[Russia and the Universal Church] [Previous] [Next]
If we wish to state Orthodoxy in terms of the Russian national ideal, logic compels us to seek the true expression of that ideal among our native sects and not within the domain of the official Church, whose origin is Greek and whose organization, given her by Peter the Great, is Teutonic. Deprived of any specific principle or practical independence, this “Ministry of the Spiritual Affairs of the Orthodox Communion” can only reproduce the imperial clericalism of Byzantium modified by the easy-going good nature of our own people and the Teutonic bureaucracy of our administration. Apart from the particular causes which produced the Raskol,1 and which have only a historical importance, it may be confidently asserted that the reason for the persistence of this schism within the nation is the obvious inadequacy of Russian Church government coupled with its exaggerated pretensions. This Church “established” by the Tsar, though totally subservient to the secular power and destitute of all inner vitality, none the less makes use of the hierarchical idea to assume over the people an absolute authority which by right belongs only to the independent Universal Church founded by Christ. The emptiness of these claims, sensed rather than consciously recognized, has driven one section of our dissenters to fruitless attempts at constituting a Russian Orthodox Church independent of the State, while another and larger section has quite frankly declared that the true Church has completely disappeared from the world since the year 1666, and that we are living under the spiritual rule of Antichrist, resident at St. Petersburg. It is plain why the advocates of the “Russian idea” take good care not to look too closely into the Raskol, nor to seek this elusive “idea” in that quarter. A doctrine which affirms that the Russian Church and monarchy are subject to the absolute rule of Antichrist and which postpones all hope of a better state of affairs to the end of the world, obviously does not harmonize very well with an extravagant patriotism which represents Russia in her present condition as the second Israel and the chosen people of the future. Nevertheless, it is of interest to note that it is precisely those who would have Russia undertake a religious mission all her own, namely the Slavophiles, who are compelled to ignore or to depreciate the one historical phenomenon in which the religious genius of the Russian people has shown a certain originality. On the other hand, in some of our liberal and radical “Westernizing” 2 circles, our national Protestantism, in spite of the barbarous forms it assumes, finds ready champions who imagine that they discern in it the promise of a better future for the Russian people. We ourselves, having no reason either to belittle or to overestimate this typical phenomenon of our religious history, are able to view it more objectively. We do not underrate the great part played in the rise of the Raskol by the profoundest ignorance, ultra-democratic tendencies, and the spirit of revolt. We shall not, therefore, look to it for any higher truth or any positive religious ideal. Nevertheless, we are bound to note that there has always been a spark of the divine fire in this crude and even senseless incitement of the passions of the mob. There is in it a burning thirst for religious truth, a compelling need for a true and living Church. Our national Protestantism aims its shafts at a partial and imperfect manifestation of ecclesiastical government and not at the principle of the visible Church. Even the most advanced section of our “old believers” regard an actual organized Church as so necessary that, because they are robbed of it, they believe themselves to be already under the rule of Antichrist. Allowing for the ignorance which leads them to mistake Russia for the whole world, there is to be found at the bottom of all these queer errors the idea or the axiom of a Church independent of the State and closely bound up with the whole intimate social life of the people — a free, powerful and living Church. And if our dissenters see the official Church, whether Russian or Greek, without independence or vitality, and declare that therefore she is not the true Church of Christ, they are at least consistent in their error.
The negative truth implied in the Raskol remains unassailable. Neither the bloody persecutions of past generations, nor the oppression of a modern bureaucracy, nor the official hostility of our clergy has done anything to meet the unanswerable contention that there exists no truly spiritual government in the Greco-Russian Church. But this is as far as the truth of our national Protestantism goes. As soon as the “old believers” abandon this simple denial and claim to have discovered some outlet for their religious instincts or to have realized their ideal of the Church, they fall into obvious contradictions and absurdities which make them an easy target for their opponents. It is not difficult for the latter to meet the Popovtsy3 by proving that a religious society which has been for generations deprived of the episcopate and which has only partially recovered this fundamental institution by entirely uncanonical proceedings cannot be the genuine continuation of the ancient Church and the sole guardian of the Orthodox tradition. It is no less easy to establish in answer to the Bespopovtsy4 the proposition that the reign of Antichrist cannot be of indefinite length, and that logically these dissenters should repudiate not only the Church of the present day but also that of former times which, in their opinion, was destroyed in the year of grace 1666; for a Church against which the gates of Hell have prevailed cannot have been the true Church of Christ.
The great historical importance of the Raskol, with its thousands of martyrs, is the witness which it bears to the depth of religious sentiment among the Russian people and to the lively interest aroused in them by the theocratic conception of the Church. If it is, on the one hand, a matter for great joy that the majority of the populace has remained faithful to the official Church which, despite the absence of any lawful Church government,5 has at least preserved the apostolic succession and the validity of the sacraments, it would, on the other hand, have been deplorable had the entire Russian people been content with this official Church, such as it is; that would be a convincing proof that there was no religious future to be hoped for. The vehement and persistent protest of these millions of peasants gives us an earnest of the future regeneration of our Church life. But the essentially negative character of this religious movement is a sufficient proof that the Russian people, just like every other human power left to its own resources, is incapable of realizing its highest ideal. All these aspirations and tentative movements towards a true Church indicate no more than a passive capacity for religion which needs an act of moral regeneration coming from a higher source than the purely national and popular element if it is to be effectively realized in a concrete organic form.
