Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity:
The Reception of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus
in Russia
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity:
The Reception of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus
in Russia
By
Heather Bailey
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia,
by Heather Bailey
This book first published 2008 by
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2008 by Heather Bailey
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-84718-448-0, ISBN (13): 9781847184481
To my Russian history students.
For a man to know God, and to know himself and his proper
rank—a knowledge now possessed even by Christians who are
thought to be quite unlearned—is a knowledge superior to natural
science and astronomy and to all philosophy concerning such
matters. Moreover, for our intellect to know its own infirmity, and
to seek healing for it, is incomparably greater than to know and
search out the magnitude of the stars. . . . For the intellect that
recognizes its own infirmity has discovered where to enter to find
salvation and how to approach the light of knowledge and receive
the true wisdom that does not pass away with this present world.
—St. Gregory Palamas
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ...................................................................................... x
Preface ........................................................................................................ xi
Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xxi
Chapter One................................................................................................. 1
Life of Jesus in Historical Contexts
From God-Man to the Historical Jesus
Renan’s Life of Jesus
The European and Russian Intellectual Climate of the 1860s
Initial Russian Reactions to Life of Jesus
Conclusion
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31
Renanian Demoniacs, Man-Gods and Anti-Christ’s in Dostoevsky’s
Fiction
Dostoevsky and Biblical Quotations
Exorcising the Renanian Demon
Dostoevsky’s “Prince Christ” as Renanian Man-God
From Man-God to Anti-Christ
Conclusion
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 71
The Importance of Being Earnest: Renan’s Reception in Russian
Belles-Lettres
Renanian Ambiguities
Renan: A French Slavophile?
A Faulty Idealism
The Cheerful Skeptic
Conclusion
Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 92
Tolstoy: A Russian Renan?
viii
Table of Contents
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 113
What Is Truth? Renan and Russian Realism in the Visual Arts
Iconography: A Sacred Art
From Iconography to Religious Painting
Biblical Criticism and Russian Realism versus the Iconographic
Tradition
Conclusion
Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 146
Renan, Religiosity, and Revolutionaries
Introduction
Disillusionment with Materialism
Solovyov’s Conception of God-manhood as an Anti-Renanian
Synthesis
The God-Seekers: Religious Experience vis-à-vis Dogma
Between God-Seeking and God-Building: Renan as Intellectual
and Artistic Inspiration
God-Building: Revolutionaries and the Renanian Synthesis
Conclusion
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 190
Between Philo-Semitism and Anti-Semitism
Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 210
Orthodoxy Confronts Renanism
Renan in the Context of Russian Church Reform
The Popularity of Life of Jesus
Opposing Renan: 1863-1900
General Characteristics of the Orthodox Responses to Renan,
1900-1917
Orthodox Characteristics of the Orthodox Responses to Renan:
Ontology, Epistemology, Existential Experience,
and Ecclesiology
Conclusion: Assessing the Orthodox Responses
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 274
Return to the Historical Jesus
Renan’s Life of Jesus and Ideological Reexamination
Conclusion
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
ix
Bibliography............................................................................................ 291
Index........................................................................................................ 328
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1
Andrei Rublev, The Savior ...................................................................... 140
© State Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow
Fig. 2
Dmitry Polenov, Dreams (On the Mountain) .......................................... 141
© Radishchev State Art Museum, Saratov
Fig. 3
Ivan Kramskoi, Christ in the Wilderness…............................................. 142
© State Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow
Fig. 4
Mark Antokol’sky, Christ before the Judgment of the People ................ 143
© 2007 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Fig. 5
Nikolai Ge, The Last Supper ................................................................... 144
© 2007 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Fig. 6
Nikolai Ge, What Is Truth? ..................................................................... 145
© State Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow
PREFACE
In the countryside, books and brochures of agitational content circulate.
Our illiterate countryside recognizes the names Nietzsche and Marx, Renan
and Feuerbach.1
Introducing Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (Vie de Jésus, 1863) to its
American readers in 1955, John Haynes Holmes offered the following
appraisal of the overall impact of the work:
As we look back upon the nineteenth century as a definite period of
history, we see that this book was one of the world-shaking books of a
world-shaking epoch. It ranks with Darwin’s Origin of Species and Marx’s
Das Kapital as a work which changed forever the currents of the world’s
thought and life.2
Holmes’s claim may surprise the western reader for whom Darwin and
Marx still retain theoretical, scientific, and political importance, while
Renan most likely does not. Yet, if we trace the interpretive history of Life
of Jesus in Russian society, particularly in the pre-revolutionary period, it
turns out that Holmes’s assessment is no exaggeration. While this book
left an indelible impression on Russian culture—religious thought,
literature, and art—scholars have hardly made a dent in assessing its
impact. The authors of one of the few existing articles on the influence of
Life of Jesus on Russian culture therefore note that “the absence of any
attempt to interpret it either theoretically or as it pertains to the present is
1
Sergei Bulgakov, “Moia rodina,” Novyi mir, no. 10 (Oct. 1989): 237. The quote
expresses the observation of an “educated and cultured” priest of the
Chernozemnyi uezd in connection with the “especially striking growth of atheism
among the young people of the countryside that is seizing entire villages.”
Bulgakov writes that as a result of this priest’s account of the spread of atheism in
rural Russia, “a black wave of desperation and terror for Russia arose in my soul.”
