James K.A. Smith on Theocracy and Kingdom

Comment has just published a great piece (here) by James K.A. Smith offering ‘a caution for reactionary liberals who hear “theocracy” whenever Christians talk about “the kingdom.”’

He particularly has in his sights those who confuses dominionism (an understanding which thinks it’s our job to impose the kingdom here and now) ‘with the Christian political endeavour of an Abraham Kuyper’.

It’s not, he makes clear, that ‘the gospel is comfortably apolitical’. The language of the kingdom is ‘a reminder that Christianity is not just some privatized message of soul-rescue that we can comfortably fence off as “personal piety.”’ Still, ‘every time we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we are reminded it hasn’t arrived yet’.

Here, for me, is the killer paragraph:

‘[T]he arc of the biblical narrative includes a very important temporal pause button that the Dominionists ignore: we await the kingdom, we don’t impose it. In the meantime of our waiting, we hope to bear witness to our neighbours about these truths... not so we can “win” or “take over” or “have dominion” but because we believe these truths are gifts of insight into common human concern. We bring these insights to the table of public debate as a proposal to consider, not a fiat to be imposed. We hope to change things, but we see democracy as a gift for the saeculum and understand we need to persuade our neighbours. The biblical narrative teaches us to expect pluralism and difference in the meantime.’

James K.A. Smith on Rethinking the Secular

Having posted about Jamie Smith’s short piece on public theology last week – which effectively provides a taster of his work in progress for the third volume of his ‘Cultural Liturgies’ project – I thought I’d link to part 2, ‘Rethinking the Secular, Redeeming Christendom’. As with last time, he’s reworking Oliver O’Donovan here.

Here’s an early paragraph:

‘Our political institutions, habits, and practices are contingent cultural configurations that are included in the “all” that Christ redeems (Col. 1:16-17). The political is not insulated from the impact of the Christ-event and the specific witness of the church in history – including the political habits learned in the polis that is the church.’

Smith helpfully summarises what is known as the saeculum, the significance of which I think is often overlooked in discussions of pubic theology and cultural engagement more generally (for instance, in ongoing debates between two-kingdoms protagonists and so-called advocates of cultural transformation).

‘Everything is now in subjection to Christ (Heb. 2:5-8); he has already disarmed the principalities and powers (Col. 2:15). But we live in the “not-yet” where this victory is not universally recognized. It is this time – between cross and kingdom come, between ascension and second coming, between the universal scope of his lordship and its universal recognition – it is this time or season that is “the secular,” the saeculum, the age in which we find ourselves... It’s not that “secular” authorities have full authority over a limited jurisdiction; they have also only been delegated their authority for a time (the saeculum).

‘So we don't shuttle between the jurisdictions of two kingdoms; we live in the seasons of contested rule, where the principalities and powers continue to grasp after an authority that has been taken from them. The church is now the site for seeing what Christ’s kingly rule looks like – and it will be from the church that the authorities (the “stewards”) of this world might come to recognize their own penultimacy.

‘On the one hand that means relativizing the “secular” authorities. But on the other hand it also means the church’s mission can make a dent there, too. In the church’s proclamation and her embodiment of a polis in which Christ reigns... It is the very mission of the church that takes it into the imperial palace, into the executive mansion, into halls of the capitol.’

So, controversially, as Smith says...

‘This, O’Donovan points out, was the Christendom project: a fundamentally missional endeavor in which the regnant authorities recognized the lordship of Christ, recognized they were simply stewards for a coming King.

‘[A]s O’Donovan points out, most of the examples of Christendom held up for critique are, in fact, examples of something else – a church that has lost its missional, evangelical center and has forgotten how to pray “Thy kingdom come.” Once the church forgot this was still the saeculum – once it fell into the trap of thinking the kingdom had arrived in their configuration of society – the result was a “negative collusion”: “the pretence that there was now no further challenge to be issued to the rules in the name of the ruling Christ” (citing O’Donovan).

‘Christendom, then, is a missional endeavor that refuses to let political society remain protected from the lordship of Christ while it also recognizes the eschatological distance between the now and the not-yet.’

Saeculum Undergraduate Academic Journal

Following a recent conversation with a friend on the relationship between theology and culture, I’ve been trying to explore the concept of ‘saeculum’, and came across this journal – ‘a collaborative venture of undergraduate students in the Christianity and Culture program of Saint Michael’s College and the University of Toronto’, which ‘offers a venue for scholarly conversation about life in the saeculum’.

‘In these pages, you will read about the critical engagement between Christian tradition and the broader cultures in which it always and inevitably remains intermixed, including scientific discovery, music and the arts, philosophy and theology, politics and society, and the perennial task of Christian education.’

They provide a nice sketch of the concept itself:

‘“So five ages of the saeculum are ended.”

St. Augustine of Hippo

Thus St. Augustine of Hippo, at the cusp of the fifth century CE, introduced new Christians to life in the contemporary era of human history, a “sixth age” that began with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and ends only with this same Christ’s return at the end of time. Until this return, the holy “city of God” remains enmeshed in the saeculum, a passing world of social and political life. And, at least for Augustine, this saeculum is also a place of profound tension and ambiguity. Since boundaries cannot be discerned with any certainty in this life, every dimension of human existence is defined by the intermingling of divine communion and earthly commotion, of sacred and secular, of faith and culture.’

Earlier issues of the journal are available here.