Der Begriff des Politischen in der russisch-orthodoxen Tradition. Zum Verhältnis von Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft in Rußland (review)

Kostjuk's ambitious goal is "the analysis of the specific political understanding of the Russian Orthodox cultural crisis" in post-Soviet Russia's "transition from the premodern to the modern social order" (p. 12). The book, originally a dissertation for the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, builds on the author's extensive earlier sociological, political, and philosophical studies of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, but now from a broad historical perspective.

The first part of the book is a chronological survey of key ideas of church, state, and society from classical antiquity and the Old and New Testaments through the Church Fathers and the Byzantine Empire, to Russia from Kievan times until the present. Part 2 covers the same ground using systematic philosophical and theological categories, such as the image of man, the idea of freedom, the church and the world, the Byzantine concept of symphony, what the author calls the "theology of total power," and sobornost', a uniquely Russian concept denoting at once community, unity, and universality. Parts 1 and 2 provide the basis for an extensive analysis in Part 3 of the Russian Orthodox Church's stance in the post-Soviet era, particularly as expressed in its Social Doctrine, officially adopted after extensive discussion in the summer of 2000. Some comparisons are made with Western thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Montesquieu.

Kostjuk's broad historical perspective is impressive, and he effectively shows how Orthodoxy's ideas and attitudes were influenced by the political context, for example, how in Byzantium and Russia, church thought followed Eusebius of Caesarea's dictum that "the one God, the one king in heaven, the one royal Nomos and Logos corresponds to the one king on earth" (p. 225), or how the church's exclusion from the secular sphere after Peter the Great shaped the course of religious thought.

In addition to explaining the political implications of such key concepts as tradition, symphony, kenosis, and sobornost', Kostjuk clearly summarizes the thought of a wide range of figures, from Church Fathers like John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa, to such Russian churchmen as Joseph of Volokolamsk and Feofan Prokopovich, nineteenth century Slavophiles, religious philosophers like Nikolai Berdiaev and Sergei Bulgakov, and, more recently, Fathers Aleksandr Men' and Aleksandr Schmemann. Presenting the material first chronologically, then systematically, entails, however, some repetition and means that the reader must look for the ideas of, say, Vladimir Solov'ev in several different sections.

Kostjuk argues that the Russian Orthodox Church should reject rigid traditionalism and its historical deference to state authority and instead endorse such positive features of modern society as individual rights, the rule of law, and civil society, much as the Roman Catholic Church did in the Second Vatican Council. Liberal thinkers like Bulgakov and Solov'ev and the concept of sobornost', according to Kostjuk, provide a basis for the church to play an effective role today. He is hopeful that the 2000 Social Doctrine, with its comprehensive, and on the whole, openminded, analysis of politics and social issues, even a qualified endorsement of the right of resistance, can offer the "church a way into modernity" (p. 359).

Kostjuk's emphasis on ideas and concepts sometimes leads to questionable historical conclusions. While Alexander I's policies can be described as "mystical" and "universalist," they were not primarily "Masonic"(p. 84). To claim that "thanks to the influence of the Slavophils," Russia in 1880 was on the verge of a representative monarchy greatly exaggerates their impact. Nor did they "inspire . . . the Russian, Slavic oriented foreign policy in the Balkans"(p. 246). Also, are church-state relations in today's Russia really comparable to those in France, as he claims on page 346, since religion has some public role in the former but is totally excluded...