The Transcendental Problem of Religion

This essay represents the introductory chapter to a forthcoming study in the philosophy of religion. How is religion possible? A modern philosopher, sophisticated in the transcendental method, should understand the meaning of this question, which, oddly enough, has almost never been posed in transcendentalism. This question means exclusively critical analysis, the opening of premises, judgments, categories - in a word, everything that is given in religious consciousness is, as it were, implied in it and cannot be removed from it. Therefore, we are talking, so to speak, about the formal or “transcendental” nature of religion, and not about this or that content of religious ideas; further, not about its psychological side, but about the conditions of the objective significance of its content, in relation to which psychology is only an environment, a situation, an actual presence. The transcendental problem of religion, posed and understood in this sense and perhaps most conveniently introduced into the philosophy of religion, is a complete analogy to the basic problems explored in Kant's three critics. The question posed in the “Critique of Pure Reason” is this: how is science possible as objective, generally valid knowledge, if, of course, it is possible? The latter is established by the force of fact, the presence of mathematical natural science, on which, as we know, Kant “oriented himself.” In other words, how is Newton, on whom Kant relied, possible, if and since he is possible? Answering this purely analytical and transcendental question, Kant deduced, as it seemed to him (and many still think) the basis of generally valid judgments and in the doctrine of experience tried to forge armor that would protect against skepticism, elevating the actual conditions of knowledge to the rank of fundamental, categorical syntheses. The fact of science precedes analysis and forms its basis, but at the same time, criticism removes from this fact what is factual, genetic, psychological in it, and highlights in it what constitutes its cognitive scheme, significance, meaning, in other words, considers the fact only as a place of categories or a special case of categorical synthesis. The establishment of categories and their research, evaluation, systematization constitute the work of criticism, but it does not generate a fact from itself, but arises in relation to the fact. And, strictly speaking, due to this fact, it loses its applicability and general validity: Kant’s schemes are valid and characterize not a person in general with his unknowable fullness of spirit, but a “scientific person”, i.e. only one aspect of this spirit and its activity. Our question has an even greater analogy with the content of the “Critique of Practical Reason,” which seeks to find the rationalistic skeleton of ethical experience and establish the logic of ethics. Here the actual conditionality of criticism is even more obvious than in the first case, for we are no longer talking about knowledge, which is more or less forced for everyone, but about the direction of the will with its inherent freedom. Ethics is written only for those who want to be ethical, and is not written at all for insanitas moralis and for holiness, for those who are on the other side of good and evil, above or below ethics. Consequently, the transcendental nature of an ethical judgment is inextricably linked with the Fact of Ethics, which can be considered in terms of its objective significance or transcendental meaning, but can also be interpreted as simple psychologism, allowing only a causal genetic interpretation. If ethical judgments do not have the actual compulsory nature of science or the logical compulsory nature of mathematics, then all those general philosophical, epistemological and religious conclusions that Kant makes based on the analysis of ethical experience (“practical reason”) lose solid ground. Freedom seeps through and undermines the solid ground of causal necessity on which Kant builds his dam against skepticism in the Critique of Practical Reason. Our problem is closest to the content of Kant's third criticism, wrapped in the most scholastic and inappropriate form for its subject, to the analysis of aesthetic judgment. How is beauty and judgment about it possible, "Geschmacksurtheil", of course, if it is possible, if beauty exists? What are the irreducible properties of aesthetic judgment? But if it is possible, with a certain logical legitimacy, to deny even ethics as rooted in the will, then it is already completely free to deny aesthetics and the objective meaning of beauty. A huge number of people remain either born blind or unawakened in the field of beauty, many deny the objective principle of beauty and reduce it to the whim of taste, subjectivism and psychologism; a huge number of people are capable of being bored by Sistine and Beethoven and admiring oleography and; sweet waltz. All this in no way detracts from the royal nature of beauty and should not affect its understanding, although this, of course, introduces an element of factual conditioning into the transcendental analysis of the feeling of beauty. The pages devoted by Kant to the analysis of