Björk, Mårten “The end and purpose of law: Hans Barion and Gustav Radbruch on spiritual and temporal authority”
Carl Schmitt dedicated his final book, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of Any Political Theology (1970), to the canonist and Catholic priest Hans Barion. This essay interrogates Barion’s conceptualisation of the end and purpose of spiritual and temporal authority as articulated in his defence of the Third Reich in 1933. By juxtaposing Barion’s characterisation of the Roman Catholic Church as a suprapolitical religion with the legal scholar and Weimar Minister of Justice Gustav Radbruch’s assertion in 1932 that Christianity proclaims the world of law and politics to be “unessential”, I delineate two contrasting visions of law, politics, and religion in the twilight of the Weimar Republic. Both Barion and Radbruch advanced a “nonpolitical” or “suprapolitical” interpretation of religion. For Barion, the nonpolitical entailed an apolitical acceptance of state authority, with a marked preference for authoritarian governance. Radbruch, by contrast, construed the nonpolitical essence of Christianity as an antipolitical critique of law and politics as such, viewing the state as a necessary evil. My analysis concludes by arguing that this debate transcends its historical and theological context, offering insights of enduring relevance in an era marked by political instability and economic crises.
