Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? Chapters in Theological Anthropology East and West

CAN THEOSIS SAVE “HUMAN DIGNITY”? CHAPTERS IN THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY EAST AND WEST

Alfons Brüning

The Context: Turning to the Fathers about Human Dignity

This special issue of the Journal of Eastern Christian Studies gathers a series of articles devoted to the theological anthropology of the Eastern Christian Orthodox tradition. Speaking of “theological anthropology” implies that the main theme, and the focus of the articles included in the volume, is of a theoretical and partly normative character. The guiding perspective of the contributions, at the same time, is in their connection with another normative anthropological term widely discussed in our days, that of human dignity. This connection provides the interdisciplinary character of the volume. It engages patristic studies, theology, but also philosophy, theory of law and social and political sciences. There is a common focus. It might be said that the considerations in this volume start from the fact, inherent in our language, that frequently and in various contexts the expression “human being” is a nomen dignitatis, i.e. a term endowed with a normative meaning.1 Human dignity, basically in its function as a cornerstone for the modern concept of human rights, in modern times has become a problematic term for many of the aforementioned disciplines. Debates have always centered around the question of a both appropriate and consensual theoretical foundation and definition of the term, be it in a theological or secular philosophical perspective. The problem is far from being solved. In what follows, therefore, the guiding question is, what can the theological tradition of the Christian East possibly contribute to this debate about the definition and the actual content of

1 To hint at this semantic implication appears to be a certain commonplace in theological treatises, cf. Gerd Haffner, s. v. ‘Mensch. I. Philosophisch’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 7 (Freiburg, 1998/2006), col. 104-107, here col. 104: Johannes Fischer, ‘Human Dignity and Human Rights,’ Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik, 58 (2014), pp. 40-50, here p. 40. 178 Alfons Brüning

“something like human dignity”?2 For several reasons, possible answers cannot but engage the contribution of the Christian East. As we are about to see, normative anthropology actually has always done so; there is not so much a need to rediscover the particular heritage of the ancient Fathers as to reconsider the role it has played in different epochs of intellectual history. Recently, West- ern theologians also have spoken again about the need to evaluate the Hebrew, Greek and Patristic heritage to the advantage of a better understanding of human dignity as one of the main challenges still to be met in our times.3 Eastern Christianity in more recent decades, and especially after the downfall of the former Iron Curtain, appeared on the scene as a relatively new participant in the ongoing debates about the actual meaning and content of “human dignity”. The Eastern Christians have a specific tradition to refer to, including the role of Patristic sources. Yet, Orthodoxy is an ambivalent participant in such debates about human dignity, being at the same time Christian and non-Western. It is a voice that enriches but cannot always be harmoniously integrated into the complex melodies of an already existing concert. Nevertheless, there is reason to presume that the Christian East actually does have important things to say and to contribute, given the current state of the debate. Taking this as a hypothesis, the purpose of this introduction is to give an outline of the main themes of this current debate, to hint at those points where an appropriation of the Eastern tradition could meet productively with trends developed otherwise, and even help to generate some progress in ongoing discussions. To integrate the voice of the Christian East is not merely an act of good-will out of a need for diplomatic compromise, somehow dic- tated by recent geo-political developments – the need to somehow harmonize the concept of human dignity and rights with another, now non-Western, often exotic and sometimes bulky participant by means of compromise and concessions. Rather it deserves to be demonstrated, in whatever hasty sketches,

2 The articles in this volume originated as paper presented at a conference devoted to the issue of “Human Dignity and Patristic Tradition”, held at Nijmegen University, The Netherlands, in October 2014, with participants from the Netherlands, Germany, Romania and Russia, and with different confessional backgrounds. Some other contributions to the meeting have been published elsewhere. 3 Robert P. Kraynak, ‘Defending Human Dignity: the Challenge of Our Times,’ introductory chapter in In Defense of Human Dignity: Essays for Our Times, eds. Robert P. Kraynak and Glenn Tinder (Notre Dame, 2003), p. 1. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 179 that there actually are concrete points and themes in what had elsewhere been called “human rights talk” which can clearly profit from an integration of the Eastern Christian heritage – despite all difficulties such an operation would bring with it. The following outline does not, of course, exhaust the subject, but might indicate reference points for further research. As a Christian denomination, Eastern Orthodoxy, like Western Christian- ity, grounds its understanding of the human being on the Biblical reference according to which all human beings are created “after God’s image and likeness” (Gen 1:26). However, the conclusions drawn from this have often seemed different from, or even opposite to, Western concepts of the human, especially when it comes to the subsequent emergence of a human rights debate among Orthodox theologians. In this respect theological anthropology appears to be one of the most controversial issues. A stereotype still prevailing is that the West had developed the ideal of all human beings being equal, with dignity and rights belonging to every single individual, whereas the Christian East denounced the shortcomings of concepts of the isolated individual and its rights. In response, Orthodoxy had developed concepts of personhood, which – in, for the time being, rather generalizing terms – overtly refuse to see the human being as an isolated individual but as being defined or even substantially constituted by his or her relations to both God and neighbor, and as being part of a community, from where would flow his or her dignity as well as his or her duties. Personhood, therefore, became something like the classical label for Orthodox theological anthropology, including claims of superiority in relation to Western individualism. This also affects the debates concerning human dignity. Orthodox personalism is incomprehensible without reference to the Fathers. For the Orthodox the Patristic heritage had always been the main theological source of inspiration. This view had been reinforced in connection with the famous “neo-patristic renaissance” of the 20th century, initiated first and foremost by Russian theologians such as Georgii Florovskii and Vladimir Losskii. In particular, the Church Fathers’ teachings on the Trinity and on Christology, next to the notion of “deification” (theosis) of the human being, prominently informed Orthodox concepts of personhood.4 Adopting

4 For a summary cf. e.g. Nonna Verna Harrison, ‘The Human Person as Image and Likeness of God,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, eds. Mary 180 Alfons Brüning the Patristic heritage, however, has not led to homogenous and commonly shared concepts of man, but actually generated a variety of results concerning an understanding of the human person among contemporary Orthodox thinkers. Also from outside there are apparently contradictory notions: The Orthodox understanding of the human person, based on Patristic references, has been characterized by some observers as a major obstacle with respect to human dignity and rights, whereas other experts have been inclined to see this same heritage as prevalently in favor of the latter.5 Some theologians during the second half of the 20th century positioned themselves expressly in dissociation from Western thinking and from – allegedly also purely Western – discourses on human dignity and rights. Others came up with a personalist anthropology that, if adopted, would possibly require restrictions and cor- rections within the established catalogue of human rights, but they did not see themselves in complete opposition. More recent are attempts to reconcile Orthodox personalist thinking with human rights discourses and to embrace personalist concepts precisely in support of human dignity and rights.6 Part of the problem, moreover, is that the Patristic heritage that is being engaged in modern Orthodox conceptions of personhood is in itself hardly homogenous. Stating this implies a critical view of the famous “neo-patristic renaissance”, which appears to have seen the peak of its influence. Florovskii in particular pleaded for a renovation of Orthodox theology in the name of what he identified as “the spirit of the fathers”. But the very supposition that

B. Cunningham and Elisabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 78-92; Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers Grove, IL, 2013), pp. 89-91. 5 Two examples: Very skeptical concerning a productive role of Orthodox theology with regard to human dignity is Adamantia Pollis, ‘Eastern Orthodoxy and Human Rights,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 15 (1993), pp. 339-356. Pollis in particular refers to Orthodox concepts of the person as opposed to individualism, rather dissolving the single human being into larger communities as the church, and therefore hardly fitting into the established human rights agenda (cf. ibid., 341-345); mainly positive, in contrast, is Emmanuel Clapsis, ‘Human Rights and the Orthodox Church in a Global World,’ Θεολογια, 2 (2016), pp. 113-129. 6 For a comparative overview and evaluation, cf. Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Orthodox Per- sonalism. In Favor of or Against Human Rights?’ in Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights in Europe. A Dialogue Between Theological Paradigms and Socio-Legal Pragmatics, eds. Elisabeth Diamantopoulou and Louis-Léon Christians (Frankfurt/M., 2018), pp. 239-272; Aristotle Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN, 2012), pp. 98-114. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 181 there would have been something like this allegedly homogenous “spirit of the fathers”, which Florovskii thought he could distinguish behind all variety of sources and positions, has been contested among more contemporary scholars.7 Concerning human rights, this renovation of Orthodox theology for Florovskii himself would probably have generated affirmative rather than critical results. On those occasions where he felt urged to express his opinions, these came down to rather far-going support for human rights ideas.8 However, Florovskii often made it clear that he did not see himself as a lawyer or social theorist, and his personalism remained within the confines of theological reasoning. A range of his followers in the perspective of the “neo-patristic renaissance” was much less positive about “Western” human rights and often distilled general anti-Western strands from his works. For theologians such as John Romanides or Christos Yannaras, both seeing themselves as followers of Florovskii’s paradigm of “neo-patristics” and of “sacred Hellenism”, it was only one further step also to criticize human rights in general as part and expression of a misguided Western development.9 There are obvious reasons for such diversity. Engaging patristic heritage for current discussions certainly means that there is always a gap to be bridged, be it simply that of time and different historical context. The very process of adopting even particular anthropological sets in patristic sources always includes an interpretation. This is, in methodological terms, a problem of hermeneutics. What were the specific questions that might have guided someone returning to the Fathers? At the beginning of every such effort, however, stand the contextual and semantic differences between Late Antiquity and modern conditions.10 That this can – and actually does –

7 The most thorough contextualization has been offered by Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford, 2013); Cf. also Brandon Gallaher, ‘“Waiting for the Barbarians”: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky,’ Modern Theology, 27 (2011), pp. 659-691; Philip Dorroll, ‘Scripture and Dissent: Engaging with the Neo-Patristic Paradigm of Modern Orthodox Theology,’ International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 4 (2013), pp. 133-160; John Behr, ‘Passing Beyond the Neo-Patristic Synthesis,’ on https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/passing- beyond-the-neo-patristic-synthesis/. 8 Cf. the article of Nicholas Sooy in this volume. 9 Cf. Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), pp. 87-98. 10 Cf. for example Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘The Hermeneutical and Existential Contextu- ality of Orthodox Theologies of Personhood,’ in Can Orthodox Theology be Contextual? 182 Alfons Brüning result in differing anthropological concepts allegedly all derived “from the sources” is a fact to be coped with.

Ad fontes – An Exercise in Conceptual History

But why would just the consideration of Patristic sources contribute to notions of personhood, and what general ideas about “something like human dignity” might be taken from there? Besides all hermeneutical conditioning, and beyond an alleged “spirit of the Fathers”, the way back to the Fathers so far has been taken only sporadically – certainly so in connection with debates about human dignity. Comparatively few studies exist, which try soberly and systematically to investigate Patristic heritage for possible contributions to the modern image of humans in connection with human dignity and rights.11 Those studies available sometimes cannot escape a certain eclecticism guided by the need to find support for modern ideas in ancient sources. Of course, every movement back ad fontes is necessarily inspired by contemporary needs and questions. There is the temptation of quick findings, overlooking the complexities inherent in those sources themselves. The essays in this volume try to combine a focus inspired by modern debates concerning human dignity with efforts to let the Patristic sources speak for themselves. As can be anticipated here, the most obvious answer to the question of what (Chris- tian) authors of Late Antiquity would have contributed to a modern debate on human dignity is probably — very little. Only on a second look, it can be fairly much. Sure, the term “dignity” itself has its linguistic roots in the Latin dignitas (with a synonym in the Greek axioma), but the necessary exercise in conceptual

Concrete Approaches from the Orthodox Tradition, eds. Assaad E. Kattan and Radu Preda, Special Issue, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 69 (2017), pp. 51-67. 11 Cf. God and Human Dignity, eds. R. Kendall Soulen and Linda Woodhead (Cambridge et al., 2006), Introduction: ‘Contextualizing Human Dignity,’ esp. pp. 3-8; Vladan Perišić, ‘Interpretation of Human Rights in the Light of the Church Fathers,’ CEC, Church and Society Commisson, on http://www.ceceurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/HRTM_ Interpretation_of_Human_Rights.pdf; a more recent systematic study is Ulrich Volp: Die Würde des Menschen. Ein Beitrag zur Anthropologie der Alten Kirche (Leiden, 2006). Volp presents a thorough and erudite evaluation of key authors, while – curiously – some of the terms which would otherwise become central, like “deification” (theosis) or “personhood” are not explicitly treated. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 183 history (Begriffsgeschichte) soon makes it clear that the use of this term in Greco-Roman context had little in common with modern perceptions.12 As the context of application is quite different, one would look in vain for a systematic use of the term in the sense of any definition, descriptive or normative, of human nature, let alone in an egalitarian sense. The term belonged to the same semantic field as, for example, auctoritas, honor or gratia, and mainly denoted a quality distinguishing higher social ranks and members of noble and illustrious families. Dignitas pertained to higher offices in the Greco-Roman socio-political system, like senators, governors or generals, but in the larger sense of a noblesse oblige could be claimed, but also had to be fostered by members of the elite. In this latter sense, dignitas was the fruit of a sophisticated education and of certain virtues like mod- eration, self-control and politeness. Authors like Cicero and later Stoic writers usually operated with an understanding of dignitas as an outward sign of rank and nobility, on the one hand, and with an inward dimension as something to be achieved by the application of virtue, on the other. But the somewhat logical next step, that dignity then would be available for every human being capable of the described virtues – together with the complete semantic move from an outward towards an inward dignity – was never fully taken.13 Generalizing statements about the exceptional role of the human being in nature or cosmos remained rather sporadic. Certainly already Cicero had an idea about humans’ elevated position within nature, and about humans’ distinctiveness from the animals thanks to reason, language and achievements in music, poetry and art.14 There even was also the idea, in the tradition of Plato and the Stoa, that humans were supposed to become “like God” (or “like gods”, often without further elaborated concepts of the divine) through virtue and self-perfection. However, again, the combination of these two strains did not lead to egalitarian concepts of “every human

12 See for the following Viktor Pöschl, s.v. ‘Würde. I. Antike, Rom,’ in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 7 (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 638-645. We restrict ourselves to a first overview concerning use and context of semantic predecessors of “dignity”, although there might be reasons to broaden the field of investigations to more general notions concerning human nature, soteriology, humans and creation etc. Cf. the methodological remarks in Volp, Die Würde des Menschen (see n. 11), pp. 10-12. 13 Ibid., p. 642. Some nuances to this statement can be found in Petr Mikhaylov’s article in this volume. 14 Ibid., p. 642f. Cf. Cicero, De officiis 1, 105-106. 184 Alfons Brüning being”, and dignitas largely remained an ambition and a privileged claim for an elite.15 Early Christian authors adopted this ambiguous heritage, combined it with – at first sight rather scarce – Biblical references and transformed it into various patterns of Early Christian teaching. Still, in Patristic literature, we find preserved the whole array of dignity (dignitas, axioma) characterizing exceptional positions, ranks and personalities, or being the outward sign of virtue and a dignified life. The Church Fathers continued to speak of the special dignity of particular ranks (priests, bishops)16 or the exceptional dignity of martyrs.17 Early Christian hagiography used terms such as dignitas or gra vitas in the well-known sense of applied virtue and good character.18 In this sense, Augustine would speak of “righteousness and a good attitude, this true dignity of the human race”19 (which, as several other of Augustine’s remarks indicate, already include some decisive steps forward). Generally, the new main themes to be integrated were the triune God and salvation history. Three subthemes could be distinguished, which all applied the idea of God as the creator: His work of creation and the fashioning of humankind as a whole; the new sphere of the Church and God’s work of salvation and new creation in Christ; and finally God’s consummation as the eschatological goal of creation.20 The combination of, as it were, two Biblical universalisms, according to which the human had first been created “after God’s image” (Gen 1:26) on the one hand, and then, after Adam’s fall, Christ’s restoration such that, there is, according to Paul, “… neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. For ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3: 28; cf. Col 3: 11), on the other, seems to have achieved its basic contours rather early, as can be observed in Justin Martyr already in the 2nd century. The God-created human through Adam’s fall had lost his or her initial splendor expressed in the formula “after the

15 Pöschl (see n. 11), p. 643. See also Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), Introduction: ‘Contextualizing Human Dignity,’ p. 3. 16 Cyprian of Carthago, Vita Caecillii Cypriani, 3; later John Chrysostom, De sacerdotio, III, ch. V. 17 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, XXI, 130. 18 Cyprian of Carthago, Vita Caecillii Cypriani, 6; id., letters, no. 38, chapter 1. 19 Augustine, De civitate Dei 5,17. 20 Cf. Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), p. 3. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 185 image”, and only through God’s becoming human had this divine image within the human been restored and had become accessible again for the entire human race.21 But there were still problems to be solved in detail that the Platonic and Stoic heritage, among others, had left. The narrow link between the secular and the divine sphere implicit in, for example, Stoic views that humans would ontologically partake in the divine, seemed unsus- tainable to the Christian authors of the Alexandrian school, for example (with a Gnostic background perhaps still exerting some influence here and there). Its members would therefore insist on the deep difference, the ontological gap between the two spheres, to be surmounted not by human efforts but only by divine grace. This resulted, as also Petr Mikhaylov’s essay demonstrates, first in a vision of the divine-human relation as constitutive for the human being, and second in the idea of theosis (usually rendered as “deification” in English), i.e. the idea of the human becoming – or supposed to become – god-like, and similar to the Creator. By this, the relation between the Creator and the image, not the act of creation, is constitutive for an appropriate understanding of human nature. Another consequence is that a strong accent on the significance of a moral life is frequently present in the writings of these Greek fathers. Deification is a matter of a life according to God’s law, of love and virtue. In this respect, the fathers’ anthropology and their understanding of dignity retain their ancient connection with virtue, but also with gravitas, auctoritas and distinguishing qualities of the same kind. But their anthropology goes beyond mere moral admonishing. A “theology of the image” at this point received the initial sketches of its future complexity22 when several authors depicted the human soul almost stereo- typically as a mirror that in the ideal case of a turn to God and a virtuous life would reflect the light and splendor of the divine Creator.23 The mirror is the metaphor to express the moral implications of a “theology of the image” at its early stage.

