THE TRUTH OF ORTHODOXY
Nicholas A. Berdyaev
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Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external
and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and
not the inner spiritual treasure. Orthodoxy was locked inside itself, it
did not have the spirit of proselytism and did not reveal itself to the
world. For the longest time, Orthodoxy did not have such world-wide significance
as did Catholicism and Protestantism. It remained apart form passionate
religious battles for hundreds of years, for centuries it lived under the
protection of large empires (Byzantium and Russia), and preserved its eternal
truth from the destructive processes of world history. It is characteristic
of Orthodoxy's religious nature that it was not sufficiently actualized
nor exposed externally, it was not militant, and precisely because of this
the heavenly truth of Christian revelation was not distorted so much. Orthodoxy
is that form of Christianity which suffered the least distortion in its
substance as a result of human history. The Orthodox Church had its moments
of historical sin, for the most part in connection with its external dependence
on the State, but the Church's teaching, her inner spiritual path was not
subject to distortion. The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition,
in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority, and
to the Protestant Churches which are essentially churches of individual
faith. The Orthodox Church was never subject to a single externally authoritarian
organization and it unshakenly was held together by the strength of internal
tradition and not by any external authority. Out of all forms of Christianity
it is the Orthodox Church which remained more closely tied to early Christianity.
The strength of internal tradition in the Church is the strength of spiritual
experience and the continuity of the spiritual path, the power of superpersonal
spiritual life in which every generation shakes off a consciousness of
self-satisfaction and exclusiveness and is united with the spiritual life
of all preceding generations up to the Apostles. In that tradition I have
the same experience and the same authority as the Apostle Paul, the martyrs,
the saints and the whole Christian world. In tradition my knowledge is
not only personal but superpersonal and I live not in isolation but within
the Body of Christ, within a single spiritual organism with all my brothers
in Christ.
Guardian of the Shrine
Orthodoxy is first of all, an orthodoxy of
life and not an orthodoxy of indoctrination. For it, heretics are not so
much those who confess a false doctrine but those who have a false spiritual
life and go along a false spiritual path. Orthodoxy is before all else,
not a doctrine, not an external organization, not an external norm of behavior
but a spiritual life, a spiritual experience and a spiritual path. It sees
the substance of Christianity in internal spiritual activity. Orthodoxy
is less the normative form of Christianity (in the sense of a normative-rational
logic and moral law) but is rather its more spiritual form. And this spirituality
and hiddenness of Orthodoxy were not infrequently the sources of its external
weakness. The external weakness and the insufficient development, the insufficiency
of external activity and realization affects everyone, but her spiritual
life, her spiritual treasures remained hidden and invisible. This is characteristic
for the spiritual nature of the East, in contrast to the spiritual world
of the West, which is always active and always visible but then, it not
infrequently spiritually exhausts itself because of all that activity.
In the non-Christian world of the East, India's spiritual life is especially
hidden from outside eyes and is not actualized in history. This analogy
could be carried through, although the spiritual nature of the Christian
East is far different from the spiritual nature of India. Holiness in the
Orthodox world, in contrast to holiness in the Catholic world, did not
leave written monuments after itself, it remained hidden. But this is not
yet the reason why it is difficult to judge Orthodox spiritual life from
the outside. Orthodoxy did not have its Scholastic age, it experienced
only the age of Patristics. And the Orthodox Church to this day relies
on the Eastern teachers of the Church. The West sees this as a sign of
Orthodoxy's backwardness, a dying out of creative life. But this fact can
be given another interpretation: in Orthodoxy, Christianity has not been
so rationalized as it had been rationalized in the West, in Catholicism
where, with the help of Aristotle it saw everything through the eyes of
Greek intellectualism. [In Orthodoxy] doctrine has never attained such
a sacred significance and dogmas have not been so attached to mandatory
intellectual theological teachings but they were understood primarily as
mystical truths. We were less confined by the theological and philosophical
interpretations of dogmas. Nineteenth century Russia experienced a genesis
of creative Orthodox ideas [thinking] and these expressed more freedom
and spiritual talent than did Catholic and even Protestant thought.
A contemporary Orthodox church
in Kosovo - tradition in new forms
To the spiritual nature of Orthodoxy belongs
the primordial and inviolable ontologism which first presented itself as
the manifestation of Orthodox life and only then, of Orthodox thought.
The Christian West went by ways of critical thought in which the subject
was opposed to the object, and thus the organic whole of thinking and the
organic connection with life was violated. The West is more capable of
a complex unfolding of its thinking, its reflection and criticism, its
precise intellectualism. But here was a violation of the connection between
the one who knows and thinks and the primordial and original existence.
