Sermon on the Birthday of Christ:
"Christ is born, glorify Him! Christ from heaven, go out to meet Him. Christ on earth; be exalted. Sing unto the Lord all the whole earth; and that I may join both in one word, Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him Who is. of heaven and then of earth. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope. Christ of a Virgin; O you Matrons live as Virgins, that you may be Mothers of Christ. Who does not worship Him That is from the beginning? Who does, not glorify Him That is the Last?"
Again the darkness is past; again Light is made; again Egypt is punished with darkness; again Israel is enlightened by a pillar. The people that sat in the darkness of ignorance, let it see the Great Light of full knowledge. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. The letter gives way, the Spirit comes to the front. The shadows flee away, the Truth comes in upon them. The laws of nature are upset; the world above must be filled. Christ commands it, let us not set ourselves against Him. O clap your hands together all you people, because unto us a Child is born, and a Son given unto us, Whose government is upon His shoulder (for with the Cross it is raised up), and His name is called The Angel of the Great Counsel of the Father. Prepare the way of the Lord: I too will cry the power of this day. He Who is not carnal is Incarnate; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. Let the Jews be offended, let the Greeks deride; let heretics talk till their tongues ache. Then shall they believe, when they see Him ascending up into heaven; and if not then, yet when they see Him coming out of heaven and sitting as Judge.
Of these on a future occasion; for the present the Festival is the Theophany or Birthday, for it is called both, two titles being given to the one thing. For God was manifested to man by birth. On the one hand Being, and eternally Being, of the Eternal Being, above cause and word, for there was not word before The Word; and on the other hand for our sakes also Becoming, that He Who gives us our being might also give us our Well-being, or rather might restore us by His Incarnation, when we had by wickedness fallen from well-being. The name Theophany is given to it in reference to the Manifestation, and that of Birthday in respect of His Birth.
Celebrating the birthday of Christ
This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God -that putting off the old man, we might put on the New; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For where sin abounded grace did much more abound; and if a taste condemned us, how much more does the Passion of Christ justify us? Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him Who is ours, or rather as our Master's; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of re-creation.
And how shall this be? Let us not adorn our porches; nor arrange dances, nor decorate the streets; let us not feast the eye, not enchant the ear with music, nor enervate the nostrils with perfume, not prostitute the taste, nor indulge the touch, those roads that are so prone to evil and entrances for sin; let us not be effeminate in clothing soft and flowing, whose beauty consists in its uselessness, nor with the glittering of gems or the sheen of gold or the tricks of colour, belying the beauty of nature, and invented to do despite unto the image of God. Not in rioting and drunkenness, with which are mingled, I know well, chambering and wantonness, since the lessons which evil teachers give are evil. Let us not appraise the bouquet of wines, the kickshaws of cooks, the great expense of unguents; and let us not strive to outdo each other in temperance, and this while others are hungry and in want, who are made of the same clay and in the same manner.
Let us leave all these to the Greeks and to the pomp and festivals of the Greeks. But we, the object of whose adoration is the Word, if we must in some way have luxury, let us seek it in word, and in the Divine Law, and in histories; especially such as are the origin of this Feast; that our luxury may be akin to and not far remove from Him Who has called us together. Or do you desire (for today I am your entertainer) that I should set before you, my good guests, the story of these things as abundantly and as nobly as I can, that you may know how a foreigner can feed the natives of the land, and a rustic the people of the town, and one who cares not for luxury those who delight in it, and one who is poor and homeless those who are eminent for wealth?
We will begin from this point; and let me ask of you who delight in such matters to cleanse your mind and your ears and your thoughts, since our discourse is to be of God and Divine; that when you depart, you may fade not away. And this same discourse shall be at once both very full and very concise, that you may neither be displeased at its deficiencies, nor find it unpleasant through wearisomeness.
The Divine nature of God
God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always is. For was and will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being.
