Some theologians claim that all philosophical and political issues are ultimately theological. This is the kind of lavish ambit claim that the powerless of this world, like theologians, often make. But certainly complex theological discussions can sometimes throw light on thoroughly secular questions.
Take elections, for example. In them the people exercise their sovereign choice. In the recent election the people withdrew support from a government whose formulation of national sovereignty had sometimes been brutal. It is caught in Mr Howard's martial policy launch at a previous election, 'We decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come here'.
Although you may cynically think that elections and theology have only tedium in common, the theology of election does bear on issues of choice and sovereignty that resonate in political life.
The Christian theology of election has to do with God's choice. It begins with God's choosing the people of Israel from all the nations. It becomes more complicated when it deals with the split of the Christian church from Israel. It must say whether God has cancelled the original choice or has affirmed and refined it.
But for the most part the Christian theology of election has focused, not on the macro level where God chooses nations, but at the micro level where God chooses individuals. St Augustine was insistent that if individuals are saved, it is because God chooses to save them. It is not because they choose to obey God. Augustine's position can be crystallised in the statement that God's choice is sovereign and unconditioned.
The unqualified emphasis on God's choice becomes problematic when we turn our attention to people who are not saved. If those who are saved owe their happiness totally to God's sovereign and unconditioned choice, then logically it would seem that those who are damned must also owe their misery to God's choice.
This conclusion struck many of Augustine's contemporaries, as it might strike us, as unjust. Significantly in his response Augustine felt the need to defend God's justice. In doing so, he conceded that sovereign choice is not simply a matter of the power to do what you like. Even God's choice must be reasonable and just.
In Christian theology God's reason for choosing nations and individuals is love. When we love we respond to the value that we see in other people. Our love is free in the sense that