Download PDF | God, Hierarchy, And Power Orthodox Theologies Of Authority From Byzantium Fordham University Press ( 2017).
237 Pages
This series consists of books that seek to bring Orthodox Christianity into an engagement with contemporary forms of thought. Its goal is to promote (1) historical studies in Orthodox Christianity that are interdisciplinary, employ a variety of methods, and speak to contemporary issues; and (2) constructive theological arguments in conversation with patristic sources and that focus on contemporary questions ranging from the traditional theological and philosophical themes of God and human identity to cultural, political, economic, and ethical concerns. The books in the series explore both the relevancy of Orthodox Christianity to contemporary challenges and the impact of contemporary modes of thought on Orthodox self-understandings.
INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGE OF HIERARCHY FOR ORTHODOXY
Eastern Orthodox Christianity from antiquity to the present is hierarchical. Orthodoxy has a fundamental ecclesiastical orientation toward hierarchy both in its administration and its sacramentality. The hierarchical model of stratified ecclesiastical ranks, orders, and offices is present in the earliest accounts of Christianity and develops expansively throughout the Byzantine period. From its liturgical and sacramental orientations to its patriarchal and ascetic organizations, the spiritual life of Orthodox Christians—both past and present—is powerfully shaped by historical and theological traditions of ecclesiastical hierarchy.
What hierarchy is, how it is situated theologically, and why it persists, however, remain without clear consensus among both practitioners and scholars. Generally, when hierarchy is questioned in modern Orthodox theology, the seemingly vague concept of “tradition” is invoked to justify the order, exclusivity, ceremony, and authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy (particularly in its ordained ranks), without clearly articulating why the tradition of the past needs to be maintained.' This is particularly problematic when it appears that some aspects of hierarchy contradict the values of universality and equality many Orthodox Christians claim to espouse.
For some, the term “hierarchy” has developed a negative association. It is often used to refer to stratified organizational structures based on subordination of the many to a superior few, and is associated with easily abused power dynamics within those structures. For this reason, some scholars of Christianity reject the term, saying it is no longer reflective of an authentic Christian ideal.? Others argue hierarchy was never a good ecclesiastical model of organization and leadership in the first place, which presumes that hierarchy is a human creation that can (and should) take a more egalitarian form.> According to some, ecclesiastical hierarchy throughout time has obscured and twisted the supposedly simple and radically equalizing message of Jesus, and thus arguably taints all of Christian history.’ Not only is hierarchy sometimes construed as oppressive and abusive, some have regarded it as an overly complicated and needless barrier standing in the ecclesiastical way between God and humanity.’ There are indeed numerous cases in recent memory where domination, abuse, oppression, inequality, and suppression do manifest themselves among Christian leadership that give ample ground for these critiques.
Historically, Christian hierarchy suffered similar challenges and similar manifestations of disconnect between expressed religious ideals and religious administration.® The self-aggrandizement that comes with titles and positions is routinely cautioned against by early and medieval Christian authors, indicating a real historical concern for the purity of the hierarchy. Additionally, canonical developments evince that selling ecclesial offices and appointing one’s friends and family members to ecclesiastical ranks was not uncommon in Orthodox Christian history.’ Indeed if one looks to tradition, the pomp, vesture, and titles associated with ecclesiastical hierarchy are elaborately developed and maintained in various forms for over a millennium of Christianity. Although these features alone are not inherently problematic (and are actually justified by several theological and liturgical developments), for some they represent a visual manifestation of overly ritualistic and power-hungry clericalism.* The “problem” of hierarchy is not new at all, so the question of hierarchy’s persistence needs to be informed from a historical perspective.
Beyond the general modern distaste for hierarchy in some Christian and secular communities, and pragmatic assessments of hierarchy as a tenuous but persistent administrative practice historically, there are three particularly prominent (and presently relevant) domains of challenges to hierarchy as a theological ideal specifically within the richly diverse Orthodox tradition: the inclusivity of hierarchy (essentially an issue in ecclesiology), the exclusivity of hierarchy, and lastly, the relation between power and hierarchy. Although these issues are not exhaustive of the challenges to hierarchy in contemporary Orthodoxy, they are representative of three significant domains of theological concern that challenge the existence and maintenance of hierarchy.
