Dominus Iesus, published Aug. 6, 2000, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is one of the most important Church documents of modern times because it concerns what is absolutely central and primary in Christianity, Christ himself, because it defends the most unpopular aspect of the Church’s claim today — its “absolutism” — and because it overcomes the dualism of “liberal” vs. “conservative” by which the media classify and evaluate everything. (I wonder how they will classify the Second Coming when they see it.)
To see these three points, all we have to do is try to classify Dominus Iesus as “liberal” or “conservative.” I put an “L” after all its main “liberal” points and a “C” after all its “conservative” points, and I ended up with 30 Ls and 38 Cs.
But the “kicker” is that it is not half and half, or halfway in between; it is so “liberal” precisely because it is so “conservative.”
To understand this, we should first try to spear those two slippery fish: the “liberal” and the “conservative.” (You can’t fry them if you don’t catch them.)
I see four essential differences, which are the roots of all the others.
First, liberals begin with subjectivity, while conservatives begin with objectivity.
Liberals prioritize personal freedom; conservatives prioritize objective truth. Liberals absolutize persons and see truth as relative to persons. Conservatives absolutize truth and see persons as relative to truth. (Both are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. Both persons and truth are absolute.)
Second, in their anthropology, liberals prioritize the heart, while conservatives prioritize the mind. An attempted mutual heart and brain transplant between a conservative and a liberal failed because no one could find a conservative who would give up his heart to a liberal or a liberal who had any brains to give to a conservative.
Third, liberals emphasize the abstract universal, the cosmopolitan, the global, while conservatives emphasize the concrete particular: individuals, families, neighborhoods and nations. (Thus, the “bad liberalism” of “leftist” communism is international socialism, while the “bad conservatism” of “rightist” Nazism is national socialism.)
Fourth, most obviously, liberals love change and conservatives love permanence; liberals love the new, conservatives the old. That is a matter of temperament rather than ideological content, for anti-Establishment liberals turn into Establishment conservatives when they succeed. And truth is not told by clocks any more than time is told by syllogisms.
These four differences manifest in religion as Modernism vs. Fundamentalism, especially regarding salvation.
Liberals say you are saved by subjective sincerity, love and openness to the new; conservatives by objective truth and fidelity to the old. Thus, Modernists are typically universalists and inclusivists regarding salvation (“We’re all going to heaven, except perhaps the Fundamentalists”), while Fundamentalists are typically exclusivists (“You’re going to hell because you’re not us”).
When Dominus Iesus was issued, both groups gagged. The Fundamentalists found it too liberal and universalistic, and the Liberals found it too conservative and exclusivist. It’s not surprising that it happened to Dominus Iesus because the same thing happened to Jesus himself: Sadducees and Pharisees, Herodians and Zealots, suddenly found one thing to agree about. They had found their common enemy.
Throughout Christian history the pattern has repeated itself. There have always been the “faith alone” fundamentalists (Tatian, Tertullian, Bernard, Luther) and the “reason trumps faith” liberals (Origen, Abelard, Spinoza, Bultmann), but also the “both-and” defenders of mainline orthodoxy (Justin Martyr, Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, Chesterton).
The same threefold pattern manifests in Judaism. In Islam, of course, the “faith alone” people won the center of the battlefield.
Dominus Iesus not only overcomes the “liberal”/“conservative” divide but it also unites the positive in both while rejecting the negative. It is not a compromise but a “higher synthesis.” Thus many of my labels were neither “L” nor “C” but “LC.”
The three main points of this document concern (1) Christ, (2) the Catholic Church, and (3) the Kingdom of God. The first is the longest and most important. Its central passage says that:
“God, who desires to call all people to himself in Christ … does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors.’ Therefore the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.
“The salvific action of Jesus Christ, with and through his Spirit, extends beyond the visible boundaries of the Church to all humanity … for all men of good will in whose hearts grace is active invisibly. For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery.” But “they acquire meaning and value only from Christ’s own mediation, and they cannot be understood as parallel or complementary to his.”
You can see how this would deeply offend both Modernists and Fundamentalists. Just as Jesus himself did.
