Posted on 01/07/2003 12:03:54 PM PST by xzins
Imagine! The persecuted Jew who once believed himself totally innocent now saying that every man deserved his suffering, whatever it was.
Very late, with the perimeter lights in the camp glazing the windowpanes, Kornfeld confessed to the patient: "On the whole, you know, I have become convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this life on earth which is undeserved. Superficially, it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of yours for which you have now received this blow."
Possibly worth an EO ping, FL?
You may or may not know that Russia as a country accepted (Orthodox) Christianity in 988 via a prince who traveled to Constantinople and attended our Byzantine liturgy there in the Hagia Sophia.
Up until just before the Bolsheviks took over, Russia was a profoundly Christian country. Empire perhaps.
Just before the revolution when it became the USSR, there was a movement in Russia against Christianity. It became known as the Russian Intelligentsia.
more here
EXCERPT - "The development of this situation helped explain why public life in nineteenth-century Russia was dominated, first by members of the gentry, and then by the intelligentsia that sprang from it. (Pares) The aristocratic and clerical origins of the intelligentsia left a decisive imprint upon its ideas --- and it was these ideas, rather than any precise occupational function, that served to distinguish the intelligentsia from other social groups. (Kemp) It comprised those who, having received a modern education, felt alienated from the existing political and social order. They might earn their living as professional men, zemstvo employees, or even civil servants and landowners; indeed, the figure of the "repentant nobleman" stands at the cradle of Russian intellectual history. (Pares) The ideologies propounded by the Russian intelligentsia tended to be socially radical, democratic, and cosmopolitan, although they might have a concealed elitist, authoritarian, or nationalist streak. (Presniakov) These theories, derived from the advanced thought of contemporary Europe, often bore little relevance to the immediate problems confronting Russian society, but this seldom detracted from their appeal. Intellectuals were acknowledged to be their mentors by nearly all educated Russians, that is, by everyone not closely identified with the autocratic regime. (Pares) Their leadership was in normal times implicit, but in periods of crisis (1877-81, 1902-7), it became overt and decisive. (Pares) Russian socialism was therefore a product of the intelligentsia.."
Many Russian theolgians and philosophers, of the Orthodox church, spoke out at the time, protesting the turning away of Russia from Christianity.
The results of this turning away from Christianity became evident shortly afterward, when Russia became the USSR.
Solzhenitzyn, and many other writers of that time period and later, have espoused the idea that Russia deserved the suffering under communism which came to it, because they as a country had turned away from God.
"(Solzhenitzyn) thought that millions of ordinary people in Russia, through deep and on-going suffering, had achieved a "spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive... After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits."Is Solzhenitzyn a prophet for our Times?
Solzhenitzyn believed and stated, and I cannot find the quote just now, that a country had a sense of itself, that a nation could be Godly or not. That each nation needed to develop itself as devoted to God as a population.
Because of this belief in countries as Godlike or not so, he could then propose that a country could be allowed to suffer as a country for turning away from God.
There are a few links about this which I will post shortly which you may find interesting, as it seems to be quite appropriate for us, now, here in the US, to consider. In my opinion, that is.
"Thus Christianity does not teach individualism or nationalism as a source of personality, but it elevates the innate individuality of the person and the national awareness of a culture as divine facets to reflect the glory of God's kingdom."
The self-willed descent into the Abyss
"What is remarkable about Landmarks, is not only the prescience of its authors, and the accuracy of their forecasts, but the fact that literally thousands of scholars poring over the pre-revolutionary literature of Russia managed to overlook its accuracy, and to ignore its remarkable foresight."
"As Berdyayev put it in his contribution, Russia had now been seized by evil spirits like those in Gogols nightmarish tales, or by the possessed of Dostoyevskis prophetic imagination. It was not simply a change of regime, but a spiritual disaster, a self-willed descent into the abyss."
It's an awesome short piece based on an address at Harvard University when Solzhenitzyn was a 'celebrity.' Solz. wore out his welcome in that one visit to Harvard. It's getting ragged now, but its words still jump off the pages at me.
The West can survive only by reversing the process: "It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding....Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? The world is approaching a major turn in history, equal to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge...to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages but, even more important, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern Era."
I recently discovered the writings of Alexander Schmemann, mentioned in one link above. And I do enjoy Dostoevsky a great deal.
Your posts are among my favorites here on FR.
Let us, together, "swim against the tide".
"As Alexander Solzhenitsyn has said: "Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities. The very least of them wears its own special colors and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention."
+Memory Eternal, Alexander.
Something like this was suggested to me once, when I was a boy and resisting an unjust punishment. I do not believe that it can be true. More than that; I believe that this claim is positively evil, diabolical in the original and literal sense.
It is no more true to argue that men are sinless or that through suffering they're able to win their redemption than to turn these same arguements inside out in suggesting that all evils are deserved and therefore no man-dealt torment, howsoever malevolent, an injustice. The path to truth never passes through a lie.
If all evil is deserved, then every evildoer is an agent of justice. More than this, the very concept of innocence becomes impossible. Though it's likely that life in the gulags was sufficiently hellish to plant this notion in Kornfeld, only in hell is this possible, and only a diabolical mind would seek to propagate such a belief among the living.
In fact, the Church's teaching on suffering relies on its being frequently unjust: it is this suffering that, if accepted as a personal Calvary, causes us crucified in Christ. As Paul says (Coloss 1:24 ): Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.
Human suffering is an invitation to participate in the suffering of the innocent Victim, not a Christian karma by which accounts are settled and books balanced.
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