The Idol of Byzantium
Byzantium is among the idols worshipped in our days most. Populist politicians across Orthodox countries cynically exploit romantic enthusiasm for Byzantium shared by their populations. It is no coincidence that this enthusiasm refers to a state that never existed — as we know, Byzantium is a Western fantasy about the state with its capital in Constantinople that called itself Roman. Our fantasies about Byzantium lead us to fantastic ideas about the Church. Being moved by these ideas, we want our church to be state-owned, politically powerful, and exercising monopoly within our societies. In reality, however, at least in modern reality, such a church cannot last for long. All attempts at political Byzantinism in the twentieth century have proven this. I deliberately use the word “Byzantinism” with -ism at the end as a sign of the ideological character of this conception.
In most cases, Byzantinism ended up in unchecked and unrestrained personal power of a dictator who had imagined himself a reincarnation of the Byzantine basileuses. Sometimes, the dictatorial appetites of the modern “basileuses” surpass what the original basileuses allowed for themselves. Like the latter, the former seek to legitimise themselves through the Church. In contrast to the past, however, which embraced contemporaneity, the modern adepts of Byzantinism reject modernity. Their Byzantinism is a caricature of Byzantium. The protagonists of phantasmagorical Byzantinism usually fail to comprehend that the real Byzantium was not a dictatorship of typology that flourished in the twentieth century. It was a complex socio-political phenomenon featuring quite strong democratic structures that only recently scholars have begun acknowledging.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of those ignoramuses who enacts Byzantium without understanding it. He has been misinformed about Byzantium by some high-ranked prelates, who think they know Byzantium, even though they do not, such as Metropolitan Tikhon Shevkunov. He has inspired Putin to imagine himself a new Constantine or Justinian, or at least a second Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of Kyiv. That is why, for example, Putin endorsed building an enormous “archaeological park” in the occupied Crimea on the spot where Prince Vladimir allegedly received his baptism from Byzantium. I use “archaeological park” with quotation marks because, first, its constructors destroyed some archaeological monuments and artefacts, and second, it is not about archaeology but about propaganda. Shevkunov made sure that archaeology was subsumed to the needs of the state propaganda.
Putin’s fantasies about himself constitute a big problem. But an even bigger problem is that many Orthodox today still fantasise about their Church as an extension of an empire that no longer exists. They admire the TV images of Putin being pompously received on Mount Athos, where he was welcomed to stand in the stasidia that serve as a symbol of imperial might. The Orthodox, infected with the virus of Byzantinism, are willing to forgive Putin for any crime, even the genocide of another Orthodox people, as long as he promises them a second coming of the ghost of an empire and an imperial church.
Such a false eschatology stems not only from the false ecclesiology but also from a false political theology. There is an intrinsic connection between ecclesiology and political theology, particularly in the Orthodox world. Since the Church determines how we live and act as Christians, ecclesiology determines how we understand our Christian selves. We live, act, and perceive in a space which is both social and political. It is impossible to extract ourselves from it. When we turn our backs or avert our sight from it, we do not make it disappear. We simply stop influencing this space while it continues to influence us. We, thus, make ourselves unprepared to face it and vulnerable to its many impacts, both positive and negative. We are more prepared to face it when we look in its face. Then we better understand not only the world but also ourselves as members of the Church and the Church per se.
Recognising Orthodox Micro-Fascisms Through the Mirror Glass of Secularity
It is no coincidence that ecclesiology as a theological discipline emerged in modern times with the advance of secularisation. As a result of the latter, the Church, from engulfing the entire world, suddenly found herself smaller than the world and surrounded by it. This world no longer recognised itself as an intrinsic part of the Church. Several times, it rejected the Church altogether, such as in the cases of the French Revolution or Soviet Communism. Sometimes, the Church responded by rejecting the world altogether. It was as if she stood in front of a mirror and made the same gestures that the secularised world made toward her, with the only difference that her right hand in the mirror was left. That is how the churches that fight secularism and wrong (according to them) political doctrines, end up self-secularised and siding with wrong political regimes. That is what we observe in Russia, and not only there.
When the Church acknowledges the world (without assimilating with it), even if the latter seems to be hostile, this helps her to see and understand herself significantly better. Thus, ecclesiology as a theological discipline was born when the Church turned to the secular world instead of averting from it. Of course, this does not mean that ecclesiologies did not exist before the “secular age.” As long as she existed, the Church reflected on herself theologically. Yet she did not produce a systematic theology about herself that would be similar to a systematic theology about the Triune God or the Incarnation. Perhaps this can be explained by the lack of a mirror in front of her which was not her.
Something similar happened with Orthodox political theology. It has always existed unsystematised, without being recognised as a theology. Even today, many Orthodox theologians refuse to acknowledge that it exists. Yet some of them are involved in political theology nolens volens, and indeed are political theologians par excellence. A towering figure among such crypto-political-theologians was Christos Yannaras, who passed away recently and who believed that political theology is a Western discipline that does not deserve to be included in the nomenclature of the Orthodox theologies. Ecclesiology as an Orthodox theology was recognised late. The recognition of Orthodox political theology has been delayed even more.
Against the backdrop of this delay, in the shadow of the grand fascist systems of Germany and Italy, smaller fascisms and semi-fascisms mushroomed across the Orthodox countries: Greece, Serbia/Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and most recently Russia. They all were celebrated by most contemporary theologians and hierarchs. After World War II, the Western churches mostly recognised their crimes and tried to correct the errors of their political theology. The Protestants did so more quickly and openly, while the Catholics did so belatedly and indirectly. The Second Vatican Council promoted the aggiornamento agenda as an indirect acknowledgement for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with the dictatorships. More directly, this council elaborated on a political theology that made such cooperation difficult in the future.
In the Christian East, only a few theological voices have condemned the toxic collaborations of the past: with the right-wing and left-wing dictatorships of the twentieth century. Church authorities prefer not to refer to their collaboration as if it never happened. This, in my opinion, is one of the main reasons why toxic collaborations with dictatorships still occur in the twenty-first century: unrepentant sins tend to be re-committed.
Hence, here are some suggestions on how to overcome the ongoing crises in the Global Orthodoxy:
- We must critically assess the Byzantine symphonia between the Church and the State in the past, as well as the attempts to re-enact it in modern times.
- Cooperation with the fascist and semi-fascist regimes of the interwar period, as such re-enactment, as well as with the communist regimes of the post-war period, must be evaluated openly and critically. Such recognition and re-evaluation need to be done in a conciliar manner.
- This will help us to recognise and critically assess the recent wars in Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine. It is a great injustice to Orthodoxy that all the wars of the last thirty years in the territories of Europe have been fought among or involving Orthodox peoples, and we pretend that they did not or do not happen. We, as the Orthodox Church, will not move forward, or rather we will regress if we continue to ignore these wars, especially the one in Ukraine.
- Many Orthodox justify this war on the pretext of the assumed East-West dichotomy. Now it is time to overcome this dichotomy, which is a pseudomorphosis of the Orthodox theology and praxis.
- Finally, it is vital to keep a safe distance from the culture wars of our time. This does not mean that we should avoid a critical evaluation of all the ideologies that contribute to these wars from both the left and right margins of the political spectrum. It means that we must not allow our theology to be politicised.
