The Agony of the Church (1917)
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Nikolaj Velimirovic >> The Agony of the Church (1917)
THE AGONY
OF THE CHURCH
BY THE REV.
NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC, D.D.
OF ST SAVVA'S COLLEGE, BELGRADE
WITH FOREWORD BY THE
REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH
LONDON
STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
32 RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.
1917
Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.
FOREWORD
The Eastern Church, the Church of the Apostles and the Mother of us all,
in this book, speaks to her children in all lands and in all languages,
and to us, with an authority and a wisdom and a tenderness all its own.
The author and the publishers are doing us a service of the very best
kind in issuing it. May God's blessing rest upon it.
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
The contents of this book was originally given in the form of lectures
at St Margaret's, Westminster. There is, we think, a special fitness in
the lectures appearing in book form bearing the imprint of the Student
Christian Movement, for though Father Nicholas has hosts of friends in
Great Britain now, when he first came here our Movement was perhaps the
only body which had the right to claim him as being already a friend.
When the Student Christian Movement made its way to Serbia a few years
ago, Father Nicholas became one of its first friends and, the year the
war commenced and the following year, it was he who, on the Universal
Day of Prayer for Students, preached by invitation of the Student
Movement and its President, Dr. Marko Leko, to the students in the
Cathedrals of Belgrade and Nish. Members of our Movement, therefore,
will recognise that he comes under the category of persons so highly
valued in the Student Movement, namely, that of senior friend.
Both inside and outside the Student Movement to-day people are thinking
of the Church. Much has been spoken and written about the Church of
Jesus Christ in our modern world, but not so much as to leave us unready
to welcome this arresting and penetrating message from Serbia.
INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS
If the official churches have had no other merit but that they have
preserved Christ as the treasury of the world, yet they are justified
thereby. Even if they have solely repeated through all the past
centuries "Lord! Lord!" still they stand above the secular world. For
they know at least who the Lord is, whereas the world does not know.
Churches may disappear, but The Church never will. For not churches are
the work of Christ, but the Church. Moreover, if the Church disappears,
as an institution, the essence of the Church cannot disappear. It is
like rivers, sea and water: when rivers disappear into the sea, the sea
remains, and if the sea disappears into steam, water still remains.
If Christ ever meant to form the Church as an institution He meant to
form it not as the end but as the means, like a boat to bring its
inmates safely over the stormy ocean of life into the quiet harbour of
His Kingdom.
Like the body in a bath, so the soul disrobes in the Church to wash. But
as soon as we get out, we clothe our soul in order to conceal it from
the curious eye. Is it not illogical that we dare to show our
imperfections to the Most Perfect, while we are ashamed to show them to
those who are just as imperfect, ugly and unclean as ourselves? The
Church, like a bath, reveals most uncleanness.
The initial and most obvious idea of the Church is collectiveness of sin
and salvation. To pray alone and for one's self is like eating alone
without regard to other people's hunger.
When the sun sees a man of science, wealth or politics, kneeling at
prayer with the poor and humble, it goes smiling to its rest.
Full of beauty and wonders are all the Christian churches, but not
because of their pretended perfections: they are beautiful and wonderful
because of Him whose shadow they are.
You are a Christian? Then do not be afraid to enter any Christian church
with prayerful respect. All the Churches have sworn allegiance to the
same Sovereign. How can you respect a cottage, in which once abided His
Majesty King Alfred, or Charles, while you would not go into a building
dedicated to His Majesty the Invisible King of kings?
The real value of any Christian community is not to be found in its own
prosperity but in its care for the prosperity of other Christian
communities. So, for example, the value of the Protestants is to be
found in their loving care for the Roman Catholics, and vice versa.
Taking the above standard, we find that all the Christian communities
are almost quite valueless as to the spirit, i.e. as to their unusual
loving care. Their actual value is more physical than spiritual, being
as they are limited to the care for themselves. Exceptions are as
refreshing as an oasis in the desert.
Church and State are like fire and water. How to connect them? For if
connected, fire always dies down under water.
