Revisiting Desire of the Nations     0

Recently, I had the happy occasion* to revisit Oliver O’Donovan’s The Desire of the Nations. It was while reading this book as an undergrad that I first got the theopolitical itch. Re-reading Desire was a real pleasure. It also prompted some questions that I’d never had before.

Before getting to those questions, however, just a quick summary of the contours of the project. First, in Desire O’Donovan aims to resuscitate and reformulate concepts which many late-modern liberals have left for dead. Among these unpopular ideas: authority, command, obedience, and (allegedly) Christendom. As O’Donovan tells the story, it’s not simply that modern liberalism has a bunch of theopolitical skeletons in the closet (as Carl Schmitt once suggested), but rather that late modernity is more like the protagonist in the movie The Sixth Sense – it is an unwitting ghost who has failed to realize its own very limited purpose and time left on the earth. Modernity has not recognized its own origins and its own limited theological charter. Modernity has a fatal case of theopolitical amnesia, and it needs a doxological awakening.

O’Donovan’s project, then, aims at a recovery of “political theology,” which is itself a concept fallen on hard times – thanks in no small part to Schmitt. But OD’s presentation of political theology attempts to break out of the compartmentalized box in which modernity has placed the debate over “religion and politics,” and “church and state.” Political theology is, after all, a term which strikes fear into the hearts of warm-blooded liberals across the Western hemisphere. O’Donovan notes that modernity’s suspicion of political theology is double-sided, often shared by believer and non-believer alike. On one hand, there is the fear that political freedom and individual conscience are endangered when religious commitments and authorities which claim to possess divine revelation are permitted into the political sphere. On the other hand, many Christians worry that theology itself will be tainted by political life, seduced by the coercive power of the state. O’Donovan counters these fears by offering a kind of theopolitical therapy, drawing on the resources of the patristic, medieval, and early modern Christian tradition to think anew about the late-modern predicament. In this preceding tradition, we re-encounter the notion that theology is necessarily political; its political witness is the expression of its evangelical character. In fact, if we scratch beneath the surface of voluntarist, individualist modernity, we may still find some vestiges of the older political order – an order which relies on structures of command, obedience, and authority which have a theological content and history. Not only does O’Donovan want to restore these concepts, he also wants to confront them with the eschatological reality of Christ and Christ’s political Kingdom.

Over the past fifteen or so years, Desire of the Nations has acquired some infamy for its apparent defense of Christendom. That debate is interesting enough, but I want to pass on that for now. Instead, I want to imagine two possible objections, one from an Anabaptist position, one from a Reformed position. I’m turn to these tomorrow.

[*] Thanks to an excellent seminar run by Eric Gregory.

April 23, 2012
Author:
Davey Henreckson

Occupy Geneva     0

In his brilliant new collection of essays titled The Protestant Ethic Revisited, Yale sociologist Philip Gorski turns his attention to many of the old wives’ tales about the Homo economicus calvinisticus. One of the most interesting chapters is an analysis of Michael Walzer’s classic and provocative thesis on the inextricable relationship between Calvinism and revolution. Many in the Calvinist tradition have been quick — perhaps too quick — to wear that badge with honor. By contrast, Walzer’s narrative avoids the more romantic reading by highlighting the ways that the organized power of clerics gave rise to the properly Calvinist revolutions in early modern Europe.

Gorski helpful recasts and smooths out the rougher edges of Walzer’s thesis, pointing out the many other sociological and demographic factors (e.g. the inciting force of monarchical opposition and pre-existing nationalism) that fed into the revolutionary spirit. At the same time, he argues that we should not lose sight of Walzer’s basic insight:

The rise of Calvinism did not always culminate in the outbreak of revolution…. Still, a connexion existed; all the successful revolutions of the early modern era, from the Dutch Revolt through the English Civil War, were inspired at least partly by Calvinism…. If there is a fault in Walzer’s analysis, it lies mainly in exaggerating the significance of the clergy in this process, for the threads that bound together the causes of Calvinism and revolution were spun not only by ministers by lawyers, merchants, and even the occasional artisan, and the tension in this thread that made it possible to stitch the pieces of the old order into something genuinely new came less from the pens of militant clerics than from the hammers of popular iconoclasts and the swords of uncompromising gentry. It was these persons, as much as the ministers, who pushed religious opposition over the brink of violent revolution. In a word, revolutionary Calvinism had not one “carrier” but many….

In many ways it was the Calvinists and their allies who first invented revolution — its “personality,” its tropes, and its utopias. If Calvinism placed the modern subject within an “iron cage,” as Weber said, it also supplied the tools for springing the locks.

[*] Thanks to Temple University Press for the review copy.

February 7, 2012
Author:
Davey Henreckson

Althusius, covenant, and civic friendship     0

After finishing Perry’s excellent book, I wanted to trace some of the covenantal threads back to the early modern Calvinist theorist Johannes Althusius. His Politica (1603) is a less entertaining read than some of its utopian forbears, but is quite impressive in its synthetic vision. As he defines it, Althusius’ commonwealth was a covenanted society of “symbiotes.” It exists so that diverse individuals with diverse gifts are able to communicate mutual rights and services “each fairly and properly according to his ability, for symbiosis and the common advantage of the social life.” Within this covenanted community Althusius defines a rather sweeping and Aristotelian domain for civic friendship.

