Past and Present Political Theology

Expanding the Canon

Dennis Vanden Auweele, Miklos Vassányi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032237107
• eBook ISBN: 9781000064810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book demonstrates how discussions of Political Theology have been a constant feature throughout philosophical modernity and that they continue to impact contemporary political debates. By tracing the historical roots and detailing the contemporary outworking of Political Theology in Europe, it contends that this growing field requires a broader "canon" in order for it to mature.

Political Theology is shown here to be about the diversity of relationships between religious beliefs and political orientations. First engaging with historical debates, chapters re-examine the relationship between personal conviction and societal orientation on such topics as the will to believe, evil, individualism, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship between belief and natural science. The volume then establishes the relevance of these debates for the present day. As such, it invites engagement on the back and forth between religion and politics in a liberal democracy and a communist state, on how communitarianism relates to religious language, on the diversity of Christian and Jewish political theology, and the politics of toleration.

By broadening out the field of Political Theology this book offers the reader a more nuanced understanding of its sustained influence on public life. As such it will be of interest to academics working in Political Theology, but also Theology, Philosophy and Political Science more generally.

1 Kepler, the supra-confessional Lutheran

Miklós Vassányi

“Dann Ich bin ja weder Lutherisch noch Calvinisch, oder Jesuitisch auff jhren schlag … ”^*

In this paper, I would like to go after how Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) sought to clarify his stance with respect to religious toleration and church communion in the period between 1598 (the year religious persecution began in Styria) and 1628 (the year when Kepler corresponded with the Upper-Austrian Jesuit Father, Paul Guldin). In order to do that, I shall consider in detail how he related to his native Lutheran church and theology (and tangentially, Calvinist doctrine and Roman Catholic dogma and practice) over these years of religious and political unrest, which saw, among other things, the gradual increase of denominational persecution in the Austrian Habsburg provinces, the emission of Emperor Rudolf II’s progressive Majestätsbrief (1609), the formation of the Catholic League (1609), the Defenestration of Prague (May 1618) and the Battle of White Mountain (1620) – some of them sinister events conducive to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), determined by political and ecclesiastic concerns on a European scale. My analysis will be specifically dedicated to Kepler’s issue with the doctrine of divine omnipresence, incorporated in the Lutheran interpretation of the Eucharist and understood as a symbol of irreducible denominational difference among the Christian churches. I will then embed this issue into the context of Lutheran luminary Johannes Brenz’s political theology. Converging on that, I shall also try to draw a parallel between Kepler’s personal theological position and the natural scientific methodology by which he defended the Copernican system in his astronomical works. As a final upshot, I shall interpret his carefully honed posture towards church communion in general.

1. Kepler’s general attitude towards the three major Western Churches: a bird’s eye view

Kepler’s personal religion and his relation to theological dogma and church establishments are all indices of his deep suffering from the out-and-out conflict between the recently born confessional theologies and from the intrusion of the secular arm into the forums of religious life in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A non-conforming Lutheran, Kepler spent the best part of his life in Catholic lands whose administration was aggressively inimical to his confessed religion. In his quality of Imperial Mathematician, he served three Holy Roman Emperors of the Habsburg family – Rudolph II, Matthias and Ferdinand II – the latter two of who were fervent supporters of the Counter-Reformation as it had been surging in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Towards the end of the period we are discussing here, Upper-Austrian Jesuit Fathers were in fact trying to win his confidence and persuade him to accomodate to the Catholic church. Kepler’s reaction was ostensibly jovial yet intrinsically devastating – he remained a coveted but not converted asset.¹ His Lutheranism, on the other hand, was not orthodox enough for the Stuttgart-based Württemberg Lutheran Consistory to grant him church communion, despite the fact that he was literally begging for (re-)admission. In the eyes of the Consistory, the irremediable crux in his posture was that while he unstintingly adhered to the Augsburg Confession (1530), he repeatedly rejected to endorse the Formula of Concord (1577). Hereby, he himself ended up being rejected by the Consistory. In the meantime, Calvin’s spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Supper – a heresy for Lutheran orthodoxy – apparently never ceased to magnetize his theological attention. His nonviolent if embittered endeavors to come to terms with his native church thus failed, running parallel with violent and successful efforts of the Habsburg princes and emperors to ban Protestants from their hereditary lands (as of 1598). So, while he desperately wanted to keep his church membership and at the same time, rise above church conflict, he ultimately either lost or refused all church communion available or thinkable for him.²

