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Theme Articles

Contours for a Public Lutheran Theology in the Face of Empire

By Guillermo Hansen
Abstract: Three themes structure Lutheranisms interpretation of the biblical narrative as it intersects with

the present challenges of Empire: justification by faith as a declaration of inclusiveness; Gods threefoldmultidimensional action creating and sustaining democratic practices (two kingdoms); and the cross as the critical weapon against the glory of Empire. This implies placing our theology within the present cultural and religious debate in a way consistent with the methodology of the cross: a theology done from the bowels of Empire, revealing its true face behind its alleged benevolent mask.
Key Terms: Empire, cross, public theology, democracy, Luther

A Mythical Narrative
One of the most original insights of the literary critic Northrop Frye is his assertion that the entire Bible, structured around the mythos of fall and redemption, weaves its salvific theme through a narrative sequence of rises and falls of heathen kingdoms and empires. Egypt, Philistia, Babylon, Syria and Rome express the leviathanish side of a myth that has its counterpart in the mythoi of Promised Land, Jerusalem, Zion, Temple and Kingdom of God.1 The history of salvation is thus a counterpoint, or an anti-type, to the history of different forms of enslavement and oppression. While certainly these mythoi express larger metaphors regarding human existence, as symbols they give occasion for further thought. When Empire appears in the narrative as a symbol of the tragic, it becomes a (religious) means of detecting and deciphering human reality, of lifting up and illuminating a region

of human experience thus constructing a domain of objectivity. Thus when the sacredor anti-sacred is manifested on the cosmos, it is also manifested simultaneously in the psyche. Even though today we dont live in the immediacy of the myth, in interpreting we can hear again and therefore meaningfully act. Symbol gives rise to hermeneutics, and therefore, to critical thought, a criticism that is not only directed to the meaning of the symbol (as a total myth) but the reality that the symbol unveils. Thus the critique of Empire becomes not only a disgruntled left-wing opinion, but a continuation, nay, a re-creation, of the mythical narrative itselfalbeit in a postcritical way. So while it is true that Empire must be demythologizedin the sense that it does not bear an ultimate concern, otherwise it is an idolthis does not imply that it must be demythicizedfor only within a mythical narrative can faith relate to this reality as an anti-type of redemption and salvation.2 This is what, in the end, Luther achieved

Guillermo Hansen is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.
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2010 Wiley Periodicals and Dialog, Inc.

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by calling Rome and the Pope the anti-Christ thereby undermining the ideological buttress of the imperial-restorative policies of the Habsburgs.3

Luthers Confrontation with Empire

Within Lutheran circles it is often forgotten that Luthers theological and spiritual struggle was also a confrontation with Empire. The Roman-Germanic Empire considered the unity of the church as the ideological basis for conformity, and the cultural substance without which political and social existence could not be sustained. After Worms, banning or persecuting the heretic as a civil criminal was an act of political defense of the Empire. The Reformation was different from sectarian medieval movements in that it went beyond mere religious questions, instead reflecting and unraveling the total complexity of social inconsistencies in all their breath and variety. And it did so as a typical bourgeois movement, that is, pursuing a change of consciousness through a relentless reformulation of the dominant symbols. Luthers commentary on the Magnificat (15211522) is a good illustration of a contextual interpretation of the biblical mythos, a demythologization that also remythicizes power, politics and economics within the scheme of fall and redemption. Theologically, Empire becomes a theme only retrospectively, that is, from the present instant of justification, of salvation.

Lutheranisms Confrontation with Empire Today

To rescue the notion of Empire as a symbol by re-articulating it within the mythos of enslavement and redemption is a major theological task. But how can this be uttered in our self-reflective, hypercritical, postmodern age? What type of comedy, if not irony, should be posited as a counter-type to