For this reason God willed to train and teach men not by angels, but by men. For the same reason God distributed his gifts unevenly among men. He did not give all things to one person, but some to one and some to others, so that you have need for my gifts, and I for yours. And so was born, as it were, the need for communicating necessary and useful things, which communication was not possible except in social and political life. God therefore willed that each need the service and aid of others in order that friendship would bind all together, and no one would consider another to be valueless. For if each did not need the aid of others, what would society be? What would reverence and order be? What would reason and humanity be? Every one therefore needs the experience and contributions of others, and no one lives to himself alone.

Thus the needs of body and soul, and the seeds of virtue implanted in our souls, drew dispersed men together into one place….

Even so, Althusius’ liberality has its limits. Catholics, atheists, and practicing Jews were not allowed freedom to worship, although he argues that the civil magistrate has no jurisdiction to prosecute the “thoughts of men ” (XXVIII.64). In other words, since external piety has significance for the civic order, it would threaten the “symbiosis” of Althusius’ ideal regnum . Yet the inner conscience stands outside the magistrate’s domain, and such matters are best left to the spiritual discernment and persuasion of ministers. (This formulation is not that far off from the earliest stages of John Locke’s theory several decades later.)

While reading Althusius again, I noticed his sometimes tedious proclivity for systemic bifurcations and classification (he is one of those wonderfully rare Ramist Aristotelians after all). But what struck me as even more interesting was the cohesion of his socio-political vision, and the resonance with later Puritan adaptations of his utopian project. Despite his illiberal views on those of other religions, those individuals remain at the periphery of his concerns. As a result, he offers a strikingly unified federalism where the prospects for a common summum bonum seem quite attainable (cf. Bucer’s De Regno Christi). The civil covenant acts as an analogue to God’s redemptive covenant with humanity, even though it is (usually) not identified with salvific content. Similarly, Althusius’ concept of jus gentium is a civil analogue, but not a reification, of natural law (X.8). As such, it doesn’t seem to fit neatly into a system of action-guiding principles.

Still, even the most sympathetic read of the Politica has to account for the problematic seeds which sprout in later forms of Protestant federalism. It’s interesting to consider how Althusius’ Puritan heirs responded when faced with a more pluralistic (though still covenanted!) society. Then, it was not the language of external piety that was muted, but rather the language of civic friendship.

February 6, 2012
Author:
Davey Henreckson

Perry, Locke, and the neo-Calvinists     0

(Part two of some interactions with John Perry’s The Pretenses of Loyalty: Locke, Liberal Theory, and American Political Theology.)

Perry points out that most interactions with Johannine liberalism take John Rawls’ contractarianism to be the only real option, while ignoring John Locke’s original consideration of religious and civic loyalties. While Locke does eventually arrive at a kind of jurisdictional neutrality (one that Rawls inherits), he first has to employ theological arguments to convince Christians that civic toleration is part and parcel of their own religion. Simply, in order to be truly loyal to one’s Christian faith, one must also tolerate those with divergent religious beliefs. In other words, before Locke can arrive at a more “Rawlsian” notion of abstract freedom and neutrality, he first has to take the sincere beliefs of pious individuals seriously. Interestingly, Perry is somewhat agnostic about whether he believes Locke’s theological appeal to believers is itself sincere or merely a shrewd and necessary rhetorical move. While a more cynical reader might want to dismiss Locke’s theological argument on contextual grounds, Perry doesn’t let us get off so easily. After all, we can’t easily dismiss Locke’s discussion of religious loyalty when so many contemporary liberal and republican theorists are reintroducing the same topic in recent years. Language of loyalty, discursive commitments, and even public faith are back in vogue. Perry’s interpretation of Locke gives us a nice justification for this move from the father of modern liberalism himself.

In his final chapters, Perry turns to some of the key contemporary advocates and critics of the Lockean tradition. While many political debates are still limited by their Rawlsian assumptions, Perry highlights three alternate projects which take the problem of rival loyalties to heart: first, the neo-conservative republicanism of Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak; second, the ordered pluralism of neo-Calvinists Nicholas Wolterstorff and John Witte; and third, Martha Nussbaum’s turn to individual conscience. These variants all work from within the liberal tradition, even as they attempt to steer clear of the usual Rawlsian pratfalls.

Perry’s summary critique of the neo-Calvinists is particularly interesting. He notes that both Wolterstorff and Witte have turned to Abraham Kuyper as an exemplar for Christian liberals. Their brand of Kuyperianism accepts liberal polity while questioning the basis of liberal theory. In other words, “we must live together,” but Christians need not think that liberal theory provides a sufficient account of the good (ultimate or proximate). Locke comes up short on this point since he falls back too readily on his libertarian definition of freedom. By contrast, Kuyperians  “see Locke’s rights as areas of immunity that prescribe duties only of restraint. This is insufficient, for a healthy civil society depends upon a broader set of duties.” Kuyper sides with Locke in rejecting a universally-knowable summum bonum but also wants to retain divine-human relationality and the covenantal structure of civil society.

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February 6, 2012
Author:
Davey Henreckson