The first challenge of ecclesiological inclusivity is oriented by the contested issue of identifying the boundaries of authentic tradition. Specifically, identifying a community or individual as theologically sufficient for participating in communion with other communities, in the case of Orthodoxy, is traditionally determined by hierarchs and priests. Who has the authority to draw the lines of ecclesiology and community inclusivity is essentially a question of hierarchy. If the hierarchy is primarily conceived of in terms of the ordained clerical leadership, then a great deal of trust must be present between the community and its leaders to recognize the fullness of the church authentically, and to admit simultaneously the circumstances wherein the fullness of the church cannot be recognized. Ideally this decision should be based on theological evaluation, and not personal differences, power struggles, or territorial claims—however, these less spiritually focused differences have historically been the justification for schism or excommunication.’
Likewise, even theological difference needs to be carefully evaluated for the degree of its divisiveness, and not be reinforced and amplified along lines of cultural misunderstanding or political aspirations. As the source of ecclesiological inclusivity, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is simultaneously divisive and uniting in the naming of tradition. This function of determining ecclesiastical boundaries lends “hierarchy” the potential to jeopardize the legitimacy and theological authority of tradition and the identities of those within it.'? Consequently, reflecting on who and what constitutes legitimate ecclesiastical hierarchy prompts a rethinking of the ways in which ecclesiological boundaries and divisions are powerfully drawn and religious identities articulated.
A second aspect of this ecclesiological inclusivity is that of legitimization of one’s own community and ecclesiological participation via the hierarchy. Orthodoxy includes an Ignatian patristic tradition in which the legitimacy and full expression of the Christian church is tied to the presence of the hierarch."' This poses potential challenges if the hierarch is known to be morally questionable or, more grievously, unorthodox—or just frequently absent. How then do believers situate themselves and identify themselves as authentically the Body of Christ independent of the ecclesiastical leadership? Or is this a theological impossibility? This dilemma extends to a type of Donatist tension, wherein the faith in the ecclesial gathering and what it sacramentally accomplishes is called into question based on the personal integrity of the ecclesiastical minister. This tension is never fully resolved in the Byzantine tradition at a pragmatic level, and leads to some tenuously related issues of exclusion from the priestly ministry.’
Thirdly, the frequency of ecclesiological presence and participation is a challenge to the clerical hierarchy in drawing the lines of who is recognized as being within the church. If one is not present at the ecclesial gathering and is not a Eucharistic participant liturgically, then is he or she still a member of the church, and if so how? One example of maintaining this type of external ecclesiastical membership is a desert hermit or ascetic. These individuals, according to many hagiographical narratives, do not see themselves and are not viewed in commemorative liturgical memory as being in any way separated from the church, although they may spend decades apart from any official hierarchical contact.’ The acknowledgment of these individuals’ sanctity simultaneous with their legitimacy as members of the Body of Christ (even while not liturgically communing) is determined on criteria that admit a broader way of understanding the inclusivity of the church.
A second challenge to hierarchy that arises, if one conceives of hierarchy as primarily the ecclesiastical leadership of a religious community, is that of exclusion. In Orthodox Christianity, certain ranks of the hierarchy are closed to certain categories of people. Most significant for present-day discourse is the issue of women and the priestly rank of presbyter. Historically, this exclusion does not garner much attention, likely because it was a reflection of a social norm. Byzantine Christianity has a historical tradition of an ordained female diaconate, but the liturgical function of these women was arguably never viewed as a stepping stone to the priesthood or episcopacy as the male diaconate (somewhat erroneously) came to be. Consequently, in contemporary Orthodoxy, women’s exclusion from the priestly and episcopal ranks appears historically normative.'4 For a number of reasons, over time the female deaconate became a rarity and has practically disappeared at present in the Eastern Orthodox churches. Resultantly, all ordained ranks of the Eastern Orthodox clergy are in present practice male, even though the rite of female ordination to the diaconate remains “on the books” so to speak.”
