Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology

13. Monotheism as a Political Problem: The Critique of Political Theology out of the Sources of Judaism

321 monotheism as a Political Problem The Critique of Political Theology out of the Sources of Judaism bruce rosenstock erik Peterson’s Der Monotheismus als Politisches Problem (Monotheism as a Political Problem) was published in 1935. it is a short book, one hundred pages of text and fifty-eight pages of notes. it is deliberately allusive, coding in Latin quotations from augustine, as we will later note, some of its most pointed criticisms of its intended target, the jurist and “political theologian” carl schmitt. schmitt himself is mentioned only in the book’s final footnote. The book reworks two of Peterson’s earlier publications, “göttliche monarchie” (1931) and “Kaiser augustus im urteil des antiken christentums” (1932/33). What led Peterson to republish these pieces in 1935 after hitler’s accession to power two years earlier is the fusion of politics and theology that had become the staple of the newly emergent catholic Reichstheologie. From the mid-1920s certain catholic theologians in Weimar had advanced the idea that christ had come to establish an earthly sacrum imperium and that the conversion of constantine inaugurated the true “christian aion.” germany, these catholic theologians argued, had inherited the mantle of the sacrum imperium as the holy roman empire (Reich) of the german nation, a title it lost in 1806 after the napoleonic wars. germany’s only hope for salvation after the humiliation of Versailles, these catholic theologians believed, lay in its rejection of the model of the modern liberal Staat and its return to a medieval conception of christian Reich.1 in 1933, the advocates of this Reichstheologie fastened upon hitler as god’s chosen instrument in the creation of the new christian world empire. Peterson couches his critique of this theological rapprochement with the politics of national socialism in what seems to be a straightforward monograph in the field of classical philology and patristics. but the very first page of the book makes it clear that much more is at stake than philology. Printed under the heading “opening remark” (“Vorbemerkung”), the first page is typeset in italic font. it explains that the european enlightenment left christianity with only monotheism as the content of its belief in god. but, Peterson claims, only belief in the triune (dreieinige) god can properly orient political 13 322 | Bruce Rosenstock action. The belief in the triune god alone “stands beyond Judaism and paganism, monotheism and polytheism.” here is both the heart and the deepest problem of Peterson’s book: identifying Judaism with monotheism, and monotheism with the legacy of the enlightenment, it suggests that Judaism is the political problem of modernity. identifying Jewish monotheism as the political problem of modernity , how can Peterson seriously critique the catholic theologians of Reichstheologie who glorify hitler as the leader of a future holy empire of the aryan nation? to what extent has Peterson’s anti-Judaism compromised his claim to have “swept aside” (erledigt) carl schmitt’s political theology as the ideological buttress of this Reichstheologie?2 i will argue that Peterson, despite his anti-Judaism, offers the basis for a cogent and important critique of schmitt’s political theology, but that in order to carry this critique to its conclusion Peterson’s anti-Judaism must be corrected by a more nuanced understanding of the difference between Jewish monotheism and enlightenment monotheism (theism). This more nuanced approach is one that Peterson was quite likely familiar with, but had either ignored or chosen to suppress.3 i am referring to hermann cohen’s major contributions to the study of monotheism in his Ethik des reinen Willens (1904), Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (1915), and Die Religion der Vernunft aus der Quellen des Judentums (1919, 2nd auflage 1929). in all these works, but especially in the last, cohen offers a philosophical unpacking of Jewish monotheism that is sharply distinguished from the enlightenment’s monotheistic theism. to be sure, cohen argues for the inseparability of Jewish monotheism and politics, but cohen’s political theology, if we may call it that, aligns perfectly with Peterson’s rejection of the conflation of the Kingdom of god with any earthly empire. What i will refer to as cohen’s “messianic monotheism”—“der messianismus,” cohen writes one lapidary formulation, “ist der Quintessenz des monotheismus”4—is theologically and politically at opposite poles from what Peterson describes as Judaism’s “monarchic monotheism.” “messianism,” cohen writes, “stands opposed to every present political actuality, dismissing it, condemning it, pitilessly annulling it, in order to replace a...