Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev)

In the history of Russian religious thought - in the history not of school theology, repeating other people's words, but of living religious thought, a living solution to the Christian problem, a solution to the question of the relationship of the Christian spirit to worldly culture - the name of A. M. Bukharev - Archimandrite Theodore - cannot fail to be mentioned. In his youth, having taken monasticism “out of love for the truth of Christ” in order to “serve in clarifying Orthodoxy - in its relation to modernity - in order to devote himself entirely to this service,” he was persecuted by the zealots of this Orthodoxy in its historical immobility and took off monasticism for the sake of the free preaching of his harmonious Christian worldview. Leaving monasticism and entering into marriage corresponded to his views in essence, but was accompanied by intensified persecution from his enemies. He died a martyr to his idea and already through the burden of his fate proved how deeply his religious thought was rooted in his heart. The Christian views of A. M. Bukharev are simple, harmonious and consistent. His central idea is that the spirit of Christ must be embodied in the life of a Christian, that his whole life must belong to Christ. “Thoughts about acquiring Christ, whether through thought or external practice, these thoughts are carried out and revealed in all my writings, sometimes as foundations, sometimes as conclusions and results, and in general as the inner strength and beginning of my entire way of thinking.” It is more interesting for us to find out not for what practical conclusions and particular applications this central thought serves as the basis, but rather on what grounds it itself is affirmed, by what method it is organized. We must decisively declare that in the person of Archimandrite Theodore the reader is dealing with a teacher of “dogmatic theology”, and that dogmatic coverage of the subjects of religious thought is predominant in his writings. The main core of his religious worldview has support of an exclusively dogmatic nature. We do not find in him a historical perspective, an understanding of the historical appearance that evangelical Christianity itself had, and of the historical process in which the evangelical truth grew into a church-dogmatic system; We also do not find in him sufficient justification for the autocratic value of the ethical pursuit of the good of life and all kinds of cultural acquisitions. His worldview can be called completely church-dogmatic; His method of thinking also turns out to be dogmatic. The main dogmatic points in the substantiation of his religious system are the following three: the incarnation of Christ, His resurrection and the redemption of human life completed by Him. In the person of Christ, God Himself, namely, God the Word, consubstantial with His Father, took into His very personality (in the unity of His “I”) the true and complete human nature, - He accepted our human nature with the human mind, and with the heart and will, and imagination, and with the human body itself, and this His humanity in His life on earth entered into our earthly order of things, under the conditions of physical, family, civil life, national and church, entered into such a connection with external nature and the world in which man is inextricably found. Archim. Theodore enters into the closest assessment of the church dogma about the face of Christ, about the union in Him of the full Divinity and perfect humanity, and indicates the deepest meaning contained in the church struggle with Arianism, Nestorianism and Eutychianism. The real and inextricable union in the unity of the person of full human nature with the perfect Divinity, the belonging of all human life to God Himself - this is the basis of the entire Christian worldview and all Christian hopes. An equally significant point in the system of Christian thought is the doctrine of the atonement of sin, which entered human life and penetrated into all its forms. Christ God became man for every man and took upon Himself the sins of all sinners. He, the Most High, not only humbled Himself, descending for the sake of us, earth-born, from His heavenly heights into our earthly order of things, took upon Himself full human nature, but moreover, as if He Himself was guilty of all human sins and errors, He deigned to endure suffering to the inexplicable degree of the feeling of abandonment by His Consubstantial Father Himself and, finally, the shameful cross death. For the sake of His Divinity, for the sake of the Father who eternally rests in Him with all the fullness of His love, all the guilt of the sins of our world, borne by the love of Christ until death on the cross, to the state of some unsearchable abandonment by the Father, was more abundantly blotted out by Him for the sake of His humanity, naturally akin and shared with us, all the fullness of God in Christ, His truth, truth, love, in general, everything about Christ that is wise and good and the beautiful, all this is accessible and easily communicated to us, humans, if only we ourselves want and strive to perceive these treasures by faith. The Lord retains His meaning as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the whole world, for all eternity, revealing through this for us sinners the fullness of the Father’s love. God the Word is the Lamb of God, slain in the predestination of the Father from the foundation of the world, and is the foundation of all destinies and the entire composition of the world, such a foundation that, by virtue of His truth and goodness are victorious even in oppression and crucifixion, and lies and evil are put to shame and overthrown in their very triumph and triumph, that in Him life emerges from death itself, and life through His cross goes to prosperity and the highest light. Taken in Him, the smallest and, apparently, empty ceases to be so, the poisonous and deadly does not harm, lies and bewilderment do not confuse, as long as everyone in his own business does not move from his own and universal foundation, no matter what the darkness or darkness of this or that environment. The real theological point of view is to look at everything on the basis and in the spirit of Christ God the Word, Who created and bears all things by His power, and became man for the salvation of all mankind from errors and sins, the guilt