The true nature of power

This article offers a political science reading of the thought of Nicolas Cabasilas, a fourteenth-century Byzantine theologian, through a conversation between Costas Zouraris, a professor of political science, and Panayiotis Nellas, editor of the Greek Orthodox journal *Synaxi*. The approach is deliberately non-theological: Zouraris analyses Cabasilas's writings as a fully-fledged body of political thought. The central idea is that Cabasilas formulates a conception of power based on the abolition of the separation between rulers and ruled, made possible not through coercion or knowledge, but through love and service. This vision is set against the great Western political traditions — Athenian democracy, socialist utopias, Marxism — from which it differs radically. The contribution of the article is to show that Orthodox theology contains a coherent and original political dimension, rooted in Christology, which transcends the dead ends of modern political theory.