In his famous speech (in Acts 17) to “men of Athens” at the Areopagus, St.n Paul speaks of the providential ordering of God as including differentn nations, each having its particular boundaries. God “made from one mann every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, havingn determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,n that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their wayn toward him and find him.” This may seem jarring today, when many have grownn accustomed to thinking of themselves as citizens of the world or talking inn terms of a global community. And we know, of course, that the significancen of nations and national boundaries—and migration across those boundaries—isn often the subject of heated political disputes.
n Seldom, however, do these public arguments notice that without a sense ofn boundaries and limits, we may lack the language needed to expressn cosmopolitan desires and beliefs. It is hard to talk about the importancen of “the human family” unless we have some experience of life within ourn particular families and the intensity of familial attachment. Without then experience of particular friends to whom we are especially attached, can wen really have any idea of what it might mean to think of “friendship to alln the world”? Nor could we even try to think coherently of ourselves asn “citizens of the world” or members of a global community unless we hadn learned this language of belonging within smaller, more particular andn bounded political communities. Without such focused, located experience,n the “neighbor” would remain largely an abstraction—no doubt easier to loven than particular individuals, and sometimes appealing for just that reason.n
n To say everything that we want to say, we seem to need both a sense that wen are kin to all other human beings (made from one man, as St. Paul says) andn a sense of allotted periods and boundaries—that we stand in specialn relationship with and have special duties toward only some from among thatn one human family. We want and need to side both with the speaker in Robert Frost’s poem (“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”) and hisn down-to-earth neighbor (“Good fences make good neighbours”).n
Although our political debates may not often invite reflection on basicn facts about the organic structure of human beings, a little reflection onn it makes clear why we cannot say only one thing about particular bonds andn more universal duties. Human beings are living bodies. We have location. Wen inhabit particular places. Yet we are not rooted in place as plants are.n Unlike or more so than any of the other animals, we can see, reflect upon,n and desire things not immediately present to us; hence, we always to somen indefinite extent transcend the place (and the community) that locates us.n Indeed, we quite naturally yearn for what is more than human, what isn divine.
n If these simple observations are true of us, we would do an injustice ton our humanity if we had no sense of special obligation to those closelyn connected to us by nature or history. There would be something inhumann about missing entirely the moral significance of the body as the place ofn our personal presence to others. But there would also be somethingn inhuman—something not true to the sort of being we are, a being differentn from plants or the other animals—if we recognized no duties toward thosen with whom we have few special attachments, those whose chief connection ton us is simply the common humanity we share.n
n In short, to be human is to recognize a seemingly permanent tension betweenn the particular and the universal in our loves, our loyalties, and ourn commitments. Recognizing the tension does not tell us how best to addressn it, but it should at least make clear to us that—however difficult then problem of immigration may be for us—we cannot make it go away by supposingn that the borders of our community are unrelated to our peculiar andn particular identity as a nation. We may or may not need walls that separaten us from others, but we probably do at least need some fences. To haven entirely open borders is to have no borders at all. Yet the idea of openn borders is an appealing one to some.n
That appeal has been nicely captured by the political theorist Joseph Carens in a classic essay defending open borders. Expressing something of then unease we may feel at the practical reality of borders, Carens opens hisn essay with a simple observation: “Borders have guards and the guards haven guns.” More often than not, those guns are pointed at entirely harmless menn and women, people whose needs are frequently severe and who want littlen more than to share in the freedoms and opportunities that those of us inn prosperous Western democracies take for granted. What business do we haven pointing guns at such people? Carens’s arresting comment makes it clearn that “borders” are not simply lines on a map, or even physical barriers inn a desert. Rather, for those who experience them from the outside, theyn represent the exercise of naked coercion.
