The Friend and the Enemy: Carl Schmitt, Katechon, and the Theological Foundations of the Political

This paper explores Carl Schmitt’s concepts of the friend and the enemy through the lens of Katechon. Contemporary scholarship often treats Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction as an occasional decision driven by political contingency. This paper refutes such a purely political reading and instead argues Schmitt’s political enemies have a deeper theological origin—Gnosticism. The Gnostics, emerging from a mistaken rejection of theodicy, developed a cosmological dualism and apocalypticism that, in the 20th century, manifested politically in the forms of liberal universalism and social pluralism. To illuminate the theological depth of Schmitt’s thought, this paper investigates a recurring yet underexplored concept—Katechon, the restrainer who holds back the end times. By linking Katechon to Schmitt’s political projects—the nomos of the earth and the decisionist state—this paper reveals the theological foundation underlying his understanding of the political: enmity is not contingent but theologically predestined by human fallenness and God’s redemptive plan. However, Schmitt’s project of political theology ends in paradox: Katechon, meant to restrain chaos, turns into its opposite owing to its intrinsic logical flaw.