“If you plan to read only one book this year, this is probably the one you should choose.” With this recommendation the New York Times pointed up the importance of Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner, behavioristic scientist at Harvard. If this book is that significant, surely Christians should give attention to it.
Let me begin with two questions. Why did Dr. Skinner write this book? Answer: Skinner believes that only through radical application of behavioristic science, such as what he advocates, can mankind survive. What is his thesis? Answer: If society will apply to human behavior the scientific ingenuity that has proved successful in physics and biology, it can create the sort of utopia he has vividly pictured in his fictional Walden Two.
Skinner begins with the raw assumption that to approximate such a utopia will require planned control of the behavior of society and its components. This control must be based upon principles of behavioristic conditioning such as have already been applied in Pavlov’s experiments with dogs and in Skinner’s own experiments with pigeons. (He has conditioned them to play ping pong!) The control must be universal; no person or event may be exempt.
For several centuries, thoughtful men have believed that the best possible structure of human living rests solidly upon those principles that give the greatest support to man’s freedom and dignity. But Skinner believes those days are gone forever. “We have gone beyond freedom and dignity,” he says. He admits that in times past the concept of freedom played a vital role in men’s successful efforts to overthrow tyrants who had denied to them certain basic rights. But this concept of freedom and dignity that formerly prevailed now threatens twentieth-century man’s future, he says. He is convinced that no individual or nation can long survive without “controls” of some dynamic and conditioning character. The only outcome of unbridled permissiveness is chaos, anarchy, and destruction.
There is much truth in these observations. What makes Skinner’s scheme so revolutionary is his affirmation that these “controls” are found not within man himself but wholly in his environment; he flatly declares that all behavior is determined not from within but from without. Still more explosive is his judgment that there is nothing wrong, emotionally or morally, with people who behave badly. He writes: “They [young people] behave as they do, not because they are neurotic or because they feel alienated, but because of defective social environments in homes, schools, factories, and elsewhere” (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Knopf, 1971, p. 15; further quotations in this essay are from the same book unless otherwise identified).
“Mistakenly,” says Skinner, “we believe that man initiates, originates and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous” (p. 14). But Skinner says autonomy is a myth. Belief in an “inner man” is a superstition that originated, like belief in God, in man’s inability to understand his world.
What then is man? From the behavioristic standpoint, man is “a person who is a member of a species shaped by evolutionary contingencies of survival, displaying behavioral processes which bring him under the control of the environment in which he lives” (p. 211). This view of man provokes one of Skinner’s most ambiguous affirmations: “The direction of the controlling relation is reversed: a person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him” (p. 211). So! It is not a good man or a bad man that makes a good or bad environment—the reverse is true! But consider these words found near the end of his book: “While man is indeed controlled by his environment, we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making” (p. 215). Even more puzzling is this: “We have not yet seen what man can make of man.” It seems to me that if the professor were consistent, that sentence would read: We have yet to see what the environment can make of man.
At this point the inevitable question is: Who is to design and direct the behavior-controlled society? Will it be the environment? Let another social scientist, Aldous Huxley, reply:
When a piece of work gets done in the world, who actually does it?… Certainly not the social environment; for a group is not an organism, but only a blind unconscious organization. Everything that is done within the society is done by individuals.… No amount of scientific explanation, however comprehensive, can explain away the self-evident facts [Brave New World Revisited, p. 100].
And of course, Skinner has his chosen leaders as his controllers. Plato had his “philosopher-kings.” H. G. Wells had his “samarai.” Skinner has his behavioristic scientists and technicians, always portrayed as a “noble breed.” But are these persons made of other stuff than ordinary men? Are they something immune from pride and corruption?
Skinner admits that the control can be in the hands of either saints or villains. (The heading of the Times’s review of the book is startling: “Skinner’s Utopia: Panacea or Path to Hell”!) Even in Skinner’s eyes, these controllers are not so saintly as to preclude a suspicion that even they will have to be controlled. How does he handle this one? Quite readily: “The controller must be a member of the group he controls” (p. 172). So the controller controls the controlled, but, to make sure he does not over-control the controlled, the controlled control the controller! Feel better now?
