Aristotle Papanikolaou - The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy

The Christian theological notion of theosis, usually translated as deification, is not intuitively associated with political theology. In fact, some might argue that theosis gets in the way of a Christian political theology, as it focuses attention on the individual striving for a mystical, nonhistorical, world-denying union with God. The monk escapes to the desert to avoid the messy realities of politics, which distract attention away from the acquisition of the divine light. Supporting this view of the apolitical nature of deification is the fact that the Christian tradition most associated with this idea, the Orthodox Christian tradition, has never really been known for its political theology, except for what some interpret as the Eusebian glorification of the Christian emperor and the Christian empirepejoratively labeled Christendom. If one were to analyze more closely all that is implied in the Christian theological notion of theosis, however, one would more clearly see that theosis has everything to do with politics: the mystical is the political. Admittedly, the association between theosis and politics is not self-evident. The problem could be with the word deification, as it conjures up images of individual striving toward some sort of superhuman, godlike transformation. If there was one thing that deification was not meant to signify, it was the human transformation into Zeus.

As a result of the misunderstanding that surrounds the word deification, I prefer a less literal translation for theosis: divine-human communion. First, divine-human communion reminds us that theosis is primarily a relational category. The human transformation that it signifies results from a relationship with God. This relationship, however, is not one of distance but of progressive union with the life of God that does not obliterate the difference between God and the human. It does not allow this difference to preclude communion; instead, this difference is the precondition for such a communion. Above all, theosis asserts that the human was created for such a communion with God.

One cannot stop there: to assert that the human is created for communion with God is to make a statement about the structure of creation itself. Although creation is ontologically other than the uncreated, it was created with the capacity of presencing the uncreated. Although existing as the not-God, creation is not the enemy of God, even when immersed in sin; nor is it in competition with God. It exists with the eternal capacity for transformation, which is nothing other than the presencing of the divine in its very materiality. This capacity to embody the divine is what contemporary Orthodox theologians refer to as the sacramentality of creation. To assert that creation was created for communion with God is to simultaneously claim that creation already exists in and through the divine, that the divine is latently present within the material creation at its core.

The emphasis, thus, is on divine-human communion, because the burden to figure out how to tap the latent divine presence within creation ultimately depends on humans. Divine-human communion is not meant in any way to denigrate nonhuman materialityquite the contrary. It is simply meant to emphasize how communion with the divine, for which all of creation is destined, depends on how humans relate to God. Theosis simply asserts that the thriving of creation is proportionate to the degree in which humans commune with the divine.

The sacramentality of creation is, then, not reached through acts of magic, but through an ascetics of divine-human communiona performance of ascetical practices that opens one up to communing with the life of God that is in and around creation, and communicated definitively in Jesus Christ. One way to see Christian asceticism is as a tradition of thinking on the kinds of practices one needs to perform so as to make oneself available to Gods love, which is always on offer. The point of the practices is not to earn or to merit communion with Godwhich, if one thinks about it, doesnt really make sensebut to remove what gets in the way of experiencing what is readily available.

In the end, the Christian ascetical tradition took very seriously the command to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10:27). It also realized the paradoxical nature of the commandone cannot will to love. Asceticism is a tradition of thinking on how to fulfill this commandment, which