1

Whither Oliver O’Donovan?

 James K.A. Smith | Doctoral Seminar | Calvin Theological Seminary | 20 November 2013 We’ve had the opportunity to work closely through O’Donovan’s

 Resurrection and Moral Order 

 (RMO) and

 Desire of the Nations

 (DN). But these are just the first two panels of what is a triptych. The third panel is

The Ways of Judgment 

 (WJ), published in 2005. And just this year O’Donovan has started a second triptych, a three-volume work on

 Ethics as Theology

, launched with a first volume entitled

Self, World, and Time

 (SWT), described (importantly) as “An Induction” and not just an “introduction.” Subsequent volumes will be

 Finding and Seeking 

 and

 Entering Into Rest 

. In this final class, in lieu of the opportunity for us to read these works together, I want to sketch how WJ extends the project of RMO and DN, and then—ever so briefly—offer some “first impressions” of SWT.

Ways of Judgment 

: A Synopsis

 1. The Project: Relation between DN and WJ Actually, “synopsis” might be promising too much; think of this instead as a compression of some key themes in WJ. Our first question might be: how does WJ relate to DN? Is WJ the “political ethics” that O’Donovan pointed out was needed in DN (p. 15) and somewhat promised—or hoped for—in the Preface to the paperback edition (DN, p. ix). Yes and no. While he does see WJ as the fulfillment of that promise, the promise “has changed shape in the keeping” (WJ, ix), in part  because O’Donovan is less confident in the distinction between “political theology” and “political ethics.” (Indeed, this seems further confirmed in his latest project which explores

 Ethics as Theology

.) So the relation between DN and WJ is “circular” in the best sense: WJ picks up where DN finished, but brings us back to DN’s starting point—which, we might recall, was to “push  back the horizon of commonplace politics and open it up to the activity of God” in order to discern “what God is doing in human history” (DN, 2). O’D sees such a project as quite opposed to the “correlationism” that characterizes so much political theology in the second half of the 20

th

 century in which “the proper political orientations were taken to be well understood” while “the shape of our theological beliefs” were treated as “indefinitely negotiable.” “I start from diametrically opposite assumptions,” O’D announces: The Gospel proclamation I take to be, in its essential features, luminous, the  political concepts needed to interpret the social and institutional realities around us obscure and elusive. The work of political theology is to shed light

 from

 the Christian faith upon the intricate challenge of thinking about living in late-modern Western society (WJ, x,

emphasis added 

). WJ is offered as that promised “political ethics” in the sense of its “pastoral importance: to give guidance to those who, believing the Christian faith or capable of suspending their disbelief,

 

 2 have to exercise political responsibilities.” And that, it turns out, includes all of us because these “responsibilities are those which we all face…We all have many occasions to decide whether to approve or disapprove” (WJ, xi). In short, we all find ourselves in the ways of

 judgment 

.

I suspect that many of “us” who exercise political judgment—including especially those engaged in the very specific vocations of politics, administration, and elected office—will find WJ still just a tad abstract and high-flying. I find myself wondering what an even more concrete political ethics from O’Donovan might look like. Are there places where we can see O’Donovan intervene in specific political discussions, recommending certain policies, decisions, and judgments? Is there a treasure trove of op-eds he’s written where we can seem him working this out in public? Perhaps not. One can’t do everything, and his vocation may be the foundational and the transcendental. But I think there remains “translation” work to be done that would help us envision what it would look like to

act 

 politically in light of O’D’s triptych. Imagine O’Donovan offers a workshop on “good government” for

all 

 British MPs:

What does he say?

 

2. Political Theology as “Apologetics” Political theology in this mode also has an important secondary function today: “it has an

apologetic

 force when addressed to a world where the intelligibility of political institutions and traditions is seriously threatened. Christian theology sheds light on institutions and traditions, to address a crisis that is more pressing on unbelievers than on believers; and so it also offers reasons to believe” (WJ, xii). In this sense political theology is

 public

 theology and it serves the  public by offering a

 genealogy

 of its own institutions (in the modern West). “Western civilization finds itself the heir of political institutions and traditions which it values without any clear idea why, or to what extent, it values them” (xiii). Here a distinctly Christian genealogy is a public offering: “Recovery of theological description enables us to understand not only what the goods of our institutions and traditions are, but why and how those goods are limited and corruptible, and to what corresponding errors they have made us liable” (xiv-xv). So this isn’t a usurper’s errand; it is, rather, part of the teaching ministry of the church: “Christian theology in these circumstances resumes its ancient role of educating a people in the practical reasonableness required for their political tasks” (xv). 3. The Thesis: Politics and Judgment We should note the architecture of WJ. The book is divided into three parts: Part I. The Political Act: Judgment Part II. Political Institutions: Representation Part III. Life Beyond Judgment: Communication The first third of the book, then, elucidates the nature of judgment as the heart of politics. This is O’D’s overarching thesis: “The authority of secular government resides in the practice of  judgment” (3). He then defines judgment as “

an act of moral discrimination that pronounces upon a preceding act or existing state of affairs to establish a new public context 

