The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  ton patera ho hyios: ibid., p. 343):

  For this reason, when Jesus arrived at the economy in accordance with which he

  was to be raised above the world and, once recognized, to be glorified by the glory

  of those who would go on to glorify him, he spoke these words: “Now the Son of

  man has been glorified”; and since “no man knoweth the Father, save the Son who

  reveals him” and the Son was about to reveal the Father through an economy, for

  this reason “God as well was glorified in him.” (Ibid.)

  The economy of passion and the economy of revelation coincide in glory, and

  the latter (or, rather, glorification) defines the set of Trinitarian relations. The

  trinity is a doxology.

  8.7. Modern theologians distinguish, as we have seen, between “economic

  trinity” (or trinity of revelation) and “immanent trinity” (or trinity of substance).

  The former defines God in his praxis of salvation through which he reveals himself

  to men. The immanent trinity instead refers to God as he is in himself. We redis-

  cover here, in the opposition between two trinities, the fracture between ontology

  and praxis, theology and economy that we have seen constitutively marking the

  formation of economic theology (see §3.4 above). To the immanent trinity there

  correspond ontology and theology; to the economic there correspond praxis and

  oikonomia. Our investigation has tried to reconstruct the way in which these orig-

  inal polarities have, at different levels, developed into the polarities of transcen-

  dent order and immanent order, Kingdom and Government, general providence

  and special providence, which define the operation of the machine of the divine

  government of the world. The economic trinity (Government) presupposes the

  immanent trinity (the Kingdom), which justifies and founds it.

  It comes as no surprise, therefore, that immanent trinity and economic trin-

  ity, distinguished at the very beginning, are then perpetually reunited and artic-

  ulated together by the theologians and that it is precisely this articulation that

  is at stake in theology. The “economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice

  versa” (Moltmann, p. 160): this is the principle that must guide all attempts to

  think their relation. The work of sacrifice and salvation, which is in question in

  economic theology, cannot be erased in the immanent trinity.

  If the central foundation of our knowledge of the Trinity is the cross, on which

  the Father delivered up the Son for us through the Spirit, then it is impossible

  to conceive of any Trinity of substance in the transcendent primal ground of this

  event, in which cross and self-giving are not present. (Ibid.)

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  561

  That is, there are not two different trinities, but a single trinity that is, at once,

  a single divine story of salvation and a single economy. And yet, this identity

  should not be understood as “the dissolution of the one in the other” (ibid.). Ac-

  cording to the complex mechanism that, as we have seen, marks the relations be-

  tween theology and economy from the beginning—and, then, the functioning

  of the governmental machine—the two trinities, though intimately articulated,

  remain distinct. What is in question is rather the reciprocity of their relations.

  What this thesis is actually trying to bring out is the interaction between the

  substance and the revelation, the “inwardness” and the “outwardness” of the

  triune God [ . . . ] From the foundation of the world, the opera trinitatis ad extra

  correspond to the passiones trinitatis ad intra. (Ibid.)

  Glory is the place where theology attempts to think the difficult conciliation

  between immanent trinity and economic trinity, theologia and oikonomia, being and praxis, God in himself and God for us. For this reason, the doxology, despite

  its apparent ceremonial fixity, is the most dialectical part of theology, in which

  what can only be thought of as separate must attain unity.

  Real theology, which means the knowledge of God, finds expression in thanks,

  praise and adoration. And it is what finds expression in doxology that is the real

  theology. There is no experience of salvation without the expression of that ex-

  perience in thanks, praise and joy. An experience which does not find expression

  in this way is not a liberating experience [ . . . ] So God is not loved, worshipped

  and perceived merely because of the salvation that has been experienced, but for

  his own sake. That is to say, praise goes beyond thanksgiving. God is recognized,

  not only in his goodly works but in his goodness itself. And adoration, finally,

  goes beyond both thanksgiving and praise. (Ibid., pp. 152–153)

  In glory, economic trinity and immanent trinity, God’s praxis of salvation and

  his being are conjoined and move through each other. From here stems the in-

  dissoluble knot that binds together doxological elements in the strict sense and

  the Eucharistic mimesis that one finds in liturgy. Praise and adoration directed

  toward the immanent trinity presuppose the economy of salvation, just as in

  John, the Father glorifies the Son and the Son glorifies the Father. The economy

  glorifies being, as being glorifies the economy. And only in the mirror of glory do the two trinities appear to reflect into one another; only in its splendor do being

  and economy, Kingdom and Government appear to coincide for an instant.

  Hence the Council of Nicaea, in order to avoid all risk of separating the Son

  from the Father, the economy from the substance, felt the need to insert into

  the symbol of faith the formula phōs ek phōtos, “light of light.” For this reason,

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  Augustine, while seeking obsessively to eliminate all risk of subordination by the

  trinity, takes up an image of light and glory (Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 4,

  Chapter 20, §27).

