VI.
Now the general background is clarified for us. We can move on to the concrete understanding of Russia, which can be seen in the proper light only against this background. Here during the last millennium events developed differently from the West.
The Kiev Caves Lavra was founded only three years before the schism in the Christian Church, and the monastery of Anthony in Novgorod was founded afterwards. This means that from its beginning our spiritual life developed without ties to the spiritual life of the West, and after the Florentine union of 1439, when contact with the Greek Church was severed, it struck out on an independent path of its own. This path, for the most part, turned out to be opposite from the European one. There, as we know,in the 11th century piety took a downward turn and continued to decline steadily up to the present time.
In Russia it was precisely in the 11th century that the rapid growth of Christian spirituality took place. The seeds sown in Kiev by Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves and in Novgorod by Sts. Anthony the Roman and Barlaam of Hutinsk sprouted in the form of numerous neighboring monasteries, and all of these shoots and buddings so firmly grounded themselves in the society of that time that it was impossible for even the Tartar-Mongol invaders to weed them out. Thus, during the period of the 11th through the 14th century the strengthening of Christianity in Kievan-Novgorodian Rus took place. And then something happened which can be compared to the transplanting of a sapling into new soil where, in time, it grew into a huge flowering tree. The increase in power of the Muscovite principality in the 14th century received the blessing of St. Peter and the sanction of the great abba Sergius, the wonderworker of Radonezh, and thus began the mighty process of Christianization which rolled to the Solovetsky islands in the north and to the Pacific Ocean shores of Siberia in the east. The three-hundred-year period from the 14th to the 17th century formed that unique spiritual and political society which was nostalgically remembered for a long time afterwards as "Holy Russia." By the middle of the 17th century Russian piety reached it culmination. A multitude of indications give evidence concerning this – the flowering of church architecture, the sheer number of churches which were constructed, and the specifics of the interior decor, which became so intimate that it seems that the Lord God with the Holy Theotokos and all the saints came down from heaven at that time and became part of the Russian household. On this point, by the way, we have the direct testimony of the Syrian Paul of Aleppo. In his Journey he constantly admires the religious zeal of the Russians exclaiming, "These are indeed holy people, how happy they are!" Although historical science totally ignores this most valuable source, which destroys its politico-economical concept of the development of society, for the unprejudiced reader it gives incontestable proof that up to the very moment when they began to "hew the window into Europe," our Christian piety was not decreasing, but growing.
When that window was hewn, Russia had nothing left to do but join the pan-European process of replacing God with man. The graph line of its faith, which hitherto was heading upward, now began to slip downward – slowly at first,and then faster and faster, in order to make up for lost time and to meet Europe at the same point in the twentieth century. But since the Russian organism was different, the penetrating virus of temptation developed in it not as it did in the European organism, and "man-worship" too another form for us. Which form was that?
That is very simple, we need make one amplification. Until now, speaking of the enthronement of the cult of man, we have not posed the question of which man? Yet this question is very significant. Man has two aspects: individual and social, or as Christians say, soborny. Thus the essence of the concept of "man as God" is not fully defined until we determine which aspect was deified. The answer is thus: both aspects were deified, but each in a different location. In Western Europe they established the cult of the individual, in Russia – the soborny. With us it could not have happened otherwise. The Russian soil onto which the seeds of temptation fell was still too saturated with the second Gospel commandment "love they neighbor." And when we, following the Europeans, rejected the first commandment and stopped acknowledging the invisible God, the second modified itself into the idea of a brotherhood of visible people. For this reason man, whom we put upon a pedestal, turned out to be humanity, whom we henceforth worship, whom we glorify, and for whose bright future we live and labor. Thus "man-worship" split into two disputing confessions. The dogmatic difference between the two is deeply hidden, but on the surface it gives rise to striking differences in literally everything – in philosophy, in art, in the tenor of life, etc. There is no point in discussing them, for they are the everyday reality of our existence which we constantly see and feel. For the sake of brevity one may say: the West places primary importance on the interests of the individual, and we, on the interests of society.
Yet whose interests are considered a priority in Christianity? That is the whole point. Here such a question loses all meaning. In Christianity man was created in the image and likeness of God, and God is one in the indivisible and consubstantial Trinity. Therefore, the individual make-up of man, which is in the likeness of the One God, is indivisible and consubstantial with its sobornal make-up, which is also in likeness of the Trinity. Therefore, to place the two in opposition is simply impossible.
