For many centuries now, the world has faced the clash of two missions: the search for truth and the search for order. Those who create order become the rulers of men, e.g. kings, ministers, and statesmen. Those who seek truth become philosophers, sages, and priests. In the age of Christendom, these two missions were formalized in the institutions of Church and Crown—traditionally called the spiritual and temporal powers. The spiritual power is that said to be established by God to receive and interpret his truth and doctrine.

While these should theoretically compliment each other, history shows ongoing tension and strife. Although this piece will focus on the Christian world, the dynamic has placed out in China, the Islamic world, and other regions. In the West, the spiritual power was historically the Catholic Church. Given this conflict, we have to confront a second truth: the cult of Jesus Christ has lasted an astonishingly long time. Other universal religions, like Islam, have also shown staying power. Given that universal faith seems to create conflict between the two powers, why have these faiths displayed such astonishing dynamism? We’ll consider this question in the remainder of the piece.

Our major guide will be the Russian author Vladimir Solovyov. Writing in the end of the 19th century, he is an enigmatic figure. His soul was deeply Russian. Solovyov wrote extensively about Russian Orthodox concepts of sobornost, the Third Rome, and the destiny of Christian Eurasia. However, one fact makes him unique among Russian authors, including his compatriots like Dostoyevsky. Solovyov strongly desired the reconciliation of Russia and world Orthodoxy with the Catholic Church. In particular, he accepted the primacy of the Roman See. This resulted in a detailed book, Russia and the Universal Church. Solovyov’s desire for communion was based on his belief that a structurally universal Church alone can preserve the sacred tradition. Solovyov further believed that it was this tradition which would allow Russia to fulfill its great destiny among the Slavs and as the foremost power in Christian Eurasia.

While Solovyov never abandoned his Russian Christian identity and culture, he worked hard toward the cause of reconciliation. This resulted in dialogue with Slavophiles, Eastern and Latin authors, and his likely reception of communion from Catholic clergy. He moderated neither his fealty to the Papacy, nor his Russian soul; instead, each spurred the development of the other.

In order to understand the position of sovereign power (the order institution) and religious bodies (the truth institution), we must consider the possibilities for this relationship. First, the truth institution can be directly subject to the order institution; in this case, the state controls the religion and it acts as a state department. Second, the order institution and truth institution can merge into a single organization. In this case, the religious body makes or holds state-like claims of authority. A modern example of this would be the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the supreme power is held by a cleric. Greeks in the Ottoman Empire found themselves in a similar situation, where the Orthodox Church became an autonomous governing body in addition to a religious one. The final possibility is for the truth institution to carry out its mission autonomously from the order institution. The Church does its work and self-governance independently of the state, because its work transcends the temporal state.

The third possibility is the situation of Christianity and Islam, but also of other religions with universal claims such as Buddhism. Quasi-religious bodies like the Freemasons have also acted in this way. In this case, the religion commits itself to maintaining the sacred tradition. Advising and criticism of political power is done on the basis of its religious authority and not the power of compulsion. In the Catholic world, the Papal power was not in his arms, but in his ability to publicly correct, excommunicate, and place countries under sacramental interdict. There are some problems with this frame, not least of which is that this sharp distinction between religion and state is an invention of Western modernity. But insofar as we can distinguish between daily governance versus religious duties, it will suffice.

The first relationship—truth institution as a department of the order institution—is on its face preferable for political power. If religion is controlled by the sovereign power, then it has the additional tool of religious doctrine to shape the social order. Since a religious body bases its authority on its power to interpret divine law and tradition, the temptation for the sovereign to use it is immense. But by doing this, the institution begins to see its authority slowly eroded. The mission of the truth institution becomes increasingly bound up in that of the order institution. It begins to fail at what should be its core competency.

