Sovereignty - God, State, and Self

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SOVEREIGNTY Goo,

STATE, AND SELF

The Gifford Lectures

Jean Bethke Elshtain

BASIC BOOKS .\ \f�,\18LR OF THE Pf,R"iEl "i BOOKS CROl P ;\F,\\" YORK

BOOKS BY JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought Editor, The Family in Political Thought Meditations on Modern Political Thought Women and War Co-Editor, Women, Militarism, and War Editor, Just War Theory Power Trips and Other Journeys

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Coauthor, But Was It Just?: Reflections on the Persian Gul War Democracy on Trial Coeditor, Politics and the Human Body Real Politics: At the Center of Everyday Life Augustine and the Liniits of Politics Who Are We?: Critical Reflections, Hopeful Possibilities New Wine and Old Bottles: International Politics and Ethical Discourse Coauthor, Religion and Arnerican Public Life Jane Addanis and the Dreani of Anierican Democracy Editor, The Jane Addanis Reader Just War Against Terror

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Copyright© 2008 by Jean Bethke Elshtain Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Per eus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be repro­ duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quota­ tions embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Book [ or other name], 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,2.'300 Chestnut treet, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 10-414 5, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. De igned by Timm Bryson Set in 12-pt. BulmerMT A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN l.'3: 978-0-465- 03759-9 10 98 76 54321

TO THE l\1El\1ORY OF J\t1Y PARENTS Paul George Bethke and Helen Lind Bethke

and for Dr. Harry Rosenberg,

who taught me to love the Middle Ages

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We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and others. -ALBERT CAMUS

I knew, always, that I would he a worker in the vineyard, as are all men and women living at the sa1ne time, whether they are aware of it or not. -CZESLAW MILOSZ

CONTENTS

Preface

IX

CHAPTER ONE

Sovereign God: From Logos to Will

1

CHAPTER TWO

Sovereign God: Bound or Unbound

29

Will, Power, and Earthly Dominion

57

The Sovereign State Unchained

77

The Binding and Loosing of Sovereign States

91

CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FI\'E

Binding, Loosing, and Revolution

119

CHAPTER SF:\'EN

Unbinding Revolution, Binding Constitution

137

CH.\PTER EIGHT

The Creation of the Sovereign Self

159

Self-Sovereignty: Moralism, Nihilism, and Existential Isolation

181

CHAPTER SIX

CH.\PTER NL\�:

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Contents

Vlll

c11.\PTER TEN

The Sovereign Self: Dreams of Radical Transcendence

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Less-Than-Sovereign Self and the Human Future

203 227

Aft erword

247

Acknowledgments Notes Index

249 251 321

PREFACE

The bulky envelope, for\varded to n1y Nashville, Tennessee, hoine fro1n Chicago, bore the return address: University of Edinburgh. "Funny/' I 1nused, "I don't think I kno\v anyone at Edinburgh. " I opened the letter and entered into that condition of happy shock kno\vn to every person invited to be a Gifford lecturer.Being a lecturer in this 111ost distinguished series is an unstated yearning for laborers in the vineyards of n1oral philosophy, theology, and, though so1nething of a stretch, political theory. As I an1 not officially a philosopher, nor can I clain1 a theology degree, a Gifford appointn1ent see111ed a bit out of reach. But .. . then .. . there \Vas Gifford lecturer, Hannah Arendt, she who insisted she \Vas a political theorist, not a political philosopher, and that a good bit hung on the difference.This was cold co111fort, of course, as \vho a1nong us-certainly not I-would put ourselves in the sa1ne ca1np as the learned and erudite Arendt. Thus I had resigned n1yself-as a hedge against disappoint1nent, no doubt-that a Gifford appointn1ent \Vould likely pass 1ne by. My delight at being included in the table of \Vorthies is felt keenly. To be sure, the e1notion that follo\VS close upon delight is fear and intimidation. So 111any years . .. so 1nany great books. At one point these considerations n1ust be put aside. One does \Vhat one does, for better or \Vorse.What I do is political theory \vith ethics as the heart of the n1atter.I decided long ago that one could no 111ore separate the study of IX

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Preface

politics fr on1 ethics than one could hold back the tides. In1portant, then, to bring political analysis to the fore . the ethics en1bedded in. one's ' as a constituent feature of what one has to say. I a1n enonnously grateful to the Gifford selection con1111ittee for giving n1e the opportunity to explore in depth an issue that I have probed for over a decade no,v: sovereignty. Ho,v does one begin to take the 1neasure of this protean topic? I begin here by reviewing 111y past ,vork and noting the relevance of previous books to this study. In n1y scholarly work and 1ny life, I have learned that one cannot erect a bright line separating what ,ve call public fr o111 ,vhat we call pri­ vate. This ,vas the subject of n1y first book. The issue of public in rela­ tion to private haunts n1e yet. 1 No n1atter ,vhat the topic at hand, one can refract it in such a ,vay that the public and private, the political and the personal, con1e into play. This involves no identity bet,veen public and private; indeed, that particular clai111 inti1nated noxious outcon1es that I assay in yet another book. 2 Public and private attaches itself to a third distinction-so1ne insist a bright line-bet,veen what we call religion and ,vhat ,ve call politics. It is this particular distinc­ tion, and its interweaving ,vith public and private, that figures in1por­ tantly in SovereZ:gnty: God, State, and Stlf. A bit of personal history will help the reader to appreciate the in1portance of this latter distinction to the book in hand. Let 1ne take the reader back to a particular ti1ne, na1nely, the late 1960s. This ,vas not a cahn ti1ne culturally and politically speaking, as all An1ericans of a certain age_ well ren1e1nber. The civil rights rnove1nent was in full s,ving. President Kennedy had been assassinated. Protest surrounding the ,var in Vietnan1 ,vas heating up. The counterculture ,vas preaching a '�1nake love, not ,var " gospel. Son1e of us ,vere struggling to understand ,vhat ,vas going on and to sort out just ,vhere ,ve "fit " in the overall schen1e of things. Who ,vere ,ve anY'vay-as a people, as singular persons? I was at the tin1e a graduate student in politics and, with a few rare excep­ tions, none of 1ny graduate courses in political science touched on any of these 1natters. We ,vere 1nore or less obliged to leave such burning concerns off to one side ,vhen ,ve entered the classroo111. The reigning episten1ology ,vas a variant on positivis1n called behaviorisn1. Its devotees proclai1ned fro1n the rooftops that the study

