Oct 16, 2023 06:25 AM
(This post was last modified: Oct 16, 2023 06:29 AM by C C.)
https://providencemag.com/2023/10/katech...deception/
EXCERPTS: Why did Russia launch the aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022? Certainly not because of an existential need. [...] Russia does not need supremacy over Ukraine for economic reasons either.
The primary factors in Russian aggression are not of a directly material nature. In geopolitical terms, Russia wishes to subjugate its neighbors [...] These tendencies in culture and politics are united by the term “Russian world.”
But the “Russian world” as a concept has its otherworldly side, and we could call it — as Russian politicians and priests often do — “Holy Rus.’” It represents the spiritual dimension of the Russian state, and at the same time offers deep foundations for Russian aggression against Ukraine and the political-ideological rupture with Western countries.
Although many emphasize the concept of Moscow as the “Third Rome” in the foundations of the ideological landscape that gave birth to the large parts Russian political and intellectual elite, it contains only a partial explanation of the initiation of the war.
According to this view, after Rome in the Catholic-Orthodox schism lost the right to be considered the center of Christianity, that right was transferred to Constantinople. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, as Philotheus of Pskov wrote in 1511 — Moscow became “the third Rome.”
In order to understand the main spiritual root of contemporary Russian aggression in the light of the idea of the “Holy Rus,’” it is necessary to understand that the Russian political (and religious) leadership does not see this war as a conflict with Ukraine, but with the entire West, symbolized by NATO.
That idea is very useful in terms of propaganda and daily politics because it seemingly turns Russia from an aggressor into a victim. But at the same time, such a view actually originates from an idea whose forefather was Philotheus from Pskov, and today it is directly represented by Patriarch Kirill and philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, while Russian state leaders such as Vladimir Putin or Dmitry Medvedev allude to it in their statements.
“This is not a war with Ukraine. This is a conflict with globalism as a complete planetary phenomenon,” wrote Dugin at the very beginning of the invasion, while patriarch Kirill noted that the war “has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance.”
The mentioned duo can serve as a metaphor for the relationship of a significant part of the Russian secular and spiritual elite have with the war because, despite their differences — Kirill is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Dugin an, esoteric philosopher with probably more influence in the West than in his native land — they draw inspiration from the same source. Although we sometimes hear that the Russian political elite has a Messianic complex...
[...] I believe it is the idea that Russia does not have a messianic, but rather a katechonic role in the history of the world.
Who or what is a katechon? According to Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, he is an unidentified restrainer who delays the antichrist’s worldly supremacy until the end of history, when Christ will defeat him: “(…) the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present until he is removed from the scene. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming.” (2 Thess 7-8)
Many early church fathers believed that the Roman Empire was the katechon, and some also believed that the katechon was the Church itself. However, interest in this spiritual concept fell into abeyance in the West over time, only to survive in two completely different contexts: in Russian Orthodoxy and the European “conservative revolution” between the world wars.
The idea according to which Russia is that katechon, although obscure in the West, has long pervaded certain parts of the Russian intelligentsia. The best example of this is advocated today by Russian clergy who directly inherited the idea from their tsarist antecedents, but also by philosophers like Dugin through 20th-century intellectuals often associated with Nazism, like Carl Schmitt. These two, until recently separate lines of development of the term katechon, in the 21st century merged in the imperial ideology of Putin’s Russia.
Dugin has oftentimes spoken about various aspects of Russian identity as katechon.
[...] Many naïve Western conservatives fell for Putin’s branding of Russia as a defender of what he himself calls the “traditional values.” When they look at the mainstream politics, media, culture, and corporations of the modern West, they too see “outright Satanism.”
But even though, at least on a declarative level, he recognizes the problems that exist in the West, Putin is nowhere near being the solution. Putin’s “traditional values” are not Christian traditional values, but the values of some other tradition.
Or, let’s go one step further, if one kind of “culture of death” dominates in the West, Putin’s Russia only offers another kind of “culture of death” instead.
What Western conservatives often forget is that Russian mainstream politics is in its essence just as anti-Christian as Western politics, but in a different way. Its moralistic vision, according to which the community they belong to has the right to dominate others, by all means, including the mass murder of innocents, does not reflect real Christianity, but implies a type of paganism different from the current Western post-Christianity... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Why did Russia launch the aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022? Certainly not because of an existential need. [...] Russia does not need supremacy over Ukraine for economic reasons either.