of which He took upon Himself and bore until death on the cross, Who, thus, shines on everyone and everything with His love, abolishing evil and bringing life out of death. But Christ not only through His incarnation entered into all conditions of human nature and human life and with His suffering and death atoned for our sins, He also glorified our nature both in His earthly life, for example in the transfiguration on the mountain, and especially in His resurrection. Christ accepted flesh, akin to our physicality; The materiality of the hands and the whole body, which is natural to us, was retained by Him and in the glory of His resurrection. With His humanity, perceived for our sake, He ascended into heaven and thereby elevated this His humanity, representing and spiritually concentrating us all, into open enjoyment of the fullness of the Father’s love, resting essentially and eternally in His Divinity. This is so that the entire multisyllabic area of ​​the earthly, material, in which man labors and is burdened in various ways, is not outside of Christ’s grace and truth; then, so that a Christian, whether engaged in earthly things in thought or in life, clings to Christ as the head of everything - both earthly and heavenly - and in Him, even among his worldly activities, is overshadowed by the love of his Heavenly Father; then, so that a Christian, striving for Christ with renunciation of everything worldly, does this without prejudice to the material and carnal, to which he belongs and for which, so to speak, Christ’s very flesh, accessible even after the resurrection to the touch, stands up. From these principles, Archim. Theodore brings out his central idea about life according to the spirit of Christ. Just as in Christ the Divinity and humanity were united, on the one hand, inseparably and unchangeably, and on the other, inseparably and inseparably, so the spirit of Christ must be embodied in our lives, and we must inseparably and inseparably unite our heavenly aspirations with earthly conditions and needs, we must combine Orthodoxy with modernity. One-sided asceticism first of all sins against this principle. “Let us give up,” they say, “our weak human mind, imagination, especially this mortal physicality; we will trample and destroy our moral personality; let us ascend in spirit to the heavenly and divine.” Fine; but we must not forget that in Christ humanity, both with the rational soul and with the physicality, was not absorbed by the Divinity, but for the sake of us, humans, for the sake of the salvation of our mind and our other spiritual powers, as well as our physicality, remained whole, like His Divinity, in His one person; and this for the preservation and elevation of our personality in its true dignity. To suppress the human mind or other spiritual powers with a spiritual direction instead of their versatile revelation in Christ, to remove our very physicality from any participation in grace-filled spirituality, would mean to reconcile with the spirit of Eutychianism, which recognized in Christ, our Savior and prototype, the absorption of the human by the Divine, and with the Monothelites not to recognize in Christ, along with the Divine, human will and activity. No, the spirituality of our life and activity does not consist in soaring, not wanting to know human reality, while in the environment and under the conditions of this reality - under conditions not only directly spiritual and church, but also family, national, civil - the Consubstantial Son of God descended to us, having received and preserved in the unity of His person, in union with His Divinity, human nature with human will and human action, which means with human thoughts, desires, feelings, memories, imagination, and all this for the sake of us, humans... The gracious spirit, which elevates us above carnal sinfulness and above worldly corruption, consists, in fact, in the fact that everything relating to the spirit - to every action of all its power, and to the body, even to eating food and to sleep - everything in our personality should be according to Christ and with Christ and, therefore, under the good will of His Heavenly Father and in the communion of His Holy Spirit. And moreover, since Christ came into the world in the meaning and disposition of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, and this love, which took upon itself all responsibility for human sins, is the spirit of His entire earthly life, of all His states and actions, then it is in such His spirit that the spirituality of all of us should be - both internal dispositions and thoughts, and external relationships and actions. One can present direct experimental evidence of the ancient spirit bearers about the truth of such a concept regarding spirituality, arising from the very essence of the dogmas of Orthodoxy they approved. One spirit-bearing elder suggested that in the event that a young monk, with his youthful soaring, began to rise above the earth towards the sky, to hold him by the legs and put him on the ground. Another of the strict ascetics, having learned about the iniquities of someone, only sighed with sorrow, not purified from the condemnation of the lawless one, and the Lord Himself in a night vision appeared to the ascetic with the condemnation of himself and with the readiness to accept the second crucifixion for the sinner internally condemned by him. This is how false spirituality is, revealing itself not in the image and spirit of the Lamb of God! So, if we, being zealous for God and the Church, do not heed or pay little attention to Christ Himself in the various difficulties and needs of His lesser brethren - whether in the environment of foreign citizens and people, or in the realm of thought and feeling: our spirituality, which does not quite rise to heaven according to Christ, should be placed on the earth, which Christ loved so much and which in Christ already becomes a heavenly residence. If we begin to look at the revelation of human thought, heart, fantasy in the sciences and arts with the spirit of condemning human infidelity here to Christ, and not in the spirit of His love, taking upon ourselves responsibility before His Father in our infidelity, then the Lord Himself will show Himself to have accepted human thought, heart, fantasy and, in general, all human nature with human will and action, moreover, taking upon Himself the guilt of all human sins in all these relationships