God against Messiah | 89any time to “either strive toward a complete community out of free will [Gemein-
schaft aus Freiwilligkeit], a divine kingdom, or... to an indolent or brutalized
subordination.”^23 On a political level, the same principle confirms “the rightful
possessor of the commission, the ‘charismatic’ man,” in his authority, yet also
sanctions the misappropriated and abused authority of pretenders and the empty
anarchy (leere Herrschaftslosigkeit) of those who indulge in “enmity not merely to
order [Ordnung] but to organization [Gestaltung].”^24 Theocracy is thus “a strong
bastion for the obedient, but also at the same time can be a shelter to the self-
seeking behind which he exalts his lack of commitment as divine freedom.” This
double-tiered double bind produces a social existence fraught with conflict:
The result of this is that the truth of the principle must be fought for...
religio-politically. The venture of a radical theocracy must therefore lead to
the bursting-forth of the opposition latent in every people. Those, however,
who in this fight represent the case for divine rulership against that of “his-
tory,” experience therein the first shudder of eschatology. The full, paradoxical
character of the human attitude of faith is only begun in the situation of the
“individual” with all its depths; it is developed only in the real relationship of
this individual to a world which does not want to be God’s, and to a God who
does not want to compel the world to become His. The Sinai covenant is the
first step visible to us on the path through the dark ravine between actualiza-
tion and contradiction. In Israel it led from the divinely proud confidence of
the early king-passages... to that first form of resignation with which our
Book of Judges ends.^25However theologically inflected this rhetoric may be, Buber intends to remain
within the realm of historical description. The “first shudder of eschatology” oc-
curs for the partisans of the kingship of God when they imagine a society in
which all are reconciled to divine rule and no longer seek to usurp or undermine
it; in other words, a sustainable anarcho-theocracy. Moreover, Buber believes he
is describing a general phenomenon of which the story of Israel as presented in
the Bible is only one instance. Recognition of the paradox of theocracy leads to
the breakout of conflict within every people, and within every people the two
sides are the same: they “contend in the same name, and always without a clear
issue of the quarrel.”^26 What Buber here counterposes to divine rulership and
calls “history” he refers to elsewhere as realpolitik, and what he calls realpolitik
is identifiable, still elsewhere, as political theology.^27 Thus the contemporary pro-
ponents of realpolitik and political theology are analogous to those Israelites who
misunderstand and abuse the anarcho-theocracy.
The hero of Buber’s story, in contrast, is Gideon, to whom Buber devotes the
first chapter of Kingship of God. In the moment that Gideon refuses the principle
of hereditary monarchy, he endorses the theopolitical thesis: “A will of a religious
and political kind in one, historically localizable in this its stage, a will towards
constitution combined with faith, found here the straight-forward expression of