Purely political war, stripped of theology, disappears within Christendom’s undecidable political-theological frame.

Evidence

In the warring temporality that is Christendom’s, between the theological and the political, which it cannot tell apart, war-war “itself,” one could say, but more precisely, nonreligious, “purely political” war-seems to have disappeared. If it is true that “the Jewish people has left its holy war behind” (331/G368), and Christianity knows war as theologico-political (that is to say, as undecidably political or theological, political and theological), an account of messianic politics would still have to account for the persistence of an act of war that is no act of love, an act of love turned purposive act, an act of political war: “whatever war [the Jewish people] experiences are purely political.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 484

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘purely political war’ (which disappears for Christendom) from theological-political war, a key distinction in Rosenzweig’s framework.