aesthetic feeling are symptomatically among his most interesting, for they clearly reveal the insufficiency of his rationalism. The aesthetic feeling is recognized as “completely indeterminable by logical proof (Beweisgriinde), as if it were only subjective” (Kr. d. Urt., Reclam, 145), and at the same time claims to be objective and universally valid, which leads Kant to pose the question: “how are synthetic judgments “a priori” possible in the field of aesthetics?” Taste therefore becomes a thing in Kant “Vermögen”, “the ability, analogous to reason, to evaluate a priori the communicability (Mittheilbarkeit) of the feelings that are associated with a given representation (without the mediation of a concept)” (160). We are not interested now in Kant’s aesthetic theory itself and in general in the principles of the “Critique of the Power of Judgment.” What is interesting here is only the use of the transcendental-analytical method that it receives in the hands of its creator himself, and that expanded understanding of it, in which its task is to reveal the conditions of scientific, ethical, aesthetic significance, to analyze these aspects of consciousness not in subjective psychological, but in its universally scientific definitions. The transcendental a priori is that which is present in every exercise of a given function of consciousness, without which it is impossible, and, moreover, not in the sense of matter or content, but of form or categories. The analysis of religious consciousness must reveal the transcendental nature of religion, identify the categories of religious consciousness, and establish here “synthetic judgments a priori" (in Kant’s language). This is what the question boils down to: how is religion possible, i.e., what are the categories of religious judgment, what is the unique characteristic of religious consciousness. In order to legitimately raise this question, it is not yet necessary to prejudge the question of religion and its given content in essence; It is enough just that it is possible to pose the same if that we raised regarding the criticism of science, ethics, aesthetics: if it exists. For the transcendental analysis of religion, a mere conditional assumption or assumption of its existence is sufficient; a priori, it is hardly possible to reject this modest assumption in advance even in our skeptical age. Religion is such a universal Fact of human life that it is simply impossible for anyone to deny it; If they say that religion cannot currently be considered equally characteristic of all humanity, then, after all, we must not forget that the same argument is even more applicable to aesthetics, ethics, even logic. Skepticism regarding the independent formulation of the transcendental problem of religion, however, may be more plausibly based on another consideration. It is possible to challenge the autonomy and originality of religious consciousness, to recognize for religion only a heteronomous existence as a derivative quality or a transitory stage of development. An example of such an attitude is the same Kant, who, among his systematically planned criticisms, which had but his thoughts to exhaust all the main directions and contents of consciousness, did not however include a “critique of the power of religious judgment,” while it is known that the theory of religion is hidden in all three of his criticisms. And this is because he did not recognize religion as an independent area of ​​the spirit, and religious consciousness as a completely special, original side of consciousness in general, but considered religion only in the plane of ethics, considering it as the music of morality and, perhaps, its completion. Outside of ethics, religion, according to Kant, does not and should not have its own special existence: religiosity independent of morality, direct veneration of God associated with positive religion, is invariably branded by Kant as “Abgötterei, Fetischmachen, Afterdienst” and so on. (see, for example, in Die Religion in der blossen Vernunft, Reclam, 193 and passim), and the limitation of reason in relation to religion within the framework of a purely moral understanding protects, in his opinion, theology from turning into “theosophy or demonology”, and “religion into theurgy or idolatry” (Kr. d. Urt., 358). Religion without its moral interpretation seems to him idolatry - Abgotterei. 1 Such doctrinal prejudice against independent interpretation of religion and this dogmatic intolerance towards religion, of course, constitute Kant’s personal peculiarity and have no basis. In his attitude towards religion, Kant was blinded and hypnotized by his own doctrine and therefore could not devote to its transcendental study the attention that the logic of transcendentalism or simple consistency requires. Kant is, of course, not the only one who is blinded by doctrinal prejudice to the independent problem of religion. Not to mention the numerous representatives of dogmatic atheism, whose attitude towards religion is expressed in hatred of it (ecrasez l’infame), it is enough to name the representatives of German idealism Fichte (the period of Atheismusstreit) and Hegel, in whom religion is equally relegated from its proper place and