ALFONS BRÜNING

DIFFERENT HUMANS
AND DIFFERENT RIGHTS?

On Human Dignity from Western and Eastern Orthodox Perspectives1

Introduction
The term “human dignity” in recent decades has experienced a meteoric, albeit
sometimes ambiguous, career. It has become popular, but what it actually
means is not always clear. Probably one of the most important documents of
the 20th century (at least the most often translated—into 406 different lan-
guages so far), the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
the United Nations (UNDHR) from 1948 starts: “Whereas recognition of the
inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world ....”
Moreover, quite a number of constitutions throughout the world cite the notion
of “human dignity” in prominent places, mostly right at the beginning. The
German Grundgesetz simply has it in its very first sentence (Grundgesetz art.
1.1): “Human dignity is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of any
state power” (translation is my own). Moreover, although often seen as a
“Western” creation, the use of the term is no more limited to the countries usu-
ally seen as “the West.” It holds a comparable place in various constitutional
texts throughout the world (cf. McCrudden 2008: 664-75).

“Dignity” always appears as the basis for claiming rights. According to defini-
tions like the one just quoted, human dignity is inalienable, equal, and univer-
sal, and the rights derived from this individual dignity of every single human
are as well. At the same time, although human dignity might be inviolable and
sacrosanct, it is also rather controversial. Consequently, a number of other,
equally important declarations and constitutional texts, such as the European
Charter of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Russian Federation do
indeed acknowledge the basic significance of human rights for legislation, but
do not directly rely upon or refer to either the term or the notion of human dig-

1
This article is based on the Dutch text of a lecture given at VU University Am-
sterdam and the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam on 24 January, 2013,
on the occasion of my inauguration. It has been reworked and revised.

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nity. As we will soon see, there are good reasons for this, too. The debate about
the real substance and content of this notion is in fact almost as old as the well-
known declarations and constitutional texts that cite it in central places.

This leads to another preliminary remark. Outcomes of this debate can, with
good reason, be regarded as being of more than merely theoretical significance
for legislation and politics. This article will, of course, deal primarily with
theological and philosophical approaches to grounding human dignity. The link
with everyday political, legislative, or social processes might hardly be a direct
one all the time. Yet little imagination is required to concede that it does make
a difference in this respect, too, whether prevalence is given to, say, individual
dignity or collective values, freedom or order, secular or religious models, or
however else possible antagonisms might be described. In most contemporary
societies, it is precisely such antagonisms that exist, are represented by a spec-
trum of groups, and therefore find their expression in public debates and
through the votes of lobbyists. In other words, they do bear a more than theo-
retical potential for sometimes severe social conflicts. Among other things, the
aim of this article, as also might be stated beforehand, consists in an attempt to
trace such antagonisms to their actual substance.

Controversies: East-West or Secular-Religious?

In the meantime, this is not only true for the Western hemisphere, where the
modern conception of human rights is said to have its roots. Some years ago,
in August 2008, the bishops’ conference of the Russian Orthodox Church
(ROC) in Moscow adopted a document containing, as the title says, the “Basic
Teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church on Human Dignity, Freedom and
Rights” (Osnovy 2008). Comments accompanying the release of the document
repeatedly emphasized that it was meant to form a basis for facilitating further
discussion with human rights groups and NGOs inside and outside the ROC’s
sphere of influence. Indeed, it was obvious at that time, not only to the bish-
ops, that such a discussion was in need of a new impulse. At the time of the
publication of the document, on the territory of the former Soviet Union, the
relationship between human rights activists on the one hand and the Orthodox
Church on the other had to be described as frozen and reserved, to say the
least.

Actually, the document included a couple of passages that seemed able to ex-
plain immediately why this was the case. One of the—to this day—controver-
sial sequences concerns the term “human dignity.” First, the Russian Orthodox
Church also presupposes that it is this human dignity that offers the very basis
for claiming rights. But what does human dignity actually consist in—in the
eyes of the Orthodox bishops and theologians? Here the document in question
gives a—at first sight, at least—rather unconventional explanation. In the Eng-
lish translation of the text the corresponding passage reads:

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In Orthodoxy the dignity and ultimate worth of every human person are derived from
the image of God, while dignified life is related to the notion of God’s likeness a-
chieved through God’s grace by efforts to overcome sin and to seek moral purity and
virtue.
According to the Orthodox tradition, a human being preserves his God-given dignity
and grows in it only if he lives in accordance with moral norms because these norms
express the primordial and therefore authentic human nature not darkened by sin. (Os-
novy 2008: I.2-I.4)
And further: “A morally undignified life does not ruin the God-given dignity
ontologically but darkens it so much as to make it hardly discernible.”

Several elements in this passage might seem rather familiar to Western theor-
ists and especially to Western theologians. Others, perhaps, just make them
shake their heads. In this perspective, it seems, human dignity ceases to be an
absolute and inalienable quality of human beings but becomes a relative one
that can even almost be completely lost through “undignified” behavior or
lifestyle. Consequently, humans are also not equal in their human dignity but
might differ from one another according to their spiritual advancement and
moral status. Finally, human dignity is also no longer a universal and inde-
pendent category but depends on living according to an existing framework of
“God’s commands” and also on the church’s approval and judgment. In other
words, human dignity is bound up with the will and censorship of a religious
authority. The crucial point here is that rights, according to the “classical” view
presented above, are being possessed and claimed on the basis of the presup-
position of an individual, universal, equal human dignity. In this document the
Russian Church makes up a difference between a principal “God-given” dig-
nity (the term used in the translation is “value”) and the latter’s actual “visi-
bility” or realization in life. As a consequence, “dignity” is divided into two as-
pects. While the first aspect maybe left untouched, it is the second, in close
connection with a moral status, from which possible rights may—or may not—
be derived. And it is an authority of a non-political nature that claims to set its
marks on the political landscape, claiming that legislation should not be based
on an individual and egalitarian ideal of human dignity but on “dignified life”
according to its own standards.

Vigorous protest against this interpretation came up soon. In the Russian media
commentators spoke about a “clerical version of human rights,” and many a
statement ended up with the conclusion that human rights, from this angle,
would finally pertain only to Orthodox believers and even that they could be
fully claimed by no more than the more zealous among them. What troubled
commentators most, by all accounts, was the church’s refusal to regard human
rights as something of absolute value with binding force for religious
denominations as well and its attempt to impose its own value system on
society as a whole instead. (Egorov 2008; Klin 2008) In this context, it might
be worth noting again that, according to several polls since at least 2000, there
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has been a huge majority (up to more than 80%) in the Russian population who
declare themselves to be Orthodox, while the number of those regularly at-
tending church services is significantly lower (at times less than 5%). So, if
Alexander Agadjanians’ analysis is right, i.e., that the Russian Orthodox
Church outwardly accepts the rules of the game of a modern and pluralistic so-
ciety but only so that it can introduce into this society a different system of
values already in force inwardly (Agadjanian 2012), then this would at the
same time be the system of a minority in Russian society.

