What is Political Theology?

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Excerpt from Trump and Political Theology: Unmaking Truth and Democracy, by Jack David Eller (Gcrr Press, 2020). Reprinted with permission from the author.

At the most obvious level, the term “political theology” designates some relation between politics and religion, as well as or in addition to an application of theology to political questions. However, like all technical and cultural terminology, things are never so obvious and never so settled. Jan Assman famously characterizes political theology as the “ever-changing relationships between political community and religious order, between power [or authority: Herrschaft] and salvation [Heil].”[2] Saul Newman’s recent brief introduction to political theology expands on the definition to include “the way in which political concepts, discourses and institutions—particularly sovereignty—are influenced, shaped and underpinned by religious categories of thought.”[3]

In The Future of Illusion, Victoria Kahn defines political theology quite tersely but instructively as “the theological legitimation or religious dimension of political authority,” raising the critical issue of legitimation.[4] This issue is not at all lost on other commentators, including Newman—in fact, it will soon become central to the entire enterprise—as he grants that “the problem of political theology is a way of thinking about the foundations and legitimacy of power in modern societies,”[5] perhaps especially but by no means exclusively in modern societies. Meanwhile, Andrew March, of all places in an essay about Islamic politics, argues that political theology is “the assertion that certain concepts, gaps, and aspirations immanent in Western political theory are transferred from theology either in the form of presence or of absence”—primarily the presence/absence of a god.[6]

Political theology may be predominantly Western, but it is not exclusively modern. A pre-Christian thinker, Marcus Terentius Varro (116‒27 BCE), is often credited with the first use of the term, naming theologia politikē or theologia civilis as one of the three branches of theology (and the prerogative of priests), along with “mythical” and “cosmological” or natural theologies, the realms of poets and philosophers, respectively.[7] Particularly in premodern societies, including ancient Israel, politics and theology were intimately, although not always comfortably, entangled, and as Christianity penetrated and crystallized in the Roman Empire, the tension between politics and religion became acute. The admonitions of Jesus that God’s kingdom was not of this world and that believers should render to Caesar what was Caesar’s and to God what was God’s were simultaneously helpful and unhelpful, stipulating but obscuring the chasm between earthly and heavenly authority. As is well known, Christians were often castigated in Rome, not so much for their unconventional beliefs as their disloyal behavior. Their crime was more political (failing to revere and obey the emperor) than religious (believing in the wrong/false god), although failing to worship the old gods was potentially catastrophic too.

As Christopher Rowland warns, Christianity’s “eschatological hope of God’s kingdom on earth which is such a dominant thread in New Testament theology cannot allow any easy accommodation between the church, the community of those called to bear witness to the reign of God, and political powers.”[8] Not that this stopped anyone, like Constantine and subsequent monarchs, from trying. Augustine faced the challenge with kindness in his City of God, recognizing, contrary to many fundamentalist Christian sects today, that even if there are two cities or kingdoms—a fallen worldly one and a perfect heavenly one—nevertheless humans are citizens of both. Appreciating that humans are thoroughly social beings long before the advent of modern social science, Jean Bethke Elshtain judges that Augustine taught, “Christians are not to hunker down in the church, but to approach the world with a loving worldliness, born out of a recognition of the world’s many goodnesses and blessings.”[9] Truly, “earthly institutions have a real claim on us,”[10] and we would best think of ourselves as dual citizens, although the same complications with dual national citizenship today apply to dual spiritual citizenship.

We cannot possibly rehearse the entire history of politicaltheological thinking here, so let it suffice to say, along with Elizabeth Phillips, that there have historically been at least four eras of or approaches to political theology in Christendom:

The first is related to theological understandings of creation, fall and human nature. Some suggest that there are basically two types of political theology: one type begins from positive possibilities inherent in God’s creation and the other type begins from human limitations due to sin. A second way would be to describe distinctive approaches to political theology according to theological traditions, noting the differences between Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist and Eastern Orthodox political theologies. Third, we can note differences between political theologies by contrasting three distinct approaches within twentieth-century scholarship: Political Theology, Public Theology and Liberation Theology. Finally, it is also important to note more recently emerging schools of thought—what might be considered the second generation of political theologies.[11]

Hence, Assman’s ever-changing relationships.

Notes

[2] Quoted in Hent de Vries, “Introduction: Before, Around, and Beyond the Theologico-Political,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 25. Original quotation in Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil: Politische Theologie in Altägypten, Israel und Europa (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2000), 15.

[3] Saul Newman, Political Theology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019), 4‒5.

[4] Victoria Ann Kahn, The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 1.

[5] Newman, Political Theology, xx.

[6] Andrew F. March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Theology,” Social Research 80, no. 1 (2013), 293.

[7] de Vries, “Introduction,” 25.

[8] Christopher Rowland, “Scripture: New Testament,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 33.

[9] Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Augustine,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 40‒41.

[10] Ibid., 42.

[11] Elizabeth Phillips, Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 31‒32.

Jack David Eller is a cultural anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology with Woxsen University in Hyderabad, India. He is the author of numerous books and articles on anthropology, religion, ethnic and religious violence, and contemporary populism, including Trump and Political Theology: Unmaking Truth and Democracy and (as editor) The Anthropology of Donald Trump: Culture and the Exceptional Moment.

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What is Cultural Anthropology? An Introduction by Jack David Eller

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