N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
(Russian)
Universality and Confessionalism
by Prof. Nikolai Berdiaev
translated by Fr. Stephen Janos
We live in an universalist/ecumenical era, an era of world
associations, religions, cultures, intellectualism, economics
and politics. Worldly organisations, congresses, gatherings, diverse
international meetings show the symptoms of a will detected everywhere
for accord and association. This began after the bloody discord
of the world war. Fierce nationalist passions still lacerate all
the entire world. The sin and sickness of nationalism all still
disfigure the Christian confessions. Already there is the possibility
of yet a new war to torment the European nations. But never has
there been such a yearning for unity, such a thirst for overcoming
particularism and isolation. These worldly tendencies show themselves
also in the life of Christian churches. The Ecumenical Question
has become for Christian consciousness the question of the day.
The Christian East issues forth from a condition of reticence
and the Christian West as it were ceases to account itself the
sole bearer of truth. Many write and speak about the coming-together
of the divided parts of the Christian world, about the unification
of the Church. They are beginning to be acutely aware, that the
divisions and discords within Christianity is a great scandal
before the face of an un-Christian even anti-Christian world.
But do condusive psychological premisses for reapproachment and
unity exist? This is the first question which we must raise. The
question about the overcoming of divisions, about the universal
unity of Christian humanity mustneeds little disturb those of
the Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants who feel a complete satisfaction
with their confession, seeing in it the fullness of truth and
considering it the solitary true preservation of Christian revelation.
It is necessary to feel the disquiet and dissatisfaction, to be
aware of the historical sins of each confession, to probe the
imperfection and want of completeness, in order to be fired up
with the Ecumenical Movement. It is necessary to feel the onset
of a new world epoch, to be aware of the new hurdles set before
Christianity, so as to overcome the provincialism of the confessions.
The so-called Ecumenical Problem does not exist for all Christians,
many consider it a false problem. The very stating of the problem
presupposes the existence of sin not only personal, but also the
sin of the Church in its human, certainly, aspect. The Ecumenical
problem is not only a problem of Christian unity, but also a problem
of Christian fullness. But to aspire after fullness is only for
those who are aware of the lack of fullness, those who have a
need for wholeness. For still too many Christians their provincial
perspective is presented as an universal perspective. The question
about Catholics is particularly complex and difficult. For Catholics
it is officially forbidden to take part in the Ecumenical Movement,
and they do not send their proponents to a congress or gathering.
A faction of the Catholic side sympathises, and they take part
in some of the inter-confessional circles and gatherings. But
the Catholic Church has its own attitude worked out over centuries
towards the problem of universality, and the Catholic psychology
is opposed to new forms in the movement towards universality.
The Catholic Church avows the universal unity as basic to its
own nature, primordially inherent to it, from which it derives
its very name. To those yearning for unity and universality it
says: Come to us, and your yearning will be satisfied, since we
have that which ye seek. The Ecumenical Movement for the Catholic
Church is none other, than a movement for reuniting with the Catholic
Church. The Catholic awareness considers the yearning and disquietude
as essentially that of schismatics, separated off from the universal
Church, but does not admit it for Catholics dwelling in the bosom
of the Church, knowing plenitude and oneness. It is the Catholics,
certainly, who suffered the division of the Christian world and
they experience the turmoil, but they do not predicate a Catholic
policy in regard to the ecumenical problem. It is however necessary
to say, that not only for Catholics, but also for any man seeing
in his own confession the absolute fullness of truth, there yet
remains the question about the personal treatment of others from
within this confession. Catholics consider by unification of the
Church an annexation to the Catholic Church. But even the Orthodox
understand by unification of the Church an annexation to the Orthodox
Church. The glaring gaze of the Protestants, seeing in the Catholic
and Orthodox Churches pagan and magic elements, awaits rather
a personal conversion to the Church of the Word of God. Thus the
school of Karl Barth, itself an interesting current of religious
thought in contemporary Europe, is quite unfavourable towards
the Ecumenical Movement and is indifferent towards it. This is
explained by its Protestant pathos, by its return to the sources
of the Reformation. But the greater part of Protestants, particularly
the Anglo-Saxon world, are of an other disposition. The Ecumenical
Movement was conceived in the bosom of Protestantism. If for the
Orthodox and the Catholics the very word-phrase "unification of
the Church" is inexact and ambiguous -- since they believe in
the existence of one visible Church, then for the Protestants
it is a possibility -- since for them there is one invisible Church,
of visible churches however many there might be, as many as there
are Christian communities. For Orthodox sharing in the emergent
movement is easier than for Catholics -- Orthodox are rather more
free than Catholics -- but more difficult than for Protestants,
since there also exists for the Orthodox one visible Church with
dogmas and mysteries.
