The Cult of Thomas Aquinas’s Relics at the Dawn of the Dominican Reform and the Great Western Schism

This chapter reconstructs the cultural and theological politics of the celebrations of Thomas Aquinas’s translatio, looking closely at the liturgy used to commemorate the day. It argues that the veneration of Aquinas’s relics, as well as the masses said in his honor, enabled him to figure as a healer and an agent of reform. Aquinas comes to be projected as an Avignon saint, in a cult promulgated by Elias Raymundus of Toulouse. This chapter shows how commemorative practices interwove to produce this reforming Avignon saint, particularly looking at hagiography, ritual, and, the display of relics.

To Constantinople and Back

Chapter 9 follows Melania as she trails her still-pagan uncle Volusian to Constantinople; he was one of two chosen to represent the West at the wedding of the eastern princess Licinia Eudoxia to the western emperor, Valentinian III. The chapter describes travel arrangements of the period, including use of the cursus publicus, and the city of Constantinople and its institutions. It traces the development of Christianity in the city, the rise of monasticism, the building of churches, and the search for relics. It describes the eastern court and Melania’s associations with high aristocracy and the Constantinopolitan imperial family. Volusian, although converted, did not live to participate in bringing the recently finished Theodosian Code to the West. The chapter also details the theological politics and Christological controversies (in which Melania participated) that disturbed the city in the fifth century. After mourning her uncle, Melania left Constantinople in late February 437, making record progress through the snow in order to reach Jerusalem in time for Easter (April 11, 437). In Jerusalem, she continued her building activities and acquisition of relics, and she greeted and escorted the empress Eudocia on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from Constantinople. A few days before her death in December 439, Melania accompanied her cousin Paula to celebrate the nativity of Jesus in Bethlehem. Back in her monastery, she bade farewell to various groups before dying on probably December 31. Her remarkable life, according to her biographer, was crowned by a similarly spectacular death and entry to heaven.

Isaiah and the Neo-Babylonian Background

This chapter opens with some remarks on prophecy and international politics inspired by a reading of Max Weber’s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; this is apropos of the abundance of polemic against foreign powers, in the first place Babylonia, in Isaiah and other prophetic texts. Babylon is the major figure in the sequence of ten oracles in Isa 1–23. Looking back over these oracles we would want to ask questions: by whom and for whom were they written, and how were they circulated? Then the account in chapters 36–37 of the visit of envoys sent by Merodach Baladan (Marduk-apla-idinna) to Hezekiah, now convalescentis discussed. Finally, the fall of Babylon and the dismantling of the Babylonian Empire lead to a discussion of theological politics involving Judaean, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian deities, with a focus on their respective roles as creation deities.

Christen Gemeinde, Bürgergemeinden, Migranten, Aktiengesellschaften, Finanzmärkte …

The thesis of this article is that the arrival and non-arrival of African migrants fractures the pseudo innocence of Western Europe exposing its colonial entanglements hence challenging the church to develop a decolonial theological politics. The article develops such a politics by re-examining and reconfiguring elements of Barth’s theological politics. It draws on his understanding of the “lordless powers” and of God taking the side of the poor and rereads them in the light of a counter imperial reading of the New Testament. This forms the basis for a reconfiguring of themes from his Christian Community and Civil Community.

Land and Literature in a Cosmopolitan Age

Despite its growing cosmopolitanism, European culture after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 was no stranger to ancient beliefs in a natural, religiously sanctioned, and aesthetically pleasing relationship to the land. The classical Greek notion translates as “autochthony”—literally, birth from the soil, enabled by a god. The biblical account in Exodus gives the idea of a Promised Land, designed for a particular people by their god. Twentieth-century versions of the first theme culminate in the Nordic (and then Nazi) notion of a Volksgemeinschaft—a folk community—built on the supposedly intrinsic link between Blut und Boden, blood and soil. And the idea of a Promised Land has motivated rebellious English Puritans, colonizing Americans obsessed with their “manifest destiny,” Dutch Voortrekkers, and a wide array of liberation movements.The many resonances of these topoi form a more or less coherent whole, from the novels of George Eliot to the poetry of T. S. Eliot, from thinkers such as J. G. Fichte to the Austrian historian Otto Brunner and the Indian social psychologist Ashis Nandy, and throughout the long history of Western aesthetics, from Meister Eckhart to Alexander Baumgarten to Martin Heidegger. The supposed cosmopolitanism of the modern age often obscures a deep commitment to regional, nativist, nationalist, and civilizational attachments, including a justifying theological politics, much of which is still with us today. Untangling the meaning of the vital geographies of the modern age, including how they shaped our accounts of literature and representation, is the goal of this book.

Political Theology or Theological Politics? Hugo Ball, Early Christian Hagiography, and a New Vision for Society

A contribution to modernist studies and the history of political ideas, this article examines the unlikely intellectual dialogue between Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and the former Dadaist Hugo Ball (1886–1927) that frames the formative scene of politico-theological discourse in the twentieth century. Based on close readings of Ball’s aesthetic, intellectual, and philosophical exchanges with Schmitt, the essay offers insights into the peculiar case of a Catholic intervention into political theology.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

Martin Buber’s View of Biblical Leadership and His View of the Eternal Thou

Recent studies have renewed focus on Martin Buber’s “theopolitics” in contrast to “theological politics.” The present study expands this work by looking at what Buber meant by God. His approach to the Bible, informed by his view that “extended, the lines of relationship meet in the Eternal Thou,” illuminates his analysis of the five types of biblical leadership. That analysis, far from separating “religion” and “politics,” seemed to assume what might be designated a civil religion. The social order was integrated with religious concerns. Underneath the socio-religious surface, however, Buber discerned universal principles of relationship. Analyzing each stage in biblical leadership as Buber presented it shows how he extended the lines of historical relationships to reveal an aspect of the Eternal Thou.