As the intermediary between heaven and earth, Man was destined to be the universal Messiah who should sake the world from chaos by uniting it to God and incarnating the eternal Wisdom in created form. 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 realising it progressively by the continuous co-operation of grace and freedom, in regenerating and reforming Nature outside the Godhead until its universal and perfect integration is achieved (ή άποκατάστασις τώυ πάντων). 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 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 indeterminate change in time, or the infinite disjunction of moments; and thirdly, as a result of this double division, by the transformation of all causality into mechanism.
Vladimir Solovyev, Russia and the Universal Church. trans. Herbert Rees (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1948), 179.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In