The Crisis of Protestantism 2
II
I see the historical tragedy
of Protestantism in a wrong and uncomplete conception of the christological
dogma, that means the mystery of the incarnation of God, in the tendency to
monophysitism, that one Nature is swallowed by the other. The other side of
monophysitism is nestorianism. Calvin is very near to it. The transcendental
schism between Godhood and Manhood has on the field of Protestantism as a
result two opposite currents: an extreme antihumanism, a devaluation of Man
that he is disappearing from the face of God, or a humanism and immanentism, a
devouring of the Divinity by the Manhood, in last consequence in the
anthropologism of Feuerbach in so far as here the Divinity is only a projection
of the human nature. Schleiermacher and Ritschl are on the humanistic side of
the Protestant thinking. K.Barth, Brunner, Gogarten who are returning to the
sources of Protestantism, to Luther and to Calvin, are on the antihumanistic
side. They use to negate Man monistically. But that is contradicting the dogma
of the incarnation of God, of the unification of two Natures which aren't
denied or disappearing. In Barthianism there is a strong Old Testament,
prechristian element, which has influence also on Calvin. To speak from a
transcendent abyss between God and Man, between Creator and creature means to
deny the incarnation of God, the Godmanhood of Christ. Therefore they say that
there is a movement from God to Man, but no movement from Man to God, an answer
of the human nature in an analogous activity wouldn't be possible. Here the
religious phenomenon becomes onesided, and the dialectic theology ceases to be
dialectically. There is no dialogue between God and Man but only a monologue of
God. The extreme dualism touches the extreme monism. The absolute transcendentalism
necessarily destroys Church as a godmanly organism and a godmanly process. The
consequence is the rejection of the Mother of God who is in the light of the sophia,
the Wisdom, radiant creature. She is the cosmic foundation of the Church.
Another consequence is the negation of the liturgical-sacramental realm of
Christianity, in which is happening the sanctification of the creaturely world.
In Christianity becomes the transcendence immanent, and that is the most
important point in Christianity. And this immanentism is totally another than
that of Schleiermacher and the German idealists which has always a monophysitic
nature. The theocentrism of Barth shows an extreme transcendentism as negation
of theoandrism, of Godmanhood. Therefore for Barthianism doesn't exist any theosis,
no deification of the creaturely world, of Man and of cosmos, which however is
the scope of Christianity! The theosis is in Christianity no pantheistic
monism nor transcendental dualism, but a third, a great mystery (7) and a great
paradox. Barth says in his "Epistle to the Romans": "The Messiah
is the end of Man". Gogarten teaches: "There is an absolute
opposition between God and Man". Another reference of him says: "God
hasn't any place in the world as long as Man hasn't destroyed himself".
The representatives of this current exclaim: "We or the eternity".
That means a finally reduction of Man, not only of sin, but also of Man. The
fact however that God became Man has risen and glorified human nature. You may
only speak in this kind, if God didn't become Man, and if the two Natures in
Jesus Christ wouldn't unify themselves always in the life of the Church which
is a life of Godmanhood, of the mystical Body of Christ Who contents whole
humanity. This new current gives the impression as if it indentified Man with
sin, as if for it the image of God in Man were finally deleted. Already with
Luther and Calvin we find such an inept conception of the Fall as if it would
destroy finally the image of God in the nature of Man. Catholic theologians are
right when they protest against this idea. The negation of Godmanhood leads to
a thinking of Christ only as mediator. This contradicts the Orthodox
ecclesiastical meaning. Two worlds, heaven and earth, eternity and time, Divine
and human are divided by a deep abyss. But Christ has overcome this abyss. In
Christ the relation between God and Man becomes immediately. For K.Barth whole
Christianity is only the Word of God; God speaks and Man must hear. But God
isn't only speaking, He becomes Flesh and Man. How is the relation of this
current to the word of St Athanasius: "God became Man that Man will become
God"? For us these words are fundamental, in them we find the whole
Christianity. Eastern Orthodoxy thinks redemption not juridical or moralistic like
Western Christianity, but physical that means metaphysical, ontological. It is
possible to say cosmological as continuation of the creation of the world.