“Moia rodina” was first published in Russkaia mysl’, no. 11 (1912): 185-92.
2
John Haynes Holmes, introduction to The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan (New
York: Modern Library, 1955), 15. Throughout this study, citations from Life of
Jesus are from this edition unless otherwise noted.
xii
Preface
startling.”3 Soviet scholars have grasped the significance of Renan to a
greater degree than their western counterparts, understanding that the
image of Jesus of the Russian intelligentsia in the second half of the
nineteenth century was shaped largely by Renan.4
Life of Jesus was influential in every stratum of Russian society, and
many of those who responded to Renan’s work—whether literary figures
or critics, philosophers, or priests—spoke of the work’s significance or
meaning for Russian society.5 One aspect of this study is to demonstrate
the different ways in which Renan’s controversial work led Russian
intellectuals to reappraise the historical significance and contemporary
relevance of Jesus Christ. A unifying thread throughout the chapters is that
while Russian society between 1863 and 1917 was captivated by religious
questions in general and the person of Jesus Christ in particular, the
Orthodox dogmatic understanding of Jesus Christ as God-Man (God and
Man)6 was challenged by competing visions of Jesus as a historical figure,
3
M. P. Odesskii and M. L. Spivak “Zhizn’ Iisusa. Istoricheskie metamorfozy,”
Literaturnoe obozrenie 3/4 (1993): 99. As Odesskii and Spivak note, “the works
and even the figure of Renan himself, the French historian, philologist, and
influential thinker, became one of the noteworthy pages in the tradition of RussianFrench relations,” 59. There is one other article that presents an overview of Life of
Jesus’s role in Russian intellectual and cultural life. See Erich Bryner, “Das Leben
Jesu Ernest Renans und seine Bedeutung für die russische Theologie- und
Geistesgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 47, no. 1 (1987): 6-38.
Besides these two articles, the secondary literature consists mainly of articles
dealing with the relationship between Renan and individual Russian writers. These
articles will be discussed later in this study.
4
See I. A. Kryvelev, Chto znaet istoriia ob Iisuse Khriste? (Moscow, 1969) and V.
V. Lytkin, “O nekotorykh problemakh kritiki khristianstva v nasledii K. E.
Tsiokovskogo,” Nauchno-ateisticheskie issledovaniia v muzeiakh: sbornik
nauchnykh trudov (Leningrad, 1987). Lytkin writes “in the opinion of I. A.
Kryvelev, to which we subscribe, ‘in the second half of the last century the
temperament of Christ, in the social opinion of the European intelligentsia, was
interpreted through the prism of the portrayal Ernest Renan gave in his book’,” 52.
5
While this study centers around Life of Jesus, it is not possible to isolate Renan’s
most famous work from the entire corpus. As Renan was an extremely prolific
writer, a thorough study of the influence of all his works on Russian thought would
require at least another volume. Thus, while a few of Renan’s other works are
occasionally mentioned and utilized, the chief focus here is on the image of Jesus
as it relates to philosophical, religious, artistic and socio-political problems in lateimperial Russian society.
6
Use of the term God-Man may require some justification. In his discussion of the
terms bogochelovechestvo, theandry, and theanthropy, Paul Valliere notes that the
terms theandry and theanthropy appear rarely in patristic sources, and generally
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
xiii
moral teacher, social reformer or revolutionary. Orthodox theologians and
priests were, however, fully engaged in defense of the church’s
christological dogma, and they refuted any attempt to reduce Jesus Christ
to anything less than the God-Man. As one Russian theologian put it,
everyone continued to regard Christ as a person who taught with authority,
but there was a struggle between such people and the Christian church.7
This struggle was so pervasive that one simply cannot discuss Russian
religious thought after 1863 without understanding the ways in which
biblical criticism, and specifically Renan’s Life of Jesus, altered the course
of religious discussion.
A second aspect of this study, closely related to the first, is to
demonstrate that the Russian responses to Life of Jesus, whether positive,
negative, or mixed, utilized the book as a vehicle for a more expansive
appraisal of the moral, socio-political, and religious condition of European
society in general and Russian society in particular.
The first chapter of the present study sets the stage for more in-depth
examination of Life of Jesus in Russia. It briefly summarizes the history of
christological controversy and the origins of the historical Jesus, presents
an overview of Life of Jesus, and introduces the reader to the European
and Russian intellectual contexts in which Renan’s book appeared.
After providing a historical backdrop, the study turns to the ways in
which major literary figures understood Renan. While not claiming to be a
comprehensive account of Dostoevsky’s anti-Renanian polemics, chapter
two explores the novelist’s assessment of Renan as depicted in three major
works: The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoevsky was intrigued by the fact that atheists like Renan could not
find a higher ideal of humanity than Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, for
Dostoevsky, Renanism represents a demon to be exorcised from the
Russian intelligentsia. Renan’s Jesus is also the prototype of the superman,
or man-god, a concept that captured Dostoevsky’s imagination as
manifested in The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, in which the
“indicate Origenist or Monophysite tendences.” He continues, “The attitude of the
fifth-century Orthodox bishop Quintianus is typical. . . . ‘If anyone says
theanthropy rather than saying God and human being, let him be anathematized’.”
See Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Theology in a New
Key (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 13. Certain Russian
Orthodox writers cited in this study, in defense of the doctrine of the Incarnation,
sometimes do employ the term God-Man, clearly without any Monophysite
intentions.
