Covenant and Constitutionalism: The Covenant Tradition in Politics by Daniel J. Elazar

Author:Daniel J. Elazar [Elazar, Daniel J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Theology, Religion, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781560002352
Google: _PdKDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 3521691
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1996-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

6

Covenant and the Challenges of Human Nature

Changes in intellectual fashion could not alone have brought down the structure of the American covenantal system which was so deeply implanted in the American psyche, the American political culture, and the behavioral and institutional manifestations of that culture. There also had to be problems with the covenant idea itself. These did indeed occur in two ways, both stemming from the realities of human nature.

The first, in a sense, is the simplest. The covenant tradition suffered from the sanctimonious and oversimplistic thinking of some of its adherents, often those who most directly relied upon it in their interpersonal relations to justify what they believed and what they were doing. Both are normal human failings, but any system that offers or appears to offer the keys to the kingdom of heaven is likely to suffer particularly from sanctimoniousness as those of its adherents who do not recognize their own weaknesses and failings easily find ways to be sanctimonious in relation to others.

We can also expect that some people will be more intelligent or better educated than others and that those with more limited intelligence or less education are prone to accept oversimple explanations for complex questions based upon the superstructure of ideas and behavior that they have erected for themselves. At the very least this is off-putting for people who are not satisfied with those oversimple explanations. At worst it can be a threat to the entire structure, however that structure is misunderstood by those seeking simplistic solutions to difficult and complex problems.

The second source of the problem is related to the first, that is to say, it is simply deficiencies, weaknesses, and failings in human nature that make the covenantal system and its tradition in its pure forms impossible of realization in this world. Even those who strive most diligently to live up to the terms of their covenantal tradition will at some point or another fail and leave themselves open to those who will charge them with hypocrisy and the system with failure. For those who accept the tradition and the problems of human nature and who approach both with the kind of understanding which the Bible itself manifests, these problems do not dissuade them from the essential validity and importance of the tradition. But for those who chafe under its restrictions, these failings supply or form a basis for their own personal rejection and a club with which to beat the tradition before the public as well.

In the nineteenth-century United States there were those who came out of the covenantal tradition and who remained within it or close to it in some way, who tried to deal with these problems of covenant and human nature in a critical yet sympathetic way. Aside from Lincoln, the rest of them made their mark in literature rather than philosophy or politics and indeed formed the constellation of nineteenth-century American literary greats. Three in particular stand out: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens).

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