Political Philosophy and Revelation

11. The Definitive Kingdom

118 11. The Definitive Kingdom Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Benedict XVI To be always looking at the map when there is a fine prospect before you shatters the “wise passiveness” in which landscape ought to be enjoyed. But to consult a map before we set out has no such ill effect. C. S. Lewis I • Every civilized city is an active order composed of mortal men during the time they are precisely the mortals. Politics as such describes their order insofar as they are alive in this world. The existing polity reflects the inner order or disorder of the citizens’ souls as they associate to achieve the end they define as happiness. Politics, which is natural to man, does not in principle affirm that this world is the individual citizen’s only destiny. Men are by nature to be sure political animals. What they are fully capable of being as mortals is not possible outside the polity. Yet what men are is not wholly completed within the city either. All cities are limited cities. What is not mortal belongs to the immortals. Intelligence is said to be “divine.” It too belongs to the immortals, to what does not change. Man is the mortal being who is also “divine,” that is, who participates by his intelligence in the things that do not An earlier version of this chapter was delivered as a lecture at the Institute of Divine Word, Chillum, Md. Epigraphs are from Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 24b; C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), vii. The Definitive Kingdom 119 change. That he can so participate is the reason why he is also said to be through his soul immortal. Neither man nor the world are complete without intelligence. And intelligence leads to the question of whether intelligence in knowing whatis can know its origin if it is offered to him to know. Whatever be the size of the city, great or small, in any era or location , we find men in it constantly being born and, at the same time, dying . Our cemeteries, insofar as we still have them, are designed by the city to remember, among the still living, the dead who were once born in the city and what they accomplished. The memories, laws, deeds, customs, music, and sayings of the dead remain alive in the cities and in part define them as what they are insofar as they are not forgetful of their great deeds and words. We also find in actual cities children, adolescents, youths, those just taking up family and civic responsibility. Also present in their maturity are those who work and seek to solve problems of need and style, those who rule and are ruled. We have those who step aside to wonder about the meaning of it all, something Socrates thought should be their first, even daily duty. They ask of what is, why it is, why it is this way, not some other way. Those who retire from labor and work also remain in the city. Some are wise. All die. Cicero, in his essay “On Old Age,” says that a republic needs the elderly , the wise, those who have seen the stages of every life, those with experience. The old, patiently or anxiously, expect the final manifestation of their mortality. We have heard that Socrates on his last day spoke of the immortality of his soul to respond to the annoyance of the potential philosophers who could not understand why he was so calm before such an unfair sentence. We are not just “souls,” but mortals. We do have souls and bodies. They belong together, as Aristotle said. Christianity reaffirmed this connection with the doctrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection. The soul is made visible to us when it acts through and animates the body. The relation of immortality to resurrection is the essence of Augustine’s locating the Platonic city not in solely speech but in what he called, modifying but not denying Plato, the City of God. The ancient cities were said to have been founded by the gods. The 120   A Natural...