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I<\/span>n the wonderful world of social media, one recurring meme comes from an old Spiderman cartoon, where two<\/em> Spidermen each point at the other accusing him of being the real<\/em> doppelganger. This meme can also serve as a helpful reference point for understanding eighteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy, as brilliantly detailed in Andrey V. Ivanov\u2019s recent book, A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of the Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia<\/em><\/a>.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n Each Spiderman gets a label. One is \u201cphilo-Protestant reformers\u201d and the other \u201ctheir philo-Catholic critics.\u201d Each accused the other of being the real<\/em> Westernizer or heretic, each claiming to be the true defender of traditional Orthodoxy. I can only summarize it herein, but what makes the story so fascinating is that each were at the same time both right and wrong.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]his monograph,\u201d writes Ivanov, \u201cseeks to challenge the common notion that the Orthodox Church and Western Christianity are mutually exclusionary.\u201d Furthermore, he states, \u201cThe central argument of this book is that Russia\u2019s modernizing church reform was a wide-ranging adaptation of first, the concepts developed during the European Reformation, and later, the ideas of the religious Enlightenment.\u201d Ivanov adopts the terms \u201cphilo-Catholic\u201d and \u201cphilo-Protestant\u201d to indicate the particular current of Western influence preferred by the various camps throughout this \u201clong eighteenth century\u201d (1700-1825).<\/p>\n The philo-Catholic party was the product of seventeenth-century polemics against Protestant influence in Orthodoxy, the anti-Jesuit patriarch Cyril Loukaris of Constantinople in particular. These resulted in the Confession<\/em> of Peter Mohyla of Kiev<\/a> and the Confession<\/em> of Dositheus of Jerusalem<\/a>, a product of the 1672 Jerusalem Council<\/a> and specifically written as a polemical response to Loukaris\u2019s own Calvinist Confession<\/em><\/a>. For the most part, both simply reproduce Roman Catholic responses to Protestant doctrines on justification, the Eucharist, and so on. Mohyla\u2019s, in particular, was patterned after the Tridentine Catechism<\/em><\/a> and needed to be revised in order to remove some more overtly Roman Catholic teachings, such as purgatory, before every Orthodox patriarchate accepted it as a catechetical standard. At the start of the eighteenth century, Stefan Iavorskii, locum tenens of the patriarchal see in Moscow, embodied the philo-Catholic perspective.<\/p>\n Tsar Peter (\u201cthe Great\u201d) brought Iavorskii to Moscow from Kiev. Having witnessed at ten years-old the Moscow uprising of 1682<\/a>, in which rioters murdered boyars, military personnel, and members of the royal family, Peter determined to refashion Russia into a kingdom of law and order, following Western examples. At first, however, he had no specific agenda for the Church, other than \u201cgaining the revenue in tax appropriations from the patriarchate\u2019s serf-tilled estates\u201d and \u201cstaffing of vacant church positions with better-educated men. And the best-educated clergymen,\u201d Ivanov continues, \u201cwere all in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n These educated Ukrainian hierarchs, in turn, by-and-large received their better educations in Jesuit universities in the West, commonly converting to Uniatism only to convert back immediately after finishing their studies (\u201cexpedient dissimulation\u201d)\u2014a practice Rome apparently knew about and tolerated. Unfortunately for Peter, his early efforts to reform the Church thus backfired: \u201cInfluenced by Roman Catholic notions, these men invited by the tsar to Moscow increasingly used the language of the Catholic Reformation to define the new relationship of the church to Russia\u2019s state and society,\u201d in particular the \u201ctwo swords\u201d doctrine of the Church\u2019s spiritual and temporal authority, used to criticize the tsar. Having discovered \u201cbetter educated\u201d didn\u2019t get him what he wanted, \u201cPeter requested the governor of Kiev, Dmitrii M. Golitsyn, to look for reform-minded and loyal clergymen in the city. After some time the governor replied, \u2018In all of Kiev, I found only one man, the prefect of the school of the Brethren Monastery, who is favorable towards us.\u2019 That prefect was none other than Feofan Prokopovich.