Between Kin and Cosmopolis
An Ethic of the Nation
❧
Nigel Biggar
BETWEEN KIN AND COSMOPOLIS
An Ethic of the Nation
The Didsbury Lectures Series
Copyright © 2014 Nigel Biggar. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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isbn 13: 978-1-62032-513-1
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Biggar, Nigel.
Between kin and cosmopolis : an ethic of the nation / Nigel Biggar.
The Didsbury Lectures Series
xvi + 110 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 13: 978-1-62032-513-1
eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-190-1
1. Christianity and politics. 2. Church and state. 3. State, The. 4. Political ethics. 5. Nationalism. 5. Christian ethics. I. Series. II. Title.
BR115.P7 B54 2014
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
“The debate about massive and unrestricted immigration has emerged from almost nowhere to become the most toxic issue in British politics. Because reasoned argument has been banished since Enoch Powell, we have lacked a framework for considered discussion and populism has stepped in. In this well-researched and articulate hundred pages on national identity and independence (Scottish or not) Nigel Biggar gives us just such a framework, demonstrating yet again the value of public theology. He makes an outstanding contribution.”
—Iain R. Torrance, Pro-chancellor, University of Aberdeen, former Moderator of the General Assembly, President Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary
“Many people have written recently on political theology: but the discussion tends to remain at a rather abstract level, of endorsing or decrying broad trajectories, genealogies, and movements. Biggar stands in an older Anglican tradition, running through Temple, Arnold, Coleridge, Burke, and Hooker. Immersed in this tradition, whilst drinking deeply from Barth, Niebuhr, and Augustine, Biggar remembers something that many theologians have found comfortable to forget: that the use of temporal power inevitably leads to the particular judgment in a flawed situation, and to a decision with consequences, some of which will be sad, without this rendering the decision wrong. Biggar writes with the full command of a capacious and prudential theological tradition, without ever being obscure, jargonistic, or dry. He is never afraid of strong judgments, but also never fails to give all his reasoning respectfully, and with possible caveats, always seeking to understand the good that the alternative perspective is trying to protect. The result is a forceful, well-paced text that commands attention and respect, and that will provoke controversy in the best way, by calling upon all interlocutors to join a debate, where the whole human being is invited, complete with affections, beliefs and transcendent aspirations. This is a thoughtful theological engagement with some of the deepest political dilemmas of our contemporary situation, where contingent and transient complexities are set capaciously and judiciously against the framework of eternity.”
—Professor Christopher J. Insole, Durham University, Durham, UK
The Didsbury Lectures
Series Preface
The Didsbury Lectures, delivered annually at Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, are now a well-established feature on the theological calendar in Britain. The lectures are planned primarily for the academic and church community in Manchester but through their publication have reached a global readership.
The name “Didsbury Lectures” was chosen for its double significance. Didsbury is the location of Nazarene Theological College, but it was also the location of Didsbury College (sometimes known as Didsbury Wesleyan College), established in 1842 for training Wesleyan Methodist ministers.
The Didsbury Lectures were inaugurated in 1979 by Professor F. F. Bruce. He was followed annually by highly regarded scholars who established the series’ standard. All have been notable for making high calibre scholarship accessible to interested and informed listeners.
The lectures give a platform for leading thinkers within the historic Christian faith to address topics of current relevance. While each lecturer is given freedom in choice of topic, the series is intended to address topics that traditionally would fall into the category of “Divinity.” Beyond that, the college does not set parameters. Didsbury lecturers, in turn, have relished the privilege of engaging in the dialogue between church and academy.
Most Didsbury lecturers have been well-known scholars in the United Kingdom. From the start, the college envisaged the series as a means by which it could contribute to theological discourse between the church and the academic community more widely in Britain and abroad. The publication is an important part of fulfilling that goal. It remains the hope and prayer of the College that each volume will have a lasting and positive impact on the life of the church, and in the service of the gospel of Christ.
Acknowledgments
Most of the content of this book was composed for delivery as the 2011 Didsbury Lectures at the Nazarene Theological College, Manchester. I am bound and glad, therefore, to record my thanks to colleagues at the College both for honouring me with the invitation to lecture and for providing warm hospitality during my sojourn with them.
In addition, I also owe thanks to Mr. William Sheehan, the historian of colonial counter-insurgency campaigns, and to Dr. Simon Kingston, for confirming that my construal of Irish history in chapter 4 is not implausible.
Some of the material in chapters 1, 2, and 3 has appeared elsewhere. Chapter 1 is a heavily reworked version of “The Value of Limited Loyalty,” which found first published expression in Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (edited by David Miller and Sohail Hashmi and published by Princeton University Press in 2001). Chapter 2 is based mainly on “Why the Establishment of the Church of England is Good for a Liberal Society,” which originally appeared in The Established Church: Past, Present and Future (edited by Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby, and William Whyte, and published by T. & T. Clark in 2011); but it also draws from “Saving the ‘Secular’: the Public Vocation of Moral Theology,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37.1 (2009). Chapter 3 echoes parts of chapter 6 of my own In
Defence of War (Oxford University Press, 2013). I gratefully acknowledge the permission given by all three publishers to borrow material from these publications.
Introduction
Twenty-nine years ago I was told by a senior Anglican clergyman that the nation-state was passé. He sounded so sure of himself that I was impressed, and, being impressionable, I assumed that he must know what he was talking about. I cannot remember why he was so sure; but I do remember that his conviction was a fashionable one. Quite why it was fashionable is not clear to me now. The mid-1980s were too early for globalization’s transfer of power from national governments to free global markets and transnational corporations to have become evident. Perhaps it was the recent entry of an economically ailing and politically strife-torn Britain into the arms of the European Economic Community that made the nation-state’s days look so numbered. And, of course, the Cold War, which would not thaw until 1989,