N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
Quenchers of the Spirit
(Gasiteli Dukha)
by Nicholas Alexandrovich Berdyaev
When the ultra-Orthodox "Religio-Philosophic Library", at the head
of which stands such a pillar of Orthodoxy as M. A. Novoselov, brought
to light the now notorious and acknowledgedly heretical book of
the schema-monk priest Antonii Bulatovich "Apologia of Faith in
the Name of God and in the Name of Jesus", we in the editor's preface
then peruse the pathetic words: "Like the tremour of an earthquake,
throughout all the universal Church, from the South to the North,
from the East and to the West has spread indignation, when some
frivolous-minded and propped-up by rationalism monks dared to infringe
upon this nerve of the Church, into which all the other nerves collect,
-- upon this dogma, in the denial of which constitutes the denial
of all dogmas, -- upon this holy thing, which lies at the basis
of all churchly holy-things. Even if there were nothing more, besides
this tremour of the year 1912, then it would be quite sufficient,
like a cardboard play- house, to cast down the edifice of the blasphemers
of the Church, who speak about its dying, about its public expense,
about its stagnation, about its paralysis. The Church is too great,
to be affected by trifles. Its immovability -- is a great immovability,
and is not death. But when an attempt on it provokes it to the quick
-- it reveals its might, it shudders. Thus now also it has shuddered,
when from every end -- from the remote provincial monasteries and
from the capitals -- from half-literate ascetics and from educated
working men there burst from the bosom a general cry of indignation
and there blazed an unanimous desire to enter in defense for the
most precious possession of a believing heart. Apostates of the
Church needed a sign -- let them be silent: here it is! But where
is the centre of this tremour? Indeed where, but in a primal stronghold
of Orthodoxy? Where however, but in this historically-unprecedented
and inimitable realm of monks, which dwell contrary to the laws
of earthly realms. On Athos there is neither tilling nor smoke,
nor smokeless gun-powder, and the transgressing citizen of it they
punish not with prisons, but by deprivation of the fragrant smoke
of the spiritual fatherland... It is cold in the cultural world.
The impervious stony crust of rationalism overlays the ocean of
grace everywhere. But eternally there boils in the appenage of the
MostHoly and All-Pure Mother of God this scorching and heated lava,
without which mankind would be frozen stiff. Such a spiritual eruption,
in line with others, appeared in 1912. The term for it, if it be
permissible to anticipate the history to be written in future, --
might term it: "The Year of the Athos Disputes about the Name Jesus".
It has been a while since then, when these words were written,
and already history has cruelly made mockery over them. This year
in truth seemed significant for the Orthodox Church.
In every issue of the newspapers they write about the "Name-praisers"
("Imeneslavtsi") and "Name-contemners" ("Imenebortsi"), about
the starets-elder Illarion, about the schema-monk priest Antonii
Bulatovich, about the tremourings at Athos, about the measures
of the Holy Synod against the new "heresy", about the terrors,
from which all the blood seethes with indignation. Would the author
of the quoted preface repeat his few rhetorical words, or would
the events of recent times be too great an effort also for his
Orthodox romanticism? Who are these several frivolous-minded and
propped-up by rationalism monks", having dared to infringe upon
the holy Name of Jesus? This is the Holy Synod and the Patriarchs,
the Church Russian and the Church of Constantinople, having condemned
in very harsh form "Name- praising", as a God-blaspheming heresy.
Upon Athos there is smell "with the smoke of gunpowder" and, through
"the laws of the earthly realms", its citizens "are punished with
prisons". With interrogations and with mutilations they urge on
the correctness of the Synod's faith. Where however is the voice
of the Church, which would bespeak its powerful word on a dogmatic
question, affecting the very foundations of Christianity? For
the first time after long, long centuries the Orthodox world emerged
from a condition of stagnation and is bestirred by a question
of spiritual, of mystical experience, not by a paltry question
of church governance, but by a larger dogmatic question. It was
joyful, that in the XX Century people could be so passionately
stirred up by religious questions. The disputes of the Imeneslavtsi
and the Imenebortsi resembled those of ancient times, when in
the Orthodox Church there was still spiritual life and spiritual
movement. And with excitement there waited the best Orthodox people,
people of genuine religious experience and genuine religious life,
as to how the Church would give answer to a profound spiritual
question, to a question of mystical experience. Here is not the
place essentially to enter into the dogmatic dispute of the Imeneslavtsi
and the Imenebortsi. I say only, that on the side of the Imeneslavtsi
is a prevalence of a most keen spiritual life, for them there
is the mystical tradition, and among them are people of a foremost
religious experience. In the teachings of the Imeneslavtsi is
that partial truth of pantheism, which purports, that the energies
of God posit themselves immanently for the world and for man.
