Abstract

Anthropology, the “science of man,” was originally opposed to theology. Catholic theologians responded by creating their own “Christian” anthropology. Even a Protestant theologian like Karl Barth wrote that “theology as a science” is a human endeavor, i.e., human “discourse about God” — a “special science” because its search for truth distinguishes between the sacred and the profane. Thus the lines between science and theology have long been blurred. Notwithstanding all this, neither Wolfgang Palaver's anthropological theology nor René Girard's theological anthropology have anything to do with Carl Schmitt's political theology. Schmitt was first and foremost a jurist concerned with political questions. The moment his thinking is arbitrarily abstracted from its juridical context it becomes open to misinterpretations.