In Greek texts of the
fifth and fourth centuries we encounter the idea that religion, the belief in
gods and their worship, is a human invention in the service of political power
and social control. For example "the fragment of Critias" is an
excerpt from a satirical play believed to be by Critias (although it is by
Euripides) with Sisyphos, saying that the fear of the
gods is nothing but the invention of a shrewd, intelligent and thoughtful man,
meant to intimidate the wicked and keep them from committing evil in thought,
word -or deed. The problem is `the evil' which is undiscovered and undiscoverable,
committed in concealment and seclusion beyond the reach of public control.
Starting from this calculation, he introduced the belief in gods. The idea of
omniscient deities should persuade humans to keep the laws, even where no
witnesses were present.
A similar argument is
used by Polybios in a fully positive sense. This author ascribes the success of
Rome to the absolutely dominant position which the Romans gave religion within
the structure of their state. "The greatest advantage of the Roman republic",
he writes, "seems to me to lie in the belief in gods '(peri theon dialepsei)."2 The
Romans, he continues, granted this position to religion "for the sake of
the masses" (dia plethous
chax1fi). For this reason, Polybios continues, "the ancients seem to me to
have deliberately inspired the masses with the ideas about the gods (pen theon ennoias) and the belief in
the netherworld." Moreover, they had created tragedy as a medium to arouse
visions of horror and anxiety in the masses in order to discipline them:
"The masses are careless and full of illegal desires. The only means to
restrain them is by vague fears (adelois phobois) and by such a spectacle (tragodia)."
Polybios recognizes religion as a fiction, it is true, but as a great
civilizing achievement and the foundation of social order, peace and harmony:
thus, a "legitimate fiction." According to Polybios, it would be
extremely unreasonable to cure the masses of these imaginations.
Still, Polybios,
unlike Critias or Euripides, distinguishes between `religion' and `popular
beliefs.' He does not say that the gods arc fictitious, but that mass religion
rests on fictitious concepts and imaginations. Mass religion is fictitious
because it fulfils a political function. The political function of religion
both legitimizes and criticizes. It legitimizes religion because it argues that
the belief in gods is indispensable for political order and social harmony, and
it criticizes it by exposing its fictitious character. Cicero, in De Matura Deorum, stresses the critical character of this argument,
postulating that by repre¬senting the belief in gods
in its totality as an invention of smart politicians, religion altogether is
destroyed." In Roman history, Numa Pompilius was held to be a model of
such a smart politician. He appears in Roman tradition almost as a clone of
Moses. Numa was said to have referred to the nymph Egeria as the source of his
legislation just as Moses refried to Jahvch. Like Moses,
Numa codified these laws in a book. Unlike Moses, however, he took this book
along in his tomb instead of leaving it to posterity, thereby protecting it
from later manipulation. In Roman tradition, Numa appears as a wise ruler and
not as a religious impostor. He acquired this negative attribute only in the
seventeenth and eighteenth century. The notorious pamphlet De Tribus Impostoribus exposing
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed as the prototypes of religious invention for
political purposes quotes Numa as the most important pagan parallel, dedicating
a whole chapter to him.
" nid i, qui dixerunt
totam de dis immortalibus opinionam fictam esse ab hominibus sapientibus rei publicae causa, ut, quos ratio non posset, cos religio
ad officium duceret, nonne omnem religionem funditus sustulcrunt?"
(Cicero, De natura deorum.: 1061). An equally
ambivalent statement is provided by Diodorus Siculus in a passage concerning
the six great legislators of humanity. Diodorus intends for his account to be a
demonstration of wise statesmanship without any critical, let alone denunciating,
tendencies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, this passage
became the most influential argument for exposing religion's fictitious
character and political function. Moreover, it is the only quotation within the
pagan critique of religion that explicitly mentions Moses. The first of these
legislators, whom Diodorus calls Mnevis or Menas or Menes, is said to have stated that Hermes gave him
these laws. In the same manner, Minos among the Cretes
referred to Zeus, Lycurgus among the Spartans to Apollon, Zoroaster among the
'Arians' (arianoi = Persians) to Agathos
Daimon (= Ahura Mazda), Zalmoxis among the Getans to
Hestia and Moses among the Jews to lao (= Yahveh).'
