The Church and Spiritual Life

"The Church, by its nature, rises above the transient, above specific struggles, but by proclaiming the eternal truths of the spirit, it heals from the power of demons and creates the spiritual foundations for a new world." - Christian Churches and The Future of Europe, page 8

"The life of the world, in all its multifaceted diversity, is increasingly distancing itself from Christianity. The issue is not that the world is becoming more sinful—it has been sinful enough in the past—but that the modern world fundamentally rejects Christianity and loses the very sense of sin." - Problems of Worldview in Our Time and Universal Christianity, page 2

The West lives its Christianity outwardly, through action and societal organization, whereas the East lives it inwardly, through mystical experience and inner transformation. - The Truth of Orthodoxy, 3-5

Orthodoxy is not a tool of the state or society; it is a spiritual reality, a living organism, and the mystical Body of Christ. [...] Orthodoxy sees itself as both outside and inside society, guiding without imposing, influencing without domination. It is a mystical body rather than an institution of power. - The Truth of Orthodoxy, 9, 10

"However, the contradiction between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, if we understand these terms to mean cultural, political, and other divergences from Orthodox or Catholic norms, undoubtedly exists. Yet between true religious Orthodoxy and genuine Catholicism, there is no internal contradiction, only old misunderstandings that hinder mutual understanding and create the impression of a genuinely significant difference."
- Georgy Florovsky on the Misunderstandings Between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, 1 (19)

"Opponents of Christianity typically remain under the sway of this harmful historicism; they are oppressed by historical empiricism. [...] Human sins, which so deeply distort Christianity in history, obscure for them the divine truth of Christianity. For them, Christianity in its value and meaning disappears because they are burdened by the actions of Christians as they appear in crude historical empiricism." -On the Debate about Christianity and Freedom, (7)

"A merely political revolution against the present regime would achieve little. The impulse for such a revolution would leave untouched profundities that lie far deeper than are guessed at by a mere politician out to found a political programme. On this plane merely to attack the Russians strengthens them. It strengthens them in their siege-like complex. They expect to be attacked. They, who, as they think, have come to liberate the world, expect to be hated by the world. It will be a waste of time to fight Bolshevism unless it is overthrown by a trained theologian." -THE RUSSIAN IDEA by Christopher Hollis, 4 (26)

"The believer risks more than the non-believer. The believer risks losing eternal life, while the non-believer risks only losing a few decades, which is not as tragic or terrifying." -Letters N.A. Berdyaev to Shestov, 6 (33)

"My tragedy is not the tragedy of unbelief, it is the tragedy of faith."-Letters N.A. Berdyaev to Shestov, 10

 "I want to organically unite the truth of radicalism with the truth of conservatism. With millennia-old roots, we cannot expect new revelations. I do not believe in the revolution, but I am awaiting a religious revolution." -Gippius and Merezhkovsky, 8

"I increasingly feel that spiritual death is spreading among the people. The Church lacks new energy, and people are falling into despair. Thoughts about future religious events increasingly visit me, and it seems to me that the old forms of faith have outlived their time. I believe that a new era will come." -Gippius and Merezhkovsky, 13

"Historicism is always under the sway of relativism and does not penetrate to the essence of things; it is incapable of revealing meaning. Historicism is the suppression of meaning by empiricism. [... German Idealism] did not reach a truly ontological investigation of value and meaning, but it nonetheless freed us from the nightmarish dominance of historicism. [...] Human sins, which so deeply distort Christianity in history, obscure for them the divine truth of Christianity. For them, Christianity in its value and meaning disappears because they are burdened by the actions of Christians as they appear in crude historical empiricism. - On the Debate about Christianity and Freedom, 1 (7)