"[...] a new demonic outpouring is being loosed upon mankind. In the Christian apocalyptic view...we can see the power which until now has restrained the final and most terrible manifestation of demonic activity on earth has been taken away (II Thess. 2:7), Orthodox Christian government and public order (whose chief representative on earth was the Orthodox emperor) and satan has been "loosed out of his prison," where he was kept by the grace of the Church of Christ, in order to "deceive the nations" (Apoc. 20:7-8) and prepare them to worship antichrist at the end of the age. Perhaps never since the beginning of the Christian era have demons appeared so openly and extensively as they do today."Fr. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, p. 109.
"Masonic and mystical symbolism has been used on American currency since the very beginning, and was employed as a means of of distinguishing our money from that of Old World Europe, which invariably featured the bust of the reigning monarch. In contrast, America's founding fathers agreed that American money should be decorated with symbols of the anti-monarchist, pro-democratic Enlightenment philosophy upon which the Republic was founded, and many of these ideals were Masonic in origin. [...] The Rosicruicians and proto-Masons believed that if a system of government could be set up somewhere that was not beholden to any church, or to any royal house, then its citizens would be free to learn these ancient [occult] truths and explore these new ideas. Then they could export their wisdom, and their enlightened form of government, to the rest of the world."Tracy R. Twyman, Solomon's Treasure, pg. 3, 18-19.
"Conservative refers to someone who recognizes the old and natural through the "noise" of anomalies and accidents and who defends, supports, and helps preserve it against the temporary and anomalous. [...] Just as a hierarchical order exists in a family, so there is a hierarchical order within a community of families--of apprentices, servants, and masters, vassals, knights, lords, overlords, and even kings--tied together by an elaborate and intricate system of kinship relations; and of children, parents, priests, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs or popes, and finally the transcendent God. Of the two layers of authority, the earthly, physical power of parents, lords, and kings is naturally subordinate to control by the ultimate spiritual-intellectual authority of fathers, priests, bishops, and ultimately God,"Hans Herman Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed, pg 188.
"The Holy Fathers agreed with Eusebius. Thus St. Gregory the Theologian wrote: 'The three most ancient opinions about God are atheism (or anarchy),polytheism (or polyarchy), and monotheism (or monarchy). The children of Greece played with the first two; let us leave them to their games. For anarchy is disorder: and polyarchy implies factious division, and therefore anarchy and disorder. Both these lead in the same direction – to disorder; and disorder leads to disintegration; for disorder is the prelude to disintegration. What we honour is monarchy…' 'What we honour is monarchy…' That certainly appears to imply that monarchism is part of the Orthodox world-view, even if it does not figure in any of the Creeds. We find the same in the Fathers of the fifth century. Thus Archbishop Theophan of Poltava writes: 'St. Isidore of Pelusium, after pointing out that the God-established order of the submission of some to other is found everywhere in the life of rational and irrational creatures, concludes from this:‘Therefore we are right to say that the matter itself – I mean power, that is, authority and royal power – are established by God.'"Vladimir Moss, The Restoration of Romanity, pg. 275.
"The two greatest gifts which God in His infinite goodness has granted men are the Priesthood and the Empire. The priesthood takes care of divine interests and the empire of human interests of which is has supervision. Both powers emanate from the same principle and bring human life to its perfection. It is for this reason that emperors have nothing closer to their hearts than the honor of priests because they pray continually to God for the emperors. When the clergy shows a proper spirit and devotes itself entirely to God, and the emperor governs the state which is entrusted to him, then a harmony results which is most profitable to the human race. So it is then that the true divine teachings and the honor of the clergy are the first among our preoccupations."St. Justinian, Novella Six
Fear God. Honor the emperor.1 Peter 2:17
_____________________
I realize that this post is going to end up being rather cryptic, but I wanted to give a sort of update on things I've been working on lately. As someone who has been critical of what passes for Western culture for a while, I've been interested in an on-again off-again way with the causes of Western decline. No doubt, this is the Aristotelian in me. However, as a result of last semester's final project for my class on the topic of Justice, Law, and Government, I began thinking about the relationship of chaos and order, of law to government (and justice to each), of democracy to monarchy, of secularism to the Orthodox Christian worldview...and certain things began to "click." As a result I've been working (when I've had time this summer, which has not been much, alas) on revising that project and expanding it to be less consumed by the abstraction of theory, and putting it to more concrete, practical use as a framework for understanding the interrelatedness of the Schism, humanism, the 'Renaissance,' the Protestant Reformation, the 'Enlightenment,' the occult, and the downward spiral of the West. More on this will follow, but for now, I ask you to read over the quotes I've pulled out here, and really think about them--not just react according to the dictates of modern western bias.
9 comments:
Sounds like a show to me!
