N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
SALVATION AND CREATIVITY
(Two Understandings of Christianity)
_____________________
(Dedicated to the Memory of Vladimir Solov’ev)
"Serve ye one
another, each by such gift,
as he hath received, as good stewards
of the manifold graces
of God".
(1
Pet. -- Ch. 4: 10.)
The correlation between the ways of human salvation and
the ways of human creativity is very central, very tormenting
and very acute a problem of our age. Man perishes and he has a
thirst for salvation. But man is also by his nature a maker, a
creator, a builder of life, and the thirst for creativity cannot
be extinguished within him. Can man be saved and at the same time
create, can he create and at the same time be saved? And how to
perceive Christianity: is Christianity exclusively the religion
of the salvation of the soul for life eternal, or is creativity
of an higher life also justified by the Christian consciousness?
All these questions torment the contemporary soul, though not
always is perceived their depth. Wanting to set right their life
vocation, their creative act of life, Christians do not always
realise, that there is discourse about the very concept of Christianity,
about the assimilation of its fullness. The torment of the problem
of salvation and creativity reflects the schisms betwixt Church
and world, the spiritual and the mundane, the sacral and the secular.
The Church is concerned with salvation, the secular world however
is concerned with creativity. The creative act, which the secular
world is concerned with, is not given justification, is not sanctified
by the Church. There is a profound disdain, almost a contempt
of the churchly world towards those creative deeds in the life
of culture, in the life of society, which fully are processes,
transpiring within the world. At best creativity is admitted,
it is tolerated, one peeks at it through the fingers, not granting
it profound a justification. Salvation is a matter of the first
sort, the one thing necessary, creativity however is a matter
of the second or third sort, applicable to life, but not the very
essence of it. We live beneathe the sign of a deepest religious
dualism. Hiero craticism, clericalism in the understanding of
the Church is the expression and justifying excuse of this dualism.
The Church hierarchy in its essence is an hierarchy which is angelic,
and not human. In the human world the heavenly angelic hierarchy
is only symbolised. The system of hierocratism, the exclusive
sovereignty of the priesthood in the life of the Church, and through
the Church in the life of the world also, is a suppression of
the human principle by the angelic, a subordination of the human
principle to the angelic principle, as a calling with which to
guide life. It is always a sovereignty of a conditional symbolism.
[trans. note: the Russian euphemistic idiom for becoming a monastic
is to take on the angelic garb and life, an image of useage to
which the modern Western mind is not sensitive to, but here also
betraying the dualistic schism alluded to above.] But the
suppression of the human principle, the non-allowance of its unique
creative expression, is an impairment of Christianity, as being
the religion of God-manhood. Christ was the God man, and not a
God-angel, in Him perfectly was united in one person the Divine
nature with the human nature and by this human nature was transported
to Life Divine. And Christ the God-man was the foundation principle
of the new spiritual human race, a life of God-manhood, and not
of God-angelhood. The Church of Christ is God-manhood. The angelic
principle is a principle intermediary betwixt God and the human,
a principle passively-intermediary, transmissive of Divine energy,
conductive of Divine grace, but not an active-creative principle.
The active-creative principle was bestown to mankind. But the
sinful limitedness of mankind does not permit of the fullness
of Christian truth. And the suppressive sovereignty of the angelic
hierocratic principle is an indicator of the impotence of sinful
mankind to express its creative nature, to accept Christianity
in its fullness and wholeness. The way of salvation for sinful
mankind obviates its necessity first of all in the angelic hierocratic
principle. The way of creativity remains however as an autonomous
human way, not sanctified and not justified, and man is left on
his own.
The religious non-expression of the human principle, as
an organic part of the life of God-manhood, the religious non-disclosure
of the free vocation of man creates the dualism of Church and
world, of Church and culture, the acute dualism of the sacral
and the profane. For the believing Christian two lives are created,
a life that is of a first and a second sort. And this dualism,
this two-sidedness of life attains to an especial acuteness in
the Christianity of the present time. In medieval Christianity
there was its theocratic, hierocratic culture, to which all creativity
of life was self-subordinated to the religious principle, conceived
as the sovereignty of the angelic hierarchy over the human. In
medieval culture and society there was the sacral, but the religious
justification was conditionally-symbolic. Culture by its concept
was angelic, and not human. The sovereignty of the angelic principle
always leads to symbolism, to the conditional, sign reflection
within the human world of the heavenly life without its real attainment,
without the real transfiguration of human life. The present time
has cast down the symbolic and completed the break. Man rebelled
in the name of his freedom and went upon his own autonomous way.
The nook of the soul remained for religion. They began to think
of the Church differently. The Christian of the present time lives
in two incongruent rhythms -- in the Church and in the world,
upon the pathways of salvation and upon the pathways of creativity.
In the theocratic societies, in the theocratic cultures the human
principle was subordinated, the freedom of man was not yet granted
its consent to the existence of the Kingdom of God. In the humanistic
societies and cultures of the present time the human principle
has been torn asunder from God and from the efficacy of Divine
grace. The conjoining of the Divine and the human has not been
attained. The ways of creativity of the humanistic world were
without God and against God. The drama of the present humanistic
history is the drama of a deep tearing asunder of the way of creativity
of life apart from the way of salvation, apart from God and from
Divine grace. The dualism of Church and world realises suchlike
forms of expression, which former sacral organic epochs did not
know of. In the world has occurred tremendous creative developement
in science, in philosophy, in art, in state and social life, in
the advances of the technical, in the moral attitudes of people,
even in religious thought, in mystical frames of mind. All of
us, not only non-believers, but also believing Christians, we
all participate in this developement of the world, this developement
of culture, and we devote to it a significant part of our time
and effort. On Sunday we come into Church. Six days in the week
we devote to our creative, constructive work. And our creative
attitude towards life remains non-justified, non-sanctified, not
co-dependent upon the religious principle of life. The old, the
medieval theocratic hierocratic justification and sanctification
of all the processes of life has already no power over us, it
is deadened. The very believers, the selfsame Orthodox people
participate in the non-justified and the non-sanctified life of
the world, they subordinate themselves to the profane, the non-sacral
science, to the profane non sacral economy, to the profane non-sacral
law, to a lifestyle long since already bereft of sacral character.
