Western Gnoseology, Epistemology, Culture

[Justin Kissel]

The Culture of the Heart and the Culture of the Reason: Gnoseology in Orthodox and Post-Orthodox Culture - Source

"More than a thousand years after the birth of Christ, there arose the heresy of the scholastic Latin theologians, who wished to unite the philosophy of Aristotle with Christian theology. Nevertheless they did not imitate the holy teachers of the early Church, who made philosophy fit theology; but the Scholastics did the opposite, making the Gospel and the holy Christian faith fit the doctrines of the philosopher Aristotle. From this source there arose in the Latin Church so many heresies in the theology of the Holy Trinity, so many distortions of the words of the Gospels and the Apostles, so many violations of the sacred canons and the divine councils, and finally so many corruptions and adulterations of the holy sacraments." - Eustratios Argenti [1]

Introduction
"No-one has ever seen a saint leaving a lecture-room or a library." - Mother Gabriela

Gnoseology can be defined as the study of knowledge and our method of cognition, in plain English, the way in which we know about things, the method we use to know about and understand reality. Gnoseology takes very different forms in Orthodox societies from those found in modern Western, that is post-Orthodox, societies. What exactly are these differences?

Post-Orthodox Gnoseology
"Between the end of the eleventh century and the end of the twelfth, everything is changed in the West." - Fr Yves Congar

One of the clearest examples illustrating these differences in the discovery and application of knowledge is in the rise of Western universities.

Although universities existed in the pagan ('classical') world, under Orthodox Christian influence they gradually closed down in the first centuries after Christ, since they were not spiritually helpful [2]. Thus, many of the greatest fourth-century saints studied at the old universities, but then moved on to higher things in the new monasteries. However, later saints, say of the eighth century, did not even study at universities, but went directly to the monasteries.

Orthodox Christians found that the centres for higher knowledge, the monasteries - for example the Monastery of St Sabbas in Jerusalem, or the aptly-named Studion Monastery in Constantinople - were far more appropriate for acquiring spiritual knowledge through the Holy Spirit than the old universities. In the early West too there were great centres of higher Christian study, for instance the monasteries at Bangor in Wales, at Iona in Scotland, at Lindisfarne and Canterbury in England, at Lerins in Gaul, at Toledo and Seville in Spain, at Rome and Cassino in Italy, to name but a few.

However, these monastic centres began to be supplanted in the West in the twelfth century by universities. The first was Bologna in Italy in 1150. This was followed by Paris in 1192, Oxford and Salerno in 1214, Toulouse in 1217, Salamanca in 1243, Seville in 1254, Cambridge in 1257, Montpellier in 1289, Orleans in 1306, Prague in 1348, Cracow in 1362, Heidelberg in 1386 and many others. The reason for the appearance of these universities was the great transformation of Western civilization which becomes clear in the twelfth century, but which can actually be traced back to the mid-eleventh century.

The Meaning of the Western Transformation
"Rome preferred the abstract syllogism to Holy Tradition, which is the expression of the common mind of the whole Christian world, and in which that world coheres as a living and indissoluble unity. This exaltation of the syllogism over Tradition was in fact the sole basis for the rise of a separate and independent Rome. . .Rome left the Church because she desired to introduce into the faith new dogmas, unknown to Holy Tradition, dogmas which were by nature the accidental products of Western logic." - Ivan Kireyevsky [3]

This transformation has many names, but it involves the following shifts in thought and way of life:

From God to Man.
From Knowledge of the Creator to Knowledge of the Creation.

From Knowledge of God to Knowledge about God.
From Theology to Philosophy.

From Grace to Law.
From Prayer to God to Conversation with Man.

From Monasteries to Universities.
From Living Experience to Academic Scholasticism.

From Wisdom to Science.
From the Heart to the Reason.

This last change is of vital significance. The movement away from the heart was the movement away from the Biblical and Patristic understanding of the heart as the place where God and man communicate, from the nous, as the Greek Church Fathers expressed it [4]. In Post-Orthodox society, its place was taken by the brain, the discursive reason, or dianoia in Greek. Instead, the word heart came to mean the emotional centre of man. As a result post-Orthodox piety was expressed either in the form of discursive reason, dry scholastic philosophy, or else in the form of emotional outpouring, meditation, sentimentalism, imagination, fantasy, romanticism, illusion. These emotions typify the 'mystical' pietism of the Western Middle Ages and later Protestant revivalism.

This development was the exact opposite of the sober experience of all the Church Fathers. They considered that the human mind and emotions were unable to express truths regarding the Creator. In their view, when used to seek the knowledge of God, the human mind and emotions could only express human illusion, what the Greek ascetics called plani, the Latin ascetics illusio [5], and the Slavic ascetics prelest.

