Lord Nigel Biggar's Call to Intellectual Action

Or, why my hands are no cleaner than J. D. Vance's

Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas

Nigel Biggar

, former guest on The Flâneur and the Philosopher among other honorifics, shared today his lecture, “The Spirit of Truth: The Call to Intellectual Public Service.”

Dr. Biggar was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2022. This January, he became a baron and a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas (as he is now known) is a modern example of the intellectual man of action and a Christian realist. I was very inspired by his words, in which he commended and justified this very calling to his audience:

I am aware that I opted for an academic career partly because I have a certain personality: quite cautious, wanting time to observe and reflect and work things out, unwilling to decide until fully ready, careful to cover and protect every angle, averse to risk. (Well, at least I used to be!) Such a personality develops a characteristic set of virtues, of course, but it is not well suited to making momentous and risky decisions under intense pressure. I have a great deal of respect, therefore, for other people, no less intelligent than I, who have chosen—or been fated to choose—careers and roles that are heavy with front-line responsibility and light with the leisure to reflect. I sympathise very greatly with those whom Reinhold Niebuhr nicely called “the burden-bearers of the world”.

Those of us whose personality inclines us toward study may relish the virtues of slow, careful thought. But we must not look down on those who shoulder responsibilities that require quicker decision-making on matters of great weight, risking error.

Yet, in sympathizing with those in power, many worry that intellectuals will become but tools of power:

[When] Cian O’Driscoll…wrote that just war theorists like me are inevitably part of “the war-machine” that we are trying to constrain, and that we therefore stand in danger of coming so close to the flame of power that we get burnt by it, I protested. I understand what he means. Institutions do acquire a momentum of their own—sometimes perverse—that is hard to stop, and well-meaning individuals need to take care lest they get carried away. Nevertheless, it struck me that where Cian saw a machine, I saw faces—the faces of friends in public office, who are, I think, more morally reflective and sensitive than the average citizen, humbler, less sanctimonious, and who have shouldered responsibilities and taken risks that academics like me have chosen careers to evade. It is widely recognised among academics that remoteness from the exercise of executive power yields the important advantage of critical distance. What is less recognised is that it also occasions a grave temptation—a temptation to relish too much the self-flattering role of righteous prophet, to indulge in wishful thinking, to daydream among the ‘what-ifs’, and never to grasp the necessary nettle.

The intellectual’s critical distance can also be an occasion of pride and self-righteousness.

A few paragraphs later, Dr. Biggar references Augustine as a theologian keenly aware of the dangers of making ethical and political judgments, especially when lives, and one’s own ethical purity, hang in the balance.

But:

Augustine did not flee. He did not run away. He stayed. He continued to shoulder the responsibilities of bishop, which, as the Roman Empire crumbled around him, were increasingly those of government. He kept up pastoral correspondence with military tribunes like Boniface and Marcellinus, whose Christian consciences were troubled by what they had to do. With them he lamented the tragic dilemmas of political life, but he did not flinch from facing them. He staggered onward, rejoicing.

And note: none of this prevented Augustine from developing the prophetic critique of the Roman Empire that became The City of God. He stands, therefore, as a shining example of one who took the risk of coming close to the flame of power and yet was not consumed by it—of one who risked played pastor and yet could still play prophet.

In our youth, it is easy to criticize those in authority as pawns in a system. Especially as an intellectual or academic, one can wield one’s faculties of judgment upon others, while evading judgment ourselves. Having not yet assumed worldly responsibility, no one could pin any blame upon us for compromise with the system.

But the task of mature manhood is to unite thought and action. Having reflected and come to judgments that are truly one’s own, we must embody those thoughts in action. In doing so, our thoughts must themselves compromise with the messy reality in which we live.

The man of action is, therefore, a sinner. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Jesus took upon Himself the guilt of all men, and for that reason every man who acts responsibly becomes guilty. If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility, … He sets his own personal innocence above his responsibility for men, and he is blind for the more irredeemable guilt which he incurs precisely in this.” (Ethics, 241)

Bonhoeffer, good Lutheran that he was, comforted us that the doctrine of justification by faith frees us to sin boldly, as we must.

Please give “The Spirit of Truth,” from Lord Nigel Biggar, a listen (or a read).

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Lord Biggar now writes a Substack, The Biggar Picture. Give him a subscribe!

Watch my and King Laugh’s interview with Dr. Biggar, “God Is in the World, Not Just the Bible,” here:

Or read my previous commendation of Dr. Biggar’s work, “Check Your Sources: Theology from the Bible and Experience,” and my philosophy of Christian Realism.