Horizontality vs. Verticality: New Readings in the Understanding of Religion and the Organizing of Politics

Abstract

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are each in their own way monotheistic religions–and I would argue that this unifying factor that links together all three Western religions has profound repercussions upon the conceptualization of God and the allowable limits to political behavior in the name of God that each of these religions would be theologically entitled/permitted to advocate. Plato in his dialogue Parmenides forms a significant part of the pedigree to the emergence of monotheism–and, if not a “pedigree,” because there are conflicting views among historians as to when the texts of Genesis and Exodus actually appeared,1 then a cogent presentation of the same theme. Plato’s version is theologically and logically connected to the simultaneous introduction in the Parmenides of the tenets of negative theology, that we can only say what the One is not, but not what He is. Because negative formulations are inextricably grammatically and logically linked to positive formulations (they can always be rephrased in positive form), Plato’s concession to the intelligibility of negative theology is largely rhetorical, and not substantive.