In addition to the exclusion of women from the priestly hierarchic ranks, there are other hierarchic exclusions within traditional Orthodoxy. For example, the episcopacy is reserved for the unmarried celibate male in current practice despite a rich history of married bishops.'° Although the practical need for celibate bishops has developed theological justification, the question remains if this development is theologically essential and immovable, or if it reflects a historical accommodation to express a particular theological claim in a particular time, that now could be adapted or changed to express the same theology more precisely.'’ Even the male priesthood has additional exclusivity within it, as men may be excluded as candidates for the priesthood based on marital, familial, and physical impediments. Moreover, the question of hierarchic exclusivity needs to be reevaluated historically and currently with regard to the Orthodox laity. Lay men and women are similarly restricted, at least historically and canonically, from certain types of sacramental participation and contact at certain times of perceived states of diminished personal integrity, purity, or wholeness (for example, bleeding, seminal fluids, bathing, birth, manslaughter). Although these restrictions are perhaps sometimes pastorally appropriate, they reflect ambiguity surrounding the relationship between ecclesiological participation, mediation of divine power, and sacramental validity.'®
A third significant area of challenges to hierarchy is that of its association with disparate power dynamics. If hierarchy can be considered as a theological concept central to Orthodoxy, then this association must somehow be resolved in a way that accounts for the necessary inequitable stratification of power and offers protections from its potential earthly abuses. Byzantine Christianity’s rich legacy of spiritual guidance is particularly problematic in this context.” If one is expected to be obedient and essentially hand over one’s will to another human being, that person ideally should be more spiritually authoritative and knowledgeable than the subordinates. ‘The spiritual elder’s perceived position of power, however, lends itself to potentially abusive dynamics for the subordinates. Power is primarily problematic if it is held in an unchecked position that can be dangerous to its subordinates without recourse to means of mediation. Not only must correction or limitation of power be administered through those who have power above the person in question, but also by those in subordinate positions. Otherwise, the subordinates are vulnerable to spiritually masked abuses. Specifically, in the nonliturgical context for ecclesiastical leaders and spiritual authorities, the question arises from whence does their power and authority come, and do those subordinate to them have any power themselves? In the context of spiritual authority outside of the ritual administration, there is more of a blurring of the lines between personal piety and the power of one’s appointed office. Additionally, there remains ambiguity about how to situate charismatic individuals seemingly outside of the institutionalized hierarchy who have significant authority and discipleship. Who or what legitimates their power and validates it within authentic Orthodoxy, especially if the charismatic is challenging the authority of the hierarchical administration?
All of these challenges and critiques raise the question: Why hierarchy? How is hierarchy theologically conceived, justified, and produced as an essential part of Christian existence? Although hierarchy appears in a Christian context often as a norm for which great historical evidence can be given, is there sufficient continuity of theological justification in this “tradition” of hierarchy that substantiates it as a spiritual necessity in the Christian past and present? Or, if hierarchy is some humanly constructed innovation of the Christian faith, why has it endured across generations and throughout many variations of Christianity? Has a lineage of authoritative clerical men simply failed to imagine it otherwise, and squashed the voices of those who might? Have they not envisioned some more egalitarian or democratic form, relying instead as a default on an ecclesiological model associated with divinely given authority and continuity with a retrospectively sacralized past? More grievously, does hierarchy persist as a type of intentional, damaging, and sexist “sacred domination?””° To address these questions I turn to the tradition in which hierarchy as a theological signifier and ideal originates—that of Byzantine Christianity.
Introducing Byzantine Hierarchy and Its Dionysian Legacy
For Byzantine Christians, hierarchy carried more positive values than it does for many today. Historically, “hierarchy” at the time of its linguistic introduction was widely accepted in Christianity, and for many present day adherents to hierarchically organized religious traditions the term persists with a positive connotation.”’ However, these values are not limited to tradition conceived of as historical record, or to the conception of hierarchy as merely a stratification of clerical administrators. In the Byzantine Christian theological tradition, hierarchy appears elusive and yet constant, affirmed and yet subverted, inequitable and yet the only means of true equality, and the source of ecclesiastical authority and the limit of it. In all this liminality and paradox, hierarchy is foremost determined and empowered through divine reflectivity. Literally, hierarchy is a combination of the Greek words iepd¢ (meaning “sacred”) and &pxr (meaning “beginning,” “principle,” or “sovereignty”). Although hierarchy is by no means a uniquely Christian term or concept in its broadest application, in the history of specifically Byzantine Christianity (the context in which it first emerges and is adopted as authoritative) it does have a rich theological lineage. This lineage warrants consideration in any attempt to evaluate hierarchy’s significance and application historically, and its present-day relevance.” The late fifth- or early sixth-century author known by the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite is generally recognized as having first coined the term “hierarchy,” and subsequently developed it in a Christian context.”’ Despite its seemingly simple literal meaning, Dionysius gives the concept a multitude of complex theological explanations in his two hierarchical treatises— the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, as well as in his Eighth Letter. With Dionysius, the term “hierarchy” is coined and given a theological interpretation, definition, and justification that is carried through the Byzantine ecclesiastical legacy even to the present day.”4 As Dionysius constructs it, hierarchy is more than just an ecclesiastical means of administration. It also is the essential means of authentically communicating divinity (both through participation in God and communing God either sacramentally or iconically to others).”” This conception of hierarchy is inclusive of but not limited to ecclesiastical order and ranks of spiritual authority. The fulfillment of one’s hierarchical rank is determined by the ability to authentically communicate divinity in that rank.”° Although some modern scholars characterize Dionysius’s hierarchy as being somewhat detached from practical application, his hierarchic legacy was readily received and applied in the history of Byzantine Christianity.””
