Subhumanity

Subhumanity:

The Philosophy of the Absurd

Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodox Word magazine #106 Sept-Oct 1982

Source:

https://app.box.com/s/h2x2dfgj91hetra2ao3apjzc7uzqre0v

This study was written by Fr. Seraphim as a sub-chapter in his book The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man, on which he was working at the time of his conversion to Orthodoxy in the early 1960's and which, unfortunately, was never finished.  Although written 20 years ago, this in depth study rings true, for today we see only too clearly the disastrous effects of this philosophy of the absurd.

   The present age is, in a profound sense, an age of absurdity.  Poets and dramatists, painters and sculptors proclaim and depict the world as a disjointed chaos, and man as a dehumanized fragment of that chaos.  Politics, whether of the right, the left, or the center, can no longer be viewed as anything but an expedient whereby universal disorder is given, for the moment, a faint semblance of order; pacifists and militant crusaders are united in an absurd faith in the feeble powers of man to remedy an intolerable situation by means which can only make it worse.  Philosophers and other supposedly responsible men in governmental, academic, and ecclesiastical circles, when they do not retreat behind the impersonal and irresponsible facade of specialization or bureaucracy, usually do no more than rationalize the incoherent state of contemporary man and his world, and counsel a futile "commitment" to a discredited humanist optimism, to a hopeless stoicism, to blind experimentation and irrationalism, or to "commitment" itself, a suicidal faith in "faith."

   But art, politics, and philosophy today are only reflections of life, and if they have become absurd it is because, in large measure, life has become so.  The most striking example of absurdity in life in recent times was, of course, Hitler's "new order," wherein a supposedly normal, civilized man could be atone and the same time an accomplished and moving interpreter of Bach (as was Himmler) and a skilled murderer of millions, or who might arrange a tour of an extermination camp to coincide with a concert series or an exhibition of art. Hitler himself, indeed, was the absurd man par excellence, passing from nothingness to world rule and back to nothingness in the space of a dozen years, leaving as his monument nothing but a shattered world, owing his meaningless success to the fact that he, the emptiest of men, personified the emptiness of the men of his time.

   Hitler's surrealist world is now a thing of the past; but the world has by no means passed out of the age of absurdity, but rather into a more advanced-though temporarily quieter-stage of the same disease.  Men have invented a weapon to express, better than Hitler's gospel of destruction, their own incoherence and nihilism; and in its shadow men stand paralyzed, between the extremes of an external power and an internal powerlessness equally without precedent.  At the same time, the poor and "underprivileged" of the world have awakened to conscious life, and seek abundance and privilege; those who already possess them waste their lives in the pursuit of vain things, or become disillusioned and die of boredom and despair, or commit senseless crimes.  The whole world, it almost seems, is divided into those who lead meaningless, futile lives without being aware of it, and those who, being aware of it, are driven to madness and suicide.

   It is unnecessary to multiply examples of a phenomenon of which everyone is aware.  Suffice it to say that these examples are typical, and even the most extreme of them are but advanced forms of the disorder which surrounds everyone of us today and which, if we know not how to combat it, takes up residence in our hearts.  Ours is an age of absurdity, in which the totally irreconcilable exists side by side, even in the same soul; where nothing seems to any purpose; where things fall apart because they have no center to hold them together.  It is true, of course, that the business of daily life seems to proceed as usual – though at a suspiciously feverish pace, – men manage to "get along," to live from day to day.  But that is because they do not, or will not, think; and one can hardly blame them for that, for the realities of the present day are not pleasant ones.  Still, it is only the person who does think, who does ask what, beneath the distractions of daily life, is really happening in the world – it is only such a person who can feel even remotely "at home" in the strange world we live in today, or can feel that this age is, after all, "normal."

   It is not a "normal" age in which we live; whatever their exaggerations and errors, however false their explanations, however contrived their world-view, the "advanced" poets, artists, and thinkers of the age are at least right in one respect: there is something frightfully wrong with the contemporary world.  This is the first lesson we may learn from absurdism.

   For absurdism is a profound symptom of the spiritual state of contemporary man, and if we know how to read it correctly we may learn much of that state.  But this brings us to the most important of the initial difficulties to be disposed of before we can speak of the absurd.  Can it be understood at all?  The absurd is, by its very nature, a subject that lends itself to careless or sophistical treatment; and such treatment has indeed been given it, not only by the artists who are carried away by it, but by the supposedly serious thinkers and critics who attempt to explain or justify it.  In most of the works on contemporary "existentialism," and in the apologies for modern art and drama, it would seem that intelligence has been totally abandoned, and critical standards are replaced by a vague "sympathy" or "involvement," and by extra-logical if not illogical arguments that cite the "spirit of the age" or some vague "creative" impulse or an indeterminate "awareness"; but these are not arguments, they are at best rationalizations, at worst mere jargon.  If we follow that path we may end with a greater "appreciation!' of' absurdist art, but hardly with any profounder understanding of it.  Absurdism, indeed, may not be understood at all in its own terms; for understanding is coherence, and that is the very opposite of absurdity.  If we are to understand the absurd at all, it must be from a stand-point outside absurdity, a standpoint from which a word like "understanding" has a meaning; only thus may we cut through the intellectual fog within which absurdism conceals itself, discouraging coherent and rational attack by its own assault on reason and coherence.  We must, in short, take a stand within a faith opposed to the absurdist faith and attack it in the name of a truth of which it denies the existence.  In the end we shall find that absurdism, quite against its will, offers its own testimony to this faith and this truth which are – let us state at the outset – Christian.

   The philosophy of the absurd is, indeed, nothing original in itself; it is entirely negation, and its character is determined, absolutely and entirely, by that which it attempts to negate.  The absurd could not even be conceived except in relation to something considered not to be absurd; the fact that the world fails to make sense could occur only to men who have once believed, and have good reason to believe, that it does make sense.  Absurdism cannot be understood apart from its Christian origins.

   Christianity is, supremely, coherence, for the Christian God has ordered everything in the universe, both with regard to everything else and with regard to Himself, Who is the beginning and end of all creation; and the Christian whose faith is genuine finds this divine coherence in every aspect of his life and thought.  For the absurdist, everything falls apart, including his own philosophy, which can only be a short-lived phenomenon; for the Christian, everything holds together and is coherent, including those things which in themselves are incoherent.  The incoherence of the absurd is, in the end, part of a larger coherence; if it were not, there would be little point in speaking of it at all.

   The second of the initial difficulties in approaching the absurd concerns the precise manner of approach.  It will not do – if we wish to understand it – to dismiss absurdism as mere error and self-contradiction; it is these, to be sure, but it is also much more.  No competent thinker, surely, can be tempted to take seriously any absurdist claim to truth; no matter from which side one approaches it, absurdist philosophy is nothing but self-contradiction.  To proclaim ultimate meaninglessness, one must believe that this phrase has a meaning, and thus one denies it in affirming it; to assert that "there is no truth," one must believe in the truth of this statement, and so again affirm what one denies.  Absurdist philosophy, it is clear, is not to be taken seriously as philosophy; all its objective statements must be reinterpreted imaginatively, and often subjectively.  Absurdism, in fact-as we shall see – is not a product of the intellect at all, but of the will.

   The philosophy of the absurd, while implicit in a large number of contemporary works of art, is fortunately quite explicit – if we know how to interpret it – in the writings of Nietzsche; for his nihilism is precisely the root from which the tree of absurdity has grown.  In Nietzsche we may read the philosophy of the absurd; in his older contemporary Dostoevsky we may see described the sinister implications which Nietzsche, blind to the Christian truth which is the only remedy for the absurd view of life, failed to see.  In these two writers, living at the dividing point between two worlds, when the world of coherence based on Christian truth was being shattered and the world of the absurd based on its denial was coming into being, we may find almost everything there is of importance to know about the absurd.

