The Agony of the Church (1917)
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Nikolaj Velimirovic >> The Agony of the Church (1917)
The intellectual Greeks and Hellenists climbed to the idea of one God
and of Logos, the Mediator between God and the world, through whom God
created whatever He created, and who may be incarnated for the salvation
of the fallen, suffering creation. Well, Jesus Christ could include in
His person this wonderful doctrine of Neoplatonism.
The mountainous Asia under Caucasus and Ararat, plunged into the mystery
of Mithras, which was born out of the Zoroastrian dualistic religion of
light and darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Well now, Christ, the friend
of humanity, revealed Himself as the God of light struggling against
Satan, the enemy of humanity.
Rome, politically ruling the world, was longing for a sacred King, for a
Prince of Peace, who should come from the East and bring to the people
some higher and truer happiness than that deceiving chimera of political
bigness. Well, Christ should be this universal, sacred King, this Prince
of Peace, and Messenger of a durable happiness. It is not true that
Christ had His prophets among the people of Israel only. His prophets
existed in every race and every religion and philosophy of old. That is
the reason why the whole world could claim Christ, and how He can be
preached to everybody and accepted by everybody. Behold, He was at home
everywhere!
(b) Inclusive in Worship.--Inclusive in doctrine, the primitive Church
was wisely inclusive in worship too. It would be nonsense to speak of
Christian worship as of something quite new and surprising. There was
very little new and very little surprising in it indeed; almost nothing.
The first Church met for prayer in the Jewish temple. Wherever the
apostles came to preach the new Gospel they went to the old places of
prayer, to the temples of Jehovah. Their Christian spirit did not revolt
against the old forms of worship. Later on the naked Christian spirit
needed to be clothed, and it was clothed. But when Israel looked to
Christian worship they recognised much--forms, signs, vestments and
administration--to be like their own. And not only Israel, but even
Egypt, India, Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome, yea, the Pagans of
North and South. If Nature could speak, it could say how much it lent of
its own to Christian worship.
A student of ancient history one day asked me: "How can I recognise the
Christian religion as the best of all, when I know how much it borrowed
from the ancient religious forms of worship? How poor it looks without
all that!"
I said: "Just this wonderful power of embracing and assimilating gives
evidence of the vitality and universality of Christianity. It is too
large in spirit to be clothed by one nation or one race only. It is too
rich in spirit and destination to be expressed by one tongue, by one
sign, or one symbol, or one form. In the same sense as Christian
doctrine was prepared and prophesied by the religions and the
philosophies before Christ, in the same sense Christian worship was
prepared and prophesied as well. Whenever the Christian spirit is strong
the Church is not afraid of worship being strange, and ample, and even
grotesque. The weaker the Christian spirit, the greater exclusiveness in
worship. Some people say: It is wicked to use pagan architecture for the
Church, and incense and fire, and music, or dance, or bowing, or
kneeling, or signs and symbols, in Christian worship, because it is
pagan." Yes, all this is pagan indeed, but it is Christian too if we
wish it to be. The Latin language was pagan, but now it is Christian
too. The English language was a vehicle of Paganism as well, now it is a
vehicle of Christianity. The human body was itself pagan too, but the
Eternal Christ, God's Holy Wisdom, entered it and filled it with a new
spirit, and it ceased to be pagan. We in the East sometimes use for our
sacerdotal vestments Chinese silk made by pagan hands in China, or
chalices and spoons and little bells and chains made by the Moslems, or
precious stones gathered and scents prepared by the fire or
stone-worshippers of Africa, and no one of us should be afraid to use
them when worshipping Christ, as Christ Himself was not afraid to touch
the most wretched human bodies or souls with His pure hands.
Christianity cannot be defiled, using for its worship the works of pagan
hands, but pagan people are hereby taking a share in Christian worship,
physically and unconsciously, waiting for the moment when they will
share in it spiritually and consciously as well. Every piece of Chinese
silk in our vestments is a prophecy of the great Christian China. But
this belongs to the following paragraph.
THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM IN THE CHURCH'S DESTINATION
Judaism was destined for the people of Israel only. The Christian Church
was destined for the people of Israel too, but not for them only. She
included Greeks as well.
The Greek polytheism of Olympus was destined for the Hellenic race only.