given subordination to ethics or philosophy. Particularly significant in this regard is Hegel, for whom religion signifies only a stage, and not the highest one, in the self-consciousness of the spirit, which is successfully overcome in philosophy. In order to pose the transcendental problem of religion, you only need to have no prejudice, neither metaphysical or speculative, nor dogmatic, nor factual: you need to look at life with open, simple eyes and give the world-historical fact of religion the attention that naturally belongs to it. And, first of all, what is religion? What is unique about religious experience? What is the basic quality of the religious in general? In answering this question, in the numerous definitions of religion that are made in the literature, in most cases an attempt is made to capture certain features (or tasks) of normal religiosity, and a normative judgment is made about what religion should or can be in its most perfect form. Our formulation of the question so far pursues purely formal goals of transcendental analysis. We want to establish those features without which religion is impossible, religious consciousness extinguishes, and which constitute it. We want to establish—sit venia verbo—the basic categories of religious judgment. The direction in which this definition should be sought is given in the word itself, which expresses the basic essence of religion and therefore contains a summary thought about it: religio - religare - connection, connect, unite. In religion, a connection is established and experienced, the connection of a person with that which is higher than a person. The religious attitude is therefore based on a fundamental and irreducible dualism; in religion, whatever it may be in its specific form, there are always two principles, two poles. Religion (as Feuerbach rightly noted) is always a split between a person and himself, his attitude towards himself as another, a second, not one, not the only one, but connected, united, correlating. In religion, a person feels that he is seen and known before he recognized himself, but at the same time, he recognizes himself as remote, cut off from this good source of life, with which he strives only to establish a connection, religion. So, in its most general form, religion is the recognition of God and the feeling of connection with God. If this religious formula is translated into philosophical language, it will receive the following expression: religion is the experience of the transcendental, which becomes immanent to that extent, but while maintaining its basic transcendence, the experience of the transcendental-immanent. One should not be afraid of the logical opposition of these signs, for what they express in their living process is more flexible and plastic than angular, immobile logical definitions. Be that as it may, in religion one inevitably has to deal with this conjugation of opposite logical poles, their mutual repulsion and constant attraction; in the categories of religion, the transcendental-immanent deity is the basic formal concept. So, religion is a conscious connection with the deity. Such is its universal understanding, communis opinio gentium, and such is its “transcendental” definition, which we must further analyze. In order to affirm its unique nature (and not be the music of ethics, or immature, imperfect philosophizing), religion must have its own organ. Religious experience must be qualitatively different from the adjacent and contiguous areas of the life of the spirit. Religion must have its own special logic, find its own special authenticity (as at least the sense of beauty has), it must have the eye of a higher reality, to which neither the mental nor the physical eye can reach. Religious experience confirms a person in the reality of another, divine world, not by proving its existence, convincing him of its necessity, but by bringing him into a living, real connection with religious reality, simply showing it to him. Only those people who actually met with the deity on their life’s path, who were overtaken by it, and upon whom it poured out its overwhelming power, entered on a truly religious path. 2 Religious experience in its immediacy is neither scientific, nor philosophical, nor aesthetic, nor ethical, and just as beauty cannot be cognized with the mind (but can only be thought about), so with thought only a pale idea of ​​the scorching fire of religious experience is given. To comprehend religion, the religious in its originality, one must observe those who are the genius of religion (just as in aesthetics, the laws of beauty are established not by professors of aesthetics, but by the creative creatures of genius); the lives of saints, ascetics, prophets, founders of religions and living monuments of religion: writing, cult, customs - this, along with personal experience, is the source of knowledge in the field of religion. Thus, the basis of religion is the personally experienced encounter with the deity, and this is the source of its autonomy. No matter how proud the wisdom of this age may be, powerless to understand religion due to the lack of the necessary experience, due to its religious mediocrity, those who see God in their pure