Magisterial Orthodox Social Teaching
Part 3: The relationship between Church and State
Think about the last time you drove on a major highway. There could have been dozens, maybe even hundreds of drivers on all sides. All of you are making your own, independent decisions about speed; if, when, and how to change lanes; the distance to maintain from the car in front of you, and any number of other decisions from whether or not to change the radio station, adjust the a/c or open a window.
And all of this you and all the other drivers do with surprisingly few rules. Yes, there are some positive obligations: a posted speed limit to be and a requirement (honored in the gap) to signal when changing lanes. And of course, we shouldn’t tailgate, change speed erratically or stop suddenly except in an emergency.
Given these complexities, it would defy the ability of even the wisest lawmaker to issue detailed regulations and concrete directions on how you—personally—should make the drive home at the end of a long workday.
This is also the challenge of public policy and so the moral analysis of such policy that is central to Orthodox social thought.
But magisterial Orthodox social teaching is less like the job of a government official crafting public policy and more like the driver in rush hour traffic who must respond to a myriad of contingent and ever-shifting facts in order to get home safely.
Of necessity, OST will always have an open-ended and provisional character as the Church seeks to remain faithful to Christ and her own identity while navigating in a world in which she institutionally, the faithful personally, and institutions, men, women, and communities make independent and idiosyncratic decisions based on a rich mix of personal goals, limited information, and a dynamic social context.
All of this leads us to see the value of what thinkers like Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) and Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) call “epistemological humility.” While typically applied to the social sciences and offered as an apologetic for limited government, given the applicative character of OST we should likewise embrace a similar notion.
And in fact, as we’ll see, the Church does.
The providential character of the state: shared asceticism
For Orthodox Social Teaching,
…the emergence of the temporal state should not be understood as a reality originally established by God. It was rather God’s granting human beings an opportunity to order their social lives by their own free will, so that this order, as a response to the earthly reality of sin through opposing it by means of temporal power (Basis, III.1).
The emergence of the State, in other words, is providential and represents an opportunity for all human beings to exercise their freedom cooperatively in the ascetical struggle against sin.
It is in light of this that the Basis quotes both St. Paul (Romans 13:1-7) and St. Peter (1 Peter 2:13-16) that Christians are “to obey [civil] authorities regardless of their attitude to the Church.” Here again, we see the centrality of martyrdom to the exercise of our freedom. Remember, the apostles wrote what they wrote at a time when “the Church of Christ was persecuted both by Jewish and Roman State authorities. This did not prevent the martyrs and other Christians of that time from praying for prosecutors and recognizing their power” (III.1).
Other than when it would require false worship, obedience to the State is necessary in all things since “God blesses the state as an essential element of life in the world distorted by sin.” In our fallen world, “both the individual and society” as a whole “need to be protected from” those who would harm others (III.1).
The provisional character of the state: limited obedience
“At the same time, Christians should avoid attempts to make” the State “absolute.” We must also “recognize the limits” of the State and “its purely earthly, temporal and transient value conditioned by the presence of sin in the world and the need to restrain it” (III.1).
Critical here is the need for Christians and all those of goodwill to bear in mind that “just as other human institutions,” the State “even if aimed at the good, may tend to transform into a self-sufficing institution” usurping the place of God in human affairs (III.1).
This is why, turning now to FLW (#9), even though obedience is the default response and cooperation (symphonia in Greek) the ideal in the relationship of Church and State, we must not romanticize the apostolic, patristic, and Byzantine witness on this as if they were a “kind of absolute rule for Christian conduct in all imaginable circumstances.” At the same time, however, we “cannot judge all forms of human government as equivalent with one another, even though all fall far short of the Kingdom” of God.