However, some of this controversy still deserves mention. First of all, W. Goethe was not only a Catholic cleric, but also a most learned historian of the Church, who printed many volumes from this area before his conversion to Orthodoxy. This great and deeply specialized scholarship allowed him to argue from a much more thorough historical position. Vl. Solovyov was undoubtedly a great polymath in the field of church history. But, apparently, W. Goethe had many advantages in this respect. It cost him nothing to cite a mass of irrefutable historical facts testifying to the long-standing Caesar-papist tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as to characterize Byzantine Orthodoxy in an anti-papist spirit, citing the indisputable facts of the emergence of the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch or Jerusalem on the basis of completely equal and fraternal mutually located autocephalous churches, as opposed to papist absolutism.

W. Goethe cites numerous examples of the persecution of dissidents in Catholicism, including inquisitorial fanaticism, the burning of heretics and the "Index of Forbidden Books", in relation to which Russian practice incomparably more often and more deeply pursued freedom of faith. Persecution here, according to W. Goethe, was basically political rather than religious. And if Vl. Solovyov finds in the thousand-year-old Roman Catholicism the triumph of religious freedom, then the scholar-historian of the church W. Goethe did not cost anything to destroy the naïve conviction of Vl. Solovyov, who either did not know the relevant historical facts, or deliberately ignored them.

In the opinion of this author, Vl. Solovyov resolutely recognized the freedom of conscience of all opponents of Russian Orthodoxy, including not only some shundists, Uniates, but even notorious anarchists, who preached the literal destruction of everything that existed and had absolutely no positive ideals. And only, you see, the Holy Synod and the Russian Emperor could not defend the Orthodox faith, since this defense, they say, contradicted the freedom of conscience.

The article by W. Goethe which we have quoted undoubtedly contains some purely newspaper arguments, quite external and unspeakable. On the whole, however, this article is dictated not only by great historical scholarship, but also by a deeply convinced and pronounced church-historical pathos. And it must be said that with all due respect to the lofty aspirations and dreams of Vl. Solovyov, after reading this kind of critical analysis, has to agree in many respects with his opponents and admit that the philosophical depth of his views sometimes did not in the least interfere with his too hasty, if not downright frivolous assertions.

2. Criticism of Vl. Solovyov from the point of view of canon law. Later, and this is also very soon, we also find in literature criticism of the specifically theocratic views of Vl. Solovyov.

In his article "The Theocratic and Hierocratic Views of Vladimir Solovyov and Fyodor Dostoevsky Before the Court of Canon Law of the Orthodox Church," Solovyov's understanding of Christian theocracy is criticized in detail and in detail. The author pays much less attention to the hierocratic views of F. M. Dostoevsky, which we will not talk about here.

Vl. Solovyov believes that the church has the legal (divine) right to prevail in the state as an organ of divine-human power. In form, this authority is a theocracy, since the ecclesiastical authority, and from it any other, is the conductor of divine power. He sees the goal of theocracy "in the perfect reciprocity of the free divine-human union, not in the fullness of power, but in the fullness of love" (VI, 633), in the realization of "the complete internal and external reunion of heaven and earth, the free union of the Creator with creation." A necessary consequence of the establishment of a worldwide Christian theocracy, the foundation of which was Jesus Christ, he considers the destruction of independent earthly power and its subordination to the source of all authority, the God-man.

The author of the article examines in detail the Old Testament teaching on theocracy and those passages from the Gospel on which Vl. Solovyov to prove his views. "Mistakes of Vl. Solovyov," the critic writes, "depend on his confusion of the eternal kingdom of Christ as the Ruler of the world (in the broad sense of the word) and His temporal kingdom as the Head of the grace-filled spiritual kingdom" [335]. As a result of the incorrect, from the author's point of view, understanding of the power of Vl. Solovyov admits several contradictions in his teaching. On the one hand, he makes the apostles the bearers and exponents of the divine-human power, and on the other hand, it is already a question of the power of priests, kings and prophets (the triune way of divine-human unity), which Christ endows them with from the fullness of his autocracy. However, a little later, in the brochure "The Russian Idea" by Vl. Solovyov suddenly writes that only the Apostle Peter receives "the fullness of power" and "the keys of the kingdom", but this provision, in the opinion of the author of the article in question, is not sufficiently substantiated and runs counter to the previous thoughts of the philosopher.

