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APOLOGY of CULTURE
Religion and Culture in Russian ought
edited by Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, & Paweł Rojek
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 Pontical 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 Pontical University of John Paul II in
Krakow, Poland.
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. e 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. ese pre- and non-modern visions are now gaining exceptional value in the postmodern reality in which we find
ourselves. e 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 is a timely volume addressing the unity of theology and culture in the
conditions of extreme secularization of all forms of life. e 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. e 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. ese 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
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 ought
Copyright © 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.
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ISBN : –-–-
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 + p. ; cm. —Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN : –-–-
. Religion and civil society—Russia—History. . Christianity and culture—Rus-
sia—History. I. Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. II. Obolevitch, Teresa. III. Rojek,
Paweł. IV. Title.
BR .A
Manufactured in the U.S.A. //
Contents
Contributors | ix
Introduction—Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology: Russian Reli-
gious ought against Secular Reason |
—Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, and Paweł Rojek
Part I: Russian ought and Secular Reason
Man as Spirit and Culture: Russian Anthropocentrism |
—Marcelo López Cambronero
e Trinity in History and Society: e Russian Idea, Polish Messian-
ism, and the Post-Secular Reason |
—Paweł Rojek
Georgy Fedotov’s Carmen Saeculare: A Reection on Culture as a
Judgment of Modernity from the Philosophy and eology of Some
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russian inkers |
—Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen
e Polyphonic Conception of Culture as Counterculture in the
Context of Modernity: Fr. Pavel Florensky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Maria
Yudina |
—Olga Tabatadze
Pavel Florensky on Christ as the Basis of Orthodox Culture and Chris-
tian Unity |
—Nikolai Pavluchenkov
vi
e Problem of Christian Culture in the Philosophy of Vasily
Zenkovsky |
—Oleg Ermishin
Overcoming the Gap between Religion and Culture: e Life and
Works of Mother Maria (Skobtsova) |
—Natalia Likvintseva
Apology of Culture in e Journals of Father
Alexander Schmemann |
—Svetlana Panich
Part II: Historical Focuses
Catholicity as an Ideal Foundation of Social Life: Gregory Skovoroda
and His Concept of the High Republic |
—Victor Chernyshov
Religiosity and Pseudo-Religiosity in Russia’s Nineteenth Century
Liberation Movement Preceding Bolshevik Quasi-Religiosity |
—Katharina Anna Breckner
Tolstoy and Conrad’s Visions of Christianity |
—Brygida Pudełko
Nikolai Fedorov and Godmanhood |
—Cezar Jędrysko
Catastrophism as a Manifestation of the Crisis of Consciousness in
Russian and Polish Cultures |
—Natalia Koltakova
Nikolai Berdyaev and the Transformations of the Idea of
Humanism |
—Ovanes Akopyan
Between Idol and Icon: A Critical Appraisal of the Mystery Project of
Culture by Vyacheslav Ivanov in the Context of the ought of Jean-
Luc Marion |
—Marta Lechowska
Ivan Il’in on the Foundations of Christian Culture |
—Yury Lisitsa
vii
Religious Realism and Historical Challenges: Vasily Zenkovsky and
Russian Youth Abroad |
—Natalia Danilkina
Russian Religious ought in the Middle of the Twentieth Century:
Discursive Strategies in the Philosophical Diaries of Yakov Druskin
and Alexander Schmemann |
—Maria Kostromitskaya
e Symphonic Unity of Traditions: Sergey Horujy’s Synergetic An-
thropology and the Interpretation of History |
—Roman Turowski
Part III: Religion, Politics, and Ecumenism
e Roman Question in the History of Russian Culture in the Late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries |
—Fr. Yury Orekhanov
e Rotten West and the Holy Rus: Ethical Aspects of the Anti-Occi-
dentalism of the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church |
—Fr. Marcin Składanowski 208
e Universalism of Catholicity (Sobornost’): Metaphysical and Exis-
tential Foundations for Interdenominational Dialogue in the Philoso-
phy of Semen Frank |
—Gennadi Aliaiev
Local Civilizations and the Russian World: Nikolai Danilevsky and the
Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate |
—Olga Shimanskaya
e Idea of the Antichrist in Russia: From Religious to Political
Narration |
—Magda Dolińska-Rydzek
ix
Contributors
Ovanes Akopyan, Doctoral Student at the University of Warwick, England.
Gennadi Aliaiev, Professor at the Poltava National Technical Yuriy Kon-
dratyuk 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 Kon-
dratyuk 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-Univer-
sität, 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 Per-
sonnel 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, Kra-
kow, Poland.
Natalia Likvintseva, Research Fellow at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Me-
morial House of the Russian Abroad, Moscow, Russia.
Contributorsx
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 Pontical 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 Uni-
versity, Moscow, Russia.
Brygida Pudełko, Assistant Professor at Opole University, Opole, Poland.
Paweł Rojek, Assistant Lecturer at the Pontical 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 Pontical University of John
Paul II in Krakow, Poland.
Introduction
Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology
Russian Religious Thought against Secular Reason
—A M-V A, T O,
P R
T 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 at-
tention to references occurring in sermons, rstly 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: “e 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 articial concept of “the religious,” becomes meaningless, powerless and
worthless. To stay alive, religion should embrace and penetrate the whole of
. We owe this observation to ndrey Kurayev, “Kak nauchnyy ateist stal
d’yakonom,” .
