Chapter 2:
Holy War and Spiritual Warfare
Holy War and Spiritual Warfare
Before Urban II’s reign, his predecessor Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) had excommunicated Henry IV three times in an attempt to induce the emperor to capitulate to his demands. In response, the emperor threatened to depose Gregory VII. Eventually, the emperor supported the election of pro-imperial antipope Clement III (r. 1080–1100). The emperor continued to support the sympathetic antipope through Gregory VII’s papacy, through the brief papacy of Urban II’s immediate predecessor Pope Victor III (r. 1086–1087), through Urban’s own papacy, and through the papacy of his successor, Pope Paschal II (r. 1099–1118).
John Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” in Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, 1st ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 2034.
Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” 2031–32.
Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 1.
“In regard to Russian influences, Listitsa mentions that, at that time among Ilyin’s ‘spiritual authorities ... were Pushkin, Gogol, Tyutchev, Dostoyevsky, a. K. Tolstoy, and Theophanes the Recluse.” Thus, see also Yuri Listitsa, “Kratkiy biograficheskiy ocherk,” Naslediye russkogo filosofa I. A. Il’ina (1883–1954), Moscow State University, http://nasledie-iljina.srcc.msu.ru/NIVC-site%20Iljina- ZHIZNEOPISANIE/zhizneopisanie-k-b-o.html.
Feofan Nicodemus, Nevidimai︠a︡ bran’, Universitetskaia tipografiia, Moscow, 1886. This is the earliest reference to the text that I could find.
Lorenzo Scupoli, Nicodemus and Feofan, Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 69.
Theophan, Unseen Warfare, 13.
Ilyin, Resistance, 11, [emphasis in original].
See again Ilyin’s mobilization of the concept in element VIII, above.
The Latin ius carries the dual senses of both “right” and “justice” in the original.
Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 19.
As an essentially Augustinian doctrine of just war, Ilyin’s solution to authorizing war absent the divinely-ordained authority of the tsar is much like that of Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099). It was Urban II who, in 1095, infamously called European Christendom to war against Muslims in the Holy Land with the pronouncement “Deus vult!,” and thus initiated the First Crusade (1096–1099). From the beginning of Urban II’s papacy, he was embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over significant aspects of papal authority.1
It is therefore significant that when Byzantine Emperor Alexius I appealed to Urban II for support against the Seljuk Turks who had taken control of Jerusalem, Urban II called the European princes to war on the authority of God himself, bypassing the Holy Roman Emperor’s temporal authority. Similarly, Ilyin frees the Whites (and himself) from reliance on the contingent authority of the tsar by presenting the idea of “resistance to evil by force and the sword” as an obligation directly to God rather than a duty to the emperor. Ilyin is more abstruse than Urban II, and unlike Urban, he was not trying to snub imperial authority, but to restore it. Nevertheless, he faced the same problem of authorizing coercive force without it. Ilyin’s end is the same: he seeks to mount a war that does not require the authorization of a worldly ruler.
Once again, Eastern Orthodoxy, unlike the Western Church, does not acknowledge a theology of just war. Neither, therefore, does it need to distinguish between just war and holy war. Yet as scholar of religious ethics John Kelsay notes, by the end of the Middle Ages, Catholic theologians “made a strong distinction between just war, construed as war fought for approved political and moral purposes, and holy war, understood to be war fought because of difference in religion. Just war came to be approved, while holy war stood within a class of prohibited acts.2 Kelsay’s historical example is instructive:
It is therefore significant that when Byzantine Emperor Alexius I appealed to Urban II for support against the Seljuk Turks who had taken control of Jerusalem, Urban II called the European princes to war on the authority of God himself, bypassing the Holy Roman Emperor’s temporal authority. Similarly, Ilyin frees the Whites (and himself) from reliance on the contingent authority of the tsar by presenting the idea of “resistance to evil by force and the sword” as an obligation directly to God rather than a duty to the emperor. Ilyin is more abstruse than Urban II, and unlike Urban, he was not trying to snub imperial authority, but to restore it. Nevertheless, he faced the same problem of authorizing coercive force without it. Ilyin’s end is the same: he seeks to mount a war that does not require the authorization of a worldly ruler.