the tragedy of Empire? The first step is to demythologize the notion of Empire, that is, to uncover its underpinnings as a total (late modern) myth and expose its ominous underside. Second, the symbol must be re-located within the constellation of mythoi of the Christian story whereby the narrative of redemption interlocks with our contemporary narratives of oppression and enslavement. Finally, theology as a constructive task seeks to explain and engage mundane reality in relation to the primary symbols of faith; it is the task of enlarging the scope of symbols by broadening and illuminating a wider area of understanding and action. Within this frame of concerns I shall formulate the following theological and ethical questions: how does our Lutheran heritage, its core theological metaphors, contribute and/or relate to issues that confront us in public life? Can it provide any meaningful orientation for dealing with issues related to authority and new networks of labor, production and power? In sum, can it be a critical yet positive force for democracy facing Empire, and an advocate of tolerance and pluralism against fundamentalisms? I suggest that Lutheranism may be able to contribute significantly if its theological metaphors for salvation also cut across the order of creation. Three mythoi structure Lutheranisms interpretation of the biblical narrative as it intersects with the present challenges: justification by faith as a declaration of inclusiveness; Gods threefoldmultidimensional action (i.e., two kingdoms) creating and sustaining democratic arrangements; and the cross as the critical weaponand a critique of weaponsagainst the glory of Empire and war. The challenge is to articulate these dimensions without falling into moralizing or legalistic solutions to deep structural, cultural and social disputes. This implies placing our theology within the present cultural and religious debate consistently with the methodology of the cross: a theology done from the bowels of Empire, revealing its true face behind its alleged benevolent mask. This is not a matter involving good scholarship only, but also proper social location as suggested by the symbols themselves.

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Central Lutheran Symbols

Justification by faith and cross, understood within the frame of Gods threefold-multidimensional action (two kingdoms), evoke a theological space for relating to values such as difference, plurality, tolerance and acknowledging the other, within a (radical) democratic being, practice and institutional frameworka state of affairs in which people are empowered and have power.4 I would certainly never suggest that democracy constitutes a redemptive reality, nor attempt to artificially import Lutheran codes into a theology of Empire. Rather the chore consists of showing how the central symbols of the Lutheran interpretation of the biblical narrative open up and disclose the reality of Empire as a theological theme. The gospel, certainly, cannot be reduced to an historical realization, the field of the law and the ethical imperative. Yet the gospel shares with the law the same ground, the gracious command of love. Thus the gospel narrative not only embodies the command, but also shows a social bias towards a justice that embraces and accepts radically the other. What happens coram Deo unleashes a revolutionary burst of energy coram mundo. Law and gospel, demand and promise, are neither confused nor estranged. While the power of religious symbols is shown to the extent that they function as detectors of reality, at the same time they attract toward themselves values and practices that become integral to the hermeneutical dynamic of a tradition. It is at this juncture that religious values and practices focused on the most vulnerable and powerless (justification), as well as a critique against power and victimization (cross), converge with one of the directions that history may take, radical democracy (two kingdoms). Gospel and law are thus reflected, parabolically, yet never exhausted, in democratic arrangements. And conversely, democratic being and practices can never fully flourish without a religious substance, without trust, faith and love. This can ground a robust Lutheran public theology that inspires strategies to face the subtle power of Empire.

Empire Past & Present

The globalizing and unsettling forces of capitalism, technology, climate change, mass media and popular culture chart a reality marked by fleetness, disorientation and rapid social change. Empire is the name given to the global network of hierarchies and divisions that promise and attempt to maintain order through new mechanisms of control and conflicta specific regime of global relations.5 Therefore Empire refers neither to a single country, nor to a unified political system, but to a global-network of sovereignty that rests on dominant nation-states, supranational institutions and major capitalist corporations and financial conglomerates.

A World System
Following the social scientist Immanuel Wallersteins analysis of world-systems6 neither nation-states, nor political regimes, nor religious bodies, nor geocultural zones should be posited as the main repository of Empire. Rather, it is the dynamic network cutting across and undergirding all of the above establishing a special hierarchical regime of relations based on the pursuit of endless profits. A world system thus cuts across political and cultural units creating an integrated zone of activity with institutions that obey certain systemic rules. Another characteristic of world system analysis is the notion of cyclical dynamic and linear trends. Inspired by chaos theory, Wallerstein maintains that an existing system that can no longer function adequately within its defined parameters faces a bifurcation where a choice is pressed upon it. In effect, every system can be said to be alive. If a system survives, it pursues its historical life within the framework and constraints of its constitutive structures. It obeys a cyclical dynamic, but also spawns linear trends. When the expansion of the linear trends jeopardizes the equilibrium enacted by the cyclical process, the crisis cannot be solved within the system as such; a bifurcation is imminent.

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The modern world system, Empire, has its origins in European expansion beginning in the sixteenth century. It is not bound by a unitary political structure, although after World War II, liberal democracy became the desirable political regime. Its unifying factor is not a political regime or culture, but the division of labor resulting from the relentless pursuit of profits.7 The accumulation of capital, which splits the system along a core and different degrees of periphery, determines the nature of this division.8 This constitutes its basic cyclical dynamic.

