Maximizing freedom for private appetites

George Will on conservatism and libertarianism—and this, in 1981:

Many conservatives  insist that America's great problem is just that government is so strong it is stifling freedom. These people call themselves "libertarian conservatives"—a label a bit like "promiscuous celibates." Real conservatism requires strong government.

The overriding aim of liberalism, properly understood, is the expansion of liberty. (American "liberals" long since became what Europeans call "social democrats," preoccupied with equality.) Conservatism, properly understood, rejects the idea of a single overriding aim.

Real conservatism tries to balance many competing values. Striking the proper balance often requires limits on liberty, and always requires resistance to libertarianism (the doctrine of maximizing freedom for private appetites) because libertarianism is a recipe for the dissolution of public authority, social and religious traditions, and other restraints needed to prevent license from replacing durable, disciplined liberty.

The truly conservative critique of contemporary American society is that there is too much freedom—for abortionists, pornographers, businessmen trading with the Soviet Union [Iran?], young men exempt from conscription, to cite just four examples. ...

Professor James Q. Wilson of Harvard wonders, reasonably, how conservatives can reconcile their idea that government should do less with the desire for the nation to play a more assertive role internationally, a role that may require, in addition to more weapons, more government activism in the management of international trade.

On forensic/juridical theories of the atonement

Here is Timothy Ware:

In the words of an Orthodox Christmas hymn, `Sharing wholly in our poverty, thou hast made divine our earthly nature through thy union with it and participation in it.' Christ shares in our death, and we share in his life; he `empties ourself' and we are `exalted'.

As Christ said at the Last Supper, `The glory which thou hast given to me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one: I in them and thou in me, may they be perfectly united into one'. By assuming our humanity, Christ who is Son of God by nature has made us sons of God by grace. In him we are `adopted' by God the Father, becoming sons-in-the-Son.

This particular notion of salvation as sharing implies two things in particular about the Incarnation. First, it implies that Christ took not only a human body like ours, but also a human spirit, mind and soul like ours. If Christ did not have a human mind, then this would fatally undermine the second principle of salvation, that divine salvation must reach the point of human need. The importance of this principle was re-emphasized during the second half of the fourth century, when Apollinarius advanced the theory — for which he was quickly condemned —that at the Incarnation Christ took only a human body, but no human intellect or rational soul. To this St. Gregory the Theologian replied, `The unassumed is unhealed'. Christ, that is to say, saves us by becoming what we are; he heals us by taking our broken humanity into himself, by `assuming' it as his own, by entering into our human experience and by knowing it from the inside, by being himself one of us. Had his sharing of our humanity been in some way incomplete, then man's salvation would be likewise incomplete. If we believe that Christ has brought us a total salvation, then it follows that he has assumed everything.

Secondly, this notion of salvation as sharing implies — although many have been reluctant to say this openly — that Christ assumed not just unfallen but fallen human nature. As the Epistle to the Hebrews insists (and in all the NT there is no Christological text more important): `We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but he was in all points tempted exactly as we are, yet without sinning' (4:15). Christ lives out his life on earth under the conditions of the fall. He is not himself a sinful person, but in his solidarity with fallen man he accepts to the full the consequences of Adam's sin.

St. Paul goes so far as to write, `God has made him who knew no sin to be sin for our sake'. We are not to think here solely in terms of some juridical transaction, whereby Christ, himself guiltless, somehow has out guilt `imputed' to him in an exterior manner. Much more is involved than this. Christ saves us by experiencing from within, as one of us, all that we suffer inwardly.