The Mystical as Political

Aristotle Papanikolaou

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780268089832
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Denominaciones cristianas

Theosis, or the principle of divine-human communion, sparks the theological imagination of Orthodox Christians and has been historically important to questions of political theology. In The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy, Aristotle Papanikolaou argues that a political theology grounded in the principle of divine-human communion must be one that unequivocally endorses a political community that is democratic in a way that structures itself around the modern liberal principles of freedom of religion, the protection of human rights, and church-state separation.

Papanikolaou hopes to forge a non-radical Orthodox political theology that extends beyond a reflexive opposition to the West and a nostalgic return to a Byzantine-like unified political-religious culture. His exploration is prompted by two trends: the fall of communism in traditionally Orthodox countries has revealed an unpreparedness on the part of Orthodox Christianity to address the question of political theology in a way that is consistent with its core axiom of theosis; and recent Christian political theology, some of it evoking the notion of "deification, " has been critical of liberal democracy, implying a mutual incompatibility between a Christian worldview and that of modern liberal democracy.

The first comprehensive treatment from an Orthodox theological perspective of the issue of the compatibility between Orthodoxy and liberal democracy, Papanikolaou's is an affirmation that Orthodox support for liberal forms of democracy is justified within the framework of Orthodox understandings of God and the human person. His overtly theological approach shows that the basic principles of liberal democracy are not tied exclusively to the language and categories of Enlightenment philosophy and, so, are not inherently secular.

Chapter One

Orthodox Political Theology through the Centuries

It is quite a remarkable fact that in the history of theology in the Christian East, there exists a core and guiding principle that is never challenged within the movement of the tradition: the principle of divine-human communion. This principle may sometimes be ignored, or often under-emphasized, but there are always trajectories within the tradition at any given moment in history that keeps its memory alive. Divine-human communion, or theosis, sparks the theological imagination of Orthodox Christians, and the influence of this principle is visible in writings related to questions of political theology. This chapter will trace the influence of this principle on Orthodox political theologies, and the effects of the forgetfulness of this principle in thinking about church-state relations. Although the principle of divine-human communion is discernible in the political theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Sergius Bulgakov, and Vigen Guroian, a consensus does not exist on the implications of this principle for political theologies. Implicit is a debate about what an Orthodox political theology should look like given the consensus on the realism of divine-human communion. I will end the chapter with a description of the post-Communist ambivalence of the Orthodox Churches to modern liberal democracy, which indicates the urgency for a more exhaustive political theology grounded in the principle of divine-human communion, an outline for which is given in the remaining chapters.

Eusebius’s Trinitarian Model

The earliest Christian documents give no clear or consistent statements of Christian theologies of state or culture. Christianity was an emerging religion within the Roman Empire, and although they would reject the various forms of pagan religion, Christians expressed a more ambiguous attitude toward the civic and political institutions of the Roman Empire. The Gospels present a Jesus who is not particularly clear on what is being called today a “political theology,” but this vagueness does not mean that the portrait of Jesus that is given in the Gospels is not without its political implications, as various forms of liberation theology have rightly reminded us. One consistent thread in the earliest Christian texts is a nonidentification of the kingdom of God with any form of political community.

The political reality at the time of both Jesus and Paul was the kingdom of the Romans, or more commonly put, the Roman Empire, and the kingdom of God was often portrayed as diametrically opposed to the Roman Empire or to any kingdom of this world. The Gospel narration of Jesus’s few comments on political matters, such as his proclamation to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt 22:21), together with his stance before Pontius Pilate, could be interpreted in such a way as to justify a condemnation of all political institutions as falling short of the promised kingdom of God. Further support for such an interpretation might come from the fall of Babylon in the book of Revelation (Rv 17:1–18:24), the rejection of the “world” in the letters of John (1 Jn 2:15), and the metaphor of the “two ways” in the early Christian document Didache. A trajectory within Christian thought emerged in which, although Christians knew they had to live within the world until the promised kingdom of God, all other kingdoms were seen as the anti-kingdom, a form for arranging power and human relations structured according to all that is opposed to God’s kingdom. The common description for this Christian positioning vis-à-vis political communities is in terms of the distinction between “this world” and “the other world,” a dualism that often gets hardened into a Manichean mutual exclusivity. Although it was within the context of the Roman Empire that such a separation developed, it is still evident in contemporary Christian approaches to political theologies.

A less hardened opposition to the structures of political power is discernible both in the book of Acts and the writings of Paul, the latter appearing even to offer divine sanction of political institutions when he writes that “those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom 13:1). While appearing to offer a divine grounding to political power, what the book of Acts and Paul both have in common is the affirmation of the nonidentification of the kingdom of God with political kingdoms.1 This nonidentification does not necessarily entail a complete absence of the divine from the political, but it has left open the ambiguity of whether political institutions are to be tolerated until the coming kingdom of God, or whether Christians are to actively work toward a good particular to political communities, a good not in competition with the kingdom of God but one that the latter perfects.