And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature', only adumbrated by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily . . . not by His Essentials, but by His Environment; one image being gotten from one source and another from another, and combined into some sort of presentation of the truth, which escapes us before we have caught it, and takes to flight before we have conceived it, blazing forth upon our Master-part, even when that is cleansed, as the lighting flash which will not stay its course, does upon our sight . . . in order as I conceive by that part of it which we can comprehend to draw us to itself (for that which is altogether incomprehensible is outside the bounds of hope, an not within the compass of endeavour), and by that part of it which we cannot comprehend to move our wonder, to, become more an object of desire, and being desired to purify, and by purifying to make us like God.
The Divine Nature then is boundless and hard to understand; and all that we can comprehend of Him is His boundlessness; even though one may conceive that because He is of a simple nature He is therefore either wholly incomprehensible, or perfectly comprehensible. And when drawing a conclusion from the whole it calls Him Eternal. For Eternity is neither time nor part of time; for it cannot be measured. But what time, measured by the course of the sun, is to us, that Eternity is to the Everlasting, namely, a sort of time-like movement and interval co-existence with their existence. This, however, is all I must not say about God; as my present subject is of the Incarnation. But when I say God, I mean Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This then is the Holy of Holies, which is hidden even from the Seraphim, and is glorified with a thrice repeated Holy, meeting in one ascription of the Title Lord and God.
When His first creation was in good order, He conceives a second world, material and visible; and this a system and compound of earth and sky, and all that is in the midst of them an admirable creation indeed, when we look at the fair form of every part, but yet more worthy of admiration when we consider the harmony and the unison of the whole, and how each part fits in with every other, in fair order, and all with the whole, tending to the perfect completion of the world as a Unit. This was to show that He could call into being, not only a Nature akin to Himself, but also one altogether alien to Himself. For akin to Deity are those natures which are intellectual, and only to be comprehended by mind. Perhaps some one who is too festive and impetuous may say, What has all this to do with us? Talk to us about the Festival [the Birth of Christ], and the reasons for our being here today. Yes, this is what I am about to do, although I have begun at a somewhat previous point, being compelled to do so by love, and by the needs of my argument.
The fashioning of man
Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from each other, had remained within their own boundaries, and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator-Word, silent praisers and thrilling heralds of His mighty work. Not yet were the whole riches of Goodness made known. Now the Creator-Word, determine to exhibit this, and to produce a single living being out of both - the visible and the invisible creations, I mean - fashions Man; and taking a body from already existing matter, and placing in it a breath taken from Himself which - the Word knew to be an intelligent soul and the Image of God, as a sort of second world. He placed him, great in littleness on the earth; a new Angel, mingled worship- per, fully initiated into the visible creation, but only partially into the intellectual; king of all upon the earth, but subject to the King above; earthly and heavenly; temporal and yet immortal; visible and yet intellectual; half-way between greatness and lowliness; in one person combining spirit and flesh; spirit, because of the favour bestowed on him; flesh, because of the height to which he had been raised; one that he might continue to live and praise his Benefactor, the other that he might suffer, and by suffering be put in remembrance, and corrected if he became proud of his greatness. For to this, I think, tends that Light of Truth which we here possess but in measure, that we should both see and experience the Splendour of God, which is worthy of Him Who made us. and wilt remake us again after a loftier fashion.
This being (man) He placed in Paradise, having honoured him with the gift of free will (in order that God might belong to him as the result of choice); naked in his simplicity. Also He gave him a law, as a material for his Free Will to act upon. This Law was a commandment as to what plants he might partake of, and which one he might not touch. This latter was the Tree of Knowledge. But when the Devil's malice and the woman's caprice, to which she succumbed as the more tender, brought to bear on the man, he forgot the commandment which had been given him, he yielded; and for his sin he was banished, at once from the Tree of Life, and from Paradise. Yet here too he makes a gain, namely death, and the cutting off of sin, in order that evil may not be immortal. Thus punishment is changed into a mercy; for it is in mercy, I am persuaded, that God inflicts punishment.
