RUSSIA AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH
THE TRINITARY PRINCIPLE AND ITS
SOCIAL APPLICATION
Vladimir Solovyev



PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

PART THREE
Contents

THE DIVINE TRINITY RATIONALLY DEDUCED FROM THE IDEA OF BEING
THE THREE DIVINE HYPOSTASES AND THE PROPER SIGNIFICATION OF THEIR NAMES
THE DIVINE ESSENCE AND ITS THREEFOLD MANIFESTATION
THE SOUL OF THE WORLD; THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATION, SPACE, TIME AND MECHANICAL CAUSALITY
THE HIGHER WORLD. THE FREEDOM OF PURE SPIRITS
THE THREE MAIN STAGES OF THE COSMOGONIC PROCESS
THE THREEFOLD INCARNATION OF THE DIVINE WISDOM
MESSIANIC MAN AND THE CHAOS OF MANKIND THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF TRINITARY SOCIETY
THE MESSIANIC PREPARATION AMONG THE HINDUS, THE GREEKS AND THE HEBREWS
THE ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST THE SOCIAL TRINITY PRIESTHOOD AND FATHERHOOD
KINGSHIP AND SONSHIP PROPHECY THE THREE SACRAMENTS OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN
THE FOUR SACRAMENTS OF THE DUTIES OF MAN

CHAPTER NOTES

The Divine Trinity rationally deduced
from the idea of Being

The Divine Trinity rationally deduced from the idea of Being
is, like God Himself, one. But there is unity and unity. There is a negative,
solitary and barren unity, which is limited to the exclusion of all plurality.
This unity is mere negation, which logically presupposes what it denies and
appears as the beginning, arbitrarily arrested, of an indeterminate number. For
there is nothing to prevent the reason from admitting several simple and equal
unities and then multiplying them to infinity. And if the Germans are right in
naming such a process "evil infinity" (die schlechte Unendlichkeit), (1) the simple
unity which is its opposite is not opposed to plurality and does not exclude it, but
in the serene enjoyment of its own superiority dominates its opposite and subjects
it to its own laws. Evil unity is void and nothingness; true unity is that of the one
being which contains all in itself. This positive and pregnant unity principle may
well be described as "evil unity." But there is a true unity which,while always
remaining itself above all limited and manifold reality, includes, determines and
reveals the living powers, the uniform reasons and the varied qualities of all that
exists. It is with a confession of this perfect unity, producing and embracing all,
that the Christian Creed begins: in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem
(παντοκράτορα).

This characteristic of positive unity (uni-totality or uni-plenitude) belongs to all
that is, or must be, absolute of its kind. Such is, in Himself, God Almighty; such,
ideally, is the human reason which is able to comprehend everything; such, lastly,
must be the true Church which is essentially universal, that is to say, embraces
mankind and the whole world in its living unity.

Truth is one and unique in the sense that there cannot be two truths absolutely
independent of one another, still less contrary to one another. But in virtue of this
very unity, the one truth, incapable of containing within itself anything limited,
arbitrary or exclusive, or of being partial or incomplete, must comprise within a
logical system the reasons of all that exists and must suffice to explain everything.
So, too, is the true Church one and unique in the sense that there cannot be two true
Churches independent of one another, still less in conflict with one another. But for
that very reason the true Church, as the unique organization of the divine-human
life, must embrace in an actual system all the fullness of our existence and must
define all the duties of man, meet all his true needs and answer to all his
aspirations.

The actual unity of the Church is represented and secured by the ecclesiastical
monarchy. But since the Church, being one, must therefore be universal, that is to
say, must embrace all in a determinate order, the ecclesiastical monarchy cannot
remain barren but must engender all the powers that go to make up human society
in its fullness. And if the monarchy of Peter, considered as such, affords us a
reflection of the divine unity and at the same time a real and indispensable basis for
the progressive unification of mankind, we shall see also in the further
development of the social powers of Christendom not only a reflection of the
immanent fecundity of the Godhead, but also a real means of linking the totality of
human existence to the fullness of the divine life.

In saying that a living being is, we inevitably ascribe to it at once unity, duality
and trinity. There is unity because we are dealing with a single being. There is
duality because we cannot affirm that a being is, without at the same time
affirming that it is something, that it has a determinate objectivity. The two
fundamental categories of all being are therefore (1) its existence as a real subject,
and (2) its objective essence or its idea (its raison d'être). Finally, there is trinity:
the subject of the living being is linked in three different ways to its essential
objectivity; it possesses it in the first place by the very fact of its existence, as its
own intimate nature or actuality; it possesses it in the second place in its activity
which is necessarily the manifestation of this substance; finally, it possesses it in
the awareness or enjoyment of its own being and activity, in that return upon itself
which proceeds from existence manifested in activity. The presence of these three
modes of existence, successively if not simultaneously, is absolutely essential to
the constitution of a living being. For if it goes without saying that activity and
awareness imply the real existence of a given subject, it is no less certain that a
reality entirely incapable of either would be, not a living being, but an inert and
lifeless thing.

There can be no question that, considered in themselves, the three modes of
being just indicated have a quite positive character. As a really existing subject is
more than a logical abstraction, so an acting and conscious subject is more than
inert matter or blind force. But in the natural order, among all created beings, the
constituent modes of complete existence are never found in their pure form; they
are inseparable from certain limitations and negations which profoundly modify
their positive character. Indeed, if the created living being enjoys real existence, it
never possesses it as an absolute and primary fact; its reality derives from an
external cause, it is not self-contained. So, too, the proper activity of a created
being is never purely, simply and solely the manifestation of its inner being, but it
is necessarily determined by the concurrence of circumstances and the influence of
external stimuli, or at least complicated by the logical possibility of an alternative
manifestation. Finally, the self-consciousness of the created being, proceeding
from a contingent existence and an externally determined activity, does not depend
on the being itself in either its quality, quantity or duration. Thus the finite being,
neither existing primarily in itself, nor acting solely by itself, cannot return
completely upon itself, but always needs some external complement.
In other words, finite existence never contains within itself its own raison
d'être; and in order, finally, to justify or explain the fact of this existence, it must
be linked to absolute Being, or God. In asserting that He exists, we must
necessarily attribute to Him the three constituent modes of complete being. Since
real existence, action and enjoyment are in themselves purely positive attributes,
they cannot be lacking in absolute Being. If He exists, He exists not merely in the
mind, but in reality; if He is a reality, He is no dead or inert reality, but a being
manifesting itself by its own activity; if He acts, it is not as a blind force, but as
consciously aware of His being and taking pleasure in its manifestation. Deprived
of these attributes, He would not be God, but a lower nature, less than man. But for
the very reason that God is God, that is to say, absolute and supreme Being, the
three constituent modes of complete being can only be attributed to Him in their
essential and positive character, apart from any idea that is not bound up with the
notion of Being itself, but relates only to the mode of contingent being. Thus, the
real existence which belongs to God cannot accrue to Him from any external
cause, but is a primary and irreducible fact. God exists in Himself and by Himself.
The reality He possesses is, in the first place, altogether from within; it is an
absolute substance. So, too, the proper action or essential manifestation of God
cannot be either determined or modified by any external cause, but is simply the
pure and perfect (that is, completely adequate) reproduction of His own being, His
unique substance. This reproduction cannot be either a new creation or a division
of the divine substance; it cannot be created, because it exists from all eternity; it
cannot be divided, because it is not a material thing, but pure actuality. God,
possessing it in Himself, manifests it for Himself, and reproduces Himself in a
purely interior act. By this act He arrives at the enjoyment of Himself, that is, of
His absolute substance, not only as existing, but also as manifested. Thus, the
complete existence of God does not require Him to go outside Himself, nor does it
set Him in any external relationship; it is perfect in itself, and does not involve the
existence of anything outside itself.

In the three constituent modes of His being, God is in unique relation to His own
substance: (1) He possesses it in Himself in His "first act" (absolute fact). (2) He
possesses it for Himself, in manifesting or producing it from Himself in His
"second act" (absolute action). (3) He possesses it in returning upon Himself, in
rediscovering in it, in a "third act," the perfect unity of His being and His
manifestation (absolute enjoyment). He cannot enjoy it without having manifested
it, and He cannot manifest it without having it in Himself. Thus, these three acts,
states or relationships — here the terms coincide — indissolubly bound together,
are different but equal expressions of the entire Godhead. In manifesting His
intimate nature or in reproducing Himself by Himself, God has no intermediary
and submits to no external action which might modify His reproduction or render it
incomplete; that which is produced is therefore completely equal to that which
produces, in every respect, except in so far as one produces and the other is
produced. And as the whole Godhead is contained in its reproduction, so is it
wholly contained in the enjoyment proceeding from that reproduction. This
enjoyment, being contingent upon no external condition, cannot be an accidental
state inadequate to the absolute being of God; it is the direct and complete outcome
of the divine existence and action. God, as enjoying, proceeds from Himself as
producing and produced. And as the third term, that which proceeds, is determined
only by the two first, which are entirely equal to one another, it must also be equal
to them in every respect except in so far as it proceeds from them and not vice
versa.

These three acts are not separate parts of the divine substance; no more can they
be successive phases of the divine existence. If the idea of a "part" implies space,
that of a "phase" implies time. In excluding these two forms of created existence,
we must affirm that the absolute substance is contained in the three modes of
divine existence, not only without division, but without succession. This implies
three relative subjects or hypostases in the absolute unity of the divine substance.
Indeed, if the three modes of absolute existence could be successive, then a single
subject would suffice, a single hypostasis might be found successively in three
different relationships to its substance. But absolute Being, being unable to change
in time, is not susceptible of a successive evolution; the three constituent modes of
its complete existence must be in it simultaneous or co-eternal. On the other hand,
it is clear that one and the same subject or hypostasis cannot affirm itself
simultaneously as not manifested, as manifested, and as proceeding by its
manifestation. It is, therefore, necessary to admit that each of the modes of divine
existence is always represented by a relatively distinct subject; that it is eternally
hypostatized and that consequently there are in God three co-eternal hypostases.
This necessity can be presented from another point of view. Since God in the first
mode of His existence, as neither produced nor manifested but reproducing and
manifesting Himself, is necessarily a genuine subject or hypostasis, and since the
second mode of divine existence, God as reproduced or manifested, is completely
equal to the first in every respect except the specific difference in their mutual
relationship, it follows that if the first is an hypostasis, the second must also be an
hypostasis. For the only relative difference that distinguishes them does not refer to
the notion of an hypostasis, but to that of producing or being produced. Thus, if the
one is an hypostasis that produces, the other is an hypostasis that is produced. The
same reasoning applies completely to the third mode of Divine existence, which
proceeds from the two former, inasmuch as God through the accomplishment of
His manifestation returns upon Himself in the absolute enjoyment of His
manifested being. In removing from this last relationship all notion of time or of a
successive process, we are led inevitably to admit a third hypostasis, co-eternal
with the other two and proceeding from both as their unity and final synthesis, thus
closing the circle of the Divine life. Enjoyment in God (God as enjoying) cannot be
unequal to His action or His primordial reality; if, then, the latter are distinct
hypostases, the former must be also.

The trinity of hypostases or subjects in the unity of absolute substance is a truth
given us by Divine Revelation and the infallible teaching of the Church. We have
seen that this truth imposes itself upon the reason and can be logically deduced
from the admission that God is, in the positive and complete sense of this term.
Divine Revelation has not only taught us that there are three hypostases in God, but
it has also designated them by specific names. We shall complete the foregoing
argument by showing that these names are not arbitrary, but that they correspond
perfectly to the trinitary idea itself.


The three Divine Hypostases and
the proper signification of their names

GOD possesses positive and complete existence. He is the living God. Life
means reproduction. Reproduction or generation is supreme causality, the
proper action of a complete and living being. In this perfect causality, the
productive cause must, in the first place, contain in itself its product or effect, for
otherwise it could only be an occasional cause, and not the true cause of the
product. This first phase of absolute life, in which the living effect seems absorbed
in the unity of the primordial cause, is only a necessary supposition of the second,
that of actual production, in which that which produces distinguishes itself in act
(actu) from its product, and effectively engenders the latter. But we have already
established the fact that since absolute Being can of necessity have no other
secondary cause associated with it and limiting its productive action, its immediate
product must be strictly adequate to it. Thus, the eternal process of the divine life
cannot stop at the second term, the differentiation or reduplication of absolute
Being as producer and produced. Their equality and their substantial identity mean
that the manifestation of their actual and relative difference (in the act of
generation) must inevitably issue in a new manifestation of their unity. And this
unity is no mere repetition of that primordial unity in which the absolute cause
includes and absorbs its effect in itself. Since the latter, as actually manifested,
appears as the equal of that which produced it, they must of necessity enter into a
reciprocal relationship. As this reciprocity is not to be found in the act of
generation (in which the generator is not in turn generated, and vice versa) it
necessarily demands a new act determined at one and the same time by the first
cause and by its consubstantial product. And since it concerns a relationship which
is essential to the Divine Being, this new act cannot be an accident or a transient
state, but is eternally substantive or hypostatic in a third subject proceeding from
the two first and representing their actual, living unity in the same absolute
substance.

After this explanation, it will be easily seen that the names, Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, given to the three hypostases of absolute Being, far from being
metaphorical, find in the Divine Trinity their proper and complete application,
whereas in the natural order these terms can only be used in an imperfect and
approximate sense. And first, as regards the two former terms, when we speak of
"father" and "son" we mean to convey no other idea but that of an absolutely
intimate relationship between two hypostases of one and the same nature, which
are essentially equal to one another, but of which the former gives, without
receiving, existence, while the latter receives, without giving, it. The father, qua
father, is distinct from the son only by having produced him, while the son, qua
son, is distinct from the father only by being produced by him.

This is all that is contained in the idea of paternity as such. But it is clear that
this determinate idea, so clear and distinct, cannot be applied in its purity and
entirety to any class of created beings that we know: not in its entirety, for in the
natural order the father is only a partial cause of the existence of the son, and the
son derives his existence only partly from the father; not in its purity, because
besides the specific distinction of having given and received existence, there are
between fathers and sons in the natural order countless individual differences, quite
foreign to the mere idea of paternity and filiation. To discover the true application
of this idea we must rise to the level of absolute Being. There we have seen the
relation of paternity and filiation in its purity, for the Father is the sole and unique
cause of the Son; in its entirety, for the Father gives all existence to the Son, and
the Son has in Himself nothing but what He receives from the Father. There is
between them an absolute distinction as regards the act of existence, and an
absolute unity in all the rest. Being two, they can unite in an actual relationship and
in common produce a new manifestation of absolute substance; but since this
substance belongs to them in common and without division, the product of their
reciprocal action can only be the explicit affirmation of their unity emerging from
and overcoming their actual difference. And as this synthetic unity of the Father
and the Son, manifested as such, cannot be represented either by the Father as such
or by the Son as such, it must necessarily be substantiated in a third hypostasis to
which the name of "Spirit" is entirely applicable from two points of view. First, it
is in this third hypostasis that the Divine Being, by its inner reduplication in the act
of generation, achieves the manifestation of its absolute unity, returns upon itself,
affirms itself as really infinite, possesses itself and enjoys itself in the fullness of its
consciousness. Now, this is the specific characteristic of the spirit (in its interior,
metaphysical and psychological sense) in so far as it is distinguished from the soul,
the intelligence, and so forth. Again, since the Godhead attains its interior
completion in its third hypostasis, it is particularly in the latter that God possesses
the liberty to act outside Himself and to set in motion an external medium. But it is
precisely this perfect liberty of action or movement that characterizes the spirit in
the external or physical sense of the word, πνευμα, spiritus, that is to say, breath or
respiration. Since neither this perfect self-possession nor this absolute liberty of
external action can be found in any created being, it may reasonably be asserted
that no being of the natural order is spirit in the full sense of the word, and that the
only spirit properly so-called is that of God, the Holy Spirit.

While it is essential to admit three hypostatized modes in the inner development
of the Divine life, it is impossible to admit more. In taking as our starting-point the
fullness of existence which necessarily belongs to God, we are obliged to add that
it is not enough for God to exist simply in Himself, but that He must manifest this
existence for Himself, and that even that is not enough unless He can enjoy His
existence, thus manifested, in affirming the dominance of His absolute identity and
unchangeable unity over the very act of His inner reduplication. But granted this
last affirmation, this perfect enjoyment of His absolute being, the immanent
development of the Divine life is completed. To possess His existence as pure act
in Himself, to manifest it for Himself in absolute actuality, and to have the perfect
enjoyment of it — this is all that God can do, without going outside His inner
being; if He does anything else, it is no longer in the sphere of his immanent life,
but outside it, in a subject which is not God.

Before passing to this new subject, let us note that the trinitarian development of
the Divine life, eternally substantiated in the three hypostases, far from modifying
the unity of absolute Being, or the supreme Monarchia, is simply its full
expression, and that for two essential reasons. The divine Monarchia is expressed
in the first place by the indivisible unity and indissoluble bond between the three
hypostases which have no existence at all in a separate state. It is not only that the
Father never is without the Son and the Spirit, just as the Son never is without the
Father and the Spirit, nor the Last without the Two Former, but it must also be
admitted that the Father is not the Father or first principle, except in so far as He
begets the Son and is with Him the cause of the procession of the Holy Spirit. The
Father is only a distinct hypostasis, and that the first, with and for the whole
Trinity. He could not be the absolute cause if He did not have in the Son His
absolute effect, and find in the Spirit the reciprocal and synthetic unity of cause
and effect.