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XI

of politics should be cleansed fro1n the sn1udginess, 1nessiness, and taint of "values." A chas1n separated descriptive and evaluative state111ents, ,ve ,vere told. There ,vere facts-a kind of translucent relation­ ship betvveen a "nan1e" and its object ,vas assun1ed-or there were "subjective" things like "values," "biases, ' "e1notional preferences," none of ,vhich had any cognitive status. According to the critics, one ,vound up ,vith a crununy deal: reductionistic "scientis1n" and subjec­ tivistic e1notionalisn1. The upshot? Most of ,vhat people had to say politically, n1ost of the e1notions stirred up by politics, 1nost of the language in and through ,vhich real politics ,vas conducted, ,vas consigned to a conceptual nethenvorld. No ,vonder I and so 111any of n1y class111ates were vexed. We had entered graduate school on fire with ideas and passions, includ­ ing political passions about creating a 1nore fair, 111ore free, 1nore decent A111erica, only to learn that these were "biases" that one could attach to the "facts'' if one so desired. But such ideas and passions could never pass n1uster as a feature of the scientific study of politics.-'3 The hard version of the fact/value distinction n1ade little sense to 1ne. It 111ade short shrift of concerns flowing fro111 religion, or any other strong, nonnative con1111it111ents. In the narro,v political science world, these ,vere biases ,vith no ,varrant for truth. Although 111y scholastic interests at the tin1e did not touch on religion explicitly, they did revolve around consideration of the link between political inquiry and 1noral in1peratives presupposed by classical theorists in the history of political thought. Political theory beca1ne a refuge for 111e precisely because I could take up the "big" questions-the nature of political order, justice, freedo111, liberty, con1n1unity-in the historic texts. Con1plex questions arose fron1 the great tradition, and studying the canon drew 1ne into a world of vital debates. I observed, ho,vever, that so1nething hinny had happened on the road to canon creation in political theory: The "religious thinkers," ,vith few exceptions, were missing in action. As well, the religious di1nensions of those thinkers who were central to the canon ,vere often ignored or di1ninished. For exan1ple,J ohn Locke's scriptural references fron1 his clas­ sic Tu.Jo Treatises on Governnzent ,vere often eli1ninated fron1 f consideration, as if it ,vas obligatory of Locke to toss that "stuf " in but

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Preface

one should attach little real 1neaning to it. 4 Locke's religion didn't figure, save to position hi1n as so1neone doing the sensible and right thing in severing statescraft fron1 soulcraft i� his fa1nous Letter on Toleration. The thinkers \vhose religious con11nitrnents couldn't be scraped off like so 1nuch stale icing fro1n a two-day-old cake \vere adn1ittecl to the polit­ ical theory world in excised forn1. Perhaps portions of St. Augustine's City of God \Vere taken up but not, certainly, his Confessions. As for explicitly theological titles like On the Trinity or Augustine's great argun1ents against the Manicheans and the Pelagians-that was the stuff of arcana, interesting only to that odd duck, the theologian. Perhaps a bit of St. Thon1as Aquinas on the law fron1 his Su1111na Contra Gen tiles, but the refonners-Luther and Calvin-were nowhere to be seen. I recall to this day ho\v transgressive I felt when I first began teach­ ing Western political thought and assigned Martin Luther's classic essay On the Freedo111 of the Christian in the sa1ne section in which we read Machiavelli's The Prince, insisting, as I did so, that Luther's text \Vas ar­ guably n1ore i1nportant over the long run of vVestern history as it pre­ saged profound alterations in the structures of selfhood, understandings of freedon1, vie\vs of everyday life, ideas of authority and rule, and on and on. That this \Vas a "bold 1nove" on n1y part brings a s1nile to 111y face fro1n 1ny perch decades later. Working on 1ny first book, I incorporated thinkers that \Vere usually 01nitted fron1 the study of political theory. I further detennined that eth­ ical 1natters would take center stage. As I wrote Public il1an, Private Wonzan, 1ny assess1nent of 111y O\vn state of 1nind was that \Vhatever reli­ gious belief clung to 1ne \Vas scarcely visible in an overt \vay. Looking back, I realize that 1ny critique of various thinkers fro1n the canon, as \vell as of certain schools, tendencies, and ideologies in fe111inis1n, often reflected, if in derivative fonn, religious ( specifically Christian in origin) ideas and conunittnents I scarcely ki1e\v I held at the tirne. I refer to such \Veighty 1natters as ontological presuppositions, anthropological considerations, ideas of hurnan purpose and dignity, birth and death, the n1oral develop1ne11t of the child, and "the ethical polity," as I called it. It took others to point out to 111e, often in the fonn of rather tart criti­ cisrn that I had pennitted too 1nuch "religious stuff" to creep into political

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Xl l l

theory. But the die ,vas cast and I have, for thirty years now, worked to build bridges bet\veen religious and political concepts and understand­ ings-1nore overtly so over the past fifteen years. Being asked to join the U niversity of Chicago Divinity School in 1995 gave 111e the opportunity to pursue ,vith rene,vecl vigor 111y effort to include the political di1nensions in the texts of the great theologians and, in turn, the theological di111ensions of the great political theorists in treatn1ents of Western political thought. In other words, for the first tin1e, I began ,vorking in reverse ( so to speak) by bringing political theo­ rists to bear on the indispensable works in theology. I 111ention "theology" ,vith a certain trepidation. Although I have ,vritten an appreciative exegesis of St. Augustine's 111agisterial De Trindate-as part of a rather n1odest book on Augustine-I ren1ain an an1ateur in theological studies. 5 I say this not to be coy but, rather, fron1 a profession of n1y own lin1its. Despite this I see111 to venture onto theological turf with an alarm­ ing degree of regularity and thus far I have escaped the scholarly equiva­ lent of being ridden out of to,vn on a rail. This no doubt says n1ore about the generosity of critics than it does of n1y own expertise. I a111 at it once again. One cannot write about sovereignty and God and escape theology. To the contrary, one is in the thick of it. Ho,v co111e? Isn't sovereignty prin1arily a political concept after all? I had indeed once thought so. To be sure, I uttered, with all Protestants, a version of the Lord's Prayer that ends ,vith these words: "For thine is the kingdon1, and the po,ver, and the glory. An1en. " This would see111 to locate sovereignty full square in, or as, divinity itself. Kingdo111, power, and glory sun1 up 111uch of ,vhat students of political history su111n1on when they recall the glories and treacheries of classical sovereignty in the majesty of kings and kingdo1ns. I had not really studied any history of sovereignty, or the nexus between God and kingdon1s, as a young student of governn1ent-this ,vas only just before the study of politics beca111e "political science." As a student in several IR (international relations) courses as an undergraduate, I had � of course, learned that "sovereignty �' is the IOCllS classicus of the state, the sine q ua non of political life. Sovereignty ,vas the place fron1 ,vhich one began. It was a concept to be accepted

