Apology of Culture: Religion and Culture in Russian Thought

PICKWICK Publications 199 West 8th Avenue, Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401 Tel. (541) 344-1528 • Fax (541) 344-1506 Visit our Web site at www.wipfandstock.com An imprint of WIPF and STOCK Publishers Contemporary philosophy and theology are ever more conscious of the fact that the model of relations between religion and culture developed in modernity is fundamentally flawed. The processes of the secularization of society, culture, and even religion are rooted in the dualistic vision of religion and culture introduced in the late Middle Ages. In seeking a way out, we need to explore domains of culture unaffected by Western European secular thinking. Russian thought is remarkably well prepared to formulate an alternative to secular modernity. Indeed, in Russian culture there was neither a Renaissance nor an Enlightenment. Eastern Christianity retained an integral patristic vision of human nature that had not been divided into separate “natural” and “supernatural” elements. These pre- and non-modern visions are now gaining exceptional value in the postmodern reality in which we find ourselves. The heritage of Russian Christian thought may serve as a source of inspiration for alternative approaches to religion and culture. In this respect, Russian thought may be compared with nouvelle théologie, Radical Orthodoxy, and other recent movements in Christian postsecular thought. For this reason it remains astonishingly contemporary. APOLOGY of CULTURE Religion and Culture in Russian Thought edited by Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, & Paweł Rojek “Apology of Culture is a timely volume addressing the unity of theology and culture in the conditions of extreme secularization of all forms of life. The appeal to the Russian religious philosophical thought provides a fresh look at the place of humanity in the world where diminution of communities and alienating tendencies of technology become threatening factors of its stability. The volume complements sources on ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ by advancing the scope of modern critique of secularism, atheism, and nihilism.” —ALEXEI NESTERUK, Senior Research Lecturer, University of Portsmouth, UK “Faced with the twin threat of moral relativism and secular nihilism, much of Christianity has become far too defensive and pietistic. To restore and renew Christendom, we need to re-enchant religious transcendence and recover the archaic western wisdom in a more culturally mediated and dispersed idiom. A more imaginatively ‘incultured’ faith can unite the patristic fusion of biblical revelation with Greco-Roman philosophy to the Romantic blending of high with popular and folk culture. These extraordinarily rich essays highlight the crucial contribution of Russian religious thought to such an orthodox yet generous Christian revival, in particular the integral unity of the person, the city and the cosmos; . . . mystical metaphysics combined with cosmic contemplation binds together nature with the supernatural and culture with faith.” —ADRIAN PABST, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Kent, UK Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen is Professor at the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient and Instituto de Filosofía “Edith Stein,” Granada, Spain. He is the author of Between the Icon and the Idol (Cascade, 2013). Teresa Obolevitch is Professor at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. Recently she published in French La philosophie religieuse russe (2014). Paweł Rojek is Assistant Lecturer at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. Media, Examination, and Review Copies: Contact: James Stock (541) 344-1528, ext 103 or James@wipfandstock.com ISBN: 978-1-4982-0398-2 / $28 / 252 pp. / paper Orders: Contact your favorite bookseller or order directly from the publisher via phone (541) 344-1528, fax (541) 344-1506 or e-mail us at orders@wipfandstock.com Apology of Culture Religion and Culture in Russian Thought Edited by Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, and Paweł Rojek APOLOGY OF CULTURE Religion and Culture in Russian hought Copyright © 2015 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401. Pickwick Publications An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3 Eugene, OR 97401 www.wipfandstock.com ISBN 13: 978–1-4982–0398-2 Cataloging-in-Publication data: Apology of culture : religion and culture in Russian thought / edited by Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, and Paweł Rojek. x + 242 p. ; 23 cm. —Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 13: 978–1-4982–0398-2 1. Religion and civil society—Russia—History. 2. Christianity and culture—Russia—History. I. Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. II. Obolevitch, Teresa. III. Rojek, Paweł. IV. Title. BR932 .A67 2015 Manufactured in the U.S.A. 02/17/2015 Contents Contributors | ix Introduction—Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology: Russian Religious hought against Secular Reason | 1 —Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, and Paweł Rojek Part I: Russian hought and Secular Reason 1 Man as Spirit and Culture: Russian Anthropocentrism | 15 —Marcelo López Cambronero 2 he Trinity in History and Society: he Russian Idea, Polish Messianism, and the Post-Secular Reason | 24 —Paweł Rojek 3 Georgy Fedotov’s Carmen Saeculare: A Relection on Culture as a Judgment of Modernity from the Philosophy and heology of Some Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russian hinkers | 43 —Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen 4 he Polyphonic Conception of Culture as Counterculture in the Context of Modernity: Fr. Pavel Florensky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Maria Yudina | 53 —Olga Tabatadze 5 Pavel Florensky on Christ as the Basis of Orthodox Culture and Christian Unity | 63 —Nikolai Pavluchenkov 6 he Problem of Christian Culture in the Philosophy of Vasily Zenkovsky | 72 —Oleg Ermishin 7 Overcoming the Gap between Religion and Culture: he Life and Works of Mother Maria (Skobtsova) | 79 —Natalia Likvintseva 8 Apology of Culture in he Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann | 87 —Svetlana Panich Part II: Historical Focuses 9 Catholicity as an Ideal Foundation of Social Life: Gregory Skovoroda and His Concept of the High Republic | 99 —Victor Chernyshov 10 Religiosity and Pseudo-Religiosity in Russia’s Nineteenth Century Liberation Movement Preceding Bolshevik Quasi-Religiosity | 110 —Katharina Anna Breckner 11 Tolstoy and Conrad’s Visions of Christianity | 119 —Brygida Pudełko 12 Nikolai Fedorov and Godmanhood | 129 —Cezar Jędrysko 13 Catastrophism as a Manifestation of the Crisis of Consciousness in Russian and Polish Cultures | 138 —Natalia Koltakova 14 Nikolai Berdyaev and the Transformations of the Idea of Humanism | 146 —Ovanes Akopyan 15 Between Idol and Icon: A Critical Appraisal of the Mystery Project of Culture by Vyacheslav Ivanov in the Context of the hought of JeanLuc Marion | 153 —Marta Lechowska 16 Ivan Il’in on the Foundations of Christian Culture | 162 —Yury Lisitsa vi 17 Religious Realism and Historical Challenges: Vasily Zenkovsky and Russian Youth Abroad | 172 —Natalia Danilkina 18 Russian Religious hought in the Middle of the Twentieth Century: Discursive Strategies in the Philosophical Diaries of Yakov Druskin and Alexander Schmemann | 180 —Maria Kostromitskaya 19 he Symphonic Unity of Traditions: Sergey Horujy’s Synergetic Anthropology and the Interpretation of History | 187 —Roman Turowski Part III: Religion, Politics, and Ecumenism 20 he Roman Question in the History of Russian Culture in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries | 199 —Fr. Yury Orekhanov 21 he Rotten West and the Holy Rus: Ethical Aspects of the Anti-Occidentalism of the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church | 208 —Fr. Marcin Składanowski 208 22 he Universalism of Catholicity (Sobornost’): Metaphysical and Existential Foundations for Interdenominational Dialogue in the Philosophy of Semen Frank | 218 —Gennadi Aliaiev 23 Local Civilizations and the Russian World: Nikolai Danilevsky and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate | 227 —Olga Shimanskaya 24 he Idea of the Antichrist in Russia: From Religious to Political Narration | 235 —Magda Dolińska-Rydzek vii Contributors Ovanes Akopyan, Doctoral Student at the University of Warwick, England. Gennadi Aliaiev, Professor at the Poltava National Technical Yuriy Kondratyuk University, Poltava, Ukraine. Katharina Anna Breckner, Independent scholar, Hamburg, Germany. Marcelo López Cambronero, Professor at the Institute of Philosophy “Edith Stein,” Granada, Spain. Victor Chernyshov, Professor at the Poltava National Technical Yuriy Kondratyuk University, Poltava, Ukraine. Natalia Danilkina, Assistant Lecturer at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia. Magda Dolińska-Rydzek, Doctoral Student at the Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, Germany. Oleg Ermishin, Research Fellow at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Memorial House of the Russian Abroad, Moscow, Russia. Cezar Jędrysko, Doctoral Student at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Natalia Koltakova, Assistant Lecturer at the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, Donetsk, Ukraine. Maria Kostromitskaya, Doctoral Student at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia. Marta Lechowska, Assistant Lecturer at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Natalia Likvintseva, Research Fellow at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Memorial House of the Russian Abroad, Moscow, Russia. ix x Contributors Yuri Lisitsa, Professor at the St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russia. Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Professor at the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient and Instituto de Filosofía “Edith Stein,” Granada, Spain. Teresa Obolevitch, Professor at the Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. Fr. Yury Orekhanov, Professor at the St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russia. Svetlana Panich, Research Fellow at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Memorial House of the Russian Abroad, Moscow, Russia. Nikolai Pavluchenkov, Assistant Professor at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russia. Brygida Pudełko, Assistant Professor at Opole University, Opole, Poland. Paweł Rojek, Assistant Lecturer at the Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. Olga Shimanskaya, Associate Professor at the Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Fr. Marcin Składanowski, Assistant Professor at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. Olga Tabatadze, Assistant Lecturer at the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient, Granada, Spain. Roman Turowski, Doctoral Student at the Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. Introduction Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology Russian Religious Thought against Secular Reason —Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, and Paweł Rojek The secret police which supervised the Church under the various Eastern European communist regimes issued a special questionnaire for informers who spied on priests. According to it, they were to pay special attention to references occurring in sermons, irstly to those pertaining to the Bible, secondly to Church Fathers, and thirdly to general literature.1 Priests were not considered dangerous when they quoted religious sources alone; the communist regime saw the greatest threat in merging Christianity with general culture. Surprisingly enough, the same intuition can be found in John Paul II. He wrote: “he synthesis between culture and faith is not only a demand of culture, but also of faith . . . A faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”2 Christianity, understood as an existential Event, remaining within the limits imposed by the artiicial concept of “the religious,” becomes meaningless, powerless and worthless. To stay alive, religion should embrace and penetrate the whole of 1. We owe this observation to Аndrey Kurayev, “Kak nauchnyy ateist stal d’yakonom,” 341. 2. John Paul II, Address to the Italian National Congress. 