The Christian world-concept not only does not oblige, but also it does not permit us to think, that the real is only the individual souls of people, that only they constitute the creation of God. Society and nature are indeed reality and are created by God. Society is not an human invention. Thus initially however, thus it has ontological roots, as also does the human person. And it is impossible to tear asunder the human person from society, just as it is impossible to separate society from the human person. The person and society are situated in interdependent life, they presuppose a single concrete purpose. The spiritual life of the person is reflected in the life of society. And society is a sort of spiritual organism, which is nourished by the life of persons and it nourishes them. The negation of the reality of society is nominalism. And in such form nominalism has a fatal consequence for Church consciousness, for an understanding of the nature of the Church. The Church is spiritual society and this society is imbued with ontological reality, it cannot be limited to a co operative of individual souls being saved. In the churchly society is realised the Kingdom of God, and not only individual souls are saved. When I say, that to be saved is possible only in the Church, I affirm the Sobornost’ [collective universality] of salvation, salvation in spiritual society and through spiritual society, salvation with my brethren in Christ and with all God’s creation, and I negate the individualistic understanding of salvation, salvation in isolation (save thyself, whosoever be able, force a way into the Heavenly Kingdom, as said a certain Orthodox), and I repudiate the egoism of salvation. Many think, that the interpretation of Christianity, as a religion of personal salvation, is primarily a churchly interpretation. But in actuality it collides headlong with the very idea of the Church and it subjects the reality of the Church to a nominalist degradation. If some of the more externalised opinions hold sway in the Orthodox world and certain hierarchs are esteemed as particularly churchly, then this does not signify however, that they are more churchly in depth, in the ontological sense of the word. At one time its was Arianism that held sway amongst the hierarchs of the East. Possibly, these opinions reflect an impairment of Christianity, an ossification within Christianity. In the world there would not have been such terrible catastrophes and upheavals, there would not have been such godlessness and belittling of spirit, had not Christianity become so unsoaring, dull, uncreative, if it had not ceased to inspire and direct the life of human society and culture, if it had not fenced in the human soul into a small corner, if conventional and external dogmatism and ritualism had not replaced the real existence of Christianity within life. And the future of human societies and cultures is dependent on this, whether Christianity receives the signification of creative and transfigurative life, and whether again within Christianity is the spiritual energy, capable to generate enthusiasm, and to summon us from decay to ascent.
The official people of the Church, the professionals of religion, tell us, that the matter of personal salvation is alone necessary, that creativity for this purpose is unnecessary and even harmful. Why then knowledge, why then science and art, why then inventions and discoveries, why then should there be societal truth, the creativity of a new and better life, when eternal destruction threatens me and eternal salvation is solely necessary for me. Such a sort of suppressive and even downright panicky religious consciousness and self-feelings cannot give justification for creativity. Nothing is needful for the matter of personal salvation of the soul. Knowledge by suchlike measure is unnecessary, just as art is unnecessary, economics is unnecessary, political sovereignty is unnecessary, and unnecessary is even the existence of nature, of God’s world. True, sometimes they tell us, that there is necessary the existence of sovereignty and under this in the form of autocratic monarchy, such that the whole of this is a religious system that was possible only thanks to the existence of an Orthodox monarchy, to which also was entrusted all the arrangement of life. But in the final analysis, it is necessary to acknowledge, that the sovereign realm was not only not necessary for my salvation, but quite harmful. Such a sort of religious consciousness is unable to give justification to any sort of matter in the world, or is able to do so only through inconsistency and by sufferance. There is a Buddhist tendency within Christianity. There remains only to go into the monastery. But the very existence of monasteries presupposes their being guarded by the civil order. This sort of consciousness is inclined to justify a petty bourgeois existence, humble and dispassionate, and to conjoin it in one system with a few monastic feats, but it can never justify creativity. The question needs to be put otherwise and Christianity not only permits, but also dictates for us to put the question otherwise. A simple baba, they tell us, is saved better, than is the philosopher, and for her salvation there is no need for learning, there is no need of culture, etc. But one might presumably doubt, that for God only the simple baba is needful, that by this is exhausted God’s plan about the world, God’s idea about the world. And indeed at present the simple baba is a myth, she has become nihilistic and atheistic. The philosopher and man of culture have become the believers. The crude, and fools, and even idiots can be saved in their own way, but presumably one might doubt, that in God’s idea about the world, that in the schema of God’s Kingdom, that it will be peopled exclusively by the crude, by fools and by idiots. Presumably one might think, no less transgressing humility for us, that God’s plan about the world is more lofty, more manifold and resplendent, that into it enters the positive plenitude of being, ontological perfection. The Apostle recommends us to be children at heart, but not in mind. And here the creativity of man, and learning, art, discoveries, the betterment of society, etc., etc., is necessary not for personal salvation, but for the realisation of God’s intent for the world and for mankind, for the transfiguration of the cosmos, for the Kingdom of God, into which enters all the fullness of being. Man is called to be a creator, a co-participant in God’s deed of world-creation and world-arrangement, and not only to be saved. And sometimes man is able in the name of creativity, to which he is called by God, to forego thinking about himself and his soul. Various gifts are given by God to people, and no one possesses the right to bury them in the ground, for these talents all need to be creatively fulfilled, manifest in the objective vocations of man. With great forcefulness about this speak both the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 12: 28) and the Apostle Peter (1 Pet. 4: 10). Such is God’s plan about man, that the nature of the human person is creative. The person is saved. But for this, that the personhood be saved, it is necessary that it be affirmed in its authentic nature. The authentic indeed nature of the person is in this, that it is the centre of creative energy. Outside of creativity there is no personhood. The creative person is saved for eternity. The affirmation in opposition to creativity is an affirmation of the salvation of emptiness, of non-being. There is inherent to man in his positive being a creative psychology. It can be suppressed and hidden, it can be revealed, but it ontologically inherent to man. The creative instinct in man is an unselfish instinct, and in it man forgets about himself, he emerges from himself. Scientific discoveries, technical inventions, artistic creativity, societal creativity can be needful for others and useful for utilitarian ends, but the creating itself is both unselfish and a renouncing of self. In this is the essence of the creative psychology. The psychology of creativity is very distinct from the psychology of humility and cannot be constructed upon it. Humility is more external a spiritual action, in which man is preoccupied about his soul, about self-overcoming, self-perfection, self-salvation. Creativity is a spiritual action, in which man forgets about himself, foregoes himself in the creative act, is absorbed by his subject. In creativity man tests out the condition of the extraordinary ascent of all his being. Creativity is always a tremour-shock, in which the everyday egoism of human life is surmounted. And man consents to perish his own soul in the name of creative activity. One is unable to make scientific discoveries, to philosophically contemplate the mysteries of being, to form artistic insights, to create social reforms merely in a condition of humility. Creativity presupposes another spiritual condition, not in opposition to humility, but qualitatively distinct from it, an other moment of spiritual life.
