Two Kingdoms & Two Cities: Mapping Theological Traditions of Church, Culture, and Civil Order 9781506421568, 9781506432557, 9781506425191

Table of contents :
Additional praise for Two Kingdoms & Two Cities
Two Kingdoms & Two Cities
Two Kingdoms & Two Cities

Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Luther’s “Inward/Outward” Two Kingdoms
Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, and a “Dialectical” Two Kingdoms
Lutheran and Catholic Neoconservatism and a “Paradoxical” Two Kingdoms
Reformed Two-Kingdom Theology and a “Parallel” Two Kingdoms
Neo-Augustinian Liberalism and an “Eschatological” Two Kingdoms
Augustine and a “Christendom” Two Cities
Oliver O’Donovan and A Doctrine of the “Two”
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Additional praise for Two Kingdoms & Two Cities “Crouse’s map of overt and implicit appeals to ‘two kingdoms’ has reshaped my historical understanding considerably. I now view crucial figures like Luther very differently and more deeply than before. Crouse’s map also surfaces some crucial biblical-theological decisions that political doctrines of ‘the two’ consistently face. This book is an example of how important careful historical analysis can be—for knowing where we are, how we got here, and what questions to ask about where to head next.” Daniel Treier, Blanchard Professor of Theology, Wheaton College “Christians claim to be ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the world. So, how do Christians relate their faith to public life? In this book, Crouse navigates how the best Christian thinkers, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, have responded to these questions. In the process, Crouse unearths Luther’s theology of ‘two kingdoms’ as a contender with which all Christian political theorists, each in their own ways, have had to wrestle. If you seek a guide into the symphony of Christian theology of politics, this is the one to read.” Mark Mattes, Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Grand View University, author of The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology “This is an elegant and erudite map of the various dualistic theories at work in Protestant political theology from Luther and Calvin to our own day. Niebuhr’s famous volume on Christ and culture now has a sturdy supplement, if not a serious competitor, in Crouse’s new volume. What an impressive debut for this ‘emerging scholar.’” John Witte, Jr., Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University “The intersection between the political and spiritual realms is a constant source of interest and tension. In this timely book, Crouse takes

his readers through the history of their interaction and dialogues with some of the great names in Christian theology along the way. This is a major contribution to an important subject and deserves a wide readership, both inside and outside the church. Highly recommended!” Gerald Bray, Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology, Knox Theological Seminary, author of Augustine on the Christian Life “What does it mean for the church to be ‘in’ the world but not ‘of’ it, and how do these two prepositions relate to Augustine’s two cities and Luther’s two kingdoms? Crouse’s book provides both important orientation and strategic tips for the church’s involvement in the contemporary, post-Christian “game of thrones”—the ongoing conflict between secular and sacred for the body of Christ and the souls of his disciples.” Kevin Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School “This is a groundbreaking study, conversant with the traditions of Augustine and Luther but also providing a reliable guide to contemporary options in Christian political theology. A sustained argument that illumines as it informs.” Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School and general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture

Two Kingdoms & Two Cities

Two Kingdoms & Two Cities Mapping Theological Traditions of Church, Culture, and Civil Order

Robert C. Crouse

Fortress Press Minneapolis

TWO KINGDOMS & TWO CITIES Mapping Theological Traditions of Church, Culture, and Civil Order

Copyright © 2017 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover design: Alisha Lofgren

Hardcover ISBN: 9781506421568 Paperback ISBN: 9781506432557 eBook ISBN: 9781506425191

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Manufactured in the U.S.A. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML.

To Becky

Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

xv

1.

Luther’s “Inward/Outward” Two Kingdoms

2.

Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, and a “Dialectical” Two Kingdoms

35

3.

Lutheran and Catholic Neoconservatism and a “Paradoxical” Two Kingdoms

61

4.

Reformed Two-Kingdom Theology and a “Parallel” Two Kingdoms

89

5.

Neo-Augustinian Liberalism and an “Eschatological” Two Kingdoms

121

6.

Augustine and a “Christendom” Two Cities

149

7.

Oliver O’Donovan and A Doctrine of the “Two”

179

Conclusion

215

Bibliography

237

Index

249

1

Acknowledgments

This work would not exist apart from the encouragement of others. My parents have always fostered in me a sense of stewardship for the gifts and resources that have been given to me—they themselves being one of God’s greatest gifts to me—and as long as I can remember, my father has spurred me on with discussions about Christian faith and culture. From my college years, I owe a great debt to the time, mentorship, and care shown to me by Don Westblade. His exhortation to me to be involved in theological study was a watershed moment in my life. In particular gratefulness for this project, I must thank my doctoral advisor, Dan Treier, for giving more time and energy to me than a person deserves. I cannot think of a way in which Dr. Treier did not give me exactly what I needed to complete this work (originally a dissertation at Wheaton College in historical and systematic theology). Any deficiencies in this work are certainly not from him. Kevin Vanhoozer is owed much for agreeing to remain on my doctoral committee despite a move back to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and despite his own incredible workload. My thanks go to James K. A. Smith for agreeing to serve as an external examiner for my dissertation and for helping me see the implications of my work. Also on the dissertation committee and serving as chair, Marc Cortez read the entire work meticulously and added to the project with his comments on Luther’s and Augustine’s theological anthropology. Though not on the PhD faculty, three Wheaton professors must also be mentioned for their contributions. Bryan McGraw, associate professor of politics, has helped me with this project from the very beginning, when he encouraged me to sit in as a guest in his Christian Political Thought seminar. His exhortation and invitation to present a portion of my work at the Wheaton Christian Political Thought Workshop xi

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resulted in great feedback, and his insights into initial drafts of the dissertation were very valuable. Vince Bacote acted as a sounding board for the dissertation numerous times, and assisting his class on political theology helped me clarify several ideas. Greg Lee also helped me greatly with my reading and exposition of Augustine. Beyond professorial mentorship is the peer inspiration I received from fellow doctoral students and friends. Peter Green and Matthew Patton helped the most with the content of this study, but many others in the Wheaton program encouraged me with their own dedication and scholarly example. I had the privilege of counting two church communities as my own during my doctoral program, and both have been very important. Hinsdale Trinity Presbyterian Church began ministering to my family even before our first Sunday visit and continued to serve us throughout. Christ Covenant Church gave me the opportunity to put my education to use in a pastoral capacity, and that has been deeply instrumental in my life. Without their support (including needed breaks for writing!), I could not have finished this project. When I took up a teaching position at Knox Theological Seminary, my faculty colleagues enthusiastically encouraged me to publish my work. Fortress Press graciously took the manuscript and labored with me to get it into the light of day. I would also like to thank Sean Talbot, a student at Knox, for volunteering (!) to slog through the text to find typos and enhance the overall clarity. Though I could certainly give thanks to many others, most of all, my thanks and dedication go to my constant companion in life, my beloved wife, Becky. She continues to make life bright and fresh and to be an incredible source of encouragement. She has made sacrifices for and with our family so that this labor could be completed. I dedicate this work to her.

xii

Abbreviations

c. ep. Augustine, Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. In Works of Saint Augustine: A Pel. Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990–. civ. Dei.

Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans. Translated by R. W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

CTJ

Calvin Theological Journal

DBW Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works EJT

European Journal of Theology

en. Ps.

Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos. In Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990–.

Ep.

Augustine, Epistulae. In Political Writings. Edited by E. M. Atkins and Robert J. Dodaro. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

FP

Faith and Philosophy

FT

First Things

Gen. litt.

Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram. In Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990–.

gr. et Augustine, De gratia Christi et de peccato originali. In Works of Saint Augustine. A pecc. Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey. or. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990–. JMM

Journal of Markets and Morality

JRE

Journal of Religious Ethics

LQ

Lutheran Quarterly

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LW

Luther’s Works. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. 56 vols. St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86.

MR

Modern Reformation

ModTheo Modern Theology pecc. mer.

Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum ad Marcellinum. In Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990–.

PT

Political Theology

ProEccl

Pro Ecclesia

SJT

Scottish Journal of Theology

SCE

Studies in Christian Ethics

TS

Theological Studies

WTJ

Westminster Theological Journal

xiv

Introduction

Christianity’s relationship to politics has a long and thorny history. “Christ and culture” debates garner perennial attention. The recurrence of this theme and the variety of Christian theological views on it indicate its ongoing importance. The present book joins this conversation and offers a new angle of entry into a long-standing dilemma. The State of the Question Contemporary political theology is characterized simultaneously by consensus and by disagreement. Most scholars agree that academic political theology deals intellectually with the Western collapse of Christian hegemony, the rapid extension of religious pluralism, and the fragmentation of politics and society. Theologians can no longer assume a mutually supportive relation of church and state. The prominence of the church in Western society cannot be assured anymore; earlier ways of speaking about culture with Christian overtones are now obsolete. Numerous titles now speak about “post-Christian,” “post-Christendom,” and “after-Christendom” contexts.1 The question is how Christians should respond. There is general agreement within contemporary political theology on an initial response to culture, viewing the breakdown of “Christendom” as a verdict on past problems.2 So, “post-Christendom” is not 1. See, e.g., Addison Hodges Hart, Strangers and Pilgrims Once More: Being Disciples of Jesus in a Post-Christendom World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014); Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2004); Rodney R. Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1996); Barry Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999). 2. See the oft-cited work Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), as one example.

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simply a descriptive diagnosis of the current state but also a prescriptive evaluation of Christendom. The fall of Christendom is not negative or even neutral. Though a few may lament its fall, many celebrate its demise to the extent that “post-Christendom” political theology might as well be labeled “anti-Christendom.”3 On this account, new horizons reveal deep problems of earlier discourse on Christian life in this world. Thus, Christendom is deemed not a noble failure but a project inherently flawed from the beginning. Post-Christendom theologies go beyond critiquing Christendom’s results to rejecting its original aspiration. Another feature of the widespread consensus is the recognized need for ecumenism. Living in a post-Christendom context compels theologians to work together in new ways. Thus, contemporary political theology involves greater convergences between Protestant denominations as well as between Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Part of this ecumenism involves retracing the steps of prior divergences and seeking to retrieve earlier theological wisdom for the current situation. But there the consensus seems to end. Various proposals advocate retrieval of different figures and traditions. Augustine’s shadow looms especially large in present movements, encompassing numerous attempts at recovery from different angles, often with the overarching language of “two cities.”4 Some Lutherans, such as Robert Benne, call for returning to Luther’s “two kingdoms.” Within Benne’s wider circle is a shared “neoconservative” coalition of Lutherans and Roman Catholics advocating for a “genuine secularity” in America’s pluralist environment. Apparently independent of Benne’s appeals, a movement among Reformed confessionalists seeks to rediscover a lost Reformed two-kingdom tradition. Other contemporary sources reexamine Dietrich Bonhoeffer or renew interest in Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realism. Additionally, the model proposed by John Howard Yoder and extended by Stanley Hauerwas—often labeled “neo-Anabaptist”—claims ongoing interest, along with the neo-Calvinist legacy of Abraham Kuyper. 3. See, e.g., Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991); Jonathan Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom: The Church as a Movement for Anarchy (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2006). 4. See, e.g., Michael J. S. Bruno, Political Augustinianism: Modern Interpretations of Augustine’s Political Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014). Bruno’s work is helpful for getting a general sense of the current landscape, but is much less helpful in actually mapping the different readings of Augustine with larger theological themes, as my own project attempts to do.

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INTRODUCTION

Missing from this contemporary scene is a comprehensive, compelling map of how these solidifying “schools” of political theology relate to one another. For example, narrowing the field just to recent “two kingdoms” and “two cities” movements, the various dual models apparently have little in common as far as historical dependence is concerned. Many advocates of a return to Augustine’s thought openly reject Luther’s ideas, and some two-kingdom promoters refer to the need to resist “the Augustinian temptation.”5 Champions of Bonhoeffer often launch scathing critiques of Niebuhr.6 Despite the call for more ecumenical political theology, the basis for converging patterns of thought frequently remains unclear. The current Reformed two-kingdom model particularly seeks not just retrieval but even renarration of a conceptual genealogy through Reformed history. Whatever the merits of its story, one clear gap is its relation to Christian thinking outside the Calvinist confessional tradition. David VanDrunen’s massive work Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms (2010) includes material on Luther7—often considered the twokingdom founder—but then the story continues only in a Reformed direction.8 Meanwhile, a newer reading of Luther’s two kingdoms has arisen in historical scholarship, pioneered first by W. D. J. Cargill Thompson and more recently by William Wright.9 Yet their scholarly reinterpretation of Luther’s two-kingdom thought has not penetrated wider political theology. In fact, Luther seems to be a missing—or at least, misunderstood—piece as people puzzle over the landscape of recent political theology. Augustine is named frequently, but Luther is typically brought up only for passing criticism. Even Robert Benne, specifically championing Luther, does not engage much with his primary texts 5. Robert Benne, “The Neo-Augustinian Temptation,” FT 81 (1998): 14–16. 6. Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001); Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004). 7. David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 8. James K. A. Smith, “Reforming Public Theology: Two Kingdoms or Two Cities?” CTJ 47 (2012): 122–37, and Branson Parler, “Two Cities or Two Kingdoms? The Importance of the Ultimate in Reformed Social Thought,” in Kingdoms Apart: Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective, ed. Ryan McIlhenny (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012), 173–97, both connect the Reformed two-kingdom movement to Augustine and are therefore helpful to this study. However, both read Augustine primarily in a Hauerwasian and Yoderian mode, where my study will situate Augustine within a broader “Christendom” reading. 9. W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, ed. Philip Broadhead (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984); William J. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).

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or the newer reading. Yet, prima facie, Luther represents a vital figure between Augustinian and Calvinist political theology, between premodern sources and the question of modernity. Mapping his thought in comparison with Augustine and key modern voices should contribute to better understanding of the present situation and its narrative of Christendom. Perhaps the easiest way to map present political theologies is to return to the classic typology of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (1951).10 But, for the same reasons I have just mentioned, Niebuhr’s work is often marginalized in these contemporary discussions. For some, Niebuhr’s context on the edge of Christendom makes his categories suspect.11 For others, Niebuhr’s historiography is problematic, especially for figures such as Augustine and Calvin.12 Despite the challenges to Niebuhr’s categories, only a few new typologies have been suggested, none with Niebuhr’s staying power, at least in cultural memory. Thus, new “mapping” of Christian options for engagement with culture is needed. My Proposed Contribution This book seeks to move Christian political theology forward with an exercise in “theological cartography.”13 Although a comprehensive map would be most helpful, this study limits its focus primarily to the recent proposals of two kingdoms and two cities. The main argument of this project is that a new look at Luther’s idea of two kingdoms and its legacy situates both Reformed notions of two kingdoms and neo-Augustinian two-cities models within a broader set of a “doctrine of the two,” a feature with which Oliver O’Donovan claims all Christian political thought must wrestle.14 Arguing from Luther allows one to conceptualize not only current Augustinian and Reformed proposals but also a number of other factors: Lutheran theology in Nazi Germany, the legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr, renewed interest 10. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 50th anniversary ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2001). 11. Glen H. Stassen, D. M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder, Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995); Charles Scriven, The Transformation of Culture: Christian Social Ethics after H. Richard Niebuhr (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 1988). 12. See, e.g., David VanDrunen, “The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin,” CTJ 40 (2005): 248–66; D. Stephen Long, Theology and Culture: A Guide to the Discussion (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007), 61–71. 13. James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 25. 14. Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 193.

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INTRODUCTION

in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the rise of neoconservative Catholic and Protestant ecumenism, and accounts of modern liberalism.15 The resulting method is similar to what has been called “retrieval theology”16 yet is less focused on constructive appropriation and more on comparative conceptual analysis. Others have used the metaphor of “mapping” thought, in which the cartographer’s role spans both historical and dogmatic tasks.17 While leaping over centuries, our narrative needs to be historically plausible, carefully engaging in historiographic contextualization and the reading of primary sources. But its goal is not solely historical understanding. Neither is the goal fully constructive; the map does not necessarily indicate the new way forward for all Christian theology to follow. The goal is to elucidate the relationship of present options in political theology. Such conceptual analysis will uncover thought patterns that often go unquestioned, even unnoticed. Accordingly, it will highlight key theological moves that are necessary in any Christian dogmatic approach to the relationship of church, culture, and civil order.18 Thus, although this theological mapping analyzes both historical thought and contemporary retrievals, it is not itself a direct or fullscale retrieval. James K. A. Smith writes that in theological cartography, “a focus on orientation can be the occasion for a reorientation, providing reasons for renavigation and pursuing previously untraveled paths.”19 This study begins to indicate a way forward for Christian political theology, but indirectly—by first surveying the ingrained routes of previous travelers in the theological decisions of law and 15. I should note here that my decision to focus on Luther, and not Calvin, is threefold. Luther first made popular the terminology of “two kingdoms” and is therefore the named original source. Moreover, Luther elicits clear connections to Augustine in ways that Calvin does not. Finally, my chief interest is in narrating a story of Christendom and modernity, and Luther stands on that edge in a particularly illuminating way. Calvin’s role in the grand narrative is still important, though just not as central a role as Luther and not in the scope of the telling I offer here. I have read though not expounded on Calvin, and my argument does address his role in a limited fashion in chapter 4, in a section evaluating VanDrunen’s historical account of the Reformed two kingdoms. 16. On “retrieval theology,” see W. David Buschart and Kent D. Eilers, Theology as Retrieval: Receiving the Past, Renewing the Church (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015). 17. In addition to Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, see Bruce L. McCormack and Kelly M. Kapic, eds., Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012); Brian K. Morley, Mapping Apologetics: Comparing Contemporary Approaches (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015); Robert C. Greer, Mapping Postmodernism: A Survey of Christian Options (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003); and Benjamin Valentin, Theological Cartographies: Mapping the Encounter with God, Humanity, and Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015). 18. In Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr construed the question more narrowly in terms of Christology and culture; this present study presents the question primarily from the angle of revelation and secondarily from ecclesiology—church, culture, and aspects of Christian moral knowledge. 19. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, 25 (italics mine).

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gospel; sources of revelation for public life; construals of Israel and the church; and conceptions of body and soul, present and future, and love and justice. This study, then, maps unexpected points of convergence among diverse confessional traditions regarding a modern perspective on political theology. Overview of the Argument With these proposals in place, I now turn to sketching the argument of this book. The mapping of two-kingdom and two-city proposals begins with rereading Luther (chapter 1). The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that Luther’s foundational duality involves body and soul, outward sociality and inward individuality. Through this lens, law and gospel each deal with the appropriate realm—law with sociality, the gospel with the heart—reflecting Luther’s biblical theology, especially regarding the relationship between old-covenant Israel and the newcovenant church. Luther prioritizes the church first, as an invisible relation to Christ, while also placing the visible church in the external kingdom dealing with law. Consequently, church and state can cooperate selectively in this outward realm. Thus, Luther’s thought belongs within Christendom, advocating an Erastian kind of Christendom, with the state leading the church. Beginning with Luther achieves not solely a historical objective but also a theological one: it allows a reading that names central categories of “twoness”—law and gospel, Israel and church, body and soul, faith and reason. Chapter 2 traces key alterations to Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine, especially the severance of natural law from biblical revelation, even more particularly in the administration of worship. With Luther, the church no longer participated in the divine regulation of natural law but was to be governed wholly by separate revelation. Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer belong to this legacy, though they resisted certain elements and introduced “dialectic” to keep two-kingdom thought from becoming static and disconnected. Both Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer include more tension in their original “two,” primarily an eschatological dichotomy between the present age and the age to come. Dialectic tension in their thinking allowed them to let the gospel influence society indirectly, though both also had even more positive assessments of secularity than Luther. Chapter 3 follows the influence of Niebuhr and Christian realism in twentieth-century Lutheran and Roman Catholic neoconservatism.

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INTRODUCTION

Robert Benne began a self-conscious retrieval of Luther’s two-kingdom thought in the second half of the twentieth century. His outline of a modern two-kingdom theology provides an ideal opportunity to compare Luther’s paradigm to modern Lutheran thought. Benne does not have an internal/external polarity, as Luther does, although he does maintain a strict law/gospel dichotomy. The result is the clear institutional separation of church and state with a strong division between natural law and biblical revelation. The chapter then follows Roman Catholic trajectories toward neoconservatism through John Courtney Murray and Richard John Neuhaus. Its conclusion demonstrates that two-kingdom thought is closely connected with the acceptance of modern liberalism. Chapter 4 identifies the other recent self-conscious attempt to revive a two-kingdom paradigm, from the Reformed camp. I outline the rise of the contemporary Reformed two-kingdom movement from Michael Horton to its fullest expression in the work of David VanDrunen. Though not indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr, as contemporary neoconservatism is, it was born from a desire to navigate American culture wars. The chapter traces its retelling of Reformed political thought in comparison with other traditions of “the two.” One important distinctive is the strict parallelism of current Reformed two-kingdom thought, with clear emphasis on the visible centrality of the church. Unlike some other movements, this paradigm involves overt biblical-theological concepts about law and gospel and the relationship of old-covenant Israel to the church, behind which stands the (often unacknowledged) work of Meredith Kline. Chapter 5 turns to Niebuhr’s legacy in introducing Augustine to modern liberal thought. “Augustinian liberals,” as they are called, represent a retrieval of Augustine’s political thought through modern lenses. The chapter narrates the importance (sometimes understated) of R. A. Markus’s reading of the “secular” in Augustine, demonstrating that contemporary Augustinian proposals still operate within that framework. Though Luther’s thought is criticized or neglected, deep similarities emerge between current Augustinian paradigms and Luther’s two-kingdom model. Chapter 6 substantiates the flip side of the argument in chapter 5 by reading Augustine as much more Christendom-oriented than contemporary readings often suggest. Accordingly, most recent Augustine advocates appear to be profoundly dissimilar to their namesake. By contrast, chapter 7 presents one modern figure who represents a

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bridge from Augustine to Luther while maintaining a kind of pro-Christendom stance, maintaining the possibility that the gospel can shape political order. This overall mapping exercise thus situates the theopolitical landscape and offers a narrative. The landscape is the theologian’s decision on how to delineate the dualities and tension at the heart of Christian faith, specifically issues of the movement of old covenant to new covenant, sources of revelation for Christian reflection, and law and gospel. These basic principles drive theological decisions on the “presentness” of God’s kingdom, an evaluation of civil government, and the purpose of the church. Bound closely to such doctrinal distinctions is the narrative that one tells of Christendom and modern liberalism, especially the emergence of Protestantism in that account. This present work follows one trail of those decisions with the hope that the journey gives clarity to other possible routes.

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1

Luther’s “Inward/Outward” Two Kingdoms

Luther’s thought stands at the fountainhead of the “two kingdoms” category. Although others preceded Luther in identifying duality at the heart of Christian public theology, Luther reshaped previous strands into his own formula. Luther himself made famous the “two kingdoms” (zwei Reiche) designation, though other “doctrines of the two” were available for use. Because Luther’s two-kingdom theology is often misunderstood and its influence increasingly neglected, this study starts with him, highlighting especially his central “two” and their ambiguous relation to “Christendom.” Background: Two Swords and the Medieval Synthesis Medieval theories of church and state generally involved the “two swords” model associated with Pope Gelasius I (ca. 494) and did not primarily employ language of two cities, two eras, or two kingdoms. The two swords represented two “powers” (potestates) in an institutional division between church and state, which bore two different means of authority for different purposes. The sword of the church was excommunication, wielded with spiritual authority by the clergy. The sword of the state was execution, wielded with coercive authority by civil magistrates. Though already in Gelasius the spiritual powers had “the greater responsibility,” with the royal power as “subordinate,” both still

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found their legitimation directly from God, having their own methods of use.1 An important shift arose on the other side of the investiture controversy via Pope Boniface VIII’s papal bull Unam sanctam (1302), which reshaped the two-swords doctrine in favor of ecclesiastical authority. Instead of conceiving of two independent swords coming directly from God, Boniface stated that the physical sword of coercive government was mediated through the church. Both swords, spiritual and temporal, were given to Christ and entrusted to the church. The church then delegated the temporal sword to the state: “Both are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword—the latter to be used for the Church, the former by the Church; the former by the hand of the priest, the latter by the hand of princes and kings, but at the nod and instance of the priest.”2 Thus, the state received its legitimation entirely from the church. Boniface’s argument did not go without challenges, but the twoswords concept itself went unchallenged. Both papal and royal thinkers appealed to a visible divide of office: priest and king. This divide mirrored ongoing philosophical debates over the reception of Aristotle and questions of nature and grace. The contention concerned the relationship within the duality—whether mediated and therefore hierarchical or immediate and therefore autonomous—but not the duality itself. Does humanity’s spiritual end dictate its natural end, and, likewise, does the spiritual sword govern the temporal sword? Or does nature exist as preparation for grace, and, likewise, is the temporal sword the underpinning for spiritual authority? The key concept in either formulation is the superadditum donum: an additional gift is required for exalting humanity to the state of beatific vision (even in original nature, regardless of sin). Righteousness is always a gift above and beyond nature. In the medieval scholastic synthesis, there are two ends for humanity in one realm. The Place of the Two Kingdoms in Luther’s Thought In this context, Luther inherited a “doctrine of the two.” Though Luther’s political theology has more affinities with Gelasius than with 1. Gelasius I, “Letter to Emperor Anastasius,” in From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, ed. Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 179, italics mine. 2. Boniface VIII, “Unam sanctam,” in Readings in the History of Christian Thought, ed. Robert L. Ferm (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964), 481, italics mine.

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Boniface, his thinking was not determined by either. Its creative development used some of the conceptual framework of the two swords but located the original duality elsewhere.3 Luther upended the late medieval synthesis on what constitutes the duality worth debating. Traditional scholarship has often seen Luther’s political thought as entirely pragmatic and ad hoc. In other words, Luther began as a theologian of justification, and only when pressed by social issues of the 1520s did he put together semicoherent (if that) political ideas.4 Even those who consider Luther a more systematic political theologian see him beginning with justification by faith alone and working out his civic theory only by implication.5 Recent scholarship argues against this, proposing that Luther’s doctrine of justification and his “public” theology—everything to do with the Christian’s life in the world—were worked out together.6 As William Wright writes, the doctrine of the two kingdoms was, for Luther, “a fundamental premise,” even more fundamental than justification by faith alone: “As a basic assumption, Luther presented all of his teachings within the context of these two kingdoms.”7 Wright even dares to call Luther’s teaching on the two kingdoms a “worldview”: “The concept represented Luther’s Reformation worldview or Weltanschauung. When it is understood as such, it proves to be essential for clarifying all of Luther’s views.”8 Characterization of Luther’s two kingdoms as a worldview underscores that political theology is a theological task, reflecting on the first principles of God’s revelation. The Christian relationship to cul3. For instance, Luther inherited the medieval distinction between conscience (forum internum) and external observance (forum externum), but his originality lay in tying law and gospel to those fora. For more on the medieval distinction, see Alexander Murray, Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 4. See, e.g., Hans-Joachim Gänssler, Evangelium und weltliches Schwert: Hintergrund, Entstehungsgeschichte, und Anlass von Luthers Scheidung weier Reiche oder Regimente (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1983). 5. Thus, even W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, though emphasizing the coherence of Luther’s political thought more than others, organizes his argument as a move from justification to the two kingdoms as a political doctrine (Political Thought of Martin Luther, 16–36). Arguing for Luther’s twokingdom thought as foundational does not necessitate a linear view of Luther’s theology as static, but means only that the two-kingdom concept was not on the periphery of this thought. 6. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 13–14: “From the start, he counted everything that concerned the body and mind as the concern of the letter or law, while the gospel concerned heavenly and spiritual things” (italics mine). 7. Ibid., 11. See also Heinrich Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen im Zusammenhang seiner Theologie,” in Reich Gottes und Welt: Die Lehre Luthers von den zwei Reichen, ed. Heinz Horst Schrey (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 188: “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen ist so vollständig mit seiner gesamten Theologie verwoben, daß man die Fäden nach allen Seiten hin verfolgen kann: zur Gottesanschauung, zur Lehre von der Schöpfung und Erhaltung der Welt, zur Christologie, Eschatologie, zum Kirchenbegriff, Vernunftbegriff, Rechtsbegriff usw.” 8. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 15.

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ture and political order has significance not merely for the present social context but for an outlook on all theology. Paradigms for the gospel and public life are “worldviews” that house diverse theological commitments; this realization should bolster the value in studying them. Certain aspects of scholarly debate on the origin of Luther’s twokingdoms doctrine, though fascinating, are not directly relevant to this project. For example, Wright argues that Luther worked out his unique paradigm in the context of Renaissance humanism and its epistemological skepticism. Such claims are for others to evaluate. What Wright adds here is a rationale for seeing coherence in Luther’s thought and giving the two-kingdoms idea its proper place—not as an ad hoc necessity in response to social disorder9 and not as merely a rationale for the relationship of the church to the state, but more basically as the place of the Christian in the world.10 Luther’s Unique Two-Kingdom Framework Luther’s initial rejection of the papal claim to both temporal and spiritual swords was not a new development. His rejection of Boniface’s two swords follows Marsilius of Padua, Ockham, and the Franciscans, returning to a more original Gelasian two-swords doctrine. Church and state receive two different swords directly from God, independent of one another. The unmediated reception of these powers, however, does not mean that they are to be exercised without any relation between them. The purpose is merely to deny ecclesiastical delegation of the temporal sword and hierarchical churchly direction of political governance. What distinguishes Luther from these others is not the appeal to a Gelasian unmediated duality of institutions but rather his integration of that duality with his own view: a foundational operative duality of visibility/invisibility, as well as a moral, predestinarian duality reminiscent of Augustine. Luther’s reflection on human life in the world is therefore so complex because it has not a single duality at work but actually three.11 In other words, Luther questioned whether the 9. In Luther’s own words, “There are two kingdoms, one the kingdom of God, the other the kingdom of the world. I have written this so often that I am surprised that there is anyone who does not know it or remember it” (LW 46:69). 10. Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen,” 175. 11. Ibid., 177, refers to Luther’s two-kingdom thought as “dreidimensional,” though I prefer to use the language of “dimensions” to refer to the realms only. In contrast to Luther, Bornkamm portrays Augustine’s two cities as “fast rein eindimensional” (179).

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two-swords (designating two powers) and the two-cities (two societies) doctrines expressed the fundamental duality in Scripture. He consented to those previous dualities, but only on the condition of his own: visibility and invisibility. Given Luther’s complex distinctions, it is important to begin by spelling out essential concepts. W. D. J. Cargill Thompson is perhaps most helpful on conceptual points, even in his admission that his terminological outline is more precise than anything Luther ever provided.12 Three dualities existed at the heart of Luther’s thought: two parallel dualities and one antithesis. This list moves both chronologically, as Luther conceived of these in human history, and logically, in terms of foundational importance. The First Duality: “Two Realms” The first duality is where Luther is most often misunderstood: at the beginning of creation, God created the world with two different realms (Reiche), or domains of existence, two realms within human existence corresponding to humanity’s two natures. There is a “spiritual realm” (das geistliche Reich) and an “earthly realm” (das weltliche Reich).13 What distinguishes these dual realms is primarily visibility and relationality.14 The spiritual realm involves the human person before God alone (coram Deo)—analogous to the soul or conscience, invisible to natural human sight. The earthly realm involves the human person in a net12. Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 40: “Luther’s use of language is extremely imprecise: the same words are frequently used very differently in different contexts, with the result that the same or similar words and phrases often have overlapping or contradictory meanings, which need to be clarified for the modern reader before we can embark on an analysis of his thought. For this looseness of vocabulary is one of the principal elements responsible for the confusion over the interpretation of his doctrine.” Yet, “at the risk of introducing a degree of precision which is perhaps somewhat alien to Luther’s own mode of thought, it is possible, for purposes of analysis, to draw a distinction . . . while remembering that the distinction is at best a conceptual one, and is not reflected with any degree of precision in Luther’s vocabulary” (42). What follows is reliant upon Cargill Thompson’s explanation of the different dualisms, though I have added where Luther is unique (the first dualism) and where he is closer to past dualities (Gelasius and Augustine). 13. “Temporal” (or “secular,” to use the Latin word) is probably not the best term to translate weltliche, though it is the most common. “Worldly” often has too negative a connotation, and moreover it is confusing, because Luther uses it sometimes in that negative sense. “Physical” probably gets more clearly at Luther’s sense. An important German synonym for Luther is äußerlich, “external.” The weltliche Reich is everything external. 14. Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen,” 175: “Es kommt darum alles darauf an, zu begreifen, daß es sich nicht um eine Zerreißung der Welt in zwei voneinander starr getrennte Gebiete handelt, sondern um perspektivische Zusammenhänge, um die gleiche Welt, nur von den zwei verschiedenen Blickpunkten.” Bornkamm objects to the use of “realm” to denote a competing space in reality that does not overlap with another—hence his use of “perspective” and “relationship.”

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work of relations and dependencies with other social creatures (coram homnibus or corum mundo)—analogous to the body, able to be seen in human perspective. All human persons exist in both domains simultaneously and always; all human actions take place with reference to both domains. The two realms are noncompetitive and creational, not foundationally dealing with salvation and damnation.15 Luther normally used the adjectives weltlich and geistlich to describe the complementary spheres of reality, and the noun Welt to denote the fallen condition of the world. He used not the scholastic pair of “nature” and “grace” but rather the descriptors “natural” and “spiritual,” a nonsalvific category. There is also a clear spatial connotation, involving two spheres distinct from one another—not “spatial” in the sense of two competing spaces on the same plane, but two “spaces” as in two dimensions that intersect within the one reality God created. The “heavens and the earth” are the one, twofold reality of the world. The Second Duality: “Two Rules” The second duality is Luther’s acceptance of a Gelasian two-swords theory, though even here Luther made innovations. The differentiation here overlaps with and depends on the first duality. Just as there are two realms (zwei Reiche) to human existence, with two different relationalities, so there are two ways that God has ordained for those relationships to operate—zwei Regimente. These are the two “governments” or “reigns” of God: spiritual (das geistliche Regiment) and earthly or physical (das weltliche Regiment).16 These correspond to the respective realms specified earlier. Spiritual government is exercised invisibly by God alone in direct relationship with the human soul or conscience through the word. Earthly government is God’s rule exercised visibly and indirectly through other human persons, targeted at the human body. Although earthly government is most associated with coercion and the sword after the fall, it seems clear that these do not belong to its essence.17 The threat of punishment exists in light of possible sin (the 15. Pace Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 43. Cargill Thompson states that “the spiritual order (‘das geistliche Reich’) is the order of salvation,” which, although true, is slightly misleading in describing the primary meaning of the spiritual and physical realms. 16. “Government” here is verbal, not carrying a more static meaning such as “state.” It focuses primarily on the act and less on the institution. A closely related word is Oberkeit (“authority”), as in the famous work Von weltlicher Oberkeit (Of Worldly Authority). 17. Again pace Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 41.

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warning of death regarding Eden’s forbidden fruit), but it is not exercised until the actualization of sin. Though this particular theme comes close to Gelasius’s two “swords” (instruments of rule or power), there are also important differences. Gelasius’s argument seems almost entirely visible and institutional, associating the spiritual sword of excommunication with the visible church, especially its clergy, and the physical sword with the state.18 The focus of the two-swords paradigm is the authority of each institution or office to govern in a particular way. Though Luther’s zwei Regimente certainly leads to that as well, it does much more work. The zwei Regimente duality is dynamic, emphasizing active ways in which God administrates creation. It concerns not only who wields authorized power but also the different kinds of power authorized. Another way of expressing the difference between Luther’s two governments and Gelasius’s two swords is that Luther sees God as the primary actor, the one ruling. In fact, in Luther’s account of “spiritual government” (geistliche Regiment), God alone is the actor. The visible church witnesses to God’s action in the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments, but, being external, the church as institution (not the communio sanctorum) governs only external affairs.19 The two powers (duae potentiae) of the Gelasian theory can be divided on a two-dimensional map, but Luther’s two realms (in which the “governments” operate) are like two different dimensions that have complete overlay. The Third Duality: “Two Peoples” The first two dualities, zwei Reiche (“two realms”) and zwei Regimente (“two rules”), are divine, instituted and directed by God. But Luther’s last duality is the divide resulting from sin: the redeemed (identified with God’s domain of salvation) and the lost (identified with Satan’s domain of damnation). This contrast is predestinarian and eschatological, the kingdom of God (Reiche Gottes or Reich Christi) versus the kingdom of Satan (Teufels Reich or Reich der Welt).20 In this conceptual category, Luther most often uses Welt in its fallen sense, to refer to peo18. Gelasius I, “Letter to Emperor Anastasius,” 179. Gelasius moves immediately from “authorities” directly to the office of priest and king. 19. Luther sometimes refers to temporal government as äußerliches Regiment, “external rule” (LW 45:111). 20. LW 45:88: “Here we must divide the children of Adam and all mankind into two classes, the first belonging to the kingdom of God [Reich Gottes], the second to the kingdom of the world [Reich der Welt].”

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ples characterized by sin and associated with the devil’s power. Highlighted here are two peoples, with corresponding allegiances to God and the devil. Cargill Thompson emphasizes that this third duality “cut[s] across the first two concepts,” because the divine dualities are complementary—spiritual and earthly are not at odds—whereas the eschatological contrast involves opposition, an antithesis. 21 Two-Kingdom Terminology The language of Luther’s two-kingdom framework is often quite slippery—both in the original and in English translation. Two German words (Reich and Regiment) and one Latin word (regnum) convey multiple, overlapping meanings. Reich and regnum are especially flexible: both can mean (1) a realm or domain (a spatial/dimensional connotation); (2) the activity (“rule” or “reign”) of a ruler; or (3) the people ruled. All three of Luther’s conceptual dualities can be expressed by these terms. English translations vary widely (with “kingdom” and “realm” being most common). Regiment is more specific, usually denoting the active “rule” or “government” of God as in the second duality. Luther could use Reich for the “two rules” (using the second definition of Reich), but he almost never uses Regiment to describe the first duality of realms. Occasionally, especially in earlier writings such as Temporal Authority, Regiment is closely associated with “people,” because Christians accept God’s spiritual rule and, qua Christians, do not need the external government of the sword (though they still experience God’s worldly administration through the “masks” of human provision of food and the like). Likewise, unbelievers do not accept God’s spiritual rule of the word and therefore need external rule to keep them in check.22 Heinrich Bornkamm describes the difference between the realms (Reiche) and the governments (Regimente) by stating that the realms are a domain of rule (“Herrschaftsberich”) and the governments are a manner of rule (“Herrschaftsweise”)—a distinction between sphere and method.23 21. Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 38–39. 22. LW 45:90–91: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world [Reich der Welt] and are under the law. There are few true believers and still fewer who live a Christian life. . . . For this reason God has provided for them a different government [Regiment] beyond the Christian estate and kingdom of God [Gottes Reich]. . . . For this reason God has ordained two governments [zwei Regimente]: the spiritual, by which the Holy Spirit produces Christians and righteous people under Christ; and the temporal, which restrains the un-Christian and wicked so that—no thanks to them—they are obliged to keep still and to maintain an outward peace.” 23. Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen,” 178.

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Luther could use Reich or Regiment to describe the third conceptual category. Here, Reich connotes a people and their identification with their ruling head—either God or Satan.24 Although in the second duality (“two rules”) all people—elect and nonelect—are ruled by God, in this third duality (“two kingdoms”) human persons are “ruled” in terms of their submissive response. So, the elect in faith obey the will of God, but the nonelect submit to the devil’s desires. The second duality (“two rules”) emphasizes the action of God’s ruling—either directly or indirectly—in a providential manner. But the third dualism (“two peoples”) emphasizes a people’s acceptance of rule. In a final linguistic complication, all three dualities together—two realms, two rules, two peoples—are equivocally referred to as Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine, primarily given that Reich can refer to all three dualities. Ironically, this language obscures the unique element in Luther’s thought, which is not the third dualism—the opposition between God and Satan (prominent though that is)—but the tworealms and two-governments distinction. This irony also underscores that Luther’s two-kingdom thought was not merely political. Indeed, one of the most fundamental mistakes in interpreting Luther is to identify the two kingdoms as the visible institutions of church and state or the offices of clergy and laity/king. The institutions of church and state map onto Luther’s distinction, which is as wide as creation itself. That clarification bolsters my wider claim, that a theology of church and state is subsumed under a wider account of what we might call “public order.” Luther’s Biblical Approach to the Two Kingdoms With Luther’s terminology established, it is important to substantiate key claims by hearing of Luther’s two kingdoms in his own voice. The task now is to present Luther’s two kingdoms as a kind of biblical theology—a difficult task, considering his wide-ranging writings, and a task unfulfilled in much Luther scholarship. This biblical theology presents Luther’s thought following the biblical story line, especially narrating the history of law and gospel, Israel and the church. Once the two-king24. Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 40. Although Cargill Thompson is right to note that Reich can mean “people,” he fails to see that Luther’s most basic meaning is “realm.” “Spiritual people” were designated “spiritual” for Luther because they are right with God in that relationality or perspective, not because Reich properly excludes people such that some exist solely in that realm. In other words, Luther’s use of Reich as “people” depended on his foundational concept of realm.

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dom doctrine appears in this light, we will examine its application to Luther’s view of public life, especially the church’s mission vis-à-vis social and political order. Prelapsarian Two Kingdoms Although the distinction between two realms and governments produces many dichotomies, most foundational is Luther’s distinction between the “internal” (invisible) and the “external” (visible), corresponding to spiritual and physical life. Although it is not the most obvious in Luther’s many expositions, this distinction stands behind the others. In particular, Luther points to this division as set forth from the beginning of the creation of “heaven” and “earth.” Corresponding to the twofold nature of humanity, body and soul, this distinction worked out in terms of the external/outer/physical and the internal/ inner/spiritual. In the garden, Adam was created with a “twofold life [duplicem vitam]: a physical one and an immortal one.”25 Like the animals, he had an external, bodily existence of “eating and drinking,” but beyond his carnal subsistence, God endowed him with a spiritual dimension that is a “better life than the physical.” Luther connects this spiritual capability with the imago Dei and the invisible church.26 The Edenic beginning of the two realms makes clear that Luther did not conceive of the two kingdoms strictly as the opposition of God to Satan or righteousness to sin. The original duality is not the result of sin; the two realms are more basic even than soteriology. Luther identifies the worldly kingdom in Genesis 1–2 with “eating, drinking, begetting, growing,” and the spiritual kingdom as “the quickening spirit” that God “breathed into man.”27 The two kingdoms are built into creation. The two governments, however, are slightly more ambiguous. Before the fall, God related to humanity in two different ways (the two governments), but these are not properly designated “law” and “gospel,” which are postlapsarian terms.28 Yet the existence of the 25. LW 1:57. 26. LW 1:56–57. See also LW 1:104: “But the church was established first because God wants to show by this sign, as it were, that man was created for another purpose than the rest of the living beings. Because the church is established by the Word of God, it is certain that man was created for an immortal and spiritual life, to which he would have been carried off or translated without death after living in Eden.” 27. LW 1:86. See also LW 1:65: “After this physical life was to come a spiritual life, in which he [Adam] would neither make use of physical food nor do the other things which are customary in this life but would live an angelic and spiritual life. As the future life is pictured to us in Holy Scripture, we shall not drink, eat, or carry on any other physical functions.”

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two realms shows that God would have related to human conscience through God’s word, to be believed by faith, and to the human body through external means, worked out by reason and prudence. Luther sees the creation mandate—dominion over the earth—as part of the “external” outworking of the worldly kingdom.29 Luther’s view of the prelapsarian state is also strongly egalitarian and idyllic. Contrary to much medieval scholastic interpretation, there was no original hierarchy between Adam and Eve or in either the physical or spiritual kingdoms.30 Not even over possible prelapsarian children would there have been “authority.”31 Likewise, original righteousness is defined in terms of both the physical and spiritual kingdoms: “If we follow Moses, we should take original righteousness to mean that man was righteous, truthful, and upright not only in body but especially in soul, that he knew God, that he obeyed God with the utmost joy, and that he understood the works of God even without prompting.”32 Here also, Luther outlines his view of the three estates (Stände) or orders (Ordnungen) of the physical, temporal kingdom: church (Kirche/ecclesia), state (Regiment/politia), and domestic life (Häuslichkeit/oeconomia), which includes marriage, family, and work. Only the church and the household are “natural orders,” deriving from creation itself.33 The state is an “emergency order,” instituted because of sin.34 For Luther, civil government was instituted with the Noahic allowance of the sword (Genesis 9), although he granted that the concept can be traced back to the warning of Cain.35 Notably, all three, 28. LW 1:106–10. Luther argued that although God’s command to Adam can be considered “law,” it is not the typical meaning of “law” encountered elsewhere in Scripture, with the specific connotation of condemnation. 29. LW 45:111: “There [Gen 1:26] only external dominion [äußerliches Regiment] is ascribed to man.” 30. LW 1:184–85. See also LW 1:115: “For the punishment, that she is now subjected to the man, was imposed on her after sin and because of sin.” 31. LW 1:102. 32. LW 1:113. 33. LW 1:103: “Here we have the establishment of the church before there was any government of the home and of the state; for Eve was not yet created [Gen 2:16–17]. Moreover, the church is established without walls and without any pomp, in a very spacious and very delightful place. After the church has been established, the household government is also set up, when Eve is added to Adam as his companion. . . . Moreover, there was no government of the state before sin, for there was no need of it. Civil government is a remedy required by our corrupted nature. It is necessary that lust be held in check by the bonds of laws and by penalties. For this reason you may correctly call civil government the rule of sin.” 34. One of Luther’s most repeated quotations of Augustine’s City of God is the famous line “What are empires but bands of robbers?” 35. LW 45:86. Also notable is that Luther sees Cain’s bloodshed as establishing a “false church” (Babylon), whereas Augustine more closely connects Cain’s bloodshed with the establishment of cities and political order (Babylon). See LW 1:252.

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inasmuch as they are visible organizations, belong to the worldly, temporal realm.36 Postlapsarian Two Kingdoms Though the two kingdoms existed from the beginning, sin complicated God’s original paradigm, introducing Satan’s opposition to God at all points. The two realms are no longer simply a feature of created reality but a battleground. Satan seeks to disrupt both body and soul, and God must preserve order for the body if God is to save the soul.37 God’s two governments, in particular, would require a much more complex approach. This complex postlapsarian condition is best described by the important dichotomy of “law” and “gospel.” Although the foundation of the two realms is the external/internal distinction, this law/gospel contrast is the most well known dichotomy in Luther’s thinking. Law and gospel are God’s “left hand” and “right hand”—God’s one-two punch, so to speak—in God’s fight against Satan. God institutes this approach immediately after Adam’s expulsion from the garden. At its simplest, Luther maintains the distinction between law and gospel as the difference between “command” and “promise,” between “doing” and “receiving”: From this it is sufficiently evident what the distinction is between the Law and the Gospel. The Law never brings the Holy Spirit; therefore it does not justify, because it only teaches what we ought to do. But the Gospel does bring the Holy Spirit, because it teaches what we ought to receive. Therefore the Law and the Gospel are two altogether contrary doctrines. . . . For the Law is a taskmaster; it demands that we work and that we give. In short, it wants to have something from us. The Gospel, on the contrary, does not demand; it grants freely; it commands us to hold out our hands and to receive what is being offered. Now demanding and granting, receiving and offering, are exact opposites and cannot exist together....... Therefore if the Gospel is a gift and offers a gift, it does not demand anything. On the other hand, the Law does not grant anything, it makes demands on us, and impossible ones at that.38 36. F. Edward Cranz, in An Essay on the Development of Luther’s Thought on Justice, Law, and Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 176, points out that “none of the three hierarchies is a ‘spiritual rule.’” Indeed, “Luther is classifying all three hierarchies as ‘worldly.’” Even “the preacher as such is a world-person, not a Christian person.” 37. LW 1:104. 38. LW 26:208–9, italics mine. For an early exposition (1520), see LW 31:348: “Here we must point out that the entire Scripture of God is divided into two parts: commandments and promises.”

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With the law, terms such as “works,” “letter,” and “reason” are bundled together. The gospel gets worked out as “grace,” “Spirit,” “faith,” and “forgiveness.” Although Luther notes some traces of the law/ gospel distinction in pre-fall Eden, it is formally a postfall reality. Since the fall, law and gospel are not primarily complementary, as in the visible/invisible distinction, but now antithetical. The gospel is necessary only where there is need of redemption, and in the context of salvation, the law moves beyond simply “command” to “condemnation.” It is an obligation with a condition attached, particularly a threat.39 “Do this and live” is Luther’s repeated point, with the implication “Don’t do this and die.” The gospel announces something already done.40 Law and gospel are God’s two governments after the fall, mapping onto the two realms in their fallen condition. The gospel is found only in the spiritual realm, although it has implications indirectly in the physical realm. But the law has a “double use” that can be plotted on both the spiritual and physical realms.41 The “theological” or “spiritual” use of the law, its operation as God’s accusation of the human heart for sin, is paradoxically its “true function” and “chief and proper use,” as well as its “strange work.”42 It is “proper” because it leads to the gospel, God’s true and chief work, but “strange” because the law’s rightful domain is the governance of outward relation. This spiritual use is directed primarily at non-Christians, driving them to despair of their own righteousness and flee to the grace of Christ. For Christians, the law should have no permanent place in the spiritual kingdom, but given that even Christians are simul iustus et peccator, God allows the law in temporarily to humble them of spiritual pride.43 In the spiritual kingdom, law and gospel act dialectically, for the law always gives way to the gospel. When the gospel is not believed as fully as it should be, the law comes in to drive the believer back to the gospel. In the worldly, external kingdom, there is no dialectic. The purpose 39. LW 1:110. 40. LW 35:162: “For God speaks through the law, saying, ‘Do this, avoid that, this is what I expect of you.’ The gospel, however, does not preach what we are to do or to avoid. It sets up no requirements. . . . For the gospel teaches exclusively what has been given to us by God, and not—as in the case of the law—what we are to do and give to God.” 41. LW 26:308. 42. LW 26:309. Gustav Wingren, Luther on Vocation, trans. Carl Rasmussen (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1957), 61: “In this way, according to Luther, the law is God’s ‘strange’ work, which holds the gospel in prospect; and the gospel is God’s ‘proper’ work (opus proprium), his ‘own’ work.” 43. Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 59: “As has been said several times, the law or works have no role to fill in conscience or before God. It was pointed out in this section that desperation and doubt arise when the law intrudes into conscience; that God wills this, because he wills the crucifixion of the old man.”

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of the law there is its “political”44 or “civil”45 use, restraining sin and social disorder. It does not give way to the gospel as it does in the conscience of the believer.46 Rather, in the external realm it has a twofold relation to the gospel. Negatively, it is “to prevent the course of the Gospel from being hindered by the tumults and seditions of wild men.”47 More positively, “the Law is a minister and a preparation for grace,”48 though that preparation is entirely negative. It is not the praeparatio ad gratiam of medieval scholastics, in which the law guides a person from natural to spiritual virtue. For Luther, civil law, especially with its corresponding punishment, provides a temporal analogy for God’s eternal wrath upon lawbreaking and might therefore drive a sinner to spiritual repentance. Because God governs the inward spiritual kingdom primarily by the word of the gospel, and the external kingdom only by the law, Luther often referred to each realm by “law” and “gospel.” It is important to remember, however, that the law is the more complicated of the two.49 It operates in both, though differently. But because the spiritual use of the law gives way to the gospel, Luther often spoke of the gospel as “heavenly” and the law as “earthly”: The way to distinguish the one from the other is to locate the Gospel in heaven and the Law on earth, to call the righteousness of the Gospel heavenly and divine and the righteousness of the Law earthly and human, and to distinguish as sharply between the righteousness of the Gospel and that of the Law as God distinguishes between heaven and earth or between light and darkness or between day and night. Let the one be like the light and the day, and the other like the darkness and the night. If we could only put an even greater distance between them! Therefore if the issue is faith, heavenly righteousness, or conscience, let us leave the Law out of consideration altogether and let it remain on the earth. But if the issue is works, then let us light the lamp of works and of the righteousness of the Law in the night. So let the sun and the immense light of the Gospel and of grace shine in the day, and let the lamp of the law shine in the night. These two must be distinguished in your mind in such a way that when 44. LW 26:343. 45. LW 26:309. 46. Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 61: “The function of the law is thus twofold, civil and spiritual. The first is the ordinary function of the law (on earth, ruling the body), while the second is the entry of the law into an area other than its own (before God, in the conscience). Peculiarly enough it is the second which is the law’s ‘right’ and ‘proper’ task.” 47. LW 26:309. 48. LW 26:314. 49. Thomas McDonough, The Law and the Gospel in Luther: A Study of Martin Luther’s Confessional Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 144–45.

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your conscience is completely terrified by a sense of sin, you will think of yourself: “At the moment you are busy on earth. Here let the ass work, let him serve and carry the burden that has been laid upon him; that is, let the body and its members be subject to the Law. But when you ascend into heaven, leave the ass with his burdens on earth; for the conscience has no relation to the Law or to works or to earthly righteousness. Thus the ass remains in the valley; but the conscience ascends the mountain with Isaac, knowing absolutely nothing about the Law or its works but looking only to the forgiveness of sins and the pure righteousness offered and given in Christ.” In society, on the other hand, obedience to the Law must be strictly required. There let nothing be known about the Gospel, conscience, grace, the forgiveness of sin, heavenly righteousness, or Christ Himself; but let there be knowledge only of Moses, of the Law and its works. When these two topics, the Law and the Gospel, are separated this way, both will remain within their limits. The Law will remain outside heaven, that is, outside the heart and the conscience; and, on the other hand, the freedom of the Gospel will remain outside the earth, that is, outside the body and its members. And just as soon as the Law and sin come into heaven, that is, into the conscience, they should be promptly ejected. For then the conscience should know nothing about the Law and sin but should know only about Christ. On the other hand, when grace and freedom come into the earth, that is, into the body, you must say: “You have no business here among the dirt and filth of this physical life. You belong in heaven!” 50

Luther was especially emphatic on the law’s strictness in the social realm because of perceived abuses during the Peasants’ Revolt. In the context of the two kingdoms, Luther so often refers to the law’s political use that it became synonymous with the sword, that which enforces the command or threat. Because the gospel has no demands, nothing enforces it; sacraments signify grace freely given. The differing content of law and gospel is also important. The content of the gospel is, most simply, the promise of eternal life as a freely offered gift. More specifically, it is “a proclamation about Christ: that He forgives sins, grants grace, justifies, and saves sinners. Although there are commandments in the Gospel, they are not the Gospel; they are expositions of the Law and appendices to the Gospel.”51 Technically, even the command to “believe” the gospel is not properly part of the gospel itself but is law, for, in its fallen nature, humanity cannot 50. LW 26:115–16. 51. LW 26:150.

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will to believe, and so the call comes as despair.52 The regenerating power of the Spirit makes the call to believe an entrance to the free gift of the gospel. Two Kingdoms and Old and New Covenants After the fall, God instituted law and gospel as God’s method of preservation and redemption. For preservation, Luther saw the political use of the law instituted most clearly in the allowance of capital punishment given to Noah (Genesis 9).53 The later institution of the “Mosaic order” was a unique, provisional work of God in combining political and spiritual uses of the law, as well as a temporary conflation of the two realms. Luther used such words as “mixed,” “middle,” and “mingled” to describe Israel’s condition under the law of Moses: These are two kingdoms: the temporal, which governs with the sword and is visible; and the spiritual, which governs solely with grace and with the forgiveness of sin. Between these two kingdoms still another has been placed in the middle, half spiritual and half temporal. It is constituted by the Jews, with commandments and outward ceremonies which prescribe their conduct toward God and men.54 And from now to the end of the world these two realms are not to be confused, as was done in the Jewish nation during the period of the Old Testament. Henceforth they are to remain distinct and separate from each other, if the pure Gospel and the true faith are to be preserved. 55

This special arrangement was enacted because “the world was now full and sunk in blindness so that men scarcely knew any longer what sin was or where death came from.”56 By calling for this strange mixture of the kingdoms, God was to “reveal sin anew” through both the political and spiritual uses of the law.57 It was a time of heightened discipline; the Mosaic law was given “because [God] wanted thereby to compel,

52. Hans-Martin Barth, The Theology of Martin Luther: A Critical Assessment (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 152: “In fact, the Gospel should not even come to stand for something that one ‘must’ or ‘should’ believe—because then it has become law!” 53. LW 1:103–4. 54. LW 35:164. 55. LW 22:225. Luther saw the Roman papacy as a return to the Jewish arrangement in how “they merge the spiritual and the secular realms” (LW 22:227). 56. LW 35:237. 57. LW 35:237.

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burden, and press the Jews”58 and to expose their need for another way of life—namely, faith.59 Luther thus saw the situation of Israel as an example of sin’s dominion in the world—a reign of law, not gospel.60 Israel under the law was characterized primarily by externality and outward order, by “crude external observance.”61 Because it dealt with law, which is “earthly,” “the Old Testament . . . was a promise—not of remission of sins or of eternal things, but of temporal things, namely of the land of Canaan; no man was thereby renewed in his spirit to lay hold of the heavenly inheritance.”62 Scholars are quick to note that by “law” Luther did not mean the entire Old Testament. Yet Luther also explained clearly that the “gospel” principle was quite infrequent in the Old Testament: Know, then, that the Old Testament is a book of laws, which teaches what men are to do and not to do—and in addition gives examples and stories of how these laws are kept or broken—just as the New Testament is gospel or a book of grace. . . . Now in the New Testament there are also given, along with the teaching about grace, many other teachings that are laws and commandments for the control of the flesh—since in this life the Spirit is not perfected and grace alone cannot rule. . . . Nevertheless just as the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ, so the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of law, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good. You should expect this in the Old Testament.63

Confusingly, Luther sometimes distinguishes between the canonical Old Testament and what we call today the “covenant” with Israel, or “Old Testament.” The canonical book contains both law and gospel—as 58. LW 35:163. 59. LW 26:289. 60. LW 9:63: “There is this difference between the two: the New Testament is founded wholly on the promise of the merciful and faithful God without our works; but the Old Testament is founded also on our works.” 61. LW 35:166. 62. LW 36:40. 63. LW 35:236–37. See also LW 31:348–49: “Here we must point out that the entire Scripture of God is divided into two parts: commandments and promises. Although the commandments teach things that are good, the things taught are not done as soon as they are taught, for the commandments show us what we ought to do but do not give us the power to do it. They are intended to teach man to know himself, that through them he may recognize his inability to do good and may despair of his own ability. That is why they are called the Old Testament and constitute the Old Testament....... Thus the promises of God give what the commandments of God demand and fulfill what the law prescribes so that all things may be God’s alone, both the commandments and the fulfilling of the commandments. He alone commands, he alone fulfills. Therefore the promises of God belong to the New Testament. Indeed, they are the New Testament.”

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all biblical books contain both—but the covenant can be equated with “law” and “works.”64 Yet, given that the Old Testament books are mostly law, Luther generally equates the two.65 Luther argues that exactly this conflation of externality with salvation was abrogated in Christ in the new covenant: Furthermore, in the Old Testament God carried on a twofold government: external and internal. He determined to rule the people Himself, both inwardly and outwardly—inwardly in their hearts and outwardly in their bodies and their property. This explains why He gave them so many kinds of laws mingled together. . . . Now, however, God reigns only spiritually in us through Christ. He executes the physical and external rule through the civil government. Therefore the external rule was abrogated when Christ came. Now God no longer assigns external persons, times, and places; but He governs us spiritually by means of the Word, so that we are lords over everything external and are not bound to anything physical. . . . Thus all that is not external in the Old Testament still stands. 66

Because the free grace of the gospel is more clearly seen in the New Testament,67 Luther saw the movement of old covenant to new covenant as a “transfer” of external to internal: The prophet begins to deal with the transfer (translationem) of the kingdoms (regni) which was achieved not only from people to people, but from substance to substance. The kingdom of the Jews was physical, established with government (politia) and ceremonies. This indeed was changed. The kingdom of the church, however, is only spiritual. Hence there is a difference between a kingdom of faith and an external kingdom, not according to the matter but according to appearance. . . . For the kingdom of Christ does not have its place in the senses.68 64. See Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, ed. Victor Gruhn, trans. Eric Gritsch and Ruth Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 83. Bornkamm quotes Luther in a sermon saying, “But because there are a heap of promises in the New Testament and a heap of commandments in the Old, we call one the gospel book and the other the law book.” See also LW 22:224, where Luther equates the old covenant with “the secular realm,” and the new covenant with “the spiritual realm.” When Jesus drove the money lenders out of the temple (John 2), he “did not act as a servant of the New Testament but of the Old, and as a disciple of Moses” (22:225). 65. Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 86. See LW 35:358: “Just as the Old Testament is a book in which are written God’s laws and commandments, together with the history of those who kept and of those who did not keep them, so the New Testament is a book in which are written the gospel and the promises of God, together with the history of those who believe and of those who do not believe them.” Notice the contrast between the “keeping” of the Old Testament and the “believing” of the New Testament. 66. LW 30:20–21. 67. LW 30:19. 68. LW 17:386–87. Luther went on to say, “We live under the government in our outward life, which is like a poor skin. . . . Even though we should feel sin, death, and the Law, the kingdom of Christ is

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In particular, Luther contrasts the “externality” of the old covenant with the “internality” of the new covenant. “Here he [God] casts down the outward and bodily priesthood, which had existed before in the Old Testament, as well as the outward church—all this he casts away.”69 This contrast of the testaments parallels the contrast of the visible (“outward”) and invisible (“inward”) church: whereas the old covenant mixed inner salvation with outward administration, the salvific focus of the new covenant is on the invisible dimension.70 Luther did not see a new ceremonial or civil law reinstituted in the new covenant. Though certainly he was concerned to reform outward expressions of worship, he did not see these pertaining to “law” in the New Testament. They are much more akin to an accommodated “human law,” applications of natural law directed by reason and prudence in conjunction with general biblical principles.71 The moral law of Scripture is simply a written version of natural law. All law, for Luther, involves moral obligation, whereas the gospel does not obligate at all. Luther on the Church and Its Mission For Luther, the church—as the spiritual communio sanctorum, the unseen mystical bond—has always existed. This is most clearly seen in the founding of the church at Adam’s creation. Before God created Eve as Adam’s partner, the church existed because Adam was created with a spiritual nature related directly to God.72 God even established the signs of the church, the preaching of the word (God’s command to Adam), and the sacraments (the offer of the tree of life). Although these signs are outward forms corresponding to the external realm, Luther emphasizes the simplicity of the church as the communion of the soul there nevertheless, but the treasure is hidden in this outward life. Externally the Christian life is a sack and a skin, and the internal treasure must not be evaluated on that basis. Our outward life is like a wretched sack which has beautiful gold inside it” (LW 17:387–88). 69. Martin Luther, quoted in Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 216. 70. Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 217–18. There is also underlying unity between the two covenants, though: the Old Testament had an invisible element, and the New Testament does speak of a visible element. 71. Luther actually referred to certain biblical laws as “human law.” See Johannes Heckel, Lex Charitatis: A Juristic Disquisition on Law in the Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Gottfried Krodel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 57, and Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 29. Luther criticized Levitical laws as overly nitpicky: “For Moses not only teaches fear, love, and trust toward God, but he also provides so many ways of outward worship—sacrifices, thanksgivings, fasts, mortifications, and the like—that no one needs to choose anything else. . . . He goes so far that some of the prescriptions are to be regarded as foolish and useless” (LW 35:239). 72. LW 1:103–6. Note that the church is spiritual in its relation to God but earthly in its visible relationships with other humans.