1 2 Apology of Culture human reality, including art, science, politics and economy. It seems very signiicant that both enemies and defenders of faith alike admitted it. True religion implies culture, but also culture calls for true religion. A Christian religion without culture is dead, as is a culture devoid of faith. he “deculturalization of faith” is as dangerous as the “desacralization of culture.” Catharine Pickstock wrote about “necrophilia,” the love of death, of modern culture,3 which stems from its closeness to religion. We would like to pay attention on the twin phenomenon on the side of religion, which could be labeled “zoophobia,” that is a fear of life. Religion too oten fears its own manifestation and incarnation in all spheres of human reality. As a result, both the necrophilia of culture and the zoophobia of religion leads to the domination of secular order. The Integrality of Russian Thought Contemporary philosophy and theology are still more conscious of the fact that the model of relations between religion and culture developed in modernity is the key for understanding the current state of the Western world. he processes of the secularization of society, culture, and even religion, are rooted in the dualistic vision of religion and culture introduced in the late Middle Ages. Modern thought, language and practice are deeply afected by this dualism. he division between the sacred and the secular brings about the gradual removal of the sacred and the inal triumph of the secular. Christian Events, instead of being the fundamental inspiration of human life, ultimately become a particular private interest of no real importance.4 If we seek a way out, we need to explore domains of culture unafected by Western European secular thinking. We might look for inspiration in past pre-modern Western thought, but we also may investigate contemporary non-modern Eastern thought. Russian thought is remarkably well prepared to formulate an alternative to secular modernity. Indeed, in Russian culture there was neither a Renaissance nor an Enlightenment. Eastern Christianity retained an integral patristic vision of human nature which had not been divided into separate “natural” and “supernatural” elements. hese pre- and non-modern visions are now gaining exceptional value in the post-modern reality in which we ind ourselves.5 3. Pickstock, Ater Writing, 105–6. 4. For a concise summary of accounts of the endogenous process of secularization, see Javier Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason. 5. See Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, 80, 104, and Rojek, “Mesjańska teologia polityczna.” Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology We believe that the heritage of Russian Christian thought may serve as a source of inspiration for alternative approaches to religion and culture. In this aspect, Russian thought may be compared with Nouvelle héologie, Radical Orthodoxy and other recent movements in Christian post-secular thought and for this reason it remains astonishingly contemporary. Moreover, perhaps it is even a hidden source of all these intellectual movements; as it was recently argued, Henri de Lubac, their founding father, was deeply inluenced by Russian thought.6 Russian religious thinkers have provided not only a profound diagnosis of the crisis, but have also searched for ways to overcome it. hey desired the “re-enchantment of the world,”7 the reversal of the process recognized by Max Weber as the core of modernization. Duns Scotus, homas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, and many other fathers of modernity, imposed the modern concept of religion8 and wanted to delineate the boundaries between such “religion” on the one hand, and the autonomous secular domains of philosophy, politics and economics on the other. Russian thinkers blurred these supposed boundaries. hat is why Russian philosophy is so oten indistinguishable from theology from the Western point of view. It is not a methodological error, but rather a direct consequence of an alternative approach to the supposed relation between religion and culture. Moreover, the principle of integrity led to the characteristic blurring of genres in Russian culture. Philosophy is not separated from theology, but also from literature, religion life, social and political activity and biography in general. Again, this is not an error, but a result of an integrated approach to culture. Now we would like to focus on just two examples of the Russian integral way of thinking. Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), a classic Russian writer, was also a deep Christian thinker who foresaw the coming erosion of religious culture and its replacement with the modern state. He belonged, along with Vladimir Odoyevsky (1803–1869), to the irst generation of original Russian Christian thinkers who anticipated all the development of Russian philosophy. he great philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) formulated with a masterly clarity the dialectics of secularization and saw the only way out for religion is creation of its own culture. Soloviev was also a poet and literary critic. Both Gogol and Soloviev constitute the great Russian tradition uniting religion with culture on the one hand, and literature with philosophy on the other. 6. See Dell’Asta, La teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente. 7. his term has been coined in German by Michael Hagemeister in his (highly critical) description of Florensky’s views; see Hagemeister, “Wiederverzauberung der Welt.” 8. Cavanaugh, Myth of Religious Violence. 3 4 Apology of Culture Gogol on Integral Christian Culture Russian philosophical thinking goes beyond the formal boundaries of what is understood under the term philosophy in the West. he reason for this is that it undertakes a metaphysical relection, that it has never ceased to pose questions on such fundamental issues as evil, that it has never lost its existential character. “he Russian thinker,” wrote Siemion Frank, from a simple pilgrim [bogomolets] to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Vladimir Soloviev, always seeks “pravda”; not only does he want to understand the world and life, he strives also to grasp the main religious and moral principle of the universe, so as to transform life and the world, to be cleansed and saved. He longs for the unconditional triumph of truth, in the sense of “true being,” over falsehood, over untruth [nepravda] and over injustice [nespravedlivost’].9 his is why the Russian tradition has a propensity to obliterate the boundaries between philosophy and literature, between thought and art. he common goal is the discovery of man and the truth revealing itself in him. In this way all elements participate in, co-create and become saturated with the all-unity of common experience, namely tradition, and culture created by it. “Gogol was our irst prophet of the return to a holistic religious culture—the prophet of Orthodox culture,” wrote Vasily Zenkovsky.10 Gogol’s genius is in his understanding of the signiicance of the ability to create Christian culture and tradition as well as in his deeply thought out interpretation of the dechristanization processes of Western culture. At the core of this dechristanization lies the expulsion of Christ as the center of human life, and in this way the loss of everything that is truly human. he advancing diminishment of community and alienation prevents the formation of culture originating from perichoresis, inseparably binding beauty, good and truth. he author of Dead Souls aptly remarks that the processes constraining contemporary Europe stem from the presence of “empty spaces” that appeared in the relations between people who became individuals and citizens. Modern Western European countries try to ill these “empty spaces” with complicated laws and regulations, want to transform them into something new of absolute moral value, in something that, according to the prophetic words of Gogol, will lead Europe to “bloodshed.”11 9. Frank, “Essence and Leading hemes,” 36. 10. Zen’kovskiy, Russkiye mysliteli, 55 11. Ibid., 58, 59. Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology According to Zenkovsky, what was only a vague symbolic construct in A City without Name by Odoyevsky12 became in Gogol an expression of life experience resulting from a deep relation of soul, heart and mind. his is the axis, the extremely important foundation in the tradition of Russian religious thinking of Odoyevsky’s and Gogol’s followers, a precious source of inspiration for a Christian West increasingly consciously searching for answers to questions posed by postmodernism. Soloviev on the Dialectics of Secularization “Religion”—as Vladimir Soloviev wrote at the beginning of his fundamental Lectures on Divine Humanity—“must determine all the interest and the whole content of human life and consciousness.”13 his straightforward claim briely summarizes the account for the problem of the relation between religion and culture in Russian religious thought. Soloviev clearly saw that the abandoning by the religion of its central place led to the process of secularization: For contemporary civilized people, even for those who recognize the religious principle, religion does not possess this allembracing and central signiicance. Instead of being all in all, it is hidden in a very small and remote corner of our inner world. It is just one of the multitude of diferent interests that divides our attention. Contemporary religion is a pitiful thing.14 In other words, dualism at irst leads to secularization, then to privatization and, inally, to the annihilation of religion. he current pitiful state of religion in the modern world is a direct consequence of the conceptual division between religion and culture in past. he resumption of the integrality of the sacred and the secular is the only way to overcome the current cultural and religious crisis. Religion, if it is supposed to be something at all, must be everything. It must penetrate all domains of human life: spiritual and corporeal, emotional and intellectual, private and public, individual and social. his was the main concern of Soloviev in his Lectures. “All that is essential in what we do, what we know, and what we create,” wrote Soloviev, “must be determined by and 12. Odoevsky, “A City without Name.” For detailed interpretation of this work, see Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, 19–26. 13. Solovyov, Lectures, 1. 14. Ibid., 1–2. 5 6 Apology of Culture referred to such [religious] principle . . . If the religious principle is admitted at all, it must certainly possess such all-embracing, central signiicance.”15 It seems that on the very irst page of his Lectures Soloviev challenged the deepest foundation of secular order. he grounding of culture in religion brings about the reintegration of culture itself. Culture is no longer a plethora of unrelated phenomena. If all the elements of human life relect the divine principle, they also create a special kind of unity. As Soloviev put it: “If we admit the existence of such an absolute center, all the points on the circle of life must be linked to that center with equal radii. Only then can unity, wholeness, and harmony appear in human life and consciousness.”16 his is the true stake in the dispute over religion and culture. he lack of integrity in culture undermines the stability of personal identity. he unity of individual life is possible only in a united culture. Russian Thought and Radical Orthodoxy he history of contemporary Russian thought contains some extraordinary examples for its—greater or lesser—response in the West. Primarily it was writers and poets who were listened to, although some philosophers and theologians may be highlighted as well. heir legacy was undeniably the reason for the establishment and activity of numerous Western research centers studying and popularizing Russian thought. he greatest of them are in France, the United States, and Poland. hese centers are universally known for their long traditions and their great numbers of published works; therefore we will not discuss them. Instead, we would like to focus on a recent philosophical phenomenon which is described as Radical Orthodoxy, the creation of which was marked in 1997 by two provocative manifestos, and later by a collection of works entitled Radical Orthodoxy: A New heology.17 Radical Orthodoxy has its roots in a speciic form of theological realism that was irst outlined in the works of John Milbank. he theological realism promoted by Milbank is mainly about the criticism of logic which predominates in philosophy and secular theology, both in its established, modern version and also in the new, postmodern one. his criticism undertakes the quest for theology “on the other side of secular mind” and tries to restore its status as “master discourse,” namely of an ultimate and ordering logic that postulates all other disciplines such as philosophy or social 15. Ibid., 1. 16. Ibid. 17. Milbank et al., Radical Orthodoxy. Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology sciences, while itself it is not postulated by them. To Milbank, “his is why it is so important to reassert theology as a master-discourse; theology, alone, remains the discourse of non-mastery.”18 heological realism, as professed by Radical Orthodoxy, strives to be new in the sense of undertaking once again the attempt to return to historical-pragmatic Christian philosophy (in Maurice Blondel’s understanding) and New heology (in the understanding of Marie Dominique Chenu, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar). heological realism plunges into the philosophy of these schools and entirely relinquishes the way of practising natural theology that started from the times of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. For, in this time, according to Radical Orthodoxy, natural theology capitulated to the secular concept of nature (physis) and fell into idolatry of ontotheology, which was unknown in homism realism. By means of renewed philosophical theology, Radical Orthodoxy tries to prove two theses. First, the world we inhabit leads us to some superior “truly existing” reality, which postulates calls for a special theological concept of ontology. Second, this deeper and more intensive existence is given to man by God through the spheres of theory and practice, which require a speciic, theological concept of intermediation. hese theses of John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Phillip Blond, were presented by the authors in a detailed and comprehensive way in the collection Radical Orthodoxy: A New heology. In a scholarly, and also a wider cultural context, Milbank points to the necessity of restoring academic education, and more generally, the intellectual and cultural activity, the three foundations of which shall be theology, philosophy and literature. his project assumes that theology contains biblical criticism and church history, and thus theology relates to all issues of history. Literature should be the third component because both theology and philosophy also exist in poetic and narrative forms, and, starting from Romanticism, it was precisely literature that was frequently the most powerful means of both the defence and advancement of Orthodox doctrine. Since the academic environment mainly studies texts, and while literature combines texts and images, the literary way of artistic expression should prevail in the reformed syllabus, which by no means ousts music and ine arts from the sphere of interest of theology and philosophy. It is easy to notice some obvious similarities between criticism of secular modernity and the holistic perception of Christian culture represented by Radical Orthodoxy and the basic discourse of Russian Christian thought, which began at least with Gogol and perhaps culminated in Soloviev. For this reason it is hardly surprising that a few years ago a work 18. Milbank, heology and Social heory, 6. 7 8 Apology of Culture entitled Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy was published.19 In this book various philosophers and theologians from Western and Eastern Europe engage in a debate on such issues as: East and West, heology and Philosophy, Politics and Ecclesiology, Sophiology, Ontology, etc. In the introduction to this collection of essays, the editors point out the common challenges posed by postmodern and neoliberal society, as well as the common heritage that provides an opportunity for an encounter with the honest search for truth. Apology of Apology In Western philosophy the necessity of breaking of the “bizarre dialogue” between East and West, in which the West only spoke and never listened, became evident to all who realized the legacy of Russian Christian thought. However, one has to bear in mind that modernity should not be renounced, for to do so would be to commit the mistake made by its representatives, namely renouncing the previous traditions. Modernity has already become part of our tradition, and its rejection would turn us into proponents of modernity. Emancipation from modernity expresses itself in accepting it as part of our tradition and formulating an answer to it in our own language. If Christ is the center of the universe and of history, philosophy should not be afraid to accept him as its center. Christian philosophy, together with its apologists, is a rational expression of experiencing Christ, an experience arising from the Catholic community. Hence it is clear that, for a contemporary Western philosopher realising the need for the deep renewal of Western Christian thought, interest in the tradition of Russian Christian thought is something natural. According to Zenkovsky in his Foundations of Christian Philosophy, theology was never separated from philosophical thought in the East. “heology not only was above everything, but it also formed the ultimate appeal: not infringing the freedom of thought, it enlightened and justiied it, just like all-united truth enlightens and justiies all fragmentary truths.”20 It is precisely here that the irst and foremost apologetic function of philosophy, common to all Christian thinkers, begins: one has to be vigilant against all attempts of isolating and transforming it, in Zenkovsky’s words, into “pure philosophy” and leading to a suicidal illusion of self-reliance. he same author, in the introduction to another work, Apologetics, aptly 19. Pabst and Schneider, Encounter. 20. Zen’kovskiy, Osnovy, 7. Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology remarked that “faith is connected with knowledge and culture.”21 his is so because the Christian experience, the encounter of man and Christ, is a “live and indivisible whole”22 embedded in time, incorporated in history and lived in community, namely the Church. his close relation of faith, knowledge and culture is the most important bastion of the apologetic work of a Christian thinker. his connection allows us to penetrate areas of our interest without fear or complexes, using the vast richness of traditions and cultures that avoided the mistakes of modernity, referring all the time to representatives and continuers of the tradition of Russian thought, which may be helpful to us. Today the words contained in the intellectual testament of the great forerunner of Russian Christian nineteenth-century philosophy, Peter Chaadayev, and titled Apologie d’un fou (Apology of a Madman) seem extremely timely and important to us. He courageously proclaims that though “love of country” is a beautiful thing, “there is a [iner thing], namely, love of truth . . . It is not by patriotism but by means of truth that the ascent to Heaven is accomplished.”23 his sentence largely relects the sense in which we understand “apology” and “culture”—it is a space called to meet with the truth. A truth, which we need especially nowadays to face the emerging dangers of modern nationalisms. houghts similar to Chaadayev’s insights can be found in the twentieth century in the works of, for example, Ernst Kantorowicz, Alasdair MacIntyre and William Cavanaugh.24 We hope that the presented book has this special dimension, since it is a result of the meeting of people who adhere to this very beautiful love, the love of the truth. And only the life of faith and culture born in truth may be an expression of apology, of apo-Logos. We have invited selected scholars from Russia, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, Germany and the United Kingdom to investigate in detail how Russian thinkers have combined Christianity with culture, philosophy, literature, social life and inally with their own lives. he contributors to this book analyze the visions of not only philosophers such as Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai Berdyaev or Ivan Il’in, and theologians such as Pavel Florensky, Georgy Fedotov or Vasily Zenkovsky, but also artists such as Leo Tolstoy, Vyacheslav Ivanov or Maria Yudina and witnesses of faith, such as Mother Maria (Skobtsova). his multi-perspective approach remains faithful to the 21. Zen’kovskiy, Аpologetika, 11. 22. Zen’kovskiy, Osnovy, 6. 23. Chaadayev, Philosophical Letters, 164. 24. For example: Kantorowicz, “Mystères de l’Etat” and “Mourir pour la patrie”; MacIntyre, Ethics and Politics; Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy. 9 10 Apology of Culture integrated tradition of Russian Christian religious culture and gives us a great opportunity to analyze our contemporary world under its light. he book is a sequel to a number of other publications made jointly by the community of scholars interested in Russian philosophy and gathered around the “Krakow Meetings,” an annual series of conferences organized, among others, by the Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow.25 We would like to express our gratitude to all those who have helped in publishing this book. Our project was made possible thanks to the support of the Pontiical University of John Paul II, the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Krakow, Instituto de Filosofía “Edith Stein” in Granada, the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient in Granada and the Science and Culture Creators Association Episteme in Krakow. We are also grateful to Aeddan Shaw who proofread the whole book. In Krakow we are proud that Vladimir Soloviev spent a few weeks in our city at the turn of 1888 and 1889. “In Krakow I led a distracted, but virtuous life,” he wrote to one of his friends.26 Perhaps the proposed book is also distracted to some extent, but we hope that it nevertheless remains intellectually virtuous. Besides, it is worth recalling that Soloviev’s supposed distraction was only a guise; in fact, in Krakow he worked intensely on a secret memorandum to the Tsar with which he hoped to realize his farreaching ecumenical projects.27 Great things begin in Krakow.28 Bibliography Cavanaugh, William T. Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. ———. he Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conlict. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 25. See our earlier books in Polish, Russian and English: Obolevitch and Duda, Symbol w kulturze rosyjskiej; Obolevitch and Bremer, Inluence of Jewish Culture; Obolevitch, Metaizyka a literature; Obolevitch and Rojek, Religion and Culture in Russian hought; Obolevitch et al., Russian hought in Europe. 26. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, 350. 27. Solovyov’s Krakow afair was investigated in detail by Vyacheslav Moiseyev, “Tayna krakovskogo dela.” 28. his Introduction is to some extent based on our two previous philosophical manifestos: Mrovchinski-Van Аllen, “Russkiye mysliteli i Evropa segodnya,” published also in Polish as Mrówczyński-Van Allen, “Rosyjscy myśliciele i Europa dziś,” and Rojek, Obolevitch, “Religion, Culture and Post-Secular Reason.” Some excerpts from Mrówczyński-Van Allen’s paper used in this Introduction were translated into English by Katarzyna Popowicz. Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology Chaadayev, Peter. Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman. Translated by MaryBarbara Zeldin. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969. Dell’Asta, Adriano, ed. La teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente nel XX secolo: storia di un incontro. Atti del Convegno promosso da Fondazione Russia Cristiana e Commissione Teologica Sinodale del Patriarcato di Mosca, Seriate 30–31 ottobre 2004, La Casa di Matriona, 2005. Frank, Semen L. “he Essence and Leading hemes of Russian Philosophy.” Russian Studies in Philosophy 30 (1992) 28–47. Hagemeister, Michael. “Wiederverzauberung der Welt: Pavel Florenskijs Neues Mittelalter.” In Pavel Florenskij—Tradition und Moderne, edited by Norbert Franz and Michael Hagemeister, 21−41. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001. John Paul II, Pope. Address to the Italian National Congress of the Ecclesial Movement for Cultural Commitment. January 16, 1982. Kantorowicz, Ernst. “Mourir pour la patrie (Pro Patria Mori) dans la pensé politique médiévale.” In Mourir pour la patrie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. ———. “Mystères de l’Etat. Un concept absolutiste et ses origines médiévales (bas Moyen Age).” In Mourir pour la patrie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. Kurayev, Аndrey. “Kak nauchnyy ateist stal d’yakonom.” In Neamerikanskiy missioner. Saratov: Izdatel’stvo Saratovskoy Eparkhii, 2005. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Martínez, Javier. Beyond Secular Reason. Más allá de la razón secular. Granada: Editorial Nuevo Inicio, 2008. Milbank, John. heology and Social heory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Milbank, John, et al., eds. Radical Orthodoxy: A New heology. London: Routledge, 1999. Moiseyev, Vyacheslav. “Tayna krakovskogo dela Vladimira Solov’yeva.” Przegląd Rusycystyczny 1 (2003) 5−21. Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. Between the Icon and the Idol. he Human Person and the Modern State in Russian Literature and hought: Chaadayev, Soloviev, Grossman. Translated by M. P. Whelan. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013. ———. “Rosyjscy myślicielei Europa dziś.” Translated by Agata Kędzior. Pressje 26–27 (2011) 262–68. ———. “Russkiye mysliteli i Evropa segodnya.” In: XX Ezhegodnaya Bogoslovskaya konferentsiya Pravoslavnogo Svyato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Materialy, edited by V. N. Vorob’yev, 87–91. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Pravoslavnogo Svyato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta, 2010. Obolevitch, Teresa, ed. Metaizyka a literatura w kulturze rosyjskiej. Metaizika i literatura v russkoy kul’ture. Krakow: Uniwersytet Papieski Jana Pawła II w Krakowie Wydawnictwo Naukowe 2012. Obolevitch, Teresa, and Józef Bremer, eds. he Inluence of Jewish Culture on the Intellectual Heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Ignatianum, Wydawnictwo WAM, 2011. Obolevitch, Teresa, and Krzysztof Duda, eds. Symbol w kulturze rosyjskiej. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Ignatianum, Wydawnictwo WAM, 2010. 11 12 Apology of Culture Obolevitch, Teresa, and Paweł Rojek, eds. Religion and Culture in Russian hought: Philosophical, heological and Literary Perspectives. Krakow: he Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow, 2014. ———. “Religion, Culture and Post-Secular Reason: he Contemporary Signiicance of Russian hought.” In Religion and Culture in Russian hought: Philosophical, heological and Literary Perspectives, edited by Teresa Obolevitch and Paweł Rojek, 5–9. Krakow: he Pontiical University of John Paul II in Krakow, 2014. Obolevitch, Teresa, et al., eds. Russian hought in Europe: Reception, Polemics, Development. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Ignatianum, Wydawnictwo WAM, 2013. Odoevsky, Vladimir. “A City without Name.” In Russian Nights. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965. Pabst, Adrian, and Christoph Schneider, eds. Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. Pickstock, Catherine. Ater Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998. Rojek, Paweł. “Mesjańska teologia polityczna Włodzimierza Sołowjowa.” Pressje 28 (2012) 160−70. Solovyov, S. M. Vladimir Solovyov: His Life and Creative Evolution. Faifax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2000. Solovyov, Vladimir. Lectures on Divine Humanity. Revised and edited by Boris Jakim. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne, 1995. Zen’kovskiy, Vasiliy. Аpologetika. Riga: Rizhskaya Eparkhiya, 1992. ———. Osnovy khristianskoy ilosoii. Vol. 1, Khristianskoye ucheniye o poznanii. Frankfurt am Main: Possev-Verlag, 1960. ———. Russkiye mysliteli i Evropa. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1955. PA rt I Russian Thought and Secular Reason 1 Man as Spirit and Culture Russian Anthropocentrism —Marcelo López Cambronero Ideocentrism in Russian Thought The theory of Moscow as the third Rome is paradigmatic for the way in which Christendom can be afected by ideological tensions. It is not a matter of the past, but an ideological stand which, secularized or not, still exerts an inluence on power structures in Russia and on the political mentality of the dominant class and people. It is a concept entertained by some Russian authors and whose origins take us into the past, at the third canon of the Second Ecumenical Council, and the First of Constantinople (381 AD). his canon was adopted at a delicate moment for the occidental part of the Roman Empire, not yet divided (as it would be ater the death of heodosius I) and caused by the pressure of the Visigoth invasion once they crossed the Danube in 376 AD and started heading on to the west, winning and murdering Emperor Valens I at the battle of Adrianople. 15 16 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason Constantinople enjoyed increasing political inluence and was in the process of becoming the de facto center of Oriental Christianity, in contraposition with the Occident due to the theological argument regarding ilioque. Finally, as we all know, the Orthodox perspective would end up considering Rome to have fallen into heresy and that the Patriarch of Constantinople was the depositary of the authentic faith. By the time the Ottomans conquered the city and desecrated the Saint Soia in 1453, the Russian church was autocephalous, even though it would not have a Patriarch until 1589. From that moment on, the Russians claimed that they were the unique heirs to the Orthodox faith, and began to consider Moscow to be the hird and only genuine and eternal Rome. When in 1492, at the exact time the Arabs were being expelled from their last Western stronghold in the south of Spain, he Exposition of the heory of the hird Rome emerged, in which the Metropolitan Zosima explained that the Emperor (the Tsar, derived from Caesar), “is the only emperor of the Christianity and ruler of the holy thrones of God, of the Holy Universal Apostolic Church, which, instead of being Roman or Constantinopolitan, is placed in Moscow.” It was not merely a matter of displacing the primacy of the Church, but also of moving the capital of the existing empire, in other words, a new imperialist Messianism, impregnated with a tremendous political force: In what respect was the conception of Moscow as the hird Rome twofold? he mission of Russia was to be the vehicle of the true Christianity, that is, of Orthodoxy, and the shrine in which it is treasured. his was a religious vocation. “Orthodoxy” is a deinition of “the Russians.” Russia is the only Orthodox realm, and as such a universal realm like the First Rome and the Second. On this soil there grew up a sharply deined nationalization of the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy was in this view the religion of the Russians. In religious poetry Russ is the world; the Russian Tsar is a Tsar above all Tsars; Jerusalem is likewise Russ; Russ is where the true belief is. he Russian religious vocation, a particular and distinctive vocation, is linked with the power and transcendent majesty of the Russian State, with a distinctive signiicance and importance attached to the Russian Tsar. here enters into the messianic consciousness the alluring temptation of imperialism.1 he baptism and the Eucharist are sacraments that possess considerable political weight, as they conigure a community. By the baptism we are 1. Berdyaev, Russian Idea, 7–8. Marcelo López Cambronero Man as Spirit and Culture incorporated into the people of God, by the Eucharist we are one in Christ. he political component of the Christian faith is inherent and much stronger than ideological tenets or moral codes, but that is precisely why it can be narrowed down to a set of moral or ideological criteria, contributing thus to mistaking the unity in Christ, which conigures the church, with a religious Messianism which is thirsty for power. In the case of Russia, the maximalism caused by the ideological secularization enclosed by the airmation of Moscow as the third Rome is expressed in the hegemonic pretension that the Tsar, empire and faith are intermingled to create a monster, one that is diicult to control and that can be taken over by politicians with imperialist aspirations. here is a subtle line between one sphere and the other, illustrated by the fact that, when he came to power, Lenin received numerous letters in which Christians acknowledged him the new Tsar of all the Russias and saluted him as God’s envoy to fulill the destiny of the nation and of the only apostolic Church. No wonder that a linguistic particularity of the Russian language means that words such as “peace” or ”justice” (pravda) and “government” (pravitel’stvo) share a common etymology. As Orlando Figes has warned, ever since the February Revolution a rearrangement of the language took place to assimilate the new political order with regards religious discourse. hus, the provisional government was invited “to lead Russia on to the just path of salvation and truth.” A group of countrymen and soldiers reminded the Soviet leaders that “you have been blessed by Jesus our Saviour and are leading us to the dawn of a new and holy fraternal life.”2 If philosophy aims at understanding and transforming reality starting from present information, it implies that a philosopher is willing to change her or his opinion when she or he perceives that it helps in her or his quest for the truth; ideology instead functions on diferent, largely opposite, mechanisms. Ideological discourse reduces reality to a pre-manufactured scheme about what is truth, good, justice, about who are its enemies, and it will defend such a conceptual net beyond what experience informs, altering, distorting or confounding it, since what it pretends is to have ideology replace reality. When ideology takes a central place in the life of the people, they become easily manipulated and, in the case of rebellion, they are subdued without mercy.3 2. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 145–46. 3. On the power of ideology in Russia and its inluence on Russian maximalism over the last decades, see Mrówczynski-Van Allen, “La Idea Rusa.” 17 18 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason Christocentrism in Russian Thought he chief resource that withholds the Russian church from the predominance of ideological stands is what Irénée Hausherr SJ has deined “the primacy of the spiritual,”4 which translates as the centrality of Christ and the work of God’s Grace in the life of the people. he true reality, “the reality of the real,” is expressed in the power of the transiguration by the Grace of God of the people and everything empirical, whose paradigm is to be found in the Eucharist, where the extraordinary character of the ordinary is revealed. As we have seen, the Russian word for “truth” has the same root as the word for “government;” it is also true that it can be frequently spotted in the company of the word svet, meaning “light,” suggesting that the way to ind the truth is to expose opaque matters to the divine light. In other words, there is something more real than what we perceive, which is not separated from perception, nor is it in a diferent world, but which overlaps the empirical in order to give it consistency: it is the Light of God, the seal on every creation in so far as it has been created. Capturing this light is essential for an appropriate understanding of the world, which is, given its origin, something more than “natural” (in the sense of pure nature), and it helps to a better—although obscure, always insuicient—knowledge of God. With regards politics, this perspective encouraged the emperor to attend to this source of light when dealing with earthly matters, or, to put it diferently, to search for understanding in the closeness to Christ. hus, knowing the world and knowing God are two aspirations which can be attained by following one and the same path. here is no division between faith and reason, rather reason must be enlightened by faith to be able to understand the sense of the world and of life, but also that of society, politics or economy. As Vladimir Lossky put it in his classical Mystical heology of the Eastern Church, there is not any disjunctive between mysticism and theology in the Orthodox Church: he Eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma airmed by the Church. he following words spoken a century ago by a great Orthodox theologian, the Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, express this attitude perfectly: “none of the mysteries of the most secret wisdom of God ought to appear alien or altogether transcendent to us, but in all humility we must apply our spirit to the 4. Hausherr, “Pour comprendre l’Orient chrétien.” Marcelo López Cambronero Man as Spirit and Culture contemplation of divine things.” To put it in another way, we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other. If the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the proit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone.5 Symeon the New heologian (949–1022), whom the Eastern church places alongside John the Baptist and Gregory of Nazianzus, has a central place in this theological vision. For Symeon, the encounter with Christ ills man with divine light, thus liting up reason, which alone, is not capable of the knowledge of God, not even of the “factic.”6 Symeon introduced into Russian thought the rejection of certain dualisms that, over the time, had become ixed in some Christian sectors, hindering the understanding of the life of faith and, at the same time, of the place of man in creation. Natural, Supernatural, and State-Centralism In contraposition to this theological conception present in Orthodox Christianity, and threatened by the ideological pressure of “Russian maximalism,” the Occidental Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has evolved into a speciic form of secularization, also under the pressure of a speciic ideology. he dispute between the Emperor and the Pope, culminating, among others, with the “Investiture Controversy,” but generally carried on throughout the Middle Ages, let a dualist print in Western culture, described by the great theologian Henry de Lubac as one between the natural and the supernatural.7 he assertion that man has two inalities, a natural and a supernatural one, was defended by diferent theologians at diferent courts, and let its mark in classical texts like Dante Alighieri’s De Monarchia, who writes, Inefable Providence has thus designed two ends to be contemplated of man: irst, the happiness of this life, which consists in the activity of his natural powers, and is preigured by the 5. Lossky, Mystical heology, 8. 6. See Symeon the New heologian, Hymnen. 7. Lubac, Surnaturel. 