It is the same, mutatis mutandis, with the two other hypostases. On the other
hand, in spite of this mutual dependence, or rather by reason of it, each of the three
hypostases possesses the absolute fullness of the divine being. The Father is never
limited to existence in Himself or to absolute and primordial reality (actus purus);
He translates this reality into action, He acts and He enjoys, but He never does so
alone — He acts always through the Son, and He enjoys always with the Son in the
Spirit. The Son on His part is not only absolute action or manifestation; He also
has being in Himself and enjoyment of this being, but He has them only in His
perfect unity with the two other hypostases: He has both the self-subsistence of the
Father, and the enjoyment of the Holy Spirit. Lastly, the Latter, as the absolute
unity of the Two Former, is necessarily what They are, and possesses in act (actu)
all that They have, but with Them and through Them.

Thus, each of the three hypostases has absolute being, and has it completely: in
reality, in action and in enjoyment. Each is therefore true God. But as this absolute
fullness of the divine being belongs to each only in union with the other two and in
virtue of the indissoluble bond which unites them, it follows that there are not three
Gods. For the hypostases must be isolated in order to be counted; but none of them,
isolated from the others, can be true God, since it cannot even be in such a
condition. It is permissible to represent the Holy Trinity as three separate Beings
since no other representation is possible. But the impotence of the imagination is
no argument against the truth of the rational idea, which is clearly and distinctly
recognized by pure thought. In truth, there is only one indivisible God, realizing
Himself eternally in the three hypostatic phases of absolute existence; and each one
of these phases, constantly finding itself internally completed by the two others,
contains and represents the entire Godhead, is true God through unity and in unity,
not through exclusion or in separation.

This effectual unity of the three hypostases derives from the unity of their
principle; and this is the second reason for the divine Monarchia, or rather a
second aspect of it. There is in the Trinity only one first cause, the Father, and
thence arises a determinate order which makes the Son ontologically dependent
upon the Father, and the Holy Spirit upon the Father and the Son. This order is
based upon the trinitary relationship itself. For it is clear that action implies reality,
and enjoyment implies both.


The Divine Essence and its threefold manifestation

GOD is. This axiom of faith is confirmed by philosophic reason which, in
accordance with its own nature, seeks such a necessary and absolute being
as should contain in itself its own raison d'être, explain itself by itself and
suffice to explain all the rest. Starting from this fundamental idea, we have
distinguished in God the threefold subject which is implied by complete existence,
and the objective essence or absolute substance possessed by this subject under
three different relationships, in pure or primordial act, in secondary or manifested
action, and in a third act of perfect self-enjoyment. We have shown that these three
relationships cannot be founded on any division of parts or succession of phases
(two conditions equally incompatible with the idea of Godhead), and that therefore
they imply in the unity of the absolute essence the eternal existence of three
relative subjects or hypostases, consubstantial and indivisible, to which the sacred
names of the Christian revelation — Father, Son and Spirit —are eminently
appropriate. It now remains to define and name the absolute objectivity itself, the
unique substance of the divine Trinity.

It is one; but since it cannot be one thing among many, a particular object, it is
universal substance or "all in unity." Possessing it, God possesses all in it; it is the
fullness or absolute totality of being, antecedent and superior to all partial
existence.

This universal substance, or absolute unity of the whole, is the essential Wisdom
of God (Khocmah, Σοφία). Possessing in itself the latent potentiality of all things,
it is itself possessed by God and under a threefold mode. It says itself: Jahveh
qanani reshith darco, qedem miphealav, meaz — Dominus possedit me capitulum
viæ suæ, oriens operationum suarum, ab exordio. And again: Meholam nissacti,
merosh, miqadme arets — Ab æterno ordinata sum, a capite, ab anterioribus
terræ. (2) And in order to complete and explain this threefold manner of being, it adds
further: Vaëhieh etslo, amon, vaëhieh shaashouim yom yom — et eram apud eum
(scilicet Dominum — Jahveh) cuncta componens, et delectabar per singulos dies. (3)
Ab æterno eram apud eum — He possesses me in His eternal being; a capite
cuncta componens — in absolute action; antequam terra fieret delectabar — in
pure and perfect enjoyment. In other words, God possesses His unique and
universal substance or His essential wisdom as eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Having thus one and the same objective substance, these three divine subjects are
consubstantial.

Wisdom has told us in what her action consists — it consists in "composing the
whole" (eram cuncta componens). She goes on to tell us in what her enjoyment
consists: mesakheqeth lephanav becol heth; mesakheqeth bethebel artso,
veshahashouhaï eth-bene Adam — ludens coram eo omni tempore; ludens in
universo terræ eius, et deliciæ meæ cum filiis hominis (4) — "rejoicing always before
Him, rejoicing in the terrestrial world, and my delights with the sons of Man."
What then is this rejoicing of the divine Wisdom and why does she find her
supreme delight in the sons of Man?

God possesses the totality of being in His absolute substance. He is one in the
whole, and He has the whole within His unity. This totality implies plurality, but a
plurality reduced to unity, actually unified. And in God Who is eternal, this
unification is also eternal; in Him indeterminate multiplicity has never existed as
such, has never been produced in act (actu), but is found from all eternity subjected
and reduced to absolute unity under its three indivisible modes: unity of simple
being, or unity in itself, in the Father; unity of being, actively manifested in the
Son, Who is the direct action, the image and Word of the Father; and lastly, unity
of being, penetrated by a complete enjoyment of itself in the Holy Spirit, Who is
the common heart of the Father and the Son.

But if the eternally actual state of absolute substance (in God) is to be all in
unity, its potential state (outside God) is to be all in division. This is indeterminate
and anarchic plurality, the Chaos or το απειρον of the Greeks, the German
schlechte Unendlichkeit, the tohu va bohu of the Bible. This antithesis of the
Divine Being is from all eternity suppressed and reduced to that state of pure
potentiality by the very fact and the first act of the divine existence. Absolute and
universal substance belongs in fact to God, He is eternally and primordially all in
unity; He is, and that is enough for Chaos not to exist. But that is not enough for
God Himself Who is not merely Being, but perfect Being. It is not enough to
affirm that God is; it must also be possible to say why He is. To subsist from the
beginning, to suppress Chaos and to contain all in unity by the act of His
omnipotence — that is the divine fact that demands explanation. God cannot rest
content with being in fact stronger than Chaos, He must be so by right. And to
have the right to conquer Chaos and reduce it eternally to nothingness, God must
be more true than it. He displays His truth by confronting Chaos not merely with
the act of His omnipotence, but with a reason or an idea. He must, therefore,
distinguish His perfect totality from the chaotic plurality, and to each possible
manifestation of the latter He must reply, in His Word, by an ideal manifestation of
true unity, by a reason showing the intellectual or logical impotence of the Chaos
that would assert itself. Containing all within the unity of absolute Omnipotence,
God can also contain all within the unity of the universal idea. The God of might
must also be the God of truth, the supreme Reason. To the pretensions of the
infinitely manifold Chaos, He must oppose not only His being pure and simple, but
also a whole system of eternal ideas, reasons or truths, each one of which, linked
with all the others by an indissoluble bond of logic, represents the triumph of
determinate unity over anarchic plurality, over the Evil Infinity. The chaotic
tendency of every particular being to assert itself exclusively as though it were the
whole is condemned as false and unjust by the system of eternal ideas which
assigns to each a definite place in the absolute totality, thus displaying, alongside
the truth of God, His justice and His equity.

But the triumph of reason and truth is still not enough for the divine perfection.
Since the Evil Infinity or Chaos is an essentially irrational principle, the logical and
ideal manifestation of its falsity is not the proper means to reduce it inwardly.
Truth is manifested, light is shed, but the darkness remains what it was: et lux in
tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt. Truth is a reduplication and a
separation, it is a relative unity, for it affirms the existence of its contrary as such,
in the act of distinguishing itself from it. And God must be absolute unity. He must
be able to embrace in His unity the opposite principle itself, in showing Himself
superior to it not only by truth and justice, but also by goodness. The absolute
excellence of God must be manifested not only in opposition to Chaos, but also for
Chaos, in giving it more than it deserves, in making it share in the fullness of
absolute existence, in proving to it not merely by objective reason but by an inner
living experience the superiority of the divine plenitude over the empty plurality of
the Evil Infinity. The Godhead must be able to meet every manifestation of
rebellious Chaos not only with an act of force suppressing the contrary act, not
only with a reason or an idea convicting it of falsity and excluding it from true
being, but also with a grace penetrating and transforming it and so drawing it back
to unity. This threefold unification of the whole, this threefold victorious reaction
of the divine principle against potential Chaos, is the inner eternal manifestation of
the absolute substance of God or of the essential Wisdom which, as we have seen,
is "all in unity." Strength, truth and grace; or power, justice and goodness; or
again, reality, idea and life — all these relative expressions of absolute totality are
objective definitions of the divine substance corresponding to the Trinity of
hypostases which possess it eternally. And the indissoluble bond between the three
Persons of the supreme Being is necessarily manifested in the objectivity of their
unique substance, of which the three principal attributes or qualities are mutually
bound up with one another and are equally inseparable from the Godhead. God
could not penetrate the Chaos by His goodness, if He did not distinguish Himself
from it by truth and justice, and He could not distinguish Himself from it or
exclude it from Himself if He did not contain it in His power.


The Soul of the World; the Principle of Creation, Space, Time and Mechanical Causality

WE can now understand the significance of the joy of the eternal Wisdom
of which she tells us in Holy Scripture. She "rejoices" in summoning up
before God the countless possibilities of all existences outside the
Godhead and in reabsorbing them in her omnipotence, her absolute truth and her
infinite goodness. In this joy of His essential Wisdom, God, one and threefold, in
suppressing the power of the possible chaos, illuminating its darkness and
penetrating its depths, is interiorly aware of Himself and proves to Himself from
all eternity that He is more powerful, truer and better than any possible being
outside Himself. This rejoicing of His Wisdom shows Him that all that is positive
belongs to Him in fact and by right, that He possesses eternally in Himself an
infinite treasure of all real powers, all true ideas, all gifts and all graces.
In the two first essential qualities of Godhead, God might limit Himself to His
immanent manifestation, (5) the eternal rejoicing of His Wisdom; as One almighty,
just and true, He might well rest content with triumphing in Himself over anarchic
existence in the inner certainty of His absolute superiority. But that does not satisfy
grace and goodness. In this third quality, divine Wisdom cannot rest content with a
purely ideal object, she cannot stop short at a realization that is only potential, a
mere enjoyment. If, in His power and truth, God is all, He desires in His love that
all should be God. He desires that there should be outside Himself another nature
which may progressively become what He is from all eternity — the absolute
whole. In order to arrive itself at the divine totality and to enter with God into a
free, reciprocal relationship, this nature must be separated from God and at the
same time united to Him; separated by its actual basis which is the Earth, and
united by its ideal culmination which is Man. It is supremely in her vision of the
Earth and of Man that the eternal Wisdom unfolds her rejoicing before the God of
the Future: mesakheqeth bethebel artso, veshahashouhaï eth-bene Adam.
We know that the possibility of chaotic existence, eternally contained in God, is
eternally suppressed by His power, condemned by His truth and absorbed by His
grace. But God loves Chaos in its nothingness and wills that it should exist, for He
is able to draw rebellious existence back to unity and fill the infinite void with His
superabundant life. God, then, gives Chaos its freedom; He refrains from acting
against it by His omnipotence in the first act of the Divine Being, in the element of
the Father, and thus causes the universe to emerge out of its nothingness.
Unless we would repudiate the very notion of Godhead, we cannot admit outside
of God any existence in itself, real and positive. What is outside Godhead can
therefore only be the Divine transposed or reversed. And this is what we primarily
see in the specific forms of finite existence which separate our world from God.
This world is, in fact, constituted outside God by the forms of Extension, Time and
Mechanical Causality. But these three conditions have nothing real and positive
about them; they are simply a negation and transposition of divine existence in its
principal categories.

We have distinguished in God (1) His absolute objectivity, represented by His
substance or essence, which is the whole in one indivisible unity; (2) His absolute
subjectivity or His interior existence, represented in its totality by three inseparable
hypostases, mutually conditioning and completing one another; (3) lastly, His free
relativity or relationship with what is not Himself, represented first by the joy of
the Divine Wisdom, and then by Creation (and, as we shall subsequently see, by
the Incarnation). The general characteristic of the Divine Being in these three
categories or aspects is its autonomy, its perfect aseity, the absence of any external
determining factor. God is (1) autonomous in His objective substance, for, being
all in itself, it cannot be determined by anything; (2) He is autonomous in His
subjective existence, for it is absolutely complete in its three co-eternal and
hypostatic phases, which possess in their unity the totality of being; finally (3) He
is autonomous in His relationship to what is not Himself, for this other is only
determined to exist by a free act of the Divine Will. Thus, the three categories
indicated are merely different forms and expressions of the divine autonomy. And
it is on that account that in the terrestrial world, which is simply the reverse image
of Godhead, we find the three corresponding forms of its heteronomy: Extension,
Time and Mechanical Causality. (1) If the objective and substantial expression of
the divine autonomy is "all in unity," omnia simul in uno, the heteronomous
objectivity of Extension consists, on the contrary, in the fact that every part of the
world outside the Godhead is separate from all the others; it is the subsistence of
each one outside the whole, and of the whole outside each one — it is the opposite
of totality. Thus, our world, in so far as it is composed of extended parts, represents
the divine objectivity reversed. (2) So, too, if the subjective autonomy of the divine
existence finds its expression in the equal actuality and the close and indissoluble
bond between the three terms of this existence which complete, without
succeeding, one another, the heteronomous form of Time presents us, on the
contrary, with an indeterminate series of moments challenging one another's
existence. Each of these moments, in order to enjoy actuality, must exclude all the
others, and all of them, instead of completing one another, suppress and supplant
one another without ever attaining the totality of existence. (3) Finally, as the
creative liberty of God is the final expression of His autonomy, so the heteronomy
of the world outside God is completely manifested in Mechanical Causality, in
virtue of which the outward action of a given being is never the direct effect of its
inward act, but must be determined by a chain of material causes or conditions
independent of the agent itself.

The abstract principle of Extension is that two objects, parts of the whole,
cannot occupy the same place at the same time, and similarly a single object, a
single part of the whole, cannot be in two different places at once; this is the law of
division or of objective exclusion between parts of the whole. The abstract
principle of Time is that two interior states of a subject (states of consciousness,
according to modern terminology) cannot coincide in a single actual moment, and
similarly a single state of consciousness cannot be maintained as actually identical
in two different moments of existence; this is the law of the perpetual disjunction
of the interior states of every subject. Finally, according to the abstract principle of
Mechanical Causality, no act or phenomenon is produced spontaneously or of
itself, but is entirely determined by another act or phenomenon, which is itself
simply the effect of a third, and so on; this is the law of the purely external and
occasional relationship between phenomena. It is easy to see that these three
principles or laws express but one general urge, tending to disintegrate and
dissolve the body of the universe and to deprive it of all inner coherence and of all
solidarity between its various parts. This urge or tendency is the very basis of
Chaos, that is, of Nature outside the Godhead. An urge implies a will, and a will
implies a psychical subject, that is to say, a soul. Since the world which this soul
strives to produce — the whole disintegrated, disjointed, and only held together by
a purely external bond — is the opposite or reverse of the divine totality, the soul
of the world itself is the opposite or antitype of the essential Wisdom of God. This
world-soul is a creature, the first of all creatures, the materia prima, the true
substratum of our created world. In fact, since nothing can have any real and
objective existence outside God, the world outside the Godhead can only be, as we
have said, the divine world subjectively transposed and reversed: it is simply a
false aspect or illusory representation of the divine totality. But even this illusory
existence implies a subject putting itself in a false relationship and producing in
itself the distorted image of truth. Since this subject can be neither God nor His
essential Wisdom, a distinct subject or world-soul must be admitted as the
principle of Creation, properly so-called. As a creature, it does not exist eternally
in itself, but it exists from all eternity in God, in the state of pure potentiality, as
the latent basis of the eternal Wisdom. This potential future Mother of the world
outside the Godhead corresponds, in its complete ideality, to the eternally actual
Father in the Godhead.

