Unifying Christians of the
East and the West
by
Nikolai Berdiaev
(1925/1926
- #73bis) (1)
translated by Heinrich Michael Knechten
[p. 185] The separation of Churches or, better said, the schism of Christianity
is the greatest failure of the Christendom in history. This failure testifies,
how much freedom the Providence of God has given to man, and how much man has
misused this freedom. In the Church there cannot be separation, because the
Church is One, and it is homogeneous. Its oneness is determined through the
fact that Christ is living in it, that it is mediating the gifts of Grace, and
that in it are administered the sacraments. It is not the Church that is
divided, but rather [p. 186] Christian humanity. The separation happened within
the kingdom of Caesar which became interweaved with the Kingdom of God, but it
is not in the Kingdom of God, in which there cannot be separation. The selfsame
and eternal Truth of the Christian Revelation is individualized in different
races, nations, personalities. The absoluteness of Christian Truth is in no way
contrary to an individuation of this kind. There are no excluding oppositions
between the universal and the individual. The universal and the individual have
herein a concrete sameness. The absolute Truth of Christianity has a human
recipient. The human element is not passive but rather active, and it reacts
with a creativity different to that which is revealed from above. It creates a
multiplicity of forms. And in this should be seen nothing bad. There are many
mansions in my Father's house [John 14:2]. Thoroughly justified is the
existence of an Eastern and of a Western Christianity, just as there is of a
Romanic (2) Christianity and of a Germanic Christianity. It must be said that
already in the first centuries the difference in the types of Eastern and
Western Christianity had become apparent. The patristics of the East was very
different from that of the West; different forms of spirituality developed in
the both parts of the Christian world. One part of Christendom adopted the
heritage of Greece, the other the heritage of Rome. And even if there had not
occurred the catastrophe of the formal separation of the Church, which first
then happened when the differences of the both types of Christianity had
sufficiently grown apparent, there would in spite of that exist still these
types of Eastern and Western Christianity, sharply individualized and different
from each other. [p. 187] From the Orthodox standpoint one could admit that
there would be a Latin Christianity even while maintaining Christian unity, but
that this Latin Christianity would be very strange to Russian Orthodox people.
Russian Orthodox in hostility to Catholicism sometimes say, that they cannot
bear Latin language and the shaved faces of the Catholic priests, and they are
inclined to see a very heresy even in this Latin language and in these shaved
faces. So strong an effect have national prejudices! With a more insightful
view on the processes of religious individuation it must be admitted also that
the German Catholicism never adopted that Latin spirit which pervades the
Catholicism of the Roman peoples. It is enough but to remember the great German
mysticism, which is in its essence Catholic, and to compare it with the
Spanish, Italian or French Catholic mysticism. Tauler, Suso and Jan van
Ruysbroeck or Angelus Silesius, who was a passionate and intolerant Catholic,
belong to entirely different a spiritual world from that of St John of the
Cross, St Theresa, Blessed Angela or St Francis de Sales. German Catholic
theology is less rationalistic than French or Italian theology, and in it rules
less the Latin love for clear forms. A theologian like Scheeben would be
impossible in France. St Thomas Aquinas was a typical Italian, a Latin genius,
a genius of form and measure. The German spirit created Meister Eckehart.
Protestantism was mostly a product of the German and Anglo-Saxon race, of its
individual forms of religiosity. This [p. 188] was a pathological protest
against the constraint of the Latin universalism. Individualization is very
distinct within the Christianity of the Western world and is active also in
Catholicism, but these individualizations and differentiations are yet deeper
when comparing the Christianity of the East and the West. The primary and
fundamental issues are not the dogmatic and ecclesiastical canonic differences
between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, but rather the differences of spiritual type
and of spiritual experience of the mystical way. Howsoever much Orthodox and
Catholics fight about the filioque and the infallibility of the pope, they will
never come near to a mutual understanding. Here collide worlds which have
walked different paths and have collected different experiences upon these
paths. It has become difficult for them to understand each other. The
stipulation for an abstractly-formal agreement on differences of thinking
cannot contribute anything for mutual understanding. This question cannot be
decided upon a formal-dogmatic or formal-canonic scope. For the East the
infallibility of the pope and the outward unity of the ecclesiastical
organization were superfluous while for the West they were essential, because
East and West had walked different historic paths and had collected different
spiritual experiences.
