Political Theology and International Relations: From History to Emancipation.

This article examines political theology as both a historical and critical inquiry into international relations, emphasizing its marginal status within the field despite its significant influence on key concepts such as sovereignty. Political theology is defined as the study of political ideas, institutions, and practices through theological categories, particularly within a Christian context, revealing how theological analogies underpin modern political vocabulary. The article critiques prevailing secularist narratives that dismiss theology as either irrelevant or dangerous, arguing instead that political theology exposes the indeterminacy and contingency of international relations concepts like the exception—extraordinary actions that contravene legal order—and challenges the binary opposition between rational secularism and irrational religiosity. By denaturalizing accepted assumptions and highlighting the epistemological parallels between secular and theological knowledge, political theology offers an emancipatory framework that broadens moral and political imagination, fostering dialogue beyond entrenched hierarchies of knowledge and enabling new ways to address global questions of justice, peace, and coexistence.