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The Eastern Church is not a homogeneous body. Among the various nations of which it is composed, the two most important have given it their names; its official title is the Greco-Russian Church. This national dualism (which, it may be remarked in passing, is singularly reminiscent of the two feet of clay of which Archbishop Philaret speaks) suggests a concrete form in which to put the question of our ecclesiastical unity. We are concerned to discover what the real living bond is which unites the Russian and the Greek Churches and makes of them a single moral organism. We are told that the Russians and the Greeks possess a common faith and that that is the main thing. But we must enquire what is meant in this case by the word “faith” or “religion” (vera). True faith is that which possesses our whole soul and is seen to be the moving and guiding principle of our entire existence. The profession of one and the same abstract belief, having no influence upon conscience or life, constitutes no corporate bond and cannot truly unite anyone; it becomes a matter of indifference whether or not anyone possesses this dead faith in common with anyone else. On the other hand, unity in real faith inevitably becomes a living and active unity, a moral and practical solidarity.
If the Russian and Greek Churches give no evidence of their solidarity by any vital activity, their “unity of faith” is a mere abstract formula producing no fruits and involving no obligations. A layman interested in religious questions once asked that distinguished prelate, the metropolitan Philaret,1 what could be done to revive the relations between the Russian Church and the Mother Church. “But on what grounds are relations between them possible?” was the reply of the author of the Greco-Russian Catechism. Some years before this curious conversation, there occurred an incident which gives us an insight into the truth of the words of the wise archbishop. William Palmer, a distinguished member of the Anglican Church and of the University of Oxford, wished to join the Orthodox Church. He went to Russia and Turkey to study the contemporary situation in the Christian East and to find out on what conditions he would be admitted to the communion of the Eastern Orthodox. At St. Petersburg and at Moscow he was told that he had only to abjure the errors of Protestantism before a priest, who would thereupon administer to him the sacrament of Holy Chrism or Confirmation. But at Constantinople he found that he must be baptized afresh. As he knew himself to be a Christian and saw no reason to suspect the validity of his baptism (which incidentally was admitted without question by the Orthodox Russian Church), he considered that a second baptism would be a sacrilege. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to accept Orthodoxy according to the local rules of the Russian Church, since he would then become Orthodox only in Russia while remaining a heathen in the eyes of the Greeks; and he had no wish to join a national Church but to join the universal Orthodox Church. No one could solve his dilemma, and so he became a Roman Catholic.2 It is obvious that there are questions on which the Russian Church could and ought to negotiate with the Mother See, and if these questions are carefully avoided it is because it is a foregone conclusion that a clear formulation of them would only end in a formal schism. The jealous hatred of the Greeks for the Russians, to which the latter reply with a hostility mingled with contempt — that is the fact which governs the real relations of these two national Churches, in spite of their being officially in communion with one another. But even this official unity hangs upon a single hair, and all the diplomacy of the clergy of St. Petersburg and Constantinople is needed to prevent the snapping of this slender thread. The will to maintain this counterfeit unity is decidedly not inspired by Christian charity, but by the dread of a fatal disclosure; for on the day on which the Russian and Greek Churches formally break with one another the whole world will see that the Ecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that there exists in the East nothing but isolated national Churches. That is the real motive which impels our hierarchy to adopt an attitude of caution and moderation towards the Greeks, in other words, to avoid any kind of dealings with them.3
As for the Church of Constantinople, which in its arrogant provincialism assumes the title of “the Great Church” and “the Œcumenical Church,” it would probably be glad to be rid of these Northern barbarians who are only a hindrance to its PanHellenic aims. In recent times, the patriarchate of Constantinople has been twice on the point of anathematizing the Russian Church;4 only purely material considerations have prevented a split. The Greek Church of Jerusalem, which is in fact completely subservient to that of Constantinople, depends, on the other hand, for its means of subsistence almost entirely upon Russian charity. This material dependence of the Greek clergy on Russia is of very long standing, and does in fact form the only actual basis of Greco-Russian unity. But it is clear that this purely external link is incapable of fusing the two Churches into a single moral organism endowed with unity of life and action.
This conclusion will be further strengthened if we take into consideration the national Churches of lesser importance which, being under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople, were formerly part of the Greek Church, but became autocephalous as the various, small States regained their political independence. The relations of these so-called Churches to one another, to the metropolitan see of Byzantium and to the Russian Church, are almost non-existent. Even such purely official and conventional relations as are maintained between St. Petersburg and Constantinople are not, as far as I am aware, established between Russia and the new autocephalous Churches of Romania and Greece.