. John Paul II, Address to the Italian National Congress.
Apology of Culture
human reality, including art, science, politics and economy. It seems very
signicant 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.
e “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 oen 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 mo-
dernity is the key for understanding the current state of the Western world.
e 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 aected
by this dualism. e division between the sacred and the secular brings
about the gradual removal of the sacred and the nal 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 unaected
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. ese pre- and
non-modern visions are now gaining exceptional value in the post-modern
reality in which we nd ourselves.5
. Pickstock, Aer Writing, –.
. For a concise summary of accounts of the endogenous process of secularization,
see Javier Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason.
. See Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, , , 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 éologie,
Radical Orthodoxy and other recent movements in Christian post-secular
thought and for this reason it remains astonishingly contemporary. More-
over, 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
inuenced by Russian thought.6
Russian religious thinkers have provided not only a profound diagno-
sis of the crisis, but have also searched for ways to overcome it. ey desired
the “re-enchantment of the world,”7 the reversal of the process recognized
by Max Weber as the core of modernization. Duns Scotus, omas 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 do-
mains of philosophy, politics and economics on the other. Russian thinkers
blurred these supposed boundaries. at is why Russian philosophy is so
oen indistinguishable from theology from the Western point of view. It is
not a methodological error, but rather a direct consequence of an alterna-
tive approach to the supposed relation between religion and culture. More-
over, 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 inte-
gral way of thinking. Nikolai Gogol (–), a classic Russian writer,
was also a deep Christian thinker who foresaw the coming erosion of reli-
gious culture and its replacement with the modern state. He belonged, along
with Vladimir Odoyevsky (–), to the rst generation of original
Russian Christian thinkers who anticipated all the development of Russian
philosophy. e great philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (–) formu-
lated 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.
. See Dell’Asta, La teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente.
. is term has been coined in German by Michael Hagemeister in his (highly
critical) description of Florensky’s views; see Hagemeister, “Wiederverzauberung der
We l t .”
. Cavanaugh, Myth of Religious Violence.
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. e reason for this
is that it undertakes a metaphysical reection, that it has never ceased to
pose questions on such fundamental issues as evil, that it has never lost its
existential character. “e 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 be-
ing,” over falsehood, over untruth [nepravda] and over injustice
[nespravedlivost’].9
is is why the Russian tradition has a propensity to obliterate the boundar-
ies between philosophy and literature, between thought and art. e com-
mon 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 rst prophet of the return to a holistic religious cul-
ture—the prophet of Orthodox culture,” wrote Vasily Zenkovsky.10 Gogol’s
genius is in his understanding of the signicance of the ability to create
Christian culture and tradition as well as in his deeply thought out inter-
pretation 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. e advanc-
ing diminishment of community and alienation prevents the formation of
culture originating from perichoresis, inseparably binding beauty, good and
truth.
e author of Dead Souls aptly remarks that the processes constrain-
ing contemporary Europe stem from the presence of “empty spaces” that ap-
peared in the relations between people who became individuals and citizens.
Modern Western European countries try to ll 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
. Frank, “Essence and Leading emes,” .
. Zen’kovskiy, Russkiye mysliteli,
. Ibid., , .
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. is
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 fundamen-
tal Lectures on Divine Humanity—“must determine all the interest and the
whole content of human life and consciousness.”13 is straightforward
claim briey summarizes the account for the problem of the relation be-
tween 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 recog-
nize the religious principle, religion does not possess this all-
embracing and central signicance. 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 dierent interests that divides
our attention. Contemporary religion is a pitiful thing.14
In other words, dualism at rst leads to secularization, then to privatization
and, nally, to the annihilation of religion. e current pitiful state of reli-
gion in the modern world is a direct consequence of the conceptual division
between religion and culture in past. e 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. is 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
. Odoevsky, “A City without Name.” For detailed interpretation of this work, see
Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, –.
. Solovyov, Lectures, .
. Ibid., –.
Apology of Culture
referred to such [religious] principle ... If the religious principle is admitted
at all, it must certainly possess such all-embracing, central signicance.”15
It seems that on the very rst page of his Lectures Soloviev challenged
the deepest foundation of secular order. e grounding of culture in reli-
gion brings about the reintegration of culture itself. Culture is no longer a
plethora of unrelated phenomena. If all the elements of human life reect
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
is is the true stake in the dispute over religion and culture. e lack of
integrity in culture undermines the stability of personal identity. e unity
of individual life is possible only in a united culture.
Russian Thought and Radical Orthodoxy
e 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. eir legacy was undeniably the
reason for the establishment and activity of numerous Western research
centers studying and popularizing Russian thought. e greatest of them
are in France, the United States, and Poland. ese 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 Ortho-
doxy, the creation of which was marked in by two provocative mani-
festos, and later by a collection of works entitled Radical Orthodoxy: A New
eology.17
Radical Orthodoxy has its roots in a specic form of theological real-
ism that was rst outlined in the works of John Milbank. e 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. is criticism un-
dertakes 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 order-
ing logic that postulates all other disciplines such as philosophy or social
. Ibid., .
. Ibid.
