On Wednesday, Nov. 7 Chimes Perspectives Co-Editor Josh Pater interviewed Rev. Oliver O’Donovan, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church. Dr. O’Donovan studies Christian ethics, especially Christian political thought. He delivered Calvin College’s 2001 Stob Lectures, in which he investigated Augustine’s notion of “common objects of love. Thanks to Community News Editor Elisabeth Bont for transcribing the interview.

What did you find when you went looking for the roots of political theology for your book ``The Desire of the Nations,'' and were you surprised at what you found?

Yes I was, though it was quite a moment of discovery, I think. I came at it from a series of moral questions about the just war, having been well taught by my ethics teacher Paul Ramsey at Princeton. In the early 80s I decided I had to get into this much more thoroughly, so I went back then to the founding texts of the just war tradition from the 17th century and found, to my amazement and delight, not just a sort of just war theory but a whole political theory, a whole elaboration of political concepts that covered a huge range of things and was deeply theological in inspiration. That helped me understand what Hobbes was doing, and when, coming out of this tradition and using this tradition, himself having a great theological interest, he set apart the political thought from the theological thought, creating, as it were, a sort of autonomous structure of political thought that lived on its own, and so I said to myself at that point, ``What I've got to do is actually get back behind that great division and see finally what was going on.''

The next stages I owe considerably to my wife, Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, who was herself working on the political theory of the Reformation. To understand that she had to go back to find out what was happening behind, and dug up a whole lot of authors that neither of us, in our innocence, had any knowledge of, and, I think, are talked about largely only by medieval historians. We found what an incredible wealth of tradition there was back there and how many issues that we discuss today in a sort of superficial, modernistic sort of way actually had there roots right back then. ... That book came out of this attempt to rethink and to do what they were doing, which was to rethink the Bible and the biblical witness to politics in the light of some of our questions. Not, as it were, forcing the Bible to answer questions it doesn't want to answer, but allowing our questions to be reinterpreted in the light of a long tradition that was rooted in biblical exegesis and understanding and had contributed obviously much more than we'd ever realized. ... By training, purpose and intuition I'm a moralist, so in the end, getting back to the question of practical reason is part of my agenda. I want to see what our practical moral questions look like when renourished from this source. ...

You were focused on nuclear deterrence, but the book ends up being a much broader vision.

Yes, and it never actually get to a practical agenda, but the original plan was that there would be a book that would start off or end up with some practical questions of political ethics. That half never got done, and it still excites me, and that's what I'm sort of still concerned about, this second part. The two ends of the investigation fell apart, as it were. As I was working it grew and grew and grew and became something that needed saying on its own.

Is that book of political ethics something you intend to take up?

I hope to, but one has to say these things tentatively.

From what I've read of critiques of your book, some have said that it's a powerful and biblically-based defense of the notion of Christendom. That notion offends Western sensibilities, yet you don't seem too offended by it. Why not?

I think I have to challenge a reading of the book that sees it as a defense of Christendom in a strong sense. It's a lesson to the critics of Christendom as to how they should set about their job. It's a defense of Christendom against what seemed to me be dogmatic and doctrinal criticisms, and it's an attempt to explore more fully the very ambiguous legacy that it left us and at what points it did make mistakes. Christendom is a huge concept. If it's difficult to decide whether there was ever a just war, it's twenty times more difficult to decide if there was ever a just Christendom. The point I wanted to make is this is where the inspiration of Christendom is missiological. It's about the bringing of the world under the sway of the lordship of Christ, including its political structures; that's what it's about and that's why people walked into the project enthusiastically. Our contemporary fondness for a kind of absolute division between the sacred and secular, of course, makes that look out of order from the beginning. But that contemporary fondness has got to be challenged; it's actually problematic, and I'm by no means alone in thinking that. ... You have all kinds of practices going on out of Christendom, many of them intensely criticized within Christendom. If they've got a good criticism of Christendom, they will probably find they've got it from the thinkers of Christendom, that they are actually not breaking with it but continuing the critical dialectic that helps constitute the era that most of the objections we raise are modifications, and frequently rather unsubtle modifications, of things that were seen, discussed, purposed on as problems within the era of Christian civilization.

So, then, do you see within participants of Christendom the sort of resources we could use to better evaluate it?

Exactly. They are our best teachers in this respect. They can tell us what's good about their project quite clearly, and they can tell us what's likely to be wrong with it, and where it's likely to go astray.