For the Orthodox Tradition, any kind of meditative emotion and imagination lead to illusory psychic phenomena. It was these which in the post-Orthodox West came to be called 'mysticism'. This is in contrast to the sobriety of the Orthodox Christian experience of grace. For us, emotion and imagination lead to delusion, the illusions of self-flattery, in which the victims believe that they are already saints, already 'saved', and all human abilities and achievements are idolized and deified. Man becomes God. This whole philosophy, called humanism, is in stark contrast to the God-Manhood, 'Theanthropy', or 'Logosness', of the Orthodox Christian understanding of reality. As one fifteenth-century Orthodox writer, Iosefos Bryennios, put it:

Those who subject the dogmas of the faith to chains of syllogistic reasoning strip of its divine glory the very faith that they strive to defend. They force us to believe no longer in God but in man. Aristotle and his philosophy have nothing in common with the truths revealed by Christ [6].

Knowledge of the Creator and Knowledge of the Creation
"You are a disciple not of the Fathers but of the pagan Greeks. If I wished, I too could produce syllogisms to answer your sophistic reasonings - and better syllogisms than yours at that. But such methods of argument I reject, and take my proofs from the Fathers and their writings. You will answer me with Aristotle or Plato or one of your modern teachers; but to oppose you I will invoke the fishermen of Galilee, with their simple preaching and their true wisdom which to you seems foolishness." - St Symeon of Thessaloniki [7]

None of the above means that post-Orthodox gnoseology is wrong in itself. It is wrong only when it is applied to seeking knowledge of God, which it is unable to do, or when its results are misapplied. If it is applied to seeking knowledge of the Creation and the resultant technology, or 'know-how', is used for the glory of God and the good of mankind, then that gnoseology is positive. In other words although it cannot teach us about the Creator, it can teach us about Creation and that knowledge of Creation can be put to good use.

Post-Orthodox gnoseology can teach us how to dissect Creation, analyzing it and breaking it down into its components, building-blocks, elements (all modern scientific terms) which we can use for our benefit. For instance, post-Orthodox gnoseology revealed to Mendeleyev the periodic table of the elements, it has given us the technology to build steam-engines and computers, to understand the structure of the atom, it has enables us to digitalize sound and image and then reproduce it.

As we have said, all this knowledge is useful only if we wish to use it for the glory of God and human benefit. All post-Orthodox gnoseology, the understanding of the contents of the Universe, of Creation, can also be used for our perdition and destruction, as with dynamite, the machine-gun, the gas-chamber, the Atom Bomb, or chemical and nuclear pollution and the poisoning and pillaging of the natural world. Only our primary concern, Orthodox gnoseology, can teach us how to apply our secondary concern, post-Orthodox gnoseology, correctly. In simple terms, without spiritual understanding, technical understanding will always be misapplied.

As we have said above, post-Orthodox gnoseology is unable to understand the Creator. One may have the know-how to create incredibly powerful telescopes and microscopes and examine Creation with them, to build and programme a computer, or to understand the atom. However, none of this means that we are at all competent to understand the Creator, to attain the Divine Light or to know how to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Divine Energies. Only Orthodox gnoseology can help in this respect.

Conclusion
"All that we have said about the great Christian Mysteries is not an opinion of our own (if it were an opinion of our own it would be worth nothing), but it is the repeated experience of the Apostles in the ancient days and of the saints up to our own days. For the Church of God lives not on opinion, but on the experience of the saints, as in the beginning, so in our days. The opinions of intellectual persons may be wonderfully clever and yet be false, whereas the experience of the saints is always true. It is God the Lord who is true to Himself in his saints." - St Nicholas of Zhicha [8]

Although it is true that you cannot understand atomic structure by living the ascetic life, it is also true that you cannot understand how to attain purity of heart in a university, and without purity of heart you cannot understand how to apply correctly the understanding of atomic structure. Thus we can understand that the knowledge of the world is only useful when it is correctly applied to the world, to created things. However, the knowledge of God is useful, not only when it is applied to God the Creator, but also when it is applied to Creation.

This is why, for example, some of the world's greatest perverts and atheists, from Stalin to Kazantzakis or Jesuit pedophiles, have come out of studies of academic subjects, including university 'theology'. They studied academic 'theology', but did not pray, live and experience it. Without an understanding of the Creator obtained in the heart by grace through ascetic life, we will not know how to apply the knowledge of Creation obtained in a university.

