On the Holy Spirit in Nature and Culture

G.P. Fedotov

Georgy Petrovich Fedotov (October 1 (13) 1886, Saratov, Russian Empire, – September 1, 1951, New York, US) was a Russian religious philosopher, historian, essayist, author of many books on Orthodox culture, regarded by some as a founder of Russian “theology of culture.”  Fedotov left Soviet Russia under duress for France in 1925, then in 1939 emigrated to the United States where he taught at St. Vladimir Orthodox Seminary, New York, and continued publishing books up until his death in 1951.  His most famous work is The Russian Religious Mind.

It is extremely difficult to distinguish the actions in the world of the persons of the Blessed Trinity, to name the invisible and mysterious Divine Power separately by the names of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  In the Church, in the history of the redemption of the human race, the Holy Names are partly clarified for us.  This clarification has been the work of Christian theology.  But in theology, as well as in the economy of the Church, the Holy Spirit remains the most mysterious hypostasis. Theologians agree that the nature and work of the Holy Spirit are hidden for us, scarcely to be named.  What can we say about nature and culture, which stand outside the theological circle of vision altogether?  Here only guesses are possible, only anticipations.  But in the mode of speculative and unpretentious thought, permit a non-theologian to have a word.

First of all, it can and must be established that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world and outside the Church; that if His work is most clearly and powerfully manifested in the sacramental life of the Church and in the spiritual life of the Saints, there is and can be no place foreign to His breath.  If I go up into heaven, Thou art there; if I go down into hades, Thou art present there.  If I take up my wings toward the dawn, and make mine abode in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand guide me, and Thy right hand shall hold me (Psalm 138: 7-10).  It is not by chance that this hymn to the Divine omnipresence begins with the name of the Spirit.  And we all know and repeat: The wind bloweth where it listeth (St John 3:8), Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17) -- denying, with the Church, the possibility of a normative, legal, canonical limitation of His power, although in the Church’s economy of His gifts, there is a norm, law, and canon.  To some extent, we think of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world as more inclusive than the work of the Son of God in his role as Redeemer, though not in his character as Divine Logos.  Salvation outside the Church, impossible according to the laws of ecclesiology, is admitted by us in the freedom of pneumatology.  The Holy Spirit speaks by the mouth of the pagan prophet Balaam and even of his donkey.

Outside the Church, the work of the Holy Spirit is revealed in the natural world and in the world of culture.  Where and in what way is it pre-eminent vis-à-vis the Father’s power as Creator and the Son’s Intelligence?  We proceed in this perilous quest on the basis of the only reliable dogmatic symbols: the Church reveals the Holy Spirit to us as “life-giving” and “speaking through the Prophets.”  All the pneumatophanies revealed in the Holy Scriptures agree with this.  It is in this direction -- toward the Spirit as the source of life and inspiration -- that we will direct our search.

In the created world, according to these symbols, the Holy Spirit is manifested above all in living nature, which has at least a limited freedom.  This freedom is given in the elementary spontaneity of movement.  In the inorganic world, law reigns; in the celestial realm, as in the realm of crystals, the intelligibility of the Logos, the mathematically ideal basis of the world, is reflected.  But in the organic world, there is a place for the unexpected, the discontinuous, what has been called the “creative impulse.”  In the divine world, what is behind this creative impulse of Bergson’s?  “By the Holy Spirit every soul is made living,” sings one of the hymns of the Eastern Church.  In the light of the general symbolism of the Holy Spirit (the image of the Dove), it would not be too bold to see the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit not only in the human, but also in the animal, plant, and, perhaps, in the cosmic, world soul.

