THE VICTORY OF THE CHURCH
WHAT IS THE CHURCH?
What is the Church, psychologically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A school of the Christian spirit. That is her first task in the
world.
2. She is the Body of Christ. That is her official and physical
determination--her firm, her name.
3. She is the living Christ Himself, i.e. Christ's body (consisting of
all the human bodies inside the Church organisation), and Christ's
spirit (filling all the human bodies inside the Church). That is her
ideal, her end, her Horeb.
What is the Church, sociologically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A Theocracy. That is her general virtue, which she shares with all
the religions in history.
2. She is a Christocracy. God is the abstract Ruler of Humanity, but
Christ is the pragmatic God, leading, enlightening, encouraging and
inspiring Humanity. That is the Church's special charter, special way,
different from the charters and ways of other religions.
She is a Sanctocracy. The saints ought to lead mankind--not the great
men of the world, but the saints. But when all men become saintly, no
special leaders will be needed: no authority, no state, no law, no
punishment. All men will do their over-duty, and all will be happy in
their neighbour's happiness. The fight for right is an inferior stage in
human history. It is a savage fight. But there will come a fight for
over-duty. It will be a smiling, pleasant fight.
What is the Church, historically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A heresy regarding Judaism and Paganism, a real, deep heresy. Not so
deep was the outward gulf as the inward. Outwardly, this heresy made a
thousand compromises with Judaism and Paganism. That did not matter. But
inwardly it was a new, an absolutely new and most uncompromising spirit
with anything in the world.
2. She was a heresy regarding the whole practical life of mankind:
politics, society, art, war, education, nationalism, imperialism,
science. She meant the most obstinate conflict between what exists and
what ought to exist. Therefore her martyrdom is quite comprehensible.
3. She was built up and applied to human life by the Graeco-Hebrew
spirit. Yet she has become the European religion, par excellence, almost
exclusively European. That is her historical development and fate.
Europe's acceptance of Christianity is nominally definite. No other
Asiatic religion (all great religions are Asiatic) has had any notable
success in Europe. Yet Europe's mission of Christianity has been no
success. St Paul has done more for the Christian mission than the whole
of modern Europe. Historically, Christianity has been and has remained
until now the religion of the European race only.
What is the Church viewed from the point of view of the world war?
The Church is:
1. The only keeper of the secret of the present war. The present war is
the result of the de-christianisation of Europe, and de-christianisation
of Europe's Church. The Church only is conscious of this fact and keeps
silent. She has no courage to accuse because she has no courage to
self-accuse.
2. She is the only thing which makes European civilisation not lower
than the civilisation of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and China. The ruins of
those ancient civilisations are more magnificent than the actual
constructions of Europe. But the Church gives Europe a special nimbus
and a special excellency over those ancient worlds. Secular Europe does
not know that, but the Church knows it and keeps silent. She cannot
announce it because she has sinned. Her sins keep her tongue-tied.
3. Nothing is sure to survive the present catastrophe of Europe, but the
Christian Church. None of the European potencies has the idea for the
reconstruction of the world, for durable and Godlike world-peace, but
the Church.
Socialism, Masonry, Philanthropy, Rousseauism,--all these are only small
units of the great treasury that the Christian Church hides under her
clouds and dust of errors and miseries. All non-Christian systems and
schemes mean, my own interest first and then thine, or first I and my
nation and my race, and then thou and thy nation and thy race, or, my
happiness and, along with it, thy happiness. The Christian idea hidden
in the Church is a revolutionary one, the most revolutionary idea in the
world. The Christian idea is, thou and thy nation and thy race first,
and then me and my nation and my race; or, thy happiness first and in
thy happiness my happiness. Saintliness above everything, the true
saintliness including goodness and sacrifice. That is the fundamental
idea of the Church. That is the only constructive, Godlike treasury that
Europe still possesses, the sleeping, never used, never tried treasury.
The Church is the keeper of this treasury. This treasury must survive
the old Europe and the old Church, the de-christianised Europe and the
de-christianised Church.
THE POVERTY OF EUROPEAN CIVILISATION
The poverty of European civilisation has been revealed by this war. The
ugly nakedness of Europe has brought to shame all those who used to bow
before Europe's mask. It was a silken shining mask hiding the inner
ugliness and poverty of Europe. The mask was called: culture,
civilisation, progress, modernism. All was only vanitas vanitatum and
povertas povertatum. When the soul fled away, what remained was empty,
ugly and dangerous. When religion plunged into impotence, then:
Science became a mask of pride.
Art--a mask of vanity.
Politics--a mask of selfishness.
Laws--a mask of greediness.