  א Given that glory is the place in which the movement of the Trinitarian economy

  has to reveal itself in full, it is also the place in which the risk of noncoincidence between being and praxis and of a possible asymmetry in the relation between the three divine

  persons is at its highest. It comes as no surprise then that it is precisely in the excursus on glory that Origen seems to adopt a subordinationalist position that could make him

  appear as a precursor to Arius. Having commented upon the reciprocal glorification of

  Father and Son in John, he prudently puts forward the idea of a self-glorification of the

  Father that is independent of the one that he receives from the Son:

  I wonder whether God can be glorified in a way that is independent of his being

  glorified by the Son, since he has the advantage of being glorified in himself;

  through the contemplation of himself he rejoices in his own knowledge and

  vision with an indescribable satisfaction and joy that are greater than that of the

  Son, since he finds his joy and satisfaction in himself—as far as it is possible to

  express such ideas with respect to God. Indeed, I use these terms that cannot

  really be applied to God, because I lack the unspeakable words. (Origen, Commentaire, pp. 337–339) That subordinationalism is rejected from the beginning as an intolerable heresy is not

  so much and not only because it implies a superiority of the Father over the Son
(in

  the Gospels, Jesus frequently attributes to the Father just such a superiority), but also

  and above all because it endangers the functioning of the Trinitarian apparatus, which

  is founded upon a perfect interpersonal circulation of glory between immanent trinity

  and economic trinity.

  It is still with reference to the passage in John that Augustine, in On the Trinity, warns against every attempt to introduce an asymmetry into glory so as to found upon it the

  superiority of one person over another.

  But here also let them wake up if they can, who have thought this, too, to be

  testimony on their side, to show that the Father is greater than the Son, because

  the Son hath said, “Father, glorify me.” Why, the Holy Spirit also glorifies Him.

  Pray, is the Spirit, too, greater than He? [ . . . ] Whence it may be perceived that

  all things that the Father hath are not only of the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit,

  because the Holy Spirit is able to glorify the Son, whom the Father glorifies. But

  if he who glorifies is greater than he whom he glorifies, let them allow that those

  are equal who mutually glorify each other [ invicem]. (Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 2, Chapter 4, §6, pp. 47–48)

  The economy of glory can only function if it is perfectly symmetrical and reciprocal. All economy must become glory, and all glory become economy.

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  563

  8.8. Theology never manages truly to get to the bottom of the fracture

  between immanent trinity and economic trinity, between theologia and oikonomia. This is demonstrated in the very glory that was supposed to celebrate their reconciliation. It is marked by a fundamental dissymmetry in which only

  the economic trinity is completed at the end of days, but not the immanent

  trinity. After the Last Judgment, when the economy of salvation is complete

  and “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), the economic trinity will be

  reabsorbed by the immanent trinity and “what remains is the eternal praise of

  the triune God in his glory” (Moltmann, p. 161). The paradisiacal liturgy ends

  up in doxology; it knows no mass but only the hymn of praise. In this asym-

  metry of glory, the “anarchic”—and, at the same time, generated—character

  of the Son reemerges, putting in question the laboriously achieved result of the

  long and acrimonious dispute with Arianism. The economy is anarchical and,

  as such, has no foundation in God’s being; and yet, the Father has generated

  the Son before the eternal times. This is the “mystery of the economy,” whose

  darkness glory is not able completely to dispel in its light. To the original

  paradox of a generated anarchy, at the end of days, there corresponds that of

  an economic—and yet finite—anarchy. (The attempt to think, at one and the

  same time, an infinite being and its finite history—and hence, the figure of

  being that survives its economy—forms precisely the theological inheritance

  of modern philosophy, which achieves its most extreme form in the last works

  of Heidegger.)

  Of course, the operation of glory—or at least its pretension—is to express

  the pleromatic figure of the trinity, in which economic trinity and immanent

  trinity are once and for all securely articulated together. But it can only fulfill

  this task by continuously dividing what it must conjoin and each time recon-

  joining what must remain separated. For this reason, just as in the profane

  sphere glory was an attribute, not of Government but of the Kingdom, not

  of the ministers but of the sovereign, so the doxology refers ultimately to the

  being of God, not to his economy. And yet, just as we have seen that the King-

  dom is nothing but that which remains if one removes Government, and the

  Government that which remains if the Kingdom removes itself, in such a way

  that the governmental machine always consists in the articulation of these two

  polarities, equally, one could say that the theo-doxological machine results from

  the correlation between immanent trinity and economic trinity, in which each

  of these two aspects glorifies the other and stems from the other. Government

  glorifies the Kingdom, and the Kingdom glorifies Government. But the center

  of the machine is empty, and glory is nothing but the splendor that emanates

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  from this emptiness, the inexhaustible kabhod that at once reveals and veils the

  central vacuity of the machine.