   The absurdist revelation, after a long period of underground germination, bursts into the open in the two striking phrases of Nietzsche so often quoted: "God is dead" means, simply, that faith in God is dead in the hearts of modern men; and "there is no truth" means that men have abandoned the truth revealed by God upon which all European thought and institutions once were based, they have abandoned it because they no longer find it credible.  Both statements are indeed true of what has, since Nietzsche's time, become the vast majority of those who were once Christian.  It is true of the atheists and satanists who profess to be content or ecstatic at their own lack of faith and rejection of truth; it is equally true of the less pretentious multitudes in whom the sense of spiritual reality has simply evaporated, whether this event be expressed in indifference to spiritual reality, in that spiritual confusion and unrest so widespread today, or in any of the many forms of pseudo-religion that are but masks for indifference and confusion.  And even over that ever-decreasing minority who still believe inwardly as well as outwardly, for whom the other world is more real than this world – even over these the shadow of the "death of God" has fallen and made the world a different and a strange place.

    Nietzsche, in the Will to Power, comments very succinctly on the meaning of nihilism:

What does nihilism mean? – That the highest values are losing their value. There is no goal. There is no answer to the question: "why?

   Everything, in short. has become questionable.  The magnificent certainty we see in the Fathers and Saints of the Church. and in all true believers, that refers everything, whether in thought or life, back to God, seeing everything as beginning and ending in Him. everything as His will-this certainty and faith that once held society and the world and man himself together are now gone and the questions for which men once had learned to find the answers in God now have – for most men – no answers.

   There have been, of course, other forms of coherence than Christianity and forms of incoherence other than modern nihilism and absurdity.  In them human life makes sense, or fails to make sense, but only to a limited degree.  Men who believe and follow, for example, the traditional Hindu or Chinese view of things, possess a measure of truth and of the peace that comes from truth – but no absolute truth, and not the "peace that passes all understanding" that proceeds only from absolute truth; and those who all away from this relative truth and peace have lost something real, but they have not lost everything. as has the apostate Christian.  Never has such disorder reigned in the heart of man and in the world today; but this is precisely because man has fallen away from a truth and a coherence that have been revealed in their fullness only in Christ.  Only the Christian God is at the same time all power and all love; only the Christian God, through His love, has promised men immortality and, through His power to fulfill that promise, has prepared a Kingdom in which men will live in God as gods, having been raised from the dead.  This is a God and His promise so incredible to the ordinary human understanding that, once having believed it, men who reject it can never believe anything else to be of any great value.  A world from which such a God has been removed, a man in whom such a hope has been extinguished are, indeed, in the eyes of those who have undergone such a disillusionment "absurd."

   "God is dead," "there is no truth": the two phrases have precisely the same meaning; they are alike a revelation of the absolute absurdity of a world whose center is no longer God, but – nothing.  But just here at the. very heart of absurdism, its dependence upon the Christianity it rejects is most apparent.  One of the most difficult of Christian doctrines for the non-Christian and anti-Christian to understand and accept is that of the creatio ex nihilo: God's creation of the world not out of Himself, not out of some pre-existent matter, but out of nothing.  Yet, without understanding it, the absurdist testifies to its reality by inverting and parodying it, by attempting in effect, a nihilization of creation, a return of the world to that very nothingness out of which God first called it.  This may be seen in the absurdist affirmation of a void at the center of things, and in the implication present in all absurdists to a greater or lesser degree, that it would be better if man and his world did not exist at all.  But this attempt at nihilization, this affirmation of the Abyss, that lies at the very heart of absurdism, takes it  most concrete form in the atmosphere that pervades absurdist works of art.  In the art of those whom one might call commonplace atheists – men like Hemingway, Camus, and the vast numbers of artists whose insight does not go beyond the futility of the human situation as men imagine it today, and whose aspiration does not look beyond a kind of stoicism, a facing of the inevitable – in the art of such men the atmosphere of the void is communicated by boredom, by a despair that is yet tolerable, and in general by the feeling that "nothing ever happens."  But there is a second, and more revealing, kind of absurdist art, which unites to the mood of futility an element of the unknown, a kind of eerie expectancy, the feeling that in an absurd world where, generally, "nothing ever happens," it is also true that "anything is possible."  In this art, reality becomes a nightmare and the world becomes an alien planet wherein men wander not so much in hopelessness as in perplexity, uncertain of where they are, of what they may find, of their own identity – of everything except the absence of God.  This is the strange world of Kafka, of the plays of Ionesco and – less strikingly – of Beckett, of a few avant-garde films like "Last Year at Marienbad," of electronic and other "experimental" music, of surrealism in all the arts, and of the most recent painting and sculpture – and particularly that with a supposedly "religious" content – in which man is depicted as a subhuman or demonic creature emerging from some unknown depths.  It was the world, too, of Hitler, whose reign was the most perfect political incarnation we have yet seen of the philosophy of the absurd.

   This strange atmosphere is the "death of God" made tangible.  It is significant that Nietzsche, in the very passage (in the Joyful Wisdom) where he first proclaims the "death of God" – a message he puts in the mouth of a madman – describes the very atmosphere of this absurdist art.

"We have killed him (God), you and I!  We are all his murderers!  But how have we done it?  How were we able to drink up the sea?  Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon?  What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun?  Whither does it now move?  Whither do we move?  Away from all suns?  Do we not dash on unceasingly?  Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions?  Is there still an above and below?  Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness?  Does not empty space breathe upon us?  Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker?"

   Such, in fact, is the landscape of the absurd, a landscape in which there is neither up nor down, right nor wrong, true nor false, because there is no longer any commonly accepted point of orientation.

   Another, more immediately personal, expression of the absurdist revelation is contained in the despairing cry of Ivan Karamazov: "If there is no immortality, everything is permitted."  This, to some, may sound like a cry of liberation; but anyone who has thought deeply about death, or who has encountered, in his own experience, a concrete awareness of his own impending death, knows better than that.  The absurdist, though he denies human immortality, at least recognizes that the question is a central one-something most humanists, with their endless evasions and rationalizations, fail to do.  It is possible to be indifferent to this question only if one has no love for truth, or if one's love for truth has been obscured by more deceptive and immediate things, whether pleasure, business, culture, worldly knowledge, or any of the other things the world is content to accept in place of truth.  The whole meaning of human life depends on the truth or falsity – of the doctrine of human immortality.

   To the absurdist, the doctrine is false.  And that is one of the reasons why his universe is so strange: there is no hope in it, death is its highest god.  Apologists for the absurd, like apologists for humanist stoicism, see nothing but "courage" in this view, the "courage" of men willing to live without the ultimate "consolation" of eternal life; and they look down on those who require the "reward" of Heaven to justify their conduct on earth.  It is not necessary, so they think, to believe in Heaven and Hell in order to lead a "good life" in this world, and their argument is a persuasive one even to many who call themselves Christians and are yet quite ready to renounce eternal life for an "existential" view that believes only in the present moment.

   Such an argument is the worst of self-deceptions, it is but another of the myriad masks behind which men hide the face of death; for if death were truly the end of men, no man could face the full terror of it.  Dostoevsky was quite right in giving to human immortality such central importance in his own Christian world-view.  If man is after all to end in nothingness, then in the deepest sense it does not matter what he does in this life, for then nothing he may do is of any ultimate consequence, and all talk of "living this life to the full" is empty and vain.  It is absolutely true that if "there is no immortality," the world is absurd and "everything is permitted" which is to say, nothing is worth doing, the dust of death smothers every joy and prevents even tears, which would be futile; it would indeed be better if such a world did not exist.  Nothing in the world – not love, not goodness, not sanctity, – is of any value, or indeed even has any meaning, if man does not survive death.  He who thinks to lead a "good life" that ends in death does not know the meaning of his words, they but caricature Christian goodness, which finds its fulfillment in eternity.  Only if man is immortal, and only if the next world is as God as revealed it to His chosen people, Christians, is there any value or meaning to what man does in this life; for then every act of man is a seed of good or evil that sprouts, to be sure, in this life, but which is not reaped until the future life.  Men who, on the other hand, believe that virtue begins and ends in this life are but one step from those who believe that there is no virtue at all; and this step a fact of which our century bears eloquent witness – is all too easily taken, for it is, after all, a logical step.