As evident in the writings of three later Byzantine theologians— Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662), Niketas Stethatos (c. 1000—90), and Nicholas Cabasilas (c. 1319-91)—Dionysius’s construction of hierarchy as a theological ideal is most relevantly appropriated, and robustly reflected, in challenging liturgical and problematic practical contexts. These three historically distinct Byzantine theologians offer examples of Dionysian hierarchic dependence and simultaneous divergence within Byzantine Christianity. Consequently, along with Dionysius they serve as the primary subjects of this book. Obviously, many other significant appropriators of Dionysius exist in Byzantium—John of Damascus and Gregory of Palamas are particularly noteworthy. Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas, however, reflect Dionysian hierarchical dependence and appropriation in the three domains in which Dionysius most richly develops his theology of hierarchy: the theoretical, the ritual, and the problematic-practical contexts.
Moreover between all four of these historical authors there is a shared basic belief about the determination of power and legitimate authority based on participation in divinity. Although these chosen authors span a considerable period of time, they each: (1) discuss the hierarchic ideal with reference to ritual significance, (2) attempt some negotiation of the hierarchic ideal in problematic practice, and (3) indicate Dionysius as an authoritative antecedent for understanding ecclesiastical hierarchy. Even though the particular ways they appropriate Dionysian hierarchy in diverse historical and intellectual contexts varies, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas provide evidence of a common theological assumption that ecclesiastical hierarchy is constituted by divinizing activity and validated by divine likeness.
To briefly introduce the Byzantine theologians who will serve as the interlocutors in my analysis of Orthodox hierarchy and power, I begin with Maximus, who appropriates Dionysius significantly in many of his works and reflects and refines a Dionysian construction of ecclesiastical hierarchy as constituted by that which communicates divinity. For Maximus, the authentic ecclesiastical hierarchy as the communication of divinity becomes synonymous with the correct diothelite christological confession of faith.”? In his liturgically contemplative Mystagogy, Maximus prefaces his own work as distinct from Dionysius’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, but in his content he repeatedly cites the Corpus Dionysiacum.*© Likewise, in his ascetic writings he displays a simplified structure of monastic spiritual authority seemingly counterintuitive to the stratified reality Dionysius proposes. Maximus, however, does employ the Dionysian determination of divinizing activity to legitimate individuals’ fulfillment of these roles, which is explicit in his definition of bishop, priest, and deacon.*! In addition to his own writings displaying a Dionysian dependence, the records of Maximus’s trial depict Maximus in continuity with Dionysian ideals. Maximus draws the boundaries of ecclesiological legitimacy in his own polemical historical context by defining valid ecclesiastical hierarchy in Dionysian terms of its ability to communicate divinity through christological confession, reflection, and participation.**
Next, Stethatos is a unique case in Dionysian appropriation and dependence because much like Dionysius he has a treatise devoted to the subject of hierarchy specifically. Even though Stethatos was the hagiographer, disciple, and editor of Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022), who is often read as the Byzantine charismatic culmination of anti-institutionalized hi-erarchical sentiment, Stethatos’s text makes significant use of lengthy Dionysian citations idealizing hierarchy. Stethatos’s On Hierarchy expands the Dionysian triadic hierarchic construction of the priestly ranks based on liturgical function, while also taking Dionysius’s construction of hierarchy as divine communication to its seemingly structurally nullifying conclusion in affirmation of authentic hierarchy. In applying this conception of hierarchy to issues of spiritual authority in his own day, Niketas appropriates the Dionysian hierarchical ideal in a way that allows him to reconfigure the legitimacy of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as more charismatically constituted.°?