You see Christendom not so much as a mission of the Church but as a response to the church's mission. Is that correct?

Yes. That's a good way of summing it.

So, in a sense, there could be an analogy in all sorts of disciplines and all sorts of vocations. What you might be saying is we need to bring these spheres of life under, make them respond to - or wish that they would respond to - the Church's mission.

Exactly. If one is compelled to believe in such a thing, say as in a Christian university that has integrity as a university and a place of study, not a place of indoctrination but as a place of study and inspiration and so on, and is wholly Christian in its commitment, or a Christian hospital, or whatever, one ought to have confidence in the idea of a Christian government. It will not be without its problems or ambiguities, any more than a Christian hospital is, but all spheres of life belong under the sway of Christ, and the Bible proclaims quite particularly the subordination of the political powers under the rule of Christ.

When you talk about sacred versus secular, you mean secular in a different sense than popular political discussion, in that secular for you is the present and the temporary, verses the sacred, which is the eternal.

Yes. You're quite right about the term secular and the positive way in which I try to use it. The way I put the difference is that I don't think secular is properly contrasted with sacred. Secular is properly contrasted with eternal. There are other pairs of words with secular as one of them. There is secular/ecclesiastical, and so on. But the sphere of the secular, properly conceived as a Christian idea, is the sphere of this world and the obedience in which the structures of government and life are lived for Christ according to their proper order, as opposed to the sphere of the proclamation of the gospel and the coming again of Christ and the eternal order. In that sense, secularity is an essential part of Christian living, obedient living.

In the book you say that no other destiny can be conceived other than that of a city. Would you explain what you mean by that, because I think that, off hand, it doesn't seem right to a lot of people today.

... There is no way to be an individual human being except by being in relation with other human beings and with God, and with others because we're in a relationship with God ... We're not summoned to any other end than that. ... It's a pagan idea, this notion that salvation is the flight of the alone to be alone, this isolated individual self-transcendence in a kind of inner spirituality. It's always got its followers, and in the modern world it has its followers, those who sort salvation through psychoanalysis and basically believe that their welfare consists in a kind of harmonization entirely within themselves. Some forms of eastern spirituality encourage the same sort of quest for this aloneness. I think Christians just don't believe that. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the creator's intention. There is a proper individuality and a proper way of being alone and on one's own, always; however, within community, always created by community. If I go and seek solitude, I take a solitary walk to the nice nature preserve you have, and maybe I'll be able to pray while I'm there, maybe meditate and have thoughts that are sort of divine or transcendent, where is that possibility of being alone coming from? From the community that's created the space, from the teachers who have shaped by habits that enable me to seek God and seek truth. I am all the time a child of that community as I explore the possibilities of aloneness and seek the highest which God has made me capable of. It's not an isolated exercise, though it may be a solitary exercise. This is nothing against monasticism. The monks in the desert went into the desert in order to pray for the church. They were never more members of the church then when they were there alone praying for the church.

You've talked about church, community and city, and we could also throw in society. Aren't those all different notions? Does the communality that is intended for us within the church differ from that within our society or within or national structure?

Here is a point where the ``doctrine of the two'' is invoked. On earth, yes, because the way in which we experience the church as a community is still provisional. We are not yet at rest with the saints of all ages in heaven, in the glory of God united by his worship. We look for that and hope for that, but the full-bodied sociality of the church is not yet wholly present to us. We get tastes of it in our congregations where we worship and foresights of it, but the full city of God to which we are called is not yet part of our experience. But if one says we are called to a city, I think it's important to see that some of the full, concretely structured political, public character that we associate with civil societies is also clinging to the church in the end, that this is the fulfillment not only of the prayer meeting and the quiet little gathering, it's the fulfillment of the public life that we know here on earth.

That last statement almost sounds like something with which Stanley Hauerwas could agree, that there is a political analogue within the church; he sort of envisions the church politically. Yet you move away from Hauerwas's analysis and come to a point that's quite different. What do you make of his argument (following John Howard Yoder) that what he calls Constantinian assumptions are wrong, first because if the church is truly the church it will always be a minority, and second because in turning Christianity into a philosophy suitable to maintain the society, Christians undercut the ability of the church to take a critical stance toward that society.

