The Church of Christ is God-manhood. The angelic principle is a principle intermediary betwixt God and the human, a principle passively-intermediary, transmissive of Divine energy, conductive of Divine grace, but not an active-creative principle. The active-creative principle was bestowed to mankind. But the sinful limitedness of mankind does not permit of the fullness of Christian truth. And the suppressive sovereignty of the angelic hierocratic principle is an indicator of the impotence of sinful mankind to express its creative nature, to accept Christianity in its fullness and wholeness. The way of salvation for sinful mankind obviates its necessity first of all in the angelic hierocratic principle. The way of creativity remains however as an autonomous human way, not sanctified and not justified, and man is left on his own.
The religious non-expression of the human principle, as an organic part of the life of God- manhood, the religious non-disclosure of the free vocation of man creates the dualism of Church and world, of Church and culture, the acute dualism of the sacral and the profane. For the believing Christian two lives are created, a life that is of a first and a second sort. And this dualism, this two-sidedness of life attains to an especial acuteness in the Christianity of the present time. In medieval Christianity there was its theocratic, hierocratic culture, to which all creativity of life was self-subordinated to the religious principle, conceived as the sovereignty of the angelic hierarchy over the human. In medieval culture and society there was the sacral, but the religious justification was conditionally-symbolic. Culture by its concept was angelic, and not human. The sovereignty of the angelic principle always leads to symbolism, to the conditional, sign reflection within the human world of the heavenly life without its real attainment, without the real transfiguration of human life. The present time has cast down the symbolic and completed the break. Man rebelled in the name of his freedom and went upon his own autonomous way. The nook of the soul remained for religion. They began to think of the Church differently. The Christian of the present time lives in two incongruent rhythms — in the Church and in the world, upon the pathways of salvation and upon the pathways of creativity. In the theocratic societies, in the theocratic cultures the human principle was subordinated, the freedom of man was not yet granted its consent to the existence of the Kingdom of God. In the humanistic societies and cultures of the present time the human principle has been torn asunder from God and from the efficacy of Divine grace. The conjoining of the Divine and the human has not been attained. The ways of creativity of the humanistic world were without God and against God. The drama of the present humanistic history is the drama of a deep tearing asunder of the way of creativity of life apart from the way of salvation, apart from God and from Divine grace. The dualism of Church and world realises suchlike forms of expression, which former sacral organic epochs did not know of. In the world has occurred tremendous creative development in science, in philosophy, in art, in state and social life, in the advances of the technical, in the moral attitudes of people, even in religious thought, in mystical frames of mind. All of us, not only non-believers, but also believing Christians, we all participate in this development of the world, this development of culture, and we devote to it a significant part of our time and effort. On Sunday we come into Church. Six days in the week we devote to our creative, constructive work. And our creative attitude towards life remains non-justified, non-sanctified, not co-dependent upon the religious principle of life. The old, the medieval theocratic hierocratic justification and sanctification of all the processes of life has already no power over us, it is deadened. The very believers, the selfsame Orthodox people participate in the non-justified and the non- sanctified life of the world, they subordinate themselves to the profane, the non-sacral science, to the profane non sacral economy, to the profane non-sacral law, to a lifestyle long since already bereft of sacral character. The believers, the Orthodox people live the church life in Church, they go on Sundays and feast days to the temple, they fast during Great Lent, they pray to God morning and evening, but they do not live church life in the world, in culture, in society. Their creativity, in political and economic life, in the sciences and the arts, in the inventions and the discoveries, in the everyday morality, it remains external to the Church and external to religiosity, it remains profane and worldly. This is altogether an other rhythm of life. A tempestuous creative development has transpired within the world, in culture. In the Church for a long time however a comparative state-cism has set in, as though petrified and ossified. The Church began to live exclusively as a guardian, a link with the past, i.e. it expressed but one side of churchly life. The Church hierarchy became hostile towards creativity, suspicious towards spiritual culture, it restrains man and fears his freedom, the ways of salvation are put opposite the ways of creativity. We are saved on one plane of existence and we fashion life on altogether an other plane of existence. And there remains always the danger, that on that plane on which we create, we shall perish and not be saved. And there is not any hope in this, that the unsustainable further dualism can be overcome through the subordination of all our life and all the creative impulses to the hierocratic principle, through a restoration of the theocratic in the old sense of the word. To the conditional symbolism of an hierocratic society, there is no turning back. This would be but a temporary reaction, rejecting creativity. The religious problem about man, about his freedom and creative vocation, has been posited in all its acuteness. And this is not only a problem of the world, a burdensome and irksome problem in contemporary culture, this is also a problem of the Church, a problem of Christianity, as the religion of God-manhood.