n But open borders may appeal to many people for a deeper reason than ourn mere reluctance to point guns at those who wish us no ill. Open bordersn seem to hold out the promise of a world in which people of all races,n colors, and languages could live peaceably as friends and neighbors, an world in which age-old barriers of national and ethnic hostility have beenn overcome. Surely Americans—we who “hold these truths to be self-evident,n that all men are created equal”—must find the vision of such a worldn appealing. And Christians especially may be drawn to it as a foretaste orn image of the kingdom of God. Anyone who has ever worshipped in a large,n diverse congregation, joined together in prayer and song with men and womenn of many different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, has experienced then pull of this vision.n
Despite this pull, however, the vision of a world without borders overlooksn much that is of moral significance. Different national cultures are notn mere obstacles in the way of a broader cosmopolitanism. They are also then very fabric out of which we construct meaningful lives. They are vehiclesn of poetry, art, and song; they supply patterns for our work and leisure,n our loving and our dying. Moreover, the open borders argument, if it provesn anything, proves too much. Without the stability of bounded communities, wen are unable to defend or sustain many other things that most of us considern valuable. We distribute food stamps and Social Security checks to membersn of our own national community, but not to the countless others around then world who might benefit from them. We provide schools to educate our ownn children, but not those of neighboring countries. We build our ownn interstate highways, deliver our own mail, clean our own rivers andn streams. All these collective endeavors presuppose the existence of a “we,”n a community of fellow citizens sharing a common life. Restricting access ton any of these goods, no less than restricting it to the nation’s territory,n rests ultimately on the implicit possibility of coercion on behalf of thatn common life. Most of the time this possibility remains implicit and isn therefore easily ignored; restrictions on immigration only make it visiblen and remind us that it undergirds all of our civic activity.
n To think of ourselves as fellow citizens whose common life is fenced offn and distinct from that of other groups who share their own common life, wen do not have to picture the kinship we share with fellow citizens as a kindn of blood tie, simply unavailable to those who lack the DNA that marks ourn tribe. To some degree, our common life in the United States is formed byn the constitutional structure we have inherited—a set of commitments that wen share, whatever our other differences. And to that degree, anyone preparedn to affirm those commitments and that structure is, at least in principle,n suited to be one of us. Thus, in the measured, almost didactic prose of hisn First Inaugural Address, Lincoln characterized “the Union” in terms of an series of political structures:n
n The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, byn the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by then Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faithn of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that itn should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally,n in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing then Constitution, was “to form a more perfect union.”n
But those structures do not tell the whole story of a nation. Harder ton define and pin down, but at least as important and perhaps moren fundamental, is a shared cultural history that makes us recognize onen another as having a kind of kinship based not on blood but on the definingn stories we share. Of course, part of our shared cultural history is surelyn the story of our political arrangements—how they came to be, their peculiarn and even unusual character. But still, in order to say all that he neededn to say, Lincoln also spoke of “the mystic chords of memory,” appealing moren poetically at the end of that address to ties that penetrate more deeplyn into national life than political arrangements alone can reach.
n The theologian Russell Moore has captured something of those ties, thoughn he was writing about familial rather than political community. When he andn his wife adopted two sons who had been orphaned in Russia, friends andn acquaintances encouraged them to be sure to teach the boys about theirn cultural heritage—meaning by that the story of their Russian roots. Then Moores, however, took a different approach. “As we see it,” he wrote,n “that’s not their heritage anymore, and we hardly want to signal to themn that they are strangers and aliens, even welcome ones, in our home. Wen teach them about their heritage, yes, but their heritage asn Mississippians.” So the boys learned about their grandfather, a Baptistn pastor in the South, their great-grandfather who raised cotton, and then civil rights movement. The point, even if overstated, is clear: A sharedn history over time creates a kind of kinship. To be sure, had there notn already been in the Moores’ marriage something that does not love a wall,n they could not have created such familial bonds. And yet those bondsn establish a boundary—a fence that identifies us and separates us fromn others. Something similar is true of any political community that enduresn over time.n