Once again, Eastern Orthodoxy, unlike the Western Church, does not acknowledge a theology of just war. Neither, therefore, does it need to distinguish between just war and holy war. Yet as scholar of religious ethics John Kelsay notes, by the end of the Middle Ages, Catholic theologians “made a strong distinction between just war, construed as war fought for approved political and moral purposes, and holy war, understood to be war fought because of difference in religion. Just war came to be approved, while holy war stood within a class of prohibited acts.2 Kelsay’s historical example is instructive:
At the close of our period [i.e., early Sixteenth Century], Francisco de Vitoria could evaluate the claim of the Spanish emperor with respect to fighting against the indigenous peoples of the New World in such a way as to suggest that difference of religion, in and of itself, could never provide a just cause for war. Nor could the emperor authorize fighting based on a claim that dominion over the natives’ land had been granted him by the Pope.3
The point of comparison here is Ilyin’s claim that the “anti-spiritualism” of the Bolsheviks constituted an evil that must be resisted “by force and the sword.” His definition of good as “spirituality and love” and evil as “anti- spiritual” is very much couched in the terms of religious difference, which were no longer considered justification for war in the Western Church as of the early Sixteenth Century.
Ilyin’s definitions of good and evil, moreover, grant him enough latitude that “spiritual” good can just as easily be defined as faith over atheism as it can as monarchist pre-Revolutionary Russian Orthodoxy over any Christian or even Orthodox alternatives. This is especially important given the 1925 publication date of On Resistance to Evil by Force. The schismatic (and state-sympathetic) “Renovationist” or “Living” Church had begun forming three years earlier, and in 1923, the Soviet authorities sponsored the first Renovationist Council in Moscow, which, among other things, tried Patriarch Tikhon for his opposition to Soviet authorities. In Tikhon’s trial, the Council resolved that he should be defrocked, and the patriarchate itself abolished. This did not directly affect the “Tikhonite” Church, which continued to operate, albeit illegally. However, when Tikhon died in 1925—the year Ilyin published On Resistance to Evil by Force—the Soviet authorities forbade the convocation of a Church Council, which effectively prevented the election of a new patriarch for almost 20 years. Not only was Ilyin, like Urban II, trying to declare a holy war without imperial authority, but he was also trying to do so without papal/patriarchal authority. Thus, the logic of holy war appeals to Ilyin for the very reasons that it appealed to Urban II, which are also the very reasons it was eventually prohibited in the Western Church.
Yet Ilyin’s justification of coercive force is not limited to mere religious differences like those between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam, nor even like the sectarian differences between the Orthodox and the Russian Old Believers. Rather, Ilyin also ascribes any atheistic opposition to his idealized view of symphonia as being in the service of preternatural Evil itself; he projects religious evil onto non-religion. According to Ilyin’s reasoning, in rejecting spirituality (as Russian Orthodox Christianity), the Bolsheviks have aligned themselves with Evil in a war against God. Ilyin refuses to acknowledge any perspective outside his metaphysical paradigm. For this reason, On Resistance to Evil by Force is not only a call to holy war, but it is also an example of what is now popularly described as “spiritual warfare.” The primary significance of the distinction between holy war (that is, a war against other people over religion) and spiritual warfare (that is, a war between spiritual good and evil) lies in the possibility of combining the two, as Ilyin does. A holy war, like Urban II’s First Crusade, is a war between human belligerents over religious difference. Its rationale has to do with disparate truth claims: true god(s), true prophet(s), true doctrine(s), etc., in a battle among real people over avowed religious epistemologies. Spiritual warfare, by contrast, need not offer evidence of any real conflict; it assumes a priori that preternatural Evil is always locked in a celestial battle with the forces of Good. By combining the two, Ilyin both (1) derives his authorization from divine fiat and, (2) literally demonizes his opposition.