On the side of the Imenebortsi appears the official, the public,
the Synodal Orthodoxy, long ago having ruptured every connection
with Christian mysticism, long ago indifferent to any spiritual
life, long ago having declined into civil positivism and worldly
materialism. In answer to the spiritual stirring of the Orthodox
world, the stirring of the finest monks, elders and laymen, with
all their heart devoted to Orthodoxy, there resounded the voice
of the official, the public Church, and it covered itself with
indelible shame. For the Synod Church and the Church of the Patriarchs
this was a great trial, a testing, sent from above.
When the schema-monk priest Antonii Bulatovich arrived
in Russia from Athos to seek out the truth of God in the Russian
Church, they then subjected him to a search, after which the Holy
Synod suggested to the Ministry of Interior Affairs to dispatch
him from Peterburg as a troublesome man. They answered his spiritual
thirst with police harassment. Archbishop Antonii Volynsky in
"By a Russian Monk" gives out a burst of abuse, abuse -- worthy
of a cabdriver, but not a prince of the Church, against the book
of the starets-elder Illarion "On the Hills of the Caucasus",
from which began all the movement. The Holy Synod was indignant,
that the starets-elder Illarion, schema-monk priest Antonii Bulatovich
and the Athos monks had dared to disturb the spiritual peace and
stagnation, that they dared to think about matters of spiritual
experience and knowledge. The Holy Synod, in everything the likeness
of our state power, most of all fears and hates any vitality and
any movement, and first of all it wants peace and quiet. Its first
concern, is that nothing happen. No sort of dogmatic questions
inside Orthodoxy are scrutinised, questions of spiritual life
cease to bestir the Orthodox world. They are interested by such
second-rate and lukewarm questions, as: to be or not to be a patriarch,
whether to organise a parish, etc. No sort of mysticism should
disrupt the deathly calm of the Orthodox world. And suddenly the
very Orthodox from among the Orthodox were a tremble, they became
restless, they thirsted. Our bishops, sitting in the Holy Synod,
long ago ceased to be interested by essentially religious questions,
and indeed the bishops never were strong in questions of religious
knowledge and mystical contemplation. What is beyond the matter
for them is the extent, and whether Jesus Himself is really present
in the Name Jesus or whether the name is but an abstract mediative
sign. They, being people subsisting by a worldly utilitarianism,
are not able to penetrate into such questions, posited merely
by mysticism, by religious philosophy or by people of profound
contemplation. The Holy Synod declared as heresy the Imeneslavtsism
for its disturbance, being caused to a people, long ago disaccustomed
to any spiritual life or any spiritual stirring. The Holy Synod
hates having any spiritual life, it reckons it dangerous and disquieting.
Is it possible to turn to the positivists of the Synod Church
and to the materialists of the Patriarchs' Churches, to people
immersed in the lower sphere of being, with a question about the
Name of Jesus, with a question of spiritual life and religious
contemplation? When a serious question has arisen, then the official
Church is rendered shamefully ineffective. Suddenly there is shewn,
that there is neither the power nor the life of the Spirit in
the Synod Church. The brutal punishment by Archbishop Nikon over
the Athos monks, bestown with the great schema-rank, and having
dwelt on Athos for 30 and 40 years, put to shreds by army-troops
and the police, shoes an unprecedented degradation of the Church,
its utmost debasement. They sometimes love to shout, that the
Church is suppressed by the state. But it was the bishops themselves
indeed summoning the civil powers to violent acts for their own
ends, they are a thousand times worse than the soldiers and city-police.
