SOAS Research Online

Abstract

An Augustinian analysis of the current version of political liberalism which is increasingly dominating Western politics recognises it as idolatrous. Nonetheless, there are key Christian insights that political power is to be limited and that the polis is not the most important society which can be described as ‘political limitism’. Christian political limitism sees human politics as tending to idolatry but nonetheless sustained by God’s grace as God gives people time to respond to God and to re-order their disordered loves in relation to Godself, the supreme good. Christian political limitism can be translated into a form of open liberalism, in which liberalism is recognised to be a pragmatic, limited, political vision rather than a self-contained and self-generating source of values.