Liberalism as Political Anticipation: Democracy, Human Rights, and the Eschatological Kingdom

Liberalism as Political Anticipation: Democracy, Human Rights, and the Eschatological Kingdom Abstract This article proposes a novel theological interpretation of liberal democracy's historical development from Greek polis to universal human rights. Drawing on John Zizioulas's eschatological ontology, particularly his concept of "remembering the future," I argue that liberal democracy's progressive movement from substance- based to relation-based personhood represents a political anticipation of the Kingdom of God, where each person stands before God as unique and irreplaceable. While liberalism remains insufficient as a self-contained ideology, its core intuitions—the rejection of substantialist definitions of personhood, the affirmation of universal dignity, and the protection of individual rights—mirror the eschatological reality already actualized in the Eucharistic community. This reading offers Orthodox theology a constructive engagement with liberal values without baptizing liberal ideology, recognizing liberalism not as an endpoint but as a pedagogos eis Christon, a preparation for the fuller reality of the Kingdom. Keywords: Eschatological ontology, liberal democracy, John Zizioulas, personhood, human rights, Kingdom of God, political theology I. Introduction: The Question of Liberalism and the Kingdom In contemporary political theology, liberal democracy often finds itself caught between uncritical embrace and outright rejection. Progressive Christians baptize liberal values as self-evidently Christian, while traditionalists condemn them as secular humanism's infiltration into the Church. Both positions, I contend, miss a deeper theological truth: liberal democracy's historical trajectory—from limited Greek citizenship to universal human rights—represents a political intuition of eschatological personhood, albeit partial and incomplete. This article advances a specific thesis: the development of liberal democratic principles corresponds to the movement from substance-based to relation-based ontology that John Zizioulas identifies as central to Christian eschatology. In Zizioulas's framework, the person is constituted not by ousia (substance, nature, biological givens) but by hypostasis—unique, irreplaceable existence in relation to God and others. Liberal democracy, in its ideal form, moves toward this same insight: personhood belongs to the human being as such, not by virtue of birth, ethnicity, class, or any other substantialist criterion. However, this correspondence is neither accidental nor does it validate liberalism as an autonomous ideology. Rather, liberal democracy functions as what Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has called a glimpse of "common values which transcend national, political, religious, racial or cultural boundaries" —values that find their ultimate ground and fulfillment in the eschatological Kingdom already present in the Church's liturgical life. My approach differs from both liberal theology's comfortable conflation of gospel and modernity, and from radical Orthodox critiques (such as Davor Džalto's anarchist political theology) that reject liberal democracy entirely. Instead, I propose a third path: recognizing liberal democracy as anticipation rather than realization, 1 2 3

as preparation rather than fulfillment, as the political sphere's groping toward a truth that theology articulates explicitly. This argument proceeds in three movements: First, I trace the historical development from Greek democracy through republicanism to liberal democracy, identifying the shift from substantialist to universalist conceptions of personhood. Second, I explicate Zizioulas's eschatological ontology, particularly his notion that personhood is constituted by relation rather than substance. Third, I demonstrate the correspondence between liberal democratic developments and eschatological anthropology, while maintaining crucial distinctions that prevent the reduction of Kingdom to polis. II. From Polis to Universal Rights: The Historical Movement A. Greek Democracy: The Birth of Political Personhood The Athenian polis represents humanity's first sustained experiment in political personhood. Prior to democracy, individuals were subsumed into tribes, households, or monarchical structures where identity derived from one's place in a fixed hierarchy. In Athens, by contrast, citizens participated in the ekklesia (assembly) as political agents possessing isegoria (equal right to speak) and isonomia (equality before the law). Yet Greek democracy remained profoundly limited by substantialist categories. Citizenship belonged to adult males born of Athenian parents—a definition grounded in physis (nature, biology, birth). Slaves, women, and metics (resident foreigners) were excluded not because they lacked rational capacity, but because they lacked the proper substance. As Aristotle systematized, some humans are "slaves by nature"—their very being destined for subordination. Nevertheless, the Greek achievement was revolutionary precisely in establishing the principle of political personhood. In the agora, a space emerged where humans could encounter one another not as functions of oikos (household) or tribe, but as participants in common deliberation. This space, however imperfectly realized, anticipated something beyond itself. B. Roman Republicanism: Expanding the Circle Rome extended the boundaries of political community through civitas—citizenship that could be granted regardless of ethnic origin. The famous declaration "Civis Romanus sum" ("I am a Roman citizen") carried legal protection across the empire's expanse, famously claimed by St. Paul in Acts 22:28. Yet Roman citizenship remained bound to legal status, a privilege conferred by power rather than an inalienable dignity. The Stoic philosophical tradition introduced what appeared to be a more radical conception. Cicero and later Stoics spoke of a cosmopolis—a universal city of reason where all rational beings participate in natural law. However, this Stoic universalism remained fundamentally substantialist: dignity was grounded in rational nature—the human capacity for logos. One possessed worth by virtue of instantiating rationality, a universal substance. This differs critically from Christian anthropology. As the Church Fathers emphasized, following Genesis, humanity is not defined primarily by rational capacity but by divine vocation. Adam became human not through 4 5 6