The believers, the Orthodox people live the church life in Church,
they go on Sundays and feastdays to the temple, they fast during
Great Lent, they pray to God morning and evening, but they do
not live church life in the world, in culture, in society. Their
creativity, in political and economic life, in the sciences and
the arts, in the inventions and the discoveries, in the everyday
morality, it remains external to the Church and external to religiosity,
it remains profane and worldly. This is altogether an other rhythm
of life. A tempestuous creative developement has transpired within
the world, in culture. In the Church for a long time however a
comparative staticism has set in, as though petrified and ossified.
The Church began to live exclusively as a guardian, a link with
the past, i.e. it expressed but one side of churchly life. The
Church hierarchy became hostile towards creativity, suspicious
towards spiritual culture, it restrains man and fears his freedom,
the ways of salvation are put opposite the ways of creativity.
We are saved on one plane of existence and we fashion life on
altogether an other plane of existence. And there remains always
the danger, that on that plane on which we create, we shall perish
and not be saved. And there is not any hope in this, that the
unsustainable further dualism can be overcome through the subordination
of all our life and all the creative impulses to the hierocratic
principle, through a restoration of the theocratic in the old
sense of the word. To the conditional symbolism of an hierocratic
society, there is no turning back. This would be but a temporary
reaction, rejecting creativity. The religious problem about man,
about his freedom and creative vocation, has been posited in all
its acuteness. And this is not only a problem of the world, a
burdensome and irksome problem in contemporary culture, this is
also a problem of the Church, a problem of Christianity, as the
religion of God-manhood.
Thought at the present time has become subject to the dissective
influence of nominalism. In the consciousness of mankind, the
ontological reality is decomposed and pulverised. This process
also affects Church consciousness. And how often the most reactionary
tendencies of Church thought have appropriated to themselves a
nominalistic understanding of the Church. They have ceased to
comprehend the Church integrally, as an universal spiritual organism,
as ontologic reality, as the Christified cosmos. There has prevailed
a differentialised understanding of the Church, whether as institution,
as community of believers, or as hierarchy and temple. The Church
was transformed into a curative establishment, in which they deal
with individual souls for healing. Thus is affirmed a Christian
individualism, indifferent to the fate of human society and the
world. The Church exists for the salvation of individual souls,
but has no concern for the creative aspects of life, for the transfiguration
of social and cosmic life. Suchlike a kind of exclusively monastic-ascetic
Orthodoxy in Russia was only possible, because that the Church
entrusted all the organisation of life to the state. Only the
existence of the autocratic monarchy consecrated by the Church
made possible such Orthodox individualism, such a separateness
of Christianity from the life of the world. The Orthodox monarchy
upheld and guarded the world, and churchly order was also maintained
by it. The Church was indifferent not only to the arrangement
of cultural and social life, but also to the arrangement of churchly
life, to the life of the parishes, to the organisation of a non
dependent churchly authority. The existence of an Orthodox autocratic
monarchy is the obverse side of monastic-ascetic Orthodoxy, of
perceiving Orthodoxy exclusively as a religion of personal salvation.
And therefore the collapse of autocratic monarchy, of the Russian
Orthodox tsardom, implies substantial modification in Church consciousness.
Orthodoxy cannot remain predominantly monastic-ascetic. Christianity
cannot be reduced to the individual salvation of separate souls.
The Church inevitably turns itself to the life of society and
the world, and inevitably it needs to participate in the formation
of life. In the autocratic monarchy, as a type of Orthodox theocracy,
it was the angelic, and not the human principle, that reigned.
The tsar, in accord with this concept is in essence of the angelic,
and not of the human order. The collapse of Orthodox theocracy
ought to lead to the awakening of creative activism of a very
Christian nation, an human activism, for the formation of a Christian
society. This turnabout should begin first of all with this, that
Orthodox people make themselves responsible for the fate of the
Church in the world, in an historical actuality, that they be
obliged to take upon themselves churchly formation, the life of
the parishes, a concern about the temple, and organisation of
churchly life, brotherhoods, etc. But this change of Orthodox
psychology cannot be restricted to formation of churchly life,
it extends also to all aspects of life. All of life ought to be
thought of, as churchly life. In the Church all aspects of life
enter in. A turnabout is inevitable for an integral comprehension
of the Church, i.e. for the surmounting of Church nominalism and
individualism. The understanding of Christianity exclusively as
a religion of personal salvation, the constriction of the scope
of the Church to something existing alongside with everything
else, -- when the Church is the posited fullness of being, would
be also the source of the greatest disorders and catastrophes
in the Christian world. The abasement of man, of his freedom and
creative vocation, the inculcation of suchlike an understanding
of Christianity, would also evoke the revolt and rebellion of
man in the name of his freedom and his creativity. Upon that desolate
spot, which would remain in the world to Christianity, the Anti-Christ
would begin to build his own Babylonian tower and go far in its
construction. Seducing the freedom of the human spirit, the freedom
of human creativity would ultimately perish upon this path. The
Church ought to guard itself from the evil elements of the world
and the evil developements in it. But the genuine guarding of
things holy is possible only under the admission of Christian
creativity.
II.
Upon what spiritual basis does Orthodox individualism base
itself, by what is its understanding of Christianity justified,
as a religion of personal salvation, indifferent to the fate of
society and the world? Christianity in the past was extraordinarily
magnificent, manifold and many-sided. In the Gospel, in the Apostolic
Epistles, in the Patristic literature and in Church tradition
it is possible to find the basis for varied comprehensions of
Christianity. The understanding of Christianity, as a religion
of personal salvation, mistrustful towards any creativity, rests
itself exclusively upon the Patristic ascetic literature, which
neither is the whole of Christianity nor is it the whole even
of Patristic literature. The "Dobrotoliubie-Philokalia" would
as it were screen out for itself everything remaining. In the
ascetic is expressed eternal truth, which enters into the inner
spiritual pathway, as an inevitable moment. But it is not the
fullness of Christian truth. The heroic struggle with the nature
of the old Adam, with the sinful passions, promoted a certain
aspect of Christian truth and exaggerated it to all-encompassing
dimensions. The truths, revealed in the Gospels and the Apostolic
Epistles, were set aside onto a secondary plane, and were stifled.
At the basis of all Christianity, at the basis of all the spiritual
pathway of man, the pathway of salvation for life eternal, was
put humility. Man needs to be humbled, and all the rest then happens
by itself. Humility is the sole method of inner spiritual activity.