n That we live in times and places allotted us by the providence of God, thatn such particular loyalties in large part shape and identify us—none of thisn means that there is not also in us something that does not love a wall.n That openness is built into the organic structure of human life, but, moren important still, Christians discern something of that openness in God’sn action within history, something that should discipline our inclination ton grant a kind of ultimacy to our particular political loyalties. “Scripturen tells us,” St. Augustine writes, “that Cain founded a city, whereas Abel,n as a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the saints is up above,n although it produces citizens here below, and in their persons the City isn on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom comes.” We owe loyalty to ourn nation, but we do not belong to it to the whole extent of our being. Thisn should remind us that, even when we are inclined (or tempted) to think ofn our political community as exceptional, our ongoing effort to share an national identity must also have the character of a continuing experiment,n as the Puritans who came to these shores (and had their share in fashioningn those mystic chords of memory) believed. If God has a stake in preservingn our community, as the Puritans believed he had in theirs, that can only ben because our common life exists to serve, wittingly or unwittingly, hisn purposes, not ours.n
n Moreover, although Jews must decide for themselves whether a loyalty thatn is deep but not ultimate also characterizes their understanding of lifen within community, scriptural texts seem to point in that direction. We can,n for example, note a tension right within the oracles of the prophet Amos.n On the one hand, Israel’s Lord says to “the whole family that I brought upn out of the land of Egypt: You only have I known of all the families of then earth” (3:1–2). And yet, mysteriously, Amos also suggests that the same Godn who had brought Israel out of Egypt had likewise brought “the Philistinesn from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir” (9:7). More directly still, inn Deuteronomy (2:5), Moses reminds Israel that the Lord who had promised an land to Abraham and his descendants had also given a land “as a possession”n to the Edomites. And, of course, the servant who, according to the prophetn (Isa. 49:6) will restore the tribes of Jacob and the people of Israel has an yet more expansive task: to make Israel “a light for the nations, that myn salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Somehow, evidently, even then most important of fences serve, in the providence of God, not as barriersn to shared life but as invitations.n
n More generally, if our borders cannot simply be open but must,n nevertheless, be porous enough for outsiders sometimes to join us asn insiders, how can and should we think about the inevitable tension betweenn what is particular and what is universal in our loves and loyalties? Theren are, roughly, three ways we might try to come to terms with it.n
We might, first, try to begin from a cosmopolitan perspective for whichn particular attachments based on shared cultural history, and the fencesn that sustain them, are always in need of special justification. There aren Christian versions of that beginning point. Thus, for example, John Calvinn discerned in the parable of the Good Samaritan the teaching that “the termn ‘neighbor’ includes even the most remote person” and that, therefore, “wen are not expected to limit the precept of love to those in closen relationships.” Augustine found a similar teaching in the creation story.n “God created man,” Augustine writes in the City of God, “as onen individual; but that did not mean that he was to remain alone, bereft ofn human society. God’s intention was that in this way the unity of humann society and the bonds of human sympathy be more emphatically brought homen to man, if men were bound together not merely by likeness in nature butn also by the feeling of kinship.”
n But then an obvious question arises. How, within that feeling of universaln kinship which thinks of “even the most remote person” as a neighbor, do wen make place for the “allotted periods and the boundaries” of differentn peoples that St. Paul acknowledges in his Areopagus speech? Augustinen suggests that we think in terms of what one might call a divine lottery.n Given the limitations of our finite condition, we should think of time,n place, and circumstance as “accidents” connecting us and obligating us inn special ways to some of those many neighbors with whom we share a universaln kinship. We must, he says, think of this as determined by “a sort of lot,n according as each man happens for the time being to be more closelyn connected with you.”n
n Simply as a matter of reasoning, this may work. Beginning from ann obligation to include all others within the scope of our love, butn recognizing the limits that time and place put upon us, we can think of ourn special obligations to some as a specification of the bond we share withn all but cannot for the moment enact with all. Fences are an unfortunaten necessity, a concession to our limitations, but they do not cut deeply inton our identity. The problem, though, is those mystic chords of memory ton which Lincoln appealed. A shared allegiance grounded in the accidents ofn time and place, reasoned though it may be, can hardly account for the kindn of bond citizens of a nation often experience. And surely, it is unlikelyn to move many to be willing to die for the sake of that bond. It seems ton make our shared national identity the conclusion of a process of reasoningn rather than a premise that underlies our thinking.n
Perhaps a different approach can do more justice to the tension betweenn particular and universal obligations. We might think of the bond we sharen universally with all other human beings not as a cosmopolitan startingn point but as a protective limit. That is, the most meaningful ties, then ties that move us deeply, are the narrower and more particular ones ton those with whom we share a cultural history—stories and loyalties that markn us off from other peoples and make us not necessarily better orn exceptional, but distinctive. We have special obligations to fellown citizens because of that complex web of social and historical relationsn into which we were born or chose to enter at some point. Yet of course, wen know well that such particular loyalties can sometimes blind us to then legitimate claims of outsiders, and we can forget or ignore our obligationsn to all those others whose only obvious tie to us is the general bond ofn humanity we share with them. That universal bond, our shared humanity, setsn a limit to what we may do to anyone even for the sake of those to whom wen are most closely attached.