Archbishop Nikon urged the Imeneslavtsi monks into the correct
faith of the Holy Synod with the help of bayonettes, maiming defenseless
elders. By his spiritual power Archbishop Nikon could never persuade
anyone. The Synod Orthodoxy is persuasive to no one: in it is
no persuasive power of the Spirit (not one Synod missionary could
ever persuade over a single sectarian). The eternal turning of
the Synod Church to the power of state arms is a revealing acknowledgement,
that its Orthodoxy is powerless, unpersuasive and untempting.
After the monstrous punishment upon the hapless monks, the ancient
bulwark of Orthodoxy Athos was laid waste, and the Holy Synod
decided, that the Russian and Constantinople Churches had destroyed
the heresy. The maimed monks remained material proof of the victory
of the Synod's truth over heretical error.
The vast significance of the "Year of the Athos Disputes
about the Name Jesus" is in this, that it marks a difficult and
decisive moment for all the searching, the profound, the pure
Orthodox. There certainly mustneeds occur a crisis of consciousness
within Orthodoxy. And first of all necessary would be to inspect
the traditional teaching about humility. Among the very best,
the most spiritual Orthodox, both monks and priests, and also
laymen, are many fervent adherents of Imeneslavtsism, -- condemned
both by the Russian Synod, and by the Patriarchs. The Holy Synod
calls for humility, for a disavowal from sagacity. Are these to
submit themselves, for whom the glorification of the Name of God
and the Name of Jesus is "a nerve of the Church, in which collect
together all the other nerves, this dogma, in the denial of which
constitutes the denial of all dogmas, those holy things, which
lie at the foundation of all the churchly holy", -- are they to
humble themselves before the Holy Synod? On the one side is the
spiritual experience proper, corroborated by the experience of
saints and elders, its religious conscience, and on the other
side -- the Holy Synod, no one of esteem, doubtful even from a
canonical point of view, covetous Patriarchs, deceitful bishops,
a visible voice, but perhaps merely the Church in appearances.
Monks give a vow of obedience, humility possesses for them the
significance of a formal principle of inner spiritual activity.
This monastic spirit of obedience and humility has also carried
over for Orthodox laity. They are prepared to serve evil and humble
themselves before it. And we arrive at the question, is Christianity
a religion of humility and obedience or a religion of freedom
and love? The historical mode, the official old Christianity,
the guardian of infants, has ultimately degenerated into a religion
of humility and obedience, as the principle of the self-complacent.
That one mustneeds humble oneself before God, in this there is
no problem. But mustneeds one be humbled afront the world and
people, to be humble afront evil, to be humble afront that which
is an outrage against the religious conscience and religious experience,
against that obtained of lofty spiritual life? The teaching about
humility is transformed into an extinguishing of spirit, into
a deadening of spiritual life, into a connivance for evil. The
requirement of humility always and in everything is already long
ago become the tool of the devil, a shielding of evil, a disarming
in the struggle with evil. The Synod Church, in which the spirit
lives not, knows only, that it requires always and in everything
humility and submissiveness. It fears spiritual life, as though
fire, and it seeks after methods to puff out the fire of the Spirit.
Any mysticism frightens it, since mysticism has no need of external
authority and does not admit of any authority. Ultimate reality
is presented the mystic in spiritual experience, and for him the
outward dogmas of the Synod bishops are pitiful and confused.
The most lowly, the most swinish material life is more dear for
the Synod Church, than sublime spiritual life, than upward ascent.
The Synod Church wants to rule over the souls of people through
their sins and weakness. Better it is to sin, but not to rise
up spiritually, not to pursue wisdom, not to dare to get up too
high. They tell, how some elder said to Vl. Solov'ev: "Commit
sin, Vladimir Sergeevich, so as not to become proud". This is
so characteristic for Orthodoxy. Sin is indulgently permitted,
so that man should not be exalted too high. Official Orthodoxy
hates any upward ascent, any growth, it gives blessing only to
deathly peace and spiritual groveling. Any spiritual, any religious
experience is first of all a liberation from the oppression of
worldly utilitarianism, of worldly positivism, of worldly necessity
and worldly reckonings. Official Orthodoxy -- is wholly within
utilitarianism and positivism, within worldly reckonings and worldly
necessity; it injures the soul by its lack of spiritualness, by
its bourgeois- ness.
