Ever since the European wars of religion tore societies and families apart, disabusing Western culture from the notion that confessionalism was a sound basis for politics, modern liberalism has been the obvious and mostly unchallenged political heir-apparent to Christendom. Foundational to this theory is the belief in a neutral or natural human reason that operates independently of revealed religion and so forms an unbiased basis for public discourse and interchange. Religious convictions, consequently, are relegated to the private or personal sphere, having no public purchase (hence, the very modern conversation about the relationship between faith and reason). Tolerance becomes the ethic for handling particularities such as religion. Humans are noble on account of their rationality, the instrument of societal harmony, and thus in keeping with that hope for rational harmony, all humans deserve society’s patience (tolerance) as they come to a better mind.

While non-religious wars of the last two centuries have stunned the modern liberal dream, acute globalization and pluralism have brought the tradition to a philosophical crisis. Contemporary culture can no longer escape the fact that all human rationality is culturally situated and conditioned. Diversity accordingly has replaced unity as the mark of genuine society. And so liberation of particulars once muted by modern universal reason supplants tolerance as the moral imperative of society. After all, modern reason was no universal human faculty unaffected by circumstance, but simply the expression of a culture, the culture of white, Western men. The modern concern for unity is thus unmasked as oppressive, just an attempt of one culture to suppress and swallow others.

The clash of modern and postmodern political theories has generated considerable debate, the effects of which are readily observable in the growing inability of politicians and political commentators to comprehend, much less respond to, each other. In keeping with the contemporary trend of theological politics, author Kristen Johnson believes that the long silenced tradition of Christianity, once thought to be the source of all societal unrest, possesses resources capable of addressing the current political crisis.

Johnson begins by exploring tolerance in recent liberal political theory, using John Rawls and Richard Rorty as the primary interlocutors. The shift from tolerance to difference is the subject of chapter 3. Here, she focuses on the thought of Chantal Mouffe and William Connolly. Agonistic political theory, she observes, helpfully exposes the ontology of political liberalism as fundamentally intolerant. Moreover, in resorting to metaphysical explanation, it opens the door for theological description and thus represents an opportunity for Christian theology to regain its voice. Yet in the end, the politics of difference appear unsatisfying as conflict and coercion are made metaphysically basic. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned program of liberation can be hostile to those traditions that have enjoyed mainstream societal respect and recognition as it seeks to create space for marginalized cultures and traditions. Many Christians, for example, are shocked to find themselves suddenly disparaged in today’s culture. Yet, because hostility and power are basic to the world, violent dethronement of an established cultural form is necessary for empowering minorities. “Could it be,” asks Johnson, suggesting the way forward, “that a Trinitarian ontology would enable us to imagine communities of harmony that respect the universal and the particular?” (p. 139).

Answering this question affirmatively is the task of the remaining two chapters. For those familiar with the current trend of theological politics, it should come as little surprise that Johnson turns to St. Augustine. His City of God is explored in chapter 4, with Johnson highlighting how he has a vision of the created order whose multiformity is due to the fecundity of God’s life and is harmoniously ordered by love to that triune life. Peace, harmony, and love are thus metaphysically basic, not chaos, strife, and discord. Furthermore, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin marks a distinction between the Earthly City and the Heavenly City such that the Earthly City cannot attain the goods of the Heavenly City autonomously, that is, apart from the redemption wrought in Jesus Christ and effective in his body, the Church. In this way, modern liberalism has a mistaken view of the unity of society, aspires for something beyond its capability, and tries to achieve it against the grain of God’s created order restored in Christ. Agonistic political theory, on the other hand, is fatalistic and hopeless, not recognizing that peace is the fabric of the created order.

The final chapter attempts to apply Augustine’s vision to the contemporary dilemma of difference and unity. Curiously, however, Johnson focuses more on conversations in theological politics than on the philosophical conversation with which she began the book. The basic shape of the answer seems to be that Christians, as citizens of the Heavenly City, can contribute to the goods of the Earthly City by bringing the distinctive life of the Church to bear on the Earthly City all the while recognizing that pure peace is presently impossible.

What began as an interesting task with potential thus seems to fizzle. Johnson shows herself informed by the work of major contemporary theologians of politics like John Milbank and Oliver O’Donovan. She writes engagingly and clearly. Yet her conclusions appear to fall short of their intended targets, and, as far as I can tell, do not advance the conversations to which she hoped to contribute.

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