2. Documentary sources

The documentary sources for my query are multiple but the importance of Kepler’s correspondence is paramount. Some seven items or groups stand out from the crowd of his epistles that have a bearing on religion: 1. Kepler’s correspondence with H. von Hohenburg, C. Zehentmair and S. Gerlach (1598–1609); 2. His letter to Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg (1609); 3. His correspondence with the Stuttgart Lutheran Consistory (1611–1612); 4. A letter of his to Michael Mästlin (1616); 5. The all-important correspondence with Matthias Hafenreffer, Rector of Tübingen Academy (1618–1619); 6. The terse order of the Upper Austrian Estates to Kepler and his response (1627–1628); and 7. The very significant correspondence with Paul Guldin SJ (1628), in which Kepler explains his irenic attitude toward religious belief and recuses himself from accommodating to Catholicism.³ The Stuttgart Consistory’s internal memoranda and counsel to the Duke of Württemberg about Kepler may be regarded as a group of documents which also belongs here. Besides these private sources, at least three printed texts are also essential for reconstructing Kepler’s non-conforming Lutheran theology: His detailed interpretation of the Lord’s Supper published under the title of Unterricht Vom H. Sacrament des Leibs und Bluts Jesu Christi unsers Erlösers. Für meine Kinder, Hausgesind, und Angehörige (Prague: 1617); his anonymous confession of faith titled N. N. Glaubensbekandtnus vnd Ableinung allerhand desthalben entstandener vngütlichen Nachreden (Strassburg: 1623); and his comments on Tübingen Rector Matthias Hafenreffer’s severely critical letter, the Jo. Kepleri notae ad Epistolam D. D. Matthiae Hafenrefferi, quam is ad Keplerum scripsit (Tübingen: 1625). A surviving document of the so-called Hexenprozess, that is, Kepler’s manuscript defense of Catharina, his aged mother (Stuttgart: 1621) is, to my mind at least, less relevant here.⁴

3. Kepler’s external predicament around the turnof the century

As this story begins in December 1598, Kepler, now a district mathematician in the city of Graz (Styriae procerum mathematicus), reports to a friend on the political and ecclesiastic conditions in Styria, deeply grieving that the freedom of religion has been abolished, Protestants have no access to the sacraments and many have even been expelled from the province:

What shall I do? Stay in Styria? or leave? … I am a Christian who has received the Augustan Confession straight from home, this is the creed that I embrace as I have not learnt hypocrisy… . What am I faced with? Whoever I depended on so far for interceding for me with God has been expelled from these provinces while others who I could huddle up with before God will not be allowed to enter… . In such a predicament, with so many good people exiled, how shall I find a higher-flown topic for my meditations?⁵

Besides the two cornerstones of his faith that Kepler considers himself a Christian and that he will never let go of the Augustan Confession, it is remarkable in this passage how he insists on his need to have fellows in faith and on that it is tragical to be left alone, without a community of believers to belong to. Although at this moment, he himself has not yet been exiled, the time is now approaching when that will happen, as he announces in a 1599 letter written to his dear master in mathematics and astronomy at the Tübingen Academy, Michael Mästlin:⁶

<I am certain that impending misfortune> … cannot loom larger than it does now, so long as this constitution persists. Citizens have been expelled … the Prince is not going to allow any Lutheran to stay in the city or, if they decide for leaving, to freely take away or sell or exchange their possessions. Snares will be contrived whereby citizens can be indicted for high treason, in order that theft may be covered up by the semblance of justice. First, prison sentences will be delivered; but a pecuniary fine will be accepted as a settlement; in the end, when the convict has been deprived of all they had, they will be exiled anyway… . Whoever takes an infant for baptism to a minister staying in a nearby city, whoever takes the Lord’s Supper as ordered by the Anointed, whosoever participates in Evangelical assemblies, has committed high treason. Who chants a Psalm within the city walls, who reads Lutheran homilies or the Lutheran Bible, deserves to be banned from the premises of the city.⁷

