NIKOLAI BERDYAEV’S IDEAS ON ORTHODOXY – PROJECTIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOX COMMUNITY IN BULGARIA
NIKOLAI BERDYAEV’S IDEAS ON ORTHODOXY – PROJECTIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOX COMMUNITY IN BULGARIA

Summary/Abstract: The most important judgment in Orthodoxy as a religion is that you do not become Orthodox, you are born Orthodox. This is the most important conclusion in the works of the great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev 1874-1948. His ideas about Orthodoxy prove to be extremely relevant in our current times. The present text aims to project these ideas onto the Orthodox community in Bulgaria in the 21st century, with a particular focus on some of the decisions made by the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria. Most of them resemble policies that may serve the power elite, but move away from Orthodoxy and its traditions. Among them are the controversy over the Russian Church in Bulgaria, the unleashing of Russian spy-mania, which has no analogue, the putting into the mouth of the sick and dying patriarch of claims about the war of Russia and Ukraine, which, besides being secular, are also conjunctural, etc. Berdyaev’s ideas check that existential minimum without which Orthodoxy not only departs from itself, but loses its specificity of doctrine and religion. We, the laity, cannot watch this process idly, for both state and church must serve the people. Orthodoxy is entering its final battle because it is not a religion of individual faith like Protestantism, nor of authority and hierarchy like Catholicism. It is a religion of “internal devotion, liturgicality, conciliarity, freedom and eschatology”, to use Berdyaev’s words. Will we, as Orthodox, all be able to defend the right to be so, and trust in the Holy Spirit sent by Christ after the Resurrection as the Spirit of truth?

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