1 European Political Theology

Jürgen Moltmann

What Is the Point of Political Theology Today?

Isn’t the modern world committed to the principle of strict separation
of church and state and of religion and politics? Did we not secularize
politics, when we made it democratic? Isn’t it the case that in democra-
cies “all power originates from the people”? What do the politicians of
any country know about religion and what do the authorities of religious
communities know about politics? If one speaks of “political theology,”
is one not advocating that we return to a situation in which theologians
intervene politically, like the mullahs in Iran or the cardinals in the
ancien régime in France, or even a situation in which one might envisage
the establishment of a theocracy? How can there even be such a thing as
a political theology, if the fundamental conviction of the modern world
about politics and religion is that “religion is a private matter”?
My intention in this essay is to sketch a path from the old forms
of politicized religion and theology to the New Political Theology of
Christianity, which was fully engaged in criticism of public affairs in
the tradition of prophets. When the terrorism of National Socialism was
raging unabated on the streets of Germany, only a very few Christians
protested; most retreated into the sphere of their private lives and obeyed
the God-given “constituted authorities”(Rom. 13:1). The New Political
Theology was born of this scandalous and shameful episode.
After Auschwitz, Christian faith is no longer a private matter in
Germany, and theology belongs in the realm of the public discussion of
political freedom, social justice, and the future of the earth. Apartheid
was the origin in South Africa of a theology liberated from racism. “The
poor” are the origin in Latin America for the development of a political
theology of liberation. “Han,” the pain and anger of the oppressed, was
the origin in South Korea of the political Minjung-theology, a “theology
of the people.” White racism was the origin in the United States of the
public theology of the civil rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther

3
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4 Jürgen Moltmann

King Jr. Everywhere in the Christian world new political theologies

have arisen, all of them with an ecumenical dimension. I limit myself
in this essay to the developments in Europe and concentrate especially
on those in Germany, because I have been a part of them.
There are at least four different types of political theology in
Europe: (1) the theological formulation of the age-old political religion;
(2)  the modern conflict between anarchism and political sovereignty,
and between terrorism and the politics of safety; (3) the New Political
Theology of Christian resistance against privatization of faith and polit-
ical idolatry; and (4) engagement for social justice, just peace, and the
integrity of creation.

Political Religion
The term political theology was coined in pre-Christian stoic phi-
losophy as the genus politikon:  “Panaitius delineated three classes
of God-figures:  natural powers thought of as persons, the Gods of the
state-religion, and the Gods of the myths (genus physikon genus poli-
tikon and genus mythikon).”1 The Roman Marcus Terrentius Varro
(116–27 BC) spoke of the “natural theology” of philosophers and the
“political theology” of the citizens. Augustine referred to this distinc-
tion in De Civitate Dei.2
What was, and to some extent still is, political religion? According
to the ancient doctrine of the state, worship of the gods of city, country,
and empire is the state’s supreme purpose (fi nis principalis). The state’s
gods provide for the prosperity and peace of the people, so the citizens
must provide for their appropriate worship. The favor of these Gods is
won through public sacrifice, but if there are famines, pestilences, natu-
ral catastrophes, and wars, they are signs that the gods are angry because
of blasphemy, insufficient cultic observance, or the disobedience of the
citizens. The people must do penance, as once in Nineveh, make special
sacrifices, or slay the wicked who are in their midst.
To ensure the favor of the gods was the preeminent task of ancient
rulers worldwide, for they all were priestly kings. The Roman Caesar
was the pontifex maximus of Rome’s state god. The Chinese emperor
certainly stood over his subjects as “Son of Heaven,” but if he fell into
disfavor with heaven and his country was visited by famine, plague,
earthquakes, and floods, he could be overthrown. The Moloch of
Carthage demanded children as sacrifices; the Aztecs and Mayas offered
their Gods still-quivering hearts. These political religions were do ut
des religions in which the relationship between deity and worshippers

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European Political Theology 5

was one of contractual exchange.3 Blasphemy was the worst of crimes,

because it was not directed against human beings but against the pro-
tecting gods. The blasphemer had to be eliminated and put to death.
In the late Roman Empire, Jews and Christians were persecuted when-
ever misfortunes and disasters happened. They were accused of “athe-
ism” because they did not worship the Caesar cult.4 As late as 1706
the law and theology faculties in the University of Tübingen declared
jointly: “That blasphemy was the most horrible and greatest of crimes,
whereby God could easily be moved to wrath and could avenge the out-
rage on the whole land through famine, earthquake and pestilence.”5
Political religion embraced not only the human but also the natural
world. The human state had to be governed in congruity with surround-
ing nature. The sovereign was responsible for peace not only in the
human world but also in the world of nature. Chinese political religion
was founded in the harmony of heaven and earth: in spring the emperor
acted as the “first man of the land” at the agricultural altar in Beijing.
In the European tradition the correspondence between the monar-
chical structure of the cosmos and the political monarchy of the one
ruler was observed.6 Aristotle quoted in his Metaphysics XII a word of
Agamemnon in Homer’s Iliad (“But the world must not be governed
badly:  ‘The rule of the many is not good; let one be the ruler.’ ”)7 and
turned this political idea into cosmology. The order of the cosmos
is: one god – one logos/nomos – one universe. The corresponding polit-
ical order is: one emperor – one law – one empire. This type of divine
monarchy was always imperialistic. This was not limited to European
monarchies. A famous word of the Mongol Lord Genghis Khan, report-
edly spoken in 1254 to Franciscan monks who tried to convert him,
shows that this was a universal political religion from Rome to China
and everywhere: “In heaven there is no other than the one, eternal God,
on earth there is no other than the single lord Genghis Khan, the Son of
God. This is the word being said to you.”8 Monotheism – whether reli-
gious or metaphysical – served monarchism and imperialism in politics.
With the Constantinian turn, Christianity changed from a perse-
cuted minority to a tolerated religion (religio licita) and fi nally to the
general political religion of the Christian Empire. Byzantium became
the center of the world and the mirror of heaven on earth.9 But the
connected imperial claim overcharged the power and the possibili-
ties of the state and was a reason for its decay. The originally critical
Christian eschatology was changed into the political ideology of the
Christian Empire:  the kingdom of Christ has no end. The Christian
Empire combined the Pax Romana with the Pax Christi. The Christian