. 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, “is is why
it is so important to reassert theology as a master-discourse; theology, alone,
remains the discourse of non-mastery.”18 eological 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 eology (in the understanding
of Marie Dominique Chenu, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar).
eological realism plunges into the philosophy of these schools and entire-
ly 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 omism 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 con-
cept 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 specic, theological concept of intermediation. ese theses of John Mil-
bank, Catherine Pickstock and Phillip Blond, were presented by the authors
in a detailed and comprehensive way in the collection Radical Orthodoxy:
A New eology. 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. is 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, start-
ing 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
ne 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 repre-
sented by Radical Orthodoxy and the basic discourse of Russian Christian
thought, which began at least with Gogol and perhaps culminated in So-
loviev. For this reason it is hardly surprising that a few years ago a work
. Milbank, eology and Social eory, .
Apology of Culture
entitled Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy was
published.19 In this book various philosophers and theologians from West-
ern and Eastern Europe engage in a debate on such issues as: East and West,
eology 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 o 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 realis-
ing the need for the deep renewal of Western Christian thought, interest in
the tradition of Russian Christian thought is something natural. Accord-
ing to Zenkovsky in his Foundations of Christian Philosophy, theology was
never separated from philosophical thought in the East. “eology not only
was above everything, but it also formed the ultimate appeal: not infringing
the freedom of thought, it enlightened and justied it, just like all-united
truth enlightens and justies all fragmentary truths.”20
It is precisely here that the rst 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.
e same author, in the introduction to another work, Apologetics, aptly
. Pabst and Schneider, Encounter.
. Zen’kovskiy, Osnovy, .
Van Allen, Obolevitch, Rojek Apology of Culture and Culture of Apology
remarked that “faith is connected with knowledge and culture.”21 is 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. is close relation of faith,
knowledge and culture is the most important bastion of the apologetic work
of a Christian thinker. is 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 ex-
tremely timely and important to us. He courageously proclaims that though
“love of country” is a beautiful thing, “there is a [ner thing], namely, love
of truth ... It is not by patriotism but by means of truth that the ascent to
Heaven is accomplished.”23 is sentence largely reects 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. oughts 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 expres-
sion 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 nally with their own lives. e 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). is multi-perspective approach remains faithful to the
. Zen’kovskiy, Аpologetika, .
. Zen’kovskiy, Osnovy, .
. Chaadayev, Philosophical Letters, .
. For example: Kantorowicz, “Mystères de l’Etat” and “Mourir pour la patrie”;
MacIntyre, Ethics and Politics; Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy.
Apology of Culture
integrated tradition of Russian Christian religious culture and gives us a
great opportunity to analyze our contemporary world under its light.
e 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 Pontical University of John Paul II in Krakow.25 We
would like to express our gratitude to all those who have helped in publish-
ing this book. Our project was made possible thanks to the support of the
Pontical University of John Paul II, the Copernicus Center for Interdisci-
plinary 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 and . “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 far-
reaching 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, .
———. e Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern
Conict. Oxford: Oxford University Press, .
. See our earlier books in Polish, Russian and English: Obolevitch and Duda,
Symbol w kulturze rosyjskiej; Obolevitch and Bremer, Inuence of Jewish Culture; Obo-
levitch, Metazyka a literature; Obolevitch and Rojek, Religion and Culture in Russian
ought; Obolevitch et al., Russian ought in Europe.
. Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, .
. Solovyov’s Krakow aair was investigated in detail by Vyacheslav Moiseyev,
“Tayna krakovskogo dela.”
. is Introduction is to some extent based on our two previous philosophical
manifestos: Mrovchinski-Van llen, “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 Mary-
Barbara Zeldin. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, .
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 – ottobre
, La Casa di Matriona, .
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Studies in Philosophy () –.
Hagemeister, Michael. “Wiederverzauberung der Welt: Pavel Florenskijs Neues
Mittelalter.” In Pavel Florenskij—Tradition und Moderne, edited by Norbert Franz
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———. “Mystères de l’Etat. Un concept absolutiste et ses origines médiévales (bas
Moyen Age).” In Mourir pour la patrie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
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Milbank, John, et al., eds. Radical Orthodoxy: A New eology. London: Routledge,
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Moiseyev, Vyacheslav. “Tayna krakovskogo dela Vladimira Solov’yeva.” Przegląd
Rusycystyczny () −.
Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. Between the Icon and the Idol. e Human Person
and the Modern State in Russian Literature and ought: Chaadayev, Soloviev,
Grossman. Translated by M. P. Whelan. Eugene, OR: Cascade, .
———. “Rosyjscy myślicielei Europa dziś.” Translated by Agata Kędzior. Pressje –
() –.
———. “Russkiye mysliteli i Evropa segodnya.” In: XX Ezhegodnaya Bogoslovskaya
konferentsiya Pravoslavnogo Svyato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta:
Materialy, edited by V. N. Vorob’yev, –. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Pravoslavnogo
Svyato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta, .
Obolevitch, Teresa, ed. Metazyka a literatura w kulturze rosyjskiej. Metazika i
literatura v russkoy kul’ture. Krakow: Uniwersytet Papieski Jana Pawła II w
Krakowie Wydawnictwo Naukowe .
