With Christ's coming among the Slavs the balance between good and evil
spirits was lost. Quite unlike Perun, Christ was a decisive fighter for
good. He showed only one--exclusively one--way, the narrow way leading to
the kingdom of good, which is the Kingdom of God, the Highest and the Best,
_Deus Optimus_, not only as a dream of Pagan humanity, but as a provable
reality. Although good seems very often to be a weak and losing party in
this world, men must not waver but always take cheerfully the part of good.
Evil spirits in men and around men are very powerful in this world. Christ
Himself was overwhelmed for a time by the evil spirits of this world. But
it was only for a time which is now over. It was at the new beginning of
the world, so to say, when He came to break the power of Pagan men, hold
the balance between the good and evil spirits and to stop the serving of
"two masters." The start was very unpromising; He was trodden down, but He
got up and proved Himself the victor. He came now as a victor to the Slavs
to make new armies of men, who would consent to undertake His burden, and
to go His exclusive way of good, worshipping and serving only one God, His
Father and the Father of all men. He came claiming everyone, telling each
one "not to be ashamed"--as it is wonderfully expressed in the English
Baptism formula--"manfully to fight under His banner, against sin, the
world, and the devil, and to continue to be Christ's faithful soldier and
servant unto his life's end."
Tolstoi exalted only Christ's Sermon on the Mount, _i.e.,_ only Christ's
teaching, or part of Christ's teaching. The Orthodox Church exalted Christ
himself, as an exceptional, dramatic Person, suffering for good; as a
divine hero, fighting against all the evil powers of the world. A teaching
or a life drama--_i.e.,_ Tolstoi or Orthodoxy! The Church thought: there is
something greater than Christ's words, that is Christ Himself. His words
are extraordinary, it is true, no man spoke as He, but His person and His
life were more extraordinary still. Thousands of martyrs died for _Him_,
not for the _Sermon on the Mount_. His words died with His death and came
to life again only with His resurrection. The fate of His words was quite
dependent on the fate of His person. Consequently His words have been only
a shadow of His personal drama, only an inadequate expression of His
individuality and His world mission, only the secondary fascination for the
coming generation. He himself was the essence of the human drama; He
himself--the essence of God and Man; He himself--the incarnated good and
the standard of the good in the world's history. He is incomparably better
than Zeus, Jupiter, Wothan or Perun, because He is a reality, a divine
reality among men.
The "Petrified" Church.
So Professor Harnack from Berlin called the Orthodox Church of the East. I
know his reasons for that very well. Comparing the unchangeable image of
Christ, fixed in the East once for all, with the confusing thousand
_opinions_ of Christ in Protestant Germany, he was quite justified in
calling our Church by a striking name, so differentiating her from his own.
I am glad that he invented the name "petrified." With the proud spirit of a
Protestant scientist, I wonder why He did not invent a worse name for
Eastern Orthodoxy. I wonder much more that Professor Harnack, one of the
chief representatives of German Christianity, omitted to see how every
hollow that he and his colleagues made in traditional Christianity in
Germany was at once filled with the all-conquering Nietzscheanism. And I
wonder, lastly, whether he is now aware that in the nineteen hundred and
fourteenth year of our Lord, when he and other destroyers of the Bible, who
proclaimed Christ a dreamy maniac, clothed Christianity in rags,
Nietzscheanism grew up the real religion of the German race.
What is the fact about the "petrified" Church? If "petrified" means intact,
or whole, or undestroyed or living always in the same dress, but still
living, then the famous Professor may be right. Yet this petrified Church
has always come victorious out of any test to which she has been put. The
Christian Church is always on trial, and I think she is never so much
Christian as when she is being tested. She does not shine or develop or
make progress otherwise than through hard tests. Christianity is founded
upon a drama and not upon a science; therefore its growth and development
are dramatic and not scientific. Let us take an example. Eastern Orthodoxy
was put to the test for centuries to fight for its existence and its ideals
against the ruling Islam. Roman Catholicism was put to a similar test in
Spain. German Protestantism was put to the test of German science. What
happened? Islam was defeated in Russia and in the Balkans, not only
physically, but morally and intellectually. The epoch of the catacombs and
the bloody days of Nero and Diocletian have been repeated once more in the
Balkans, in Russia, and are still being experienced in Armenia and Asia
Minor. The killed and martyred kings, princes, bishops, priests and laymen
from these countries will not be ashamed before the martyrs from the
Coliseum. Orthodox Christianity stood the test very well. It saved itself;
it gave the inspiration for resistance; it showed itself superior even
afterwards when the enslaved countries were liberated. Holy Russia counts
her greatness from the time when she got rid of Islam. During the five
years of their freedom Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria built more than the
Turks built during 500 years of Turkish rule.
Roman Catholicism in Spain came through its test very badly. Before the
Islamic invasion, and after it for a long time, the Christian population
showed itself inferior to the Moors, in work, in justice, in progress. But
to the honour of Roman Catholicism I must say that it stood the test very
well in Croatia and in Hungary in its struggle against Islam. German
cathedral Protestantism failed in its test. It is destroyed as a religion,
it exists only as an archival science. It ceased to be what Christianity
really sought to be--a drama; it is transformed into an indifferent
scientific medium for reading, exploring, classifying, comparing,
criticising. It is no more a living, dramatic being--no more the serving,
ruling and suffering Christ. There is very little heroic or divine in it!
Why not then worship Wothan again instead of Christ?
And Anglicanism? It had the worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort, quiet
business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The English
Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses of life
under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only if the
British Empire is compared with an antique Pagan Empire. Where in this
Empire is there a Lucullus or a Caracalla? The astonishing luxury, the
bestial, insatiable passions? Or the furious competitions in petty things
with which the social life of Rome was daily intoxicated? Yet English
Christianity is neither so dramatic and full of contrasts as Dante's
Catholicism, nor so vibrating a lyric as Dostojevsky's Orthodoxy, but
rather a quiet, smooth epic like Milton's poetry.