INTRODUCTIONdon’t tend to love killers, while keeping ambiguity intact—might already dispel their
worst potential, and do so miraculously, as a special effect in its own right.
To articulate all this with the help of Spinoza means rewriting a certain idea of tran-
scendence (the notions, dimensions, or experiences with which ‘‘religion’’ and the ‘‘theo-
logico-political’’ are most often identified) in the language of immanence, associated with
the history of atomism, materialism, naturalism, and pantheism. The latter traverses the
history of thought as a heretical countercurrent, of sorts. Yet this rewriting also implies
interrogating the historical and systematic pertinence of the very distinction and opposi-
tion between transcendence and immanence, as well.
Beyond this ontological—and, ultimately, metaphysical—hypothesis, one could re-
turn to the original theologico-political question and ask: Where and how did this fatal
dualism, if not manicheism, of two supposedly separate and antagonistic realms—an op-
position that contains the seeds of its better alternative—first enter the historical world
in its theologico-political guise? In antiquity, the Middle Ages, or modernity, including
today’s uni- and multipolar worlds? And what are its perils and chances for contemporary
and future democracy, for an openness associated with tolerance and hospitality, with the
flourishing of human rights as well as with novel possibilities for the living together of
bodies and minds, peoples and cultures, animals and things? The four consecutive parts
of this volume are devoted to shedding light on these questions.
What, Then, Are Political Theologies?
Systematically and traditionally, the concept of ‘‘political theology’’ connotes, as Jan Ass-
mann suggests inAuthority and Salvation: Political Theology in Ancient Egypt, Israel, and
Europe, the ‘‘ever-changing relationships between political community and religious
order, in short, between power [or authority:Herrschaft] and salvation [Heil].’’^80 Yet its
contemporary range and implications reach further and encroach upon the central ques-
tions of political philosophy and political theory, in its comparative anthropological, so-
ciological, economic, and juridical varieties, from which its original metaphysical impetus
must also be distinguished. In addition to theorizing ‘‘the political,’’ ‘‘political theology’’
also enters into relationship with urgent questions of daily ‘‘politics,’’ without, of course,
being immediately (or fully) rendered (or contradicted) by them. Precisely this irreducible
tension will interest us throughout; it signals this tradition’s continued recalcitrance—as
if, so far, nothing could really substitute for it.
Historically, the termpolitical theologydates to Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27b.c.,
who is discussed by St. Augustine inThe City of God(cf. 4.27 and 31). Varro speaks of the
Stoic tripartition of theology (theologia tripertita), in which a political theology (theologia
politike ̄) is juxtaposed with mythical (mythike ̄) and cosmological (kosmike ̄) theologies. In
Varro’s Latin, the distinction is betweentheologia civilis,fabularis, andnaturalis, each of
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