the hierarchy of angelic ministries has become completely inoperative. While in
hell something like penal administration is still in operation, paradise not only
knows no government, but also no writing, reading, no theology, and even no
liturgical celebration—besides doxology, the hymn of glory. Glory occupies the
place of postjudicial inoperativity; it is the eternal amen in which all works and all divine and human words are resolved.
In Judaism, inoperativity as the dimension most proper to God and man
is given a grandiose image in the Sabbath. Indeed, the festivity of the Jews par
excellence has its theological foundation in the fact that it is not the work of
creation that is considered sacred but the day on which all work ceases (Genesis
2:2–3; Exodus 20:11). Thus, inoperativity is the name of what is most proper to
God (“{Only God truly posses inoperative [ anapauesthai] being}”: Philo, On the Cherubim, §90, p. 89; “{The Sabbath, which means inoperativity [ anapausis], belongs to God}”: ibid., §87, p. 89) and, at the same time, that which is awaited
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in eschatology (“They should not enter into my inoperativity [ eis tēn katapausin
mou]”: Psalms 95:11).
In Paul’s Letters, in particular the Epistle to the Hebrews, the eschatological
theme of inoperativity is introduced through a Midrash on Psalm 95:11. Paul (or
whoever is the author of the epistle) calls “sabbatism” ( sabbatismos: Hebrews 4:9) the inoperativity and beatitude that await the people of God.
Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his inoperativity
[ katapausis], some of you will be excluded from it. For unto us was the gospel
preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not
being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we who have believed do enter
into inoperativity, as He said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into
my inoperativity: although the works were finished from the foundation of the
world. For He spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God
did rest the seventh day from all His works. And in this place again, they shall not enter into my inoperativity. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter
therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of their
lack of obedience: Again, He limiteth a certain day, saying in David, Today, after
so long a time; as it is said, Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
For if Joshua had given them inoperativity, then would He not afterward have
spoken of another day? There remaineth therefore a sabbatism to the people of
God. For he that is entered into His inoperativity, he also hath ceased from his
own works, as God did from His. (Hebrews 4:1–10)
The link that Paul, developing a biblical and rabbinical motif, establishes between
the eschatological condition, Sabbath, and inoperativity profoundly marks the
Christian conception of the Kingdom. In his commentary on the Epistle to the
Hebrews, John Chrysostom identifies without reservation inoperativity, sabba-
tism, and the Kingdom of heaven: “For [Paul] said not inoperativity but ‘Sab-
bath-keeping’; calling the kingdom ‘Sabbath-keeping,’ by the appropriate name”
(John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews 6, §2, p. 654); “What
other inoperativity [ katapausis] then is there, except the kingdom of Heaven
[ basileia tōn ouranōn], of which the Sabbath was an image and type [ eikōn kai
typos]?” (ibid., 6, §7, p. 651). Sabbatism is the name of eschatological glory that is, in essence, inoperativity. The Clementine Homilies, a text strongly influenced by Judeo-Christian traditions, defines God himself as Saturday and inoperativity. In an extremely dense theological passage, after attributing to God the name
“nothing” ( to ouden) and linking him to the void, the author writes: “This is the
mystery of the Sabbath [ hebdomados mystērion]. He Himself is the inoperativ-
ity of all things [ tōn holōn anapausis]” (Clement of Alexandria, The Clementine
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HOMO SACER II, 4
Homilies, Chapter 17, §10, pp. 320–321). And in the Pseudo-Dionysius, in the
passage that we have already cited on hymnology, glory, the hymnical, and inop-
erativity are tightly conjoined and the hymns of the angels are defined as “divine
places of thearchical inoperativity [ theioi topoi tēs thearchikēs ( . . . ) katapauseōs]”
( Celestial Hierarchy, 7, 57).
It is in Augustine that this theme becomes a problem or, more precisely,
the supreme theological problem, that of the eternal Saturday (“sabbatum non
habens vesperam,” “the Saturday that does not set”), which concludes—in a
sublime and, at the same time, tortured glimpse— The City of God, that is,
the work that contains his most extreme meditation on theology and politics.
Immediately, the problem is clearly announced in all its simplicity: “How the
saints shall be employed when they are clothed in immortal and spiritual bodies
[ Quid acturi sint in corporibus inmortalibus atque spiritalibus sancti]?” ( The City of God, Book XXII, Chapter 29, p. 691). Augustine realizes that one cannot
properly speak either of “action” or otium and that the problem of the final
inoperativity of creatures surpasses the intelligence of both men and angels.
What is in question is “‘the peace of God which,’ as the apostle says, ‘passeth all
understanding’” (ibid.).