In Russia and the Universal Church, Solovyov reflects on how deeply felt political involvement impacted the Russian Church. In his lifetime, the Church was still under the arrangements of Tsar Peter I, who appointed a governing synod rather than a patriarch. Solovyov cites the explanations given by a member of this Synod, the Archbishop Ireneus of Pskov:

As is well known, the Russian Church is governed by an administrative council called a Spiritual Conclave or Holy Synod, whose members are nominated by the Emperor and are presided over by a civil or military official, the High Procurator of the Holy Synod, who has complete control of the government of the Church. The dioceses, or eparchies, are nominally ruled by bishops nominated by the Head of the State on the recommendation of the Synod, that is, of the High Procurator who may subsequently depose them at pleasure

[…]

The Synod of St. Petersburg, from its earliest years, insisted upon its character as an imperial institution and never failed to quote the temporal power as the true source of its authority. In all its early official acts, it repeats over and over again that ‘command has been given’ (poveleno) by the sovereign to everyone, ‘to persons of every rank, ecclesiastics and laity, to regard the Synod as an important and powerful body’ and in no way to disparage ‘the dignity bestowed upon it by His Majesty the Tsar.’ It is easy to see that the element of temporal authority from which the Synod thought to draw its strength was bound inevitably to prevail over every other element in its composition and to dominate completely this hybrid institution[…]

It would be false to assume that as a result the Church simply became a rubber-stamp. Solovyov agrees with the Slavophiles that it is the spiritual guardian of the Slavic peoples. Yet by bringing the power of the Church from far to near, the secular power was forced to interfere in it on an increasingly frequent basis. As with the results of absolutism, this undermined the regular function of the hierarchy. Solovyov cites the bishop’s account of demands within the clergy itself:

Some suggest that the enthusiasm of preachers should be revived by a new system of official rewards in the shape of special decorations. Others insist that the State must formally guarantee the lower clergy protection against the power of the bishops. Others believe that our religious future depends upon an increase in the ecclesiastical revenues; they would therefore have the State grant the Churches the monopoly of certain branches of industry. Some even suggest the introduction of a scale of charges for the administration of the holy sacraments…Some go so far as to assert that our religious life is not sufficiently regulated by the government, and they demand a new code of laws and rules for the Church. And yet in the present Imperial Code there are more than a thousand articles regulating the supervision of the Church by the State and defining the duties of the police in the sphere of religious belief and practice. The secular administration is declared by our Code to be the upholder of the dogmas of the established religion and the guardian of good discipline in the holy Church[…]

In Solovyov’s time, there was a dual phenomenon of reaction against this in both the elite and peasantry. Among the elite, interests in both Latin Catholicism as well as non-Christian philosophies like Freemasonry had existed for some time. Conversely, the traditions of the Old Believers–a sect which rejected the reforms of Tsar Peter I and saw him as Antichrist–were still widely respected among the peasantry. It should be emphasized that these trends occurred despite a large number of personally pious rulers, including the final Tsar who would be martyred by the Bolsheviks. The arrangement incentivized the order institution’s increasing involvement in the truth institution in order to achieve immediate goals; in response, the truth institution’s authority was undermined. Today, the Moscow Patriarchate has been restored. Nevertheless, Solovyov would note–as he does of the Old Believers–that the persistent tendency to identify the Church as a part of Russian life, rather than Russia as a nation of the Church, still moves power towards the same trends.

Lest we accuse the Russian Church of being a purely state-driven venture, it should be stated that Orthodoxy has a universal character. Its historic foundation is in the Holy Land, its ecumenical councils are in the Roman and Byzantine empires, and it holds a communion with many churches beyond Russian borders. The influence of the state was not infinitely elastic, and many faithful clergy and laity faced persecution in various periods of history. But what Solovyov emphasizes is that it is insofar as this universality exists that the truth-seeking mission was successfully carried out. Just as importantly, the order institution—the Russian state—benefited from that mission in the long run, even if short-term costs sometimes arose.

To avoid focusing solely on Orthodoxy, we can turn our gaze to an example from our own time: the Catholic Church in Germany. According to German law, the Catholic church (and other groups) benefit from a share of income tax paid by members of these communions. The result is that 70% of revenues come from this tax program. The incentives of Church officials become clear: make sure that this system is not disrupted. In practice, this has meant that the Catholic Church in Germany has become a promoter of the liberal democratic ideology of the Federal Republic.

