Status Updates From The Desire of the Nations: ...

These final two chapters are easier reading, perhaps because the material is more familiar, or perhaps because I've adjusted more to O'Donovan's writing style. He doesn't aim for clarity or quotability but the density is strangely addicting.

Chapter 6 is officially the most comprehensible chapter yet, probably because there's a good deal of history and historical analysis of the development of Christendom.

Notes on first few pages of Ch. 5 . . . the church is a complete (but hidden) political society with a reigning king and a law, which exists in tension with earthly powers who do not command its final allegiance. While aspiring to live quiet and peaceable lives, members of the church do so from a position of independence, showing their courtesy and good conduct to earthly regimes without being enslaved to them.

well . . . I'm happy to say that after about three times through each chapter, I understand about half of it. Hopefully once I've finished the whole book each piece of the argument will fall more securely into place. Meantime, I'm newly appreciating just how political the language of the Bible is. The true king has come & his kingship now sets the terms of/illuminates all political aspirations. Not vice versa.