It is most of all important to perceive that the Church
is a Divine-human process, the interaction of God and mankind.
In the history of the Church not only does God act, but also man.
And man brings into the life of the Church both his positive creative
activity and also his negative activity, having been distorted.
Man has imposed his own imprint on all the churches and all the
confessions and he is always inclined to substitute his own seal
in place of the seal of God. Within tradition, for tradition not
only Orthodox and Catholic, but also Protestant, human activity
is always shrouded over. And this human activity develops not
only that what like a seed was placed within Divine Revelation,
but often also took the place itself of Divine Revelation. Thus
continuously side by side in the history of the Church the Gospel
was screened and transmitted by human tradition. Very often there
was opposed to new human creativity not Divine Revelation itself,
but the already ossified results of an old human creativity. Human
creativity and activity of the past sometimes seem inertial, jumbled
together for the human creativity and activity of the present.
This we see constantly in the history of Christianity. The demand
of guarding the tradition of the fathers and the forefathers might
often be unfaithful to the fathers and the forefathers, who in
their own time created something new. Living tradition not only
preserves, but creates further. It is impossible to comprehend
within the religious life, if one does not constantly remember,
that Revelation dually assumes not only a Revealing of God, but
also a perceiving of the Revelation by man. Man in perceiving
Revelation is not like a stone or a piece of wood, he is activated.
When man hears the Word of God -- the beloved phrase of Barthianism
-- he is not able to be passive, he always has a creative reaction
in his hearing, he has always an active comprehension of what
was heard. The perception of Revelation is already a response
to it. Wherefore the Divine element and the human element in the
life of the Church and in Christian history are so mixed up together,
that it is difficult to separate and divide them apart. Absolute
guarantees of purely the Divine aspect, not complicated by the
human aspect nor altered by it, would almost not be possible.
Such a guarantee would be a negation of human freedom. Catholics
seek their guarantees in the infallible authority of the pope;
Protestants -- on the authority of Holy Scripture; Orthodox --
in Sobornost' and Church Tradition. But in these searchings after
guarantees there is no escape from a vicious circle, because the
authority of the pope exists only during that time wherein the
faith of Catholics, human faith, consigns to the pope this authority;
since Holy Scripture itself, the Word of God is come by through
human verse, expressed in human language and given to us through
Church Tradition; since the Sobornost' of the Church presupposes
human freedom and outside this freedom there does not exist tradition
itself. The teaching of Khomyakov about Sobornost' has an advantage,
since avowedly there is put at the center of it the idea of freedom,
and not the idea of authority. And Dostoievsky further discerns
that the idea of authority is an anti-Christian temptation. The
question is complicated because, not only all the searching, corruption
and sin in the life of the Church proceeds from the human aspect,
but from it also proceeds all the creative, the enrichment and
development. Human activity of the past, human tradition often
mix up the resolution of the problems posed for our era, but these
problems can only be resolved by a new human activity, only by
the commencing of a new tradition. The human aspect, with its
own active reaction individualises Christian Revelation, fragmented
into national types of thought and national types of culture,
associated and conjoined within national-political forms. The
universal truth of Christianity is perceived variously and assumes
a different type for East and for West, for the Latin, German
or Anglo-Saxon world. We do not know a type of Christianity that
would not be an human individuation. These very individualisations
by themselves are a positive enrichment and blessing. In the House
of the Father are many abodes. Yet by human sin is manifest not
individualisation, but rather separation and emnity. If there
were not the separation of the Church, then all the variance would
be the huge distinction between the type of Christian East and
the type of the Christian West. This distinction was largely between
eastern and western patristics, when the Church was still one.
If India and China were to become Christian, then they would form
a new individualised type of Christianity, distinct from the Eastern
Orthodox and from the Western Catholic and Protestant. You would
not convince Indians or Chinese, were they to become Christians,
that the ancient Graeco-Roman culture with Plato, Aristotle and
the Stoics is a necessary component part of Christian Revelation.
