The Trinity, the “Prevailing Religion,” and the Greek Constitution

Effie Fokas, Senior Research Fellow, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy; Research Associate, London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory

The implications, potential and real, of the references to religion in the Greek Constitution entail a perennial socio-legal conundrum in Greece and the subject of intense legal and political debate. In this post, I will introduce readers to those references to religion in the text of the constitution and explore some ways in which they have both potential and real impact upon Greek socio-legal life.

The Current Greek Constitution and Sacramental Categories

The current Greek Constitution was drafted in 1974 following the end of a military dictatorship; it came into effect in 1975 and underwent amendments in 1986, 2001, 2008, and 2019. Consistently, however, since its 1974 formulation, the Constitution of Greece is  presented “[i]n the name of the Holy and Consubstantial and Indivisible Trinity”; these are the words the reader first encounters under the title, “The Constitution of Greece.” To the general reader, “consubstantial” will be a rather unintelligible theological notion; it means “of one and the same substance, essence, or nature” and denotes here the oneness of the three “persons” of the Trinity—God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. (more…)

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God in the Irish Constitution

Dr. David Kenny is Assistant Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin

Upon first reading, God, and some of his consistent personages, plays a striking and prominent role in the Irish Constitution. But like many things, the meaning and effect of this is not as clear and as obvious as one might think, and the real story of the God in the Irish Constitution is more complicated than one might initially assume.

A Godly Preamble

In their first week of law school, I have my Constitutional Law students read the Irish Constitution and ask for their impressions. For almost all of them, it is their first time reading the text in full. Every year, multiple students note the religiosity of the text as the most striking feature. Before even that most common invocation of popular power “We, the people,” our Constitution’s Preamble begins with a very different invocation:

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God in Secular Constitutions

Dmytro Vovk, Director of the Center for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and co-editor of Talk About: Law and Religion

Carl Schmitt points out in Political Theology that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” Likewise, many doctrines and concepts of modern constitutionalism have theological roots and have been developed in the dialogue with religious tradition. Religion has never fully disappeared from texts of secular constitutions—it lingers in symbolic references to God, religious formulas in presidential oaths, constitutional agreements with churches of majorities, and so on.

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