MR. TOYNBEE'S CITY OF GOD
cooperation, economic security, all of this theological baggage is com–
pletely superfluous. For not a single one of the concrete proposals he
makes for social change follows from his theological assumptions. The
latter, whether true, false, or meaningless, are compatible with any
state of social affairs. As a decisive test of this let us take Mr. Toynbee's
recommendations in answer to his own question: "What shall we do to
be saved?" He replies: "In politics, establish a constitutional cooperative
system of world government [through the U.N.]. In economics, find
working compromises between free enterprise and socialism."
Precisely from what theological assumptions do these-or any other
-political and economic directives necessarily follow? What dogmas of
Christianity are incompatible with free enterprise or with collectivism
or with the varied alternatives to constitutional world government? What
could be clearer than that Mr. Toynbee's theology is neither a necessary
nor a sufficient condition for his own proposals for a better world? Not
necessary because many non-Christian Chinese, Hindoo, Moslem, and
Jewish public figures advocate them just as firmly as Mr. Toynbee. Not
sufficient because many of Mr. Toynbee's co-religionists, whose theolog–
ical sincerity and orthodoxy he would be the last to dispute, are bitterly
opposed to them.
The point is very elementary but its implications have such a
devastating significance for Mr. Toynbee's view on the relation between
theology, the good life, and world order that it is necessary to underscore
it. Once it is firmly grasped, the utter irrelevance of religious revivalism
for any kind of social reform becomes apparent. We will then be free
to explore the mischievous psychological and political consequences of
insisting upon a return to religious foundations as a prerequisite to
social reform. And by religion I mean here what Mr. Toynbee and most
people who have called themselves religious mean-belief in theological
dogmas as revealed to an authoritative church.
Some may feel that Mr. Toynbee, whose piety and good will are
deeper than his theological acumen, is a weak representative of the
general position. Consider for the moment, then, the case of M. Maritain
whose apologetics for the Christian basis of politics and peace does
not lack subtlety. In one of his books on scholasticism and politics, M.
Maritain develops the importance for human society of the theological
distinction between "the individual" and "the person." In the course
of his analysis he relates, not without a certain sly satisfaction at the
benefits conferred by a Catholic education, a story of a visit paid by
Georges Duhamel, Fran<;ois Mauriac, and himself to Dr. Salazar, the
philosopher-dictator of Portugal:
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