And having been first chastened by many reasons (because his sins were many), by word, by law, by prophets, by benefits, by threats, by plagues, by waters, by fires, by wars, by victories, by defeats, by signs in heaven and signs in the air and in the earth and in the sea, by unexpected changes of men, of cities, of nations, at last he needed a stronger remedy, for his diseases were growing worse; mutual slaughters, adulteries, perjuries, unnatural crimes, and that first and last of all evils, idolatry and the transfer of Worship from the Creator to the creatures. As these required a greater aid, also they obtain a greater.
The Word Himself
And that was that the Word of God Himself - Who is before all worlds, the Invisible, the Beginning, the Light of Light, the Source of Life and Immortality, the Image of the Archetypal Beauty, the immoveable Seal, the unchangeable Image, the Father's Definition and Word, came to His own Image, and took on Him flesh for the sake of our flesh, and mingled Himself with an intelligent soul for my soul's sake, purifying like by like; and in all points except sin was made man. Conceived by the Virgin, who first in body and soul was purified by the Holy Spirit (for it was needful both that childbearing should be honoured, and that virginity should receive a higher honour, He (Christ) came forth then as God with that which He had assumed, One Person in two Natures, Flesh and Spirit, of which the latter defied the former.
O new commingling; O strange conjunction; the Self Existent comes into being, the Uncreated is created, that which cannot be contained is contained, by the intervention of an intellectual soul, mediating between the Deity and the corporeity of the flesh. And He Who give riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead. He that is in full empties Himself, for He empties Himself of His glory for a short while, that I may have a share in His fullness. What is the riches of His Goodness? What is this mystery that is around me? I had a share in the image; I did not keep it; He partakes of my flesh that He may both save the image and make the flesh immortal. This is more godlike than the former action, this is loftier in the eyes of all men of understanding.
To this what have those cavillers to say, those bitter reasoners about the Godhead, those detractors of all that is praiseworthy, those darkeners of light, uncultured in respect of wisdom, for whom Christ died in vain, those unthankful creatures, the work of the Evil One? Do you turn this benefit into a reproach to God? Will you deem Him little on this account, that He humbled Himself for you; because the God Shepherd, He who lays down His life for His sheep, came to seek for that which had strayed upon the mountains and the hills, on which you was then sacrificing, and found the wanderer; and having found it, took it upon His shoulders on which He also took the Wood of the Cross; and having taken it, brought it back to the higher life; and having carried it back, numbered it among those who have never strayed. Because He lighted a candle - His own Flesh - and swept the house, cleansing the world from sin. And He calls together His Angel friends on the findings of the coin, and makes them sharers in His joy, whom He had made to share also the secret of the Incarnation?
He (Christ) was sent, but as man, for He was of a twofold Nature; for He was wearied, and hungered, and was thirsty, and was in an agony, and shed tears, according to the nature of a corporeal being. And if the expression be also used of Him as God, the meaning is that the Father's good pleasure is to be considered a Mission, for to this He refers all that concerns Himself; both that He may honour the Eternal Principle, and because He will not be taken to be an antagonistic God. And whereas it is written both that He was betrayed, and also that He gave Himself up and that He was raised up by the Father, and taken up into heaven; and on the other hand, that He raised Himself and went up. Are you then to be allowed to dwell upon all that humiliates Him, while passing over all that exalts Him, and to count on your side the fact that He suffered, but to leave out of the account the fact that it was of His own will? See what even now the Word has to suffer. By one set He is honoured as God, but is confused with the Father, by another He is dishonoured as mere flesh and severed from the Godhead. With which of them will He be most angry, or rather, which shall He forgive, those who injuriously confound Him or those who divide Him? For the former ought to have distinguished, and the latter to have united Him; the one in number, the other in Godhead. Do you disbelieve in His Godhead? This did not even the demons, O you who are less believing than demons and more stupid than Jews.