A Global State of War

The 1960s marked thus the end of the supremacy of liberalism, thereby dislocating the geo-culture that had kept the political institutions intact by balancing the cyclical dynamic of capitalism with the political and social linear trends.10 Decolonization, womens movements, youth culture and labor, vindication of difference and minorities, concern for the environmentthese have unhinged the underpinnings of the capitalist world economy and exposed it to the full force of political and cultural shocks from which it has been sheltered.11 It is also during this time that fundamentalist trends gained ascendancy again in different places in the world.12 Cultural transformations soon lead to new self-esteem and political demands, which in turn put new pressures on the cyclical nature of the system. The result is that in the last fifty years there has been a growing squeeze on the average rate of profits; costs of production have been rising while the margin of surplus is narrowing. Capitalist production had to face increasing costs in employee remuneration and salaries, inputs (infrastructure and raw materials), and taxation. These events weakened the link of the worldsystem with the more moderate center and thus reacted against the cultural and social transformations dating from the 1960s. Most dramatically, neoliberalism was replaced by neoconservatisma religiously sanctioned force that is a war, culturally and politically, with the freedoms and social advancements of the previous four decades.13 Far from bringing order and restoring equilibrium to the system, these reactions have accelerated the cycle of crisis, leading to a general global state of war fueled by dwindling resources and a new enclosing of the commons.14 Today linear trends are moving toward blocking the unrestrained continuation of an endless accumulation of capital, the engine of capitalist development. On the horizon are indications of great social turmoil, in response to (1) the very fluctuations of the system itself; (2) the declining legitimacy of state structures; and (3) the cultural crisis of prevailing symbolic systems. As Eric Hobsbawm asserts,

The Geo-Culture of Liberalism

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the political history of the modern world system became the subject of a debate about the line dividing the included from the excluded, as well as about the tenor, extent and limits of tolerance and inclusivity within this cyclical dynamic. These were the linear trends spawned by the world system. The debate occurred within the framework of a geo-culture that proclaimed the inclusion of all as the definition of the good society.9 This geo-culture was liberalism, which proved to be a formidable ideological force, acquiring a solid hegemony in Europe around 1848. Not only did it establish the legal and institutional foundations to be emulated by most countries in the world, but it also was elastic enough to absorb anti-systemic movementslinear trendsarising within it. Within nation-states, attempts by groups to achieve inclusion as full citizens were the central focus of radical movements. First was the turn of industrial workers, who once organized in unions and syndicates sought political power. After decades of struggle, a compromise emerged: the welfare state. Then, beginning in the 1960s, those excluded from full participation and decision makingcertain racial/ethnic groups, women, sexual minorities and oppressed majorities in coloniesvoiced their anti-systemic claims. All these movements were more or less successful in achieving full citizenship and/or independence, but failed fully to redress the cyclical dynamic as such.

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The world of the third millennium will. . .almost certainly continue to be one of violent politics and violent political changes. The only thing uncertain about them is where they will lead.15

cial scenario, that is, in constructing an alternative, more humane global network?

A New Set of Possibilities

What will dominate in the upcoming arrangement? Should one speak of a system or multi systems? What values will be paramount? One thing is certain: the present world-system has now passed its full maturity. It will do anything possible to ameliorate the crisis, even adopting conservative discourse(s) to suit the demands of electorates who are determined to behave in customary ways in the pursuit of short-term benefits. Precisely because the fluctuations and uncertainties are becoming more acute, the demand for security will be stronger and so, too, the violence.16 States of exception17 will be erected as paradigms for political rule, where all citizens are placed under permanent suspicion and surveillance. Moreover, military strength and control of foreign territories become necessary steps in the larger project of spreading appropriate codes of conduct to the rest of the world.18 This violence exercised in the pursuit of securitydoubtful ends combined with immoral meanshas in the last years received in the U.S. strong popular backing and ideological support from a growing social and cultural forceevangelical fundamentalism.19 In this fashion, liberty is curtailed in the name of security, which in turn exacerbates inequality. Thus today institutions and social arrangements face a new set of possibilities: either a radicalization of democratic principles and practices; or falling into new hierarchical and intolerant forms of tutelage. The outcome will depend on the many decisions made or actions taken in times of rapid change. History does not have a moral vector; it does not necessarily lead to greater tolerance, liberty or equality. Furthermore, in times where interdictions against religion are falling, the religious dimension may be destined to play a critical role in either democracys demise or its radical flourishing.20 Do Lutheranisms core metaphors have any role to play in this new cultural, political and so-