21 Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone, 124, 4. 22 Biblical roots of such a “theology of the image” in Pauline writings are explored by Volp, Die Würde des Menschen (see n. 11), pp. 88-98. It needs perhaps to be emphasized that the notion of “theology of the image” is, strictly speaking, anachronistic, as no one of the Fathers themselves would have used this term explicitly as a particular discipline. Thinking about the human was nothing else except thinking about the “image of God”. 23 See Petr Mikhaylov’s article in this volume. 186 Alfons Brüning

Beyond all variations that would engage the imago Dei pattern in either conceptual or merely metaphoric ways, “theology of the image” from the beginning is closely connected with the idea of theosis. Athanasius of Alexandria’s famous sayings on theosis, according to which humans had become “partakers of the Divine”, and “he [the divine logos] became human, so that man can become God”, is a concise summary of this intellectual development.24 Later Church Fathers went on to praise, as Platonic or Stoic tradition had already done sporadically, the general dignity of every member of the human race, which God had provided with reason and placed above all other crea- tures to reign over them and endowed with “royal dignity”.25 They still often combined this with the illustration of a mirror that would reflect God’s splendor and light, as does for example Gregory of Nyssa.26 Gregory would also add another important nuance to a “theology of the image”, which would later culminate in the apophatic approach to the divine, connected with the name of Pseudo-Dionysios and others – that God remains ultimately inaccessible to human concepts and terms. That would also mean that, as the human is created truly “after the image” of the divine Creator, and a true image is supposed to resemble the original as far as possible, the human being (the nature of the human mind, in Gregory’s terms) equally holds an ultimate mystery and escapes narrow definitions.27 Next to an “apophatic theology” there was an “apophatic anthropology”. There is yet little evidence up to now that would allow to say how far this impulse had remained a single one or was received by other ancient authors. Perhaps only modern circumstances made this thought more relevant. At any rate, for an understanding of human dignity all this implies, in more or less expressive terms, that ultimately God himself is the actual bearer

24 Athanasius, De incarnatione verbi, esp. 54. 25 Lactantius’ argument, that God the creator had created humans weak, without weapons or defense, but endowed them with reason so that they can acquire everything necessary to rise above all animals, in some sense anticipates a way of thinking later elaborated by Renaissance authors such as Pico, cf. Lactantius, De opificio Dei, chapters II-IV. 26 Best known is probably Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis, chapters 4 and 8; see also Leo the Great, sermo XII, 1,1; sermo LXXVII 3,2; cf. Pöschl (see n. 11), pp. 644f.; further examples (Lactantius, Theopilus of Antioch etc.) from the period before are given by Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), pp. 3f. 27 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis, 11. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 187 and source of all dignity in whatever understanding and human dignity would derive from Him. On the further path towards an actual “theology of the image”, especially concerning the dynamic implications, there would emerge another unresolved problem inherited from “pagan” philosophy, namely that of man’s goal of, but also capacity for, self-perfection – of becoming “god-like”. Several of the ancient Church Fathers, up to the well-known intellectual struggle of Augus- tine, spent much effort to come to terms with this widespread ancient pattern of man capable of self-perfection or, as might be said, self-salvation. That man could achieve perfection, or deification, or salvation through his own efforts, as elements in Platonic and Stoic teaching would have suggested, seemed contestable at least already to the early Christian authors. This can be seen in their conceptions of the nature of man as a creature dependent on the Creator, the obvious damage of sin and Adam’s fall, and salvation through the incarnate logos. Deification had to be re-conceived within this context. As a consequence, the concept of theosis forced further differentia- tions within a “theology of the image”. The early Church fathers in both East and West had taken rather seriously the full sentence, consisting of two parts, of Gen. 1: 26, according to which God had created man “in Our image, after Our likeness”. Not all of them did, to be accurate – the fact that some even of the more influential fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa apparently did not apply or extrapolate this distinction,28 testifies to the variety of possible “theologies of the image” present in the first centuries. There were some common guidelines, nonetheless. Where the distinction between image and likeness worked, it significantly contributed to a dynamic understanding of the human. We probably first come across this distinction in Clement of Alexandria’s writings.29 Around the same period, we find in treatises of Irenaeus of Lyons further elaboration of the clear distinction between the dimension of “image”, on the one hand, which is basically static, unconditional and irreversible, and the dimension of “likeness”, on the other hand, which is understood dynamically and denotes the destiny and sense of human life and a goal still to be achieved in it. Nonetheless, both “image”

28 Cf., also for the following, Norman Russell, Fellow Workers with God. Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood, NY, 2009), esp. chapter 3, ‘Image and Likeness’, pp. 73-92. 29 Cf. Petr Mikhaylov’s article in this volume. 188 Alfons Brüning and “likeness” need God’s grace. Already in Irenaeus’ account the significance of Christ’s salvation work is crucial, as it restores both image (inherent in man since creation, but invisible) and likeness (never to be achieved except through God himself becoming man).30 Even a certain optimism concerning the prospective self-perfection or deification now possible for the human being in Irenaeus ultimately results in praise of the Creator.31 It is both the distinction of “image” and “likeness” and the decisive role played by divine grace that Irenaeus would pass, among others, to Augustine. Still more than two centuries later, the bishop of Hippo felt urged to struggle against an image of the human being that would already by nature be uncorrupted, positive and capable of achieving self-perfection (or “likeness” respectively) out of his or her own efforts. Augustine’s writings, which have often been claimed as a particular heritage of Western, Latin Christianity, with his particular Trinitarian theology and anthropology, are in fact still largely related to the entire sphere of Greco-Roman culture, that only after his time began to disintegrate.32 Augustine did not differ so much from some of his Greek contemporaries when he left an ambiguous concept of dignity as his main legacy.33 His controversies with Pelagius and his adherents, mainly fought through an uncompromising insistence on the crucial significance of divine grace, has been described as another step in overcoming ancient philosophy and anthropology, with its elitist claims to independent self-perfection.34 The argument was not finished entirely even after the death

30 Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, III, 23, 1-8; V, 16, 1-3; cf. Thomas G. Weinandy, ‘St Irenaeus and the Imago Dei: The Importance of Being Human,’ Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 6 (2003), pp. 15-34; Peter Schwanz, Imago Dei als christologisch-anthropologisches Problem in der Geschichte der Alten Kirche von Paulus bis Clemens von Alexandrien (Halle/Saale, 1970), esp. 117-143 (erudite, but critical evaluation from a Protestant point of view); Ian Hislop O.P., ‘The Image of God in Man According to St Irenaeus,’ New Blackfriars, 3 (1946), pp. 69-75; Volp, Die Würde des Menschen (see n. 11), pp. 119-124. 31 Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, IV, 38, 1-3. 32 On the Augustinian creative transformation of the ancient Roman “texture of values” towards a more general notion of human dignity cf. Volp, Die Würde des Menschen (see n. 11), pp. 229-240. 33 Cf. the article by Matthias Smalbrugge in this volume, on the ambiguities still remaining in Augustine’s otherwise innovative approach. 34 Cf. Charles Pietri, part 1, chapter 4 in Die Geschichte des Christentums, vol. 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1996), pp. 525-551; Robert A. Markus, ‘“Imago” and “Similitudo” in Augustine,’ Revue des Études Augustiniennes, 10 (1964), pp. 125-143. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 189 of the protagonists, and repercussions reached beyond the confines of the Greco-Roman and later Byzantine and Latin hemisphere. So, when Isaac the Syrian (Isaac of Nineveh) in the 7th century spoke of God’s love not for, or according to, human deeds but for human nature unconditionally, this meant consciously refusing to operate with the distinction between “image” and “likeness”. Isaac’s basically positive, optimistic assertions concerning human nature in general can be read as a remote echo of earlier debates vacillating between virtue and grace as constitutive for the human being. They are not limited to Isaac alone but have some similarities, for example, in Maximus Confessor.35 Whatever the new or old dignity would be based on, Christian universalism still had its limits by just being Christian. Augustine apparently rejected an ethos of self-perfection by virtue and insight first and foremost as inap- propriate for members of the Christian Church, which he did not want to see turning into an elitist, in fact sectarian circle of a few who considered themselves particularly advanced in wisdom and moral virtues. So his insistence on divine grace also can be read as a step towards universalism, but this universalism is still that of the Church. The Church, not humanity as such, generally was the coordinate system relevant for the Church Father’s reflections on human nature and destiny. Also, St Paul’s above-mentioned exclamation about ancient categories of nation, sex or social status being now irrelevant ultimately pertained to all humans called to faith in Christ. So, too, did Tertullian’s phrase about “the soul being naturally Christian” (anima natu- raliter Christiana).36 Tertullian on another occasion also pointed to the dis- order, the lack of dignitas and auctoritas that appeared to be a sign of heretics and their communities.37 Opposite to this, John Chrysostom in his homilies takes up Paul’s saying when he speaks of the “nobility of faith” that is now open to everyone, to Greeks and barbarians, strangers and citizens, male and female.38 In the early 5th century, authors address the particular dignity of

35 Cf. Dmitrii Bumazhnov’s article in this volume. Isaac generally did not operate with any imago Dei concept. “Human race” or “humanity” might be another possible translation for his term “human nature”. 36 Norbert Brox, ‘“Non Ulla Gens Non Christiana” (Zu Tertullian, Ad Nat. 1, 8, 9 f.),’ Vigilae Christianae, 27 (1973), pp. 46-49. 37 Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, 41. 38 Cf. Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity, Introduction (see n. 11), p. 5. 190 Alfons Brüning the Holy Church and all its members, which – according, for instance, to Leo the Great – would have taken the place of Israel, the former chosen people.39 Augustine calls the Romans to join the Church and leave behind their ancient customs and outdated beliefs: “Incomparably more glorious than Rome, is that heavenly city in which for victory you have truth; for dignity – holiness; for peace – felicity; for life – eternity.”40 His “dignity” is never unambiguous. In many of the early Christian authors and especially in Augustine’s writings the ambiguity between the universal nobility of Christianity, and the threat to fail in emulating the true divine image, Christ, is always felt.41 At any rate, it seems that a majority among the patristic authors is only marginally interested in exploring the nature of the human being in its own right and outside the general narrative of creation, salvation and eschatological perspective. Exceptions either follow the examples of Late Roman and Greek philosophy, as in the already mentioned case of Gregory of Nyssa and his attribution of “royal dignity” to mankind in general,42 or they take their starting point from charity and the Gospel’s commandment to care for the needy, the poor, the weak and the suffering. Especially the Cappadocian fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries – be it as bishops, be it as writers – seem to have fostered a generalizing view on all humans even beyond the confinements of the Chris- tian narrative, when they called their flock to exert mercy on those troubled by hunger and poverty. Although neither a notion of dignity comparable to those applied in modernity, nor notions of individual rights seem to shine through these texts, they betray a certain further step towards a generalizing, egalitarian idea of the human being, outside the limits of a particular Chris- tian story of salvation. Consequently, these texts in modern times have often been seen as early predecessors in Christian tradition of contemporary concepts of human rights.43

39 Leo the Great, sermo IV, 3, 1; sermo XXXIII, 3, 3. 40 Augustine, De civitate Dei 2, 29; English after http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/ 120102.htm. 41 Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity, Introduction (see n. 11), pp. 5-8. 42 Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis (see n. 26). 43 Susan R. Holman, The Hungry are Dying. Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford, 2001) with edition of sermons of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great; Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, ed. Susan E. Holman (Boston, 2008); Cheryl Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 191

Summarizing these first explorations, it has to be stated that the Fathers generally did not apply terms of dignity that are directly comparable to “human dignity” in our understanding. Where they speak of the particular role of man in creation and nature, they often do not even use the expression “dignity”, albeit alluding to notions which later centuries would have described in just this and concomitant terms. Dignitas/axioma and their semantic relatives function within a broader semantic field, with a number of interchangeable synonyms – something that indicates a clear difference from the contemporary use of “dignity”, which has rather become a kind of technical and juridical term, at least with much fewer synonyms. Modern “dignity” has largely been deprived of connotations of “honor” and the like, which cannot be said of antique predecessors, despite all semantic shifts and enlargements introduced by the Fathers – an observation opening the path for a variety of further conclusions, or as some say, further problems.44 Furthermore, the use of relevant terms generally moves within a Christian narrative that puts strong emphasis on transcendence, more accurately on God as the creator, the incarnated God surmounting sin and the corruption of human “dignity”, and a development of man and world in eschatological perspective. This is expressed in initial sketches of a “theology of the image”, which – albeit derived from Biblical sources – integrates Stoic and Platonic elements into a dynamic vision of the human. Allusions to morality, often in connection with notions of asceticism, in this context help preserve the ancient connection of dignity with virtue on the one hand, with nobility or honor, on the other. Central elements in this vision are a relational dimension of Creator and creature that is understood as ontologically constitutive, and a differentiation between “image” and “likeness” that leads to the idea of man existing as destined not only for autonomous moral self-perfection,

Brandsen, Paul Vliem, ‘Justice and Human Rights in Fourth Century Cappadocia,’ Social Work & Christianity, 34 (2007), pp. 421-448; from the perspective of Catholic Social teaching see Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics. Issues and Challenges for Twenty-First- Century Christian Social Thought, eds. Johan Leemans, Brian J. Matz and Johan Verstraeten (Washington, 2011). 44 Cf. Peter L. Berger, ‘On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honor,’ in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy, eds. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair McIntyre (Notre Dame, 1983), pp. 172-181. Berger in particular points to unresolved questions of (collective) identity challenged by a mere individualistic and abstract notion of universal dignity. 192 Alfons Brüning but for deification. The balancing of moral demands flowing from this concept on the one hand, and the dependence of all human life and existence on divine grace on the other, forms a main theme throughout Patristic literature and is presented in various ways. One might state both – there is a hint at the exceptional position of the human being in nature, further at the human being not to be appropriately understood without reference to a transcendent dimension, and, at the same time, the significance of both human-divine and inter-human relations (usually derived from the former) and the form they should take. In both perspectives, the Fathers’ concepts, including their understanding of deification, are ultimately theocentric (i.e. mainly related to the triune God). They are also Christocentric in the sense, that the frame of reference of these concepts always remains the Christian Church. Where the Gospel would name two commandments – love of God and love of one’s neighbor (cf. Mt 22:37-40; Mk 12:28-34) as decisive for salvation, Patristic literature with some homogeneity puts the accent on the first of them – whereas modern debates concerning human dignity and rights would, even in a Christian context, shift the focus towards the latter. We will soon have to return to this. On the other hand, there is a variety of solutions in detail and no sound and clear-cut definition of what humans are, and what human dignity might be, or ought to be. For a majority of the Fathers there remains an ultimate mystery about God and the human being. Patristic sources – due to their inner disparity, but also due to a semantic context rather alien to that of modern times – in fact offer quite some inspiration, but certainly not a homogenous concept one could possibly start with in order to define the roots of human dignity in modern understanding. At the other end of the time scale, precisely this is at stake in current debates: roughly speaking, everyone seems to know what “human dignity” means, but no one can define it. It seems to be a paradox similar to that once indicated by Augustine about what time is: “As long as no one asks me, I seem to know it, but once I have to explain it to someone asking, I do not know.”45

45 “...si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio...” – Augustine, Confessiones, 11, 14 (English mine, AB). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 193

Defining Human Dignity: Current Problems and Paradoxes

In modern times, the term “human dignity” is widely acknowledged in its function as the basis and starting point for modern concepts of human rights. At the same time, it has always remained a controversial and contested notion. The striking paradox lies in the ever growing frequency of invocations of the term on the one hand, opposed to the still ongoing uncertainty about its actual content on the other. Apparently, everyone seems to know what human dignity is, and at the same time no one can conclusively define it. Of course, there were always many who tried. Controversies date back to the very beginning of the use of such concepts in modern times, and already then the many conflicting, sometimes mutually exclusive views could only be reconciled temporarily. Without such hard-reached compromises, key texts like the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) of 1948 and consecutive documents would probably never have seen the light of day. The often quoted comment of the French philosopher Jacques Maritain, summarizing both the problem and the pragmatic solution chosen for the time being, has not lost its relevance:

It is related that at one of the meetings of a UNESCO National Commission where Human Rights were being discussed, some expressed astonishment that certain champions of violently opposed ideologies had agreed on a list of those rights. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why.’ That ‘why’ is where the argument begins.46

He later continues, referring to the opposed ideologies:

[…] It remains to be decided which has a true and which a distorted vision of Man.47

About 70 years later, this is still more or less the state of affairs – decision and common agreement have not been reached. Only – an important “only” – the state of controversies has to be summarized differently. If debates

46 Jacques Maritain: Introduction, in Human Rights. Comments and Interpretations. A Sym- posium Edited by UNESCO, (Paris, 1948), p. I. 47 Ibid., p. VIII. 194 Alfons Brüning since then have arrived at any kind of consensus, this consensus lays in a shift of accents, insofar as “human dignity” is no longer a term that waits for definition to be reached in some remote future but instead is just being characterized by its openness for a variety of more concrete philosophical and theological definitions. So meanwhile, by their very nature, human dignity and human rights are, and ought to be, open for (various) foundations (German, for example, uses the qualifying term begründungsoffen). This has consequences for any particular worldview system, religious or secular, and its respective efforts to subscribe to human dignity on grounds of its own anthropological views. On a general scale, this includes a certain pragmatism. Furthermore, it is a secular approach, while applying a kind of secularity that is neither anti-religious nor specifically modern. In just this sense, the entire set of human rights has been characterized as secular.48 Another question is, in which sense this currently prevailing understanding of begründungsoffen can possibly be described as, or at least be related to, an “apophatic anthropology”, as suggested by various modern theologians, partly in reception of Patristic patterns. Also to this we will have to return. Certainly the above-mentioned temporary, or in a certain sense secular compromise does not itself represent a solution to everyone, nor did it stop the debates about “right” or “wrong” perceptions and foundations of “human dignity”. The still prevalent ambiguity of such temporary compromises on the one hand and ongoing disagreements beyond a pragmatic surface on the

48 Without the possibility of discussing this in depth, a remark on the actual character of this kind of secularity seems appropriate or even necessary: Jacques Maritain himself, well aware of the diversity of worldviews, religious belief systems and ideologies that needed to be reconciled, nonetheless believed in what he called a “secular faith”: “Men mutually opposed in their theoretical conceptions can come to a mere practical agreement regarding a list of human rights.” – Cf. Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago, 1952), p. 76. Secularity, therefore, in this context engages religious and non-religious worldviews alike and must not be confused either with anti-religious atheism or with “exclusive humanism” allegedly typical for Western development (as e.g. in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Cam- bridge, Mass., 2007), pp. 130, 221, 259, 412 etc.). As becomes clear also from Maritain’s other quotations provided here, secularity leaves the perspective open for a future growth in agreement also beyond the limits of pragmatic compromises, while establishing (starting with these compromises) a culture of acceptance (or tolerance) of existing differences along with conscious refusal of violence or discrimination. To even name the many examples and theoretical pioneers, in both Eastern and Western cultural history, of this approach, which Maritain was far from having invented, would make this footnote an article of its own. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 195 other, have also affected the further fate of human rights. Currently, as mentioned, there is a general paradox between advancements in implementation and the lack of definition. The unfinished state of affairs is even mirrored in degrees of legal implementation of human rights. While numerous constitu- tions out of the second half of the 20th century and throughout the globe, which each implement the concept of human rights into a national legal system, start off with an invocation of human dignity, a number of others try to avoid such invocation, despite an otherwise similar guideline concerning the implementation of human rights.49 Among theorists, summarizing accounts from as early as the 1980s and 1990s already end with a certain skepticism or even admitted helplessness as far as the very possibility of any consensual definition of “human dignity” is concerned. Some already by then name “human dignity” just “another empty formula”.50 Philosophy feels urged to make the obvious contingency of the term the object of particular reflection.51 The spread and frequent invocation of the term seem to be in open contrast to its apparent lack of clarity. “Today, the concept of human dignity has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché – a moral trump frayed by heavy use, a general principle har- ried by constant invocation.”52 This concerns the philosophy and theory of law in particular. Philoso- phers of law regularly complain about the vagueness of the concept and the lack of any kind of operational definition. “The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jurisdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity seems open to

