1. This is a more cogent critique than most. Perhaps my affinity for Ellul betrays a shared Calvinist connection, but I do think the “dualist” critique is a relic of the fears of Platonism or Marxism/Hegelianism. Let’s see if I can allay those fears with a thread. 🧵
2. I subscribe to an older way of thinking rooted in a pre-modern metaphysic in which one finds fulfillment in one’s role. In this medieval society there were three main roles, that of warrior, priest and farmer.
3. The rules that made one a good warrior were different from those of the priest or the farmer. Even as Christians the path was somewhat different for each in that each had different obligations placed on them.
4. There is a sense that the necessity for the warrior only comes because of a world of sin. One of the things that sin does is that it complexifies things that should be simple. In other words sometimes the choice is not between good and evil but an evil or a really bad evil.
5. Killing you may be a bad thing, but if you are going to rape my wife and kill her, then killing you, while not really a “good” is still the better choice.
6. This idea of a single, cohesive set of rules that covers all things may be the goal of redemption, the reuniting and reintegration of all things into a single whole, the time has not come for that.
7. While it may be desirable to have a society where faith, morality and politics are a seamless whole, our sinful world is not that reality.
8. Herman Dooyeweerd identified 15 different aspects which reality participates in to varying degrees. Are all these aspects balanced in all situations? No. And that is part of sinful reality.
9. We must deal with what is. We must recognize that there are times when politics demands of us certain “necessities.” These necessities will imperil our salvation. Politics is a dangerous calling, one not taken lightly.
10. But like the warrior, the political has its own rules. This fracturing is the result of sin. Redemption seeks integration, but it is not always possible.
11. This is why the medievals leaned on the “two swords.” They saw the church and the crown as the two main forces or powers ordering society and each played their role and by working together they created a relatively integrated whole in society.
12. The modern idea of the private/public split and the idea of a secular or mostly secular public space has banished the truly religious from the public realm leading to pietism and ham handed attempts to do Christian politics.
13. It also left the public realm with a religious void that was filled by the left turning politics into its own secular religion. This too is not healthy as left politics operates with a kind of holy war mentality.
14. The alternative is not a Christian political holy war as this damage the Christian witness of the church. The alternative is to do what must be done to defeat the leftist (the “warrior” role so to speak) and then re-integrate the church later (whatever that might mean).
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