XIV

Prefa ct

rather than explored-that had n i gh ontological status. It was the 111e1nbership card in the world of nation-states. . ' It occurred to 1ne that this was a rather re1narkable concept when I was ,vorking on 1ny book Wo,nen a n d VVa r. 6 It see1ned astonishing that a notion linked to 1neclieval pro jJatria nlori-to die for the father or the feudal lord-had trans1nogrified over the centuries, beco111ing attached to love and affection for one's national ho1ne. The 1nost con11non juridical or legiti1nate political config1-iration, the sovereign state, continued to under­ "'rite the ideal (contested, to be sure) of dying for one's ho1neland. This sent 1ne to the early n1odern sovereigntists, fore111ost if not first a1nong these the redoubtable Thon1as Hobbes. With Hobbes one finds the pretensions of sovereignty 1najestically enshrined as he ,vrites of the sovereign's a,veso1ne power; his terrible po,ver; his not-to-be-triflecl-,vith po,ver that is subject to none save the sovereign Goel, although Hobbes's sovereign God see111s not to play 1nuch of a role in chastening earthly sovereignty, one of the key attributes of God for 1nedieval theolo­ gians-at least until the e1nergence and in1perfect triun1ph of no1ninal­ is111. For vvith no1ni nalis1n-as ,ve shall see-construal of the deity shifted a,vay fr o1n the lushness of Augustine's tri nitari anis1n ,vi th its heavy e1nphasis on the Mediator (the second person of the trinity); a,vay fro1n the elaborated and Aristotelian ized trinitarianis1n of St. Tho1nas Aquinas, to a radical stress on God's absolute po,ver and his ,villfulness. It further occurred to 1ne that there ,vas son1ething of that absoluteness and willfulness in early n1oclern (which is to say postn1edieval) construal of political sovereignty. It followed that perhaps-just perhaps-theological understandings had 1nigratecl into early n1oclern political sovereigntis1n. The n1ore I thought about this, the n1ore sense it n1acle, given Hobbes's no1ninalis1n and his ill-ten1perecl but witty assaults on the "churcl11nen," the Scholastics and their theological and n1oral realis1n, as contrasted with no111inalis1n. At least as interesting ,vas the undeniable fact that the theological backdrop to political concepts had fallen a,vay in the study of political thought; indeed, there ,vere son1e editions of Hobbes's great ,vork Leviatha n that eli111inated the entire second half on "A Christian Co1n11101nvealth " and '�'rhe Kingdo111 of Darkness." Hobbes's prqject was a political theolog,)r,

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xv

but the theolog;y fell out of the picture as the "canon " of Western political thought got "nonnalized ." Perchance, I 1nused, there ,vas a connection between the God of Augustine and Tho1nas and the notions of political life that prevailed in the Middle Ages, recalling 1ny n1aster's degree i n 1nedieval history attained before the late 1960s hit and ,ve all decided we had to study so1nething "relevant." (For 1 ne this had 1neant political science.) I now consider 1nyself fortunate for having studied 1nedieval and early 1nodern history as the 1nedieval epoch displayed a bewildering variety of over­ lapping ju risdictions, none of ,vhich could clai1n de facto the kind of absolutis1n that sovereigns began to en1brace fro1n the sixteenth century or so on. I also speculated that the papal doctrine of plen itudo jJotestatis, or a plenitude of po,ver proclai1ned de jure, added to the revival of Ro1nan la,v, served as undeq)inning for early 1nodern notions of political sovereignty. All of this is explored in detail in the text through historic reconstruction and interpretive pol itical theory. To this already con1plicated picture, one additional piece had to be added to n1ake the n1atter co1nplete, nan1ely, n1odern notions of self-sov­ ereignty. I pondered whether there n1ight be a connection between prior constructions of state sovereignty, with notions of a possessed and invio­ lable territory, a kind of autarchy, and the celebrations of self-sovereignty and triun1ph of the individual will to po,ver in which we are currently a,vash. What ,vas the philosophical backdrop to this astonishing notion of the self ? For there are alternative ,vays of thinking about persons that are 1nore n1odest concerning ho,v 1nuch ,ve define and control our very selves. H o,v did all of these pieces go together? I followed n1y hunch that the n1odern sovereign self owes a good deal to the 1nodern territo­ rial state: It is as if that entity got parceled out to constitute so 1nany 1nini-sovereignties-ontological individualisn1s-in 1nuch of n1odern theory. The cultural criti que and constructive argun1entation in the book's concluding chapters take up this challenge. With these 1nusings in n1ind, I began stalking sovereignty. In residence at the Library of Congress as the holder of the Mag,11ire Chair of Ethics, fall of 2003 , I decided to proceed '�] ogically " by searching for tides under ��sovereignty? This 1nessage ca1ne back: "Your search retrieved n1o re

X VI

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records than can be displayed. Only the first 1 0,000 will be shown." Well, that was a relief ! I gave up proceeding "logically " nearly as soon as I had . ' en1braced that strateg)' and decided to follow n1y hunches, in fi.111 awareness that I could but scratch the surface of this inexhaustible topic. These prelin1ina1)' skinnishes led 111e to the ruen1l ackno\\rledgn1ent that n1y en­ tl)' on sovereignty for the Ency clopedia Anzericana, 1 997, lin1ited as it was by space constraints, posited 1nore than it proved. The Gifford lectures, and this follo\v-up volu1ne, have given 1ne the wondern1l opportunity to n1ake good on n1y prelin1ina1)' 1nusings and hunches. But it is a frustrating business withal knowing, as I do, that I an1 painting with broad strokes and that the devil is always in the details. Still . . . t1)'ing to bring so111e fonn to the canvas is the first step before one fills in the details. A heads-up to readers: The discussion of God's sovereignty will likely have the strongest appeal to historians of theological and political thought. I rather unabashedly bring back the notion of the "history of ideas "-an approach that see1ns to have run afoul of criticisn1 in recent decades. This is a pity as, well clone, tracing the evolution and 1nigration of ideas is an in1portant, even exhilarating, enterprise. This 1neans, a1nong other things, that one cannot abstract ideas fro1n the textures, the waq) and woof, of histOI)'. There exists a huge gulf that separates abstract concepts that the political theorist cannot do without, fro1n abstracted­ ness, draining all the 1nessy life out of one's subject n1atter. Without con­ crete history, political thought beco1nes a gnostic enterprise-all words, no flesh; all spirit, no-body. Then, disastrously, that disen1bodied enter­ prise invites sche1nes and ideologies that are in1posecl over the living, incarnate tissue of hu1nan life. One is left staring at the n1ins wrought by this sort of arrogance when it is brought to bear on political and social life, even as one recognizes the palpable inadequacies of philosophies that are, quite literally, 1101.vhere. The chapters on God's sovereignty are a con1plex bringing together of theological the1nes, teasing out their political i1nplications. The chapters on political sovereignty that follo,v \vork, so to speak, in reverse, as I unpack the theological then1es i1nbedded in political argun1entation, oflering as I n1ove along interpre­ tations of key political thinkers in the West. These chapters involve nothing less than a retelling of the story of Western political thought. 7