They had their own ancient wisdom, their own great philosophies,
and they remain for them much closer than Plato or Aristotle.
This ought to be ascribed to the human aspect, not the Divine
aspect. Our Christianity up to the present was almost exclusively
the Christianity of Mediterranean nations, of Graeco-Roman culture.
Such was the human soil receiving Christianity. True, this soil
was formed in the Hellenistic epoch which was universalistic,
but all this however was complicated by the eastern influences
of Graeco-Roman culture. In the East was the influence by the
principal trend -- Greek culture; in the West -- Latin. For the
one influence the principal trend was Plato and Neo-Platonism;
for the other -- Aristotle and the Stoics. But if we believe in
an absoluteness of Christianity, then we are not able to take
into account the Mediterranean Graeco-Roman religion. It is necessary
to distinguish Christian Revelation from the types of civilisation
and the types of thought, through which it is refracted. And here
all the confessions make this distinction insufficiently. If however
they make Aristotle a fragmentary part of Christian Revelation,
if the Thomists avow the confession of Aristotle's philosophy
as a necessary pre-condition for the correct understanding of
Revelation, then it means that the human particular was accepted
in place of the Divine-universal. The human element, human versification
transforms the absolute Christian Revelation into a confession,
into which the universality is always jammed-in. Without doubt
-- nations, civilisations and confessions have their own special
gifts and missions. But a consciousness of these gifts and missions
does not oblige to cripple the universal consciousness. National
types and civilisation types, the character of thought and distinction
of formulation are moreso separative, than the religious realities
and truth of Revelation itself, than spiritual life. When the
problem of Christian universality is considered, it is rather
difficult how to specify what aspect in a confession applies to
the human and psychological, to types of thought and culture,
nationalism and politics. And furthermore there is the great difficulty
in delineating within this individuative human element between
what is the positive diverse creativity and richness, and between
what in it is the source of self-complacency, narrow-mindedness,
division and emnity towards others. A Confession, any Confession,
is an historic individualisation of the one Christian Revelation,
of the one Christian Truth. Since no Confession is able to be
the full universal Truth, it is not able to be the Truth itself.
A Confession is an historical category and it relates to an historical
issue of the Divine-human religious process. A Confession is the
confessing of faith in God by man, and not the full Truth revealed
by God. And man himself adds on limitations to his confession
of faith in God. A believer has an irresistible tendency to see
a theophany in that which he himself has contributed to the historical
religious process. His very own deeds appear to him like an objective
truth revealed from without. National-historical faith-confessions
in particular appear to be revelations objectively given. Church
nationalism, although it were as vast as Latinism, is still an
irresistible paganism within Christianity. A Christian is not
able not to believe, that the Universal Church of Christ exists,
and that in it are oneness, fullness and riches. But it is only
partially, incompletely actualised in history, and much in it
remains in a potential condition. Confessions with their own conjoining
with nationalism and political forms, with their own limitations
by certain types of thought and certain styles of culture are
not able to pretend to be the contemporary actualised Universal
Church, a contemporary expression of oneness and fullness. No
confession in its human aspect is able to pretend to be the bearer
of the fullness and purity of Orthodoxy, Catholicity, and Evangelicity.
Confessions always have limitations and often become ossified,
obstructing the Spirit. No local Orthodox Church can pretend to
be the bearer and expression of the fullness of Orthodoxy. The
Orthodox Church exists as the true Universal Church, but this
is not the Russian or the Greek Church, in which the Orthodoxy
is subsumed. The Roman Catholic Church cannot pretend to be the
bearer and expression of the fullness of Catholicity. And the
many-denominationed Protestant Church cannot pretend to be the
bearer and expression of the fullness and pureness of Evangelicity.
People very often accept their own pride and self-conceit for
faithfulness to Truth. But they become faithful not so much to
Truth, as to themselves and their own limitations. Truth is established
rather moreso deeply and moreso beyond. The official Catholic
Church has pretensions to be the bearer of fullness and universality.
And in the name of their own universal consciousness it is exclusive;
it removes itself from communality with all the remaining Christian
world. In actuality it is particularistic, the Roman Church, bearing
on itself the imprint of a certain type of human mentality, human
civilisation, the imprint of an human ethnos, the Latin ethnos.
