Thank goodness we have Garry Wills to tell us What Jesus Meant, to use the title of his latest short book, because clearly no one else has had many compelling ideas on the subject. In a New York Times editorial, Mr. Wills tells us all about it:

There is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian.

All those Byzantines who kept referring to the empire as the “Christ-loving politeia” must be kicking themselves now that Garry Wills has explained things to all of us. If only St. Photios had known what Garry Wills now knows! Here’s a question: Garry Wills is Catholic (so I have read), so what does he make of a figure like St. Louis or the proposal to beatify the Austrian emperor Karl? How in the world does he reconcile his apolitical Christianity with a tradition that, on first, second and third glance, seems to make the claim that men in politics can become saints and that part of the way they do this is by carrying out their political duties in a particular way.

So what does Wills mean here? Taken in its basic sense, ta politika, those things that have to do with the life of the polis, cannot entirely exclude Christianity so long as there are Christians in the polis. On that point alone, this statement is untrue. Wills does point to the verse in the Gospel according to St. John, My Kingdom is not of this world (and I insist on using the King James translation, rather than whatever it was that Wills was using), which is equivalent to saying that the Church, where we have a foretaste of the Kingdom, is not of this world. Yes, thanks for that clarification. We had already picked up on the idea that the Mystical Body of Christ is of an entirely different order from the Post Office.

To say that Christians have nothing to do with politics in the broadest sense, and that there is not in some sense a kind of politics that is more consonant with and guided by the Gospel than others, is to become the worst kind of quietist. That there is not a vision of Christ that will neatly fit someone’s political program is obvious to serious Christians who are confronted with the programs of modern secular parties. But to say that there is no possibility of any kind of Christian politics is akin to saying there is no possibility of Chistian life and transformation.

Wills makes a classic error when he says, “We cannot do what Jesus would do because we are not divine.” That would be right, except for all the passages in Scripture that call us, on the one hand, to be perfect (now that’s a scary idea!) and on the other promise our regeneration and, as the Fathers understood, our deification, our becoming like God by grace, our adoption as sons by grace. What else does the Psalmist mean when he says, Ye shall be as gods?

That is really taking us away from the question of politics itself, but it cannot be entirely unconnected, as Wills’ denial of our ability to follow Christ because of our human frailty is a basic denial of God’s continuing work in the world as well as a denial of the efficacy of the ministrations of his own hierarchy. Indeed, the efficacy of the Church’s ministry would have to be very much in doubt if we listened to Mr. Wills. And that, one suspects, is part of his project. It isn’t simply to keep out an “institutional Jesus” from the political world, but to reject all those “institutional” forms of Christianity (including any episcopal hierarchy you’d care to name) that supposedly commit the same errors in attempting to “tame” Christ by continuing to do His work.

It is very fashionable in theological circles to say dismissive things about “institutions,” and it is true that the Church is not a mere “institution” or “religious organisation,” but that She has always had a certain kind of orderly structure with lines of authority and discipline to preserve the community of the faithful should not be in doubt, nor should it be viewed as a departure from the Lord’s teachings.

Ross Douthat takes issue with Wills’ claim, drawn from the Damon Linker playbook, that politics and Christians have nothing to do with each other. After making some solid points (while also conceding way too much to Wills), Mr. Douthat falls into what I’d like to call the Hauerwasian Pit:

Our model shouldn’t be the Emperor Constantine, imposing the faith by fiat – but neither should it be Pontius Pilate, asking “what is truth?” and washing his hands of the world.

We could disagree or not about whether there should be some kind of established religion (I might give a qualified yes, most others would say no), but we should dispense with misusing the name of Constantine in the context of established religions and any references to a mythical “Constantinianism” should cease forthwith. Call me pedantic if you like, but it strikes me as vital to understand that Constantine’s adoption of Christianity, or even his enforcement of Nicene Orthodoxy, was not “imposing the faith by fiat.” If it were, he would have to have done some imposing of the Faith on those who did not belong to it, rather than enforcing what ecclesiastical councils decided against schismatics and heretics in the Church.

He adopted the Christian religion under whatever peculiar interpretations Lactantius, Hosius of Cordoba and Eusebius of Caesarea (what a wild combination!) provided to him, he enforced the doctrinal finding of a council of bishops by law as emperors had done in enforcing the decisions of local councils in the past (as Aurelian did in confirming and enforcing the decree to depose Paul of Samosata, for instance, though no one would confuse Aurelian with a friend of Christianity) and he directed the largesse of patronage away from pagan temples and towards church building. Neither, stricly speaking, did later Byzantine emperors after Theodosios usually “impose the faith by fiat.” Justinian may have done a little more imposing than some, but there was never any question in most of Byzantine history of forced conversions or the auto-da-fe or anything that could reasonably be called “imposing the faith.” That was, all apologies to the Habsburgs and the like, usually something that Reformation and Counter-Reformation rulers did, and even there it is a mixed picture.