The professor is not blind to the fact that in his utopia there would be conflicts of interest. But whose interest would finally prevail? Would there be no opposition party? What would happen if the dissidents shouted down “the conditioning reinforcements” in riotous protest?
And then there is the most crucial of all questions: Would such a society guarantee to man his legitimate creaturely freedom? Skinner has another ready answer: “The individual will find his own destiny fulfilled by cooperating freely with the purposes of society.” Do we not hear echoes of Nazism and Communism here? The existential psychoanalyst Rollo May thinks Skinner is a totalitarian without fully knowing it. He comments: “I have never found any place in Skinner’s system for the rebel, yet the capacity to rebel is of the essence in a constructive society” (Time, Sept. 21, 1971, p. 52).
But what about the future? Who of us is not haunted, as is the professor, by the horrendous prospect of the suicide of the race? To imply that such a crime could be charged to some impersonal and neutral entity called “the environment” would be to abolish any concept of moral reality within the structure of the universe. And that is why we Christians reject all utopian schemes, whether scientific or romantic, that are founded upon a false view of man.
Many scientists, psychiatrists, and theologians vigorously oppose Skinner’s view of man. The well-known psychologist Michael Beldock wrote perceptively:
Man’s problems are all rooted in that “inner man” on whose psychological nature the fate of all of us hangs like a fine platinum thread. It has not changed very much, if at all. Man has changed [outwardly], having added to his natural biological capacities, special devices for increased speed and strength, and for the relative control of nature, and for the conquering of disease. But the “inner man” still struggles with the same issues: greed, jealousy, anger, and how to live with one another and like it. It is hardly wise to assume that because man has been partly successful in remaking his physical environment, the same set of skills will be sufficient to control his inner psychological makeup [Psychiatry and Social Science, Dec., 1971, p. 18].
The writings of Bertrand Russell, too, undermine Skinner’s whole structure. In speaking of the aspirations of the scientific community to bring about a “better world” this distinguished philosopher and scientist asks a stubborn question: “What stands in our way?” He answers: “It is not physical or technical obstacles, but only the evil passions in human minds” (The Impact of Science on Society). Now we have it. Our problem is not primarily an evil environment; it is evil men. John wrote of Jesus: “He knew what was in man” (John 2:25). Jesus knew what the essential man is. He knew that the core of human personality is in the heart center; he knew that heart center is spirit; and he knew that out of that spirit are the issues of life. He never looked upon man as only a body, or as a body with a spirit. He always looked upon him as a spirit with a body. Nor did he believe that the body is inherently evil. He knew that when man behaves badly, it is not because any part of his physical being is bad in and of itself, but because, as Jesus said, there is within man an unclean spirit, out of which emerge “evil thoughts, fornications, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, evil, slander, pride, foolishness.” And then Jesus pronounced one of his “universals” that all history confirms: “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:21–23). Christ did not spend his time and energy dealing principally with externals in his efforts to help broken humanity. It is true, blessedly true, that he healed and fed people, but the context clearly indicates that he was interested more in their hearts than in their bodies. He ministered to them both spiritually and physically, but there was no question in his mind as to which was of primary importance. Blessed is the Church when it follows in his steps.
I have no quarrel with Professor Skinner about the need for a changed environment. Nor do I deny that both men and the environment need to be under some kind of control. Never in history has this not been true. My basic difference lies in the fact that Skinner believes man is best controlled from without, by manipulation, whereas Christians believe that man is best controlled from within, by motivation.
The Christian Gospel most surely calls for obedience on man’s part, which indubitably implies that the Christian is under some form of control; but by no means does this control rob him of that creaturely freedom and dignity which are legitimately his as gifts from the divine Creator. He accepts this control of his own free will. This voluntary assumption of an inner control over his life, thoughts, and actions is a result of a personal, uninhibited choice to open his sovereign consciousness—his “holy of holies”—and invite in Another Person. And who is this Person? None other than the sovereign God in the person of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the only One who has the right to exercise ultimate control over his creatures.