There is no evidence of a strong current of Christian anarchy: until the coming of the kingdom of God, political institutions were deemed necessary. The real question was whether to judge those political institutions, that is, the Roman imperial structures, as antithetical to the kingdom of God or as in some way divinely sanctioned by God. Since the fall of the Roman Empire was not imminent, focus was less on the form of political community, since there was no real chance to challenge the imperial structures, and more on the way Christians should relate to the already existing imperial structures, addressing such questions as serving in the army and holding political office. Christian writings on particular involvements in Roman society always reflected an awareness of a self-identity that was distinct from the prevailing political and civic structures in which they participated, even in those writings that suggested a noncombative relationship to those structures.

A third option would emerge, one that would closely align the Christianized Roman Empire with the kingdom of God without, again, strictly equating the two.2 This option is coterminous with the ascendancy of Constantine I (324–37) to the throne. In 313 the emperors Constantine I and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which granted religious freedom within the empire but was also the first step toward Christianity becoming the established religion of the empire.3 It became the first step because of Constantine’s “conversion” to Christianity. Although scholarly debate continues on the question of the authenticity of Constantine’s conversion, there is no disputing the popular belief in his conversion and the patronage Constantine bestowed on Christian institutions and churches, which seemed to support the perception of conversion. Christianity was not declared the official state religion until 380, under Theodosius I (379–95), but a particular understanding of the Christian state started to take shape under Constantine, especially in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea.

Although it is common to name the empire after Constantine’s conversion as Byzantine in order to indicate the change that occurred to the empire, specifically its Christianization, the word “Byzantine” can be misleading in relation to the attempt to understand the development of political theology after Constantine’s conversion. Notwithstanding the invention of the term as a way of contrasting the empire after Constantine’s conversion with the glorious, multicultural, tolerant “Roman” Empire, the Christians within this empire never thought of themselves as “Byzantine” but as “Roman”; not as creating something opposed to but as the genuine heirs and guardians of the Roman civilization. Such a self-perception is even evident today in the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s understanding of itself as an institution that preserves romiosyne, which is argued to encompass “Hellenism” while surpassing it.4 It is also used to distinguish the Ecumenical Patriarchate from the Greek state without necessarily renouncing “Hellenism.” Christians only repudiated the empire’s pagan past, not its civic and political modes of being. In the end, the persecutions notwithstanding, Christians were also proud Romans, and such a sentiment explains why there is a virtual absence of a developed political theology in the 1100-year existence of the Byzantine Empire.

The first signs of a distinctively “Orthodox” political theology, one that would wield considerable influence on what would become the Orthodox Church even beyond the definitive fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, are seen in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea (260–340). Although Christianity was still in the minority during Eusebius’s time, or perhaps because it was the minority, this did not stop him from describing the Emperor Constantine as the “Viceroy of God”5 or the empire itself as an image of the heavenly kingdom.6 Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History is an account of history that has divine providence as its guiding force toward the culminating point of the reunification of the Roman Empire under a Christian emperor. Although a history of Christianity, the Ecclesiastical History offers a political theology insofar as its pages express a certain understanding of God’s power and sovereignty in relation to the course of events that took place over nearly three centuries. Maximin’s defeat by Licinius and Constantine is attributed to his being “bereft of divine Providence,” while his death was caused by an “invisible, divinely sent fire,” a “stroke of God.” After Maximin’s death, the “other enemies of godliness” were also struck down, beginning with those closest to Maximin, so that “when the impious ones had been purged away, the kingdom that belonged to them was preserved steadfast and undisputed for Constantine and Licinius alone; who . . . made it their very first action to purge the world of enmity against God.”7 Throughout the Ecclesiastical History, any movement that led to the culmination point, the reunification of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperor, was attributed to divine providence. For Eusebius, God is clearly “leading . . . his servant Constantine” (10.8.19), who is described as “the friend of God” having “God the universal King and Son of God, the Saviour of all, as their [Constantine’s and Crispus’s] Guide and Ally” (10.9.4).

Eusebius further links God’s providence in the Christianization of the empire with the history of salvation. Salvation, according to Eusebius, is the restoration of the soul, which was created by the Son of God “in His own image,” from its fall in love for what is earthly, sensual, and material (10.4.55–58). After the Word had “paid the just penalty of her sins, [and] once more again restored her . . . first, then, choosing unto Himself the souls of the supreme Emperors, by means of these men most dearly beloved of God He cleansed the whole world of all the wicked and baneful persons and of the cruel God-hating tyrants themselves” (10.4.55–60). This allowed the bishops to be “brought out openly and honoured worthily with the great gifts of His [the Word’s] Father’s bounty” (10.4.60). The bishops as pastors could then do their work in offering the instruction that would restore the image of the Word in individual souls. The implication here, of course, is that the extension of the salvation offered in Christ depends on the Christianization of the empire, because only then could the pastoral care of the bishops be extended as widely as possible.