The vision of this “peace” is, for Augustine, so difficult to conceive that, on
the one hand, he is keen to qualify it by stating that it will not only be intellec-
tual, because we will see God through the senses of our glorious body. On the
other hand, he forgets that what is in question is precisely a “peace” and appears
to maintain that on the eternal Saturday we will see God govern a new heaven
and a new earth (ibid.). But he quickly returns to the decisive question, that of
the unthinkable nature of the inoperativity of the blessed. It is a case of a new
state that knows no acedia ( desidia) or need ( indigentia), and whose movements, which it is impossible even merely to imagine, will nevertheless be full of glory
and decorum (ibid. , XXII, 30). He finds no other adequate expression for the
blessed inoperativity, which is neither a doing nor a not-doing, than a “becom-
ing Sabbath” of the resurrected in which they are identified with God:
“Be inoperative and know that I am God [ vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus].”
There shall be the great Sabbath which has no evening [ . . . ] For we shall be
the Sabbath, when we shall be filled and replenished with God’s blessing and
sanctification. There shall we be inoperative [ vacantes], and know that He is God
[ . . . ] But when we are restored by Him and perfected with greater grace, we
shall be eternally inoperative [ vacabimus in aeterno] to see that He is God, for
we shall be full of Him when He shall be all in all. (Ibid., p. 695)
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Here, in a stuttering attempt to think the unthinkable, Augustine defines the
final condition as a sabbatism to the nth degree, a making the Sabbath take rest
in the Sabbath, a resolving of inoperativity into inoperativity:
After this period
God shall be inoperative on the Sabbath, when He shall make
inoperative in itself that very Sabbath that we shall be [ cum eundem diem septimum, quod nos erimus, in se ipso Deo faciet requiescere] [ . . . ] Suffice it to say that this shall be our Sabbath, which shall be brought to a close, not by an evening,
but by the Lord’s day, as an eighth and eternal day [ . . . ] There we shall be in-
operative [ vacabimus] and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to
attain to the kingdom of which there is no end? (Ibid., p. 696)
And only at this point, in the full glory of the Sabbath, where nothing is in
excess and nothing is lacking, Augustine can conclude his work and pronounce
his amen:
I think I have now, by God’s help, discharged my obligation in writing his large
work. Let those who think I have said too little, or those who think I have said
too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough join me
in giving thanks to God. Amen. (Ibid.)
8.23. If the postjudicial condition coincides with the supreme glory (“vera
ibi gloria erit”: The City of God, p. 696) and if glory in the century of centuries has the form of an eternal Sabbath, what remains to be investigated is precisely
the meaning of this intimacy between glory and sabbatism. At the beginning
and the end of the highest power there stands, according to Christian theology,
a figure not of action and government but of inoperativity. The indescribable
mystery that glory, with its blinding light, must hide from the gaze of the scrutatores maiestatis is that of divine inoperativity, of what God does before creating the world and after the providential government of the world is complete. It is
not the kabhod, which cannot be thought or looked upon, but the inoperative
majesty that it veils with its clouds and the splendor of its insignia. Glory, both
in theology and in politics, is precisely what takes the place of that unthinkable
emptiness that amounts to the inoperativity of power. And yet, precisely this un-
sayable vacuity is what nourishes and feeds power (or, rather, what the machine
of power transforms into nourishment). That means that the center of the gov-
ernmental apparatus, the threshold at which Kingdom and Government cease-
lessly communicate and ceaselessly distinguish themselves from one another is,
in reality, empty; it is only the Sabbath and katapausis—and, nevertheless, this
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inoperativity is so essential for the machine that it must at all costs be adopted
and maintained at its center in the form of glory.
In the iconography of power, profane and religious, this central vacuity of
glory, this intimacy of majesty and inoperativity, found its exemplary symbol in
the hetoimasia tou thronou, that is, in the image of the empty throne.
The adoration of an empty throne has ancient roots and can be found in
the Upanishads. In Mycenaean Greece, the throne discovered in the so-called
Throne Room in Knossos is, according to the archaeologists, an object of wor-
ship and not a seat designed to be used. The bas-relief in the Medici Villa in
Rome, which represents the empty throne from the front and surmounted by a
crown surrounded by towers, appears to testify to a cult of the throne in the rites
of the Magna Mater (Picard, p. 11). A cult of the throne for political ends, dating
back to the fourth century bc about which we are well informed is that of the
empty throne of Alexander, established in Cynda by Eumenes, the commander
in chief of the Macedonian troops in Asia, in 319–312 bc. Claiming inspiration
from Alexander himself who appeared to him in a dream, Eumenes fitted out
the royal tent with an empty golden throne at its center on which rested the
crown, scepter, and sword of the deceased monarch. Before the empty throne
stood an altar on which officers and soldiers spread incense and myrrh before
performing a ritual proskynēsis, as though Alexander had been present.
