Kingdom and commonwealth

The Greek word basileía βασιλεία can be correctly translated as ‘kingdom’, ‘sovereign realm’, ‘empire’ or (as we Americans tend to prefer, blasted republicans that we are) as ‘commonwealth’. Rather than griping too much about it, it’s worthy to dwell on the breadth of the meaning of the Greek word itself, because there is actually a good reason for the last translation. As our father among the Saints, Archbishop John the Golden-Tongued of Constantinople, put it:

The possessions of the Emperor, the city, the squares, and the streets, belong to all men, and we all use them in an equal degree. Look at the economy that God has arranged. He has created some things that are for everyone, including the air, sun, water, earth, heaven, sea, light, and stars, and He has divided them equally among all men, as if they were brothers. This, if nothing else, should shame the human race. The Emperor has made other things common to all, including the baths, cities, squares, and streets. There is not the slightest disagreement over this common property but everything is accomplished peacefully. If someone tries to take something and claim it as his own personal possession, then quarrels arise. It is as if the very forces of natures were complaining, and as if at that time when God was gathering them from everywhere they were trying with all their might to separate among themselves, to isolate themselves from each other, and to distinguish their own individual property by coldly saying that ‘this is yours but that is mine’. If this were true, quarrels and bitterness would arise, but where there is nothing of this sort neither quarrels nor disagreements occur. In this way we see that for us as well a common and not an individual ownership of things has been ordained, and that this is according to nature itself. Is not the reason that no one ever goes to court about the ownership of a public square the fact that this square belongs to all?

Saint John Chrysostom’s reading of the Imperial inheritance as public property of all people in the basileía, as common wealth, to be used for the common good, is actually taken from prior sources. It is a Christian radicalisation, in fact, of Seneca. It critically reorganises the Roman, pagan understanding of property in light of the rights and duties of the Emperor – by way of analogy to the providence of God. Byzantine autocracy (that is to say, the Christianised autocracy that took root after Emperor Saint Constantine) is, in fact, one of the main wellsprings of modern Christian social thought on the progressive income tax and the welfare state.

Modern leftists, ‘progressives’ and socialists borrow shamelessly from this inheritance – as well they ought to do. Quotes from Saint Basil, Saint Gregory and Saint John Chrysostom are rightly common among ‘progressive’ Orthodox and Latin Christians. There is much worth borrowing from them. Far less admirable, though, is the failure to acknowledge that the radically-Christianised aristocratic principle, the idea of noblesse oblige found in the Gospel of Saint Luke (but hardly limited to that!), is in fact the source of this Patristic thinking that they claim to value. The insistence on retaining the old equity-inspiring values and norms of the early Christian world would ring a lot more true, if they actually respected that early Christian world and its political thought, rather than writing it off as so much oppressive ‘despotism’.

In doing that, such leftists and ‘progressives’ retread the conscious rejection of Byzantine political thought in Whiggish classical-liberal and proto-libertarian quarters in the nineteenth century. They ignore the history of leftist ideas in modernity, as rooted in royal initiatives against a rising bourgeoisie. And they rob their own side of a critical dimension of historical awareness, a dimension that could still be useful in actually promoting ‘progressive’ policies.

I’ve pointed out before that the polities that generally take the best care of their people – that assure the great bulk of them of a decent and civilised existence, at least in œconomic terms – are either constitutional monarchies of the northern European variety, or else ‘illiberal’ post-communist ‘hybrid’ states. Archbishop Saint John Chrysostom was not being naïve or haphazard when he appealed to the property of the Emperor to make his case for the common weal. Concrete expressions of everyday social solidarity actually do matter a great deal more than slogans (or elections, or partizan invective). Keeping in mind that all of the Three Holy Hierarchs were, on some level, educated Christian Platonists, it’s necessary for leftists to begin to adapt at least some of the Socratic-Platonic scepticism of democracy for themselves, if they want to preserve the egalitarian goals they claim to stand for.