Classical Protestantism and Barthianism think cosmogony as Old Testament,
biblicistical, not New Testament. The calvinistic meaning of life as worship to
the honour of God is also Old Testament, not New Testament. K.Barth is
following this doctrine, too. God wants to rule and Man has to serve this
dominion. God is the absolute superior monarch, first of all the monarch. But
this monarchical aspect in the idea of God isn't a Christian aspect. Therefore
Barth underlines the anger of God, punishment, and he diminuishes the mercy of
God. He doesn't so much see God as Love Who revelates Himself in His Son. The
merciful God is covered by the Old Testament God which has the power. God does
whatever He wants, God is free, He is beyond of Good and Evil. This motive of
Duns Scotus which changes God into a random tyrann is very strong in
Barthianism, therefore you feel a lack of love in this current. Christianity is
first of all a religion of fear and of punishment. This type is very ingenious
depicted in "Brand" by Ibsen, its model was Kierkegaard. Brand
doesn't know the God of Love. A voice out of Heaven must remember him this
verity. Heroism without mercy and maximalism contradicts the spirit of
Christianity. The maximalism of Kierkegaard is deceitful. There is no
similarity with Christian sanctity. It is close to montanism. Church banned it.
For us Orthodox Russians there is nothing stranger than the predestination
doctrine of Calvin: God created some people for eternal beatitude and other for
eternal reprobation. We must recognize in this doctrine the power of the reductio
ad absurdum (reduction to impossibility), but it is clear that the problem
of the relation between God's omniscience and human freedom in Christian
consciousness isn't solved. For us is also the doctrine of blessed Augustine
unacceptable. It is not accidentally that all Eastern teachers of the Church
believed in general redemption, in apocatastasis, from Origen to St
Maximus Confessor. The generality, the cosmical character of redemption is one
of the fundamental motives also of the Russian thinking.
For Brunner has the
trinitarian dogma no meaning, equally the dogma of the doctrine and that of the
bible. It is characteristical for the whole Protestantism that the trinitarian
dogma remains in it in the shadow. There is a God, a human soul and a mediator
between God and this soul – Christ. But the faith in the Godmanhood of Jesus
Christ, that He is the only begotten Son of God, cannot get any right sense
outside of the faith in the Trinity of God. Our faith in the Godhood of Christ
says that He is the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. Without this faith
there is a duality instead of Trinity, but the Two is an uncomplete number, it
shows no exit. There is almost not spoken about the Holy Spirit, the third
Hypostasis in the Holy Trinity, and He is almost completely identified with
Grace. Also the Catholic theology uses to think in this way. Eastern
Christianity is first of all a religion of the Holy Trinity and lays special
stress on the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit is the divine energy immanent in
the world. Outside of the faith in the Holy Trinity there is only a
monarchistic meaning of God. Calvin and K.Barth claim the absolute monarchy of
God, His absolute rule and honour. That is pure monotheism. It sounds
paradoxically, but it must be said that Christianity is no monotheistic
religion. Orthodox Jews understand this best. Pure monotheism is jewish,
islamic, not Christian religion. For the Christian consciousness is the Godhood
not absolute monarchy but Holy Trinity, that means endless love and sacrifice.
Each of the three Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity emanates in endless love and
readiness to sacrifice. Only the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a doctrine of
God as Love. The abstract-monotheistic, monarchical idea of God is a
prechristian grade of cognition of God, an exoterian doctrine of God. The
esoterian face of God is hidden to it. Yet more, without Christ, without the
divine love which is ready to sacrifice, it is not possible to accept God. He
would terrify us in a transcendental fright as mysterium tremendum. Pure
monotheism leads always to transcendental dualism and doesn't know anything
about unification of Heaven and earth, Creator and creature, about incarnation
of God, the central mystery of Christianity. Pure monotheism has as consequence
a creaturely world without God and its deep reduction. That is islamic
religion. The trinitarian dogma is indissoluble unitied with the veneration of
the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. I read the book by Brunner with great
interest, because I felt the tension and sharpness of thought, the religious
pathos. But when I came to the sentence where Brunner confesses that he doesn't
believe in the birth of Jesus Christ from a Virgin or at least is indifferent
to it, I felt sad and the matter became even noisy, because it seemed to me as
if from now on all would be deleted, all would be further on useless. In this
point there is a radical difference to Protestantism. The whole miracle of
Christianity and its whole sense is in the birth of Christ out of the Virgin
Mary from the Holy Spirit. Without this there isn't Christianity. How ever we
would come near to the Protestants, how ever we would work with them, the
rejection of the veneration of the Mother of God creates an abyss between us.