The first record of this oriental custom in Rome is to be found in the sella
curulis—the seat usually allocated to the republican magistrates in office—which
the senate awarded to Caesar to be exhibited at the games, empty and adorned
with a golden crown encrusted with precious stones. In Augustus’s epoch, both
the written testimonies and his image as it is reproduced on coins show that
the golden throne of the divus Iulius was constantly exhibited at the games. We
know that Caligula had an empty throne placed on the Capitoline Hill, in front
of which the senators were made to perform the proskynēsis. Alföldi provides
reproductions of coins that clearly demonstrate that under Titus and Domi-
tian, the empty sellae of the emperors, surmounted by a crown, had by then
been transformed into thrones as objects of devotion similar in every way to the
pulvinaria and the lectisternia upon which the gods were represented. Cassius Dio (72, 17, 4) tells us that, for Commodus, whether he was present or absent,
theaters were fitted out with the symbols of Hercules: a golden throne, a lion
skin, and a club.
However, the cultual meaning of the empty throne culminates in Christian-
ity, in the grandiose eschatological image of the hetoimasia tou thronou, which
adorns the triumphal arches and apses of the paleo-Christian and Byzantine
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basilicas. So the fifth-century mosaic on the arch of Saint Sixtus III in Santa
Maria Maggiore in Rome shows an empty throne encrusted with multicolored
stones, on which rests a cushion and a cross; next to it one can make out a lion,
an eagle, a winged human figure, some fragments of wings, and a crown. In the
church of San Prisco in Capua, another mosaic represents the empty throne, be-
tween a winged bull and an eagle, resting on which is a scroll fastened with seven
seals. In the Byzantine basilica of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, the hetoimasia
in the mosaic of the Last Judgment shows a throne with a cross, a crown, and a
sealed book, accompanied above it by seraphims with six wings and, on either
side, by two large figures of angels. In Mystras, in the church of Saint Demetrius,
a fresco of the thirteenth century exhibits an empty throne suspended from the
air, draped in purple, and surrounded by six acclaiming angels; just above it, in
a crystalline transparent rhombus, there is a book, an amphora, a snow-white
bird, and a black bull.
Historians usually interpret the image of the empty throne as a symbol of
regality, both divine and profane. “The value of the throne,” writes Picard, “never
appears with as much force as it does when the throne is empty” (Picard, p. 1).
This interpretation, which is certainly simplistic, could be developed in the
terms of Kantorowicz’s theory of the “two bodies” of the king, which suggests
that the throne, like the other insignia of regality, refers more to the office and
the dignitas of the sovereign than to his person.
A similar explanation cannot, however, provide an account of the empty
throne in the Christian hetoimasia. This must first be referred back to its eschatological context in Revelation 4:1–11. Here the apostle has inseparably conjoined
t
he originary paradigm of all Christian liturgical doxologies with an eschato-
logical vision that takes up again the motifs of the hallucinatory prophecies of
Isaiah 6:1–4 and Ezekiel 1:1–28. The image of the throne, upon which, in Isaiah,
YHVH sits and in Ezekiel, a “likeness as the appearance of a man” (1:26), is
derived from both of these passages. From Ezekiel the “four living creatures”
(1:5) with the faces of a lion, a bull, a man, and an eagle (which from the time
of Irenaeus would be identified with the evangelists); from Isaiah, the song of
the Trisagion (“holy holy holy is the Lord omnipotent”), which makes here its
first appearance in Christian doxology. It is decisive, however, that while in the
apocalyptic text, the anonymous being who sits on the throne “was to look upon
like a jasper and a sardine stone” (Revelation 4:3), in the representations of the
hetoimasia tou thronou the throne is absolutely empty—aside from the book
(which in the text lies “in the right hand of him that sat”), the crown, and, later,
the symbols of the crucifixion.
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The term hetoimasia, like the verb hetoimazō, and the adjective hetoimos is, in the Greek of the Septuagint, a technical term that, in the Psalms, refers to
YHVH’s throne: “{The LORD prepared His throne in Heaven}” (Psalms 102:19);
“Justice and judgment are the hetoimasia of thy throne” (89:14); “Thy throne is
established ( hetoimos) of old” (93:2). Hetoimasia does not mean the act of preparing and fitting out something, but the readiness of the throne. The throne
has always been ready and has always awaited the glory of the Lord. According
to rabbinical Judaism, the throne of glory is, as we have seen, one of the seven
things that YHVH created before the creation of the world. In the same sense, in
Christian theology the throne has been ready for all eternity because the glory of
God is co-eternal with it. The empty throne is not, therefore, a symbol of regality but of glory. Glory precedes the creation of the world and survives its end. The throne is empty not only because glory, though coinciding with the divine essence is not
identified with it, but also because it is in its innermost self-inoperativity and
sabbatism. The void is the sovereign figure of glory.
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