Thread by @levidmorrow

Theodicy and State Violence: Political Theology & Rav Shagar

THREAD

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Adam Kotsko usefully expands Carl Schmitt's definition of political theology thusly: Political theology deals, writ large, with analogies between the problem of evil and political legitimacy—theological and political *justification*—in a given culture.
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https://twitter.com/levidmorrow/status/1328746171704217601?s=20

At first glance, Rav Shagar would seem to lack any such analogy. In "צחוק המגילה" he discusses both divine and state violence, and both exceed any form of rationale or justification. Yet divine absurdity simply elicits a corresponding human absurdity.
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preview.tinyurl.com/yy7z3gpz

Whereas Shagar the Jew commits to God beyond reason, Shagar the citizen critiques the state harshly, and—in "חוק ואהבה"—tries to imagine radically different—legitimate—models of the state.
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preview.tinyurl.com/y4xok9dz

As becomes clear in his newest book, בריתי שלום, Shagar challenged the legitimacy of the state or its actions any time land was being given away, but his critiques were not theological but based on democratic values of transparency & majoritarianism, as well as national unity.
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This already points the way to an explanation for the disjunction: Shagar's rugged dualism. Shagar distinguishes in many places between the verbalizable human realm and the inexpressible divine. While true faith involves a corresponding human transcending of words and logic...
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...the two are fundamentally distinct. In fact, Shagar adumbrates the care needed to keep from applying words and logic too confidently to God, from letting wordless faith solidify into idolatrous ideology.
So God is beyond good and evil, in fact beyond any words at all.
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The state, in contrast, has never been transcendent. Its legitimacy has always been subject to value-based critique.

So is that it? His dualism denies the theological-political analogy and restores the realm of the profane to Kookian Religious Zionism?

Not so fast.
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Shagar affirms an all-encompassing divine monism—"Everything is divine"—including the realm of the secular and the profane. So how can he also have a holy/profane dualism?
The answer lies in his critique/appropriation of Kookian monism.

https://twitter.com/levidmorrow/status/1315531991924826113?s=20

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He cites the Kookian idea of the holy, the national, and the ethical as three seemingly opposed forces that are actually just manifestations of the true "Supernal Holy." Rav Kook argues that we need to deny our limited perceptions to get to the Truth. Think Zeno's paradoxes.
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Shagar argues that the supernal holy applies only "dialectically." It's an eschatological truth and a regulative ideal. It's important to be aware of, but on a concrete level, the realms of the holy and the profane do indeed oppose each other.
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https://twitter.com/levidmorrow/status/1315950525729439744?s=20

So Shagar's dualism is real, but also limited in some respects. He sees the state as currently profane, but potentially messianic, and it's hard not to see this as curtailing his critiques on occasion. This just returns to the dualism, however, as...
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...even when he limits his critiques of the state somewhat, he insists on the separation of religion/holiness from the state—delineating them as two distinct realms.
This dualistic split thus manifests within the divine itself, within the different worlds in which a...
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...person lives (state, religion), and also within the individual themselves. Shagar says that religious people in the modern world live in and are deeply shaped by both holy and profane worlds. This restores the analogy between God, world, and person—all split.

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@threadreaderapp please unroll