Eric Voegelin (11)

Limits of the moral community
(continued from preceding post)

Another problematic aspect of Voegelin's description is that he writes as though he were ignoring Aquinas's implicit distinction between those who are "actually" members of the corpus mysticum and those—namely, all human beings—who are merely members in "potentiality". Obviously, this distinction creates two unequal moral categories of person: the Christians and the potential Christians, or Christians belonging to unrecognized churches, who are likewise potential converts to one's own church. If one were to regard both categories as equivalent, the Christian sacraments would seem to be pointless. (Also, the missionary orientation of Christian churches to non-Christians would not be regarded as essentially different from the attitude of an inward-looking religion like Zoroastrianism. Voegelin is not acknowledging that the Christian missionary attitude does in fact constitute a recognition that non-Christians are potentially members of the Christian community.) The kind of simplification which Voegelin strikes me as engaging in here is a characterically liberal, universalist one.

Voegelin recognizes that the expansion of the corpus mysticum to include all mankind has been a gradual process in Christian history. What he does not, as far as I know, point out is that this expansion has also been a radical dilution. For example, the earliest Christian church took its rites so seriously that mere candidate Christians, the catechumens, let alone members of the general public, were not permitted to witness the full service. (The Orthodox service still contains an injunction to catechumens to leave at a certain point, although apparently this is now considered to be purely a matter of liturgical form.) The earliest church seems to have been charged with a mysterious Spirit which might do acute physical harm to someone who committed sacrilege by participating in the Eucharist in the wrong frame of mind—as Aquinas still recognized—and which presumably could confer commensurately greater benefits on those who were fitted to participate. The strength of the ties in such a community is perhaps inconceivable to us now. That being the case, it is difficult to see the historical expansion of the Church as an unmixed blessing, or to agree with Voegelin that any drawing-in of the boundaries of the moral community must ipso facto represent a regression.

Surely it would be a mistake, in view of the dilution which has occurred, for each of the various present-day churches to continue to claim that it represented the one true Christian community, the corpus mysticum. Indeed the formally organized churches have probably become largely irrelevant to this community (though some of them may still represent important guiding centres within it). It would seem that what remains of the Christian community has by now expanded to encompass the Western world, as well as parts of the non-Western world: a society of global scale which is still held together by vaguely Christian moral ideas. This moral community now includes Christians, those of other faiths, and those of no faith. Nevertheless, it is not universal. The distinction remains between those who are "actually" members of the community and those who, in refusing to acknowledge its moral precepts, are merely part of the community "in potentiality". The Germans, for example, defected from the Western moral community during the Nazi period. It is a grave mistake to treat all human beings as though they are "actually" community members, imposing no qualifications whatsoever for community membership.

How should one treat those outside the moral community? This seems to me to be a very difficult question. Tentatively I would say that at the most basic level, justice requires that one accord outsiders the same consideration as those outsiders would accord oneself. Beyond this, it seems to be a matter of charity, which cannot be subjected to legalistic prescriptions. Where a political decision is in question, one should also always keep in mind that support for a "charitable" collective action is at the same time support for coercion of any dissenting fellow-voters to participate in the "charity". Such coerced action is not, in fact, charitable.

Ideally, the Golden Rule tells us that we should treat non-members of the community as we would wish to be treated if we found ourselves in their shoes. But it is extraordinarily difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of people of whom we know little, who do not share our basic values, whose reactions to our initiatives are unpredictable.