Political Theology

Political Theology

By M. Douglas Meek

Political theology does not intend to be a rigorous ethical theory; rather, it aims to provide a new paradigm of the character and task of theology. Political theology has worked particularly to criticize the other-worldly dimensions of Christian eschatology, to transform Christian concepts of God, to devise a political hermeneutic for engaging in Christian theology, and to outline a theory of the practice for the church in the late twentieth century. It seeks not to make politics the center of theology but rather to relate theology to the political conflict that is deciding the future of humanity and the earth.

Background

Today's political theology was initiated and shaped in Germany in the late 1960s by the Catholic theologian Johannes B. Metz and the Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann, with important additions by Helmut Peukert and Dorothee Soelle. Other theologians who have contributed significantly to political theology are J. Deotis Roberts, John B. Cobb, Jr., Matthew Lamb, and M. Douglas Meeks in the United States, José Míguez Bonino in Argentina, Charles Davis in Canada, Alfredo Fierro in Spain, and Alistair Kee in Great Britain. Political theology has been influential in the development of Latin American liberation theology, and black theology in Africa and North America.

In the late 1960s, Moltmann and Metz considered politics to be the "all-inclusive" horizon of humanity. Politics had become the destiny of the human race, but politics had not become truly human in a world threatened by possible nuclear holocaust. In this situation, political theology has argued that the church should join the common struggle of all humanity for a common future. Indeed the very character of Christian theology should contribute to the search for possible human cooperation to realize hopeful historical possibilities in the face of a threatening apocalyptic future.

The background of political theology lies in the theology of secularity. Both Metz (following Karl Rahner) and Moltmann (following Dietrich Bonhoeffer) began with the assumption that theology should not oppose secularity since secularity—emerging out of the hopeful Enlightenment promises of autonomy, maturity, and responsibility—is a human affirmation of God's creation and the incarnation of God. Secularization thus frees the world from theo-political control of the church and religious control of politics.

But under the influence of revisionist Marxists such as Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas (the last three associated with the Frankfort School of Social Criticism), Metz and Moltmann devised a new theological bearing that placed the dialectic between eschatology and history at the heart of theology and thus made a qualitative step beyond the theology of secularly. Secularity had to be questioned precisely at the point of its deepest faith and most compelling promise, namely, progress. Political theology has sought to undermine the uncritical acceptance of the Enlightenment promises as if they had been realized, when in point of fact they are at best still promises and at worst distorted.

Inspired by the writings of the young Marx, political theologians have found in humanistic Marxism some of the messianic hopes that had emigrated from the church. The Marxist criticism of religion asks why society is so unhealthily religious, and the most widely known answer of Marx is that religion is an opium of the people. Religion numbs people to their suffering and makes them politically unaware of the causes of their suffering. Religion, according to Marx, decorates the chains of the slaves with flowers. But the humanist reading has discovered that Marx also recognized in religion a positive element. Religion is an expression of and protest against the real misery of humanity. Marx criticized the other-worldly eschatology that provided a merely illusory compensation for human misery and thereby helped to perpetuate the conditions that caused it.

Some parallels exist between the Marxist analysis and the political hermeneutic of the gospel devised in political theology. For one, political theology understands messianic Christian faith as a protest against real misery and simultaneously the imperative for liberation from political and economic oppression. Thus the new criterion of theology and faith is to be found in praxis, for unless theory contains initiative for transforming the world, it remains doomed to the status of a mere story of the existing world. Christian political theology as a theory-praxis must prove itself in the power to overcome the real misery of humanity.

In contrast to Marxists, however, Christians see human misery as slavery to sin • and death and look to God for liberation from sin by grace and from death by resurrection. Transcendent and immanent hopes interact. Hope grounded in the Resurrection transcends all historical anticipations. And thus no revolutionary achievement can be made absolute. Hope keeps alive the will to transcend every realization of freedom, to resist resignation to failure, and to free from legalistic compulsion political work for freedom.

Transformations of the Concept of God

Following upon its Marxist analysis of the political and historical inadequacies of Christian concepts of God, political theology begins its transformation of the concept of God by using the eschatological perspective in which God is dialectically related to history from the future. Political theology's orientation to the future depends on the promises of God that have already been given. What Metz calls the ''dangerous memories" of the tradition mediate into the present the eschatological proviso. These memories bear the promises of God and enliven hope in midst of the irrationalities and oppression of the present. Eschatology uncovers the ambiguities of the present. The light of these promise-bearing memories discloses the present darkness of the world. History is provisional, not yet perfected. The eschatological proviso makes relative all present systems and makes clear the cruciality of historical activity in relation to God. Eschatology leads to a political hermeneutic that leads to a new political praxis.

Mediational in character, political theology concentrates on biblical narratives of God's involvement in the negations and suffering of history. The promise of God is uncovered in the resurrection and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The resurrection uncovers God as present in history and as the effective power of the coming reign of righteousness and peace. The resurrection reveals the future of God in the light of which the world's conditions of injustice are disclosed and judged. These conditions also suggest that the presence of God in the world—through resurrection—is one of suffering love. At the heart of political theology is its view of human freedom, which interprets the cross in the light of systemic sin and structural evil. The crucifixion uncovers God as present in history within the suffering of God's creatures. As such, God gives to the human being passion, the power of suffering love, the only power stronger than the power of nothingness. If the message of the cross and resurrection and of the kingdom of God announced by Jesus is the center of Christian theology, then theology must be pursued within the church's actual historical existence among the political conflicts of the world.