Humility screens out and stifles love, which reveals itself in
the Gospel and manifests itself as the foundational basis of the
New Testament God with man. The ontological concept of humility
consists in a real victory over the self-affirming human self-centredness,
over the sinful disposition of man to situate the centre of gravity
for life and the source of life in himself alone, -- this is the
meaning of the overcoming of pride. The concept of humility is
in the real change and transfiguration of human nature, in the
mastery of spiritual man over the man of soul and flesh. But humility
ought not to stifle and snuff out the spirit. Humility is not
external obedience, submission and subordination. Man can be very
disciplined, very obedient and submissive, and yet have humility
not at all. We see this by way of example in the Communist Party.
Humility is an efficacious change of the nature of the soul, and
not external subordination, leaving nature unchanged, its own
inner working over itself, its deliverance from the power of the
passions, from the lower nature, which man is wont to accept as
his true "I". In humility is affirmed the true hierarchy of being,
spiritual man takes precedence over soulful man, God receives
precedence over the world. Humility is the pathway of self-cleansing
and self definition. Humility is not the annihilation of the human
will, but rather the illumination of the human will, the free
submission of it to Truth. Christianity cannot negate humility,
as a moment of the inner spiritual pathway. But humility is not
the whole of spiritual life. Humility is a genuine means. Yet
humility is not the sole means, it is not the sole pathway of
spiritual life. Inner spiritual life is immeasurably more complex
and multi-facetted. And it is impossible to give answer to all
the inquiries of spirit by the preaching of humility. And humility
can be conceived of falsely and too externally. To the inner spiritual
life and the inner way there applies an absolute primacy, it is
more primary, more profound, more primordial than all our relations
to the life of society and the world. In the spiritual world,
from the depths of the spiritual world is defined all our relationship
towards life. This -- is a religious axiom, an axiom of the mystic.
But a concept of humility is possible, distorting all our spiritual
life, not accommodating the Divine truth of Christianity, the
Divine fullness. And in this is all the complexity of the question.
The construction of life upon the sole spirit of humility
creates also an external authoritative-hierocratic system. All
questions of social form and cultural creativity are decided in
conformity to humility. This would be a fine arrangement of a
society, in which people humble themselves the most, and be obedient
the most. It would censure every array of life, in which is given
expression to the creative instincts of man. Thus in essence there
is resolved not a single question, but is merely as regards to
this, whether it promotes the humility of man. Deterioration of
humility leads to this, that it ceases to be understood inwardly,
to be secretly-treasured as a mystical act, as a manifestation
of inner spiritual life. Humility is transformed into an external
system of life-arrangement, repressing man. Humility in its mystical
essence is altogether not contrary to freedom, it is an act of
freedom and presupposes freedom. Only free humility, the free
subordination of soulful man to spiritual man has religious significance
and value. Compulsory humility, imposed humility, is determined
by the external structure of life and possesses no significance
for spiritual life. Slavery and humility -- are variant spiritual
conditions. Humbling myself in my inner spiritual pathway, in
a free act I posit the source of life to be in God, and not in
my own selfness. For phenomenological analysis there is disclosed,
that my freedom precedes my humility. Humility is more inner,
secretly-treasurative a spiritual condition. But having decayed,
a degradated humility, an humility become deteriorated transforms
itself into an external compulsively imposed system of life, negating
the freedom of man, coercing man. In soil humility readily sprouts
forth hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness. At that selfsame moment
when the ontological concept of humility would consist in the
liberation of spiritual man, a deteriorated humility holds man
in a condition of restraint and oppression, it chains down his
creative powers. The great ascetics and saints accomplished an
heroic act of spiritual liberation of man, of opposition to the
lower nature, to the power of the passions. Corrupters of humility
negate the heroic act of the spiritual liberation of man and hold
man in subjection to an authoritative system of life. When I humble
myself before the will of God, when I conquer in myself the slave’s
revolt of selfness, I come from out of freedom and I go towards
freedom. Selfness enslaves me, and I want to be liberated from
it. Humility is one of the methods of transition from a condition,
in which the lower nature governs, to a condition, in which the
higher nature governs, i.e. it signifies the growth of man, his
spiritual ascent. Deteriorative humility desires however a system
of life, in which liberation never enters, in which spiritual
ascent is never to be attained, in which the higher nature never
shews itself. The liberation of spirit, spiritual ascent, the
manifestation of the higher nature would be declared a non-humble
condition, a deficiency of humility. Humility is transformed from
being a means and a way into an end in itself.
They begin to set humility in opposition to love. The way
of love is considered as the not-humble, as the audacious way.
The Gospel is ultimately replaced by the "Dobrotoliubie-Philokalia".
Where then is it for me, a sinner and unworthy, to pretend to
love for neighbour, to brotherhood. My love will be infected by
sin. First I should humble myself, and love should appear, as
the fruition of humility. But I could be humble all my life yet
never attain a sinless condition. Therefore also love would never
appear. Where then is it for me a sinner to dare to spiritual
perfection, to valour and sublimity of spirit, to the attainment
of utmost spiritual life. At first it is necessary to vanquish
sin by humility. But this takes up all of life and there remains
neither time nor strength for creative spiritual life. It is possible
only in this world, indeed here also unlikely, if in this world
however only humility be possible. The degenerated humility creates
a system of life, in which life that is everyday and commonplace
and of bourgeois-manner, is more honoured than the humble, than
the Christian, than the moral, than the attainment of a still
higher spiritual life, and love, contemplation, perception, creativity,
always there is the suspicion of a deficiency of humility and
of pride. To haggle at the shop-counter, to live in a very egoistic
familial life, to serve in the ranks of the police or excise-duty
office -- humbly, not presumptuously, not boldly. And here then
otherwise is the aspiration towards the Christian brotherhood
of people, of the realisation of the truth of Christ in life,
or to be philosopher or poet, Christian philosopher or Christian
poet -- not humbly, proudly, presumptuously, boldly. The shopkeeper
may be not only covetous of gain, but also dishonourable, yet
less subject to the peril of eternal perishing, than that one,
who his entire life seeks after truth and verity, who thirsts
for a life of beauty, than for example Vl. Solov’ev the Gnostic,
the poet of life, the seeker of true life and the brotherhood
of people who is subject to the danger of eternal perishing, since
he is insufficiently humbled, he is proud. It becomes an hopeless,
and a vicious circle. The yearning for the realisation of the
Truth of God, the Kingdom of God, of the spiritual heights and
spiritual perfection, is proclaimed a spiritual imperfection,
a lack of humility. In what then is the basic defect of deteriorated
humility and its system of life? The basic defect lurks in the
false concept of the correlation between sin and the pathways
of liberation from sin or the attainment of higher spiritual life.
