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1 INTRODUCTION Returning to Political Theology 1 POLITICAL THEOLOGY This is a study of a particular political theology and its variants, a tradition found among Reformed Protestants over three centuries and one that substantially changed the direction of political thinking in the modern world. “Political theology” is a term requiring some explanation, together with a brief defense of its use instead of the term “civil religion.”1 Noting the difference between these terms gets to the heart of the whole study. “Theology” is a Greek word that applies the scholarly tradition of logos to the study of God.2 Translated, logos can mean both speech and investigation. The earliest Greek philosophers understood logos to be a means of studying something by speaking about it. The earliest uses of the word “theology” are found in the works of Plato and Aristotle, who wanted to apply reasonable investigation to divine things. In Christianity the word is used both in this sense (reasonable investigation) and in the sense of words about or from God—the Word of God. The logos tradition, as it has been practiced within Christianity, emphasizes justification by argument and encourages both engagement and debate with secular philosophy and theory. To take a theo-logical approach implies that religious ideas and secular ideas can exist alongside each other and maintain a respectful discussion on the common ground of reason and speech. Thus, I intend “political theology” to be a term that respects religion and politics as a relationship between equals. The term “civil religion,” by contrast, implies a hierarchical approach to religion and politics that makes religion serve political goals. “Civil religion” flirts with judging religious opinions only in terms of what is expedient for the civil or political. This is the approach of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, JeanJacques Rousseau, and Niccolo Machiavelli. Jefferson’s or Franklin’s approach is 2 POLITICS REFORMED superior to Rousseau’s or Machiavelli’s because it respects the ennobling spirit of religion to encourage the habits of ordered liberty or republican virtue. Machiavelli’s or Rousseau’s use is more cynical and utilitarian, using religion only to instill martial virtue or to impose ideological unity. But either use is a consequentialist approach to religion. The result is a dichotomous, even adversarial, approach to the intersection of religion and politics. For many reasons, this will not do. Religion is not the handmaid of politics. Politics and religion, at least when practiced in a community, are best understood as partners. But this is admittedly a tense partnership. Individuals may sometimes have to resolve the tension when choosing between civil and religious imperatives. This is especially true in a liberal political order where individual rights and individual conscience are considered inviolable. If one takes a long view of the Western experience, particularly following the Reformation, it is the mutual respect and support between politics and biblical religion (the dominant Western religion) that have encouraged liberty. To suggest dichotomous priorities of “religion” and “politics” invites paranoia and disables respectful discussion. Both church and state begin to wonder which will be subordinated to the other. Dichotomies that seek to divorce the civil from the religious, or to subordinate one to the other, function only in the abstract. They are contrary to political reality, which is always dictated by human nature, and human nature demonstrates itself to be both political and religious. Human nature is not either political or religious; it must be both political and religious. Furthermore, the great traditions of biblical religion are political by nature. There are three reasons this is true. First, the practice of biblical religions is essentially social and requires institutional (political) structures and offices.3 Second, biblical religions are inherently legal and ethical. They set boundaries on individual and community behavior. Third, biblical religions share with the political a common grounding in anthropology (in the classical sense); that is, their first principles begin with human nature. The great challenge for modern legal and political practice, therefore, is not to separate the “religious” from the “political.” Instead, it is to determine proper jurisdiction for the civil and the religious, particularly as they relate to civil law and practice. Determining jurisdiction is the great challenge taken up by the most prominent early modern political philosophers.As conflict within the church spilled over into the civil during the seventeenth century, famous philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke tried to determine the proper boundaries for ecclesiastical and civil authorities. But...

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