East and West
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 20, 2023
The history of mankind always has a theological signature, and it can therefore be instructive to look at the current conflict between East and West from the perspective of the schism which, many centuries ago, divided the Romam Church from the Orthodox one. As is known, the basis of the schism was the question of the Filioque: the Roman creed asserted that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son (ex Patre Filioque), while for the Orthodox Church the Holy Spirit proceeded only from the Father.
If we translate the theological language into concrete historical terms, this means — since the Son incarnates the divine economy of salvation on the level of earthly history — that for the Greek Orthodox East the spiritual life of believers was not directly involved on the level of historical economy. The denial of the Filioque separates the celestial world from the earthly one, theology from historical economy. And this — without the prejudice of other factors — may explain why the West — especially in its protestant version — gives the development of historical economy an attention that is at all unknown to the Greek Orthodox world, which seems to ignore the industrial revolution and remain anchored to feudal models. Translated into theological terms, even the Marxist primacy of economy over spiritual life perfectly corresponds to the nexus of the Holy Spirit with the Son which defines the Creed of the West.
All the more fraught with consequences is the reversal produced by the Russian Revolution, when the Western model of the primacy of historical economy is forcibly grafted onto a world spiritually completely unprepared to receive it. Once again, from this perspective, the failure of the Soviet model and the manifest re-proposition of theological motifs in post-Soviet Russia let itself be explained as the return of the removed independence of the Holy Spirit, which recovers that central position that the Communist regime had not been able to erase.
It seems all the more absurd that — while in recent decades the Roman and Orthodox Churches had been getting back closer together — the West, not incidentally under the guidance of a protestant country, now re-proposes — more or less unconsciously in the name of the Filioque — a war without quarter with Orthodox Russia.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 20, 2023
The history of mankind always has a theological signature, and it can therefore be instructive to look at the current conflict between East and West from the perspective of the schism which, many centuries ago, divided the Romam Church from the Orthodox one. As is known, the basis of the schism was the question of the Filioque: the Roman creed asserted that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son (ex Patre Filioque), while for the Orthodox Church the Holy Spirit proceeded only from the Father.
If we translate the theological language into concrete historical terms, this means — since the Son incarnates the divine economy of salvation on the level of earthly history — that for the Greek Orthodox East the spiritual life of believers was not directly involved on the level of historical economy. The denial of the Filioque separates the celestial world from the earthly one, theology from historical economy. And this — without the prejudice of other factors — may explain why the West — especially in its protestant version — gives the development of historical economy an attention that is at all unknown to the Greek Orthodox world, which seems to ignore the industrial revolution and remain anchored to feudal models. Translated into theological terms, even the Marxist primacy of economy over spiritual life perfectly corresponds to the nexus of the Holy Spirit with the Son which defines the Creed of the West.
All the more fraught with consequences is the reversal produced by the Russian Revolution, when the Western model of the primacy of historical economy is forcibly grafted onto a world spiritually completely unprepared to receive it. Once again, from this perspective, the failure of the Soviet model and the manifest re-proposition of theological motifs in post-Soviet Russia let itself be explained as the return of the removed independence of the Holy Spirit, which recovers that central position that the Communist regime had not been able to erase.
It seems all the more absurd that — while in recent decades the Roman and Orthodox Churches had been getting back closer together — the West, not incidentally under the guidance of a protestant country, now re-proposes — more or less unconsciously in the name of the Filioque — a war without quarter with Orthodox Russia.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov, East and West, 1912–1913. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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