A spectre is haunting the Western political imaginary – the spectre of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). This Christian doctrine continues to shape how political orders and institutions appear as legitimate, and ultimately it can help us realise how authority functions. Its influence exists in our understanding of political founding and thus of political legitimacy, as this derives from the creation – the founding myth. The modern sovereign state, for example, often appears as if it has always existed – and will always exist – in its present form, while institutions such as the police are frequently understood as necessary features of social life rather than historical creations. These assumptions are sustained by a particular understanding of founding. Due to the loss of a theo-political language, expressing the multiple intersections of theological and political thought, creatio ex nihilo has acquired a ghostlike status, haunting the political imaginary. In order to expose this hidden power, we must name it. Only then can we begin to realise its power and reimagine how we think about political founding and legitimisation.
If we are to understand the political influence of creatio ex nihilo, Augustine’s City of God is a good place to start. The influential work was written in a period of theo-political turmoil, only three years after the sack of Rome in 410. In it, Augustine expresses a theo-political understanding of founding, tying the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo to political founding; thereby, instilling the ghost into the political imaginary. The Augustinian understanding of creation in the City of God can be expressed with these four concepts: (1) The good nature of creatures; (2) the im/mutable distinction; (3) the creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo); (4) the Creator/Founder is one entity. In Augustine’s idea of creation, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is the centripetal force, as it connects the different elements.
Augustine (knowingly or unknowingly) instils this doctrine into the political imaginary through his language and analogies in which he conflates theological and political concepts. The important conflation for our purposes is the one between Creator and Founder. In the Latin text, Augustine uses the words creator and conditor which matters because creator was typically used theologically, where conditor was a political concept. Augustine describes God as the Founder of the heavenly city, showing the theo-political language of the City of God. But he is not reserving the word conditor for writing about God as the Founder of the heavenly city; instead, he uses the words conditor and creator interchangeably throughout the text and conflates the two terms (which is not reflected in the English translations). A telling example is: “God is the Creator of the world” [Deum conditorem mundi esse]. He claims that God is the Founder of the world, not the Creator.
The conflation of theological creation and political founding culminates in a passage in which Augustine compares God’s creative ability to Romulus and Alexander – the mythical founders of Rome and Alexandria. In this comparison, Augustine puts his idea of founding to political use. Augustine understands the Founder as a single entity acting with a firm will, authority and freedom. But furthermore, he presents an understanding of founding without any ‘before’. In fact, he actively tries to erase the ‘before’ of founding. He wants to push the temporal before into unintelligibility. The founding comes out of nothing.
In the political imaginary, this focus on the before is significant, as authority relies heavily upon this temporal before by dominating or erasing the sense of any existence before its own foundation. Authority claims an authenticity, legitimising the endurance and inevitability of political institutions, most profoundly exemplified by the sovereign state’s sempiternity and the inevitability of the police. This authenticity is established through the erased ´before´, due to the strange interconnection between beginning and end in the idea of ´before (e.g., eternity is both before creation and the end of creation).
The erasure of the ‘before’ has two consequences: Firstly, it instils the idea of sempiternity into the political imaginary by erasing the possibility of a political institution to end, providing it with an everlasting being. In other words, the erasure of the ‘before’ is simultaneously an erasure of what came before and of the end. Without a ‘before,’ there is no end. Secondly, the doctrine creates an inevitability of political institutions by erasing the space of imagination. The idea that without the status quo, communal life would not be possible; that is, the nothingness of the ‘before’ generates a similar nothingness of the end. The complexity of the ‘before’ is erased to uphold the status quo.
Now that we have named the spectre, we can confront it. By asking ‘What was before founding?’, we are able to challenge the nothingness of the political imaginary and unlock a new room of political imagination. Insisting on a recognition of the ‘before’ can be challenging the hegemonic imaginary. By recognising the ‘before’, we can begin anew.
