Abstract
Now that the critique in Part I has exposed the weaknesses in the Council’s pastoral strategy and conception of the lay apostolate, Part II (i.e. Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11) aims to remedy those weaknesses by proposing an alternative framework by which the Catholic Church ought to be guided in its relations with political authorities. The purpose of this chapter is to set out the methodological parameters by which I intend to propose this framework. The framework to be proposed will be neither too specific with respect to place nor too general with respect to time. The framework will focus on the saeculum, meaning the age between the first and second comings of Christ, and will attend to the differences in church-state relations that follow from some political authorities continuing to bear signs of Christendom’s legacy. The ressourcement method will be used by returning to scripture, followed by an examination of how scripture was read by key figures in the history of Christian thought, in conversation with several non-Catholic theologians, thereby contributing to an initiative known as ‘receptive ecumenism.’
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. DH’s observations about the growing awareness in our time of human dignity and of the need for freedom from coercion in society (DH 1966a, p. 675, n. 1).
- 2.
I am not yet making a judgment as to whether Christendom was ‘a project of the church’s mission, either as an end in itself or as a means to the further missionary end’ (O’Donovan 1996, p. 195; original emphasis), as Hauerwas believes it was (Hauerwas 1999, pp. 38–39), or if Christendom was instead a response on the part of converted rulers to the Church’s mission, as O’Donovan claims (cf. O’Donovan 1996, pp. 195, 215–217). My point is rather that the close union of the church with political leaders cannot plausibly be claimed to have always been thought of as the ideal arrangement since the apostolic era, but that its growing desirability was intertwined with the development of contingent historical events.
- 3.
See, for example, O’Donovan’s criticisms of perhaps the most well-known example of contextual theology, namely Latin American liberation theology, for ‘its dependence on historicist idealism’ (O’Donovan 2007, p. 271). I am here echoing O’Donovan’s more general opposition to inflated claims about the importance of context: ‘The ‘political hermeneutic’ is discovered and explored in a particular context of discipleship; yet it does not belong only to that context, nor is it the context that imposes it in the first place. It belongs to the Scriptures and is imposed by the exercise of reading the Scriptures’ (O’Donovan 1996, pp. 21–22). Elsewhere I have identified and explained my reasons for rejecting the same pattern of thinking among certain Muslim contextual and liberation theologians (Ciftci 2018).
- 4.
Framing my discussion of Christendom’s remnants in terms of the church’s missionary purposes makes my argument different from Nigel Biggar’s defence of the established church. His aim is rather to show those within and without the Anglican community that establishment benefits a liberal society, an argument with which I am nonetheless sympathetic (Biggar 2011, 2014, 2020).
- 5.
See O’Collins for further discussion of the ressourcement movement’s role at Vatican II for ‘the transformation of Catholic doctrine (1) on revelation through Dei Verbum, (2) on the church through Lumen Gentium, and (3) on divine revelation made to all human beings through Ad Gentes’ (2011, p. 378).
- 6.
The books published in the ‘Evangelical Ressourcement’ series, e.g. (Allert 2007), edited by the Baptist Patristics scholar D.H. Williams, are an example of a similar interest on the part of Evangelicals to enrich their own tradition by learning from the life and thought of the Church Fathers.
- 7.
A recent document on ministry released by the Church of England, Kingdom Calling, shows a slightly greater willingness, albeit only in passing, to consider the ministry that lay Christians may perform in social and political life (The Faith and Order Commission 2020, pp. 33–35, 53–54), by drawing on John N. Collins’ scholarship on diakonia as a form of service commissioned by a higher authority (ibid, pp. 44–46). Cf. (Hordern 2019, pp. 672–676; Collins 2002, 2014).
- 8.
The only discussions of Oliver O’Donovan’s political theology by Catholic theologians I have found are one journal article (McEvoy 2007), one chapter by Aidan Nichols (1999, pp. 71–89), a few paragraphs in Douglas Farrow’s book on political theology (2015, pp. 14–19, 22, 78), and a few brief remarks and two book reviews by Cavanaugh (2004, pp. 397, 403–405; 2006a, b; 2016, pp. 162–166). Farrow had been drawing on O’Donovan when Farrow was still an Anglican, long before he became Catholic (1999, pp. 164, 272). Cavanaugh can reasonably be assumed to have been exposed to O’Donovan’s work during his periods of study in non-Catholic institutions (Cambridge and Duke). We may take these as signs that O’Donovan is not well known to many Catholic theologians.
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Ciftci, M.Y. (2024). Methodological Introduction. In: Vatican II on Church-State Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56706-3_7
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