The Russian perception of Christianity was from the beginning, from the first introduction, an aesthetic one.

THE MADNESS OF THE CROSS

by Mark Hackard

Russian science-fiction writer Natalya Irtenina examines the very modern phenomenon of Christian conviction without faith – an attribute of those who struggle toward God in a godless age, a world suffocated rationalist constructs and eviscerated by nihilism. The brilliant poet and diplomatFyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873) embodied such longing, and is a symbol of hope for those who would only cry out to the unknown God to help their unbelief. Translated by Mark Hackard.

Russian life in the past two centuries has borne among other things a strange type of man – he who has within himself an at-first-glance paradoxical conjunction of beliefs. He isn’t religious, he doesn’t believe in God, and he does not seek refuge for his soul in the Church. Yet for all that, he is convinced of the importance of Christianity, the significance of the social institution of the Church, and the necessity of all the characteristics of Orthodox religiosity for the entire people and the private individual.

In the 19th century, Slavophile Ivan Aksakov expressed this contradiction in his book on Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev: he was a man “not of Christian belief,” but “Christian convictions.” Tyutchev’s younger contemporary, the philosopher Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev, was for half his life indifferent to the essence of Christian belief and remained just an observer of the exterior side of Orthodoxy. Sensitive, attentive, and admiring, but still an outsider. “To my aesthetic, Russian love for the Church I had to add that which I lacked before a full confession of faith: fear of sin…fear of God, spiritual fear…,” he would later write. In other words, “beards, pussy-willows, icons, the poetry of prayer and fasting,” but not one’s own participation. An aesthetic satisfaction from contemplation, but not personal faith.

............

Read more: souloftheeast.org