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The term “Orthodox morality”—in combination with “traditional
values”—is unquestionably a neologism.
A passage from Friedrich
Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals” gets right to the point of Aristotle Papanikolaou’s recent essay on Public Orthodoxy: “We need a critique of moral values, the value of these values
is […] to be called into question—and for this purpose a knowledge is
necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values
grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and their
distortion.” One does not have to agree with Nietzsche’s conclusions in
order to agree on the validity of his endeavor, especially if one aims,
like Papanikolaou, to answer contemporary questions without threatening
the internal coherency of the tradition. On that note, I would like to
draw the attention to the fact that in Russia, the term “Orthodox
morality” has not only a modern, but also a Soviet ring to it.
As for its “modern ring,” one of the commonplaces about Russian thought in general is its “concentration on ethical problems.”
According to the Slavophile Alexei Khomiakov, “Russia should be either
the most moral, that is the most Christian of all human societies, or
nothing,” and the concept of ethics as the cornerstone of Russian
mentality was shared by the “Westerners” and most Russian philosophers
of the Silver Age. Russian literature is famous for treating moral
questions, and Dostoevsky has been praised for having anticipated
Nietzsche: “If God does not exist everything is permitted” (see Mihajlo Mihajlov, “The Great Catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian Neo-Idealism,” in Nietzsche in Russia, ed.
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal). On these grounds, claims about Russian
(Orthodox) moral superiority over “Western civilization” can be traced
back to 19th century discourse that is rooted in modern
European debates around (French) Enlightenment and (German) Romanticism.
As “strategic alliances” between Russian Orthodox and American
Evangelicals reveal, we are not dealing here with geographical divides,
but with a general principle of cultural development that Ernst Cassirer
simply called the everlasting competition and antagonism of two forces:
conservation and renewal (Cassirer, “The Tragedy of Culture” in The Logics of Cultural Sciences, trans. S.G. Lofts). These forces are part of any tradition, which, by the way, simply never are “pure.”
As for the “Soviet ring” to “Orthodox morality,” Russian commentators were quick to compare the list of “Basic Values of [Russian] Allnational Identity”
promoted by the World Russian People’s Council in 2011 with the “Moral
Code of the Builder of Communism” from 1961 (see Richard T. De George, “Soviet Ethics and Morality”). Victoria Smolkin
convincingly demonstrates that religion remained a problem for the
Soviet project until the end, namely on the battlefield of “religion and
atheism on moral issues.” Already at the time of early de-Stalinization
suggestions about the positive role religious morality could play in
order to “build the ideal Communist society” popped up. Indeed, the
relationship of religious thinkers and socialism in Russian thought is
intimate and complex. Still in the 1980s, Nikolai Krasnikov from the
Institute of Scientific Atheism wrote lengthy treatises and books about
the socio-ethical development of Russian Orthodoxy because he was
worried about its efficiency: He described how “Orthodox moralists” were
trying to adapt traditional religious-moral principles to progressive
socialist life and that they even emphasized the social benefits of
ascetism in order to show that a socialist state is in need of the
Church. In his view, they did this in order to “slow down the
secularization of the Soviet citizens’ needs of religious ideology and
morals,” and therefore the “Church ideologists” based their arguments on
the “religious Renaissance by Russian theologizing philosophers“ like
Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai Berdiaev and Sergei Bulgakov. However,
according to Krasnikov, they only engendered a new version of the opium
of the people: to seek salvation in eternity still hindered Communist
morality with its focus on this-worldly spiritual progress of the person
and society. It is ironic to observe that the rejection of Soviet
communism by the former socialists Bulgakov and Berdiaev was based on
moral grounds in the name of the freedom of the person, while
contemporary ideologists try to bridge the gaps in Russian identity by
focusing on common “traditional values” shared by Soviet and Orthodox
“moralities.” However, one has to bear in mind that their common ground
is highly selective and largely based on the rejection of “the imagined ‘western liberal ethos.’” The common hostility to “Western liberalism” (or the lack of a concept of “moral autonomy”)
is the only way to explain how “Orthodox morality” seems to be
compatible with both Soviet progressivism and new Russian
traditionalism.
In short, in Russia, the term “Orthodox morality” was increasingly
used during the Soviet “battle of religion and atheism on moral issues.”
This battle surely has been won by religion. Under the repressive
circumstances of Soviet ideology, the Church’s strategy not to question
Soviet power and not to fight science, but to focus on spiritual and
moral questions may have been wise and quite successful. But after the
breakdown of the atheist regime, many Church representatives continue to
play the moral card in order to legitimize their status instead of
cherishing the new freedom of theological reflection. And for state
leaders the Church’s strong position in questions of morality became a
useful tool to forge new “spiritual braces” for a disoriented
post-Soviet society that “has seen a cacaphony of moral debate.”
In this way, the former battle of religion and atheism became a battle
of “traditionalism” and “liberalism” on moral issues. The only problem
is, that the old-new idea of Russia’s global mission to protect
tradition strikingly contrasts with provocative diagnoses like the
philosopher Sergey Horujys’
about “the annihilation of ethics” in today’s Russia because of “the
absence of individual ethic positions and the willingness to adopt any
position prescribed by the state.” On a more positive note, the findings
of the sociologist Ella Paneiach
indicate that people in Russia actually share more or less the same
“European values,” which enables real debate, but they live under
conditions that don’t really allow them to base their decisions on them.
However, the term “Orthodox morality” stands on shaky ground. If it
once may have been a powerful spiritual weapon in the battle against
state atheism, it has become a mundane weapon on the battlefield of
geopolitical culture wars with no roots in Christian moral theology
whatsoever. I am afraid that people engaging in cultural wars are
neither really interested in morality nor in real debate on grounds of
common presuppositions. But of course, for those who are
interested in theological argument about morals, Orthodox tradition has a
lot to offer. For example, Sergii Bulgakov wrote (in order to criticize
“protestant rationalizing theology,” by the way): “In reducing the
essence of religion to morality […] religion’s own proper nature is
ignored. […] Morality […] cannot have an unconditional religious
meaning; it is the Old Testament, a period of subjection to law that is
overcome (although not abrogated) by the New Testament, by the kingdom
of grace” (Unfading Light, trans. Thomas Allan Smith, p.
47-48). One of his students, Paul Evdokimov, wrote an “Orthodox Vision
of Moral Theology” (only published in French in 2009):
“Man is not only a being that searches for its salvation, but he is also a creator. We have to overcome any normative ethics of rules of conduct, ethics of obligations, laws and bans, we have to overcome moralism. There is nothing more boring, more discouraging than the three categories of the classic systems of moral theology: the duties vis-à-vis God, to one-self, to the next and to society. How is it possible to apply the category of duty or obligation to the life in God? […] Man is not a museum of virtues, but a temple of the living presence of God. In this sense ethics contain not only axiology, acceptance and distinction, but also ontology, transfiguration of man by the gifts of the Holy Spirit who turns him into a source of creative energies and conveys him a prophetic element. […] We should exclude any static attitude that restricts itself to a simple initiation or imitation of the past, in order to open up for a neo-patristic perspective that is true to the creative spiritual dynamism of the Fathers.” (Une vision orthodoxe de la théologie morale, p. 16, 19).*
While fake debates on “Orthodox morality” quickly lead to a dead end,
genuine thought and good theological argument offer fresh perspectives
within the Christian tradition of moral theology.
*I owe the reference to this book to Jeremy Pilch.
Regula Zwahlen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She is coeditor of the German edition of the Russian theologian Sergii Bulgakov’s work and of the monthly specialist journal Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West (Zurich, www.g2w.eu).
Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.