You're dead right in observing the point in which I stand with Stanley on this. I think the point which you articulated is a point which he has terribly well articulated, which I've been helped by his articulation of. Those who put this all in terms of the pro- or anti-Christendom discussion have seen me as radically turning my back on Stan and his anti-Christendom ways, and within those limited terms that's true. ...

I think his criticisms of the Christendom idea are partly wrong, first because he dismisses the church as always being a minority. I don't know on what theological authority one could make that assertion. The church has very often been a minority. But whether the church is a majority or a minority at any time or place, the church is not given yet to be wholly visible to itself. There is a real temptation in wanting to be a visible minority, a gathered church in which you can say, ``We are few, but we know exactly who we are, and we know who is on our side. The line is drawn clearly and unambiguously between us and the world.'' That kind of visibility and definition is not granted to the church in our age. We know where the church is because we know where the sacraments are and where the word is preached. We see people gathering to the sacraments, we see the church taking form. I'm with Augustine and again a gathered church Protestantism. The edges are always indistinct. Is this person moving into the church, giving light to those who dwell within the house, or is he just standing on the edge and about to turn his back? We don't know. ... Even if it's true that the church is going to be a minority, the church is going to be embattled and contested to a certain extent, but it can be so as a majority sometimes. Evil has its ways of challenging the church when it's in an apparently confident position just as much. Even if the church is a minority, it can't be a self-conscious minority which says to itself, ``We're perfectly safe because we're a minority.'' That I have to say I find troubling in the kind of catacomb consciousness I find in Stan and John Howard Yoder. I don't think it was at all typical of the Christians that actually inhabited the catacombs. They didn't huddle down there and say, ``How nice. We at least know who we are while we're down here.''

The question of the church being unable to criticize society, that seems to me to be wrong, but not wholly wrong. Whenever our mission takes us into a sphere of life, the question is always before us: Can we remain faithful to Christ while engaging in the demands, expectations, and outlook of this sphere of life? It's a question for me as a professor: ... How do I reconcile the shape of my life as a professor with the missiological challenge, the discipleship challenge of Christ? It's going to be the case if you're a businessman or a teacher or a nurse or a ruler. The question ``Are we being swallowed by alien perspectives here?'' is one that is always right to ask and can never be escaped. ... It seems to me extremely clear that the question of the church's assimilation to the ethos of the society in which it lives, particularly western society - which is deep down the thing Stan cares about most, and I honor him for that because I think he is a great prophet against the assimilation of the Church to the world - that question is raised quite irrespective of the church's relation to government. No doctrines of Christendom or against Christendom are going to change the fact that the church in a loud, confident and boisterous society - confident of its position, confident of its own right - is going to have to struggle to keep the authenticity of its gospel. It's going to happen anyway, and relation to government doesn't necessarily make it easier or harder, though in any given situation it might, depending on the government.

Earlier you mentioned regaining a sort of proper individuality in the setting of proper community. Where has individuality become improper?

I decline to call myself anti-liberal, though I share a lot of the basic ground with people like Stan who denounce liberalism, partly because I think, as I spell out in that book, that I think liberalism was actually in birth a set of perceptions that are properly Christian inspired and there is a Christian root to liberalism. Nevertheless, I do believe that today's liberalism is a deep problem. Part of the problem is the way it conceives the relationship of individual to society. It's not just simple individualism in the sense of a casual existentialist, everyone according to his own genius. Liberalism reflectively is highly aware of sociality and the need for it, but it conceives of it constructively. It conceives of it as a kind of projection as a kind of individual aims and goals, and this attempt to justify society has taken on quite new forms in the late-modern era, to justify society by what it offers to the individual. The economization of politics is a very clear sign of this. It's based on a projection that the individual is atomic and self-possessive. It's as though I possess myself as a supreme bit of property. I own myself in this ultimate way, and I own my life, and every kind of social interrelation is a sort of negotiation between self-own, self-possessive barons, each with their barony trying to do trade-offs. This fails to get the real genius of human sociality right, the way we are actually created with and for one another from the ground up, something I think Christians have always been rather good at asserting.

Anything else?

Just some pleasant things about how nice it is to be here and how enormously focused I thought the questions were last night. The way the questions came back was as if they were on radar guided missiles, absolutely targeted in a sharp way, seeing not only things I'd said but what might lie behind them. It was an extraordinary first evening for me and gave me an extraordinary first impression of Calvin - not that I needed to be persuaded of that.