Not all creativity is good. There can be an evil creativity. It is possible to create not only in the name of God, but also in the name of the devil. But therein particularly it should be impossible to give up creativity to the devil, to the Anti-Christ. The Anti-Christ with great energy shews forth his pseudo-creativity. And if there will not be a Christian creativity and a Christian organisation of life, then the anti-Christian and the Anti-Christ’s creativity and organisation will usurp all more and more territory, to triumph in all the spheres of life. But for the work of Christ in the world it is necessary to battle outwards as much as possible for greater territories of being, it is necessary to cede as little as possible to the Anti-Christ and his work in the world. Withdrawing from the world, negating creativity in the world, ye hand over the fate of the world to the Anti-Christ. If we as Christians will not create life in true freedom and brotherhood of peoples and nations, then the Anti-Christ by falsehood will do this. The dualistic divide between a personal spiritual disposition with its morality, for which Christianity demands asceticism, denial, sacrifice and love, — and the disposition and morality of a societal, creative governance, economy, etc., for which Christianity permits of attachments to material goods, the cult of ownership and the thirst for wealth, of rivalry and competition, of the will to power, etc. — can no longer exist. Christian consciousness cannot permit, that society should be left on its own, which it acknowledges as defective and sinful. Christian renewal presupposes a new spiritual-societal creativity, the creation of a real Christian society, and not a conventionally-symbolic governance. It is impossible to tolerate further the conventional lie within Christianity. Anti-Christian socialism triumphs, because Christianity does not resolve the social question. Anti-Christian gnosticism triumphs, because Christianity does not reveal its own Christian gnosis. And so on in everything. We draw nigh to the final frontier. A secular, humanistic, balanced culture becomes all less and less possible. No one believes anymore in abstract culture. Everywhere man stands afront a choice. The world is divided up into opposing principles. It is impossible for everything to transpire further such, as has transpired in recent history. And together with this is the impossibility to return to the old medievalism. The problem of creativity, the problem of Christian culture and society is insoluble by the churchly-hierocratic. This is a problem of a religious sanctification of the human principle, and not the restoration of governance of the angelic principle. Creativity is a sphere of human freedom, full of copiously-abundant love towards God, the world and man. To lead a way out from the crisis of the world and the crisis of Christianity is possible neither by the principles of recent history, nor by the principles of the old Middle Ages, but only by the principles of a new Middle Ages. Christian creativity will be a deed of monasticism in the world. The religious crisis of our epoch is bound up with this, that the churchly consciousness is impaired, it has not the comprehension of fullness. And sooner or later this fullness ought to be conceived of and ought to be revealed, that there is a positive creative development in the world, and in culture it would be a revealing of human freedom in the Church, it would be a disclosure of the life of mankind in the Church, i.e. it would be subconsciously churchly. The creativity of man in the world would be the life of the very Church, as God-manhood. This does not at all mean, that all creativity and creating by man in the new history would be subconsciously churchly. This process would be twofold, in it would be readied the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of Anti-Christ. In humanism also there was a great lie, a revolt against God, it readied the destruction of man and the extinction of being. But it was also a positive searching out of human freedom, it was a disclosure of the creative powers of man. The further creative process in mankind cannot remain neutral, it ought to become positive-churchly, to be conscious of itself, or ultimately it will become anti churchly, anti-Christian, satanic. In the world, in culture there ought to be effected a real-ontologic separation, not formal and external-churchly, but innerly-spiritual and ontologically-churchly. In this is the meaning of our times. Divine energies are efficacious everywhere in the world through manifold and frequently un-discernible pathways. And it does not make sense to tempt “these little ones” of our time, the prodigal sons returning to the Church, by denying every positive religious sense of the creative processes, transpiring in the world.