But even “dead” nature is alive for religious and artistic vision.  In it, order and structure have not finally restrained freedom.  There are natural elements that are free by their very nature -- and in their freedom they are formidable for man.  It is remarkable that the appearances of the Holy Spirit are often connected with the tumultuous action of these very elements: wind and fire.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind… And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. (Acts 2:2-3).  The very name of the Spirit in different languages means first of all blowing, the wind of the air (πνεῦμα, spiritus).  Fire is so symbolic of the Holy Spirit that the very baptism of Christ is a baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire.  In this elemental garment of the Holy Spirit, the angels are also akin to it: Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire (Psalm 103:4; Hebrews 1:7).  In the fire and tempest, it is not only the might of an angry Deity that is revealed to man, but also the inspiring power of God that fills man with awe and delight.  The Israelites tremble around the lightning-girdled Sinai, but the prophets can hear the voice of God in the fire and storm. Elijah, who ascended on a chariot of fire, in the Russian people’s perception remained the thunder-bearer, the thunder-wielder.  Even water is more closely connected than earth with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Does not the Bible begin with these words: And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2)?  Water seems opposite to fire in its coldness and wetness, but in its elemental power the ocean is in harmony with the thunderstorm and the wind, as they are formless.  The fire of the Holy Spirit descends into the water of Baptism.

On the other hand, the Earth, cosmic and static, subjugated to man, seems the farthest from the theophanies of the Holy Spirit.  But it is the maternal bosom, native to man, called the Mother by almost all peoples.  Human life is possible only on Earth and only by its gifts.  The other elements are deadly to man.  Why does the Holy Spirit appear in them?  Here a limitless field of reflection opens up.  Our confusion increases when we realize that the voice of the elements is hostile to personhood, that the chaos that bursts forth in them threatens to dissolve, to drown the personal in the impersonal.  Christianity is the religion of the Person, in which the person is liberated from the dark power of the elements through asceticism, sacrifice, and a personal, discerning, and elective love.

What is the meaning of the Dove as the symbol of the Holy Spirit descending upon the Son of God?  Historians of religion point out that the Dove is the sacred bird of Astarte and Aphrodite, adding to this that in Hebrews the Spirit -- Ruach -- is a feminine name.  Our confusion increases.  But after all, sex is the principle of organic life, and in it the elemental beginning of life is most strongly manifested.  Thus the symbol of the Dove is linked with the symbols of wind and fire, thus heightening for us the formidable mystery of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

In the elemental world, and in the element of sex, which is the most formidable for us, lies a mortal danger to personhood.  But in them also lies the source of organic life, to which the person is eternally bound through his flesh and without which he cannot exist.  This antinomy points to the deep disintegration in the life of the world brought about by sin.  Through sin, death entered the world, into the very wellsprings of life. Where the tension of life is strongest, death is closest: in the storm, in fire, and in love.  The dissolution of the person in the elements is spiritual death.  The fact that this death is preceded by a stormy tension of force, rapture and a sense of liberation, indicates the original divine power of life, which retains traces of its divinity even in the disintegration and decay of the elements.  The elements, which are fatal to man, remain the most beautiful garment of the Godhead.

It is not in the Earth, which is harmless, even beneficial and submissive to man, but in the destructive and beautiful forces of fire and wind that the Spirit of God speaks to man: wind and fire, air and heat, calmed and tempered, are the sources of the life and fertility of the Earth itself.  However, in giving himself over to the elements, however Spirit-bearing they may be, there lies a great danger for man.  From the source of life and inspiration he can drink the cup of his own sin and death.

The Old Covenant shut out this danger from Israel by placing a ban on the world's formidable beauty.  The personal covenant made with the people of God gave them in the law a disciplining school of personhood.  But in paganism everywhere, humanity serves the elements, as well as partaking through them of the divine sources of life.  The bondage and enslavement of the person is the price to be paid for this perilous path of divine knowledge.

However, we can now recognize that paganism had its own theology (and not just a demonology), because the Fathers of the Church introduced its insights into the dogmas of Christianity.  Paganism, not Israel, builds culture and discerns its religious meaning.

Can we recognize the basic truth of the Hellenic myth about the sacred origin of culture?  I think we can, if we take seriously the words of Christ: Without me ye can do nothing. Nothing – meaning, of course, nothing of value.  This excludes the possibility of a demonic origin for beautiful things, and limits the idea of a merely human character of culture.  Yes, culture is predominantly the work of man, man placed between God and the cosmos -- but man inspired by God to create.

There are two perennial origins of culture: labor and inspiration. Culture in the Latin sense of the word is dual: cultura agri and cultura Dei.  As labor, culture goes into the Earth, and is akin to its humble, black depths.  As labor, culture is inconceivable without tools and without rational knowledge, and rises along this path to science and to its heavenly origins in the realm of the Logos.  Like a sigh, culture arises for the first time in art -- in chorea, i.e. song and dance, inseparable from prayer and cult.  The ancients were filled with faith in the divine character of artistic inspiration.  Poetry is sacred madness, mania; the poet is a prophet.  Vates means both.  Even Aristotle calls the poet ἔνθεος -- possessed by God.  In this the ancients were not mistaken.