   Disillusionment, in a sense, is preferable to self-deception.  It may, if taken as an end in itself, lead to suicide or madness; but it may also lead to an awakening.  Europe for five centuries and more has been deceiving itself, trying to establish a reign of humanism, liberalism, and supposedly Christian values on the basis of an increasingly skeptical attitude toward Christian truth.  Absurdism is the end of that road; it is the logical conclusion of the humanist attempt to soften and compromise Christian truth so as to accommodate new, modern, that is to say, worldly, values.  Absurdism is the last proof that Christian truth is absolute and uncompromising, or else it is the same as no truth at all; and if there is no truth, if Christian truth if not to be understood literally and absolutely, if God is dead, if there is no immortality – then this world is all there is, and this world is absurd, this world is Hell.

   The absurd view of life, then, does express a partial insight: it draws the conclusions of humanist and liberal thought to which well-meaning humanists themselves have been blind.  Absurdism is no merely arbitrary irrationalism, but a part of the harvest European man has been sowing for centuries, by his compromise and betrayal of Christian truth.

   It would be unwise, however, to exaggerate in this direction, as apologists for the absurd to, and see in absurdism and its parent nihilism signs of a turn or a return to hitherto neglected truths or to a more profound world-view.  The absurdist, to be sure, is more realistic about the negative and evil side of life, as manifest both in the world and in man's nature; but this is after all very little truth in comparison with the great errors absurdism shares with humanism.  Both are equally far from the God in Whom alone the world makes sense; neither consequently has any notion of spiritual life or experience, which are nourished by God alone; both therefore are totally ignorant of the full dimensions of reality and of human experience; and both have thus a radically oversimplified view of the world and especially of human nature.  Humanism and absurdism, in fact, are not as far apart as one might have supposed; absurdism, in the end, is simply disillusioned but unrepentant humanism.  It is, one might say, the last stage in the dialectical procession of humanism away from Christian truth, the stage in which humanism, merely by following its internal logic and drawing out the full implications of its original betrayal of Christian truth, arrives at its own negation and ends in a kind of humanist nightmare, a subhumanism.  The subhuman world of the absurdist, though it may at times the humanist knows, only rendered "mysterious" by various tricks and self-deceptions; it is a parody of the true world, the world the Christian knows, the world that is truly mysterious because it contains heights and depths of which no absurdist, and surely no humanist, even dreams.  

   If, intellectually, humanism and absurdism are distinguished as principle and consequence, they are united in a deeper sense, for they share a single will, and that will is the annihilation of the Christian God and the order He has established in the world.  These words will seem strange to anyone disposed to take a sympathetic view of the "plight" of contemporary man, and especially to those who listen to the arguments of absurdist apologetics which cite supposed scientific "discoveries" and the all-too-natural disillusionment that has come out of our century of war and revolution: arguments, in short, that rely on the "spirit of the age," which seem to make any but a philosophy of absurdity next to impossible.  The universe, so this apology runs, has become meaningless, God has died, one knows not quite how or why, and all we can do now is to accept the fact and resign ourselves to it.  But the more perceptive absurdists themselves know better, God has not merely died, said Nietzsche, rather men have murdered Him; and Ionesco, in an essay on Kafka, recognizes that "if man no longer has a guiding thread (i.e., in the labyrinth of life), it is because he no longer wanted to have one.  Hence his feeling of guilt, of anxiety, of the absurdity of. history."  A vague feeling of guilt is, indeed, in many cases, the only remaining sign of man's involvement in bringing about the condition in which he now finds himself.  But man is involved, and all fatalism is only rationalization.  Modern science is quite innocent in this respect, for in itself it must be, not merely neutral, but actively hostile to any idea of ultimate absurdity, and those who exploit it for irrationalist ends are not thinking clearly.  And as to the fatalism of those who believe that man must be a slave to the "spirit of the age," it is disproved by the experience of every Christian worthy of the name – for the Christian life is nothing if it is not a struggle against the spirit of every age for the sake of eternity.  Absurdist fatalism is in the end the product, not of knowledge nor of any necessity, but of blind faith.  The absurdist, of course, would rather not face too squarely the fact that his disillusionment is an act of faith, for faith is a factor that testifies against determinism.  But there is something even deeper than faith which the absurdist has even more reason to avoid, and that is the will; for the direction of a man's will is what chiefly determines his faith and the whole personal world-view built upon that faith.  The Christian, who possesses a coherent doctrine of the nature of man and should have thereby a deep insight into human motives, can see the ultimate responsibility the absurdist prefers to deny in his disillusioned view of the world.  The absurdist is not the passive "victim" of his age or its thought, but rather an active – though often confused – collaborator in the great undertaking of the enemies of God.  Absurdism is not primarily a phenomenon of the God-these are its disguises and rationalizations; it is rather something of the will, an anti-theism (a term applied by Proudhon to his own program, and seen by de Lubac, in The Drama of Atheist Humanism, as a key to understanding other revolutionaries), a fight against God and the Divine order of things.  No absurdist, to be sure, can be fully aware of this; he cannot and will not think clearly, he lives on self-delusion.  No one (unless it be Satan himself, the first absurdist) can deny God and refuse his own truest happiness in full consciousness of the fact; but somewhere deep within every absurdist, far deeper than he himself usually wishes to look, lies the primordial refusal of God which has been responsible for all the phenomena of absurdism as well as for the incoherence that indeed lies at the very heart of this age.

   If it is impossible not to sympathize with some at least of the artists of the absurd, seeing in them an agonized awareness and sincere depiction of a world that is trying to live without God, let us not for all that forget how thoroughly at one these artists are with the world they depict; let us not lose sight of the fact that their art is so successful in striking a responsive chord in many precisely because they share the errors, the blindness and ignorance, and the perverted will of the age whose emptiness they depict.  To transcend the absurdity of the contemporary world requires, unfortunately, a great deal more than even the best intentions, the most agonized suffering, and the greatest artistic "genius."  The way beyond the absurd lies in truth alone; and this is precisely what is lacking as much in the contemporary artist as in his world, it is what is actively rejected as definitely by the self-conscious absurdist as it is by those who live the absurd life without being aware of it.

   To sum up, then, our diagnosis of absurdism: it is the life lived, and the view of life expressed, by whose who can or will no longer see God as the beginning and end, and the ultimate meaning, of life; those who therefore do not believe His Revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ and do not accept the eternal Kingdom He has prepared for those who do believe and who live this faith; those who, ultimately, can hold no one responsible for their unbelief but themselves.  But what is the cause of this disease?  What, beyond all historical and psychological causes – which can never be more than relative and contributory – what is its real motivation, its spiritual cause?  If absurdism is indeed a great evil, as we believe it to be, it cannot be chosen for its own sake; for evil has no positive existence, and it can only be chosen in the guise of a seeming good.  If up to this point we have described the negative  side of the philosophy of the absurd, its description of the disordered, disoriented world in which men find themselves today, it is time to turn to its positive side and discover in what it is that absurdists place their faith and hope.

IN WHAT ABSURDISTS PLACE THEIR FAITH AND HOPE

   For it is quite clear that absurdists are not happy about the absurdity of the universe; they believe in it, but they cannot reconcile themselves to it, and their art and thought are attempts, after all, to transcend it.  As Ionesco has said (and here he speaks, probably, for all absurdists): "to attack absurdity is a way of stating the possibility of non-absurdity," and he sees himself as engaged in "the constant search for an opening, a revelation."  Thus we return to the sense of expectancy we have already noted in certain absurdist works of art; it is but a reflection of the situation of our times, wherein men, disillusioned and desolate, yet hope in something unknown, uncertain. yet to be revealed, which will somehow restore meaning and purpose to life.  Men cannot live without hope, even in the midst of despair, even when all cause for hope has been, supposedly, "disproved."

   But this is only to say that nothingness, the apparent center of the absurdist universe, is not the real heart of the disease, but only its most striking symptom.  The real faith of absurdism is in something hoped for but not yet fully manifest, a "Godot' that is the always implicit but not yet defined subject of absurdist art, a mysterious something that, if understood, would give life some kind of meaning once more.

   All this, if it seems vague in contemporary absurdist art, is quite clear in the works of the original "prophets" of the age of absurdity, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky.  In them the revelation of absurdity has a corollary.  "Dead are all the gods," says Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "now do we desire the Superman to live."  And Nietzsche's madman says, of the murder of God: "Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us?  Shall we not ourselves have to become gods, merely to seem worthy of it?"  Kirillov, in Dostoevsky's Possessed, knows that "if there is no God, then I am God."

