THE KINGDOM of GOD and the COMMON GOOD

INTRODUCTION

Blessed Is the Kingdom

This book is about three things: the Kingdom of God, the common good, and Orthodox Christian social thought. Along the way, it will touch on a wide range of topics, but these things—particularly the last one—remain the heart of the book. This introduction aims to orient my readers for what follows. While we will encounter many surprising details I uncovered in my research for these chapters, I firmly believe that the primary goal and contents of a book should not be a mystery to readers. If by the end readers have a better understanding of Orthodox Christian social thought, I will consider the book a success.

Christian Social Thought: The Church, the Kingdom, and the Common Good

Jesus began His ministry by proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). He taught His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come. / Your will be done / On earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). And He taught St. Nicodemus that “unless one is born of water and the Spirit,” i.e., baptized, “he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Through these instances and many others, Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God is wherever His reign prevails. And through His life, death, and Resurrection, Christ brought to us communion with God and each other and established His Church, which according to Vladimir Soloviev, “binds . . . together” the world and the Kingdom of God. Indeed, we could even say that the Church is the world becoming the Kingdom of God—not identical with either but “intermediary between the two.”1

As Fr. Alexander Schmemann put it, “The proper function of the ‘leitourgia’ ”—i.e., liturgy, then—“has always been to bring together, within one symbol, the three levels of the Christian faith and life: the Church, the world, and the Kingdom; that the Church herself is thus the sacrament in which the broken, yet still ‘symbolical,’ life of ‘this world’ is brought, in Christ and by Christ, into the dimension of the Kingdom of God, becoming itself the sacrament of the ‘world to come.’ ” 2 In her mediatorial role between heaven and earth, the Church proclaims the Gospel of Christ’s Kingdom, beginning every Divine Liturgy with the proclamation, “Blessed is the Kingdom!” But she also seeks the common good of the kingdoms and communities of this world, whose leaders and actors she commemorates in various litanies. Therefore, our “Blessed is the Kingdom!” should lead us to bless the various kingdoms in which we reside, which means not only repeating the words of the litanies but showing our care for the common good through our actions.

We see many examples of this in Scripture. For one, Jesus often showed His desire to care for the common good by healing the sick and visiting the outcast—doing both, for example, when He healed ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan, an outcast in Jewish society (see Luke 17:11–19). He taught His disciples to do the same (see Luke 9:1–6). He acknowledged the authority of Caesar while pointing to the greater authority of God (see Matt. 22:21), showing us that acknowledging God does not require us to reject earthly kingdoms. In the Old Testament, through the prophet Jeremiah, God showed His care for the common good when He commanded His people to seek peace even for their enemies: “Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace” (Jer. 29:7). Saint Constantine confirmed this concept when he prayed, “My own desire is, for the common good of the world and the advantage of all mankind, that thy people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord. Let those, therefore, who still delight in error, be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity [sic] which they have who believe.”3

Thus, citizenship in God’s Kingdom should make us more concerned with the common good of even secular society. As St. John Chrysostom said, “How may we become imitators of Christ? By acting in everything for the common good, and not merely seeking our own. . . . In truth, a man (really) seeks his own good when he looks to that of his neighbor.”4 The common good, then, consists of the health and flourishing of both ourselves and our communities, from families and friendships, to workplaces and social clubs, to cities, nations, and the whole world. And caring for the common good is, of course, about love. As St. Nicholas Cabasilas taught, God himself is “the common good of all” and “man goes beyond his nature and becomes like God” when he does not “love [his] own gain alone, but consider[s] [himself] rewarded by the triumph of others” 5 through love. How we care for the common good by loving, in particular, our poor and marginalized neighbors is what Christian social thought is all about. And Christian social thought does not cover every important aspect of morality but focuses specifically on the economic aspect of our lives.

We can learn from other Christian traditions that have developed principles and teachings of their own social thought for our very peculiar modern economies in the last 150 years. And of course, the Bible, common to all Christians, is also full of commandments about wealth and poverty, rich and poor. The Orthodox Church, in her mediatorial role between the Kingdom of God and the common good, has two thousand years of social thought, too. And in our modern era, we can and should learn even from the one specialized science that exists to figure out how best to improve the material and social conditions of our neighbors: economics.

