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Frederick Bauerschmidt’s critique of Schillebeeckx’s political theology provides a helpful starting point for our investigation. Bauerschmidt argues that Schillebeeckx’s categories of ‘mystical’ and ‘political’ conform too closely to the modern privatization of faith and the reduction of politics to statecraft.2 _{No matter how much Schillebeeckx ‘seeks to overcome a}

sharp distinction between the two by relating them dialectically’, ‘they still

2 _{Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, ‘The Politics of Disenchantment’,  New Blackfriars 82}

remain basic poles in his interpretation and thus continue to reproduce the very antinomies between sacred religion and disenchanted politics that he wishes to overcome’.3 _{By constructing mysticism in distinction to politics,}

Schillebeeckx must strip Christianity of its distinctive politics: ‘Despite his own warnings about a formalized eschatological proviso, Schillebeeckx consistently speaks of love of God as providing only an “orientation” or “direction” or “inspiration” to political activity.’ For Bauerschmidt, Schillebeeckx’s theology ‘is predicated on the interiorization and depolitici- zation of Christianity; as with Weber, religion must become “mysticism” so that politics might become autonomous and rational’. Religion, in the form of the ‘experience of God’, can ‘ensoul’ politics, but it cannot ‘embody’ it.4

The other side of the dichotomy is equally problematic for Bauerschmidt. He finds in Schillebeeckx’s laudable concern that theology not be reduced to politics an assumption that politics ‘take the form of coercive use of power by nation states’.5 _{Schillebeeckx’s dichotomy between the mystical and}

political assumes the political is an autonomous and neutral construction. The Church is forced to conform to the form of politics allowed in the modern state, which Bauerschmidt describes as a Hobbesian monopoly on power and a Weberian administrative bureaucratic rationality. Lost as a result, the Church’s ability to model a distinct politics that can challenge the modern political order.

Bauerschmidt’s critique poses well the threat of the political domesti- cation of religion into mystical interiority. It does not, however, sufficiently engage Schillebeeckx’s theologies of revelation and salvation, and for that reason, it overstates the privatization of mysticism and the captivity of the Church in statecraft. Despite the difficulty of escaping this dichotomy (which Schillebeeckx describes as a ‘gulf’) between public and private, Schillebeeckx insists on a fundamental connection between faith and politics.6

Schillebeeckx does not posit the political as simply a matter enacting prior belief (private or not). Rather, for him, the liberative struggles of human history are the ‘medium and material’ of revelation itself. God continues to act in history and has not ceased to be the ‘biblical God’.7

Revelation has a ‘sacramental structure’ built upon this divine action within ‘secular’ history. Historically ‘meaningful’ events of liberation and

3 _{Bauerschmidt, ‘Politics of Disenchantment’, p. 325.} 4 _{Bauerschmidt, ‘Politics of Disenchantment’, p. 327.} 5 _{Bauerschmidt, ‘Politics of Disenchantment’, p. 328.}

6 _{Derek J. Simon, ‘Salvation and Liberation in the Practical-Critical Soteriology of}

Schillebeeckx’, Theological Studies 63 (2002), pp. 494–520. ‘Gulf’ from Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (trans. John Bowden; New York, NY: Crossroad, 1981) p. 906.

7 _{Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (trans. John Bowden;}

the reaction against suffering in contrast experiences form its material. This shared history; a ‘general salvation history’ becomes revelation proper in ‘interpretative experience ... in relation to what God is actively bringing about in this world’.8 _{Religious communities are the ‘sacraments’ of this}

salvation, the ‘places where salvation from God is thematized or put into words, confessed explicitly, proclaimed prophetically and celebrated liturgically’.9 _{Religious belief is ‘a gracious answer to that which precedes}

all talk of believers: God’s creative action within history in and through men and women for human salvation’.10

Likewise, Schillebeeckx’s understanding of mysticism is not one of private interiority detached from the world. He draws from Dominican spirituality, which sees mysticism as an intensification of the ordinary. Mystical experiences transcend ‘the political and personal ethical commit- ments of Christians’, by implicating the whole, rather than excluding the everyday.11 _{Martha, not Mary is the true fulfillment of the via eminentiae.}

Her ‘concern for God makes her solicitous for human beings’.12 _The

mystical is not interiority or privacy. It is an intensification of all dimen- sions of life in relationship to God. For that reason, it pushes against human categories and concepts, including the reduction of politics to statecraft and bureaucratic rationality.

If he is not wedded to a Weberian privatization of faith, why does Schillebeeckx emphasize that the relationship of religion and politics is one of inspiration and motivation? This arises from his theology of creation and transcendence. God is the creator and sustainer of finite human freedom. ‘Creation faith sets us free for our own task in the world.’ The Christian God is not a conservator of a preordained order. Creation faith prevents humans from passing ‘over to God what is our task in this world’. ‘Overcoming suffering and evil, wherever we may encounter them ... is our task and our burden ... not a matter for God, except that this task is performed in his absolute presence.’13 _{God’s salvific actions in human}

history are always veiled as much as revealed.14

This notion of finite freedom is Schillebeeckx’s point of articulation between theology, pluralism and liberalism. ‘Christian revelation gives no precise instructions for the economic, social and political ordering of human society.’ Yet the message of the Gospel is relevant to these questions.

8 _{Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 12.}

9 _{Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, p. 32; Schillebeeckx, Church, pp. 12–13.} 10 _{Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 14; Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, p. 34.} 11 _{Schillebeeckx, Church, pp. 69–70.}

12 _{Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 77.}

13 _{Cf. the text ‘I Believe in God, Creator of Heaven and Earth’, included in: Edward}

Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (trans. John Bowden; New York, NY: Crossroad, 1983) pp. 94–96.

