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In Memoriam
Bill Niskanen, Trinitarian
The Cato Institute’s long-time chairman was a man and economist in full.
Taken as a whole, Reflections of a Political Economist is a fine collection of essays. But if you want to get an idea of the esteem William “Bill” Niskanen was held in at the Cato Institute, go ahead and skip to the end, chapter 41, “A Personal Reflection on the Trinity.” There is nothing political in this chapter. It is a sermon that Niskanen, who died last week of a stroke at 78, delivered at his Christ Church in Washington D.C. on Trinity Sunday, 2006.
Niskanen’s book was published by Cato, which has a reputation as a very secular institution. I worked there and can say from experience that the reputation is both deserved and overstated. Cato is nervous about religion, true. However, it is OK with the use of some religious texts to help support its vision of libertarianism in politics.
Cato vice president David Boaz, following in the footsteps of Thomas Paine, opened The Libertarian Reader with a passage from the first book of Samuel, chapter 8 — the bit where the prophet warns the people of Israel about the catastrophically high price they will pay if they insist on a having a king. (“He will take your sons, for his chariots. And he will take your daughters, to be cooks. And he will take your fields…”) Boaz elsewhere included the same passage as part of “the prehistory of libertarianism.”
So there was some precedent for Catoistas pointing out that religion-inspired liberty and the more secular varieties can play nice. But to publish a sermon on a specific aspect of theology, and one unique to Christianity and not even accessible to natural theology? The only person in the building who could pull that one off was Bill Niskanen.
He was chairman of Cato from 1985 to 2008 and chairman emeritus thereafter. Yet it wasn’t just his title that compelled publication. The New York Times obit that ran over the weekend called Niskanen a “blunt libertarian economist,” and that’s one way of putting it. He was a University of Chicago-trained economist who was run out of jobs at Ford Motor Company and then the Reagan administration for speaking his mind.
Niskanen opposed Ford’s push for protection against Japanese auto imports and he opposed aspects of what became President Reagan’s 1986 tax reforms. He also drew sharp attacks from Walter Mondale for arguing the blindingly obvious: one big reason for the sex disparity in pay is that women leave the workforce to raise children. The Reagan White House insisted that Niskanen was speaking only for himself. In his memoirs, Niskanen called White House chief of staff Donald Regan “a tower of jelly.”
Now, pretend for a minute that you are head of publications at the Cato Institute. Bill Niskanen comes to you with a collection of essays on just wars, tax burdens, global warming treaties, defense dollars, corporate scandals, and the like, and this very earnest man has included as a coda his sermon on the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. You want to tell him to take it out?
I’m glad that didn’t happen because it’s an interesting little sermon on the Trinity and it reveals a side of Niskanen most of us never got to know. He delivered it at his longtime church. Christ Church is an Episcopal church, but we learn that’s not where he started. “As a former Baptist,” he says, getting into the meat of the message, “I am first inclined to look to the authority of the Scriptures.”
And there the problems begin. The word Trinity appears nowhere in the Bible and is most evident in a verse in the first letter of John that most scholars believe to be a much later addition to the text. Rather, the Trinity was a way of resolving several problems about Jesus and about a figure that Jesus spoke often of, the Holy Spirit.
“The Roman church,” Niskanen preaches, “claimed that they had resolved these differences by going beyond any of these positions asserting that Jesus was both divine and human, as he always was and always will be. This then left the awkward problem of the nature of the Spirit, to which there are numerous references in the Scriptures. So the Roman church also escalated the spirit to a co-equal and co-eternal status with the Father and the Son. And, voila, the doctrine of the trinity was born — later to be affirmed by two major fourth-century church councils.”
That is the description of Bill Niskanen, political economist, and it sounds too cynical to Niskanen, lay theologian. You can already hear him dialing it back when he invokes the church councils, and he next raises the “role of reason, the third source of Christian authority, in understanding the doctrine of the trinity.” He says that “for the most part” the Trinity lies “beyond reason” and confesses this leaves him “very uneasy.”
Niskanen explains himself: “I am not averse to living with mystery; all sorts of conditions that I value are a mystery to me. But it does lead me to question whether there is some perspective on the trinity that is both better rooted in the Scriptures and more coherent.” And he proceeds to offer just such a perspective.
I’ll let readers peruse his solution on their own and close instead with Niskanen’s whimsical words on the Holy Spirit. “On occasion,” he confesses, the Spirit’s “still small voice speaks to me so clearly that I am surprised that others in my presence do not also hear it. Like right now when it tells me that ‘Time’s up. Episcopalians prefer short sermons.’”
About the Author
Jeremy Lott is editor of RealClearPolicy.com, RealClearBooks.com and RealClearReligion.org and associate editor of RealClearScience.com.
Ryan| 10.31.11 @ 8:35AM
"So the Roman church also escalated the spirit to a co-equal and co-eternal status with the Father and the Son."
Argh. Just a bad way to put it, I think. The Spirit already held that position, it wasn't given to Him by the Church.