The point of Dominus Iesus is that it is precisely the “conservative” or “traditional” “high Christology” of the Church and the Bible, so uncompromising on Christ’s full divinity, “unicity” or uniqueness and universality that allows us to have a very “liberal” hope for the salvation of non-Christians.
Because all truth and goodness comes from him, the truth and goodness in the hearts, lives and religions of non-Christians are his action in their cultures and their hearts.
Second, since the Church is not Christ’s artifact but his very body, what is true of him is true of her. Dominus Iesus refutes the “liberal” separation of the two (three cheers for Christ, one for the Church) by correcting its misinterpretation of Vatican II’s statement that Christ’s Church “subsists in” the Catholic Church:
“With the expression subsistit in, the Second Vatican Council sought to harmonize two doctrinal statements: on the one hand, that the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand, that ‘outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth’ … but … they derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church. … It is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation.”
Finally, “the Church is not an end unto herself, since she is ordered toward the Kingdom of God, of which she is the seed, sign and instrument. Yet, while remaining distinct from Christ and the Kingdom, the Church is indissolubly united to both. … The Kingdom of God … is not identified with the Church in her visible and social reality. In fact, ‘the action of Christ and the Spirit outside the Church’s visible boundaries’ must not be excluded.”
Justin Martyr, the first Christian philosopher, said that because Christ is the Logos who enlightens all men (John 1:9), whatever has been truly said by the pagan philosophers is properly Christian. All truth is ultimately his truth, not Buddha’s or Muhammad’s or Socrates.’
Thus our “liberal” assessment of the truths in other religions is based on our “conservative” Christology. This is the double reason, the both “conservative” and “liberal” reason, why we will not and cannot shut up, why we insist on telling the Good News to everyone (including Jews and Muslims): because Christ is the only Savior and because he is already at work in their lives. He plants, waters and gives the increase; we only point to him.
Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and the King’s College in New York City. He is a the author of more than 59 books, including Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Christianity for Modern Pagans and Fundamentals of the Faith.
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WONDERFUL! I’ve tried explaining this to people before and never had quite the right words. Thank you!
As I read through this piece, I thought to myself, “This is a gem. This paints a picture with all its pieces, all its parts and lets the reader choose what they like about it. Who wrote this I thought?” Of course, it was Sir Kreeft.
Few are as talented at writing as Dr. Kreeft. I have heard many descriptions of the necessity for the “liberal” and “conservative” circles to merge in order to find perfect truth, but now I think I understand even better that may not matter if they ever merge, they both exist inside the box of the Venn diagram.
Thank you for so clearly stating what I was thinking.
Thank you so much for writing this article, Dr. Kreeft! The Church is neither liberal nor conservative, but Catholic! Both liberalism and conservativism fall short of the Truth, which the Church, and only the Church, possesses in its fullness. Thanks for reminding us all of this truth.
Pope Benedict has written some marvelous works; only lately have I come to appreciate the wisdom he brings to the faithful. This article is timely as voices grow louder and less forgiving in the ongoing “discussion” between the liberal and conservative factions in the Church.
Though I believe the cause of the conflict does not lie with purely political ideology (tomorrow’s post at Taming the Wolf explains what I perceive to be the cause), your analysis and Benedict’s paper can no doubt provide a map to finding the bridge.
Only one minor quibble with your analysis. The National Socialists, the Nazis, cannot correctly be identified with conservatives. They, too, like the Communists, represent a move toward big government liberalism.
The form of the socialist government that rules varies once one installs the big government, but it is still socialism. National socialism thus does not represent limited government views of conservatives. Worth noting the differences.
Actually, whatis missing from Dominus Iesus is The Filioque, which illuminates the fact that one can know through Faith and Reason that The Blessed Trinity exists within an ordered, complementary relationship of Perfect Love between The Father and The Son through the Unity of The Holy Spirit, and thus The Love between The Father and The Son, must proceed from both The Father and The Son, to begin with.
I have always resisted the terms “conservative” and “liberal” as they apply to Catholics for a simple reason. These terms are too often used as a smokescreen to blur the lines of orthodox Truth by those who dissent from it. There is a battle for the heart of the Church, and those who are embarrased by Her claims of Truth tend to label the orthodox as “conservative” in an attempt to paint orthodoxy as just one more option among a plurality of truths. Let us insist on the distinction between orthodox Catholics and heterodox dissenters and drop the liberal/conservative jargon altogether.