In addition to the above contradictions, the author points out a number of discrepancies in the works of the philosopher with the dogmatic provisions of canonical Orthodoxy. Asserting that Christ established a Christian theocracy on earth, Vl. Solovyov transfers many of the principles of the Old Testament theocracy to the New Testament kingdom. Thus, he sees not only the spiritual power of Christ on earth, but also the royal and prophetic power. Further, firstly, the pagan king, in the philosopher's opinion, becomes a real king only in Christianity, and earthly power receives a true foundation. Secondly, the church has a center of unity outside the state and above it. Thirdly, the philosopher affirms unity in faith in order to preserve the unity of the universal church and demands the external unification of the churches under the authority of the high priest, which would precede their internal unification. In his teaching on theocracy, Vl. Solovyov devotes a great deal of space to the historical role of the new prophets, whom he calls "free public figures" and "free planners of the social movement." On behalf of canonical Orthodoxy, the author argues that the church and the state are two independent legal bodies. As a result of a difficult struggle, the pagan state recognized the rights of the church, but did not disappear, but became nearby. In this way, the pagan sovereign became a Christian king. The Christian church did not need a supreme high priest who would unite "the various national clergy into one universal body." There is no need for an earthly universal father, just as there is no need for an outward union of the churches, for there is no national difference for the brethren in Christ, and the true freedom of the church is conditioned by the freedom of each member of the church. The ideal of a God-like life is indicated by Jesus Christ, and therefore the Church does not know prophets with the calling that Vl. Solovyov.

The author of the article concludes: "We see that Solovyov is completely wrong in asserting his theocratic system on the words of the Gospel; we have also shown that the universal theocracy he portrays does not agree with the norms of church life that have been approved by the Ecumenical Councils, and consequently Solovyov pronounces a sentence on himself as a false prophet." In any case, the sentence that Vl. Solovyov, not he himself, but the author of this article, does not become more lenient because the author nevertheless singles out a number of general propositions of Vl. Solovyov, with whom he agreed. However, such provisions as the independence of state power from spiritual power or the subordination of civil society to spiritual society are not, in fact, Solovyov's proper and thus do not mitigate criticism. We know that at the time of the publication of The History and Future of Theocracy, the doctrine of universal theocracy had not yet acquired its complete form. Being much more of a philosopher than a theologian, Vl. Solovyov dreamed of creating his own theocratic doctrine, which, being the creation of his brilliant mind and romantic dream, could not be a strict repetition of the dogmatic tenets of Orthodoxy, whose representatives did not abandon their attacks on his teaching. The harsh criticism and possible unrealizability of many of the provisions of Solovyov's theory of universal theocracy, it seems to us, do not detract from the nobility of its original and basic idea. However, not all nobility is necessarily justified historically, and not all nobility appears in a logically irreproachable form. The study of N-v is undoubtedly a veritable pogrom of the entire theocratic system of Vl. Solovyov. But this theocratic system is still imbued with the spirit of freedom and dreams of universal human unity.

3. Anthony (Khrapovitsky). As a matter of fact, we find the same pogrom of Solovyov's ecclesiastical views in the article by Anthony (Khrapovitsky) "The Superiority of Orthodoxy over the Teaching of Papism in Its Exposition by Vl. Solovyov"[338]. It is only necessary to say that the secular reader will be very disappointed in this article in view of the complete absence of philosophical or historical research in it and in view of the appeal of this article exclusively to naïve believers and hearts unconditionally devoted to Orthodoxy. Anthony writes eloquently, but, unfortunately, for a secular person, there is not much convincing and obvious material here. Anthony's position is impregnable and final. Vl. Solovyov, in the author's opinion, "fell into that terrible pit of errors, into which every zealot of the Church naturally falls, not according to reason"[339]. It should be noted that Anthony here has in mind exclusively the work "Russia and the Universal Church", which was published in French in 1889 and was unknown to anyone in Russian society. For this reason, Antony's objections may have made a strange and unexpected impression on many thinking people of the time.

The essence of the matter is that Vl. In this work, Solovyov places a very high emphasis on the social principle and, understanding society as the state, demands that the state and the church be considered as a single whole, although they are different in their goals. However, it must be said that Anthony is somewhat carried away. Vl. Solovyov never and nowhere spoke of the primacy of the state or the church, on the contrary, only the union of the high priest, the tsar and the prophet can ensure the right life of all mankind. The church is not at all subordinate to the state, but the state is not subordinate to the church either. These are two spiritually united organisms. In contrast to this, Anthony believes that the tasks of the church and the state are so different that there can be no question of their primacy over each other. The state is a legal sphere that can and must act on people by pure coercion. The Church, on the contrary, is a union of people in one love for Christ. With this, we would say, a kind of dualistic view of church and state, it cost Anthony nothing to subject the views of Vl. Solovyov very thorough and harsh criticism. And it seems that Anthony is right in many respects here. But if we take Vl. Solovyov as a whole, then no dualistic understanding of his views is inadmissible. And then it turns out that the disputing parties simply do not have a common language.

In our opinion, he understands the unity of church and state perfectly, as it should be, from the point of view of the believing heart. For Antony, such an ideal unity seems in the end also desirable, but in fact too utopian. Instead, it has to oppose church and state much more than it was with Vl. Solovyov. On the other hand, anyone can say that instead of Solovyov's utopianism, Anthony comes much closer to the historical practice of the state and church spheres.

It goes without saying that Solovyov's papism also appears to Anthony as nothing more than a logical contradiction arising from the identification of church and state. And then Vl. Solovyov would have argued in vain that he never proceeded from the identification of church and state. But the former is so convinced of the indisputable difference between these two historical regions that any spiritual unity between them could appear to him only as their complete identification.