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 the "City which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb. xi, 10). Everything man thinks or does has no toerh 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 ensure 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'etre, the secular state is completely indifferent to anything but their earthly happiness. As Machieavelli said, the state exists for man and consequently any price may be paid to achieve his goal - raison d'etat (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 humanity.
The motto of the City of Man to come also derives from the French Revolution - "liberty, fraternity, equality." The "liberty" or "freedom" about which these 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, it 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, amor de soi. In other words, the teaching of the Christian Faith on "God, the flesh and the Devil" evaporates 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 emplys 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). Utopia, of course, is a heaven-surrogate. Progress, is that combination of human intelligence and cosmic design that ensures 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. When 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 have come to have less and less influence upon Western life and thought. 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 christiania in which two ministries, the imperium and the 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 Tzars, 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 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 Preisthood 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 loss 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 vicarious Christi. His cornation 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 Spoiuse of the Bride, the Empire, His Body or, as Professor Kantorwicz puts it, the Empire was his "mystical body," his "second body" (5). Incidentally, as the head of the 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 succeed 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 Tzars, claimed to have received their regalia from the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Monomach in the 10th century. Also, the coronation of the Basileus or Tzar 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, 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 por 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 or emperor, the people looked for encouragement in their common religion, not a tool in the pursuit of "life, liberty 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 Astrakhan 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 Tzar's lofty calling.
Perhaps it was Peter the Great who gave the West reason to judge the 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 and altered the "theology" of kingship. No longer did the Tzar 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 became less and less paternal and Russia less and less a family. Power was not so much spiritual as it was legal. If administrators were not Frenchmen or 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.
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Footnotes:
2. Machiavelli's The Prince, written during the Italian Renaissance, was among other things, an attempt to define a new criteria for the secular state. Kingship as a vehicle of salvation was no longer acceptable. Machiavelli offered raison d'etat - "by reason of state," "in the best interest of the state."
3. Millenium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress. New York, 1964, p. 201.
4. See W. Hammer. "The Concept of the New or Second Rome in the Middle Ages." Speculum XIX (1944), 51-62: and R. L. Wolff, "The Three Romes: the Migration of an Ideology and the Making of an Autocrat," Daedalus LXXXVIII (1959), 291-311.
5. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theory. Princeton, 1957.
--Sacred Monarchy and the Modern Secular State, Fr. Michael Azkoul
Posted by Clifton at December 6, 2004 06:30 AM | TrackBack