Another City

Peter J. Leithart, June 14, 2004

The following is a review I wrote and had posted on a now-defunct web site. The review was written before Against Christianity, which is the hypothetical book referred to in the review.

Barry A. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Christian Mission and Modern Culture; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 1999).

Barry A. Harvey, who teaches systematic theology at Baylor University, almost wrote the book I�ve wanted to write.

Another City is not a full-blown text in ecclesiology, but an attempt to explain the stance that the church should have toward a post-Christendom world. To this end, Harvey examines the apostolic and patristic vision of the church not as a �separate community�Enor as the �soul of the empire�Ebut as �another city�Eexisting within the earthly city (Chapters 1-2). He then traces the collapse of this ecclesiology in the medieval and modern periods, tracing the collapse to the blurring of the distinction of heavenly and earthly city that followed the Constantinian shift and to the abstraction of �religion�Efrom �secular�Econcerns that took place as a result of a �Cartesian�Eshift (chapters 3-4). In the end, he urges a renewal of the early church�s vision of herself and her mission, so that the church can again engage in a proper �sanctified subversion�E(Harvey quotes the phrase from Rodney Clapp) of the postmodern �risk culture�E(chapter 5).

The notion of the church as �another city�E(which, to my mind, is exactly right) is a key to Harvey�s book, and therefore needs to be unpacked and defended, if only briefly. Harvey points out that �already in the New Testament we find the political concepts of city, citizen, foreigner, commonwealth, not to mention koinonia (a Greek term denoting the basic patterns of relatedness that characterized the classic polis) and ekklesia (the assembly of citizens in a city), used frequently not only to identify the community of Christ�s followers, but also to challenge prevailing assumptions about the way a people should order the relations between its citizens and with those outside their community (cf. Matt. 5:14; Eph. 2:12; Phil 3:20; Heb 11:10, 16)�E(p. 15). In short, Christians plundered the lexicon of Greek political theory to explain who they were and what they were up to. One of the implications of this vocabulary is that the church is an irreducibly political community. This does not mean that the church governs territory and exercises coercive power; to think �coercion�Ewhenever we hear �politics�Eis a modern aural disease. Rather, Harvey argues that politics has to do with the life of a community, with, as Richard Neuhaus puts it, �how we live together.�E In this sense, the church is a political order, with a unique way of living together �Epracticing a Christian way of life, engaged in mutual correction and discipline, celebrating Christian feasts and rites. And in this sense, the calling of the church is precisely to be such a political order, manifesting and embodying the gospel in its �politics.�E

To put it in other terms, Israel was shaped by what Harvey, following Martin Buber, calls a �poeticizing memory,�Ea religious-political hope that the all-embracing rulership of God would be realized on earth. Jewish eschatology was shaped by a recognition of the gap between this hope and the reality of Israel�s life. According to the early Christians, this hope for an order that manifests the �kingdom of God�Ewas fulfilled in the society of the church. Concretely, the church�s sacraments, discipline, and proclamation all served as �signs that God was at work in the world�E(p. 58).

The virtues of this book are many. For starters, it is packed. Only 165 pages, it covers a remarkable range of theological, historical, and cultural issues, and does so with care and insight. Along the way, it serves as a convenient introduction to the concerns of some of the most important and intriguing contemporary movements and writers in mainstream theology. George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Rowan Williams, and N. T. Wright are frequently cited, and some of the common themes of these writers are concisely and clearly summarized.

Harvey offers several particularly neat arguments and insights. Quoting Georges Florovsky, he points out that Christianity was from the first a community and not merely a doctrine, and goes on to say that the church�s claim to be the redeemed and redemptive community posed a direct challenge to Roman ideology: Rome, Florovsky said, saw itself as �the City, a permanent and �eternal�ECity, Urbs aeterna, and an ultimate city also. In a sense, it claimed for itself an �eschatological dimension.�E It posed itself as the ultimate solution to the human problem�E(p. 22). Today, we can hardly read these words without a sense of familiarity, since Western democracy �poses itself�Ein precisely the same way. The church�s claim to be the ultimate civic form, the eschatological form of human community, is as direct a challenge to Western democracy as it did to Roman imperium.

