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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
December 4, 2005
Tolerance/forgiveness
The word "tolerance", in the sense of endurance, is much older, but its use to mean a disposition to be indulgent dates from the 18th century. This is not something I was surprised to find, when I looked it up. "Toleráble" is old French out of Latin: that word swept into English use with the beginnings of modernity. It began to swell in meaning from the 17th century, acquiring a vogue for its specialized use in communicating the idea of religious toleration (Act of Toleration, 1689). And with that, a new etymological association with the Latin "tollere", which is not merely "to bear" (as, tolerare), but "to lift up, raise". Our English word "extol" takes this farther, towards praising, even boasting about something.Forgive me, I always wanted to be a don. But my interest in this word is more than academic. It is one of the "thought-killer" words for the politically correct mind; "tolerance" is to be accepted uncritically as a word for all seasons and reasons, and thought must stop the moment it appears. As ever, we find even postmodernity is not without a history -- it is the carrying forward of a loose idea hatched during the Enlightenment, into the realm of dementia. The earlier Enlightenment thinkers tended to think things through; or at least, to try to do so. As I've argued before in these columns, it is worth going back to read John Locke's famous Letter Concerning Toleration (also 1689) to find out what the master of the word thought he was doing with it. Locke, a great grandfather of modern liberalism, advocated toleration for certain religious non-conformists. He did not for a moment think toleration could be unrestricted. Jews, Catholics, and Atheists were among those whose outlook on life were, for various stated reasons, intolerable to British freedom. Don't laugh, until you have comprehended what those reasons were. Locke, who was quite intelligent, knew that no political order could survive without restricting the activities of people sworn to destroy it. The same principle was invoked from the beginning of modern democracy, to restrict the activities of people (from divine-right monarchists to communists) sworn to destroy democracy. Over the intervening centuries, Jews, Catholics, and even Atheists found ways to swear allegiance to the British crown, and thus to the Protestant, Christian, liberal political order that crown represented. To get some analogy to what was involved, we might look to contemporary Muslims who insist that no political order is legitimate unless it is based on Koran and Sharia. How can they honestly participate in a society which has consciously and consistently rejected both, and which they are bound by creed to undermine? Just as Catholics were once bound in conscience to reject the legitimacy of the King of England, and therefore deprived of the franchise. You cannot serve two masters. But this specific use of the concept of toleration in high matters of church and state, is today nearly archaic. What we tolerate today -- simply because "toleration" seems to us an intrinsically good idea -- is anything at all. It includes, from abortion to pornography to homosexuality to "euthanasia", many things that were considered criminal until quite recently (and still are, by a considerable part of the population). Moreover, it extends, through the hypocritical rhetoric of "welfare" and "caring", to indulging all kinds of anti-social behaviour that one was once compelled to hide. Increasingly, "intolerance" is presented as the only real evil; so that the word itself has become unacceptable, and has been replaced by the term "zero tolerance", as a means to advance a revolutionary agenda. The puzzle for me is to understand how this idea of toleration was able to get so far off the rails. So far, that mainstream liberal Christians have come, without thinking, to imagine that "toleration" was a virtue preached in the Gospels. Whereas, a radical intoleration of the devil and his works is expounded there. Christ also taught "forgiveness". But forgiveness, and toleration, are hardly interchangeable ideas. They are, rather, directly in conflict: and the latter leaves no room for the former. We cannot forgive what we don't think wrong. Yet if it is indeed wrong, it requires forgiveness. I challenge my reader to think this through over the next week, in this Advent season, while I'll be away. To think about how cold and mean a society becomes, when toleration is raised to its only moral standard, and the whole possibility of forgiveness is consequently withdrawn. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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