That which for the holy fathers was never integrally original
with the spiritual life, is become a corpse's poison in the contemporary
"spiritual" world, a morgue-ish, hypocritical, veiling- over of
the absence of spiritual life. It is impossible to deny with impunity
the creative spiritual stirring. Humility was formerly an heroic
resistance to the natural order, to paganish passions, a stripping
away from oneself of the old Adam. But now humility is become
a slavery to a rotting, putrified "this world". By their fruits
do ye know them. This Gospel criterion remains eternal. What indeed
are the fruits of the Synod Church, of official Orthodoxy? These
are horrid fruits. Spiritual death, the demise and corpsification
of the human soul -- here are the fruits of a decayed, a putrified,
a deadening teaching about humility and obedience, about sin and
evil. At the present time decadent, decrepit Christians shout
loudly about the freedom of man, when the talk concerns evil and
sin. But when the talk gets round to the good or creativity, then
they no longer talk about freedom, they then deny freedom. Freedom
for them exists for evil, for good there does not exist freedom.
Freedom is but an opportunity for non-belief in man, for a distaste
towards man, for hostility towards the creative impulses in man.
They believe more in the Anti-Christ, than in Christ. Christianity
has degenerated into a religion of sin and evil, into human-hatred
and human-extirpation. Be like swine, live in the mud -- by this
sinfulness, by this weakness it is possible to be complacent to
a decrepit, a degenerate Christian consciousness. But God forbid
that thou should be human, to be spiritually forceful, to reach
higher, to discover one's own creative nature. To be human is
much worse, much more perilous, than to be swinish. A swinish
mode of existence is indulgently encouraged for the Orthodox world
by the Church. Be humbled afront our divineness, and we shall
through our fingers peek upon thine swinish life. It is possible
to be beastly (the vast majority) and it is possible to be angelic
(a not-large minority), but it is impossible to be human. Orthodoxy
does not believe in the God-man, and it is not a religion of God-manhood.
The recognition of Christ indeed not only as perfect God, but
also as perfect Man makes obligatory for a faith in human nature,
for an esteeming of man, for an acknowledgement of the free human
element. But a monophysiting Orthodoxy would desire to extirpate
man and acknowledge God alone. Man and the human -- art hopeless
mud and swinishness. Let the mud and swinishness remain until
there is a complete disappearance. This would be humbly so. The
mud and swinishness at the extreme do not make proud. Vl. Solov'ev
taught about God-manhood, but his reflections upon this, that
in the idea of God- manhood -- is the essence of Christianity,
were not utilised by the indulgent attention of the official Church.
The monophysiting Orthodoxy believes in God, absolutely transcendent
for human nature, God is remote and foreign, God is pre-Christian.
In this old, and afront the judgement-seat of Christ heretical
faith there is evidenced a non-belief in the transfiguration of
life, in the ascent of man, in the revealing of Divine life in
man. The monophysiting Orthodoxy regards as heresy any Christian
immanentism. But the official Orthodoxy itself long ago already
became a pernicious and anti- Christian heresy. In it there have
not remained traces even of the Gospel Christian spirit, of Christian
mysticism, of the religion of love and freedom, the religion of
infinite rapprochement and unification of man and God. The monophysiting
Orthodoxy makes a bloody human offering of sacrifice in the name
of its un-Christian God. They denounce Catholicism in the foolish
teaching about Redemption, but official Orthodoxy also confesses
a pagan-foolish teaching about Redemption as a propitiation of
God's wrath. Our bishops are most fond of the wrath of God and
they frighten out the souls of men, disclosing to them the sole
way to salvation as through the inherent to them grace of the
priesthood. Christianity is reduced primarily to a fear of destruction,
and redemption -- to legal processes over transgressions.