I cannot reason thus -- the world lies in evil, I am a sinful
man and because my yearning towards the realisation of the Truth
of Christ and towards brotherly love amidst mankind is a proud
pretension, a deficiency of humility, -- therefore every authentic
impulse in the direction of the realisation of love and truth
is a victory over evil, is a deliverance from sin. I cannot speak
thus -- the yearning for spiritual perfection and the spiritual
heights is pride and an insufficiency of humility, an insufficient
consciousness of the sinfulness of man, -- therefore every advance
towards spiritual perfection and the spiritual heights is the
way of victory over sin. I cannot speak thus -- I am a sinful
man and therefore my audacity to apprehend the mystery of being
and to create beauty is already a victory over sin, a transfiguration
of life. It is impossible to say: sin distorts and perverts both
love, and spiritual perfectivity, and cognition and everything,
and therefore there is no victory over sin along these pathways.
Therefore it is completely possible to say likewise: the way of
humility is distorted and perverted by human sin and greed and
is a distorted, degenerate, perverted humility, an humility, transformed
into slavery, into egoism, into cowardice. Humility is no more
a guarantee from distortion, and degeneration, than love or cognition.
Sin is conquered with great difficulty and it is conquered
only by the power of grace. But the pathways of this victory,
the pathways of the acquisition of grace are manifold, and they
encompass all the plenitude of being. Our love towards neighbour,
our cognition, our creativity, is ultimately distorted by sin
and bears within itself the seal of imperfection, but indeed so
too the way of humility is distorted by sin and bears within itself
the seal of imperfection. Christ commanded first of all to love
God and to love neighbour, to first of all seek after the Kingdom
of God, and a perfection in likeness to the perfection of the
Heavenly Father. The "Dobrotoliubie-Philokalia", -- into which
were not included the most remarkable mystical works of St. Maximos
the Confessor, nor of St. Simeon the New Theologian among others,
-- is first of all a collection of moral-ascetic directives for
monks, and not the expression of the full plenitude of Christianity
and its pathways. Not only the spirit of the Gospel and the Apostolic
Epistles, but also the spirit of the Greek Patristic fathers in
the most profound of their currents, -- is otherwise than this,
than for example the one-sided spirit of the Orthodoxy of Theophan
the Hermit. Ultimately, in Theophan the Hermit there is much that
is true and eternal, particularly in his finest book "The Way
to Salvation", but its attitude towards the life of the world
-- is depressingly-timid, its Christianity withered and impaired.
The central idea of the Eastern Patristic fathers was the idea
of "theosis", of deification ("obozhenie") of the creature, of
the transfiguration of the world, of the cosmos, and not the idea
of personal salvation. Not by chance were the greatest Eastern
teachers of the Church inclined towards the idea of "apokatastasis"
[trans. note: cosmic restorative return], not only St. Clement
of Alexandria and Origen, but also St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory
Nazianzen, St. Maximos the Confessor. The juridical conception
of the world process, the juridical conception of expiation, the
building up of hell, the salvation of the chosen and the eternal
perdition of all the rest of mankind is expressed mainly in Western
Patristics, in Blessed Augustine, and then in Western Scholasticism.
For the classical Greek Patristic fathers, Christianity was not
only the religion of personal salvation. It was directed towards
a cosmic apprehension of Christianity, it proposed the idea of
the illumination and the transfiguration of the world, the deification
of the created. Only later did the Christian consciousness hold
in greater esteem the idea of hell, rather than the transfiguration
and theosis of the world. This occurred, perhaps, as the result
of the prevalence of barbaric nations with their fierce instincts.
These nations needed to be subjected to severe discipline and
intimidation, since their flesh and blood, their passions threatened
ruin to Christianity and to every form of order in the world.
Christianity, taken as a religion of a personal salvation from
eternal perdition through humility, led to panic and terror.
Man lived under the horrible stress of terror of eternal perdition
and would consent to anything, if only he might avoid it. The
authoritarian system of obedience and submission created an affective
emotion of the dread of perdition, a panicked dread of the eternal
torments of hell. Under suchlike a spiritual arrangement,
under suchlike a state of mind, a creative attitude towards life
is very difficult. There is no time for creativity, when destruction
threatens. The whole of life is put beneathe the sign of terror,
of fear. When pestilence rages, and every second -- death threatens,
man has no time for creativity, he is exclusively occupied by
measures of salvation of the pestilence. Sometimes Christianity
is also conceived of, as salvation from a raging pestilence. Creativity
and the building up of life were rendered possible only thanks
to a system of dualism, which granted moments of oblivion about
salvation from perdition. Man devoted himself to science and art
or to the social order, having forgotten at the time about the
threatening destruction, revealing for himself another sphere
of being, separate from that sphere in which perdition and salvation
are accomplished, and with these two spheres being not at all
connected. The understanding of Christianity, as a religion of
personal salvation from perdition, is a system of transcendental
egoism, or transcendental utilitarianism and eudaimonism. K. Leont’ev,
with a boldness typical for him, professed such a religion of
transcendental egoism. But this is particularly because his attitude
towards the life of the world was fully pagan, and he dualistically
conjoined within himself the man of Athos and the Optina ascetic-monastic
Orthodoxy, together with the man of the Italian Renaissance of
the XVI Century. With a transcendental consciousness, man is preoccupied
not by the attainment of higher perfection in life, but by concern
about the salvation of his own soul, by thought about his own
eternal receiving of bliss. Transcendental egoism and eudaimonism
innately negates the way of love and cannot be faithful to the
Gospel command, which bid us to perish one’s own soul for the
sake of finding it, to give it up for one’s neighbour, to
teach first of all love, unconditional love for God and neighbour.
But to posit Christianity as a religion of transcendental egoism,
not knowing the unconditional love towards Divine perfection,
means to blaspheme Christianity. This is either a barbaric Christianity,
a Christianity humbling the wildness of the passions and distorted
by these passions, or it is a Christianity degenerate, and impaired,
and impoverished. Christianity always was, is and will be not
only a religion of personal salvation and fear of perdition, but
it is likewise a religion of the transfiguration of the world,
the deification of the creature, a religion cosmic and social,
a religion of unconditional love, a love for God and for man,
the covenant-promise of the Kingdom of God. Under the individualistic-ascetic
understanding of Christianity, as a religion of personal salvation,
of concern only about one’s own soul, the revelation about the
resurrection of all creatures is unintelligible and unnecessary.