The apparent incompatibility of this approach with conditions of a modern

society was widely seen with distrust in the West. In particular, the connection
between dignity and morality made up in the document evoked objections
from Protestant churches. In an immediate response, the “Community of Pro-
testant Churches in Europe,” a Vienna-based joint organization of various Pro-
testant denominations, felt urged once more to emphasize the inalienability, in-
dividuality, and universal applicability of human rights. According to this
statement, under no circumstances can human dignity be made dependent upon
the judgment of any particular institution, be it religious or political. Conse-
quently, neither membership of any religious or ideological community nor the
preference of one way of living to another can exert any influence on the dig-
nity of any human being since it was given by God once and for all (CPCE
2008). Similar arguments came up during subsequent meetings between Pro-
testant and Russian Orthodox theologians, mainly from Germany and Finland
(Hurskainen 2012).

Does all this mean, then, that we are dealing with at least two approaches to
human dignity and rights that differ significantly from each other? The op-
position marked by such protests—religious vs. secular, and East vs. West—
still appears to be in force. Does the Russian Orthodox Church vote for a
different form of human rights than “the West” and Western-based Christian
churches? As a matter of fact, a rough summary of the two perspectives would
perhaps indeed result in the notion of two opposed concepts and therefore of
human dignity and rights in opposing Eastern and Western forms. On the one
hand, there would be then a concept of dignity that is inalienable and static, at
the same time linked with an idea of the human as individual and an egalitarian
principle, whereas, on the other hand, a more dynamic concept of human dig-
nity is being applied but with plainly collectivist and authoritarian overtones.
In a way, this comes down to a juxtaposition of the principle of “freedom” on
the one hand to that of “order” or “harmony” on the other—still a rough sum-
mary, and a neutral one as well, leaving the question open as to which of these
principles really deserves more emphasis after all.

Such a juxtaposition is tempting in some way, not least because it seems to fit
well with political developments, and a chain of spectacular events in recent
years. At least, it seems to offer a ready-made explanation for the widespread
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perception of the Orthodox Church in Russia as just a handmaiden of the state,

in particular, the ideological servant of President Putin’s regime of “steered
democracy” and at the same time a main opponent of human rights. Suffice it
to say that this is a widespread image among Russian NGOs as well as in
Western media. Periodically, this ideological opposition appears to lead to
particular clashes, as recently happened around the controversial performance
of the punk band Pussy Riot in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow—a
confrontation, on a theoretical level, between the freedom of expression and art
and apparently more authoritarian and communitarian principles like public
order or religious values.

Things are slightly more complicated, however, and deserve to be depicted

with additional nuance. In order to outline the tension cited above, we fre-
quently had to use expressions like “it seems,” “apparently,” and the like.
There are certainly differences also beneath the surface, but they are less sharp
and less irreconcilable than the current ideological trench warfare often sug-
gests. At the same time, it must be noted that the impression of ideological
confrontations of this kind—East vs. West, in various respects and under vary-
ing slogans—can easily be enforced, while it takes a great deal more effort to
pacify them again.

A closer look on the ongoing discussion about the concept of human dignity
will hopefully serve to illustrate this twofold statement. The first thing one has
to note, then, is that clear and definitive concepts of what “human dignity”
might actually entail are lacking on both sides. There are certainly elaborated
concepts, and both have a venerable tradition behind them but also betray their
deficits.

Doubts and Debates on Human Dignity in “the West”

As for the current state of affairs in a “Western” discussion of human dignity
and rights, the stereotypical view of human dignity as once established by the
Enlightenment (individual, inalienable, equal, and universal) has been a matter
of controversy for years already. Doubts about its real content and the use of
the term in various contexts have been raised in several disciplines, such as
philosophy of law, medical ethics, and bioethics. “Human dignity” has become
a term with multiple meanings applied in rather differing and sometimes either
unclear or even contradictory contexts. In particular, jurists have come to deny
the homogeneity or univocal applicability of a term like “human dignity.” Mc-
Crudden, for example, states instead that
the use of “dignity”, beyond a basic minimum core, does not provide a universalistic,
principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense
that there is little common under-standing of what dignity requires substantively within
or across jurisdictions. The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying
significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jur-

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isdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity

seems open to significant judicial manipulation, increasing rather than decreasing ju-
2
dicial discretion. (McCrudden 2008: 655)
Such doubts are clearly not a new phenomenon. Already by the early 1960s,
thus little more than a decade after the publication of the UNHDR, philo-
sophers of law raised the principal question as to whether “human dignity,”
beyond its function as a reference point for emphatic confessions, also entails
real content and substance. Apart from this, a rather new set of questions is be-
ing generated in subjects like bioethics and by techniques of artificial insem-
ination. The various objections all result in one basic question, i.e., whether
dignity is simply ascribed or lent to humans, and be this even through an act of
goodwill, an ethically founded humanitarian act, or acknowledged on the basis
of an objective reality and actual quality (Wils 2002). Even recent attempts to
reconstruct the genesis of the Western idea of dignity and to reconcile older
narratives of the either purely religious or exclusively secular origin of the
term still leave the final impression that this idea is more the product of an
achieved consensus than the representation of a reality once discovered (cf.
Joas 2013).

At this time, one finds little more than assumptions—and an empirical argu-
ment ex negativo. At least, in those cases when it is offended, something like
the dignity of a human individual seems to become obvious as a matter of ex-
perience, and thus a perceptible reality. But what can be stated beyond that?
The one thing we know for certain is that there is something present in every
human being that can be hurt by suppression, violence, torture, and discrimina-
tion—and this something is still difficult to express. Consequently, there are
pleas to continue to use the term “dignity” despite all its shortcomings and as
something like a place keeper faute de mieux. At any rate, this seems a better
option than to drop the term entirely without any substitute readily available
(Bielefeldt 2008: 8-12; 2011). Some other theorists started basing their vote on
a notion of self-evidence, which takes up the above-mentioned ex negativo ex-
perience that, in their view, is even not limited to particular cultural contexts or
ideological teachings. According to the African-American philosopher K. An-
thony Appiah
We do not need to argue that we are all created in the image of God, or that we have
natural rights that flow from our human essence, to agree that that we do not want to be
tortured by government officials, that we do not want our lives, families, and property
forfeited. And ordinary people almost everywhere have something like the notion of
dignity—it has different names and somewhat different configurations in different

2
McCrudden continues, however, noting “that the concept of ‘human dignity’
plays an important role in the development of human rights adjudication, not in pro-
viding an agreed content to human rights but in contributing to particular methods of
human rights interpretation and adjudication” (McCrudden 2008: 655).

