The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics

by Andrew Willard Jones

The prevailing narrative of human history, given to us as children and reinforced constantly through our culture, is the plot of progress. As the narrative goes, we progressed from tyranny to freedom, from superstition to science, from poverty to wealth, from darkness to enlightenment. This is modernity's origin myth. Out of it, a consensus has emerged: part of human progress is the overcoming of religion, in particular Christianity, and that the world itself is fundamentally secular.

In The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics, Andrew Willard Jones rewrites the political history of the West with a new plot, a plot in which Christianity is true, in which human history is Church history.

The Two Cities moves through the rise and fall of empires; cycles of corruption and reform; the rise and fall of Christendom; the emergence of new political forms, such as the modern state, and new political ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism; through the horrible destruction of modern warfare; and on to the plight of contemporary Christians. These movements of history are all considered in light of their orientation toward or away from God.

The Two Cities advances a theory of Christian politics that is both an explanation of secular politics and a proposal for Christians seeking to navigate today's most urgent political questions.

Genres: History, Christianity, Politics, Catholic, Church History, Nonfiction, Theology

376 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 2021

Reviews

[Josh Olds · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Two Cities is two thousand years of political history packed into just under 400 pages. Taking its title from Augustine’s The City of God, where he posits that there are two cities: Rome, which symbolizes everything worldly, and Jerusalem (the city of heaven), which symbolizes the Christian community. The history of the church, writes Andrew Willard Jones, is the struggle of the individual between the two. Jones, writing through a Catholic lens, leads readers from the Roman Empire to the American empire in an attempt to understand the church’s influence on the state throughout history.

Jones begins his work with a section that’s rather philosophical, working his way through early history from creation to the fall of Rome. It’s this section that defines the church and defines the polis, or the state, and shows how the two were always meant to intertwine. That’s a difficult concept, given that much of modern political sensibilities rely on the separation of church and state. But what Jones has in mind is that the Adamic mandate to subdue the earth involves creating community, culture, infrastructure—it involves creates a polis. Politics and religion are intertwined because what individuals believe affects how they create and build their polis.

From here, Jones works his way chronologically through history, with section growing larger than the next as he approaches modernity: 30 pages devoted to the ancient church; 40 pages to the medieval church; 30 to the Reformation; then 100 for the modern church and 60 for the post-modern. In this, we can see that one of Jones’ primary objectives is not just the dispassionate retelling of history, but the construction of a narrative intended to illuminate and provide direction for today. As Jones puts it, The Two Cities is “a historical narrative that is Christian through and through…capable of understanding modernity from within the truth of Christianity.”

Jones writes magnificently and in compelling fashion, positioning the Church as not just part of history but infused at the center of history. I especially appreciated the section on medieval history, both because it’s an area I don’t know a lot about and an area in which the Catholic Church became very secular to the point of almost losing its religion completely. While Jones probably wouldn’t say it that bluntly, he fully admits that corruption and sin abounded. However, it also points to a faithful remnant through it all, highlighting the ever-present struggle between the two cities. Coming from a Protestant tradition that remains suspicious of Catholicism, a lot of this history was completely new to me. Although Jones is Catholic, writing to Catholics, published by a Catholic publisher, this Protestant pastor (who is no longer suspicious of Catholics) was able to follow the narrative clearly. It was also refreshing to see a study of the Reformation from a Catholic perspective and Jones is balanced and nuanced in his evaluation.

Overall, there’s a lot to work through in The Two Cities and even where I don’t fully agree with Jones’s theological or philosophical points, his irenic tone and clear narrative are helpful for understanding how he came to that position and what his reasoning is. It’s a text to be grappled with, particularly in what it means for the church moving forward.

[Joseph O’Reilly Tynan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great overview of church history and it is not too long. If you have a desire to increase in knowledge about the history of Christian politics I do encourage you to pick up this book. The most interesting topics I encountered were: the 20th Century’s bastardization of the French revolutions goals, the project of German nationalization in the 19th Century with Otto Bismarck, and the glories of the 12th century all over Christendom. The insights of the second Vatican council were also of interest to me and he briefly went over some of the pressing documents including lumen gentium and Gaudium et Spes. I also loved the insight that the 100 years war was super harmful to Christendom.

