Political theology in a Nordic post-secular setting

Abstract

The current return of religion into the public sphere in Europe calls for a rethinking of traditional standpoints in political theology. The present article discusses the Lutheran idea of “two kingdoms,” which has been important in a Nordic setting. The author shows how the theological idea of two kingdoms has changed in the time after Luther. Originally, in pre-modernity, church and state were both seen from a religious point of view. God the creator was presupposed by all citizens. In modernity a secular view-point became the one taken for granted, defining also the way the spiritual realm was comprehended. In a post-secular context neither of these positions can be taken for granted. Current political theology must search for a post-secular solution that goes beyond the dichotomy of politics belonging to a secular sphere and Christian life belonging to a religious one. The article analyses some examples of how the idea of the post-secular has been discussed. Taking its starting-point in ideas by thinkers informed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the article stresses the importance of taking concrete contexts into account in every discussion of political ethics. The position presented points in the direction of “radical democracy” newly discussed by several theologians.

Notes

1. This idea is often referred to as “the two kingdoms doctrine.” However, it is problematic to speak of a doctrine when it comes to Martin Luther himself, and to the Lutheran tradition before the 20^th century. For a more detailed discussion of this, see Kurtén, “Lutheran Moral thinking,” 16–19.

2. This idea is often referred to as “the two kingdoms doctrine.” However, it is problematic to speak of a doctrine when it comes to Martin Luther himself, and to the Lutheran tradition before the 20^th century. For a more detailed discussion of this, see Kurtén, “Lutheran Moral thinking,” 13–33. The present article elaborates some findings in that earlier text.

3. For example, Jan-Olav Henriksen made similar points in an article from 2005: Henriksen, “Pluralism and Identity,” 277–290. Ulrik Becker Nissen has also in several articles made similar critical remarks. See for example Nissen, “Lutheran Natural Law,” 413–434. See also Nissen, “Social Ethics between Universality,” 83–91.

4. Haikola, Usus Legis, 85–113. See also Frostin, Politik och hermeneutik, 126–137; Henriksen, Pluralism and Identity, 277–279; Andersen, “Law in Nordic Lutheranism,” 393–399.

5. The following, modern understanding of the Lutheran tradition seems to be in conflict with the original view by Luther. Ulrik Becker Nissen has recently pointed to this. The point is that the reason a Lutheran tradition has fit well in modern societies is because of a misunderstood interpretation of the tradition in question. The mistake is that the thought of God as the sustainer also of societal life has been overlooked. Nissen, “Social Ethics between Universality,” 86, 89. Per Frostin made the same observation, Frostin, Luther's two Kingdoms Doctrine, 166–171.

6. The point I want to make is in similar ways made by Zygmunt Bauman, Charles Taylor, José Casanova and Talal Asad, although they differ from each other in their assessment of the development. See Bauman, Postmodern Ethics; Taylor, A Secular Age, 300–304; Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 19–25, 211–212; Asad, Foundations of the Secular, 181–186.

7. The Book of Concord, 355–356.

8. See for example Grenholm, Protestant Work Ethics, 41–47.

9. The role of the academia in forming the secular society is touched upon for example by Stanley Hauerwas. See Hauerwas, The State of the University, 179–180.

10. I here use “ideology” in the sense of critical theory (Frankfurter School), according to which an ideology consists of features taken for granted. An ideology is thereby determinative for the human outlook on life.

11. In his discussions of Frazer's “The Golden Bough,” Ludwig Wittgenstein very clearly pointed to this development. To his mind, the book exemplifies how Frazer by “reading” religious practices with modern scientifically trained eyes, seemed to totally miss what was religiously important in the life of the natives under study. Wittgenstein, “Bemerkungen über Frazers The Golden Bough,” 233–245. Timo Koistinen from Helsinki has recently discussed Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer. His argument can be interpreted as an example of what we below will call a modern view. Koistinen, “The vantage point,” 138, 143.

12. Political theology in a modern, secular democratic state had to speak a rational and secular language in order to have something to say. See for example Mendieta, The Frankfurt School on Religion, 4–8.