or human powers... When everything related to the body and even to the secondary forces of the soul - imagination, external feeling and even the lower ideality of reason, with all their manifestations and the fruits of their actions in the world, is recognized as an area almost rejected, at least to nothing heavenly, which has to be revealed, in fact, in the future life, completely unsuitable and unnecessary, then in this case Christian spirituality is made into something a monster of which all those who labor and are burdened with various earthly, human needs and interests are frightened and run away. And Christianity seems to be given not for the earth and earth-born, so that the will of the Heavenly Father may be on earth as it is in heaven. But no less destructive is the opposite direction - life, worldly or secular, placed completely outside of Christ, independent of Him, arranged not according to His principles, but according to the principles of reason, personal or universal. The falsity of this direction is revealed from two sides. On the one hand, no success is possible for worldly life placed outside of Christ, as this was revealed especially clearly before the time of the coming of Christ, when paganism internally disintegrated and collapsed, and the spiritual state of the majority of the Israelis was even more bleak than the state of the pagans. And in our time, to tear away any aspect of human life from the principles of Christ means to immediately condemn it to complete hopelessness. Outside of Christ and His Holy Spirit there can be nothing true, pure or beautiful; Outside of Christ there cannot even be human dignity, but a person, having become detached from Christ, necessarily falls from the height of human dignity to what is lower than Christ, to spiritual bestiality or bestiality. Even if he has in mind and defends human rights, even if he talks and tries to elevate human dignity, the human mind and heart - just not according to Christ, the Son of God - his beginning will still be a beast, albeit with human eyes. Let this man, who does not want to know Christ, the Son of God, be distinguished by the eagle flight of thought, the powerful power of the word - the beginning of his activity and direction is still not true humanity, but fallen to the image of a beast, although this beast has lion-royal lips and eagle wings. Let him refine and satisfy his senses with fine arts or aesthetic pleasures, without, however, caring about their true ennoblement by fidelity to Christ - this is again not a truly human principle, this is a beast whose nose is like a bear and which, according to the prophecy, devours a lot of flesh - everything sinful and sensual. Even if this man, who does not value conformity to the Son of God, would be distinguished by his many-sided education, would be the same in our time as the Hellenes were compared to the barbarians in the ancient world - in his beginnings one still does not see a person, but only the image of a lynx or an attractive-looking leopard, according to the vision of the prophet. On the other hand, just as a person cannot live outside of Christ, so a Christian must in all aspects of his life - family, social, scientific, artistic, even physical - live according to the spirit of Christ, Who in His incarnation took upon Himself all the conditions of human life, in His suffering atoned for all human sins, and in His resurrection raised all human nature to the Heavenly Father. Not only cannot a person live outside of Christ, but Christ cannot be excluded from the composition of humanity, which in its entirety belongs to Him and constitutes His eternal and inalienable property. Even if a person renounced Christ, Christ still cannot renounce His human nature. In “God the Word made flesh,” all human nature—soul, body, and in soul and body—all their natural powers and the free action of these powers belong to His own person, so we must stand for all aspects of humanity as Christ’s property—for thought, will, imagination, heart, for the body itself and the satisfaction of its needs in Christ. Suppression, oppression, especially condemnation and rejection of anything truly human (except for sin, which already constitutes a perversion of humanity) is already an encroachment on grace itself, on the spirit and meaning of the work of Christ - and this is exactly the same as standing for something human that is not in Christ means already taking away from Christ the property of His grace and casting this human thing out of the realm of salvation into inevitable destruction and corruption. Am. He breathed Orthodoxy and did not forget it for a single minute. Whether he talked about Ivanov's painting, about Gogol's works, about schismatics and missionary work, about Western science, about women and family, about Jews, about power and subjects - he considered everything from the point of view of Orthodoxy. In particular, he looked at family, national, and civil life this way. In the Old Testament, all this constituted an environment that raised the believer to view from afar the coming grace of Christ. And now we, who already know and have in Christ the very essence of grace and truth, can and must directly and quite consciously create and develop our own, family, national, and civil well-being - on the basis of Christ’s truth and grace. Thus, in the Old Testament, in patriarchal family life, marriage and children gave believers a foretaste of the promised divine descendant of Christ and His union with the Church - now in the New Testament the divine union of Christ and the Church is graciously reflected in every marriage, and - faith can only not accept this grace in vain, but, on the contrary, always heed it and through this always bring it into living movement. In the Old Testament, the chosen people and the Promised Land retained their spiritual significance precisely as the people of God, as God’s land - in the New Testament it is already fully known that God the Word himself in the flesh lived under the conditions of national and civil life on earth and this for all mankind for all times; and, thus, our faith in our views and life regarding citizenship and nationality is only supposed to hold on to them and carry on further and further in their area this great grace, making our earthly life heavenly. Otherwise, Orthodox Christians, with all the height of their New Testament calling, will be in family and civil life the same