%0 Journal Article
%T Towards a Christian Ontology of Political Authority: The Relationship between Created Order and Providence in Oliver O¡¯Donovan¡¯s Theology of Political Authority
%A Jonathan Cole
%J Studies in Christian Ethics
%@ 1745-5235
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0953946818775559
%X This article argues that the formally similar conceptions of political authority provided in Oliver O¡¯Donovan¡¯s Resurrection and Moral Order and The Desire of the Nations appear to assume different ontologies of political authority. The former account conceives political authority as a special use of natural authorities found in the created order, where ¡®authority¡¯ is defined as what it is that evokes free and intelligible human action. The latter account, however, appears to attribute the existence of political authority exclusively to divine providence. I contend that these two accounts of political authority are ostensibly in tension. I also argue that O¡¯Donovan¡¯s subsequent ¡®providentialist¡¯ account of political authority is unable to explain how political authority can evoke free and intelligible action in political communities. I maintain that O¡¯Donovan can remove this apparent tension by returning the essence of political authority to creation, as he did in Resurrection and Moral Order, and then regard the Christ-event as redeeming political authority rather than merely restricting its historical function to judgment, as he argues in The Desire of the Nations. The emergence of O¡¯Donovan¡¯s ¡®Christian liberalism¡¯ could then be regarded as the ¡®work of divine providence in history¡¯ facilitated by the redemption of the natural authorities in the created order
%K Oliver O¡¯Donovan
%K political authority
%K ontology
%K created order
%K providence
%K redemption
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0953946818775559