The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy

Notes

Notes introduction 1. Although a dominant theme in the Orthodox Christian tradition, deification has played a formative role in the Catholic theological imagination . Attempts recently have been made to demonstrate its importance for the Protestant traditions as well. See Paul M. Collins, Partaking in Divine Nature: Deification and Communion (London: T&T Clark, 2010). See also Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 2. In its emphasis on a theology of Christian politics that foregrounds the Christian response to the command for neighborly love, the work of Luke Bretherton has affinities with what follows, even if our approaches are not identical. See especially Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Oxford: WileyBlackwell , 2010). 3. See Orthodox Constructions of the “West,” eds. George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming ). Chapter One. Orthodox Political Theology through the Centuries 1. Christopher Rowland, “Scripture: New Testament,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh, 21–34 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 2. One would be hard pressed to find any Christian identifying any sort of empire, Roman or American democratic, with the eschatological kingdom of God, in view of the fact that the latter was proclaimed as a future, end-of-history event. This fact did not stop Christians from identifying close 201 202 Notes to Pages 16–23 political analogues to the kingdom of God, such as Eusebius’s account of the Roman Empire after Constantine’s conversion, or present-day fundamentalist Christian reverence of American democracy. 3. W. H. C. F rend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 483. 4. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Speaking the Truth in Love: Theological and Spiritual Exhortations of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, ed. John Chryssavgis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), esp. 176 and 355. 5. Norman Baynes, “The Byzantine State,” in Byzantine Studies and Other Essays, 47–66 (London: Athlone Press, 1955). 6. Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, in From Irenaeus to Grotius : A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, ed. Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 62. 7. Ecclesiastical History, trans. J. E. L. O ulton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), 9.10.1–15. Elsewhere, Eusebius speaks of the removal of the generation of those who hate God, to ton theomison genos (10.1.7). 8. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 58. 9. Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 10. On Eusebius, see John Behr, The Nicene Faith (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), esp. 61–75; and Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58–61. 11. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 60–61. 12. Ibid., 61. 13. Ibid., 62. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 60. 16. Baynes, “The Byzantine State,” 48. 17. John Chrystostom, “From the Twenty-Fourth Homily on Romans,” in O’Donovan and O’Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius, 92. 18. Ibid., 93. 19. John Chrysostom, “From the Fourth Homily on the Text ‘I Saw the Lord. . . .,’ ” in O’Donovan and O’Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius, 98. 20. Ibid. 21. The most thorough and comprehensive treatment of this theme in both the Post-Nicene and Ante-Nicene Christian theologians is given by Kenneth Alexo Jr., “Toward an Ecclesial Theory of Politics: An Interpretation of the Political Theology of the Greek Church Fathers” (PhD diss., Princeton Notes to Pages 23–30 203 University, 2009). Alexo is especially critical of Francis Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy: Origins and Background (Washington , DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1966). 22. Chrysostom, “From the Twenty-Fourth Homily on Romans,” 94. 23. Ibid. 24. Alexo, “Toward an Ecclesial Theory of Politics.” 25. Ibid., 47. 26. Ibid., 40. 27. On this, see ibid., 476–95. 28. On the diverse ways in w hich deification was understood in t he Greek fathers, see the monumental work of Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 29. Runciman, The Byzantine Theocracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 46. 30. John Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982), 48. See also Runciman, The Byzantine Theocracy, 46. 31. Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy, 49. See also Justinian, “Novella 6...