Rights, Recognition, and the Order of Shalom: On Wolterstorff’s Political Theology

Abstract

Nicholas Wolterstorff’s The Mighty and the Almighty is an intervention in the field of Christian political theology. He argues that traditional political theology in both its premodern and contemporary forms has tended to fall into perfectionist and providentialist traps, allowing the state to claim divinely-bestowed authority where it has none. In response, his constructive project advances particular views of the relationship between divine and political authority as well as the relationship between the state, conceived as a divinely-authorized rights-limited institution, and the church, conceived as a non-natural institution that is ontologically autonomous of the state. Wolterstorff suggests that Christian political theology can, and ought to, endorse a certain form of modern liberal polity. While granting many of his points, I argue that Wolterstorff’s dismissal of traditional thinkers, such as John Calvin, reveals two problematic features of his own theory: first, the way he relates the state’s moral authority to natural rights and the common good; and second, his proposal of the ontological distinction between church and state. Drawing on the conceptual resources of some of Wolterstorff’s own theological forebears—John Calvin and Johannes Althusius—I suggest that traditional Christian political theology offers a more adequate framework for recognizing the common good and responding appropriately to conditions of justice and injustice.