There are three ages in the history of the Church: the Golden Age, when
the Church was opposed to political governments; the Iron Age, when she
was politically directing Europe's kingdoms; and the Stone Age, when she
has been subdued to the service of political governments. What a
humiliation for the present generation to live in the Stone Age of
Christianity!
Trying to unite Church and State we are trying to unite what God
separated from the beginning of our era.
To separate the Church from the State does not mean, as many think, to
separate soul from body; it means to separate two quite opposed spirits
unakin and hostile to each other, like Cross and Capitol.
The worm of comfort and human inertia has reconciled Christianity with
secular, pagan governments, and so paralysed the most divine movement in
human history. Go to the bottom of all those clever advocacies for unity
of Church and State, and you will meet, as their primus motor, the worm
of comfort and human inertia.
All Churches and Christian institutions of the present time, however
wonderful they may be, are only a dim prophecy of the coming Christian
worship in truth and spirit. Through them we look now to the future as
through a glass.
Christianity is neither monarchical nor republican. It does not care
about institutions but about the spirit living in them. That institution
is the best which is fullest of the Christian spirit. From this point of
view, an autocracy may be better than a republic, and vice versa.
The true Christianity has been hidden from us as iron and coal were
hidden from the men of the Stone Age. They walked over iron and coal but
they used stone and wood only. So we are walking over and around Christ,
still using in our daily life the pagan gods of old.
If there is to be a new geological epoch, with a new type of man, it
will be the Christian epoch. All the existing types have been made by
revolutions and influences of earth and water, or of air and fire. Now
only the Christian revolution--I mean literally and not
allegorically--can produce a higher type of the human animal.
My friend, you are dissatisfied with the existing Churches, and you are
anxious to form a new church, or sect, or some kind of religious
organisation! How childish of you! The existing Churches are the most
wonderful vessels--some in gold, others in silver or pottery--made by
thousands of years and generations. I know your dissatisfaction comes
because of the emptiness of those vessels and not because of their
ugliness. Well then, pour the divine wine into them and they will please
you just as the vessels in Cana of Galilee pleased the thirsty people
around the table. No one of those people, being thirsty, ever thought of
making new vessels for the wine, but to get wine as soon as possible
into the vessels. To pour wine into existing vessels, that is really the
needed miracle, my dear grumbler!
People say: Read the Bible! Almost would I say: Do not touch it for five
years--read other literature during this period--and then read it again,
and you will see its real greatness, power and sweetness.
The Christ's wounds have wrought more blessings in the world than the
health of all the Roman Caears.
The Eucharist does not mean a memory only but also a prophecy. The
prophecy of it is, that the whole earth will become Christ's body,
Christ's flesh and blood, so that whatever we eat or drink we eat and
drink Him.
He ought to be our daily food. Regarding all our food through Christ it
will not seem to be a prey from nature but rather nature's sacrifice for
us, reminding us of Christ's sacrifice, and through it of our own
calling to sacrifice.
You have to choose either to be proud or poor in spirit. The first will
mean a noisy destruction, the second a quiet construction.
There exists no sublime and no mean thing in the whole world of which I
could not find a representation in myself, and none in which I were
wholly unrepresented.
The beauty, glory and greatness of a field of golden wheat consists of
an association of innumerable blades of wheat, with their insignificant
beauty, glory and greatness. If you have seen that, then do not repeat
to me the old story of the beauty, glory and greatness of the human
blade called Pythagoras, Caear or Napoleon.
The wealthiest and most powerful people, that we are wont to admire and
imitate, were most pitied by Christ. To-day, as always, the most
difficult Christian mission is that among the rich.
Our real value we never reveal through the using of our rights but
through our capacity for service and sacrifice.
Easier is it for a man to get his own rights than to lose his pride.
Sacrifice without murmuring makes of our stormy life a calm holy day. We
fill all our days with the talk of the people who are loth to sacrifice
and of those who dare to sacrifice. Disgust and admiration are two baths
in which our hearts bathe from sunrise to sunset. By nothing is the
disgust towards a man more excited than by hearing: "He is incapable of
sacrifice." When this sentence is directed to ourselves, we feel as if
we had lost the whole battle of life.