In the world a deep crisis is happening, in the world is
being born a passionate thirst for an higher spiritual life. In
all the ends of contemporary culture there is seen a crossing-over
to spirituality after a long period of immersion in materiality.
It senses the breath of the Spirit. The Spirit breathes, whence
it will. free mystics, theosophists, Steinerianists, Tolstoyans,
dobroliubovtsi, sectarians of various sects, wanderers from the
people and wanderers from among the Intelligentsia -- all thirst
for spiritual life, transfigured life. All more and more withdrawing
wanderers are to be met with, seeking life in the Spirit, having
renounced the blessings of a lower life. Christ came into the
world, and the power of Christ acts in the world. And the great
task, wherein the world crisis of the crossing-over to a new spiritual
life should be accomplished, is beneathe the banner of Christ.
The official Church does nothing, so as to alleviate the spiritual
thirst of the world and take on the uncertain spiritual yearnings
for a Christian consciousness. Its cunning servants think only
to curse and to resort to force. The Orthodox world is sunken
to the depths of material life. Otherwise, it would not hold out
as it were so rapaciously for civil utilitarianism. Even from
Southern India with its old and remote for us wisdom, they come
in their own way to help European mankind exit from the spiritual
crisis. And the great spiritual experience of the Orthodox East
does not have a voice to speak its own word of help in this critical
hour, when Christian mankind stands at the cross-roads.
How tormentingly horrible our Orthodox life is. The Orthodox
Church does not point to any ways of life, any ways of spiritual
developement. In Khar'khov gubernia they call "shkopets" ("castrate")
anyone, who is not drunken and who lives a little more spiritually,
than what the national traditional manner of life requires. What
kind of Orthodox indeed art thou, if thou dost not drink, art
not licentious and dissolute, art not coarse in material interests,
if thou art too interested in questions of spirit? Too keen a
religious interest is already not Orthodox. Orthodox is the drunkenness,
the dissoluteness, the coarseness of the material lifestyle. A
spiritual manner of life is not -- a ritualistic attitude towards
religion, an absence of thirst for spiritual renewal -- the true
signs of orthodoksal-ness.
The gates of hell have long ago prevailed over the Synod
Church, just as they prevailed over the papist Church. And this
signifies, that the Synod Church is not the authentic Church of
Christ, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. The tragedy
of Imeneslavtsism unmasks the lie of the official ecclesialism,
the absence in it of the Spirit of Christ. That "immobility of
the Church", in which is seen its sublimity by the preface writer
to the book of the schema-monk priest Antonii Bulatovich, is a
sign of spiritual death. The Church of Christ is an eternal Divine-human
dynamic. In this enthusiasm afront the "immobility" one senses
this is all a monophysite tendency, a denying of man. The Church
-- the Divine-human organism also presupposes action of the human
element. God Himself egressed from a state of "immobility", from
stillness, when He created the world. Man is called into churchly
live to be active, to do. Man bears responsibility for the Divine-human
organism, the Church. A downfall of the Church is a downfall of
man. When the Church dwells in a spiritual "immobility", then
in its dynamic it is reduced into soldiers, police, bayonettes
and guns. This is a spiritual paralysis. And in the Synod Church
the paralysis is transformed already into a deadening, it secretes
a corpse's poison and poisons with it the spiritual life of the
Russian nation. All they, that are alive in Russia, and spiritual,
seeking after Divine life and Divine truth, ought to depart from
this Church of rottenness and decay, they ought to guard the Russian
nation from the effect of the corpsely poison. But this presupposes
a shift in Christian consciousness, a radical revision of the
decrepit teaching about humility and obedience, about evil and
sin, an uncovering of the inner sources of the rebirth of spiritual
life, an affirmative life, not a denigrative one. Necessary now
is not humility and obedience, but the growth of spiritual life,
a concentration of spiritual strength, opposing the deadly evil.
Now is necessary to angrily drive out the money-changers from
the temple.