Philosophizing about Greek culture, Nietzsche labeled its two opposing and related beginnings with the names of Apollo and Dionysus.  Without wishing to yield to the demons of either the Apollonian Socrates or the Dionysian Aeschylus, we Christians can give true names to the divine forces at work, according to the Apostle Paul, in pre-Christian culture.  These are the names of the Logos and the Spirit.  The one signifies order, orderliness, harmony; the other signifies inspiration, delight, creative impulse. Both beginnings are inescapably present in every work of culture.  Both the craft and the labors of the farmer are impossible without some creative joy.  Scientific knowledge is unthinkable without intuition, without creative contemplation.  And the creation of a poet or musician involves arduous labor, molding inspiration into the rigorous forms of art.  But the origin of the Spirit prevails in artistic creation, just as the origin of the Logos prevails in scientific knowledge.

The Muse is the name by which ancient poets invoked the inspiring grace of the unknown Holy Spirit (Ruach).  The poets (vates), like, perhaps, the sibyls of Apollo, received prophecies, like Balaam, from the Spirit “Who speaks by the prophets.”  Was it not from Beelzebub that Virgil prophesied the birth of the divine child?

But all the perils that were hidden in the natural elements rise up with particular strength in the Spirit-bearing, ecstatic spheres of culture.  Even the very connection with the natural world is deeper and more integral here than in the colder and harsher spheres of the Logos.  The riot of natural elements, particularly the riot of sex in man, inspires the artist.  He is the most defenseless of the children of the world before the pressure of these elements.  In relation to the elements he is all hearing, all impulse.  The shackles of duty and law are powerless over him.  That is why the poet’s songs often turn out to be songs of sin, and his personal lot is tragic.  To be torn by the elements is the fate of so many poets. But in the elemental forces of the soul it is not merely impersonal streams that are at work: demons rush through them and distort the holy sources of inspiration. Art is often demonic, but this does not deprive it of its divine origin. The devil is an actor who seeks to imitate God. Deprived of creativity, he puts on creative disguises. All the better he infiltrates the genuine, i.e. divine, creativity, in order to muddy the clear waters with turbid impurities. The Muse is the Holy Spirit alone, but the harpies steal and defile the divine food.

Plato, in despair at the waywardness of the poets whom he himself recognized as divine, dreamed of banishing them from his Republic. How many Christians in their hearts would like to imitate him! But culture without poets, like the Church without prophets and mystics, would be a sterile desert. With the dying out of creative contemplation, the verdant tree of science would wither away. Without the revelation of the national idea in beauty, the homeland would shrink into the state, social life into chains of legal rules and the slave yoke of labor. The family would wither without love. Life would cease without the Life-giver. Hearths would go out with the extinction of the Fire. The danger of chilling and deadening hangs over every impoverished culture. It is particularly acute at a time when Christian scholasticism is powerless to face a paganism which has already lost its gods.

It is only in Christianity that we are given both the inexhaustible springs of the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, the possibility of keeping them pure. It seems that for paganism slavery to the elements is inevitable. Its spirituality, with the necessity of the law of the fallen world, degenerates into orgiasticism. The efforts of the Orphics and Plato to return Dionysus and Eros to their pure divine life were doomed to failure.