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The final chapters on self-sovereignty offer cultural criticisn1s and constructive alternatives. Readers devoted to conte111pora ry cultural criticis1n n1ay turn directly to the self-sovereignty chapters and begi n reading; hopefully, this in turn \vill send the1n back to the earlier chap­ ters in order to figure out "ho\v co1ne." As I gro\v older and, hopefully, a bit \Viser, I a1n ever 1nindful that St. Bernard of Clairvaux's observation that '\ve stand on the shoulders of giants" is a truth that engenders lunnility and an appropriate awareness of the finiteness of one's O\Vn enterprises. We are all laborers in the vine­ yard and, if \Ve are lucky, \Ve add just a bit to the storehouse of wisdon1 and kno\vledge that is our shared hu1nan inheritance. One of n1y persistent \Vorries about our O\Vn ti1ne is that we 1nay be squandering a good bit of that rich heritage through processes of organized "forget­ ting/' a clin1ate of opinion that encourages presentis1n rather than a historic perspective that re1ninds us that \Ve are ahvays boats 1noving against the current, "borne back ceaselessly into the past," in F. Scott Fitzgerald's n1en1orable words fro1n The Great Gatsby. This historic recognition should not occasion resentn1ent or dour heaviness; rather, it should instill gratitude. As this book dre\v to a close, I realized that it \Vas no cuhninating 1nagnun1 opus-fe\v books are-but, rather, a con­ tribution to the shared n1en1ory of our ti1ne and place. And that is enough. .Jtrnt Bd!tftt Elslttai11 Chicago, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee, fall 2 0 0 6

1

S OVEREIGN G O D : FRO11 LOGOS TO WILL

T H AT G O D A LO � E I S S O V E R E I G N I N A L L T H I N G S . I M M UTAB LE, T I I E FULLNESS O F

truth, reason , and goodness \Vas an article of faith-faith being the 1nost perfect act of hu1n a n reason-within the regnai1t Tho1n is1n of Europe's High Mid d le Ages. God 's sovereignty over the hu1nan intellect held that luunan beings could con1e to God and discern his existence and d ivinity through the light of intellect and reason . Faith vvas not cast i n opposition to reason, as n1any now have it, 111ost often critics \vho seek to d iscredit faith as irrational e111otionalis1n . Too, for o ur 111 edi eval forebears i n the West, hu111an law should aspire to e111u late the la\vs of God . Sh ould hun1 an law deny or transgress di­ vine law, the lesser (hu111an) law 1n ust give \Vay before the greater. It follo\\,ed that kings \vho beca111e tyrants, hence lawless, were despots \Vho 1night be re1n oved fro111 office, for they had defied its nonnative require1nents. But son1ething happened to this cluster of in1peratives as theological no111inalisn1 and voluntarisn1-to be explained in detail belo\v­ challenged the theological realis111 that held there was a 1noral order, dis­ cernable through reason and available to all. This chapter will be challenging for the reader-it \Vas certainly challenging for the author­ as \Ve trace the 1nove1nent fr on1 God as Logos to Goel as will on the level of thought and as proleptic to n1odern sovereign political configurations. I

2

S O V E R E I G N TY

The central question and puzzlen1ent is this: If God's power is absolute and innnutable, is God in any way bound, or is, instead, God free to undo what he has already clone, ovei·turn the laws of nature, perhaps, or even bring creation to an end? At first blush, it isn't easy to discern \vhat the political i1nplications of these theological issues n1ight be. That \vill be our task as \Ve unpack construals of God's sovereignty and their possi­ ble i1nplications for the earthly tasks of fashioning con1n1unities, king­ clo111s, principalities, laws, and justice. There are at least three sets of considerations that confront us: (a) God's sovereignty as a theological proposition and the nature of that divine power and authority, (b) the relative positions of spiritual and secular authority on the level of thought once Christianity had intro­ duced that distinction, and ( c) the \Vorking out "on the ground" of these respective authorities, including whether either can be said to be sover­ eign and, if so, ho\v. 1 Our task here is to describe a "1noral concept " of sovereignty that can be distinguished fro1n the later, territorial one \vith \vhich \Ve are all fan1iliar: sovereignty as the sine q ua non of states. One begins \vith Sovereign God. 2 W hat does it 111ean to say "God the Father Alinighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth "? This n1oral con­ cept of sovereignty was n ot attached to a notion of territory but as­ signed as one of God's po\vers, the heart of God's authority over all of creation. J ust ho\v terrifying, co1nforting, or enduring a concept is this? God's sovereignty has passed the endurance test, although chal­ lenges have been 1nountecl as to \vhether God is, in fact, sovereign and i n \vhat \vays it n1ight be said that he is. Throughout history Chris­ tians have been terrified and con1fortecl by the idea. For this is a sover­ eign God \Vho en1pties hin1self of his p ower and binds hin1self to hu1nan beings through the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ, who is born, crucified, and risen again in Christian theology and doctrine. :3

AU G U S T I N E O N T H E T R I N I TY

A place to begin "\vorking" these questions is \vith St. Augustine and his 111agisterial treat111ent of the Christian doctrine of the triune God. 4

Sovereign God: Fro m L ogos to M1ill

.'3

Augustine understood that God's all-po,verful inunutability gives hi1n do111inion over all his creatures and, further, that God's po,ver and glory is all-enco111passing, so that not even a hair on a hu111an head goes un­ nu1nbered. Hu1nan beings are su�ject to their creator. But how are we to "think" the question of God? Can ,ve in any ,vay rise to hin1? Does he in any ,vay co1ne do,vn to us? The ans,ver to each of these questions, for Augustine, is yes. To hi111 it ,vas clear that ever "since the Prologue to the Gospel of John, the concept of logos has been at the very center of our Christian faith in God," in the ·,vords of Pope Benedict XVI, who adds: "L ogos signifies reason, 111eaning, or even 'word'-a 1neaning, therefore, that is Word, that is relationship, that is creative. The God ,vho is logos g;uarantees the intelligibility of the world , the intelligibility of our existence, the aptitude of reason to know God . . . and the reason­ ableness of God . . . even though his understanding infinitely surpasses ours and to us n1ay often appear to be darkness." 5 Christians pro­ clai1ned the ,vord is love before the Beatles: "Say the word and you'll be free? Reason and love are not severed as both are e1nbodied in a person ( the second person of the Trinity) and that person is love incarnate. This person/love is accessible to hu1nan reason, if i1nperfectly: We are not struck du1nb at the thought of the 1nystery. It is to this con1plex of notions, and the vision of God's po,ver, justice, love, and 1nercy, that Christian thinkers attached the notion of the "good news" despite all the n1iseries of the world. 6 Of the unity and equality of each person of the Trinity, Augustine has no doubt. But there are tricky and insistent 1natters that nag. One of these has to do ,vith God the Father Ahnighty linked as he was to visions of po,ver and sovereignty, and how it is possible that he is not su­ perior to God as incarnate, a hu1nan person. How can they be coequal if one '�gives" the other to us? 7 If ,ve cast this query through the pris1n of sovereignty: Ho,v can God's sovereignty be dividec�? Augustine re­ sponds: To the fonn of God , the son is equal; in the fonn of n1an born of ,von1an� under the law, he is a servant who ca111e that "he n1ight redee111 those who ,vere under the la,v.'' 8 For exa1nple, ,ve say of hu1nan beings that they are both body and soul-ensouled bodies-but we don't for a n1on1ent believe that each person appears in the world as body with a