The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of
Christ, for it dwells eternally in the Cosmos as an unification
of Christ the Logos with the soul of the world and the soul of
man, an eternally accomplishing in the Cosmos of the mystery of
the Redemption. The Church dwells invincibly on the heights of
spiritual life, in an unification of man with God and through
God with other men. The spiritual flesh, about which the Apostle
Paul speaks, ought ultimately to assume mastery over the lower
flesh of ecclesiality, always bound up with the lower flesh of
man. This lower physical flesh of ecclesiality has deadened and
rotted. And salvation is perhaps found only in the revealing of
its spiritual flesh. The matter of Archbishop Nikon and Archbishop
Antonii is also a rotting of the physical flesh of the Church,
its old attire, intended for the infancy of mankind. Mankind is
now grown up out of these old clothes and should garb itself in
the new spiritual flesh. The decaying physical flesh of ecclesiality
prefers the beastly for man, it desires dirt, and wantonness and
groveling more than purity, than dignity and spiritual ascent.
It is very clear, that the end of the infancy of mankind approaches
for the materialistic Church. It does not accommodate the life
of spirit, the thirst of spirit, the stirrings of spirit. Everything
is reaped in its own time, since the world lives by creative spiritual
growth, by an eternal dynamic, by an eternal ascent. That, which
earlier in the Church was an universal education and guidance
of an immature mankind, that now has become coercion and a quenching
of spirit. The Synod Church, the official Orthodox commit blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit. And it was said, that blasphemy against
the Son of God is to be forgiven, but not forgiven is blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit. The Church is not that, the which is
not given to breathe in the Spirit. Can the Church of Christ be
quenchers of spirit, suppressors of every spiritual impulse? The
restoration of the old patristic consciousness and the old Orthodox
mode of life is a great obstacle on the pathway of Christian renewal.
Schema-monk priest Antonii Bulatovich himself -- is a man of the
old consciousness, -- his book is built up upon the dead authority
of texts, and not upon spiritual life, not upon mystical experience.
But a role was destined to be played by this book in the disintegration
of the Synod Church. If the Imeneslavtsi "heresy" provokes a schism
in the Church, then this can only be rejoiced at and greeted as
a sign of life. Desirous and glad is everything, which frustrates
the protection of this hypocritical lie, which obstructs everything
felicitous and orderly in Orthodoxy. It is necessary to desire
by all the powers of spirit, that there be revealed and disclosed
every truth, the pravda, exceeding every conniving and every earthly
blessing, so that an end may be put to "immobility" and quiet,
so that the spiritual earth-tremour burst forth from beneathe
the rotting physical flesh of ecclesiality. In this is the pledge
of new spiritual life, the start of Divine-human doing. Authentic
religious life is a victory over fear, an acquisition of courage,
the penetration of secular life with a sense of good. Deadening
ecclesiality mustneeds hold man in a condition of fear and terror.
And therefore the highest virtues now -- are audacity and daring.
Are audacity and daring sufficient for those Orthodox, whom the
Holy Synod compels to renounce their religious conscience and
their religious experience? That, which man recognises in his
own religious experience about the world is otherwise, it is more
authoritative and more primary than any external authority. And
the question about the Name of Jesus is perhaps only decided by
a turning towards the spiritual life proper and towards people
of the highest mystical experience, not towards the Holy Synod
and not towards the Patriarchs, for whom it is not a matter of
spiritual, mystical nor inner extent. Let the organisation of
the physical flesh of ecclesiality resolve their positivo-material
questions. Spiritual people can turn but to the spiritual flesh
of the Church mystical.
1913
("Gasiteli Dukha", -- in journal Russkaya Molva, aug. 1913,
No. 232.)
(Incorrectly cited as journal Russkaya Mysl' in YMCA Press
Vol. 3 of Berdyaev's Works -- "Tipy Religioznoi Mysli v Rossii"
(1989) -- which reproduces the "Gasiteli Dukha" article on pp.
622-634)
Translator's Postscript:
This is that famously notorious article by N A Berdyaev,
concerning which he said: "The issue of the paper, in which the
article was printed, was confiscated, and I was remanded for trial
on charges of blasphemy concerning the article, punishable by
perpetual banishment to Siberia. My lawyer informed me the matter
was hopeless. They postponed the matter because of the war and
the impossibility to call all the witnesses. Thus it was put off
prior to the revolution and the revolution ended the matter. If
there had been no revolution, then I should not have been in Paris,
but in Siberia, in perpetual banishment". (Samopoznanie, Ymca-Press,
1949-1983, pp. 234- 235).
