HENT DE VRIESBeyond Tolerance: Pluralism and Agonistic Reason
One should not yield too quickly to the temptation to associate the descriptive-recon-
structive (that is to say, the institutional-juridical, or, as Assmann says,beschreibende) and
the normative-constructive (that is, the political, orbetreibende) uses of the concept of
the theologico-political with the more explicitly confessional (or ‘‘appellative’’) adoption
of the term. The last can be found in twentieth-century Catholic and Protestant theologies
of revolutionary hope (Johann Baptist Metz, Ju ̈rgen Moltmann, Dorothee So ̈ lle, and oth-
ers), especially in the Latin American and Third World liberation theologies of the 1960s
and 1970s (in the writings of South American authors such as Gustavo Gutie ́rrrez, Leo-
nardo Boff, and, more indirectly, Enrique Dussel^120 ). In a different tone, a confessional
use of the theologico-political appears in the writings of the British Radical Orthodoxy
group (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, Philip Goodchild, and others).
Thesenormative investments—which are also visible in recent antiglobalization pro-
tests^121 —are but the latest expression of a longer and richer tradition of articulating the
connection between religion and the socio-juridical, public realm in ways that, even if
they do not challenge the strict legal separation of church and state, question the latter’s
ideological neutrality and supposed liberality, just as they caution the Church to give up
its illusory and somewhat deceptive apolitical stance.^122
That things are more complex here is clear from Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical,
Deus Caritas Est(God Is Love), published in January 2006: ‘‘The church cannot and must
not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She
cannot and must not replace the state. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not
remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.’’^123 That this does not allow the Vatican to
absent itself from straightforward confrontation with the powers that be, precisely in its
insistence on the intra-ecclesial and pastoral role of its mission, is clear from its recent
clash with the Chinese authorities over the state’s imposed appointment (and the
Church’s subsequent excommunication) of bishops on the mainland. The episode, which
played itself out in May 2006, had an ironic sequel. When the highest official of the
Roman Catholic Church in China, Cardinal Joseph Zen, also bishop of Hong Kong and
elevated to Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in February 2006, commemorated the seven-
teenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, he criticized the Communist re-
gime on several counts. He was contradicted by Liu Bainian, Secretary General of the
government-approved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, who expressed his surprise
at Zen’s comments, saying: ‘‘According to God’s holy teachings, what belongs to Caesar
should be left with Caesar, and what belongs to God should be left with God.’’^124
In a remarkable conversation with Ju ̈rgen Habermas at the invitation of the Catholic
Academy of Bavaria in January 2004,^125 then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected
Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, reiterates the Roman Catholic Church’s view that sci-
ence and modern democratic institutions cannot as such—or drawing on their own intel-
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