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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2025
The tension between John Neville Figgis’s pluralist political theory and his defence of the truth claims of Christianity in the public square makes it difficult to assess the social implications of his personalism. This article considers Figgis’s theories of classical pluralism and corporate personhood and how they relate to his theological anthropology. God makes humans for membership in group persons, paradigmatically the Church, and also other associations that should be free to pursue their corporate ends and govern themselves. The just state coordinates and ensures peace between group and individual persons and allows them to freely play as they pursue the good. This perspective on the modern state and free associations offers an alternative to the modern tendency towards state centralization and individual atomism. But Figgis’s conceptions of freedom, love, corporate personhood and the state introduce a challenge for the contemporary reader. He implies that the state should be a neutral arbiter among individuals and groups. Joseph Ratzinger argues for the good of Christians living and enacting laws and policies that reflect their Christian consciences. Figgis’s Christian personalism informs and challenges Ratzinger’s social theory.
1 See Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, translated by Philip Mairet, University of Notre Dame Press, 1970, and Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, translated by John J. Fitzgerald, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Bernard A. Gendreau contrasts Maritain’s metaphysical personalism with Mounier’s phenomenological philosophy in ‘The role of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier in the creation of French personalism’. In The Personalist Forum, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 97–108, University of Illinois Press, 1992, Gendreau provides a good introduction to shared themes and disparate methodologies, colouring the development of Catholic personalism.
2 Paul Avis, Neville Figgis, CR: His Life, Thought and Significance, Brill, 2021.
3 Rowan Williams, ‘Preface’, Neville Figgis, viii.
4 Williams, ‘Preface’, Neville Figgis, viii.
5 Avis, Neville Figgis, 133.
6 Avis, Neville Figgis, ‘The Ecclesiology of John Neville Figgis, CR’, 133.
7 Andrew Grosso, Neville Figgis, ‘Figgis and Nietzsche on Freedom, Authority, and Pluralism’, 153.
8 Williams, ‘Preface’, Neville Figgis, CR: His Life, Thought and Significance, ed. By Paul Avis, Leiden: Brill, 2021, xi.
9 John Neville Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1913, 120.
10 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 120.
11 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 120.
12 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 120.
13 Andrew Grosso, ‘Figgis and Nietzsche on Freedom, Authority, and Pluralism’, Neville Figgis, CR: His Life, Thought and Significance, ed. By Paul Avis, Leiden: Brill, 202, 152.
14 Grosso, Neville Figgis, 152.
15 John Neville Figgis, Civilization at the Crossroads, London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1912, 170.
16 John Neville Figgis, Antichrist and Other Sermons, London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1913, 129.
17 John Neville Figgis, The Fellowship of the Mystery, London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1914, 83.
18 Figgis, Fellowship, 83.
19 Ibid.
20 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 8.
21 Ibid, 47–48.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid, 89–90.
24 Ibid, 224.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Patrick Nash, British Islam and English Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 88.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 41.
32 Ibid, 42.
33 Ibid, 250.
34 Nash, English Law, 89
35 Ibid, 89.
36 Nash persuasively argues that classical pluralism accurately describes the political and legal theory articulated by Otto von Gierke and followers such as Figgis, while Figgis himself does not employ this term. See ‘An Introduction to Otto von Gierke’, English Law, 81. In the argument that follows, I will use the terms classical pluralism and pluralism interchangeably.
37 Figgis, Fellowship of the Mystery, 51–52.
38 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 120.
39 Ibid.
40 Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, 120.
41 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Pluralism as a Problem for Church and Theology’, The Nature and Mission of Theology, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016, 73.
42 Ratzinger, Nature and Mission, 73.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid, 74.
45 Ibid, 81.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid, 82.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid, 82.
50 Eric L Mascall, The Importance of Being Human: Some Aspects of the Christian Doctrine of Man, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959, 41.
51 Mascall, Being Human, 41.
52 Mascall, Being Human, 41.
53 Figgis, Fellowship of the Mystery, 172.
54 Figgis, Fellowship of the Mystery, 172.
55 See Figgis’s letter to a friend at St Catherine’s in Maurice Graham Tucker, John Neville Figgis: A Study, London: SPCK, 1950, 14.
56 See Figgis’s letter to his parishioners in Tucker, Figgis, 14.