The Divine Realm
Evgueny Lampert
Those of you who came to adulthood in the “Beforetime” — that is, before the advent of the internet — may recall the experience of carrying a grubby bit of paper in your wallet with a list of all the out-of-print titles you were constantly searching for, so that whenever you chanced across a secondhand bookshop in your travels, you could remember to look for them. The text I am posting here was one of these for me: and indeed, not until the advent of the internet was I able to find a copy (an elegy for the era of prolonged and unfulfilled seeking for such texts will come at a later date). Philip Sherrard, the Orthodox luminary of the Perennialist school, mentioned it in one of his works (Church, Papacy, and Schism, if I remember correctly, though I do not have the book to hand) as the key to his understanding of the sacraments; that was what prompted my initial interest. It turned out that Dr Lampert (1914-2004) was a Russian émigré and a pupil and associate of Fr Sergius Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev at the Institut Saint-Serge in Paris (I believe that Fr Sergius guided Dr Lampert’s Oxford doctoral thesis, which was the basis of the present text); thus, although his scholarly interest later turned to Russian radicalism, in his philosophical and theological phase, his influence on Sherrard marks a rare intersection of the world of Russian religious philosophy and the Perennialist stream of Schuon, Guénon, and others (and I note, for the cautious Orthodox reader, that Sherrard’s Orthodoxy is impeccable in spite of this association).
Dr Lampert’s obituary in the Guardian gives a brief account of his life and career. To my knowledge, this work is at present otherwise unavailable online.
Lampert, Evgueny. The Divine Realm: Towards a Theology of the Sacraments. London: Faber and Faber, 1944.
Foreword
The present essay is, as its sub-title indicates, an introduction to the theology of the sacraments, a discussion of the fundamental religious and philosophical premises of sacramental theology. This has generally drawn less attention to itself than the doctrines of the various sacraments, although it is rather here that the differences or unity of Christian outlook are manifest.
From the very beginning and throughout the ages man has been tempted by the divine mystery and greatness of the world; here lies the source of the tragedy of human life. Mankind has perpetually abandoned God for idols, the cosmos for a profaned and secular world and the truth about man for his idolization. It is the great temptation of “immanentism,” which assumes such varied and often unexpected forms: naturalism and magic, humanism and rationalism, nationalism and economism, state-worship and technology; in short every kind of idolatry.
And yet this “immanentism” cannot simply be dismissed as false. It is, as it were, a dialectically justified phase in the spiritual destiny of mankind. Christianity does not deny the reality of the world, but only affirms its supreme relatedness to God, without which, in fact, it ceases to be the cosmos and becomes the instrument of demons, a seductive idol. But the negation of the world unfortunately often makes its way into the Christian consciousness of man, and forms within it a tendency to “monophysitism” and every kind of transcendentalism. It is precisely this tendency, which dialectically justifies its antithesis: immanentism.
To unite the truth of the one and the other, to find not merely their “synthesis,”
but their living unity, to perceive in vital awareness God in the world and the world in God — such is the aim of Christian life and thought. But is this aim attainable at all? Does it not tear the mind and heart of man asunder? The answer to these questions is the subject of the present work: namely, the sacrament. Our faith and knowledge witness to the sacramental miracle, to the perpetual creative sacramental action of God in the world and in man.
Such a general approach to sacramental theology explains the seemingly far-fetched problems discussed in the first part of this essay.
From the formal point of view my approach might be described as religious-philosophical, or rather Christian-philosophical. But it rests not on an abstract problem or rational scheme nor on a mere religious and dogmatic proposition, but on a kind of vision or the much misused “intuition.” Plato has shown that the fundamental motives of philosophical thought are not “thought out,” but are realized intuitively and arise in the depth of human consciousness. The thought of the philosopher by day is fertilized by the nocturnal visions of the seer. And if this be true of the philosopher, how much more so of the theologian, whose knowledge is concerned with the living mysteries of divine and human life. Do not philosophy and theology altogether belong rather to the sphere of mythology than to that of syllogisms and intellectual distinctions; and does not at the basis of all genuine human thought lie — horribile dictu! — a myth? The mythological character of philosophy is again shown in Plato, who, with an indifference shocking to the philosophers and with seemingly intentional confusion, passes from the heights of logical inquiries to the myth, and utters some of even his most fundamental ideas in the form of myths, leaving it to the commentators to solve the question of how to understand this kind of argumentation — whether Plato is speaking seriously or merely joking. This explains the somewhat fragmentary character of his thought; for each of his dialogues, with all its inner unity and artistic perfection, presents to a systematic philosophy no more than a fragment, sketch or essay, without at the same time making the reader even conscious of the need to “make ends meet…” Something similar will be found in the present essay.
I should like to mention another feature proper to the argument of this work, a feature which is ultimately due to the same mythological manner of thought: namely, its discordant antinomic character, which may appear to disregard the demands of pure discursive reasoning. For, though mythological thought operates with conceptual judgements, and hence must needs pertain to the sphere of discursive reasoning, yet, at the same time it transcends this sphere, brings an element of discontinuity, contradiction and antinomy. Are not all the fundamental realities of the Christian revelation indeed permeated by such antinomies? And do they not often embrace propositions which are logically contradictory? This, no doubt, is a witness to the existence of mystery inherent in the depths of real life.
Such a manner of thought demands an adequate form resilient enough for its expression. The arts of philosophy and theology are among the least accessible to formulation; this applies even to Plato, who has given in his dialogues inimitable examples of “poetical philosophy,” where the truth is not proved or demonstrated so much as shown. But such art does not belong to Plato’s philosophical muse alone: it is proper to a certain style of thinking. Such a style is also sought for, both instinctively and consciously, by Russian religious thought, a disciple of which the present writer feels himself to be; it is prompted not by pretence, but by an inner imperative necessity.
In view of the general plan of this essay the purely historic element in the course of inquiry has been reduced to a minimum. I have consciously refrained from quoting and discussing exhaustive historical material: not from lack of awareness of or respect for other points of view, but in order not to complicate the objective course of the argument, already so complex. Yet it is scarcely necessary for me to point out how much I am indebted to contemporary theological and philosophical literature, in addition, of course, to the original Christian theological tradition.
This work was originally written as a D.Phil. thesis and appears here in a somewhat modified form. I should like to take the opportunity of expressing my sincere gratitude to the late Professor O. C. Quick for his most helpful advice and criticisms. My thanks are also due to St. Catherine’s Society, Oxford, to the Anglo-Orthodox Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, and to the British Council, whose material help made it possible to write this book. The Hon. Maurice Baring and Mrs. Frances Cornford have given me their kind permission to quote their translations of Pushkin’s and Tyutchev’s poems.
E.L.
Oxford, 1943