SACRED
MONARCHY
AND
THE MODERN SECULAR
STATE
Thursday, February
09, 2006
The 20th century has brought
an end to sacred monarchy. To be sure, several nations yet possess a
king or queen, but with few exceptions, they reign without ruling. In
the West, none of them pretend to hold their position by "the Grace
of God", despite the liturgical rhetoric surrounding their coronations.
As for the Arab Sheikdoms and the Ayatollah Khomeini, were it not for
humanism (and their oil) they would be laughed out of the United Nations,
for basing their life, laws and political policies on the Koran. To
what extent the idea of "sacred kingship" does in fact influence
them, one cannot always determine; nevertheless, nothing is more certain
than the disappearance of "sacred kingship" from among so-called
Christian nations.
In any case, there has never
been a monarch who ruled in the East or in the post-Orthodox West by
"the Grace of God", because the existence of true kingship
depends upon true faith. Furthermore, we cannot speak of a heretical
society as societas christiana. The Holy Russian Empire - the
last phase of the Roman Imperium, successor to Byzantine or Christian
Rome - was the last Christian society and Nicholas II was the last Christian
Emperor. His death brought the extinction of "the age of Constantine",
the end to God's Plan concerning holy empires
With the disappearance of Christian
Rome, that which restrained world-revolution, world-atheism-arnarchy-apostasy,
is no more (cf. II Thess iv, 6). Secularism characterizes the present
age and no where is it more obvious than in the principles and policies
of the modern democratic state in which power ascends from the electorate
to the elected, to officials and bureaucrats whose only concern, if
any at all, is the material and earthly happiness of constituents. If
there is a place for religion in these "pluralistic societies",
it does not inform its attitudes, aspirations and decisions-making process.
The self-styled "separation of church and state" is a political
dogma because it is already a spiritual condition.
The secular state is always
atheistic. St. Gregory the Theologian observed in the 4th century that
there are three fundamental kinds of government: monarchy, the rule
of one, is associated with belief in one God or, at least, one supreme
God. Polyarchy (aristocracy, the rule of the few or best, is linked
with polytheism; and the rule of the may, the Saint called anarchy (democracy),
is bound with atheism. We Orthodox, he said, hold monarchy "in
honor", because it imitated the unity of God whereas polyarchy
implies a division or dispersion of His Power, a "severance of
His Essence of God is pulverized or, in other words, power is so completely
spread out or distributed that He cannot be conceived to exist (Theol.
Ora. III, 2
Gregory's explanation. He did not mean that nations always make conscious,
philosophically elaborated choices, but that there is always a direct
connection between theology and politics.
We can see this fact even more
clearly in the "political theology" of "christology of
Christian Rome where the monarchy and the empire imitate the Incarnation.
Thus as Jesus Christ was both God and man, so Orthodox monarchical society
likewise possessed two dimensions, one earthly and one heavenly, united
as the two Natures in Christ. The Basileus or Tsar, the imperium, Emperor,
represented the humanity of Christ and the priesthood or sacerdotium
was the Christian society even as "the Whole Christ" works
for the salvation of the world. In very broad terms, the domain of the
Emperor was the body while the priesthood cared for the soul. Of course,
the Emperor's subjects were, like himself, members of the Church, for,
in a real sense, the Empire was the Church.
Orthodox peoples have known
only monarchy - whether pagan, Christians, Moslem or heretic. For a
while, at lest, the West was Orthodox and maintained the correct "political
theology" and "christology". Falling away from the true
faith, it has evolved those political forms about which St. Gregory
spoke. Europe was divided among numerous kings while the papacy pretentiously
sought to replace the Byzantine Emperor whom it had deserted. Eventually
Catholic religious unity began to crumble, as the Renaissance writings
of Meister Eckart, Nicholas of Cusa and Dante testify. By the time of
the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, both the political and
religious unity of the West was totally disrupted. Transparently, many
rulers with many religious creeds, trinitarian and otherwise, sprouted
everywhere to match the individualism and relativism which Protestantism
had wrought.
Kingship and the idea of descending
political power - that is, political power "descending" from
God to the king for the benefit of the people - finally expired with
the "republicanism" of the French Revolution. 1789 marks the
traditional date for the beginning of the complete and radical secularization
of the Western world. From this moment, "democracy" becomes
its political ideal and atheism its political consequence. God is forever
shut off from human affairs, dying a quiet death in the scientific madness
of the 19th century, with no one to grieve hum, as Nietzsche moaned.