49 Cf. Christopher McCrudden, ‘Human Dignity and Juridical Interpretation of Human Rights,’ European Journal of International Law, 19 (2008), pp. 655-724, esp. pp. 664-675. 50 ‚Infolge dieses vielfachen und widersprüchlichen philosophischen und politischen Sprachgebrauchs ist ‚Menschenwürde‘ zu einer Leerformel neben anderen geworden.‘ – Such is the pessimistic conclusion of Panagiotis Kondylis, s.v. ‘Menschenwürde,’ Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 7 (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 637-677, quotation p. 677. 51 Cf. e.g. Menschenwürde. Eine philosophische Debatte über Dimensionen ihrer Kontingenz, eds. Mario Brandhorst and Eva Weber-Guskar (Berlin, 2017). 52 John Witte Jr., ‘Between Sanctity and Depravity: Human Dignity in Protestant Per- spective,’ in In Defense of Human Dignity: Essays for Our Time, eds. Kraynak and Tinder (see n. 3), pp. 119-138, quotation p. 121. See also the afterword to the same volume by Glenn Tinder, ‘Facets of Personal Dignity,’ p. 238. 196 Alfons Brüning significant judicial manipulation, increasing rather than decreasing judicial discretion.”53 For theorists of law, one should add, the problem has another aspect which hints at the interdisciplinary dimension of our considerations here. Although this is perhaps – to our perception, and at the current state of the debate – not always explicitly highlighted by either theologians or philosophers or theorists of law, perceptions or concepts of what “human dignity” could be have to be “translated” from one sphere or discipline into the terminology of the other – from theology to theory of law, political science or sociology, for example. This “second” translation also affects a possible handling of Patristic patterns revived for modern discussions. Such “translation” is relatively easy to be done with abstract or, in a sense, nom- inalistic statements about the individual, about “man as such” and his nature, dignity, value and so on. Philosophical treatises, as far as they themselves operate with such abstractions (like Pico della Mirandola’s often quoted essay De dignitate hominis, or Immanuel Kant’s famous passage about the human as a morally autonomous being with intrinsic value, that must not be reduced to a mere price54) at first sight offer a lesser problem in this respect. Their statements about human nature can be taken more or less without further filtration for defining the details of the juridical person, the kind of abstract avatar that would form the cornerstone of a legal system like also that of human rights. Philosophical or theological approaches (for example of personhood, but in some sense also of an “apophatic anthropology”) that tend to define the human being through his or her relations, invoking either the community or human-divine relation as constitutive, and therefore operating with categories of “I-the Other” or “I-Thou” instead of an objective “he” or “she”, offer greater problems in this respect – especially if they carry with them an open refusal of sound definitions, and thus leave lawyers disappointingly unequipped. In a word, several patterns of Patristic

53 Such is the tenor of McCrudden, ‘Human Dignity’ (see n. 49). See also the various contributions to Understanding Human Dignity, ed. Chr. McCrudden (Oxford, 2013). Some further hints to the – equally controversial – German discussion concerning problems of application in positive law in Jean Pierre Wils, s.v. ‘Würde’, in Handbuch Ethik (Stuttgart, 2002), col. 537-542. 54 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in id., Werke in 6 Bänden, ed. W. Weischedel, vol. 4 (Darmstadt, 6th ed., 2005), pp. 59-60. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 197 anthropology, and also modern concepts of personalism are, at first glance, at odds with the terminology of law, but also with various socio-economic or political theories. Furthermore, many supporters of – otherwise rather diverse – personalist concepts would probably agree in negating the necessity of “translation” at all. There is an implicit communitarian strain usually present in concepts of personalism, and corresponding considerations often lead theorists of personhood to concepts of social entities or communities which are characterized by outright avoidance of such terminological reduction. Perhaps from this come the difficulties many theologians – not only Orthodox as we are about to see – express regarding a language of dignity and rights. Instead, the starting point for many of these concepts actually consisted in a protest against forms of abstractive individualism, which would reduce the human being to an anonymous subpart, to an atomized existence within an otherwise soulless social, economic or juridical system. The human person, therefore, is more than a passport, a tax number or register entry, but also more than a citizen, an economic actor or laborer, or a juridical person.55 To adequately address the dignity of the human person would mean to take into account, also in language and terminology, his or her life, relations and meaning of existence. Personalists’ responses to the challenges of abstract ideological systems in East and West – details are to follow – consisted in the development of harmonious concepts of community realizing inter-human or human-divine relations, shaped by mutual respect, perhaps charity and mutual love of the acting subjects. Politics, law, social life under such conditions were to be ideally framed, following an expression of the Orthodox philosopher Chris- tos Yannaras, as “an exercise of the truth”. If that is the case, the aforementioned translation is obsolete, as are concepts of human rights or abstract human dignity.56 God’s kingdom does not need “rights”, neither does any

55 Examples of such personalist critique of social, economic or legal systems can be found in such divergent works as Emmanuel Mounier’s critique of individualism and bourgeois existence (cf. Emmanuel Mounier, Manifeste au service du personalisme (Paris, 1936); id., Le Personnalisme (Paris, 1949)) or Max Scheler’s critique on technique and economic liberalism, see for example id., Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1 Frühe Schriften (Bonn, 1971), p. 180. Cf. Wilhelm Mader, Max Scheler (Hamburg, 1995), pp. 24-29. 56 Cf. Christos Yannaras, ‘Human Rights and the Orthodox Church,’ in The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World, ed. Emmanuel Clapsis (Brookline, 2004), pp. 82-89; see also Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), pp. 91f.; for a critical discussion cf. 198 Alfons Brüning ideal community derived from, or reflecting it. Yannaras’ perspective offers an illustrative example of the skepticism often at work among theorists of personalism (especially of Eastern Christian provenance) towards allegedly “Western” and “modern” legal and, in their eyes, “technical” concepts like those of human rights. It is the difference between “is” and “ought to”, between ideal and reality, that becomes of relevance here. Once the utopian (or even eschatological) character of such community concepts is recognized,57 it becomes more likely that the need of a translation of personalist concepts of human dignity into the terminologies of regulative and descriptive systems is also conceded by theorists of personhood. How that would look in concrete conceptions will occupy us further below. For the moment, suffice it to state that there already exists another variety of such “translations”, with new antagonisms arising between religiously founded and “humanist” versions of “human dignity”. This is true in particular on an international scale and after the end of Communism, when formerly less consulted religious systems and cultural spheres have offered hitherto unknown contributions to the question of how to define “human dignity”. Orthodox Christianity belongs to the new actors on the scene, together with Islam, for example – to the effect, that there seem to be at play apparently mutually irreconcilable objective and subjective, along with individualist and corporate concepts of man and “human dignity”. Sometimes phrased in a “Huntingtonian” perspective of a “clash of civilizations” (despite all academic discussions during a quarter of a century, this phrase still appears to be suggestive), the new situation has added to an already existing helplessness also concerning the hope for an agreement about operational definitions.58

Kristina Stoeckl, ‘The “We” in Normative Political Philosophical Debates: The Position of Christos Yannaras on Human Rights,’ in Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights, eds. Alfons Brüning and Evert van der Zweerde (Leuven, 2012), pp. 187-200. 57 Perhaps already sufficient is a developed sense for the difference between the reality of the Christian church (or religious communities in general) and that of secular social entities, political institutions etc., as was the case with Georgii Florovskii (cf. the article by Nicholas Sooy in this volume). Another example for the mentioned visions of community developed on the basis of personalist thought is presented by Konstantin Antonov with his article on Russian natural law and Pavel Novgorodtsev. Curiously, Antonov also has to note the later authoritarian and anti-democratic turn of Novgorodtsev’s political views. 58 Cf. Mark L. Movsesian, ‘Of Human Dignities,’ in Notre Dame Law Review, 91 (2016), pp. 1517-1551. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 199

Despite apparent dead ends and new antagonisms identified so far, there is perhaps also some progress beyond the surface. All doubts and disillusioned statements as those just mentioned on a closer look concern the possibility of definition, not what might be called the reality or substance. If our perception is not mistaken, few would nowadays completely deny that there actually is “something like human dignity”. Doubts concern terminology, definition and language, whereas some agreement still remains, or even might have grown stronger over the decades, that there is indeed “something about humans” that needs to be respected and protected. Opposite to the earlier mentioned statements concerning the uselessness of existing definitions, or a discouraging plurality of such definitions that borders on arbitrariness, there is the continuous supposition that “human dignity”, although being something that cannot easily be defined, nonetheless really exists, brings with it certain ethical demands, and in turn can be violated. “Vulner- ability” remains one important strain in approaches to “human dignity”. “Human dignity” might be a vague term, but “dehumanization” remains a commonly acknowledged threat within modern political, social and economic structures. The most prominent factor which shaped the birth of, and continues to strongly support the need to defend “human dignity” is the memory of totalitarianism and the large scale violation or “dehumanization” that culminated in the horrible experiences under early 20th century totalitarian regimes, first of all in the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag.59 And had not such acts of “dehumanization” been committed in the name of “creating the new man”? There is a commonplace saying that modern concepts of human rights have their origin in, or at least received decisive impulses through reflections about how to further prevent such political and ethical aberrations. In a word, the actual existence, the “reality” or “substance” of something like “human dignity” within such debates is hardly contested. It makes the problem expressed in the “why?” sequence still the more urgent. Currently the philosophical and theological debate wavers between a certain tendency towards resignation in face of this irritating multitude and lack of

59 Suffice it to recall, as one of the most prominent, and most impressive examples out of a vast literature on “dehumanization” committed by totalitarian regimes, the account of the former Auschwitz prisoner Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo? (Torino, 1947) and in particular the introductory poem to the work. 200 Alfons Brüning operational definitions on the one hand, and deliberate efforts to defend the term, also in its protective function, against such seemingly capitulating tendencies on the other.60 Where efforts to better ground and defend human dignity are continued, they take new paths, and we might dare the assertion that this also conditions a new interest in the patterns of early Christianity and concepts of personalism derived from here. The just mentioned terminological crisis concerns, first and foremost, notions of dignity that would – in a manner absolute, unconditional and irreversible – belong to an abstract, in a way static concept of the individual human being, from which, once implemented in legal systems, human rights would flow. What results from existing efforts, as can be summarized here in anticipation of what is about to follow, is, first and simply, an increasing agreement and conviction concerning the central relevance of normative anthropology. Secondly, there is probably also a growing sensitivity for relational models in understanding the human being as person, both with and without invocation of transcendental dimensions; even among secular philosophers non-rational or, if one wants, poetic derivations of human dignity have gained attractiveness – the imago Dei pattern being one of them; finally, dynamic models in the understanding of human dignity increasingly take the place of earlier static definitions, accompanied by a growing skepticism towards the very possibility of final definitions (making concepts engaging an “apophatic anthropology” perhaps more relevant). As shall become clear, these are most favorable conditions for a re-consideration of Patristic heritage, which still results in an adoption process not without traps and threats. Within this, the story of the ongoing intellectual struggle over the appropriate understanding of human dignity is also that of a questioning of once conventional narratives and of competing new stories. More than one of them bases its claim to authority on having found the path to actual origins, ad fontes. Patristic sources hold a prominent place in such claims. They are seen as an authoritative and indispensable point of reference by some, accompanied by the claim for a particular interpretation being the authentic one by others. The actual story is multifaceted.

60 Cf. Heiner Bielefeldt, Auslaufmodell Menschenwürde? Warum sie in Frage steht und warum wir sie verteidigen müssen (Freiburg, 2011); Charles R. Beitz, ‘Human Dignity in the Theory of Human Rights: Nothing But a Phrase?’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 41 (2013), pp. 259-289. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 201

Competing Narratives – Towards the “Sacrality of the Human Person”?

Is there at least a consistent history of human dignity? It would be important to have one, perhaps. Explaining the sources often means to explain the subject or term in question, and tracing origin can replace definition. A possible answer to the famous “Why?” often consists in telling a story. Consist- ent narratives are supposed to underline the strength and relevance of a term (as a particular understanding of the human being and of human dignity), and its absolute value beyond the whims and wiles of history. The opposite, an apparent contingency of historical development, might testify to a lack of consistency and clarity of the very term. The latter fact, i.e. the obvious contingency of development concerning a concept like “human dignity,” is currently often hinted at as an additional objection to its inherent claim.61 The fact that ancient times, and particularly Christian antiquity, would possibly have operated with notions of “dignity” quite different from ours appears to be another counterargument against the universal relevance of human dignity.62 On the other hand, the possibility of finding common ground beyond the times can emphasize it. Furthermore, even if the very possibility of a progressive elaboration of concepts like human dignity is basically conceded, the question immediately emerges where the main contribution came from, and – in connection with that – who could claim some “copyright” (including the right to define) for this concept. In short, was it religious or secular humanist tradition, was it Protestantism, or Renaissance and Enlightenment or some other worldview to which we owe an achievement like “human dignity”? A multitude of thinkers, schools, secular and religious institutions has claimed its own narrative as allegedly being constitutive and explanatory for a specific development towards modern ideas of human dignity and rights. Human rights, then, appear to be the fruit of either Greek philosophy, or Stoic heritage, of the Renaissance, Western enlightenment, or Scholastic theology, or Protestant ideas of the covenant; they were born among the Puritan pilgrim fathers, in the American Declaration of

61 Cf. i.a. Brandhorst, Weber-Guskar, Menschenwürde (see n. 51), esp. pp. 14-24; Michael Rosen, Dignity. Its History and Meaning (Cambridge, Mass., 2012). 62 Cf. also Volp, Die Würde des Menschen (see n. 11), pp. 364-365, with his warning against short-cut applications of ancient writings for modern purposes, combined yet with a plea for thoughtfully exploring their treasures. 202 Alfons Brüning

Independence, in the Declaration of the Rights of the Citizens of the French Revolution, in the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and so on. The result is a competition of such claims, which needs to be reconciled in order to avoid the just-mentioned impression of contingency. New actors on the scene add their own narratives to competition. The experience of recent decades has shown that this factor of competing narratives contributes quite well to the already mentioned “Huntingtonian” scheme, once the broadening of a geographic focus leads to the inclusion of critical or refuting narratives as well as affirmative ones in the competition. More concretely, the popular formula of “the West against the rest” is also at work here, among others, with respect to Eastern Christianity, in particular after Communism. Notably, and as mentioned before, anthropology has always been a cornerstone in the Eastern (Christian) critique of Western developments and the latter’s alleged “idolatry of the individual”, the secular “man-god” opposed to an Eastern “Godman” inspired by the figure of Christ himself and informed by a theology of human’s higher purpose.63 The opposition here is also one of allegedly true and false paths in history. Beyond all these arguments, something like an actual “history of human rights” as an integrative academic field of research is actually a rather new phenomenon. In other words, a more evaluative and less self-affirming history of human rights has been a challenge to be met for only a few years now.64 Preliminary results are perhaps as expected; certainly the formerly common story of a linear development towards liberation and emancipation of the human individual is obsolete.65 If there is a history of human rights, according

63 Cf. Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), pp. 88-95; Julia Anna Lis, Antiwestliche Diskurse in der serbischen und griechischen Orthodoxie. Zur Konstruktion des „Westens“ bei Nikolaj Velimirović, Justin Popović, Christos Yannaras und John S. Romanides (Frankfurt/M., 2019). 64 Cf. Moralpolitik. Geschichte der Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Göttingen, 2010), esp. the editor’s introduction, ‚Zur Genealogie der Menschen- rechte,‘ pp. 7-37; see also Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History (Cam- bridge, Mass., 2010). Moyn challenges common narratives about the genesis of human rights, arguing that their relevance was recognized in international politics not earlier than in the 1970s. 65 An early example for a common liberation narrative of the individual, culminating in the UDHR and subsequent documents, is Gerhard Oestreich, Geschichte der Menschen rechte und Grundfreiheiten im Umriss, Historische Forschungen, 1 (Berlin, 1968). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 203 to what we are able to tell now, it is anything but a linear or one-dimensional story of success. It also is not a peculiar Western story. This equally applies to the story before and after the compilation and promulgation of the UNDHR as a central document of reference. What becomes visible, step by step, instead of a linear history, is a story of grand ideas and pragmatic compromises, of illusions, dead ends, of steps forward and backward, eventually of use and ideological misuse in Cold War and post-colonial contexts. To state this opens up the perspective not only to reconcile divergent Western narratives, but also to deconstruct old and still frequently operating East-West stereotypes and counter-narratives. The more this work proceeds, the more central becomes the question of human nature and dignity. One recent attempt to find due balance between religious and secular narratives done by the German social philosopher Hans Joas puts normative anthropology into the center of the “new genealogy of human rights” he proposes. Giving, after a thorough reconsideration of existing arguments, the necessary credit to both secular and religious contributions, Joas hints at a consensus about “the sacrality of the human person” that would have subsequently emerged in heated debates throughout the 19th and early 20th century. He then applies sociological schemes such as system theory, in order to demonstrate how this consensus gradually developed into a commonly shared set of values for social groups, institutions and state legislation.66 Joas does not dwell extensively on the particular meaning such terms as “sacrality” or “person” could have had within the various worldviews he engages for his “new genealogy” (in the sense of differentiating between “sacred” and “inviolable”, or “person” and “individual”), perhaps consciously leaving this difference open.67 Joas gives another illustration of the fact that our view on both the religious and the secular parts in the development has differentiated. The same can be said for the Western religious narrative, which knows confessional

66 See Hans Joas, Die Sakralität der Person. Eine neue Genealogie der Menschenrechte (Frankfurt/M., 2011). English: The Sacrality of the Person. A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Georgetown, 2013). 67 According to Joas’ later statements, his concept of “sacrality” was, in its neutral use, informed by religious scientists, whereas ideas about the “person” were inspired by such otherwise very divergent concepts as those of Max Scheler or Emmanuel Mounier. Cf. Hans Joas and Samuel Moyn, ‘The Sacredness of the Person or The Last Utopia: A Conversa- tion about the History of Human Rights,’ in Imagining Human Rights, eds. Susanne Kaul and David Kim (Berlin/Boston, 2015), pp. 9-32, here p. 13. 204 Alfons Brüning fault lines as well, next to entangled stories of both support and resistance concerning human rights. Protestant Christianity continues to claim main contributions to this emancipation story by hinting at the covenant concepts in the North American colonies and inherent ideas of the autonomous, free citizen with equal-rights.68 In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church is still commonly seen as having long represented mainly a bulwark of authoritarian structures and conservative political concepts. According to a still commonly accepted perspective, it was only during Vatican Council II that Roman Catholicism caught up to modernity and finally made the turn towards an acknowledgement of individual human dignity and freedom of conscience. The Roman Catholic church maintains a relationship towards human dignity and rights that still preserves many ambiguities.69 The Roman Catholic story has its peculiarities but is in no way exclusive. Throughout modern times, Protestant Christianity has also struggled with an anthropology that wavered between human’s sinful nature and the nobility of the human derived from being created “after God’s image”.70 In a certain sense, beyond superficial emancipation stories, religious strains of the complex and in many respects unready narrative of human dignity and rights in many respects display a continuation of the ambiguities probably inherited from the ancient church – the need to balance between the human being’s fallen nature and the need for salvation and grace on the one hand, and its exceptional role above all nature by the will of the Creator on the other.

