Freedom & The Spirit

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) believed that the dawn of the twentieth century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic worldview and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. His philosophy goes beyond mere rational conceptualization and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence in contact with the divine world. He directed all his efforts-philosophical as well as in his personal and public life-at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt this by tapping the divine creative powers that constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world.

In Freedom and the Spirit, Nikolai Berdyaev tells us that the creative development of the spirit and the free exercise of man's powers can be conceived only as the free cooperation of man with the work of God. Creative spiritual development represents a new principle that signifies an offering of human freedom to God, an offering God expects from us. The life of the spirit is a creative and dynamic process. Spiritual development is possible only because there is freedom; it is not movement on the plane of the external world, but the bringing to birth of forces that lie hidden in the inner depths of existence: "The spiritual world is like a torrent of fire in free creative dynamism."