SOPHIA

(---This is an entry on Vladimir Solovyev’s religious and legal “utopianism.” For much more on Solovyev, see my entry The Meaning Of Love in the Russian section (posted on this blog on September 14^th, 2011), and A United Church Of Christ? entry in the Religion section (posted on January 16^th, 2011, as a part of the mega-entry And When She Was… Good, She Was Horrid!), all three together serving to complement one another.---)

There is a shocking irony that the greatest by all accounts Russian philosopher mystic, the epitome of genius in all cultures, was at the same time perhaps the most utopian philosopher who ever lived. There were in his philosophy two utopian lines: religious and juridical, and we shall look at them both in this entry.

The core idea of Solovyev’s religious philosophy is that of Sophia, the soul of the world. She is described by him as a mystical cosmic being, the eternal feminine quality within God uniting Him with the world that He created, and also as God’s Design regarding the world. The term Sophia is present in the Bible, but, to Solovyev, she is much more concrete, as he has encountered her several times already, in his visions, as a woman, and had direct communication with her. Thus Solovyev’s religious philosophy is claimed not just as a product of his mind, even if inspired, but as revelatory, bearing God’s own direct imprimatur.

Believing Solovyev’s claim is not a matter of faith to us, although it was certainly a matter of faith to him. It has nothing to do with religion outside his own mind, and for this reason, the Russian Orthodox Church had no hesitation in declaring his views not just heretical, but anti-religious. (More precisely, today’s Russian Orthodox Church sees Solovyev’s teaching more kindly as extra-religious.) It was surely understandable for the Tsarist Church to take offense, as Solovyev attacked her (justly) as ineffectual and subservient to Caesar, that is, to Russia’s secular power. It was for this reason that he suggested a reunification of the two Churches under the leadership of the Pope, whom he considered the only existing religious supra-national authority. We can also see that today his idea looks and is preposterous, but in his time he was not alone in complaining about the morbid state of the Russian religion, and it took Lenin with his Bolshevik revolution instead of the Pope, to make things right, delivering a nasty electric shock to the patient’s heart, thus reviving him from his coma.

Let us take a closer look now at Solovyev’s Sophia. She was in effect the bridge between the world and its Creator. According to Solovyev it was possible to reunite the world with God by realizing Sophia by means of a threefold procedure. Three components had to play a role here. Theosophy formed a conception of her. Theurgy was the means of regaining her. Theocracy was the instrument of enthroning her.

In more detail, Theosophy as God’s Wisdom (little relation to Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy!) represents a synthesis of scientific discoveries and Christian revelations (a reconciliation of science and religion), in the framework of integral knowledge. Faith does not contradict reason, but complements it. (I am still unhappy with his supplantation of instinct and intuition by faith and religious revelation!) Ironically, and reprovingly toward the modern stubborn religious crusade to outlaw evolution, Solovyev accepts the idea of evolution, which he explains as an effort to overcome the Fall by a breakthrough toward God. According to him, there are five stages of the Evolution: the mineral stage; the plant stage; the animal stage; the human stage; and God’s stage. Mind you, all Creation strives toward God, and hence the Evolution of the species represents exactly such a striving, and it results in lower forms evolving into higher forms. (A note to myself: I actually love this idea, and I ought to be quoting it in my other discussions of the Evolution!)

Theurgy is Solovyev’s rejection and condemnation of moral neutrality. In fact, there can be no such thing as moral neutrality. (To quote Kierkegaard, it is either…or! I am sure that Solovyev was under Kierkegaard’s influence here, although he makes no such acknowledgment.) Theurgy in Solovyev is the practice of moral purification, without which one cannot attain truth. The essence of Theurgy is cultivation of Christian love, sacrificing self-assertion for the sake of unity with others. Solovyev makes this one of his dominant themes in determining the Christian attitude toward non-Christian nations, and particularly toward the Jews, calling for their benevolent treatment, and thus earning for himself the title of Righteous Gentile among them. On a different note, Berdyaev’s call for the self-assertion of the individual against encroachments of society and state seems to be in contradiction here with the teaching of his idol.

And finally- Theocracy, once again a familiar word which ought not to be taken at its usual usage value. At the heart of Solovyev’s “theocratic” state is not an established religious political power, but a set of spiritual principles, which have not a national, but a supranational universal character. Solovyev’s outrageous idea of uniting the Russian monarchy and the Russian Church with Roman Catholic Church was a step toward such a transcendence of national limitations, a step toward the establishment of world Theocracy.

Having discussed the details of Solovyev’s Sophia, we are now moving to one of the effects of Sophia, that is toward his conception of the ideal law and justice, which is almost as hopelessly utopian and impractical as Sophia herself. At the heart of his legal teaching is his rejection of moral neutrality, therefore the law can be either moral or immoral.

Morality always strives toward an ideal, it prescribes proper behavior and addresses the inner side of man’s will. The law is always conditional and implies a limitation, as in the juridical sphere what is of importance is the outward manifestation of the person’s will: the action and its consequences.

Thus, unlike Sophia, the Law has no power to bring God’s Kingdom to the world. It is designed to prevent people’s lives from being hell, before Theocracy has been established.

The purpose of the Law is to create a balance between personal freedom and the common good, that is, the necessary “limitation of personal freedom by the requirements of the common good.”

The attributes of Law are its public character, its specificity, and its implementability.

The attributes of power are the issuance of laws, justice of the courts, and law enforcement.
The state is designed to protect the interests of its citizens. The Christian state protects individual interests, strives to improve the conditions of human existence, and cares for the economically weak.
State progress consists in ‘as little as possible infringing on the individuals’ inner moral world and ensuring as certainly and broadly as possible the external conditions for decent living and human self-improvement.’
“Legal coercion does not force people to be righteous. Its purpose is to thwart a bad person from becoming a malefactor, a danger to society.”
Society cannot live by a moral law alone. In order to protect all interests, juridical laws and the existence of the state are required.

The reason why I used the phrase “almost as utopian and impractical,” in reference to Vladimir Solovyev’s theory of law and justice is that there are elements in it, which are not particularly utopian per se, but which have a clearly identified declarative character, and are in fact largely truistic.

This concludes our present discussion of Vladimir Solovyev’s wishful thinking. For more on his other ideas see my other Solovyev entries in other sections of this book.