\u201d<\/p>\n Fr. Georges Florovsky described Prokopovich as \u201ca dreadful person\u201d in his Ways of Russian Theology<\/em><\/a>. Ivanov casts Prokopovich in a more sympathetic light, but hardly a glowing one. While studying in Rome, Prokopovich became disillusioned by Roman ecclesiastical intrigue, lax piety, and religious scams. After an elderly Jesuit priest granted Feofan access to a library of banned and unredacted books, Feofan became enamored with the works he read there, including \u201cMartin Luther\u2019s Babylonian Captivity of the Church<\/em>,\u201d reading which heightened his anxiety, compelling him to flee in 1701. This so scandalized the Roman Curia that in 1735, citing the case of Prokopovich, \u201cthe congregation moved to end the toleration of temporary conversion for Orthodox students.\u201d<\/p>\n Prokopovich stopped over in German lands on his way back to Kiev and brought philo-Protestant theology with him, mostly Lutheran though ultimately \u201ceclectic.\u201d Yet Prokopovich \u201cwas also \u2026 not a Protestant, professing strictly Orthodox views on the rejection of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed and the incorruptibility of the relics found in the Kievan Caves Monastery.\u201d The same could be said for philo-Catholics\u2014they were not Roman Catholics. The latter could have remained Uniates, after all, and Prokopovich could have stayed in Germany. Rather, Ivanov notes, \u201cProtestant theology shaped most of Feofan\u2019s doctrinal worldview, but he embraced those positions because he believed them to be truly and originally Orthodox and \u2026 cognitively effective weapons in cleansing the church from the \u2018Papist\u2019 influence of the prior century.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as Mohyla and Dositheus used Roman Catholic theology to combat Calvinist influence on Orthodoxy, Prokopovich found Lutheranism useful in combating Roman Catholic influence. Both camps Westernized in order to fight Westernization. While Ivanov more or less confirms Florovsky\u2019s assessment of Prokopovich regarding his bad faith arguments and his \u201cpurge\u201d of his opponents from the hierarchy after 1730, Ivanov again complicates the picture. Despite Prokopovich\u2019s clearly polemical accusations that his opponents were \u201cPapist,\u201d some of them actually plotted, with the help of the Spanish, for ecclesiastical union between Moscow and Rome, and they supported reinstating the Moscow patriarchate, which Prokopovich\u2019s reforms had successfully replaced with the Holy Synod, specifically for that purpose.<\/p>\n Though a clear aberration, Fr. Alexander Schmemann noted<\/a>, \u201cCanonically the synod was recognized by the Eastern patriarchs.\u201d Moreover, according to Ivanov, \u201cFeofan did not seek to rewrite the liturgical cycle \u2026 his reforms pursued very few liturgical changes.\u201d Nevertheless, the reforms radically altered the Church\u2019s official theology. Prokopovich authored<\/a> a \u201cnew catechism after Martin Luther\u2019s similar work\u201d (the Small Catechism<\/em><\/a>) to replace Mohyla\u2019s, complete with a Lutheran-inspired doctrine of forensic justification. The Holy Synod model followed later Lutheran ideas of Johann Franz Buddeus, Johann Gerhard, and others on the relationship between Church and state, emulating Sweden in particular. This, Ivanov notes, actually elevated the Church compared to now-Emperor Peter\u2019s preference that it be an \u201cEcclesiastical College\u201d subordinate to the Senate. Instead, Prokopovich succeeded in making it equal to the Senate, directly under the authority of the tsar and his \u201cchief procurator.\u201d<\/p>\n Feofan\u2019s reforms did not stop at ecclesiology and Church-state relations, however. He also promoted the proliferation of theological schools throughout Russia. Despite Western-influenced curricula, these schools ultimately meant Russian educational independence. Russia\u2019s best and brightest no longer needed to be educated in Western schools, though some still chose to do so. Schmemann saw the positive, long-term significance of this development. \u201cEven though it came through the West,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201c\u2026 the great forgotten tradition of thought, that of disinterested search for truth and ascetic service to it, were revived again in Orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n Feofan\u2019s reforms also extended to monasticism. The negative impact of these reforms cannot be denied. As Ivanov notes, \u201cthe number of monasteries in Russia declined from 1,153 in 1700 to 285 in 1764\u2026.\u201d Furthermore, Prokopovich recast the monastic vocation in utilitarian terms, and monasteries thus required a new, socially-beneficial (as if they weren\u2019t already) reconfiguration: \u201cWhile the number of monks and nuns declined, the institutional incomes (often derived from ownership of large lands and many serfs) did not, allowing the Synod to fill the vacant cells in the monasteries with non-monastics.\u201d This included serving as retirement homes for military personnel and their widows; hospitals; prisons for use by the secret police; \u201csupply bases for the army\u201d; and trades schools.