Two Lungs – a Model of Christian Culture in the Thought of Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov and John Paul II

Kazimierz Pek

Abstract

When in 1926 Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (d. 1949) confessed faith in the Catholic Church, he wrote that for the first time he truly felt a member of the Orthodox Church, having been breathing before with only one lung. In this way the Russian thinker and poet openly accepted the Christian heritage of the East and West. He is now known as the author of the idea of two lungs. A seminar was devoted to the idea in Rome in 1983. During an audience with the delegates, Pope John Paul II said that the idea was also close to his heart, which he had made known during his first pilgrimage to France in 1980 and later in his Redemptoris Mater (1987) encyclical. The conception of the two lungs of the Church and of Europe developed on the basis of the Christian doctrine of God in three persons, which reconciles unity with diversity. The unity can be realized at the Church level (between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches) or at the social level (unity in and of Europe). The teaching of Vyacheslav Ivanov and John Paul II can also be inspiring in ones considerations of culture and faith.