  8.9. The aporias implicit in every theology of glory are evident in the work of

  the Protestant theologian who lies at the origin of Balthasar’s attempt to aesthet-

  icize doxology. In a decisive passage of his Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth inserts a brief treatise on glory, which the Catholic theologian takes up and expands upon

  in his masterpiece. Even though the stylistic form of the work of the two theolo-

  gians is very different, their aim is substantially the same. Barth is perfectly well

  aware that glory refers to “His freedom, majesty and sovereignty” (Barth, p. 641).

  For him it defines “His competence to make use of His omnipotence [ . . . ]

  and to exercise His lordship [ Herrschaft]” (ibid.). Abruptly shifting his analysis of glory into the “immediately proximate” (ibid.) sphere of beauty, he uses this

  concept as a supplement ( Hilfsbegriff: ibid, p. 653) to confront what appears to

  him a “blind spot” (ibid., p. 650) in the theological conception of glory. That is

  to say, it is a case of nothing less than the neutralization of the idea that the glory

  and sovereignty of God are reducible to the brutum factum of his omnipotence

  and his force.

  Or can we say positively of the method of God’s glory, of His self-glorification,

  only that it has the whole omnipotence of God behind it, that it persuades [ überzeugt] and convinces [ überführt, literally, “it guides us from above”] by ruling, mastering [ herrscht] and subduing [ überwältigt] with the utterly superior force

  [ . . . ]? [ . . . ] When the Bible uses the term “glory” to describe the revelation

  and knowledge of God, does it not mean something other and more than the

  assertion of a brute fact? [ . . . ] We have seen that when we speak of God’s glory

  we do emphatically mean God’s “force.” Yet the idea of “glory” contains some-

  thing which is not covered by that of “force.” For the idea of “kingdom” which

  precedes the other two concepts in the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer seems to

  say something of wider range than can be described by “force” alone. Light too,

  has force and is force, but it is not this that makes it light. Has not and is not

  God more than is covered by the idea of force when He has and is light and is

  glorious? (Ibid.)

  We find here, as we find at the hidden root of all aestheticisms, the need to

  cover and dignify what is in itself pure force and domination. Beauty names pre-

  cisely the “supplementary element” that enables one to think glory beyond the

  factum of sovereignty, to “depoliticize” the lexis of Herrlichkeit (that Barth, not by chance, had up to this point expressed with the technical terms of political

  sovereignty and government: herrschen, führen, walten), transferring it into the

  sphere of aesthetics.

  THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY

  565

  If we can say that God
is beautiful, to say this is to say how He enlightens and

  convinces and persuades us. It is to describe not merely the naked fact of His

  revelation or its power [ Gewalt] but the shape and form in which it is a fact and

  is power. (Ibid.)

  Barth is perfectly aware of the impropriety and inadequacy of the term “beauty,”

  which inevitably refers one to the profane sphere “of pleasure, desire, and enjoy-

  ment” (ibid., p. 651); and yet the risk of aestheticism (“drohende Ästhetizismus”:

  ibid., p. 652) is precisely the price to be paid if one is to detach the theory of glory

  from the sphere of Gewalt, of power. That beauty should become the designation,

  at once improper and absolutely inevitable, of glory, means that the problem of

  the relation between immanent trinity and economic trinity, between ontology

  and oikonomia will have to be related to the aesthetic sphere as well. God’s glory and freedom are not an “abstract freedom or sovereignty” (ibid., p. 659). The

  being of God is not “self-enclosed and pure divine being” (ibid.); what makes him

  divine and real is his being nothing other than the being of the Father, the Son,

  and the Holy Spirit. “His being [ . . . ] is not form in itself but the concrete form of

  the triune being of God” (ibid.). The trinity of God is, in this sense, “the secret of

  His beauty” (ibid., p. 661). The decisive moment of the transferral of the biblical

  kabhod into the neutral sphere of aesthetics, which only a few years later Balthasar will consider to have been fully achieved, takes place here.

  8.10. There is also another reason behind the aestheticization of glory. It

  allows one to confront the problem that, in the history of theology, is—at one

  and the same time—ever present and always eluded by new means. We are

  speaking of that glory that the theologians define as subiectiva, seu formalis (or, external); that is, the glorification that men (and with them the angels) owe to

  God. Inasmuch as it constitutes the doxological nucleus of liturgy, it enjoys a

  lustrous prestige and self-evidence; however, despite the specifications and argu-

  ments of the theologians, it certainly cannot be said that its rationale is equally

  clearly illuminated.

  As long as there has been glory there has been glorification; and this not only