Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology [1 ed.] 9780745642536

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Editors’ Acknowledgements
Editors’ Introduction
Guideline for the Reader
Introduction
1 The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure
2 The Legendary Document
3 The Legendary Conclusion
Postscript: On the Current Situation of the Problem: The Legitimacy of Modernity
Appendix: ‘Peterson’s Conclusion and Concluding Footnote’
Notes
Index of Subjects
Index of Names

Citation preview

Political Theology II

POLITICAL THEOLOGY II The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology

Carl Schmitt Translated and introduced by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward

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First published in German as Politische Theologie II © Duncker & Humblot GmbH, 1970 This English translation © Polity Press, 2008; ‘The Editors’ Introduction’ © Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward. Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK. Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4253-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4254-3(pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3178-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3179-0(pb) Typeset in 11 on 14 pt Adobe Caslon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound in the UK by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

To Hans Barion, on his seventieth birthday 16 December 1969

Contents

Editors’ Acknowledgements Editors’ Introduction Guideline for the Reader Introduction Chapter 1 The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure 1 The Content of the Myth 2 Hans Barion’s Critique of Political Theology 3 The Contemporary Significance of the Myth of Closure (Hans Maier – Ernst Feil – Ernst Topitsch) Chapter 2 The Legendary Document 1 The Genesis and the Historical Limitation of the Matter 2 Politico-Theological Interpolation: le roi règne et ne gouverne pas 3 Limitation of the Matter and Question from the Political Side: Monarchy

ix 1 31 34

37 37 46

49 60 60 66 70

viii

4 5 6

Contents

Limitation of the Matter and Question from the Theological Side: Monotheism Eusebius as a Prototype of Political Theology The Confrontation between Eusebius and Augustine

Chapter 3 The Legendary Conclusion 1 The Claims of the Conclusion 2 The Assertive Power of the Conclusion

76 79 98 103 103 105

Postscript On the Current Situation of the Problem: The Legitimacy of Modernity Appendix ‘Peterson’s Conclusion and Concluding Footnote’

131

Notes Index of Subjects Index of Names

133 152 156

116

Editors’ Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we want to thank Alice Schubert from Duncker & Humblot and Manuela Tecusan from Polity Press for their professional assistance, and George Schwab for his comments on our translation. We would also like to thank the following, from the University of Manchester, for their comments, observations and assistance: Alison Sharrock for her help with the Latin; Stephen Todd and Todd Klutz for their insights into the Greek; Peter Scott for volunteering to go through the manuscript; and Alan Williams for his advice on metrics. Of course, any errors or mistakes are entirely our own.

Editors’ Introduction

Look at the author most precisely Who speaks of silence oh so nicely; For while he’s speaking of quiescence He outwits his own obsolescence.1

Schmitt composed this telling rhyme as a personal reflection, in the notes he wrote in his prison cell at Nuremberg, in 1946, and published it as part of his book Glossarium in 1952. The verses reinforce an unconfirmed myth according to which his last conversation with Robert Kempner, the chief attorney of the Nuremberg trial, who was interrogating Carl Schmitt, ended with the following exchange: Kempner: What are you going to do now? Schmitt: I will retreat into the security of silence.2

Schmitt was interrogated and imprisoned for thirteen months, suspected of having been an active promoter of Hitler’s politics of expansion. Subsequently, he was released from prison without any charges being levied against him. He gave up his Chair in Berlin, returned to his parents’ home

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Editors’ Introduction

in Plettenberg and ostensibly retreated to a house he then named San Casciano. San Casciano was the name of the town near to the farm where Machiavelli ‘exiled himself ’ after his expulsion from public life by the Medici. It was also the place where he composed his most famous political works, The Discourses and The Prince. But the name Schmitt gave to his home, San Casciano, also alludes to Saint Cassian, the last martyr of Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians, who was stabbed to death by his students with a stylo.3 Schmitt’s experience at Nuremberg served to intensify the central questions he was asking throughout the earlier part of his career; questions which continue to dominate the concluding section of Political Theology II: Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur? Who will judge? Who will interpret? Ultimately, these are not Schmitt’s questions but those of Thomas Hobbes. They articulate and raise concerns that are historical, sociological, juridical, political – but also hermeneutical. On the one hand, in every one of these concerns, what is treated is concrete circumstances. The questions arise from, and the answers offered are responses to, situations of immediate practical import. They are the key questions of Realpolitik. On the other hand, because they concern hermeneutics, these questions invite metaphysical speculation. For they are about judgement, authority and legitimacy, while also being grounded in Schmitt’s own experience from the end of the Weimar Republic, from his career during the early years of the Nazi regime (1933–6) and, as we have already mentioned, throughout the Nuremberg trials. But these three concerns – judgement, authority and legitimacy – are bound up with a concrete historical situation and an ideological structure which, to a greater or less extent, informs all interpretation. What is self-evident in one generation can be rendered

Editors’ Introduction 3

questionable in another; the interpretations that seem valid in one context are not necessarily valid in another. Change is not automatically for good, but time transforms even the most substantive issues and makes judgements which have already been passed to stand in need of new interrogation. The passage of time is intimately associated with the question: Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur? We have to bear this in mind as we approach Political Theology II – a text written by a man over eighty years old, reflecting back on his public, intellectual and political engagement almost half a century earlier. There is a tendency in secondary literature on Schmitt to concentrate on the work of the inter-war period (1919–39). There is a number of reasons for this. First, some see his writings during this period as representing his most important academic contribution. Secondly, Schmitt’s membership of the Nazi party made him, maybe still makes him, a persona non grata after 1945 – someone who can be read, but not cited without mentioning the author’s past. Thirdly, his later work presents a certain literary obscurantism with references made to arcane sources, oblique hints, suggestive undertones, double meanings, crafted ironies and symbolic figurations. This style of writing opens itself to different, even contradictory, interpretations. And it was intended to do so. It is the style of someone who had retreated into the security of silence. For example, Political Theology II concludes with a Latin epigram which seemingly judges and interprets the contemporary situation pessimistically: Eripuit fulmen caelo, nova fulmina mittit Eripuit caelum deo, nova spatia struit. Homo homini res mutanda Nemo contra hominem nisi homo ipse

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Editors’ Introduction

[He snatched the thunder ball from heaven, and sends out new thunder balls. He snatched away heaven from God and spread out new realms. Man is an interchangeable thing to man; No one is against man except man himself.]

But is the epigram Schmitt’s, or does its allusive rhythm, conforming to, and then breaking with, the hexameter, point to Schmitt’s adoption of an ancient source? And what is the sense we should attribute to it, with respect to all that precedes it? Whatever the reasons for this academic concentration on the work of the inter-war years, its effect has been to distort the understanding of Schmitt’s oeuvre by interpreting all of it through the narrow focus of certain selected texts from this period.4 At least three times in the post-war period, Schmitt deliberately returns to and recites titles from his earlier work, as if wanting to give an overall shape to a lifetime’s intellectual labour. And the texts he chooses for such treatment are, arguably, his most important ones. In 1950, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Ius Publicum Europaeum can be viewed as a reflection on his controversial treatise from 1939, Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte: Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht [Order in International Law and the Prohibition of Intervention for External Powers: A Contribution to the Concept of Reich in International Law]. In 1963 he rethought The Concept of the Political (first published in 1928) in his book Theory of the Partisan: Notes on the Concept of the Political. And in Political Theology II: The Legend of the Closure of any Political Theology, published 1970, he revisits his 1922

Editors’ Introduction 5

volume Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Doctrine of Sovereignty, which Heinrich Meier (among others) view as the key to understanding Schmitt’s thinking.5 In none of these later texts are we simply dealing with sequels of earlier works, in the sense of continuations of earlier narratives. As a close reading of the titles (and subtitles) demonstrates, what we have in these texts are new investigations of important earlier concepts in different contexts – contexts that develop, extend and reinterpret what was presented in those previous studies. Political Theology II as a Rereading of Political Theology In the ‘Guideline for the Reader’ at the opening of Political Theology II, Schmitt gives his own interpretation of the relationship between the two books: ‘The thematic development of my political theology from 1922 takes a general direction which departs from the ius reformandi of the sixteenth century, culminates in Hegel and is evident everywhere today: from political theology to political Christology.’6 But, in fact, Political Theology from 1922 contains only a very limited amount of theology. The ‘theology’ provided in the text is incidental rather than systematic, and the word is used synonymously with ‘metaphysics’. There are no dogmatic, moral or pastoral questions addressed. Moreover, Schmitt has decided to use the same grammatical construction for his title as he did for his book Political Romanticism, published in 1919. This suggests that political theology and political romanticism could also be interchangeable: they both name historical periods in which certain beliefs and convictions were taken for granted by specific communities. This can be supported by Schmitt’s idea of ‘the sociology of juridical

6

Editors’ Introduction

concepts’, a methodology outlined in chapter three of Political Theology. ‘The metaphysical idea’, he writes, ‘of the world produced by a certain epoch has the same structure as the form of its unquestioned political organisation. The expression of this identical correlation is exactly the sociology of the concept of sovereignty. In fact it proves, as Edward Caird said on Auguste Comte, that metaphysics is the most intense and clearest expression of an epoch.’7 With ‘the sociology of juridical concepts’, Schmitt suggests a methodology which is distinct both from that of Karl Marx’s thesis of the social predominance of economic structures and from that of Max Weber’s thesis of the predominance of the specific ideas of a certain group. When he states that there is a correlation between the discourse of a particular form of political organisation and the metaphysical discourse of that epoch, Schmitt seeks to find an intermediate position. In fact, the proposed ‘sociology of juridical concepts’ can be understood in structuralist and determinist terms.8 Because the metaphysical discourse, according to Schmitt, determines the possibility for the conditions of the ideological acceptance of a particular form of political organisation, e.g. parliamentary democracy, absolute monarchy, commissary dictatorship and so on. But let us look more closely at the composition and origins of Political Theology. As the subtitle indicates – Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty – the book is comprised of four essays on the problem of sovereign power. The first two essays are a critique of Hans Kelsen’s normative understanding of pure law; the third one, the most theoretical of the essays, explores the systematic and historical resemblance between theology and law as academic disciplines. Essays one, two and three were first published as a contribution to a Festschrift for Max Weber entitled Sociology of the Concept of Sovereignty

Editors’ Introduction 7

and Political Theology.9 In this contribution Schmitt makes two bold statements for which he later became remembered and of which he himself said that at that time he started to publish books which could be of greater significance and of interest to a wider audience.10 The opening line of essay one, ‘The Definition of Sovereignty’, reads: ‘Sovereign is the one who makes the decision on the state of exception/emergency.’11 And the third essay, entitled ‘Political Theology’, opens with the statement: ‘All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts.’ The tension between the definition of sovereignty and Schmitt’s account of secularisation, which he saw as intrinsic to his proposed sociology, is resolved in the concluding fourth essay, which was added later, for the publication of Political Theology in 1922. In that fourth essay he gives an account of the political theology of the Catholic Counter-Revolution that was closely related to his short but influential treatise Roman Catholicism and Political Form published in 1923.12 This fourth essay raises the problem of sovereignty again from a specific political and ecclesial angle. It is only possible to understand the nature of the resolution that the fourth essay provides to the tension in the other three if we follow Schmitt’s remark, made in Political Theology II, on the significance of the thinkers of the Counter-Revolution for the origins of sociology and its underlying normativity.13 This is a typical example of the way Schmitt, in his later work, rereads what he wrote earlier. But one has to be careful about identifying political theology just with a ‘sociology of juridical concepts’ and to appreciate ‘political theology’ as the name given to a specific evaluation of secularisation. This view of secularisation sees modernity as a process of decay and is deeply informed by a cultural pessimism prevalent among

8

Editors’ Introduction

intellectuals of his generation. That is to say, political theology is neither just a specific sociology, nor just another name for a complete rejection of liberalism and its modern convictions and beliefs. We will examine this further in Schmitt’s critique of ‘new political theology’, which was emerging at the time of the publication of Political Theology II.14 The Structure of Political Theology II Political Theology II is much more explicitly theological than Political Theology. In his earlier work, ‘theology’ was understood in terms of a history of ideas and was therefore interchangeable with metaphysics. Here, at least in the final paragraphs, Schmitt outlines a specific theological speculation: a Christology based on the ambivalent concept of stasis. The book begins with – and is, for the most part, orientated towards – the critique of a thesis proposed by a leading German theologian, Erik Peterson, and dedicated to a more controversial theologian, Hans Barion.15 Barion was a foremost German critic of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council and the editor of a Festschrift for Schmitt, on his 80th birthday, bearing the enigmatic but telling title Epirrhosis – which means both strengthening and, in a rhetorical sense, intensification.16 Peterson, a church historian who developed a close relationship with Karl Barth at the University of Bonn, eventually became a Catholic convert from Protestantism. It was at the same university that he met Carl Schmitt. He attended Schmitt’s marriage to his second wife, then they visited Rome together and a number of letters were exchanged between 1925 and 1949. In other words they were friends, and Political Theology II must be read in the context of a friendship which eventually broke up.

Editors’ Introduction 9

The main argument put forward in Political Theology II is of an apologetic and defensive nature. In 1935 Peterson published a short book called Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem [Monotheism as a Political Problem], which concludes17 with an apodictic statement on the theological impossibility of any political theology. According to Peterson, political theology is theologically impossible for Christians because the trinitarian dogma does not allow a correlation between a political reality and a theological belief. Moreover, the legitimating of any political reality by theological means is unacceptable. For Christians, Peterson emphasises, political reality has to be met with an eschatological reservation. That is, all human, political and contingent reality must be understood as provisional, never as the fulfilment of God’s will. Peterson’s phrase ‘eschatological reservation’ became the central notion for Johann Baptist Metz’s project of a ‘new political theology’; a project beginning to emerge at the time of the publication of Political Theology II. This emphasis on the eschatological nature of true Christian belief, by Metz as well as by Peterson, has to be understood, in the case of the latter, in the context of his conversion: that is, of his rejection of a specific form of Protestantism that assimilated, and ultimately identified itself with, Kultur on the one hand, and the enthusiastic reception of Nazism by Catholic conservatives on the other. The former was the object of Karl Barth’s trenchant critique of all onto-theology.18 This is important for the understanding of the apologetic style of Political Theology II because it concerns Schmitt personally and impacted on his friendship with Peterson. Schmitt refers in Political Theology II to a ‘Parthian attack’. This phrase,19 used by Barion, illustrated how Peterson attacked Schmitt in a decisive moment, when Peterson was

10

Editors’ Introduction

already running away. Throughout Political Theology II, the reader can sense Schmitt’s personal hurt when he says that Political Theology II should ‘rip the arrow from its wound’. But the Parthian tactics are also the tactics Schmitt employs for his defence throughout this volume. He feels the need to defend himself again and to correct the meaning of ‘political theology’. Following the grammar of a Parthian strategy, his defence also implies an attack, which is a counter-attack. This becomes evident in his ‘Postscript’ to Political Theology II, when he seeks to demonstrate that Christian theology is essentially political because the substructure of revolution has been set out in the Christian teaching on the Incarnation. This counter-attack is, at the same time, a critique of technological progress, modernity and liberalism. As such, if we compare the four chapters of Political Theology from 1922 with the four chapters of Political Theology II, the essay on the political theology of the Counter-Revolution (i.e. on de Maistre, Bonald and Donoso Cortés) must be read as the key to the Christological speculations of the ‘Postscript’ and its political implications. We will elaborate on this further, when we discuss the reasons why Schmitt, in the upheaval of the late 1960s, refers in his last book back to political theology, and therefore to the very question of sovereignty. Article 48 and 1968 After the Second World War, the new constitution of Germany was modelled on the constitution for the Weimar Republic, but it did not contain the clause concerning emergency powers – that is, the legal regulation for a case of emergency, as it was laid down in Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic. The article on the state of exception

Editors’ Introduction 11

became paradigmatic for Schmitt’s political theory (namely for his notion of decisionism) and for the understanding of sovereignty as defined in the opening line of Political Theology (1922). The Weimar constitution [Reichsverfassung] declares in Article 48 (1) that, if a county does not fulfil its duty, the Reichspräsident is entitled to use armed force to compel it to do so; and (2) allows the Reichspräsident to suspend ‘entirely or in part the fundamental rights guaranteed by the 7 articles of the constitution: 114 (personal freedom), 115 (inviolability of property), 117 (privacy of letters), 118 (freedom of expression and in particular freedom of the press), 123 (freedom of congregation), 124 (freedom of association), 153 (the requisition of private property), to restore public security and order by the means of armed forces, if necessary.’20 In Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre from 1928, we can read his interpretation of article 48 of the Weimar constitution: The suspended constitutional norm has no validity for the time it is suspended. The limitations for the executive implied by this norm are suspended for every institution: neither the constitutional regulations nor their subsequent norms can restrict institutional action. Therefore, the suspension does not mean the breach of the law in an individual case (because no valid legal regulation has been violated); moreover, its validity has been sublated. Nor does it mean an amendment, because after the end of a suspension of law, which is only possible as a suspension within certain temporal limits, the law regains its normativity.21

Schmitt’s interpretation is followed by a long, explanatory footnote22 in which he emphasises that Article 48, para. 2, s. 1 declares that it is the Reichspräsident who is empowered in a state of emergency to restore public security and order by

12

Editors’ Introduction

suspending personal rights. Furthermore, Schmitt declares that Article 48 defines a regulation which is ‘typical for a dictatorship’.23 For Schmitt, dictatorship is not necessarily a negative term. In his book Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf [Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Class Struggle of the Proletariat], published in 1921, he seeks to demonstrate that the office of the dictator was introduced to protect the republic in times of crisis. The so-called commissary dictator was given extraordinary powers to suspend individual rights written down in the constitution for the sake of the very existence of the republic. The dictator, Schmitt emphasises, does not act beyond the legal framework of the constitution, because he is bound by three preconditions:24 first, the state of emergency must have been declared; secondly, the content and range of extraordinary power must have been defined; and, thirdly, the dictatorship is always limited to a certain period of time – that is, the dictatorship ends with the end of the state of exception.25 During the years following 1945, Schmitt concentrated on the problem of the right interpretation of Article 48, which culminated in a controversy between the two most eminent legal theorists of the twentieth century concerning the question of the status of the president of the Reich [Reichspräsident] and of the constitution. In 1931 Schmitt published a book called Der Hüter der Verfassung [The Safeguard of the Constitution], in which he defines the Reichspräsident as the neutral power (pouvoir neutre) acting in times of crisis and, in particular, in a looming civil war. His office supersedes the status of competing parties, and it is he who ultimately has to make the decision to declare a state of exception.26 According to the definition of sovereignty in

Editors’ Introduction 13

Political Theology from 1922, for Schmitt the ultimate sovereign is not the parliament but one single person, namely the Reichspräsident, who becomes the protector of the constitution by his act of sovereign decision-making. Schmitt’s interpretation of the sovereign power which proves itself in times of a crisis and is vested in a single person is, in fact, close to Jean Bodin’s definition of sovereignty as the divine right of kings and to an understanding of constitutional monarchy which, in the end, opens the room for an absolute monarchy which, finally, might result in dictatorship (in the negative sense). Following Schmitt’s own suggestion, outlined in Chapter 3 of Political Theology from 1922, the proposed interpretation of Article 48 and its corresponding form of political organisation is tied to a specific, in this case Catholic, metaphysical worldview. ‘One God – One king’ summarises the metaphysical worldview which is the precondition for Schmitt’s interpretation of Article 48. It is therefore not surprising that in the same year, 1931, Schmitt published Der Hüter der Verfassung [The Safeguard of the Constitution]. Hans Kelsen immediately responded with a harsh criticism of Schmitt’s interpretation. According to Kelsen – who, following Paul Laband, perfected legal positivism and associated himself with the Vienna Circle – such a metaphysics was not only nonsense but also dangerous. The sovereign, so Kelsen thought, can never be one single individual, because the constitution can only be protected by a supreme court which legitimates acts of sovereignty and/ or the suspension of constitutional rights. Kelsen accuses Schmitt of disguising his real political interests by introducing the concept of pouvoir neutre, a notion rooted in constitutional monarchy. In the end, says Kelsen, the president appears as the monarch in a republic, and it is he who

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Editors’ Introduction

guarantees the common will of the people. But this implies that the ‘monarch’ is above and beyond parliament; for parliament only produces, according to Schmitt, differences of opinion and interest.27 Hans Kelsen’s objections to Schmitt’s view did not only stem from Kelsen’s anti-metaphysical position. In moral terms, his legal positivism was directed against the possibility of a dictator who crosses the Rubicon being legalised and legitimated by the constitution. In 1933 Schmitt proved that Kelsen’s concerns were justified: he interpreted Hitler’s rise to power as legal by the so-called Ermächtigungsgesetz, which he was determined to relate back to Article 48.28 One year later he published an essay claiming the legality and even legitimacy of the so called Rhömmorde, that is, Hitler’s ordering of the assassination of his political enemy Ernst Rhöm, at that time the leader of the SA and a serious contender for the leadership of the Nazi party. In his essay, called ‘The Führer Protects the Law’,29 Schmitt juxtaposes the bureaucratic ‘emptiness of the state’ in the Weimar Republic, which lacked both morality and substance, with the heroism of the Führer, who had the courage to declare the state of exception and take action. It is undisputed that Schmitt’s essay ‘The Führer Protects the Law’ follows the rhetoric of the party of which he was by now a member. The Reichspräsident, the pouvoir neutre, the commissionary dictator who was seen as a protector of the constitution became a tyrant. Politically, this was the end of the Weimar Republic, and it came about legally and in accordance with the constitution. This is a memory which, in post-war Germany, the socialists and, in particular, the Liberal party have never forgotten. After 1945, the situation in Germany was quite different. The country (still occupied and under the control of Allied

Editors’ Introduction 15

Forces) was required to draft a constitution. Significantly, this constitution did not contain any legal handling for a ‘state of the exception’, as mentioned above. This meant that Germany was not granted full sovereignty, because the Allied Forces had the privilege to protect themselves and to act without the agreement of the German government. In the wake of acts of terrorism (from the Red Army Faction) and in the global climate of students contesting authority, the Coalition in Germany (of CSU and SPD) passed the infamous Notstandsgesetze on 30 May 1968. By this they fully restored the sovereignty of the German state30 and reinserted the essence of Article 48 into the new constitution. Political Theology II was written during this time, and it is likely that Schmitt felt some satisfaction when he read Article 115e and Article 155a of the new German constitution. Of course, there is one significant difference between these articles and Article 48 of the Weimar constitution: it is not a single person who decides on the ‘state of exception’. It is now an assembly: an emergency Cabinet. That is to say: Schmitt’s adopted view of sovereignty (a view following Bodin’s, and evident in his reading of Hobbes) – namely that sovereignty can never be divided – had been contradicted. Is this the reason why he takes up a problem he was working on in 1922 in 1969, calling again on the Political Theology? The New Political Theology By comparing Article 48 of the Weimar Republic with the implementation of the Notstandsgesetze we have only touched upon the political side of the issue. The question still remains why Schmitt fashioned his last monograph in a theological manner. There are two possible answers to this question.

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Editors’ Introduction

Either he wanted to propose his own theology – namely a version of Christology distinctive from that of Peterson – or, reading it in context, Political Theology II is an intervention in current ecclesial affairs. We believe the latter to be true. The book is dedicated to one of the foremost critics of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5), Hans Barion. Councils are the most important historical and dogmatic landmarks in the Christian tradition. This is where doctrine is discussed and orthodoxy defined, and councils go back to the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325 CE), assembled by Constantine the Great: a council which plays an important role in the present text. Through this dedication to Barion, Schmitt is making a political statement which cannot be read without bearing in mind his comments upon the work of the counter-revolutionary thinkers, both in the final essay of Political Theology and in Political Theology II. In fact, Barion’s own involvement in the Nazi regime was a matter of considerable debate. In Barion, the Catholic priest and canon lawyer who was eventually disciplined by the church because of his public support of the Nazi regime,31 Schmitt finds a reflection of his own position as a Catholic and constitutional lawyer ostracised by the German intellectual world. Between 1962 and 1965, the Catholic church had to learn a hard lesson: that even debates concerning its own constitution cannot be conducted any longer in a clandestine manner. The church discovered what politics had discovered much earlier – the significance of the public sphere. For the first time the media challenged the way the church governed itself, raising questions concerning its authority and the way that authority was exercised. As a result of this, the church opened itself to the secularised public. This was risky for two reasons. First, it involved a loss of Vatican control. Secondly,

Editors’ Introduction 17

it could be interpreted as embracing Protestant liberalism. For conservatives like Schmitt and leading theologians like Erich Przywara and Karl Barth, this new exposure to the world, by the Catholic church, was going too far. Political Theology II was written in the aftermath of this council. Furthermore, we have to understand the establishment of the Second Vatican Council in the context of post-war Germany. For it was composed predominantly of German theologians. So the political cannot be disassociated from the theological in this situation. As Schmitt argues in this book, through an analysis of role of Eusebius in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, political theology cannot be so easily dismissed. We might also note that the attention to Christology in the ‘Postscript’ can be read as a Catholic conservative response to the council’s pneumatological emphasis, what the foremost German theologian at the council, Karl Rahner, earlier had anticipated in his book The Spirit in the World.32 A similar Christological emphasis can be found in another leading German Catholic conservative (who was not called to serve at the council), Hans Urs von Balthasar.33 The impact of the council was twofold. On the one hand, it gave rise to an enormous enthusiasm among the majority of the laity, as well as among the clergy, for the church’s embrace of the modern secular world. The church was now understood as inseparable from society, and this led to a reevaluation of the role of the laity – a democratisation akin to what had happened with Protestantism during the Reformation.34 This enthusiasm was mainly based on the constitutional document Gaudium et spes, which was passed by the council as its final decree and in which we can find a highly interesting discussion of the relationship between the church and the world. On the other hand, this sea-change

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Editors’ Introduction

left behind a number of significant conservative theologians like Przywara, Guardini and von Balthasar, with whom Schmitt was in personal contact or was at least intellectually allied from the 1920s and 1930s onwards.35 Paralleling this democratisation of the church was the rise of a new political theology. This was pioneered by Johann Baptist Metz, a student of Karl Rahner, who redefined the public role of theology in terms of providing a critique of society. The critique of society which Schmitt takes from Metz, referring explicitly to him in Political Theology II, is the pessimistic evaluation of society as humanising [hominisierende Gesellschaft], that is, a society ignoring transcendence. But Schmitt reads Metz’s critique in Hobbesian terms. In the concluding epigram of Political Theology II we learn that man is interchangeable with man, and this is Schmitt’s answer to the two alternatives representing the basic attitude towards human beings and politics paradigmatically defined by Rousseau and Hobbes. Homo homini homo (a man is a man to another man) is Carl Schmitt’s intermediate solution to, on the one hand, Rousseau’s homo homini deus (the anthropology of liberalism) and Hobbes’ homo homini lupus (the anthropology of authoritarianism) on the other. He takes Metz’s theological critique as a springboard for reinstating his own political philosophy. It is in fact quite intriguing that a liberal Catholic theologian like Ernst Feil is dismissed in Political Theology II while Johann Baptist Metz and his new political theology, which was no less ‘liberal’ than Feil’s, receives such a positive reception. Either Schmitt recognises the conservative side of Metz and his project of a new political theology or he sees the possibility that his own political theology can be rehabilitated or whitewashed in and through Metz.

