The self-moved mover: God and Western bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy in Jürgen Moltmann’s theology

2021

SetF

Although Political Theology examined mainly the political dimension of the relationship between God-Father and God-Son, it is paramount to consider the political performance of the Holy Spirit in the Economy of Redemption. The Holy Spirit has been characterized as the binding cause and the principle of relationality both referring to God’s inner life and to God’s relationship with His creatures. As the personalization of relationality, the Holy Spirit performs a unique task: to bring together what is apart by means of organisation. This power of the Spirit to turn a plurality into a unity is manifested in the Latin translation of oikonomía as disposition, that is, giving a special order to the multiple elements within a certain totality. Within this activity of the Spirit, Theodicy can be regarded as the way to depict God’s arrangement of the world and of history, bringing everything together towards the eschatological Kingdom of God. The paper aims at showing this fundamental activity of the Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, and intends to pose the question on how to think on a theology beyond theodicy, that is, how to think on a Trinitarian God beyond the categories of sovereignty and totalization.

Section: Political Theology As Theodicy: the Eschatological Kingdom Of Godmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Theology as Theodicy: The Holy Spirit’s Performance in the Economy of Redemption

2021

SetF

“…Life is defined in contrast to the inert by its capacity to rule over itself (auto-nomy), or even more, itself being its own cause (autos-arché). At least in Western tradition it seems that life is signified within the bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy (Grassi 2018a;2018b). Of course, within this paradigm, life is turned into an analogous concept, for now the degree of autarchy (or autonomy) that living beings have is the criterion for its place in the living scale, from cells to God and backwards (Dalleur 2015;Grassi 2018c).…”

Section: Semantic Displacements Within the Bio-theo-political Paradigm Of Autarchymentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-organized bodies, between Politics and Biology. A political reading of Aristotle’s concepts of Soul and Pneuma

2019

SetF

The idea of a self-organized system brings both political and biological discourses together, for they both aim at explaining how a certain compound can achieve self-unity out of plurality. Whereas biological metaphors in politics have been much examined, political metaphors in biology have not. In this paper I intend to show how political metaphors can enlighten biological discourses, taking the work of Aristotle as a case-study. The relationship between the main elements of a living-body could be better understood within a political scheme: the soul rules over the body through pneuma, its prime minister. This scheme entails, thus, to re-examine Aristotle's definition of soul in the light of the key concept of pneuma, and to replace the hylemorphic explanation with a triadic one. On the one hand, soul is the entelecheia of the body as it keeps both the form and the end of the organism, which is its unity. On the other hand, the moving-efficacious principle that performs unity by circulating through the body, and by linking the body to its environment is pneuma. Therefore, the political formula: "the king does not govern" could shed light upon the structure of the living body: whereas the soul rules the body, pneuma governs it. Although Aristotle does not 1 This paper was written during my Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Institut für Hermeneutik of the University of Bonn, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.

“…I am not able to show in this paper the ways in which the Bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy is still operating in Trinitarian theology. I have published a paper on one of the most important systematic theologians of the XXth century, Jürgen Moltmann, who -although he constructed his theology on the importance of Trinity-is dependent of the paradigm of autarchy when defining God's life (see: Grassi, 2018b). How dependent Christian theology is on Greek metaphysics is still a disputable topic in contemporary theology, and I will not address this question in this paper, for it exceeds the scope of my argument.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

El paradigma bio-teo-político de la autarquía y la paradoja del Dios viviente

2021

Cueteo

In the Western tradition, life has been defined within the idea of reflexivity and unity. These two features of life are intertwined in what I call the Bio-Theo-Political Paradigm of autarchy, in which living beings are defined primarily as self-sufficient entities. The perfect living being, thus, will be the most autarchic, one that can achieve perfect unity within its own self- referred dynamics. This perfect living being is God, and Western theology (both Greek and Christian) conceptualized God as “thought of thought”, for only the intellect can achieve a pure reflexive unity. However, Plotinus and Jean-Paul Sartre (two very different philosophers, coming from very different traditions and in very different contexts) showed the difficulties of such a definition of God. This paper aims at problematizing the Bio-Theo-Political Paradigm of autarchy by showing its inconsistency when reaching the idea of a perfect living being. In doing so, a need to rethink life and God is fostered, a need that Christian Theology in particular should face in order to build a theology of a Trinitarian living God.