‘Power’ in Orthodox Political Theology

Abstract In modern democracies, people exercise power indirectly—through representative government. People must be represented because their “essence” becomes intelligible only if someone speaks in their name. I suggest that this paradox of power can be illuminated by drawing an analogy to the Eastern Orthodox distinction between the essence and the energy of God. By this analogy, “essence” is the people and the actualization of their essence, their “energy” is the government. Both dichotomies describe aspects of power—one as potentiality and the other as actuality . I argue that the concept of power implicit in the model of essence‐energy relation developed by the school of imiaslavie (which I translate as “Name‐hallowing”) is preferable to the one implicit in Neo‐Palamism. By positing that God's essence can be actualized through the discursive medium of the “word” or “name,” imiaslavie facilitates trust that a people's “essence” can likewise become actualized in public political discourse whereby they constitute power that acts in their name. By contrast, the Neo‐Palamite emphasis on mystical experience invites the “will” to act as the primary mediator between “essence” and “energy,” and hence makes us suspicious of democratic deliberation, craving instead immediate identity with government—either by binding popular will to an autocrat or by expressing it directly through radical democracy.