Editors’ Introduction 19

Perhaps both of these assumptions are true; for a rehabilitation of Schmitt takes place in other circles around the same time – most importantly, in an intellectual discussion among Jewish thinkers. In his posthumously published treatise, The Political Theology of Paul,36 the rabbi Jacob Taubes tells the story of how he contacted Schmitt. He downplays Schmitt’s Nazi ambitions by calling them ‘a flirt with the Nazi party’ and by comparing him with Heidegger. Schmitt and Taubes met after the publication of Political Theology II, to discuss the right interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is quite remarkable because Schmitt, in an attempt to save his reputation among the pioneers of Nazi ideology, has organised a conference in 1936 at which the nature of German jurisprudence was to be cleansed of any Jewish influences.37 Taubes was never tired of emphasising his relationship with Schmitt during the late 1960s, when he was a professor at the Free University of Berlin. He gives an account, documented in his book Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung [Ad Carl Schmitt: Countervailing Forces],38 of an invitation to the university that he extended to Alexandre Kojève in 1967. Kojève was the doyen of an interpretation of Hegel that was embraced by the New Left in France following his lectures in the 1930s. Taubes’ invitation to Kojève was a clever move politically, insofar as he was introducing a reactionary interpretation of Hegel to the post-1968 left-wing debate in Germany. But Kojève surprised everyone by stating that the only person in Germany worth speaking to was Carl Schmitt. This was clearly a very delicate situation: the rabbi, Jacob Taubes, was asked to explain why he had invited someone who was associated with Schmitt. We are not concerned with a full exploration of the political circumstances surrounding this event. We only wish to point out that it is in this context

20

Editors’ Introduction

that Taubes used a letter written to Carl Schmitt by Walter Benjamin in his defence. In this letter, composed in 1930, Benjamin thanks Schmitt for his work and insights into the nature of sovereignty, from which his book on the Trauerspiel benefited. For Schmitt, this must have been not only a personal rehabilitation, but a reaffirmation of what he had written in Political Theology from 1922. The left-wing interest in Schmitt was not restricted simply to Kojève. In his book Right and Left, after a conference in Turin in 1994 on the question What is Left?, the Italian political theorist Norberto Bobbio (whose exchange of letters with Carl Schmitt is documented) rightly states that Schmitt’s ideas were first discovered by left-wing theorists during the crisis of the Left after 1989.39 The reception of Schmitt by the Left is manifold and ranges from figures like Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek up to the contemporary interest in political theology.40 In fact, in an interview with the leading German Maoist of that time (1969), J. Schickel, Schmitt recognises the power of socialist ideology and the fact that the Left and the Right were two sides of the same coin.41 According to Bobbio, the political thinker who is ‘the prototype for this conflation [between Left and Right] is Georges Sorel. The author of Reflections on Violence.’42 At the heart of Sorel’s political thinking lies an evaluation of the power of myth. Schmitt, Mythology and Georges Sorel With the Christological turn in Schmitt’s ‘Postscript’, with his elucidation of the ‘structural problem with Gnostic dualism’ and with his examination of what he terms a ‘stasiological’ interpretation of the Trinity, we are reminded of a central theme

Editors’ Introduction 21

throughout PoliticalTheology II.This theme is announced in the repetition of the word ‘legend’ throughout the text. The subtitle of the volume is the ‘The Myth [Legende] of the Closure of any Political Theology’, and each of the three sections composing the book in the German original include the word ‘legend’ in their headings. Schmitt, the ironist who had intended to read philology when he first went to the University of Berlin, writes: ‘No one should want to disturb such a beautiful legend and it is, in fact, impossible to destroy it’ (see Guideline, p. 31); for, contrary to the ‘etymological meaning of the word legend (from legere to read) – the legend is not read anymore, only cited’.43 This is an interesting and significant understanding of legend insofar as legend (a) has an aesthetic value (it is beautiful) and (b) cannot be destroyed. This understanding of legend comes from, and relates to, another word that reverberates throughout Schmitt’s entire corpus – the word ‘myth’. Myth, legend and a third word from this semantic field, symbol, are all political and theological concepts. Politically, there is something subversive about such mythopoietic thinking, and Schmitt’s analysis of the sociology of juridical concepts demonstrates that he was more than aware of this. Mythopoietic thinking raises issues which can be neither easily debated nor easily interpreted. It appeals to an arcane metaphysics. ‘To great politics belongs the “arcanum”, Schmitt wrote.44 Mythopoiesis is then suited to the development of political theology. In Germany the person in the early twentieth century who did most to reinstate the philosophy of myth, legend and symbol was Ernst Cassirer. He made mythopoiesis the foundation for his neo-Kantian anthropology. Schmitt in his student days at Berlin and Strassburg was profoundly interested in Catholicism and philosophy and moved in

22

Editors’ Introduction

neo-Kantian circles which were antagonistic to the positivism espoused by Kelsen. Cassirer’s two most important works on the nature of myth and symbol, Begriffsform im mythischen Denken [The Conceptual Form of Mythical Thinking] and Philosophie der symbolischen Formen [Philosophy of Symbolic Forms], were published in 1922 and 1923 respectively. And it was exactly at this time that Schmitt himself began to show an interest in the political power of myth. That Schmitt was acquainted with Cassirer’s early work is evident from a reference to him in Schmitt’s 1919 volume, Politische Romantik [Political Romanticism], although it was only after the Second World War and the collapse of the Third Reich that Cassirer published on the politics of mythmaking in his groundbreaking study from 1946, The Myth of the State [Der Mythos des Staates]. But what we do have throughout Schmitt’s work are references to a remarkable manifesto by the French political thinker Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la violence [Reflections on Violence], first published in 1908. In that book Sorel famously outlines his ‘theory of myth’, and we find here a significant source for Schmitt’s political understanding of myth, legend and symbol. Examining this source opens up a very fruitful way of understanding the different levels of authorial intention in Political Theology II. Schmitt came closest to writing an essay on the political work of Georges Sorel in an article published in 1923, entitled ‘Die politische Theorie des Mythos’ [‘The Political Theory of Myth’] and reprinted later in his collection Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailles, 1923–1939 [Standpoints and Ideas during the Struggle with Weimar – Geneva – Versailles, 1923-1936].45 At the time he was concerned with two subjects – both of

Editors’ Introduction 23

which were of considerable interest to Sorel – and he published them as separate studies later, during his early years as a lecturer at the University of Bonn. The first subject was Catholic political thought and was published as Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form [Roman Catholicism and Political Form]. The second was the difficulties of parliamentarism, which was published as Die Geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus [The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy]. Sorel appears in both books. In the former, Schmitt describes him as ‘an original and prolific thinker’46 and in the latter Sorel enables Schmitt to examine something of the crisis of Weimar liberal parliamentarism. In both books, it is Sorel’s theory of myth that is central: ‘The great psychological and historical significance of the theories of myth cannot be denied’, Schmitt writes.47 The essay is evidently a spin-off from the second book. In it, Schmitt recognises the political danger of mythical thinking; the anarchist possibilities of its power over people; and its radical challenge to the rational politics of liberal parliamentarism. His essay ends with a significant reference to Mussolini’s appeal to myth in his speech in Naples on October 1922; only for Mussolini ‘[o]ur myth is the nation, the great nation’.48 Schmitt observes that Sorel’s socialism here is an inferior myth. Schmitt also recognises the relationship between such mythical thinking and political theology, not simply because Sorel continually uses the Roman Catholic construal of the church militant as an example of his theory of myth, but also because in this book myth is metaphysically indissociable from pluralism, and so Schmitt concludes that ‘political theology is polytheistic as every myth is polytheistic’.49 It is important to understand how Sorel viewed myth and how Schmitt began to see that, although ‘[t]he conceptual

24

Editors’ Introduction

(ideelle) danger of this irrationality is great’,50 it could be extremely practical politically, when Mussolini’s experiment was being repeated by Hitler. Sorel’s Theory of Myth and Schmitt’s Conversion For Sorel, myth was a historical force, whose power lay partly in the nature of human weakness. It is able to move the masses deeply if it is believed. ‘As long as there are no myths accepted by the masses, one may go on talking of revolts indefinitely without ever provoking any revolutionary movement’, he wrote.51 Myth is, then, an expression leading to action. It cannot be separated from violent practices, for it commits believers to such practices. It commits them to ‘combat that will destroy the existing state of things’.52 While a utopian element pertains to myths, they have a life of their own and survive while belief in them remains. As such, ‘[a] myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical to the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement’.53 It is this will to act that distinguishes the power of myth from the intellectual, bourgeois constructions of utopias. Parliamentarism and political liberalism, for Sorel, were ‘the best examples of a utopia that could be given’.54 Furthermore, myths are aesthetic, for the power of their ideology lies in the ‘idolatry of words’,55 in the appeal they make, through images, to the imagination; to an imagined glory, an imagined heroism or martyrdom. Sorel used ‘myth’ and ‘legend’ as synonyms. We can see from this brief account how Schmitt’s description, in Political Theology II, of the legend of the closure of political theology as both beautiful and indestructible follows closely Sorel’s theory. One could even argue that Schmitt’s

Editors’ Introduction 25

continual appeal to the need for executive action by the Reichspräsident in the Weimar Republic could be interpreted as an appeal to the myth of dictatorship: the heroic, selfless, neutral leader, who will guard the constitution at any cost. For if a myth such as that governing the liberal notion of the state could not be refuted, then it could only be challenged and countered by belief in another myth. The National Socialists and the Communists were in fact both producing alternative myths of their own. Finally, the Nazi myth of the Volk as a distinct racial community prevailed, and Sorel’s thinking on the relationship between myth and violence was borne out – as also was his observation on the ‘cowardice of the [liberal] government’.56 When Schmitt returned to Sorel’s work in 1938, he no longer played an important role in the development of Nazi politics. In fact, leading figures in the party were highly suspicious of his Weimar past. Joseph Bendersky observes: ‘Still fearing for his safety, Schmitt would never criticize the Nazis directly. He would instead cautiously cloak his dissatisfaction in erudite pieces of scholarship on Thomas Hobbes and the nature of the Leviathan.’57 Sorel now emerges as a political theorist in the same tradition as Hobbes, Machiavelli, Vico and Nietzsche58 – as a constructor of ‘politico-mythical’ images of totality. What Schmitt takes scholarly pains to examine is the way Hobbes’ notion of the total state was not totalitarian (despite certain interpretations of it by contemporary Nazi thinkers). It could not be, because the body of the state, for Hobbes, was a mechanical one, not a natural one, and ‘mechanism is incapable of any totality’.59 What is significant here is a conversion: Schmitt’s recognition that, when a myth cannot be refuted, rational explanations about metaphysical assumptions and political consequences

26

Editors’ Introduction

provide no answer to the situation. The dangers of the mythical, then, are less significant than its potential to change an ‘ethos of belief ’60 by rereading and reinterpreting the myth.61 In the concluding paragraph of his Leviathan, Schmitt makes an interesting association, significant for Political Theology II. He is concluding his thoughts on the notion of the total state and Hobbes, when he writes: The process of identifying other philosophical systems that render the idea of totality possible will not be undertaken here; for that reason I am also leaving aside a view expressed by Erik Peterson in which he asserted that the ‘total’ concepts of modern times are not at all meant as concepts but as myths. Totalization thus means mythization. Accordingly the philosophy of Schelling or of Georges Sorel would become associated with such conceptions of totality.62

The association is interesting because a debate with Peterson with respect to the total state was already prefigured. Schmitt does not footnote where Peterson has made his assertion, but it is evident that this debate would foreground the mythopoietic. It is this debate that ensues in Political Theology II. Why is this employment of myths so significant for interpreting what Schmitt is doing with respect to the legend of the closure of political theology in Political Theology II? Briefly, the main body of the text concerns a confrontation between Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo, developed from the reading of Eusebius by Erik Peterson that we mentioned earlier. Schmitt and Peterson are paralleled in the figures of Eusebius and Augustine, and the confrontation takes on subtle overtones concerning the historical

Editors’ Introduction 27

and political situation in which Peterson attacked Schmitt. The legend of the closure of political theology cannot be refuted, but it can be challenged by an alternative myth – that political theology is written into Christianity because of the Incarnation. In fact, Schmitt contests Peterson’s claim through offering the very item Peterson declares impossible: a Christian political theology. Attention to the mythopoietic in Schmitt enables us then to read the confrontation expounded in Political Theology II on several levels: as a theological challenge to Peterson’s legend; as an historical correction of a certain form of political theology, caesaropapism, by Eusebius; as a critical reading of some of Peterson’s work; but also as a cryptic apologia for Schmitt’s own thinking through the Weimar crises and the early years of the Nazi regime. The various levels of authorial intention in this text necessarily invoke what we alluded to in the opening of this introduction: Hobbes’ questions Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur? and the historical, sociological, juridical, political but also hermeneutical issues they raise. It is fitting, then, that Political Theology II ends with a reference to this theme, by adding: ‘Who answers the question in concreto, on behalf of the concrete, autonomously acting human being: what is spiritual, what is worldly and what is the case with the res mixtae. . .?’ The book then concludes on a note of healthy scepticism. Notes on the Translation For the translation of Political Theology II we decided to minimise the quotation of the original terms in German. Titles of books which have not been translated or names of journals

28

Editors’ Introduction

are given in German and are translated into English whenever it seemed to be necessary. Our preference was for not disturbing the flow of reading while also not ignoring or simplifying the many allusions, secret hints and word-plays that Carl Schmitt makes. We had long and often agonising discussions about the most faithful translation of words. Given the length of Political Theology II, a glossary was deemed by us to be inappropriate. Nevertheless there are some concepts which are central to this text and their translation should be mentioned. ‘Political theology’ itself can be viewed as either a common noun and an adjective (a theology which is political) or the proper name of an intellectual project (with capitalised initials). Unfortunately Schmitt is not consistent here. Where we have thought he was intending the latter, we have translated the phrase as ‘Political Theology’. Arguably the two most ambiguous words in the text appear together in the subtitle, Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theologie, which we have translated as ‘The Myth [Legend] of the Closure of any Political Theology’. Erledigung, in this context, means both the elimination of a person and the bringing to an end of a discussion by a conclusive argument. Schmitt clearly intended to express both. For him the Erledigung announced was both a personal attack and an academic matter.63 With the decision to translate Erledigung as ‘closure’ we want to emphasise that neither political theology as such nor the person of Carl Schmitt as an academic has become irrelevant. The book seeks to re-open the case and argues that ‘political theology’ cannot be shelved. Closely related to Erledigung is Schmitt’s use of Legende, which we have translated as ‘myth’, in the sense of an uncritical or unwarranted academic certainty about the impossibil-

Editors’ Introduction 29

ity of any political theology. We use ‘legendary’ (legendär) whenever Schmitt states that the myth has become generally accepted and prominent. The distinction between Gesetz and Recht in German is much stronger than the difference in English between ‘law’ and ‘right’. In fact, what we have translated as ‘law’ combines the Latin lex with, to some extent, the Latin ius, and also the Greek νόµος. The importance of the nuanced use of ‘law’ is evident in a passage where Schmitt criticises the misleading German translation of nomos as ‘norm’ (p. 56). There are similar difficulties in translating wissenschaftlich as ‘academic’ or ‘scientific’, or protestantisch as ‘evangelical’. In this translation, we have chosen to translate all these terms with respect to their contexts. So that whenever the German reads Erledigung we have translated it as ‘closure’, ‘bringing to an end’, resolved or ‘impossibility’. The same is true for wissenschaftlich, translated as ‘academic’, ‘erudite’, ‘scholarly’ or ‘learned’ – because, once again, there is no sharp distinction between science and humanities (Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft) in German. Schmitt’s syntax is frequently highly complex, and in the interests of making good sense in English we have taken the liberty to change it whenever necessary. Furthermore, in the footnotes, all editorial comments upon the text, for instance explanations, full references and the like, are in square brackets. All translations are ours, except the quotation taken from Max Weber on p. 109 and the translations from Latin on p. 130 and in Postcript, notes 2 and 3. M. H. and G. W.

Guideline for the Reader

The title Political Theology II refers to my book Political Theology, published by the same publisher in 1922 (second edition, 1934). In the present study I am going to examine a short theological treatise from 1935 which has in the meantime become an academic myth. The myth informs us that this short treatise from 1935 demonstrated that all political theology is completely over. The conclusion of the treatise claims something similar. No one should want to disturb such a beautiful myth and it is, in fact, impossible to destroy it. My examination, therefore, will concentrate on the internal relation between the argument and the conclusion of this treatise. The complete theological oeuvre of its author, Professor Erik Peterson, and in particular the elaboration of his theology from 1922 to 1960, is not the subject of my specific analysis. If I dedicate such a defined and specific analysis of a treatise from the year 1935 to a great theologian, ecclesiologist, canon lawyer and historian of law like Hans Barion, for his seventieth birthday (on 16 December 1969), then I wish to prevent any obvious misunderstandings from the very beginning. Barion’s academic oeuvre is much too large and

32

Guideline for the Reader

wide-ranging to be possibly honoured by the dedication of such a short essay. Barion is a jurist in the same league as Rudolph Sohm, one of the great encyclopaedic researchers and teachers of jurisprudence. And I have to ask myself whether or not, by my opusculum, I create the impression of making an inadequate gesture, such that it might be better to omit the personal dedication. I have many objective and personal reasons for showing Hans Barion respect and for thanking him, not only for his scholarly publications, which are exemplary, insightful and very fruitful for me, but also for his keen interest in my efforts in legal studies. He has critically engaged with my ideas in three extended essays published in 1959, 1965 and 1968.1 The last of these examinations can be found in his fifth study on the Second Vatican Council and was published in the Festschrift Epirrhosis, for my eightieth birthday in 1968.2 In it he analyses the problem of political theology. Barion also speaks about Peterson’s treatise. He states that a discussion of it is necessary, and he calls it a ‘Parthian attack’. This phrase impressed me and provoked me to recall an old challenge and to rip the Parthian arrow from the wound. This is how my specific analysis arose, which is just a preliminary work for others and is little more than a report on a cathartic operation which I now submit as an expression of a companionship over forty years long, rich in theoretical, practical and personal experience. This companionship united a legal theorist with a canon lawyer in the spirit of their ius utrumque [twofold law]. The thematic development of my political theology from 1922 takes a general direction which departs from the ius reformandi [right of reformation] of the sixteenth century, culminates in Hegel and is evident

Guideline for the Reader

33

everywhere today, from political theology to political Christology. December 1969 Carl Schmitt

Introduction

For atheists, anarchists and positivist scientists, any political theology – like any political metaphysics – was scientifically brought to an end because, for them, any theology and metaphysics were brought to an end as sciences long ago. They use the phrase only polemically and derogatively [Schlag- und Schimpfwort], to express a total and categorical negation. But the joy of negating is a creative joy; it has the ability to produce from nothingness that which was negated, and therefore to create it dialectically. When a god creates a world from nothing, he then transforms nothingness into something utterly astonishing, namely something out of which a world can be created. Today, we don’t even need a god for this any longer. Self-expression, self-affirmation and self-empowerment – one of the many phrases prefixed by ‘self ’, a so-called auto-composition – are enough to allow a new and unforeseen world to emerge. These new worlds produce themselves and, moreover, they produce the conditions for their own possibility – at least those artificial laboratory conditions. The closure of any political theology that is at stake in this examination does not want to be associated with such atheistic, anarchistic or positivistic closures. The author of this

Introduction 35

polemical negation of political theology, Erik Peterson, is not a positivist like Auguste Comte, not an anarchist like Proudhon or Mikhail Bakunin, and not a scientist in the modern style. He is in fact a Christian theologian of great piety. He begins his closure with a dedication, Sancto Augustino and a prayer to the great church father as a preliminary remark. His closure is a theological closure: a closure of any political theology. This cannot be the last word for any atheist or any non-theological observer. It might be interesting for them only as a case of intra-theological self-critique and self-destruction, an unintended annulment of any belief in God being politically relevant, or of any socially relevant theology at all. Such a case is noted either with satisfaction or dismay. We are talking about a short, historico-philological treatise, which Erik Peterson published in 1935 with Jakob Hegner in Leipzig. Its title is Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanun [Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire]. The title and the subtitle indicate that the treatise is thematically restricted to monotheism and monarchy, and its historical sources are taken from the first centuries of early Christianity. Furthermore, the erudite notes which constitute more than half of the content of the treatise deal only with this period of history. On the last pages (99–100), the closure of any political theology is declared decisively as the conclusion. This conclusion is followed by a final comment in the last page of the notes ( p. 158, n. 168). In it a brief reference is made to a treatise by Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie [Political Theology], Munich 1922, which introduced the phrase ‘political theology’ to literature. Then Peterson

36

Introduction

literally declares: ‘We have attempted to demonstrate with a concrete example the theological impossibility of a “political theology”.’ This is the last word of the treatise: the great theological closure. We will have to prove to what extent this conclusion (and this final comment to which it is linked) is related to the preceding evidence and whether it can be drawn as a valid conclusion.

1 The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

1 The Content of the Myth Peterson’s conclusion (with its final comment attached) is still cited today as if a res iudicata has been ultimately created, with legal force. It is sufficient to refer to it to make any further discussion superfluous and to make unnecessary not only the study of my book Political Theology from 1922, but also a more detailed examination of Peterson’s treatise from 1935. Such generalising dismissals are frequent and hard to avoid in discussions within the fragmented scientific community, with its divisions of labour. They ease and lighten academic research in a way that is difficult to resist. With such a multifaceted, complex and over-talked-about topic as political theology, such dismissals are almost inescapable. Nevertheless, a critical re-examination is needed from time to time for the sake of academic accuracy. For the global and negative conclusion that political theology is impossible, contemporary theologians and anti-theologians, Christians and anti-Christians can be quoted. With respect to the possibility of such a negative consensus, it is time to confront the formation of such myths. Scholarly works, too, can become

38

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

legends quickly, whenever they haul out and solemnly declare a commonly accepted conclusion as the result of their erudite research. Erudite treatises, which are transmuted into academic legends in this way, are only used and – contrary to the etymological meaning of the word Legende – not read any more, only cited. That is the case here. Our investigation concerns questions in the history of ideas. If, in the year 1935, a treatise about the formula ‘one God – one monarch’ was published in Germany, then it automatically entered the sphere of being dangerously relevant to the current situation, more so when the monarch is occasionally (p. 52) also called Führer. This was seen then as contemporary criticism and protest; as a well-disguised and intelligently masked allusion to the cult of the Führer, the one-party system and totalitarianism. The book’s motto contributed to that; it was a sentence by St Augustine – ‘Pride too has a certain desire for unity and omnipotence, but in the realm of temporal things, where all things are transient like a shadow’1 – who warns against the false striving for unity which originates in the worldly lust for power. This explains the vivid reception and acceptance of the treatise when it was first published. The Catholic journal Gral praised it as ‘a small, friendly book which provides, in barely a hundred pages, new insights into the greatest questions that determined human society and nations’. The book, the Gral continues, ‘delivers the death-blow to political theology without any polemic’. In the Schweizer Annalen it was noticed that ‘here the end of all political theology is accomplished. The buried meaning of this analysis is exposed here in a surprising way.’2 There is, as far as I know, no historical or biographical monograph on Erik Peterson’s life and work, although this

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

39

would be an informative subject, especially with respect to political theology and theological politics. During the years of his public career, 1925–60, his conversion to Catholicism marked an absolute turning point, which cannot simply be pinpointed to a calendar date in 1930. Peterson began as an academic theologian in the tradition of the Göttinger Schule during the First World War, 1914–18, and was caught up in the intense crisis which occurred in German Protestant theology following the outcome of the First World War. The voluminous literature on this crisis between 1918 and 1933 has been well researched and painstakingly analysed in a dissertation by Robert Hepp from the University of Erlangen in 1967. He raised the right research question: Politische Theologie und Theologische Politik [Political Theology and Theological Politics].3 Throughout the Middle Ages and the Reformation, the co-operation and mutual recognition between the two kingdoms and domains found in Augustine’s teachings safeguarded the division between civitas Dei and civitas terrena – religion and politics, this world and the hereafter – thereby making it concrete for German Protestantism in 1918, these institutional safeguards vanished, initiating crisis; whereas the Catholic church remained, it appeared, absolutely unaffected by this crisis during the entire Weimar period (1919–33). It held on unperturbed to its traditional teachings concerning the two societates perfectae – the church and the state. The old Lutheran as well as the modern liberal separation between the spiritual and the temporal, religion and politics, was abrogated through the shattering of the two decisive domains, church and state – because the separation between state and church is an issue concerning the responsibility of legally institutionalised subjects and not an issue

40

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

concerning an objectively verifiable distinction between domains. In fact, as Robert Hepp says (p. 148), there was no state any more which was ‘purely political’ and no theology which was ‘purely theological’. The domain of society and the social impacted on both and dissolved their distinction. In this way a situation arose for German Protestantism in which Protestant theologians realised the crises of religion, church, culture and state, and, finally, saw that critique is the essence of Protestantism. This was an insight of Bruno Bauer which, since 1848, had been overshadowed by Marxism. In a ‘political manifesto’ from 1932 entitled Krisis, the constitutional theorist, Rudolf Smend, spoke as a matter of course of the connection between the political and the religious crisis. Robert Hepp writes (pp. 161 and 162): Without the walls of the dogma the spiritual could no longer be clearly separated from the temporal . . . The same theologians who already demanded the separation of the state and the church at the time of the monarchy, although being priests [Abbés] engaged with the world, provided the service of a hairdresser for the Emperor’s theological periwig – exactly as Eusebius of Caesarea once did for Constantine the Great; these same theologians had become theologians of the royal court of democracy.

It is the theologian of Constantine’s royal court, the Christian bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who has been illustriously placed at the pinnacle of false political theology. In what follows we will encounter him frequently. The moral or theological portrayal of him as a ‘hairdresser for the Emperor’s theological periwig’ was formulated in 1919 by the theologian Overbeck from Basel. It was intended to be an excoriation of the famous Berlin professor Adolf Harnack,

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

41

accusing him of being a theologian of the royal court of Wilhelminian Prussia. Of course, this should have been a ‘purely’ moral and ‘purely’ theological criticism, not commingled with anything political, since such commingling would have been ‘impure’ eo ipso. Peterson published his exchange of letters with Harnack from the year 1928 with an epilogue (Hochland, November 1932 [= E. Peterson, Theologische Traktate (München: Kösel-Verlag, 1951)], pp. 295–321). In 1932 he writes, in note 19 of this publication: ‘From this perspective one can say that only to a certain extent did the confessional controversy in Germany have any real impact in the field of political theology.’ In his treatise of 1935, Peterson was silent about this ‘impact to a certain extent’, although it had been an urgent issue for all Christian confessions because of Hitler. In his years at Bonn, between 1924 and 1930, in the ripening of his determination to convert, Peterson also wrote a paper important for the present context, Was ist Theologie? [What is Theology?’] (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1925). In it Peterson proclaimed – at that time he was still an Ordinarius in the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Bonn – that theology is only possible as a theology of absolute dogma. Theology is the continuation of the incarnate logos and is only possible between the time of the Ascension and the return of Christ; everything else is literature, fiction and theological journalism: Only because of dogma is theology separated from its association with that most dubious of all academic disciplines, the socalled Humanities. It is liberated from the contexts of the history of civilisations, the history of literature, art history, philosophy of life, or whatever they might be called.

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The Christian theologian has a particular ecclesiastical status; he is neither prophet nor novelist. ‘Neither the Jews nor the pagans have a theology; theology exists only in Christendom and only on the precondition that the incarnated word spoke of God. The Jews may do exegesis and the pagans mythology and metaphysics; but theology, in its proper sense, only began when the incarnate one spoke of God.’ Not even the Apostles and martyrs are theologians. For Apostles proclaim the word and martyrs testify to it. In contradistinction to that, theology is the continuation of the revealed logos in the form of concrete discussion. There is only theology in the time between Christ’s first and second coming. From such a viewpoint, any idea of a Christian ‘political theology’ seems to become meaningless, if not blasphemous. My own book Political Theology, from 1922, was known to Peterson through many conversations.4 The book does not deal with theological dogma, but with problems in epistemology and in the history of ideas: the structural identity of theological and juridical concepts, modes of argumentation and insights. We will refer to this in Chapter 3. However, with his theses about the nature of Christian theology, Peterson appeared to have bypassed the uncertainties related to the crisis of German Protestantism at that time; he made himself secure through a dogmatic theology. But, given the changing friend–enemy constellations throughout history, theology can become a political tool of the revolution as well as of the counter-revolution. This is a natural part of the ongoing change within political–polemical tensions and of the formation of battle-lines; it is just a question of intensity. Erik Peterson himself knew this best. He went so far as to respond like this to a complaint about the contemporary loss of interest in theological controversies:

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One must have the courage to live once more in the sphere in which dogma is an issue, and then one can be assured that people will be interested in theology again. They will be interested in the same way women hawkers in the market at Constantinople were interested in the controversy over homoiousios and homoousios.