7
N. Bogoliubov, Obraz Iisusa Khrista v “Zhizni Iisusa” E. Renana i D. Shtraussa
(Chernikov, 1912), 1-2. From Vera i Zhizn’, no. 9-14 (1912).
xiv
Preface
novelist juxtaposes a variety of man-gods with the God-Man. For
Dostoevsky, the essence of Christianity was the Incarnation, the God-Man
Jesus Christ. Attempts to dilute Christianity amounted to the destruction of
Christianity. If Jesus Christ is not the God-Man, Christianity should be
discarded altogether.8
While nineteenth-century Russian writers engaged in heated polemics
on religious and socio-political questions, they almost universally exhibit a
common feature: moral earnestness. “The Importance of Being Earnest”
(chapter 3) focuses primarily on what can be called critiques of Renan’s
idealism. Nikolai Strakhov was followed by a number of literary critics
and religious philosophers in identifying Renan as an idealist. While some
critics wholeheartedly embraced this aspect of Renan, others, beginning
with Strakhov, pointed out that Renan’s idealism was seriously deficient,
mainly due to the savant’s lack of moral earnestness. From these negative
critiques one definition of Renanism emerged: the subordination of
religion, philosophy, politics, and morality to mere aesthetics.
Like Strakhov, Tolstoy was deeply bothered by Renan’s lack of moral
sincerity, but his critique, unlike that of the neo-Slavophile Strakhov, was
tied to a sharp indictment of what he called “Church Christianity.” In his
critique of Christian dogma, Tolstoy did not differentiate between
Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism; he tried to establish that true
Christianity had nothing to do with the dogma of the Christian churches,
but was in essence the moral teaching of Jesus. Tolstoy did believe that
Jesus’s teaching constituted divine revelation. Thus, his approach to
Christianity is best understood as a reaction not only against the Christian
churches but against the historical school of biblical criticism. Despite the
efforts that Tolstoy made to distinguish himself from the French savant, a
number of his contemporaries regarded him as Renan’s Russian
counterpart (chapter 4).
As with literature, the debate about Jesus influenced the development
of the visual arts in Russia. Until the nineteenth century, religious art in
Russia was synonymous with iconography. Only during the course of the
nineteenth century, and partly as a result of biblical criticism, did the two
8
Dostoevsky’s religious views have been the topic of extensive discussion and
debate. For an overview of the topic see George Pattison and Diane Oenning
Thompson, “Introduction: Reading Dostoevsky Religiously,” in Dostoevsky and
the Christian Tradition, ed. George Pattison and Diane Oenning Thompson (New
York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1-28. Andrew
MacAndrew discusses Dostoevsky’s rejection of the “new” Christianity of the
utopian socialists in his introduction to his translation of The Adolescent (New
York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971), v-xxxiii.
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
xv
diverge. In “What Is Truth? Renan and Russian Realism in the Visual
Arts”—the first part of the title is derived from Nikolai Ge’s painting of
Christ before Pilate and serves as an apt framework for a study of
realism—I explore the connection between Renan’s Life of Jesus and the
visual arts in Russia. The chapter demonstrates that artists of the realist
tendency intentionally applied the latest historical research to their artistic
renditions of Jesus, trying to create depictions of Jesus consistent with the
contemporary historical, moral, and social understandings. In keeping with
the theme that educated society was increasingly moving away from the
Orthodox dogmatic teaching about Christ, the chapter compares and
contrasts the concept of realism as understood in the Orthodox
iconographic tradition with nineteenth-century conceptions of historic and
natural realism. While denying the Incarnation and thus breaking
dramatically with the iconographic tradition, Russian realist depictions of
Jesus continued to view and portray Jesus as a figure who transcended
history and whose life and teaching retained direct relevance for
nineteenth-century Russia (chapter 5).
Art and literature in late-imperial Russia were increasingly oriented
towards social criticism and social change. Russian radicals and
revolutionaries found justification in modern conceptions of Jesus Christ
and the Gospels, particularly Renan’s, for their social programs, while
regarding the Orthodox Church as a bastion of conservatism and reaction.
“Renan, Religiosity, and Revolutionaries” (chapter 6) explores the
attitudes towards Renan of a number of key figures of the Silver Age, in
the context of the ideological debate between God-Seeking and GodBuilding, broadly defined. Because his Life of Jesus created a synthesis of
positivism and idealism, religion and science, Renan was generally
regarded as a religious thinker whose central contribution was separating
religious faith and experience from dogmatic constraints. As Gary Shapiro
expresses it, Renan’s appeal was that “he allowed his readers to believe
themselves scientific and even a bit skeptical, while still allowing them to
indulge in religious sentiments.”9 Renan was a divisive individual whose
writings provoked practically ceaseless argument. An important aspect of
the controversy was whether the French academic was a genuinely
religious or merely a religiose thinker.10 In any case, Renan found a
9
Gary Shapiro, “Nietzsche Contra Renan,” History and Theory. Studies in the
Philosophy of History 21, no. 2 (1982): 215.
