Milbank, discussing the possibility of educative coercion: “although Christianity . . . certainly requires in the end free consent to the truth, it does not fetishize this freedom merely as a correct mode of approach: truth is what most matters, and moreover a collective commitment to truth, since truth itself is the shareable and the harmonious. Thus in certain circumstances, the young, the deluded, those relatively lacking in vision require to be coerced as gently as possible. Anyone professing to be shocked by this is, I submit, naively unreflective about what in reality he already accepts (for example in the secular schooling of the young) and is thinking in over-individualistic and over-voluntaristic terms that are ontologically impossible.”
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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