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Further Notes
on the Church and Political Theology
4/11/06, Rev.
1. In light of what I have called the
dialectic between church and world, attend to the following considerations:
a. Among the social/culture worlds in which the church inevitably exists,
we must include the civic governmental structures and politics,
whatever they are in fact. The name given these in our time is state,
referring mainly to what are called the nation-states
that have definite, if controversial, geographical borders. But when we
look at such civic governmental arrangements historically, the term state
can be misleading, especially because clearly defined geographical borders
were less common.
b. It is in relation to these nation-states that Weber
defined “politics as the art of statecraft,”
and it is in the givenness of this grammar that ‘politics’
gets tied to the nation-state. In the modern world, it is this sense of
politics that feeds the oft-cited claim that the church and state are
separate and distinct realities and that the church should not be involved
in politics—meaning the politics of the state.
c. This Weberian sense of politics involves the practice
of saying that, if the church—or Christians¬—engage the
state in judgments or conversation, they must do so in a language that
does not make any explicit appeals to religious/theological beliefs or
concepts. Instead, such discourse about state governance or statecraft
must be made in a language that is ‘rationally available to all.’
The Audi/Wolterstorff discussion concerns the intelligibility and practicality
of this proposed criterion about ‘public discourse.’
d. In much current theological discussion—from Roman Catholicism
to Lutheranism—it is claimed that such a common, rational language
is given in ‘natural law’, which is presumably
a set of convictions that can be articulated without reference to peculiar
Christian theological convictions. Such discussion often ignores the perplexities
apparent in legal and church history of different accounts of what is
included in the natural law.
e. Given the multi-dimensional character of the ‘world’—as
identified in my analysis of the various meanings of the word—the
church’s witness to whatever world, and whatever dimension or sphere
of some world, may have variations of theme and content, even given the
overarching summons to witness to the triune God for the benefit
of the world. Such witnessing can take the multi-faceted forms
of discourses and practices identified, schematically, as evangelism,
prophecy, agapic emancipation, and vocation.
2. Theses concerning the Church's Construal of
the World and its Politics and the Construal of the Church's Witness and
Politics internal to the Church's own theological discourses and practices.
a. The church itself, in its witness to the reality of God for the benefit
of the world, necessarily construes the world itself, in whatever manifestation,
as the world over which the triune God reigns as Creator, Reconciler,
and Redeemer.
b. Whatever conferred actuality the world might have as created and sustained
by God, it is an actuality of arrangements and relations that are permitted
by God, if not endorsed by God. This is the relative independence of the
world to which God patiently consents.
c. God has a history with the world, in which God acts in various ways
upon and within the world and the world in various ways acts upon God.
At no point in the world’s emerging actuality in creational time
does the world exist utterly independent of God with the power and authority
to determine its own destiny.
d. God’s revelatory self-communications in Israel and in Jesus Christ
and the calling of the church convey the truth that God’s actuality
is the Governing authority who rules the world as the Gracious and Merciful
Lover who is indefatigable and undefeatable, and in that respect is the
Ultimate Companion of the world and all the creatures therein.
e. These convictions ground the church’s own vocation to witness
to God and to be that liberative and redemptive community that exemplifies
the politics—the practices and discourses of God’s redemptive
purposes and reign in Jesus Christ.
f. These theological construals by the church are so essential to its
life that it would be an act of unfaithfulness were it to prescind from
them and presume to live by other convictions about the world, the reality
of God and human destiny.
g. The church’s interaction with the worlds is always the interaction
of nonviolence and abstaining from the exercise of coercive or dominating
power. Hence, the church does not pretend to or hanker after being the
dominating power in the politics of the nation-states.
3. Consider Daniel Bell’s discussion of Political Theology
as a theological discipline:
[See “State and Civil Society” in BCPT, 423-428.]
a. Bell distinguishes between The Dominant Tradition and The Emergent
Tradition.
b. The Dominant Tradition
1) In contemporary discussion of political theology are:
a) Political Theology as in Moltmann and Metz
b) Latin American Liberation Theology
c) American Public Theology as in Neuhaus, Murray, Thiemann, Stackhouse
2) This tradition, for all its inner diversities, share the following
basic convictions:
a) Accepts the givenness of the modern nation-state and thereby the Weberian
slogan: “Politics is the art of statecraft in the governing of states
that have a monopoly of violence within and over definite boundaries.”
b) Political theologizing is about how the state can be a relative agent
for such soteriological functions as the achievement of justice and peace
in the world.
c) Hence, the use of the state’s coercive power in just causes is
the key to that sort of politics that might be reconciling and redemptive.
d) The church’s primary task is to provide those values and principles
[discourses and practices?] in the nonpolitical life of the state that
gives moral guidance and support to the state in its role of providing
justice and order within the state and in the state’s relations
with the other states in the world.
e) But the church itself is not expected to play a role in the actual
political governance of the state. Weber: religion’s role is the
formation of citizens who can govern and rule the state wisely and justly.
c. The Emergent Tradition:
1) also referred to as “Post Liberal Theological Politics”,
inclusive of Yoder, Hauerwas, Milbank, and O’Donovan. [I’m
not so sure of this.]
2) They do not accept the givenness of the modern nation-state as the
context in which politics has its proper location and tasks.
3) Hence, they reject the slogan and the practice that “Politics
is statecraft’.
4) Believe that the church is itself a ‘public body’ that
is constituted by a politics grounded in the reality of Jesus Christ as
Lord over the world and the reconciler of the world.
5) This is not the replacement of the modern state with a hegemonic church
that dominates and subdues the state and civil society.
6) “the order of [the church’s] life is liturgical, which
is to say that because it eucharistically participates in Christ’s
reconciling sacrifice it is able to effect redemption—the renewal
of human communion/community. And this is precisely what the true polity,
the true politics, is about.”
7) “The claim that the church is the exemplary form of human community
is first and foremost a claim that the meaning of all politics and every
community flows from participation in Christ. The true form of politics
is visible only as every political form is drawn into relation with Christ,
the desire of the nations.”
8) In the eucharistic church “we see the true community, the true
polity, the true politics—a politics that modern statecraft, embedded
as it is in the (dis)order of dominion and the endless conflict of self-interested
individuals, cannot even dream of, but only mock.”
4. Sobering Questions which remain:
a. Given the apparent [inescapable?] gap between the empirical church
communities and traditions that we find in the U,S., how does the view
of the normative church, which I have proposed, help ‘reform’
these churches?
b . Is there enough integrity and agreement in the church’s discourses
and practices that the church can itself be a self-conscious and disciplined
‘alternative community’ or ‘contrast community’
or ‘alternative way of life’ in the midst of the various worlds
in which it exists, including the nation-states? Related question: is
it possible for the church to be considered a polis with its own politics
in the absence of any binding theological beliefs and practices?
c . How then does the church engage in disciplines—practices—that
give common shape to church-life? And how does the church identify and
diminish the powers of the world to discipline and shape the life of the
members of the church?
d . What is the ‘justice’ that the church cares about and
how does it relate to God’s justice, to God’s grace?
e . Yet, can the church and the Christian ever engage the world—live
in the world as a Christian—without clarity about the theological
nature and distinctiveness of the Christian faith?
f . Without clarity about what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ,
church congregations and traditions will simply engage in the world’s
politics on the world’s own political terms---that is, in the discourses
and practices by way of which the world determines what it means to be
human, the nature and destiny of human beings and society, whose goods
and hopes are to be honored, whose authority is to rule over human society.
Copyright©Joe R. Jones
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