carnal people as the other sons of Adam and Eve, supplemented only by naturally weak forces and walking along naturally broken paths. In the life of Christians and in their views, in this case, there is inconsistency, duality, contradiction between the heavenly treasure of Christ’s faith buried, as if buried in the ground, and worldly life, paganly wandering in its own unauthorized ways... Likewise, state life itself should not be separated from Christianity. The essential “interest of Christianity” is that everything and everyone in humanity be brought under the blessing of grace and into the communion of the love of the Heavenly Father, extended to people in His Only Begotten Son. Separate what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God, arrange and discuss everything civil in complete separation from the spiritual and the church, then you will alienate this area from the love of the Father, which all rests in the Son, then in this area there will be nothing truly good, useful and beautiful, then it will come to early or late destruction. Not only family, society and the state, not only science and art must develop according to the spirit of Christ, but even bodily life, every private relationship, every work - everything must be according to Christ. It is not according to Christ that we should go through any earthly field, starting from one where almost physical strength alone is required, to one where thought, feeling, and word work; to organize and arrange our own, public or private, business not according to Christ means for Christians to degrade their civil life incomparably lower than the citizenship status of carnal Israel. The most menial work - what prevents you from doing it, as it were, under the direct supervision of the universal Master, who was pleased to live in the house of a simple carpenter until he was thirty years old? Interpreting and caring about the benefits related to temporary needs, benefits and pleasures themselves, is it not possible, first of all, to see with your faith in these benefits the gifts of love of the Heavenly Father, Who gives us everything richly for enjoyment through His Only Begotten Son - Christ! The most apparently empty conversations and readings that are fruitless for the spirit can be listened to in no other way than by following with your inner thoughts the Lamb of God, who was not ashamed to take upon Himself the guilt of all our emptiness. Whether to eat food or to rejoice - everything must be done in the presence of Christ. Every work we do must be a continuous presence before the eyes of God’s love. We should not have spiritual backyards where we stand next to those who do not know Christ or even the dumb. The true and living spirit of Christianity is not the spirit of condemnation of the world, but salvation, not the spirit of slavish oppression, but the sons of unfree and independent truth, the lamb's spirit of meek condescension and humility, but not harsh exaltation or downtrodden spiritual humiliation. Someday such a blessed time will come, - such was the last hope of A. M. Bukharev, - when for the consciousness and life of mankind the full light and power of Christ's church primacy will be revealed by faith, extending to everything, not only heavenly, but also earthly, and when the luminous spirit and power of the truth of the procession of the Holy Spirit only from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will shine into every environment, not only the direct church, but also the family, civil, into all the connections of society, into history, into all the logical movements of our thought... This worldview of A. M. Bukharev, in any case, cannot be denied remarkable harmony and consistency. And in essence, his central idea about the harmonious combination of Christian spirituality with worldly, or secular, life has all the signs of living truth and deeply rooted in the world soul and in the historical organism. Connected with his personal feat, it creates for him a well-deserved glory, the radiance of which falls on the Russian theological school. This is one of those ideas that make a valuable contribution to the universal treasury and occupy a strong place in the ideological history of mankind... But the grounds on which A. M. Bukharev asserts his idea, and the method by which he develops it, cannot be called successful. He was well aware of the task ahead of us of achieving a higher synthesis, but he did not provide a solution to this task. It has already been noted that it comes from exclusively dogmatic grounds. The exclusive use of the dogmatic point of view has its drawbacks. But he does not even stand at the height of Christian dogma. He confines himself only to the formulas of Christological dogmas and reveals unfamiliarity with their philosophy, with those thoughts that lay behind them and constituted their internal content in the theological system of each of the outstanding teachers of the Church. In him we often find references to condescension and humility, which constitute the inner side of the divine-human face, but his information about kenosis 1 is limited to elementary data from textbooks. He often resorts to the church formula about the inseparable and inseparable union in Christ of the divine and human natures, but we do not find in him even a remote hint of the patristic teaching that Christ’s self-abasement reached the point of His submission to the laws of human nature. “The self-abasement of the Son of God in the form of freely granting human nature the ability to bear His Divinity extended to submission to the laws of human nature that possessed Him. The relationship of natures was determined by freedom, but freedom gave place to the dominance of the laws of human nature. Therefore, the union of natures was accompanied not by the sporadic and arbitrary intervention of the Divine nature in the area of human nature, but the mutual communication of properties, the gift from the Divine to human nature, was determined by the laws of human development... The wise evangelist, beginning the story of the Logos who became flesh, shows that the Word, for the purpose of economic development, allowed its own flesh to develop according to the laws inherent in the nature of the flesh, etc. (see “Fundamentals of Christianity,” vol. 1, p. 95) 2. If, according to the meaning of this truth, we understand the relationship of Christian spirituality to our worldly life, then this