Now the universe was in the hands of man and, as August Comte proclaimed,
he was its "god" and the love of humanity his religion.
II
In historical terms, the word
"secularism" refers to that Western cultural enterprise whose
end is to "liberate" mankind from the supernatural and the
transcendent. The creature becomes the ruler of the creation. He is
the caretaker of the only homeland, this world, he will ever know. It
is his city, his everlasting grad, and not, as St. Paul
wrote, to look forward to City which had foundations, whose builder
and maker is God" (Heb xi, 10). Everything man thinks or does have
no other purpose but happiness in this life, a happiness which he will
make for himself.
According to Jean Jacques Rousseau,
the state originated in this hope. Individuals came together for mutual
protection in a "social contract", a pact which would insure
the permanent benefit of its signatories. Thus, the state and all its
institutions (including religion) exist for the single purpose of achieving
the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Unlike the
Christian State or Commonwealth which has both the restraint of evil
and the promotion of its citizen's salvation as its raison d'être,
the secular state is completely indifferent to anything but their earthly
happiness. As Machiavelli said, the state exists for man and consequently
any price may be paid to achieve his goal - raison d'état 2).
The creed of the secular state
is formulated in The Declaration of the Rights of Man, that formidable
document of the French Revolution. No modern political announcement
more clearly severs Western civilization from its traditional supernatural
perceptions. The Russian philosopher, Alexei Khomiakov, condemned the
Declaration as a surrender of all things good and holy that the
West yet possessed. There is no hope for its salvation, he said, while
its destiny rests in the hands of supercilious social reformers, godless
ideologues and dreamy utopians. Western philosophers, however, were
boasting of a new beginning for a new humanity.
The motto of the City of Man
of come also derives from the French Revolution - "liberty, fraternity,
equality". The "liberty" or "freedom" about
which there and other revolutionaries rhapsodize is not passionless.
In fact, as the French philosopher, Helvetius maintained, the passions,
skillfully managed, are the fundamental force in the formation of human
character. If they are "evil", they are the "evil"
of our "dark side" or, in the words of Lord Byron, the source
of energy, boldness, strength and imagination. The "passions"
provide the drive for perfection. Therefore, liberty, in one sense,
is understood as the possibility of personal growth and, in another,
its means the legal or social condition for it. Law exists to remove
the obstacles that hamper man's earthly pursuits.
Of course, the single limitation
on liberty is that no one may deprive another of the same right. Liberty
for one is liberty for all. It is not the privilege of class, sex, race
or religion. Everyone must have the opportunity to forge his own destiny,
that is, no externally imposed standards of conduct, no moral absolutes,
no foreign ideals, no selfishness, may be imposed which favors one person
over another. The place of the state in the human experience is simply
to guarantee, as we have already mentioned, "equal rights"
to all, recognizing always that the first principle of life is amor
sui, amour de soi. In other words, the teaching of the Christian
Faith on "God, the flesh and the Devil" evaporated in the
face of the secular "higher consciousness".
Man suffers the same fate as
God: the life of the spirit vanishes from culture and history with Him.
The result of God's banishment is the reduction of the human race, as
Professor Erich Voeglin said, to "the fraternity of equal automata".
Liberty and equality for all, - the two are connected, for only equals
are free, - according to their modern definition, presupposes the unity
of all, a universal brotherhood. Men are brothers not because they possess
a common Father and Mother, God and the Church, but because they spring
from their earth, are subject to the same natural laws, suffer the same
fate.
When a secularist employs the
expression, "spiritual regeneration", he refers to an emotionally
adjusted, humanitarian, self-fulfilled individual. In order for him
to achieve this goal, society rears legislators and technicians, its
priest and prophet. They provide the atmosphere in which men and women
are permitted "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
In the first instance, this means "education", the inculcation
of secular knowledge - preparation for living in this world. Public
or secular education assumes that the individual is soulless and that
his training is primarily adjustment to a changing material environment.
That such a program will succeed,
that the entire secular enterprise will succeed, is assured by Progress
- modernity's substitute for Providence. Such optimism, says Professor
Tuveson, is belief in magic, the same kind connected with the secular
dream for utopia 3
Progress, is that combination of human intelligence and cosmic design
that insures that everlasting beatitude is man's destiny. To be sure,
there are temporary delays, disillusionment, suffering, but these are
a discipline, a purging, a preparation for the golden age to come.
