The Absence of Augustine’s Christology in Recent Protestant Augustinian Political Theology

In the last several decades, moral theologians have looked to Augustine and Augustinian themes in order to lay out contemporary political theologies. Meanwhile, several recent works of scholarly study on Augustine himself have appeared which foreground his Christology, particularly as it relates to political life. In this essay I will evaluate how Augustine’s distinct Christology might further contemporary Protestant Augustinian political theology. I will begin by surveying recent scholarship on Augustine’s Christology – particularly the work of Robert Dodaro – and engage in exegesis of key texts from Augustine’s corpus in order to outline Augustine’s Christological political thinking and moral epistemology, in which Christ reveals true justice and imparts a Christoform humility to those integrated into his body. I will then survey the way that Christology has been deployed by three recent works of Protestant Augustinian political theology: Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love, Luke Bretherton’s Christianity and Contemporary Politics, and Michael Lamb’s A Commonwealth of Hope. Ultimately I will argue that although these thinkers make use of some Christological themes, their work would be deepened with attention to the Christological origin and content of the virtues of justice and humility, and the theme of Christ’s love distributed into and within the totus Christus. These Protestant Augustinian political theologies could thus be deepened insofar as they might draw explicitly from the central Christian mystery – the incarnation – and insofar as they might become more authentically Augustinian, as Augustine himself offers a thoroughly Christological account of political life. Furthermore, Augustine’s emphasis on Christoform political humility undergirds his rich account of repentance, mercy, and forgiveness in public life, which is especially needed at the current political moment. Special attention will be given to the development of the totus Christus theme in Augustine’s biblical exegesis, particularly his exegesis of the Psalms (as explored by Michael Cameron and others), and the ecumenical nature of the totus Christus as seen in its deployment in early Protestant theology.