4

S OV E R E I G N T Y

"soulful " sovereign self attached as a kind of pennanent shadow to the lesser corporeal self, ren1iniscent of Robert Louis Stevenson's "My Shado\v, " a poen1 for children that ·b'egins "I have a little shado\v that goes in and out with 1ne,/And what can be the use of hin1 is 1nore than I can see." 9 So God is both father and son-and the one is not a pale shadovv of the other.1 0 For Augustine, a creative intelligence lies behind this \vorld and the beings that call it hon1e.Hun1an beings, created in God's i1nage (i111ago Dei) participate in God's creativity.But it is pride and folly to pretend one can en1ulate God directly. 1 1 There are Un, it s-intrinsic, not acci­ dental or contingent-to our capacity to understand fully, to divine (if you will) the Divine person(s). Touch sets a lin1it; sight sets a li1nit; speech sets a lin1it. Augustine is especially brilliant on speech and language, those in1perfect ways lnunan beings attest to what they have experienced, conten1plated, or con1e to understand.

A Doc

R E A L LY I s M A N ' s B E S T F R I E N D

Most fan1ous a1nong Augustine's nnISings on speech is the \Vay sentient creatures are divided by linguistic difference.In the fan1ous Book XIX, chapter 7, of The C£ty of God, he concludes that 1nost hu1nan beings "would be rnore cheerfi1l with [his] dog for co1npany than with a for­ eigner." 1 2 W hy is that? Because of the difficulties, at tin1es the see1ning irnpossibilities, of conununication if t\VO people speak different lan­ guages.Even vvith n1e1nbers of one's own speech conununity, including one's fan1ily and friends, full transparency of understanding is never possible.u That said, Augustine is jJ ri,n u s in ter p a res of those who have, through the centuries, ren1inded us of the 1nurkiness and irnpene­ trability of speech.1 4 Rue the inadequacies of our tenns of understanding as \Ve will, we have no choice but to follovv the conventions of hu1nan language. \;Ve caunot leap out of the \vorld and attain an Archirnedean point or devise a n1eta-language purged of earthly usage by fi1llible creatures. It follo\VS that hu rnan beings possess only a "creature's knowledge " that co1nes in "faded colou rs, con1pared \Vith the kno\vledge that co1nes Vt'hen it is

S o v r rf ig n G o d: Fro m L ogos l o VVill

5

kno,vn in the Wisclo1n of God. " Godlike wisdo1n is not attainable on this earth. 1 5 Reason "of itself could never directly reach the truth; it acted in the light of faith; and ,vas essentially an acco111pani111e11t to n1a11 in his transitory state as voyager in this ,vorld. " 1 6 Why belabor these 111atters? For t,vo reasons. First, because ,vhat Augustine is about in The Trinity is to ofler thoughts that ,vere taken up by those a111ong the faithfi.11 ,vho "think what they are doing," in Hannah Arendt's fa1nous phrase. Second, because articulation of li111 its intrinsic to sovereignty, ,vhether li111its God has freely i111posed on hin1self, li1nits to earthly rule, or li1nits to hu111an self-governance, are central to this study and conspicuous, at ti1nes, by their absence in hurnan history and thought. W here sovereign God is concerned, Augustine's teaching stresses just ho,v shocking the incarnation . was to classical philosophy and anthropology and, further, how one n1ust have hu111ility to see this truth. Christ, he tells us, taught a fishennan's ,visdo1n, not a philosophy available only to an elite fe,v. 1 7 The concept of the Trinity redee1ns hun1an reason and willing, thus dignifying the person as a whole. Despite the intricacies Augustine puts before us, there is son1ething beautifully stark about the triune God's nature. 1 8 God is "good without quality . . . great without quantity . . . the Creator who lacks nothing, ,vho rules but fron1 no position, and who contains all things without an external fonn, as being whole everywhere without lin1itation of space, as eternal without ti1ne, as 1naking 1nutable things without any change in Hi1nself, and as a Being without passion." 1 9 Augustine re1ninds us that hu1nan beings are earthy, fallible, and unable to sustain perfectly certain abstract truths, especially philosophic understanding that 01nits grace and love. 2 ° Clain1ing othe1wise is epis­ te1nic presun1ptiveness, a flawed e1nbrace of the "Selfsa1ne," Aug;ustine's ,vord for the inunutability that is God's alone. Apparently far ren1oved fro1n the political issues taken up in any discussion of sovereignty, this point ,vill be vital. Hu1nan finiteness is the grounding of any fonn of human life, including political life. Our finiteness pron1pted 1nany antique philosophers to downgrade that ,vhich is n1utable and decays-the body, in the overall schen1e of things-having seen in ki10,vledge that co1nes through the body only detritus that the real '�ki1ovver " n1ust slough ofL 2 1

6

S O V E R E I G N TY

We con1e to kno,v and to love Goel through our ensouled bodies. As subjects or citizens, we find ourselves in political fonnations that cul1 ninate-at least since the late Mid�lfe Ages-in structures we define as sovereign. 22 Because trinity can be represented, in language, law, phi­ losophy, story, and art, it takes on a ,vorlclly character.We co1ne to see and to know trinity thro ugh understanding, i1nagining, na1ning, willing, and love. 23 Augustine offers an ingenious probing of the dy­ na1nics of the n1ind in a world of bodies, a world in ,vhich bodies con­ fine us and free us at one and the sa1ne ti1ne. If one forgets that he or she is not God, one forgets the neighbor, and solipsis1n takes over, for hu1nan beings can never be three in one-they can only "i1nitate " the God they believe is all-powerful, a solipsistic God, not the trinitarian God of Augustinian Christianity. 2 .i It is easier to in1agine a solipsistic God isolated in transcendent splend or if one plucks the self out of the web of entanglen1ents that are the stuff of a hu1nan life. 25 This Augus­ tine never did. It is the God of a purely conten1plative philosophy that is "essentially self-centered: thought conte1nplating itself. The God of faith is basically defined by the category of relationship." 26 This God co1nes down to us through the son so that we n1ight rise to hin1: The relational cli1nension is never severed. There is 1nuch 1nore that 111ight be said, but this n1ust suff ice for no,v: God is the apogee of knowledge and of love. Even as one believes in order to understand (the fa1nous credo ut in trlligrun), so Goel passes our understanding. We kno\v hi1n through his deeds and a love that gave his "only begotten Son" that ,ve n1ight be reclee1necl. 2 7 Augus­ tine ren1inds his readers that the Christ now "preached throughout the ,vorl cl is not a Christ ,vho is adorned ,vith au earthly kingclon1, nor a Christ rich in earthly possessions, 11or a Christ shining with any earthly splendour, but Christ crucified. " 28