will mean that life according to the spirit of Christ does not in the least violate those laws that determine this life in its own spheres, natural and social, that the spirit of Christ is embodied in the personality of man and only through the personality is revealed in the natural and social spheres. Another truth of patristic philosophy, which lies at the root of church Christological formulas, is the doctrine of the unity of the divine-human life of Christ despite the heterogeneity of the divine and human natures. “Relating to each other as the external to the internal, the properties of human nature and the properties of Divine nature were not two homogeneous parts of one whole, but were heterogeneous and dissimilar, they were two sides of a single life or being. It is easy to understand what consequence follows from this for the question of the unity of the divine-human life or being. Divinity and humanity in Christ, precisely because they are heterogeneous, were united into the unity of theanthropic life, into natural unity - this was the single nature of God the Word incarnate. Two human bodies, no matter how different or how similar they may be, even if they have the same head, cannot form one body, but are two bodies; on the contrary, clothing does not increase the number of one body, but a clothed body is one body. Also, the soul in union with the body is not two souls, not two bodies, not two people, but one rational flesh; word and thought, idea and picture - not two, but one. Unity, not composition or mixture, occurs when parts are heterogeneous. According to the teachings of Cyril of Alexandria, there truly is one nature of the Word incarnate. For if there is one Son, by nature and truly originating from God the Father, the Logos, ineffably begotten, and if He, having taken on flesh, not soulless, but animated by a rational soul, became a man, descended from a woman, then He should not be divided as a result of this perception into two persons or a son, but remained one, only no longer incorporeal and not outside the body, but having assimilated it by virtue inseparable connection. But whoever says this does not at all affirm confusion or merging or anything like that; such a consequence does not necessarily follow from the preceding premises... because the Divinity and humanity (in Christ) abide and are understood each in the peculiarities of its nature,” etc. (ibid., p. 100). When applied to our question, this will have the meaning that personal spirituality and natural-social life, following its own laws, are not mechanically mixed, but are heterogeneous, since personal spirituality follows absolute norms, and natural-social life follows the path of conditional development, and therefore they can be united in the highest harmony. Christian spirituality, or absoluteness, limited to the sphere of the individual, can be harmoniously combined with the natural and social aspects of life precisely because it does not interfere with their conventional forms, allowing them to develop according to their own laws. A. M. Bukharev did not even have a premonition of this heterogeneity of spheres of life, and in solving the religious problem of life he uses bare Christological formulas, which inevitably should have led him to a mechanical view of the relationship of spirituality to worldly life. Bukharev did not use the patristic teachings, but because he limited himself only to the dogmatic point of view and did not reach the evangelical one, the shortcomings of his worldview increase. The apostolic-patristic teaching in this respect differs from the evangelical point of view in that in the first, in contrast to the pure evangelical teaching, conditional content is given, in it the pure evangelical teaching enters into a historical perspective and is adapted to the historical task. Such a task was the expulsion from all areas of pagan natural-social life of the polytheistic spirit, which penetrated all forms of this life among the pagans. It was necessary to sanctify with Christianity not only science and art, not only state and family life, but even such functions as nutrition. Hence the apostolic commandment: “Whether you eat or drink, do everything for the glory of God” 3 . On the contrary, in the pure, ahistorical gospel teaching, we are instilled with the idea that both natural and socio-historical life is carried out according to laws that are alien to moral goals. God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. That is why the Gospel teaching expresses personal spiritual absoluteness, softened in the apostolic and patristic teaching. And in order to solve the religious problem in relation to our time, we need to return to the purity of the Gospel teaching. A. M. Bukharev does not know either the heterogeneity of the spheres of our life, or personal-spiritual absoluteness. In accordance with this, he does not know natural, natural and socio-historical life. For him, all life is divided into two opposite parts - “based on Christ” and “sinful human”; for him, every side of life outside of Christ is inevitably sinful, the entire scope of life activity comes down to salvation and the only value life has is from Christ. He has no love for life before knowing its meaning; he does not know the natural value of life. Therefore, the task he took upon himself turned out to be beyond his strength. Christ is the founder of absolute spiritual life, but from the work He accomplished, neither the nature nor the history already presupposed by Him is explained. It is impossible to remove the whole life from soul salvation; Along with inner spiritual life, this heterogeneous natural-historical life is necessary. An exclusively Christian point of view on life is inevitably an ascetic point of view. And the religious system of Archimandrite Theodore, in spite of everything, is an ascetic system. What is important here is that his idea about the relationship of Orthodoxy to modernity developed at a time when he was a sincere monk, “was naively devoted to monastic vows,” and, of course, he later left monasticism, essentially by accident. He did not have the conscious rejection of monastic vows that Luther had. He got married, and this corresponded to his views, but he did not leave monasticism in order to get married. However, we will not insist that there is a secret of his soul. In any case, his views even after leaving monasticism were and remained ascetic. The