Political Freedom from a Reformed Perspective

Given the current political turmoil that excludes immigrants, and refugees in the US, this paper revisits Calvin, and examines the theo-political implications of his sacramental ecclesiology in the context of exile. I explore how he resisted exclusionary structures, particularly in relation to the Corpus Christianum, which sought social purity at the cost of producing countless refugees. Through an analysis of the Eucharist and its relation to the church, I trace the inversion of corpus mysticum and corpus verum, which shifted the church’s foundation from sacramental practice to legal structures. I will argue that Calvin, within the framework of the threefold body of Christ, seeks to restore the severed link between the Eucharist and the Church, a bond that began to weaken after the twelfth century, in a way that does not make any visible community sovereign, and that he instead envisions the church as a performative space of radical inclusion. 

The only direct textual evidence we have concerning Jonathan Edwards’ views on slavery comes from a cryptic draft of a polemical letter he wrote defending a pro-slavery New England pastor against his anti-slavery parishioners. Though much ink has been spilled about this draft letter, Edwards scholarship has largely focused on reconstructing the social-historical conditions around the controversy. Comparatively little attention has been paid to how Edwards’ philosophical and theological commitments may have informed his views on slavery. In this paper we use the letter to attempt a rational reconstruction of Edwards’s views on slavery. Our close reading of the letter examines Edwards’s biblical and philosophical for coherence and compatibility. We then suggest that Edwards’s commitments may reflect the influence of Augustine’s case for the justice of slavery (with which Edwards was no doubt familiar). The result, we hope, is an Edwards whose pro-slavery views are clarified in light of his intellectual debts.  

Reformed accounts of political freedom predictably draw inferences from their understanding of God’s authority, governance, and saving work. Yet leading Reformed authorities disagree about both the nature of God’s freedom and rule and then accordingly also about the nature of human freedom and just politics. One important and under-appreciated sticking point in these debates is the threat of divine domination and the domineering political inferences it enables. In this paper I draw on recent work from political theorists of domination to help precisify this concern. I then argue it helps reveal a strand of Reformed reflection that is chiefly concerned with non-domination and eager to weed domination out of Reformed theology. I conclude by noting that domination poses a distributive, systematic problem for Reformed theology that is more expansive and troubling but also more constructive and promising than other statements of the problem suggest.