   Man's first sin, and the ultimate cause of the miserable condition of man in all ages, was in following the temptation of the serpent in Paradise: "Ye shall be as gods."  What Nietzsche calls the Superman, and Dostoevsky the Mangod, is in fact the same god of self with which the Devil then and always, has tempted man; it is the only god, once the true God has been rejected, whom men can worship.  Man's freedom has been given him to choose between the true God and himself. between the true path to deification whereon the self is humbled and crucified in this life to be resurrected and exalted in God in eternity, and the false path of self-deification which promises exaltation in this life but ends in the Abyss.  These are the only two choices, ultimately, open to the freedom of man; and upon them have been founded the two Kingdoms, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man, which may be discriminated only by the eye of faith in this life, but which shall be separated in the future life as Heaven and Hell.  It is clear to which of them modern civilization belongs, with its Promethean effort to build a Kingdom of earth in defiance of God; but what should be clear enough in earlier modern thinkers becomes absolutely explicit in Nietzsche.  The old commandment of "Thou shalt," says Zarathustra, has become outmoded; the new commandment is "I will."  And in Kirillov's satanic logic, "the attribute of my godhead is self-will."  The new religion, the religion not yet fully revealed that will succeed the old religion of Christianity to which modern man thinks by now to have delivered the final blow is supremely the religion of self-worship.

   This is what absurdism and all the vain experimentation of our day is seeking.  Absurdism is the stage at which the modern Promethean effort hesitates. entertains doubts, and has a faint foretaste of the satanic incoherence in which it cannot but end.  But if the absurdist is less confident and more fearful than the humanist, he nonetheless shares the humanist faith that the modern path is the right path, and in spite of his doubt he retains the humanist hope – hope not in God and His Kingdom, but in man's own Tower of Babel.

   The modern attempt to establish a kingdom of self-worship reached one extreme in Hitler, who believed in a racial Superman; it reaches another extreme in Communism, whose Superman is the collectivity and whose self-love is disguised as altruism.  But both Nazism and Communism are extreme forms – their phenomenal success proves it – of what everyone else today actually believes: everyone; that is, who does not stand explicitly and absolutely with Christ and His Truth.  For what is the meaning of the gigantic effort in which all nations have today joined to transform the face of the earth and conquer the universe, to bring about an entirely new order of things wherein man's condition since his creation will be radically transformed and this earth, which since man's fall has been and can be nothing but a place of sorrow and tears, is to become, supposedly a place of happiness and joy, a veritable heaven on earth with the advent of a "new age"?  What does this mean but that man, freed of the burden of a God in Whom he does not believe even when he professes Him with his lips, imagines himself to be God, master of his own destiny and creator of a "new earth," expressing his faith in a "new religion" of his own devising wherein humility gives way to pride, prayer to worldly knowledge, mastery of the passions to mastery of the world, fasting to abundance and satiety, tears of repentance to worldly joy.

   To this religion of the self absurdism points the way.  This is not, to be sure, always its explicit intention, but it is its distinct implication.  Absurdist art depicts a man imprisoned in his own self, unable to communicate with his fellow man or enter into any relationship with him that is not inhuman; there is no love in absurdist art, there is only hatred, violence, terror, and boredom – because in cutting himself off from God, absurdist man has cut himself off from his own humanity, the image of God.  If such a man is awaiting a revelation that will put an end to absurdity, it is surely not the revelation that Christians know; if there is one point on which all absurdists would agree, it is the absolute rejection of the Christian answer.  Any revelation the absurdist, as absurdist, can accept must be "new."  About Godot, in Beckett's play, one character says, "I'm anxious to hear what he has to offer.  Then we'll take it or leave it."  In the Christian life everything is referred to Christ, the old self with its constant "I will" must be done away with and a new self, centered in Christ and His will, be born; but in the spiritual universe of "Godot," everything revolves precisely about the old self, and even a new god must present himself as a kind of spiritual merchandise to be accepted or rejected by a self that will tolerate nothing that is not oriented to itself.  Men today "wait for Godot" – who is, perhaps, on one level, Antichrist – in the hope that he will bring appeasement of conscience and restore meaning and joy to self-worship, in the hope that is, that he will permit what God has forbidden and provide the ultimate apology for it.  Nietzsche's Superman is absurdist, modern man with his sense of guilt obliterated in a frenzy of enthusiasm generated by a false mysticism of the earth, a worship of this world.

   Where will it all end?  Nietzsche and the optimists of our day see the dawn of a new age, the beginning of "a higher history than any history hitherto."  Communist doctrine affirms this; but the Communist reorganization of the world will, in the end, prove to be no more than the systematized absurdity of a perfectly efficient machine that has no ultimate purpose.  Dostoevsky; who knew the true God, was more realistic.  Kirillov, the maniacal counterpart of Zarathustra, had to kill himself to prove that he was God; Ivan Karamazov, who was tormented by the same ideas, ended in madness, as did Nietzsche himself; Shigalev (in The Possessed), who devised the first perfect social organization of mankind, found it necessary to deliver nine-tenths of mankind to absolute slavery so that one-tenth might enjoy absolute liberty – a plan that Nazi and Communist Supermen have put into practice.  Madness, suicide, slavery, murder, and destruction are the ends of the presumptuous philosophy of the death of God and the advent of the Superman; and these are, indeed, prominent themes of absurdist art.

   Many feel – with Ionesco – that only out of thorough exploration of the absurd condition in which man now finds himself, and of the new possibilities this has opened up for him, may a way be found beyond absurdity and nihilism into some new realm of coherence: this is the hope of absurdism and humanism, and it will become the hope of Communism when (and if) it enters its period of disillusionment.  It is a false hope, but it is a hope that may, for all that, be fulfilled.  For Satan is the ape of God, and once divine coherence has been shattered and men no longer hope for the absolute coherence God alone can give to human life, the counterfeit coherence that Satan is able to fabricate may come to seem quite attractive.  It is no accident that in our own day serious attention is being given once more by responsible and sober Christians dissatisfied alike with facile optimism and facile pessimism, to a doctrine that, in Western Europe at least, was almost forgotten for centuries under the influence of the philosophy of enlightenment and progress.  (Cf. Josef Pieper, The End of Time; Heinrich Schlier, Principalities and Powers in the New Testament; and before them, Cardinal Newman.)  This is the doctrine, universally held by the Churches of the and West, of Antichrist, that strange figure who appears at the end of time as a humanitarian world-ruler and seems to turn creation upside-down by making darkness seem light, evil good, slavery freedom, chaos order; he is the. ultimate protagonist of the philosophy of the absurd, and the perfect embodiment of the mangod: for he will worship only himself, and will call himself God.  This is no place, however, to do more than point out the existence of that doctrine, and to note its intimate connection with the Satanic incoherence of the philosophy of the absurd.

   But more important even than the historical culmination of absurdism, whether it be the actual reign of Antichrist or merely another of his predecessors, is its supra-historical end: and that is Hell.  For absurdism is, most profoundly, an irruption of Hell into our world; it is thus a warning of a reality men are all too anxious to avoid.  But those who avoid it only bind themselves the closer to it; our age, the first in Christian times to disbelieve entirely in Hell, itself more thoroughly than any other embodies the spirit of Hell.

   Why do men disbelieve in Hell?  It is because they do not believe in Heaven, because they do not believe in life, and in the God of life, because they find God's creation absurd and wish that it did not exist.  The Staretz Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov, speaks of one kind of such men.

There are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell... They have cursed themselves, cursing God and life ....They cannot behold the living God without hatred, and they cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God should destroy Himself and His own creation.  And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death ...

   Such men, of course, are extreme nihilists, but they differ in degree only, and not in kind, from those less violent souls who faintly curse this life and find it to be absurd, and even from those who call themselves Christians and do not desire the Kingdom of Heaven with all their hearts, but picture Heaven, if at all, as a shadowy realm of repose or sleep.  Hell is the answer and the end of all who believe in death rather than life, in this world rather than in the next world, in themselves rather than in God: all those, in short, who in their deepest heart accept the philosophy of the absurd.  For it is the great truth of Christianity – which Dostoevsky saw and Nietzsche did not see – that there is no annihilation, and there is no incoherence, all nihilism and absurdism are in vain.  The flames of Hell are the last and awful proof of this: every creature testifies, with or against his will, to the ultimate coherence of things.  For this coherence is the love of God, and this love is found even in the flames of Hell; it is in fact the love of God itself which torments those who refuse it.