As a result, the German bishops have a reputation for being among the most radically modernist clergy in the Catholic world. With the Lutheran Church being the other major religious body, German bishops have pushed strongly for the acceptance of Lutherans in mixed marriages with Catholics to the Eucharist, an act in violation of Church teaching. German bishops have also signaled in favor of a more modernist attitude towards homosexual couples, including private blessings. German bishops have been among the major push for a wide-ranging interpretation of Pope Francis’ policy to allow divorced Catholics in new relationships (viewed as adulterous by Catholic teaching) to receive communion. Almost amusingly, they have bred an attitude of dripping contempt for Catholics in regions such as Africa who have been faithful to tradition, which in any other context would be racism and classism of the highest order. It is clear that the observations made by Solovyov on the Russian Church of his day can be applied to West as well as East.

Let’s consider the next option: the establishment of a unified institution which seeks both truth and order. It is an arrangement which has been tried, both by circumstance and ideological commitment. In many ways, it mirrors the dynamics of the truth institution subject to the order institution. The major difference is that the roles of priest and ruler are actually merged. If priests cannot fulfill their role as servants of the state, can we turn priests into rulers?

The most famous examples of this in the West occurred through the decline of the Western Empire. Bishops and Popes found themselves often having to take on duties of political government in addition to Church government. The Papal care of Rome saw the origins of what became the Papal States. While clergy were not generally meant to be in such roles, the context of the time meant that this situation became regularized.

In reality, most of the territory remained under the control of the great families of the region. However, this led to the Papacy itself becoming a prize of local politics. Corruption became rife, with this infamous period of the Pornocracy being widely seen as the lowest point of the Papacy’s history. Similar situations have arisen in cases where bishops and priestly offices have become spoils of rule. It is clear that organizations seem unable to maintain both truth and order as core competencies. Truth institutions do not make good governors, unless they stop being good at their truth-seeking mission.

This brings us to the final position, and the one which Solovyov defends as the most beneficial for both the truth-seeking and order-seeking missions. The truth institution operates independently from the order institution; this means that the order institution may engage it honestly as a source of wisdom. The order institution neither erodes the core competency of truth-seeking, nor fears the truth institution’s designs on power.

Now obviously this relationship has historically been fraught and never so ideal. As seen in examples above, rulers and clergy can deviate from these beneficial norms. But what we are laying out is a relationship which is both possible, and which is ideal when adhered to. It should be emphasized that this preserves the sovereignty of the temporal power on an institutional level. After all, it is the sovereign’s power whether or not to adhere to truth and wisdom or not. But if a sovereign departs from reality, the result is that competent rule must inevitably be taken up by others.

Departure from truth in and of itself erodes sovereignty. Therefore, the sovereign must adhere to truth. It follows that the sovereign must have a source from which to know truth–and that the incentives must exist for this source to pursue truth, and for the sovereign to trust it.

We return to Russia and the Universal Church. In the section on the universal nature of the Church, Solovyov first defines the Church and its mission on earth:

Since the objective truth of faith is universal and the true subject of faith must be conformed to its object, it follows that the subject of true religion is necessarily universal. Real faith cannot belong to man as an isolated individual, but only to mankind as a complete unity; and the individual can only share in it as a living member of the universal body. But since no real and living unity has been bestowed on the human race in the physical order, it must be created in the moral order…

But this love which is to transform the discordant fragments of the human race into a real and living unity, the Universal Church, cannot be a mere vague, subjective and ineffectual sentiment; it must be translated into a consistent and definite activity which shall give the inner sentiment its objective reality. What, then, is the actual object of this active love?

Solovyov’s argument is as follows: since truth is universal, and the body of the Church has a mission to proclaim it in a universal manner, it must therefore have a universal character. This argument by analogy forms the flip-side to his observation that subjecting the truth mission to the order mission results in its corruption. Since the order institution cannot govern the truth institution without subverting it, the truth instititution requires its own order of government. That order must be oriented toward the truth-seeking mission. Solovyov continues:

If the Church is to guide the common life of mankind towards the goal of divine love, and to direct public opinion on the road to divine truth, she must possess a universal government divinely authorized. This government must be clearly defined so as to be recognizable to all[…]

The perfection of the one universal Church consists in the harmony and unanimity of all its members; but its very existence amid actual disharmony requires a unifying and reconciling power immune from this disharmony and in continual reaction against it, asserting itself above all divisions and gathering to itself all men of good will, denouncing and condemning whatever is opposed to the Kingdom of God on Earth. Whoever desires that Kingdom must desire the only way that will lead mankind collectively to it. Between the hateful reality of the disharmony reigning in this world and the longed-for unity of perfect love in which God reigns, there is the necessary road of a juridical and authoritative unity linking human fact to divine right.

