A confession: the only book by Rowan Williams that I’ve read (or been interested in reading, until recently) is his Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love – a book as profound as it is beautiful. A few weeks ago, I read Difficult Gospel: The Theology of Rowan Williams by Mike Higton. This planted a desire to go and read some more Williams – a desire I’ve tried resisting mainly because he’s so trendy at the moment and I have an aversion to trendy theologians (a story for another blog perhaps). Tonight I started reading his On Christian Theology – another beautifully written book. I thought I’d share the three points he makes on theocracy for two reasons: (i) because it struck me how his words echo similar reverberations in Forsyth’s own thinking on the topic (there is no evidence of which I am aware that Williams is familiar with Forsyth); and (ii) because I think there’s much here to reflect on.

‘Theocracy assumes that there can be an end to dialogue and discovery; that believers would have the right (if they had the power) to outlaw unbelief. It assumes that there could be a situation in which believers in effect had nothing to learn, and therefore that the corporate conversion of the Church could be over and done with. Second, following from this, theocracy assumes an end to history. The powerful suggestions of Barth and von Balthasar about history between the resurrection and the second coming as the gift of a time of repentance and growth are set aside; instead of God alone determining the end of the times of repentance, the Church seeks for foreclose the eschaton. Third, most obviously, theocracy reflects a misunderstanding of the hope for God’s kingdom, a fusion of divine and earthly sovereignty in a way quite foreign to the language and practice of Jesus. Theocracy, the administration by Christians of a monolithic society in which all distinction between sin and crime is eroded, is neither a practical nor a theologically defensible goal’. – Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 36.