The Beginnings of Old Believer Thought. -V. Senatov
The development of church theology in ancient Russia still awaits its historian. Despite the extensive research devoted to contemporary events in church and civil history, the evolution of Christian legal and moral concepts within our own land remains poorly studied. The flourishing of Christianity in Russia long before St. Vladimir is clearly attested by Blessed Jerome and some of the earliest Arab writers. Besides the well-known accounts of the preaching of St. Andrew the First-Called, there is evidence that under pagan emperors, the bishops of Jerusalem had ties with southern Russia and preached here. It is reliably known that Constantine the Great and John Chrysostom took an active part in the planting of the Christian faith on Russian soil, among the “Rosses.”
Christianity made its way into Russia by three principal routes: through the Caucasus and the Black Sea from Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; through Constantinople from Greece; and from the west via Italy. The strength and significance of these influences are difficult to judge now, but it is certain that each had its own distinctive coloring. After the Greek influence, the strongest was the eastern, that is, Syrian-Palestinian. Among the legends found in the oldest Slavonic manuscripts, there are many that do not appear in the earliest Greek sources—these are translations from Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic. This eastern influence was probably older than the Greek-Byzantine. During the era of iconoclasm, Christians in southern Russia maintained relations not with iconoclastic Byzantium, but with Iberia (Georgia) and, via Asia Minor, with Palestine. Despite the unusualness of this route for that era, it seems it had long been familiar and well known. It is possible that the southern Russian Christians recalled their earliest connections with the primitive Christian lands—connections which had been forgotten in the 7th and 8th centuries. Apostolic preaching undoubtedly reached the North Caucasus and from there, naturally, could have spread further to the Don.
With the time of St. Vladimir, Christianity did not begin in our land, but rather, its most ancient period had already ended in Rus’. This was marked by the adoption from Byzantium of liturgical rites and the church-canonical structure of life. This ritual, purely external and state arrangement of the church was not the soil or the fundamental spreading of the faith itself and of universal Christian concepts. For centuries before this, the faith had already been active and developing here, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, cultivating in people refined Christian moral concepts. In accepting from the Greeks the external and state structure of the already long-existing church, the Russians did not adopt from them any of the Christian moral concepts relating to personal and social life. These concepts had been known to our ancestors even before the official triumph of Christianity in Russia; in this respect, our forebears were thoroughly independent of the Greeks—even stood above them: Greeks, in the eyes of Russians, were always seen as cunning people. Such a view could not have arisen if, in the time of Vladimir, Russians stood below the Greeks in moral and genuinely religious terms.
In Russia, as at the apex of a cone, converged the threads of many local Christian churches. From Byzantium came liturgical practice and church-canonical order. Bypassing Byzantium, through the Caucasus mountains, came religious thought from the more ancient churches of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria—a thought rich in Eastern creativity and deep critical spirit.
Despite the continual unity of the Byzantine and Alexandrian churches, there was a profound human difference between them. From its very founding, from the time of Constantine the Great, Byzantium distinguished itself from all other churches by its external ecclesiastical construction, the creation of liturgical order, and so forth. Emperors honored patriarchs with splendid sakkos vestments; Justinian built the church of Hagia Sophia. All other religious creativity of Byzantines, of the entire people, followed in the same direction. By contrast, in Alexandria, the principal concern was church teaching, the elevation of the human spirit in evangelical truth, and the construction of all human relations—social and civil—on this truth. The traces of this are clearly visible in the works of the writers of the Alexandrian church from Origen to Cyril, that is, over two centuries. Instead of the temporary and local church building projects that captivated the Byzantines, the Alexandrians sought to solve universal, global, and eternal questions—concerning the all-encompassing power of Christianity, sanctifying all aspects of human activity, transforming the very essence of human life, and restructuring law and the state on new principles, not on conditional and arbitrary ones as with Roman law and government, and as with all law and governments up to now, but on eternal human principles. Universal Christian thought found its fullest and deepest expression in Alexandria, more so than anywhere else. For many centuries, the Alexandrian fathers and writers were true universal teachers, examples even for such great fathers as Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom. The Alexandrians did not succeed in bringing their great designs for the reordering of the whole world to fruition: they were equally hindered by Rome, with its conditional law and striving for hierarchical infallibility, and Byzantium, with its external and incidental church construction. Yet the very posing of these questions and the very existence of these intentions must be credited as a great merit to the Alexandrian church.