As pure indeterminate potentiality, the world-soul has a twofold and variable
character (ή αόριστος δύας): it can will to exist for itself outside God, it can take
the false point of view of chaotic and anarchic existence, but it can also abase itself
before God and, by freely attaching itself to the Divine Word, bring all Creation
back to perfect unity and identify itself with the eternal Wisdom. But to do this, the
world-soul must first enjoy real existence in distinction from God. The eternal
Father therefore created it by restraining the act of His omnipotence which
suppressed from all eternity the blind desire for anarchic existence. This desire,
becoming act, revealed to the world-soul the possibility of the opposite desire, and
thus the soul itself received an independent existence, chaotic in its immediate
actuality, but capable of changing into the opposite. Having conceived Chaos and
given it a reality relative to itself, the soul conceives the desire for deliverance
from this discordant existence of aimless and irrational agitation in an abyss of
darkness. Drawn hither and thither by blind forces striving with one another for
exclusive existence, rent asunder, disintegrated, reduced to a countless multitude of
atoms, the world-soul feels a vague but profound desire for unity. By this desire it
attracts the action of the Word (the Divine as acting or as manifested) which
reveals itself to it at the beginning in the general, indeterminate idea of the
universe, the world as one and indivisible. This ideal unity, realizing itself upon the
basis of chaotic extension, takes the form of unlimited space or immensity. The
whole, reproduced, represented or imagined by the soul in its state of chaotic
division, cannot cease to be the whole or lose its unity completely; and since its
parts do not wish to complete or penetrate one another in a positive and living
totality, they are compelled, while mutually excluding one another, nevertheless to
remain together, to co-exist in the formal unity of indefinite space, a form which is
entirely external and void of the objective and substantial totality of God. But the
soul is not content with external immensity; it wishes also to experience the
interior totality of subjective existence. This totality, eternally triumphant in the
Divine Trinity, is for the chaotic soul suppressed by that in-determinate series of
mutually exclusive and indifferent moments which is called Time. This false
infinity which enchains the soul constrains it to desire the truth; and to this desire
the Divine Word replies by the suggestion of a new idea. By its action upon the
soul, the supreme Trinity is reflected in the stream of indefinite duration under the
form of the three times. In seeking to realize total actuality for itself, the soul is
compelled to fill up every given moment of its existence by the more or less
indistinct memory of a past without beginning and the more or less vague
expectation of a future without end.

And, as a deep unchangeable foundation for this changing relationship, there are
the three principal states of the soul itself, its three modes of relationship to the
Godhead, fixed for it under the form of the three times. The condition of its
primordial absorption in the unity of the eternal Father, its eternal subsistence in
Him as pure potentiality or mere possibility, is henceforward defined as the Past of
the soul; the condition of separation from God by the blind force of chaotic desire
makes up its Present; and the return to God, the new reunion with Him, becomes
the aim of its aspirations and efforts, its ideal Future.

As upon the anarchic division of extended parts the Divine Word establishes for
the soul the formal unity of space, and as upon the basis of the chaotic succession
of moments it produces the ideal trinity of time, so upon the basis of mechanical
causality it manifests the concrete solidarity of the Whole by the law of universal
attraction binding together, by an inner force, all the scattered fragments of chaotic
reality to form a single compact and solid body, the primal materialization of the
world-soul, the original base of operation for the essential Wisdom.

Thus, through the blind and chaotic struggle which imposes upon the soul an
existence indefinitely divided in its parts, exclusively successive in its moments
and mechanically determined in its phenomena; through the contrary desire of the
soul itself aspiring to unity and totality; and through the action of the Divine Word
in answer to this desire — by the united operation of these three agents, the lower
world, that is, the world outside the Godhead, receives its relative reality or, in
Biblical phrase, the foundations of the Earth are laid. But in the idea of Creation
the Bible, like theosophical reason, makes no distinction between the lower and the
upper world, between the Earth and the heavens.

Thus we have seen how the eternal Wisdom called forth the possibilities of
irrational and anarchic existence in order to confront them with the corresponding
manifestations of absolute power, truth and goodness. These divine reactions,
which are nothing but "play" (jeu — a game) (6) in the immanent life of God, become
real principles of being when the anti-divine potentialities which provoke them
cease to be pure potentialities. Thus, to the creation of the lower or chaotic world
necessarily corresponds the creation of the upper or celestial world: Bereshith bara
Elohim eth hasham-maïm v'eth ha'arets.


The Higher World The Freedom of Pure Spirits

BERESHITH — εν αρχη or better, εν κεφαλαιω (7) — in principio, seu potius, in
capitulo: To suppose that the opening words of Genesis are only an
intermediate adverbial expression, like our modern phrase, "in the
beginning," and so forth, would be entirely to misunderstand not only the genius of
the Hebrew language, but also the general spirit of the ancient East. When the
Hebrew language uses a substantive, it takes it seriously, that is to say, it has in
mind an actual being or object denoted by this substantive. Now, it is undeniable
that the Hebrew word reshith, here translated αρχη, principium, is a genuine
substantive of feminine gender. The corresponding masculine is rosh, caput, head.
The latter term is used by Jewish theology pre-eminently to denote God, the
supreme and absolute Head of all that exists. But what, from this point of view, can
reshith be — the feminine of rosh? To answer this question we need not turn to the
ingenuities of the Cabbalists. The Bible is there to give us a decisive solution. In
chapter 8 of the Proverbs of Solomon already quoted, the eternal Wisdom,
Khocmah, tells us (v. 22): Jahveh qanani RESHITH darco — Jahveh possessed me
as the (feminine) beginning of His way. It is then the eternal Wisdom which is the
reshith, the feminine principle or head (source) of all being, just as Jahveh Elohim,
the triune God, is its rosh, its active principle or source. Now, according to
Genesis, God created the heavens and the Earth in this reshith, in His essential
Wisdom; which means that this divine Wisdom does not only represent the
essential and actual uni-totality of the absolute being or substance of God, but also
contains in itself the unifying principle of the divided and disintegrated being of
the world. Being the accomplished unity of the whole in God, it becomes also the
unity of God and of existence outside the Godhead. It is thus the true rationale and
end of Creation — the principle in which God created the heavens and the Earth.
While it exists substantially and from all eternity in God, it realizes itself
effectively in the world and is successively incarnate therein, in drawing it back to
an ever more perfect unity. At the beginning it is reshith, the pregnant notion of
absolute unity, the unique principle which must unify all; at the end it is malkhouth
(βασιλεία, regnum), the Kingdom of God, the perfect and completely realized unity
of the Creator and the creature. It is not the soul of the world; that is only the
instrument, the medium and ground of its realization, which it approaches by the
action of the Word and gradually raises to an ever more complete and real
identification with itself. The soul of the world, considered in itself, is the
indeterminate subject of Creation, equally accessible to the evil principle of Chaos
and to the Word of God. The Khocmah, Σοφία, the Divine Wisdom, is not the soul,
but the guardian angel of the world, overshadowing all creatures with its wings as a
bird her little ones, in order to raise them gradually to true being. It is the substance
of the Holy Spirit Who brooded over the dark waters of the forming world. Ve
rouakh (feminine) Elohim merakhepheth al pene hammaïm. But let us follow the
order of the sacred record: Bereshith bara Elohim eth hashammaïm v'eth ha'arets.
No research is needed to discover the meaning of the last word: ha'arets, Earth.
The inspired writer goes on at once to explain; ve-ha'arets haïethah tohu va bohu:
and the Earth was Chaos. But if by the Earth, in the Biblical account of Creation,
we are to understand Chaos or the lower universe outside the Godhead in its
chaotic condition, it is clear that the expression hashammaïm, the heavens, which
the sacred text puts in close relation to the Earth as the opposite pole of Creation,
indicates the upper universe or the invisible world of the divine reactions,
established or realized distinctly as a counterbalance to chaotic existence.

This invisible world is not without reason denoted in Hebrew (as in Old
Slavonic) by a word of dual number, rendered as plural in Western languages. This
dual answers to the primordial division of the divine world. We know that the
efficient cause of Creation (αρχη τες γενέσευς) is the act of will by which God
refrains from suppressing by His omnipotence the potential reality of Chaos, or
ceases to react against this potentiality by the special power of His first hypostasis,
limiting Himself to reaction by the second and third — by justice and goodness,
truth and grace. Since the first hypostasis of the Most Holy Trinity, the Eternal
Father, refrained from reacting against the possible Chaos in His specific quality,
that is, from suppressing it by His omnipotence, and since this was the prime
condition or efficient cause of Creation (for which reason God the Father is preeminently
the Creator of the world), it follows that to constitute the sphere of
divine reactions to Chaos, we have only the specific manifestations of the other
two hypostases; and this fact imposes a primordial duality on the invisible
universe. We have (1) a system of the immediately creative reactions of the Word,
which form the ideal or intelligible world properly so-called, the sphere of pure
intelligences, objective ideas and divine thoughts hypostatized; and (2) a system of
reactions of the Holy Spirit, more concrete, subjective and living, forming the
spiritual world, the sphere of pure spirits or angels.

It is in the creative sphere of the Word and the Holy Spirit that the divine
substance or essential Wisdom is determined and appears in its proper character as
the luminous and heavenly being separated from the darkness of earthly matter.
The proper sphere of the Father is absolute light, light in itself having no relation
with darkness. The Son or the Word is as light manifested, the white ray which
lights up external objects, not by penetration, but by reflection from their surface.
Finally, the Holy Spirit is the ray which is refracted by the non-divine medium and
breaks up and creates in this medium the heavenly spectrum of the seven
primordial spirits like the [seven] colors of the rainbow.

The pure intelligences which form the world of ideas are absolutely
contemplative, impassible and changeless beings. Like stars fixed in the firmament
of the invisible world, they are above all desire, all will and therefore all freedom.
Pure spirits or angels have a subjective existence more complete or more concrete.
Beside intellectual contemplation, they know affective and volitional states and
have movement and freedom.

But the freedom of pure spirits is quite different from that which we experience.
Not being subject to the objective limitations of matter, space and time, nor to all
the mechanism of the physical world, the angels of God have the power to
determine their destiny by a single interior act of their will. They are free to declare
themselves for God or against Him; but as by their nature (inasmuch as they are
immediate creatures of God) they possess from the first a superior light and force,
they act with a full awareness and complete effectiveness and cannot go back on
their actions. By virtue of the very perfection and greatness of their freedom, they
can exercise it only once for all in a single decisive act. The inner decision of their
will, encountering no external obstacle, produces instantaneously all its
consequences and exhausts their freedom of choice. The pure spirit which freely
decides for God enters immediately into possession of the divine Wisdom and
becomes, as it were, an organic and inseparable member of the Godhead; love
towards God and voluntary participation in the divine action are from
henceforward its nature. On the other hand, the spirit which decides to the contrary
can never revoke its decision; for it made the decision in perfect knowledge of
what it was doing, and it can only have what it desired. It desired separation from
God because it had conceived an aversion for Him. Since this aversion could have
no sort of motive — for in God can be found no shadow of evil whatsoever to
justify or explain a feeling of hostility towards Him — this hostility is purely and
simply an act of the spiritual will, having its whole reason in itself and subject to
no modification; it becomes the very nature or essence of the fallen angel. Being,
as it is, absolute master of itself, independent of any external and temporal cause or
circumstance, the will against God is necessarily eternal and irrevocable. It is an
infinite abyss into which the rebel spirit is immediately hurled and from which it
can spread its rebellion throughout the material chaos, the physical creation, right
to the confines of the divine world. It knew well, in deciding against God, that it
would not lack a sphere of action; for the Divine Will had already called forth from
the void the world-soul, in awakening in it the chaotic desire, the basis and
material of all Creation. This world-soul is an indefinite and indeterminate
principle (απειρον και αόριστον), and it will always impart this character in a
certain degree to all that issues from itself. Thus there will be a vast no-man's-land
remaining in suspense between God and His adversary and providing the latter
with the means by which to nourish its hatred, practice its rebellion and prolong its
struggle. Its existence, therefore, will not be inert and vacuous, it will have an
abundant and varied activity, but the general direction and inner quality of all its
activity are predetermined by the primordial act of will which separated it from
God. To undo this act and to return to God is for it an absolute impossibility. The
contrary teaching of Origen, condemned by the Church, shows that that lofty and
gifted mind had but a poor conception of the essence of moral evil, a fact which
incidentally he proved in another connection by seeking deliverance from evil
passions by means of a purely material and external process.


The three main Stages of the Cosmogonic Process

IN the thought of God the heavens and the Earth, the upper and the lower
world, were created together in a single principle which is substantial Wisdom
— the absolute unity of the Whole. The union of Heaven and Earth, founded in
principle (reshith) at the beginning of the work of creation, must be realized in fact
by the cosmogonic and historical process culminating in the complete
manifestation of this unity in the Kingdom of God (malkhouth). This union as
actually realized implies a preliminary separation, manifesting itself in the chaotic
existence of the Earth, an empty and barren existence plunged in darkness
(khosheh) and the abyss (tehom). This abyss had to be filled, this darkness had to
be illumined, this barren womb had to be made fertile, and finally by the united
action of both worlds a being had to be produced, half of Heaven and half of Earth,
capable of embracing in its unity the totality of Creation and of uniting it to God by
a free and living bond, by the incarnation in a created form of the divine eternal
Wisdom.

The cosmic process is the successive unification of the lower or earthly world,
originally created in a chaotic and discordant condition — tohu va bohu. In this
process, as revealed in the sacred record of Genesis, we see two principles or
productive factors, the one absolutely active, God through His Word and Spirit,
and the other partly co-operating by its own strength in the divine order and plan
and bringing them to realization, and partly providing simply a passive and
material element. For instance, it is said of the creation of plants and animals:
vaïomer Elohim: tad' sheh ha'arets deshe heseb maz'riah zerah, etc., et dixit
Deus: germinet terra herbam viventem et facientem semen, etc.; and then: vattotseh
ha'arets deshe heseb maz'riah zerah leminehou, etc. — et PRODUXIT terra herbam
viventem et facientem semen iuxta genus suum. And further: vaïomer Elohim: totse
ha'arets nephesh haïah leminah, etc. dixit quoque Deus: PRODUCAT TERRA animam
viventem in genere suo. It is clear, then, that God does not directly create the
various manifestations of physical life, but that He simply determines, directs and
ordains the productive force of this agent called "Earth," that is, earthly nature,
primal matter, the soul of the lower world. This soul is in itself simply an
indeterminate and inordinate force, but capable of aspiring to divine unity and
desiring reunion with the heavens. It is upon this desire that the Word and Spirit of
God act by suggesting to the inconscient soul ever more perfect forms of union
between the heavenly and the earthly and impelling it to realize them in the
medium of the lower world. But since the soul of this world is in itself an
undefined duality (αόριστος δύας), it is also a prey to the action of the anti-divine
principle which, having failed to constrain the higher Wisdom, besets its lower
antitype, the world-soul, forcing it to remain in chaos and discord and, instead of
realizing the union of heavens and Earth in harmonious and regularly ascending
forms, to produce inordinate and fantastic monsters. Thus, the cosmic process is,
on the one hand, the peaceful meeting, love and marriage of the two agents, the
heavenly and the earthly, while on the other it is a mortal struggle between the
Divine Word and the lower principle for the possession of the soul of the world. It
follows that the work of creation, being a doubly complicated process, can only
advance in a slow and gradual manner.

The Bible has just formally told us that it is not the direct work of God; and the
sacred record is amply confirmed by the facts. If the creation of our physical world
had emanated directly and exclusively from God Himself, it would be an
absolutely perfect work, a calm and harmonious production not only as a whole,
but in each of its parts. But the reality is far from corresponding to such an idea. It
is only from His own point of view which includes all (kol asher hasah) in a
moment of vision — sub specie aeternitatis — that God can pronounce creation
perfect — tob meod, valde bona. As for the various parts of the work considered in
themselves, they deserve from the mouth of God only a relative approval or none
at all. In that, as in all the rest, the Bible is in accord with human experience and
scientific truth. If we consider the terrestrial world as it is and especially its
geological and paleontological history, so well documented in our days, we find
depicted there a laborious process determined by heterogeneous principles which
do not achieve a firm and harmonious unity except after much time and great
effort. Nothing could bear less resemblance to an entirely perfect work issuing
directly from a single divine artificer. Our cosmic history is a long and painful
parturition. We see in it clear signs of internal struggle, of shocks and violent
convulsions, blind gropings, unfinished sketches of unsuccessful creations,
monstrous births and abortions. Can all these antediluvian monsters, these
paleozoa — the megatherium, the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the pterodactyl
and so forth — form part of the perfect and direct creation of God? If all these
monstrous species were tob meod (valde bona), why have they completely
disappeared from our Earth to make room for more successful, harmonious and
balanced forms of life? Creation is a gradual and laborious process; that is a
Biblical and philosophical truth as well as a fact of natural science. The process,
implying imperfection as it does, also implies a definite progress consisting in a
more and more profound and complete unification of material elements and
anarchic forces, in the transformation of chaos into cosmos, that is to say, into a
living body capable of serving for the incarnation of the divine Wisdom. Without
going into the details of cosmogony, I will only indicate the three principal
concrete stages of this unifying process.