68 John Witte Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge, 2015). American dissenters’ contributions to modern human rights are another contested issue. For critical remarks see e.g. Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Menschenrechte zwischen Politik und Religion von den Anfängen bis zur Atlantischen Revolution,‘ in Umstrittene Säkularisierung. Soziologische und historische Analysen zur Dif- ferenzierung von Religion und Politik, eds. Karl Gabriel, Christel Gärtner and Detlef Pollack (Berlin, 2012), pp. 313-358. 69 J. Bryan Hehir, ‘The Modern Catholic Church and Human Rights: the Impact of the Second Vatican Council,’ in Christianity and Human Rights. An Introduction, eds. John Witte Jr. and Frank S. Alexander (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 113-134; Paolo G. Carozza, Daniel Phil- pott, ‘The Catholic Church, Human Rights and Democracy: Convergence and Conflict with the Modern State,’ Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 15 (2012), pp. 15-43. 70 Witte, ‘Between Sanctity and Depravity’ (see n. 52); Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments in Human Rights,’ in eds. Witte and Alexander, Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 69), pp. 155-172; Wolfgang Huber, s.v. ‘Menschenrechte, Menschen- würde,’ in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 22 (1992), pp. 577-602, esp. pp. 578-579. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 205

The Obsolescence of Common East-Western Anthropological Stereotypes

If a closer look at complex stories leads to perspectives for reconciliation of religious and secular, but also Protestant and Catholic competitive narratives, perhaps the perspective also opens for Eastern Christianity. A similar ambivalence concerning human rights and liberal democracy in general as once displayed by Western Christian confessions has more recently been stated also concerning Eastern Orthodox Christianity.71 This ambivalence, in other words, does not constitute a particular East-West antagonism. So there is reason to presume that some of the currently prevailing opposite views are actually grounded on artificial and outdated antagonisms of narratives. On a closer look, much of the critical stance of several Orthodox theologians towards concepts of human dignity and rights targets the once conventional but in fact now outdated Western narratives of a mostly secularly motivated emancipation of the individual, against which the understanding of humans as persons, and the value of religion would have to be defended. It is this almost exclusively secular version that had been, for instance, critically addressed – in a globalizing perspective obviously lent from Hunting- ton’s scheme – by metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk (after 2009 patriarch) of the Russian Orthodox Church in a series of articles published in the Russian newspaper Nezavisima Gazeta in 1999 and 2000.72 Here the concept of human rights appears to be first and foremost the result of the Renaissance (which for Kirill means a return of “ancient paganism”), followed by indi- vidualization in the Reformation, secularizing tendencies in the Enlightenment, materialism and atheism of the 19th century, all cumulating in the UNDHR of 1948 as an ultimate codification of Western a-religious anthropocentrism. All these steps are viewed with critique and rejection. According to Kirill,

71 Cf. e.g. Elisabeth Prodromou, ‘Christianity and Democracy: The Ambivalent Ortho- dox,’ Journal of Democracy, 15 (2004), pp. 62-75. 72 Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk, ‘Obstoiatel’stva novogo vremeni [Conditions of our time], in Nezavisimaia Gazeta, NG-Religii, May 26, 1999 – see https://mospat.ru/archive/ 1999/05/nr905262/ ; id., ‘Norma very kak norma zhizni [Norms of faith as norms of life],’ in Nezavisimaia Gazeta February 16, 2000 – see http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2000-02-16/8_ norma.html (also reprinted in Tserkov’ i vremia [Church and Time], 2 (2000), pp. 203- 221). 206 Alfons Brüning the Russian Orthodox tradition was not part of this history, and as a consequence could not share the concept of “human rights”. At least, it felt unable, on the ground of its own theological tradition, to adopt them unconditionally, but rather sees the necessity to balance rights by duties, and the emphasis on freedom by insisting on the significance of religiously founded moral norms. Kirill’s view, which came to be shared by a majority of Russian church officials in the coming period, formed the guidelines along which the Russian Orthodox Church would develop her position towards human dignity and rights in the following years, up to the release of a summarizing document in August 2008.73 It is not too difficult to demonstrate that much of this attitude, next to its obvious post-Soviet nuances, is mainly a repetitive adaptation of the already mentioned anti-Western patterns, including their focus on concepts of the human being.74 In the light of scientific results long available, but still rarely communicated or systematized, it would seem more apt to note an important Eastern Christian contribution to the emerging discourse about freedom balanced by morality – or vice versa – that is the main theme of the West as well. Eastern Christianity, including Russian Christianity, has always been involved in the complex discourse about human dignity; a more accurate story, recapitulating each of the mentioned stages, would even be incom- plete without the Orthodox contributions. And many of these contributions rely, in one way or another, on Patristic voices and sources. For instance, John McGuckin has recently argued again that it would be a mistake to presume that Orthodoxy in Byzantium had no sensibility for human rights or, in a broader sense, for the needs of the poor and suppressed and for the defense of the individual against arbitrary political action. There is actually not much of a new revelation in this argument. On a closer look, in its perspective of a church countering state and society as a voice of justice and

73 Cf. Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), pp. 93-95; Kristina Stoeckl, ‘The Moral Argument in the Human Rights Debate of the Russian Orthodox Church,’ in Chris- tianity, Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine, eds. George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (New York, 2017), pp. 11-30. Ead., The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London, 2014); Alena Alshanskaya, Der Europa-Diskurs der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche (1996-2011) (Frankfurt/M., 2016), esp. pp. 234-265. 74 Cf. also Alfons Brüning, ‘”Freedom” vs. “Morality” – On Orthodox Anti-Westernism and Human Rights,’ in eds. Brüning and van der Zweerde, Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 56), pp. 125-154. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 207 moral norms, McGuckin’s article takes much from the vision of “the empire and the desert” already developed by none other than Georgii Florovskii.75 Already since the late Middle Ages refugees from Byzantium under Turkish threat had a widely acknowledged influence on the Italian Renaissance, and that is most probably also true for Pico della Mirandola’s famous treatise on human dignity (De dignitate hominis, 1486), to which the classical narrative of modern human dignity customarily refers. The way ad fontes led Renais- sance authors also back to the Church Fathers, and it led via Byzantium. The still rather common view on Pico and his Renaissance contemporaries as liberating the image of man from medieval restrictions, which goes back to the account of 19th century historian Jakob Burckhardt, is also in many respects outdated and has subsequently been replaced by less unilaterally glorifying and instead more differentiating accounts.76 Far from generating simply a latter day revival of ancient “pagan” patterns, Pico applied a whole array of philosophical and theological sources, many of which were of Patristic and Byzantine origin. Insofar as general trends of Renaissance anthropology can be identified, they continued to acknowledge Christian religion as a source of truth and had much room for themes like human’s moral obliga- tions or for virtues like charity and human solidarity. In general, Renaissance authors developed a variety of often divergent concepts about the “dignity of man”. Consequently, to reduce this variety to the libertarian image of man as basically free of all relational bounds and cut off from religious roots would just be mistaken.77 Only insofar as one certain strain of medieval thought in fact was quite pessimistic about the human condition, the Renaissance

75 John McGuckin, ‘The Issue of Human Rights in Byzantium and the Orthodox Christian Tradition,’ in eds. Witte and Alexander, Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 69), pp. 173- 190; Georges Florovsky, ‘Empire and Desert: Antinomies of Christian History,’ in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 3 (1957), pp. 133-159; also available in Florovskii’s Collected Works, vol. 2 (Belmont, 1974), pp. 67-100. 76 Cf. Jakob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, (originally Basel, 1860; later i.a. Stuttgart, 1987), part II, on Pico esp. p. 387. A formidable source for the state of research concerning Pico’s treatise is the website of a joint project of Brown University and Universita degli Studi di Bologna, see https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_ Studies/pico/. 77 See already Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources (New York, 1979), esp. pp. 137-163 and 167-210; id., Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (New York, 1961), esp. pp. 80-81, 120-139. 208 Alfons Brüning can be credited for having eventually surmounted this one-sided negative view. Several Renaissance authors expressively conceived their writings on human dignity as a response to Lothar of Segni’s (Lotario dei Conti di Segni, the later Pope Innocent III, lived 1161-1216) disillusioned view on the human condition, as expressed in his tractate On human misery (De misericordia conditionis humanae). The picture offered here on the human situation is in fact depressing. The human condition appears as being determined by nothing except labor, suffering, fear and death, while the human being is described as weak, “made from earth, conceived in sin, born for punishment … nothing but mud and ash” – and so on.78 Innocent III, or Lothar in fact himself seemed to be not content with this end of the story and intended to write a countering treatise on human dignity restored, as it was, by Christ. He announced this intention in his preface but the plan never material- ized.79 Innocent’s work exerted a significant influence in the Latin world and probably created a strain of rather pessimistic perspectives on humanity. Since the Middle Ages, and especially in the Renaissance, a stream of other authors felt urged to complete the task by writing on “human dignity” in response to the “misery” outlined in the treatise. Some, like Bartolomeo Facio and later Giannuzzo Manetti, actually did, and they used ancient Greek and Patristic sources (like Lactantius) for their reply.80 As said, the Renaissance movement back to the sources (ad fontes) by mediation of the Byzantines clearly led to the Patristic sources as much as to those of “pagan” ancient philosophy. Engaging both, humanists’ solutions of the problem of human dignity or misery were not homogenous, and they generated versions of the autonomous human being next to models of participation in the divine as being constitutive for human nature. The debate among scholars continues.81

78 Innocenti III Papae, ‘De contemptu mundi sive de misericordia conditionis humanae libri tres,’ in Patrologiae latinae cursus completus. Series secunda, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1855), vol. 217, cols. 702-718. 79 Ibid., col. 702. 80 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought (see n. 77), pp. 170-172; The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, eds. Charles B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner et al. (Cambridge, 1988), p. 306. On Lactantius as a model for Pico and Renaissance thought see also n. 25 above. 81 Further research is supposed to include, next to those mentioned, studies like e.g. Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1970; re-edition i.a. Notre Dame, 2017); Trinkaus, following Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 209

Beyond the sketches just presented, we apparently have, for the time being, rather limited knowledge about what kind of impulses Western humanists might have received from their Byzantine contemporaries in a field like theological anthropology. Part of the problem is that the attitudes about human nature and fate also within Byzantium itself, before and after the fall of Constantinople, were obviously much less homogenous than earlier suggested. Among others, the famous Hesychast or Palamite controversies were running parallel to the growing Ottoman military threat. Palamism, however, in this perspective represents another Patristic Renaissance avant la lettre and this time in the Christian East. From what is known, there is an emphasis, in some important Byzantine circles, on the human being as destined to participate in God, while notions of autonomy or self-sufficiency are at maximum secondary: man cannot be understood in depth, except through his dynamic relation to God, an aspect of which is his possible deification.82 It is the Hesychast, or – as prominently present, for instance, in the works of Nicholas Cabasilas83 – the kenotic dimension of human existence that not only forms a pivotal element for understanding human nature, but also constitutes, in the ideal case of a life according to “deification”, something like his dignity. While this might be a certain mainstream, it still would allow for quite a lot of variations in detail. One unresolved controversy concerned the significance of learning and wisdom, next to, or in opposition to virtue, for human advancement or deification. This latter issue by all evidence was a matter of debate already in Byzantium on the one hand, and became a major preoccupation in the Western Renaissance connected

his mentor Kristeller (see n. 77), argues extensively in favor of a large-scale reception of Patristic sources in the Renaissance, especially Augustine. For an insight into scholarly debates concerning Renaissance thought and the reception of ancient Christian sources see also the critical comment on Trinkaus’ works, as e.g. by John H. Geerken, in Journal of the History of Philosophy, 12 (1974), pp. 525-535. 82 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1974), esp. pp. 1-3, 138-150. 83 Cf. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ (Crestwood, NY, 1974 [²1982]), or the same author’s homilies on the Virgin, see Kallistos Ware, ‘“Beyond all holiness”: St Nicholas Cabasilas and the Mother of God,’ on https://afkimel.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/kallistos- ware-beyond-all-holiness.pdf; cf. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (see n. 82), pp. 146-149; Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ, transl. Norman Russell (Crestwood/NY, 1987), esp. part II, pp. 107-159. 210 Alfons Brüning with it on the other hand. So what about Byzantine humanists and their legacy? Further research would probably be well advised to pursue in particular the traces of humans’ perfectibility, be it by learning, be it by virtue and spiritual growth, which are equally, although not with equal accents, present both in Renaissance works like Pico’s and in Byzantine conceptions of the human being.84 At any rate, a concept like the prevalent one in Byzantine tradition that saw the human being as destined for deification, and positioned above all nature and creation, lacks the shadows cast on it by some Western concepts of misery and sin – like those of Innocent III, but also those later prevalent in certain approaches of the Reformation (like the Calvinist adoption of Augustine, or Luther’s De servo arbitrio). By all evidence, general ideas about human nature in Byzantium in the 15th to 17th centuries were much more positive, without the disillusioned view to be met in some strains of Western tradition (as is usually said, due to other conceptions of sin and mortality, and a different, and generally scarce reception of Augustine in the East).85 Still in the 16th and 17th centuries, and after the conquest of Constantinople, we meet hymn-like glorifications of the human being as head of creation, destined to become God-like, in writings of both the Romanian86 and the Muscovite Russian tradition,87 to name but some examples. At that time, if anywhere, the glori- fication of the human being was to be observed as univocal in the Christian East, not in the West, but it was always – in a way specifically reflecting the Fathers’ tradition – narrowly connected with what the liturgical traditions calls doxology, i.e. with an expression of glory to the divine Creator.

84 A more recent attempt to rehabilitate a group of Byzantine humanists with views different from the Hesychast accent on “deification” so much emphasized by “neo-Hesychast” authors like Meyendorff (see n. 82), and more appreciation for learning, studies and wisdom in Gerhard Podskalsky, Von Photios zu Bessarion: Der Vorrang humanistisch geprägter Theologie in Byzanz und deren bleibende Bedeutung (Wiesbaden, 2003). 85 Cf. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (see n. 82), pp. 143-146. 86 Cf. the theological passages in the instructions of the Walachian prince Neagoe Basarab to his son, in Mihai-D. Grigore, Neagoe Basarab – Princeps Christianus (Frankfurt/M., 2015), pp. 136f.: The glorifying sequences are part of a doxological passage: The main purpose of the glorified human being is to act and develop to the glory of God the Creator. 87 Cf. Mikhail V. Dmitriev, ‘Humanism and the Traditional Orthodox Culture of Eastern Europe: How Compatible were they in the 16th and 17th centuries?’, in eds. Brüning and van der Zweerde, Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 56), pp. 85-110. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 211

To look one step further, it would be equally mistaken to isolate the Orthodox hemisphere completely from the Enlightenment and its contribution to understandings of human dignity and rights. Certainly, at some moment Orthodox clerics and theologians would have subscribed entirely to the text of a prayer that circulated in Anglican England in the early 19th century: “Protect us, O Lord, from liberty, equality and human rights!”88 But this was after the terrorist turn of the French revolution and after Napoleon’s army had first entered the Ottoman hemisphere in 1798 in its campaign to Egypt, and assaulted Russia in 1812. Before, and partly parallel to these events, some strains of Enlightenment thinking and culture actually had their repercussions also in Greece, Bulgaria, Russia and elsewhere. This holds true in particular if the Enlightenment is seen – in accordance with current and more advanced pictures – not as just one homogenous move of rationalism, emancipation from religion and development of liberal political theory, as it had long been the case, but as a multiple phenomenon. Enlightenment, for instance, in England or Germany showed faces and results sometimes rather different from those in France, and even within France itself there remained a difference between Montes- quieu, Voltaire or the Encyclopédie on the one hand, and radical Jacobinism and Napoleon on the other. Orthodox clerics like the Greek Eugenios Voulgaris (1716-1806), later bishop of St Petersburg and of Cherson, or Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) of Moscow (1737-1812) looked favorably especially on the Enlightenment’s accent on education for the forming of the human individual. According to their Orthodox tradition, they might have strengthened the emphasis on spiritual forming and virtues which would be equally important to intellectual advancement. On the other hand, they fostered ideas of universal human values, being effective even beyond the confines of their own church, and of religious tolerance, which would inspire following generations.89

88 Quoted after Martin Greschat, Das Zeitalter der Industriellen Revolution. Das Christen- tum vor der Moderne (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 22 [English mine, A.B.]. 89 For the Greek context cf. Paschalis Kitromilides, ‘Orthodoxy and the West: Reformation to Enlightenment,’ chapter 8 of The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5, ed. Michael Angold (Cambridge, 2005), esp. pp. 202-209; on Metr. Platon and Enlightenment in Russia see esp. Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon (De Kalb, 2013). 212 Alfons Brüning

