Aristotle, Eric, and James

Introduction
I missed all the fun my friends Eric Conn and James White had yesterday on the X, debating the implications of a screen shot summarizing Aristotle’s conception of “philia” – the Greek word for “friendship,” defined as “ethno-cultural consensus between members of the same city.” The summary went on to say that for Aristotle, democracy is only possible in homogenous ethnic groups, and tyrants and despots always exploit ethnic rivalries. “Ethnic chaos prevents all philia from developing.”

Eric kicked off the excitement by saying, “Aristotle was right,” and Dr. White wondered whether Eric was taking into account Aristotle’s lack of a Christian anthropology, soteriology, let alone a very different political situation. Dr. White also asked if the gospel indicates that common commitment in Christian society ought to be Christ and His law, rather than tribe and family.

What I Would Say
Not that anyone asked, but I would like to offer the following contribution to the conversation:

Aristotle was right, except for Cain and Abel, Israel in Egypt, and the entire history of Greece (and the world). 

In other words, I would say that Aristotle was mostly right, but wholly insufficient. 

It doesn’t get much more mono-ethnic than Cain and Abel, and envy turned murderous and destroyed that unity, and tyrants haunted Cain’s mono-ethnic family tree. And here we’re using “mono-ethnic” in Aristotle’s cultural sense, not merely a racial, genetic sense. 

Israel was a very homogenous culture going down into Egypt and remained a very homogenous culture in Egypt, and yet a despot and tyrant who did not know Joseph exploited them anyways and enslaved them. A homogenous culture was helpful for their future deliverance, but it was not sufficient to prevent enslavement. 

Likewise, the history of Greece was notoriously unstable, and the best of the Greek philosophers themselves recognized that more was needed than mere shared culture. Amazingly, at least some of the Greeks recognized that there was something disordered in the soul of man and this disorder spilled out into society. While a relatively well-balanced society might lean against that disorder, and it does, it is insufficient for creating widespread, long term order, as the whole history of our sorry planet manifestly demonstrates.

Restoring & Glorifying Nature
Eric and James exchanged verses, particularly Col.3:10-11 and Gal. 3:28, James pointing out that the gospel is doing something surprising to natural relations and differences, and Eric pointing out that it cannot be erasing them since that would also have to include male and female, as the egalitarians try to do. 

And both are right, but instead of saying that true Christian unity (and therefore social harmony) is “outside” of the categories of tribe and family, I believe it would be more accurate to say that Christ came to heal, restore, and glorify the categories of tribe and family. He came, as Malachi says, to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” He came to remove the enmity between male and female, husbands and wives. And this is the point of the New Testament “household codes,” the central plan for social, political, and cultural reformation: the restoration and healing of households – where even Christian slaves and masters are exhorted to pursue this unity with one another, even the evil ones. 

But this is where Dr. White has a good point: the exhortations to slaves and masters tells you that this restoration of natural ties and differences in families and tribes is something more radical than mere restoration of nature. Slaves and masters would have often been of different ethnic-cultural backgrounds, often the result of wars and intense resentments, and yet, providentially, made part of the same household, and therefore called to unity. The same has to be said of the New Testament insistence on the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ and in the church, in the household of God — where so much distrust and enmity had existed for centuries. 

This is the glorification of nature. This does not erase nature. This does not displace nature. But where sin has abounded, where animosity and enmity have abounded, grace abounds still more. And frequently, new, fledgling Christian churches found themselves in far flung places, thrust together from many different tribes because of their love for Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. For Paul, the church testified to the gospel not merely through the restoration natural affections (though certainly that) but also through the surprising friendship and unity of very diverse people.

Conclusion
Frequently the, “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?” discussions (going back to Tertullian) get bogged down in theory, but I actually think it’s more helpful to just use concrete examples and ask whether they are correct or helpful and to what extent. 

In this case, I do think Aristotle is noticing something generally true about the world: without shared language, culture, values, beliefs, and practices, it is virtually impossible for people to work together, communicate, and build a society together. Witness the Tower of Babel. Culture is arguably an extension of language, common practices and values that are intelligible to others. The core of this societal unity is ordinarily extended through natural families.

But that natural unity is not sufficient to build and preserve a society. It is a natural, good, and necessary starting point, such that mass immigration, without healthy systems of assimilation, is an attack on social cohesion, but cultural homogeneity is not sufficient for unity. While Aristotle is right that cultural animosity is easier to exploit by tyrants, natural man has a knack for even screwing up cultural homogeneity. Sin is the root problem for unity, not ethnic difference, any more than sexual difference is what causes marital or familial strife. Those differences exacerbate strife and make unity harder, but sin is the root problem, the disorder in our souls that disorders families and nations.

Nature is the starting point. And grace heals nature. Grace restores nature. Grace does not displace or destroy nature. But having healed and restored nature, grace also does more than we expect. This is not some kind of sentimental multicultural blank check, for guilt-tripping or coercing people into superficial “unity” that will only erupt in violence and strife like it’s doing in the UK right now. But as Pastor Doug likes to say, God meets us where we are and not where we should have been. We should work for a shared cultural unity in our context – our country cannot survive without it, but that means for many of us finding our assignment to love and build unity with people who are very different from us. 

And this love can certainly include mass deportations of illegal immigrants; it can and should include strict enforcement of just laws and just penalties for criminals, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. You cannot have any kind of societal unity based on selective DEI justice. But sometimes we will find ourselves thrust together in the same household, church, city, and nation, and while the gospel does not promise that unity will appear out of nowhere, the gospel does suggest that you may have more to work with in and through your households than you first thought possible. 

Photo by Kumpan Electric on Unsplash