In its view of history, humanity has still not invented anything beyond the alternative of progressivism or catastrophism. In exactly the same way, in its view of the human being, we stand before a choice between philanthropy and misanthropy...
In its view of history, humanity has still not invented anything beyond the alternative of progressivism or catastrophism. In exactly the same way, in its view of the human being, we stand before a choice between philanthropy and misanthropy. It is not hard to be convinced that the view of history naturally correlates with the view of the human being: a misanthrope will hardly believe in progress leading to universal happiness and prosperity, while one who believes that the human being is originally good will almost certainly also believe that in the life of humanity there are no insoluble problems and that universal happiness is attainable, at least in principle.
The biblical view of history, however, is antinomic: on the one hand, the entire history of the Christian era is nothing other than the history of the advancing and ever more fully revealing Kingdom, the projection of which into the untransformed world is the history of Christian righteousness, or, as it is usually called, Christian holiness; on the other hand, the whole history of the "Christian" world is the history of that evil in which, according to the word of the Gospel, the world lies, and which manifests itself in "Christian" history. The biblical view of the human being is just as antinomic: on the one hand, the path of righteousness was open to the human being in every age, and God gave His people the Torah as a guide on this path; on the other hand, as God says through the author of the Prologue of Genesis, "every intention of the human heart is evil from his youth", and nothing can be done about this before the full transformation of human nature. Thus it turns out that the coming of the Kingdom, neither in the life of an individual person nor in the history of humanity, resembles in the least that progress of which philanthropists of all times and peoples dreamed, being sure that gradual improvements both of technology and of morals would finally bring humanity into a golden age.
On the contrary, the coming of the Kingdom presupposes the polarization of the mutually opposing forces of the Kingdom and the forces of that evil in which the world lies. This is so both in the history of humanity and in the life of an individual person. And the more such a person is rooted in the life of the Kingdom, the more noticeably that evil connected with his fallen nature manifests itself in his life, both inner and outer. As in humanity in the course of world history, it does not, of course, appear anew from nowhere and does not even increase in size; it simply becomes more noticeable, just as its opposition becomes more noticeable.
But this opposition is pushed all the more toward the "external", to the periphery of life, the more the seeker of the Kingdom is rooted in its life. Then less and less periphery remains; it gradually disappears, while there is more and more of the inner, that in which the life of the Kingdom manifests itself. Only this process cannot be completed in an untransformed world wounded by evil. It is completed in the Kingdom, and the one who does not see the Kingdom does not see its completion either. A completion that coincides with the triumph of the Kingdom and the full transformation of creation.
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4:16 Therefore - Because of this grace, we faint not.The outward man - The body. The inward man - The soul.