. The latter type of aggressive eschatological sentiment becomes increasingly important after the Reformation; it reaches its climax in the secularized derivatives of Christian eschatology; in the modern mass movements of Communism and National Socialism.25

24. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 178–80, 185, 300; Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 300–303; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:154; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:268. 25. Voegelin, “The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society,” 90; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:160. See also Eric Voegelin, “Gnostic Politics,” 226, 229, 235, 240; Voegelin,

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Along the continuum stretching from the Hebrew Bible to modern political movements, Voegelin reserves some of his harshest criticism for the English Puritans. His analysis of Puritanism forms part of his wider critique of the Protestant Reformation, which he refers to as “the successful invasion of Western institutions by Gnostic movements.”26 For Voegelin the Puritans are a particularly apt example of the manner in which biblical texts have influenced modernity, because he believes the Puritan Revolution stands in a direct line of metastatic phenomena originating in Israel and then transmitted by the New Testament.27 In Puritanism, Voegelin argues, a boundary is crossed; we are beyond Christianity and have entered the realm of full-blown Gnosticism. Retaining Christian symbols, the Puritans subvert their meaning. Voegelin comments on a 1647 sermon delivered by Thomas Collier at Cromwell’s headquarters: The Christian tension between created and divine being, between the limits of being and transfiguration by grace in death, gets dissolved into an immanent historical process. . . . And this immanentization dissolves even the symbol of “heaven” inasmuch as it substitutes a materialist paradise for the mystery of the beatific vision of God in death and then against this “lowly image” calls for a temporal realization of the eternal Kingdom as its spiritual interpretation. In this annihilating attack on Christian symbolism Collier has indeed gone as far as anyone could possibly go without abandoning it altogether. . . . There is already indicated the historical line along which Gnostic politics will shift from Christian symbolic language to the anti-Christian symbolism of Marxism.

Elsewhere, Voegelin reiterates his claim about the “materialistic” character of Collier’s sermon, contrasting it with the more balanced (yet still potentially dangerous) symbolism of the medieval mystic Erigena. The mystic is aware that the imaginative symbols of a paradisiacal realm are not to be taken literally as descriptions of an actual, spatially bounded location beyond this world. ——— Order and History, 1:454; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 185, 207–11; and Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:144, 147–48, 150, 156, 167–69, 172, 173–75, 194. 26. Voegelin’s harsh criticism of the Reformation and its major figures has occasioned spirited responses. See Douglass, “A Diminished Gospel”; Joshua Mitchell, “Voegelin the Faithless: Thoughts from Luther”; Thomas W. Heilke, “Calvin, Gnosis, and Anti-philosophy: Voegelin’s Treatment of the Reformation”; William Stevenson, “An Agnostic View of Voegelin’s Gnostic Calvin”; and Henrik Syse, “Was Voegelin Fair to the Lutheran Reformation?” 27. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 197; Voegelin, “The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society,” 90.

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At the same time the mystic knows that “the symbol of perfection is rooted in the experience of an imperfection that can be overcome only through grace in death.” As with the genuine mystic, an “activist” such as Collier “accepts the dematerialization of the symbol; but he then goes one fateful step further: he abolishes the distance between the symbol and the experience and mistakes the symbol for an experience that can be realized existentially in the life of man in society.” This fateful step has dire consequences, for the “transformation of the mystical symbol of perfection into a political program for activists lies at the core of modern mass political movements.”28 This is notably similar to Voegelin’s critique of Paul—common to both Paul and Collier is a sense that the tension between imperfection and perfection has been abolished, while transfiguration is brought into the historical present. In similar fashion, the accusation that Collier substitutes a “materialist paradise” for the beatific vision resembles Voegelin’s criticism of the prophets, who are faulted for their “massive materialism” and “grossly materialistic” understanding of victory.29 The text of the Collier sermon to which Voegelin refers reads as follows: “We always had and we still have very lowly and carnal images of heaven in so far as we take it to be a place of glory beyond the firmament, invisible, and we are to enjoy its joys only beyond this life. But God himself is the Kingdom of Saints; their pleasure, and their glory. Wherever God is manifest, there is his Kingdom and that of the Saints; and he manifests himself in the Saints. Here is the great and hidden mystery of the Gospel, this new creation in the Saints.” Reading this, it strikes me that Voegelin interprets it in a way that, if not the very opposite of Collier’s intended meaning, entirely downplays the preacher’s central focus on how it is God who is at work transforming human beings. The idea that God is manifest in the saints is not only fully compatible with the New Testament and later Christianity, but central to the entire Pauline tradition, where the “body of Christ” is often used to describe the Christian community.30 Nowhere in this passage does Collier claim that the will of the saints is the will of God; rather, he insists that where God is manifest, there are the Kingdom and the saints. The saints take joy in God as they go about their earthly 28. Voegelin, “Gnostic Politics,” 225–26; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:166–67. 29. See Chapter 2. 30. See Murphy-O’Connor, Becoming Human Together, 174–97. “To say that Paul saw the unity of the community as primary and envisaged individuals as being changed by absorption into that unity might seem to be at best a meaningless paradox and at worst an unwarranted denigration of the role of Christ. Does it not attribute to the community a function that properly belongs to the saving Christ? Paul would answer in the negative because, for him, the community is Christ” (183).

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tasks. Contrary to Voegelin’s reading, it would be difficult to imagine a more explicit acknowledgment of the fundamental human orientation to a transcendent God for the direction and transformation of human life. Once again it appears as if the only idea of transfiguration Voegelin seems willing to accept is that which occurs after death. While this is certainly an essential dimension of the gospel message, it ignores the equally important proclamation by Jesus that those who take their bearings in light of the will of his heavenly father are also responsible for bringing about the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth (Matt. 6:9–13, 33; Luke 4:16–19; 11:1–4; 12:31). Despite Puritan assertions that it is the Lord God who will establish the coming realm, Voegelin is convinced that “the scriptural camouflage cannot veil the drawing of God into man.” From here it is but a short step to complete immanentization, which, while emptied of explicit Christian symbolism, continues to bear the mark of the “troublesome constants” inherited from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: If the church in possession of the eschaton had neglected to explore the structure of history, as well as its own place in it, the new movements threw out the eschaton altogether. What they preserved from the Jewish-Christian tradition was its most dubious element, i.e., its metastatic faith in the new aeon. This preservation, one may say, was theoretically and historically ineluctable. For, on the one hand, after Christianity one cannot go back to cosmology but only forward to a more differentiated understanding of the unity of mankind in history under the mystery of the eschaton; while on the other hand this advance was precluded by the anti-Christian character of the revolt that had removed the eschaton together with the remnants of an apocalypse that had the ghastly farce of an apocalypse without an eschaton.

The Christian belief in “sanctification of life” is immanentized; the “pilgrim’s progress” through the world, culminating in the hoped-for beatific vision, is transformed into the many secular variants of progressivism. The perfect realm that for Christians lies on the other side of death becomes a society freed, by human effort, from the evils that have always afflicted the human race.31 Throughout Voegelin’s genealogy of deformations it becomes clear that these phenomena encompass more than “totalitarian” and/or communist movements. Liberalism and every other form of “progressivism” are of the same metastatic Gnostic lineage as their totalitarian opponents. They are nothing more 31. Voegelin, “World-Empire and the Unity of Mankind,” 153; Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 297–300.

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than variations on the theme of immanentization of the eschaton. The idea that “the goal of the revolution could be achieved through a constant process of reform, without the unpleasant side effects, belongs in the Gnosticutopian class.” Liberalism contains “the irrational element of an eschatological final state, of a society that will produce through its rational methods, without violent disturbances, a condition of everlasting peace.” Liberalism and communism are both manifestations of the modern myth of perfection through political action so characteristic of this “ideological and metastatic age”: “The two great protagonists of our present history are dominated by a common faith; they believe in a telos of humanity; they are conscious of a mission to fulfill. Such projects are unrealizable. The constitution of being cannot be changed. When the action of men and governments is dominated by eschatological dreams, it becomes impossible to define a rational policy; one can no longer do anything but adjust means to predetermined ends.” Voegelin cites a wide range of phenomena to illustrate the Gnostic character of modern politics. In addition to the brutalities of the twentieth century’s totalitarian regimes, he classifies as “Gnostic dreams” the idea of “freedom from want and fear of the Atlantic Charter,” the notion of a war to end all wars espoused by President Wilson, and the concept of world government, whether in the form of a League of Nations or a United Nations. In the latter case Voegelin detects continuity from the early Christian understanding of spirit-filled communities, through the Puritan “conception of a federation of spiritual nucleus groups,” to its secularized form as American federalism, and finally in the extension of the idea to a government overseeing all nations.32 However severe his criticism of the Gnostic or metastatic tendencies he detects in modern Western civilization, Voegelin also finds in certain aspects of the biblical tradition sources of resistance to the ideological tendencies within modernity. For example, Voegelin cites the ability of modern Anglo-American democracies to resist ideologies. He attributes this in part to the fact that the English and American revolutions occur at a relatively early period, in which the premodern Christian substance of Western societies has not yet been irreparably eroded. In these nations the traditions of Christian compromise with the exigencies of mundane existence are still alive. Among the positive developments present in the Anglo-American mediation of the biblical heritage is 32. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 186, 189, 226–27, 229–32; Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 299–300; Eric Voegelin, “Liberalism and Its History,” 89, 92; Eric Voegelin, “Prospects of Western Civilization,” 117; Voegelin, “Gnostic Politics,” 230, 235–36; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:170, 176, 179.

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the idea of self-government, which Voegelin understands as having its roots in early Christian notions of community: The people that can govern by itself is not any people in an ethnic sense. . . . It is the people that experienced its birth under God, that can also lose its life in this status, and that . . . necessitates a rebirth to be able to govern. English reformers of the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, from Wycliffe to John Wesley, who were political as well as ecclesiastical reformers, achieved the essential for the democratization of the West when they took the life of the Christian community and of the community-constitution to be a model for the existence of citizens in a national society also in secular matters.

While Gnosticism demonizes its opponents and preaches a hostility toward them that is easily turned into violent deeds, Christianity, properly understood, encourages mutual respect among contending social groups and individuals, as well as a sense of social solidarity. In particular, the biblical conviction that human beings are made in the image of God is for Voegelin an invaluable insight from which may be derived a profound respect for the humanity of all persons.33 It should be clear, then, that Voegelin does not believe that a serious reading of the Bible leads to social or political quietism in which those attentive to experiences of transcendence wash their hands of “dirty politics.” In his comparison of Anglo-American and German political culture he praises the Wesleyan reform movement, while decrying the apolitical tendencies he identifies as part of the legacy of German Pietism.34 Biblical faith and political engagement are not only compatible, but biblical ideas about mutual regard for others within the community and the idea of the human person as created in the divine image may help individuals become more conscious of their responsibilities as citizens. Voegelin hopes that through a recovery of transcendent experience people become more capable of resisting the lure of ideologies. He believes that by reflectively reading classic texts from the world’s various wisdom traditions, individuals can gain access to the experiences “behind” the texts. In his view, this kind of openness to reality is the key 33. Voegelin, “Gnostic Politics,” 240; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 240–41; Voegelin, “Popular Education, Science, and Politics,” 85; Eric Voegelin, “Democracy in the New Europe,” 61–62; Eric Voegelin, “Democracy and Industrial Society,” 213, 221–22; Eric Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans, 204–12. 34. Eric Voegelin, “Freedom and Responsibility in Economy and Democracy,” 72–74; Voegelin, “Democracy and Industrial Society,” 218–19.

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to preserving the balance necessary to living wisely in the world. While he has little use for churches or for doctrine, he certainly respects the Bible as one of those normative texts that, when read carefully (and not metastatically), can provide an opening to experiences of transcendence.35 The Bible, for Voegelin, can be a potent force in forming character in a way that leads to an increased ability to resist ideological deformations and to a heightened sense of the duties of citizenship. Voegelin’s thinking on the relationship between the Bible and modernity is both nuanced and perplexing. Few in the contemporary philosophical milieu have been as forceful in appealing for a renewed appropriation of the classical and biblical tradition as therapy for modernity’s ills. Yet few have issued such dire warnings about the disorders deriving from biblical religion. With the differentiation of the transcendent God in Israel and the further recognition in Christianity of the individual soul’s openness to divine transcendence, a tremendous source of personal and communal order is made available. But the balance of consciousness within the biblical orbit is ever precarious and inclined toward deformation. Throughout his writings Voegelin wrestles with this twofold character of the biblical legacy as both therapeutic and disruptive. In the case of New Testament Christianity he addresses the problem by separating its eschatological features (inherited from Israel) from what he designates as its essential, world-transcending core. Such a solution gives rise to more questions than it solves. For if the gospel is capable of transforming persons in ways that enable them not only to resist the lure of ideologies, but to function as reasonable political agents, then the question naturally arises as to how we are to evaluate the actions, decisions, and policies of those so transformed. Voegelin certainly acknowledges a role for biblical religion in shaping the horizon of modern citizens. But these same individuals are called to act in the world, and when they do, their actions will frequently proceed on the basis of their fundamental orientation with regard to transcendent reality. This in turn raises the question of the relationship between the life of the spirit and praxis. How are we to determine when actions spring from an interiorized “essential Christianity” or from metastatic faith? There is a sense in which the problem presented by the prophecy of Isaiah makes its presence felt throughout Voegelin’s work. As noted in Chapter 2, Voegelin makes judgments based upon what he determines to be acceptable or possible in the political realm. Since he is not privy to the religious experiences of others, he is led to infer the presence or absence of deformed consciousness on the basis of the 35. A similar point is made in Michael P. Federici, “Voegelin’s Christian Critics,” 337–38.

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person’s political decisions or stance. For example, Voegelin ridicules pacifist sentiments or movements committed to nonviolent resistance, seeing in them evidence of unbalanced consciousness, as well as a “naively stupid” or even blasphemous misinterpretation of Christianity. In such cases pacifist convictions constitute proof of metastatic, Gnostic thinking. He does not seriously consider the thought that such convictions might actually proceed from a profound spiritual experience. Similarly, in the course of discussing critics of the Vietnam War, Voegelin accuses at least some members of the intelligentsia of “willful divorce from reality and violent aggressiveness in the pursuit of utopian dreams.” He worries that “for the time being . . . the rational conduct of politics by the American government is seriously impaired because governmental action in conflict with the utopian fantasies of the moment has become practically impossible. How far this restriction of the American range of action, because of intellectuals who have lost contact with reality, will pose a danger to the country, only the future can show.”36 I cite these examples not because I disagree with Voegelin that there are persons who are utopian and aggressive and who have lost contact with reality, but because I have reservations about the unacknowledged standard of judgment he employs when making such assessments. It is the tendency to portray as spiritually diseased those with whom one may have serious differences with regard to government policy that I find disturbing. Passionate opposition to a war (or any other policy for that matter) may in fact be a manifestation of loss of contact with reality, but the fact of opposition does not in itself prove this. This lack of clarity with regard to those political phenomena classified as metastatic and those seen as a legitimate application of biblical insight to political life is especially evident in Voegelin’s attitude toward liberalism. Even those who share most of Voegelin’s judgments on ideological movements may nevertheless be confounded by his lumping together of totalitarianism and liberal progressivism as variants of Gnosticism. Take the rather common case of Americans who are both politically liberal (in the classic Anglo-American, not partisan sense of the term) and also believing Jews or Christians. Such persons may find that their biblically formed faith leads them to work toward reform of unjust social structures, believing that in doing so they are helping to build up God’s kingdom as well as acting as good citizens. At what point does such a person’s faith-inspired social activism transform him or her into a metastatic activist? As noted above, Voegelin applauds the influence of the Bible when it 36. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 8:280–83; Eric Voegelin, “Foreword to the Second Edition of The Political Religions,” 21; Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 118–19.

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contributes to an atmosphere of reasonableness, respect, and solidarity in politics; however, when members of these same democratic societies work toward the amelioration of social ills he does not hesitate to label them as metastatic or Gnostic when he thinks they violate the laws governing social existence. This same tension informs Voegelin’s treatment of Christianity within the modern Anglo-American world. He offers a positive assessment of the Wesleyan reform, while adopting a generally hostile attitude toward Puritanism. Why the difference? Of course, Voegelin would argue that the Puritans are Gnostics while the Wesleyans are not. This judgment, though, appears to rest upon Voegelin’s disapproval of the social and political activism of the Puritans. Applying this standard consistently, we would have to conclude that Wesleyanism would become a Gnostic movement if its adherents took up the cause of social justice in a way that violates the norms of what Voegelin considers to be politically reasonable and achievable. By the same token Voegelin is strangely reticent when considering the fact that Great Britain and the United States, the two nations that, in his view, are most resistant to ideologies, are also nations with a significant Puritan heritage. With Britain, Voegelin could argue that Puritanism is moderated by the older, medieval traditions of the established church. But such is not the case with the United States, where sectarian Christianity, especially in its Puritan form, is a constitutive element in its founding. Could it be that the same features of biblical religion that provide immunization against ideology also provide the impetus to change social conditions? Might it not also be the case that the notion of a covenanted community, which Voegelin acknowledges as one of the roots of American democracy, is also the source of policies and attitudes he derides as metastatic? Voegelin certainly grants that an awareness of the human orientation to divine transcendence, experienced and expressed so intensely in the biblical orbit, is an essential feature in generating resistance to ideologies. But he too easily assigns human activity in the service of social and political change to the category of ideological deformation, without sufficiently considering that the motivation for such activity flows from precisely the same source as this resistance. This oversight on Voegelin’s part becomes especially clear in his treatment of nonradical forms of Puritanism. Realizing that his focus on the radical left wing of the Puritan movement may strike some as unfair in that it takes an extreme form of Puritanism as representative of the whole, he argues that the nature of revolutionary phenomena can “be studied best in its radical expressions where it is not obscured by compromises with the exigencies of political success.”37 In 37. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 211.

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other words, moderate Puritanism’s compromise with political realities simply disguises its true nature as Gnostic.38 This is to argue that if, in fact, Puritanism tends to associate itself with a politics of compromise and moderation, we are to abstract from these “merely” empirical contingencies and realize that in essence we are dealing with a form of proto-totalitarianism.39 That Puritan adjustment to the realities of political life might actually be a translation of their religious convictions in political terms is not a possibility Voegelin considers. Michael Walzer addresses precisely this point when he distinguishes between political messianism and what he describes as an “Exodus politics.” Walzer notes how since the later medieval period and early modernity there has come to exist in the West a particular way of speaking about political change: The story has roughly this form: oppression, liberation, social contract, political struggle, new society (danger of restoration). We call the whole process revolutionary. . . . This isn’t a story told everywhere; it isn’t a universal pattern; it belongs to the West, more particularly to Jews and Christians in the West, and its source, its original version, is the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. . . . [Because] of the centrality of the Bible in Western thought and the endless repetition of the story, the pattern has been etched deeply into our political culture. It isn’t only the case that events fall, almost naturally, into an Exodus shape; we work actively 38. With regard to Voegelin’s argument here, Douglass comments, “This begs, however, the very point that needs to be demonstrated. One could just as easily argue that left-wing Puritanism was an aberration which no more represents the essence of Puritanism than the Inquisition represents the essence of Roman Catholicism. In defending this proposition, it would not be difficult to show that the metastatic expectations developed by the radical wing were not at all compatible with the main tenets of Puritan theology—that in fact they were as heretical to mainstream Reformed theology as to Roman Catholicism. . . . Calvinism represents a particularly strong emphasis on the transformative power of the Gospel and also on the immediacy of divine rule. It represents, therefore, precisely the kind of theology and ethics Voegelin finds objectionable in Christianity. This, I would submit, is the real issue in Voegelin’s critique. More than the attack on tradition and more than disrespect for reason, the problem with Calvinism is its spiritual and ethical activism. . . . In Voegelin’s view, this can have only one meaning—the beginning of Gnosticism.” “A Diminished Gospel,” 152–53. 39. This same tendency to abstract from the empirical data of politics in order to grasp the “essence” of the phenomena is what enables Voegelin to categorize liberalism and totalitarianism as variants of what is “essentially” the same Gnosticism. This issue is central to his disagreement with Hannah Arendt, who maintains that in fact liberals are not totalitarians, and that this empirical difference is quite significant. Voegelin chastises her for not recognizing the consubstantiality of the two movements on the level of essence. For a discussion of this debate, see Ranieri, Eric Voegelin and the Good Society, 190–94. David Walsh argues convincingly in The Growth of the Liberal Soul that liberalism is in fact an important carrier of fundamentally biblical insights within the modern world.

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to give them that shape. We complain about oppression; we hope (against all the odds of human history) for deliverance; we join in covenants and constitutions; we aim at a new and better social order. Though in attenuated form, Exodus thinking seems to have survived the secularization of political theory.40

Walzer acknowledges that the imagery of Exodus can be used to support the kind of intolerant, activist perfectionism that Voegelin fears. But Walzer argues that this perfectionism is an exaggeration of Exodus symbolism that does not take into account the equally prominent focus on the Israelites’ failings, their backsliding, and their constant need for reform as members of a covenanted people. The Exodus story contains “a strong sense of this worldly complexity.” In a politics inspired by the Exodus, “liberation is not a movement from our fallen state to the messianic kingdom but from ‘the slavery, exploitation, and alienation of Egypt’ to a land where people can live ‘with human dignity.’ The movement takes place in historical time; it is the hard and continuous work of men and women.” While Puritanism could (and sometimes did) fall into the patterns Voegelin describes, the majority of English Puritans could say with Cromwell, “‘We are thus far . . . ’—and . . . know, in fact, where they are. For them, Exodus history gives rise to Exodus politics. Compared with political messianism, Exodus makes for a cautious and moderate politics.” Conceding that political messianism has its origins in the Exodus story, Walzer notes how it differs from the spirit of the Exodus in crucial respects: instead of working patiently within history, it desires to escape history; its opponents are not viewed simply as wrong, but as agents of Satan; and it will use any means necessary to “force the End.”41 Clearly Walzer’s “political messianism” bears a strong resemblance to Voegelin’s Gnosticism. But where Voegelin finds a direct and ominous continuity in the eschatological traditions of the Bible, Walzer’s distinction allows for a greater degree of complexity among the trajectories emerging from the biblical milieu. Walzer is neither naive nor blind to the dangers of unbalanced eschatological consciousness; the following passage by Walzer could easily be mistaken for Voegelin: The translation of messianic fantasy into worldly activity is a fact of the modern age. Ideologists and militants have not only dreamt of but actually reached for a kind of secular paradise, the perfection of humankind in a perfect society: unity, harmony, freedom, eternal bliss. . . . If messianism outlives religious faith, it still 40. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 133–34. 41. Ibid., 149, 146–47, 139.

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inhabits the apocalyptic framework that faith established. Hence the readiness of messianic militants to welcome, even to initiate, the terrors that precede the Last Days; and hence the strange politics of the worse, the better; and hence the will to sin, to risk any crime for the sake of the End.

At the same time, the difference from Voegelin is clear: It is a serious mistake, however, a misreading of the historical record, to argue that radical politics necessarily and always takes this form. Among critics of political messianism the mistake is common and even deliberate: if they lump together every sort of radical aspiration, they do so because they see the threat of apocalyptic fanaticism all around them, lurking, as it were, in every revolutionary program. . . . In fact, our culture is far richer than that, and modern radicalism is predictably diverse, internally contradictory, a tangle of opposing perceptions and hopes.42

Walzer’s reflections show that one can be in substantial agreement with Voegelin as to the biblical source of modern ideologies without following him in his conclusions about a phenomenon such as Puritanism and/or modern politics. His point is well taken, although in itself it does not disprove Voegelin’s overarching thesis about the biblical sources of contemporary disorder. Voegelin might even concede that radical politics does not “necessarily and always” assume dangerous form, but he would push Walzer to explain why it sometimes does. What is it about the underlying experiences that allows the more violent forms of political radicalism to become such powerful and destructive movements? Walzer may be correct in asserting that historically, not all eschatologically oriented political movements evolve in the direction of apocalyptic destructiveness, but he does not clearly explain why this is the case. I will return to these issues in the concluding chapter, but in anticipation of a more extensive discussion later, I would offer as a partial explanation the notion that while the Bible certainly contains a strongly messianic, eschatological trajectory that is quite capable of being appropriated for violent ends, it is also the bearer of a tradition that consistently takes the side of victims. This latter tradition frequently acts as a moderating influence on the destructive potential of messianic fervor in those cultures influenced by the Bible; it also explains why some of the worst violence in the contemporary world has been committed in the name of liberating victims from oppression. Where the biblical text has had an impact, we find both tendencies at work. Voegelin concentrates 42. Ibid., 145–46.

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almost exclusively on the potential dangers of the eschatological mentality, and he allows his fear of modern ideological movements to color his judgments about the role of the Bible in society. When reading his work, it is hard to escape the impression that his interpretation of the Bible and its legacy has been formed by peering through a lens at a modern world traumatized by the horrifying violence of the twentieth century. But because he values the biblical differentiation of transcendence, he wants very much to salvage what he takes to be the Bible’s abiding legacy. Caught between a deep wariness with regard to the Bible’s deforming tendencies and a deep respect for the wisdom the Bible embodies, Voegelin resolves this tension by dividing the biblical legacy. On one side there is the Bible’s eschatological vision—dynamic, prone to imbalance, and tainted with an ineradicable impulse to bring heaven to earth. In this vision Voegelin locates the roots of modernity and its travails. On the other side there is the biblical revelation of the God beyond the gods—the transcendent reality in relation to which humans become aware of both their greatness and their limitations. By recovering this orientation to the transcendent, Voegelin believes modernity might someday find its balance. The question remains, though, whether anything distinctively biblical remains in the notion of transcendent experience, pruned of its eschatological impulse to cooperate with God in undoing the world’s evil.

5 The Triumph of the Biblical Orientation

Responding to the criticisms made by Eric Voegelin and Alexandre Kojève of his book On Tyranny (1948), Leo Strauss expresses the thought that perhaps the attempt to restore classical social science is utopian, “since it implies that the classical orientation has not been made obsolete by the triumph of the biblical orientation.” And in a 1946 letter to Karl Löwith, Strauss remarks how “there can be no doubt that our usual way of feeling is conditioned by the biblical tradition,” even as he refuses to rule out the possibility of correcting that conditioned feeling. To begin the process of correction, though, the source of this pervasive feeling must be identified. Strauss finds it in the biblical teaching on Providence, which he describes as “the belief in creation by the loving God.” Eleven years earlier, in another epistolary exchange with Löwith focusing largely on Nietzsche, Strauss praises the latter’s doctrine of the eternal return as an attempt “to wean us and himself from millennia-old pampering (softening) due to belief in creation and providence.” As part of the same exchange, Strauss reiterates his point: “If one considers what decisive importance the dogma of creation and providence has for all of post-ancient philosophy, then one comprehends that liberation from this dogma was only to be brought about through the ‘superhuman’ effort of the teaching of the eternal return. . . . Once this liberation—liberation from an unbelievable pampering of the human race—is achieved, then the eternal return can be taught calmly— assuming that it is true, and that is the central question for cosmology.”1 1. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 177–78; Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence concerning Modernity,” 111; Leo Strauss and Karl Löwith, “Correspondence,” 183, 190.

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It becomes clear from another 1946 letter to Löwith that Strauss’s concerns about the influence of the Bible coincide with his focus on the question of Athens and Jerusalem.2 This more than suggests that Strauss’s attention to the Bible is not merely a political philosopher’s reflections on the biblical text, but a concerted effort on his part to liberate society from the domination of biblical teaching. And if this teaching ultimately rests on a “belief in creation by the loving God,” we can better understand why he focuses almost exclusively on precisely these aspects of the biblical text. The significance of these remarks to Löwith should not be underestimated, for they offer clear insight into the attitude animating Strauss’s approach to the Bible. There is a sense in which everything Strauss writes on the Bible can be understood in their light. “The triumph of the biblical orientation” points to a disruptive imbalance within Western civilization. The predominance of either Athens or Jerusalem would jeopardize the vitality of the West, which depends upon the tension between the two cities for its dynamism and life.3 Like Nietzsche’s work, Strauss’s overall project of reviving the classical orientation in politics can be understood as an attempt to weaken, if not undo, the victory of the Bible. If Strauss is not as overtly hostile to the biblical message as Nietzsche, it is because he is more sensitive to the requirements of political philosophy. In the interest of political cohesion, society requires a set of firmly held convictions shared by the majority who are incapable of philosophy. In the Western world, this role, for better or worse, has been fulfilled by biblical religion. A frontal attack on the beliefs of the many is therefore counterproductive and irresponsible. At the same time, the lopsided influence of the biblical tradition has led to a critical imbalance in modern society. The teaching of Jerusalem has won out over the way of Athens; modernity reflects the unfortunate consequences of this “unbelievable pampering” of the human race. In a situation in which the Bible has clearly triumphed, adherents of philosophy must work to restore the proper balance. To understand the significance of the triumph of the biblical orientation, we would do well to ask just how Strauss conceives the relationship between modernity and the Bible. Answering this question is no easy task. For someone who considers the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem to be the central issue confronting Western civilization, Strauss devotes a relatively meager amount of space to analysis of the Bible. As has already been noted of his work, there is nowhere near the amount of detailed commentary on biblical texts that we have in his treatment of the classics. This discrepancy would pose no problem but for the fact that Strauss repeatedly emphasizes the importance of 2. Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence concerning Modernity,” 108. 3. See Chapter 3. Also “Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History,” 116, 121.

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keeping alive the question of the relationship between Greek and biblical traditions. He insists that we cannot understand the modern world without a serious consideration of the claims of Athens and Jerusalem. His reticence, then, in treating biblical texts with the same degree of thoroughness as he employs when considering classical Greek texts is puzzling. In the case of the New Testament, the absence of any serious consideration amounts to a deafening silence on Strauss’s part. We are left wondering whether his observation about Machiavelli applies equally to himself: “The silence of the wise man is always meaningful. It cannot be explained by forgetfulness.” 4 Strauss’s silence may be significant, but arguments based upon an author’s omissions are always more precarious than those that rely on written or spoken evidence. This is part of what makes Strauss a difficult author to interpret. By comparison, Voegelin is a model of candor, indicating quite clearly where he thinks the Bible inclines toward dangerous imbalance, and tracing a direct line from these biblical phenomena to their modern progeny. Nonetheless, even in the case of Strauss, there are in fact sufficient statements and hints in his work to enable us to recognize ways in which he construes the relationship between the Bible and the modern world. While it would be inaccurate to consider Strauss a committed advocate of the view that modernity is primarily a product of secularized biblical faith, he never denies the thesis outright, and he acknowledges that the modern project may, in fact, owe part of its inspiration to biblical teaching.5 For Strauss, the cultural process of secularization means “the preservation of thoughts, feelings, or habits of biblical origin after the loss or atrophy of biblical faith.” However, he acknowledges that this definition is primarily negative—it “does not tell us anything as to what kind of ingredients are preserved in secularizations.”6 In his essay “The Three Waves of Modernity” he offers some possible ways in which the connection between the Bible and modernity may be understood. He does not think it suffices to explain modernity as secularized biblical faith if by that we mean “not to hope for life in heaven but to establish heaven on earth by purely human means.” Plato also wished to “bring 4. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 30. Strauss’s relative silence about the Bible has been noticed by a number of commentators. See, for example, George Grant, “Tyranny and Wisdom: A Comment on the Controversy between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève,” and James Steintrager, “Political Philosophy, Political Theology, and Morality.” 5. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 28. See also Leo Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” 20. Daniel Tanguay also discusses the secularization thesis with reference to Strauss, although he is more skeptical than I am about Strauss’s acceptance of the thesis. See Tanguay, Leo Strauss, 112–17, 138–43. 6. Leo Strauss, “The Three Waves of Modernity,” 82–83.

