Theology of Disillusionment

Many Russian-speaking people are now disillusioned—with their former ideals, their country, their church. “Everything is gone, we have lost everything,” they say, and they revise their former assessments and bitterly discard their former hopes and dreams. But this is not the first time in history that this has happened, and the very first disappointment of Christians can give today’s disappointed people, if not an example to follow, at least a reason to think.

The Great Disappointment occurred around the third quarter of the first century, when the first generation of Christians began to die, the first persecutions began, and at the same time it became clear that the Second Coming of the Lord did not happen, did not put everything in its place, did not punish the evildoers and did not reward the righteous, and therefore we must somehow learn to continue to live in this not-very-friendly world. In scientific and theological literature this new vision is called “delayed Parousia” (Greek παρουσία: “presence,” “coming”).

In fact, it was this Disappointment that shaped Christianity as we know it: with its rigorous dogma, its complex worship, its elaborate asceticism, its many confusing issues and the range of opinions on each of them. While people lived with the expectation of the imminent end of the world, none of this was necessary, but now a new Christian culture had begun to emerge. There were still about two centuries to go before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and had to adapt to its needs, enough time for it to take shape.

Most importantly, it was necessary to understand the reasons for this delay. The author of the Second Epistle of Peter expressed this most fully and in detail:

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill what He has promised, even though it may seem to some to be a delay. No, it is He who shows you great patience: He does not want anyone to perish, but wants to bring all to repentance” (3:9).

And if so, the position of passive consumers who are ready to receive everything from Christ became impossible for Christians; on the contrary, their main task now became to open the Gospel to this world, which was not at all inclined to accept it, and to realize it in their own lives, which, of course, many wanted to spend on something simpler and more pleasant.

Simply put, parousia itself came to be understood not as a “final triumphal coming” but rather as a “permanent presence.” The call “Maran-atha” (“Lord, come”) did not disappear, but gave way to the words “Christ is in our midst.”

But the problems were not limited to the “delay” of the Second Coming. I will name only the main ones. Initially, Christ addressed the people of Israel, as did the first apostles, but the majority of Jews did not accept their preaching, and the majority of Gentiles simply did not take it seriously, as Paul’s speech in Athens showed, or they mixed this preaching with their own prejudices, as it happened with the same Paul and Barnabas in Galatia. So now it was necessary to address the border group of “those who fear God,” i.e., those Gentiles who had already accepted the doctrine of the One God, but had not yet converted to Judaism (which, to all appearances, was Paul’s main audience). The educated Gentiles needed the biblical teaching presented in a language they could understand.

As the number of communities grew and spread throughout the empire, there was a risk that they would spread too far apart, that Christianity would be mixed with a multitude of other religions and cults; so it was necessary to formulate the basic, common tenets of the Christian faith as the boundaries of the necessary unity. In turn, the Roman state was beginning to see Christians as a threat because they were able to form viable structures. The Roman state began to view Christians with suspicion because they were preaching a new cult and building social ties on top of existing ones, accepting both slaves and patricians into their ranks; so it was necessary to find a form of loyalty to the state power that would not call into question Christian identity itself.

Something similar is happening on a new level now, and I would like to offer the most general reflections on this theme: how the current disillusionment can become a source of creative development for Christians. This is particularly true of the more recent Russian emigration, which is or was in one way or another connected with the Orthodox tradition. Approximately one hundred years ago, Nina Berberova solemnly declared: “We are not in exile, we are on the message”[1]. Today we can hardly repeat these words. But life is not over; moreover, history will not end even after our death. In the era of the “spiritual revival” of the ’90s, which turned into the current catastrophe, the voices of the Russian emigrants of the 20th century were clearly heard. They could not prevent the catastrophe, but maybe they were able to delay it a little, and, most importantly, to become beacons for the multitude of the confused. We are not “on message” in the sense that we have to reveal something meaningful and important to the rest of the world, but we can see ourselves as messengers of our own experience and our own ideals that work for the future, even if we ourselves will not catch that future.