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Intellectual Heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. Krakow: Wydawnictwo
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Apology of Culture
Obolevitch, Teresa, and Paweł Rojek, eds. Religion and Culture in Russian ought:
Philosophical, eological and Literary Perspectives. Krakow: e Pontical
University of John Paul II in Krakow, .
———. “Religion, Culture and Post-Secular Reason: e Contemporary Signicance
of Russian ought.” In Religion and Culture in Russian ought: Philosophical,
eological and Literary Perspectives, edited by Teresa Obolevitch and Paweł
Rojek, –. Krakow: e Pontical University of John Paul II in Krakow, .
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Development. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Ignatianum, Wydawnictwo WAM, .
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and Radical Orthodoxy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, .
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() −.
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Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne, .
Zen’kovskiy, Vasiliy. Аpologetika. Riga: Rizhskaya Eparkhiya, .
———. Osnovy khristianskoy losoi. Vol. , Khristianskoye ucheniye o poznanii.
Frankfurt am Main: Possev-Verlag, .
———. Russkiye mysliteli i Evropa. Paris: YMCA-Press, .
PART I
Russian Thought and Secular Reason
Man as Spirit and Culture
Russian Anthropocentrism
—M L C
Ideocentrism in Russian Thought
T M as the third Rome is paradigmatic for the way in
which Christendom can be aected by ideological tensions. It is not a mat-
ter of the past, but an ideological stand which, secularized or not, still exerts
an inuence 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 ( AD). is canon was adopted at a deli-
cate moment for the occidental part of the Roman Empire, not yet divided
(as it would be aer the death of eodosius I) and caused by the pressure of
the Visigoth invasion once they crossed the Danube in AD and started
heading on to the west, winning and murdering Emperor Valens I at the
battle of Adrianople.
Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason
Constantinople enjoyed increasing political inuence and was in the
process of becoming the de facto center of Oriental Christianity, in con-
traposition with the Occident due to the theological argument regarding
lioque. Finally, as we all know, the Orthodox perspective would end up
considering Rome to have fallen into heresy and that the Patriarch of Con-
stantinople was the depositary of the authentic faith.
By the time the Ottomans conquered the city and desecrated the Saint
Soa in , the Russian church was autocephalous, even though it would
not have a Patriarch until . 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 ird and only genuine and eternal Rome.
When in , at the exact time the Arabs were being expelled from
their last Western stronghold in the south of Spain, e Exposition of the
eory of the ird 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 Con-
stantinopolitan, is placed in Moscow.” It was not merely a matter of displac-
ing 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 ird
Rome twofold? e mission of Russia was to be the vehicle of
the true Christianity, that is, of Orthodoxy, and the shrine in
which it is treasured. is was a religious vocation. “Orthodoxy”
is a denition 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 dened na-
tionalization 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. e Russian re-
ligious vocation, a particular and distinctive vocation, is linked
with the power and transcendent majesty of the Russian State,
with a distinctive signicance and importance attached to the
Russian Tsar. ere enters into the messianic consciousness the
alluring temptation of imperialism.1
e baptism and the Eucharist are sacraments that possess consider-
able political weight, as they congure a community. By the baptism we are
. Berdyaev, Russian Idea, –.
Marcelo López Cambronero Man as Spirit and Culture
incorporated into the people of God, by the Eucharist we are one in Christ.
e political component of the Christian faith is inherent and much stron-
ger 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 congures 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 armation 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 dicult to control and that can
be taken over by politicians with imperialist aspirations. ere 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 ac-
knowledged him the new Tsar of all the Russias and saluted him as God’s
envoy to fulll 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. us, 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 dierent, 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, alter-
ing, 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 sub-
dued without mercy.3
. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, –.
. On the power of ideology in Russia and its inuence on Russian maximalism
over the last decades, see Mrówczynski-Van Allen, “La Idea Rusa.”
Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason
Christocentrism in Russian Thought
e chief resource that withholds the Russian church from the predomi-
nance of ideological stands is what Irénée Hausherr SJ has dened “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. e true reality, “the reality
of the real,” is expressed in the power of the transguration 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 nd
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 dierent world, but which overlaps the em-
pirical 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 insucient—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 dierently, to
search for understanding in the closeness to Christ.
us, knowing the world and knowing God are two aspirations which
can be attained by following one and the same path. ere 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 e-
ology of the Eastern Church, there is not any disjunctive between mysticism
and theology in the Orthodox Church:
e Eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction be-
tween mysticism and theology; between personal experience
of the divine mysteries and the dogma armed by the Church.
e following words spoken a century ago by a great Ortho-
dox 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 transcen-
dent to us, but in all humility we must apply our spirit to the
. 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 sup-
port 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 prot of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone.5
Symeon the New eologian (–), 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 lls
man with divine light, thus liing 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 xed 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 Chris-
tianity, and threatened by the ideological pressure of “Russian maximalism,”
the Occidental Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has evolved into
a specic form of secularization, also under the pressure of a specic ideol-
ogy. e dispute between the Emperor and the Pope, culminating, among
others, with the “Investiture Controversy,” but generally carried on through-
out the Middle Ages, le a dualist print in Western culture, described by
the great theologian Henry de Lubac as one between the natural and the
supernatural.7
e assertion that man has two nalities, a natural and a supernatural
one, was defended by dierent theologians at dierent courts, and le its
mark in classical texts like Dante Alighieri’s De Monarchia, who writes,
Ineable Providence has thus designed two ends to be contem-
plated of man: rst, the happiness of this life, which consists
in the activity of his natural powers, and is pregured by the
. Lossky, Mystical eology, .