Strictly speaking, holy war represents an understanding of just war theology in which coercive force is justified on the basis of religious difference alone—conversion by the sword, as it were. For this reason, it was widely condemned in the Western Church by the end of the Middle Ages. Spiritual warfare, on the other hand, began as part of an ascetic religious thought world in which Christians see themselves as joining directly in the struggle against preternatural evil through prayer and self- denial. However, since its inception in Late Antiquity, spiritual warfare has become a framework for demonizing—often literally—individuals or groups who hold different worldviews, by attributing their refusal to capitulate and convert to the influence of Satan. This use of holy war combined with spiritual warfare is present from the very beginning of Ilyin’s On Resistance to Evil by Force. In his preface, he includes the following dedication:
Ilyin’s definitions of good and evil, moreover, grant him enough latitude that “spiritual” good can just as easily be defined as faith over atheism as it can as monarchist pre-Revolutionary Russian Orthodoxy over any Christian or even Orthodox alternatives. This is especially important given the 1925 publication date of On Resistance to Evil by Force. The schismatic (and state-sympathetic) “Renovationist” or “Living” Church had begun forming three years earlier, and in 1923, the Soviet authorities sponsored the first Renovationist Council in Moscow, which, among other things, tried Patriarch Tikhon for his opposition to Soviet authorities. In Tikhon’s trial, the Council resolved that he should be defrocked, and the patriarchate itself abolished. This did not directly affect the “Tikhonite” Church, which continued to operate, albeit illegally. However, when Tikhon died in 1925—the year Ilyin published On Resistance to Evil by Force—the Soviet authorities forbade the convocation of a Church Council, which effectively prevented the election of a new patriarch for almost 20 years. Not only was Ilyin, like Urban II, trying to declare a holy war without imperial authority, but he was also trying to do so without papal/patriarchal authority. Thus, the logic of holy war appeals to Ilyin for the very reasons that it appealed to Urban II, which are also the very reasons it was eventually prohibited in the Western Church.
Yet Ilyin’s justification of coercive force is not limited to mere religious differences like those between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam, nor even like the sectarian differences between the Orthodox and the Russian Old Believers. Rather, Ilyin also ascribes any atheistic opposition to his idealized view of symphonia as being in the service of preternatural Evil itself; he projects religious evil onto non-religion. According to Ilyin’s reasoning, in rejecting spirituality (as Russian Orthodox Christianity), the Bolsheviks have aligned themselves with Evil in a war against God. Ilyin refuses to acknowledge any perspective outside his metaphysical paradigm. For this reason, On Resistance to Evil by Force is not only a call to holy war, but it is also an example of what is now popularly described as “spiritual warfare.” The primary significance of the distinction between holy war (that is, a war against other people over religion) and spiritual warfare (that is, a war between spiritual good and evil) lies in the possibility of combining the two, as Ilyin does. A holy war, like Urban II’s First Crusade, is a war between human belligerents over religious difference. Its rationale has to do with disparate truth claims: true god(s), true prophet(s), true doctrine(s), etc., in a battle among real people over avowed religious epistemologies. Spiritual warfare, by contrast, need not offer evidence of any real conflict; it assumes a priori that preternatural Evil is always locked in a celestial battle with the forces of Good. By combining the two, Ilyin both (1) derives his authorization from divine fiat and, (2) literally demonizes his opposition.
Strictly speaking, holy war represents an understanding of just war theology in which coercive force is justified on the basis of religious difference alone—conversion by the sword, as it were. For this reason, it was widely condemned in the Western Church by the end of the Middle Ages. Spiritual warfare, on the other hand, began as part of an ascetic religious thought world in which Christians see themselves as joining directly in the struggle against preternatural evil through prayer and self- denial. However, since its inception in Late Antiquity, spiritual warfare has become a framework for demonizing—often literally—individuals or groups who hold different worldviews, by attributing their refusal to capitulate and convert to the influence of Satan. This use of holy war combined with spiritual warfare is present from the very beginning of Ilyin’s On Resistance to Evil by Force. In his preface, he includes the following dedication:
White warriors, bearers of the Orthodox sword, volunteers of the Russian state’s burden! In you there is an Orthodox knightly tradition, you have established your life and death in the ancient and right spirit of service, you have maintained the banners of the Russian warriors of Christian favor. I dedicate these pages to your leaders. Let your sword be a prayer and let your prayer be a sword!4
As such, I argue, in On Resistance to Evil by Force, Ilyin seeks not merely to justify, but also to sacralize violence on the basis of religious difference.
Though the term “spiritual warfare” is probably most familiar in the context of modern Evangelical Protestantism, the beginnings of such thinking can be found in numerous Christian ascetic texts going back to late antiquity. In its original context, it is a spiritual practice, in which prayer, fasting, abstinence, etc., are understood as defenses against the temptations of the Devil and his demons in one’s personal path to salvation. The foundational text in that tradition is Talking Back, by Evagrius of Pontus (345–399 CE). Evagrius instructs desert-dwelling Christian hermits of late antiquity to “talk back” to demons who would tempt them with impure thoughts by reciting short prayers and specific verses from the Bible. A crucial point here is that as an ascetic practice, spiritual warfare did not initially project motives onto the actions of other people, but rather projected demons onto one’s own spiritual weaknesses. Such “warfare” is repeatedly described as internal. By definition, ascetics have withdrawn from worldly affairs, including temporal war. Such laicization of what was originally an ascetic or monastic spiritual practice may be partially to blame for later populist political applications like Ilyin’s.
