On the assumption that Christian theism grounds all valid moral prescriptions in a divine purpose, Christian ethics is fundamentally challenged by the widespread consensus in contemporary democratic theory that justice should be separated from any comprehensive good. This essay responds to that challenge through a criticism of separationist theories of justice and a summary argument for democratic principles that depend on the divine good. Democratic justice is compound in character or includes a difference between formative principles, by which a political discourse about the good is constituted, and substantive principles, which should be convincing within the democratic discussion and debate. I argue programmatically that a theory of justice as general emancipation is compound and specifies Christian ethics to politics.

O'Donovan and Yoder are both radical critics of the modern liberal split between politics and religion and the view that there can be some neutral moral discourse to mediate between them. Both seek therefore to redescribe the political meaning of the Christian narrative vision for the late modern West and to show how liberalism represents a false version. There are, however, fundamental disagreements between O'Donovan's retrieval of Christendom political theology and Yoder's elaboration of the church as a voluntary political community of non-violent believers. Unfortunately the precise character of the disagreement tends to be obscured by caricatured descriptions of the other on both sides: Yoder's crude Constantinianism cannot begin to do justice to O'Donovan's position, and O'Donovan's dismissal of Yoder's "free" church voluntareity as a form of "neo-liberalism" is misplaced. My paper will redefine the disagreement as centered on their different political interpretations of biblical eschatology.