. See Symeon the New eologian, Hymnen.
. Lubac, Surnaturel.
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, güel 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 e same dualism ourished aer the seventeenth century
conicts in Central Europe through the works of the Jesuit Father Francisco
Suárez, and spread across the Jesuit institutions of education.
e 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 specic to mundane
activities, such as politics (power), economy (possession), etc., and whose
nality is welfare. e only inuence of Christ in this sphere is the endow-
ing 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 eort to reach vir-
tues and in the response to specic impermeable normative systems. As a
result of this perspective, one can arm that monogamous and indissoluble
matrimony is “natural,” whereas the Christian tradition has always armed
that the said reality can be experienced only by the grace of God. In fact,
the Church arms 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 conned to this aspect of life, of pious practices which seem to
be disconnected from life. is is the main cause of secularization, as it
. Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia, III, XVI, .
. Ibid.
. Ibid., I, V, –.
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 So-
loviev, Nikolai Berdyaev, and before them Gregory Skovoroda, and writers
like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Boris Pasternak or Vasily Grossman saw in west-
ern 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
fulll, 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 suocates and destroys
Christian experience. For them there are not two dierent 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 esh, or, on the contrary, it is deemed to fall prey to its own
passions. ere 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 niteness 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 “objectied”
world. e later does not relate to “reality,” nor with the “natural,” but with
the external dynamics of the human being, whether the laws of nature, so-
cial laws, or, markedly, in the ideological frames he encounters, all of which
try to dene 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 eect on
the human being of that “direction” which man takes as primordial in his
conscience. us, the human being can be diluted by objectivizing, and live
. See Berdyaev, Bourgeois Mind; Solitude and Society; Slavery and Freedom; and
e Divine and the Human.
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 pri-
marily 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 an-
thropological dualism, one which exercises such a force in human existence
that it ends up presenting man with two dierent manners of living, and
two dierent structures of being, among which he has to choose, in a rst,
decisive act of freedom.
In this sense the spiritual sphere is not overruled or opposed to the
material sphere, but uplis it and restores it to its real being, accommodat-
ing the emotional and the rational in a major sphere which is also more real.
is 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. e 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 be-
tween 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.
e characters of Pasternak’s and Grossman’s short stories nd them-
selves in the same situation when Anna Akhmatova’s poetry is debated, who,
aer a lifetime of suering, 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 nov-
els.” When Velchaninov, the protagonist of the minor but splendid work e
Eternal Husband (), is confronted in the rst 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 be-
tween “public life” and “private life,” between faith and reason, although
this tendency is changing under the inuence of western thought. ere
is no analytical decomposition, but rather the synthetic integration of
every human experience, through a perspective that goes beyond the ex-
ternal manifestations. is is what Raskolnikov nds out when, once the
old pawnbroker in Crime and Punishment () 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 purication the rst Sunday aer her wedding and forty days
aer 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 nd
some modes that are for us, in the Western world, of paramount impor-
tance if we want our conscience to stand rm against the ideological forces
to which we are constantly exposed. e certainty that we are God’s chil-
dren, 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. e
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” nalities of man.
Bibliography
Berdyaev, Nicolas. e Bourgeois Mind and Other Essays. London: Sheed & Ward, .
———. e Divine and the Human. London: Georey Bles, .
———. e Russian Idea. New York: Macmillan, .
———. Slavery and Freedom. London: Georey Bles, .
———. Solitude and Society. London: Georey Bles, .
Dante Alighieri. De Monarchia. Translated by Aurelia Henry. Boston: Houghton,
Miin, .
Figes, Orlando, and Boris Kolonitskii. Interpreting the Russian Revolution: e Language
and Symbols of 1917. New Haven: Yale University Press, .
Hausherr, Irénée. “Pour comprendre l’Orient chrétien: La primauté du spirituel.”
Orientalia Christiana Periodica () –.
Lossky, Vladimir. e Mystical eology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, .
Lubac, Henri de. Surnaturel. Études historiques. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, .
Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. “La Idea Rusa y su interpretación.” In La Idea Rusa,
edited by Marcelo López Cambronero and Artur Mrówczynski-Van Allen, –
. Granada: Nuevo Inicio, .
Symeon the New eologian. Hymnen. Edited by Athanasios Kambylis. Berlin: de
Gruyter, .
The Trinity in History and Society
The Russian Idea, Polish Messianism, and the Post-Secular Reason
—P R
V S Krakow for a few weeks at the turn of
and . 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 nish 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 (–), the great Polish historian, lit-
erary critic and conservative politician.2 Shortly aer the visit, Tarnowski
published a detailed review of Soloviev’s L’idée Russe in his journal Przegląd
Polski to which Soloviev replied soon aer in the “Lettre á la Rédaction.”3 A
. For details of Soloviev’s “Krakow aair” see Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov, and
Moiseyev, “Tayna krakovskogo dela.”