Ilyin was certainly familiar with the idea of spiritual warfare. If nothing else, he would have known it from his interest in the writings of Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), including, notably, Unseen Warfare (Nevidimaia bran’). As pointed out earlier in this volume, Ilyin was drawn to Theophan’s ideas.5 Theophan wrote a number of original works of enduring interest. Yet Theophan’s Unseen Warfare, which appeared in its first edition by 1886 (if not earlier)6 and was in its fourth edition by 1904,7 is a translation and adaptation of an earlier Greek rendering of a 1589 work entitled Combattimento Spirituale (Spiritual Combat) by a Venetian Catholic priest named Lorenzo Scupoli (c. 1530–1610). Scupoli’s Spiritual Combat is considered a classic of spiritual writing of the Counter-Reformation period, to be compared with the Spiritual Exercises (1548) of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). The Greek translation from which Theophan worked had itself been created in the eighteenth century by an Orthodox monk named Nicodemus, who lived in the famous monastic settlement at Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. It was Nicodemus who had changed the title from Spiritual Combat to Unseen Warfare (Άόρατος Πολεμος) when he combined it with another shorter work by Scupoli and translated it into Greek.8 Nicodemus’ translation was quite faithful to the original, but Theophan made several changes in his Russian translation to bring the prescribed ascetic practices, which had been particularly Catholic, into line with Eastern Orthodoxy.
A clear distinction between holy war and spiritual warfare reveals what Ilyin intends in his notorious and oft-quoted phrase, “Let your sword be a prayer, and let your prayer be a sword!” Beginning with the second part of the quote, “let your prayer be a sword” is consistent with the ancient monastic conception of internalized spiritual warfare; it spiritually (that is, symbolically) weaponizes ascetic practices in an internal struggle with preternatural evil. Ilyin himself concedes the intended internality of the ascetic practice, when he writes:
Though the term “spiritual warfare” is probably most familiar in the context of modern Evangelical Protestantism, the beginnings of such thinking can be found in numerous Christian ascetic texts going back to late antiquity. In its original context, it is a spiritual practice, in which prayer, fasting, abstinence, etc., are understood as defenses against the temptations of the Devil and his demons in one’s personal path to salvation. The foundational text in that tradition is Talking Back, by Evagrius of Pontus (345–399 CE). Evagrius instructs desert-dwelling Christian hermits of late antiquity to “talk back” to demons who would tempt them with impure thoughts by reciting short prayers and specific verses from the Bible. A crucial point here is that as an ascetic practice, spiritual warfare did not initially project motives onto the actions of other people, but rather projected demons onto one’s own spiritual weaknesses. Such “warfare” is repeatedly described as internal. By definition, ascetics have withdrawn from worldly affairs, including temporal war. Such laicization of what was originally an ascetic or monastic spiritual practice may be partially to blame for later populist political applications like Ilyin’s.
Ilyin was certainly familiar with the idea of spiritual warfare. If nothing else, he would have known it from his interest in the writings of Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), including, notably, Unseen Warfare (Nevidimaia bran’). As pointed out earlier in this volume, Ilyin was drawn to Theophan’s ideas.5 Theophan wrote a number of original works of enduring interest. Yet Theophan’s Unseen Warfare, which appeared in its first edition by 1886 (if not earlier)6 and was in its fourth edition by 1904,7 is a translation and adaptation of an earlier Greek rendering of a 1589 work entitled Combattimento Spirituale (Spiritual Combat) by a Venetian Catholic priest named Lorenzo Scupoli (c. 1530–1610). Scupoli’s Spiritual Combat is considered a classic of spiritual writing of the Counter-Reformation period, to be compared with the Spiritual Exercises (1548) of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). The Greek translation from which Theophan worked had itself been created in the eighteenth century by an Orthodox monk named Nicodemus, who lived in the famous monastic settlement at Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. It was Nicodemus who had changed the title from Spiritual Combat to Unseen Warfare (Άόρατος Πολεμος) when he combined it with another shorter work by Scupoli and translated it into Greek.8 Nicodemus’ translation was quite faithful to the original, but Theophan made several changes in his Russian translation to bring the prescribed ascetic practices, which had been particularly Catholic, into line with Eastern Orthodoxy.
