The Ghost of Totalitarianism: Deconstructing the Pneumatological Nature of Christian Political Theology

Martin Grassi deconstructs the totalitarian paradigm underlying Western political and theological discourses by a critical examination of the concept of spirit (pneuma). This notion plays a paramount role in such Western discourses as biology, cosmology, politics, and theology, for it is the principle that turns a plurality of elements into a systematic unity. Christian political theology finds in the Holy Spirit the principle of efficacy of God's economy of redemption, which has been ultimately defined as the realization of the Kingdom of God as a perfect and unified political system under the One Ruler. Only through a deconstruction of this semantic performance of the Spirit are we to look for an alternative understanding of God and a Trinitarian dynamics that could stress singularity and relationality without reducing community to a merely organic totality.