10
Renan was understood by some critics as more religiose, i.e., superficial and
sentimental with respect to religion, than religious. Many of Renan’s defenders,
however, believed the French historian was genuinely religious, i.e., seriously
interested in spiritual issues. The distinction between these terms, “religious” and
xvi
Preface
considerable following among Russians who were eager to retain a sense
of spirituality apart from the dogmatism of Orthodoxy. While the general
mood of the early twentieth century was characterized by a shift from
materialism to idealism, the God-Seekers, heavily influenced by the
religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, believed religious faith should
have a direct impact on the building of a more just socio-political order. In
contrast, the God-Builders, namely Maxim Gorky, harnessed the forms,
imagery, and sentiments of religion (i.e., religiosity) to the revolutionary
cause—the construction of heaven on earth. Following Solovyov, the GodSeekers had a largely negative view of Renan, but at the same time they
argued that by emphasizing the divinity of Christ at the expense of his
humanity, the church had neglected socio-political affairs and had failed to
seek social justice. On the other hand, the God-Builder Gorky, along with
other literary and political radicals, viewed Jesus not as a historical figure
or moral teacher, but as a socio-political revolutionary and/or the symbol
of the future utopia and the triumph of man over nature. Gorky found
Renan’s Life of Jesus particularly appealing and useful precisely because
the work was not only accessible and enjoyable but was also free from
moral-ethical baggage.
Renan posited an alternative belief system bereft of dogmatic
constraints. His more moderate critics considered his rejection of dogma a
denial of authentic Christianity, while more staunch critics did not hesitate
to call him a blasphemer and enemy of Christianity. At the same time,
Renan was closely aligned with influential Jews—including his French
publisher—and Jewish causes. In Russia he was highly regarded or at least
well-respected by prominent Russian-Jewish intellectuals. His works
appeared in Russian-Jewish journals and thick journals under the direction
of Jewish editors. Renan’s perceived philo-Semitism led one reactionary
writer to charge that Renan was “obsequious” to the Jews. “Between
Philo-Semitism and Anti-Semitism” (chapter 7) explores Renan’s
reception in the Russian press in connection with the Jewish Question.
While in the post-Holocaust context Renan has been considered one of the
ideologues of modern anti-Semitism, in this chapter I suggest that Renan’s
role in modern anti-Semitism should be reconsidered. The perceptions, in
some circles, that Renan was a nineteenth-century Judas, on the one hand,
“religiose” is at the very heart of the controversy over Renan and his significance.
The term “religiosity” seemed the appropriate term for chapter six because, as will
be seen, Vladimir Solovyov saw religiosity as a barrier to a proper understanding
of religion as encompassing socio-political issues while radical revolutionaries
tended to see religious institutions, but not necessarily religious sentiment, as a
barrier to their social programs.
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
xvii
and a philo-Semite on the other, may really have done as much as or more
than other aspects of his career to fuel anti-Semitic feeling. At the very
least, considerations of Renan’s alleged anti- and philo-Semitism should
not be divorced from his reputation as the author of Life of Jesus.
After several chapters that focus largely on the reactions of the
intellectual elite to Renan’s book, I turn to the responses from specifically
Orthodox quarters. “Orthodoxy Confronts Renanism” introduces a second
definition of Renanism—substitution of mere religious sentiment for
authentic Christianity—and demonstrates that Renanism was a new
secular religion with influence not only among the educated public, but
among broad cross-sections of Russian society. From the numerous
responses of parish priests, church hierarchs and theologians to Renan’s
work, the depth of the penetration of Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russian
society becomes clearer. The Orthodox response to Renan was part of the
broader church reform movement of the pre-revolutionary period, and was
an attempt to combat the inroads of biblical criticism in Russian society as
a whole. There were differences of opinion about how best to achieve that
goal, which was one of several obstacles that limited the efficacy of the
church’s response. Written to uphold church dogma and the authority of
the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, the responses indicate significant
dynamism within the church on the eve of revolution. Published
refutations of Renan offer valuable insights into Russian Orthodox identity
in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as evident in the
evaluations of western society and western Christianity that appear in
those refutations. While utilizing western refutations of Renan, churchmen
sought a distinctively Orthodox defense of the dogma of the Incarnation in
response to attempts to reduce the God-Man to a moral teacher, social
reformer, or revolutionary. Even the most “liberal” or radical churchmen
rejected Renan’s substitute religion and held to dogma and tradition in the
face of empiricism and textual criticism. Such a response, however, did
not merely represent blind loyalty to tradition, but was also rooted in
Orthodox ontology and epistemology which differed fundamentally from
western Christianity (chapter 8).
As will be seen, due to the abolition of censorship, 1905-1906
represents one significant turning point in the history of Life of Jesus in
Russia. 1917 marks yet another. Incompatible worldviews battled over
Russia’s soul, and by all appearances, the church lost the battle in 1917.
By the 1920s, official atheism replaced Orthodoxy as the state religion,
and one pre-revolutionary alternative religion, Renanism, was stifled at the
same time. With the adoption of official atheism, the party line on Jesus
was that he was an entirely ahistorical figure, the product of legends.
xviii
Preface
Debate on this question did not altogether disappear, and in the postStalinist era, Renan’s Life of Jesus reappeared in discussions of the matter.