Early Christianity was eschatological; it had no historic perspective;
it awaited the immanent end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ. But
Christianity was destined to become a historic world power. It could not for
long live upon those exclusively charismatic [p. 189] gifts, upon which lived
the early Christians; it had to have an organ for continued historical life and
for the struggle. Eastern Christianity, which inherited the hellenistic spirit,
was more meditatively disposed, it concerned itself more in discussing dogmatic
questions, and the essential work of the Eastern Patristics was in shaping the
dogmas. In the East issued forth both the heretical and a Christian gnosis,
beginning with St Clemens of Alexandria. The West was more practical; it
inherited the Roman spirit; is was more busy with questions of organization of
the Church and with moral theology. In the West, Christianity came more quickly
to a consciousness of its historical tasks. The Western Church proved itself to
be primarily a fightingly active Church. It took upon itself immense
governmental and historical tasks, because the Empire in the West had collapsed.
In the East, the Church maintained always the eschatological character.
Orthodoxy was more inclined to eternal life and the Kingdom of Heaven than to
earthly life and to the historical victories of Christianity in the world. The
Church in the West became an immense historical power; it understood completely
the bellicose task involved in world supremacy, of ruling over the world. The
Western Church saw itself as the Kingdom of God upon the earth, beginning with
St Augustine. The historical perspective was overshadowed the eschatological
perspective. Christianity in the West was by its type more active and
bellicose, it was striving after power upon the earth, after deeds in history.
This led to a very high valuation of the principle of organization. For the Catholic
consciousness it is characteristic, that all must be organized and put under
the outer unity, – the soul, the so- [p. 190] ciety, the culture must be
organized; the Church – in a sense of external universal unity – must be
organized; the religious thinking, the system of theology and philophy must be
organized. Instruments of the battle, with which the Church is called to fight
in the world, must be trained and ready everywhere. The Church must have its
own armies and fortresses. All must be transformed into an army and a fortress,
– soul, social life, thinking. Scholasticism is only the arming of thinking for
battle, defense and attack. The theological and philosophical system of St
Thomas Aquinas is an immense, wonderfully built fortress, like the whole
Catholic Church overall.
I know that the Catholic world is very rich, complex and manifold, that
there are many currents in it. But it is no accident that in the Christianity
of the West Aristotelianism prevails. The way of Western Christianity can be
expressed in the categories of the Aristotelian philosophy, in the Aristotelian
doctrine of form and matter [forma et materia], of potentiality and act
[potentia et actus]. The form organizes the matter of life, the matter of the
world; the world must be assigned finally to the organizing form. The
ecclesiastical hierarchy which is assigned to a uniform highest center, the
ecclesiastical doctrine is a forming, organizing principle, which must rule and
cannot tolerate that matter which would flow chaotically or separating itself
off. Potentiality is imperfect, is non-expressed being which has not yet found
its expression, half not-being, – only the act is true and full being. God is
pure act [actus purus], and in Him there is no potentiality. So the Catholic
Church is longing to be on earth pure [p. 191] act and not to tolerate the
dominance of the potentiality, the not-coming to expression with all its
manifold possibilites. In this regard the Christianity of the West,
Catholicism, has inherited antiquity’s thinking: it is classical, it fears
infinity, it sees in finiteness, in definiteness the sign of the perfectness of
being. In Christianity of the East there prevails another spirit. For the East
Platonism is far nearer than is Aristotelianism. Orthodoxy is more meditative
and eschatological, less bellicose and actual. In the Orthodox Church one finds
more the potential, the historically not yet worked out, and it does not regard
this as a sign of imperfection or a half not-being. The eschatological perspective
of life must maintain moreso the potential possibilities.
