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This article attempts to draw the scope and content of contemporary Political Theology, based on a review of the 2013 publication titled, Political Theology: Contemporary challenges and future directions, edited by Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Klaus Tanner and Michael Welker. The book is a collection of contributions which explore the contemporary content and potential future of the subject discipline. 'Political Theology' as critical theology and as a 'theology with its face towards the world' is committed to 'justice, peace and the integrity of creation' and is multifaceted. It represents a discipline with which theologians reflect on political-theological objectives across continents and paradigms. The article concludes with a brief investigation of the implications of insights offered in the book for the South African context (as part of the African continent). ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2015

For this Special Issue which confronts the ways in which the question of pluralism represents both haunting and promise within modern political theology, I explore the presence of pluralism in the context of the environmental crisis and religious responses to issues such as climate change. Following Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, I suggest that models of disenchantment are misleading&mdash ; to quote Latour, &ldquo ; we have never been modern.&rdquo ; In engagement with a range of neo-vitalist scholars of enchantment including Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Isabelle Stengers, Jane Bennett and William Connolly, I explore the possibility of a kind of critical-theory cosmopolitics around the concept of &ldquo ; enchantment&rdquo ; as a possible site for multi-religious political theology collaborations and argue that this is a promising post-secular frame for the establishment of cosmopolitical collaborations across quite profound kinds of difference.

Wortwörtliche politische Auslegung der Bibel für die Politik von heute. ; Word for word interpretation of bible for politics today.

Theological and political concepts and practices are frequently deeply related in political thought. If this statement is true in general, it is particularly accurate for the case of John Locke, to the extent that we can apply the label "political theology"—following Carl Schmitt's approach to the topic—for evaluating his project. Elisabeth A. Pritchard's recent book Religion in Public: Locke's Political Theology centers on that specific "label," which has sometimes been used, albeit not frequently, by other scholars. Speaking of a Lockean political theology means that liberalism does not represent the official end of every kind of political theology. In Pritchard's understanding, Locke's political theology consists of the shared conviction or consensus that individuals are the sacred property of a transcendent and benevolent creator. As a result, in his view Locke condemns every kind of political theology that compromises with hierarchical and competitive structures, providing differential access to the sacred. In this article I will defend a competing argument: In John Locke's writings we can find a political theology of sovereignty, even though he argued using liberal political presuppositions. In the end he consecrates political power just as the previous political tradition did, even if he uses a different argumentative path for achieving legitimation. He creates the fiction that political intervention, even in sacred matters, can be eliminated from the political arena.

Theological and political concepts and practices are frequently deeply related in political thought. If this statement is true in general, it is particularly accurate for the case of John Locke, to the extent that we can apply the label "political theology"— following Carl Schmitt's approach to the topic—for evaluating his project. Elisabeth A. Pritchard's recent book Religion in Public: Locke's Political Theology centers on that specific "label," which has sometimes been used, albeit not frequently, by other scholars. Speaking of a Lockean political theology means that liberalism does not represent the official end of every kind of political theology. In Pritchard's understanding, Locke's political theology consists of the shared conviction or consensus that individuals are the sacred property of a transcendent and benevolent creator. As a result, in his view Locke condemns every kind of political theology that compromises with hierarchical and competitive structures, providing differential access to the sacred. In this article I will defend a competing argument: In John Locke's writings we can find a political theology of sovereignty, even though he argued using liberal political presuppositions. In the end he consecrates political power just as the previous political tradition did, even if he uses a different argumentative path for achieving legitimation. He creates the fiction that political intervention, even in sacred matters, can be eliminated from the political arena.

One of the ways of thinking God in contemporary philosophy is reflecting on violence. In fact, reflecting on violence implies always at the same time to refer to the difficulty of thinking about the co-implication of law and violence, a typical prerogative of divine action. From this perspec-tive, political theology is concerned with the status and the possibilities or impossibilities of rep-resenting violence in a given political order. Three are the classical texts in the backdrop of this reflection on the hiatus between law and violence: Walter Benjamin Critique of Violence of 1921, Carl Schmitt's Political Theology of 1922 and Derrida's Force of Law of 1989. The article exam-ines another paradigm, that of Ernesto Laclau. The article concludes that only a non-presentable idea of God as a negative fundament allows for a non-authoritarian political idea. But this non-presentable character is only made possible by revolutionary politics.

This dissertation explores the significance of ritual inoperativity for political theology. Drawing from representative interpreters of biblical/traditional sources, contemporary philosophical reflection, and practical analysis of rituals, this study argues that rituals such as Sabbath, vigil, shmita, and fiesta paint a unique image of human identity and authority in the world. This image is starkly opposed to the common political-theological framework in which God is defined through action, and human beings are similarly defined as action-producing beings. in contrast, ritual inoperativity depicts God's identity and authority as one who gives rest or €œlets be.€ for this reason, human identity and authority should follow a similar model. This study argues that this perspective of political power could be enormously important for addressing the most significant political challenge in the contemporary world: climate change. It concludes by suggesting how a climate-healing Sabbath ritual could function.

28 pages ; The essay examines the pronounced theological turn of the late Carl Schmitt, especially in his Politische Theologie II (1970). He aim is to understand what Schmitt meant by a "Catholic intensification" in the relationship between theology and political theory. The essay gives equal attention to Schmitt's polemic against the theologian Peterson, who denied the possibility of political theology, and the dialogue with the philosopher Hans Blumenberg, who had severely criticized Schmitt's conception of secularization. The essay shows that in both instances the opposition merely encouraged Schmitt to sharpen and clarify his own theological position, which includes heretical Gnostic elements.