Directions for a Public Lutheran Theology

Democracy as a political system and culture, resting on values and practices such as freedom, equality, social justice and the rule of civil law, is likely to be the real casualty of the unrelentless spread of the cyclical dynamic of Empire. Yet in spite of Empires attempt to order and control planetary life, millions of people are reacting and resisting in different ways. Most are pursuing personal solutions to systemic problems, thus confirming that biopower (the regulation of social life through control over individuals bodies and thinking), is developing as one of the central marks of imperial domination. Others, small numbers affiliated with religious, leftist and ecological organizations, attempt to resist Empire by postulating an utopic outside of moral purity, from which an epic redemption will flow. Finally, far greater and growing numbers identify themselves with religious fundamentalist views that are usually functional to or absorbed by Empire, or in some cases embody anti-systemic resistanceby peaceful and/or violent means.

Inclusion as Resistance
Yet, there also may be new opportunities for a radical democracy, emerging from inside Empire; that is, from the underside of the hierarchies of domination, through the creation of new global circuits of cooperation, collaboration and inclusion. Here new kinds of relationships and power are locally and globally linking people who have a common desire to exercise democracy as an affirmation of life in its multiple expressions, across religious, ethnic, cultural, gender and class divides. In this form of active resistancea fourth strategy in the face of Empireinclusion becomes a key instrument in the search for democratic solutions to systemic problems. Inclusion, therefore, is a multileveled

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compound of cognitive, social, institutional and psychological factors. But three dimensions must be theologically addressed for the sake of a tolerant, just and democratic social arrangement. As the Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede has shown, power-distance, tolerance and inclusion are key dimensions structuring any society and culture, through dynamics acquired in the family, school and workplace.21 We cannot ignore the psychological and symbolic ground that nurtures views and practices of tolerance and inclusion, as well as power-sharing. Background theories, social experiences, religious symbols and mythical narratives set the parameters for an axiological universe (mythical-ethical core) where tolerance and respect are paramount. What theological resource do we possess in our Lutheran tradition to address this challenge?

In late modernity, religious symbols, narratives and myths are acquiring renewed vitality and interest. This places theology and ethics in a new light, for values never appear in a vacuum, independent from narratives and mythoi. Thus theology offers critical clues for interpreting these myths and symbols, thereby enhancing their formative powers. Notions regarding the nature of the divine, time, space, will, body, mind, animals, plants, land and the human condition, have a direct effect in the way people situate themselves in face of otherness, plurality and difference.

Justication as Inclusion
The doctrine of justification by faith, Pauls interpretation of Jesus gospel as it reaches people in the margins (cf., 1 Cor 1:2629), is a key component in the way in which Lutheranism approaches the mythical narrative. The doctrine, as formulated by Paul and afterwards, is a critical and central guide to understanding the biblical message regarding the relationships between humans, creation and God. It radically redraws the boundaries of Gods domain in order to include those who hitherto were considered far from it: gentiles, slaves, women, urban poor, artisans and people of doubtful religious orthodoxy. This inclusiveness is basic to all other doctrines and statements regarding Christian life. It leads to a gracious appraisal of the life of every person and creature. In the same vein, Luther employed the language of justification to indicate what God has done for all through Christ: making us equal participants in the justice revealed in Jesus. In this case, sinners were included, which in the medieval scholastic distinction between a spiritual and secular state meant practically all of those who lived in the saeculum. Luther could forcefully stress justification because this was central to a radical reconception of God and Gods intimate involvement with creation in general and sinners in particular. The language of justification expresses a strategy of inclusion of the destitute, the marginal and the excluded, not into the logic of what exists, but into a new redistributive community of social, spiritual and material goods.22 This communicated the hidden

Theological Resources
In order for this to flourish, a receptive environment is necessary. A democratic horizon and regime are needed to sustain a new socio-political network. While the patterns of genuine democracy are created in the collaborative and respectful cooperative practices from below, overarching institutional guarantees are also necessary. The building up of a responsible and activist citizenship is the fundamental weapon against the subtleness of Empire. Again, what theological motifs foster this view? Finally, the grievances and sufferings that may breed intolerant reactions must be redressed. Speaking about radical democracy, therefore, implies a new world system where the services and resources involved in reproducing and expanding life are more or less equally shared and fairly exchanged. In other words, democracy calls for new cooperative and communicative networks of labor and production, breaking the cyclical dynamic of Empire based on endless search for profit and its accumulation by dispossession. From a theological perspective, here converge the theme of the cross as a critique of Empire and power, justification as a declaration of inclusiveness, and the multilayered action of God in creation, providing a clear direction for responsible citizenship in the world.