Faith outside the empire

Perhaps the main thesis that unites all those who are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in Russia is that its main problem is imperialism (although there are very different answers to the questions of what exactly it consists in and how to get rid of it). In ecclesiastical language, this is usually called “Sergianism”: in 1927, Metropolitan Sergius, the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, signed a document that can be read as a standard declaration of loyalty to the existing authorities, but can also be seen as a statement that Stalin’s USSR replaces the collapsed Russian Empire as the main and almost the only support for the Church as an organization. Practice has shown that it is the second reading that has become dominant. “A great, moral, social force has been abolished: the force in which our people felt their own strength, in which they were guided in their creative labors and enterprises, in which they took comfort for many years…And to our beloved and unforgettable Joseph Vissarionovich we prayerfully, with deep, fervent love, proclaim eternal memory”—such words would hardly have been uttered by Metropolitan Sergius in 1927, but in March 1953 they sounded to the whole world from the lips of his successor Patriarch Alexy before the funeral service for the deceased leader.[2]

The irony of history is that the most vivid and implacable opponents of Sergianism among Russian emigrants tended to repeat the same mistake with regard to other political regimes, and while the 1927 declaration can be justified by blackmail and threats from the Chekists, other episodes of the “restoration of the empire” were completely uncoerced and voluntary. In March 2014, I was in the U.S. at the invitation of local parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church and personally observed the delight of many of its parishioners at the “return of Crimea to its native harbor”; their dreams of the restoration of the empire were coming true before their eyes, and the beginning was made in none other than Crimea, which remained the last shard of the empire! And it became immediately clear that their Orthodoxy (deep and sincere, as far as I could judge) was inseparable from the empire—even if not really existing, but imagined and therefore especially desirable. And this despite the fact that they were born and raised in the United States, in a country where the state is fundamentally and consistently excluded from association with any religious organization, considering religion to be a private matter of citizens.

But then was it Metropolitan Sergius? The Old Believers will confidently attribute the moment of subordination of the Church to the state to the times of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei, but was it otherwise under Tsar Ivan the Terrible?

And in general, if we look into it, the state-ization of the Church began in the 4th century, if not under Constantine, then certainly under Theodosius (both are canonized saints). Having made Christianity a permitted religion, the empire could not but make it a state religion, nationalize it, subordinate it to its own interests. The history of the Church is full of examples of resistance (for example, in the time of the Iconoclast emperors), but the forces were, of course, too unequal. As Mother Maria Skobtsova wrote,

“The synodal type of religious life, which put forward along with spiritual values other values—from the state, or everyday life, or the tradition—thus not only rearranged and confused the hierarchy of values, but often simply substituted Christ’s love with selfish love for the things of this world….(Now) the Roman emperor defeated Christ not in the circus arena, not in the catacombs, but in the moments of his recognition of the King of Heaven, in the moments of the beginning of the substitution of Christian commandments for the commandments of the secularized statehood”[3] .

And one can easily imagine how, after some political changes in Russia, the same characters who bless the current Kremlin authorities, or their heirs, will besiege the new rulers and demand privileges from them in exchange for their blessings, will annoyingly tell how indispensable they are for the spiritual and moral education of the population and how hard they suffered under the yoke of dictatorship, secretly sympathizing with the fighters against it. And they will do it themselves, voluntarily, without the slightest pressure, sincerely believing that it is necessary to accept any bit of power as a ghost of the former empire, as a new Katechon, and merge with it roots and crowns.

It would seem that the experience of Orthodox communities in exile in the 20th century shows that they can live perfectly well in the complete absence of attention from the state. But it seems that this experience was never realized and was perceived by many as a way to sit out the turmoil and wait for a new tsar to enter the Kremlin to the church chime.

We don’t have another history of Christianity. But this does not mean that there will not be another. Much has been said recently about the German experience of repentance after dictatorship, a very successful and, in fact, unique experience. There is no point in repeating everything that has been said about it here, I will only remind you that the key role in German politics after 1945 was played by parties whose names began with the word “Christian,” the CDU and the CSU, and they did not just use traditional symbols or sets of quotes (after all, the Wehrmacht also wore crosses and the slogan “God with us”), but were guided by evangelical values in relation to the contemporary situation. There has never been a Christian policy of this kind in Russia before, but even now there is no visible attempt to reflect on the possibility of such a policy and on what will have to be resolutely abandoned.