We have already mentioned the first, determined by universal gravitation, which
makes the lower world a relatively compact mass and creates the material body of
the universe. There is the mechanical unity of the whole. The parts of the universe,
while remaining external to one another, are nevertheless held together by an
indissoluble chain, the force of attraction. In vain they persist in their egotism; it is
belied by the insuperable attraction which impels them towards one another, the
primordial manifestation of cosmic altruism. The soul of the world achieves its
first realization as universal unity and celebrates its betrothal with divine Wisdom.
But, roused by the creative Word, it aspires to a more perfect unity; and in this
aspiration it frees itself from the ponderable mass and transforms its potentiality
into a new subtilized and rarified material called ether. The Word takes possession
of this idealized material, as the proper medium of its formative action; projects
imponderable fluids into all the parts of the universe; envelops all the members of
the cosmic body in a network of ether; manifests the relative differences of these
parts and places them in fixed relationships, and thus creates a second cosmic unity
more perfect and more ideal, the dynamic unity realized by light, electricity and all
the other imponderables, which are simply modifications or transformations of one
and the same agent. The characteristic of the agent is pure altruism, an unlimited
expansion, a continual act of self-giving. However perfect in itself the dynamic
unity of the world may be, it merely envelops the material mass in all its parts; it
does not take inward possession of them, or penetrate them to the depth of their
being and so regenerate them. The soul of the world, the Earth, sees in the
luminous ether the ideal image of its heavenly beloved, but does not in reality unite
with it. Nevertheless, it aspires always towards this union, and will not confine
itself to the contemplation of the heavens and the shining stars, to immersion in the
fluid ether; it absorbs the light, transforms it into living fire and as the fruit of this
new union produces from its loins every living soul in the two kingdoms of plants
and animals. This new unity, the organic unity, with inorganic matter and the
etheric fluids as its base and medium, is the more perfect in that it forms and
governs a more complicated body by a more active and universal soul. In the
plants, life is objectively manifested in its organic forms; it is felt by the animals in
its movements and subjective effects; and lastly it is comprehended by man in its
absolute principle.

The Earth which, originally void, formless and plunged in darkness, was to be
gradually enveloped by light, and given form and diversity; which, in the third
epoch of cosmic growth, had only vaguely felt and confusedly expressed, as in a
dream, its creative potentiality in the forms of vegetable life, those first
combinations of the dust of Earth with the beauty of the heavens; which for the
first time in this plant-world emerges from itself to meet the heavenly influences,
then separates from itself in the free movement of the four-footed animals and rises
above itself in the airy flight of birds; the Earth, after diffusing its living soul in
countless species of vegetable and animal life, finally concentrates and returns
upon itself and assumes the form which enables it to meet God face to face and to
receive directly from Him the breath of spiritual life. Here, Earth knows Heaven
and is known of it. Here the two terms of Creation, the Divine and the non-Divine,
the higher and the lower, become one in reality, are actually united and enjoy that
union. For true self-knowledge is impossible except by a real union, since perfect
knowledge must be realized, and real union must be conceived in idea to be
perfect. For this reason the supreme union, that of the sexes, is called "knowledge"
by the Bible. The eternal Wisdom, which is in principle the unity of all, and
entirely the unity of opposites — a free and reciprocal unity — finds at last a
subject in which and through which it can realize itself completely. It finds it and
rejoices. "My delight," she says — my supreme delight — "is in the sons of Man."


The threefold Incarnation of the Divine Wisdom

ET formavit Futurus Deorum hominem — pulvis (sic) ex humo — vajitser
Jahveh Elohim eth haadam haphar min haadamah: If the earth in general
signifies the soul of the lower world, the dust of the earth indicates the state
of abasement or helplessness of this soul when it ceases to assert and exalt itself in
the blind desire of an anarchic existence, when repelling all lower suggestions and
abandoning in perfect humility all resistance or antagonism to the heavenly Word,
it becomes capable of understanding its truth, of uniting itself to its activity and of
establishing in itself the Kingdom of God. This state of humiliation, this absolute
receptivity of earthly Nature, is objectively marked by the creation of Man (humus
— humilis — homo); the sensitive and imaginative soul of the physical world
becomes the rational soul of humanity. Having attained an interior union with the
heavens, contemplating the intelligible light, it can include by consciousness and
reason all that exists in an ideal unity. Ideally an universal being in his rational
potentiality as the image of God, Man must become effectively like God by the
active realization of his unity in the fullness of Creation. Child of the Earth by the
lower life which it gives him, he must give it back transformed into light and lifegiving
spirit. If through him, through his reason, Earth is raised to Heaven, through
him also, through his activity, the heavens must descend and fill the Earth; through
him all the world outside the Godhead must become a single living body, the
complete incarnation of the divine Wisdom.

In man alone the creature is perfectly, that is, freely and reciprocally, united to
God, because, thanks to his two-fold nature, man alone can preserve his freedom
and remain continually the moral complement of God, while achieving an ever
completer union with Him by a continuous series of conscious efforts and
deliberate actions. There is a marvellous dialectic in the law of life of the two
worlds. The very supernatural perfection of the freedom enjoyed by a pure spirit,
the absence of all external limitation, means that this freedom, manifesting itself
completely, is exhausted in a single act; and the spiritual being loses its freedom by
reason of the very excess of freedom. On the other hand, the hindrances and
obstacles presented by the external medium of the natural world to the realization
of our interior acts, the limited and conditional character of human freedom, make
man freer than the angels in that he is allowed to retain his freewill and exercise it
continually, and to remain, even after the Fall, an active co-operator in the divine
work. It is for this reason that eternal Wisdom does not find her delight in the
angels, but in the sons of Man.

Man exists primarily for the interior and ideal union of earthly potentiality and
divine act, of the Soul and the Word, and secondarily for the free realization of this
union in the totality of the world outside the Godhead. There is, therefore, in this
composite being a center and a circumference, the human personality and the
human world, the individual man and the social or collective man. The human
individual, being in himself or subjectively the union of the divine Word and
earthly nature, must begin to realize this union objectively or for himself by an
external reduplication of himself. In order really to know himself in his unity, man
must distinguish himself as knowing or active subject (man in the proper sense)
from himself as known or passive object (woman). Thus the contrast and union of
the divine Word and earthly nature is reproduced for man himself in the distinction
and union between the sexes.

The essence or nature of man is completely represented by individual man (in
the two sexes); his social existence can add nothing to it; but it is absolutely
necessary for the extension and development of human existence, and for the
actual realization of all that is potentially contained in the human individual. It is
only through society that man can attain his final end, the universal integration of
all existence outside the Godhead. But natural humanity (Man, Woman and
Society), as it emerges from the cosmic process, contains within itself only the
possibility of such integration. The reason and consciousness of man, the affections
and instinct of woman, and finally the law of solidarity or altruism which forms the
basis of all society, these are but a foreshadowing of the true divine-human unity, a
seed which has yet to sprout, blossom and bear its fruit. The gradual growth of this
seed is accomplished in the process of universal history; and the threefold fruit
which it bears is: perfect Woman, or nature made divine, perfect Man or the God-
Man, and the perfect Society of God with men — the final incarnation of the
eternal Wisdom.

The essential unity of the human being in Man, Woman and Society, determines
the indivisible unity of the divine incarnation in humanity. Man properly so-called
(the masculine individual) contains already in himself in potentia the whole
essence of man; it is only in order to realize that essence in actuality that he must,
first, reduplicate himself or render his material side objective in the personality of
Woman, and secondly, multiply himself or render objective the universality of his
rational being in a plurality of individual existences, organically bound together
and forming a corporate whole — human Society. Woman being only the
complement of Man, and Society only his extension or total manifestation, there is
fundamentally only one human being. And its reunion with God, though
necessarily threefold, nevertheless constitutes only a single divine-human being,
the incarnate Σοφία, whose central and completely personal manifestation is Jesus
Christ, whose feminine complement is the Blessed Virgin, and whose universal
extension is the Church. The Blessed Virgin is united to God by a purely receptive
and passive union; she brought forth the second Adam, as the Earth brought forth
the first, by abasing herself in perfect humility; there is therefore here, properly
speaking, no reciprocity or co-operation. And as for the Church, she is not united
to God directly, but through the incarnation of Christ of which she is the
continuation. It is then Christ alone Who is truly the God-Man, the Man Who is
directly and reciprocally (that is, actively) united to God.

It was in the contemplation in His eternal thought of the Blessed Virgin, of
Christ and of the Church that God gave His absolute approval to the whole
Creation when He pronounced it to be tob meod, valde bona. There was the proper
subject for the great joy which the divine Wisdom experienced at the thought of
the sons of Man; she saw there the one pure and immaculate daughter of Adam,
she saw there the Son of Man par excellence, the Righteous One, and lastly she
saw there the multitude of mankind made one under the form of a unique Society
founded upon love and truth. She contemplated under this form her future
incarnation and, in the children of Adam, her own children; and she rejoiced in
seeing that they justified the scheme of Creation which she offered to God: et
justificata est Sapientia a filiis suis (Matt. xi. 19).

Mankind reunited to God in the Blessed Virgin, in Christ and in the Church is
the realization of the essential Wisdom or absolute substance of God, its created
form or incarnation. In truth, it is one and the same substantial form (designated by
the Bible as semen mulieris, scilicet Sophiae) which realizes itself in three
successive and permanent manifestations, distinct in existence but indivisible in
essence, assuming the name of Mary in its feminine personality, of Jesus in its
masculine personality, and reserving its proper name for its complete and universal
appearance in the perfect Church of the future, the Spouse and Bride of the divine
Word.

This threefold realization in mankind of the essential Wisdom is a religious truth
which Orthodox Christendom professes in its doctrine and displays in its worship.
If, by the substantial Wisdom of God, we were to understand only the Person of
Jesus Christ, how could all the texts of the Wisdom Books which speak of this
Wisdom be applied to the Blessed Virgin? Moreover, this application, which has
been made from the earliest times in the Offices of the Latin Church as well as of
the Greek Church, has in our own days received doctrinal sanction in the Bull of
Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin. On the other
hand, there are texts of Scripture which Orthodox and Catholic doctors apply
sometimes to the Blessed Virgin, sometimes to the Church; for instance, the
passage in the Apocalypse concerning the Woman clothed with the sun, crowned
with the stars, and with the moon beneath her feet. Finally, there can be no doubt
as to the close link and complete analogy between the individual humanity of
Christ and His social humanity, between His natural Body and His mystical Body.
In the sacrament of Communion the personal Body of the Lord becomes in a
mystical but real manner the unifying principle of His collective Body, the
community of the faithful. Thus the Church, human Society made divine,
possesses fundamentally the same substance as the incarnate Person of Christ or
His individual Humanity; and since this latter has no other origin or substance than
the human nature of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, it follows that the
organism of the divine-human incarnation, having in Jesus Christ a single active
and personal center, possesses also in its threefold manifestation one single
substantial basis, namely, the corporal nature of the divine Wisdom, as both latent
and revealed in the lower world; it is the soul of the world completely converted,
purified and identified with Wisdom itself, as matter identifies itself with form in a
single concrete and living being. And the perfect realization of this divine-material
substance, this semen mulieris, is glorified and resurrected Humanity, the Temple,
Body and Spouse of God.

The truth of Christianity, under this positive aspect — the complete and concrete
incarnation of Godhead — has particularly attracted the religious soul of the
Russian people from the earliest times of their conversion to Christianity. In
dedicating their most ancient churches to St. Sophia, the substantial Wisdom of
God, they have given to this idea a new expression unknown to the Greeks (who
identified Σοφία with the Λόγος). While closely linking the Holy Wisdom with the
Mother of God and with Jesus Christ, the religious art of our ancestors
distinguished it clearly from both and represented it under the form of a distinct
divine being. It was for them the heavenly essence clad in the appearance of the
lower world, the luminous spirit of regenerate humanity, the Guardian Angel of the
Earth, the final appearance of the Godhead for which they waited.

Thus, side by side with the individual human form of the Divine — the Virgin-
Mother and the Son of God — the Russian people have known and loved, under
the name of St. Sophia, the social incarnation of the Godhead in the Universal
Church. It is this idea, revealed to the religious consciousness of our ancestors, this
truly national and yet absolutely universal notion, that we must now expound in
reasoned terms. It is for us to formulate the living Word which old Russia
conceived and which new Russia must declare to the world.


Messianic Man and the Chaos of Mankind The primitive
elements of Trinitary Society

AS the intermediary between Heaven and Earth, Man was destined to be the
universal Messiah who should save the world from chaos by uniting it to
God and incarnating the eternal Wisdom in created forms. This mission
involved Man in a threefold ministry; he was to be priest of God, king of the lower
world, and prophet of their absolute union: priest of God in sacrificing to Him his
own arbitrariness, the egoism of humanity; king of the lower world of Nature in
subjecting it to divine law; prophet of the union of the two in aspiring to the
absolute totality of existence and in realizing it progressively by the continuous cooperation
of grace and freedom, in regenerating and reforming Nature outside the
Godhead until its universal and perfect integration is achieved (ή αποκατάστασις
των παντων). Submission to God, and the domination of Nature for its own
salvation: these two phrases sum up the Messianic Law. Man rejected it because he
preferred to achieve the goal directly, by himself, in violation of the order laid
down by the divine reason. He wished to unite himself arbitrarily to the lower
world of Nature, in virtue of his own desire, thinking by this means to possess
himself of an unconditional sovereignty, an absolute autonomy equal to that of
God. He would not subordinate his kingship to his priesthood; and consequently he
became incapable of satisfying his true aspirations and of fulfilling his prophetic
mission. His inordinate desire to unite himself to Nature was bound to result in his
subjection to it; and as an inevitable consequence he could not escape contracting
the distinctive features of the material world apart from the Godhead, and being
transformed to its image and likeness. Now, we know that the essential character of
Nature outside God is expressed first by indeterminate plurality in space, or the
infinite division of parts; secondly, by indeterminate change in time, or the infinite
disjunction of moments; and thirdly, as the result of this double division, by the
transformation of all causality into mechanism. It is true that this potentiality of
infinite disintegration and universal discord, which is the essential characteristic of
Chaos, is limited in creation by the action of the unifying Word which on this
chaotic foundation constructed the cosmos. But in the lower Nature (before the
appearance of Man) the foundation of Chaos is not suppressed; it persists like fire

beneath the ashes, a prevailing tendency ready to awaken at every opportunity. It is
in this potential form that fallen Man has contracted the disorder, becoming
thereby what is wrongly called natural humanity, but is in fact chaotic humanity. In
this human mass we distinguish clearly the three fundamental characteristics of
Nature apart from God. The infinite disintegration of material parts in space is
translated into human terms by the indeterminate and anarchic plurality of coexisting
individuals; to the infinite disjunction of moments in time corresponds, in
the life of mankind, the indeterminate succession of generations which vie with
one another for actual existence and in turn supplant one another; and finally the
material mechanism of the physical world is transferred to mankind under the form
of that heteronomy or rule of fate which subjects the will of Man to the force of
circumstances and his inner being to the dominating influence of external
environment and temporal conditions.

We know, however, that the Fall of Man could only postpone and not annul his
vocation. The salutary obstacles of Space, Time and Mechanical Causality, while
separating him from his supreme end, at the same time saved him from absolute
and final frustration. (1) The indeterminate plurality of individuals — which is,
considered in itself, a declension — is the prime condition of human salvation; for
although a part of this great number may by fresh crimes aggravate original sin and
propagate it more widely, there always remain some righteous ones to mitigate the
effects of evil and to prepare the means of future salvation. Thanks to this
indeterminate multiplication, Abel is replaced by Seth and Saul makes room for
David. (2) The indefinite succession of generations is a second condition of
salvation; none disappears without leaving something to facilitate the work of its
successors and to elaborate some more perfect historic form which may better
satisfy the true aspirations of the human soul. Thus what could not be revealed in
Eve or Tamar or Rahab or Ruth or Bathsheba, was one day revealed in Mary. (3)
Finally, the heteronomy of our existence is a third condition of salvation, no less
indispensable than the former two. For if the will of Man, both good and bad, was
immediately efficacious, there would be an end of Mankind and of Creation. The
fratricide Cain would in that case be plunged immediately into the depths of Hell
before he had built a town and founded ancient civilization; the good Seth would
have ascended to Heaven or at least to Paradise with his brother Abel before he had
begotten the ancestors of Jesus Christ; and the lower world, the Earth, robbed of its
center of unity and action, would have reverted to the sad condition of tohu va
bohu in which it was before the Creation. And there would have been no one to
give joy and delight to the eternal Wisdom.

If, then, our subjection to the conditions of the material world is a consequence
of the Fall and a penalty of sin, we see that this penalty is a blessing and this
necessary consequence of evil is a necessary means of absolute good.
As the chaotic Earth could not escape the cosmogonic action of the Word, which
transformed it into a balanced, enlightened and living world, so the chaos of
mankind, created by the Fall of Eden, had to be subjected to the theogonic
operation of the same Word, which aims at regenerating it into a spiritual humanity
really unified, enlightened by divine truth, and living with an eternal life. The form
of the Messianic Man, rejected by the first Adam, was not entirely destroyed in
natural humanity, but simply reduced to the state of latent potentiality; thus it
remained as a living seed — semen mulieris (id est Sophiæ) — realizing itself
partially and progressively, and finally incarnate in the second Adam. This
theogonic process, the creation of trinitary Man, Messianic Man or God-Man,
through Whom the divine Wisdom becomes incarnate throughout the whole
universe, presents, in the order of time, three main stages: (1) the series of
Messianic anticipations in "natural humanity" or in the human chaos — before
Christianity; (2) the appearance of the individual Messiah in the person of Jesus
Christ; (3) the Messianic transformation of the whole of mankind, or the
development of Christendom.

