Orthodox Nihlism

Nicholas Berdyaev argued that Russian Nihilism was traceable to Orthodoxy: “if could appear only in a soul which was cast in an Orthodox mold.  It was Orthodox asceticism turned inside out, and asceticism without Grace.  At the base of Russian Nihilism, when grasped in its purity and depth, lies the Orthodox rejection of the world, its sense of the truth that ‘the whole world lieth in wickedness,’ the acknowledgement of the sinfulness of all riches and luxury, of all creative profusion in art and thought . . . . Nihilism considers a sinful luxury not only art, metaphysics, and spiritual values, but religion also.”