Traces of ancient Alexandrian thought are evident in Russian consciousness from the time of Vladimir. In our Slavonic tales, the moral aspect is always foremost, and the same is true in our commentaries on Holy Scripture; to this day, in books of interpretation, the sections most beloved by Russians are those labeled “vozvodnoye,” that is, the moral explanation of a purely historical event. Alongside the official development of church life and the consolidation of state hierarchy, there was always another religious life flowing within the people themselves—a moral elevation of the human person, the subjection of all things to the judgment of God, and the transformation of state and ecclesiastical authority into a moral duty. Our elites, in their ecclesiastical and governmental construction, wished to imitate the Greeks with all their liturgical and social rituals, right down to the episcopal sakkos and the royal gates. The people did not resist this upper current, but neither did they regard it as the very essence of religious life; they looked deeper and instinctively, and consciously, strove toward universal and all-encompassing moral goals and ideals. It is possible that this striving is an inheritance from ancient Alexandria, which reached us bypassing Byzantium and even before the official adoption of Christianity.
Let us point to just two tales that clearly express the all-human aspiration of the Russians.
In the Menaion of St. Macarius is found the following tale. St. Pamva (an Egyptian ascetic who lived in the famous Nitrian desert in the fourth century, commemorated on July 18th) had a disciple. The disciple once asked for permission to go to Alexandria to sell some handicrafts. He spent a whole week in the city and, when he returned, St. Pamva questioned him about what he had seen in great Alexandria, what he had heard and done. The disciple recounted how he had seen the patriarch and received his blessing, how he had spent seven days and nights in the porch of the cathedral of St. Mark the Apostle, enjoying the marvelous singing of the stikhira and canons and the solemn patriarchal services. Bitterly, the disciple complained that in their desert they had no leather-bound books, heard no chanting of stikhira and canons, and saw no episcopal services. The holy ascetic replied: “Wait, all this will come to us as well: there will be leather-bound books, the desert will resound with loud singing and wonderful episcopal services. Bishops will settle in the deserts and ride about on splendid white horses, surrounded by hosts of priests and singers. And then a great abomination will strike the whole land: bishops will become lovers of silver, greedy, gluttonous, deceitful, cunning, cruel, bloodthirsty, and man-hating.” “How then can one be saved?” asked the disciple. “Let each, in saving, save his own soul,” answered St. Pamva.
In the book “The Passion of Christ,” in its first printed edition at the end of the seventeenth century, a true rarity, there is the following account, omitted from all later editions. At the descent of our Lord Jesus Christ into Hades, an innumerable multitude of high priests, kings, princes, hierarchs, grandees, boyars, military leaders, priests, and all sorts of church and civil ranks gathered at the gates of hell. At the preaching of John the Baptist, all this nobility pressed from the near and far dungeons of hell to the very gates and arranged themselves according to their rank, hoping to greet Christ on behalf of all common humanity, expecting that He would deliver them before all other people. Upon hearing of the Savior’s coming, the powers of hell gave way, and among the countless millions a remarkable commotion arose. For Christ’s arrival, people themselves established some order: the first places were taken by the high priests and kings, and so on, while the common folk were left to jostle in disorder at the back. Entering Hades, the Lord cast a stern and sorrowful gaze upon the countless ranks of high priests, kings, and all the great ones—former rulers of earth and shepherds of souls who had deceitfully governed with the word of God. All fell prostrate, and as the fearful, trembling ranks parted, the Lord silently passed into the further chambers of Hades. There were gathered all the humble and destitute of the earth, those wounded by life, embittered murderers, hungry robbers, fornicators, harlots, and so on. “Your sins are forgiven you,” said the Lord to them, “you have greatly suffered on earth because of the rulers and authorities, you did not keep My commandments and did not know love among yourselves. Come, follow Me.” And Christ led them all out of hell, passing by the countless ranks of high priests, kings, and grandees, paying no heed to them. And they all cried out to the Lord, beseeching Him: “Did not we, Lord, serve Thee? Was it not in Thy name that we ruled on earth? Did we not teach Thy law to the people subject to us? And as for those whom Thou takest with Thee—what good did they ever do Thee? Were they not a disgrace to us and to Thee on earth?” “I know,” the Lord replied to them, “you knew My commandments and strove to break them. From you the earth groaned, soaked in human blood and covered in crimes. My heart turns away from you. Depart from Me!”
Let these tales be factually untrue, but undoubtedly the voice of ancient days and profound, universal human thought resounds in them. The same idea is instilled in both; only the outward design differs. Both serve as the foundation upon which church and civil laws should be established—not random and temporary, but universal and eternal.