For a religion of personal salvation there is no world eschatological
perspective, there is no connection with personness, nor of the
individual human soul with the world, with the cosmos, with all
creation. An hierarchical order of being is negated by this, in
which all is bound up with all, and from which the individual
destiny cannot be detached. An individualistic understanding of
salvation is more proper to Protestant pietism, than to a Christianity
as Church. I cannot be saved by myself, in solitude, I can be
saved only with my brethren, together with all of God’s creation,
and I cannot think only about my own salvation, I ought to think
also about the salvation of others, about the salvation of all
the world. And indeed salvation is but an exoteric expression
for the attainment of the spiritual heights, of perfection, of
like-to-God, as the supreme value of worldly life.
III.
All the greatest of Christian mystics put a faith-confessed
love towards God and union with God higher than personal salvation.
A more externalised Christianity often faults the mystics on this,
that for them the centre of gravity of spiritual life lies altogether
not in the ways of personal salvation, and that they go the perilous
ways of mystical love. The mystic is indeed of altogether different
a degree of spiritual life, than is the ascetic. The mystics characteristically
might study, reading the "Hymns" of St. Simeon the New Theologian.
The Christian mystic also understands salvation, as illumination
and transfiguration, the deification of creature, as an overcoming
of the isolation of creatureliness, i.e. as separateness from
God. The idea of theosis holds sway over the idea of salvation.
This is beautifully expressed by St. Simeon the New Theologian:
""I am imbued with His love and beauty, and filled with Divine
delight and sweetness. I become a partaker of radiance and glory:
my face, as also of my Beloved, doth shine, and all my limbs become
bearers of radiance. I thereupon co-become more beautiful than
the beauteous, more godly than the gods, I become most powerful
of all the powerful, more than the great kings and far more venerable
than anything, that might be seen, not only of the earth and that
upon the earth, but also of the heavens and all, that is in the
heavens." I quote the greatest mystic of the Orthodox East. It
would be possible to produce an innumerable number of fragments
from Western mystics, Latin Catholics or German mystics, which
substantiate this thought, that at the mystical centre of gravity
there never lies the yearning for salvation. The Catholic mystic
has overcome the juridicism of Catholic theology, the legalistic
understanding betwixt God and man. The dispute of Bossuet with
Fenelon was also the dispute of a theologian with a mystic. On
the mystical pathway there is always an unconditional displacement
oblivious about the self, a disclosure of immeasurable love towards
God. But love for God is a creative condition of spirit, in it
is the overcoming of every restraint, a liberation, an affirmative
revealing of spiritual man. Humility is only a means, it is still
negative. Love for God is an end, it is already positive. Love
for God is already a creative transfiguration of human nature.
But love for God is likewise a love for the spiritual heights,
for the Divine in life. Divine eros is spiritual ascent, spiritual
growth, a victory of the creative condition of spirit over the
condition of restraint, that sprouting of the wings of the soul,
that Plato speaks of in the "Phaedrus". The affirmative content
of being is live, creative, transfigurative love. Love is not
something particular, a separate side of life, love is the whole
of life, the fullness of life. Cognition is likewise a disclosure
of love, cognitive love, cognitively an union of the loving with
his theme, with being, with God. Creativity of the beautiful is
likewise a disclosure of the harmony of love in being. Love is
the affirmation of the countenance of the beloved in eternity
and in God, i.e. it is the affirmation of being. Love is an ontological
first-principle. But love for God is inseparable from love for
neighbour, love for God’s creation. Christianity also is a revealing
of Divine-human love. It saves me, i.e. not only love for God
but also love for man transfigures my nature. Love for those near,
for brothers, the acts of love enter upon the path of my salvation,
of my transfiguration. On the way of my salvation enters in love
for animals and plants, for each thing close by, for stones, for
rivers and seas, for hills and fields. By this too I am saved,
all the world too is saved, it attains to illumination. Deathly
indifference towards man and nature, towards every living thing
in the name of self-salvation is an hideous manifestation of religious
egoism, it is a desiccation of human nature, it is a readying
"in heart of impotent eunuchs". Christian love ought not to be
"glass-transparent love" (an expression of V. V. Rozanov). Abstractly-spiritual
love is also "glass-transparent love". Only love that is spiritually
of soul, in which the soul is transfigured in spirit, is a living
and Divine-human love. The sometimes encountered monastic-ascetic
disdain towards people and the world, a chilling of the heart,
and the mortification towards everything alive, is a degeneration
of Christianity, an impairment within Christianity. The substitution
in place of the commandment of love for God and love for neighbour,
given by Christ himself, by a commandment of external humility
and obedience, the chilling of any love, is also a degeneration
of Christianity, an incapacity to accommodate the truth of Christianity.
It is necessary to note, that in particular the idea of cosmic
transfiguration and illumination is most near to the Orthodox
East. For Western Christianity the juridical idea of justification
is more near. And the idea of justification is central for the
consciousness of the Catholic and the consciousness of the Protestant.
Hence in the West disputes about freedom and grace, about faith
and good works, acquire particular significance. Hence the seeking
of authority and external criteria of religious truth. Only
the mystics rise above the stifling idea of God’s judgement, God’s
demand of justification from man, and they understood, that for
God is necessary not the justification of man, but rather the
love of man, the transfiguration of his nature. This is the central
problem of the Christian consciousness. Whether in justification
and judgement, in God’s inexorable justice is the essence of Christianity,
or whether this essence is in transfiguration and illumination,
in God’s infinite love. The juridical understanding of Christianity,
producing the present spiritual terror, is a severe method, by
which Christianity parented the nations, that were full of bloody
instincts, cruelty and barbarism. But to this understanding is
opposed a more profound understanding of Christianity, as the
revelation of love and freedom. Man is called to be a creator
and co-participant in the deed of God’s creation. It is God’s
call, directed to man, and to which man ought freely to give answer.
For God submissive and obedient slaves are altogether not needful,
eternally trembling and egoistically concerned with themselves.
For God sons are needful, free and creating, loving and daring.
Man has terribly distorted the image of God, and has attributed
to Him his own perverse and sinful psychology. But it is needful
always to remember the truth of apophatic theology. If to
God might also be ascribed an emotive life, then it does not follow
as consequence to present it in the form of the most vile of human
emotions. Spiritual terror indeed and spiritual panic, begetting
the juridical understanding of the relationship between God and
man, and the placing of justification and salvation at the centre
of Christian faith, issues forth from an understanding of an emotive
life of God, in everything like to the most vile emotive life
in man. But God revealed Himself in the Son, as the Father, as
infinite love. And by this is forever surmounted the understanding
of God as fierce Lord and vindictively wrathful Master. "God did
not send His Son into the world, so as to judge the world, but
so that through Him the world might be saved". "This is the will
of the Father Who hath sent Me, so that of all which He hath given
to Me, no one should perish, but instead resurrect on the last
day".. [Jn. 3: 13, 6: 39-40]. Man is called to perfection,
to the like perfection of the Heavenly Father. The Christian revelation
is first of all the good news about the onset of the Kingdom of
God, which to seek is commanded us, first of all. The seeking
of the Kingdom of God is however not a seeking merely of personal
salvation. The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world,
the universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth.