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places—and desire something like respect from their fellows and believe that they merit
it unless they do evil. (Appiah 2001: 106)
This is a suggestive passage, and it even seems tempting just to leave the de-
bate at this point. Yet such a solution would simply mean a flight from already
existing conflicts. It would ignore the fact that there actually are various con-
cepts and terms already existing, according to various cultural contexts, value
systems, and religions, and they are often in conflict which one another. There
might be potential for a consensus, but it seems hard to express this consensus.
So the current state of discussion about “human dignity” is perhaps described
best with the help of Augustine’s famous quotation on time: “I know it as long
as no one asks me, but if I try to explain it to someone who asks, then I don’t.”
(St Augustine, Confessiones, 11.14; the translation is my own).

After all, on what grounds, apart from the above-mentioned patterns of self-
evidence, can it then be claimed that human dignity is a universal category and
that human rights as grounded on this dignity in fact do belong to every person
equally and inalienably? The necessary conclusion, at this point, would be that
human dignity as a concept is, in fact, no more than a hypothesis or, better, a
concept of a rather normative character derived from hitherto insufficient at-
tempts to express an equally valuable and vulnerable core of human nature. It
expresses a certain notion of anthropology but its universal character remains
hypothetical here as long as it has not received universal acceptance. At the
same time, it is certainly based on a certain sense of optimism, as far as the
possibility for universal agreement is held to be a real one.

Stating this, by the way, leads directly back to the roots and origins of the
concept of human rights in its present form. At least, the concept of human
rights—as, for example, articulated in the UNDHR—from the beginning was
formulated consciously to avoid any explicit reference to a particular religious
or philosophical view. At the same time, there was always the presumption that
the concept nonetheless would not ultimately be in conflict with the most dif-
ferent ideologies, philosophies, and religious doctrines. A comment given by
Jacques Maritain perhaps not coincidentally sounds somewhat similar to the
quote from Augustine above. One of the co-authors of the UNDHR, Maritain
summarizes the preceding debates and the nature of the final consensus like
this: “Yes, they said, we agree about the rights, but on condition that no one
asks us why” (Van der Ven 2008: 165f.).

Regardless, however, of all endeavors to retain a certain neutrality in the con-

cept, human dignity and rights are still widely regarded as a product mainly of
Western thinking and its more or less successful application to a larger context.
If then, in the current state of discussion, its theoretical base and empirical sub-
stance are described at the same time as being only a provisional achievement
and as deficient and in need of precision, this entails some consequences for a
possible confrontation with a differing concept (like that of Russian Orthodoxy
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and Eastern Orthodox theology, which we are about to discuss). Both ap-
proaches underwent some critique, but there might be points of mutual enrich-
ment beyond the perspectives that are often taken of a superficial competition
to find the better (or less incomplete) one.

The Concept of Theosis (Deification) in the Eastern Church

Like all branches of Western Christianity, Eastern Orthodox theology grounds
the notion of human dignity on the Bible, in particular on the verses from the
Genesis (1:26f.): “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of
God he created them; male and female he created them.” The fact that humans
were created in God’s image is also the starting point for Orthodox Christianity
for any thinking about human dignity (cf. Osnovy 2008: I.1). On the other
hand, the Orthodox tradition is generally more cautious and less emphatic in
discussing human nature than the Western tends to be sometimes. One would
look in vain here for enthusiastic pronouncements on human creativity and
capabilities as in the Western Renaissance3 or the autonomous moral capacity
of the human being as in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, in the writings of
the church fathers, which continue to form the very basis of Orthodox think-
ing, the notion of “dignity” is hardly to be met in a uniform and unambiguous
sense. Just as, for example, in older works of Stoic philosophy, the term “dig-
nity” appears among early Christian theoreticians more as a kind of nobility
that is lent to humans by God or at least by means of God’ s help and support.
This means that “dignity” is to be understood mostly as a synonym for “qual-
ity,” maybe even a specific “quality” that could either appear as part of nature
or might have been acquainted. So the word parallel of “dignity” in Greek just
as for example in Russian can more easily be used also in its plural form
(Russian: dostoinstva), and is connoted, to some extent, by such terms as
“virtue.”

In its present state, Orthodox teaching divides “human dignity” into two ele-
ments. This subdivision has also been applied recently to the document
containing the Russian Orthodox “basic teachings” discussed here (Osnovy
2008). First, in this tradition the imago dei, the image of God, constitutes a
principal value of the human person, which still cannot be called “dignity.”
This image is actually seen as a mere sketch or design, which is yet to be real-
ized in life. It is regarded as the potential to become truly human. But insofar
as humans realize this potential and thus their true nature, they become not
only truly human but at the same time God-like. The concept behind this is
known in patristic literature as theosis, usually translated as “deification.”4

3
Probably the most famous among those is Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the
Dignity of Man (1486).
4
The corresponding Russian term is obozhenie. Cf. Osnovy, 2008: I.3.

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There is yet one important thing to be added. Even if humans would become
God-like, they could never become God himself. In other words, the rela-
tionship between the original subject and the image remains untouched—a
relationship that has been elaborated extensively in connection with the theo-
logy of icons (Sheldon-Williams 1967). In the perspective of Eastern theology
it is of great importance that this relation of the major origin and the minor
image remain intact. In this view, as a created being, the human person is hu-
man only in his relationship with his divine Creator. Otherwise, the concept of
“deification” and likewise that of “becoming truly human” would turn into a
misguided adulation of the individual human person, an “idolatry of the iso-
lated self.” According to quite a line of Orthodox thinkers looking critically to
the West, this is precisely what went wrong here: The tradition cited con-
cerning the emphatic emphasis on dignity, capability, freedom, and moral au-
tonomy since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment ultimately created the
cult of humankind as such, simultaneously depriving the human being of his
roots in his relatedness to the Creator—an erroneous development that led to
the destruction of human community and solidarity and to the destruction of
nature alike. In the same vein, the concept of human dignity and human rights
is being criticized as just another expression of this fatal spirit of hubris (Popo-
vić, 1997; Yannaras, 2004; for an alternative perspective cf. Dmitriev 2012).