We may grant that the official Church ruled by a civil servant is nothing but a State institution, a minor branch of the bureaucratic administration; but the Church conceived by our dissenters would at the most be a merely national and democratic Church. It is the idea of the Universal Church which is lacking on both sides. The article of the Creed concerning the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, though sung at every Mass and recited at every Baptism, remains as much a dead letter for the “old Orthodox” as for the “ruling Church.” For the former, the Church is the Russian nation — in its entirety up to the time of the patriarch Nikon, and since his time in that section of it which has remained faithful to the old national rite. As for the theologians of the official Church, their ideas on the subject are as vague as they are inconsistent. But the feature which is constant among all their variations and common to them all, in spite of their differences, is the absence of a positive faith in the Universal Church. Here, to confine ourselves to a single writer who is worth a host of others, is the theory of the Church expounded by Archbishop Philaret, the able Metropolitan of Moscow, in one of his most important works:6
“The true Christian Church includes all the particular Churches which confess Jesus Christ ‘come in the flesh.’ The doctrine of all these religious societies is fundamentally the same divine truth; but it may be mingled with the opinions and errors of men. Hence, there is in the teaching of these individual Churches a distinction of greater and less purity. The doctrine of the Eastern Church is purer than the rest, indeed it may be recognized as completely pure, since it does not link the divine truth to any human opinion. However, as each religious communion makes exactly the same claim to perfect purity of faith and doctrine, it does not behoove us to judge others, but rather to leave the final judgment to the Spirit of God Who guides the Churches.”
Such is the opinion of Mgr. Philaret and the majority of the Russian clergy agree with him. The breadth and conciliatory nature of this view cannot conceal its essential defects. The principle of unity and universality in the Church only extends, it would seem, to the common ground of Christian faith, namely the dogma of the Incarnation. This truly fundamental faith in Jesus Christ, the GodMan, is not regarded as the living and fruitful seed of a further development; the theologian of Moscow would rather see in it the final unity of the Christian world and the only unity which he considers necessary. He is content to ignore the divergences that exist in the Christian religion and declares himself satisfied with the purely theoretical unity thus obtained. It is a unity based on a broad but hollow indifference, implying no organic bond and requiring no effective fellowship between particular Churches. The Universal Church is reduced to a logical concept. Its parts are real, but the whole is nothing but a subjective abstraction. Even if it has not always been thus, if the Church in her entirety was once a living body, yet that body is today a prey to death and dissolution; it is only the existence of the separate parts that is actually manifest before our eyes, while their substantial unity has vanished into the realm of the unseen world.
This idea of a “dead Church” is not merely the logical conclusion which we believe to be implicit in the propositions advanced by our renowned theologian; he has labored to describe to us the Universal Church as he conceived it under the form of a lifeless body made up of heterogeneous and distinct elements. He has even been inspired to apply to the Church of Christ and to the stages of its historical existence the vision of the great idol recorded in the book of Daniel. The golden head of the idol is the early Christian Church; the chest and arms of silver signify “the Church growing in strength and extent” (the age of the martyrs); the brazen stomach is “the Church in prosperity” (the triumph of Christianity and the age of the great doctors). Finally, the Church of the present, “the Church in its divided and fragmentary condition,” is represented by the two feet with their toes, in which clay is mingled with iron by the hands of men. To accept this ill-omened symbol seriously would mean the denial of the one, infallible and impregnable Church of God founded to last for all generations. The author perceived as much, and in subsequent editions of his work he erased the whole of this allegory; but he found nothing to put in its place. It must, however, be confessed that in limiting the application of this symbol to the official Greco-Russian Church the distinguished representative of that institution displayed both acumen and impartiality. Iron and clay mixed by the hand of man — violence and impotence, and an artificial unity which needs only a shock to reduce it to powder: no simile could better depict the actual condition of our established Church.
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1. The generic name of raskol (schism) is in use among us to denote especially those of the dissenters who separated from the official Church over the question of rites and who are also called starovery (old believers). The separation was finally consummated in the years 1666-1667, when a council assembled at Moscow anathematized the old rites.
2. This is the name (in Russian, Zapadniki) given to the literary party opposed to the Slavophiles and attached to the principles of European civilization.
3. A moderate party which by unlawful means is now in possession of a priesthood and even, since 1848, of an episcopate, whose center is at Fontana Alba in Austria.
4. A radical party which holds that the priesthood and all the sacraments, with the exception of Baptism, have been completely non-existent since 1666.
5. All our bishops are nominated in a manner absolutely forbidden and condemned by the third canon of the seventh Œcumenical Council, a canon which in the eyes of our own Church can never have been abrogated (for lack of subsequent œcumenical councils). We shall have to return to this subject later.
6. Conversation of an inquirer and a believer on the truth of the Eastern Church.
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