In the words of the old Russian proverb: 'Our primary school is the family; our secondary school is the parish; our university is the monastery'. Unlike post-Orthodox, 'Western' culture, which is the culture of the brain or reason, our Orthodox culture is essentially the culture of the heart, the culture of the saints. Unlike the 'Western' culture of the reason, 'dianetic', rationalist culture, Orthodox culture is the culture of the spirit, it is 'noetic', spiritual culture. And it is time for any Orthodox who has not yet understood that to wake up!

Footnotes:

1. The words of this 18th century Greek theologian are quoted in Scholasticism and Theology: Theological Method as a Factor in the Schism, by his biographer Fr Kallistos Ware, in Eastern Churches Review, V, 1 (1973). Another writer on this theme is the modern Greek philosopher Christos Yannaras.

2. A similar fate was shared by the pagan Olympic Games, which were only revived in our neo-pagan times, with their billions of dollars, 'performance-enhancing' drugs, women in states of undress, bisexuality and huge numbers of brothels for the use of contestants and spectators alike.

3. Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow 1911), P. 226.

4. The word nous has been translated by the Latin term intellect in English. However, without specific qualification, this could be very misleading because of the associations of the modern words intellect and intellectual. These associations symbolize the spiritual degeneration of the modern West, as it confuses the use of the discursive reason ('intellect') with the understanding of the heart ('nous'). Generally nous can be translated as spirit or eye of the soul, or heart, but again only with qualification. The adjective noetic can variously be translated as spiritual, heavenly, invisible, but sometimes, like nous, may need to remain untranslated. Something similar appears to be happening to the word spirit and also spirituality which are now frequently used to mean the fallen and sinful human spirit, and paganism - 'pagan spirituality' (sic). Orthodox spirituality is inconceivable outside the Church, hence the Russian word 'tserkovnost', literally 'churchness', which mean Orthodox spiritual practice. Modern Western languages can be very impoverished when it comes to expressing Christian spirituality.

5. For example in the Conferences of St John Cassian. Certain Eastern Orthodox writers appear not to realize that this term was used by the Latin Orthodox ascetics, and that there is no need to use the terms plani or prelest, there is a perfectly Orthodox Western term.

6. Quoted in Ware, op.cit. P.21.

7. Adv. Omn. Haer, 29 (MPG clv, col. 140BC)

8. Quoted in Ware, op.cit. P.20.

[Justin Kissel]

What is the objective of Orthodox culture? It is to introduce and to realize, to the greatest extent possible, the Divine in man and in the world around him; to incarnate God in man and in the world, wherefore Orthodox culture is an incessant service to Christ our God, an incessant divine service. Man serves God by means of all creation; all around himself he systematically and regularly introduces that which is of God into his every effort, into his creativity. He awakens everything divine in nature around him, in order that all of nature, under man’s guidance, might serve God, and thus does all creation participate in a general and mutual divine service, for nature serves that man who serves God.

Theanthropic culture transfigures man from within, and thereby likewise influences his external condition, - it transfigures the soul, and by way of the soul, it transfigures the body. For this culture, the body is the temple of the soul, which lives, moves and has its being through the soul. Take away the soul from the body-and what will remain, if not a stinking corpse? The God-man first of all transfigures the soul-and, subsequently, the body as well. The transfigured soul transfigures the body; it transfigures matter.

The goal of Theanthropic culture is to transfigure not only man and humanity, but also all of nature through them. But how is this goal to be attained? Only by Theanthropic means: through the evangelic virtues of faith and love, hope and prayer, fasting and humility, meekness and compassion, love of God and neighbour. It is by means of these virtues that Theanthropic Orthodox culture is fashioned. Pursuing these virtues, man transfigures his deformed soul, making it beautiful; it is transformed from something dark into something light, something sinful into something holy, something with a dark countenance into something Godlike. And he transfigures his body into a temple that can accommodate his Godlike soul.

It is through the podvig [= (spiritual) ordeal] of procuring the evangelic virtues that man acquires power and authority over himself and over nature around him. Banishing sin both from himself and from the world that surrounds him, man likewise banishes its savage, destructive, ruinous force; he fully transfigures himself and the world, and subdues nature, both within and without and about himself. The finest examples of this are the saints: having sanctified, having transfigured, themselves through the podvig of attaining to the evangelic virtues, they likewise sanctify and transform nature around about them. There are many saints who were served by wild beasts and who, simply by the mere fact of their appearance, could subdue and tame lions, bears and wolves. They treated nature prayerfully, mildly, meekly, compassionately, and gently; being neither harsh, nor stern, nor hostile, nor ferocious.

