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

Abstract

Der Begriff des Politischen in der russisch-orthodoxen Tradition. Zum Verhaltnis von Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft in Rusland. By Konstantin Kostjuk. [Politik- und Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Veroffentlichungen der Gorres-Gesellschaft, Band 24.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. 2005. Pp. 409. euro55.00 paperback.) Kostjuk's ambitious goal is 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 Eichstatt-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, officiaEy 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 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. …