Public Theology: Thinking About the Bible and Politics
Defining Political Theology
In last week’s article on public theology, we pictured Christians as exiles in the earthly city and considered how they might view “Christianly” the human societies in which they find themselves. This week we look specifically at political theology, which is an analysis of political arrangements from the perspective of God’s way with the world.
Political theology asks questions about how much future hope can be brought to bear on present realities. There are two dangers in political theology: neglect of the not-yet on the one hand and disregard of the already on the other hand. Walter Rauschenbusch, typifying the first danger, said that the doctrine of the kingdom of God “is itself the social gospel.” In reaction to the social gospel movement, many American evangelicals in the twentieth century forgot the already by developing a posture of “social fatalism” (Elizabeth Phillips). Some even concluding that the church exists during a pause in divine time in which social questions are on hold until the end times and that the sole work of the church in the meantime is to lead people to Christ for their spiritual salvation. I want to at least raise a question here: Has the bracketing-off of social and political matters by us Christians in America in the last hundred years left us in a vacuum where we lack the ability even to evaluate political developments?
Grappling with Application
Let’s say that, instead, we adopt the stance that Christians have something to contribute to policies in the earthly city. We are still faced in that case with the difficulty of applying the Bible to politics. Some Christians try to apply the words of the Bible to political issues of our day in a straightforward way, while others dismiss entirely the idea that the ancient texts of scripture can pertain to contemporary social concerns. There is every possible position in between these two extremes as well.
Here is a small sample of how Christian thinkers have applied the Bible to the political, social, and economic questions of their times.
- Direct Biblical Principles: Catholic Social Teaching, which is a series of papal encyclicals (letters) written over the past 135 years offering guidance on social problems, reasons from higher-level principles in scripture to more specific conclusions. For instance, in 1961 Pope John XXIII addressed the fragile condition of rural economies. He argued that (a) Jesus’ compassion for the crowds reveals a concern for “the earthly needs of mankind,” so (b) it is appropriate for the church to use its theological insights about human nature to address social matters, (c) by concluding in this case that the right to private property must not obstruct the flow of material goods to meet the needs of all people, and (d) then by issuing lower-level norms (like honoring the need for tax assessments that take into account farmer’s unique cash-flow challenges) that can be adapted to specific circumstances.
- Bible-Influenced Method: Mid-twentieth-century Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple followed the method of Catholic Social Teaching but turned that method into a more precise formula by outlining a hierarchy of Christian principles: (a) primary principles (such as the inherently social character of human beings), (b) which generate mid-level propositions that stand between theology and government policy (such as (i) every child should be a member of a family and (ii) every citizen should have enough money to maintain a home), (c) which then guide individual church members who have expertise in the details of social structure as the make specific policy decisions.
- Sphere of Natural Theology with Punctuated Miracles: A similar approach emerged in the work of theologian-journalist-politician Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper believed that religion and politics are inexorably linked, but he refused to grant the church—any church—authority “to determine what should obtain for the state” since sin undermines the human capacity to move seamlessly from one sphere to another. Kuyper suggested that religion works on two levels—one that concerns the “mysteries of salvation,” available only through scripture, and the other that is the bedrock of a people’s sense of justice and is available through natural revelation. The government as an entity, Kuyper taught, has no business going beyond natural religion. To be sure, scripture can and should influence social policy at times. As an example, Kuyper drew from scripture the principle that God ordains taxation as a nation’s “sacred offering.” This principle shaped how Kuyper the politician understood the purpose and structure of tax systems. He did not think he would have had the same understanding based on natural revelation alone. But when scripture does influence social policy, it does so because of the devotional and intellectual life of individual civil servants rather than through any theological competence of the civil sphere or political competence of the church as an institution.
- The Story of Generosity: There is, alternatively, a practice of deriving policies from the narrative structure of scripture rather than from principles. Contemporary theologian Kathryn Tanner exemplifies this strategy by arguing that the overall story of the Bible is one of God distributing good with reckless abandon. The good (whether spiritual or material) is to be distributed further by the initial recipients in imitation of God’s activity. Tanner concludes that this pattern of cascading distributions leads us to picture the Christian story in a way that couples the economic production of value with the distribution of goods, all shaped by a “spirit of noncompetitiveness.”
- Agape-Infused Justice: Finally, the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr (Richard’s older brother) assumes that industrial societies would stop functioning without profit-motive and therefore self-interest. But self-interest is not a biblical value. Justice is a biblical virtue, but it, within the Bible itself, is in tension with agape, or self-sacrificial love. Justice calculates everyone’s interests, while sacrificial love as Niebuhr understood it seeks only the good of the other with no thought to the good of the self. Niebuhr thought that social policies need to accommodate both self-interest and justice for society to generate material goods yet survive as a community. The problem, as he saw it, is that the impulse toward justice is not strong enough to counterbalance self-interest. The Christian spirit of sacrificial love must infuse social policy and correct the more calculating, “big picture” regard for society as a whole that we call justice, Niebuhr thought. Only then will there be something in our political life compelling enough to prevent justice from collapsing into self-interest, as it often does. In the end, no policies flow from agape, but agape leavens the discussion in the public square so that a more just overall arrangement prevails.
I offer these summaries, not to endorse the political conclusions of any particular thinker, but to illustrate the methods by which theologians have sought to move from the words of the Bible to contemporary social policies. Like last week, maybe it is worthwhile considering which of these approaches (or others you can think of) resonate with you and seem the most faithful to your calling as a citizen of the heavenly city sojourning in a foreign land.
We will talk about these issues and probably much more at our Theology on Tap meeting on Saturday. Come with questions, thoughts, and ideas!
Title Art: Churches, New Jerusalem, Aristarkh Lentulov, 1917