It is not an external, violent, mechanical imposition thereof, but an inner, good-willed, personal assimilation of the Lord Jesus Christ through the podvig of the Christian virtues that establishes the Tsardom of God on earth, that establishes Orthodox culture-for the Tsardom of God does not come externally or visibly, but internally, spiritually, imperceptibly. The Saviour says: ”The Tsardom of God shall not come perceptibly; And they shall not say: ‘lo, it is here,’ or: ‘lo, it is there.’ For behold, the Tsardom of God is within you.” (Luke 17, 20-21) - it is within the God-created and Godlike soul, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, - for ”The Tsardom of God is not food nor drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 14, 17) Yes, in the Holy Spirit, and not in the spirit of man. It can be in the spirit of man to the extent that man infills himself with the Holy Spirit by means of the evangelic virtues. Wherefore the very first and very greatest commandment of Orthodox culture is: ”Seek ye first the Tsardom of God and of His righteousness, and all this shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6, 33), that is, everything will be added unto you which is needful for supporting the life of the body: food, clothing, shelter. (Matt. 6, 25-32) All these things are but the appurtenances of the Tsardom of God, yet Western culture seeks these appurtenances first of all. Therein is its paganism to be found; for, in the words of the Saviour, it is the pagans who seek these appurtenances first of all. Therein is its tragedy, for it has starved the soul in its concern for material things, whereas the sinless Lord has stated once and for all: _”Do not be concerned for your life, for what ye shall eat or drink, nor for your body, what ye shall wear... Because it is the pagans who seek all these things, and because your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all this. Seek ye first the Tsardom of God and His righteousness, and all this shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6, 25, 32-33; Luke 12, 22-31)

Great is the extent of those necessities which modern man passionately creates in his imagination. In order to satisfy these senseless needs men have turned our wondrous Divine planet into a slaughterhouse. But our philanthropic Lord has long since revealed what is “the one thing needful” for each man and for all of humanity. And what is this? - the God-man Jesus Christ and everything that He brings with Him: divine truth, divine justice, divine love, divine goodness, divine holiness, divine immortality and eternity, and all the other divine perfections. That is “the one thing needful” for man and for humanity, and all the rest of man’s necessities, in comparison with this, are so insignificant, that they are almost unneeded. (Luke 10, 42)

When man seriously, and in accordance with the Gospel, contemplates the mystery of his own life and of the life around him, then he must, of necessity, conclude that the most pressing need is to reject all necessities and to follow decisively after the Lord Jesus Christ, to unite with Him by way of perfecting the evangelic podvigs. Without having done this, man remains spiritually unfruitful, senseless, lifeless; his soul dries up, crumbles away, disintegrates, and he gradually grows insensate, until such time as he finally dies completely, for the Divine lips of Christ did say: ”Abide ye in Me, and I in you. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit of itself, unless it be on the vine: so also you, unless ye be in Me. I am the vine and ye are the branches, he who abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing. He who abideth not in Me shall be cast out, like a branch, and shall wither up, but such branches are gathered and cast into the fire, and they are consumed.” (John 15, 4-6)

It is only by means of a spiritually organic unity with the God-man Christ that man can continue on his life into life eternal and his being-into one of eternal existence. A man of Theanthropic culture is never alone: when he thinks-he thinks through Christ, when he acts-he acts through Christ, when he feels-he feels through Christ. In a word: he incessantly lives through Christ-God, for what is man without God? - at first, half a man, and in the end-no man at all. It is only in the God-man that man finds the completeness and perfection of his own being, his Prototype, his perpetuity, his immortality and eternity, his absolute worth. The Lord Jesus Christ, alone among men and all beings, proclaimed the human soul to be the greatest treasure of all worlds, of those both above and below. ”Therefore, fear them not: for there is nothing concealed that shall not be revealed, nor secret which shall not be made known.” (Matt. 10, 26)

All the stars and planets are not worth a single soul. If a man wastes away his soul in sins and vices, he will not be able to redeem it, even were he to become master of all the stellar systems. Here man has but one way out-the God-man Christ-Who is the only One Who grants immortality to the human soul. The soul is not freed from death by material things, but enslaved; and it is only the God-man Who frees man from their tyranny. Material things have no power over the man who belongs to Christ; rather, he has power over them. He sets the true value of all things, for he values them in the same way as did Christ. And whereas the human soul, according to the Gospel of Christ, has an incomparably greater worth than all the beings and all the things in the world, Orthodox culture is therefore primarily a culture of the soul.

