Return to Political Theology

INTRODUCTION There was a time when theology was called the "queen of the sciences." From the beginnings of the university in the High Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, theology formed the backbone of liberal instruction at institutions of higher learning. Those days are long past. What remains of theological investigation in most major American universities has been transposed into the study of religion and safely sequestered in "religious studies" departments. Few undergraduates today encounter theology as a discipline--and as for law students, well, the idea that theology might have some relevance for the study of law is regarded in the legal academy as either quaint or worse, vaguely menacing. And yet. The last two decades have brought surging interest in the field called law and religion; religious liberty has become a subject of major doctrinal concern; and one of the most important books published by a legal academic in the past four years was a work of political theology. (1) These stirrings in the legal world have been matched by a renewed interest among theologians in politics and the law. For evidence of that, consider the recent publication of one of the more ambitious studies in biblical theology of the last three decades, N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God. (2) Wright is an English theologian of some acclaim. A prolific writer, he counts more than sixty titles to his credit, and his latest is the fourth installment in a series investigating New Testament history and theology. Wright's work has canvassed such subjects as the "historical Jesus" and first-century Christianity, but he considers himself principally a scholar of the Apostle Paul. (3) His most recent volume is a sweeping study of Paul's theology, including, importantly, Paul's political theology. Running over fifteen hundred pages in length and divided into two books, Paul and the Faithfulness of God painstakingly reconstructs Paul's historical context and intellectual influences on the way to a thorough restatement of Paul's thought. The volume concludes with a multichapter examination of what Pauline theology means for Paul's day and ours, with politics front and center. The book has proven a minor sensation in the world of biblical studies. But why should lawyers care? The answer has to do with what Mark Lilia has recently and rather famously called "the Great Separation." (4) Lilia's claim is that liberalism and limited, constitutional government are possible only when religion is firmly quarantined from the business of politics. (5) "[I]ndividual rights to private and collective worship, freedom of conscience, religious toleration"--all these were the fruits of banishing religion from the public sphere, he says. (6) By his account, modernity itself emerged from this great separation. The idea is hardly novel. It has been in vogue in the western world since at least the Enlightenment. Listen closely in contemporary America and you will hear it just about everywhere, from political theory to Supreme Court opinions citing the "wall" separating church and state. (7) It is so commonplace, in fact, so thoroughly conventional and widely accepted that it is sometimes difficult to imagine any other way of seeing the world. But as critical legal scholars remind us, conventions can be dangerous things. They condition us to accept as facts what are in truth highly normative propositions. And that brings us back to Paul. Pauline theology shares a good deal in common with the liberal tradition. Indeed, it is among that tradition's most powerful moral sources. (8) Yet, Pauline theology challenges as many liberal conventions as it affirms, including, perhaps especially, the Great Separation. This may come as a surprise to those who view Paul as a "religious" writer concerned exclusively with spiritual matters like salvation and judgment, the afterlife, and heaven. But if N. …