Thought at the present time has become subject to the dissecting influence of nominalism. In the consciousness of mankind, the ontological reality is decomposed and pulverised. This process also affects Church consciousness. And how often the most reactionary tendencies of Church thought have appropriated to themselves a nominalistic understanding of the Church. They have ceased to comprehend the Church integrally, as an universal spiritual organism, as ontological reality, as the Christified cosmos. There has prevailed a differentiated understanding of the Church, whether as institution, as community of believers, or as hierarchy and temple. The Church was transformed into a curative establishment, in which they deal with individual souls for healing. Thus is affirmed a Christian individualism, indifferent to the fate of human society and the world. The Church exists for the salvation of individual souls, but has no concern for the creative aspects of life, for the transfiguration of social and cosmic life. Suchlike a kind of exclusively monastic-ascetic Orthodoxy in Russia was only possible, because that the Church entrusted all the organisation of life to the state. Only the existence of the autocratic monarchy consecrated by the Church made possible such Orthodox individualism, such a separateness of Christianity from the life of the world. The Orthodox monarchy upheld and guarded the world, and churchly order was also maintained by it. The Church was indifferent not only to the arrangement of cultural and social life, but also to the arrangement of churchly life, to the life of the parishes, to the organisation of a non dependent churchly authority. The existence of an Orthodox autocratic monarchy is the obverse side of monastic-ascetic Orthodoxy, of perceiving Orthodoxy exclusively as a religion of personal salvation. And therefore the collapse of autocratic monarchy, of the Russian Orthodox tsardom, implies substantial modification in Church consciousness. Orthodoxy cannot remain predominantly monastic-ascetic. Christianity cannot be reduced to the individual salvation of separate souls. The Church inevitably turns itself to the life of society and the world, and inevitably it needs to participate in the formation of life. In the autocratic monarchy, as a type of Orthodox theocracy, it was the angelic, and not the human principle, that reigned. The tsar, in accord with this concept is in essence of the angelic, and not of the human order. The collapse of Orthodox theocracy ought to lead to the awakening of creative activism of a very Christian nation, an human activism, for the formation of a Christian society. This turnabout should begin first of all with this, that Orthodox people make themselves responsible for the fate of the Church in the world, in an historical actuality, that they be obliged to take upon themselves churchly formation, the life of the parishes, a concern about the temple, and organisation of churchly life, brotherhoods, etc. But this change of Orthodox psychology cannot be restricted to formation of churchly life, it extends also to all aspects of life. All of life ought to be thought of, as churchly life. In the Church all aspects of life enter in. A turnabout is inevitable for an integral comprehension of the Church, i.e. for the surmounting of Church nominalism and individualism. The understanding of Christianity exclusively as a religion of personal salvation, the constriction of the scope of the Church to something existing alongside with everything else, — when the Church is the posited fullness of being, would be also the source of the greatest disorders and catastrophes in the Christian world. The abasement of man, of his freedom and creative vocation, the inculcation of suchlike an understanding of Christianity, would also evoke the revolt and rebellion of man in the name of his freedom and his creativity. Upon that desolate spot, which would remain in the world to Christianity, the Anti-Christ would begin to build his own Babylonian tower and go far in its construction. Seducing the freedom of the human spirit, the freedom of human creativity would ultimately perish upon this path. The Church ought to guard itself from the evil elements of the world and the evil developments in it. But the genuine guarding of things holy is possible only under the admission of Christian creativity.
II.