question of the relationship of Orthodoxy to modernity was for him entirely a question of the possibility of a worldly life, firstly, more or less sinless and, secondly, built according to the thought of Christ. But this is precisely the ascetic principle, which cannot embrace the fullness of life. In words Archim. Theodore resisted such asceticism *, but in essence he was unarmed in front of it. “With our minds and hearts,” he writes, “we recognize and solemnly confess only Christ God the Word as the beginning and goal of everything that exists, the supreme condition of the very possibilities, the beginning and goal, the ruler and judge and light of man with his mind, with all his powers and internal laws; outside of Christ, everything for us is nothing more than insignificance and negligence. Barometers, steamships, all the fruits of civilization that have come to us from the West, inventions and successes of the human mind - all of this henceforth constitutes for us the gifts of God the Word, which hitherto were only vainly stolen from Him by the human mind, which forgot that it itself is His property, and neglected its heavenly glory - to be in conformity and fellowship with God the Word; In all this, we renounce only everything that cannot be subordinated to the spirit of Christ, that goes out of conformity with it and, therefore, falls to bestiality and bestiality. And henceforth the beginning and goal of all sciences and art, the alpha and omega of everything for us will be one Christ...” Archimandrite. Theodore wants to express the idea that a Christian can assimilate the entire culture, freeing it from sin, that “with faith it is possible to transfer all the treasures of Egypt and Babylon to the promised land.” But in order for this transfer not to be the same theft that the Jews committed when leaving Egypt, it is necessary to place culture in a significant connection with Christ. However, how to do this? After all, to assert that “barometers and steamships were stolen by reason from Christ” means going against the evidence. When Askochensky (a rude champion of Orthodox asceticism) objected to Archimandrite. Theodore that “Christ has absolutely no need for barometers and steamships,” the latter was powerless against this argument. Christ really does not need barometers and steamships, and evangelical, that is, pure, Christianity was entirely imbued with the expectation of the imminent arrival of the last hour - and it is even less possible to produce culture and history from Christ. And we cannot but agree with the words of one deep thinker that “the (possible) victory of Archimandrite. Theodora and the defeat of Askochensky lie outside the field of polemics between them, and in the next, upper floor, where, however, not only Askochensky, but also Archimandrite. Theodore did not enter; and in the battlefield where they fought, besides his kind heart, at the archimandrite. Theodore had no other arguments, no intellectual and, finally, even just smart arguments” 4. Archim. Theodore stood on the same ascetic point of view as Askochensky - and the imaginary reconciliation of Christ with the world was his self-deception. In fact, if we look at everything from the point of view of the Incarnation, if “the Lamb of God is the beginning and goal of all sciences and arts, the alpha and omega of everything,” then all science, with the bold implementation of this principle, should turn into theology, all art should shut itself up in the church, the state should turn into a theocracy or submit to the Church. This conclusion cannot be avoided. And a decisive inclination towards him is noticeable on all the pages of A. M. Bukharev. Of Gogol, whom he tirelessly calls the Orthodox Russian poet, he places above all his correspondence with friends, about which he says that the fragrance of Orthodoxy is wonderfully diffused in it. Following Gogol, he repeats that the poet must be brought up with the highest Christian education. He demands that the poet take the Bible as his highest guide, which outlines the prototype for everything and for everyone, so that from it he can gain that spiritual mood, which, for example, is revealed in the prophets. The mystery of Christ, according to Arch. Theodora, lies at the foundation of poetry. And wasn’t he the one who spoke about church supremacy over everything!.. ** We willingly agree that in words Archimandrite. Theodore constantly struggled with these conclusions, closing his eyes to them, but they naturally flow from his principle - and this is most confirmed by his severe pessimism. “Believing in the inviolability and inviolable holiness of everything churchly, it is scary to think about the immutable truth that in general everything that is done not according to Christ’s beginning and with a purpose not in Christ - all of this is already decisively out of the favor of the Heavenly Father, which rests in all its fullness in Christ God the Only Begotten Word and only in Him extends to creatures. Everything that is not from the Father in Christ belongs in its spirit to the realm of the prince of this world, to the realm of lies and sin. Think, then, that the inventions and fruits of European civilization, which came to us from the West, were invented there by the human mind for its own glory, for the purposes of this world, and not for the glory of Christ and human salvation. Consider that most of the sciences and arts of the Western-educated world, transferred to us, are also not based in Christ. Consequently, all this is outside the favor of the Heavenly Father, and every garden that the Father does not plant will be uprooted... 