In the very simplest terms,
we are living in a world hostile to the Christian Economy. Democracy
or the secular state - the agent of Progress - is a political situation
not congenial to Christ and His Church. In fact, democracy would not
exist without secularization. There is a certain irony in all this,
if the Marxists are right, because Progress will eventually eliminate
democracy and all forms of the state. Where there is complete moral
responsibility and total freedom, there will be no need for any political
institutions. The worker's paradise will have no need for them.
III
The historical evolution of
the Western political system from monarchy to democracy is also a process
of secularization. By that we mean not only that power was gradually
transferred from the ruler to the ruled, the electorate, but also that
God and Christian values has come to have less and less influence upon
Western life and though. Power no longer descends from God to His viceroy
for the salvation of the people and, of course, the state no longer
bears the image of Christ.
The modern political situation
is antithetical to that condition which prevailed under the Christian
Emperors - or, indeed, under kingship in general. St. Constantine initiated
the Christian Roman Empire, the societas christiana
in which two ministries, the imperium and sacerdotium,
the government and the priesthood, governed one people, a single body
politic. Hence, the double-headed eagle of Byzantium which was later
adopted by the Tsars, that is, when Moscow "the Third Rome"
succeeded Constantinople, "the Second Rome", on its fall to
the Turks in 1453 4
Christian Rome, Russian and
Byzantine, bore the image of the divine-human Christ. The relationship
between the Church and the Empire, after their mating compared to the
connection between the humanity and divinity in Christ as defined by
the Council of Chalcedon (451). They were united without loss of identity,
without loss of the truth that the Empire would eventually perish would
eventually perish but the Church would not. Likewise, the Emperor and
the priesthood ruled as a "symphony of powers", as the Emperor
Justinian wrote in his 6th Novel. They collaborated in the governing
of the Empire, albeit the Emperor did not meddle with doctrine and the
Priesthood did not directly interfere with his political decisions.
Christian romans believed they
dwelt in an Empire which should encompass the whole world because that
Empire was founded on a religion intended for all men. As a matter of
historical fact, the claims of the Empire depended upon the truth of
the Christian Faith. The lost of that Faith meant the loss of any claim
to the Empire. Thus, for example, the medieval Popes denied to the "Greek
Emperors" the title of "Roman" and the right to govern
because, as they said, "the Greeks" did not hold the True
Faith. In the same way, the Orthodox denied to "the Latins"
or "Franks", as Westerners were sometimes called, any share
in the Roman government, because they did not possess the Faith of Christ.
Clearly, since the purpose of the Empire was the salvation of its subjects,
not to have the true Faith implied the loss of the Christian monarchy.
The Christian Emperor was not
an ordinary ruler. He was vicarius Christi.
His coronation was a sacrament, for he was anointed, as was Saul, David
and Solomon, to protect and guide God's People. He was a "messiah",
the Saviour, the Spouse of the Bride, the Empire, His Body or, as Professor
Kantorwicz puts it, the Empire was his "mystical body", his
"second body" 5
Christian Roman Empire, the ruler had to be a man, even as Jesus of
Nazareth was a man. Never could a woman rule in her own name and to
my knowledge never did a woman legally succeeded to the throne. Only
after Peter the Great did a woman presume to rule in her own right.
You will understand in a moment how such a violation of tradition was
possible.
Furthermore, the Emperor was
viewed as more than a layman. His robes resembled the priests' vestments.
The Russian Tsars claimed to have received their regalia from the Byzantine
Emperor, Constantine Monomach in the 10th century. Also, the coronation
of the Basileus or Tsar and the pageantry surrounding it compared to
a liturgy. The Patriarch poured oil on his head, a sacramental oil,
which signified the king or emperor’s sacred and messianic character,
his leadership of God's People. He was the very personification of the
"lay priesthood" about which the Apostles spoke. His position
as God's "servant" involved the privilege of entering the
sanctuary during the Divine Liturgy to receive the Holy Communion in
his hand as was the privilege of the bishop and presbyter. Clearly,
then, his authority was not simply political or administrative but spiritual.
He was expected to be holy that he might lead his nation into holiness.