Theology--a mask of scepticism.
Technical knowledge--a poor surrogate for spirituality.
Journalism--a desperate surrogate for literature.
Literature--a sick nostalgy and a nonsense, a dwarf-acrobacy.
Civilisation--a pretext for imperialism.
Fight for right--an atavistic formula of the primitive creeds.
Morals--the most controversial matter.
Individualism--the second name for egoism and egotism.
Christ--a banished beggar looking for a shelter, while in the royal and
pharisaic palaces lived: Machiavelli, the atheist; Napoleon, the
atheist; Marx, the atheist; and Nietsche, the atheist, imperially ruling
Europe's rulers.
The spirit was wrong and everything became wrong. The spirit of any
civilisation is inspired by its religion, but the spirit of modern
Europe was not inspired by Europe's religion at all. A terrific effort
was made in many quarters to liberate Europe from the spirit of her
religion. The effort-makers forgot one thing, i.e. that no civilisation
ever was liberated from religion and still lived. Whenever this
liberation seemed to be fulfilled, the respective civilisation decayed
and died out, leaving behind barbaric materialism in towns and
superstitions in villages. Europe had to live with Christianity, or to
die in barbaric materialism and superstitions without it. The way to
death was chosen. From Continental Europe first the infection came to
the whole white race. It was there that the dangerous formula was
pointed out: "Beyond good and evil." Other parts of the white world
followed slowly, taking first the path between Good and Evil. Good was
changed for Power. Evil was explained away as Biological Necessity. The
Christian religion, which inspired the greatest things that Europe ever
possessed in every point of human activity, was degraded by means of new
watchwords; individualism, liberalism, conservatism, nationalism,
imperialism, secularism, which in essence meant nothing out
de-christianisation of the European society, or, in other words,
emptiness of European civilisation. Europe abandoned the greatest things
she possessed and clung to the lower and lowest ones. The greatest thing
was--Christ.
As you cannot imagine Arabic civilisation in Spain without Islam, or
India's civilisation without Hinduism, or Rome without the Roman
Pantheon, so you cannot imagine Europe's civilisation without Christ.
Yet some people thought that Christ was not so essentially needed for
Europe, and behaved accordingly without Him or against Him. Christ was
Europe's God. When this God was banished (from politics, art, science,
social life, business, education), everybody consequently asked for a
God, and everybody thought himself to be a god, and in truth there it
failed, not on theories in Europe proclaiming, openly or disguisedly,
everyone a god. So the godless Europe became full of gods!
Being de-christianised, Europe still thought to be civilised. In reality
she was a poor valley full of dry bones. The only thing she had to boast
of was her material power. By material power only she impressed and
frightened the unchristian (but not antichristian) countries of Central
and Eastern Asia, and depraved the rustic tribes in Africa and
elsewhere. She went to conquer not by God or for God, but by material
power and for material pleasure. Her spirituality did not astonish any
of the peoples on earth. Her materialism astonished all of them. Her
inner poverty was seen by India, China, Japan, and partly by Russia.
What an amazing poverty! She gained the whole world, and when she looked
inside herself she could not find her soul. Where has fled Europe's
soul? The present war will give the answer. It is not a war to destroy
the world but to show Europe's poverty and to bring back her soul. It
will last--this war--as long as Europe remains soulless, Godless,
Christless. It will stop when Europe gets the vision of her soul, her
only God, her only wealth.
THE CHRISTIANISATION OF THE CHURCH
The Church must first awaken out of her sleep and her European
emptiness, and then Europe will come again to life. The Church has
failed, not because she was not Europeanised, but just because she was
too much Europeanised. Instead of inspiring Europe she was inspired by
Europe, i.e. emptied by the empty Europe. The soul obeyed the body and
became the body itself. All the secular watchwords entered the Church
and the Church watchwords were eclipsed. Liberalism, conservatism,
ceremonialism, right, nationalism, imperialism, law, democracy,
autocracy, republicanism, socialism, scientific criticism, and similar
things have filled the Christian theology, Christian service, Christian
pulpits as the Christian Gospel. In reality the Christian gospel has
been as different from all these worldly ideas and temporal forms as
heaven is different from earth. For all these ideas or forms were
earthly, bodily, dustly--a convulsive attempt to change unhappiness for
happiness through the changing of institutions. The Church ought to have
been indifferent towards them, pointing always her principal idea,
embodied in Christ. And her principal idea meant never a change of
external things, of institutions, but a change of spirit. All the ideas
named were secular precepts to cure the world's evil, the very poor
drugs to heal the sick Europe outside of the Church and without the
Church.