Again, Diodorus or his informant, perhaps Hecataeus of Abdera, does not aim at
a critique of religion, but he rather describes this strategy, the framing of
legislation by political theology, as a highly successful and fully legitimate
device for the foundation of states and larger communities. In the fifteenth
century, this passage provided the model for Marsilio Ficino's concept of 'theologia prisca.' Ficino
interpreted the notions of legislation and the founding of states in the sense
of theology and the founding of religions ànd
replaced the great legislators with his concept of the ancient
"sages:" Hermes Trismegist, Zoroaster,
Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras etc., who conveyed to humanity both religion and the
rules of social order and civilized life.
Even in the first
half of the seventeenth century, Gabriel Naudé r (1600-1652) in his famous Considérations politiques sur lei coups d'État
could still quote and even enlarge Diodorus' argument in a totally neutral,
uncritical sense:
Tous les anciens
Législateurs voulant autoriser, affermir & bien fonder les Loix qu'ils
donnoient à leurs peuples, n'ont point eû de meilleur moïen de le faire, qu'en
publiant & faisant croire qu'ils les avoient reçûës de quelque Divinité:
Zoroastre, d'Orornasis, Trismegiste de Mercure, Zalmoxis de Vesta, Charondas de
Saturne, Minos de Jupiter, Lycurgue d'Apollon, Drago & Solon deierve, Numa
de la nymphe Egerie, Mahomet de l'Ange Gabriel; & Moise, qui a été le plus
sagede tous, nous décrit en l'Exode comme il reçût la sienne immédiatement de
DIEU.'
It was only in the
latter part of the seventeenth century that some `free thinkers' discovered the
critical potential in this tradition. Political theology came to be seen not
only as the instrumentalization, but also as the invention of religion for political
purposes. Arguing that religion served a function in the civilization of
mankind and the build-up of political communities inevitably implied the
critique that it is nothing but a function of politics, a fraudulent invention.
The seventeenth chapter of the French Traité des
Trois Imposteurs starts with this quote from Naudé
and turns it into a devastating critique of religion, or, to be more precise,
of `revealed religion' that is, of monotheism.' The French pamphlet bears the
name of Spinoza in its subtitle: Traité des Trois Imposteurs on l'lesprit de
Monsieur de Spinosa. It is obvious that the publication of Spinoza's Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus (1670) marks the turning point in the
reception of Diodorus and the tradition about the six legislators. It is thus
not inadequate to subsume the whole debate on the political instrumentalization
or invention of religion under the term `Political theology.' From Spinoza to
Bakunin, political theology is a polemical term, denouncing theology or
religion as the handmaid of politics.
Among the most
interesting contributions to the debate about political theology are John
Toland's Adeisidaemon, dealing with Numa Pompilius
and with Cicero's summary of the Greek critique of religions and Origines Judaicae, published
together in 1709, dealing with Moses and taking Decorus'
passage on the six lawgivers as its starting point. In this book Toland opposes
the Biblical Moses, who followed the general principle in "inventing"
(finxisse) a deity as the author of his legislation,
with Moses of Strabon (Moses Strabonicus),
who, conversely, rejected the principle or strategy of political theology in
radical fashion.
According to Strabo,
an Egyptian priest named Moses, who felt dissatisfied; with Egyptian religion,
decided to found a new religion, and emigrated with his followers to Palestine.
He rejected the Egyptian tradeof representing the
gods in zoomorphic images. His religion consisted of the recognition of only
`One Divine Being' whom no image could represent: "which encompasses us
all, including earth and sea, that which we call the heavens, the world and the
essence of things--this one thing only is God." The only way to approach
this god is to live by natural law, in virtue and in justice. Later on, the
Hebrews deviated from the purity of this doctrine and developed superstitious
habits, such as dietary prohibitions, circumcision and various other laws.
