The theological possibilities of communism: A comparison between the utopias of Eastern and Western Christianities

In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch claims that the Russian Orthodox Christian Church was theologically more open towards the ideas of October than its Western counterpart. The remark is intriguing, but Bloch does not offer any detailed explanation except to say that Orthodoxy considers the revelation “unconcluded.” This article is an attempt to provide a slightly more detailed background to Bloch’s remark and present some elements of Orthodox Christianity and its utopianism by way of comparative critical hermeneutics, a method that looks at the interpretative differences between Orthodox and Western Christianity with respect to some basic shared dogmas and their de-alienating and alienating effects.