Before Jesus Christ, mankind, lacking a real center, was simply a potential
organism; in fact, there were only separate organs: tribes, states and nations, some
of whom aimed at universal domination. This was already an anticipation of future
unity. But in each of these disjointed parts of mankind, whether or no it aspired to
supplant the whole under the form of a universal monarchy, there had been from
the beginning a certain realization in the social sphere of the Messianic or trinitary
form tending to represent in more or less restricted limits the totality of human
existence.

This trinitary form has a broad foundation in the being of Man. All human
existence is made up of three principal terms: the accomplished facts preserved by
the tradition of the past, the actions and tasks imposed by the needs of the present,
and the aspirations towards a better state determined by a more or less perfect ideal
of the future.

There is an obvious analogy, but also an essential difference, between these
constituent modes of human existence and the corresponding modes of Divine
existence (to say nothing of the hypostatic character of the latter). The broad
reason for this difference is that in God, as absolute Being, the first mode
determines the second completely, and the two together completely determine the
third, in which the Divine Being finally possesses itself and completely enjoys
itself. Man, on the other hand (to mention here only the third mode of his
subjective existence), cannot actually possess the totality of existence, which is for
him only a more or less distant future. This future ideally anticipated cannot be the
object of a proper enjoyment, but only of an aspiration.

In our material or animal life, this trinitary form already exists, but it is there a
natural symbol rather than a reality. The accomplished fact is here represented by
the past generation, the fathers or ancestors; the actuality is the present generation,
the men of today; finally, the natural aspirations towards the future are incarnate in
the children, the future generation. It is clear that the trinitary form has here a
purely relative and fundamentally illusory character: natural life strives to give
permanence to the relationship, but never succeeds in doing so, and each
generation in turn passes through the state of Future, Present and Past, to disappear
into nothingness and oblivion. Each generation desires to possess complete
actuality, but since each has an equal right to this possession none can obtain it
effectively; and after vain attempts to stem the torrent of temporal existence, all are
in turn engulfed in it. But this continual succession of generations does not exhaust
all human existence; this is only animal humanity. Besides this there is social
humanity, which has never been confined to material actuality or content merely to
pursue and maintain the actual fact of existence. Human society, even at the lowest
stages of its development, has always coupled facts with principles, realities with
ideas.

The actuality of the present moment is never for human society a purely
mechanical sequence in time, a mere postea to its past, or a purely mechanical and
temporal antecedent, a mere antea to its future. This actuality is always linked to
the two other terms by an inner spiritual bond which fixes the past and the future
and which, if it does not stem the torrent of material existence, at least confines it
to a definite channel and transforms the Evil Infinity of natural time into a system
of historical development. In every human society, however barbarous it may be,
above and beyond the material interests of the moment, there is a religious
tradition and a prophetic ideal. The past, instead of being ruthlessly supplanted in
the manner of those savages who kill and eat their aged parents, is preserved with a
filial piety as the basis and abiding sanction of the present; and the future, instead
of being conceived as a pitiless fate or sacrificed to the flames of egoism like the
children that were consumed in the blazing statue of Moloch, is appealed to and
invoked as the true end and rationale of the present, its joy and crown. Thus at the
head of every human society we see a trinity, more or less differentiated, of
governing classes partly linked, but never identified, with the threefold natural
relationship of the successive generations. There are in the first place the priests or
sacrificers, corresponding to the fathers, the older generation; indeed, originally in
the life of tribes and scattered clans, priestly functions were performed by the
fathers of families and the domestic hearth was the principal altar. Nevertheless
even in this primitive state the father stood for more than the particular fact of
natural fatherhood; he was linked by his priestly dignity to the absolute fact of the
Divine Fatherhood, to that eternal Past which precedes and conditions all
existence. In contrast to the animals, material generation had in the person of
human fathers become a social institution and an act of religion. And if the living
father was a priest, the mediator between the present and the past, the dead
ancestor, re-entering the invisible world, became merged in the absolute past itself,
the eternal Godhead, and became an object of worship. Ancestor-worship is in fact
a universal element in religion. (8) Thus the ministry of the immediate past, of the
living fathers, the priests, linked the present existence of mankind to a vaguer and
more remote past, to the mysterious facts preceding our existence and determining
it with an absolute necessity. In the second place, we see the class of warriors who
by their strength and daring guaranteed to society its actual means of existence and
met the pressing needs of the given moment. This class was naturally drawn
mainly from the sons of families, the present generation. And although the older
generation also took part in military enterprises, it was not Priam or Nestor, but
rather Hector and Achilles who commanded the warriors, while duly yielding place
to the older men whenever it was necessary to obtain the favor of the gods by
sacrifices. Thus the relation between these two main classes of Society roughly
corresponds to the relation between the two generations, the present and the past,
of natural life. But if this analogy were extended, if the future of the social
organism were also to find itself solely or mainly represented by the future
generation, the children who supplant their forebears, to be themselves supplanted
by their offspring, and so on, then the existence of Society would be confused with
the Evil Infinity of natural life, there would be no history, no progress, but simply a
continuous and fruitless change. This is not so in fact. In every society there has
been from the earliest times, besides the priests and the warriors, a class made up
of every age, sex and condition, who anticipated the future of man and satisfied the
ideal aspirations of the society in which they lived. In the life of nature the third
term, instead of being the true unity of the first and second, is fundamentally a
mere repetition of them. The future generation represents the future only in an
illusory and ephemeral manner, as one member of an indeterminate series is worth
no more than another. In the order of natural succession the new generation
supervening upon the older is not in itself more advanced or nearer the ideal of
perfection. It is on this account that true social progress, independently of the
infinite succession of generations, demands that there be real representatives of the
future, men who are in fact more advanced in the spiritual life, capable of
satisfying the aspirations of their contemporaries and of confronting a given
society with its ideal in the degree to which it can grasp it and they themselves can
realize it. To these men of the ideal future I give the general name of prophets. The
word is commonly understood to signify one who foretells the future.

Between the fortune-teller and the true prophet there is much the same
difference as there is between the chief of a gang of robbers and the lawful
sovereign of a great state, or between the father of a primitive family sacrificing to
the shades of his ancestors and the Pope bestowing his blessing urbi et orbi and
opening Heaven to the souls in Purgatory. But apart from this difference, which
concerns the extent of their respective jurisdiction, there is also another distinction
to be drawn. The future may be foretold not merely in words but also in action by a
partial anticipation of states and relationships which do not form part of the present
condition of humanity. This is prophecy in the proper sense, which moreover
presents undefined modifications and gradations. The African witch-doctor, for
example, has or claims to have the power of bringing rain or fine weather at his
good pleasure. This superior power of the human will over the forces and
phenomena of material nature is an attribute of humanity in so far as it is perfectly
united to the creative and omnipotent Godhead. Such a union, which is, generally
speaking, foreign to our present condition, is simply the ideal goal, the remote
future, to which we aspire; and the exercise of a power proper to this future state is
an anticipation of the future, or a prophetic act. But true prophecy is not that of the
sorcerer. He does not possess, and is not even aware of, the religious and moral
conditions of supernatural power; if, in fact, he exercises this power, it is only in a
purely empirical manner. But even in the case where his magical power is nothing
but a fraudulent pretence, it is nonetheless an anticipation, though only in desire
and aspiration, of a higher state, an ideal future reserved for Man. And if we turn
from the African witch-doctor to a true Christian wonder-worker such as St.
Francis of Assisi, we find in his miracles the same power of the human will over
the forces of external nature which the magician of a savage tribe possesses or
claims to possess. In both cases the power is limited; for the miraculous power of
even the greatest saints has never been constant in its duration or universal in its
application. But the great difference is that the saint is aware and in possession of
that which is for Man the supreme inner condition of supernatural power, namely,
moral union with the Godhead. Thus his power, based on his moral superiority, is a
faithful and direct, even though feeble and limited, reproduction of the divine
Omnipotence which is no blind force, but the logical consequence of the intrinsic
and essential perfection of Absolute Being. In so far as the saint shares in this
perfection, he shares also in the divine power and affords us an anticipation of our
final state, which is not only real but internally true, perfect in itself, though
externally incomplete.

Let us now compare, in quite another sphere of prophecy, the great sage of
Greece with a Hebrew nabi. Plato in his Republic gives us the ideal of human
society organized on the principles of justice and reason. It is the anticipation of a
future which was partly realized by the society of medieval Europe. (9) Plato was
therefore a prophet, but in the sense in which the African witch-doctor is a wonderworker;
he did not possess, and was not even aware of, the true conditions under
which his ideal must be realized. He did not understand that for the equitable and
rational organization of social life human justice and reason are not sufficient; nor
that the ideal of a just and wise society conceived by a philosopher still has to be
made fruitful by a corresponding moral action on the part of society itself. Society
is, in fact, dominated by evil; if it is to be organized in accordance with the ideal of
the good, it must be saved and regenerated. But abstract meditation will not save it.
For all its anticipation of social truth, the Platonic idealism did not possess the way
to its realization and could not give life to the conception of it. That is the great
difference between the philosophic prophecy of the Greeks and the religious
prophecy of the Hebrews. The Israelite nabi to whom the truth was revealed by a
personal relationship to the living God of history anticipated the ideal future not by
abstract thought, but with his heart and soul. He cleared the way, he awakened the
life. In his prophecies there was, as in Plato, an ideal of a perfect society; but this
ideal was never dissociated from the inner condition which determined its
realization, the free and active reunion of mankind with God. The true nebiïm
knew well that this union was only to be accomplished by means of a long and
complicated divine-human process, a process of mutual action and concurrence
between God and Man; and not only did they know this as a general principle, but
they knew and proclaimed at each given moment what mankind in its provisional
central organ, the Jewish nation, must do in order to co-operate effectively in
furthering the divine-human work. Their action was complete, since on the one
hand they pointed to the absolute goal in the distant future, and on the other they
indicated the effectual means of leading mankind towards that goal at the present
moment. Thus, in uniting all human anticipations of the ideal future under the
general name of prophecy, we are not ignoring the vast and essential difference
which separates not merely wizards and sorcerers, but also the loftiest intellects of
uninspired humanity from the true prophets of the living God.


The Messianic Preparation among the Hindus, the Greeks and the Hebrews

AT the dawn of history, every father of a house is a priest or sacrificer, each
son of the house is a warrior on an equal footing with all his fellows and
owing obedience only to temporary chiefs. But as the unit of society is
extended and organized, particular priests begin to collect into a single body
forming a specifically religious fellowship, a clergy more or less concentrated in
the person of a chief priest or pontiff; at the same time the active part of the
population tends to establish and organize itself under the orders of a sovereign
who is not only the military leader in time of war, but also the head of society in
peace time in all the affairs and practical questions raised by a more complex
social life. When society is no longer merely a family and its manifold interests are
no longer directly harmonized by natural kinship and by the obvious necessity for a
rigid solidarity, conflicts and struggles arise and some impartial authority becomes
necessary for the establishment of social equilibrium. Thus the main function of
the sovereign in peace time is that of judge, as we see in all primitive states. To
lead the nation on the field of battle and to decide its disputes in time of peace are
the two main needs which the original institution of monarchy had to fulfil.
While the disintegrated and scattered elements of the spiritual and natural body
of humanity were thus re-assembling under the action of the historic Word into the
partial unities of rudimentary churches and states, the soul of mankind, repeating at
a higher level the stages of the cosmogonic process, was developing its efforts to
enter into an ever more intimate union with the Spirit of the eternal Wisdom.
In India the soul of mankind, manifesting itself first through the intuitions of the
saints and sages of orthodox Brahmanism, then through the teaching of the
orthodox sage Kapila, founder of the Sankhia philosophy, and finally through the
new religion of Buddha Sakyamuni, recognized and loved the Absolute primarily
in its negative form as the opposite of existence outside the Godhead, or the nature
of the world. For the first time the soul of mankind became profoundly aware of
the vanity of material life and conceived an overwhelming disgust for this life of
illusion, which is in fact death rather than life, in so far as it devours itself
continually and never achieves stability or satisfaction.

But disgust with false life did not reveal the true. The human soul as manifested
in India, while asserting with perfect certainty and admirable power that the
Absolute is not to be found in material life, that it is not identical with Nature and
the world, was unable to discover or to say where it is to be found or what it is. But
instead of recognizing this inability and seeking its causes, the wisdom of India
asserted its own impotence as the final word of truth and pronounced that the
Absolute is to be found in Nothingness, that it is non-existence, Nirvana.
For a moment India, through its sages, had acted as a national organ of the
universal soul of mankind, in perceiving the vanity of natural existence and freeing
itself from the bonds of blind desire. The thought and feeling that possessed
Buddha and his disciples when they affirmed that the Absolute is not anything, that
it is none of all the things that exist in Nature, was in fact a universal act of the soul
of mankind, which was bound to pass through this negative truth before conceiving
the positive idea of the Absolute. But the wisdom, or rather the folly, of the East
consists in taking a relative and provisional discovery for complete and final truth.
The fault is not that of the human soul, but that of the soul of these sages and of the
nations that adopted their teaching. In halting at a necessary but lower stage in the
universal process, these nations did not check the progress of history, but remained
themselves outside the progressive movement of humanity away from its
immersion in a barbarous particularism. The universal soul forsook them and went
to seek among other nations the spiritual organs for new modes of union with the
Divine essence. Through the inspired sages, poets and artists of Hellas it perceived
and loved the Absolute, not as the Nothingness of Buddhism, but as the Idea and
the ideal world of Plato, an eternal system of intelligible truths reflected here
below in the sensible forms of Beauty.

The idealism of Greece was a great truth, more positive and complete than the
nihilism of India. Yet it was not the complete and final truth, so long as the ideal
world was considered in its purely theoretic and æsthetic aspect, so long as it was
simply contemplated apart from reality and life or realized exclusively in the
superficial forms of plastic beauty. If the ideal world is truer than the material
world, it cannot be powerless against it. It must penetrate it, subdue it from within
and regenerate it. The intelligible light of the higher world must be transfused into
the moral and practical life of the lower world; the divine will must be
accomplished on Earth as it is in Heaven. The Word of God is not only the sun of
truth, of which the reflection is seen in the troubled stream of natural life; it is also
the beneficent angel who descends into the stream to purify its waters and to open
up beneath the sand and slime of human passions and errors the well of living
water springing up into eternity. The wisdom of the Greeks, like that of the Hindus,
was content to call a final halt at the stage of truth which it had reached. The last
utterance of the Hellenic wisdom, the Neo-Platonic philosophy, insisted even more
than Plato himself on the purely theoretic or contemplative character of the
practical life. The true sage, according to Plotinus, must be a stranger to any
practical aim, any activity, any social interest. He must flee the world in order first
to raise himself by abstract meditation to the intelligible world and then to be
absorbed in ecstasy by the nameless abyss of absolute unity. The Proteus of human
errors is fundamentally one identical being, and this identity reveals itself
especially in the ultimate conclusions of systems which are to all appearance
diverse in origin. Thus, the final absorption in the unnamable Absolute of Neo-
Platonism is indistinguishable, except in words, from the Buddhist Nirvana.

If the two great Aryan nations confined themselves in the last resort to this
negative revelation of the Absolute, the positive revelation created for itself a
national organ in the Semitic people of the Hebrews. The religious life and history
of mankind were concentrated in this unique people because it alone sought in the
Absolute the living God, the God of history; the positive future of humanity was
prepared and revealed in this people because it alone saw in God not only Him
Who is, but also Him Who will be, Jahveh, the God of the Future. Salvation came
of the Jews and could come only of them because they alone understood true
salvation — not absorption in Nirvana by moral and physical suicide, not the
abstraction of the mind into pure idea by a theoretic contemplation, but the
sanctification and regeneration of the whole being and existence of Man by a living
activity, both moral and religious, by faith and works, by prayer, labor and charity.
While the Hindus and the Greeks stopped at partial aspects of the Godhead
which they were foolish enough to take for the whole, thus transforming truth into
error, the Hebrews had received by means of their revealed religion the living germ
of the divine Essence in its complete and final truth; not that this Essence was
manifested to them in an instant in all its absolute perfection: on the contrary, its
manifestations were gradual and very imperfect, but they were real and true. They
were no distant reflections or scattered rays of the divine idea illuminating the
mind of an isolated sage — they were substantial manifestations of Divine
Wisdom itself, produced by the personal action of the Word and the Holy Spirit
and addressed to the whole nation as a social entity. The Divine Wisdom did not
only enter into the intelligence of the Israelites; it took possession of their hearts
and souls, and at the same time appeared to them in sensible forms.

We see, in fact, in the Old Testament a twofold series of divine manifestations:
the phenomena of the subjective consciousness by which God speaks to the soul of
His righteous ones, the Patriarchs and Prophets, and the objective appearances by
which the divine power or glory (shekhinah) manifests itself before all the people,
concentrated upon material objects such as the Altar of Sacrifice or the Ark of the
Covenant. This twofold process of moral regeneration and external theophany was
bound to attain its goal; these two theogonic currents inevitably met and coincided
in the creation of an individual being who, absolutely holy and pure in body and
soul, could not only morally but also physically incarnate God in himself and could
unite in one being Jacob and the Stone of Bethel, Moses and the Ark of the
Covenant, Solomon and his Temple.

