Abstract
The American Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, is credited with having retrieved the thought of Augustine for twentieth-century political theology. In a way difficult to imagine in our day, precisely as a theologian he exercised a powerful influence within the public sphere especially during the 1940s and 1950s. His brand of Christian realism, though placing agape love at the centre of the Christian life, also accepted that much more than love was needed to shape a practical and faithful theological ethics of the political realm. Thus, while pacifist in instinct, he nevertheless drew from Augustine his belief that the state had to adopt and employ institutional capacities for violence for the sake of the security of the nation.
From the late 1940s the Mennonite John Howard Yoder, in responding to Niebuhr’s work, commenced a line of reflection which would develop into a counter-movement, as it were, challenging a number of Niebuhrian ideas and shaping an alternative account of how theological ethics might relate to politics. Far from the inner life of the Church being the realm of the non-political, as Niebuhr proposed, Yoder held that it was precisely as such, that is, as the Church truly being the Church, that Christian witness was at its most faithfully political vis-à-vis the principalities and powers of the world. Particularly since the publication of Yoder’s 1972 work, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans), these two streams of thought, the Augustinian-Niebuhrian, and the Yoder-initiated, Anabaptist or ‘ecclesial’, have interacted in critical and fruitful ways.
The continuing effect of that engagement has meant that, speaking generally, the thinking among contributors to the conversation has not ossified into immovable dead-ends and, with a willingness to re-think, correct and to develop on both sides, now it would be more accurate to talk of the neo-Augustinian and the neo-Anabaptist approaches. This is the point where Stephen Long’s book enters the picture. Standing within the latter, Yoder-inspired stream (his doctoral work was supervised by Stanley Hauerwas, himself heavily influenced by Yoder), his aim is to push both sides to advance the rapprochement that has already occurred between them. My sense is that he has achieved this purpose remarkably well. Long’s approach is patient and scrupulously fair at least to those theologians he considers with which this reviewer is familiar.
Following an orienting Introduction, the work is composed of three rather long chapters (approximately 100, 70 and 100 pages) and ends with a brief summarising conclusion. The structure is simple, with single chapters devoted to the presentation of each of the two approaches to theological ethics Long is considering, and a third chapter whose purpose is to respond to Augustinian criticisms of the ecclesial perspective. However, what one gains with such a spare framework is somewhat counterbalanced by the occasional difficulty for the reader in keeping track of the author’s line of argument within each chapter.
Chapter 1 is headed ‘Origin and Development of the Augustinian Approach’. Here Long sets out three broad themes in Niebuhr’s theology of politics, namely (a) its dependence upon Augustine, (b) the role that agape is to play in personal and political ethics, and finally (c) its foundations in his broader theology. With this groundwork in place, we then follow its development via the writings of Paul Ramsey, Oliver O’Donovan, Charles Mathewes, Eric Gregory, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Jennifer Herdt, and finally John Milbank. Each of these is viewed as fitting, more or less obviously, within the Augustinian-Niebuhrian tradition. The approach Long has chosen is to maintain running comparisons between the scholars he is discussing, and this is a useful way of shedding light on the major issues that have emerged since Niebuhr’s time. However, with ideas from a number of scholars being kept in the air simultaneously, the reader less familiar with the territory can on occasion get left behind. Still, at the end of the chapter, there is a sense that its purposes have been well achieved and the discussion has been thorough and fair-minded. Throughout the chapter, Long has his overarching goal in mind, which is to offer, in his third and final chapter, a response to neo-Augustinian criticisms of the ecclesial or neo-Anabaptist approach. So, by the end of chapter 1, he has accumulated fifteen such points of criticism.
Chapter 2, ‘Origin and Development of the Ecclesial Approach’, follows a similar route as the first. Yoder’s theology of politics is explored and the chief points of difference and similarity between it and that of the Augustinian-Niebuhrian approach are laid out. Into this mix is brought the work of Stanley Hauerwas and James William McClendon whom Long refers to as ‘converts’ of Yoder, having had their eyes opened by his writings to the defects of their former Niebuhrian realism. The thought of these three theologians draws attention to such themes as the centrality of an adequate ecclesiology in relation to ‘the world’, that is, one oriented towards the pursuit of a holy and faithful witness to the teaching of Jesus Christ, to a thoroughgoing eschatological awareness, and to a fully serious commitment to Gospel non-violence.
