Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1): Student, Soldier, Prisoner, Teacher

 Student (1918-1941)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, a city in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. His father, Isaaki, was an artillery officer who fought on the German Front from 1914 until the Russian army was demobilized in 1918. His mother, Taisia, grew up in a landowning family and was able to learn French and English. His father died in a hunting accident six months before his birth. Shortly after his birth, his mother took him to Rostov-on-Don and raised him there, supporting them both by working as a secretary.

A Sympathetic Shouldering of Cares

In September 1919, less than a year after the German defeat in World War 1, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) gave an address, “The Christian’s Place in Society,” at a conference on Religion and Social Relations in the central German town of Tambach. Through it, he reminds us today that, as Jesus moves in our lives, his truth constantly frees us from all other authorities to test whether they are strengthening in us his gifts of love and life and to challenge them if they are not.

 

Barth and Schleiemacher: Two Roads Diverge

In September 1922, Swiss-born Karl Barth (1886-1968) gave an address, “The Problem of Ethics Today,” to a group of pastors in the western German city of Wiesbaden. In it, he mentioned Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) who, like Barth, was a Reformed theologian but who, unlike Barth, was a significant contributor to modern liberal theology. Barth summarized Schleiemacher’s contribution in this way:

Barth on Calvin on Hope

In July 1922, Karl Barth gave an address, “The Need and Promise of Christian Preaching,” to a group of Reformed pastors. He chose to close his remarks with “a confession of hope”:

Freed from the Devil by Jesus

The anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes to us about human beings as children of God: Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he [Jesus] himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:14-15, English Standard Version).

God created Adam and Eve, and the rest of us human beings through them, as his children and with physical bodies. Having physical bodies meant that God created us with a definitive physical limitation: death. His original intention, however, was to graciously and continuously respond to this limitation by enabling us to eat of the tree of life.

Recovering Our Distinctive Character

It is 1450 BC. The people of Yahweh have been camped at the base of Mount Sinai for about a year. They are about to pull up stakes and walk through hostile territory to the Promised Land. Moses goes to the Tent of Meeting to speak with Yahweh.

He says to Yahweh, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight and your people. Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15-16, English Standard Version).

Sense of Adventure

Edith Hamilton (1868-1963), in her magnificent book, Mythology (1942), writes of the Quest of the Golden Fleece. To obtain that prize, Jason would have to man his ship, the Argo, with the best and brightest of Greece. Hera, Queen of Olympus, helped Jason gain their enthusiastic support. In one priceless sentence, Edith describes how Hera did so: she kindled in each one the desire not to be left behind nursing a life without peril by his mother's side, but even at the price of death to drink with his comrades the peerless elixir of life (p. 163).