In addition, if we follow the observation in Lynn Hunt’s enthusiastically received study concerning the emergence of human rights ideas out of affective identifications between reader and character “across class, sex, and national lines”, and an empathy for the public good, evoked by Enlighten- ment writers such as Rousseau or Richardson,90 searching for similar examples in Russian publicity and literature would probably not be in vein. Suf- fice it here to recall examples like Aleksandr Radishchev’s famous Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow (published in 1790), or Nikolai Karamzin’s sentimentalist novel Poor Liza (1792) with its famous sentence “for indeed also peasant women know to love” (“ибо и крестьянки любить умеют”), which might have produced an effect perhaps only gradually different from that of their Western counterparts.91 Later in the 19th century, Russian Slavophiles next to liberal thinkers in Russia would invoke, next to Kant’s writings, the Patristic heritage as one particular source for their concepts of human personhood. Ivan Kireevskii highlights the role played, in his view, by Greek patristic theology for Renaissance ideas of human dignity: “The eyes of many Europeans were opened by the writings of the Holy Fathers that were brought from Greece after its fall.” From Kireevskii and his famous counterpart Aleksei Khomiakov the line can be continued to Vladimir Solov’ev and his concept of “Godmanhood” (богочеловечество). But there is also the Hegelian, Westernizer and, as it turned out, ultimately Kantian line. The renowned philosopher of law Boris Chicherin can think of no better expression for human dignity than the imago Dei formula:

The source of this supreme dignity of the human being and of all the demands flowing from it consists in the fact that he carries in himself consciousness of the Absolute, that is, this source lies precisely in the metaphysical nature of the subject, which raises it above the whole physical world and makes it a being having value in itself and demanding respect. In religious language this is expressed in the saying that we are created in the image and likeness of God.92

90 Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York, 2007), quotation p. 38. 91 The phrase in Karamzin’s novel “did mean quite something at that time, when the average person did not even believe that a peasant woman could have a headache.” – Adolf Stender-Petersen, Geschichte der Russischen Literatur (Munich, 1993), Part II, p. 44 [English mine, A.B.]. 92 Cf. the excellent survey by Randall A. Poole, ‘The Defense of Human Dignity in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought,’ in Iosif Volotskii and Eastern Christianity. Essays Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 213

In part, Russian perception of Enlightenment heritage might have consisted in productive adaptation on the one hand and the creation of countering concepts on the other hand. Probably not by chance Russian lay theologians like Kireevskii and Khomiakov in their anthropological concepts occasionally also accentuated the kenotic aspect as derived from Patristic and Hesychast literature. It is more than accidental that patterns we already met would now appear again as distinctive in the antagonisms between Westernizers and Slavophiles. Correspondingly, Sergei Khoruzhyi has noted that Slavophile concepts, including anthropology, were largely theocentric, in opposition to the anthropocentrism of many Westerners.93 However, also the Slavophiles’ adaptation of both Enlightenment and patristic concepts was not a-political and often implied a critique of the serfdom of the peasantry and generally of the repressive tsarist regime. It did not lead them to an isolated moralism, deprived of any vision for contemporary society, which latter was in fact their main concern. In other words, these Slavophile thinkers can be regarded also as pioneers concerning the above-mentioned “translation” challenge. They were among the first to make the distinction between “is” and “ought to be” a criterion and starting point for socio-political concepts. What they did is to present a more communitarian ideal of both church and society, in which relational aspects contributed much to the definition of the human’s place in the world as it was, and as it should be. That is true for some implications of Khomiakov’s influential ecclesiological concept of sobornost’ (usually rendered in English as “catholicity”) as an ideal for the Christian church. But it also found its way into concepts of society realizing what adherents of the Russian school of natural law, represented by personalities such as Boris Chicherin or later Pavel Novgorodtsev, had called “the right for a decent life”. Relying on the concepts of relatedness of the human being towards both God and to one another, Russian Slavophiles opposed personalist thought to what they considered to be the isolated individual of Western

Across Seventeen Centuries, eds. David Goldfrank, Valeria Nolan and Jennifer Spock (Wash- ington D.C., 2017), pp. 271-305, quotations p. 278 (Kireevskii), p. 285 (Chicherin), with further reference. See also A History of Russian Philosophy, 1830-1930: Faith, Reason and the Defense of Human Dignity, eds. G. M. Hamburg and R. A. Poole (Cambridge, 2010). 93 Sergej Horujy, ‘Slavophiles, Westerners and the Birth of Russian Philosophical Humanism,’ in eds. Hamburg and Pole, A History of Russian Philosophy (see n. 92), pp. 27-51. 214 Alfons Brüning enlightenment and liberalism. Their personalism, however, was not a hin- drance, but just the starting point for a plea in favor of “human rights”. At the same time, bemoaning the miserable fate of the Russian peasant in 19th century society in a way not so different from contemporary com- plaints, for example, about the injustice of slavery in the Anglophone world, their ideals were as much a claim for the relevance of universal human dignity. Parts of their communitarian ideal were of much influence on later concepts of personalism, but also on the ecclesiology of eminent theologians of the next generation, or even on major guidelines of the “neo-patristic Renaissance” announced by Georgii Florovskii, or, for instance, the personalist concepts of the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae.94 So there is, in the light of more recent research, no more major narrative culminating, after direct lines, in modern ideas about human dignity and rights. A complex, entangled story, instead, knows progress and backdrops, and is in no way the exclusive claim of one particular religious or ideological actor. Nevertheless, the new story can also be told in various steps, and each of these steps also has its inherent movement “back to the roots”, and to the authors of ancient Christianity. The allegedly unique “neo-patristic Renais- sance” in 20th century Orthodoxy in fact had many predecessors, also in the complex story of modern concepts of human dignity. The next chapter in this story, on the eve of such concepts, is already one of cooperation between Eastern and Western theologians and philosophers, and again reference to ancient Christian sources is no Eastern privilege. Besides, few ideas have contributed as much to modern perceptions of human dignity and the idea of human rights as a personalism inspired by Christian tradition.

Imago Dei, Anthropological Turns, Personhood: Explorations of Modern Theory and Theology

Perhaps it is not too much of an exaggeration to state that terms and patterns like imago Dei, deification and ultimately personalism set the tone for many of the developments in normative anthropology of recent decades. This is not restricted to Christian theology. Hans Joas’ above-mentioned “new genealogy of human rights” concerns agreements about the “sacredness of the

94 See the contribution of Konstantin Antonov to this volume. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 215 human person” among not only theologians, but also philosophers of various backgrounds, be it, in Maritain’s words, “under condition that no one asks us why.” And as we have mentioned, on theoretical level there is perhaps a common hope if not for a sound definition universally shared, but for an appropriate (mode of) description. In what would such hope be grounded? To begin with, it appears that religion-based notions of human dignity have gained attractiveness in more recent decades on many sides, not least even among the non-religious. That has to do with the above-mentioned impasse concerning rational or ideological definitions and a changing perception of the role of language. In a majority of post-modern critique on ideology’s seductive force, language itself often, if not always appears as a tool of ideological absorption. The argument put forward, for example, by the German Protestant theologian Wolfgang Huber, according to which a definition would automatically imply an undue ideological absorption or even reduction, meanwhile can count on the accord also of some secular philosophers.95 If our cautious statement concerning a development in favor of theological patterns is true, then it can be ascribed to the capacity of religious terminology not to define, but to express what human dignity could be. It is a shift in linguistic method, not in conviction, but it is in this context where also patterns borrowed from ancient Christian writings are met with new interest. On occasion, even secular philosophical schools with no explicit reference to, or even conscious dissociation from, religion and theistic approaches nevertheless in some cases applied the poetic capacities of language in order to come to a conception of the human that would provoke respect or even veneration. Despite deliberate efforts to maintain a separation from religion, such approaches seem either to border on religion or at least concede the theist alternative as of continuing relevance.96 In particular, the originally Jewish-Christian imago Dei pattern came to exert its fascination among those who, by their own account, otherwise have no explicit “religious musicality”. One prominent example is German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas. Habermas has frequently expressed his growing

95 Wolfgang Huber, ‘Menschenwürde,’ in Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik, 57 (2013), pp. 62-65, here 64f. 96 See e.g. George Kateb, Human Dignity (Cambridge, MA, 2011), and also the review by Nicholas Woltersdorff in Ethics, 122 (2012), pp. 602-607. 216 Alfons Brüning sympathies for an understanding of man as being created as imago Dei, “in the image of God”. While otherwise keeping his distance from particular religious worldviews – the suggestive expression of “lacking religious musicality” is his – Habermas uses the imago Dei formula to support an argument otherwise quite in line with a Kantian defense of the morally autonomous subject. Pure rational language for him appears to be insufficient in order to do justice to what is “sacred” or “vulnerable”, “worth being protected” in the human being, for example, in the face of modern science and technology. Habermas therefore repeatedly hints at the potential of a religious phrase approaching man as “created according to God’s image” that still waits to be fully exploited by enlightened human reason and a corresponding terminology and grammar.97 Would someone like Habermas find sense also in an “apophatic anthropology”? Certainly, examples like his should perhaps not be overrated, as this sometimes happens in slightly triumphant references to Habermas’ statement by modern theologians. They can, however, serve as evidence to the fact that in times usually termed post-modern and post-secular, Biblical and Patristic statements about the human being have gained some attractiveness even for non-Christian and secular philosophy, at least by force of their metaphorical value. Necessarily, in such adoptions the focus remains anthropocentric. On the other hand, even in modern Christian theology a certain abandoning of former strict theocentric positions can possibly be detected. So the rap- prochement between philosophy and theology happens due to movement on both sides. Equally, 20th and 21st century theology moved in a direction that can be understood as a movement from definition to description and at the same time performed its own “anthropological turn.” From the perspective of secular philosophy, that often turned former opponents among the theologians into possible allies. At the same time, the handling of the classical imago Dei pattern in various confessional denominations, in parallel intellectual movements or in overt ignorance of former confessional boundaries, displays a development towards concepts of personhood.

97 See Jürgen Habermas’ speech on occasion of his being awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Association, cf. ‘Glauben und Wissen,’ in Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels (Frankfurt, 2001), esp. p. 15. See also the essays, including Habermas’ own, in Habermas and Religion, eds. C. J. Calhoun, E. Mendieta and J. van Antwerpen (Cambridge e.a., 2013). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 217

The picture to be drawn for the time being is necessarily impressionistic. The following list of examples from various Christian confessions, of course, is not and cannot be composed with any claim to be a representative cross-section or to identify main stream developments in modern theology. The level of a well-founded hypothesis is perhaps the maximum to be reached within the given limits. Part of the risk lies in the fact that even within Christianity allusion to the imago Dei pattern as a possible basis for human dignity can be encountered with stereotypical regularity, but once more this suggests more homogeneity than there actually is.98 So even despite certain ecumenical agreements, and also within the new dialogue with secular philosophy, Christian religion is still far from speaking with only one voice. The same lack of homogeneity, besides, needs to be stated concerning concepts of personhood. Some common patterns ascribed to the human being like autonomy, inspiration and creativity, insistence on relational and communitarian dimensions of human nature, along with a rejection of both pure materialism and pure individualism can be identified. Beyond this level there is room for quite a variety of concepts with different accen- tuations. Reference to transcendence is a frequent, but neither general nor necessary component. In many theological or philosophical systems the term “person” is being applied with some intent, but without explicit elaboration of corresponding concepts.99 Despite all doubts about the ultimate value of the following tour d’horizon, however, the very fact that more than just scattered and isolated examples for an “anthropological turn” and tendency towards personalism can be gathered might suffice, for the time being, as an indicator for something important. And it is here where the revival of ancient Christian, Patristic patterns also has its part – by the way, prominently, but in no way exclusively among Eastern Chris- tian theorists.

98 Johannes A. van der Ven, Human Rights and Religious Rules (Leiden, 2010), pp. 173-174. 99 Cf. Thomas D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, s.v. ‘Personalism,’ The Stanford Ency- clopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2018/entries/personalism/. The authors propose, “for taxonomic con- venience”, a grouping into two categories, those of personalism in the strict sense, and personalism in a broader sense. (p. 2 of the print version). This differentiation, as might become obvious, applies for a majority of the examples to follow. 218 Alfons Brüning

“Anthropological Turns” in Roman Catholicism

To start with, quite a number of outstanding 20th century Catholic theologians implemented a significant shift in their attention to anthropology, putting considerations about the role of the human being in history and revelation in the center of their theological thinking. An outstanding example is Karl Rahner, whose work became famous for his particular “anthropological turn” towards the human being as the central factor for what he called the self-revelation of God (Selbstmitteilung Gottes).100 Next to him there are more than sporadic traces of such a growing interest in the human being, his nature and historical experience, as an object of theological reflection in the French Nouvelle théologie, or the works of, for instance, Romano Guardini101 or Edward Schillebeeckx.102 By all evidence, the list could easily be enlarged. Even with an inevitable neglect of individual differences, these examples may nonetheless help to indicate that such tendencies were anything but marginal. In their way it was these approaches that helped prepare such an anthropological turn during Vatican II, in particular the adoption of human rights (encyclical Pacem in Terris, 1963) and acknowledgement of religious liberty on behalf of the dignity of the human person (Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, 1965). This turn, with its far-reaching consequences for relations with those “not fully living in the truth”, has appropriately been described on various occasions as a turn “from the right of the truth towards the rights of the human person.”103

100 A substrate of his thoughts is his famous Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg, 1976). See also Daniel Munteanu, ‘Grundzüge und gesellschaftliche Relevanz eines ökumenischen Menschenbildes,’ International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 2 (2011), pp. 125-144, on Rahner esp. 129f., 133-137. 101 Cf. Romano Guardini, Das Ende der Neuzeit. Die Macht (Würzburg, 1965). See also the portrait by W. Detloff in Klassiker der Theologie, vol. 2, eds. G. Kretschmar and H. Fries (Munich, 1983), pp. 316-330. 102 See his Mensen als verhaal van God (Baarn, 1989), Engl. transl. Church: The Human Story of God (New York, 1993). See also Mary Catherine Hilkert OP, ‘The threatened humanum as Imago Dei: Anthropology and Christian Ethics,’ in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, eds. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London/New York, 2010), pp. 127-141. 103 (See also n. 69 above) – Quotation from: Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde, Introduction to the German Edition of Humanae Vitae, ed. Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (Münster, 1968), p. 9 [English mine, A.B.] – The declaration’s original text reads: ‘Therefore the Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 219

There is, in Catholic thinking and beyond, a twofold dimension to this “anthropological turn”, but both dimensions are interrelated and both deliver the parameters along which the “discovery” of personalism in all its varieties runs. For one part, the human being is being removed from, as it was perceived, enslaving ideological contexts (religious ideologies among them), which would otherwise subordinate human existence to allegedly “higher” purposes alien to his autonomous nature – a refusal, therefore, of the right of anonymous truths. But where the focus of attention shifts from abstract systems of truths towards the concrete existence of the human being – it is here where the invocation of the imago Dei pattern provides an almost stereotypical starting point – not only the static but also the dynamic dimension, not only image, but also likeness, come into play. The new anthropocentrism in fact results in describing the human being as a theocentric being, capable of the infinite (humanum capax infiniti), in Rahner’s diction.104 There is, among Catholic, Protestant and also Orthodox authors, a clearly felt, almost omnipresent spirit of resistance, a certain spiritual protest, expressed in various efforts to restore the human image against temptations of absurdity and absorption by technical or ideological systems and modes of thinking. This also creates the climate for a re-consideration of ancient Christian, Patristic sources, particularly intense in, although by no means exclusive to Orthodox authors. As the Greek Orthodox theologian Panagiotis Nellas puts it:

There are times when one feels oneself literally ‘cast down and abandoned in a corner of the universe yet obliged to go on living.’ But there are other times when a strange inspiration, which nevertheless comes from deep within oneself, seems to raise one up above necessity and grant one a taste of true freedom and joy. The Church Fathers speak at length about this inspiration.105

right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it and the exercise of this right is not to be impeded, provided that just public order be observed.’ – Dignitatis Humanae, 2, on http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_ council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html. 104 On Rahner’s interpretation of imago Dei see Munteanu, ‘Grundzüge und gesellschaft liche Relevanz einer ökumenischen Menschenbildes’ (see n. 100), pp. 134f., with further references. 105 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ (see n. 84), p. 15. 220 Alfons Brüning

As stated, the term “human person” does not always receive a thorough elaboration in these documents and texts, nor can all theologians mentioned in our collection be categorized as explicit “personalists” in any strict sense. Furthermore, they often displayed only marginal interest in socio-political or juridical matters outside theology. In other cases, this was significantly different. The discovery of another aspect of inner-Catholic movements prior to World War II has recently helped to add rather important facets to the picture and holds a central place in what might be called “the Catholic history of human rights”. It is the influence of Catholic personalist concepts, parts of which contributed significantly to the development of a human rights agenda in the period up to the release of the UNDHR in 1948. For the time being, there are three main centers of personalism and concomitant intellectual activities to be identified, and all milieus are not imaginable without due account of Catholic influence: Munich, with an environment much shaped by the work of Max Scheler; Lublin, Poland, with its influence, among others, on the future Pope John Paul II; and Paris, with the Thom- ist philosopher Jacques Maritain being not only a main figure of that city’s intellectual milieu, but also (not least after his exile in the US) a protagonist of the movement leading to the compilation of the UN Universal Declara- tion of Human Rights finally in 1948. Samuel Moyn sees Maritain and the Christian, mainly Catholic conservative project at the origin of modern human dignity and rights as the main reason to give up, once and for all, the idea of the history of human rights as a story of a static liberal doctrine rising over time.106

Protestantism: Visions of Justice as Visions of Inter-human Relations

Protestant, and in particular Reformed (or Calvinist) theological thinking with regard to politics and society has traditionally been preoccupied with

106 Cf. Samuel Moyn, ‘Personalismus, Gemeinschaft und Ursprünge der Menschenrechte,’ in ed. Hoffmann, Moralpolitik (see n. 64), pp. 63-91; id., Christian Human Rights. Intel- lectual Heritage of the Modern Age (Pennsylvania, 2015), esp. pp. 65-100. See further James Chapel, Catholic Modern. The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church (Cambridge, Mass., 2018); see also Williams and Bengtsson, s.v. ‘Personalism’ (see n. 99) (printed version pp. 7-9.) Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 221 what might be categorized as structures of justice. At the same time, reflecting on justice usually included an eschatological dimension. Justice was a peculiar property of God’s kingdom. Initial 19th century skepticism – nota bene not necessarily rejection – regarding human rights in Protestant circles used to argue in the name of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of justice, from which rights of the human can be derived, but which is never fully at humans’ disposal. This was, in summarizing terms, the view of late 19th century Reformed theologians such as the Dutch social activist and reformer Abraham Kuyper and his contemporaries.107 Earlier patterns of mistrust towards human rights as mainly an achievement of the (atheist) Enlighten- ment, together with traditional views of the human being as mainly a sinner in need of God’s grace, were still at work. Rights were to be countered by duties (towards one’s neighbor, and to God), and all tendencies towards a “possessive individualism” that would claim rights as possession of the isolated individual were condemned.108 The counter-narrative of Protestant ideas of the covenant and inherent concepts of rights, as recently unearthed in works like the above-mentioned by John Witte Jr., obviously was not yet known by the early decades of the 20th century and could not exert any influence. Consequently, skepticism or even open rejection of concepts of unconditional rights prevailed in the works of most of the important Prot- estant theologians of early 20th century. One would look in vain for a discussion of a keyword such as “rights” in the works of Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth, for example.109 The old anthropological dichotomy