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character of Gods rule, and subverted the retributive traditions where God is represented as powerfully present in the world, the One to whom all creatures must submit.

Justication as an Act of Trespass

In their respective ways, both Paul and Luther sought to translate into their contexts the normative dimension of Jesus message about a merciful Father and a generous kingdom, as well as his ministry of trespassing the multiple frontiers that put human beings in an interdict, thereby robbing God of Gods glory. In effect, justification encodes the multiple forms in which Jesus ministry interweaves divine righteousness, social justice and mercy, clashing with Roman commercialization, Herodian urbanization, priestly codification and imperial monetization. His wandering among the ptochoi with the empowering message of the kingdom reveals the different dislocations that the empire exploited for its own benefit. The existence of so many who were excluded indicated the inherent limits and cruelty of the honor and social net constituted by the overlapping of pyramidal schemes of patronage proper to the Augustan era. Jesus proclamation of a kingdom for the nobodies and undesirables touched on the most pressing issues of the time: debt, bread, shame and impurity. Exorcisms and the healing of bodies and spirits broke the spell that bounded and burdened colonial and undesirable people. When Jesus broke bread, he adopted the degraded position of women: he served, he was the hostess. With this practice, he witnessed to the righteousness God willed for creation, and communicated an egalitarian and unbrokered sharing of Gods goodness and mercy. In the same vein, Jesus crossing of different frontiers allowed individuals and groups into an immediate physical and spiritual contact with Gods justice, and thus, unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another. As the gospel traditions emphasize, Jesus crossed the traditional boundaries of family, honor and dishonor, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, sick and healthy, pure and impure, country and city, poor and rich. Bearing witness to the Fathers mercy and coming reign, Jesus embod-

ies a new space: the space of the Spirit. His body, his presence, becomes the locus for a new narrative that is not only about God, but also about how God crosses over into the bodies and minds of those who never expected to be considered as somebodies. To draw frontiers is an act of disenfranchising power; to trespass is an act of divine imagination and love.23 The parables of Jesus present the drama of a plot that may well have a humorous or tragic ending. Reversals are a standard feature in the parables. In its tragic mode, this reversal signifies an exclusion of those who think that inclusion is their lot due to their righteousness. In the comedy plot, those marginalized and outcast, who had never been expected to be invited, paid in full, welcomed home, or rescued, are surprised by their sudden good fortune. Jesus parables comprise a skillful social and cultural commentary on insiders and outsiders, subverting the code that establishes the boundaries of Gods companionship.24

Justication as Healing
Luther himself points in this direction as he relates the reality of justification to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:2937). In this story, with its vivid bodily references, the Reformer saw the nature of Gods saving activity in Christ portrayed as a God who becomes our neighbor, a God who crosses frontiers. The wounded man is reborn through the gracious help of the Samaritan (Christ). The wounded man represents humanity under the curse of the law. To be justified and to be healed are practically synonymous. Luther comments that the Christian has begun to be justified and healed (sanari), like the man who was half-dead (semivivus).25 In the end, what this parable tells us is that in Gods domain, help or salvation comes only to those who have no reason to expect it, and who cannot resist it when it is offered.26 It is an act of sheer, unexpected, gracious inclusiveness. From the point of view of what Luther called an existence cursed by the law, salvation comes from that quarter from which one does not and cannot expect it.

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God s Crossing Movements

In brief, intrinsic to the concept of justification is this tension between insiders and outsiders, identity and universality, staying and crossing, local and global, particular and universal. For those who have been touched by Gods mercy, justification implies not only to be present at the many boundaries that divide humanity, but also to discern which ones need to be crossed, which ones need to be dismantled, and which ones need to be simply named and made visible. The gospel narratives about crossing over are a vindication of bodies that have been broken by debt, torture, enclosures, despair and abandonmentby the curse of the law. This is the particular sensitivity associated with Gods crossing movements, in which Christians participate out of the same love that once crossed over to them. This is why nobody is really an insider: to live by grace is the recognition that we are all part of a koinonia of former outsiders of different degrees. As any doctrine, justification is a regulative principle embedded in a cultural-linguistic grid that encourages certain attitudes, behaviors and relationships. In this way the doctrine of justification is the explanatory function of the mythoi of a God falling for the excluded. Reversal, inclusion, establishment of new circuitries of power and affirmation, an assertion of the different that does not fit under the law, sensitivity towards the impure and shamedthese constitute basic attitudinal components encoded under justification by faith. This level is thus a key in the conformation of a spiritual and psychological openness to otherness that would be the basis for any challenge to hegemonic and intolerant views. Yet it is also true that to create this climate, other variables must come into play, that is, key grievances must be institutionally and socially addressed.