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6 Jürgen Moltmann

Caesar represented Christ the cosmocrator; his rule was an absolute

rule, an imitatio Dei and an imitatio mundi. Political structure had to
be understood as the image of heaven. Ceremony at court was a polit-
ical liturgy worshipping God and his image on earth. The Christian
Caesar was the unique source of power and law in the empire and his
role was without limits. The Christian emperor was also the protector
of the Christian church. In the name of the political imperial religion
he had to unify the various churches and different theologies. Nicaea
(325) and Chalcedon (450) were the results. Swords were converted into
Christian swords and warfare limited by the criteria of a just war. This
idea of a Christian political religion and theology was alive in Moscow,
“the Third Rome,” until 1917.10 The symphony of religion and politics
in this form is traditional Orthodox “political theology” until today.
Constantine and Helena are saints and the last tsar and his family,
killed in 1917, are venerated as holy by the Russian Orthodox Church
and the Russian people.
However, the Constantinian turn did not only create a Christian
imperial religion but also  – in opposition  – a monastic movement.
Beginning with Antonius in Egypt, Christians turned away from the
world seeking the “beyond” in eremitic or monastic life.11 Since that
time we have, on the one hand, the Christianity of the world and, on the
other hand, the Christianity of the religious orders; political seculariza-
tion was answered with a religious desecularization.
On the theoretical level this was discussed between Erik Peterson
and Carl Schmitt. The church historian Erik Peterson wrote his famous
treatise “Monotheismus als politisches Problem” (1935) against the
Political Theology of Carl Schmitt (1922, 1934)  and defended the pro-
vocative theses:  (1)  The doctrine of the divine monarchy was already
wrecked on the Trinitarian dogma, and (2) the Pax Romana idea failed
the transcendent character of Christian eschatology. With these devel-
opments in Christian theology “monotheism as political problem” is
“finished” and Christian faith was “liberated” from the political pres-
sure of the Roman Empire.12 Christian proclamation of the gospel can
no longer be misused to justify political power:  the mystery of the
Trinity is only in God, not in a creature, and only God can give the
peace Christians seek – no Caesar can do this.
Peterson wrote this treatise with salient reference to the year
1933 in Hitler’s Germany. Carl Schmitt answered in 1970 with a small
book, Politische Theologie II:  Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder
Politischen Theologie.13 His argument was that theological critique
does not do away with the theory and phenomenon of political religion;

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European Political Theology 7

political theology is not only possible (contra Peterson) but is necessary

until Christ’s return. Neither Peterson nor Schmitt discussed a political
theology of the crucified Christ, though Jesus was crucified in the name
of the Pax Romana.

Anarchism/Terror versus Sovereignty/Safety

The modern concept of “political theology” was introduced into a now
worldwide debate by the German professor of constitutional law, Carl
Schmitt. His American partner was Leo Strauss. Schmitt took this
term for his doctrine of political sovereignty from the Russian anar-
chist Mikhail Bakunin who wrote the book Gott und der Staat (1871)
with the famous slogan: “Neither God nor state” (ni Dieu – ni maître).
Bakunin condemned any domination of humans over humans in state
and society and proclaimed liberation from divine and human authority.
“If God is, man is a slave; now man can and must be free; then God does
not exist.”14 Satan was the first rebel, free thinker, and world liberator
because he persuaded human beings to disobey God and eat the fruit of
knowledge. Bekunin was a strong materialist: the human being is an ani-
mal and the brain a machine.
For Carl Schmitt, God and state constitute that sovereignty that is
able to suppress Bakunin’s “neither God nor state” anarchism. Schmitt
did not borrow the term political theology from the ancient world but
from Bakunin, who used the phrase as a derogatory label for the work of
his opponent, Mazzini. Schmitt argued that “all significant concepts of
the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”15
In his own political theology he referred to Catholic philosophers of the
counterrevolution in the nineteenth century:  Bonald, de Maistre, and
Donoso Cortes. There is no medium between catholicity and atheism,
and so there is no medium between authority and freedom. But what is
sovereignty? “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.”16
Thus article 48 of the Weimar Constitution in Germany declared a “dic-
tatorship of the president of the Reich.”17 Schmitt defended the dictator-
ship of Hitler in 1933 as a legitimate act of political sovereignty: “The
will of the Fuhrer is law” because he believed “non veritas sed auctori-
tas facit legem.”
Schmitt saw the conflict between the sovereignty of the state and
anarchy against the background of the apocalypse of world history.
He believed in the apocalyptic idea of the final battle at Armageddon
of God against Satan, which was the reason, in his opinion, that the
world was already engaged in a permanent civil war. He proclaimed

