We come around once again to this night of Advent as the gloom of winter encircles us who live in the northern hemisphere (it is now the turn of the Aussies to get their boats out and go sailing). For us people of the north, the liturgical year seems to match the moods of the seasons.

Back in December 2018, I wrote Cry to the Night in which I discussed the themes brought up by the more sensitive souls of recent history:

In these gloomy Advent days, I mediate on the words of Novalis in his Hymnen an die Nacht, which I read in English translation. I also find inspiration  in my favourite Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. Both he and Freidrich von Hardenberg were inspired by the great German cobbler and mystic Jakob Böhme. The theme of the night (the Ungrund) pervades Christian mysticism, especially the Carmelite saints like John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila. Holiness comes through suffering and long periods of desolation and spiritual hardship. Winter is a time when the days are at their shortest, but the true Sol Invictus, the incarnation of God in Christ, brings us light and inner deliverance within from whatever can befall us.

These themes remain with me, and shortly after writing Cry to the Night, I discovered Dr Michael Martin and his interest in Sophiology, the study of the Holy Wisdom. A few years ago, he wrote Post-Christianity: How Christianity Failed and Continues to Fail and You Are Here: Nikolai Berdyaev Calls the Eschaton. Michael too is a fan of Nikolai Berdyaev, whom I discovered during my student days at Fribourg. It was a time when I was tempted by Orthodoxy, but there was as much difference between Orthodoxy and Berdyaev as between the German Lutheran establishment and men like J.S. Bach and Jakob Böhme.

Either a new epoch in Christianity is in store for us and a Christian renaissance will take place, or Christianity is doomed to perish

Berdyaev wrote in The Fate of Man in the Modern World. He also wrote in the same work:

We are witnessing a judgement not on history alone, but upon Christian humanity…. The task of creating a more just and humane social order has fallen into the hands of anti-Christians, rather than Christians themselves. The divine has been torn apart from the human. This is the basis of all judgement in the moral sphere, now being passed upon Christianity.

When Christian humanism is gone, we finish up with the parable written by William Golding, The Lord of the Flies in 1954. It is a story of a group of apparently innocent pre-adolescent boys who were “plane-wrecked” on an uninhabited island. The dominent boys formed a gang, driven by superstition and obscurantism, and sank into barbarity. I don’t know if this work is still analysed and taught in schools, but this is how I knew of it. Films were made in 1963 and 1990, the latter being an American version. The plot is impressive and almost a theme of latter-day original sin. Calvin came up with his theory of double predestination and total depravity. This utter pessimism leads to one possible conclusion: the collective suicide or annihilation of humanity.

A few days ago, I saw one of those “fear-porn” videos on YouTube about the third secret of Fatima, which is as incoherent as they come. Pope Francis would be the Antichrist, and this is why all but the first page of the secret would have continued to be covered up by the Vatican. So we have something little different from the sweating and Bible-thumping of Ian Paisley! The point I bring up here is that evil would prevail, and God as a true psychopathic demiurge would proceed with the Great Chastisement. This, presumably, would take the form of nuclear Armageddon or an asteroid hitting the earth. If either of these did not annihilate the totality of mankind, few people would remain, presumably shut up in their homes with the two blessed candles (!). In the end, Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart would triumph… Over a charred earth made even more lifeless than Mercury or Mars? What triumph? Heaven, the Afterlife, whatever you want to call it? The end of the world is possible, but Christian eschatology has other layers of meaning than our individual deaths and human extinction.

I suppose that the quote of Samuel Johnson – Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully takes on a new meaning. Humanity languishes in its condemned cell and hears the work of the carpenters at work assembling the gallows in the public place outside the prison. It is going to be wonderful feast for the townsfolk! Need I insist?

The traditionalist RC fear-porn wears thin, and it would not convert me if I were an atheist or of another religion. The history of the Church shows the presence of the Parousia in the minds of Christians. Jesus, having suffered death, risen miraculously and ascended into heaven, will come again to judge the quick and the dead. What does this mean? Many of us will already be dead and will have been through our judgement and our fate for eternity. Would this universal judgement affect only those still living at the time, or all of us? We need to develop our knowledge and understanding of eschatology, to arrive at a more mature way of seeing things. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a courtroom or a bank, but a much more profound and spiritual concept.

For Berdyaev, eschatology is more about regeneration, of the world and each one of us. We experience salvation whilst still in this life through θέωσις, deification , participation in the divine consciousness. The eschaton or full revelation announces itself through the prospect of our death, something we will not avoid whether we are good or evil, strong or weak. We have to experience transformation, to let go of our present comforts, passing through the darkness of night, chaos and Ungrund to enter a new world.

Our world is going through a crisis of ideologies, differently from the 1920’s and 30’s, but a certain analogy can be seen. As Berdyaev would have seen with the rise of Hitler and Stalin, we no longer trust our political institutions and we are confused by the lies and contradictions. Many talk of decivilisation and collapse. Mobs of young men in our cities burn cars, loot shops, attack the police with improvised weapons, and there seems to be no solution to it all. To quote Berdyaev:

The world is living in a period of agony which greatly resembles that of the end of antiquity. But the present situation is more hopeless, since at the close of antiquity Christianity entered the world as a new young force, while now Christianity, in its human age, is old and burdened with a long history in which Christians have often sinned and betrayed their ideal. And we shall see that the judgment upon history is also a judgment upon Christianity in history.

Something of great concern to us is artificial intelligence and technology. Mankind is becoming mechanised. Transsexualism by medical and surgical means is frightening, as is planting electronics into people’s brains. Berdyaev like Charlie Chaplin back in the 1940’s saw it coming.

No political system seems to have a solution. Their role is occupied by anti-Christians. As Michael Martin said: Christianity, furthermore, failed to save culture, because it failed to be Christian. The aspiration to unite churches through the ecumenical movement has failed. Policies like those of Pope Francis drive the traditionalists further away, aware that an existence outside the Papal communion removes from them all claim to coherence. There is still a multiplicity of Christian confessions and traditionalist dissidences.

This tendency began when Christians turned from eschatology to the institution. The first monasteries assimilated their life to the martyrdom suffered under the Roman Empire, but symbolically. Gradually, the institution formed after the Donation of Constantine (forged document) came into being, and the essence of Christianity was lost. I may seem to be writing like a Protestant, but they too have gone the same way.

Only Christianity can save the world from Christianity. That would seem to be an outrageous thing to say. Berdyaev exhorted us away from static traditionalism to the prophetic mission of Christianity. Does this mean a capitulation to “progressivism”, liberalism and Woke? No, the way lies elsewhere. It is difficult to judge whether we can find hope or just pessimism in Berdyaev. C.S. Lewis called his autobiography Surprised by Joy. Where is the wonder that beauty is meant to provoke in us, shocking us to seek something beyond every thing we know? This was the theme in my recent posting Beauty will save the world.

For as long as some of us have these aspirations in spite of our unworthiness, I think we can believe in a future Christianity built on beauty, truth, goodness, love and everything that inspires us who are critical of The Machine. I believe it is this movement of conversion, invisible to most, that would bring about the triumph of the Holy Wisdom and the Mother of God we invoke in our prayers. Let this light bring hope in this gloom as we prepare for the true Christian feast of the Nativity of Jesus.

I leave you with this poignant piece by Holst.