This vast Church, a grand style with great past culture, encompassing
all parts of the world -- but it is only a part, taking itself
for the whole. In its particularism it most imagines itself universal.
Especially, the Catholic consciousness in its classic system of
Thomism regards its own church, ie. the contemporary, as fully
actualised in history, and it is willing to admit nothing of potentiality
still requiring actualisation. This fully conforms with the Thomistic
interpretation of Aristotle's teaching about potentiality and
act. Orthodox consciousness is more readily able to admit potentiality
in the Church, of those things still requiring actualisation.
This is defined by the concept of the Church as a living spiritual
organism, or Divine-human process. This also is Sobornost', a
strange notion for Western Christian consciousness.
But does this not lead us to acknowledge the limitedness
of every confession and the impossibility to see universality
in it -- does this not lead us to Inter-Confessionalism? Many
think of the Ecumenical Movement as a movement towards Inter-Confessionalism.
I am inclined to think that Inter-Confessionalism is a mistake
and a danger for the Ecumenical Movement. Protestant organisations
frequently put forth the principle of Inter-Confessionalism and
in it they think to encompass all the confessions and churches.
But Inter-Confessionalism is least of all to be acknowledged universal.
Inter-Confessionalism is not an enrichment, but an impoverishment,
not a concrete fullness, but rather an abstraction. Inter-Confessionalism
is not richer and fuller, but rather poorer and more impaired
than a confession. It is a reducing to the minimum. Inter- Confessional
Christianity is an abstract Christianity, and in it there is not
the concrete fullness of life. The proponents of Inter-Confessionalism
propose a Christianity to be united on an abstract minimum of
Christianity, eg. on faith in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, throwing
away everything else that makes for division. But by such a path
it is impossible to come upon the religious life. Religious life
has altogether no semblance to political life, wherein impossible
coalitions are structured such, that I yield up something to you,
and you yield up something to me. Faith however is able to be
integral, whole, in which there is nothing possible to yield up.
Wherefore it only is living, wherefore it only is able to inspire
to action. If what I have as an Orthodox is a cult of the Mother
of God, then I cannot pretend that I forget about this in the
interest of harmonising with a Christianity to which this cult
is foreign. Universality is fullness and it is not attained by
way of abstraction, by a way of addition and subtraction. The
will for universality is a will for greater fulless and enrichment
and only by this fullness and enrichment is it possible to think
about the reunification of the Christian world. The Ecumenical
Movement is able to be considered only in the sense, that in it
representatives of various confessions jointly meet together and
work, that it is a co-operation of confessions. But this jointness
does not mean that a confession makes itself within to be inter-confessional,
that Inter-Confessionalism makes its believers into Orthodox,
Protestants or Catholics. Such an Inter-Confessionalism would
signify indifference. Therefore it is necessary to speak not about
Inter-Confessional, but rather about Supra-Confessionalism, about
a movement towards supra- confessional fullness. Universality
is attained by a movement upwards and into the depths, through
a manifestation of fullness within each religious type. The Christian
world is one in the depths and in the heights, but on the surface
it is hopelessly divided. But the movement towards Inter-Confessionalism
moves along the surface. The movement towards Supra-Confessionalism
is a movement in depth and on high. We want to fill in its deficiency.
Inter-Confessional Christianity is deficient, very abstract, a
minimising, and therefore we ought not to strive after it. Only
by remaining in one's own confession, but going into profound
depths and sublime heights, passing from the plane on which historical
confessions clash, to the greater spiritual plane, I am able to
hope to attain to supra-confessional fullness. Orthodoxy in its
depths, in the authentic realities, is able to make encounter
with Catholics and Protestants. Profound Christian mysteries make
encounter with profound mysteries of non-Christian religions.
On the surface we are divided by doctrines and forms of thought,
various psychologies and forms of church organisation. In the
depths we touch together with Christ Himself, and therefore with
each other. And this is altogether not the bloodless Inter-Confessionalism.
This is a movement towards fullness.