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8 Jürgen Moltmann

the “friend-or-foe-relationship:  whoever is not for us, is against us”

and called this the existential political category. The archetype for
this friend-or-foe distinction is the distinction between God and Satan,
which is heading for a decisive battle.18 God’s revelation inaugurates
this decision between those who believe and those who become ene-
mies of God. Unbelief is blasphemy and rebellion against God. The fact
that we have not yet reached this apocalyptic end of history is due to
a mysterious katechon (2 Thess. 2:7). The power of delaying the end of
the world by restraining evil is the sovereign authority of the state: “I
believe in the katechon; for me he is the sole possibility for a Christian
to understand history and find it meaningful.”19 The katechon is the
evil-suppressing state and is for Schmitt the only explanation of the
delay of the parousia of Christ.
The modern politics of safety against terrorism is very much like
Carl Schmitt’s doctrine of unlimited sovereignty of the state against
revolution and anarchy. Schmitt’s ideas are influential for conservatives
and “neocons” in America, where his friend Leo Strauss popularized
his thought. American politics reacted to the terror of 9/11 in 2001 with
the Patriot Act, allowing the president to act as in a permanent state
of exception. The results are suspension of civil liberties for American
citizens, an illegitimate prison in Guantanamo, the unlimited surveil-
lance of the world by the National Security Agency, and the killing of
terrorists by drones where ever they may be found. “America is at war,”
declared President George W. Bush. The friend-or-foe distinction suits
the political doctrine of the United States. Since its inception there has
been a dualistic doctrine of friend and foe, good and evil, apocalypti-
cally oriented on the millennial role of “one country under God,” the
“redeemer nation”20 for the rest of the world.

The New Political Theology

The New Political Theology emerged in Germany under the shock of
Auschwitz. We survivors of World War II associated with the Shoah
of the Jewish people not only the moral catastrophe of our own peo-
ple but also the shame of Christianity. Why was there so little resis-
tance? We found two patterns of behavior in the Catholic and Protestant
political traditions, which apparently led to the failure of churches and
Christians. First was the widespread opinion of the middle class that
religion is a private matter and has nothing to do with public life and
politics – an inward emigration that allowed external crimes to happen
on the streets. Second was the Lutheran tradition of two kingdoms – the

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European Political Theology 9

separation between spiritual and worldly powers that asserts that

Christians are free in their faith but obedient to the given political power
(Rom. 13). Only when the Nazis attacked the churches, forcing obedi-
ence to their ideology, did some Protestant congregations resist in the
Confessing Church, whose Barmen Declaration of 1934 stated, “The
Church must remain the Church.” But there was no protest on behalf of
persecuted Jews.
After a century-long antimodern defense strategy, the Roman
Catholic Church opened itself to the world in Vatican II (1962–5).
Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio were influential for the
famous aggiornamento. They demanded a new theology with its face to
the world. Catholic fundamental theologian Johann Baptist Metz began
with a “theology of the world,” and saw the relationship of church and
world in the light of a “political theology.”21 He established political the-
ology not as a special theological discipline in ethics or social teaching,
but rather as the public consciousness of church and theology in modern
times. In Theology of the World, Metz touched on two points: (1) Political
theology is the critical correction of the privatization of modern religion
(“Religion is a private matter”) and of modern theology as transcenden-
tal, existential, or personalistic. (2) Political theology is a formulation
of the eschatological Christian message under the condition of mod-
ern society. The church must become a “social-critical institution,” and
theology must be a liberating account of faith and hope.
Metz came to political theology through his teacher and friend Karl
Rahner. Rahner had introduced the “anthropological turn” into modern
Catholic theology. Metz went one step further: “The attempt to inter-
pret theology in a totally existential or personalistic way is an important
accomplishment of theology. . . . This existential-anthropological theol-
ogy, however, easily becomes isolated from the world and history, when
eschatology is not seen to be more basic to theology. Only in the escha-
tological horizon of hope does the world appear as history.”22 Because he
understood my Theology of Hope so well at this point, I gladly took up
his challenge (“Every eschatological theology must become a political
theology which is a socio-critical theology”), and became the second
representative of the New Political Theology in Germany.
What distinguished the New Political Theology from the old polit-
ical theologies was the determining subject: the subject of the old polit-
ical theologies was the political religion of the power of the state or of
revolutionary movements; the subjects of the New Political Theology
are the church and Christian communities in society. This is an impor-
tant difference, because at the center of Christian faith stands not the