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directly with God: “But it is useful to note also that God gave Adam Word, worship, and religion in its barest, purest, and simplest form, in where there was nothing laborious, nothing elaborate.” 73 Luther goes on to say that this condition of the church is partially what Christ restored when he abrogated the more elaborate outward mixture of the cultic church of the Old Testament. But because of “the weakness of our flesh,” God kept some external forms, which will fall away in the eschaton.74 Under the old covenant, the external, institutional nature of the church was emphasized, but with the full realization of the gospel, the focus is on the spirit of the church. 75 It is essential to grasp that, for Luther, the invisible church, as communio sanctorum, is primary, with all other aspects being derivative.76 The essence of the church is “not a physical assembly, but an assembly of hearts in one faith,” the mystical relation of each believer to Christ by the Spirit.77 It is a “creature of the word,” the church’s defining substance: “Where the Word is, there is the church.”78 This definition is the meaning of the church in its “proper sense,” as vera ecclesia (“true church”).79 Accordingly, Luther “entertained considerable reserve” over the term “church,” preferring “fellowship” to a more organizational sense.80 This account maps onto Luther’s two-kingdom worldview with the distinctions of internal gospel and external law. Because the word is spiritual, the fundamental nature of the church is invisible, hidden, and discernable only by faith.81 Luther often returned to this idea of the “hidden church,” overlapping, though not entirely, the invisible 73. LW 1:106. 74. LW 1:106: “After this wretched life, however, when we join the choirs of the angels, then we shall offer this worship in a holier and purer form.” 75. Herman Amberg Preus, The Communion of Saints: A Study of the Origin and Development of Luther’s Doctrine of the Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1948), 81. Preus quotes Luther as saying, “Therefore, all those who make the Christian communion a material and outward thing, like other communities, are in reality Jews, for the Jews likewise wait for the Messiah to establish an external kingdom.” The Papists “thus sacrifice the faith, which alone makes the kingdom of Christ a thing spiritual and of the heart.” 76. Preus, The Communion of Saints, 79. 77. LW 39:65. 78. Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 257. 79. Barth, Theology of Martin Luther, 281: “The true church is in no way identical with the institution and organization of the church and its members. The distinction between the ‘church in the proper sense’ and the church as a social entity preserves the concrete, visible church against overestimation of itself and enables self-distancing and self-critique.” 80. Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 279. 81. LW 33:89. Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology, 278, describes Luther as sometimes speaking of “two churches,” one external and the other internal, as if they were two separate realities.

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church.82 This concept of hiddenness grounds Luther’s exposition of the church foundationally in the inward, spiritual kingdom. Thus, Luther’s thought on the spiritual foundation of the church makes it difficult to plot in contrast to worldly institutions; Luther’s questions were not about the church as an institution compared with other institutions.83 It is no wonder that Luther’s focus on the inward heart of the church provoked his papal interlocutors to accuse him of describing a Platonic ideal.84 But this concept of hiddenness is only one perspective on the church as it exists in the context of the two kingdoms. As is seen in Luther’s earlier exposition of Genesis, the church is actually rooted in pre-fall creation and, as such, is part of the outer, temporal kingdom. Yet, although the visible church’s externality is rooted in the original creation order, Luther also saw the increased focus on its outward forms to be under the old covenant as a result of sin, unbelief, and hardheartedness.85 In the coming of Christ in the new covenant, much of that outward focus is removed, though not entirely. The church has not yet been perfected; thus, its external features, though thoroughly stripped and simplified from the old covenant, remain until the eschaton. Therefore, partly because of humanity’s creatureliness and partly because of its fallenness, God uses external forms to communicate spiritual benefits in the church. This two-kingdom paradigm explains Luther’s seemingly contradictory statements about the church. On the one hand, the church is one of the three estates of the temporal, worldly kingdom, from the beginning of creation.86 On the other hand, of the three estates, only the church is upheld by the specific, saving word of the gospel. Law and gospel cut straight through the church, mapping onto the visible/ worldly and invisible/spiritual divide as well. The gospel sustains the spiritual life of the church, but, as Luther reiterated throughout his career, the gospel does not pertain to externality; it does not “establish any distinct external order among Christians.”87 The outward forms 82. John Tonkin, The Church and the Secular Order in Reformation Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 69–70. 83. Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen,” 174. 84. LW 39:218: “Since I had called the Christian church a ‘spiritual assembly,’ you mocked me as though I wanted to build a church just as Plato built a city which is nowhere.” Luther earlier said that the church is “a spiritual and not a physical assembly. For what is believed is neither physical nor visible. All of us see the external Roman church. That is why it cannot be the true church” (LW 39:75). 85. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 124–26. 86. Barth, Theology of Martin Luther, 328, comments that few scholars have treated Luther’s doctrine of the church in relation to both the two-kingdom doctrine and the three estates.

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are therefore applications of law through human reason.88 A concrete example fleshes this out. In the gospel the church is characterized by pure equality in Christ; yet this equality remains an inward, invisible reality. For stability in the world, the church must have a “hierarchy” of stations to maintain outward order—though Luther does not, of course, equate that hierarchy with levels of superiority or inferiority, only of office.89 The two-kingdom doctrine explains why Luther fought so viciously on the exact formula of justification but was comparatively dispassionate about visible structures of the church. The church must be nourished spiritually by the gospel, but outward arrangements could be directed by practical applications of natural law, just as with the other estates. Hence, Luther allowed civil rulers to reform the external organization of the church, though only according to their capacity as Christians, as members of the church and not as civil rulers. Luther’s two kingdoms also explain the question of the church and “legal jurisdiction.” Throughout his career, Luther repeated his conviction that the church has no “jurisdiction” as such, contra Roman canon-law teaching. His extensive belief about Christian liberty of conscience left considerable space for adiaphora (“things indifferent”).90 Yet, parallel to the dialectic of law and gospel in the believer’s conscience,91 Luther allowed the church, as a visible and temporal estate, to have laws existing “below the level of conscience,” especially because the Christian remains simul iustus et peccator.92 Although the church witnesses to the spiritual reign of Christ, because of its externality it must be organized by human reason and expediency. One of the best ways to approach Luther’s theology of the church in the two kingdoms is via the preaching of the word and especially the sacraments. The sacraments image the working of God’s two governments in the two realms.93 Externally, the sacraments nourish the 87. LW 45:88. 88. Barth, Theology of Martin Luther, 328: “When he asserts that ‘these divine stations continue and remain throughout all kingdoms, as wide as the world and to the end of the world,’ he cannot mean ‘church’ in the proper sense, but only a social form of religion belonging to it as a reality in society. Luther apparently can regard this structure of church as founded in natural law.” 89. See LW 46:39. Paul’s statement that there is “neither slave nor free but all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) is interpreted regarding the spiritual kingdom—“in Christ the lord and the servant are equal.” But in the temporal kingdom, there have to be hierarchies of estate to have order. 90. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 40: “The true church is not a lawmaking institution.” 91. Michael S. Whiting, Luther in English: The Influence of His Theology of Law and Gospel on Early English Evangelicals (1525–35) (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 139. 92. Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 60.

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body, providing an external sign and a physical reminder. But through the sacraments the Spirit works immediately by the word in the human heart. This explains why Luther said that the church has no authoritative jurisdiction. Pastors bind the conscience not through human laws but only in their agreement with the word, which by the Spirit does all the work in the soul.94 However, because this present time is not yet eternal glory, outward forms, including commands, must give directed form to the body. Although the church, as a visible institution, exists alongside other temporal orders—household and state—only the church acts as an authorized vessel for the gospel.95 Hence, Luther believed that the church should no longer speak on civil affairs, as the papacy did, but should be limited to “faith and morals”: “Spiritual authorities should rule over matters which are spiritual. . . . But spiritual matters are not money or material things; they are faith and good works.”96 Moreover, the church is not to give advice to government: “Let the preacher keep his hands off the secular government, lest he create disorder and confusion! . . . And again, it is wrong for a pastor to say: ‘Listen, government or judge, I want you to administer justice as I wish!’ But I must say: ‘You have your own powers, laws, practice, and usage; therefore do not administer justice according to my opinion, will, or books but according to your own laws.’”97 Because the true church should be characterized primarily by its spiritual nature and by the gospel, Luther believed it should rely solely on Scripture for encouraging the soul. The other temporal orders—household and state—had no dialectic of law and gospel, and therefore relied solely on human reason from natural law.98 The gospel itself is not a suitable guide for ordering the public life of any of the three estates of the external kingdom: For this reason nothing is taught in the Gospel about how it [the temporal realm] is to be maintained and regulated. . . . Therefore whoever wants to learn and become wise in secular government, let him read the heathen books and writings. . . . Just as the spiritual and holy prophets and kings taught and directed the people about how to come to the eternal kingdom of God and to remain in it, so these secular, heathen, godless prophets and 93. Thomas A. Brady Jr., “Luther and Society: Two Kingdoms or Three Estates? Tradition and Experience in Luther’s Social Teaching,” Lutherjahrbuch 52 (1985): 206: “The sacraments forge a connection between churches in both kingdoms.” 94. Paul D. L. Avis, Church in the Theology of the Reformers (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 81–90. 95. Tonkin, Church and the Secular Order, 69, 74. 96. LW 44:160. 97. LW 22:225–26. 98. Tonkin, Church and the Secular Order, 57.

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kings taught and directed the people about how to preserve the secular kingdom. . . . The heathen, for their part, have their heathen books; we Christians, for our part, have the books of the Holy Scriptures. The former teach virtue, laws, and wisdom with respect to temporal goods, honor, and peace on earth; the latter teach faith and good works with respect to eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.99

Inasmuch as the church is external, its mission is to preserve outward order for the freedom of the gospel. But that preservation operates only as it witnesses to Christ’s spiritual government in the hearts of believers. Luther on Christian Vocation in Public Because of Luther’s highly differentiated way of looking at the church, he primarily described Christian engagement with the world through the vocation of individual Christians.100 Though much could be said about Luther’s exceedingly original doctrine of vocation (Beruf), the emphasis here is on the Christian manner of participating in public life. Its best entry point is Luther’s exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, especially relevant as a set of sermons to the laity and not merely academic lectures to theology students. Luther opens his preface by stating that his interpretation of Christ’s teaching must avoid two false construals.101 On the one hand, the Scholastics (the “jurists”) make the Beatitudes into “counsels of perfection” for those seeking to attain a higher level of piety than normal Christians. Such optional practices are applicable only for a select group of Christians seeking greater spiritual life. On the other hand, the Anabaptists (the “fanatics” and “schismatics”) rightly see these words as commands for all Christians but falsely apply them to life in the public, external realm. Luther sees his job as “open[ing] up the true meaning of God’s commandments” and clarifying this text’s centrality for the two-kingdom paradigm, life lived from the vantage point of two different perspectives.102 99. LW 13:198–99. 100. LW 21:106: “He [Christ] is not tampering with the responsibility and authority of the government, but He is teaching His individual Christians how to live personally, apart from their official position and authority” (italics mine). 101. LW 21:5: “Thus the devil blows and brews on both sides so that they do not recognize any difference between the secular and the divine realm, much less what should be the distinctive doctrine and action in each realm. Thank God, we can boast that in these sermons we have clearly and diligently shown and emphasized this.” 102. LW 21:3.

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Luther is clear from the start that the Sermon on the Mount is not concerned with justification; in its imperatives, there is not “gospel” but “law.”103 But Luther also wants to avoid a common portrayal of Christ as a new Moses, a second lawgiver for salvation in the new covenant. Jesus is not giving a second law to bind the consciences of Christians but is “clarifying” and “commending” the highest aims of the Mosaic law and the natural law, which is summed up in the Golden Rule.104 The Sermon on the Mount therefore has several purposes. First, in its theological role in the conscience, it reveals the highest demands of the law, causing believers (and, only indirectly, nonbelievers)105 to despair of their “good” works and turn to the gospel-promise. 106 But, second, because the sermon is directed only to Christians, Luther is then adamant that this law cannot be meant for “political” or “civil” use, because Christians should have no need for political law. Rather, Jesus’s commands are divine moral law, not accommodated to corrupt human nature like the Old Testament laws.107 Thus, these commands come closest to what would later be called the “third use” of the law, though Luther never uses that term.108 The descriptions of the Sermon on the Mount picture the believer’s life in terms of works, but they are works fulfilled only in the heart of faith.109 For faith alone does what the law requires “naturally” and “spontaneously,” without need of a command.110 Still, being simul iustus et peccator, a Christian can receive the law as a way to combat the works of the flesh, while the Spirit oper103. LW 21:67: “As I have said, He does not discuss the great chief doctrine of faith here. Instead, He begins from the bottom by clarifying and commending the Law.” 104. LW 21:67–73. 105. LW 21:93: “The non-Christians are no concern of ours, since they must be governed, not with the Gospel, but with compulsion and punishment.” 106. William Lazareth, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible, and Social Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 163. 107. Heckel, Lex Charitatis, 85–88. 108. Whiting, Luther in English, 18, 31. 109. LW 45:96: “In this way the two propositions [“do not resist an evil person” and “turn the cheek”] are brought into harmony with one another: at one and the same time you satisfy God’s kingdom inwardly and the kingdom of the world outwardly. You suffer evil and injustice, and yet at the same time you punish evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time, you do resist it” (italics mine). 110. Luther often used the adverbs “naturally” and “spontaneously” to describe how faith in the gospel fulfilled the law’s demands. Commenting on the Sermon on the Mount in LW 45:89, he appealed to Jesus’s words that “a good tree bears good fruit”: “A good tree needs no instruction or law to bear good fruit; its nature causes it to bear according to its kind without any law or instruction. I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples, and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand. Just so, by the Spirit and by faith all Christians are so thoroughly disposed and conditioned in their very nature that they do right and keep the law better than anyone can teach them with all manners of statutes; so far as they themselves are concerned, no statutes or laws are needed.”

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ates above the command by faith in Christ, who has already fulfilled it for the believer.111 The law does not bind the conscience, but neither is it a counsel of perfection for a select few. This law describes the obligations of an outward life that is fulfilled only by the inner life of faith.112 This dialectic maneuvers Luther between the Scholastics and the Anabaptists. Thus, the Sermon on the Mount does not properly belong to the new covenant and to Christ as Redeemer.113 Vocation in the world, shaping much of Luther’s discussion, takes place under law.114 Yet, for Christians, it is not law in its condemnatory sense but law that obliges people to their neighbor.115 Spiritually, in their consciences, Christians are obliged to no one (“free lord”) but Christ; externally, in their bodies, Christians are obliged to their neighbor (“priestly servant”). 116 Besides obligation, Luther works this out in terms of “private” and “public,” Christ and the world, many times: “I have often said that we must sharply distinguish between these two, the office and the person. The man who is called Hans or Martin is a man quite different from the one who is called elector or doctor or preacher. Here we have two different persons in one man.”117 Contrary to what some scholars have argued, Luther did not invent the public/private distinction later in life, after he encountered certain social problems.118 It was present as early as 1519 in his sermon “Two Kinds of Righteousness.” There, in a question as to whether it is ever permissible for Christians to punish sin, he answered, “A single solu111. Whiting, Luther in English, 33–35. 112. See LW 35:370: “Faith, however, is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us to be born anew of God, John 1[:12–13]. It kills the old Adam and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers; and it brings with it the Holy Spirit. O it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them” (italics mine). 113. Luther often said that the life of Christ is “between the covenants” and that Christ acts in Moses’s stead. 114. Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 7; and Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 132, 148. 115. Luther said that the “doctrine of faith and promises” (i.e., the gospel) “[is] not mentioned here.” Rather, the Sermon on the Mount is about the second table of the law (see further LW 21:240). 116. LW 31:344: “A Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” After these famous opening lines, Luther went on to distinguish between the “inner man” and the “outer man.” For Luther, “It will not harm the soul if the body is clothed in secular dress” (italics mine). 117. LW 21:23. See also LW 21:171: “Thus every human being on earth has two persons: one person for himself, with obligations to no one except to God; and in addition a secular person, according to which he has obligations to other people. In this life we have to have social relations with one another.” 118. Contra Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 583.

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tion to this problem cannot be given. Therefore one must distinguish among men. For men can be classified either as public or private individuals.”119 “Private” is the same as “inward” (innerlich), “spiritual” (corum Deo), a “Christ-person,” and “for oneself.” “Public” is the same as “outward” (äußerlich), “worldly” (corum homnibus), a “world-person,” and “for others.”120 This distinction allowed Luther to navigate between the extremes of the Scholastic and Anabaptist views of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’s radical claims are not downplayed as optional (as for the Scholastics); neither are they to be worked out strictly in obligation to one’s neighbor (as for the Anabaptists): “The Gospel does not trouble itself with these matters [the administration of temporal order]. It teaches about the right relation of the heart to God.” For matters temporal, “that is what lawyers are for, to teach and manage such matters.”121 Some things are done “as a Christian,” and other things are done “not as a Christian”: Here [in the secular realm] your name is not “Christian,” but “father” or “lord” or “prince.” According to your own person you are a Christian; but in relation to your servant you are a different person. . . . Do you want to know what your duty is as a prince or a judge or a lord or a lady, with people under you? You do not have to ask Christ about your duty. Ask the imperial or the territorial law. . . . It gives you both the power and the might to protect and to punish within the limits of your authority and commission, not as a Christian but as an imperial subject.122

Luther uses the same twofold paradigm to explain how the early Christians could fight as soldiers and also accept martyrdom for their faith: “In all good conscience they slashed and killed, and in this respect there was no difference between Christians and heathen. Yet they did not sin against this text. For they were not doing this as Christians.”123 Luther applies this distinction of “world person” and “Christ person” to political leaders as well: Christ is giving instructions to the individual or “the Christian man” and . . . a sharp distinction must be made between “the Christian” and “the 119. LW 31:304. Luther goes on to say that “the things which have been said [the promises of the gospel] do not pertain at all to public individuals” (LW 31:304). 120. LW 46:122: “A Christian is a person to himself; he believes for himself and for no one else. But a lord and prince is not a person to himself, but on behalf of others.” 121. LW 21:108. 122. LW 21:109–10, italics mine. 123. LW 21:110, italics mine.

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man of the world,” between a Christian person and a secular person. For a Christian as such does not bear the title male or female, young or old, lord or servant, emperor or prince, peasant or townsman, or anything else that can be named as belonging to the world. He does not have a “person” or mask, and he should not have anything or know anything in the world but be satisfied with his treasure in heaven. Whoever does not distinguish carefully here but imitates our sophists and fanatics in mixing everything up and confusing it, cannot correctly understand any of these sayings. Of course, a prince can be a Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian; and insofar as he does rule, his name is not “Christian” but “prince.” The person is indeed a Christian, but his office or his princedom does not involve his Christianity. Insofar as he is a Christian, the Gospel teaches him not to do injury to anyone, neither to punish nor to take revenge, but to forgive everyone and to put up with any injury or injustice that may be done him. That, I say, is the Christian’s duty. But it would not make for a good administration if you were to preach that sort of thing to the prince. This is what he has to say: “My status as a Christian is something between God and myself. It has its own directions about how I should live in relation to Him. But above and beyond this I have another status or office in the world: I am a prince. The relation here is not one between God and this person, but between me and my land and people.” The issue here is not how you should live in relation to God . . . that applies to you as a “Christian person” who is not involved with land and people. So you see that each status or office is properly distinguished from the other . . . and, so to speak, [they] are contradictory.124

For Luther, when you are not obligated to your neighbor, that is when you are directly under Christ’s spiritual rule.125 You are free to live by the faith that demands nothing. But when you are obligated by your neighbor, then you are under the law’s obligation. 126 Even there, under the law’s obligation, one fulfills the command primarily by the inner attitude of the heart, not the external action itself. The hidden (“spiritual”) vindicates the visible (“secular”): “The whole of the Christian life has to be hidden and remain hidden this way.”127 124. LW 21:170. 125. LW 21:109: “There is no getting around it, a Christian has to be a secular person of some sort. As regards his own person, according to his life as a Christian, he is in subjection to no one but Christ, without any obligation either to the emperor or to any other man. But at least outwardly, according to his body and property, he is related by subjection and obligation to the emperor, inasmuch as he occupies some office or station in life or has a house and home, a wife and children; for all these are things that pertain to the emperor.” 126. LW 21:110: “But in areas where you are free and without obligation to such a secular authority, you have a different rule [Christ’s], since you are a different person.” 127. LW 21:163.

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The Christian lives by these two different persons, the inner person (“Christ person”) and the outer person (Weltperson): “What is necessary is the right distinction between the two, rather than a confusion of them. Each should move in its own sphere, and yet both should be effective. A Christian may carry on all sorts of secular business with impunity—not as a Christian but as a secular person—while his heart remains pure in his Christianity, as Christ demands.”128 The demand of the law is met by a pure heart, which is made pure only by faith in Christ.129 Though the demand of Christ’s command is an external, active “work,” it is satisfied by inner, passive faith.130 In this way, a Christian can even sue, take to court, and punish within the demands of the law, if they are trusting Christ and loving from the heart: “It is permissible for you to use orderly procedure in demanding and obtaining your rights, but be careful not to have a vindictive heart. Thus it is proper for a judge to punish and execute, and yet he is forbidden to have any hatred or vindictiveness in his heart.”131 Luther even warns officials who might be inclined to show mercy because of their inner attitude of love not to let that influence their external actions; there, they need to “employ [their] secular person.”132 Christian magistrates actually find it more difficult than non-Christian magistrates to enact public justice. Luther’s doctrine of vocation, therefore, has several elements. As is 128. LW 21:113, italics mine. 129. LW 21:113: “Thus when a Christian goes to war or when he sits on a judge’s bench, punishing his neighbor, or when he registers an official complaint, he is not doing this as a Christian, but as a soldier or a judge or a lawyer. At the same time he keeps a Christian heart. . . . In other words, a Christian as such does not live for the things that are visible about this outward life. They all belong to the imperial government, which Christ has no intention of overthrowing” (italics mine). 130. Susan Schreiner, “Martin Luther,” in The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries: From the Early Church to John Paul II, eds. Jeffrey Greenman, Timothy Larsen, and Stephen Spencer (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007), 114. Luther sometimes referred to the difference between law and gospel as the difference between the active and the contemplative life: “And this grasping of Christ through faith is truly the ‘speculative life,’ about which the sophists chatter a great deal without knowing what they are saying. . . . But once we have been justified by faith, we enter the active life. In this way the sophists could have made a correct distinction between the contemplative and the active life, if they had called the former Gospel and the latter Law; that is, if they had taught that the speculative life should be included and directed by the Word of God and that in it nothing else is to be looked at except the Word of the Gospel, but that the active life should be sought from the Law, which does not grasp Christ but exercises itself in works of love toward one’s neighbor” (LW 26:287). 131. LW 21:111. Much of Luther’s exposition is similar to Augustine’s treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, except that Augustine’s distinction between the external deed and the attitude of the heart does not have a corresponding private/public distinction. See Bornkamm, “Luthers Lehre von den zwei Reichen,” 183–84. “Wie bei Augustin diese Dialektik von persona publica und persona privata fehlt, so denkt er auch in einem anderen Sinne undialektischer als Luther” (183, italics mine). 132. LW 21:118.

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widely seen in popular portrayals, Luther tore down the hierarchical structure that saw clerical offices as more “spiritual” than lay offices. The “spiritual” is transferred from an exterior state to an interior condition true of all those justified by faith in Christ. Correspondingly, Luther dignified the offices of normal daily life, such as farming and parenting. These necessary positions perform real good in the world. But one must be careful about stepping too far on this latter point. Luther was clear that these offices are not “sacred,” “spiritual,” or “Christian” in themselves; in fact, one does not fulfill these roles specifically as a Christian—not even in marriage133 or parenting, where one must “judge” and “punish” according to obligation to the law.134 Not even Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers permits speaking of each person acting spiritually “as a Christian” in all their responsibilities in the world. Those tasks are good and necessary, to be done according to God’s law and in a way pleasing to God. But they are not actions under the direct control of Christ as Redeemer or callings within his kingdom, which is inwardly spiritual. Luther did not sanctify common life; he “secularized” all life. Vocation in the world, for believers, is influenced by the gospel and by Christian revelation only indirectly. Even then, Luther warned against too much influence, as in the case of a merciful Christian ruler. A heart purified by the grace of Christ is freed from its impossible quest to be righteous on its own and can now serve its neighbors wholeheartedly. But the gospel itself does not provide new content in serving the neighbor. The secular realm is the domain of human reason and natural law, whereas Scripture’s unfolding drama has no direct relevance to structures of public life. For Luther, vocation in the world has goodness and dignity because of its connection to creation and to God’s providence (preservation), but not because of its connection to redemption wrought by Christ. 133. LW 21:93: “What is the proper procedure for us nowadays in matters of marriage and divorce? I have said that this should be left to the lawyers and made subject to the secular government. For marriage is a rather secular and outward thing, having to do with wife and children, house and home, and with other matters that belong to the realm of the government, all of which have been completely subjected to reason (Gen. 1:28). . . . Christ is not functioning here as a lawyer or a governor, to set down or prescribe any regulations for outward conduct; but He is functioning as a preacher, to instruct consciences.” 134. LW 21:210–11: “In the household, for example the mother and father have to judge among the children and the servants, have to administer punishment, even corporal punishment, when they refuse to behave. . . . This is all part of the secular realm, which is not our concern here and which we will therefore permit to act the way it should and must act. What we are discussing here is another kingdom, one which in no way weakens or annuls the other, namely, spiritual life and existence among Christians, where it is forbidden for one to judge and condemn another.”

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Luther’s Two Kingdoms and the Idea of Christendom At this point, we are able to review Luther’s reshaping of the medieval synthesis and to consider Luther’s ambiguous relationship to the concept of Christendom. The medieval synthesis primarily pictured Christian engagement in the world with two visible institutions and hierarchies: church and state. The civil estate represented either creation (Gelasius’s two swords) or preservation (Boniface’s two swords), and the spiritual estate represented redemption in Christ. Christians had “ends” in each, with the spiritual end seen as the culmination of the two. But whereas the medieval synthesis had two ends (natural and spiritual) in one realm (the world), Luther’s two-kingdom framework had one end (salvation) with two realms (temporal and spiritual).135 In H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology, a vertical division is surely right for the synthesis view—“Christ above culture”—and a horizontal division for the paradoxical view—“Christ and culture in paradox.”136 For Luther, the two realms, spiritual and physical/temporal, are not arranged hierarchically but together simultaneously.137 Similarly, John Witte offers this visual picture of the effect of Luther’s reforms: “Luther’s two-kingdom theory turned the traditional hierarchical theory of human society onto its side.”138 The resulting implications for Luther’s view of the Christendom idea are difficult. On the one hand, clear elements speak of his rejection 135. As one example of this difference between “synthesis” and “paradox” in the placement of the distinction, the medieval schoolmen maintained the superiority of the contemplative life over the active life, whereas Luther and the Reformers thought them equal (or at least characterized by every Christian’s works of the body and faith of the soul). For another example, the schoolmen defended the view of a sacred language (Latin) and a secular language (vernacular) for one society, whereas Luther argued for one language (vernacular) having different functions within the church and political society. 136. The “para” in “paradox” indicates side by side. The summary of Albert Wolters is even more specific: “Grace flanks nature” (“Christianity and the Classics: A Typology of Attitudes,” in Christianity and the Classics: The Acceptance of a Heritage, ed. Wendy Helleman (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 189–203). 137. See, e.g., Cargill Thompson, Political Thought of Martin Luther, 44: “What differentiates Luther’s idea from the medieval is that he sees the two divine orders as existing in parallel rather than in a hierarchical relationship. Whereas the medieval view, embodied above all in Thomism, tended to see the two orders as two tiers, the order of nature constituting a lower tier in which man prepared himself for ascent to the higher, Luther’s theology of justification involved the rejection of the idea that anything man did in the natural order could contribute to his position in the spiritual order. Thus Luther tended to view the two orders as distinct and separate. . . . They represent distinct and parallel modes of man’s existence, corresponding to his dual nature. In one he works out his salvation; in the other he lives his natural life in the world.” 138. John Witte Jr., Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 107, italics mine.

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of Christendom’s aims. Luther’s work, after all, certainly contributed to the historical fall of medieval Christendom. But because the synthetic medieval expression is not the only way of elucidating the Christendom idea, the story gets more complicated. At different levels of the paradigm, Luther stands in an ambiguous relation to Christendom, though he is more critical than not. Luther’s most definitive act in his two-kingdom teaching was setting rulers free from relating their task to the gospel and the revelation of Christ. For Luther, civil authority need not receive its justification for existence from the church or even be subordinated to the church. Luther assigned the gospel to a realm untouched by the affairs of physical life.139 The church takes its social form from something other than its new birth. Civil government does not witness to Christ’s reign in history, though it continues to preserve the order in which the gospel has space to exist.140 The gospel cannot stand on its own; it needs something that actually goes against it in order to flourish. Yet the same fundamental move—placing the main dividing line between external and internal and associating that with law/gospel and old/new covenant—allowed Luther to give church and state a greater connection than is often perceived. In many scholarly accounts, Luther’s strong statements about civil authority’s not being oriented to religious issues face contradiction from two particular actions: his allowance of magisterial reform of the church and his allowance of civil persecution of the Anabaptists. A typical scholarly account chalks these up to “inconsistency”—the practical medieval world caught up with Luther’s radical ideas. But the best historical explanation recognizes the consistency of Luther’s ideas with some aspects of Christendom. Luther’s admonition for civil rulers to initiate reforms of the church, for example, had to do less with desperation (though that was certainly involved) than with his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. A Christian civil magistrate initiates reforms in the church as a member of 139. LW 26:117: “There is a time to hear the Gospel and a time to know nothing about the Gospel. Let the Law go away now, and let the Gospel come; for this is the time to hear the Gospel, not the Law. But you have nothing good; in fact, you have sinned gravely. Granted. Nevertheless, I have the forgiveness of sins through Christ, on whose account all my sins are forgiven. But in a matter apart from conscience, when outward duties must be performed, then, whether you are a preacher, a magistrate, a husband, a teacher, a pupil, etc., this is no time to listen to the Gospel. You must listen to the Law and follow your vocation. Thus the Law remains in the valley with the ass, and the Gospel remains with Isaac on the mountain.” 140. See, e.g., LW 21:99: “Christ has no intention here of interfering in the order of the secular realm, nor of depriving the government of anything. All He is preaching about is how individual Christians should behave in their everyday life.”

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the visible church, not as a civil ruler per se. Any member—lay or clerical—has responsibilities toward the church, and a civil ruler happens to have opportunity to effect reform. Another, still more influential reason impinged on Luther’s allowance of Anabaptist subjection as well. By placing the church in the external, temporal kingdom, he had the (visible) church and civil government both governing the same object: the body. Luther’s advice to outlaw the Anabaptists in certain German provinces fit the category of external order. The justification was on civil grounds, not properly religious grounds. Likewise, certain statutes concerning Protestant practice—including princely reforms of church worship—were to be regarded as pertaining to decorum and civil order. In other words, Anabaptists were persecuted, in Luther’s mind, not simply because they were heretics but also because they threatened the social order that makes space for gospel preaching. 141 This explanation is not meant to justify Luther’s actions or even to include them in the category of “Christendom.” More simply, Luther, although he tore down aspects of the Christendom idea, was not a proto–liberal democrat, as some have made him out to be. Luther should first be heard on his own terms. His two-kingdom paradigm specifically forbade taking the equality inherent in Christ’s spiritual kingdom and “transferring” it to public order.142 The rough-and-tumble situation of fallen creation requires hierarchy and differentiated order. A better understanding of Luther’s two-kingdom paradigm renders his actions and thought consistent. Luther desired a “Christian” society in wanting a civil order ruled by law that could make space for the gospel. At the fountainhead of Protestantism, therefore, was Luther’s religious and political break with Roman Catholicism. This chapter has argued that Luther’s political novelty, though oft acknowledged, was not fundamentally the separation of church and state or even the freedom of religion; rather, the break was between the evangelical center of Christian faith and all forms of sociality. The heart of the gospel of Christ is for the human heart; all visible order is based, first of all, on natural law, accessible outside of sacred Scripture but clarified primarily in the Old Testament. Christians must live with this tension by living 141. Furthermore, Luther considered right worship to be part of the “natural law.” 142. For two examples of this transfer, see Walter Altmann, Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. Mary Solberg (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000); and Nathan Montover, Luther’s Revolution: The Political Dimensions of Martin Luther’s Universal Priesthood (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011). These books remain thought-provoking as constructive theology based on a few of Luther’s insights, but they fail as attempts to portray Luther’s thought accurately.

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a dual life, a private and a public existence. Yet, because Luther saw the visible church as in need of outward structure, his paradigm of thought allowed for church and state to cooperate in social order on the basis of a prudential application of the law’s restraint of sin. Paradoxically, Luther held together a deep affirmation of common life and a suspicion of that common life having connection to the evangelical center of the gospel. This chapter has brought a newer perspective on Luther out from the specialism of historical scholarship and into the question of dogmatic constructions on church and culture. The chapters that follow will trace the legacy of Luther’s polarity in several formulations of modern theology.

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Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, and a “Dialectical” Two Kingdoms

Chapter 1 argued that Luther’s primary theological distinction involved the complementary categories of visible/invisible or outward/ inward. Although those were foundational categories, Luther’s dualism of law/gospel also introduced a contrastive element. These elements together expressed his ambiguity toward the role of a Christendom idea in political theology: body and soul work together, but law and gospel stand in stark opposition. The present chapter considers some of Luther’s heirs who wrestled with the legacy of his two-kingdom thinking. The goal is to map another way of reading a primary theological dichotomy that seeks to do justice both to upholding the gospel and to securing order in the civil sphere. Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer represent this wrestling with Luther’s legacy in their focus on a “two” that generates productive tension. Despite certain differences between Niebuhr’s and Bonhoeffer’s reworkings of the Lutheran “two,” both retrieved elements of the two-kingdom ideal with Christendom at its crisis and its collapse. This chapter’s map begins with prior two-kingdom theologies that provided a background for Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer. Luther’s cate-

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gories underwent significant changes in the early-modern era, particularly the institutionalization of his dichotomies. Both Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer, originally immersed in this inheritance, broke from prior models to form their own accounts of the dual modality. Background: Directions of Two-Kingdom Thought This section connects the previous account of Luther’s two-kingdom thought with its movement toward the twentieth century. The main claim regarding this connection is that the two kingdoms narrowed after Luther, becoming primarily a political doctrine that corresponded solely to the institutions of church and state. Hence, the two-kingdom doctrine was used by both those supporting the Nazi regime—either by upholding the Volk (“folk” or “nation”) or by remaining silent on political issues—and its opponents, who recognized the inherently religious claims of the German state. Enlightenment Eigengesetzlichkeit and Romantic Gesinnung Appropriations of Luther’s two-kingdom thought, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tended to disregard Luther’s own careful distinctions. For example, Luther argued that the two realms (heavenly and earthly), and also the corresponding governments for those realms (the unmediated and the mediated word), were present from creation. By this, Luther demonstrated that God would relate to human beings in two ways from the very beginning. According to humanity’s twofold nature, body and soul, God would use mediated, external means to order outward life and unmediated, internal means to address the conscience. This distinction, however, did not go very far, because sin interrupted the basic dynamics. Law and gospel became associated primarily with the two governments: law primarily in its condemnatory function, and gospel in its forgiving function. Likewise, God’s mediated government through law Luther associated with the coercive function of civil magistracy. God’s immediate government through the gospel Luther associated with the free, peaceful proclamation of Christ by the Spirit. As we saw earlier, Luther believed that human political authority was an “emergency” order that mapped onto the already existing two governments. Later interpretations elided Luther’s distinction between the two governments (and therefore the two realms) with the functions of

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church and state. One side saw Luther’s grounding of the two governments in creation and deduced that political power itself was rooted in creation. The other side saw Luther’s acceptance of civil authority as a postfall establishment and concluded that the two governments were a postfall reality corresponding to Satan’s rule (law) and God’s rule (gospel). Lost in both interpretations were Luther’s external/internal distinction and the corresponding ways in which God governs. William Wright defines the essence of these later two-kingdom doctrines as “the idea that the world, human institutions, politicians, and everyday people were free from the power and the laws of God, because the world had its own rules and ethical norms, which were produced by processes internal to the world.”1 This two-kingdom variant came to be associated with the German Eigengesetzlichkeit (“autonomy”).2 Instead of God’s ruling one realm for the purpose of redemption and the other realm for the purpose of preservation, later German theologians spoke of the secular realm as preserved by the world’s own processes. Wright connects these Lutheran revisions with two important concepts: the “natural law” of the Scientific Revolution, and the Gesinnung, “attitude” or “sentimentality,” of romanticism. Contrary to most popular depictions, Luther maintained a high place for human reason and natural law as they related to the worldly kingdom. Only in the spiritual kingdom, in matters heavenly and divine, was reason “the devil’s whore,”3 but it held the rightful place in governing public affairs, ascertaining the natural law and administering outward justice.4 This emphasis was pushed even further by the prevailing Scientific Revolution of Galileo and Newton. “Natural law” took on a more mechanized and autonomous sense than Luther meant. The “laws of nature” were considered independent from biblical revelation and increasingly from God’s sustaining providence as well. Parallel to the hard sciences were the emerging “social sciences.” Thinkers also keyed in on the determinism of social laws and economic mechanisms: “Perhaps individual freedom of choice could only be maintained in the 1. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 19–20. 2. Ahti Hakamies, “Eigengesetzlichkeit” der natürlichen Ordnungen als Grundproblem der neueren Lutherdeutung: Studien zur Geschichte und Problematik der Zwei-Reiche-Lehre Luthers (Witten: LutherVerlag, 1971), 19. Hakamies connects the concept of “autonomy” with the question of “natural theology.” See also Louis Reith, “Die Eigengesetzlichkeit der weltlichen Lebensbereiche in der liberalen Theologie und Sozialphilosophie,” in Umdeutungen der Zweireichelehre Luthers im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Ulrich Duchrow, Wolfgang Huber, and Louis Reith (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1975), 38–67. 3. LW 51:374. 4. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 122–24. See also LW 46:102–3.

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inner person, while the exterior or outer world of institutions had their own predetermined laws.”5 Whereas Luther drew attention to the providential ordering of God in natural law, later two-kingdom paradigms in the Enlightenment stressed the self-sustaining character of nature, with “society” increasingly coming under the category of “nature.” From Luther to the early twentieth century, natural law moved toward mechanization and immanentization. One of the final steps was to begin speaking about the Eigengesetzlichkeit of society and political order. Likewise, whereas Luther spoke of human reason as a “gift” for “ordering the things of this world and for preserving honesty in outward life,”6 German Lutherans after him emphasized reason itself as divine. Ironically, the divinization of reason corresponded with its immanentization, becoming more associated with technological and empirical reasoning. Ulrich Duchrow, for example, concedes that although Luther did see the earthly kingdom as ruled by Vernunft (“reason”), this reason should not be identified with the claimed “neutrality” of the scientific method.7 According to Duchrow, Luther’s use of “reason” is still shaped by a classical Greco-Roman conception as an active participation in the transcendence of the good, the true, and the beautiful.8 Above all, for Luther, reason is still a gift of God. Correspondingly, as the political sphere was placed under the determinism of “political science,” Lutheran two-kingdom theology sectioned off “religion” as the domain of interior sentiment, Gesinnung. Though this certainly had a kind of precedent in Luther, later twokingdom thinkers underscored the subjectivity of religion in comparison to the objectivity of natural law. Luther saw the Ten Commandments as a clear exposition of the (moral) natural law written on the heart, but the Enlightenment broke apart this union by asserting the moral neutrality of natural law and the subjectivity of moral sentiment within.9 Though Luther certainly located the gospel in the spiritual realm of the conscience, “law” was still one side of the “twofold Word of God,” and therefore outward order was still governed by God’s word, 5. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 24. 6. LW 12:57. 7. Ulrich Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre’ in Theologie, Praxis, und Institution lutherischer Kirchen: Einige geschichtliche Beispiele und Perspektiven,” in Zwei Reiche und Regimente: Ideologie oder evangelische Orientierung? Internationale Fall- und Hintergrundstudien zur Theologie und Praxis lutherischer Kirchen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Ulrich Duchrow (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1977), 12. 8. Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 12. 9. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 26.

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albeit not necessarily all biblical revelation.10 The union of natural law and positive biblical law allowed Luther to maintain a kind of Christendom model for the state; severance of the two marked the end of Christendom for Germany.11 With the church absorbed into the state, religion was pushed deeper and deeper into private life. 12 The Reichskirche and the Deutsche Christen Movement This development of two-kingdom thought in Germany laid the groundwork for the Reichskirche (“national church”) of National Socialism and the German Christian movement. Notable adjustments included adding Volk (“race” or “nation”) to Luther’s orders of creation and solidifying the “state” as a paired correspondence with “church” in the language of two kingdoms.13 Whereas Luther saw the hierarchy of the world as a result of the fall, Lutheran theologians in Nazi Germany argued that civil power existed alongside church, household, and now Volk as the hierarchies of creation. The idea of two kingdoms was interpreted primarily as a political doctrine, allowing the public magistracy to operate on values evolved from creation itself.14 Although Luther’s conception of church and state had Erastian (or, traditionally, “magisterial”)15 tendencies in allowing political oversight of external ecclesiastical order, theologians supporting Hitler embraced full-blown Erastianism that named the power of state as head of the church.16 The doctrine of the two kingdoms was used not only to support the Nazi regime—the civil power operating by the law of nature and also overseeing church order—but also to avoid political issues altogether by separating the realms. Yet the two-kingdom worldview was also the basis upon which some theologians rejected the Nazi program.

10. Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 22. In contrast, the popular phrase from nineteenth-century Lutheranism was that the law was “ein geborener Heide,” “a born pagan.” See also Per Frostin, Luther’s Two Kingdoms Doctrine: A Critical Study (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1994), 115–17. 11. Duchrow’s reminder is helpful that “für Luther das ‘Natürliche Gesetz’ nicht etwa eine beliebige, von Christus unabhängige ‘eigengesetzliche’ Größe, sondern identisch mit dem Gesetz Christi, nämlich den wechselseitigen Dienst zwischen den Menschen ist” (“Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 26). 12. Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 24. 13. For a helpful summary, see Klemens Von Klemperer, “Beyond Luther? Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Resistance against National Socialism,” ProEccl 6 (1997): 184–87. 14. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 31–33. 15. The older designation of the Lutheran and Reformed Reformation was “magisterial,” meaning that the civil magistrate oversaw ecclesial reform. 16. Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 18.

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Niebuhrian Realism and the Two Kingdoms The renaissance of Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine in Germany had a key counterpart in North America. Among those who promulgated a style of two-kingdom thinking, none is more important than American ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr’s German heritage and mixture of Lutheran and Reformed traditions open the way for understanding the public appropriation of two-kingdom theology in North America. Niebuhr’s membership in the German Evangelical Synod helps to situate his approach to the two kingdoms. The German Evangelical Synod of North America was a merger of German Lutheran and German Reformed traditions, accepting both Luther’s Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism. Similarly, Niebuhr’s background in Protestant liberalism and his encounter with more traditional streams of Christianity help to explain his “modernizing” of the two-kingdom paradigm. Niebuhr’s intellectual biography begins with his early saturation in pacifism and the theology of the Social Gospel. Such a theology typified the Enlightenment optimism that church and state could work together for the alleviation of social ills, within a kind of secularized Christendom. But Niebuhr later related that his idealistic dreams of social change were diminished by the horrors of World War I, the Great Depression, and the frustrated implementation of his ideals in a Detroit pastorate.17 By 1932, when he wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society, the groundwork was laid for his “Christian realism.” Niebuhr’s rejection of the Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch was brought on by his discovery of “the Augustinian tradition,” which, for Niebuhr, included the Apostle Paul, Augustine himself, and the Protestant Reformers. What gripped Niebuhr was the reality of original sin, human finitude, and the tempered, “not yet” eschatology of Augustinian tradition. The Sermon on the Mount: The Eschatological Standard Christian realist and Niebuhr scholar Robin Lovin describes Niebuhr’s theology as established on his disagreement with the Social Gospel. At its heart was an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, a key component of the Social Gospel program:

17. Robin Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 66.

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For Reinhold Niebuhr, . . . Rauschenbusch’s writings shared with these sentimental pieties one fundamental confusion: the moral vision of the New Testament is treated as a “simple possibility.” It becomes a key point of Christian Realism that the ethics of Jesus cannot provide a social ethics. For Niebuhr, the most difficult problems lie not between the Gospel profession and present practice, but between what the ethics of Jesus demands and any possible social organization.18

Clearly, Niebuhr no longer accepted in whole his liberal pietist upbringing, but neither did he completely adopt the opposite. Like Luther before him, Niebuhr began to see two opposing problems visà-vis Jesus’s ethical teaching, and he considered it his responsibility to navigate between them (though, ironically, Luther would be one of the extremes he would avoid). Niebuhr’s rhetoric often employed language of a “middle path” between two extremes: in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1963), that between “orthodoxy” and “liberalism” (which middle path he called “prophetic Christianity”); in The Nature and Destiny of Man (1943), that between “Reformation” and “Renaissance,” as well as “Lutheranism” and “Puritanism.” Niebuhr’s dilemma was similar to Luther’s: that of interpreting the Sermon on the Mount without blunting its obvious commands, while also fashioning a social ethic that allowed for political coercion. Although his solution has similarities to Luther’s (such as the importance of heartfelt intentionality), Niebuhr’s primary distinction is not inner/outer, person/office, or even private/public. His crucial distinction lies between eschatological ideal and present approximation. From the outset, Niebuhr was quite clear that Jesus’s ethic teaches total renunciation of the self and absolute surrender to God. “Nothing could be plainer than that the ethic uncompromisingly enjoins nonresistance and not non-violent resistance.”19 Here, Niebuhr chides reducing Jesus’s commands, even ever so slightly, to make them remotely possible to fulfill in the real world. Ironically, those who

18. Robin Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5. 19. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Church Is Not Pacifist,” in Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Scribner, 1940), 10.

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champion forms of “political pacifism”20 are often most guilty of doing this: The effort to elaborate the religio-moral thought of Jesus into a practical socio-moral or even politico-moral system usually has the effect of blunting the very penetration of his moral insights. When, for instance, liberal Christianity defines the doctrine of non-resistance, so that it becomes merely an injunction against violence in conflict, it ceases to provide a perspective from which the sinful element in all resistance, conflict, and coercion may be discovered. Its application prompts moral complacency rather than contrition, and precisely in those groups in which the evils which flow from self-assertion are most covert. This is the pathos of the espousal of Christian pacifism by the liberal Church, ministering largely to those social groups who have the economic power to be able to dispense with the more violent forms of coercion and therefore condemn them as un-Christian.21

For Niebuhr, it is essential to see what he called the “absolutism” of Jesus’s commands. Not only sin but even human finitude makes Jesus’s ideal so impossibly absolute: “Jesus thus made demands upon the human spirit, which no finite man can fulfill.”22 Like Luther, Niebuhr interprets the Sermon on the Mount not as “gospel” but as “law.” He maintains the Lutheran law/gospel distinction by arguing that the gospel does not present itself as “a ‘challenge’ to man to obey the law of Christ”; rather, it “deals realistically with the problem presented by the violation of this law.” The grace of the gospel is “pardon rather than power.”23 Niebuhr fits right alongside Luther in saying that the first work of Jesus’s ethic is to condemn and relativize all human actions as falling short of this law.24 20. “Political pacifism” would refer to the Social Gospel movement, which allowed Christians to be involved in politics but required them to use minimal coercion and force. Other forms of pacifism, such as complete renunciation of political authority and withdrawal from civic order, Niebuhr respected as at least being more consistent with Jesus’s ethic. He actually spoke highly of “individual pacifism” and its usefulness to Christianity. See Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Seabury, 1963), 115: “Religious pacifism, as a part of a general ascetic and symbolic portrayal of love absolutism in a sinful world, has its own value and justification. A Church which does not generate it is the poorer for its lack. But it ought to be clear about its own presuppositions and understand the conflict between the ideal of love and the necessities of natural life.” 21. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 29–30. 22. Ibid., 73. On Niebuhr and finitude, see Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 208. 23. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Church Is Not Pacifist,” 2–3. 24. Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 25: The “rigorism” of Jesus’s ethic and “its failure to make concessions to even the most inevitable and ‘natural’ self-regarding impulses may best be judged by analyzing the attitude of Jesus toward various natural expressions of human life. Every form of self-assertion is scrutinized and condemned in words which allow of no misinterpretation.”

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In this vein, Niebuhr distinguishes between “vertical religious reference” and “horizontal socio-moral concerns.”25 As an ideal, Jesus’s teachings belong in the category of “vertical religious reference”: “They proceed from a transcendent and divine unity of essential reality, and their final fulfillment is possible only when God transmutes the present chaos of this world into its final unity.”26 For Niebuhr, Jesus painted an eschatological picture of the ultimate harmony of the new creation. Hence, it does not speak to the present life of sin, self-preservation, and self-regard.27 As Lovin comments, “The pure ethics of Jesus . . . is unrealistic in that it cannot be lived by persons who must struggle with the multiple demands and against the finite limits of human life and individual history.”28 One of Niebuhr’s most famous quotations illustrates this well: The ethic of Jesus does not deal at all with the immediate moral problem of every human life—the problem of arranging some kind of armistice between various contending factions and forces. It has nothing to say about the relativities of politics and economics, nor of the necessary balances of power which exist and must exist in even the most intimate social relationships. The absolutism and perfectionism of Jesus’ love ethic sets itself uncompromisingly not only against the natural self-regarding impulses, but against the necessary prudent defenses of the self, required because of the egoism of others. It does not establish a connection with the horizontal points of a political or social ethic or with the diagonals which a prudential individual ethic draws between the moral ideal and the facts of a given situation. It has only a vertical dimension between the loving will of God and the will of man.29

Approximation and the Dialectic of Love and Justice Yet it is a mistake to conclude that Niebuhr therefore dispenses with 25. Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 28. 26. Ibid., 35. 27. Although I cannot find the phrase “necessary evil” that is so often attributed to Niebuhr, there are instances where he said something quite similar. See Reinhold Niebuhr, Justice and Mercy, ed. Ursula Niebuhr (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 59, where he speaks of a parent’s authority to discipline a child as having “some good in this evil.” Robin Lovin speaks similarly: “Government represents a center of power that is necessary for order, but alien to faith. . . . Conduct in that service, however, bears little relationship to the standards that govern relations between Christians, and is no service at all to the faith. . . . Government and politics remain an unavoidable evil, for which the Christian’s only praise is to remind us that a world without government would be even worse. . . . What we can do is to enter into politics as an act of service, risking our own inner peace to spare our neighbors the loss of outward peace” (Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 166–67). 28. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 11. 29. Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 23–24.

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the ethical content of Jesus’s sermon. Where Luther affirmed a public/ private distinction, Niebuhr introduces his concept of approximation. The ethical content of Jesus’s teaching, which is love, can be approximated by what Niebuhr calls “equal justice.” Recognizing the relationship between love and justice is important: love is “the final form of justice; for equal justice is the approximation of brotherhood under the conditions of sin.”30 Justice and love have a dialectical relationship.31 Love is love because it is not strict justice; it transcends justice.32 But justice itself can “approximate” love, especially in conditions of relative equality.33 Although Niebuhr does not use language of “participation,” perhaps it would not be a stretch to say that justice participates in love—dialectically, not directly.34 Niebuhr’s distinction of approximate/ideal allowed him both to praise and to criticize Luther.35 For Niebuhr, Luther’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was “the most profound understanding of the meaning of Christian agape, particularly of its completely disinterested motives.”36 Yet Luther was not dialectical enough.37 Law and gospel are rightly distinct, but the law does not return to participate in the gospel, just as, for Luther, love had no relation at all to justice.38 In particular, Niebuhr sees “quietistic tendencies” and “defeatism” in Luther, especially for his “lapses into mystic doctrines of passivity.”39 30. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (New York: Scribner, 1943), 2:254, italics mine. 31. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 66: “The first step toward a realistic Christian ethics is to make a distinction between love and justice.” 32. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:246. Corresponding to justice and love are nature and grace: “‘Nature’ in this case represents the historical possibilities of justice. ‘Grace’ would correspond to ideal possibility of perfect love” (2:246). 33. Ibid., 2:197. 34. Ibid., 2:246: “The Christian conception of the relation of historical justice to the love of the Kingdom of God is a dialectical one. Love is both the fulfillment and the negation of all achievements of justice in history. . . . There are therefore obligations to realize justice in indeterminate degrees; but none of the realizations can assure the serenity of perfect fulfillment.” 35. See also Brent Sockness, “Luther’s Two Kingdoms Revisited: A Response to Reinhold Niebuhr’s Criticism of Luther,” JRE 20 (1992): 93–110, who argues that Niebuhr misunderstood elements of Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine because of its modern corruptions. Just as I argue here, Sockness argues that Niebuhr’s thought is much closer to Luther’s than is usually realized. 36. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:187. 37. Ibid., 2:195: Luther’s “absolute distinction between the ‘heavenly’ or ‘spiritual’ kingdom and the ‘earthly’ one destroys the tension between the final demands of God upon the conscience, and all the relative possibilities of realizing the good in history” (italics mine). 38. Luther had more room for “love” in political society than Niebuhr grasped. Luther referred to the work of law in the three estates as God’s “strange work of love” (opus alienum caritatis), because it is not directly operative on love. See Duchrow, “Luther und der Gebrauch und Mißbrauch der ‘Zweireichelehre,’” 13: “Dabei kann die ultima ratio politischen Handelns, Zwang und Gewalt, als Negierung der Liebe erscheinen, sie bleibt aber ‘fremdes Werk’ (opus alienum) der Liebe und ist nur als solche auch politisch zu rechtfertigen.” 39. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:194.

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Most alarming, Niebuhr faults Luther for lumping together “works,” “law,” and “activity” (in contrast to the “contemplative” life of the gospel) so that “‘without works’ degenerates into ‘without action.’”40 Niebuhr calls this the “mystic fear of action, because all action is tainted with sin.”41 Centrally present to Niebuhr is Luther’s idea that “in society . . . there let nothing be known about the Gospel, conscience, grace, the forgiveness of sin, heavenly righteousness, or Christ Himself; but let there be knowledge only of Moses, of the Law and its works.”42 Niebuhr does not deny that the gospel is not to be directly present in the public realm, but he argues that the gospel indirectly participates in the civic order through an “approximate” relation to equal justice. Accordingly, although Niebuhr rejected the methods of the Social Gospel, he did not, in one sense, reject its aims. Not that he identified social justice with the eschatological kingdom of God, but he did seek political transformation in some asymmetrical relation to the eschatological order. The key is not to confuse the two or attribute earthly success to the heavenly ideal. The gospel, or even the law of love, is not the method of political transformation: “With Augustine, we must realize that the peace of the world is gained by strife. That does not justify us either in rejecting such a tentative peace or in accepting it as final. The peace of the city of God can use and transmute the lesser and insecure peace of the city of the world; but that can be done only if the peace of the world is not confused with the ultimate peace of God.”43 In the dialectic of transformation, all attempts to produce justice ultimately incur guilt. Yet, for Niebuhr, this does not mean that one should not try. Here lies the “relevance of an impossible ethical ideal”: Jesus’s ideal ethic is impossible because of human sin, but relevant because of the approximation of relative justice to love.44 The harmony of the eschatological kingdom is the goal, but not an immediate goal. While Niebuhr criticizes Luther, he also criticizes Calvin on the other end of the spectrum, whom he categorizes as “theocratic,” though quite differently from the Social Gospel. According to Niebuhr, Calvin blurred the law/gospel distinction and sought to instate the gospel as legal norm.45 Calvin’s “bibliolatry” caused him to see biblical law as a 40. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:187. Niebuhr believed that Luther was more “mystical” than most scholars admit, because of his intense focus on the inner life (2:185). 41. Ibid., 2:188. Niebuhr also had a problem with Luther’s view of justification as freedom from all law, including political law (2:189). Niebuhr did not see the law entirely in negative terms, as Luther did (as either restraining or revealing). 42. LW 26:116. 43. Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 38, italics mine. 44. Ibid., 62–63.

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remedy to a sinful social order.46 For Niebuhr, approximations of love in relative justice are found through human reason and natural law, not special revelation.47 Paradoxically, we aim at the law of love by not directly following the law of love.48 The Call of Responsibility—Pecca fortiter For Niebuhr, the connection between justice and love is “responsibility.”49 The reason for dealing with the rugged world of politics is that Christians are responsible for their neighbor, even when that responsibility is guilt-laden.50 The obligation of the law calls forth responsible action from Christians, action taking place under the condemnatory supervision of the law.51 Niebuhr does not justify political coercion as consistent with the method of love, even if it somehow participates in its ultimate aims:52 Those of us who regard the ethic of Jesus as finally and ultimately normative, but as not immediately applicable to the task of securing justice in a sinful world, are very foolish if we try to reduce the ethic so that it will cover and justify our prudential and relative standards and strategies. To do this is to reduce the ethic to a new legalism. The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.53 45. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:198–203. 46. Ibid., 2:202: “Calvin’s ‘divine law,’ in which he finds an answer to every moral and social problem, is nicely defined here. For it is a compendium collected from ‘various places in Scripture,’ without reference to the historical relativities which are enshrined in a sacred canon. This is the ethical corollary in Calvin’s system of his general Biblicism, not to say Bibliolatry. Just as Luther regards the Bible primarily as the ‘cradle of Christ’ and therefore has a principle of criticism of Scripture itself in the Christ of Scripture, so he also understands that the love commandment transcends all other commandments in the Bible. He is thereby saved from the error of Biblicism in both theology and ethics. Calvin, on the other hand, commits both errors.” 47. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 15–16. 48. Ibid., 26: “The Christian ideal of love cannot directly guide ordinary moral choices, because it has no place for the prudent balancing of competing interests that most of these decisions are about.” 49. Here, Niebuhr came closest to Luther’s inner/outer distinction, where the internal motivation of faith justifies the external action of justice. 50. Niebuhr readily admitted to pacifists that they remind “the rest of us, who fool with politics, that we are playing a dangerous game” (Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 93). 51. This emphasis on obligation is why Robin Lovin connects Niebuhr to Bonhoeffer: “The idea of responsible action connects Niebuhr more closely than I had understood before to his theological adversary, Karl Barth, and to his erstwhile student, Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, vii). Lovin even uses Bonhoeffer’s language of “the ultimate” and “the penultimate” to describe Niebuhr’s thought (5). 52. John Patrick Diggins, Why Niebuhr Now? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Niebuhr urged that “modern man recover Christianity in order to accept the guilt and sorrow that accompanies the necessary use of power” (40, italics mine). 53. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Church Is Not Pacifist,” 9, italics mine.

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Responsible action is dialectical. Jesus’s absolute law of love requires pacifism, condemning any alternative as sinful.54 Yet responsibility to one’s neighbor in the form of social order requires political coercion. Love both condemns and requires its opposite. “Moral man” is confronted by “immoral society”: groups of people necessitate the balance of conflicting self-interests and therefore are always “immoral.”55 That is why Niebuhr offers Christian realism as a theory “more dialectically” relating law and gospel, justice and love, nature and grace: Reformation insights must be related to the whole range of human experience more “dialectically” than the Reformation succeeded in doing. The “yes” and “no” of its dialectical affirmations: that the Christian is “justus et peccator,” “both sinner and righteous”; that history fulfills and negates the Kingdom of God; that grace is continuous with, and in contradiction to, nature; that Christ is what we ought to be and also what we cannot be; that the power of God is in us and that the power of God is against us in judgment and mercy; that all these affirmations which are but varied forms of the one central paradox of the relation of the Gospel to history must be applied to the experiences of life from top to bottom. 56

Like Bonhoeffer later, Niebuhr appeals to Luther’s principle of pecca fortiter (“sin boldly”) for capturing both the selfishness and the unselfishness of serving the neighbor in the civic order.57 Genuine Secularity Niebuhr’s concepts of approximation and relative justice allow him to affirm certain aspects of the secular. According to Niebuhr, the triumph of Luther’s theology was to “make genuinely secular (that is, nonsacred) objects and ends of human striving morally respectable. A free society encourages a multitude of activities which are not in them54. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 94: “Christianity imposes moral demands which exceed, and even contradict, the requirements of ordinary prudential ethics, which is concerned to establish some sort of balance between the competing interests and powers that shape everyday life.” 55. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribner, 1960). See also Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:208–9, describing “an inevitable moral tension between individual and group.” 56. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 2:204. Niebuhr also wrote, “According to our interpretation, ‘grace’ is related to ‘nature’ partly as fulfillment and partly as negation” (2:245). 57. Reinhold Niebuhr, Justice and Mercy, 43: “We know . . . that business and politics are not governed by unselfishness. All the justice we have is a justice which has transmuted the sense of responsibility in various balances of power in order to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, by making the weak a little stronger but not too strong. Always we are dealing with sinful man.”

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selves sacred.”58 Luther is also preferable to Augustine on the place of the church in secular society. Niebuhr sees Augustine’s identification of the visible, historic church as the “city of God,” even proleptically, as overreaching the secularity of the world.59 Robin Lovin argues that Niebuhr helped to solidify Christian realism as a theory of liberalism because of its concept of “relative justice” as a secular category.60 “The requirements of justice have their own integrity”; therefore, any conception of justice can be maintained entirely apart from Christian revelation.61 There are certainly echoes of Luther here, but Niebuhr went even further. Christian revelation helps to solidify the principles of relative justice—Niebuhr was unashamed of this “public” role of the faith—but these principles of justice have no reference to any view of the ultimate good. For Niebuhr, “the commonwealth was secured by agreement on principles of justice, not by common objects of love” (reversing Augustine’s dictum).62 Fashioning social justice based on such lofty concepts introduces a new legalism that denies original sin. Relative justice may participate in Jesus’s absolute law of love, but it does so paradoxically and in a hidden manner.63 For this reason, Niebuhr rejects the idea of “Christianizing” the social order, not only because he believed it would be unsuccessful but also because he did not think that the social order needed Christianizing.64 Christian revelation points to original sin, but Niebuhr believed that such knowledge could be gained empirically, without resorting to Scripture. There is no “Christian” view on culture or politics: We have now come to the fairly general conclusion that there is no “Christian” economic or political system. But there is a Christian attitude toward all systems and schemes of justice. It consists on the one hand of a critical 58. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner, 1953), 98. 59. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, 1:230, 2:138–39; Christian Realism and Political Problems, 138. Augustine scholarship is divided over whether Augustine’s civitas Dei should be understood as the church visible or invisible, on earth or only in heaven. See my interpretation in chapter 6. 60. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 64–68. “Christian realism diverges from political liberalism only after modern politics takes a sort of utopian turn in the nineteenth century” (65). 61. Ibid., 67. Lovin sees a similarity between Niebuhr and liberal political theorist John Rawls: “They [Niebuhr and Rawls] share the idea that justice provides norms for a distinctive sphere of life that is governed by different expectations from those that mark the highest aspirations of personal life or a comprehensive achievement of human good. This distinction depends on a kind of political realism that we first see clearly in the way the Reformation realists separated spiritual and secular authority.” 62. Ibid., 63. 63. This concept of relative justice applied indirectly is similar to what Heinrich Bedford-Strohm calls Bonhoeffer’s “biblisch informierter Realismus,” which does not allow direct applications of Scripture in public life (“Dietrich Bonhoeffer als öffentlicher Theologe,” Evangelische Theologie 69 [2009]: 338). 64. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 43.

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attitude toward the claims of all systems and schemes, expressed in the question whether they will contribute to justice in the concrete situation; and on the other hand a responsible attitude, which will not pretend to be God nor refuse to make a decision between political answers to a problem because each answer is discovered to contain a moral ambiguity in God’s sight. We are men, not God; we are responsible for making choices between greater and lesser evils, even when our Christian faith, illuminating the human scene, makes it quite apparent that there is no pure good in history; and probably no pure evil, either.65

Christian faith provides resources for understanding the human condition, and internal motivation for seeking justice, but not unique principles for life in public society. In fact, Christians, more than others, must guard against applying Christianity’s greater revelation in the roughand-tumble life of this present age. Summary Though Reinhold Niebuhr did not use the language of “two kingdoms” or even “two realms,” his thought evinces clear patterns of two-kingdom thinking. Like other modern two-kingdom thinkers, Niebuhr did not retain Luther’s central distinction between visible and invisible realms. Luther’s doctrine thus became primarily a tool for envisaging political order, but the same paradigm was nevertheless applied. Niebuhr maintained a law/gospel distinction and also sought to keep intact both the radical claims of Christ and the fallen nature of the world. What held them together is the obligation or responsibility of Christians to the service of their neighbor. Here, Niebuhr highlighted the theme of “necessary evil” and the dialectic of violating love’s methods for the sake of love’s aims. Although Niebuhr echoed much that had previously been said, his distinctive influence in this stream of two-kingdom thinking, especially in contemporary debates, is fourfold. First, Niebuhr injected an “activist” element. He was not necessarily right about the Lutheran tradition being “quietist,” but he certainly gave more prominence to social transformation—albeit “two-kingdom” transformation, still grounded in nonredemptive terms. His dialectic, not strictly a static distinction, allowed more dynamic interaction between law and gospel, justice and love, and nature and grace. 65. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Theology and Political Thought in the Western World,” in Faith and Politics, ed. Ronald Stone (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 56.