Collation of two lectures presented to theological students' fellowship meetings in Dublin and Belfast, Oct. 1975.

This article explores the fate of political theology in Kazuo Ishiguro's speculative fiction Never Let Me Go (2005) and, by implication, in contemporary fiction more broadly. To pursue a reading of Christianity that extends from Hegel through Lacan to Žižek, the article argues that political theology's future may perversely lie in a materialism emptied of all transcendental guarantees: political theology is the historically privileged master fantasy or illusion which reveals the fantastic or illusory status of our entire relation to the real in (neo-)liberal modernity. In conclusion, the article argues that Ishiguro's fiction may thus be read less as a melancholic dystopian study in total ideological capture or surrender than as the representation of a state of immanent freedom beyond the power relations of (neo-)liberal subjectivity.

Conflict between religion and state politics is a persistent phenomenon in human history. Hence it is not surprising that the propagation of Christianity often faces the challenge of &ldquo ; political theology&rdquo ; . When the Church of the East monk Aluoben reached China in 635 during the reign of Emperor Tang Taizong, he received the favorable invitation of the emperor to translate Christian sacred texts for the collections of Tang Imperial Library. This marks the beginning of Jingjiao (景教) mission in China. In historiographical sense, China has always been a political domineering society where the role of religion is subservient and secondary. A school of scholarship in Jingjiao studies holds that the fall of Jingjiao in China is the obvious result of its over-involvement in local politics. The flaw of such an assumption is the overlooking of the fact that in the Tang context, it is impossible for any religious establishments to avoid getting in touch with the Tang government. In the light of this notion, this article attempts to approach this issue from the perspective of &ldquo ; political theology&rdquo ; and argues that instead of over-involvement, it is rather the clashing of &ldquo ; ideologies&rdquo ; between the Jingjiao establishment and the ever-changing Tang court&rsquo ; s policies towards foreigners and religious bodies that caused the downfall of Jingjiao Christianity in China. This article will posit its argument based on the analysis of the Chinese Jingjiao canonical texts, especially the Xian Stele, and takes this as a point of departure to observe the political dynamics between Jingjiao and Tang court. The finding of this paper does show that the intellectual history of Chinese Christianity is in a sense a comprehensive history of &ldquo ; political theology&rdquo ; .

It is a contested issue, particularly among modern and postmodern scholars, whether political theory requires a foundation—some set of background assumptions (about the nature of existence, the nature of agency, what is of value in human life and so forth) that is fundamental to and presupposed absolutely by it. Andrew Vincent, in his book The Nature of Political Theory (2004), analyzes different types of foundations based on the assumption that they are necessary and ubiquitous. He believes this is so because as a finite being, without absolute certainty and objective knowledge, man naturally seeks a foundation, which in a comprehensive and complete sense eludes him. In other words, political theory is permanently in search of 'foundational arguments' that 'are intrinsically unresolvable'. According to Vincent, '[w]e may not be able to identify absolutes, but neither can we avoid foundationalism'. It is the nature of our being, he suggests, that we continually ask questions that cannot be absolutely resolved. Vincent takes it to follow that the foundations upon which political theory relies are and must be 'ordinary and multiversal, rather than extraordinary and universal'. Lacking absolute certainty, we are confronted with 'multiple foundational problems and answers, which are not finished'. This state of affairs, he suggests, 'is deeply irritating for some, but is quite normal and ordinary for humanity, and should become normal and ordinary within political theory.'

The need for political theology to refine its scope, and&mdash ; ultimately&mdash ; to arrive at a place where it might enjoy full ownership over its public voice, grows more urgent by the moment in our fraught globalized climate [.]

Bourdieu's anthropology of the state can be interpreted as a form of political theology, premised on a panentheistic conception of the state, which is transcendental to social reality while simultaneously being lodged in all social matter. The state is a Leviathan that imposes a horizon of meaning beyond which social agents rarely, if ever, move. The anthropologist must transcend the doxic structures of the state by engaging in a labor of anamnesis, enacting a bringing-to-consciousness of the invisible and occluded operations of the state in its deployment of symbolic power, which serves to naturalize a series of dominant (yet arbitrary) categories, concepts, and representations. Bourdieu's ontological vision can be summarized in the concise formula, 'state = society = God.' A guiding methodical imperative for sociologists of the state-as-divinity is extracted from Bourdieu's lectures on the state: the Deus Absconditus Principle, which mandates detecting and uncovering the veiled divinity of the state in all aspects of social reality. It is the task of the anthropologist to channel, interpret, and challenge the panentheistic state.

Bourdieu's anthropology of the state can be interpreted as a form of political theology, premised on a panentheistic conception of the state, which is transcendental to social reality while simultaneously being lodged in all social matter. The state is a Leviathan that imposes a horizon of meaning beyond which social agents rarely, if ever, move. The anthropologist must transcend the doxic structures of the state by engaging in a labor of anamnesis, enacting a bringing-to-consciousness of the invisible and occluded operations of the state in its deployment of symbolic power, which serves to naturalize a series of dominant (yet arbitrary) categories, concepts, and representations. Bourdieu's ontological vision can be summarized in the concise formula, 'state = society = God.' A guiding methodical imperative for sociologists of the state-as-divinity is extracted from Bourdieu's lectures on the state: the Deus Absconditus Principle, which mandates detecting and uncovering the veiled divinity of the state in all aspects of social reality. It is the task of the anthropologist to channel, interpret, and challenge the panentheistic state.