Man’s greatness is only in God-that is the motto of Theanthropic culture. Man without God is 70 kg of bloody clay, a sepulchre prior to the grave. European man has condemned to death both God and the soul, but has he not thereby also condemned himself to that death following which there is no resurrection? Try dispassionately to grasp the essence of European philosophy, of European science, politics, culture, civilization, and you will see that in European man they have killed God and the immortality of the soul. And if one seriously ponders the tragedy of human history, then it is possible to see that Deicide always ends with suicide. Remember Judas: first he killed God, and then he destroyed himself, such is the inevitable law of the history of our planet.

The structure of European culture, erected without Christ, must crumble away, crumble away very quickly-prophesied the insightful and astute Dostoyevskii 100 years ago, and the mournful Gogol’ over 100 years ago. And before our very eyes are the prognostications of the Slavonic prophets coming to pass. For 10 centuries has the European Tower of Babel been a-building, and now a tragic picture meets our gaze: what has been constructed is a huge-nothing! General perplexity and confusion have begun: man cannot understand man, nor soul-soul, nor nation-nation. Man has risen up against man, kingdom against kingdom, nation against nation, and even continent against continent.

European man has reached his destiny-determining and head-spinning heights. He has set the superman at the summit of his Tower of Babel, seeking therewith to crown his structure, but the superman went mad just short of the apex and fell from the tower, which is crumbling away and collapsing, in his wake, and being broken down by wars and revolutions. Homo europaeicus had to become a suicide. His “Wille zur Macht” (lust for Power) became “Wille zur Nacht” (longing for Night). And Night, a burdensome Night, descended upon Europe. The idols of Europe are crashing down, and not far distant is that day when not a stone will remain upon a stone of European culture, that culture which builds cities and destroys souls; which deifies creatures and casts away the Creator...

The Russian thinker Herzen, enamoured of Europe, long lived there; but, in the sunset of his life, 100 years ago, he wrote: “For quite some time did we study the worm-eaten organism of Europe; in all its strata, everywhere, we saw the signs of death... Europe is advancing toward a frightful catastrophe... Political revolutions are collapsing beneath the weight of their inadequacy. They have wrought great deeds, but have not accomplished their task. They have destroyed faith, but have not secured liberty. They have kindled in men’s hearts such desires as were not fated to come to pass... Before all others, I turn deathly pale and am affrighted of the impending night... Farewell, dying world! Farewell, Europe!”

The heavens are empty, there is no God in them; the earth is empty, there is no immortal soul upon it. European culture has turned all its slaves into corpses and has itself become a graveyard. “I want to journey to Europe,” says Dostoyevskii, “and I know that I am going to a graveyard.” (F. M. Dostoyevskii. ”Zimniya zametki o lyetnikh vpechatlyeniyakh” [”Winter Notes On Summer Impressions”].)

Prior to the First World War, Europe’s impending perdition was sensed and foretold only by melancholic Slavonic seers. Following it, some Europeans also take notice of and sense this. The boldest and most sincere of them, doubtless, was [Oswald] Spengler, who shook the world with his book “Untergang des Abendlandes” (O. Spengler, vol. 1, [_”Obraz i deystvityel’nost’”] “Image and Actuality,” M.- Pg., 1923) In it, through all the means that European science, philosophy, politics, technology, art, religion, etc., could provide him, he shows that the West is perishing. Ever since the First World War, Europe is emitting her pre-mortem death-rattle. Western or Faustian culture, which according to Spengler had its origins in the X-th century, now is passing away and crumbling down, and is destined to perish completely in the XXII-nd century. (At present it would seem that this process has become accelerated.) In the wake of European culture, Spengler foresees the coming of the culture of Dostoyevskii, the culture of Orthodoxy.

With each new cultural discovery, European man grows ever more mortified and dies. European man’s love affair with himself-that is the grave from which he neither desires to-nor, consequently, can-be resurrected. Its infatuation with its reason-that is the fatal passion which desolates European humanity. The only salvation from this is Christ, says Gogol;. But the world throughout which “are dispersed millions of glittering objects that scatter one’s thoughts in all directions, has not the strength to meet with Christ directly.”

The type of European man has capitulated before the fundamental problem of life; the Orthodox God-man has solved all of them, each and every one. European man has solved the problem of life through nihilism; the God-man, through eternal life. For the Darwinian-Faustian man of Europe, the main object of life is self-preservation; for the man of Christ it is self-sacrifice. The first says: sacrifice others for yourself! while the second says: sacrifice yourself for others! European man has not resolved the pernicious problem of death; the God-man has resolved it through Resurrection.

