Download PDF | Vladimir Soloviev - The Russian Church and the Papacy, An Abridgment of Russia and the universal church, San Diego 2001.
206 Pages
foreword
Between the thought and concerns of Pope John Paul II and the eminent Russian philosopher and theologian, Vladimir Soloviev, there are a number of significant parallels. When the Holy Fa- ther commends the writings of Soloviev and speaks of him as a prophetic figure, he is pointing us to a man who is a kindred spirit of his. In 1995 John Paul II issued his landmark apostolic letter, Orien- tale Lumen, to help Catholics better understand the vast rich her- itage of the separated Eastern Churches. Never before in Christian history has a leader of one tradition written so appreciatively, so incisively, about the heritage of another tradition as has the Holy Father. Never before, that is, with the exception of Vladimir Soloviev's Russia and the Universal Church, of which the present volume is an abridgment.
Though John Paul's description of the Eastern ethos is more detailed, it is not more warmly and accurately done than is Soloviev's description of the Catholic Church and especially of the office of Peter. For centuries, Roman pontiffs have reached out to the sepa- rated Eastern Churches, urging them in most irenic terms to re- turn to communion with Rome. No pontiff has so extended him- self, none has written and spoken so eloquently, as John Paul II. Unfortunately, to this consistent papal outreach there has never been a corresponding positive response from the hierarchies of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Never, that is, until Vladimir Soloviev (acting on his own authority, of course) exhorted the separated Eastern Churches warmly to grasp the outstretched hand of Rome in restored com- munion. The basic theme of his book is that the Eastern Churches can never become truly themselves, truly Catholic, until they are reconciled with Rome.
Magisterial statements aimed at the separated Eastern Churches have always insisted that the Eastern traditions must be preserved. "Unity in legitimate diversity"¹ has been the hallmark of the Church's appeal for reconciliation with the Orthodox Churches. Yet prelates and theologians of those Churches seem never to have taken the Catholic Church's reassurance at face value. Never, that is, until Vladimir Soloviev responded wholeheart- edly. In Rome's outreach, said Soloviev, "we are not asked to change our nature as Easterns or to repudiate the specific charac- ter of our religious genius." Again, "We merely have to restore to our religion its catholic or universal character by recognizing our oneness with the active part of the Christian world [by which term he designates the Catholic Church], with the West central- ized and organized for a universal activity and possessing all that we lack." To accomplish this, "there is no need to invent or create anything new." In accord with the agenda for the Jubilee Year, on March 12, 2000, John Paul II spoke on behalf of the Catholic Church, asking pardon of God and of all other persons who have suffered at the hands of the sons and daughters of the Church.
Never before had a pontiff, or any other prominent religious leader, issued such a far-reaching statement of repentance on behalf of his own tradi- tion. Never before, that is, with the exception of Vladimir Soloviev's mea culpa spoken (again, on his own authority) on behalf of the Russian and other Orthodox Churches. A recent commentator speaks of Soloviev as "a prophet of ecclesial repentance."3 Read- ers of this book will be impressed and enlightened by the solemn manner in which Soloviev calls the roll of sins and shortcomings of the separated Eastern traditions. In 1992 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with approval of John Paul II, issued Communionis Notio (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion). Section 17 emphasized the Church's teaching that communion with Peter's successor is "not an external complement to the particular church, but one of its in- ternal constituents. ." Therefore, the existence of the separated Eastern Churches ("those venerable Christian communities") is "wounded" by their separation. Soloviev's book confirms this di- agnosis. Every major fault he discerns in the life of the Orthodox Churches he traces back to their separation from Rome.
In recent years it has become customary to speak of the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches as "sister Churches." John Paul II approved a clarification of this term in a Note on the Expression "Sister Churches" issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2000). According to section 11, the term may be used properly only when referring to particular Churches. "It must always be clear... that the one, holy, Catholic, and apos- tolic universal Church is not sister but mother of all the particular Churches." Soloviev would have understood and agreed with this distinc- tion. In line with the precision stated in this Note, he never refers to "our two Churches." The phrase "the universal Church," which he used often, always refers to the Roman Catholic Church. Practically alone among Eastern Orthodox writers, Soloviev saw the true relation of the separated Eastern Churches to the Catholic Church. Orientale Lumen teaches that the tradition of the Eastern Churches "is an integral part of the heritage of Christ's Church ." (1). Soloviev said essentially the same.
We Orthodox Chris- tians, he wrote, must "recognize ourselves for what we are in real- ity, an organic part of the great body of Christendom....."There is in Soloviev no hint of the claim made by Eastern Orthodox apologists, that the Orthodox Churches as a whole constitute the one true Church. Consider one final indication of the spiritual kinship between John Paul II and Vladimir Soloviev. When Christ founded his Church on Peter the rock, says Soloviev, he established "the unique institution of universal fatherhood in the Church...." He thereby entrusted "the universal Church" to Peter "as the one supreme representative of the divine fatherhood to the whole family of the sons of man."Therefore, he insists, "Love for the Church has no real meaning except for those who recognize per- petually in the Church a living representative and a common fa- ther of all the faithful, capable of being loved as a father is loved in his family...." This universal fatherhood about which Soloviev writes so elo- quently: has any other pontiff so fully exemplified this fatherhood as has John Paul II? -Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, O.P. Archbishop of Vienna
Preface
From the East he came, appearing suddenly, nearly a century af- ter his death, in Church documents of the highest authority. For many Westerners, Vladimir Soloviev made his debut in Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), the 1998 encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II. There his name emerges in a sweeping genealogy of the great Christian philosophers, from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to Newman and St. Edith Stein. Two years later, the same Pope would praise Soloviev as one of the modern era's great "witnesses of the faith and illustrious Christian thinkers" and call his work "prophetic." Who was that man, and how did he elude popular notice for so long? Vladimir Sergeyevich Soloviev (1853-1900) was hardly un- known in his own time and place. Recognized during his life- time as the leading light in a brilliant constellation of Russian thinkers, he developed his thought not only in scholarly publi- cations, but in popular journalism and even in fiction.