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about the cessation of all evil on earth by purely human means,” and “surely Plato cannot be said to have secularized biblical faith.” The desire to realize the perfect society on earth is not in itself uniquely biblical. Nevertheless, Strauss does not discount the secularization thesis; rather, he suggests that it needs to be made more specific. As examples he cites the idea that “the spirit of modern capitalism is of puritan origin,” along with the notion that Hobbes’s “fundamental polarity of evil pride and salutary fear of violent death . . . is a secularized version of the biblical polarity of sinful pride and salutary fear of the Lord.” Compared to Voegelin, Strauss is far less apt to call attention to the direct influence of the eschatological dimensions of the Bible on modernity. But there is no question that, like Voegelin, he attributes ideas such as that of a radical transformation in human nature and that of a coming age of universal peace to the prophetic-messianic strain within the Hebrew Bible. Plato may also have desired the realization of the best regime during his lifetime, but unlike the prophets he did not believe human nature would change; consequently, he believed that the best possible society has but a meager chance of coming into existence. By contrast, the prophets envisioned an age to come, brought about by the action of God, marked by justice, abundance, and shalom. In Strauss’s view, here we find the roots of the modern project of bending nature to serve human needs.7 Even in its secularity, modernity betrays its origins as a child of the belief in a providential, loving God. If humanity is to be weaned from this “millennia-old pampering (softening),” the relationship between this belief and modernity must be clarified and criticized. For Strauss this means understanding the role biblical notions of charity play in constituting the modern horizon.

The Modern Reign of Charity In a rather lengthy footnote to the first chapter of his 1935 work Philosophy and Law, Strauss makes a reference to the effects of the biblical tradition on modernity: The Enlightenment’s aim was the rehabilitation of the natural through the denial (or limitation) of the supernatural, but what it accomplished was the discovery 7. According to one of his interpreters, “Strauss attributed a seriously ‘messianic’ religious component or residual faith to modern philosophy in its very beginnings, irrespective of whether these were Machiavellian or Hobbesian. For Strauss, this is what differentiates modern philosophers from premodern: the belief that they can transform, and even perfect, the nature of man and the world.” Green, “Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish Thinker,” 398–405.

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of a new “natural” foundation which, so far from being natural, is rather the residue, as it were, of the “supernatural.” The extreme possibilities and claims discovered by the founders of the religious as well as the philosophical tradition by starting from the natural and the typical became, at the outset of modernity, self-evident and in this sense “natural”; hence they are no longer regarded as extremes requiring a radical demonstration, but themselves serve as a “natural” foundation for the negation or re-interpretation not only of the supernatural but also and precisely of the natural, the typical: in contrast to ancient and medieval philosophy, which understand the extreme by starting from the typical, modern philosophy, in its origin and in all cases where it is not restoring older teachings, understands the typical from the extreme. Thus, by leaving out of account the “trivial” question about the essence and teachability of virtue, the extreme (“theological”) virtue of charity becomes the “natural” (“philosophic”) virtue; thus the critique of the natural ideal of courage . . . is now “radicalized” in such a way that the character of virtue in courage as such is denied outright.8

This passage captures the essentials of Strauss’s understanding of charity and its role in constituting the modern horizon. Before I elaborate on it, it may be helpful to say something about its context, which is a discussion of the effects of the Enlightenment on Judaism. For Strauss, “the present situation of Judaism . . . is determined by the Enlightenment.” Further, if “the foundation of the Jewish tradition is belief in creation of the world, in the reality of the Biblical miracles, in the absolutely binding character and essential immutability of the Law, resting on the revelation at Sinai, then one must say that the Enlightenment has undermined the foundation of the Jewish tradition.” Strauss then distinguishes between what he describes as the radical Enlightenment (exemplified by figures such as Spinoza, Hobbes, and Voltaire), which intentionally and purposefully sets out to undermine the tradition, and the moderate Enlightenment, which tries to “mediate between orthodoxy and radical enlightenment, between belief in revelation and belief in the self-sufficiency of reason” (for example, Moses Mendelssohn). Believing the position of the moderate Enlightenment to have been declared untenable by the judgment of history, Strauss focuses his attention on those later Jewish thinkers, who, acknowledging the untenability of the moderate view, and conceding that the battle between enlightenment and orthodoxy cannot be won at the level on which it has been previously fought, take the debate to a “higher” level wherein the foundation of the tradition can be reestablished through a synthesis of Enlightenment and orthodoxy. What occurs in this process is the 8. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 135–36.

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“internalization” of traditional doctrines concerning creation, miracles, and revelation. As noted in earlier chapters, Strauss takes this attempted defense of orthodoxy to be, in fact, a disavowal of the tradition, a disavowal resting upon two serious errors. The first consists in explaining “external” orthodox beliefs (such as the literal belief in miracles, creation, and audible revelation) as belonging to an undeveloped stage of the tradition and considering later developments (like prophetic messianism) as an advance; the second error appeals against orthodoxy to the more “extreme” statements that have arisen within the tradition. The passage just cited refers to this second error. In Strauss’s view, the peak of the pyramid has been made into the foundation. This distortion is but one more capitulation to the Enlightenment, in that the “extremes of the tradition” have been rendered as “the foundation of a position that is actually completely incompatible with the tradition.”9 What is striking both in the passage cited above and in Strauss’s discussion of these issues is the frequent use of the word extreme. This usage is critical in understanding Strauss’s position since such extremes are easily contrasted with the “moderation” he believes to be characteristic of classical thought. Equally important is Strauss’s choice of example; “the extreme (‘theological’) virtue of charity” has become the “‘natural’ (‘philosophic’) virtue.” Strauss faults the Enlightenment for presenting charity (traditionally understood as a supernatural virtue) as a natural virtue. For our purposes, what is interesting here is Strauss’s rendering of the traditional distinction between the natural and the supernatural in terms of a distinction between the natural (or typical) and the extreme. In developing and employing the terminology of natural and supernatural, the medieval Christian theological tradition wished to say something about how human nature can achieve its highest realization only when brought to completion and animated by the love of God, which is itself disproportionate to “mere” nature. Humans are those creatures oriented toward an end beyond space and time in the beatific vision of God. The emphasis, then, is on the supernatural as the perfection or fulfillment of the natural. So understood, it would make little sense to refer to charity as an “extreme” in relationship to nature. Yet in Strauss’s formulation, this is precisely what happens. Rather than the supreme fulfillment of human nature, charity is contrasted with the natural as a conceptual possibility arising within the tradition, which, taken from its original setting, easily leads to the kinds of distortions Strauss sees as culminating in modernity. Yet one could also make the case that, contrary to Strauss’s account, from a biblical perspective the supernatural is not arrived 9. Ibid., 22–25.

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at by starting from the natural, but rather the reverse; the human is understood first in relationship to God, and the natural is understood only in that light.10 The influence of “extreme” virtues profoundly shapes the character of modern philosophy: According to classical philosophy the end of the philosophers is radically different from the end or ends actually pursued by the nonphilosophers. Modern philosophy comes into being when the end of philosophy is identified with the end which is capable of being actually pursued by all men. More precisely, philosophy is now asserted to be essentially subservient to the end which is capable of being actually pursued by all men. . . . In this respect, the modern conception of philosophy is fundamentally democratic. The end of philosophy is now no longer what one may call disinterested contemplation of the eternal, but the relief of man’s estate. Philosophy thus understood could be presented with some plausibility as inspired by biblical charity, and accordingly philosophy in the classic sense could be disparaged as pagan and as sustained by sinful pride. One may doubt whether the claim to biblical inspiration was justified and even whether it was always raised in entire sincerity. . . . Philosophy or science was no longer an end in itself, but in the service of human power, of a power to be used for making human life longer, healthier, and more abundant.11

If Strauss expresses some doubt here about the biblical inspiration behind modern philosophy, he nonetheless concedes a degree of plausibility to the connection between charity and the modern commitment to “the relief of man’s estate.” Elsewhere, however, he affirms more clearly the connection between modern philosophy and biblical morality: “Modern rationalism rejected biblical theology and replaced it by such things as deism, pantheism, and atheism. But in this process, biblical morality was in a way preserved. Goodness was still believed to consist in something like justice, benevolence, love, or charity.” What is clear in any case is Strauss’s association of biblical charity with the modern concern to alleviate suffering. However wellintentioned, though, these modern developments lead to a subordination 10. Technically speaking, the distinction between natural and supernatural does not occur in the Bible. It emerges in the medieval period under the pressure of questions having to do with the relationship between divine and human nature, as well as consideration of how God effects conversion in humans. Nonetheless the distinction stands in firm continuity with the biblical witness, and it can be understood as a way of making explicit what is implicit in the biblical notion that human beings are made in the image of God. See The New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Mary Collins, Joseph A. Komonchak, and Dermot A. Lane, 995–96. 11. Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” 19–20.

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of philosophy to extraphilosophical goals, in the interest of serving human needs. From the perspective of classical philosophy, this is a deflection of philosophy from its true path. Strauss cites Francis Bacon to the effect that unlike Greek philosophy, biblical religion makes the human person rather than the cosmos the true image of God.12 As we saw in Chapter 3, Strauss repeatedly calls attention to the Bible’s depreciation of the heavens and its overriding concern for the earthly life of human beings. This turning toward the human is an implicit criticism of the “superhuman,” contemplative ideal of the philosophers. Likewise, there is a significant lowering of the horizon, as the highest type of human life is relegated to a position of lesser rank in comparison with the biblical call for moral virtue.13 The Bible’s focus on human affairs at the expense of contemplation paves the way for modern philosophy: “The shifting of interest from the eternal order to man, and thus to application, had as we have seen, found expression earlier in the turning of philosophy to history. Carried to its logical conclusion, it leads to Hobbes’s political philosophy.” In the philosophy of Hobbes, the classical, aristocratic virtues are denigrated, replaced by the virtues of justice and charity: “In place of the triad ‘honour, justice, and equity’, we have more and more the two concepts ‘justice and charity’. Thus the more Hobbes elaborated his political philosophy, the further he departed from his original recognition of honour as virtue, from the original recognition of aristocratic virtue.” We must be careful, though, not to misunderstand Strauss’s point about the influence of biblical charity on modern thought. Strauss is no postmodern Scrooge, frowning at the sight of human acts of benevolence. It would be more accurate to say that he worries about the unintended consequences of granting charity a dominant position among the virtues that order society. For example, in the first quotation cited in this paragraph, he remarks how the shift of interest “from the eternal order to man” is, in fact, a move toward a focus on “application.” Strauss believes a focus on application (in other words, practicality) can easily deteriorate into the manipulation and domination of human life. He suggests as much when he notes how, “according to the modern project, philosophy or science was no longer to be understood as essentially contemplative and proud but as active and charitable; it was to be of service of man’s estate; it was to enable man to become the master and owner of nature through the 12. Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 90–91. 13. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 99; Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 90–92. See also Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 81; and Leo Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” 329.

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intellectual conquest of nature.”14 When Strauss criticizes Hobbes for allowing “justice and charity” to supplant the aristocratic virtues, it is because in so doing, Hobbes weakens the necessary forces of prudence and moderation that would prevent practicality (in the interest of charity) from degenerating into manipulative, albeit well-intentioned, oppression. Hobbes may consider charity along with justice to be the cardinal virtues, but that does not prevent him from devising a political philosophy that is hardly the embodiment of charity in any recognizably biblical sense, that is, in the sense of self-giving love and benevolence. Hobbes may have been motivated by a desire to foster the wellbeing of the members of the commonwealth, but the society he envisions creates and sustains itself by means that are anything but charitable. Strauss does not fault Hobbes for being overly kind and compassionate in devising his political philosophy; his point is that charity, insofar as it is a virtue directed toward human need rather than human excellence, has the effect of deflecting human life from its highest aspirations. It is certainly not a question of Strauss’s having mistaken Hobbes for Francis of Assisi. With this in mind, we can better appreciate Strauss’s description of some of the consequences of allowing charity to acquire dominance in society: By Machiavelli’s time the classical tradition had undergone profound changes. The contemplative life had found its home in monasteries. Moral virtue had been transfigured into Christian charity. Through this, man’s responsibility to his fellow men and for his fellow men, his fellow creatures, had been infinitely increased. Concern with the salvation of men’s immortal souls seemed to permit, nay, to require courses of action which would have appeared to the classics, and which did appear to Machiavelli, to be inhuman and cruel. . . . He seems to have diagnosed the great evils of religious persecution as a necessary consequence of the Christian principle, and ultimately of the Biblical principle. He tended to believe that a considerable increase in man’s inhumanity was the unintended but not surprising consequence of man’s aiming too high. Let us lower our goals so that we shall not be forced to commit any bestialities which are not evidently required for the preservation of society and of freedom. Let us replace charity by calculation, by a kind of utilitarianism avant la lettre. Let us revise all traditional goals from this point of view. I would then suggest that the narrowing of the horizon which Machiavelli was the first to effect, was caused, or at least facilitated, by anti-theological ire—a passion which we can understand but of which we cannot approve.15 14. Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 50, 100; Leo Strauss, The City and Man, 3–4. 15. Leo Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 43–44.

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Some of Strauss’s most sympathetic readers are troubled by these observations, because they imply that “the elevation of human expectations due to charity is at least indirectly responsible for persecutory fanaticism of modernity.”16 Strauss makes an explicit contrast between the classical tradition, which would have recoiled at the thought of committing atrocities in the interest of saving souls, and the biblical tradition, whose sense of responsibility for the well-being of others leads to persecution. Nor does Strauss’s criticism of the modern “narrowing of the horizon” inaugurated by Machiavelli mean that he is criticizing Machiavelli’s insight into the connection between biblical charity and religious intolerance. Strauss never says Machiavelli was mistaken in his judgment about the effects of charity; rather, he faults Machiavelli’s reaction to these effects. Confronted with the social disruption wrought by charitable intentions gone awry, Machiavelli opted for the way of “calculation” to bring peace through a more judicious and effective use of violence. But calculation is but another word for the preoccupation with practicality that Strauss associates with the influence of charity on modern society. In Machiavelli, Strauss sees a political thinker who turned to calculation to stem the violence that results from persecutory zeal. Machiavelli’s remedy may have been wrong, but his diagnosis was right. To block the dangerous effects of aiming too high, Machiavelli lowered the horizon. Strauss believes this to be a mistake, and looks to the classics for models of societies that aim high while remaining free of the harshness that all too frequently accompanies the reign of charity. This may help to explain Strauss’s comment about the narrowing of the horizon by Machiavelli being caused by “anti-theological ire—a passion which we can understand but of which we cannot approve.” Strauss understands Machiavelli’s “anti-theological ire” because he believes there is good reason for it—the Bible is to blame, however indirectly, for the crimes of zealots who persecute others in its name. But Strauss cannot approve of this passion. He cannot approve of it because it so consumed Machiavelli as to lead him to adopt the wrong solutions to religiously inspired problems. Machiavelli’s turn to “calculation” was ill conceived, and contributed to the further subordination of the contemplative life to politics. He thereby accelerated the biblical revolution against the classical aristocratic tradition.17 In addition, Strauss recognizes that antitheological passions need to be kept hidden. Society needs religion; to undermine it overtly is counterproductive for those who wish to serve lasting political goals. 16. James V. Schall, S.J., “A Latitude for Statesmanship? Strauss on St. Thomas,” 226. 17. See Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, 118. Unfortunately, Drury is sometimes so polemical that she undermines her case.

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Classical thought understands this better than Machiavelli did. In Strauss’s eyes, Machiavelli’s teaching contains nothing unfamiliar to the classical authors. The primary difference is that Machiavelli stated boldly and in his own name what the classical writers would only suggest indirectly through the mouths of their characters. This was his fundamental error. By addressing himself so directly to his readers, he made philosophy a public phenomenon. Machiavelli’s resort to “propaganda” was, in Strauss’s opinion, yet another consequence of the biblical legacy. Machiavelli followed in the footsteps of Jesus, the greatest of the “unarmed prophets” (Machiavelli sees himself as an unarmed prophet as well) who used propaganda to achieve victory for Christianity. Machiavelli “attempted to destroy Christianity by the same means by which Christianity was originally established.” The public nature of the Christian proclamation stands in stark contrast to the subtlety of “Socratic rhetoric”: Its purpose is to lead potential philosophers to philosophy both by training them and by liberating them from the charms which obstruct the philosophic effort, as well as to prevent the access to philosophy of those who are not fit for it. Socratic rhetoric is emphatically just. It is animated by the spirit of social responsibility. It is based on the premise that there is a disproportion between the intransigent quest for truth and the requirements of society, or that not all truths are always harmless. Society will always try to tyrannize thought. Socratic rhetoric is the classic means for ever again frustrating these attempts.

An author such as Xenophon understood this well; a classical sense of moderation and social responsibility informs his political teaching: [He does so] not by protesting that he does not fear hell nor the devil, nor by expressing immoral principles, but by simply failing to take notice of the moral principles. He has to reveal his alleged or real freedom from morality, not by speech but by silence. For by doing so—by disregarding morality “by deed” rather than by attacking it “by speech”—he reveals at the same time his understanding of political things. Xenophon, or his Simonides, is more “politic” than Machiavelli; he refuses to separate “moderation” (prudence) from “wisdom” (insight).18

To avoid the impression that Strauss’s analysis here is directed solely against the influence of Christianity, I would call attention to the fact that he also 18. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 10; Strauss, History of Political Philosophy, 297; Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 45; Strauss, On Tyranny, 27, 56.

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invokes Xenophon in at least two other places to compare the Greek thinker’s advice with that of Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. 12:1–7). The first instance is within a context in which Strauss is contrasting the Bible’s heavy emphasis on moral demands (resulting from the biblical sense of humility, guilt, repentance, faith, and fear in relation to God) with the weakening of such demands among the Greeks (where, in the absence of divine threats and promises, evolution is in the direction of contemplation). Strauss speaks of how the biblical men and women “live in fear and trembling as well as in hope,” whereas the philosopher lives in a state that transcends these emotions. As an illustration of the difference between the biblical and Greek horizons he mentions how “the prophet Nathan seriously and ruthlessly rebukes King David for having committed one murder and one act of adultery.” Strauss then contrasts the prophet’s behavior with “the way in which a Greek poet-philosopher playfully and elegantly tries to convince a Greek tyrant who has committed an untold number of murders and other crimes that he would derive greater pleasure if he would have been more reasonable.” This comparison also appears in “Jerusalem and Athens,” where Strauss quotes Xenophon directly: The nearest parallel to this event [Nathan/David] that occurs in the Socratic writings is Socrates’ reproof of his former companion, the tyrant Critias. “When the thirty were putting to death many citizens and by no means the worst ones, and were encouraging many in crime, Socrates said somewhere, that it seemed strange that a herdsman who lets his cattle decrease and go to the bad should not admit that he is a poor cowherd; but stranger still that a statesman when he causes the citizens to decrease and go to the bad should feel no shame nor think himself a poor statesman. This remark was reported to Critias . . . ” (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.32–33)19

The bluntness of the prophet stands in sharp relief to Socratic subtlety and indirectness. Strauss’s juxtaposition of the prophet with Socrates/Xenophon might, at first glance, appear to be an indication that Strauss clearly sympathizes with prophetic courage and zeal rather than with the philosopher’s reticence. But in light of the previously cited comparison of Xenophon and Machiavelli this would appear to be a mistaken conclusion. The Greek thinker’s silence is 19. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 109–10; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 404. The episode with Nathan and David is also cited as one of two biblical epigraphs to Strauss’s Natural Right and History (both involving prophetic chastisement of kings), lending credence to the view that the book is written with the opposition between Jerusalem and Athens in mind.

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in fact an effective means to reveal “his alleged or real freedom from morality,” thus demonstrating his “understanding of political things.” This refusal to separate “moderation” (prudence) from “wisdom” (insight) on the part of the philosopher shows him to be more “politic” than the well-intentioned yet imprudent prophet. The prophets would seem to be, in Strauss’s view, practitioners of the same dangerous moral zealotry that culminates in the imposition of the realm of charity. Machiavelli’s teaching, public and outspoken, has more in common with biblical prophecy than with the subtle wisdom of the classics. Machiavelli forgot what classical thinkers never lost sight of—that “the end of the philosophers is radically different from the end or ends actually pursued by the nonphilosophers.” If, as Strauss maintains, the Bible is responsible for the erosion of this all-important distinction, then Machiavelli unwittingly succumbed to its influence. Even the great Florentine thinker remains tainted by the “extreme” virtues stemming from the religious tradition he blamed for making people weak. As counterintuitive as it might seem, Machiavelli and his intellectual descendants move forward aspects of the biblical message even as they battle the institutional bearers of that message. According to Strauss, in their dedication to “the relief of man’s estate” these modern political philosophers further the belief that all means are justified in the pursuit of this charitable end. Because the impulse of charity results in an overriding concern for the well-being of others, philosophy is now forced to take its bearings from the ends pursued by the multitude and to work toward the alleviation of their suffering. But along with this heightened sense of responsibility for human welfare comes a temptation toward social engineering and religious persecution.

The Meaning of Modernity: The Strauss-Kojève Debate With this juxtaposition of modern cruelty and classical moderation we return to the question posed by Strauss in On Tyranny as to whether “the classical orientation has not been made obsolete by the triumph of the biblical orientation.” If biblical teaching bears some responsibility for the crisis of modernity, then there is some urgency in discovering nonbiblical sources for renewal. Although there are other places in his writings where Strauss takes up the issue of Athens and Jerusalem, nowhere does he address the issue with greater nuance than in On Tyranny. Apart from his mention of “the triumph of the biblical orientation,” the contrast between Athens and Jerusalem is rarely

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made explicit in this work, yet the entire volume is permeated with this tension, and, I would argue, with Strauss’s preference for Athens over Jerusalem.20 The opposition between Athens and Jerusalem provides the context for an exchange between Strauss and Alexandre Kojève on the nature of love. In On Tyranny, the term charity (specifying the biblical notion of love) is not used; instead Strauss employs the term love throughout his discussion, regardless of the Greek word to which he is referring. This allows him to discuss love in a generic way, calling attention to that which its several meanings have in common. Strauss’s discussion of love occurs in the context of his analysis of Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero (or Tyrannicus). The topic of love is brought up as Simonides the poet and Hiero the tyrant converse about the relative merits of love versus admiration. Strauss takes the view that admiration is superior to love. Love is too concerned with the opinions of others; the wise person is indifferent to being loved but relishes the admiration of the few who are similar in excellence.21 The range of love is also more limited than that of admiration; one can be admired, but hardly loved by one’s enemies. Strauss goes on to point out further instances of love’s deficiencies in comparison to admiration: Each man loves what is somehow his own, his private possession; admiration or praise is concerned with the excellent regardless of whether it is one’s own or not. Love as distinguished from admiration requires proximity. The range of love is limited not only in regard to space, but likewise . . . in regard to time. A man may be admired many generations after his death whereas he will cease to be loved once those who knew him well are dead. Desire for “inextinguishable fame,” as distinguished from desire for love, enables a man to liberate himself from the shackles of the Here and Now.

20. Heinrich Meier cites letters from Strauss to Julius Guttmann and Jacob Klein in which Strauss admits that his studies in classical thought are an indirect means of indicating the incompatibility of philosophy and Judaism. Strauss wonders about the “extent to which one may responsibly expound this possibility publicly.” With this in mind, he decides it is more prudent to address the issue “with respect to some strategically favorable, non-Jewish object.” To accomplish this goal, he “chose Xenophon, partly due to the connection with the problem of Socrates, partly because the assumption is that if even Xenophon, this seemingly harmless writer, then all the more . . . The little writing [On Tyranny] is a preliminary study.” Meier, Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 24. 21. Strauss, On Tyranny, 89. As is often the case with Strauss, it is not easy to distinguish between his exposition of the ideas either of the author or of the characters within a text and his own views. It is not impossible, though, and in my reading I have tried to draw upon those aspects of Strauss’s commentary where he seems to go beyond the explicit, literal sense of the text to speak in his own name. I have also relied on the judgments of other commentators on Strauss to learn from their approaches to this difficulty.

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Strauss then concludes, “Admiration seems less mercenary than love.” It also follows that “admiration is as much superior to love as the man of excellence is to one’s benefactor as such.” Strauss expresses this same insight in other words when he notes how “love has no criterion of relevance outside itself, but admiration has.” Those who wish to rule are driven by the desire to be loved, whereas “the wise man is as self-sufficient as is humanly possible; the admiration which he gains is essentially a tribute to his perfection, and not a reward for any services. The desire for praise and admiration as distinguished and divorced from the desire for love is the natural foundation for the predominance of the desire for one’s own perfection.”22 This passage can help us to understand the distinction Strauss makes between admiration and honor. The person who is admired or who seeks to be admired desires to possess those qualities that embody human excellence. Those who wish to be honored may be interested simply in the acclaim of the crowd, whether or not they are actually virtuous. I use the conditional may because someone who is indeed excellent may be honored as well, and he or she may actually desire to be recognized for possessing such excellence. But Strauss’s point is that external acclaim is secondary; the excellent or admirable person is interested in his or her perfection in virtue, not in being honored. By comparison, someone motivated by the desire to be loved will be far more likely to seek to be honored, since love, in Strauss’s view, is dependent on the response of others. In the course of his analysis it becomes increasingly clear how the desire for love and the desire for admiration are virtually antithetical.23 Of course, this contrast between love and admiration is sustainable only if we accept Strauss’s account of love as essentially self-seeking. We love those who benefit us and we benefit others in order to gain their love. On Strauss’s reading one can readily admire someone for his or her excellent qualities independently of any benefit one might derive from him or her. But in the case of love, Strauss excludes the possibility of loving another purely for his or her own sake or because it is the nature of love to do so without thinking of oneself.24 In other words, the biblical notion of charity as unconditional is not seriously entertained in Strauss’s account of the nature of love. Neither in On Tyranny nor elsewhere in his writings does Strauss treat this theme in any depth. His silence with regard to the New Testament is particularly notable. As far as I can 22. Ibid., 89–90. 23. Victor Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics, I,” 73. 24. “[Strauss] does not allow that we love—or, for that matter, that we benefit—others for their own sakes, any more than he allows for the kind of love that seeks no return. We love—or benefit—others for our own sakes alone.” Ibid., 72.

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tell, there is only one reference to the New Testament in On Tyranny, and that is found in a footnote. The relevant part of the footnote reads: “Cf. 1 Peter 1.8 and Cardinal Newman’s comment: ‘St. Peter makes it almost a description of the Christian, that he loves whom he has not seen.’”25 Apparently Strauss cites these passages as challenges to his claim that love, unlike admiration, requires proximity in space and time. But he neither develops the point nor considers what the passages indicate about the idea of love in the New Testament. There are certainly more profound differences between the New Testament’s teaching on love and the classical tradition’s teaching on admiration than a dispute over whether love involves spatial or temporal proximity. For someone who is normally such a nuanced interpreter, Strauss could have quite easily shed light on some of the relevant issues by giving some attention to the various meanings of love in classical and New Testament Greek. In the passage under consideration, the Greek word for love in 1 Peter is derived from agape rather than from philia. Strauss is too sensitive a reader of texts not to have noticed this difference. Yet he excludes any consideration of love as selfless regard for another, independently of whether or not that other is seen or unseen. What, then, are we to conclude? By relegating to a footnote the insights of a religious tradition that has contributed significantly to Western civilization’s discourse about love, and by reducing the difference between the biblical and classical traditions on this issue to a matter of the spatial/temporal closeness required by love, Strauss conveys a good deal about his attitude toward the biblical teaching. By ignoring the difference between agape and philia he subsumes the biblical notion within his overall understanding of love, depriving it of its force and distinctiveness. Every nuance of Xenophon’s text is explored, while the corresponding biblical insights are nowhere engaged. This would not be noteworthy, except for the fact that Strauss himself frames the issue under consideration in On Tyranny as a question of how best to make a case for classical social science in the face of “the triumph of the biblical orientation.” One would think, under these circumstances, the biblical orientation would be given due consideration. We are reminded again of Strauss’s observation that the wise man’s silence cannot be explained by forgetfulness. Kojève, for his part, identifies precisely what it is that Strauss excludes from his consideration of love. He argues that “man is loved solely because he is, and independently of what he does (a mother loves her son in spite of his faults),” 25. Strauss, On Tyranny, 125. The passage from 1 Peter reads: “Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy.”

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and that “love is specifically characterized by the fact that it attributes a positive value to the beloved or to the being of the beloved without reason.” Strauss answers by pointing to the fact that a mother loves her son because he is her own, thus reiterating his claim that we tend to love only what is in some sense ours. While Strauss may have found the weakness in Kojève’s example, he has not necessarily disproved Kojève’s broader point. The primary focus of Kojève’s example is not on the fact that the son “belongs” to the mother, but on the character of maternal love as regard for the other “independently of what he does.” In other words, Kojève’s point (as distinguished from his example) would be entirely reconcilable with the notion of love of one’s enemies, an example that would not be open to Strauss’s objection, unless of course we love our enemies because they are our own. If anything, Kojève argues, Strauss has gotten the relationship between love and admiration exactly backwards. It is love that acts without regard for the qualities or the response of the other. Genuine love is, in this sense, indifferent to receiving benefits. By contrast, the person who wishes to be admired wants “the recognition of his perfection and not the love of his being; he would like to be recognized for his perfection and therefore desires his perfection.” This desire is actualized through action; hence, Kojève concludes, the one who seeks admiration does so by performing those actions that will win him the esteem of others.26 Essentially Kojève questions Strauss’s depiction of the pursuer of admiration as free of desire for approbation by others. He challenges Strauss’s contention that “love has no criterion of relevance outside itself, but admiration has.” For Strauss, it is love rather than admiration that is constantly looking toward others to know the best way to please them and to know how to benefit them in order to be loved in return. Admiration, on the other hand, is granted on the basis of a set of independent criteria epitomizing human excellence, so the admired person is worthy of honor whether he benefits anyone or not. Kojève brings out the questionable character of this depiction of self-sufficiency by showing how the one wishing to be admired needs to have his perfection recognized as such. The standards for human perfection are human standards that depend on others for their formulation and recognition. The person who desires this perfection must look to others to know what qualities he or she needs to possess in order to be admired. The desire for admiration is intensely mimetic, and mimetic in a way that can easily lead to an endless, empty pursuit of prestige. The way of love (as the biblical tradition understands it) also involves taking others as our models, but in a manner devoid of rivalry. Yet Strauss draws practically the opposite conclusion. He draws the distinction between admiration and love by claiming for the 26. Alexandre Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” 156.

