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.

However, not being able to understand Solovyov's teaching on the unity of church and state, Anthony was well versed in the fact that all papism is based precisely on the identity of spiritual and secular power. After all, in reality and historically, the popes have always and everywhere dreamed of extending their power, in addition to the spiritual, also to the entire secular life of mankind. Vl. Solovyov understood perfectly well that the existing relations between church and state, full of all sorts of shortcomings and outright ugliness, should be guided by a more spiritual and more ideal understanding of the matter. But what he did not understand at all was that papism was his blind infatuation, his romantic utopia, and his uncritical approach to whole periods of European human history. And Anthony understood this best of all, and here he was helped by a much more sober and critical assessment of Roman Catholicism. He imagined the Catholic teaching on the infallibility of the Pope only as a pitiful replacement of the one and truly divine leader of the Church by an ordinary sinful man. And in general, Anthony believes that a huge exaggeration of the excessively humanistic beliefs of Vl. Solovyov is the result of his loss of the Christian feeling of love[343]. According to Antony, it turns out that if Vl. Solovyov puts the public in the foreground, then he does not need such love, which would be based on concepts higher than human ones. Such love, of course, loses all its content for Anthony and becomes only an impersonal humanism.

Finally, it is worth quoting another important judgment: "All those reproaches with which Solovyov heaps upon our Church and our confession of faith are applied not to the Church, but to the religious life of society." And in general, the book analysed by Anthony seems to him to be an "ugly, extreme deviation"[345] from the right path in Russian society.

It is possible that Vl. Solovyov once responded to this criticism from Antony. But the materials that we have at our disposal do not contain such an answer. However, there is something else. The fact is that in the following year, 1891, an article by Vl. Solovyov's "On Forgeries" (VI, 327-340), in which he, without at all having Anthony in mind, criticizes various kinds of incorrect approaches to Orthodoxy among many thinkers, calling these views "forgeries." And it was to this article that Anthony replied with a special article, which he called "Forgeries of Vl. Solovyov"[346]. The article is written in simple language, although with a lot of quotations from the New Testament. Her thoughts boil down to the following.

First of all, he attacks the central idea of Solovyov's views, which he rightly calls the idea of the kingdom of God. Indeed, for Vl. Solovyov of that period, this idea occupies a central place. And, in spite of a certain kind of one-sidedness, Anthony quite correctly brings to the fore in this idea its social-state character. According to Anthony, Vl. According to Solovyov, it turns out that the Kingdom of God exists, but there is no real God. After all, the Christian teaching about the kingdom of God is based on the teaching about love, that is, about love for God and love for our neighbors. Where is this teaching about love in Vl. Solovyov? Anthony cites the following very characteristic quote: "True and genuine Christianity is neither dogma, nor hierarchy, nor worship, nor morality, but the life-giving spirit of Christ... the spirit embodied in the religious forms and institutions that form the earthly Church"[347]. And indeed, if we seriously draw all the demarcations between the kingdom of God and the neighboring regions, it becomes incomprehensible what kind of "spirit" this "spirit" by which the kingdom of God lives. Anthony simply believes that this is nothing more than a non-religious and only legal organization. The Gospel, he says, is relegated "to the category of ordinary, purely conventional systems of social-state organization." He asserts that the divine teaching about the kingdom of God "does not have a legal, formal character at all, but understands in this concept the moral content of Christianity" [349]. And in this regard, it should be noted that from the point of view of Orthodoxy, he is apparently quite right. Vl. Solovyov, in essence, of course, did not even think of reducing the Church to a juridical organization. However, in those of his works that Anthony has in mind, Vl. Solovyov is indeed too carried away by social ideas, which were almost entirely absent in the official theology of that time. And in his criticism of this enthusiasm, Anthony is undoubtedly right, if, of course, we stand on his point of view and on the principled position of Orthodox theology in general. This is what the orthodox were officially supposed to say, finding in the theology of Vl. Solovyov is only "forgeries full of gross arbitrariness"[350].

As a result, Anthony in the teaching of Vl. Solovyov does not see any call to a new life about the Kingdom of God, but only finds a regulating principle for a purely earthly and completely secular life: "The Kingdom of God, or the Church, according to V. S. Solovyov, must have all special political functions and progress, that is, wage legal wars, collect excise taxes, punish and reward. Probably, it also assumes improved prostitution from the sanitary point of view, better regulated gambling and other necessary companions of socio-political culture? For our part, we would advise our politician one thing: to hide St. Catherine as far as possible for the sake of consistency. Scripture and to mention it as rarely as possible. This will be consistent not only for the full use of the Roman hierarchy, dear to his heart, but also as a kind of precaution so that readers do not call his system irreligious."

Such a characterization, in spite of all its correctness from the orthodox point of view, should not confuse the historian of Russian thought, who is obliged not to stand on the positions of Vl. Solovyov and not on the positions of the official theology of that time, but exclusively on the positions of fidelity to historical facts. Basically, Vl. Solovyov does not defend the understanding of the Church and the Kingdom of God as mere legal organizations, but he is undoubtedly carried away by the social side of the matter, and this passion of his is quite rightly criticized by Anthony. In the same way, the latter, who justly criticizes Vl. Solovyov in this point is completely wrong in her ignorance of Solovyov's philosophy as a whole. And as an example of a more business-like approach to the essence of the issue, we cited the work of P. Y. Svetlov[352].

4. P. Y. Svetlov. P. Y. Svetlov is based not only on the French books of Vl. Solovyov, but also on those of his works which by the time of Anthony's speech had long been published and which it would not be bad for the latter to know. First of all, it costs nothing for P. Y. Svetlov to point out the many statements of Vl. Solovyov, which completely contradict the juridical understanding of the Church and the Kingdom of God. For example, in his "Spiritual Foundations of Life" he wrote: "The same faith in the Kingdom of God does not allow us to be satisfied with the present reality. For in this reality there is still unrighteousness, strife, and calamity; But the Kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit"[353]. In the "Readings on God-manhood" we read: "Being the body of Christ, the Church is not yet His glorified, wholly deified body. The present earthly existence of the Church corresponds to the body of Jesus during his earthly life (before the resurrection), a body which, although it manifested miraculous qualities in particular cases (which are now inherent in the Church), is in general a mortal, material body, not free from all the infirmities and sufferings of the flesh, for all the infirmities and sufferings of human nature are accepted by Christ; but just as in Christ all that is weak and earthly is swallowed up in the resurrection of the spiritual body, so must it be in the Church, His universal body, when it has reached its fullness"[354]. In the work "The Great Controversy and Christian Politics" we read: "As the true body of the God-Man Christ, the Church must be, like Him, an unmerged and inseparable combination of the Divine and the human. In Christ, his human, rational will, was in everything and to the end subject to the will of the Father. Through this feat of self-denial, he subdues his material nature, heals, transforms and resurrects it in a new spiritual form. In the same way, in the Church, the holiness of God, accepted by the will and reason of mankind, through the feat of self-denial of people and nations, must be carried out into the entire composition of humanity, into all its natural life, and through this into the life of the whole world to its healing, transfiguration and resurrection."