hearts have religion and know its essence. The connection between religion and other aspects of the life of the spirit is not primitive, but derivative, not logical, but psychological. Religion originates in the experience of God (under whatever face this revelation of God may take place). Feeling God, a person thereby feels himself in the “world”, in other words, the main religious antithesis is revealed to him, which invariably accompanies religious life, the opposition of God and the world. As if a light had fallen from above and illuminated the world from above, the consciousness of the divine world lights up in the soul, and a line is established between what is above and what is below, showing it this world in a completely different light, giving it a completely different taste, a different feeling of being, namely the feeling of the world as remote from God. In the human soul there appears a consciousness of non-absoluteness, non-divinity, and therefore the sinfulness of one’s existence, the desire to free oneself from the “world” and overcome it in God is established, in other words, along with religious self-awareness, a feeling of sin, evil, guilt, alienation from God, the need for salvation and redemption will be born. To rise from the decay of this world to God in the kingdom of freedom—this is the thirst that every religion awakens in the soul, and the deeper and deeper it is, the higher and more perfect it itself is. In other words, religious feeling is accompanied by a certain disappointment in this world, pessimism regarding its current state, world sorrow, but at the same time this pessimism is only a shadow of joyful faith, promising victory over the world, hope for liberation and salvation; the world is losing its authenticity and its uniqueness: above the world and in the world there is God, such is the joyful news of every religion. Therefore, religion is the joy of all joys, although its exactingness connects it with a certain pessimism, the awakening from the sleep of complacency and worldliness. However, although the need for redemption and salvation, like world sorrow, psychologically predisposes to religion, they do not yet establish it, as the question only presupposes the possibility of resolution, but in itself is not the answer. For religious self-awareness, one thing is decisive: the touch of the Divine, faith, “as it is.” 3 The basic experience of religion possesses (at least at its highest points) such a victorious power, such a fiery persuasiveness that it leaves far behind any other evidence. It can be forgotten or lost, but not refuted. The entire history of humanity, and in particular its religious self-awareness, turns into some kind of completely insoluble mystery or simply an impossibility, if we do not recognize that it is based on living religious experience, i.e. unless you accept that the Greeks somehow saw and knew their Dionysus, and the Roman soldiers their Mithra, etc. In the prophets of Israel we constantly encounter the following speech: and God said to me. Have you ever thought about these words? Have you ever even remotely translated these words into your own religious experience? “And God told me”! What is this: is it really just a hallucination, self-deception, charlatanism, a literary device or... And if it’s true... if what’s written in these books is true: God spoke, and man listened, heard... God, of course, not with the physical organ of hearing, but with my heart, with my whole being, and the word of God sounded louder than all the thunder of the world, more convincing and more reliable than all his words. If people of faith began to tell about themselves what they saw and learned with the utmost certainty, then a mountain would form, under which the hill of skeptical rationalism would be buried and hidden from view. Skepticism cannot be completely convinced, it can only be destroyed, and God has the power to destroy it by His appearance, and it is not for us to determine His path and explain why and when He is revealed. Nevertheless, whoever denies or does not allow a special religious identity and a special organ of religion must stop in amazement before the world-historical fact of religion, as if it were some kind of general, mass hypnosis and insanity. Anyone who does not want to accept the only simple and natural hypothesis of religious realism must oppose it to the theory of mass hallucinations and illusionism or... “the inventions of the priests”! Écrasez l'infame, this goal justifies all means, however - alas! - except for the stupid ones, this remedy is stupid. So, in religious experience there is given - and this is its very essence - a touch of another, higher, divine reality, a feeling of God is given; Moreover, not in general, in abstracto, but for man: man, through himself and in himself, finds a new world, before which he trembles with fear, joy, love, shame, repentance. Religion is not just the music of the soul, it sounds not only in me, but also outside of me, above me, it is not subjective, but objective, it has reality. In this realism of religion, its main difference is from objectless, subjective, aestheticizing religiosity, which modern aestheticizing over-refinement is not averse