The Soul of a Christian Commonwealth

(An excerpt from a recent thesis chapter draft; citations removed)

Nowhere is Hooker's dependence on the dictum "grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it" more true than his treatment of the role of religion in the commonwealth. While Hooker understood public religion as a natural and civil phenomenon, not as exclusively Christian or spiritual, this did not mean it was a mere simulacrum of the spiritual; rather, although achieving its effect through natural and outward instruments, Christian worship can serve as a real pathway toward our growth in grace.  The key point, however, was that the civil kingdom, in addition to being concerned with all the mundane concerns of public order, economic prosperity, and outward protection that characterize our modern conception of the domain of politics, was also properly a religious order; it existed under God, toward God, and animated and structured by worship. 

Given Hooker's argument in Book I, it is not hard to see why this should be the case.  Human nature is not satisfied with mere finite, earthly ends, but constantly seeks a happiness beyond the bounds of temporal existence, a happiness to be found in God.  This restless longing for God, which subordinates and orders all other desires, will always, thinks Hooker, be reflected in the life of human society, which will always establish some kind of religious devotion at the heart of its public life.  Because of the centrality and ultimacy of this religious devotion, worship is not merely of value for its own sake, but serves as an anchor for the public life of the community, guaranteeing unity around a common object of love, and reverent esteem for the magistrates who are the guardians of this common life.

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What Good Ol' Days?

Even among us postmillenial types, it is a common enough foible to imagine that we are living in a dark and decadent age.  We look back with nostalgia and longing to an earlier Christian culture, to a time when everyone went to church, society lived basically in accord with Christian morality, Biblical teaching was enshrined in law and followed in national and international affairs, and orthodoxy was universally accepted and taught in the pulpits.  Nowadays, it is clear, we have rejected God and are suffering His judgment.  

So it is strange when one starts reading works from these good ol' days and finds the same old complaints about the irreligiousness of society, the same laments about impending judgment. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to read two things which helped reveal just how one-sided this narrative really is--Patrick Collinson's brilliant study The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559-1625, and an essay in the Wall Street Journal, "Violence Vanquished"

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A Constantinian Showdown

 Yes, believe it or not, I am still alive.  But I am on vacation, and my brain has completely shut down and refused to produce blog-worthy ideas.  

However, I can point you to where some real blogging action is--or was--I'm a week or two behind. 

Ben Witherington recently produced a lengthy series of posts reviewing Peter Leithart's groundbreaking recent book, Defending Constantine--while broadly appreciative and complementary, he was sharply critical on several points, as one might expect, given that he is a pacifist.  Leithart's responses to his objections are particularly fascinating, and very relevant to the recent discussion about retributive justice here.  Leithart's final post, "Loving Enemies" offers a frank confession of the difficulties of a Christian just war position, which he nonetheless feels compelled to cling to.  My own thoughts on this subject are very similar to what Leithart voices in this fantastic post.

Here are the links:

Witherington Intro
Witherington 1
Witherington 2
Witherington 3
Witherington 4
Witherington 5
Witherington 6
Witherington 7
Witherington 8 

Leithart 1: "Guarding the Garden"
Leithart 2: "Crushing Heads"
Leithart 3: "Protoeuangelium"
Leithart 4: "Warrior Messiah"
Leithart 5: "Marcion"
Leithart 6: "Loving Enemies" 

If you're eager for more action, this just in--the AAR conference this fall in San Francisco will host a dialogue/debate between Leithart and Stanley Hauerwas over Defending Constantine.  If I weren't already going, I might buy a plane ticket just to see that!

Nuggets from the O'Don

My supervision meeting with Prof. O'Donovan today featured the usual generous sampling of entertaining and illuminating tangents, in which he deigned to share tantalizing tidbits of insight about political theology as a whole and that of the Reformation in particular.  Here are a smattering of them (take these with a significant grain of salt as representations of O'Donovan's thought, since he was speaking off the cuff and these thoughts are filtered through the narrow and potentially distorting limits of my own understanding and particular interests):

The point that the Calvinists are urging at the end of the 16th century is that the Reformation has not been completed because a true Church has not been established with independent integrity as a social body.  The Anglicans respond that the Presbyterians are in fact wanting to reverse the Reformation, by re-establishing a new papacy, just a papacy of the proletariat.  There is some justice in the charge, but there is also justice in the point the Presbyterians are urging; after all, the Papacy was not an all-bad idea.  In fact, the Papacy was a historical development that grew out of the need to answer the same sort of question--namely, how do we give a locus of the Church’s identity as a unique institution in  the midst of a Christendom society?  The advent of Christendom and the Christianization of the Roman Empire called forth the Papacy as the solution, as a way of giving a clear visible form to the Church as something independent from Christendom.  The problem did not go away, and the Presbyterians were right to raise the question again.  Even Hooker recognizes this to an extent, giving the Church a certain kind of independent visible identity again, with its own laws and its own Convocation that govern how the monarch can govern it.

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