On the basis of just their own strength and moral intention, humans would not
achieve anything as long as God’s grace was missing. But this grace was
granted and worked through salvation. The early church fathers subsequently
already distanced themselves from the slightly elitist ideal of autonomous self-
perfection as articulated in Stoic philosophy. In their view, even the imago dei
was spoiled and distorted by sin. It was Adam’s sin that had made the aim of
self-perfection an impossible one without God’s help and therefore only God’s
incarnation in Christ and Christ’s death and resurrection restored human dig-
nity (Soulen and Woodhead 2006: 2f.). It was a restoration in principle, open-
ing anew the way for everyone to realize his God-given potential in “deifi-
cation”: “God became human, so that man can become God,” to quote Athan-
asius of Alexandria (Athanasius, De incarnatione verbi, 54). What is constitu-
tive is a momentum of dependence. After all, it is God who, first through crea-
tion and later through his incarnation, founds and safeguards human dignity.
Accordingly, as Father John Meyendorff put it: “… salvation is not only a
liberation from death and sin; it is also the restoration of the original human
destiny, which consists in being ‘the image of God’” (Meyendorff 1989: 472).

At the same time it appears to be self-evident for the Orthodox perspective that
this restored possibility of deification has its place exclusively within the
Christian church, “a building erected out of our souls,” as St John of Damascus
has put it. Accordingly, St Gregorios Palamas, the great innovator of the

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hesychast tradition, calls baptism the first resurrection of the human soul that
had previously died because of sin (Jacobs 2006: 621).

In more concrete terms, this still includes more than a merely formal member-
ship in the church or even the performance of rites. The major objective of a
Christian life consists rather in a multipolar connection and communication
(communio, or koinonia in Greek; obshchenie in Russian) with God as well as
with other humans. The first is realized through prayer, participation in the lit-
urgy and the holy sacraments, while the second results in practicing true love
of one’s neighbor, which is grounded in the relation with the divine. Ultimately
it is the divine original that connects all human images of God. A popular quo-
tation that is usually ascribed to Dostoevsky but most probably goes back to
Russian folklore needs to be understood in this context: “To love someone
means to see him the way he was meant by God.”5 After all, does this not
mean just doing justice to his God-given dignity?

Differences Revealed through Comparison

The quote certainly sounds nice. On the other hand, it should have become
clear meanwhile that the Eastern Orthodox perspective described above entails
a number of patterns that might conflict with the concept of secular human
rights. Are the critics right who pointed out that, under such conditions, dignity
is something that is in the end available only to devout Orthodox Christians?

Strictly speaking, the answer most probably has to be “yes.” But this is less as-
tonishing or puzzling than might seem at first. It has to do with a certain claim
to represent the absolute that is a natural pattern of religion and in connection
with the human rights concept has caused a particular story of resistance and
adoption for Western branches of Christianity as well. Furthermore, possible
clashes—in anthropology and beyond - are perhaps easier to be dissolved as
was the case earlier with the Western Christian churches. As seen above, Or-
thodox Christianity shares with the latter the view that human dignity is ulti-
mately grounded in the idea of the human being as imago dei, as being created
in God’s image. On the other hand, the conclusions that follow from this basic
assumption are different from the Western view in some respects.

General observations on a comparative approach therefore usually contain

questionable suggestions of a clash of cultures or civilizations East and West.

5
This quote is often presented as an aphorism by Dostoevsky but never with a
concrete reference. Anthologies of Dostoevsky’s quotations including references do not
contain the sentence (cf. Grishin, 1975) Instead, it also appears in the works of other
Russian writers, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, in some cases slightly varied and with addi-
tions. For the time being, it seems most likely that they all took it from the same source,
namely Russian folklore.

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This view changes necessarily if it is taken into account that many contradic-
tions in theory between a secular human rights concept (including its basic un-
derstanding of human dignity) and Christian theology go back to an opposition
not between East and West but between a secular concept (designed for a sec-
ular state) and one for a religious institution (such as the Christian church). To
put it simply, a religious institution, due to its naturally inherent claim to re-
present an absolute system of values and truths, cannot simply put aside the
above-mentioned “Why?”. Rather, in itself it represents a set of “why’s” and
can adopt a foreign concept such as that of human dignity and rights only via
its already existing doctrine and even has to change or adjust the former if its
own doctrinal framework would require this. The content of such a concept has
to be brought into some agreement with the preexisting tradition if it is not to
be rejected outright. Western Christian denominations have gone through a
similar process and still have some reservations concerning particular patterns
of secular human dignity and rights (cf. Brüning 2012).

For example, the critique that a concept of human rights is in danger of ending
up as a simple idolatry of the isolated and therefore fancy-free and selfish indi-
vidual has been raised by Christian theologians in the West as well. This is, by
the way, another point where global anti-Western critics of Orthodox origin
like those mentioned earlier (Popović, Yannaras) probably need to be cor-
rected. To give just one example out of many: That human rights have to be
rooted ultimately in God (and not in humankind) is an argument met fre-
quently in the writings of the Dutch Protestant theologian Abraham Kuyper—
one of the founders of VU University Amsterdam. The conclusions derived
from this basic presumption by Kuyper and his contemporaries do not result in
a categorical rejection of the human rights concept but in an alternative vision
of an ideal order that humans would never be able to establish on their own.
Insofar as this order—according to a corresponding interpretation of the teach-
ing of two kingdoms—cannot be traced back only to a political power, it car-
ries the possibility of being realized on the basis of God’s grace and Christian
virtue. A closer look can show that, in fact, the conclusions drawn by Kuyper
and some of his colleagues concerning such terms as grace, salvation, and
compassion are surprisingly similar to the visions of Orthodox theology (Eg-
mont 1995). It might not just be by chance, then, that some recent tendencies
in Protestant theology show a growing interest in the Eastern concept of the-
osis, also because of the presumption of parallels existing between this concept
and Protestant teachings of justification (Saarinen 2002; the issue is still con-
troversial, cf. Oeldemann 2002). None of these considerations led to the re-
jection of the concept of human dignity and rights, but they were part of a
process of subsequent adoption and partial adjustment.

A quite similar story can be told about Roman Catholicism, where it had been
just the papal encyclical on “human dignity” (dignitatis humane) that formed a
milestone between decades of skepticism or open rejection, and the principal
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approval of human rights (Huber and Tödt 1989: 39-45). Space does not allow
discussing the phenomenon in more detail here, and there is still much research
to be done on this particular field of (Christian) religion and secular human
rights. The few hints made here might nonetheless suffice to illustrate a pro-
cess in which several branches of Latin Christianity slowly but surely turned
from strong opponents into supporters of human rights, even though a solid
portion of criticism and reserve still remains. There is reason to presume that a
similar process is taking place within Eastern Christianity as well, whereas
some of the accompanying conditions concerning theology as well as historical
circumstances are different.