19 20 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason terrestrial Paradise; and then the blessedness of life everlasting, which consists in the enjoyment of the countenance of God, to which man’s natural powers may not attain unless aided by divine light, and which may be symbolized by the celestial Paradise.8 Later on he points out, To the former we come by the teachings of philosophy, obeying them by acting in conformity with the moral and intellectual virtues; to the latter through spiritual teachings which transcend human reason, and which we obey by acting in conformity with the theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.9 We must recall that the aim of this text is to reduce the tension between the Emperor and the Pope, güeli and ghibellini, and thus bring peace, which is for Dante the ultimate aim of social life, whether in the city or throughout their reign.10 he same dualism lourished ater the seventeenth century conlicts in Central Europe through the works of the Jesuit Father Francisco Suárez, and spread across the Jesuit institutions of education. he distinction of aims was also a distinction of orders, as previously presented, and ended up determining the way in which practical life and Christian morality were conceived. Accordingly, man lives simultaneously in two spheres, each having their particular aims. On the one hand, there is everyday life, conducive to “natural” aims, which are speciic to mundane activities, such as politics (power), economy (possession), etc., and whose inality is welfare. he only inluence of Christ in this sphere is the endowing of life with a certain moral sense—which results in a dry moralism and cuts it away with grace—since it is rooted in the human efort to reach virtues and in the response to speciic impermeable normative systems. As a result of this perspective, one can airm that monogamous and indissoluble matrimony is “natural,” whereas the Christian tradition has always airmed that the said reality can be experienced only by the grace of God. In fact, the Church airms that only matrimony contracted between two baptized persons is valid. On the other hand, we would deal with another sphere of life, in which other goods, “supernatural” and spiritual are to be pursued. Christ is conined to this aspect of life, of pious practices which seem to be disconnected from life. his is the main cause of secularization, as it 8. Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia, III, XVI, 7. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., I, V, 7–8. Marcelo López Cambronero Man as Spirit and Culture provokes an immediate moralization and ideologization of Christians, and renders Christ irrelevant for our lives. We should not be surprised that Russian authors such as Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai Berdyaev, and before them Gregory Skovoroda, and writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Boris Pasternak or Vasily Grossman saw in western civilization the displacement of the person from the central interests of philosophy, as it grew to be a part of the social machinery, citizens whose vital sense is no more given by their belonging to Christ, by their freedom or individual originality, but by their dependence on the state. Now it is the state which is called, as the political arm of (economical) capitalism, to fulill, that is, to satisfy, our “natural” desires. The Direction of the Conscience and the Rebirth of Man Russian Christian thinkers, following in the steps of the Church Fathers, have not displayed this type of dualism, which sufocates and destroys Christian experience. For them there are not two diferent aims and orders in human life, rather the human being, as an incarnated spirit, is at the crossroads of the two worlds, the material and the spiritual, and it is called to elevate the lesh, or, on the contrary, it is deemed to fall prey to its own passions. here is a two way aperture for the conscience and the person has to make its own choice freely. We could say that it is a freedom that chooses assisted by grace, but it would be an incomplete formulation: freedom opens itself to the grace and received God to the extent to which its initeness and aperture allows it to. Nikolai Berdyaev expresses this idea very vividly in his “bourgeois metaphysics” in many of his works.11 Berdyaev’s stand will help us illustrate the criteria of Russian culture with regard to this aspect. As introduced earlier, Man stands at the crossing point between two worlds, namely the spiritual world and what we could call the “objectiied” world. he later does not relate to “reality,” nor with the “natural,” but with the external dynamics of the human being, whether the laws of nature, social laws, or, markedly, in the ideological frames he encounters, all of which try to deine who he is and how it is reasonable for him to live his life. We are not dealing with two distinct realities or worlds, but with the efect on the human being of that “direction” which man takes as primordial in his conscience. hus, the human being can be diluted by objectivizing, and live 11. See Berdyaev, Bourgeois Mind; Solitude and Society; Slavery and Freedom; and he Divine and the Human. 21 22 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason subdued by his passions and social and ideological structures, or he can overcome them by embracing reality in its totality, that is, attending primarily to the light that illuminates and gives a sense to the human being, and whose origin is undoubtedly divine. It is not an ontological, but an anthropological dualism, one which exercises such a force in human existence that it ends up presenting man with two diferent manners of living, and two diferent structures of being, among which he has to choose, in a irst, decisive act of freedom. In this sense the spiritual sphere is not overruled or opposed to the material sphere, but uplits it and restores it to its real being, accommodating the emotional and the rational in a major sphere which is also more real. his is how the radical dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural is overcome, just as it is overcome the net distinction between idealism and realism. he last two theories of knowledge are equally false to the extent to which they do not grasp the true nature of the problem: knowledge needs to be active, but it is not a mere projection of the subject, but the encounter between a spiritual being and a world whose real sense it needs to unveil and develop from his own being and provided it remains open to God’s grace. he characters of Pasternak’s and Grossman’s short stories ind themselves in the same situation when Anna Akhmatova’s poetry is debated, who, ater a lifetime of sufering, acknowledges in “A Land not Mine” that “the secret of secrets is inside me again.” It is the same perception that we identify in Dostoevsky’s novels, wrongly decoded in the West as “psychological novels.” When Velchaninov, the protagonist of the minor but splendid work he Eternal Husband (1870), is confronted in the irst chapter with the contrast between his moral conceptions and his remorse, we need not deepen into his “unconsciousness,” “subconscious” or “psychological problems,” but into the profundity of his heart, where this division of conscience takes place, this struggle between the spirit and the objectivizing process. Similarly in Russian culture, there are no clear-cut separations between “public life” and “private life,” between faith and reason, although this tendency is changing under the inluence of western thought. here is no analytical decomposition, but rather the synthetic integration of every human experience, through a perspective that goes beyond the external manifestations. his is what Raskolnikov inds out when, once the old pawnbroker in Crime and Punishment (1866) is murdered, he does not interpret his action as psychologically problematic, but as a decision about his place in the world, which would make Sonia’s character fall apart. Even though this line of thought contains irrefutable positive elements, it would be a mistake to overlook the fact that Orthodoxy has embraced, on many occasions, the division of conscience which took it to a dualism that Marcelo López Cambronero Man as Spirit and Culture is unacceptable. Practices such as the prohibition on women from entering the church during her menstrual period, the obligation to submit herself to a ritual of puriication the irst Sunday ater her wedding and forty days ater she has given birth, the prohibition of sexual intercourse during Lent and Advent, on the eve of all religious feasts, the prohibition of the spousal kiss during a day in which one has taken Holy Communion, all these are denigrating and contrast with our new life in Christ. To sum up, in Russian culture, let alone similar deviations, we ind some modes that are for us, in the Western world, of paramount importance if we want our conscience to stand irm against the ideological forces to which we are constantly exposed. he certainty that we are God’s children, and that our destiny is not determined by the state apparatus or the mainstream culture allows us to face the possibility of a renewed culture with more freedom to embrace man in its plenitude without the constraint to give in to the processes of objectivizing enforced on us by society. he intimacy with Christ, our vital axis, is therefore essential in our attempt to overcome the dualism so deeply embedded in secularization and the loss of direction in Christian life; we refer to this bias, of the earlier discussed “double direction in conscience” which presents itself under the guise of dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural, between the “natural” and “supernatural” inalities of man. Bibliography Berdyaev, Nicolas. he Bourgeois Mind and Other Essays. London: Sheed & Ward, 1934. ———. he Divine and the Human. London: Geofrey Bles, 1949. ———. he Russian Idea. New York: Macmillan, 1948. ———. Slavery and Freedom. London: Geofrey Bles, 1939. ———. Solitude and Society. London: Geofrey Bles, 1938. Dante Alighieri. De Monarchia. Translated by Aurelia Henry. Boston: Houghton, Milin, 1904. Figes, Orlando, and Boris Kolonitskii. Interpreting the Russian Revolution: he Language and Symbols of 1917. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Hausherr, Irénée. “Pour comprendre l’Orient chrétien: La primauté du spirituel.” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 33 (1967) 351–69. Lossky, Vladimir. he Mystical heology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976. Lubac, Henri de. Surnaturel. Études historiques. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1946. Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. “La Idea Rusa y su interpretación.” In La Idea Rusa, edited by Marcelo López Cambronero and Artur Mrówczynski-Van Allen, 225– 300. Granada: Nuevo Inicio, 2009. Symeon the New heologian. Hymnen. Edited by Athanasios Kambylis. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976. 23 2 The Trinity in History and Society The Russian Idea, Polish Messianism, and the Post-Secular Reason —Paweł Rojek Vladimir Soloviev stayed in Krakow for a few weeks at the turn of 1888 and 1889. He was returning from Paris, where he had formulated his great theocratic and ecumenical program, to Saint Petersburg, where he hoped to realize it; Krakow was at that time the last city before the Russian border. He stopped here to inish a secret memorandum for Tsar Alexander III, by which he believed he would be able to convert him to his own ideas.1 Soloviev met a few friends in Krakow and discussed with them his philosophy and perhaps his secret plans. Apparently, one of Soloviev’s Krakow friends was Professor Stanisław Tarnowski (1837–1917), the great Polish historian, literary critic and conservative politician.2 Shortly ater the visit, Tarnowski published a detailed review of Soloviev’s L’idée Russe in his journal Przegląd Polski to which Soloviev replied soon ater in the “Lettre á la Rédaction.”3 A 1. For details of Soloviev’s “Krakow afair” see Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, 350 and Moiseyev, “Tayna krakovskogo dela.” 2. Soloviev and Tarnowski met probably on the customary hursday parties arranged by Count Paweł Popiel (1807–1892) in his house on św. Jana street 20 in Krakow, see Popiel, Rodzina Popielów, 66, 73. 3. Tarnowski, “Głos sumienia z Rosyi;” Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” see also brief Tarnowski’s rejoinder “Odpowiedź.” he irst Russian translation of Soloviev’s letter was published in émigré journal Novyy Zhurnal by the Krakow scholar Grzegorz Przebinda, see his Włodzimierz Sołowjow, 222. 