Caritas impels toward a just social order, demands the abolition of ‘social

and political alienations’. ‘[H]uman solidarity and social responsibility’ must be fostered ‘all over the world’. Politics in the strictest sense of directly overseeing and enacting a social and political order is outside the authority of the Church. It is however, a matter for Christians to engage in along with other citizens. It is in this sense the Gospel provides ‘motives’ and ‘inspi- ration’ for their political decisions. The Church does have a proper role in politics in the more general sense of the broad historical project of forming human society into a ‘polis ... in which it is good for everyone to live’. On this level, the Church’s interventions are not direct involvements in power struggles, but ‘in the way of spiritual power, critical and ethical’.15 _Although

this engagement is not ‘separate from its proclamation of faith’ the Church must contribute to ‘social discussion’ not with dogmatic confession, but by arguing on a ‘rational basis’ in a manner ‘accessible to non-believers’.16

Nevertheless, Schillebeeckx explicitly rejects Kuitert’s confidence in the autonomy of political reason and his council of Church neutrality save in times of political emergency. Even within a state system that is deeply democratic, Schillebeeckx hesitates. His questions are based not on ideological suspicions of the violent roots of modern liberalism and the nation state. Rather, they are undertaken in the name of a more thorough going democracy whose boundaries include not just citizens of first world nations, but the entire world, where economic and military policies distort the distributions of resources and shatter human flourishing. Here, political reason and even the most scrupulously exercised state democracy functions ideologically by ignoring the broader human ‘ecumene of human suffering’. This poses a fundamental challenge to the ‘liberal pluralism of modern theologies’.17

Schillebeeckx’s political theology is also deeply influenced by his soteri- ology. Humans are not capable of complete salvation under their own power. While divine salvation takes place within the world, it is never reducible to any political party or program.18 _{Human projects are forever}

hindered by chance, contingency in a history marred by sin, and by their

15 _{Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, p. 78.} 16 _{Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, pp. 81–82.} 17 _{Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, pp. 81–84.}

18 _{Cf. Erik Borgman, ‘Theology as the Art of Liberation: Edward Schillebeeckx’s}

Response to the Third World Theologians’, Exchange 32/2 (2003), pp. 98–108 (103):

At the same time, however, he was certain that no political program or political order could ever embody the Christian values completely. In his discussion with Jacques Maritain’s idea of a New Christendom, he developed the strong conviction that every human humanism would necessarily be incomplete and stay an unfinished symphony.

own ignorance and sinfulness.19 _{The question of divine salvation arises}

from the ‘impossibility of a total, universal and final liberation through emancipation’.20 _{This limit points to salvation not because of an eschat-}

ological proviso, but in terms of an ‘eschatological superabundance’ that points to inner ‘positive’ connection between the Kingdom of God and human emancipatory struggles.21

Schillebeeckx’s resistance to a directly political role for Christian faith is also driven by his understanding of the Paschal Mystery:22

As the intrinsic consequence of the radicalism of its message and reconciling practice, the crucifixion of Jesus shows that any attempt at liberating redemption which is concerned with humanity is valid

in and of itself and not subsequently as a result of any success which

may follow.23

Christian salvation transcends politics as it aims forever beyond what is humanly achievable. In so doing, it also fundamentally challenges any model of politics as violent domination or bureaucratic control.

Schillebeeckx’s Christological project is a fundamental challenge to Bauerschmidt’s critique that his politics lacks a distinctively Christian form. Christianity does not lack a model of action, it is found in the life praxis of Jesus of Nazareth. Schillebeeckx’s turn to the historical/theological study that became the Christological trilogy after his engagement with Critical theory led him to a concern that pure critical negativity could provide no guidance for politics.24 _{The New Testament contains the early Church’s}

response to Jesus in their life praxis. In this we can gain an image of Jesus’ own praxis.25 _{The ‘profound connection between the life praxis, death, and}

Resurrection of Jesus remains pivotal in Schillebeeckx’s understanding of the productive difference between sociopolitical liberation and definitive eschatological salvation.’26

19 _{Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, p. 101.} 20 _{Schillebeeckx, Christ, p. 768.}

21 _{Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Terugblik vanuit de tijd na Vaticanum II: De gebroken}

ideologieën van de moderniteit’, Tussen openheid en isolement: Het voorbeeld van

de katholieke theologie in de negentiende eeuw (ed. Erik Borgman and Anton van

Harskamp; Kampen: Kok, 1992), pp. 153–72 (170–71). Cited in Simon, ‘Salvation and Liberation in the Practical-Critical Soteriology of Schillebeeckx’, p. 517.

22 _{Simon, ‘Salvation and Liberation in the Practical-Critical Soteriology of Schillebeeckx’,}

p. 503.

23 _{Schillebeeckx, Christ, p. 837.}

24 _{William Portier, ‘Interpretation and Method’, The Praxis of Christian Experience: An}

Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (ed. Robert J. Schreiter and

Mary Catherine Hilkert; New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1989), pp. 18–34 (31).

25 _{Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, p. 35.}

26 _{Simon, ‘Salvation and Liberation in the Practical-Critical Soteriology of Schillebeeckx’,}

When considered in its whole, Schillebeeckx’s conception of the relationship of Christian faith and politics does not seem adequately described by Bauerschmidt’s critique. Christian faith is not private. It begins and remains in history in a manner that does not accept the modern distinction of spheres any more than it accepted sacral boundaries in ages past. Mysticism is not understood as an experience of private interiority, but as a disruptive deepening of the human encounter with the divine in the midst of any human activity, including politics. Far from accepting the rules and confines of statecraft, Schillebeeckx situates all politics within the context of human finitude against the encompassing horizon of God’s presence and history’s destiny in the Kingdom of God.