However, Russia is far from unique here. I believe that in some other post-Soviet countries the emergence of new jurisdictions independent of Moscow is understood by many as the formation of churches that are primarily national and only secondarily Christian, but I will let the citizens of these countries judge this better.

It is not so difficult to understand all this if we remember that, according to the Gospel, Christ died on the cross not for the greatness of Rome or the independence of Judea but for each individual, who, unlike empires and republics, is eternal. The first generations of Christians, faced with this problem, offered their own solution: outward loyalty to the existing state (but nothing more) and the building of communities based on principles other than that state.

Hope for a society

Personalities make up society. Interaction with it is often understood by traditional church structures as something between corporate public relations and an ideological department that fulfills the order of the state in exchange for privileges.

But Jesus referred to his disciples as the “salt of the earth” (i.e., the minerals without which the earth cannot bear fruit), and an unknown author around the year 200 in an epistle to Diognetus expanded on this idea further:

“Christians do not differ from other people in place of residence, language, or customs, since they do not dwell in special cities, do not use some distinctive dialect, and do not have a peculiar way of life…In short, what is in the body is soul, Christians are in the world.”[4] .

Today, it seems to be rather the opposite: practicing Christians are clearly distinguished by external characteristics (clothing, special turns of speech, everyday rituals, etc.), but they rarely try to become the “soul of the world,” i.e., to show others some special patterns of behavior, meanings, and values.

In this case, churchgoing is understood as joining a certain special subculture. As for active participation in the life of society, from charity to defending civil rights, belonging to the Church does not, in general, affect a person’s behavior.

The first generations of Christians, as far as we can tell, did not specifically create such a subculture. They faced much more important tasks: how to fit into the polis society and how to fill the well-known forms with new content. We can well imagine how this was done: church communities took the form of collegia, a widespread polis institution, and the relationship between the bishop and his flock generally followed the model of patronage. Moreover, this model was carried over into the theological sphere: according to Paul’s teaching, believers were redeemed by Jesus from slavery to sin and death, and thus became his freemen or clients, whom he endows with the necessary resources (righteousness) and who in return are obliged to do his will. The next task was to present the Good News in the language of Hellenistic philosophy, primarily Platonic, simply to be heard; in fact, this task gave rise to Christian dogma and patristic theology as we know it today.

If today we perceive these culturally conditioned forms and constructions as something once and for all given from above, we betray the very principle of incarnation, according to which divine Truth is united with human flesh, which in turn has nationality, cultural identity, and much more. So that these words do not look too general, we can offer two very famous and at the same time very uncontroversial examples of the search for such models that emerged in the mid-20th century in the Western world.

The first is the attempt to apply existential philosophy to the exegetics of New Testament texts, which in the 1940s gave rise to Rudolf Bultmann’s theory of demythologization and the critical response to it that has shaped much of modern New Testament scholarship. Bultmann’s thesis was that the New Testament was written in the mythological language of the time, and that it needed to be translated into the language of modern philosophy and psychology. Simply put, people of the mid-20th century do not need to be told stories about angels and demons; they need to talk about the meaning of their existence, extracting the gospel message in its very essence (kerygma) from the mythological narrative.

Another example is liberation theology, which emerged in Latin America in the 1960s as a reaction to the wide spread of Marxism (Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and others). It sought to read the Bible and evaluate what was going on around them not from the perspective of the church establishment, but from the position of the “poor of the Lord” on behalf of whom the Old Testament prophets spoke. From this perspective, the Gospel calls for the liberation of the oppressed and the restoration of justice, and it is hard to disagree that the Gospel does indeed contain such calls and that the state-ized churches preferred to ignore them.

Both theories have attracted a sea of criticism, and I am far from thinking that they should be borrowed as they were formulated eighty and sixty years ago, respectively; incidentally, a rather successful attempt to integrate their most important points into the tradition can be found in Jürgen Moltmann’s “theology of hope” (1970s). But for obvious reasons, Russian theology was very far away from such questions at that time, just as it did not notice them in the nineties, when it was time to rebuild walls and reprint books, and still does not notice them today. Well, catching up development has undoubted advantages: one can generalize the experience of predecessors and avoid their mistakes. But asking questions about how we can combine modern philosophy and psychology with Christian faith, how to preach the Gospel to the people of the 21st century without pretending that we still live in the Roman Empire, and what to say to the oppressed about their situation, will have to be done sooner or later. If this is not done, the traditional Church is inevitably destined to become a folk sanctuary somewhere on the margins of the modern world.

