Quote of the Week: Ivan Kireevsky
Theological studies are neither possible nor necessary for everyone; the study of philosophy is not accessible to everyone. Constant and special exercise in that inner attention that cleanses and gathers the mind towards its higher unity is also not possible for everyone. It is possible and necessary, however, for everyone to bind the direction of their life with their fundamental conviction of faith, to harmonize with it their main occupation and every particular matter, in order that every action might be an expression of the one striving, that every thought might seek a single foundation, every step lead to a single goal. Without this, human life will not have any meaning, the mind will be a counting machine, the heart a collection of soulless strings through which whistles an inadvertent wind; no action will have a moral character, and there will be no human beings, properly speaking. For human beings are their faith.
– Ivan Kireevsky, “Fragments” in On Spiritual Unity : A Slavophile Reader. Trans. Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1998), 286.
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Agree with the first part, but he loses me with “human life will not have any meaning” without the singularity of foundation and goal.
What is sounds like he is saying is that in a certain sense we are what we believe. Ivan Kireyevsky was a man who saw that true holiness was best exhibited in the saints who lived every aspect of their lives through the lens of their faith. He saw this first hand by being so close to the Elders of Optina monastery in Russia when it was in it’s heyday.
Human life has no meaning outside an arbitrary and pragmatic one without God and a life lived in faith. I think he could see where Russia was headed in the future when the people and the culture threw out Christ or tried to divorce God from all but one “religious” aspect of life. If we call ourselves religious then our religious outlook shouldf form a unified worldview. We can’t leave God in a slot on Sunday and ignore Him the rest of the week. At least this is how this former Roman Catholic Traditionalist turned Orthodox sees it.