Cognition came out of life and thinking, came out of existence. Cognition
and thinking did not pass through the spiritual wholeness of the person,
in the organic unity of all his strengths. The West accomplished great
feats on this foundation but this resulted in the falling apart of the
primordial ontologism of thinking, the thinking did not enter into the
depth of substance. This resulted in Scholastic intellectualism, rationalism,
empiricism and the extreme idealism of Western thought. On the Orthodox
ground, thinking remained ontological, joined to existence, and this is
evident throughout the whole of Russian religio-philosophic and theological
thought of the XIX and XX centuries. Rationalism, legalism and all normatism
is alien to Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church is not defined in rational concepts,
it is conceptualized only for those living within it, who are united to
its spiritual experience.. The mystical types of Christianity are not subject
to any kind of intellectual definitions, they do not have any juridical
signs nor do they have rational signs. Genuine Orthodox theologizing is
theologizing on the basis of spiritual experience. Orthodoxy almost completely
lacks Scholastic manuals. Orthodoxy understands itself through Trinitarian
religion; not with abstract monotheism but in concrete Trinitarianism.
The life of the Holy Trinity is reflected in its spiritual life, its spiritual
experience and its spiritual path. The Orthodox Liturgy begins with the
words: "Blessed is the Kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit." Everything begins from above, from the Divine Triad, from
the heights of the Essence, and not from the person and his soul. In Orthodox
understanding it is the Divine Triad which descends and not the person
who ascends. There is less of thisTrinitarian expression in Western Christianity,
it is more Christocentric and anthropocentric. This difference is noted
in Eastern and Western patristics where the first theologizes from the
Divine Trinity and the second, from the human soul. Thus the East first
of all proclaims the mysteries of Trinitarian dogmas and Christological
dogmas. The West primarily teaches about Grace and free will and about
the ecclesiastical organization. The West had greater wealth and a greater
variety of ideas.
Orthodoxy - Faithfulness to
the Holy Tradition
Orthodoxy is that Christianity wherein is a
greater revelation of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Orthodox Church did not
adopt the Filioque, which is seen as a subordination in the teaching about
the Holy Spirit. The nature of the Holy Spirit is revealed not so much
by dogmas and doctrines but by its action. The Holy Spirit is closer to
us, it is more immanent in the world. The Holy Spirit acts directly upon
the created world and transfigures creation. This teaching is revealed
by the greatest of Russian saints, Seraphim of Sarov. Orthodoxy is not
only Trinitarian in essence but it sees as the task of its earthly life,
the transfiguration of the world in the image of the Trinity and have it
become pneumatic [Grk. Spiritual] in essence.
I am speaking about the depths of mysteries
in Orthodoxy and not of superficial trends in it. Pneumatologic [Grk. Spiritual]
theology, the anticipation of a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the
world arises easier on Orthodox soil. This is the remarkable particularity
of Orthodoxy: on the one hand it is more conservative and traditional than
Catholicism and Protestantism but, on the other hand, within the depth
of Orthodoxy there is always a great expectation of a new religious manifestation
in the world, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the coming of the New Jerusalem.
Orthodoxy did not develop in history for nearly the whole millennium; evolution
is a stranger to it but within it the possibility of religious creativity
was concealed, which is held in reserve for a new, not yet achieved, historical
epoch. This became evident in Russian religious trends of the XIX and XX
centuries. Orthodoxy makes a more radical division between the Divine and
the natural world, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar and does
not accept those possible analogies which are frequently evident in Catholic
theology. The Divine Energies act covertly in man and in the world. One
cannot say about the created world that it is a god or is divine, nor can
one say that it is outside the Divine. God and Divine life do not resemble
the natural world or the natural life, one cannot make analogies here.
God is eternal; natural life is limited and finite. But, Divine Energy
is poured out upon the natural world, acts upon it and enlightens it. This
is the Orthodox understanding of the Holy Spirit. Thomas Aquinas' teaching
about the natural world, positing it in opposition to the supernatural
world is, for the Orthodox, a form of secularizing the world. Orthodoxy
is in principle pneumatological [Grk. Of the spirit] and in this is its
distinction. Pneumatism is the final result of Trinitarianism. Grace is
not the mediation between the supernatural and the natural; grace is the
action of the Divine Energy on the created world, the presence of the Holy
Spirit in the world. It is the Pneumatism of Orthodoxy which makes of it
a more complete form of Christianity, revealing in it the predominance
of New Testamental origins following those of the Old Testament. At its
apex, Orthodoxy understands the purpose of life as the seeking and the
attainment of the grace of the Holy Spirit, as a means of the spiritual
transfiguration of creation. This understanding is essentially opposite
of the legalistic understanding in which the Divine world and the supernatural
world is the law and the norm for the created and natural world.
