The Church and the Holy Spirit in 20th Century Russia

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2000 by Boris Bobrinskoy

1. As this century draws to a close, this seems an appropriate moment for us to think about the signs and the fruits of the Holy Spirit in time and space, specifically in the Russian Orthodox Church. The 20th century began as a time of great vigour, with an unprecedented upsurge of theological and spiritual energy, culminating in the canonization of St Seraphim of Sarov and the great council of the Russian Church in 1917-18. The advent of atheistic totalitarianism broke the wings of this theological creativity for seventy years. Those who did not die before the firing squads or in the camps continued their way of the cross in silence and in the secret of their hearts, contributing to the purification of the church through their suffering. ("Give your blood and receive the Spirit.")

According to the ways of divine providence, theological thinking continued to find expression in the centres of Russian emigration abroad, especially between the two wars, so that it is not possible to assess contemporary Russian theology without taking into account the exceptional contribution and the quality of the theological work produced by the Russian diaspora.

Today, new generations are at work in Russia itself and promise a rich harvest before long. But the impact of Russian theological thinking in the West has been so extensive, both in non-Russian Orthodox churches and in Catholic and Protestant circles, that we may legitimately question the very notion of Russian theology and its frontiers.

It seems to me somewhat arbitrary and dangerous to limit a study of Russian theology to the 20th century, for the boundary between the 19th and 20th centuries is artificial. Certainly, as the present Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev notes in his doctoral thesis on Russian ecclesiology -- recalling the speech given by Alexander Blok twenty years after the death of Vladimir Soloviev, when the poet expressed this intuition, which was subsequently corroborated by events -- January 1901 was set under a radically different sign from December 1900, and the start of the century was full of new signs and premonitions.(1) Nonetheless, ecclesial consciousness at the start of 20th century flourished as the fruit of an enormous body of work already undertaken in the previous century. I would situate this in three principal areas:

a. The role of the spiritual centres and monasteries around the specifically Orthodox charismatic phenomenon of the startsy (elders) -- of Optino, Valaam, Sarov, the holy Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, with the renewal of interest in the Philocalia, inspired by the saints Nicodemus the Hagiorite and Paissy of Moldavia, then St Ignatius Brianchaninov and St Theophan the Recluse, the rediscovery of the spiritual texts, the growing practice of prayer of the heart inspired by "The Way of a Pilgrim", and lastly the charismatic influence of St John of Kronstadt. In short, all this great spiritual and ascetic tradition impregnated theological thinking and greatly contributed to overcoming the divide between theological rationalism and piety.

b. The publication of the complete works of the church Fathers of East and West, each translation accompanied by an outstanding monograph on those authors, which placed Russian historical and patristic studies on a level with Western scholarship. A theological and spiritual tradition, a vision of liturgical life and a deep sense of the church in its catholicity were thus established.

c. Thirdly, I must mention the role and importance of the Slavophile school of lay theologians of the 19th century, from Ivan Kireevsky, Alexis Khomiakov and Aksakov to the Trubetzkoi brothers, not forgetting the man who has been called the Russian Origen of the 19th century, Vladimir Soloviev, and culminating in the long preparation of the council of Moscow. It should be said that this Slavophile school was -- sometimes violently -- opposed to the scholastic theology which Father Georges Florovsky did not hesitate to describe as a "Babylonian captivity". This shows us that scholastic theology is not a peculiarly Western and Roman phenomenon, and that theological rationalism is always an inherent danger and temptation in any theology -- I say this to guard against any hint of Orthodox triumphalism.

2. With regard to the subject of this paper, one would be tempted to develop an ecclesiology and a pneumatology somewhat dissociated from one another. Let me say first of all that the reality of the life of the Spirit and life in the Spirit is deeper and more intimate than theological language about the Spirit, for theology derives from experience but never expresses it in an entirely adequate way. Similarly, the life of the church and life in the church is infinitely more than all we are able to say in our theological or canonical reflection. The danger of theological speculation lies in compartmentalizing chapters of theology, juxtaposing one after the other aspects of the unique mystery of the economy of salvation which actually belong indissociably together, thus betraying the true purpose of theology, which is to translate in divine-human language the indescribable experience of the divine life in human history.