The primary factors in Russian aggression are not of a directly material nature. In geopolitical terms, Russia wishes to subjugate its neighbors [...] These tendencies in culture and politics are united by the term “Russian world.”
But the “Russian world” as a concept has its otherworldly side, and we could call it — as Russian politicians and priests often do — “Holy Rus.’” It represents the spiritual dimension of the Russian state, and at the same time offers deep foundations for Russian aggression against Ukraine and the political-ideological rupture with Western countries.
Although many emphasize the concept of Moscow as the “Third Rome” in the foundations of the ideological landscape that gave birth to the large parts Russian political and intellectual elite, it contains only a partial explanation of the initiation of the war.
According to this view, after Rome in the Catholic-Orthodox schism lost the right to be considered the center of Christianity, that right was transferred to Constantinople. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, as Philotheus of Pskov wrote in 1511 — Moscow became “the third Rome.”
In order to understand the main spiritual root of contemporary Russian aggression in the light of the idea of the “Holy Rus,’” it is necessary to understand that the Russian political (and religious) leadership does not see this war as a conflict with Ukraine, but with the entire West, symbolized by NATO.
That idea is very useful in terms of propaganda and daily politics because it seemingly turns Russia from an aggressor into a victim. But at the same time, such a view actually originates from an idea whose forefather was Philotheus from Pskov, and today it is directly represented by Patriarch Kirill and philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, while Russian state leaders such as Vladimir Putin or Dmitry Medvedev allude to it in their statements.
“This is not a war with Ukraine. This is a conflict with globalism as a complete planetary phenomenon,” wrote Dugin at the very beginning of the invasion, while patriarch Kirill noted that the war “has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance.”
The mentioned duo can serve as a metaphor for the relationship of a significant part of the Russian secular and spiritual elite have with the war because, despite their differences — Kirill is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Dugin an, esoteric philosopher with probably more influence in the West than in his native land — they draw inspiration from the same source. Although we sometimes hear that the Russian political elite has a Messianic complex...
[...] I believe it is the idea that Russia does not have a messianic, but rather a katechonic role in the history of the world.
Who or what is a katechon? According to Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, he is an unidentified restrainer who delays the antichrist’s worldly supremacy until the end of history, when Christ will defeat him: “(…) the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present until he is removed from the scene. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming.” (2 Thess 7-8)
Many early church fathers believed that the Roman Empire was the katechon, and some also believed that the katechon was the Church itself. However, interest in this spiritual concept fell into abeyance in the West over time, only to survive in two completely different contexts: in Russian Orthodoxy and the European “conservative revolution” between the world wars.
The idea according to which Russia is that katechon, although obscure in the West, has long pervaded certain parts of the Russian intelligentsia. The best example of this is advocated today by Russian clergy who directly inherited the idea from their tsarist antecedents, but also by philosophers like Dugin through 20th-century intellectuals often associated with Nazism, like Carl Schmitt. These two, until recently separate lines of development of the term katechon, in the 21st century merged in the imperial ideology of Putin’s Russia.
Dugin has oftentimes spoken about various aspects of Russian identity as katechon.
[...] Many naïve Western conservatives fell for Putin’s branding of Russia as a defender of what he himself calls the “traditional values.” When they look at the mainstream politics, media, culture, and corporations of the modern West, they too see “outright Satanism.”
But even though, at least on a declarative level, he recognizes the problems that exist in the West, Putin is nowhere near being the solution. Putin’s “traditional values” are not Christian traditional values, but the values of some other tradition.
Or, let’s go one step further, if one kind of “culture of death” dominates in the West, Putin’s Russia only offers another kind of “culture of death” instead.
What Western conservatives often forget is that Russian mainstream politics is in its essence just as anti-Christian as Western politics, but in a different way. Its moralistic vision, according to which the community they belong to has the right to dominate others, by all means, including the mass murder of innocents, does not reflect real Christianity, but implies a type of paganism different from the current Western post-Christianity... (MORE - missing details)