As for Christian theology in particular, the prominent position of a term like

“sin” might be a hint of specific difficulties. For theologians, this term denotes
an entire complex alluding to the relationship between God and humans, an-
thropological aspects of human nature as incomplete or fallen, questions of in-
dividual responsibility, and sacramental patterns like confession, redemption
and the like. At any rate, “sin” does not have a place in a secular theory or con-
cept; it is clearly a part of non-secular terminology and can therefore be seen
as a main indicator of possible tensions. Such tension could possibly be sum-
marized in a question like the following: Can humankind claim rights if—or as
long as—his very nature appears to be spoiled and darkened by sin? One
should again be aware of the fact that a quite similar consideration in the past
often led to serious skepticism towards the idea of unconditional human digni-
ty and rights among Western Christian churches also (Huber 1992: 578f.). That
such uncertainties also preoccupy Orthodox church leaders at present can be
seen in many speeches and public statements on human rights throughout the
last decade. Already the widely perceived and commented “Basis of a Social
Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” published in 2000, has a corre-
sponding passage on human rights:
In the contemporary systematic understanding of civil human rights, man is treated not
as the image of God, but as a self-sufficient and self-sufficing subject. Outside God,
however, there is only the fallen man, who is rather far from being the ideal of perfec-
tion aspired to by Christians and revealed in Christ («Ecce homo!»). (Osnovy 2000:
IV.7)
Yet it is precisely the comparative perspective on the Eastern churches that
makes this problem appear less difficult. The point here is that Orthodox
theology does not know, or at least does not hold to, the Augustine teaching of
original sin that had been of such dominating albeit controversial influence on
Western theology. The Orthodox perspective on the issue is much less “foren-
sic”: in other words, God appears not primarily as a strict judge but as a
physician and healer. According to the church fathers, sin is less the stigma of
personal guilt than a sign of disorientation and spiritual disease. Adam’s fall,
therefore, is not seen in the first place as disobedience to God’s law and order
but as his selfish separation from God. He remains the same by nature but is

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cut off from his roots, and therefore spoiled and doomed to fall into despair.
Even if his intentions remain good, on his own he cannot manage to bring
about what he is destined to become and instead becomes hopelessly caught up
in his competing motives and passions. There has to be a helping hand from
outside that shows him the way out of his worldly labyrinth. It is this precisely,
according to Orthodox teaching, that is the starting point for Christ’s work of
salvation. This also means that the imago dei is not completely annihilated by
sin, and Orthodox anthropology in some respects is in fact more optimistic and
positive than some branches of Latin tradition.

On the other hand, this still concerns a principle value, which is not yet human
dignity, and it is still Christ’s work, not human nature, that it is attributed to in
a decisive way. So the question remains: Are there human rights to be claimed,
and a human dignity that exists outside the community of the church? Or do
we have to do with a strict exclusivism also in this sense? An accurate de-
scription of the situation would probably have to take into account that in cur-
rent Orthodoxy—in various local churches and various theological tenden-
cies—there is no final and univocal answer. What can be stated is that the self-
awareness of being part of a community that represents the “ark of salvation”
has not exempted Orthodox theologians from further reflections on the ideal
shape of that community. So far, the most significant answers consist, on the
one hand, of a reformed conception of the ideal constitution of the church and,
on the other, in some emphasis on the very phenomenon of communio between
all members of this community with one other and even with those not directly
belonging to it.

As for the first, reflection on the ideal inner structure of the church both in a
spiritual and in a constitutional sense is for the most part centered around its
organic and, so to speak, communitarian structure, including the equal voice
and value of every single member. This ideal is not in contradiction with the
fact that some functionaries, such as the bishops especially, might exert a high-
er authority in several matters as long as the most significant decisions finally
require the consensus of all. The key word for describing this ideal is to be
found in the Russian word sobornost, a term that has various, more or less ap-
propriate, translations like “catholicity,” “conciliarity,” or “universality.” The
very content of this term is probably best hidden by a combination of all. It
was—as is well known—the Russian lay theologian Aleksei Khomiakov, who
first coined the idea, although not the term itself (Schäder 1967; Plank 1960).
The term and the idea were initially meant as an adequate description of the
above-mentioned spiritual communio (corresponding to the Greek koinonia or
obshchenie in Russian), but they left remarkable traces not only in modern
Orthodox ecclesiology but also in practical reforms of the Russian Orthodox
Church structure in the 20th century. The famous local council of Moscow in
1917/18 with its cautious attempts at aggiornamento, its renewed church
constitution, and reinstallation of the office of the patriarch was strongly in-
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fluenced by the sobornost ideal. (Oeldemann 1992) To this day, Orthodox

participants in ecumenical talks with Roman Catholicism emphasize the “con-
ciliar” inner structure of their church, by which their ecclesiology—in theoret-
ical as well as in practical terms—is supposed to differ from the church of the
Roman pope (Hilarion 2009). It is also against this background that some po-
litical scientists have even presupposed a stronger natural affinity of Orthodox
believers to democratic forms of statehood and society than initially present in
Western Christianity (Marsh 2005; Marsh and Payne 2012).

Such attitudes, in any case, had their effect on attempts to formulate an appro-
priate anthropology in the Orthodox spirit that at the same time is capable of
responding to challenges of modernity. It has been mainly émigré theologians
since the early 20th century after the Russian Revolution who formulated deep
ideas about an understanding of the human being as person and the relation-
ship of persons among one another—all of which emerges from their shared
idea of the church as a spiritual community. Theologians such as Georgii Flor-
ovsky, Nikolai Berdiaev, and Sergei Bulgakov each tried to develop an un-
derstanding of humankind that, on the one hand, dissociates from some main
paths taken in the West but, on the other, addresses the same problems. Ortho-
dox theology consciously juxtaposes an understanding of “person” to what it
perceives as the Western “individual” and, by doing so, successfully tried to
contribute to the discourse on human nature in modern times (Berdiaev 1945;
cf. Zwahlen 2012a; Vallière 1997: 280-82). What is central in all these con-
cepts, despite many differences in detail, is the idea that it is the community in
its spiritual sense, in which the individual partakes, and precisely in this is con-
stituted as a person. More recently, it was the Greek archbishop and theologian
Ioannis Zizoulas who developed further not only the “communitarian” ideal of
the church but also a concomitant anthropology about how the human person
becomes truly human through his participation in the communio of the church
(Zizioulas 1985).

