The Mystical as Political proposes that theosis, or divine-human communion, ought to play a central role in democratic life. To support this claim, Aristotle Papanikolaou engages Orthodox tradition, a persistent Eastern suspicion of Western values, and contemporary Western theological assertions that liberal democracy is anathema to a eucharistic understanding of church.
The Mystical as Political is a primer on Orthodox theology. Divine-human communion tells us that human beings were created in order to love God, and reveals, further, that all of creation has the capacity to embody the divine. Sometimes translated as “deification,” theosis is better understood, argues Papanikolaou, as a capacity that begs certain practices. That human beings were made to love God does not mean that we are each ready and able to experience such an overwhelming love. Recognizing this, the Eastern Church has developed a tradition of ascetical practices so that people can learn such love. “Love requires work,” Papanikolaou affirms; “one must learn how to love” (3). Theosis is an ongoing process that defines human being rather than an achievable objective for a particular person. The potential for such communion has political implications. This is the book's central claim and its signal contribution to political theology, a growing field that investigates connections between Christian ideas and practices of politics.
Papanikolaou's case turns on affinities he discerns between an Orthodox worldview and liberal democracy. Eastern theology is often pegged, from within and without, as a desert theology, which obligates the most committed followers to a monastic separation from the world and its manifold distractions. But The Mystical as Political asserts that political community is one of many deserts in which Christians must learn to love. “It is simply not the case,” according to Papanikolaou, “that only those who isolate themselves from family, work, or politics are capable of divine-human communion” (196).
Despite an early history of Orthodox theology that collapsed the theological and political, or recent assertions that church ought to be in prophetic tension with any form of political community, the author insists that liberal democracy is most conducive to the church's goals. Indeed, Vladimir Solov'ev and Sergius Bulgakov, leading nineteenth-century Orthodox political theologians, suggested that “the principle of divine-human communion requires a political form in which this communion is realized freely and without coercion” (43). Liberal democracy's separation of church and state is the best available option for providing the space for people to learn to love.
But it is not simply that liberal democracy may provide a venue for Orthodox Christians to practice their faith robustly: Papanikolaou also demonstrates how the tradition may contribute to democratic life. When the Eastern tradition recognizes confession as a sacrament, he argues, it affirms the “transformative power of . . . truth-telling” (166). Liberal democracy's embrace of free speech provides the venue for such transformation, where politics provides “an opportunity to move toward a deeper love of God and neighbor” (154).
Papanikolaou never allows the urgency of his argument to devolve into dismissals of those who disagree with him. His book is a model for how a scholar can be critical, careful, and even generous in his disagreements. Despite his generosity, Papanikolaou limits his argument with a predictable set of conversation partners. He engages a seeming theological diversity, including Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, ordained, lay, liberal, and conservative voices, yet this diversity manages to produce a familiar uniformity of a white, male, heterosexual perspective, which is at odds with the book's democratic vows.
Papanikolaou's project would have been fruitfully challenged and strengthened by an engagement with theologians like Eugene Rogers, who draws on Eastern Christianity to argue that for same-sex and cross-sex couples, marriage brings sanctification through ascetical practices that depend on community; or like Shawn Copeland, a Roman Catholic systematic theologian who has reflected on the meaning of the Eucharist for enslaved bodies. I can offer this criticism in good faith, because I have confidence in Papanikolaou's commitment to democratic processes and truth-telling.
The Mystical as Political is indeed a carefully argued and theologically daring book. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level students in political theology.
