Orthodoxy In Political Thought Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The contribution of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy to political thought is often either ignored or simply dismissed by Western scholars convinced that, because its historical experiences have no exact parallels in the modern Catholic and Protestant traditions, Orthodoxy was unable to formulate a coherent position towards politics, law, and society. While Eastern Europe did not directly experience the Reformation or the Enlightenment, Orthodoxy did encounter modernity, totalitarianism, and democracy.

The meeting of Orthodoxy with modernity began in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725) and expanded once Russia emerged as a dynamic European cultural center and smaller Orthodox nations won their independence from the Ottoman Empire. As a result, a broad and rich discourse about church, state, and society was cultivated in Orthodox circles. Many leading Orthodox thinkers dealt with fundamental questions of law, politics, society, and human nature with novel insights, often giving distinct readings of the biblical, apostolic, and patristic sources. In the twentieth century, the advent of communist regimes in the predominantly Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria stifled intellectual debate, restricted religious instruction, censored religious publications, and thus deprived Orthodox thinkers of their audience. Orthodox churches were dismantled or co-opted by communist states, and many Orthodox theologians served long prison sentences for resisting state-sponsored antireligious campaigns. The collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991 revitalized Orthodox intellectual debate regarding those countries’ totalitarian past and democratic future.

Of all Orthodox countries, Russia has had the richest intellectual tradition, drawing on the writings of the church fathers or modern Western philosophy to wrestle with the situation of Orthodoxy in the global civilization produced by the scientific and political revolutions of the Enlightenment. The first Russian Orthodox modern theologian, Aleksandr Bukharev (1824–1871), was also the first to discuss the challenge modernity posed to the church as defender of the “right” faith. Philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1901) worked out an intricate philosophy of law that grounded law and political order in morality, anchored morality directly in a Christian theology of salvation, and mediated between Orthodox tradition and modern critical thought. An outspoken proponent of reconciliation, sobornost, between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, Soloviev preferred social pluralism to the traditional Orthodox theology of theocracy, which tied church, state, and nation into an organic whole. Communist authorities were little inclined to tolerate independent intellectuals, so in 1922, prominent Orthodox thinkers Sergii Bulgakov, Nicholas Berdyaev, and Vladimir Lossky were driven into exile from Russia. Bulgakov (1871–1944) built on his experience as an economist to develop a comprehensive theology of God’s humanity and a philosophy of economy. Some of his most important books were published in Paris and remain relevant for current debates on the engagement of intellectuals in political life; the theology of the wisdom of God, or sophiology; and even land privatization in Russia.

Berdyaev (1874–1948) worked out a complex new theology of human nature anchored in an ethic of creation, redemption, and law, and an original theory of human dignity and salvation grounded in the Orthodox doctrine of deification, or theosis. Lossky (1903–1958) formulated a new theory of human dignity, freedom, and discipline anchored in the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, and he challenged the church, compromised by association with the repressive communist regime, to reclaim the freedom to discharge divinely appointed tasks. A significant, but lesser known, contribution to Orthodox thought was made by Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae (1903–1993), who drew on the works of the church fathers to build a theory of the meaning of human freedom and sinfulness, including the symphony of natural and supernatural sources of law and authority. Despite spending long years in communist prisons and suffering prolonged persecution, Staniloae had little to say about the political compromises of the Romanian Orthodox Church during communism and supported Romanian ethnic nationalism.

Since democracy has returned to formerly communist countries, theologians have debated the role of the church in democracy and the European Union (EU) enlargement process; the morality of new reproductive methods and the legalization of homosexual behavior; the proper relationship between church and state and between minority and majority religious groups; and the role of the state in defending traditional religions, while faced with increased competition from new religious movements. While Orthodox theologians from different countries have joined in the debate, to date none has proposed a coherent political theology. Orthodox theologians and Orthodox churches prefer to stress the persecution they suffered at the hands of the communist regimes and are reluctant to consider critically the role of the church in aiding and abetting repression and in persecuting smaller denominations.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the most vigorously debated topic within Orthodox circles was symphonia, the Byzantine concept of theocracy also known as Caesaropapism. The concept traditionally described ties between the state and the Orthodox churches, which faithfully upheld it after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1456. Symphonia presupposed the existence of a Christian emperor who stood at the center of the Christian Empire and at the helm of the church. For Eusebius of Caesaria (260–340), the Christian emperor was God’s representative on earth, a position reminiscent of the ancient Roman institution of the god-emperor, who played the role of pontifex maximus (high priest) in the state cult. On the one hand, the church recognized the emperor as protector of the church and preserver of the unity of faith, and limited its authority to the spiritual domain; on the other hand, the emperor was subject to the spiritual leadership of the church as far as he was a son of the church. While some Orthodox theologians maintain that symphonia is hardly appropriate for democratic, religiously pluralist countries— either because the society is unwilling to grant churches so much power or because a strong church-state relationship would benefit the state but compromise the church—other clergy members insist that the state should maintain privileged ties to the Orthodox Church leadership.

Bibliography:

Stan, Lavinia, and Lucian Turcescu. Religion and Politics in Post-communist Romania. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Valliere, Paul. Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Solovyev, Bulgakov; Orthodox Theology in a New Key. Edinburgh, U.K.:William B. Eerdmans, 2001.
Witte, John, and Frank S. Alexander. The Teaching of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics and Human Nature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

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