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former an indifference to recognition by others, and for the latter an entirely dependent yet fundamentally self-centered orientation. The comparison of admiration and love is not incidental to the central argument of On Tyranny, or for that matter to the central themes of Strauss’s work as a whole. It is, in the final analysis, an embodiment of the problematic relationship between philosophy and politics, the ancients and the moderns, or Athens and Jerusalem. In On Tyranny the real issue is the political implications of love versus admiration. Formulated slightly differently, what we have here is an exploration of the consequences for political life of the “extreme” virtue of biblical love versus the way of philosophical moderation. In Strauss’s account, the root of the moderation characteristic of the philosophical way of life is a marvelous detachment from “human things.” The philosopher’s dominating passion is the desire to know the eternal order and the eternal causes of that order. But “as he looks up in search for the eternal order, all human things and all human concerns reveal themselves to him in all clarity as paltry and ephemeral.” As a result, the philosopher is relatively indifferent to human weal or woe; his attachment to human beings is weakened by his attachment to eternal beings.27 This is not, however, a fault on the part of the seeker of wisdom. Strauss emphasizes how the philosopher’s detachment makes him immune to those greedy and rivalrous passions that drive communities apart. Because of this the philosopher will not be inclined to hurt anyone; indeed he will go beyond the negative responsibility to do no harm, and will try to mitigate, as much as he can, the evils that are part of the human condition. Given his detachment, though, it is not at all clear why the philosopher would be inclined to do this.28 The philosopher helps the city by giving advice to those who hold political power. No better advice could be received by political leaders, because, conscious of his progress in the quest for knowledge of the eternal order, the philosopher is entirely without ambition in the realm of human affairs; his self-admiration “does not need to be confirmed by the admiration of others in order to be reasonable.” Despite this self-sufficiency, the philosopher cannot help being attracted to those well-ordered souls who reflect the eternal order he seeks. And since the well-ordered soul would be one that is inclined toward philosophizing, “the philosopher therefore has the urge to educate potential philosophers.” Here the philosopher invites conflict with the city. Compelled to go into the marketplace in search of potential philosophers, 27. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 198, 200. The philosopher’s detachment is not absolute. Strauss acknowledges that philosophers will be attached to some degree to their families and to their cities, but especially to those rare souls who are either philosophers or potential philosophers. 28. Victor Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics, II,” 308.

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this lover of wisdom will be viewed with suspicion by the many who have no aptitude for philosophy, and who resent what they view as the philosopher’s corruption of the most promising young people. The philosopher is forced, then, to defend philosophy before the city by influencing its rulers. This is done through the practice of “philosophic politics,” designed to prove to the doubtful that philosophers are good citizens who are in no way subversive and that they reverence and hold sacred the laws and traditions of the city. The moderation of the philosopher consists in performing this task of mediation well. The city must be placated and the philosophical life must be preserved.29 Compared to the healthy influence exercised on politics by the admirably disinterested philosopher, the motivation of the political leader seems positively selfish. Of the political man in contrast to the philosopher, Strauss points out, He could not devote himself to his work with all his heart or without reservation if he did not attach absolute importance to man and to human things. He must “care” for human beings as such. He is essentially attached to human beings. This attachment is at the bottom of his desire to rule human beings, or of his ambition. But to rule human beings means to serve them. Certainly an attachment to beings which prompts one to serve them may well be called love of them. Attachment to human beings is not peculiar to the ruler; it is characteristic of all men as mere men. The difference between the political man and the private man is that in the case of the former, the attachment enervates all private concerns; the political man is consumed by erotic desire, not for this or that human being . . . but for the large multitude, for the demos, and in principle for all human beings. But erotic desire craves reciprocity: the political man desires to be loved by all his subjects. The political man is characterized by the concern with being loved by all human beings regardless of their quality.

Attachment to human beings is at the root of the political man’s ambition, rather than ambition being understood as the cause of attachment. This is important, because when Strauss then goes on to say the political man’s attachment to people may be described as love, it follows that love would be at the root of this ambition. Strauss then rather easily glides from calling this attachment love to referring to it as an erotic desire, a “craving” for recognition from the crowd. Of course, this is perfectly consistent with what he says about the nature of love as inherently self-seeking and as driven to benefit others by the need to receive benefits in return. The philosopher, entirely free of such desire, stands in stark contrast to the political man consumed by the need for 29. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 201, 203–5.

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recognition, a need that will not subside until all, no matter how insignificant, have granted their recognition. The love characteristic of the political man is fundamentally mercenary and self-centered.30 If Strauss’s analysis of love is correct, it is easy to understand why the line separating the greatest benefactors from the greatest tyrants is very thin. Failing to win recognition by providing benefits, the political man may resort to whatever means are necessary to achieve his ends. What began with acts of charity designed to win the people’s praise may eventually lead to actions that are far from charitable. This insight may help to explain Strauss’s horror at the thought of modernity’s eventual culmination in the realization of the “universal and homogeneous state,” an end he sees as inevitable given the forces propelling the modern project. “We are now brought face to face,” Strauss asserts, “with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to ‘the conquest of nature’ and in particular of human nature, what no earlier tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal.”31 What Strauss has in mind is the vision of the contemporary world articulated by Kojève. Drawing on Hegel, Kojève argues that, given the limitless nature of the desire for recognition, a human being wishes “to be effectively ‘recognized’ by all of those whom he considers capable and hence worthy of ‘recognizing’ him.” In the case of a political leader, this will include the leaders and peoples of other states, who demonstrate their worthiness by their very ability to maintain their independence from him. Those who submit to him already grant him recognition; but over those who resist he will try to extend his authority in order to force their recognition. In the final analysis, “the head of State will be fully ‘satisfied’ only when his State encompasses the whole of mankind.” But once the universal state is achieved, the leader will be interested in gaining genuine recognition from all, rather than mere servile obedience. He will therefore attempt to raise the economic, social, cultural, and even political levels of participation of the people to the highest degree possible. This leads Kojève to the following conclusion: “The political man, acting consciously in terms of the desire for ‘recognition’ . . . will be fully ‘satisfied’ only when he is at the head of a State that is not only universal but also politically and socially homogeneous . . . that is to say of a State that is the goal and the outcome of the collective labor of all and of each.” For Kojève the universal character of the state is due to the historical influence of both classical philosophy and the Bible; but its homogeneous character is attributable to the Bible alone, especially as mediated historically through the Hebrew prophets and Paul.32 30. Ibid., 198, 202. 31. Strauss, On Tyranny, 27. 32. Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” 145–46, 171–72.

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My purpose in describing Kojève’s position is not to take sides with him against Strauss. It is entirely possible to share Strauss’s resistance to Kojève’s vision of the end of history while still disagreeing with Strauss’s reasons for doing so and with the alternatives he proposes. My point is that despite his strenuous disagreement with Kojève as to the desirability of and justification for the universal and homogeneous state, Strauss does not disagree that such is the outcome of modernity. Nor does he dispute Kojève on the issue of the biblical origin of the modern horizon. Strauss criticizes Kojève on other grounds. First, he notes how Kojève assumes the universal and homogeneous state to be the best social order. He questions whether the best society is one in which every human being is fully satisfied in having his human dignity universally recognized, and one in which there is equality of opportunity for all. In Kojève’s vision, citizens of this state will work as little as possible because nature will have been conquered, and war will cease because all are now members of one political community. Strauss wonders whether this is a desirable goal, since by Kojève’s own admission it is genuine work and participation in bloody political struggle that raises humans above other animals. The end of history means the loss of our humanity; “it is the state of Nietzsche’s ‘last man’.” But perhaps this condition of ease and placidity will provide people with the opportunity to spend more time exercising their capacity to think. Kojève and Strauss agree that human beings are rational creatures. Free of other concerns, they would be able to give themselves more fully to the life of the mind. Strauss, however, remains unconvinced. In the final analysis, he considers the universal and homogeneous state to be contrary to nature: “If the final state is to satisfy the deepest longing of the human soul, every human being must be capable of becoming wise. The most relevant difference among human beings must have practically disappeared. We understand now why Kojève is so anxious to refute the classical view according to which only a minority of men are capable of the quest for wisdom.” By nature, not all are capable of becoming wise, so the coming state will never be able to fully satisfy its people. It is therefore impossible to recognize all others as equal with regard to the highest human activity. But where this recognition is lacking, inequality persists, and the state is not truly universal and homogeneous. The modern solution has been to create the conditions for universal recognition by lowering the standards on which recognition is based: “The classical solution supplies a stable standard by which to judge of any actual order. The modern solution eventually destroys the very idea of a standard that is independent of actual situations.”33 33. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 208, 210–11.

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The consequences Strauss draws from this scenario are bleak. In the universal and homogeneous state few, if any, will be wise, and neither they nor the philosophers will desire to rule. The leader of the state will, therefore, not be wise. To retain power, this “Universal and Final Tyrant” will suppress any movement or any kind of thought that calls into question the validity and goodness of the universal and homogeneous state. Of course, the life of inquiry that is philosophy will be a particular target of criticism, so philosophers will, as they have throughout history, be forced to defend themselves before the political community by acting upon the tyrant. But this attempt takes place in a context shaped by the modern abolition of relevant differences. By making philosophy a matter for public consumption and by placing it in the service of propaganda, Machiavelli’s revolution has created the conditions where anyone can claim the mantle of philosopher. The Final Tyrant styles himself a philosopher, and claims to be persecuting not philosophy, but only false philosophies. In the past, philosophers were able to survive by going underground, and by writing in a way that appeared to accommodate the ruler’s concerns while simultaneously conveying their true teaching to those few capable of understanding. But there is no escape in the universal and homogeneous state: “Thanks to the conquest of nature and to the completely unabashed substitution of suspicion and terror for law, the Universal and Final Tyrant has at his disposal practically unlimited means for ferreting out, and for extinguishing, the most modest efforts in the direction of thought. Kojève would seem to be right although for the wrong reason: the coming of the universal and homogeneous state will be the end of philosophy on earth.”34 With this chilling vision of a future society we may appear to have wandered from our discussion of the Bible and modernity. But such is not the case. Strauss’s indictment of the universal and homogeneous state is the capstone of his indictment of modernity, and indirectly, of those elements out of which the modern world has been formed. The Bible, of course, figures significantly as a source of the modern. Strauss speaks of the differences between classical and modern tyranny: “Present day tyranny, in contradistinction to classical tyranny, is based on the unlimited progress in the ‘conquest of nature’ which is made possible by modern science, as well as the popularization or diffusion of philosophic or scientific knowledge.”35 The classical authors were aware of these possibilities, but rejected them as unnatural. Modernity, by contrast, adopts this unnatural posture. Recalling our earlier discussion, it is easy 34. Ibid., 211. 35. Ibid., 178.

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enough to pinpoint the source of this aberration. Is it not the priority given to the extreme, unnatural virtue of charity? And is not the conquest of nature (including human nature in the universal and homogeneous state) primarily undertaken with an eye toward “the relief of man’s estate”? Despite the misuse to which technology has been put, there is no question that a good part of its development and use in the modern West has as its aim the alleviation of human suffering. To the extent that the Bible has contributed to the recognition of victims and the responsibility to address their plight, it lies at the basis of these efforts. While Strauss is not against redressing the suffering of humanity, he seems far more concerned with the abuses that can attend the spread of technological innovation in the areas of control and manipulation. Because of this, he adopts an approach that strikes at what he perceives to be the root of the problem, “the triumph of the biblical orientation.” This involves a sustained criticism of charity and its effects. Strauss never accuses the Bible directly, but the cumulative effect of his presentation in On Tyranny and elsewhere is to establish a strong association, if not a relationship of direct causation, between the Bible’s teaching and the worst features of the modern world. It remains to consider other possible reasons for Strauss’s fears concerning modernity. Two comments in On Tyranny suggest much about the source of his fears. Criticizing Kojève’s overly optimistic depiction of the universal and homogeneous state, Strauss observes how Kojève’s vision of harmony presupposes a society in which all behave reasonably. Strauss finds this assumption highly questionable, and he asks whether Kojève has underestimated the power of the passions. The other comment occurs in the context of Strauss’s criticism of Kojève for his uncritical appropriation of Hegel. In Strauss’s view, Hegel radicalized the modern tradition ushered in by Machiavelli and Hobbes, and thereby further emancipated the passions. All three of these modern thinkers “construct human society by starting from the untrue assumption that man as man is thinkable as a being that lacks awareness of sacred restraints or as a being that is guided by nothing but a desire for recognition.”36 With his reference to an “awareness of sacred restraints,” Strauss alludes to the role played by religion in setting limits to the passions. His preoccupation with the Bible as divine law can therefore be at least partially explained as an attempt to reawaken an appreciation of a socially effective antidote to the excesses wrought by the modern emancipation of the passions. Related to Strauss’s worries about the power of the passions in modern society is his deep unease about the loss of social differentiation. According to Strauss, “It is a demand 36. Ibid., 192, 207.

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of justice that there should be a reasonable correspondence between the social hierarchy and the natural hierarchy.”37 Some critics dismiss his elitism and his emphasis on natural distinctions among human beings either as snobbery or, even worse, as an argument for tyrannical rule by the wise. In fact, what Strauss understands is the relationship between the breakdown of “natural” hierarchies and the consequent increase in the possibility of rivalry and conflict. Where all are considered politically equal, there is no longer any basis for the requirement to defer to one’s “superiors.” Each person in society is now a potential rival, and the stability of a social situation thus constituted is precarious. Strauss also understands how biblical ideas about charity and equality contribute to this state of affairs. By eroding important distinctions, such as those between philosophers and nonphilosophers, biblical ideas about the equality of all before God and the moral stance which flows from these ideas blur the difference between the wise and the unwise. When this distinction is lost, society suffers as a result of its being deprived of the guidance of those devoted to (and capable of) the pursuit of wisdom. In addition, when ideas about equality permeate a culture, it may lead, as it has in the modern West, to the popularization of philosophy. In either case, whether political power is deprived of philosophical guidance or the people believe themselves to be wise, Strauss sees cause for alarm in a situation where passions have been liberated and the masses rule. These concerns on Strauss’s part help to explain his apparent preference for what he refers to as the classical idea of the “closed society”: Classical political philosophy opposes to the universal and homogeneous state a substantive principle. It asserts that the society natural to man is the city, that is, a closed society that can well be taken in one view or that corresponds to man’s natural . . . power of perception. Less literally and more importantly, it asserts that every political society that ever has been or ever will be rests on a particular fundamental opinion which cannot be replaced by knowledge and hence is of necessity a particular or particularist society. This state of things imposes duties on the philosopher’s public speech or writing which would not be duties if a rational society were actual or emerging; it thus gives rise to a specific art of writing.38

This is a remarkable passage, which should certainly give pause to those who believe Strauss embraces some transcendent standard as a guide in political life. Society depends on a fundamental opinion, which Strauss insists cannot 37. Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” 21. 38. Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, x.

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be replaced by knowledge. Essentially, society requires a myth by which to live, and the critical task of the philosopher is to publicly support this myth, while writing in such a way as to keep the spirit of philosophy alive among those few capable of understanding. Again we are reminded of Strauss’s extolling of “Socratic rhetoric” over and against the “propaganda” that is part of the biblical legacy. Also striking is how Strauss explicitly juxtaposes this classical vision to that ghastly descendant of the Bible, the “universal and homogeneous state.”39 Strauss’s fears concerning the advent of such a state manifest themselves in his consistent downplaying of the universalizing tendencies within the biblical tradition. As discussed in earlier chapters, the Bible, for Strauss, is essentially a reflection of one community’s exaltation of its particular, ancestral divine code. A heroic, long-suffering people serving a majestic, inscrutable God in obedience to the Law—these are the salient features in Strauss’s account of biblical origins. He disparages “the view of ‘Jewish universalism’ held by a certain liberalism” and criticizes those who argue that Jewish involvement in modern culture “derives from the classical universalism of Judaism.”40 In line with this criticism is a corresponding neglect of the Bible’s prophetic-messianic strain, which Strauss tends to associate with modern notions of universalism and progress.41 In response to the question whether the messianic hope for redemption indicates a higher regard for the future than for the past, however venerable, Strauss contends that, “according to the most accepted view, the Messiah is inferior to Moses.” The messianic future will in fact be a return to the past, to the full practice of the Torah. In “Progress or Return?” he further specifies what he means: “Judaism is a concern with return; it is not a concern with progress. ‘Return’ can easily be expressed in biblical Hebrew; ‘progress’ cannot.”42 For Strauss the notion of return presupposes the Bible’s affirmation of a perfect beginning from which humankind declines, whereas the idea of progress looks back to a barbarous beginning that humankind will overcome through its own efforts. But these are certainly not the only alternatives. Here Strauss’s 39. Clark A. Merrill argues that Strauss sees the modern ideologies culminating in the rule of the Final Tyrant as the “natural child of Christianity.” Merrill also believes that Strauss holds Christian scholasticism responsible for the rejection of classical philosophy and the move toward modernity. See Merrill, “Leo Strauss’s Indictment of Christian Philosophy,” 94–96. 40. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” 107–8; Strauss, review of Contemporary Religious Thinkers, by Albert Levkowitz, 107. 41. See Grant Havers, “Romanticism and Universalism: The Case of Leo Strauss,” 155–67. 42. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 88. The accompanying footnote to this statement holds the “most accepted view,” in Strauss’s opinion, to be that of Maimonides. Whether Maimonides’ is in fact the most accepted view on this question and whether Strauss’s is the most accepted view of Maimonides are relevant questions.

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omissions are as telling as his examples. Considering that he is concerned to understand the roots of tradition, it is noteworthy that he chooses to invoke only the “perfect beginning” of the early chapters of Genesis. If his goal is to get back to the most primordial layers of Jewish self-understanding, he would be on firmer ground by starting with the liberating events of the Exodus, events considered to be constitutive of Israel’s existence as a people. Even his reminder about the messianic future’s being a return to full practice of the Torah is more appropriately associated with the giving of the Law at Sinai than as a reference to the primordial history of Genesis. God frees Israel for service—the events of Exodus are the basis for Israel’s adherence to the Torah.43 By establishing the contrast as he does between a biblical teaching of a perfect beginning (with “return” as the authentic response) and a modern, progressive view of the past as disorder and imperfection, Strauss diverts our attention from the fact that the position he labels progressive has an equal or perhaps even superior claim to biblical lineage. Contrary to Strauss’s formulation of the question, progress and return are quite compatible when understood in light of the Exodus narrative. Taking the Exodus as a paradigm, we find that in the beginning there was the house of bondage, the place of oppression, and that history, as redeemed by God, is a movement away from this condition toward a future of peace and well-being, as Michael Walzer explains: For the movement from beginning to end is the key to the historical importance of the Exodus story. The strength of the narrative is given by the end, though it is also crucial that the end be present at the beginning, as an aspiration, a hope, a promise. What is promised is radically different from what is: the end is nothing like the beginning. . . . God’s promise generates a sense of possibility. . . . The world is not all Egypt. Without that sense of possibility, oppression would be experienced as an inescapable condition, a matter of personal or collective bad luck, a stroke of fate. . . . Much of the moral code of the Torah is explained and defended in opposition to Egyptian cruelty. . . . The new regime is defined by contrast with the old. Not only this new regime, the commonwealth founded by Moses: in an important sense, the language of revolutionary politics generally (and of religious messianism, too) is first developed and deployed here. Oppression takes on the moral significance it has had in the Judeo-Christian world ever since.44

The direct line from the paradigmatic liberation depicted in Exodus to the modern concern for “the relief of man’s estate” that underpins much of “progressive” politics is a dimension of the biblical story that Strauss, for the most 43. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, 143. 44. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 11, 21, 24.

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part, disregards. Much like Voegelin, he is unsettled by the uses to which modern zealots have put such biblical language.45 If these are indeed Strauss’s concerns with regard to the legacy of the Bible, we must come to terms with the fact that Strauss nonetheless defends the option for Jerusalem in the modern world. On one level he seems to do so out of a sense of respect for and loyalty to his Jewish heritage. From the days of his earliest Zionist writings, Strauss never takes the easy way out by separating the religious meaning of Jewish life from its cultural and sociological aspects. He honestly confronts the fact that at the basis of the formation of the Jewish people is a claim about having been brought into existence through the gracious will of God. Strauss is of the opinion that even for those who are incapable of believing this, due consideration must be given to the fact that this belief is at the root of Jewish tradition. Even if Strauss himself comes to see Judaism as a “heroic delusion,” he encourages those who do not believe to “enter into this mysterious belief,” confident that those who do so will come away with some understanding they did not have before.46 This is entirely consistent with his commitment to live out the tension between Jerusalem and Athens. It can also be fairly said that he defends the choice for Jerusalem with the aims of political philosophy in mind. Clearly he has little interest in biblical theology or exegesis apart from its role in delineating the starkness of the contrast between the ways of life represented by philosophy and by revelation. Nor is he, as a philosopher, interested in the recovery of experiences of transcendence, as is Voegelin. But since the majority of people in society will never be capable of philosophy, and because the unity of the city requires at least some salutary and fundamental opinions, the choice for Jerusalem is worth defending. Strauss thinks those aspects of biblical morality that focus on law and prohibitions are 45. I believe these concerns lie at the heart of Strauss’s criticism of Hermann Cohen, and clearly there is a sense in which Strauss understands himself as contending with Cohen over the fundamental meaning of the biblical heritage. He rejects Cohen’s claim that the patriotism of the prophets is at bottom nothing but universalism. From Strauss’s perspective, Cohen naively blends Israelite prophecy with modern humanitarianism. Commenting on Cohen’s criticism of Spinoza, Strauss notes how Cohen views as a satanic notion the idea that Judaism’s goal is the establishment of a Jewish state. Strauss then goes on to add that “he [Cohen] certainly would not have considered it satanic but divine if someone said that the sole end of the religion of Judaism is the establishment and preservation of the socialist state.” Strauss does not consider that Cohen may be in fact closer to the core of Jewish tradition than he is himself, to the extent that Cohen grasps the importance of the Bible’s antisacrificial, antimythological message and its relationship to modern efforts in behalf of social justice. See Leo Strauss, “Introductory Essay to Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism,” 277; “On the Argument with European Science,” 112–13; and “Cohen’s Analysis,” 144, 156–57. 46. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 327–28, 345.

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to be preserved and fostered as a guide for those who are not capable of the philosophical life. In the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves, any belief that helps men and women refrain from violence and follow the stabilizing customs and traditions of society should not be explicitly undermined. But those aspects of the biblical tradition that have helped to constitute modernity must be challenged, contained, and if possible, undone. A direct attack on the Bible would, of course, be unwise, since it is the source of the major religious narratives of the modern West, and the weakening of religious belief among the many is detrimental to the stability of society. But in the modern context of a Western society structured by the triumph of the biblical orientation, no synthesis between Athens and Jerusalem is possible, since Strauss thinks every attempted synthesis is in fact a subordination of one city to the other. A synthesis of the classical and the biblical would poison the classical well and lead to the destruction of philosophy.47 In a situation in which the biblical orientation has gained the upper hand, its salutary aspects must be preserved, that is, those beneficial to social stability; while those that contribute to the dangerous tendencies of modernity must be resisted. The teaching of the Bible must be presented in a way that eliminates any possibility of its being understood as compatible with philosophy, and every effort must be expended to restore the true meaning of philosophy after its captivity by a biblical tradition that sees charity and righteousness as higher than contemplation. This requires all the skill a thoughtful political philosopher can muster. Strauss insists on preserving the tension between Athens and Jerusalem not because he sees them as possessing equally valid claims to guide civilization, but because modernity represents the triumph of Jerusalem, a triumph that must be offset as much as possible by the revival of classical wisdom.

47. According to Merrill, this is precisely what occurs in Christian scholasticism, in Strauss’s opinion.

Conclusion The Bible, Philosophy, and Violence

When we consider the ambivalence with which Strauss and Voegelin approach the legacy of the Bible, we are also led to consider questions concerning the role of violence in society. As political philosophers, the two thinkers are preoccupied with questions of order and disorder, and despite their invocations of the classical past of philosophy, the violent present of modern times is the ever-present backdrop of their thought. Even when it is not explicitly invoked (and this is much more the case with Strauss than with Voegelin), the problem of human violence remains a preoccupation with both men. Whether we have in mind the persecutory “universal and homogeneous state” so dreaded by Strauss, or the apocalyptic destructiveness wrought by metastatic thinkers as envisioned by Voegelin, the ideas of both men tie the violence of the contemporary world in some degree to the historical influence of the biblical text. One would be hard pressed to find in their work a similar wariness with regard to philosophy. In this concluding chapter I wish to explore these questions. This will involve treating the theme of violence in a more explicit way than I have up to this point. To do so I will draw upon the ideas of René Girard, whose work on the role of violence in the founding and formation of cultures is widely regarded as one of the major theoretical approaches to these issues. Girard has carefully explained the relationship between human desire, violence, and the place of scapegoating in the origins of society. He has also focused extensively on the ways in which the biblical text calls into question the legitimacy of scapegoating violence. Having introduced Girard’s theory, I will then consider the work of Strauss and Voegelin in its light. This will bring us back to the question with

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which this volume began—whether philosophy is capable of fully understanding the meaning of the Bible.

The Theory of René Girard Girard comes to the Bible as an anthropologist of religion, not as a theologian. This point bears emphasis, because his claims about the Bible are made on the basis of an anthropological reading of the text. As a scholar he approaches the Bible without making any assumptions regarding the veracity of its theological claims. Girard acknowledges the indirect consequences of his work for theology, but he insists his theory is primarily concerned with a biblically inspired breakthrough in the social sciences. He argues strongly that the Bible, as a text available to anyone regardless of their religious commitment, discloses a distinctive anthropological perspective, accessible to all people, which brings to light essential insights into the workings of culture in a way in which other texts do not. It would be misleading, then, to characterize the difference between Strauss and Voegelin, on the one hand, and Girard, on the other, as a difference between those who come to the Bible from the perspective of philosophy and those who do so from the perspective of faith.1 Like Strauss and Voegelin, Girard is a thinker who is dissatisfied with much of what passes for theory in the human and social sciences, and he is very much interested in working out a proper “scientific” framework to address the important issues arising in these disciplines. Most important from the perspective of this study, though, is the conviction he shares with Strauss and Voegelin that in developing such a science, the Bible must be taken into account. Much hinges on how the biblical text is interpreted. In attempting to answer this question it is certainly relevant to ask how much of the text a thinker’s hypothesis is able to explain. For an author’s interpretation to work, must significant aspects of the Bible be ignored? To what extent does the thinker under consideration allow the biblical text to disclose its own intelligibility, rather than coming to the text with questions alien to the Bible’s self-understanding? Do his or her insights allow for the biblical data to be understood within a comprehensive, synoptic viewpoint, without forcing the data into an artificial pattern? The test of a theory is its explanatory power. On this count Girard’s theory is particularly strong. His fundamental insights not only discern a comprehensive 1. René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 190–92; René Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, 45, 211.

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intelligibility in the biblical text, they also help to explain an enormously wide range of cultural, social, and political phenomena. A Girardian perspective is also able to account for development within the biblical text, especially with regard to the gradual recognition and exposure of the scapegoating mechanism in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. His theory also does justice to all biblical genres; it is capable of explaining the importance of sacrifice, ritual, and law, while simultaneously understanding their relationship to prophecy and wisdom literature. Perhaps most importantly, Girard starts from what is of central importance to the biblical authors themselves. For example, while Strauss ignores the New Testament and Voegelin gives a highly selective reading, Girard takes that which is at the heart of the evangelists’ narratives— the Passion accounts—as his primary focus. To critique Strauss and Voegelin in light of Girard’s thought is not to impose an arbitrary or ill-fitting grid on their philosophies. It is to apply the insights of an equally masterful reader of texts to questions raised by Strauss and Voegelin, and to consider whether these insights explain the texts in a way that supplements, fulfills, or challenges their interpretation and goals. What immediately strikes one about Girard’s theory in comparison to the philosophies of Strauss and Voegelin is his explicit treatment of and preoccupation with the theme of violence. In what is perhaps his most well-known work, Violence and the Sacred, Girard explores the role of violence in the origins of religion and culture. For Girard, humans are beings who are largely constituted by what he refers to as mimetic (or borrowed) desire. Mimetic desire operates not primarily in a direct linear fashion (for example, “I want that toy.”) but triangularly (“I see you want that toy; now I do too.”). Desire is characterized as mimetic because we tend to “desire according to the desire of the other.” The reason Girard prefers the term mimesis to imitation is that it avoids the connotation associated with the latter term as designating mere copying. Mimesis is more than simply acting as someone else does; it also “involves the less recognizable ways in which we are constituted as human beings by receiving physical being, a sense of being, gestures, memory, language and consciousness.” Mimesis evokes desire and desire structures mimesis. Human beings are not primarily individuals who have desires, but persons who, in a quite real sense, are their desires. As James Alison argues, “Since the ‘me’ of each one of us is founded by desire, we cannot say that desire is our own, as though it belonged to some preexistent ‘me.’ The ‘me’ is radically dependent on the desires whose imitation formed it. This means there is no ‘real me’ at the bottom of it all, when I’ve scraped away all the things I’ve learned, all the influences I’ve undergone.”2 2. Alison, Joy of Being Wrong, 12, 30–31.

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Our capacity for mimesis is the basis for our capacity to learn, to develop, and to be open to others. Girard insists that mimetic desire, properly understood, is intrinsically good: “It can be murderous, it is rivalrous, but it is also the basis of heroism, and devotion to others, and everything.” So while there is nothing inherently bad or destructive about mimetic desire, it can become so when two or more people desire the same object. Such a situation can rapidly degenerate into violent conflict, a conflict that is eminently contagious, given the mimetic character of desire. As mimetic contagion spreads, the condition of society deteriorates rapidly, rent by division and violence. The ensuing chaos is brought to an end by the group’s selection of a victim who is identified as the cause of the present crisis. The choice of the victim is usually not entirely random: “If we look at myths, we will see that the victims are too often chosen among physically challenged people or foreigners to be a purely random event: these ‘preferential signs’ increase the possibilities of being selected as a scapegoat. It is very clear in Isaiah, in the ‘Servant of Jahweh.’ . . . Preferential signs of victimization are given as reasons for victimizing this person. . . . Infirmities, or unpleasant traits, are mistaken for guilt.” With the collective murder or expulsion of this scapegoat, peace is (at least temporarily) restored. Social stability is purchased at the expense of the victim. This mechanism works as long as the perpetrators do not recognize or take responsibility for their role in the violent deed: “The mechanism of the creation and maintenance of social order by means of the expulsion of the arbitrarily chosen victim depends for its success on the blindness of the participants as to what is really going on: they have to believe in the guilt or dangerous nature of the one expelled.”3 In this sense, scapegoating rests upon a fundamental lie. As the action of scapegoating brings order out of chaos, so religion, which commemorates and reenacts the primordial deed, lies at the basis of culture. Religion arises as the “cover story” through which the dispatching of the victim is both justified and hidden from view. It is produced by “the collective transference against a victim who is first reviled and then sacralized.”4 The scapegoat who is initially blamed for the community’s troubles becomes the “savior” of the community as a result of his or her peace-producing death. At the earliest levels of cultural formation, a community’s victims are transfigured into divinities, divinities who often display a twofold character as sowers of discord and bringers of peace, corresponding to the community’s ambivalence toward its original victims as both the source of and remedy for its ills. The “primitive or 3. René Girard, The Girard Reader, 64; Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 68; Alison, Joy of Being Wrong, 10. 4. Girard, Girard Reader, 174.