Peter,
You are wrong in calling National Socialism a conservative idea. It is not. It is in fact socialism, ableit in the form of nationalism. Hitlerism, in the form of the German Workers National Socialist Party, was just that: socialism. There have been different forms and extremes of socialism. Just as Mussolini changed the name of the Socialist Party in Italy to the Fascist Party in 1922 in order to differentiate himself and his party of the extremists of Bolshevism.
I have read many of your works, but you are wrong in calling Nazism a conservative ideal or “bad conservatism” as you phrased it. Mein Kampf is clear in the socialistic values that Hitler proposed.
If you look at the history of the economy of National Socialist Germany, Hitler did in fact nationalize/socialist industry. He left a shell for corporations to lead themselves, but they were in fact led and controlled by the National Socialists.
I respect you greatly as a Catholic writer, but please investigate this subject matter a bit further.
Thank you and God bless you.
-Patrick
While the author has aroused my curiosity to explore Dominus Iesus, I must admit I was surprised that such a prolific author and professor of such highly acclaimed institutions could make the statement in part three of his article that Nazism was an example of “conservatism” on the “right” side of the political spectrum. I agree with Patrick O’Connor and Greg’s comments that National Socialism represents the leftist view of the world along with Communism. Both forms of socialism were totally run by dictators without free elections and totally controlled what was to be manufactured and grown, and how it was to be distributed. The only difference between Socialist Communism and Socialist Nazism was who owned the factories and farms. The communist owned everything. The Nazis left manufacturing and farms in private hands, but dictated what and how they made and grew stuff. I would disagree, however, with Greg’s calling this major error in understanding the political spectrum, “one minor quibble.” Nazism is next to Communism on the far left side of that spectrum. Conservatism is on the right side followed by Libertarianism and then anarchy.
I would also offer in the fourth part that liberals “love,” not “change” but intentions while conservatives “love,” not “old,” but results. And “anti-Establishment liberals don’t turn into Establishment “conservatives, but in fact turn into leftist dictators. Obamacare is a good illustration of both of those points.
Gotta love, Kreeft. I especially love the last paragraph. Made me think of what St. Thomas Aquinas supposedly said to someone who asked, “Do you REALLY want everyone in the world to be Catholic?” He responded, “Of course! That’s like asking, ‘Do you REALLY want everyone in the world to be HAPPY?’”.
May we all get out there and share the Good News of Jesus Christ!
The Filioque, which illuminates The Unity of Perfect Love that is The Blessed Trinity, helps us to define the essence of Marriage. Only in a complementary relationship, can two become one body, one spirit in Love, creating a new Family. “Have you not heard from The Beginning that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh…” The Dignity of the human person, endowed to us from God, is inherent in our complementary nature as male and female for it is in The Image of God that we were created. We were created to live in a communion of Love while being called to The Communion of Perfect Love, simultaneously.
May I share this with my entire known world? What a wonderful and beautiful explanation not of liberal vs conservative, but of liberalism vs conservative. God, as we should know, is above all of this, but we as humans need to grasp the distinctions. Your insights are appreciated.
If anyone cares the real clarification of the document is w/in the writings of our present Holy Father aka Joseph Ratzinger. My rule is go to the sources (original). Other sources such as this article merely confuse the issue and as noted by some commentators on Mr. Kreeft’s article, effuse errors. Only the author of the document can truly clarify his thinking. By nature anyone else tends to put their own slant, as it were, on the original thought. Pope Benedict XVI has written much that has been commented upon by many excellent thinkers. But rule of thumb is “go to the sources”. Once you read Joseph Ratzinger’s many excellent books, you will discover for yourself just how this wonderful document evolved from his experienced and brilliant mind. So if you want to know what he meant when he wrote this, ask him; and you will know exactly w/o misunderstandings or errors. He is concise, simple and direct thus easy read.
I never fail to be surprised that so many people believe they can “know” what someone else was saying. By dissecting their statements, the one who does so presumes to “know” their intentions - something only God and the person himself can know. I respectfully repeat “go to the sources”.
