RO, Augustine, and Borders

RO, Augustine, and Borders November 20, 2004

Hans Boersma offered an interesting critique of the notion of “borders” in Radical Orthodoxy and some of its fellow travelers, especially concerning their relationship to Augustine’s conception of the city of God. The two terms of his analysis were “ontology of peace” and “oppositional logic,” and he argued that these stand in some tension with one another in RO. He agreed with RO writers that both themes are found in Augustine, but argued that they work differently in Augustine than they do in RO writers. On the one hand, he argued that for Ward and Milbank the ontology of peace ultimately trumps the oppositional logic. Milbank critiques borders and boundaries, arguing for a city without walls. He does not want to speak of God’s punishment, and he is reluctant to speak of the exercise of exclusion as a disciplinary measure. But Milbank also sets the church in strong opposition to the secular world. But how can this oppositional logic function unless there are boundaries to the church, and boundaries that will be controlled and patrolled. William Cavanagh, in Boersma’s reading, celebrates boundaries, arguing for church discipline to be exercised against oppressors, and strengthening the oppositional thrust of Milbank. Yet, at the same time, he renounces the need for border control; he wants an alternative city, but is not willing to describe the mechanisms for keeping that city alternative. In Cavanagh, as Boersma sees it, the oppositional logical ultimately overwhelms the ontology of peace.

Augustine, he claimed, is able to hold the two themes together because he does not absolutize either, and because he identifies the civitas Dei ultimately with a heavenly city rather than with any earthly institution. Thus, there is only a tentative and partial identity between the civitas Dei and any civitas terrena , but this very partiality means that there can be a spectrum and gradation in the earthly appearance of the city of God. In other words, though the church is the earthly community that functions as a true commonwealth ( res publica ), this has to be qualified in two ways: a) even the church does not fully manifest the justice of the ultimate city and b) earthly political entities can manifest some measure of that justice. Augustine also recognizes the role of redemptive violence (which Milbank does as well on occasion), and hence the necessity for border patrol. For these reasons, Augustine also sees the church’s role as somewhat more nuanced than the purely oppositional role that Cavanagh argues for. Though the earthly city will never manifest the justice of God in fullness, that is not a reason to withdraw from the earthly city. The church should speak to the earthly city in an effort to give politics a more Christianized form. (Some of this critique of Cavanagh runs along the same lines as my critique of Hauerwas in Against Christianity .)

Two comments on Boersma’s thoughtful paper. First, it seems that one of the key issues between Augustine and RO is the role of sin. When sin is factored in, then there is no conflict (as James Smith pointed out in the seminar) between an ultimately ontology of peace and the present need for oppositional logic and the boundary patrol that it entails. Second, it appears to me that boundary patrol is a primordial reality, the first duty of Adam in the garden. God drew lines ?Ehe MAPPED ?Ethe world in the original creation. Mapping as such is not a response ot the fall, but a prelapsarian phenomenon. Without distortion, one might say that Adam’s fall was a failure to patrol the border. What this means for our notions of the goodness of creation needs to be thought through (I suppose it is at least highlighting the difference between protology and eschatology), but it strongly supports the notion that border patrol is essential to human community ?Ecertainly so in the postlapsarian situation. As I have commented before, I take Genesis as implying that Adam could have protected the integrity of the Edenic world only by an act of violence, only by “crushing the head” of the serpent who tempted Eve and transgressed the garden’s boundaries.


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