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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!
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.