to having fun with, like a piquant sauce of moods. Religion is not my creation, otherwise it is not a religion at all; it convinces with the power of fact, moreover, with greater persuasiveness than any facts of external reality, for example, the sensation of this table, this wall, this noise. Therefore, the reality of God cannot be eliminated from religion, just as the objectivity of beauty cannot be eliminated from art: God exists - outside of me, but also for me - apart from my subjectivity, but also communicating with it... This is not only an analytical judgment derived from the concept of religion, but at the same time a religious synthetic judgment a priori. ESI, - this in religion comes before analysis, and together as the subject of analysis. In the face of this ESI, in front of a synthetic religious judgment a priori, of course, the so-called. “proof of the existence of God.” They can have a certain significance (whatever it may be) in philosophy, in speculative theology, generally outside the proper field of religion, in the latter the joyful, immediate ESI reigns. Evidence of the existence of God appears only with the onset of a crisis of religious consciousness, when, for one reason or another, the sources of religious inspiration and revelation dry up or become clogged, but the faith that is called upon to say to the mountain: move to the sea has absolutely nothing to do with evidence. Of course, even on purely philosophical grounds one should reject the idea of ​​proving the existence of God, for here, obviously, there is an internal contradiction in the very formulation of the problem: by relative considerations, based on the law of causality and analysis of causal series, absolute existence is affirmed, rising above the relative and free from causality. Obviously, in the field of Kant’s experience we will not meet God, for “for science, God is a completely unnecessary hypothesis” (Laplace), and the so-called. the evidence boils down to a more or less successful postulation of God or to the disclosure of various aspects of the philosophical concept of God. The only way of real, vital knowledge of God remains religious experience. The ESI, a synthetic religious judgment a priori, is the only support of religion, without which it does not exist in the same sense in which art does not exist without beauty or morality without a sense of duty, without the distinction between good and evil. And thus religion becomes independent of ethics, aesthetics, theoretical knowledge, philosophy and science, for it has its own support, its own organ of perception. - But this assumes, I hear an objection, that the basis of religion is “psychologism,” a subjective mood, a caprice of the imagination, to which is given transcendental meaning; as psychologism or logical fetishism, the hypostatization of ideas and moods, religion is often shown out the door these days, it is given a formal challenge, it dissolves entirely into religiosity. And yet there is no right for this. Yes, religion is psychologism in the sense that it is a fact of psychological life, carried out in a specific individual psyche. But in this sense, all activities of the spirit are guilty of psychologism: isn’t cognition also a fact of mental life, isn’t morality psychology, and there is nothing easier to “explain” beauty in the sense of psychologism. And yet, if here we distinguish between a genetic and a systematic point of view, and separate its meaning and significance from a fact, then exactly the same thing should take place in religion. And here we distinguish the subjective religious process from its transcendental characteristics and affirm not only the psychological originality of religion (this would mean breaking open doors, because no one denies this yet), but also the independent “ability of religious judgment.” In religion, the human spirit comprehends what it does not comprehend either in science, or in ethics, or in aesthetics (although each of them separately can point the way to religion, and indeed does this in its own way). So, to answer the preliminary and general question, how is religion possible? We answer: religion is the recognition of the Divine and connection with Him; it is possible thanks to the religious giftedness of man, the presence of a religious organ that perceives the Divine and His influence. Without this organ, the magnificent and colorful development of religions and religions that we observe in the history of mankind, as well as its originality, would not have been possible. 