. Soloviev and Tarnowski met probably on the customary ursday parties ar-
ranged by Count Paweł Popiel (–) in his house on św. Jana street in Kra-
kow, see Popiel, Rodzina Popielów, , .
. Tarnowski, “Głos sumienia z Rosyi;” Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” see also
brief Tarnowski’s rejoinder “Odpowiedź.” e rst Russian translation of Soloviev’s let-
ter was published in émigré journal Novyy Zhurnal by the Krakow scholar Grzegorz
Przebinda, see his Włodzimierz Sołowjow, .
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 le
without answer. Tarnowski’s papers was the rst serious Polish, and perhaps
also rst 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 (–) and August Ciesz-
kowski (–). Tarnowski wrote,
ough 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 pri-
ority in order of time; I do not want to discuss whether they
have also priority in the depth and the power of thinking.5
Aerwards, 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 Posi-
tion of Poland form the Divine and Human Perspective (–) 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 e Russian Idea (). 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 Rus-
sia from the Divine perspective. I would like to focus on their insights on
. Tarnowski, “Wykład idei.”
. Ibid., ; 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 inuences of French post-
revolutionary religious thought, see Walicki, “Philosophie de l’Histoire,” , “Mickie-
wicz’s Paris Lectures,” , and Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism, –.
. Zdziechowski, Pesymizm, romantyzm a podstawy chrześcijaństwa, .
. Berdyaev, Russian Idea, .
. Walicki, “Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures,” “Solov’ëv’s eocratic Utopia,” and Russia,
Poland, and Universal Regeneration. For an attempt to analyze the possible inuences
of Polish Messianism on Soloviev see Strémooukho, Vladimir Soloviev, , –.
. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” .
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 dif-
fered gravely in the details of their visions: Krasiński believed that Poland
was the only country able to realize Christian principles in social and politi-
cal 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 dual-
ism so characteristic for modernity, and placed God at the center of human
life, history and society. In this, Russian and Polish Christian thinkers an-
ticipated the crucial ideas of Nouvelle éologie, 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 oers a straightforward answer to the question of human na-
ture. When Pilate pointed at Jesus and said “Ecce homo” (John :), he ac-
tually made the most proper, although merely ostensive denition 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. is is the fundamental principle of Christian an-
thropology, which overcomes the modern dualism between self-sucient
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 e
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 divin-
ization, if only it agrees and freely ts his will to will of God.”13 Krasiński
. 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.
. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid.
Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society
consequently developed that idea. e fulllment of that calling is the same
as the realization of the human nature. erefore there is no worry about
the supposed loss of humanity in divinity. “e more you unite with God,
the more you become yourself; since if the result of this uniting was dier-
ent, you would be not driven toward life, but toward death, and God nally
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
e same anthropological principle might be found in Soloviev, al-
though 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 ex-
pressed the fundamental principle of Christocentric anthropology perhaps
even in more provocative way: “e 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. e human
person is divine since it has the capacity to be divinized. “Divinity belongs
to human beings and to God, but with one dierence: 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 is 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 fulllment, not an exclu-
sion of human nature.
Religion is the reunication of humanity and the world with the
absolute, integral principle. at principle is integral or all-em-
bracing, excluding nothing. erefore, true reunication with
it, true religion, cannot exclude, suppress, or forcibly subject to
. Ibid.,
. Ibid., .
. Solovyov, Lectures on Divine Humanity, , translation improved.
. Ibid.,
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 di-
vinization in eternality. We would not lose anything, but would rather win
everything.
Messianism and Missionism
Jesus Christ revealed the true human nature. is 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. ey believed that people are supposed to realize Christian doc-
trine not only in their private life, but also in public spheres of economics,
politics and international aairs. In this they were both genuine Messianists.
e term “Messianism” was originally introduced by Józef Hoene-
Wroński, a Polish eccentric mathematician, philosopher and inventor writ-
ing in French, who published in a treatise entitled Messianisme.19 e
term was then adopted by Adam Mickiewicz and popularized in his famous
Paris lectures in Collège de France (–); Wroński never forgave him
for this supposed intellectual the. e term “Messianism” subsequently
started to stand for many quite dierent 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 “Mission-
ism” (a belief on the special mission of some or all nations), and nally by
“passionism” (a belief on the special value of collective suering).20 “Mes-
sianism” 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 “Messian-
ism” means the same as “christianism.” Wroński used that term
in the meaning: completed, integral Christianity, penetrating all
. Ibid.,
. Hoene-Wronski, Messianisme; Wroński was apparently a prototype of a myste-
rious Polish master in Balzac’s novel e Quest of the Absolute ().
. I proposed an integral theory of Messianism in my “Mesjanizm integralny;”
notice that these three components of Polish Messianism correspond roughly to the
three oces 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 inter-
national aairs.21
Messianism is therefore a tendency towards the full realization of the prin-
ciples of Christianity in social life. In other words, to the building of the
Kingdom of God on Earth. is mundane Kingdom should not, however,
be confused with the ultimate salvation. Messianists believed in human
progress, but nevertheless realized that its nal fulllment implies a New
Earth. To use Eric Voegelin’s popular terminology, they certainly immanen-
tized the eschaton, but not so much.22
Krasiński, though he did not called himself a Messianist, stated per-
fectly clear the fundamental principles of that doctrine. e meaning of
history was the gradual transformation of all reality according to revealed
principles. He wrote for instance:
e ultimate goal of our earthly history is ... the universal sa-
cred 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 in-
stitutions, transforming the Earth into one great sanctuary of
the Holy Spirit.23
e sense of history was therefore the process of divinization, that is—ac-
cording 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 uni-
versal 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 e ideal is already given in Christian-
ity; now is the time for its realization in the world.28 Using the terminology
. Braun, Kultura jutra, .