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Second, Niebuhr’s primary polarity was the tension between the future eschaton and the present fallen reality. This choice of eschatology as a major category characterizes the turn to eschatology as the twentieth-century way of describing the two kingdoms. This central modality in Niebuhr generated other tensions, such as love and justice; law/ gospel was not Niebuhr’s primary way of designating his dialectic. Contrasting love and justice ensures that both are “active” terms, instead of opposing activity and passivity in Luther’s law and gospel. In this sense, Niebuhr is sometimes seen as a more “Reformed” instantiation of the two-kingdom approach. Third, Niebuhr reintroduced Augustine to Christian public theology. The legacy of Luther was a common subject of debate in nineteenthand early twentieth-century German thought. American debates were much more Reformed in orientation, but Niebuhr presented Augustine as a figure that could mediate between Lutheran and Reformed approaches, or at least categorize a tradition as more than a “precursor.” But Niebuhr put forward his own “Lutheranized” Augustine, not the Augustine he saw represented by medieval Christendom. Fourth, Niebuhr influenced not only North American thought but also, through his teaching at Union Theological Seminary in the 1930s, German students who returned to their home country during the rise of Nazi power. One important conduit of his thought, often unnoticed in older scholarship, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to whom we now turn. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Two Kingdoms Contemporary readings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer vary widely. By some, Bonhoeffer is claimed as a neo-Anabaptist pacifist, and by others, as a martyr of liberation theology.66 More recently, scholars have connected Bonhoeffer to both his Lutheran heritage and his one-time professor Reinhold Niebuhr.67 If the preceding argument about Niebuhr is correct, then these two sources need not conflict. Especially in his Ethics, Bonhoeffer’s similar, modern two-kingdom framework comes 66. For the Anabaptist Bonhoeffer, see Hauerwas, Performing the Faith. For “liberationist” perspectives on Bonhoeffer, see Larry L. Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North Americans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Geffrey B. Kelly, Liberating Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Message for Today (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984); Julio De Santa Ana, “The Influence of Bonhoeffer on the Theology of Liberation,” Ecumenical Review 28 (1976): 188–97; G. Clark Chapman Jr., “Bonhoeffer: Resource for Liberation Theology,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36, no. 4 (1981): 225–42. 67. On Bonhoeffer’s Lutheranism, see Michael DeJonge, “How to Read Bonhoeffer’s Peace Statements; or, Bonhoeffer Was a Lutheran and Not an Anabaptist,” Theology 118 (2015): 162–71.

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clear, despite ambiguities in both Bonhoeffer’s relationship to traditional Lutheranism and his connection to Niebuhr. Like Niebuhr’s, Bonhoeffer’s choice of words about certain Lutheran doctrines seems to put him at odds with his confessional heritage. Yet, similar to Niebuhr’s relation to Luther, Bonhoeffer criticized Niebuhr while not acknowledging positive indebtedness to his thought. These challenges for relating the two must be answered in the following pages, but the answers can be previewed here. Bonhoeffer’s criticism of contemporary German theologians accounts for most of his ire at “Lutheranism.” In fact, his desire to combat the two-kingdom doctrine of Nazi Germany led him to call it “pseudo-Lutheranism.”68 Much modern German theology represented a corruption of Lutheran teaching. But neither did Bonhoeffer simply want to repristinate the Reformation’s original teaching. Indeed, he had sharp criticisms of certain two-kingdom themes; it is sometimes difficult to know when he attacked Luther’s own doctrine and when he targeted the common perception of the two kingdoms in Germany. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer’s own public theology borrows from two-kingdom concepts, despite his unique twists.69 Charles Marsh is one Bonhoeffer scholar who openly highlights the connection between Bonhoeffer’s later theology and Niebuhr’s realism.70 Marsh recounts not only Bonhoeffer’s early exasperation with Niebuhr while attending Union Seminary but also Niebuhr’s later transformative effect on Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer’s German philosophical idealism and stress on theory over praxis were slowly chipped away by Niebuhr’s pragmatic influence. Though Bonhoeffer lamented that America was “Protestantism without the Reformation,” he could not deny the “sobriety and seriousness” of Niebuhr as an “irrefutable” influence, “determinative for me for a long time to come.”71 Marsh particularly locates Bonhoeffer’s pacifist reading of the Sermon on the Mount to his time at Union—influenced by both Jean Lasserre and Niebuhr. Though Niebuhr was in transition from the Social Gospel to Christian realism during Bonhoeffer’s visit—the lectures Bonhoeffer heard formed the basis of Moral Man and Immoral Society72—Niebuhr 68. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott, DBW 6 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 56. 69. This is the conclusion also of Jordan Ballor, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Two Kingdoms, and Protestant Social Thought Today,” La Revue Farel 6–7 (2011): 62–75; and Patrick Nullens, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Third Way of Christian Social Engagement,” EJT 20 (2011): 60–69. 70. Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Knopf, 2014). See particularly his chapter on Bonhoeffer’s visit to Union, pp. 101–35. 71. Ibid., 125.

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never renounced his belief that the Sermon on the Mount teaches absolute pacifism. His realist point was that it does not obligate Christians in this present evil age. But the most important element of Niebuhr’s influence upon Bonhoeffer is the theme of responsibility: “The vocation of public theologian as Niebuhr defined it excited Bonhoeffer and refreshed his perspective.”73 Niebuhr’s point was that theology must be grounded in the conflicting tensions of reality. Christian action is not pure and untainted by sin but must engage the realities of fallen life. “Niebuhr’s influence can in fact be discerned every time, after 1933, that Bonhoeffer . . . holds that ‘costly’ grace requires not that one become a saint, a genius, or a clever tactician but rather an honest, sober, and unflinching realist.”74 Marsh refers to Bonhoeffer’s Ethics as “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism but with Christ restored to its center.”75 Marsh even suggests that Bonhoeffer’s decision to forgo his pacifism in the midst of the Nazi crisis had roots in Niebuhr’s responsible realism of “civil courage and ultimate honesty.”76 That Bonhoeffer renewed correspondence with Niebuhr after Niebuhr publicly broke with his earlier theology of the Social Gospel, and immediately after Hitler’s election, is instructive.77 Bonhoeffer marked out Niebuhr most of all his professors at Union, and Niebuhr secured Bonhoeffer’s second trip to the United States. In Marsh’s words, Niebuhr’s theology “remade him [Bonhoeffer] into a theologian of the concrete.”78 Bonhoeffer and Luther Bonhoeffer clearly saw that Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms, whatever its original flaws, had been corrupted by German theologians.79 The problem, for him, was the splitting of reality into “two 72. Charles Marsh, Strange Glory, 107. 73. Ibid., 108. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 315. 76. Ibid., 341–42. 77. Ibid., 160. 78. Ibid., 135. Marsh describes Bonhoeffer’s year in America as “loosen[ing] boundaries between inner and outer, between emotion and reason, between thought and action” (134). This is a good description of Bonhoeffer’s shaking off Luther’s actual two-kingdom distinction and replacing it with Niebuhr’s dialectic of love and justice/responsibility. 79. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 123. According to Bonhoeffer, the problems of modernity came from a deadly mixture of the two kingdoms with a denial of original sin: “Luther’s great discovery of the freedom of the Christian and the Catholic heresy of the essential goodness of human beings resulted together in deifying humanity.” Bonhoeffer saw America as “Protestantism without the Reformation” because of underrating original sin in the Social Gospel.

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realms.” Bonhoeffer shows marked antipathy for the language of “realms” and “the division of reality into sacred and profane, or Christian and worldly.”80 For him, “there are not two realities, but only one reality, that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world.”81 Language here is tricky. Though Luther used the language of two realms, and important scholars have described Luther’s view as concerning “dual Christian reality”82 and “two kingdoms as two dimensions of existence,”83 for Luther, there was one reality, though it was two-dimensional. When Bonhoeffer says that “in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world,”84 he is not contradicting Luther’s thought on the two realms. Luther was clear that the two realms are not competing spatial realities but two perspectives or overlays in the world created by God—“heaven” and “earth.”85 Interestingly, Bonhoeffer seems to indicate that the idea of “two realms” was not originally in Luther. For instance, he says that the two-realms idea “contradicts both biblical and Reformation thought.”86 Indeed, “we must get beyond this two-realms image,”87 especially when the realms are set up as “static opposites.”88 Bonhoeffer sees Luther as correcting an imbalance in medieval Christendom by giving a positive account of daily created life: “As Luther polemically led the worldly into battle against the sacralizing trend of the Roman church, so this worldliness must be polemically contradicted by the Christian, by the ‘sacred,’ in the very moment when it is in danger of making itself independent, as happened soon after the Reformation, reaching its high

80. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 57. Luther never referred to the world as “profane,” but rather as “secular,” temporal. In general, Luther worked with the dichotomy of “spiritual” and “secular,” not “sacred” and “profane.” 81. Ibid., 58, italics original. 82. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding, 42. 83. B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 119. 84. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 58, italics original. 85. For the argument that Bonhoeffer thought of “realms” as competing spaces, see Bedford-Strohm, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer als öffentlicher Theologe,” 336–38. 86. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 58. 87. Ibid., 66. 88. Ibid., 59.

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point in cultural Protestantism.”89 For Bonhoeffer, Luther’s doctrine can be salvaged if the two kingdoms are held in “polemical unity”: In the name of a better Christianity Luther used the worldly to protest against a type of Christianity that was making itself independent by separating itself from the reality in Christ. Similarly, Christianity must be used polemically today against the worldly in the name of a better worldliness; this polemical use of Christianity must not end up again in a static and self-serving sacred realm. Only in this sense of a polemical unity may Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms be used. That was probably its original meaning.90

Even in wanting to move past Luther’s terminology, Bonhoeffer is keen to show his interpretation as fitting with Luther’s original aims. Clearly, though, elements of Bonhoeffer’s thought move beyond, if not outright disagree with, Luther’s thinking on the two kingdoms. Bonhoeffer seems to disregard the two realms (internal/external) while maintaining some distinction of the two governments (active/ passive, law/gospel) at an institutional level (state/church), albeit not at other levels. Regarding the two realms, Bonhoeffer focuses heavily on the visibility of faith in distinct practices (especially in Discipleship). Unlike Luther, Bonhoeffer sees the church primarily in terms of visibility and concreteness.91 His warning against overspiritualizing the church would seem relevant to Luther’s ecclesiology: “It would be very dangerous . . . to deny the visibility of the church and thus to devalue it into a purely spiritual entity.”92 This warning echoes the common criticism from Roman Catholics that Luther created a Platonic form of the church that does not exist in the empirical world. Luther’s placement of the church’s visibility in the category of “worldly” or “temporal” reality does seem to take the opposite line from Bonhoeffer. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s christocentric anthropology, seen in the 89. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 59–60. See also Bonhoeffer’s statement from another essay in Ethics, “Heritage and Decay,” that “the Reformation was . . . the justification of the worldly [weltlich] as such. The Reformation biblical faith in God has radically desacralized [entgöttert] the world” (114). Here, Bonhoeffer got Luther exactly right: Luther did not “sanctify” common life, he “dignified” it. He placed the daily life of peasants on the same level as clergy by “desacralizing” the visible church. He lowered the status of clergy, but he did not necessarily raise the status of common, bodily life. The worldly became “good,” not sacred (thus “dignify”). According to Bonhoeffer, a later corruption sacralized creation: “Protestants found in a misunderstood Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms a liberation and sanctification of the world and the natural order” (113–14). 90. Ibid., 60, italics mine. 91. Ibid., 62. Instead of an invisible church (Luther), Bonhoeffer emphasized that “the church occupies a certain space in the world that is determined by its worship, its order, and its congregational life” (62). 92. Ibid., 63.

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concepts of Stellvertretung (“vicarious representative action”) and Christus als Gemeinde existierend (“Christ existing as church community”), problematizes Luther’s eschatological antithesis between God and the devil. According to Bonhoeffer, humanity was created already in Christ, because creation itself is already redemptively ordered. For this reason, the lines between creation and redemption, church and world, and law and gospel are blurred; the incarnation expresses “that in the body of Christ all humanity is accepted, included, and borne, and that the church-community of believers is to make this known to the world by word and life. This means not being separated from the world, but calling the world into the community [Gemeinschaft] of the body of Christ to which the world in truth already belongs.”93 In this way, Bonhoeffer qualifies his points about the visible organization of the church: “It is not true that the church intends to or must spread its space out over the space of the world.”94 The church’s social space “has already been broken through, abolished, and overcome” by Christ’s reconciliation of the world, with the result that “the world is not divided between Christ and the devil; it is completely the world of Christ, whether it recognizes this or not.”95 In this sense, Bonhoeffer seeks “the grounding of the reality of the world in revelational reality, and thereby the validity of the gospel for the whole world.”96 Luther’s two-kingdom paradigm kept the gospel solely in the spiritual realm of the conscience: the special revelation of Christ and his gospel rules only the heart, while outward action is ruled by natural law. That distinction established significant differences between Bonhoeffer’s public theology and Luther’s. Pacifism and Pecca fortiter Bonhoeffer’s pacifism also seems to be a clear difference between him and Luther—not just on the level of practice but also on the deeper level of theory. Pacifism represented, for Luther, a mixture of the two kingdoms and a confusion of law and gospel. Bonhoeffer rejects the distinctions of private/public and person/office that Luther maintained are so essential to reading the Sermon on the Mount—and all Christian 93. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 67, italics mine. On the same page, Bonhoeffer writes, “There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God. Whoever perceives the body of Jesus Christ in faith can no longer speak of the world as if it were lost, as if it were separated from God.” 94. Ibid., 63. 95. Ibid., 64–65. 96. Ibid., 60.

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life in vocation.97 For Luther, the Sermon on the Mount is first to be read as a condemnation of the sinful hearts of humanity, and secondarily as a description of the life of “individual Christians,” which faith will ultimately fulfill in the heart. It does not apply to public persons in their temporal offices. Bonhoeffer read the sermon much more directly, as commands simply to obey.98 The Sermon on the Mount calls Christians to live by Christ’s commands even in wider society: “What could the call to follow Jesus mean today for the worker, the businessman, the farmer, or the soldier?”99 Referring directly to Luther, Bonhoeffer writes that “the assertion that it is not possible to govern with the Sermon on the Mount springs from a misunderstanding of the Sermon on the Mount.”100 Still, even Bonhoeffer’s pacifism surfaces hints of two-kingdom thinking, especially in his eventual participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler.101 Uwe Siemon-Netto argues that Bonhoeffer’s seeming contradictions between belief (pacifism) and action (attempted assassination) are explained only by the two-kingdom doctrine.102 He argues that Bonhoeffer acted in the plot not as a member of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, especially not as a pastor, but as a member of the secular realm, where external order needed to be restored. “So adamantly was he in making this distinction,” Siemon-Netto writes, “that he insisted on having his name removed from congregational prayer lists for pastors persecuted for proclaiming the Gospel.”103 Bonhoeffer did not justify his action in accord with the gospel. His political conflict incurred guilt, as all action in the secular kingdom is a “necessary evil” for preserving order so that the gospel can grant forgiveness:104 “In this [secu97. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Geoffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey, trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, DBW 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 134–35: “But this distinction between private person and bearer of an office as normative for my behavior is foreign to Jesus. . . . ‘Private’ and ‘official’ spheres are all completely subject to Jesus’ command. The word of Jesus claimed them undividedly. He demands undivided obedience.” 98. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 326: “The purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to do it (see the ending of Matthew 7!).” 99. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 39. 100. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 359. 101. This view is being challenged by those who argue that Bonhoeffer was not meaningfully involved in the conspiracy. See Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony Siegrist, and Daniel Umbel, Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013). 102. Uwe Siemon-Netto, “Welcome Back, Dietrich,” Lutheran Witness 125 (February 2006): 16–17. See also Charles Ford, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Resistance, and the Two Kingdoms,” Lutheran Forum 27 (August 1993): 28–34. 103. Siemon-Netto, “Welcome Back, Dietrich,” 17. 104. For more on Bonhoeffer’s “acceptance of guilt,” see Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 791–95, 856. For exposition of Luther’s pecca fortiter (“sin boldly”), see Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 51–54.

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lar] kingdom, humans can’t help but sin in the sense that their actions are always imperfect in God’s eyes. But this must not prevent them from following the dictates of reason, and then turning to the ‘righthand kingdom’ for forgiveness in Christ.”105 In this way, Bonhoeffer exemplifies the dialectic of law and gospel in two-kingdom thinking. Bonhoeffer’s Innovative Two Kingdoms Ironically, Bonhoeffer’s indebtedness to the Lutheran two-kingdom perspective may be most evident in his original contributions to public theology. This irony appears especially in his exposition of “orders of preservation” and “divine mandates,” as well as his discussion of the state as “the restrainer.” Bonhoeffer’s earlier work in Creation and Fall (1937, based on lectures given in 1932–33) modified the traditional Lutheran language of “orders of creation” to “orders of preservation.”106 It is unclear whether Bonhoeffer knew that Luther himself did not locate the state naturally as an “order of creation,” even if contemporary Lutherans had done so. But Bonhoeffer moved the other two estates, family and church, which Luther had placed in creation, into postlapsarian providence as well.107 For Bonhoeffer, all reality is fallen (and preserved), with no access back to the situation of the world at creation: “Humankind after all cannot find its way back behind its split state to unity; it is no longer able so unambiguously to distinguish the light of Lucifer, the light-bearer, from the light of God.”108 Surprisingly, Bonhoeffer was even willing to do this with marriage. The account of Adam and Eve is not properly the institution of marriage but simply a picture of human community. Indeed, “the creation of the woman belongs already to the prehistory of the fall.”109 Though it modifies Luther’s thought, this trajectory is similar. Unlike Bonhoeffer, Luther believed that one could speculate on the state of original creation, and Luther’s speculation was quite idyllic. 105. Siemon-Netto, “Welcome Back, Dietrich,” 16. See also Von Klemperer, “Beyond Luther?” 194: responsible action in this world is “not between good and evil, but between one evil and another, and . . . nevertheless God leads him [humanity] to himself even through evil.” 106. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans. Douglas Stephen Bax, DBW 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 140. 107. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 95. In an editorial footnote, de Gruchy mistakenly traces the idea of the state as a natural order back to Luther’s own thinking. 108. Ibid., 140. 109. Ibid., 95. See n. 5. Student notes from Bonhoeffer’s lectures read, “It is superficial reasoning to take this as a basis for speaking about marriage as an order of creation” (Ferenc Lehel, 49), and “one may not speak of the institution of marriage here. It is the story of human community as such” (Hilde Pfeiffer, 38).

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But, for Luther, the fall wrecked all forms of life, so that all the estates shifted to a remedial character beyond their archetypal form.110 Similarly, Bonhoeffer said that God “affirm[s] the sinful world” and even institutes “new laws that now apply to the earth and humankind after the fall.” God’s preserving action even “participates” in the “wickedness, the fallen state, of those laws.”111 Bonhoeffer’s use of the image of cloaks (to cover Adam’s and Eve’s nakedness) seems to parallel Luther’s use of “masks” in speaking about both the guilt of human social order and God’s using it to preserve the world for the gospel. 112 By the time Bonhoeffer was writing what later became Ethics, he dropped the language of “orders of preservation” and instead adopted “divine mandates,” though the framework is basically the same. “Divine mandates” speaks more clearly to their origin in God and drops the terminology of “order,” which Bonhoeffer thought was too “static.”113 Though Bonhoeffer separated “work” and “marriage,” which in Luther’s context were all subsumed under oeconomia (household administration), the divine mandates were the same as Luther’s three estates: The relation of the world to Christ becomes concrete in certain mandates of God in the world. The scripture names four such mandates: work, marriage, government, and church. We speak of divine mandates rather than divine orders, because thereby their character as divinely imposed tasks [Auftrag], as opposed to determinate forms of being, becomes clearer. . . . God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ.114

Bonhoeffer was clear about the preparatory role of the divine mandates, especially those outside the church. They are not specifically “Christian,” but they point to Christ by their own deficiency.115 This draws attention to Bonhoeffer’s desire to rehabilitate a theology of the “natural,” not subsumed under either “sacred” or “sinful.”116 “Still, that 110. LW 1:198–219. 111. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 139, italics mine. 112. On the “masks of God” in Luther’s two-kingdom thought, see Brian Brewer, “‘These Are the Masks of God’: Martin Luther and the Protestant Life of Vocation,” in Thriving in Babylon: Essays in Honor of A. J. Conyers, ed. David Capes and J. Daryl Charles (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 178–203. 113. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 74: “Thus the doctrine of divine mandates—which in the form of a doctrine of ‘estates’ [Stände] threatens to lead to a dangerous partition between human beings and reality—serves to place human beings before the one and whole reality as we find it revealed in Jesus Christ” (italics original). 114. Ibid., 68–69, italics original. 115. On this pattern of argument, see Barry Harvey, “Preserving the World for Christ: Toward a Theological Engagement with the ‘Secular,’” SJT 61 (2008): 64–82.

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which is Christian is not identical with the worldly, the natural with the supernatural, the revelational with the rational.”117 Bonhoeffer’s distinction between the “ultimate” and the “penultimate,” especially in the integrity of the “penultimate,” also maps onto this same distinction.118 The “restrainer” in Bonhoeffer’s thought offers final evidence of his place in the two-kingdom stream, however original and ambiguous. Taking his cue from 2 Thessalonians 2:7, Bonhoeffer interprets the “restraining force” (das Aufhaltende) as “the ordering power of the state.” Bonhoeffer returns to the tension in God’s preservation of fallen orders by saying that the restraining power of the state “is not without guilt, but God uses it to protect the world from disintegration.”119 Though much more negative than Luther’s view of the state, and more in line with the pacifist Anabaptist tradition, this claim expresses a fundamental two-kingdom tension: the necessity of something at odds with the gospel message itself. Despite Bonhoeffer’s criticism of Eigengesetzlichkeit (“autonomy”) of public order, he still allows for “a relative autonomy” (einer relativen Eigengesetzlichkeit) of the state from the concrete form of divine law.120 Luther seemed to advocate a more peaceful resolution, but Bonhoeffer’s strong dialectic still echoes its Lutheran forefather. Bonhoeffer even resembles the more Christendom-minded aspects of Luther when writing that the church is an “ally” to “the restrainer,” the two of them “joining in sincere alliance,” even if that alliance is between two opposites of “blessing and guilt.” 121 Summary After Luther, then, the two kingdoms turned toward more fixed and creational categories. Though Luther himself rooted the two kingdoms in creation, he saw the fall as having a tremendous impact on God’s mode of governing the two realms, body and soul. Much of this impact was lost in the extreme optimism of the Enlightenment and modern philosophy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by way of his predecessor Reinhold 116. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 173: “We speak of the natural as distinct from the created, in order to include the fact of the fall into sin. We speak of the natural as distinct from the sinful in order to include the created. The natural is that which, after the fall, is directed toward the coming of Jesus Christ....... The natural does not compel the coming of Christ, nor does the unnatural make it impossible; in both cases the real coming is an act of grace.” 117. Ibid., 59, italics mine. 118. See “Ultimate and Penultimate Things,” in Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 146–70. 119. Ibid., 131, italics mine. 120. Ibid., 362. 121. Ibid., 132–33.

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Niebuhr, recovered this sense of the fallenness of the world and God’s condescension to participate in fallen means for the sake of its preservation. Luther’s identification of the two realms as visible reality and invisible reality likewise began to drop out. Instead, the realms became most often associated with church and state as jurisdictions. In other words, Luther’s two-kingdom worldview became solely a political doctrine. The body/soul dichotomy allowed Luther to retain some aspects of Christendom, albeit an Erastian kind. Although some traces of his Erastian Christendom remained in the Lutheran renaissance of early twentieth-century Germany, the fracture between Christian faith and political order was already deep, making space for an Erastianism of a different and more dangerous kind. Conclusion Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer both represent figures who, somewhat unwittingly, retrieved a tradition of the two kingdoms for the twentieth century. Though they saw themselves as combating the problems of Lutheran political theology, they drew from aspects of Luther’s modalities in their formulations. Clearly, they did not use the same categories as Luther: the inner/outer dichotomy was transposed to future/present, love/justice, or ultimate/penultimate. But they did (to use one of Niebuhr’s categories) approximate Luther’s thinking in a different time. Like Luther’s, their formulations allowed for an even more positive assessment of “secularity,” as distinguished from the finality of the gospel. Also like Luther’s, their formulations still left some room for a kind of “Christendom” situation. For Niebuhr, this room involved the way in which relative justice approximates the gospel of love; for Bonhoeffer, the natural as already Christ-laden. Bonhoeffer came closer to an antagonism of “the two” than Niebuhr, which explains the reading of Bonhoeffer by neo-Anabaptist advocates. Niebuhr’s unique importance to this work lies in adding Augustine to the twentieth-century discussion of “the two.” Bonhoeffer’s lies in representing a recent school of followers that can also connect to the Lutheran two kingdoms, albeit emphasizing the antithesis between the practices of the visible church and the world. Both added nuanced and dialectical ways of speaking about the profound ultimacy of eschatological reality and daily common life in this world.

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Lutheran and Catholic Neoconservatism and a “Paradoxical” Two Kingdoms

Although Reinhold Niebuhr held a place in the Lutheran tradition, by his own admission his thought was geared toward political prescription much more than dogmatic theology. Thus, many who upheld Niebuhr’s project after him, particularly those who continued the retrieval of Augustine, did not share even Niebuhr’s moderate Lutheran background.1 Yet some of Niebuhr’s followers sought to retrieve a more confessional and therefore explicit two-kingdom doctrine, as a matter of not only historical excavation but also constructive theology. Robert Benne can be credited as the leading figure in this Lutheran return to a self-conscious two-kingdom model.2 His work rehabilitated the two kingdoms from becoming a solely political doc1. Chapter 5 examines Reinhold Niebuhr’s influence in this area, especially the connection between Niebuhr’s use of Augustine and the influence of the two kingdoms. 2. The extent of Benne’s influence appears particularly in two volumes. One is an edited work from a conference of Lutheran scholars all expressing indebtedness to Benne’s rehabilitation of the Niebuhrian “paradox category”: Angus Menuge, ed., Christ and Culture in Dialogue: Constructive Themes and Practical Applications (St. Louis: Concordia, 1999). The Niebuhrian category clearly influences the title. More recently, in the Festschrift for Benne (Michael Shahan, ed., A Report from the Front Lines: Conversations on Public Theology; A Festschrift in Honor of Robert Benne [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008]), many essays acknowledge particular dependence on Benne’s proposal regarding the “Lutheran difference” in public theology.

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trine, applying it to cultural and ecclesial questions more broadly, such as Christian higher education. Benne and other contemporary Lutherans have generally intended to restore Luther’s own doctrine of the two kingdoms without large-scale alterations. Nevertheless, in a few significant ways, contemporary formulations differ from Luther’s own articulation, thus contributing to a modernized two-kingdom paradigm. Treatment of Robert Benne’s place in this two-kingdom stream also opens space for Benne’s larger circle of neoconservatism, especially in North American Roman Catholic theology. Recognizing this connection not only locates the two kingdoms in a tradition often seen as opposing them, but also indicates how modern versions of the paradigm coincide with a certain acceptance of liberal political order. To the extent that recent Catholic theologians have reasoned in resonance with the two kingdoms, they have likewise opened themselves to modernity. Accordingly, after this chapter addresses Benne’s confessional Lutheran retrieval and alteration of the two-kingdom position, the argument turns to neoconservative Catholic thought and its most significant connection with Lutheranism, Richard John Neuhaus. Robert Benne and Contemporary Lutheran Retrieval Robert Benne’s chief work reclaiming a two-kingdom perspective is the 1995 publication The Paradoxical Vision.3 The book is notable for several reasons. One is the title, clearly alluding to H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous category of “Christ and Culture in Paradox.” As Benne recounts, during the 1960s and 1970s, much mainstream Lutheran theology turned away from Niebuhr’s characterization of Lutheranism as “paradoxical” to “transformationist” models of Christian social thought.4 As a result, his Lutheran training was more grounded in liberation theology than the tradition of the two kingdoms. Benne credits Reinhold Niebuhr, as well as time spent with German Lutherans such as Walter Künneth and Helmut Thielicke, for his discovery of traditional Lutheran two-kingdom thought.5 Accepting this position 3. Robert Benne, The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995). 4. Benne mentions in particular his former professors Gibson Winter and Alvin Pitcher (Paradoxical Vision, viii). See Gibson Winter, Elements for a Social Ethic (New York: Macmillan, 1966). For a general overview of the development of Lutheran ethical thinking in a “transformationist” trajectory, see Charles Amjad-Ali and W. Alvin Pitcher, eds., Liberation and Ethics: Essays in Religious Social Ethics in Honor of Gibson Winter (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1985). 5. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, vii–ix.

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entailed a rebuttal of the Niebuhrian (of both Reinhold and Richard) critique that the Lutheran two-kingdom view is “quietist,” the assessment that caused fellow Lutherans to reject the older approach in favor of “Christ transforming culture.” Instead of embarrassment at H. Richard Niebuhr’s portrayal of Luther’s two-kingdom idea, Benne embraces the designation “paradoxical.”6 The Lutheran Difference: A “Middle Way” In a way typical of two-kingdom thinking, Benne situates his work between several extremes as a “third way.” The two poles he seeks to avoid are “accommodationist” engagement and “Christian politics.” Benne sees both stemming from what H. Richard Niebuhr called “constructive Protestantism,” which Benne identifies with the Calvinist impulse “to transform society as an analogy to the transformation of the soul.”7 This gospel-transformationist model spawns both liberal and conservative offshoots, really two sides of the same coin. For Benne, the root is a doctrine of progressive sanctification: “The sinner’s soul is transformed by the Spirit so that he or she can clearly discern God’s will and actually do it. But the process does not stop there. This transformation of the soul brings about the urge to transform society in like manner.”8 Both American liberals and fundamentalists, though often seen as enemies, inherit this same root impulse and are much closer than they are made out to be. For Benne, conservative and liberal transformationism splits over the content and likelihood of transformation. On the left, liberals become “accommodationists” to rising secular forces, adapting the traditional Christian formula of the gospel to fit their public paradigm. On the right, conservatives do not modify the content of orthodox doctrine, but they seek to apply it directly to a “Christian politics.” Among conservatives, the theocratic posture splits into optimistic and pessimistic camps: aggressive reconstructionists, who optimistically continue efforts to reclaim an evangelical politics; and fundamentalists, who pessimistically withdraw from mainstream society and wait for God to establish the earthly millennium. Benne rejects all of these positions, disagreeing with any attempt—liberal or conservative—to apply the gospel to political order. Such an endeavor ends up losing either 6. Robert Benne, “Lutheran Quietism Redivivus?” LQ 17 (2003): 231–34; Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 63. 7. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 28, italics mine. 8. Ibid., 28.

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the content of the gospel (liberal accommodation) or the integrity of a believer’s participation in political life (aggressive reconstructionists or passive fundamentalists). For Benne, all this comes back to a problematic expectation for anything beyond individuals’ becoming “Christian.”9 Benne offers “the Lutheran difference” as an alternative that rises above the current culture wars. “The Lutheran difference,” a phrase borrowed from Mark Noll, posits a “paradoxical” vision that holds to an orthodox gospel in all its fullness but does not try to apply it to political and social systems. The paradoxical vision does not pollute the gospel by accommodating worldly values (contra liberals) or upset the truly secular order of civil polity (contra conservatives). “This framework protects the radicality and universality of the gospel”—radicality in its supernatural content (contra liberals) and universality in its transcendence of cultural/political structures (contra conservatives). 10 With a progressive doctrine of sanctification cited as the root problem, Benne argues that a Lutheran or “paradoxical” view of sanctification allows for a paradoxical public theology. First, one should not expect straightforward, progressive transformation at the individual level. “Calvinist doctrines of sanctification anticipate too complete a transformation of the soul,” but a Lutheran view preserves the concept of “alien righteousness” by seeing sanctification as a repeated return to justification: In contrast to the Lutheran paradoxical view (simultaneously justified and sinner), Reformed ethics envision much more. The Spirit can overcome the recalcitrance of the old Adam. The “new person in Christ” can make visible, progressive steps toward perfection. This means both perceiving and doing the will of God. Reformed traditions have generally affirmed a third use of the law in addition to the two uses that Lutheranism accepts.11

Benne connects this third use of the law to two more Reformed concepts that he critiques: deeper continuity between old-covenant Israel and new-covenant church, and greater confidence about the clarity of Scripture on topics not related to salvation. Lutherans are less willing to connect Israel and the church than the Reformed tradition is, and “a further ‘nudge’ in the Lutheran direction would lead to a bit more skep9. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 42. 10. Ibid., 62. Benne uses language throughout The Paradoxical Vision of “safeguarding” the gospel from outside influence. 11. Ibid., 96–97.

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ticism about whether the Bible or the social ethics of the church gives that much clarity about worldly issues.”12 In the two-kingdom paradigm, “secular people have important insights into the creative workings of the law, perhaps surpassing even those of Christians.” Benne says that this “Lutheran difference” leads to “a bit of Lutheran diffidence.”13 But Benne presses his point even further by arguing that a paradoxical public theology critiques not simply the doctrine of individual sanctification but also the analogy between individual and society. More fundamentally, “there can be no projection of what happens in the life of an individual’s soul onto the life of society.”14 Benne thus affirms Reinhold Niebuhr’s distinction between moral humanity and immoral society: individuals are capable of moral evaluation, whereas society inherently cuts across moral categories.15 Society does not have clear moral agency. A paradoxical perspective is more fully able to live with these tensions and ambiguities than a transformationst paradigm. The Core of the Paradoxical Vision Benne next sets forth positive criteria for the paradoxical two-kingdom model. He lists four central tenets of this vision: (1) the qualitative distinction between God’s salvation and all human effort, (2) the paradox of human nature, (3) God’s paradoxical rule, and (4) the paradox of history. The first is the Lutheran emphasis on the “passivity” of salvation that protects the unconditionality of the gospel. Benne sees this protection of the gospel in terms of its “radicalness” and its “universality.” It is radical in negating any human claim to having a role in the drama of salvation.16 By contrast, transformationists often speak in terms of humans’ “participation” in the economy of salvation, even if only as instruments. It is universal in that “the gospel simply does not exclude. All humans, regardless of what group they belong to, are equidistant and equally near the grace of God in Christ.” Transformationists claim that some nations are more “Christian” than others, or that certain institutions or groups are closer to Christ, but these are category mistakes. Benne emphasizes that all human actions 12. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 98. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 43. 15. Ibid., 77. For Benne, social groups “lack conscience and prudence.” Moreover, “human sin is particularly expressed in collective situations” (77). 16. Ibid., 71.

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beyond the passive acceptance of salvation “belong in the penultimate sphere.”17 In Benne’s second tenet of the paradoxical vision, the paradox of human nature, he outlines the key Lutheran distinction between spiritual and civil righteousness. In their depravity, humans are utterly unable to do spiritual good before God, but even the most depraved are still able to maintain political order with outward civil righteousness; eternal salvation and external order are not intricately connected. In particular, Benne argues that civil community is upheld through natural law discerned by common reason: “Our rationality, though fallen, can help us discern what is right and just behavior with regard to our fellow human beings.”18 Because natural law is universally accessible without reference to spiritual understanding, non-Christians are just as capable as Christians to live righteously in the civil realm. Benne appeals to the fabled saying of Luther that he would “rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian.”19 Thus, we should have great confidence that non-Christians can still maintain right societal relationships, for “reason is a whore only when it tries to rise up in wisdom and righteousness to God.”20 Momentarily skipping the third tenet, I turn to Benne’s fourth point, about the “paradox of history.” His exposition is strikingly similar to Niebuhr’s focus on the otherworldliness of Christian love (chapter 2) and contemporary Augustine scholars’ emphasis on the opaqueness of the saeculum (chapter 5). The paradox concerns the announcement of God’s kingdom and its delay beyond temporal history. For Benne, “this biblical and Christian perspective arose when the kingdom expected by the followers of Jesus did not come.”21 The Old Testament political kingdom was expected, but a transcendent and spiritual kingdom was received, fully revealed only in the eschaton. As a consequence, we must see the kingdom as outside temporal history: “The world goes on its jagged path, perhaps positively conditioned by Christian influence, but no one should mistake that Christian influence for the kingdom of God.”22 17. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 72. 18. Ibid., 77. 19. Ibid. This saying is usually considered apocryphal, but it echoes sentiments that Luther expressed on occasion: “It is said that there is no better temporal rule anywhere than among the Turks, who have neither spiritual nor temporal law, but only their Koran. But we must admit that there is no more shameful rule than ours with its spiritual-temporal law, which has resulted in nobody living according to common sense, much less according to Holy Scripture any more” (LW 44:203). 20. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 78. 21. Ibid., 80, italics mine.

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The real heart of Benne’s proposal is found in his third tenet: God’s paradoxical rule, the “most difficult element, yet the most important”—Benne’s explicit identification with the two-kingdoms doctrine.23 Its difficulty is that it cuts across the human tendency toward simplicity, unity, and resolution by placing duality at the heart of reality: “There is a twofoldness in God’s action in the world, a twofoldness that generates and reflects a real tension in the individual and corporate lives of Christians.” This is a tension “between Christ and the ongoing societal necessities of the world.”24 Though all Christian groups recognize something of this tension, “the Lutheran way comes closest to living with an unresolved tension.”25 This unresolved tension appears most basically in the difference between law and gospel. According to Benne, the state, “which has a tentative autonomy,” is run by law. In this realm, “God operates through ‘masks’ to get this work done. Many of these masks are not recognizably Christian or even religious.”26 Benne critiques how Christians often feel like they should be applying their faith to politics: because “the action of the law in the world is nonredemptive,” civic order need not have specifically Christian influence.27 Benne calls for an “honest secularity” that Christians should uphold in political affairs.28 But this secularity is not a call to withdraw from politics, for law still calls forth responsibility. Like Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, and other two-kingdom thinkers, Benne uses “necessity” and “responsibility” as main categories for the participation of Christians in the world. Christians will have to be “involved in some worldly responsibilities that will not appear directly as works of love. . . . Worldly responsibility will mean coming to terms with the finitude and fallenness of the world.”29 Yet, whereas the law elicits responsibility, action, and moral obligation, the gospel does not. The gospel generates spontaneous faith in the heart by the Holy Spirit but has no conditions of activity attached. The gospel is “vertical,” connecting humans in their relationship to God. When the gospel is falsely presented as having “demands,” it is 22. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 89. 23. Ibid., 78. 24. Ibid., 81. 25. Ibid., 82, italics mine. On the uneasiness of this tension, Benne writes that “the twofold rule of God intersects creatively and painfully in the lives of Christians living in a balance-of-terror world” (119). 26. Ibid., 84. 27. Ibid., 85. 28. Ibid., 177. 29. Ibid., 85.

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“made into law.” That is why “the extravagant love revealed in the gospel cannot become the guiding principle for ordering life in the rough and tumble of this world. The world must remain under the law, not the gospel. If it pretends to be under the direct guidance of the gospel . . . it dishonors God the creator.”30 Although the gospel may indirectly influence the world through individuals, Christians must not have “an irresponsible desire to transform it.”31 The attempt to give visible expression to the gospel, especially in society, “will destroy both law and gospel. . . . The ‘gospel ethic’ does not fit smoothly into the world.”32 Benne again targets what he calls the “transformation view” for promulgating a public ethic that flows from the gospel, blurring these paradoxes and mixing law with gospel. This “supplanting of the law by the gospel” explains why there is “a constant drift toward pacifism” in contemporary political theology.33 The result is that “the law is simply cancelled out as a firm guide to personal life in the world.”34 “The problem with all this is that the ‘gospel ethic’ is not fit for the challenges of the world. . . . The world cannot be directly run by gospel love or the Christian virtues that are elicited by it. The world is run under the law, the ‘left-hand kingdom of God.’ The law must and does account for the fallenness of the world. It demands and coerces. It holds persons responsible. It judges.”35 Confusing law and gospel has disastrous effects for both individual salvation and social order. The distinction of law and gospel works out not only in the practice of Christian persons but also in the unique mission of the church. Benne contends that transformationists are embarrassed about the social irrelevance of Christian faith. The problem with the transformationist view is the loss of the “specifically religious mission of the church.”36 “The Lutheran tradition has been more focused and limited in its definition of the mission of the church.”37 Individual Christians 30. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 87, italics mine. 31. Ibid., 87–88. 32. Ibid., 88. Note the quotation marks around ‘gospel ethic.’ Benne is clearly showing that the gospel itself does not have moral content, at least not as clearly as the law does. 33. Ibid., 94. Thus, Benne claims that Anabaptist and Reformed theologies are unexpected bedfellows, whereas Lutheranism stands apart from both. 34. Ibid., 95. 35. Ibid., 95–96. Benne also uses the heart/body and private/public distinction in his formulation of law and gospel: “God rules the repentant heart with his gospel, but he rules the world of public affairs with his law” (96). 36. Ibid., 99, italics original. 37. Ibid., 101. Benne points out that Lutheran ecclesiology rests only on word and sacrament as signs of the gospel, whereas the Reformed ecclesiology includes law/order, especially in church discipline, as part of the esse of the church.

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may participate in politics, even seeking to transform political institutions in line with natural law (not the gospel), but the church as a gathered body and represented by its clergy is to focus on nurturing souls in faith. Other concerns besides proclaiming the gospel and receiving the sacraments have potential to “confuse the church’s central mission and to damage its integrity.”38 Churches indirectly affect their culture by forming Christian believers into virtuous citizens who then preserve the institutions of civic life simply and modestly through honest behavior. Clergy are not able themselves to deal with diverse aspects of modern life, because their training is only in Christian doctrine, which is exclusively “religious.”39 Likewise, this indirect approach is not paternalistic in pushing its ideas on the world. Social pronouncements by the church should be few and far between—only when a social or governmental practice directly violates a core religious principle. Given that the church’s mission is for spiritual ends, Christian laity may enter into political debates as separate individuals, but the church as a gathered body does not, not even for “social” questions: Even social statements [by the church] are by and large illegitimate, especially if they are prescriptive. All direct, prescriptive incursions into economic and political life involve the church in a false claim of authority and competence in that realm. . . . Such incursions make the church just another political agent among the many operating in God’s left-hand kingdom, which is a betrayal of the constituting mission of the church. The only time the church should speak directly is in matters of status confessionis. These are instances in which a social practice is clearly contrary to the Word of God, that is, it goes counter to the very essence of the gospel.40

Even when the church makes forays into social questions, it should “limit its address to communicants of the religious tradition, not to the public world.”41 Laypersons not acting as ecclesial representatives can address the wider public; when they do so, they must “translate” Christian values into a more intelligible form for nonbelievers. Benne thus advocates the use of natural-law arguments made especially in Roman Catholic natural philosophy.42 On this “criterion of intelligibil38. Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 102. 39. Ibid., 199–200. “Lutheran theology has been reluctant to assert the church’s competence on ‘worldly matters’” (61). 40. Ibid., 174–75. 41. Ibid., 205.

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ity,” Benne writes that Christians must “make the modulations necessary to render key Christian insights publicly intelligible.” 43 Summary and Comparison with Luther The contemporary Lutheran paradoxical vision bears obvious similarity to the two-kingdom tradition at numerous points. The similarities are so striking that they hardly need repeating. Instead, a few differences are worth pointing out. Though contemporary Lutheran advocates of the two kingdoms self-consciously seek to recover Luther’s own theology, this recovery is not slavish and may occur without full awareness of differences from Luther’s formulations. For example, Benne, in reviewing William Wright’s historical work on Luther’s two-kingdom worldview, expressed great surprise at the differences between Wright’s historical interpretation of Luther and his own contemporary retrieval.44 The crux was Wright’s argument that Luther distinguishes the two kingdoms as realms between body (visible) and soul (invisible). Benne concludes, “If Wright is right about Luther, then I believe Luther is wrong about the way the two-kingdom doctrine should function in Christian teaching.”45 Like many modern Lutheran two-kingdom advocates, Benne divides the two kingdoms primarily along institutional lines: church and state. More foundationally, Benne’s core dichotomy is eschatological—the “delay” of the eschaton—producing a law/gospel division and a polar modality of knowledge: reason (law) and faith (gospel). Although Benne comes closer to Luther’s two-kingdom “worldview” than Reinhold Niebuhr, for whom it was solely a political doctrine, the paradoxical vision still does not play the architectonic role in theology for Benne that it did for Luther.46 Benne realizes that Luther’s body/soul distinction makes Luther’s view more compatible with the Christendom cooperation of church and state, just as body and soul cooperate. In making the twokingdom doctrine more compatible with modern democratic liberalism, the contemporary Lutheran approach has deemphasized the the42. On “translation,” see Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 214: Good practitioners of the two kingdoms “have all succeeded in translating core Christian religious and moral values into arguments thoroughly understandable to non-Christians.” 43. Ibid., 214, italics mine. 44. Robert Benne, review of Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism, by William Wright, LQ 25 (2011): 227–30. 45. Benne, review of Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms, 229. 46. For Benne’s application of the two-kingdom paradigm to education, see his “A Lutheran Vision of Christian Humanism,” in Menuge, Christ and Culture in Dialogue, 314–32.

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ological and revelatory content of law; Luther saw natural law as most clearly expressed in Scripture, but contemporary Lutherans have narrowed the content of natural law much further, excluding the “right worship of God,” which Luther saw as one of its main tenets. Luther displayed an appreciation of hierarchy in the worldly kingdom, but contemporary thinking on the two kingdoms affirms a stronger democratic stance. This is not necessarily to confuse the egalitarian nature of the spiritual kingdom with secular government—a practice often characteristic of liberationist readings of Luther’s theology—as much as to apply Luther’s argument for the limits of government differently. Though the practical effect on political structures is different, the underlying theory is apparently in line with earlier traditions of the two kingdoms. Yet contemporary Lutherans are certainly less vocal about the postlapsarian character of political authority than Luther himself was. The Twentieth-Century Catholic Revolution That Robert Benne pointed to Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest converted from Lutheranism, as an exemplary practitioner of the “paradoxical vision” may not seem surprising given Neuhaus’s Lutheran background. But it should be more unexpected that Benne argues for Neuhaus’s continued adherence to the two kingdoms even after his transition to Catholicism. To be surprised, one simply has to remember Luther’s description of Roman Catholic ecclesiology’s confusion of his central distinction. Richard John Neuhaus thus stands as a good hinge figure for moving from Lutheran retrievals of Lutheran tradition to Catholic acceptance of something like the two-kingdom paradigm. Yet even before Neuhaus, significant movements in Catholicism signaled a shift to postChristendom forms of political theology. Although this history could be told much more expansively, the following narrative must focus on connecting elements of Catholic political theology’s twentieth-century transition to aspects of the two-kingdom tradition. John Courtney Murray The figure most important for the twentieth-century Catholic revolution in political theology was the American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray. Often credited with bringing Catholic political

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thought into the modern age, Murray saw himself as bringing the Catholic church into greater freedom, particularly in critiquing traditional Catholic notions of Christendom—“throne-and-altar” arrangements—in favor of secular, pluralist orders and religious self-determination. Although early on, Murray’s work was censured by the Jesuits for its “radical” tone, he was vindicated by his inclusion at the Second Vatican Council and his involvement in drafting the document Dignitatis Humanae. Murray’s main intellectual focus was to alleviate American Catholics of their discomfort with the U.S. constitutional settlement, especially its disestablishment clause. Beyond the national context, Murray wanted worldwide Catholicism to recognize its past errors in supporting Christendom, seeing the United States as a model for future Catholic political theology. Because he was a Jesuit priest, this task meant that Murray had to walk a fine line between appealing to tradition and defending American originality.47 Part of Murray’s strategy was retelling Christian political thought in a Catholic liberal mode. This meant critiquing elements of medieval pronouncements, such as Boniface’s advocacy of a two-swords theory.48 For Murray, American disestablishment of the church represented the best of the Catholic heritage. In particular, it represented Christ’s original distinction between “the things that are Caesar’s” and “the things that are God’s,” embodied proleptically in the Gelasian framework of parallel spiritual and temporal orders.49 But even this Gelasian duality of institutional authority must be improved. Murray appealed primarily to Aristotelian natural law and Thomist natural theology in order to speak not only of two specific “powers” but also, more broadly, of the “twofold” nature of Christian life in the world. He was content, for example, to speak of a “Christian mode of existence” distinct from the mode of life as a citizen of the earthly city.50 A further modification restricted the contents of the natural law to “the precepts in the ‘Second Table’”—not including the duties toward the divine.51 Murray nowhere acknowledged this as a change from Thomist thought. 47. Murray conceded “the newness of this formulation of the traditional doctrine, as over against the classic medieval statements” (“The Church and Totalitarian Democracy,” TS 14 [1952]: 558). 48. John Courtney Murray, “Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” TS 10 (1949): 180. 49. John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960), 202. 50. Ibid., 203. 51. Ibid., 322.

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For Murray, the founding of the United States was a high point in natural-law thinking, for which reason Catholics could assent to it. The penultimate can be formulated on its own, apart from reference to the ultimate. America’s “unity is purely political, consisting in agreement on the good of man at the level of performance without the necessity of agreement on ultimates.”52 The structure of the political order and its constitution are therefore religiously neutral; they “have no religious content. . . . They are not invested with the sanctity that attaches to dogma, but only with the rationality that attaches to law.”53 Natural law need not have religious foundations, so the church does not need to undergird or oversee a political order: “The doctrine of natural law has no Roman Catholic presuppositions. Its only presupposition is threefold: that man is intelligent; that reality is intelligible; and that reality, as grasped by intelligence, imposes on the will the obligation that it be obeyed in its demand for action or abstention.”54 Yet Murray also spoke about a “sacred” quality of each person’s right to make religious choices: “The personal conscience is a sacred forum.”55 Several times he correlated religion with inwardness and the hidden movement of the soul, speaking of the “interior religious life,” “internal religious decisions,” and “social expressions of the religious conscience.”56 Like Luther, Murray enumerated the sphere of the secular as “juridical relations between men” and the sphere of sacred religion as “man’s relation to God,” conscience being foremost.57 With such language about personal, internal conscience, traditional Catholics would understandably be suspicious that Murray’s framework was “Protestant.”58 Murray often rebutted this charge by arguing that Catholic thought—although not “Catholic” in the sense of revealed religion—could embrace natural law in a way that Protestant thought could not.59 For example, Murray responded to a theoretical Protestant 52. Murray, We Hold These Truths, 54. 53. Ibid., 49, italics mine. 54. Ibid., 109. 55. John Courtney Murray, The Problem of Religious Freedom (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1965), 34. 56. Ibid., 24, 34, 39. Murray distinguished between “public goods” and “spiritual goods,” with spiritual goods relating to personal religion; religion is “not public” (42). 57. Ibid., 87. Elsewhere, Murray defined the jurisdiction of the spiritual order as “whatever is in any way sacred in human affairs, whatever has relation to the salvation of souls or to the worship of God,” whereas the jurisdiction of the secular realm is “all other things” (“Church and Totalitarian Democracy,” 557–58). 58. Donald Pelotte, John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict (New York: Paulist, 1976), 34, 56–57. 59. Murray, We Hold These Truths, 41: “It is indeed one of the ironies of history that the tradition should have so largely languished in the so-called Catholic nations of Europe at the same time that its enduring vigor was launching a new Republic across the broad ocean. There is also some paradox

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charge that “natural-law doctrine is not ‘Christian’” by arguing for a modest natural-law conception: “Natural-law theory does not pretend to do more than it can, which is to give a philosophical account of the moral experience of humanity and to lay down a charter of essential humanism. It does not show the individual the way to sainthood, but only to manhood,” and thus “for a man to be reasonably human, and for a society to be essentially civil.”60 Murray saw the relationship between natural law and revealed gospel as one of gradation: “The Christian call is to transcend nature, notably to transcend what is noblest in nature, the faculty of reason.”61 But, importantly for Murray, this hierarchy of nature and grace does not mean that the revealed must direct the natural—one traditional way of describing the ecclesiocentric Christendom position.62 Not only does nature have its own integrity, but grace relates to nature on a different plane. The separation of the natural and the religious is good for both. The first principle is the distinction between the sacred and the secular orders of human life. The whole of man’s existence is not absorbed in his temporal and terrestrial existence. He also exists for a transcendent end. The power of government does not reach into this higher sacred order of human existence. . . . Its powers are limited to the affairs of the temporal and terrestrial order of man’s existence. And they are not to be used as instruments for the spiritual purposes of the Church—the maintenance of her unity or the furtherance of her mission.63

This indicates a sharp difference from the classic Catholic concept of the confessional state: revealed religion—relating to humanity’s transcendent end—does not help to direct natural order. “America has proved by experience that political unity and stability are possible without uniformity of religious belief and practice.”64 All that is necessary is unity on “rational truths and moral precepts that govern the structure of the constitutional state. . . . Stable political unity . . . can be in the fact that a nation which has (rightly or wrongly) thought its own genius in Protestant terms should have owed its origins and the stability of its political structure to a tradition whose genius is alien to current intellectualized exigencies of Protestant religiosity.” Murray generally assumed that natural law was absent from Protestant tradition, opposed to the “general Protestant moral system” (296). 60. Murray, We Hold These Truths, 297, italics mine. 61. Ibid., 298. 62. “Church and Totalitarian Democracy,” 557. 63. Murray, Problem of Religious Freedom, 28. 64. Murray, We Hold These Truths, 72.

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strengthened by the exclusion of religious differences from the area of concern allotted to government.”65 The no-establishment clause of a pluralistic order actually liberates the church to fulfill its true, transcendent function. In a particularly important section on the founding of America, Murray used a striking image. He related how Pompey entered the Jerusalem temple in 63 BCE, only to find the Holy of Holies empty—a sign that Israel’s God could not be depicted with an idol. In a similar way, the heart of the American system is “empty” of any “ideological idol” because of its decision to keep religion out of public life.66 Because the American order excludes religion, it therefore excludes idolatry. There is no confusion of the natural with the spiritual; thus, the church pursues a much more limited calling: It is not the function of the Church as such to elaborate the public consensus, which is a body of rational knowledge, a structure of rational imperatives, that sustain and direct the action of the People Temporal and of their secular rulers. The proper task of the Church is the custody and development of the deposit of faith, which is a body of revealed truth, a structure of mystery, that sustains and directs the action of the People Spiritual.67

According to Murray, even Dignitatis Humanae, written largely by his own hand, is not couched primarily in the framework of revealed religion. It is public, because its language is “translated” into that of natural law and reason: “The Declaration is the only conciliar document that is formally addressed to the world at large on a topic of intense secular as well as religious interest. Therefore, it would have been inept for the Declaration to begin with doctrines that can be known only by revelation and accepted only by faith.”68 Richard John Neuhaus and Catholic Neoconservatism Murray, then, a key figure in the “revolution” of the Second Vatican Council who was instrumental in the writing of statements on religious 65. Murray, We Hold These Truths, 73. 66. Ibid., 77–78. 67. Ibid., 121–22. Murray also rejected the idea of the “indirect” influence of the pope in the temporal order. See Thomas Ferguson, Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), 19–23. 68. John Courtney Murray, “The Declaration on Religious Freedom,” in War, Poverty, Freedom: The Christian Response, ed. Franz Böckle (New York: Paulist, 1966), 4.

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liberty, was generally considered “radical” before the council; but, given subsequent history, he is now considered quite conservative. Those who took up Murray’s mantle branded themselves “neoconservatives,” situated between those who sought to radicalize Vatican II further and those who would return to aspects of Christendom in pre–Vatican II formulas (the “paleoconservatives”).69 In debating the effects of Vatican II, the neoconservatives claimed to be content to live within the settled framework of Vatican II’s modern revolution. Among neoconservative Catholic voices, Richard John Neuhaus is the best case study for this project, for two reasons. First, Neuhaus bridges the Lutheran–Catholic divide. Second, Neuhaus’s critique of the “naked” public square contains language that on first glance seems to distance itself from the two-kingdom tradition. But although Neuhaus is often associated with those favorable to Christendom establishment—the religious right, evangelical transformationists, and “theocons”—a perusal of his work shows the opposite to be the case. 70 Religious Values and “The Naked Public Square” Neuhaus is known for his book The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984). Neuhaus decried the strict secularism that excludes all forms of religious influence in public life—the “naked” public square as the requirement that citizens remove any religious clothes before going out in public. This basic theme resonates with more transformationist thinkers, who have often taken up Neuhaus in that direction. Read with nuance, though, Neuhaus does not head in a transformationist direction. His goal is to have religion heard as a voice in the public debate, but not as the only or the dominant voice of political decision making, not in a move toward “the return of an oppressive Christendom.”71 Rather, his chief target is “militant secularism,” not “democratic secularism.”72 Neuhaus, like Benne, does not reject secu69. The neoconservatives see Vatican II as a true revolution, but one that does not need further revolutions. See George Weigel, Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy (New York: Paulist, 1989), 71. 70. For Neuhaus’s rejection of the label “theocon,” see “Dechristianizing America,” FT 164 (2006): 70: “I don't think I’ll go along with being called a theocon, not even accepting it with ‘a wink and a grin.’ To too many, the term inevitably implies theocracy, which is the very opposite of what my friends and I have been contending for all these years. I will never tire of insisting that the alternative to the naked public square is not the sacred public square but the civil public square. . . . I am guilty as charged by some conservatives: I am a liberal democrat. . . . On these and many other questions, liberalism was radically redefined beginning in the 1960s, with the ironic result that I and others of like conviction are called conservatives.” 71. Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 145. 72. Neuhaus is thus generally surprised that an attempt to allow religious voices to be heard is con-

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larity outright. To say that there ought to be space in the public square for religious opinion, as Neuhaus did, assumes that the square is not itself religious. “Militant secularists” see the presence of religious discourse within that square as subverting its neutrality; “democratic secularists,” as Neuhaus saw himself, claim that nothing demonstrates the square’s impartiality more than allowing all voices, even those influenced by religion, to be heard. Problems come when the public realm excludes religiously informed values wholesale. Key to understanding Neuhaus’s argument in The Naked Public Square is his reliance on (Lutheran) Peter Berger’s concept of a “sacred canopy.” Christians should not set up an altar to the Christian God at the heart of the political order, but rather they should seek to erect a “sacred canopy” that represents the transcendence of all or any religious faith.73 Religion contributes to, but is not identical with, the sacred canopy. The sacred canopy is the generality of “transcendent value” without the specific content of Christian doctrine; in fact, Neuhaus says that the sacred canopy will be able to judge religious doctrine itself: “People will continue to seek in secularity their safety from religious tyranny until Christians believably propose that there is greater safety under a sacred canopy that brings all institutions and belief systems, and most particularly religion, under judgment. The canopy is that to which the Judeo-Christian religion points. Religion bears witness to it but our religion is not to be equated with it.”74 Because the sacred canopy is “sacred,” a bearer of “transcendent” values, and erected in part by religion, Neuhaus later had to clarify that he was not advocating “civil religion” but “public philosophy,” in the manner of John Courtney Murray. “The common good,” for Neuhaus, is a moral, not a comprehensively religious, concept. “A moral tradition is part of religion but by no means the whole of it; nor, especially in Christianity, is it the most important part. But it is a necessary part.”75 Hence, Neuhaus rejects the phrase “Christian nation.” Indeed, he spoke of “religion,” not “Christianity,” as having a place in the public square. Throughout The Naked Public Square, Neuhaus defines “religion” as any system dealing with “ultimate values” and “transcendent meaning.” 76 Neuhaus wanted religiously informed values to be allowed in the sidered “conservative” or “antiquarian.” For him, it is simply an implication of egalitarian liberal democracy (Naked Public Square, 156). 73. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 121. 74. Ibid., 122–23. 75. Richard John Neuhaus, “Civil Religion or Public Philosophy,” FT 108 (2000): 72. 76. For example, Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 60.

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public square, but not religion qua religion. He alternated between speaking of “religiously informed values” and “religiously based values,” but speech delivered in public is not itself religion. It is informed by religion as a source. Like Murray, he uses the metaphor of “translation”: “Those who want to bring religiously based values to bear in public discourse have an obligation to ‘translate’ those values into terms that are as accessible as possible to those who do not share the same religious grounding.”77 In this way, Neuhaus retains the idea of “public reason” from Rawls, agreeing that religion qua religion does not have a place in public discourse—yet countering that public discourse can be informed by religion. Thus, Neuhaus opposed “fundamentalist and experiential forms of religion that are self-consciously divorced from public reason.”78 Fundamentalist Protestants of the religious right are too captured by biblicism to construct a true “public philosophy.”79 Neuhaus also appeals to Paul Tillich’s typology of heteronomy, autonomy, and theonomy. The religious right tries to impose biblical law on society—a type of “heteronomy”—whereas secularists are content with an atheistic “autonomy.” The solution is Tillich’s true “theonomy”: A theonomous culture . . . is one in which religious and cultural aspirations toward the transcendent are given public expression. Theonomy is not theocracy. . . . Theocracy is an act of historical closure, and therefore a form of idolatry. . . . A theonomous culture suggests a “sacred canopy” that legitimates a social order. Because religious rightists appear to propose not a canopy but a straitjacket, many Christians and Jews find themselves in a defensive posture that, sometimes inadvertently, reinforces those who equate theonomy with theocracy, and opposes both. 80

Neuhaus’s regular use of the term “Judeo-Christian” signals that he spoke primarily of morality and not the gospel as evangelical pronouncement. Indeed, one of the reasons for rejecting “Christian Amer77. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 125. 78. Ibid., 158. 79. Ibid., 36–37. 80. Ibid., 188. Unfortunately, Neuhaus’s definition of “theonomy” is nearly polar opposite that of Tillich and the same word associated with R. J. Rushdoony and Christian reconstructionism. Rushdoony’s “theonomy” was the application of all biblical law—including the penal code of the Mosaic Torah—to modern society. In Tillich’s separate terminology, this would be considered “heteronomy.” For Tillich, theonomy was not God’s law as set forth in Scripture but the “law” inherent in humans, who have their being grounded in God. Tillich argued that theonomous ethics recognizes the dependence of human beings upon the divine but does not see ethical principles as an “outside force,” alien to human nature itself. Theonomy is thus the awareness of God within human nature. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:83–86.

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ica” is that it leaves out the Jews, from whom Christians derive their morality, though not their concept of salvation.81 Neuhaus’s reading of the biblical story line in The Naked Public Square also follows many of the contours of two-kingdom thinking. Along with First Things colleagues such as Michael Novak and George Weigel, as well as Benne, Neuhaus advocates for a Christian Zionism that sees a continuing place for the Jews in God’s plan of history. The old- to new-covenant transition is simply not yet complete.82 For Neuhaus, the New Testament church is not a “replacement” for the Old Testament (or even continuing) Israel. He disparaged how the church “has styled itself ‘the New Israel.’”83 For Neuhaus, the decisive difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom of God—a very earthy, Old Testament announcement with “changes in the real world”—is located beyond history, thus creating an intermediate space between the two eras. Neuhaus refers to the widespread notion of the “delay of the Parousia”: “There is no doubt that the earliest Christian community believed that the final events of history were imminent,” but Jesus’s present kingdom is “not of this world.”84 He even cites approvingly Loisy’s famous dictum—“Jesus came announcing the kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church”—commenting that “the disappointment was and is understandable.”85 Thus, the kingdom is still “coming.” “The basic lesson, which Christians must learn again and again, is that the church is not the kingdom of God;”86 rather, the church “points to that which is not yet part of historically available experience, it points to the coming kingdom of God.”87 Because of this interim between present spiritual salvation and future earthly transformation, Christians can work together with Jews (and, by extension, Muslims), especially in establishing common moral practice. This provisional alliance reassures the public square that religious believers do not seek to dominate: “Only as the church, in its own teaching and life, cultivates this sense of provisionality and modesty will religion seem less threatening to those who would now bar it 81. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 261. 82. Neuhaus has praised Oliver O’Donovan for including Israel in his political theology and also criticized him for giving too much of an overrealized eschatology to the church apart from Israel. See Neuhaus, “Commentary on The Desire of the Nations,” SCE 11 (1998): 56–61. 83. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 167–68. 84. Ibid., 168. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 122, italics mine. 87. Ibid., 123.