   So it is too with absurdism; it is the negative side of a positive reality.  There is, of course, an element of incoherence in our world, for in his fall from Paradise man brought the world with him; the philosophy of the absurd is not, therefore, founded upon a total lie, but upon a deceptive half-truth.  But when Camus defines absurdity as the confrontation of man's need for reason with the irrationality of the world, when he believes that man is an innocent victim and the world the guilty party, he, like all absurdists, has magnified a very partial insight into a totally distorted view of things; and in his blindness has arrived at the exact inversion of the truth.  Absurdism, in the end, is an internal and not an external question; it is not the world that is irrational and incoherent, but man.

   If, however, the absurdist is responsible for not seeing things as they are, and not even wishing to see things as they are, the Christian is yet more responsible for failing to give the example of a fully coherent life, a life in Christ.  Christian compromise in thought and word and negligence in deed have opened the way to the triumph of the forces of the absurd, of Satan, of Antichrist.  The present age of absurdity is the just reward of Christians who have failed to be Christians.

   And the only remedy for absurdism lies at this, its source: we must again be Christians.  Camus was quite right when he said, "We must choose between miracles and the absurd."  For in this respect Christianity and absurdism are equally opposed to Enlightenment rationalism and humanism, to the view that reality can be reduced to purely rational and human terms.  We must indeed choose between the miraculous, the Christian view of things, whose center is God and whose end is the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, and the absurd, the Satanic view of things, whose center is the fallen self and whose end is Hell, in this life and in the life to come.

   We must again be Christians.  It is futile, in fact it is precisely absurd, to speak of reforming society, of changing the path of history, of emerging into an age beyond absurdity, if we have not Christ in our hearts; and if we do have Christ in our hearts, nothing else matters.

   It is of course possible that there may be an age beyond absurdity; it is more likely, perhaps – and Christians must always be prepared for this eventuality – that there will not be, and that the age of absurdity is indeed the last age.  It may be that the final testimony Christians may be able to give in this age will be the ultimate testimony, the blood of their martyrdom.

   But this is cause for rejoicing and not for despair.  For the hope of Christians is not in this world or in any of its kingdoms – that hope, indeed, is the ultimate absurdity; the hope of Christians is in the Kingdom of God which is not of this world.

St. John of Kronstadt's Orthodox World View

http://www.russian-inok.org/

AN OUTLINE OF THE ORTHODOX WORLD-VIEW OF FATHER JOHN OF KRONSTADT.

Based on His Own Words

Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky

There is an unusually attractive power, particularly for the pastor, in the personality of Father John of Kronstadt, even in his portrait, the attraction of his writings, in his diary My Life in Christ. There is a peaceful and consoling quality in the notes of his diary, not to mention the very subjects of his talks, which spiritually exalt, uplift, and strengthen. Once you have opened the book, the eye is drawn aside only with great difficulty, and the hand seems by itself to turn one page after another. Whence comes this attraction of hearts to Father John? Undoubtedly of great significance is the fact that Father John is our contemporary. He made his notes for himself and at the same time for us. He brought into his diaries his personal thoughts, answered the questions of his own soul, but to a certain degree these were also our questions, answers to our perplexing problems, here often is the confirmation of our own conclusions. What he himself writes down in his diary is justified: "We often hear from others, or frequently read in their writings, that which God has placed in our own mind and heart, what we ourselves have wished, that is, often we find our most beloved thoughts in others." He then offers an explanation: "Is not there one Lord God of minds; is not there one Spirit of His in all those who seek Truth? Is not there one Enlightener, enlightening every person who comes into the world?" (My Life in Christ). Here you have the basic reason for the attraction toward Father John, as he himself indicates. He answers the questions of our own personal spirit. As a person of strong faith, of deep Orthodox religious thought, and of complete unity in word and deed, he answers in a most perfect manner, becoming our friend, our counsellor, comforter, reviver, and spiritual teacher.

The theology of Father John, his world-view, is deeply Orthodox. Can it therefore be the object of any special study? Is it not already given in the Orthodox catechism? What new thing can be revealed in it?

Of course, Father John's thinking concerning God, in its essence, is that which is transmitted from the Fathers of the Church, catholic, apostolic, and based on the Gospel. In him we do not find any sensational novelty, no modernism in faith. Nevertheless, it is precisely this tradition that attracts special attention, it attracts because it is the basis on which Father John expresses his broad world outlook, that which may be called a personal Christian philosophy.

Believers react differently to the truths of faith which they accept. Some accept them without any doubts as indisputable authority. Others strive to unite them with their own general world outlook; faith together with reason. But in either case each must unite his faith with his life, with his deeds. If the content of our faith does not affect the content of our deeds, their essential nature, if our conduct is unaffected by what we believe, then faith ceases to be alive. A synthesis of faith and life is needed, and better yet - of faith, reason, and life - faith, reason, heart, and life. The more completely one lives the life of the Church, the more complete should this synthesis be. It is quite evident how much this is needed by the pastor. In the person of Father John we are given an example of harmony between theological knowledge and practical understanding of life, together with personal spiritual experience. Before us is the purposeful, deep, harmonious world outlook on which foundation the Christian personality of an ideal Christian pastor was formed.

What influence shaped the world-view of Father John? He himself speaks concerning this.

The basic structure of his world-view was Sacred Scripture. "From the first days of my high service to the Church," writes Father John, "I began reading the Sacred Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, drawing from it all that is edifying for myself as a human being in general, and as a Priest in particular" (Brief autobiography in the journal North for 1888). In his talk with pastors he relates: "When free from personal service and duties, I read the Sacred Scripture of the Old and New Testaments and especially the New Testament - this most invaluable good tidings of our salvation. While reading I try to ponder over every paragraph, every phrase, even separate words and expressions, and then through this careful attentive relation to the Sacred Book, there arises such a wealth of thoughts, such a wealth of themes for sermons, that no preacher can exhaust this vast depth of God" (A talk with clergymen at Sarapule in 1904). When reading the diary of Father John, we notice that all the books of Sacred Scripture are presented in the diary by extracts, but in such a manner that nowhere can one feel intentional grouping of texts, there is no overstatement with texts; unusually natural is the union of the personal and divine elements. The usual method of Father John is to conclude his own personal talks with an extract from the Word of God, and close his writings in the same way that the word amen confirms the words of prayers taken from the service book.

The other part of the structure of Father John's world-view was the reading of the Lives of Saints. "Having read the Bible, the Gospel, and many of the writings of St. John Chrysostom and other Ancient Fathers, and also the Russian Chrysostom, Philaret of Moscow, and other Church writings, I felt a special attraction towards the calling of a priest, and began to ask God that He might make me worthy of the Grace of the priesthood, and worthy of being a pastor to His sheep..." (A talk on the 25th anniversary of his priesthood). Father John rarely mentions the Fathers of the Church in his diary and one must at least be somewhat well acquainted with their writings in order to feel the power of their influence on the formation of Father John's thought, and on the very style of expression in the diary, in particular the influence of Sts. John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and the writings of the great Ascetics. In his often-used conversational form of writing, one feels the spirit of St. John Chrysostom; in his discourse on the Holy Trinity - St. Gregory the Theologian; in the completeness of thought, as expressed by rich synonyms and epithets - St. Basil.

We know how highly Father John valued all the Church service books. He himself said: "I always read the canons at Matins myself. What riches are found here; what deep content, what wonderful examples of fervent faith in God, patience in sorrow, self-denying fidelity to conscience under conditions of merciless torture the Church daily presents to us! By reading the canons the soul gradually becomes filled with the inspired feelings and mental attitudes of those Saints whom the Church praises; it lives within a perpetual church environment, and thereby it becomes accustomed to church life. I was trained, it may be said, in the church life by this reading, and for this reason I advise all who sincerely desire to acquire spiritual riches to pay serious attention to the reading of the canons according to the church service books - the Octoechos, Menaion, and Triodion."