This sounds more like revolution and is definitely not a depoliticisation of theology, although Peterson seems not to have noticed that these political–theological demonstrations were in fact revolutions of the monks. A bishop of the Christian church like Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who loved peace and order, was sympathetic neither to these demonstrators nor to the protesting ‘women hawkers’ of Constantinople and other oriental cities, who lacked specific theological charisma. We are concerned here, as we said, with Peterson’s 1935 treatise on ‘political monotheism’. This treatise was written in the context of the new crisis which, predictably, followed Hitler’s coming to power in 1933, and as a consequence of the totalitarian ambitions of his National Socialist regime. The new crisis impacted upon all Christian confessions, Protestants and Catholics, but in different ways, because the Catholic church had signed a Reichskonkordat with Hitler in 1933. The treatise from 1935 does not deal with the crisis explicitly and ex professo, but in a way, one might say, that is disguised in terms of a very erudite historico-theologicophilological focus on the early centuries of the Roman Empire. As far as the problem of political theology is concerned, it is decisive that Peterson maintains the Augustinian teaching of the two kingdoms, the two distinct ‘cities’ (the city of God and the earthly city). Their institutionalisation occurred during the

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Christian Middle Ages and Reformation. Peterson ignores the crisis of the modern problematic of church/state/society. Neither of these kingdoms is any longer distinguishable, either in matter or content. The spiritual–temporal, this world and the hereafter, transcendence–immanence, idea and interests, superstructure and substructure – can only be determined according to the struggle between the subjects. Totality is potentially attainable from every standpoint or disputed matter after the traditional ‘walls’ (that is, the historical legacy of the institutions of the [various] churches and states) have been successfully challenged by a revolutionary class. Up to the First World War (1914–18), the restored structure of these institutionalised dichotomies, legitimated by the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), seemed to be valid. One could hold on to the fiction of a ‘purer’, ‘cleaner’ separation between religion and politics, even in the liberalism of the nineteenth century. Religion was either an issue for the church or, simply, a private concern. But politics was an issue for the state. Both remained distinguishable, despite ceaseless disputes about their responsibilities, as long as the organisations and institutions were visibly distinctive, immanent organisations and institutions and were able to appear and act effectively in the political public sphere. For, as long as this was the case, one could define religion as being related to the church and politics as being related to the state. The time of change came when the state lost its monopoly on the political and other political agents, who were literally fighting each other, claimed this monopoly for themselves. The traditional categories imploded when a revolutionary class, and particularly the industrial proletariat, became the new effective subject of the political. I have examined this development in my book Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Soveränitäts gedankens bis zum

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proletarischen Klassenkampf [Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Proletarian Class Struggle] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1921). The result was formulated in a strictly systematic form only in 1927, in my book The Concept of the Political. This treatise – originally published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik (August 1927) – begins therefore with the statement: ‘The concept of the political is the precondition for the concept of the state.’ Subsequently, the systematic enquiry of this treatise developed into a book on the theory of the constitution [Verfassungslehre] (1928), not on the theory of the state [Staatslehre]. In other words: today one can no longer define the political from the state; what we take to be the state today must, on the contrary, be defined and understood from the political. But the criterion for the political today can no longer be a new substance, or a new ‘subject matter’, or a new problematic in its own right. The only scientifically arguable criterion today is the degree of intensity of an association and dissociation; that is, the distinction between friend and enemy. I beg the reader’s pardon. I have counted on your patience to follow such a swift overview of the transition from church and state to the political. In the light of the confusion in the current discussion, there is hardly any other possibility of communicating and gaining a degree of reflection which makes a fruitful discussion possible. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde has summarised the current status of the problem in an essay, ‘Politisches Mandat der Kirche?’ [‘A Political Mandate for the Church?’] (Stimmen der Zeit, 148, December, 1969, pp. 361–72): The contemporary political left and the theology which sympathises with it discovered something of what Carl Schmitt

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already foresaw and formulated forty years ago. Namely, that the political has no discrete object. Moreover, it designates a certain degree of intensity of association or dissociation, which draws its material from all subjects, whatever the given situation and conditions of a society may be. Therefore one cannot circumvent the political by retreating to a neutral position, to some pre-political natural law or to the pure proclamation of the Christian gospel. Even those positions become politically relevant whenever they enter the matrix of the political. This is unquestionably right, empirically and analytically. And one might ask oneself why neither the common public nor the public voice of the church came to this conclusion.

Böckenförde’s essay is dedicated to ‘Professor Hans Barion on his seventieth birthday’. We have now to consider Barion’s account of the problem of political theology. 2 Hans Barion’s Critique of Political Theology With reference to what precedes our discussion, we concentrate on examining Barion’s critique from 1968 of the overprogressive theory of the state made by the Second Vatican Council. In the fifth of his studies on the council, he analyses in particular §74 of the Pastoral Constitution, ‘On the Church in the Modern World’. The canon lawyer raises two questions: Is the council’s over-progressive theory of the state a political theology? And is it a theology at all? Barion’s answer is: It is a ‘political theology’ because it prescribes a certain political model in its official teaching: but therefore it cannot be theologically legitimated, and hence it cannot be a theology, because

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revelation does not present such models. Even the recognition of the Roman state in the first century was just a factual recognition, like every other model possible within the framework of the Ten Commandments. (p. 51)

Barion bases his distinction between theology and politics on the separation of the two kingdoms in the teachings of St Augustine (p. 17). Peterson too, when he brings political theology to an end, refers to the teaching of St Augustine. It seems that both theologians agree on this. But whether Peterson would have agreed to Barion’s critique of the council’s ‘over-progressive’ theses is indeed another question, which lies outside the scope of our discussion. Barion’s study contains not only a critique of the overprogressive social teaching of the Second Vatican Council, but also a crystal-clear analysis of my essay from 1923, ‘Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form’ [‘Roman Catholicism and Political Form’], which is of course anything but an official church statement.5 Barion, the scholarly ecclesiologist and canon lawyer, calls my essay an Elogium [praise], and he might be right. The essay certainly has a rhetorical bent. We will see later on how Peterson characterises his negative model of a political theology – with Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the eulogist of Constantine the Great, treated as a rhetor and the bishop’s eulogy treated as an encomium [ancient Greek hymn of praise] – distinguishing it from theology. To be named alongside Eusebius is an undeserved honour for me – although I would not deny the compliment, which implies a validation [of my position], even if only from a non-theological perspective. This is even more so as Barion, in contrast with Peterson, does not neglect the historical, thematic and systematic associations of my

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essay with my other work in legal theory between the years 1919–27; in fact he emphasises them.6 Barion states that this eulogy for the Roman Catholic church, published in 1923, is a clear and decisive statement in the public sphere [weltgeschichtlichen Öffentlichkeit].7 It could have been written even in 1958, the year of Pius XII’ s death; but its truth received a death blow when Pope John XXIII introduced his ‘Aggiornamento’. The Second Vatican Council has taken away the basis for the eulogy (p. 19). Consequently, Barion puts a question mark after ‘political form of power’ in the title of his essay. The time for Roman ecclesiastical triumphalism is over, and the glorious pomp of a form of power that impacted on the history of the world, which I was talking about in my essay, has become ‘only the glorious pomp of a dysfunction in the history of the world’ (p. 51). These are the words of a theologian and an expert, especially in ecclesiology and canon law. His conclusion seems to be in accordance with Peterson, the theologian and expert in exegesis. Both refer to St Augustine’s teaching on the two kingdoms; both reject the tradition which appeals to the continuity between the church and the Roman Empire, and call this ‘political theology but not theology’. The canon lawyer elaborates this in a few lines which are a masterly synoptic overview of one thousand and five hundred years of the negation of the possibility of any Christian political theology (p. 17). This synoptic journey starts from ‘the teaching of the two kingdoms in the New Testament which is most clearly expressed in early Christianity by Augustine and culminates in Luther’. Through the Enlightenment, and particularly through Auguste Comte’s three-stage law promoting a detheologisation – ‘what the over-progressive theology would

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understand as secularisation’ – this negation has come to mark a clear distinction between spiritual and temporal, theology and politics (Epirrhosis, p. 17). Peterson’s confronting of Eusebius, the church historian and eulogist of Constantine the Great, with Augustine, the Latin church father, seems to support this – although it is unlikely that Peterson would have mentioned Luther and Augustine in the same breath. Nevertheless, Barion refers in his study only to my essay ‘Roman Catholicism’, whereas Peterson’s final comment (linked to his conclusion) is directed against a completely different and purely juridical book, namely my Political Theology from 1922. Barion is fully aware of that; none the less he sees that a discussion of Peterson’s treatise is necessary – although at the time (in 1968) he believed that ‘[i]t is a piece seldom referred to today’ (p. 54). In the meantime, it has become evident that the myth is still alive today, and that Barion, with his belief of 1968, was taught a lesson as early as February 1969. 3 The Contemporary Significance of the Myth of Closure (Hans Maier – Ernst Feil – Ernst Topitsch) In the essay ‘Political Theology’ in Stimmen der Zeit (February 1969), the leading expert in political science from Munich, Hans Maier, criticises both ‘the catchphrase “political theology”, which is so popular today’, and the many theories and agendas of contemporary Protestant and Catholic theologians who preach a ‘theology of revolution’. His critical polemic is mainly directed against what the Catholic theologian J. B. Metz explicitly presents as his political theology. In the book Theologie der Welt (1968),8 Metz demands a de-privatised and public proclamation of faith and its actualisation, along with

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an institutionalised social critique by the church – a critique grounded in Christendom’s eschatological reservation. Metz uses the phrase ‘Political Theology’ explicitly for his project. Hans Maier calls this ‘an attempt based on an inappropriate concept’, because the concept of a Christian political theology is intrinsically impossible given its doctrine of the Trinity: ‘The history of political theology in Christendom is simultaneously the history of its continuous destruction’ (p. 76). Maier’s theological authority and academic crownwitness is Erik Peterson. The essay in Stimmen der Zeit of February 1969 ends with a quotation from Peterson’s conclusion. This quotation is prefaced by the statement that Peterson wrote the lines during the early years of the Nazi regime with reference to Carl Schmitt. Following the exact quotation from Peterson’s conclusion, Hans Maier adds: Even today, Peterson’s conclusion needs no further comment – except an emphasis on its continuing relevance: because the new political theology is just a secularised and dialectical version of the old one. In the face of it, it is the legitimate task of Catholics to emphasise the legitimate autonomy and separation of the spiritual from the temporal, of the church from society. This is the distinctive task of the Catholic laity, which has maintained an ability to discern between the spirit of the contemporary religious crisis and the crisis of the church. It is on their behalf that I have spoken here.

On the other hand, the Catholic theologian Ernst Feil, in an essay called ‘Diskussion zur Theologie der Revolution’ [‘Contributions to a Theology of Revolution’], published in a collection which he and Rudolf Weth edited in 1969, defends J. B. Metz’s political theology through an examination of the

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shift from political theology to a theology of the revolution. But he is cautious about any attempt to see the revolution as such, in concreto (the revolution of course means the great French Revolution and its Marxist continuation) as a manifestation of God in history. He warns against any ‘false understanding of the doctrine of the two kingdoms’ and, at the same time, he emphasises that not every rejection of a ‘theology of the revolution’ is a categorical rejection of revolution, though he decisively rejects a political theology of the counterRevolution, of the Restoration and of tradition. He, too, refers to Peterson’s legendary closure of any political theology. It is quite surprising that he mentions, in his historical overview, the name of Thomas Hobbes without alluding to the specific politico-theological nature of the Protestant Reformation and of every confessional revolution and counter-revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He does not even realise the extent to which the ius revolutionis of the French Revolution is a logical de-theologised continuation of the ius reformandi of the Protestant Reformation. In his careful consideration only one thing is certain, namely the dismissal of a political theology of the Counter-Revolution. But he does not recognise that there is a dangerous parallel between the Counter-Reformation and the Counter-Revolution. Moreover, he does not realise, either, that he cannot escape Hobbes’ all-deciding questions: Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur? [Who will decide? Who will interpret?] Ernst Feil too appeals to Peterson’s legendary closure of any political theology. But he limits this to the ‘political theology of the Restoration’. The result is ‘quite simple’: the political theology of the Counter-Revolution (de Maistre, Bonald and Donoso Cortés) was terminologically and thematically a re-establishment of classical pagan political

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theology; ‘it served to maintain political forms that were already broken’. In other words, Vae Victis! [‘Woe to the vanquished!’] Adding to the misfortune, the vanquished looses the possibility of a political theology. ‘Since the (at least in its origin) positive evaluation of the concept political theology by C. Schmitt, it would seem that there has hardly been anyone who agrees with this evaluation.’ Feil’s argument is not about ‘intra-theological’ categories, as for example in the case of the Protestant theologian J. Moltmann, but about the evaluation [Bewertung] of concrete politico-historical events like Revolution and CounterRevolution. The word ‘Bewertung’ is particularly telling. The binary oppositions of revolution and reaction, future and past, the new and the old, become Bewertungen [evaluations], and Augustine’s two kingdoms are transformed into Wertgeltungsbereiche [value-systems] in terms of Wertphilosophie [a philosophy of values]. But then it is no longer surprising if anti-Gallicans, Catholic thinkers like de Maistre, Bonald and Donoso, are seen as Eusebians, caesaropapists or Arians. The convertibility of the value lies in its sense and meaning, its worth and nature. What is new today is old tomorrow. Feil comes alarmingly close to progressive theologians of the nineteenth century like David Friedrich Strauss. For them, at that time, Christendom was the revolutionary new compared with pagan polytheism, and Christian monotheism was progressive compared to such pagan polytheism and pluralism. Julian the Apostate was seen as both a romantic and a reactionary, while the holy Athanasius was seen as a revolutionary. Today the situation is reversed. Today, the traditional Christian church represents the old and the reactionary, and progress as such is the new. D. F. Strauss represents a typical example of a kind of an ideology of the new

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and the modern that we could also characterise as a ‘political theology of the novel’ – which is, to be honest, ‘uncritical’, in contrast to Bruno Bauer’s political theology.9 Feil calls ‘uncritical and revealing’ the relation between the three Roman Catholic and counter-revolutionary thinkers on the one hand and the political and social developments of their time on the other. It was revealing indeed, like every other honest engagement, because the three thinkers were existentially committed to what they advocated and defended. To a certain extent they were uncritical about the authority of the church, which they saw as legitimate and to which they bowed, as Peterson also did, explicitly. By the way, they were very intelligent critics and able sociologists: one could even call them the fathers of modern sociology. Auguste Comte was influenced not only by Saint-Simon but also by de Maistre: an interesting work was published on Bonald which Feil also cites (p. 125, n. 45). Its title is Der Ursprung der Soziologie aus dem Geiste der Restauration [The Birth of Sociology in the Spirit of the Restoration].10 Donoso’s Christian eschatology can only be understood as a rejection of Baron Henri de Saint-Simon’s philosophy of history, with which the young Spaniard was infatuated. A counterrevolutionary like Burke seems merely to be rhetorical and his argument is more of a pleading when compared to the critical sharpness of those three Catholic thinkers. Not even Donoso’s bold rhetorical style changes this judgement. It is already evident today, as E. Feil suggests, that ‘the question of the relation between faith and political action is not just unanswered, but raised anew by the failure of a traditional political theology’. Therefore J. B. Metz is right to ‘reflect repeatedly, critically distancing’ the relation between Christian faith and society ‘on the basis of the eschatological

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orientation of the faith’. The eschatological orientation seeks ‘to formulate the eschatological message in the framework of the conditions of our contemporary society’. What does this actually mean? Our contemporary society is progressive. This unfettered progress entails a value-free and scientific attitude, the commodification of all values and the augmentation of liberal human consumption. Furthermore, our society is made up of a plurality of social groups in which everything becomes plurivalent, and it is finally, as J. B. Metz says, a hominising [humanisierende] society. I think that such a progressive, plurivalent, hominising society permits only that kind of eschatology which is immanent to the system and therefore also progressive and plurivalent. This kind of eschatology can therefore only be a homo-homini-homo eschatology. At most this eschatology is an utopia on the principle of hope, the content of which is an homo absconditus who produces himself and, moreover, produces the conditions for his own possibility. It is particularly interesting for our context that E. Feil, in his response to Hans Maier, also takes up Peterson’s legendary conclusion, even if only to put an end to the antiGallicans as caesaro-papists and to concede to that political theology of the revolution some carefully thought through theological opportunities. However, Feil must have sensed the fundamental weakness in Peterson’s treatise: the pure emphasis on an unreflected catchphrase, ‘divine monarchy’ (rather than ‘political unity’), and the evasive omission from the political side of all other implied problematics of this issue – most especially, the exclusion of democracy. But this does not mean, as Feil wished, that the excluded party [democracy] can be saved. What is proven is just that the incomplete examination of sources by Peterson does not

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support the general conclusion. And therefore his general conclusion becomes an unwarranted cheque, drawn on an account which is empty of resources. Ernst Feil, as a Catholic theologian, wants to limit the closure of political theology by excluding democracy from Peterson’s general verdict. The neo-positivist Ernst Topitsch goes even further and transforms the closure of the monotheistic–monarchic realm into a general comparative cosmology, thereby dissolving any concrete theology. In an essay in the Catholic journal Wort und Wahrheit (1955, issue 1, pp. 19–30), ‘Kosmos und Herrschaft, Ursprünge der politischen Theologie’ [‘Cosmos and Dominion, the Origins of Political Theology’], he says that ‘no lucky star seems to shine on’ the problem which became known through the catchphrase ‘Political Theology’ and everything it implied; Hans Kelsen’s essay ‘Gott und Staat’ [‘God and the State’] in Logos 11, 1923 did not receive much attention, and ‘the more successful treatise by Carl Schmitt is nothing but an intelligent sketch’. In 1955 Topitsch was not yet the established mountebank that he is today. By downplaying my essay from 1922, he aligns himself with Peterson’s view in his concluding footnote, where it is stated that ‘it is a short, non-systematic exploration’. He does this in order to single out this book from the more scholarly books which provide its historical, thematic and systematic context. Topitsch praises Erik Peterson, who has elucidated the relation between the idea of divine monarchy and the dogma of Trinity ‘in an exemplary manner’, and who has ‘clearly distinguished’ the Catholic religion from the Arian ideology of the Empire [Reichsideologie]. None the less, he simultaneously criticises Peterson’s concentration on pagan theology, which remains the ‘backbone’ of political theology and, as such, could be dismissed as pagan and heretical.

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With this critical remark on Peterson’s claim that he had brought to an end any Christian political theology once and for all, Topitsch approaches the heart of our question. In other words, he realises the real weakness of Peterson’s treatise, its feeble structure, the inconsistency between the evidence presented and the conclusion. Furthermore, he rejects the move to a purely theological edification. Instead of this, he neutralises – and that means in this context: de-theologises – the specific concern of a Christian theologian, and indulges himself by focusing on seemingly impressive material about the general relation between cosmos and dominion in the ancient cultures of the Chinese, Indians, Assyrians and Persians. As a result, he circumvents the pressing theologicopolitical question: Although the problem of the Trinity makes impossible, in its own way, a sociological dissolution of the concept of God and hinders its abuse – the legitimation of the caesaro-papistic absolute state [Universalstaat], it is not permissible to infer and validate social norms from it.

This statement is very confused. On the one hand, he seems to agree with Peterson, and, on the other, he is hesitant and completely aware that Peterson’s exemplary presentation of the victory of the doctrine of the Trinity over Arian monotheism was in itself ‘clearly of eminent political significance’ (p. 26). Ultimately, everything is subsumed to normativism, because he suddenly talks about norms rather than nomos, and not about concepts or doctrines by which genuine historical orders are theoretically structured in order to make legitimate decisions, interpret these decisions and be in control of their execution.

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Topitsch has not only observed the intrinsic weakness of Peterson’s conclusion; he also has the merit of having found a plausible classification for the confusing phenomena implicated in this immense problematic. He divided into three categories the complex and reciprocal, vertical and horizontal, connections between political reality and religious ideas and images. The confusion of symbols and allegories, parallels and analogies, metaphors, projections and retrojections from one sphere to another is sociomorphic, biomorphic or technomorphic. But this is not a solution to the problem of the connections themselves, it is rather an initial morphology of metaphors which classifies and catalogues the phenomena at stake within ‘a hall of mirrors’ [Spiegelungen und Rückspiegelungen]. As long as the human being is anthropomorphic, that is, a being modelled on humanity, he understands himself and his social relations in such ‘images’. The ineradicable anthropomorphism of all human thinking can appear as bio-, techno-, or sociomorphism. The king can appear as God, and God as a king. But God can also be imagined as the world’s electric motor, and the electric motor as a kind of machine that moves the world. Finally, human beings also refer to such images for their own self-understanding, and they comprehend themselves through their psychophysiological apparatus scientifically, as if through a kind of space-shuttle. All of this can be expressed in polymorphic metaphors. The huge Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes’ state, is tetramorphic: as well as being the great but mortal god, he is a huge animal and, furthermore, a large man and a big machine. The immensely polymorphous realm of political theology or metaphysics contains naïve projections, numinous fantasies, reflective reductions of the unknown to something that is known, analogies between being and

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appearances, ideological superstructure over substructure. At first glance, the classification into socio-, bio-, or technomorphic simply categorises the material of data and images for the continuing and reciprocal meta-ana-katamorphosis. A biological creature like the human will not mistake himself for a machine or a social group as such. The three classes of images and types, i.e. the biomorphic, technomorphic and sociomorphic, are labels, road signs on scientific highways, which function almost like computer-friendly categories. No theoretical and conceptual effort is needed to distinguish a driver from a car and both from an automobile association. The structural mistake which weakens Peterson’s thesis makes it easy for the positivist to turn a purely theological closure of political theology into a scientific closure of theology itself. From this standpoint, it is a pity that Topitsch does not refer to the scholarly essay ‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’], which Peterson published in 1931 (in Theologische Quartalsschrift). In this essay one can find the entire arsenal for Peterson’s theologico-historical argument, without its making a claim for an absolute and universal conclusion. A theologian like Peterson does not need to wait for the epistemological and methodological questions to be answered definitively in order to make his purely theological statement. One would do him an injustice by turning his – successful or unsuccessful – closure of monotheistic– monarchistic political theology simply into a general sociology of cosmological images and by dissolving it into a matter of comparative religion, a general sociology of religion or a positivistic theory of norms. The three essays by Hans Meier, Ernst Feil and Ernst Topitsch are of great interest for our examination, each in its own way. They demonstrate the ways in which the different

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and sometimes diametrically opposed directions of Peterson’s statement of the closure [of political theology] are still significant today. Meier adopts uncritically Peterson’s conclusion and footnote taliter qualiter; Feil concedes the validity of [Peterson’s thesis] for the political theology of the CounterRevolution; Topitsch praises the critique of caesaro-papism and transforms it from a specific theological statement into an issue for the general study of religion. We now turn to the origin and the document of the legend itself: Peterson’s treatise from 1935 called Monotheismus als politisches Problem [Monotheism as a Political Problem].

2 The Legendary Document

1 The Genesis and Historical Limitation of the Matter We concentrate here on the legendary document – Peterson’s treatise on monotheism of 1935 – in order to understand its conclusion accurately. Peterson’s main scholarly work is his Habilitationsschrift of 1926, called Heis Theos, on the topic of the one God. The treatise of 1935 is closely related to it thematically. The Habilitationsschrift arose from Peterson’s Göttinger dissertation. It was accepted by the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Göttingen and was published in 1926 as a book under the title Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments [Research on the Religion and Literature of the Old and New Testaments], in a series edited by R. Bultmann and H. Gunkel. The [full] title of the [1935] treatise [on monotheism] is Heis Theos: Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen [Heis Theos: Epigraphic, Stylistic and Historical Enquiries]. This voluminous book of 1926 is highly significant for the academic problem of monotheism, especially because it proves that the formula of one God as a public acclamation can

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be an affirmation or demonstration both for a particular god or for a particular emperor or king. It does not necessarily contain a confession of monotheism. At this point nothing is said about political theology: no question is raised from this perspective. Furthermore, no dogmatic perspective is emphasised in the book. It remains objective [wertfrei] in terms of a dogmatic and axiological restraint, in accordance with the scientific self-understanding of a liberal theology. An enormous amount of material from literary sources and epigraphic evidence is laid out with perfect objectivity, and no judgement for or against any theological standpoint or any specific dogmatic creed can be found. In 1925, Peterson published his acclaimed essay ‘Was ist Theologie?’ [‘What is Theology?’]. Even then, in 1925, the phrase ‘political theology’ was not yet mentioned. Peterson first talks about political theology, both as a thing and as a phrase, in an essay of 1931 entitled ‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’], published in Theologische Quartalsschrift (1931, issue IV, pp. 537–64), in which he anticipated word for word most of his treatise of 1935. He begins, as he does in his later treatise, with the ‘Aristotelian theology’ and the ‘divine monarchy’ of the Alexandrian Jews, and he analyses Philo, whose Jewish Hellenistic reinterpretations he characterises as political (p. 543). Monotheism as a political problem is, for him, nothing but the problem of the Hellenistic transformation of the Jewish belief in God. Even the subsequent discussion of Tertullian corresponds to the later treatise on monotheism. Bishop Eusebius, panegyrist of Constantine the Great, appears here already as an example of an inadmissible political theology, but not yet as a general, exemplary prototype for all time. It is said about him that he started to politicise the idea of God’s monarchy after

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Tertullian had attempted to juridify it.1 [Peterson] confronts all such attempts with Christian theology’s dogma of the triune God. At the end of the essay (p. 563), he quotes Gregory of Nazianzus in order to elevate the entire reflection to its ‘true order beyond all disorders termed anarchy, polyarchy and monarchy’. Likewise, the same Greek church father, Gregory of Nazianzus, appears as the great theologian at the end of the treatise of 1935 (pp. 96–7), whose orthodox trinitarian teaching put an end to the political theology of the Arians. The result is that there cannot be a political realisation of the divine monarchy. ‘Whoever would attempt such a realisation imitates the antichrist, of whom Gregory of Elvira says: ipse solus toto orbe monarchiam habiturus est [he alone will have rulership over the whole world]’ (p. 563). This quotation about the antichrist, which appears at the end of the essay of 1931, is not central to the treatise of 1935 (p. 70), although the antichrist and ‘world-state’ [Weltstaat] were no less relevant in 1935 than in 1931, or at the time of the Pax Romana of 325 – or even today, in 1969. The difference between the publications of 1931 and 1935 lies not in their scientific evidence or lines of argument. Apart from additional material in the text and footnotes, some short references to later church fathers and nuances in the formulation, the novelty of the 1935 treatise lies in an interpolation in a politico-theological mode which we will discuss in detail in Chapter 2.2. In the 1935 publication, the essential, and decisively significant, addition is a confrontation between Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea and St Augustine as a transition to the conclusion, with its final footnote. Through his Christian concept of ‘peace’, Augustine should have contributed what the Greek church fathers and Gregory of Nazianzus, in particular, provided with their concept of God

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and their doctrine of the Trinity: the liberation of the Christian faith from ‘bondage to the Roman Empire’. This is stated in some brief speculative sentences. After that, both the conclusion and the final footnote are simply superimposed on the scholarly material. How was it possible that the evidence from a short essay from 1931, which deals with the first centuries of Christianity to the time of Constantine, could be used, without any significant consideration of any further historical material or developments in the argument, as a sufficient rationale for the overall dismissal of any political theology? The treatise itself only offers one single and very brief hint. Although it calls itself modestly, in the subtitle, ‘A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire’, nevertheless the main title universally proclaims ‘Monotheism as a Political Problem’, and the conclusion, with the final footnote, ultimately rejects any political theology. The rationale for the argument is simply that the epoch of the Roman Empire and the case of Eusebius should be exemplary for the whole problem of political theology. The opening of the preface states: ‘Through an historical analogy, the inner problematic of a political theology which is based on monotheism ought to be demonstrable.’ The concluding sentence at the end of the book states: ‘We have attempted here, with a concrete analogy, to demonstrate the theological impossibility of a political theology.’ But the exemplary nature of the analogy is neither explained nor established. Does this mean that this is just an illustration? If this is the case, it would not be a convincing argument for all the different forms into which political theology can be translated [Umbesetzung]. In the case of Constantine the Great, we are dealing with the relation between the Christian

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church and a powerful Christian (or at least Christianfriendly) monarch. Furthermore, we are dealing with an almost intra-Christian struggle. Its problems and solutions cannot be transferred either to the theoretical or to the political relation between the Christian church and nonChristian, antichristian or even irreligious and completely de-theologised opponents. Constantine considers himself to be – even without Christian baptism – a bishop and a kind of thirteenth Apostle. Eusebius accepted him as the bishop ton ekton (that is, either the bishop of those who are outside, and therefore non-Christians; or the bishop of that which is outside, namely the political realm). The paradigmatic nature of such a figure and of its entire context, including Bishop Eusebius himself, and therefore also the possibility of comparing Constantine the Great with, for example, Hitler or Stalin, is very limited. It is inadmissible in scientific and theological scholarship to explain the relevance of 1935 through historical parallels drawn from 325 – at least not without explaining in concreto the intended exemplary nature of the evidence. Furthermore, the theologia politica or civilis of GraecoRoman antiquity, which is known to us through the tradition of Terentius Varro in St Augustine’s extensively interpreted chapter of Civitas Dei (XII.1), is ignored. Varro, whom Augustine addresses with humorous superiority as Marce astutissime [ ‘Most perceptive Marcus’], belongs to the field of Peterson’s expertise. In the book Heis Theos, from 1926, he is only briefly mentioned twice (pp. 245, 306) and not in the context of our topic. The ancient polis was a community based on cult. Varro distinguishes the mythical (fabulous) theology of the poets, which belongs to the theatre, from the natural (physical) theology of the philosophers, which

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belongs to the world, and from political theology, which belongs to the polis or urbs.2 Political theology is part of the nomos and constitutes the public sphere through the worship of the gods, rites of sacrifice and ceremonies. It belongs to the political identity and continuity of a people for whom the religion of the fathers, regulated public holidays and the deum colere kata ta nomima [‘to worship God according to custom’] is essential in order to identify one’s heritage, one’s legitimate succession and oneself. At this point the question arises, which E.-W. Böckenförde has put in this way: Is it that the Christian belief, according to its inner structure, is a religion like any other religion and is therefore its valid manifestation like that of the public (polis) cult? Or does the Christian belief transcend all other religions known to date, and its effectiveness and relevance consist exactly in the fact that it leads rational people to their own freedom and the secular order of the world by deconstructing mythical forms of religion and public belief in cults? (Säkularisation und Utopie [Secularisation and Utopia]. Ebracher Studien, Festschrift für Ernst Forsthoff, 1967, p. 91)

