Roland Burris, Saint Augustine, and Stanley Fish
In his occasional New York Times blog, Stanley Fish makes the brilliant analogy between Roland Burris’ appointment to the Senate and Saint Augustine’s role in the Donatist controversy. Fish’s central question is critical, not only for the case of Roland Burris but for the many acts that constitute our public life: Does “the lawfulness of an official action…depend on the purity of the person who performs it”?
On first thought, it might be very tempting to answer “yes.” But as Fish (and St. Augustine before him) quickly point out, that would undermine nearly every facet of public life and action. Just one example: “Is your marriage invalidated because the clerk or cleric who performed it cheated on his wife or stole from the poor box?”
Which takes us back to St. Augustine. In Fish’s words:
This last question is not new. It was debated in the 4th and 5th centuries in the context of what…
