HOW TO UNDERSTAND RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY: TIME

Eastern Orthodox theology reflects a specific reception of time. It is not only a linear process: beginning, stages, and goal. Time also isn't a circle (as in pagan conceptions), with the end attached to the beginning, with eternal repetition of stages, by this endless imitating of eternity. Orthodox thought is trying to investigate in detail the relations between time (as a linear process) and eternity. Time is linear and in this sense it is under eternity, as the Earth is under the sky. Time is free from God's will, it is a part of the "sovereign" kingdom of the sinful world and one of the consequences of sin. But time is created not by any evil God but by the only true Creator. Due to this, He is the God of time, He rules over it, and His eternity coincides with the time when God will show Himself to people, during His Epiphanies.

For the Protestant mind eternity is out of touch, it is before the beginning and after the end. For the Russian Orthodox (Eastern Orthodox, Medieval, Roman Catholic) mind, eternity is not inside time but present in it. Past and future moments can not be in the present but the present can include past and future. Eternity is not equal to time but time sometimes can be equal to eternity. It seems to be very illogical - but we are speaking about feelings and cultural perceptions of Russian Orthodoxy.

This feeling of relations between time and eternity lies under several phenomena which are so exotic (and seems erroneous) to practically all Protestant authors).

Yury Buyda, an authour and journalist, in his essay on vodka in "Novoye Vremya" (#20, 2001, p. 29), marks that Russians usually drink vodka "at once", quickly, while Westerners drink it slowly. "West is gradual development, East (Russia) wants to make everything at once."

This is a new variant of the old juxtaposition of evolution and revolution, labor and heroic deed. Certainly, this is opposition inside Western civilization, and Russia is the part of West, although an extreme. Russia is identiphied with barbaric (or young) hurry and haste, when people do not want to stop and think before acting. West is old and prefers thought to action (in this opposition, in many others East is ancient.)