The Theological Foundations of Davor Džalto’s Political Theology

Abstract

The article explores the most important ideas of political theologian Davor Džalto. The first part of the article defines the ontological and anthropological foundations of his political concept: the doctrine of creation from nothing and the image of God in man; and also formulates Džalto’s opinion about what is the main existential problem of human existence. In the second part of the article, the author identifies the «personal» and «individual» modes of human existence in the concept under study and the logic corresponding to them: the logic of «this world» and the logic of «The World to come». The third part of the article defines the modes of social existence corresponding to the logic of «this world» and the logic of «The World to come». In the next part of the article, the author describes the modes of human political existence, which proceed from the logic of «this world» and the logic of «The World to come». The final part of the article identifies the origins and analyzes the theological foundations of Džalto’s political theology. The author comes to the conclusion that Džalto builds the theological foundation of his political theology based on the ideas of the personalist ontology of Zizioulas, and the main idea of Džalto’s «Orthodox Christian anarchism» is that the Church should choose a strategy that, although it does not reject the state and power as an integral phenomenon of the fallen world, but at the same time calls for reduction of the political sphere to the possible minimum.