. Voegelin, New Science of Politics.
. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,”
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., −.
. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” .
. Ibid., .
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.
e unanimity of Krasiński and Soloviev is strikingly manifested in
their interpretation of Matthew :. Soloviev noticed in , in his Rus-
sia 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 sanc-
tion an order of things which gives Caesar all and God nothing.
e saying “My Kingdom is not of this world” is always being
used to justify and conrm 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 , a surprising interpretation of Christ’s
dictum:
ese 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 gradu-
ally decrease. ings 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, Mes-
sianism and Missionism. Messianism says about the great task of the uni-
versal religious regeneration of the world, whereas Missionism simply states
that at least some nations have specic missions in the universal history.
is 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 Mission-
ists. ey believed that nations are not contingent cultural constructions,
but organic spiritual communities and both dened nations as “organs”
. Solovyev, Russia and the Universal Church, .
. Krasiński, Pisma literackie, −; for a religious interpretation of this poem see
Sokulski “Przedświt jako tekst profetyczny.”
. Berdyayev, “leksey Stepanovich Khomyakov,” ; Walicki, Slavophile Contro-
versy, .
Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society
of humankind.32 e national missions were therefore thought by them as
parts of the great messianic task of all humankind. Ultimately every na-
tion was called to serve every other one. However, they diered 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 cho-
sen 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 aer the revolution, the aban-
doned Russian mission had returned to Poland.34 irdly, they held oppos-
ing 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 ercest 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 vi-
sion of the alliance between Russian Empire and Communism turned out
to be not a prejudice, but a prophecy.35
The Trinity in History and Society
e founding act of modernity was the separation of religion on the one
hand and the world on the other. In eect, the religion became an isolated
sphere with no real consequences in other spheres of life. e result of this
separation was probably best expressed by Immanuel Kant in the famous
dictum: “e doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally—he wrote—has no
practical relevance at all.”36 It seems signicant that both Krasiński and So-
loviev, on the contrary, considered the Trinity as the model of quite practi-
cal issues. eir treatises are based on the analogy between the Trinity and
. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” −; Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” .
. Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” .
. Jankowski, Idea Rosyjska Sołowjewa, –.
. 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 dierences between Krasiński and Soloviev largely coincide with
the dierences between Krasiński and Mickiewicz, see Fiećko, Krasiński przeciw Mick-
iewiczowi. It proves that some types of Polish Messianism other than Krasiński’s were
even closer to the Russian Idea.
. Kant, Religion and Rational eology, .
Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason
the human reality, though the rst saw the Trinity mostly as a pattern of
historical development, whereas the latter made it primarily a paradigm of
political relationships.
Krasiński’s treatise, nally 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 at last title
reveals the underlying idea of the whole work. e Holy Trinity is the unity
of the three fundamental principles of Being, inking and Acting or Liv-
ing, 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 reected in ought, and the Act is a unity of
these two principles. ese three elements roughly correspond to the hu-
man 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, inking and Acting reveal themselves throughout
history in the order of time.
As every created whole, the history of humankind must con-
sist on three parts, corresponding rstly to Being, secondly to
ought and its struggle with Being, and thirdly to the recon-
ciliation and unication of the struggling parties into the one
Spirit. Only aer 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 fullled.38
Accordingly, Krasiński believed that the Antiquity realized the principle of
Being, the Middle Ages was the embodiment of the principle of ought,
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 dierent ages, but also between dierent nations. Nowadays, in
his view, the Italians, Spaniards and French are still attached to the po-
litical principle of Being, the Germanic nations realized the philosophical
. Krasiński, “O stanowisku Polski,” –.
. Ibid., .
Paweł Rojek The Trinity in History and Society
principle of ought, whereas the Slavic peoples are supposed to open a
new era of religious Act. e 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 nal
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 briey 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. e 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 ev-
erything. He generates the Son, which however cannot give any-
thing to his Father. e Son cannot commune with Him as equal
... Incredible autocracy, boundless auctoritas paterna. e gov-
ernment 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 .. . is is all antichristian. e
yoke, loaded on that nation, is contained in the false concept of
divine Trinity, which is divine in so far as its persons are per-
fectly 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. e form of theologi-
cal thinking therefore shapes the form of political institution. e parallel
between Krasiński and Peterson is striking.41
e political and institutional dimensions of Trinitarian dogma was
further developed by Soloviev. He rmly stated that the task of Russia, but
also that of every other nation, as well all as the whole humankind, is to
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Peterson, “Monotheism.”
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. e “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 So-
ciety in human communities corresponded to the persons of Father, Son
and Holy Spirit in the divine Trinity. e Trinity makes the perfect unity,
which however does not exclude distinctions of persons and dierences in
relations between them. It also does not exclude the central position of the
Father, who generates the Son and emanates the Spirit. e image of this
unity in dierences is Jesus Christ, who besides being the Second Person of
the Holy Spirit, also united the three messianic oces 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 oces, which are embodied in three dis-
tinct 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 Fa-
ther, 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
. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” .