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10 Jürgen Moltmann

divine monarchy, but the resurrection of the Christ who died on the
Roman cross. For Metz, the cross of Christ is the reason why the scandal
and the promise of salvation are public, not private or purely religious.
Christ did not die between two candles on an altar but outside of the
city, executed at Golgotha. Metz went on to develop his political the-
ology further as a theology of the world of suffering and compassion.23
The Kirchenkampf (church struggle) of 1934 to 1945 and the
Confessing Church protest against the Nazi dictatorship left Protestant
theologians after the war with the need for a political theology. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer joined the military resistance and was murdered on April 9,
1945 at Flossenbürg.24 Paul Tillich emigrated to New York in 1933. Karl
Barth was forced to return to Switzerland in 1936. The first problem
discussed was political preaching: Must the preacher avoid politics or
must he or she prophetically address public questions? Does she or he
know more about political solutions as every informed citizen, or must
she or he address those who suffer under political power and those who
are disoriented by those powers?
After the end of the alliance of throne and altar, the Protestant
church was no longer a state-church. The church was to use her new
freedom for prophetic public declarations and had to develop a public or
political theology of her own. Apartheid, atomic rearmament, hunger in
Africa, and homelessness in Germany became questions of Christian
faith and ethics, and the answers were often different from the German
government. Lutheran theologians revised their age-old doctrine of two
kingdoms and became engaged in the public field for justice, peace,
and the integrity of creation. But old state-church Christianity on the
European continent had problems with democracy and civil liberties
that developed in free-church contexts in America or in French laicité
(secularism).
I began my contribution to this conversation with a political the-
ology of the cross.25 With Pontius Pilate, a politician came into the
Christian confession of faith. Jesus of Nazareth was condemned and
executed as an enemy of the Roman Empire. The inscription on the
cross told the reason for his execution:  INRI, Jesus Nazarenus Rex
Judaeorum. Whether this was an error or not is irrelevant. The empire
condemned Jesus, but God raised the crucified one from the dead and
elevated him to his kingdom. The Roman Empire is condemned by
God, the Father of Jesus Christ.26 What the state intended as shame
received the highest glorification of God. Those who believe in the
resurrection of the crucified one see the divine glory on the face of
Christ and no longer in the face of the politically powerful. For those

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European Political Theology 11

who believe in the glory of the crucified one, every divine legitimation
is withdrawn from political power. All that is left is the human legiti-
mation of political power. The Christian martyrs who died in Roman
arenas because they refused the Caesar cult knew this and died “with
Christ.”
The crucified Christ has a strong idolatry-critical power for those
who follow him. Power enables idolatry of the worst and most danger-
ous kind. Whoever touches the political idols of the powerful must die.27
This was the case in the religious nationalism of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries: the “holy Fatherland” demanded millions of vic-
tims. This was even more the case in the totalitarian dictatorships of
fascism and Stalinism in the twentieth century where opponents and
dissidents were eliminated. This is also the case in the globalized cap-
italism of the twenty-first century, which impoverishes the many to
make a few rich. The natural feeling of empowerment is divine; the
feeling of powerlessness creates anxiety and is degrading. All human
idols are fi xed on power. The resurrection of the powerless Jesus shows
that God’s weakness is stronger than “all rule, authority and power” of
this world (1 Cor. 15:24).28 Following the crucified one is the power of
the powerless.
Political and civil religions serve the symbolic integration of a
nation. They also serve the self-righteousness of the people. The critic
of this self-idolization of nations serves the humanization of men and
women and the universalism of the kingdom of God. If there is no theo-
logical affirmation of a religious justification of political power “from
above,” the political field is free for a legitimation of political power
“from below,” from the people instead of from the gods or the beyond.
“Give to God what is God’s and to the Caesar what is Caesar’s” – this
word of Jesus separated God from Caesar, reducing Caesar to a human
being. In the long run this paved the way from divine political monar-
chy to democracy and a “government of the people, by the people and
for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln said in his famous Gettysburg
address. Political power is to be separated, given only limited time, and
must be used according to the law and the constitution, the covenant
of the citizens. Wherever government rule is illegal, illegitimate, or
against human rights, resistance is a duty. According to article 14 of the
Scottish Confession of Faith (1560), Christians have “to represse tyran-
nie, to defend the oppressed” as part of their love of neighbor.29 Today
capitalism must be democratized. “The cross is our political critic; the
cross is our hope for a politics of freedom. The memory of the crucified
Christ is our reason for political theology.”30

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12 Jürgen Moltmann

The most well-known and most controversial prophetic voice of the

New Political Theology of postwar Germany was Dorothee Sölle. She
was a protester and a poet, a praxis-oriented and experience-grounded
theologian. Political praxis precedes theology as much as the experience
of God. She combined mystical spirituality and political resistance in
a unique way. She became the theologian of groups protesting against
nuclear rearmament and environmental destruction, against capitalism
and socialist dictatorship. Her theology arose from the “death of God”
movement and started with a book on Christ “after the death of God.”31
Through the Kölner Nachtgebet (evening prayer at Cologne, 1969–71)
for the “politization of the conscience” she became famous for political
prayer and an actualization of the Psalms. In 1971 she departed from
Rudolf Bultmann’s existential hermeneutics:  “Theology must reflect
her own social and political situation in the conflict of her time.”32
Bultmann’s hermeneutic was apolitical: his religion was a private mat-
ter, and he refused to join the movement against atomic weapons in
the 1950s. The New Political Theology was, however, only one the first
step for Sölle. When Latin American liberation theology became widely
known after 1972, Sölle joined this way of doing theology for the poor
and the oppressed. She would also go on to identify with feminist the-
ology, seeking the liberation of women from age-old patriarchal domi-
nation into full autonomy and equal human rights. But at the end of her
life she returned to mystical spirituality, for which she had written an
early book, Hinreise.33
Mysticism is the “longing for God,” who is the “mystery of the
world.” Mystical spirituality is in all world religions, and, at the same
time, above all religious institutions as “the anti-authoritarian element.”
Mysticism is the true unity of all different religions and secular long-
ings. In her 1997 book Mystik und Widerstand: “du stilles Geschrei,”
she “democratized” the otherwise often elitist mystical experience.34
Mystical experience can happen every day to everyone. United with the
mystery that is named “God,” one’s self is liberated from the ego, posses-
sions and violence, and greed and anxiety. This is the best preparation
for resistance against a wasteful, consumerist society and an alternative
life: “A different world is possible.” Dorothee Sölle’s ideas are similar to
Thomas Merton’s “contemplation in a world of action” (1965) and Roger
Schutz and the Taize-spirituality of “lute et contemplation.” Her last
and unfinished book, Mystik des Todes, is on the mystery of death. This
is no longing for dying but for a full and free life in God, as we can expe-
rience it in mystical moments of the nunc aeternum.

