Drenched with Deity

In his English Literature in the Sixteenth-Century, C.S. Lewis offers perhaps what is the best summary of and introduction to Richard Hooker that I have yet found, far more lucid and on the mark than most "specialist" treatments.  Toward the end, he offers this luminous passage:

"Every system offers us a model of the universe; Hooker's model has unsurpassed grace and majesty.  from much that I have already said it might be inferred that the unconscious tendency of his mind was to secularise.  There could be no deeper mistake.  Few model universes are more filled--one might say, more drenched--with Deity than his.  'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5).  God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent.  It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular.

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Appealing to Caesar

In accounts of Christian's political responsibilities, it is not uncommon to hear appeals to the way Paul used his Roman citizenship and the Roman political system.  These range from the fairly modest--"Paul's appeal showed that the Roman Empire, for all its evils, could still serve a useful purpose and Christians need not completely separate themselves from an unjust political system"--to rather more robust claims that Paul's actions somehow constitute a ratification of the goodness of the Roman order and proof that Christians should be enthusiastic citizens of earthly polities.

In A Secular Faith, Darryl Hart steers toward the latter approach, using Paul's example in favour of his thesis that Christians must have "hyphenated identities" as inhabitants of the spiritual and earthly kingdoms.  (The real problem with this claim is that in fact he is calling not for hyphenated, but bifurcated identities, not for 'Christian-American' but for 'Christian//American'; but more on that another time).

But what was Paul actually up to?  And what lesson does his appeal to Caesar actually offer?

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Sola Scriptura in the Public Square, Pt. 1

Last week, I presented a paper at a conference in Winchester entitled "Sola Scriptura in the Public Square: Insights of Richard Hooker" which was a sort of miniature, highly-condensed form of my thesis as currently envisioned, or at any rate of several key chapters of it.  I thought I would post it here for the benefit of anyone who's been interested in my posts on Hooker, Reformed two kingdoms theory, natural law, and the role of Scripture in politics, although be warned that this relatively short essay can do little more than scratch the surface of the key issues, many of which have been developed at more length in previous posts here.

**Edit: As this paper will be published in an extended form by T&T Clark in a volume entitled The Bible: Culture, Community, and Society, they would obviously prefer if I did not have the full-text available here.  I have thus removed most of this post, and the next one, leaving only some tantalizing excerpts.**

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Forgetting How to be Secular

In a pregnant passage of Common Objects of Love, O'Donovan argues that, rightly understood, "secularity" is in fact a Christian concept, and the modern retreat of Christianity means, ultimately, a loss of secularity, since secularity consists in the patient suspense in wait of ultimate validation, and modernity rejects faith in any ultimate validation to come:

"The Christian conception of the 'secularity' of political society arose directly out of this Jewish wrestling with unfulfilled promise.  Refusing, on the one hand, to give up what it knew of God, itself, and the world, accepting, on the other, that what it knew was incomplete and demanded validation, Israel understood itself and its knowledge and love of God as a contradiction to be endured in hope.  'Secularity' is irreducibly an eschatological notion; it requires an eschatological faith to sustain it, a belief in a disclosure that is 'not yet' but is absolutely presupposed as the inner meaning of what we know already.  If we allow the 'not yet' to slide toward 'never,' we say something entirely different and wholly incompatible, for the virtue that undergirds all secular politics is an expectant patience.  What follows from the rejection of belief is an intolerable tension between the need for meaning in society and the only partial capacity of society to satisfy the need.  An unbelieving society has forgotten how to be secular."