5 Think about the terrible danger that almost the entire new worldly order of things is in.” Isn't this still pessimism? But this is a curse to the entire modern world, a curse to the entire culture and civilization. Is it possible, in this case, to transfer the treasures of Egypt and Babylon to the Promised Land?.. No. There is only one opportunity to overcome this hopeless pessimism, to lift the curse from the world and humanity, this is to recognize the heterogeneity of the spheres of life, to recognize, along with Christ’s spirituality, the natural life, natural and socio-historical, developing according to its own laws, in these laws beloved by the Heavenly Father. That this natural life must be cleansed of its sins, that the Christian cannot approve of all the fruits that have blossomed from its root, that he cannot assimilate some of its manifestations, is easy to agree with. But the question is, does this purification exhaust the Christian’s entire relationship to the world? For example, eliminating debauchery means solving the whole question of a Christian’s attitude towards marriage? Exactly no. Personal-spiritual life and natural life can be compared to two different geometric figures, which, when superimposed, partially coincide, such as a circle and a triangle. To stand exclusively on the Orthodox point of view, to reduce the entire religious question to the cleansing of the world from sin, is the same as demanding that the circle and the triangle coincide entirely or cutting off the divergent parts. There must be some coincidence; a Christian can accept worldly life only cleansed of sins - conquests, field trials, capital punishment, debauchery, slavery of conscience and body are absolutely unacceptable for him. But after subtracting this homogeneously coinciding part, a non-coinciding part remains - this is natural life, proceeding according to its own laws. Man eats, grows, reproduces and ages according to his own laws, science develops according to his own laws, and society naturally moves from one economic and political form to another. The attitude of a Christian to this natural necessity is the true Christian question. We must agree that in all this, in this natural necessity, there is no Christianity, that along with it it is a heterogeneous area. Family love, scientific, economic interests, the development of society - all this is not sinful and not sacred; all this does not directly contribute to Christian salvation and does not require Christianity for its development. To stand exclusively on the Church-Orthodox point of view means to demand the application of Christianity to the very forms of natural life; in this case, an ascetic-pessimistic attitude towards the entirety of worldly life is inevitable. But one has only to recognize the heterogeneity of the spheres of life, Christian and natural, one has only to demarcate the realm of personality for Christian spirituality, and for the sphere of forms of natural life to demand freedom of natural development according to its own laws, and we will be at the threshold of the highest harmony. The mistake of A. M. Bukharev was that he wanted to apply Christianity not only to the solution of internal moral issues, but also to external forms - he set the Church a task not only moral, but also political - he wanted the Russian people to be Orthodox, the Russian kingdom to be Orthodox. “The power and significance of the fact that the Lord, full of grace and truth, appeared openly, like a king, in the visible capital city of the famous people of God, will be spiritually revealed to us, obviously, in no other way than that all areas of our life, the nationality and citizenship of the Orthodox kingdom, not only in their directly moral aspects, but also in relation to their external expressions and accessories, will be illuminated for our faith by the one truth of Christ and grace." But this is, simply speaking, clerical policy - and it is not at all new, coming, but has long been carried out in church history, especially vividly by the Roman Catholic Church. And it’s not in vain that A. M. Bukharev constantly repeats: “If only it’s not like dad’s.” The shadow of papism haunts him because, in essence, he is on the same path. This is exactly what has always happened in the history of the Church and what should not happen in the future. The church's attitude towards external forms of natural life is truly and inevitably clericalism, papism. Where the spiritual realm and the natural realm coincide when superimposed, where the matter is about the cleansing of natural life from sins, the church’s sanctification of natural life is appropriate, but to the rest of natural and socio-historical life, which does not coincide with Christianity in the essence of its natural development, the necessary change of forms, Christianity should not relate to the church, on a homogeneous scale, but only from the inside, only through the mediation of Christian-minded individuals. Otherwise, that is, by applying Christianity directly to the external relations of life, to its external forms, one will have to take the pathetic path of mechanical play with words. This is what happened to A. M. Bukharev. Listen to what lessons he draws for our time from the Gospel story of the Nativity of Christ in the Bethlehem Cave. In this event of gospel history, the following circumstances were revealed: 1) the taxable state of Joseph and Mary, 2) their high family, 3) the government order (on the national census) and 4) the ecclesiastical significance of the event, since the Newborn Infant of God is the Head of the Church. “Contemporary circumstances help faith to take full advantage” of the lessons of this event. These are four lessons. 1) In the pre-arranged improvement of people in a tax-paying state (written in 1859) - see with your faith the essence of the whole matter in showing this mercy to Christ Himself, who was born for people in a similar state, to show Him this benefit precisely in His lesser brothers. 2) Sharing concerns about this with other people of a higher kind, strive by faith, in fact, to ensure that together with them you perceive and retain in your dispositions the spirit of the Divine Descendant of the Kings. 3) In the government and the king, notice the influence of the grace of the Most High King. 4) Finally, in the Holy Church, see the true mother, invisibly supporting and observing such grace in her Orthodox people and state in her grace-filled ways. In such a way, in a purely scholastic way, Archimandrite. Theodore derives moral teaching for modern times from all the events of gospel history, from all holidays, etc. But this is not enough. It comes to such violent conclusions and curious comparisons that cause irresistible amazement. Demanding a combination of what belongs to God with what we owe to Caesar, Bukharev knows that in this matter he has against himself the clear words of the Gospel: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God’s to God 6 . But he does not stop at this difficulty; he resorts to artificial interpretation in order to eliminate the direct meaning of the Gospel words. He even states that “God the Word in the flesh was from the cradle to the grave the most faithful subject of Caesar” and