<\/p>\n While incredibly disruptive and negative, monasteries did need reform, specifically with regard to the ownership of serfs. Decades after Prokopovich, the cruelty of monks toward the peasantry came to a head. \u201cTorture and abuses were common,\u201d details Ivanov, \u201csuch monasteries as Novospasskii and Savvin-Storozhevskii Monastery would beat and torture their peasants to extract bribes and forced labor. With the permission of their protopriest, the priests of Murom Cathedral also beat their peasants routinely, demanded hefty bribes for permission to marry, and even raped peasant women for weeks at a time\u2026. Peasants (and the village priests who supported them) sent protests to Moscow or St. Petersburg that were ignored or resulted in the arrest and torture of the plaintiffs.\u201d The result: \u201cWith no legal recourse for their grievances, peasants picked up their pitchforks.\u201d These revolts received a violent answer: \u201cOnly cannon fire, grenades, and the capture of Mirzin along with the sustained rape and pillage of the villages ended the revolt in 1757.\u201d Feofan\u2019s reforms did not address this problem, but reform came at the advent of the Enlightenment in Russia.<\/p>\n While expediency, rather than principle, was the primary motivation, this monastic reform left fertile ground for Russian Orthodox appropriation of Enlightenment ideals. Church peasants were \u201cpermanently freed \u2026 from ecclesiastical control\u201d by the February Manifesto of 1764 of Empress Catherine (\u201cthe Great\u201d). \u201cIn terms of acreage, the church appeared to have lost a lot,\u201d notes Ivanov, \u201cabout 8,557,688 desiatin of land (roughly the size of Indiana) with some 1,069,711 male serfs.\u201d Instead of inefficiently (and forcefully) needing to extract taxes and labor from serfs, the Church now received state funding.<\/p>\n Most importantly, \u201cPeasants, not the state, appeared to be the biggest winners in this reform.\u201d As a result, Church hierarchs, inspired by Enlightenment works well-read in their seminaries, became advocates of the abolition of serfdom and defenders of peasants against the nobility: \u201cthe church emerged as a long-term moral winner in this reform\u2026. [T]he pragmatic decision also appeared as enlightened and the idea of order was intertwined with virtue\u2026. [I]n the long term, it allowed the church to become more concerned about the improvement of village life and to develop even bolder views on agrarian servitude.\u201d Bishops spread literacy and schools among the peasants and supported the vernacularization of the Bible and religious education. They opened clinics for basic medical care. Platon Levshin, metropolitan of Moscow from 1775-1812, attained a \u201creputation as a \u2018liberal monk,\u2019\u201d because he \u201ccompared their treatment to \u2018murder\u2019 and maintained that peasants ought to have the right to sue oppressive landowners in court.\u201d<\/p>\n The emancipation of ecclesiastical serfs itself enabled the advance of Enlightenment principles in Russia: \u201cFreed from the cares of tax-collecting and from the terrors of the rebellious peasantry, many Russian bishops pursued the life of the mind.\u201d They eagerly read Lutheran and Calvinist theology, Pietist spirituality, Anglican commentary on canon law, many moderate Enlightenment authors, and even some Roman Catholics. \u201cUnlike Feofan Prokopovich,\u201d writes Ivanov, \u201cwho viewed Protestant thought as a means to purify Orthodox dogma from its Catholic influences, eighteenth-century bishops began to view theology as a science that could tolerate or accept varying views, innovation, and change.\u201d This more ecumenical mindset converged in their preaching of rationalistic Enlightenment morals and Pietistic mysticism. Extending the shorthand adopted by Ivanov, we could refer to this new generation of Enlightenment-inspired philo-Protestant hierarchs as \u201cphilo-Pietist.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Levshin, his \u201cmost seminal contribution to Orthodox theology \u2026 was his catechism.\u201d Ivanov notes\u2014including an extensive side-by-side comparison in his appendix\u2014that Platon\u2019s catechism<\/a> bears undeniable theological and structural influence from the Calvinist Westminster Larger Catechism<\/em><\/a>, \u201cinclud[ing] such topics as the attributes of God, the questions of ecclesiology, the \u2018offices\u2019 of Christ, and even sacramental definitions. Platon also shared the Calvinist doctrine of Providence\u2026.\u201d Whether or not Platon\u2019s catechism would violate the standard of Dositheus\u2019s anti-Calvinist Confession<\/em> would be an interesting research question. On a cursory reading, it seems that Platon tended to \u201crationalize\u201d traditional Orthodox teaching and practices that would scandalize Protestants, like \u201cprayers for the dead,\u201d whereas Loukaris passed over them in silence.<\/p>\n In any case, the influence of the Enlightenment, while \u201ceclectic,\u201d reached widely, including \u201cnorthern German Neology, Newtonian Physicotheology, and British Latitudinarianism,\u201d as well as \u201cJean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, and Montesquieu.