Quote for Today on Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Caesar and God and the Human Soul

If we listen carefully to [some of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's] statements, they are based on the Gospel’s distinction between God’s realm and Caesar’s realm and the insistence that each realm has its proper role. Surprisingly, Solzhenitsyn uses the distinction of two realms in order to lower people’s expectations about the role of the state (Caesar’s realm) in people’s lives and to allow the higher, spiritual realm of God and the soul to flourish in conditions of political freedom. Under conditions of limited state power and responsible freedom, a vibrant Christian culture can develop—promoting faith, family, art, private property, and love of nature–without being destroyed by secular political ideologies. Thus, Solzhenitsyn opposes both totalitarianism and theocracy because they undermine responsible political freedom allied with a vibrant Christian culture.

• Robert P. Kraynak, Solzhenitsyn and the Battle for the Human Soul in First Things