It just took a few hundred years to begin to figure out the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, and it's still relatively undefinable - which is okay. It was mostly due to heretical positions about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that brought about the debate anyway, and then they sat down and looked to see what the scriptures stated.
(Sidenote - one idea that many of us Protestants don't give credence to - the various councils which came up with many of the creeds really did search scriptures FIRST to see what was Biblical).
PJ| 10.31.11 @ 10:52AM
You're absolutely correct.
1 of the reasons why the Orthodox Churches, such as the Russian, & the Roman Church are not united (besides the papal primacy) is the slight difference in interpretation on how the Spirit relates to the Father & Son.
David T| 10.31.11 @ 11:34AM
Of course, from the Orthodox perpective, the difference in interpretation is not slight. And it didn't help matters that the Western Church inserted the filioque into the Nicene Creed without consulting the Eastern Church.
Ryan| 10.31.11 @ 1:14PM
I just read through the wikipedia article on the filioque.
To my Protestant mind, "talk about splitting hairs..."
PJ| 10.31.11 @ 4:38PM
From the Catholic prospective it is splitting of hairs. Pope John Paul II, in the 1990s supposedly made it a moot point from the Catholic side.
David T| 10.31.11 @ 11:30AM
Ryan--I agree the Church did not elevate the Holy Spirit to His exalted position in the Godhead. The practice of the Church from the earliest times was Trinitarian. Before St. Paul wrote his first epistle, the Church was baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. By the time the books of the NT were finally written (end of 1st century) and canonized by the Church (end of 4th century), belief in the Triune God was the firm, orthodox position. It was the heretical attacks on the Person of Christ (mostly Arianism) in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries that forced the Church into refining the Trintarian doctrine.
IzeHavitt| 11.2.11 @ 12:13AM
The basic problem here is a lack of an accurate understanding of the Scriptures; of such things as the biblical field of Figures of Speech; and of church history. For example, many will cite Matthew 28:19 as the scriptural basis for the trinity. But a case can be made that that particular passage was a forgery. Why do I say this? Because in the Book of Acts, ch.2, v.38, there is the apostle Peter and his fellows urging people to be baptized people "in the Name of Jesus Christ". Now the Matthew account seems to be a very specific instruction given by Jesus Himself some fifty or so days earlier. Either the Apostles forgot it or, instead, were instructed to baptize "in the Name of Jesus Christ". The latter seems much more likely. Further, not only is there no word "trinity" in the Bible, there also is no phrase "God, the Son". But there are very many references to Jesus as "the Son of God". In fact, to emphasize the importance of that truth, John 20:31 tells us that "these were written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and, that believing, ye might have life through His Name." As to the so-called 3rd person of the trinity, one can solve this question by asking two more: 1. Is God holy? Obviously yes. 2. Is God spirit? According to John 4:24, yes again. So a case can be made that the phrase the Holy Spirit" is a figure of speech which describes another Name for God, emphasizing both His holiness and that He is a spirit. As an example of names for God, in the Old Testament there are ten redemptive names for God, as Jehovah; i.e., "Lord". Jesus fulfilled seven of them; the other three are reserved for God Himself. Finally, what is not known or understood by many is that, after the 1st Century Church, the revelation of the Old Testament - with it's multiple references to there only being one true God- was shunted aside, and the revelation of the New Testament was allowed to be mingled with Greco-Roman mythology. This error, orchestrated by Satan himself, has been one of those things that has disallowed the Church to yet achieve it's potential. The Church has yet to recover from this.
Ryan| 11.2.11 @ 8:17AM
Several problems here that non/anti-Trinitarians don't deal with:
1. Jesus' Baptism, where all three are present and separate at the same time.
2. Jesus' "I AM" claim before the Sanhedrin during his trial.
3. Thomas stating "My Lord and My God."
4. Jesus praying. Is He talking to Himself or to God?
One God. Three persons. It's an idea where with man it is contradictory, but with God it can work because of Who He is and what He can do.
It's one of the few things I agree with Catholics on - that it is really an inexplicable mystery.
Seek| 10.31.11 @ 11:47AM
Doctrinal disputes aside, I offer condolences to Bill Niskanen's family, friends and Cato Institute colleagues. He was a class act. I knew him only casually on professional basis. But he was sharp as a tack and a true friend of liberty. R.I.P.
W| 10.31.11 @ 4:15PM
I read and have a copy of Niskanen's 1988 book, "Reaganomics, An insider's account of the policies and the people." Excellent book. RIP.
irish19| 10.31.11 @ 8:19PM
Great discussion! Sorry I can't add anything.
POST American| 10.31.11 @ 11:33PM
---Great piece.
NOW, back to 33rd degree Freemason,
Arminian Heretic and/or Christian imposter,
PAT ROBERTSON's inroduction of
Masonic EUGENICS doctrine (--greenlight
to dumping one's spouse with Alzheimers)
OVER hallowed scriptural truth
----by directly spitting in the face of
the Christ uttered doctrine --
---ONE MAN
--------ONE WOMAN
--------------ONE LIFE
---REALLY kiddies ---CLEAN OUT YOUR CHURCH
---or form your own.