The Omnibus Homo Sacer
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For this reason Saint Jerome, in the epistle to Pope Damasus, commenting upon
Isaiah (6:2–3), in which it is said that the seraphims covered with their wings
the head and feet of the Lord, catches a glimpse of a sign of the impossibility of
thinking what precedes the creation of the world or follows its end:
What will happen after the consummation of the century? After humanity has
been judged, what life can there be? Will there still be another earth? Will new
elements and a new world be created? [ . . . ] Isaiah wants to say that what there
was before the world and what there will be after it cannot be told [ . . . ] We
know only what is in between and has been revealed through Scripture: when
the world was created and when man was created, the flood, the law, and how
starting with the first man all the world was filled, until in the last age the Son
of God was incarnated for our salvation. Everything else was hidden by the two
Seraphims, who covered their head and feet. (Hieronymus, Epistolae, I, 18, 7,
in PL, 22, 365)
It is like saying that of God we can know and think only the economy, the
Government, not the Kingdom or the inoperativity; and yet the Government
is nothing but the brief interval running between the two eternal and glorious
figures of the Kingdom.
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It is now comprehensible why, in the theological tradition that finds its most
extreme representative in Peterson, the perfect cipher of Christian citizenship
is constituted by the song of praise, and the pleromatic figure of the political is
bestowed upon the angels who have become inoperative. The doctrine of Glory
as the final end of man and as the figure of the divine that outlives the govern-
ment of the world is the answer that theologians give to the problem of the end
of the economy. The angelic ministries survive the universal judgment only as a
hymnological hierarchy, as contemplation and praise of the glory of the divine.
With every providential operation exhausted and with all administration of sal-
vation coming to an end, only song remains. Liturgy survives only as doxology.
א That the problem of how to think the inoperative figure of divinity represents,
in Christian theology, a veritable crux, is proven by the difficulty encountered—since Irenaeus and Augustine—by the attempts to answer the blasphemous question par excellence: “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth? [ . . . ] Why did
He not continue to do nothing forever as He did before?” Already Augustine—who in
the Confessions (Book 11, §10, p. 240) relates the question in this form, attributing it to men pleni vetustatis suae—mentions the ironic reply, which in truth betrays incredible embarrassment: “He was getting hell ready for people who pry too deep [ alta ( . . . )
scrutantibus gehennas parabat]” (ibid., §12, p. 241). Eleven centuries later, as testimony to the persistence of the problem, Luther takes it up again in the following form: “He sat in the forest, cutting rods to beat those who ask impertinent questions.”
The question—which, it is no coincidence, derives from pagans and Gnostics, for
whom it posed no difficulty—was particularly embarrassing for Christians, precisely
because the Trinitarian economy was essentially a figure of action and government. It
corresponded perfectly, a parte ante, to the question regarding the state not only of God but also of the angels and the blessed after the world’s end.
Hence glory is what must cover with its splendor the unaccountable figure of divine
inoperativity. Even if it can fill entire volumes (as in the case of Balthasar), the theologia gloriae is what we might call a blank page in the arguments of the theologians. For this reason its typical form is that of mysticism, which—in the face of the glorious figure of
power—can do nothing except fall silent. In every other case, scrutator maiestatis obtunditur a gloria, as Luther stated in his incisive formula.
In Judaic circles, where God has not taken the oikonomia within himself, the question regarding the inoperativity of God is much less embarrassing. According to the Midrash
(Tehillim, 90, 391), two thousand years before he created the heavens and the earth, God
created seven things (the Torah, the throne, paradise, hell, the celestial sanctuary, the name of the Messiah, and the voice that cries: “Repent, ye sons of men”). In the subsequent
two thousand years—always according to this Midrash, which thus answers the question
preemptively—he has consulted the Torah, has created other worlds, and has discussed
with the letters of the alphabet which of them should be the agent of creation.
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
519
6.9. The evacuation of the angelic ministries after the Judgment demon-
strates that the divine government of the world is structurally limited in time;
that the theological economy is essentially finite. The Christian paradigm of gov-
ernment, like the vision of history that supports it, lasts from the creation until
the end of the world. The modern conception of history that takes up without
reservation the theological model in many of its aspects, finds itself for this rea-
son in a contradictory situation. On the one hand, it abolishes the eschatology
and infinitely prolongs the history and the government of the world; on the
other hand, it finds that the finite character of its paradigm returns ceaselessly
(which is as evident in Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel as it is in the problem of
the end of the history of being in the later Heidegger).