Presumably due in part to a dearth of materials available on Jesus Christ,
in some cases even Orthodox priests during the Soviet era recommended
Renan’s Life of Jesus to Russian readers, though only with the admonition
that belief in the God-Man requires faith. Life of Jesus regained cultural as
well as academic importance during the post-Stalin era, and resurfaced as
a bestseller in 1990 and 1991. While the Soviet Union was in the process
of crumbling altogether, more than one million copies of Life of Jesus
were printed in Russia and the NIS, testimony to the fact that the
fascination with Jesus Christ in general, and Renan’s account of his life in
particular, remained embedded in Russian culture even through seventy
years of official atheism.11 Renan’s longevity in Russian society and
culture is the topic of the concluding chapter, “Return to the Historical
Jesus” (chapter 9).
A Few Words on Methodology and the Scope
of This Study
While I demonstrate that Renan’s Life of Jesus made inroads in every
stratum of Russian society, this is primarily a study in intellectual and
cultural rather than social history. The sources for this study are derived
primarily from representatives of either a secular or religious educated
elite in late-imperial Russia, and thus the main emphasis is on that small
segment of society. Observations of Russian society as a whole are still
generally based on the perceptions of this intellectual elite.
This study may be read in the context of a broad and contentious
scholarly debate about secularization in general. Has religion been in a
state of steady decline or decreasing social significance in (western)
society over the last 40 to 250 years? If so, how best can we understand
and explain the phenomenon of secularization? To what extent is it an
inevitable result of modern ideas, especially Enlightenment rationalism,
the steady advance of science, industrialization and urbanization? Is
participation in religious communities driven by supply or demand?12 An
11
Knizhnoe obozrenie, 1990 and 1991.
For a synopsis of the scholarship on the secularization thesis, see the
introductory chapter to Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 18481914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). For a collection of essays on the
scholarly debates surrounding secularization, see Steve Bruce, ed., Religion and
Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
12
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
xix
entire body of literature is devoted to such issues, which are well beyond
the scope of this study.
What is important about secularization theory for purposes of this
study is, first, that Renan’s Life of Jesus appeared at a time when many
scholars believe adherence to traditional Christian belief and practice (e.g.,
church attendance, baptism, confirmation, communion) was on the
decline, though they disagree as to whether this was a uni-directional or
cyclical process, and they disagree regarding causation; second, scholars
do not agree that secularization is best understood as an overall decline in
religious belief and practice; rather it can be understood as a
compartmentalizing of religion, that is, an increasing relegation of
religious belief and practice to the private sphere; alternatively,
secularization can be understood in terms of increasing religious pluralism
and alternative forms of belief and practice. Viewed in this light, spiritism,
freethought and socialism, for example, can all be alternative forms of
religious experience.13 This study will demonstrate that Renan’s chief
significance, as understood by his admirers and critics alike, was that he
posited an alternative religion rather than mere unbelief; third, I will not
attempt to resolve the insoluble problem of causation, that is, whether (or
to what degree) Renan caused some people to believe a certain way, or
simply reflected what a growing segment of society already believed.
Renan’s contemporaries, however, were aware of the complex intersection
between ideas and society. As far as his critics were concerned, the crucial
issue was the substitution of superficial and sentimental religiosity in place
of authentic religious faith in Christ, regardless of whether Renan was a
direct cause or simply a symptom of this societal condition.
Finally, it may be necessary to clarify what I mean by Renan’s
influence and significance. First, this study will demonstrate how Russian
intellectuals interpreted Renan, and does not attempt to clarify whether
their interpretations of Renan were consistent with the French savant’s
intended meaning. Second, when speaking of Renan’s influence, I refer
only to his capacity to have an impact on European/Russian thought,
which influence is perceived not only when people agree with him but
also—perhaps even to a greater degree—when people polemicize against
him. Thus, references to his influence are by no means intended to suggest
a unilateral flow of ideas, nor to suggest that Renan necessarily persuades
his readers to agree with him. Further, by emphasizing that Renan’s
influence was enormous, I do not intend to suggest that it was the most
significant aspect of late-imperial Russian intellectual and cultural history,
13
McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 11.
xx
Preface
but only that it is one important but hitherto neglected chapter in that
history.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Russian are my own. I
have followed the Library of Congress system of transliteration, with the
omission of diacritic marks and a few other exceptions. Dates are given in
old or new style depending on the calendar used by the sources cited.
Scriptural references are cited from the King James Version of the Bible
unless otherwise noted.
Having established the general direction and limitations of this study, I
turn now to a fuller introduction of the historical context behind a book
that “changed forever the currents” of Russian “thought and life.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Without the financial, administrative, intellectual, and moral support of
many individuals and institutions this project would not have been
possible.
To begin with, I would like to thank the staff of Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, particularly Amanda Millar and Carol Koulikourdi, for
bringing this project that began a decade ago to fruition.
I am deeply indebted to my colleagues at the University of Illinois at
Springfield (UIS). Receipt of a Competitive Scholarly Research Grant
from UIS made it possible to visit Russia in 2005 to continue research that
began when I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. I owe
an enormous intellectual debt to two UIS colleagues in particular—Larry
Shiner and Rosina Neginsky—who read the manuscript in its late stages
and suggested revisions which no doubt have improved the overall quality
of the text. They have advised me on several other issues related to
publication, and provided unceasing encouragement. My colleagues in the
History Department at UIS, by their scholarly achievements as well as
their collegiality, have provided an intellectually stimulating and
collaborative environment that has facilitated the advancement of this
project. They have always been happy to guide and encourage me through
the process of manuscript preparation and publication, and have followed
my progress with great interest. The department’s graduate assistants
between 2002 and the present have also provided indispensable research
support for this project, as has the staff of Brookens Library.