Lastly, Cabasilas reflects explicit Dionysian dependence with his liturgical configuration in The Life in Christ and Commentary on the Divine Liturgy by repeatedly citing Dionysius as a source for liturgical contemplation. In these texts, Cabasilas reflects the Dionysian focus on the sacraments baptism, chrismation, and Eucharist as hierarchical because of their ability to communicate divinity. Cabasilas uses the liturgical context and contemplation as a springboard for his theoretical consideration of the hierarchical dilemma of the relationship between the ministrant’s personal piety and the efficacy of the sacraments. Moreover, in an arguably Dionysian move, Cabasilas defends the perfection of the sacraments based on their divine origin, power, and end as well as the mutual dependence between the laity and clerical ranks for hierarchical participation.*4 With his more practicalpolemical writings, Cabasilas, although not citing Dionysius directly, reflects a Dionysian negotiation of problematic clerics based on the construction of authentic hierarchic fulfillment of one’s rank through divine reflectivity.* Consequently, other Dionysian inheritors and appropriators may reflect Dionysian hierarchic ideals as well, but Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas serve as close comparison points to unearth a persistent interpretive conception of hierarchy across historically diverse theological contexts because of their treatment of the ecclesiastical hierarchic ideal in comparable domains, and citation of Dionysius as authoritative.
By way of close engagement with the lives and writings of these authors in the following chapters, I assert that the concept of ecclesiastical hierarchy is primarily theorized, liturgically realized, and negotiated in praxis by being constructed as and identified with the authentic communication of divine power. Specifically, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas successfully maneuver theological and practical challenges in ecclesiastical order and spiritual authority by mirroring and adapting the construction of hierarchy originally expressed by Dionysius. In this interpretation, ecclesiastical hierarchy is determined and validated by the cooperative divinizing activity, real communion with divinity, and participative manifestation of the divine image among humanity.
Introducing Power Theorists to the Byzantines
‘The engagement evinced in the domains of theory, liturgy, and practice by Dionysius, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas attests to a distinct theology of hierarchy grounded in a unanimously accepted conception of power. For these authors, hierarchy is not just a lofty and unattainable ideal of harmonious ecclesial interactions, it is a theological ideal realized in the very real human relations of ecclesiastical praxis.
The hierarchical interpretation, application, and negotiation reiterating the claim that hierarchy is good is grounded in two foundational assumptions expressed with only subtle shades of variation by these four Byzantine authors: that authentic power is divinely originative and divinely reflective. In the chapters that follow, this interpretation of power is developed, and serves as the subtext for the ways in which hierarchy is configured and interpreted with continuity by the Byzantine authors. These foundational beliefs also serve as the basis of a historically grounded yet presently relevant contemporary Orthodox theory of power.
Orthodox Christian discourse about ecclesiastical hierarchy, like all discourse, is a discourse of power. Byzantine authors reveal and produce power linguistically, and give the readers insight into power production in ritual and practical pastoral contexts. Therefore, the insights of contemporary power theorists such as Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler are useful in rethinking the role of power in Byzantine ecclesiastical hierarchical interpretations, negotiations, and appropriations as a pervasive and sustaining element (rather than one of domination). A broader theological interpretation of hierarchy necessitates a broader consideration of power. Hierarchy as a religiously conceived ideal and system is a mediation, production, and acknowledgment of power in a way that finds resonances with the critical theories of these more modern authors.*° This resonant framing for reconsidering the relationship between power and hierarchy can be initiated by Butler’s statement about power that we are used to thinking of power as what presses on the subject from the outside, as what subordinates, sets underneath, and relegates to a lower order. This is surely a fair description of part of what power does. But if, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are.*”
Hierarchy, as I will argue in coming chapters, for the Byzantines enacts this dual characterization of power as that which is wielded by authorities and that which forms the Christian subject.
Power, as Byzantines understood it and power as modern theorists conceptualize it, maintains significant elements of distinction. Reading Byzantine power in terms of several insights from Marx, Arendt, Foucault, and Butler, however, contributes to and challenges our understanding of why and how ecclesiastical hierarchy persists to the present age among churches of Byzantine heritage (namely, the Eastern Orthodox traditions). Previous scholarship on Byzantine theological conceptions of ecclesiastical power engaging the perspectives of critical theory is very limited.** Interpreting power as something produced, something ceded, the mode by which the “self” is realized, the means by which knowledge is formed and conveyed, however, is an interpretation that finds parallels in the Byzantine religious understanding of hierarchy.
Although it might appear contradictory to engage four disparate power theorists as informing a singular interpretation and theorization of Byzantine ecclesiastical hierarchical power, Marx, Arendt, Foucault, and Butler each offer something that aids in the reading of Byzantine hierarchy and its relation to power in a new light.*? As Byzantine theology often is characterized by trying to know the unknowable and speak the ineffable, and is marked by a singular divinity manifest through multiplicity, there is a certain continuity within the Byzantine theological tradition with this approach.