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from the public square.”88 Here converge Neuhaus’s antisupersessionist understanding of the old and new covenants and his understanding of the providential preservation of the Jews with the role of the state. The Lutheran Transition to Catholicism Though Neuhaus had already written, as a Lutheran, of a “Catholic moment” for American society, he converted to Catholicism in 1990. Two important articles clarify both Neuhaus’s Lutheran foundation in the two kingdoms and its relation to Catholic neoconservative political theology. Only months before Neuhaus’s private acceptance into Roman Catholic communion, he delivered an address at a Lutheran theology conference on Lutheran principles of social engagement. The foundation of the entire speech was the clear distinction between law and gospel. He even couched this distinction in terms of Murray’s denunciation of “sacred monism,” with much of the critique directed at the evangelical insistence on taking a “Christian approach” to politics.89 As a clear outflow of his law/gospel distinction, Neuhaus rejected any claim to “Christian politics.”90 Bringing distinctively Christian principles to the public square only ends up blurring Christian distinctions: The “legalizing” of the gospel is the inevitable consequence when Christians lose sight of the law/gospel dialectic. The gospel is then turned into law. This is evident in the disturbingly common formulation, “The gospel requires that ——.” The blank is filled in with sundry prescriptions regarding behavior, feeling, or thinking, frequently of a social or political nature. Thus are law and gospel confused and conflated, with the result that the proper work of both is undermined.91

Seeing Neuhaus’s clear dependence on law/gospel thinking here helps interpret many statements from The Naked Public Square. Remembering that Neuhaus spoke of “religion” instead of Christianity or the church, we can conclude that Christians should bring their religion to bear in the public square not in its gospel form but in its law form. Or perhaps “religion” is simply the law form of Christianity.92 Because the content 88. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 123. 89. Richard John Neuhaus, “To Serve the Lord of All: Law, Gospel, and Social Responsibility,” Dialog 30 (1990): 140. 90. See, e.g., Richard John Neuhaus, “Against Christian Politics,” in The Best of “The Public Square” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 2:61–70. 91. Neuhaus, “To Serve the Lord of All,” 143.

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of Christianity is the doctrine of Christ, more precisely the law’s claim to transcendent value and morality is at issue. Note that religion in general, not the redeeming gospel, offers the transcendent value that helps to limit the political order. Religion acts in the motivation, though not necessarily the form, of public arguments. Mixing law and gospel “politicizes the faith”93 and fails to understand that spiritual justice (“imputed righteousness”) and natural justice (“civil righteousness”) exist on two different planes that do not meet.94 Neuhaus’s reliance on Reinhold Niebuhr here is clear throughout, though he employs even more polemical “realism” than Niebuhr. It is wrong to try to establish the justice of God’s kingdom here and now—even by approximation. Neuhaus was therefore less aggressive against the claims of secularity than he is often interpreted to be. Treating the question of religion and democracy sociologically allowed him to level the differences of Christianity from other religions (especially Judaism) by speaking purely of “morality” and “values.”95 This is a function of law, not the specific promise of salvation in the gospel. Neuhaus’s approach allows us to see how a two-kingdom model can oppose militant secularism without aligning with a transformationist or Christendom model. The two-kingdom approach rids the public square of all forms of “gospel,” even if they come in the guise of secularist ideology and optimism. But opposing the secularist gospel does not necessitate promulgating the Christian gospel in the political order. The two-kingdom approach seeks “genuine secularity” that limits political judgment to matters of law so that it does not encroach on the sacredness of the gospel. This address provides a corrective for those who would see Neuhaus’s critique of the “naked” public square as dressing it in the clothes of Christian faith. Here, Neuhaus gives a very limited conception of the church’s mission, with explicit reference to the two-kingdom doctrine. He also introduces a dictum that became important for both Lutheran and Catholic neoconservatives on ecclesial jurisdiction: “On social and political issues where it is not necessary for the church to speak, it is necessary that the church not speak. Where it is neces92. Note this clear difference between Neuhaus and Murray, for whom “religion” had to do solely with eternal life in heaven. For either definition of religion, “law” (Neuhaus) or “gospel” (Murray), the particular content of Christian doctrine is kept out of public purview. 93. Neuhaus, “To Serve the Lord of All,” 146. 94. Ibid., 143. 95. See Benne, Paradoxical Vision, 5–6, for his decision to speak about “religion” more generally—albeit in particular social traditions—instead of Christian doctrine more specifically, in its relation to democratic society.

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sary to speak to public policy, the church speaks proscriptively and not prescriptively.”96 Echoing his earlier call to erect a “sacred canopy,” Neuhaus reasons that the church’s involvement in public is simply to bear witness to transcendent values and a common civil morality. But the real value in this address, published after Neuhaus’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, is its postscript connecting his Lutheran reasoning with his present membership in the Catholic Church. In case any readers were tempted to write off Neuhaus’s address as merely containing his past beliefs, he corrects them. In fact, he goes even further than stressing the continuity of political theology: he argues that Lutheran two-kingdom thinking is better embodied in present-day Roman Catholicism: “As I understand the intention of the Lutheran Reformation and its implications for our day, the appropriate arena in which to advance and develop the truth of the two-fold rule of God is the Roman Catholic Church.”97 Neuhaus cites Catholic natural-law thinking as one area that can better serve the two-kingdom doctrine than simply the distinction between spiritual and civil righteousness.98 Neuhaus’s participation at another conference was similar: he participated as a Lutheran, published the presentation after his conversion, and wrote a postscript as a Catholic. The project addresses the legacy of Murray, regarding which Neuhaus was invited to give a Protestant assessment. Neuhaus argues that the best of Murray’s thought has parallels in Lutheran political theology. In particular, Neuhaus refers to Murray’s critique of “monism” as a problematic attempt to unite both sacred and secular: His [Murray’s] understanding of natural reason and natural law required a recognition of the moral integrity of the “ordinary” tasks that are built into the orders of creation and preservation. Such tasks did not require an explicitly sacral or ecclesiastical benediction external to themselves in order to possess moral integrity. It has frequently been argued that recognition of the integrity of the secular was a distinctive achievement of the Reformation. Murray had no doubt that he came to an appreciation of the secular by a thoroughly Catholic route. . . . For Reformation thinkers, especially Lutherans, and for Murray, secular tasks possess an integrity that Christians are bound to affirm. One might debate whether Murray’s thought in this connection was definitively shaped by a cultural milieu 96. Neuhaus, “To Serve the Lord of All,” 145. Neuhaus therefore distinguished between his role as a pastor in the church’s ecclesial setting and his political writings as a citizen and public intellectual. 97. Ibid., 149. 98. Ibid.

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formed by the Reformation tradition or whether, as he appeared to think, it was drawn from Thomas and distinctively Catholic teaching. . . . I suspect that Murray, both self-consciously and by cultural osmosis, drew on diverse sources and very self-consciously presented his argument in a distinctively Catholic form. . . . In any event, what Murray frankly termed “dualism” is very sympathetic to a Lutheran understanding of the relationship between secular and sacred, law and grace, creation and redemption—and, by extension, the relationship between state and church. 99

Neuhaus then champions Murray, along with Reinhold Niebuhr, for keeping him from the “monist” temptation of Reformed transformationist approaches: “One can sympathize with the adamant insistence that, if Christ is Lord at all, he must be Lord of all. . . . As much as he might sympathize, however, Murray would no doubt argue today, as he argued then, that the monist ambition to establish a coherent or ‘integral’ Christian social order is dangerously misguided.” 100 Neuhaus connects Murray’s “dualism” with Niebuhr’s “dialectic,” highlighting both as describing the interim period before Christ’s Parousia in terms of tension and polarity: “For the Lutheran Christian, Murray’s keen appreciation of the duality and dialectic of Christian existence has obvious connections with the theological construct of the ‘two kingdoms.’”101 Neuhaus appeals to the “striking similarity, if not identity, between Murray’s view of natural law and the Lutheran view of the ‘orders of creation and preservation.’”102 As in the first address discussed, though, Neuhaus praises the Catholic tradition of natural law as a better framework for Luther’s emphasis on reason in the temporal kingdom. Still, both amount to the same goal: “It might be said that Murray fought monism primarily because it endangered the political order, and Luther fought it primarily because it obscured the gospel.”103 Again, Neuhaus found it imperative to pen a postscript to defend his essay from misinterpretation. He maintains the same position, now on the Roman Catholic side, standing by what he wrote as representing his present stance: “Suffice it that subsequent developments require no substantive changes in the argument offered. In my judgment, what was authentic in the Lutheran Reformation is fulfilled and what was 99. Richard John Neuhaus, “Democracy, Desperately Dry,” in John Courtney Murray and the American Civil Conversation, ed. Robert Hunt and Kenneth Grasso (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 11–12. 100. Ibid., 15. 101. Ibid., 16. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 18.

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lacking is remedied in becoming a Roman Catholic. Then and now, I understand myself to be in communion with both Luther and Murray.”104 Such was Neuhaus’s apologia—and not his last—regarding the convergence of Lutheran and Roman Catholic political thought in modernity. Augustine and Catholic Liberalism After Neuhaus’s transition, he continued to defend his arguments, now also having to square his modern democratic views with Catholic tradition. Like Murray, Neuhaus sought to renarrate “traditional” Catholic teaching—which, he acknowledged, usually favored “Christendom”—toward a settlement with modern liberalism. Although Neuhaus accepted the label “neoconservative”—the “neo-” being an important qualifier, in distinction from earlier Christendom views—he also continued referring to himself as a “liberal,” espousing “liberalism.”105 For Neuhaus, political liberalism was synonymous with “modernity,” “the two terms usually being more or less interchangeable.”106 Religion compatible with liberalism simply “acknowledges the transcendent source and end of human existence,” being outside the bounds of this-worldly life.107 Neuhaus began to argue not merely that the church should support liberal polity but that liberal polity is necessary for the full mission of the church: “Liberalism is the condition for the Church to invite free persons to live in the communio of Christ.”108 One new development for the Catholic Neuhaus was growing attention to Augustine’s political theology. Luther and modern Catholic thinkers dominated Neuhaus’s earlier work; by the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Augustine became dominant. For example, in a symposium reflecting on the twentieth anniversary of The Naked Public Square, Stanley Hauerwas commented on the prevalence of liberal Protestant thinkers in the original publication—particularly Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ernst Troeltsch, and Paul Tillich—reflected primarily in Neuhaus’s definition of religion as something transcendent and 104. Neuhaus, “Democracy, Desperately Dry,” 18. 105. See Richard John Neuhaus, “The Liberalism of John Paul II,” in A Free Society Reader: Principles for the New Millennium, ed. Michael Novak, William Brailsford, and Cornelis Heesters (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2000), 29–39. See also his concession that “Hauerwas is right in saying that I was and am a liberal in my devotion to liberal democracy” (“The Naked Public Square Now: A Symposium,” FT 147 [2004]: 24). 106. Neuhaus, “Liberalism of John Paul II,” 31. 107. Ibid., 35. 108. Ibid.

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inward, which has to be “expressed” and “translated” in public.109 Neuhaus responded with continuing support for the overall project of modern liberalism, now taking his cue from Augustine: Today I would more emphatically take my stand with Augustine and his City of God, especially Book XIX. As Augustine viewed the Roman Empire, so I, mutatis mutandis (admitting the differences are great), view liberal democracy. Although it is of the city of man and is characterized by disordered love and the lust for power (libido dominandi), it is deserving of our qualified allegiance, support, and remedial efforts. Such is the circumstance not of our choosing short of the promised triumph of the City of God.110

Neuhaus would also shift from the “inwardness” of Protestant views of religion to the “naturalness” of Catholic natural law and epistemology.111 Neuhaus, again, did not acknowledge a natural-law tradition in Reformation Protestantism, calling for a return to more “classical” sources, such as Greco-Roman philosophy and Stoicism. For Neuhaus, the Protestant view of “the religious” paralleled the Catholic view of “the natural.” Even as Neuhaus relied on Augustine’s concepts, though, he did so in terms of the Lutheran two kingdoms. In chapter 6, we examine more fully Augustine’s own concepts, but for now, we can notice how Neuhaus associated the Augustinian “city of man” with the public arena of all society. This “city of man” “is deserving of our qualified allegiance, support, and remedial efforts,” with “liberal democracy” (positively) said to be “of the city of man.” Such language is not unique to this place. Elsewhere, Neuhaus spoke of Christians as “dual citizens.”112 Neuhaus clearly used a Lutheran two-kingdom concept of duality—in which one is a “member” or “citizen” of both kingdoms simultaneously—within the language of the Augustinian two cities. For Neuhaus, Christians should support earthly politics in the city of humanity and as citizens of the city of humanity. By Neuhaus’s own admission, he saw the Lutheran conception and at least the modern Catholic doctrine as largely synonymous or at least broadly compatible.

109. Neuhaus, “Naked Public Square Now,” 11–12. 110. Ibid., 24. 111. Ibid. 112. Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (New York: Basic, 2009), 183.

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Conclusion The burden of this chapter has been to map both an explicit retrieval of the two kingdoms in the twentieth century and an implicit acceptance of two-kingdom thinking in a seemingly opposed tradition. With the basic contours of Lutheran and Catholic neoconservatism outlined, we are able now to make a few general observations about the shape of this school’s “doctrine of the two.” Ironically, Protestants have often not noticed the incredible twentieth-century Catholic revolution—which, if my account is correct, owes much to the roots and development of Protestant political theology. Catholic traditionalists have more often noticed the “Protestantizing” tendency of neoconservative writers than have neoconservative Catholics themselves. Individual liberty, the autonomy of the temporal order, and religion as an outward expression of the inner conscience are ideas that, even if not “borrowed” consciously from Protestant thought, run parallel to the Lutheran two-kingdom framework. Even when contemporary Catholic neoconservatives appeal to Augustine, theirs is the “Lutheran” Augustine of freedom of conscience and law/gospel modalities of Christian faith. Vatican II has frequently been described as an “updating” of Catholic theology, “bringing the Catholic church into modernity.” To the extent that modernity—at least in political theology—is identified with Protestant two-kingdom thought, then Vatican II is also updating the church by means of Protestant thought, catching up with the two kingdoms. Yet, as with contemporary Lutheranism, the present neoconservative Catholic two-kingdom paradigm is not the same as Luther’s original. Luther’s two-kingdom framework allowed for a Christendom situation, however ambiguously; present two-kingdom thought, even in its Catholic form, does not see Christendom as an ideal or even a possible instantiation. One of the key differences involves the formulation of natural law. Luther’s concept of natural law was closely associated with biblical revelation and the divine will. Present descriptions of natural law are typically contrasted with divine revelation and especially the biblical witness. Natural law is seen as religiously neutral, separate from comprehensive visions of the good. Thus, Lutheran and Catholic neoconservatives argue that “nature” is free from the possibility of idolatry; there are no divine pretensions, no false worship. Another important difference from earlier two-kingdom approaches involves “religion.” Like natural law, this concept is meant to be theo86

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logically neutral, describing only the form of transcendent values and not the content. Though the term had some usage around Luther’s time (cuius regio, eius religio), it did not play into his political and social thought. Present writers within the two-kingdom tradition frequently position religion as the “law form” of Christianity—the moral revelation from God’s holiness without the content of the gospel in Christ. The distinction between “natural religion” and “revealed religion” follows along the lines of law and gospel, though perhaps with some differences. This chapter extends the overall narrative of this study by offering neoconservatism as an example of how two-kingdom theology is more prevalent in modern thinking than is often acknowledged. Protestant and Catholic theologians have carried on Luther’s influence by way of Niebuhrian realism. Though scholars often note Reinhold Niebuhr’s impact on American politics at large, this study adds new ways of conceiving that influence, especially in places where many have seen Christian “transformationism” and theoconservatism. Though the movement described in the next chapter, the Reformed two kingdoms, is not consciously dependent on the figures described here, the context of neoconservatism generally sheds light on the context of the Reformed two-kingdom emergence—or on any number of modern conservative movements that seek to maintain traditional conceptions of the gospel and that also keep boundaries on the gospel’s place in public life.

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Modern theological commitments to “honest secularity” spread aspects of the two-kingdom perspective beyond Lutheran confessional bounds. A Reformed two-kingdom renaissance, for instance, began in confessional circles and has now expanded to a wider evangelical audience. As with contemporary Lutherans, Reformed two-kingdom advocates allow for positive aspects of modern secularity, triangulating their stance between withdrawal from political life and advocacy for Christian triumphalism. Reformed two-kingdom advocates seek to retrieve this perspective from their Protestant Reformation heritage, their historical focus falling particularly on Calvin and his successors. As with Benne and contemporary Lutherans, however, their aim is primarily not historical but constructive. More than with most expressions of the two kingdoms, Reformed two-kingdom advocates have sought to root their views in biblical theology. This wedding of public theology with explicit biblical exegesis puts more focus on construals of Scripture’s narrative, especially the transition of the old covenant to the new covenant and the relationship of Israel to the church. Accordingly, after recounting initial proposals and more mature formulations of

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the Reformed two-kingdom approach, this chapter will consider its grounding in biblical theology, especially as influenced by Meredith Kline. Because this movement explicitly calls itself “two kingdoms,” the chapter seeks to compare this identification with Luther’s and others’ recent appeals to “the two.” The Critique of the Culture Wars Naming a founding person or date for the Reformed two-kingdom movement is difficult. The movement has sometimes been called “the Escondido theology,” a pejorative label of neo-Calvinist detractors.1 The label is helpful, though—not in a derogatory sense, to sideline the group from the standard Reformed position, but to signal that key advocates (Michael Horton, Darryl Hart, and David VanDrunen) have been associated with Westminster Seminary California, in Escondido. Much “Escondido theology” rests on the biblical theology of Meredith Kline, who taught there from the seminary’s beginning in 1981 until 2002. The Reformed two-kingdom movement relied as much on the general mood of late twentieth-century American culture as on any major theological program. Like that of other “third way” options, Reformed two-kingdom thinking has found much of its impetus in avoiding the extremes of the politicized Christian right (or evangelical left) and fundamentalist cultural resignation. Michael Horton, a seminary student of Kline’s who later returned to teach at Westminster Seminary California, was among the first to invoke explicitly the two-kingdom doctrine in recent Reformed literature. In Beyond Culture Wars (1994), Horton argues that evangelicals are wrongly engaged in a fight to implement a “Christian America,” abandoning the centrality of the church and its institutional ministry. Addressing a conservative evangelical audience, he critiques the rhetoric of the Christian right and aims to show that Christians should transcend the culture wars altogether and halt attempts to bring about a “Christian culture.” Horton is clear that “Christianity is not a culture” and a “Christian nation” is a category mistake.2 His chapter “The Christian Empire” offers a long critique of the idea of Christendom, making one of the first appeals to “two kingdoms” in recent Reformed litera1. See, e.g., John Frame, The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdom Theology (Lakeland, FL: Whitefield, 2011). 2. Michael Horton, Beyond Culture Wars (Chicago: Moody, 1994), 35, 83.

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ture. He claims that not until Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation was “the Augustinian notion of ‘two kingdoms’” recovered. 3 Horton also maps the two kingdoms onto the categories of law and gospel. Distinguishing between biblical commands and the gospel itself, Horton argues that the gospel is a promise, both about what has been done and about the future life, and therefore it cannot be applied in this time. For Horton, “the language of the Christian Right . . . is the language of Pelagianism.”4 In fact, “the uniqueness of Christ and of Christianity is undermined by the Right also, in its insistence on a ‘public faith.’”5 Acting as if the gospel could be applied to social issues trivializes it, for “the Gospel is not the answer to everything”; societal issues “are temporal problems demanding temporal solutions.” 6 Another advocate for the Escondido model is Darryl Hart, a former academic dean at Westminster Seminary California and historian of American religion. Hart’s critique of the culture wars is written primarily from a historical perspective—how evangelicals have lost the gospel message in seeking to “transform” society. This theme remains a major emphasis for Hart: “Applying the faith to all areas of life misconstrues the essence of the Christian message, which has far more to do with eternal rather than temporal realities.”7 Hart calls this broadening of the Christian message the “trivialization of religion by making it public,”8 quite happily calling Christian faith “irrelevant” to much of life in this world.9 He aims, therefore, for Christians “to keep the public sphere religiously neutral.”10 The key move is an acceptance of a narrow definition of what constitutes “religion.”11 According to Hart, Lutherans appeal to the “doctrine of the two kingdoms,” whereas “Presbyterians and Reformed make the same point by virtue of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church.”12 The “spirituality of the church” is a doctrine articulated in southern Presbyterianism that sees ecclesiological mission as “other3. Horton, Beyond Culture Wars, 93. 4. Ibid., 126. 5. Ibid., 224. 6. Ibid., 202. Horton made the practical suggestion that Christians stop “crusading against gay rights”—not because homosexuality is acceptable in the church but because public opposition hinders the obligation for the gospel to have no temporal, political overtones (248–49). 7. Darryl G. Hart, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), xxi. 8. Ibid., xviii. 9. Ibid., 144. 10. Ibid., xvii. 11. Ibid., 178–79. 12. Ibid., 179. At this point, Hart associated the two-kingdom doctrine not with Reformed theology but only with Lutheranism.

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worldly” and “privatistic.”13 Yet one should not mistake otherworldliness or privatism for withdrawal from present public life. Rather, the otherworldliness of Christianity simply excludes the expression of religious faith from public life. That is why individual Christians must eschew attempts to apply Christian principles to public life, learning to live as pilgrims with “multiple layers of existence” and a “dual identity.”14 A Distinctly Reformed Approach to the Two Kingdoms These calls for transcending evangelical culture wars set the tone for self-identifying Calvinists interested in moving beyond the categories of Christian transformationism. Early stages of the Reformed two-kingdom movement relied heavily on appeals to Luther and to theological concepts in the Lutheran tradition.15 Many of Horton’s early examples come also from Augustine, who interchanges “two kingdoms” with “two cities.”16 Because Horton’s perspective on church and culture was perceived as different from the standard Reformed position, he and other Escondido theologians took it upon themselves to show that their position coheres with Calvin and the Reformed tradition. One form of argument suggests that Luther and Calvin can be described in a “pan-Reformational” way. In other words, Lutheran and Reformed traditions are not as far apart as is commonly implied.17 Horton argued this very point in a scholarly article on “Calvin’s approach to the Law-Gospel hermeneutic central to Luther and Lutheran exegesis.” The main argument is that “Calvin is in perfect agreement with Luther’s approach.”18 Horton later responded to the charge that his approach was “influenced by Lutheran categories and concerns” by showing “the alleged antithesis between law-gospel and covenantal paradigms . . . to be false.”19 The Reformed doctrine of the “covenant of works” was advanced “pre13. Hart, Lost Soul of American Protestantism, 59. 14. Ibid., 180–81. 15. See, e.g., Darryl G. Hart, “What Can Presbyterians Learn from Lutherans?,” Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 8, no. 4 (1999): 3–8. 16. Michael Horton, “Defining the Two Kingdoms,” MR 9:5 (2000): 21–28. 17. Some Lutheran theologians are less willing to accept this claim than Calvinist theologians, as we saw in chapter 3. They often triangulate their position with attacks on Reformed theology, especially the third use of the law and sanctification. Escondido theologians respond that the “Reformed theology” of Lutheran criticism is a caricature of true Reformed orthodoxy. 18. Michael Horton, “Calvin and the Law-Gospel Hermeneutic,” ProEccl 6 (1997): 29. 19. Michael Horton, “Law, Gospel, and Covenant: Reassessing Some Emerging Antitheses,” WTJ 64 (2002): 279, italics original.

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cisely through its reflection on the relation of law and gospel.”20 For Horton, this Reformed concept generates a doctrine of sanctification much closer to contemporary Lutherans such as Benne.21 Beyond article-length defenses, the most mature formulation of a uniquely Reformed history of the two kingdoms comes from David VanDrunen, a former student at Westminster Seminary California now teaching there as professor of theology and ethics. Like Horton and Hart, VanDrunen made his initial foray into a two-kingdom theology with a critique of American evangelical culture wars.22 But his most important contribution is his expansive work Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (2010). Ostensibly a historical account, the book consistently presents evaluative comments on each of the main figures VanDrunen studies. In the first and last chapters, VanDrunen makes clear that he sees the recent story of Reformed social thought as a kind of “fall from grace.” In abandoning the Reformed legacy of the two kingdoms, contemporary neoCalvinists, chief targets of VanDrunen’s work and current shapers of evangelicalism, have struggled to supply a consistent model of the relationship between Christianity and culture. VanDrunen claims that they are unwittingly trying to reestablish Christendom, whereas his narrative shows that “the demise of Christendom can be celebrated rather than mourned.”23 The Calvinist Shape of the Two Kingdoms For VanDrunen, one of the keys to promoting a two-kingdom model in his context is to ground it specifically in the Reformed tradition. Thus, a key moment in VanDrunen’s narrative was an advance upon Augustine’s two cities and Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine. The Reformed modifications to earlier two-kingdom theories were (1) the institutionalization of the two kingdoms as the visible church and state, (2) 20. Horton, “Law, Gospel, and Covenant,” 280, italics original. 21. For a more constructive law/gospel theology, see Michael Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 80–101. On Lutheran and Reformed doctrines of sanctification, see Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 657–59. For a specific argument about Calvin and the two-kingdom doctrine, see Michael Horton, Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 213–26. 22. David VanDrunen, “Biblical Theology and the Culture War,” Kerux 11 (May 1996): 27–36. VanDrunen uses the Augustinian language of “two cities” and the earthly city as Babylon: “We are a people in exile. We are a people who live with Adam east of Eden. We do not live under a Davidic king. The Mosaic Law is not our constitution. We, like the Israelites, live in Babylon” (29). 23. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 13.

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the parallel of the two kingdoms with the dual mediatorship of the Son, and (3) the grounding of the two-kingdom doctrine at creation in the “covenant of works.” These theological formulas express an even sharper distinction between creation and redemption. VanDrunen argues that these doctrines have seeds in Calvin himself but that they were worked out more fully later.24 On the first point, VanDrunen highlights the exact location of the two kingdoms in Reformed thought. Whereas Luther located the spiritual kingdom primarily in the heart, Calvinists identified the visible church as the spiritual kingdom.25 Thus, Lutherans relegated institutional church polity to temporal concern, but Calvinists included outward church structures as part of the spiritual kingdom. That is why Calvin fought so vigorously for the church’s independence from civil oversight, especially in the administration of excommunication. Accordingly, Lutherans thought outward order was a matter of adiaphora, but Calvinists believed that there were scriptural commands for church polity.26 On the second point, the doctrine of Christ’s dual mediatorship builds on Calvin’s famous christological formula the extra calvinisticum, which maintained that the eternal Logos, the second person of the Trinity, is not entirely circumscribed by his incarnate human body (finitum non capax infiniti). But it goes farther than this christological affirmation, applying different modes of rule to the Son’s different modes of existence. The dual mediatorship of Christ posits a “fundamental distinction between God’s non-redemptive work of creation and providence through his Eternal Son and his redemptive work through the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.”27 In the Son’s dual mode of existence, he “continues to sustain creation independent of his media24. VanDrunen notes that “the two mediatorships of the Son of God, over creation and redemption ..... [were] developed by later generations of Reformed theologians and came to serve as the crucial foundation for their two kingdoms doctrine,” though he also asserts that “Calvin laid the groundwork” in his doctrine of the extra (Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 76). 25. Ibid., 70: “This practical outworking of Calvin’s social thought indicates that he indeed took the two kingdoms idea in some different directions from that envisioned by Luther and, in fact, that Calvin merged a two kingdoms doctrine with an institutional arrangement of church and state that hearkened back in certain ways to a Gelasian two swords paradigm.” 26. Ibid., 92: “Calvin believed that the church, the present manifestation of the spiritual kingdom, was also to have an established government and system of discipline. Thus, while Luther and the Lutheran tradition tended to associate the visible, institutional aspects of the church’s life with the earthly kingdom (and hence entrusted these to the civil magistrate), Calvin defended mightily the independence and jurisdiction of the church on these matters. Thus it might be said that Calvin identified ecclesiastical affairs as a whole with the spiritual kingdom, and not just its work of ministering the gospel, as was the tendency within Lutheranism.” 27. Ibid., 75.

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torial work as reconciler of creation in the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.”28 Most concisely, VanDrunen describes the dual mediatorship doctrine this way: “The Son rules the state as God and creator [asarkos] and rules the church as God-Man and redeemer [ensarkos].”29 The dual mediatorship of the Son allows VanDrunen to restrict the categories of redemption and the Son’s redemptive rule: “To distinguish between the Son as creator and the Son as redeemer entails that the title ‘Christ’ belongs only to the latter. . . . The Son redeemed the world, but did not create the world, as the Messiah, the Christ.”30 Creation and redemption therefore apply to different modes of the Son’s existence, independent of each other.31 Referring to “Christ” as Creator and therefore governor of providence and temporal affairs—including nations—is “to confuse categories and language precisely where categories and language are at issue.” The proper terms for the divine second person qua divine are simply “Son” or “Logos.” “If the Son of God creates in a different capacity from his capacity as redeemer, then he does not create as ‘Christ.’”32 VanDrunen argues that such a conception buttressed the Reformed two-kingdom position, whereas the Lutheran two-kingdom model lacked such a distinction. The Reformed could have another, Trinitarian reason, to restrain the gospel and redemptive categories from applying outside the church in nonecclesiastical life.33 The twofold existence of the Son is so central to VanDrunen that it is at the core of his definition of the two kingdoms at the opening of his work:

28. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 75, italics original. 29. Ibid., 218. In addition to speaking of “church” and “state,” VanDrunen sometimes speaks about the Son’s “twofold kingship over creation and redemption,” with creation and redemption as two independent domains (218). See also this definition: “The Son of God rules the temporal kingdom as an eternal member of the Divine Trinity but does not rule it in his capacity as the incarnate mediator/redeemer” (181). 30. Ibid., 313, italics mine. For VanDrunen, there are areas untouched by Christ’s redemption: “The common, non-redemptive character of the areas of life outside the church is rooted in the Son’s work of creation, while the special, redemptive character of the church’s life and ministry is rooted in the Son’s work of salvation” (305). 31. Note in several quotations VanDrunen’s use of “independent,” apparently equivalent to “autonomous” in other figures from our study. VanDrunen argues for “the idea of an independent purpose for the life of common grace, or the civil kingdom” (ibid., 305). The problem with neoCalvinist transformationists is that in their theology, “there are no independent purposes of a civil kingdom” (370), and they refuse “to see an independent purpose for the natural” (406). 32. Ibid., 314, italics mine. Thus, VanDrunen can affirm that “Christ” is the king of the church only, even though “God” is the ruler of nations (178). 33. VanDrunen’s identification of the spiritual kingdom with the institutional church is so close that he can refer to “the earlier Reformed tradition’s differentiation of the ecclesiastical and nonecclesiastical realms in terms of the two kingdoms” (ibid., 403).

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In affirming the two kingdoms doctrine, they [the Reformed] portrayed God as ruling all human institutions and activities, but as ruling them in two fundamentally different ways. According to this doctrine, God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer, and thus these two kingdoms have significantly different ends, functions, and modes of operation.34

The third important development in Reformed exposition of the two kingdoms was the covenant of works:35 “The idea that the creation of human beings with the natural law written on their hearts was itself a covenantal act of God represents a significant development of earlier Christian natural law thought.”36 The covenant of works further grounded the civil kingdom in creation. It bolstered both the law/ gospel contrast (by connecting the covenant of works with “law” and the covenant of grace with “gospel”) and the creation/redemption duality (the more fundamental distinction). Creation itself is ordered by law, calling for active obedience; redemption is characterized by grace, passively received by divine revelation. VanDrunen relates the two sides of the two kingdoms (law/covenant of works/creation and gospel/covenant of grace/redemption) as “independent”: “The covenant of works was understood as an act of creation distinct from and independent of God’s work of redemption in the ‘covenant of grace’”—not only distinct, but independent and autonomous from each other.37 With this addition—the covenant of works, alongside the dual mediatorship of the Son—the heirs of Calvin sharpened the polarity of the two kingdoms. The Consistent Application of the Two Kingdoms Beyond these three developments, VanDrunen finds the most crucial Reformed two-kingdom breakthrough in the American disestablishment of religion.38 But, although the American settlement kept secular 34. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 1. 35. VanDrunen defines the “covenant of works” as teaching that “God, at creation, promised Adam a reward of everlasting, eschatological life on condition of his perfect obedience during a probationary period” (ibid., 162). It is bound up with Adam meriting this everlasting life apart from an idea of grace—hence, with this conception of strict nature, the connection with natural law. 36. Ibid., 163. 37. Ibid., 164, italics original. “Insofar as natural law originated in the covenant of works, therefore, Reformed orthodox theologians grounded it in God’s creating work rather than in his redeeming work” (164, italics mine). 38. Ibid., 234.

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authority from interfering with the church (one side of the two kingdoms), VanDrunen argues that not until the thoroughgoing “spirituality of the church” doctrine arose did Reformed churches stop interfering with temporal matters (the other side of the two kingdoms). He connects this development with “divine right” ecclesiology: The spirituality doctrine was closely related to the idea of jure divino Presbyterianism, a matter that had reared its head at about the same time. The connection between these doctrines was that both placed significant constraints upon the power of the church to speak and act. Jure divino, or divine right, Presbyterianism asserted that, in Scripture, God had ordained Presbyterian church government, commissioned the church and its officers to perform certain functions, and prescribed the models by which it could vary out these functions. The church was not only obliged to organize itself and exercise its responsibilities according to this biblical teaching but was also prohibited from adding anything to it. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church, on the other hand, indicated that the church’s only concern was with spiritual (as opposed to temporal or civil) things, and thus that the church was generally prohibited from expressing views about civil affairs. A concise summary might be to say that these two doctrines ascribed to the church authority to exist and act according to Scripture only and to address itself to spiritual matters only. 39

Like Hart, VanDrunen points to southern Presbyterians, especially Stuart Robinson and James Henley Thornwell, as producing the fullest version of the two kingdoms in Reformed history, especially in refusing to make theological judgments on the civil matter of American slavery. 40 The achievement of figures such as Robinson and Thornwell in eliminating many perennial tensions in Reformed two kingdoms theology and practice deserves recognition. Not only did they apply the two kingdoms doctrine more consistently than their predecessors by wrenching the church away from civil politics and the state away from spiritual affairs, but they also did so without any suggestion that Christians should withdraw from life in the cultural realm.41

39. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 247. 40. VanDrunen defends Robinson’s opposition to amending the U.S. Constitution to acknowledge Christ as the ruler of nations. For Robinson, “the spiritual nature of the church meant that it could have ‘no cognizance’ of the ‘things pertaining to the kingdom of Caesar’” (ibid., 254). VanDrunen also upholds Thornwell’s opposition to “Christian” parachurch organizations of charity (261). 41. Ibid., 267.

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Nineteenth-century southern Presbyterianism had given the Reformed two-kingdom doctrine “its most coherent expression yet achieved,” the pinnacle of Reformed social thought.42 The Downward Turn After narrating several triumphs, VanDrunen plots a downward slide. In a chapter entitled “The Ambiguous Transition,” Abraham Kuyper becomes a transitional figure leading away from the Reformed twokingdom heritage. VanDrunen admits that Kuyper himself showed significant continuity with the two-kingdom paradigm, but at times Kuyper’s rhetoric blurred the boundaries. His designation of “Christian nations,” his call to “Christianize” culture, and his distinction between the organic church in society and the institutional church—with priority on the former and the latter depending on it—clearly broke from the standard Reformed two-kingdom model.43 These small shifts would lead Kuyper’s heirs to make more critical alterations. VanDrunen finds these shifts gaining speed with Kuyper’s successor Herman Dooyeweerd and coming into full force with Karl Barth in Europe and neo-Calvinist evangelicalism in North America. Dooyeweerd furthered Kuyper’s concept of a distinctly Christian worldview, making Scripture applicable not only to matters of redemption but also to politics, art, and science. Barth wholly rejected the dual mediatorship of Christ as well as the covenant of works and the law/gospel distinction; for Barth, Jesus Christ the Redeemer rules over politics and culture.44 Neo-Calvinists in North America joined evangelicals in rallying around the slogan to “redeem the culture.” According to VanDrunen, they attempted “to ground culture in creation as it is being redeemed and perceive only one kingdom of God, thereby setting forth 42. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 275. 43. VanDrunen also criticizes Kuyper’s attempt to link creation and redemption as theological categories in his appeal to Christ as one person: “They derive from the same Christ” (ibid., 313). For VanDrunen, this assertion fails to maintain the distinction between Christ’s divinity as Creator and humanity as Redeemer. 44. The problem with Barth is his belief that “all truth is Christological” (ibid., 324); in his theology “there is no continuing voice of creation that is independent of God’s work in Christ.” Likewise, Barth rejected the idea that there is “common, preserving grace in the creation that is independent of it [Christ’s redemptive work]” (325, italics mine). Barth “rejected the doctrine of a creational covenant of works in which the law was given without the gospel. For Barth, all creation is Christological in a way that it can never be accorded an existence independent of redemption, so the law can never come apart from the gospel, the latter of which must take precedence” (344–45, italics mine). VanDrunen disapproves also of Barth’s rejection of an “independent natural law.” Instead, Barth maintained that all goodness and truth “must be due to the creating and redeeming work of Christ” (347, italics mine).

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a program for Christian participation in culture with fundamental theological differences from the earlier Reformed natural law and twokingdom traditions.”45 VanDrunen ends his narrative with only a few glimmers of hope for the Reformed two-kingdom tradition—mainly a call to return to this Reformed “standard” that he has laid out. Evaluating VanDrunen’s Historical Narrative Space will not allow a full evaluation of VanDrunen’s extensive account of the Reformed two-kingdom doctrine, but a brief historical assessment should accompany this mapping of two kingdoms and two cities. Certainly, it has filled a major scholarly gap and underscored that the “neo-” prefix in neo-Calvinism is not without warrant; contemporary neo-Calvinists sometimes call Calvin their ally in areas where he would disagree. Thus, VanDrunen rightly uncovers a two-kingdom doctrine, often forgotten, within the Reformed tradition, but his interpretation fails to establish convincingly that the two-kingdom view he outlines is the Reformed model of the Christian theology of culture.46 The rub for VanDrunen lies in tracing a story of development, which can be either positive or negative, furthering an original vision or deviating from it. From the start, VanDrunen portrays the recent history of the two kingdoms, at least since Kuyper, as clearly a negative deviation from the standard position. VanDrunen wants neo-Calvinists to realize that their transformationism is simply not “Reformed.” However, VanDrunen acknowledges that there was significant development in Reformed social thought before Kuyper; so he must argue that these developments followed the trajectory of predecessors, whereas Kuyper introduced something completely aberrant to the tradition. To substantiate this claim, VanDrunen must demonstrate a good deal of continuity preceding Kuyper, along with discontinuity from Kuyper and his successors. His thesis can already be challenged if there was substantial discontinuity before Kuyper, or continuity between Kuyper(ians) and the earlier tradition. This is an exercise in historical comparison. VanDrunen runs into difficulty with his attempt to identify the standard of the Reformed doctrine as the two-kingdom theology articu45. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 349. VanDrunen believes that neo-Calvinist arguments for specifically Christian participation in society “have placed an eschatological burden upon the cultural task that was not present in earlier Reformed thought and that further distinguishes their thought from earlier ideas of natural law and the two kingdoms” (349). 46. It should be noted that VanDrunen uses the definite article throughout the book to speak of one Reformed social doctrine, not simply a tradition of the two kingdoms among many.

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lated by southern Presbyterian advocates of the “spirituality of the church.”47 This identification problematizes the status of Reformed views before this time. After all, VanDrunen does not want to concede that Calvin and all others failed to meet this later standard. Thus, VanDrunen must argue that Calvin articulated a sufficiently coherent theory of the two kingdoms, but it needed a more coherent expression, resulting from more consistent practice and theory. From the beginning, VanDrunen defines the Reformed two-kingdom doctrine primarily in terms of later Reformed formulations, especially the dual mediatorship of the Son and the covenant of works. VanDrunen wants to have it both ways, identifying doctrinal expressions later than Calvin as the Reformed standard while including Calvin within that category.48 Once VanDrunen lays out these other subdoctrines for the Reformed two-kingdom doctrine, he judges later Reformed theologians by those subdoctrines. Rejection of the dual mediatorship of Christ and rejection of the covenant of works are considered rejection of the standard Reformed position. VanDrunen’s historical narrative also imposes a sharp distinction between practice and theory in each Reformed figure he investigates. Each had a coherent theory of the two kingdoms, he argues, though the theory becomes even more coherent through such developments as the dual mediatorship of the Son, the covenant of works, de jure divino Presbyterianism, and the spirituality of the church. Yet VanDrunen criticizes each figure for not being consistent in practice with the coherent theory. Apparently, in VanDrunen’s story, no Reformed theologian consistently practices the two-kingdom theory until the American disestablishment of church and state and the southern refusal to address the issue of slavery as a matter of Christian principle. Not once does VanDrunen allow that what he calls “inconsistencies” may actually be practices consistent with a theory that he has misinterpreted. Canons of both historical scholarship and charitable reading raise sus-

47. VanDrunen says that the spirituality of the church tradition “brought the Reformed natural law and two kingdoms tradition to its most coherent expression yet achieved” (Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 275, italics mine). Notably, VanDrunen finds the best of the two-kingdom tradition in the American context: “Thus, the Reformed natural law and two kingdoms traditions continued on into the early American experiment and even attained greater degrees of clarity” (275, italics mine). 48. VanDrunen stresses that Reformed theologians should not consider Calvin the standard of the Reformed tradition (ibid., 67–69, 149–51). That point should be taken in stride, but why should nineteenth-century southern Presbyterianism be considered the standard of Reformed social thought? For it is primarily their theology that Calvin and others “anticipate,” and against which Kuyper and his heirs are compared.

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picions when VanDrunen always finds Reformed practice to be substantially inconsistent with espoused theory.49 For example, VanDrunen writes off the mutual support of the church and civil authority in many Reformed territories as being inconsistent with their own two-kingdom doctrine. His explanation is that they were too much affected by their times. Though that may be, a better historical explanation is pursued by investigating their own connections between theory and practice. For instance, VanDrunen considers the deletion of the Reformed confessions on religious duties of the Christian magistrate to be the height of the confessional Reformed twokingdom conception, but he does not explain how a “deletion” can be part of this development of continuity from Calvin to James Henley Thornwell. VanDrunen strikingly associates the disestablishment of church and state in the United States “with the original Reformation and Scottish Presbyterian view that church and state are separate institutions with different origins, standards, and purposes.”50 Exclusion of churchly oversight from the civil realm “reflects the original vision of the Scottish Reformation . . . which the Scottish reformers and other Reformed people had never been able to put into practice consistently as they continued to fuse the roles of church and state.”51 It would be odd for such an action, lying in stark contrast with another earlier event (disestablishment versus confessional states), actually to be that event’s fulfillment. VanDrunen also does not acknowledge that by enshrining in confessions beliefs about religious duties of Christian magistrates, the earlier Reformed generations would be guilty of not simply inconsistent practice but also inconsistent theory (in VanDrunen’s estimation). VanDrunen would need to revise his narrative to reflect this reality: his is a “rise and fall” narrative, not simply a “fall” narrative. The theory and practice of an earlier Reformed social heritage were revised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. VanDrunen

49. For good critiques of VanDrunen’s historical portrayal of Calvin, see Cornelis Venema, “The Restoration of All Things to Proper Order: An Assessment of the ‘Two Kingdoms/Natural Law’ Interpretation of Calvin’s Public Theology,” in Kingdoms Apart: Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective, ed. Ryan McIlhenny (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012), 3–32, and Gene Haas, “Calvin, Natural Law, and the Two Kingdoms,” in Kingdoms Apart, 33–64. Both authors agree with VanDrunen that Calvin had a two-kingdom doctrine, but both criticize VanDrunen’s stark dichotomies of creation and redemption. For a pioneering exposition of Calvin, see W. J. Torrance Kirby, “A Reformed Culture of Persuasion: John Calvin’s ‘Two Kingdoms’ and the Theological Origins of the Public Sphere,” in Calvin at 500: Theology, History, Practice, ed. Richard Topping and John Vissers (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 52–66. 50. VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 274–75, italics mine. 51. Ibid., 213, italics mine.

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obviously considers this position beneficial, but he has not proven that it is the Reformed position. A Positive Account of Modern Liberalism Beyond accounts of historical theology, from the beginning the Reformed two-kingdom movement has supported historical accounts of modern liberalism. Michael Horton has defended the term “secular” for Christian theology, much like other figures in this project, especially in light of Augustine’s saeculum.52 David VanDrunen similarly advocates for modern liberalism by distinguishing between an “ultimate” and a “penultimate” perspective.53 He agrees with the basic charge of critics of modernity that liberal democracies are a far cry from the heavenly Jerusalem, but the real problem is the comparison itself—attempting to connect the penultimate to the ultimate.54 Critics of modernity “desire a social order that, in one way or another, manifests the eschatological kingdom of Christ in the here and now.”55 VanDrunen maintains that the penultimate should be judged by its own standard, apart from the ultimate. Liberalism should be evaluated “in terms of its ability to provide solutions to penultimate questions” —on this account, being far superior to a “Christian” ideal such as a Christendom state.56 Trying to make ultimate concerns relevant to penultimate order only creates disorder. “Unified visions of society”—even Christian visions of society, as in Christendom—“have given us totalitarianism, tyranny, and terror.”57 In reaction to Christendom and its resulting religious wars, modern liberalism “eschewed grand theories and metaphysical visions of society—and in so doing gave much of what we consider the best of our rights and liberties.”58 It demonstrated that “a common morality is possible without a common metaphysics.”59 Chris52. Michael Horton, “The Time Between: Redefining the ‘Secular’ in Contemporary Debate,” in After Modernity? Secularity, Globalization, and the Re-enchantment of the World, ed. James K. A. Smith (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 45–66; Horton, “In Praise of Profanity: A Theological Defense of the Secular,” in Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, ed. Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008), 252–66. 53. David VanDrunen, “The Importance of the Penultimate: Reformed Social Thought and the Contemporary Critiques of the Liberal Society,” JMM 9 (2006): 219–49. 54. Interestingly nowhere does VanDrunen cite Bonhoeffer regarding the terminology “ultimate” and “penultimate.” 55. VanDrunen, “The Importance of the Penultimate,” 223–24. 56. Ibid., 234. 57. Ibid., 237. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 236, italics mine.

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tians must come to terms with the fact that because of modern secularization—not a “Christian” ideal of Christendom—“government tyranny has been drastically reduced; slavery has been abolished; poverty in anything other than a relative sense has been virtually eliminated; and life expectancy has risen dramatically.”60 Here, modernity critics need to be severely chastened. Contra their laments, VanDrunen sees “metaphysical pluralism” as the “most fundamental strength” of modern liberalism, an outworking of the Reformational concept of the two kingdoms.61 VanDrunen further notes that liberalism offers the best picture available for fulfilling the cultural mandate in its unreligious terms: The acquisition and utilization of knowledge of this world seems boundless from a finite, human perspective, and as it has slowly increased among the members of the human race through the centuries, and exploded in unprecedented ways in the last century, man is coming to ever greater expression of the image of God, whose knowledge is indeed absolutely boundless.62

In this way, secular modernity actually provides space for the creative capacity of humanity to image God as Creator in a way that a Christian society could not: Liberalism is arguably the only social system yet imagined that provides the space for these creative human capabilities to be given such wide rein. Only liberalism, as far as we can tell, permits the kind of complex social order to develop that necessarily corresponds with the ever greater development of the image of God in the human race as a whole. Only liberalism, with its concept of the rule of law and the market order, brings people from around the world together in peaceful and productive ways such that the tiny bits of image-bearing knowledge that each of us possesses can be brought into connection with the tiny bits of all the others so that together this pooled knowledge can burst forth in creative ways impossible to delineate ahead of time.63

Christians should give more weight to this penultimate perspective and stop trying to connect penultimate order with ultimate values. If they would, this would turn them from “modernity critics” into 60. VanDrunen, “The Importance of the Penultimate,” 239. 61. Ibid., 235. 62. Ibid., 241. 63. Ibid., 242.

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“modernity supporters,” who cease pining for the recovery of Christendom. Though Darryl Hart often comments on the evangelical culture wars as a historian, his A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (2006) constructively presents the two kingdoms as a narrative apology for modern liberalism. Hart states up front that the book “starts from the premise that Christianity is an apolitical faith.”64 His thesis is equally frank: “My argument is that the basic teachings of Christianity are virtually useless for resolving America’s political disputes, thus significantly reducing, if not eliminating, the dilemma of how to relate Christianity and American politics.”65 For Hart, “Christianity is essentially a spiritual and eternal faith, one occupied with a world to come rather than the passing and temporal affairs of this world.”66 Thus, any public expression of Christianity inherently trivializes it.67 Hart designates this view “Christian secularism.”68 Christian secularists robustly grant the secular independent status from religion. Hart calls this “hyphenated existence—one part private and religious, the other part public and political.”69 His central support is Jesus’s statement in the Sermon on the Mount to “beware of practicing your piety before other people in order to be seen by them.” These words “take some wind out of arguments” for a public faith. Instead, Jesus’s statement “teaches that the nature of genuine religion is precisely private, personal, and not something for public display.”70 Given that Christ’s rule is “spiritual, not civil” and “eternal, not temporal,” and given that a believer should “not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” it should be possible “for a serious believer to keep that faith bracketed once entering the public square or the voting booth.”71 “The very essence of faith, at least the Christian variety, might be that it is

64. Darryl G. Hart, A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: Dee, 2006), x. 65. Ibid., 11. The book’s purpose is “to show that efforts to use Christianity for public or political ends fundamentally distort the Christian religion because it is essentially an otherworldly faith” (16). 66. Ibid., 12. 67. Ibid., 16: “The most intimate and sacred acts of religious devotion, those that fulfill the Christian’s duty to love God, take place in either the personal (the home) or private (the church) settings.” One should not miss, however, Hart’s distinction between Christianity and Christians: “Christianity may be indifferent to life in the polis, but Christians themselves may not be” (13–14). 68. Ibid., 15. 69. Ibid., 174. 70. Ibid., 176. 71. Ibid., 101, 176.

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private, personal, and something to be kept distinct from expression in the public arena of politics.”72 The demand that liberalism makes of the religious person is not terribly burdensome or at odds with the demands of true faith. The point of Christian devotion could very well be to live a hyphenated existence, always juggling the public and the private, recognizing the significant difference between those spheres because of the inherently private and personal nature of Christian devotion.73

Christians must learn to lead a “double life.”74 Hart believes that the privatization of religion was not just a result of Enlightenment skepticism but also the genius of Protestant theology—connected particularly to the Protestant reading of the old- to new-covenant transition.75 The shift from Israel to church moves from a wide-encompassing rule of God to the “reduced character of Christ’s sovereignty in the Christian era.”76 Thus, the Protestant Reformers “implicitly heralded the kind of confinement of religion to a private or nonpublic sphere.”77 Medieval Christendom reverted to the pattern of old-covenant Israel, whereas Protestantism recovered justification by faith and the doctrine of free conscience for the new-covenant era. Hart also appeals to the distinction in southern Presbyterianism between “the kingdom of God” and the “kingdom of Christ”: “The former refers to God the Father’s providential rule over all creation, an all-encompassing reign that is non-redemptive. The latter is much more limited, a redemptive rule by the incarnate second person of the Trinity over the hearts of believers. Being under God’s divine rule was different from being in Christ’s kingdom.”78 These American Protestants considered the kingdom of Christ “narrowly religious,” whereas “the civil realm, as such, was not a site of Christian activity and should not be.”79 This distinction allowed these Protestants to show that “Christianity transcended the politics dividing North and South”; Hart commends this southern Presbyterian approach as a way by which American Christians can transcend contemporary culture wars and support modern liberalism as an areligious paradigm. 80 72. Hart, A Secular Faith, 176–77. 73. Ibid., 177. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 244. 76. Ibid., 230. 77. Ibid., 243. 78. Ibid., 117–18. 79. Ibid., 118.

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Two-Kingdom Vocation in Biblical Perspective Like other Reformed two-kingdom writers, VanDrunen has applied his particular vision to cultural concerns more broadly and to the place of Christian vocation in particular. His recent Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (2010) expounds a two-kingdom biblical theology, especially focusing on the vocation of believers in the world. The Creation Mandate in Protology and Eschatology In Living in God’s Two Kingdoms (2010), VanDrunen approaches vocation through exploring the creation mandate in protology (first things) and eschatology (last things). He takes this route in response to the neoCalvinist call for Christians to take up Adam’s creation mandate for cultural production that will last into the eschaton.81 Regarding creation, VanDrunen’s thesis is that “because Jesus has fulfilled the first Adam’s commission, those who belong to Christ by faith are no longer given that commission. . . . We are not little Adams.”82 The original mandate was primarily not a command but a condition for eternal life. VanDrunen returns to the Reformed “covenant of works” with special emphasis on works as a test requiring Adam to merit eternal life: “By a divine covenant, Adam’s righteous cultural labors would have earned him a share in the eschatological world-to-come.”83 Humanity’s “dominion” was designed not for this world but primarily for the next; the tree of life was to be given once Adam earned his place there.84 Adam’s failure now made cultural labor fallen and unable to achieve this destiny; cultural activity can no longer have any connection to the final divine telos.85 But here VanDrunen emphasizes Christ as the last Adam: Jesus “fulfilled the original task of the first Adam and attained his original destiny”; thus, God justifies believers by reckoning them “as those who have perfectly completed the first Adam’s task.”86 Van80. Hart, A Secular Faith, 117. 81. David VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 20–24. VanDrunen also includes N. T. Wright and the New Perspective as primary targets aligning themselves with neo-Calvinist transformationism. 82. Ibid., 28. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., 58. 85. Ibid., 51, 79. 86. Ibid., 51, 63.

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Drunen thereby claims that transformationist language about the creation mandate denigrates Christ’s merits and runs the danger of worksrighteousness: “If Christ is the last Adam, then we are not new Adams. To understand our own cultural work as picking up and finishing Adam’s original task is, however unwittingly, to compromise the sufficiency of Christ’s work.”87 By seeing redemption as restoration to the original purposes of creation, transformationists put a legalistic burden on Christian vocation. For VanDrunen, the creation mandate is no longer in effect for believers. Regarding eschatology, VanDrunen’s thesis is that “God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world, but is preserving them.”88 But this preservation lasts only until Christ’s second coming, when all culture will be destroyed: “God does not promise to Christians that the products of their labor will adorn the New Jerusalem—in fact, Scripture indicates just the opposite.”89 Neo-Calvinist transformationists do not take seriously biblical passages concerning the eradication of the whole created order, including all cultural activities, at the final day. For VanDrunen, “Our earthly bodies are the only part of the present world that Scripture says will be transformed and taken up into the world-to-come.” Continuity between the two worlds is solely “believers themselves.”90 This eschatological reality should teach Christians to “engage in cultural activities with a deep sense of detachment from this world and of longing for our true home in the world-to-come.”91 Eschatology demonstrates the creation mandate’s ceasing, not its extension. Thus, neither Genesis’s protology nor Revelation’s eschatology makes vocation sacred or transformative. The Sermon on the Mount and Christian Vocation In between, VanDrunen develops the discontinuity between Israel and the church. Beyond Christ’s obedience to the original creation mandate, VanDrunen sees a crucial role for Christ in bringing the Mosaic order to a full and final end. The Sermon on the Mount indicates an end to the fusion of the two kingdoms in theocratic Israel. According to VanDrunen, the Sermon on the Mount is genuinely new, not a clarify87. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 50. “He has left nothing yet to be accomplished. . . . But to think that our sufferings contribute to atoning for sin or that our cultural obedience contributes to building the new creation is to compromise the all-sufficient work of Christ” (51). 88. Ibid., 15, italics original. 89. Ibid., 189. 90. Ibid., 66, italics original. 91. Ibid., 126.

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ing interpretation of what was originally meant in the old covenant.92 The clause “You have heard it said, ‘hate your enemy,’” for example, VanDrunen treats as a legitimate summary of the Mosaic order, not a corruption, because the law commanded the destruction of all pagan nations without mercy. Against the Mosaic fusion of cult and culture, the Sermon on the Mount depicts only religious faith and worship, leaving aside culture unaltered.93 The sermon’s ethic is not natural, creational, or universal but redemptive—only for those voluntarily choosing to follow Christ in the spiritual kingdom. The institutional church is the key dividing line. The call for nonviolence is enacted primarily by official representatives of the church—the clergy—and secondarily by laypeople gathered for worship. Outside this corporate gathering, members are allowed to pursue the necessities of judgment and justice.94 The Place of the Church in a Reformed Two-Kingdom Approach According to VanDrunen in Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, the Reformed two-kingdom doctrine uniquely places the visible church at the center of life between the two ages, as the institutional boundary of the spiritual kingdom. The visible church is “the only institution and community in this world that can be identified with the redemptive kingdom and the covenant of grace”; in contrast to the family and the state, it is the only institution that will survive the judgment day.95 The family and state “are not uniquely Christian,” because they were ordained by God as Creator, whereas the church is established by Christ as Redeemer.96 “This high view of the church,” VanDrunen argues, “sets the two-kingdom vision of this book apart from many redemptive transformationist models dominant in contemporary conversations about Christianity and culture.”97 Christ’s spiritual kingdom is an ecclesiastical kingdom alone; “Christian” is a label that can be affixed only to ecclesiastical categories. 92. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 109. 93. David VanDrunen, “Bearing Sword in the State, Turning Cheek in the Church: A Reformed TwoKingdoms Interpretation of Matthew 5:38–42,” Themelios 34 (2009): 322–34. The title gives away the article’s difference from the Lutheran two-kingdom interpretation. In that view, the internal/ external distinction matters most—internally loving one’s enemy while externally enacting public vengeance. 94. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 118. 95. Ibid., 102, italics original. 96. Ibid., 122. The family is not directly part of the redemptive covenant because it exists only temporarily (121). 97. Ibid., 103.

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In this high view of the church, VanDrunen considers the possible objection that diaconal ministry, addressing physical needs, might blur the two-kingdom distinction and negate the “spirituality of the church” doctrine. Indeed, he concedes that assisting the temporal needs of persons does “overlap” with the nonredemptive kingdom, but this overlap can be reduced by restricting its location to the redemptive kingdom alone—that is, the institutional church—and its orientation solely toward spiritual redemption.98 A two-kingdom model “authorizes the church to give material assistance to the needy of the church and not the needy of the world in general.” Although individual believers may assist the poor more generally in society, they do so as citizens of the common secular kingdom. A local church should not set up its own soup kitchen, for example, and the church’s official ministry should not “assist people outside the church.”99 The church’s work is spiritual, a foretaste of life beyond this-worldly concerns. A distinction between church and culture leads to better understanding of Christian vocation. Against the transformationist view that all vocations are sacred, VanDrunen notes that God’s redemption pertains only to persons: “While Christians themselves are holy and redeemed, as citizens of the redemptive kingdom, their daily vocations are not.”100 Technically, “Christian vocation” is a misnomer, because believers work out their vocations under God’s creational law, not Christ’s redemptive authority. Yet VanDrunen points out one exception: ecclesiastical vocation as a member of the clergy. “The church’s vocations have their origin in the redemptive kingdom while all other vocations have their origin in creation as divinely upheld though the Noahic covenant. The world of the ministry is truly a holy vocation.”101 This same distinction applies to education. For VanDrunen, “only theology as taught by the church’s representative officials counts as Christian education,” because it alone deals with salvation and the heavenly kingdom.102 All other disciplines operate according to natural revelation and are universally accessible. This important distinction “provides reasons to be cautious and modest about attempts to provide holistic education. . . . No institution in the present world, of either the redemptive kingdom or the common kingdom, has the authority 98. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 151. 99. Ibid., 158, italics original. For the same conclusion from another Reformed two-kingdom advocate, see Hart, A Secular Faith, 231. 100. Ibid., 188–89, italics original. 101. Ibid., 190, italics mine. 102. Ibid., 174.

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or competence to communicate a holistic, all-encompassing, and fully integrated world and life view.”103 Education must be split between eternal concerns in the church by faith and temporal concerns in the academy by natural reason. Christians should be modest about how faith contributes to wisdom, because “non-Christians often have made greater contributions to human learning than Christians have.” 104 Unlike vocation and education, however, politics has no split between Christian and non-Christian elements: politics is decidedly creational and nonecclesiastical. Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount clearly leaves political order outside the realm of God’s salvific activity: “A two-kingdoms doctrine distinguishes what is uniquely ‘Christian’ from what is simply ‘human.’”105 Although believers may have particular (“Christian”) motivations for participation in public life, there is no objective difference from non-Christians in its actual practice. “Believers are not to seek an objectively unique Christian way of pursuing cultural activities,” because “the normative standards for cultural activities are, in general, not distinctively Christian.”106 The terminology of “Christian ethics” applies solely to “obligations known only through Scripture and . . . binding only upon citizens of Christ’s heavenly kingdom.”107 For VanDrunen, Christendom models of church and culture illegitimately relocate politics under the influence of divine revelation and the gospel. But this makes politics “sectarian,” given that the gospel pertains to Christians only. In a Reformed twokingdom model, political action is not Christian, because “unbelievers know the basic demands of justice by virtue of God’s natural revelation. Objectively speaking, political activity is a common task, not a uniquely Christian task.”108 Meredith Kline and Two-Kingdom Biblical Theology Beyond desiring to transcend politicized culture wars and opposing transformationist evangelical education, Reformed two-kingdom advocates seek to rediscover older approaches to church and culture. But often overlooked is the degree to which Meredith Kline’s biblical 103. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 177–78, italics mine. 104. Ibid., 184. 105. Ibid., 166. 106. Ibid., 168. Public life is normed by “universal human obligations” that have no reference to Christ’s kingdom. 107. Ibid., 169, italics original. 108. Ibid., 198.

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theology shapes the movement’s contours. Kline’s innovative construal of covenant theology is foundational. Unlike other Escondido theologians previously mentioned, Kline was not interested in historical details of the Reformed tradition. Though in scholarly Old Testament studies Kline is known most for his work on Hittite suzerainty treaties, his broader legacy provides a basis for two-kingdom distinctions. Kingdom Prologue (2006) is his most comprehensive work on the matter, and The Structure of Biblical Authority (1975) addresses important related topics, especially the role of the Bible in culture. The Adamic Covenant: A Meritorious-Culture Covenant Kline’s most important contribution is his way of construing the biblical covenants, especially the original Adamic mandate and its relationship to Israel and the church. Like older Reformed formulas, Kline’s proposes a divine covenant of works with Adam, but Kline delves deeper into this concept in regard to Adam’s need to merit fuller life with God. For Kline, Adam’s original created life was only provisional; he was to enter into eternal, eschatological life by being granted access to the tree of life, the “sign and seal of man’s perfected life,” after he fully executed his divine mandate.109 Kline insists that the terms of this mandate be seen in “legal-commercial” categories: “heaven must be earned.”110 Adam’s probation is described as “meritorious” and “a matter of pure and simple justice.”111 “Adam’s obedience would have merited the reward of eternal life and not a gram of grace would have been involved.”112 Even more highly original is Kline’s connection of this meritorious covenant of works with Adam’s cultural commission. For Kline, Genesis 1–2 portrays God’s activity as temple building, preparing the earth to be filled with the divine presence. He notes the confluence of both cultic and royal language in the creation account, describing this condition as a “theocracy” where “the political and the cultic are not distinguishable.”113 Adam’s task is simultaneously priestly (“cult”) and kingly (“culture”), extending the sanctuary of Eden to the whole earth 109. Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 48. 110. Ibid., 107–8, italics mine. 111. Ibid., 107. 112. Ibid., 115. 113. Ibid., 51.

