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5 - Loving in Conflict

Theological Agonistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2025

Nicholas Norman-Krause
Affiliation:
Belmont University
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Summary

In this final chapter, I explore how the experience of democratic conflict might be conceptualized by religious traditions in theologically and ethically meaningful ways. I return to the Augustinian tradition and its understanding of love as a resource for thematizing agonism theologically. First, I consider the role of love in Augustine’s moral psychology and political theory, showing how pluralist politics can be understood as a practice of discovering and pursuing “common objects of love” amidst difference. Next, I analyze the notion of political friendship in Augustine and Aristotle in order to show how social relations around these common objects of love might incorporate forms of conflict, disagreement, and parrhesia that are ordered to tending these common goods. I conclude by looking at two figures who extend Augustine’s political theology of love in distinctly liberative directions under the notion of enemy-love. Gustavo Gutiérrez and Martin Luther King, Jr., I argue, develop accounts of the imperative to love the enemy in ways that encompass forms of confrontation, opposition, and conflict in seeking to convert enemies to friends.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Loving in Conflict
  • Nicholas Norman-Krause, Belmont University
  • Book: Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy
  • Online publication: 21 March 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009603829.006
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  • Loving in Conflict
  • Nicholas Norman-Krause, Belmont University
  • Book: Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy
  • Online publication: 21 March 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009603829.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Loving in Conflict
  • Nicholas Norman-Krause, Belmont University
  • Book: Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy
  • Online publication: 21 March 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009603829.006
Available formats
×