Russian Philosopher
Saw the
Difference
Between True and False Christianity
V. V. Zenkovsky
Mikhail
Speranski (1772 - 1839), partial view of a painting by Alexander Varnek
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A 2017 Editorial Note:
The following
article is reproduced from
“A History of Russian
Philosophy”, by V. V.
Zenkovsky, a
two-volume edition, Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd.,
London, 1953, vol. I, pp. 111-115.
In the 19th
century, theosophist Helena Blavatsky
wrote that
Russia was the only country where the
pure ideal of
Christ was still preserved. HPB also said
that the Western
Church is the deadliest enemy of the
Ethics of Christ
(see Collected Writings, vol. XII, p.
268).
A living,
unbureaucratic view of Christian Mysticism
has been
influential from the beginning in the History
of Russia. It is
present in the ideas of I.V. Lopukhin
(author of the
book “The Inner Church”), and the writings
of Alexei
Khomiakov, M.M. Speranski, Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Leo Tolstoy, N.
Berdyaev and N.O. Lossky, among others.
(Carlos Cardoso
Aveline)
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The mysticism of Mikhail
M. Speranski (1772 - 1839), an outstanding political figure under Alexander I,
exhibits different characteristics [from
those of Aleksander F. Labzin].
His career was marked by strikingly abrupt changes. He
came from the people, but began very early to manifest exceptional talents at school.
Upon graduation from the Theological Seminary in St. Petersburg (later renamed
“Academy”), Speranski, who had worked very hard in school, went into government
service rather than scholarly work, and as a young man became closely
associated with Alexander I, as a kind of “prime minister”. In 1812, because of
slander, he was relieved of his positions and exiled to a remote province. He
gradually rehabilitated himself, eventually returning to government work; under
Nicholas I he carried out the immense and extremely important work of codifying
the laws.
The philosophic education which Speranski received at
the St. Petersburg Theological Academy did not provide him with a finished
world-view. His mind, which inclined to mathematics and abstract theory, was at
its best in juridical thought, to which he owed his extraordinary career, a
career which took him from a lowly rank to the highest rung on the ladder of
government service. However, his spontaneous religiosity was not suppressed. As
in many other outstanding Russians of his time, religious needs were very
strong in Speranski; but he was not much attracted by the concrete life of the
Church, and ecclesiastical doctrine seemed dry to him. He felt that it did not
express the full profundity of Christian moralism.
“The inward path is very different”, he wrote in a
letter, “from the outward path taken by many Christian What I call the outward
path is a moral religion from which
secular theologians have crowded out the Divine teaching; what I call the
outward path is a mutilated Christianity, overlaid
with all the colours of the sensuous world [i.e. secularized!], and
consenting in a policy of indulgence toward the flesh and the passions…, a weak,
deviating, compromising Christianity
which differs only verbally from pagan moral doctrine”.
These harsh words, which we will meet later in Herzen,
for example, and to which many Russian radicals would willingly have
subscribed, were written by Speranski even before he turned wholeheartedly to
mysticism, and are thus the more interesting. Speranski’s renunciation of the
Church’s conception of Christianity was motived - as was the case with many of
his contemporaries - by his search for a “pure” Christianity (not “deviating”
or “compromising”), i.e. an “inner” Christianity. In 1804, the year in which
the above-quoted letter was written, Speranski became friendly with a mystic
whom we have already met, I V. Lopukhin, author of The Inner Church and other
books (see the preceding chapter), who undertook to direct Speranski’s mystical
self-education.
From Boehme, Saint-Martin, and other occult mystics,
Speranski turned to Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and the Church Fathers. He gradually
developed a new mystical word-view, critical of the “common sense” which blocks
one’s feeling for the “mystery of life”. In a letter to his daughter, he even
praised “daydreaming” for tearing us away from the “calculations of life”. [1] “We all live in a kind of madness”,
he wrote in another letter to his daughter, “for we are wholly immersed in the
passing moment, heedless of eternity”. [2]
This longing for eternity does not entail a break with earthly life, but only
with the superficial perception of life. To his friend Tseier he wrote: “The
Kingdom of God is within us, but we ourselves
are not; thus it is necessary for us to return within”. Speranski went very
far in distinguishing the “true” and “false” conceptions of Christianity. Here
is a characteristic passage, full of sharp and bitter accusations against the
Church.
“The Anti-Christ has transformed his host; he has
given them the outward aspects of Christian warriors, and assured his warriors that they are really
warriors of Christ… He has invited an ideal of Christ for them…; to inward
fasting he has opposed outward fasting, to spiritual prayer of many words, to
resignation of spirit humiliation of the flesh. In a word, he has created a complete system of false Christianity.” [3]
This accusation of contemporary Church Christianity
exhibits an interesting characteristic of the secular religious thought of the
time, which considered itself the bearer of “genuine” Christianity: it was
ready to repeat with Speranski the ancient charges of the Old Believers, to
view the Church as a product of the Anti-Christ! We shall find this theme more
than once in Russian religio-philosophic searching - for example, in Leo
Tolstoy.