True church development, true church life, is not expressed wholly in the external, physical realm, perceivable and observable by the senses; it is the domain of the inner transformation of the human being, not of outward service to God, but of inward likeness to Him. Theological thought is lofty, knowledge of Holy Scripture is precious, but of itself, without inner renewal, all this is nothing more than a leather-bound book, which will be consumed and decay, which one may constantly hold in one’s hands and know entirely by heart, and yet be deeply hateful to God, a blood-drinker and a man-hater. Beautiful and moving is the singing of stikhira and canons, but this is only outward artistic beauty and may not be accompanied by inner elevation. Great is the episcopal and royal ministry, but in the episcopal office one can be a servant of Satan, the murderer of men, and not of Christ, Who is love; and with the royal scepter in hand, it is easy to become a fomenter of disturbances, disorder, and cruel crimes. Knowledge of Holy Scripture, the outward beauty of Christian worship, and the very episcopal authority may not be expressions of true church life; they may lose their original significance and become merely visible varnish on a tomb with a rotting corpse inside.
From the time of St. Vladimir, when state authority became Christian, it firmly and unswervingly followed Greek church models. Churches were built, monasteries established at the courts of princes and boyars, church art and architecture, icon painting, chanting, and splendid processions with crosses were introduced; bishops, headed by the metropolitan, were brought into the highest governmental circles and acquired a defined and very lofty state standing. In short, in our land everything that existed in Byzantium was repeated according to a ready-made plan—repeated on a smaller scale and with less artistic finish in detail. Alongside this purely external church construction, both artistic and legal, another movement developed more vitally and powerfully. Mercy and Christian love, rather than external law, were placed first in all human relations. Not lordship, but a sense of one’s own unworthiness before God and men was regarded as the highest dignity of a person. Lacking external education and being mostly illiterate, our people were nonetheless astonishingly mature in moral thought, alive in spirit, and possessed a truly poetic fervor, with which vast numbers of Russians, sparing no effort and even at risk to life, strove for all that was best and holiest in the broadest sense of these words.
Not pride or self-consciousness of one’s worth, but the awareness of one’s unworthiness did the Russian place as the foundation of the moral personality. From this awareness, he derived the whole circle of his political and social rights, as well as the entire sphere of lofty moral demands and concepts. A vivid illustration of this is the testament of Vladimir Monomakh to his children: “Receive with love the blessing of spiritual men… Have no pride either in mind or in heart, and think: we are but dust, alive today, tomorrow in the grave… On the road, on horseback, if you have no task, instead of idle thoughts recite prayers by heart, or repeat at least a short but better prayer: ‘Lord, have mercy.’ Never fall asleep without a prostration; and if you feel unwell, make three prostrations to the ground. Let not the sun find you in bed. Go early to church to offer up the morning praise to God; so did my father, so did all good people. When the sun shone upon them, they glorified the Lord with joy.” In these words is reflected a profound philosophical worldview. Even with a princely crown upon his head, a man must first and foremost consider his own nothingness; his affairs of state he must, as with beads, intersperse with words of prayer; he must begin and end the day with gratitude to the Lord. Political and social rights, all of daily human life, here are colored by deep faith, in its pure and perfect form, without any scholastic or logically-dogmatic forms. Theologically subtle and logically difficult concepts of two wills, of the meaning of hypostasis, and the like—upon which Byzantium’s religious life was built and sustained—perhaps never even entered into Russian religious consciousness; at any rate, the whole circle of Byzantine dogmatic thinking, though remaining a cherished ancestral tradition, had no vital practical significance on Russian soil. Faithful thought found here for itself an entirely new and, from a universal human point of view, a more important and interesting path.
A. S. Khomyakov, for all his respect for Byzantium, justly reproached it for retaining pagan elements, though under Christian names. It divided man into two: into the Christian ascetic, indifferent to all external life, and the suffering Christian, submitting to the random laws of the state. Civil law remained independent of faith. The emperors, in defiance of Christianity, called themselves divine (divus) and styled themselves “our eternity” (perenuitas nostra). Laws concerning marriage, slaves, property, and the like retained the indelible imprint of pagan indifference to the principles of morality. The Church, recognizing itself as perfect, neither extended nor sought to extend itself to the eternally imperfect structure of society, allowing it to claim the ambiguous right to call itself Christian based on the confession of its members; nor did it nurture in the Christian soul a moral aspiration for harmony between his civic and human duties; it inspired no hope for a better future, nor reminded him of the great truth that the external form must sooner or later become the expression of the inner content, and that law must ultimately rest not on conditional and arbitrary, but on eternal and human foundations.