IV.
The Christian world-concept not only does not oblige, but
also it does not permit us to think, that the real is only the
individual souls of people, that only they constitute the creation
of God. Society and nature are indeed reality and are created
by God. Society is not an human invention. Thus initially however,
thus it has ontological roots, as also does the human person.
And it is impossible to tear asunder the human person from society,
just as it is impossible to separate society from the human person.
The person and society are situated in interdependent life, they
presuppose a single concrete purpose. The spiritual life of the
person is reflected in the life of society. And society is a sort
of spiritual organism, which is nourished by the life of persons
and it nourishes them. The negation of the reality of society
is nominalism. And in such form nominalism has a fatal consequence
for Church consciousness, for an understanding of the nature of
the Church. The Church is spiritual society and this society is
imbued with ontologic reality, it cannot be limited to a co operative
of individual souls being saved. In the churchly society is realised
the Kingdom of God, and not only individual souls are saved. When
I say, that to be saved is possible only in the Church, I affirm
the Sobornost’ [collective universality] of salvation, salvation
in spiritual society and through spiritual society, salvation
with my brethren in Christ and with all God’s creation, and I
negate the individualistic understanding of salvation, salvation
in isolation (save thyself, whosoever be able, force a way into
the Heavenly Kingdom, as said a certain Orthodox), and I repudiate
the egoism of salvation. Many think, that the interpretation of
Christianity, as a religion of personal salvation, is primarily
a churchly interpretation. But in actuality it collides headlong
with the very idea of the Church and it subjects the reality of
the Church to a nomialistic degradation. If some of the more externalised
opinions hold sway in the Orthodox world and certain hierarchs
are esteemed as particularly churchly, then this does not signify
however, that they are more churchly in depth, in the ontologic
sense of the word. At one time its was Arianism that held sway
amongst the hierarchs of the East. Possibly, these opinions reflect
an impairment of Christianity, an ossification within Christianity.
In the world there would not have been such terrible catastrophes
and upheavals, there would not have been such godlessness and
belittling of spirit, had not Christianity become so unsoaring,
dull, uncreative, if it had not ceased to inspire and direct the
life of human society and culture, if it had not fenced in the
human soul into a small corner, if conventional and external dogmatism
and ritualism had not replaced the real existence of Christianity
within life. And the future of human societies and cultures is
dependent on this, whether Christianity receives the signification
of creative and transfigurative life, and whether again within
Christianity is the spiritual energy, capable to generate enthusiasm,
and to summon us from decay to ascent.
The official people of the Church, the professionals of
religion, tell us, that the matter of personal salvation is alone
necessary, that creativity for this purpose is unnecessary and
even harmful. Why then knowledge, why then science and art, why
then inventions and discoveries, why then should there be societal
truth, the creativity of a new and better life, when eternal destruction
threatens me and eternal salvation is solely necessary for me.
Such a sort of suppressive and even downright panicky religious
consciousness and self-feelings cannot give justification for
creativity. Nothing is needful for the matter of personal salvation
of the soul. Knowledge by suchlike measure is unnecessary, just
as art is unnecessary, economics is unnecessary, political sovereignty
is unnecessary, and unnecessary is even the existence of nature,
of God’s world. True, sometimes they tell us, that there is necessary
the existence of sovereignty and under this in the form of autocratic
monarchy, such that the whole of this is a religious system that
was possible only thanks to the existence of an Orthodox monarchy,
to which also was entrusted all the arrangement of life. But in
the final analysis, it is necessary to acknowledge, that the sovereign
realm was not only not necessary for my salvation, but quite harmful.
Such a sort of religious consciousness is unable to give justification
to any sort of matter in the world, or is able to do so only through
inconsistency and by sufferance. There is a Buddhist tendency
within Christianity. There remains only to go into the monastery.
But the very existence of monasteries presupposes their being
guarded by the civil order. This sort of consciousness is inclined
to justify a petty bourgeois existence, humble and dispassionate,
and to conjoin it in one system with a few monastic feats, but
it can never justify creativity. The question needs to be put
otherwise and Christianity not only permits, but also dictates
for us to put the question otherwise. A simple baba, they tell
us, is saved better, than is the philosopher, and for her salvation
there is no need for learning, there is no need of culture, etc.
But one might presumably doubt, that for God only the simple baba
is needful, that by this is exhausted God’s plan about the world,
God’s idea about the world. And indeed at present the simple baba
is a myth, she has become nihilistic and atheistic. The philosopher
and man of culture have become the believers. The crude, and fools,
and even idiots can be saved in their own way, but presumably
one might doubt, that in God’s idea about the world, that in the
schema of God’s Kingdom, that it will be peopled exclusively by
the crude, by fools and by idiots. Presumably one might think,
no less transgressing humility for us, that God’s plan about the
world is more lofty, more manifold and resplendid, that into it
enters the positive plenitude of being, ontological perfection.