The Christian Church was destined for the Hellenic race too, but not for
it only. She included Indians as well.
Buddha's wisdom was offered to the monks and vegetarians. Monks and
vegetarians the Christian Church included in her lap, but also married
and social people too.
Pythagoras founded a religious society of intellectual aristocrats. The
Christian Church from the beginning included intellectual aristocrats
side by side with the ignorant and unlettered.
The Persian prophet, Zoroaster, recruited soldiers of the god of light
among the best men to fight against the god of darkness. His religious
institution was like a military barracks. The Christian Church included
both the best and the worst, the righteous and the sinners, the healthy
and the sick. It was a barracks and a hospital at the same time. It was
an institution both for spiritual fighting and spiritual healing.
The Chinese sage, Confucius, preached a wonderful ethical pragmatism,
and the profound thinker, Lao-Tse, preached an all-embracing
spiritualism. Christian wisdom included both of them, opening Heaven for
the first and showing the dramatic importance of the physical world for
the second. Islam--yes, Islam had in some sense a Christian ambition: to
win the whole world. The difference was: Islam wished world-conquest;
the Church, the world's salvation. Islam intended to subdue all men and
bring them before God as His servants: The Church intended to educate
all men, to purify and elevate them, and to bring them before God as His
children.
And all others: star-worshippers, and fire, and wood, and water, and
stone, and animal-worshippers had a touching sense of the immediate
divine presence in nature. The Church came not to extinguish this sense
but to explain and to subordinate it; to put God in the place of demons
and hope instead of fear.
The Church came not to destroy, but to purify, to aid and to assimilate.
The destination of the Church was neither national nor racial, but
cosmic. No exclusive power was ever destined to be a world-power. The
ultimate failure of Islam to become a world-power lies in its
exclusiveness. It was with religion as with politics. Every exclusive
policy is foredoomed to failure: the German as well as the Turkish and
the Napoleonic. The policy of the Church was designed by her Divine
Founder: "He that is not against us is for us." Well, there is no human
race on earth wholly against Christ and wholly unprepared to receive
Him. The wisdom of the Christian missionaries therefore is to see first
in what ways Providence has prepared a soil for Christian seed; to see
which of the Christian elements a race, or a religion, already
possesses, and how to utilise these elements and weld them into
Christianity. All that--in order to make Christianity grow organically,
instead of pushing it mechanically.
In conclusion let me repeat again: the wisdom of the Church has been
inclusive. Inclusive was the wisdom of her Founder, inclusive the wisdom
of her organisation and of her destination. Exclusiveness was the very
sickness and weakness of the Church. That is why we in the East in the
time of sickness of the Church looked neither towards Peter, nor Paul,
nor John, but towards the Holy Wisdom, the all-healing and
all-illuminating. For St Sophia in Constantinople, the temple dedicated
to Christ the Eternal, includes in itself the sanctuaries of Peter, Paul
and John; moreover, it is supported even by some pillars of Diana's
temple from Ephesus and has many other things, in style or material,
which belonged to the Paganism of old. Indeed, St Sophia has room and
heart even for Islam. The Mohamedans have been praising it as the best
of their sanctuaries!
I speak thus to you because I am sure you will not misunderstand me. And
because I know you, the British, to be a race of the world-wide spirit,
I dare to make this appeal to you.
Look to the Holy Wisdom! Look beyond Peter, and Paul, and John--through
them and still beyond them! Every Church has her prophet, her apostle,
her angel. Look now over them all to the very top of the pyramid, where
all the lines meet!
Either Christianity is one, or there is no Christianity. Either the
Church is universal, or there is no Church.
There lived once upon a time twelve men as different as any twelve men
could be. And the Holy Wisdom united all of them into one spiritual
body. Such was the first Church of the twelve, and such ought to be the
last Church of the milliards: different in all her parts, but cemented
by the Holy Wisdom into one glorious building. Christ, God's Holy
Wisdom, includes all of us, why should we exclude each other? He was
sent for the salvation of China and Japan and India as well as for that
of the Jews and Greeks. Well, let us quarrel no more about the
"circumcision" while a milliard of human beings are still waiting to
hear for the first time the name of Jesus Christ--yea, for the first
time after two thousand years! Let the present time be the new Pentecost
for us all. I speak to you, the British: don't look around you and wait;
it is yours to start. All the peoples of earth are looking towards you
and listening to you. Don't be too shy to start.