He was "the father of
his people" whose duties were more than the execution of justice,
the prosecution of war and resistance to evil. He was obliged to help
the widow and the orphan, to clothe and feed the poor and defend the
Faith. In other words, when he took his coronation oath, he also
obliged himself to philanthropia,
an imitation of divine Providence. On the other hand, the people were
expected to obey him as a child obeys his father. No Orthodox spoke
of his "rights" - he humbly performed his duties: to God,
to the Emperor, to the nation. From the king of emperor, the people
looked for encouragement in their common religion, not a tool in the
pursuit of "life and property", to borrow John Locke's celebrated
phrase.
Western historians and philosophers
have never understood the Orthodox World. Their writings seem always
to give a curious and sometimes cynical twist to the words and deeds
of Orthodox rulers. They have taken the religiously moving Testament
and Prayer of Vladimir Monomach, for example, or his pious letter to
Oleg, son of Svyatoslav to be politically motivated. Likewise,
when the Grand Duke, Vassily, arrested his emissary to the Council of
Florence for betraying Orthodoxy, historians find fanaticism or irrational
fear. Nothing else but lust for power can explain Ivan the Dread's crusade
against the Tartars and Moslems at Astrakha and Kazan. And later, the
beautiful hymn of Feodor Alexeievitch to the Virgin Mary is viewed as
superstition if not hypocrisy. And, of course, Western historians interpret
the Crimean War as a failure of Russian imperialism. They would never
concede that the actions of Nicholas I was a fulfillment of the Tsar’s
lofty calling.
Perhaps, it was Peter the Great
who gave the West reason to judge to Russian monarchy with the same
Machiavellian skepticism as they judged their own governments. Surely,
it is accurate to say that the decline of spirituality among the rulers
of Russia began with Peter. He initiated the process of "Westernization",
that is to say, the process of secularization which culminated in the
terrifying atheism of the Bolshevik Revolution. In order to give Russia
a new direction, it was necessary for Peter to change the very nature
of the monarchy itself. As Professor Cherniavsky tells us, Peter transformed
altered the "theology” of kingship. No longer did the Tsar resemble
the humanity of Christ, but he mirrored now the sexless Creator. As
it was in the West after the Protestant Reformation, a female might
now sit upon the Russian throne. In fact, the 18th century was dominated
by the two Catherines, Anne and Elizabeth, the opposition of the Church
notwithstanding. That they may have ruled well is not the point, Christian
society was not the same as we observe, for instance, in the conflict
between the classes.
In addition, the emperors and
empresses because less and less paternal and Russia less and less a
family. Power was not so much spiritual as it was legal. If administrator
were not Frenchmen of Germans, they were Russians who had lost their
faith. The autocracy of love and faith became the autocracy of force
and cunning. The Freemasons, Bible Societies and theosophists invaded
holy Russia. Her seminaries and academies spewed Western rationalism
and skepticism. The people were confused and discontented.
IV
The Orhtodox Chruch has lived
with monarchy from the day the Lord established her nearly two thousand
years ago. The first monarchy was Roman, sacred and pagan. Of course,
some have argued that the Church is "in the world and not of it"
and therefore, it makes little difference what the political structure
under which the Church lives; in fact, she ought to have no association
with the world whatsoever. God wished to refuse the Hebrew nation a
king and the Orthodox is the New Israel. Finally, it would seem that
"democracy" would suit Orthodoxy far better that any other
form of government, because it is secular. The Church is free to act
without the encumbrances of an imperial hierarchy.
First of all, it is important
for Orthodoxy to live under a form of government which is not hostile
to Her, even more one which would encourage Her spiritual and physical
growth. The world belongs to Her, as it belongs to Her God. She must,
therefore, associate Herself with it in order to sanctify it, to recover
it form the Devil. Thus, when the Lord commanded that all creatures
be converted and baptized in the Name of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit (Matt. xxviii, 18), we must assume that those nations would
have governments and that these to argue that the Church is "in
the world but not of it", because that nation converted to Christ
is no longer "of it", no longer "from it". Consequently,
if God hoped to deny the request of the ancient Israelites for a king,
it was because He did not wish His People to imitate their neighbors.
In any case, they had a government whose ruler was God Himself, directing
them with a Law from Above through His appointed Judges - Joshua, Samson,
etc.