107 Cf. Ad van Egmont, ‘Calvinist Thought and Human Rights,’ in Human Rights and Religious Values. An Uneasy Relationship?, eds. A. A. An-Naïm, J. D. Gort, H. Jansen and H. M. Vroom (Amsterdam, 1995), pp. 192-202. 108 For the following see also Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments in Human Rights,’ in eds. Witte and Alexander, Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 69), pp. 155-172. 109 Ibid., p. 156; cf. Witte, Reformation of Rights (see n. 68). Georg Jellinek’s efforts from as early as 1895, to emancipate human rights from the common French Enlightenment narrative and to find instead the origins of important patterns in the American colonies and the German Reformation, have provoked some controversies among philosophers of law, but have obviously failed to exert any direct influence on (Protestant) theology. Cf. Gregor Jellinek, Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte (first 1895, 4th ed. Leipzig/Munich, 1927), with a summary of polemics generated by the first edition on pp. iii-xiv. Few exceptions, as e.g. Ernst Troeltsch, are mentioned here as well; cf. Troeltsch ,Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus für die Entstehung der modernen Welt,‘ Historische 222 Alfons Brüning between a human’s sinful nature and his or her nobility as being God’s creature, apparently felt especially sharply in Protestant theological concepts and already present in Luther’s formula of man as simul iustus et peccator, could well be translated into more contemporary adaptations of the imago Dei pattern, but had a long way to go towards the actual acknowledgement of human rights.110 “Justice” subsequently became an eschatological, and in parallels to this also a relational ideal – to the effect that there were new modes of description for the human community, earlier addressed as “God’s people”. It is the eschatological design of such ideas of humanity that might provide another explanation for the astonishingly low sensitivity of theologians for notions of “rights”. In many Protestant cases, this went along with open distrust towards Patristic patterns. Theosis also, perhaps due to the open dislike displayed in Adolf von Harnack’s Dogmengeschichte a generation earlier,111 attracted no interest among Protestant theologians in the early 20th century. On the other hand, quite a few came up with interpretations of imago Dei which, albeit not labelled as such, are strongly reminiscent of personalist concepts. Karl Barth interpreted the pattern in relational terms, claiming that the act of creation of the human being established a relation of analogies (analogia relationis) between the Creator and creature, not a divine-like substance (analogia entis) in the human himself or herself. Grace as acting in relation, therefore, not a divine-like substance, is what might constitute human dignity. Derived from this is the ethical claim that inter- human relations ought to follow the model of God’s grace and love for His creature. All is connected with the human being’s higher purpose to fulfill God’s commandment in love of God and one’s neighbor. Although Barth speaks of “humanity” as something to become manifest in human life, there

Zeitschrift, 97 (1906), pp. 1-66, who corrects Jellinek in the sense that the principles of individual freedom, and freedom in religion in particular, have indeed much profited from their religious, not only juridical foundation, but that this foundation originated not from Calvinist and Protestant, but from Anabaptist thought, see ibid., pp. 38-41. For the context see also Hoffmann, ,Zur Genealogie der Menschenrechte,‘ (see n. 64), p. 11. 110 See also Witte, ‘Between Sanctity and Depravity’ (see n. 52). 111 Adolf v. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte (Tübingen, 1893, 51905), pp. 161, 166f. etc. (Harnack, whenever he mentions it at all, renders theosis as ‘Vergottung’, which in German has a pejorative overtone compared with the more common term “Vergöttlichung”). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 223 is no allusion to “deification” in corresponding passages.112 He obviously has no need of “deification” in order to address the dynamic aspects of human nature and dignity. The emphasis on relationality, on the other hand, similar to such turns in Roman Catholic theology, often means a distancing from abstract idealist models, and works to the favor of living reality and experience. For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer took up these impulses and developed an anthropology of person characterized by relationality: “By person, I do not mean at this point the idealistic person or mind or reason, but the person in concrete, living individuality.”113 Emil Brunner, second after Karl Barth as far as influence and reputation, ultimately deviated from his former companion. He abandoned the pure relational interpretation by distinguishing between a material and a formal aspect of imago Dei. Sin had annihilated the former, whereas the latter remained and would allow recognizing the human in man through such things as reason, language, personality and self-understanding as person, and conscience knowing God’s law. This formal aspect of imago Dei, apparently still to be framed as substantial, is that to which God’s grace and revelation are directed. But again, what emerges from this is an ethic of divine-human relation in all dimensions. On this basis, Brun- ner emphasized the responsibility of man towards one’s neighbor; at the same time, however, he underlined the significance of God-created orders and systems like nature, but also society, culture, state or economy. Thus, an idea of human dignity is implicit and inscribed into an ideal of order. Despite his personalist leanings, justice is the main theme for Brunner, but it is a justice emerging out of divinely inspired relations. “Brunner’s theory of justice is an Aristotelian equality based theory, not a dignity-based theory.”114

112 Cf. Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/1, pp. 205-220 (Zurich, 1945); III/2 (Zurich, 1948), ch. 10, par. 45, 3 (‘Menschlichkeit als Gleichnis und Hoffnung’), esp. pp. 386-391. 113 Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer. A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids, 1999), esp. pp. 29-45 on personhood and relationality; quotation from Bonhoeffer ibid., p. 33; Jennifer Howell, Imago Dei and the Earthly Life: The Theological Anthropology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (PhD Diss, Baylor University, 2014). 114 Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments’ (see n. 70), p. 165. Generally, for an evaluation of Brunner’s concepts cf. ibid., pp. 161-165. Crucial for Brunner’s ideas has been his Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (Tübingen, 1932), later to be elaborated 224 Alfons Brüning

Instead, there seems to be more of human dignity and less of an order- centered approach in the works of German Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. Pannenberg to a large extent moved away from the Lutheran dichotomy of iustus et peccator and saw the human being as the key towards knowledge of God, characterized by his or her own inherent longing and striving for perfection and salvation. The human being for Pannenberg is the bearer of an eschatological anticipation (Antizipation) of the world to come.115 As this applies for all humans, and every human being, it ought to find expression in relations of mutual respect, in the sense that man as person can never be fully at the disposal of other humans, like other things of the real world. So Pannenberg again combines the Kantian insistence of the human being bearing a value, not a price, and being autonomous, not subordinated to any purpose, with an ethics of relation that can cautiously be labeled as personalist.116 The already mentioned “translation” problem, however, returns in his texts and remains unresolved. Pannenberg’s system can be interpreted in favor of an idea of human rights, but at the same time his personalist allusions make him, like many theologians, limitedly sensitive for the institution of rights. He rather wants to go beyond formal or positive rights: “Through acts of recognition, therefore, love creates right.”117 So while there is no reason to presume that Pannenberg would reject human rights in the name of agape inspired by Christ’s example, as it seems to have happened

in Gerechtigkeit. Eine Lehre von den Grundgesetzen der Gesellschaftsordnung (Zurich, 1943) [English: Justice and the Social Order (New York, 1945)] and Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und wirklichen Menschen (Berlin, 1937). 115 W. Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch. Die Anthropologie der Gegenwart im Lichte der Theologie (Göttingen, 51976). On Pannenberg’s „anthropological turn“ and soteriological anthropology see also Munteanu, ‘Grundzüge und gesellschaftliche Relevanz eines ökume- nischen Menschenbildes’ (see n. 100), pp. 130-132, 137-141. 116 “Die Beziehungen zwischen Menschen sind nur insoweit menschliche Beziehungen, wie man einander als Person gelten lässt. Als Person wird der andere dann respektiert, wenn ich in ihm dieselbe unendliche Bestimmung, die in keiner schon vorhandenen Lebensgestalt aufgeht, am Werke weiß wie in mir selbst. Person ist das Du, insofern es nicht verfügbar wird wie die mich umgebenden Dinge.” – Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch (see n. 115), p. 60. 117 “Durch Akte der Anerkennung also schafft Liebe Recht.” – Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch (see n. 111), p. 69. [English mine, A.B.] – See on rights and justice his chapter ‘Recht durch Liebe,’ pp. 67-77. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 225 elsewhere in 20th century Protestant thought,118 his insistence on Christian love also leads to a certain neglect concerning aspects of positive law. This makes him, perhaps like many among the theologians we have mentioned, a problematic correspondent for juridical, law-centered debates on human dignity and rights. Contemporary Protestant theology, while usually advocating human dignity and rights without basic objections, goes on with the search for an appropriate expression, in its own terminology, for how human dignity might be properly understood. In Protestant theological terms of our times, this means the task of “re-contextualizing” human dignity.119 Within such efforts, “justice” continues to be a main reference point, but at the same time this justice, along the lines earlier established, turns into a matter of realizing the relational existence to which the human being is destined – in the two dimensions of “imago Dei” and “justice out of love”.120 This newly emphasized, relational dimension of human existence apparently also helps to overcome the paradox between the ethical importance and the terminological uncertainty of human dignity. From this sometimes emerges the suggestion that “dignity” does not at all relate to some objective essence of individual human beings but acquires its meaning according to a relationship and is rooted in social practice.121 Somewhat complementary to this, one meets again certain sensitivity for the usurping potential of language itself, which would make not particular definitions but any given definition a violation already of, for example, Kant’s principle. The conclusion, curiously enough, consists in a plea for an “apophatic anthropology” that takes seriously the

118 Cf. Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments in Human Rights’ (see n. 70), pp. 157f., with particular reference to Swedish Lutheran bishop and theologian Anders Nygren. 119 Cf. R. Kendall Soulen and Linda Woodhead, ‘Contextualizing Human Dignity,’ in God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), pp. 1-24, and other contributions to the volume. 120 Cf. e.g. Christoph Schwöbel, ‘Recovering Human Dignity,’ in eds. Soulen and Wood- head God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), pp. 44-58. 121 Frits de Lange, ‘The Hermeneutics of Dignity,’ in Fragile Dignity. Intercontextual Con- versation on Scripture, Family and Violence, eds. L. Juliana Claassens and Klaas Spronk (Atlanta, 2013), pp. 9-28. Ceteris paribus, this view on dignity as something bestowed on the person through a moral act towards the Other (the needy, vulnerable, disabled) is also in the center of consideration by Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments in Human Rights’ (see n. 70), pp. 169-171; the “constructivist” aspects of this approach yet seem to be an unresolved problem. 226 Alfons Brüning mystery of any human existence in a plea for a “body guided by the Holy Spirit” as a vessel for divinization.122 So the subsuming notion seems possible, that Protestant thinking, despite the often displayed reserve towards especially Greek Patristic patterns, and mainly based on communal concepts realizing justice according to God’s command, ends up, if not with explicit personalism, then with rather similar patterns in terms of a relational interpretation of human existence and allusions, motivated by ethics, towards an “apophatic anthropology” parallel to, partly in the Father’s spirit.

Eastern Orthodoxy: Theology of the Image Taken Seriously

The plea for an “apophatic anthropology” would certainly have met the sympathy of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a leading representative of 20th and 21st century Orthodox theology. In his attempt to sum up and assess main developments of – not only – Orthodox theology in the preceding decades, Kallistos recently announced the 21st century as that of anthropology, which was supposed to take the place of ecclesiology as the guiding theme of the century before. Within this, he explicitly speaks out in favor of an “apophatic anthropology”, and he does so with reference to the imago Dei pattern, to personhood and the above-mentioned passage of Gregory of Nyssa.123 “Personhood remains irreducible; its reality cannot simply be deconstructed and reduced to the facts of appropriate sciences. The actual experience of being a person is far greater than any particular explanation that we chose to give of it; …”124 With such statements, Kallistos Ware indeed does take up some major trends in Orthodox anthropology from previous decades, which in many ways can be related to the general efforts concerning anthropology and “human dignity” in other camps and schools as outlined before, and in some respects betray surprising concurrence. Orthodox anthropology – even if not positioning itself directly within the program of a neo-patristic renaissance, or reproducing the anti-Western

122 Linda Woodhead, ‘Apophatic Anthropology,’ in Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity (see n. 11), pp. 233-246, with references to ancient sources of theosis, the desert fathers and the Russian spiritual elder Seraphim of Sarov. See also Huber, ‘Menschenwürde’ (see n. 95). 123 Kallistos Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century (Geneva, 2012). 124 Ibid., p. 32. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 227 overtones of this program – often presented a re-evaluation of the Patristic heritage and derived from this a call to emphasize human’s higher purpose for personal development, and to insist on the spiritual dimension of human existence. That implies, along the lines of Orthodox personhood, an understanding of personal development that could not be reduced to, or exhaustively described by, a vocabulary merely alluding to things as welfare, health, success or power. In many of such readings there is an otherworldly aspect to human existence, that remains incomprehensible without reference to – in consciously vague terms – a spiritual realm that is not isolated from this world but is an integral part of it, and of human nature in particular. Kallis- tos’ interpretation has some particular features: “Each of us is called to act as priest of the creation, and mediator.”125 Other revitalizations of the Patris- tic heritage by Orthodox theologians, and adoptions of theosis, have a more existentialist note, engaging also Byzantine and Hesychast authors with their particular emphasis on the link between kenosis and true human destiny.126 Despite inherent differences, however, the strong accent on the spiritual, dynamic dimension of human nature and the higher purpose of human existence meanwhile has made it to a commonplace and general starting point in Orthodox encyclopedia entries.127 Perhaps with the idea of possible convergences with other Christian confessions, protagonists of the first generation of the “neo-patristic renaissance” were still largely interested in ecumenical contacts, be it for mutual exchange or for the sake of what John Meyendorff would later call “giving witness to the world”.128 The split into anti-Western and pro-ecumenical branches was, therefore, a phenomenon of later times. The emergence of a debate around human rights was no exception to this, although it sometimes seemed a long way to go from “theology proper” to the socio-political sphere to which that debate mainly belongs.

125 Ibid. (emphasis in the original). 126 Cf. e.g. Nellas, Deification in Christ (see n. 84). On Nellas see Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers. From the Philokalia to the Present (Downers Grove, IL, 2015), pp. 191- 193. 127 Cf. e.g. Vladimir Shmalyi, s.v. ‘Antropologiia’ [Anthropology], in Pravoslavnaia Entsik- lopediia [Orthodox Encyclopedia] vol. 2 (Moscow, 2008), pp. 700-709, also online on http://www.pravenc.ru/text/114070.html . 128 See John Meyendorff, Witness to the World (Crestwood, NY, 1987); illustrative, also for the field of anthropology, are the essays in Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, eds. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis, 1992). 228 Alfons Brüning

This was not yet true for all environments. Here and there theorists from various denominations displayed a shared interest in anthropological questions directly in response to the politically and culturally turbulent times after World War I, the rise of Fascism and the Russian Revolution. In some milieus, appeals to personhood were just the result of joint intellectual operations. Theorists with an Eastern Christian background had a significant part in such operations. Debates around concepts of personhood reached an early peak in the interwar period. To some extent this could easily be expressed, for example, in extrapolation of Kantian terms (and often was), but circumstances also provided a favorable climate for the considerations of some particular patterns of Orthodox anthropology as elaborated in the period before (which was true for the concept of theosis) or excavated in response to the challenges of the time (as could possibly be said about a “theology of the image”). Against such background, nowhere perhaps was the interaction between Orthodox, more accurately Russian Orthodox émigré circles and Western personalist movements, the latter more than superficially inspired by Catho- lic Christianity, more intense than in interwar Paris – at that time, as outlined above, generally an intellectual laboratory to generate key terms of modern understandings of personhood, from Catholic viewpoints and beyond. The Eastern Christian contribution within this laboratory most likely was more than marginal, but still waits for exploration in detail. A key figure in this environment for much of the 1930s was Nikolai Berdiaev, whose intellectual circle (the Berdiaev colloquy, called into life in 1928) offered a meeting point not only for other Russian emigrants (among them theologians of the rank of Florovskii and Sergii Bulgakov), but also for philosophers and prominent advocates of personalist concepts like Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel. Especially with Maritain, the future author of seminal passages of the UNDHR, Berdiaev maintained a good, although at times somewhat uneasy friendship.129 Articles and reviews in the émigré journal The Way (Путь), of which Berdiaev acted as editor-in-chief, offer a vivid reflection of the attention and reflective efforts devoted to major personalist and anthropological themes as those discussed in these circles. This is also true for programmatic writings of Mounier or Maritain, which were

129 Cf. Andrew Louth, ‘Nikolaj Berdyaev – Creativity, Freedom, and the Person,’ in id., Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 60-76, here esp. p. 63. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 229 honored by extensive, albeit sometimes critical reviews by either Berdiaev himself or others in his environment. The details of this vivid debate and exchange of thoughts, also with regard to concepts of “human dignity” and concomitant impulses for later phases previous to the UNDHR, still await more thorough investigation.130 Berdiaev was generally perceived as representative of the Orthodox theological tradition (partly due to his studies of another alleged prophet of the Eastern tradition, Dostoevskii131), but it remained a matter of controversy as to what extent his views, in particular his anthropology, could be called canonically Orthodox. Equally disputed were the ideas of his émigré fellow (though, different from Berdiaev, an Orthodox priest and theology professor) Sergii Bulgakov. The latter shared with Berdiaev a strong accent on human freedom as a basic feature of the human person, and on creativity as an expression of the role of the human being as mediator between secular and divine. Again, more than “pure theology” was at stake. As has been argued, Bulgakov’s ideas about the human being bridge the gap between his philosophy of economy and his theological sophiology.132 If a characterization in short terms is possible, it would label Berdiaev’s vision of man tragic, perhaps existentialist, while that of Bulgakov appears to be incarnational, seeing the human being endowed with a divine task to transform the world. Both had, at any rate, a path in life mostly parallel, sometimes intersecting, and a common cause in defending the image of the human against reductionist philosophical theories and enslaving ideologies. Both engaged the legacies of late 19th century Russian religious philosophy, in particular of Dostoevskii and Solov’ev (and, roughly speaking, their revitalizations of concepts like imago Dei and theosis in the idea of “Godmanhood” [богочеловечество]). Finally both, in different contexts, were keen to make their point in the quest for “human dignity” of the