It is impossible to give up the Truth in which we believe, and
thereis nothing in it to be surrendered. Concrete integral Truth
is indivisible. But this does not make implication that one account
oneself already the bearer of this Truth. No one is able to pretend
that he or his religious community fully actualises the fullness
of universal Truth. Not only in life, but also in thought it is
not fully actualised. Not only the individual man, but also each
religious community there is a need for its fullfillment, and
always it becomes blameworthy in self-satisfaction, in emnity
towards others, and to assume the part for the whole. The Christian
religious life is infinite in its tasks and it is not able to
be comprised in any final form. Meanwhile all historic confessions
strive after a consolidation of final forms, in which they wish
to contain the fullness of Truth. Universality however is an infinite
task, not containable by any confessional form. Christianity is
not only a Revelation of Truth, but also a Revelation of Love.
And fanatical attachment to its own confessional truth often sins
against love. It is a not-believing in Christ, Who is not only
the Truth, but also Love, as the Way and the Life. Only an unity
of truth and love is able to reveal the way of Christian unity.
Legalistic devotion to truth itself for its own sake may lead
to hateful feelings and disunity. The excluded entry of love,
accompanied by an indifference to truth, makes vague and uncertain
the aim itself of Christian unity. It is necessary to make a distinction
between Orthodoxy as the Universal Church, in which there mustneeds
be the Fullness of Truth, and Orthodoxy as a confession, in which
inevitably there rests the imprint of human organisation. I can
see in Orthodoxy the very great Truth and therefore I want to
remain in it to the end. But this does not oblige preventing me
to see the historical sins and blame of Orthodoxy, both Graeco-Byzantine
and Russian. And such sins are not small -- deceitful attitudes
by the Church towards the State, having led to the enslavement
of the Church by the State, church nationalism, belief in ceremony,
into which the Orthodox world frequently succumbs, a deficiency
of action, of active Christian life, the suffocation of the Gospel
aspect by the sacramental-liturgical aspect, isolation within
itself and hostility towards the Western Christian world. The
very word Pravoslavnie/Orthodoxy signifies the confession of Truth.
But the national Orthodox churches of the East do not manifest
themselves as bearers of this full Truth. By Orthodoxy, and in
particular for us Russian Orthodoxy, one ought to acknowledge
that Orthodoxy preserved an ancient truth, but very little and
poorly did it put it into practise, very little was done for embodying
it into life, and not only in life but even in thought. Western
Christianity realised and actualised itself much more. It may
be because the temptation to alter the truth often presented itself.
But Truth is revealed to us not only in order for us to guard
it jealously, it is revealed to us for creativity in life. Truth
is not dead stock-capital, it ought to bring about a profiting.
Truth, which itself is not realised in the dynamic of life, thus
becomes deadened, it ceases to be the Way and the Life. Beyond
question, the Truth of Orthodoxy was the Spiritual Font of Life
of the Russian nation. It gave birth to the images of great saints.
It shaped the souls. But its realisation was not proportionate
to the measure of the given truth. The Christian West, it may
seem, actualised itself too much, until the force burst asunder;
the Christian East -- insufficiently so. I am convinced that there
is in it greater dogmatic truth than in Catholicism and Protestantism,
that in it are given endless possibilities, particularly in consequence
of its insufficient actualisation, and that in it flows the spirit
of freedom. But this does not hinder the awareness of the sins
of the Orthodox world and its limitation. And in the West there
exist not only confessions, as Orthodox often suppose. In the
West is an original Christian spiritual experience, very rich
and varied, and we ought to much study Western Christianity. But
also the Western Christian world ought to consider the significance
and richness of the Christian East. It is neither necessary in
total nor in all it holds to, Only such a reciprocal dispostion
might be propitious for Christian reapproachment and unity. We
cannot in the XX Cent make pretension to a consciousness of the
Universal Church by human power itself. If the Universal Church
never was, it if does not know its own origin from Jesus Christ,
then it would never be. Congresses, conferences, inter-confessional
gatherings might be a symbol of the rise of a new universal spirit
amongst Christian mankind, but they cannot make pretense to a
consciousness of the Church, which finally first of all would
be fully universal. The Ecumenical Movement, which serves its
own heated advocacy, has its own risks, which need to be recognised.