intellectual development but through responding to God's call—through entering into relationship with the divine Other. The patristic tradition, as Zizioulas recovers, understands personhood as constituted by communion, by the capacity for personal relationship, not by possession of rational substance. This represents a genuinely revolutionary break from Stoic substantialism, though the political implications would take centuries to unfold. C. The Liberal Revolution: From Substance to Universal Dignity The transformation from ancient to modern conceptions of rights represents what Charles Taylor calls a "great disembedding"—the liberation of persons from predetermined social matrices. This shift crystallized in three key moments: First, the Enlightenment proclamation of natural rights: John Locke's assertion that individuals possess "natural rights" to life, liberty, and property prior to any political arrangement severed rights from substantialist foundations. One has rights not because of birth, achievement, or virtue, but simply by virtue of being human. Second, the American and French Declarations: The claim that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" (1776) and that "men are born and remain free and equal in rights" (1789) universalized political dignity in unprecedented ways. Significantly, both declarations appealed to divine creation—not substance—as the ground of rights. Third, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1's proclamation that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" (1948) extended this logic to its fullest political expression. Dignity inheres in the human person as such, transcending nation, race, religion, sex, or any other substantialist category. This trajectory reveals a clear pattern: the progressive de-substantialization of personhood. Political dignity migrates from aristocratic birth (substance) to rational nature (substance) to simply being human—a move that, as I will argue, parallels Orthodox eschatological anthropology's insistence that personhood is constituted by relation, not substance. III. Zizioulas's Eschatological Ontology: Person as Relation A. The Critique of Greek Substantialist Ontology Metropolitan John Zizioulas's theological project centers on a fundamental distinction: between substantialist ontology inherited from Greek philosophy and relational ontology revealed in biblical eschatology. In Greek metaphysics, being is defined by ousia—the unchanging essence that makes a thing what it is. A human being's identity derives from participation in universal human nature; the individual is a particular instance of a general substance. This ontology, Zizioulas argues, infiltrated Christian theology despite its fundamental incompatibility with biblical revelation. When patristic theology adopted Greek philosophical categories, it risked reducing personhood to a mere instance of human nature, thereby losing what is distinctive in Christian anthropology: the person as absolutely unique, irreplaceable, and constituted not by nature but by relationship. 7 7 8 9 10 11

Zizioulas recovers the Cappadocian distinction between ousia (substance/essence) and hypostasis (concrete personal existence). Critically, hypostasis is not simply "individual substance" (as Boethius later defined persona). Rather, it denotes existence-in-relation. The Father is not Father by virtue of divine substance—which He shares equally with Son and Spirit—but by His unique relationship: being Father to the Son, breathing forth the Spirit. Applied to human anthropology, this means: The person is constituted by relationship, not substance. I am not primarily an instance of human nature who subsequently enters relationships; I exist as relationship. My personhood is realized in ecclesial koinonia (communion)—supremely in relation to God through incorporation into Christ's body. This has radical implications: If personhood is relational rather than substantial, then my identity is not fixed by biology, ethnicity, gender, or social status. These are attributes of nature, not constitutive of personhood. In Galatians 3:28's eschatological vision—"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"—substantialist categories are transcended (though not abolished) by relational identity in Christ. C. "Remembering the Future": Eschatology as Present Reality Zizioulas's most distinctive contribution appears in his posthumous work Remembering the Future: Toward an Eschatological Ontology. Traditional theology treats eschatology as protology's conclusion—the return to Eden, paradise restored. Zizioulas reverses this: The eschaton is not the return to an original state but the arrival at true being's goal. The Kingdom of God represents not restoration but new creation, the fulfillment toward which creation was always oriented. Crucially, this eschatological reality is not merely future; it invades the present through the Eucharist. In liturgical celebration, the Church "remembers the future"—makes present what is to come. The anamnesis (remembrance) in the Eucharistic prayer is not nostalgia for the past but actualization of the Kingdom already inaugurated in Christ's resurrection. In this eschatological mode of existence, persons relate to one another not according to substantialist hierarchies (master/slave, Jew/Gentile, male/female) but as unique, irreplaceable hypostases standing together before God in love. The Eucharistic community thus embodies the Kingdom's social form: not organic unity of substance, but free communion of irreducible persons. IV . Liberal Democracy as Political Anticipation A. Structural Correspondence: From Substance to Relation The parallel between liberal democracy's historical development and eschatological ontology now becomes clear. Both move from substance to relation as the ground of personhood: Greek Democracy → Substantialist Ontology Citizenship defined by physis (nature/birth) 12 13 14 15