Marx’s conception of power in terms of class preservation and economic exchange, Arendt’s envisioning power primarily as a group potential realized in concert, Foucault’s recognition of power produced as dispersed throughout a system, and Butler’s interpretation of power as a generative constraint of the individual are useful for considering the identification and interpretation of power as represented in the Byzantine idealization and negotiation of ecclesiastical power and authority.“! These contemporary theorists provide conceptions of power through which an Orthodox theology of power can be situated, brought into conversation, and ultimately articulated with as much clarity as is possible for something contextualized in apophatic mystery.‘ Consequently, through this trans-historical interdisciplinary engagement, our understanding of how hierarchy relates to power can be deepened historically, and brought into a broader contemporary conversation of religious power.
Before introducing a brief foretaste of how Byzantine hierarchy and power can be illuminated by engagement with contemporary critical theorists, it is first useful to briefly introduce the major contributions from each theorist that illuminate the relationship between power and hierarchy. I begin in chronological progression with Karl Marx (1818-83), the German philosopher and revolutionary. Taking a Marxist approach to interrogating the relation between power and hierarchy leads us to consider the question of why those in the “dominant” positions within the hierarchy are in these positions. Additionally, and perhaps more significantly, Marx prompts us to consider why those in the “dominated classes” accept being dominated and accept (or do not even recognize) their “oppression.
Although the terms of domination and oppression are incompatible with the Byzantine theological conception of hierarchy, they prompt us to consider the rhetorical and ritualized styles by which the hierarchy functioned among both lay and priestly classes. Likewise, in light of Marx we must examine why and how power is dispersed through the ecclesiastical society in the configuration in which it exists, and how this relation of social power reproduces or shifts the stratification of one rank above another. Lastly, the strategies employed to secure power in terms of class, especially the “mystification of power” and ideological domination, as well as any tactics for resisting this domination, should function as part of our intellectual context.”
Hannah Arendt (1906-75), the German political theorist, offers us an oft-contested but significant contribution in the way of distinguishing power and violence as discreet yet interdependent entities. As she constructs it, power exists in potential amid the consent of groups, and is realized through actions. On the other hand, violence is enacted through implements, but is not the same as power. Violence also can destroy power. This distinction is useful for analyzing the way that power functions in hierarchy, and in naming those who appear to be in positions of power but also abuse their subordinates.
The exercise of power, and the recognition of the authority of those who are acknowledged to possess it (based on their of fices), indicate that power always comes from the people, and “authority” is a specific manifestation of power.‘4 For Arendt, authority does not come from persuasion or coercion, but rather through the recognition of legitimacy lent from collective others.” This is very significant for considering the relation between one’s hierarchic position and the degree of its fulfillment in recognizably iconic ways as determinative of ecclesial authority.
Moreover, Arendt’s distinction between power and violence provides a means of reflecting on the importance of self-determination and autonomy as a safeguard from abuse. If consent is required for power to be power rather than violence, then subordination must be a free and voluntary obedience. This insight is particularly relevant for interrogating the limits of the valorization of suffering within Orthodox theology and practice. Lastly, Arendt also provides us with the notion that power is potential realized in activity, as opposed to some “thing,” which accords well with the Byzantine notion of hierarchy realized via activity.*°
Michel Foucault (1926-84), the French philosophical historian, provides a diffused conception of power wherein power is resituated away from individual agency and instead interpreted as a systemic social production. This way of thinking about power is important for reconsidering its relation to hierarchy because it recognizes that power inheres in the hierarchy itself (opposed to merely with the hierarch). For Foucault, power is constructed through daily social production.
It is found embedded in systems, institutions, and human relations. For our purposes, this is useful in considering how power is not only at the “top” of the hierarchy, but also produced within it by relationships and rituals. Discourse then, everything that goes into speaking hierarchy, “can be both an instrument and an effect of power” because, according to Foucault, “discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart.”“” All identities then, are shaped by discourse and systems of power. In order to gain better insight to how hierarchy was believed to function for Byzantine theologians, it is helpful to consider how hierarchy produces identity and in so doing what it restrains and how it is itself restrained. Foucault conceives of power not only as an external imposition upon someone, but more significantly as an internal regulation through normative and repetitive social constructions.
More explicitly, power is the ability to shape a “body” and control the construction of reality and available knowledge.** It is worth considering then, how and if hierarchy fits in this paradigm of power from within a constructed system and shapes the “Body” of Christ. There is also the Foucauldian contribution that power is a relation that requires a free alternative and option to act otherwise. This is provocative in the case of commonly characterized systems of domination and subordination such as hierarchy.