G o o ' s S ov E R E I GNTY A N D H uMAN S o c IA L L I FE I N T I I E E A R T H LY C I T Y

A n understanding as po,verftil as Augustine's ,vas destined to have a profound and lasting i111pact in a society that defined itself as "Christian. "

S n v e re ig11 G n d : Frn m L ogns t o H'ill

7

Augustinianis1n \Vas the do1ninant \vay of thinking about God and earthly n1atters until the triu1nph of St. Tho1nas Aquinas and Scholasticis1n. 29 Medieval theology and philosophy is inseparable fro1n the \Vays our forebears fro1n the late Antique World through the late Middle Ages sorted out a tale of t\vo kingdo1ns, or po\vers, laid do\vn byJesus when he picked up the coin and stated tantalizingly: "Render unto Caesar that \vhich is Caesar's and unto God that "'hich is God's," 30 vexing Chris­ tians-and 1nore than Christians-ever since. Jesus' distinction invites one to ask about the nature of the t\vo sides of the coin. Is there a single po\ver or are there t\vo? Or 1nore? My focus is the internal, or \vhat \Ve call do1nestic, 1nodel of hu1nan social and political life. Is po\ver divisible or is it singular and brooks no con1petition? Do \Ve face a 1nonistic, plenipotentiary sovereign-or a plurality of po\vers, 1nultiple authoritative sites within a single body politic? This is one \vay the sovereignty question is refracted on the ground, not so 1nuch in a causal line fro1n God's sovereignty but, rather, as an e1nanation of theological contestation, as I hope to de1nonstrate. Of course, Augustine was not prin1arily a political thinker. He cannot be looked to as a syste1natizer of political ideas or categories; neverthe­ less, his thought is rich \vith in1plication and, at ti1nes, explicit conunen­ tary on earthly rule. Augustine's acerbic articulation of pridefiilness in politics and the 1nanner in which pride spurs unjust do1ninion, retains its resonance. Here Augustine on Ro1ne: A city characterized by an excess of pride is one " which holds nations in enslaven1ent, but is itself don1inated by that very lust of do1nination." 3 1 Augustine offers an alter­ native to the received Ciceronian definition of a con1n1onwealth in Book II, chapter 2 1 , of his Ci(y of God, na1nely, as a people united by a co1nmon sense of interest. Augustine, by contrast, infuses peoplehood \vith love and desire, to \vit: "A people is the association of a 1nultitude of rational beings united by a con1n1011 agreen1ent 011 the objects of their love? It follo\vs ssthat to observe the character of a particular people \Ve n1ust exa1nine the objects of its love." 3 2 The famous Book XIX of Thf City of God is often 1nined for precepts about the interests govern1nent should serve, including Augustine's argu1nents against slavery ''by nature," for he repudiates Aristotle's clain1 that

8

S OV E R E I G N TY

slave1y exists "by nature." To the contrary, no one is "naturally" enslaved to another and no lnunan being by nature enjoys absolute do1ninion over another life. Augustine's definition a just conunonwealth, the question of war, and his analogizing between the peace and the good of various lay­ ers, levels, and institutions found 'Vvithin the con1n1onwealth-all can be brought to bear to challenge n1onistic and solipsistic understandings of God's sovereignty and, as well, the authority of bodies politic. For Aug,·us­ tine, there is a "darkness that attends the life of luunan society," and this holds \vithin, and cuts across, all levels or circles of hu111an existence, fro1n the dom.us, or household; to the civitas, or city; fron1 clans and tribes to great and terrible e1npires; on to the orbis terrae, or the earth; finally, the cosn1 0s, or universe, the heaven and the earth. 33 Social life is full of ills and yet to be cherished . The Church could not have 111ade "its first start . . . if the life of the saints ,vere not social."·3 4 As to how lunnan beings should organize their earthly living together, Augustine begins with the hun1an person. W hether Christian or not, each has access to a naturalistic n1orality.:3 5 For exa111ple, God's sentient creatures share deeply e1nbedded strictures against \Vrongful death, or 1nurder. That is ,vhy '\Ve recoil in horror at the ,villful n1urder of a lnunan being. The fa1nily derives fro1n nature and is an institution in \vhich any hierarchy is based as service and crude do111ination has no legiti111ate space. Augustine departs fro111 the classic Greek philosophers, however, in refusing to sever the household fron1 the city or, as the Greeks ,vould have it, the oiltos fro1n the jJolis. Instead, each feeds into the other. Au­ gustine finds in the household "the beginning, or rather a sn1all co111po­ nent part of the city, and every beginning is directed to so1ne end of its o,vn kind, and every co111ponent part contributes to the co111pleteness of the ,vhole of which it fonns a part. The i111plication is that don1estic p eace contributes to the peace of the city, for an ordered hannony of those ,vho live together in a house contributes to the ordered hannony concerning authority and obedience obtaining an1ong citizens.":36 In Augustine's earthly rule, each beginning carries \Vithin it a portion of the ,vhole and the ,vhole overlaps ,vith, and is internally connected to, each part. The li fe of household, church, and city is a social life erected, initially, 0 1 1 the ground of a basic gra1111nar of lnnnan actions and pos-

of'

Sove reig n God: Fro m L o gos to Mli/1

9

sibilities fran1ed by finitude, by birth and by death. As to the rest, we o,ve the necessity for earthly rule to the fact of lnunan fallenness. Tainted forever after by the legacy of "original sin," hu1nan beings 111ust erect barriers to their ,vorst tendencies even as they seek to realize their best. That is the only legiti1nate purpose of earthly do111inion. Because no one can clai1n sovereignty in relation to another-authority is so1ne­ thing very different-,ve are not denuded if ,ve give of ourselves to oth­ ers. En1bracing ca ritas, love of the neighbor, or enslaved by cujJiditas, a drive for 1nore p leasure, 111ore pelf, 111ore power, hu111an beings are caught ,vithin the ,vorkings-out of this dialectic in every sphere, fro1n fa1nily to ,vhat ,ve no,v call state. 3 7 And in those spheres, Christians share space ,vith others ,vho do not profess Christianity-yet this civil con1111unity n1akes legiti111ate clai1ns on all, Christians and non-Chris­ tians alike.