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archaic sacred” is nothing other than the scapegoating community’s violence, which is worshipped by its beneficiaries. For Girard, then, the beginnings of religion and culture are inextricably intertwined, and religion can properly be said to be at the origin of culture. Archaic religion is the institution that recalls the founding violence in myth and ritual. It thereby legitimates a particular form of violence as the antidote to the ever-present danger of a relapse into a more primordial chaos. Gil Bailie argues that the famous distinction between “sacred” and “profane” is born as the culture glorifies the decisive violence (sacred) that brought an episode of chaotic violence (profane) to an end. . . . Distinguishing these two forms of violence is always an extremely arbitrary affair, but that does not keep the distinction from having beneficial effects. Religion makes possible these benefits by bestowing sacred status on a socially tolerable form of violence to which the culture can resort as an alternative to greater and more catastrophic violence.

The origins of cultural, social, and political distinctions can be traced back to the fundamental distinction between the “good,” sacred violence that brings unity and peace, and the “bad,” profane violence resulting in chaos. Therefore, certain kinds of violence are granted legitimacy in the interests of preserving civilization, while illegitimate violence is banned. Social order depends upon the recognition and acceptance of these differences; this is why the erosion of “proper” distinctions and the resulting loss of social differentiation are usually perceived as a dangerous threat to the community. Therefore the presence of an accepted system of distinctions is essential to social stability; where the hierarchies and ordering divisions within a society begin to unravel, disorder looms. Part of Girard’s achievement has been to show how many of our cultural distinctions can be traced back to frequently unacknowledged assumptions about legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence.5 Myths play a tremendously important role in religion and culture by disguising the originating violence from which they emerge. To the extent that myths are able to hide from view this collective murder, they often represent a later stage of development, one beyond the ritualized sacrifice and prohibitions in which the victimage mechanism is more easily detected. While myths reflect the scapegoating mechanism, one rarely finds in myth an explicit theme of scapegoating, identifying the innocent victim as such. In Girard’s view, this is a point that is often overlooked by those who study myth: “Myths, they would 5. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, 6; Girard, Girard Reader, 106–17.

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say, are not about scapegoating because they don’t talk about it. But that’s just the point: they don’t talk about it; they disguise their generative center.” This is a tremendously important point for understanding Girard’s thought. The absence of explicit violence within a text may very well be an indication of its being under the sway of that violence; conversely, texts in which violence is apparent (such as many in the Bible) may in fact testify to a community’s dawning awareness of its own scapegoating practices. Scapegoating only works when its victims are understood to be the real cause of the problems besetting the community. The innocence of the victims must remain unacknowledged if scapegoating is to have its desired results: A scapegoat effect that can be acknowledged as such by the scapegoaters is no longer effective; it is no longer a scapegoat effect. The victim must be perceived as truly responsible for the troubles that come to an end when it is collectively put to death. . . . An arbitrary victim would not reconcile a disturbed community if its members realized they are dupes of a mimetic effect. I must insist on this aspect because it is crucial and often misunderstood. The mythic systems of representation obliterate the scapegoating on which they are founded, and they remain dependent on this obliteration. Scapegoating has never been conceived by anyone as an activity in which he himself participates and may still be participating even as he denounces the scapegoating of others.

Since the scapegoating mechanism is usually not explicit in the mythic text, the interpreter must rely on indirect clues, or what Girard calls “stereotypes of persecution.” There are three stereotypes underlying the structure of many mythical accounts of collective violence: a crisis in which social order is threatened and social distinctions unravel; accusations (often of the most repulsive kind) being made against victims onto whom are transferred the alleged crimes that have caused the social upheaval; and the presence of a person with the previously mentioned typical signs of the victim, such as being deformed, marginal, or foreign. These stereotypes are not always found to be equally present in a given text, and depending on the sophistication of the myth they may be especially well hidden. Girard finds in the Oedipus myth a classic example of this phenomenon: The Oedipus myth does not tell us that Oedipus is a mimetic scapegoat. Far from disproving my theory, this silence confirms it as long as it is surrounded by the telltale signs of scapegoating as, indeed, it is. The myth reflects the standpoint of the scapegoaters, who really believe their victim to be responsible for the plague in their midst, and they connect that responsibility with

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anti-natural acts, horrendous transgressions that signify the total destruction of the social order. All the themes of the story suggest we must be dealing with the type of delusion that has always surrounded and still surrounds victimage by mobs on the rampage. In the Middle Ages, for instance, when the Jews were accused of spreading the plague during the period of the Black Death, they were also accused of unnatural crimes à la Oedipus.

While victimage is still clearly present in modern society, Girard notes that the sacrificial means by which earlier societies sustained their social order have become less and less efficacious in bringing about a condition of peace. But as the victimage mechanism loses its effectiveness, we tend to find more, rather than fewer victims; “as in the case of drugs, consumers of sacrifice tend to increase the doses when the effect becomes more difficult to achieve.”6 With the breakdown of religious ritual and prohibition, people are no longer able to trust so readily in the distinction between good (sacred) and bad (profane) violence. When the sacrificial mechanism begins to fail, the previously unquestioned guilt of the victim begins to be challenged. Where the scapegoating mechanism ceases to have its salutary effects there develops, then, a dual movement of escalating violence accompanied by an increasing sympathy for victims. This is precisely the paradox of modernity, a period marked by unparalleled destruction of human life as well as an ever-widening concern for history’s victims. According to Girard, the reason for these developments, that is, the loss of efficacy of the scapegoating mechanism and the concomitant recognition of the innocence of the victim, can be attributed to “the presence of the biblical text in our midst.” The Bible exhibits a strong tendency to side with victims; and while its earlier strata still contain traces of collective violence, on the whole it is remarkable for its gradual unveiling and rejection of the sacrificial mechanism at the foundation of culture. Because of this, once the biblical message is introduced into a culture it begins to subvert the order established on the basis of violence. Taking the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis as an example, Girard points to the violent expulsion of Joseph by his brothers as an act of “vengeful consensus,” and observes how “the biblical text rejects that perspective and sees Joseph as an innocent scapegoat, a victim of his brothers’ jealousy, the biblical formulation of our mimetic desire.” By contrast, however much Sophocles may sympathize with Oedipus, it remains the case that Oedipus is guilty: “The myth always asks the question, ‘Is he guilty?’ and provides the answer: ‘Yes’. Jocasta and Laios are right to expel Oedipus, since he will 6. Girard, Girard Reader, 14–15, 17, 267.

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commit parricide and incest. Yes, Thebes is right to do the same, since Oedipus has committed parricide and incest. . . . In the case of Joseph, everything works in reverse. The hero is wrongly accused. . . . I think there is a fundamental opposition between biblical texts and myths.” The truth of the biblical text lies in “the denial of myths, which are the source of the lie, since they always confirm the scapegoat mechanism, and in so doing cover it up.” Throughout the Bible, “the collective violence that constitutes the hidden infrastructure of all mythology begins to emerge, and it emerges as unjustified or arbitrary.” Unlike Romulus, the fratricide whose deed is justified because it leads to the greatness of Rome, the Bible insists that Cain, the founder of the first city, is a murderer. In the Exodus, God acts to rescue slaves from an oppressive order invested with sacred status; the binding of Isaac makes clear that God does not want the sacrifice of the innocent, the prophets intervene in the name of God in behalf of those most likely to serve as society’s scapegoats, and the Psalms and the book of Job give eloquent, powerful expression to the voices of victims. Torah, Prophets, and Writings all testify to the Bible’s ongoing revelation of the scapegoating mechanism.7 The Gospels, in Girard’s view, bring this biblical revelation to its completion. They “denounce the founding violence as an evil that should be renounced” and “portray this violence as the vulgar scapegoat phenomenon that it is, the fruit of mimetic contagion.” The Gospels differ from myth in that “the same scapegoating that myth misunderstands and therefore reveres as sacred truth, the Gospels understand and denounce as the lie that it really is.” This Gospel proclamation appears most starkly and definitively in the Passion narratives. There, the biblical recognition of God’s identification with the victim reaches its apex. Commenting on the reaction of Jesus’s disciples to his crucifixion, Girard notes that they saw it as a unique event, a single, unique event in world history. It is indeed unique as revelation but not as a violent event. The earliest followers of Jesus did not make that mistake. They knew, or intuited, that in one sense it was like all other events of victimization “since the foundation of the world.” But it was different in that it revealed the meaning of these events going back to the beginnings of humanity: the victimization occurs because of mimetic rivalry, the victim is innocent, and God stands with the victim and restores him or her.

7. Girard, Girard Reader, 17, 151–52; Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 200; René Girard, “The Myth of Oedipus, the Truth of Joseph,” 108, 112. See also René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, 151–53; Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire; and I See Satan, 109–17.

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From this perspective, it is one of the great ironies in the history of interpretation that the Passion narratives, with their radical rejection of scapegoating, have often been interpreted in precisely the opposite sense—as somehow approving of the practice of scapegoating. Because the scapegoating mechanism appears in the Gospels, some conclude that they advocate a sacrificial religion. But if the Bible is to effectively expose the sacrificial mechanism at the heart of culture, it must do so from within, through the appearance of similarity: “The event portrayed must indeed be the same or the Gospels would not be able to discredit point by point all the characteristics of mythologies that are also the illusions of the protagonists of the Passion.” With certain qualifications, Girard argues that the Passion accounts portray the nonsacrificial death of Jesus, that the “Christ of the Gospels dies against sacrifice, and through his death, he reveals its nature and origin by making sacrifice unworkable, at least in the long run, and bringing sacrificial culture to an end.”8 It is Girard’s conviction that one of the unfortunate consequences of the sacrificial reading of the Gospels is the development of a “Christendom” whose misunderstanding of its own foundational text enables it to operate out of the same sacrificial, scapegoating horizon as every other culture. The nonsacrificial implications of the Gospels continue, though, to exercise their influence in our midst—acting as a force of disruption against sacrificial structures and increasing our ability to hear the cries of their victims. Before bringing Girard’s insights into conversation with the thought of Strauss and Voegelin, it may be useful to consider his understanding of philosophy. Girard does not consider himself to be a philosopher. While obviously well-versed in the Western philosophical tradition, he does not deal at great length with any particular philosopher—with the exception of Nietzsche. There is a relatively brief but concentrated focus on Heidegger in his Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World and some discussion in Evolution and Conversion.9 Plato is mentioned frequently in Girard’s work, often as an

8. René Girard, The Scapegoat, 101; Girard, Girard Reader, 18, 282. In recent years, Girard has become less insistent about avoiding the use of the word sacrifice to refer to the death of Jesus. If understood as the self-giving love exemplified in Jesus’s life and death, then sacrifice is acceptable, but if taken to mean the kind of ritual sacrifice reflected in myth, then he would still reject its applicability to the Gospels. He now distinguishes between archaic sacrifice, “which turns against a third victim the violence of those who are fighting,” and Christian sacrifice, “which is the renunciation of all egoistic claiming, even to life if needed, in order not to kill.” Evolution and Conversion, 215. 9. Girard, Things Hidden, 263–75; Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 45–47, 253–57. Girard’s treatment of Nietzsche is found in several places: Girard Reader, 243–61; I See Satan, 170–81; “To Double Business Bound,” 61–83; “The Founding Murder in the Philosophy of

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example of the philosophical attitude toward religion and myth. Like Strauss and Voegelin, Girard is very much interested in the social and cultural setting out of which philosophy emerges. From Girard’s perspective, philosophy arises in a context in which there has been deterioration of the scapegoating mechanism as a means to generate and maintain social order. The myths and religious rituals are no longer as effective as they were in the past, and the polis remains mired in a sacrificial crisis. As someone deeply concerned with the order of society, Plato realizes this and looks toward a solution beyond traditional Greek religion and myth. He considers the violence of many Greek myths to be repellent and unworthy of imitation. Girard notes Plato’s uneasiness with regard to mimesis, but Plato is not able to articulate the source of his unease. Girard attributes this (at least in part) to Plato’s seeming lack of awareness of acquisitive mimesis and its relationship to conflict and social disorder. Yet even this incomplete insight does not prevent Plato from recognizing the profound importance of the sacred in the life of the community.10 He may not fully understand the relationship between mimesis, violence, and the sacred, but he possesses a deep sense of the importance of the sacrality of order. His attacks on the poets and on the earlier traditions’ mythical depictions of the gods demonstrate his awareness of the inadequacy of previous myths and traditional religion to sustain culture. Despite the best efforts of Plato and other philosophers to transcend myths that have become embarrassing to them, Girard maintains that “philosophy is the continuation of myth by more sophisticated means.” If myths serve to disguise the collective murder at the basis of society, philosophy is but a further development in the obfuscation of this violence: “What philosophy does by expelling myth is to discard an outmoded vehicle of scapegoating and to reinstate the same process in less violent forms which are invisible once again.” Philosophy represents a new stage in the process of completely eliminating the traces of the scapegoating mechanism, both justifying and disguising the violent foundations of culture. Plato’s ——— Nietzsche,” 227–46; and “Nietzsche and Contradiction,” 27–31. I have written elsewhere on the relationship between Nietzsche and Strauss in light of Girard’s insights; see my “Modernity and the Jewish Question.” 10. “Plato’s hostility toward mimesis is an essential aspect of his work and it should not be seen as confined, as it always is, to his criticism of art. If Plato mistrusts art it is because art is a form of mimesis, and not the reverse. He shares with primitive peoples a terror of mimesis that has yet to be sufficiently explained. . . . Yet Plato is also deceived by mimesis because he cannot succeed in understanding his fear. . . . Plato never relates conflict to acquisitive mimesis. . . . We have little idea of the possibilities for conflict contained in imitation. And neither the primitive prohibition nor Plato gives us any direct explanation of the fear of mimesis.” Girard, Things Hidden, 15, 17.

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purification of earlier Greek theology was a noble attempt to remove any trace of mythological violence. In the absence of the biblical insight into the presence of actual victims behind the mythological text, Plato’s efforts are entirely understandable, but this does not alter the fact that in “cleaning up” the myths he is also further erasing any of the telltale signs of victimization: “From now on gods must be neither criminals nor victims and, because they are not recognized as scapegoats, their acts of violence and criminality—the signs that point to them as victims—including the crisis itself, must be gradually eliminated.” The effect of the “philosopher’s myth” is to purge from the tradition any traces of the connection between divinities and violence. Plato, through the creation of a new kind of culture, is genuinely trying to protect society from the escalating chaos that accompanies the breakdown of the sacrificial system: “The Platonic stage, as opposed to the preceding one, does not culminate in an actual re-creation of the myth, though it is just as fundamental. Another culture is founded, no longer truly mythological but ‘rational’ and ‘philosophical,’ forming the very text of philosophy.” Yet despite his admiration for Plato’s “greatness and depth,” Girard concludes that “Plato, like all Puritans, misses the goal, which is to reveal the mechanism of the victim and the demystification of the representations of persecution.”11 On the verge of insight, philosophy loses its nerve and becomes another screen for the violent sacred. If Girard is correct about philosophy in this regard, then it is not at all surprising that violence rarely appears as the explicit theme of philosophical reflection. Occasionally, though, philosophers have dropped their guard and allowed something of philosophy’s relationship to the violent sacred to emerge. Nietzsche is one of the rare thinkers to have pondered this relationship, but Girard finds similar reflection going on in the thought of Heraclitus and Heidegger. Girard’s most extensive comments on Heidegger occur in the context of his comparison between the logos of Heraclitus and the logos of John.12 The relationship between the two logoi is particularly relevant to our discussion. Girard recognizes the contribution of Heraclitus in establishing logos as a philosophical term meaning “the divine, rational and logical principle according to 11. René Girard, “Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with René Girard,” 19; Girard, Scapegoat, 77, 83. It is not that Plato is entirely without an awareness of the scapegoating mechanism. Girard comments on “an astonishing sentence” in Plato (Republic II, 361b–362a) that describes the fate of the perfectly just man whose pursuit of justice leads to his death at the hands of the community. Girard mentions how Socrates could be said to fit this description, and that in this instance Plato has had a breakthrough with regard to the nature and function of scapegoating. With Plato, however, this remains an isolated insight, and he is unable to effect a full break with the mythological horizon he criticizes. See Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 67–68. 12. Girard, Things Hidden, 263–75.

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which the world is organized.” He also notes that the appearance of the term in the Gospel of John has allowed for the development of a “Christian philosophy” in which the two types of logos are brought together; “Greek philosophers can now be taken as precursors of Johannine thought, somewhat like the Jewish prophets.” Girard believes, however, that this process has led to the obscuring of the differences between a Greek conception of logos and that of the Gospels.13 The logos of Heraclitus, in Girard’s view, reflects the religious crisis of his time: The fifth fragment of Heraclitus quite clearly deals with the decay of sacrificial rites, with their inability to purify what is impure. . . . “In vain do they strive for purification by besmirching themselves with blood, as the man who has bathed in the mire seeks to cleanse himself with mud. . . . In addressing their prayers to images of the gods, they might just as well be speaking to the walls, without seeking to know the true nature of gods or heroes.” The difference between blood spilt for ritual and for criminal purposes no longer holds.

Through his philosophy Heraclitus responds to this crisis. He understands well how the apparently random and lawless character of collective violence actually follows patterns that operate without the participants’ awareness. His genius is to be able to understand this logos or “logic” of violence, and its structuring force in bringing order from disorder.14 Girard cites Heidegger’s definition of the Heraclitean logos as the “violence of the sacred” and observes how “Heidegger recognizes that the Greek Logos is inseparably linked with violence.”15 Girard speaks of the logos of Heraclitus as “the Logos of all cultures to the extent that they are, and will always remain, founded upon unanimous violence.” The Heraclitean logos functions much like the philosopher’s myth in Plato’s writings. Fearful of the violence that may be unleashed when the older myths and rituals cease to perform their magic, the philosopher must provide a more rational “account,” a logos that will legitimate certain kinds of violence while restraining its excesses. Articulating the violence of the logos is, of course, a risky business, since once articulated it is to some degree exposed, and once exposed it can (as happens in the biblical world) begin to lose its 13. Ibid., 263–64. 14. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 43; Bailie, Violence Unveiled, 241–42. Girard cites Fragment 60 in defense of this interpretation: “Strife is the father and king of all. Some it makes gods, others men, some slaves, and others free” (43). 15. Girard, Things Hidden, 265. Others have come to similar conclusions without appearing to have any knowledge of Girard’s thought. See, for example, Gregory Fried, Heidegger’s “Polemos”: From Being to Politics, 21–42; and Charles Bambach, Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks.

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effectiveness. Girard understands Greek tragedians as being engaged in a process of decoding the violent underpinnings of culture, much like the similar efforts of the Israelite prophets. One of the reasons Plato feels it necessary to expel the poets from his politeia is precisely because he is apprehensive about the uncomfortable truths to which they point. Girard sees Heraclitus as being very much in line with the tragic effort, but as with the tragedians, his insight into scapegoating violence is only partial. His philosophical “account” provides a rational screen by which society is protected from the disturbing secret at the heart of human culture. Philosophy, as the “last, final refuge of the sacred,” is an accomplice in this deed.16 Girard finds this to be the case also with Heidegger, whose incomplete insights into humanity’s violent origins are reflected in the close relationship he finds between the concealment and unconcealment of being. In Girard’s reading, Heidegger does not possess a way of articulating why such obscurity is needed. Heidegger interprets Western culture in light of the insights of Anaximander, but without awareness of the underlying pattern of scapegoating violence reflected in the pre-Socratic philosopher’s work.17 Girard finds Heidegger to be more forthright about the violence associated with the logos of Heraclitus, without suspecting that “he is talking about the scapegoat and the way in which it engenders the sacred.”18 Heidegger is profoundly conscious of the religious dimension of pre-Socratic texts, and he has a deep appreciation of the sacrality and power of origins. He is far less sensitive to that which these accounts of origins conceal. For Girard, an essential difference between the Greek logos and the Christian logos lies in their attitudes toward violence. In the case of the Gospels, “the Gospel of John states that God is love, and the synoptic Gospels make clear that God treats all warring brothers with an equal measure of benevolence. For the God of the Gospels, the categories that emerge from violence and return to it simply do not exist.” If this is an accurate description of God as portrayed in the Gospels, and if this kind of love is incompatible with violence, then we would expect to find evidence for this in the evangelist’s conception of the logos. In fact, the evangelist repeats three times, within the space of several lines (John 1:4–5, 10–11), how the logos is rejected. 16. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 39–67, 88; Girard, Things Hidden, 265–67. 17. René Girard, “Origins in Heidegger,” keynote lecture given on June 1, 2000, at the annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, held at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA. As far as I know, the lecture has not been published, and my references here are taken from my notes. 18. Girard, Things Hidden, 267.

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The Johannine Logos is foreign to any kind of violence; it is therefore forever expelled, an absent Logos that never has had any direct, determining influence over human cultures. These cultures are based on the Heraclitean Logos, the Logos of expulsion, the Logos of violence, which, if it is not recognized can provide the foundation of a culture. The Johannine Logos discloses the truth of violence by having itself expelled. First and foremost, John’s Prologue undoubtedly refers to the Passion. But in a more general way, the misrecognition of the Logos and mankind’s expulsion of it disclose one of the fundamental principles of human society.

The Johannine logos is notable by its absence, for its inability to be heard. And how could it be otherwise if the hidden, sacrificial mechanism operative in culture is always at work, shaping the way we think about and act in the world? The logos that constitutes “the world” cannot tolerate the logos of the Gospels. But a culture founded on scapegoating violence of which it is unaware does not consciously expel the Christian logos—it rejects it by assimilating it to its own sacrificial consciousness: Something common to all cultures—something inherent in the way the human mind functions—has always compelled us to misrecognize the true Logos. We have been led to believe that there is only one Logos, and that it is therefore of little importance whether that Logos is credited to the Greeks or the Jews. The same violence always manifests itself, first in the guise of religion, and then fragmented in the discourses of philosophy, aesthetics, psychology and so on. . . . The Logos which is expelled is impossible to find. Heidegger is absolutely right to state that there has never been any thought in the West but Greek thought, even when the labels were Christian.19

Girard credits Heidegger with being able to see that the Greek logos and the biblical logos are not the same, and that their meanings are in fact opposed. Girard shares Heidegger’s (and Strauss’s) skepticism regarding the possibility of harmonizing the two logoi. However, while he approves of Heidegger’s insight into the inherent violence of the Heraclitean logos, Girard faults Heidegger for accepting “modern thought’s most widespread cliché concerning the Old Testament,” the view that the biblical God is authoritarian and despotic. In doing this, Heidegger introduces violence into the biblical logos, thus obscuring the very differences he claims to recognize: “[Heidegger] is blind to the reality of the Johannine Logos. What stops him from analysing 19. Ibid.

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this side successfully is his concern to introduce violence not only into the Greek Logos—where it really has a place—but also into the Johannine Logos, which is thus represented as being the expression of a needlessly cruel and tyrannical deity.”20

Violence and the City It remains to be seen whether Strauss and Voegelin are susceptible to similar criticism. There is certainly some basis for comparison, given that Heidegger, Strauss, and Voegelin all return to the Greeks for inspiration, however much they may diverge in their interpretations. In the case of Strauss, there is an acknowledged debt to Heidegger. However much he may criticize him, Strauss remains impressed by Heidegger’s attempt to get to the roots of the philosophical tradition “as they are,” which is to say as “natural and healthy.”21 It is entirely appropriate, then, to ask whether Strauss’s attempted recovery of the origins of Western civilization exhibits characteristics similar to those Girard discovers in Heidegger. The following passage refers to Heidegger, but Girard could just as easily be speaking about Strauss: “He replaces the relationship of mutual tolerance between the two types of Logos with a relationship of antagonism. The warring doubles have been installed in the very heart of European thought.”22 This aptly captures the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem as Strauss understands it. The two cities stand opposed to each other; and their struggle constitutes the very life of the West. The logos of Western civilization is, for Strauss, a logos of war. It resembles closely the Heraclitean logos, “the violence of the sacred, which keeps doubles in relative harmony and prevents them from destroying one another.”23 Resembling each other in their opposition to modernity and in their basic agreement with regard to the importance of 20. Ibid., 267, 263–64, 265–66, 269, 271–73. 21. Leo Strauss, “An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John’s College in Honor of Jacob Klein,” 450. For a discussion of Strauss’s relationship to Heidegger, see Steven B. Smith, “Destruktion or Recovery?: Leo Strauss’s Critique of Heidegger.” 22. Girard, Things Hidden, 265–66. Nietzsche’s influence on Strauss did not go unnoticed by one of Strauss’s most devoted students: “Appealing from one part of Nietzsche’s fertile thought to another part, Leo Strauss can be said to have subscribed to the desirability of maintaining, instead of synthesis, a ‘magnificent tension of the spirit’ that stimulates human life in general and human thought in particular. The phrase comes from the preface of Beyond Good and Evil, a work admired by Leo Strauss as Nietzsche’s most beautiful book.” Werner Dannhauser, “Athens and Jerusalem or Jerusalem and Athens,” 162. 23. Girard, Things Hidden, 265. This is Girard’s description of the Heraclitean logos as understood by Heidegger.

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virtue, Athens and Jerusalem are, nevertheless, warring doubles, diverging radically on “the one thing needful” as they contend for the allegiance of humanity. The two traditions remain enmeshed in a struggle without end: “Each of the two antagonists claims to know or to hold the truth, the decisive truth, the truth regarding the right way of life. But there can be only one truth: hence, conflict between these claims, and necessarily conflict among thinking beings; and that means inevitably argument. Each of the two opponents has tried for millennia to refute the other. This effort is continuing in our day, and in fact it is taking on a new intensity after some decades of indifference.”24 Particularly striking in Strauss’s formulation of the problem both here and elsewhere is his tendency to see the choice for Athens or Jerusalem in starkly disjunctive terms, and his penchant for the language of conflict and opposition. Likewise, in Strauss’s writing on the Bible there is more than a trace of the “widespread cliché” of the divine authoritarianism that Girard detects in Heidegger. The primary focus in his reading of the Bible is on a God who is powerful, who displays that power in ways that are frequently unintelligible to human beings, and who is to be feared. As noted in Chapter 3, fear of punishment is an important element in Strauss’s understanding of the biblical attitude toward God. Adam and Eve are punished severely, despite their relatively innocent drift into disobedience. Concerning the relatively mild punishment of Cain, Strauss observes how we must assume “that punishments were milder in the beginning than later on.” For example, Sodom and Gomorrah are utterly destroyed, the innocent along with the guilty, and except for Noah and his kin, sinful humanity is wiped out during the Flood. The increase in hope that follows the Flood is accompanied by an increase in punishment. The punitive character of God is drawn out repeatedly in Strauss’s writings on the Bible. Even when he speaks of the mercy of God and the hope engendered by God’s covenants with Israel, there is always present a strong sense of the harshness of the divine education of humanity. The slightest infringement of or deviation from the divine command is met with disproportionate severity on the part of God. Strauss insists that while the examples he cites to illustrate this may be “to a certain extent arbitrary,” they are “not misleading.”25 It would be foolish to deny that images of God as punitive are present in the Bible. Girard clearly acknowledges that in certain sections and at particular stages of development the Bible contains passages full of violence: 24. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 123. 25. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 387–88, 390; Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 107–10.

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In fact, in the Old Testament one still finds a good deal of violence: in Judges and other historical books, there is still a mythical valorization of the community against the scapegoat victim. In the so-called psalms of malediction or execration, there is also the hatred and resentment of the victim. . . . It is a stage in a growing process of discovery of the scapegoat mechanism, which presents moments of regression and moments of fast progression. Some of this progression, like the shift from human to animal sacrifice, is common to most societies, but it remains low-key, while in the Bible it is made fully visible and glorified.26

It is not the case that Girard suppresses the evidence or denies the presence of violence in the biblical text while Strauss honestly acknowledges its existence. The difference lies in their interpretations of the same set of data. Girard sees the overall dynamic within the Bible as a gradual movement away from the violent sacred, where the very explicitness of violence within the text is often indicative of this movement. The Bible is a “text in travail,” “not a chronologically progressive process, but a struggle that advances and retreats.”27 For example, the “theology of divine anger,” in which God punishes the people for their sins, is for Girard a step in this direction, because it reveals an acknowledgment on the part of the biblical authors of human culpability for the violence afflicting the community.28 In Strauss’s interpretation, the punishment-threatening God of the Bible is taken at face value to further the contrast between biblical fear and Greek moderation. How one selects and arranges examples from the biblical writings is crucial, and for the most part the examples offered by Strauss give the impression that the God of the Bible is willful, harsh, arbitrary, and violent.29 No more than Heidegger, though, does Strauss analyze explicitly the relationship between violence and the sacred, although as a political philosopher he cannot avoid questions having to do with politically sanctioned violence. But Strauss does so in a way quite different from Heidegger’s obscure and meditative engagement with the sacred. He is able to do so, in part, by distinguishing between philosophy and the city when speaking of Athens. The requirements of the city do not always coincide with those of philosophy. The 26. Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 207. See also Girard, Things Hidden, 268. 27. René Girard, Walter Burkert, and Jonathan Z. Smith, Violent Origins, 141. 28. Girard, Scapegoat, 85. Raymund Schwager has combed the biblical text and assembled much of the relevant data to show how in the vast majority of cases in which violence is attributed to God, it is actually human violence that is being described. See Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? 29. Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 394–98. See also Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, 47.

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philosopher needs the security, order, and necessities of life provided by the city in order to practice the philosophical way of life. But this way of life, by its very nature, leads to a questioning of the traditional verities upon which the city depends for its cohesion and stability. Political philosophy at its best strikes the necessary balance between these conflicting demands. The city will make use of violence to preserve its security; philosophers recognize this and practice a careful prudence with regard to a regime under whose shelter they are permitted to live and philosophize. Unlike the messianic dreams of the prophets, classical philosophy believes that the “establishment of the best regime will not include the cessation of war.” Strauss considers it to be entirely consistent with the idea of natural right for a society to use whatever means it deems necessary to combat an unscrupulous enemy—“natural right must be mutable in order to cope with the inventiveness of wickedness.” But unlike Machiavellianism, adherence to natural right means taking one’s bearings “by the normal situation and by what is normally right,” deviating from this “only in order to save the cause of justice and humanity itself.” Classical natural right is flexible, geared toward creating the best possible approximation of the best regime, not on the basis of unchanging, inviolable moral principles, but by making concrete decisions informed by prudence and moderation. The notion of a moral law that transcends the city, capable of judging its policies and decisions, is part of the legacy of the Bible. This leads Strauss to question whether “natural law” as it appears in Aquinas is natural at all.30 If the city must at times employ violence to secure itself, philosophy as such does not partake in such activities (at least not directly). Warfare may be a requirement of the city, but philosophy in its highest form, as the disinterested pursuit of truth, has nothing to do with it. For Strauss, questioning and a delight in the truth for its own sake characterize the philosophical life. Philosophy is rational, serene, and moderate; it is “graced by nature’s grace.” The philosopher, as the embodiment of the desire for eternal wisdom, rises above quarrels of the vulgar: “The philosopher’s dominating passion is the desire for truth, i.e., for the knowledge of the eternal order, or the eternal cause or causes of the whole. As he looks up in search for the eternal order, all human things and all human concerns reveal themselves to him in all clarity as paltry and ephemeral, and no one can find solid happiness in what he knows to be paltry and ephemeral.” Such radical detachment, however, is not absolute; 30. Strauss, On Tyranny, 27; Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 194–200; Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 32; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 403; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 144, 157, 160–63.

