Towards a Christian Ontology of Political Authority: The Relationship between Created Order and Providence in Oliver O'Donovan's Theology of Political Authority (original) (raw)
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The OT Foundation of Contemporary Political Theology
A GWC Postgraduate Seminar on how the OT is used within contemporary political theology. This paper examines the work of Oliver O'Donovan, J Gordan McConville, and David VanDrunen, bringing them into dialog with each other, and examining the exegetical foundations for their political systems.
The Heythrop Journal, 2014
How can the narrative of God's decisive action in Christ be made politically fruitful? For all their differences and distinctive emphases, John Howard Yoder and Oliver O'Donovan's works can be read as sophisticated attempts to translate the Christological narrative into reflections on political authority. While both authors present Christ's rule first and foremost in ecclesial terms, they also try to coordinate the church's existence and message more directly with 'secular' political agents. This essay attempts to give a precise account of Yoder's and O'Donovan's respective notions of both church and state post Christum. It concludes that despite their distinctive emphases both authors find difficulties in simultaneously ascribing a more modest role to the state and enlisting political agents directly into the service of God's ultimate goals. I suggest that this tension is rooted in the nature of New Testament metaphors for rule, which oscillate between comparing and contrasting Christ with political rule, and therefore between affirming and subverting it.
The mighty and the almighty: an essay in political theology
Choice Reviews Online, 2013
For a century or more, political theology has been in decline. Recent years, however, have seen increasing interest not only in how church and state should be related, but in the relation between divine authority and political authority, and in what religion has to say about the limits of state authority and the grounds of political obedience. In this book, Nicholas Wolterstorff addresses this whole complex of issues. He takes account of traditional answers to these questions, but on every point stakes out new positions. Wolterstorff offers a fresh theological defense of liberal democracy, argues that the traditional doctrine of "two rules" should be rejected, and offers a fresh exegesis of Romans 13, the canonical biblical passage for the tradition of Christian political theology. This book provides useful discussion for scholars and students of political theology, law and religion, philosophy of religion, and social ethics.
Political Theology from Satan to Legitimacy
Political theology is often the subject of debate. In this contribution we will trace an alternative declination of this concept in modern political thought. Starting from James I's thought, the article will show the most arcane and heterodox sides of sovereignty and the multiple configurations of the political body.
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In this essay, I examine Michel Foucault's political contrast between the theological domains of the pastoral and the mystical, in order to note his focus on how necessity and providence are founding and legitimizing concepts of the State. Through this process I develop an analysis of how Foucault, in his critique of the historical uses of theology as a tool of pastoral power, actually points toward another form of political theology than Carl Schmitt's. My contention is that we begin to see another "type" of political theology appear in the writings of Giorgio Agamben, who follows Christian traditions much more closely than Foucault. The re-formulation of political theology within Agamben's work, I argue, has tremendous significance for the field as a whole and is much in need of further elaboration, a task toward which this essay only points.
Carl Schmitt once defined himself as a theologian of jurisprudence. This chapter argues that his concept of political theology must be understood within the context of jurisprudence and not as a thesis concerning the use of religion within politics. In its earlier configuration, Schmitt's political theology is a multifaceted response to two juridical critiques of sovereignty: those of Hans Kelsen; and those of Otto von Gierke and the English pluralist school. In this early phase, Schmitt's political theology is centered on the juridical conception of representation and on the state as fictional personality, primarily as it is found in Thomas Hobbes. Through his extensive engagement with Hobbes's interpretation of the Trinity or persons of God, Schmitt shows howjurisprudence aids in the understanding of theology rather than the other way around. Schmitt's later work is a defense against Erik Peterson's critique of political theology, itself based on a juridical interpretation of Christology.