13. In Sweden the academic discipline studying moral life within the theological faculties was named “Theological ethics” until the late 20^th century, when it was renamed only “Ethics.” Bexell and Grenholm, Teologisk etik: En introduktion, 20. In Finland, talk of the Golden rule, seen as a universal ethical norm, has been central both in the social ethical statements made by Lutheran church authorities and with one of the leading scholars in Lutheran ethics at Helsinki University, Antti Raunio. See Hytönen, Kirkko ja nykyajan eettiset, 277–282. and Raunio, Järki, usko ja lähimmäisen hyvä, 112–115. In a similar way, Svend Andersen from Denmark argues that the Christian love commandment coincides with the natural law and is thereby accessible to universal reason. Andersen, “Law in Nordic Lutheranism,” 396.

14. We can think of Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 40s, the Soviet Union in most of the 20^th century, the military juntas of Greece, Spain, Chile, Argentina in the 1960s and 70s and so forth.

15. Cavanaugh sees the so-called religious wars in 16^th and 17^th century Europe, not primarily as wars between different religions, but as a means of the political powers to help the modern central state “create an autonomous political sphere from which its greatest rival, the church would be excluded.” Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 5.

16. The position of Habermas is found in Habermas, “Notes.” Habermas defends a view close to the one of José Casanova, presented below.

17. A similar tension can be seen between Habermas and Charles Taylor in a relatively recent, small but most informative book: Butler et al., The Power of Religion, 60–69.

18. Casanova states that the decline of religion due to the Enlightenment has concerned three dimensions: a cognitive, a political and a subjective, expressive one. Casanova, Public religion, 30. He seems to neglect the point that “religion” and “religious beliefs” in the way they are discussed in Enlightenment thought to an important degree are products of the same, modern Enlightenment. In note 21 I will return to how Gavin Hyman, among others, has shown the close connection between a secular definition of “religion” and a critique of “religion” by the same secular mind.

19. Casanova, Public religion, 19–39.

20. Casanova Public religion, 39. See also Asad, Formation of the Secular, 181–183, where Asad describes Casanova's view.

21. Asad, Formation of the Secular, 184–185. The point is that as long as we do not question the secular framework, any religious point of view will be assessed within this framework. Gavin Hyman in his book “Short history of Atheism” shows, for example, convincingly how the object of the modern criticism of religious beliefs is itself a product of the secular framework of modernity. I find his argument a good example of how modern secularly based language tries to mirror a religious reality. Moreover, the modern concept of “religion” is, in turn, part of what defines “secular.” The meaning of “secular” accordingly becomes a function of the meaning of “religious.” Hyman shows, for example, how the modern use of the term “atheism” is not intelligible without an accepted understanding of the term “theism,” and they are both defined by the modern secular mind. Hyman, Short History of Atheism, 155.

22. Asad, Formation of the Secular, 185.

23. “[F]ar from becoming a source of moral values that can enrich public debate, deprivatized religion (where religion has already been defined essentially as a matter of belief) becomes a site for conflict over non-negotiable rights – for example, the parent's right to determine his or her child's upbringing, or pregnant woman's right to dispose of her foetus.” Asad, Formation of the Secular, 186. Charles Taylor, in the above-mentioned discussion with Habermas, comes close to this same position. See Taylor, “Why we need,” 44, 51.

24. See Asad's description of the European historical development from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. Asad, Formation of the Secular, 190–191, also makes the following warning: “I am arguing that ‘the secular’ should not be thought of as the space in which real human life gradually emancipates itself from the controlling power of ‘religion’ and thus achieves the latter's relocation. It is this assumption that allows us to think of religion as ‘infecting’ the secular domain or as replicating within it the structure of theological concepts. The concept of ‘the secular’ today is part of a doctrine called secularism.”

25. Asad, Formation of the Secular, 201. He can, rightly according to me, claim that: “the ‘proper domain of religion’ is distinguished from and separated by the state in modern secular constitutions. But formal constitutions never give the whole story. On the one hand objects, sites, practices, words, representations – even minds and bodies of worshipers – cannot be confined within the exclusive space of what secularists name ‘religion.’ They have their own ways of being. […] On the other hand the nation-state requires clearly demarcated spaces that it can classify and regulate: religion, education, health, leisure, work, income, justice, and war. The space that religion may properly occupy in society has to be continually redefined by the law because the reproduction of secular life within and beyond the nation-state continually affects the discursive clarity of the space.” Asad, Formation of the Secular, 201.

