Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/263

Rh one-sidedly coercive. But the most momentous schism in the church was the secession of Byzantium, which thereby became Asiatic; the state subdued the church, the church retired into itself, lapsed into spiritual death, and was therefore conquered by Islam; the east was and is the true home of Christianity, which, however, has remained an inward Christianity, and has failed to animate life and civilisation. The extant autocephalic Orthodox churches have, even more than the Byzantine mother church, become the prey of little states. Solov'ev points to the hostile attitude of the patriarchate of Constantinople towards the Bulgarian church, and shows how the churches of the Balkans are dominated by a petty nationalist spirit.

Protestantism, in its justified protest against Rome, was too one-sided in its advocacy of the critical activity of the understanding.

Whereas the functions of high priest, king (Solov'ev is speaking in Russian terminology of the tsar), and prophet were harmoniously united in the person of Christ, these three religious functions were one-sidedly developed in the three churches. The papacy represented the one-sided development of high priesthood; Orthodoxy, the one-sided development of kingship; Protestautism, the one-sided development of prophethood. To express the matter in a different way, in the person of Christ there existed a harmonious unification and unity of Father (high priest), Son (king), and Holy Spirit (prophet). The aim of the church must be to effect the social realisation of this trinity in unity, but the three Christian churches have carried out the task in a non-organic and one-sided manner.

Russia received church and civilisation from Byzantium, and for this reason in Russia, too, church and civilisation are one-sided. Situated geographically between the Asiatics (Mohammedans) and the Latins, Russia maintained her freedom, developed her political organism, and separated herself wholly from the west. But in Russia the church was weakened even more than in Byzantium. Solev'ev gives an account of ecclesiastical evolution in Russia wherein the patriarch Nikon, in contradistinction to customary views, is represented as antichrist. The persecution of the raskolniki and of the sectaries is described as an unchristian use of violence; Peter's reforms are considered to be nothing more than an outward and mechanical linking-up with the west, nothing more than a first step; Peter