All these influences so affected the person of Father John that God, Faith, and Church became the foundation of his entire life, and these contents united with his pure, healthy, harmonious development, and the full lively energy of his physical and spiritual being. Exalted contents filled a worthy vessel. One of the consequences of this was that for Father John the truths of Faith were presented not as abstract propositions, but as life forces, expressed in practical living. Father John thinks in terms of images, and he teaches us this manner of thought. He writes: "They say that we soon get tired of praying. Why? It is because you do not picture before yourself the Living God as being nearby, on your right side. Look upon Him always with the eyes of your heart, and then you will be able to stand all night in prayer, and you will not become tired. What am I saying - night! You will stand three days and three nights and not become tired. Recall those who stood in prayer on pillars for long periods of time." He writes elsewhere: "In praying, it is necessary to imagine all creation as nothing before God, and the One God as All, upholding all, Omniscient, active, giving life to all." For this reason his thoughts are so rich in comparisons, likenesses, and symbols dealing with the most exalted objects of faith.

As a lens can burn wood when it has concentrated the rays of the sun at its focus, in like manner during prayer the heart is set afire when "the Sun of the Mind - God, images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Saints, the Angels with fullness and power, are concentrated at the center of our soul, at the heart."

The spontaneous incarnation of faith in corresponding Christian activity, the moral application of each point of faith to life: these comprise the characteristic feature of Father John's understanding of the world and of life. In him one meets theology in thought and in practice.

How then does Father John present his theology to us?

God is One, of One Essence, Self Existent. "For the true believer God is Omnipresent and is All, and creatures are as though non-existent; every earthly substance and that of all visible worlds are as though non-existent, and for him there is not even a single line of thought without God." God is unchanging and everlasting, angelic spirits and souls of men also. "Everything else is like a soap bubble. By these words I do not underestimate that which has been created, but I speak of it in comparison to the Creator and the blessed spirits." From this there proceeds a clear moral deduction for us: not to cling to material, temporal life.

"God is closer to us than any person, at all times; closer than my clothing, closer than air, closer than my wife, father, mother, daughter, son, or friend. I live by Him in soul and in body. I breathe by Him, I think by Him, I feel, imagine, plan, speak, undertake, and act by Him, For in Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). As in the ocean, lake, or river, every drop of water is connected with other drops of water and surrounded by them, or as in the air, every part is surrounded by others and united by them, so likewise we earthly inhabitants are surrounded by God from all sides, and the pure in heart among us or those who are being cleansed are united with Him, and are everywhere with Him." "The Omnipresence of God is spatial and mental, i.e., God is everywhere, in spatial and mental relationship. Wherever I go in body or thought, everywhere I meet God, and everywhere God meets me."

Throughout his entire diary, Father John constantly reminds us of God - that God is Self-Existent, of One Essence - as do the Church Fathers (for example St. Gregory of Nyssa). Namely as a Pure Being, God is Omnipresent, Omniscient, all-permeating, and all-filling. For this reason God is so near to the world and to people. "God is simply love." "The Lord in His infinite nature is by simplicity such a Being that He is all in the name Trinity or in the name, Lord, or in the name Jesus Christ."

If that is so, then in order for man to be in union with God it is necessary by His Grace to attain that perfect simplicity of goodness or holiness of love. And one "should believe simply, saying to oneself: I believe all this which is asked in simplicity of heart, and I ask all simply." "Love without reasoning: love is simple. Likewise believe and hope without reasoning. For faith and hope are also simple." "Truth is simple." Consequently from the thought about God there proceeds a general commandment of life, which is to be simple in everything and in particular in relation to people. "May simplicity go before you everywhere; especially be simple in your faith, hope, and love, for God is an Essence of Simplicity, a Unity that is worshiped everlastingly, and our soul is simple. The simplicity of our soul is hindered by our flesh, when we please it." "Endeavor to attain the simplicity of a child in your relation to people and in prayer to God. Simplicity is the greatest good and dignity of a person. God is completely simple, because He is perfectly spiritual and completely good. And let not your soul be divided into good and evil."

God is a Trinity in Unity. "God the Father is Life, God the Son is Life, and God the Holy Spirit is Life: the Holy Trinity is Life." "What a fullness of Infinite Life!" exclaims Father John, when speaking about the relationship of the three Persons in God, and then again in the same notes he repeats: "What a fullness of life," and about their unity, for the third time: "What a fullness of life!"

The fullness of divine life is reflected in the richness, the variety of life and of the created world, in the kindness of God, spread throughout the whole world. The world as the product of a Live, Wise God is full of life: everywhere and in all there is life: as in the whole, so in all parts. This is a real book from which one can study God, although not as clearly as from revelation. Before the world was created, only the infinite God of Life existed; when the world was created out of nothing, God, of course, did not become limited; this complete fullness of life, and His infinity remained with Him. The fullness of life and infinity were expressed in creatures that are alive, limited, and possess life, of which there are innumerably many.

However, the world is limited, and in its limitation serves as a support for living creatures, that they may not disappear into limitless space.

"Just as the soul supports the body, so does God uphold the whole universe, all the worlds, and yet is not bound by them; the soul is in all the body, and the Spirit of God is transcendent and fills all nature; only the soul is limited by the body, although not completely, because it is able to be everywhere; likewise the Spirit of God is not limited by the world, and is not contained by the world, as in a body."

In observing the world we are astounded by how generously, how bountifully the Creator has endowed His creations with capabilities, with art, delicate and beautiful forms, gave them creative capacity. "Wondrous are Thy works, O Lord! At every step, at every moment in life." "Involuntarily one becomes aroused to praise God when one sees the infinite variety of everything created on earth in the animal kingdom, and in the plant and inorganic kingdoms. What a wise arrangement in all, in that which is great and small. Involuntarily one praises God and says: Wondrous are Thy works, O Lord; in wisdom hast Thou made them all; glory to Thee, O Lord, Who hast made them all."

"Who is it that forms the flowers so wisely, so delicately, arranges so splendidly, gives form to the disordered, i.e., the shapeless, formless substances of the earth? Who gives it such wonderful form? O Creator, grant us the opportunity through flowers to embrace Thy wisdom, benevolence, and Thine almighty power."

"The Lord is the cause and everlasting support (strength) of my organic, physical life through the activity of the lungs, stomach, heart, veins, muscles, and spiritual-organic life through the mind, and thought, through the enlightenment of the heart by His Light."

And here again in the midst of ideas dealing with the fullness of life, the bountifulness, and wisdom of God, Father John gives a corresponding moral lesson.

"The Lord has complete consideration for nature created by Him, and for its laws, which are the product of His infinite, most perfect wisdom; and therefore He usually realizes His will through the means of nature and her laws, as, for example, when He punishes people, or blesses them." This is one deduction. The other: If the Lord is so generous a Creator, if there is no end to His goodness, if the earth by His will furnishes food and clothing in abundance for man, then "each Christian, especially a priest, should follow in example the goodness of the Lord, that everyone should be invited to dine at your table, the food is the Lord's. The miser is an enemy of the Lord."

From here comes the call towards the fullness of pastoral activity, from here comes the fullness of his personal pastoral work. As a pastor, he warns himself and his co-pastors of being one-sided in Christian effort. "It is not necessary to ask whether one should spread God's glory by writing, speaking, or by good deeds. It is obvious. This we are obliged to do according to our strength and our ability. Talents must be used in action. If you should stop to think of this simple matter, then the devil will try to suggest an absurdity... that you need only inner work." "A priest must also remain in the spiritual world, in the sphere of his flock, as the Sun in nature; he must be a light for all, the living, kind hearted soul of all." "My sweetest Saviour! Thou didst come to serve mankind; not in the temple only didst Thou preach the Word of Heavenly Truth, but wandering through cities, towns, Thou didst not shun anyone; Thou didst go into the homes of all, especially those in whom Thou didst foresee full repentance with Thy divine glance. Thou didst not sit at home, but had love for all. Grant us that we may show that love toward Thy people, that we pastors may not exclude ourselves from Thy sheep, in our homes, as in castles, or prisons, coming out only for service in the church, or for urgent call in their homes because of duty, mechanically repeating the same prayers. May our lips be opened in the spirit of faith and love in free conversation with our parishioners. May our Christian love spread and be strengthened towards spiritual children through attentive, free, fatherly discourse with them."