In contrast to this Byzantine reality, and the dominance of pagan principles within it, in ancient Russian society, at the very root of the national consciousness, lay a profound moral principle—essentially Christian and human. The citizen was absorbed into the Christian, and the Christian moral principle became the foundation of law and authority. The proud mind of the Greco-Roman easily and quickly adopted the view of Christ as the source of all power and state authority. In substance, Christianity itself, in its pure apostolic form, gained nothing by this; there was only a substitution of the name Jupiter-Zeus for the name Christ the God-Man—more precisely, the pagan Jupiter-Zeus assumed the name of Christ. Just as previously to Jupiter-Zeus, so now to Christ did men look as the dispenser of royal scepters and high-priestly staffs. The suffering Christ, healing the sick, sharing meals with public sinners, forgiving robbers, making His first disciples out of those considered the dregs of society—in short, Christ living and always abiding among people, and especially among the humiliated and insulted—did not find faith in Himself, either in Western Europe or in Orthodox Byzantium. The Russian person, however, first of all believed in the suffering Christ, the Helper of all who were wronged, overlooked, poor, and unfortunate. Vladimir Monomakh did not think that his princely power originated from Christ and rested upon Him; he believed that at every important affair, one must sincerely and humbly say, “Lord, have mercy,” that one must begin and end the day with a prostration before God, and that every human title is perishable and insignificant. The son of Monomakh, Grand Prince Mstislav, as the Prologue states, “did not take silver or gold into his hands, for he did not love riches.” These views and examples were not unique; they fill all the oldest Russian chronicles and all the accounts of saints composed on Russian soil and widespread among Russians. These views formed the soil in which Russian religious thought was born and grew. The chronicler Nestor wrote of monasteries: “Many monasteries are founded by kings and nobles and from wealth, but they are not like those founded with tears, fasting, prayers, and vigils.” Power and wealth cannot be means for the flourishing of faith; for that, there is only one means—personal and communal consciousness in the Christian spirit.
With these Russian views, law in its very foundation acquires an entirely new meaning, a different sense and content, and all social relations are changed at their very root. These views are utterly incompatible with the organization of society on Roman-Byzantine and modern principles, and sharply underline the pagan character of many ideas still considered fundamental to Christianity. Above all, they are incompatible with the notion of Christ as the source or founder of all earthly, and also ecclesiastical, authority. Dominion, especially in the name of Christ, slavery, and the division of people into classes, are utterly rejected and shown as anti-Christian principles. The church community can only be self-governing, fostering the freedom of each individual member. Pastorship does not lead to any outwardly honored position, but can only be the expression of inner Christian humility and of inward Christian love. Yet, none of these principles was destined to develop openly and acquire state significance. Byzantine principles—essentially pagan, though merely cloaked in Christ’s name—gained decisive dominance and entered into the very flesh and blood of state and externally ecclesiastical construction.
Not having gained predominance above, the truly Christian principles built for themselves a very strong and extensive nest below, among the very heart of the people. Gradually, the people remained alone, as if without rulers and representatives, and continued to be nourished solely by moral principles—by concepts of Christian love and humility. In Russian tales, little space is devoted to the triumphant Christ, building kingdoms and thrones, to the church victorious and adorned with gold and silver, to hierarchs crowning kings and appearing in all the splendor of earthly greatness. But there are very many tales of another sort: about Christ as a poor boy leading the blind and collecting alms with them from the poorest and most miserable people; about a church in a humble cave, with extraordinarily poor furnishings and impoverished worshipers, among whom is found a shiningly holy but unknown holy fool; about hierarchs and bishops traveling with a simple staff, in worn clothes, and in the company of the most ordinary people. St. Nicholas takes the sword from the executioner and saves the unjustly condemned. St. Sergius feeds the bear, serves in a threadbare robe with a wooden chalice, and is vouchsafed a miraculous visitation from the God-bearer. In all these tales, deeply human principles shine forth brightly, and there is no aristocracy, no hints at rights and privileges in the usual sense of those words, no sign of one ruling over another.
Under the influence of such moral forces, the simple Russian people developed a special understanding of law in general, and of church law in particular—an understanding that has nothing in common with Greco-Roman ideas, and testifies to a new, deeply human culture, a new sense and content of faith, a new social order and way of life.
For centuries, Christian-human concepts among the people did not diverge from Byzantine notions above, in the ruling classes. Among the higher ranks there constantly appeared individuals ablaze with living popular faith and hopes. Their inner holiness and purity reconciled the people to the purely Byzantine position which, reluctantly and by necessity, they held. This reconciliation was incidental and forced. The closer time drew to Nikon and Peter I, the more clearly this reconciliation of two fundamentally different principles began to be disturbed, and in the time of Nikon it was finally shattered.
The essence of Old Belief is to be sought not in ritual, nor in the replacement of one rite with another, but in the very meaning of the faith of the people, on the one hand, and the Byzantine-state position of the hierarchy, on the other. In this sense, Old Belief is the lawful heir of the most ancient Alexandrian Church, and is called to renew and further develop the Christian and universal human thought of that Church.
V. Senatov
“Church,” 1909, No. 1