Volume 10 (2018): Issue 2 (August 2018)

Before the Russian revolution of 1917 and subsequently in exile, the leading figures of the Russian religious renaissance were deeply engaged in social and political questions. Vladimir Soloviev, Sergius Bulgakov and Nicolas Berdyaev in particular presented Christian philosophies and theologies as alternatives to secular philosophies which captivated the Russian intelligentsia in late imperial Russia. Their thinking was consistent with evangelical precepts and the social thinking and actions of the early Fathers of the Church, even if not always couched in explicitly Christian terms. Major Christian theological and spiritual principles inspiring their theologies include the equality of all human beings, the evangelical imperative of love of neighbour as a reflection of love of God, the uniqueness of the human person, and freedom. Social and political thinking during the Russian religious renaissance provided a solid, if inadequately recognized, basis for the development of later Orthodox social and political theology.

This paper aims at reconstructing the political theology of Vladimir Solovyov. Taking as a starting point the argumentative pattern of Carl Schmitt, my research focuses on the analysis of the two central elements of the political theology of the Russian philosopher: first, on the ontological premise which is justifying the possibility of the union of religion and politics in a coherent and functional whole (i.e. the condition of the possibility of this mixed reality); second and as a direct result of this premise, on the description of the reasoning process through which Solovyov is pleading for establishing a close relation between religion and politics, Church and State (i.e. the stages of the theological-political discourse). The relation between religion and politics has cosmic significance as it is supposed to lead to the unification of the whole material and spiritual world in God.

The ideal of Byzantine symphony is still present in contemporary debate on church-state relations. A worldly notion of power interferes with a theological assessment of authority in the Church: hence the identification of the Christian empire with the kingdom of God, in a kind of a realized eschatology. This paper undertakes the deconstruction of the notion of “byzantine symphony” through its interpretations by some Russian religious thinkers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the whole of Russian society faced dramatic changes. The idea of Christian empire, represented by Constantine the Great, emerges as the foundation of the new orthodox Russian Empire (Tjutčev), contrasted to European civilization (Danilevskij, Leont’ev); but Constantine is also an apocalyptic figure (Bukharev), a political leader (Bolotov), a tyrant (Solov’ev) and the symbol of an entire epoch in Christian history that definitely came to an end (Bulgakov, Berdyaev).

The present paper discusses the anti-Greek Catholic and anti-Jewish attitudes of some Orthodox clergy as reflected in the interwar legionary press. By making reference to several newspapers (Legiunea, Predania, Glasul Strămoșesc) the article sheds light on the political mobilization of the legionary Orthodox clergymen and intellectuals in support of the xenophobic agenda regarding other denominations (especially the Greek-Catholics) and religious groups (the Jews) in interwar Romania.

Orthodox Christianity remains relatively understudied and its scholarly analysis still suffers from widespread misconceptions. This article’s opening section is devoted to de-bunking of past biases, as these emerge in conventional or traditional modernist images of Orthodoxy in scholarship. Next, the article lays out a global perspective and argues that such a perspective can contribute greatly toward a different understanding of the relationship between Orthodox Church and politics. It proposes a series of distinct church-state patterns as observed in Orthodox pre-modern and modern societies. The variety of these arrangements strongly suggests the need to overturn past interpretations and to accept the basic premise that Orthodox Christianity has a multifaceted relationship to society and culture – as well as to accept the notion that, from within the lenses of historical globalization, Orthodoxy has experienced historical change and that its current version is in fact not the relic of an unchanged tradition but rather the product of social change and of adjustment to globalization.

We live in an age of endemic violence. Violence is fed by the binary categories through which human beings interpret the world, leading to the phenomenon of scapegoating violence. Jesus died to be the final scapegoat. Spirals of fear singled out Jesus to be the scapegoat for the anxieties and animosities of the people in his time. René Girard discovered in the Christian Gospels a truthful narrative that did not mask or disguise scapegoating for what it is: the elimination of the innocent victim(s). Christians dare to claim that Jesus died to end all scapegoating. This nonviolent interpretation of the cross of Jesus Christ serves as the theological foundation for active participation by Christians in movements for organized nonviolent resistance as a means of achieving social justice. This foundation is urgently needed in a world of spiraling violence and war making.

The article describes and reflects the extent to which the free-church path of separation between church and state secures its independence from state influence and at the same time creates scope for assuming political responsibility and influencing society. To this end, the origins and development as well as the probation and problems of the free church principle of the separation of church and state are examined. Against this background, a fundamental relationship of church, state and politics in terms of religious, plural and secular societies is reflected and developed. The separation of state and church does not mean that they ignore each other. The religious institutions, people and beliefs take part in shaping law, public policy and organizing civic engagement. Therefore the public and political responsibility of churches and theology is examined from a free-church point of view.

In this essay, I want to engage Luther’s political theology by engaging Michael Laffin’s recent book, The Promise of Martin Luther’s Political Theology. I am fully aware of the debates around Luther’s political theology and realize that Laffin’s is only one interpretation, but it is a very nuanced interpretation that offers compelling arguments. I then want to illustrate affinities between Laffin’s interpretation of Luther and my own Orthodox political theology based on the realism of divinehuman communion, or theosis. I then want to end by relating this comparison to what is arguably one of the most pressing questions of Christian political theology – the Christian’s relation to political liberalism.

This article introduces an empirical comprehension of secularization – disavowing Max Weber’s grasp – which is based on the premise that a structural similarity of symbols leads to their transmogrification. The structure of society remains the same in a secular society as well, in that consciousness is still affected by the same experiences. Following a brief remark on liberalism as privatizer of all highest goods, one of the consequences of secularization is exemplified. The European Union is such a liberal foundation whose self-understanding has found itself at a loss of political approval. Based on a political economy, namely on the benefit of some is the detriment of the other, the EU has overlooked that a society always shares a civil religion to which it is not possible to give up: Renouncing the sacred always denotes a profound political crisis. And a political crisis will always generate a new civil religion, of fundamental reactionary nature, and, therefore, incurring the inevitable form of an ideology.