Liturgy is the center of Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy is primarily liturgical. It informs
and enlightens the people not so much by sermons and the teaching of norms
and laws but by liturgical services themselves which give a foreshadowing
of transfigured life. It likewise teaches the people through the examples
of saints and instills the cult of holiness. But the images of saints are
not normative; to them is granted the graceful enlightenment and transfiguration
of creation by the action of the Holy Spirit. This, not being the normative
type for Orthodoxy, makes it more difficult for the ways of human life,
for history; it makes it less attractive for any kind of organization and
for cultural creativity. The hidden mystery of the Holy Spirit's activity
upon creation has not been actually realized by the ways of historical
life. Characteristic for Orthodoxy is FREEDOM. This internal freedom may
not be noticed from the outside but it is everywhere present. The idea
of freedom as the foundation of Orthodoxy was developed in Russian religious
thinking of the XIX and XX centuries. The admission of the freedom of conscience
radically distinguishes the Orthodox Church from the Catholic Church. But
the understanding of freedom in Orthodoxy is different from the understanding
of freedom in Protestantism. In Protestantism, as in all Western thought,
freedom is understood individualistically, as a personal right, preserved
from encroachment on the part of any other person, and declaring it to
be autonomous. Individualism is foreign to Orthodoxy, to it belongs a particular
collectivism. A religious person and a religious collective are not incompatible
with each other, as external friend to friend. The religious person is
found within the religious collective and the religious collective is found
within the religious person. Thus the religious collective does not become
an external authority for the religious person, burdening the person externally
with teaching and the law of life. The Church is not outside of religious
persons, opposed to her. The Church is within them and they are within
her. Thus the Church is not an authority. The Church is a grace-filled
unity of love and freedom. Authoritativeness is incompatible with Orthodoxy
because this form engenders a fracture between the religious collective
and the religious person, between the Church and her members. There is
no spiritual life without the freedom of conscience, there is not even
a concept of the Church, since the Church does not tolerate slaves within
her, but God wants only the free. But the authentic freedom of religious
conscience, freedom of the spirit, is made evident not in an isolated autonomous
personality, self-asserted in individualism but in a personality conscious
of being in a superpersonal spiritual unity, in a unity with a spiritual
organism, within the Body of Christ, i.e. the Church. My personal conscience
is not placed outside and is not placed in opposition to the superpersonal
conscience of the Church, it is revealed only within the Church's conscience.
But, without an active spiritual deepening of my personal conscience, of
my personal spiritual freedom, the life of the Church is not realized,
since this life cannot be external to, nor be imposed upon, the person.
Participation in the Church demands spiritual freedom, not only from the
first entry into the Church, which Catholicism also recognizes, but throughout
one's whole life. The Church's freedom with respect to the State was always
precarious, but Orthodoxy always enjoyed freedom within the Church. In
Orthodoxy freedom is organically linked with Sobornost', i.e. with the
activity of the Holy Spirit upon the religious collective which has been
with the Church not only during the times of the Ecumenical Councils, but
at all times. Sobornost' in Orthodoxy, which is the life of the Church's
people, never had any external juridical signs. Not even the Ecumenical
Councils enjoyed indisputable external authority. The infallibility of
authority was enjoyed only by the whole Church throughout her whole history,
and the bearers and custodians of this authority were the whole people
of the Church. The Ecumenical Councils enjoyed their authority not because
they conformed with external juridical legal requirements but because the
people of the Church, the whole Church recognized them as Ecumenical and
genuine. Only that Ecumenical Council is genuine in which there was an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit has no
external juridical criteria, it is discerned by the people of the Church
in accordance with internal spiritual evidence. All this indicates a nonnormative
nonjuridical character of the Orthodox Church. Along with this the Orthodox
consciousness understands the Church more ontologically, i.e. it doesn't
see the Church primarily as an organization and an establishment, not just
a society of faithful, but as a spiritual, religious organism, the Mystical
Body of Christ. Orthodoxy is more cosmic than Western Christianity. Neither
Catholicism nor Protestantism sufficiently expresses the cosmic nature
of the Church, as the Body of Christ. Western Christianity is primarily
anthropological. But the Church is also the Christianized cosmos; within
her, the whole created world is subject to the effect of the grace of the
Holy Spirit. Christ's appearance has a cosmic, cosmogonic significance;
it signifies somehow a new creation, a new day of the world's creation.
