A reasonable question may be proposed given today’s political climate: what are the roots of conservative and liberal thought? Is it a facetious and divisive stand against all that either side stands for? Or is it an outward affiliation with a political party? A positive response to these questions not only degrade the truth that is at the center of conservatism, but also denigrates its Biblical beginning. Much of conservative thought has been penned and defended by prominent leaders of our past such as Edmund Burke—considered the “father of conservatism”—and well into the 1950s, Russel Kirk, and many more in between. Though I would like to propose a beginning that goes further back, all the way to the beginning.
From Adam’s dusty birth, him and God were in perfect communion. They conversed freely and at one point in their fellowship, God gave Adam guidance in how he ought to govern himself, all the created, and eventually his wife, Eve. God commanded unto him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”1 This was not a guideline or a boundary, nor a moral teaching, but a divine law. A law that rises above man’s own laws and even his rationale. This was God’s word that Adam was given as a blessing for his own good, for if he ate of the fruit, he would surely die.
To further note the revelatory importance in God’s command, there is nothing that rises, encircles, or touches God’s Truth. Anything but the Truth is a sacrilege and an idolatrous upholding of oneself. To prefer our self-absorbed thoughts and pleasures rather than to undertake a respectable and contemplative endeavor to sincerely learn about God or at least His very nature. This is the distinctive difference between conservatism and liberalism.
Adam and Eve were given two choices: obey God and make sense of his Word through daily application of it; or obey themselves and create their own order. Conservatives aim for the former and liberals crave for the latter. Self-proclaimed conservatives with no objective and moral standard have nothing to protect. Partisan alignment with the Republican party does not make one a conservative.
Following conservatism was the impulse of liberalism. After having been ordered not to eat of the tree of good and evil, Adam and Eve sinned against God anyways. The moral evil however, occurred before they ate of the fruit. Rather, the moral decision to disobey God was clearly made in both Adam and Eve’s hearts prior to the eating of the fruit. This New Testament prefiguring is what eventually led to Jesus’ teachings on the obedience of the heart before the law.
There are two points to observe in the Biblical roots of liberalism. The first is that in the serpent’s conniving and crafty persuasion, he told Eve that to eat of the fruit would make her be like God. The second point is the overwhelming appeal that sin itself presents. That the “fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom”1. In other words, the serpent convinced Eve that she could in some way, transcend beyond her present knowledge and become like God herself. The fruit itself is analogous to man’s pleasurable vices. To wrongfully partake and indulge in our empty pleasures is the conscious decision to go against God, vainly placing ourselves above God. Liberalism then, is the capricious servility of self-idolatry. Even the most accomplished and self-convinced liberal can never eliminate the existence of God. In truth, the liberal-hearted place themselves above God as the Philistines set the Ark next to their pagan idol, Dagon. The prophet, Samuel, illustrates the consequences of placing God next to Dagon which echoes a great warning to our society—a falling forwards and a decapitation of our metaphorical arms and legs; and ultimately, a severing of the soul from the rest of the body.
Image credit: “The Rebuke of Adam and Eve” – Domenico Zampieri, 1626
Reference
1. English Standard Version Bible