His treatment of the �Cartesian�Eshift is excellent. As Harvey points out, one of the main goals of Descartes�s philosophical efforts was to detach knowledge and the self, from the webs of relationship and interaction that make up most of a normal person�s life, producing a �picture of a self unfettered by the physical body or by webs of interlocution embedded in social and geographical ties�E(p. 105). This looks like a declaration of independence; everyone has the opportunity to write his own life story without nagging interference from other people or cultural and social obstacles. Yet, ultimately, the promise of liberation fails. Removing the self from a national or religious tradition and its practices, from particular social and personal relations, from a specific placement in the world could have no other result than to empty the self. The factors that Descartes wanted to remove are precisely the factors that give the self content.

Harvey�s discussion of the cultural and political consequences of this view of the self is superb, but too complex to summarize here. A couple of points will have to do. Empty selves are easily manipulated selves, and thus the Cartesian self allied easily with the goals of the modern nation-state. Modern Western political order is like the Cartesian self writ universal: It is pure process, denuded of all tradition and religion, stripped of all content, and then exported globally. This exportation will fail, because as Harvey makes clear Western political order is not in fact traditionless, but a very peculiar and specific tradition.

Many more good things might be said about Harvey�s book, but I did use that weasel-word �almost�Ein the first paragraph, and it�s time to come clean about my reservations. I have several. First, Harvey�s treatment of Christendom is nuanced and balanced. He recognizes that it was a mixed bag, providing opportunities as well as temptations for the church. Yet, he is in the end an opponent of Christendom, arguing that �moral guidelines are restructured to accommodate the duties and obligations of station, office, and profession, that is, social roles established and maintained by ruling authorities of the world so that they could serve their preservative function�E(p. 88). As a result, the �practices and habits of discipleship as established by the words and actions of Jesus�Ewere neutralized. Even if we admit that the demands of Christ were often in fact ignored in the interests of expediency, this is finally unsatisfying. What was Constantine supposed to do when he converted? Abdicate? And if not, then didn�t he have to make the effort to apply the �practices and habits of discipleship�Eto the �obligations of station�E Harvey seems to imply that Christian ethics only works for a beleaguered and minority church, but as a matter of fact the church has not always been beleaguered and in the minority. Oliver O�Donovan�s treatment of Christendom (in his Desire of Nations) is much more satisfying; he recognizes that the conversion of the empire was a fulfillment of the church�s mission, which was, after all, to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.

Second, a related point: Harvey argues that the medieval system rested on an over-realized eschatology that saw the empire as in some sense identical with God�s kingdom. He has a point, but Harvey�s own eschatology is under-realized. He says, for example, that the church�s preaching �did not substantially alter . . . the essentially incomplete nature of this story�E(p. 148), and similar references pepper the book. This is astonishing, given the emphatic declaration of the New Testament that the �ends of the ages�Ehad come. To the extent that he recognizes an eschatological �already�Eat all, he sees it exclusively in the church. This is an error, but one that I don�t have space to discuss here.

Finally, Harvey�s treatment of the church as a �diaspora�Epeople turns on the dynamics of space and time, but his treatment of that dynamic is fundamentally backward. In contrast to the modern self, who conceives of itself in spatial terms, set up over against an environment to be dominated, the Christian self and the church is temporally oriented. Like the Jews who were spatially separated and hoping for an eschatological reunion, Christians lay no claim to space, but orient themselves (largely through Eucharistic memory and hope) to a future �place�Eof gathering. According to Paul, however, the church does lay claim to all space as well as all time: �All things are yours . . . the world . . . things present, things to come�E(1 Cor. 3:21-23). The way the church lays claim may look a lot like refusing to lay claim; we don�t have to scramble and strive to protect our space or to speed up the timetable. But the reason why we don�t scramble is because we have all the time and space we need, all the time and space in the world. We live in patience not because we claim nothing, but because we are confident that our claims to everything will one day be honored.

All of which means: I still have a book to write after all.