I think this question is too narrow on account of its implicit disjunctive alternative; but the question is inevitable. The church of Christ is not of this world and its history, but it is in this world. That means: it is localised and opens up a space; and space here means impermeability, visibility and the public sphere. Peterson does not take any of this into account in his examination, and therefore he does not consider it in his conclusion. Varro is not mentioned even in his essay ‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’] (1933). Nevertheless, this essay of 1931 did not at that point intend the absolute closure

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of any political theology. The ignoring of Varro makes it evident that, in the essay of 1935 by comparison with the essay of 1931, at stake was not the elaboration of the argument, but only the conclusion [Schlußthese]. Political theology is indeed a polymorphous phenomenon, and, moreover, there are two different sides to it, a theological and a political one. Each is directed to its specific concepts. This is already given in the compositum of the phrase. There are many political theologies because there are, on the one hand, many different religions, and, on the other, many different kinds and methods of doing politics. In such a twofold and bipolar field, a serious discussion is only possible when the arguments, questions and answers are precisely defined. Therefore we will look into the political as well as into the theological aspect, with reference to the limitations of the evidence presented and of the implied parameters of the problem of political theology. But before that we have to pay attention to a remarkable politico-theological interpolation, which Peterson has incorporated into his treatise from 1935. 2 Politico-Theological Interpolation: le roi règne et ne gouverne pas [the king reigns but does not govern] For Peterson, political theology is over. He is not even concerned with the huge impact which the results of his own research in the book Heis Theos had on Max Weber’s sociology of ‘charismatic legitimation’ (because acclamation is characteristically associated with the charismatic leader).3 Ultimately, [charismatic legitimacy] is just an offspring of secularised Protestant theology (by Rudolph Sohm) as a deformation of an originally theological notion [Urbild]. For the charismatic legitimation of the Apostle Paul in the New

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Testament remains the theological source for all that Max Weber has said sociologically about charisma: Apostle Paul – the triskaidekatos, the thirteenth over and above the twelve (Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 2, Luke-Acts, chapter 15) – could not legitimate himself as charismatic in the face of their concretely established order. On the contrary, a completely different, unbiblical example of political theology from 1931 appears in the essay published in the Theologische Quartalsschrift (p. 540). All of a sudden a French saying appears: le roi règne, mais il ne gouverne pas. I think it is exactly this interpolation, in this context, which is the most intriguing contribution that Peterson – maybe unconsciously – attributed to political theology. It concerns Aristotle’s philosophy and that of Jewish or pagan Hellenism and it is central to the argument of our treatise, even though it is just a marginal comment within this thesis; for monotheism emerged ‘as a political problem from the Hellenistic transformation of the Jewish belief in God’ (p. 98). As a theologian, Peterson uses a French phrase from the nineteenth century which is, without him acknowledging it, the modernisation of a Latin phrase coined in 1600 against the Polish King Sigismund III – rex regnat sed non gubernat. The theologian wants to interpret as an especially pagan or Judeao-Hellenistic form of monotheistic–political theology what is truly not theological at all, but only pure metaphysics, or even just a syncretistic philosophy of religion. The formula itself was originally not understood in terms of political theology. It became an anthem for a certain party of the liberal bourgeoisie in the de-theologised nineteenth century. A typical representative of this bourgeois monarchy, Adolphe Thiers, who later dealt violently with the Paris Commune of

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1871, proclaimed the statement in 1829, and again in 1846, as the logo for a parliamentary monarchy in favour of a capitalistic juste milieu regime. In Peterson’s essay from 1931, this phrase only appears once, on page 540 (as mentioned above), without any further commentary or explanation, as the key formula for what Werner Jaeger has called the ‘Aristotelian theology’ and the monotheism of the Alexandrine Jew, Philo. The retrospective use of such a formula, from a postChristian, liberal epoch back to the antiquity of the first century, is astonishing. But it also shows how much reflection and thought can be invested in a useful politico-theological or politico-metaphysical formulation. Donoso Cortés has both recognised and examined its politico-theological and deistic character in his all too laicised essay of 1851 on ‘Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism’. This French formula itself is sufficiently analysed, politically and theologically, in a letter by Donoso from 19 June 1852, in Paris, to Cardinal Fornari in Rome. Its conceptualisation is in accordance with the structure of a political monotheistic rationalism whose zenith of power wants to be beyond the reach of the combat of parties in order to rationalise the struggle for power itself (see my Verfassungslehre [Theory of the Constitution], p. 287). The parallel between the monarch of a parliamentary regime (who does not interfere with his government’s decisions, and who reigns rather than governs because of a notional transcendence accorded him by that parliamentary government or by a cabinet) and the idea of a passive being from a higher sphere is striking. On the other hand, it is grotesque to compare Louis Philippe with Hellenistic emperors, Roman Caesars or Persian caliphs. The Persian king, who rules through his representatives, viziers, satraps, ministers and messengers, can indeed be paralleled,

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in a telling metaphysico-political manner, with God who, unlike the god of the Stoics, is not conceived of as a power active within the cosmos but rather as an arche, a principle which governs from a higher sphere through sub-deities, angels and messengers. This [principle] does not exclude a plurality or multitude of other archai but demands it, because this corresponds to his divine, supreme, sacrosanct and personal dignity.4 It is indicative of Peterson’s understanding of political theology that he situates a bourgeois king like Louis Philippe in such spheres. Obviously Peterson was profoundly impressed by the French formula. In the essay published in the Theologische Quartalsschrift 1931, it appears (as was mentioned above) only once, and only casually. By contrast, in the treatise of 1935 it is significantly developed and emphasised. In fact this is the leading theme in the whole discussion about Jewish and pagan–Hellenistic monotheism. [The formula] is mentioned no less than seven times, with emphasis (pp. 19, 20, 49, 62, 99, 117, 133), as an idea ‘which we encountered throughout’, even ‘in its particular meaning; the almighty God reigns, but national gods govern’. We are also warned ‘that this will be carefully borne in mind’ (p. 133). At an important point he repeats this idea without mentioning the formula, when he discusses the pagan argument according to which a god can only reign over those who are like him, and therefore over other gods, and not over human beings or animals. Similarly, this was said of Emperor Hadrian, who only reigned over human beings and not over animals (pp. 52–3). Therefore the formula becomes the key for understanding monotheistic paganism.5 Such examples of political theology are acceptable for Peterson because they do not concern Christian monotheism

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and its doctrine of the Trinity. With reference to Aristotle’s political theology he even states, explicitly, ‘that the final foundation of the unity of a metaphysical view of the world is always dependent upon, and prefigured by, the judgement of a certain political concept concerning potential unity’ (p. 19). In a comment on this paragraph, he raises the question ‘whether Aristotle, through his formulation of his monarchic ideal within the metaphysical order, anticipated the nature of the Hellenistic monarchy represented by Alexander the Great’ (n.14, p. 104). This coincides with the thesis of my Political Theology, 1922 and with the sociology of the concept of sovereignty which is elaborated there (p. 60, second edition): I quote there a sentence by Edward Caird (from his book on Auguste Comte)6 according to which ‘metaphysics is the most intensive and clearest expression of an epoch’. The final verdict of the conclusion obviously does not refer to such cases of a non-Trinitarian–monotheistic political theology or metaphysics. 3 Limitation of the Matter and Question from the Political Side: Monarchy The limitation from the political side seems to be clear: the subject of examination and the matter of our argumentation is only monarchy in terms of the power and dominion of one single person. This seems to be a self-evident limitation because of the concentration on monotheism. The limitation is expressed by the formula: one God – one King. Monarch is, for the Roman Empire, the emperor, Caesar, Princeps and Augustus. The One on the political side of political theology is therefore an arche as a singular person, not yet as a ‘juridical person’ but more as an individual human being. As soon

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as a second person comes into play, as in the case of the double principate of the Roman emperors (p. 47), the formula loses its evidence. The possibility of a Trinity, on the political side, does not occur. It is impossible to transfer the concept of monarchy to a Trinity within which arche and potestas ‘have a meaning of their own’. (‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’], p. 557). Nevertheless, the argument also mentions political units with the potential to act, which are composed of a plurality of people or groups; pagans in particular are always peoples, thought of as a political unit in the plural. In the pagan world, polytheism corresponds to a political pluralism of peoples taken in the sense of political units (and not only as social groups). The pagan world as a whole counts as a political pluriverse of different nations, which become a political universe only through the One Lord of the world. ‘God’s people’, the Jewish people, is a political unit too, and so is also the ecclesia, the Christian church, God’s new people. ‘In the end’ the concept of monarchy in Alexandrine Judaism was ‘a politico-theological concept designed to justify the religious superiority of the Jewish people’ (p. 63). The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus does not speak of ‘divine monarchy’. Christians, as the new ‘people of God’ who took the place of the Jews, adopted this political idea of unity for their ecclesia and carried it forward. In the beginning, their use of the concept of monarchy is, according to Peterson, just a piece of Jewish or Judaeo-Christian ‘propaganda’. For the Christians, he explains, that propaganda is a result of the ‘close connection between the Christian and the Jewish schools of thought. In the literature of Christian propaganda, as in that of Jewish [propaganda], the politico-theological concept of monarchy was used to justify the superiority of God’s people,

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coming together in the ecclesia Christi, over the polytheistic belief of the peoples (pagans)’ (p. 37). At this point it becomes evident that the accurate, central, and systematic concept for the politico-theological problem that Peterson discusses cannot be oriented towards monarchy, but has to be oriented towards political unity and its presence or representation. Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan (1651) has systematically positioned the concept in that way: the Highest, the sovereign, can be a single human being, but also an assembly or a majority of people capable of action.7 If the formula is no longer: One God – One King, but: One God – One People, and if the political side of political theology is no longer oriented towards the single monarch but towards a people, then we turn to democracy. The plausible coincidence between monotheism and monarchism breaks down and is no longer valid. This dissonance has not gone unnoticed by Peterson’s sharp mind: ‘One people and One God – this is, of course, a Jewish slogan’ (p. 23). However, the Alexandrine Jew, Philo, does not speak about ‘divine democracy’, and in this context he usually would be the first to point to divine monarchy (p. 22) and to draw the distinction between the metaphysical and cosmic unity of the universe and pagan polyarchy, oligarchy and ochlocracy. In general, Philo is ‘a friend of democratic ideals . . . but it is evident that because of his Jewish faith he was not allowed to talk of a metaphysical, divine democracy in this context’ (p. 29). According to Christian theology, since the appearance of Christ Jews have no king and no prophets any more. The politico-theological question of monarchy becomes more complex through the fact that neither Origen and the Alexandrian theologians nor St Athanasius use the word monarchy; they talk of divine monas [monad] instead. The

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word ‘mon-archy’ implies the Aristotelian mia arche, the principle of the One, whereas the word monas relates to the Pythagorean–Platonic unity of the number. Peterson praises Pope Dionysius (259–68 CE), who ‘advocates the holy annunciation of the monarchy, overcomes Gnostic dualism and sees in the Trinity a single arche of three persons, who are at the same time unity and Trinity and can neither be separated nor divided’ (pp. 56–7). Oddly enough, Eusebius, Origen’s loyal student, does use the word monarchy. But in his case this has been interpreted as Arianism and a heretical position, and consequently as political theology, because he lacks Pope Dionysius’ orthodox concept of the Trinity. We do not want to spend any more time on this because, as far as monarchy is concerned, from the political side of the problem, the monarch of Hellenistic monotheism is, for Peterson, paradigmatically a single person: ‘the One power of the ultimate One principle with the powerfulness of the One ultimate bearer of this power’. One should not forget, when referring to the word monarchy, that the principate of Caesar Augustus was still based on its republican legitimation. The continuity of the dualism between the Roman Senate and the Roman people, between the patres conscripti and the populus – that is, the assembled citizenship – between auctoritas and potestas subsists in spite of all the changes and catastrophes recognised throughout the centuries. Therefore the Roman Pope Gelasius was able to refer to this even at the end of the fifth century (494 CE) in order to claim for himself auctoritas as bishop of the Roman church and to bestow upon the Christian emperor the empire and grant him the potestas.8 What we are told about the millennial struggle between the Christian sacerdotium and the Christian imperium is offered in a footnote and it is no more than a line taken from the Iliad

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(2, 204): ‘One [person] should be king’. We are also told that this [imperative] ‘plays also a role in the mediaeval controversy between the emperor and the pope’ and that this verse [from the Iliad] is also quoted in Dante’s De Monarchia I, 10 (p. 120, n. 63).9 This is all that we learn about one millennium of the Christian–theological Middle Ages. The modern plebiscite monarchy is not mentioned, maybe because it is not legitimated in terms of an absolute monarchy but in terms of a plebiscite democracy, by the will of the people and not by God’s grace. We have already mentioned (Chapter 2.2) the most striking example of a new political theology for both theologians and non-theologians. This is Max Weber’s ‘charismatic legitimacy’, which would be for Peterson just a distortion, an example of a sociologically secularised theology and therefore theologically irrelevant. Nevertheless it belongs to the political side of the whole phenomenon and it should have interested the author of the book Heis Theos simply because of the connection between charismatic legitimacy, leadership [Führertum] and acclamation. In Peterson’s treatise (p. 52), the Führer is counted as a monarch; charismatic and hereditary legitimacy are intermingled, so that in the end Adolf Hitler and Kurt Eisner, together with Emperor Franz Joseph and Wilhelm II, appear under the same politico-theological category of ‘monarchs’. In this case a strict theological method results in an even worse neutralisation than Max Weber’s value-free science. A simplification arises from the limitation of sources on monarchy, which is basically the Hellenistic standard view of the divine monarchy. But this fact has far more fundamental implications than would appear at first glance. Not only does this simplification exclude the vast topic of ‘democracy’; all the problems of ‘revolution’ and ‘resistance’ are also ignored.

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The unity of the monarch is seen as the production, depiction and maintenance of the existing order and as a unity of peace. The fact that on the political side of political theology, too, there is something like uproar surfaces sometimes in certain passages, when the rebellion of the Giants and Titans against Zeus is mentioned (pp. 30–31, 114, 144). But, for a Christian trinitarian theologian, this seems to be insignificant, because it is pagan mythology, although there have been Christian– theological speculations about the rebellion of the angels too, and about its connection with the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. Maybe today we would dismiss this as eastern trinitarian gnosis. The decisive argument for the Trinity that St Gregory of Nazianzus offers – that in the Trinity stasis is no longer imaginable – is, for a correct political theology, far away from being as irrelevant as Peterson claims (see the Postscript on stasis, p. 122). In the meantime – since 1935 – the two excluded subjects (democracy and revolution) have made a serious comeback. The intensive discussion today by Catholic as well as Protestant theologians about a ‘Christian revolution’ does not see itself affected by Peterson’s verdict in any possible way. The leap by which he ignores one and a half thousand years on the politico-historical side in order to come to his conclusion is much too general and abrupt. Let us prove the coherence of the argument in terms of its contents from the other, theological side, to the extent that this is permitted to us nontheologians. In the following we will leave aside completely the theological problem of the analogia entis [analogy of being] as well as that of the analogia fidei [analogy of faith], which, by the way, is also ignored by Peterson, and we will concentrate only on the matter and question from his treatise of 1935.

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4 Limitation of the Matter and Question from the Theological Side: Monotheism There are three monotheistic religions on the theological side of this twofold topic. But these are not the three bearers of the ring, as in Lessing’s famous parable: Jews, Christians and Muslims. The monotheism of the three replicated rings is, for Peterson, another fourth kind of ring; it is the enlightened monotheism of the eighteenth century, which he notices only with a glimpse of contempt (in the preliminary remarks). Furthermore, the two religions, of the Muslims and of the Jews, are not the ones named in the declaration of the Second Vatican Council from 28 October 1965 (concerning the matter of the relation of the church to non-Christian religions). Islam, whose political relevance is immense and whose theological significance is undisputable, is completely ignored, although its God deserves this title more than the One of Aristotelian or Hellenistic metaphysics. ‘Monotheism as a political problem’ does not mean anything more, for Peterson, than the Hellenistic transformation of the Jewish belief in God. The three monotheistic religions which are examined with regard to their political theology are Judaism, paganism and – at an intermediate position, with two different trajectories – the Christendom of the triune God. The question of the comparability of Christian– trinitarian monotheism with other religions – on which see the quotation taken from E. W. Böckenförde’s essay on the origin of the state as a process of secularisation (above, Chapter 2.1) – is raised anew, in a more radical form. All attempts failed to make the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit plausible for other monotheistic faiths. An unsuccessful theological attempt was called monarchianism, which has

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not been taken seriously and which, according to Peterson following Harnack (p. 123, n. 75), was laughed at under this description. Monarchianism has been deemed a heresy in all its forms – dynamic or modalistic identity between Father and Son, adoption of the Son by the Father and other construals. The troublesome question whether it was right ‘to see in the Christian faith only monotheism’ occurs at least once in Peterson’s treatise (for instance concerning Orosius, p. 94). By the way, the doctrine of the triunity of the one God serves, without any qualification, as an argument for the impossibility of any political theology. Misuse always remains possible, but within Christianity it would be something different from what it is in other, still monotheistic but not trinitarian religions. Those are expressly conceded to have the potential for a political theology. It is not clear to what extent non-Christian religions could have a genuine theology at all. The Jewish Old Testament has its prophecy, but not theology, and among the pagans there only exists a philosophical metaphysics or what may be called ‘natural’ religion. Maybe Peterson conceded a theology to the non-trinitarian religions in an ad hoc manner and only hypothetically, in the sense that a non-trinitarian religion – if it is possible for it to have any theology at all – produces a political theology from itself. The placement beyond all politics, the absolute unassailability, unattainability and autonomy from the political, is denied the non-Christian, that is, the non-trinitarian, monotheism. The verdict against the monotheism of the Enlightenment is brief and apodictic; the [verdict] against Jewish–Christian monotheism is categorical: never will the different peoples agree on one ‘law’, ‘and therefore the impact of Jewish–Christian monotheism on political life can only be destructive’ (p. 63).

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Hence it seems that non-Christian theology is the genuine soil or the hotbed, so to speak, of the problematic phenomenon which one designates as ‘Political Theology’. Whenever Peterson finds anything like this in Christian authors of the first centuries, he assigns it to Jewish or pagan influences. Jews and pagans have to live with the fact that their speculations on the ‘divine monarchy’ are deemed to be political theology, but nevertheless it is conceded to them that this is theology. The Christians of the first Christian centuries did have something like political theology, but this was, of course, not Christian theology. This is despite the fact that the proclamation of the ‘monarchy of God’ was an ‘essential element in the Christian course of instruction for baptism’ (pp. 35, 117). We know this from the catechesis of Cyril of Jerusalem; but this seems to be the case only because the patristic teachers and apologists were caught up in the Jewish tradition of teaching, within which they should be understood. Whenever a pagan like Celsius or a philosopher like Porphyry does political theology, they are perfectly entitled to do it – if we look at them from the perspective of their non-trinitarian monotheism. There are pagans, as Peterson has demonstrated in his book Heis Theos (p. 254), who talk in a syncretistic manner of the triunity of the One God. They do not appear in Peterson’s treatise of 1935 any longer. Even their kind of monotheism – just because it is pagan – would not eo ipso have been brought to an end as political theology, whereas a Christian attempt on the basis of trinitarian teaching would automatically have been. In our concentration on the subject discussed by Peterson there is neither critical objection nor reproach. On the contrary, it should be emphasised that, because of that clear limitation, it follows that a plain question is raised. Nevertheless, it should be remembered at the same time that

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Peterson’s conclusion does not allow any general claims about political theology as a whole. The limitation of the metaphysical monotheism of the three named religions is clearly emphasised in the preliminary remark of Peterson’s treatise through a solemn appeal to St Augustine, and then sketched out in the concluding statements at the end (pp. 97–100). Our intention is neither to contradict the erudite expert on early Christianity nor to attempt criticising him. We just want to examine the soundness of his conclusion on the closure of any political theology. Unfortunately, there is no positive definition of the treatise’s central and all-important phrase – political theology. Peterson finds examples of political theology not only in Eusebius of Caesarea but also in great theologians and saints of the Christian church, in church fathers and in canonical teachers like St Ambrose and St Jerome. He justifies early Christian theology in terms of it not being yet fully independent of the Jewish tradition, as in the case of Cyril of Jerusalem’s catecheses. With Origen, the origins and trajectory of a ‘genuine politico-theological reflection’ become evident. Peterson explains this as a result of the controversial engagement with the political theology of the Roman pagan Celsus; the pagan has forced the Christian dialectically, one might say, from the pagan side (pp. 67–71). Only since Eusebius of Caesarea, Origen’s student, were the ideas in Origen ‘developed in various directions’ (pp. 71–81), and this had ‘enormous historical significance’, impacting even on Ambrose, Jerome and Orosius (pp. 82–96). 5 Eusebius as a Prototype of Political Theology Eusebius is a controversial figure in ecclesial history; he is known as the father in Christ. In a modern ‘fatherless society’,

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this metaphor of the father is enough to cast doubts on him. He is suspected of being a supporter of authoritarianism – a verdict which, by the way, is also made with respect to the first person of the divine Trinity. Eusebius was a friend of Constantine the Great and was profoundly involved in the theological and political conflicts of the Council of Nicaea. He was a personal friend of Arius, and so he never lost the odour of Arian heresy. We do not attempt and do not wish to undertake the saving of his reputation. We are not here to make any accusation against him. We only wish to know what Peterson genuinely understood by political theology and what it is that he announces in his conclusion as the theological closure and as his negative judgement on Eusebius’ model – which, seemingly, should remain unchanged down to the end of time. The accusations he makes against the Christian Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea concern, on the ethical side, his character and, on the theological and dogmatic side, his orthodoxy. The moral accusation against his character comes down to a complete defamation of him as a Christian, human being and historian. His admiration for Constantine the Great is used to portray him as a ceasaropapist, a Byzantine in the worst sense of the word, a sycophant or – as in the already cited phrase of the theologian Overbeck from Basel – the ‘royal theological hairdresser of his majesty’s periwig’. Jacob Burckhardt, the doyen of the human sciences in Basel, denies him even his historical integrity. The passage from J. Burckhardt’s book Die Zeit Konstantins des Großen [The Age of Constantine the Great] (1853, 2nd edition 1880) is worth quoting in extenso: Eusebius is not just a fanatic; he was perfectly aware of Constantine’s profane soul, of his cold, terrible desire to

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dominate, and he knew without any doubt the true reasons for war: but he is, through and through, the first dishonest historian of antiquity. His tactics, which were gloriously successful at that time and throughout the Middle Ages, were to portray the first great defender of the church as an ideal for a future generation of princes, at any price. As a result, we have lost sight of a great human genius, who was ignorant of the moral concerns in the business of politics and who saw the problem of religion only in terms of its political usefulness.

Jacob Burckhardt’s authority is great and, as we will see, in the end it becomes essential even for Peterson. A highly respected scientific anthropologist, philosopher, sociologist and intellectual like Arnold Gehlen has recently sided unconditionally with this verdict on Bishop Eusebius (Moral und Hypermoral: Eine pluralistische Ethik [Moral and Hypermoral: A Pluralist Ethics] 1969, p. 35). However, there still remain today defenders of this man, who was so defamed, and, interestingly, they come from a position which is particularly critical towards caesaro-papism. In the final chapter, on ‘Constantine and Eusebius’, of Arnold A. T. Erhardt’s book Politische Metaphysik [Political Metaphysics] (Vol. 2, Die Christliche Revolution [The Christian Revolution], 1959), the author makes a fine and impressive attempt to save the reputation of the Christian bishop. But it is immediately obvious what it means for the problem of political theology when the prototype of political theology is identified with the prototype of a dubious Byzantinism. From a theologico-dogmatic perspective, Bishop Eusebius is being accused of having combined the doctrine of the Trinity with the heresy of Arius in an ambiguous way. Eusebius, unlike the Arians, emphasised that the logos, as Son

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of the Father, is identical in substance [wesensgleich]; but at the same time he stressed the difference of the Son (begotten of the Father) with respect to creation (produced by the Father out of nothing, that is, made), and therefore he distinguished between genitum and factum [begotten and made]. He intended to circumvent the heretical monarchianistic identification of the Father with the Son, and by doing this he slightly overemphasised the non-identity of the Father with the Son and the subordination of the Son to the Father. We will not discuss the theological accusations which may have rightly been levelled against him. Peterson does not examine this in his treatise on political monotheism of 1935, although he recognises the extraordinary range of this problem – he even raises the question whether Christian monotheism and its doctrine of the Trinity is comparable at all with Jewish or pagan Hellenistic monotheism (see above, Chapter 2.4, pp. 76–9. For both Peterson and Arnold Erhardt the touchstone here is the doctrine of the divine monarchy – which is also the stumbling block. ‘Monarchianism stank at that time throughout the entire church.’ Such a formulation, by A. Erhardt (Die Christliche Revolution, p. 285), indicates the penetrating nature of the political resentment that operates on both sides, among theologians as well as among politicians. ‘In fact, Erhardt really sees metaphysics as theology and therefore politics as an ultimately religious phenomenon’ (Franz Wieacker, Preface to Vol. 3 of Erhardt’s Politische Metaphysik [Political Metaphysics], 1969, p. ix). Peterson wants to uphold the absolute separation between the two domains, but, where the doctrine of the Trinity is concerned, an absolute separation would only be possible in the abstract, given that the second person of the Godhead represents the perfect unity of the two

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natures, the human and the divine, and that Mary, the biological mother, has given birth to the divine child in a certain place at a certain time in history. Eusebius, unlike his teacher Origen, uses the expression ‘divine monarchy’. But highly regarded church fathers also did this. From the perspective of his theologico-dogmatic shortcomings, Eusebius is not really a convincing prototype of political theology. Therefore Peterson shifted his focus on to a second dogmatic weakness: Eusebius’ soteriological and eschatological ideas and, in particular, his positioning of Constantine and of the Roman Empire in his teachings about the historical appearance of the Saviour and the unity of the world at the end of time. This means that Peterson isolates his Eusebean model from the historical concreteness of the Council of Nicaea and therefore divests Eusebius of the ecclesiastical evidence which would be necessary for a persuasive example. The Council of Nicaea, the true arena of Bishop Eusebius, was concerned with the doctrine of the Trinity, and particularly the doctrine of the relationship between the divine Father and the divine Son. This was not a dispute about dogmatic questions of eschatology. At that time such questions were less pressing in the eastern church than in the west. But the Council of Nicaea became a test case for the impossibility of any rigid division, in practice, between religious and political motives and goals. These could not become two distinct thematic areas because of an impenetrable thicket composed of theologico-dogmatic zeal, intrigues at the royal court, tumultuous monks, incited masses, and all sorts of actions and counteractions. Countless church fathers and canonical teachers, martyrs and saints throughout the ages have passionately engaged in the political struggles of their time because of their Christian convictions. Even the journey into

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the desert or the climbing of the stylite’s pillar can become a political demonstration, depending on the issue. As, from the secular point of view, the potential ubiquity of the political emerges in ever new forms, so, from the spiritual point of view, the ubiquity of the theological emerges in ever new forms. When a bishop from the fourth century suspected of heresy is introduced into the twentieth century as the prototype of political theology, there seems to exist a conceptual link between politics and heresy: the heretic appears eo ipso as the one who is political, while the one who is orthodox, on the other hand, appears as the pure, apolitical theologian. So, when does political theology become (as Peterson puts it in his conclusion) ‘an abuse of the Christian gospel in order to justify a political situation’? Only when a heretical deviation from the doctrine of the Trinity is intended and one seeks to implement it? If this is so, then a heretical animus dogmatizandi [zeal to convert] should be essential to political theology. It would have been better if Peterson had counterbalanced his negative model of Eusebius with a positive model of an apolitical trinitarian theology, taken from the historical context of Constantine’s and Eusebius’ time; in that way he would have identified an undisputed orthodox representative of the dogma of the Trinity as the clear anti-type of pure and apolitical theology. The person who immediately springs to mind is the great critic of Eusebius, Saint Athanasius, who became an icon of trinitarian orthodoxy and whose name was still considered useful, by a great political journalist such as Joseph Görres in the nineteenth century (1838), to serve as a catchword in the church’s struggle with the Prussian state. Athanasius is seen as an undisputed orthodox theologian on the teaching of the Christian