A little later on you will see Jesus submitting to be purified in the River Jordan for my Purification, or rather, sanctifying the waters by His Purification (for indeed His had no need of purification Who takes away the sin of the world) and the heavens cleft asunder, and witness borne to him by the Spirit that is of one nature with Him; you shall see Him tempted and conquering and served by Angels, and healing every sickness and every disease, and giving life to the dead (O that He would give life to you who are dead because of your heresy), and driving out demons, sometimes Himself, sometimes by his disciples; and feeding vast multitudes with a few loaves; and walking dryshod upon seas; and being betrayed and crucified, and crucifying with Himself my sin; offered as a Lamb, and offering as a Priest; as a Man buried in the grave, and as God rising again; and then ascending, and to come again in His own glory. Why what a multitude of high festivals there are in each of the mysteries of the Christ; all of which have one completion, namely, my perfection and return to the first condition of Adam.
Christ's Conception
Now then I pray you accept His Conception, and leap before Him; if not like John from the womb, yet like David, because of the resting of the Ark. Revere the enrolment of account of which you were written in heaven, and adore the Birth by which you were loosed from the chains of your birth, and honour little Bethlehem, which has led you back to Paradise; and worship the manger through which you, being without sense, was fed by the Word . . . If you are one of those who are as yet unclean and uneatable and unfit for sacrifice, and of the gentile portion, run with the Star, and bear your Gifts with the Magi, gold and frankincense and myrrh, as to a King, and to God, and to One Who is dead for you. With Shepherds glorify Him; with Angels join in chorus; with Archangels sing hymns. Let this Festival be common to the powers in heaven and to the powers upon earth. For I am persuaded that the Heavenly Hosts join in our exultation and keep high Festival with us today . . . because they love men, and they love God ... just like those whom David introduces after the Passion ascending with Christ and coming to meet Him, and bidding one another to lift up the gates.
One thing connected with the Birth of Christ I would have you hate ... the murder of the infants by Herod. Or rather you must venerate this too, the Sacrifice of the same age as Christ, slain before the Offering of the New Victim. If He flees into Egypt, joyfully become a companion of His exile. It is a grand thing to share the exile of the persecuted Christ. If He tarry long in Egypt, call Him out of Egypt by a reverent worship of Him there. Travel without fault through every stage and faculty of the Life of Christ. Be purified; be circumcised; strip off the veil which has covered you from your birth.
After this teach in the Temple, and drive out the sacrilegious traders. Submit to be stoned if need be, for well I want you shall be hidden from those who cast the stones; you shall escape even through the midst of them, like God. If you be scourged, ask for what they leave out. Taste gall for the taste's sake; drink vinegar; accept blows, be crowned with thorns, that is, with the hardness of the godly life; put on the purple robe, take the reed in hand, and receive mock worship from those who mock at the truth; lastly, be crucified with Him, and share His Death and Burial gladly, that you may rise with Him, and be glorified with Him and reign with Him. Look at and be looked at by the Great God, Who in Trinity is worshipped and glorified, and Whom we declare to be now set forth as clearly before you as the chains of our flesh allow, in Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom be the glory for ever. Amen.
IV
The Orthodox church 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 Orthdoxy far better than 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 from 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 governments themselves must also become Christian. It is useless 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). IN the first place, no democracy 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 accompkished. How, for example, can we be reconciled toa 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 seemt o 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 become 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 expect the same reproach. Furthermore, we must understand that nothing exists to protect us, no Tzar. 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 overthrown by Christ whose kingdom will have no end.
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Footnotes:
6. The so-called neo-Christian Russian intelligentsia (Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Kartashev, 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 unite 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.
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This essay, for the first time, was delivered to the attention of the Russian Youth Congress, held in Toronto, Ont., August 1979, by it's author Fr. Michael Azkoul.
--Sacred Monarchy and the Modern Secular State, Fr. Michael Azkoul
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