I would love to talk about this, when I've got something substantial to talk about. Right now, although there is a clear argument from the text of my original paper, this project's scope has extended well beyond a 3-prong defence of monarch (from philosophy, theology, and economic grounds) for an academic exercise. Plus, I've got material from Tracy's book (and some of my own research in the direction of Hermetic Magic->Freemasony->US Government) to add in and work on, not to mention the literal slew of pre-1917 and early Bolshevik era apocalyptic prophecies from Russian saints and new-martyrs to tie in. If I still believed in coincidences before this, I certainly don't any more.
j
Monarchy is not merely part of an Orthodox worldview, it is part of a general Christian worldview. How can we recognize the rule of Christ in His Kingdom if we have no representative of Christ on earth? And, as someone pointed out, removing holy days from the calendar did not make every day holy, it made no day holy. Making all people equal does not confer worth, it robs us of worth, for we have no role, and without role we have no worth.
Hi Preston, thanks for commenting!
I suppose that in clarifying my original post, my underlying assumption is that the truly Christian worldview is the Orthodox Christian worldview; I hope that doesn't come off sounding snarky or arrogant...it's simply the baseline at which I am operating.
You are spot-on, of course. The liberalization of the Church was cemented with the liberal values of the so-called Enlightenment, but began much, much earlier (with the Norman invasion of Italy c.1000, then their takeover of England in 1066--with the Great Schism, conveniently, in between). The change in the mind of the Western Church in the 41 years between the Schism and the First Crusade is truly nothing short of astonishing (contemporary reports of the Latin Christian's entrance into Antioch by the Eastern clergy show that they were scandalized by Western 'religious' behavior...going well beyond simple unfamiliarity with western liturgical rites and practices, but actually into the character and ethos of what the Westerners called being Christian).
The "rediscovery" of the ancient world (not just it's philosophy, but its mystery cults and esoterica too) carted off by the Latins after their sack of Constantinople in 1204--at which time they justified their actions against the Eastern Christians by not recognizing them as Christians--led to not only the rise of humanism, the so-called "Renaissance," the disastrous affair with the Templars and their "seeding" of the west with subversive fraternal orders...but eventually the Enlightenment and the advent of the modern (anti-christian, anti-monarchy, anti-tradition) world.
The connections between these things are not arbitrary or coincidental, and the more I am uncovering as I look into this, the more and more I am seeing layered pattern upon layered pattern.
And I am not at all convinced that what we are dealing with right now is not Jacques de Molay's final vengeance on the institutions of the Church and monarchy.
I hope you post more on this. It sounds really interesting. I've not seen anything from any political perspective that has moved me to believe one form of government is superior to another yet. This is interesting.
Well, I think that's a very common sentiment, and one I've encountered in Orthodoxy a lot--there's a sort of resistance to criticizing the "form" of government we live under, especially when it at least seems to grant us relative peace and security to practice our religion as we wish (unlike the yoke of, say, the Turk or the Communists). Nevertheless, these statements from the Fathers are there, and while I loathe to use phrases like "They speak for themselves" (which is often a red flag that someone is misusing context), the truth here is that there is simple no other way to contextualize them.
Of course, there are those among us who would be willing to say that St. Gregory the Theologian didn't know what he was talking about with politics and the organization of society; that we have "advanced" beyond such notions of monarchy and empire (which are, after all, tools of oppression and therefore unChristian, right?). For myself, I think all government contains the ability to be a tool of oppression...but I don't see that every form of government has benefits to offset its oppressive tendencies. I may talk a little bit about that in the next post.
There's also that troubling fact that the Fathers seem to think that the very existence of the Roman empire was necessary for the coming of Christ into the world; and from that point of view, the transformation of it into the Christian Roman Empire was not just an accident of history but manifestly the will of God (check out the words for the Doxasticon of St. Cassia that we sing in the ER at Christmas: "When Augustus reigned alone upon earth, the many kingdoms of men came to end: and when Thou wast made man of the pure Virgin, the many gods of idolatry were destroyed. The cities of the world passed under one single rule; and the nations came to believe in one sovereign Godhead. The peoples were enrolled by the decree of Caesar; and we, the faithful, were enrolled in the Name of the Godhead, when Thou, our God, wast made man. Great is Thy mercy: glory to Thee.")
New post soon, I promise.
I should mention that I'm definitely not one of those people who thinks that Orthodoxy implies membership in the GOP, but I also am not one of those who thinks that the Orthodox Church is ok with the movement that uses catch phrases like "social/economic/environmental justice" to justify its control over people's lives. And as I hope to demonstrate in future posts, in America, "conservative" and "liberal" don't imply the kind of differences that we think they do (or that they even ought to).
On this, check out my blog, the "Anti-Democracy Agenda":
www.anti-democracy.com
Cheers
Thank you, Mr. Kofmel! I was delighted to look through your site this morning and found much of it refreshing. I will say, though, that one can imagine much worse governments than democracy--although certain features of democratic or mob rule might be necessary conditions to produce those. Nevertheless it seems to me that experiments in publicly-owned government have been an unmitigated disaster and have brought us nothing but war and economic failure. It is nice to see someone taking a principled (and, surely, unpopular) stand to expose democracy as the moral and economic fraud it is.
Post a Comment