The title "Quenchers of the Spirit" derives literally from
Saint Paul's 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, Chapter 5 Verse
19 -- "Quench not the spirit", this but two verses before the
"Pray unceasingly" command familiar to all that know of the "Jesus
Prayer" in Orthodoxy. And immediately after exhorting us to "Quench
not the spirit", Saint Paul bids us to "Contemn not prophesying",
-- so significant a religio- philosophic motif of Berdyaev. The
only surprise to the work is that there is no Scriptural citation
given, but not surprising in light of its proximity to the "pray
unceasingly" injunction for the Jesus Prayer, which would seem
to relate directly to the Imeneslavtsi or Imyaslavtsi. Theirs
would seem to be the Hesychiast tradition within the Church centring
round the unceasing praying of the Jesus Prayer, in the literature
of the Philokalia-Dobrotoliubie, and defended by Sainted Gregory
Palamas (co-incidentally Archbishop of that same Thessalonika)
in his theology arising out of his famed disputes with the Scholastic,
Varlaam of Calabria. But perhaps it was some abuse of the Jesus
Prayer that brought the bayonettes to Holy Mount Athos that we
know not of?
Some might be confused when Berdyaev so strongly berates
the Synodal Church, a term that since has become affixed to the
legacy of the post-revolutionary Karlovtsi Synod, which in 1913
did not exist. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church,
berated by Berdyaev, is the highest governing organ of the Church
-- nowadays presided over by His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow.
In pre-revolutionary Russia, the sweeping reforms of Tsar Peter
the Great abolished the dignity of the patriarch and on European
models created a Synod of Bishops, headed by an Prokurator, a
layman and government official with veto powers. Pobedonotsev,
who died in 1907, has a certain reactionary infamy of reputation.
Reforms that lose their inner dynamic of reform, can over the
space of centuries become increased forms of stagnation. But the
time of Berdyaev's article and the events preceding, 1912-1913,
were unsettling times for Russia and perhaps reflect the further
destabilising effects of Rasputin (died 1916) not only in government
but also the Church, far beyond the long paralysis inflicted on
it by the reforms of Peter. And perhaps the removal of Rasputin
also removed the blasphemy charge for Berdyaev.
With historical hindsight, this article offers a glimpse
on the eve of the apocalyptic time of the Old Order in Russia.
It is extremely agonising to realise that the Church should not
have been able to forestall the horrors brought on by the War
and Revolution, and had to contribute so many of its best and
finest to crowns of martyrdom, religious and social and political.
As is all the terrible holocausts of this century, and the historical
lesson of "Never again", it is imperative that the Church work
while it is yet spiritual day. Freed of the reforms gone stale
under the Old Order, the Church restored the patriarchate to Russia
and was guided by the Holy Spirit to choose Sainted Patriarch
Tikhon (Belavin). The Bolsheviks tried to turn the Church into
a museum, but failed; it would be the ultimate blasphemy that
believers should do with the Church what the Bolsheviks failed
at.
Berdyaev's article offers a glimpse into an ancient dichotomy
within Orthodoxy, not found in Western Churches, that of startsi-elders
in a tandem of spiritual authority based on holiness and wisdom,
in concert with hierarchical ecclesial authority based on apostolicity,
both deriving from ultimate authority of Christ as Lord in the
Church, and the Holy Spirit within the Church as the Sobornost'
of God with all His people, not just clergy as in papism formerly.
Starchestvo, the seeking out of experienced spiritual guides and
elders, is anciently connected to monasticism and to such places
as Holy Mount Athos.
The ultimate irony: in exile in Paris Berdyaev remained
faithful and finished his life's course under the Moscow Church
rather than that under Metropolitan Evlogii in the West, that
selfsame Church so fiercely criticised years before in his audacious
article, "Quenchers of the Spirit".
© 1999 by translator Fr. Stephen Janos
Permission granted for non-commercial distribution
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