The perfect circle of the Universal Church requires a unique center, not so much for its perfection as for its very existence. The Church upon Earth, called to gather in the multitude of the nations, must, if she is to remain an active society, possess a definite universal authority to set against national divisions; if she is to enter the current of history and undergo continual change and adaptation in her external circumstances and relationships and yet preserve her identity, she requires an authority essentially conservative but nevertheless active, fundamentally unchangeable though outwardly adaptable; and, finally, if she is set amid the frailty of man to assert herself in reaction against all the powers of evil, she must be equipped with an absolutely firm and impregnable foundation, stronger than the gates of Hell.

Since we live in an era when this language is used even by clergy to justify globalist projects, we might wonder what it means to “gather in…the nations”. The Church exists in a world of many societies, nations, and states. In particular, there exist many princes, governors, and temporal rulers. In other words, it is possible to have a truth-seeking institution which can be accessed by many different—even competing—order institutions. If truth is indeed objective and unitary, then a truth-seeking institution gives order institutions a foundation to cooperate on which they did not have before.

This is particularly true in the case of the Church, which holds that truth reveals political duties on the part of kings. Having accepted the Church as the institution of truth, these temporal governors entrusted its spiritual governors to carry out their mission. The Church—operating properly—did not exist to govern states, and so it was not inherently a threat to secure power. It became part of the worldview which informed the decisions of sovereigns. Conflict arose when sovereigns gave in to the temptation to begin usurping parts of the truth-seeking mission, or where ambitious clergy impinged on the order-seeking mission. It should be noted that this is radically different from modern secularism, which essentially bars any official state recognition of a truth-seeking institution.

For Solovyov, the unity of truth underlying the Church’s mission must be manifest in the Church’s governance:

If we would avoid the two opposite pitfalls of blind materialism and ineffectual idealism, we must admit that the needs of actual existence and the demands of the ideal coincide and harmonize in the order established by God. In order to show forth in the Church the ideal of harmony among men, Jesus Christ founded as the prototype of conciliar government the college or original council of the twelve Apostles, equal with one another and united by brotherly love. In order that this ideal unity might be effectually realized in every age and place, that the council of the hierarchy might always and everywhere prevail over discord and gather up the multiplicity of private opinions into uniform public decrees, that discussion might issue in the living manifestation of the unity of the Church, secure from the hazards to which the assemblies of men are exposed — in a word, that His Church might not be built upon shifting sands, the divine Architect revealed the firm impregnable Rock of ecclesiastical monarchy and set up the ideal of unanimity while basing it upon an actual living authority.

It is a principle of monarchy that the division of temporal sovereignty results in temporal chaos. Likewise, Solovyov upholds the visible unity of spiritual sovereignty. We might cite St. Cyprian of Carthage from his text on The Unity of the Church: “Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity.” To affirm the Church’s universal nature must entail affirming its unity:

The fixed point, the impregnable rock, has been discovered whereon to base the divine-human activity. The organic foundation of the universal Church is found in a single man who, with the divine assistance, answers for the whole world. It is fixed neither upon the impossible unanimity of all believers, nor upon the inevitably hazardous agreement of a council, but upon the real and living unity of the prince of the Apostles. And henceforward every time that the question of truth is put to Christian humanity, it will not be from the voice of the masses nor from the opinion of the elect that the fixed and final answer will come. The arbitrary opinions of men will only give rise to heresies; and the hierarchy separated from its center and abandoned to the mercy of the secular power will refrain from speaking or will speak through such councils as the robber-council of Ephesus. Only in union with the rock on which it is founded will the Church be able to assemble true councils and define the truth by authoritative formulas.

Having reflected on the nature of spiritual government, we must now see how this translates into the messy realm of political life. The order institution acts uses its resources to organize social and political life. To do this, it must accept both a positive model (what the world is like) and a normative model (what the world should be like). The Christian sovereign has chosen to accept a model of the world based on the Christian faith.