26. Asad, Formation of the Secular, 201.

27. Hyman discusses many theological attempts in modernity to meet the atheistic challenge. And he shows how many of them are doomed to fall under the same critical judgment that he pronounces over modern atheism. Both the secular and the religious beliefs are defined in a language at home in secular modernity. Hyman, Short History of Atheism, 167.

28. Hyman, Short History of Atheism, 183–185.

29. See for example Kurtén, Grunder för en kontextuell; Kurtén, ”Theology and the Secular;” Kurtén, “Trust, Basic Convictions;” Kurtén, “Absolute Values, Work;” Kurtén, “Value Theory, Epistemology;” Kurtén, “Internal Realism.”

30. Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen, § 115; Wittgenstein, Über Gewissheit, § 94. See also Taylor, A Secular Age, 549.

31. Nielsen and Phillips, Wittgensteinian Fideism?, 39–40; Kurtén, Grunder för en kontextuell, 28–33.

32. Taylor, A Secular Age, 549; Wittgenstein Philosopische Untersuchungen, § 1 passim.

33. Wittgenstein, Philosophicshe Untersuchungen, §§ 43, 124, 161.

34. Otherwise it is in danger of representing something totally esoteric, a life not intelligible in the eyes of fellow humans.

35. Stanley Hauerwas gives a good example of this claim in Hauerwas, With the grain, 231–234.

36. Through this I present a position more critical of the secular condition than the one we find for example in Henriksen's article from 2005, see Henriksen “Pluralism and Identity,” 285–289. The same goes for the position taken by Nigel Biggar. See for example Biggar, Behaving in Public, 47–49.

37. This challenge consists in resisting the claim by the secular mind that it represents the neutral and objective way of dealing with life and world, and in revealing the ideological character of that kind of secular thinking. Secular points of view should be treated on equal terms with other religious and/or ideological views.

38. On this point I find that Biggar, who in many other respects represents a view close to the one presented here, takes a different path. In his “humane polyglot liberalism,” he seems to stress the idea of a natural moral order of some kind. See Biggar, “Saving the ‘Secular,’” 22. In 2011, when presenting his “Barthian Thomism,” Biggar is somewhat more cautious in his understanding of the idea of a natural law. However, his optimism regarding a general ethical truth seems to remain. See Biggar, Behaving in Public, 108–109.

39. This stress on the individual person resembles the discussion by Biggar in Biggar, Behaving in Public, 88–89.

40. The short discussion between Habermas and Taylor in 2009 illustrates this dilemma very well. Butler et al., The Power of Religion, 60–69. This dilemma, as well as some other aspects taken up in this concluding part of my argument, deserves a more thorough discussion. I will return to them in another article which is in progress, with the working title “Luther, Wittgenstein and Political Theology.”

41. What these consequences could be, can be seen for example in writings by Stanley Hauerwas, Jeffrey Stout, William T. Cavanaugh etc. Whether the voices of radical orthodoxy (John Milbank and his followers) also belong here, I hesitate to say. - For my own part, the four points I picked from Wittgenstein make me underscore how the importance of different frameworks differs from moment to moment and from place to place. When the contexts differ, ethically good solutions also differ.

42. Perhaps the ultra-liberal voice of Robert Nozick was not so bad after all? See Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, especially his last part on “Utopia.”

43. See for example Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 99–102. In his doctoral thesis from 2012 Miika Tolonen, Åbo, has analysed Hauerwas' ecclesiologically anchored ethics, relating it to a Nordic discussion in theology. See Tolonen, Witness Is Presence, 29–80.

44. A central idea of “radical democracy” is the focus on local political communities. Instead there is a suspicion towards remote democratic institutions. See chapter one in Hauerwas and Coles, Christianity, Democracy. See also Robbins, Radical Democracy, 188–189, where Robbins points to the pluralisation of politics in post-secularity. According to Robbins, this calls for a “constitutive power of the multitude – a political theology without sovereignty.”

45. When “secular” loses its well defined meaning - as a function of an equally well defined religion, expressed within an overall secular framework – then the way the whole Western modern society is constructed begins to fall apart.

46. Casanova, for example, sees the incompatibility of an established church with the functional differentiation of society. However, he is blind for the incompatibility of the ideological character of secular thinking with the return of religion to the public sphere. Casanova, Public religion, 213.