The principle according to which the government of the world will cease
with the Last Judgment has only one important exception in Christian theology.
It is the case of hell. In Question 89, Thomas Aquinas asks himself whether the
demons will execute the sentence of the damned (“Utrum daemones exequen-
tur sententiam iudicis in damnatos”). Against the opinion of those who held
that, with the Judgment, all function of government and ministry would cease,
Aquinas instead claims that the demons will carry out their judicial function as
executors of the infernal punishments for all eternity. In the same way as he had
argued that the angels would lay down their ministries but would eternally main-
tain their order and their hierarchies, so now he writes that “so, too, will order be
observed in punishments, men being punished by demons, lest the Divine order,
whereby the angels are placed between the human nature and the Divine, be en-
tirely set aside” ( Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 89, a. 4).* In other words, hell is that place in which the divine government of the world survives for all eternity,
even if only in a penitentiary form. And while the angels in paradise will abandon
every form of government and will no longer be ministers but only assistants,
despite conserving the empty form of their hierarchies, the demons, meanwhile,
will be the indefectible ministers and eternal executioners of divine justice.
However, this means that, from the perspective of Christian theology, the
idea of eternal government (which is the paradigm of modern politics) is truly
infernal. Curiously, this eternal penitentiary government, this penal colony that
knows no expiation, has an unexpected theatrical implication. Among the ques-
tions Aquinas poses with regard to the condition of the blessed, is whether they
are able to witness the punishments of the damned (“Utrum beati qui erunt
* The Supplement to Questions 89 and 94 Agamben refers to does not appear in the English translation of the Summa. A translation of these passages can, however, be found at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5.
htm.—Trans.
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in patria, videant poenas damnatorum”). He is aware that the horror and the
turpitudo of a similar spectacle is not suitable fare for saints; and yet, with a psychological candor in the face of the sadistic implications of his arguments
that it is not easy for us moderns to accept, he affirms without reservations that
“the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them [ . . . ] [if ] they
are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned” (ibid., Supplement,
q. 94, a. 1). In addition to this, the blessed and the angels with whom they con-
template it are not allowed to feel compassion before this atrocious spectacle,
but only enjoyment, insofar as the punishment of the damned is the expression
of the eternal order of divine justice (“et hoc modo sancti de poenis impiorum
gaudebunt, considerando in eis ordinem divinae justitiae, et suam liberationem,
de qua gaudebunt”: ibid., a. 3).
The “spectacle of suffering,” whose solidarity with the power of the ancien
régime Foucault has demonstrated, finds here its eternal root.
Threshold
THAT angelology directly coincides with a theory of power, that the angel is
the figure of the government of the world par excellence is already evident
from the simple fact that the angelic names are identified with those of worldly
powers: arkai, exousiai, kyriotētes ( principatus, potestates, dominationes in the Latin translation). This is evident in Paul, in whose Letters it is not always easy to distinguish the names of the angels from those of the worldly authorities. After all,
the hendiadys arkai kai exou siai is commonly used, in the Greek of that time,
as a way of indicating human powers in a generic way (so in Luke 12:11, Jesus’s
followers are dragged into the synagogue before “magistrates, and powers [ epi
( . . . ) tas arkas kai tas exousias],” and in Titus 3:1, Paul counsels the members of the community to be “subject to arkais exousiais”). In the Letter to the Colossians as well, where the cult of angels is certainly in question, it is not clear whether the
“principalities and powers” over which the Messiah has triumphed via the cross
(Colossians 2:15) are angelic or human powers. And even in the celebrated verse
of 1 Corinthians 15:24, the destruction of “all rule and all authority and power”
that the Messiah brings about when he hands back the kingdom to God can refer
equally well to worldly powers and to the angels. In other passages, in which
the terms unequivocally denote angelic powers, these are seen as ambiguous de-
monic powers. So the Letter to the Ephesians, which opens with the luminous
image of the resurrected Messiah whom God places on his right-hand side, “far
above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion” (Ephesians 1:21),
ends with the evocation of angels themselves as “the rulers of the darkness of this
world” ( kosmokratores tou skotou toutou): “For we wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the dark-
ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
The intercourse between the angels and the worldly powers is more intimate
and essential, and derives, first, from the fact that, insofar as they are figures of the
divine government of the world, they are immediately also the “princes of this
world” (1 Corinthians 2:6). The worldly and angelic powers become indistinguish-
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able in Paul because they both stem from God. The celebrated passage in Romans
13:1–5, on the divine origin of every exousia (“there is no power but of God”),
should be read from this perspective, and in it one also finds its corrective. Pauline
angelology is, in fact, in agreement with the critique of law and authority that it
founds. For authority, like law (which “was ordained by angels”: Galatians 3:19;
see also Hebrews 2:2), was given “for sin” (Romans 8:3), and its power ceases with
the arrival of the Messiah. No “angel” nor any “power” ( arkē) can separate us from
“Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39), because “we shall judge angels” as well
(1 Corinthians 6:3). George B. Caird has observed that the ambiguity of the an-
gelic powers, like that of the law and of every power, resides in the fact that what
had been given provisionally and for sin pretends to be valid absolutely.