\u201d But the Orthodox did not read these uncritically: \u201cAt the same time, they unanimously condemned Deism (found in those very books).\u201d Nor did the influence stop at theology, as already noted regarding serfdom. In politics, Platon and others openly supported a constitution.<\/p>\n The last phase of Western influence during this period came via the Awakening and as a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism. \u201c[M]any Russians,\u201d notes Ivanov, \u201cwere trading their previous enlightened decadence\u201d\u2014which included, put mildly, a marked slackening of asceticism\u2014\u201cfor the life of contemplation, mysticism, and social responsibility.\u201d Yet there were perhaps more continuities with the Pietism and moralism of preceding decades than discontinuities: \u201cMany of the \u2018gentlemen\u2019 bishops of the Catherinian generation welcomed the arrival of the new [Awakening] Protestant literature and spiritual trends with fascination. Paradoxically, however, they did not reject all of the Enlightenment ideas that they had cherished\u2026.\u201d For convenience, I will again extend Ivanov\u2019s shorthand to call this group \u201cphilo-Awakener.\u201d<\/p>\n Ivanov focuses on St. Filaret Drozdov, metropolitan of Moscow after Platon and his former student. \u201cHe was deeply involved in the Awakening in Russia,\u201d notes Ivanov, \u201cas the person who \u2018converted\u2019 [Alexander Nikolaevich] Golitsyn to the right path, as a one-time member of Labzin\u2019s secret society [a Rosicrucian Masonic lodge], and as one of the leaders of the Bible Society,\u201d which \u201cspread nearly a million vernacular New Testaments and Psalters all over Russia\u201d from 1813-1826. Not everyone supported the Bible Society, however, and in its opposition, we see the successful resurgence (after many failed attempts throughout the century) of philo-Catholic forces, as well as the beginning of the \u201cneo-patristic\u201d theological and spiritual turn in nineteenth-century Russia.<\/p>\n These critics were \u201cnot a unified group by any measure\u201d but shared \u201cthree features\u201d: \u201cdisapproval \u2026 of the Awakening\u201d; \u201copposition to the vernacularization of holy texts\u201d; and \u201cdissatisfaction with \u2026 Petrine and Catherinian church reforms.\u201d Chief among them, Archimandrite Fotii Spasskii \u201cdisapproved of Filaret\u2019s 1823 catechism \u2026 and advocated the return of Peter Mohyla\u2019s Tridentine-inspired catechism.\u201d Several other opponents had simply turned to romantic conservatism from Enlightenment ideals as they aged.<\/p>\n Yet Ivanov cautions not to assume total insulation from the Awakening they denounced: \u201cFotii \u2026 used a standard tool of the awakeners\u2014direct revelation\u2014to bolster his arguments.\u201d He compares Fotii to Rasputin, noting that like him, \u201cFotii possessed the unique advantage of appealing directly to the court.\u201d What sort of messages did he relay? \u201cFotii accused England of plotting a revolution in Russia by sending English missionaries \u2026 to bring \u2018poison through the channel of the Bible Society.\u2019\u201d Despite (or because of?) the deep influence the Awakening had on him, Tsar Alexander took Fotii\u2019s pronouncements seriously: \u201cAlthough he hesitated to close the Bible Society, its translation activities and public outreach were curtailed\u201d and thousands of vernacular Bibles burned.<\/p>\n In the interregnum after Alexander died, the Decemberists attempted to force Russia to adopt a constitution. Nicholas I answered the crowd\u2019s request with cannon fire. As for the previous 125 years of Church reform, \u201cThe new tsar \u2026 was clearly not fond of the Awakening or the reformed Orthodox theology of the eighteenth century. By personal decree, he closed the Bible Society on April 12, 1826.\u201d After 1836, Procurator Nikolai Protasov, actively suppressed Western influence, including the teaching of all philosophy, in Russian seminaries (though ultimately unsuccessfully, partly due to \u201cFilaret\u2019s protection\u201d).<\/p>\n According to Ivanov, \u201cFilaret viewed Protasov\u2019s policies as \u2018a return to the times of [Catholic] scholasticism\u2019 and stated that any decisions that reflected the opinions of the 1672 Jerusalem Council \u2026 carried a \u2018Catholic stain.\u2019 He complained about the return of the ancient \u2018persecutions of the Church,\u2019\u201d but his protests ultimately remained rhetorical. \u201cFilaret acknowledged that the turn against Enlightenment theology and Awakening spirituality \u2026 had long been underway \u2026 and standing in its way would require combat on barricades he was not willing to climb.