The Theory of God-seeking and God-building

A religious-philosophical trend in Russia. It came into being in the early 20th century, after the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, it was widely popular among the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The leading figures of this trend of thought were Merezhkovsky, Bulgakov and others. They organized a religious-philosophical society in Petersburg, using the magazines Novy Put (New Path), Voprosy Zhizny (The Question of Life) and Povorotnyy Moment (Milestone) as ideological bases which promoted the thoughts that Russia is “God’s earthly kingdom” and the Russian people as “God’s chosen people”.

They argued that Russia could be salvaged only by the “religious commonality” and that Marxism should be defeated by a new “true” Christianity. Therefore, they launched a God-seeking movement, proposing to find a “common”, “spiritually ideal God”, a “happy, good and perfect God”, i.e., Christ, the God-man. They argued that God, through the God-man Christ, shows man his divinity, reveals the meaning of life and defines the purpose of human history. Philosophically, it demonstrated extremely subjective idealism. Mysticism, the teaching of the Fathers, etc. were the sources of their ideas.

They advocated that apocalypse is the highest form of cognition. The history of humankind is, then, to achieve a predetermined purpose – to unite all people in the bosom of Christianity. Therefore, the history of humankind is the history of religious change. Merezhkovsky also linked morality with religion and accused the materialist, atheistic worldview of proletariat as lacking noble morality. Works such as Plekhanov’s On the So-called Religious Seekings in Russia and Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism were critical for the disintegration of the God-seeking thought. With the new upsurge of the Russian Revolution, its influence began to weaken, and it finally disappeared.