HENT DE VRIESsovereignty, or of a democracy yet and forever to come (a`venir), which no longer fits the
ancient or modern understanding of geo- or bio-political dictates?
With this in mind, we can see how Assmann’s work on political theology in the
ancient world inspires two further sets of related questions. First, is it true that ‘‘the
further one goes back in time, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between reli-
gious and political institutions’’?^89 Might the same indistinction not be plausible as we
progress toward an as yet undetermined future? Indeed, does the distinction between the
theological and the political not crumble when we analyze its unstable arrangement in
the present? In other words, is there a ‘‘permanence of the theologico-political,’’ however
conceived (Lefort’s view being one possible articulation), or does the mutual imbrication
of ‘‘salvation’’ and ‘‘power’’ reveal complexities—and potentialities or, should we say,
virtualities—we have not even begun to address or to realize?
Second, can one plausibly argue, as Assmann does, that political theology emerges
only‘‘where such problems [of salvation and power] are treated in forms that implicate
the gods or God,’’^90 although he immediately adds ‘‘that concepts and models of a ‘hori-
zontal’ order of living together also belong to political theology wherever they draw in the
divine’’?^91 Or does the theologico-political also have relevance—and thus some perma-
nence—beyond the literal or implicit invocation of gods or God, that is to say, of the
divine, salvation, and the sacred? Should we entertain the possibility that its significance
reveals itself with even more consequence under the reign of the secular, where it works
its wonders in more oblique—and hence intractable—ways? And, if this is so, can one
still claim that a ‘‘theology is political, and a state doctrine theological, only when it
postulates a nonsecular foundation, for example, in the form of the holy and hence, in
the final analysis, imperativestatusof a political association [Verbandes],... in the form
of a regime of divine grace [Gottesgnadentum], or in the form of the political assignment
[Auftrag] of the Church’’?^92 Or, by contrast, isanyreference to some transcendence,
whether vertical or horizontal, that is to say, to some empty signifier, absolute performa-
tive, or conditionless condition by itself already sufficient to conjure up the explicitly or
implicitly religious motif and motivation documented in the tradition of ‘‘political theol-
ogy’’? Is it crucial to decide this, or would the mere distinction between, say, ‘‘static’’ and
‘‘dynamic,’’ ‘‘closed’’ and open’’ societies (but also moralities and religions) inaugurate
the theologico-political questioning that interests us here?
In short, is there any relevance or permanence of the theologico-politicalbeforeand
beyondthe dual perspectives of (or on) what Assmann terms ‘‘the implicit theology of the
political’’ and ‘‘the implicit politology, sociology, or anthropology of theological or, more
generally, religious discourses’’?^93 That is to say, is there a political theology that isnot yet
orno longerstrictly or simply theological or even political, in the traditional and modern
definitions of these terms?
Assmann recalls that political theology has, at least historically, counted as ‘‘a specific
notion [ein Spezifikum] of Western history and hence of Christendom,’’^94 despite the
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