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as a holy city. Before the fall, cult and culture, religion and daily life, were undifferentiated: Adam’s most mundane cultural activities were acts of worship and the means of earning eschatological consummation.114 Upon Adam’s completion of the cultural mandate, Kline believed, earthly culture itself would be transformed and transcended. The Sabbatical pattern pointed to this ultimate rest from culture building: “Six days of genealogical-cultural work would eventually come to an end and man would enter with joy into the eternal seventh day of the Creator’s Sabbath.”115 Eschatological life would be devoid of the externality of culture; the original cultural mandate would come to an end: At the consummation, man leaves behind the external culture he has developed through his earthly history. . . . Glorification has made all this superfluous. . . . Man’s external culture was intended to serve only a provisional purpose during man’s preconsummation history. It was merely a temporary substitute for glorification, the real and permanent thing. . . . Glorified mankind is the divine culture, the metaculture beyond human culture.116

Kline refers to the eternal eschatological city that supersedes the provisional earthly city as Metapolis. This city sheds the outward trappings of human culture: “Nothing of earthly culture external to man enters Metapolis. . . . For Metapolis is not a city that glorified man inhabits. It is rather the case that glorified man is Metapolis.”117 All of this, Kline proposes, is the divine plan before the fall. Humanity’s failure to carry out the Adamic mandate on earth means that the eschatological city is now completely a work of God brought about by Christ in heaven; its features are anticipated on earth only in the religious worship of the covenant community.118 The Noahic Covenant: A Nonmeritorious-Culture Covenant With humanity being unable to fulfill the meritorious cultural mandate of Adam, provision for culture continued in the covenant with Noah 114. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 70. 115. Ibid., 97. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid., 100, italics original. 118. Meredith Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 155. After Adam broke the covenant of works, “a new way of arriving at the consummation was introduced, the way of redemptive covenant with common grace as its historical corollary.”

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but was stripped of the original meritorious conditions and eternal promises.119 With the entrance of sin, “cultural functions are not holy but profane”; in the Noahic covenant, cult and culture, religion and daily life, are fully severed.120 No longer able to be meritorious with regard to eternal life, cultural activities now merely preserve human life for the work of God’s special grace in the religious reception of salvation by faith. In the Noahic covenant—“a covenant of common grace”—culture is temporary.121 God “sovereignly revised the original structure of things, bringing into being within the arena of earthly history an interim world order which involved the holy/common distinction as one of its fundamental features.”122 The sphere of politics, in particular, is “common not only in the sense that its benefits are shared by the generality of mankind, the just and the unjust alike, but in the sense that it is nonsacred. Particular emphasis needs to be given to the fact that the political, institutional aspect of common grace culture is not holy, but profane.”123 Hence, there should be no identification of humanity’s cultural endeavors with Adam’s original creation mandate. That mandate is refracted through the lens of God’s preserving grace in the covenant with Noah. The cultural mandate lasts only until the final judgment and no longer.124 The Abrahamic Covenant: A Nonmeritorious, Noncultural Covenant The Noahic covenant is one of “common grace” or “cultural grace,” but the Abrahamic covenant is identified with “special grace.” The Noahic establishes the universal, common kingdom, but the Abrahamic establishes the spiritual kingdom. It has all the opposite characteristics of the Noahic: it is concerned with the human response of religious faith—not ordinary cultural activities—and it confers spiritual salvation upon the elect.125 Unlike in the Adamic covenant, salvation is offered not on the condition of merit (“the law principle”) but on 119. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 249. 120. Ibid., 67. 121. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 245. Kline acknowledges that many Reformed theologians have included the Noahic covenant in the “covenant of grace,” but he argues that this has brought about “hopeless confusion,” blurring culture and redemption. 122. Ibid., 171. 123. Ibid., 155. Kline especially highlights how Genesis records the flourishing of human culture in the sinful line of Cain. Those same cultural activities are listed among things that perish with the destruction of Babylon in Revelation 18. 124. Ibid., 250. 125. Ibid., 293.

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the basis of free grace (“the gospel principle”), apart from works and cultural labor.126 Abraham and the patriarchs thus lived in this dual citizenship of the two kingdoms, participating in commonality with nonbelievers in the civil administration of the Noahic covenant and participating in God’s redemption with fellow believers in the spiritual administration of the covenant of grace. That is why Abraham and the patriarchs were relatively unconcerned with distinguishing themselves culturally from the Canaanites. The Mosaic Covenant: A Meritorious-Culture Covenant One of Kline’s most distinctive moves is arguing that the Mosaic covenant breaks this pattern of grace and the desacralization of culture; unlike the Noahic covenant (concerned with cultural grace) and the Abrahamic covenant (concerned with redemptive grace), the Mosaic covenant is a meritorious (nongracious) covenant concerned with cultural striving. Israel’s national theocracy is an “intrusion” into the normal state of affairs after the fall, a “republication” of the Adamic covenant of works and a pointer forward to the final separation at history’s end.127 In the patriarchal age, Abraham and the patriarchs could share cultural goods with their pagan neighbors, because culture was no longer a holy task. But in theocratic Israel, Kline argues, culture became religious and sacred again. Thus, it was “a peculiar institutional integration of culture and cult.”128 Not only was the sacralization of culture reinstituted in Israel, but so, too, was the principle of meritorious works, though only symbolically.129 The “law principle” took priority over the “gospel principle.”130 Kline uses this paradigm of “intrusion” to explain why the Old Testament law addressed daily cultural life (e.g., washing and disease) and commanded an ethic of the slaughter and cursing of one’s enemies (e.g., the conquest of Canaan and the imprecatory psalms).131 The institution of the Mosaic covenant was thus a monumental shift 126. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 294. 127. Ibid., 369: “The theocratic kingdom instituted in the Mosaic age was a redemptive renewal of the paradise-sanctuary of Eden and a prototypal preview of the eternal theocratic sanctuary of the Consummation.” 128. Ibid., 105. 129. Ibid., 118: “In the covenant mediated through Moses at Sinai it was arranged that Israel’s enjoyment of the external typological kingdom awaiting them in Canaan should be governed by the principle of law, that is, works, the opposite of the gospel principle of promise.” 130. Ibid., 323. 131. Ibid., 159. Kline writes that “the intruded holiness of the heavenly kingdom extended to the Israelite theocratic structure as a whole, to its cultural as well as cultic dimensions” (159).

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in the governance of the two kingdoms. In particular, it suspended the universal kingdom of cultural commonality. Israel was no longer considered a “sojourner” on earth, like the patriarchs, but a permanent resident in the land. Israel was not to maintain common cultural life with pagans in the promised land; instead of commonality, visible separation was the order. This distinction was exemplified in Israel’s command to destroy pagan nations and to pray for their annihilation. Under this covenant, redemptive blessings were confined to one ethnic nation. Kline is not persuaded by Reformed interpreters’ argument that Israel had a kind of missionary calling.132 Yet, just as Israel recapitulated Adam’s task, it also recapitulated Adam’s fall. The Babylonian exile, as punishment for Israel, therefore reinstituted the two kingdoms in their full distinctions, common and redemptive. Now Israel was to seek peace and to pray for the prosperity of foreign neighbors, but not to try transforming the nations—letting them remain pagan instead. Religion and culture were separated once again in the exile. Although this paradigm was reversed when Israel returned to the boundaries of the Holy Land, the exilic moment pointed forward to the coming of the new covenant. The New Covenant: A Nonmeritorious, Noncultural Covenant The coming of Christ and his completion of the original covenant of works abrogated this “peculiar” intrusion of culture into cultic religion. The visible church, like the pre-Mosaic patriarchal community of Abraham, is therefore not a theocracy.133 Invisibly, it is theocratic, ruled by Christ; but this is spiritual rule, visibly just one among many religious institutions of the common-grace era: “Its visible organization, in particular as it is related to civil powers, is so designed that it takes a place of only common privilege along with other religious institutions within the framework of common grace.”134 Whereas Israel was “cultural-cultic,” the church is “strictly cultic.”135 Just as Israel was 132. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 158–59. 133. See, e.g., Meredith Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 100: “This institutional symbolization of the final judgment and eternal kingdom disappeared from the earthly scene when the Old Covenant gave way to the New. In this age of the church, royal theocratic authority with its prerogative of imposing physical-cultural sanctions resides solely in Christ, the heavenly King. The judicial authority of the permanent special officers whom Christ has appointed to serve his church on earth is purely spiritual-cultic.” 134. Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 167. 135. Ibid., 98–99. A practical example of this distinction is Kline’s opposition of the church’s diaconal ministry as being solely about temporal needs (Kingdom Prologue, 175–76). Kline also opposed the

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a republishing of the Adamic state, so the church is a republishing of the patriarchal period.136 For this reason, Kline sees Old Testament Israel as closer than the New Testament church to the eschatological life of heaven, at least in its abrogation of the principle of common grace.137 Against neo-Calvinists and much evangelical thought, the new covenant does not dismantle the division between “holy” and “common”; that must wait until the eschaton. For now, Christians live as dual citizens of the holy, redemptive covenant (Abrahamic-new) and the creational, common covenant (Noahic). Dual Canons and a Voluntary Ethic Kline’s clear distinctions between Israel’s cultural theocracy and the church’s spiritual existence also made him draw closer boundaries around the canons of the Old and New Testaments. Kline used the framework of Hittite suzerainty treaties to argue that Scripture is a covenant document and therefore applicable only to the covenant community that is its vassal.138 The Old Testament is God’s treaty with ethnic Israel; though as a theocracy this covenant treaty affected other nations (i.e., destroying them), it did not directly apply to Gentiles. Because of differences between Israel and the church, Kline argues that it is better to speak of “two canons” in the Scriptures instead of “the canon” of the Bible. The Old Testament and the New Testament are “two distinct canons,” each having its own integrity as “a separate canonical whole. . . . As polities for two different covenant orders, the Mosaic and the Messianic, the two covenantal canons stand over against one another, each in its own individual literary-legal unity and completeness.”139 Kline makes clear that “the Old Testament is not the canon of the Christian church,” especially in its rules about cultural life.140 The New Testament norms ethical behavior in its relation to spiritual faith, but it does not address cultural norms and thus cannot be applied to life outside the gathering of the covenant community.141 Kline’s way of idea of medical care as an aspect of his denomination’s missionary work; he objected to church funds being used to build a hospital in an African mission outpost (see VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 416). 136. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 161. 137. Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 167: “It is this ultimate state of affairs that is found intruded into the Old Testament dispensation in connection with the Israelite theocracy, which typified the perfected kingdom of God.” 138. Ibid., 88–90. 139. Ibid., 97. 140. Ibid., 99.

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construing Christian ethics, then, can be considered “voluntaristic.” Christians are obligated by the higher ethic of New Testament revelation, but non-Christians are not. Their ethic is solely the natural law of creation. Kingdom ethics transcend creational ethics. Lastly, the distinctions in Kline’s biblical theology drive him to reject any form of Christendom. He singles out the “branch of Reformed Kuyperian tradition,” the “neo-Dooyeweerdian school,” for transgressing this holy/common dichotomy.142 Beyond neo-Calvinism’s ideas of “Christian culture,” Kline sees the concept of confessional Christian governments as still more problematic: Religious confession, cultic activity in general, appertains to the sphere of this holy covenant institution, not to the state. The state has to be non-confessional, a-religious. . . . Every form of state participation in religious confession, whether through constitutional affirmation, official pronouncement, public ceremony, or the like, is a transgression of the boundaries set in the divine ordering of the distribution of cultural and cultic functions among the institutions of the postlapsarian world. . . . Even if it [state confession] is in acknowledgement of the God of the Christian faith, it is guilty of a monstrous confusion of the holy kingdom of God with the common, profane city of man.143

Such Christendom paradigms simply turn back the redemptive-historical clock to theocratic Israel. Like Adam, Israel failed in its covenant of works and cultural commission; Christians who seek to sacralize culture in the same manner will receive the same judgment in their attempt to usher in the eschatological consummation. 144 Conclusion The contemporary Reformed two-kingdom movement certainly represents a stream of the broader two-kingdom tradition. In some ways, it actually intensifies many of the tradition’s themes, especially the provisionality of human culture and the uniquely spiritual meaning of the gospel. The divine work of salvation does not have clear effects on the ordering of this temporal world, especially political governance. Creation, along with God’s sustaining providence, runs on a different track from God’s action in redemption. Like other two-kingdom advocates, 141. Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 101–2. 142. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 169. 143. Ibid., 179–80. 144. See further Meredith Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” WTJ 41 (1978): 172–89.

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the Escondido theologians see Old Testament Israel as a unique and temporary fusion of the two kingdoms, not to be repeated in this Christian era. Christ’s advent attained the spiritual remedy of sin, not the transformation of social and civic order; creation has an integrity of its own. Yet the Reformed two-kingdom paradigm marks its place with its own Reformed distinctions. Some of these distinctions do not alter the shape of the broader tradition, whereas other points give different contours to previous themes. The Presbyterian covenant-of-works formula further underscores the law/gospel contrast that is so central to Lutheran two-kingdom thought. Though Lutheran theologians have generally not articulated Adam’s commission in terms of meriting blessing, their conception of vocation under the category of law, not gospel, conveys a similar message. Christ’s role in attaining eternal life also relativizes any way by which human persons can contribute to fulfilling the original creation mandate. Two Reformed distinctions, however—the dual mediatorship of the Son and the identification of one kingdom with the visible church—seem to indicate important differences from other streams of the two-kingdom (not to mention the broader Reformed) tradition. Use of the extra calvinisticum by Hart and VanDrunen to identify the two kingdoms with the Son’s two natures certainly separates them from Lutheran formulations.145 Though Lutheran two-kingdom conceptions see two different modes of rule, they do not dichotomize the human and divine natures of the Son to do so. For them, Christ as incarnate Messiah, as well as Creator, exercises his rule over the nations; he simply rules through law, not gospel. In this way, Lutheranism has resources to speak about Christian governments and Christian culture, even if it generally chooses not to. The Reformed two-kingdom paradigm does not even allow for the titles of Israel’s Messiah to be used in the sense of rulership over the nations. It keeps a tighter rein on Christ’s sovereignty and a greater distance between God’s creational and providential work, on the one hand, and God’s salvific work, on the other. This narrower focus on the realm of Christ’s rule also expresses itself in the institutional divide between the two kingdoms. As we saw earlier, Luther’s distinction lay between body and soul, external and internal, 145. VanDrunen calls the dual mediatorship formula “the most basic theological foundation for the Reformed two kingdoms doctrine” (Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 402). Even more broadly, he wonders whether any two-kingdom view can operate apart from the dual-mediatorship doctrine: “Is the two kingdoms idea plausible without it?” (430).

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which allowed him to speak of the visible church as part of the external kingdom. As such, it did not have the spiritual jurisdiction that only Christ and his Word have. Reformed two-kingdom advocates have generally placed a much stronger emphasis on the institutional church as itself being redemptive. Thus, VanDrunen, for example, can speak of ministers’ calling as “holy” in contradistinction to the “common” vocations of the laity. Likewise, Luther’s exposition of the Sermon on the Mount hinged on the inward/outward distinction, inwardly loving one’s neighbor while (in the role of magistrate) outwardly ordering punishment. VanDrunen sees the two kingdoms in the same text as dealing with the church gathered at worship and the church scattered in daily life. In many Reformed two-kingdom writers, “church” takes on the meaning primarily of its representative officers. Thus, the contemporary Reformed two-kingdom movement bears some similarities to other streams of two-kingdom thinking, yet with subtle differences. Its high ecclesiology is closer to Augustinian conceptions, though without the church’s transformative action in the civic order. The seemingly unequal balance between churchly life and daily life may even resemble the “Thomistic” synthesis of nature and grace. One characteristic that the Reformed two-kingdom proposal shares with all modern advocates of the two kingdoms is a disavowal of Christendom and a positive assessment of secular liberalism, at least from a penultimate point of view. Not all agree on the foundation of this positive assessment, whether it stems from biblical principles or purely from natural law. But clearly, the two-kingdom paradigm works best within such a framework of distinguishing civil and religious jurisdictions. This narrative is one of leaving Christendom behind for purer expressions of the two-kingdom teaching. The early Reformed twokingdom use of Augustine for a two-kingdom framework also connects to the movement in the next chapter, neo-Augustinian liberalism, and its reading of Augustine to promote liberal polity; but, as with other interpretations so far, the Augustine appealed to is an Augustine read (unintentionally) through the lens of a modernized Lutheran two kingdoms.

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To this point, Augustine has been looming in the background; the present chapter brings him into the foreground, examining a more explicitly Augustinian set of contemporary proposals. The movement to reengage Augustine is sometimes labeled “neoAugustinianism,” or more specifically “Augustinian liberalism,” for its use of Augustine to fortify Christian commitment to liberal democratic order. Referring here to “neo-Augustinian liberalism” identifies the movement with the larger scholarly retrieval of Augustine but narrows the focus to an Augustinian political theology for modern liberalism.1 As these writers do not self-consciously use the language of “two kingdoms,” and they often criticize Luther’s thought, it is incumbent upon my larger argument to establish how their thinking reveals an inflected two-kingdom subcurrent. The term “Augustinian liberalism” first appeared in a 1991 article by Paul Weithman, “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism.”2 The phrase 1. “Neo-Augustinian” is not pejorative, as if implying at the outset that this “Augustine” does not match the original bishop of Hippo. It simply denotes a new return to Augustine, separated from earlier returns by the different Augustine content that is highlighted. I will use interchangeably “neo-Augustinian” and “Augustinian liberal,” though technically the latter is a subset of the former.

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gained traction in Eric Gregory’s book Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (2008).3 By this time, a number of theologians, philosophers, and political ethicists could be categorized as “Augustinian liberals.” Most important for coalescing Augustinian liberalism was R. A. Markus’s Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (1970).4 Reaching beyond Niebuhr’s Christian realism, Markus’s work can be credited with founding neo-Augustinian liberalism.5 R. A. Markus Saeculum (1970) Markus was a British professor of history; ostensibly, Saeculum was a historical investigation into Augustine’s social thought. But, from the outset, Markus was clear that his “interest in the past merges into a present concern”; history “merges into theology.”6 His constructive goals are found primarily in the final chapter: to “‘carve a channel’ from Augustine to our own day.”7 Before arriving at Markus’s practical appeals, we must trace this channel back to the source in Markus’s historical interpretation. Because of Augustine’s later association with medieval synthesis, primarily in his famous dictum “Compel them to come in,” Markus saw his primary task as disentangling the African bishop from European Christendom. For Markus, contrary to later interpretations, Augustine is a theologian of the secular, not an apologist for Christian culture or the Christian state. More specifically, Markus locates Augustine’s mature thought as navigating between two extremes: the “Eusebian” (sacred) and the “apocalyptic” (profane).

2. Paul J. Weithman, “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism,” FP 8 (1991): 461–80. 3. Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1. 4. Originally published in 1970, the book was reissued in 1989 as a second edition, with a new preface and bibliography. My citations come from the second edition: Robert A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). The second edition contains the same pagination in the text’s body as the original version. 5. Eric Gregory refers to Saeculum as “the scholarly lodestar for Augustinian liberalism” (Politics and the Order of Love, 77). 6. Markus, Saeculum, xxii–xxiii. 7. Ibid., xxiii.

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The “Secular” of the Mature Augustine At one extreme is what Markus refers to most frequently as “EusebianRome theology,” as well as the “Constantinian-Theodosian establishment,” tempora Christiana (the Christian times), and the imperium Christianum (Christian Empire).8 Located in Augustine’s early theology, this theology was also dominant among Christians by the late fourth century AD. Following its namesake, “Eusebian theology” gave sacral significance to the ascension of Constantine and later Christian emperors. History moved into a new, climactic phase, the “Christian times,” connected by some to the beginning of the eschatological millennium of Revelation 20. Theologians related the fulfillment of biblical prophecy to the current “Christianization” of Rome, explaining the political order with references to Christ’s kingship, represented by the emperor. The church was the triumphant kingdom of God on earth.9 Markus argues that Augustine began to turn from this theology with his rereading of Paul in the mid-390s; this turn was fully accomplished after the sack of Rome, in 410.10 Augustine’s discovery of human bondage to original sin destroyed his historical optimism, his “Christian politics,” and his identification of the visible church with Christ’s eschatological kingdom. Yet Augustine did not swing to the opposite extreme, which Markus primarily labels the “apocalyptic” tradition. If Eusebian theology tended to “sacralize” everything, the apocalyptic tradition tended to consider nearly everything “profane.” Instead of the tempora Christiana, this view saw history as entering the age of apostasy and approaching the final cataclysm. The imperium Christianum was not a Christian empire but an abandonment of Christ’s kingship entirely. The Catholic Church had fallen from grace, with only a tiny remnant of the elect representing the purity of God’s kingdom. Markus identifies this tradition especially with the North African churches—in particular, those of Donatism.11 Augustine’s disillusionment with Roman triumphalism could easily have sent him to monastic radicalism or apocalyptic Donatism, yet Markus argues that Augustine pioneered a novel third way: a theology of the secular. Markus argues that the ancient world dichotomized life into 8. Markus, Saeculum, 56, 114, 38, 37. 9. This summarizes chapter two of ibid., 22–44. 10. Ibid., 139. As a result, any Augustine writings before 395 are regarded as “the early Augustine” and any between 395 and 410 as the “middle Augustine.” Markus is explicating only Augustine’s “mature” thought (after 410). 11. Ibid., 55.

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“sacred” and “profane.” The “secular” was an invention of Christianity and, in particular, of Augustine. “Augustine’s theology rejected the dichotomy of sacred and profane.”12 Sacred and profane are “mutually exclusive areas,” whereas the secular lies between them, directly opposing neither. In Markus’s reading, “the ‘secular’ is neutral, ambivalent, but no more profane than it is sacred.”13 The sacred and the profane are ultimately eschatological—the purity of good and evil revealed in the Last Judgment. But the secular is the place of the penultimate. Until Christ’s return, the world exists in the saeculum, the temporary intermingling of those inwardly separated by their loves as elect and reprobate. Markus lays out three areas in which Augustine “secularized” his theology: history, the civil state, and the church, in that chronological order.14 In each area, Augustine navigated between Eusebian (sacred) and apocalyptic (profane) poles with a distinct concept of the secular. Secular History From his rereading of Paul, Augustine “could no longer see salvation as an ordered progression” in history; rather, it was a “miracle of divine initiative” without a steady, upward path.15 God’s grace in history was punctiliar and disruptive. Thus, Augustine’s secular view of history meant that “all history outside the canon was seen as homogeneous and, in terms of ultimate significance, ambivalent.”16 “Sacred history,” which is “uniquely distinguished from all other human history,” climaxed and concluded in Christ’s ascension, not in church history. For this reason, biblical prophecy could have no fulfillment in the saeculum.17 In Augustine’s “historical agnosticism,” God’s kingdom was fully pushed back to the eschaton: “No historical conditions can provide so much as a shadow of this fulfillment, no historical process can lead either towards or away from it.”18 Historical meaning points back to Christ’s incarnation or forward to his return, not to the church’s present ups and downs. This view of the secular, according to Markus, allowed Augustine to avoid the extremes of the church’s “rise” (Eusebian, sacred) or “fall” (apocalyptic, profane) at Constantine’s conver12. Markus, Saeculum, 122. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 133. 15. Ibid., xi. 16. Ibid., 133. 17. Ibid., 158. 18. Ibid., 166.

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sion. History in the saeculum is opaque; the shape of eschatology and the actions of divine providence cannot be discerned. Secular State Augustine’s acceptance of this theology of history modified his view of civil government. The key is Augustine’s move from locating political authority in creation—“the all-embracing cosmic order, grounded in the ultimate rationality of the world”—to locating it in history, especially postlapsarian history: By the time he [Augustine] set out on writing the City of God late in 412 or 413 he had reinterpreted the need for political authority and institutions in terms of his new vision of human existence: social life, too, had to be seen as radically fallen and infected with sin. Now the authority of government and its coercive mechanisms had to be re-interpreted: their object was no longer to embody an over-arching rational order in society, but to secure its fabric against the forces of disintegration, helping to check conflict, to minimise its disruptive power.19

Augustine moved from the particular to the general: from secularization of the Roman Empire to secularization of “social institutions in general, in the sense that they had no immediate relation to ultimate purposes.”20 Two appendixes in Saeculum illustrate Augustine’s view of government as a product of the fall. Augustine rejected his earlier endorsement of the family as the seed of government and the pater familias as a parallel to the civil ruler. Rather, all distinctions of power and position were introduced by human sin; there is no natural hierarchy among human beings. “Augustine thought of all institutions of human domination and power as on a level with slavery.”21 Markus goes on to claim that this perspective was quickly lost in medieval Christendom with its Aristotelian categories of the natural order of political authority, even as medieval theologians appealed to Augustine’s civitas Dei. This “ambivalence” about the state allowed Augustine to integrate both Eusebian and apocalyptic perspectives. Christian involvement in politics was seen as legitimate (Eusebian), although not sacred. Moreover, Augustine continued to characterize the state as participating in 19. Markus, Saeculum, xi. 20. Ibid., 133. 21. Ibid., 200.

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sin and unable to advance “sacred history” (apocalyptic). One might say that Augustine encouraged Eusebian-type methods but with an apocalyptic-type aim and attitude.22 Markus expounds Augustine’s political thought as advocating the state’s “neutrality” regarding religious matters. “In order to empty the ‘state’ of eschatological significance,” Augustine posited the state as lying “between” the two cities, seen as two eschatological principles.23 What the saeculum did for the state was “to preserve its neutrality between the two ‘cities’ and to transfer to them the whole burden of being the exclusive bearers of all ultimate significance.”24 The saeculum is “the overlap between the heavenly and the earthly cities,” with the neutral state being its symbolic representation.25 Political order is “the area of indeterminacy between the two cities. This, in the last resort, is the theological locus of politically organised society.”26 In Augustine’s hands, political thought was removed from the dimension of theology.27 Augustine “pushed such fundamental commitments as a man’s religious belief and the values he lives by outside the field of political discourse. . . . The only links between the realm of politics and the realm of faith and morals were now those which existed inwardly, in the way in which individuals’ valuations are structured.” 28 Secular Church Besides secularizing history and the state, Markus argues that Augustine, in his most mature thought, also secularized the doctrine of the church. As an African theologian, Augustine inherited a certain tradition about the church’s purity, which took a while to surrender. His long controversy with the Donatists caused Augustine to transfer his notion of the secularity of history and society to church history and ecclesial society. The church was overthrown from its lofty position and removed from the sphere of “sacred,” taking its place alongside other 22. Markus, Saeculum, 167. 23. Ibid., 150. 24. Ibid., italics mine. 25. Ibid., 101. 26. Ibid., 64, italics mine. Elsewhere, Markus writes that “Rome is here suspended, so to speak, between the two ‘cities’” (58, italics mine). See also p. 98: “The Empire—as all actual societies of men—hovers between the ‘earthly’ and the ‘heavenly’ cities, or, more precisely, it exists in the region where the two cities overlap.” 27. Ibid., 69–70. 28. Ibid., 70. Markus uses “realm” to speak about the saeculum, as he also does on p. 154. Like Luther, he connects the two realms inwardly. Here and throughout Saeculum, Markus uses “values” instead of “virtues,” speaking of “religion” instead of Christian faith and worship—very similar to Neuhaus and the neoconservatives.

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social institutions of the saeculum: “The history of the Church is no more sacred than the history of anything else between the Incarnation and the Parousia.”29 Most strategically, Markus interprets the “city of God” not as the visible, historic church but as the invisible church, revealed only in the eschaton.30 Indeed, Augustine’s preoccupation with “the point of view of God’s predestinating choice—a point of view which increasingly dominated Augustine’s thought”—tempered his earlier African emphasis on the church’s visibility and purity. His ecclesiology shifted from “empirical, sociological, or historical terms into an eschatological key.”31 Markus maintains that the “two cities” are invisible, defined only by internal characteristics (love) and God’s choice from eternity (predestination).32 The “city of God” exists primarily in heaven as the church triumphant—though mystically united with the church militant—only to exist fully as the New Jerusalem.33 Accordingly, Augustine’s “image of the Church is that of a ‘secular’ institution: the language in which it is described is that which the Bible applies to ‘the world.’ ‘World’ and ‘Church’ are co-extensive: there is a real distinction to be drawn between them, but it is eschatological rather than sociological or historical.”34 Both church and state exist in the same basic category: “The Church is no more ‘sacred’ than the world is ‘profane’: they are both ‘secular.’” The church, “like all human institutions,” is “like any other human grouping, part of the saeculum.”35 All human societies, including the church, are “mixed multi-

29. Markus, Saeculum, 179. 30. This argument is made in ibid., 117–26. See esp. p. 125: “In no way, at any rate, could it [the civitas Dei] be identified with any worldly institution, and conversely, no worldly institutions could ever validly claim to be ‘Christian’ or ‘sacred.’ In Augustine’s eschatological perspective the distance between the only true Christian society and any historical society, past, present or future, was infinite.” 31. Ibid., 120. 32. Ibid., 151: The two cities “can never be discerned in their unmixed state. This invisibility of the presence of eschatological categories in historical realities is the foundation of Augustine’s theology of the saeculum. In order to insist on the ultimate eschatological ambivalence of all empirical human groupings and institutions Augustine had to by-pass their collective, institutional character, and to break them down . . . into terms of individuals with their personal loyalties to different, and very mixed, ultimate values.” 33. Ibid., 62: “But it is a society which, again like its heavenly counterpart, does not appear visibly as a society until the last judgment at the end of time. Here and now the two cities melt into one another; their boundaries are invisible and cut across all visible social groupings.” 34. Ibid., 122–23. 35. Ibid., 179.

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tudes,” with overlap in both cities.36 In Markus’s reading, the church cuts through the heart of every person as both “sinner” and “saint.” 37 Augustine’s Inconsistency At one crucial point, Markus anticipates major pushback to his thesis regarding Augustine’s theology of the secular: What about Augustine’s argument for civil enforcement of orthodox Christian worship? “The coherence of this picture is disturbed, and the truth of the hypothesis threatened, by an aspect of Augustine’s mind not so far considered: his readiness to endorse religious coercion by the authorities of the state.”38 Here, Markus must walk a tightrope: without abandoning his entire argument, he must explain how this coercion accords with Augustine’s general approach to church and society. Markus admits, throughout, a “central paradox,” an “unresolved tension,” not what “we might expect to find,” a “paradoxical conclusion,” and an “acute tension.”39 Even after his explanation, Markus believes that his own theoretical schema more exactly represents Augustine’s thought than Augustine’s own words: “The argument of this book is that if we wish to understand the political bearings of the fundamental theological structures of Augustine’s thought, we do better to pursue the implications of the hypothesis in which we have reconstructed the shape of that thought than to remain content with what he actually said about the duties of Christian rulers and subjects.”40 For Markus, Augustine’s argument for civil maintenance of religion is the outlier, not to be accorded significance within his theology of the saeculum. Yet, in this attempt at harmonizing, Markus has two important theses to argue: Augustine considered the rule of a Christian civil magistrate to perform a pastoral function; and Augustine thought primarily 36. Markus, Saeculum, 62–63: “From this [eschatological] point of view the sphere in which human kingdoms, empires and all states have their being is radically ambiguous, and all social institutions and human groupings are radically infected with this ambiguity” (italics mine). 37. Ibid., 167. “The line between sinner and saint or the persecutor and his victim can no longer be drawn at the frontiers of the visible church. These concepts and their oppositions have no validity on the plane of empirically observable, historical reality; they have validity only in eschatological terms. . . . The discrimination cuts into the very substance of the Church, as it cuts into the world; indeed, it cuts into the inner being of a man himself” (123). 38. Ibid., 134. 39. Ibid., 139, 146, 147, 151, 152. “His endorsement of official enforcement of Christian orthodoxy, whatever its theoretical foundations, is not well at home in the repudiation of the Theodosian ‘Christian times,’ nor in the setting of his scepticism about a Christian Roman Empire and about legal and institutional means of christianisation” (146). On the same page, Markus even argues that Augustine was “concealing this tension from himself.” 40. Ibid., 153.

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in terms of individuals, not abstract collectives and institutions. On the first point, Markus contends that Augustine never endorsed state coercion of pagan religious worship; hence, Augustine saw persecution of the Donatists as a matter of the church’s recalling apostate members41 Religious coercion of this kind falls under the pastoral function of “church discipline.” Christian rulers are simply acting in the place of the bishop. On the second point, closely related to the first, Markus maintains that Augustine had no concept of an abstract “state.” He thought of civil authority entirely in terms of individual rulers, so a Christian ruler could act entirely on individual authority. Augustine simply had no concept of a “governmental machinery of the ‘state.’”42 Rather, he “individualised,” “personalised,” and “atomised” all social groupings, especially as his thought became more predestinarian.43 For “all empirical human groupings and institutions,” Augustine chose to “by-pass their collective, institutional character” and to “break them down . . . into terms of individuals with their personal loyalties to different, and very mixed, ultimate values.” Augustine collapsed communities into “their component personal atoms.” This process of individualization paradoxically allowed him to consider the state “neutral.” 44 Constructive Proposals Having made his historical case, in the epilogue Markus turns to follow “the signposts provided by Augustine’s reflection on history, on society and on the Church.”45 On history, Markus affirms that Augustine’s thought on secularization can be adapted well by modern Christians, especially in not bemoaning the loss of Christendom. On society, Markus continues in this same vein by decrying “Christian politics” that seeks to reassert lost dominance. Believers should address public issues from nonreligious standpoints.46 Markus points to Bonhoeffer 41. Markus, Saeculum, 142. 42. Ibid., 148. 43. Ibid., 151. 44. Ibid.: “The main lines of his thinking about history, society and human institutions in general (saeculum) point towards a political order to which we may not unreasonably apply the anachronistic epithet ‘pluralist,’ in that it is neutral in respect of ultimate beliefs and values.” 45. Ibid., 155. 46. Ibid., 172: “The radically revolutionary character of Christian hope makes it, in practice, compatible with almost any political programme which does not set itself up as an ideology with absolute claims upon men’s ultimate loyalties. . . . Indeed, the most pressing and urgent social tasks, seen in the light of eschatological hope, assume the features of circumscribed problems, capable of being dealt with on a restricted canvas, without raising ultimate questions” (italics mine).

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as the best example of this Augustinian vision: “Bonhoeffer’s ‘penultimate’ is the almost exact equivalent of Augustine’s saeculum, the temporal reality of the two eschatological ultimates in their present inextricably confused and interwoven state.”47 Christians can “welcome the disintegration of a ‘Christian society’ as a profound liberation of the Gospel. Augustinian theology should at least undermine Christian opposition to an open, secular society.” In particular, the political realm needs to be reimagined as the exclusion of “any ideology or any final political vision . . . a pluralistic, religiously neutral civil community.”48 Christians need to become vocal ambassadors of “the neutral, pluralist society of the Augustinian tradition, excluding ultimate commitments from its sphere of interest, content with securing a living space against chaos.”49 In the epilogue’s final section, Markus ventures to convince Christians of the church’s “worldliness.”50 As one example, he suggests that the church’s institution—its structures and organization—is not as apparent in the New Testament as is often supposed. The church is as governed at least by human reason as by divine law: “Ecclesiastical institutions and their history are in no way privileged above the ‘secular.’ They share the same ambivalence, the same relativity, the same liability to infection with sin and distortion through betrayal.” 51 It is vital, Markus declares, to distinguish the visible, institutional church from both the “city of God” and the “kingdom of God.” God’s purpose of salvation is not strictly carried on by the church, but “the vehicle of God’s work is the City of God in its earthly pilgrimage: the part of mankind whose hearts are invisibly ruled by God. . . . This City is not the Church, though it will exist within the Church as well as outside it.”52 Likewise, “the Church is not this Kingdom, even in its germ or chrysalis. . . . The Kingdom is the final consummation of God’s creative intention: not the Church. The Church is an interim institution, whose distinct existence in the world is itself provisional.”53 At this point, Markus concedes that he has probably left behind Augustine’s thought for his own. For example, Augustine could approve of Cyprian’s dictum extra ecclesiam nulla sallus, evidence of 47. Markus, Saeculum, 172. 48. Ibid., 173. 49. Ibid., 178. 50. Ibid., 179. 51. Ibid., 180. 52. Ibid., italics mine. 53. Ibid., 181–82, italics mine.

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correspondence between the visible church and membership in God’s kingdom. But Markus believes that Augustine’s theology of the secular truly points in the opposite direction, with salvation not “somehow confined to the empirically circumscribed thing which we can recognize in the world as ‘Church.’”54 This further secularization of the church is in line with Augustine’s best thinking, Markus believes, even if it is not directly stated by Augustine. Christianity and the Secular (2006) Markus’s Saeculum was republished in 1989, with a new introduction and bibliography. In the introduction, he restates his original thesis about Augustine and his constructive proposals, even heightening the degree to which they are needed. “The menace of theocratic regimes,” referring not to past attempts of Christendom but to contemporary Christian coalitions, makes a true Augustinian renaissance all the more important.55 Later, Markus’s final work, Christianity and the Secular, neatly bookends the argument he began in Saeculum. Much of Christianity and the Secular repeats themes already discussed, so there is no need to cover the work extensively. Markus begins by acknowledging criticisms of his earlier work, considering Christianity and the Secular a kind of Augustinian retractio—a “reconsideration,” not a retraction.56 Though some have indeed received this last work as a disavowing retraction, Markus clearly recants nothing substantial of his earlier thesis. Rather, Christianity and the Secular represents Markus’s more constructive thought on the relationship of Christian faith, church, and culture. In retracing the earlier argument, Markus narrates the 1960s as a time of coming to terms with secularization, his thinking certainly shaped by such notions as Bonhoeffer’s “‘adulthood’ of the world” and “religionless Christianity,” as well as attempts to construct a “secular theology.”57 This intellectual climate, Markus relates, “may have shaped, more than I intended, my attempt to understand what Augustine might have to say to Western Christians in the second half of the twentieth century.”58 Yet Markus does not apologize, for the “secular54. Markus, Saeculum, 181. 55. Ibid., viii. 56. Robert A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 2–3, 51. 57. Ibid., 2. 58. Ibid., 3.

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ization thesis” was short-lived. Movements such as Radical Orthodoxy and the neo-Anabaptists, with their repudiation of the secular, prompt Markus to return to his support of a “secular” theology of society. The two main categories of Markus’s reconsideration are his historical interpretation of Augustine and his own constructive argument about the “neutrality” of secular society. Regarding his historical interpretation, Markus entertains criticisms primarily from Radical Orthodox theologian John Milbank. Milbank argues that given that Augustine locates justice in God’s spiritual reign, anything outside of submission, such as in the civitas terrena, is inherently sinful. In Milbank’s interpretation, Augustine ties all notions of “public” and “justice” to the church; the state has justification only in its reference to the civitas Dei, the visible institution of the church.59 Markus concedes that he may have downplayed the centrality of the church in Augustine’s thinking, but he stands his ground against “ecclesial” detractors: “I admit the justice of criticisms of my minimizing unduly in my Saeculum the social character of the church, though I would have reservations about John Milbank’s view that ‘as a civitas, the Church is, for Augustine, itself a political reality.’”60 For Markus, the “ecclesial” reading of Augustine, with justice always related to God, fails to recognize a place in Augustine’s thought for a “relative version of justice.”61 Augustine is much more of a “penultimate” thinker than his readers—both Christendom and modern—have understood, and he allowed for “a sense of the autonomy of the secular.”62 Markus does come closer to a full-blown retraction concerning the criticism that he too quickly glossed over Augustine’s approval of the political suppression of heresy. As we have seen, Markus expressed much hesitancy in his original work, and he expresses here that he is “still uncertain about it.” Whereas he earlier tried to reconcile Augustine’s theology of secularity with religious coercion, Markus now seems to abandon the attempt: “It is clear that his endorsement of the coercion of heretics and schismatics runs counter to his views on the func59. Markus confesses that “a great deal in Augustine’s thought points in this direction” (toward Milbank’s reading), but a greater reading of the whole prevents this error. Markus also acknowledges that others have put this criticism to his reading even better than Milbank; Robert Dodaro’s Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) is “the most powerful, though also subtly nuanced, statement I know of” (Christianity and the Secular, 42). 60. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 42n27. 61. Ibid., 43. 62. Ibid., 66. Markus often uses “autonomy” (echoing certain interpretations of Luther’s two kingdoms) in describing Augustine’s thought on the secular realm. See, e.g., Saeculum, 69–71; and Christianity and the Secular, 9, 11, 37, 40, 69, 72.

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tions of the civil community.” The two views are simply “irresolvable.”63 Markus’s tack is to see Augustine’s view of religious suppression as having “relative independence” from his other views. It is better to follow the implications of Augustine’s theology of the secular than his actual practice. The second major area that Markus addresses is his constructive argument for the “neutrality” of secular society. He clarifies that by “neutrality” he does not mean total exclusion of religion from public life, as in Richard Rorty’s thought. Markus concedes that “my own interpretation of the political implications of Augustine’s views has come perilously close to doing this,” that is, to making Augustine “a precursor of modern secular liberalism.”64 Instead, his argument is that religion—in particular, Christianity—need not be given as a necessary justification for political decisions. Religion is neither excluded nor needed. Politics is “neutral,” the “domain of the religious—though not moral—adiaphora.”65 For Markus, the key to Augustinian liberalism is consensus. From Charles Taylor’s work, Markus gleans two different methods of approaching the neutral, secular sphere: “the common ground strategy” and the “independent ethic” strategy. The first—finding beliefs shared by citizens in a commonwealth—upholds consensus more clearly. But Markus points out that when a civil community becomes entirely pluralistic, consensus becomes much more difficult, and an “independent political ethic”—“a reduced, nonreligious, common ground”—becomes necessary.66 It all depends on how homogeneous (or not) one’s community is, though Markus is clear that we should be suspicious of the attempt to make societies homogeneous, especially of “hankering after the conditions which allow institutional religious influence.”67 Rejecting Rorty’s absolute exclusion of religion from public life, Markus approves of a Rawlsian approach, with a “basic structure” of society that is itself nonreligious but that can be endorsed with inward religious motivations by individual citizens.68 What must be rejected is “the tradition which would see the public sphere as founded on or tied in one way or another to Christianity.”69 Thus, the 63. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 66n48. 64. Ibid., 50–51. 65. Ibid., 5–6, italics original. 66. Ibid., 7. 67. Ibid., 9. 68. Ibid., 67. John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice was published in 1971, only one year after Markus’s Saeculum. 69. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 41.

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“neutrality” of the public sphere is religious—not taking a stance on a particular conception of “the good”—but not moral.70 Augustinian Civic Liberalism If R. A. Markus made possible, historically and intellectually, the ability to call oneself an “Augustinian liberal,” then Charles Mathewes and Eric Gregory have notably and proudly worn the badge.71 But these two scholars are not strict disciples of Markus: they neither pursue primarily a historical understanding of Augustine nor follow exactly Markus’s understanding of Augustinian liberalism. Still, their projects are similarly interested in uncovering the implications of Augustine’s thought for life in post-Christendom society. For all three, Augustine’s location on the edge of a collapsed world order gives him a unique voice for Christians living on the other side of Christendom. With Markus, Mathewes and Gregory share the fundamental starting point of an eschatology of the saeculum: an overlapping period in history characterized by opacity, proximate ends, and relative goods. Christian engagement in culture and politics takes on this already/not-yet dimension. Yet, whereas Markus began with Augustine’s secularization of history, Mathewes and Gregory work from Augustine’s conception of virtue. Approaching public theology from this perspective allows them to focus primarily on political ethics instead of political theology or even political theory, thus deferring deeper questions about the constitution of the state and political order. Mathewes covers the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—whereas Gregory focuses primarily on love as a civic virtue. Emphasis on virtue gives their projects a decidedly different texture from Markus. Both Mathewes and Gregory take Markus’s basic point that political institutions do not have ultimate significance and need not refer to the church or Christian faith. But, where Markus prefers an independent political ethic, Mathewes and Gregory are much more willing to allow for religiously motivated language and action in the political sphere. Whereas Markus’s burden is to desacralize politics from the work of the gospel, Mathewes and Gregory envision political participation as a form of religious sanctification. Markus represents 70. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 44. Markus retains his terminology of “neutrality” from Saeculum with this clarification. For Markus’s uses of “neutral”/“neutrality,” see Saeculum, 25, 32, 55–58, 65, 89, 122, 150, 173, 178; and Christianity and the Secular, 6, 40, 44, 63. 71. I limit the discussion to Mathewes and Gregory as the movement’s most prominent theological representatives.

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a position closer to Reinhold Niebuhr’s realist Augustinianism and the Lutheran two kingdoms, while Mathewes and Gregory share at least some affinity with “transformationist” approaches. Their appeal to Augustine creates room for more distinctly Christian political witness. Charles Mathewes and a Mirror for Christian Citizens Mathewes’s engagement with Augustinian political thinking goes at least as far back as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago, completed under the Reinhold Niebuhr scholar William Schweiker, addressing evil and conflict in the Augustinian tradition.72 For our purposes, Mathewes’s most relevant works are A Theology of Public Life (2007) and The Republic of Grace (2010), with the former as the more theoretical argument.73 Both follow a similar outline, moving from a foundational Christian vision of the public landscape to Christian practice of the virtues in citizenship. Mathewes’s project is summarized alternately in both works as “a mirror for Christian citizens” and “a mirror of Christian citizenship.”74 This designation, modifying the traditional genre of “a mirror for Christian princes,” speaks to several aspects of Mathewes’s work. First, he takes the modern democratic situation as a given: “Where there is no king . . . ‘the sovereign’ is us—you and I and our neighbors.”75 Yet Mathewes also asserts that his project is “not an apology for democracy.” His intention is “not to use faith to support our democratic culture” but quite the opposite: “to use our civic interactions with one another to deepen faith.”76 As a result, his argument deals with “public life,” not simply politics or especially political institutions. In other words, he is advocating not that the political order should learn from the Christian gospel but that the practice of politics can teach Christians about their own life in the gospel. Mathewes focuses on the Christian citizen rather than citizens of all faiths or the political order itself.77 How does Mathewes’s central thesis relate to the contemporary 72. Charles Mathewes, “The Challenge of Tragedy for the Human Good: The Augustinian Proposals of Reinhold Niebuhr and Hannah Arendt” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1997). The dissertation was published as Evil and the Augustinian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 73. Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine 17 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), and The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 74. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 3; Republic of Grace, 8. 75. Mathewes, Republic of Grace, 8, italics original. 76. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 23. 77. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 2; Republic of Grace, 5.

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question of religion in public life? He opposes extremism on either side: both religious hegemony and secularist exclusion of religious language from a supposedly neutral public square. Rather, religious advocates—Mathewes having in mind solely Christians—must approach civic discourse with openness, vulnerability, and endurance. The latter is especially important for Mathewes’s retrieval of Augustine. An Augustinian eschatology is one of patience and perseverance that excludes premature closure, joining Mathewes to Markus’s critique of Milbank.78 Politics actually teaches Christians the discipline of ascesis: participating in service to the neighbor while not expecting transcendent success and not attempting to usher in the kingdom—“using” but not “enjoying,” in Augustinian terms.79 Mathewes’s Augustinian distinction between “use” and “enjoyment” steers between both apocalyptic politics (only God is to be enjoyed) and otherworldly politics (the world is to be used for enjoying God).80 As an Augustinian, Mathewes acknowledges the fallen character of the state, especially its potential for idolatry. Yet, although “political life as we experience it today is not the proper form of public life”—he calls it “an ersatz practice”—public engagement is “not optional” but is an “inescapable activity that is, like everything else, a mixed blessing.”81 The very messiness of politics provides Christians with the opportunity for practicing ascesis in faith, hope, and love. Mathewes appeals to an Augustinian anthropology that sees human nature primarily as “responsive,”82 that of a “sufferer,” so that engagement in the saeculum is about receiving God’s gifts in the form of “the other.”83 The radical pluralism of a modern liberal order is not a challenge for Christianity to overcome but an opportunity for spiritual formation. The virtue of faith motivates Christians to bring their beliefs into the public square, but primarily to receive, not to construct. Hopeful citizenship tempers any expectation that politics will become “Christian”; 78. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 124–27. “His [Milbank’s] project, for all its power as critical diagnosis, does not offer much constructive help for a theology of engagement; it is too apocalyptically impatient to take the time necessary to develop such a theology” (127). For a similar critique of Hauerwas, see p. 162. 79. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 192: “Political life is supposed to be unsettling, not calming; disturbing, not reassuring; a pilgrimage, not a homestead. Nor is it simply politics’ accidental character that is a function of sin; rather, politics itself, and the form of life that requires politics, is our lot only because of sin. It is a way of coping, recognizing our need to cooperate with people often quite unlike us. It is an inescapable mode of life in which we ought to be engaged, until the eschaton, but it is not one that we ought to expect to enjoy.” 80. Ibid., 76–82. 81. Ibid., 181. 82. Ibid., 50, and Republic of Grace, 139. 83. Mathewes, Theology of Public Life, 75.

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love further motivates Christians to serve their neighbors and be vulnerable to them. Despite conceiving of political participation with a distinctly Christian identity (contra Markus), Mathewes is much closer to Markus than at first glance. For example, although Mathewes maintains that the public is not a “neutral” meeting place, its character is less than clear, given the focus on Christians’ engaging it to edify their faith. Religious adherents need not sideline their faith commitments, but the public square is a place where citizens seek “common ground” and “significant overlappings” without the influence of only one religion.84 Mathewes’s critique of Oliver O’Donovan and of Christendom interpretations of Augustine follows along these lines. For Mathewes, “the political order remains, until the eschaton, far more ‘unredeemed’ than he [O’Donovan] allows.”85 Contra O’Donovan, politics was not brought into the economy of salvation by Christ’s incarnation. Here, Mathewes affirms the “pieties” of liberalism to avoid the errors of Christendom with its “realized” eschatology, especially the idea that “Christ’s redeeming power works here and now, and it works on the political order itself.”86 Mathewes summarizes his critique as dealing primarily with misunderstanding the ambiguous nature of the saeculum: O’Donovan too tightly joins together heaven and politics, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. He makes the eschatological kingdom of God too much like a this-worldly political entity, and the political structures of this world too much like the kingdom. These assumptions undergird his excessively confident assessment of prospects for a contemporary Christendom. . . . As regards the consummation of the kingdom, O’Donovan assumes a stronger than warranted continuity between our worldly anticipations and the supra-worldly satisfactions that await us. 87

Striking a tone similar to Markus, Mathewes writes that “the church is no more pure in this life, no more a haven of righteousness, than any other institution.”88 Echoing Reinhold Niebuhr, Mathewes argues that because of the opaqueness of the saeculum, “Christians are well advised to care about the civic order for negative reasons, for fear of what it might become.”89 Believers can be formed spiritually by political par84. Mathewes, Theology of the Public Life, 138–39. 85. Ibid., 181. 86. Ibid., 184–85. 87. Ibid., 185. 88. Ibid., 186. 89. Ibid., 187, italics mine.

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ticipation, but primarily by what it is not: Christians look in hope for the world to come, even as they seek to provide relative peace for their neighbors now. Eric Gregory and the Politics of Love Even more than Mathewes, Eric Gregory exemplifies the label “Augustinian liberal.” A key feature of Gregory’s work is coalescing the neoAugustinian movement in its discernable strands. Politics and the Order of Love (2008), begun as Gregory’s doctoral dissertation (completed in 2002),90 combines both analytic and constructive work in surveying the tradition of liberally retrieving Augustine, proposing his own “rational reconstruction” to reinvigorate the rationale for modern democratic order.91 Like Mathewes, Gregory focuses not on political institutions but on the virtues of citizens in determining the shape of public culture. For Gregory, debate over religion in public life can be viewed by examining which aspects of Augustine’s political legacy are best for our contemporary, post-Christendom setting. Four main categories of political Augustinianism provide three liberal options and one antiliberal option. The latter is associated with the interpretation of Augustine prevalent for most of church history: the Augustine of medieval Christendom and church establishment. This “high-church” Augustine speaks about true justice being fulfilled only in the body of Christ. Gregory connects this view to recent modernity critics such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank. Meanwhile, the three categories of “Augustinian liberalisms” tend to attach themselves to different virtues in Augustine: hope, justice, and love. Augustinian hope appears most clearly in Christian realism, with its “principal spokesperson . . . the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.”92 Niebuhr can be credited with reviving Augustine’s political thought in the context of pluralistic democracy and is thus the fountainhead of Augustinian liberalism.93 Gregory sees Niebuhr’s realism

90. Eric Gregory, “Love and Citizenship: Augustine and the Ethics of Liberalism” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2002). 91. Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 2. 92. Ibid., 11. 93. Ibid., 82: “Niebuhr is the standard route into political Augustinianism. In fact, given the relative neglect of Augustinianism in twentieth-century Catholic social thought, it is not too much to claim that Niebuhr’s Augustine has become the Augustine of both Protestant and Catholic political imagination.”

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primarily as a retrieval of Augustine’s categories of sin and suspended eschatology: This type reconstructed Augustine’s controversial doctrine of original sin and his dramatic narrative about “two cities” in order to temper the enthusiasm of democratic optimism and to support something like the “secular” order of liberalism. . . . In Niebuhr’s version of politics, the central fact of human nature this side of the Eschaton is sin, and it is the purpose of government, not to eliminate sin, but to constrain or ameliorate its bad effects by passing laws and using armed force prudentially (albeit tragically). Sentimental attempts to derive a social ethic from the gospel commandment of love are dangerous. Love is best conceived as a utopian idea that discloses what life will be like when God brings human history to a close by establishing his kingdom. . . . Liberal democracy is the least bad form of government because it recognizes government’s limited, sin-constraining role. In defending it, we need a realistic understanding of human nature and a willingness to use force and threat of force in the interest of maintaining order and approximating justice.94

Because this realistic category of Augustinian liberalism focuses on the limits of politics, it is wary of perfectionism and realized eschatology, fostering the virtue of eschatological hope in the practice of public life. Above all, this-worldly life, governed especially by law, must not be confused with the heavenly life to come, which is expressed by pure love. Gregory associates several Lutheran theologians with this type, as well as the early thinking of R. A. Markus in Saeculum.95 Gregory agrees with the realist account of eschatology and especially the idea of the saeculum, the overlap of the ages and the creation of “a this-worldly space for a shared public culture.”96 Thus, realists’ account of the need for eschatological hope amid pragmatic politics is persuasive. But, according to Gregory, Christian realists fail to express “an inner dynamic that might lead one to see citizenship in relation to discipleship,” and “love seems forever deferred to the eschatological community.”97 Concerning the realist reading, he sees an overemphasis in this Augustine on the fallenness of the political order. He is willing to entertain more revisionist accounts of Augustine’s (and Luther’s) location of political authority in “supralapsarian” created order. 98 94. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 11. 95. Ibid., 80. 96. Ibid., 85. 97. Ibid., 95. 98. Ibid., 55, 88.

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The second type of Augustinian liberalism followed chronologically the realism of Niebuhr and the Augustinians of hope. Disillusioned by a focus on the fallenness of political authority, this view sees political adjudication as “neutral” and espouses the Augustinian virtue of justice. Gregory considers this to be typified in John Rawls’s theory of “justice as fairness.”99 This type particularly emphasizes procedural justice, refusing to give religious preference in political judgments within a pluralist culture. Paul Weithman, in the inaugural usage of “Augustinian liberalism,” argued that Christians should understand government as a check on pride, including religious pride that desires to impose the faith on others.100 Christians should be willing to restrain their expression of the faith in the public square so as not to confuse it with the limited goods of a stable political order. There is “metaphysical modesty” in keeping comprehensive religious and philosophical views from a minimal conception of the state in its political arbitration.101 Appeal is made to R. A. Markus’s interpretation of Augustine as desacralizing the state from its ties to God’s revelation and salvific purposes in history.102 This proceduralist view of the state is more positive than the realist view, but with a narrower definition of justice, as political consensus not based on religious and philosophical grounds. Gregory appreciates this second category, Augustinian proceduralism, for its resistance to grounding politics in a “complete metaphysics.”103 Yet he also acknowledges that his own focus on citizenship, not on the apparatus of political authority itself, makes this position less useful in his overall argument. Citizens can bring private religious motivations to their action in society, even if the state itself does not act upon them.104 Gregory also finds that excluding love from the civic 99. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 12. Gregory makes an interesting point about timing: Markus’s Saeculum, in 1970, marks the true historical turn to Augustine’s political thought for modern pluralistic society (Niebuhr was much more a popularizer of Augustine). A year later (1971), Niebuhr died and Rawls published A Theory of Justice. This marked the transition to the second type of political Augustinianism (Eric Gregory, “Before the Original Position: The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls,” JRE 35 [2007]: 179). 100. Weithman, “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism,” 475: “But given Christian abhorrence of pride, Christians would do better to look for and employ such arguments [“religiously neutral” liberal ones] than to run the risk of pride that religiously-based political argument poses. . . . Political liberalism therefore prevents acts of pride that take the form of religiously inspired advocacy appealing to such premises.” 101. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 103. The phrase “metaphysical modesty” is from Edmund Santurri. 102. Gregory links the “later Markus” to his third category of Augustinian civic liberalism, with its virtue of love (Politics and the Order of Love, 81), but I see Markus’s later statements as fitting much closer with this second, procedural-justice category. Markus’s affirmation of Rawls, though nuanced (see earlier), seems to support this categorization. 103. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 104.

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order, based on its connection to a “transcendent moral order,” which a liberal state does not endorse, keeps this type from being fully Augustinian. For Gregory, love has a place in political reasoning, even for liberalism in which one should “neither expect nor want the state to become a confessing religious community.”105 The third type of Augustinian liberalism Gregory calls “Augustinian civic liberalism,” his own preferred way of retrieving Augustine for contemporary political thought. Whereas realists and proceduralists (types 1 and 2) “trade upon a contrastive account of love and sin,” civic liberalism works with a “dialectical relation between love and sin.”106 Gregory contends that love is the least appreciated virtue of Augustine’s civic theology, but one that can aid in supporting alternative readings. Focusing on sin alone makes politics primarily about limits, but Gregory wants a more capacious imagination for the good of politics. One can see this trajectory in the movement of Gregory’s categories: the realist view sees politics as negative; the proceduralist view sees politics as neutral; and civil liberalism sees politics with the potential for real good, even driven by love. Gregory enlists a diverse cadre of advocates in his third category of a “politics of love,” but his appeal to Martin Luther King Jr. is foremost.107 Gregory emphasizes not the actions of political organs but the formation of a charitable citizenship—“love as a motivation for political action.”108 Realists and proceduralists have focused primarily on structure and procedure, but Augustine’s theology of love adds the important dimension of motivation and virtue—habits and practices that fuel democratic participation.109 This “liberal agapism” wants to see the civic community as an “affective organization.”110 But to argue for love in liberal political theory, Gregory acknowledges his need to answer the objection, stated most forcefully by Hannah Arendt, that allowing for love in political discourse will result in coercive paternalism. In other words, love is so closely connected to religion that it will issue in civil maintenance of religion. To counter 104. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 105. 105. Ibid., 8. 106. Ibid., 148, 94, italics mine. 107. Ibid., 12. 108. Ibid., 158. 109. Ibid., 129: “I am not trying to provide a Christian theory of the state, whatever that ambiguous identity might mean in a world where we never encounter ‘the state’ but rather its various agencies dispersed throughout local, national, and international civil communities. . . . I am interested, however, in the neglected motivational aspects of the ethics of citizenship.” 110. Ibid., 116, 274.

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this, Gregory appeals to recent feminist “care” theory, the idea of “civic friendship,” and elements of liberation theology as nonpaternalistic ways of conceiving love. Like Mathewes, Gregory emphasizes love as a passional disposition, vulnerable and accepting of the other—not as having theological content. He also defends Augustine’s distinction between uti (“use”) and fruit (“enjoy”) against the Kantian critique that this makes the neighbor “instrumental” to God. In an Augustinian Christology, the incarnation of Christ as fully God and fully human unites love of God and love of humanity in one. The uti/fruit distinction need not be the “subordinationist teleology” of Christendom-sympathetic readers of Augustine, which would threaten ideals of liberal freedom and tolerance.111 Gregory also appeals to an “implicit love for God” that, although it does not explicitly confess the Christian faith, loves God simply in the love of one’s neighbor.112 Gregory also avoids paternalistic, content-laden conceptions of love by distancing himself from elements of an Augustinian ecclesiology, especially “the temptation to believe that [Christians] themselves hold a monopoly on God’s grace or virtue.”113 Against Milbank’s ecclesiological interpretation of Augustine, Gregory argues that “Christ is not the possession of Christianity, the church, or Augustinianism” but rather the “good in common” of all.114 Thus, while Christian believers may grasp the theological telos of love in God, nonbelievers can also be trained in love, because “theorizing virtues for citizens in a liberal society does not necessarily require this teleological structure.”115 According to Gregory, “Augustinian liberals . . . cannot expect liberals to ‘confess Christ is Lord’ in order to become good lovers and good citizens.”116 God’s incarnational love for the world, according to Gregory, enables humans to love one another with the kind of “vulnerable encounters with others that is characteristic of liberal politics.”117 The political exercise of love by citizens of liberal democracies is receptive, not 111. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 335. 112. Ibid., 334. 113. Ibid., 256. In another place, Gregory writes, “The kingdom of God is much bigger than the church, and the church experiences the same sinful divisions and broken ruptures that characterize the world. God belongs to neither the church nor the world, though both offer differentiated witnesses to God” (129, italics original). 114. Ibid., 373. In Gregory’s words, “I do not separate Christology and ecclesiology, but I push a more dialectical relation than Augustine, Hauerwas, and Milbank would allow” (131–32). One of the disagreements is simply over whether liberalism’s values are compatible with Christian virtue. Contrary to Hauerwas and Milbank, Gregory has a “critical admiration of liberal virtues” (32). 115. Ibid., 332, italics original. 116. Ibid., 256. 117. Ibid., 362.

