Quote of the Week

Christian history, as its content is disclosed in the Book of Revelation, represents the tragedy of a struggle of the Church with the Beast and with false prophets, in which prior to the dawning of the eschatological and the Church will attain victory (so far as it can be attained in the world), so that Christ’s millennium with his saints will be brought about. But the end does not come in an arbitrary way as a deus ex machina, but in the fulfilment of times and measures. History is a domain of human creativity, while creativity cannot exist without prophecy, viz. a consciousness of creative aims, a striving towards the future, which is in a sense a synonym of creativity so that an extinction of the creative spirit implies the destruction of creativity.

How does this creative awareness arise in man [sic]? It comes by feeling the reality in all that exists, its instability, and its incessant urge in the very depth of life. Prophecy is an answer given by the grace of the Holy Spirit to the question of life, it is a word of the Present about the Future, which the Present actually pre-contains, and consequently it is a call, a daring, a creative thought. Every historical epoch has its own peculiar tasks and its particular prophecy. Our epoch also has them — it is impossible for it not to have them, and it dare not be without them. One can even say that we are overburdened by their weight….

Many of us feel the fulness of the Church in its static sense, we consider that the only duty a Christian has is to preserve this fulness. This pious conservatism turns with suspicion to everything that is new. But according to the Gospel one can only conserve by creative expansion — Church statics are dynamic when immersed in history. The face of eternity is seen in time in which the eternal life of the Church is accomplished. The Church Universal combines within itself both this fulness of eternity, and the integrity of time — the present which preserves the past and conceives the future, and the future itself which is the disclosing of the past and a fulfilment of the present. The Holy Spirit Himself grants to His Church this future and illuminates its paths.

[Sergei Bulgakov, “The Church Universal,” Journal of Fellowship No. 25 (September 1934)]