Merezhkovsky’s Neo-Christianity of the Third Testament: From Symbolist Historiosophy to Radical Politics

Vadim Polonsky

doi:10.3390/rel12070456

Abstract

This article places Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s Chiliastic concept of Three Testaments into a unified structure. The author analyzes the writer’s integral system of Christological, anthropological, and historiosophicidiomyths and meta-symbols. He studies the religious, philosophical, and aesthetic genesis of the semantic transformation of traditional theological constructions and the doctrinal compilation of Russian fin de siècle culture dominant elements. It is shown how religious Modernist mythmaking alters political reality in Merezhkovsky’s mind and draws him towards radical ideologies of the extreme left and right.

Highlights

In a conceptual Thesaurus created by Merezhkovsky, the main is the antithesis “contemplation vs. action”: Dialectics calls for the transformation of the first into the second
At the very beginning of the first part of the trilogy, Merezhkovsky reveals his views on the significance of pre-Christian history as a myth/proto-image in regard to the coming of the Savior of the world—and he does it with formulaic brilliance: The whole matter of the world mystery-myth about the suffering God is an event, which has not happened once but always does, is happening again and again in the life of the whole world and mankind
According to Merezhkovsky, Paganism has always revealed the deep connections between sex and the Resurrection

Summary

Introduction

According to Merezhkovsky, the base of this worldview is a universal, symbolic, and mythological construct. He perceives all world history as an opposition and antithesis of two primal sources, the “abyss of flesh” and the “abyss of spirit”. As Merezhkovsky points out, this synthesis can only be possible within a future new Church. Testament”, whose concept emerged from the strong chiliastic tradition, from Montanus of Phrygia (II AD) to the Calabrian monk Joachim of Fiore (12th century) This doctrine states the First Testament was the Old Testament of God the Father; the Second was the New Testament by God the Son, Jesus Christ; followed by the Third.

On the Way to the New Church and “Religious Community”

Works Abroad

Theological Accompaniment

The Heavenly Kingdom as the Looking Glass Land

Poetics and Politics on the Metaphysical Background

Moscow