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European Political Theology 13

A sociocritical theology of the world will meet other critical move-

ments and theories in society. In the Western world this was Marxism
and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. The New Political
Theology was often interpreted as socialist theology, while the tra-
ditional theologies of churches and universities remained conservative.
It was in 1968 that the student revolts in Paris and Berlin, in Berkeley
and Mexico City reached a climax. These were young people’s revolts, a
cultural revolt, a radical democratic movement, and a socialist experi-
ment. It was out of this student revolt that Helmut Gollwitzer’s socialist
theology emerged.35 Gollwitzer was a strong Barthian and a pastor of the
resisting church during the Nazi dictatorship, but it was the students in
Berlin who convinced him of the “capitalist crime against humanity”
and a “revolution of life” that was required. Capitalism was going to
end in the downfall of humanity, unless there was a turn to life. In this
conversion from destructive greed to love for life he saw the dawn of the
kingdom of God in this perverted world. His “Theses on Revolution as
a Theological Problem” were passed from hand to hand. He tried to fi nd
an authentic location for the church in the so-called class struggle of the
present. His colleague Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt found a combina-
tion of theology and socialism in the early writings of Karl Barth.36 The
Lutheran Ulrich Duchrow combined anticapitalism with antiimperial-
ism.37 George Casalis in Paris proclaimed a “planetary class struggle”
between the poor and oppressed people of Third World countries and
the rich nations in the First World. He went to Nicaragua to join the
Sandinistas against the Somoza dictatorship. Richard Shaull in Brazil
was the first to introduce “revolution” into ecumenical theological
debates. Many Catholic theologians who had studied in Europe devel-
oped in Latin America revolutionary and Marxist theories and joined
the struggle of the people for liberation. There was a lively exchange
of ideas between political theologies in Europe and Latin America,
though not without conflict. Marxism became en vogue through the
religious neo-Marxism of Ernst Bloch and the sharp social criticism of
the Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert
Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. This New Left movement in the West
was not supported by the Stalinists in the Soviet world or the Maoists
in China, but rather feared. The outcome in Latin America was libera-
tion theology, started by Gustavo Gutiérrez.38 In Europe it was a radical
democratic political theology of human rights and the rights of nature.
That is to say, the critique of capitalism and imperialism of Karl Marx
was taken over, while the Stalinist form of socialism was refused. In

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14 Jürgen Moltmann

Protestant theology, a new materialist exegesis emerged:  so-called

socioeconomic hermeneutics. The Marxist presupposition is that the
economic context makes the religious text; one must therefore inter-
pret the religious text in the given sociohistoric context and conflicts
in order to bring the readers of the religious text into the struggle to
overcome capitalism and colonialism today. Sociohistorical hermeneu-
tics may be the only lasting fruit of the socialist theology of the 1970s.
I now conceive of the term political theology more broadly than
Metz and I did in the beginning, as a designation for theological reflec-
tion on the concrete political practice of Christianity. Christians partic-
ipate in the public affairs of their societies and the world because they
hope for the kingdom of God and anticipate the justice and peace of the
new earth as much as they can. Kairos, context, and community shape
the political hermeneutics of the Christian message.

Political Theologies of Just Peace

and Environmental Justice
A divided Germany was always the center of military confrontations
between the superpowers. Around 1980 the situation heated up through
the mutual arms race. Nowhere in the world were so many atomic
bombs warehoused as in West and East Germany. The people responded
to this with a large peace movement. Human chains stretched from
Stuttgart to Ulm and continual protests in Mutlangen and other mili-
tary installations indicated resistance on a massive scale. The Protestant
Church in West Germany published a position paper on peace, and the
Reformed Church called out for a status confessionis:  “Either atom
bombs or Christ.”39 Historic peace churches such as the Mennonites
were the role model for everyone who decided “to live without arma-
ments.” In the demonstrations against the nuclear terror, which was
called “mutual deterrence,” nonviolence was practiced. Jesus’s Sermon
on the Mount became a guideline for protesting Christians, and because
evoking it became dangerous, West German politicians dabbled in polit-
ical exegesis. The Federation of Protestant Churches in East Germany
repudiated solemnly “the spirit, logic and practice” of the weapons of
mass destruction.40
In Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche there was a small group who met every
Monday for peace prayer beginning in 1980. In the fall of 1989 this peace
circle served as the initial spark for the massive demonstrations that
toppled the East German socialist dictatorship. It was a nonviolent tri-
umph against violence. With the cry, “We are the people,” Germans

