III. SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES
OF DETERMINISM
It is a common reaction to systems including deter-
minism that they should induce fatalism, passivity, a
complete conservatism. For if man can achieve nothing
on his own initiative, why should he try to exercise
any initiative? It is a similar reaction that these systems
should induce amorality, even immorality. For if man
can achieve no reward or recognition for good conduct,
why should he be good? These tend to be the reactions
of neutral observers, however, not those of believers
in theological systems containing elements of deter-
minism. In actual fact, these systems have often been
associated with socially active, even militant, religious
groups, which often demanded a puritanical moralism
of their members. In Christian Europe, the Augustinian
West has been usually more militant than the Orthodox
East, despite the East's greater emphasis on human free
will. The difference was reflected at a fairly early point
in the ecclesiastical history of the two areas. The
churches in the East submitted to the control of secular
governments, first the control of the Greek emperors
headquartered in Constantinople, later the control of
the Russian tsars headquartered in Moscow or St.
Petersburg. Forms of cesaropapism thus have often
characterized the Eastern churches. The churches in
the West, meanwhile, led by the Roman pontiff,
claimed a considerable independence from the secular
states, and often made such claims good. On occasion
the papacy even claimed a measure of control over
the secular states.
In more modern times, predestinarian Calvinist
churches were the most militant and puritanical prod
uct of the Protestant Reformation. When the religious
tensions created by the Reformation became so acute
that they boiled over into open warfare, it was most
often the Calvinists who took the leadership of the
Protestant cause. This bellicosity was first evident
among the Swiss cantons, in Zwingli's day, even before
Calvin became the recognized principal leader of the
movement. It became even more pronounced and
large-scale in France, where Calvinist Huguenots
helped to plunge the nation into more than thirty years
of religious wars beginning in 1562. It was repeated
in the Netherlands, where the Calvinist Beggars helped
provoke the eighty-years' war for Dutch independence
in 1572. Also in Germany the Calvinists of the Palati-
nate organized a Protestant Union, which helped push
all central Europe into the Thirty Years' War in 1618.
In England the Calvinist Puritans won control of Par-
liament, and then tried to change the form of govern-
ment by force, from 1640 to 1660.
Even in the twentieth century, neo-orthodox theolo-
gians with elements of determinism in their thought
have been noted for their concern with social problems
and morality. Both Niebuhr and Barth have been sensi-
tive to the need for large-scale reforms which is most
commonly exploited by socialists. Both were also early
to recognize the great moral evil of fascism and to
urge that Christians resist it with force, even war when
that seemed necessary.
The correlation between determinism and militancy
in Christian civilization is not, to be sure, a perfect
one. In the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the
seventeenth century, the neo-Augustinian Jansenist
movement was in most respects markedly less militant
even though markedly more puritanical than its chief
opponent, the Society of Jesus. But in general the
correlation between Christian determinism and mili-
tancy is striking and surely significant.
Similar historical examples of a correlation between
determinism and militancy can be found in other sys-
tems. They are particularly striking in Islam. The cen-
turies after the Prophet's death when the doctrine of
kadar was generally accepted were the very years
when Islam generated its most explosive force, con-
quering large parts of the Near East, the Middle East,
Africa, and India. The recrudescence of Muslim mili-
tancy with the arrival of the Turks several centuries
later, seems to have coincided with a revival of a kind
of determinism. It took a Turkic form in the doctrine
of kismet, a form of fatalism about the development
of this temporal world, not necessarily connected to
questions of man's eternal destiny.
This frequent correlation between theological de-
terminism and social militancy poses problems of great
psychological and cultural interest. They may be be-
yond the competence of a historian of ideas. But there
clearly seems to be something about the beliefs that
there is a God who controls the universe completely
and that those who believe in Him are His chosen
instruments, which induces a social activism which can
become militant, even frantic, even fanatic.
