I am as you know profoundly altered in mysterious and still to be discovered ways by the death of my wife and love of 25 years. On the other hand I remain existent in flesh and recognize a mere 14 days before she lived as she had lived since being poisoned by Kaiser to cure her from “Covid” and punished then operated on by Kaiser for a brain tumor that had not been present prior. I blame none. Judith chose and I disagreed.
Elizabethan at heart I do strongly accept correspondences I detect which doubtlessly can only be revealed to me by my own personal experience of life first and then based upon this my interests and disinterests and my inner man grudgingly takes sunlight into the eyes.
I follow world news, vaccine news, American news, news about bone in the nose primitives in fancy clothes arbitrating human destiny and I cringe. From 6 to 66 I read what intrigues me somewhat, retain a bit, draw my own conclusions, pray I am not hopelessly mistaken and it’s all gonna be all right for the “Destiny” of man.
I use Substack to share my thought and busk with words online. Now I must go further. Hunter Thompson, the last great American Anti-Hero, quipped that when the “Going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
For Berdyaev, the rise of the technological colonization of man did not simply happen by accident. Rather, it is the result of the breakdown of culture and the failure of Christianity to transfigure society. Influenced by Solovyov’s conviction that Western Christianity, while it created a culture, did not create a Christian culture, whereas Eastern Christianity failed to create a culture at all, though its society was Christian, Berdyaev lays the blame at the feet of a Christianity mired in its many sins and more invested in preservation of the past than concern about the future. His critique is scathing:
“We are witnessing a judgement not on history alone, but upon Christian humanity…. The task of creating a more just and humane social order has fallen into the hands of anti-Christians, rather than Christians themselves. The divine has been torn apart from the human. This is the basis of all judgement in the moral sphere, now being passed upon Christianity.”
Christianity, furthermore, failed to save culture, because it failed to be Christian:
“In this visible world there is no external unity in the Church; its œcumenicity is not completely actualized. Not only the division of the Churches and the multiplicity of Christian confessions but the very fact that there are non-Christian religions in the world at all, and that there is, besides, an anti-Christian world, proves that the Church is still in a merely potential state and that its actualization is still incomplete.”
In addition, Christianity, for Berdyaev, is too enamored of its own past, thereby neglecting its true vocation:
“In historical Christianity the prophetic element inherent in it has become enfeebled and this is why it ceases to play an active and leading role in history. We no longer look to anything but the past and to past illumination. But it is the future which needs lighting up.”
And not only has the prophetic element become enfeebled, but, because it has, so has Christianity tout court:
“Christianity in the course of its history has too often been submissive to brute facts; the leaders of the churches have too often adapted themselves to various political and social orders, and the judgement of the Church is only pronounced after the event. The result of this has been a loss of messianic consciousness and an exclusive turning towards the past.”
Even the accommodationist approach to Christianity’s “engagement with the world” focused on the present proves sterile: “The adapting of Christianity to the social structure and to the forces which dominated it has disfigured Christianity in the course of history and naturally provoked resentment. The spiritual depths of Christianity are no longer to be seen.” The picture he paints is a dire one rendered in a pallet of grey.
Faced with the realities of Christian history and culture and the impending demonic tecnicization of man, Berdyaev can only conclude that, “Either a new epoch in Christianity is in store for us and a Christian renaissance will take place, or Christianity is doomed to perish,” though he knows full well that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Berdyaev wagers on behalf of the Church Triumphant, but he condemns degenerate Christianity when he sees it because he knows a failure of culture is at its core a failure of Christianity. He recognizes the paradox.
The paradox is that only Christianity can save the world from Christianity. Thus Berdyaev prophesizes the arrival of “the new Christianity” which will “rehumanize man and society, culture and the world” because “[o]nly in Divine-humanity, the Body of Christ, can man be saved.” But such regeneration is not without conditions:
“The future depends upon our will and upon our spiritual efforts. This must be said about the future of the entire world. The part to be played by Christianity will certainly be enormous on condition that its old fictitious forms are left behind and that its prophetic aspect is revealed as the source of a different attitude towards the social problem.”
Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
Your ability to tailor your pieces so cogently in the midst of your grief is sadly enviable. Therapy and solace take many forms.
Maybe a Christianity with 12 gods, 6 women and 6 men would be ok.....