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imposing; it “is conditioned by (and flows from) their love for God which is always already part of God’s own love for them.”118 The Lutheran Inflections of Augustinian Liberalism How, then, does the two-kingdom tradition outlined earlier relate to this contemporary movement of Augustinian liberalism? Gregory’s categorization of political Augustinianisms is a helpful place to start. Niebuhr’s Augustinian realism, discussed in chapter 2, bears certain marks of the two-kingdom tradition, especially in insisting that the gospel is not suited for ordering civil community. Markus most closely resembles Niebuhr on this front, with his postlapsarian location of political authority and his sharp eschatological distinction between the future kingdom of God and the current time. Whereas Luther’s contrast was primarily internal/external and Niebuhr’s was primarily love/justice—only secondarily eschatological—Markus’s is more fully eschatological: the translucent world to come versus the opaque subsistence of this present age. Like Niebuhr, Markus viewed the Bible as not transparent for political application.119 Both Niebuhr and Markus, like many advocates of the two-kingdom tradition, sought to avoid two extremes of perfectionist thinking: imperialistic Christian triumphalism and apocalyptic asceticism or quietism. Yet Markus moved Augustinian political theology in a more liberal direction even than Niebuhr, especially with his argument for a “religiously neutral” state and an “independent political ethic.” Such a conception allows Markus’s appeals for politics to be more positive and activist than simply calling for the restraint of evil, as in the more traditional two-kingdom view that Niebuhr shared.120 The self-identifying “Augustinian liberals” certainly followed Markus in this more constructive and dynamic perspective on political action, even further advancing this approach. In terms of Gregory’s threefold typology of Augustinian liberalism, the third type, Augustinian civic liberalism (or “political agapism”), now leads the scholarly conversation on retrieving Augustine for current political theology.121 Augustinian civil liber118. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 381. 119. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 86–87. Markus contrasts Augustine’s use of classical pagan sources for reflection on political thought with Gregory the Great’s central reliance on Scripture, even the Old Testament, disapproving of the latter. 120. In the background of these theoretical approaches were Markus’s more practical allegiances: he favored socialist and Marxist programs, being at odds with Niebuhr’s firm stance against Communism (Markus, Saeculum, 178). 121. As was noted earlier, Gregory places the later Markus in this third type, but I think that his views

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alism moves beyond Markus’s discussion of neutrality toward positive virtues of the liberal order and toward exploring what it contributes to Christian formation (Mathewes), and what Christian formation contributes to liberal virtues (Gregory). In my estimation, Mathewes’s proposal exhibits a tinge more Niebuhrian realism than Gregory’s—especially given Mathewes’s emphasis on hope, which Gregory categorizes as the quintessential virtue of Augustinian realism. Hence, Mathewes addresses Christian audiences primarily, whereas Gregory addresses love more widely in the discipline of political ethics.122 Accordingly, Mathewes worries that Gregory’s “liberal perfectionism” not only misses important aspects of Augustine himself but may also flatten out the “eschatological dialectic” and idealize the political order, which, for Mathewes, is “a deeply unstable reality.”123 Taking Augustinian civic liberalism as a whole displays characteristics of a two-kingdom approach along with elements fitting a more transformationist model. The language of theological virtues in the practice of politics seems to mix the two kingdoms. As much as Mathewes and Gregory express a debt to Niebuhr, their argument that love plays a role in political judgments is simply not one Niebuhr would share. Both Mathewes and Gregory employ dialectic, but their dialectic closes the gap more tightly than Niebuhr or perhaps even Bonhoeffer does. The nub of the point involves the theological virtues. The twokingdom tradition has no problem with using natural virtues in political action. But faith, hope, and love are not simply actions in themselves; they have objects of theological content in the gospel and in Christ’s advent. In a two-kingdom account, such content is given without reference to this-worldly renovation and only for eschatological ends. Inasmuch as Mathewes and Gregory accent the visible realization of virtues from God’s kingdom in extra-ecclesial institutions, their proposals have taken a different turn from the paradoxical thought of the two kingdoms. Despite these qualifications, however, Augustinian liberalism, even in “agapistic” forms, still fits within the family resemblance of twokingdom thinking. This resemblance appears more clearly in what advocates argue against than in what they argue for. For all their discourse on theological virtues, they still do not make theological justifit more closely the second type (“proceduralism”), given the absence of any discussion of love or the virtues in the civil polity. 122. Mathewes points this out in his review of Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love (“Augustinian Politics,” Books and Culture 16 [June 2010]: 27–29). 123. Mathewes, “Augustinian Politics,” 29.

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fications for the public order or even for particular Christian stances argued in that public square. Christendom is no friendlier to them than it was to Markus, Niebuhr, or earlier adherents. Both Mathewes and Gregory see Milbank as a key Augustinian target; though both express some appreciation for the work of O’Donovan, all disagree fundamentally with his claim for “the promise of Christian government.”124 Markus and Mathewes disagree specifically with O’Donovan’s claim that the coming of Christ irrevocably altered the purpose of political authority. For these neo-Augustinians, the victory of the cross does not contest the authority of secular power; that would be an overly realized eschatology.125 Addressing Gregory’s proposals, James K. A. Smith rightly notices that Gregory’s use of “love” often means simply “desire” (value-neutral), even when he still uses the language of a theological virtue.126 In other words, Gregory empties the Christian revelatory content of love as a theological virtue. Smith asks, Can one appeal to love in the abstract as a motivation? In other words, can love be formalized and generalized as a motivational placeholder? Is it sufficient to invoke love as a motivational and formative aspect of virtue? Is not love always already intentional and specific, aimed at something (or someone)? And is not this particularity heightened because, as Gregory rightly observes, for Augustine “we are always already lovers” (248)? So for Augustine, the question is not whether we love, but what we love. So might we not legitimately ask: “Whose love? Which motivation?” 127

Smith’s concern is getting Augustine right historically, and he criticizes Gregory for intentionally neglecting some of Augustine’s key points. Although chapter 6 will address this historical question, my point here is to move Gregory closer to the two-kingdom position—which has traditionally excluded the theological virtue of love, with its height in forgiveness, from direct political application. Gregory’s conception of love has “remained rather abstract,”128 and for that reason, there is less of a divide between Luther and Niebuhr, on the one hand, and Gregory’s “political agapism,” on the other. A similar point can be addressed to Mathewes’s case for the theo124. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 145. 125. Markus, Christianity and the Secular, 28–30; Theology of Public Life, 182–86. 126. James K. A. Smith, “Formation, Grace, and Pneumatology; or, Where’s the Spirit in Gregory’s Augustine?” JRE 39 (2011): 556–69. 127. Smith, “Formation, Grace, and Pneumatology,” 562, italics original. 128. Ibid., 563.

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logical virtues in political participation as a discipline of Christian formation. On the surface, this seems to contradict squarely with Luther’s claim that a ruler acts as a ruler qua ruler, not as a Christian. But O’Donovan notices that Mathewes nowhere speaks about political authority per se.129 His is a civic theology not from above (authority) but from below (citizenship). In other words, Mathewes does not necessarily answer differently from proponents of earlier Christian tradition, but he refuses to address the questions that the earlier tradition asked—regarding political justification and architectonics. O’Donovan even connects Mathewes’s insistence on speaking about “public life,” not “political institution,” to Niebuhr’s concept of “moral man” and “immoral society.” Moreover, like Gregory, Mathewes empties the theological virtues of their primary theological content; citing Mathewes’s treatment of faith, which he considers weakest, O’Donovan notices that what is meant is generic “belief” and, even more, the ascesis of “disbelief” toward all worldly political institutions. As with Gregory’s concept of love, Mathewes’s concept of faith seems capable of exercise by nonbelievers and Christians alike.130 In this respect, Mathewes and Gregory both (along with Markus) share a point with Bonhoeffer made earlier. Blurring the eschatological distinction between elect and reprobate—or, similarly, rejecting the extra ecclesiam nulla sallus—means blurring law/gospel, church/world, and creation/redemption categories. In short, these various forms of attenuation complicate the picture, but fundamentally they pull the Augustinian liberals closer to two-kingdom thought than most have realized. Admittedly, a further difficulty in locating Augustinian liberalism on the map of church and culture is its sole dealing with political issues. Despite Mathewes’s preferring the designation “public,” even he deals only with “public citizenship” in a democratic state. In claiming that Augustinian liberalism fits broadly into the two-kingdom pattern of thinking, I do not claim that it does so in the “worldview” sense as seen in Luther. Theological cartography is all the more difficult given the differing terminology and even questions of different theologians. For example, Luther references aspects of life in the body, regarding one kingdom, in ways similar to Augustinian liberals’ reference to life in 129. Oliver O’Donovan, review of A Theology of Public Life, by Charles Mathewes, PT 12 (2011): 618–19. 130. Ibid., 617. O’Donovan hints that this generality in the virtues may correspond to Mathewes’s lack of reference to Scripture: “More puzzling in a work of avowed theology is an absence of Scripture which is so complete that it can only be intentional. This leaves unanswered questions about how the author envisages the discipline of Christian theology when self-consciously attached to a tradition” (617).

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the public square. The upshot, then, is that, notwithstanding various differences, Augustinian liberalism remains within the overall trajectory of the two kingdoms, extending that trajectory along the lines of “Augustinian” and modern democratic modifications. Just how “Augustinian” those modifications actually are is the subject of the next chapter.

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If Augustinian liberalism added “Augustinian” modifications to the two-kingdoms tradition, then what of Augustine himself? The present chapter approaches earlier comparisons from a different angle—as a result, indicating not similarities to Luther but differences from Augustine. The present task is to substantiate the earlier claim that Augustinian retrievals in the twentieth century generally borrowed more from a modernized two-kingdom view than from Augustine’s own twocity paradigm. A brief overview of Augustine’s political theology will highlight where, in this hypothesis, recent retrievals have been flawed. Because Robert Markus limits Augustine’s “mature” thought to a period after 410, I will demonstrate my thesis using only writings from after that date. It would be impossible here to provide exhaustive exposition of Augustine’s thought; the present account can capture only basic contours impinging on current political retrievals. The Two Cities as Antithetical Social Realities The heart of Augustine’s most basic duality is a noncreational, postlapsarian reality: two antithetical loves. These loves form two cities, the earthly city (terrena civitas)1 and the city of God (civitas Dei): “Two cities, 1. Johannes van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s “City of God” and the Sources of His Doctrine of the Two Cities (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 130, notices that Augustine almost always uses this

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then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self.”2 The very creation of the two cities is a rupture of the original society in the angelic community, even before the creation of humanity—but a rupture in which humanity now participates. The divine cause of these two cities is the eternal decree of predestination, separating humanity into the elect and the damned.3 Augustine announces at the beginning of City of God that the tracing of these two cities—“defending the city of God against its foes in the earthly city”—is the theme of his entire work. As established in the eternal decree, the two cities are, first and foremost, eschatologically determined. The city of God is the heavenly city (civitas caelestis), fully its own only at the consummation and the resurrection of the saints to glory. Its symbolic name, Jerusalem, refers to the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21. Augustine thus distinguishes between the city of God “on pilgrimage” and the city of God “at rest”: “But, this city has one part gathered in from among mortal men, which, in time to come, is to be united with the immortal angels. For now, however, its members are either mortal pilgrims upon earth, or, in the case of those who have passed through death, are at rest in the secret places where souls are received and abide.”4 The same can be said for the earthly city, though Augustine is reluctant to speak of its members as “pilgrims.” The earthly city is the combination of sinful humanity and angels on earth, and the damned in hell. The two will come together at the final judgment. This “eschatologism” (Markus’s term) of Augustine was emphasized in the latter half of the twentieth century. The two cities are constituted entirely by their final destinies—an interpretation of eschatological separation. Along with this eschatological emphasis comes an interpretation involving spatial or moral division. Donald Burt, for example, refers to the two cities as “transcendent cities” and “supratemporal societies.”5 Miikka Ruokanen argues that “civitas terrena is not word order and that it is not symmetrical with its opposite, civitas Dei. In the former, the adjective comes first (terrena), and in the latter it is a genitive (Dei, “of God”). Perhaps this signals that the earthly city is characterized primarily by its “earthiness,” not its location (the city of God is also “on the earth” in its pilgrimage), and is only secondarily a city; the city of God is a true city because it is from God. 2. civ. Dei 14.28. 3. civ. Dei 15.1. 4. civ. Dei 12.9. 5. Donald Burt, Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine’s Practical Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 120.

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a concept used for the description of any part of created nature. The terrestrial city is a spiritual or metaphysical reality, which molds the naturally good being of rational beings.”6 Ironically, most often the “realist” accounts of Augustine’s political thought see his concept of the “two cities” as idealist—two spiritual archetypes that can judge all earthly communities in history but that themselves hover above or beyond history. With these ideals lying outside this temporal age, all action and institutions here and now are relativized. Lost in this emphasis on Augustine’s eschatology is an exploration of how these two loves “create” two cities (civitates) or two societies (societates); Augustine uses the two interchangeably.7 The focus on internal loves and the predestinating will of God does not actually indicate hiddenness and inwardness; this hidden dimension works itself out visibly. Augustine refers to the two cities as “two orders of human society,”8 visible enough that they have a “history” that can be clearly narrated.9 The predestinating decree of God for these two cities does not stop Augustine from speaking about their “progress” and about how members can be “transferred” from one to the other.10 For Augustine, then, there is a strong connection between inward matters of personal will or belief and their social association, especially in visible practices. There is no hint of Luther’s notion that the realm of the gospel touches only an individual’s relationship to God. Augustine treats the history of loves as a history of practices in both the heavenly and the earthly cities. Augustine’s primary duality was not always this social reality, as it took form in City of God. Johannes van Oort shows that Augustine’s earlier modality was more closely matter and spirit—“the world of the senses” and “the transcendental, spiritual world that is only accessible to the intellect.”11 The spiritual kingdom of the Logos—“the sum total 6. Miikka Ruokanen, Theology of Social Life in Augustine’s “De civitate Dei” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 93. 7. See the list of passages in Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 103, noting also that urbs can be used synonymously with the other two terms. Augustine himself provides his definition of civitas in at least two places: (1) “The happiness of a city and of a man do not, after all, arise from different sources; for a city is nothing other than a concordant multitude of men” (civ. Dei 1.15); and (2) “A city is nothing other than a multitude of men bound together by some tie of fellowship” (15.9). 8. civ. Dei 14.1, italics mine. 9. civ. Dei 15.1. 10. For “progression,” see civ. Dei 18.1. The city of God “grows” by the inclusion of new “offspring” (17.4). Abel, though by predestination he belonged to the city of God, was born into the earthly city, “because he derives his origin from a condemned stock” (15.1). Rahab was a member of “Babylon, the city of this world, the wicked city” (en. Ps. 86.6), but she was brought into Jerusalem, “finding her place among the members of the queen [the church]” (en. Ps. 86.7). 11. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 109.

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of ideas”—did not have purchase in earthly time, but humanity could participate in it for the present by mystical transcendence. The parallel of active, bodily life and rational, contemplative life followed along these same lines.12 The dividing line between spiritual and physical was therefore not between two groups of people but within the body and soul of each person, particularly the believer—“the old, outer, earthly man contrasted to the inner, new, heavenly man.”13 This modality Augustine later rejected soundly, especially clearly in Retractationes. True blessedness is a bodily and social reality, though not fully accomplished until the eschaton. Oort writes, “The completion of the new man is considered to be an eschatological event. In later writings, for example, he [Augustine] no longer equates the old man and the outer one, but he is of the opinion that the outer man was created perfect in God’s image and will one day be resurrected.”14 The image is one of transformation—the old person transformed into the new—rather than disposal. The early Augustine allegorized biblical language of Jerusalem and Babylon as principles that waged war in the individual soul—the soul as civitas, in which God or the devil reigned.15 By his later years, the spiritual battleground lay not only in the soul of each person but also, and primarily, in the tension of two societies, two social “bodies.”16 City of God as Visible Church This change in the primary duality put greater focus on the church as a body. Even after Augustine began speaking of the community of believers as a city, he initially kept a distinction between “Zion” and “Jerusalem” as designating temporal and eternal instantiations, respectively, of the faithful. Oort notes the change: For some time Augustine stressed the difference between Zion as the Church in peregrination and Jerusalem as the eternal city of God; later this distinction hardly ever occurs. In the City of God it plays no role. In this work the believers who are peregrinating on earth are designated as citi-

12. Note that Luther identified the two realms with the active and contemplative lives. 13. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 108. 14. Ibid., 112. 15. Ibid., 121. 16. Ibid., 96. Oort notes that this change came with Augustine’s pastoral office and his responsibility to preach the Scriptures—changing from a purely philosophical domain to a biblical one (112). We might add to that Augustine’s predestinarian shift.

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zens of the heavenly city Jerusalem. Augustine even speaks of the city of God in its entirety as the civitas Dei on its pilgrimage.17

Augustine was on a path of synthesizing the temporal and the eternal, so that the world itself is not temporal; only rebellious sinners who will be removed from the eternal state are temporal. Oort also helpfully addresses a point hotly contested by Markus and neo-Augustinian liberals: the identification of the city of God with the church on earth. This identification appears in the earlier quotation, and Oort supplies many occurrences in City of God.18 Markus’s interpretation of the civitas Dei as not having its referent in the visible, historical church has now been rightly criticized by several scholars.19 Though Markus certainly makes good points about the “eschatologism” of Augustine and his later preoccupation with predestination, Augustine simply had a closer identification of the kingdom of God with the church than Markus allows—“kingdom of God” and “city of God” being functionally synonymous.20 For Augustine, baptism makes the baptized “partakers of the kingdom of heaven”;21 those who are not baptized are presently “outside the kingdom of heaven.”22 Augustine’s eschatology pictures the “saints of Christ reigning with Him even now.” If they were not, then “the Church of the present time could not be called His kingdom, or the kingdom of heaven.” Clearly, the church is called God’s kingdom by Augustine, for those outside the visible church are “out of His present kingdom.”23 The distinction between the city of God “in its pilgrimage on earth” and the one “at rest in heaven” is not a division of two cities of God. For Augustine, the “pil-

17. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 122. 18. Ibid., 127–28: “A few passages from Augustine’s writings may illustrate the extent to which he identifies the city of God with the Church. In the City of God: ‘the city of God is the holy Church’ (VIII, 24); ‘the city of God, which is His Church’ (XIII, 16); ‘of the city of God, which is of the Church’ (XV, 26); ‘Christ and His Church, the city of God’ (XVI, 2).” To this list we can also add 17.4 (“the Church of Christ . . . the ‘City of the great King’”); 17.15 (“concerning Christ and His Church: that is, concerning the King and the City which He has established”); 17.20 (“the marriage of the King and Queen of that city: that is, Christ and the Church”); 20.11 (“the Holy Church in all the world: that is, the universal City of Christ”); and 20.11 (“the camp of saints and the beloved City are simply the Church of Christ spread throughout the whole earth”). 19. See Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society; and “Ecclesia and Res publica: How Augustinian Are NeoAugustinian Politics?,” in Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance against Modernity?, ed. Lieven Boeve, Mathijs Lamberigts, and Maarten Wisse (Louvain, Belg.: Peeters, 2009), 248–56; and Oliver O’Donovan, “The Political Thought of City of God 19,” in The Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 48–72. 20. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 105. 21. pecc. mer. 1.18.23 (411–12). 22. c. ep. Pel. 1.22.40 (420–21). 23. civ. Dei 20.9, italics mine.

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grim part” of the city of God participates with the “heavenly part” in its liturgical, eucharistic assembly. The prime reason that some see disjunction between the city of God and the visible church is Augustine’s doctrine of ecclesia permixtum, the “mixed church.” Against the Donatists, Augustine famously argued that a pure church of only regenerate saints did not exist. The church has “false” members in its midst. Yet the language of “temporary membership” is often lost in discussions of Augustine’s doctrine of the “mixed church.” Although Augustine could certainly view the pilgrim city of God in terms of the predestinating decree, he was also entirely comfortable with speaking of the ecclesial city in terms of history.24 City of God, after all, devotes more space to biblical history than to the doctrine of divine predestination. For Augustine, even the nonelect who are presently members in the visible church have some taste of the kingdom through that membership: In one sense, then, we are to understand the kingdom of heaven as a kingdom in which both are included: that is, the man who breaks what he teaches, and he who performs it: though, one is the least and the other is great in the kingdom. In another sense, however, it is a kingdom into which only he who performs what he teaches will enter. In the first sense, then, where persons of both kinds are present, the “kingdom of heaven” is the Church as she now is [qualis nunc est]. But in the second, where only persons of the second kind will be present, it is the Church as she will be [qualis tunc erit], when no wicked man shall be within her. Therefore, the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven. Thus even now the saints of Christ reign with Him, though not in the same way as they will reign hereafter.25

Markus’s way of explaining these robust ecclesiological statements, as pertaining to the “invisible church in heaven,” does not always work.26 In the passage quoted here, Augustine’s distinction is between the church in history (visible now) and the church in the eschaton (not yet

24. See, e.g., civ. Dei 15.18: “Thus man must not place hope in himself, so that he may become a citizen of that other city and not of the one dedicated to this age.” In the opposite direction, the righteous sons of Seth—“sons of God”—forsook “the godliness which they had preserved in their holy fellowship [sancta societate] and fell into the ways of the earth-born society [societatis terrigenae]” (15.22, italics mine). 25. civ. Dei 20.9. 26. For a fuller critique of Markus’s historical exposition, see Gregory Lee, “Republics and Their Loves: Rereading City of God 19,” ModTheo 27 (2011): 553–81.

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seen); “kingdom of God” is applied to both, albeit with clear “already/ not-yet” appreciation. For Augustine, the visibility of the church as a “people” (populus) actually grows with the transformation from old covenant to new covenant. In a passage in which Augustine wonders whether there were any “members of the fellowship of the heavenly city outside of the race of Israel before the Christian times,” he affirms that although Israel constituted a visible people of God’s kingdom, there were Gentile believers apart from that body. This does not prefigure the concept of a believer outside of the present-day church; but, rather, before Christ, there were those “who belonged, not by earthly but by heavenly fellowship, to the true Israelites, the citizens of the supernal fatherland.” These Gentile believers did not constitute a “people” that could be called “the people of God,”27 but now, in the Christian era, all believers constitute one visible people. Augustine uses the metaphor of the temple’s visual glory: “This house of God is greater in glory than was that former one.”28 In the new covenant “shall come the desired of all nations.” Yet even this visible glory is not as great as the consummation: “Yet because the churches are also full of those who will be separated by winnowing, as on the threshing-floor, the glory of this house does not yet appear as fully as it will in time to come, when everyone who is there will be there forever.” Augustine’s language here suggests not that the reprobate were never members of the city of God but that, if not excommunicated in this life, they will be separated at the final judgment. It is a matter of “temporary” versus “eternal” members. One might argue that the ecclesiological distinction closest to Augustine is not between the visible and the invisible church but between the church at present, “as it is now” (ecclesia qualis nunc est), and the church in the eschaton, “as it will be then” (ecclesia qualis tunc erit).29 The distinction involves not spatial “planes”—earthly/heavenly or visible/invisible—but history. Augustine believes he is telling the “history” of the city of God by telling the biblical story of old-covenant Israel and the new-covenant church. The city of God “grows” by the inclusion of new “offspring.”30 It is not a transcendent ideal or merely an eschatological goal. The visible/invisible distinction fits within this primary distinction. The city of God is not entirely visible now, because 27. civ. Dei 18.47. 28. civ. Dei 18.48. 29. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 124–25. See also the quotation from civ. Dei 20.9 in the text. 30. civ. Dei 17.4.

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the church still has to grow by means of more conversions and also by its pruning of excommunication. In addition, the city of God contains not only earthly members but also those who are in heaven, as well as the angels.31 At the very least, the visible church sets the markers on the kingdom and city of God in the saeculum.32 Two Mixed in the World, but without Overlap The city of God also lacks complete visibility at present, because of the mixing of the two cities in the same place: this fallen world. Although many appeal to Augustine’s language of the “commingling” of the city of God and the earthly city, Augustine notably says that this commingling happens not only “in the church” but also “in the world.”33 As one example, note how Augustine narrates the histories of the two cities separately at first and then together, correlating the actions of the saints in Israel with the actions of world empires outside: “Thus we must give the names of Assyrian kings where necessary, in order to show how Babylon, the first Rome, as it were, pursues its course alongside the city of God on pilgrimage in this world [cum peregrina in hoc mundo Dei civitate procurrat].” He does not want the reader to get the impression that the two cities are cordoned off from one another; the renarration together is “for the sake of comparing the two cities.”34 In reality, there are two “histories” to the world, but they are mingled together in the world: “Thus far we have depicted, to the extent that seemed sufficient, the mortal course [mortalis excursus] of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, which are mingled together from the beginning to the end [ab initio usque in finem permixtarum].”35 Their histories overlap, but nevertheless they are separate, identifiable histo-

31. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 128, suggests that one difference between “church” and “city of God” may be that Augustine includes angels in the latter but not in the former. He argues that civitas Dei may be more eschatological than ecclesia, given that Augustine rarely speaks of “reprobates” in the city of God, though he speaks quite often concerning the church. Oort cites civ. Dei 1.35—“while she is a pilgrim in this world, the city of God has with her, bound to her by the communion of the sacraments, some who will not be with her to share eternally in the bliss of the saints”—as the exception that proves the rule. I take it as an exception that disproves his rule. 32. Augustine speaks of the “tares, which are to be gathered out of His kingdom, which is the Church, at the end of the world” (civ. Dei 20.9, italics mine). Baptized reprobates are, in some sense, part of the kingdom, though they are finally excised from it on judgment day. 33. civ. Dei 1.35: “In this world [in hoc saeculo] the two cities are indeed entangled and mingled with one another.” 34. civ. Dei 18.2. 35. civ. Dei 18.54. Note also how Augustine can say alternately that the two cities are mixed in hoc saeculo (civ. Dei 1.35) and in hoc mundo (18.2).

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ries: the history of the saints from Israel to the church, and the history of world empires from Babylon to Rome. Most scholars now interpret saeculum wholly in temporal terms—as the “overlaps of the ages”—but quite clearly, there is a physical-spatial element as well (hence the older translation “world” instead of “age”).36 The saeculum as a unit of time—the “temporal age”—began at creation, or actually Adam’s fall,37 when creation itself was cursed and destined to be judged; the time (“this age”) and space (“this fallen creation”) are therefore nearly identical.38 The city of God and the earthly city both make use of the same physical goods: believers in their relation to God and unbelievers for their own personal pride and enjoyment. The final judgment does not merely separate false sons from true sons within the church (as Markus emphasizes); it also separates sinners from the world, the new heavens and new earth.39 The city of God and the earthly city are “intermingled” not just in institutional infiltration but also in sharing the same creational goods for the present time. But neither spatial nor temporal aspects of the saeculum indicate a tertium quid, or neutral zone “between” the two cities.40 Temporally, the church’s existence in the saeculum is not as significant as it seems. For Augustine, all sacred revelation has occurred within this fallen, passing age, including Christ’s coming. The “opaqueness” of the saeculum is not so great that eschatological and revelatory truths are unable to penetrate this historical age.41 True, Augustine sees what he calls 36. Mary Clark, “World,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 892, notes that “Augustine makes no sharp distinction between mundum and saeculum.” 37. civ. Dei 15.21: “Here, then, are the two cities presented, the one trusting in the things of this world, and the other in the hope of God. They issue forth, as it were, from the common gate of mortality opened in Adam, so that they may go forward and onward towards their own different and proper ends.” 38. The most basic temporal distinction in Augustine is between hoc saeculum (this age) and saeculum futurum (the future age), or saecula saeculorum (the ages of ages, sometimes translated “world without end”). See Paul J. Griffiths, “Secularity and the saeculum,” in Augustine’s “City of God”: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 33–34—contra Markus, who sees the saeculum being inaugurated at Christ’s first coming. 39. civ. Dei 20.17. 40. The language of a “third thing” between the two cities is from Henri-Irénée Marrou, “Theéologie de l’histoire,” in Augustinus magister: Congres international augustinien (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1954), 202: “Dans la théologie de saint Augustin il y a place pour trois choses: ses deux « cités », et un troisième élément, difficile à désigner avec des termes propres mais qui est le donné historique, qui se manifeste à nous comme cette commixtio provisoirement inextricable (toujours le mystère de l'histoire inachevée) des deux cités.” See also Marrou, “Civitas Dei, civitas terrena: Num tertium quid?,” in Studia Patristica: Papers Presented to the Second International Conference in Patristic Studies, ed. Kurt Aland and F. L. Cross (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957), 342–50. 41. Griffiths, “Secularity and the saeculum,” 44, argues well that Markus “is much too decided when he says that eschatological categories are invisible in historical realities. If this were so, it would have to be the case that the celebration of the Eucharist and the gladiatorial games were iden-

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“sacred history” as ended, as a history of revelation. But, as will be seen presently, Augustine sees prophecies of sacred history as having contemporary fulfillment. The conversion of Constantine, for the mature Augustine, is not new revelation but an application of sacred history in the present time.42 Spatially and socially, the only commonality between the two cities involves creational goods they use (separately) for their ends; the cities are entirely antithetical. Augustine says that “there exist only two orders of human society”; there is no third.43 Persons have membership in only one city. In later writings, one of Augustine’s most common Scripture quotations is “Whatever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).44 Both cities are saecularis (“worldly”) in the sense that they exist in this present age, in this fallen creation.45 The earthly city is characterized by “earthiness” because it does not relate creational goods to God; the heavenly city is characterized by “heavenliness” because it relates earthly goods to God in heaven and to their final destiny—not because it exists only in heaven and not on earth. The earthly city locates its final destiny in this age and by physical creation alone. In another sense, both the earthly city and the heavenly city are sempiternus (“everlasting”), because God has an unending destiny for both outside this present age.46 The earthly city believes its destiny to be constricted to this age, but in reality, there will be a resurrection even for the unrighteous, in everlasting torment. The earthly city is therefore not “on pilgrimage” in the same way that the city of God is: “The earthly city is not a pilgrim in this world, but which finds its rest in its own temporal peace and felicity.”47

tically opaque to the eschatological reality of the civitas Dei. Augustine certainly does not think that.” 42. It is doubtful that even Eusebius of Caesarea saw Constantine’s accession as divine revelation on par with the apostolic deposit, rather than a typological parallel or application from Scripture. The later Augustine does not go as far as Eusebius, of course, but contrasting the two may not have as much purchase as Markus supposes. 43. civ. Dei 14.1. 44. Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 116. 45. See civ. Dei 15.26: “The pilgrim city which dwells in this wicked world [in hoc saeculo maligno].” 46. Augustine generally restricts aeternus (“eternal”) to the city of God. Though both cities endure forever, Augustine considers celestial bliss to have an element outside creational time. In one place, Augustine does qualify the everlastingness of the earthly city: “But the earthly city will not be everlasting; for when it is condemned to that punishment which is its end, it will no longer be a city” (civ. Dei 15.4). 47. civ. Dei 15.17.

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The Earthly City and Political Empires Augustine does not mince words regarding the earthly city. The opposite of the city of God, it is a “city of unbelievers” (civitas infidelium), “the city of this world” (civitas huius saeculi), “the ungodly city” (impia civitas), “the beast” (bestia), “the fellowship of unbelievers opposed to the faithful people and the city of God” (populus infelium contrarius populo fideli et civitati Dei), “the city of mortals” (civitas mortalium), “the demon-worshipping city” (daemonicola civitate), “the city of the devil” (civitas diaboli), and “the society of the earth-born” (terrigenarum societate).48 More complicated is the relationship of the earthly city to various historical cities, especially Rome. Just as the eschatological city of God is presently embodied in the visible church, so also the city of infernal destiny is embodied visibly. For Augustine, the earthly city is manifest chiefly in world empires. The history of the heavenly city follows the history of biblical Israel and the church; the history of the earthly city follows the rise of imperial states. Just as Jerusalem is the symbol for the city of God in the old covenant and new covenants, so Babylon is the symbol for how the earthly city seeks to dominate in political rule (libido dominandi). Augustine argues that the earthly city is not truly unified, as the city of God is. The city of God became more visibly unified when believing Gentiles and believing Jews became “one people” in the new covenant in Christ. But the earthly city is “divided against itself” and “has been divided into a great number of kingdoms.”49 The two outstanding are the Assyrians and the Romans—or, as Augustine also refers to them, “Babylon of the East” and “Babylon of the West” (the “second Babylon”). To understand why Augustine so designates the earthly city, we must consider Cain’s building a city after Abel’s murder. For Augustine, this episode sheds light on the earthly city. Cain’s murder of Abel proves the earthly city’s hostility for the city of God and its founding on violence. By “city,” Augustine means not solely the moral (dis)order of the damned but political and cultural governance: human civilization is established by means of blood. As Augustine points out, “Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, a pilgrim, did not found one.”50 The 48. civ. Dei 18.1, 18.41, 20.9, 20.9, 18.2, 18.41, 17.16, 15.22. 49. civ. Dei 18.2. 50. civ. Dei 15.1.

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righteous line of Abel “did not seek mastery in the city which had been founded by his brother.”51 The visibility of the two cities once again comes into play, because Augustine is connecting by contrast the actions of the earthly city and the city of God. Political rule and city building are distinctively characteristic of the earthly city. For this reason, Augustine can connect earthly empires—Babylon and Rome—with the city of the damned: while the reprobate seek cultural dominance, “the supreme task, in this world, of the pilgrim city of God, its whole task during this mortal life, is to call upon God.”52 The earthly city is always culturally superior to the pilgrim city of God. Augustine also connects the bloody founding of the earthly city with the founding of Babylon and Rome. The tower of Babel (Genesis 11), which Augustine connects with the founding of Babylon, signifies the earthly city’s preoccupation with earthly cities. It, too, is established by blood; Augustine connects Babel’s founder, Nimrod, with his description as a “mighty hunter”: “For what does this word mean, what is a ‘hunter,’ if not a deceiver, an oppressor, a slayer of earth-born creatures? Thus he, with his peoples, began to build a tower against the Lord.”53 Augustine even adds that the Lord came down to judge not “the children of God, but that society which lives according to man, which we call the earthly city.”54 Citizens of the city of God were not present at Babel, because they were not undertaking a project of cultural and political dominance. It does not escape Augustine’s notice, either, that Rome’s founding recapitulates the founding of the original earthly city—by fratricide, “the first founder of the earthly city.” “It is not to be wondered at, then, that long afterwards, at the foundation of that city which was to be the capital of the earthly city of which we are speaking, and which was to rule over so many nations, this first example—or, as the Greeks call it, archetype—of crime was mirrored by a kind of image of itself.”55 Rome, here, is the “capital city” of the worldwide earthly city—the successful embodiment of what all members of the earthly city seek to do in every nation. The Roman Empire is no more evil than all other nations of the earthly city, for other nations simply failed to achieve political domi-

51. civ. Dei 15.5. 52. civ. Dei 15.21. 53. civ. Dei 16.4. 54. civ. Dei 16.5. 55. civ. Dei 15.5.

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nance.56 In an ambiguous way, then, political action is bound up with the practice of the earthly city. Augustine’s comments elsewhere connect political rule with slavery and humanity’s fall into sin. Commenting on Genesis 1:26—“let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing which creepeth on the earth”—Augustine argues that God “did not intend that His rational creatures, made in his own image, should have lordship over any but irrational creatures: not man over man, but man over the beasts.” The unrighteous built cities and extended kingdoms. By contrast, “the first just men were established as shepherds of flocks, rather than as kings of men.” Animal husbandry, not political rule, is according to the “order of nature.” Political rule is the “desert of sinners, . . . a condition of servitude imposed on the sinner.” Augustine then ties divine allowance of the sword with Noah’s curse on Canaan to be a “slave.” Slavery and political judgment are elided: “The first cause of servitude, therefore, is sin, by which man was placed under a condition of bondage, a condition which can come about only by the judgment of God.”57 Nature’s original order was a “fellowship of equality under God”; by the fall, people sought to “impose dominion upon equals, in place of God’s rule.”58 Augustine considers even the rule of husbands over wives as having arisen “from the punishment of sin” (de poena peccati) and “not by nature but by the fault” (non natura sed culpa).59 Paradoxically, though, political order is not only a judgment for sin but also a measure to contain sin’s spread. It “enjoins the preservation of the order of nature and forbids its disruption.” The magistrate who bears the sword reminds humanity of the “violation of that [divine] law,” mediating God’s moral providence. The divine will for husbands to rule over their wives in this present time is necessary to check sin. Augustine’s conclusion in these passages, made explicit elsewhere, too, is that such hierarchy will pass away at the close of the saeculum.60 56. civ. Dei 15.5–6. 57. civ. Dei 19.15. 58. civ. Dei 19.12. 59. Gen. litt. 11.37.50. The root of all “servitude” (servitus) and “dominion” (dominium) is the fall into sin. See also civ. Dei 15.7, where Augustine parallels God’s exhortation for Cain to “master” sin and Adam’s injunction to be master to his wife. 60. civ. Dei 19.15: These things last “till injustice pass away and every human principality and power be brought to nothing.” See also, e.g., en. Ps. 61.8 (416): “Keep in mind that every earthly state will undoubtedly perish. Its sovereignty will pass away at the coming of the Lord’s reign.” Even Christian rulers “are like villains in a state doomed to pass away, and for the time being they are under orders from the teachers in the holy city to serve their masters conscientiously. . . . Matters are arranged like this until iniquity passes away.”

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Christian Secular Politics Although these considerations—the two cities as visible social realities and the association of the earthly city with political rule—could suggest rejection of nonecclesiastical society and civic life, several factors support the contrary. One is that not every earthly political arrangement is identified with the city of the damned; Jerusalem is one counterexample, returning us to Augustine’s Old Testament theology. Clearly, Jerusalem, in much of Augustine’s thought, represents the city of God, but Augustine also distinguishes this type in double-layered symbolism. Jerusalem the historical city is “an image of the heavenly city” but also “part of the earthly city.” Speaking of Jerusalem, Augustine writes that “the earthly city has two aspects. Under the one, it displays its own presence; under the other, it serves by its presence to point towards the heavenly city.”61 The historical city uniquely combines both; the temple is particularly emblematic of the city of God, whereas the kingship has its referent in the earthly city. Therefore, the earthly Jerusalem is of Babylon: “David, therefore, ruled in the earthly Jerusalem, a son of the heavenly Jerusalem.”62 This double symbolism operated in the shadows of the old covenant. The coming of Christ clearly separated “Israelites according to the flesh, the earthborn citizens of the earthly Jerusalem,” from the heavenly members of Jerusalem. Augustine again sees the transition from old covenant to new as a transition from lesser to greater visible unity. Yet, although Augustine sees the pairing of the two in old-covenant Jerusalem as unique, he does not see it as problematic. In fact, Christian rulers today should look to godly kings of Israel as their examples; the situation is entirely parallel. In Expositions on the Psalms, Augustine makes this clear, using language of “kingdoms”: So, to put it briefly and succinctly, there is an earthly kingdom in this world today, but there is also a heavenly kingdom. Each of them has its pilgrim citizens, both the earthly kingdom and the heavenly, the kingdom that is to be uprooted and the kingdom that is to be planted for eternity. For the present the citizens of both are thoroughly mixed together in this world: the body of the earthly kingdom is intermingled with the body of the heavenly. The heavenly kingdom groans as the citizens of the earthly kingdom surround it; and from time to time presses the citizens of the

61. civ. Dei 15.2. 62. civ. Dei 17.20.

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heavenly kingdom into service, as the heavenly kingdom for its part also commandeers the citizens of the earthly kingdom.63

Members of the heavenly city retain heavenly citizenship even as they are “pressed” into service by the earthly city. There is no membership transfer or dual citizenship.64 Just as David ruled the earthly city (described as “Babylon”) as a citizen of the heavenly city, so should Christian rulers now: We find a citizen of Jerusalem, a citizen of the kingdom of God, entrusted with secular administration. He may wear the purple, or be an officer of the state, or a magistrate, or a proconsul, or a general. He discharges civic duties, but he keeps his heart raised above them if he is a Christian, a believer, a Godfearing person, one who sets little store by the circumstances in which he finds himself and puts his hope in those he has not attained yet. . . . We should not despair of the citizens of the heavenly kingdom, therefore, when we see them transacting the business of Babylon or dealing with earthly matters in this earthly political arena. 65

The new covenant has more clearly distinguished the city of God in its spiritual unity, but the example of old-covenant Jerusalem can extend to this era. In a particularly provocative passage, Augustine suggests that “Babylon gradually changes into Jerusalem [delabitur de Babylone in Ierusalem], and how could it do that, unless through him who justified the godless?”66 Babylon loses its identity and is “being transformed into Jerusalem.”67 Augustine’s “Tempora Christiana” Language of transformation is also key to (the mature) Augustine’s understanding of what happened with the Roman Empire. Contrary to Markus’s repeated assertion that Augustine, after supporting the tem63. En. Ps. 51.4 (412–13). Augustine uses language of “two kingdoms” that Luther will later use—even speaking of the earthly and the heavenly. But also notice the clear differences. For Augustine, both kingdoms inhabit the same space (in hoc saeculo) and time (hodie), and each is a social body (corpus). 64. En. Ps. 61.8 (416): “Every earthly state makes use of some of our citizens to administer its affairs. How many of the faithful are there among its citizens, among its loyal subjects and its magistrates, its judges, generals, governors and even kings? . . . We are told that the citizens of Jerusalem must bear with the citizens of Babylon, and indeed offer them more generous compliance than they would if they were citizens of Babylon themselves” (italics mine). Augustine never concedes that Christian kings are themselves members of the earthly city, even if they serve in its midst. 65. En. Ps. 51.6. 66. En. Ps. 86.6. 67. En. Ps. 86.7.

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pora Christiana, no longer saw biblical prophecy as relating to the saeculum, Augustine in fact continued to interpret scriptural passages as highlighting the church’s continuing triumph. Augustine relied on his concept of the totus Christus, the “whole Christ,” to relate standard messianic interpretation to Christ’s body, the church.68 His stated principle is “Wherever we recognize Him, we also recognize the Church.” Therefore, he can say that the statement “All nations will be blessed in your Seed” (Genesis 22:18) refers to the church, Christ’s body in the world; nations will be blessed by the church.69 Likewise, although Christ is the “stone” of Daniel 2:45 that “has broken all the kingdoms of earth, all those which were relying upon the worship of demons,” the church “grew and became a vast mountain, and filled all the earth.”70 Augustine’s choice of words—Christ has “broken” (fregisse) the kingdoms of the earth—indicates how this transformation works: lust for domination that characterizes political rule is rendered inoperative. One of Augustine’s most frequently quoted biblical passages in all his political writings (including after 410) is Psalm 72:11, “All the kings of the earth will adore him.” Augustine returns to Psalm 72 to show that the conversion of the emperors to the church is the outworking of God’s kingdom in the world. Addressing the Donatists, he writes, “You fail to notice that the church at that time was just beginning to sprout from a recent seed, and this prophecy was not yet fulfilled in her: And all the kings of the earth will adore him; all nations will serve him [Psalm 72:11]. Certainly the more nearly this is fulfilled, the greater the power at the church’s disposal.”71 In another quotation of Psalm 72, Augustine states that because this prophecy is being fulfilled now, “how much more ought we to use the ordained authorities (which God has subjected to Christ, as his prophet foretold) to subject heresy and idolatry?...... That is why we must use this authority of the church, which God promised her and has granted her.”72 Again, the transformation of the times comes by Christ’s defeat (subdido) of the political power of the earthly city. The saeculum, then, is not nearly as opaque as Markus makes it out to be; Augustine continues to see prophecies fulfilled beyond Christ’s 68. For the relationship between the totus Christus and Augustine’s political theology, see Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society, 72–73. 69. Ep. 105.14 (409–10). In Ep. 185.4 (417), Augustine writes that the Donatists “separated themselves from the Catholic church, that is, from the unity of all nations.” 70. Ep. 105.15 (409–10). 71. Ep. 173.10 (411–14), italics mine. 72. Ep. 105.5–6 (409–10).

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death and resurrection, because of his high ecclesiology. Correspondingly, the civil polity does not stand in a neutral position vis-à-vis the economy of salvation. Power belonging to the earthly city has been plundered, with the remains at the church’s disposal. In another instance of the application of prophecy, Augustine writes, “Once the following words of scripture began to be fulfilled, And all the kings of the earth will adore him; all nations will serve him [Psalm 72:11], what soberminded person would now say to the kings, ‘Don’t worry about those within your kingdom who are restraining or attacking the church of your Lord. It should be no concern of yours whether someone chooses to be devout or sacrilegious’?”73 Once the powers of the earthly city are handed to Christ, they should be adjusted to the church’s mission. Another key biblical text is Psalm 2, in which Augustine sees the entire positional change of earthly power. He especially cites this text in defense of calling on civil authority to restrain Donatist schismatics. He rebuts the claim that the apostles never called on civil authority by appealing to a later fulfillment of Psalm 2: Therefore in apostolic times, when kings were not yet serving the Lord, but were still imagining empty things against Christ (so that all the prophetic predictions might be fulfilled) [e.g., Psalm 2:1], surely it was not possible then to forbid acts of impiety by law. They could only practice them! For the ages were succeeding one another in order, so that first the Jews, the preachers of Christ, also killed him (as Christ had predicted) under the impression that they were doing their duty to God, then the nations raged against the Christians; while the forbearance of the martyrs overcame them all.74

Augustine contrasts “apostolic times” with “the succeeding order of the times” (ordo temporum volvebatur), when kings would serve Christ.75 We should notice also the trigger for this application of Christ’s reign: the patience (patientia) of the martyrs that conquered all (omnes vinceret). Paradoxically, relinquishing earthly power won the victory and generated the fulfillment of Psalm 2: Those who do not want just laws to be established against their own impiety object that the apostles did not make such requests of earthly kings. 73. Ep. 185.20 (417). 74. Ibid. 75. “Ages” is not a good translation here, given its connotation of salvation history. Markus is right that Augustine did not see his own time as a completely new “age” in sacred revelation, although clearly Augustine did see this as the new outworking of something not present for the apostles.

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They do not take into account that that was a different time, and everything is done at its own proper time. Which emperor then believed in Christ, and would serve him by passing laws in defense of piety against impiety? Why have the nations raged, and the peoples imagined empty things? The kings of the earth are at hand, and the rulers have come together as one against the Lord and against his Christ [Psalm 2:1–2]. The events described a little later in the same psalm were not yet taking place: And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear and rejoice in him with trembling [Psalm 2:10–11].76

Augustine here refers to a “different time” (aliud fuisse tunc tempus), not explicitly invoking the times as “Christian,” though in other places he would not hesitate to do so: “the whole church of Rome and the Roman empire, which by God’s favor is Christian” (Romanumque imperium, quod Deo propitio christianum est).77 Another of Augustine’s favorite examples is the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar and his royal command to worship only the true God of Israel. Augustine sees this conversion as equally relevant to his own time: Similarly, even Nebuchadnezzar himself was so moved and altered by witnessing the miracle that saved the three lads that he issued an edict on behalf of truth against error. This said that Anyone who should blaspheme 76. Ep. 185.19 (417). In another letter, Augustine appeals to the progression of the psalm alongside his citation of Nebuchadnezzar: “Neither in the Gospels nor in the Letters of the apostles is there found a case in which something was asked for from the kings of the earth in defense of the Church against the enemies of the Church. Who denies this? But this prophecy was not yet fulfilled: And now, kings, have understanding; you who judge the earth, be warned; serve the Lord in fear [Psalm 2:10–11]. For what is said a little before in the same psalm was still being fulfilled, Why have the nations raged and the people plotted in vain? The kings of earth have arisen, and the princes have gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed one [2:1–2]. If, nonetheless, past actions in the books of the prophets were symbols of those to come, that king who was called Nebuchadnezzar symbolized both times: both that of the Church under the apostles and that of the Church at present. During the times of the apostles and the martyrs there was fulfilled what was symbolized when the previously mentioned king forced good and righteous people to worship the idol and cast them into the flames when they refused. But now there is being fulfilled what is symbolized a little later by the same king when, after having been converted to honor the true God, he decreed in his kingdom that whoever blasphemed against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would face appropriate punishments. The earlier time of that king, therefore, signified the earlier times of non-believing kings, under whom the Christians suffered instead of the unbelievers, but the later time of that king signified the times of the later kings, who were now believers under whom the non-believers suffered instead of the Christians” (Ep. 93.9 [407–8]). Markus would not accept this letter as representing the “mature” Augustine, because it predates 410, but the thought pattern is so similar as to make it noteworthy here. 77. Gr. et pecc. or. 2.17.18 (418). Another instance is Ep. 87.8 (405–11): Paul even appealed to Caesar about religious persecution (from the Jews), “and that was before the Roman empire became Christian [imperium christianum].” The only hesitation in using this piece of evidence is the date given for the letter: either 405 or 411. If the early date is correct, it does not pass Markus’s cutoff for the “mature Augustine.” The quote from gr. et pecc. or. 2.17.18 (418), however, passes that test.

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the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego will meet his death, and his house will be scattered [Daniel 3:29]. Are you unwilling for the Christian emperors to issue some similar command against you, when they are aware that you are rejecting Christ in those whom you rebaptize? If, though, the rulings of kings do not extend to preaching religion or to prohibiting idolatry, then why did you mark yourself as bound to the king’s edict when he issued commands of that sort? Do you not know the king’s words: the signs and portents which the Lord God on high has given me I am pleased to report in my sight: how great and powerful is his reign; his reign lasts for ever and his authority from generation to generation [Daniel 4:2–3]?78

Likewise, the standard used to judge Israel’s kings in the Old Testament is the same for Christian emperors: “For all the kings who, during the period of the prophets, failed to outlaw or overturn the practices of the people of God in breach of the commandments of God received blame. Those who outlawed or overturned them won praise beyond that that others deserved.”79 In the very next breath, Augustine offers Nebuchadnezzar as the godly example of a ruler who went from promoting idol worship to establishing true religion by his edicts.80 For Augustine, this is what the martyrs longed to see. Ruling the Earthly City as a Citizen of the Heavenly City In many letters to public officials, Augustine makes quite clear that the standard for public governance is not separate from knowledge of the truth gained from Christian doctrine. He does not advocate a source of public, secular justice apart from the justice revealed in the gospel. One of his approaches plays with the Latin salus, which can mean “safety,” “security,” or “salvation”—in a temporal or eternal sense. In his letter to Marcellinus, he points out that when soldiers sought salvation from John the Baptist, they were not told to give up the defense of the nation.81 But the consequence of people seeking salutem from sin is that the republic will be salus, both healthy in virtue and secure in the defense of peace. Augustine goes on: 78. Ep. 105.7 (409–10). 79. Ep. 185.8 (417). 80. Ibid.: “The same king [Nebuchadnezzar], however, once reformed by a God-given miracle, established on behalf of truth a law that was religious and praiseworthy, that anyone who should utter blasphemy against the true God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego should be destroyed along with his house [Daniel 3.1–30].” 81. Ep. 138.15 (411–12). “If Christian teaching condemned all warfare, then the soldiers in the gospel who were seeking guidance about their security [salutis] would have been told to throw away their weapons and withdraw entirely from the army.” A better translation than “security” is “salvation.” Augustine is pointing out that they were first of all concerned about their eternal destiny.

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So let those who say that the teaching of Christ is opposed to the commonwealth give us an army composed of the sort of soldiers that the teaching of Christ would require. Let them give us provincials, husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, kings, judges, and finally even tax-payers and tax-collectors, of the sort that the teaching of Christ demands. Then let them dare to say that this teaching is opposed to the commonwealth! Indeed let them even hesitate to admit that, if it were observed, it would contribute greatly to the security [salutem] of the commonwealth [republicae]!82

The source of governance and of political obedience in the Roman Empire is “the teaching of Christ” (doctrina Christi), not Stoic natural law or other sources. Military action as well as political judgment in accordance with Jesus’s message, which Augustine locates in the Sermon on the Mount, will strengthen, not weaken, the commonwealth. Christ’s teaching does not exist on a different plane or in a different time than the one in which common Christian citizens live. Augustine also took biblical doctrine as teaching the magistracy to support the public worship of God in civil affairs: “It is the job of Godfearing kings of the earth [Psalm 2:2] to restrain with suitable harshness idolatry just as much as adultery, murder and other transgressions and wrongs of that sort.”83 Augustine exhorts one political officer to “see then how clearly the sacred writings declare that the source of human blessedness is the same as that of civic blessedness.”84 The biblical evidence cited is Psalm 144: “Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.” That same ruler Augustine warns against conceiving of political virtue only in minimalistic terms—provisional peace, order, and basic security. A Christian ruler should direct his people to the ultimate blessedness of heaven: I want to say this: if any of your governing, however informed by the virtues I listed, is directed only to the final aim of allowing human beings to suffer no unjust hardships in the flesh; and if you think that it is no concern of yours to what purpose they put the peace that you struggle to provide for them (that is, to speak directly, how they worship the true God, with whom the fruit of all peaceful life is found), then all that effort towards the life of true blessedness will not benefit you at all. . . . If the 82. Ep. 138.15 (411–12). “Security” is probably too pragmatic a translation for the theologically rich term salus, which, for Augustine, can mean simply “salvation.” 83. Ep. 204.4 (419). 84. Ep. 155.9 (413–14). He goes on: “That is what we want for ourselves and for the city of which we are citizens. The source of blessedness is not one thing for a human being and another for a city: a city is indeed nothing other than a like-minded mass of human beings.”

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only reason that you want them, with your help, to live more securely is so that they might win God, in whose presence they will live blessedly; then, all your virtues will be real ones.85

Even in City of God, Augustine clearly teaches that Christian governments are to support true worship and to oppose paganism in the body politic. “Christian emperors” who “belong to the kingdom of God” are “happy if they rule justly.” How does Augustine see justice in their rule? “If they make their power the handmaid of His majesty by using it to spread His worship to the greatest possible extent.” 86 These quotations should make us hesitate about Markus’s description of the religiously neutral saeculum and also the neo-Augustinian liberal focus on “citizenship.” Not only does Augustine continue to see Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled in the conversion of emperors—even applying exhortations for Israel’s kingdom to Roman provinces—but he also directs Christian rulers to advance a civic program rooted in Christian worship. Contra Markus, in Augustine, the state does get encompassed by the salvific economy. One cannot simply relegate this civic program to “early” or “middle” Augustine; some of his latest writings set forth these arguments. Neither is it historically responsible to assign such episodes to “lesser” dimensions of his thought.87 Markus’s argument that Augustine conceived of Christian rulers acting as pastoral representatives of the church is highly dubious, for reasons that Markus himself outlines elsewhere.88 Christian rulers are citizens of the heavenly city who have providentially been given a place to support the faith in the earthly city. This argument, much of it dependent on Augustine’s letters, does not run contrary to the famous arguments made in book 19 of City of God. Even there, Augustine’s text does not give an inch to “liberal” readings. The “consensus of wills” (compositio voluntatum) is not a consensus that the heavenly city makes with the earthly city but a consensus within the earthly city—as Augustine notes, political dominance needs some kind of order—which the heavenly city exploits: “She directs that earthly peace toward heavenly peace.”89 Augustine does not grant “relative” justice to the earthly city;90 iustitia is tied to divine 85. Ep. 155.10–12 (413–14). 86. civ. Dei 5.24. 87. Markus, Saeculum, 57n1, expresses agreement with Peter Brown that Augustine’s exhortations to Christian rulers are “some of the most shoddy passages of the City of God.” 88. Markus, Saeculum, 152. 89. civ. Dei 19.17.

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forgiveness of sin.91 But he does grant relative peace—“earthly peace” (terrenam pacem)—which, beyond paling in comparison with true eternal peace, is extremely fragile. Earthly peace is strengthened when depending upon the hope of eternal peace, for “all peace, of body or of soul, or of both, [is] in relation to that peace which exists between mortal man and immortal God.”92 To this end, Augustine argues that Christian faith will actually strengthen earthly republics, not destroy them: “But when those who are gifted with true godliness and live good lives also know the art of governing peoples, nothing could be more fortunate for human affairs than that, by the mercy of God, they should also have the power to do so.”93 He is adamant about this claim even in relation to war: If the earthly commonwealth observes Christian precepts in this way, then even wars will be waged in a spirit of benevolence; their aim will be to serve the defeated more easily by securing a peaceful society that is pious and just [pietatis iustitiaeque]. . . . For the good would even wage war with mercy, were it possible, with the aim of taming unrestrained passions and destroying vices that ought, under a just rule, to be uprooted or suppressed.94

Central to modern readings is Augustine’s revision of Cicero’s definition of a republic to exclude justice and to be founded on “common agreement as to the objects of their [its members’] love.”95 What must first become clear is that Augustine is not retracting his earlier statement that Rome was never a true republic. Nor is he proposing that earthly republics should exclude justice. He is simply speaking to the fact, in his mind, that no earthly republic apart from the true religion can participate in justice. Although Augustine does redefine a republic in “neutral” terms, actual historical republics do not exist as neutral: all cities/societies/republics are “good” or “bad” cities/societies/ republics to some degree, measured by objects of their love. The “neutral” terminology does not remain neutral: it must be filled with the content of empirical practice and orientation. Earthly republics in the past have been representations of the ultimate terrena civitas, but with 90. Herbert Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 99. 91. On justice and the forgiveness of sins, see Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society, 111–12. 92. civ. Dei 19.14. 93. civ. Dei 5.19. 94. Ep. 138.14 (411–12). 95. civ. Dei 19.24.

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the true religion they can be oriented toward the heavenly city of God, albeit never identical with it. Often missed is the evidence of this point in Augustine’s discussion of Christian emperors.96 Augustine says that they are happy “if they rule justly” (iuste), and they are indeed happy “in hope.” He later excludes the idea of relative justice in the earthly republic, so these emperors are unique: unlike any other description of rule in City of God, theirs is done in justice. The key is orientation to the love of God and acknowledgment of the forgiveness of sins. Augustine’s letter to Macedonius, a vicar of Africa, offers one of his fullest treatments of the relation of the church to the state vis-à-vis a defense of the clerical practice of interceding for criminals condemned to death. Augustine supports the integrity of both political and ecclesiastical orders in a dialectical relationship: The bishops’ practice of intercession does not contradict this ordering of human affairs [political order]. Far from it. In fact, if the latter did not exist, there would be no cause or opportunity to intercede. The more just it is to punish sinners, the more welcome are the favours bestowed by those who intercede for them or spare them. In my view, the only reason that a harsher legal code of retribution was energetically put into effect in the Old Testament, in the time of the ancient prophets, was to show that it is right to establish penalties for the wicked. Consequently, when the New Testament, in its forgiveness, warns us to spare them, it must either be as a saving cure which might lead to our own sins being spared; or else in order to set an example of gentleness, so that by sparing them, Christians might allow the truth that is preached to be loved as well as feared. 97

Political authorities have a legitimate case for punishing offenders, but the higher virtue is forgiveness. In the same letter, Augustine argues that although the state can exonerate on its own, it is better that it allow the church to do this, pointing to the higher virtue outside itself in true absolution. Political authority has been taken up into the economy of grace, though not on its own—only inasmuch as it reveals its own deficiency and draws attention to God’s work in the church. The heart of political action, coercion by the sword, remains for Augustine a tragic postlapsarian necessity, but it gains new purpose as it highlights its opposite—free forgiveness in Christ. For Augustine, the Christian virtues of a believing ruler cover a multitude of sins. A Christian judge might torture, but he should lament 96. Notice that Augustine does not refer to them as “Roman” emperors, signifying that Christians were never true Romans in the aspiration of the Roman imperial projection. 97. Ep. 153.16 (413–14).

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doing it, praying for forgiveness of his sins and amendment from the criminal.98 Christ’s victory does not redeem political institutions from complicity in sin, but it can reorient political judgment from manifesting its love of glory to love of God and neighbor. Such judgment cannot redeem, but, transformed, it can point to the eternal peace of the heavenly city. A Typology of Augustines In light of the foregoing, a clear typology of “Augustines” helpfully emerges. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Augustine and Markus’s Augustine are nearly identical—the “realist” Augustine, in Eric Gregory’s terms. But whereas Niebuhr rejected Augustine’s “high” ecclesiology, Markus argues for a much lower ecclesiology than later Christendom saw in Augustine.99 Despite similar constructive proposals, historically Niebuhr thought that Augustine identified the civitas Dei with the visible church, whereas Markus argues that he did not. Niebuhr’s Augustine is an “ecclesial realist” and Markus’s a “Lutheran realist.” 100 The difference between Markus and Augustinian civic liberalism (Mathewes and Gregory) concerns the turn to virtue. Markus’s Lutheran Augustine deals primarily with predestination and eschatology—hence, an invisible church. Mathewes and Gregory, both “raised on a steady diet featuring thinkers like Hauerwas and MacIntyre,”101 inherited a burden to speak of discernible practices, tradition-constituted morality, and virtue ethics. Although Mathewes and Gregory reject the visible ecclesiology of Hauerwas, they retain the emphasis on virtue and especially motivation. James K. A. Smith’s charge that Gregory’s Augustine is “Barthian” therefore rings partly true. Smith means that Gregory appeals to a universal Christology in Augustine but not to his ecclesiology, primarily by speaking of the “Christ-event” and not

98. civ. Dei 19.6: “The wise judge does not act in this way [torture] through a wish to do harm. Rather, he does so because, on the one hand, ignorance is unavoidable, and, on the other, judgment is also unavoidable because human society compels it.” The wise judge must “acknowledge that the necessity of acting in this way is a miserable one: if he hated his own part in it, and if, with the knowledge of godliness, he cried out to God, ‘From my necessities deliver Thou me’ [Psalm 25:17].” On “lament” in Augustine’s political thought, see Griffiths, “Secularity and the saeculum,” 53–54. 99. Markus backtracks on this particular aspect of Augustine in Christianity and the Secular. 100. For a similar “Lutheran” reading of Augustine, esp. its “invisible church” aspect, see John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001). 101. Mathewes, “Augustinian Politics,” 27.

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the church shaping the motivation of love.102 Yet this Augustine of the virtues is that of not only Barth but also MacIntyre and Hauerwas. 103 There are problems with each of these Augustines, here noted in turn. Retrieval of the virtues was certainly a helpful corrective to the realist Augustine of Niebuhr and Markus. Augustine’s understanding of justification as a process of renewal marks a key difference between him and Luther. Whereas Luther had a law/gospel distinction, Augustine’s is more precisely a law/grace dichotomy. For both, the law reveals the fallenness of humanity, but for Luther, the gospel reassures of a passive, alien righteousness. For Augustine, God’s grace works through that self-awareness of sin to infuse active righteousness through Spirit-empowered virtue. Grace enables one to fulfill the law, even if by inward love and not outward conformity (Augustine’s letter/ spirit distinction). Augustine’s social theology is therefore necessarily more active, highlighted by virtue, and centered on the church’s visible means of grace (especially the monastic community) than either Niebuhr’s or Markus’s. Mathewes’s and Gregory’s emphasis on public virtue therefore derives from truly Augustinian virtue transformationism. Yet differences between Augustine’s activism and Luther’s passivity should not be overemphasized. Augustine’s transformationism is not sanguine about the realization of righteousness in this lifetime. (One can see why Augustinian tradition was instrumental in developing the doctrine of purgatory.) Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians is theologically relevant for not only individual growth in grace but also society at large. Mathewes’s concerns about Gregory’s perfectionism are relevant here. Augustine’s suspicion of the morality of social groups is not quite Niebuhr’s tragic conception of competing individuals, but with the realists one can agree that Augustine tends to see the capacity for sin as socially enlarged. Against the realists, I have argued that Augustine could envision a “Christian time” and a “Christian society,” but with the realists Augustine did not believe this vision to be 102. Smith, “Formation, Grace, and Pneumatology, 557, 565. 103. Mathewes and Gregory do not claim to have followed Augustine with historical fullness. Mathewes, in Theology of Public Life, 19, consciously uses the phrase “Augustinian tradition” so that he will not be “trapped in the historical cul-de-sac of debates about what Augustine ‘really meant’” (italics original). Likewise, Eric Gregory, in Politics and the Order of Love, 2, calls his project a “rational reconstruction” of Augustine that attempts “to settle neither the historical question of what, if any, political theory Augustine actually subscribed to, nor the counterfactual questions of what Augustine would have wanted to say about liberal politics had he lived to experience it.” These demurrals are well taken, but given that these authors continue to call their projects “Augustinian,” it is pertinent to ask how Augustinian they really are.

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a permanently progressing reality. Christian emperors are exceptions, not the norm. Another key difference between Augustinian liberalism and Augustine himself is Augustine’s clear teaching on election. Smith rightly critiques Gregory on this point, which could apply in part to Mathewes as well. Citing Augustine’s homilies on 1 John, Smith quotes Augustine on the necessity of the Spirit for the theological virtues and, most importantly, love: “There can be no love without the Spirit of God,” for love is “the peculiar gift of the Spirit: he is the one and only fountain.”104 In Augustine’s pneumatology, the gift of the Spirit is not “common to all,” as in Gregory’s estimation, but given only to those who are predestined of God in the church. To this point we could add similar statements that “no one who is without true godliness—that is, without the worship of the true God—can have true virtue,” and that “virtues which the mind seems to possess . . . are not virtues at all if they do not have reference to God.”105 As Smith notes, predestination and pneumatology call into question a model that in the name of Augustine makes theological virtues, even implicitly, the driving force of a pluralistic, secular political order. Even more fundamentally, all of these Augustinian liberals—Markus, Mathewes, and Gregory—underplay Augustine’s ecclesiology and the extent to which Augustine saw political order being reoriented to the church itself. This neglect owes to Markus’s exposition in Saeculum, with the heart of the challenge concerning Augustine’s calling on imperial power in the Donatist controversy. In some ways, Markus himself leads the way by admitting his failure to reconcile this aspect of Augustine’s thought to the whole, chalking it up to “inconsistency.” A better historical reading lets this episode inform our understanding of Augustine’s theology rather than considering it an outlier. These criticisms of Markus and interpretations of other Augustinian liberals need not be overplayed. Augustine’s realism and dialecticism are important aspects of his thought. Dodaro rightly locates the historical Augustine of Hippo between competing interpretations from Markus and Milbank: It is striking that in terms of Augustine’s thinking about the church in relation to society, whereas Robert Markus concentrates his analysis on 104. Smith, “Formation, Grace, and Pneumatology,” 567. See also Augustine’s statement in Ep. 185.50 (417): “An enemy of unity cannot share in God-given charity. Those who are outside the church do not have the Holy Spirit.” 105. civ. Dei 5.19, 19.25.