The transcendental dualism which makes a creation without God makes impossible
the faith in the birth of Christ out of a Virgin and the veneration of His
mother. The birth of Christ, that means the incarnation and becoming Man of
God, is here understood full worldly. We have no cosmical process which
revelates a transfigured virginal creatureship to make possible the conception
of the Logos in the bottom of the earth. Therefore the cosmical basis for the
Church must fall. Brunner sees the faith in the Virgin, the Mother of God, as a
naturalistic theory of parthenogenesis. You feel here a disgust for nature, for
the creaturely world. K.Barth who is more orthodox in his Dogmatic says that
Christ was born from the Virgin, but this hasn't any spiritual consequences for
him, it's not leading to a cult of the Mother of God which seems to be to
Protestantism always a pagan naturalistic cult. But paganism is here the
cosmos, and we are coming to the question how Western Christianity relates to
the cosmos.
III
In the Western Christian Idea was
the cosmos neutralized in a long process. It has its grades. It began already
with St. Thomas of Aquino. He said the natural order is an independent sphere,
differing and divided from the supranatural order. The neutralization of the
cosmos was the result of an ordering in steps. Nature and grace were sharply
opposed. St Thomas of Aquino became a source of European naturalism. But with
him there is the cosmos yet a hierarchic order (ordo) with all its
steps. Later on followed the process of destroying the cosmos in the antique
and middle age sense of this word. On the place of the cosmos was now the
nature as object of the scientific cognition and of technical development.
Luther and Protestantism were a futher step in the neutralization of the cosmos
and, consequently, his secularization. Protestantism saw the religious life as
relation of the human soul to God. The human soul was differed from the
cosmical whole. K.Barth says very often that Protestantism isn't individualism,
but in spite of this the neutralization of the cosmos, the secularization of
nature leads necessarily to individualism. We have individualism not only in
Protestantism but also in Catholicism, because it doesn't say that the human
soul is safed together with the world, that the redemption is an
ecumenical-cosmical and not an isolated individual matter. For Western European
Christianity the human soul doesn't remain as an organical member in the
cosmical whole, in the all-ecclesiastical collective. Also the Catholic
consciousness doesn't think the ecclesiastical hierarchy as all-ecclesiastical,
cosmical collectivism, the creaturely world isn't understood as organical whole
in which the divine Wisdom works. Protestantism isolated the human soul even
more and set it without any relation to the cosmical unity before God. The
consequence was a total secularization of the nature, the cosmos disappeared,
in its place was now a dead mechanism. The connection between Heaven and earth
was ended, nature wasn't yet powered by divine energies. The "supranatural"
of St Thomas of Aquino disappeared for the ruling consciousness of Western
Europe, the "natural" remained, but divided from the
"supranatural". There are to be seen ways of Christian renewment
without a living relation to nature, to cosmos, to creation as a whole. In
Western Christian thinking remained the divine, sanctified cosmos only in the
Christian theosophy (which has absolutely nothing in common with the popular
"theosophy" of our days) of Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Pordage,
Fr.Bader, partly with Schelling in the doctrine of Wisdom. That is an emminent
merit of the Christian theosophy, first of all of the greatest Christian
theosoph, Jacob Boehme. The Christian East was from the beginning more cosmical
than the West, and that is connected with his Greek sources. Greece was the
revelation of the splendid cosmos, and with it was connected its whole
religious life. In changed form this went over to the patristic. With Origenes,
St Gregory of Nyssa, St Maximus Confessor is the cosmical gnosis much stronger
than in the Latin patristic, also more anthropological and psychological.
Christian West comes from blessed Augustine. This deeper cosmical element
expressed itself in liturgy and in the life of the saints. In the Byzantine
monastic-ascetic type of piety was the cosmical element weakened, but in
Russian Orthodoxy renewed and it became stronger because it had the original
Russian paganism as cosmical basis, an individual Russian-national element,
transfigured by Christianity. Our thirst for cosmical transfiguration is
expressed in our Easter and in the joy about the Resurrection.