Rights belong to those with correct substance (Athenian birth, male gender) Exclusion grounded in ontological difference Liberal Democracy → Relational Recognition Citizenship belongs to persons as such Rights inhere in being human, not in particular attributes Inclusion grounded in universal dignity This movement is not accidental. Liberal democracy intuitively grasps what eschatological ontology articulates explicitly: Personhood transcends every substantialist category. When the Universal Declaration proclaims that all are "born free and equal in dignity," it echoes—however secularly—the eschatological truth that each person stands before God as unique and irreplaceable, regardless of ethnic origin, social status, or biological attributes. B. The Common Principle: Dignity Beyond Substance Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in his addresses on human rights, has articulated this connection. Speaking to the Council of Europe, he declared: "In our global community, common values transcend national, political, religious, racial or cultural boundaries." These values, he continued, rest on "the universal dignity of all people"—a dignity grounded not in philosophical abstractions but in each person's divine origin and destiny. This theological affirmation finds political expression in liberal democratic principles: 1. Equal legal standing: No person stands above or below the law by virtue of birth or status. This mirrors the eschatological community where "God shows no partiality" (Acts 10:34) and all stand equally before divine judgment and grace. 2. Protected freedoms: Liberal rights protect the space wherein persons can respond freely to truth, rather than being coerced by substantialist necessities (tradition, hierarchy, majority). This corresponds to eschatological freedom—not autonomy, but the capacity for authentic response to God and neighbor. 3. Participatory governance: Democratic participation recognizes each person's irreplaceable voice in the polis, just as the eschatological Kingdom requires the unique participation of every person for its fullness— no one is merely replaceable instance of a type. 4. Universal scope: Human rights' universalism—transcending ethnicity, religion, culture—reflects the Kingdom's catholic (universal) character, where the dividing walls of hostility are broken down (Ephesians 2:14). C. The Liturgical Roots of Liberal Intuition Here a provocative thesis emerges: Liberal democracy's intuitions about universal dignity may themselves be secularized echoes of Christian liturgical practice. For centuries, Christian Eucharistic assemblies proclaimed and enacted—however imperfectly—a radical equality. In early Christianity, Paul could write to Philemon urging him to receive the slave Onesimus "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear 16

brother" (Philemon 1:16). In the liturgy, slave and free, Roman and barbarian, male and female stood together as members of Christ's body. Of course, the Church often betrayed this eschatological vision, baptizing rather than challenging substantialist hierarchies. Yet the liturgical grammar remained, inscribed in Scripture and sacrament: "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise... so that no one may boast before him" (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). This liturgical-theological logic, I suggest, fermented within Western consciousness, eventually erupting in political form as liberal democratic principles. This is not to claim that liberalism simply derives from Christianity historically (though genealogical connections exist). Rather, liberalism and Christianity share a common intuition about personhood that finds its ultimate ground in eschatological ontology. Liberalism articulates this intuition politically; Christianity reveals its theological depth. V . Why Liberalism Is Not Enough: The Limits of Secular Anticipation A. Autonomy vs. Freedom-for-Communion Liberal democracy's chief limitation lies in its conception of freedom. Classical liberalism defines freedom negatively: freedom from coercion, interference, imposed substantialist identities. This is indeed necessary and good. But it is not sufficient. Eschatological freedom is freedom for communion. As Zizioulas emphasizes, true personhood is ekstasis— standing outside oneself in relationship. The person exists fully only in self-giving love toward God and neighbor. Liberal freedom can liberate the self from imposed identities, but cannot by itself direct the freed self toward its true telos: communion in the Kingdom. This produces liberalism's characteristic pathology: the atomized individual, "free" but isolated, autonomous but purposeless. Without eschatological orientation, freedom collapses into mere choice—the capacity to select among consumer options without any criterion of what is genuinely humanizing. B. Rights Without Ontological Ground A second limitation: Liberal democracy proclaims universal dignity but cannot adequately ground it philosophically. If humans are merely evolved mammals, sophisticated biological machines, or socially constructed subjects, why should they possess "inalienable" dignity? The Enlightenment initially borrowed Christian theological capital (creation in divine image), but once severed from its roots, liberal humanism struggles to justify its own commitments. Moreover, liberal tolerance often operates on substantialist grounds—accepting the Other based on shared rational capacity or moral qualities. But as Zizioulas insists, authentic Christian personalism transcends even this: "The Christian ethos of otherness does not allow for the acceptance or the rejection of the Other on the basis of his or her qualities, natural or moral. Everyone's otherness and uniqueness is to be respected on the simple basis of each person's ontological particularity and integrity. Not only the rejection, therefore, but even the mere tolerance of the Other on the basis of such qualities would be incompatible with the Christian ethos." 17 18 19