There are indications that this kind of thinking in the meantime has also found
its way into a social theory that, unlike Western Christianity, could not be fully
elaborated by the Orthodox churches during the time of communism. Since
then, a process has been set up to develop at least the guidelines of such a
theory. The document on human rights that is being investigated here is a
prominent example, as is its predecessor, the “Basis of a Social Concept,”
which was adopted and published in 2000 (Osnovy 2000). Although the pro-
cess of elaborating a detailed social theory is still in its beginning stages, steps
like those already taken in fact do reveal certain communitarian overtones,
with their expressive dissociation from Western liberalism and individualism,
and their emphasis on tradition and “traditional values.” Here one can easily
find parallels to Western theories of communitarianism, such as those laid out
by Charles Taylor, Alastair McIntyre, and others. The focus on “freedom” in
the established human rights concept is being countered by a call for “moral-
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ity” that has to be brought back into post-secular societies. This brings Ortho-
dox approaches into some proximity not only with actual communitarian con-
cepts but also with criticism expressed in other parts of the world, as, for ex-
ample, in the name of so-called Asian values (cf. Bell 2013, and other articles
in this volume). A more detailed elaboration of a political theoretical concept,
however, still probably remains to be done. To some extent, the tendencies to
counter “Western individualism and liberalism” actually do go back to the re-
ception of the distinguished models of emigration theology just mentioned. On
the other hand, it would probably not be going too far wrong to state that this
reception is often still rather selective or at least incomplete (Stoeckl 2008).

This is true first and foremost with regard to an East-West opposition that
emerges from actual statements and to a more informed spectator must seem to
have been constructed or exaggerated in huge parts rather than an objective
fact. A series of anti-Western slogans is often and readily repeated, whereas the
dissociation from the West that was to be found earlier among the émigré cir-
cles mentioned above often went along with a detailed knowledge of the lat-
ter’s models and debates and with a certain ecumenical openness. Currently,
the frequent statements opposing the unlimited “freedoms” as allegedly en-
tailed in the human rights concept with a claim for and an emphasis on the
need for “morality” for a Western audience often bear the character of an old-
fashioned moralism. What easily escapes the Westerners’ understanding, how-
ever, are the roots of such statements, which are ultimately to be found in the
church ideal of sobornost, now translated into the vision of a peaceful and har-
monic coexistence in society. The corresponding virtues and values go beyond
mere tolerance and safeguarding human rights. They extend to the repudiation
of any form of extremism and violence on the one hand to a strong accent on
“morality” and human duties that are to balance human rights (Philaret 2007).
The spiritual ideal of theosis and of sobornost (or communio) can usually be
identified easily as laying the ground for such concepts. The political conclu-
sions nonetheless are widely divergent. They include votes for democracy as
much as for authoritarian systems. Inspired by the sobornost ideal, the Russian
priest and theologian, the late father Veniamin Novik, wrote that democracy
was obviously the best possible political system since it presupposes a virtue
of self-restriction and therefore, through its inherent mechanisms of mutual
control, counters the temptation of power (Novik 1997).

To be sure, this is only one voice among many, and it probably does not repre-
sent the mainstream, which is generally more anti-liberal and traditionalist. At
the same time, the search for consistent concepts—which is to include consis-
tent concepts on anthropology—is far from over, and in the current situation it
has to integrate a variety of dissonant voices and fractions (cf. Papkova 2011).
That there has to be a spiritual base, and not only a secular one, is one of the
few common grounds to be identified, but the details are still a matter of—
sometimes very passionate—debates.
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Perspectives for Mutual Enrichment?

This situation of incompleteness on both sides obviously opens up a number of
possibilities for a mutual dialogue on human dignity and rights, especially be-
tween Eastern and Western Christian denominations. Despite some confusion
and even dead ends that the present situation has also generated (on both sides,
as we have seen), one might nonetheless feel able to also identify at least a
couple of issues on which the approaches of Orthodox theology could probably
inspire the entire discussion on the notion of human dignity. We will try and
discuss a few of them in this conclusion to this article.

First, as seen above, Orthodox teaching also presents humankind as created by

God and in God’s image. In a way, this is the most important answer of the Or-
thodox tradition on the above-mentioned “Why?” question: it is basically be-
cause of this understanding that human beings can claim dignity. This ap-
proach, with its exclusion of alternatives, is perhaps difficult to accept from a
secular point of view and even more so if it would lead to certain morally bind-
ing conclusions as well and to a peculiar set of legislation in a secular state.
Non-believers may therefore suspect that the line between religious doctrine
and a secular state can easily be blurred on such a basis (cf., e.g., Osnovy
2008: part III, claiming that "human rights cannot be superior to the values of
the spiritual world"). The issue is perhaps much less controversial than it might
seem, however. The point of possible agreement is here that if humans are
created by God, they are not created by humans and have not created
themselves. If this is the case, no human being has the right to claim the power
of disposal over any other human being. This is the basis for dignity in more
secular approaches as well, which connect “dignity” with autonomous exist-
ence, and oppose it to something like “price,” which reduces the human to a
mere thing or commodity that can be used, sold etc. It was no less a theore-
tician of human dignity than the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant,
who insisted that, as a bearer of humanity, every human being should be
treated as a bearer of his own and individual aim and destination and may
therefore not be completely reduced to the role of an instrument of a means for
others, and for other purposes (Kant 2005: 59f.).

Second, humans are not only created by God but are also created in God’s
image. This imago dei in Orthodox teaching, as we have seen, signifies not so
much an already existing nobility as a potential that is yet to be realized. In
this context we can only allude to the fact that such a perspective might well
exert some influence on controversial issues concerning borderline cases of
human life as recently generated by bioethics and medicine, such as abortion,
artificial insemination and reproduction or, at the other end of the scale, coma
and possible brain death. To discuss this in detail would require—and de-
serve—much more space and effort and is beyond the scope of this article. But

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if there are no easy solutions, then the perspective cited offers at least more in-
sight into the very nature of the conflicts linked to such cases.

Another aspect also seems important for assessing the actual meaning of “de-
ification”: the aim included in the potential of human beings according to Or-
thodox teaching. It possibly also provides a provisional answer to those who
might ask how one would be able to speak about “deification” with those who
do not believe in God. At any rate, it belongs to Christian theology’s important
claims and insights (in both East and West, by the way), that it is beyond pure
human ability to assess what it means to be truly human. The idea of what it
means to be completely human (totus homo) in its whole dimension is not
available to and at the disposal only of human beings themselves. Of course,
this is not to say that such availability and disposal cannot be claimed or re-
quired, and this fatal error already happened. Suffice it to recall corresponding
attempts to “create the new man” by various political ideologies in modern
times. Holding to the view cited, i.e., that the ideal of the human being is be-
yond human disposal as well, would automatically imply an immediate re-
jection of political ideologies, “political religions,” and utopias with their in-
herent strive to create and realize the “new man.” On the other hand, it does
not mean subscribing to some kind of creational fatalism, as if the human be-
ing has not been given the opportunity to participate in the process of becom-
ing truly human. Otherwise, any talk and theory about the possibility of guilt
and crime in a secular philosophical sense or about sin in theological ter-
minology would hardly make sense. Furthermore, in addition to questions of
individual morality, the entire topic of the community and its ideal state is
already implied here, regardless—by the way—of secular or theological per-
spectives. A theological perspective would further add, however, it is still only
constituted the relation of the created human being with its creator that makes
that individual a person. It should be mentioned again, by the way, that West-
ern and Eastern theology even widely agree on this, except for a couple of im-
portant nuances (cf. Brinkman 2003: 27-36).

