No Nation Can Be the City of God | Faith & Politics #4

James Spencer and Ashish Varma reflect on the previous episode's conversation with Veronica Roberts Ogle — and on what happens when Augustine gets recruited for arguments he was writing against.

The starting point is a claim James has encountered in political speeches: that the two cities can be collapsed, and that a nation might become the city of God. Both men think this misses Augustine's whole point. The cities are distinguished by their loves, and a community formed by self-love doesn't graduate into the other by improving its policies.

From there the conversation widens. James connects Augustine's ordered loves to the Old Testament grammar of love as loyalty, and argues again that the ordo amoris isn't a ranked list. Ashish brings in Balthasar on faith as resonance — the violin that sounds because it's attuned — and Tolkien's music of creation, which is like unto a chorus without quite being one.

They land on the wedge that can't be closed: a nation is bounded by resources and space, while there is always room in the kingdom for one more. Plus: pilgrims versus tourists, and why Las Vegas may be America's most honest city.

Chapters:

00:00 Reflecting on the Ogle conversation

02:00 When Augustine gets enlisted for a Christian nation

06:48 Love as loyalty: Deuteronomy 6 and 1 John

09:11 Ordered loves is not a dartboard

11:25 The Good Samaritan and the outer ring 1

1:50 Balthasar: faith as resonance and attunement

17:03 Why not a chorus? Tolkien and the limits of language

19:30 Can non-Christians love?

25:11 Sameness that improvises rather than repeats

28:45 Wholesomeness is not holiness

33:07 False theologies and the sacred function of the state

39:27 The wedge: bounded nations, unbounded kingdom

44:48 What the church can do that the state cannot

50:08 O'Donovan: governing authorities as secondary witness

53:43 Pilgrims and tourists

59:39 Provision, anxiety, and the faith muscle

Augustine City of God, two cities, ordo amoris, ordered loves, Christian nationalism, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Tolkien Ainulindalë, Oliver O'Donovan, William Cavanaugh, pilgrim and tourist, political theology, church and state, Veronica Roberts Ogle

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