Thank you so much. This has been really helpful to me. God bless each one of you more and more.
No doubt, someone should ask His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, why the Creed in Dominus Iesus did not include the Filioque since the Filioque illuminates the unitive role of The Holy Spirit.
Liberal and Conservative are not opposites, regardless of how much American Media and modern lexicography make them to be.
Liberal is the opposite of authoritarian, while conservative is the opposite of progressive. Conservative and progressive are entirely relative to the time of which the person is speaking. It seems to me that the commentator is equating liberal with progressive. Although the 2 may often go together (i.e. many in the Democratic Party), they don’t have to. I’d be interested in hearing the commentator’s thoughts on this topic would be, while using these words classically
Excellent article but ‘Liberal Fascism’by Jonah Goldberg is a brilliant clarification of the confusion of the terms Liberal and Conservative in the political sense. It will illustrate that Nazism is Liberal not Conservative among many other things. Please read it carefully.Blessings…
If Naziism is NOT the error of excess of conservatism, what is? Libertarianism? Anarchy?
“If Naziism is NOT the error of excess of conservatism, what is? Libertarianism? Anarchy?”
Jeff - “Nazism : the body of political and economic doctrines held and put into effect by the National Socialist German Workers’ party in the Third German Reich including the totalitarian principle of government, state control of all industry, predominance of groups assumed to be racially superior, and supremacy of the fuhrer.” Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
“libertarian 1 : an advocate of the doctrine of free will 2 : one who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty esp. of thought and action” ditto
“anarchy 1 a: absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society made up of individuals who have no government and who enjoy complete freedom 2 : absence of order : DISORDER 3 : ANARCHISM” ditto
“conservatism 1 a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change 2 : the principles and polices of a Conservative party” ditto
Stillbelieve,
Thank you for giving me dictionary definitions. Perhaps you can elucidate in some useful manner to explain your point? Because while I appreciate your attempt, simple dictionary definitions are not particularly helpful.
“Perhaps you can elucidate in some useful manner to explain your point? Because while I appreciate your attempt, simple dictionary definitions are not particularly helpful.”
Jeff Stevens - Well, then perhaps I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were challenging the idea that conservatism was on the right side of the political spectrum, opposite of Nazism which is on the left contrary to what the article’s author said. Thus the political definitions according to Webster’s for an objective observer’s “defense,” as opposed to just my verbiage.
Please clarify for me the meaning of your initial comment.
I realize now I should have included communism in the list of political definitions. So, here it is to make the list complete.
“communism 1 a : theory of advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed 2 a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Leninism that is the official ideology of the U.S.S.R. b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls the state-owned means of production with professed aim of establishing a stateless society c : a final stage of society in the Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably.
I think Nazism and Communism on the left side are a lot closer to each other than is conservatism which is on the right side of the political spectrum just before you get to Libertarianism and Anarchy.
It is interesting the Prof. Kreeft makes the wrong assumptions in regards to the way political ideology is presented by the respective parties:
First, liberals begin with subjectivity, while conservatives begin with objectivity. [Wrong. Conservatives have built in and usually incorrect assumptions that are in opposition to objectivity. Examples: liberals are always wrong, they are baby-killers, etc. Meanwhile conservatives will deny health care to the uninsured, the poor are unwelcomed blight, foreigners are bad, immigrants are second-class and should be deported, etc. Clearly anti-Catholic except for abortion]
Liberals prioritize personal freedom [Partially correct. Tea Party and conservatives object to President Obama’s agenda since it infringes on liberty and personal freedom] ; conservatives prioritize objective truth [Wrong. Talking heads such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and Fox News are extremely biased against anything non-white or non-conservative. Liberals are generally more intellectual and educated then conservatives and deal more with concrete truths].
Liberals absolutize persons and see truth as relative to persons. Conservatives absolutize truth and see persons as relative to truth. [Wrong. You simply have it backwards. Conservatives absolutize every person and idea with the basic premise that their own beliefs can’t possibly wrong or challenged in any way.]