All peoples, or nearly all, have had in their religions the notion of a divine
woman and a divine man, of a Virgin-Mother and a Son of God coming down to
Earth to struggle against the forces of evil, to suffer and to conquer. But there can
be no question that only in the womb of the Jewish people have these universal
ideas taken bodily form and been actually hypostatized in the two historic persons
of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. This unique phenomenon implies a unique
history, a preparation or special education of this people. Even the rationalists
should be forced to this conclusion. And indeed, apart from all miraculous facts in
the proper sense of the term, there is in the social and political sphere a general fact
which distinguishes the history of the people of Israel and gives it an essential preeminence
over the two great nations which by their original and creative genius
seemed called to play a leading part in the destinies of mankind. Whereas the
national development both of the Hindus and of the Greeks followed the path of
crisis and revolution and issued in purely negative results, the development of the
Hebrew people was on the whole brought about along organic and evolutionary
lines and issued in a positive result of immense and universal significance, namely,
Christianity. On the one hand, we see only distorted and truncated adumbrations of
trinitary Man or of the Messianic form; on the other, we find the three real
elements of social Messianism in their normal and harmonious relationship,
foreshadowing and preparing the appearance of the true personal Messiah.
In India, the priestly caste of the Brahmins, representative of the religious
tradition, of the sacred and inviolable past, aimed at retaining its own exclusive
supremacy and exerted in actual life the oppressive power of a ruthless legalism,
suppressing all possibility of free spiritual movement or social progress. But when
priests aspire to direct government of the world, they inevitably succumb to a fatal
dilemma: either they govern in reality, entering into the material details of secular
actuality, and thus compromise their religious prestige, lower their sacred dignity
and in the end lose their authority in the eyes of the masses and with it all their
power; or else, while retaining direct control of society, they desire to remain true
priests, and accordingly their government loses its sense of reality and, being
unable to meet the lawful needs of those whom they govern, they either ruin
society if it remains loyal to them or are deprived and supplemented by the active
part of the nation. In India the priestly caste was obliged to surrender a large part of
its control to the warrior class, but what it retained was enough to arrest the free
development of the national life. This struggle was complicated by the increasing
activity of the third of the social orders, (10) the sages, who were diverging more and
more from the orthodox teaching and traditional discipline and finally came into
open conflict with the Brahmins. The military or royal class was divided in the
struggle, but ultimately sided with the representatives of tradition; and the Hindu
prophets, the sages of Buddhism, were cruelly persecuted and eventually expelled
from India. If, on the one hand, the negative wisdom of Buddhism, bitterly
opposed to the present and to the past, was nothing but an empty and barren
utopianism, the priesthood and the monarchy, on the other hand, by uniting against
the new movement of thought and stamping it out with violence, robbed India of
all freedom and deprived her of all possibility of historic progress. Despite the
superiority of the Aryan race and the great qualities of her national genius, India
has thenceforth remained an impotent slave, yielding without resistance to every
master who has claimed her.

The rise of Indian culture is marked by the predominance of the priestly caste
representative of the past and of the common tradition; the beginnings of the
history of Greece, on the other hand, are characterized by the dominance of the
active part of society, the warriors, the men of self-assertive, self-displaying and
adventurous violence. Though the superiority of this element of society was at first
eminently favorable to the progress of all human activities, the crystallization of
the military class in cities or states did not fail subsequently to become a menace
and a hindrance to the free movement of the national spirit, and in fact determined
its revolutionary character. A society which is centered in a single purely political
body inevitably degenerates into a condition of despotism, whatever its form of
government may be. The men of the present, the practical men who govern
absolute states, whether republics or monarchies, disbelieve in the past and fear the
future. Moreover, though they are themselves devoid of true piety or true faith,
they tolerate the representatives of religious tradition as harmless or even useful on
condition that they remain inactive; they assign an honorable place to an official
priesthood, not only as a means of controlling the blind mob, but also as an
ornamental coping-stone to the structure of the omnipotent State. But they have an
implacable hatred for any free and spontaneous movement of religion, for anything
that opens new horizons to the soul of Man or tends to advance him in any way
towards his ideal future. The Athenian government, for all its democratic character,
could do nothing but banish Anaxagoras and poison Socrates in the name of the
Fatherland, that is, of the absolute State. Under such circumstances, the progressive
movement of religious and philosophic thought is inevitably brought to a rupture
with the powers of the present and the tradition of the past, with the State and the
State religion. Thought becomes cosmopolitan; while Socrates and Plato despised
the Athenian democracy, Aristotle despised all the republican constitutions of the
Greek cities and preferred the semi-barbarous monarchy of the Macedonians, until
at last the Cynic and Stoic philosophers repudiated all idea of Fatherland or State,
and declared themselves indifferent to all public concerns. The independence and
political organization of Hellas were destroyed by a philosophy and a philosophical
religion which raised nothing upon the ruins of the Fatherland.

This antagonism between the present existence of the nation, as represented by
the Greek republics, and the higher thought, the future of the nation, as represented
by the idealism of the Greeks, this struggle between Philosophy and the State was
fatal to both. The State lost the reason for its existence, and the ideal of the
philosophers failed to achieve any concrete or living realization. The State, content
to rely solely upon violence, perished by violence; and Philosophy, too
contemptuous of reality, remained an abstract and impotent ideal. Justice
demanded that it should be so. Any more positive outcome of the national life was
not only as impossible for the Greeks as for the Hindus; it would not have been
desirable. Since the two highest conceptions which inspired the genius of these two
nations — the Indian pessimism with its Nirvana, and the Greek idealism with its
absorption in the Absolute — were neither of them the full and final truth, they had
neither the power nor the right to achieve a permanent and harmonious realization.
A nihilist pessimism creating a social organization, a contemplative idealism
capable of modifying things as they are — these are contradictions in terms. And
if, despite this intrinsic contradiction, these two imperfect national ideas had been
given stability and permanence by an external equilibrium of social forces,
mankind would not have profited in the least. There would merely have been three
Chinas instead of one.

If the history of the Hebrews bore a different character and produced other
fruits, it was because the national life of Israel was based upon a religious principle
that was complete in itself and capable of organic development. This principle was
manifest in the trinitary form of the Jewish theocracy in which the three social
powers, ranging themselves in a normal and harmonious relationship,
foreshadowed and prepared the Kingdom of the true Messiah. We are not
forgetting the unfaithfulness of the Jewish people and their repeated efforts to
shatter the trinitary form of the Mosaic theocracy. We know well that King Saul
massacred the priests of Jahveh at Nob, and that succeeding kings, both at Samaria
and in Jerusalem, persecuted and put to death the true prophets. But these facts,
which are only too certain, must not prevent us from recognizing three undeniable
truths of history: (1) that the idea of trinitary theocracy, that is of the organic cooperation
and moral harmony between the three powers governing a complete
society — that this idea, quite unknown to both Hindus and Greeks, was always
present to the mind of Israel; (2) that this idea, at the most solemn crises of Jewish
history, took form and was effectively realized; (3) that the representatives of
national progress, the men of the future, the men who made history — in a word,
the prophets — never entered upon the path of pure revolution; while they
scourged with their inspired words the misdeeds of the priests and princes of the
nation, they never repudiated in principle the priesthood of Aaron or the kingship
of David.

Moses, the greatest of the prophets, did not assume the priestly power, which he
left to Aaron, nor the military leadership, which he bestowed on Joshua. Nor did he
claim any exclusive exercise of the prophetic power, which he imparted to the
seventy representatives of the people, uttering the prayer that all the Israelites
might receive the gift of prophecy. So, too, David, the supreme instance of the
theocratic king, was the restorer and champion of the priesthood. He would do
nothing without consulting the infallible oracle (the Urim and Thummim) which
belonged to the office of the High Priest; and at the same time, though himself a
prophet by a personal endowment, he bowed to the moral authority of public
prophecy. The history of Old Testament theocracy reaches its culmination — the
complete differentiation and perfect harmony of the three powers — when,
towards the end of David's reign, his son Solomon is raised to the throne and
anointed king by the high priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan. And when, after
the failures and downfall of the kings of Judah and their rivals of Ephraim, the
cream of the people, punished by the fall of Samaria and Jerusalem and the
captivity of Nineveh and Babylon, returned to the Holy Land to re-establish the
society of Jahveh under the protection of Persia, we find the prophet Zechariah
insisting upon the trinitary formula of the re-established theocracy, upon solidarity
and harmony between the priesthood in the person of Joshua, son of Josedek, and
the temporal princedom in the person of Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel — between
the two powers to which he, the prophet, was the living bond of union and inspired
peace-maker.

The children of Israel never forgot that Society is the body of the perfect Man,
who is of necessity trinitary: priest of the Most High, king of the Earth and prophet
of the union between the human and the Divine. This unique people anticipated
and prepared the coming of the God-Man, not only by the insight of its seers, but
by the constitution of its society, by the very fact of its trinitary theocracy.
It is well known that the sacred anointing of sovereigns was among the Hebrews
the common prerogative of priests, kings and prophets. Thus the supreme Anointed
One (the Messiah or Christ) was to unite in Himself the three powers. And in fact
He did reveal Himself as the absolutely pure and holy Priest or sacrificer, by
offering to the Heavenly Father the complete sacrifice of His manhood; as true
King of the world and of material Nature which by His resurrection He rescued
from the law of death and conquered for eternal life; and finally, as perfect
Prophet, by showing to men, in His ascension into Heaven, the absolute end of
their existence, and by giving them, in the sending of the Holy Spirit and the
founding of the Church, the strength and means necessary for the attainment of that
end.


The absolute sovereignty of Christ The social trinity
Priesthood and fatherhood

AS God in His Trinity of Persons possesses absolutely the fullness of His
divine substance, His heavenly Body or His essential Wisdom, so too the
God-Man in the trinity of His Messianic powers possesses completely the
Universal Church, His divine-human Body, at once heavenly and earthly, the
perfect Spouse of the incarnate Word. "All power has been given unto Me in
Heaven and Earth." This universal power is not the omnipotence of God; that
belongs eternally to the Word and so cannot be given to him. The power here
referred to is the Messianic power of the God-Man, a power that does not relate to
the universe outside God as such, but to the universe reunited to God, co-operating
with Him and incarnating in time His eternal essence. If the fullness of this power
belongs by right to Christ and only to Him, since He alone could merit it, the
exercise of this divine-human power demands the free submission and the living
co-operation of mankind itself. The action of Christ is therefore determined here by
the progressive development of humanity, drawn by degrees into the divine-human
sphere, assimilated to the mystical Body of Christ and transformed into the
Universal Church.

If God, that is to say, Christ in glory, had wished to impose His truth and His
will upon men in a direct and supranatural manner, if He had wished to save the
world by force, He could well have done so; just as before His glorification He
could have asked His heavenly Father to send Him a legion of angels to protect
Him from the servants of Caiaphas and the soldiers of Pilate. In that case the
history of the world would have been soon completed, but it would not have
achieved its goal; there would have been no free co-operation between Man and
God, no true union and perfect concurrence between the creature and the Creator;
and mankind itself in losing its freedom of choice would have been assimilated to
the physical world. But the Divine Word did not become incarnate on Earth in
order to sanction materialism. Since that incarnation, the freedom of Man remains
assured; the Universal Church has a history. It was necessary that Christ should
ascend to the heavens and govern the Church by means of human ministers to
whom He might delegate the moral and juridical fullness of the three Messianic
powers, without thereby imparting to them the immediate efficacy of His
omnipotence which would have restricted the freedom of men. In a word, we know
that in founding the Church Christ delegated His powers to her; and in doing so he
followed what we may call the trinitary scheme, ratio Trinitatis.

The Trinity of God is the evolution of absolute Unity which contains in itself all
the fullness of Being, unfolding itself in three hypostatized modes of the divine
existence. We know that in the Trinity absolute Unity is secured: (1) by the
ontological primacy of the first hypostasis which is the original cause or principle
of the two others, but not vice versa; (2) by the consubstantiality of all three,
ensuring the indivisibility of their being; and (3) by their perfect solidarity which
does not permit of their acting separately. The social trinity of the Universal
Church is the evolution of the ecclesiastical monarchy which contains in itself all
the fullness of the Messianic powers, unfolding itself in the three forms of
Christian sovereignty. As in the Godhead, the unity of the Universal Church is
secured: (1) by the absolute primacy of the first of these three powers, the
pontificate, which is the only sovereignty directly and immediately instituted by
God and therefore de jure the cause and necessary condition of the two others; (2)
by the essential community of these three powers as included within the same
Body of Christ and sharing the same substance of religion, the same faith, tradition
and sacraments; (3) by the moral solidarity or community of aim which for all
three can be nothing but the coming of the Kingdom of God, the perfect
manifestation of the Universal Church.

The religious community and moral solidarity of the three sovereign powers
under the absolute primacy of the universal pontificate, such is the supreme law,
the ultimate ideal of social Christendom. But though in God the trinitary form of
unity exists in actuality from all eternity, in the Church it is only gradually
realized. Hence, there is not only a difference, but even a certain contrast between
the Divine Trinity and the social trinity. The primary datum of the Divine existence
is absolute Unity, of which the Trinity is the direct, perfect and therefore eternal
unfolding. The primary datum of the Church is, on the contrary, the indeterminate
plurality of natural, fallen humanity. In the Divine Being the Trinity is the form by
which absolute Unity extends and unfolds itself; in the social being of the human
race the trinity is the form by which the indeterminate plurality of particular
elements is reduced to a synthetic unity. Thus, the development of the Church is a
process of unification within an ideally constant, but actually variable, relationship
between de jure unity and de facto plurality, a process which involves two main
operations: the progressive centralization of the given ecclesiastical body, and the
unifying and synthetic action of the centralized Church which aims at the
incorporation of the whole of mankind into itself. The hypostases of the Divine
Trinity are absolutely simple in themselves and their trinitary relationship is
perfectly pure and immediate. The sovereign powers of the trinitary society of the
Universal Church are neither simple in themselves nor in the conditions in which
they must be realized. They are not simple in themselves, for they are only relative
centers of a collective whole. The mode of their realization is complicated not only
by the indeterminate plurality of the human medium in which they must manifest
themselves, but also owing to the fact that the perfect Messianic revelation finds in
natural humanity only partially successful attempts at unification, upon which the
unifying work of the Church must be grafted. While this materially assists the
divine-human operation, it also imparts to it a less pure, regular and harmonious
character. The chaos which is only veiled by the physical creation still asserts its
claims not only in the history of natural humanity, but also in the history of
Religion and of the Church.

The aim of the divine-human work is to save all men equally, to transform the
whole world into a royal and prophetic priesthood, a society of God in which men
find themselves in direct relation to Christ and have no need of sun (that is, of a
special priesthood), of moon (that is, of a special kingship), or of stars (that is, of
prophecy as a public function). But to attain this end, it is not enough to define it. It
is only too obvious that the mass of men do not individually and subjectively
possess piety, justice and wisdom in sufficient measure to enter into direct contact
with the Godhead or to invest each individual with the character of priest, king and
prophet. Hence, it is necessary that these three Messianic attributes should be given
objective and organic form in public and social life, and should be permanently
differentiated in the universal organism in order that Christ may have specific
organs of His activity as Priest, King and Prophet. The people of Israel said to
Moses at the foot of Sinai: "We cannot endure the presence of Jahveh, we shall all
die. Go thou in our stead to speak with Jahveh, and thou shalt bring back all that he
shall say to thee for us; so shalt thou be a mediator between us and the Most High,
that we may live." And the Lord said to Moses: "What this people have said, they
have well said." And by the command of Jahveh, Moses not only acted personally
as a mediator between the Godhead and the people, but also, in declaring that the
people had been called to be a priestly kingdom (malkhouth cohanim), he founded,
as we have seen, the three powers through which Jahveh was to exercise His social
activity in Israel. The human mediator of the Old Testament thus foreshadowed the
divine-human Mediator of the New Covenant. Jesus Christ, while preaching the
Kingdom of Heaven which is within us, grace and truth, and proclaiming the
perfect unity of love and freedom as the supreme law of His Church, none the less
proceeds to organize the ecclesiastical body and to bestow upon it a central organ
by the method of a special choice. All must be completely equal, all must be one,
and yet there are only twelve Apostles to whom the power of Christ is delegated,
and among them there is only one on whom this power is conferred completely and
absolutely.

