The Will Supreme

However, my contention is not that it is good to keep death as this great leveller; rather, I am more generally concerned with a worldview in which the human will can overcome anything and should do so. And here is where Christianity is distinct.

March 18, 2020 | By Tommy Schacht, PC ‘21. Tommy is majoring in History.

There is a specter that haunts the globe; a spirit which infects the hearts and minds of billions around the world, informing and guiding their actions on a daily basis. This specter goes by many names, but there is one which I like to call it: optimism.

Now, one may be surprised to hear that optimism is that thing which currently infects the world. After all, we are constantly told that the world is about to end. Headlines constantly inform us about how the rich are getting richer while the poor see their wages stagnate, about how Nationalism, racism, and xenophobia have traveled up through the corridors of power, taking hold of countries like American, Britain, Hungary, and Brazil, and about how the world will end in ten years if we do not fundamentally reorder our society to battle the scourge of climate change. However, I would claim that these messages do not constitute the fundamental worldview of most people, including those who would agree with them. Over Thanksgiving Break, I had a spirited debate with my cousin. He is of the opinion that we are living in a simulation. The argument goes like this: given enough time and resources, it is likely that humans (or another sentient race) will gain the technological capacity to simulate universes. When this happens, the number of simulated universes will rapidly dwarf the number of “real” universes (of which there is one). Thus, on a purely statistical basis, the odds are that we are living in a simulated universe. 

If you read carefully, you will note that there is an important unspoken assumption: there will not be limitations that would prevent us from simulating universes. This is profoundly optimistic. We can trace a similar optimism in other facets of life. The story of modernity is the story of the human will overcoming its limitations, and the optimistic worldview is that this trend will continue. Think of the 20th century. It took less than 60 years to get from Kitty Hawk to a man on the moon. Modern medicine has eradicated diseases wholesale, and modern agriculture has increased output to astronomically high levels, at least compared to a century earlier. This optimism even extended into political philosophy; what is totalitarianism except an attempt to impose the human will onto society? Facism is the belief in the state uber alles, where the state can organize the sum total of human society. The state performs its functions as an extension of the will of its constituent members. Thus, if the state’s will is frustrated, then the wills of its members are also frustrated. Only those who do not accept human limitations would be fascists; otherwise, they would acknowledge there are some things the state cannot do. 

The 21st century has a freedom hangover inherited from the 20th; most of us still believe, on an instinctual level, that humans can overcome the limitations the world places on us. This impulse has largely been funneled into a fideism around science. There are people I know who are not worried about climate change not in spite of science, but because they think that scientists will be able to come up with solutions to save us. All of those who love Elon Musk and think he will set up Martian colonies buy into this worldview. They have a sort of blind faith in the capacity of science and our ability to solve seemingly intransigent problems. Nowhere is this optimistic impulse more clear than in our modern relationship with death. 

Historically, death has been the ultimate limit. No matter our accomplishments and grandeur, the Grim Reaper would harvest us just the same. While we could control a lot of things in our lives, the one certainty in life is that it would one day end. However, modernity seeks to remove even that final limitation on the will. People are seeking immortality. Whether it be by cryogenics, robotics, or just really good medicine, there are those who think mankind will be able to tear the veil asunder and free us from the shackles of death. They fall prey to the same insidious optimism that claims many scientific enthusiasts. On the other hand, there are those who seek not to avoid death, but to meet it on their own terms. I am of course talking about euthanasia. Euthanasia is the ultimate exertion of the will; it allows us to wrest control of our destiny from the hands of fickle Fate. Rather, we get to decide when, how, and in how much pain our lives end. While it is not the full conquest of death, it is a sallying forth. Its increasing acceptance in society is indicative of a mindset in which our will is paramount, and ought to be treated as such. 

At first glance, the Christian relationship with death is not all that dissimilar. After all, death is not the final frustration of our will. Christians have hope in the world to come: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. If anything, Christians seem to be more open to the critique that I am leveling than secular people. They have successfully removed that much-vaunted final obstacle. However, my contention is not that it is good to keep death as this great leveller; rather, I am more generally concerned with a worldview in which the human will can overcome anything and should do so. And here is where Christianity is distinct. For while we have overcome death, we have not done so by our own wills. While the particular soteriology may differ by denomination, all Christians believe that it is God who conquered the grave. Lazarus did not rise because he desired it; he rose because Jesus commanded it. The crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the actions of the incarnate God. As such, our conquest of death does not pose the same problem as Elon Musk’s. Our eternal life is not the product of human hands, but a gift freely given by a loving God. It does not speak to a desire to conquer all, but a desire by God for us to be united with Him. This is not just preferable because it is humble; the will uber alles is a pride of the worst sort. Putting in God’s will over our own is also good because we are broken. Our wills do not always lead us to the good. One need only look at the 20th century examples previously mentioned to see the truth in this. Rather than put our trust in what we know to be untrustworthy, we ought instead trust in the perfection of God.