December 26, 2011
What is Our Highest End?
One of my favorite quotes is from Lord Acton, the famous 19th century British historian: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” The quote comes from a speech given in 1877 entitled “The History of Freedom in Antiquity.” The majority of the speech deals with the concept of political liberty in ancient Greece and Rome. Acton goes into great detail about what the more well-known Roman and Greek philosophers had to say about liberty, what liberty meant to those civilizations, how the concept of political freedom contrasted with Greece and Rome’s governments. Towards the end of the speech, Acton changes directions, and looks at liberty from a more philosophical standpoint:
But Plato and Aristotle were philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for Liberty; and they resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but to be content with a strong administration, prudently adapted to make men prosperous and happy. Now Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together; but they do not necessarily go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.What Acton says and doesn’t say is very important. Acton doesn’t say that liberty is man’s highest end; he says that it is the highest political end. This in itself implies that there is something more important than liberty for people to pursue and obtain. He immediately makes that implication explicit when he says that liberty is required for people to pursue the highest ends of both public and private life. But what are those highest ends?
The scripture that gives the most direct answer is “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Eccl. 12:13; all Scriptures ESV) Fearing God involves being in awe of Him, not so much being terrified of Him; as the O.C. Supertones once put it, “Not fear like a gun, but like the heat of the sun.” So we glorify God for who He is and what He does, as Paul instructs us: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:31)
As to keeping God’s commandments, Jesus instructs us that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37-39) We also read, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) So we see from Scripture that our highest ends are the glorification of God and keeping His commandments, and in so doing, enjoying a relationship with (walking with) God. In doing this, we fulfill our highest end. The Westminster Catechism states it well: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”
Carrying this back to the original quote, our political liberty can be used for many different things. We can choose to equate political liberty with moral liberty, disregarding moral principles and living a libertine lifestyle. We can choose to live a life of material fulfillment and chase after riches. We can choose to live a life of solitude, removing ourselves from society to the greatest extent possible. We can choose to make political liberty our highest end, working our entire lives to make people politically free who are still enslaved to sin. Or, as the Bible instructs us, we can choose to take advantage of our political liberty in order to fully pursue the way of life God has intended for us.