Between the orgiastic nature of pagan spirituality and Christian spirituality there stands the Cross. On this Cross, human nature in its divine Original is crucified. The wounds of the Lord make it impossible for him who contemplates them to immerse himself in an elemental life — one that is unconscious and voluptuous. The Cross interrupts the flood of natural life. Its nails pierce both our body and soul, deadening their sinful movements. But the crucified Lord sends the disciples the Comforter. The fact that it is He who sends Him to them (the Comforter… whom I will send unto you from the Father, St John 15:26) as it were, brings Him down from the Cross, and sends the fire and the wind of the Spirit through the Cross. Having been crucified with Christ, the apostles can now become safely inebriated with the ecstasy of the Spirit. To outsiders they appear drunk with joy and mad with glossolalia. The outward signs of the Holy Spirit, as in the pagan world, are elemental and ecstatic. But the elements of this world are forever dead to those who “bear in their bodies the marks of the Lord.” This path to the gifts of the Holy Spirit is pointed out by Peter on the day of Pentecost: Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38). Baptism is a symbol of death to the elemental world and resurrection to Christ. At the same time, baptism is the entrance into the Church, a divine organism, entirely formed from the forces and energies of the Holy Spirit at work in it. The Criterium Crucis and Criterium Ecclesiae are given to us for recognizing the Holy Spirit, for guarding the purity of His gifts. I will not speak here of the action of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental life of the Church and in living holiness. I must raise the problem of the work of the Holy Spirit in a culture that is already Christian.

Is culture abolished in the New Testament? Here is a question to which the answers in our day are already faltering. In the fullness of the Kingdom of God there is no place for culture. What remains is pure life in the Holy Spirit: there is no culture where labor, the curse of the fall into sin, disappears from its two elements. But if labor and deed remain on the paths of holiness, culture is bound to remain on the paths of life. If the Kingdom of God had already come -- in everyone and everything -- then nature itself, as a kingdom of laws, would be abolished. As long as nature remains, culture must be built. Otherwise the angelic purity of the saints would directly meet the bestiality of sinners. The Church, in her task of saving mankind, thereby sanctifies culture as the form of mankind’s common life.

The structure of Christian culture is formally no different from pagan culture. For sociology, there is no distinction between baptized and unbaptized peoples. Our legislators write laws, and our poets write poems, even still addressing the “Muse” in whom they no longer believe. And in Christianity the same areas of culture (art, creative intuition) remain the preeminent bearers of divine inspiration, although no sphere of life and culture can be completely devoid of it. And just as in paganism, poets give themselves over to the elements, powerless to distinguish the voice of the Holy Spirit from the voices of other spirits, and often seek in the most sensual storms of the flesh the source of inspiration. Everything is as it was. Sometimes it seems even worse than it was. Can we be surprised at this phenomenon in culture, if in the spiritual life itself inspiration and spirituality sometimes prove to be seductive? Throughout the history of the Church there are sects that, in the name of the Holy Spirit, free themselves from the law and are carried away by the flow of the lower elements: the “Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit” in the West, the “spiritual Christians” (“Khlysts”) in Russia. Pagan orgiasticism constantly returns in Christianity. The old man is not completely overcome in any of us. Only for a short time are we able to crucify ourselves with Christ, and our life in the Church is intermittent, sporadic. Criterium Crucis as well as Criterium Ecclesiae often dim for us. But both the Cross and the gracious life of the Church are at work in the world, continually transforming it.

The temptation of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit lies in freedom: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. For spirit-bearing holiness there is no law. All the energy of the Apostle Paul’s struggle with the law is understood to the full in a Church filled with thunderous manifestations of the Spirit: The Spirit of God dwelleth in you. He speaks in tongues, he speaks in prophecies -- tumultuously, sometimes inarticulately. The Apostle already wants to channel the gifts of the Holy Spirit pedagogically, to put them to use. Teaching is more valuable than glossolalia. Going further along this path, scholastic theology develops the doctrine of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: “the Spirit of the fear of God, the spirit of power, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of wisdom, and the spirit of the Lord.” Here there is a clear desire to moderate, to rationalize the phenomena of the Holy Spirit: no prophecies, no tongues, no mystical union with God (unless they are carefully hidden in the “spirit of power” and “spirit of the Lord”). But in the ancient Church the discoveries of the Holy Spirit are tumultuous and fiery. And not for the Apostolic age alone, but for all generations of the Church, striving for the coming unfolding of the Kingdom of God, the ancient prophecy is alive: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28).

The end of powerful personal charisms is to some extent counterbalanced by the development of a complex economy of grace channeled in the Mysteries and hidden works of the Church. Here the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to all, even to the weak; here in contrition and supplication a school of repentance and prayer is developed to purify the heart for the reception of these gifts. But already the heroes of the spiritual life go into the wilderness to “acquire the Holy Spirit” in a harrowing struggle. Their fearful asceticism is, in a religious sense, the crucifixion of body and soul. And it is only through the Cross that the wonderful and fearful gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to them. Ascesis, i.e. self-crucifixion, is the indispensable way to the pure heights of Christian mysticism. False mysticism, false spirituality is almost always associated with a lack of ascetic purification. But asceticism is precisely crucifixion, not the fulfillment of the law. The Spirit is not subject to the law; the Spirit is not a subject of the law, but of the Cross.