\u201d Compelled by the counterreformers, especially \u201cPrivy Councilor Konstantin Serbonovich,\u201d Filaret revised his catechism \u201c\u2018in accordance with the strict requirements of the ancient Orthodoxy,\u2019 which included the introduction of the Catholic teaching on the Nine Beatitudes and the equivalency of church tradition with revelation.\u201d<\/p>\n Ivanov\u2019s Spiritual Revolution<\/em> more than accomplishes its stated goals. It is a groundbreaking work of historical theology, and it should serve as an essential reference for any future exploration of Russian Orthodoxy in the \u201clong eighteenth century\u201d today. But why would anyone want to do that?<\/p>\n Ivanov could have made an even stronger case\u2014as has Marcus Plested in his Orthodox Readings of Aquinas<\/em><\/a>\u2014by highlighting the Eastern roots of medieval scholasticism in St. John of Damascus and other Fathers. Florovsky isn\u2019t entirely wrong that Orthodox theology was forced into the \u201cpseudomorphoses\u201d of foreign categories, but scholasticism\u2014which is a method of inquiry, not a theology or philosophy\u2014was not one of them.[2]<\/a> From this perspective, Peter Mohyla simply picked up where Gennadius II Scholarius left off, dialoguing with the West through the scholastic method.<\/p>\n Furthermore, as Ivanov does note, the liturgical life of the Church remained largely constant, and even Prokopovich read and recommended the Church Fathers (though preferring, like many Protestants, the first four centuries). St. Paisii Belichkovskii translated the Philokalia<\/em> in 1793, and it quickly gained a wide readership. Florovsky even applauded Platon\u2019s efforts to vernacularize curricula, eliminating the psychological divide between Slavonic prayer and Latin theologizing. One might even argue for a dialectical development: Just as wariness over Mohyla\u2019s philo-Catholic teachings led to positive revision of his Confession<\/em>, St. Filaret\u2019s revised Catechism<\/em><\/a> remains useful today, including those aspects his philo-Catholic opponents compelled him to add. In any case, I agree that \u201cEast and West\u201d are the wrong analytical categories. What matters is, well, \u201cOrthodoxy and heterodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n I see at least two ways forward for anyone looking to build upon Ivanov\u2019s work: First, one could conduct a thorough comparison of the catechetical documents referenced in this review. These texts are necessarily simple, intended for the teaching of the laity, but not unnuanced. Understanding the context of conflicting Western influences, these works make for easy comparison of standard Church teaching across the \u201clong eighteenth century.\u201d Second, the Church has fittingly canonized at least one figure of each camp from this period as examples of true Orthodox sanctity: St. Dmitry of Rostov (philo-Catholic), St. Iaosaph of Belgorod (philo-Protestant), St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (philo-Pietist), and St. Filaret of Moscow (philo-Awakener). What common fruits of the \u201cfaith \u2026 once for all delivered to the saints\u201d (Jude 3) can be gleaned across their lives and writings?<\/p>\n But perhaps the question remains: Why? The majority of those reading this live in the West. Many (including myself) converted to Orthodoxy from Western confessions. Some may wonder what of their past faith needs to be rethought and what they should retain. The good news is Orthodox engagement with nearly all contemporary Western teachings and trends can be found in this period. Reacquaintance with these sources may also counteract one harmful tendency of our time: what I\u2019ll call \u201cself-Orientalism<\/a>,\u201d the artificial comfort of being \u201cexotic\u201d and \u201cdifferent\u201d at the exclusion of our own Orthodox heritage and, for that matter, genuine progress in ecumenical dialogue.<\/p>\n Much of this period was truly scandalous and embarrassing. That cannot be denied. But how long must we allow even justified shame to keep us from the necessary work of sifting through the debris of this neglected era for the treasures beneath the rubble? Christ told St. Peter that \u201cthe gates of Hades shall not prevail against\u201d his Church (Matthew 16:18). The errors of sinful human actors can never outweigh the ever-active grace of God and the gifts deposited in his Church by the saints. Any with the faith and courage to undertake such intellectual archeology today will find Ivanov\u2019s Spiritual Revolution<\/em> an invaluable survey from which to begin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nPhilo-Catholics<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Philo-Protestants<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Monastic Upheavals<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Enlightenment Philo-Pietists<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Philo-Awakeners<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Recategorizing the Past<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Contemporary Conclusions<\/strong><\/h1>\n