The Plan of This Book

Accordingly, this book has five parts:

Part 1 sets the stage for modern Christian social thought and surveys some basic teachings of other Christian traditions. While we confess in the Creed that the Orthodox Church is the “one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” of Jesus Christ, we nevertheless should know what other Christians have done and what common ground might exist to help us think and work together. “For he who is not against us,” says Christ, “is on our side” (Mark 9:40).

Part 2 surveys the Bible, building a biblical theology of wealth and poverty in the context of our salvation through the Gospel. The Bible is the most precious aspect of Holy Tradition, and we cannot hope to understand the latter without a decent grasp of the former. The Liturgy of the Catechumens precedes the Liturgy of the Faithful in the Divine Liturgy for this reason. Every Orthodox Christian must hear the Holy Scriptures before receiving Holy Communion. As St. Paul commanded, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16).

Part 3 surveys Church history in order to more fully ground Orthodox social thought in Holy Tradition. From martyrs to monks to Church Fathers, theologians, and philosophers, we have our own deep well of living water to contribute to broader conversations about Christian social thought today. As an author and researcher, I firmly believe that all Orthodox reflection on the issues of our times must take account of the contributions of those who went before us. “Every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus, “is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13:52). We cannot just say, “New problems require new ideas,” when “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9).

Conversely, Part 4 surveys the history of economics in order to help us incorporate its genuinely new insights for understanding our world today. Human nature has not changed. People still need to love God and their neighbors. People still struggle with the same sins. But our world has changed, particularly its economies. We need not only the “old” things, but “new” things as well. And we’ll see that the history of economics contains many stories, insights, principles, and examples to help us more prudently “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10) in our contemporary contexts.

Last, Part 5 surveys more recent Orthodox social thought. In particular, I look at insights from the controversial teachings of Fr. Sergei Bulgakov and Fr. Pavel Florensky on divine wisdom or “Sophia.” Then, I examine the contributions of S. L. Frank and St. Maria Skobtsova regarding the concept of sobornost’ and the imitation of the Mother of God. Next, I sketch out economic implications of liturgical theology via Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Paul Evdokimov. Last, I survey and evaluate recent Church documents that touch on wealth, poverty, markets, business, economic development, and globalization. As an epilogue, I end with an invitation to see the many ways we all can contribute—and already are contributing—to Orthodox social thought in action for both the Kingdom of God and the common good today.

While the topics I explore in this book may be new and intimidating for some readers, I’ve kept the chapters short—each about the length of a long blog post. So folks should be able to read one chapter a day, for example. And as much as possible, I’ve written them so that readers could even skip around without too much confusion. Most chapters begin with a “hook” drawn from my admittedly limited and dated grasp of pop culture as an aging millennial dad, or else from history—something familiar, silly, or interesting—so that my readers aren’t just bombarded with technical terms from the start. I always write out names of important figures fully in their first occurrence in each chapter, so readers won’t need to wonder which “Smith” or whomever I mean. And each of the five parts ends with a summary and discussion questions.

I want this book to start conversations in parishes, classrooms, ministries, even businesses. I want it to get people excited about living our Orthodox Faith in our world today. Asking forgiveness for any ways I may fall short of that goal, this book is my “widow’s mite,” offered in gratitude for the grace God has given me to read, think, and write about these topics as my career. I’ve been blessed to write it. I hope others will be blessed to read it.

1 Vladimir Solovyov, The Justification of the Good , rev. ed., ed. Boris Jakim, trans. Natalie A. Duddington (Eerdmans, 2005), 371, emphasis original. The Russian surname “Soloviev” can be transliterated in several ways in English. I use the spelling “Soloviev” in the body of this text because that was his own preference. On which, see Vladimir Wozniuk, “Vladimir S. Soloviev: Moral Philosopher of Unity,” Journal of Markets & Morality 16, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 323–329.

2 Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, rev. and expanded ed. (SVS Press, 1979), 151, emphasis original.

3 Eusebius of Caesarea, The Life of Constantine , 2.56, in NPNF 2 1:513.

4 John Chrysostom, Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospel of St. John , 15, in NPNF1 14:52.

5 Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ , trans. Carmino J. de Catazanaro (SVS Press, 1974), 210–211.