Schubart's Unvarnished Sympathy

{As promised, I here begin a more detailed look at Walter Schubart’s Russia and Western Man, specifically the book’s Chapter Five, “The Spiritual History of the Russians”.}

Given my own status as a late-blooming Russophile, I share the late Walter Schubart’s enthusiasm for Russian spirituality, an enthusiasm that may or may not have been tempered by the year he spent in a Soviet prison camp in Kazakhstan, where he died in 1942. Nonetheless, I must caution the reader that, based on my own reading and research, “The Spiritual History of the Russians” may not be entirely objective, accurate, or reliable. Schubart was far too prone to romanticizing his subject, as well as to sweeping generalizations about history, nations, and people. With that in mind, let’s see what the man had to say.

In the beginning, writes Schubart, “The Russian soul was harmoniously tuned.” The “beginning” to which he refers is the era of “Kievan Rus’,” which is to say, Old Russia before Mongols and Tartars (and Peter the Great, oh my) came along. “A harmonious spirit pervaded the whole of ancient Russian Christendom,” just as it had pervaded western Europe during what Schubart calls the “Gothic Age” (medieval times). Despite the encroachment of decadent Western ways in recent centuries, Schubart asserts that the same harmonious spirit is still evident in Russia:

“The countenance of all Russian priests expresses an inner harmony. With their mild features and flowing hair, they are reminiscent of old portraits of Saints. What a contrast to the smooth, severe countenances and stern Roman features of the Western Jesuits!”  

Confirming his impressions, Schubart quotes the Orthodox theologian and historian Ivan Arseniev:

“The tranquil quality of [the Orthodox priest’s] spiritual demeanor, the mildness of his bearing and his intellectual moderation, so far removed from every form of eccentricity or hysteria, are particularly characteristic of the Russian Holy man. His expression is both manly and humble.” ¹

Schubart goes on to note that “The most perfect expression of the Russian sense of harmony is the belief in the God-manhood of Christ. According to Sergei Bulgakov, this constitutes the ‘very heart of Christianity’. Promethean civilization [in the West] started by tearing asunder God and world, religion and culture, into two hostile halves,” ² a fatal metaphysical error that Russia has so far avoided—or had avoided, at least, as of 1938.

Western Christianity, claims Schubart, and Protestantism in particular, has made Christian belief an increasingly private matter; by contrast, non-Promethean (or “less Promethean”) Russia has steadfastly insisted on the Christ-like integrity of the believer, who can no more separate her religion from her public life than she can separate her human self from her divine self. God-manhood constitutes an ontological intimacy as well as an eschatological goal: “Eternal God and eternal Man (Adam) are essentially related,” explains Schubart; “the God-manhood of Christ is a symbol of the closest relationship between God and man, between heaven and earth.” God and man, Schubart says, are “so alike and so attuned to one another that Christ was able to become an organic personal unity.” Some Orthodox theologians have gone so far as to suggest that not only Jesus, but every human being is God incarnate.

Giving credit where credit is due: here, Schubart was right to emphasize the significance of “God-manhood”. It is indeed a central doctrine in Orthodox Christianity, and it was central to Russian thinkers like Solovyov and Berdyaev, both of whom attempted to persuade modern Christians that "made in the image and likeness of God" is more than metaphor. A clever exegete can make the case that the words of Scripture, “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,” apply as much to the divine-human nature as they do to the institution of marriage.

However, it seems excessive to claim, as Schubart did, that “The Russians have always held fast to this tremendous concept…God-manhood is an integral part of the Russian soul and is the purest and loftiest symbol of its inner harmony; it is the deepest expression of the Russians’ universal feeling.” There is little evidence that the theological/metaphysical construct of God-manhood, or the attendant idea of theosis, was ever embraced or understood by ordinary Russians who, like ordinary people everywhere, have been occupied most of the time with less lofty matters. More to the point, Russia’s long-standing “peculiar institution” of serfdom, outlawed only in 1861, suggests something short of genuine respect for the God-manhood of peasants. 

Continuing "The Spiritual History of the Russians," Schubart explains when, how, and by whom the pure, harmonious soul of Russia was sullied. That unfortunate development will be the subject of my next post.      

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¹ Schubart assures us that his sources—including the famous Slavophile, Ivan Kireevsky—are “quite objective” in their assessments: as, for example, when he cites Kireevsky’s claim “that the old Russia of the Kiev period evolved her laws and statutes without any compulsion from above, without any bloody state organization, without any class, rank, or party conflicts, in a natural way out of the philosophy of the people…there were no lords or knights [but] instead, innumerable settlements or communities were scattered over the country with their own laws and their own leaders.” Citing Kireevsky on Old Russia is like citing Shelby Foote on the ante-bellum South: a liberal dose of skepticism is advised.

² Schubart quotes Martin Luther: “A Prince can be a Christian, but as a Christian he must not rule. As an individual, he may be a Christian; but his office or Principality has nothing to do with Christianity.” This attitude was the genesis of “separation of church and state”; it was later elaborated by Reinhold Niebuhr as the insoluble dichotomy of “moral man” and “immoral society”. Niebuhr, whose pessimism was rooted in his belief in Original Sin, is something of a touchstone for American conservatives, who do not seem to realize that the “privatization of religion” and the “secularization of the public square”—both of which phenomena they decry—follow logically from Niebuhr’s, and Luther’s, assertions.