THE BIBLE AS A MODEL FOR DEMOCRACY

Among Genesis's innumerable meanings is a theory about how truth is gained.  Starting with the famous opening "In the beginning," the book seems to assert that finding the greater truth in both human and godly affairs comes out of a journey through time.  That it takes a multigenerational effort and the insights and experiences, trials and errors, of so many people to construct a good and just world.

PBS DISCUSSION -- THE JOURNEY TO ENLIGHTENMENT

The people who joined together on PBS to talk about Genesis wrung many different ideas about God and truth out of the stories in the text.  Genesis, indeed the entire Old Testament, seems to say that truth about both divine and human affairs is too big to be contained in a single line of reasoning.  It is not reducible to pithy slogans or easy generalizations.  The premise is that knowledge about truth comes from living, that it is complicated and diverse, and is ultimately beyond the full grasp of any human being.

A DEMAND FOR HUMILITY

Such a view demands humility from those trying to find the truth.  And the characters in many Biblical narratives are frequently humbled in the process of meeting their destinies:  Abraham must give up his son Ishmael and send Hagar into the desert.  Joseph is put in prison.  In fact, these emotional setbacks are often important steps in journeys to enlightenment. And, as some in the PBS discussion group seemed to point out, such humbling experiences are what ultimately humanizes many of Genesis's soldiers, sages, and nation-builders

The model of how truth is gained is so different from the course commonly accepted in the West, which is based on the Socratic model.  In the latter, truth is ahistorical.  It is not embedded in the many experiences of living but exists as abstract principles and immutable laws.  In this view, knowledge of truth comes through reason and argument, not out of the collective wisdom of diverse experience.

The premise is that those with the best minds, the best education, and in some cases the highest moral charters are most likely to find the truth.

In politics, as I.F Stone argued in his book "The Trial of Socrates," this view is inherently autocratic, and often ruthless.  It posits that truth can be found by only a few and that, by definition, people's opinions are not equal in merit.  It is further assumed that, not possessing the advantages of the highest intellect and education, most people would not live by the highest principles.  Therefore to make a good society people must be forcibly hoisted to the highest principles.

This was the premise underlying Bolshevik thinking as Lenin wrested control of Russian at the beginning of the 20th century.  The Socratic paradigm also characterized the cruel logic that justified the fratricidal policies of Stalin and other communist countries from the middle of the century all the way through Cambodia's killing fields, when Pol Pot tried to hack the country into the peasant utopia he worked out in his head during the discussions groups he participated in as a student in Paris.

THE GOOD SOCIETY

The premise for democracy, on the other hand, is based on the Bible model.  At the heart of democracy is the idea that the good society evolves through time, and that it requires the input of many voices and points of view to bring it to maturity.

The divided government that has been more the rule than the exception in America during most of the twentieth centuary has meant that our laws and policies often contain the accumulated wisdom of a cross section of this country. This brings our society closer to the larger truths about America than a narrow vision based on the political parties, however valid those ideas may be in their own right.

Perhaps the electorate's preference for divided government comes from an instinct that develops among the governed in a democracy.  In this way, our democracy may owe more to our unconscious affirmation of the Biblical paradigm than it does to the Greeks and Romans, on whose imperfect democracies some of our government institutions are based.

TRIUMPH OF THE BIBLICAL PARADIGM

But divided government requires humility from democracy's leaders.  Right out of the crucible of an election, new leaders often feel so empowered by their own vision of the truth that they resist any thought of compromise.  But government frequently forces ideologues into pragmatists. When political parties adjust their vision to include some of the reality of others, they have more success. The large-scale demise of communism in the Soviet Union and in Europe was a triumph of the Biblical paradigm in politics over the Socratic.

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