And this leads us to the last
point in question. It is difficult for me to conceive an Orthodox democracy,
especially a modern democracy which is, as you know, pluralistic, individualistic
and secular 6
complies with the words of the Lord's Prayer, "Thy Kingdom come,
thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". If God is King
in heaven, he must like wise be King on earth. If all of heaven and
earth belong to the Lord, then, similarly the Lord's viceroy is governor
of the earth. This explains, in another way, why those not subject to
the Orthodox emperors were also heretical and pagan.
Let us say, then, that no Orthodox
worth his salt can live comfortably in a society where the Will of God
is not accomplished. How, for example, can we be reconciled to a society
in which self-interest is the first principle of all action and where
confusion, heresy and skepticism are described as good and creative?
How do we share in a government whose authority is human and sometimes
deliberately anti-Christian? One cannot imagine a democracy in which
the people humble themselves before the bishop. Worst of all, there
is no secular society in which Christ, as a cultural fact, is recognized
as God. Moreover, if the state must resemble Christ and the state is
secular, then, Christ must be viewed as totally human.
In any case, the modern world
does not allow for "sacred democracies" and the president
is not anointed with "the oil of gladness". Thus, it would
seem to me that an Orthodox is faced with the dilemma of living in a
society which is basically hostile and alien to him. Of course, we must
honor the president, obey just laws and do no harm to any man. Yet we
cannot allow ourselves to come an intrinsic part of secular society.
The early Christians were accused of being "anti-social" because
they would not become involved in the affairs of the pagan Roman Empire,
so we must understand that nothing exists to protect us, no Tsar. We
will be threatened even more with the appearance of the Anti-Christ.
He will be the product of secular society. He will, almost ironically,
establish a secular monarchy, an ecumenical or world kingship. In the
end, of course, he will be over-thrown by Christ whose kingdom will
have no end.
FOOTNOTES:
1. The Prophet
Daniel declared that 4 great Empires will rule on the earth: the Egyptian,
the Persian, the Greek and the Roman after which will come the End-time
and the Return of Christ. The Roman Empire was both pagan) inaugurated
by Augustus Caesar) and Christian (inaugurated by St. Constantine).
The Christian Roman Empire had two phases - the Byzantine and the Russian.
Nicholas II and his predecessors were successors to Constantine and
those Greek or Byzantine Emperors that followed him. The capital of
the pagan Empire was Rome, of Byzantium, Constantinople or New Rome
("2nd Rome") and the capital of Christian Russian was Moscow
or Third Rome. See S. F Platonov, textbook
of Russian History.
Vol. I Prague, 1924-25, p. 128 f; H. Schraeder, Moskau,
Das Dritte Rom, Darmstadt,
1957.
2. Machiavelli's
written during the Italian Renaissance, was among other things, and
attempts to define new criteria for the secular state. Kingship as a
vehicle of salvation was no longer acceptable. Machiavelli offered
- "by reason of state", "in the best interest of the
state".
3.
the Background of the idea of Progress.
New York, 1964, p. 201.
4. See W. Hammer.
"The Concept of the New of Second Rome in the Middle Ages",
(1944), 51-62; and R. L. Wolff, "The Three Romes: the Migration
of an Ideology and the Making of an Autocrat", Daedalus
5.
Political Theory. Princeton,
1957.
6. The so-called
neo-Christian Russian intelligentsia (Bulgakov, Berdyaey, Kariashev,
etc) hailed the fall of the Russian monarchy as the beginning of the
Church's freedom. The "end of the Constantinian age", they
said. Meant that the destiny of the Russian Church was now in the hands
of the Russian people. They mentally at least, tried to impose their
democratic and socialist principles on the Church Herself. The attempt
to unit their political views with the hierarchical system of Church
government naturally failed. The history of the post-revolutionary Russian Church,
in part, has been a conflict between neo-Christian laicism and traditional
episcopal authority. The intelligentsia and their followers always placed
their "creativity" before any allegiance to the Church and
obedience to their bishops. See the interesting discussion in Michel
d'Herbigny et A. Beubner, "Eveques Russes En Exile", Orientalia
Christiana XXI, 67 (1931), 256-271.
Fr. Michael
Azkoul.
This essay, for the first time,
was delivered to the attention of Russian Youth Congress, held in Toronto,
Ont., August 1979, by its author Fr. Michael Azkoul.
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