Political Hermeneutic

The resulting theological method is critical of other forms of theological hermeneutic. Metz argued against the Thomistic doctrine of nature and natural law because of its ahistorical character. He found transcendental Thomism, with its turn toward the subject, to be apolitical (see his Theology of the World). Moltmann similarly criticized the dualistic and static nature of an extreme Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms and the orders of creation and the individualistic and reclusive tendencies of various forms of modern existentialism (see his On Human Dignity). Political theology has steadfastly criticized the sequestering of religion, the narrowing down of religion to the inner life. As the mirror image of the Enlightenment's optimism about the progress of human behavior and understanding, middle-class religion strengthens the conditions of the elite's privilege over those who cannot benefit from the logic of progress and at the same time promotes the increasing subjugation of the elite itself to a life of fate without real choices. The point of theological hermeneutic can no longer be simply Pure understanding. The task is not to explain the world but to transform it. As Moltmann put it, "In the past two centuries, a Christian faith in God without hope for the future of the world has called forth a secular hope for the future of the world without faith in God" (Religion, Revolution, and the Future, 200).

Political theology has provided a critique of the ways in which Western religion and politics have been falsely related. It has argued against political movement that use religion for their own ends and religious movements that merely legitimate political interests. Both political religions and religious politics make themselves available for human domination. But there is no simple solution to the problematic relationship of religion to politics, of altar to throne. History suggests that there have been "no states without gods and no divinities without states." Since being adopted as the state religion of Rome, Christianity has often served the raison d’être of the state by providing the cultural unity of the realm and the legitimation of power as if it were divine. From the time of the service of the early Christian theorist Eusebius to the cult of the Roman emperors, through the time of the elevation of Constantine as God's representative on earth, to the pre-World War II support given by Protestant and Catholic churches to the National Socialist depiction of Hitler as a messianic figure, to the more recent religious justification of the politics of the right and the left in North America, religion has been used for the political oppression of human beings. Politics takes over the roles and authorizing mechanism of religion. It uses religion for legitimation and stabilization of the present order.

On the other hand, the religious use of politics must be criticized. The church cannot become a political party, else it should lose its freedom to bring God's promise of the reign of righteousness to bear on all politics. But neither can theology and the church escape politics. There is no such thing as an apolitical theology or nonpolitical church. People of faith are always involved in social relationships and power relationships. The church cannot withdraw from the political realm. To do so would simply give a legitimation to the status quo. The church should exist as an institution of critical freedom, seeking in its mission to subvert the ideologies of class, race, and society. In this way the church constantly refuses to be a national, cultural, or ethnic power group.

Political theology challenges all theology to become aware of the ideologies that suffuse church and theology today and that facilitate the hardening of the status quo. The liberation of theology is at stake. All theology should begin with ideology critique through which theologian and church become aware of their actual political situation. Theology should ask the question, Cui bono, or, for whose good does it exist, whose benefit does it serve? Political theology ^s contribution to this liberation takes place in the foci of memory, future, suffering, solidarity, and praxis.

Theory for Church Practice

In its process of liberating persons and structure⁵ from political and economic oppression, political theology has sought to widen church's view of salvation. Moltmann speaks of five interrelated spheres of oppression and liberation in which the messianic activity of the church must join all others who seek the dignity of human beings and of the ecosphere: the political, economic, cultural, natural, and personal spheres. To address the suffering in each of these spheres is to undermine the idols and ideologies that undergird the exploitation of some people by others and of the earth by human beings. In the political sphere, the idols of the ruling few must be replaced with democracy. The messianic contribution is the identification of God's power with the crucified one. In the economic dimension, the ideologies that, through property rules, exclude many from livelihood must be replaced with rules that put belonging to community and access to what is required for life above the accumulation of wealth as power. The messianic contribution is the identification of God as the triune community of creative righteousness. In the cultural dimension, the idols of racism, sexism, and ageism that define certain people as less than fully human must be replaced with the image of the triune God as the dignity of every person. In the natural dimension, the mechanistic denigration of nature and the body must be replaced with a symbiosis of the human being and nature. The messianic contribution is a view of God the Holy Spirit as immanent in nature. Finally, in the personal dimension, the despair, anxiety, and meaninglessness felt by the person must be replaced with hope and trust that open up the future. The messianic contribution is the forgiveness of guilt and the freedom from the fear of death that deliver persons from the life-destroying laws of self-justification and compulsion to immortality.

While insisting that Christian faith is inherently political, political theology has worked against a reduction of faith to political and social activity and activism. Countering the utilitarian moralism of revolutionary movements and achieve­ment-centered values of society today, Moltmann and Metz have also devised extensive theologies of spirituality and play. Faith is not just a modality leading toward action, but it is doxology, the joy and praise of God. Likewise, theology is not just a theory of practice but pure theory, the enjoyment of God rooted in God's free love in creation and redemption.

Bibliography. 

José Míguez Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation. John B. Cobb, Jr., Process Theology As Political Theology. M. Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy. Johannes B. Metz, Theology of the World. Johannes B. Metz, Faith in History and Society. Johannes B. Metz, The Emergent Church. Jürgen Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future. Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God.

Source: Musser/Price, A New Handbook of Christian Theology.