In the past Unia attempts between Catholics and Orthodox bore
an altogether external character, that of church- governance,
and it was accomplished without an inner spiritual unity. This
Unia usually caused the reverse results and aroused even greater
hostility. Nowhere is there such hostility between Orthodox and
Catholics, as in the countries where there is Uniatism. It is
very characteristic, that the Orthodox are most repulsed by those
Catholics, who appear to be specialists on the Eastern Question
and on Orthodoxy, professionals on the so-called "Re-Unification
of the Church". The very expression "Re-Unification of the Church"
would be best altogether discarded, as insincere and inacurrate.
A schism of churches did not occur; what occurred was a schism
of Christian humankind. And the question amounts not to a re-unification
of churches, but to a re-unification of Christians, a re-unification
of Christian East and West, and a re-unification of Christians
within the West itself. From this it always concludes where it
begins, with a re-unification of the Christian soul. Least of
all is this attained by negotiations and agreements by church
rulers. The process of reapproachment and unification ought to
come from underneath, from within the depths. The danger of formal
Unias exist therefore, when Catholics strive towards the annexation
of the Orthodox East. On this soil has already stood Vl Solovyev,
who was great by his empathy over unity, but the point of view
of which was out-dated. At present the Ecumenical Movement, in
which the chief role is played by Protestants, takes on a different
symbol and with it is bound up danger of a different sort. They
sometimes comprehend Christian Universality too externally, predominantly
social and moral. In our era there exists an understanding of
Christianity as being a social and moral religion. It is often
possible to encounter such an understanding in the Anglo-Saxon
world. I am least of all inclined to deny the great significance
of the social question for the unification of the Christian world.
On the contrary, I think that the social question at present is
central for Christian consciousness. From the changed attitudes
of Christianity of all confessions of belief towards social life,
from the radical condemnation by Christians of social injustice
and demands for realising the righteousness of Christ in social
life, its fate depends upon Christianity in the world. Precisely
upon this ground there emerges the gathering of anti-Christian
forces. Christians ought not to cede to the enemies of Christianity
the prerogatives of the struggle for social justice, for improvement
of the condition of the working classes. But Christianity is not
a social religion, and the foundations of Christianity are not
social nor are they moral, but rather mystical and spiritual.
Forgetfulness about the mystical side of Christianity and its
orientation towards eternity cannot lead to true unity and universality.
The Liturgical Movement of our times is a reminder about the mystical
foundations of Christianity. And in a significant part of the
Protestant world, which generally is most liturgically impaired
and impoverished, there has awakened a liturgical thirst. The
unity of the Christian world will be attainable not on the soil
of the social, but on the soil of the spiritual deepening between
all confessions, on the soil of emergence of spiritual life. In
the last century Christian spirituality has become enfeebled,
and Christianity having grown external, was exposed to the influence
of rationalism and frequently was subservient to bourgeois interests.
It is impossible to hope, that a decayed and externalised Christianity
would attain to greater unity and universality. The tasks of the
Ecumenical Movement are however carried out under the present
time Christian renaissance. Over our world living through its
crises and catastrophes, it brings about a breath of a new Christian
spirituality. And with this are bound up our hopes. It is impossible
already to be an externalised, existing Christian, half-Christian,
half-pagan. The demands imposed on a Christian soul in our times
are terribly increased. And there occurs a qualitative selection.
By the sword it separate the authentic from the inauthentic, the
real from the illusory, the Divine from that, which man himself
fashions and passes off for the Divine. Christianity itself over
the course of centuries has become secularised and there ought
to occur a cleansing of Christianity. It is necessary to resolve
the problems within Christianity which torment the world, and
Christianity cannot be indifferent to movements in the world.
But then however it would be strong in the world and for the world,
when it is not dependent on the world nor defined by the world.
There emerges in the world an unprecedented concentration, association
and organisation of anti-Christian forces. These forces are unusually
active. And Christianity, divided into parts, into hostility between
its confessions, is powerless before the face of anti-Christian
peril, before the increasing de-Christianisation of the world.
The contrast between the associated, organised and anti-Christian
forces and that of the divided, disorganised and passive force
of Christians cannot but torment the Christian conscience. Before
the face of a powerful enemy, the need for Christian unity is
not able to be perceived. Christians themselves are guilty in
much, Christians and not Christianity. Christians themselves were
necessary to do those social and cultural deeds, which often the
enemies of Christianity did instead. They did not do it, or they
did it with a strange delay, that even worse, condemned the doers.
