Back to top: Chapter 16
Politics
1 There is a close analogy between the perception of divine initiative and the assumptions that define political institutions. Political structures control the mechanisms of power ideally not through coercion but tensional factors that unite the social group.
2 Religion is an essentially political act. It offers mechanisms that serve to give integration to the social group, and politics is like a religion because it offers an effective model of world integration.
3 In the religious system, the absolute is the main objective and the integration of the social group is a derivative. In the political system, the integration of the social group is the main objective and the encounter with the absolute is a derivative.
4 The State offers a formula for cohesion for which each individual feels better able to face the absolute. Sometimes power structures exploit this situation, but such deception or exaggeration does not invalidate the reality upon which the exaggeration was based.
Back to top: Chapter 16
Kingship and State
5 In Mesopotamia, the king represents the pinnacle of power, who guarantees the integration of the social group. Individual kings were rarely divinized, but the kingship itself was. The State is the materialization of order, specifically connected with the divine sphere, and then connected with the king’s control.
6 In the Biblical context, power structures are seen evolving and dissolving, but there is a direct divine dimension in the covenant, whereby God guarantees the integrity of the social group. Kingship develops late, and in a context of hostility. The concept of the nation is more fundamental, and expresses unity not through territory or political structures but through an alliance with God.
7 The interlocutors here are the community as a whole, as these political structures affected every individual. In Mesopotamia, the state power had to motivate its citizenry to feel like a single community; in the Biblical community, surprisingly the people show cohesion even when their political structures break down.
8 In Mesopotamia, religious ideation understands the beginnings of the city and kingship as autogenous and static. Biblical ideation is very dynamic. God is not seen as creating political institutions but offering choices to the community, and national identity is seen as separate from political institutions.