Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal, by Glenn Tinder

In Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal, Glenn Tinder defends liberty and the liberal, democratic orders by which men presently attempt to establish and maintain it. As part of his defense, he makes a sober and extensive critique of liberty, acknowledging that most men’s use of liberty, much of the time, is mistaken and harmful or, in Tinder’s stronger words, sinful and even evil; however, he describes what he considers to be the chief good resulting from liberty and defends liberty on grounds that its good effects are greater than the bad.

As our mention of his choices of words may already have begun to make apparent, Tinder writes “from a Christian point of view” (xii); in particular, he describes himself as “a Socratic and Kantian Christian” (xii-xiii). His writing shows a steady awareness of a potentially diverse audience of Christians and others who are not Christian. He seems to assume his reading audience is mostly American, or in any case Western and liberal-democratic, and the distinction among potential readers he makes or acknowledges most frequently is one between Christians and humanists. As he makes the distinction, the Christians believe Christian doctrines, of course, and are or can be otherwise open to what is available to unaided human understanding, while the humanists, to speak generally, attempt to rely only on what is available to unaided human understanding. Tinder gives over the seventh of his book’s thirteen chapters to the subject of dialogue, and there he maintains that the goodness of liberty lies most of all in its openness to dialogue. He maintains that the dialogic possibilities regarding the most important human mysteries or problems are inexhaustible; a further reply is always possible. He would have the humanists understand that it is worth their while to engage in listening to and speaking to the Christians and other believers, for they are sources of intuitions that, whatever their divine or human origin, are in some cases not repugnant to the humanists’ own reason. He would have the Christians understand that their liberty includes listening to and speaking to each other and to humanists on all humanly important matters. As part of his defense of such liberty for dialogue, he advises his fellow Christians to be doubtful of the sharp dichotomy they make between believers and unbelievers. They believe that God is love, and therefore, he says, they must beware assuming God has written off any large portion, or even any small portion, of his human creatures. Moreover, among the professed Christian believers may be many who merely subscribe to formulas of belief, while among men who profess no such belief there may be many who earnestly seek right understanding and right action. Under the circumstances, Christians are warranted in listening and speaking to all such earnest inquirers. The Christians’ liberty also includes inquiring into their own doctrines, for although revelation is God’s, doctrines are human, and a human understanding of doctrine can be deepened and improved. In Tinder’s quite interesting formulation, a Christian knows the Christian doctrines only as he actively seeks to understand them. Thus, the Christians have liberty and even responsibility to engage in dialogue in pursuit of understanding the doctrines of the faith.

We have so far read only chapters 1, 2, and 7 of Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal, and we hope to return to it at intervals. Already, we recommend it with some confidence to Christians and humanists alike, who think that reason, revelation, and the relationship between them remain a perennial problem.

(We thank Keith Peevy for his kind gift of a copy of Liberty.)

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