The value of metaphysical systems is more for the scientific than for
the moral progress of mankind. Upon Hegel you could build a new science,
but upon St Paul only could you build a new social life and a new world
politics. Did you ever think that St Paul is the greatest prophet of a
new and desirable statesmanship?
All the Empires founded upon rights have perished and must perish. The
future belongs to the Empire of St Paul, an Empire founded upon loving
service.
It is better in humbleness to belong to the worst of the Churches than
proudly to separate one's self from the best of the Churches.
Aristocratic origin is as inscrutable as the darkness of the past night.
A mighty aristocrat of to-day may be of the meanest soul-stuff, and the
beggar at his door of the noblest. But respect both of them equally,
knowing that both of them are of the same royal origin. The Most High
names both of them His children. For the same reason respect asses and
sheep and trees and stones.
The real crucifiers of Christ in our time are those who think Christ's
Gospel could not be taken as a base for world politics. Were not His
last words to the disciples: go to all nations? The last and supreme
expression of Christianity will be in the relations of nation to nation,
as its starting expression has been the relations of man to man.
Inter-individualism has been the elementary school of Christianity.
Inter-nationalism ought to be its university.
Christian ethics, i.e. cheerful service and sacrifice, is the noblest
consequence of real belief in God. Never a shorter line can bind our
planet with the centre of the Universe than the line going through
Christ. It is the shortest way, as a straight line is the shortest
distance between two geometrical points.
Slavery means obligatory service; freedom ought to mean willing service.
Only a man or a nation educated for willing service to their neighbours
is a really free man or free nation. All other theories of freedom are
illusions. Freedom asking for rights and not for willing service means
an endless quarrel crowning with unhappiness all its champions. Neither
Pericles' republic nor Octavian's monarchy were the States of happiness,
but St Paul's pan-human state, with a single Magna Charta of willing
service, will be a State of Universal Happiness.
Every man is a battlefield of many unclean spirits, very bold in the
absence of Christ and very shy in His Presence. O how many of these
spirits that find an easy habitation in us would make even the swine to
rage and run down the steep place--into the sea!
The conception that the mentality of Machiavelli and Metternich,
Bismarck and Beaconsfield could be taken as a basis of politics, whereas
Christ's mentality could not, is the conception even of many
theologians. Yet Christ survives all these politicians as an undying
power, just because He is the fittest of all of them.
What an obscure philosophy it is which teaches that Moses and Mohamed
had some thing to do with politics and Christ has not!
Carlyle and Emerson were over-anxious to recommend every great man as a
leader of mankind more than Christ. It is the same as to say: men! take
candles and lamps to light your way in darkness, but be aware of the
sun. How quite different are Dostoievsky and Tolstoi!
I looked at men in prayer and I thought: Behold, the fallen angels! I
looked again at them in hateful quarrel and I thought: Behold, the risen
demons!
Animals are cruel but not vulgar. Yet both in cruelty and vulgarity man
is on record. If forced to chose one of two evils, we should prefer to
look at cruelty rather than vulgarity.
All our to-days are spoiled by reminiscences about yesterday and sorrows
about tomorrow. Thus we are disindividualising and emptying all our
"to-days" and degrading them to a misty meeting-place of yesterday and
tomorrow.
From the physical point of view the greatest thing in this life is its
mystery. From the moral point of view the greatest thing in man is the
optimistic interpretation of that mystery. There is no reasonable
optimism outside of Christianity.
No man could be a tyrant unless he were a slave of some moral defects.
No nation could tyrannise over another nation unless it were tyrannised
over itself by some illusions.
Nobody in the world is free but he who feels himself to be a prisoner of
Christ. The greatest champion of freedom in human history called
himself: "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ."