We know that the principle of chaotic existence, of existence, that is to say,
apart from the Godhead, is manifested in the life of natural humanity by the
indeterminate succession of generations, in which the present hastens to supplant
the past, only to be itself continually supplanted by an illusory and transient future.
The parricidal children, becoming fathers, cannot but beget a new generation of
parricides, and so on to infinity. Such is the evil law of mortal life. Therefore, if
mankind is to be regenerated and given true life, its past must above all be
stabilized by the organization of a permanent fatherhood. Purely human society
already allots to the transitory fatherhood of natural life three distinct functions: the
father produces and sustains the existence of the child by begetting it and providing
for its material needs; he guides the moral and intellectual development of the
adolescent by educating it; finally, he remains for his grown son the living and
venerable memory of his past. The first relationship is for the child one of complete
dependence; the second lays upon the adolescent the duty of obedience; the third
only demands filial piety, a free sentiment of veneration and a mutual friendship.
If, in family life, fatherhood is seen under these three successive aspects, in the
regenerate social life of the whole human race it assumes them simultaneously. For
there are always individuals and nations that have yet to be begotten to spiritual
life, and have yet to receive the elements of religious nurture — nations and
individuals in moral and intellectual infancy; others, like adolescents, must in
every age develop their spiritual powers and faculties with a certain freedom, but
none the less must be constantly watched over and guided in the true path by the
authority of a father, which shows itself at this stage mainly as an educative and
teaching authority. Finally, there are always, if not whole nations, at least
individuals who have reached spiritual maturity, and the more conscious and free
they are, the greater is the veneration and filial piety they feel for spiritual
fatherhood.

From another point of view, there is bound to be an hierarchical gradation in
spiritual fatherhood in proportion to the extent of the social units which it
embraces. We know that the Church is natural humanity transubstantiated. Now,
natural humanity is constituted on the analogy of a living body. A physical body is
a complex unity made up of relatively simple units of different degrees in a
complicated relationship of subordination and co-ordination. The main degrees of
this physical hierarchy are three in number. The lowest degree is represented by
the relatively simple units, the elementary organs or organic elements of the body.
In the middle degree we find the limbs of the body and its organs properly socalled,
which are more or less composite. Finally, all these members and organs
are subordinate to the unity of the whole body controlled by a central organ.
Similarly, in the political organism of natural humanity, which was to be
regenerated by Christianity, relatively simply units — tribes, clans, rural
communities, small states — were united in composite collectivities more or less
subdivided, nations at different stages of development, provinces of varying extent;
finally all the provinces and nations were united in the universal monarchy,
governed by a unique social organ, the city of Rome, a city which concentrated in
itself the whole world and was at once urbs et orbis.

This was the organism which was to be transubstantiated by Christianity. The
body of historic humanity was to be regenerated in every part in accordance with
the order of its composition. And since Christ established a spiritual fatherhood as
the basis of this regeneration, that fatherhood had to take form in accordance with
the given variations in the forms of society. There were, therefore, three degrees in
the spiritual fatherhood or the priesthood: each primary social community or
village, transubstantiated into a Church, received a spiritual father or priest; and all
these priests together formed the lower clergy or the priesthood, properly speaking.
The provinces of the Empire, transubstantiated into eparchies or dioceses of
different orders, each formed a large family with a common father in the person of
the archiereus or bishop, the immediate father of the priests under him and through
them of all the faithful of his diocese. But all the spiritual social units of this
second order represented by the episcopate, the particular Churches of cities,
provinces and nations governed by prelates of all degrees (simple bishops,
archbishops, metropolitans, primates or patriarchs) are only members of the
Universal Church which must itself be manifest as a higher unit embracing all
these members. The mere juxtaposition of its parts is not in fact enough to
constitute a living body. It must possess a formal unity or substantial form which
definitely embraces in actuality all the particular units, the elements and organs of
which the body is composed. And if the particular spiritual families which between
them make up mankind are in reality to form a single Christian family, a single
Universal Church, they must be subject to a common fatherhood embracing all
Christian nations. To assert that there exist in reality nothing more than national
Churches is to assert that the members of a body exist in and for themselves and
that the body itself has no reality. On the contrary, Christ did not found any
particular Church. He created them all in the real unity of the Universal Church
which He entrusted to Peter as the one supreme representative of the divine
Fatherhood towards the whole family of the sons of Man.

It was by no mere chance that Jesus Christ specially ascribed to the first divine
hypostasis, the heavenly Father, that divine-human act which made Simon Bar-
Jona the first social father of the whole human family and the infallible master of
the school of mankind. "It is not flesh and blood which have revealed it to thee, but
My Father Who is in heaven." God the Holy Trinity is as indivisible in His action
ad extra as in His inner life. If St. Peter was divinely inspired, it was by God the
Son and God the Holy Ghost as much as by God the Father, and since it was a
matter of inspiration it might have seemed more appropriate to make special
mention of the Holy Spirit Who spake by the prophets. But it is just here that we
see the divine reason which governed every word of Christ, and the universal
significance of His utterance to Peter. For it was not a matter of asserting that in
this particular instance Simon had been inspired from above; that was as possible
for him as for any of his fellows. But it was a matter of establishing in his favor the
unique institution of universal fatherhood in the Church, the image and instrument
of the divine Fatherhood; and therefore it was above all to the heavenly Father that
the supreme reason and sanction for this institution was to be referred.

It is hard to leave the pure air of the Galilean mountains for the polluted
atmosphere of the Dead Sea. Our anti-Catholic controversialists, while admitting
that the Church of the parish or of the diocese needs its priest or bishop, its visible
father, the human organ of the divine Fatherhood, will hear nothing of a common
father for the whole Universal Church. The only head of the Church, they say, is
Jesus Christ. And yet they see no reason why a parish or a diocese should not be
governed by a visible minister; every Orthodox is ready to see in each bishop or
priest a vicar of Jesus Christ, though he cries Blasphemy! when Catholics give this
title to the first of the patriarchs, the successor of St. Peter. But do these Orthodox
schismatics in fact recognize Jesus Christ as Head of the Church? If He were really
for them the sovereign Head, they would obey His words. Is it obedience to the
Master that drives them into rebellion against the steward that He has Himself
appointed? They are ready to allow Christ to act through His ministers in any given
part of His visible Kingdom, but they appear to think that He exceeded the limits
of His power and abused His rights in giving to Peter the keys of the whole
Kingdom. It is as though an English subject, while allowing the Empress of India
the right of nominating a governor at Madras and a magistrate at Bombay, were to
dispute her appointment of the Viceroy at Calcutta.

But, it may be said, the Universal Church in her entirety goes beyond the bounds
of earthly humanity; she includes the saints in Paradise, the souls in Purgatory and
even, adds Khomyakov, the souls of those yet unborn. We doubt whether the Pope
is much concerned to extend his jurisdiction over the souls of the unborn. But,
speaking seriously, we are not dealing with the Universal Church in its absolute
and eternal totality, but in its relative and temporal totality, with the visible Church
in each given moment of its historic existence. For the Church, as for the
individual man, there is the invisible totality or the soul, and the visible totality or
the body. The soul of man surpasses the limits of earthly existence, it survives the
physical organism, and in the world of spirits it thinks and acts without the medium
of a material brain; but if anyone were to draw from that the conclusion that in his
earthly existence man can get along without brains, the conclusion would hardly be
granted, except perhaps in his own case!

There is another a priori argument used to evade the necessity for a universal
fatherhood. Since the principle of fatherhood represents tradition, the memory of
the past, it is thought to be enough for the Church to show true spiritual fatherhood
by guarding tradition and preserving the memory of its own past. From this point
of view, spiritual fatherhood would be represented solely by the great departed
ancestors of the religious society, the Fathers of the Church. But why not extend
this logic to particular Churches? Why are not the faithful of a parish content to
find this spiritual fatherhood in the historic memory of the first founders of their
parish church? Why do they also need a living spiritual father, a permanent parish
priest? And why does it not completely satisfy the inhabitants of Moscow to have a
sacred tradition, a pious remembrance of the first rulers of their Church, the holy
metropolitans Peter and Alexis? Why do they also want a living bishop as a
perpetual representative of this ancient tradition? To relegate the spiritual
fatherhood of the Church to the past in the proper sense of that which has only an
ideal existence for us is to misconceive her very essence and raison d'être. The
barbarous ancestors of mankind knew better: they recognized the survival of
ancestors and even made them the main object of their worship, but for the
continual maintenance of that worship they required that the dead ancestor should
always have a living successor, the soul of the family, the priest or sacrificer, the
permanent intermediary between the invisible divinity and their actual life.
Without a single father common to the whole human family, the earthly life of
the sons of Adam must remain subject to division of every kind, and unity will
have only an ideal existence upon Earth. Real unity will be driven back to Heaven
like the legendary Astræa; and Chaos will reign upon the Earth. In that case,
Christianity would have failed; for it is in order to unify the lower world, to draw
the Earth out of chaos and unite it with the heavens, that the Word was made flesh.
The docetic Christ of the Gnostics, a phantom Christ, would be more than
sufficient to found an invisible Church. But the real Christ has founded a real
Church upon Earth and has based it upon a permanent fatherhood universally
diffused throughout all the parts of the social organism, but actually concentrated
for the whole body in the person of the common father of all the faithful, the
supreme pontiff, the elder or presbyter par excellence, the Pope.

The Pope, as such, is directly the father of all the bishops and, through them, of
all the priests. Thus, he is father of fathers. There is no question that the Pope is the
only bishop to be called not only "brother" but also "father" by other bishops from
the earliest times; and it was not only individual bishops that recognized his
paternal authority, but gatherings of the whole episcopate as impressive, for
instance, as the Council of Chalcedon.

But this fatherhood of the Pope in relation to the teaching Church or the clergy
does not belong to him absolutely. Not only bishops, but all priests are under
certain aspects the equals of the Pope. The Pope has no essential pre-eminence
over a simple priest in the ministry of the sacraments, with the exception of Holy
Order, in which he has no privilege above that of any other bishop. It is for this
reason that the Pope calls the bishops not only his sons, but also his brothers, and is
called brother by them. Thus, within the limits of the Church, properly speaking,
the Pope has only a relative fatherhood, not fully analogous to the Divine
Fatherhood. The essential characteristic of the latter is that the Father is such in an
absolutely unique manner, that He alone is Father, and that the Son and the Spirit,
while partaking in the Godhead, do not partake in the Divine Fatherhood in any
manner or degree. But the bishops and priests — the whole teaching Church —
share more or less in the spiritual fatherhood of the Pope. Fundamentally, there is
no essential difference between this spiritual fatherhood or priestly power in the
Pope and the same power as it is in the bishops; just as the power of the episcopate
is the relative fullness of the power of the priesthood, so its absolute fullness is
found in the Papacy.


Kingship and sonship Prophecy
The three Sacraments of the Rights of Man

IF the Papacy, after the manner of the Divine Fatherhood, must beget a second
social authority, it is not that of the bishops who are fathers themselves, but an
essentially filial authority, the representative of which is in no way and in no
degree a spiritual father; just as in the Trinity the eternal Son is Son in the absolute
sense and in no sense possesses fatherhood. The second Messianic power is
Christian kingship. The Christian king, prince or emperor is pre-eminently the
spiritual son of the supreme pontiff. If the unity of the Church (11) is centered and
realized in the supreme pontiff, and if there is a relation of sonship between the
Christian State as such and the Church, this relationship must exist really and, so to
speak, hypostatically between the head of the State and the head of the Church. It
belongs to the science of history to examine in the past, and to the opportunism of
politics to decide for the present, the relations between the Church and the pagan
State. But as regards the Christian State, it is unquestionable that it represents the
second Messianic power, the Kingship of Christ, and that it is, as such, begotten in
principle by the first, the universal fatherhood.

The positive mission of the Christian State is to incarnate the principles of the
true religion in the social and political order. These principles are represented and
preserved by the Church (in the narrower sense of the word), the religious society
based upon that spiritual fatherhood which is centered in the Pope, organized in the
episcopate and priesthood, and recognized by the piety of the body of the faithful.
The Church in this sense is the fundamental religious fact and the one way of
salvation opened to mankind by Christ. But Christ in His work, as in His Person,
makes no distinction between the way, the truth and the life. And if for us the truth
is based upon the teaching of the Church and the spiritual life upon the sacraments,
it must not be forgotten that the foundations exist not for themselves, but for the
whole structure. True and living religion is not a speciality, a separate domain, a
secluded corner of human existence. Religion, being the direct revelation of the
Absolute, cannot be one thing among many: it is all or nothing. The recognition of
it implies its introduction into every sphere of intellectual and practical life as the
supreme controlling principle, and the subordination to it of all political and social
interests.

For Christ is not only Priest, but also King; and His Church must combine a
royal authority with her priestly character. While reconciling fallen human nature
to God through the perpetual Sacrifice, while regenerating and raising men by the
ministry of spiritual fatherhood, the Church must also prove the fruitfulness of this
fatherhood by bringing the entire collective life of man into fellowship with God.
In order to save the world which "lieth in the evil one," Christianity must mingle
with the world; but in order that the human representatives of the divine fact, the
earthly guardians and instruments of transcendent truth and absolute holiness, may
not compromise their sacred dignity in the practical struggle against evil, nor forget
Heaven in their desire to save the Earth, their political action must be indirect. As
the divine Father acts and manifests Himself in creation through the Son, His
Word, so too the Church of God, the spiritual fatherhood, the universal Papacy,
must act and manifest itself externally by means of the Christian State, through the
Kingship of the Son. The State must be the political organ of the Church; the
temporal sovereign must be the "Word" of the spiritual sovereign. In this way, the
question of supremacy between the two powers is solved: for the more each is
what it should be, the greater is their mutual equality and freedom. When the State,
confining itself to the exercise of secular power, asks and receives its moral
sanction from the Church, and the latter, while asserting its own supreme spiritual
authority, entrusts its external action to the State, there is an intimate bond between
the two, a mutual dependence, and at the same time all conflict and oppression of
the one by the other is excluded. When the Church guards and expounds the law of
God, and the State devotes itself to the carrying out of that law by the
transformation of the social order in accordance with the Christian ideal and the
creation of practical conditions and external means for realizing the divine-human
life in the whole range of earthly existence, then it is clear that all conflict of
principles and interests must vanish to give place to a peaceful division of labor in
the common task.

But if this mutual dependence of Church and State, in which stands their true
freedom, is an essential condition of realizing the Christian ideal upon Earth, it
surely becomes clear that this very condition of harmony and unity between the
two powers exists only in idea and is unrealized in positive religion or in practical
politics. The hierarchical Church, resting principally upon sacred tradition, regards
religious truth mainly as an accomplished fact and stresses chiefly the primary
datum of revelation. From this point of view the incarnation of Christ, the reality of
the God-Man, the fundamental principle of the true religion, is primarily an
historic event, a fact of the past linked to the present, so to speak, sub specie
præteriti by a series of other religious facts regularly produced in an unchangeable
order established from the beginning once for all, the traditional teaching
reproducing the depositum fidei, the apostolic succession being transmitted in a
uniform manner, Baptism and the other sacraments being signified by invariable
formulæ, and so on. (12) This traditional principle, this unchanging and determinate
character, is absolutely essential to the Church in the narrower sense; it is her
native element. But if she confines herself to this element alone and, resting
satisfied with her superior origin, refuses to take account of anything outside it, she
makes way for that absolutism of the State which regards religion as a thing of the
past, venerable but irrelevant, and so thinks itself justified in absorbing all the
living present in the politics of temporal interests.

"I am unity," says the Church, "I embrace all nations in a single universal
family." "Well and good," replies the State, "let all the nations of the Earth be
united in the mystical and invisible order; I am not opposed to the communion of
saints nor to the unity of Christian souls in a single faith, a single hope, a single
love. But real life is not like that. There the sovereign nation is supreme; its own
self-interest is the ultimate goal, its principle is material power, and war is its
instrument. Therefore, divide Christian souls into hostile armies, and they have
only to slaughter one another upon Earth in order to realize the more speedily their
mystical union in Heaven."

"I represent the unchangeable truth of the absolute past," says the Church.
"Exactly," replies the semi-Christian State, "I only ask for the relative and shifting
sphere of practical life. I venerate sacred archæology; I reverence the past so long
as it is content to be past for good and all. I do not lay a finger on dogmas or
sacraments, provided that there is no meddling with the secular matters of the
moment which are my undisputed sphere: the schools, science, social education,
domestic and foreign affairs. I stand for justice: suum cuique. A divine institution
has nothing to do with all these purely human things. The heavens to God, the
temple to the priest — and all the rest to Cæsar!"

But what is to remain for Christ, both God and Man, Priest and King, the Lord
of Heaven and Earth? This egoistic justice, this anti-Christian divorce between the
two worlds, can only be justified by a logic which stops short at the relative and
abstract duality of the spiritual and the secular, the sacred and the profane, and
makes no mention of the third term, the absolute synthesis of the Infinite and the
finite, eternally accomplished in God and finding its accomplishment in mankind
through Christ. It is the very spirit of Christianity that is here ignored, that
harmony of the whole, that union which is both necessary and free, unique and
manifold, the true future which fulfils the present and brings the past to life.