The Apostle recommends us to be children at heart, but not in
mind. And here the creativity of man, and learning, art, discoveries,
the betterment of society, etc., etc., is necessary not for personal
salvation, but for the realisation of God’s intent for the world
and for mankind, for the transfiguration of the cosmos, for the
Kingdom of God, into which enters all the fullness of being. Man
is called to be a creator, a co-participant in God’s deed of world-creation
and world-arrangement, and not only to be saved. And sometimes
man is able in the name of creativity, to which he is vocationed
by God, to forego thinking about himself and his soul. Various
gifts are given by God to people, and no one possesses the right
to bury them in the ground, for these talents all need to be creatively
fulfilled, manifest in the objective vocations of man. With great
forcefulness about this speak both the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 12:
28) and the Apostle Peter (1 Pet. 4: 10). Such is God’s plan about
man, that the nature of the human person is creative. The person
is saved. But for this, that the personness be saved, it is necessary
that it be affirmed in its authentic nature. The authentic indeed
nature of the person is in this, that it is the centre of creative
energy. Outside of creativity there is no personness. The creative
person is saved for eternity. The affirmation in opposition to
creativity is an affirmation of the salvation of emptiness, of
non-being. There is inherent to man in his positive being a creative
psychology. It can be suppressed and hidden, it can be revealed,
but it ontologically inherent to man. The creative instinct in
man is an unselfish instinct, and in it man forgets about himself,
he emerges from himself. Scientific discoveries, technical inventions,
artistic creativity, societal creativity can be needful for others
and useful for utilitarian ends, but the creating itself is both
unselfish and a renouncing of self. In this is the essence of
the creative psychology. The psychology of creativity is very
distinct from the psychology of humility and cannot be constructed
upon it. Humility is more external a spiritual action, in which
man is preoccupied about his soul, about self-overcoming, self-perfection,
self-salvation. Creativity is a spiritual action, in which man
forgets about himself, foregoes himself in the creative act, is
absorbed by his subject. In creativity man tests out the condition
of the extraordinary ascent of all his being. Creativity is always
a tremour-shock, in which the everyday egoism of human life is
surmounted. And man consents to perish his own soul in the name
of creative activity. One is unable to make scientific discoveries,
to philosophically contemplate the mysteries of being, to form
artistic insights, to create social reforms merely in a condition
of humility. Creativity presupposes another spiritual condition,
not in opposition to humility, but qualitatively distinct from
it, an other moment of spiritual life. St. Athanasias the Great
disclosed the truth of "homo-ousia" not in a condition of
humility, but in a condition of creative ascent and illumination,
although too humility preceded this. Creativity presupposes the
characteristic spiritual ascesis, creativity is a not-allowing
of its passions. Creativity presupposes self-denial and sacrifice,
a victory over the power "of the world". Creativity is a disclosure
of love for God and for the Divine, and not for this world. And
therefore the way of creativity is also a way of surmounting "the
world". But creativity is a different quality of spiritual life
than humility and ascesis, it is a disclosing of the God imaged
nature of man. Sometimes they reason it out thus: at first man
needs to be saved, to conquer sin, and then to create. But such
an understanding of a chronological relationship betwixt salvation
and creativity is in contradiction to the laws of life. Such has
never occurred nor will occur. I require all my life to be saved
and until the end of my life there is no succeeding ultimately
to conquer sin. Therefore never will there onset a time, when
I shall be able to begin to create life. But thus still, just
as man needs all his lifetime to be saved, man needs all his lifetime
to create, participating in the creative process in accord with
his gifts and his vocation. The relationship between salvation
and creativity is ideational and inward a relation, but it is
not the relation of a real chronological bodily sequence. Creativity
assists in and does not impede salvation, since creativity is
a fulfillment of the will of God, an obeying of God’s call, a
co-participation in the acting by God in the world. Whether I
be a carpenter or a philosopher, I am called by God to create
constructively. My creativity can be distorted by sin, but a complete
lack of creativity is an expression of the ultimate stifling of
man by Original Sin. It is not true, that only ascetics and saints
are saved, -- they likewise created, and were artists of human
souls. The Apostle Paul in his own spiritual type was to a greater
degree by religious genius moreso a creator, than saint.
V.
Not all creativity is good. There can be an evil creativity.
It is possible to create not only in the name of God, but also
in the name of the devil. But therein particularly it should be
impossible to give up creativity to the devil, to the Anti-Christ.
The Anti-Christ with great energy shews forth his pseudo-creativity.
And if there will not be a Christian creativity and a Christian
organisation of life, then the anti-Christian and the Anti-Christ’s
creativity and organsation will usurp all more and more territory,
to triumph in all the spheres of life. But for the work of Christ
in the world it is necessary to battle outwards as much as possible
for greater territories of being, it is necessary to cede as little
as possible to the Anti-Christ and his work in the world. Withdrawing
from the world, negating creativity in the world, ye hand over
the fate of the world to the Anti-Christ. If we as Christians
will not create life in true freedom and brotherhood of peoples
and nations, then the Anti-Christ by falsehood will do this. The
dualistic divide between a personal spiritual disposition with
its morality, for which Christianity demands asceticism, denial,
sacrifice and love, -- and the disposition and morality of a societal,
creative governance, economy, etc., for which Christianity permits
of attachments to material goods, the cult of ownership and the
thirst for wealth, of rivalry and competition, of the will to
power, etc. -- can no longer exist. Christian consciousness cannot
permit, that society should be left on its own, which it acknowledges
as defective and sinful. Christian renewal presupposes a new spiritual-societal
creativity, the creation of a real Christian society, and not
a conventionally-symbolic governance. It is impossible to tolerate
further the conventional lie within Christianity. Anti-Christian
socialism triumphs, because Christianity does not resolve the
social question. Anti-Christian gnosticism triumphs, because Christianity
does not reveal its own Christian gnosis. And so on in everything.
We draw nigh to the final frontier. A secular, humanistic, balanced
culture becomes all less and less possible. No one believes anymore
in abstract culture. Everywhere man stands afront a choice. The
world is divided up into opposing principles. It is impossible
for everything to transpire further such, as has transpired in
recent history. And together with this is the impossibility to
return to the old medievalism. The problem of creativity, the
problem of Christian culture and society is insoluble by the churchly-hierocratic.
This is a problem of a religious sanctification of the human principle,
and not the restoration of governance of the angelic principle.
Creativity is a sphere of human freedom, full of copiously-abundant
love towards God, the world and man. To lead a way out from the
crisis of the world and the crisis of Christianity is possible
neither by the principles of recent history, nor by the principles
of the old Middle Ages, but only by the principles of a new Middle
Ages. Christian creativity will be a deed of monasticism in the
world. The religious crisis of our epoch is bound up with
this, that the churchly consciousness is impaired, it has not
the comprehension of fullness. And sooner or later this fullness
ought to be conceived of and ought to be revealed, that there
is a positive creative developement in the world, and in culture
it would be a revealing of human freedom in the Church, it would
be a disclosure of the life of mankind in the Church, i.e. it
would be subconsciously churchly. The creativity of man in the
world would be the life of the very Church, as God-manhood. This
does not at all mean, that all creativity and creating by man
in the new history would be subconsciously churchly. This process
would be twofold, in it would be readied the kingdom of this world,
the kingdom of Anti-Christ. In humanism also there was a great
lie, a revolt against God, it readied the destruction of man and
the extinction of being. But it was also a positive searching
out of human freedom, it was a disclosure of the creative powers
of man. The further creative process in mankind cannot remain
neutral, it ought to become positive-churchly, to be conscious
of itself, or ultimately it will become anti churchly, anti-Christian,
satanic. In the world, in culture there ought to be effected a
real-ontologic separation, not formal and external-churchly, but
innerly-spiritual and ontologically-churchly. In this is the meaning
of our times. Divine energies are efficacious everywhere in the
world through manifold and frequently undiscerned pathways. And
it does not make sense to tempt "these little ones" of our time,
the prodigal sons returning to the Church, by denying every positive
religious sense of the creative processes, transpiring in the
world.
