The construction of life upon the sole spirit of humility creates also an external authoritative-hierocratic system. All questions of social form and cultural creativity are decided in conformity to humility. This would be a fine arrangement of a society, in which people humble themselves the most, and be obedient the most. It would censure every array of life, in which is given expression to the creative instincts of man. Thus in essence there is resolved not a single question, but is merely as regards to this, whether it promotes the humility of man. Deterioration of humility leads to this, that it ceases to be understood inwardly, to be secretly-treasured as a mystical act, as a manifestation of inner spiritual life. Humility is transformed into an external system of life-arrangement, repressing man.

In soil humility readily sprouts forth hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness. … Deteriorative humility desires however a system of life, in which liberation never enters, in which spiritual ascent is never to be attained, in which the higher nature never shews itself. The liberation of spirit, spiritual ascent, the manifestation of the higher nature would be declared a non-humble condition, a deficiency of humility. Humility is transformed from being a means and a way into an end in itself.

The degenerated humility creates a system of life, in which life that is everyday and commonplace and of bourgeois-manner, is more honoured than the humble, than the Christian, than the moral, than the attainment of a still higher spiritual life, and love, contemplation, perception, creativity, always there is the suspicion of a deficiency of humility and of pride. To haggle at the shop-counter, to live in a very egoistic familial life, to serve in the ranks of the police or excise-duty office — humbly, not presumptuously, not boldly. And here then otherwise is the aspiration towards the Christian brotherhood of people, of the realisation of the truth of Christ in life, or to be philosopher or poet, Christian philosopher or Christian poet — not humbly, proudly, presumptuously, boldly.

The Church hierarchy in its essence is an hierarchy which is angelic, and not human. In the human world the heavenly angelic hierarchy is only symbolised. The system of hierocratism, the exclusive sovereignty of the priesthood in the life of the Church, and through the Church in the life of the world also, is a suppression of the human principle by the angelic, a subordination of the human principle to the angelic principle, as a calling with which to guide life. It is always a sovereignty of a conditional symbolism. [trans. note: the Russian euphemistic idiom for becoming a monastic is to take on the angelic garb and life, an image of useage to which the modern Western mind is not sensitive to, but here also betraying the dualistic schism alluded to above.] But the suppression of the human principle, the non-allowance of its unique creative expression, is an impairment of Christianity, as being the religion of God-manhood. Christ was the God man, and not a God-angel, in Him perfectly was united in one person the Divine nature with the human nature and by this human nature was transported to Life Divine. And Christ the God-man was the foundation principle of the new spiritual human race, a life of God-manhood, and not of God-angelhood. The Church of Christ is God-manhood. The angelic principle is a principle intermediary betwixt God and the human, a principle passively-intermediary, transmissive of Divine energy, conductive of Divine grace, but not an active-creative principle. The active-creative principle was bestown to mankind. But the sinful limitedness of mankind does not permit of the fullness of Christian truth. And the suppressive sovereignty of the angelic hierocratic principle is an indicator of the impotence of sinful mankind to express its creative nature, to accept Christianity in its fullness and wholeness. The way of salvation for sinful mankind obviates its necessity first of all in the angelic hierocratic principle.

In medieval Christianity there was its theocratic, hierocratic culture, to which all creativity of life was self-subordinated to the religious principle, conceived as the sovereignty of the angelic hierarchy over the human. In medieval culture and society there was the sacral, but the religious justification was conditionally-symbolic. Culture by its concept was angelic, and not human. The sovereignty of the angelic principle always leads to symbolism, to the conditional, sign reflection within the human world of the heavenly life without its real attainment, without the real transfiguration of human life.

In the autocratic monarchy, as a type of Orthodox theocracy, it was the angelic, and not the human principle, that reigned. The tsar, in accord with this concept is in essence of the angelic, and not of the human order. The collapse of Orthodox theocracy ought to lead to the awakening of creative activism of a very Christian nation, an human activism, for the formation of a Christian society.

… is the impossibility to return to the old medievalism. The problem of creativity, the problem of Christian culture and society is insoluble by the churchly-hierocratic. This is a problem of a religious sanctification of the human principle, and not the restoration of governance of the angelic principle. Creativity is a sphere of human freedom, full of copiously-abundant love towards God, the world and man.

At the foundation of the Christian faith lies not only the priestly, but also the prophetic. “And how in accord with the grace given us, we have differing gifts, if then thou hast prophecy, prophesy according to the measure of faith” (Rom.12:6). Creativity, the creative discovering of the genius of man is at present a secular prophecy, to which ought to be restored its sacred significance.