The juridical understanding of redemption as a carrying out of a judicial
process between God and man, is somewhat foreign to Orthodoxy. It is closer
to an ontological and a cosmic understanding of the appearance of a new
creation and a renewed mankind. The idea of Theosis was the central and
correct idea, the Deification of man and of the whole created world. Salvation
is that Deification. And the whole created world, the whole cosmos is subject
to Deification. Salvation is the enlightenment and transfiguration of creation
and not a juridical justification. Orthodoxy turns to the mystery of the
RESURRECTION as the summit and the final aim of Christianity Thus the central
feast in the life of the Orthodox Church is the feast of Pascha, Christ's
Glorious Resurrection. The shining rays of the Resurrection permeates the
Orthodox world. The feast of the Resurrection has an immeasurably greater
significance in the Orthodox liturgy than in Catholicism where the apex
is the feast of the Birth of Christ. In Catholicism we primarily meet the
crucified Christ and in Orthodoxy - the Resurrected Christ. The way of
the Cross is man's path but it leads man, along with the rest of the world,
towards the Resurrection. The mystery of the Crucifixion may be hidden
behind the mystery of the Resurrection. But the mystery of the Resurrection
is the utmost mystery of Orthodoxy. The Resurrection mystery is not only
for man, it is cosmic. The East is always more cosmic than the West. The
West is anthropocentric; in this is its strength and meaning, but also
its limitation. The spiritual basis of Orthodoxy engenders a desire for
universal salvation. Salvation is understood not only as an individual
one but a collective one, along with the whole world. Such words of Thomas
Aquinas could not have emanated from Orthodoxy's bosom, who said that the
righteous person in paradise will delight himself with the suffering of
sinners in hell. Nor could Orthodoxy proclaim the teaching about predestination,
not only in the extreme Calvinist form but in the form imagined by the
Blessed Augustine. The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church,
from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of
Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic
of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never
been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea
of Divine love. Chiefly - it did not define man from the point of view
of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification
of man and cosmos.
The mystery of Death and Resurrection
Finally, the final and most important feature
of Orthodoxy is its eschatological consciousness. The early Christian eschatology,
the anticipation of Christ's second appearance and the coming of the Resurrection,
was to a greater extent, preserved in Orthodoxy. Orthodox eschatology means
a lesser attachment to the world and earthly life and a greater turning
towards heaven and eternity, i.e. to the Kingdom of God. In Western Christianity,
the actualization of Christianity in the paths of history, the turning
towards earthly efficiency and earthly organization resulted in the obscuring
of the eschatological mystery, the mystery of Christ's second coming. In
Orthodoxy, primarily as a result of its lesser historical activity, the
great eschatological anticipation was preserved. The apocalyptic side of
Christianity had less of an expression in the Western forms of Christianity.
In the East, in Orthodoxy, especially in Russian Orthodoxy, there were
apocalyptic tendencies, the anticipation of new outpouring of the Holy
Spirit. Orthodoxy, being a more traditional, a more conservative form of
Christianity, while preserving the ancient truths, allowed for the possibility
of a greater religious innovation, not innovations of human thought which
is so prominent in the West, but innovations of the religious transfiguration
of life.The primacy of the fulness of life over the differentialized culture
was always especially characteristic for Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy did not see
such a great culture which arose on the grounds of Catholicism and Protestantism.
Perhaps this is so because Orthodoxy is turned towards the Kingdom of God
which will come not as a consequence of historical evolution, but as a
result of the mystical transfiguration of the world. It is not evolution
but transfiguration which is characteristic for Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy cannot
be known through surviving theological tracts; it is made known through
the life of the Church and the Church's people, it is least of all expressed
in understanding. But, Orthodoxy must come out from its condition of being
shut up and isolated, it must actualize its hidden spiritual treasures.
Only then will it attain worldwide meaning. The recognition of Orthodoxy's
exclusive spiritual significance as a more pure form of Christianity must
not engender self-satisfaction within it and lead to a rejection of the
meaning of Western Christianity. On the contrary, we must aquaint ourselves
with Western Christianity and learn many things from it. We must strive
towards Christian unity. Orthodoxy is a good basis for Christian unity.
But Orthodoxy suffered less from secularization and thus can contribute
an immeasurable amount towards the Christianization of the world. The Christianization
of the world must not mean a secularization of Christianity. Christianity
can not be isolated from the world and it continues to move within it,
without separation, and while remaining in the world it must be the conqueror
of the world and not be conquered by it.
(In " Vestnik of the Russian
West European Patriarchal Exarchate "- Paris 1952)
From the editors:
Being a loyal son of the Orthodox
Church, N.A.Berdyaev remained an independent thinker in his philosophical
creativity, which he himself repeatedly pointed out. For this reason his
testimony about the Truth of Orthodoxy is that much more valuable for us,
being unencumbered with the conventional and frequently lifeless language
of "scholastic theology."
Translated from the Russian by
A.S. III |