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the philosopher is a human being, after all, and cannot “be dead to human concerns, although his soul will not be in these concerns.” Nevertheless, it remains the case that the philosopher is immune to the most common and the most powerful dissolvent of man’s natural attachment to man, the desire to have more than one has already and in particular to have more than others have; for he has the greatest self-sufficiency which is humanly possible. Hence the philosopher will not hurt anyone. While he cannot help being more attached to his family and his city than to strangers, he is free from the delusions bred by collective egoisms; his benevolence or humanity extends to all human beings with whom he comes into contact.31

As is clear from the passages just cited, Strauss’s philosopher, consumed with wonder concerning the eternal order, transcends the common human desire for recognition, and is thereby freed from any inclination to compete with or to harm others. In Girardian terms, the philosopher is impervious to the contagion of mimetic desire and the violence to which it can lead. Although violence is necessary to preserve the city, Strauss avoids introducing any taint of it into philosophy itself. Philosophy recognizes the exigencies behind the city’s recourse to violence, while taking no direct part in such unfortunate necessities. Athens is presented as an exemplary regime, a city that makes reasonable and judicious use of coercion. Strauss invariably tends to make the classical attitude toward violence seem as reasonable and unobjectionable as possible. Discussing Thrasymachos’s opinion about justice in the Republic, Strauss argues, It is most important, both for the understanding of the Republic and generally, that we do not behave toward Thrasymachos as Thrasymachos behaves, i.e., angrily, fanatically, or savagely. If we look then at Thrasymachos’ indignation without indignation, we must admit that his violent reaction is to some extent a revolt of common sense. Since the city as city is a society which from time to time must wage war, and war is inseparable from harming innocent people, the unqualified condemnation of harming human beings would be tantamount to the condemnation of even the justest city.

31. Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 40; Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 197–200. See also Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” 13–15, 20; and “What Is Political Philosophy?” 10–11.

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Whether or not one agrees with Strauss’s judgment, the justification of his conclusion through an appeal to “common sense” is a way of persuading his readers of the reasonableness of Thrasymachos’s position. Elsewhere Strauss praises the moderation and even leniency of Athens in dealing with its citizens; and to the objection that it was Athenian democracy that killed Socrates, he explains that Socrates “was killed when he was 70; he was permitted to live for 70 long years.” Strauss becomes indignant with those who criticize Plato for his “alleged lack of liberalism,” and reminds them of how tolerant Plato was even by contemporary measures. Plato followed the standards of his time, and those standards “are best illustrated by the practice of Athens, a city highly renowned for her liberality and gentleness.” In its reasonableness and moderation, the classical understanding of politics comes closest to liberal or constitutional democracy, Strauss believes.32 It would appear, then, that regarding the violence of Athens and Jerusalem, Girard’s criticism of Heidegger can be legitimately extended to Strauss: “He sees the former as violence committed by free men, while the latter is violence visited upon slaves. The Jewish Decalogue is simply an interiorized form of tyranny. In this respect, Heidegger is faithful to the whole tradition of German idealism, which represents Yahweh as an oriental despot.” Strauss does not detect the gradual revelation of the scapegoating mechanism at work in the Hebrew Bible, nor does he realize that “what appears to us to be Yahweh’s violence is in fact the attempt of the entire Old Testament to bring to light the violent reciprocal action of doubles.” Strauss, like Heidegger, installs this violence in the very heart of Western civilization in the form of the endless battle between Athens and Jerusalem. Girard’s observation about Heidegger fits Strauss as well: “The illusion that there is a difference within the heart of violence is the key to the sacrificial way of thinking. . . . He wishes to differentiate the two types of Logos, but by inserting violence into both of them, he deprives himself of the means for doing so!”33 Strauss contrasts the enlightened and prudent violence of the Greek city with the threatening commands of the biblical God. The “good” violence of Athens is largely justified, and philosophy’s hands remain forever unstained by blood. By contrast, the “typical” biblical man is willing to sacrifice his son on divine command, and God rejects those who hesitate to obey the divine command to destroy the Lord’s enemies. Strauss, like Heidegger, wants to distinguish between good and bad violence in ways favorable to Athens. He does 32. Strauss, History of Political Philosophy, 37, 86; Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 36; Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 193–94. 33. Girard, Things Hidden, 266–68. See also Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats?

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not seem to realize how, in so doing, he remains within a horizon structured by violence, and how he perpetuates in his own work the self-serving myth of philosophy’s innocence. Absent in Strauss is any suggestion that “reason” may itself be complicit in the process of victimization. Instead, he opposes Jerusalem, with its unquestioning obedience to the unfathomable will of a sometimes loving, often punitive God, to Athens, the embodiment of freedom, wonder, and the love of knowledge.

Philosophical Violence Because he differs from Strauss in his conception of philosophy, Voegelin also differs in his understanding of philosophy’s relationship to the Bible. Instead of a permanent opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, we have an ongoing historical process of differentiation of consciousness, shedding increasing light on the structure of experiences of transcendence. Voegelin’s thought develops in the direction of a growing recognition of the profound equivalences among the experiences articulated in religious, literary, and philosophical texts. In obvious contrast to Strauss, Voegelin emphasizes the core similarities between the Bible and classical philosophy in such a way as to sometimes obscure their differences. This is particularly true in his discussion of the New Testament. It is hardly an exaggeration to see in Voegelin a particularly keen example of the tendency to allow the Christian logos to be absorbed by the Greek logos. The relative neglect of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection in his thought, the reading of the Passion in terms of the Hellenisticecumenic drama of existence, and the emphasis on the common noetic core of philosophy and gospel all point in this direction. Voegelin stands very much within the tradition that emphasizes the common meaning of the Greek and Christian logos, and that sees in the Greek philosophers precursors of gospel truth. With the development of the notion of “equivalences” in his later thought, the commonality between noetic and pneumatic differentiations is increasingly affirmed. Any divergences simply reflect a “modal difference within the common structure.”34 One instance of Voegelin’s tendency to blur the distinction between philosophy and gospel can be found in his discussion of Plato’s myth of Er (the 34. Voegelin, “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,” 366. This tendency to deemphasize the distinctive qualities of Greek and biblical thought and to view them instead as “ethnic” variants of a common experiential core becomes more and more pronounced in Voegelin’s later writings. A particularly clear example of this can be found in “The Meditative Origin of the Philosophical Knowledge of Order.”

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Pamphylian myth of the Republic X) and John 12: “It would be difficult to find a major difference of function between Plato’s Pamphylian tale of the last judgment and John’s Last Day. . . . [The] saving tale, be it Plato’s Pamphylian myth or John’s gospel, is not an answer given at random, but must recognizably fit the reality of existence which in the question is presupposed as truly experienced.”35 I would argue that the Pamphylian myth functions quite differently from the text of John 12. In Girardian terms, the myth is a near perfect example of the manner in which philosophy hides the victimage mechanism that the Gospels reveal. Present in the myth are typical “stereotypes of persecution” in the Girardian sense. There is, first of all, a social crisis. The myth reflects a disruption of the social order—remotely, in the crisis confronting the Athens of Plato’s day, and more immediately in the context of the dialogue as a whole, with its attention to the question of the fate of the just in a society lacking in justice. Another stereotype of persecution is present in the kinds of crimes attributed to those who are the most severely punished or who choose their fates unwisely. The community of scapegoaters almost always attributes the most heinous of crimes to its victims, crimes that frequently involve a violation of society’s most strongly held taboos. For example, the tyrant Ardiaios suffers terrible tortures because in addition to being a parricide and fratricide he has done “many other abominable things.” More striking is the example of the first man to select his new life by lot. Having been one of those “who had come down out of heaven,” and who had previously lived in “a well-ordered community, with some share of virtue which came by habit without philosophy,” he nonetheless chooses foolishly, unaware that he is fated to “devour his own children, amongst other horrible things.” And even though it is acknowledged that the luck of the lot has a role to play in this process, the verdict on the unfortunate fellow is announced in a way that reflects one of the primary aims of the philosopher’s myth: “The blame is for the chooser; God is blameless.”36 The victim is guilty; he has no one to blame but himself.37 It is difficult, then, to understand how the Pamphylian myth can be said to fulfill the same function as the Gospels, in which the victim is clearly innocent. In the Gospels, 35. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 182–83. 36. Plato, Great Dialogues of Plato, 415–20. 37. Through analysis of myths from a wide range of cultures, Girard shows how chance or lot “embodies all the obvious characteristics of the sacred. Now it deals violently with man, now it showers him with gifts. Indeed, what is more capricious in its favors than Chance, more susceptible to those rapid reversals of temper that are invariably associated with the gods? The sacred nature of Chance is reflected in the practice of lottery.” Girard Reader, 25. Another way in which a highly sophisticated myth like Plato’s is able to absolve the gods without attributing guilt to the community or revealing the scapegoat mechanism is by introducing victims “who are guilty of the actions without being intrinsically bad.

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God is blameless because God is at one with the victim in exposing the scapegoating mechanism at the basis of culture. Plato fears the specter of violence at the heart of the myths he has inherited, and he understands the need to alter the manner in which the gods are presented, if only from an awareness that gods who commit crimes themselves “may become the despised and trampled victims of men.” If that were to happen, the order of society would suffer. The gods must not be allowed to become victims, but “unlike the prophets of the Jews and then the gospels,” Plato “cannot imagine that such a victim could be innocent.”38 Since he does not detect the scapegoating mechanism at work, he unintentionally tends to perpetuate it by shifting the blame to other victims, whether they are the figures in the Pamphylian myth, the poets of tradition, or the sophists of his day. The function of the Platonic myth is, in fact, quite the opposite of John 12, whose purpose is to anticipate what will be made uncomfortably clear in the Passion about the nature of violence. The philosopher’s myth hides from view the truth about sacrificial violence. Surely it is no accident that Plato concludes the Republic with a Socratic reminder that belief in the saving tale enables one to safely cross the River of Forgetfulness. On the question of violence and the Bible, the God encountered in experiences of transcendence is, for Voegelin, not the punitive lawgiver depicted by Strauss. When Voegelin speaks of these experiences it is always with an emphasis on their mystical and normative character rather than on any fear of punishment. Where Strauss contrasts the fear and trembling of biblical humanity with the serene detachment of the philosophical life, Voegelin is far more likely to read notions of faith, hope, and love into the experiences of the classical philosophers.39 With Voegelin there is a much stronger sense that the association of violence with divinity represents an aberration, stemming from a misinterpretation of experience, whereas with Strauss the threatening and punitive aspects of the divine are somehow reflections of the mysterious, inscrutable quality of God’s will. For example, when Voegelin speaks of the religious wars of extermination described in Deuteronomy, he attributes this to a situation in which a genuine awareness of God has been lost due to an unfortunate process of doctrinalization and the freezing of the word of God into scripture. When Strauss cites examples of biblical violence, he often explains them ——— Because they have not been informed of certain circumstances, they bring about unintentionally the state of affairs required to justify the use of collective violence against them.” Girard, Scapegoat, 83. 38. Girard, Scapegoat, 78. 39. Much to Strauss’s chagrin, we might add. See Strauss and Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy, 71–72, 74, 76.

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as indications of the profound gap separating divine and human notions of justice, and as evidence of the weakness of human reasoning when confronted with the mysterious nature of the biblical God. Nonetheless, even if Voegelin’s notion of God is largely free of violent overtones, the same cannot be said of his estimation of the biblical legacy. In the case of the Gospels, Voegelin believes the absorption of messianism into the Christian movement “has brought into the history of Christianity, as well as of a Christianized Western civilization, the apocalyptic strand of violent phantasy that can degenerate into violent action in the world.” The teaching of the Matthean Jesus makes little or no allowance for ongoing life in this world, and even though Jesus speaks of having come to fulfill rather than to destroy, “the fulfillment is difficult to distinguish from apocalyptic destruction.”40 Voegelin is well aware that violence is present in the classical philosophical tradition as well. When discussing the Heraclitean logos, he prefers to speak of logos as rational, divine intelligibility, but he readily acknowledges the constitutive role of violence in Heraclitus’s philosophy of order. He also directly confronts the issue of the relationship between coercion and persuasion in Plato. The saving tale, enlightening and guiding the souls of its hearers, is a story of war and struggle.41 Because of the Bible’s pneumatic lineage, Voegelin is far more wary of the violence stemming from the biblical milieu. And because noetic thinkers better preserve the “balance of consciousness,” they can be better trusted to use violence prudently and in the interests of order. These thinkers possess an awareness of the destabilizing effects of theophanic events, and consequently they articulate these experiences in ways that mitigate their disruptive tendencies—even if this requires the creation of a “philosopher’s myth” in the service of social stability. In the final analysis, when Voegelin speaks of the balance of consciousness he is in fact referring to the ability to properly discern the difference between legitimate and illegitimate violence. Voegelin judges the classic philosophers more favorably than pneumatic visionaries because the philosophers better understand the dangers inherent to theophany and take necessary steps to keep violence within its proper limits. The philosopher’s saving tale, with its struggle and death through war, is permeated with the spirit of violence in the service of cultural stability. By contrast, the dangers associated with the Gospels are the dangers of a violence that recognizes no limits, violence always ready to burst forth with “apocalyptic ferocity.” 40. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 205, 210. 41. Voegelin, Order and History, 2:301–13; Voegelin, Order and History, 3:213–23, 277–82; Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 188, 209–10, 186.

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The “good” violence of myth and philosophy must not be confused with the “bad” violence fostered by the Gospels. But the arbitrariness of this distinction becomes evident in Voegelin’s work. He cites Plato’s Statesman to the following effect: “Those who do not possess courage and temperance or other inclinations to virtue, those who by an evil nature are carried away to godlessness, pride, and injustice, the Statesman will have to eliminate by death or exile, or by punishment with the greatest disgrace; and those who find their happiness in ignorance and baseness he will relegate to a state of slavery. . . . Only when the uneducable men are eliminated can the weaving of the political fabric begin.” Voegelin defends the “combination of force and spiritual reform” in Plato while excoriating it in those like the Puritans who take the Bible as their guide. Labeling the latter as Gnostics begs the question as to why their particular efforts at social reform are somehow worse than those of the philosopher who believes the “weaving of the political fabric” can begin only after the elimination of the uneducable. I am in no way suggesting that Voegelin seriously considers these Platonic solutions to be either applicable or desirable for contemporary society. He clearly rejects such an idea.42 But one looks in vain for the same severity of criticism with regard to the violence advocated by Plato as we find with violence understood as stemming from biblical influence. Like Heidegger and Strauss, Voegelin succumbs to the illusion that there is “a difference within the heart of violence.” It is a dangerous illusion in that it criticizes the dangers present in the biblical message while turning a far less critical eye toward the violence of the “rational,” the “prudent,” and the “moderate.” This attitude perpetuates the myth of philosophy’s unerring wisdom, paying insufficient attention to the horrors wrought by the violence of those convinced of their own rationality.

Analyzing the Violence of Order As political philosophers, neither Strauss nor Voegelin can avoid questions involving the appropriate use of violence. According to Strauss, classical natural right allows for the employment of any means deemed necessary for the preservation of the city, with a clear understanding that extreme measures are to be reserved for extreme circumstances. Philosophy as an Eros directed toward contemplation of the eternal order is foreign to violence. As political philosophy, however, it exercises a moderating influence on the city to the 42. Voegelin, Order and History, 3:212–23, 277–82, 318–19.

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extent it is able, and it displays a sense of social responsibility by prudently avoiding direct challenges to the city’s fundamental beliefs and actions: “In what then does philosophic politics consist? In satisfying the city that the philosophers are not atheists, that they do not desecrate everything sacred to the city, that they reverence what the city reverences, that they are not subversives, in short, that they are not irresponsible adventurers, but good citizens and even the best of citizens. This is the defense of philosophy which was required always and everywhere, whatever the regime might have been.”43 With regard to the biblical heritage, Strauss is more ambivalent. Whether the biblical teaching is divine revelation or heroic delusion, it is unquestionably influential. Aspects of this teaching may be helpful to society in restraining human passion through adherence to law conceived as the commands of God. But other dimensions of the biblical message are far less salutary. In its exaltation of the “extreme” virtue of charity, its uncompromising moral directness, and its contributions to notions of universalism, progress, and egalitarianism, the Bible is charged with fostering fanaticism, lacking in moderation, and furthering the advent of the universal homogeneous state. Voegelin shares Strauss’s high regard for the moderation and restraint of philosophy in comparison to the Bible. But where Strauss emphasizes biblical law as prohibition, Voegelin sees a role for the Bible as a source of spiritual formation that can have a salutary if indirect effect on society through the influence it exerts on human souls.44 At the same time, Voegelin is quite forceful in pointing to a direct link between biblical revelation and contemporary ideological movements. From a Girardian perspective, the concerns voiced by Strauss and Voegelin about the destabilizing effects of the Bible on social order are legitimate. Girard would readily concede that the biblical text does in fact undermine social stability—to the extent that it exposes the scapegoating mechanism at the basis of all societies. Where this mechanism is revealed (as it has been in those cultures under biblical influence), it becomes increasingly difficult for societies to make use of sacrificial means to solve their problems. For Girard, the Bible subverts the order of society by exposing its violent foundations. Scapegoating is effective only as long as it remains hidden—once exposed it begins to lose its power. From then on, it becomes increasingly difficult for the society 43. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” 205–6. 44. This is in no way to suggest that the notion of prohibition captures the essence of biblical notions of law. I am not invoking stereotypes of “Jewish legalism” and “Christian spirituality.” My point is simply to indicate the way in which I believe Strauss makes use of the Bible. I do think he sees himself as articulating the traditional Jewish interpretation of the texts, but whether he does in fact is a different matter.

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in which this breakthrough has occurred to return to its former ways of legitimating its own violence. Social and cultural distinctions that rest upon sacrificial practices and patterns of scapegoating are undermined, and society is plunged into a crisis involving a loss of social differentiation. The ensuing crisis may in fact lead to greater waves of violence, as traditional forms of order unravel. Deprived of sacrificial protections by the biblical message, societies may resort to extreme measures to preserve unity and stability. This is precisely what Girard believes is happening in the contemporary world. Because of the Bible’s influence, the truth about history’s victims is being revealed and “victimage patterns, systems of scapegoating will not provide the stable form of culture that they have had in the past.” As a result, “all of Western and then world history can be interpreted as a turbulent, chaotic, but constantly accelerating process of devictimization.”45 Unfortunately, humanity’s habitual recourse to violence does not pass away without a struggle; the less it is able to produce its desired effects, the more virulent it becomes. The devastating violence of the twentieth century can be traced to the realization that “with the founding mechanism absent, the principle of violence that rules humanity will experience a terrifying recrudescence at the point when it enters its agony. . . . This means that the violence, having lost its vitality and bite, will paradoxically be more terrible than before its decline.” The Bible produces a double movement within a culture, both a heightened awareness of victims and a violent reaction on the part of the sacrificial system it exposes. This accounts for the paradoxical character of the contemporary world: “Whether we examine the matter attentively or not, we easily see that everything people say about our world is true: it is by far the worst of all worlds. They say repeatedly—and this is not false—that no world has made more victims than it has. But the opposite proposition is equally true: our world is also and by far the best of all worlds, the one that saves more victims than any other. In order to describe our world, we must multiply all sorts of propositions that should be incompatible but now are true simultaneously.” Where the scapegoating mechanism is weakened, its culture-preserving effects are impaired. Yet the very force that weakens 45. Girard, Girard Reader, 183, 209. “Victimage is still present among us, of course, but in degenerate forms that do not produce the type of mythical reconciliation and ritual practice exemplified by primitive cults. This lack of efficiency often means that there are more rather than fewer victims. As in the case of drugs, consumers of sacrifice tend to increase the doses when the effect becomes more difficult to achieve. . . . In our world, sacrificial means have degenerated more and more as victimage, oppression, and persecution have become predominant issues. No return to the rigidities of prohibition and ritual is in sight, and some very special cause must be found to account for this unique evolution. I have an answer to propose, and it is the presence of the biblical text in our midst.” Girard Reader, 16–17.

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the mechanism also acts as a safeguard against the further violence that could easily arise when its ability to order society is undermined. Sensitivity to the plight of victims impedes our ability to scapegoat; thus modernity shows a remarkable ability to absorb a degree of erosion of social differentiation that would have seriously threatened earlier societies: Some people equate the proliferation of desire with a loosening of the bonds of culture, which they deplore; they link it to the leveling of “natural” hierarchies on a broad front, and the wreckage of all values worthy of respect. In the modern world, these enemies of desire are ranged against the friends of desire; the two camps periodically pass judgment on each other in the name of order against disorder, reaction against progress, the past against the future, and so on. In contrast to what the “enemies” of desire are always telling us, our world shows itself to be quite capable of absorbing high doses of “undifferentiation.” . . . In the long run, the pessimism of “reactionaries” never proves to be justified, but neither does the optimism of revolutionaries.46

We now live in what Girard describes as an objectively apocalyptic situation, in which the violence at the basis of culture has been unveiled (apocalypsis), but in which humanity has not yet given up its reliance on scapegoating. This apocalyptic awareness is the realization that “after the decomposition of the sacrificial order there is nothing standing between ourselves and our possible destruction.” We find it difficult to give up sacrificial remedies proven effective in the past, especially when we have yet to discover something to take their place. This is completely understandable once we realize how the scapegoating mechanism has served us for so long as a potent source of societal stability. Its purpose has always been “to limit violence as much as possible but to turn to it, if necessary, as a last resort to avoid an even greater violence.” Archaic societies relied upon it not because they were evil, but because it provided a solution to the ever-present threat of violence looming just beyond the borders of their precarious social order. Despite the presence of the biblical text in our midst, it is still very difficult for humanity to abandon such an effective remedy. Girard understands full well how sacrificial practices serve a tremendously important function within the social, political, and cultural spheres. In fact, even though it enjoys the benefit of having lived with the Bible for centuries, modern Western political thought remains thoroughly imbued with these practices. Consequently, it operates with a peculiar mixture of concern for victims and a lingering reliance upon the scapegoating mechanism. On a fundamental level, politics deals with who may be sacrificed, for what reasons, and under what 46. Girard, I See Satan, 165; Girard, Things Hidden, 195–96, 284–85.

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conditions. Political philosophy sometimes justifies, sometimes critiques, and nearly always reflects these practices. Girard sees modern political thought as dividing the forces of this world into two groups—the constituted authorities and the crowd. “The former usually get the better of the latter, but in times of crisis the reverse is true.” Whether “conservative” or “revolutionary,” modern political theory “criticizes only one category of powers, either the crowd or the established rulers.” What this means is that those who are conservative try to consolidate the constituted authorities, the institutions that embody the continuation of a religious, cultural, political, and judicial tradition. They are susceptible to criticism for their excessive bias toward the established powers. They are equally susceptible to threats of violence from the crowd. For the revolutionaries the reverse is true. They systematically criticize institutions and shamelessly revere the violence of the crowd. . . . The revolutionary historians of the French and Russian revolutions mythologize all the crimes. Any serious research into the crowd is considered reactionary by them. They do not welcome illumination in these areas. It is a fact that “victimage” mechanisms need obscurity if they are to “change the world.”47

Girard speaks here of modern political thought, but given its greater proximity to ancient myth, classical political philosophy is even more deeply imbued with traces of the sacrificial. Revolutionary thought may pass over in silence the crimes of “the people” in justifying its efforts to change the world, but classical philosophy displays a similar mythologizing tendency in the interests of preserving social order. It would not be misleading to describe Strauss and Voegelin as conservatives in the sense intended by Girard. This is not to suggest, however, that either man is an uncritical supporter of the status quo as long as order is preserved. Clearly this is not the case with either of them. But both men are far less critical of violence in the service of social order than they are of the forces of dissolution. Their effort to recover classical wisdom has as one of its primary goals the preservation of order in the midst of what they take to be modern disorders. Strauss is not at all sanguine about the collective behavior of the majority of human beings, and in his communication with Carl Schmitt he comments on the evil inclinations of human nature and the need for political coercion.48 47. Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 235; Girard, Scapegoat, 113–16. 48. Strauss argues that there is a natural inequality with regard to the potential to actualize our highest capacity, i.e., our ability to exercise our intelligence. This exercise admits of various gradations among human beings, with its fullest actualization occurring only rarely, in those who are philosophers. Strauss is more pessimistic with regard to the capacities of the vast majority of human beings. He apparently agrees with Carl Schmitt

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We already noted how his interpretation of classical natural right makes allowance for the use of any measures when engaged in a battle with an unscrupulous enemy. In a 1933 letter to Karl Löwith he defends the practices of the right in light of the rise of Hitler: “Just because the right-wing oriented Germany does not tolerate us, it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right—fascist, authoritarian, imperial—is it possible, in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and sickening appeal to the ‘unwritten rights of man’ to protest against the repulsive monster.”49 Voegelin is equally forthright about the link between coercion and order: To set up a government is an essay in world creation. Out of a shapeless vastness of conflicting human desires rises a little world of order, a cosmic analogy, a cosmion, leading a precarious life under the pressure of destructive forces from within and without, and maintaining its existence by the ultimate threat and application of violence against the internal breaker of its law as well as the external aggressor. The application of violence, though, is the ultimate means only of creating and preserving a political order, it is not its ultimate reason: the function proper of order is the creation of a shelter in which man may give to his life a semblance of meaning.

The “evil” of violence is part of the very nature of governance: Quantitatively, “evil” is most strongly present in the disharmony between the rulers and the ruled as it is expressed in the suppression of the rabble, which is an essential task of every government, expressed in the threat and use of force. Of necessity, the soul of the rabble, as a mass of the spiritually disoriented, is always in a state of rebellion against the rulers, because the spirit that rulers realize is incomprehensible to them. . . . Greek antiquity, which drew a distinction between the free man and the slave by nature, looked upon the oppression of the subordinate masses as less of an evil than we are accustomed to, since our time entertains the absurd notion of deducing the equality of human beings from their equality before God.50 ——— about the human tendency to evil, and therefore the permanent need for dominion—a dominion that involves unifying a people in their opposition to a designated enemy “other.” Strauss, “Three Letters to Carl Schmitt,” 125. See also Susan Shell, “Taking Evil Seriously: Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Political’ and Strauss’s ‘True Politics,’” 174–93. 49. Quoted in Eugene R. Sheppard, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher, 61. 50. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:225; Eric Voegelin, “The Theory of Governance,” 314–15.

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Both Strauss and Voegelin fear the crowd—and not without reason, in light of the mass movements of the twentieth century. Their turn to classical philosophy is animated by the conviction that its insights articulate a wonderfully balanced vision, both moderate and realistic. Strauss and Voegelin seem equally captivated by the pronounced emphasis on the necessity and sacrality of social order exemplified by classical thought. In his description of the transition from myth to philosophy, Strauss observes how Greek thought moves from the embarrassingly anthropomorphic gods, to more-abstract notions such as “fate,” to the equally impersonal ideas of “nature and intelligible necessity.” In Strauss’s view, philosophy evolves toward an idea of the limits or constraints imposed by the necessities inherent in the nature of things, necessities that human beings as human are capable of grasping by means of their reason. He believes this is one of the major points of divergence between Plato and the Bible. Plato understands the cosmic gods to be greatly superior to the traditional Greek gods who manifest themselves as they wish. The cosmic gods manifest themselves regularly, in recurring patterns accessible to human intelligence. The order of things is thereby endowed with a sacred character. Rather than intelligible necessity, the Bible speaks of commands issuing from the will of an all-powerful and mysterious God, and it strictly forbids the attribution of sacrality to cosmic order. This distinction allows Strauss to invest the “necessities” discovered by philosophy with a rational character in comparison with the unpredictable will of the biblical God, which, if not quite irrational, so exceeds reason as to be incomprehensible. At the center of his Liberalism Ancient and Modern, Strauss places a lengthy essay on Lucretius. The meaning of the essay and its purpose within the volume as a whole is not easily determined, because, as is so often the case, Strauss operates in his role as expositor and commentator. In the preface to the book, however, Strauss offers some comments on the essay. He cites Lucretius’s poem “On the Nature of Things” as an example of premodern liberalism, and notes how in the poem “premodern thought seems to come closer to modern thought than anywhere else.” He finds Lucretius to be unequaled in his awareness that “nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless” and that “the eternal is not lovable.” The teaching of Lucretius, then, would be profoundly at odds with central teachings of the Bible concerning God’s deathlessness and goodness. A careful reading of the essay reveals instance after instance of Lucretian teaching opposed to biblical ideas about creation, divine concern for human beings, and the importance of charity. According to the Lucretian teaching, “fury and violence” account for the emergence of “things”; the world is definitely not the product of a caring being, nor is it created for our benefit. The Lucretian doctrine “destroys our importance,”

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reducing the human race to one more element within an indifferent cosmic process. The self-sufficient divine beings do not love, and they have no reason to be kind. The vision of Lucretius is marked by a recognition of world process as eternal, violent flux and an almost Heraclitean insight into the logos of order as a logos of war. The philosopher’s poem propounds the “sacred necessities” governing the universe. In considering the relationship between the teaching of Lucretius and that of Strauss, it would certainly be in keeping with what we know of Strauss’s approach to the Bible to see in his attention to Lucretius another indication of his efforts to diminish the triumph of the biblical orientation by replacing its teaching with classical thought. The centrality of the essay within a book devoted to liberalism is a good indication that it represents part of Strauss’s effort to wean his readers from what he considers to be the softening effects of belief in Providence. A modern liberalism of biblical descent is challenged by the premodern liberalism of the classics. And what better example to draw upon than Lucretius, in whose work premodern comes closest to modern thought, thus allowing the teaching to be more easily absorbed? The benefits of liberalism may thereby be preserved, but they will have been pruned of the biblically inspired distortions of progressivism, universalism, and egalitarianism. The intelligible necessities discovered by philosophy stand in stark contrast to the prophetic, messianic vision of the Bible. According to the Greek philosophers, human nature will remain always as it has been, and even if by chance the best regime comes into existence in a single city, that city will “as a matter of course” become embroiled in wars. From the perspective of philosophy, there will be no beating of swords into plowshares.51 With Voegelin we find a similar connection between philosophical wisdom and the necessities of order, stated, however, without Strauss’s reticence. Plato and Anaximander are the true heroes of The Ecumenic Age. The Anaximandrian “truth of the process” best conveys the reality of the human condition, whether that truth is expressed in its original compact form or in the more-differentiated variants of Heraclitus and the later Greek philosophers. The order of things envisioned by Anaximander is an order of justice founded upon retribution, and however tragic such a process may be, it is not within the capacity of human beings to alter it. This truth must never 51. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 119; Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 397, 403; Strauss, preface to Liberalism Ancient and Modern, x; Leo Strauss, “Notes on Lucretius.” For some illustrations of teachings at odds with those of the Bible, see 95–96, 98, 103, 105, 115, 118–19, 122–23, 129–31, and 133 in “Notes on Lucretius.” On war, see 81, 95–96, 122–23, 131–33, 135. On sacrifice and prohibition, see 82–83, 98, 105, 131.

