Andrey Kuraev

Christianity on the Edge of History. About our defeat.

PREFACE

Different people in the beginning of the millennium have different expectations. The most sober perception of the transition was expressed by political scientist Alexander Neklessa: "The twentieth century leaves the stage like a great actor, accompanied not by a storm of applause, but by a long and painful pause hanging over the hall." [1]

But the word "sobriety" is by no means synonymous with the word "massiveness". Most were just eager to enter the new century, hoping that it would be "absolutely fantastic." The "New Era" will begin. All previous epochs of "ignorance and barbarism" will fade before its brilliance.

Back in 1999, it seemed to many that the calendar would close our century and, most importantly, all the problems that we had accumulated by the end of the century with a simple change in numbers. It is this irrational hope that still makes the celebration of the next New Year so emotionally saturated on the other side of the "millennium". People crave renewal. But they have lost the skill that Nikolai Gumilev spoke of: "Only snakes shed their skin, We change souls, not bodies." People have forgotten how to change their internal climate, they have forgotten how to repent. And therefore the more hopes are pinned on the change of bodies (not only in the sense of the fashionable idea of reincarnation, but also in a broader sense: they hope for a change in their "socio-cultural body", they hope that they will be warmed by changes in the world around them).

People who do not know how to repent and recreate their inner world always hope for some external soul that will shower them and wash them away from all iniquities, sins, hangovers and problems. Therefore, people are inclined to greet even catastrophic news with strange joy – about the beginning of a war or a revolution (recall the joyful enthusiasm that seized B. Pasternak at the news of the outbreak of the war in 1941 and described by him in Doctor Zhivago).

So the calendar "revolution" of 2000 was perceived as a joyful catastrophe: "Everything will be different and everything will be fine!" We are in a hurry to new adventures, friends! Hey, speed up, machinist!" It is the calendar here that is credited with the right to absolve sins and close the dirty pages of our past ("if we offended someone in vain"). It is not before Eternity that the man of the "Cheburashka era"[2] repents, nor does he expect forgiveness from the Eternal. The calendar became his confessor: time drowns his sins and illnesses. Salvation from the past is in the future, that is, it is still in time, and not in the Supra-temporal.

The "New Year" declares us subjects of the future, abruptly moves us to the future, throws us across the "border" of epochs, into the future, to which we have nevertheless broken through, and thereby frees us from tributary to the past with its mistakes. The apocalyptic promise of Christ: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5) is put into the mouth of the Calendar by the secular consciousness.

Once upon a time, people "canceled history", got rid of the burden of their mistakes with the help of rituals that transferred them to primitive times, to those times when the gods created the world and the world was not yet spoiled by human sins. The calendar and New Year holidays did not move people forward, to another future, but on the contrary, returned them to the starting point, which was even before the past – "in the time of it", in the time of myths. [3] From the present, people fled to the ancient, or rather, the primordial sacred.

Today, the mass consciousness perceives the transition to the new millennium as a way to escape from the present, but not into the past, but into the future. But this is also a form of a completely religious perception of history. It manifests itself in the hope of a certain "sacrament" of the calendar, a sacrament that will magically change us, change us without our own participation.

The first task of this book, then, is to explain why Christians do not share the optimistic enthusiasm of believers in His Majesty Progress. This unbelief of ours is almost universally known today. In the church milieu, they like to talk about the "end of the world" and the "times of the Antichrist." These conversations of ours can be heard outside the churches as well. But Christian "pessimism" is surprising. The surprise is inevitable, because the pessimism of Christians contrasts sharply with the optimistic expectations of the mass media. All the more necessary is it to explain yourself.

The second task of this book is to intervene in the gossip within the Church just mentioned and to try to reduce the degree of its intensity. The enthusiasm that seized non-church people on the threshold of entering the "Age of Aquarius" partly captivates believers as well. For them, however, this enthusiasm turns out to be gloomy. Reckless faith in any rumors, any "prophecies" is inherent in many church people today. And with the same ease and thoughtlessness with which the secular mass consciousness accepts any innovations, with the same ease and thoughtlessness, many church people (and church publications) are ready to see in any innovation the "antichrist's trick" and call for a struggle against it. And this is also drunkenness.