Doubtless, the principles of European culture and civilization are theomachic. Long was the type of European man in his becoming what he is, until such a time as he replaced the God-man Christ with his philosophy and science, with his politics and technology, with his religion and ethics. Europe made use of Christ “merely as a bridge from uncultured barbarism to cultured barbarism; that is, from a guileless barbarism into a sly barbarism.” (Bp. Nikolai [Velimirovich], ”Slovo o vsecheloveke” [”A Sermon On Everyman”], p. 334.)

In my conclusions about European culture there is much that is catastrophic, but let this not astonish you, for we are speaking about the most catastrophic period of human history-the apocalypse of Europe, the body and spirit of which are being rent asunder by horrors. Without a doubt, volcanic contradictions are implanted in Europe, the which, if they are not removed, can be resolved only by the final destruction of European culture.

• Saint Justin Popovich, Whither Does Humanistic Culture Lead?

[Justin Kissel]

What are, on the other hand, the fruits of the God-Man society [the Church]?—Saints, Martyrs, and Confessors. That is its goal, that is its meaning and design, that is the proof of its indestructible strength. Not books and libraries, systems and cities—all things that are here today and gone tomorrow. The various pseudo-Christian humanisms fill the world with books, while Orthodoxy fills it with the hallowed.

In the European West, Christianity has gradually transformed into humanism. For a long time and arduously, the God-Man diminished, and has been changed, narrowed, and finally reduced to a man: to the infallible man in Rome and the equally "infallible" man in London and Berlin. Thus did papism come into being, taking everything from Christ, along with Protestantism, which asks the least from Christ, and often nothing. Both in papism and in Protestantism, man has been put in the place of the God-Man, both as the highest value and as the highest criterion. A painful and sad correction of the God-Man's work and teaching has been accomplished. Steadily and stubbornly papism has tried to substitute the God-Man with man, until in the dogma about the infallibility of the pope—a man, the God-Man was once and for all replaced with ephemeral, "infallible" man; because with this dogma, the pope was decisively and clearly declared as something higher than not only man, but the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the holy Ecumenical councils. With this kind of a departure from the God-Man, from the ecumenical Church as the God-Man organism, papism surpassed Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Thus, the first radical protest in the name of humanism against the God-Man Christ, and his God-Man organism—the Church—should be looked for in papism, not in Lutheranism. Papism is actually the first and the oldest Protestantism.

We should not do this ourselves. Papism indeed is the most radical Protestantism, because it has transferred the foundation of Christianity from the eternal God-Man to ephemeral man. And it has proclaimed this as the paramount dogma, which means: the paramount value, the paramount measure of all beings and things in the world. And the Protestants merely accepted this dogma in its essence, and worked it out in terrifying magnitude and detail. Essentially, Protestantism is nothing other than a generally applied papism. For in Protestantism, the fundamental principle of papism is brought to life by each man individually. After the example of the infallible man in Rome, each Protestant is a cloned infallible man, because he pretends to personal infallibility in matters of faith. It can be said: Protestantism is a vulgarized papism, only stripped of mystery (i.e., sacramentality), authority and power.

Through the reduction of Christianity, with all its eternal God-Man qualities, to man, Western Christianity has been turned into humanism. This may seem paradoxical, but it is true in its irresistible and unerasable historical reality. Because Western Christianity is, in its essence, the most decisive humanism; and because it has proclaimed man as infallible, and has turned the God-Man religion into a humanist religion. And that this is so is shown by the fact that the God-Man has been driven to the heavens, while his place on earth has been filled with his replacement, Vicarius Christi—the pope. What a tragic piece of illogic: to establish a replacement for the everywhere-present God and the Lord Christ! But this piece of illogic has been incarnated in Western Christianity: the Church has been transformed into a state, the pope has become a ruler, bishops have been proclaimed princes, priests have become leaders of clerical parties, the faithful have been proclaimed papal subjects. The Gospel has been replaced with the Vatican’s compilation of canon law; Evangelical ethic and methods of love have been replaced with casuistry, Jesuitry and the "holy" Inquisition. What does all this mean? With the systematic removal and destruction of everything that does not bow to the pope, even with forced conversions to the papal faith, and the burning of sinners for the glory of the meek and the mild Lord Jesus!

