THE THEOLOGY of POLITICAL POWER an Historical Approach to the Relationship Between Religion and Politics
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THE THEOLOGY OF POLITICAL POWER An Historical Approach to the Relationship between Religion and Politics PART 2: RUSSIA AND THE WEST (to 1789) Vladimir Moss © Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2011. All Rights Reserved. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................4 IV. THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: KIEV AND MOSCOW .............................5 Church and State in Kievan Rus’ ..........................................................................5 The Breakup of Kievan Rus’ ................................................................................11 Autocracy restored: St. Andrew of Bogolyubovo.................................................14 Russia between the Hammer and the Anvil ........................................................19 The Rise of Muscovy............................................................................................21 Russia and the Council ........................................................................................27 The Third Rome ...................................................................................................30 The Heresy of the Judaizers..................................................................................38 Possessors and Non-Possessors ...........................................................................46 St. Maximus the Greek ........................................................................................50 Ivan the Terrible: (1) The Orthodox Tsar............................................................52 Ivan the Terrible: (2) The Bloodthirsty Tyrant....................................................57 The Moscow Patriarchate ....................................................................................68 Orthodoxy and the Unia......................................................................................72 The Russian Time of Troubles .............................................................................79 The Hereditary Principle .....................................................................................91 Tsar, Patriarch and People...................................................................................98 The Schism of the Old Ritualists .......................................................................102 Patriarch Nicon and the Symphony of Powers..................................................111 The Rebellion of the Streltsy ..............................................................................125 From Holy Rus’ to Great Russia .......................................................................130 V. THE WESTERN REVOLUTION: PROTESTANT DEMOCRATISM......136 Renaissance Humanism.....................................................................................136 Machiavellianism...............................................................................................140 The Idea of Liberty .............................................................................................144 Protestant Rationalism ......................................................................................148 Luther on Church and State ..............................................................................155 Calvin on Church and State ..............................................................................160 The Counter-Reformation..................................................................................165 The Church of England......................................................................................169 Holland: the First Capitalist State.....................................................................174 The Old Testament in the New World ..............................................................178 The English Revolution .....................................................................................182 The Divine Right of Kings.................................................................................185 English Radicalism ............................................................................................190 The Killing of the King ......................................................................................191 Locke’s Theory of the Social Contract................................................................196 A Critique of Social Contract Theory ................................................................202 The Idea of Religious Toleration ........................................................................205 England: the Conservative Enlightenment .......................................................211 France: The Radical Enlightenment ..................................................................222 2 The Enlightenment and Politics ........................................................................226 Enlightened Despotism ......................................................................................230 Hume: the Irrationalism of Rationalism............................................................235 The Counter-Enlightenment..............................................................................242 Rousseau and the General Will .........................................................................247 Tikhomirov on the General Will ........................................................................255 Two Concepts of Freedom..................................................................................261 Judaeo-Masonry .................................................................................................268 The Grand Orient ..............................................................................................277 VI. THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: ST. PETERSBURG .................................281 Peter and the West.............................................................................................281 Peter’s Leviathan ...............................................................................................288 Tsar Peter and the Orthodox East .....................................................................300 Was Peter an Orthodox Tsar? ...........................................................................303 The German Persecution of Orthodoxy.............................................................308 Tsaritsa Elizabeth ..............................................................................................313 Catherine II ........................................................................................................318 Pugachev’s Rebellion .........................................................................................326 Poland: Nation without a State .........................................................................330 Catherine and the Jews.......................................................................................337 Catherine and the Masons .................................................................................344 Conclusion .........................................................................................................353 3 INTRODUCTION This book is a continuation of my earlier book, The Theology of Political Power – Part 1: Israel, Rome and Byzantium (to 1453). It takes the analysis of the relationship between religion and the main forms of political power – autocracy, absolutism and democracy – into the early modern age, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. The main struggle in this period is seen to be between the Russian Autocracy and the Western revolution in its two main forms: Catholic-absolutist and Protestant-democratic. March 5/18, 2011. East House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking, Surrey. GU22 0SB. 4 IV. THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: KIEV AND MOSCOW Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Matthew 23.12. Church and State in Kievan Rus’ The 600-year history of Russia from her baptism under St. Vladimir in 988 until the official proclamation of the Russian Empire as the Orthodox Empire by the Ecumenical Patriarchs Joachim (in 1561) and Jeremiah II (in 1588) presents a very striking and instructive illustration of the Lord's words: "the last shall be first" (Matthew 20.16). For most of this period Russia was the most populous and flourishing nation in Orthodoxy. The beauty of her churches and the piety of her people amazed all comers. The monastic missionary movement inspired by St. Sergius of Radonezh in the fourteenth century came to be called "the Northern Thebaid" because of the resemblance of its piety to that of the Egyptian Thebaid. And yet during the whole of this period the Russian Church remained no more than a junior metropolitan district of the Ecumenical patriarchate! Unlike the much smaller Serbian and Bulgarian Churches, the Russian Church never sought autocephaly, and even when the Byzantine empire had contracted to a very small area around the capital city, the Russian Grand-Princes looked up to the emperors in Constantinople as to their fathers or elder brothers.1 This voluntary self-limitation and national humility on the part of the princes and people brought many blessings to Russia. First and foremost, it implanted Orthodoxy in all its purity into the hearts of the people with no admixture of heterodoxy.2 Secondly, the fact that the metropolitan of the Russian Church was appointed by Constantinople gave him the ability to arbitrate