” (7). Note the sort of “act”-centrism here: the political is identified with

 judgments

 and judgments are

acts

 of moral discrimination. One could wonder if hovering over or behind such an account is a kind of lingering “great man” picture of the political, a sort of hangover picture of “the ruler” issuing edicts. I don’t want to deny that judgments are made, nor do I think O’Donovan’s account

 

 3  precludes a place for institutions and systems, but by centering politics in the

act 

 of judgment there is an odd way that the political seems to reduce to persons or agents.  Nonetheless, O’D rightly observes that judgment is both “reactive” and “prospective”: we  pronounce upon the past, but our judgments also create new contexts and possibilities. (One could track this back to his discussion of

time

 in RMO.) “Judgment, then, both

 pronounces retrospectively on

, and

clears space prospectively for 

, actions that are performed within a community” (WJ, 9). In the former respect, judgments need to be

true

; in the latter respect,  judgments need to be

effective

 (9; these themes are then explored in more detail in ch. 2). Political wisdom is found at the intersection of these demands on judgment. “Good” judgments will be not be “idealist” in their devotion to some abstract principle of truth; they will be able to effect good government

because

 they are true. Similarly, “good” judgments will be effective not  by being merely pragmatic but because they rightly track the truth of a situation and the relevant obligations that apply. This is no mean feat.

I would note an issue in the ballpark here, carrying over from DN (and Jonathan Chaplin’s critique). By identifying  politics with judgment

and 

 making judgment an “act of

moral discrimination

, dividing right from wrong” (WJ, 7), O’Donovan once again makes government essentially post-lapsarian. Now, he might point out that he is defining the task of

 secular 

 government which is, by definition, governing

in

 the

 saeculum

, and hence essentially  postlapsarian. True, but the picture of judgment tends to make

in

 justice an essential condition, in which case there would only be judgment—and hence there would only be politics—where there is injustice. Indeed, he says exactly this: “Judgment…presupposes actual injustice, for judgment (in its central political sense) is response to wrong” (32). The Garden, we might say, is “pre-political” on this picture and government is only a post-lapsarian necessity. Apart from the wrongs of injustice, such judgment is not needed. “So political authority has no special mandate to  pursue a public goal, ‘the common good’ conceived as a giant millennium dome. Mankind in his and her native social existence, to the extent that that is not impeded and hindered by sin, serves the common good simply by being

 societas humana

. Government’s task is to respond to

threats

 to the common good, repelling whatever obstructs our acting freely together” (WJ, 57). “Wrong,

and nothing else

, is the necessary condition, but also the sufficient condition, for governmental intervention” (62, emphasis added). As you know, in the Neocalvinist tradition following Dooyeweerd—represented so well in the work of Jonathan Chaplin—we have some skepticism about this identification of government and politics with the

 post lapsum

 (contra WJ, 59). The Garden, to extend the metaphor, already calls for government,

not 

 because of injustice  but simply as a

 good 

 requirement for social networks that extend beyond kin. So even “harmony” is something that needs to be administered, which calls for judgments—not because of injustice or wrongs but because of the conditions of finitude. So we might agree with O’D that judgment is at the heart of governing, but we would demur from the further claim that judgment is essentially reactive

to injustice

. It can simply be “reacting” to the conditions of

creaturehood 

 and the demands of

time

. That said, we can still agree about the unique constraints of political  judgment

in the saeculum

 (though we might, even then/there, have different understandings of its

 scope

, without concluding that the Dooyeweerdian tack is essentially “big government” as discussed today).

4. Government, “Communications,” and Civil Society (or, “Freedom and Its Loss,” ch. 5) One of O’Donovan’s more idiosyncratic concepts is his use of the term “communications.” While we tend to restrict the word’s connotations to something like language or media, O’D is invoking an older, more expansive sense of the term (sort of like the old ways the English used to use the word “intercourse!”). By “communications” O’D means “patterns of holding things in common’ (67). These are many and varied and are neither reducible to government or the state (that would be totalitarianism) nor are they “owned” by the state. When we hear O’D speaking of “communications,” we might simply hear “civil society”—modes of social life outside of the state.