Re-conceptualizing Democracy
Truly democratic practices require not only particular religious and moral sensitivities, but also

a political regime or arrangement that guarantees minimal conditions, precisely because of the crisis generated by diversity. Moral and religious sensitivities are neither independent of certain narratives nor uncoupled from the political realm. This is the second level referred to above, which points to democracy as both a cultural horizon for the expression of the multitude, as well as a political and institutional arrangement that locates sovereignty in the hands of the people. After the Cold War, the concept of democracy has been set adrift from its rigid moorings, thus providing new opportunities for its re-conception.27 In effect, the forces of globalization have posed formidable challenges, and there are strong differences regarding the compatibility and future of democracy in late modernity. Social democratic arguments claim that democracy is debilitated or threatened by globalization, especially by its economic forces and fundamentalist reactions. The reassertion of the sovereignty of nation-states, therefore, seems the best strategy in the present global system. Liberal cosmopolitan arguments stress that the forces of globalization, while not always beneficial at first, release the democratic potential of people precisely by promoting freedom from the rule of nation-states. Neoconservative ideologues stress that only intervention by the coalition of the willing led by the U.S.can foster democratic forces and institutions. Traditionalists, on the other hand, contest both the leading role of the U.S. and the compatibility of democracy with the cultural values of non-Westerners.28 None of these views, however, seems sufficient for confronting the new demands for global tolerance, inclusivity, justice, peace and democracy. Democracy is confronted with a leap of scale, where the local appears more intensively related to the global, superseding the boundaries of traditional nation-states. The present grievances against political, ecological and economic aspects, including the current state of war, are symptoms of a crisis within the present world system, a rebellion against the formal mechanisms of sovereignty and its failing system of representational decision-making processes.

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Cross as a Socio-Political Event

Lutheranism came rather late valuing democracy positively. Luther was certainly no democrat, and neither were most Lutheransespecially in Germanyuntil well into the second half of the twentieth century.29 But this anti-democratic stance has more to do with a patriarchal and hierarchical sociopolitical ideology than with the motifs of justification and cross. Not only theologies of glory, but also ideologies of glory need to be criticized; cross and justification entail a gospel that transversely impinges upon power and authority. This is precisely what a theology of the cross does. It should not be limited, as in classical Lutheranism, to a soteriological dimension, but it is also a sociopolitical event that reveals or makes visible the use and abuse of power by Empire. Jesus cross was not an event marginal to the empire. Rather it expressed its very core, the center of Empire itself, the manifestation of its raw power, of its mercilessness, its corruption and its arrogance. In this vein the most substantial affirmation of Christianity is that the ultimate reality promised to our worldcommunion, kingdom of Godis defined by the struggle between a space emptied of Gods luminosity and a space filled by an alien, imperial presence. It calls out our attention upon an impotent God that has fallen into our world. But because it is an impotent God, it erodes our notions of potencies by proclaiming that the ultimate mystery of love is to remain incomplete: only an imperfect, lacking being is truly capable of giving and receiving love. In the midst of this joust between (imperial) potency and (divine) impotency, between the law and the end of the law, the cross appears as the center of a new gospel: the failure of history becomes Gods chosen abode. In this type of discursive encoding, the guiding of our attention upon the cross is always a sociopolitical event, for it reveals the use and abuse of the law against the words and signs that addressed directly the suffering of people. The law, as in imperial sovereignty, does not exist without the negation of an other. The cross is a verdict denouncing that something is fundamen-

tally wrong with how the world is structured,30 with how the world attempts to fill in the gaps. Golgotha is the mirror image of the Ara Pacis Augustae, the critical reflection of the Octavian imperial realized eschatology, the unmasking of Rome as the benefactor of all humanity.31 This fallen God on a cross is a total reversal of values, for in it God justifies the victim of the public, legal and official imperial powerthe man Jesus, friend of sinners and destitutes.32