In the Orthodox tradition of identifying humility, suffering, and obedience with holiness, emphasizing voluntary action with an alternative to act otherwise as a requisite aspect of ecclesiastical power relations offers a protection against the spiritualization of abuse.” Moreover, Foucault asserts that power is only known through comparison to other power. This may prove an integral starting point as the Byzantine authors craft authentic ecclesial power as divine. Lastly, Foucault has a brief consideration about the unique shape and interests of “pastoral power,” which he acknowledges to be distinct from sovereign or political power. This domain of power may serve as a reference point for distinguishing the hierarchic conception of power by the Byzantines in contrast to other categories of power.”?
Judith Butler (1956-), the American philosopher and gender theorist, conceives of power as a generating force, but occasionally engages it as repressive and constraining as well. Butler’s focus on the performance of identity is worth considering alongside the liturgical building of the hierarchical subject. Additionally important for our interpretation is evaluating how power shapes both the normative and the subversive identities available for people to perform. For Butler, “one is paradoxically both subject to the Power of the . . . cultural norms that constrain and compel one’s performance of gender and simultaneously enabled to take up the position of a subject in and through them.” When this insight is considered in terms of hierarchical identity, it prompts an assessment of how the Christian subject is formed.” Butler’s conception of power is distinctively tied to her notion of the performativity of identity.
Our emphasis on the liturgical production of hierarchy indicates an agreement with Butler: Social reality is not a given but is continually created as an illusion “through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign.”** By embodying and reenacting these constructions we make them appear “natural” and a necessary part of existence.” Butler thus poses for us the challenge of the constructedness of hierarchy as the normative (and indeed necessary!) Christian organization. The concept of performativity is intended to reveal hegemonic conceptions of identity as fictions (but they are not “fictive” in the religious mind of Byzantine theologians, and Butler might assert this is precisely because they are products of them).
This poses a significant challenge to our Byzantine authors who seemingly cannot imagine the Christian body otherwise “performed.” What can be entertained and is supported by our Byzantine authors, however, is that the fictive human identity created by humans is often unfortunately distinct from the divinely given immovable identity of the human to be realized in divine participation and perfection.” Butler reiterates that compulsively enacting socially prescribed forms, as a way of demonstrating conformity to gender ideals, trains the body to become sexually legible.” This claim may be helpful in examining how Christians must train their ecclesial Body to be legible in terms of divine likeness, and how individuals train and conform liturgically to perform divine archetypes through hierarchical participation.
Byzantine and Orthodox conceptions and productions of power in light of the insights mentioned above reveal a fundamental assumption about power that allows greater flexibility in how the theologian maneuvers and constructs hierarchy practically and theologically. As I will suggest in subsequent chapters, the implicit position assumed by Dionysius, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas is fundamentally distinct from that of the modern theorists and yet compellingly illumined by them. According to these Byzantine theologians, power originates and proceeds from God alone. All power, to the extent that any power is real, is divine. Any human power is only a participation in divine power. Perhaps this is unsurprising and can be said of many divine qualities such as goodness or being. These authors’ hierarchical maneuvering and theorization attest that wherever divinely reflective and participative selfemptying is acknowledged, there also is a manifestation of power. One only has power (and here I do mean power, not just authority) to the extent one gives power away.
‘The generalized idealization of hierarchy (for which Dionysius is critiqued by at least one notable Orthodox historian) as that which communicates divinity, however, is perplexing in practice when one considers the many historical abuses of power from within ecclesiastical hierarchies. Regardless of the historically and socially imbedded factors subtly shaping the hierarchical model of ecclesiastical administration as the model of church organization, Byzantines did interact with hierarchy as a religious ideal in such a way as to produce and perpetuate it as the source of accessing divine power within the Orthodox ecclesiastical community.*° The hierarchical discontinuities between ideology and practice are paradoxically complicated and ameliorated when hierarchy is constructed as the only means of mediating divine power.”
The power of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is imbedded within the relations between God and all the heavenly hosts, and the lay and clerical human participants constituting the church. Consequently, remaking and disciplining of the Body of Christ in conformity with the divine archetype is constantly taking place to conform to the “normative” expectation and implicit assumptions of how the christological “body” looks and functions. Although we cannot retrieve some pure “Byzantine Hierarchy” instantiated as a historical reality, we do find within the Orthodox traditions of praxis and theology refractions of attempts to maintain and reinforce the ideal of hierarchy as divinely communicative of divine power, and the means of transforming oneself by this power.” This will hopefully become clear in the coming chapters.