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Trinity. Nevertheless, despite his orthodoxy, this contentious man would have been no convincing counter-example of apolitical theology; particularly so when Eusebius, who was always concerned with peace, is portrayed as the political theologian. This would otherwise give the impression that, for Peterson, the royal intrigues and tumult of the orthodox are examples of pure theology, whereas the same actions by the heretic are, eo ipso, pure politics. It would be more accurate to refer to the three great Cappadocians as anti-types of Eusebius: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory of Nazianzus appears, both in Peterson’s essay of 1931 and in his treatise of 1935, as the decisive crown witness for a dogmatic, uncontested and orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Today (1969), since we are influenced by a Marxist theological discussion, the three great Cappadocians are no longer testes idonei [suitable witnesses] because they could immediately have been suspected of ideology. All three of them were rich men, landowners – today one might say Kulaken – and it would not be difficult for a Marxist educated critic to ‘unmask’ their theological speculations as a clear case of class ideology and superstructure of their socio-economic conditions. This seems to have escaped Peterson’s attention. He preferred to remain abstract and, hastily, at the end of his treatise, following the Greek theologians who developed the dogma of the Trinity, he introduced Augustine, the great Latin church father, as the theologian of the eschatological conception of peace, to whom Peterson dedicated his treatise and whom he invoked in prayer. In this way the treatise comes to an end in a very edifying but also over-hasty manner, which disguises and veils the real problem by portraying Eusebius, not so much as one suspected of Arianism

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on account of his dogmatic but incorrect understanding of the Trinity, but rather as a false eschatologist because of his exaggerated view of the Roman Empire in the history of salvation. As such, he becomes a prototype for an impossible political theology. The true problem and its intricate complexity can only be resolved by making a precise distinction between the institutions of the spiritual and the secular, this world and the hereafter, theology and politics. The entire Christian aeon is not a long march but a single long waiting, a long interim between two simultaneities, between the appearance of the Lord in the time of the Roman Caesar Augustus and the Lord’s return at the end of time. Within this long interim, there emerge continually numerous new worldly interims, larger or smaller, which are literally between times. For even highly disputed dogmatic questions concerning orthodoxy often remain in doubt for generations. The Christian eschatological interpretation of current events cannot be easily prohibited. Moreover, in times of catastrophe, such interpretations gain an unexpected power. Peterson was clearly aware of these implicit difficulties, because the immediate expectation of the second coming, which paralyses all earthly activity, is prolonged through the Christian church and eschatology becomes a ‘doctrine of the last things’. In a paper called ‘Die Kirche’ [‘The Church’], given in 1929, he writes: It is absolutely true that the church is therefore ambivalent. It is not a clearly defined religio-political entity, like the messianic kingdom of the Jews. On the other hand, the church is not simply a purely spiritual entity in which concepts such as politics and dominion are entirely prohibited, something which has restricted itself entirely to service. The intrinsic ambiguity of the

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church can be clarified through the interpenetration of empire and church. The ambiguity is caused by the unbelief of the Jews, which always enraged a moralist like Nietzsche about all Christian concepts. (E. Peterson, Theologische Traktate, München: Kösel-Verlag, 1951, pp. 423–4)

The statement ‘the intrinsic ambiguity of the church’ is of great consequence, especially in a context concerning political theology and the worldly distinction between the two spheres of the spiritual and the secular. The question arises immediately: who might be a suitable subject of political theology within the Christian church, if this political theology should prove itself theologically impossible? If a pious Christian, as a lay person, recognises the finger of God in the events of current political importance and also recognises the operation of providence, then this, according to Peterson, is not political theology because it is theologically and dogmatically insignificant. But in fact there has never been a Christian people who would not have done ‘political theology’ in this sense: all Christian peoples praised the champions of Christ and the defenders of his church, and even venerated them as saints. There was never a Christian people who would not have seen a providential, and therefore to some extent theological, meaning in the earthly success or defeats of Christ’s church. A church is not only composed of theologians. Indeed, theology is not only concerned with itself, but it reflects upon pre-given belief that it cannot simply produce. In the same way, the church is not limited to itself as a clearly defined sphere of ecclesiastical life. It is rather engaged with a whole range of Christian life, including the so-called people who dwell on the

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margins of the church, who see the church from the inside only for baptism, confirmation, marriage and death. Even these bonds, which from the standpoint of the church are so disdainfully dismissed, are rooted in the power of the Christian proclamation. The church must not see its engagement with this sphere as a call for missionary activity, but the church is that institution which represents this Christendom. (So Claus von Bormann, Die Theologisierung der Vernunft; Neuere Strömungen in der evangelischen Theologie (Entmythisierung) [The Theologicalisation of Reason: New Trends in Protestant Theology (Demythologisation), Studium Generale, Vol. 22, Fascicle 8, 1969, p. 7 68, in a reponse to T. Reudtorff, Kirche und Theologie [Church and Theology], 1966)

The Catholic church, particularly in this respect, practised a liberal tolerari potest [it can be tolerated]. It never allowed itself to be lectured to by its enemies on the concept and limits of this tolerance. From Peterson’s train of thoughts, one might assume that he, too, accepts a certain lay freedom for political theology, because it does not really matter what non-theologians fabricate. If he concedes that Jews and pagans have a political theology, then he should allow pious Christians to have a political theology also, even if only in an inauthentic sense. Moreover, normally the Catholic lay person has no dogmatic ambitions and rarely has an obstinate animus dogmatizandi [zeal to convert]. Throughout modernity, the eruption of a rebellious animus in the history of the Christian church was a real danger. It arose only with the charisma of Protestant preachers during the Reformation and with their proclamation of the Word [of God], that that charisma finally became secularised and value-free; what Max Weber viewed as the true ‘revolutionary power of

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history’ (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft [Economy and Society], p. 666). In contrast to a Catholic lay person, a Catholic prelate or dignitary of the church acts in a completely different politicotheological situation; this person, by their profession ex officio, is politically active in the interest of the church without having to become theological in a dogmatic way. His situation, in a de-theologised world in which the church is irrelevant, can no longer be compared to that of a participant in the Council of Nicea. This inseparable ‘combination’ of politics and religion, of the political and the theological, has other roots with respect to a religious as well as an antireligious freedom, and it has consequences other than those in Constantine’s time. Under Constantine, a powerful emperor guaranteed the Christian bishops a reservation area for their peaceful councils and protected them from the tumults of a theologising multitude, who Peterson admired (Was ist Theologie?) [What is Theology?] (1925) – tumults that were incited by the monks. Let us try to illustrate less revolutionary occurrences of such political theology or theological politics by a more familiar example, namely the Lateran treaties which the Holy See signed with the Kingdom of Italy – in the particular political context of Mussolini and the fascist regime – on 11 February 1929 in Rome. At that time, these Lateran treaties were, for millions of pious Roman Catholic Christians, an event of providential significance. The future Pope John XXIII wrote on 24 February 1929, from Sophia, to his sisters: ‘Praise the Lord! Everything the Freemasons, that is, the Devil, has done against the church and the pope in Italy over the last sixty years has been destroyed.’ That was, surely, the political assertion of a pious Christian and future pope; it was not meant in

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the theological sense of dogma and infallibility; and therefore it cannot be subsumed under Peterson’s verdict. Does it follow that anything which does not claim to be a dogmatic truth, or the infallible, is non-theological–political? What, then, would practically remain of political theology? Early in 1933, the prelate Ludwig Kaas, at that time the political leader of the German Catholics, papal protonotar and professor of canon law, published an essay entitled ‘Der Konkordatstyp des faschistischen Italien’ [‘The Nature of the Concordat with Fascist Italy’] in Volume 3 of the Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht [The Journal for Foreign Public Law and International Law] (edited by Professor Victor Bruns, Berlin, in collaboration with Kaas and others [3/2 (1933), pp. 488–522]). He celebrates Mussolini as a ‘statesman by calling’, who was guided by the gift of discernment, the donum discretionis. Through Mussolini – a former Marxist and free-thinker – those corrections in history took place ‘which the believer will call providential but everyone else is allowed to call logical’. The gift of discernment, accredited here to Mussolini, is more the gift of the politically correct distinction between friend and enemy than the theological gift of the distinction between the orthodox and the heretical, which, according to Peterson, gives the right to be intolerant. Was the essay by Kaas a political option for Mussolini and Fascism, even if only tant que cela dure [for as long as it lasts]? Obviously, it was not meant in a dogmatic sense, and therefore it does not come under Peterson’s verdict. One would have to be a participant of the council on the wrong side, like the unfortunate Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, in order to come close to the prototype. The decisive theologico-dogmatic accusation, through which Eusebius is constituted as the prototype of a political

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theology which is impossible in Christian terms, concerns not so much the dogma of Trinity as the soteriological teaching about the end of time and about true peace, which no emperor and no worldly empire, but only the return of Christ, can give to the world and humankind. Eusebius greatly exposed himself as a panegyrist and glorifier of the Roman Empire. He compared Constantine to Caesar Augustus, who was, in the eyes of the Christian bishop, the victor over the political pluralism of the pagan nations, the vanquisher of an atrocious civil war, the peace-maker and lord of the one, ultimately pacified, world. In Eusebius’ portrait, Constantine has accomplished what Augustus had begun: the monarchy of Augustus stands for ‘the end of the nation-state’ and ‘is providentially connected to the appearance of Christ’; but only the victory of Christendom completes the victory of unity over plurality, the victory of the one true belief in God over the polytheism and the superstition of the polis of pagan peoples. The Roman Empire is the peace, the victory of order over uproar and over the factions of the civil war: One God – One World – One Empire. This kind of divine monarchy, for Peterson, is the prototype of an inadmissible Christian theologico-eschatological and political theology, even though this One God ought to be the Christ, the God–Man of the Christian Trinity – because only the return of Christ at the end of time will bring about the true peace and the real unity of the world. If a Christian bishop like Eusebius, who survived the Christian persecution under Diocletian, enthusiastically praises the Roman Emperor Constantine (who brought this persecution to an end), then this is natural and not a reason for theological closures, as long as the bishop does not mistake this Caesar for God or Christ. Obviously he could not see the

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antichrist in the Caesar. It would be interesting to learn more about Eusebius’ attitude and, in particular, more about his view on the Roman Empire as the restrainer of the antichrist, the Kat-Echon [= katechon, ‘restrainer’] in Paul’s letter (2 Thessalonians 2. 6). But here we are only concerned with the accurate content of Peterson’s concluding assertion. We know what Peterson, the learned philologist and exegete, thought about the Kat-Echon: the unbelief of the Jews, their continued refusal, until the present day, to become Christians withholds the end of the Christian aeon (see n. 9 to this chapter). In this speculation of Eusebius, the person of Caesar Augustus appears as ‘necessarily meaningful for Christendom itself ’ (p. 83). In the end Eusebius, who allows monotheism to be inaugurated through Augustus, has ‘opted, politically, for the Roman Empire’ (p. 80), and in his theological interpretation of history ‘political and rhetorical motifs are conflated’ (p. 84). This demotes the Christian theologian to a political theologian. The point where errant political theology ends and the correct, absolutely apolitical Christian theology begins is only perceptible in a few brief hints. Normally the Roman Caesar Augustus is viewed as being part of Christian soteriology. And it seems to me not un-Christian to see in historicopolitical events the finger of God and his providence. But this must not lead to a ‘political option’, because it would then cease to be theological. Peterson’s argument revolves around a distinction between the purely theological and the impurely political, in an abstract and absolute disjunction which enables him to circumvent the mixed nature of the spiritual–secular combination of any specifically historical event. In fact, Peterson’s sharp critique of Eusebius is not a painstaking theologico-dogmatic critique of Eusebius’ standpoint. This is scarcely attempted. He does not even mention the

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obvious and evident teachings of this friend of Caesar, like his attitude towards the office of bishop of the (not yet baptised) Constantine, or his claim [that Constantine] should be seen as an Apostle. The many problems about the monotheistic Trinity and the inner-worldly, supra-worldly eschatological expectations make the plausible over-simplification difficult with respect to theological issues which would enable us to make a decisive verdict about all political theology. The theologico-dogmatic death blow to Eusebius should put an end to all political theology; but this portrayal of Eusebius as a prototype of political theology makes it also possible to dismiss him as a person, both intellectually and morally. Furthermore this also explains why Peterson finally arrives at the same condemning verdict as Jacob Burckhardt and Overbeck, although he carefully avoids quoting such liberal authors or associating Eusebius with categories such as ‘caesaro-papism’ or ‘Byzantinism’. The learned German theologian has a number of discriminating categories in his arsenal in order to dismiss Eusebius, the political theologian, from the threshold of pure theology. Above all, he calls him an ideologist, albeit, of course, a Christian ideologist. Although the phrase ‘Christian ideology’ appears only once (p. 82), it is highly significant, and it is not put in inverted commas; it is intended to deal a death blow to the prototype of political theology in the Christian domain. At the same time, Eusebius’ theologumenon, with its enormous consequences, is related back to the pagan Celsus, ‘who, in the end, might have inspired the elaboration of this Christian ideology’. A second form of theological discrimination is the employment of the category of propaganda. Propaganda is produced particularly by Judaeo-Christian authors who, continuing the tradition of Philo of Alexandria

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and of Hellenistic Jewry, make proselytes throughout polytheistic paganism with their ‘divine monarchy’ (p. 31). Christian authors of pagan origin suffer from a third stigma: they like to use rhetoric in the ancient think-and-speak manner [Denk-und-Sprechstil]; they cling to the traditional topoi of their art and they do not yet reach the stage of ‘theological reflection’. The categorisation of Eusebius, that panegyrist of Constantine and the church historian, as just an orator is a powerful attack. His commentary on the protection of free exchange in the Roman Empire, which eased the Christian proclamation of the gospel, is ‘inflected through the rhetorical topos in his encomium to Rome, according to which the Roman Empire should have made possible the freedom of this exchange; even his idea that in the Roman Empire all became one family issues from that same rhetoric’. Peterson believes that the orator Eusebius deserves a specific examination and that the text against Hierocles shows that ‘Eusebius was even fluent in the language of the Second Sophistic’ [c. AD 60–230] (p. 145, n. 163). In the end he alludes to Jacob Burckhardt’s defamation of Eusebius the historian – without citing the Basle authority, of course – by referring to the ‘historian’ Eusebius, in inverted commas (p. 140). He was even then ‘out of date’ as a political theologian, in terms of a Judaeo-pagan theology (p. 563 of the essay from 1931). If this prototype of Christian political theology was already theologically out of date one and a half thousand years ago, then we can hardly imagine the extent of its current obsoleteness. The academic dismissal of the Christian author is then followed by the moral and political dismissal of his character. The case is made for Origen, Eusebius’ teacher, that ‘his thinking is upright’ (p. 65) because Origen was ‘at

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the bottom of his heart apolitical’ (p. 70), and therefore had to surrender to the influence of the politico-pagan theologian, Celsus (ibid.). There are no such mitigating circumstances for his loyal student, Eusebius, because this one apparently had a political nature which predetermined that he would be an exemplary of all that we have come to understand as political theology, despite his love for freedom and order. This is how the dismissal of Eusebius, a politicising participant in the council of the year 325, is achieved by a pretentious apolitical German theologian of the year 1935, through a highly learned theological–exegetical– philological–historical–academic essay. The ad personam attack of the prototype should put an end to the issue: political theology as such. This is the intention of such a complete defamation of a Christian bishop who has been respected for one and a half thousand years as the father of church history. We are dealing here with a political answer to a political question which has emerged from the crisis of Protestant theology between the years 1925–35. Peterson believed that he had evaded the crisis through a return to an unproblematic dogmatism and through the discovery of a safe haven of pure theology. A closer examination of his argument reveals that his theologico-dogmatic demonstration only becomes persuasive through the dismissal of the prototype of Eusebius. Only by this means are the enemies of the years 1925–35 directly hit. But Peterson has not transcended the abstract and absolute disjunction between pure theology and impure politics. He retreated from the crisis of Protestant theology into a rigorous negation of all that was non-theological. From there he barricaded himself against anything that might have enabled him, with the help of an

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adequate concept of the political, to understand the current situation of church, state and society academically. On the other hand, neither did he become apocalyptic. He did not declare that the end of time had arrived or that Hitler was an instrument of the antichrist, and he was theologically careful and tentative as far as his treatise of 1935 is concerned. We have already pointed out the internal problems of his purely theological argument, based on the dogma of Trinity and on the teaching of the two kingdoms. We have seen that the argument from these sources is not convincing. All that has already been said in the essay of 1931. Only the disguising of the actual enemy from of 1935 as the historical figure of the infamous caesaro-papist, Eusebius, was generally convincing – and not only for the Christian opponent to any absolutist state and to any national or ethnic [völkischen] totalitarianism: any liberal, any anti-clerical person and, last but not least, any classically educated humanist could agree without hesitation. Peterson was entitled to any polemic that hit home in 1935. The big problem of political theology and the concept of the political could not have been eliminated through this polemic. The real effect of Peterson’s treatise, its wit, one might say, was not the closure of that big problem but the effective use of a political myth. Peterson tacitly presupposes the myth of caesaro-papism and Byzantinism and at the same time emphasises it. The negative myth of Eusebius was propagated by Jacob Burckhardt in the middle of the liberal nineteenth century and, due to his lasting authority, this myth went uncontested. Jacob Burckhardt’s authority was a cultural product in the same spirit of the humanities which the theologian, Peterson, dismissed distastefully in his short treatise Was ist Theologie? [What is Theology] in 1925. In 1935,

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the same doyen of the humanities, Jacob Burckhardt, anonymously provided the same theologian, Erik Peterson, with material from which the maximum effect could be gained for his legendary and so-called purely theological treatise. The theologian understood how to use the cultural effect in a highly theological disguise. He recoined it for the contemporary situation in order to gain, by this means, the most effective political attention for his famous treatise of 1935. The categorical distinctions between the two kingdoms and spheres, which were handled in a practical way in epochs which recognised the institutions of state and church, do not work any longer when the religious cannot be clearly differentiated from the church and the political from the empire [Reich] or state. For the walls collapse and the spaces which were once distinct intermingle and penetrate each other, as in a labyrinthine architecture of light. The façade of the absolute purity of the theological is then no longer convincing. Peterson’s verdict becomes shallow. An extension of his verdict to non-theological ideas just emphasises more clearly its shallowness. In an essay from 1947, ‘Existentialismus und protestantische Theologie’ [‘Existentialism and Protestant Theology’], Peterson states, with reference to Heidegger’s philosophy, that in it ‘one has seen clearly the consequences of the transformation of theological concepts into universal concepts’; namely, it ‘leads to such a distortion that the decision for God, who became incarnate in history, becomes a decision for the Führer, who is the incarnation of his time’. According to this logic, the explicitly non-theological philosophy of Heidegger should also be affected by this verdict and therefore unmasked as secularised theology. The imbalance of Peterson’s argument and of his absolute verdict now becomes evident. Peterson achieved the disguise of the

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contemporary situation by means of an historical disguising of the prototype of Eusebius; nevertheless, [the disguising] cannot save his apodictic and shallow verdict. Not even Peterson’s attempt to confront Eusebius with Saint Augustine can challenge this conclusion. 6 The Confrontation between Eusebius and Augustine Peterson’s theological argument is based on several soteriological presuppositions. Eusebius said, with reference to an OT prophecy (Micah 4,4): ‘All that came to pass when the Romans came to power, from the day our Lord Saviour was born until now’ (p. 77). Peterson, as exegete, was outraged by that. He accuses the bishop of Caesarea of seeing ‘without hesitation that all prophesies about the peace of nation were fulfilled by the Roman Empire’ and he dismisses him by saying: ‘the lack of exegetical skills is obvious’ (ibid.). This is immediately followed by confronting him with Saint Augustine: ‘But Augustine, in Civitas Dei, iii 30, says something else.’ The transition from the world of Constantine the Great to Alaric, king of the Vandals during the declining Western Roman Empire, is truly remarkable, although easily acountable in an historian from the year 1935. In terms of the politico-historical and historico-dogmatic situation, you cannot compare the context of a Greek church father of the Nicaean Council with that of a Latin church father under the rule of the Vandals. Why, then, the reference to Book iii, chapter 30 of the Civitas Dei? Does this chapter contain perhaps the decisive theological argument? In the vast work of St Augustine there are some chapters of stunning relevance for the present and force of argument; as an example, I just want to mention i 11, with its sublime overcoming of the

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humanitarian lamentations for the numerous deaths during the migration of the nations – a chapter that Karl Marx could have referred to as a classical document whenever he talked about religion as ‘the heart of a heartless world’. Or consider iv 15, with its mockery of the ‘just wars’ of the ‘imperial powers’. The reader who makes the effort to reread Book iii chapter 30 will be disappointed to a certain extent. He will find in Book iii a description of the Roman civil wars. This is a topos for classical rhetoric which contains terrifying descriptions and which Peterson himself detects in Eusebius, Ambrosius and Hieronymus [St Jerome] (p. 148, n. 145). Augustine refers to it in order to demonstrate to the pagans that their gods are powerless because they cannot prevent such cruelty. In chapter 30 under discussion, he names Sulla, Caesar and Octavian, whom he belittles – in contrast to the praise given to them by Eusebius – as adopted nephews-in-law of the great Caesar. The chapter continues with a lamentation over the particular misfortune that hit the unlucky Cicero during the civil war. Peterson pities Cicero for being so foolish as to make a pact with Octavian in order to save the freedom of the republic from Antonius, while Octavian made a pact with Antonius in order to kill Cicero and liberty; so ‘blind and naïve’ was this pagan Cicero – usque adeo caecus atque improvidus futurorum [to such an extent (sc. was he) blind and lacking in the foresight of things to come] – says Augustine. Cicero was very popular in the west throughout the fourth century (Arnold Erhardt, Politische Metaphysik [Political Metaphysics], Volume 3, p. 39) and particularly useful as a point of reference. Naïve and blind. Maybe Peterson’s reference to the fate of Cicero contains a subtle contemporary allusion to the

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situation of 1935. That would be interesting as a contribution to the possibilities of free speech in a time of political censorship and manipulation of the public sphere. As a theological argument in the confrontation between Eusebius and Augustine, it is very weak, and, if taken to demonstrate the theological superiority of Saint Augustine, it is a misuse of the incomparable authority of the great Latin church father. Nobody questions the theological superiority of St Augustine. But this chapter iii 30, with its lamentation over the ‘blind’ Cicero, demonstrates nothing but the superiority of someone born later, who makes judgements post festum on people who have acted in the past. The later generation might regard what, to the older, was a dark and unpredictable future as a completely transparent historical development and might wonder about the ‘blindness’ of that older generation. Tomorrow’s future, as Julien Freund correctly states, is just the past of the day after tomorrow. Imaginative retrospectives provide no basis for theological arguments. In the comparison between Augustine with Cicero, what is evident is the superiority of a Christian theologian from the time of the migration of nations over a pagan philosopher from the time of Octavian’s civil war. But in the confrontation between Eusebius and Augustine as Peterson constructs it, what is evident is the superiority of a Christian theologian who witnessed the decline of the western Roman Empire over a Christian theologian who lived one hundred years earlier, in the time of Diocletian, Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea. Of course, it was not Augustine himself who made this claim against Eusebius: a Christian theologian from 1935 used it, turning it against the father of the history of the Christian church in order to accuse him of political theology.

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Emperor Augustus’ universal peace, which Eusebius glorifies, did not put an end to the atrocities of wars and civil wars. Not even the universal peace of Constantine the Great lasted for very long. Therefore neither of these forms of peace are genuine. Peterson calls such forms of peace ‘questionable’, and he juxtaposes the Augustan peace with the authentic Christian Augustinian peace, which will only emerge at the end of time, with the return of Christ. Neither Caesar nor Augustus nor Constantine the Great were able to put an end to wars and civil wars. Was the Augustinian peace in Civitas Dei able to accomplish this? The millennium of Christian popes and emperors who recognised the Augustinian theology of peace was also a millennium of wars and civil wars. The doctrine of the two swords – one of which is a spiritual sword – is still beyond the horizon. The confessional civil wars during the Reformation, in the Christian sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were about the ius reformandi [right to reform] of the Christian church; they were concerned with inner theological, and even inner Christological, disputes. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is the fruit of a particular theologico-political era.10 An epoch of ius revolutionis [right to revolt] and total secularisation followed. The sentence in Hegel that ‘it is the stupidity of the younger generation’ to make a revolution without reformation and to assume that it is possible to make an alternative constitution for a state, based on quietness and harmony with the old religion and its sacred values (Encyclopaedia § 525 [= Hegel’s Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences]) has to be understood as a politico-theological statement;11 and Joachim of Floris’ theology of history is a theologico-political interpretation of the doctrine of Trinity.12

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Peterson does see that there is a new problem with that at all. He repeats the criticism of Eusebius made in the essay ‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’] of 1931, and he adds erudite philological sources from the same period – the first Christian centuries; but then he does not conclude, as in 1931, with the eschatological reference to the antichrist. Instead, he enlarges his sources through an appeal to St Augustine and declares in his conclusion that any political theology has been brought to a conclusion forever, through the Christian doctrine of Trinity of the Greek fathers and through Saint Augustine’s theology of peace. So what does this conclusion really say?