Toland constructs the
opposition between Egyptian traditional religion, with which Moses is said to
have been dissatisfied, and the new religion instituted by Moses, in terms of
political versus natural religion. He supplies the reasons for Moses' dissatisfaction
by drawing on another passage in Diodorus, saying that each nome
or province had its own deity ever since a certain, very sagely, prince ("sapientissimus quidam
princeps") came to stabilize the concord of the king¬dom
by introducing a pluralistic and polytheistic religion ("variam & miscellam induxit religionem"), and
thereby to prevent a con¬spiracy among the Egyptians.
Polytheism, according to Diodorus and Toland, has a political purpose. It
stresses the political divisions and sub-identities by instituting tutelary
deities, thus preventing unification and the formation of one political will,
which this over-sage ruler seems to have feared as potentially rebellious. Strabon's Moses, in turn, was a deist and an iconoclast. He
held God to be "Nature, or matter, mechanically arranged and acting
without conscience and intelligence" ("Naturam,
vel mundi materiam mechanics dispositam
et absque ullam consia intelligentiam agentem") and was a fierce enemy of idolatry. Even the
Bible shows that he did not matte, any mention of the
immortality of the soul nor of a future statum, of
reward or punishment. The name by which he called his god means just "necessariam solummodo existentiam," necessary existence or "what exists
by himself" ("quod per se existit"), in the same sense that the Greek "to
on" denotes the incorruptible, eternal, and interminable world. Toland
obviously thinks of Ex. 3:14 where God presented himself to Moses: "I am
that I am," or, in the version of the LXX: "ego eimi
ho on" "I am the Being orte" or-
simply "I am Being." Moses was not an atheist, but a pantheist, lor,
to speak in conformity with more recent usage, a Spinozist.
Toland explains what Strabon describes as a later depravation of Moses'
religion, with its- innumerable commandments and prohibitions, by quoting a
passage from Ezekiel: "But I shall give them statutes that are not good
and laws by which they cannot live," ("Ego etiam
dederam ipsis statuta non bona et Jura per quae
non vivere possent"). Ez. 20, 25. (The
quotations are taken from the second edition, which was published in 1653)
Toland deploys
several other passages from the prophets rejecting cult on behalf of
"nature" (on behalf of justice, to be precise, but this distinction
seems to be immaterial in Toland's context). The same distinction between
religion and superstition occurs also in Toland's other pamphlet, Adeisidaemon. Here, `religion of reason' is viewed as the
only valid religion. Superstition is denounced a pseudo-religion, unable to
withstand the criteria of reason, and invented by humans only for the purpose
of supporting the political order in the sense of political theology. Political
theology is a phenomenon of degeneration and the hallmark of `false religion.'
Even more orthodox
authors such as Alexander Ross availed themselves of this same argument. For
them, political theology is the hallmark of pagan religion. In his book Pansebeia Ross writes: "All false Religions are
grounded upon Policy," that is, "humane Policy to keep people in
obedience and awe of their superiours".
Similarly, the most
important and influential treatment of questions concerning revelation and
political theology, Bishop Warburton's The Divine Legation of Moses, has to be
seen within this tradition.' Warburton, however; is more of a classical scholar
than a theologian. He agrees with Ross that polytheism or paganism is political
theology and a human fiction, but he follows the antique tradition in taking
these inventions as indispensable and therefore legitimate fictions without
which all political and social order would collapse. Warburton gives two
explanations for the political function of polytheism, one based on Critias and
the other on Strabo. Polytheism, as political theology, fulfils two functions
:First, the function of founding public morals and obedience to the law, and,
secondly, the function of mirroring and expressing on the divine plane the
various distinctions and identities that make up the political and social world
the distinctions between nations, provinces and cities, and between classes,
tribes and professional groups. Both functions cooperate to keep the subjects
under control. Therefore, every society aiming at social order and political
power must of necessity form a pantheon of tutelary deities, by elevating
important legislatoirs, heroes and kings to the ranks
of gods, and ascribing to them supervisory functions of the laws and
personifications of political and social identities. But Warburton also takes
the pagan gods to be a necessary, indispensable, and legitimate fiction, without
which civil society could not last. Both, polytheism and idolatry, originate
from and correspond to a political necessity, and form the political theology
of paganism.