By the summer of 1599, Kepler has definitively lost his previous partial immunity from religious persecution and has to leave Styria as Archduke Matthias Habsburg, the ruler of Inner Austria, wants to secure the Catholic homogeneity of his province. As Kepler points out in the quoted passage, the political perspective now is that the state power is determined to use foul play to involve Protestants in high treason. All external tokens of Lutheran faith are herewith prohibited by the secular arm; and as Kepler, summoned to publicly reveal his church adherence, openly confesses his Lutheran faith in Graz, he has to leave Styria, heading for Prague. There, he will join Tycho Brahe as an assistant and later, will hail with enthusiasm the emission of Emperor Rudolph’s benevolent and profoundly liberal Bohemian Majestätsbrief (early July 1609).⁸

4. Kepler’s issue with Lutheran Church discipline: a series of baleful events

These external circumstances were aggravated by Kepler’s early, personal doubts especially about how the Lord’s Supper has to be conceived of in clear and “orthodox” theological terms. To believe the Notae ad epistolam Hafenrefferi, his apology printed after Tübingen Rector Matthias Hafenreffer’s theological missive to Kepler had been published (1625),⁹ Kepler as a 12-year-old boy had already been mentally vexed by the fact of the schism,¹⁰ and as an adolescent, even before arriving at the Tübingen Stift, he endorsed a Calvinistical conception of the Lord’s Supper without identifying it as a Calvinist doctrine.¹¹ After earning his magister artium degree at Tübingen University in 1591, the young man continued to study theology at the same institution, as was customary.¹² He had almost graduated when in 1594 he was invited to Graz to serve as a district mathematician, and mathematics teacher at the Protestant Stiftsschule there. In the Notae, he points out that during his theological studies, he sympathized with Lutheran theologian Aegidius Hunnius’ (1550–1603) conception of Christ’s person, which derived the ubiquity of His human nature from the hypostatical union with His divine essence, the Logos.¹³

Next, in 1609, Kepler shared his doubts concerning divine presence in the communion wafer with the Württemberg theologians and Prince Johann Friedrich;¹⁴ while in 1612, as he moved to Linz upon the death of Emperor Rudolf II (1612), he was banned from Lutheran church communion by the local pastor, the Reverend Daniel Hitzler (1575–1635).¹⁵ The reason for this was, again, that he shared with Hitzler his reservations concerning the Lutheran doctrine of divine ubiquity, taking “exceptions,”¹⁶ that is, stipulating conditions on which he was willing to endorse the Formula of Concord as it had been set out in the Book of Concord (Concordia, Dresden: 1580).¹⁷ Kepler appealed to the Stuttgart Consistory, to thwart scandal,¹⁸ but the Consistory’s response dissuaded him from harboring alternative theological opinions.¹⁹ Besides the interpretation of divine omnipresence, another difficulty was Kepler’s unwillingness to excommunicate the non-Lutheran denominations on account of their respective interpretations of the Lord’s Supper.²⁰ He was allowed to take communion for the last time in Prague, 1617.²¹ Traveling to Tübingen in the same year, he again asked for permission from Tübingen Academy Rector Matthias Hafenreffer to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper. Hafenreffer ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Kepler, the supra-confessional Lutheran
• 2 The subject’s perspective in Leibniz’s philosophy
• 3 From a pagan theologia civilis in Rome to a fictitious political theology in Kant: epochal metamorphoses of a theological underlay of political thought
• 4 On evil and political theology: reflections on Kant and after
• 5 The political theology of witnessing: the Canaanite woman and Kierkegaard’s tax-collector
• 6 The politics of religious commitment: pascal and Dostoevsky
• 7 The East-West divide in the European Union and its overcoming
• 8 Spiritual communism: the career of a theory from Saint Augustine to MacIntyre
• 9 Dispositives of political theology: analyzing non-discursive elements of the Josephinian dispositive of pastoral power
• 10 Theological motives in Hannah Arendt’s thought
• 11 A political theology “of Doubtful Solidity”: Leo Strauss on Rousseau via Spinoza
• 12 Religious moral languages, secularity and hermeneutical injustice
• 13 “State-persecution” in the works of Raffaele Pettazzoni: a religious history
• 14 Christ versus the Llama sacrifice: Rodolfo Kusch’s theological criticism of the colonization of Latin America
• 15 Religious atheism: assessing political religion through Critchley’s Faith of the Faithless
• Index