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1 The Claims of the Conclusion At the end of his treatise, Peterson reiterates that the Christian doctrine of the triune God is beyond both Judaism and paganism, because the mystery of the Trinity itself is only understandable in the deity as such, not in the creature. Even the peace which any Christian seeks cannot be guaranteed by any Caesar, but can only be a gift given by the One who is ‘higher than all rationality’. Such a testimony was not, of course, suited to becoming an academic legend. It already assumes the legendary conclusion, and it is followed by the concluding remark that is our present concern. The conclusion is comprised of three sentences, which run as follows: 1. The doctrine of the divine monarchy had to fail on account of the trinitarian dogma, and the interpretation of the pax Augusta had to fail on account of Christian eschatology. 2. Therefore it is not only the case that monotheism was theologically brought to an end as a political problem and that the Christian creed was freed from any concatenation with

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the Roman Empire; also, this fundamental dismissal of any ‘political theology’ revealed the abuse of the proclamation of the Christian gospel in its justification of any political situation. 3. ‘Political theology’ is only possible on the basis of Judaism or paganism. Sentence one is a transparent claim; it is based on historical sources and on the argument for the work in progress, and it dictates the conclusion. Such a thesis would be debatable just on its own. Sentence two is ambivalent and combines four different claims. First, sentence one states that ‘theologically, monotheism as a political problem is brought to an end’; and theologians would have to decide among themselves whether this is the case whenever they wanted to solve political problems theologically. Secondly, it is claimed that the Christian belief has been ‘freed from any concatenation with the Roman Empire’ and this is a repetition of the thesis of sentence one. Thirdly, any political theology has to be contradicted whenever it abuses the Christian gospel. And it seems here that this is also true for any non-monotheistic political theology: this would be a theological argument, and therefore an issue for theologians. Fourthly, with the use of the word abuse [Mißbrauch], another level of ambivalence suddenly becomes evident, because an ambiguous predicament is introduced: abuse is an ambivalent concept, which needs to be interpreted; the ‘fundamental’ dismissal [dismissal of the abuse of political theology] does not need to be a concrete dismissal, ipso facto a complete dismissal. It rather depends upon the recognition of the preconditions of the case and upon its legal status. The dismissal does not concern any polit-

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ical theology as such, but only its abuse. Neither is it concerned with what could possibly be the very strong, immediate, political implications of a pure theology which does not abuse the proclamation of the Christian gospel for the justification of a political situation but implies a justification (or even a condemnation). Anyway, we can only discuss this fourth claim in sentence two, which is a sub-clausal statement, if it becomes obvious who decides in concreto the evidence or lack of evidence for an abuse. It seems that this character should be the theologian. Sentence three employs the term ‘political theology’ in inverted commas, and by doing this it signals reservations. Besides that, the sentence is not in itself contradictory, and so we can discuss it further as a thesis. 2 The Assertive Power of the Conclusion In what language are these three sentences spoken? It is scarcely the language of theology, at least not in its strictest sense, as presented to us by Peterson in his essay ‘What is Theology?’ of 1925. ‘Closure’ [Erledigung] is not a theological term. Should it be understood as a declaration of an anathema or heresy, its authority would be compromised by the scholarly argumentative style of its exposition. The scholarly style of thinking and expression in these three sentences returns them to the sphere of academic discussion. Peterson usually declares that false opinions in this sphere are not automatically heresies (Hochland, 33, October 1935, p. 6). Nor is it very likely that he intended a declaration of ratione peccati [argument based on guilt]. The main argument can be summarised as follows: monotheism is theologically brought to an end as a political

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problem. This can either mean that it is brought to an end because it is a political and not a theological problem, and therefore does not concern the theologian; or it is brought to an end despite being a political problem, and hence also subjected (as res mixta) to a theological judgement; in this way it can be brought to an end (also) as a political problem – from a theological perspective. In the first case, this would be a pure theology for the theologians, something of l’art pour l’art [practised] by theologians who disqualify the contributions of non-theologians by labelling them ‘political theology’ in the sense of lay theology, ideology, political journalism, rhetoric or propaganda. In the second case, it should be understood as a scholarly argument, and therefore it ought to be recognised that this is possible as an academic discourse from both sides – the theological as well as the political. Furthermore, this presupposes, on both sides – mutually compatible as they are – a common understanding of academic discourse as well as structurally congruent key concepts. There is no real division of disciplines without something of a common language. Nobody would claim that the theological doctrine of Trinity could solve a mathematical problem about numbers. And the reverse of this statement, that mathematics could solve the problem of the Trinity, would be meaningless to the same extent. Except that this reversal only wants to point out that theology is not a proper academic discipline. Theologians have achieved a lot with respect to the current fashionable understandings of science and scientific fashion if they defend themselves from the interventions of non-theological disciplines, even though these disciplines might have provided a support for its apologetics. The expression ‘bringing to an end’ [erledigen] is not really part of Peterson’s theological vocabulary, but nevertheless he

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falls back upon it either polemically and pugnaciously or with respect to the language of the philosophy of values. By this, a vast area, a whole cosmos of images, reflections and vertical (insofar as they go from down to up) analogies of symbols and similes is brought to an end – but also the ‘exemplary’ prototype of such wrongdoing, the Bishop Eusebius, as Christian theologian, as exegete, as historian and as a ‘political’ character. Furthermore, my own academic treatise on constitutional law, Political Theology of 1922, which bears the subtitle Four Chapters on the Doctrine of Sovereignty, is nominatim [‘expressly’] torn apart hastily in a concluding sentence. Neither is the preliminary remark, written in November 1933 for the second edition of 1934, mentioned with reference to the formula le roi et ne gouverne pas. This is a pity for an objective reason, which becomes evident in the light of an important problem, which is evaded and which Peterson himself raises in his essay What isTheology? of 1925.This is the relation between theology and law as two academic disciplines which work, to a large extent, with structurally compatible concepts. Normally, in other cases, Peterson can distinguish theological closures from other kinds of academic closures. For example, that is how he is able to dismiss the book by Edgar Salin, Civitas Dei (1926), in a review (Schmollers Jahrbuch, Volume 50 (1926) p. 175), by saying: ‘There is hardly any sentence in this book which will go unchallenged by the theologian or the “scholar”.’ Here he also emphasises that the theologian, ‘who in the end is always also an advocate’, is not able to judge with same objective interest as the ‘scholar’. We are here concerned with the conceptual structure of his antithesis between theology and politics. Theology is not the same as religion or faith or numinous excitement. Theology wants to be a serious academic discipline and it will remain as

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such, unless a completely different understanding of science is able to marginalise religion and its theology and to assimilate them into a scientific understanding of the world, rendering them superfluous by making them either anachronistic or forms of psychoanalytical neurosis. The adequate opposition to theology as a science is another science, which needs to be more than just an auxiliary discipline or methodology. Which science could fulfil this job? Politics is not a science, and sociology or political science are understood as precise methodologies, not compatible with theology. The relationship between theology and metaphysics remains unclear. It cannot be the historiography of the first centuries, as in the review of Salin’s book mentioned above. Neither can it be what Peterson called the ‘most dubious of all disciplines, the so-called humanities’ (‘What is Theology?’, 1925, p. 23). Therefore what remains can only be theology’s academic twin, which is – when not diluted into history – the theory of law. This was developed into a systematic discipline in the Christian Middle Ages out of sheer casuistry. One of its last great representatives was the Protestant canon lawyer, Rudolph Sohm. Hans Barion, the canon lawyer, ecclesiologist, historian of law and jurist in constitutional law, who in 1942 gave a valid interpretation of Sohm’s work on the anniversary of his hundredth birthday (Deutsche Rechtswissenschaft, 1942, pp. 47–51), is Sohm’s legitimate successor, for us, from a Roman Catholic perspective. There is no need to outline the legal and historical context here. Barion understands the Codex Iuris Canonici as ‘an inner order of the legal constitution of the church which is an exemplary approach to the divine ecclesial law’ (Säkularisation und Utopie [Secularisation and Utopia], Ebracher Studien. Ernst Forsthoff zum 65. Geburtstag, p. 190). Moreover, one of Max Weber’s

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quotations should be sufficient – the one I had in mind when I referred to his name in my essay of 1923 on Roman Catholicism. Max Weber reminds us that it was the right of the Roman church to have ‘produced a rational system unlike any other holy rite’ and which was even unknown to Roman law. He then concludes: The muftis, rabbis and geonim found parallels only in the confessors and directeurs de l’âme of the Counter-Reformation, and in certain divines of the old Protestant churches. Such casuistic ministry was then promptly productive of certain remote similarities to the Talmudic products, especially within the Catholic realm. But everything was under the supervision of the central offices of the Holy See, and binding norms of social ethics were currently elaborated exclusively through their highly elastic decrees. In this way, there arose that unique relationship between sacred and secular law in which canon law became indeed one of the guides for secular law on the road to rationality. The relatively decisive factor was the unique organisation of the Catholic church as a rational institution [Anstalt].1

I have to be cautious here not to deliver, once more, an eulogy. Theology and jurisprudence have been institutionalised into two separate, but often also antagonistic, faculties, and they forged a ius utrumque [reciprocal right] which was an academic achievement of secular significance between canonists and jurists within this academic rivalry. This is exactly what is at stake in my Political Theology.2 The scientific conceptual structure of both these faculties has systematically produced areas in which concepts can be transposed, among which harmonious exchanges are permitted and meaningful. It is only a question of the right attunement of the instrument. The

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one who is political is, in this context, the legal theorist, who belongs to a concrete order which is part of the state; the canon lawyer is theological here and he belongs to the concrete order of the church. But the prototype of political theology as represented by Peterson – Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who was suspected of Arianism – is an ecclesiastical and theological figure in a situation in which the church is not juxtaposed to the state, but to a still pagan empire which seeks to become Christian. Prior to his conversion to Catholicism, Peterson had made a long comment in his essay What is Theology? (1925), stating that the juridical vernacular has an extraordinary impact upon theology; there he relates very closely the vernacular of the New Testament to the law. Dogma and sacrament, as he claims, are terms taken from juridical discourse, because both of them are the performance [Vollzug] of the incarnate Word of God, and much more than just preaching and exegesis. This is called the ‘inner character of the New Testament’s revelation’. Dogma and theology are not just a completion, in the same way as the Incarnation is the fulfilment of the Old Testament, but they are ‘at the same time something else, not covered by the prophetic word: a performance’. The ‘conceptual clarity’ of the dogma also reveals the ‘clarity and forceful character of the revelation of the logos’. In short, it is astonishing with what clarity and outspokenness it is realised that decision and precision belong to the act of the Word of God, and that the human being transforms the immediacy of that charisma into a self-destructive irrationality through his rejection of it and of its legal implications. In a footnote to an exchange of letters with Harnack (Hochland, November 1932 = Traktate, p. 321), Peterson declared that confessional controversy in Germany – in 1932 – ‘was only authentic to a

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certain extent in the area of political theology. The specific novelty and Christian character (compared to the “holy” right) is of course preserved in canon law and not in the holy right’ (note 14 in the essay on the church from 1929). This knowledge of the legal character of the act, and the frank recognition of a self-ruling medium, are indeed astonishing. It is even more surprising that such assertions were tacitly ignored in a publication on political theology which was published shortly after. In the scholarly essay ‘Göttliche Monarchie’ [‘Divine Monarchy’] of 1931 (p. 562), Peterson writes about Tertullian that he – in contrast to the politicising Eusebius – had put the idea of divine monarchy into legal terms. Maybe this is an echo of the critique of the juridical, although it remains a remark, and an incidental one at that, according to which the autonomy of the juridical accuracy of the act [of the Word of God] is still recognised above and beyond academic theology. Tertullian is the prototype of a reflection on the theological possibilities of specific legal thinking. He is still mentioned in Peterson’s treatise from 1935, although no longer as the legalising theologian contrasted to the politicising theologian Eusebius, but through a critique of his theologically defective interpretation of the doctrine of Trinity in terms of a ‘theory of state’. However, it remains a test case of decisive significance for the general relation between theology and jurisprudence that the jurist Tertullian insisted on the charisma of the martyr in the crucial moment of the institutionalisation [of the church] and that he opposed the full transformation of that charisma into a charisma of the office. This was the soteriological and historical moment when the ruling extra ecclesiam nulla salus [‘there is no salvation outside the church’] was formulated by St Cyprian. Arnold T.

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Ehrhard discusses that moment in volume two of his threevolume work Politische Metaphysik von Solon bis Augustinus [Political Metaphysics from Solon to Augustine] under the title ‘Die Christliche Revolution’ [‘The Christian Revolution’] (Tübingen, 1959). The legal theory of the church was brought into being by Tertullian, and Cyprian was the first one to give it the formulation which made a legal organisation ‘perfect’ (Arnold T. Ehrhardt in the chapter ‘Die Afrikanische Kirche II’ [‘The African Church II’], pp. 134– 81); whereas the jurist Tertullian in particular opposed such juridical perfection by insisting on the non-official charisma of the martyr, which Cyprian rejected in favour of the priestly charisma of the office. Erhardt observes (Political Metaphysics, Volume II, p. 165) that, since Cyprian, the term clerus incorporates the ‘technical’ meaning of the distinction between the ordained members of the clergy and the people – laos, with its association with the laity: Derived from the usage of the word in Acts 1. 17, this linguistic development shows the acceptance, by the Christian laity, of the doctrine of apostolic succession in the strict sense of the word. With that acceptance the complete legal organisation of the church in the west of the empire was accomplished.

It should be noticed that Arnold Ehrhardt uses the word ‘technical’ and not ‘juridical’, although, in his academic examination of this development, he writes from the perspective of the history of law – maybe to avoid possible reservations emerging from any transition from legal theory to theology. Only in the light of the antithesis between the theological and the juridical has the statement ‘theologically political

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monotheism is brought to an end’ a precise academic meaning. How should a theology, which explicitly separates itself from politics, be able to put an end, theologically, either political authority or a political claim? If the theological and the political are two substantially separate spheres – toto caelo [completely] different – then a political question can only be dealt with politically. The theologian can reasonably declare the closure of issues of political significance only by establishing himself as a political voice which makes political claims. Whenever he gives a theological answer to a political question, either he simply ignores the world and the sphere of the political or he attempts to reserve the right to impact directly or indirectly on the sphere of the political. It is therefore either a renunciation of any theological competence in political issues (the theologian remains pure in his pure element), or it is the opening of a conflict of competences, a kind of contestation of authorities [Litiskontestation]. The statement ‘political monotheism is theologically brought to an end’ implies the theologian’s claim to the right of making decisions in the political sphere too, and his demand for authority over the political power. This claim becomes politically more intense along with the degree to which theological authority claims to supersede political power. In the case of the opening of a conflict of competences, the theological party then refers to the character of the human being as a double-creature, a mixture of two natures composed of spirit and matter, soul and body. In fact, this presupposes common Christian–theological representations of the nature of human beings, as well as a difference concerning modes of communication between Christians on the one hand and other populations and governments on the other. The possibility of a ‘concordat’ will always remain a specific problem,

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because each party in the conflict can accuse the other of an ‘impure’ mixture of theology and politics, or politics and theology. As a consequence, the conflict will be radicalised and made politically more intense. If the theologian insists on his theological decision, then he has decided on a political question theologically and has claimed for himself a kind of political competence. The assertive power of the pretentious and seemingly superior verdict goes no further than a sharp, but only abstract–absolute, declaration of competence or incompetence. The rest is equivocation. A conflict is always a struggle between organisations and institutions in the sense of concrete orders. It is a struggle of institutions over stances. Substances must first of all have found their form; they must have been brought into a formation before they can actually encounter each other as contesting subjects in a conflict, that is, as parties belligérantes. The distinction between substance and instance might sound reminiscent of Aristotelian hylomorphism; however, it is both meaningful in practice and correct in theory. If both parties in the conflict are unable to negotiate their right of co-determination in terms of a concordat, the conflict of competences must end in the same way as the confessional civil wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century: either in a precise answer to the big question quis judicabit? [‘who will decide’?] or in an equally precise itio in partes [‘return to the region’] – that is, in a spatially clear territorial or regional demarcation, in accordance with the principle cuius regio eius religio [‘who rules defines the creed’]. In the interim, in that ambivalent situation of an ‘impure mixture’, both parties in the conflict are keen to point out the limits of each other’s competences and declare: Silete in munere alieno! [‘Mind your own business!’] This is the

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beginning of a new epoch in the academic discipline of international law, the rational and humane cultivation of the war between states in the ius publicum Europaeum [European public law]. Until the Day of Judgement, the Augustinian teaching on the two kingdoms will have to face the twofold open question: Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur? [‘Who will decide? Who will interpret?’] Who answers in concreto, on behalf of the concrete, autonomously acting human being, the question of what is spiritual, what is worldly and what is the case with the res mixtae, which, in the interval between the first and the second arrival of the Lord, constitute, as a matter of fact, the entire earthly existence of this spiritual-worldly, spiritual-temporal, double-creature called a human being? This is the big question posed by Thomas Hobbes, which is at the centre of my treatise Political Theology from 1922 and which led to a theory of decisionism [Dezisionismus] and of the inner logic of the act. This is, as one can see, the question about the legitimation of any reformation and revolution; the question of the ius reformandi and then, in the later phase, the structurally different question of the ius revolutionis. Hans Barion has pointed out in the Savigny Zeitschrift (Kanonische Abteilung 46, 1960, p. 500) that Thomas Hobbes’ theory of state sovereignty is, to the last detail, the antithetical counterpart to John of Salisbury’s hierocratic teaching. In my essay on Hobbes, ‘Die vollendete Reformation’ [‘The Completed Reformation’] (Der Staat 4 [1965], p. 63), I have called attention to the fact that this has opened a new historical horizon for the interpretation of Hobbes.

Postscript: On the Current Situation of the Problem: The Legitimacy of Modernity Erik Peterson’s now legendary closure of any political theology wants to be understood as a theological negation from the perspective of the theology of a trinitarian–monotheistic religion which claims to be absolute. Our analysis of his treatise from 1935 on political monotheism was limited to the relation between the objective argumentation and its conclusion. Peterson’s horizon only covers the political monotheism of Hellenistic philosophy; his is, therefore, only a metaphysics or a philosophy of religion. The large and pressing topic itself, political theology and political metaphysics, has not yet been the subject of an objective investigation in our particular examination of a scholarly legend. We will wait to see what happens in the discussion on Peterson which Hans Barion has declared necessary in his contribution to Epirrhosis (1968). At the end of our present and limited analysis we only attempt to sketch the horizon of the problem as it can be grasped in the contemporary situation.

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This comes out best in Hans Blumenberg’s book Die Legitimität der Neuzeit [The Legitimacy of Modernity] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1966). In this book, the non-absolute is declared absolute and an attempt is made to negate scientifically any political theology – scientifically in the sense of an understanding of science which does not accept any validity for a continuing influence of, or transposition from, the history of salvation stemming from a religion which claims to be absolute. Such transpositions are regarded as tragic mortgages from past epochs. Their liquidation is part of the worldliness of a de-theologised modernity and will remain its ‘permanent critical office’ (p. 61). Such an admonition cannot remain unheard. The clear thesis and the overwhelming material in this unusual book require, from our side, some comments from a juridical perspective about the current state of the problem. Blumenberg’s generalising mixture of my thesis with all sorts of confused parallels between religious, eschatological and political ideas (p. 18) could give rise to misunderstandings. It should have been noticed that my elaborations on political theology are not grounded in a diffuse metaphysics. They bring to light the classical case of a transposition of distinct concepts which has occurred within the systematic thought of the two – historically and discursively – most developed constellations of ‘western rationalism’: the Catholic church with its entire juridical rationality and the state of the ius publicum Europaeum, which was supposed to be Christian in even Thomas Hobbes’ system. This understanding of the state has achieved, to date, the greatest rational ‘progress’ of humanity in the definition of war as it appears in the theory of international law: namely the distinction between the enemy and the criminal, and therefore the only possible basis for the theory of the neutrality of

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states in times of war between them. That, for me, is part of my political theology and it indicates the paradigm shift in modernity. On the ‘threshold’ of this shift, we hear Alberico Gentile’s Silete theologi! [Theologians, keep quiet!] – he who was a contemporary, countryman and companion in fate – although much luckier than him – of Giordano Bruno of Nola [in Campania]. For Blumenberg, ‘secularisation is a category of historical injustice’. He seeks to unmask it as such, and he hopes to overcome its translations and transpositions through the legitimacy of modernity. He hoisted a juridical flag with his booktitle Legitimität der Neuzeit [The Legitimacy of Modernity]. The challenge he poses is even greater, because the word ‘legitimacy’ was understood for centuries as the monopoly for the legitimation of dynasties. In other words, it was a justification of continuity, tradition, upbringing and heritage; a ‘historical’ justification of the past and of an ‘historical school of law’ which its progressive and revolutionary enemies accused of legitimating the injustice of today through the injustice of yesterday. This seems to be simply grounded in a justification issuing from the novelty. Blumenberg’s extraordinary achievement could easily be identified, by hasty commentators, as similar to the triviality of David Friedrich Strauss, which we have mentioned above (Chapter 1.3, pp. 52–3). This suggests therefore that legitimation through genuinely rational and ‘legal’ knowledge cannot count as legitimacy (p. 313), but rather as legality – because of its explicit link to the exception and interruption of the unquestionable nature of the ‘law’. Unfortunately, the conception of law is mortgaged in a particularly tragic way to very old theological and metaphysical antitheses, which seem to become even

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more impenetrable due to a modern scientific ‘law of nature’, because right (in the sense of freedom) is juxtaposed to law as a means of force. I just want to refer to the theological opposition between the Old and the New Testament, in which the law is opposed to the gospel; to the difference between an understanding of the law before and after exile within the Old Testament; and to the confusion which emerged from the habit of translating into German the [ancient] Greek word nomos as law [Gesetz].1 In contemporary language, legitimacy means righteousness and legality lawfulness. Legality is the logical result of the function of a state bureaucracy or of any other mathematically construed apparatus; it is viewed as the predictable function of a sequential procedure compatible with what is taken as modern bureaucracy. Legitimacy would carry with it a vast contraband of old concepts and transpositions which could include tradition, customs, fatherhood and the necromancy of the old. These distinctions are ultimately taken from Max Weber’s sociology and they are not even mentioned in Blumenberg’s book. Nevertheless, he remains one of the main representatives of successful theories of secularisation, and not only because of his famous theory of irrational charismatic legitimacy as the genuine source of all revolutionary justification – which is in contrast to legality. Legality, for the French Revolution of 1789, was a higher and more valid, more rational and new mode of legitimacy; it was a message from the goddess of Reason, from the new opposed to the old. In the meantime, political experiences and popular–paedagogical enlightenments, given expression by Bert Brecht, have contributed to the fact that legality is nothing more than a synonym for mob rule. Today, whoever wishes to emphasise that he is right and

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that his statements are just normally speaks of what is legitimate and not of what is legal. Even when he creates both some normative basis through a law passed by himself and the conditions for the possibility of law-making – consensus, public opinion, control of all the factors involved in the process of legislation – his authority can be called, scientifically too, a genuine self-empowerment. If everything is strictly regulated by legal normativity, exceptions are condemned, mutations suspect, and miracles are seen almost as acts of sabotage. Then the question evidently arises of how that which is continually new could emerge within such a legal framework. But such a question would not address the reason for the rejection of miracles, exceptions, voluntarism and decisionism. In the end, Blumenberg is interested in the self-empowerment of human beings and in the human thirst for knowledge. Concerning the latter, he explicitly states that, ‘by its nature, it does not need any justification at all’ (p. 393). ‘Knowledge does not need any justification, it justifies itself; it is not the gift of God and is not bound by enlightenment or insights through grace. Rather, it rests upon its own evidence, which neither God nor Man can ignore’ (p. 395). That’s it. Autism is inherent in this argument. Its immanence, directed polemically against a theological transcendence, is nothing but self-empowerment. Of course, Blumenberg also speaks the language of a philosophy of values. According to its logic, [this language] operates not only with transvaluations but also with the loss of value, with the announcement of the loss of value and even with the announcement of invalidity – and, as such, it therefore can become a vehicle for that which is radically aggressive. Thus questions of legitimacy or legality are dissolved into the universal convertibility of values. This aspect of the

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issue is called the ‘tyranny of values’, and its justification for the annihilation of what is invalid can only be addressed through a reference (compare the Ebracher Festschrift for Ernst Forsthoff, Stuttgart 1967, pp. 37–63; see also, for the antinomy between planning and progress, the significant essay by Hans-Joachim Arndt, ‘Die Figur des Plans als Utopie der Bewahrung’ [‘The Prototype of the Plan as Utopia of Conservation’], pp. 119ff.). From the standpoint of a self-empowering novelty, it is logical to reject any need for justification. Is there a reason why what is really new should justify itself before the prevailing old, which stands in opposition to the new? Because the old is no longer significant? However, the inner aporiae of the contradictions in planning and novelty are indeed great and must radicalise and inaugurate the immanent aggression of the unfettered new. In such a context the Latin word curiositas, as the name for the hunger for knowledge, seems almost too weak. Maybe the Greek word tolma [audacity] (see The Legitimacy of Modernity [Blumenberg, H., Frankfurt a. M.: SuhrkampVerlag, 1966)], p. 269) is more appropriate, because it is an expression that implies audacity and joy in the danger of having no need for justification. The old word hubris, as used in modernity, would seem to be inappropriate and only slightly better than a powerless lamentation with theological overtones. I don’t want to create the impression, with these remarks, that I wish to engage in a confrontation with a book that opens up astonishing horizons, theologically, anthropologically and cosmologically, and whose insights were very fruitful for me. Neither starting nor attempting such a confrontation would be appropriate. What is intended here, in the context of a postscript, is a specific analysis of a theological treatise which

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brings to an end the problem of political theology through a confrontation between Eusebius and Augustine and which was quite successful in doing that. I cannot even begin with a report on the paragraphs which I see as the most important parts, for me, of that book – like those on Tertullian (The Legitimacy of Modernity, pp. 282–3) and his specific theological decisionism (see my lecture on ‘Die drei Arten des Rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens’ [‘The Three Modes of Juridical Thinking’], 1936, pp. 25–6). Neither can I enter into the problem which is so central in our context and whose exposition is the key to Blumenberg’s critique: the relation between St Augustine and Gnosticism. I would have to examine the interpretation of Book xxi, 1–8, of Civitas Dei (p. 309) and, furthermore, I would have to attempt to interpret correctly the difficult passage on tanta novitas [‘so much novelty’] in Book xii, ch. 21, of Civitas Dei with respect to all its implications concerning the eternal return and happiness of the human individual, postlapsarian predestination and divine almightiness.2 To cover all that in a postscript is absurd even as an idea. But what is still needed is a word about the criterion for the political and for a political theology; that is, about the distinction between friend and enemy. Peterson in his teaching on the Christian Trinity refers decisively to a passage in Gregory of Nazianzus (Oratio Theologica iii 2) which revolves around this formulation: The One – to Hen – is always in uproar – stasiazon – against itself – pros heauton. Right in the middle of the most precise formulation of this difficult dogma, we find the word stasis in the sense of ‘uproar’. The etymology and history of the word stasis deserves to be mentioned in this context. It extends from Plato (the Sophist, 249–54, and the Republic, Book v, 470), through the

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Neoplatonists, Plotinus in particular, to the Greek church fathers and teachers. With this concept an intriguing contradiction of a dialectical nature emerges. Stasis means in the first place quiescence, tranquillity, standpoint, status; its antonym is kinesis, movement. But stasis also means, in the second place, (political) unrest, movement, uproar and civil war. Most Greek dictionaries put those two diametrically opposed meanings together, without any attempt to explain them – which, to be fair, cannot be expected from them.3 Even the sheer listing of numerous examples of such opposition provides a rich resource for the observation of political and politico-theological phenomena. At the heart of the doctrine of Trinity we encounter a genuine politico-theological stasiology. Thus the problem of enmity and of the enemy cannot be ignored. In today’s Anglo-American vernacular we can observe another linguistic fact which is relevant to our problem: the word foe, which, since Shakespeare, was only regarded as old-fashioned and used ‘rhetorically’, has gained a new significance since the Second World War. In his contribution to the Festschrift Epirrhosis (1968), George Schwab has analysed this telling phenomenon under the title ‘Enemy or Foe: Ein Konflikt der modernen Politik’ [‘Enemy or Foe: A Conflict for Modern Politics’]. Consequently, for us, a closer look at the fate of the concept of enemy in a logically de-theologised and purely new human reality is inevitable. Here lies another new danger: if not a Manichaean enmity between God and the devil, then certainly a ‘Gnostic recidive’, to use Blumenberg’s terminology. Against the accusation of positing an alliance betweeen Gnosticism and modernity, he reverses the line of argument, claiming that modernity is the second – and this time successful – overcoming of Gnosticism, after the first unsuccessful overcoming –

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that of the Augustinian gnosis before the others (p. 78). Therefore the Christian Middle Ages and the ‘unity of its rational obsession with system’ can now be understood in terms of the defeat of its Gnostic opposite. Thus de-theologisation implies de-politisation, in the sense that the world has ceased being ‘politomorph’. Consequently, the distinction between friend and enemy is no longer valid as criterion of the political.4 Gnostic dualism juxtaposes the God of love, a God external to this world, viewed as God of salvation, to the just God, the Lord and creator of this evil world. The two gods are in a state of open war, or at least in a relationship of unbridgeable alienation similar to a kind of dangerous Cold War, in which the enmity can be more intense than any enmity found in the simplicity of a fight on traditional battlefields. The reason for the persuasiveness and contradictory difficulties of Gnostic dualism is not so much the prevalence of the old mythical and metaphorical symbols of light and darkness; rather, they stem from an almighty, all-knowing and all-benevolent creator God who cannot be the same as a God of salvation for the world he created. Augustine shifts the focus of this difficulty away from the deity, onto the human being endowed with freedom and created by God. In other words, he sees the problem in the creature who, by the power of the freedom he is endowed with, now transforms God’s world, which does not need salvation, into a world in need of salvation. Humans, created by God and endowed with these powers, prove their freedom not through the good they do but through their wicked acts. The doctrine of Trinity accommodates the identity of the God of creation as the God of salvation through the unity between Father and Son. They are not absolutely identical, but nevertheless they are ‘one’.

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Thereby a dualism of two natures, God–human, becomes a unity in the second person. The main structural problem with Gnostic dualism, that is, with the problem of the God of creation and the God of salvation, dominates not only every religion of salvation and redemption. It exists inescapably in every world in need of change and renewal, and it is both immanent and ineradicable. One cannot get rid of the enmity between human beings by prohibiting wars between states in the traditional sense, by advocating a world revolution and by transforming world politics into world policing. Revolution, in contrast to reformation, reform, revision and evolution, is a hostile struggle. Friendship is almost impossible between the lord of a world in need of change, that is, a misconceived world – a lord who is guilty of this need for change because he does not support but rather opposes it – and the liberator, the creator of a transformed new world. They are, so to speak, by definition enemies. En temps de révolution tout ce qui est ancien est ennemi [‘During a revolution everything belonging to the old regime was considered inimical’] (Mignet). Even during the Reformation of the Christian church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, what had began as Christologopolitical conflict over the ius reformandi (the right to reform] became a politico-theological revolution. Hegel’s famous observation on reformation and revolution (Enzyklopädie §552 [= Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse ] [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences]) accurately reveals what is at stake only from the perspective of political theology. I have shown, in one of my essays on the new interpretation of Leviathan (Der Staat 4 [1965], pp. 51–69), that Thomas Hobbes brought the Reformation to a conclusion by recognising the state as a clear alternative to

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the Roman Catholic church’s monopoly on decision-making. This was the fruit of an epoch which was determined by the mediaeval idea of a ius reformandi on the one hand and, on the other, by the fact that the ‘state’ was emerging at that time and already claiming sovereign power. Blumenberg has masterly demonstrated the ‘paradigm shifts’ informing such a perspective through the confrontation between Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno (pp. 435ff.). I ended my exposition on Thomas Hobbes with the conclusion that his Leviathan is the product of an epoch which was ‘the fruit of a specifically theologico-political age’. I have demonstrated different types of enmity against Napoleon in a later essay, ‘Clausewitz als politischer Denker’ [‘Clausewitz as a Political Thinker’] (Der Staat 6 (1967), p. 494). I have distinguished between Fichte’s ideological enmity against Napoleon and Clausewitz’s political enmity, and I have alluded to a statement by Goethe, which was cited and interpreted by people intimate with Goethe’s work in countless informal conversations during the last war, 1939–45: the famous Latin motto endorsing Book 4 of Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth]: nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse [‘no one is/can do anything against God except God himself ’].5 The idea itself is old. If every unity implies a duality and therefore the possibility of uproar, or stasis, is immanent, then theology seems to become ‘stasiology’. Goethe’s dictum – which he himself may have formulated in Latin – has a Christological origin. I found out that it is taken from the fragments of Catherina von Siena by Jakob Michael Lenz, in which Catherine, fleeing her father, laments: ‘Mein Vater blickte wie ein liebender, Gekränkter Gott mich drohend an.