In the spirit of the ancient Fathers, Father John has recourse in examining for dissimilarity the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. He represents God the Father as Mind or Thought, God the Son as the Word of the Father, and God the Holy Spirit as the Divine Deed. "God is a Spirit... And in what way does a Spirit manifest Himself? By thought, word, and deed. For this reason, God as a Simple Being does not consist of a series or multiplicity of thoughts or multiplicity of words or creations, but He is all completely in one simple thought - God the Trinity, or in one simple word - Trinity..., but He is all, and all-existent, all-permeating, and all encompassing..."

In the unity of the Holy Trinity, an image is also given to us. As the Trinity, our God is One in Being - "so should we be One. As God is simple, so should we be simple, so simple as though we all were one person, one mind, one will, one heart, one goodness, without the slightest admixture of malice, in a word, one pure love, as God is Love."

Let us concentrate our attention on how Father John expresses his Christian teaching about God the Father. How often God the Father is presented as distant from the world! In philosophical religious teachings about God the Word, or Logos, it is explained in another sense, that God the Father, as the Absolute, is incommensurate with the relative world, and therefore cannot have direct contact with it, and consequently, is in need of an intercessor between Himself and the world, and that such an intercessor is God the Word, God the Son (Son of God). Such an outlook, incidentally, was expressed in the philosophical system of Vladimir Soloviev. This view penetrates often also into our common religious ideas: God the Father, living in unapproachable Light, has reserved the right for this same reason to be remote from this earthly world and from us people. In a similar manner, the thought of the remoteness of God the Father from people is felt in the Roman Catholic teaching about atonement (redemption) where the redemption of mankind with the Blood of the Son of God, is explained by the necessity of appeasing, satisfying God the Father for His being insulted through the sin of man.

Father John teaches an entirely different idea:

God, Father of the Word, is also our benevolent and loving Father. When saying 'The Lord's Prayer,' we must believe and remember that the Father in heaven never forgets and will not forget us, for what earthly father forgets or does not care for his children? Remember that our Heavenly Father constantly surrounds us with love and care, and not in vain is He called our Father - this is not a name without meaning and force, but a name with great significance and power." "Should we not recognize Him as all the more benevolent, because He gave...the greatest gift of His benevolence, wisdom, and omnipotence - by this is meant freedom..., not being shaken by the ingratitude of those who received the gift, in order that His goodness could shine brighter than the sun before everyone? And has He not shown by His deed His boundless love and unlimited wisdom by bestowing upon us freedom, when, after our fall into sinfulness, and our withdrawal from Him, and spiritual ruin, He sent into the world His Son, the Only-begotten One, in the likeness of perishable man, and gave Him to suffer and die for us?"

"Christian! Remember and constantly bear in mind and in your heart the great words of the 'Lord's Prayer': Our Father, Who art in the Heavens.' Remember Who our Father is. God is our Father, our Love: who are we? We are His children, and among ourselves, brothers; in what manner of love ought children to live among themselves, having such a Father? If you were children of Abraham you would have done the deeds of Abraham; what kinds of deeds must we do?" "Our life is that of love - yes, love. And where there is love, there is God, and where there is God, there is all good... And so with joy feed and delight everyone, please all and depend in all things upon the heavenly Father, the Father of mercies, and God of all consolation. Bring to your neighbor in sacrifice that which is dear to you..." And so, we see, Father John converts the fundamental dogmas into immediate moral admonitions; he shows that every truth of Faith contains in itself a moral purpose.

Father John, in his theology about the Father teaches, first of all, about divine thought. "From God's mind, from God's thought, proceeds every thought in the world. In general everywhere in the world we see the kingdom of thought, as in all the structure of the visible world, so also, in particular, on earth, in the rotation and life of the earthly planet, in the distribution of the elements of the world: air, water, fire, whereas other phenomena are distributed in all animals, in birds, fish, snakes, beasts, and in man, in their wise and purposeful formation, and in their capabilities, morals, habits; in plants, in their adaptation, in nutrition, and so on, everywhere we see the kingdom of thought, even in the inanimate stone and sand."

God's thought has its reflection in man's thought. "We are able to think on account of this, because there exists the Infinite Thought. We are able to breathe because there is boundless space with air. That is why pure thoughts dealing with any subject are called inspired. Our thought constantly flows under the condition of an Infinite Spirit's existence. That is why the Saviour says: - Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you...what ye shall speak. You see, thought and even word (inspiration) comes to us from an outside source; this takes place in a Grace-filled state and in case of need."

What kind of edification does Father John draw from his thinking on God's Thought? The reminder that we must avoid all kind of thought that is not true, fear lies, not to sin in thought, because false thoughts themselves draw us away from God, and incline us to surrender to the devil's power. Sins of thought in a Christian are not to be considered a small matter, because, according to St. Macarius of Egypt, all our pleasing of God consists of thoughts; for thoughts are the beginning: from them arise words and actions, words, because they give Grace to listeners, or are corrupted words and serve as a temptation to others; they corrupt the thoughts and hearts of others.

The second person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son, is the Hypostatic Word of the Father. This dogma gives Father John the inspiration to often express in his writings the power and action of every word, not only God's word but also man's. "The Word is the Creator and our God; every word of His is Truth and action. Such should our word also be, (for we are created in the image of God)." "The Word is the expression of truth, the very truth, the life, and the deed. The Word precedes every creature, everything, as the cause of existence, in the past, present, and future." "How much then must one cherish especially all that which comes forth from the Very Hypostatic Word, the Gospel words, the writings of the Church Fathers, the prayers." "Christian! cherish every word, be attentive to every word; be firm in word; be trusting toward every word of God, and the words of saintly persons, the words of life. Remember that the word is the beginning of life." "The word must be revered strongly because in one word there is the Omnipresent One, and One that fulfills all, one and undivided Lord,... in one name is He Himself, the Lord..." "Remember that in the very word is contained the possibility of action; only one must have strong faith in the power of the word, in its creative capacity. With the Lord the word and deed are inseparable. So ought it to be with us also, for we are images of the Word, in its creative capacity. With the Lord the word and deed are inseparable. So ought it to be with us also, for we are images of the Word..." "The word is power... And of people it is said: he has an extraordinary power of words. So you see, the word is power, spirit, life." "Every word, every kernel will bring you spiritual benefit. Who from among those who pray has not experienced this? Not in vain did the Saviour compare the seed with the word, and the heart of man with the earth." "One must believe that as the shadow follows the body, so action follows the word; as with the Lord, word and action are inseparable; for He speaks and it is; He orders and it is done... The trouble is that we are of little faith, and separate words from deeds, as body from soul, as form from content, as shadow from body."

It is evident that in the majority of thoughts expressed, Father John speaks about prayer, about the power of prayerful words spoken with faith.

In action not every word retains its power. Father John observes: "The word on the lips of some is spirit and life, and on the lips of others, dead alphabet (for example during prayer or sermon)." Finally, the word can be a negative force. "With the devil, who fell away from God, there remained only the shadow of a thought and word without truth, without the essence of a deed, a lie, a shadow; and as the true word being the image of God the Word, and proceeding from Him, is Life, so a false word from the devil, being his image, is death; a lie is inevitable death, for, naturally, that brings death to the soul which itself had fallen from life into death."

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is also called Hypostatic, i.e., Personal Wisdom of God. Why do we believe that the Wisdom of God has a Personal attribute? Father John answers: "How could God be without Wisdom, and not be Personal, how could God not be the Creature, how could He be without His own living self-existent Wisdom? Glance upon all in this world, how wonderful it all is!... Imagine how God, having created innumerable reasonable, personal, wise, living creatures, could not Himself generate from within Himself Personal Wisdom? Is this wise? Is this possible? Is this in conformity with the perfection of God? In God there must be the Hypostatic Wisdom, or the Hypostatic Word of the Father, equal as the life-creating Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son."