It is important to
realize that neither the atheist nor the deist critics of political theology
and even those orthodox theologians who interpret political theology as the
hallmark of paganism never put into doubt the necessity of theological
fictions. Even the atheists, except extremists such as Knutzen and Meslier, do not plead for anarchy.
Thus, here are four
early positions concerning the political function of religion. All four agree
in declaring political theology or political religion as false or fictitious.
They differ in what they conceive of as truth in opposition to political theology.
The most radical position, which is also the earliest attested one, is the
position of Sisyphos in Critias' or Euripides' play Sisyphos. He declares religion as such and in toto to be a
political fiction, implying the truth to be atheism. Less radical is Polybios'
position, who speaks only of popular religion as a political fiction, implying
that there is also a true or elite religion which is inaccessible to the
masses. The position presented by the treatise De Tribus
Impostoribus and also by the Spinozist Traité des trois imposteurs impliè's the opposition between revealed religion as false,
because of its political function, and natural religion as true. The fourth
position, for which we quoted Alexander Ross in the seventeenth and William
'Warburton in the eighteenth centuries, declares pagan religions to be false
because they only serve political functions, and biblical religion to be true
because it is based not on fiction but on revelation. Warburton, however, being
a classical scholar, combines the position of Polybios with that of Alexander
Ross. He reconstructs Eagan religions as "double religions"
displaying an exoteric and an esoteric side.
The political
function and the fictitious character concerns only the exoteric side of pagan
religion. The esoteric side, tike `mysteries,' are free of any political
instrumentalization. This is also the reason for their concealment. The
mysteries do not legitimize or support the state at all, because they are about
nature or natural theology and nature, accordingly, would not know of moral
obligations and political or social identities. But Warburton's theory is even
more complex because, besides being a classical scholar, friend of Alexander
Pope and editor of Shakespeare's works, he was also a bishop for the Anglican
church; as such, he was constrained to reserve the highest place for revealed
religion. This forced him to distinguish not only between false, i.e.
political, and true, i.e. natural religion, but also between pagan and
Christian religion. Pagan religion is not false but "double,"
comprising an exoteric political and an esoteric natural religion, as opposed
to biblical religion which, because it is based on revelation, is simple.
Warburton's
monumental work, nine books in three volumes, met with a very widespread and
vivid reception; though not for its orthodox superstructure, but rather because
of its theory of double or `mysterious' religion. It was read as demonstrating
that every religion, including biblical monotheism, had the structure of a
double religion: a state-supportive, legitimizing façade and an esoteric
inside, the mysteries of nature. It thus became a basic text for freemasonry.
In 1786 and 1787, Carl Leonhard Reinhold, a Jesuit, student of philosophy,
freemason and illuminate, wrote a book on the "Hebrew Mysteries or the
Oldest Religious Freemasonry" that was based on Warburion:
This became a basic text not only for Masonic, but much wider circles of Deism,
Enlightenment and philosophy, especially by mediation of Schiller, who
condensed Reinhold's arguments and demonstrations into a widely read essay Die Sendung Moses.
Reinhold equates the
concept of `nature' as the supreme deity of natural religion with Isis, the
goddess of the Egyptian mysteries, who, in the inscription can her veiled image
at Sais" presents herself with the words "I am all that is, was and
will be. No mortal unlifted my veil." This,
according to Reinhold, is the deity in whose mysteries Moses was initiated when
he was educated as a prince at the Pharaonic court. When Moses later returned
to his native people, he wanted to acquaint his people with the deity of the
mysteries, whose presentation he translated for them not as "I am all that
is," but as "I ain Beigg."
This is how Reinhold interprets Ex 3:14, "eheyeh
asher eh`yef" ("I
am that I am").