The order institution, in this relationship, accepts a model of the world built by the truth-seeking institution in the grounds that the institution is competent and trustworthy. Nevertheless, it falls to the order institution to act on this model. The Christian sovereign had a detailed view of the nature of the world and what his goals ought to be, but it fell to him to act upon that view. It is worth noting that members of a devoted truth-seeking institution may be so committed to their mission that they decide to resist or correct errors despite their lack of power. If sovereign power reacts with hostility, they may risk everything. In the Church’s life, such people became martyrs and their demonstrated trust in the Church served as testimony for many others to place their trust in it too.

Solovyov begins his work with reflections on the Christian temporal power; it is here near the end where we will consider them:

All are one in the Church through the unity of hierarchy, faith, and sacraments; all are made one in the Christian State through justice and law; all must be one in natural charity and free co-operation. These three modes, or rather degrees, of unity are inseparably connected. In order to impose that universal solidarity which is the Kingdom of God on nations and classes and individuals, the Christian State must believe in it as absolute Truth revealed by God Himself.

But the divine revelation cannot be made directly to the State as such, that is to say, to a natural humanity outside the sphere of the divine operation: God has revealed Himself, He has entrusted His truth and His grace to an elect humanity, that is, to the Church, sanctified and organized by Himself. If the State, itself the product of human agencies and historic circumstances, is to bring mankind under the sway of absolute Justice, it must justify itself by submission to the Church which provides the moral and religious sanction and the actual basis for its work.

It is equally clear that the perfect Christian society, or the prophetic union, the reign of love and spiritual freedom, presupposes the priestly and kingly union. For the divine truth and grace cannot fully control the moral being of mankind nor effect its inner transformation unless they first have an objective force in the world, unless they are incarnate in a religious fact and upheld by law, unless, that is, they exist as Church and State.

Since the priestly institution is a fact, and the brotherhood of perfect freedom is an ideal, it is the middle term especially — the State in its relation to Christianity — which determines the historic destiny of mankind. The State exists in order to protect human society against evil in its external and public form — that is, against manifest evil. The true social good being the solidarity of the whole, universal justice and peace, social evil is simply the violation of this solidarity. The actual life of mankind shows a threefold violation of that universal solidarity which is justice: justice is violated, firstly, when one nation attacks the existence or freedom of another, secondly, when one social class oppresses another, and thirdly, when an individual by committing a crime openly revolts against the social order.

With this reflection, we finally see what the Christian sovereign has as a temporal mission. The sovereign–secure in his temporal power–sets his order on a Christian foundation. He pursues justice in accordance with that vision preserved and upheld by the Church. It is in this sense that one can speak not only of Christian kings, but of Christian kingdoms and Christian nations. These polities and peoples live in an order formed by the faith. As all political orders shape their people, the population of the Christian polity lives out the faith in customs, culture, and daily life.

In Solovyov’s defense of the universal Church, he also discerns some of the principles which can give answers to political theology. Speaking from the Russian world, he is freed from the constraints of Latin and Thomist thought. Valuable though these traditions are, they have too often become stuck in their own labyrinthine philosophical systems.

In laying down a challenge for the unity of the Western and Eastern churches, Solovyov has also laid down a challenge for political theology. His challenge has a surprising result. The relationship of a truth institution and an order institution in fact becomes more resilient and dynamic when they do not compromise or combine core competencies.

The universality of the church allows it to pursue truth on the universal level, and to retain its vital power even as states rise and fall in their organic cycles. The temporality of the state allows it to preserve a power to make decisions, while having access to a trustworthy authority whose wisdom can inform them. While the power to make political decisions—which is traditionally recognized as “by the grace of God”—is unified, there exist distinct spheres of authority. On the more mundane scale, we can consider that while a businessman may have power over his widget-making team, the team’s knowledge certainly grants them greater authority on how to make a widget. But unlike a company, where everyone benefits from greater profits, the truth- and order-seeking missions are not so easily combined.

The order institution indeed has the power to overturn these spheres, just as it has the power to self-destruct. But the wise order institution understands that it requires source for truth, and that its core competency differs from that of truth-seeking. The wise truth institution, conversely, does not attempt to take on the mission of order-seeking as well. With these reflections, political theology and philosophy alike might better demonstrate how universal truth and temporal order might achieve the cooperation which brings forth civilization.