A Dynamic Trinitarian Concept of God

This cross, in turn, is the key for a contemporary Lutheran appropriation of the doctrine of the Trinity and the theory of Gods multidimensional action in creation (the so-called doctrine of the two kingdoms). The very dynamic of the trinitarian concept of God and the twofold or multiple ruling of this God encourages a public and political theology firmly anchored through the cross in the world of the victims. By its thorough deconstruction of a power that stems from above it postulates that another form of power is possible, a power that is enacted by breaching frontiers and vindicating the right of the powerless to live. Yet, part of the same Lutheran articulation is of a cautionary tone that protects the irreducible nature of the gospel from the necessary temporal realizations that always include a certain degree of coercion and even violence. In this eon we cannot live only from the mediations furnished by the gospel, but at the same time we cannot exercise a power that is not congruent with the drive of this same gospel. Far from falling into new dualisms, this Lutheran caution is the basis for the critique not only of any form of (fundamentalist) enthusiasm, but also of any form of imperial power, which always attempts to hide the violence of its law under a putative evangelium of peace, democracy, or the market. The theology of the cross calls things as they really are,33 without falling into a legalism or a utopian idealization. For this theology to be publicly relevant, its metaphors must be woven with kindred values from other traditionsthe power of

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the symbol to catalyze new dimensions of reality and thus elicit a new praxis. The Roussonian concept of volont gnrale, Montesquieus and Lockes e e e division of powers, Kants sapere aude!, Madisons constitutional check and balances, Marxs concept of social democracy, Lenins critique of imperialism, and Foucaults microphysics of power all coalesce in a late-modern notion of radical democracy that grows as the living alternative of the multitude through the network spawned by Empire.34 This form of democracy, which challenges the cyclical dynamics of Empire, emerges from within the imperial logic of late modernity. It is a new form of sovereignty based on communication, relationships, and different forms of life that nonetheless are able to find and discover what they have in common. For that reason, democratic demandsalthough always imbued with particular and therefore selfish interestscan be seen as the means through which the living God providentially holds Gods creation in view of its final fulfillment. After all, this form of swarming communicationand not a hierarchical Ordnungbetter reflects the dynamism proper to a trinitarian God.

As Reinhold Niebuhr once asserted, the human capacity for justice makes of democracy something possible; but its inclination to injustice makes of democracy something necessary.35 Therefore, democracy should be measured both by its capability to voice grievances of a particular group as well as the ability to connect different kinds of groups (economic, political, human rights, education, ecology, health). These grievances give rise to a multitude through which the future of democracy is at stake. This requires a renewed democratic ethic, one that bridges ideas, hopes and affection, allowing an emotional yet also rational identification with a network of differentiated democratic power.

The Weapon of Love

With this we reach a third level as to how we redress global and local grievances that are economic, social and ecological in naturedifferent forms of intolerance that also generate intolerant reactions. If the imperial world-system cannot show possibilities toward a more egalitarian arrangement, then the appeal of fundamentalist minorities certainly will be strengthened. Grievances and suffering bring us to the bedrock of human existence; this is the source of local knowledge that signals the inadequacies of ideological, social and economic systems.36 Grievances, therefore, voice the insurrection of subjugated knowledge against hegemonic ideologies.37 Of course, suffering is never without interpretation, but our bodies make of it a mediated immediacy, thus enclosing a negative universality that challenges programs and systems thriving on elusive promises and concrete duress. Deprivation and poverty may breed anger, indignation and antagonism, but revolt arises only on the basis of wealtha surplus of intelligence, vision, experience, knowledge and desire that is generated by a shift in social practices and cultural patterns. Herein lies, precisely, the inadequacy of the intolerant strategies and weapons of Empire. They recoil from the most fundamental weapon of all, a proactive tolerance that comes with love.

Differentiated Democratic Power

This trinitarian understanding, approached through Jesus cross and Gods justification, provides a positive valuation of the new realities set off by the new democratic networks. They communicate middle axioms where participation, peace and justice appear as central values for political practice. Democratic participation and tolerance thus ground the minimal conditions for a lasting peace; a peace that is not merely the absence of violence and war, but the basic precondition for reason, imagination, desire, emotions, feelings and affections. Without tolerance, without participation, but above all, without peace, no cooperation, communication, forms of life and social relationships can emerge from the incredible potential of the swarming multitude. These are the weapons that signal the democratic critique of arms, launching a critique of the massive means of destruction at the disposal of the core powers.