However, because
Moses wanted to include the whole people into the mysteries of nature, and
because he could not possibly "initiate" them (an educational process
taking many years and requiring only the strongest and most intelligent minds),
he had to turn the mysteries of Isis into a public and political religion,
based on blind belief and obedience, and to turn Isis, the sublime deity of the
mysteries, into Yahveh, a national god. Thus biblical monotheism, because of
its political function in supporting the Jewish nation and commonwealth, has to
be classified among the false religions its only element of truth, which Moses
was able to rescue from the Egyptian mysteries, being the unity or oneness of
God.
Yet according to
Schiller, Moses was not an impostor, but just an "accommodator."
According to Schiller "His enlightened mind and his sincere and noble
heart" had revolted against the idea of giving his people a false and
fabulous god. But the truth, the religion of reason and nature, was equally
impossible to reveal. Eventually, the only solution was to proclaim the truth
in a fabulous way and to endow the true god with some fictitious properties and
qualities that the people would be able to grasp and to believe in. It is
important to realize that neither the atheist nor the deist critics of
political theology and even those orthodox theologians who interpret political
theology as the hallmark of paganism never put into doubt the necessity of
theological fictions. Even the atheists, except extremists such as Knutzen and Meslier, do not plead for anarchy. (Winfried
Schröder Ursprünge des Atheismus. Untersuchungen ser
Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, 1998, p. 228).
Thus, Moses couched
his vision of truth in the illusionistic form of a national god and a national
cult, including the whole `hieroglyphic' symbolism of lustrations, sacrifices,
processions, oracles, and so forth. With Schiller we approach the point where
religion is defined as "Opium of the people" (K.Marx)
and as an "illusion" (S.Freud).
Through this
transformation process, the topic of political theology finally reached Mikhail
Aleksandrovitch Bakunin (1814-1876), the exponent of
romanticist anarchy, who no longer concedes religion's legitimacy and
indispensability as political fiction. His motto is the inversion of Voltaire's
verse "Si dieu n'existait
p6 it faudrait l'inventer,"
which proclaimed: "Si dieu existait
it faudrait l'abolir"
("If God existed he should be abolished"). Up to Bakunin, almost all
critics of religion, including Sisyphos in Euripides'
play, agreed that, without the fiction of god or gods, all moral, legal and
political order would vanish. Bakunin, on the other hand, holds that religion
must be abolished because of its political theology. Political theology has now
become an unequivocally polemical term, denouncing religion as a tool of
oppression in the hands of the ruling classes. Religion can and must be
disposed of, because humankind has the reason and the power of their own to
establish institutions of decent society.
It is in Bakunin's
writings that the German Carl Schmitt, detected the term `political theology'
and redefined it in a positive sense. Schmitt does not share Bakunin's positive
anthropology. Instead, he falls back to the pessimistic anthropology of Christianity
in general with its doctrine of original sin, and to the seventeenth century in
particular and Hobbes' ideas of the natural state as bellum omnium contra
omnes. In the light of such a pessimistic view of man, not religion, but
political order, the state, becomes indispensable. Again, the notion of
indispensability acquires a religious aura. Political power is good, because it
is indispensable, and this goodness or sacredness of power is expressed by St.
Paul in the words that it is "of God." Not "false religion is
political," but "true politics is theological;" summarizes
Schmitt's version of the debate.
This however
corresponds to the original meaning of biblical monotheism. In the Books Exodus
through . Deuteronomy, monotheism is represented as a liberation movement,
directed -against pharaonic totalitarianism.
This is not what Aleksandrovitch Bakunin or even Carl Schmitt had in mind
however. In fact the sovereign state which Schmitt advocated corresponds more
to ancient Egypt than to ancient Israel.
See also:
Toland, John (1709). Adeisidaemon, sine Titus Linius a superstitione
vindicatus. Annexae
saut jusdem Origins judaicae /sine, Strabonis, de Moyse et religion judaica
historia, breviter illustrata]. The
Hague: Thomam Johnson.
Warburton, William
(1738--1741] (1778). The divine legation of Moses demonstrated on the
principles of a religious deist, from the omission of the doctrine of a future
state of reward and punishment in the Jewish dispensation. 4 vols. London.
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