Why Christian forces are less active than anti-Christian forces,
quite plainly, this is explicable by the Christian teachings of
belief and world outlook. Christianity recognises the freedom
of the human spirit and the power of sin. It is not able to believe
in the resolution of all the questions of external life nor in
coerced organisation, in which Communism believes. Christian freedom
in particular makes difficult the realisation of Christianity
in life. This is the fundamental paradox of Christianity. It is
easier to be a materialist than a Christian. From a Christian
is demanded incomparibly more, and usually he fulfills it less.
But epochs occur when Christian souls awaken, when activism is
made unavoidable, and dullness and inertia of soul are overcome.
We are come upon such an epoch. Responsibility has increased immeasurably.
We do not already live in a cozy and calm Christian existence.
We are summoned to creative efforts. The Ecumenical Movement is
a symptom of the awakening of the Christian world, as yet still
weak. But within all the confessions and all the historical churches
there awakens this disquiet and agitation. All more and more often
there emerges a passing through the enclosed boundaries of a confession.
The transitions from one confession to another are often a personal
matter and do not resolve the ecumenical problems, usually even
do not raise them. But people, remaining believers in their own
confession, sicken with thirst for universal unity and fullness.
More deep and spiritual an understanding ought to weaken confessional
fanaticism and self-conceit; it leads to another plane than that,
on which are played out the struggles of the divided and hostile
parts of the Christian world. "Mystic" and "politic" are necessarily
set in decided contrast within the Church, using these words in
the sense that Charles Peguy uses them. All the persecutions of
Christian history are related to the engagement of the Church
with the "political". In the separation and emnity a large part
however was borrowed from the political, which is able to be shown
for all the historical religious persecutions. And here already
the political momentum plays a predominant role in religious strife,
it enters into dogmatic disputes. The awakening of Christian spirituality
ought to diminish the role of the political element in the Church.
And by this ought to be uncovered the possibility of a new spirit-inspired
social creativity within Christianity. We enter into the present
new era and altogether modernly there needs to be posited the
problem of unity and universality. In the old settings of this
problem was however a sense of the particularism and parochialism
of the historic life of the Church. We live in a revolutionary
epoch, and all the historical boundaries, seemingly eternal, are
swept away. Universal Christianity might however be actualised
through a critical eschatological sense of life. Christians think,
that Divine truth separates them. In reality what separates them
namely is human, human inner constructs, differing in experience
and sensation of life within its intellectual type. Treating as
an object their own personal condition, people think that they
struggle for an absolute truth. But when we come towards the authentic
religious primal-realities, when the authentic spiritual experience
shows itself forth to us, we come nigh close one to another and
are united in Christ. Orthodox have a different teaching about
the Atonement than Protestants, and are able to dispute endlessly
that their teaching is more correct. But the Atonement itself
is one thing or another, yet the religious reality itself is one.
Orthodox have another teaching about the veneration of the Mother
of God than do Catholics: they do not accept the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. Disputes about the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception arouse division and hostility. But the cult itself
of the Mother of God, the religious experience itself of the Mother
of God is one and this however is of the Orthodox and the Catholics.
Christian reapproachment results when set neither on the soil
of scholastic-doctrinalism, nor on the soil of canonical correctness.
On this soil especially there occur separation and division. Reapproachment
first of all needs to set on the groundwork of the spiritual-religious,
the inner. The outer comes from the inner, Church unity from the
spiritual unity of Christians, from Christian friendship. There
is conjoined first of all the faith on Christ and the life in
Christ, a seeking of the Kingdom of God, ie. the very essence
of Christianity. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all else
shalt be apportioned you. It is possible to join together on the
very seeking of the Kingdom of God, and not on those remaining
things that are added. But in sinful Christian mankind, these
things that are apportioned/added eclipsed the very Kingdom of
God itself, and it is this that separates into parts the Christian
world. The idea of the Kingdom of God is more deeply profound
than the idea of the Church, which is an historical pathway to
the Kingdom of God. The idea of the Kingdom of God is eschatological
and prophetic. On it ought to be the foundation of unity. This
is not a minimum but a maximum, not an abstraction but concrete.
The perspective of attaining absolute fullness and absolute unity
is an eschatological perspective, is a fulfillment of the times.