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be forgotten, and Voegelin extols Plato for his ability to recognize it and consciously and deliberately avoid the mistakes of the prophets. Gifted with the same revelation as Isaiah, Plato makes sure “the Anaximandrian experience of the Apeiron extends its balancing effect into the symbolization even of the God behind the Olympian gods.” The God of Sinai and the Exodus gives way to a divinity subject to a fateful, cosmic process.52 More is at stake here than a theological difference regarding the proper depiction of the divine—the sacred quality of social order becomes questionable where God is understood as transcending creation. We touched on this in Chapters 2 and 4, when discussing Voegelin’s assessment of the political implications of New Testament Christianity. Christianity continues the inheritance of Israel in radically de-divinizing social order. More-compact orders and their symbolizations are threatened by this change, and “a culture in which the sacrality of order, both personal and social, is symbolized by intracosmic gods will not easily give way to the theotes of the movement whose victory entails the desacralization of traditional order.” For Voegelin, the de-divinization of order wrought by the biblical tradition is not especially beneficial. In the interests of preserving something of the sacrality of order, the creation of a new myth is required, crafted by the philosopher in the interests of society. The sacralization of order, when understood in a Platonic sense, meets with Voegelin’s approval.53 And just as Plato does, Voegelin enlists philosophy in the cause of justifying the violence of order. This is clear from Voegelin’s treatment of the Anaximander fragment. Voegelin situates Anaximander’s teaching within the context of the violence permeating the Ecumenic Age. Anaximander is no mere speculator; he is attempting to provide a rational discourse concerning the horrors in which his society is engulfed. Voegelin finds that modern historian Jakob Burckhardt asks the same questions: “Does history not really offer the nauseating spectacle of meaningful advances, which even Burckhardt does not deny, achieved through the human misery and mass murder of conquest? The question is ineluctable.” Burckhardt (like Girard) is forthright about the existence of victims behind historical texts: “The suffering is real and so are the violators who inflict it on the victims. This violence is evil; and it does not become less evil, if a power situation that has been created by such evil is taken into the cure by better men, so that in the end mere power is ‘transformed into law and order.’” Nevertheless, Burckhardt “accepts the Anaximandrian truth of the process in the fullness of its 52. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:232–35, 254, 277–78, 283, 289–90, 294–95, 296–97, 302, 304–6. 53. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 100, 107; Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 194.

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mystery.” He can “imagine worse things than the evil of egoistic violence”; for without evil there would be little room for the practice of disinterested goodness. Burckhardt neither justifies the evil nor denies the advances it has helped to bring about. However distressing, we must accept the fact that “becoming and perishing are the general fate on this earth; but every true single life that is cut short before its time by violence, must be considered irreplaceable, and even not replaceable by another just as excellent.” This passage is a poignant combination of Anaximandrian and biblical insight. As the inhabitant of a culture informed by the biblical concern for victims, Burckhardt is grieved at the thought of the loss of a single, irreplaceable individual. Yet this is the way of the world, and ultimately it is the wisdom of Anaximander that has the final word. As for Voegelin, he applauds Burckhardt’s “uncompromising stance” and believes that “today it is even more necessary than it was a hundred years ago.” In Girardian terms, what is striking about the Anaximander fragment is the manner in which it grants ontological status to the idea of violent reciprocity (“they pay one another penalty for their injustice”).54 To the extent that Voegelin approves of the Anaximandrian formulation, he does the very same thing. The difference, then, between Girard and Voegelin is not that Girard opposes the use of violence in all circumstances, while Voegelin does not. Rather, Voegelin accepts Anaximander’s insight as illuminating the ontological structure of the cosmos, while Girard understands it as an especially revealing example of the manner in which philosophy shrouds the scapegoating mechanism in the aura of metaphysics. For Voegelin, the fragment states an important truth; for Girard, it is another manifestation of the fundamental lie at the basis of human cultures. Ironically, Girard is sometimes mistaken for a “conservative” thinker in the sense we have been discussing. Reacting to the observation that, politically, he seemed to come down on the side of “order and law against all forms of violent excess,” he responds: All you have to do, apparently, to make that verdict inevitable is to maintain that the victims are real behind the texts that seem to allude to them. Does it inevitably follow that the impeccable revolutionary credentials go to those for whom the victims are not real? This would be a great paradox indeed! There are signs, I am afraid, that this paradox is not merely intertextual. It may well be the major fact of twentieth century life. The ideologies with the greatest power to fascinate the modern mind are also responsible for the greatest massacres in human his 54. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:232–33, 254–55, 277, 278.

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tory, but many intellectuals have been especially reluctant to acknowledge the fact, as if ideology reinforced in them the old capacity not to see that all victims are equally real behind the ideological as well as the mythical text.

While the references to victims are characteristically Girardian, the critique of ideologies could easily be taken from Strauss or Voegelin. Girard shares their concern about the threats posed by ideologists and “activist dreamers.” This point requires emphasis if we are to understand where the actual differences lie between Girard on one side and Strauss and Voegelin on the other. Ultimately it comes down to a divergence in terms of how they read the Bible and their understanding of its social and cultural effects, particularly with regard to the revelation of the scapegoating mechanism and the new sensitivity to victimization this entails. There is a strong sense in Girard’s thought that once the biblical text begins to exercise its influence in a culture, there is no turning back. Once the message of the text enters the bloodstream of a society, it becomes impossible to revive previous sacrificial practices, precisely because scapegoating can only function when its practitioners are unaware of what they are doing. When the relationship between violence, mimesis, and scapegoating is understood, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify violent solutions to our problems. This does not occur because we have become more benevolent, but because we now possess an increased ability to recognize the contagious and self-perpetuating character of violence. If, in the passage quoted above, Girard decries the blindness of ideologically justified violence, this is not because he is taken in by the reverse illusion concerning the inherent goodness of violence committed in the interests of law and order: The expression “order and law” is reminiscent of “law and order.” To American readers, at least, it suggests some recent alignments in American domestic politics. These alignments mean little more than the distribution of good and bad political grades to those who come down “for” or “against” law and order. Since everybody resorts to the same simplistic dichotomies, the thinking is the same on both sides. This is as it should be. “Violent excess” on the one hand, “law and order” on the other have always fed on each other. What else could they feed upon? If they did not, we would be rid, by now, of both of them.55

If Strauss and Voegelin share with Girard an appreciation of the destructive effects of ideologies, they do not appear to have come to Girard’s insight that 55. Girard, “To Double Business Bound,” 228.

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anti-ideological violence is just as likely to perpetuate the destructive cycles that it hopes to eliminate. Strauss and Voegelin can be scathing in their comments with regard to what they take to be naive, pacifist-leaning humanitarianism and modern revolutionary politics, and they are critical of the biblical tradition to the extent that it contributes to these movements. Yet even though they both give extensive attention to threats to social and political order, they remain relatively silent about the enormous achievements of modernity in terms of the alleviation of human suffering. Their criticism of the Bible is hardly balanced by an equally appreciative appraisal of its role in the formation of the modern concern for victims. It is almost as if they take this aspect of modernity for granted, without giving due consideration to its possible source. Or, if they do consider the question, they both seem to locate the notion of protecting people from violence as arising from the idea of philosophical moderation. One does not have to read much of either Strauss or Voegelin to become aware of how what may seem like purely “philosophical” issues can scarcely disguise a concern for the plight of victims evident throughout their work. At the root of their concern for social and political order, in their arguments in favor of culture-preserving violence, there is a desire to prevent a recurrence of the terrible events of the twentieth century. Strauss may write with cool detachment about the need to preserve the possibility of the philosophical life within society, but behind nearly all his analyses there is the worry about violence being used against unpopular minorities, whether Jews or philosophers.56 His Persecution and the Art of Writing is an entirely typical work, one that epitomizes Strauss’s mature philosophy. If he is wary of the triumph of the biblical orientation, it is because he sees it as leading to a dogmatic intolerance with violent consequences. Voegelin’s anger over the unwarranted destruction of innocent people is often palpable in his writing. He writes of how the strongest influence on his research is his “perhaps misplaced sensitivity towards murder”: “I do not like people just shooting each other for nonsensical reasons. That is a motive for finding out what possibly could be the reason someone could persuade somebody else to shoot 56. Sheppard discusses this in his excellent book on Strauss: “Strauss was a GermanJewish refugee vitally concerned with the possibility of Jewish existence in exile. During his own period of exile from his native country, he came to question the wisdom and prudence of any project that called for an overcoming of political imperfection or for any messianic aspiration to overcome exile. Strauss regarded exile as the natural condition of all political societies; he recast the precarious existence of the diasporic Jew, who lives in perpetual fear of persecution, as the normative model of the philosopher.” Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile, 7.

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people for no particular purpose. It is not simply an academic problem . . . that evokes my interest in this or that issue in the theory of consciousness, but the very practical problem of mass murder which is manifest in the twentieth century.”57 When Voegelin rails against the despiritualization of modern society, much of his indignation arises from the scandal of “normal” people committing horrible crimes against their neighbors. In his view, the intellectual lineage of the ideas motivating such atrocities has its unfortunate source in the biblical tradition. Here it may be helpful to recall Girard’s observation about the paradox at the heart of the modern Western world, that no culture has created more victims and no culture has done more in behalf of victims. To the extent that these phenomena have their roots in processes unleashed by the Bible’s exposure of the sacrificial mechanisms previously employed to sustain culture, it would be accurate to describe Strauss and Voegelin as thinkers whose fear of the destabilizing tendencies wrought by the biblical message outweighs and to some degree blinds them to the Bible’s role in the rehabilitation of victims. It is as if they appreciate only one side of Girard’s twofold insight. In one sense Strauss’s observations about the “naturalization” of charity in the Enlightenment are very much in agreement with how Girard understands the connection between the Bible and modernity. From a Girardian perspective one can say, “Participants in Western culture have lived for so long under the influence of the biblical ethos that it is difficult for us to fully appreciate its uniqueness. So pervasive is the concern for victims it arouses that there is a tendency for us to think of it as either a natural, universal emotion or a personal moral achievement for which the individual can take credit.” As with Strauss, we find an acknowledgment of the modern tendency to take a biblically inspired virtue for a natural human inclination. Nor would Strauss be apt to disagree with the judgment that “both the secularizing and rationalizing impulses it espoused were products of the Judeo-Christian tradition that the Enlightenment came into existence by underestimating and repudiating.”58 But largely absent from Strauss’s account of these modern developments is that which is central for Girard: the gradual recognition of the victim within the biblical text. Girard is very much aware of the link between the Bible and modernity, and he insists that it is impossible to conceal the biblical origin of the modern concern for victims. The “residue of the ‘supernatural’” that Strauss finds reflected in modern claims about the “naturalness” of charity is a partial consequence 57. Eric Voegelin, “Autobiographical Statement at Age 82,” 440. 58. Bailie, Violence Unveiled, 12, 30.

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of the reality of living with the Bible for two millennia. By focusing on the evolution of the biblical insight into victimization, Girard is able to explain how and why the supernatural has become transformed into the “natural” virtue of the Enlightenment. When the truth about the victim comes to be understood, it becomes increasingly difficult to defend the self-justifying myths that have, until then, sustained society. It is not at all surprising, then, when societies look back on their own histories and find it difficult to understand how anyone could ever have believed such tales. For example, Girard calls attention to the modern capacity to decode medieval and early modern persecution texts. 59 Modern interpreters easily see through these texts to the acts of scapegoating violence behind them. If the Enlightenment takes this ability to recognize victims as a manifestation of natural benevolence, tolerance, and charity, this is because the biblical insight has entered into the bloodstream of Western civilization. Concern about victimization has become “second nature.”60 The Enlightenment’s blind spot is its confusion of the sins of the institutional bearers of this insight with the message itself. Thus in Girard’s reading, it is not a case (as it is for Strauss) of modernity’s seizing upon “extremes” within the tradition and taking these to excessive lengths; rather, it is a matter of the legitimate development of the tradition in a direction implicit in its origins. Far from representing an extreme within the biblical tradition, Girard views the Bible’s teaching on charity to be an entirely consistent development of tendencies already present within the text. In the case of the Enlightenment we have a biblically influenced culture wrestling with the implications of its own best, inherited insights. For Girard, these biblical insights are responsible for what is best in the modern world, and the excesses of modernity are distortions of these insights.61 The Enlightenment’s embrace of charity, tolerance, and compassion are part of the historical unfolding of the primary and central thrust of biblical revelation—a revelation, it should be emphasized, that may be understood anthropologically as well as theologically. One does not need faith to discern the evolution of insight into victimization within the biblical text. 59. Girard, I See Satan, 163; Girard, Scapegoat, 1–44. 60. The following quote from Voltaire illustrates this modern tendency to take attention to the needs of victims as a universal and natural inclination: “Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be the same. . . . If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can help him, and he does not do so, he is guilty in the sight of all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties.” In The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick, 119. 61. Girard, Girard Reader, 279, 287.

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When Strauss draws a connection between modernity’s commitment to the “relief of man’s estate” and its zealotry in persecution, his reservations parallel Girard’s idea of the modern capacity to both benefit humanity and produce victims on an unprecedented scale. But Strauss and Girard differ considerably in their explanation for the simultaneous increase in both violence and concern for human welfare. Girard attributes the increase in violence to the disorder accompanying the breakdown of decaying sacrificial structures under pressure from Judeo-Christian revelation. Strauss draws a much more direct connection between the sense of responsibility for others generated by biblical charity and the tendency for this sense of responsibility to result in the coercion of the recalcitrant. In addition, Strauss sees the impact of charity as contributing to a lowering of the horizon he associates with modernity; for Girard the increased concern for victims represents perhaps humanity’s greatest advance. Girard is as attentive as Strauss to the danger inherent in modern Western civilization’s combination of concern for human welfare joined to unprecedented technological and economic might. But from Girard’s perspective, Strauss’s account of modernity describes only part of the story—technological advances may indeed be employed in the service of tyranny and destruction, but they also can result in the reduction of suffering. Canadian philosopher George Grant, a great admirer of Strauss, makes the following observation about Strauss’s apparent agreement with classical philosophical reticence toward technology: There is one argument on the modern side which the interests of charity require should be presented. It is the following: no writing about technological progress and the rightness of imposing limits upon it should avoid expressing the fact that the poor, the diseased, the hungry, and the tired can hardly be expected to contemplate any such limitation with the equanimity of the philosopher. . . . It is not by accident that as representative and perceptive a modern political philosopher as Feuerbach should have written that “compassion is before thought.” The plea for the superiority of classical political science over the modern assumptions must come to terms with the implications of this phrase in full explicitness.62

Girard provides us with the ability to recognize how much Strauss’s own position emerges from within a cultural horizon already formed by the biblical critique of victimization. It is quite clear that Strauss is concerned with persecution; one of his indictments of charity’s effect on modernity is that it leads 62. Grant, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” 66.

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to greater violence against victims. But Strauss is far less alert to the possibility that the ability to offer this critique has its source in the very text he criticizes. He writes as if it is the moderation of the classics that inspires his aversion to victimization. Strauss decries religious persecution, and he is well aware of Christianity’s historical sins in this regard. He therefore draws the conclusion that it is ultimately the Bible that is to blame. In doing so, he allows the scandal of religious persecution as it has existed in the West to block his insight into the place of the victim within the biblical text. Girard never denies that, historically, Christianity has persecuted others, but he would distinguish between the biblical unmasking of the sacrificial structures at the basis of culture and the fact that it takes even the recipients of this revelation many centuries to be weaned from a reliance on them. His thought is able to account for the paradox of a religious tradition that simultaneously is the bearer of a message that leads to the disintegration of the victimage mechanism and also is the perpetuator of that mechanism. With Voegelin we find a similar wariness with regard to the social and cultural effects of the biblical heritage. His fears concerning the prophetic and messianic strains within the biblical tradition lead him to adopt a stance in which biblical excesses require modification by philosophical restraint. Whereas Girard sees the destabilization wrought by the biblical message as part of a painful dismantling of the pervasive lie that has previously governed the world, Voegelin attributes its unsettling effects to the Bible’s relative lack of balance when compared with the truth of existence mediated by philosophy. Voegelin is particularly distressed by the ways in which fanatics and ideologues in modern times have drawn upon the Bible to justify the annihilation of their foes. However, in light of Girard’s thesis, what Voegelin has done is to accept such violence as somehow legitimately derived from biblical sources. When he contrasts the “blood-dripping Word of God” of the book of Revelation (Rev. 19:11–16) with the Jesus who delivers the Sermon on the Mount, he highlights a tension that is indeed present in the New Testament.63 Where I believe he differs from Girard is in his judgment that the violent avenger of the Apocalypse is a symbol that is very much in keeping with the already present tendencies within the biblical text. In Voegelin’s view, without the balance provided by philosophy, this is the sort of thing that can too easily happen with biblical sources. Girard would not dispute that Revelation is a problematic text (even though he would probably point out that the passage Voegelin cites is not

63. Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 206.

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typical of the book as a whole), but he would also call attention to the ways in which Jesus appropriates apocalyptic symbolism from the Hebrew Bible and empties it of any connotation of divine violence: We must realize that the apocalyptic violence predicted by the Gospels is not divine in origin. In the Gospels, this violence is always brought home to men, and not to God. . . . The theme of the Christian Apocalypse involves human terror, not divine terror: a terror that is all the more likely to triumph to the extent that humanity has done away with the sacred scarecrows humanists thought they were knocking over on their own initiative, while they reproached the JudaeoChristian tradition for striving to keep them upright. . . . The really important apocalyptic writings say nothing except that man is responsible for his history. You wish for your dwelling to be given up to you; well then, it is given up to you.

The apocalyptic discourses of Jesus do not threaten divine punishment, but call attention to what human beings will bring upon themselves if they persist in resorting to violent solutions to their problems.64 Far from being an affirmation of divine wrath or an incitement to violence, the apocalyptic warnings of Jesus point to the consequences of human violence. They are in no sense a source of human violence, but a realistic prediction of its consequences. Girard is as critical of violent sectarians as Voegelin, but he would add that such people misunderstand the fundamental movement within the biblical text. In the case of modern metastatic ideological movements, Girard would note how their violence is much more appropriately characterized as a resurgence of the archaic violent sacred than as a consequence of biblical teaching. Where Voegelin looks to the Bible to discover the roots of modern violence, Girard would suggest taking a closer look at the classic texts of Greece and Rome, in which the violent sacred of earlier times lives on, without the influence of biblical sources. Girard readily concedes that people may appeal to certain biblical texts to justify the ruthless treatment of their enemies. But in doing so they perpetuate the scapegoating that the Bible unveils and rejects. With regard to the Bible’s teaching on nonviolence, Girard would hardly deny Voegelin’s claim that to actively live out such a teaching would be extremely costly. But he would offer a rather different explanation as to why this is the case: “Since they do not see that the human community is dominated by violence, people do not understand that the very one of them who 64. Girard, Things Hidden, 185, 186, 188, 195, 259–60; Girard, I See Satan, 184–85. See also Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? 217–20; and Jozef Niewiadomski, “‘Denial of the Apocalypse’ versus ‘Fascination with the Final Days’: Current Theological Discussion of Apocalyptic Thinking in the Perspective of Mimetic Theory.”

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is untainted by any violence and has no form of complicity with violence is bound to become the victim. All of them say that the world is evil and violent.” The practice of nonviolence becomes problematic only in a situation where violence is accepted as normal. If collective violence is actually the unconscious generator of social solidarity and culture, then anyone who tries to break with it will be stigmatized and easily perceived as an ideal victim. Jesus and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah are victims par excellence because they are the least violent. The violence they suffer as society rids itself of such troublemakers can be understood as the perhaps unfortunate but necessary way of the world— “Can you not see that it is better to have one man die than to have the whole nation destroyed?” (John 11:50). If one takes the insight of Anaximander to be the truth about the world, biblical nonviolence will appear as suicidal folly— which is exactly the conclusion drawn by Voegelin. However, if Girard is correct, the Anaximander fragment is permeated with the very sacrificial mentality disclosed and repudiated in the biblical text. In Girard’s reading of the Bible, what is revealed there is the true nature of violence: its illusions, methods, and the fact that it operates within societies as “the enslavement of a pervasive lie.” Scapegoating is most effective when scapegoaters unthinkingly accept the fact that their victims are indeed guilty. The verdict of the crowd is always justified, and its violence is always legitimate. To escape from this lie involves moving away from violence in all its forms, including those that have “always seemed to be natural and legitimate.” Commenting on the Sermon on the Mount, Girard explains, “In order to free oneself from sacrifice, someone has to set the example, and renounce all mimetic retaliations: ‘turn the other cheek’, as Jesus says. To learn about the role of mimetism in human violence helps us to understand why Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount are what they are. They are not masochistic; they are not excessive. They are simply realistic, taking into account our almost irresistible tendency to retaliate.” In words that would no doubt challenge the assumptions that both Strauss and Voegelin bring to their understanding of the political, Girard comments, Modern interpreters certainly see that everything in the Kingdom of God comes down to the project of ridding men of violence. But because they conceive of violence in the wrong way, they do not appreciate the rigorous objectivity of the methods which Jesus advocates. People imagine either that violence is no more than a kind of parasite, which the appropriate safeguards can easily eliminate or that it is an ineradicable trait of human nature, an instinct or fatal tendency that it is fruitless to fight. . . . Violence is the enslavement of a pervasive lie; it imposes upon men a falsified vision not only of God but also of everything else. . . . To leave violence behind, it is necessary to give up the idea of retribution; it is there-

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fore necessary to give up forms of conduct that have always seemed to be natural and legitimate. . . . Because they have no knowledge of violence and the role it plays in human life . . . commentators sometimes imagine that the Gospels preach a sort of natural morality that men, being naturally good, would respect of their own accord if there were no “wicked” people to prevent them from doing so, and sometimes they dream that the Kingdom of God is a kind of Utopia, a dream of perfection invented by some gentle dreamer who was incapable of understanding the ground rules upon which humankind has always operated.65

Far from being a utopian vision oblivious to the rules that govern human existence, the biblical message articulates the truth about violence. The Bible entertains no illusions as to the cost involved in living out this truth; but neither does it succumb to the far more prevalent illusion that there can be a violent solution to the problem of violence.

The Bible and the Myth of Philosophy Troubled by the effects of the Bible on society, Strauss and Voegelin look to philosophy as a corrective. Biblical excess is tempered with philosophical prudence, reasonableness, and moderation. The two philosophers differ, however, in the ways in which they frame the relevant issues. Strauss repeatedly emphasizes the opposition between faith and reason, Jerusalem and Athens. The Bible stands for authority, obedience, and law, while the philosophical life is portrayed as being devoted to the exercise of intelligence and freedom. Voegelin rejects such contrasts, preferring to view the differences between the Bible and philosophy in terms of differentiations of consciousness emerging in response to experiences of transcendence. He makes it clear, though, that the noetic differentiation characteristic of philosophy is superior to the pneumatic, biblical differentiation in terms of the balance necessary to sustain social order. He also becomes increasingly critical of what he considers the biblical tradition’s attempts to monopolize the idea of revelation for itself, while consigning philosophy to the realm of merely natural reason. Both Strauss and Voegelin exonerate philosophy with regard to violence, although here too they offer differing accounts. Strauss distinguishes between the necessary violence employed by the city for the sake of its preservation, and the reticence exhibited by philosophers in criticizing the violence of a regime whose protection they enjoy. As a 65. Girard, Girard Reader, 184–85; Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 307–8; Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 203–4; Girard, Things Hidden, 197–99.

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life devoted to contemplation of the whole, philosophy in its highest form has nothing to do with violence. As political philosophy, however, it may acquiesce in the city’s violence for the sake of the common good, while indirectly exercising a moderating influence on the regime. Voegelin is more forthright when speaking about philosophy’s connection to violence. This violence is legitimate when it flows from the insights of someone like Plato, who wisely understands the limits of human nature and who recognizes that, however much persuasion is to be preferred, there are times when coercive measures must be undertaken for society’s benefit. With the guidance of philosophy, violence may be appropriate and justified. “Philosophy” as described by Strauss and Voegelin serves as a useful foil in relation to what they each see as problematic aspects of the biblical legacy. Yet there is something artificial and unconvincing about this juxtaposition. The artificiality stems largely from their idealized depiction of philosophy. Strauss’s “philosopher”—serene, detached, rational, and benign—has the character of an abstract, ideal type largely disengaged from any particular context. Strauss describes classical philosophy in the most elevated terms as embodying “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” and representing the “highest form of the mating of courage and moderation”; he declares that it benefits from being “graced by nature’s grace.” Its adherents see political things with “a freshness and directness which have never been equaled.” Strauss believes the political order sketched by Plato and Aristotle is the most perfect. His praise of classical political philosophy could not be more emphatic: “It reproduces, and raises to its perfection, the magnanimous flexibility of the true statesman, who crushes the insolent and spares the vanquished. It is free from all fanaticism because it knows that evil cannot be eradicated and therefore that one’s expectations from politics must be moderate. The spirit which animates it may be described as serenity or sublime sobriety.”66 No trace of criticism mars this description, and it is hard to imagine how political philosophy so conceived could ever be mistaken in its judgments. In light of such passages, it has been argued that Strauss’s work should be understood as primarily rhetorical “and that it should be approached as an example of political theory as evocation.”67 According to 66. Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence concerning Modernity,” 107; Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 27–28, 40. The reference to crushing the insolent and sparing the vanquished comes from Caesar’s Commentaries, a book to which Strauss turns for inspiration during the bleak years of the 1930s. In 1933 he writes to Löwith of how he holds out some hope in the dire political situation as long as some “spark glimmers of Roman thinking.” Sheppard, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile, 61. 67. John G. Gunnell, “Political Theory and Politics: The Case of Leo Strauss and Liberal Democracy,” 85. In support of this interpretation, one could point to the fact that despite

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this view, Strauss is quite conscious of the discrepancy between political theory as it lives on in academia and the concrete life of politics. He seeks, “without leaving the security of the academy, to speak politically in the language of philosophy and to philosophize rhetorically.” The question naturally arises as to whom such speech is addressed, since those with genuine philosophical aptitude will always be, in Strauss’s opinion, quite rare. This observation is not meant to suggest that philosophy must become popular and prove its practical usefulness. But a question certainly arises concerning the status and relevance of a type of knowledge claimed by its possessors to be the key to living well while simultaneously remaining accessible only to the few. What could be the possible role of “philosophical claims to political knowledge that lack political authority”? The disparaging of modern political thought, when joined to a highly idealized yet concretely vague appeal to the perfection and moderation of classical philosophy, allows those who embrace this rhetoric to bemoan their plight as refugees within a modern world that has lost touch with the nobility of the classical past. This stance lends itself to the cultivation of elite groups with little sense of responsibility to society other than to decry the lack of virtue among the many while prudently choosing to refrain from seriously challenging the actions of those charged with the responsibility of crushing the insolent. Philosophy so conceived finds itself in the paradoxical position of defending truth as well as untruth: The dilemma propelled his [Strauss’s] project into a kind of inauthenticity where philosophy held itself academically aloof, but compromised truth in the service of political purpose. More than once Strauss reveals his willingness to accept the noble lie not only in politics but also in the relationship between philosophy and politics. His saga of the decline of the tradition and the crisis of modernity falls into this category, but so do his claims about the existence and rediscovery of natural right. . . . What cannot be doubted . . . is that Strauss recognized that political society required transcendental beliefs and a belief in transcendentalism. There must be a belief in truth in politics even if truth and politics were ultimately incompatible. His mistake was to assume that it was within the province and capacity of academic philosophy to save the appearances and underwrite political values either specifically or generically.68 ——— the emphasis Strauss places on the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, he actually gives little attention to the Bible other than the first few chapters of Genesis. Strauss’s “Jerusalem” does not reflect a serious study of specific biblical texts, but serves more as a useful construct in contrast with classical philosophy. 68. Gunnell, “Political Theory and Politics,” 68, 85–86. See also George Kateb, “The Questionable Influence of Arendt (and Strauss),” 38–43.

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Because Voegelin understands philosophy to be concerned with exegesis of experiences that are in principle accessible to all, his account of philosophy does not have the same elitist tinge as Strauss’s version. One can hardly imagine Strauss agreeing with Voegelin that the results of the philosopher’s analysis “must be communicated to the general public.” However, Voegelin is not especially sanguine about the ability of the many to think and live philosophically. Philosophy is not for everyone; the spiritual ailments of “the mass of mankind” must be cured by religion. And if Voegelin does not quite reach the same rhetorical heights as Strauss when extolling philosophy, it is clear that he looks to philosophy as the best hope for humanity in its present crisis. His attitude toward philosophy exhibits the same idealizing tendency as we find in Strauss. True philosophy never loses its balance, and it protects society from the unbalancing effects of revelation by deliberately introducing uncertainties of meaning when needed to prevent consciousness from derailing “into apocalyptic expectations of a final realm to come.” Voegelin insists on a number of occasions that anyone seeking to understand society and its current ills must return to the Greeks. For Voegelin this involves not a fruitless attempt to revive the polis, but an appreciation of how Plato and the other classical philosophers have bequeathed to us the conceptual language with which to consider problems of order and disorder.69 Both Strauss’s and Voegelin’s philosophical critiques of the Bible remain unconvincing. To a significant degree I believe this is due to the fact that to criticize biblical teaching from the perspective of classical political philosophy is to engage in a critique on the basis of a highly idealized abstraction—an abstraction not in the sense of something empty and meaningless, but in the sense of a set of ideas lacking institutional embodiment in the present. In other words, to compare the Bible with classical philosophy is to compare a tradition that is still very much alive and operative in the world with one that is essentially nonexistent except in university departments. The Bible continues to inspire and inform living traditions in a way “philosophy” does not. A preoccupation with victimization (frequently manifesting itself as discourse involving the protection of human rights) is a dominant feature of modern politics, even when we fall far short of our professed ideals. People actually attend church and synagogue and try to translate what 69. Eric Voegelin, “What Is Political Theory?” 65; Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 93–101, 122–23; Voegelin, “Gospel and Culture,” 210–12; Voegelin, Order and History, 4:295–96; Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” 266; Voegelin, “Democracy and Industrial Society,” 217; Voegelin, “Prospects of Western Civilization,” 126; Eric Voegelin, “In memoriam Alfred Schutz,” 465; “Conversations with Eric Voegelin,” 268–70.