To start what? To start a revival of the primitive wisdom of the Church,
i.e. to confess and declare:
That Christianity in its integrity is one and indivisible;
That Christianity is not a precious stone preserved in a box called the
Church of England, or the Church of the East, or Rome, but that it is
the common good of mankind, destined for all continents and all races;
That there is no constituent of the present European civilisation, but
the Christian religion, which could stop the brutal struggle among men,
in one form or another, and guarantee a Godlike peace profitable for
the whole of mankind.
All of us, small or great nations, are now looking to you with respect,
not only for the victory over a revived anachronical Paganism in Central
Europe, but also for a formulation of the new ideal, of saving power for
all men.
Great is our expectation indeed, but it is justified by your gifts,
given to you by Providence. Therefore let your hearts be larger than
your Empire and your national Church, and the respect of mankind towards
you will be warmed by love. Surely there can not be built a greater
Empire than yours, humanly speaking. The only greater Empire than yours
will be Christ's Empire. And if you are longing for something greater
than your present possession, you are indeed longing for this universal,
pan-human Empire of Christ. Otherwise you would be sticking either at a
stagnancy or at something impossible. Both would be unwise: nature
tolerates no stagnancy and punishes experiments with the impossible.
But who am I to teach you? "A reed (from the wilderness) shaken with the
wind"? Not I but the present despair of the world teaches you. I am only
a loud amongst many suffocated cries from West and East, from North and
South, directed to you: lift up your hearts and listen! God is now doing
a great thing through you, and the whole world is expecting a great
thing from you. What is this great thing? How to reach it? Pray and
listen! One thing only is sure, that this great thing will come neither
from any Foreign Office nor from any War Office, but from the living
Christian Church. Yes, she is still living, although she looks dead. She
is only sleeping. But Christ is standing beside her now, calling: "Rise,
ye daughter! Talitha Cumi!"
CHAPTER II
THE DRAMA OF THE CHURCH
The Church is a drama. She represents the greatest drama in the world's
history, yea, she personates the whole of the world's history. She
originated in an astounding personal drama. Humanly speaking, in the
life of Jesus Christ during the three years of His public work there was
more that was dramatic, from an outside and inside point of view, than
in the lives of all other founders of religion taken together. And
speaking from a soteriological and theological point of view, His
life-drama had a cosmic greatness, involving heaven and earth and both
ends of the world's history. Wonderful was the life of Buddha, but his
teaching was still more wonderful than his life. Very striking was the
life of Mohammed, the life of a pious and romantic statesman, but his
work quickly overgrew his personality. Five years after Mohammed's
death, Islam numbered more followers than Christianity five hundred
years after Golgotha. But the life-drama of Jesus was and still is
reckoned as the most marvellous aspect of Christianity: not His teaching
or His work, but His life.
Well, was not His life-drama typical and prophetic for His Church? His
Church had to live through all those agonies, external and internal,
that He Himself lived through. She had to go through sunshine and
darkness, through angelic concerts and devilish temptations, through
death and resurrection. In one word, she had to live His life, again and
again, treading sometimes quickly, sometimes reluctantly, her path,
always asking for light and comfort from her visions of Him. I say the
visions of Him, because those visions were omnipotent, including in
themselves words and works.
There is an impressive picture now circulating in London of an English
soldier lying wounded in agony on the battlefield. Well, what would a
Buddhistic painter put as a simile of consolation for the man in agony?
What else if not a Buddha's sentence or word? And what would a
Mohammedan painter put on the picture to console the expiring soldier if
not also a sentence or word from the Koran or an imaginative view of the
Paradise which is waiting for him? And you know what a Christian painter
depicted--the vision of the Crucified! the soldier lying beneath this
vision grasping with his hand Jesus' bleeding feet; this vision of the
Crucified is greater than any sentence, any word, yea, it includes all
the words of sympathy and of consolation. On another occasion the
Christian painter would paint another appropriate vision, and a painter
of another religion or philosophy would write another appropriate word.
Therefore, it is difficult to learn the Christian religion without
pictures, or to teach it without visions.