24 Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society few months later Tarnowski published extensive commentary on Soloviev’s new book, La Russie et l’Église universelle,4 which was unfortunately let without answer. Tarnowski’s papers was the irst serious Polish, and perhaps also irst European, reaction to Soloviev’s great theocratic writings. I am not going to analyze here the discussion between Tarnowski and Soloviev, which undoubtedly deserves careful examination. In this paper I would like to develop one quite obvious observation made by Tarnowski. He noticed that Soloviev’s ideas were very close to the doctrine of Polish Messianists, particularly Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–59) and August Cieszkowski (1814–94). Tarnowski wrote, hough it is unfortunately very probable that Mr. Soloviev has never read them, and therefore he found his way of thought without their help, nevertheless these authors have at least priority in order of time; I do not want to discuss whether they have also priority in the depth and the power of thinking.5 Aterwards, many other Polish and Russian scholars indicated similarities between the Russian Idea and Polish Messianism. For instances, Marian Zdziechowski compared Soloviev and Andrzej Towiański,6 Nikolai Berdyaev found similarities between Soloviev and August Cieszkowski7 and Andrzej Walicki indicated a closeness between Soloviev and Adam Mickiewicz.8 I would like to develop Tarnowski’s thesis by comparing two works by Krasiński and Soloviev. Krasiński in the unpublished treatise On the Position of Poland form the Divine and Human Perspective (1841–1847) tried to reveal the destiny of Poland in the divine plan of Providence. Exactly the same attempt in regard to Russian history was made forty years later by Soloviev in his famous lecture he Russian Idea (1888). Soloviev wanted to reveal “not that what nation thinks about itself in time, but that what God thinks about it in eternity,”9 that is, in Krasiński words, the position of Russia from the Divine perspective. I would like to focus on their insights on 4. Tarnowski, “Wykład idei.” 5. Ibid., 34; Tarnowski suggested that some of the common elements in Polish and Russian thought stem from the common inspiration of German Idealism; I would rather point to a shared Christian tradition and the recent inluences of French postrevolutionary religious thought, see Walicki, “Philosophie de l’Histoire,” 189, “Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures,” 75, and Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism, 239–77. 6. Zdziechowski, Pesymizm, romantyzm a podstawy chrześcijaństwa, 414. 7. Berdyaev, Russian Idea, 228. 8. Walicki, “Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures,” “Solov’ëv’s heocratic Utopia,” and Russia, Poland, and Universal Regeneration. For an attempt to analyze the possible inluences of Polish Messianism on Soloviev see Strémooukhof, Vladimir Soloviev, 196, 363–4. 9. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” 220. 25 26 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason human nature, universal history and social order. It is amazing how close they were to each other in these fundamental issues. Nevertheless they differed gravely in the details of their visions: Krasiński believed that Poland was the only country able to realize Christian principles in social and political life, whereas Soloviev granted that great mission to Russia. I believe that both the Russian Idea and Polish Messianism have not only historical, but also great contemporary importance. It seems that these two intellectual movements in the same vein undermined the secular dualism so characteristic for modernity, and placed God at the center of human life, history and society. In this, Russian and Polish Christian thinkers anticipated the crucial ideas of Nouvelle héologie, Second Vatican Council, Radical Orthodoxy, the School of Granada and other recent fashionable currents in Christian post-secular thought.10 Apparently, they simply went beyond secular reason before it was cool. Christ and Human Nature Christianity ofers a straightforward answer to the question of human nature. When Pilate pointed at Jesus and said “Ecce homo” (John 19:5), he actually made the most proper, although merely ostensive deinition of man. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the paradigm of man. To be a true man is to imitate Christ. Now, if being a true man involves uniting with God, then religious life is not something external for man, but rather something which realizes human nature. If Divine humanity is the true humanity, then divinization is the true humanization. his is the fundamental principle of Christian anthropology, which overcomes the modern dualism between self-suicient nature on the one hand and optional supernature on the other, and calls for the positive reintegration of all human reality in Christ. It seems that this fundamental intuition might be found both in Krasiński and Soloviev. Krasiński starts his treatise by declaring that man is called to “complete its own creation” and to “grow” towards God.11 he end of this growing is given in Christ, since His life was “the archmastery of life.”12 More particular, Christ “revealed clearly, convincingly and vividly, by words, but most of all by acts, that the human nature is called to divinization, if only it agrees and freely its his will to will of God.”13 Krasiński 10. In the interpretation of the dialectics of secular reason I rely most of all on the brilliant essay by Msgr. Javier Martínez in Beyond Secular Reason. 11. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” 5. 12. Ibid., 8. 13. Ibid. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society consequently developed that idea. he fulillment of that calling is the same as the realization of the human nature. herefore there is no worry about the supposed loss of humanity in divinity. “he more you unite with God, the more you become yourself; since if the result of this uniting was diferent, you would be not driven toward life, but toward death, and God inally would be your eternal death.”14 It is so because grace does not destroy, but rather perfects nature. Krasiński went on and claimed that divinization is in fact a natural objective of man. In some sense, there is nothing miraculous about it. “Our hitherto mundane nature is a miracle of our refractoriness and embroilment, and that what is usually called miracle is rather our inner, ultimate and true nature.”15 he same anthropological principle might be found in Soloviev, although not exactly in the relatively short Russian idea, but rather in Lectures on Divine humanity, where he gave a more profound anthropological basis for his historiosophical and political constructions. Soloviev, in the same vein as Krasiński, believed that the divinization is the proper object of man and the personal life of each individual men and the history of universal mankind should be a processes of achieving that great goal. Soloviev expressed the fundamental principle of Christocentric anthropology perhaps even in more provocative way: “he human person can unite with the divine principle freely, from within, only because the person is in a certain sense divine, or more precisely, participates in Divinity.”16 In a subsequent passage Soloviev explained in what sense man might be called divine. he human person is divine since it has the capacity to be divinized. “Divinity belongs to human beings and to God, but with one diference: God possess Divinity in eternal actuality, whereas human beings can only attain it, can only have it granted to them, and in the present state there is only possibility, only striving.”17 his possibility is essential for man and its realization is in fact a self-realization. Becoming God does not exclude but rather presupposes and reinforces being a man. Religion is therefore a fulillment, not an exclusion of human nature. Religion is the reuniication of humanity and the world with the absolute, integral principle. hat principle is integral or all-embracing, excluding nothing. herefore, true reuniication with it, true religion, cannot exclude, suppress, or forcibly subject to 14. 15. 16. 17. Ibid., 25 Ibid., 28. Solovyov, Lectures on Divine Humanity, 17, translation improved. Ibid., 23 27 28 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason itself any element whatever, any living force in humanity or in its world.18 We should not therefore be afraid of religious life in temporality and divinization in eternality. We would not lose anything, but would rather win everything. Messianism and Missionism Jesus Christ revealed the true human nature. his revelation is important not only for individual human life, but also for human communities. We are all called to imitate the life of Christ, both in our personal and social lives. In the case of individual men it leads to personal salvation, while in the case of communities it involves the building of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Both Krasiński and Soloviev were particularly interested in that second historical process. hey believed that people are supposed to realize Christian doctrine not only in their private life, but also in public spheres of economics, politics and international afairs. In this they were both genuine Messianists. he term “Messianism” was originally introduced by Józef HoeneWroński, a Polish eccentric mathematician, philosopher and inventor writing in French, who published in 1831 a treatise entitled Messianisme.19 he term was then adopted by Adam Mickiewicz and popularized in his famous Paris lectures in Collège de France (1840–44); Wroński never forgave him for this supposed intellectual thet. he term “Messianism” subsequently started to stand for many quite diferent views and attitudes, some of which are perhaps expressed more properly by the term “millenarism” (a belief that the world needs universal religious reintegration), others by “Missionism” (a belief on the special mission of some or all nations), and inally by “passionism” (a belief on the special value of collective sufering).20 “Messianism” eventually became a label for almost all Polish philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century. Jerzy Braun, a Polish writer and scholar, explained the proper meaning of this term in the following way: Hebrew Mashiah is the same as Greek Christos, hence “Messianism” means the same as “christianism.” Wroński used that term in the meaning: completed, integral Christianity, penetrating all 18. Ibid., 10 19. Hoene-Wronski, Messianisme; Wroński was apparently a prototype of a mysterious Polish master in Balzac’s novel he Quest of the Absolute (1834). 20. I proposed an integral theory of Messianism in my “Mesjanizm integralny;” notice that these three components of Polish Messianism correspond roughly to the three oices of Christ, distinguished in Patristic and recalled in contemporary theology. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society domains of public life, beginning from philosophy and culture, and ending with state organization, economic order, and international afairs.21 Messianism is therefore a tendency towards the full realization of the principles of Christianity in social life. In other words, to the building of the Kingdom of God on Earth. his mundane Kingdom should not, however, be confused with the ultimate salvation. Messianists believed in human progress, but nevertheless realized that its inal fulillment implies a New Earth. To use Eric Voegelin’s popular terminology, they certainly immanentized the eschaton, but not so much.22 Krasiński, though he did not called himself a Messianist, stated perfectly clear the fundamental principles of that doctrine. he meaning of history was the gradual transformation of all reality according to revealed principles. He wrote for instance: he ultimate goal of our earthly history is . . . the universal sacred Kingdom of God on Earth, powered not by our arbitrary will but the human will united with the Divine one; that is, Christian order actualized and realized, concerning not only individual souls, but also all humankind, all rules, laws and institutions, transforming the Earth into one great sanctuary of the Holy Spirit.23 he sense of history was therefore the process of divinization, that is—according to the anthropological principle—humanization of all spheres of human life. Krasiński spoke about “religionization,”24 “Christization,”25 or even “kingdomization”26 of private, social, state and international life. Soloviev manifested the same active attitude of a Christian engaged in transforming the whole world. He wrote: “To take part in the life of the universal Church, in developing the great Christian civilization, to take part in this task according to its own power and capacities—this is the true aim, the only true mission of every nation.”27 he ideal is already given in Christianity; now is the time for its realization in the world.28 Using the terminology 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. Braun, Kultura jutra, 348. Voegelin, New Science of Politics. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” 29 Ibid., 36. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 12−13. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” 228. Ibid., 239. 