CHAPTER I
THE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH SOPHIA
The most magnificent sanctuary of the Eastern Churches is called St
Sophia (Holy Wisdom), whereas the most magnificent sanctuaries of the
Western Churches are called St Peter's, St Paul's, or St John's, etc. As
every hair on our head and every line on the palm of our hand has a
certain significance, so these dedications of the Church have doubtless
certain significance. And this significance is typical of the religion
of the East and the West. Western Christianity, grown upon the soil of a
youthful individualism, preferred this or that apostle's personality and
dedicated their best temples to him. The aged East, tired of
individualistic ambitions, tired of great men, flagellated by the
phantom of human greatness, was thirsty for something higher and more
solid than any human personality. Adoration of great personalities being
the very wisdom of this world, the East stretched its hands to a
superhuman ideal, to the Holy Wisdom. It is a psychological fact that
youth sees his ideal in personal greatness, progressed age in holiness.
The East asked for something more eternal than Peter, Paul or John.
There is wisdom, and there is holy wisdom. Philosophical or personal
wisdom existed from the beginning of mankind, but Holy Wisdom entered
the world with Jesus Christ. Christ was the embodiment of God's wisdom,
the very incarnation of Holy Wisdom. This Wisdom stands above all human
wisdom and revives and illuminates it. Holy Wisdom includes the
essential wisdom of Peter, Paul, John, and any other apostle or seer, or
any other thing or creature, as the ocean includes the water of many
rivers. In the darkest times of dissension, uncertainty or suffering,
the Christian East did not rely so much upon the great apostles, either
Peter, or Paul, or John, but looked beyond time and space to the Eternal
Christ, The Logos of God, and asked for Light. And it looked to Eternity
through this church in Constantinople, St Sophia, as the all-embracing
and all-reconciling, holy symbol. Whenever Peter, or Paul, or John, or
any other apostle, or prophet, became the ground upon which the
believers quarrelled, it was in the Holy Wisdom that they sought refuge
and healing from their intellectual one-sidedness and ill-will.
Yet if Holy Wisdom has only in the East a magnificent visible symbol,
Holy Wisdom is none the less the very foundation, substance and aim of
the Western Church as well as of the Eastern, yea of the one, holy
Catholic Church. For Christianity had been destined neither for the East
alone nor for the West alone, but for the whole globe. And what means
the so-much abused word Catholic if not inclusiveness? Even such is,
too, the meaning of the Divine wisdom as revealed in Christianity from
the beginning.
I will try to show this inclusive wisdom of the Church, revealed from
the beginning, Firstly in the Church's Founder, Secondly in the Church's
organisation, and Thirdly in the Church's destination.
THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH'S FOUNDER
By His birth He included and bound together the lowest and the highest,
the natural and the supernatural: stable, manger, straw, sheep and
shepherds on the one hand; stars, angels, magi and Davidic royal origin
on the other.
By His life He included the austerity of the Indian monks, of John the
Baptist and the Nazarenes on the one hand; and on the other the
Confucian moderate feasting, in the houses of friends, at the marriage
feast and on other solemn occasions.
His life-drama was interwoven into the lives of all classes of people:
men, women and children, Judaists and heathen, King Herod and the
proconsul Pilate, priests and soldiers, merchants and beggars, learned
sophists and ignorant fools, the sick and the healthy, the righteous and
the sinful, Jews and Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and all others who
could be met in Palestine, the very market of races and creeds.
He was by no means a party man like the Pharisees and the doctors of
law. He called both the Pharisees and their enemies to follow Him. He
went to the temple to pray, but He also prayed alone in the desert. He
kept the Sabbath and He broke the Sabbath by healing the sick and doing
good on this sacred day. He came not to destroy the Law, but He brought
something which was higher than the Law and even included the law
itself, i.e. love and mercy.
He rebuked people who used to pray and say. "Lord, Lord!" And yet He
prayed very often Himself. He rebuked those who were fasting, and yet He
used to fast Himself. What He really looked for was neither prayer nor
fasting, but the spirit in which one prayed or fasted.
He commanded the people to give to Caesar things which were Caesar's,
and to God that which was God's. He did not criticise this or that form
of government, nor did He accentuate Monarchism, Republicanism, or
Socialism as one form preferable to another. Under His scheme all forms
of government were included as equally good or evil according to what
place they reserved for God, what gifts they duly gave to God, and by
what spirit they were inspired.