Yet the Church only possessed the true remedy, although she became
forgetful of it, because she herself got sick, and instead of giving the
world the necessary remedy she looked about to take it from the world.
Weakened in her position in the world and forgetful of her external
value, the Church, or some parts or parties of the Church, made even
coquetry with the current and transitory potencies in order to make her
position stronger. Yet the fact stood in history as big as a mountain
that the Church always failed when making concessions of her spirit to
any temporary power, and when not making concessions as to the visible
forms and transitory shapes of human societies.
Neither Ritualism nor Liberalism helps anything without the true
Christian spirit. The modern Ritualism and Liberalism are absolutely
equally worthless from the Christian point of view, being so hostile to
each other as they are, filled with the unclean spirit of hatred,
unforgiveness, despising and even persecuting each other. They are
equally unchristian and even antichristian. Measured by the mildest
measure they are a new edition of the Judaistic Pharisaism and
Sadduceeism. The Ritualists cling to their ritual, the Liberals cling to
their protest against the Ritualists. But the true spirit by which both
of them move and act and write and speak is the unclean spirit of hatred
and despite of each other, the very spirit which excludes them both from
communion with Christ and the saints. The Church has been equally
de-christianised by Ritualists and Liberals, by Conservatives and
Modernists, by bowers and by talkers. The Church must be now
re-christianised amongst all of them and through all of them.
Let the Church be the Church, i.e. the community of the saints. Let the
world know that the Church's mission on earth is not to accumulate
wealth, or to gain political power or knowledge, or to cling to this
institution or to that, but to cleanse mankind from its unclean, evil
spirits, and to fill it with the spirit of saintliness. Let the Church
first change her spirit and then urge the whole of mankind to change
theirs.
Let the Ritualists know that however devout they might be, still they
can call the Protestants their brothers. The most devout have been often
killers of their neighbours and killers of Christ.
Let the learned doctors of Protestantism think that however learned they
might be, still they are foolish and ignorant enough to be
self-satisfied. It is doubtful whether the most elaborate sermon of a
Protestant doctor smells more beautifully than incense. The most learned
theologians in Germany and elsewhere have whole-heartedly supported the
criminal enterprise of the warlike and criminal scientia militans. The
deepest learning and the meanest spirit have often shown in history a
very brotherly alliance. Christianity is not that.
Let the Pope be congratulated for his tenacious keeping of the idea of
Theocracy. But let him consider this idea only as the starting-point in
the social science of the Church. His Theocracy has been refused because
it was not at the same time Christocracy and Sanctocracy. The saints in
Christ are alone infallible. Let the Vatican be filled with saints, and
infallibility then will not need to be preached and ordered but only to
be silently shown. Nobody believes infallibility upon authority, but
everyone will accept it upon Saintliness.
The way of authority is a fallible way.
The way of knowledge is quite as fallible.
But the way of saintliness is infallible.
Every spirit is fallible but the spirit of saintless. The Church is
infallible not by any talisman but by her saintliness. The Bishop of
Rome or of Canterbury will be infallible only if they are saints. The
saints are detached from everything and attached to Christ, so that
Christ incarnates His spirit in them. Not we, but Christ in us, is
infallible.
Let the people of the Eastern Church stick to their Christian ideal of
saintliness. Their interpretation of the Christian spirit may be the
best and truest. Yet the ideal must become flesh. Let them not be proud
of their not having pride, and exclusive because God chose them to
understand the bottomless deepness of the esoteric Christianity. By
pride towards the proud and by exclusiveness they may spoil and darken
their ideals and remain in the dark.
Let all the Churches feel their unity in the ideal spirit of
saintliness. But if that is difficult for them, let them first feel
their unity in sinfulness, in committed sins and crimes, in their
nakedness and poverty. Just to start with, this first step seems
absolutely necessary. Never any great saint became saintly unless he
first thought himself equal in impurity and sinfulness with all other
human beings. The Churches must go the way of the saints. Their way is
the only infallible one.
THE ONLY NECESSARY EXCLUSIVENESS OF THE CHURCH
When you deeply search in history about the causes of the strength of
the primitive Church and of the weakness and decay of the modern Church,
you will come to a very clear and simple conclusion.
1. The primitive Church was inclusive as to its forms, but exclusive as
to its spirit.
2. The modern Church has been exclusive as to its forms, but inclusive
as to its spirit.
The primitive Church was very puritanic concerning the Christian spirit.
She was not particular as to the vessels in which to pour the new wine,
but she was extremely particular as to the wine itself. She borrowed the
vessels in Judæa, Alexandria, Athens, Rome, but she never borrowed wine.
