From One City to Two: Christian Reimagining of Political Space

Abstract

The paper questions the basic assumption that the nation-state is one city, within which there is a division of goods and a division of labour, which follow certain well-worn binaries: civil society and state, sacred and secular, eternal and temporal, religion and politics, church and state. It explores some deficiencies of John Courtney Murray's conceptualization of the political space in this way, and turns to Augustine's tale of two cities for a more adequate conceptualization. The paper especially argues that the two cities are not two institutions but two performances, two practices of space and time.