THE THEOLOGY OF POLITICAL POWER – PART 2 An Historical Approach to the Relationship between Religion and Politics Vladimir Moss © Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2010 CONTENTS IV. THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: KIEV AND MOSCOW .............................4 Church and State in Kievan Rus’..........................................................................4 The Breakup of Kievan Rus’ ................................................................................10 Autocracy restored: St. Andrew of Bogolyubovo.................................................13 Russia between the Hammer and the Anvil ........................................................18 The Rise of Muscovy............................................................................................20 Russia and the Council........................................................................................26 The Third Rome ...................................................................................................29 The Heresy of the Judaizers..................................................................................37 Possessors and Non-Possessors ...........................................................................45 St. Maximus the Greek ........................................................................................49 Ivan the Terrible: (1) The Orthodox Tsar............................................................51 Ivan the Terrible: (2) The Bloodthirsty Tyrant....................................................56 The Moscow Patriarchate ....................................................................................67 Orthodoxy and the Unia......................................................................................71 The Russian Time of Troubles .............................................................................78 The Hereditary Principle .....................................................................................90 Tsar, Patriarch and People...................................................................................97 The Schism of the Old Ritualists .......................................................................101 Patriarch Nicon and the Symphony of Powers..................................................110 The Rebellion of the Streltsy ..............................................................................124 From Holy Rus’ to Great Russia .......................................................................129 V. THE WESTERN REVOLUTION: PROTESTANT DEMOCRATISM......135 Renaissance Humanism.....................................................................................135 Machiavellianism...............................................................................................139 The Idea of Liberty .............................................................................................143 Protestant Rationalism ......................................................................................147 Luther on Church and State ..............................................................................154 Calvin on Church and State ..............................................................................159 The Counter-Reformation..................................................................................164 The Church of England......................................................................................168 Holland: the First Capitalist State.....................................................................173 The Old Testament in the New World ..............................................................177 The English Revolution .....................................................................................181 The Divine Right of Kings.................................................................................184 English Radicalism ............................................................................................189 The Killing of the King ......................................................................................190 Locke’s Theory of the Social Contract................................................................195 A Critique of Social Contract Theory ................................................................201 The Idea of Religious Toleration ........................................................................204 England: the Conservative Enlightenment .......................................................210 France: The Radical Enlightenment ..................................................................221 The Enlightenment and Politics ........................................................................225 Enlightened Despotism......................................................................................229 2 Hume: the Irrationalism of Rationalism............................................................234 The Counter-Enlightenment..............................................................................241 Rousseau and the General Will .........................................................................246 Tikhomirov on the General Will ........................................................................254 Two Concepts of Freedom..................................................................................260 Judaeo-Masonry .................................................................................................267 The Grand Orient ..............................................................................................276 VI. THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: ST. PETERSBURG.................................280 Peter and the West.............................................................................................280 Peter’s Leviathan ...............................................................................................287 Tsar Peter and the Orthodox East .....................................................................299 Was Peter an Orthodox Tsar? ...........................................................................302 The German Persecution of Orthodoxy.............................................................307 Tsaritsa Elizabeth ..............................................................................................312 Catherine II ........................................................................................................317 Pugachev’s Rebellion .........................................................................................325 Poland: Nation without a State .........................................................................329 Catherine and the Jews.......................................................................................336 Catherine and the Masons .................................................................................343 Tsar Paul I of Russia..........................................................................................352 The Annexation of Georgia................................................................................358 The Murder of Tsar Paul ...................................................................................364 3 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 in the frequent quarrels between the Russian princes in the Kievan period, thus preserving the spiritual unity of the Russian nation that had been achieved under St. Vladimir. And thirdly, it ensured the survival and resurrection of Russia as a single Orthodox nation even after the Mongols had destroyed Kiev and subdued most of Russia in the 1240s. 1 Fr. John Meyendorff, “From Byzantium to Russia: Religious and Cultural Legacy”, in Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996, p. 115. 2 The Russians were not even exposed to the classical pagan authors;