n Without a sense of universal obligation that controls what we will do inn the name of particular commitments to those with whom we share mysticn chords of memory, there could be no limit on what we might do for the saken of national survival. An exaggerated sense of the claims special moraln relations make upon us, as if they fenced us off entirely from connectionn with those outside our community, would simply dissolve the tension betweenn the particular and the universal in our loves. Then we would have bluntedn entirely our sense of something within us that does not love a wall. Wen would be thinking of ourselves almost as rooted in place—more like plantsn than human beings.n
n This second approach has its own difficulties, however. The ties andn obligations that we have to all children of Adam are not really given theirn due if we think of their function only negatively—as a kind of limit thatn protects against injustice. For surely they are more than that. Universaln love has its own dynamism; it calls us out of contented life within ourn allotted time and place, not allowing us to rest content with those to whomn we are specially attached by historical circumstance.n
Is there any third—and better—way to deal with the tension that marks ourn life? We can take our hint from a fact we noted earlier. Only because wen feel loyalty to those bound to us in special ways can we understand whyn members of other national communities might have a similar loyalty to thosen with whom they share a history. And only then can we even begin to considern that our particular loyalties may have more than one purpose. They aren intended, surely, to enrich our lives, but also to play a role in then education of our commitments. Without attempting to derive particularn attachments from a cosmopolitan starting point, but also without making then obligations we have to all little more than a boundary-setting negativen principle, we may come to see our special loves as a training ground inn which we can learn just a little about what it means to care for any humann being.
n This third way—building up from particular loyalties to more universaln ties—corresponds well to the teleological thrust of the overarchingn biblical narrative. Against the background of the loss of the peace ofn creation and the scattering of the nations, God begins with Abraham then long, slow process of gathering the nations once again into a singlen people. The culmination of this extends, of course, beyond history as wen know it, but it is clear that what begins in very particular kinds ofn belonging has a universal dimension. “The princes of the peoples gather /n as the people of the God of Abraham,” the psalmist says (47:9). Discerningn the same divine intention, Jesus says (Matt. 8:11), “Many will come fromn east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in then kingdom of heaven.” Different loyalties are not obliterated, but they turnn out to contain within themselves more expansive possibilities than we couldn have imagined.n
n To what degree those possibilities can be lived here and now is never easyn to say. Still, the fact that they cannot be fully realized in humann history, and that we would be profoundly mistaken to imagine otherwise,n does not mean they should be ignored. Taken seriously, they will shape andn reshape our sensibilities in ways hard to predict, ways that will notn always lead in a single direction. To take this third approach, then, is ton see our communities as always on the way—never having fully establishedn identities, but more than insignificant stopping points where we merelyn catch our breath for the rest of the journey. We must and should maken distinctions among neighbors, but those distinctions will constantly ben reworked and refined; they never have the last word. Good neighbors, wen might say, make good—albeit porous—fences.n
Gilbert Meilaender is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University. Peter C. Meilaender is professor of political science at Houghton College.
Photo by Tomas Castelazo via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