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, indivisible, "Within you, there is breath, material, impersonal in nature, but in God as Life Itself, breath is a Personal Spirit, indivisible, simple, that gives Life to everything." "You will ask further: Why is the third Person called Spirit, and why is He a separate Person, when God, even without Him, is Spirit? I answer: The Holy Spirit is called Spirit in relation to creatures: the Lord breathed with His Hypostatic Spirit, and there appeared, by the power of His Life-creating Spirit, an innumerable host of spirits: In the power of His Spirit lies their strength; He breathed with His Spirit into man's body: and now man became a living soul, and from this Breath, until now, people are born, and will be born until the end according to the commandment: increase and multiply. If the Lord created by His Spirit so many personal separate beings, then why is it impossible for the Holy Spirit Himself to be a Person, or a personal creative Being? If there are countless numbers of created personal spirits, then is God Himself to remain without Spirit, without His Independent, Hypostatic Personality?"

"The Holy Spirit, like air, is everywhere and penetrates all." "The Lord Jesus Christ Himself likens the Holy Spirit in His action to the substance of water (John 7:38-39), air, or wind (John 3:8)." "As the air in the room is identical with the outer air, comes from it, and necessarily presupposes the air spread out everywhere, so in like manner, our soul, the breath of the Spirit of God, presupposes the existence of the omnipresent, transcendent Spirit of God." It is the Spirit that quickeneth (John 6:63). "The life in creatures belongs to God, from the time of their creation, and to God the Son, their creator, bringing them from non-existence to existence... The Holy Spirit creates us in the womb of our mother; our spiritual wealth belongs to the Holy Spirit."

Our soul lives by the Holy Spirit, through Him we pray, through Him we become purified, through Him we save ourselves. "As breath is necessary for the body, and without breathing man cannot live, so without the Breath of the Holy Spirit the soul cannot live the true life. What the air is for the body, that the Holy Spirit is for the soul. Air is likened to the Spirit of God. The Spirit breathes wherever It wishes." "He who prays prays by the Holy Spirit." "Prayer is the breath of the soul, as air is the breath of the natural body. We breathe by the Holy Spirit. You cannot say a single word of prayer from your heart without the Holy Spirit."

"As in a conversation with people the sound-conveying medium between our words and the words of another is air, which is everywhere and fills all space, and through air the words reach the ear of another, and without air it would be impossible to speak and hear: so in a spiritual manner, in communication with spiritual beings the mediator is the Holy Spirit, omnipresent and transcendent."

"We are filled with One Spirit: Do you see how the Holy Spirit surrounds us like water and air on all sides?"

"For a long time I did not know with full clarity how necessary was the strengthening of our soul by the Holy Spirit. And now the Most Merciful One gave me the opportunity to find out how indispensable it is. Yes, it is necessary every minute, as is breathing, necessary at prayer, and throughout life. It is necessary that our heart rest on a rock. And that rock is the Holy Spirit."

"All upright people are filled by the One Divine Spirit, similarly as a sponge is saturated with water. The comforting Holy Spirit, filling the universe, penetrates through all the believing, humble, good, and simple souls of men, and living in them, revives and strengthens them; He becomes all for them: light, power, peace, joy, success in deeds, especially in an upright life - He is all goodness."

Thus we see that the dogma of the Holy Spirit in the thought of Father John is closely connected with life. The teaching about the Holy Spirit is at the same time teaching about the life of the world, about the source and nourishment of all uprightness and holiness.

Such is the teaching of Father John about the Holy Trinity. In God, the Triune Unity, is found all the fullness of life and the life of the world. The reflection of the attributes of God is represented by the universe, the material world, and in particular, man. From here, we will make a general deduction from the words of Father John: "In order to become pure images of the Holy Trinity, we must try to attain holiness in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Thought corresponds to God the Father, the word to the Son, and deeds to the Holy Spirit, the all active Creator."

"Your Lord is Love: love Him and in Him all people, as His children in Christ. Your Lord is Fire: do not be cold at heart, but burn with fire and love. Your Lord is Light: do not walk in the darkness of your mind without reason and understanding or without faith. Your Lord is a God of mercy and kindness: you also be a source of mercy and kindness to your neighbors. If you will be so, you will attain salvation with eternal glory."

Such should our life be, for we carry within ourselves the image of God.

But actually most of the time we live in doubts, lack of faith, in unbelief, having eyes and seeing not, having ears and hearing not, and having a hardened heart. "We notice within ourselves the struggle of faith and disbelief, of good and evil, the spirit of the Church against the spirit of the world. Do you know from whence this comes?" asks Father John, and he answers: "From the struggle of two opposing forces: the power of God, and the power of the devil. And I also feel within myself this struggle of two opposing forces. When I begin to pray, at times an evil force painfully depresses me and casts my heart down, that it may not be able to look up to God," writes Father John, in one of his comparatively early writings. The radiation of the evil forces of the devil is similar to poison that enters the body. The kingdom of life and the kingdom of death go together. And involuntarily the question arises: Why does the Lord allow the devil to exist, and even to act on good souls?

And in this Father John sees providential plans of God. "If you do not experience in yourself the influence of the evil spirit, you will not know and you will not value as you should the goodness shown to you by the benevolence of the Holy Spirit; not having known the spirit that destroys, you also will not know the Life-giving Spirit. Only because of contrary opposites of good and evil, of life and death, we understand one and the other... Glory to God, the Wise and All-Good, that He permits the spirit of evil and death to tempt us and cause us suffering. Otherwise, how could we begin to value the consolation of Grace, the consolation of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Life-giver!"

For this reason we have been given the Holy Church, Her Sacraments, and all of Her ordinances so that we might have the opportunity to remain under the constant influence of the all-conquering Grace of God.

The work of the Grace of God we see openly in life. If one had been proud, a lover of oneself, unkind, but became humble and gracious, he became so by the power of Grace. The unbeliever, a believer - by the power of Grace. The lover of money, no longer acquisitive, but honest and generous by the power of Grace. The glutton became moderate in eating from the conscious knowledge of high moral purpose, by the Grace of God. He who hated and was full of malice, a lover of his fellow man by the power of Grace. He who was cold toward God, toward the Church, was transformed, he became a fervent believer in God, by the act of Grace. "From this is is evident that many live without Grace, not knowing its importance and its need for themselves, and do not seek it... Many live in all kinds of abundance, and pleasure, but they have no Grace in their hearts, this most valuable treasure for the Christian without which the Christian cannot be a true Christian and inherit the kingdom of God."

"The sign of God's mercy and that of His Most Holy Mother of God toward us, after or during prayer, is peace within the heart, especially after the affect of some passion, which is the absence of peace of soul. By peace of soul and a certain holy inclination of the heart we can easily ascertain that our prayer is heard and the Grace asked for is received."

Take advantage then, Christian, of God's treasure of Grace! "When you pray to the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, the One God, do not seek Him outside yourself, but perceive Him within yourself as living in you, completely penetrating within you and knowing you. Know ye not that ye are temples of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Remember "that your soul is like some imprint of godliness and all the riches of the soul consist of God, as within a treasure (the treasure of Grace) from which we can draw every spiritual good, by the prayer of faith, and by patience, and by purifying oneself from all iniquity."

"As there is an overabundance of sources of water on earth, and all drink from them, come and draw freely, for the Lord is an ocean of spiritual waters; come and draw all the spiritual good with the dipper of true, firm, and unashamed faith. Only extend this hearty dipper and you will inevitably draw abundantly the water of life, the forgiveness of sins, and peace of conscience. But fear doubt; it deprives you of the means of drawing forth every mercy of God."

The waters from this source you will also find in communion with saints during prayer; they are in the graceful life of the Church. "The priesthood and in general, all the saints, are blessed water containers, from which the water of Grace is transmitted to other believers. Living waters will flow from the depths of rivers."

In such a manner Father John teaches us the fundamental truths of the Christian faith and life founded on these truths. The value of his theological teaching for us consists of the close connection between his theological thought, his words, and his life, and all his sanctified activity. The value is in this, that his personal life justified, proved, and realized his faith in action. "Experience!" - "Based on experience!" with this exclamation Father John often finishes his separate writings. "No matter how many times I prayed with faith, God always heard me and answered my prayers." What can be said stronger than these words?