The Christian spirit and the pagan spirit were just like two opposite
poles, like white and black, or day and night. The Church was conscious
of it, and jealously watchful that no drop of any foreign spirit should
be mixed with the precious spirit of the New Gospel. There existed no
thought of compromise, and no idea of inclusiveness whatever regarding
the spirit. The terrific conflict of Christianity and Paganism through
centuries sprang from the irreconcilability of two different spirits.
Were the Church as inclusive as to the spirit as she was to forms,
doctrines, customs and worships, conflicts never would arise--but then
neither would Christianity arise.
The modern Church is particular as to its institutions, but not
particular at all as to its spirit. The Roman Emperors never would
persecute the modern Church, for they would easily recognise their own
spirit included in her. Nor would the Pharaohs from Egypt persecute
modern Christianity. Nor would Areopagus or Akropolis be puzzled so much
had St Paul preached to them the modern European Christianity with its
complicated spirit of all kinds of compromises with Heaven and Hell,
compromise with the State, Plutocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism,
Conquest, War, Diplomacy, Secular Philosophy, Secular Science, Agnostic
Parliaments, Tribal Chauvinism, Education, Officialism, Bureaucracy,
etc., etc. All these things have their own spirit, and every such spirit
is partly or wholly included in the spirit of the Church, i.e. of modern
Christianity. None of the Christian Churches of our time makes an
exception as to this inclusiveness of all kinds of spirits. Even
Protestantism, which claims the simplicity of its Christian ritual and
administration, represents a lamentable mosaic of spirits gathered from
all the pagan corners of secular Europe and mixed up with the Christian
wine in the same barrel.
The Church of the East excommunicated thousands of those who crossed
themselves with two fingers instead of using three fingers. The Church
of the West burnt thousands of those who did not recognise the papal
organisation of the Church as the only ark of salvation. Yet there is
rarely to be found in the Church annals an excommunication on the ground
of chauvinism or brutal egoism. No one of the world conquerors--neither
Napoleon nor Kaiser William--have been excommunicated by the Church. It
signifies an extreme decadence of the Church. And this decadence
penetrates and dominates our own time. Speaking on the reunion of the
Churches the peoples of the East are anxious to know--not whether the
Church of the West has preserved the unmixed Christian spirit in its
integrity, but whether this Church still keeps Filioque as a dogma, and
whether she has ikons, and whether she allows eggs and milk in Lent. And
the people of the West are anxious to know whether the Eastern Church
has a screen quite different from their own screen at the altar, and
whether she has been always tenaciously exclusive in teaching, worship
and organisation. Who of us and of you asks about the integrity of the
Christian spirit? If St Paul were amongst us he would ridicule our
controversies on Filioque and all the trifles concerning Church
organisation and the external expressions of Christianity. He would ask:
What happened with the spirit he preached? What happened with this
spirit which excommunicated de facto the Jewish narrow Patriotism and
the Roman Imperialism? Have we still this exclusive spirit which moved
the world effecting the greatest revolution in History? I am sure he
would have to repeat with good reasons to every Church and to everyone
of us: "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."
Well, we must come again to this source of Christian strength and
greatness, which is Christ's spirit. A new revival, yea, regeneration of
Christianity, could be possible only in a united Christian Church; and
the union of the Church is possible only upon the ground of the
primitive Church, which was inclusive in teaching, worship and
organisation, but exclusive in spirit. On the day when we all exclude
from ourselves the Jewish and Greek and Roman spirit, and retain only
the pure Christian spirit, we shall be at once ready to include each
other's Church into one body, into one Christianity. We must be clear
about it, and we must confess that the divisions of the church are due
to the invasion of a foreign spirit, an unclean spirit, into the Church.
When the Church cleanses herself from this foreign unclean spirit she
will be victorious over herself, and from this victory to the ultimate
victory of Christianity over our planet will be a very short distance.
ECCLESIA TRIUMPHANS
How can the church get her past strength again and triumph over the evil
inside and outside her walls?
If she were united she could get it by waiting for the ruin of
Europe--i.e. of a house which is divided in itself--which is not very
far off. But she the Church--is divided too. She is fighting with and
for the European parties, and against herself. Consequently, in waiting
for the ruin of Europe she is waiting for her own ruin. Therefore she
must make up her mind lest it is too late. Horribile dictu--she must
start a dramatic movement in order to get her soul back.
