The State As Salvific Institution

"Thus, 'the modern state is best understood... as a source of an alternative soteriology to that of the Church' (RONT, 182). The advent of modernity and the birth of the secular, therefore, do not entail the creation of a secular public space where the state merely manages temporal goods, distinguished from a private sacred space where individuals and communities are free to pursue a supra-temporal telos. The state does not take a merely temporal regulatory role and leave salvation in the hands of the church; rather, the modern state seeks to replace the church by itself becoming a soteriological institution."


James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 132