The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology

Political theology as we know it today reacts against the attempt to insulate theology from political theory which has generally characterised the modern era. But its own intellectual parentage in the idealist historicism of the nineteenth century has left it still entrammelled in the suspicions and inhibitions from which it has wanted to break free. Oliver O'Donovan contends that, to pass beyond suspicion and totalised criticism of politics and to achieve a positive reconstruction of political thought, theology must reach back behind the modern tradition, achieving a fuller, less selective reading of the Scriptures and learning from an older politico-theological discourse which flourished in the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods. Central to that discourse was a series of questions about authority, generated by Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God.