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Doch hätt’ er beide Hände ausgestreckt – Gott gegen Gott’ (sie zieht ein kleines Kruzifix aus ihrem Busen und küßt es) ‘Errette, rette mich Mein Jesus, dem ich folg, aus seinem Arm!. . . Errette, rette mich von meinem Vater Und seiner Liebe, seiner Tyrannei.’6 [‘My father looks menacingly at me like a loving and aggrieved God. But would he have both hands stretched out for me – God against God’ (she draws a small crucifix from her bosom and kisses it) ‘Save, save me My Jesus, whom I follow, from his arms! . . . Save, save me from my father And his love, his tyranny.’]

I am convinced that the key to the frequently disputed riddle of Goethe’s motto can be found here. Blumenberg gives so many examples of Christological insight that it may not be wrong to raise the problem of political theology in terms of the enemy and to direct some thesis towards the motto of a poet who is not suspected of any theological zeal – although, in a conversation with the Chancellor Friedrich von Müller (10 October 1823), he said: the doctrine of Christ’s divinity supports despotism, it is even its requirement. The following thesis is not an attempt to reify Blumenberg’s ideas; it just projects a counter-image which now I see much more clearly in order to understand my own position more sharply. The key question which offers itself to me about the political concerns the reality of an enemy

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whose concrete possibility I can still see in its entirely detheologised counter-image. Its transposition from the old political theology into a pretentious and totally new, purely secular and humane humanity needs to be watched closely and critically, for it remains indeed the permanent function [Officium] of any scientific struggle for knowledge. A completely de-theologised and modern–scientific closure of any political theology could therefore be formulated in the following train of thought: 1 For an academic, exact and scientific discipline, there is no theology as a subject of discussion, with specific and distinctive epistemological categories. Neither is there any scientific new political theology in the sense of transpositions from earlier theological positions; any democratic (instead of the earlier monotheistic) and no revolutionary (instead of the earlier counter-revolutionary) political theology. All detheologised concepts carry the weight of their scientifically impure origins. It is no longer possible to construct a new political theology ab ovo, so to speak. There is no ovum in an old or renewable sense at all. There is only a novum. All de-theologisations, de-politicisations, de-juridifications, deideologisations, de-historicisations, or any other series of de-prefixed entities tending towards a tabula rasa are nullified. The tabula rasa de-tabularises itself and is erased with its tabula. The new, purely human and secular science is a continuing and process–progress of a widening renewal of knowledge in purely secular human terms, driven by an ongoing human curiosity. 2 The new human being who produces himself in this process is no new Adam and not even a new pre-Adam. Even less is he a new Christ–Adam figure. Rather, he is the unplanned, arbitrary product of the process–progress of

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himself, which he both puts into action and maintains in operation. 3 The process–progress does not only produce itself and the new human being, but also the conditions for the possibility of its own novelty–renewal. This is the opposite of creation out of nothing, because it is the creation of nothingness as the condition for the possibility of the self-creation of an ever new worldliness. 4 The freedom of the human being is the highest value. The condition for the possibility of the freedom of humans is the neutrality [Wertfreiheit] of human science and knowledge. The condition for the performance of this neutral element [Wert-Freiheit] of science is the freedom the use [Verwertung] of its results within the framework of free production. The objectivity [Bewertungsfreiheit] gives meaning to the consumption [Verwertung] of the production within the framework of free use. The irreversible syndrome of neutrality, use and objectivity [Wert-Verwertungs-und Bewertungsfreiheit] is the progressive scientific, technical, industrial and free society. 5 The self-producing new human being that expresses itself in a processive progress of three freedoms (neutrality, use and objectivity [Wert-Verwertungs-und Bewertungsfreiheit]) is not a new God, and the new science ascribed to him is neither a new theology (no counter-theistic self-divinisation) nor a ‘religious anthropology’. 6 The new human being is aggressive in terms of the ongoing progress and continuous repositioning of himself. He rejects the concept of the enemy and any secularisation or transposition of old conceptions of the enemy. He leaves behind the outmoded through what is scientifically, technically and industrially new. The old is not the enemy of the new. The old resolves itself, through itself, in the scientific,

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technical, industrial process–progress which either consumes the old – according to the measure of new utilities – or will be ignored as unusable or annihilated as invalid. 7 Eripuit fulmen caelo, nova fulmina mittit Eripuit caelum deo, nova spatia struit. Homo homini res mutanda Nemo contra hominem nisi homo ipse. [He snatched the thunder ball from heaven, and sends out new thunder balls. He snatched away heaven from God and spread out new realms. Man is an interchangeable thing to man; No one is against man except man himself.]

I conclude with this question. Which of these three freedoms is intrinsically the most intense and aggressive: scientific neutrality, the technical and industrial freedom of production or the arbitrary nature of free human utilisation? Should this question be ruled out of court on academic grounds, because the word ‘aggressive’ has become value-free, then the situation would be clear: stat pro ratione Libertas, et Novitas pro Libertate [Freedom replaces Reason, and Novelty replaces Freedom].

Appendix: ‘Peterson’s Conclusion and Concluding Footnote’

Peterson, Erik, Der Monotheismus als Politisches Problem. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (Leipzig: Jakob Hegner, 1935). Conclusion, pp. 98–100. Monotheism as a political problem emerged from the Hellenistic transformation of the Jewish belief in God. Due to the fact that the God of the Jews was amalgamated with the monarchic principle of Greek philosophy, the concept of divine monarchy, in the first instance, had the function of a politico-theological slogan for Jewish propaganda. This politico-theological slogan has subsequently been adopted by the church during its expansion into the Roman Empire. It was then confronted with the idea of a pagan political theology, according to which the divine monarch had to reign while the national God had to govern. In order to confront this pagan theology, which was designed for the Roman Empire, the Christian side now claimed that the national gods were not even able to govern because, due to the Roman Empire, the nationalist pluralism had been dissolved. In this

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spirit, the pax Augusta was then interpreted as the fulfilment of the Old Testament’s eschatological prophecy. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the divine monarchy had to fall before the trinitarian dogma and the interpretation of the Pax Augusta had to fall before the Christian eschatology. By that, not only monotheism as a political problem was resolved theologically, and the Christian faith liberated from the concatenation with the Roman Empire, but also, fundamentally, a break was made with any ‘political theology’ which abused the Christian proclamation for the justification of a political situation. Only within Judaism or paganism can something like ‘political theology’ exist. But the Christian proclamation of the triune God is beyond Judaism and paganism, because the mystery of the Trinity only exists in the divinity itself, not in the creature. Likewise, the peace that the Christian seeks is not granted by any Caesar, but is only a gift by him who is ‘higher than all rationally’. Footnote 168, p. 158. The term ‘political theology’ was, as far as I know, coined by Carl Schmitt in Political Theology, Munich, 1922. His essay was not intended to be systematic. Here we have tried to demonstrate, by a concrete example, the theological impossibility [Unmöglichkeit] of any ‘political theology’.

Notes

Editor’s Introduction 1 Schmitt, C. Glossarium (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1952), p. 194, entry from 23 August, 1948: ‘Sieh Dir genau den Autor an,/der schön vom Schweigen reden kann./Solange er vom Schweigen spricht,/solange nämlich schweigt er nicht.’ 2 Quaritsch, H., Carl Schmitt: Antworten in Nürnberg (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), p. 40. See also Quaritsch’s discussion of the authenticity of Schmitt’s statement, p. 41 and 46. 3 The reference to Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians plays an important role in the text at the point where Schmitt defends Eusebius, who was accused of being an imperial propagandist, against Jacob Burkhardt and Erik Petersons. There are good reasons to assume that Schmitt intended to parallel his own fate with that of Eusebius and and to compare their damaged reputations. See also Koenen, A., Der Fall Carl Schmitt: Sein Aufstieg zum ‚Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches’ (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), p. 19. 4 The most exhaustive examination of Schmitt after 1945 has been undertaken by Dirk Van Laak in his PhD thesis: Van Laak, D. Gespräche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens: Carl Schmitt in der politischen Geistesgeschichte der frühen Bundesrepublik (Berlin, Wien: Akademie Verlag, 2002). But even Van Laak pays only little attention to the years following the Second

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Notes to pages 5–7

Vatican Council and the rediscovery of Schmitt’s work by the Left in the late 1960s. Meier, H., Die Lehre Carl Schmitts; Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung politische Theologie und politische Philosophie (Stuttgart, Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 1994). For a theological critique of Schmitt’s ‘pagan’ Christology, see Palaver, W. Die Mythischen Quellen des Politischen: Carl Schmitts Freund–Feind Theorie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998). Politische Theologie, p. 51. Available in English: Schmitt, C., Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, edited and translated by George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). This immediately brings to mind the work of Michel Foucault on the significance of episteme – what he later described as the determinism of the ‘historical apriori’. There is a methodological resemblance between Foucault’s (post)structuralism and that of the structuralists of the 1920s, and Jürgen Habermas was not wrong when he pointed out the conservative pessimism (Kulturpessimismus) which post-Marxist thinkers of the 1970s shared with the conservatives of the 1920s. See Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, translated by Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), (chapters 9 and 10, pp. 238–93. and 219 on the similarity between Schmitt and Bataille). Hauptprobleme der Soziologie: Erinnerungsgabe für Max Weber, Vol. II, Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz and Werner Sombart (eds) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1923), pp. 1–35. Koenen, A., Der Fall Carl Schmitt (above, n3), p. 24. The German word ‘Ausnahmezustand’ designates both a state of emergency and one of exception. This is made evident through the reintroduction in 1968 of the Notstandsgesetze discussed later in this introduction (see pp. 15–20). For the discussion about the distinction between ‘commissarial’ and ‘sovereign’ dictatorship, see Schwab, G. The Challenge of the Exception. An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt between 1921 and 1936 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989) pp. 30–7, and p. 42, for a discussion of the difference between the concepts of ‘Ausnahmezustand’ and ‘Notstand’.

Notes to pages 7–11 135

12 See ch. 1.2, n4 in this volume. 13 See ch. 1. 3 in this volume. 14 See Manemann, J., Carl Schmitt und die Politische Theologie: Politischer Anti-Monotheismus (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002). 15 A detailed monograph on Hans Barion, discussing his sympathy for the Nazi regime and his critique of the Second Vatican Council, has only recently been published: Marschler, Th., Kirchenrecht im Bannkreis Carl Schmitts. Hans Barion vor und nach 1945 (Bonn: Novum und Vetera, 2004). 16 Epirrhosis. Festgabe für Carl Schmitt zum 80. Geburtstag, Hans Barion et al. (eds) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1968). 17 The conclusion and its footnote, to which Schmitt refers frequently in Political Theology II, are added to this translation in the appendix. 18 Barth’s critique can be summed up in the phrase ‘God is God’ and in his attack on existentialism. Dialectical theology explicitly rejected the Protestant Kulturprotestantismus typified by such theologians as Adolph von Harnack. Prior to his conversion, Peterson had a number of exchanges with his colleague Barth, at the University of Bonn. This is not the place to develop Barth’s impact on Peterson and Barth’s own role during the early years of Nazism. See Barth, K. Reformation als Entscheidung [Reformation as Decision)] (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1933) and the resolution of the Barmen synod. 19 It was the style of the Parthians to fire an arrow at their enemies when these were pretending to retreat. 20 Schmitt, C., Verfassungslehre (Munich, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1928), pp. 110-1. 21 Schmitt, C., Verfassungslehre (Munich, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1928), pp. 111–2. See also Erwin Jacobi, Die Dikatur des Reichspräsidentent nach Art. 48 der Reichsverfassung’ in Heinrich Triepel (ed.) Der deutsche Föderalismus. Die Dikatur des Reichspräsidenten (Berlin und Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1924), pp. 105-39. In his essay, Jacobi distinguishes between the suspension, breach, and sublation [‘Außer Kraft Setzen’] of constitutional rights. 22 See also the Appendix to Die Diktatur entitled: ‘Die Diktatur des

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Reichspräsidenten nach Artikel 48 der Weimarer Verfassung’. This appended essay was first published in 1924, without the chapter: ‘Das Ausführungsgesetz zu Art. 48 Abs. 2’, in which Schmitt analyses the implementation of the law of emergency and therefore replies to the criticism he received from colleagues for his text of 1924. In the second edition of Die Diktatur in 1928 the complete text was made available. See Schmitt’s Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Munich, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1928), pp. 212–57, and, for the first publication of the text, Der deutsche Förderalismus. Die Diktatur des Reichspräsidenten. Veröffentlichung der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer Heft 1 (Referate von Gerhard Anschütz, Karl Bilfinger, Carl Schmitt und Erwin Jacobi) (Berlin, Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1924), pp. 63–139. 23 Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, p. 111. 24 Schmitt, C. ‘Das Ausführungsgesetz zu Art. 48 der Reichsverfassung (sog. Diktaturgesetz)’ published in the second edition of Schmitt, C., Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Munich, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1928) as an appendix pp. 211–57. This, Anhang’ differs from his earlier essay published in 1924 [see footenote 23] insofar as he has added a chapter on the implementation of the state of exception. This was exactly the problem of the Weimarer Verfassung, which just states in Article 48: ‘The measures have to be suspended [außer Kraft setzen] by the will of the Reichspräsident or the Reichstag. Details would be defined by a [future] law’. 25 In this context it is interesting to refer to Ernst Topitsch’s essay on Schmitt, ‘Die Wissenschaftsauffassung Carl Schmitts’, in his Im Irrgarten der Zeitgeschichte: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot) 2003, pp. 44–92: there Schmitt is wrongly accused of contradicting the principle of his own concept of commissary dictatorship, which is contrary to totalitarianism. This is not only interesting because Topitisch, who is labelled in Political Theology II a Schamanomache, was acquainted with Kelsen and one of the most prolific represen-

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26 27

28 29

30

31 32 33

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tatives of legal and philosophical positivism. The word ‘Schamanomache’ has at least two associations. A ‘shaman’ is the one who commands supernatural powers and Ernst Mach, whose surname resembles the ending of this derogatory term, was a member of the Viennese circle and was acquainted with Hans Kelsen. Moreover, a Schamanomach is phonetically almost identical to Monarchomach. Schmitt, C., Der Hüter der Verfassung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996), pp. 140–2. Kelsen, H., Wer soll Hüter der Verfassung sein?, Die Justiz, Vol. 6 (1930–1), pp. 576–628. For Kelsen and Schmitt on parliamentarism, see Schmitt, C. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, translated by Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) (originally published in 1923) and Kelsen, H., Das Problem des Parlamentarismus (Wien, Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1926), pp. 39–44. Schmitt, C., ‘Das Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich’, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Vol. 38.7 (1933), pp. 455–8. Schmitt, C., ‘Der Führer schützt das Recht: Zur Reichstagsrede Adolf Hitlers vom 13, Juli, 1934’, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Vol. 39.15 (1934), pp. 945–50. For a detailed analysis: see Schneider, M., Demokratie in Gefahr? Der Konflikt um die Notstandsgesetze (Bonn: Neue Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986). See Koenen, A., Der Fall Carl Schmitt (above, n3), pp. 310–12. Rahner, K., Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1996). Von Balthasar developed his own Christology in his trilogy Herrlichkeit: Eine theologische Ästhetik (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1961-69). For a discussion on the democratisation of the church following the Second Vatican Council, see the annotated bibliography by Hoelzl, M., ‘Demokratie in der Kirche’, in Bischofsbestellung – Mitwirkung der Ortskirche? Bernhard Körner et al. (eds) (Graz: Styria, 2000), pp. 161–88, 211–25. There is a number of extant letters from Przywara and Guardini to Schmitt; see Nachlass Carl Schmitt: Verzeichnis des Bestandes im

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46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Notes to pages 19–24

Nordrhein-Westfälischen Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dirk Van Laak and Ingeborg Villinger (eds.) (Siegburg: Respublica-Verlag, 1993). Taubes, J., Die Politische Theologie des Paulus (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003), pp. 132–42. Schmitt, C., ‘Die Deutsche Rechtswissenschaft im Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist’, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Vol. (41)20, ed. Carl Schmitt, 15 Oct. (Berlin: 1936), pp. 1193–9. Taubes, J., Ad Carl Schmitt Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1987). Bobbio, N., Rechts und Links: Gründe und Bedeutung einer politischen Unterscheidung (Berlin: Wagenbach, 2006), p. 31. See for example Theology and the Political: The New Debate, Creston Davis et al. (eds) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) and Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, Hent de Vries (ed.) (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). ‘Gespräch über den Partisanen’, in Staat, Großraum, Nomos (above, n25), pp. 617–36. Bobbio, Rechts und Links (above, n40), pp. 32–3. See p. 38 of this volume. Schmitt, C., Roman Catholicism and Political Form, translated by G. L. Ulmen (New York: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 34. Schmitt, C., Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailles, 1923–1939, edited by Helmut Quaritsch (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1995), pp. 9–18. Schmitt, Roman Catholicism (above, n44), p. 12. Schmitt, C., The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (above, n27), p. 23. Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe (above, n45), p. 17. Ibid. Ibid. Sorel, G., Reflections on Violence, Jeremy Jennings (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid. Ibid.

Notes to pages 24–26 139

55 Ibid., p. 48. 56 Ibid., p. 61. 57 Bendersky, Joseph W., Carl Schmitt: The Theorist for the Reich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 244–5. 58 Schmitt, C., The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, translated by George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein (New York: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 11. 59 Ibid., p. 100. 60 Schmitt, Roman Catholicism (above, n44), p. 17. 61 Schmitt’s ‘conversion’ has to be related to a characteristic of post-Nuremberg life more generally. Paul Noack, in his Carl Schmitt: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Propyläen, 1993, p. 294) succinctly sums this up when he writes: ‘Er [Schmitt], der sich den mythischen Elementen sowohl der Sprache wie der Politik immer stäerker verbunden gefühlt hat, dessen bildhafte Sprache Bewunderung erregt hat, stilisiert sich nun kurzerhand selbst zum Mythos. Er macht sich zum Mittelpunkt seiner Welt, indem er sich auf eine bezogene Privatmythologie aus Elementen der klassischen Mythologie, der klassischen Staatslehre und der klassischen Literatur schafft.’ [‘He [Schmitt] has been increasingly attracted to both the mythological elements in language and also politics, whose sheer imaginative style has generated admiration, now portrays himself simply as a myth. He makes himself the centre of his own world by creating a private mythology composed of aspects taken from classical mythology, classical theories of the state and classical literature’], This self-stylisation through symbolic figures was evidently one means whereby Schmitt could create for himself a public, if not an acceptable persona. Three figures are particularly used: a Christian Epimetheus, whom he employed in describing himself in his 1950 volume Ex captiviate salus (written when he was awaiting trial); Machiavelli; and Benito Cereno, the protagonist in a novel by Herman Melville with that title. 62 Leviathan, p. 100.

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Notes to pages 28–38

63 The word Erledigung only appears once in Peterson’s text, in the conclusion and not in the footnote referred to by Schmitt, where Peterson employs ‘the impossibility of any political theology’. See pp. 131–2. Guideline for the Reader 11 Hans Barion, ‘Ordnung und Ortung im kanonischen Recht’, in H. Barion, E. Forsthoff and W. Weber (eds), Festschrift für Carl Schmitt, Berlin 1959, pp. 1–34; H. Barion, ‚‘Kirche oder Partei? Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form’, Der Staat 4 (1965), pp. 131–76; H. Barion, Weltgeschichtliche Machtform? Eine Studie zur Politischen Theologie des II. Vatikanischen Konzils, in H. Barion, E.-W. Böckenförde, E. Forsthoff and W. Weber (eds), Epirrhosis. Festgabe für Carl Schmitt zum 80. Geburtstag, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1968, pp. 13–59. 12 Hans Barion, ‘Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil. Kanonistischer Bericht I’, Der Staat 3 (1964), pp. 221–6; ‘Bericht II’, Der Staat 4 (1965), pp. 341–59; ‘Bericht III’, Der Staat 5 (1966), pp. 341– 52. ‘Bericht IV’ discusses the social teaching of the council and is published as an article in the Festschrift Säkularisierung und Utopie, Ebracher Studien, Ernst Forsthoff zum 65. Geburtstag, Stuttgart 1967, pp. 187–233, with the title ‘Das konziliare Utopia. Eine Studie zur Soziallehre des I [sic] Vatikanischen Konzils’. ‘Bericht V’ discusses the council’s theory of the state and is published as part of the contribution to the Festschrift Epirrhosis, pp. 13–59, with the title: Weltgeschichtliche Machtform? Eine Studie zur Politischen Theologie des II. Vatikanischen Konzils. Chapter 1 The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure 11 ‘Habet ergo et superbia quendam appetitum unitatis et omnipotentiae, sed in rerum temporalium principatu, quae omnia transeunt tamquam umbra.’ Sanctus Augustinus, De vera religione 45, 84 (Patrologia Latina 34, 160) English translation available in: J. H. S. Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings. The

Notes to pages 38–42 141

Library of Christian Classics. Vol. 6 (London: SCM Press), p. 269: ‘Pride in a manner seeks omnipotence, but in the realm of temporal things, where all things are transient like a shadow.’ 12 We will discuss in section 23 some examples of the present significance of this myth. As a common symptom of its diffuse and almost already atmospheric propagation, one has to look at the Propyläen- Weltgeschichte IV (1963), in which William Seston discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the west. He speaks about Constantine’s Arian church policy and calls Eusebius of Nicomedia, the bishop who baptised the dying Constantine, its theological author. W. Seston then asserts (p. 504): ‘Only from the Arianism of this time was it possible for political theology to emerge.’ The phrase ‘Political Theology’ is eye-catching, although Seston, the historian, does not confuse the prototype of Peterson’s model, the previously dispatched Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, with the Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. 13 The subtitle of the dissertation is ‘Studien zur Säkularisierung des Protestantismus im Weltkrieg und in der Weimarer Republik’. Only chapters 1 and 2, with footnotes, have been published so far (in typescript), as a dissertation under Professor Dr H. J. Schoeps, submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy at Erlangen Nürnberg. The chapters are entitled ‘Weltkrieg als Religionskrieg’ (1) and ‘Revolution und Kirche’ (2). 14 I just want briefly to allude to the essay ‘Fortschrittliche Intelligenz’, by Professor Alois Dempf, in the May/June 1969 issue of the journal Hochland, in which Peterson is praised as the true author of the concept of ‘Political Theology’. One can read there: The professor of constitutional law, Carl Schmitt, was keen to adopt the concept of Political Theology; Thomas Hobbes was deemed by him the exemplary theoretician of absolutism due to the combination of spiritual and temporal power; by this he [C. S.] came close to the totalitarian doctrine of the state. However, his best students, Waldemar Gurian and Werner Becker, went over to Peterson.

142

Notes to pages 47–48

Werner Becker, who drew my attention to this essay by Dempf, wrote to me about it on 10 June 1969 from Rome: ‘I also wish to refer to the essay by Dempf in the May/June issue of Hochland. Because it depicts our common time in Bonn, at the time when Erik Peterson gave the two – for him very decisive – lectures.Why did Dempf not analyse them? What does ‘in a time of the looming struggle of the churches between pure orthodoxy and liberal theology’ (p. 238) mean? In this struggle, which has nothing to do with the later struggle of the churches, Barth and Peterson were already on the same side for a long time! Furthermore, it has to be noted that Peterson and you were friends. One could not have just gone from you to Peterson. In the paragraph in which your name is mentioned everything is wrong. 15 My essay results from a paper on ‘Die Sichtbarkeit der Kirche’ [‘The Visibility of the Church’] (in the journal Summa of 1917) and from discussions with various friends at that time: Theodor Haecker, Konrad Weiß and Franz Blei. It was published at the behest of Franz Blei and Jackob Hegner. It became famous because of the opening line: ‘There exists an anti-Roman disgust.’ This sentence was seen as a provocation by the then existing anti-Roman disgust and the prelate Kaas quoted this sentence in the German parliament [Deutscher Reichstag] against Ludendorff. In my essay I do not talk about an affinity between the church and certain forms of political unity (monarchy or democracy). The essay defends the unique political form of the Roman church as the historical and visible representation of Christ – the human being who has become a reality in history – which has three forms of public manifestation: as an aesthetical form in great art, as a juridical form in the development of canon law and as a glorious form of power that impacted on the history of the world. 16 We are talking here not only about essays but also about extensive books like Politische Romantik [Political Romanticism] (1919), Die Diktatur von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsbegriffes bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf [Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Class Struggle of the Proletariat ] (1921) and

Notes to pages 48–53 143

about the last two chapters in the study on the ideological situation of contemporary parliamentarism [Engl. transl. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy], which are related historically, thematically and systematically to the 1922 Politische Theologie. Hugo Ball, who did not belong to a professional class (for he was neither a professional theologian nor a professional jurist), was the only one who paid attention [to the fact that it was written in the context of my other writings on jurisprudence] in his summarising examination of the matter, and he did not gloss over the details of the discussion. His essay ‘Politische Theologie’ was published in the Catholic journal Hochland of 1924, in the June issue, and it strikes the critical reader even today. Ball, who died in September 1927, was not able to read my treatise on the concept of the political (published in 1927). 17 For the problem of the public sphere today, in 1969, of continuing interest is the following paragraph, taken from an essay by Carl Eschweiler in the journal Religiöse Besinnung (Stuttgart 1931/32, issue 2, p. 78): The kingdom of Jesus, resting not on the force of arms, but only on the authority [Auktorität] of testimonies of, and for, the truth, was at no time a merely private affair. The heathen empire did not rage against private thoughts and emotions for over 250 years. The church of the martyrs was a community whose independence from the state can neither be explained by freedom of thought [Steuerfreiheit der Gedanken], like tax exemption,] nor by the secrecy of revolutionary practices; it was already a proper church in the catacombs, that is, a realm of the public order which was unbearable for the absolute heathen state.

18 J. B. Metz, Theology of the World, translated by William GlenDoepel, London: Burns and Oates, 1969. 19 The book by D. F. Strauss on Julian the Apostate, The Romantic on the Throne of the Caesars, was published 1847 in Mannheim. See the analysis of the ‘romantic on throne of the Caesars’ in my book Politische Romantik [Political Romanticism] (3rd edn, pp. 210–21). Of special importance in this context is p. 221:

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Notes to page 53

In order to realise the difference between the religious arguments of Julian the Apostate and those romantics of the Restoration, it is sufficient to bear in mind what these parties stood for who encountered them as the old and the new. The Caesar encountered his enemy, a religious belief, with religious arguments. [In other words] the theologising part shied away from a political discussion and moved to religious demonstration whereby theology was used as a romantic alibi.

Of further importance is my book from 1950 Donoso Cortés, pp. 97–8 (the essay from 1927): Strauss’ argument becomes so primitive that it is almost acceptable by common knowledge: the old dies, the new lives; Christendom is the old, and that which we believe today – progress, freedom of science, and so on – is the new. The pragmatic conclusion is evident. All this belongs to the cabinet museum of Pareto’s museum of psychedelic derivations. Compared with Strauss, the mythologist of the life of Jesus, Renan is infinitely more tasteful, but also more pessimistic.. However, the nuances between good and bad taste are of minor significance here. More important is the myth in which both mythologists believe. The struggle between the old and the new is a topic of all myths: Kronos versus Uranos; Herakles versus Zeus; and the giant Thurios – the Teutonic Thor, the green dragon – versus the red dragon. All this acquires the banality of a complacent fashion in the work of the two progressive critics of the Bible, Strauss and Renan alike. For sure, Strauss is the more outspoken here. In his view, the new is extraordinarily happy with itself and its time. He (sc. Strauss) enjoys the victorious joy of the respite while he can represent himself in the role of the new. As said, it is primitive, but therefore predestined to become a myth of the masses of a positivistic century.