There is much in this chapter that is illuminating. The work of Yoder has, since his time, been widely examined and, other than the two ‘converts’, we meet with the analyses of Travis Kroeker, Gerald Schlabach, and William Cavanaugh among others, whom Long draws upon to flesh out his narrative. Those associated with the ‘ecclesial’ approach have generally taken thoughtful account of the criticisms which neo-Augustinians have made, and Long lucidly charts the convergences between the two camps as well as their limits. More so than in the first chapter, he is at home in this terrain and we begin to see at this point hints of his own pre-occupations and passions. One anxiety in particular shows itself early in this chapter in his treatment of Yoder’s widely-acknowledged predatory behaviour towards women. Long struggles over five pages to arrive at a position that seeks to give full weight to the stain that he believes marks Yoder’s writings and yet at the same time refuses to accept that the oeuvre of the latter is to be discarded tout court because of it. I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable with Long’s attempts, especially within the current socio-political climate in the US and some other Western nations in which the thought of a scholar might be discounted on the strength of its source, for example evangelical Christian, progressive liberal, white male. I wondered whether perhaps Long conceded too much to this attitude. In any case, links between Yoder’s thought and his alleged moral failings figured minimally in the author’s subsequent discussions.
With fifteen criticisms to work through, one might imagine that the final chapter, ‘Addressing the Critiques’, might be rather slow going. However, this was certainly not the case; the chapter prompted this reviewer, at numerous points, to stop and reflect on matters of interest or challenge. Long takes care to ensure, not only that duplicate discussions are avoided, but more importantly that the thought of his key players is brought into conversation with an array of other theologians and political philosophers. Mention can be made here of Jeffrey Stout’s gingering critique of the ecclesial approach; a discussion of apocalypticism and Cyril O’Regan’s work on this topic; and Milbank, O’Donovan and the place of Constantinianism in theological ethics. Add to this, reflections on themes such as ecclesial mission, civic republicanism, ressentiment, and violence/power, and one ends up with a very rich final chapter.
What might one conclude, then, about the success of Long’s project? Overall, one would have to judge it well executed, and certainly worth the effort. On each of the three broad categories of question he considers, important clarifications are offered, concessions made and positions better defended: careful interpretation of Augustine’s thought reveals significant misunderstandings within both approaches; careful distinctions are drawn between agape as a guiding virtue in personal relations, and the various forms of agapeism which seek to place it at the centre of political and ecclesial life; and the two approaches are challenged to take more seriously the resources available to a biblical faith grounded in ecclesial tradition.
Good books do not tie up all the loose ends. In this case, the reviewer was left with one nagging question which has to do with the place of the concept of ‘violence’ in Long’s thought. The notion appears frequently throughout the text, mainly in connection with the opposition of the neo-Anabaptist/‘ecclesial’ approach towards the violence of the nation state, and one gains the impression that it is primarily towards this violence, existing as part of the very marrow of the state, that the church must direct its counter-witness. Only in chapter 3 (esp. pp. 251–52) do we find a more nuanced discussion of the idea, with a distinction drawn between legitimate uses of force by the state, for example enforcement of payment of taxes or the coercion of road laws, and the violence which is represented, for example, by oppressive prison conditions in the US or a state’s willingness to inflict lethal violence on other nations in the interests of national or international security. This would appear to open up the possibility, for Long, of a state that works to remove violence from its operations in relation to its own people, in which case the real object of his criticism of state violence might actually be the existence of and readiness to deploy a standing defence force. The key issue between the Augustinian-Niebuhrian and ‘ecclesial’ approaches would then become a matter of how one evaluates Augustinian just war theory in relation to the various forms of pacifism, a much more circumscribed set of questions than the issue of violence as such. I would have liked to have seen a treatment of these matters in the final chapter. Relevant here, too, is the question of whether it is the place of violence in the political sphere that divides the two approaches, or rather whether the issue of retaliation is more central. In the latter case, a fuller reckoning, by both sides, with restorative/reparative conceptions of justice and how they might function within a Christian ethics might raise prospects for further agreement between them.
Stephen Long has undertaken a very difficult task. From the stance of one identifying with the Yoder-inspired approach to the theological ethics of politics, he has sought to engage the thought of two whole traditions in critical dialogue with each other. This has required a sound grasp of the writings of many scholars, and a capacity to relate these in often complex ways; he has done this with great skill and generosity of spirit. His achievement is the more praiseworthy in the current academic climate for the manner in which it demonstrates a searching after a truth that is genuinely consequential. For both the working theologian and the graduate student in theology, Long’s book offers a broad and well-differentiated understanding of major Christian contributions to a significant area of theology, but more than that, it serves as a fine addition to the continuing work of pondering upon how the Lord is calling his people to witness to and engage the realm of the political in our day.