We cannot say that such attempts have not been made in the contemporary Russian-speaking environment, but they are still very few and rather inconsistent. As an example, let me cite the so-called “weak theology” (an idea expressed in the 2010s by John Caputo, developed in Russia by Svetlana Konacheva, Andrei Shishkov—who prefers to call his theology “dark”—and some others). It proposes to view God not as a superpower that demands unconditional worship and obedience and severely punishes sins, but rather as an event that helps us find meaning in our own lives and build relationships with others. In this sense, such a theology inherits both Bultmann’s demythologization and the liberation theology of Latin American pastors.

Simply put, since the Church wanted to influence the society of the Roman Empire, it had to put on the pallium of Platonic philosophy. Today, in order to accomplish the same task, it has to put on the outfit of postmodernism.

All this concerns not only high controversies, but also practical issues. At the risk of arousing a sea of emotions, I will name only two, the most topical, in my opinion. The first is the question of sexual ethics. Yes, medieval Christianity was, to a large extent, what we call fixated on the sexual sphere as sinful and in many respects remains so to this day; but we do not find this in the early Christian texts. There is an extremely strict requirement for that time to limit sexuality to marriage, and the rest is not even discussed. By the way, marriage was chronologically the last-declared Church sacrament, and the wedding as a special rite was performed only from the 4th century, already in the imperial period, and, to all appearances, initially only for the upper strata of society. It looked the same in ancient Russia: Church weddings for princes and boyars and traditional pagan forms of marriage for peasants, to the indignation of preachers.

But in the Roman Empire, marriage law was complex and elaborate; for example, marriages cum manu and sine manu (lit. “with hand” and “without hand”) differed in their status and consequences, marriages between slaves were generally impossible, etc. In today’s secular society, the concept of marriage is much more blurred, the notorious “stamp in the passport” is becoming an optional formality, and a Church wedding is just a beautiful rite for most people. In this situation, is it possible to impose on young people the requirements of a completely different society? Does it require, on the contrary, a radical revision of ideas about fidelity, adultery and other things in the spirit of modern practice, where people “meet,” “live together,” etc.? I don’t have an answer to that question, but no one else seems to. In any case, the recent norm of “no sex before marriage” has actually already been replaced by the opposite norm: “Marriage is only for couples who have made sure they are serious about it.”

Much is said in connection with current events about the necessity or even possibility of national repentance, but it is usually said from the position of a future officer of the occupation administration: how “we” will make “them” repent. At the same time, the world has accumulated a rich experience of nations overcoming their own dark pasts and overcoming the spiral of defeat and resentment. Nikolai Epple’s book An Inconvenient Past tells about this in Russian, and some kind of Church response will be necessary, especially since the Christian tradition has a rich experience of repentance as an active hope for a new beginning.

In modern society, a kind of backwards cancel culture is gaining momentum. I would interpret this expression rather as a cult of unforgiveness. It implies that past mistakes or previous failure to meet current standards requires that a person be completely cut out of society, and it is impossible to change this. Such a cult is especially dangerous in the digital age, when everyone leaves a trace on the Internet with literally every action, and the development of new moral standards and new practices of reconciliation with the past in this context (not to mention the current wars) could be an important task for Christians.

Love and the church

Reflecting on the fate of “eternal” Rome, defeated by the Visigoths, Augustine, in the early 5th century, wrote in his treatise The City of God about two cities: the earthly, based on love of self, and the heavenly, based on love of God and neighbor. They coexist in time and space, and each person inevitably finds himself or herself a citizen of one or the other. Such a view allowed us not only to experience the unthinkable—the capture of Rome by the barbarians—but to find in it a meaning and a task for the future. The catastrophe we are experiencing now can move us to such a reflection.