But what about the churches themselves? To state it bluntly, how would one
prevent the churches from becoming political institutions similar to ideological
parties with their ideals of the “new man” in the sense just mentioned? Or, in
other words, what would be the appropriate response to those critics mentioned
above who stated that, in the Orthodox vision of human rights, the latter ul-
timately only pertain to devout Orthodox believers following the church’s
moral and ritual prescriptions meticulously? In the Orthodox sense, an answer
would—theoretically—perhaps sound like this: if no human being has the right
to claim the power of disposal over anyone else, then he also has no right to
claim any such power over anyone else’s potential in the sense of theosis ei-
ther. There might be advice and there might be compassion, but in the end ev-
ery authority is limited. This is little more than a consistent continuation of the
Orthodox teaching about God. According to Orthodox, namely, the “apo-
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 DIFFERENT HUMANS AND DIFFERENT RIGHTS?

phatic” (not-knowing or ignorant), tradition of theology, God is inaccessible

and incomprehensible in his nature and substance. If humans are then created
in God’s image and destined to become like God, this would mean that there is
also no way to finally assess what the imago dei of a particular person would
consist in concretely and how it has to be put into effect. Indeed, there have
been attempts to speak of an “apophatic anthropology” as well, on the basis of
such considerations (Woodhead 2006). In the words of Metropolitan Kallistos
(Ware), anthropology is perhaps becoming the main theological subject of the
21st century. But we are, and ought to remain "a mystery to ourselves, and to
each other", which is the main starting point for this "apophatic anthropology"
(Kallistos 2012: 19-33). This is a point that certainly deserves further reflec-
tion.

One might further argue that, on this basis, the subdivision of a notion of “dig-
nity” that is found in, among other things, the Russian Orthodox document on
human dignity and rights makes some sense perhaps, apart from the objections
mentioned earlier. What this means can be made clear by a closer look on the
application of a term like “dignity” in every days language usage (and not only
with reference to juridical terms, as mentioned above), which yet also shows
how disparate the semantic field of dignity still remains. As we have seen, a
distinction is made here between a principal value of human beings that cannot
be lost and an actual “dignity” that bears an empirical component and some-
times, as the document says, “is hardly discernible.” It was precisely this ap-
parent relativizing of dignity that led to protests and to debates mainly among
theologians between East and West. What was relativized, however, was, as it
were, the secondary implications, not the core value—not the potential itself
but the possible ways of its actualization.

As it turns out, this debate and the entire issue finally address the question of
individual and community in their mutual relationship. With some reason one
might argue, on the one hand, that some individual core of any human being
should be regarded as an entity independent of any given social context,
whereas it is precisely this social context, which means a particular social com-
munity, political entity, and religious or ideological (in a more neutral sense of
the term) group within which “dignity” becomes a visible reality—in a couple
of possible senses. It is the community that ultimately grants and realizes
human rights on the basis of an acknowledgement of dignity—an event with-
out which any reasoning about rights and dignity would remain on the level of
mere theory.

It is partly on this basis that several Orthodox theorists have suggested a great-
er emphasis on the community and on collective rights that were to complete
the usual set of individual based human rights. Various claims in this direction
in recent years especially focus on the rights of specific communities, like fam-
ily, nation, or religious groups (Heraklion Declaration 2003). Furthermore, a
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STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 2

philosopher of the rank of the Greek Christos Yannaras identifies the reason for
current deficiencies in the human rights idea and its realization in its insuffi-
cient implementation within a suitable community. Rights in their actualiza-
tion, according to him, need to be rooted and embedded in a “community
based on the truth” according to the models of the Greek polis and subse-
quently the Byzantine model of the church (Yannaras 2004).

Is this community aspect irrelevant in debates elsewhere? It was a few years

after World War II and against the background of huge numbers of emigrants,
refugees, and displaced persons that the political riots of war had generated
that Hannah Arendt openly voted for just one basic human right, namely what
she called the right to have rights. What she had in mind was no less and no
more than the right of a human being to be received and integrated into a
community that makes his rights and in a sense even human existence a reality
(Arendt 1949).

At the same time, this is the basic event where the merely theoretical relevance
of the potential or core value ends and the potential is supposed to be actual.
This already means talking about an aspect of “dignity” in whatever under-
standing that is to be actualized empirically—be it in terms of a “dignified life”
according to certain moral standards or in terms of “human conditions” created
to make life humane.

The context created this way is far from anything new. It has been reflected on
several times especially since the late 1960s, when the so-called second and
third generation of human rights, sometimes called social and cultural rights,
were first formulated. Suffice it here to recall that these sets of rights—con-
cerning such things as sufficient food supply, access to water, medical care, as
well as the freedom of choice of profession and freedom from any kinds of
exploitation or, furthermore, rights to education, cultural self-expression, par-
ticipation in societal and cultural life, etc.—basically all concern an appropri-
ate degree of participation of the individual in the economic, social, and cul-
tural life of a given community and society.6

All this also concerns notions of dignity, which in turn can be supposed to
bear, next to its individual applicability, a social or collective connotation as

6
Occasionally, these rights are explicitly connected with the concept of dignity.
Accordingly, for example, paragraph 13, part 1 of the International Covenant on Eco-
nomic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) reads as follows: “The States Parties to the
present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that edu-
cation shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense
of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental free-
doms.”

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 DIFFERENT HUMANS AND DIFFERENT RIGHTS?

well. It is not by chance that in everyday use the term “dignity” (supposedly in
any European language) can also be applied to offices and ranks that have a
certain function, which in turn are distributed throughout a social system. We
are accustomed to speaking of the dignity of a judge, a physician, a professor,
a president, or cabinet member. At the other end of the scale, the living condi-
tions of, say, beggars and the homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc. are often
spontaneously described as inhumane, and a violation of human dignity. Con-
sequently, a dignified human life would mean living under humane conditions,
which are therefore to be guaranteed.