A clear distinction between holy war and spiritual warfare reveals what Ilyin intends in his notorious and oft-quoted phrase, “Let your sword be a prayer, and let your prayer be a sword!” Beginning with the second part of the quote, “let your prayer be a sword” is consistent with the ancient monastic conception of internalized spiritual warfare; it spiritually (that is, symbolically) weaponizes ascetic practices in an internal struggle with preternatural evil. Ilyin himself concedes the intended internality of the ascetic practice, when he writes:
nowhere it seems, is this internal resistance to evil developed with such depth and wisdom as that found in the ascetic teachers of Eastern Orthodoxy. Personifying the origins of evil in the image of immaterial demons, Anthony the Great, Mark the Ascetic, Ephrem the Syrian, John of the Ladder and others, teach tireless inner “battle” with “unseen” and “non-violent” “attached evil thoughts,” and John Cassian explicitly points out that “no one” can be deceived by the devil but one who “has chosen to yield to him the consent of his own will.”9
Yet the first part of Ilyin’s dedicatory injunction, “Let your sword be a prayer,” is an unambiguous example of holy war—one that sacralizes real violence against real people by turning killing into a religious obligation. In combining the two as Ilyin does so succinctly yet so thoroughly in his preface to On Resistance to Evil by Force, he is not merely prescribing an ascetic practice for resisting temptation on an individual soul’s path to salvation, nor is he merely calling for a holy war. Rather, by externalizing the internal battle of ascetic spiritual warfare and projecting preternatural evil onto his human adversaries, he literally makes them into “enemies of God.”10 Moreover, because God, as the source of justice, is ipso facto incapable of acting unjustly, Ilyin not only justifies, but also valorizes violence and war against evil in the name of religion. His combination of spiritual warfare and holy war drags non-religious and non-Orthodox epistemologies alike onto the fields of an Armageddon of his own making.
The utility of spiritual warfare in Ilyin’s poisonous combination—though perhaps not as apparent—is even more disturbing. Ilyin not only justifies, but also valorizes violence against Evil in the name of religion. Spiritual warfare pertains to right or justice in war (ius in bello),11 which dictates conduct once war has begun. In modern secular theories of just war, it is the latter set of principles of right or justice in war that defines war crimes as “unjust.” Yet whereas one is presumably concerned with the just treatment of non-combatants, excessive cruelty, terms for surrender, etc. in secular theories of right or justice in war, the notion of spiritual warfare relieves these obligations by dehumanizing one’s adversaries. One could hardly be expected to concern oneself with the possibility of unjust treatment of demonic forces. As Ilyin himself poses the problem, “If ‘mankind’ and the ‘evil in it’ are not the same, then is it not possible to act on a person so that this influence is beneficially transmitted precisely to the ‘evil’ that resides in him?”12 By combining holy war and spiritual warfare, Ilyin justifies the monarchist Whites and condemns the Soviet Reds in a perfect closed loop, with a zero sum. Moreover, in his sloganeering about swords and prayers, Ilyin blatantly contradicts his attempt to distinguish his ideas about “resistance to evil by force and the sword” from holy war, which sacralizes violence.
As mentioned above, much of the significance of a Russian Orthodox doctrine of just war lies in the fact that the concept does not originate with Ivan Ilyin, nor is it limited to his writings. Insofar as Ilyin’s philosophy consists of a religious justification of violence and authoritarianism, it is not Ilyin’s. This has bearing on scholarship and political commentary that seeks to situate Ilyin’s thought in Russian illiberal politics. Ilyin’s On Resistance to Evil by Force is paradigmatic, but not unique. It is not Ilyin’s philosophy with which we should be concerned, but rather that philosophical- theological argument that Ilyin seeks to emulate. In the section that follows, I retrace the recent conversation about Ilyin’s contemporary influence in Russia and existing analyses of On Resistance to Evil by Force.
The utility of spiritual warfare in Ilyin’s poisonous combination—though perhaps not as apparent—is even more disturbing. Ilyin not only justifies, but also valorizes violence against Evil in the name of religion. Spiritual warfare pertains to right or justice in war (ius in bello),11 which dictates conduct once war has begun. In modern secular theories of just war, it is the latter set of principles of right or justice in war that defines war crimes as “unjust.” Yet whereas one is presumably concerned with the just treatment of non-combatants, excessive cruelty, terms for surrender, etc. in secular theories of right or justice in war, the notion of spiritual warfare relieves these obligations by dehumanizing one’s adversaries. One could hardly be expected to concern oneself with the possibility of unjust treatment of demonic forces. As Ilyin himself poses the problem, “If ‘mankind’ and the ‘evil in it’ are not the same, then is it not possible to act on a person so that this influence is beneficially transmitted precisely to the ‘evil’ that resides in him?”12 By combining holy war and spiritual warfare, Ilyin justifies the monarchist Whites and condemns the Soviet Reds in a perfect closed loop, with a zero sum. Moreover, in his sloganeering about swords and prayers, Ilyin blatantly contradicts his attempt to distinguish his ideas about “resistance to evil by force and the sword” from holy war, which sacralizes violence.