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European Political Theology 15

struggled for the first time in their history for democracy. It was the
first successful revolution in Germany, and a nonviolent one. Peaceful
change from dictatorship to democracy was possible. The downfall of
the Soviet Empire followed as well as other revolutions throughout
Eastern Europe. In Latin America military dictatorships gave way to
democratic governments.
It was clear to me how Christians should respond to violence:  do
not turn swords into Christian swords, and do not be satisfied with only
Christian plowshares, but turn the swords into plowshares.41 This is a
politics of disarmament while building up just peace. This is the con-
version of the war industry into a peace industry. Peace in a violent
world can be achieved through confidence-building measures. Peace is
not the absence of violence, but the presence of justice. Peace is not a
given situation, but a process of reducing violence and constructing jus-
tice in the social and the global relationships of humankind.42
The long European Constantinian era thus comes to an end. The
time of Christian swords is over. The Church becomes an ecumenical
church of peace independent of the state and the political interests of the
powerful. There is no valid theological doctrine of a just war anymore
but only the new theological doctrine of just peace, as it was decided
in the International Ecumenical Convocation on Peace in Kingston,
Jamaica, in 2011.43
Alongside the new political theology of just peace, there has arisen
a new political theology of nature.44 The universal ecological crisis
demands a complete reform of Christian theology and spirituality: We
need not only peace on earth, but also peace with the earth. We stand at
the end of the modern age and at the beginning of the ecological future
of our world, if our world is to survive. A new paradigm is in the process
of developing, which links human culture and the nature of the earth
differently from the way they were linked in the paradigm of modern
times. The modern age was determined by the human seizure of power
over nature and its forces. This domination and exploitation of nature
have come up against their limits.
As early as 1962, Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring and
awakened environmental awareness in America and beyond. The Club
of Rome demonstrated The Limits of Growth in 1972.45 The Chernobyl
disaster of 1986 made large parts of Belorussia uninhabitable and took
more than 140,000 human lives. Finally, the Fukujama catastrophe of
2012 in Japan warned the world. Universal climate change is produc-
ing man-made natural disasters of typhoons, tsunamis, and the rising
water level of the oceans. Yet people seem to be paralyzed by a kind of

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16 Jürgen Moltmann

ecological numbing, and the world conferences of the United Nations

are not very effective against national interests.
Why do we need a new theology of all things? Because it was mod-
ern theology in the West that determined the human relationship to
nature and the concept of human lordship over the earth – the concepts
of dominium terrae and imago Dei.46 It was a concept of God without
the world and of a world without God. The monotheism of a transcen-
dent God cleared the path for the mechanistic view of nature. As God is
the omnipotent lord and owner of the universe, man as his image must
become the mighty lord and owner of the earth: “Subdue the earth and
have dominion over every living thing” (Gen. 1:28).
A new picture of the human being is emerging: from the center of
the world to a cosmic integration, and from the arrogance of world dom-
ination to a cosmic humility.47 Anthropocentric anthropology gives way
to integral anthropology: before human beings can “subdue the earth”
they are part of the nature of the earth, and whatever the special human
position may be, they are members of the great earth-community of liv-
ing beings.48 In theological terms, before human beings are imago Dei
they are imago mundi, creatures of the earth, “earthlings” (Gen. 2:7).
Before human beings assume any rule over the earth, or any responsi-
bility for creation, the earth cares for them. It is not that the earth is
entrusted to us; we are entrusted to the earth. The earth can live without
human beings, but we cannot live without the earth. The Earth Charter
says rightly, “Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth, our
home, is alive with a unique community of life.”49 And, as ecofeminism
has noted, this integral anthropology would also end the domination of
the soul over the body and the domination of men over women.
Modern theology has always seen the earth only as something that
human beings are supposed to subdue, but many premodern cultures
and religions have said the earth is “our mother” (Eccles. 40:1). Can one
subdue one’s own mother?50 Modern ecological theology starts with
the assumption that the earth is our home.51 What is the earth? New
astro-sciences have shown the interactions between the nonliving and
the living spheres of the earth. The result is the idea that the earth’s
biosphere, together with the atmosphere, the oceans, and land masses,
forms a unique and complex system that has the capacity to bring forth
life and create habitats. This is James Lovelock’s much-discussed and
influential Gaia theory.52 This theory corresponds to the wealth of bib-
lical traditions about the earth:  the earth is a creative creature and
“brings forth living creatures . . .” (Gen. 1:24); there is a direct covenant
of God with the earth (Gen. 9:13); the divine Spirit is the earth’s creative

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European Political Theology 17

life power (Isa. 32:14); the Messiah is a fruit of the earth (Isa. 4:2); and
God has reconciled the cosmos through the risen Christ (Col. 1:20).53
Modern theology has made a strict distinction between God and
the world:  God is unworldly  – the world is not divine but secular.54
Ecological theology is moving from this godless world to the world in
God and God in the world with the help of Trinitarian thinking: God
the Father created the world through the Son/Logos in the energies of
the Spirit. It follows that the world is seen as a nondivine being inter-
penetrated by God through the energies of the Spirit. God is present in
every created being. Some call this panentheism, others prefer to speak
of the cosmic schechina of God or the perichoresis of God in the world
and the world in God (see 1 John 4:16).
Christian spirituality was and is mostly a spirituality of the soul
and the beyond. The redeemed go to heaven and leave the earth behind.
They were only guests on earth. The new spirituality will be an earth
spirituality. Human beings are earthlings and the earth is our home.55
The new spirituality is seeking contact with the cosmic Christ through
the spirit of the earth.
Like socialist theology and the theology of just peace, ecological
theology aims to stir up Christians to participate in these initiatives
and in them to realize their own visions. By contrast, like the other
movements, ecological theology also brings the problems of society and
a globalized world into the church, so that the Christianity is present
in the promise and the sufferings of human beings and the nature of
the earth.