But when the law is isolated and exalted into an independent system of religion,
it becomes demonic. The corruption of the law is the work of sin, and in partic-
ular the sin of self-righteousness [ . . . ] All legalism is self-assertion, a claim that
we can establish our own righteousness, that we can save ourselves by our own
moral and spiritual attainments. (Caird, p. 41)
But this demonic radicalization of the law and of angelic ranks also in some
ways constitutes a hypostasis of fury and divine justice that the cabalists will call
Din, rigor, and that in Paul appears as “indignation and wrath” ( orgē kai thymos: Romans 2:5–8). The angels, as a cipher for the divine power of government of
the world, also represent the dark and demonic aspect of God, which, as such,
cannot simply be expunged.
Pauline messianism must be seen from this perspective. It acts as a corrective
to the demonic hypertrophy of angelic and human powers. The Messiah deacti-
vates and renders inoperative the law as well as the angels and, in this way, rec-
onciles them with God ( katargeō * is the technical term that Paul uses to express
the relation between the Messiah and the power of angels and men; I translate
argos as “inoperative” and not simply as “I destroy”). (One reads in Colossians
1:15–20 that all things, “whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities,
or powers,” have been created through the Messiah, and through him they will
be reconciled with God.)
The theme of the law no longer applied, but studied, that in Kafka’s novels
goes hand in hand with that of the constantly inoperative angel-functionaries,
here reveals its messianic pertinence. The ultimate and glorious telos of the law
and of the angelic powers, as well as of the profane powers, is to be deactivated
and made inoperative.
* The King James Bible uses “fail” for katargeō, as in 1 Corinthians 13:8. —Trans.
7
The Power and the Glory
7.1. The caesura that divides the nature of angels and articulates their
orders into those of assistants and administrators, into choristers of
glory and ministers of government corresponds to a dual figure of power that
we must now interrogate. Perhaps only in the tension between gloria and gubernatio, the articulation of Kingdom and Government, which we have attempted patiently to reconstruct by means of the history of the theological-economic
paradigm, attains at one and the same time both its full intelligibility and its
maximum opacity. Intelligibility, because never as in th
e opposition between
assistants and ministers has the difference between Kingdom and Glory become
so effective; opacity, because what is a politics that would not be of government
but of liturgy, not of action but of hymn, not of power but of glory?
To answer this question we must first identify the secret thread that unites
Peterson’s 1935 text on angels to the dissertation that the young theologian, not yet
converted to Catholicism, publishes in 1926 under the title Heis Theos. Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Years later, confronting similar themes, Kantorowicz called Peterson’s dissertation “fundamental.”
The subtitle, which brings together a philological category with concepts drawn
from theological studies is, from this point of view, misleading. It is neither a
properly theological study nor is it, despite the imposing critical apparatus and the
extraordinary erudition, a case of a solely historical-philological investigation. The
disciplinary field in which the dissertation is to be placed remains obscure and so
requires some preliminary considerations.
In 1934, in the introduction to his book on the formation of imperial Roman
ceremonials, Andreas Alföldi lamented that, while the study of the rational-
juridical aspects of the imperial State had produced works of the caliber of Mom-
msen’s Staatsrecht, the investigation of its ceremonial and religious aspects was left to works of dubious scientific value such as Culte impérial by the abbot Beurlier (Alföldi, p. 5). In the same way, in the introduction to his book on the Laudes
Regiae (1946), Ernst Kantorowicz observed that the study of liturgical sources of
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political history remained, till the beginning of the twentieth century, the pre-
rogative of theologians and of Church historians who, as parties to the case, were
not necessarily the most trustworthy sources (Kantorowicz 1946, p. vii).
Although composed by a theologian (who could nonetheless claim Franz
Boll, Eduard Norden, and Richard Reitzenstein as his teachers), Peterson’s dis-