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the concept of the “mixed church” and ignores the implications for a mediation of divine love in Augustine’s concept of the church as the “whole Christ,” John Milbank gives strong consideration to the latter theme, but entirely ignores, or explains away, the implications of the “mixed church” in Augustine’s thought.106

Along with Dodaro’s, O’Donovan’s approach to Augustine appears to be much more consistent with the full contours of Augustine’s theology (see chapter 7). Gregory admits as much when he concedes that in O’Donovan’s recognition of a Christian confessional state, “O’Donovan stands closer to Augustine than most Augustinian liberals.”107 O’Donovan summarizes Augustine’s thought well in his statement that “the secular magistrate is drawn wholly into the church’s discourse on divine mercy and forgiveness of sins. For Augustine (in contrast to ..... some later Augustinians, notably Luther) there is no other context within which his task can be described.”108 The relationship between law and grace in Augustine is more truly dialectical than a straightforward dichotomy. The law participates in grace in its fulfillment. Like Luther, Augustine appeals to a divide between Old and New Testaments, Israel and the church, to underscore differences between law and grace. But the divide is not as wide as it first seems. For Augustine, grace brings the law to its intended fulfilment, whereas for Luther, the law continues its primary work of revealing the need for grace. The result of Augustine’s dialectic is that grace, or the gospel, leads actual social order toward its fulfillment. Though Luther speaks of indirect ways by which the gospel affects the visible dimension of human existence, for Augustine, the effect is more pronounced. The church has real social weight that penetrates the strict legality of the political order. Conclusion: Augustine’s Two Cities Addressing Augustine in the middle, not at the beginning, of our twokingdom exposition has the odd effect of comparing Augustine to Luther, rather than the other way around. But this reversal helps to avoid the temptation of drawing a straight path from Augustine to Luther. Scholars have sometimes overemphasized the degree to which Luther’s two-kingdom thought is “dependent” on Augustine’s two 106. Dodaro, “Ecclesia and Res publica,” 264. 107. Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 145. 108. O’Donovan and O’Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius, 107.

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cities. Certainly Luther is dependent, given that much of Western theology finds a key source in Augustine, but Luther does not acknowledge clear-cut reliance on Augustine’s formulations, at least concerning political and social thought. We have seen clear differences between the two. The clearest disparity between the two cities and the two kingdoms is that Augustine’s two cities are antithetical social realities, albeit with the heart of the antithesis located in the human heart (two separate loves). For Luther, the more basic polarity is the difference between the heart and sociality, a complementary but different dichotomy. Luther’s law/gospel theology works within this active/passive, visible/invisible split. Augustine’s dialectic keeps the tension primarily within visible action, instead of cutting across it. This difference accounts for Augustine’s allowing civil proceedings to be penetrated by the gospel. The church really does transform institutions and life outside its organizational boundaries without destroying its integrity and by bringing to light its superiority. This transformationism does not easily accord with Reformed transformationism, but neither does it accord easily with the two-kingdom tradition in Luther’s line.109 Nevertheless, all that said, Augustine’s thought bears more similarity to the two-kingdom model than it does to other conceptions. His realism about sin and general pessimism about the extent to which extra-ecclesial or even ecclesial life will conform to divine grace match much two-kingdom thinking. The location of political authority outside the created moral order, with the resulting discontinuity between worldly hierarchical life and heavenly eschatological life, corresponds to the tradition these pages have been identifying. A preliminary conclusion to this investigation into Augustine might suggest that although many traditions trace their origins to Augustine, few (if any) seem to capture the crux or extent of his thinking. Much of the two-kingdom tradition, especially among contemporary advocates, has been anti-Christendom, yet Augustine has a much more ambiguous relationship to Christendom thinking—according to the exposition here, a much more positive relationship than has been recently perceived. At the same time, then, the more anti-Christendom uses of Augustine reveal latent influence from Luther, a more extensive influ109. Many have rightly criticized Reinhold Niebuhr for putting Augustine in the “Christ transforming culture” category alongside such diverse figures as Calvin and F. D. Maurice, but the alternative locations suggested for him are usually not any better. “Christ and culture in paradox” may be best, but even that classification would require significant caveats.

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ence than has been recently perceived. Therefore, the next chapter will examine an interpreter of Augustine who is less anti-Christendom and correspondingly wrestles with the nature of the “two” in that thinker: Oliver O’Donovan.

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In chapter 5, Oliver O’Donovan was mentioned as a foil for Augustinian liberals who reject “Christendom” versions of Augustinianism. Although O’Donovan himself is in some ways an Augustinian liberal, in other ways O’Donovan’s project involves a modernized Augustinian Christendom—or, more precisely, a “dialectical Christendom II.” The present chapter demonstrates further that O’Donovan is more clearly Augustinian than many contemporaries, and it proceeds to map O’Donovan’s thought in relation to other two-cities and two-kingdom paradigms. Law and Gospel One clear distinction between O’Donovan’s and two-kingdom positions concerns O’Donovan’s opposition to a traditional Lutheran law/gospel dichotomy. Present throughout his work, this opposition emerges in the opening thesis of Resurrection and Moral Order (2nd ed., 1994), O’Donovan’s proposal for a distinctly evangelical ethics: “The foundations of Christian ethics must be evangelical foundations; or, to put it more simply, Christian ethics must arise from the gospel of Jesus Christ.”1

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The first opponents addressed by this thesis are those who argue for “the opposition of law and gospel” and “make a virtue of denying that ‘Christian ethics’ in the strict sense can exist.”2 The Lutheran tradition, particularly, separates the gospel from moral life: The Lutheran tradition . . . has usually found it difficult to accept that an ordered moral demand can be, in and of itself, evangelical. The antithesis between Moses and Christ has been widened to encompass a total opposition between order and transcendence. The liberating activity of God is marked by its insusceptibility to characterization in terms of order, while order, even the order of creation, has been classed with law rather than the gospel, and so assigned a purely provisional and transitory significance.3

Audaciously, O’Donovan writes that morality “is itself an integral part of the Christian gospel.”4 Fundamental to O’Donovan’s thinking is the idea of authority as a correlate to freedom. The gospel does not simply proclaim a promise but is an “authority” granting free action. Hence, O’Donovan sees no contradiction in speaking of an “evangelical moral law.”5 “We do not have to abandon evangelical proclamation when we ask about the form of the human response to the gospel.”6 Contra a particularly Lutheran construal of the division between justification and sanctification, “the improper divorce of sanctification from justification bequeathed Protestant churches their characteristic tension between a gospel with no concern for life in the world and a concern for life in the world which has lost touch with the gospel.” 7 O’Donovan’s special concern is the limitation of the gospel to one arena of creation, allowing the fallen disorder of creation to triumph in the end. Reflecting on the second edition of Resurrection and Moral Order, O’Donovan insists that he would underscore this concern even more strongly now. Appealing to John Milbank’s work, he critiques the Lutheran notion that the gospel has no “social space.” The gospel is more expansive: it is not only assurance of a completed gift but also a demand for applied action and a source for moral knowledge. In rejecting a strict law/gospel dichotomy, O’Donovan does not sug1. Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 11. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 153, italics original. 4. Ibid., 26. 5. Ibid., 156. 6. Ibid., 182. 7. Ibid., 254.

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gest that law and gospel can be equated. Both make promises and command obedience, but differences remain. In defining “law,” O’Donovan appeals primarily to the Jewish Torah, not a generic idea of “command” only.8 Highlighting law as a species of history and not a unique type of communication allows O’Donovan to rehabilitate the law/ gospel distinction as a contrast between pre-Pentecostal and post-Pentecostal experience. The law’s inadequacy is not its communication of command but its inability to save. The law, on the one hand, is “inadequate as it appeals simply to the immanent power of the subject, ‘the flesh,’ and offers no gospel of subjective participation in its good order”; it is “good news that remains firmly in the realm of the objective, apart from me.”9 The gospel, on the other hand, is Pentecostal, coming with the Spirit’s power. Yet the difference runs even deeper. The law was a concession to fallen creation, pointing to creation’s true order but also revealing human inability: “For Jesus Moses was an artificer of compromise.”10 Elsewhere, O’Donovan writes that “the trouble is not that law hopes to express some moral truth. . . . The truth of a law must also be a truth about the society in which the law will function.”11 Thus, the law truthfully expresses both the moral order of creation and human sinfulness. The gospel expresses the truth of created moral order and the redemption of human sinfulness—not only the original good order but also its renovation and fulfillment in Christ. 12 Although O’Donovan conceives of the law/gospel contrast historically, he allows for a Reformation perspective on law and gospel in the abstract, as the experience of command and promise: The law was thus a particular historical phase of Israel’s experience of God; but the Jewish experience of history is seen to represent a universal existential situation in which an individual at any point of history may find himself before Christ has become a saving reality in his own experience. To experience moral command as “the law,” then is to encounter it as though from a point in the history of salvation at which God has not yet given the total blessing which he has promised his people. Law supposes that God’s complete saving purpose is still an object of hope. 13

8. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 151. 9. Ibid., 22. 10. Ibid., 130. 11. Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 19. 12. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 24. 13. Ibid., 152, italics original.

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This point becomes especially important for O’Donovan when contrasting the “law” of secular government and the “gospel” of the church. But this law/gospel contrast is a tertiary derivation from the original likeness of law and gospel, and the secondary contrast of law and gospel indicates the absence or presence of the Spirit. Natural Law Like his opposition to a traditional law/gospel dichotomy, O’Donovan’s opposition to forms of natural law puts him at odds with a two-kingdom paradigm. The key distinction here runs between ontology and epistemology. O’Donovan affirms natural law in its ontological sense—the reality of a created moral order—but denies its strong epistemological sense: that it is unequivocally self-evident to all people, or should be, apart from the revelation of Christ in the gospel. Because of the fall, there is an “opacity and obscurity of that order to the human mind which has rejected the knowledge of its Creator.”14 Since “the exercise of knowledge is tied up with the faithful performance of man’s task in the world,” moral knowledge is “inescapably compromised by the problem of fallenness.”15 Because God is the common good of all and cannot be subtracted out of the total picture of reality, there is no unified grasp of the shape and meaning of that reality without the revelation of God in the gospel. But the obstacle of natural knowledge is not upended by an entirely different object of knowledge: “We must firmly reject the idea that Christian ethics is esoteric, opted into by those who so choose, irrelevant to those who do not choose.”16 Rather, “Christian moral judgments in principle address every man.”17 Ontology and epistemology must be clearly distinguished. “We say that man’s rebellion has not succeeded in destroying the natural order to which he belongs; but that is something which we could not say with theological authority except on the basis of God’s revelation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”18 Referring to this as “epistemological guardedness,” O’Donovan explains his ambiguous stance on natural law: “We have avoided using the classic term ‘Natural Law’ in the course of our exposition of created order, and will continue to avoid it, despite points of strong 14. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 19. 15. Ibid., 81–82. 16. Ibid., 16. 17. Ibid., 17. 18. Ibid., 19.

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sympathy between our account and the more realist versions of Natural Law theory. The Western tradition of Natural Law has been unable to avoid an ambiguity in which universality has been attributed not only to being but to knowledge.”19 For O’Donovan, the gospel illuminates true knowledge of the created moral order, which has its stability in Christ.20 The Coming of God’s Kingdom The same principle undergirding O’Donovan’s views on law and gospel, as well as natural law, further undergirds his view of history: there is no “area of life which Christ has not touched or transformed.”21 The direction and end of history are not accessible from its internal workings but are revealed only by the inauguration of God’s kingdom in the resurrection of Christ. Yet this eschatological unveiling discloses only the shape and conclusion of history, not its every detail. Still, O’Donovan argues that the eyes of faith can discern the outline of the Spirit’s application of Christ’s victory. This discernment counters Lutheran skepticism that classifies “all social orders indiscriminately as ‘law,’ or, as in other secularist traditions, ‘natural law.’”22 For O’Donovan, “this is to refuse the gospel’s call to discern the signs of the times—a refusal that historicism can make by asserting that while all ages are different, no age is more different than any other.”23 Boldly, he asserts that “history since Christ bears the mark of that in Christian civilization.” 24 Not until O’Donovan’s later works in political theology did he flesh out those earlier claims. Crucial to understanding this connection is O’Donovan’s principle that “politics belongs within the category of history, not of nature. . . . Political order is a providential ordering, not a created one, and so it has become diaphanous to the redeeming work of God, taking on new forms in the light of the Christ-event.”25 Political theology, then, must begin with the sacred history of Scripture and discern applications into secular history. 19. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 85. 20. Thus, O’Donovan critiques any assertion that “the believer is in no more favoured a position than the unbeliever when it comes to discerning the difference between good and evil” (Resurrection and Moral Order, 11). 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., xv. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., xiv. 25. Oliver O’Donovan, “Deliberation, History, and Reading: A Response to Schweiker and Wolterstorff,” SJT 54 (2001): 137, italics original.

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Paradigmatic Israel Not without controversy, O’Donovan begins his exposition of theopolitical history with Israel’s experience of Yahweh’s kingship. In The Desire of the Nations (1999), O’Donovan posits that God’s authority over Israel is the paradigm for all political authority—though by analogy, not unequivocally.26 Yahweh’s military deliverance of Israel from its enemies (power), his giving of the law (judgment), his possession of Israel as his people by securing the land (tradition), and correspondingly Israel’s praise of Yahweh (acknowledgment) form the basis of all political rule: “Political authority arises where power, the execution of right and the perpetuation of tradition are assured together in one coordinated agency.”27 The act of political governance is not an outworking of creational patterns; “only sociality itself was given in creation[;] all other political structures were given by divine providence.”28 Unlike many premodern authors, O’Donovan does not see even “the mark of Cain” (Genesis 4:15) or the Noahic lex talionis (Genesis 9:5–6) as “establishing” human civil order. In the mystery of God’s providence after the fall, political authority is never “established” as much as it is “encountered”; just as Israel encountered Yahweh, political life is “a framework we discover, rather than devise.”29 In O’Donovan’s theopolitical narrative, God’s kingship over Israel was at first imageless, unmediated, and unrepresented. In other words, God as king meant that there was no human king. Though this unmediated divine rule was conceded at the beginning of the Davidic monarchy, disintegration of the representative human rule began almost immediately. Israel’s national exile led to the experience of division of God’s rule: Yahweh’s possession of his people was now mediated by a “foreign sword,” a time of “separation”30 inaugurating the time of the two kingdoms: God’s rule alongside alien rule.

26. On Israel as paradigm, O’Donovan writes that “in the church’s understanding Israel’s political categories were the paradigm for all others. . . . The future of the one nation was a prism through which the faithful looked to see the future of all nations” (Desire of the Nations, 23). 27. Ibid., 46. 28. Ibid., 14. 29. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 55. 30. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 84.

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The Challenge of God’s Authority Within this matrix, O’Donovan sees rich import for Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom. O’Donovan makes much of the “continuing exile” theme in some recent biblical scholarship—the Jews’ considering Roman oversight a sign that Yahweh had yet to reassert his rule over Israel with unified representation.31 Through Jesus’s ministry, God ends the time of “dual authority” and fulfills the singularity of God’s possession of Israel. O’Donovan uses his earlier framework for the exodus to demonstrate reconstitution of divine political authority. Jesus’s miracles are works of deliverance (power); his prophetic action and crucifixion execute God’s justice (judgment); his resurrection secures possession of the community gathered around him by the sending of the Spirit (tradition); and by the Spirit the restored community has faith in Christ as Lord (acknowledgment). In short, the Christ event involves thoroughly political action, and the gospel is a political message. “Faith in the coming of the Kingdom, then, implied an act of political recognition directed to Jesus himself. The dawning rule of God was experienced in his ministry.”32 Jesus’s ministry has two political sides, one positive and one negative. Positively, Jesus represented in himself the singular unity of God’s rule—both “political” and “spiritual.”33 “The appearance of true authority in Israel meant the unity of political and religious spheres under the rule of God. Obedience and worship were to be one and the same.”34 In Christ, the purpose of all political structures in mediating God’s rule has been fulfilled. As the flip side of that statement, with the beginning of political reunification came the end of dual mediation: “The Two Kingdoms period, in which Temple without power and praetorium without worship coexisted in some kind of parallel, was declared closed.”35 O’Donovan capitalizes on this ending of duality to demonstrate Jesus’s seeming lack of concern over certain political questions. This lack of concern makes Jesus’s message not “apolitical” but “counterpolitical.” O’Donovan exemplifies this move in his interpretation of Jesus’s statement about taxes and “giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” 31. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 87. 32. Ibid., 117, italics mine. 33. Ibid., 82: “The terms ‘political’ and ‘spiritual’ take us to the very substance of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, which spans the two.” 34. Ibid., 117. 35. Ibid.

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Against a view that sees primarily parallelism and sphere sovereignty, O’Donovan understands Jesus to put civil authority at odds with God’s authority—in other words, what does not belong to God? All political authority is on the edge of extinction: “To recognise the coming of God’s Kingdom is to be a son of the Kingdom, and so emancipated from the order in which God’s rule was mediated through such alienating institutions as taxation. But purely as a concession Jesus and his disciples will pay taxes ‘to create no scandal,’ i.e. lest they be misunderstood as mere rebels, who refuse God’s mediated rule as such.”36 Precisely because Roman and temple authority were vanishing, Jesus could be nonchalant about the question, focusing on “offense” rather than principle. Since he [Jesus] did not concede that they had any future, he gave them neither dutiful obedience within their supposed sphere of competence nor the inverted respect of angry defiance. He did not recognize a permanently twofold locus of authority. He recognized only a transitory duality between the coming and the passing order. So the duality inherited from Israel’s past underwent a transformation. The Two Cities, with their concomitant Two Rules expressing Israel’s alienation from its calling, gave way to the Two Eras. The coming era of God’s rule held the passing era in suspension.37

Here, O’Donovan incorporates the theme of “principalities and powers” developed so heavily by John Howard Yoder.38 Jesus’s ascension means that all earthly authority is subjugated and given to the Son. Christ rules in his humanity—as a representative of Adam at God’s right hand—universally. In principle, all nations and all peoples belong to Christ’s regime, though in the church his rule is acknowledged and made visible. Just as Christ represents the final end of humanity, so also the church represents the final worldwide community under the lifegiving rule of God.39 In God’s kingdom, no authority stands between Christ and submissive humanity.

36. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 92. 37. Ibid., 93. 38. See John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Angus Noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eedrmans, 1994). It is no accident that O’Donovan deals most closely with Yoder’s thought in his chapter titled “Triumph of the Kingdom” (Desire of the Nations, 151–52). 39. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 146.

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The Reauthorization of Secular Authority O’Donovan may initially seem to be Anabaptist, espousing the total opposition of Christ and all earthly authority. Not accidentally, for example, do several authors find great agreement between Yoder and O’Donovan concerning Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom.40 But O’Donovan describes this as a “moment” in redemptive history.41 This “moment of the Kingdom’s challenge” is followed by a moment of “reauthorisation,”42 the concept that puts O’Donovan’s thought in sharp contrast with Yoder’s. Although Christ’s ascension strips all earthly powers of their authority, God gives back to human polities a limited measure of purpose. The cross and empty tomb have executed divine reconciliation, but it remains to apply this salvation; God’s patience makes space for humanity’s glad submission. Because sin remains despite being judicially defeated, space for freedom requires a continuing sign of God’s judgment. The civil sword is therefore now oriented wholly to securing temporary order; for that purpose, it must continue to enact wrath against sinful behavior that would destroy social communication. Thus, civil authority now acts entirely as a preservative measure. In God’s providence, the consummation of the kingdom is suspended so that all humanity can hear the saving message. Human political order maintains a limited breathing space for the gospel to be communicated. This is a significant change in the character of civil authority. Of the three essential elements of political authority (power, execution of right, and tradition), O’Donovan argues that tradition was most important to the ancient world: governments representatively bore the hopes of a community for their telos. Now, after Christ’s representation of all humanity toward its end in the eternal kingdom, political agency is oriented solely to judging evil and defending the good. O’Donovan dubs this “the reactive principle.” Whereas ancient government may have been allowed to carry forward its community’s unique identity—in part because Israel, representative of the human race, needed to bring forth the messianic promised seed—it can now be archetypal only to the extent necessary for defending the good of this 40. See, e.g., Paul Doerksen, Beyond Suspicion: Post-Christendom Protestant Political Theology in John Howard Yoder and Oliver O’Donovan (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 94–98; Dorothea Bertschmann, Bowing before Christ—Nodding to the State? Reading Paul Politically with Oliver O’Donovan and John Howard Yoder (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 16. 41. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 231–33. 42. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 146.

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community and not another one. After the revelation of Christ, governments may maintain their limited identities, but they must not expand them, especially with universal aspirations, where only Christ can represent. Likewise, the other political essential, power, must also be limited. Not everything that can be punished should be punished—only what maintains order. Granted these new limitations, the essence of political authority has not changed—only its emphasis, or telos. Power, execution of right (judgment), and tradition in one agency still form the esse of the political act. Power and tradition do not dissolve entirely; civil governments must still wield the sword and represent their communities, only minimally so. Governments are not justified by their power and tradition; they continue to exist in God’s plan only because of the judgments they render. The esse remains the same, but the bene esse is that power and tradition are subordinated and oriented entirely to judgment; whatever power and representative tradition are required to maintain judgment are enough. This “reauthorization” of political authority is oriented specifically to the church, not simply an abstract principle of gospel dissemination. The redemptive rule of Christ is made visible in the church; governments picture God’s condemnation of sin, not forgiveness and reconciliation: “Secular authorities are no longer in the fullest sense mediators of the rule of God. They mediate his judgments only.”43 Herein lies a key paradox: by becoming truly secular (i.e., “temporary”), governments also become Christian, oriented toward the only lasting community, the church. For O’Donovan, civil governments perform their duty rightly only when they acknowledge a distinct political society in their midst: the international community of the church ruled immediately by the risen Christ. Political authorities must renounce what was once their prerogative, giving way to the church’s representation of humanity through Christ and its enactment of God’s rule. In this sense, O’Donovan famously sees a positive legacy to Christendom. “Secular” cannot mean religiously neutral, which O’Donovan finds impossible in principle. Governments are now called to recognize that their existence is sustained solely by Christ’s limited reauthorization for the sake of the church’s mission. To be truly “temporary” and “penultimate,” civil authority must recognize the eternal and ultimate. O’Donovan is clear, however, that being oriented toward the church’s 43. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 151, italics mine.

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mission does not mean “defending” the church or enforcing its message coercively. Doing so would deny not only the free response necessary for salvation (the esse of the church’s mission) but also the church’s political existence as ruled only by Christ himself. Rather, being oriented toward the church means recognizing its own authority as limited. Without an acknowledgment of this limitation, O’Donovan believes, governments will seek to gain back their previous authority, even if they do so under the guise of “neutrality.” The Eschatological Dialectic of Israel and Church O’Donovan’s thought depends crucially on a conception of Israel and the church, especially in light of his eschatological framework. Clearly, he sees Old Testament Israel as more than a contrast to the Christian church. Christ fulfills Israel’s identity and promises; through Christ, the church receives the status of the people ruled by God. But O’Donovan does not see the church being quite as close to Israel as Augustine does. He refers to the church variously as “political,” “eschatological,” “postpolitical,” and “secular.” Grasping the meaning of these terms helps to elucidate O’Donovan’s Protestant Christendom thought. Church As “political,” the church is, first and foremost, ruled: “Describing the church as a political society means to say that it is brought into being and held in being, not by a special function it has to fulfil, but by a government that it obeys in everything.”44 The church is political “analogously”: “United States” refers to neither the government exclusively nor the people in that country apart from its governmental structure, but the people as represented by their political leaders. Likewise, the church is political as a society ruled by a king. It is not itself the political structure of governance nor the representative of governance. The church therefore experiences God’s direct reign in Christ, having no need of another authority structure although gladly submitting to God’s judgments in secular authority. O’Donovan’s later way of speaking about the church has therefore called it “postpolitical.”45 By 44. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 159. 45. O’Donovan is emphatic about the church’s “political” nature in early works (Resurrection and Moral Order and Desire of the Nations), but his usual phrasing shifts toward “postpolitical” in later works (Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009] and Ways of Judgment, as well as an important article, “What Kind of Community Is the

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being “postpolitical,” the church demonstrates its transcendence of political judgment, accepting God’s final judgment proleptically displayed in Christ’s death and resurrection. If governments now mediate God’s judgments solely in a penultimate manner, then Christians no longer need this witness. The church is, in this sense, “eschatological,” living now in anticipation of the time when political structures will meet their definite end and fall away entirely. O’Donovan also uses the term “counterpolitical”: As the model for the communication of the Spirit in the world, the church is defined as the community that “judges not,” but bears witness to a final judgment. To speak of the church as a “counterpolitical” society is in constructive tension with speaking of it as a “political society.” It is the bearer of a discourse that defers judgment, seeking further reflection and a discourse “between the times” in the moment of God’s patience. . . . The completion and finalization of political order under the free and worshipping embrace of God’s rule coincides with the completion and finalization of social order in complete and uncoerced fellowship with God. Precisely because this is its true political nature, we may speak of the church as “postpolitical,” revealing the final form of human society. 46

Here, O’Donovan connects these themes with Jesus’s words “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1), a pervasive theme in his work. The community that “judges not” is “postpolitical” or “counterpolitical” because it both accepts God’s final judgment for itself and refuses to judge others with divine condemnation. Paradoxically, then, “judging not,” at least in this age “between the times,” means allowing governments to deliver penultimate judgments—a key reason why O’Donovan, like Augustine, opposes the death penalty. “Judging for yourself” and “judging not” are inextricably connected: By obedience we determine ourselves not to judge at the point where judgment has been given, not to perpetuate the act of judgment, but to allow it to be overtaken by the goal it was intended to serve, that of free social engagement. This act of not-judging is an end of judgment in a positive as well as a negative sense. Judgment cannot reach its completion without it, and so it is in its own way an act of judgment upon an act of judgment. It is what Jesus calls “judging for yourselves.” When we judge for ourselves,

Church? The Richard Hooker Lectures, 2005,” Ecclesiology 3 [2007]: 171–93). The concepts are not necessarily at odds, despite different emphasis. This change has often gone unnoticed; it may be due to criticism of his stance on “Christendom” in Desire of the Nations. 46. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 240.

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we judge that the good that God by his own judgment has set before us to do is now open for us to do.47

Contra the Anabaptist tradition, “not judging” does not mean that Christians cannot be involved in the work of secular authority. But such work involves “interim” acts, which must give way to God’s ultimate reconciling judgment: The society that refrains from judging is not a society without judgment, persisting in primal innocence before the knowledge of wrong. Not-judging is not detachment from judgment, nor a bewildered shrug of the shoulders in the face of its imponderable demands. On the contrary, it is a society that has felt the need for judgment, has cried to God for judgment, and has seen it revealed in Christ; and believing what it has seen, it has judged for itself. A society that refrains from judgment does so because it has the judgment of God to defer to. Living under God’s judgment, then, and embracing it as the law of its life, it is free not to judge, since all human judgment is merely interim, waiting for the judgment that is to come. 48

Christians in civil government, as in O’Donovan’s exposition of civil government generally, must acknowledge this provisional role—not pretending that their judgments are ultimate. The church as institution must never take up the sword of coercive judgment. Its “political,” or clearly “postpolitical,” nature is limited to being ruled.49 The church as a community must bear witness to its eschatological identity as the community that needs no protector besides Christ.50 Because the church as an institutional body can only call sinners to willing repentance but not defend injured right, even the church itself “exists under the general oversight of secular jurisdiction.”51 Tension between “political” and “postpolitical” is clear in O’Dono47. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 240, italics original. 48. Ibid., 238, italics original. 49. O’Donovan, “What Kind of Community?,” 184: The church is “a community that judges without coercion. . . . It announces, but does not exercise, the coming judgment of God” (italics original). 50. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 151: “By embracing the final judgment of God Christians have accepted that they have no need for penultimate judgments to defend their rights. The continued presence of such judgments in the world, however, is an important witness to those to whom the word of final judgment has yet to come.” 51. O’Donovan, “What Kind of Community?,” 185. For O’Donovan, civil government can “intervene” in church matters when they involve injury to the common good and require its defense. He speaks of “the attempt to define certain spheres of social life as in principle beyond the reach of such intervention”—even an “independent church authority”—as “a mistake.” Approvingly, he quotes Grotius’s point that “wrong in Romans 13:4 must include wrong done in religion” (Ways of Judgment, 62–63).

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van’s account (in Resurrection and Moral Order) of the church as “secular.” Although the church is the community ruled directly by Christ, a “true anticipation of the kingdom of God,”52 its outward polity must partake of structures of this age. Its form in the world is that of an organized society, and as such it has a structure of political authority: it has institutions of government, rules for administration, sanctions against the breach of rules and so on. However, outside the Congregationalist tradition, Christian theology has always refused to understand this form as being the essence of the church, and has understood church-authority as something more than this purely immanent church-political authority. . . . This arbitrary authority, to which we point when we speak of the church’s transition from counsel to command, is alien to the true nature of the kingdom of God, though it can serve it.53

The church is “secular,” in this sense, because “the church does not yet live in the full daylight of the kingdom of God, but shares with the world a life under the shadow of divine judgment”: “Just as the political structures of worldly society depend upon the representation of divine judgment in the form of coercive rule, so the structures of the church depend also upon a sign of divine judgment. What differentiates the church’s sign, however, is that it points, entirely symbolically, to the last judgment, the judgment which will put an end to all judgment.” 54 Because of this tension between the already/not-yet in the church, it cannot, for example, completely demonstrate the absolute equality of each individual before Christ. Hence, O’Donovan can distinguish between kingdom and church: The Church is not itself the community founded by the universal judgment of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. To that extent it is part of the same political world as any other concrete society, subject to the same kinds of formal discipline. It carries its treasure in earthenware vessels, a universal identity in non-universal forms, forms of jurisdiction derived, as Marsiglio thought, and Richard Hooker after him, from secular authority. If it were not so, we could not locate the Church or live within it. 55

52. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 165. 53. Ibid., 173. 54. Ibid. Similarly, “the only judgment with which the church has to reckon is the final judgment, diving between belief and unbelief. The secular authorities, on the other hand, deal only in provisional and penultimate judgments” (150–51). 55. O’Donovan, “What Kind of Community?,” 185, italics original.

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O’Donovan concedes that we must distinguish between that aspect of the church which witnesses to the coming kingdom and that aspect which is part of the interim: The Church, then, will have a distinctive twofold form, which is very difficult to describe. We may speak in terms of a tension between an outer and an inner identity, as has often been done by way of a contrast between the Church “visible” and the Church “invisible”: there are offices of leadership, responsibilities and rules that resemble leadership, responsibilities and rules in any other public society; there are forms of law, discipline and decision-making that resemble procedures in any other society; yet these serve a hidden universal identity under the rule of God in Christ. 56

Thus, O’Donovan radically distinguishes between society and political society. Given that political authority involves postfall order, it is defeated rather than redeemed. Even in the church as institution, structures of authority are reoriented to serve the society. Israel O’Donovan’s ecclesiology requires understanding Israel’s continuing place in his thought. The interim status of Israel keeps O’Donovan from speaking too much of the church’s “public” and “political” nature (as, e.g., in Augustine). For O’Donovan (in Desire of the Nations), Israel parallels the continuing role that civil government must play in God’s purposes.57 Because “Israel can never be replaced,” Israel’s public polity remains in such a way that the church’s political faith must remain hidden: “The age of the church is one of striving to reclaim the public tradition of Israel for the faith which completes Israel, an age in which faith and social structure wrestle with one another in the hope of being fused into each other.”58 Israel’s continued existence means that the church is not God’s only public sign; the church “exists vis-à-vis the social structures of Israel” and “appears rather underdressed politically, waiting for a fuller clothing when the public form in which it has 56. O’Donovan, “What Kind of Community?,” 185. O’Donovan similarly argued this earlier, explaining his ecclesiology as having a “characteristically Protestant” distinction, “the sharp distinction between didactic and political authority” regarding the church (Resurrection and Moral Order, xix). 57. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 147: “It is necessary to read [Romans 13] in the context in which Paul himself has set it, which is his claim for the continued significance of Israel as a social entity in God’s plans for final redemption. St. Paul’s famous paragraph about the authorities arises naturally from his claim for Israel. . . . As Israel is claimed for faith . . . so the authorities are claimed for obedience to Israel. . . . The question [of government] is parallel to the question he has just asked and answered about Israel, a question that arises from the dawning of the eschatological age.” 58. Ibid., 132.

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placed its hope is made available by Israel’s own self-giving to God.”59 This age is “the dialectic of the two communities”: “Until the last reconciliation the two communities must coexist, the one with the witness of its public institutions, the other with a witness founded on and attesting faith, the community of circumcision and the community of baptism.”60 So, although O’Donovan is often considered “supersessionist” for using Israel’s history in Christian political theology,61 this charge is largely a red herring. In response to Neuhaus’s professed Zionism, O’Donovan states clearly, “I believe my views are rightly classified as ‘not supersessionist.’ The church, which participates in both Jewish and Gentile identity, is not called to displace Israel, but to be at once Israel-for-the-Gentiles with Israel and the-Gentiles-for-Israel with the Gentiles.”62 The church’s mission and political identity are complete only when it has received from Israel its publicity.63 Eschatology Along with supersessionism, O’Donovan is often criticized for his eschatology: some identify it as overrealized; others, as underrealized. Niebuhrian realists and modern liberals—neo-Augustinian, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic—critique O’Donovan’s eschatology as being too realized, especially in light of his Christendom proposals. They are suspicious of the church’s being so rigorously described in “kingdom” terms, ruled directly by Christ, with the political order’s being “subdued” by Christ’s political victory. Neo-Anabaptists who criticize O’Donovan for underrealized eschatology oppose his statements about the church’s “interim” period and its participation in structures of this age. Because of O’Donovan’s stance on Israel, “the church is not yet manifest as the self-standing political society it is destined to be.”64 He continues to reserve a great amount for the future eschaton—that “the Christ-event, though accomplished, is still an event for the future.”65 The preceding exposition of O’Donovan’s views on the “political”

59. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 25. 60. Ibid., 131–32. 61. Scott Bader-Saye, Church and Israel after Christendom: The Politics of Election (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005). 62. Oliver O’Donovan, “Response to Respondents: Behold, the Lamb!,” SCE 11 (1998): 106. 63. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 285–87. 64. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 88. 65. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 144.

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nature of the church, its relationship to Israel, and the fullness of the future eschaton counters the thin accounts behind these charges. Christian Secular Politics The preceding exposition of O’Donovan’s framework also provides key indicators for locating him among the other relevant traditions. Christendom First, O’Donovan’s controversial affirmation of some aspects of Christendom garnered an amount of attention that surprised him. His goal was not to “defend” Christendom categorically but to learn from Christendom. He gained most from its pattern of political submission to Christ’s reign, the idea “that the relation between the two authorities, churchly and secular, was dictated by mission.”66 The church’s goal was not a power grab but the witness of Christ’s authority over kings and magistrates. Defined variously as “the idea of professedly Christian secular political order” and “the idea of a confessionally Christian government,” Christendom’s key is being “intimately bound up with the church’s mission.”67 Most of O’Donovan’s “defense” counters neo-Anabaptist critiques from Yoder and Hauerwas, but many of the same points could be used against certain two-kingdom conceptions. For O’Donovan, they represent two sides of the same coin: “Recent natural-rights thinkers object to the idea of a political society in which a religious confession is built into its principles of government, making more than a ‘thin’ set of social values normative for the public conduct of affairs. Their communitarian opponents denounce the attempt to make the confession of the church look like a general rule of civilisation.”68 Political confession is the central question: “Is there something implicitly coercive in the very attempt to define a secular government as Christian?” Forced belief aside, which O’Donovan himself critiques,69 the issue is 66. O’Donovan, “Response to Respondents,” 104, italics original. 67. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 195. 68. Ibid., 212. 69. Ibid., 218: “It was a mistake, however, to go beyond speaking of conscious facilitation of the church’s mission and to speak, as the apologists of Christendom often did, of the ruler’s duty to ‘defend’ the church, or ‘reinforce church discipline.’” Again, “the historical record of persecutions, . . . and of a more usual repressive tolerance which permitted minorities to exist, but on pain of civil disadvantages, does not resolve the question whether it was a necessary entailment of the Christendom idea. It followed, evidently enough, from the thought that the state’s duty was to defend the church, by coercive measures if necessary. If, as we have argued, this thought was a

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actually whether moral agreement obtains at all in society. The underlying principle of both neo-Anabaptists and Niebuhrian realists is radical individuation of moral agency that “springs from a radical suspicion of society as such and of the agreements that constitute it—to be traced back, perhaps, to the contractarian myth which bound individuals directly together into political societies without any acknowledgment of the mediating social reality.”70 This suspicion, however, implicates the church as well as wider society; thus, O’Donovan offers a political critique of an underdeveloped ecclesiology. States are in the business of judgment, judgment requires moral discernment, and the greatest revelation of moral order is the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection. It would be pretense, then, to argue that the state can remain disinterested regarding gospel truth; the state “may facilitate the mission of the church, or impede it. . . . In the Christian era there is no neutral performance on the part of rulers; either they accommodate to the energy of the divine mission, or they hurl themselves into defiance.”71 O’Donovan argues against the idea of Jacques Maritain and others that teaching a state to be “humble” means instructing it in only “natural” ways.72 For O’Donovan, the “natural” way of the state is simply not humble, a problem discovered only in the face of Christ’s lordship. Attempting to teach the state apart from the specificity of “evangelical content” does not issue in greater degrees of freedom.73 For O’Donovan, ecclesiology is always prior to political theology.74 Christianity and Liberalism The preceding points might seem to place O’Donovan among medievalists, not liberal democrats. But O’Donovan’s stance toward modern liberal democracy is more nuanced. His definition of “Christendom” actually coheres with the definition of “liberalism” in a phrase uniquely his: “Christian liberalism.”75 O’Donovan distinguishes, however, between early-modern liberalism as distinctly Christian, the heritage of Chrismistake, which, however deeply rooted it became, can be distinguished from the authentic stock of the Christendom idea, then the idea itself may be cut free from its parasite” (221). 70. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 222. 71. Ibid., 217. 72. Ibid., 219. 73. Ibid., 225–26. 74. Ibid., 159: “A theological account of how this world is ruled, then, must proceed from and through an account of the church.” 75. Ibid., 278. O’Donovan uses “Christian constitutionalism” (240) and “Christian political order” (195) as phrases synonymous to “Christian liberalism.”

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tendom, and late-modern liberalism, “the child of Christianity,” which has “left its father’s house and followed the way of the prodigal.”76 As Christendom’s legacy, Christian liberalism “lies in a fruitful constellation of social and political ideas which came together in a decisively influential way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”; O’Donovan uses the bare term “liberal” and the phrase “late-modern liberal” for what comes after the French and American Revolutions.77 So, although O’Donovan can, in a sense, be counted among “modernity critics,” his narrative is different. For him, modernity itself is not a “fall” from medieval Christendom (a typical Roman Catholic narrative) nor a further fall from some earlier pristine age (a typical Anabaptist narrative) nor an almost unqualified advancement of history (a typical two-kingdom Protestant narrative). Vital to O’Donovan’s account of modernity is the triadic relationship between church, society, and civil government. The church’s witness calls civil rulers to submit to Christ; the exercise of political authority, with its weapons of coercion, always remains outside the church, despite being influenced by and reoriented to the church. Society, however, has the capacity to enter the church through its individual members and as a whole, to become a “penumbra” to the church.78 Politics is the indirect mission of the church, society its direct mission. Political magistracy provides the space for the church’s mission; society is the space of the church’s mission. Thus, “the first and last frontier of the Gentile mission is the social frontier.”79 Characteristic of late modernity is confusion of the social and political horizons vis-à-vis the church. The church proclaimed the “secularity” of rulers—that their authority is now temporary in light of Christ’s universal kingship—and early modernity accepted the attendant limited role for civil government. But that limitation was taken at its extreme to exclude Christian confession itself, as if the responsible and law-governed state were a “natural” sensibility, determined by the contracted will of autonomous individuals. Such a political limitation “declared that political authorities were incapable of evangelical obedience.”80 Secularity no longer meant “temporary” in light of the Christ event, but “neutral” with regard to religious and moral principle.81 For 76. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 275. 77. Ibid., 226. 78. Ibid., 251. 79. Ibid., 243. 80. Ibid., 246. 81. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 76: “A polytheistic society negotiates multiple claims with no cohe-

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O’Donovan, such a move is clearly a post-Christian phenomenon. Modern secular government does not overtly proclaim the telos of a society; in fact, it seems to claim the opposite, that it is the construction of society. But the end is the same: politics becomes the highest form of human life, in either dictatorial or popular totalitarianism.82 Political representation becomes idolatrous in nationalism or self-preserving consumerism.83 Instead of simply political secularity, late modernity proclaimed the “secularity” of society as well. “To deny political authority obedience to Christ is implicitly to deny that obedience to society, too.”84 With rulers being incapable of moral and religious agreement, society itself became “a quasi-mechanical system, incapable of moral and spiritual acts. . . . The false self-consciousness of the would-be secular society lies in its determination to conceal the religious judgments that it has made.”85 Modernity’s radical individualism is simply the other side of the coin from postmodern sociological determinism: both disallow society to be normative in itself. Postmodernism can be both an inversion of modernism and its intensification, taking it to its logical extreme.86 O’Donovan sees the problems of late modernity as distinctly Christian heresy, not general pagan idolatry. Modern liberalism gave “a deist answer to a Christian question,” Christian because it is posed by Christendom.87 Having been informed of the revelation of the eschaton, modern liberalism sought pre-fall Eden or the end now, without Christ. Thus, Christian witness to political authorities finds itself having the sion but what it can impose on them, so that, in effect, it enforces its own sovereignty. Lateliberalism, one may say, in taking up the banner of ‘pluralism,’ has made itself self-consciously polytheistic.” 82. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 155–56: “If state-totalitarianism prioritizes government over society, the constitutionalist postulate of a political order prior to political order yields the ‘nationstate,’ an idea perfectly expressed by its hyphen: first we have the ‘nation,’ a self-evident political totality, and then the ‘state,’ which is the nation in its organized form. . . . Where the contractarian approach failed to grasp the fact of popular unity prior to political constitution, the constitutionalist approach failed to see that this popular unity was a moral unity, comprised by a common good rather than a political structure.” 83. On political representation and idolatry, see O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love, esp. pp. 45–72. 84. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 246. 85. Ibid., 247. 86. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 297: “Just as the indivisible atom has turned out to be a function of electro-magnetic charges, so the atomic individual is a function of social forces. The powers of negotiation and compromise this individual was supposed to command were never individual powers in the first place” (italics original). See also pp. 309–11. 87. Ibid., 185. O’Donovan goes on to say that liberalism “did justice neither to the particular nor to the universal: the abstract voluntarism of its idea of representative choice failed to acknowledge the binding force of historical and local particularities, while the abstract legalism of its idea of justice failed to recognize the kingdom of God in the Incarnation.”

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odd task of “defend[ing] their provisional role against a premature enthusiasm for dismissing them.”88 O’Donovan must support the good of punishment, for example, as a necessity for the interim, not yet abolished.89 Similarly, he defends the contingent truth of ordered differentiation in both society and church—against total equality asserted theologically as prior to society and true of the eschatological society: To project an ideal of eschatological equality onto the political order of secular society produces a tyrannous idealism, for social reality as we encounter it is always shaped by representation and judgment one way or the other. Eschatological equality belongs to the “not yet” of the kingdom. But the counterpolitical witness of the church, too, is constrained by that “not yet.” It points to the future appearing of the one representative, and to the decisive judgment he will give. It models the eschatological community. But it is not simply identical with the eschatological community that will live without structure or form other than the immediate presence of God and the Lamb in its midst.90

Likewise, modernity heard Jesus’s eschatological call to “judge not,” but in such a way that it lost its moral nerve here and now: “Ex-Christian liberalism inherited all the hesitancy; but no longer grounded in religious humility, it became moral insecurity.”91 Seeking its eschatological fulfillment apart from Christ destroys society itself, so O’Donovan emphasizes the provisional judgments of secular authority. Modern liberalism learned from Christian political teaching but asserted its results without their basis in Christ and his gospel. Justice and Mercy A crucial test case for the extent to which the Christian gospel may shape political order involves justice and mercy. O’Donovan addresses their relation with “an ongoing dialectic” and as a “highly dialectical set of ideas”—a dance between the two with neither static separation nor undifferentiated fusion.92 Only in the Christ event do we see the complete marriage of justice and mercy. Jesus’s death and resurrection make God’s judicial pronouncement—“just by virtue of the justice it 88. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 249. 89. On punishment, see ibid., 276–78. 90. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 261. For more on equality, see Desire of the Nations, 278–81; and Ways of Judgment, 31–41. 91. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 278. 92. Ibid., 259, 261. See also Ways of Judgment, 97.

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brought about, not solely by its response to obligation, and it took form as an act of forgiveness.”93 In this act of redemption, both justice and mercy retain their respective properties, a kind of hypostatic union as they meet in Christ. Having been represented in Christ, justice and mercy cannot have total representation in either church or state. But neither are they equally distributed in parallel, as asserted by Luther—law/justice in the state, gospel/mercy in the church. For O’Donovan, the gospel contains law.94 The church, therefore, witnesses to divine justification in a way that the state cannot: the church is a “direct” witness, the state “indirect.”95 The church represents the self-willing reception of God’s salvific judgment; the state, God’s coercive severance in the rejection of mercy. Accordingly, regarding “whether politics can be evangelical,” O’Donovan gives a nuanced answer. On the one hand, it is important to stand with the Reformers in proclaiming the “Mosaic” essence of political authority: acts of civil government “cannot condemn and redeem at once. . . . There is in God’s life-giving judgment something that our own judgments cannot, and must not try, to imitate.” We cannot “pretend to achieve politically what God has achieved in the Paschal judgment.”96 Only in the church “may we expect to see the Paschal victory take effect in judgments that immediately serve the creation of mutual love and the forgiveness of enemies.”97 In this sense, O’Donovan sees friction in the vocation of a Christian politician: “an inherent tension between the two obligations.” Christ’s kingship has “pressed in upon the exercise of secular judicial responsibility.” The identity of the Christian ruler is squarely with Christ—O’Donovan, like Augustine, does not speak about “dual citizenship”—but his actions represent “different aeons living by different 93. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 93. See also Desire of the Nations, 257: “In the light of the resurrection the cross is seen to be a judgment which is, at the same time and completely, an act of reconciliation: an act of judgment, because it effected a separation between right and wrong and made their opposition clear; an act of reconciliation, because by this judgment the way was opened for the condemned to be included in the vindication of the innocent.” 94. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 85–86. O’Donovan critiques the Lutheran formulation that the gospel is without prescription, that “the act of divine discrimination that took place there [the cross] is left with no dimensions; God’s acceptance and rejection [are] narrowed to a mathematical point without length, breadth, or height” (85). “The resurrection does not leave God’s judgment as a mathematical point without dimensions, but unfolds it and expounds it in the life of the Second Adam. . . . Here there is a prescription we may embrace as promise, a prescription that wholly presupposes that God has given us back our human powers of active life renewed” (86). 95. Ibid., 88. 96. Ibid., 87. 97. Ibid., 88.

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principles.”98 The opposition has limited resolution, but tension remains: the Christian commanding authority (in whatever social structure) “should act like a Christian, but like a Christian exercising an alien function.”99 Because of Christ’s displacement of all other authorities, “the ruler may belong with the church, too, but not qua ruler.”100 Yet, on the other hand, this moment of conflict is not the last word. Given that God’s justice is revealed in conjunction with mercy, so now “justice is to have new, evangelical content.”101 Albeit to a “limited extent that we are able,” politics must “point to the redemptive unity of judgment and reconciliation.”102 Although politics cannot itself become gospel, it does not remain unaffected: We cannot treat the sphere of human judgment as though it lay outside the reach of redemption, walled off from the grace of God. Even judgment is exposed to the effects of the church’s mission, the word of the Gospel, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. We may and should look for a reflection of redemption in the work of civil justice, too, as the ordinary practices of public judgment are themselves affected by the demand for renunciation.103

O’Donovan’s key to an “evangelical politics” is twofold—one within and one outside: the political practice of clemency and minimal punishment, and the presence of the church in its midst. By “minimal punishment,” O’Donovan does not give hesitancy to government’s use of the sword, its God-given duty. But political order shaped by the gospel is not bloodthirsty: “The dialectic between satisfying the requirements of justice and rising above the existing order of justice takes form as a constant duty to temper justice with mercy, which yields a practice characterized by ‘moderation.’”104 Part of this practice involves simply its mind-set; society does not suppose that ultimate justice is done in the punishment of crime. Here, O’Donovan, disagreeing with Augustine, is willing to speak of “relative justice.”105 Government must “provide a place of provisional satisfaction, where we may open ourselves to the infinitely reconciling judgment of the true God.”106 The mind-set of Christian rulers, even in administering 98. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 201. 99. Ibid., 200. 100. Ibid., 219. 101. Ibid., 201. 102. Ibid., 257. 103. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 100. 104. Ibid., 97. 105. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 129–30.

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strict justice, is to remember the mercy shown them: “Christian liberalism taught judges to look over their shoulders when they pronounced on fellow-sinners’ crimes. It taught them they were subject to the higher judgment of God, who would judge mercifully those that judged mercifully.”107 Although mercy must not overwhelm justice in the political endeavor, the occasional act of clemency displays a measure of the gospel: “The prince may practice a merciful judgment, witnessing to the divine work of reconciliation.”108 This humble mind-set of the ruler is the flip side of the Christian ruler’s tension. Political judgment should be considered an “alien function” to the Christian, yet “we may enter that sphere without ourselves ceasing from faith and obedience or leaving behind us the strength of God.” The key is remembering that the sphere of politics “is paradoxically related to the sphere of faith.” Its way of confronting sin is not the evangelical way of patient suffering. Its way of hearing God’s judgments is not the evangelical way of humble and trusting obedience. God’s redeeming judgment pours out the promised Holy Spirit upon all who believe and obey; human judgments convey no such power. The human judge may know the Holy Spirit’s help in judging, but cannot shed the Holy Spirit abroad on those who are judged. Human judgments cannot assure mankind regeneration and new life.109

Following Augustine, O’Donovan reminds Christians in authority that their prayers are more effective than anything else. 110 The deeper witness of evangelical politics lies simply in directing people to the true polis, the church. A political order can know its limitation of justice only by its fulfillment in the church. Civil government needs its ecclesial counterpart for true discharge of its duty: “The liberal state is sustained by its partnership with the mercy of the church.”111 Recognition of the church “implies some respect on the part of the rulers for the church’s leaders, and a willingness to listen to them as they explain the church’s tasks and seek assistance.”112 “The church asserted its own evangelical justice in society’s midst, and 106. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 26. 107. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 278. 108. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 99. 109. Ibid., 86–87. 110. Oliver O’Donovan, “Prayer and Morality in the Sermon on the Mount,” SCE 22 (2009): 21–33. 111. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 261. 112. Ibid., 217–18.

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society, to a degree, had to defer to it.”113 Civil government points to the church by its lack: “The secular function in society was to witness to divine judgment by, as it were, holding the stage for it; the church, on the other hand, must witness to divine judgment by no judgment, avoiding litigation and swallowing conflict in forgiveness. Society, respecting the judicial function as the core of political authority, must shape its conception of justice in the light of God’s reconciling work.”114 The state cannot be humble, or give way to something beyond itself, unless it recognizes the church’s unique mission: “There could be no autonomous self-sufficiency about the application of secular justice. If it were not drawn into the operations of the Spirit by the sanctification of the judge, then it would be an instrument in the hand of the devil.”115 In this dialectical relationship between justice and mercy, politics and the gospel, despite mutual influence, both maintain their distinctive roles. “Political order corresponds to the shape of the church, but may not be absorbed into it.”116 Political order’s limitation bears its witness: “Secular justice could not itself effect what church justice set out to achieve, the repentance and regeneration of the sinner. . . . It can only be a response to it. . . . It can only point, it cannot reach, to the place where justice and mercy are entirely one.”117 Like the Torah, political authority—a “ministry of condemnation”—attests to the ministry of reconciliation it cannot accomplish.118 Categorizing Oliver O’Donovan It is now time to compare O’Donovan’s thought more directly with the traditions of “two” previously delineated. O’Donovan’s overarching biblical theology, renarration of Christendom and modernity, and 113. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 260. 114. Ibid., 259. 115. Ibid., 260. 116. Ibid., 231, italics mine. 117. Ibid., 260. 118. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 88. Political judgments “can be evangelical to the extent that they respond to the witness of the church’s evangelical social life. They are shaped by the presence of a society in which redemption is taking effect and assuming a social form; so they witness to the Paschal judgment, but indirectly. They are not part of the immediate witness to resurrection life; they are a witness to the witness. Even politics is not driven back to a point from which the triumph of Christ is invisible; it is merely situated at a distance from it. The ministry of condemnation is a reverse image of the Paschal judgment, but as such it attests to it. It cannot preach the Gospel like an apostle, but it can carry out its work of condemnation in the conscious awareness that the Gospel is being preached. It can point indirectly to the living hope of which it cannot speak directly” (88).

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excavation of the foundations of political theory make him significant when mapping not only recent retrievals of political theology but also deeper patterns in the Christian tradition. Luther O’Donovan’s deepest break with Luther and the Lutheran tradition concerns the gospel: whereas Luther considered the gospel to be only tangentially related to political life, O’Donovan identifies the core reality of the gospel as “political.” This difference is not just semantic wrangling but generates conflicting formulations of the church and political practice. Because the gospel provides content for all, even aspects of political order, O’Donovan makes natural law, at most, a marginal help to Christian ethics. An inventory of O’Donovan’s use of “two kingdoms” also situates him with respect to Luther. O’Donovan uses the phrase synonymously with “two cities”—a dichotomous social reality, not a twofold plane of existence. For example, his description of “the Two Kingdoms” as Christians’ “having their own political identity but being resident on alien territory” actually better describes a two-cities paradigm.119 For Luther, the two kingdoms are not both sociopolitical but two realms—one outwardly political, one inwardly spiritual. O’Donovan’s description of Luther’s thought does not acknowledge an element of “realms” and “dimensions,” instead addressing two layers: “two authorities” (law and gospel) and “two societies,” synonymous with “two kingdoms,” “the Augustinian division between opposed, coexisting social realities.” But O’Donovan believes that the “two societies” element of Luther “turns out to be an ideal one,” because Christians are both righteous and sinful.120 O’Donovan’s expository omission of realms in Luther obscures the extent to which law and gospel operate on different planes but for all people—Christian and non-Christian. The law works primarily in external social existence, and the gospel in the heart, the very reason why 119. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 149. See also p. 196: “We can distinguish the two conceptions, perhaps, by borrowing terms from Luther and speaking of a Two-Kingdoms-Christendom and a TwoGovernments-Christendom doctrine. The one supposes that the conversion of rulers leaves the underlying social vis-à-vis exactly where it was. The other introduces a unified doctrine of society holding the twin peaks of authority together in a common social context. The ambiguities which surround the Christendom idea arise chiefly from this latter development of it.” It is odd, at least regarding Luther, to put the two phrases in conflict, especially where “kingdoms” has a political sense. 120. Ibid., 209.

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Luther ceded church government as adiaphora. The two kingdoms are an “ideal” distinction for Luther, dividing not visible things but the invisible and visible, in which all people (not just Christians as simul iustus et peccator) participate simultaneously. O’Donovan elides the difference by using “realms,” “societies,” and “cities” synonymously: “When in pre-modern Christianity two societies were distinguished as ‘two realms’ or ‘two cities,’ they were polarized as moral and eschatological alternatives . . . , a society of the saved and a society of the damned.”121 This description is true of Augustine, but not especially true of Luther. Even where O’Donovan uses “two kingdoms” terminology positively, he indicates that it must be understood in his eschatological schema of reauthorization. Israel’s exile in Babylon, under the dual authority of Babylon and Yahweh, is “the Two Kingdoms period, in which Temple without power and praetorium without worship coexisted in some kind of parallel.”122 This description matches Luther’s own parallelism of being under two rules—God’s political and spiritual rule—yet Luther would identify these as being located in two dimensions (inward and outward).123 O’Donovan, by contrast, highlights Israel’s tension in the one dimension of its community. O’Donovan makes much of the “Two Kingdoms period” in order to show their conflict. Even during the period, Daniel’s suffering in Babylon is “a warning against optimism about the compatibility of the two kingdoms.”124 For Luther, by contrast, the two kingdoms are inherently compatible, though we must not confuse their respective attributes. But, for O’Donovan, Jesus dismantled the separation of the two kingdoms. Jesus’s action and message “implied challenging the Two Kingdoms settlement with the promised unity of God’s all-sovereign rule”; he “unsettled the Two Kingdoms conception.”125 In Christ, “the Two Cities, with their concomitant Two Rules expressing Israel’s alienation from its calling, gave way to the Two Eras”—the old era symbolizing multiplicity of rule, the new era symbolizing Christ’s unitary and unmediated rule. 126 Because of the overlap of the ages, though, Christ reauthorizes civil authority, permitting again an element of the two-kingdom situation. Only with the delay of the Parousia and the reauthorization of political 121. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 247. 122. Ibid., 117. 123. Luther grounded his “two rules” conception on a prior foundation: the creational distinction of the “two realms.” 124. Ibid., 87. 125. Ibid., 90, 137, italics mine. 126. Ibid., 93.

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authority do believers still experience duality—as a secondary implication of Christ’s unity, not the foundational reality: Yet, as in speaking of the Incarnation itself we cannot affirm the hypostatic union without the two natures, so with the Kingdom of God we cannot conceive the henosis of political and spiritual without the duality of the two terms held together in it. That is why those who have asserted that a conception of Two Kingdoms is fundamental to Christian political thought have spoken truly, though at great risk of distorting the truth if they simply leave it at that. The unity of the kingdoms, we may say, is the heart of the Gospel, their duality is the pericardium. Proclaiming the unity of God’s rule in Christ is the task of Christian witness; understanding the duality is the chief assistance rendered by Christian reflection. 127

Though this statement sounds positive toward the two-kingdom paradigm, it is not very applicable to Luther’s terminology; it is therefore a positive statement primarily of an Augustinian two-cities conception. After the Christ event, notwithstanding the two both being authorized by Christ, “the duality assumes a conflictual, aggressive note. . . . It is a meeting, as Augustine described it, of two ‘cities,’ of two powerful and authorised (though differently powerful and unequally authorised) political communities.”128 Because O’Donovan’s language of “two kingdoms” is confusing, other elements of his engagement better help to identify his relationship to that tradition. O’Donovan’s opposition to the Lutheran category of “gospel” is already clear, and he also critiques treating the social and the spiritual as separate categories or dimensions. For example, according to O’Donovan, the Pauline contrast of “flesh” and “spirit” “is not an anthropological contrast but an eschatological one.” Like law and gospel, they “represent two realms within the terms of which we cannot live simultaneously.”129 For O’Donovan, then, the most basic “two” is eschatological: “The contrast between the ages, between the now and the then, lies at the heart of all other contrasts.”130 Similarly, O’Donovan critiques the idea that the church “becomes accommodated to existing political societies as a system of religious practice that can flourish with them,” and “it does not lay claim to the same ground that they occupy. Its authority is distinguished from theirs as ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘earthly.’ Any collision between its claims and theirs is due 127. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 82. 128. Ibid., 158. 129. Ibid., 129, italics mine. 130. O’Donovan, “Prayer and Morality,” 29, italics original.

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to a confusion of categories.”131 These words describe Luther’s position quite well. Accordingly, where O’Donovan does accord with Luther’s two kingdoms involves his concession that the church, in this “interim” time, participates in “secular” structures in a kind of formal, external way. He does not claim all aspects of the church’s visibility for the eschatological kingdom, as Roman Catholics and Anabaptists tend to do, though in opposite ways. Inasmuch as O’Donovan still retains some law/gospel distinction applied to state/church division, O’Donovan runs parallel to Luther. This parallelism is especially strong in their identification of the state as postfall. As such, there can therefore be some cooperation between the state and the institutional church. Finally, O’Donovan’s Protestant highlighting of the individual also marks him out as partially parallel to Luther. Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer O’Donovan is especially similar to Reinhold Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer concerning the fallenness of civil government. Although O’Donovan does not attribute necessary “evil” to political judgment, he is suspicious about government’s promoting for a people’s common good. With Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer, he affirms the ongoing social responsibility of Christians and the required role of government, given the need for public justice. Yet all three agree in accounting for civil authority in nonsacral terms. O’Donovan brings up Niebuhr primarily as an example opposing the idealist tradition in Christian political thought. Niebuhr reminded the world of civilization’s “dependence upon violence.” “We cannot look to civilization to satisfy nature’s claim; for always in doing justice it does injustice as well. It was the great contribution of Reinhold Niebuhr, earlier in this century, to understand this as clearly as anyone has done, and to restate for modern liberal society the theological truths which long since gave the Western political tradition its rationale.”132 Elsewhere, Niebuhr’s “great merit was to understand perfectly the logic of the idealist formulations for which he could find no substitutes.”133 “That no political society can be entirely free of idolatry was Reinhold Niebuhr’s most enduring insight.”134 131. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 162. 132. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 74. 133. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 121. 134. O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love, 41.

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Granting those similarities, there are clear differences. Niebuhr’s lack of ecclesiology stands out, whereas O’Donovan believes that the state can remain humble and limited only because of counterweighting from the church’s political nature. For Niebuhr, the state remains limited by democracy, conflicting pluralisms keeping it in check. O’Donovan is critical of Niebuhr’s “moral man, immoral society” formulation, because it effectively concedes the impossibility of communal moral reasoning, even for the church. With ecclesiology comes eschatological difference, too: though Niebuhr also employs such a dialectic, O’Donovan sees more ways by which the church bears witness to Christ’s rule here and now, including the reorientation of earthly political rule toward the church’s mission. Whereas Niebuhr lacked a substantial ecclesiology, Bonhoeffer supplied a more robust account. Bonhoeffer’s critique of the church’s invisibility in the Lutheran tradition, as well as the state’s “naturalness,” accords well with O’Donovan’s own criticisms. Bonhoeffer also exhibits a clearer eschatology than Niebuhr, in which Christ’s present reign means a “polemical” relationship between the two kingdoms. Despite these resemblances, Bonhoeffer and O’Donovan also make several diverging moves. Bonhoeffer’s pacifist interpretation collides with O’Donovan’s reading about the self-judging, nonlitigious character of Christian reconciliation.135 Thus, O’Donovan sees political judgment as “alien” to the Christian’s eschatological identity, but not necessarily sinful. One of O’Donovan’s few references critiques Bonhoeffer regarding the “divine mandates.” Interestingly, O’Donovan lumps this conception with neo-Calvinist “sphere sovereignty,” signaling its “deeper weakness, which is that it ranges the church among a number of elementary social forms.”136 “Assimilated to other generalizable spheres of society,” this move “seems to undermine ecclesiology.” One might see here a shift in Bonhoeffer from his earlier ecclesiological works to the wider social concerns of Ethics. In any case, O’Donovan winds up addressing both Bonhoeffer’s earlier and later priorities with a differently ecclesiocentric social and political theology.

135. See O’Donovan, “Prayer and Morality,” and Self, World, and Time: Ethics as Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 1:64. 136. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 254.