. Ibid.
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. 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
dier 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. e 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. e Father renounces of his son, the son rebels against
his father, brothers come together to kill their father and nally murder
themselves: the Church gives up its inuence 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 e 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. e
prophets, that is “free movers of progressive social movements,”48 should
respect both Church and State. e direct link between the Second and the
ird 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 com-
mon 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 e Trinitarian anal-
ogy is also the most subversive for the dominating modern and secular way
of thinking. ough Krasiński’s historical visions and Soloviev’s political
speculations might seems to be too arbitrary, too articial 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 hu-
. Solovyov, War, Progress, and the End of History, –; I owe this interpreta-
tion to Janusz Dobieszewski, Włodzimierz Sołowjow, ; for an alternative account see
Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol, –.
. Solov’yev, “Russkaya ideya,” .
. Tarnowski, “Wykład idei,” ; for Cieszkowski’s Triniatran interpretation of the
history see his “Prolegomena to historiosophy;” Cieszkowski and Krasiński were close
friends and deeply inuenced each other.
. For more on social implications of Trinitarian dogma see: Volf, “e Trinity Is
Our Social Program” and Rojek, “Program ekonomii trynitarnej.”
Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason
mankind, but on the contrary, humankind is a projection of God. e mis-
sion 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 éologie,
a circle of Catholic theologian with Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar and other great gures. is informal group
prepared the great event of the Second Vatican Council both intellectu-
ally 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 secu-
lar reason has thrown it. e 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 con-
stitution of the new post-secular order. For this reason I would like to briey
recall some its crucial ideas relevant for Polish Messianism and the Russian
Idea.
e principle of Christocentric anthropology is explicitly expressed in
the famous Paragraph of Gaudium et Spes. “Christ ... in the very revela-
tion of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to himself
and brings to light his most high calling.”52 e 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. is 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. Re-
ligion is seen now as the completion of man, not as an additional option.
As Msgr. Martínez noticed, “this quotation, when taken seriously, makes
. Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, .
. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. .
. See Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, –.
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 eccle-
sial hierarchy, who is primary called to transform the world according to
Christian principles. “e laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of
God by engaging in temporal aairs and by ordering them according to the
plan of God.”55 As a result of this eort “all types of temporal aairs” should
“continually increase according to Christ.”56 “e world may be permeated
by the spirit of Christ and it may more eectively fulll its purpose in jus-
tice, charity and peace ... rough the members of the Church, will Christ
progressively illumine the whole of human society with His saving light.”57
What is specically signicant is that the Fathers of the Council recalled the
traditional teaching on the three oces of Christ, which was constantly pre-
sented 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. e lack-
ing element in Council vision is the theology of nation, which could serve
as a base for national Missionism.
Finally, one can nd 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. “e Lord Jesus, when He prayed
to the Father, ‘that all may be one... as we are one’ (John :–) 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. is likeness reveals that man ... cannot fully nd himself except
through a sincere gi of himself.”59 e 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.
e teaching of the Second Vatican Council has been developed and
deepened by John Paul II, the true Slavic Pope, who fullled the prophecies
of the Polish poets and went beyond the dreams of Russian philosophers.
. Ibid., –.
. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, no. .
. Ibid.
. Ibid., no. .
. Ibid., nos. –.
. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. .
Part I: Russian Thought and Secular Reason
e two above quoted paragraphs of Gaudium et spes were his most beloved
citations. ere are even evidences that the “Trinitarian” no. “probably
owes its shape to Wojtyła.”60 I would like only to recall that the rst Encycli-
cal Letter of John Paul II starts with a splendid armation that “the Re-
deemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history.”61
is 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
e remaining great task is the detailed investigation of the possible
inuences 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 inuenced 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. e 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 post-
secular 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
specic philosophy and a theology of nation, which could be an impulse for
a more faithful approach to that issue for contemporary theologians.66 In
. Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze Watykańskim II, ; see also Waldstein,
ree Kinds of Personalism, .
. John Paul II, Redemptor hominis, no. .
. Martínez, Beyond Secular Reason, , n. .
. Dell’Asta, La teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente; I owe this reference to Artur
Mrówczyński-Van Allen.
. 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 interpreta-
tion of John Paul II’s thought.
. See for instance Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Between the Icon and the Idol.
. See for instance Pabst and Schneider, “Transguring the World,” ; for an ex-
ample of positive Polish theology of nation see Bartnik, Formen der politischen eolo-
gie 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 con-
temporary Christian thought.
When Stanisław Tarnowski in 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. eir 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 aer the Krakow meeting, Soloviev gave a speech in Moscow at a cer-
emony 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 in-
stance, 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 aer 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 nine-
teenth-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 Rus-
sian Idea. If only they knew them.
. Letter to countess S. A. Tolstoy, April , , quoted in Florensky, Pillar and
Ground of the Truth, .
. Soloviev, “Lettre á la Rédaction,” –.
. Solov’yev, “Mitskevich,” .
. Walicki, “Mickiewicz’s Paris Lectures,” .