this is for our teaching. This loyalty to God the Word seems to constitute God in relation to the civil. Therefore, we would not begin to render God's things to God if we decided to render Caesar's things to Caesar separately from what is due to God. By rendering the things that are Caesar's to Caesar separately from what is due to God, we - Christians - would not rise above the pagans and unbelievers, who can render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar separately from what is due to God no worse than Christians... As if the author of these pitiful words did not know that the pagan religion was completely state and the Greco-Roman state was completely polytheistic. His idea that only Christianity first taught us to observe God in relation to Caesar’s, that is, to see the Divine commandment in faithful submission, is downright monstrous. It’s like Dostoevsky: “If there is no God, then what kind of captain am I after that?” 7. But one cannot be a man without God, and captaincy can exist without God, and loyalty is a purely human matter. The transition from one social or state form to another is carried out according to those laws that were given by God to the world “from the beginning” and which have no direct relation to the Gospel. In order to understand the applicability of Christianity to absolutely all circumstances of human life, for this it is necessary to take it out of the sphere of forms into a completely different plane - into the moral depth of a free personality. Essentially and radically, Christianity can enter the world only in the underground depths of personal beliefs and feelings, personal achievement. And its objects are also not forms, but personalities. He has nothing to do with social forms and their changes, but he cares about individuals, their sufferings and joys, their freedom and happiness. Since the flow and change of forms affect the feelings of people, Christianity enters into the very core of worldly life and is interested in it. And already in this depth of the heart there is no forbidden area for him, here it already enters into all sorts of combinations and with a sharp sword cuts into the relationship of the government to the people, and the master to slaves, and parents to children... Mikhail Mikhailovich Tareev (1866–1934) – theologian, religious philosopher. Studied in the Ryazan family. and MDA (1887–1891), from which he graduated with a Master of Divinity degree. Later, in 1902–1918, he taught moral theology at the Academy. In 1918–1927 he lectured on philosophy and political economy at a number of universities. The creator of an original theological system in which secular culture is sharply separated from churchism (therefore he is against life asceticism and against the ecclesiasticalization of the family and the state), but every Christian, Tareev believes, must bear responsibility for both traditions and even unite them in the depths of his soul. His religious philosophy, however, largely contradicts the patristic tradition and, according to S. S. Averintsev, “in its nature it is comparable to the theology of early Protestantism” (Philosophical Encyclopedia. M., 1970. Vol. 5. P. 182). Author of the major work “Fundamentals of Christianity” (5 volumes; 2nd ed.: Sergiev Posad, 1908–1910), as well as the works “Philosophy of Life” (Sergiev Posad, 1916), “Christian Philosophy” (M., 1917), etc. Tareev always had deep respect for A.M.’s personality; bearing in mind the dramatic fate of the theologian, he called him “a witness of Orthodox freedom” (see: Theological Bulletin. 1917. T. P. October-December. P. 331). But the main ideas and method of A.M. remain alien to Tareev. He pays considerable attention to history and historicism in his concepts, therefore, not without reason, he criticizes A.M. for his “dogmatic” bias and neglect of history. However, in general, Tareev’s criticism of Bukharev’s views cannot be considered completely correct: it is obvious that he approaches them from positions close to Protestant theology. It is no coincidence that the most unacceptable thing for him is A.M.’s consistent implementation of the principle of Orthodox asceticism, his understanding of the entire worldly culture “from the point of view of the Incarnation”; on the other hand, Tareev resists A.M.’s immersion in the “worldly” ideas of the Apostle Paul and the Holy Fathers, and longs for gospel “absoluteness.” Tareev reproaches A.M. for an imaginary synthesis of Christianity and life (which is rather the sin of Western clericalism), speaks of his “self-deception” and - it’s completely strange! - “hopeless pessimism,” as if not noticing that in his theology he constantly focuses on anthropological issues: the Christian transformation of society and culture was conceived by A.M., of course, not as an external (and, therefore, ephemeral) transformation, but as an internal rebirth - in the light of the renewal of human nature and its future deification (with a free, spiritually responsible change in the views and lives of people). For the critical remarks of V.V. Rozanov and A.S. Bukhareva regarding Tareev, see this article. ed. Rozanov’s article “Askochensky and Archimandrite Feodor Bukharev.” Kenosis (kenosis) - “self-abasement” and “humility” of God; the teaching about the descent of Christ into the world, interpreting the lines from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians: “... he made himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and becoming in appearance like a man; humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death” (Phil. 2.7-8). Tareev was one of the first among Russian theologians to study this issue; see his book: “The Humiliation of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (M., 1901). This refers to the book by Tareev himself (2nd ed. T. 1. M., 1908); the author could hold it in his hands in 1907; c. r. books April 12, 1907. This means V.V. Rozanov: see present. ed. his article “Askochensky...” Quote (story by P. S. Verkhovensky) from the 1st chapter of the 2nd part of the novel “Demons” (1871). Although he directly and insistently speaks as if it were self-explanatory, “about the attraction and calling to evade the world...” A little analogy. “To promote the study of social and political questions in the light of the Incarnation” is one of the three principles of the Guild of St. Matthew" – one of the types of clerical socialism... 1 You might be interested in: