Back to the future of bad ideas

Three years before he died at the age of 88, Isaiah Berlin, one of the intellectual lights of the last century, accepted an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Too frail to accept in person, Berlin wrote a short speech to be read at the ceremony on Nov. 25, 1994. As a self-described “credo,” his “Message to the Twenty-First Century” is worth a look.

Berlin recoiled in horror from the history of his own lifetime, an age that attacked “the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction.” These waves of destruction, named Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot all grew from a single cause: ideas.

“Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise.”

The Bible is the linchpin of all human rights, for it makes certain things clear: All men are sinners, all hearts are deceptive.

According to Berlin, the fatal flaw of mankind is imagining there is one true answer for all the problems of history. “This is the idea of which I spoke, and I wish to tell you that it is false.” The reason is that human values, remarkably similar among cultures, nevertheless clash among themselves. For instance, “Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy.” Creative spontaneity conflicts with social order, reason tussles with emotion, and individual desires continually run aground on community obligations. In sum, “one cannot have everything one wants, not only in practice, but even in theory.” Philosophy comes full circle and shakes hands with The Rolling Stones.

But Dr. Berlin saw light at the end of the bloody tunnel: “Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything … is spreading.”

The Cold War was over, totalitarianism in disarray, the internet poised to become an information global bazaar where people like me could read thoughts like his. In the blinding light of a brighter future, though, he missed something: Rationality and tolerance are also “ideas,” and might even be seized upon as the “one true answer.”

Rationality is a good thing, but not an ultimate thing. Tolerance as an overarching value has built-in limitations, namely:

In his sweep of world history, Berlin lumped in Christianity with all philosophical, religious, and political ideas. That was his other mistake. Christ does not claim to have the one true answer; He is the answer. In Him conflicts are resolved from the top down—male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. Opposite values are reconciled, particularly justice and mercy, “to show [God’s] righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). Our chief conundrum—solved. The Bible is the linchpin of all human rights, for it makes certain things clear: All men are sinners, all hearts are deceptive, no one has “the answer,” I need grace as desperately as you. And God loves His image.

Discard this, and we’re back in the 20th century with societal perfection just over the next hill and retaliation for anyone who stands in its way. A lot of people who appear to be standing in the way these days are Christians, like New England college presidents, Colorado bakers, and New Mexico wedding photographers. Christian teaching seems to be the greatest obstacle to getting what we want. But it’s the very thing that frees us from the tyranny of ideas and the sirens’ song of utopia.

Email jcheaney@wng.org