The case of Bulgaria and Serbia is worse still. It is well known that in 1872 the Greek patriarchs, with the consent of the Synod of Athens, excommunicated the whole Bulgarian people for reasons of national policy. The Bulgarians were condemned for their “phyletism,” that is to say, their tendency to subject the Church to racial and national divisions. The accusation was true; but this phyletism, which was heresy among the Bulgarians, was orthodoxy itself among the Greeks. The Russian Church, while sympathizing with the Bulgarians, wished to rise above this political quarrel. But she could only do so by speaking in the name of the Universal Church, which she had no more right to do than the Greeks. The Synod of St. Petersburg, therefore, instead of making a clear pronouncement, merely sulked at the Byzantine hierarchy and, on receiving the decisions of the council of 1872 with a request for its approval, refrained from answering one way or the other. Hence arose a state of affairs which had never been foreseen or, rather, had been thought impossible, according to the canons of the Church. The Russian Church remained in formal communion with the Greek Church and in actual communion with the Bulgarian Church without any explicit protest against the canonical act of excommunication which separated these two Churches or any appeal, even if only for form’s sake, to an œcumenical council.
A complication of the same kind rose with Serbia. The atheist government of this little kingdom promulgated ecclesiastical laws which established the hierarchy of the Serbian Church on a basis of compulsory simony, since all sacred offices were to be purchased at a fixed tariff; the metropolitan Michael and the other bishops were arbitrarily deposed and a new hierarchy was created in defiance of canon law. This hierarchy was formally repudiated by the Russian Church and replied by purchasing the support of the patriarch of Constantinople. It was now “the Great Church” which found herself in communion with two Churches which were out of communion with one another.
It need hardly be added that all these national Churches are simply State Churches entirely without any kind of ecclesiastical freedom. It is easy to imagine the disastrous effect which such an oppression of the Church can produce upon the religion of these unfortunate countries. The religious indifference of the Serbs is as well known as their mania for using Orthodoxy as a political weapon in their fratricidal struggle against the Catholic Croats.5 As regards Bulgaria, Mgr. Joseph, the exarch of that country and a witness of unimpeachable authority, revealed the distressing state of religion among his people in an allocution delivered at Constantinople in 1885 on the feast of St. Methodius. “The mass of the people,” he said, “are cold and indifferent, while the educated classes are definitely hostile to everything sacred; it is only fear of the Russians that prevents the abolition of the Church in Bulgaria.” 6 There is no need for us to show that the religious condition of Romania and Greece is essentially the same as that of the Serbs and Bulgarians. In a report presented to the Emperor of Russia by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, and published last year, the religious and ecclesiastical condition of the four Orthodox countries of the Balkan peninsula is painted in the darkest colors. It could not, in fact, be worse. But what is really surprising is the explanation given in the official document. The one and only cause of all these evils, according to the ruler of our Church, is the constitutional regime! If that is so, then what is the cause of the deplorable state of the Church of Russia?
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1. The reader must not be surprised to come across this name constantly in our writings; he is the only really notable character produced by the Russian Church in the nineteenth century.
2. A note at the end of this volume gives certain historical details on the question of second baptism in the GrecoRussian Church. These facts, with which no doubt Palmer was acquainted, could only confirm him in his final resolve not to seek universal truth in a quarter where the basic mystery of our religion has been made an instrument of national politics. [The note referred to is missing from all the editions of Solovyev’s work which I have been able to consult. — Tr.]
3. It is also the only practical reason for our still retaining the Julian calendar in defiance of the sun and the stars; no change could be made without entering into negotiations with the Greeks, which is just what our clerical circles most dread.
4. In 1872, when the Synod of St. Petersburg refused to associate itself openly with the decisions of the Greek council which excommunicated the Bulgarians; and in 1884, when the Russian Government requested the Porte to nominate two Bulgarian bishops in dioceses which the Greeks regard as entirely under their jurisdiction.
5. For the views on this subject of a Slavophile writer who has lived long in Serbia, the reader is referred to the article by P. K—ky in Aksakov’s periodical, Russ (1885, No. 12). 2
6. This sermon was reproduced in full in Katkov’s paper, the Moscow Gazette.
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