Francis Oakley on Divinity and Rule

I've been reading Francis Oakley's new trilogy on The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, and have been very impressed. Oakley is making an argument similar to that of Remi Brague in The Law of God, though in a more pointed fashion: that the modern phenomenon we call "liberalism," frequently understood to have its roots in sixteenth and seventeenth-century political theory, really grew and developed in the soil of medieval Christianity. In fact, both Oakley and Brague argue, several of the major tenets we associate with liberalism--e.g. natural rights, popular sovereignty, individualism, the "secular" sphere, etc.--could only have developed within Christianity, and Western Christianity at that.

This account sure beats the sloppy Machiavelli-invents-modernity account I have heard bandied about so often.