Conclusion
At the end of our investigation we must ask about the limits of politi-
cal theology. A theology that faces toward the world will not see in that
world only politics, and the politics that it sees is no longer the omnipo-
tent power it once seemed to be. Rather politics now seems increasingly
to have to follow along behind economics and must take account of ecol-
ogy. This is the reason for the proposal that has recently been made in the
United States to speak of “public theology” rather than “political theol-
ogy.” Political theology, on this conception, should be understood as an
important part of public theology, but is not the only part. Public the-
ology treats issues that arise from the globalization of the media, of the
economy and finance, and from world politics. Christian theology was
always ecumenically oriented, that is directed to the whole of the inhab-
ited globe, just as the Christian Church has always understood itself as

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18 Jürgen Moltmann

a Catholic Church. The more globalization makes us more aware of the

universality of Christian theology and of the Christian Church, the more
theology and the Churches must self-critically free themselves from
nationalism and from the forms of imperial colonization of the world by
the “Christian” nations of Europe and America. Only by doing that can
Christian theology become a source of the power of life for all humans.
These should be the tasks of political and public theology in the future.
One must keep in mind that every Christian theology has its polit-
ical causes and its political effects. The task of political theology is
to make theology aware of these and to judge them in the light of the
gospel.

Notes
1 Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Vol. I (Gottingen, 1964), p. 198. All translations from
German texts are my own.
2 Ernst Feil, “Von der ‘politischen Theologie’ zur ‘Theologie der Revolution’?”
in Diskussion zur “Theologie der Revolution,” ed. E.  Feil and R.  Weth
(München Mainz, 1969), pp.  113–17; Siegfried Wiedenhofer, Politische
Theologie (Stuttgart, 1976); Alfredo Fierro, The Militant Gospel (London,
1977); Alisdair Kee, ed., A Reader in Political Theology (London, 1971).
3 Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope (London:  SCM Press, 2012), pp.
169–77, 191–4.
4 Adolf von Harnack, “Der Vorwurf des Atheismus in den ersten drei
Jahrhunderten,” in Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchris-
tilichen Literatur, XXVIII, 4 (Heft, 1905), p. 10.
5 Ansgar Skriver, Gotteslasterung? (Hamburg, 1962), p. 24.
6 Erik Peterson, “Monotheismus als politisches Problem (1935),” in
Theologische Traktate (München, 1951), pp.  49–105; Dazu A.  Schindler,
Monotheismus als politisches Problem? Erik Peterson und die Kritik der
politischen Theologie (Gutersloh, 1978).
7 Homer, The Iliad, 2:204, quoted in Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII:X.
8 Michael de Ferdinandy, Tschingis Khan. Steppenvolker erobern Eurasien
(Hamburg, 1958), p. 153.
9 Franz Geog Maier, ed., Byzanz. Fischer Weltgeschichte Band 13 (Frankfurt,
1973), pp. 31–43.
10 Hildegard Schaeder, Moskau – das Dritte Rom. Studien zur Geschichte der
politischen Theorie in der slawischen Welt (Darmstadt, 1963).
11 Hans Conrad Ziegler, Als die Religion noch nicht langwellig war. Die
Geschichte der Wustenvater (Koln, 2001).
12 Peterson, “Monotheismus als politisches Problem (1935),” pp. 104–5; Carl
Schmitt, Political Theology II:  The Myth of the Closure of Any Political
Theology, trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge:  Polity
Press, 2008).
13 Recently translated into English: see note 12.

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European Political Theology 19

14 Michael Bakunin, God and the State (New  York:  Dover Publications,
1970), p. 17.
15 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology:  Four Chapters on the Concept of
Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 36.
16 Ibid., p. 6.
17 Carl Schmitt, “The Dictatorship of the President of the Reich According to
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution,” in Dictatorship: From the Origin
of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle, trans.
Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), pp. 180–226.
18 Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss:  The Hidden Dialogue
(Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1995); The Lesson of Carl
Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and
Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
19 Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt, p. 162.
20 Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation:  The Idea of America’s Millennial
Role (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1968); Jürgen Moltmann,
“Die ‘Erlöser-Nation.’ Religiose Wurzeln des US-amerikanischen
Exzeptionalismus, in Die Friedens-Warte,” Journal of International Peace and
Organization (2003), Band 78, Heft 2-3/2003, S. 161–173; Francis Schüssler
Fiorenza, “Prospects for Political Theology in the Face of Contemporary
Challenges,” in Political Theology:  Contemporary Challenges and Future
Directions, ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Klaus Tanner, and Michael
Welker (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013), pp. 37–60.
21 Johann Baptist Metz, Zur Theologie der Welt (München-Mainz,
1968); Theology of the World, trans. William Glen-Doepel (New  York:
Scribner, 1969); H.  Peuckert, Diskussion zur “politischen Theologie,”
(München-Mainz, 1969).
22 Metz, Theology of the World, p. 90.
23 Johann Baptist Metz, Mystik mit offenen Augen. Wenn Spiritualitat aufbricht
(Freiburg, 2011); Memoria Passionis. Ein provozierendes Gedachtnis in plu-
ralistischer Gesellschaft (Freiburg, 2006).
24 Eberhard Bethge Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Biography (Minneapolis,
MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1999).
25 Jürgen Moltmann, “Theologische Kritik der Politischen Religion,” in Kirche
im Prozess der Aufklarung, ed. J. B. Metz, J. Moltmann, and W. Oelmuller
(München-Mainz, 1970), pp. 11–51; Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political
Theology and Ethics, trans. M.  Douglas Meeks (Philadelphia:  Fortress
Press, 1984).
26 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, Werke Band 16, 2, 198.
27 Jon Sobrino, Sterben muss, wer an Gotzen rührt. Das Zeugnis der ermorde-
ten Jesuiten in San Salvador (Freiburg, 1990).
28 Paul expected these powers and authorities of the world to be “annihilated”
(1 Cor. 15, 24), while Eph. 1, 10 and Col. 1, 20 see them “reconciled” and
“integrated” into the reign of Christ the cosmocrator.
29 Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the
Teaching of the Reformation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), p. 124.
30 Moltmann, Kirche im Prozess der Aufklärung, p. 51.