According to the model of the religious scholar and sociologist Gerd Theissen, there are three main areas in religion: myth, ethics, and ritual[5]. Turning to the first centuries of Christianity, one cannot help but see how little they focused on the ritual side of religion and how much attention was paid to myth (i.e., the narrative explaining the structure of the world and man’s place in it) and the practical ethics that flowed from it. The “revitalized spirituality” that has become the object of our disappointment has concentrated mainly on the ritual side of religion. At the same time, it turned out to be quite compatible with the new mythology of the “Russian world,” which was being born and conquered minds and territories literally before our eyes. Contrary to Bultmann, myth is not going anywhere in our lives.

For those who are not satisfied with the new mythology, it will probably not be enough to retell the old stories to each other. They will have to learn to be a different Church, and in this otherness, if they wish, they can see a return to apostolic times.

First of all, the Church will inevitably be and is already becoming poor and weak, not only in the sense that it will not be given the same amount of money and leverage as before, but also in the sense that it cannot speak to the rest of society from a position of strength even now. Moreover, it will not be able to speak as having a monopoly on the truth in the last instance in the current conditions, when there is a rich palette of the most diverse opinions and practices. A more detailed analysis of the tasks and prospects of theology in our era (made even before 2022) can be found in Mikhail Epstein’s book “Religion after Atheism: New Possibilities for Theology”[6]. One of the key concepts of this book is “poor religion/faith/church.”

Further, the Church will be and is already becoming diverse and competitive. We have long seen by many examples that the principle of “one city, one bishop” is a thing of the past and is unlikely to return. Competition between denominations and jurisdictions may take, especially in times of war, violent forms, but on the whole it is rather beneficial, and under conditions of rigid monopoly the omnipotence of diocesan administrators becomes boundless. The classical ecclesiastical hierarchy arose in a society where people were not and could not be equal: patricians and plebeians, freeborn and freedmen, not to mention slaves. The notion of human rights as such emerged explicitly during the Reformation and in connection with the reading of the Gospel: if we are all created by God and all redeemed by Christ, on what can serfdom or the privileges of the nobility (“Twelve Articles” 1525) be based? Today’s society as a whole is not class-based, and it is not surprising that the class-based structure of the Church no longer suits modern man.

In the area of ideas and practices, intense competition has long been a reality, especially with the spread of the Internet. And so the Church has every chance of becoming in no small measure remote, and even more precisely distributed in space, as was already evident during the COVID pandemic. It is not only about the Internet as a means of communication and even a way of administering the sacraments. Christianity is less and less confined to strictly ecclesiastical frameworks: for example, the most poignant poems about Christmas in Russian were written by Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky; there are different opinions about Pasternak’s ecclesiasticism, but Brodsky was definitely not religious in the traditional sense of the word. The phenomenon of extra-denominational or even extra-religious Christianity is becoming increasingly important in our lives. Such Christianity addresses meanings rather than rituals, which means that we have to talk about these meanings.

We live in an age of triumphant hatred, which usually considers itself righteous: tell me who you hate and I will tell you whether I will hate with you or against you. The Christian Church is called to show love to the world, and this can be love of self (its traditions and rituals, its hierarchy and privileges, etc.) or love of God, which always poses many challenges.

The second letter of Peter identifies the disappointment of the first Christians as a source of hope for the whole world. Emigration is a great opportunity to reflect on what is happening, to think about scenarios for the future, to lay the foundations of a building that we ourselves will probably never see completed. And if we understand our emigration as such a task, I am ready to agree that it is not only an exile, but also a message.

A message addressed to ourselves.

[1] The phrase is erroneously attributed to Zinaida Gippius – see Lilia Rodicheva. “I am not in exile, I am in the message” by Nina Berberova: canonization of the phrase // Textology and Historical-Literary Process : collection of articles of the VII International Conference of Young Researchers, Moscow, March 15-17, 2018. – Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2018. – Pp. 143-157.

[2] Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1953, №4. С.3

[3] Mother Maria Skobtsova. Types of Religious Life // Vestnik RCD, 1997, № 176. Pp. 48-49

[4] Early Christian Apologists of the Second and Fourth ‑Centuries. Translations and Studies. Moscow: Ladomir, 2000. Pp. 118-132.

[5] Gerd Theissen. A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion. London: SCM Press, 1999.

[6] Mikhail Epstein. “Religion after Atheism: New Possibilities of Theology.” Moscow: AST, 2013.