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Without this love, neither justice nor peace can permeate the increasing webs connecting us all on this fragile planet. Empire is essentially inimical to the political dimension of love. If the forces that create economic disparities make of violent behavior and intolerance prime weapons, then violence will only grow exponentially until it destroys us all. The powerful cultural and political experiences disclosing a common desire that rests on a proactive exercise of tolerance, equality and justice is an affirmation of life in its multiple expressions. The fight for democracy must always be tied to a relentless pursuit of fairness and the eradication of poverty, which only can be reached through a serious reorientation of the disparities generated by capitalism and its global division of labor. When grievances are duly heard and redressed, and when we are able to look at and name the grim face of asymmetrical power, then history loses its dramatic grip to unveil its oppositea divine irony that always promises a surplus of life.

11. See Wallerstein, p. 77; Hobsbawm, 343. 12. See Bassam Tibi, The Worldview of Sunni Arab Fundamentalism: Attitudes toward Modern Science and Technology, in Martin Marty and Scott Appelby eds., Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family and Education (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 81. 13. See David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 184. 14. A Marxist notion developed by David Harvey to refer to the reversal of common property rights and the commodification of cultural forms, histories, intellectual creativity, the environment, genetic information, public works, health and education. Harvey, ibid., 137ff. Also, David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 15. Hobsbawm, 460. 16. Hardt and Negri link this form of security to the contemporary strategies of biopower: Security requires rather actively and constantly shaping the environment through military and/or police activity. Only an active shaped world is a secure world. This notion of security is a form of biopower, then, in the sense that it is charged with the task of producing and transforming social life . . . In Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 20. 17. In Stato di eccezione, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben shows how Western democracies become invested with the need of turning emergency into the foundation of their existence. The military and the economic state of emergency often merge into one, employing war metaphors as main currency in public speeches. Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), 37. 18. See Harvey, The New Imperialism, 184s. 19. See Walter Mead, Gods Country, in Foreign Affairs 85/5 (Sept.Oct. 2006), 2443. 20. It is ironic that modern democracy, whose roots can partially be traced to a reaction against religious intolerance (Locke et al.), may today require the mystique and conviction given by religion. 21. See Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 23ff. 22. See this concept developed in Luthers Sermon on the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ and the Brotherhoods, 1519, in Helmut T. Lehman ed., Luthers Works, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 45 ff. 23. See Guillermo Hansen, On Boundaries and Bridges: Lutheran Communio and Catholicity, in Wolfgang Greive, ed., Between Vision and Reality: Lutheran Churches in Transition. LWF Documentation 47/2001 (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 2001), 87f. 24. See Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 192. 25. Jaroslav Pelikan (ed.), Luthers Works, vol. 27 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964), 227; WA II:495. Luther shows a continuity of this image as we can see in writings from 1516 through 1546. 26. Ibid., 180. 27. See Hardt and Neri, Multitude, 232. 28. Ibid., 233237. 29. See John Stumme, Lutero no era dem crata, in J. Severino o Croatto et al., Democracia: una opcin evanglica (Buenos Aires: La Aurora, o e 1983), 1935. 30. Cf., John Dominic Crossan, The Birth Of Christianity: Discovering what Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFranscisco, 1998), 258.

Endnotes
1. See Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 169ff. 2. Cfr. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. E. Buchanan (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 352. 3. See Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther: Theology & Revolution, trans. C. Foster (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 192; 199. 4. See C. Douglas Lummis, Radical Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 35, 39. 5. I follow Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris concept as developed in Empire (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000), xi-xii, 23. 6. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-System Analysis: an Introduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Uncertainties of Knowledge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004). 7. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), 43ff. 8. The core, the comfort zone, does not necessarily have to coincide with nations or states, but with the dominant sectors of the production process cutting across them. However, since monopolies need the patronage of strong states, there is a geographical consequence of the core-periphery relationship. It is also the case that the same country or nation may present a mix of core and peripheral conditions. 9. Wallerstein, World System, p. 60. 10. This corresponds to what Eric Hobsbawm calls the end of the Golden Age. See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: a History of the World, 19141991 (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).

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31. See Helmut Koester, Jesus the Victim, Journal of Biblical Literature 111/1 (1992), 315. 32. See John Dominic Crossan, The Resurrection of Jesus in its Jewish Context, in Neotestamentica 37/1 (2003), 2957. 33. See thesis 21, Luthers Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, in Helmut T. Lehmann (ed.), Luthers Works, vol. 31 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957), 53.. 34. Cfr. Hardt & Negri, Multitude, 354ff.

35. Cf., Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1944). 36. Cf., Francis Sch ssler Fiorenza, The Crisis of Hermeneutics u and Christian Theology, in Sheila Greeve Davaney (ed.), Theology at the End of Modernity (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), 135. 37. See Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 80f.

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