PO L I T I C S , L OV E , A N D N E C E S S ITY

Politics i s erected on the altar o f necessity, but not reducible to it. Unfortunately, politics offers a grand canvas on which those who prey on others can paint their grueson1e pictures. The ruthless leader of the rob­ ber band and the avaricious en1peror alike need other hu111an beings to ,vork on and to vvork over. The sin that 1nars the earthly city is the story of arbitrary power, or the ever-present possibility of such. Within this co111n1on 1nortal life, Augustine offers an understanding of earthly do111inion into vvhich love, caritas, enters. This does not solve the proble1ns of poli­ tics but it offers intin1ations of a fonn of earthly rule not reducible to do1n­ ination. Although Augustine does not speak in this way, it is surely the case that the pretensions of an absolutist notion of sovereignty aid and abet a lust to do111inate and 111ust be repudiated. Earthly institutions n1ake legitimate clai1ns on us but these can never be absolute and should not be divinized. 3 8 Within each earthly city, the saved and unsaved co1ne together: That is a given. At the sa1ne ti1ne, one can distinguish bet\veen better and ,vorse earthly cities. Ho,v does one make such evaluations? Augustine asks us to reflect on the way a city is '"turned." Does it live exclusively according to its o,vn

10

S OV E R E I G N T Y

designs? Do its rules reflect the goods ofj ustice, civi c peace, and fellow­ ship? On thi s earth , there are two rules all can follow: "First, to do no . ' hann to anyone, and, secondly, to help everyone ,vhenever possible." 3 g There n1ust be co1npro111ises between conflicting hu1nan ,vills lest hu1nan social life be turned into the night1nare later drean1 t by Tho1nas Hobbes in chapter 1 3 of The Leviathan , a world in which all hun1an be­ ings prey on all others and life is nasty, brutish, and short. The heavenly city-the society of the faithful on earthly pilgri111age-is not an earthly city unto itself; rather, citizens of the city of God are sprinkled through­ out 1nultiple earthly cities withi n ,vhich they should be decent, obedient citizens in full a,vareness that the earthly kingdo111 is, like the hu1nan be­ ings that populate it, finite, partial , inco1nplete, estranged. But that does­ n't 1nean justice should be ignored or that l ove of neighbor doesn't pertain. I t also lifts up the possibility of a secular faith, appropriately rel­ ativized, that a fl citizens 1nay share. J usti ce, or giving to each his or her clue, affords scope for earthly righteousness and can be a fonn of love. Depredation, radical suffering, arbitrariness i1nposed by earthly authority betrays a depraved love of do1nination rather than a love of neighbor. Aug·ustine doesn't give us the con1plete architecture of the fonn of rule n1ost co1npatible ,vith his under­ standings of love and justice. It see1ns safe to say, ho,vever, that it ,vould be a type of governance that builds in barriers to cruel and capricious behavior on the part of earthly rulers. Augustine knevv only the experience of the late en1pire but he was ,vell avvare that there ,vere other possibilities, including that of the patriarchs in the scriptural story of the people of Is­ rael . No earthly city can exist ,vithout legiti1nate authority; nor can rule proceed without a capacity for coercion, as vvrongdoers 111ust be brought to heel lest they cany out a reign of terror uni1npeded . ..Jo Alas, ,vith the Ro111ans even "peace" ,vas often 111ore cruel than ",var," Augustine opines. Plunder is not synony1nous ,vith politics, however, and, as I already indicated, a decent order characterized by a n1easure of justice is the heart of the n1atter. Augustine appreciates ,vhat today inter­ national relations thinkers call the SfC'll rit_y dilennna. People never pos­ sess a kingcloin "so securely as not to fear subjugation by their ene1nies; in fact, such is the instability of h u1nan aflairs that no people has ever been allo,ved such a degree of tranquility as to rernove all dread of hos-

('t')

Sovere ign God: Fro m L o gos to JVi!!

Il

tile attacks on their life in this ,vorld." 4 1 For nearly all Christian thinkers, the Fall occasioned earthly rule and set the basis for reflections on it. Be­ fore the Fall, there ,vas no need to acljudicate between "conflicting hu­ n1an ,vills" as there ,vas no perverse ,villfulness. This shared backdrop did not lead to unani111ity a1nong C hristian theologians on the nature, ends, and dignity of earthly rule, including whether it can be said to be "sovereign" and, if so, ho,v and in ,vhat ,vays .

RE G N U M AN D SAC E R D O T I U M : C O O P E RAT I O N A N D C O N F L I C T

Augu s tine p e nned his great ,vorks b e fore the articulati o n o f the do1ninant theory of rule for a thousand years of Wes tern Christian history: the so-called t,vo s,vords doctrine. The two swords are reg­ nu1n and sacerdotiu nz, respectively, earthly and spiritual do111inion , roughly. There ,vas 111uch that Augustine had not addressed and that required sorting out as Christianity rose to becon1e the offi cial reli­ gio n of the e1npire. The Bishop of Ron1e e1nerged over tin1e as the de facto if not de j ure wielder of po\\,er and authority in the Wes t ( the dep o s i tio n of the last E1np eror in the Wes t occurred i n 4 7 6 A D ) . When the Wes tern and Eastern halves of the E1npire split, they wen t their respective ways and developed distinctive 1nodes of political or­ ganization and theology. In the Eastern half of the E1npire, or Byzan­ tiun1 , there en1erged an a1nalgan1 of the forces of what we no,v call "church" and "state" that was given the nan1e of "caesaro-papis111." 4 2 It was in the West that dominion took the fonn of clarifying the spiri­ tual "sword" and the secular or earthly "sword," to use the 111etaphor n1ade doctrine by Pope Gelasius I, and the authority and don1inion of each. 43 Gelasius proffered a doctrine of in1perial or secular rule ( reg;n u111) and spiritual or episcopal rule (sacerdotiunz) that laid the grounchvork for subsequent thinking and controversy surrounding ecclesia and en1pires, and kingdo1ns and kingships. Although the disintegration of effective in1perial authori ty in the West invited the Bishop of Ro1ne to assu111e au­ thority as a necessity, it was also the case that Ro111an pontifls used the opportunity to define the nature of earthly an d spiritual do1ni nion, respectively.