First of all she must become again a heresy towards Europe and European
secular, antidivine civilisation, just as she was a heresy towards the
theocratic Israel and semi-theocratic Greece and Rome. Theoretically,
she must stick to Theocracy, historically, to Christocracy, and
practically to Sanctocracy. She must loose herself from all the chains
binding her either to the chariot of any dynasty or of any oligarch or
president, or whatever political denomination it may be, and insist upon
the Holy Wisdom to lead humanity. It ought to be absolutely indifferent
to the Church what political denomination, or social creed, or
institutional shape a human society shall have as long as this is
founded upon any other ideal but saintliness. The Church ought to know
only two denominations--politics and social life, inter-human as well as
international and inter racial-racial relations in trade and business,
in education and family life--i.e. saintliness and unsaintliness. If you
ask what saintliness ought to mean, Christianity has not to argue but to
show you the saintliness in the flesh. Christ the saintly Lord, St Paul
and St John, Polycarp and Leo, Patrick and Francis, Sergius and Zosim,
St Theresa and hundreds of other saints. And if somebody thinks still
that a few thousands of Christian saints are not a sufficient argument
to show that saintliness is practicable, then the Church has still not
to give her ideal up and to take as her ideal thousands of great and
small Napoleons and Bismarcks, and Goethes and Spencers, or Medics and
Cromwells or Kaisers and Kings--no, in the latter case it would be much
nicer for the Church to point out the saintly men outside of Christian
walls, like St Hermes and St Pythagoras, or St Krishna and St Buddha, or
St Lao-Tse and St Confucius, or St Zoroaster and St Abu-Bekr. Better
even is unbaptised saintliness than baptised earthliness.
Saintliness includes goodness and sacrifice, and excludes all the
earthly impure spirits of selfishness, pride, quarrels and conquests.
Therefore, when the Church returns to her fundamental ideal, she will
return to her elementary simplicity in which she was so powerful as to
move mountains and empires and hearts at the beginning of her history.
That is what the world needs now just as much as it needs air and
light, i.e. an elementary spiritual power by which it could be moved,
cleared up, purified and brought out of its chaos to a solid and
beautiful construction.
HOLY CHURCH IN HOLY EUROPE
Europe has been eclipsed because her Church--her soul--has been
eclipsed; the Church has been eclipsed because her principal ideal has
been eclipsed. The principal ideal of the Church is saintliness. This
ideal, plunged down into darkness like a sun into ashes, must come out
again to illuminate the Church and Europe. Europe has tried all the ways
but the way of the Church, the European Church has tried all the ways
but the way of Christ. Well, then, Europe must try the only way left,
which is saintliness. The Church must give an example to Europe.
Europe has been materialistic, heroic, scientific, imperialistic,
technical, secular. At last she has to be holy. Whatever she has been,
she has been unhappy and restless, and brutal and criminal, unjust and
gluttonous. Soldiers and traders, despots and robbers, popes and kings,
gluttons and harlots, have ruled Europe, but not yet the saints, the
holy wizards. The Church's duty has been to provide Europe with such
holy wizards. She has failed because she has been obscured by Europe, as
a fine soul often is obscured by a heavy and greedy body. The body, one
thought, the soul, another, until their thought became one and the same,
i.e. the bodily thought. Now, after a bitter experience, the soul must
come to its rights. Europe and Europe's Church have not henceforth to
think two different thoughts, but one and the same, and this one thought
has not to be a bodily one but a spiritual one. The aim of the Church as
well as of Europe has to be God, Christ, saintliness. If this thing is
given to the Church and Europe, everything else will be easily given. A
Holy Church in Holy Europe!
A holy Europe only can be a missionary Europe. No other mission has
Europe on other continents but a Christian one. It was an illusion to
speak about Europe's mission in the wide world without Christ. Well, but
only a Christlike people can be a missionary of Christ. How could an
unholy Europe preach the Holy One?
Do you think that the Arabs, who gave Europe knowledge, are expecting
from Europe knowledge? No, they expect Europe's goodwill.
Or do you think that India, whose history is a history of saints, is
anxious to accept German materialistic science, individual philosophy,
and a destructive and shallow theology? No, they expect from Europe more
saintliness than they have had in their history. And that is just very
difficult for Europe to give them.
Or do you think that Chino-Japanese civilisation has anything worth
mentioning to borrow from Europe but Christian ideals? No, nothing that
could make them happier than they have been.
Well then, let Europe kill her pride and self-conceit in this war and
become humble and meek. The Church ought to give an example to secular
Europe: an example of humility, goodness, sacrifice--saintliness.
But which of the Churches ought to give this example for the salvation
of Europe and of the world? Yours, if you like. Why not just your
Anglican Church? But whichever undertakes to lead the way will be the
most glorious Church. For she will lead the whole Church and through the
Church Europe and through Europe the whole world to holiness and
victory, to God and His Kingdom.