There is no doubt that all these facts converge into one irresistibly logical conclusion: in the West there is no Church and no God-Man, which is why there is no true God-Man society in which men are mortal brothers and immortal fellows. Humanistic Christianity is actually the most decisive protest and uprising against the God-Man Christ and all the Evangelical, God-Man values and norms. And even here is evident European man’s favored tendency, to reduce everything to man as the fundamental value and the fundamental measure. And behind that stands one idol: Menschliches Allzumenschliches. With the reduction of Christianity to humanism, Christianity has been no doubt, simplified, but also at the same time—destroyed! Now that the "gleischaltung" of Christianity with humanism has been accomplished, some in Europe are seeking a return to the God-Man Christ. However, the cries of individuals in the Protestant world—"Zuruck zum Jesus! Back to Jesus!"—are empty cries in the dark night of humanistic Christianity, which has abandoned the values and the measures of God-Man and is now suffocating in desperation and impotence. While from the depths of centuries past reverberate the bitter words of the melancholic prophet of God, Jeremiah: "Accursed is the man who puts his confidence in man!..."

In a broader historical perspective, the Western dogma about man’s infallibility is nothing other than an attempt to revive and immortalize dying humanism. It is the last transformation and final glorification of humanism. After the rationalistic Enlightenment of the 18th century and the shortsighted positivism of the 19th century, nothing else was left to European humanism than to fall apart in its own impotence and contradictions. But in that tragic moment, religious humanism came to its aid with its dogma about the infallibility of man saved European humanism from imminent death. And, although dogmatized, Western Christian humanism could not help absorbing all the fatal contradictions of European humanism, which are united in one single desire: to exile God-Man from the earth. Because the most important thing for humanism is for man to be the highest value and the highest measure. Man, not God-Man.

According to our own Orthodox feeling: Christianity is only Christianity through the God-Man, through His God-Man ideology and God-Man methods. That is the fundamental truth for the sake of which no compromises can be made. Only as the God-Man is Christ the highest value and the highest measure. One should be truthful and consistent to the end: if Christ is not the God-Man, then he is the most impudent fraud, because he proclaimed himself as God and the Lord. But the Evangelical historical reality irrefutably shows and proves that Jesus Christ is in everything and in all things the perfect God-Man. Therefore, one cannot be a Christian without a belief in Christ as God-Man and in the Church as His God-Man Body, in which He left His entire Miraculous Person. The saving and life-giving power of Christ’s Church lays in the eternally-living and all-present personality of the God-Man. Any substitution of the God-Man with a man, and any winnowing of Christianity in order to pick out only that which pleases a man’s individual preference and reason, turns Christianity into shallow and impotent humanism.

The outstanding importance of Christianity for making lies in its life-giving and unchangeable God-Manhood, by which it models humanity as a whole, bringing it from the darkness of non-being to the light of Pan-being. Only by its God-Man power is Christianity the salt of the earth, the salt that saves man from rotting in sin and evil. If it dissolves into various humanisms, Christianity becomes bland, becomes salt that has turned flat, useless, fit to be tossed out and trod on.

Any tendency or attempt at a "gleischaltung" of Christianity with the spirit of the times, with ephemeral movements and regimes of certain historical periods, takes away from Christianity that specific worth which makes it the singular God-Man religion in the world. In the Orthodox philosophy of society, the rule above all rules is this: do not accommodate the God-Man Christ to the spirit of the times, but rather accommodate the spirit of the times to the spirit of Christ’s eternity—Christ’s God-Manhood. Only in this way can the Church preserve the life-giving and irreplaceable personality of the God-Man Christ and remain a God-Man society, in which people fraternize and live with the help of Divine love and justice, prayer and fasting, meekness and humbleness, goodness and wisdom, charity and faith, love of God and love of one’s brother, and all the other Evangelical virtues.

According to the God-Man philosophy of life and the world, man, society, nation, and state are to accommodate themselves to the Church as the eternal ideal, but the Church must never accommodate itself to them—much less submit to them. A nation has true worth only inasmuch as it lives the Evangelical virtues and incarnates in its history the God-Man values. What applies to the nation, applies to the state as well. The goal of the nation as a whole is the same as the goal of the individual: to incarnate in one's self Evangelical justice, love, sanctity; to become a "holy people"—"God’s people"—which in its history proclaims the Divine values and virtues (1 Peter 2:9-10; 1:15-16).

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  They will ask us: where are the concrete fruits of this God-Man society? How was it that precisely on the field of Orthodoxy’s radiation came about the appearance of "the most radical secularism in human history?" (Joseph Piper) Does there not also exist an Eastern "Humanism" (for ex. Caesaro-papism, etc.)? The success of atheistic social humanism on the soil of Orthodoxy: is that not proof of the "inability of Orthodoxy" to solve the most elementary social problems?

