Your Eminence Metropolitan Jean,
Here I respond, with great respect and appreciation for your position, to your “open letter to Patriarch Kirill” of March, 2022 (106).
I focus on your comment that “Nothing can ever justify that the ‘good shepherds’ that we must be cease to be ‘peacemakers,’ whatever the circumstances.”
I respectfully submit that the central focus must be on the question what, exactly, do we mean by “peacemakers” in this context? The term “peace” cannot be taken to mean merely the absence of war in a world in which the United States and its system of unipolar global financial capitalism regularly and unilaterally start wars without hesitation. Here we must focus on the “Peace of Christ:” “I give you my peace, which is not of this world” John 14:27.
My definition of the term “peacemaker” is a person who works to achieve that sublime state where they are in “the Peace of Christ,” BEING their prayer, aware of the Creator’s love raining down on us AND ALSO loving thy neighbor as thyself.
Speaking from my own personal experience from my life which has effectively been lived as an “urban monk,” I can emphatically affirm that the work of the “peacemaker” as I define it is INFINITELY easier to achieve in Russia than it is in Western Europe, and certainly in the United States. That is why I now live in Russia, under special rules for foreigners who share Russian spiritual values.
The reason WHY the work of the “peacemaker” is INFINITELY easier to achieve in Russia than in Western societies is the difference in “spiritual character” of these societies. We do not live in a vacuum, obviously – the interaction with other people affects us. According to my experience, Orthodox may well be unified in their assemblies in Western Europe and the United States. But then they must go out into the world and live in societies that are characterized, not only by spiritual disunity, but by a more-or-less complete absence of meaningful spiritual connection between people. The American system of global financial capitalism that also controls Europe actively “commodifies” human persons, enouraging them to celebrate their egos and effectively eliminating spiritual interaction from the “social fabric.” According to my experience, in these societies it is only possible to do the work of the “peacemaker” where one sincerely works to “love thy neighbor as thyself” while BEING their prayer by “swimming upstream” in society. This is discussed in post #5 “Being the ‘meaasure of yeast’ in America: The prayer of I am in Christ in the chest.”
In contrast, in Russia, it is readily possible to do the work of the “peacemaker” while “swimming with the stream” of society. This is discussed in post #25 “Real time in Victory Park.”
The reason for this difference is that the mysterious spiritual phenomenon known as “sobornost” still exists in Russia, albeit greatly diminished compared with what it once was. This is a manifestation of spiritual unity that is fundamentally rooted in “love thy neighbor as thyself” and that is actively “fed” by the prayerfulness of many people. On contrast, I can affirm from my experience of 20 years living in Denmark that Danes have a similar phenomenon of “spiritual unity” which they refer to as “the hygge.” But Danes are overwhelmingly atheists. Their unity is rooted in the “love of the Danish people” and tends to alienate non-Danes. And it is by no means fed by prayerfulness. It has a fundamentally different character than sublime “sobornost,” which is not merely the “love of the Russian people,” and which does not alienate non-Russians. Ironically, Denmark descended into atheist materialism during the same period of time that Russia recovered from it, experiencing quite literally a “spiritual revolution” after the fall of the communists.
Patriarch Bartholomew has dismissed the theological concept of the “Russian world” as heretical “ethnophyletism.” But while it’s true that Russian nationalists are attempting to “cloak themselves” with Orthodoxy in much the same manner that American nationalists attempt to “cloak themselves” with Protestantism, it is also true that the “Russian world” concept has sound spiritual basis. That is the reason why the overwhelming majority of Russian Orthodox priests support Patriarch Kirill’s position. Patriarch Bartholomew likes to say that “Russian priests are afraid to speak against Putin.” There is some truth in this statement. However, it in no way diminishes the implications of the fact that the overwhelming majority DO NOT DISAGREE with Putin about the war in Ukraine.
Greece remains, officially, an “Orthodox Christian” country. But in reality, Greece has followed a similiar trajectory as Denmark and indeed is now much more like Denmark than it is like Russia. So it is not surprising that Patriarch Bartholomew does not accept the sainthood of the murdered half-Dane Tsar Nikolai II. He simply does not comprehend the significance of what was “Holy Rus” that was lost with the murder of the Holy Martyr Tsar and his family. This is discussed in post #27 “The Tsar’s Crown – the true significance of the martyrdom of the half-danish Nikolai II and his family.”
“Holy Rus” was a society achieved through 1000 years development in Orthodox Christianity – a society headed by an autocratic Orthodox Tsar but characterized by “sobornost,” which Metropolitan John Snichev famously referred to as “Russian democracy.” This was literally the union of the people and the Orthodox church – an accomplishment that occurred no place else on earth before or since. “Holy Rus,” of course, inluded most of what is now called “Ukraine.” The communists created the separate state of “Ukraine,” but they did not destroy “sobornost.” To the contrary, they re-purposed it towards their own ends. And so, after the fall of the communists in 1991, “sobornost” was still alive and well in the “Russian world.”
“Sobornost” is now under attack by the Western system of consumer capitalism which was literally forced upon Russia after the fall of the communists. Many of us here are working to alter the trajectory of development so as to harmonize Russia’s past and future – to get on the road back to “sobornost” and a modern corollary of “Holy Rus.” But for now at least, “sobornost” is still manifest. And while it is clearly diminished compared with 1991, it equally clearly continues to distinguish the “spiritual character” of Russian society from that of the West.
All things considered, I humbly submit that Patriarch Kirill’s characterization of the war in Ukraine as a “metaphysical struggle” is entirely correct. In my view, it is reasonable to say that the Orthodox world is now divided between what I call Western “Orthodox individualism” a la Patriarch Bartholomew and the Eastern “Orthodox sobornost” of the “Russian world.”
I respectfully submit that the average Russian, and the vast majority of Russian Orthodox priests, view the war in Ukraine as being a defensive one against “invasion” of the “Russian world” by NATO. Some factual matters to consider in evaluating this perspective include the following:
(1). Russia lost 27 million people defeating Germany in WWII.
(2). The revolution of 1917, like the Maidan revolution of 2014 in Ukraine, was actively ASSISTED (and some say ORGANIZED) by Western powers, namely Britian, the USA, Germany and France.
(3). Russia told these same Western powers for 14 years that it would never tolerate Ukraine becoming part of NATO.
(4). The US plan to make Ukraine part of NATO was actively, intentionally provoking a war.
This was a calculated plan to “extend” Russia and thereby lead to the downfall of the Putin government. (See report from RAND corporation “Extending Russia,”especially noting chapter 4) (107). It was a conscious, willful act of war. The Americans thought they could win through economic sanctions with all of the dying being done by Russans (who are genetically indistinguishable from Ukrainians). But the Americans miscalculated. They overestimated the significance of their “global financial capitalism” which is now well on its way to collapsing. And more importantly, they underestimated the Russians.
I invite you to pray with Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose credentials as a champion of universal Orthodoxy are unparalelled, in reconsidering your position on this question.
With love in Christ,
Theophan
106. “Open letter by Metropolitan Jean of Dubna to Patriarch Kirill,” March 9, 2022, found at:https://www.orthodoxie.com (https://orthodoxie.com/la-lettre-ouverte-du- metropolite-jean-de-doubna-au-patriarche-cyrille/?fbclid=IwAR3j0s7Q7bwA6TJcA- a7ckzbRgJzcidWFmoK9IKElbksMFJOjFhn713wqPk and available for download here.
107. Dobbins, J. et al. Extending Russia: Competing from advangtageous ground. (2018) Rand Corporation, ISBN: 978-1-9774-0021-5
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