This Criterium Crucis is also applicable to peripheral spheres of culture. The revelations of an artist, a thinker, a poet cannot be judged by law, by moral and social norms. Everything creatively new, everything prophetic violates the norm: other, higher norms will grow out of new revelations. But not all non-normativity is spiritual, not all spirituality is holy. The criterion of the Cross demands that the elements be crucified in it. The Hosanna to life and its eternal Source, the final “Yes” to the world, is carried by every high art and every wise revelation of life. But it is so easy to bless evil: to pantheistically dissolve God in the world and in the passions of the human person. Here one must ask oneself: has the artist or contemplator been pierced by the evil of the world, its sinfulness, its suffering? Has he looked into the eyes of death and corruption? Has he crucified himself with Christ in the person of the smallest of His brethren or of the lowliest of earthly creatures? If so, if his Hosanna has passed through horror and compassion, his vision of the world will be Christian, his muse from the Holy Spirit. From this point of view, it is not Dante but Rainer Maria Rilke who turns out to be the greatest of the Christian poets of the Middle and modern ages.

The Criterium Ecclesiae applies to the judgment of culture in a much more limited sense, and this for two reasons. First, the circle of Christian inspiration remains wider -- if not the mystical Church, then the ecclesiastical institutions. In our secularizing age, there is much significant and creative work going on outside the walls of the Church. It is often done by people who are hostile to the Church and Christianity. Since our whole culture and life developed on the basis of the Church’s “medieval” foundations and, in the person of those who remain faithful to the Church, continues to be nourished from its sources, its rebellious sons are also partakers of its grace to varying degrees. Modern man is often unaware of where the breath of the Spirit, which refreshes and revitalizes him in his wilderness, comes from. If we allow the work of the Holy Spirit in paganism, we must not put limits to it in the half-pagan, half-ecclesial world in which we live. Secondly, the Criterium Ecclesiae, in its straightforward application to cultural phenomena, can easily degenerate into a criterium canonis. Church consciousness, in its struggle against false spirituality and the elemental life of the world, likes to shield itself with the wall of law. Even mystics and saints often fall victim to the legalistic spirit of clericalism. The creativity of new forms, connected inevitably with the violation of laws, is contrary to the habitual, statutory rigor of everyday life. Therefore, practically, Criterium Ecclesiae in the life of culture threatens to turn out to be a kind of zealotry. However, it will retain all its significance if we return the Church to its true, mystical meaning: not a society of clerics, but the living body of Christ. In the experience of the Sacraments, prayer, and spiritual life, the gift of discernment of spirits is given, and strength is also given for direct cultural creativity. However, centuries of secularization have made this mystical-cultural osmosis infinitely more difficult. Not only do people of culture not understand the saints, but also the saints do not understand culture.

But let us move in thought, through the centuries, to the world of undecayed religious wholeness, when it is possible to speak seriously (though always with limitations) about the unity of Christian culture: to the Middle Ages, to ancient Byzantium, ancient Russia. There, culture grows directly from the root of the grace-filled life of the Church. Philosophy expresses in concepts the experience of mystics, poets compose prayers; artists in icons and statues capture the visions of the high world revealed to them. Here the free, creative breath of the Holy Spirit emanates from the center of church life -- from the altar and the eternal sacrifice of Calvary. Crux and Ecclesia are one. However, even in those times there remained a world not alien to Christ, but distant from Him, which was waiting for its hallowing. And it was subject to creative transformation. Its suffering and its beauty attracted the Christian poet. As in pagan antiquity, the Christian poet praised the beauty of women and the deeds of heroes -- but his vision deepened. Behind the beauty and power of the world he saw something else: the face of the crucified Christ. And because he saw Him, he brought his new experience into the elements of the world: he created Parsival. Insofar as his ecclesial being remained external, unrealized, he created things of pagan inspiration: the “Song of Roland.” The world of culture is always a world of tense opposites. The Crucifixion only gradually reaches the consciousness of the world. The Christian purification of inspiration rarely remains complete. But in all stages of inspiration, it is yet the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and fire.