I extend warm appreciation to the State Radishchev Art Museum of
Saratov, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the State
Tret’iakov Gallery in Moscow for permission to reproduce the works of
art featured in this book. Special thanks is due to Elena Churikova of
Springfield, Illinois, Tamara Grodskova (Radishchev Art Museum),
Galina Shurygina (Russian Museum), and Marina Ivanova (Tret’iakov
Gallery) for their assistance in procuring, first, permission to reproduce the
works, and second, high-quality images of the works. Munindra Khaund
(UIS) deserves recognition for his expert assistance, both artistic and
technological, with the process of formatting the images for publication.
In addition to the Competitive Scholarly Research Grant from UIS,
research for this book—that began as a doctoral dissertation—was
xxii
Acknowledgements
supported in part by the Regional Scholar Exchange Program, which is
funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United
States Information Agency (USIA), under the authority of the FulbrightHays Act of 1961 as amended, and administered by the American Council
for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS. The opinions expressed
herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily express the views of
either USIA or the American Councils. Additional financial support for
research and travel in 1999 was provided by a Doctoral Dissertation
Special Grant from the University of Minnesota Graduate School, as well
as by a grant from the McMillan Research Travel Fund.
I am grateful to the librarians and archivists at the following Russian
institutions: the Russian State Library (formerly Lenin Library), the
Saltykov-Schedrin Russian National Library, the State Archive of the
Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the
manuscript division and library of the Tret’iakov Gallery, the Russian
State Historical Archive, and the Tver’ Regional Archive. In addition, I
extend my thanks for the administrative assistance of the American
Council’s staff when I was in Russia in 1999.
The staff of New York Public Library’s Slavic Division, the
interlibrary loan department of the University of Minnesota’s Wilson
Library, and the Slavic Reference Library at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign’s have all been extremely helpful as this project
developed through its different phases.
For the continuing support and assistance of my mentors at the
University of Minnesota, particularly Theofanis G. Stavrou, professor of
Russian and Near Eastern history and director of the Modern Greek
Studies Program, J. Kim Munholland, professor emeritus of modern
French history, and Gary R. Jahn, professor of Russian language and
literature, I am immensely grateful. All have provided considerable
assistance in their respective areas of expertise. Conversations with other
faculty at the University of Minnesota also helped me contextualize the
topic and define its significance vis-à-vis other central historical problems.
I am especially fortunate to have had the assistance of two Orthodox
friends and kindred spirits in the study of Russian history and culture.
Both have influenced the development and shape of this project. Timothy
Ketcher, Ph.D., has recently read parts of this manuscript, and has
especially assisted me with philosophical and theological issues. Earlier,
Ken Marks provided intellectual inspiration and spent countless hours
discussing many of the ideas contained within this manuscript. Without his
knowledge of Orthodox thought and Russian history, along with his
immeasurable patience, this book would never have materialized. In
Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception
of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia
xxiii
particular, he leaves his imprint on the discussion of Dostoevsky’s novel
The Possessed.
Several other individuals have contributed to this project. I have
benefited from discussion and correspondence with other scholars of
Russian history and thought including Irina Riumshina, Paul Valliere,
Argyrios Pisiotis, Nadieszda Kizenko, Kristi Groberg, John Klier, Randall
Poole, Robert Nichols, and Jeffrey Brooks. In addition, I greatly
appreciate the assistance of Soterios Stavrou, Father Eugene Grushetsky,
Masha Rudenskaia, Derek and Rebecca Peterson, Andrew Roberts, Freda
Stavrou, Angelo Georgakis, Jan Decher, Kirk Allison, Aaron Michaelson,
Ann Linde, and Valentine Scheglowski. My family has been a source of
assistance and encouragement, as has the parish family of St.
Panteleimon’s Russian Orthodox Church in Minneapolis.
While so many individuals and institutions have contributed to this
project, I take full responsibility for the ideas expressed herein and for any
mistakes that escaped detection.
CHAPTER ONE
LIFE OF JESUS IN ITS EUROPEAN
AND RUSSIAN CONTEXTS
I believe . . . in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten,
begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light; true God of true
God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by Whom all
things were made; Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from
the heavens, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and
became man; and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered,
and was buried; And arose again on the third day according to the
Scriptures; And ascended into the heavens, and sitteth at the right hand of
the Father; And shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and
the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end . . .
—Nicene Creed
You haven’t read Renan’s book? How is that possible? He writes so
beautifully—a true artist! A true historian! They call him an atheist but I
only now, through him, began to believe! Only now can I understand the
Gospel! And above all, he writes for women! He even dedicated his book
to a woman—his sister Henrietta. . . . A delightful book! No, it’s not
possible! Please read it! I will get it for you somehow.
—Reportedly the response of a typical female reader1
In this chapter I will set the stage for exploring the impact of Renan’s
Life of Jesus from 1863 to the 1990s. After setting Renan’s book in its
theological and historical context, I will briefly summarize its themes and
approach, and then consider more specifically the intellectual climate of
the 1860s.
1
This example of the attitude of female readers towards Life of Jesus reflects the
perspective of an Orthodox priest. T. I. Butkevich, “E. Renan i ego noveishii
russkii ‘kritik’,” in Vera i razum, no. 1 (Mar. 1893): 314.
