In my last post, I quoted Dr. Sarah Young on the “Slavophile” movement in 19th-century Russia, a movement which emphasized (or exaggerated) the differences between Russian and Western European cultures. While many of the Slavophiles espoused secular, even atheist, viewpoints, a substantial number were believers in Orthodox Christianity; they saw Orthodoxy, in contrast to both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, as having maintained the purity of early Christianity. Among other perceived differences, the Slavophiles claimed that Western Christianity had succumbed to spiritual individualism (the Protestant Reformation being the most glaring instance); whereas “true” Christianity existed and flourished only in spiritual community, or sobornost. As Dr. Young explains:
In terms of the religious faith of Russia and the West, it is these opposing principles [custom and community versus abstract logic and the primacy of the individual] that have dictated the different subsequent development of the two branches of Christianity…
The Eastern church is viewed as being based on communal principles without the imposition of a hierarchy. Khomiakov calls this communal principle ‘sobornost’. Coming from the Russian word for ‘congregation,’ sobornost’ is a difficult term to translate; [it] expresses the idea of free spiritual unity and mutual love, and the absence of individualism, and is generally seen as standing at the center of Slavophile theory.
The notion of freedom is particularly important; this is not a unity that is imposed from above or that depends on material benefits such as security or profit; rather, it arises organically out of bonds of kinship, custom and mutual trust, each individual, guided by inner freedom, contributing to create a greater whole that leads to “the unity of humanity with God.”
Most historians agree with Dr. Young that the Slavophiles had “a tendency to ignore inconvenient political and historical realities and [to] create a fantasy version of Russia’s past”; but it’s worth pointing out that the idea of sobornost, whatever its historical reality, is entirely consistent with St. Paul’s notion of Christian life, as he explained it to the Corinthians:
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit…God has so composed the body…that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
For Paul, believers “in Christ” remain individuals yet are bound together into a spiritual body, a spiritual community, sharing both sufferings and joys without "division"; that is precisely what religious Slavophiles meant by sobornost. Nikolai Berdyaev, though himself never a member of the Slavophile camp (or any camp, for that matter), found in sobornost the very essence of Christianity and of Christian salvation: “Sobornost,” he wrote, if realized, “would embody the integral unity of freedom and communion in religious, social, political, and cultural relations.” Moreover, sobornost presaged an eschatological reality and offered a glimpse of the Kingdom: “Salvation is inconceivable except in the company of the whole of mankind; and sobornost should be seen as having eschatological as well as ecclesiological implications.” If Christians constitute, as Paul said, “one body,” how can they be saved (or lost) apart from one another? Salvation is necessarily universal, and sobornost is the earthly, partial, and imperfect analogue of mankind’s cosmic destiny.
To be clear: for religious Slavophiles, sobornost is not just another word for “community”. 1 For them, says Richard Hughes, “Sobornost represents communal life in the Holy Spirit, embodied within persons...” It is the presence of the Spirit, Hughes notes, rather than of some vague and transient "community spirit," that characterizes sobornost. As Berdyaev tirelessly emphasizes, the Spirit of sobornost is the Spirit of freedom, a wind blowing where it will; for believers, Spirit-filled sobornost is “the organic union of freedom and love," the Kingdom in miniature and the only eschaton worth immanentizing. 2
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http://orthodox-theology.com/media/PDF/IJOT3.2015/Richard.Hughes.pdf
1 For secular Slavophiles, says Dr. Young, the Spirit-led community was idealized not as the Church but as the rural peasant commune. She quotes Konstantin Asakov:
A commune is a union of the people, who have renounced their egoism, their individuality, and who express their common accord; this is an act of love, a noble Christian act, which expresses itself more or less clearly in its various other manifestations. A commune thus represents a moral choir, and just as in a choir a voice is not lost, but follows the general pattern and is heard in the harmony of all voices: so in the commune the individual is not lost, but renounces his exclusiveness in favour of the general accord – and there arises the noble phenomenon of harmonious, joint existence of rational beings (consciousnesses); there arises a brotherhood, a commune – a triumph of human spirit.
“A moral choir”: I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Wavy Gravy was getting at with the Hog Farm.
2 "Immanentizing the eschaton" is the late Eric Voegelin's catchy phrase for "trying to create God's Kingdom on earth," an undertaking against which Voegelin strenuously warned.
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