In criticizing the church as a “system of false
Christianity”, Speranski did not reject the mysteries of the Church; here his
consciousness was divided, and because of this, certain scholars tend to
conclude that his critique of the Church applied only to its perversions, not
to its essence. [4] But this whole
period, especially in Russia, moved under the sign of a kind of universal and supra-ecclesiastical Christianity. In this respect, Speranski was
in complete harmony with his time. But it should not be thought that Speranski
was concerned only with “inner” Christianity. He put forward, for the first
time in Russian (secular) religious thought, the idea of a Christianization of social life, later called “social Christianity”.
The tendencies of French religious thought which inclined toward social
Christianity appeared later, so that Speranski was entirely original on this
point.
This aspect of his theories is interesting because it
proved so very stable in Russian thought. Speranski’s most important statements
on this subject are to be found in his letters to Tseier.
“Those men”, Speranski wrote, “who assert that the spirit of the Kingdom of
God is incompatible with the principles of political societies are mistaken”.
And further: “I do not know a single question of state which cannot be referred
to the New Testament.” [5]
Speranski forgets here the sharp distinction in the
New Testament itself between that which is God’s and that which is Caesar’s.
This is not naiveté, of course, nor an accidental mistake. In defending the
idea of the transfiguration of political life “in the spirit of the Kingdom of
God”, Speranski essentially brought Russian (secular) thought back to a utopia
with which we are already familiar, the utopia of the “sacred Kingdom”.
The dream of “Moscow - the third Rome” included the
expectation of an “eternal” and hence righteous kingdom. From this conviction
an autocratic ideology arose, permeated with the faith that the antinomy of God
and Caesar is resolved in the Anointed Tsar. But the ecclesiastical inspiration
of this dream had already slackened in the eighteenth century. At the end of
the century - in Karamzin and others - there was a renaissance in secular
historiosophy of the idea of “sanctity” of state power. Karamzin developed this
into a complete conservative programme, set forth in his Notes on the Old and
New Russia. [6]
The contradictions and disagreements of this first historiosophical
attempt to defend the idea of the “sanctity” of power are shown in great detail
in Pypin’s book. More “harmonious” theories appeared later in Russian
historiosophy. But in Speranski we find another variant of this renascent
historiosophical utopia. He too tends to regard sovereign power as something
sacred, [7] but this is not a
programme of “social quietism”, nor a recognition of the state as sacred quand même (as in Karamzin); rather it
is a search for methods of transfiguring
the state. We should not forget the mystical expectations which were associated
with the “Holy Alliance” - and not by Alexander I alone. It has been justly
pointed out that “under Alexander the state once more felt itself holy and
sacred”.[8]
Speranski’s mysticism was more subtle and profound
than that of Labzin; but both of them, in different ways, cleared the way for secular religious thought. In this
spiritual movement there was much that was connected with the age itself - an age
full of mystical excitement - but there was also something symptomatic of the
inner spiritual dialectic of Russia.
There was a profound ferment in the Church itself and
around it; many high members of the hierarchy (for example, the well-known
Filaret, Metropolitan of Moscow) and various circles of secular society were
stirred by religious searchings, either in the spirit of “universal”, i.e.
supra-ecclesiastical, Christianity or the idea of “inner Church”. It is not
surprising that a hostile attitude soon developed in the ecclesiastical consciousness
toward this whole “modern” movement. There was sharp reaction, which later
became very strong and aggressive. This was the beginning of the division
between “progressive” and “reactionary” tendencies - so fateful for the whole
life of Russia - which continued throughout the nineteenth century.
NOTES:
[1] Pisma k docheri
[Letters to My Daughter] (1869 ed.), p.130.
[2] Ibid, pp.
236f.
[3] Note entitled “The Anti-Christ” in the collection V pamyat gr. M. M. Speranskovo [In
Memory of Count M. M. Speranski], St. Petersburg, 1872.
[4] See Bishop Theophanes’ very favourable opinion of
Speranski, for example, p. 7, of the book Pisma
o dukhovnoi zhizni [Letters on the Spiritual Life].
[5] Rus. Arkhiv,
1870.
[6] Zapiski o
drevnei i novoi Rossi Pypin aptly characterizes Karamzin’s views as a “system
of social quietism”, Obshchestvennoye
dvizheniye pri Aleksandre I [The
Movement of Society under Alexander I], 2nd ed, 1885, p. 205.
[7] Letter to Tseier, Rus.
Arkhiv, 1870, p. 188.
[8] Florovsky, op.
cit, p. 133. The mystical expectations connected with Mme. Krudener’s
influence on Alexander I are very interesting for the characterization of this
period. Cf. also Kotelnikov’s sect.
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In September 2016, after
a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students
decided to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
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