He followed the customs of His nation, and did not break them or evade
them purposely. He took food according to the Law, and washed hands
according to the Law, and went to the Holy City and took part in worship
in the temple (though He was "greater than the temple"), according to
the Law. It seems that He excluded no form of worship or social life,
though He despised the unclean and petty spirit with which the
hypocrites filled these forms. And when it came to a dispute He, the
Messenger of a new spirit, naturally tried to save rather the pure
spirit even without a form than a form filled with an impure spirit.
Therefore He felt bound to say: "Not that which goeth into the mouth
defileth a man," or "to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man," or
"thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet," etc.
Even so, too, He embraced all nationalities and races. Nothing was for
Him unclean that God had created, nothing but unclean spirits. When the
Roman centurion asked help from Him, He gave it. And when the people
beyond the Israelitish boundaries, from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,
cried after Him, He did not listen to the exclusivistic warnings of His
disciples, but He distributed even there His divine mercy. He was
mindful even of the people of Nineveh. And when He sent His disciples,
He sent them to "all nations."
Finally, He included the natural and the supernatural. He talked with
spirits. He saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven. He stood amongst
Peter, John and James on one side, and Moses and Elias on the other. All
the people saw lilies in the field and sparrows upon the roof, but He
saw more, He saw how, His Father clothed the lilies and how He fed the
sparrows. He united the natural and the supernatural in His teaching.
"Love those who love thee" was a natural teaching. But He added: "and
those who hate and persecute thee," which was supernatural.
"Give to them who give to thee" was a natural teaching. But He added:
"and to them who do not give to the", which was supernatural.
"Bless those who bless thee." But He added: "and those who curse thee,"
which was supernatural.
And He united the natural and supernatural in His death. He suffered and
died in agony. He rose from the dead, descended to Hell and ascended to
Heaven. For Him there was as little boundary between heaven and earth,
between nature and supernature, as between Israel and Canaan, or as
between man and man, or form and form.
His wisdom was inclusive from the beginning to the end. What did He ever
exclude--save unclean spirits? His disciples were as exclusive as
anybody could be, exclusive when judging and acting according to natural
wisdom. But when they looked at Him, they were reconciled. He was the
Holy Wisdom, in which everyone could find a mansion for himself, every
disciple, every nation, every form of worship, everything--but the
unclean spirit.
THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM IN THE CHURCH'S ORGANISATION
Let us look now to the Christian Church in the early time of her
formation.
Jesus Christ gave the largest possible scheme on which to work and the
largest foundation to build upon. There is no other name in history upon
which more has been constructed than upon His name. The primitive Church
realised it from the beginning, and declared it. She was inclusive from
the first, inclusive in her teaching and worship.
(a) Inclusive in Teaching.--Christ was put in the centre of the world's
history. He represented what was the best and highest in Eastern and
Western thought. The dream of Messias was the best and highest in the
Jewish conception. Well, Jesus was the Messias.
The expectation of a second Adam, the redeemer of the first, sinful
Adam, was common among the peoples in Palestine and Mesopotamia. Well,
Jesus was the second Adam, the expected Redeemer, God's Messenger.
Egypt had an intuition into the mystery of the Divinity as a Trinity.
However rough may have been that idea, the Trinity being thought of as a
human family of Father, Mother, and Son, still it existed very vividly
in Egypt. And the people expected the coming of God's only Son, the
third person of their Trinity, not an imaginary being like Horus, but
the real son of Osiris in flesh and blood who would bring happiness to
men. Well, Jesus of Nazareth was this Son of God, and He as Christ was
the eternal sharer of the Divine Trinity.
India was the cradle of the teaching of the Incarnation. The supreme
God, Brahma, had already been incarnated in many persons since the dawn
of history. But the highest incarnation of Him was still to come. Well,
Jesus Christ was this highest incarnation of Brahma in human shape.
The cultivated polytheists did not like the idea of a monotonous
theology of one solitary God. They liked rather a divine company upon
Olympus. Well, Christianity with its Trinity-teaching presented to them
a limited polytheism. God was not physically one, as in Judaism, nor
many, as in Hellenism. He was a Trinitarian Plurality in Unity. He was
not a grim hermit, but He had the riches of an eternal life.