What follows may sound anti-intellectual. Political theorists and political theologians are a different breed and as academics have every right to carry on their scholarly discussions in language that may be inaccessible to non-specialists. Yet because the Christian theologians and political theorists who diagnose modern politics, criticize liberalism, and propose theoretical alternatives to existing political structures – because those thinkers do not confine their views to scholarly journals but publish in semi-popular outlets and promote their views on social media, they may need to consider whether they are convincing anyone beyond their select academic peers.
These thoughts apply particularly to those who count themselves Christian postliberals. If that phrase seems unclear, imagine adding “ecclesiocentric” to “postliberal” the way Peter Leithart and James Wood do. The great thing about political liberalism is that it gives us a free country with liberties for philosophers and theologians to talk about politics any way they like. Still, identifying yourself as an ecclesiocetric postliberal [EP] does very little to give outsiders a sense of what you are proposing. It may even sound alarming, as in, times are so bad that we need an alternative that alerts the uninitiated to how perilous the situation is. The only way out is – wait for it – ecclesiocentric postliberalism.
Despite the linguistic changes, what stands out in reading and listening to EP’s is the priority they give to philosophy. They are not alone in this regard. Whether it stems from Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences or Abraham Kuyper’s appropriation of Hegel for an epistemological brew in which the regenerate inherently and automatically think differently (and better) than unbelievers, conservative Protestants on the Reformed side of the American church prioritize the philosophical foundation for almost everything, including politics and civil authority.
This intellectualist approach is distinct, mind you, from the logocentric understanding of Christianity of which conservative Presbyterians (especially the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) are supposed to be guilty. Doctrinalism is one thing. Philosophical foundationalism is another.
Although Wood and Leithart have been working out the ideas and implications of EP for several years (see a related book, Hell Shall Not Prevail: Essays on Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism), last summer postliberalism drew attention during the run up to the PCA’s Study Committee’s report on Christian nationalism (of which Wood is a member). Wood is a theologian (and PCA teaching elder) at Redeemer University, and appeared on Mike Horton’s broadband show, “Postliberalism, America, and the Church,” to explain and answer questions about Christian postliberalism.
At the start of Horton’s show, Wood identified postliberalism with two basic ideas: one is that religion is a public good and should not be reduced to the private sphere of an individual’s personal belief; the other is that public institutions have an obligation to promote (not maintain) religion as part of the public good.
That second idea dovetails with the arguments that Stephen Wolfe and James Baird have been making and prompts this writer to wonder why Christian nationalism or Christian syllogismism have caught on so much more among church officers and members than EP. The reason could be that postliberals are caught up in academic discussions that have not trickled down to pulpits or pews. Another way of saying this is that Wolfe and Baird #dothereading and appeal to relatively well known voices if Reformed Protestantism between 1600 and 1800. EP’s take a different intellectual path. Their sources are generally outside the Reformed churches and date from the twentieth century.
In a piece for First Things on postliberalism, Wood revealed both the philosophers that EP’s take seriously but also the heavily philosophical character of the enterprise:
[Postliberals] do not reject the now-standard genealogies of modernity offered by figures such as Charles Taylor or Michael Allen Gillespie; they largely accept them. They grant that secularity has Christian origins, that late medieval nominalism marked a decisive shift, and that modernity emerged from within Christianity rather than in straightforward opposition to it. Where they differ is in what follows from this history. For Milbank, the Schindlers, and others working within a participatory metaphysics, the Christian genealogy of modernity is not a vindication of the liberal settlement but a diagnosis of its distortions—and therefore an invitation to correction. To say that modernity is inescapable does not settle the question of whether its dominant political form is necessary.
One of the ironies of these discussions is Wood’s acknowledgment of Radical Orthodoxy’s contribution. When postliberals are “radical,” that’s fine but what out for rrrrrrrrrr2k. Wood wrote:
For those formed by Radical Orthodoxy (à la John Milbank) and the Communio school (à la David L. and D. C. Schindler), the primary objection is not individual autonomy as such—it is the separations themselves. The severing of the political from the theological, of law from morality, of the economy from social life—these are the deeper disorders, of which autonomy-maximization is more symptom than root cause.
Readers should know that entering debates surrounding Radical Orthodoxy can take readers deep into the intellectual weeds. On Adriane Vermeule and Roman Catholic integralism, Wood wrote:
Vermeule’s vision is fundamentally modern in its understanding of the state and its reduction of politics to a contest of power and will: It merely deploys modern political categories for anti-modern ends. His Schmittian framework accepts the very ontology of violence that, on a Radical Orthodox reading, lies at the root of modernity’s pathologies.
What leads someone to use the phrase “ontology of violence” seemingly without a second thought in a magazine that is not produced for specialists? Whatever makes that possible, it is at least a sign that philosophical categories are doing work that will leave average readers behind.