Somewhat in opposition to this, “dignity” might indeed be also applied to de-

scribe certain characteristics or virtues, distinguished behavior, a high level of
self-control, and the like. In these cases, the accent is put on personal merits
and virtues rather than on the external preconditions for the achievement (or
preservation) of dignity. As we have seen above, the understanding of the
theosis concept, as applied in Russian Orthodox documents and statements,
betrays a general tendency to emphasize this latter aspect and therefore give
preference to ways of self-perfection instead of the claim for good living con-
ditions. One might still feel tempted to see an opposition to Western thinking
here as also articulated in the current human rights concept—coming down to
the afore-mentioned “freedom” vs. “morality” opposition. The impression of
an old-fashioned moralism that Western spectators often get from such state-
ments is probably rooted in the feeling of a simplistic black-and-white op-
position as inherent in them, as if freedom would be necessarily immoral or,
vice versa, morality a natural enemy of freedom. Furthermore, such simplifica-
tions are perhaps not too hard to dissolve on the theoretical level, as they re-
flect such allegedly oppositional frameworks as secular vs. religious or com-
munitarian vs. individual and the like, which are also the subject of this article.
But the misunderstandings they generate in everyday communication often
prove rather persistent and difficult to overcome. On a closer look, it was pre-
cisely the discussion evoked by the Russian Orthodox document on human
dignity and rights that could eventually illustrate again how artificial this East
vs. West dichotomy really is. Concluding our observations, reference can be
made precisely in this context to the further debate that occurred among theo-
logians (mainly in Germany and Switzerland) around the criticized passages in
the Russian Orthodox document. In a critical response to the above-mentioned
statement of the “Community of Evangelical Churches in Europe,” a group of
theologians from Switzerland and Germany felt compelled to hint at another
branch of Western tradition as well, according to which morality does in fact
form an integral part of the dignity of the individual. Relevant passages, quot-
ed in this context, are once again to be found in the writings of Immanuel
Kant. He claimed that the human being can only be the bearer of an individual
aim and destination of his own and therefore his own dignity, insofar as he is
not subjected to a foreign, external law. But, in a certain sense, he creates his
own legislation. This sense, however, is equally important—more accurately
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one should say, the human being brings to the fore the law that is relevant for
him. It needs to be emphasized that this passage is not to be understood in the
sense of legal arbitrariness or selfishness but in the sense that the human being
also has dignity because and insofar he participates in a general moral law:
So morality is the condition under which exclusively a rational being can form an aim
in itself because only thanks to this (condition) can it represent in itself an autonomous
legislative entity in the realm of aims. Consequently, it is only morality, and humanity
only insofar it is capable of the former, that in the end has dignity. (Kant 2005: 68; cf.
Hallensleben, Wyrwoll, and Vergauwen 2009; Hallensleben 2009; translation is my
own)
What the authors—mainly of Roman Catholic background—of this statement
wanted to emphasize is an understanding of human rights that regards the latter
as a consistent set of rights and freedoms which have to be mutually balanced
in order to persist, and therefore need a sense of morality also that contributes
to this balance. The vote for morality and moral values that sounds from vari-
ous Russian Orthodox statements as well is thus supported by them.

Further contributions to the discussion hinted at the difference between secular

human rights and a sacred “Law of God,” which should not and need not be
confused: Human rights are not sacred and should not be seen as such. On this
point as well, theologians of different backgrounds agreed with the Orthodox
vision as expressed in the document under discussion. Others felt a certain
need to clarify the Orthodox position further and relate it to ongoing Western
debates (Heller, 2010; Wasmuth 2010; Zwahlen 2010; Gabriel 2010). What
remained controversial, however, is the understanding of dignity and rights in
an individual and unconditional or contextual, as it were, communitarian sense.
For some time, the discussion appeared to turn into a Protestant-Catholic po-
lemic around the Russian Orthodox document (Mathwig 2010a; 2010b). A
more or less conciliatory position was finally taken by the Swiss theologian
Stefan Tobler, of the Protestant theological faculty of Sibiu in Romania. Tobler
first clarified the interpretation actually suggested in Kant’s writing by hinting
at the fact that for Kant morality was part of the human potential, not a pre-
condition for its development. Dignity in Kant’s understanding therefore is
derived from the ability to act morally, not from an empirically realized mor-
ality (Tobler 2008). Perhaps more important was Tobler’s decision—in accord-
ance with his more thorough reading of Kant—to approve the division of “dig-
nity” into two aspects, i.e., a core value of every human being and the em-
pirical aspect of dignity, as it had also been suggested by the Russian Ortho-
dox document. What remains is the insistence on a core value or an immovable
aspect of dignity that lies at the foundation of a claim for human dignity and
rights—regardless of the fact that these rights also can be claimed in a way that
entails danger for the community and can be regarded as immoral. Tobler’s
conviction turns out to be that human dignity and rights should retain their
character as a secular common base and compromise, and neither be made a
matter of moral judgment nor be artificially “Christianized.” Also, for him
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human rights are not sacred; the sacred is to be sought elsewhere (Tobler 2008:
343-47).

The discussion in the meantime has not stopped but has retired somewhat into
the everyday life of academic discussions. To risk a provisional conclusion
would probably mean stating that the issue of individual vs. community, as ar-
ticulated in such antagonisms as “freedom” vs. “morality,” as well as in the
subdivision of “human dignity” into the two aspects cited has not been
explicitly addressed up to the current state of discussion but is, in a sense,
always waiting offstage. It is, to our mind, narrowly connected with a
subdivision of “human dignity” into—to use Tobler’s terms—an ontological
and an empirical aspect of dignity, or, in other terms, the conditions and the
requirements for the realization of the human potential.

This includes the notion of a potential for further development within an on-
going debate. In other words, the Russian Orthodox position as articulated, for
example, in the 2008 document and based on the Orthodox concept of theosis
is certainly able to enrich the current discourse about human rights. It intro-
duces, first, the sharpened notion of dignity as a human potential and, second,
an increasing sensibility for the community aspects of human dignity. But pre-
cisely this is an issue that is perhaps only beginning to be reflected on in its
given context: Does the accent have to be put on spiritual and moral self-per-
fection or on charity and the provision of favorable conditions for the devel-
opment of others?

Clearly this is, in the end, an artificial opposition, as might have become obvi-
ous in the course of our survey. This survey could also point to several theo-
logical issues concerning the theosis idea, where Eastern and Western thinking
partially concur, including the notion of community and the ideal derived from
this. Basic patterns like the imago dei concept, the difference as well as rela-
tionship between creator and created, the development of human potential with
respect to God’s image and the role of the community, in particular the church,
show comparable elements and are already being compared. The same is true
perhaps for some approaches of secular philosophy to human dignity and
rights. To overemphasize an East vs. West opposition must seem an inappropri-
ate venture against this background. This is not to neglect the existing differ-
ences.

It seems to me that even a further concurrence of viewpoints on the present

state of affairs lies in the acknowledgement of the constitutional significance
of the category of relation, be it with God on the one hand or among human
beings on the other. Differences of more or less importance might be found in
the understanding of the nature and the tasks included in such a relationship
(Brinkman 2003; cf. Zwahlen 2012b). Human dignity, however, in all these
perspectives appears as the human dignity of the other in both its aspects, as a
171
STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 2

potential and a responsibility beyond human disposal and with concomitant

consequences for the understanding of human rights.

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