In recent times all the spiritually significant people were spiritually isolated. Terribly alone, tragically alone was the genius, the creative innovator. There was no religious awareness, that the genius — was a messenger from Heaven. And but rarely would be heard suchlike voices, as with the voices of some Catholics, calling for the canonisation of Christopher Columbus. His isolation as a genius gave rise to dualism, about which all the time there is discussion. Only a Christian renewal, which would be creative, would be able to overcome it [i.e. the dualism]. But creative Church renewal is impossible to conceive of in the hierocratic categories, it is impossible to squeeze it into the framework of churchly professionalism, it is impossible to think of it, as exclusively a “sacral” process, in contrast to “profane” processes. Creative Church renewal will come about from stirrings in the world, from culture, from the creative religious energies accumulated in the world. We need the more to believe, that Christ acts within the spiritual human race itself, that He does not forsake it, although for us this activity would be invisible. Christians stand before the task of the Churchification (‘otserkovlenie”) of the whole of life. But the Churchification does not mean the invariable subordination of all sides of life to the Church, it should be understood differently, i.e. it does not mean the resumption of theocracy and the hierocratic. Churchification would inevitably have to have on its side the acknowledgement by the Church of that spiritual creativity, which a differentiated and hierocratic churchly consciousness would posit external to the Church. The Church in a profound sense of the word has lived also in the world, and in the world have been subconscious churchly processes. The fulfillment of the Church, as Divine human life, the disclosing of an integral Church consciousness signifies deification by a new spiritual experience of mankind. It is impossible that this spiritual experience should remain unjustified and unsanctified. Man is immeasurably anxious and thirsts for the sanctification of his creative aspirations. The Church is life, and life is movement, creativity. It is impossible to endure any longer, that creative movement should remain outside the Church and in opposition to the Church, and that the Church should be unmoving and deprived of creative life. Certain forms of Church consciousness have readily acknowledged a theophany [“manifestation of God”] in ossified forms of being, in unstirring historical bodies (e.g. monarchic rule). But the times ensue, when Church consciousness mustneeds recognise the theophany in creativity. The outside the churchly, the secular, humanistic creativity is become withered, everywhere it rests upon an impasse. Culture has become insipid. A thirst for eternity torments the best people. And this means, that there ought to ensue an epoch of creativity that is of the Church, and is Christian, and Divine-human. The Church cannot remain a facet of life, a facet of the soul. We hope, that all the creative, the transfigurative attitudes towards life pass over from the world into the Church. Only within the Church can there be preserved and revealed the image of man and the freedom of man, which suffer destruction by the processes occurring in the world. In the godless civilisation there perish the image of man and the freedom of spirit, creativity withers, and already there ensues barbarity. The Church ought still once more to save the spiritual culture, the spiritual freedom of man. This I term the onset of a new Middle Ages. The will for a real transfiguration of life awakens, not merely personal, but also societal and worldly. And this good will cannot be dismissed by the perception, that the Kingdom of God upon the earth is not possible. The Kingdom of God exists in eternity and in each instant of life and is not dependent on this, that in the world the power of evil is externally victorious. Our task is to devote all our will and all our life to the victory of the power of good, to the truth of Christ in all and everywhere.
Human life is splintered and fragmented by two tragedies — the tragedy of the Church and the tragedy of culture. These tragedies are caused by a dualistic impairment, by an impoverishment of the Church through a differentiated and hierarchic understanding of it, always setting the Church in opposition to the world. We Christians ought not to love “the world”, we ought to vanquish “the world”. But this “world” to be overcome, for the holy fathers, it is the passions to overcome, it is sin and evil, but not God’s creation, not the cosmos. The Church is set in opposition to suchlike a “world”, but it is not set in opposition to the cosmos, to God’s creation, the positive fullness of being. The resolution of the two tragedies — is in life, and not in a theoretical-only perception of Christianity; it is as a religion not only of salvation, but also of creativity, a religion of the transfiguration of the world, of the universal resurrection, of love for God and man, i.e. in a total heeding of the Christian truth about God-manhood, about the Kingdom of God. And the positive resolution is located this side of the old opposition between heteronomy and autonomy. Creativity is not heteronomous and it is not autonomous, it is altogether not “nomic”, it is Divine-human, it is a disclosure of the profuse love of man for God, the response of man to God’s call, to God’s expectation. We believe, that in Christianity are contained inexhaustible creative powers. And the disclosure of these powers would save the world from decay and decline. The question of our times consists not in the struggle of churchly and outside-churchly Christianity, but about a spiritual struggle within the Church, of Church currents internally, — of a current exclusively preservative and a current creative. And a monopoly of churchliness cannot belong exclusively to the preservative currents hostile to creativity. On this depends the future of the Church upon the earth, the future of the world and mankind. In the Church is an eternal conservative principle, and it ought immutably to protect the sacred and the tradition. But in the Church ought to be also an eternal creative principle, a principle transfigurative, oriented towards the Second Coming of Christ, towards the triumphing of the Kingdom of God. At the foundation of the Christian faith lies not only the priestly, but also the prophetic. “And how in accord with the grace given us, we have differing gifts, if then thou hast prophecy, prophesy according to the measure of faith” (Rom. 12: 6). Creativity, the creative discovering of the genius of man is at present a secular prophecy, to which ought to be restored its sacred significance.