12

S OV E R E I G N T Y

The po\ver of the Ro1nan bishop rested, in the first instance, on the scriptural deeding to St. Peter by Christ articulated in Matthe\V . ' 1 6: 1 8- 1 9 and interpreted to n1ean that the pope possessed the power to "bind and loose " on earth.4 4 Assu1ning this authority, Pope Gelasius drew upon the history of Ro1nan rule and law of which the successors of Peter \Vere the direct heir and on whon1 they n1odeled their episcopal offices. -t.5 He insisted that pope and en1peror ( or earthly ruler, by exten­ sion) enjoyed their own spheres of responsibil ity , although the spiritual "s\vord " of authority possessed a higher dignity than could be clai1ned by i n1perial or royal power. The sacred and the political \Vere not \velded together into one sovereign, n1onistic structure-despite the 1nisleading characterizations one hears frequently labeling the 1nedieval period one of theocracy. Not so. 46 As Augustine had insisted, earthly rule and do1ninion and spiritual offices had different ends and vvere d irected to\vard distinctive purposes. The one, the spiritual , gestured toward the eschaton, that \vhich was eternal. The other, the secular or te1nporal, was tin1e-bound, a part of history that would con1e to an end. If Christ \Vas King of Kings and Lord of Lords, no one else could n1ake any such procla1nation or clain1 any such identity on this earth save in utterances that bordered on blasphe1ny.Not being Goel incarnate, no one else could en1ulate this fully:1 7 Political ai1ns 1nust never be cast in the language of ulti1nacy. They are, at best, pen ultin1ate as they cannot clain1 the entirety of hu1nan loyalty and hope, thought and action. NO\V, to be sure, so1ne later 1nedieval popes 1nounted clain1s of a breathtaking "plenitude " of papal po\ver ( of \vhich n1ore later), but the distinction itself, the "two S\vords," \Vas never fores\vorn. Although there was no straightforvvard and si1nple identification of spiritual and ten1poral authority, there was overlap be­ t\veen the t\vo that n1acle conflict inevitable bet\veen co1npetingjurisclic­ tions. The saga of sorting this out gave the history of the Western half of Christendon1 a distinctive clyna1nic that channele cultural energy, conflict, and contestation. A n i ntriguing feature to Gelasius 's articulation of the t\vo S\vorcls theo1y, noted in his "Letter to the E1nperor Anastasius," is the fact that the pontiff reserves auctoritas) or authority, to the papacy-this in part

Sovr rr igu G o d: Fro m L ogos l o Will

13

because the pope has no coercive po,ver in and through ,vhich to back up his authoritative clai1ns: He hasn't the 1neans of force. 48 By contrast, the e1nperor or 1nonarch, ,vho possesses po,ver, fJotestas, does have the 1neans of force at his disposal. But auctoritas eqjoys a higher dignity than potestas. This particular distinction is key to the perennial question of ,vhat n1ade or n1akes rule, or po,ver, legiti1nate and authoritative. For now, I ,vill sin1ply note the distinction-as it precludes any clai1n of overall and co1nplete sovereignty in fonns of rule: It assu1nes an anti1nonistic doc­ trine. The question of 1nonis1n-and the totalistic te1nptation it trails in its ,vake-beco1nes ever 1nore i1nportant as we proceed. In his "Letter to the E1nperor Anastasius" Gelasius writes, "Two there are . . . by ,vhich this world is ruled : the consecrated authority of p riests and the royal po,ver. Of these priests have the greater responsi­ bility� in that they will have to give account before God's judgn1ent seat for those ,vho have been kings of inen." 49 Each "s,vord" is wielded by respective office hold ers in a legiti1nate ,vay only insofar as each observes their d istinctive co1np etence. No en1p eror can set hi1nself � above "the p riesthood ' in all things. Although there 1nay be one Chris­ tian society� within this unity one find s a plurality or, 1nini1nally, a duality of po,vers. There is one body-to deploy the corporeal 1neta­ phor that infused 1nedieval thought of a "body politic"-but two distinct and exalted persons within it. Fron1 these few words, centuries of thinking and strife . . . .

F RO M

]us Gen t i u ni T O T H E T H O M I S T I C S Y N T H E S I S

hnportant as we go fonvard is the assu1nption of a jus gentiu nz , or law of the peoples� on which both e1nperor and pope relied. A syste1natic articulati on of such law was undertaken by one of the last en1perors befo re the final b reach b et,veen East and West, J ustinian with his famous ''code/ the Co,jJus Ju ris Civilis in the sixth century. Because all subsequent thinking in the West, at least until the fractu ring of Christendom in the sixteenth century� took the fonn of hl\v-based argu1nent� the i1nportance of the J ustinian synthesis of law in the sixth cen­ tury can scarcely be overstated. 50

14

S OV E R E I G N T Y

The code proffered the prejudg1nents by n ow characteristic of Christian thinking, including the insistence that the subjection of n1an, . ' and the rule of n1an by 1nan, is not part of the natural order of things but is an inheritance of the Fall. It assu1nes further a single hun1an nature­ or theological anthropology-all are one in and through the faith, rely­ ing on St. Paul's Letter to th e Gala tians: "There is neither Jevv n or Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither 1nale nor fe1nale: For ye are all one in Christjesus." 5 1 An assun1ption of a shared hun1an­ ity is required if one is to articulate a jus gentiu ,n, or lavv of the peoples; indeed, son1e such notion is presu1nptive in current articulations of universal lnnnan rights. 5 2 Law is the expression of this universal con1111unity, "endorsed by the sovereign Lordship of God." 53 Central, too, is a jus natu rale, or natural law, that is pern1anent and to vvhich particu­ lar civil lavvs should confonn. 5 4 The seeds are sovvn for generative tensi_on and conflict bet,veen the p resu111ptions of a jus gen tiun1 and jus ·na tu rale and, by contrast, the 1nultiple civil or posi tive lavvs of particular societies. The guiding assu1nption held that the foundation of law is accessible to all rational beings: Lavi is not part of revelation but a feature of the rational founda­ tion of all things hun1an having, therefore, an intrinsic value apart fro111 the coercive or enforcen 1ent po,ver of a polity. 55 The bin ding of the earthly povver of sovereign kings or e1nperors proceeds apace, with the Co,jno- Juris Civilis in the background. So nn1ch is this the case that by the ninth century the insistence that earthly authority is lin1ited by its encl, na1nely, the establisl11nent and 1naintenance of a 1neasure of justice and, further, that this authority is also li111itecl by natural law, God's authority, and the dignity and 1najesty of the Church, is vvell established. As a 1ne1nber of the Ch urch Universal, the earthly ruler is si1n ply another believer, su�ject, like all Christians, to church governance-a point that was underscored dra1natically when the fourth-century bishop A1nbrose co1npelled the e111peror 'T heodosius to perfonn public penance for the sin of a 1uassacre by the anny at T'hessalonica that took place on his ,vatch. St. A1nLrose accepted that earthly rule ,vas divinely ordained but, as a Christian, the e1nperor is vvithin the Church and not above it. !>