The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy

4. Divine-Human Communion and the Common Good

Chapter Four Divine -human communion and the common Good The last two chapters engaged in an immanent critique of Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian attacks against modern liberal democracy and the modern liberal notion of human rights. Taking for granted Orthodox understandings of a eucharistic ecclesiology and relational notions of personhood, I argued that these particular understandings of church and personhood, rooted in t he realism of divine-human communion, do not lead to the type of wholesale condemnations of modern liberal democracy and human rights that seem self-evident to certain Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian actors. This chapter will continue this line of immanent critique but in dialogue primarily with non-Orthodox Christian political theology that has unabashedly proclaimed Christian presuppositions as the starting point for a Christian politics, declaring dead the age of Christian compromise with “public reason” advocates. Promising for Orthodox theology are those political theologies that take as their starting point not simply the God of Jesus Christ, but the extended claim that this God of Jesus Christ created the world for communion with God. 131 132 The Mystical as Political I will begin with Hauerwas, who, in spite of his protests to the contrary, drives a w edge between church and political community without a v ery developed understanding of church and without a sense of the ascetical nature of the relation between narrative, formation , and virtue. Milbank makes up what is lacking in Hauerwas by offering a thick, metaphysical understanding of the church in terms of divine-human communion, which he contrasts to a liberal democratic political community. What Hauerwas and Milbank share in common is a theoretical approach to the question of the compatibility of Christianity and liberal democracy. The logic is that if Christians make certain claims about what church is, what constitutes a Christian community, then the church cannot accept a liberal democratic state, together with all its ontological presuppositions, without compromise . Although this theological reflection on the nature of the church is necessary for political theology, both Hauerwas and Milbank do not give any sense of the necessity of the kinds of ascetical practices Christians must perform in order to realize all that they say church is. The church is the performance of Christian practices, primarily the Eucharist, but also other practices that are eucharistic in form. Christians, however, engage in practices not simply in relation to others who form part of the eucharistic community but to nonChristians as well, including atheists, in a political space. Christians do not stop performing ascetical practices once the liturgy is over. Both Hauerwas and Milbank fail to tell us what difference that makes for political theology. The work of Graham Ward, Eric Gregory, and Charles Mathewes does focus attention on the relation between Christian practices and political theology through the lens of divine-human communion. All three thinkers, in different ways, argue that Christian practices in the political space would cultivate a liberal democratic polity. More strongly, they argue that, without a transcendent horizon, a liberal democratic polity would implode on itself. The move is away from a question of the theoretical compatibility of Christianity and liberal democracy, to a fuller account of the form of polity Christian civic involvement would foster. Divine-human communion and the common Good 133 Though I applaud this move to practices in imagining Christian political theology, I would argue that insufficient attention is given to the fact that Christians are engaged in an ascetical struggle to learn to love. Ward, Gregory, and Mathewes all give the impression that Christians will engage in practices of love whose purpose is to transform or foster a certain kind of political space. In a way, they make the same mistake that Hauerwas, Milbank, Cavanaugh, and others do when they speak of the church as this ideal community over and against the political community; Ward, Gregory, and Mathewes convey an impression that Christians will de facto engage in acts of charity. And yet, the political space has to be imagined as one in which no one can count on Christians being Christian; or, as one of many deserts in which Christians are learning to love. This point may seem minor, but I will demonstrate its importance for Christian political theology. In the end, I agree with the turn to practices, and hope to offer further nuances of this turn. Through these thinkers I will also move toward the position...