[Mollie Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful overview of the entirety of European/Western history from the dawn of time until the present day accompanied with a wonderful narrative. I would read Jones' book about St. Louis IX's reign before reading this one in order to give you an idea of what his philosophy of politics is. This book would make a wonderful text for a high school European history class. It sure would've helped this European history major a ton had it been written back in the day. Finally: a theory of the Great War that makes sense! :)

[Almachius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This deserves more than the four stars I've given it - it is superb in all the ways other reviews mention, and the last three pages alone are tremendous, and I'll definitely read it again - but I'm holding it to the unreasonably high standard of what it could be in a future revised edition if it was just a little more courageous in its treatment of the twentieth century. Well done, though, Andrew Willard Jones: this is a masterpiece.

[Fr. Jeffrey Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an answer to the question, "How would we recount history if we began with the premise that Christianity is true?" It is an antidote to all false ways of political thinking.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting history here, much of it new to my husband and me, though we were both somewhat familiar with the fields covered. Jones writes from a Roman Catholic point of view. But Protestants and anyone interested in Western history and politics will find much to expand their general understanding. What we expected but missed were references to Orthodox and other Christian groups in his discussions of "human history"—since the description states that "Jones rewrites the political history of the West with a new plot, a plot in which Christianity is true, in which human history is Church history." It was unclear at times whether his mention of the "true Church," or Church with a capital C, meant all of Christendom (a word he also used a lot), or only Roman Catholicism. For aside from his take on the Protestant Reformation and later discussions specifically about the papacy and Catholic doctrine, most of his analyses of the impact of social and political movements on the Church or vice versa rang true for mainline Protestant Christianity as well, in our experience.

Finally, a more rigorous copy editing could have widened the appeal of this book outside academia. Jones is prone to long, cumbersome sentences and jargon. An alert proofreader could also have caught the many word omissions and other distracting errors that electronic spell checks miss.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the world is the history of the Church, and the one can only be fully understood through the lens of the other. The City of God is inevitably intermingled with the City of Man and it will always be so, for the Church's aim is not to bring about the annihilation of the City of Man, but its ultimate redemption.

This is an enlightening and brilliantly written general history of the Church for the present day, making tangible both her mission over the previous centuries and the destiny she is called to embrace in the 21st. It is no simple task to pack 2,000 years of history in just under 350 pages, but Jones does so while creating a text that still feels both full-scope and in-depth. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to all looking for an engaging and philosophically-inclined chronology of the triumphs and falls, and reforms and crises of the Church - from the beginning of time to the postmodern (or is it now post-postmodern?) world of today.

[Elijah Newcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Andrew Willard Jones has quickly become my favorite living thinker. His background is in medieval history, and I think he has done more than any other contemporary writer to reshape the way I see the Church’s temporal power and the political vocation of the laity. According to Jones, the vocation of all the laity is politics, properly understood as the ordering of temporal affairs toward communion with God.

This book is written at a popular level and is a great place to start with Dr. Jones’s work. He begins by arguing that the Church is not just a player in history, but the very board on which history unfolds. His account of Christian politics starts in the Garden and develops through a deeply Aristotelian and Thomistic lens. (Disclaimer: nominalism, in his view, is a big part of the problem.) Politics, for Jones, is a natural and necessary part of man’s journey toward his ultimate end—communion with God.

He carries this vision all the way into the 20th century, covering everything from the political utility of Arianism for both emperors and barbarians, to Lutheran theology as the absolutizing of indulgence, to Reformed theology as the absolutizing of law, and finally to the contradictions that arose after Vatican II. His take on the post-conciliar Church was the one part I found unsatisfying.

All in all, this is a compelling and readable book written at a popular level, full of historical insight, theological depth, and political clarity. It's also a great introduction to Catholic social thought and to one of the most exciting and entertaining Christian thinkers writing today. I can’t recommend it enough.

[Campbell Ingraham · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most insightful books I've ever read. It made me completely rethink what I know about political ideology and civilization as it relates to Christianity. It is a history of the entire world through the lens of Christianity: empires rising and falling, Christendom at its peak in the Middle ages, and how western culture was entirely formed from the values of Christianity.

[Ben Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic book about history with a particularly fresh perspective on the middle ages that goes against the current "dark ages" interpretation. many profound insights in this book from a great theologian.