2
Chapter One
From God-Man to the Historical Jesus
In the history of the Christian church the councils of Nicaea I (325)
and Chalcedon (451) were definitive in terms of Christology. The former
established that Jesus, of one essence with the Father, begotten not made,
is the second person of the Trinity while the latter further elaborated on
Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity: a single person but with
two natures, divine and human. Building on Chalcedon, the Sixth
Ecumenical Council (680-81) formally defined that to have two natures
necessitates having two wills, for “human nature without a human will is
an unreal abstraction.”2 Thus, by the end of the seventh century, the
church’s christological dogmas had been clearly delineated; in 726,
however, the christological consensus was again disrupted when the
Byzantine Emperor Leo III banned icons in religious worship, leading to
the 120-year Iconoclast controversy. Once again, the church had to define
the full implications of its christological dogmas. One aspect of the
conflict between iconoclasts and iconodules was whether Christ as God
Incarnate could be represented in art. Iconoclasts argued that God could
not be depicted, while the iconodules, represented brilliantly and
articulately by St. John of Damascus, argued that the denial of the artistic
representation of Christ constituted a denial of Christ’s human nature, and
was thus a form of negating the Incarnation itself. While the iconoclast
controversy was not merely a continuation of earlier christological
controversies, the christological aspect certainly was an important
dimension of the conflict.3 Once resolved definitively in 843—
commemorated on the first Sunday of the Great Fast (Lent) as the
Triumph of Orthodoxy—several centuries passed before the church was
again embroiled in christological conflict. The outbreak of the Protestant
Reformation struck a major blow to the church’s dogmatic position
regarding Jesus Christ. As expressed by Jaroslav Pelikan, “the
2
Quoted in “St. Maximos the Confessor: Introductory Note,” in The Philokalia:
The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St.
Makarios of Corinth, vol. 2, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and
Kallistos Ware (London: Saber & Faber, 1984), 49.
3
See Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed. (London: Penguin Books,
1997), 30-35 and Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, trans. Anthony Gythiel
with selections trans. by Elizabeth Meyendorff, 2 vols. (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992), 1:102. Ouspensky regards iconoclasm as “a
general offensive against the Orthodox teaching as a whole,” rather than as a
continuation of earlier christological controversies.
Life of Jesus in its European and Russian Contexts
3
Reformation broke out as an appeal from the authority of the institutional
church to the authority of the historical Jesus.”4
Not only did the Reformation re-visit the christological questions that
had been addressed by the church centuries earlier, but it also introduced a
new approach to history, church history in particular, that had significant
repercussions. The link between history and Holy Tradition was severed.
As expressed by Father Florovsky, the Protestants were instrumental in
establishing and developing church history as a field of study, but “their
history” was (and always is) “the history of a decline—they study history
precisely to prove the fact of this ‘decline’—and what is sought is always
the ‘primitive Christianity’ that existed before history.”5 Thus, the quest
for the historical Jesus was a logical and inevitable outgrowth of the
reformers’ “mystical blindness toward history.”6 The study of history as
‘decline’, writes Florovsky:
is the decisive element in the so-called “modernist” theology. It is a form
of a historical lack of faith, or lack of faith in history . . . Christian truth
began to seem undemonstrable in history, as something that could be
affirmed only by “faith.” History knows only Jesus of Nazareth, while the
Christ in him is professed only by faith.7
Of course, initially the reformers did not consciously separate the Jesus of
history from the Christ of faith, but their approach to history and the
shifting understanding of the “Word” of God made the future development
of such a distinction inevitable.
With the advent of the so-called Age of Reason at the end of the
seventeenth century, the dogmas formulated at Nicaea and Chalcedon
were challenged by a number of attempts, from various perspectives, to
rediscover the historical Jesus, as distinct from the Christ of faith.
4
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of
Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 157.
5
The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, ed. Richard S. Haugh, trans. Robert
Nichols, vol. 6, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two (Belmont, MA:
Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), 295-96.
6
Ibid., 295.
7 Ibid., 296.
4
Chapter One
The question of “the humanity of Jesus Christ” was transformed from a
problem of Chaldedonian Christology to a task of historical-critical
research into the biography of Jesus.8
The intellectual influences leading to this development came from within
Protestantism, as well as from a new generation of intellectuals critical of
mystical Christian dogmas and the church as an institution. Within
Protestantism, Pietism, a movement regarded as heretical by Lutherans
and Calvinists alike, emphasized Christ’s brotherhood and kinship with
humanity.9
On the other hand, Newtonian cosmology—suggesting a strictly
mechanical universe governed by universal, observable, natural laws and
presided over by an impersonal, remote deity—was hardly compatible,
certain philosophes argued, with Christian dogmatic teaching about Jesus
Christ as the second person of the Trinity, God Incarnate, who, according
to the Gospels, had authority over nature and used that authority to
perform miracles on countless occasions. In the eighteenth century,
Deism, the best-known representatives of which were Voltaire (FrançoisMarie Arouet) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Unitarianism as
understood, for example, by Joseph Priestley, were more normative than
atheism. With notions of an impersonal, orderly, rational Creator came
attempts to explain the events recorded in the Gospels in rational terms.
The effort to revise the historical record engaged the Age’s mostrenowned scientists, philosophers, and literary figures as well as
theologians.10
Yet modern materialism has its origins during the Age of Reason.