At the risk of introducing Protestant sectarianism into this discussion, the habit of EP’s to rely on Roman Catholic ecclesiology is odd (and may also explain why Wolfe and Baird have more reach). In the following quotation, Wood not only invoked a smart French Roman Catholic philosopher, but also seems to accept the view of the church that comes with it:
As Pierre Manent has argued, Christianity presents a distinctive political problem because the Church is a “real universal community,” which claims all persons and thereby relativizes every political order. Early modern political theory can be read, in part, as a sustained effort to neutralize this rival. . . . By redefining the Church as a voluntary association concerned with inward belief and otherworldly ends, [John Locke] preserves its formal freedom while stripping it of public significance. As Peter Leithart has shown, this move is not incidental but constitutive, for redefining politics as concerned with outward behavior and civil order is inseparable from confining the Church to inward belief and private devotion. The Church, on these terms, is free—but free only insofar as politically irrelevant.
What does a “real universal community” mean for a Protestant? Part of what that involves is the unity of the church not through formal institutions that govern Christians around the globe but a fellowship of saints who through the Holy Spirit share one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. (Ephesians 4:5)
Just as important to notice is the apparent disregard Leithart and Wood seem to show for the freedom of the church. History teaches that in some settings Christians have not been free to worship (such as Protestants in Roman Catholic France). If freedom to worship makes churches irrelvant to politics, maybe it is a bargain worth taking (which is the deal American Presbyterians accepted with the 1787 revision of the Westminster Confession). Churches that have been politically relevant, like the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, have not worked out so well. Maybe EP’s can supply an ontology of relevance?
As bad as the church’s irrelevance may be, worse for EP’s is the “simplified political ontology” to which political liberalism subjects the church and its ministry. As Wood described it, liberal politics leave Christians with only two choices: “the autonomous individual and the sovereign state.”
Intermediate or rival forms of authority are either absorbed (most recently marriage) or marginalized (the long-term project with regard to religious authority). Allegiances once directed to the Church are gradually redirected to the state, which comes to function as the most comprehensive, and the only indispensable, form of common life.
A further consequence for EP’s who take their cues from Roman Catholics is “the proliferation of denominations and the language of ‘religious choice.’” Such conceptualizations of the church “are not merely sociological developments” but the “outworking of a deeper conceptual transformation in which the Church has been reconstituted as one voluntary association among many.” “A critique of liberalism that focuses narrowly on autonomy while leaving this ecclesiological settlement intact,” Wood added, “has not yet reached the root of the disorder it seeks to diagnose.”
Why can’t the problem with liberalism EP’s identify merely be that sociologists and political scientists do not talk about the church the way that faculty teaching ecclesiology at seminary do? Just because Peter Berger (a sociologist) describes Christian communions as voluntary associations does not mean Stuart Robinson (Presbyterian theologian) is wrong to talk about the church as “an essential element of the gospel.”
Descriptions of church membership and authority by critics of modern liberal politics need not be any more authoritative than advertising departments for Major League Baseball. Calling the fans of the American League Boston franchise “Red Sox Nation” is no more definitive for understanding modern society than referring to modern people as rational autonomous selves.
Scholars and pundits use words and categories, supplied by a body of reflection, to describe institutions and the persons who negotiate those organizations. Those descriptions may be useful for understanding the place of the church within the fabric of modern society. But simply concluding that the church is not relevant or lacks power thanks to the reach of modern nation-states is to concede that the reality said philosophers or theorists describe is the actual state of affairs. Sometimes those descriptions are, in the words of Jeff Lebowski, “like just you’re opinion, man,” no matter how erudite.
Not to be missed in the metaphysical discussions of state power and church authority is the leverage that philosophy obtains in postliberalism. It may be biblicist to ask for biblical exegesis or sectarian to bring up the Protestant confessions, but why should, to borrow a line from Larry Newman, philosophers have all the good ideas? If you peel back the layers of the onion of Radical Orthodoxy, what will you find? Everything wholesome and metaphysically unified? Will we have to conclude that the we need philosophical tests for holding office or will we simply cut to the chase of the philosopher king (instead of Wolfe’s Christian prince)?
No matter how bad the Roman Empire was, Paul did not need political theory or political theology to be able to say that the Roman emperor was legitimate and worthy of honor. Maybe government would be better with more philosophy. But governing people does not take a hiatus to attend a seminar in postliberalism. Governments are on a spectrum, from authoritarian to liberal. The benefits of those arrangements run from stifling uniformity to incoherent chaos.
The American founders were trying to do the best they could and some of us think they did fairly well. Using epistemology or ontology to pick apart their norms and procedures is fair game in the free society they set up. But it is also too serious to be taken seriously.