It is a fact that this world lies in evil and sin. The reduction of everything to man is in fact the atmosphere in which sinful human nature and man in general—no matter where he is located—lives and breathes, and something toward which they strive. It is, therefore, no wonder that the tides of this sinfulness, just like the tides of European pseudo-Christian poisons, from time to time wash over the Orthodox peoples as well. However, one thing is irrefutably true: the Orthodox church has never ecclesiologically dogmatized any sort of humanism, whether we are talking about Caesaro-papism or any other "ism." With the strength of its genuine and uncorrupted God-Manhood and Evangelical truthfulness, and through its constant call for repentance regarding everything that is not from God-Man, it has preserved, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom and the chastity of its heart and its soul. And by this it has remained and continues to be the "salt" of the earth, man and society. On the other hand, the tragedy of Western Christianity lies precisely in the fact that it, either by correcting the image of the God-Man, or by denying it, has attempted to once again introduce demonized humanism, so characteristic of sinful human nature, to—where? Into the heart of the God-Man organism itself—the Church, whose essence lies precisely in the freeing of man from it. And through it into all regions of life, person and society, proclaiming it as the supreme dogma, as the universal dogma. With this, the demonized intellectual pridefulness of man, hidden under the cloak of the Church, becomes the dogma of a faith without which there is no salvation! It is horrible to think it, much less say it: with this, the sole "workshop of salvation" and graduation to God-Manhood in this world, is gradually turned into a demonized "workshop" of violence over consciousness and dehumanization! A workshop of the disfigurement of God and man through the disfigurement of the God-Man!

The Orthodox Church has proclaimed no poison, no sin, no humanism, no earthly social system as dogma—neither through Councils, nor through the "Body" of the Ecumenical Church. While the west, alas, does nothing but that. The latest proof: the Second Vatican Council.

The Orthodox Faith: in it, repentance is a necessary holy virtue; and it always calls for repentance. In the West: the pseudo-Christian faith in man does not call for repentance; on the contrary, it "clerically" obligates a maintaining of its fatal-to-man homo-idolization, its pseudo-Christian humanisms, infallibilities, heresies, and it pridefully considers that in no case are these things for which one should repent.

Contemporary atheistic social humanism—ideologically and methodologically—is in everything a fruit and an invention of pseudo-Christian Europe, wed with our own sinfulness. They ask us: how did it arrive on the soil of Orthodoxy? It is God trying the endurance of the righteous, visiting the children for the sins of their fathers, and announcing the strength of His Church by taking it through fire and water. Because, according to the words of the wise-in-God Macarius of Egypt, that is the only path of true Christianity: "Wherever the Holy Spirit is, there follows, like a shadow, persecution and battle... It is necessary that the truth be persecuted." What are, on the other hand, the fruits of the God-Man society?—Saints, Martyrs, and Confessors. That is its goal, that is its meaning and design, that is the proof of its indestructible strength. Not books and libraries, systems and cities—all things that are here today and gone tomorrow. The various pseudo-Christian humanisms fill the world with books, while Orthodoxy fills it with the hallowed. Thousands and hundreds of thousands, even millions of martyrs and newly martyred, fallen for the Orthodox faith—there is the fruit of God-Man society. Thus does the famous Francois Mauriac, a Roman Catholic, on the dark horizon of the contemporary world, with each day more and more pushed into the darkness of born-in-Europe, soul-losing homo-idolatry, see only one bright spot, that gives hope for the future of this world: the bathed in the blood of the martyred and newly-martyred faith. The Orthodox faith.

But in the West? They neither know the Church, nor the path, nor the way out of the hopelessness; all is sunk in soul-losing idolatry, in love of pleasure, love of self, and love of lust. Hence in Europe we see the renaissance of polytheism. The "False Christs," false gods that have flooded Europe and are exported from it to all the marketplaces of the world, have for their main assignment the killing of the soul in man—that unique treasure of man in all the worlds, and in that way make impossible the very possibility of a genuine society.

In writing this, we are not writing the history of Europe, its virtues and faults, nor the history of the European pseudo-churches. We are merely laying out the entelechy of its ontology, descending into the pith of European intellectual pridefulness, into its demonic underground, where its black sources are, whose water threatens to poison the world. This is not a judgment of Europe but a heartfelt prayerful call to the solitary path of salvation, through repentance.

• Saint Justin Popovich, Papism as the Oldest Protestantism

[Justin Kissel]

Unfortunately, the above from St. Justin are just excerpts of his entire thought on this subject. St. Justin wrote what was (IMO) a more balanced essay on the subject, called Humanistic and Theanthropic Education, but it unfortunately is not yet available online. The good news is that it is published in two seperate books of St. Justin's writings, Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ, and The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, so if you get either book you get the essay.