Representatives of the atheist branch of Enlightenment thought had a less
sympathetic conception of the Jesus of history than their Deist
contemporaries. Atypical in its radicalism was the hostile attack on
religion published as the Treatise of the Three Impostors (1719), referring
to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad as mere charlatans.
While traditional Christian belief eroded simultaneously from within
and without by emphasis on subjective religious experience on the one
hand, and philosophical skepticism with regard to dogma on the other, the
8
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol.
4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984), 362.
9
Pelikan notes that to attempt to write a biography of Christ’s life was a natural
progression from Pietism. Ibid., 361.
10
See Pelikan, “The Teacher of Common Sense,” in Jesus through the Centuries,
182-93.
Life of Jesus in its European and Russian Contexts
5
historian Edward Gibbon also made a contribution which directly
challenged the Augustinian tradition.11 In his The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire (1776-88), the only history of Christianity available in
English when it appeared, Gibbon turned Christian heroes into absurd
caricatures while arguing that Christianity had caused the collapse of the
Roman Empire (a point on which Renan agreed), ushering in the Dark
Ages.12
What the eighteenth-century intellectual developments tend to have in
common is a desire to throw off exclusivity in favor of universal values,
whether religio-metaphysical, socio-political or both. In the wake of
preceding intellectual developments, which had apparently destroyed the
tenability of Christianity, the nineteenth century gave rise to a number of
“secular religions.” Since, for many, Christianity no longer seemed
plausible, but religion still seemed essential, nineteenth-century thinkers
faced:
[the] predicament . . . of ‘honest unbelief’, of the religious temperament
estranged from the Christian faith. . . . They no longer accept[ed]
Christianity but still believe[ed] that religious commitment of one sort or
another is essential—even where they interpret[ed] ‘religion’ as little more
than an ethical, political, or metaphysical system.13
One aspect of the pursuit for a new “universal religion” that began in
the eighteenth century and continued in the nineteenth was the rationalist
interest in the historical Jesus.14 At the heart of the apparent collapse of
11
Augustine’s City of God begins with a defense of Christianity against the charge
leveled by the pagans that Christianity was to blame for the sacking of Rome.
12
According to A. N. Wilson, Gibbon’s history of the fall of the Roman empire,
along with David Hume’s Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion (1779) were the
two English-language books that most undermined religious faith. See God’s
Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1999), 19-38.
13
D. G. Charlton, Secular Religions in France 1815-1870 (London, New York,
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1963), 4. Charlton notes that secular
religions can be primarily social, metaphysical, occultist, or simply “cults of
science and of progress,” 37. Regarding Renan, Charlton writes: “It is worth while
to dwell on Renan’s system for it was one of the fullest-developed fusions of
various nineteenth-century tendencies—at once claiming to be a religion of
science, of progress and of the metaphysical ideal,” 112.
14
Pelikan writes: “The eighteenth century found in the Jesus of the Gospels the
problem as well as the solution of its quest for a ‘universal religion’.” Christian
Tradition, vol. 5, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700) (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 102.
6
Chapter One
Christian orthodoxy was the dogma of the Incarnation. Chalcedonian
Christology was inextricably tied to the redemptive work of Christ. Thus,
as orthodox Christology was revised, Christ’s intentions and the essence
of Christianity were naturally reinterpreted and redefined.15 Hermann
Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) was the first biographer of Jesus to
abandon the supernatural altogether and to craft a strictly rational account
of Jesus’s earthly life, thus initiating what has been called the quest for the
historical Jesus. The first one-hundred and fifty years of this quest is the
topic of Albert Schweitzer’s well-known book, published in 1906.16
Brought to a biographical plane by the end of the eighteenth century,
christological controversy became the “central theological problem of the
nineteenth century,”17 leading to publication of thousands of lives of Jesus
in Europe during the century.18 Of the numerous “fifth gospel” accounts
written in the nineteenth century, the two most well-known and influential
were by the Tübingen theologian David Strauss (1808-74) and the French
seminarian, philologist, and historian, Ernest Renan (1823-92). Strauss’s
Life of Jesus appeared in 1835 and Renan’s in 1863.
Strauss, borrowing from Hegel, concluded that philosophy transcended
theology, and that the Gospels could best be explained in philosophical
terms. In the tradition of German idealism Strauss found it possible to
rewrite the life of Jesus without resorting to either supernatural or rational
explanations. His synthesis was the mythological approach. Philosophical
myth did not necessarily exclude the historicity of an event, but looked for
15
Ibid., 89-101.
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its
Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery, with introduction by
James M. Robinson (New York: Macmillan, 1968). While the intellectual elite
during the Age of Reason devoted significant attention to religious questions and,
in many cases, to anti-religious—or at least anti-institutional treatises, there was
also emerging simultaneously a purely literary fictional genre about Jesus’s earthly
life. According to Philip Jenkins, these fictional lives of Jesus have received
insufficient attention given how influential they were in “spreading the scholarship
of the intellectual elites to ordinary readers.” Two of these early fictional lives of
Jesus, by the German writers Karl Friedrich Bahrdt and Karl Heinrich Venturini,
were repeatedly recycled in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries under the
guise of recently-discovered ancient manuscripts. See Philip Jenkins, Hidden
Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 48-49.
17
Theodore Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), 36.
18
Peter Fuller, Images of God: The Consolations of Lost Illusions (London, 1985),
299.
16