As mentioned above, much of the significance of a Russian Orthodox doctrine of just war lies in the fact that the concept does not originate with Ivan Ilyin, nor is it limited to his writings. Insofar as Ilyin’s philosophy consists of a religious justification of violence and authoritarianism, it is not Ilyin’s. This has bearing on scholarship and political commentary that seeks to situate Ilyin’s thought in Russian illiberal politics. Ilyin’s On Resistance to Evil by Force is paradigmatic, but not unique. It is not Ilyin’s philosophy with which we should be concerned, but rather that philosophical- theological argument that Ilyin seeks to emulate. In the section that follows, I retrace the recent conversation about Ilyin’s contemporary influence in Russia and existing analyses of On Resistance to Evil by Force.
[1] Before Urban II’s reign, his predecessor Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) had excommunicated Henry IV three times in an attempt to induce the emperor to capitulate to his demands. In response, the emperor threatened to depose Gregory VII. Eventually, the emperor supported the election of pro-imperial antipope Clement III (r. 1080–1100). The emperor continued to support the sympathetic antipope through Gregory VII’s papacy, through the brief papacy of Urban II’s immediate predecessor Pope Victor III (r. 1086–1087), through Urban’s own papacy, and through the papacy of his successor, Pope Paschal II (r. 1099–1118).
[2] John Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” in Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, 1st ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 2034.
[3] Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” 2031–32.
[4] Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 1.
[5] “In regard to Russian influences, Listitsa mentions that, at that time among Ilyin’s ‘spiritual authorities ... were Pushkin, Gogol, Tyutchev, Dostoyevsky, a. K. Tolstoy, and Theophanes the Recluse.” Thus, see also Yuri Listitsa, “Kratkiy biograficheskiy ocherk,” Naslediye russkogo filosofa I. A. Il’ina (1883–1954), Moscow State University, http://nasledie-iljina.srcc.msu.ru/NIVC-site%20Iljina- ZHIZNEOPISANIE/zhizneopisanie-k-b-o.html.
[6] Feofan Nicodemus, Nevidimai︠a︡ bran’, Universitetskaia tipografiia, Moscow, 1886. This is the earliest reference to the text that I could find.
[7] Lorenzo Scupoli, Nicodemus and Feofan, Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 69.
[8] Theophan, Unseen Warfare, 13.
[9] Ilyin, Resistance, 11, [emphasis in original].
[10] See again Ilyin’s mobilization of the concept in element VIII, above.
[11] The Latin ius carries the dual senses of both “right” and “justice” in the original.
[12] Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 19.
[2] John Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” in Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, 1st ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 2034.
[3] Kelsay, “War (Just War, Holy War),” 2031–32.
[4] Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 1.
[5] “In regard to Russian influences, Listitsa mentions that, at that time among Ilyin’s ‘spiritual authorities ... were Pushkin, Gogol, Tyutchev, Dostoyevsky, a. K. Tolstoy, and Theophanes the Recluse.” Thus, see also Yuri Listitsa, “Kratkiy biograficheskiy ocherk,” Naslediye russkogo filosofa I. A. Il’ina (1883–1954), Moscow State University, http://nasledie-iljina.srcc.msu.ru/NIVC-site%20Iljina- ZHIZNEOPISANIE/zhizneopisanie-k-b-o.html.
[6] Feofan Nicodemus, Nevidimai︠a︡ bran’, Universitetskaia tipografiia, Moscow, 1886. This is the earliest reference to the text that I could find.
[7] Lorenzo Scupoli, Nicodemus and Feofan, Unseen Warfare: The Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 69.
[8] Theophan, Unseen Warfare, 13.
[9] Ilyin, Resistance, 11, [emphasis in original].
[10] See again Ilyin’s mobilization of the concept in element VIII, above.
[11] The Latin ius carries the dual senses of both “right” and “justice” in the original.
[12] Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force, 19.