The benefit of the Christianization of the Roman Empire was not limited to the spread of truth to individual souls: it also extended the peace that was offered through the pre-Christianized Roman Empire. Eusebius proclaims that “by the express appointment of the same God, two roots of blessing, the Roman Empire and the doctrine of Christian piety, sprang up together for the benefit of men.”8 The Roman Empire put an end to war among the nations and established a peace throughout the world. It was lacking, however, true religion. With the latter, it could facilitate the uniting of the whole world as “one well-ordered and united family,” manifesting the sovereignty of the Word and, thus, imaging the Father’s kingdom. While it may sound oxymoronic to theorists of empire today, Eusebius actually saw the unity of the Roman Empire and Christian doctrine as a vehicle for peace.

It is tempting to attribute Eusebius’s providential view of history to a strict Christian monotheism: the one emperor and his empire are extensions of the one God and God’s sovereignty.9 There is some truth to this assessment, though it needs nuancing, since Eusebius espoused a radically trinitarian monotheism, albeit a subordinationist one.10 Eusebius does not present a picture of the one God standing over and against the not-God exercising God’s power at will. His emphasis is somewhat consistent with the early Christian writings insofar as his focus is on the Father’s kingdom. The kingdom of God (the Father) is mediated by the “divine Word, who administers his Father’s kingdom on behalf of all who are after him and subject to his power.”11 The divine Word, “who pervades all things and is everywhere present, unfolding his Father’s bounties to all with unsparing hand, has accorded a specimen of his sovereign power even to his rational creatures of this earth.”12 What Eusebius presents, then, is not a picture of God wielding divine power over the not-God, influencing the course of history simply by the divine will but, rather, of God the Father realizing the Father’s kingdom through the divine Word, who is already present in the not-God, particularly in the souls of humans, which image the Word. As image of the Word, humans have the capacity to participate in the sovereignty of the Word, and do so by being lords and masters of the created and material world. Insofar as the Christianization of the empire for Eusebius means a form of sovereignty that is rooted in divine truth, he cannot but see it as reflecting the sovereignty and, thus, presence of the divine Word; as the soul is an image of the Word, so is the collective Christianized empire an image of the heavenly kingdom. Rather than presenting a nominalistic God with absolute power over creation, Eusebius presents what looks like a sacramental image of the empire insofar as the structures of the Christianized empire make present the sovereign presence of God and thus the heavenly kingdom. It is this sacramental imagination that would exercise a decisive influence over Orthodox understandings of politics and culture well into the twentieth century, as Orthodox thinkers would not limit this communion simply to the individual soul but extend it to all of the materiality of creation, including the constructions of society and culture. The whole of societal space was destined to be infused with God’s presence in all its constitutive parts so as to realize a mode of being that reflects communion with God and, hence, the active presence of the Word.

It is not surprising then that, for Eusebius, the Christian emperor is an image of the sovereignty of the Word insofar as this sovereignty is directed toward the collective, while the bishops image the Word insofar as their own influence is directed to the individual soul. This dual imagining of the Word was expressed liturgically in the Church of Agia Sophia, with the emperor’s throne given a prominent place in front and to the right of the altar. The emperor as image of the Word’s sovereignty depends on his commitment to the Christian truth because only then can the emperor hope to form “his soul to royal virtues according to the standard of that celestial kingdom.”13 In what reads like a response to Plato’s understanding of the philosopher king, Eusebius describes Constantine as a

Victor in truth, who has gained the victory over those passions which overmaster the rest of men, whose character is formed after the divine original of the supreme sovereign and whose mind reflects as in a mirror the radiance of his virtues. Hence is our emperor perfect in discretion, in goodness, in justice, in courage, in piety, in devotion to God; he truly and only is a philosopher, since he knows himself, and is fully aware that supplies of every blessing are showered on him from a course quite external to himself, even from heaven itself.14

The fact that Constantine was not all that Eusebius made him out to be does not detract from Eusebius’s sacramental vision of the role of the emperor—the true philosopher king—since he is devoted to the truth of the divine Word, and only through the knowledge of such truth can the emperor embody the royal virtues that allow him to mediate the sovereignty of the Word to the empire. This particular role of the emperor, a kind of sacerdotal role that facilitates the presence of the divine Word throughout the empire—further guaranteeing the unity and peace of the empire—could be the reason why Eusebius rejects democracy as “anarchy and disorder,” and argues that “monarchy far transcends every other constitution and form of government.”15 Democracy reflects more the disorder of the pagan gods than the unity of truth of the Word of God.

Eusebius’s political theology, then, is born of necessity to account for the changes occurring in the Roman Empire, which were favorable to Christians. He is not simply giving an account of the past, but self-consciously laying the groundwork for a future for Christians within the Roman Empire that is not yet guaranteed. ...