§1. A Relaxed Political Theology
The Root of All Evil: Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania which insists there is only One ⊠one country, one truth and one way.1--Hölderlin
Theology has long been preoccupied with the question: what hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? Recent trends in the discipline of philosophy of religion have shown no linear path between the two cities may exist, and so the debate continues, opening up in the process a variety of fruitful non-linear paths between theology and phenomenology and analytic philosophy.2 Theology, too, is no stranger to those who ask how Jerusalem relates to Washington D.C. or to Rome or to the polis. One need only invoke St Paulâs concern for Christians to obey the government in Romans chapter 13. Perhaps, as John Howard Yoder strongly claims, there is a recognizable âpolitics of Jesusâ in the gospel story itself.3 Tracing the question back to the covenant between God and Israel, one needs only to absorb a few pages of the Pentateuch to acknowledge Yahwehâs kingship and to see that the Hebrew Bible trades on a kind of political theology.
The urgent question for the present book is: how does the discipline of theology contribute to the public exchange of ideas amongst citizens, to the national and international policy debate about social and economic issues, in light of political liberalism? Christianity as an intellectual tradition offers a way to God, but does it also open up a passage to public life? The biblical narrative itself is unquestionably more political than not. Or is it? The kingdom of God, according to Johannine literature, is not of this world (John 18.36).4 New Testament Christianity appears to elude the light of public life, not only in the gospels, but also in the content of the teachings of St. Paul. Christians are asked to struggle and wrestle with the principalities and powers of the world (Ephesians 6.12â20), a realm ruled by Satan, who is the god of this world (II Corinthians 4.4). Paul informs the Philippian Christians that their true citizenship lies in heaven, not here on earth (Phil. 3.20). Popularized by the Enlightenment, examples of Christianityâs otherworldliness are legion. Ludwig Feuerbach, the first great atheist and incisive critic of Christianity, proves the popular misconception about Christian spirituality when he writes the following:
This interpretation of Christianity, as âabstraction from the world,â finds a restatement not only in atheistic critics but also in contemporary Christian theologians. The relatively new sub-discipline of âpolitical theologyâ appears to confirm Christian theologyâs reluctance to rise to the challenge of the world. Social issues and political debates about the nature of the State invite a response from professing Christians, and political theology does on occasion broach these issues and debates. The disciplineâs manner of addressing such debates, however, will often alienate outsiders and appeal only to the most introverted adherents of Christianity. While the discipline of political theology usually combines political philosophy and Christian theology in fresh and innovative ways, it remains inescapably committed to exposing crucial cultural and religious deficits inherent in the political theory of liberalism. The role of âcritic of liberalismâ is not in itself a problem, but it tends to go hand in hand with an otherworldly spirituality. How does one challenge this particular kind of Christian political theology?Religion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the world; it is essentially inward. The religious man leads a life withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, still, void of worldly joy. ⊠God, as an extramundane being is however nothing else than the nature of man withdrawn from the world and concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties and entanglements, transporting itself above the world.5
The task of challenging political theology requires that I revisit some of the causes of such widespread suspicion. My instinct is that liberalismâs anthropology has become an object of unhealthy fascination for many political theologians. In contrast to the recent trend, I wish to argue in Chap. 2 that liberalism has very little to say about the self; it draws so few metaphysical conclusions about selfhood as to give the impression that it has not abandoned, but postponed the question of the self. Liberal theory surrenders to the pure political function of the State, and so, logically it must delegate or entrust the project of selfhood to metaphysical, moral, and religious traditions. What counts as important for selfhood (what makes it happy, what concerns its ultimate truth and meaning, etc.) is left up to the individualâs right to decide. While not all theologians, ethicists, legal scholars, and political philosophers who publish in political theology wholly abandon the right-based ideals of liberalism, many nonetheless have devoted themselves to fulfilling the following mission: to show that lamentable motifs like âatomismâ and âpossessive individualismâ undergird the liberal self, and that Christian and religious citizens are wise to be suspicious of the potent public vice of individualism. How can the common good be accounted for, not least promoted, if citizens care only for themselves?
Political theologians and ethicists suggest liberalism embodies a political economy of self-enclosure. Liberalism is incapable of thinking about the self in the vocabulary of relationship , since its theoretical underpinnings clearly prepare citizens to aspire to escape time and history. A descendent of the Cartesian ego, the liberal atom-citizen flees from the flesh and blood of tradition and community.6 The picture of the liberal self that holds captive political theology slowly but surely emerges as an artificial foil to be overcome (and one I hope to overcome in a different way): an individualism that will not tolerate the time-bound limits of finitude, historical pedigree, tradition, and community. This picture is filled out in more detail, too, and as it comes into greater focus in the writings of some of the more vocal critics, such as Stanley Hauerwas , Alisdair MacIntyre, or Michael Walzer , each of whom suggests in distinct idioms that religious community provides moral solidarity and the interpersonal attachment we so desperately need. That is, the shape of liberalism corresponds to an isolated atom, an island of egoism whose relationship with others has collapsed into the self-referentialism of a parochial individualism. The more I try to articulate myself as a self-governing, rights-bearing agent with no real obligations to others, the more decidedly do I adopt a promethean stance, which seeks to transcend the obligations of community and social concern.
Promethean genius generates a selfish style of public life, the âimagined withdrawal from every relationship within which the subject finds him or herself.â7 This is a not so thinly veiled attack of the Rawlsian veil of ignorance; it is argued that once we put on the veil we transform into anonymous atoms, the condition under which the social contract is supposedly signed by all. Reduced from being-in-community to being-an-atom, the liberal self necessarily cultivates a politics of loneliness, where liberal secularism âproduces an alienated world, a society of strangers.â8 The Western liberal norm, as if it were laid down as an axiom, is that I live only for my own interests because they are the only ones with which I am truly acquainted. Impersonal and detached, the late modern liberal ego cannot help but reign over its own life without consultation of past generations or consideration of future ones; such political egoism also refuses to negotiate among others who constitute the larger citizenry with whom I have been joined together by a social contract. The picture holding political theology captive is isolationism, in which liberal atoms avoid politic theory, since they by definition avoid community with others. Does liberalism really advocate for this kind of isolationism?
Platoâs critique of democracy in book 8 of The Republic lurks in the background, nourishing what could be called the communitarian discourse of suspicion that fuels so much political theology. The picture of democracy that Plato sketches overlaps with the picture of autonomy noted above: I am so consumed with my individuality in a democracy, contends Plato , that I become âdrunk with the wine of freedom.â What of authority or the weight of tradition, Plato inquires? More exactly: what of proper roles, such as the fatherâs natural authority over his children, or the teacherâs right to demand the student follow classroom procedure? In this state of autonomy , freedom descends into utter disorder.9 Detraditionalized, disencumbered from relationships, the liberal self takes freedom too far, or so was the case for some citizens in Platoâs day.10
It is all the more so in late modern political liberalism, in which powerful nation states legislate laws that protect and secure individual rights. According to its communitarian critics, then, the logic proper to atomism of this modern kind lies in the egotistical impulse to preserve private, individual interests with a minimum of interference by one another. As such, it is not a theory about public life at all, but rather its very subversion, a theory âabout avoiding politics.â11 At a fundamental level, the liberal self is beset with an implacable desire to be left alone. Political theology, expressed in its Christian idiom, condemns liberalismâs anthropology , because it is construed as a crisis of selfish auton...