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they hear into effective practice in their personal and public lives. In saying this I am in no way ignoring the lasting influence of classical philosophy on Western intellectual and political traditions. Rather, I am simply acknowledging what is clear to both Strauss and Voegelin—that the abiding legacy of classical thought in modern society has been deeply permeated and, in a sense, transformed by the biblical tradition. No doubt the classical tradition has left a lasting imprint on the political institutions of the modern Western world, but the discourse animating these institutional forms and practices today is permeated by meanings and values inexplicable apart from an overriding concern for victims.70 Because of this, we no longer have direct access to a world shaped by classical thought apart from the influence of the Bible. This is just another way of saying that the Platonic or Aristotelian polis in its living, unadulterated form is no part of our experience, nor can it ever become so unless the biblical tradition is entirely forgotten. Once the scapegoating mechanism is exposed, it becomes nearly impossible to function as if this has not happened. Instead we live in a world in which aspects of the classical tradition have been appropriated by a civilization in which the message of the Judeo-Christian heritage has come to dominate (albeit frequently in transfigured, secularized forms). When Strauss speaks of “the triumph of the biblical orientation” or of the “second cave” in which modern people find themselves, he has this situation in mind, and he certainly understands himself as working to recover the teaching of the classical authors freed from biblical influences. While Voegelin is also committed to recovering classical wisdom, he does not follow Strauss in conceiving this task as somehow involving a reversal of biblically inspired developments. Neither man believes that a return to the polis as envisioned by Plato or Aristotle is possible, but Strauss refuses to abandon the belief that Plato’s philosophy articulates the best possible regime. For Voegelin, however, there is no going back from the pneumatic differentiation of consciousness reflected in the biblical writings. He readily acknowledges the ways in which the Bible represents an advance beyond classical philosophy; nonetheless, the biblical tradition, in his view, requires the balancing wisdom of Platonic thought to restrain its socially disruptive tendencies.

70. On the classical legacy in politics, see Hannah Arendt, On Revolution; Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism; Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy; and Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. On the role of the victim in the modern world see Girard, I See Satan, 161–69.

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Reading Strauss and Voegelin, one would scarcely have a sense of the importance of the actual concrete practice of biblical religion. With this in mind one of the more striking aspects of Strauss’s and Voegelin’s treatment of biblical materials is the almost complete absence of any discussion of the role of worship. For philosophers wishing to be faithful to the spirit of the texts they analyze, this is a remarkable omission. It raises serious questions about the adequacy of their philosophical critiques, for communal worship is a central concern in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. To some degree Voegelin deals with matters of cult in Israel and Revelation, but this is very much overshadowed by his repeated tendency to favor spiritual individualism over what he takes to be a more compact religious collectivity. Even though he has a deep sensitivity to experiences of transcendence, he consistently prefers to discuss those experiences that focus on the spiritual dynamics occurring within individuals. He considers Christianity an advance beyond the religion of Israel because the individual soul is more adequately differentiated, and even within Israelite tradition, he cites the prophet Jeremiah approvingly because he is understood as a forerunner of this tendency. The compactness of Israel’s communal experience is, in his estimation, a stage to be overcome. Strauss scarcely mentions worship in the Bible, except to note how contemplation is essentially a transsocial or asocial possibility, whereas obedience and faith are essentially related to the community of the faithful. But such an observation hardly does justice to the important role of worship in the Bible. The communal worship of Israel is barely acknowledged in Strauss’s work; instead, his treatment of the Bible focuses on issues of obedience to arbitrary divine precepts, an approach that has much in common with the endless rehashing of “divine command” theory that is supposed to pass for philosophical analysis of the Bible in most introductory philosophy texts. The lack of attention to the liturgical, communal aspect of biblical tradition becomes especially noticeable when he raises questions about the appeal to religious experience in the work of other Jewish and Christian thinkers. Strauss seems capable of understanding such claims only on a purely individual level. Consequently, the questions he raises have to do with the verifiability of each person’s “private” revelation. Alien to Strauss is an appreciation of how an individual’s religious experience is to be understood within the context of a worshipping community that understands itself as part of a wider tradition. For all his criticism of modern philosophy, it is the epistemological problematic as framed by Descartes, Hume, and Kant that determines his approach to revelation. The problem of revelation is reduced to the problem of adjudicating and verifying among competing individual claims of experiences of transcendence. Absent

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from this approach is any appreciation of how religious communities have, over the centuries, developed criteria by which to determine what is and is not of God. By ignoring the role of the worshipping community, Strauss eliminates the missing link between the individual and religious experience. Voegelin does not have the same difficulties as Strauss with regard to individual revelation, because he is more open to the possibility that these claims are verified indirectly by means of cross-cultural, transhistorical comparison of textual and other symbolic sources that bear witness to the structural “equivalences” of experience. Nevertheless, Voegelin largely ignores the role of communal worship within traditions. He is capable of writing beautifully of prayer in the experience of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, but readers would never guess from these reflections that the saints belonged to worshipping communities.71 Compare this with the observation made by theologian Frans Jozef van Beeck in describing the context for Aquinas’s presentation of his “five ways”: “Ultimately, what Aquinas wants is what he already knows from the community of faith: having his desire for God nourished in the kind of worship that implies abandon. . . . He knows that, at the point where his mind will encounter the limits of the visible world, he will lose his foothold in articulate understanding. But that is precisely where he will find, in the emptiness of mind . . . the door to the sanctuary.”72 Philosophy, for both Strauss and Voegelin, focuses mainly on individuals; if there is any communal dimension to it, this occurs when these rare and like-minded persons seek out others like themselves. Unlike biblical peoples, philosophers do not take their fundamental bearings from being members of a community of worship. Unfortunately, neither Strauss nor Voegelin deals adequately with this decisive difference between the world of philosophy and that of the Bible. The centrality of liturgical life for the communities that produced the Bible is hardly reflected in their work. To the quite reasonable objection that philosophy as philosophy is not concerned with divine worship, one can say in reply that if this is so, then a philosophical approach to biblical materials is necessarily inadequate, since it treats as negligible what is central to those who formed the Bible. But both Strauss and Voegelin wish to understand the biblical writers as they understood themselves; hence, their neglect of this dimension of biblical experience is problematic. To call attention to the centrality of worship for the biblical worldview is not simply to take note of a peculiar distinguishing feature of the Bible 71. Eric Voegelin, “Quod Deus Dicitur”; Voegelin, “The Theory of Governance,” 226–38. 72. Frans Jozef van Beeck, God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology, 111.

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as compared to philosophy. It is to underline how the Bible remains a living, animating presence in the modern world in the form of religious practice. By contrast, the critiques of the Bible made by Strauss and Voegelin depend to a significant degree on the ability to confine the comparison between Athens and Jerusalem to the realm of theory. Their criticism increases in strength and forcefulness to the extent it remains on a conceptual level. This is especially evident in Strauss’s work. As noted earlier, his Athens and Jerusalem are largely symbolic evocations, intended by Strauss to highlight the inescapable conflict at the root of Western civilization. Strauss pays little attention to the actual biblical text, nor does he seem at all interested in the connection between the Bible and actual Jewish religious practice. With Voegelin, the biblical message is consistently reworked and reinterpreted in light of his developing theory of consciousness. This theoretical articulation becomes the lens through which he analyses biblical texts.73 In theory, it is possible to contrast the wisdom of Athens with the teaching of the Bible as if they are both viable options for contemporary civilization. In analyzing the Bible from a philosophical perspective, this is what Strauss and Voegelin do; in their very different ways they pull the biblical message into the realm of theory, where it can be contrasted with philosophy. Western civilization is thereby explained in terms of competing sets of ideas represented by Athens and Jerusalem. In fact, though, the realistic choice confronting contemporary civilization is not between the way of Athens and the way of Jerusalem, but rather how best to deal with the de facto “triumph of the biblical orientation.” Historically and concretely it is the biblical tradition (even in its secular guises) that has been left with the responsibility for preserving and developing modern Western civilization. Today we judge ourselves by the biblical criteria of the victim. Reflecting on the contemporary situation, Girard observes, “[It] is much easier to recover biblical principles if one doesn’t know they are biblical. . . . When our intellectuals, after the Second World War . . . thought we were through with absolutes, they were simply wrong. Because the victimary principle or the defence of victims has become holy: it is the absolute. One will never see anyone attacking it. They do not even have to mention it.”74 In the theoretical sphere it may be otherwise, but concerning the actual ordering of modern civilization, we have no opportunity to contrast societies under the sway of the Bible’s insights with comparable societies operating in accordance with Platonic moderation. The theoretical comparison practiced by Strauss and Voegelin does not correspond to lived experi 73. See Stefan Rossbach, “Understanding in Quest of Faith: The Central Problem in Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy,” 237–51. 74. Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 257–58.

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ence (at least in the modern West). As long as we remain on the level of theory it is relatively easy to take the biblical tradition to task from a perspective that has no institutional existence outside of academia. This is not to denigrate the contribution of the university, but to highlight the discrepancy between a narrative that speaks of Athens and Jerusalem as if they were both viable alternatives, and the actual historical situation we inhabit, which is largely characterized by an ongoing encounter with the legacy of Jerusalem (whether acknowledged or not). The historical sins of societies influenced by the Bible have been and will continue to be amply chronicled. Certainly Strauss and Voegelin do not hesitate to point them out. By contrast, Platonically ordered societies can not be similarly criticized because they exist only in theory. Classical philosophy simply does not exist in institutional form, nor does it permeate contemporary Western society as does the biblical legacy. At some level Strauss and Voegelin understand this well (as did Nietzsche), but at times they write as if they conceive of the ways of Athens and Jerusalem as equally realizable possibilities for the present age. Perhaps they are right; but if the spirit of classical philosophy does in fact embody an incomplete break with sacrificial thinking, then, even if possible, its revival would not be desirable. This is one of the primary reasons that the antimodernism of Strauss and Voegelin is ultimately unsatisfying. For readers are left to wonder how seriously they intend the return to classical philosophy, and whether they sufficiently think through the consequences of “repeating antiquity at the peak of modernity.”75 As critics of modernity they are often insightful, but whether they are thinkers with a positive and realizable vision for the future is open to question. It is clear that Strauss and Voegelin are aware of the discrepancies between their evocations of order and the reality of the society in which they find themselves; what is less clear is how they imagine these discrepancies can be diminished. They sometimes write as if everything would be better if only the world were to take Plato’s teaching to heart. This feeling on their part cannot even be called nostalgia, because there is no historical era informed by a “triumph of the Platonic orientation” against which to measure the achievements and sins of the civilization formed by the Bible. Instead, Strauss and Voegelin rely upon a certain myth about “philosophy” that they employ in their critique of the biblical tradition. At the heart of this myth is the belief that philosophy is never wrong—it always takes the side of truth. In this, the self-understanding of philosophy differs profoundly from that of the Bible:

75. Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence,” 183.

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But what is so extraordinary about the biblical rehabilitation of victims? Isn’t it a common practice that dates right back to antiquity? Yes, but previously the victims were rehabilitated by one group in opposition to another. The faithful remain gathered around the rehabilitated victim and the flame of resistance is never extinguished. Truth is not allowed to submerge. . . . Take the death of Socrates, for example. “True” philosophy never enters into it. It escapes the contagion of the scapegoat. There is always truth in the world; even though this is no longer so at the moment of Christ’s death. Even his favorite disciples are speechless in the face of the crowd. They are literally absorbed by it.76

Michael Walzer makes a similar point with reference to the book of Exodus, pointing out its unsparing honesty with regard to the backsliding and defections of the Israelites. The Hebrew Bible allows little room for the Chosen People to congratulate themselves on their fidelity.77 From Girard’s perspective this self-criticism is one of the great strengths of the biblical tradition. By comparison, philosophy, from the time of its birth, is not able to recognize its own complicity in scapegoating. Athens may have demanded the death of Socrates, but philosophy insists that it had nothing to do with this injustice—its hands remain bloodless. This conviction is possible as long as consciousness of scapegoating is lacking. When Plato advocates expulsion of the poets from his city, he does so with the belief that they fully deserve their fate: The Platonic rejection of tragic violence is itself violent, for it finds expression in a new expulsion—that of the poet. Through his very castigation of the poet, Plato reveals himself the poet’s “enemy brother,” his “double,” who like all true doubles, is oblivious to the relationship. As regards Socrates, whom the community—unwilling to soil its own hands by contact with an impious creature— asked to do away with himself, Plato’s sympathy is every bit as suspect as Sophocles’ sympathy for his pharmakos-hero.78

The justification of scapegoating is inscribed in the narrative of philosophy’s founding. In a scene reminiscent of the confrontation between the biblical Job 76. Girard, Scapegoat, 105. Elsewhere Girard makes a similar point: “[The] Gospel tells us there are moments in which there is absolutely no truth in culture; and I do not think any other source tells us that with quite the same conviction. There are some anticipations in Greek culture, in particular the death of Socrates, but in the accounts of the death of Socrates, philosophy always knows the truth, whereas in Christianity, the Christians themselves say ‘Peter, our leader, was ignorant.’ In other words, the New Testament says that truth is not a human truth, that truth is outside of culture and has to be introduced into the world against the grain of culture itself.” Violent Origins, 142. 77. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 17–18, 49–55, 147–49. 78. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 295.

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and his “friends,” Socrates (in the Crito) is confronted by the Laws of Athens. Job maintains his innocence to the end; Socrates, the willing scapegoat, goes to his death convinced by the Laws that such is the will of the gods. Many centuries later, but with precisely the same spirit, Strauss can comment on the sacrifice of Socrates that “Socrates preferred to sacrifice his life in order to preserve philosophy in Athens rather than to preserve his life in order to introduce philosophy into Crete. . . . His choice was a political choice of the highest order.”79 In reality, the political choice extolled by Strauss is nothing more than Socrates’ acquiescence in his own scapegoating. But philosophy accepts these sacrifices for the sake of the city. To the extent that Strauss and Voegelin identify philosophy with the life of reason in its highest form, their acceptance of the myth of philosophy’s innocence makes them relatively uncritical of reason’s own limitations. For Strauss, philosophy understands itself as “the perfection of reason and therefore the perfection of man is philosophy.”80 Voegelin notes how, while reason “is the constituent of humanity at all times,” it was the “genius of the Hellenic philosophers” that “discovered Reason as the source of order in the psyche of man.” They made this discovery as part of their “resistance against the personal and social disorder of their age.” But, Voegelin quickly adds, the philosophers did so without allowing their consciousness to take the unfortunate apocalyptic turn characteristic of the pneumatic visionaries. Plato and Aristotle did not indulge in metastatic thinking about the age to come.81 Reason, so understood, seems especially liable to sacrificial thinking, particularly because it seems to pride itself on being immune to such tendencies. Girard’s work reminds us that scapegoating remains a permanent temptation—even where the influence of biblical text erodes our capacity to engage in such practices. Having relied on this mechanism for so long, humanity finds it difficult to abandon it. By showing the ways in which members of any given society are already shaped (and distorted) by the effects of the victimage mechanism, Girard describes the factual situation in which the exercise of reason occurs. Human beings operate within societies already structured by the effects of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. He shows how profoundly these practices skew every aspect of culture and society. They literally constitute the horizon within which human life unfolds. What members of society take to be normal, even rational, is already twisted by the effects of scapegoating. If at the origins of every culture there is an act of victimization, then every area of human life will bear 79. Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 33. 80. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 141. 81. Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” 265–66.

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traces of this violent origin, including the operation of human understanding. It is within this context that the following comment must be understood: “Our own rationality cannot reach the founding role of mimetic victimage because it remains tainted with it. Narrow rationality and victimage lose their effectiveness together. Reason itself is a child of the foundational murder.”82 Girard is neither an irrationalist nor a fideist. No more than Strauss or Voegelin would he think of dismissing the role of intelligence and reasonableness in human life. But he would call our attention to how understandings of rationality, as they arise within cultures, are insufficiently aware of their involvement with scapegoating practices. For Girard, this is the pervasive illusion of all those who would justify their own acts of violence and/or victimization by an appeal to reason. It is difficult to persuade those who are convinced that, unlike their opponents, their judgments proceed from reason and therefore epitomize the virtues of balance and moderation. Reason must become aware of its own scapegoating tendencies in order to be faithful to the exigencies of its own reasonableness. As it operates concretely within a community, reason participates in the lie of “misremembering” the community’s violent foundations.83 Only when freed from the contaminating illusions of sacrificial thinking is reason able to become fully rational. Girard shares with Strauss and Voegelin a commitment to the development of a genuine human science, but he sees this as possible only on the basis of the workings of the biblical text: The scientific spirit cannot come first. It presupposes the renunciation of a former preference for the magical causality of persecution so well defined by the ethnologists. Instead of natural, distant, and inaccessible causes, humanity has always preferred causes that are significant from a social perspective and permit of corrective intervention—victims. In order to lead men to the patient exploration of natural causes, men must first be turned away from their victims. This can only be done by showing them that from now on persecutors “hate without cause” and without any appreciable result. In order to achieve this miracle, not only among certain exceptional individuals as in Greece, but for entire populations, there is need of the extraordinary combination of intellectual, moral, and religious factors found in the Gospel text. The invention of science is not the reason that there are no longer witch-hunts, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been invented. The scientific spirit, like the spirit of enterprise in an economy, is a by-product of the profound action of the Gospel text.84 82. René Girard, A Theatre of Envy, 208. 83. Alison, Joy of Being Wrong, 304. 84. Girard, Scapegoat, 204–5.

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The life of reason is truly able to flourish where the victimage mechanism has been called into question and exposed. Girard’s perspective entails no renunciation of intelligence, no capitulation to the intellectual forces of irrationality. On the contrary, his point is that in order for intelligence to be true to itself it must first be liberated from the prison of sacrificial thinking. Strauss and Voegelin critique the Bible from the perspective of philosophy—what is required, though, is that the anthropological insights of the biblical text be permitted to help philosophy fulfill its commitment to self-knowledge. In varying degrees, Strauss and Voegelin resist this conclusion, preferring to correct or oppose the biblical message in light of philosophy. Strauss is not mistaken in recognizing the Bible’s wariness with regard to philosophy. But he misinterprets that wariness, reading it as further evidence of the contrast between the unquestioning obedience demanded by the Bible and the freedom of thought typical of the philosophical life. Girard makes a powerful case, though, that far from requiring the sacrifice of the intellect, the biblical text enables intelligence to operate freely. Voegelin, unlike Strauss, does not oppose reason to revelation—on the contrary, he understands reason as being constituted by revelation.85 Yet no more than Strauss does he submit reason to criticism from a biblical perspective. This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of their treatment of the Bible—the critique moves in one direction only. Neither Voegelin nor Strauss conceives of the possibility that the biblical text could hold the key to understanding the limitations of philosophy. With his focus on the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, Strauss comes closer than Voegelin in this regard, but he is content to leave the tension at the level of irreconcilable difference, where the two foes are left with no choice but to try to defeat each other. This is hardly the same thing as critical engagement, in which the partners are able to actually learn something from each other and change accordingly. In Voegelin’s later thought, reason and revelation are brought close together, and Plato is depicted as being just as conscious of divine revelation as Moses, the prophets, and Jesus.86 But Voegelin never understands the outcome of this coming together as in any way implying any lack on Plato’s part 85. Voegelin, Order and History, 4:292–93. 86. To avoid misunderstanding, I would emphasize that I am making no claim as to the truth of Voegelin’s assertion about Plato’s experience of divine reality. My point is that from a Girardian perspective, Voegelin misses the essential anthropological difference between Plato and the Bible. Plato may very well have been reaching out to the transcendent reality worshipped by prophets and saints. But to the extent that he inhabits a cultural horizon lacking insight into the pervasiveness of the scapegoating mechanism, he does not experience the same breakthrough as those living within biblically influenced cultures.

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in comparison with the biblical sources. Voegelin’s criticism moves in precisely the opposite direction. Gifted with the same revelation, the difference between prophet and philosopher lies in the latter’s superior balance. And in what does this balance consist? In prudently devising and employing myths so as to prevent the intensity of revelatory experience from degenerating into unrealistic hopes regarding the achievement of perfection in this world. According to Voegelin, such hopes are the source of much disorder and misery, whether in the form of violent fanaticism or of the pacifist-leaning attitudes that contribute to a climate in which Gnostic sectarians can flourish. Platonic balance is also evident in the philosopher’s reliance on persuasion supplemented by coercion. Of course, it is the philosopher who is the best judge of when such violence is justified. The appropriate use of violence, that is, one that recognizes the truth of Anaximander and the laws of mundane existence, testifies to the philosopher’s rationality, while the philosopher’s presumed rationality justifies the violence. Voegelin judges Plato to be more reasonable than biblical thinkers are because Voegelin considers his attitude toward the use of violence to be more judicious. Platonic rationality is intimately tied to the violence of order— so much so that at times Voegelin seems to come close to the view that the prudent use of intelligence in knowing how to use violence in the service of order is one of the defining characteristics of reason. From a Girardian perspective, Voegelin appears insufficiently critical, always confident in his judgment about the proper use of coercive measures in the interest of preserving society. To bring these Girardian insights to bear is not to make an argument that the use of violence can never be justified; but it is to raise the question about how this violence is to be justified and for what reasons. Girard’s insight into the use of scapegoating should not be misconstrued as a moralistic or blanket condemnation of societies that rely on this mechanism; he is well aware that the reason communities have turned to this practice is that it has proven effective in limiting violence. He would share the concerns of Strauss and Voegelin with regard to the plague of violence in the contemporary world. But both Strauss and Voegelin incline toward a view that violence becomes more acceptable when it has the blessing or silent approbation of philosophy. However, from a Girardian perspective, philosophy remains trapped to some degree within a horizon structured by sacrificial thinking.87 If Girard is correct, scapegoating rests upon a lie that is gradually unveiled through the 87. See Cesareo Bandera, The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction, 43–87; and Wolfgang Palaver, “Hobbes and the Katechon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity.”

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biblical text. Its effectiveness as a culture-preserving mechanism increases in direct proportion to its ability to remain hidden. One of the more disturbing elements in the thought of both Strauss and Voegelin is their apparent approbation of philosophy’s role in withholding or obscuring unsettling truths. For Strauss and Voegelin, violence is legitimate when it is reasonable; but neither of them provides an adequate account of how such rationality is to be determined. Instead, their readers are frequently left with the impression that the standard of rationality they employ coincides with their own political judgments and commitments. For example, the flexibility with which Strauss endows the idea of natural right would place no limit on the forms of violence to be used in defending society. He takes it to be characteristic of philosophical moderation that it is able to accommodate itself to exigencies of the particular situation in determining what is to be done. Strauss is careful to distinguish between natural right and natural law, seeing in the Thomistic variant of the latter a residue of the biblical view that certain actions are immoral under any circumstances. But from the perspective of natural right (as he understands it), the decision to make use of violence in behalf of society is left in the hands of the “true statesman” whose own “magnanimous flexibility” mirrors this natural right as he “crushes the insolent and spares the vanquished.”88 Voegelin is equally flexible when contemplating violence against dangerous enemies: [An] atomic bombardment is not a moral matter but depends on politics and questions of existence. And when a social process is involved, we cannot, in the name of morality, refuse to use certain types of weapons and make certain kinds of decisions. The classic treatise on this point is Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. The necessity of the process he terms kinesis, and he considers kinesis a kind of social illness. When you are caught in such an illness you cannot extricate yourself as long as you are a statesman; you can only get out of it personally.89

Again, my point is not that all use of violence in the interest of preserving society is illegitimate. What distinguishes Girard from Strauss and Voegelin is not that he is a dove and they are hawks. Rather, what I wish to highlight is the relative ease with which Strauss and Voegelin justify such violence on the basis of an appeal to classical philosophy. Rhetorically invoking the balance and moderation of the classics somehow legitimates violence in the present.

88. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 163; Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 140–43; Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” 28. 89. Voegelin, “The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society,” 94–95.

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But as noted earlier, this appeal is made to a tradition that lives on primarily in the corridors of academia, a tradition that, from its inception, has given little thought to its own complicity in violence. Attempts to revive the wisdom of Thucydides, Anaximander, Plato, and Lucretius without a thorough examination of how sacrificial thinking is operative in their thought may easily lead (as I believe it does in the case of Strauss and Voegelin) to an idealization of the classical tradition. From this idealized perspective, modernity is condemned. What is lacking in these judgments, however, is a sense of the ways in which modernity represents an advance beyond classicism. There may in fact be very good reasons for “the triumph of the biblical orientation.” To sustain the superiority of classical wisdom over modern thought, the central role of the victim must be omitted from one’s account (or, as is more likely with Strauss and Voegelin, simply taken for granted). Once the victim is included, an evaluation of modernity becomes more complicated than either Strauss or Voegelin would have us believe. They would direct our attention to the failings of the biblical tradition when considering the evils of modernity. But it is precisely here that greater nuance is required. Strauss traces some of the less-fortunate aspects of modernity to the legacy of the biblical call for charity. Voegelin finds in the metastatic faith of the prophets one of the principal sources of disorder in the contemporary world. Girard, too, acknowledges that the excesses of modernity are largely distortions of biblical insight. But he balances this judgment with the corresponding claim that these same insights are also responsible for what is best in the modern world. It is this acknowledgment that is rarely evident in the work of Strauss and Voegelin. Its absence raises serious questions about their diagnoses of modernity’s problems and the validity of their proposed solutions. For we surely need to ask ourselves whether it is true that, as Strauss argues, it is the biblical notion of charity that accounts for modern fanaticism. Also, looking back at the twentieth century, it is a question of the utmost importance as to whether a reversal of the millennia-old “pampering” and “softening” associated with belief in a loving Providence actually serves the best interests of humanity. With Voegelin it must be asked whether it is the vision of Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul that needs to be balanced and approached with caution. Taking “metastatic faith” to be the greatest threat facing contemporary civilization runs the risk of ignoring those aspects of the same engendering biblical vision responsible for the most humane aspects of the modern world. It also tends to evade questions about philosophy’s own suitability in correcting alleged biblical imbalance. Are not acts of violence committed with greater ease when perpetrators are blinded to their own scapegoating by a belief in their own reasonableness? Likewise, a case

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can be made that the destruction wrought by modern ideological movements is a consequence of their departure from the spirit of the Bible. They become most lethal precisely when they forget to take victims into account; they are most awful when they cloak their deeds in the seemingly impartial talk of rational necessity and the impenetrable conviction of the “sublime sobriety” of philosophy. The horrors of the twentieth century are better explained as a consequence of the lasting hold exercised by sacrificial thinking, rather than as the offspring of a biblical orientation whose effect on Western civilization has been to call our attention to the lies by which we justify our scapegoating. Perhaps our problems stem, not from naively imagining that we can live in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount, but from naively following Machiavelli. It is when reason convinces us that our violence rises from a sober assessment of what needs to be done, when we take pride in the “realism” of our position, and when we regret the unfortunate “necessity” of having to do harm—it is then that we need to be most alert to our scapegoating. At its best, philosophy’s pursuit of self-knowledge can lead in this direction. But to the extent that philosophers believe their reason always preserves them in the way of truth, reason’s own need for conversion becomes apparent. In order not to be misunderstood here or accused of injecting the issue of religious faith into the discussion at this point, let me be clear that I am using the term conversion as Girard does when he describes it as a willingness to “accept that you are part of the mimetic mechanism which rules human relationships, in which the observer acknowledges the fact that he himself is implicated in his observation.” Conversion so understood “is a form of intelligence, of understanding.”90 In terms of philosophy this would involve becoming increasingly attentive to the ways in which reason itself is implicated in the scapegoating practices constitutive of culture. Here philosophy’s disavowal of any complicity in the death of its founder reveals its full significance when compared to the Bible’s insistence on our ever-present capacity to be caught up in the delusions of the mob. Again, this is not a matter of the philosopher’s accepting biblical faith, but of allowing the anthropological insights contained within the biblical text to serve as a purifying critique of philosophy’s own involvement with society’s violent practices. Whether or not one believes in the existence of the biblical God, there is no escaping the fact that the Bible is permeated with a message of ongoing repentance for sin—and if Girard is correct, much of this repentance involves a moving away from tendencies to scapegoat of which we were previously unaware. In the case of Strauss, 90. Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 45.

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he is quite clear about repentance being alien to the classical philosophical tradition. The philosopher has no need to repent and is free of such undignified passions. “Know thyself ” involves understanding humanity’s place in the universe and critically examining one’s opinions and prejudices—it does not mean “Search your heart.”91 Such a division between the biblical and the philosophical is, of course, alien to Voegelin’s thinking, and it comes as no surprise to find him highlighting the similarities between Platonic periagoge (“turning around”) and Christian metanoia (literally, “putting on a new mind,” but with connotations of repentance and turning away from sin). He is entirely comfortable with the language of conversion being used in speaking of the philosophical way of life. And if Strauss would likely see in Voegelin someone who allows biblical notions of conversion to seep into his account of the philosophical life, I would argue that the reverse is equally true, that Voegelin also tends to allow biblical repentance to be absorbed by Platonic enlightenment. On the question of Voegelin’s attitude toward the idea of the philosopher’s conversion, it should be noted how at times he undermines his own credibility in this regard by an unfortunately polemical spirit. Voegelin is capable of writing beautifully and convincingly of the spiritual dynamism reflected in great literary, philosophical, and religious texts. I cannot think of any other philosopher who comes close to him in the ability to unfold the meaning of an Augustinian or even Cartesian text as a spiritual exercise. But this exceptional sensitivity to the spiritual is joined to an understanding of the social and political realms as operating in accordance with the “laws of mundane existence.” Thinkers whose ideas he judges to be in violation of these laws are thereby disqualified from being taken seriously as persons living in openness to reality. Some of Voegelin’s most sympathetic critics note how damaging his polemics can be. Because his attacks can come across as unfair and exaggerated, Voegelin increases the risk that otherwise open-minded readers will dismiss him as a strident political partisan.92 The effect of this is to cast doubt on the validity of his analyses of experiences of transcendence, since they now fall under the suspicion of being nothing more than reflections of Voegelin’s political convictions. To the extent that he allows these convictions to influence his evaluation of the spiritual condition of other thinkers, he has only himself to blame for creating this impression. What is required is an ongoing awareness of our own proclivity to scapegoating, and the ways in which our thinking in terms of oppositions 91. Strauss, “Progress or Return?” 108–9. 92. Webb, “Voegelin’s ‘Gnosticism’ Reconsidered.”