He was a close friend of the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky and perhaps his greatest influence. As a philosopher, Soloviev was fearless. He ranged in dark val- leys where other Christians feared to venture. He actively engaged the works of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche-not to mention the ancient Gnostics and the various schools of Buddhism. He did this not to concoct a senfi-Christian syncretism, but to demon- strate that the Holy Spirit is active throughout the history of hu- man thought, guiding its development, in spite of humanity's sin and moral and intellectual blindness. Soloviev's early work was marked by an almost effervescent optimism, which flowed from a mystical experience he had had in his youth. It was a vision of "Sophia" the wisdom of God, the eternal object of God's love, and love perfected in life-giving splendor.
Thus enlightened, he was able to see the kernels of truth in all systems of thought and to extract those good things in order to restore them from God. He accomplished this restoration in his own systematic work, which was an architectonic marvel. Hans Urs von Balthasar praised Soloviev for his "skill in the technique of integrating all partial truths in one vision" and ranked him sec- ond only to Thomas Aquinas as "the greatest artist of order and organization in the history of thought."¹ The great obstacle to divine-human progress, he believed, was the fragmentation of the Church. Though he was baptized, raised, and reached his maturity in the Russian Orthodox church, Solo- viev eventually concluded that truth reached its fullness neither in the ossified tradition of Byzantine Orthodoxy nor in the un- bridled prophetic character of Protestantism, but in the unity that is accomplished only under the authority of St. Peter: the papacy.
In a stunning confession of faith, he wrote: As a member of the true and venerable Eastern or Greco-Russian Orthodox church, which speaks neither through an anti-canonical synod nor through the employees of the secular power, but through the utterance of her great Fathers and Doctors, I recognize as supreme judge in matters of religion him who has been recog- nized as such by St. Irenacus, St. Dionysius the Great, St. Athana- sius the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril, St. Flavian, the Blessed Theodoret, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Theodore of the Studium, St. Ignatius, and on and on namely, the apostle Peter, who lives in his successors and who has not heard our Lord's words'in vain: "You, are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18); "Strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:32); "Feed my sheep, feed my lambs" (cf. John 21:15, 16, 17). Soloviev's vision was expansive, ecumenical, universalist- "catholic" is the most appropriate term. If it was overwhelm- ingly optimistic in his early work, it was not naïve. He invoked history to show how world powers had formerly acted, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to advance the gospel. Again, the Spirit accomplished this work in spite of the sin and blindness of emperors from Constantine to Charlemagne. Nor was Soloviev uncritical in his devotion to the papacy. He held the office, and particular popes, to high standards, and was unsparing in his judg ment of their failures to act as humble servants.
He held a great hope that Russia-reunited to the Catholic Church-would emerge as the next temporal instrument of di- vine Providence and establish a "free and universal theocracy," where humanity could live in the freedom of the children of God. Within this vision, he advanced some radical notions for his time. He promoted religious liberty, for example, and he opposed the death penalty. In later works, Soloviev tempered his early optimism with the biblical realism of Revelation. The coming century, he believed, was to witness the advance of the Antichrist. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that Soloviev had turned pessimist. For he believed that the encroaching darkness would, in spite of itself, serve God's purposes. In a dark time, the dispersed elements of light would appear in stunning chiaroscuro.
The advance of the Antichrist would be the precondition of the reunion of Chris- tianity's dispersed members Protestant and Orthodox-under papal authority. Soloviev, like Thomas Aquinas, died young, not yet fifty years of age. His last days are shrouded in controversy. Ten years after his death, a Russian priest wrote that he had heard the philoso- pher's last confession and given him Communion. As a Catholic, Soloviev certainly had the right to resort to an Orthodox priest for the last rites if no Catholic priest were available. Yet the priest also claimed to recount some of the details of the dying man's confession, including the recantation of Soloviev's allegiance to the pope. Friends of Soloviev expressed doubts, and others were rightly hesitant to accept as trustworthy the witness of a priest who would violate the seal of the confessional. For Soloviev, Catholi-cism represented more than just a decision at the end of his life; it was the thrust of his work for two decades of his life. In any event, whether or not he voluntarily returned to the Orthodox church is irrelevant to a consideration of his views.
This was the judgment of Pope John Paul II, and it is the judg- ment of an increasing number of eminent Catholics who recog- nize Soloviev (in the words of one biographer) as the Russian Newman. In the reemergence of this great Russian voice, I believe we can see the working of the Holy Spirit, the blessed "progress" Soloviev himself foresaw. -
Scott Hahn
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