Second, in their anthropology, liberals prioritize the heart, while conservatives prioritize the mind. [Wrong. Most conservatives are not that bright and are generally lacking in formal education and sound reasoning. Liberals dominate academia for a reason—brains.]. An attempted mutual heart and brain transplant between a conservative and a liberal failed because no one could find a conservative who would give up his heart [or brain] to a liberal or a liberal who had any brains to give to a conservative. [simply a stupid statement].
Third, liberals emphasize the abstract universal [wrong. very specific in regards to solutions], the cosmopolitan, the global, while conservatives emphasize the concrete particular: individuals [wrong. they are abstract in regards to individuals freedoms, encroachment of government reach, etc.], families [unless they are intact, single parent households and other unions be damned], neighborhoods [unless there are no minorities in them] and nations. (Thus, the “bad liberalism” of “leftist” communism is international socialism, while the “bad conservatism” of “rightist” Nazism is national socialism.) <—you finally got one correct.
Fourth, most obviously, liberals love change and conservatives love permanence [correct. Let’s repeal civil rights, voting rights, women’s suffrage, etc. because conservatives believe that is not what the Founding Fathers (slave owners and white men) believed]; liberals love the new, conservatives the old. That is a matter of temperament rather than ideological content, for anti-Establishment liberals turn into Establishment conservatives when they succeed. And truth is not told by clocks any more than time is told by syllogisms. <—correct.
Peace.
Edward - you made me laugh out loud. If I have some time later I’ll explain. But let me tell you at the outset - you epitomize a person in the state of projection. You must be “highly educated.”
Dominus Iesus is distinctly Catholic except for the missing Filioque which illuminates the essence of The Holy Spirit, Who Is the ordered, complementary, unitive Love between The Father and The Son.
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
I love Kreeft, but this isn’t his best work. He’s better with philosophical apologetics.
First, in address to some of the commentators, Ratzinger wasn’t the main drafter. For those who’ve read Ratzinger, DI is quite apparently not his style, even for his ecclesiastical work. More generally speaking, the hermeneutical task apropos Church documents should involve resisting the attempt to parse the document into authorial intentions and vying viewpoints (pace Weigel and Caritas in Veritate!) and read it at face value in the context of other authoritative statements and as preached by the clergy. This, one will note, is precisely the manner in which Ratzinger aimed to resolve the subsistit in conundrum.
Second, if DI’s Conservative viewpoint truly substantiates and absorbs the Liberal, it really doesn’t overcome the dualism, then, does it?
Third, even as substantiated and absorbed, the “Liberal” elements of Dominius Iesus are NOT representative of liberalism, precisely because they’ve been eviscerated of their liberal methodology, which is not simply about such and such premises and conclusions but also about the logical precedence of them.
Finally, there is a bit of sleight of hand in the “conservative” category. Those who privilege objectivity and Christ’s unicity are not necessarily fundies or Finneyites. With many of those who’ve already commented, I think it best not to introduce these nebulous and highly charged pseudo-categories into discussion.
Let me again say, though: I do love Kreeft!
Excessive conservatism is stagnation. For example, the Empire in China had such a conservative governmental system that many of its parts and hiring systems remained the same for thousands of years. It also leads to isolationism, which the Chinese system had in spades.
Now, American conservatism definitely dabbles in isolationism. But like most American systems of thought, there tends to be a lot of movement and change inherent to it (because Americans not only have social mobility and immigration, but tend to change their minds, their parties, their towns, their churches, their technologies, and everything else), and there really isn’t any “pure exemplar” or absolute ideal to extrapolate from. If American conservatism becomes a static target, I’d be able to predict more about it.
Obviously Libertarianism and objectivism are one side of conservatism, as religious ultramontanism and fundamentalism are another. But there are so many sides to choose from! What to pick!?
I find it hard to believe that in the past ten years no one has asked Pope Benedict why The Filioque was left out of Dominus Iesus or if The Filioque was simply lost in translation.
I find it difficult to understand why you’ve made the filioque your personal crusade, whereas none of the many orthodox and holy leaders of our Church have not.
The fact is, if we believe that Christ is ONE in being with The Father, then In the ordered relationship of Love that is The Blessed Trinity, The Holy Spirit must proceed from the Love between The Father and The Son.
“The mystery of The Most Holy Trinity, is the central mystery of Christian Faith and life.”- CCC 234
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