On the basis of what has been said, we can establish the following stages of God-inspired human creativity. At the peak is the direct “reception of the Holy Spirit.” Here human creativity is directed to the Holy Spirit Himself, and the form that receives Him is the human spirit. This process takes place outside of culture, unless one considers culture as the ascetic purification of the person. That is the creativity of the saints. Further down is the creative inspiration that fills the life of the Church: her liturgy, her art, her speculation. Here creativity is directed toward the divine-human world of revelation and holiness. It is not objectified in the human spirit, but in things: in forms, colors and sounds, in ideas and words. This creativity can coexist with personal sinfulness, but it presupposes participation in the life of the Church and its cathartic process. This is holy creativity, the creativity of the saint, though not always the creativity of the saints. As we descend lower, we enter into Christian creativity, which is addressed to the world and the human soul. It is always complex -- both pure and sinful -- not purely holy, but yet sanctified and sanctifying. In each moment the possibility of a fall, change, and distortion is inherent in it. Is it necessary to add that this possibility is not excluded even at the highest stages of creativity? Still lower, and we enter into secularized creativity, detached from the Church, which differs from Christian creativity by the absence of a recognized criterion. It can be sinful or pure, destructive or life-giving -- often at the same time, in the same creation. It must be judged by the Cross. And finally, the work of pagan man, who does not know Christ, but who does not betray Him, also partakes of divine inspiration. It is difficult to say whether it stands on the last step, or whether it is higher, more innocent, more holy than the sinful inspirations of apostate Christendom. It is true that paganism has never fallen so low in its inspiration as our ungodly and uninspired creativity. Yet in the very abyss of the Fall, in the abomination of Sodom, the renegades are stung by the Cross, which it is no longer possible for sinners to feel. From the abyss (la bas) a way opens up through Golgotha (en route). This is the path from Sodom to Golgotha that the modern godless soul follows, unable to wash away the seal of a forgotten Baptism.

Nowhere, in any of the stages, is man’s creativity left untouched by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. “If I descend into hell, thou art there.” This does not mean, however, that there are no qualitative differences between the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nor that St Macarius of Egypt is in the same sense (but only to a greater extent) a partaker of the Holy Spirit as Anacreon. These differences are profound, often felt as chasms. One of them runs between the holiness achieved in the personal spiritual life and in the hallowing of culture: between the saint and the artist. The other, less obvious, is between Christian and non-Christian creativity, meaning the personal involvement of the creator in the gracious life of the Church. The possibility of extra-personal, unconscious participation in the Church’s experience (Criterium Crucis) makes this second qualitative distinction difficult to grasp in practice. But it retains all its religious significance in the destiny of the creative person himself.

The profound qualitative differences of the gifts of the Holy Spirit make antagonisms possible in the world of the values they create: for example, the ascetic rejection of culture, or the struggle between separate religious and cultural spheres. This struggle can be justified in concrete life -- in the journey towards perfection. But Christian thought must strive to overcome the contradictions. Not to deny, but to gather the goodness of God scattered in the world. To build the temple of the Church on a truly universal foundation, capable of accommodating all the spiritual creativity of man.

By the Cross and the Church’s experience, human inspiration must be evaluated, differentiated, and parsed. But we must not forget at the same time the profound irrationality and non-normativity of pneumatophanies. It is dreadful, following a deceptive call, to give oneself up to the spirit of the elements. But it is even more dreadful to extinguish the Spirit. Much must be left to the last, non-human, Judgment. Only then will the incomprehensible face of the Holy Spirit be revealed to us, who is also revealed in the New Testament in the impersonal symbols of Wind, Fire, and Dove.

Source: Collected Works: in 12 volumes / G.P. Fedotov ; [edited, annotated, introductory article: S.S. Bychkov]. -- Moscow : Martis : SAM and SAM, 1996-. / Vol. 2: Articles of the 20-30s from the magazines Put, Orthodox Mysl and Vestnik RHSD. - 1998. - 378 pp. / On the Holy Spirit in nature and in culture, pp 232-244.