THE DRAMATIC FORMATION OF THE CHURCH
It was a quarrel, as usual, among men about God and bread, when Jesus
interrupted them. Peter never thought to fish anything else all his life
but fishes, nor Pilate to sentence to death anyone but criminals, nor
the Jewish patriots that they were losing their greatest opportunity,
nor the heathen of Britannia that they were contemporaries with the very
God in flesh of their posterity. How many times did it happen that Jesus
during the first thirty years of His life was present in the temple when
a Rabbi read the prophetic passages on the Messiah! Reading the
Scriptures the poor Rabbi measured the distance between himself and the
Messiah by thousands of years, and 10--the Messiah in person was
listening to his reading!
All the controversies in the synagogues and in the streets of Jerusalem
were merely repeated platitudes, when a man appeared in Galilee, who
claimed the highest authority and showed the greatest humility at the
same time. The Law was the highest authority for the Jews, and the
Emperor of Rome the highest authority for Pilate. But Jesus declared
himself to be the bearer of an authority which was incomparably higher
than any authority existing on earth. He did not beg either Andrew or
Peter or John and James, to follow Him; He commanded them: "Follow Me!"
Speaking with authority He gained the confidence of His first followers,
and showing humility He also gamed their love. Authority and
humility--two qualities which not often were united in the character of
the church-leaders, a good reason why many of them were feared and many
others pitied, instead of being respected and loved as Jesus was
respected and loved by the first Church. For fear and pity are the
degenerate forms of respect and love.
What we call the first Church represented in reality the smallest Church
in number as well as in time and space, but the richest in its dramatic
changes and conflicts.
Some few fishermen were called by Christ, and this call meant real
baptism for them. He let Himself be baptised but He did not baptise His
disciples otherwise than by His personal calling to them to follow Him;
Pentecost was their "confirmation." The history of the first Church
comprised a time not of some hundred years but of some hundred days.
When Andrew and Peter followed Jesus the formation of the Church
started. There were already two gathered in His name and conducted by
Him in person. As a matter of fact, they followed Jesus at first merely
with their eyes and feet, but with their hearts they still followed
Moses and the Law. The Twelve Disciples were at first nothing more than
twelve insignificant grains of sand placed upon a big rocky foundation
of a palace, which had to be built. Only after their confirmation by the
Holy Spirit did they become the real pillars of the palace. They were
uncertain about their Master and everything He said, and they quarrelled
about many things. I think they represented through their differences
not one church but twelve churches, but by their common respect and love
for their Master they represented one Church only. What a prophetic
image of the Church of Christ, say, after nineteen hundred years!
Now as long as the living Jesus was with the first Church she was all
right. His life was the source of her life; His authority and power
meant her existence and unity. But when the Shepherd was smitten the
sheep were scattered. When the followers of Christ saw Him powerless and
dead they denied Him and fell back to their natural instinct of
self-defence, and the first Church died with the death of Christ. It was
like the green corn in the field smitten by a flail to the very root.
The owner of the corn walks in the field and looks with despair on his
perished corn. But it happens often that after a few days the field
begins under the sunshine to flourish anew, and the corn grows
beautifully and brings forth plenty of fruit.
Mary of Magdala and the other Mary brought this first sunshine over the
smitten corn. "He is alive!" This was the tidings of the women on the
second morning after His death. This tidings about the living Lord Jesus
con-verted Peter and the other disciples again to Christianity. "He is
alive"--that was the greatest word ever uttered by any human tongue
since the Church was founded. Yea, through this very word the drooping
Church was brought again to life. Whatever utterances Peter made during
Christ's life were as dead as stone compared with Mary Magdalene's
tidings of the living Lord after the catastrophe of His death. The
beautiful and true words: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God," had no meaning whatever for the future of Christianity in
comparison with the certainty that the dead Christ had risen, i.e. that
He was Lord even over death. Therefore if I could be convinced that a
grain of good as small as the mustardseed should result from the strange
quarrels about the primacy of this or that Church--or this or that
bishop--I would be very sorry that there did not exist a Church founded
upon the memory of Mary Magdalene. For Mary Magdalene, and not St Peter,
expressed the first the absolutely decisive revelation, churchmaking and
world-changing. "He is alive" was this decisive revelation.
