Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Be it as it may, the question of whether the narration of the Gospel story in particular and theological thinking in general may be trusted to ‘non-professionals,’ asks itself. Vyacheslav Butusov and Ilya Kormiltsev join a long succession of Russian authors who were lay persons in ecclesiastic terms. Their visions of Christ are not authorised by the Church, so to speak—quite a disturbing fact for a believer who happens to be fond of, say, Bulgakov’s writing. Should all these authors have asked church authorities for something like a solemn permission to ‘fictionalise’ Christ as a character in their literary works? Such permission could never be given, I am afraid: you cannot ‘fictionalise’ what is—or is said to be—the source of the ultimate truth, as ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ mutually exclude each other. Should their interpretations of the Gospel story never have been written, for the sake of general peace? In this case, their readership would be bereft of very good texts. ‘Good’ is rather a weak definition here: those texts widen the horizons of our thinking, even if some of them might be recognised as theologically erroneous. Is the fictionalised Christ of any of these authors simply a fictitious character? In other words: shall a Christian believer never give weight to any of these descriptions; shall he or she never believe in them, to say it in very simple words? A logical solution which, again, is malfunctioning, because belief in general cannot be commanded by reason. You see, I do not believe in Bulgakov’s ‘Yeshua the good man’ as a true image of Christ: Yeshua is in my humble opinion too weak and too unimpressive a figure. But I do believe that a conversation between Christ and St Andrew similar to the one that Ilya Kormiltsev is imagining—or reconstructing—in his song might actually have taken place. And, to make things worse, I do believe that the conversation between Christ and the Grand Inquisitor that Dostoyevsky so masterfully depicts in The Brothers Karamazov has happened; I almost see this conversation as the true fact of the spiritual reality. Does my belief make me a bad Christian? I do not expect the answer to the last question to be necessarily negative. Neither of course do I want to confront Russian Orthodoxy and to create a new Christian sub-sect worshipping Dostoyevsky as the new prophet. I do not know the answer to my question. I think the answer can only be provided by the Church as a whole; I believe that questions like the one above should not be ignored.

My dear students, it is very comfortable to imagine the Church as a congregation of silly old persons incapable of seeing the true life in its complexity. At times, the Church can be just that, only that. But then, the overwhelming image of God as the spiritual reality that exists both within and outside of the Church and which is powerful enough to equally inspire pious old monks and Russian rock artists—this idea invades your brain and destroys your inner peace for ever. A note in parenthesis: it only happens if you possess enough of what can be called intellectual honesty. (What is intellectual honesty and why is it important?)

Let us now turn to what the Saviour of the Russian song is actually saying to St Andrew (who is, as the tradition has it, the founder of Russian Orthodox Church). The message is as follows: go and voluntarily accept your own crucifixion for the sake of your fellow humans—for it is the suffering of others that you take upon yourself. Then, and then only, you will be able to work miracles, such as walking on water and the like. The heroic acceptance of one’s own mortal suffering, done for the salvation of humanity, cannot be postponed; everyone who believes in the opposite ‘indeed is a fool.’