Nature Theology Within Russian Orthodox Christianity, by Christie Gibbons, page 4

Father Sergius Bulgakov was another of the most beloved leaders and theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church in his time. He experienced religion through nature and art, in light of Dostoevsky’s mystical writings. Bulgakov, in his typical boldness and enthusiasm, attests to Lossky’s idea of the deep coherence of the Bible, saying:

The Bible is inexhaustible for us because of its divine content and its composition, its many aspects; by reason, also, of our limited and changing mentality. The Bible is a heavenly constellation, shining above us eternally, while we move on the sea of human existence. We gaze at that constellation, and it remains fixed, but it also continually changes its place in relation to us. 29 

Thus, for Russian Orthodox Christians, it is feasible for the Bible’s ecological content to be authoritative for all who attest to the right belief of the Russian Orthodox Church. This view of the Bible as being charged with meaning and inexhaustible has undoubtedly helped Orthodox Christians to be more aware of the ecological realm, which has resulted in an increase in active stewards of creation, particularly within the Russian Orthodox Church.

            Here we see the blending of pre-Christian Russian thought with modern Russian Orthodox Christianity, for the pre-Christian Russian rarely spoke of the heavens (that place believed to be apart from the earth) with particular warmth, awe, or deep longing. After all, s/he had concentrated all of his or her religious devotion on the earth and to natural powers. 30  While Russian Orthodox Christians believe that the world was created by God, and is thus of another nature than God, existing outside of God, 31  they still cling to the belief that every creature on earth is stamped with the seal of divinity. 32  This seal of divinity reflects the very being of God and therefore calls that which bears the seal to share in His divinity. 33  Thus, we see how the pre-Christian Russian emphasis upon the sacredness of earth and God’s immanence throughout the earth, is melded into the conventional Orthodox Church’s emphasis upon God’s transcendence. The current Russian Orthodox Christian belief is that God is radically transcendent by His nature, in the very immanence of His manifestation. 34  Lossky explains that for Orthodox believers,

[I]t is unthinkable that God, in order to create, should be content to produce a replica of His own thought, finally of Himself. It would be to withdraw from the created world its originality and value, depreciate creation and hence God as creator. And the whole Bible, and particularly the Book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, emphasize the absolute and splendid newness of creation, before which angels utter cries of joy... 35 

            The Russian Orthodox Church recognizes the detrimental outcome of severing the union of religion and the natural environment, which is evident within much of Western Protestantism, claiming that the sacraments of Western Protestant worshippers as entirely void of any relation to Nature. 36  Such separation between nature and religion, whether intentional or not, is in stark contrast to the Russian Orthodox Christian idea that both are intrinsically connected. Lossky likens the natural environment to a piece of music, saying:

The saint….perceives, through the detached contemplation of nature, the world as ‘a musical arrangement’: in each thing he hears a word of the Word… 37 

By Word Lossky speaks in accordance with Psalm 33: 5-9, which states:

…[T]he whole earth overflows with the Lord’s goodness. It was the Lord’s word that made the heavens, the breath of his lips that peopled them; he it is who stores up the waters of the sea as in a cistern, treasures up all its waves. Let the whole earth hold the Lord in dread, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him; he spoke, and they were made, he gave his command, and their frame was fashioned. 38 

            We have seen how the modern Russian Orthodox Christian view of the earth as sacred makes it feasible for the blending in of the pre-Christian Russian notion of the earth as a sacred Mother. George Fedotov helps us to better understand this integration of dual faiths in describing Mother Earth as remaining at the core of Russian religion. He asserts that the most secret and deep religious feelings of Russian people converge in Mother Earth, saying:

Beneath the beautiful veil of grass and flowers, the people venerate with awe the black moist depths, the source of all fertilizing powers, the nourishing breast of nature, their own last resting place…“Mother Earth, the Humid,”… alludes to the womb rather than to the face of the Earth. It means that not beauty but fertility is the supreme virtue of the earth, although the Russian is by no means insensible to the loveliness of its surface. Earth is the Russian “Eternal Womanhood,” not the celestial image of it: mother, not virgin; fertile, not pure; and black, for the best Russian soil is black. 39 

            The Russian conception of beauty is unique in claiming that Mother Earth’s black soil is a thing of veneration and loveliness. There is a depth to this concept of beauty, a depth that leads to rare, delectable beauty which can only be ascribed to spiritual things. This concept of beauty has been an Orthodox ideal since its origin. Valerie Kivelson and Robert Greene, editors of Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars, help to clarify this, saying:

Orthodoxy employs beauty--the beauty of God’s Creation…the beauty of the choir, the liturgy, the incense and icons during services--as effectively as any more textually based religion might deploy the sermon or the Word, to inculcate religious lessons. Beauty, after all, is presented in the medieval Russian Primary Chronicle as the single most compelling reason for St. Vladimir’s choice of Orthodox Christianity over other world religions. 40 

               Upon closer inspection of the Russian conception of beauty, which they find in something as dark, and dirty, as the soil, we notice the further integration of what has been deemed the Cult of Mother Earth and the modern Russian Orthodox Christian view of creation. Such integrated thought is put forth by Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, who said: “Hideousness and beauty are contained within each other.” This is clear in the following description of the Russian Orthodox Church’s conception of darkness. Here, Lossky describes darkness, which God called night, saying:

[It] represents a wholly good reality, fruitful, like the earth which germinates the seed. God has not produced evil: there is no place in the first being for negative darkness. The positive darkness of the first day expresses the uterine mystery of fertility, the principle of the mystery of life proper in the earth and to the womb, to all that generates in the positive sense of the word, to every substance of life. 41 

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29 Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, (NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 21.

30 George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1946), 11.

31 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 51.

32 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 49.

33 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 53.

34 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 23.

35 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 57.

36 Ven. A.P. Shepherd, D.D. in the foreword of Nikolai Gogol’s The Divine Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, (London: Bowering Press, 1960), vii-viii.

37 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 58.

38 Taken from a translation from the Latin Vulgate in the light of the Hebrew and Greek originals, Holy Bible (London: University Press, 1954), 490.

39 Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, 12-13.

40 Valerie A. Kivelson & Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars, (PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 10.

41 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, 65.

42 Vera Shevzov, Letting the People Into Church, eds. Kivelson & Greene, Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars, 63.

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