Eschatological ontology provides what liberalism lacks: an ontological foundation for dignity that does not depend on qualities, capacities, or achievements. Persons possess irreplaceable worth not because they instantiate rational nature or possess certain capabilities, but because they are called into existence-in-relation with the Trinitarian God. Their dignity is hypostatic—grounded in their unique, unrepeatable personal existence before God, constituted by divine call and human response. C. The Lack of Telos: Liberalism as Pedagogy, Not Endpoint Most fundamentally, liberalism lacks a telos beyond itself. It liberates, but toward what? It protects negative freedoms, but for what end? Classical liberals hoped that freed individuals would spontaneously pursue virtue, prosperity, and progress. Contemporary experience suggests otherwise. Here Orthodox eschatology offers a crucial corrective: Liberal democracy is not the Kingdom, but a pedagogy toward it. Like the Law for St. Paul, liberalism can serve as pedagogos eis Christon—a guardian leading us toward Christ (Galatians 3:24), preparing soil for the Kingdom's full flowering, but not itself the harvest. This means Christians can affirm liberal democratic values without divinizing liberal ideology. We recognize the movement from substantialist exclusion to universal dignity as genuinely good—it clears away obstacles to the Kingdom's full manifestation. But we also insist that authentic personhood finds fulfillment not in autonomous self-determination, but in free communion with God and neighbor in the Body of Christ. VI. Conclusion: Democracy as Gift to Those Who Seek First the Kingdom Reinhold Niebuhr famously argued that "Democracy is a gift which is added to those who seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness." This formulation captures the relationship I have been proposing: liberal democracy corresponds to eschatological truth not as its source but as its political shadow. When Christians seek the Kingdom—when they live eucharistically, recognizing each person's irreplaceable hypostatic existence —they create conditions wherein liberal democratic principles can flourish. Conversely, when democracy is absolutized as autonomous ideology, cut off from its eschatological roots, it withers. Rights become mere assertions of will; freedom degenerates into license; equality flattens into homogenization. Only when oriented toward the Kingdom—when liberal principles serve rather than replace Christian communion—can democracy approximate its deepest potentialities. This reading offers Orthodox theology a constructive engagement with modernity. We need not choose between uncritical embrace and total rejection of liberal democracy. Instead, we can recognize it as a political anticipation of eschatological truth: imperfect, incomplete, always in danger of self-idolatry, yet genuinely reflecting something of the Kingdom where each person stands before God as unique and beloved. In the Eucharistic assembly, this reality is already present. There, substantialist divisions are overcome not by liberal ideology but by incorporation into Christ. There, freedom is realized not as autonomy but as love's self- offering. There, equality means not identical function but irreplaceable personhood. The task of political theology is neither to baptize the secular order nor to retreat into sectarian purity, but to discern where the Kingdom's light already shines—even in unexpected places—and to kindle it toward fuller flame. 20

References 1. John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 27-65. ↩ 2. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, January 27, 2025. ↩ 3. Davor Džalto, Anarchy and the Kingdom of God: From Eschatology to Orthodox Political Theology and Back (New York: Fordham University Press, 2021). ↩ 4. Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). ↩ 5. Aristotle, Politics, 1254a-1255b. ↩ 6. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, III. ↩ 7. See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man; Zizioulas discusses this extensively in Being as Communion, 27-65, emphasizing that personhood is constituted by response to divine call, not by rational capacity as such. ↩ ↩ 8. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), Chapter II. ↩ 9. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly, December 10, 1948. ↩ 10. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 27-49. ↩ 11. Ibid., 49-65. ↩ 12. John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 113-154. ↩ 13. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 110-122. ↩ 14. John D. Zizioulas, Remembering the Future: Toward an Eschatological Ontology, ed. Maxim Vasiljevic (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2023), 23-45. ↩ 15. Ibid., 251-280. ↩ 16. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. ↩ 17. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 49-50. ↩ 18. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 51-78. ↩ 19. John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 5. ↩ 20. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (1944; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 188. ↩ 2