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prolongs the very intellectual and political climate we claim to decry. Walzer captures something of this spirit in speaking of an “Exodus politics,” a humane politics that avoids the excesses of political messianism precisely because it constantly calls to mind the teaching of Exodus that “there is no ultimate struggle, but a long series of decisions, backslidings, and reforms.”93 This is very much in accord with Girard’s understanding of the biblical text, which reflects the constant struggle on the part of its authors and adherents to be faithful to their own best insights. What this implies, though, is that what is essential for the future of Western society is not the correction of the Bible by philosophy, but a more profound appropriation of the biblical teaching itself. Despite these criticisms, I believe that performatively Strauss and Voegelin go beyond, and are in some sense even at odds with, the narratives they employ when speaking about the Bible and philosophy. I mean this in two ways. First, there is my previously mentioned point about their preoccupation with victimization. In this they both remain sons of the biblical tradition, even when they fail to recognize the Bible as the source of their preoccupation. To the extent that they both operate with the assumption that the defense of victims is one of, if not the most important concern of contemporary politics, they are more modern than either of them would probably care to admit. I would suggest that neither Strauss nor Voegelin gives serious enough reflection to the biblical and modern roots of their own thought. Living in a modern world profoundly shaped by the biblical message, they perceive its evils and conclude that the source must lie in the religious tradition that gave birth to modernity. They are less aware of how the tradition whose violence they criticize is also the source of their ability to make their critiques. Instead, both Strauss and Voegelin, each in his own way, work to impede, temper, or reverse the Bible’s influence. If successful, it would mean weakening the very tradition most responsible for the rehabilitation of victims. In suggesting the possibility of a reversal of the triumph of the biblical orientation, Strauss plays a subtle yet dangerous Nietzschean game, while Voegelin’s call to combat metastatic thinking is simultaneously an attack on the biblical sources of modernity’s preoccupation with victimization. Their prescriptions for modernity rest upon incomplete insights into the Bible. The second area in which I detect a discrepancy between their account and their performance concerns their attitude toward philosophy. The highly idealized descriptions of philosophy that both Strauss and Voegelin present 93. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 147.

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perpetuate the myth of philosophy’s invulnerable correctness and superiority. This portrait, however, does not correspond to their actual practice. Intelligence, as concretely operative in their work, is much more open, dynamic, and self-critical. Strauss’s reiterations about how philosophy is a possession of the few quickly become wearying; but he is also capable of speaking with eloquence about the joys associated with the exercise of our minds—and of doing so in a way that belies his reputation for elitism: “We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding . . . and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God.”94 In Voegelin we have a thinker whose ecumenical openness to experiences of transcendence in all their myriad forms enters into tension with the philosopher who insists that to converse about reality we must use the language of Plato. The stories Strauss and Voegelin tell about philosophy do not always coincide with their actual practice as philosophers. To some extent they remain prisoners of the narratives they tell about Athens and Jerusalem. This is unfortunate, because it generates a discrepancy between their accounts of philosophy and the actual openness they so frequently display in practice. It also deprives them of the possibility of fully appreciating the meaning of the biblical text. In critiquing the Bible from the perspective of philosophy they do not allow the biblical voice to be heard in a way that might actually serve as a purifying challenge to philosophical wisdom. It is surely no accident that, in the thought of Strauss and Voegelin, the Exodus and the Crucifixion, in some ways the most paradigmatic and distinctly biblical symbols, are notably absent. For what possible relevance could these most unphilosophical of symbols have for philosophy? That philosophy might actually require a biblical critique in order to better engage in the pursuit of self-knowledge is something neither Strauss nor Voegelin seriously entertains. Strauss speaks of the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, while Voegelin stresses the two cities’ common orientation to the divine, but neither position even remotely suggests the idea that biblical insight might hold the key to understanding philosophy. This possibility is simply outside the range of Strauss’s and Voegelin’s thought. They read and correct the Bible on the basis of their understanding of philosophy, and in so doing they miss what is most important in the biblical text. At the very least, however, their engagement with the Bible keeps alive the 94. Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?” 8.

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question of the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem, and forces us to consider how it is that we have come to live in an age marked by what Strauss calls “the triumph of the biblical orientation.” It may be that the reasons for philosophy’s retreat from society into academia go beyond the convenient and self-serving myth that it succumbed to the intrusions of biblically inspired dogmatism or that the ascendancy of biblical faith represents the victory of the masses over the truly wise. Such explanations are crude attempts to evade the challenge of the biblical text and to deflect philosophy from the path of selfexamination. If Girard is correct, philosophy at its best has intimations of the disturbing truth at the basis of civilization. But the breakthrough never occurs, and like the myth-makers and poets, the philosophers perpetuate the sacrificial thinking that shields the victim from view. Confident in its own reasonableness, philosophy convinces itself that its intentions are always pure, its judgments moderate and just. Its greatest strength easily becomes the source of its blindness with regard to its complicity in the city’s violence. However, this need not be so. Plato did not have the benefit of the insights disclosed through the biblical text. Today we do, and if philosophy would be true to itself, these insights must be considered. For it may well be the case that the knowledge of scapegoating disclosed in the Bible represents the decisive truth about human societies and cultures from which there can be no turning back. If so, then we are left with the task of living out the implications of this knowledge. And with all due respect to the achievement of Strauss and Voegelin, the crucial question becomes not whether the Bible is in need of moderation, but whether philosophy is open to conversion.

Bibliography

Works by Leo Strauss The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. “Biblical History and Science.” In Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science.” In Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. “Comment on Weinberg’s Critique.” In Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921– 1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. “Correspondence.” With Karl Löwith. Independent Journal of Philosophy 4 (1983): 177–91. “Correspondence concerning Modernity.” With Karl Löwith. Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1988): 105–19. “The Crisis of Political Philosophy.” In The Predicament of Modern Politics, ed. Harold J. Spaeth. Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1964. “Ecclesia militans.” In Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934–1964. With Eric Voegelin. Trans. and ed. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

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Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. “On the Euthyphron.” In The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. “On the Interpretation of Genesis.” In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy.” Social Research 13 (1947): 326–67. On Tyranny. Ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth. Rev. and exp. ed., including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence. New York: Free Press, 1991. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. “Perspectives on the Good Society.” In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Philosophy and Law. Trans. Eve Adler. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Trans. Elsa M. Sinclair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprint edition, 1984. “Preface to Hobbes Politische Wissenschaft.” In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. “Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion.” In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization.” In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. “Reason and Revelation.” In Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the TheologicoPolitical Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart.” In Gesammelte Schriften, Band 2, Philosophie und Gesetz/Frühe Schriften, ed. Heinrich Meier. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997. “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle.’” In Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

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Index

Abraham: Strauss and, 125–27 Aeschylus, 52 Age to come (biblical idea of), 5, 51, 89, 92, 140, 144; Voegelin and, 161, 231 Alison, James, 89–90, 96n62, 116–17, 140, 188 Anaximander: Voegelin and, 85, 87–90, 141, 198, 217–19, 227, 241, 243 Apocalyptic, 133–35, 139, 145, 209, 231, 238 Aquinas, Thomas. See Thomas Aquinas Aristotle, 232; Strauss and, 36, 41, 124, 127, 247; Voegelin and, 6, 51, 65, 69, 78, 82–83, 87, 238 Athens and Jerusalem: Strauss and, 10, 13, 22, 26–29, 37, 40, 42, 47, 103, 107, 110, 114, 119–20, 122–24, 128–30, 159–60, 170–71, 184–85, 199–201, 205, 228, 235, 240, 247 Augustine, 81, 138n13, 234, 245 Balance of consciousness (Voegelin), 75, 83, 86, 89, 141, 143, 151, 209, 225, 238, 242 Beginning (Voegelin), 77, 83, 84, 134 Beyond (Voegelin), 41, 81–84, 88, 133–35, 218 Bible: anthropological reading of, 197, 244; Girard and, 186–87, 191–94, 199–202, 211–13, 220, 225–28, 237, 243, 246; historicity of, 91, 95–96; and morality, 4, 7, 100–101; Strauss and, 107–8, 125–26, 164–66, 169–70, 184–85, 203; and philosophy, 1, 10, 22, 24, 27, 187;

teaching of, 4, 7–8, 51, 102, 144, 156, 246; use of term, 3–4, 8–10; and victims, 7, 96, 156, 180, 189, 193, 196, 219, 221–22, 227, 235, 246, 248; Voegelin and, 29, 40, 46, 49–50, 74–75, 109, 114, 123, 153, 157 Bible and faith, 2, 187; Strauss and, 113, 228; Voegelin and, 33, 80 Bible and modernity, 177, 212–13, 235, 243; Strauss and, 43, 47, 158–85, 182n39, 243, 246; Voegelin and, 131– 57, 160, 222, 243, 246 Bible and philosophy: Strauss on, 22, 24, 27, 35–36, 39, 41, 43, 103–30, 158–85, 209–11, 216–18, 225, 228–29, 231– 32, 236, 240, 246–48; Voegelin on, 29, 35–37, 39, 51, 53, 66–69, 73–102, 123, 206, 211, 229, 231–32, 234, 236, 240– 41, 245–48 Bible as source of disorder: Strauss and, 159, 163, 166–67, 180, 186, 211, 221, 225, 246; Voegelin and, 48, 50, 57, 67, 70, 74, 78, 84, 98–99, 131–32, 134–38, 141–49, 151, 156–57, 160, 184, 186, 209, 218, 221–22, 225–26, 231–32, 241, 246 Biblical criticism, 13; Strauss on, 13, 17, 20–23, 27–28, 45–46, 96; Voegelin on, 13–17 Biblical idea of redemption, 4, 7, 51, 102, 116–17; Strauss and, 124, 182; Voegelin and, 66, 87, 94–97, 100 Buber, Martin, 40 Burckhardt, Jakob, 218–19

267

268 Cain, 193, 201 Christianity, 1, 23, 91, 163, 194, 225; Strauss and, 23–24, 166, 168, 225; Voegelin and, 12, 16, 29, 31, 69, 71, 78, 80–101, 135, 138–40, 146, 148, 151 Christianity and political realm, 6, 218; Voegelin on, 81, 98–99, 136–41, 149– 50, 209, 218, 233 Church: Voegelin and, 138–40, 144, 148, 151, 153 Cohen, Hermann, 184n45 Collier, Thomas, 146–48 Covenant: Strauss on, 112; Voegelin on, 53–54, 63, 66, 153, 155 Cross/Crucifixion, 90–91, 94–95, 193, 206, 247 Decalogue: Voegelin and, 52, 56–57, 98, 205 Deformations of consciousness (Voegelin), 131, 134, 141, 143–44, 148–49 Desire: Girard and, 186, 188–89, 195, 204 Deuteronomy: Voegelin on, 54–58, 70, 208 Differentiations of consciousness (Voegelin), 15–16, 48, 49, 71, 83, 97, 206, 228, 235 Divine law: Strauss and, 25, 46n65, 107– 14, 124, 162 Doran, Robert, 63–65 Douglass, Bruce, 91n52, 99n66, 154n38 Ecclesiastes, 141 Eichrodt, Walter, 56 Enlightenment, 223; Strauss and, 41, 108, 162, 222 Equivalences of experience (Voegelin), 38, 78, 82, 142, 206 Erigena, 146–47 Eschatology, 5, 100, 155–56; Strauss and, 161; Voegelin and, 35, 65–66, 88, 98, 100, 133, 135–41, 145, 148–49, 156– 57, 161 Experience of transcendence (Voegelin), 9, 14–15, 30, 33–34, 36–40, 48, 72, 73, 150, 184, 206, 231, 245, 247 Euripides, 93 Exodus, 6, 7, 144, 154–55, 183, 193, 218, 237, 246–47; Voegelin and, 54, 76 Genesis, 6, 43, 115–16, 192–93; Strauss and, 11, 77n31, 115–24, 183, 201; Voegelin and, 76–77

Index Gilson, Étienne, 76 Girard, René, 3, 7; and apocalypsis, 213, 225–26; and the Bible, 186–87, 191– 94, 199–202, 211–13, 220, 225–28, 237, 243, 246; and conversion, 244; and cultural foundations, 186, 188–90, 196, 198–99, 211, 219, 239, 248; and desire, 186, 188–89, 195, 204; and Gospels, 193–94, 196–200, 207–8, 226– 28, 237n76, 239; and Heidegger, 194, 196–200, 205; and Logos, 196–200; and modernity, 192, 212–14, 222, 224, 243; and myth, 189–91, 193, 195, 197, 202, 207; and philosophy, 194–200, 214, 219, 237, 241, 248; and religion, 189–90; and the sacred, 195–96; and sacrificial mechanism, 192, 194, 197, 205, 211, 213, 220, 224–25, 240–41, 248; and scapegoating, 186–87, 189–96, 199, 202, 211–14, 220, 223, 226–27, 241, 236–39, 244–45, 248; and stereotypes of persecution, 191, 207; and tragedy, 198; and victims, 191–94, 196, 207, 212–13, 219–20, 222, 224, 235, 237; and violence, 186, 188–92, 194, 196– 200, 204–5, 211–13, 219–20, 226–28, 239 Glatzer, Nahum, 69–70 Gnosticism (Voegelin), 84, 131–37, 140–41, 146, 148–49, 150, 152–55, 210 God: Strauss and, 41–42, 44–46, 104, 112– 13, 122, 124–29, 158, 161, 182, 201–2, 205, 209, 216; Voegelin and, 42, 81, 83, 147, 151, 208–9 Gospels, 148, 193, 208; Girard and, 193– 94, 196–200, 207–8, 226–28, 237n76, 239; Voegelin and, 81–85, 93–102, 116n24, 136, 209–10 Guttmann, Julius, 130, 171n20 Hebrew Bible, 4, 7, 51, 65, 78–79, 161, 188, 205, 237; Voegelin and, 31, 65, 81, 133 Hegel, G. W. F., 143, 177, 180 Heidegger, Martin, 40, 200, 202, 210; Girard and, 194, 196–200, 205 Heraclitus, 69, 217; Girard and, 196–200; Voegelin and, 209 Heschel, Abraham, 63n9, 79 Hobbes, Thomas: Strauss and, 161–62, 165–66, 180; Voegelin and, 145

Index Isaiah, 189, 227, 243; Voegelin and, 57–58, 60, 62, 64, 66–67, 69, 74–75, 85, 88, 133–34, 144–45, 151, 218 Israel, 6–7, 116, 155, 183, 233; exodus from itself, 60–61, 66–67, 71, 74; and “mortgage of Canaan,” 55–56, 70; Strauss and, 44, 122, 124; Voegelin and, 14, 15, 31, 33, 49–80, 91, 97, 135, 138, 140, 145, 151, 233 Jeremiah: Voegelin and, 66–68, 233 Jesus, 6, 144, 193–94, 226–28; Strauss and, 168; Voegelin and, 73, 80–81, 84, 86–96, 99 133, 135–38, 225, 240, 243 Job, 7, 193, 237–38 John (Gospel of), 6; Voegelin and, 82–85, 88, 93–95, 136, 196–200, 207–8, 227 Joseph (biblical story of), 192–93 Judaism, 1, 10; Strauss and, 10, 28, 40, 124, 129–30, 162, 182, 184; Voegelin and, 69–71, 145 Judeo–Christian tradition, 8, 154, 183, 222, 224, 226; Voegelin and, 74, 133, 136, 148 Kant, Immanuel, 64, 113, 233 Kingdom of God, 5, 61, 80, 89, 100–101, 144, 147–48, 227–28; Voegelin and, 58, 61, 86, 97–98, 138, 141 Kojève, Alexandre, 158, 170–81 Laws of mundane existence (Voegelin), 61–64, 66, 72, 80, 83, 140, 153, 241, 245 Leap in being (Voegelin), 33, 49–53, 55, 65, 71, 135 Lonergan, Bernard, 101–2 Löwith, Karl, 119n30, 158–59, 215, 229n66 Lucretius: Strauss and, 216–17, 243 Luke (Gospel of), 6; Voegelin and, 94 Luz, Ehud, 27n32, 129 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 2, 244; Strauss and, 11, 160, 166–68, 170, 179–80, 203 Maimonides, 28n34, 46; Strauss and, 11, 46n65, 182n42 Maritain, Jacques, 80 Mark (Gospel of), 6 Marx, Karl, 142, 146 Matthew (Gospel of), 6; Voegelin and, 93,

269 97–100, 209 Meier, Heinrich, 105–6, 115, 171n20 Mendelssohn, Moses, 162 Metastasis (Voegelin), 58–59, 61–62, 74–75, 80, 83, 85, 87–89, 97, 132–35, 139–42, 144–45, 149, 151–53, 186, 226, 238, 243, 246 Metaxy (Voegelin), 30–32, 64, 73 Meyer, Ben, 5n2, 100–101 Modernity: Girard and, 192, 212–14, 222, 224, 243; Strauss and, 3, 22, 24, 34, 42, 102, 107–8, 159, 165, 177–80, 221, 224, 230, 236, 243; Voegelin and, 103, 131, 141, 143–44, 221, 236, 243 Moses, 41, 183; Voegelin and, 54–55, 76, 135, 240, 243 Myth: Girard and, 189–91, 193, 195, 197, 202, 207 Nathan (the prophet): Strauss and, 169 New Testament, 4, 7, 188, 225; communities, 6, 92, 100, 140, 147; Strauss and, 11–13, 160, 172–73, 188; Voegelin and, 12, 80–102, 133, 138–41, 144–45, 149– 51, 188, 206, 218 Niemeyer, Gerhart, 91n52 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 113–14, 236, 246; Girard and, 194, 196; Strauss and, 22, 24–25, 130, 158–59, 178, 200 Noetic differentiation (Voegelin), 72, 74, 77, 83, 142–43, 228 Orr, Susan, 114n20 Otto, Rudolf, 41–42 Parmenides, 76 Passion narratives (New Testament), 7, 94–96, 143, 193–94, 199, 208 Paul, 127; Voegelin and, 12, 80, 85–91, 136, 141–44, 147, 243; 1 Corinthians, 88; Galatians, 143 Philosophy: Girard and, 194–200, 214, 219, 237, 241, 248; Strauss and, 34–37, 105– 7, 110, 114, 119–21, 126, 158–59, 169, 175–76, 185, 203–6, 210–11, 216–17, 234, 238, 245; Voegelin and, 34, 36 41, 86, 123, 210, 221, 231, 234, 238, 241, 246–47 Philosophy and the city (Strauss), 175, 179, 181, 184, 202–6, 210–11, 217, 229, 238, 248

270 Philosophy and violence: Strauss on, 203– 6, 210, 228–29, 241–42; Voegelin on, 209–10, 228–29, 241–43 Plato, 23, 101, 232, 235–36, 243, 248; Girard and, 194–98, 195n10, 237; Strauss and, 23–24, 36, 41, 117, 128, 161, 204–5, 216, 232; Voegelin and, 30, 36, 41, 51–52, 60, 65, 68–69, 73–78, 82, 83–91, 95–97, 101, 209, 217–18, 231–32, 238, 240–41, 245, 247 ——works: Apology, 93; Crito, 238; Gorgias, 93; Laws, 87, 101; Republic, 87, 94–95, 101, 204–5, 207; Statesman, 210; Timaeus, 77, 88 Pneumatic differentiation (Voegelin), 72, 74, 77, 137–38, 142, 228, 232 Prophets, 4, 6, 7, 20, 40, 144, 177, 193, 197–98, 203, 208; Strauss and, 24–25, 41, 45, 161, 163, 168–70, 182–83; Voegelin and, 31, 53, 55–70, 73, 78, 81, 97, 132, 135, 147, 225, 233, 240, 243 Protestantism: Voegelin and, 98, 137, 139, 145–46 Psalms, 7, 45, 193, 202 Puritans: Voegelin and, 145–49, 153–55, 210 Reason: and revelation, 102, 240; Strauss and, 104–7, 110–11, 121–22, 129–30, 233–34, 240–41; Voegelin on, 73–75, 228, 240 Redemption. See Biblical idea of redemption Resurrection (of Jesus): Voegelin and, 89–92, 94, 101, 140, 143, 206 Revelation, 38, 40, 102, 223; Strauss and, 40, 43, 45–46, 50, 113, 122, 162, 233– 34; Voegelin and, 38, 40, 51–53, 73, 77, 86, 228 Revelation (book of), 138, 145, 225 Romulus, 6, 193 Rosenzweig, Franz, 40 Sandoz, Ellis, 72n21 Scapegoating, 186–87, 189–96, 199, 202, 211–14, 220, 223, 226–27, 241, 236– 39, 244–45, 248 Schmitt, Carl, 214 Schutz, Alfred, 12, 15–16, 138 Sermon on the Mount, 80, 226–27, 244; Voegelin and, 97–100, 225

Index Socrates, 238, 244; Girard and, 196n11, 237; Strauss and, 41, 126, 168–70, 205, 238; Voegelin and, 52, 93–96 Song of Songs, 18–19 Sophocles, 192, 237 Spinoza, Baruch: Strauss on, 21–22, 25, 119, 162, 184n45 Strauss, Leo: and Aristotle, 36, 41, 124, 127, 247; on Athens and Jerusalem, 10, 13, 22, 26–29, 37, 40, 42, 47, 103, 107, 110, 114, 119–20, 122–24, 128– 30, 159–60, 170–71, 184–85, 199–201, 205, 228, 235, 240, 247; and Bible, 1, 9, 11–13, 29, 40–42, 44–46, 77n31, 107–8, 112–13, 115–24, 125–28, 160, 162, 164–66, 169–70, 172–73 182–83, 184–85, 188, 201, 203, 228, 232–34, 246–47; on the Bible and modernity, 43, 47, 158–85, 182n39, 243, 246; on the Bible and philosophy, 22, 24, 27, 35–36, 39, 41, 43, 103–30, 158–85, 209–11, 216–18, 225, 228–29, 231– 32, 236, 240, 246–48; on the Bible as a source of disorder, 159, 163, 166–67, 180, 186, 211, 221, 225, 246; and biblical criticism, 13, 17, 20–23, 27–28, 45–46, 96; and biblical idea of redemption, 124, 182; on charity, 161–80, 222, 224–25, 243; and Christianity, 23–24, 166, 168, 225; correspondence with Voegelin, 17, 35, 38, 123–24; and cosmology, 116–21, 158; criticism of Voegelin, 17, 123–24, 245; and divine law, 25, 46n65, 107–14, 124, 162; and Enlightenment, 41, 108, 162, 222; on faith and knowledge, 39, 41, 43, 46, 105, 127–28, 130, 228; and Hobbes, 161–62, 165–66, 180; and interpretation of texts, 17–22, 26–27, 44, 108, 114–16, 118–19, 234; and Jesus, 168; and Kojève, 170–81; and Lucretius, 216–17, 243; and Machiavelli, 11, 160, 166–68, 170, 179–80, 203; and moderation of philosophy, 163, 166, 168–70, 175, 181, 202–3, 205, 210–11, 221, 225, 228–29, 242–43; and modern/contemporary Jewish thinkers, 29, 40, 42, 162–63, 182, 233; and modernity, 3, 22, 24, 34, 42, 102, 107–8, 159, 165, 177–80, 221, 224, 230, 236, 243; and modern philosophy, 164–65, 170, 181, 230, 233; and natural right, 203,

Index 210, 230, 242; and natural/supernatural distinction, 161–64, 222–23; and Nietzsche, 22, 24–25, 130, 158–59, 178, 200; personal faith of, 2, 9, 28; on philosophy, 34–37, 105–7, 110, 114, 119–21, 126, 158–59, 169, 175–76, 185, 203–6, 210–11, 216–17, 234, 238, 245; on philosophy and the city, 175, 179, 181, 184, 202–6, 210–11, 217, 229, 238, 248; on philosophy and violence, 203–6, 210, 228–29, 241–42; and Plato, 23–24, 36, 41, 117, 128, 161, 204–5, 216, 232; and political philosophy, 111, 158–59, 175, 181, 184–85, 203, 210– 11, 229–30; and politics, 176, 204–5, 230, 238, 246; and prophets, 24–25, 41, 45, 161, 163, 168–70, 182–83; on reason and revelation, 104–7, 110–11, 121–22, 129–30, 233–34, 240–41; and recovery of tradition, 25, 38, 46, 106, 183–84, 232, 236; and religious experience, 40–41, 123, 233–34; and revelation, 40, 43, 45–46, 50, 113, 122, 162, 233–34; and Socrates, 41, 126, 168– 70, 205, 238; and Spinoza, 21–22, 25, 119, 162, 184n45; and theology, 42–43, 45, 47, 105, 109, 129; on universal and homogeneous state, 177–80, 186, 211; and violence, 200, 203–6, 210–11, 214– 16, 220–21, 224, 228–29, 241–42; and Xenophon, 130, 168–71, 171n20, 173 ——works: “Jerusalem and Athens,” 11, 114, 169; Natural Right and History, 10; Persecution and the Art of Writing, 221; “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 11, 115–24; Philosophy and Law, 2, 35, 46n65, 161–62; “Progress or Return?” 11, 106, 108–9, 114, 182; “Reason and Revelation,” 11, 105, 109; Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 40; “The Three waves of Modernity,” 160 Tanguay, Daniel, 46n65, 106n8, 111n17, 160n5 Thomas Aquinas, 82, 203, 234, 242 Thucydides, 242–43 Torah, 7, 25, 100, 193; Strauss and, 41, 44, 127–28, 162, 182–83; Voegelin and, 31–32, 54–58, 65, 69–70 Universal and homogeneous state (Strauss), 177–80, 186, 211

271 Victims and victimization: Bible and, 7, 96, 156, 180, 189, 193, 196, 219, 221–22, 227, 235, 246, 248; Girard and, 191–94, 196, 207, 212–13, 219–20, 222, 224, 235, 237 Violence, 186, 208; Girard and, 186, 188– 92, 194, 196–200, 204–5, 211–13, 219–20, 226–28, 239; Strauss and, 200, 203–6, 210–11, 214–16, 220–21, 224, 228–29, 241–42; Voegelin and, 209–10, 214–16, 220–22, 228–29, 241–42 Voegelin, Eric: and Anaximander, 85, 87–90, 141, 198, 217–19, 227, 241, 243; and Aristotle, 6, 51, 65, 69, 78, 82–83, 87, 238; on balance of consciousness, 75, 83, 86, 89, 141, 143, 151, 209, 225, 238, 242; on Beginning, 77, 83, 84, 134; on Beyond, 41, 81–84, 88, 133– 35, 218; and the Bible, 1, 9, 12, 31–32, 49, 52–58, 63, 65–66, 69–70, 76–77, 80–102, 133, 138–41, 144–45, 149–51, 153, 155, 158, 161, 205, 208, 218, 225, 231, 246; on the Bible and experience of transcendence, 29, 40, 46, 49–50, 53–57, 63, 66, 74–75, 109, 114, 123, 157; on the Bible and modernity, 131– 57, 160, 222, 243, 246; on the Bible and philosophy, 29, 35–37, 39, 51, 53, 66–69, 73–102, 123, 206, 211, 229, 231–32, 234, 236, 240–41, 245–48; and the Bible as a source of disorder, 48, 50, 57, 67, 70, 74, 78, 84, 98–99, 131– 38, 141–49, 151, 156–57, 160, 184, 186, 209, 218, 221–22, 225–26, 231–32, 241, 246; and the Bible as a source of order, 50, 79–80, 149–53; and biblical criticism, 13–17; and the biblical idea of redemption, 66, 87, 94–97, 100; change in later thought of, 71–75, 133, 235; and Christianity, 12, 16, 29, 31, 69, 71, 78, 80–101, 135, 138–40, 146, 148, 151; on Christianity and the political realm, 81, 98–99, 136–41, 149–50, 209, 218, 233; and the church, 138–40, 144, 148, 151, 153; correspondence with Strauss, 17, 35, 38, 123–24; on deformations of consciousness, 131, 134, 141, 143–44, 148–49; on differentiations of consciousness, 15–16, 48, 49, 71, 83, 97, 206, 228, 235; on differentiation of soul, 67–69, 80; dualism in thought of, 64–65; on equivalences of experience,

272 38, 78, 82, 142, 206, 234; and eschatology, 35, 65–66, 88, 98, 100, 133, 135– 41, 145, 148–49, 156–57, 161; on experience of transcendence, 9, 14–15, 30, 33–34, 36–40, 48, 72, 73, 150, 184, 206, 231, 245, 247; and Gnosticism, 84, 131–37, 140–41, 146, 148–49, 150, 152–55, 210; on Gnosticism and modernity, 137, 148–49; and gospels, 81–85, 88, 93–102, 116n24, 136, 196–200, 207–10, 227; and Heraclitus, 209; on history, 15–16, 72–73, 85; on interpretation of texts, 17, 96, 234; and Israel, 14–15, 31, 33, 49–80, 91, 97, 135, 138, 140, 145, 151, 233; on It-reality, 77; and Jesus, 73, 80–81, 84, 86–96, 99, 101, 133, 135–38, 140, 143, 206, 225, 240, 243; and Kingdom of God, 58, 61, 86, 97–98, 138, 141; and laws of mundane existence, 61–64, 66, 72, 80, 83, 140, 153, 241, 245; on leap in being, 33, 49–53, 55, 65, 71, 135; and metastasis, 58–59, 61–62, 74–75, 80, 83, 85, 87–89, 97, 132–35, 139–42, 144–45, 149, 151–53, 186, 226, 238, 243, 246; on metaxy, 30–32, 64, 73; and modernity, 103, 131, 141, 143–44, 221, 236, 243; on modern political ideologies and movements, 131–34, 142–45, 147–50, 152–53, 156–57, 226, 241; and Moses, 54–55, 76, 135, 240, 243; on noetic differentiation, 72, 74, 77, 83, 142–43, 228; and Paul, 12, 80, 85–91, 136, 141– 44, 147, 243; on perishing (phthora), 87–91, 141, 143; and personal faith of, 2, 9, 28, 37; on philosopher’s myth, 209; and philosophy, 34, 36 41, 86, 123, 210, 221, 231, 234, 238, 241, 246– 47; on philosophy and violence, 209– 10, 228–29, 241–43; and Plato, 30, 36, 41, 51–52, 60, 65, 68–69, 73–78, 82,

Index 83–91, 95–97, 101, 209, 217–18, 231– 32, 238, 240–41, 245, 247; on pneumatic differentiation, 72, 74, 77, 137– 38, 142, 228, 232; and prophets, 31, 53, 55–70, 73, 78, 81, 97, 132, 135, 147, 225, 233, 240, 243; and Protestantism, 98, 137, 139, 145–46; and Puritanism, 145–49, 153–55, 210; on reason and revelation, 73–75, 228, 240; on revelation, 38, 40, 51–53, 73, 77, 86, 228; and “Scripture,” 14, 30–32, 34, 38, 48, 208; and Socrates, 52, 93–96; and symbols, 29–30, 37–38, 73; and theology, 73, 77; on “vision of the Resurrected,” 12, 81, 85, 88, 91–92, 142; and word of God, 31, 33, 37, 55, 68–69, 208 ——works: Anamnesis, 71; The Ecumenic Age, 71, 75–76, 81–83, 85, 86–91, 217; “The Gospel and Culture,” 81, 92–97; History of Political Ideas, 3, 11, 81, 86, 137, 139; In Search of Order, 76–77; Israel and Revelation, 10–11, 16, 49–80, 233; The New Science of Politics, 12, 82, 137, 139 Voltaire, 162, 223n60 Von Rad, Gerhard, 54 Walzer, Michael, 5, 6n4, 154–56, 183–84, 237, 246 Weber, Theodore R., 138n13 Wesley, John, and Wesleyanism, 150, 153–54 Wilhelmsen, Frederick D., 96n61 Wolin, Sheldon, 6, 140 Word of God, 2, 9, 20; Voegelin and, 31, 33, 37, 55, 68–69, 208 Worship, 4–5; absence of attention to in Strauss and Voegelin, 233–35 Xenophon: Strauss and, 130, 168–71, 171n20, 173