The Church and the State, the pontiff and the prince, at present distinct from and
hostile to one another, can find their true and final unity only in this prophetic
future of which they themselves are the necessary premises and conditions. Two
different powers, if they are to achieve unity, must have a single goal which they
can reach only in co-operation, each acting in accordance with its own character
and with the means at its disposal. Now, the common goal of the Church and the
State, of the priesthood and the kingship, is not truly represented by either of the
two powers taken alone or in its specific element. From this point of view each has
its own peculiar goal, regardless of the other. If the Church's only task is to
maintain the religious tradition, she can carry it out alone without help from the
State. If the State has only to defend its subjects against the enemy and to maintain
external order through its law-courts and police, it is fully competent to do so
without calling in the aid of the Christian Church. But Christ did not unite the
Divine and human in His individual person, only to leave them disunited in His
social body. As Priest, King and Prophet, He has given Christian society its
absolute form in the trinitary monarchy. Having founded the Church upon His
Priesthood and sanctioned the State by His Kingship, He has also provided for
their unity and their unified progress by leaving to the world the free and living
activity of His prophetic spirit. And as the Priesthood and the Kingship of the God-
Man reveal His divine nature through the medium of human instruments, so it is
with His prophetic office. A third principal ministry must therefore be admitted in
the Christian world — the synthetic unity of the first two, offering to Church and
State the perfect ideal of deified Humanity as the supreme goal of their common
activity.

Nothing has succeeded in exhausting or stifling the spirit of prophecy in the
universal Body of Christ. It blows where it lists, and speaks to the whole world, to
priests, kings and peoples. To the guardians of tradition it says: "It is no dead and
lifeless tradition that has been entrusted to you; the revelation of the living God
and of His Christ cannot be a closed and sealed book. Christ is no mere fact of past
history; He is, above all, the principle of the future, of free movement and true
progress. You have the deposit of faith; is it so much capital to be locked in a chest
or buried in the ground? If you are faithful ministers of the Lord, you will not
imitate that too cautious servant of the Gospel parable; you will not reduce the
teaching of Christ to a closed system. Remember that in that teaching, which is His
truth, Christ is also the living principle and the cornerstone. Make Christian
dogma, then, the firm but broad basis, the unchanging and yet living principle, of
all philosophy and science; do not relegate it to some remote sphere, indifferent or
hostile to human thought and knowledge. Theology is indeed the science of God,
but the God of Christian theology is united to mankind by an indissoluble union,
and the theology of the God-Man cannot be separated from the philosophy and
science of men. You are orthodox in your profession of faith, you repudiate both
the heresy of Nestorius and that of Eutyches; be orthodox, then, in the application
of your faith. Express the truth of Christ in terms of the Christian intellect,
distinguish but do not separate His natures, preserve in your ideas and your
teaching the interior, organic and living union between the Divine and the human,
without confusion and without division. Beware of slipping into Nestorianism and
admitting the existence of two sciences and two truths complete in themselves and
independent of one another. Do not, on the other hand, attempt, in Monophysite
fashion, to suppress human truth, philosophic reason and the facts of natural
science and history; do not exaggerate their importance, but do not reject their
decisive witness to Christian dogma; that is an unreasonable sacrifice which
incarnate Reason does not ask of you and cannot accept.

"But it is not only the absolute principle of knowledge which is entrusted to you,
the fathers of regenerate humanity, but also the principle of social order. And here
again, as true Orthodox, you have the royal road to follow between two opposite
heresies, the false liberalism of Nestorius and the false pietism of the
Monophysites. The former would make a final separation between Church and
State, sacred and profane, as Nestorius separated the humanity from the divinity in
Christ. The latter would absorb the human soul in the contemplation of the Divine
and would abandon the mundane world, its states and nations, to their fate; this is
the application to society of Monophysitism, which merges the human nature of
Christ into His divinity. But you, orthodox priests, who have in the true dogma of
Christ's Person the infallible expression of that free and perfect union, will always
maintain the intimate bond which links the human State to the Church of God, just
as the Manhood of Christ is in Him linked to the Word of God. To the absolutism
of the State, which tends to paganism and godlessness, you will not oppose an
absolute clericalism, self-contained and complacent in its isolation; you will not
combat error with a half-truth, but you will uphold that absolute social truth which
demands alongside the Church a Christian State, the Kingship of Christ, the image
and instrument of the divine Sonship, as you yourselves are the image of the
eternal Fatherhood. You will never submit to the secular power, for the Father
cannot be subject to the Son; but neither will you attempt to enslave it, for the Son
is free.

"Pontiffs and priests, you are the ministers of the sacraments of Christ. In
revealed dogma, Christ is the principle of all truths or of the whole truth. For truth
is fundamentally one, as it is infinitely manifold in its material content, and
threefold in its constituent form — theological, philosophical and scientific — just
as Christ is one in His hypostasis, infinitely manifold inasmuch as He contains and
manifests the ideal cosmos, and threefold inasmuch as He unites the divine
substance not only with the rational soul of Man, but also with his material and
bodily nature. So in the holy sacraments Christ is the principle of life, of the whole
of life, not only spiritual but also bodily, not only individual but also social. You,
sacrificing priests, were created to plant within humanity the mystical yet real seed
of divine-human life; you sow within our nature the seed of matter made divine, of
a heavenly corporeity. The beginning of this work, the first source of supernatural
life within the body of earthly humanity, must be an absolute fact surpassing
human reason, a mystery. But there is nothing hid which shall not be revealed; the
mystical elements implanted in human nature by the grace of the sacraments
through your ministry must germinate, grow and display themselves in visible
existence, in the social life of mankind which they progressively transform into the
true body of Christ. This work of sanctification does not, therefore, belong only to
the priesthood; it demands also the co-operation of the Christian State and of
Christian society. What the priest initiates in his mysterious rite, the secular prince
must continue by his legislation and the faithful people must consummate in its
life."

The prophetic spirit of Christianity will say then to the Christian princes and
peoples: "The Church gives you the mysteries of life and happiness; it is for you to
reveal them and to take pleasure in them. You have Baptism, the Sacrament or
Mystery of liberty. The Christian redeemed by Christ is, above all, a free man. The
eternal and absolute principle of this freedom is conferred by sacramental grace
and cannot be destroyed by the external relationships or the social condition of
Man. But in the Christian world can these external relationships be allowed to
remain in contradiction to the gift of God? The baptized Christian retains his
freedom even if he is a slave, but should he be a slave in a Christian society?
Banish, therefore, Christian kings and peoples, the last traces of pagan degradation,
suppress slavery and servitude in all its forms, direct or indirect, for they are all the
negation of Baptism — a negation which, for all its inability to destroy interior
grace, none the less hinders its external realization. Our God is no hidden God; and
if He has revealed Himself and become incarnate, it is certainly not His will that
the contradiction between the visible and the invisible should be perpetuated. Do
not, then, allow Man, whom the living God has set at liberty, to be driven back into
servitude to dead things, into slavery to machines.

"You have Confirmation, the Sacrament or Mystery of equality. The Church of
Christ communicates to each Christian, without distinction, the Messianic dignity,
which the first Adam forfeited and the second restored, by bestowing upon each
the sacred anointing of sovereigns. We know that the perfect condition of society
which is foreshadowed by this sacrament (the state of malkhouth cohanim —
regnum sacerdotale) cannot be immediately realized; but do not you mighty ones
of the Earth forget on your part that that is the true goal of Christianity. By
maintaining at all costs from selfish motives the inequalities of society, you will
justify the envious and bitter reaction of the disinherited classes. You profane the
Sacrament of Holy Chrism if you turn the Lord's anointed into rebellious slaves.
The law of God has never sanctioned inequalities of birth or fortune, and if in your
impious conservatism you raise what is only a transitory circumstance to the
dignity of an absolute and eternal principle, upon your own heads will be the sins
of the people and all the blood of revolutions.

"And you, Christian people, remember that the Church, in bestowing upon you
the Messianic dignity in Confirmation, in making each one of you the equal of
priests and kings, has conferred upon you not an empty mockery of a title, but a
real and permanent grace. It is for you to profit thereby; for by virtue of this grace
each one of you can become an instrument of the Holy Spirit in the social order.
Beside the priesthood and the kingship, there is in Christian society a third
sovereign ministry, that of prophecy, which depends neither on birth nor on public
election nor sacred ordination. It is validly conferred upon each Christian by
Confirmation and can be lawfully exercised by those who do not resist divine
grace, but use their freedom to co-operate with it. Thus, every one of you who will,
can, by divine right and through the grace of God, wield sovereign power as truly
as Pope or Emperor."(13)

Is it the fault of Christianity that this supreme right which it offers to the world
is sold by the mass of mankind to Satan for a mess of pottage?

The equality in sovereignty which belongs by right to every Christian is not an
equality without distinction. All have an equal dignity, each has an infinite value in
the eyes of all; but all have not the same function. The unity of Christian people,
founded upon the divine-human fatherhood, is the unity of an ideal family. The
perfect moral equality between the members of such a family does not exclude the
dutiful recognition by the sons of the primacy and authority of their father, nor the
distinction of one from another by a difference of vocation or of character.
Genuine and positive equality, like true liberty, is manifested and realized in that
solidarity or fraternity which makes many to be as one. The Baptism into liberty
and the Confirmation in equality are crowned by the great Sacrament of
Communion, the fulfilment of the prayer of Christ, "that they may all be one, as I
am one with Thee, My Father." In bringing about the unity of all His disciples in a
single communion, Jesus Christ did not mean to stop short at national frontiers; He
extended His brotherhood over all the nations. If this mysterious communion of the
divine Body is genuine and real, we become by the real partaking of it brothers
without distinction of race or nationality; and if we slaughter one another in the
name of so-called national interests, we are — not metaphorically, but in actual
fact — fratricides.


The four Sacraments of the Duties of Man

THE three Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Communion, by
making all Christians the free, equal brethren of one another, and all the
sons of God, incorporated in His only Son Jesus Christ, bestow upon them
Messianic dignity and sovereign rights. Man has the right to be the son of God, for
it was for this that God created him. But because he is only by right, and not
immediately in fact, the son of God, Man has also the privilege of making himself
in reality what ideally he is already and of realizing the principle of his being by
his own act. Thus, the duties of Man flow from his sovereign rights as the
conditions which he must fulfil in order to exercise his sovereignty.

Since Man is, to begin with, a son of God only in principle, his first duty is to
recognize that he is not so in fact, to recognize the vast distance between what he is
and what he ought to be. This is the negative condition of all positive progress, the
supreme duty of Man, the duty of humility, marked by the Church in the
Sacrament of Penance and Confession. Protestantism, as though to ensure in
advance the impenitence of its adherents, has rejected this sacrament. But more to
blame than the Protestant heretics are those false Orthodox who would confine the
duty of humility to individuals and would leave the units of society, states and
nations, without hope of repentance, to their vanity, pride, egoism, and fratricidal
hatred. Such was not the attitude of the prophets of the Old Testament, who called
upon cities, nations and rulers of states to repent. Nor was it the attitude of that
unique prophet of the New Testament who in his letters to the angels of the
Churches upbraided them for the public vices and sins of their communities.

At the root of all human evil, all sins and crimes both individual and social, lies
a weakness, a radical infirmity which does not allow us to be in reality sons of
God. It is the chaotic principle, the primordial basis of all created being. Reduced
to impotence (or to pure potency) in Man, but roused anew by the fall of Adam, it
has become the basic element of our limited and self-centered existence which,
clinging to its infinitesimal fragment of true being, desires to make this fragment
the one and only center of the universe. This self-centered assertion, which isolates
and separates us from the true divine totality, can only be destroyed by love. Love
is the power which makes us inwardly surpass the confines of our given existence,
reunites us to the Whole by an indissoluble bond and, by making us in reality sons
of God, causes us to share in the fullness of His essential Wisdom and in the
enjoyment of His Spirit. The task of love is the integration of Man and, through
Man, of all created existence. A threefold union is to be achieved by (1) the reintegration
of the individual Man by uniting him in a true and eternal union with
his natural complement, Woman; (2) the re-integration of social Man by the reuniting
of the individual to the human collectivity in a fixed and stable union;
(3) the re-integration of universal Man by the restoration of his intimate and living
union with the whole of nature, which is the organic body of humanity.

Man is inwardly separated from Woman by the desire of possessing her
externally in the name of a blind and irrational passion. The two are re-united by
the power of true love which identifies their two lives in their absolute substance
eternally fixed in God, and only admits the material relationship as an ultimate
consequence and external realization of this mystical and moral relationship. It is
love at its most concentrated and most concrete, and therefore at its deepest and
most intense, the true basis and general type of every other love and every other
union. The word of God has ordained and blessed it, and the Church perpetuates
this blessing in the Sacrament of Marriage which makes true sexual love the first
positive basis of the divine-human integration. For it is this sanctified love which
creates the true individual elements of the perfect society, the incarnate Sophia.
But in order to constitute social Man, the individual element, re-integrated by
true Marriage, must be re-united to the fixed collective form. The individual is
inwardly separated from society by the desire for pre-eminence and external
domination in the name of his own personality. He re-enters the unity of society by
the moral act of renunciation, the subordination of his will, his own interests, his
whole ego to the will and the interests of a superior being recognized as such. If
married love is essentially a co-ordination of two equal though different existences,
social love is bound to express itself by a definite subordination of social units of
different orders. Here it is not the brutal egoism of Man which must be shattered
by an intense emotion impelling it to identification with another being; that has
already been done by sexual love. It is the individual existence which must be
linked to a general hierarchy whose gradations are defined by the formal relation
existing between the whole and its parts of greater or less significance. The
perfection of social love cannot then consist in an intensity of subjective feeling,
but in its conformity with objective reason which tells us that the whole is greater
than any of its parts. The obligation of this love is therefore infringed and the
realization of social Man is hindered, not only by mere egoism, but also chiefly by
that particularism which draws distinctions between the interests of lower groups,
to which we are more immediately attached, and those of higher and more
extensive groups. When a man separates his love for the family, the trade union,
the social class or the political party to which he belongs from his love for his
country, or when he is ready to serve the latter without regard to mankind as a
whole or the Universal Church, he is putting asunder what God has joined in one,
and is becoming an obstacle to the integration of social Man.

The type and basic reality of this integration are given in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy formed by the Sacrament of Order. It is the triumph of social love, for no
member of this order functions or acts for himself or in his own name; each one is
ordained and invested by a superior representing a wider social unit. Here, from the
humblest priest up to the Pope, the servant of the servants of God, all are
absolutely free, as far as their sacred ministry is concerned, from self-asserting
egoism or isolated particularism; each one is simply a distinct organ of a united
social whole, the Universal Church.

But the reintegration of mankind cannot stop short at social Man. The law of
death divides the Universal Church itself into two parts, the one visible upon the
Earth, the other invisible in the heavens. The dominion of death is established. The
heavens and the Earth are separated by Man's desire for immediate and material
enjoyment of earthly reality and finite existence. Man desired to experience or taste
everything by external sensation. He desired to unite his heavenly spirit to the dust
of the Earth by a superficial union of mere contact. But such a union could not last;
it was bound to end in death. In order to re-unite the spirit of humanity to material
humanity and to conquer death, Man must be linked to the Whole, not by the
sensible surface of his being, but by its absolute center, which is God. Universal
Man is re-integrated by divine Love which not only raises Man to God, but by
identifying him inwardly with the Godhead causes him to embrace in It all that is,
and thus unites him to every single creature by an indissoluble and eternal union.
This love brings down divine grace into earthly nature and triumphs not only over
moral evil, but also over its physical consequences, sickness and death. Its work is
the final resurrection. And the Church, which teaches this resurrection in her
revealed doctrine, formulated in the last article of her creed, foreshadows and
inaugurates it in the last of her sacraments. In face of sickness and the danger of
death, Extreme Unction is the symbol and pledge of our immortality and of our
future integrity. The cycle of the sacraments, like the cycle of universal life, is
completed by the resurrection of the flesh, the integration of the whole of
humanity, the final incarnation of the divine Wisdom.

THE END

notes to third part

1 In German, schlecht (evil) and schlicht (simple) are really one and the same word, a fact which gave Hegel his opportunity for the pun which has had such a success in Germanic philosophy. Aristotle had indeed already expounded the same idea, without the play upon words.

2 Prov. viii. 22-23.

3 ibid., viii. 30.

4 ibid., viii. 30, 31

5 Immanent in relation to God, transcendent in relation to us.

6 Prov. viii. 31.

7 According to the Hexapla of Origen, the word bereshith was thus translated by Aquila, the celebrated doctor to whom the Talmud applies the words of the psalm: "Thou art fairer than the children of men."

8 This thesis has been expounded in our own time with a certain degree of exaggeration by M. Fustel de Coulanges in his Cité antique, and in a much more exaggerated form by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Sociology. It is not difficult to separate the important element of truth in their ideas from the mistaken conclusions which, especially in the English thinker, are the product of a too narrow and limited point of view.

9 On the analogy between the Platonic and the Christian Republics, see among others Ranke in his Universal History.

10 It goes without saying that the division into castes in India is a local phenomenon, not to be confused with the three governing classes found in every Society.

11 ["L'État," which occurs here in all the French editions, would appear to be a printer's error. — Tr.]

12 The real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist is, of course, a living actuality, but essentially mystical and so without direct and obvious influence upon the practical and social existence of earthly humanity.

13 It goes without saying that the prophetic ministry can have no outwardly binding character, since its exercise is solely determined by inward and purely spiritual conditions. As the representative in human society of the absolute ideal, the Christian prophet would be inconsistent and untrue to his mission if he were to employ means suited only to an imperfect state of society.

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