130 A valuable preparatory evaluation of this treasure, indispensable for further research, is Antoine Arjakovsky, La Génération des penseurs religieux de l’émigration russe: La revue La Voie (Put’), 1925-1940 (Kiev-Paris, 2002); English translation: The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925-1940, transl. Jerry Ryan (Notre Dame, IN, 2013). 131 Cf. Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 61-62, 72-76. 132 Cf. Regula Zwahlen, ‘Sergey N. Bulgakov’s concept of human dignity,’ in eds. Brüning and van der Zweerde, Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 56), pp. 167-186; A. Louth, ‘Fr Sergii Bulgakov and the Nature of Theology,’ in id., Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 42-59. 230 Alfons Brüning time.133 Also in both cases, the “orthodoxy” of their views was in dispute (although, as often the case with attempts to adapt theological concepts to new concrete socio-economic challenges, what could actually be regarded as “orthodox” was part of the question). The dispute itself was a key element of the laboratory in which they acted and thought. Generally, the adaptation of an Eastern Christian heritage that was supposed to originate in Patristic tradition was an intrinsic part of this laboratory’s activities. Part of the phenomenon was that these activities often, and necessarily so, went beyond theology in a narrow understanding. Bulgakov and Berdiaev in many ways were also social theorists (or theologians with a socio-political sensitivity perhaps rather unusual for a majority of the Ortho- dox at that time). To begin with, they had found their way to theology through short-lived sympathies with Marxism. More important, they were spiritual heirs of another paramount exponent of Russian religious philosophy, Vladimir Solov’ev, also in their interest for questions of natural law and the structures of human society. Similar to their predecessor in this respect, it was adaptations of natural law, in combination with key terms of patristic anthropology, which paved the way for various modern visions of society inspired by the Orthodox tradition. And right here existed, despite differences in detail, a common ground with personalists of Catholic origin like the mentioned Jacques Maritain. Adaptations of the concept of natural law led to a vision of society that would, in the ideal case, offer the conditions for a “dignified existence” to every human person. In this respect, affinities already between Maritain and Solov’ev are apparently more than superficial;134 but, as we have seen, the “right to a decent life” also appeared as the quintessence of considerations in line with the “Russian school of natural law”, which in many respects stood even behind “neo-patristic” views like those of Florovskii.135 Such intellectual movement among Orthodox into the direction of human dignity and rights, by the way, was not unique, and, as will become clear, hardly to be explained exclusively by any possibly specific

133 Cf. Regula Zwahlen, Das revolutionäre Ebenbild Gottes: Anthropologien der Menschen- würde bei Nikolaj A. Berdjaev und Sergej N. Bulgakov (Berlin, 2010). 134 Elena Pribytkova, ‘Natural Law and Natural Rights according to Vladimir Solovyev and Jacques Maritain,’ in eds. Brüning and van der Zweerde, Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights (see n. 56), pp. 69-82. 135 See, again, the contributions of Konstantin Antonov and Nicholas Sooy to this volume. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 231 dynamics among anti-Bolshevik Russian emigrants after the October revolution. Perhaps even more strong, although similarly inspired by both natural law and Orthodox ecclesiology (and by the Orthodox liturgy, according to his own account), were the ideas of the Lebanese philosopher and Orthodox Christian Charles Malik, another of the main co-authors of the UNDHR.136 Elsewhere in the French laboratory the revitalization of patristic patterns went less explicitly with a socio-political perspective, although still in defense of an appropriate understanding of human dignity against ideological, technical or economic absorptions. Crucial for the eventual condemnation of Bulgakov’s views in Moscow (where the patriarchate condemned his sophiology as heret- ical) had been his fellow émigré Vladimir Losskii. More closely related to the French academia than the protagonists of The Way (after his studies at the Sorbonne in medieval philosophy he prepared a book on Master Eckhardt), Losskii belonged to those who perceived the exile situation as a particular call to convey the treasures of the Eastern Christian tradition to his non- Orthodox contemporaries. Closely connected with his focus on the mystical theology of the Christian East (such is the title also of the first in his series of influential books137), i.e. the unknowable God and the apophatic tradition of uniting with God instead of speculating, is his anthropology. Losskii tried to explore the secrets of the phrase denoting the human being as “created in the image and likeness”. What does this mean under contemporary circumstances?138 As we have seen, not all of the Church Fathers operate with the distinction between image and likeness on equal scale, but Losskii does, perhaps setting the standards for a majority of Orthodox theorists to follow him. The issue for him is as central as is, for instance, the anthropological theme in Rahner’s theology.

We may say that for a theologian of the catholic tradition in the East and in the West, for one who is true to the main lines of patristic thought, the theme of

136 See Anthony G. Roeber, ‘Orthodox Christians, Human Rights and the Dignity of the Human Person. Reflections on Charles Malik (1906-1987),’ Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 70 (2018), pp. 285-306. 137 Vladimir Lossky, Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Église d’Orient, Préface par Saulius Rumšas (Paris, 1944); English: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London, 1957). 138 Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY, 1974), esp. chapter 7: ‘The Theology of the Image’. 232 Alfons Brüning

the image (in its twofold acceptation – the image as the principle of God’s self- manifestation and the image as foundation of a particular relationship of man to God) must belong to the ‘essence of Christianity’.139

Further considerations result in what can be called his formula of the human being:

Man created ‘in the image’ is the person capable of manifesting God in the extent to which his nature allows itself to be penetrated by deifying grace.140

Although one would look in vain for a direct representation of the term “human dignity” itself in his text, it is implicitly present, in a definition that would prove influential. Still more of an explicit intention to restore the “human image” against all anonymizing tendencies of the time can be felt in the works of Leonid Ouspensky, Losskii’s colleague as teacher at the St Denis Institute (an institution of Orthodox higher learning, with French as the teaching language) and a renowned icon painter and theorist of art. Together with Losskii, in 1952 he published a book on “the meaning of icons”,141 followed by an “essay about the theology of icons in the Orthodox church” (containing his lectures at St Denis),142 published in 1960. The latter in revised form would later form the first part of his two volume work devoted to “the theology of the icon”, published towards the end of his life.143 The actual intention connected with these books was less scientific or explanatory, but apologetic in regard to both Western theology and modern culture in general. His apologetic attitude, similar to Losskii, relied on Orthodox tradition as containing the necessary elements of an appropriate response to “modern secular humanism” in all its appearances (from Soviet Communism to dehumanizing aspects of science and technology). In spots his apologetic fervor was at the

139 Ibid., p. 126. 140 Ibid., p. 138. 141 First in German: Der Sinn der Ikonen (Bern-Olten, 1952); English translation: The Meaning of Icons (Boston, 1969). 142 Leonid Ouspensky, Essai sur la théologie de l’icône dans l’Église orthodoxe, vol. I, (Paris, 1960). 143 Leonid Ouspensky, La théologie de l’icône dans l’Église orthodoxe (Paris, 1980); English: Theology of Icons, transl. A. Gythiel and E. Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY, 1992). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 233 expense of scientific accuracy, which sometimes led to misunderstandings and critical replies by academic art historians.144 That his cause was actually of a larger nature becomes clear from passages addressing the theme of “the icon in the modern world”: “… the message of the Orthodox icon is an answer to the problems of our times precisely because these problems are of an anthropological nature.” He continues, accompanied by quotations from Losskii’s above-mentioned studies:

In our day, with the advent of Orthodoxy in this ‘upside-down’ world, two completely different orientations of man and of his creativity confront one another: the anthropocentrism of a secularized, a-religious humanism, and a Christian anthropocentrism. In this confrontation the icon plays a leading role.

What he means is the function of the icon – commonly described as “win- dow from eternity” – as giving witness to the human’s higher purpose, to be found through a reorientation towards the divine Creator, which would open to him another, less sober and disillusioned or technocratic, vision of the world.145 There are two main patterns – or dimensions – in the understanding of human nature, which can possibly, in a generalizing approach, be taken from this revival of a “theology of the image”: “relation” or “relatedness”, and “capacity” or “potential”. The first, basically in directions similar to more recent perspectives in Western theology, has been further developed in its ontological implications by a following generation of theologians (Zizioulas, Yannaras). This next generation also managed to balance the initially still more or less overtly theocentric perspective present in Losskii’s work by adding a communal and ultimately Eucharistic perspective. Aristotle Papanikolaou probably correctly epitomizes this intellectual path towards Orthodox personhood with the term “divine-human communion”:

What emerges, in the latter half of the twentieth century is a theology of personhood in which the ‘person’ is an event of irreducible uniqueness and freedom from the necessities of created nature. Lossky establishes the basic form of this theology of personhood within the horizon of the mystical ascent toward union

144 Cf. e.g. Paul Gautier’s review in Revue des études byzantines, 18 (1960), pp. 259-260. 145 Ouspensky, Theology of Icons (see n. 143), pp. 477, 480. 234 Alfons Brüning

with God, whereas Yannaras and Zizioulas amplified its meaning by situating personhood eucharistically – to be person is a Eucharistic mode of being realized in the eucharistic assembly. Personhood, thus, is not a capacity or an achievement, but a mode of being realized in particular relations of love and freedom.146

The last sentence of this passage might yet bear a potential for controversy with regard to human dignity and rights. Personhood is described as “not a capacity or an achievement…” Losskii, who is invoked here, actually does speak of something like “capacity”, when he ends up with the earlier quoted formula (probably not meant as a conclusive definition), describing the human as “the person capable of manifesting God in the extent to which his nature allows itself to be penetrated by deifying grace.” So here a certain capacity in fact is a feature of the person. In order not to exaggerate phil- ological scrutiny here, there might be justice in stating that both sequences circumscribe the same, basically dynamic aspect of the human being: personhood is about becoming, not merely about being. One may think of John Zizioulas’ “eschatological trace in anthropology” here, which resonates, as has been stated, with Protestant approaches like Pannenberg’s Antizipation or with the Catholic Karl Rahner’s humanum capax infiniti.147 Potentiality and reality of personhood, at any rate, do not contradict. But it is an important problem whether “human dignity” in its modern, and semantically rather narrow (for example, juridical) use, denotes “potential” (or “capacity”) or reality. It is, in some important respect, the old problem of definition: Definitions are static, personhood is not. More or less the same ambiguity applies to the second important “find” passed by Orthodox theology from Patristic tradition to modern debates – the concept of theosis, of deification. Already Losskii’s explanations would be incomprehensible without considering this concept (which he seems to mostly engage implicitly, and which, again, mainly provides the dynamic aspects of his anthropology). At the time of Losskii’s academic activity (he died early,

146 Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), p. 113. A recent study on Zizioulas describes his theological path as one leading from ecclesiology to anthropology, see Sergii Bortnyk, Kommunion und Person: Die Theologie von John Zizioulas in systematischer Betrach tung (Berlin, 2014). 147 Munteanu, ‘Grundzüge und Relevanz eines ökumenischen Menschenbildes’ (see n. 100), pp. 141-144. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 235 in 1958), theosis still was at the beginning of its career as a concept to further decode the depths of a modern Christian anthropology. At the beginning of the 1950s, “… if you had asked the average Orthodox Christian […] what theosis meant, you would probably have been met with a puzzled look. The word hardly featured in the standard theological handbooks.”148 This does not mean that it had still to be excavated directly from the Patristic sources. Preparatory work had been done, again, in Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th century. On an earlier stage, Russian Slavophiles extracted the concept, for example, through their use of the famous compilation of mystical texts and prayers of the ancient desert fathers, the Philokalia and its modern editions in Greek and Russian.149 Partly in continuation of these lines, partly in conscious dissociation from them, the term plays its role in the works of Vladimir Solov’ev. Solov’ev, whose application of ideas of natural law and sensitivity for socio-political dimensions of philosophy we have mentioned, might also be credited for having overcome the partly ascetic, partly theocentric biases still, and quite naturally, present in the spiritual literature of the desert Fathers (and in some of the Slavophile’s writings, as indicated earlier). Where he considers church, law or society, Solov’ev is able to present ideas about something like “sacramental deification”, “moral deification” or “social deification”. He might actually be the first for whom the path leads from anthropology via (ecumenical) ecclesiology to society and politics, and back, and on every stage theosis is a more than inspiring concept for him.150 This cautious widening of perspectives also towards the spheres of law, society, and politics set a tone still effective among Solov’ev’s spiritual heirs, like Berdiaev or Bulgakov. Both would continue to apply theosis, though maybe not always explicitly, in their concepts of the human person. Equally anthropocentric, albeit with much less of secular social and political matters in mind, is the adaptation of theosis offered by another French socialized Russian émigré, Myrrha Lot-Borodine. In the latter respect, but perhaps not only, Lot-Borrodine has much in common with her fellow theologian Vladimir Losskii. In both thinkers, according to Andrew Louth, can

148 Russell, Fellow Workers with God (see n. 28), p. 13. 149 See Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 1-12. 150 Jeremy Pilch, Breathing the Spirit with Two Lungs. Deification in the Work of Vladimir Soloviev, Eastern Christian Studies, 28 (Leuven, 2018). 236 Alfons Brüning be seen something of what must have been meant concretely by the “return to the fathers” and neo-patristic synthesis that Florovskii had in mind.151 Probably, female theologians like Lot-Borrodine or her contemporaries Elis- abeth Behr-Sigel and Mother Mariia Skobtsova have even greater merits than the above-mentioned Russian religious philosophers in exploiting the concept of theosis for modern theology; their work stands at the beginning of many entangled ways of reception, eventually beyond confessional confinements.152 Heleen Zorgdrager, in her contribution to our volume devoted to the three female theologians, notes among them an important shift of nuances achieved in their perception of theosis. First, they obviously deprived the concept of the purely ascetic, and in a sense exclusivist, traces which it had acquired over previous centuries – some had begun to speak of the lonely spiritual exercises of the desert monks and their contempt for the sur- rounding world as “spiritual egoism”. Whether that is an accurate critique or not, these theologians shifted the emphasis to the inter-human dimension. So despite being less interested in socio-political issues per se, Lot-Borrodine, Behr-Sigel and Mother Mariia, each in her way, were among those to overcome earlier theocentric biases of the concept in favor of a growing attention to matters of charity and love of one’s neighbor.153 Besides, they also put aside a hidden agenda of male prevalence in the concept, taking its universal implications seriously also in the sense of “neither male nor female…” Gender differences for them are of secondary importance, even to the effect that for Mother Mariia Skobtsova the love of a mother for her child can provide an illustrative example, of equal value to the spiritual exercises of the desert Fathers, to show how the path towards deification can, or even ought to be, taken. Such opening of perspectives was meant to pre-shape the concept also for application in contexts beyond theology and church. The three protagonists did not take such steps themselves, but prepared the ground, as Zorgdrager

151 Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 94-110. 152 For a detailed overview concerning the reception of theosis in 20th century Christian theology see Pilch, Deification in Soloviev (see n. 150), pp. 9-19; Russell, Fellow Workers with God (see n. 28), pp. 13-31. 153 See also, next to her article in the present volume, Heleen Zorgdrager, ‘A Practice of Love: Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882-1954) and the Modern Revival of the Doctrine of Deifica- tion,’ Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 64 (2012), pp. 285-305. On Mother Mariia see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers (see n. 126), pp. 111-126. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 237 shows, for not only theological, but social concepts and visions engaging theosis, (such as those recently presented by Aristotle Papanikolaou, to which we are about to once more return154). Still there remain differences and break lines between the adaptations. Secular society is yet but one possible field for modern reflection. Another direction possibly to be taken on grounds of an intentionally gender-neutral adaptation of theosis – for which, again, Behr- Sigel, Lot-Borrodine and Mother Mariia paved the way – is hinted at by Zorgdrager in her concluding passages devoted to the work of contemporary Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley and her attempts to integrate also sexual desire into a normative anthropology, together with an ascetic of cultivation in relations to God and fellow human beings. Theosis in the meantime indeed has become an ecumenical issue. The debate has gone over to questions as whether deification can help to better understand justification in Protestant theology, how grace is related to divine energies (in Hesychast understanding), what Trinitarian model helps best to an appropriate understanding of deification, and to contemporary re-readings of Church Fathers like Augustine155 – to name but some examples. The new attractiveness of theosis that has long left the confines of Eastern Christianity in the meantime has also evoked critical comments.156 The very phenomenon of this new attractiveness is, however, hardly accidental, seeing the favorable climate for a spiritual defense of the dignity of the human being that emerged since the early decades of the 20th century, and both triggered and condi- tioned the new interest in the “roots” of Christian thinking and Patristic sources. At least, once general lines are established, further research and more detailed analysis will be needed to further clarify intellectual paths, cross-over connections and influences at force in this process.

“Translations”

In the overview presented up to this point, the already mentioned problem of “translation” from what might be called “pure theological” terminology

154 Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6). 155 See again Matthias Smalbrugge’s contribution to this volume. 156 For a general, partly critical evaluation see Paul Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once-despised Archaism Became an Ecumenical Desideratum,’ Modern Theology, 25 (2009), pp. 647-659. 238 Alfons Brüning into a language of dignity and rights, in other words into the sphere and concomitant terminology of law, and socio-political context that constantly lingered in the background. This further step, concerning its “if” and its “how”, needs some conclusive considerations, this time with particular attention for how Orthodox theology has met the challenge. There are, to be accurate, various and sometimes ambiguous results available so far. In the post-Communist era, in particular, it is the Russian Orthodox Church, which can be credited with presenting the first attempt to adjust theosis to matters of Orthodox Christian social teaching in a secular, pluralistic context. In 2008 it issued an official document containing, according to its title, “the Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Teachings on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights”.157 Its first chapter on “Human dignity as a religious and ethical category” offers a direct reference to the patristic term of theosis:

Human life therefore lies in seeking ‘God’s likeness in all virtue so far as it is possible for man’, as St. John of Damascus says in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. The patristic tradition describes this elicitation of the image of God as deification.

The same chapter concludes:

According to the Orthodox tradition, a human being preserves his God-given dignity and grows in it only if he lives in accordance with moral norms because these norms express the primordial and therefore authentic human nature not darkened by sin. Thus there is a direct link between human dignity and morality. Moreover, the acknowledgement of personal dignity implies the assertion of personal responsibility.