Only with the falling away from God do division and opposition arise. This can be likened to the well-known phenomenon in physics known as "the effect of Zeeman," which notes that in a magnetic field each spectral line divides into two weaker lines. Analogically, in atheism each qualitatively inferior to the original. The personality degenerates into an egotistic individual, and sobornost into a faceless collectivism. True, the first, by the slight of hand of the Marxists, who went overboard on economics, was called "capitalism," but for good reason, since in individualism personal belongings and private enterprise are institutions of primary importance. The second is termed more exactly, "socialism," which, in effect, means "collectivism."
Although the contemporary opposing "systems" are actually related heresies, such closeness does not prevent their mutual repulsion. Religious feuds are all the more embittered the more closely related the confessions of the two sides are. The Catholics, most likely, would not have arranged the St. Bartholomew Massacre for Buddhists, nor would the Russian Old Believers have set themselves afire if, instead of being forced to cross themselves with three fingers, they were coerced into wearing turbans. Today's nuclear threat makes the start of a new "religious war" possible, and this makes the threat real.
However, in the division which has occurred, a deep providential meaning can be seen. Since we have rejected the theocentric understanding of the world and have accepted the anthropocentric one, the division is inevitable all the same. Yet now we are given the opportunity to see the political and worldly effects of both variants at once. We can compare the two and become convinced that they both lead to the degradation of man. It becomes apparent that it is only by serving God that we gain ourselves, but by serving ourselves we lose ourselves. This means that we must reject not one or the other "system," but anthropocentrism itself. If only one variant had been realized on earth – say, capitalism, – then, seeing the defects of that structure, the alienation of people from one another, the moral degradation and the overall "bourgeoisness" of life, we would dream of counteracting these defects by choosing a different structure and would bring about a "world revolution." And when socialism would reign and its misuses – the herd instinct, the suppression of the individual, etc. would surface, then, the drawbacks of the capitalistic system would be forgotten, and again the temptation to return to the first variant would arise. In reality, these senseless vacillations go on in our world. The negative characteristics of capitalism are always giving birth to the leftists movement in the West. The ugly aspects of socialism force many citizens of those countries where it reigns to attempt to escape to the "free world" of which they dream as a paradise on earth. But one who is familiar with both "systems" builds no illusions on either one. This sober view is gradually spreading more widely all the time.
[Was this sober view spreading? Was it over-optimistic to think so? Certainly this view was clear to Fr. Seraphim Rose. This is why Fr. Seraphim quoted Elder Ignatius, "What began in Russian will end in America." And this is how he was able to see that the super-correct disease and world orthodoxy are two flip sides of the same coin: the Zeeman effect. -jh]
In the light of all which has been said, not only does the historical role of the Baptism of Rus become clear, but also the reason that it occurred at the end of the tenth century. Although science had "proved" the non-causality of existence, in actuality everything still had its cause and its lofty goal. Thus history in all its segments is strictly providential. In our case the providence is quite apparent. It is evident that the schism in the Christian Church, which occurred the very same year that the founder of Russian cenobitic monasticism, St. Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, was ordained, was not coincidental. Because of that schism Russia was temporarily protected from the temptation to which Europe was subjected. When the temptation did finally arrive, it gave birth to an anthropocentrism of a different sort. That, in its turn, brought us to the point that each variant now stands before us in unfavorable light, convincing us of the futility of political solutions to the problems facing mankind.
Often one hears that by throwing itself into revolution Russia conducted an awesome experiment on itself, the results of which are very didactic. To some extent this is true. But one must not dissociate the "Russian experiment" from the one that went on in Europe, which was no less dramatic, for the Russian was a part of the pan-European experiment – otherwise, we will learn nothing. The abyss that we have all plunged ourselves into by the instigation of the enemy of mankind is the new religion, which covers itself with the dogmatics of the "scientific world outlook." It orients us toward serving ourselves, pleasing ourselves, and praising ourselves. It will invariably lead us to the same result as the incidents of falling to "man-worship" described in the Bible. Wishing to live in the universe in proud loneliness, we will only reap the bitterness of orphanhood. It seems that with the completion of the second millennium of the Christian era, during which this banal history has been played out, its inevitable denouncement will finally come to pass.
