Tolerance and Truth

Few words in the vocabulary of Western man today are more revered than “tolerance.” This word suggests the disposition to be patient and understanding toward people of differing opinions or practices. It suggests freedom from severity or bigotry in judging the conduct of others. One of the Bible’s great chapters speaks of it in this way: “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

The word “tolerance” derives from the Latin tolerare, meaning “to endure.” The thing to be endured is always some person, idea, attitude, or action that one believes to be wrong. It follows from the definition, then, that tolerance involves one’s attitude toward error, or at least toward what one believes to be error.

This is a tall order, of course, and it indicates that a tension must always exist between tolerance and truth. Tolerance demands that one treat charitably persons or groups espousing convictions contrary to one’s own understanding of truth, graciously granting to them the right to contradict, to believe differently, to speak their minds. On the one hand is commitment to truth, on the other an obligation to be generous-hearted toward those opposed to that truth. Unable to resolve this dilemma, some men have traditionally sought to escape it by embracing one extreme and forsaking the other.

Some have chosen to pursue truth zealously and despise toleration as softness. Ardor for truth has forever been the assassin of tolerance, a cloak for the most evil and revolting human passions. Wars have been waged for the glory of God; bloody Crusades and merciless Inquisitions have been staged; atrocities unspeakable have been committed in the name of truth. Like Saul of Tarsus, convicted zealots today continue to make havoc of the hopes of Christ’s Church in the name of Christ. Although the weapons of intolerance have been sophisticated, the spirit of the thumbscrew and the rack is still with us.

But there are two sides to every story. If some have tried to resolve the conflict by professing their devotion to absolute truth and dismissing tolerance as compromise, others have honored tolerance at the high cost of a low concern for truth. Along the path of this second solution, that of an easy tolerance, one may detect five fallacies.

First, many have adopted relativism as a cheap way out of the predicament. Jacques Maritain, the well-known Thomistic philosopher, has observed that “it is not unusual to meet people who think that not to believe in any truth is a primary condition required of democratic citizens in order to be tolerant of one another.” If zeal for truth produces intolerance, the line of logic runs, then the democratic society must diminish passion for absolute truth.

But a society that has a low estimate of truth need not talk of tolerance. For tolerance is a quality reserved for men who have something at stake. Edmund Burke wrote these timely words in 1790:

We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from contempt, is not true charity.

A second fallacy of pseudo-tolerance is that it eventually becomes the license for every evil. Forbearance that thrives on a lack of interest in what is right and what is wrong comes ultimately to embrace the wrong itself. Pope’s Essay on Man has the unforgettable quatrain:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen:

Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Why do we so casually put up with things that repelled previous generations? Have we matured? Have we grown sophisticated? Or have we lost heart in the search for truth, lost touch with objective standards, and brought chaos upon ourselves?

If the mistakes of inflexible absolutists are obvious, the mistakes of indulgent relativists are strikingly similar. The absolutist fails to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. He allows his feelings of righteous indignation to transpose from the object to the subject and concludes that since sin has no right to exist, neither does the man in sin. The relativist does the reverse. He allows his feelings of permissiveness to shift from the human subject, who must be tolerated even if in error, to the error itself. Charity toward the sinner ends up condoning the sin.

The third fallacy grows out of the ease with which the virtue of tolerance can be tainted with the vice of superciliousness.

In 1689 William and Mary signed the famous Act of Toleration. It now stands as a breakthrough in the long fight for individual religious freedom, but its immediate effect was hardly so laudable. The Church of England condescendingly granted the right of private conscience, not in a spirit of genuine tolerance, but with an air of superiority. London took pride in contrasting its newfound generosity with the unbending bigotry of Rome. Attention was not focused upon the dignity of personal freedom; it was focused upon the spiritual maturity that enabled the Anglican church to endure other points of view. Freedom had been written into books of law, but tolerance had not yet been realized in the hearts of men. While it should have been confessing its centuries of bigotry, the church chose to call attention to the special favors it was piously granting to disgruntled minorities.

John Stuart Mill observed:

Those who first broke the yoke of what was called the Universal Church were in general as little willing to permit differences of religious opinion as that church itself.… Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scales.

The fourth fallacy confronting an erring tolerance is the very dogmatism it seeks to correct. The acid test of real tolerance is one’s attitude toward the intolerant, for an open-minded man may be incapable of viewing open-mindedly a position dogmatically taken by another. Unless he is alert, he will react so sharply that he himself will manifest toward the intolerant the pride, hypercriticism, authoritarianism, and cynicism he so much dislikes in them. And he will end up by dogmatizing against dogmatism.

The final fallacy is that under certain circumstances cries for tolerance can arise from a bitter spirit of reaction. Everyone talking about tolerance is not actually practicing it. It is conceivable that some talk much of love and forbearance toward others only as a stratagem for attacking their own communion at the point of its greatest vulnerability. The question is not whether the sermons on love and forbearance are needed. The question concerns the motives that underlie the sermons.

In an article entitled “The Tolerant Personality” in the American Sociological Review, researchers James G. Martin and Frank R. Westie present the results of their studies on the dominant causes of racial prejudice. After listing several with psychological overtones, they name environment as a chief cause.

We find in our midst many Happy Bigots whose prejudices are born, not so much of personal psychological difficulty, but rather of the fact that their community expects and approves their prejudices. In such situations, the tolerant person may well be the deviant and a legitimate subject for analysis in terms of abnormal psychology. He may be tolerant because tolerance is deviation and deviation may be a functionally very important retaliatory mechanism in his personality organization.

This does not imply that all opponents of racial or religious bigotry are motivated by psychological problems, but it does suggest that some crusaders may be. Some who make a hobby of crying out excessively against their bigoted brethren may have a psychological need to cry out about something.

To be at once deeply committed yet genuinely tolerant is no small task, for it is, in fact, to have the mind of Christ. How can it be done? The secret lies in remembering that the end toward which tolerance points is always the right treatment of persons. Since my tolerance is always tested by my treatment of persons, tolerance and truth need not be mutually exclusive. I may remain unqualifiedly intolerant of erroneous ideas and actions while being truly tolerant toward persons I believe to be in error. I may pursue truth with unflagging zeal while never abusing persons with my ardor.

The key of genuine respect for persons also insures against the opposite temptation toward an easy tolerance. It is sentimental piety to talk of respecting a person without earnestly seeking to understand his point of view. To talk of tolerance while practicing moral relativism, smug superiority, dogmatism, and bitter reaction fools no one. Tolerance lies in grasping what the other person understands as truth and in judging him by his own standards, however misguided they may be.

Is the demand too high? No, not for one Man. Not for him whose commitment could not be shaken by a cross but who, all the while, could pray for the ones who nailed him there, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

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