Orthodox power, as reflected in the hierarchy, is complex in its manifestation of strength and freedom. It is confounding to human conceptions of power, and simultaneously recognizable as authentic due to its divine similitude. Because power is conceived of in this way by various Byzantine theologians, hierarchy becomes the means of accessing and resolving the paradox of attaining and administering power in a way that further shapes one in and communicates to the world divine likeness.
Ultimately, ecclesiastical hierarchy mediates, produces, and ascribes power to its participants in a way that is believed to be uniquely communicative of, and conducive to, divine similitude. Byzantine Christian theorization, maintenance, and justification of hierarchy is constructed and reinforced by Dionysius, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas as that which is suited to mediate the paradox of God’s infinitely sovereign and infinitely self-giving power in the finite world.“!
The Present Work
‘The primary argument in the following chapters is that Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy as developed and reflected by Byzantine theologians is most fundamentally and consistently rendered as the communication of divinity. The historical, rhetorical, and theological moves that Dionysius, Maximus, Stethatos, and Cabasilas make to realize this conception of hierarchy in both pastoral and liturgical praxis are shaped by the funda-mental assumption that true power comes from God alone. Additionally, these authors evidence and rely on the belief that power’s authoritative execution and legitimate presence should reveal divine likeness.
Thus, they configure hierarchy as the uniquely suited and divinely given means of mediating and producing divine power on earth. This configuration betrays theological ideals of hierarchy and power that have great relevance for contemporary Orthodox Christian conversations engaging the exclusive, inclusive, and power-based challenges of hierarchy.
The thematic approach of this book warrants that each Byzantine author’s hierarchical ideal be considered in light of the particularity of the ritual referents and negotiation of the ideal in practice. This mirrors the emphases found in Dionysius’s thought, where the significance of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is primarily found through reference to liturgical rites and in his maintenance of the hierarchy’s structure and function in seemingly problematic instances of practical application.®’ These aspects of hierarchy more fully reveal the specifically ecclesiastical aspect of hierarchy’s importance for Dionysius, and as such are used as comparable characteristics between the hierarchic ideologies of the other authors under discussion.
That is not to say that the Dionysian or other authors’ hierarchic visions as a whole are not considered, only that their evaluations are prioritized to shed light on understanding hierarchy in the ecclesiastical and applied settings specifically. By examining not only what the Byzantine authors say abstractly or theoretically about hierarchy, but also closely attending to the situation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in liturgical contexts and in instances of both textual and historical tension, I offer a portrait of each author's hierarchic vision, its lines of uniqueness, and its parallels of continuity. Additionally, as each author has his own particular context, motives, and sources for writing, where appropriate I provide historical and intellectual background for analysis in order to construct as compelling and accurate an argument as possible.
I outline the religious conflicts, liturgical setting, major influences, and social hierarchical ideals present in each author’s historical context at the onset of each Byzantine chapter as backgrounds influencing each author’s textual expression and my own interpretation of it. I situate primary texts historically (however, with an unabashed interest in their relevance for the present) to understand what they may have signified to their historical audiences. Following the four chronological chapter studies of Byzantine hierarchical engagements, I offer a cumulative reflection on the theoretical starting points and implications of power reflected by the hierarchical theology developed by the Byzantines.
This reading of power is intentionally challenged and illumined by several insights of modern power theorists in order that a more robust theory of Orthodox power in its particular features may become clear. Additionally, the Byzantine theological outline of Orthodox power I offer poses several challenges to contemporary interpretations of power in both secular and religious studies. It is through this broad and critical reconsideration of what is meant by “hierarchy” and “power” that I present an otherwise obscured yet already present aspect of the Orthodox theological tradition available for contemporary application.
In sum, with a greater understanding for how the category of hierarchy was theorized, ritually realized, and negotiated in practice during the Byzantine period, we gain a much stronger sense of how premodern Orthodox Christians balanced their ideals with their realities. With so many historical institutional abuses, power struggles, failures of mediation and leadership, and potential for inferring ontological orders of personal value, it is important to address why and how various authors maintained hierarchy as the essential paradigm for Orthodox Christian leadership, spiritual advancement, and ritual participation.
A more nuanced interpretation of hierarchy’s historically attested theological significance and negotiation is important for understanding the persistence of hierarchy in both past and present Christian communities. Understanding the theorization of power behind these hierarchical conceptualizations and maneuverings may help forge new paths of thinking about the challenges and problems associated with Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy and the application of power amidst religious communities.
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