29 30 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason of the later Lectures on Divine Humanity, the task of each nation and whole humankind is a participation in the divine and human process of realization of Christian ideals on Earth. he unanimity of Krasiński and Soloviev is strikingly manifested in their interpretation of Matthew 22:21. Soloviev noticed in 1889, in his Russia and the Universal Church, that the precept “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” is constantly quoted to sanction an order of things which gives Caesar all and God nothing. he saying “My Kingdom is not of this world” is always being used to justify and conirm the paganism of our social life, as though Christian society were destined to belong to this world and not to the Kingdom of Christ. On the other hand, the saying ‘All power is given Me in Heaven and Earth’ is never quoted.”29 In the same spirit Krasiński proposed in the foreword to his great poem Predawn, published in 1843, a surprising interpretation of Christ’s dictum: hese words contain all the future movement of humankind. Since everything belongs to God, therefore the division between God’s and Caesar’s domains is only temporary and must gradually decrease. hings that yesterday was counted as Caesar’s, today must be counted as God’s, until the City of Caesar would be nothing, and Kingdom of God would be everything.30 I distinguish, following Nikolai Berdyaev and Andrzej Walicki, Messianism and Missionism. Messianism says about the great task of the universal religious regeneration of the world, whereas Missionism simply states that at least some nations have speciic missions in the universal history. his mission might be a part of a great messianic task, but not necessary.31 Russian Slavophiles, for instance, were Missionists, but not Messianists, whereas Hoene-Wroński was Messianist, but not Missionist. Both Krasiński and Soloviev were at once Messianists and Missionists. hey believed that nations are not contingent cultural constructions, but organic spiritual communities and both deined nations as “organs” 29. Solovyev, Russia and the Universal Church, 8. 30. Krasiński, Pisma literackie, 148−9; for a religious interpretation of this poem see Sokulski “Przedświt jako tekst profetyczny.” 31. Berdyayev, “Аleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov,” 171; Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, 81. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society of humankind.32 he national missions were therefore thought by them as parts of the great messianic task of all humankind. Ultimately every nation was called to serve every other one. However, they difered in many aspects of their visions. First of all, Krasiński believed that Poles would play a crucial role in the messianic process, whereas Soloviev hoped it would be Russia. Secondly, Krasiński had the tendency to recognize Poles as the chosen nation, whereas Soloviev thought about the mission of Russia in a much more pragmatic way. “God can handle without Russia,” he wrote.33 Some Polish late Messianists even suggested that ater the revolution, the abandoned Russian mission had returned to Poland.34 hirdly, they held opposing views on the relationships between Jews and Christians; Krasiński was convinced that the Jews were no longer the chosen nation, whereas Soloviev was much more faithful to the idea. Finally, Krasiński denied any positive role of Russia in history, whereas Soloviev was generous enough to admit the great spiritual achievements of Poland. To be honest, Krasiński was one of the iercest Polish Russophobes. He even wrote secret memoranda to Pope Pius IX and Napoleon III in which he warned them and encourage them to take action against Russia. Unfortunately, his most horrifying vision of the alliance between Russian Empire and Communism turned out to be not a prejudice, but a prophecy.35 The Trinity in Histor y and Society he founding act of modernity was the separation of religion on the one hand and the world on the other. In efect, the religion became an isolated sphere with no real consequences in other spheres of life. he result of this separation was probably best expressed by Immanuel Kant in the famous dictum: “he doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally—he wrote—has no practical relevance at all.”36 It seems signiicant that both Krasiński and Soloviev, on the contrary, considered the Trinity as the model of quite practical issues. heir treatises are based on the analogy between the Trinity and 32. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” 12−3; Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” 220. 33. Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” 182. 34. Jankowski, Idea Rosyjska Sołowjewa, 24–9. 35. For the details of Krasiński’s hard-shell vision of Russia see Nowak, “Rosja i rewolucja,” and Fiećko, Rosja Krasińskiego and Krasiński przeciw Mickiewiczowi. It is worth noting that the diferences between Krasiński and Soloviev largely coincide with the diferences between Krasiński and Mickiewicz, see Fiećko, Krasiński przeciw Mickiewiczowi. It proves that some types of Polish Messianism other than Krasiński’s were even closer to the Russian Idea. 36. Kant, Religion and Rational heology, 264. 31 32 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason the human reality, though the irst saw the Trinity mostly as a pattern of historical development, whereas the latter made it primarily a paradigm of political relationships. Krasiński’s treatise, inally titled On the Position of Poland from the Divine and Human Perspective, had two alternative working titles: On the Trinity and On the Trinity in God and the Trinity in Man.37 hat last title reveals the underlying idea of the whole work. he Holy Trinity is the unity of the three fundamental principles of Being, hinking and Acting or Living, corresponding to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit respectively. According to Krasiński, these three principles manifest also themselves in human reality. Being is relected in hought, and the Act is a unity of these two principles. hese three elements roughly correspond to the human Body, Soul and Spirit. Krasiński was most interested in applications of these modes in the historical life of nations. Firstly, he believed that nations, as well as persons, have their own Body, that is what they have (historical heritage), Soul, which is what they think (present ideas), and Spirit or what they do (creative activity related to future). Secondly, he maintained that the principles of Being, hinking and Acting reveal themselves throughout history in the order of time. As every created whole, the history of humankind must consist on three parts, corresponding irstly to Being, secondly to hought and its struggle with Being, and thirdly to the reconciliation and uniication of the struggling parties into the one Spirit. Only ater such dissolution of the Trinity in the time and space humankind will tune up to it and the collective history of the human spirit will be fulilled.38 Accordingly, Krasiński believed that the Antiquity realized the principle of Being, the Middle Ages was the embodiment of the principle of hought, then we witnessed the struggle between these two principles, and now we are on the threshold of new era of Spirit. One can see this dialectics in the example of the relations between the State and Church: the Romans built the foundations of the State, medieval Christians formulated the ideal of the Church, and now we are supposed to reconcile State with the Church in a higher unity. Moreover, for Krasiński, historical functions are distributed not only between diferent ages, but also between diferent nations. Nowadays, in his view, the Italians, Spaniards and French are still attached to the political principle of Being, the Germanic nations realized the philosophical 37. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” 295–96. 38. Ibid., 32. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society principle of hought, whereas the Slavic peoples are supposed to open a new era of religious Act. he Slavic New Age will “not allow the separation between the law of God in Haven and the human law on Earth, but will instead reconcile in one justice and in one order the Real and the Ideal, the temporal and the spiritual, the state and the church, politics and Christian love, that what is and that what ought to be.”39 In would be therefore a inal age of human history, the realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Krasiński was mainly concerned in looking for traces of the Trinity in history. He believed that the harmonious heavenly pattern realized itself on Earth through dialectics of struggles and reconciliations. Besides this, he also briely sketched in an extensive note an original political interpretation of the Trinity, investigating the consequences of the schismatic Trinitarian theology for Russian political form. He accused the Orthodox Church of not developing the Trinitarian dogma in its fullness. he lack of the Filioque was supposed to be responsible for the most crude features of the Russian regime. What is the meaning of such an undeveloped Trinity? Eternal Jehovah, the mere omnipotence, causes and makes everything. He generates the Son, which however cannot give anything to his Father. he Son cannot commune with Him as equal . . . Incredible autocracy, boundless auctoritas paterna. he government is everything, on earth as it is in Heaven. Government generated everything; he provides everything . . . Such image of the world and the history is inevitable among schismatics, since on earth is as it is in Heaven . . . his is all antichristian. he yoke, loaded on that nation, is contained in the false concept of divine Trinity, which is divine in so far as its persons are perfectly equal and harmonious.40 In short, the Orthodox Church, according to Krasiński, due to the lack of Filioque, remained too monotheistic and not Trinitarian enough, and mere monotheism, as he suggested long before Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem,” unavoidably leads to autocracy. he form of theological thinking therefore shapes the form of political institution. he parallel between Krasiński and Peterson is striking.41 he political and institutional dimensions of Trinitarian dogma was further developed by Soloviev. He irmly stated that the task of Russia, but also that of every other nation, as well all as the whole humankind, is to 39. Ibid., 54. 40. Ibid., 61. 41. Peterson, “Monotheism.” 33 34 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason “restore on earth a faithful image of divine Trinity.”42 He explained that the imitation of the Trinity consists of the projection of the relations between divine persons of the Trinity into relations between social institutions on earth. he “realization of social trinity” means that “each of the three organic principles, namely Church, State and Society, remains in absolute freedom and power, neither separating from others, nor devouring or destroying them, but instead accepting its own absolute internal relations with them.”43 More precisely, Russia and other Christian nations should “subordinate the power of the State (the royal authority of the Son) to authority of universal Church (Father’s priesthood) and provide a proper space for social freedom (acts of the Spirit).”44 Soloviev presupposed that the institutions of Church, State and Society in human communities corresponded to the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the divine Trinity. he Trinity makes the perfect unity, which however does not exclude distinctions of persons and diferences in relations between them. It also does not exclude the central position of the Father, who generates the Son and emanates the Spirit. he image of this unity in diferences is Jesus Christ, who besides being the Second Person of the Holy Spirit, also united the three messianic oices of King, Priest and Prophet, corresponding to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christology is therefore a mediating element between Trinitarian and political theology. Humankind inherited messianic oices, which are embodied in three distinct institutions of spiritual authority, political government and free social activity, that is Church, State and Society. Using a little bit contemporary terminology, one may say about three spheres of religion, politics and civil society. Since these institutions are, as Soloviev said,45 instruments of each persons of Holy Trinity, their relations should mirror relations between Father, Son and Spirit.46 What are the recommended relations between human institutions? Since Religion corresponds to the Father, it should have a distinguished place in social order and the two other spheres, corresponding to the two 42. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” 246. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 245. 45. Ibid., 243. 46. A close intuition was developed by Wolfgang Grassl, who adopted the principles of Trinitarian theology for economy. He does not speak, however, about the trinity of Church, State and Society, but rather the spheres of Society, State and Market, which difer in the adopted principles of exchange, see Grassl, “Ekonomia obywatelska,” and Kędzierski, “Ekonomia trynitarna,” Rojek, “Program ekonomii trynitarej,” “Ekonomia, wzajemność i Trójca Święta.” Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society other divine persons, should be subordinated to it. he power of the Father does not, however, overwhelm the Son, for he is not Cronos devouring his own children, so the power of the Church should not suppress State and Society. And, conversely, the Son willingly accepts the power of the Father, since he is not Zeus looking for the opportunity to devour Cronos, so the State should accept the authority of the Church. Soloviev was painfully aware that the current state of the political order is a caricature of the life of the Holy Trinity. he Father renounces of his son, the son rebels against his father, brothers come together to kill their father and inally murder themselves: the Church gives up its inluence on State, the State wants to dominate religion, and social reformers rise up against both Church and the State. Moreover, Soloviev in A Short Story of the Anti-Christ described the alliance between Church and State without which elements of free prophecy turn into a caricature of theocracy.47 he relationships between these three institutions demands urgent hierarchical arrangement, and the pattern of this should be the Holy Trinity. Interestingly enough, it seems that Soloviev’s Trinitarian model of theocracy presupposes the principle of Filioque. he prophets, that is “free movers of progressive social movements,”48 should respect both Church and State. he direct link between the Second and the hird institutions makes the construction more balanced and harmonious. Krasiński and Peterson would perhaps have approved of it. Krasiński’s and Soloviev’s provocative reference to the Holy Trinity as a model of historical and social order is perhaps the most conspicuous common feature of their treatises. Tarnowski highlighted precisely that point in his commentary to Soloviev’s work. “Triplicity mirroring the Divine Trinity in creation and human history—he wrote—is not a new idea . . . we Poles has seen it in works of Krasiński and Cieszkowski.”49 he Trinitarian analogy is also the most subversive for the dominating modern and secular way of thinking. hough Krasiński’s historical visions and Soloviev’s political speculations might seems to be too arbitrary, too artiicial and too fabulous to be defended in details, nevertheless their general insight that “on earth is as it is in Heaven” is the central idea of pre- and post-secular Christian thought.50 God is not, as Ludwig Feuerbach thought, a projection of hu47. Solovyov, War, Progress, and the End of History, 159–94; I owe this interpretation to Janusz Dobieszewski, Włodzimierz Sołowjow, 426; for an alternative account see Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, 97–101. 48. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” 243. 49. Tarnowski, “Wykład idei,” 34; for Cieszkowski’s Triniatran interpretation of the history see his “Prolegomena to historiosophy;” Cieszkowski and Krasiński were close friends and deeply inluenced each other. 50. For more on social implications of Trinitarian dogma see: Volf, “he Trinity Is Our Social Program” and Rojek, “Program ekonomii trynitarnej.” 35 36 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason mankind, but on the contrary, humankind is a projection of God. he mission of the Church and the whole of humankind is to make this resemblance in the world more explicit. Beyond Secular Reason In the introduction to this paper I indicated that the glorious revolt against secular reason in the twentieth century started with the Nouvelle héologie, a circle of Catholic theologian with Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar and other great igures. his informal group prepared the great event of the Second Vatican Council both intellectually and spiritually. I agree with Monsignor Javier Martínez, archbishop of Granada, that it would be possible, and perhaps necessary, to show that the deep meaning of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and in fact the very key to understand its teaching, is exactly its attempt to recuperate the Holy Tradition from the marshlands in which the semi-conscious acceptance of liberalism and secular reason has thrown it. he same could be said of the teaching of the post-conciliar popes, especially John Paul II.51 I believe that the documents of the Council might be read as a kind of constitution of the new post-secular order. For this reason I would like to briely recall some its crucial ideas relevant for Polish Messianism and the Russian Idea. he principle of Christocentric anthropology is explicitly expressed in the famous Paragraph 22 of Gaudium et Spes. “Christ . . . in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling.”52 he Modern order rests on the separation of the domains of the natural and the supernatural, which yields the separation of culture, politics, economy on the one hand, and religion on the other. his separation, as it is well known, leads inevitably to the disappearance of religion.53 However, if the true human nature is revealed in Christ, then this modern dualism cannot be maintained anymore. Religion is seen now as the completion of man, not as an additional option. As Msgr. Martínez noticed, “this quotation, when taken seriously, makes 51. Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, 96. 52. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 22. 53. See Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, 73–85. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society it impossible for a Catholic to maintain a liberal position, and goes beyond any secular dualism or fragmentation.”54 Next, some crucial ideas of Messianism (in contrast to Missionism) might be easily found in the Constitution Lumen Gentium in the paragraphs concerning the tasks of lay people. For it is precisely the laity, not the ecclesial hierarchy, who is primary called to transform the world according to Christian principles. “he laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal afairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.”55 As a result of this efort “all types of temporal afairs” should “continually increase according to Christ.”56 “he world may be permeated by the spirit of Christ and it may more efectively fulill its purpose in justice, charity and peace . . . hrough the members of the Church, will Christ progressively illumine the whole of human society with His saving light.”57 What is speciically signiicant is that the Fathers of the Council recalled the traditional teaching on the three oices of Christ, which was constantly presented in the works of Polish and Russian Messianists. We read that every Christian continues the priestly, the prophetic and the royal functions of Jesus Christ.58 So, the people of God is the true messianic nation. he lacking element in Council vision is the theology of nation, which could serve as a base for national Missionism. Finally, one can ind in the council constitutions the most radical and subversive idea of the Holy Trinity as a social program, so characteristic for Polish and Russian religious philosophy. “he Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, ‘that all may be one. . . as we are one’ (John 17:21–22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. his likeness reveals that man . . . cannot fully ind himself except through a sincere git of himself.”59 he line of reasoning is clear. If Christ is the model of man, then His relations with the Father and Spirit should be the pattern for all human relationships. Anthropological Christocentrism therefore leads to social Trinitarianism. he teaching of the Second Vatican Council has been developed and deepened by John Paul II, the true Slavic Pope, who fulilled the prophecies of the Polish poets and went beyond the dreams of Russian philosophers. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. Ibid., 95–96. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, no. 31. Ibid. Ibid., no. 36. Ibid., nos. 34–36. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 24. 37 38 Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason he two above quoted paragraphs of Gaudium et spes were his most beloved citations. here are even evidences that the “Trinitarian” no. 24 “probably owes its shape to Wojtyła.”60 I would like only to recall that the irst Encyclical Letter of John Paul II starts with a splendid airmation that “the Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history.”61 his statement summarizes all the post-secular teaching of the Second Vatican Council and perfectly agrees with both Polish and Russian religious thought. “Again, it is text that, if it is received in an intellectual honest way and is taken seriously, goes ‘beyond secular reason,’ and makes cleat the deep incompatibility of the Catholic faith with liberal modes of thinking.”62 he remaining great task is the detailed investigation of the possible inluences of Polish Messianism and the Russian Idea on contemporary Catholic post-secular teaching. Some authors argued that Henri de Lubac, the founding father of the theological revival in the twentieth century, might be directly inluenced by Russian thought.63 It is worth noting that he was also acquainted with the messianic works of Mickiewicz. Moreover, there is a considerable amount of exciting evidence for direct messianic inspiration in the thought of John Paul II.64 As far as we know, he was also interested in Russian religious philosophy. he history of the post-secular revolution still awaits its explorers. Finally, I think that the heritage of Polish Messianism and the Russian Idea should not only be recognized as a surprisingly early expression of postsecular intuition, but also as a source of some inspiration for contemporary post-secular thought. Two points seem to me especially important: Polish and Russian Messianists were much more courageous in thinking about the state than most contemporary Christian thinkers,65 and they formulated a speciic philosophy and a theology of nation, which could be an impulse for a more faithful approach to that issue for contemporary theologians.66 In 60. Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze Watykańskim II, 109; see also Waldstein, hree Kinds of Personalism, 8. 61. John Paul II, Redemptor hominis, no. 1. 62. Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, 96, n. 35. 63. Dell’Asta, La teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente; I owe this reference to Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen. 64. For instance, during World War II, a young Karol Wojtyła was a member of the secret organization Unia, led by declared Messianist Jerzy Braun. For some historical evidences see: Mazur, “Jerzy Braun i mesjanizm Jana Pawła II,” for a more systematic study: Rojek, “Pokolenie;” I am currently working on a detailed Messianistic interpretation of John Paul II’s thought. 65. See for instance Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol. 66. See for instance Pabst and Schneider, “Transiguring the World,” 16; for an example of positive Polish theology of nation see Bartnik, Formen der politischen heologie in Polen, “Problematyka teologii narodu,” and Teologia narodu. Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society short, I believe that the works of Mickiewicz, Krasiński, and Cieszkowski on the one hand, and Dostoevsky, Soloviev and Florensky on the other, should not be considered as a mere historical curiosity, but as a challenge for contemporary Christian thought. When Stanisław Tarnowski in 1889 noticed the similarities between the Russian Idea and Polish Messianism, Soloviev had a rather obscure and quite a negative opinion on Polish philosophy. Ten years before meeting in Krakow he wrote to one of his friends: “I have come to know the Polish philosophers to some extent. heir general tone and aspirations are very sympathetic, but, like our Slavophiles, they have no positive content.”67 It seems that the discussion with Tarnowski and others changed his mind, although during the very debate he maintained his critical attitude.68 Ten years ater the Krakow meeting, Soloviev gave a speech in Moscow at a ceremony to the memory of Adam Mickiewicz. He not only praised his poetry, but also declared his acceptance of some of the fundamental principles of Polish Messianism. As far as I know, along with of some minor errors (like, for instance, the cult of Napoleon), this movement proclaimed some truths of paramount importance, truths which have a legitimate right to recognition in the Christian world—above all, the truth about the continuous growth of Christianity. If the world still exists so many centuries ater Christ, it means that something is being prepared in it for our salvation; and taking part in this is our duty, if Christianity is really a religion of divine humanity.69 In these words, as Walicki put it, “the greatest religious philosopher of nineteenth-century Russia paid homage to Mickiewicz’s religious Messianism.”70 I believe that Soloviev could have repeated these words for Krasiński, if only he had known him. I also believe that contemporary Christian post-secular thinkers could pay similar homage to both Polish Messianism and the Russian Idea. If only they knew them. 67. Letter to countess S. A. Tolstoy, April 27, 1877, quoted in Florensky, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 240. 68. Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” 182–83. 69. Solov’yev, “Mitskevich,” 211. 70. Walicki, “Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures,” 64. 39