10 Robert Spaemann, De Bonald und die Philosophie der Restauration [De Bonald and the Philosophy of the Restoration], PhD dissertation, Münster, 1952, published in Munich 1959 with the title: Der Ursprung der Soziologie aus dem Geiste der

Notes to page 62–66

145

Restauration. Studien über L. A. G. de Bonald [The Origins of Sociology in the Spirit of the Restoration: Studies on L. A. G. de Bonald]. De Bonald coined this phrase: ‘Reality is society and history.’ See the chapter ‘La Recherche de la Réalité’ (p. 89) in my Politische Romantik. Chapter 2 The Legendary Document 1 In the short treatise What is Theology?, published in 1925, one can find a lengthy adnotation to the effect that dogma and sacrament are essential to the New Testament and that they are ‘not arbitrary terms of juridical language’ (p. 31, n. 21). We will return to this annotation towards the end of our discussion (Chapter 3.2). 2 It is enough to take a look at Kurt Latte’s account of the history of Roman religion (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. 5.4), especially chapter 12, ‘The Religion of Loyalty in the Empire’, to see how much content and how many crucial aspects for a ‘theologia politica’ are ignored by excluding Varro. Unlike Latte, I will not discuss the Augustinian restoration in the spirit of pagan Italian piety pointed out by Franz Altheim in his Römische Religionsgeschichte [History of Roman Religion] [3 Vols, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1931–3], although Peterson’s friend and admirer Theodor Haecker was a Christian admirer of Virgil. 3 Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft [Tübingen: Siebeck & Mohr, 1956, 4th edn], pp. 662–73 [Economy and Society, edited by Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978]. I have emphasised the great significance of Peterson’s book for plebiscitary democracy in my treatise Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren [Public Choice and Referendum], Berlin, 1927, p. 34. For the text above, see also a statement made by Peterson in a paper on the church given in Munich 1929 (Traktate [= E. Peterson, ‘Die Kirche’, in Theologische Traktate, Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1951], p. 419): ‘Paul does not belong with the twelve [Apostles]. This shows his limitation – not of his apostolic efficiency – but of his apostolic legitimacy. And this

146

4

5

6 7

8

Notes to pages 69–73

is the reason why the Apostle Paul has a completely different place in the church by comparison with Peter.’ P. 55, n. 8. On the logic of supreme power, see Carl Schmitt, Gespräche über die Macht und den Zugang zum Machthaber [Conversations on Power and the Access to the Sovereign] [Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1954]. The Roman Emperor Hadrian was interested in a universal unification of all gods. Bruno Bauer commented on this: ‘However, this simplification of the celestial nomenclature, supported by the Stoic system, corresponds to the centralisation of terrestrial power. A number of tyrants and absolutist rulers have promoted for centuries the idea of a temple for the Olympian [Zeus] as the central God for Hellenism in Athens’ (Christus und die Caesaren [Christ and the Caesars (1877)], p. 283). See E. Caird, The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1885, p. 90, pp. 113–14.] For Hobbes, the Roman people appeared as ‘one person’ to outsiders and as ‘a monarch’ at the time of Christ in Palestine. It was the sovereign. Christ had not resisted it: Leviathan, II, ch. 19. If a political power,which in itself has a democratic constitution,occupies a foreign territory, then the people on the occupied territory are subject to a monarchy, because internally the political unity is democratically organised and it appears externally as one person. ‘In this Christian image of a world ruled by Christ’s dominion, the old Roman idea of auctoritas [authority] found its new contents and realisation. Every power comes from God, because in God the absolute auctoritas is infinite and contained in its entirety. But this dualism, which is still determined by a unity of the transcendent meaning, is a factual dualism. It is a dualism of the structures of living together, a living together in grace and in faith – in a community of saints – and a living together within the Christian moral rule of the world and within the world under the rule of Caesar – ecclesia on the one hand and empire on the other. This dualism was also based on the Roman political scheme of concepts, which was defined by auctoritas and potestas. It [the dualism] was placed in the transcendent atmosphere of the Christian conception and filled with a new content.’ J. Fueyo

Notes to pages 74–101 147

in ‘Die Idee der auctoritas: Genesis und Entwicklung [‘The Idea of auctoritas: Genesis and Development] – his contribution to the Festschrift Epirrhosis – pp. 226–7. Fueyo also reminds us of Terentius Varro’s theologia politica (p. 223). 9 In the lectures Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden [The Church of the Jews and Gentiles] (Salzburg 1933), p. 71, he writes in a footnote that it is ‘theologically absolutely justified’ if for example the Ludus de Antichristo introduces the character of the synagogue and ecclesia in the days of the Antichrist’. Ludus de Antichristo is a highly political piece of poetry written at the time of Friedrich Barbarossa and his crusade; see the new commentated edition by Gerhard Günther, Der Antichrist: Der staufische Ludus de Antichristo, with the German translation by Gottfried Hasenkamp (Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag, n. d. (1969) [1970]. In the Munich 1929 lecture ‘Die Kirche’, Peterson declared ‘that the Jews delay the return of the Lord through their unbelief. But by delaying the return of the Lord they prevent the coming of the kingdom and necessarily support the continued existence of the church.What Paul says in Romans 11 is no longer a concrete eschatology but the teaching of the last things, which can only occur in the church of the gentiles’ (Traktate, p. 413). 10 Carl Schmitt, ‘Die vollendete Reformation. Bemerkungen und Hinweise zu neuen Leviathan-Interpretationen’ [‘The Complete Reformation: Comments and Suggestions for New Interpretations of the Leviathan’], in Der Staat 4 (1965), pp. 51–9. 11 In his ‘Anmerkungen zu einer Theologie der Revolution’ [‘Remarks on a Theology of Revolution’] (in the Festschrift Epirrhosis, 1968, p. 628), Günther Rohrmoser reminds us of this sentence in Hegel and adds: ‘Hegel has understood Christendom, that is, the God’s appearance in history and the Reformation, [seen] as the appropriation of this event through the believing subjectivity, as two revolutionary events fundamental for the world history [Weltgeschichte] of freedom.’ In this context also belongs Hegel’s statement: ‘One can say that nothing more revolutionary than in the gospel has ever been spoken. Peterson fiercely rejects any compromise between the philosophy of German idealism and traditional Protestant

148

Notes to pages 101–119

theology, should one look for the ‘mediation’ of Schleiermacher or Hegel; see above, p. 91ff., at the end of the section on Eusebius as a prototype pf political theology. 12 Carl Schmitt, Donoso Cortés in gesamteuropäischer Tradition [Donoso Cortés in pan-European tradition], Köln: Greven Verlag, 1950. Chapter 3 The Legendary Conclusion 11 M. Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 2, edited by Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 829.] 12 Everything I have said on the topic of political theology is statements of a jurist upon the obvious theoretical and practical legal structural resemblance between theological and juridical concepts. This belongs to the research area of the history of law and sociology. Auguste Comte would see it as nothing more than a proof of his thesis that the jurist has relieved the canonist just as the metaphysician has relieved the theologian. We have made many new experiences since Comte, which concern the ineradicable desire for legitimation in any human being. My book Political Theology of 1922 is subtitled Vier Kapitel zur Soziologie des Souveränitätsbegriffes [Four Chapters on the Sociology of the Concept of Sovereignty]. The first three chapters were published 1922 in the memorial volume for Max Weber – the second one [dealing] with his development on decisionism [Dezisionismus] with reference to Thomas Hobbes and the third one with the title Political Theology. I would not dare, as a non-theologian, to enter a discussion on theological aspects of the doctrine of Trinity with theologians. The unfortunate case of Donoso Cortés teaches us what happens to lay theologians and to their efforts in this direction. Postscript 11 Philo of Alexandria’s assertion that the word nomos (with the accent on the first syllable [= oxytone]) cannot be found in

Notes to pages 122–123 149

Homer has also been repeated by Jean Bodin and Blaise Pascal. See Carl Schmitt in the essay ‘Nomos, Nahme, Name’ in the Festschrift for P. Erich Przywara S. J. [Societas Jesu], Der beständige Aufbruch [The Continuous Awakening], edited by Siegfried Behn (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1957), pp. 92–105. 12 The text talks about the concept of liberatio nova, the eternal blessedness, which is particpated in by those who are predestined by God and which can no longer require a return to the circles of eternal recurrence, because then the blessedness would obviously not be the true, new liberatio. Si autem in natura immortali fit tanta novitas nullo repetita, nulla rependenda circuitu: cur in rebus mortalibus fieri non posse condenditur? [‘But if there is in immortal nature so much novelty which is not recurrent for anyone, none must recur cyclically; why is it claimed that this could not be the case in mortal things?’ Walter Benjamin, who has chosen this sentence as a motto, has in mind a pessimistic book by Blanqui; see Rolf Tiedermann, Studien zur Philosophie Walter Benjamins [Studies on the Philosophy of Walter Benjamin], Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie Nr 16, Frankfurt 1965, pp. 103f. (and p. 151, where Book xii, ch. 20 (rather than ch. 21) is wrongly mentioned as the point of reference). 13 A remarkable exception can be found in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae 7, 1848–54, cols 656–5. The Thesaurus seeks to explain the surprising transition from stillness to movement in the following way: at the bottom of col. 660, it interprets the emergence and formation of a faction or party as being related to a standpoint, or point of view, which seems to point to a bridge from stillness to movement without complex dialectical evolutions – then it adds undogmatically: Viderit tamen lector an aptiorem aliquam huius significationis rationem excogitare possit [‘However, the reader should see whether they can think of a more appropriate explanation for this meaning.’ The Thesaurus also refers to the model of the appearance of the choir leader and of the choir revolving around him.] The same example is examined dialectically in Plotinus (see Maurice de Gandillac, La Sagesse de Plotin, 1952, p. 185, ch. ‘Deux en Un’). In the New Testament, stasis means ‘uproar’ or ‘tumult’ (the letter to

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Notes to page 124

Hebrews 9.8, were there is talk about the stasis of the first hut, is an exception). In the passion of Jesus – Mark 15.7 and Luke 23.19.25 – stasis is not seen by Christian theologians in the context of the ingress to Jerusalem reported before, but it is linked to the relatively unknown anti-Roman and dispute amongst Jews. In his lecture ‘Political Theology’ (Training for medical doctors in Regensburg, 15 May 969), the Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann has given a political–theological interpretation to the crucifixion of Christ by the Romans and said: ‘In fact Jesus Christ was not providentially born in the Augustinian era of peace but [he was] crucified in the name of the Pax Romana by Pontius Pilate. That was a political punishment’ (p. 12). And he continues: ‘Surely, Jesus was not an insurgent fighting for independence, like the two Zelots who were crucified with him. Nevertheless, it is also undisputable that he caused more uproar within the political theology of Rome. Christian martyrs who were sent to the arena still knew that’ (p. 12). This is correct. However, it seems to me that the idea of a ‘crucifixion in the name of the pax Romana’ is an anachronistic afterthought or a reflection from the perspective of the modern pax Americana back to the time of Pilate. The crucifixion was a measure against slaves and those beyond the law; it was the supplicium sumptum de eo in servilem modum [‘punishment exacted on the person in a servile condition’.] I have examined this in my short book Ex captivitate salus [Salvation from Captivity], 1950, p. 61. Nevertheless, Moltmann is right to emphasise the intense political meaning which the worship of a crucified God ineradicably contains and which cannot be sublimated into the ‘purely theological’. 14 Julien Freund, Le Sens du politique, Paris: Sirey, 1965 uses the distinction between friend and enemy not as the criterion (as I use it) but as one of the three présupposés (three pairs of concepts: order–obedience, private–public, friend–enemy). And he sees them as essential preconditions for a systematically structured theory of the political; see my essay ‘Clausewitz als politische Denker’ [‘Clausewitz as a Political Thinker’] in the journal Der Staat, 6 (1967), p. 500.

Notes to page 126–127

151

15 ‘Clausewitz als politische Denker’. Comments and remarks can be found in Der Staat, 6 (1967), p. 494. Hugo Ball quotes Goethe’s motto in his entries on 17 June 1919 (Die Flucht aus der Zeit [The Escape from Time], 1931, p. 253) without any further attempt to interpret it as proof of the fact that religion for Goethe was a human necessity and not a necessity for God, and that the demonic for Goethe was not a negating but an interfering power. The demonic would then not be the same as the devil; the word, according to its classical meaning, would not exclude heroism and self-worship. The question of the origin and meaning of this motto was raised for the first time after 1945 by Adolf Grabovsky (Trivium, 3, issue 4) and then discussed in a number of essays in the Goethe-Jahrbuch of the Goethe-Gesellschaft; Eduard Spranger (Goethe-Jahrbuch, xi, 1949) assumes that either Goethe or Riemer has coined the phrase and claimed that it was old because it could be found in Zincgref ’s Apophthegmata. Of the other attempted interpretations in the Goethe-Jahrbuch [Christian Janenzky, Seigfried Scheibe, Momme Mommsen], we are particularly interested in that of M. Mommsen in Vol. 13, pp. 86–104, because of the link to Napoleon. Mommsen also quotes (p. 99) Goethe’s diary entry about Fichte and Napoleon from August 1806, which I have used as well, in my essay on Clausewitz. 16 K. Weinhold (ed)., Dramatischer Nachlass von J. M. R. Lenz [Dramas by J. M. R. Lenz, Published Posthumuously] (Frankfurt am Main: Literarische Anstalt, 1884), p. 183.]

Index of Subjects

acclamation 60, 66, 74 analogy 63, analogia entis 75 analogia fidei 75 animus dogmatiziandi 84, 88 anthropomorphism 57 antichrist 62, 64, 92, 96, 102, 147 apostle 42, 64, 66–7, 93, 145 arche 70–1, 73 Arianism 85, 110, 141 ascension 41 authority 2, 15–16, 50, 53, 81, 94, 96, 100, 105, 113, 120, 143, 146 auctoritas 73, 146–7 Bible 144 bureaucracy 119 Byzantinism 81, 93, 96 Caesaro-papism 59, 81, 93, 96 Catholic 7–9, 13, 16–7, 23, 38, 43, 49–50, 52–3, 55, 75, 88–90, 108–9, 143 Catholicism 7, 21, 23, 39, 47, 49, 68, 109–10, 138–9 Church 16–17, 39, 43, 48, 88, 109, 117, 126 theologian 18, 49–50, 55 charisma 43, 66–7, 74, 88, 110–12, 119

of leadership 66 of office 111–12 Christendom 42, 50, 52, 76, 88, 91–2, 144, 147 Christianity 27, 35, 48, 63, 77, 79 christology 5, 8, 16–17, 33–4, 37 civil war 12, 91, 99–101, 114, 123 concordat 90, 113–14 constitution 10–16, 40, 45, 68, 101, 107–8, 135, 141, 146 Pastoral constitution 17, 46 Weimar constitution 10–11 cosmos 55–6, 69,107 council 16–7, 46, 89–90 of Nicaea 16, 80, 83, 89, 95, 98, 100 Second Vatican 8, 16–7, 32, 46–7, 76, 134–5, 137, 140 counter-Revolution 7, 10, 16, 42, 51–2, 53, 59, 128 crisis 12–3, 20, 23, 39–40, 42–4, 50, 95, 137–8, 142 decisionism 11, 115, 120, 122, 148 democracy 6, 23, 40, 55, 72, 74–5, 137–8, 142, 145 devil 89, 123, 151 dictatorship 6, 12–3, 25, 45, 136, 142 divine monarchy 54–5, 58, 61–2, 65,

Index of Subjects 71–2, 74, 78, 82–3, 91, 94, 102–3, 111, 131–2 doctrine 5, 16, 50–1, 56, 63, 70, 77, 81–6, 101–3, 106, 111–12, 123–4, 127, 132, 141, 148 dogma 9, 40–3, 55, 62, 84–5, 90–1, 96, 103, 110, 122, 132, 145 dominion 55–6, 70, 86, 146 dualism 20, 73, 124–5, 146 ecclesiology 48 economy 89, 145, 148 emergency 7, 10–2, 15, 134–5 Emperor 40, 61, 68, 71, 73–4, 89, 91, 101 Imperium Romanum 35, 131 enemy 40, 45, 96, 117, 123, 127, 129, 144 Enlightenment 48, 77, 119–20 eschatology 53–4, 83, 86, 103, 132, 147 Eschatological reservation 9, 50 exception 7, 10, 12, 14–15, 118, 120, 134, 136, 149–50 Existentialism 97, 135 faith 49, 53–4, 63, 72, 76–7, 107, 132, 146 Freemasons 89 French Revolution 51, 119 friend/enemy 42, 45, 90, 122, 124, 150 Führer 14, 38, 74, 97, 137 Führertum/ leadership 14, 74 Gnosticism 122–3 God 4, 9, 30, 34–5, 38, 42–3, 51, 55–7, 60–2, 65, 67, 69–72, 74, 76–8, 82, 87–8, 92, 97, 99, 103, 110–11, 119–20, 123–7, 129–32, 135, 146–7, 149–51 Gospel 46, 84, 94, 104–5, 119, 147 heresy 77, 80–1, 84, 105 history 8, 35, 38, 41–2, 48, 50–1, 53,

153

63, 65, 79, 83, 86, 88–90, 92, 95, 97, 100–1, 108, 112, 122, 142, 145, 147–8 Holy See 89, 109 hylomorphism 114 ideology 90, 20, 24, 52, 55, 85, 93, 106 Iliad 73–4 Incarnation 10, 27, 75, 97, 110 infallibility 90 interpretation 2–3, 5, 11–3, 19–20, 25, 61, 86, 92, 101, 103, 108, 111, 115, 122, 125, 132, 147, 150–1 judgement 2–3, 53, 61, 70, 80, 100, 106, 115 jurisprudence 19, 32, 109, 111, 143 Kat-Echon 92 king 13, 57, 61, 66–70, 72, 74, 98 kingdom 39, 43–4, 47–8, 51–2, 86, 89, 96–7, 115, 143, 147 laity 17, 50, 112 Lateran treatise 89 law/Ius 29, 32, 46, 48, 77, 90, 99, 107–9, 112, 115, 118–20, 135–6, 148, 150 Codex Iuris Canonici/ Canon Law 16, 31–2, 46–8, 90, 108–11, 142 international law 4, 90, 115, 117 ius reformandi 5, 32, 51, 101, 115, 125–6 ius revolutionis 51, 101, 115 legality 40, 118–20 legend 4, 21–2, 24, 26–9, 38, 51, 54, 59–71, 73–116, 145, 148 legitimacy/ legitimating 2, 9, 13–4, 44, 46, 50, 53, 56, 65–7, 73–4, 108, 115–22, 145, 148 Leviathan 25–6, 57, 72, 101, 125–6, 139, 146–7 liberal theology 61, 142

154

Index of Subjects

liberalism 8, 10, 17–8, 24, 44, 68 logos 41–2, 81, 110 martyr 2, 24, 42, 83, 111–12, 143, 150 Marxism 40 messianic kingdom 86 metaphysics 5–6, 8, 13, 21, 34, 42, 57, 67, 70, 76–7, 81–2, 99, 108, 112, 116–7 methodology 6, 108 Middle Ages 39, 44, 74, 81, 108, 124 modernity 7, 10, 88, 117–18, 121–3, 134 monarchism 72 monarchy 6, 13, 35, 40, 61–2, 67–8, 70–4, 78, 91, 142, 146 monotheism 9, 35, 43, 52, 56, 59–61, 63, 67–70, 72–3, 76–9, 82, 92, 103, 105, 113, 116, 131–2, 134 myth 1, 20–9, 31, 37–59, 64–5, 75, 88, 96, 124, 134, 139–40, 144 nation(s) 23, 38, 71, 91, 98–100 natural religion 77 Nazi 2–3, 9, 14, 16, 19, 25, 27, 50, 135 neo-Kantian 21–2 neutrality 117, 129–30 New Testament 48, 60, 110, 119, 145, 149 nomos 4, 29, 56, 65, 119, 138, 148–9 normativity 7, 11, 120 Old Testament 77, 110, 119, 132 orthodoxy 60, 80, 84–6, 142 paganism 69, 76, 94, 103–4, 132 parliament 13–14, 142 parliamentarism 23–4, 137, 142 Pax Romana 62, 150 peace 43, 62, 75, 85, 91, 98, 101–3, 132, 150 philosophy 18, 21–2, 26, 41, 52–3, 67, 97, 107, 116, 120, 131, 141, 144, 146–7, 149

polytheism 52, 71, 91 positivism 13–14, 22, 136 potestas 71, 73, 146 power 4, 6, 10, 1–4, 20, 22–4, 38, 43, 48, 64, 68–70, 73, 86, 88–9, 94, 98–9, 105, 113–14, 120–1, 124, 126, 136, 141–2, 146, 151 propaganda 71, 93, 106, 131 property 11 Protestantism 8–9, 17, 39–40, 42, 135, 141 Protestant theology 39, 41, 66, 88, 95, 97 providence 87, 92 redemption 125 reformation 17, 39, 44, 51, 88, 101, 109, 115, 125, 135, 147 Reichspräsident 11–14, 25, 135–6 representation 72 republic 12–13, 99,122 resistance 74 restoration 51, 53, 143–5 revolution 10, 42–3, 49–52, 54, 59, 74–5, 81–2, 101, 112, 115, 125, 141, 147 rights 11–3, 135 Roman Empire 35, 43, 48, 63, 70, 83, 86, 91–2, 94, 98, 100, 104, 131–2, 141 Romanticism 5, 22, 142–3 secularisation 7, 49, 65, 76, 101, 108, 118–19, 129 salvation 86, 111, 117, 124–5, 150 science 29, 34, 49, 74, 80, 101, 106, 108, 117, 128–9, 144 Socialism 23, 68 sociology 5–8, 21, 53, 58, 66, 70, 108–9, 144, 148 sovereign/sovereignty 5–7, 10–13, 15, 20, 45, 70, 72, 107, 115, 126, 134 142, 146, 148

Index of Subjects 155 spiritual 27, 39–40, 44, 49–50, 84, 86–7, 92, 101, 115, 141 stasis 8, 75, 122–3, 126, 149–50 state 7, 14–5, 22, 25–6, 39–40, 44–7, 55–7, 62, 76, 84, 91, 96–7, 101, 110–11, 115, 117–19, 125–6, 139–41, 143 superstructure 44, 58, 85

80–6, 91, 96, 101–3, 106, 111, 122–4, 132, 148 Umbesetzung 63 uproar 75, 91, 122–3, 126, 149–50

totalitarianism 38, 96, 136 transcendence 18, 44, 68, 120 Trinity 20, 50, 55–6, 63, 70–1, 73, 75,

Weimar Republic 2, 10, 14–15, 25 wertfrei/value-free 61, 129

values 52, 54, 101, 107, 120–1 violence 20, 22, 25, 138

Index of Names

Agamben, Giorgio 20 Alarich King of the Vandals 98 Alexander the Great 70 Altheim, Franz 145 Ambrose, Saint 79 Antonius, Marcus 99 Arius 80–1 Arndt, Hans-Joachim 121 Athanasius, Saint 52, 72, 84, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo 26, 38–9, 47–9, 52, 62, 64, 79, 85, 98–100, 102, 112, 122, 124, 140 Bakunin, Michael 35 Ball, Hugo 143, 151 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 17–18, 137 Barion, Hans 47–9, 108, 115–16, 135, 140 Barth, Karl 8–9, 17, 135, 142 Basil the Great, Saint 85 Bataille, George 134 Bauer, Bruno 40, 53, 146 Becker, Werner 141 Behn, Siegfried 149 Bendersky, Joseph W. 25, 138 Benjamin, Walter 20, 149 Blei, Franz 142 Blumenberg, Hans 117–23, 126–7 Bobbio, Norberto 20, 138

Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang 45–6, 65, 76, 140 Bodin, Jean 13, 15, 139 Bonald, Louis de 10, 51–3, 144–5 Bormann, Claus von 88 Brecht, Berthold 119 Bruno, Giordano 118, 126 Bruns, Victor 90 Bultmann, Rudolph 60 Burckhardt, Jacob 80–1, 93–4, 96–7 Caird, Edward 6, 70, 146 Cassian, Saint 2 Cassirer, Ernst 21–2 Celsus 79, 93, 95 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 99–100 Clausewitz, Carl von 126, 150–1 Comte, Auguste 6, 35, 48, 53, 70, 146, 148 Cortés, Donoso 10, 51, 68, 144, 148 Cyprian, Saint 111–12 Dante Alighieri 74 Dempf, Alois 141–2 Derrida, Jacques 20 Eisner, Kurt 74 Emperor Augustus 70, 73, 86, 91–2, 101

Index of Names

157

Emperor Constantine the Great 40, 47, 49, 61, 63–4, 80–1, 83–4, 89, 91, 93–4, 98, 100–1, 141 Emperor Franz Joseph 74 Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa 147 Emperor Hadrian 69, 146 Emperor Julian Apostata 52, 143 Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte 126, 151 Emperor Octavian 99–100 Erhardt, Arnold A. T. 81–2, 99, 112 Eschweiler, Carl 143 Eusebius, Bishop of Caesara 17, 26–7, 40, 43, 47, 49, 61–4, 73, 79–81, 8–5, 90–6, 98–102, 107, 110–11, 122, 133, 141, 148 Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedea 141

Harnack, Adolph von 40–1, 77, 110, 135 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 5, 19, 32, 101, 125, 147–8 Heidegger, Martin 19, 97 Hepp, Robert 39–40 Hitler, Adolf 1, 14, 24, 41, 43, 64, 74, 96, 137 Hobbes, Thomas 2, 15, 18, 27, 51, 57, 72, 101, 115, 117, 125–6, 139, 141, 146, 148 Homer 149

Feil, Ernst 18, 49–55, 58–9 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 126, 151 Flavius, Josephus 71 Cardinal Fornari, Rafaello 68 Forsthoff, Ernst 65, 108, 121, 140 Foucault, Michel 134 Freund, Julian 100, 150 Fueyo, Jésus 146–7

Kaas, Ludwig 90, 142 Kelsen, Hans 6, 13–14, 22, 55, 136–7 Kempner, Robert 1 King Louis Philippe 68–9 King Sigismund III 67 King Wilhelm II 41, 74 Koenen, Andreas 133–4, 137 Kojéve, Alexander 19

Gandillac, Maurice 149 Gehlen, Arnold 81 Gentile, Alberico 118 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 126–7, 151 Görres, Joseph 84 Grabovsky, Adolf 151 Gregory Nazianzus 62, 75, 85 Gregory of Elvira 62 Gregory of Nyssa 85 Guardini, Romano 18, 137 Gunkel, Hermann 60 Gurian, Waldemar 141

Laak, Dirk van 133, 137 Laband, Paul 13 Latte, Kurt 145 Lenz, Jakob Michael 126, 151 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 76 Ludendorff, Erich Friedrich Wilhelm 142 Luther, Martin 39, 48–9

Habermas, Jürgen 134 Haecker, Theodor 142, 145

Jaeger, Werner 68 Janenzky, Christian 151 Jerome, Saint 79, 99 Joachim of Flores 101 John of Salisbury 115

Machiavelli, Niccolò 25, 139 Maier, Hans 49–50, 54 Maistre, Joseph Marie Comte de 10, 51–3 Manemann, Jürgen 134 Marx, Karl 6, 40, 51, 85, 90, 99, 134 Meier, Heinrich 5, 58–9, 134

158

Index of Names

Melville, Herman 139 Metz, Johann-Baptist 9, 18, 49–50, 53–4, 134, 143 Moltmann, Jürgen 52, 150 Mommsen, Momme 151 Mouffe, Chantal 20 Müller, Friedrich von 127 Mussolini, Benito 23–4, 89–90 Nicholas of Cusa 126 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 25, 87 Noack, Paul 139 Origen 72–3, 79, 83, 94 Orosius 77, 79 Overbeck, Franz 40,80,93 Palaver, Wolfgang 134 Pascal, Blaise 149 Paul, Saint 19, 66–7, 92, 145, 147 Peter, Saint 145 Peterson, Erik 8–9, 16, 26–7, 31–2, 35, 37–9, 41–4, 47–51, 53–62, 64–9, 71–103, 105–8, 110–11, 116, 122, 131, 135, 139, 141–2, 145, 147 Philo of Alexandria 61, 68, 72, 93, 148 Plato 122 Plotinus 149 Pontius Pilate 150 Pope Dionysius 73 Pope Gelasius 73 Pope John XXIII 48, 98 Pope Pius XII 48 Porphyry 78 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 35 Przywara, Erich 17–18, 137, 149 Quaritsch, Helmut 133, 138 Rahner, Karl 17–18, 137 Renan, Ernst 144

Rendtorff, Trutz 88 Riemer, Friedrich 151 Saint-Simon, Henri Baron de 53 Salin, Edgar 107–8 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 26 Schickel, Joachim 20 Schneider, Michael 137 Schoeps, Hans Joachim 141 Schwab, George 123, 134, 139 Seston, William 141 Shakespeare, William 123 Smend, Rudolf 40 Sohm, Rudolph 32, 66, 108 Sorel, George 23–6, 138 Spaemann, Robert 144 Spranger, Eduard 151 Stalin, Joseph W. 64 Strauss, David Friedrich 52, 118, 143–4 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius 99 Taubes, Jacob 19–20, 137–8 Tertullian 61–2, 111–12, 122 Thiers, Adolphe 67 Tiedermann, Rolf 149 Topitsch, Ernst 49, 55–9, 136 Varro, Terentius Marcus 64–6, 145,147 Vico, Giambattista 25 Virgil [Publius Virgilius Maro] 145 Weber, Max 6, 29, 66–7, 74, 88, 108–9, 119, 134, 140, 145, 148 Weinhold, Karl 151 Weiß, Konrad 142 Weth, Rudolf 50 Wieacker, Franz 82 Žižek, Slavoj 20