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20 Jürgen Moltmann

31 Dorothee Sölle, Stellvertretung. Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem “Tode

Gottes” (Stuttgart, 1965); Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology
after the “Death of God,” trans. David Lewis (Philadelphia:  Fortress
Press, 1967).
32 Dorothee Sölle, Politische Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit
Rudolf Bultmann (Stuttgart, 1971); Sympathie. Theologisch-politische
Traktate (Stuttgart, 1979); Aüfrustung tötet auch ohne Krieg (Stuttgart,
1982); D.  Sölle and F.  Steffensky, eds., Politisches Nachtgebet in Köln,
Vol. I  (Stuttgart-Mainz, 1971); Politisches Nachtgebet in Köln, Vol. II
(Stuttgart-Mainz, 1972).
33 Dorothee Sölle, Hinreise. Zur religiösen Erfahrung. Texte und Uberlegungen
(Stuttgart, 1975); The Inward Road and the Way Back, trans. David L.
Scheidt (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978).
34 Dorothee Sölle, Mystik und Widerstand. “Du stilles Geschrei” (Hamburg,
1997); The Silent Cry:  Mysticism and Resistance (Philadelphia:  Fortress
Press, 2001).
35 Helmut Gollwitzer, Die kapitalistische Revolution (München, 1984);
Forderungen der Umkehr. Beitrage zur Theologie der Gesellschaft
(München, 1975); Krummes Holz – aufrechter Gang. Zur Frage nach dem
Sinn des Lebens (München, 1979).
36 Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus. Das Beispiel
Karl Barths (München, 1972); George Casalis, Correct Ideas Don’t Fall from
the Skies: Elements for an Inductive Theology, trans. Jeanne Marie Lyons
and Michael John (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis, 1984); Helmut Gollwitzer, An
Introduction to Protestant Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1982).
37 Ulrich Duchrow, Alternativen zir kapitalistischen Welt wirtschaft
(Gutersloh, 1994).
38 Gustavo Gutierrez, Teologia de la liberacion (Salamanca, 1972); A Theology
of Liberation (New York: Orbis, 1973; repr. 1988).
39 Das Bekenntnis zu Jesus Christus und die Friedensverantwortung der Kirche,
Eine Erklarung des Moderamens der Reformierten Kirche (Gutersloh, 1982).
40 B. Klappert and U. Weidner, ed., Schritte zum Frieden. Theologische Texte
zu Frieden und Abrustung (Wuppertal, 1983).
41 For a transformative ethics because of a transformative eschatology cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, trans. Margaret Kohl (London:  SCM
Press, 2012). For the separatist option cf. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable
Kingdom:  A  Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN:  University of
Notre Dame Press, 2002).
42 Still worth reading is Immanuel Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philoso-
phischer Entwurf,” in Werke Band VI, ed. W. Weischedel (Darmstadt, 1964),
pp. 191–251.
43 Konrad Raiser and Ulrich Schmitthenner, Gerechter Friede. Ein öku-
menischer Aufruf zum gerechten Frieden, Ökumenische Studien 39
(Munster, 2012).
44 This is the title of Peter Scott, A Political Theology of Nature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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European Political Theology 21

45 Donella and Dennis Meadows, The Limits to Growth (London:  Pan

Books, 1972).
46 Jürgen Moltmann, Man:  Christian Anthropology in the Conflicts of the
Present (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974).
47 Richard Bauckham, The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community
of Creation (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010).
48 Larry Rassmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1996).
49 Earth Charter International, “The Earth Charter,” http://www
.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html.
50 Leonardo Boff, Ecology and Liberation:  A  New Paradigm (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1995).
51 Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Heimat Erde. Christliche Spiritualitat unter
endzeitlichen Lebensbedingungen (Gütersloh, 2013).
52 James E. Lovelock, Gaia:  A  New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford:  Oxford
University Press, 1979); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God:  An
Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (New  York:  HarperCollins, 1983);
Sallie McFague, The Body of God:  An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis,
MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).
53 Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (New York: HarperCollins,
1988).
54 Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
55 Celia Deane-Drummond, Creation through Wisdom:  Theology and the
New Biology (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 2000); Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit
of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 1992);
Michael Welker, God the Spirit (Minneapolis, MN:  Augsburg Fortress,
1994); Larry Rassmussen, Earth-honoring Faith (Oxford:  Oxford University
Press, 2013).

Further Reading
Metz, Johannes Baptist, Theology of the World, trans. William Glen-Doepel.
New York: Scribner, 1969.
Moltmann, Jürgen, The Spirit of Life:  A  Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 1992.
The Ethics of Hope, trans. Margaret Kohl. London: SCM Press, 2012.
Rassmussen, Larry, Earth-honoring Faith. Oxford:  Oxford University Press,
2013.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth
Healing. New York: HarperCollins, 1983.
Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of Any Political Theology,
trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward. Cambridge:  Polity Press,
2008.
Scott, Peter, A Political Theology of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.

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22 Jürgen Moltmann

Sölle, Dorothee, Christ the Representative:  An Essay in Theology after the

“Death of God,” trans. David Lewis. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.
The Inward Road and the Way Back, trans. David L. Scheidt.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.
The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2001.

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