This pioneer attempt in a number of respects illustrates the difficulties, which an adaptation of Patristic heritage, seen as constitutive for Orthodox theology, can meet concerning “human dignity” in a modern socio-political, pluralist context. This also concerns the compromise character of an official document which seeks to express the quintessence of preceding debates

157 English version on https://mospat.ru/en/documents/dignity-freedom-rights/, esp. chapters I and IV. All further quotations taken from here. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 239 between divergent factions (which in fact had been extensive).158 Despite sincere efforts, in the eyes of many a commentator, the result was a failure, either stuck halfway between pure theology and social teaching, or just miss- ing central points concerning the role of man in modern state and society. Among the most problematic issues in following controversies was the link between dignity and morality suggested here. The document’s formulas represent a certain innovation in appealing – now quasi officially – to both the empirical and the dynamic aspects that might be attributed to “dignity”. As a result, however, full dignity would require a moral, virtuous life, and dignity can be, if not completely lost, seriously diminished due to a sinful life. The borderline separating notions of sin and of crime (or, as might be stated, between church and state) in fact is blurred here. Many commentators in East and West saw this statement as an assault on the idea of unconditional dignity with which every human being was endowed.159 The church, on the other hand, acquired the role of a moral arbiter also in society, apparently judging equally over the degree of dignity (and rights) one would be able to claim. Russian commentators from outside the church were quick to note that under such conditions only devout Orthodox Christians, or – para- doxically – just those already saved, would have a realistic chance to fully claim their human dignity.160 Such observation, on a closer look, illustrates several pitfalls an anthropology developed on grounds of Patristic models

158 Cf. the documentation in Kristina Stoeckl, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London, 2014). 159 The controversy has produced a vast literature, out of which only a selection can be presented here: Aleksandr Agadjanian, ‘Russian Orthodox Vision on Human Rights: Recent Documents and their Significance,’ Erfurter Vorträge zur Kulturgeschichte des Ortho- doxen Christentums, 7 (2008); Stefan Tobler, ‘Menschenrechte als kirchentrennender Faktor? Die Debatte um das russisch-orthodoxe Positionspapier von 2008,’ Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 107 (2010), pp. 325-347. Most recently Dietmar Schon, ‚Würde, Freiheit und Rechte des Menschen. Anmerkungen zu einem Grundlagendokument der ROK,’ Osteuropa, 67 (2017), pp. 191-204. Several observers stated that Catholic voices in the debate, although none fully agreeing, were generally more positive about the document than Protestant commentators. 160 Nikolai Plotnikov, ‘Vpered, v iazycheskii Rim!’ [Ahead, to pagan Rome!], Politicheskii Zhurnal 15, 110 (2006); Sergej Egorov, ‘Prava cheloveka po-arkhiereiski. RPC-MP bro- saet vysov mezhdunarodno priznannym pravam cheloveka [Clerical Human Rights. ROC Moscow Patriarchate challenges internationally acknowledged human rights],’ in Civitas, September 5, 2008, on http://www.civitas.ru/article.php?pop=0&code=932&year= 2008; Stanislav Minin, ´Srazhenie s vetrianymi mel´nicami´ [A Fight with Windmills], in 240 Alfons Brüning carries with it. The anthropology in the Russian Orthodox document, first, might represent a certain upgrade or progress with regard to stereotypical, static and liberal, individualistic ideas of human dignity, and their protective function against state interference, political arbitrariness and ideological absorption. If one would assume (erroneously, as we have seen), that such patterns guided the first drafts of the UNDHR, the Russian model would perhaps mean a differentiation and progress. But in going a step further it negates previous achievements rather than completing them. Inspired by the Fathers’ method and modern Orthodox theological revitalizations, the document introduces a specific dignity or value of the human with reference to the Biblical imago Dei pattern, and at the same time takes the differentiation between image and likeness very seriously – to the effect, however, that the accent lies almost entirely on the dimension of likeness, and the dynamic implications of the pattern. Consequently, sin and morality re-enter the discourse as categories to measure, if not the dignity itself, then the extent to which it has become manifest and visible. In fact, the application of the imago Dei pattern, similar to Patristic predecessors, is still mainly theocentric – or Christocentric. Namely, for a personalist dimension and communitarian implications the immediate and ultimate frame of reference is not state and society, but the church. This holds true at least unless one would agree to abandon the difference between the term “sin” in Christian tradition and the term “crime” in state legislation, which are yet not the same and cannot completely coincide. This is a core implication of the human rights concept with regard to a secular and multi-ethnic state, like the Russian federation. It is this neglect of boundaries between spiritual claims and secular legislation that immediately caught the eye of alert observers. To be fair, the document still concedes a remaining core value of the human even in case of a sinful and “undignified” life:

A morally undignified life does not ruin the God-given dignity ontologically but darkens it so much as to make it hardly discernable [sic]. This is why it takes so much effort of will to discern and even admit the natural dignity of a villain or a tyrant. (I.4)

Nezavismaia gazeta, July 2, 2008, on http://www.ng.ru/events/2008-07-02/3_windmill. html?scroll=1. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 241

True as that may be, the whole text leaves interpreters rather helpless with regard to the dignity (and rights) of ordinary citizens, especially those (religious, ethnic, sexual and other) minorities which for whatever reasons would not fit into the “traditional” Christian moral framework. Certainly, there are ideas of a Christian personalism also at work here, but it is a personalism that is still, if one wants, too Patristic, lacking some important steps otherwise achieved in the discussions about human dignity. (As for certain difficulties with secular rights’ language and the relation of the spiritual and the secular sphere, as we have seen, the document betrays the same difficulties elsewhere to be met also in, for example, Protestant thinking, but at the same time proves unable to consider existing solutions relying on distinctions between the “is” and “ought to be”.) Concerning the relation to the state, the “Basic teachings” are evidently stuck halfway between nostalgia for the Byzantine symphonia model and a modern secular state (including evident misunderstandings about secularity or “secularism”). Concerning the communitarian implications of personalist models, beyond clear allusion to the Christian church they remain vague. This also holds true for repeated invocations by Russian hierarchs of duties alongside rights, referring to article 29 of the UNDHR, according to which indeed “[e]veryone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”161 Such references were meant, of course, to restore the balance between rights and duties, which they saw distorted by a hitherto exagger- ated emphasis on rights and freedoms (opinions which are not exclusive to the Russian Orthodox, but in fact could equally claim their counterparts in the Western discourse).162 However, reference to the community here proved the expected stumbling block. The invocations of a communal dimension in various contexts leave the question open whether the community so relevant for one’s personal development and the manifestation of dignity is the Chris- tian church or – a likely hypothesis in light of this and other Russian Ortho- dox documents – the (Russian) nation, or any other. In a word, the perhaps well-intended appropriation of Patristic patterns and personalist anthropology for the sake of a deeper understanding and an enhancement of human

161 UNDHR, art. 29, 1. 162 On the ROC’s and in particular patriarch Kirill’s ‘discovery’ of art. 29 cf. Stoeckl, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (see n. 158), pp. 61-62. 242 Alfons Brüning dignity in modern times in this case ended up with difficulties. The results were evident paradoxes, a lack of clarity in various respects, and eventually striking disharmonies in the debates concerning human dignity to which this document actually wanted to contribute. Conversely, that such efforts to make the Patristic heritage fruitful for modern discourses on human dignity can have different, perhaps more promising results, at least after conscious avoidance of the mentioned pitfalls, can be seen from Aristotle Papaniloaou’s already mentioned treatise on The Mystical as Political, published a few years after the release of the Russian Orthodox document.163 Also explicitly dealing with theosis, the deification of the human as its starting point, Papanikolaou presents an attempt to present another Orthodox political theology, avoiding certain pitfalls which apparently had become virulent after the end of Communism. He situates the meaning of deification within the central Biblical commandment of love of God and love of one’s neighbor (Lk 10:27). From here he derives his understanding of deification within the framework, and as realization of “divine- human communion”.164 This latter term, in his scheme, also aptly summarizes the core of the personalist approaches developed by various Orthodox theologians in the wake of the “neo-patristic Renaissance” (like Losskii, Yannaras, Zizioulas and others) during the 20th century, despite their sometimes far- going differences in detail (not least concerning the attitude towards human dignity and rights). What results from this frame – the actual “translation” happens at this point – is a solidarity with all those suffering, a shared interest of humanity in the flourishing of every human person and the provision of favorable conditions. Human dignity starts with acknowledging the fact – and this is seen as a fact – that every human being is loved by God, even if completely abandoned by human society, or even subject to terrible forms of dehumanization, as in Nazi camps or the Gulag. Thus, not only created and then left alone, but loved in a continuing, and constitutive relationship – this is to what the appropriate understanding of imago Dei must ultimately lead. From there, Papanikolaou critically evaluates not only “justice-based” models of society, once so prominent among Protestant theologians, but also

163 Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6); a critical evaluation of the Russian Orthodox document, ibid., pp. 128-129. 164 Ibid., Introduction, esp. pp. 1-4. Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 243

“dignity-based” continuations of such models like those of Nicholas Wolter- storff, presented earlier. The difficulties of many theologians with rights language, as also Papanikolaou feels urged to acknowledge, do have a reason. “Dignity”, certainly as a juridical term, would indeed already mean a reduction, because no-one is loved, is appropriately related to because of any second-hand quality derived from, for instance, his legal status or even whatever subtle theological or ideological considerations. No one can be loved because of, or in obedience to general definitions.165 It is here where Papani kolaou addresses the otherwise often articulated resistance of Orthodox theologians to a language of rights that would never do justice to, or even “adequately indicate all that is possible for the humans in relationship with God.”166 Admittedly, also in his terms, it does not, and there remains a depth in the human person neither reflected nor sufficiently explored by a language of universal human dignity and rights. However, particular political communities, outside of a universal solidarity of the entire human race, do exist, and they are – even if their existence is, in part, ultimately based on fear and sin167 – structured by legal and political systems. Once this necessity is conceded (a concession, by the way, that implies the strict refusal of ascribing sacramental character to any kind of community), a language of human dignity and rights reflects the preconditions a legal and political system would give to the exertion of “divine-human communion” from the part of any of its members. It does not replace its exertion, nor does it provide any guaranty that this communion would be fully realized. However, it gives due credit to the fact that human flourishing, the development of the human person can only happen within a human community (that would grant rights, material goods, moral support and much more).168 There might also be derived duties to this community, but the individual person comes first. In a reading of art. 29 UNDHR, different from the Russian Orthodox version, duties can

165 Ibid., p. 124. Cf. Protestant theology, in particular Wolfhart Pannenberg, as in notes 115-118 above. 166 Ibid., p. 119. 167 Ibid., p. 125. 168 A somewhat similar thought has been expressed, although perhaps less radically, by Han- nah Arendt, ‘Es gibt nur ein einziges Menschenrecht,’ Die Wandlung, 4 (1949), pp. 754- 770. Arendt speaks of a “right to have rights”, which in her view means to be part of a community which commits itself to essential rights for all members and their realization. 244 Alfons Brüning be defined only to that kind of community which guarantees the human “free and full development of his personality.” Finally, the concept also does not entail any concrete statement about the empirical aspects – to what ultimate goal, in case of a concrete person, the full development of the human person within “divine-human communion” would have to lead, and what a human life is ideally supposed to look like. Papanikolaou’s evaluation of Orthodox personalist concepts and their implications is perhaps a bit more radical, and less church-based. In fact, he manages to avoid some of the traps (grounded, among others, in an adoption of Patristic patterns) that proved fatal for the Russian Orthodox document discussed above. The application of personhood for the purpose of a socio-political vision also here has its communitarian aspects, just as it has its “apophatic” implications. Still the boundary between the spiritual and the secular sphere does not remain fully intact, but there is at least no theocracy shining through the paragraphs. Papanikolaou makes a cautious plea for democracy and a pluralist society to be favored also in an Orthodox perspective, a point that has attracted critique from the part of other Orthodox theologians.169 But this plea is neither definite nor unambiguous. Papanikolaou also makes clear that “Christians […] should never expect a fully sacramentalized form of political community, one in which the community exists in relations of love and freedom that constitute persons as unique and irreducible”.170 Such a community, to add the voice of another Orthodox theologian, Pantelis Kalaitzidis, has a character in Orthodox perspective not merely utopian, but eschatological – a crucial difference that could only be appropriately expressed and preserved in full observance of a separation of church and state.171 “Human dignity”, in this perspective, is a poor, simplifying and reducing, but necessary place-holder, that would not be capable of fully encapsulating all dimensions of the human person, but can fulfill the service of protection, and of the provision of the conditions necessary for a full realization of theosis, understood within the frame of “divine-human communion”.

169 Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political (see n. 6), p. 127. Cf. the critical review by Vigen Guroian, ‘Goodless Theosis’, First Things (April 2014), pp. 53-55, and the further debate in the same journal, issue of June-July 2014, pp. 14-15. 170 Papanikolaou, The Mytical as Political (see n. 6), p. 125. 171 Cf. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology (Geneva, 2012). Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 245

On the other hand, this approach perhaps means not only relativizing or diminishing the meaning of “human dignity”, but also re-introducing Orthodox visions into the debate. It has its convergences with late developments in the philosophy of human rights in general. In quite some respects it resonates well with more recent attempts – in the larger context of a philosophy of human rights – to look on human nature not only in terms of vulnerability, but also in terms of potential and capability – terms that we have just met also in various Orthodox formulas describing human nature. Still refraining from all too narrow definitions, this “capability approach”, which has its firm place meanwhile among UN approved human rights concepts and strategies, equally focuses on the needs and conditions generally necessary for human development in whatever shape. The “capability approach” – mainly represented by the economic theorist Amartya Sen and the philosopher Martha Nussbaum172 – has led to a supportive attitude towards what had earlier been called the second and third generation of human rights, referring to patterns of material supply, but also education and cultural participation. Already at first sight, there seems to be a more than superficial congruence between such views and the vote for the “right for a decent life” articulated by Russian theorists of law more than a century before. Once more we have to leave the details of a comparison to further research, but there appears to be a more than superficial convergence between two “translated”, socio-political visions of human dignity as a potential to become “fully human”.

Conclusion

Such apparent convergences as those between “secular human dignity” and “apophatic anthropology, or between “the right to a decent life” and a “capability approach”, together with rapprochements between philosophy and theology in general, reflect the state of affairs after a long and complex

172 Cf. Amartya Sen, ‘Elements of a Theory of Human Rights,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32 (2004), pp. 315-356; Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities; The Human Develop- ment Approach (Cambridge, Mass., 2011); Ingrid Robeyns, ‘The Capability Approach,’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), ed. Eward N. Zalta, online on http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach. 246 Alfons Brüning development. To be sure, there are also central patterns extracted from Patristic anthropology which, if taken seriously, would lead to this state of affairs. Reviving the Father’s heritage is no more a specifically Orthodox issue. Further investigations will have to clarify the similarities and differences concerning the inherent secularism and openness for diverging foundations (Begründungsoffenheit) of “human dignity” and an “apophatic anthropology”, between the “rights to a decent life”, Christian visions of either “God’s justice” or “divine-human communion”, and the currently discussed “capability approach”, to name but some of the patterns which occurred up to now. Further investigations also will have to show whether solutions offered so far to the mentioned “translation” problems in connection with a personalist anthropology are appropriate. Our survey, if fulfilling its purpose, documents the paths taken in various efforts to take early Christian patterns seriously under modern conditions. It also, perhaps, made clear both the promises and the difficulties the Fathers’ heritage brings about for modern ideas of human dignity. In fact, modern theory of human dignity and rights can learn a few things through an encounter with the ancient Fathers, if sufficiently prepared. If every human being is understood as imago Dei, i.e. not only created after God’s image, but also in his likeness, this has several further implications. Imago Dei implies a loving God. That humans are created by God does not mean that after a single act they would have been left to their own fate, whatever that might consist in. Also an interpretation, according to which creation by God, thus not by other humans, would ground God’s possessory title and implicitly refute human claims (leading already to notions of equality, and the abolition of slavery, for example), is at maximum a superficial or legalistic interpretation – although some modern interpretations, among them the Kantian understanding of humans endowed with a purpose, not reducible to a price, lead into this direction. However, what emerges from this is only an abstract and static understanding of human dignity that has the advantage of being able to be translated into legal systems and political orders but betrays numerous deficits in concrete application and in confrontation with the need of more precise definitions. Patristic heritage, despite the many differences in detail we had to face in this survey, goes an important step further, insisting that the act of creation undergirds a relation between God and human, between Creator and creature that is constitutive Can Theosis Save “Human Dignity”? 247 for an appropriate understanding of the human being. Furthermore, there is both a static and a dynamic dimension in this relation, expressed by the twofold expression of “… in the image and likeness”. There is the love of God for every human He created according to His image, and for all humans unconditionally, but there is also the call to every single person to grow and develop into his likeness. In other words, there is both the promise and the call to humans to become god-like, to deification. Even to several secular philosophers this is, at least, an appealing metaphor. At the same time, already the Fathers (admittedly in single sources, which perhaps only modernity has made important) tell us that – despite all obvious requirements connected with this call in terms of virtue and morality, which yet provide only another framework173 – there ultimately is no concrete or formal definition available of what a concrete human life would be supposed to look like. Just as the Creator, the creature has a mystical dimension to it, which is ultimately inaccessible. From “apophatic theology” results, in final consequence, also an “apophatic anthropology”, that would in no way negate the meaning and significance of either right or duty, but put the one and the other into place. At the various stages of a complex history leading to modern adoptions of human dignity, the Fathers’ heritage has been engaged in one way or another – often long before the achievements of the 20th century. Modern applications, then, either resulted in or at least resonated with concepts of the human being as not only individual, citizen, juridical entity, economic actor and the like, but as a person that needs not only static protection but also is called to develop dynamically in its own right, and eventually God only knows to what end. Shortly, with “dignity” grows mystery, and vice versa. On the other hand, the character and structure, in ideal and practice, of the community, within which human capacity is supposed to be realized becomes a matter of reflection, too – however, always in due reverence to the singularity of the individual human person. At the end, this is perhaps where one always ends up when trying to figure out an image of the human being that would look as honored, as “dignified” as possible – just as the Church Fathers once already tried to do.

173 Cf. also Woodhead, ‘Apophatic Anthropology’ (see n. 122), p. 246. 248 Alfons Brüning

Abstract

This introductory survey tries to identify possible contributions of Patristic concepts about human nature to current debates concerning the actual meaning of the term “human dignity”. Eastern Orthodox theology, in particular in connection with 20th century’s “neo-patristic renaissance”, has offered concepts of personhood as a critical response to Western narratives about the emancipation of the human individual. Pure individualist concepts often, and in many respects have betrayed inherent weaknesses in modern debates. The current intellectual climate with its focus on normative anthropology appears to be favorable to the re-assessment of the value of the Father’s writings, but includes also certain temptations. Ancient Christian sources indeed do offer inspiring visions on human nature and destiny, but to make them fruitful for current debates requires certain hermeneutical operations to abstract from the specific historical and intellectual context from which these visions originate. As a thorough and critical examina- tion of existing narratives concerning the genesis of “human dignity” reveals, such operation is not carried out for the first time, but has been a trade-mark of all epochs now considered to be important steps on the path towards modern “human dignity”. A review of existing studies about the adaptation of Patristic sources in these epochs forces to abandon stereotypical narratives of an East- West opposition expressed in antinomies like “personhood” versus “individual”, “religious” versus “secular” and the like. Both East and West in fact engaged the Fathers, often in mutual inspiration, on a way to modern concepts of the human person and his or her “dignity”.