Paul of Tarsus had made this choice. What was his motive for doing so? “He loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Of what love does Paul speak? It was not man’s love for himself (the highest level recognized by philosophers of the “Age of Reason”), nor was it his love for his fellow man (so persistently advocated by secularists and religious humanists of our times), nor was it man’s love for God as admonished in the First Commandment. Rather, it was that love of which John writes: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). This was the dominant and all-consuming passion that motivated Paul, the greatest of all Christians. It was an experimental conviction with him, for when he tries to explain to the Corinthians why he so loved them, and why he would “most gladly spend and be spent” in their behalf, his simple answer, in Second Corinthians 5:14, was, “The love of Christ controls me.” Now we have it—the ultimate control! The ultimate control based upon the ultimate motive! And that motive is God’s love for man in and through Christ, the Crucified and Risen One.
Let me give two illustrations of how this “divine control” functions on two levels, the individual and the societal. I quote from an article on the “Jesus movement” published in U. S. News and World Report, March 20, 1972:
Today, at a time when B. F. Skinner and other behavioral psychologists proclaim the coming of the “manipulated man”—responsive by conditioned reflex to the requirements of external society and its rulers—the “Jesus people” are reasserting the validity and force of inner experience in shaping human lives. In recent years, America’s young have tried to find themselves through drugs, political violence and easy morality. Now they are turning to Christianity in its oldest form—still looking for answers to the ultimate questions: Who am I? What is the order of things? Where do I belong?
In a survey of Jesus people made in southern California and published in Society, one finds these items: 72 per cent of those listing their fathers’ occupations indicated a-white-collar background, mostly upper and middle class; 62 per cent of those over eighteen, and 44 per cent of those under that age, reported drug usage prior to conversion—nearly always more than incidental; 62 per cent said they had engaged in pre-marital sex before conversion; fewer than 5 per cent continued to do so afterwards. One does not have to approve all phases of this movement to recognize that many of these young people have undergone a genuine change from within that expresses itself outwardly in a changed environment.
My second illustration points up the fact that what takes place on the individual level can also take place on a much broader scale in society. The Cambridge Modern History sums up the eighteenth century in England as a time of “expiring hopes.” England seemed on the brink of its own “Bath of Blood,” like that into which France was plunged; but then came the Evangelical Awakening under the leadership particularly of John Wesley. The tide turned.
J. Wesley Bready speaks of this awakening as “the watershed of Anglo-Saxon history,” for this movement
became the spiritual Magna Charta of the common people of England.… This peerless revival caused the then prodigal Anglo-Saxon people to find its soul; and having found its soul, it created an epic era of freedom and social reform.… The glorious heritage of liberty and social reform bequeathed to the modern Anglo-Saxon and American peoples has been fed at many springs; but the mighty river which carried those blessings far and wide is none other than the Evangelical Revival of “vital practical Christianity”—a revival which mediated the Gospel’s inspiration and ethic not only to the individual but to the home, the factory, the market place and the seats of learning and government [Eighteenth Century England: This Freedom—Whence?, preface, XVI].
Dr. Bready concludes his remarkable study of Wesley and Whitefield and their leadership in this awakening, both in England and in America, with a challenging insight to which all social reformers, both Christian and secular, should give serious heed:
The early leaders were pre-eminently ambassadors of Christ who had experienced in their own lives the transforming power of the Gospel, and though not indifferent to social and political affairs, they felt the “call” to preach a Gospel which transforms men rather than to agitate for social reconstruction. Indeed had Wesley and Whitefield spent their careers as social reformers they would have lived disillusioned, and died heartbroken men. From their efforts, however, emerged the most profound political and social achievements, thus illustrating history’s central truth: that the changing of the hearts of men is ever the surest road toward lifting the level of human society.
Howard W. Ferrin is chancellor emeritus of Barrington College in Barrington, Rhode Island, which he served as president from 1925 to 1965. He has written several books, including “The Riddle of the Middle East.”