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Neo-Augustinian Liberalism Comparison of O’Donovan with neo-Augustinian liberals has already been anticipated in earlier chapters, inasmuch as O’Donovan is unwilling to jettison the Christendom aspects of Augustine himself. His critique of Markus’s historical interpretation of Augustine is well known,137 but also important is his constructive contrast with Markus. Whereas Markus is very critical of Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy while appreciative of John Rawls, O’Donovan has shown signs of general appreciation for Milbank while being critical of Rawls.138 Though Markus and O’Donovan agree on the idea of a saeculum, Markus maintains that this space can be supported without distinctively Christian arguments (if even acknowledged as a Christian invention), whereas O’Donovan places it within the narrative of Christ’s victory and the church’s mission. O’Donovan does not tend toward Markus’s “neutrality” language for this space; rather, it is an arena of moral and even religious underpinning. These contrasts with Markus are true, to a lesser extent, vis-à-vis Mathewes and Gregory as well. Contemporary Neoconservatism Much comparison between O’Donovan and contemporary neoconservatism (both Lutheran and Catholic) has already been introduced by discussion of Luther. O’Donovan’s critiques of natural law, a strict law/ gospel dichotomy, and certain limitations of the scope of Christ’s victory apply here as well. Neoconservatives argue for “secularity” that is neither atheistic nor specifically Christian, but open to “religion.” Though O’Donovan is sympathetic with their negative portrayal of the “naked” public square, his theological account goes further. Christ’s reign is to be manifest over defeated political authorities as well as in the church. Reformed Two Kingdoms Accordingly, deep separation of law and gospel, and especially creation 137. O’Donovan, “Political Thought of City of God 19.” 138. On Milbank, see O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, xiv; and Desire of the Nations, 249. For mild critique of Milbank, see Ways of Judgment, 89–93, 246. In all three places, O’Donovan acknowledges the rightness of Milbank’s intuition—that forgiveness has a place in public justice and “gift” is important—but critiques how Milbank gets there. For critique of Rawls, see Ways of Judgment, 41, 156, 235, 297.

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and redemption, constitutes the main division between O’Donovan and the emerging Reformed two-kingdom movement. Whereas Reformed two-kingdom advocates propose an “apolitical” conception of redemption and the church, O’Donovan sees salvation in genuinely political terms. Perhaps an even greater divide involves the substance of revelation, the fact that, for Reformed two-kingdom proponents, Scripture itself does not furnish content for social and political life. Christ rules over the church in his redemptive capacity, known through the word of the gospel, but he oversees the interaction of nations apart from his status as Israel’s king and humanity’s representative. For O’Donovan, this shrinks the gospel to the transcendence of human life, rather than its redemption. Yet unexpected convergence appears concerning the visibility and centrality of the church. Though O’Donovan can describe the church in political terms, which the Reformed two-kingdom paradigm consciously avoids, both see its inauguration as the in-breaking of the eschatological kingdom. Where the Reformed two-kingdom assertion goes even further is in making ecclesiastical structure and ministerial mediation key to this redemptive order. O’Donovan’s extra-ecclesial eschatology may be more realized, but his eschatology of the church as an institution is less realized than the Reformed two-kingdom. Moreover, like Augustine and Luther, O’Donovan has a very structureless view of the eschaton. Augustine Perhaps the most interesting comparison to make, therefore, is the one implicit in this work’s chapter sequence—O’Donovan after Augustine. The argument preceding this chapter casts most contemporary political theologies as indebted to Luther’s two-kingdom paradigm—whether or not they recognize that, or even if they deny it. Even neoconservative Roman Catholics are not exempt from this influence. To a significant extent, the Lutheran two-kingdom model is influential upon and even synonymous with modern polity itself. Thus, retrieving Augustine for the sake of modern liberalism means Lutheranizing Augustine: a two-kingdom, not two-cities, Augustine. By contrast, the present chapter claims that Oliver O’Donovan is at least one exception to that trend. As a partial advocate of the Christendom idea, O’Donovan retains much of Augustine and even the original Christendom two kingdoms of Luther. Admittedly, the extent to which O’Donovan

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remains firmly Protestant indicates his “Lutheran” transformation of certain Augustinian categories, and he defends early-modern liberalism in his own Christian fashion. Nevertheless, he retrieves Augustine in a fundamentally different way from the neo-Augustinian liberals, while diverging from the oft-implicit Luther influence over many of the aforementioned groups. The similarities between O’Donovan and Augustine are so numerous that they are hardly worth recounting. O’Donovan has said publicly that Augustine is his “greatest intellectual influence,” “a guiding light” for whom he “can sympathise with what he gets wrong as well as with what he gets right.”139 Most important for our analysis is that O’Donovan follows Augustine’s crucial dichotomy between two social realities. Law and gospel do not divide reality into asocial and social; they cut through any division of societies. Like Augustine, O’Donovan sees political authority as postlapsarian and transformed by Christ’s victory. The church is now the central society in human existence, representing the ultimate replacement of all earthly political societies. The act of political rule and judgment is shaped by Christian virtue but remains outside the heart of Christian faith and life—on its edge, neither wholly outside nor inside. For both Augustine and O’Donovan, the question of political justice and divine forgiveness exemplifies the central dynamic of Christian political theology. O’Donovan’s divergence from Augustine is all the more interesting. One of the clearest differences is O’Donovan’s criticism of Augustine on the relationship of Israel to the church, in the context of whether the parity of priest and king is a pre-Christ dynamic. For O’Donovan, the answer is no, because the church’s relationship to Israel parallels that of temple and city. The church is a city, according to O’Donovan, yet only to the degree that it wrestles with Israel for a public tradition and political structure. But, for Augustine, priest and king have a deeper dynamic than the post-Pentecostal era. O’Donovan cites the following: “One of the sources of this mistake is a doctrine to which an embarrassingly distinguished company has subscribed, Augustine himself among them, that the church was already present in Israel before Christ.”140 Perhaps the deeper point concerns O’Donovan’s whole narration of Christendom—“the doctrine of the Two”—and how much he empha139. Oliver O’Donovan, “Political Theology: Interview with Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan,” in God’s Advocates: Christian Thinkers in Conversation, ed. Rupert Shortt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 265, 267. 140. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 162.

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sizes eschatology. An earlier section in this chapter argued that Augustine saw the saeculum not, contra many interpreters (O’Donovan included), as the era between Christ’s advent and return but as the entire period after the fall until the consummation. This view does not mean that Augustine saw no change in the coming of Christ, but only that he primarily derived the tensions of faith and politics from fallen life generally. In other words, O’Donovan may be reading back into the history of the Christendom idea his own eschatological distinctions rather than finding them in premodern authors. At moments, he describes the Christendom idea entirely in terms of his reauthorization idea,141 yet his own history acknowledges that the eschatological tension was lost around the time of Augustine.142 This historical concern does nothing to damage O’Donovan’s constructive proposal about Christ’s reauthorization, yet it highlights that others did not formulate theirs in the same way. Because of O’Donovan’s view regarding Israel, a further difference between him and Augustine concerns the degree to which the church is freestanding and “political.” Though O’Donovan uses political vocabulary, he also acknowledges its analogical status. The church becomes more visible and independent as it engages with Israel and the structures of public authority. However, in Augustine, for whom Israel does not play the same role, the church exercises independence in a profounder way. Here again, O’Donovan is often labeled supersessionist, with an overrealized eschatology, but Augustine has a much more visible ecclesiology and eschatology. Whereas O’Donovan speaks of the church’s “witness” to the coming kingdom, even of its living under Christ’s hidden rule now, Augustine is willing to speak synonymously at times of the kingdom and the church. As another consequence, O’Donovan is more suspicious of the extent to which Christians can partner with the state blamelessly. Rule appears more problematic because of his views on political representation, which he acknowledges that he did not receive from Augustine: “One pillar of my account of government can admittedly claim no Augustinian parentage, and that is my view of government’s repre141. See, e.g., O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 203: “The eschatological character of Christendom” was slackened by the “distribution of the roles” of priest and king. Also p. 211: “The doctrine of the Two was, before all else, a doctrine of two ages. The passing age of the principalities and powers has overlapped with the coming age of God’s Kingdom. The confrontation of the two societies, the more attenuated balance of the two rules and the inner dynamism of the two persons are all generated by this eschatological fusion.” 142. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 202–3.

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sentative status.”143 All representation after Christ is suspect, one reason why O’Donovan speaks of the church as “ruled” and not “ruling.” Ministerial order in the church is representative, but not in a political way—or at least minimally so. Augustine is more willing to speak of the church’s leaders in parallel with political rulers, and of the church itself as having a kind of godly dominion. It should be clear that O’Donovan is not Niebuhrian on this point—with political rule (especially representation, which Niebuhr does not discuss) having the taint of sin—though he may be closer to Niebuhr than Augustine is. For Augustine, the debate about Christian involvement in politics is the same as war—bloodshed. But, for O’Donovan, the question of government is expanded to include representation itself. The final consequence of O’Donovan’s distinction from Augustine regarding Israel and the church involves the full implications of justification by faith. My point is not to determine exactly Augustine’s views on justification and salvation, which would require much more nuance than what must suffice here. The relevant point for the present is that Augustine’s law/grace dialectic allowed for closer compatibility of law and its application. O’Donovan is more characteristically Protestant in emphasizing law’s condemnatory function. Combining this distinction with the prior note about representation makes clear that O’Donovan puts clearer focus on the individual and the church’s being constituted apart from ministerial order. The last chapter of O’Donovan’s Ways of Judgment, with its heavy reliance on Søren Kierkegaard, reads much closer to Luther on the two kingdoms than to Augustine’s two cities. This Protestant moment helps to explain O’Donovan’s qualified defense of liberalism and democracy. Thus, O’Donovan represents an Augustinian two-cities paradigm chastened by a Lutheran two-kingdoms one. Even he bears marks of Luther’s paradigm and its leading toward a type of modern liberalism. Nevertheless, O’Donovan is the exception among modern retrievals of Augustine that proves certain rules. The two-kingdoms idea chastens a fundamental commitment to Augustinian thinking instead of providing an Augustinian gloss on the two kingdoms. O’Donovan’s “Christian liberalism” illustrates a possible Protestant promise of a “liberal” Christendom—neither Erastian nor ecclesiocratic, though evangelical and ecclesiocentric.

143. Oliver O’Donovan, “Judgment, Tradition, and Reason: A Response,” PT 9 (2008): 396.

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Christian political theology has often had a “two”—duality—at its center. Two cities, two powers, two kingdoms, two rules—all seek to express different aspects of how Christians should navigate public life. This work has sought to understand the particular similarities and differences between major two-kingdom and two-city proposals, especially in this post-Christendom context. How are these two “dual” paradigms related, and how do they connect with narratives of Christendom and modernity? Luther and Augustine play major roles in this exposition, lending conceptual clarity to recent Christ-and-culture models and revealing underlying thought patterns that involve deep traditions of Christian political theology. Such conceptual analysis uncovers patterns that often go unnoticed and unquestioned. This conclusion reviews the overall argument regarding those patterns, and begins to suggest their implications. Summary: Traditions of the “Two” Chapter 1 began the overall argument with a crucial hinge figure between post-Augustinian twos and modern liberalism, reevaluating Martin Luther’s two-kingdom theology. A newer reading of Luther must recognize his two kingdoms as foundationally a dichotomy between inward and outward realms, between unmediated relationship to God and mediated sociality. Though some historians have recently begun to make that transition, chapter 1 here expanded those insights into a fuller picture of Luther’s biblical political theology, especially connecting three additional points. First, law and gospel act as parallel principles for the two realms, with law and natural reason taking the primary place in all public order, including the visible 215

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church. Second, Luther’s construal of the transition from old covenant to new covenant demonstrates this movement from outward priority to inward priority. Third, this new reading helps to explain Luther’s ambiguity regarding Christendom: both kingdoms are amenable to a type of Christendom situation but are also an upstream source for modern secular liberalism. Crucially for the beginning of this argument, Luther’s primary duality was not an institutional divide between church and state—a popular misreading of the two kingdoms that persists even in some academic circles. For Luther, the creational dichotomy of body and soul gave way to two different ways by which God rules the world: mediating forms of outward order in society and the unmediated word of promise in the heart. These dual forms of government for the two realms were intensified after the fall into the condemnatory and restraining aspects of law and the reassuring word of the gospel. Luther saw the visible church as located firmly within the external structures of preservation guided by laws of outward organization; the visible is a hedge around the gospel, which is what actually reaches into the soul. This churchly location in the outward realm further helped to explain how Luther could fit within a type of Christendom situation, where church and state both deal with external forms of life. This Christendom was Erastian: the church does not direct the state, nor does the gospel give any orientation to public polities. Chapter 2 traced the central legacy of Luther’s thought into the twentieth century. A crucial change in the two-kingdom thinking from Luther involved deepening the autonomy of natural law as identified apart from special revelation. For Luther, biblical law was simply the publication of natural law, with religious worship, as an outward form, part of that law’s rational content. For the modern alternative, as it developed, divine revelation was the church’s separate source of knowledge, pertaining only to its own inner life. Church and state may cooperate in some ways, but their endeavors are entirely parallel. This trajectory set the stage for Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both of whom critiqued the contemporary use of two-kingdom thought while rehabilitating variants—their critique being one reason scholars have failed to connect them to a Lutheran two-kingdom paradigm. They represent a return to Luther in some ways and an interjection of new elements into the two-kingdom paradigm. In particular, they modified the static version of the two kingdoms by their dialectical method, aiming to open the horizon of the gospel

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to society. However, this broadening of the gospel beyond strict institutionalism did not result in its direct application to civil government. Both Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer reached an even more positive assessment of secularity than Luther. Niebuhr shifted Luther’s anthropological duality (outward/inward) to an eschatological duality (present/ future) and added dialectical participation: the gospel of love is not fulfilled until the eschaton, even if it can be approximated in the present by pursuit of equal justice. Bonhoeffer likewise challenged the static conception early on by highlighting the church as a contrast community (creating two societies, as in Augustine), but later he also accepted the “natural” as having its own kind of integrity, though with a christological center. Chapter 3 followed Niebuhr’s legacy in the English-speaking world among Lutheran and Roman Catholic neoconservatives, a surprisingly understudied theological school. In contrast to Niebuhr, who reflected Luther’s thought pattern while being overtly critical, yet under Niebuhr’s influence, Robert Benne has explicitly sought to retrieve Luther’s two-kingdom thought. Yet the difference between Benne’s and Luther’s distinctions allows Benne to go farther in positing the secularity of public life, especially the autonomy of the state and its source of moral knowledge in a religiously neutral natural law. Benne’s Catholic coadvocates in neoconservatism demonstrate a similar twokingdom thought pattern, leaving behind a Christendom past and embracing modern liberalism. Neoconservatives can thus speak against a “naked public square” while denying that they attempt to apply Christian or evangelical politics directly to secular society. Accordingly, chapter 3 crucially contributes to the argument that two-kingdom accounts and modern liberalism go hand-in-hand. Although Luther himself allowed for a kind of cooperation of church and state, features of his thought set the pattern for making all public society autonomous from the church (as institution) and the gospel (as revelation). What especially severed Luther’s complementarianism of church and state was the concept of “religion” without Christian specificity, the “law-form” of faith without the content of the gospel. Thus, neoconservatives argue for including “religious faith” and “transcendent values” in the public square, but not Christian virtues or a Christian concept of redemption or the good. The state can maintain its penultimate place by not declaring its allegiance to a particular religion. Chapter 3 uniquely synthesizes Catholic and Protestant accounts

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of religious freedom and their relation to Reinhold Niebuhr through a two-kingdom lens. Chapter 4 detailed recent proposals for two-kingdom retrieval along Calvinistic lines. The Reformed two-kingdom approach has not relied upon figures like Niebuhr. Yet, like the neoconservative approach—an underappreciated connection—it embraces aspects of modern liberal polity while retaining a conservative account of the gospel. The twin foundation of this movement (often unnoticed in scholarship) involves biblical theology—especially Meredith Kline’s construal of the church’s relationship to Israel—and the historical renarration of Reformed disconnection from Christendom, coinciding with critique of neo-Calvinist transformationism. The Reformed two-kingdom approach, then, becomes distinctive for its lack of tension and pervasive parallelism, so clearly separating creation from redemption and secular from sacred. Making this duality creational moves the Reformed two-kingdom formulation closer to Luther than to Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, or even modern Lutherans. Yet the Reformed make the visible church “sacred” in a way Luther did not. Ironically, this decision actually brings its model closer to some medieval scholastic views that Luther rejected.1 Nature and grace are entirely cordoned off from each other. As for Augustine, “the two” constitute social realities, but, contra Augustine, these social realities are not in conflict; Christians have two separate but compatible social citizenships. This separation is exaggerated by the divorce of natural law from biblical revelation. The Reformed two-kingdom position is therefore thoroughly modern and quite hostile to a Christendom style of relating the kingdoms. Chapter 5 then mapped the contemporary movement of neo-Augustinian liberalism. Again, this model owes a debt to Niebuhr for claiming to retrieve Augustine. But its particular form is indebted especially to R. A. Markus and his reading of Augustine in support of modern liberalism. The key is Augustine’s idea of the saeculum—read as this present age, being opaque to God’s redemptive purposes, neither sacred nor profane. Going beyond Niebuhr’s selective retrieval, Markus “liberalized” Augustine to an even greater extent.2 Markus set the path for 1. The Reformed two-kingdom approach stays Protestant by not allowing the nature/grace schema to have a “stepladder” approach to salvation. Salvation is divided across institutional lines. 2. Reinhold Niebuhr believed that Augustine was less passive than Luther about the possibility of political transformation—a charge that is slightly off the mark; Luther was fine with political change, as long as it was not associated with the gospel or redemption. Niebuhr thus preferred Augustine, especially what he saw as Augustine’s emphasis on provisionality and secularity. How-

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future political theologians—the neo-Augustinian liberals—to retrieve Augustine as a resource for Christians within the modern pluralist order. But, whereas Markus sought to legitimate liberal polity, the neo-Augustinian liberals simply assumed liberal polity, retrieving from Augustine virtues compatible with the politics of democratic liberalism. The focus on virtue turns back inward, toward motivation and formation to engage the civic arena. Although these neo-Augustinian liberals identify their proposals as “two cities” and criticize Luther, their thought pattern bears some very close resemblance to Luther’s two kingdoms. The conclusion to chapter 5 is therefore similar to that of chapter 3: the extent to which scholars advocate for modern liberalism—even simply for action within its arranged structure—reflects an implicit “Lutheran” reading of the public separation of law and gospel. The language of “virtue” among neo-Augustinians is partially or completely free of theological rigor in attachment to the gospel. Christian participation in public life does not mean “Christianizing” the civil polity—just the opposite, in fact; it means letting political action shape Christian life. The political order does not learn from the Christian gospel; rather, Christians can learn from the political order. Although Eric Gregory and Charles Mathewes do not use the language of natural law, they emphasize the need for an overlapping consensus on shared values for the sake of pluralistic culture. Chapter 5 makes its contribution in further highlighting the extent to which Augustinian liberals remain indebted to Markus’s earlier reading and the extent to which they actually reinforce liberal principles—not just operate within liberal confines. Hence, chapter 6 took a detour from contemporary mapping to situate Augustine vis-à-vis the figures previously outlined. As a crucial hinge for the overall argument, the chapter demonstrates important dissimilarities between Augustine himself and recent interpretations or constructive proposals bearing his name. In particular, against the tide of current Augustinian scholarship, I offered a more “Christendom” reading of Augustine, showing him to be favorable to the application of the gospel and historical revelation to the act of political discernment. The two cities are visible societies, reflecting a moral duality that is distinct in social reality and clearly involving the hisever, Niebuhr read Augustine’s “city of God” as identifiable with the visible church (contra neoAugustinian liberals), a position he rejected in favor of Luther’s more realistic and pragmatic ecclesiology.

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torical church’s exerting influence within the civil order. Augustine’s two cities are therefore, first of all, neither anthropological nor eschatological but moral, worked out visibly in society and then finally distinguished on the last day. Augustine thus bears some similarities to the “dialectic” of Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer but with greater resolution in the direction of a Christian politics, given that his two are not exclusively eschatological but also ecclesiological. To put it another way, not only can the gospel be applied in visible and public ways, but Augustine’s eschatology—although not the absolute center of his polarity—is more realized than his twentieth-century retrievers say: the final victory offers glimpses in the present through the influence of the church. Chapter 7 introduced Oliver O’Donovan as a foil to recent proposals of two cities and two kingdoms, having greater similarity to the authentic Augustine. Unlike many recent thinkers, O’Donovan has deeper affinity with Augustine’s openness to the Christendom idea. O’Donovan’s Christendom proposal is also more Augustinian than Lutheran, although, ironically, Luther’s retention of a version of Christendom puts O’Donovan closer to Luther than even modern Lutheran two-kingdom thought. For O’Donovan, the Christendom idea is not church and state on the same level—Luther’s Erastian Christendom—but the church as model for political society and the gospel informing the reality of political practice. But, whereas Augustine’s primary duality was moral, resulting in an eschatological divide, O’Donovan’s is the reverse: an eschatological divide that results in two moral societies.3 Whereas others offer an “Augustinian two kingdoms”—using the form of Augustine’s language with Lutheran substance—O’Donovan’s perspective can be seen as a more authentically Augustinian “two cities” model chastened by aspects of Luther’s Protestantism.4 O’Donovan’s version of “Christian liberalism” reflects the role of the two kingdoms in his thought, along with the concept of dual authorities, some distinction between Israel and the church, aspects of the church’s secularity, and rehabilitation of individual inwardness. Analysis of O’Donovan’s thought helps us see clearly two different strands at work. The interweaving of these strands points to larger implications of the story our historical analysis has told. 3. That O’Donovan’s duality is in the first place eschatological reflects his debt to modern thought—both to Reinhold Niebuhr and to biblical theology and its concept of “inaugurated eschatology.” 4. O’Donovan uses the language of “two kingdoms” and “two rules” more often than “two cities,” which appears quite seldom. Yet when he uses this two-kingdom language, it refers to social realities.

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Implications: Areas for Further Investigation Having surveyed the narrative argument, we have already indicated chapter-by-chapter insights generated by this project’s mapping exercise. Now, we can outline some implications not directly detailed in the full-scale map. As another mapping exercise, this section will contain a different key: elements crucial for comparing and contrasting the different models of political theology. We might call these the “topographical elements” relating and distinguishing the various paradigms located in the prior chapters’ map. The result here is a dogmatic cartological exercise, charting key decision points affecting Christian existence in various political orders. Accounting for Christendom and Modern Liberalism One clear implication of this book’s argument regards an account of “Christendom” and modernity. Careful clarification is especially important here. When referring to a “Christendom” model or approach, I mean a certain theory that is advocated—what O’Donovan calls “the Christendom idea”5—not a particular situation. Thus, historical eras may be designated by the moniker “Christendom” (such as “medieval Christendom”) inasmuch as Christians supported the Christendom idea, but it is much less interesting to isolate a state of affairs than to understand its theological justification. This means that one can support the Christendom idea in a non-Christendom situation; practical results must be differentiated from conceptual bases. In other words, the situation of Christendom can be seen as a hoped-for goal, the fruit of an effective mission, and not necessarily as a contextual standard.6 The definition of Christendom can be delineated through several different categories, with corresponding “weak” and “strong” descriptions. I outline four different types based on five different questions: (1) realm of influence, (2) type of participation, (3) type of revelation, and (4) type of relationship. At root, the five questions ask to what extent society and the state in particular can be “Christian”—and in what way. The common core of all these descriptions of “Christendom” 5. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 212, italics mine. 6. For the Christendom idea as “mission,” see chapter 8 in O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 212–26. “The Christendom idea has to be located correctly as an aspect of the church’s understanding of mission” (212).

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is that Christian faith does not prohibit or merely allow participation in the civil community but, rather, positively prescribes the shaping of the social order according to principles of Christian faith.7 In other words, Christian faithfulness is neither hostile nor ambivalent to collaboration with political organs; it seeks opportunity of mutual service as an expression of its mission. The church should, as much as possible, cooperate with the state for common goals.8 Within this common definition, we can discern different types of Christendom, however, based on a response to certain issues. Realm of Influence One way to distinguish types of Christendom is to ask where exactly Christian influence can occur: Is political participation allowable or prescriptive, or is broadly social involvement the only realm of concern? The issue here might be with the use of force inherent in political activity that is not true of social matters broadly. A weak form of Christendom is the concept of a “Christian culture”—a designation harder to nail down—in which a society generally reflects Christian belief and behavior.9 A stronger form involves explicit, public confession in the form of a state declaration—for example, in O’Donovan’s phrases, “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order” and “the idea of a confessionally Christian government.”10 O’Donovan ties these ideas specifically to “Christian constitutionalism,”11 wherein the political charter affirms the state’s existence as owing to the authority of Jesus Christ, but such a confessional Christian political order need not be restricted to constitutional governments. The declaration of other legal statutes

7. Peter J. Leithart, Against Christianity (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2003), 125, frames the issue of Christendom this way: “The issue . . . is whether a Christian civilization that extends beyond the Church is in itself a false path. . . . The issue is whether the hope of forming Christian culture in the wider society is inherent to the Church’s mission, or a deviation from the Church’s mission. Should the Christian ekklesia want to remake the earthly city in her image?” (italics original). 8. On “cooperation,” note O’Donovan’s description: “The Christendom idea describes a mutual service between two authorities, predicated on the difference and the balance of their roles. . . . The service rendered by the state to the church is to facilitate its mission. The state itself cannot pursue the mission of the church, for it is not consecrated to that task and its weapons of coercion are not fitted for it. But it may facilitate the mission of the church” (Desire of the Nations, 217, italics original). He also describes a Christendom situation as the state’s “recognition of the church and acknowledgment of its mission” (217). 9. See, e.g., T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society. New York: Harcourt, 1940. Leithart’s framing of the issue of Christendom in n. 7 centers on the issue of culture, not politics, though he himself would include the shaping of political order as also essential. 10. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 195. 11. Ibid., 240.

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and the confession of a monarch in confirmation with representative political society, for example, might also be counted. 12 Thus, “confession” can be a delineating factor of the Christendom idea—either simply by the majority of individuals in a population or by its political representation. Corresponding to the next category, this confession can be stated as the establishment of either a religion or a church. The confession of the Christian religion can be denominational—a specific tradition of Christianity—or generically Christian (e.g., the constitutional declaration of Zambia). This is different from establishment of a national church, the social organization of the Christian religion.13 Type of Participation A further question about Christendom is the type of participation under consideration. A populist version of Christendom states that allowable collaboration with the state pertains to individual Christians, not their communities or clergy. An ecclesial model, however, allows for specifically churchly involvement of some kind—either by ecclesiastical representatives or by entire church bodies. Political establishment of religion is often linked to populist versions, whereas ecclesiastical establishment is generally associated with an ecclesial model for Christendom. Type of Revelation With participation in the civil polity, we might distinguish, for example, between a Mosaic Christendom and an evangelical Christendom. A Mosaic political order sees Christian involvement with the state as a “law form” of its faith. Believers should seek to shape a political order in which its general moral principles are compatible with Christian faith. The source for this involvement is the moral knowledge revealed primarily by the Old Testament, by the overarching ethical framework of Scripture, or by divine natural law. In contrast, an evangelical polit12. Those who support the weaker idea of “Christendom” as a Christian culture only—excluding the idea of a “Christian state”—thus argue that confession should be restricted only to individuals and only implicitly to social bodies. 13. In neither case does it seem inherent to Christendom that (a) the establishment of religion excludes the free exercise of other religions, (b) the establishment of a church requires the exclusion of other churches, or (c) the establishment of a church requires official taxation of some kind. On item b, ecclesiastical establishment can be of two or more churches (see, e.g., Germany, with Protestant and Catholic churches; and Finland, with Lutheran and Orthodox churches).

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ical order sees Christian involvement with the state as stemming from the gospel. Believers seek to shape a political order that responds to and points toward the saving work of Christ, and the source for this involvement is the revelatory history of redemption in Scripture—not simply the divine law but the law revealed in Jesus Christ. A Mosaic Christendom is “Christian” only in recognition of divine moral authority, not a confession of Christ’s lordship. Type of Relationship Finally, there are also different ways to construe the relationship of church and state within the Christendom idea. First, an Erastian model sees the visible church as sharing a “law form” of faith with civil authority, able to collaborate on such externals and moral norms.14 Second, a parallelist model sees concord between church and state, because they work on different planes: the church with the gospel for the soul and the state with the law for the body. They correspond inasmuch as there is a dialectic between law and gospel.15 Third, an ecclesiocentric model allows for both church and state to be patterned after the form of the gospel, but the state, as exhibiting more of the “law” dimension, submits and gives way to the church.16 Erastian and parallelist forms of Christendom are generally Mosaic, whereas an ecclesiocentric form is generally evangelical. Again, the purpose of bringing up these “types” of Christendom is not only to show that it is not a monolithic concept but also to show that even within contested versions of Christendom, questions arise about Christian visions of law and gospel, sociality, models of revelation, and the nature of the church. The same questions apply both for types of rejection of Christendom and for types of acceptance of a Christendom idea. Corresponding to the idea of Christendom is the idea of modern liberalism. Throughout this work, “modernity” refers exclusively to its sociopolitical dimension—in other words, liberalism. The terms “liberal” and “liberalism” should not be confused with the conserva14. The Erastian model is seen most clearly in Lutheran states and in early England. Oliver O’Donovan argues that England has kept the form of an Erastian Christendom but has since migrated toward an ecclesiocentric model (On the Thirty-Nine Articles: A Conversation with Tudor Christianity [Oxford: Paternoster, 1986], 119–20). 15. The “Christendom” of Nazi Germany and some populist “Christian America” approaches can be characterized in this way. 16. This version appears in Augustine (I argue), in Roman Catholic countries as well as a mixed form in England, and in some Anglican African countries.

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tive–liberal spectrum in contemporary partisan politics, because both operate within a liberal framework, the debate being which parts of liberalism to conserve or to double down on. Neither does this terminology refer directly to liberal theology—to higher criticism and rejection of traditional Christian doctrines—although the conclusion of the present work does examine how we might associate the two. Modern liberalism in this study refers primary to liberal polity without excluding liberal theory that supports it. Liberal polity is the arrangement of political structures (often by constitution) to separate the influences of church and state. More specifically, the state is independent of church oversight, so that the church has no authority over the state, and somewhat vice versa.17 A thoroughly liberal polity does not allow religious establishment of its political authority. Liberal theory is much more expansive than liberal polity, for there are numerous competing accounts, and it is possible to have a liberal theory without a liberal polity (as in European countries). Although there is no one comprehensive liberal theory, most liberal theories hold that one religion need not provide a comprehensive conception of the good; the state is neutral regarding religion and religious bodies.18 Most liberal theories include a social-contract picture of government, with government as a protector and arbiter of individual rights. Finally, an explanation is needed about the ambiguous word “secular.” James K. A. Smith helpfully taxonomizes the word with three distinct meanings: (1) “temporary,” as it is used in the Christian theological tradition prior to modernity; (2) “areligious,” as it is used in secularization theories of the Enlightenment; and (3) “contested conditions of belief.”19 It is the third meaning that Smith, following Charles Taylor, argues is the most important in explaining modernity as a “secular age.” Modernity is “secular” not because it is without religion but because it is characterized by pluralism, in which the idea of religious belief itself is contested. Though Smith’s taxonomy is helpful, it does not include the distinct 17. O’Donovan does not use “liberal” in this sense regarding early-modern liberalism—what he calls “Christian liberalism” and “Christian constitutionalism,” which is almost synonymous with his definition of “Christendom.” O’Donovan calls modern political order “neo-liberalism” (Desire of the Nations, 222). I will use the more accepted sense of “liberal” as a contrast to “Christendom.” 18. Recent challenges to liberal theories have emerged from “civic republicanism,” but John Perry rightly notes that even civic republicanism operates within a liberal polity and is better called liberal republicanism (The Pretenses of Loyalty: Locke, Liberal Theory, and American Political Theology [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011], 133). 19. James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 20–22.

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concept of political secularity. When the term “secular” is paired with “modernity” or “liberalism,” I refer to this political idea. It is an amalgamation of definitions 1 and 2: civil governments are “neutral” with regard to the support of religion and marked by “pluralism”—having no one hegemonic worldview. When Augustine and O’Donovan pair “secular” with “Christian” (a “Christian secular politics”), the meaning is Smith’s first definition. Governments are “secular” inasmuch as they are not destined for eternity. They can be “Christian” inasmuch as they support the church, but “secular” in that they themselves are not the sign of the eschaton. My argument suggests a pivot point between this eschatological use of “secular” and Luther’s association of “secular” with the outward duty of law, excluding the content of the gospel. A central thesis of my argument is therefore that the course of two-kingdom thought becomes virtually synonymous with modern liberalism. This appears most noticeably in modern, particularly neoconservative, Catholic political theology. The synchronized movement of Catholic ecumenism with Protestant and Catholic acceptance of liberalism resulted in concepts very close to two-kingdom thought patterns. Richard John Neuhaus represents a bridge figure, openly acknowledging his transport of Lutheran ideas into Catholic thought—already present in the work of John Courtney Murray. However, my claim about the association of modern liberal polity with two-kingdom thinking must be clearly understood for what it is—and is not. It is neither a triumphalist narrative of Protestant advancement to freedom from an oppressive Dark Age nor a fall narrative of Luther’s opening up the modern Pandora’s box of radical individualism, subjectivism, consumerism, and moral relativism.20 I have not argued that Luther’s two-kingdom ideas solely or directly caused what came after him. More modestly, my contention is that Luther’s two-kingdom template exerted significant, often inadequately acknowledged influence over the history of modern political thought. Later defenses of modern liberalism bear resemblances to Luther’s thinking about the separation of law and gospel and the realms of private/public or inward/outward.21 Furthermore, this argument does 20. For two recent examples of opposite modernity narratives, see Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), which celebrates Protestant Christianity’s “invention” of the liberal individual; and Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), which at least implicitly sees Protestantism as instigating the more troubling aspects of modern liberalism. 21. One area of fruitful research would involve the connections between the American founders, liberalism, and readings of Luther. James Madison famously remarked that “Luther led the way

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not rest on Luther’s view of the individual, the conscience, or even justification by faith alone, although others have made such cases; here, the argument depends more narrowly on his definition of the gospel, its placement in the sphere of the spiritual kingdom, and his explanation of that placement in terms of the transition from old-covenant Israel to new-covenant church. Moreover, my argument also acknowledges important differences between Luther’s thought and modern political theology. I have argued throughout that Luther needs to be read as a Christendom thinker of a certain type—his is an Erastian Christendom, with cooperation between two separate and parallel institutions in one realm. This Erastianism also veers toward “caesaropapism”—in Protestant terms, “caesaroecclesialism”—because the church depends on the state to greater degrees than the opposite; the state does not stand in need of special revelation or the gospel message. Connecting the dots, then, an Erastian Christendom has closer similarities to modern liberal polity than do other forms of Christendom.22 In summary, later thinkers used much of Luther’s two-kingdom paradigm but broke apart the union of natural law and biblical revelation. Natural law came to constitute a separate category independent of sacred revelation. Whereas Luther included matters of right worship within natural law, later thought patterns placed only generic “transcendent values” therein. Given the later conception that the church was ordered by this separate source of revelation, Luther can be connected to aspects of both Christendom and modern liberalism. Conversely, the argument also implies the contribution of two-cities thinking in critiques of modernity. Augustine’s resurgence in recent times reflects discomfort with aspects of modern liberalism, even if critique is directed not at the foundations of liberal theory but only at its practice. For those interested in finding a narrative that critiques modernity without reverting to medieval Christendom, the legacy of Luther’s two kingdoms and Protestant Augustinian retrievals might provide a place to start. Oliver O’Donovan represents that possibility, at least as a beginning point.

between what is due Caesar and what is due God” (Letters and Other Writings of James Madison [Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1865], 242). John Perry’s fascinating study of John Locke, The Pretenses of Loyalty, opens the way for such connections, though he does not mention the two kingdoms or Luther. 22. This may help to explain the debate over whether the United States, at least for much of its history, can be considered a “Christendom” situation.

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The “Two” For its second major implication, this project substantiates the widespread intuition that much Christian political theology has a polarity or dyad at its heart. We have noted dualities between two planes of human existence (inner/outer in Luther), two ages (in Reinhold Niebuhr, Markus, and O’Donovan), two types of revelation (in neoconservatism and Reformed two kingdoms), and two visible societies (in Augustine). Many figures inhabit multiple dualities, though usually one is primary and further dualities issue from that foundation. Most of these figures enlist some law/gospel dichotomy; some connect that duality with Israel’s relationship to the church, whereas others connect it with different types of communication or sources of moral knowledge. Two important decisions follow: whether the key theological polarity is based in creation; and whether it is primarily conflictual, parallel, or complementary.23 These decisions are related but not identical. Those who see the two as eschatological (two ages) can see either discontinuity between this age and the next, through a “delay of the Parousia,” or complementarity, via “inaugurated eschatology.”24 Many neo-Augustinian liberals and neoconservatives describe their eschatology in terms of discontinuity. Chief in these writers is the eschatological gulf resulting in separate sources of revelation and knowledge—natural law and the apostolic witness.25 This revelational divide undergirds the institutional separation of church and state, one guided by the sacred revelation and the other guided by non-Christian sources—whether natural law and reason, empirical experience, or the overlapping consensus of pluralistic values. Uniquely, the Reformed two-kingdom movement advocates an eschatological duality rooted, first of all, in creation—only later intensified by the fall, the call of 23. All who see the primary duality in creation itself also see that duality intensified or altered by the fall. Between these three relationships of the “two,” complementarity and parallelism are distinguished as follows: complementarity involves a degree of independence, along with overlap and cooperation; parallelism involves a great degree of independence and thus virtual autonomy (neither really needing the other). 24. Reinhold Niebuhr actually begins with eschatological tension but resolves it with the concept of approximation, similar to biblical theology’s concept of “already / not yet.” 25. Neo-Calvinists also make much of the twofold division of revelation, but perhaps they attempt to leave the two “books” less independent of one another. Generally, neo-Calvinists emphasize grace restoring nature, including special revelation clarifying natural revelation. Neo-Calvinists emphasizing “common grace” and “creational structures” are accordingly closer to these two-kingdom patterns, whereas neo-Calvinists emphasizing “the antithesis” and “biblical worldview” are further away.

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Israel, Christ’s atonement, and the commissioning of the church. Yet this eschatological duality of creation and glory remains entirely independent and thus parallel—glorification transcending creation rather than restoring creation.26 As this study has shown, most who see the “two” as postlapsarian characterize their primary relationship in terms of conflict. Augustine, in particular, sees the moral state of humanity, after the entrance of sin, as entirely divided. These moral conditions create two visible societies contrasted by their uses of earthly goods. Augustine sees a reprieve between the two societies in the dialectical transformation of political societies for submission to Christ. Bonhoeffer’s early work expresses a similar contrast between the church’s nonviolent discipleship and the world, but his later work promotes a more complementary duality involving the natural and the supernatural, the penultimate and the ultimate. O’Donovan sees the two ages as primarily conflictual: children of the age to come are at odds with the authorities of the present age, destined for obsolescence. O’Donovan mitigates this tension, however, by appealing to Christ’s “reauthorization,” with its dialectic of future reality and present need for mission. This project represents a necessarily selective tracing of traditions of the “two.” Yet the present mapping is comprehensive enough to substantiate how widespread such dualities are. Many of the underlying moves traced here suggest that the pervasiveness of such political-theological dualities is at least partially a function of such dualities appearing in biblical revelation, given its various anthropological, ecclesiological, and salvation-historical contrasts. Law and Gospel and Sources of Revelation Continuing this theme, as a third implication, a particularly important theological decision regarding the Christian political “two” concerns the relation of law and gospel. In this theological realm, “law” can mean and has meant (1) Torah (the first five books of Moses); (2) the old-covenant era, characterized by its revelation in the Old Testament; (3) divine revelation that contains moral description or commands without reference to something done for one’s benefit; (4) divine revelation that condemns; and/or (5) any command. Again, Christian theology recognizes at least one of these meanings and often several of 26. Addressing O’Donovan’s eschatological tension, in addition to Christ’s reauthorization, is his concept of the resurrection’s restoring the created order.

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them, but a key theological decision concerns which is original, or primary, and which is derivative, or secondary. Important to this terminology is how much objective theological revelation is influenced by human subjective experience. A definition of law is frequently counterbalanced by a definition of the gospel: (1) a covenant era characterized by its body of revelation in the New Testament; (2) the announcement of Jesus’s kingship; (3) the promise or guarantee of salvation completed in Christ; and/or (4) revelation that can lead to salvation. Key to the relationship between law and gospel is seeing its description as fundamentally unified, parallel, complementary, or in tension. Do law and gospel describe different realities, the same reality, or the same reality with different perspectives and results? Do they both provide moral knowledge? Are they on different levels, or are they essentially opposing types of communication? Luther’s influence on this matter predominated throughout this study, with law and gospel primarily set apart as different modes of discourse and knowledge, but evaluative questions remain. Dogmatic theologies have sometimes assumed, rather than argued for, a precise meaning of the gospel, and recent theological works could also afford to share more resources with biblical-theological presentations of “law” in Scripture. Definitions of the gospel also significantly shape approaches to the entire social dimension of human existence, including political authority. If the gospel lies on another plane from politics, as it is normally located in the two-kingdom paradigm, then another source must primarily or exclusively inform Christian political life. Alternatively, if the gospel includes politics, one must wrestle with the prima facie horizons of eternal salvation and civic order. Nevertheless, there is often enough of a distinguishing factor to differentiate the center of the evangelical proclamation and its implications. Theologians must wrestle with the question of whether Christ’s comprehensive kingship is an ingredient in the gospel and to what extent the gospel is to be identified in covenantal categories (e.g., the new covenant). In some of the current proposals, a version of “covenant” trumps Christ’s kingship, and vice versa. The relation of law and gospel may be considered in tandem with sources of revelation. Though systematic theology has often treated categories such as “general” and “special” revelation, it could more readily integrate its study with ecclesiological, ethical, and Christ-andculture questions. Future studies might take more notice about the ways in which different models of cultural engagement view their

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sources of moral knowledge and revelation. Older patterns of dogmatics often gave attention to the relationship of general and special revelation to the category of “law,” and the guild of biblical studies continues to discuss this topic by other means; systematics should consider reviewing the “naturalness” of natural law and the place of the Mosaic law in the overall witness of divine revelation. Israel and the Church Likewise, for a fourth realm of implications, closely tied to the Christian political “two” are construals of Israel’s relationship to the church, along with the transition from old covenant to new covenant—in other words, a biblical-theological reading of redemptive history’s ecclesiological import. But the question remains regarding the current status of ethnic Israel, as being under the old covenant, participating somehow in the new covenant, or included in a separate covenantal category. Evaluations of supersessionism generally reflect some view of the relationship between the “Old” and “New” Testaments.27 The definition of “church” also generates terminological debate. As I have shown, Luther disliked the term entirely. Almost all parties agree that “church” can designate at least one of the following: (1) an institution visibly delineated by its structure and clerical leadership; (2) a society characterized by its public life together; (3) a fellowship defined by the promises of the gospel; and/or (4) persons demarcated by their future destiny in the eschaton. The debate concerns which of these is the central or founding idea that gives meaning to the others. For example, is visibility a dominant characteristic or a secondary implication? This book has highlighted ecclesial distance from old-covenant Israel as one key move of two-kingdom accounts. The importance of such distance is especially apparent in Luther and Reformed two-kingdom advocates. A similar concept is expressed in a different manner by neoconservatives who feature the Israel/church contrast by describing a continuing role for Israel in this era that is distinct from the church but also honored by the church in its relationship. The relative absence of biblical-theological analyses from some other figures renders this possible distinction only implicit. Alternatively, Augustine’s linking of the church’s social life with old-covenant Israel resulted in a robustly 27. I use “testament” and “covenant” fairly synonymously, though “testament” highlights not only the covenant people’s relation to God but also its relationship to a deposit of revelation and moral knowledge.

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political conception of the church. The same can be said for O’Donovan, although his desire to eschew supersessionism puts him closer to an Erastian two-kingdom position: Israel’s history speaks primarily to political structures in general, not specifically to the church’s social structure. Luther’s own description of the church prioritized its invisibility, its hiddenness by faith, which allowed him to be quite ambivalent about external forms of ecclesial life. Niebuhr shared the same perspective, as do a number of others. The Reformed two-kingdom ecclesiology stands out by contrast on this point: though demonstrating a surprisingly stark transition from old to new covenant, it maintained emphasis on the sacredness and divine authorization of the church’s visible structure. Thus, Reformed two-kingdom ecclesiology is more Augustinian than one might expect. However, unlike Augustine’s, Reforme twokingdom models see great contrast between the church’s polity from Israel’s polity, most of all in the church’s engagement with other polities. Reformed two-kingdom differentiation of the sacred and the secular as institutional realms means that the church should not be viewed in competition with the state. These are different planes of sociality. In recent decades, academic biblical theology has extensively reexamined the relationship between the testaments. Part of this project’s contribution involves highlighting the political relevance of this biblical-theological relationship (with special reference to Israel and the church). Both overtly and covertly, along with the law/gospel relationship, it affects accounts of the “two” while being affected by preferred narratives of Christendom and modern liberalism. The theological paradigms studied in this book oblige contemporary theologians to deal both with the relevance of the Old Testament and with the newness of the new covenant, especially the relationship of the new covenant to inwardness. In particular, to what extent is Christ’s present role a fulfillment or a parenthesis of Old Testament hopes? The State as Fallen and the Sermon on the Mount A fifth and final area of implications for mapping traditions of church and culture concerns the prelapsarian or postlapsarian character of the state, often correlating with interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. A subsequent question concerns whether coercive authority is the sine qua non of political order or only one possible aspect of it. At the heart of this mapping exercise are theological decisions regard-

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ing exactly what is “political.” Can the church, or even all life, be considered “political”? To what extent are Christ’s kingship and the gospel message “political”? This relates even to the notion of “sociality” itself—a concept broader than “politics.” We might construe the topic in terms of Christian faith and sociality, thus incorporating both the society known as the church and forms of social life outside the Christian community of worship. Although Luther viewed the two kingdoms as creational, he treated the state as an emergency order for sin. For this reason, Luther’s two kingdoms cannot be directly identified with the institutions of church and state. Many figures who treat the “two” as basically conflictual likewise consider political authority to be a matter of postfall providence; Augustine, Niebuhr, and O’Donovan particularly fit that category. Bonhoeffer also understood the state to be an institution of history, not creation, although he was more nuanced concerning whether to treat his “two” as conflictual. All of these figures further conceived of prelapsarian sociality in egalitarian terms, just as they did of the eschaton. That correspondence is important to notice. The eternal kingdom of God dispenses with intermediate human authorities; O’Donovan emphasizes this immediacy in his inaugurated eschatology as a witness to Christ’s reign now. Others are content to draw the egalitarian contrast from the beginning and at the end. The Sermon on the Mount plays a complementary role in this doctrinal endeavor. How one sees Christ’s commands about “turning the other cheek” and “judging not” bears on the role Christians might play in civil government or even in society at large. Luther interpreted the sermon to be “theological law,” first of all—a standard by which Christians can recognize their sin and be reassured of the gospel. The Sermon is interpreted secondarily through the lens of the inward, spiritual kingdom—attitudes of the heart. Robert Benne promotes a similar interpretation using the language of public and private—boundaries within the outward social realm. Although Augustine likewise made inward intention important to right interpretation, he did not automatically find actions of killing or judging to contradict Jesus’s words. Love might compel one to defend others. O’Donovan takes a path similar to Augustine’s while instead emphasizing “judge not” as meaning “judge for yourself,” commending a propensity to leave room for God’s judgment and to judge only provisionally in light of that. Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer took the most dialectical route, believing that Jesus’s words indicate absolute pacifism while complicating the

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Christian’s present calling by other means. For Niebuhr, Jesus’s words in their fullness address only the eschatological age. Like Luther’s interpretation, Niebuhr’s takes the Sermon on the Mount as an ideal with which to condemn human fallenness. Instead of Luther’s inward/ outward dichotomy, though, Niebuhr proposed dialectical approximation of the future ideal with the present pursuit of equal justice. Christian striving for justice points ahead to the final eschatological reality. Bonhoeffer also read Jesus’s words as commanding nonviolence—even in the present. But what may relativize these words is God’s particular call to act responsibly for the sake of others. A concomitant idea is the pecca fortiter—“sin boldly”—concept, popularly referred to as involving “necessary evil.” Because of Niebuhr’s and Bonhoeffer’s descriptions of the state as fallen and Jesus as commanding pacifism, Christian participation in civil government is sinful, though necessary. O’Donovan’s conception of the state’s fallenness and its idolatry of representation could also lean in this direction.28 But O’Donovan maintains that Christians can continue to uphold their faith even in political judgment. Augustine also speaks suspiciously of political authority, but his lack of critique of political representation keeps him from a formulation of political involvement as “necessary sin” (i.e., pecca fortiter). Although the words “sin boldly” are Luther’s, Luther himself argued for support of civil government that is not contradictory to (albeit not a function of) the Christian’s identity. The pre- or postlapsarian origin of political authority is often thought to be an archaic inquiry. But the recent attempted retrievals of older political theologies have helped this issue to resurface. Some of its importance lies in its interconnections with other biblical-theological decisions traced by our analysis. An Enduring Typology As I outlined long ago, in the introduction, H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, despite bearing the status of a “classic,” has been much maligned in recent scholarship. Although Niebuhr’s typology remains a jumping-off point for contemporary theologians, that beginning now involves primarily critique instead of confirmation. Some suggest that 28. Another element that may indicate O’Donovan’s closeness to the pecca fortiter is his admission of the felix culpa (“happy guilt”) motif. See his “Response to Craig Bartholomew,” in A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically; A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan, ed. Craig Bartholomew, Jonathan Chaplin, Robert Song, and Albert M. Wolters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 115.

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Niebuhr’s categories need significant refinement, whereas others argue that the whole project was amiss from the start. A common charge is that Niebuhr’s typology paints with too broad a brush, yet few have attempted to make detailed refinements to his overall map. Many instead use this charge to question his whole schema. Social and cultural categories are simply more fluid than Niebuhr allows, many argue, so the Christian response to culture should be as fluid. Suspicion follows regarding any enduring “types” of responses in the Christian tradition. A somewhat related evangelical critique suggests that Niebuhr’s typology fails to deal with consistent biblical-theological motifs. D. A. Carson calls for an account of Christ and culture that pays special attention to key turning points in the biblical narrative, especially the transition from old-covenant Israel to new-covenant church.29 Such an account must also deal with creation and redemption, ecclesiology and eschatology, and law and gospel. Andy Crouch accordingly criticizes Niebuhr for dealing with “stances” and “postures” of Christians in surrounding culture but failing to explore more fundamental disagreements about the nature of revelation and the gospel. 30 Comparatively neglected in these critiques is Niebuhr’s category “Christ and culture in paradox.” That neglect may be due to the view that Niebuhr privileges a transformationist perspective while being especially pejorative toward an Anabaptist one. In any case, his assessment of the paradox type is likewise disparaging. Most who come after Niebuhr, even Lutherans implicated in that type, have generally agreed with Niebuhr’s conclusion that the paradoxical model fosters dangerously passive and conservative approaches to Christian engagement with culture. Few have questioned whether Niebuhr’s account of this tradition is accurate to begin with. The present work has sought to reckon with Niebuhr’s typology, specifically through the lens of the paradoxical or dialectical approach.31 I have taken with full seriousness the question of whether we can legitimately recognize enduring types in the Christian tradition 29. D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 55. 30. Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008), 90–93, 178–83. 31. The designation “two kingdoms” is preferable over H. Richard Niebuhr’s “paradoxical” and “dialectical.” Not only is “two kingdoms” Luther’s own designation, as well as the generally preferred terminology of later adherents, but “two kingdoms” also fosters broader analysis of the pervasive “two” in Christian political theology, allowing for the incorporation of Augustine and his various modern advocates—simultaneously bringing to the surface Luther’s hidden but enduring influence in that sphere.

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of theopolitical reflection. Likewise, my analysis deals explicitly with the place of Christendom in this theological grammar of church and civil society. Given that most assessments of Christendom go hand in hand with narratives of modernity, the resulting argument emphasizes the relationship between Niebuhr’s “Christ and culture in paradox” category and the advent of modern liberalism. Furthermore, this work engages the evangelical call to incorporate major biblical turning points, which, in fact, aligns with Niebuhr’s claim that his types—for all their generality—capture major, enduring theological motifs—motifs that repeatedly, however imprecisely, turn on readings of Scripture. Paradoxically, then, this book has addressed much of the landscape in contemporary political theology while focusing on just one neglected category within H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology. Again paradoxically, the two-kingdoms idea is both a forgotten tradition and—labels aside—a recently growing one. The present study concludes that the type associated most closely with Martin Luther’s two kingdoms is an enduring, recognizable theological grammar for relating church and culture. Like any tradition, appeal to two kingdoms is not at all monolithic, but its family resemblances endure, and they have significant influence over modern Christian political theologies—even those that claim to retrieve Augustine rather than Luther.

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Index

American Founding, 72–75, 96–97, 100–101 Anabaptists, 24–27, 32–33, 59, 68, 187, 191, 197, 207, 235 Approximation, 41, 43–46, 47, 60, 139, 217, 228, 234 Augustine, xvi–xix, xxi–xxii, 4, 5, 11, 40, 45, 48, 50, 60–61, 66, 84–86, 92, 119, 121–34, 142, 145–46, 149–77, 179, 189–90, 193, 200–202, 205–6, 209–13, 217–20, 224, 226, 228–29, 233–36 Barth, Karl, 46, 98, 172–73 Benne, Robert, xvi–xvii, xxi, 61–71, 76, 79, 81, 89, 93, 217, 233 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, xvi–xvii, xix–xx, 35–36, 39, 46, 47, 48, 50–60, 233–34 Boniface VIII, Pope, 2–5, 6, 31, 72 Calvin, John, xviii–xix 45–46, 89, 92–94, 99–101, 176 Calvinism, xvii–xix, 63–64, 92–102, 118, 218 Christ: extra calvinisticum, 94–96, 98, 100, 118; kingship of, 93, 95, 104,

115, 118, 123, 185–89, 197, 200, 208, 211, 230, 233 Christian Realism: xvi–xx, 40–50, 51, 52, 81, 87, 122, 138–40, 143–44 Citizenship, 72, 82, 85, 135–36, 141–42, 146, 154, 163, 167 Covenant: Adamic, 10–12, 19–20, 57–58, 93, 96, 103, 106–7, 111–13, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 157, 161, 186, 200, 232–33; Noahic, 11, 16, 109, 112–13, 114, 116, 161, 184; Abrahamic, 113–14, 115, 116; Mosaic, 15, 16, 25, 78, 93, 107–8, 114–15, 116, 180–81, 200, 223–24, 229–31; New, xx, xxii, 16–21, 25–26, 32, 64, 79–80, 89, 105, 115–16, 155, 159, 163, 216, 227, 230–32, 235; Old, xx–xxii, 16–21, 64, 89, 105, 108, 115, 155, 159, 162–63, 216, 227, 229, 231, 235 Christendom: definition of, 221–27; narrative of, 1, 31–34, 35, 39, 40, 50, 59–60, 70–72, 74, 76, 81, 84, 86, 90, 93, 102–5, 110, 117, 119, 122, 125, 129, 131–32, 134, 137–38, 142, 145, 149, 172,

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176–77, 179, 187–90, 194–98, 203–4, 209–13, 215–32, 236 “Christian times” (tempora Christiana), 123–26, 163–67 Church: relationship to Israel, 16–19, 64, 79–80, 89, 105, 107–8, 115–16, 118–19, 162, 193–95, 231–32, 235; visible, xv–xviii, 1–2, 4, 7–9, 10–12, 18–24, 31–34, 39, 48, 54–55, 57–60, 68–70, 74–75, 79, 81, 91, 93–94, 97, 107–10, 115–16, 118–19, 123, 126–28, 130–31, 137, 138, 142, 144, 146, 152–56, 164–65, 169, 171–76, 186, 188–97, 199–213, 215–29, 231–33, 235–36 Creation: creation mandate, 11, 103, 106–7, 111–13, 118; creation order, 21, 107, 182–83, 229 Culture: culture wars, xxi, 64, 90–93, 104–5, 110; “cultural mandate,” 103, 111–13; definitions of, xviii–xix, 90, 98–99, 107–10, 111–16, 146, 222–23, 235 Delay of the Parousia, 50, 66, 70, 79, 124, 136–37, 194–95, 205, 228 Dialectic, xvii, 13, 22–23, 26, 43–50, 52, 57, 59–60, 80, 83, 141–42, 144, 171, 174–76, 179, 189, 194, 199, 201, 203, 208, 213, 216–17, 220, 224, 229, 233–35 Disestablishment, 72, 96–97, 99–101 Donatism, 123, 126, 129, 154, 164–65, 174 Double/Twofold Morality (concept of), 92, 104–5, 107–10 Enlightenment, 36–39, 40, 59, 105, 225

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Eschaton/Eschatology, 7–8, 20, 40–43, 45, 50, 55, 60, 66, 70, 79, 96, 99, 102, 106–7, 111–12, 116–19, 123–30, 134, 136–37, 139, 143–46, 150–59, 172, 176, 183, 189–95, 199, 205–8, 210, 212, 217, 220, 226, 228–29, 233–34 Gelasius, Pope, 1–2, 5, 7, 31 German Christian Movement, 39, 51–54 Gregory, Eric, 122, 134–35, 138–47, 173, 175 Hart, Darryl G., 90–93, 97, 104–5, 109, 118 Hauerwas, Stanley, xvi–xvii, 50, 84, 136, 138, 142, 172–73, 195 Horton, Michael, xxi, 90–93, 102 “humble state” (concept of), 196, 202–3, 208 Israel: as paradigm, 162–68, 184, 193–94, 231–32; relationship to church, 16–19, 64, 79–80, 89, 105, 107–8, 115–16, 118–19, 162, 193–95, 231–32, 235 Justice & Mercy, 23, 25, 29, 43–50, 60, 81, 108, 110, 132, 138–40, 143, 167–72, 185, 198–203, 207, 209, 211, 217, 234 Kingdom of God, 7–8, 23, 25, 44–45, 47, 66, 68, 79, 81, 98, 105, 116–17, 123–24, 130–31, 137, 142–44, 153, 155, 163–64, 169, 183, 185–87, 192, 198, 206, 212, 233 Kline, Meredith, xxi, 90, 110–19, 218 Kuyper, Abraham, xvi, 98–100, 117

INDEX

Law: law & gospel, xix–xxii, 3, 8–34, 35–39, 42, 44–50, 54–55, 57–59, 64–75, 78, 80–83, 85–87, 91–93, 96, 98–101, 103, 108–9, 113–14, 116–19, 130, 139, 146, 173, 175–76, 179–82, 197, 200, 204, 206–7, 209, 211, 213, 215–19, 223–24, 226–33, 235; natural law, xix, xxi, 19, 22–23, 25, 30, 33, 37–39, 46, 55, 66, 69, 71–75, 82–83, 85–86, 93, 96, 98–101, 116–19, 168, 182–83, 204, 209, 216–19, 223, 227–28, 231 Liberalism: Christian liberalism, 196–97, 199, 202, 213, 220, 225; civic liberalism, 134, 138, 140–44, 172, definition and narrative of, 48, 70, 76, 84–85, 102–5, 121, 133–34, 137–44, 196–99, 202, 209–11, 213, 215–21, 224–27, 232, 236 Luther, Martin, xvi–xxii, 1–34, 35–39, 41–42, 44–46, 48, 50–60, 66, 70–71, 73, 83, 84, 91–92, 94, 126, 145–46, 149, 152, 163, 173, 175–76, 200, 204–5, 207, 209–11, 213, 215–20, 226–28, 231, 233–34, 236 Markus, R. A., 122–34, 137, 139–40, 143, 145–46, 149, 153, 157–58, 164–66, 169, 172–74, 209, 218–19, 228 Mathews, Charles, 134–38, 142, 144–46, 172–74, 209, 219 Milbank, John, 132, 136, 138, 142, 145, 174–75, 209 Modernity, xviii–xix, 52, 62, 84–86, 102–5, 138, 153, 197–99, 203, 215, 221, 224–27, 236

Murray, John Courtney, xxi, 3, 71–78, 81–84, 226 Neo-Anabaptists, xvi, 50, 60, 132, 194–96 Neo-Augustinianism, xvii–xviii, 121, 153, 169, 194, 209, 211, 218–19, 228 Neo-Calvinism, xvi, 90, 93, 95, 98, 99, 106–7, 116–17, 208, 218, 228 Neoconservatism, xvi, xix, 62, 76, 80–81, 84, 86, 126, 209–10, 217–18, 226, 228, 231 Neuhaus, Richard John, xxi, 62, 71, 75–87, 126, 194, 226 Neutral/Neutrality, 38, 73, 77, 86–87, 91, 124, 126, 129–30, 132–34, 140–41, 143–45, 157, 165, 169–70, 188–89, 196–97, 209, 217, 225–26 Niebuhr, H. Richard, xviii–xix, 31, 62–63, 234–36 Niebuhr, Reinhold, xvi, xviii, xx–xxi, 35, 40–52, 60, 61–63, 65–67, 70, 81, 83, 87, 122, 135, 137–40, 143–46, 172–76, 194, 196, 207–8, 213, 216–20, 228, 232–34 O’Donovan, Oliver, xviii, 26, 79, 137, 145–46, 153, 175, 177, 179–213, 220–29, 232–34 Pacifism, 40–42, 46–47, 50–52, 55–56, 59, 68, 107–8, 208, 233–34 Pecca Fortiter (“sin boldly”), 46–47, 55–56, 234 Political: definition of, 222–23, 230, 232–34 Private/Privatistic vs. Public, 39, 92, 104–5, 140, 226, 233

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Reichskirche, 39, 51–54 “Religion” (concept of), 38–39, 73–81, 84–87, 91–92, 104–5, 113, 115, 126, 137, 209, 217, 223 Robinson, Stuart, 97 Roman Catholicism: medieval, 1–2, 24–30, 33, 50, 52–54, 72, 74, 105, 122, 125, 138, 218, 221, 227; modern, xvi, xix–xxi, 62, 69, 71–87, 138, 194, 197, 207, 209–10, 217, 223–24, 226 Romanticism, 36–39 Saeculum, 102, 122–34, 136–40, 143, 156–57, 161, 164, 169, 172, 174, 187–89, 209, 212, 218 “Secular”/Secularism, xvi, xix, xxi, 5, 16, 18, 23–24, 26–32, 37, 40, 47–49, 53, 56, 60, 64, 67, 73–74, 76–77, 81–83, 89, 102–4, 109, 122–34, 156–57, 162–63, 167, 175, 187–89, 191–92, 195, 197–99, 207, 209, 217–18, 220, 222, 225–26, 232 Sermon on the Mount, 24–30, 40–44, 51–52, 55–56, 104, 107–8, 110, 119, 168, 232–34 Smith, James K. A., xi, xvii–xix, 102, 145, 172–74, 225–26 Spirituality of the Church, 91–92, 97–98, 100, 105, 109 Social: definition of, 197–99, 232–33 Social Gospel, 40–42, 45, 51–52

252

Southern Presbyterianism, 91–92, 97–98, 100, 105, 109 Slavery (American South / Civil War), 97, 100 Thornwell, James Henley, 97, 101 Two Cities: city of God, 45, 48, 85, 91–93, 112, 127, 130, 149–58, 162–71, 219, 222; earthly city, 72, 85, 91, 93, 112, 149–52, 156–67, 169 Two Kingdoms: definition of, 4–9 Two Powers, 4–5, 7, 215 Two Swords, 1–7, 31, 72, 94 Unam Sanctam, 2 Universal Reason (epistemology), 102–4, 109–10 VanDrunen, David, xvii–xix, 90, 93–110, 116, 118–19 “Values” vs. Virtues, 39, 69–70, 76–78, 81–82, 87, 90–92, 102–5, 126–27, 129, 142, 145–46, 195, 217, 219, 227–28 Vatican II, 71–72, 75–76, 86 Vocation, 13–14, 22, 24–31, 52, 56, 58, 106–10, 118–19, 200 Voluntary Ethic, 116–17 Wright, William, xvii, 3–4, 21, 26, 37–39, 53, 70