Energy will not be spent on an organized act of history, the spiritual
forces remain concentrated in the interior. There is a great eschatological and
apocalyptical expectation, a turning to the end of the world, the Second
Coming, the celestial Jerusalem, which is to come into the world. Orthodoxy is
less built up than Catholicism; characteristical for it is more the insight of
intelligent beings, the world of ideas, the world of wisdom, the sophiotic
character of the creature. It does not conceive of life as form ruling over
matter. The life in the world is not organization but rather organism, and the
Church is first of all an organism, the Body of Christ. The element of
organization is not so important, it is secondary. The inner unity of the
Church is not to be defined by the external organization of ecclesiastical
unity. Ecumenicism is not something horizontal, but rather [p. 192] vertical,
qualitative not quantitative. An immense freedom of spirit finds definition in
Orthodoxy by the fact, that Orthodoxy has not first of all the aim to be world
organization, to give form to matter by force, to actualize the life of the
Church. The Kingdom of Heaven comes unseen [cf Luk 17:20]. Orthodoxy is in no
way aims at a victory upon the earth at all costs. This also gives freedom to
it; the organized army cannot feel free in the war, on the battlefield, in the
fortress; it must be strongly disciplined and assigned to a warlord. But life
is not only war, and the Christian people is not only an army. This can be seen
also in the Catholic Church, in which developed a more complex creative life, a
richer culture than in the East. But the idea of an organized, bellicose Church
still predominates.
Orthodox thinkers frequently use to fight against the filioque, because
in this formula there is so to speak expressed the subordinated position of the
Holy Spirit, a "subordinatianism" (3) in conceiving of the
Third Hypostasis, and a pretensive Christocentrism which hinders the Holy
Spirit to pour freely into the world and over mankind. Orthodoxy is basically a
Christianity which reveals the nature of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it looks to
the mystery of Resurrection and the Transformation of the creature. The most
important feast of Orthodoxy is the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. In
Western Christianity, at the center is the Cross, Golgotha. The spiritual type
of Eastern Christianity, of Orthodoxy, presents great difficulties for
historical life, for the creation of a culture in itself. The eschatological
attitude of Orthodoxy, its inclination to the eternal life, to the end of the
world, had [p. 193] the consequence that the reconstruction work of life was
imposed exclusively on the state, the czar who was anointed by the Church for
czarism. The Church was not identified with the state, and it did not fulfill
the tasks of the state, but externally it was subjected to the state, as was
the case in Byzantium and also in the Russia of the Petrine period. The eschatological
feeling sometimes paralysed the creative energy of the Orthodox. But certainly
the apocalyptic consciousness of the Russian religious thinkers of the XIX
century assumed not rarely a more active, creative character, and it was
connected with the faith in the beginning of a new pneumatological epoch in
Christianity. Paracletism is characteristic to many Russian religious thinkers.
Orthodoxy has maintained unaltered the truths of the old Church more than has
the Christianity of the West, and it is nearer to early Christianity. On the
spiritual grounds of Orthodoxy there is more possible an apocalyptic
consciousness, a prophetic presentiment, because it is less busy with historic
activity which obscures the perspective of the final destiny of mankind.
Catholicism has too much actualized itself in history. In Orthodoxy there are
hidden immense, not yet expressed and not yet lived-out spiritual forces. I as
an Orthodox must recognize the spiritual superiority of my Church. But I think
however that the individualized spiritual types of Eastern and Western
Christianity have a raison d’etre and must remain to the end of the world.
Neither of these types and ways is the fullness of Christianity. The
ecumenicism of Christianity remains potential, it has not been actualized fully
and expressed externally. [p. 194] But when expressed, there will begin a new
epoch of Christianity, a greater fullness in the life of the Church, a more
integral, a more concise, a more cosmic understanding of the Church. The individualized
types of Christianity must remain because they contribute to its richness, but
the hatred and hostility must stop. We pray for a unifying of Churches, for
unity of the Christian world. But which path have we to traverse, to arrive at
this unity?