Volume 20, 2000
P. Travis Kroeker
Pages 41-64
Why O'Donovan's Christendom is not Constantinian and Yoder's Voluntariety is not Hobbesian
A Debate in Theological Politics Re-defined
O'Donovan and Yoder are both radical critics of the modern liberal split between politics and religion and the view that there can be some neutral moral discourse to mediate between them. Both seek therefore to redescribe the political meaning of the Christian narrative vision for the late modern West and to show how liberalism represents a false version. There are, however, fundamental disagreements between O'Donovan's retrieval of Christendom political theology and Yoder's elaboration of the church as a voluntary political community of non-violent believers. Unfortunately the precise character of the disagreement tends to be obscured by caricatured descriptions of the other on both sides: Yoder's crude Constantinianism cannot begin to do justice to O'Donovan's position, and O'Donovan's dismissal of Yoder's "free" church voluntareity as a form of "neo-liberalism" is misplaced. My paper will redefine the disagreement as centered on their different political interpretations of biblical eschatology.