Pentecost was the crown of the first Church and meant her victory over
all her internal conflicts and her final armament for the coming
dramatic struggle in the world. The Church, which kept herself after
Golgotha on the defensive, inwardly against doubt and fear, outwardly
against the regardless persecution of men, now, after Pentecost,
undertook again her offensive against all her enemies, and became again
the Church militant as she was before Golgotha when the Lord led her in
person. This is the second Church, to which also we all belong.
Historically, this Church is the second, but organically and
dogmatically she is absolutely one with the first Church. Let us see now
what were.
THE EXTERNAL CONFLICTS OF THE MILITANT CHURCH
For the quantity and quality of the conflicts are the conditions of the
dramatic life of a person as well as of a society. Well, the Christian
Church had plenty of the most extraordinary conflicts, external and
internal. Among the gravest external conflicts I reckon her conflicts
with Patriotism and Imperialism.
The first Christians were persecuted most fiercely by the exclusive
Jewish patriots, as all good Christians always have been persecuted by
exclusive patriots. For it is an essential characteristic of a true
Christian not to be an exclusive patriot, exalting his own nation and
despising all others. Oppression and suffering are the best soil for a
too excited Patriotism. Such a soil was Israel in the time of Christ and
the first Church. All parties were united against Christ and His
followers upon national and patriotic grounds; the Pharisees, the
Scribes, the Sadducees and the ignorant people, believers and
sceptics--they all accused Christ of "perverting the nation." They
accused St Paul of the same crime. Yet St Paul it was who dealt with the
question of Jewish Patriotism very courageously and minutely.
Patriotism is a natural quality, but Christianity is supernatural.
Patriotism is a provincial truth, but Christianity is a pan-human truth.
Patriotism means love of one's country or one's generation, Christianity
means love of all countries and all generations. Christianity includes a
sound and true Patriotism, but excludes untrue and exaggerated
Patriotism as it excludes every untrue thought and feeling. Of course an
exalted Patriotism in a frame of hatred all around excludes the
Christian religion and is its most dangerous enemy. St Paul, who
remained a true patriot till the end of his life, thought, as we all
shall think, that Christianity never can damage the just cause of a
country, but, on the contrary, it gives to a patriotic cause a universal
nimbus and importance, putting it direct before the Eternal Judge, and
liberating it from small anxieties, little faith and unworthy actions.
He who is numbering every day our hair, and feeding the sparrows, and
clothing the grass in the field--He is a greater warrant for our
patriotic justice than any of our exaggerated calculations and
sentiment about our country and our nation. Alas, no European nation has
right to blame the Jews because of their persecution of Christianity in
the name of their Patriotism. There exists no country in Europe which
has not at some time in the name of a false Patriotism either directly
persecuted or abased the Church, or at least subordinated her to the
cause of the country or put her in the service of its local and temporal
cause. The purest Christianity in the nineteenth century had a struggle
against patriotic and nationalistic exclusiveness not much less dramatic
than the primitive Church, struggling in Judasa against Judaism and in
Greece against Hellenism. The national hero-saints were exalted in
Europe over the merely Christian saints: in France, Jeanne d'Arc; in
Russia, Serge of Radonez; in Germany, Luther; among the Serbs, St Savva,
and St Peter of Cettinje.
Another enemy of the Church from the beginning was Imperialism. First of
all Roman Imperialism. Christ's second "crime," for which He was brought
before Pilate, was His disregard of Caesar. And Caesar was the symbol of
the Roman world-dominion. Therefore, one Caesar after the other did
their best to exterminate this dangerous Christian sect. Therefore,
among hundreds of religions only Christianity practically was prohibited
in the Roman Empire, as a religio illicita. No wonder! All other
religions which swarmed in Rome were tolerated as naive curiosities by
the people who had lost their own religion. But Christianity was marked
as an enemy from the first. Not only a corrupted Caesar, like Nero,
persecuted the Church, but the wise ones like Trajan and Diocletian, and
the wisest, like Marcus Aurelius. There were plenty of pretexts to
excite the public mind: burnings, earthquakes, diseases, etc. It was
Trajan who prohibited by an edict the Christian secret clubs, Hetoerias,
as dangerous to the State. And it was the philosopher Marcus Aurelius
who sentenced to death the Christian philosopher, Justin, on
Imperialistic grounds.