Politicization of Theology and Theologization of Politics: Dialogue Between Jan Assmann and Carl Schmitt

Abstract

The article examines the problems of the genesis of political theology as a phenomenon and the specificity of political theology as a method based on the concepts of Jan Assmann and Carl Schmitt. Analysing the development of political religion in Jewish political theology as a phenomenon and political theology as a sociological method provides new insights into the tasks of political theology as a syncretic political, theological, anthropological and sociological method. This method not only explores the changing relationship between power and religious order, but also identifies its actual origins. The examination of this genesis is traversed through the key concepts of “theologization of politics” (Assmann) and “politicization of theology” (Schmitt). An analysis of Schmitt's method of political theology itself, with reference to Assmann's analysis of political theology, leads to the conclusion that Schmitt theologizes political theology by presenting it as a single mechanism and stripping it of the content that could legitimise secular power. The political theology that emerged in Judaism, conditioned by the gap between theory and practice, makes possible the act of legitimation circulating between divine law and its fulfilment. Schmitt, however, shifts the focus from the internal circulation of legitimation to the principle itself. This principle is enunciated by the sociology of legal concepts, a method that not only establishes the substantive identity of the metaphysical picture of the world and the legal system, but to some extent strips this identity of the intrinsic distinction of being-in-itself, which metaphysics/theology tries to think through, and being-for-itself, which political praxis arranges according to the metaphysical premise but does not coincide with it completely. The article therefore concludes that the notion of political theology in Assmann's theory is the most constructive and historically validated, whilst also having great potential for deconstructing both historical political-theological models and the political-theological method itself.

Keywords

• political theology
• schmitt
• assmann
• politicization of theology
• theologization of politics