Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (review)

The authors of the dozen essays gathered together in this volume present them as "an accompaniment" to their splendid From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (1996). Self-confessedly "explorations in 'the political' . . . from a perspective formed by the Bible and the Latin theological tradition," the essays fall into two groups. The first represents an historical or "constructive" engagement with various moments in what the O'Donovans refer to as "the Christian political past" or "the older theo-political tradition." The second involves a largely critical engagement with "contemporary approaches, ideas, and institutions" conducted in the light of that older theo-political tradition. The disparate nature of the pieces assembled here appears to have precluded any really helpful labeling of the two groupings. Part I is simply entitled "Moments in the Theological-Political Tradition"; Part II, "Contemporary Themes: Liberal Democracy, the Nation-State, Localities, and Internationalism." These titles not affording much of a clue to the contents of the book, a full listing of essay titles would appear to be called for. Thus, grouped together in Part I are the following: "History and Politics in the Book of Revelation"; "The Political Thought of City of God 19"; "Christian Platonism and Non-proprietary Community"; "The Theological Economics of Medieval Usury Theory"; "The Christian Pedagogy and Ethics of Erasmus"; "The Challenge and the Promise of Proto-modern Political Thought"; "The Justice of Assignment and Subjective Rights in Grotius." And in Part II: "Government as Judgment"; "Subsidiarity and Political Authority in Theological Perspective"; "Karl Barth and Paul Ramsey's 'Uses of Power'"; "Nation, State, and Civil Society in the Western Political Tradition"; "The Loss of a Sense of Place."

The whole is prefaced by a substantial introductory essay in the course of which the authors bluntly affirm that their commitment to taking the older "theo-political" tradition seriously necessarily implies a "confrontational stance" toward the commonplaces which are universally supposed "to shore up our contemporary political institutions—the commonplaces of republican freedom and self-government, of popular sovereignty and the rights of individuals and communities." At the same time they confess the hope that the several essays, their disparate nature notwithstanding, will offer "a progressively unfolding coherence." It is not clear, however, that that hope has been realized here, and I suspect that even those readers who are not unsympathetic with the author's project and who are reasonably familiar with the tradition and the texts under discussion will find something of a gap between authorial aspiration and achievement.

It would be churlish not to acknowledge that these are learned essays. They rest on the foundation of an erudition at once both broad-ranging and specialized. They are also, almost invariably, deeply thoughtful pieces. In the latter respect, I myself was especially taken with Oliver O'Donovan's "Loss of a Sense of Place" and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan's "The Challenge and Promise of Proto-modern Political Thought." But it has also to be noted that the authors cannot usually be said to wear their learning lightly. Most if not all of the essays, moreover, appear to have been written with a theologically-oriented readership in mind. For an historian of political thought, certainly, they manage unwittingly to convey something of an "in-house" feel, and appear to be speaking largely to those who can be relied upon to bring to what they have to say a set of presuppositions shared comfortably with the authors. The nature of the criticisms the latter (explicitly or implicitly) direct at the commonplaces believed to inform contemporary liberal-democratic political life is clear enough. Less clear, however, is the nature of the assumptions they would put in their place—assumptions, at least, capable of speaking to those who do not share (or fully share) their own, warm Christian commitments. Talk about "politics as judgment" is a case in point. It constitutes the closest thing to a...