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The Catholicity of Subsidiarity

by Jordan J. Ballor • December 5, 2012
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Earlier this week we noted that Patrick Brennan posted a paper, “Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine,” which unpacks some of the recent background and implications for the use of the principle in Catholic social thought. As Brennan observes, “Although present in germ from the first Christian century, Catholic social thought began to emerge as a unified body of doctrine in the nineteenth century….” Brennan goes on to highlight the particularly Thomistic roots of the doctrine of subsidiarity, “a new idea creatively culled from the depths of the Catholic philosophical and theological tradition that had roots in Greek philosophical speculation.”

While recognizing the innovativeness of Taparelli’s thought and the genius of 19th and 20th century revivals of neo-Thomism, it is also worth noting the basic “catholicity,” or universality, of a doctrine like subsidiarity within the broader Christian tradition. If Christian social thought has been around since the first century, then so have its constitutive elements, in more or less developed form. And pace Brennan, it is not clear to me that there is one univocal version of subsidiarity, at least as it arises out of the early modern period.

With this in mind, I have just posted two papers that explore the early modern backgrounds of subsidiarity and related concepts like natural law which focus particularly on the provenance of these ideas in the Reformed tradition.

In “State, Church, and the Reformational Roots of Subsidiarity,” I explore “some (although certainly not all) of the antecedents in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras that stand behind more contemporary expressions of the doctrine of subsidiarity,” specifically within the ecclesiastical and the political thought of the Reformed.

In “A Society of Mutual Aid: Natural Law and Subsidiarity in Early Modern Reformed Perspective,” I examine how

Subsdiarity, in its most basic (if not yet principled) sense is in this way a corollary of natural law, in that it is an aspect of the rational ordering of society, including human individuals with a common nature (including dignity and relative autonomy) as well as a variety of institutions with different ends (natures). Subsidiarity is an answer to the question of ordering variegated social institutions and relating them to the individual, an answer which became increasingly developed and mature as Reformed social thought progressed.

These papers should be appearing in print sometime next year, and the versions posted at SSRN represent various stages of finality with respect to the text itself. Most changes should be superficial, however, and so the content of these two papers is essentially reliable at this point. I commend them, and the principle of subsidiarity itself, to your study. We can also look forward to the scheduled publication in which Brennan’s essay will appear, Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective, ed. Michelle Evans and Augusto Zimmermann (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming).

Jordan J. Ballor Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is a senior research fellow and director of publishing at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty. He is also a postdoctoral researcher in theology and economics at the VU University Amsterdam as part of the "What Good Markets Are Good For" project. He is author of Get Your Hands Dirty: Essays on Christian Social Thought (and Action) (Wipf & Stock, 2013), Covenant, Causality, and Law: A Study in the Theology of Wolfgang Musculus (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012) and Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church's Social Witness (Christian's Library Press, 2010), as well as editor of numerous works, including Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology. Jordan is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary.

Posted in Christian Social Thought, PublicationsTagged calvinism, catholic social teaching, christian theology, christianity, federalism, Patrick Brennan, Religion/Belief, subsidiarity

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  • DCampbell2

    Isn’t subsidiarity gaining popularity. such a vague word with such insidiously selfish line of reasoning. I’m sure we’ll find scripture advising every Christian to adopt one widow or orphan so that limited participation in charity was established by early church wisdom. Did the reformation which empowered individual thought and decision, lead to selfish distribution of resources through only libertarian governance. No, the collective thought of individual decision makers is exercised through elected governance. If we desired smaller minded solutions, we would be electing smaller minded governance. Trust and obey. There are so many avenues to serve the poor, whether accessing government money to run a hospital, or pave streets and pick up trash. The collective wisdom of our leadership exceeds the high minded selfish Christian theologians desiring to pander to the selfish, worried Tea Party constituents.

    • Mike

      DCampbell2

      I’m sorry if the tone of this response can be taken as harsh or intolerant, but are you kidding?

      “Insidiously selfish line of reasoning . . . .”

      “If we desired smaller minded solutions, we would be electing smaller minded governance.”

      “The collective wisdom of our leadership exceeds the high minded selfish Christian theologians . . . .”

      If you don’t like Christians, fine, but why do you hate economists? Have you ever even heard of the law of unintended consequences? If not, here it is:

      ‘The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.’

      The majority of folks who have faith in big government solutions to their personal problems are not knowledgeable of this economic law. They have been encouraged to believe this: “If you can think it, it can happen just as you imagine.” This is a fallacy since human beings are unimaginably complex creatures to manage and control. Big government programs are almost universally subject to major and often destructive unintended consequences, even though these unintended consequences are contrary to the thought and desire of the originators of those programs. Additionally, such programs also deprive individuals of the ability to engage in effective virtuous action on the smaller scale permitted by following the principle of subsidiarity.

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