Saturday, November 22, 2008, 4:23 AM
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853 - 1900), was a Russian philosopher and theologian (and also poet, pamphleteer, literary critic).
The
story of the man is interesting in itself. He started from materialism,
went on to some form of transcendental philosophy, to some
quasi-Gnosticism, to Orthodoxy, to dream of Sobornost.
He ended up convinced (just over 100 years ago) of the inevitability of
Christian Eschatology in the most obvious sense, with Anti-Christ and
all, and the Second Coming, the Parusia,
NOT as a mystical metaphor, BUT an event in time (even more imminent
today, 100 + years after he wrote his book on eschatology and the
Antichrist).
He is one the few Christian authors, in recent times, to openly confront the eschatological issue of the Second Coming.
At
the end of his life, having written mostly philosophical and
theological treatises and essays, he realized that the form of
“conversations”, with the addition of a "short story" would be the best
way to make sure that his thoughts did not just reach the intellectual
elite, but would be understood by as many people as possible.
In this respect his last book, that he completed in the year he died, 1900, and was published posthumous, in 1904, Three discussions. War, progress, and the end of history, including a short story of the Anti-Christ is of central importance. It is also his spiritual testament.
This is the essential “profile” of the book. Each "conversation" has a "protagonist", a "reference figure":
1. The protagonist of the First "conversation" is the General, opposed by the Prince, and the theme is war. The General represent traditional Christianity, which sees the State and the Church harmoniously united, and war as a "necessary evil". The Prince, a thinly veiled image of the famous writer Tolstoy, is the advocate of absolute pacifism, of absolute non resistance to evil, which he identifies with the essence of the "christian message".
2. The theme of the second conversation is progress, and the protagonist is the Politician, who, in a horizon where there is only room for lip service and formal homage to God, is firmly and optimistically convinced that "progress" (material, scientific, commercial etc.) will bring about the solution to all the problems that have haunted mankind in the past. War, famine, diseases, in his optimistic view, will disappear, and universal peace will reign, as by magic. But, at the end, the confident certainty of the Politician is disturbed by Mr. Z, with his quotation from the words of a character in Turgenev's Smoke, that "progress is a symptom".
3. The third "conversation" starts by taking up Turgenev's quotation, and, at the Politician's question, Mr. Z (a character representing the author Solovyov himself), explains ominously:
1. The protagonist of the First "conversation" is the General, opposed by the Prince, and the theme is war. The General represent traditional Christianity, which sees the State and the Church harmoniously united, and war as a "necessary evil". The Prince, a thinly veiled image of the famous writer Tolstoy, is the advocate of absolute pacifism, of absolute non resistance to evil, which he identifies with the essence of the "christian message".
2. The theme of the second conversation is progress, and the protagonist is the Politician, who, in a horizon where there is only room for lip service and formal homage to God, is firmly and optimistically convinced that "progress" (material, scientific, commercial etc.) will bring about the solution to all the problems that have haunted mankind in the past. War, famine, diseases, in his optimistic view, will disappear, and universal peace will reign, as by magic. But, at the end, the confident certainty of the Politician is disturbed by Mr. Z, with his quotation from the words of a character in Turgenev's Smoke, that "progress is a symptom".
3. The third "conversation" starts by taking up Turgenev's quotation, and, at the Politician's question, Mr. Z (a character representing the author Solovyov himself), explains ominously:
"I believe that progress, a visible and accelerated progress, is always a symptom of the end."
This is also the theme of the third conversation: the end of universal history, or, otherwise said, the end of the world.
4. The "Short story of the Antichrist", that Mr. Z announces in the third conversation, pretending that he has heard it from an old monk, is in fact a realistic account of the probable last phase of history, when the Antichrist will reign, and, when everything seems lost for mankind, only the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will defeat him completely.
Solovyov thought that the form of "short story" would make more acceptable to the public the recount of a story that, he firmly believed, was essentially the accurate description of the forthcoming last act of history.
I believe that, with few inessential differences, the last act of history will not be much different form what Solovyov described.
4. The "Short story of the Antichrist", that Mr. Z announces in the third conversation, pretending that he has heard it from an old monk, is in fact a realistic account of the probable last phase of history, when the Antichrist will reign, and, when everything seems lost for mankind, only the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will defeat him completely.
Solovyov thought that the form of "short story" would make more acceptable to the public the recount of a story that, he firmly believed, was essentially the accurate description of the forthcoming last act of history.
I believe that, with few inessential differences, the last act of history will not be much different form what Solovyov described.
Links
- Three discussions. War, progress, and the end of history, including a short story of the Anti-Christ. - with this link you can actually Read Online the scanned book, in its English translation of 1915, @ archive.org
- "A Short Story of the Anti-Christ" - the text by Solovyov, with introduction by Fr Addison Hart and comment from Hans Urs von Balthasar, @ goodcatholicbooks.org.
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