In recent times all the spiritually significant people were
spiritually isolated. Terribly alone, tragically alone was the
genius, the creative innovator. There was no religious awareness,
that the genius -- was a messenger from Heaven. And but rarely
would be heard suchlike voices, as with the voices of some Catholics,
calling for the canonisation of Christopher Columbus. His isolation
as a genius gave rise to dualism, about which all the time there
is discussion. Only a Christian renewal, which would be creative,
would be able to overcome it [i.e. the dualism]. But creative
Church renewal is impossible to conceive of in the hierocratic
categories, it is impossible to squeeze it into the framework
of churchly professionalism, it is impossible to think of it,
as exclusively a "sacral" process, in contrast to "profane" processes.
Creative Church renewal will come about from stirrings in the
world, from culture, from the creative religious energies accumulated
in the world. We need the more to believe, that Christ acts within
the spiritual human race itself, that He does not forsake it,
although for us this activity would be invisible. Christians stand
before the task of the Churchification (‘otserkovlenie") of the
whole of life. But the Churchification does not mean the invariable
subordination of all sides of life to the Church, it should be
understood differently, i.e. it does not mean the resumption of
theocracy and the hierocratic. Churchification would inevitably
have to have on its side the acknowledgement by the Church of
that spiritual creativity, which a differentiated and hierocratic
churchly consciousness would posit external to the Church. The
Church in a profound sense of the word has lived also in the world,
and in the world have been subconscious churchly processes. The
fulfillment of the Church, as Divine human life, the disclosing
of an integral Church consciousness signifies deification by a
new spiritual experience of mankind. It is impossible that this
spiritual experience should remain unjustified and unsanctified.
Man is immeasurably anxious and thirsts for the sanctification
of his creative aspirations. The Church is life, and life is movement,
creativity. It is impossible to endure any longer, that creative
movement should remain outside the Church and in opposition to
the Church, and that the Church should be unmoving and deprived
of creative life. Certain forms of Church consciousness have readily
acknowledged a theophany ["manifestation of God"] in ossified
forms of being, in unstirring historical bodies (e.g. monarchic
rule). But the times ensue, when Church consciousness mustneeds
recognise the theophany in creativity. The outside the churchly,
the secular, humanistic creativity is become withered, everywhere
it rests upon an impasse. Culture has become insipid. A thirst
for eternity torments the best people. And this means, that there
ought to ensue an epoch of creativity that is of the Church, and
is Christian, and Divine-human. The Church cannot remain a facet
of life, a facet of the soul. We hope, that all the creative,
the transfigurative attitudes towards life pass over from the
world into the Church. Only within the Church can there be preserved
and revealed the image of man and the freedom of man, which suffer
destruction by the processes occurring in the world. In the godless
civilisation there perish the image of man and the freedom of
spirit, creativity withers, and already there ensues barbarity.
The Church ought still once more to save the spiritual culture,
the spiritual freedom of man. This I term the onset of a new Middle
Ages. The will for a real transfiguration of life awakens, not
merely personal, but also societal and worldly. And this good
will cannot be dismissed by the perception, that the Kingdom of
God upon the earth is not possible. The Kingdom of God exists
in eternity and in each instant of life and is not dependent on
this, that in the world the power of evil is externally victorious.
Our task is to devote all our will and all our life to the victory
of the power of good, to the truth of Christ in all and everywhere.
Human life is splintered and fragmented by two tragedies
-- the tragedy of the Church and the tragedy of culture. These
tragedies are caused by a dualistic impairment, by an impoverishment
of the Church through a differentiated and hierarchic understanding
of it, always setting the Church in opposition to the world. We
Christians ought not to love "the world", we ought to vanquish
"the world". But this "world" to be overcome, for the holy
fathers, it is the passions to overcome, it is sin and evil, but
not God’s creation, not the cosmos. The Church is set in opposition
to suchlike a "world", but it is not set in opposition to the
cosmos, to God’s creation, the positive fullness of being. The
resolution of the two tragedies -- is in life, and not in a theoretical-only
perception of Christianity; it is as a religion not only of salvation,
but also of creativity, a religion of the transfiguration of the
world, of the universal resurrection, of love for God and man,
i.e. in a total heeding of the Christian truth about God-manhood,
about the Kingdom of God. And the positive resolution is located
this side of the old opposition between heteronomy and autonomy.
Creativity is not heteronomous and it is not autonomous, it is
altogether not "nomic", it is Divine-human, it is a disclosure
of the profuse love of man for God, the response of man to God’s
call, to God’s expectation. We believe, that in Christianity are
contained inexhaustible creative powers. And the disclosure of
these powers would save the world from decay and decline. The
question of our times consists not in the struggle of churchly
and outside-churchly Christianity, but about a spiritual struggle
within the Church, of Church currents internally, -- of a current
exclusively preservative and a current creative. And a monopoly
of churchliness cannot belong exclusively to the preservative
currents hostile to creativity. On this depends the future of
the Church upon the earth, the future of the world and mankind.
In the Church is an eternal conservative principle, and it ought
immutably to protect the sacred and the tradition. But in the
Church ought to be also an eternal creative principle, a principle
transfigurative, oriented towards the Second Coming of Christ,
towards the triumphing of the Kingdom of God. At the foundation
of the Christian faith lies not only the priestly, but also the
prophetic. "And how in accord with the grace given us, we have
differing gifts, if then thou hast prophecy, prophesy according
to the measure of faith" (Rom. 12: 6). Creativity, the creative
discovering of the genius of man is at present a secular prophecy,
to which ought to be restored its sacred significance.
NIKOLAI BERDYAEV
© 1999 by translator Fr. Stephen Janos.
(1926 - 308 - en)
SPASENIE I TVORCHESTVO. Dva ponimaniya khristianstva.
Posvyaschaetsa pamyati Vladimira Solov’eva. -- Journal
"Put’", jan. 1926, No. 2, p. 26-46.
Permission granted for non-commercial distribution
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