But this fulfillment of the times is however accomplished in time.
The Ecumenical Movement signifies a change within the Christian
world, the arising of a new Christian consciousness. Orthodoxy
would be propitious soil for the Ecumenical Movement and the entry
of Orthodox into this movement may have great significance. The
Orthodox world is not a participant in the fierce historical struggle
of Protestants and Catholics. The experience of inter-confesssional
gatherings in Paris has shown, that Orthodox and Catholics more
easily meet on an Orthodox groundwork. There are two understandings
of universality -- horizontal and vertical. For an horizontal
understanding of universal unity it signifies the seizure as may
be possible of vast expanses of land, with an universal organisation
over all the surface of the land. Catholicism is inclined towards
this understanding. For a vertical understanding of universality
it is a measurement of depth, and universality is able to be bestowed,
like a quality of each eparchy/diocese. This is the Orthodox understanding.
It is more propitious for the Ecumenical Movement. The Catholics
could take an active part in this movement in however this circumstance,
if they renounce imperialism in the understanding of the universal
unity of Christianity, if they conquer in themselves the imperialistic
will as a temptation, and view around themselves not objective
influences, but subjective. This perhaps is the most important
question in the movement towards unity. Without the part of the
Catholics the movement is not able to be complete in its results.
Of the Protestants there is another temptation, a temptation of
too great an easiness in the attaining of unity and universality.
The Orthodox temptation however is the temptation of an isolated
and self-satisfied existence, indifferent to what happens in the
world. Each has its own temptation. The soil for unification might
be prepared by human action and a focusing of the human will.
And we all ought to work towards this. But not by human powers
is this unification to be accomplished; it is accomplished ultimately
by the action of the Holy Spirit, when the hour for this is come.
And in any case, the movement towards this central event in the
destiny of Christianity symbolises the entry into a new epoch,
when the pouring-forth of the Holy Spirit will be more powerful,
than was up to the present time.
Nikolai Berdiaev
Paris
Translator's Postscript
Article published in collaborative book "Khristianskoe
Vozsoedinenie: Ekumenicheskaya Problema v Pravoslavnom Soznanii
(Christian Reunification: The Ecumenical Problem in Orthodox Consciousness)",
YMCA Press, Paris, no date, p 63-81. YMCA Press Berdiaev "Bibliographie",
by T Klepinina, indicates publication in year 1933. Also, that
article was first published in 1931 in French, under title "OEcumenisme
et le confessionalisme". Russian title "Vselenskost' i konfessionalism".
In light of the French title, it might seem that our title should
be "Ecumenism and Confessionalism". Berdyaev, in addition to using
the literal russification of the word "ecumenical", uses also
this word "vselenskost'" which I translate as "universal" which
is the literal meaning of the Greek-derived "oikumene" (sic "ecumenical
councils" in contrast to those that are only "local" or parochial);
indeed, the word "catholic" bears in part similar meaning. In
the long duration that separates us from 1931 very much has transpired:
the events of 1960's and after have made of the English word "ecumenical"
a reknown label, yet devoid of its meaning and significance.
Since 1931/1933, a critical moment midway between the catastrophic
world wars, much has transpired, and the first impulse may be
to regard this work as out-dated and obsolete. On the contrary,
so very much remains pertinent to our own day. And to compare
the changed against what was then, is to taste of the bittersweet
tragedy of Christian unity in our own seemingly post-ecumenical
world. Amidst all the other failed hopes of that time.
There is in the article something to unsettle everyone
whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant. As in any Berdyaev "issue"
one must comprehend the whole and avoid taking him out of context.
Berdyaev's basic contention remains extremely valid: that Christian
unity of any sort can only be attained through a co-operation
with the Lord God, by a penetration into the spiritual depths
of one's own religious Tradition for what is authentically eternally
real, in contrast to what will be "consigned to oblivion" on the
Last Day. A fine tonic to the polite "ecumenical teas" of our
own day.
This article should likewise help set to rest the scholarly
conceit of some that Berdyaev is somehow not Orthodox, on its
fringe, as compared to the rich diversity of life within the Church,
and which we ardently hope will return within the life of the
Church.
This translation copyright 1995 by translator Fr. Stephen Janos.
Permission granted for non-commercial distribution
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