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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: This study compares two perspectives on religion and political relationship, one of the most respected belonging to a Western theologian of the first millennium, Augustine, the other belonging to an illustrious patriarch of Constantinople, Photius. The first outlined his views in this matter in his famous work The City of God, written shortly after the fall of Rome in the year 410. The second wrote in a time in which the Byzantine Empire was recovering after two centuries of isolation. Augustine was the launcher of an idea of separation that must exist between the political and the spiritual and eschatological mission of the Church. Photius, by contrast, campaigned for a collaboration, in the historical field, between political and religious, between the patriarch and the emperor. Comparing the two positions, the author notes that Photius lacks eschatological dimension, only the appearance of personal responsibility before the divine "forum" being kept, while in Augustine just the unilateral emphasize on the eschathology makes him theory lack practical and concrete effects. The two views complement each other, the strengths corresponding exactly to of weaknesses of one another. Augustine defined better church´s role and place as an institution historical and therefore superior to political, while Photios thought better the possibility of a collaboration between Church and State. |
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