SOURCE: "An Evaluation: 'My Ways Are Not Your Ways, '" in An Apostle of Freedom: Life and Teachings of Nicolas Berdyaev, Philosophical Library, 1960, pp. 292-313.

In the following excerpt, Vallon offers a critical appraisal of the salient concepts of Berdyaev's religious philosophy.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.

—Galatians 2:20

Berdyaev described his philosophy as "existential" to indicate that his thought was rooted not in discursive reason, but in life experience. He never related himself, however, to any of the existential schools, and least of all to the atheistic variety represented by JeanPaul Sartre which often is erroneously identified with existentialism par excellence. He shares in the basic conviction of all existentialists, namely, that existence precedes essence, but he differs from most of them...