4 Every genuine religion feels its objectivity and relies on it - it deals with the Divine, pronounce ESI to Him; psychologism is only a “religion of moods,” i.e. religiosity, powerless to rise to religion and shining with alien, reflected light. GOD is the main content and main “category” of religion. To avoid misunderstandings, let us add that we take the concept of “deity, god” in the broadest and most indefinite sense, embracing various religions, as a formal category applicable to all possible contents. For the transcendental characterization of religion at this stage, it is still indifferent whether a person worships a wooden block, connecting his faith in the divine with it, or the Christian trinitarian God: the essential feature that establishes the nature of religion is the objective nature of this worship, associated with a sense of the transcendence of the deity. This quality, we think, is satisfied by all historical religions, for such is the nature of religion in general. In this sense, godless religion is a conlradictio in adjecto, for the essence of religion consists in recognizing that God exists, i.e., that behind the immanent, given world, there exists another, transcendental, divine world, which becomes accessible and tangible in religion: “religion within the limits of reason alone,” i.e. immanent, the religion of subjective idealism, is not a religion at all, but only one of its many counterfeits and surrogates. However, I can already hear the usual objection in such cases: an atheistic religion is possible and exists, which does not affirm God, but non-existence, nothingness, and this religion has global significance and counts hundreds of millions of followers: this is Buddhism. Not being a specialist in Buddhism, from my acquaintance with the popular literature to which supporters of this opinion usually refer, I get a different impression: firstly, that folk, exoteric Buddhism, to which this religion actually owes its spread, is by no means limited to one “nonsense,” but contains elements of concrete polytheism, even fetishism; secondly, and this is the most important thing, Buddhist nothingness, non-existence, nirvana, the unity of indifference (tat twam asi - this is that) do not at all represent a purely negative concept, but are quite suitable for our general definition of the Divine. For this nothing is not a round zero, but an extremely positive quantity, precisely what exists behind the removal of the veil of Maya, which obscures our vision with the world of phenomena immanent to us, and this positive nothing constitutes the true, albeit transcendental reality for us, in relation to which a typically religious attitude is established. Therefore, even this religion is not guilty of closed subjectivism, immanentism and psychologism, no matter how meager its negative concept of God may be. 5 2. Transcendent and immanent A pair of correlative concepts: transcendental - immanent, plays a significant role in defining religion. These concepts are extremely polysemantic; The entire history of philosophical thought can be presented as the history of these concepts, or as the history of the problem of the transcendent. Obviously, it is necessary to agree on their meaning. Immanent is what is contained within a given closed circle of consciousness; what is beyond this circle is transcendental or does not exist within these limits. However, the transcendent is not nothing, a round zero, because the immanent would not recognize itself as immanent, self-closed, limited without this boundary. The transcendent is at least a certain border region for the immanent, a limit. In a certain sense, any transsubjective reality can be considered (epistemologically) transcendental to consciousness: the external world, an alien self, Mount Elbrus, the Caspian Sea, any unrealized possibility of new experience. Whatever philosophical refinements this definition may be subjected to, practically, in the direct feeling of life, a certain measure of immanence, actual and potential, is given. Receiving new impressions from life, whether it be the Arctic Ocean or the island of Ceylon, Eskimos or Zulus, Brazilian butterflies or crows, the Big Dipper or the sun - in all this a person feels himself in an immanent world, united in all its diversity. For him, this is his own world, and for immanent self-consciousness the only world, as a qualified coherence of being. There is a special cosmic feeling, usually dull and dull, but speaking loudly when irritated. Is this “world” the only one, and its immanence is absolutely closed, or are there other “worlds” that in their transcendence embrace our immanence and - oh, horror! - bursting into it? As the ocean envelops the globe, Earthly life is surrounded by dreams... Night will come, and with sonorous waves The element hits its shore. Are there other worlds, is there anything transcendental at all? This cannot be answered with speculation or immanent experience; this can only be answered with new experience, expansion and transformation of experience, assuming, of course, that our cosmic being recognizes with a special, completely indefinable and irreducible feeling the region of another world “supernatural”. Here begins the realm of “mysticism,” as well as the path of “occultism,” “the science of how to achieve knowledge of the higher worlds” (Steiner). All occultism is an expansion of the immanent towards the hitherto transcendental, and man, transforming himself, himself becomes a being of another world, precisely the one that he cognizes. However, since “spiritual knowledge” is, in fact, knowledge, i.e. methodically carried out development of problems, refinement of observations, enrichment, improvement, ordering of experience, as it relates to the field of knowledge in general, immanent in this world. The “higher worlds,” which “spiritual knowledge” teaches us to achieve, are, strictly speaking, our own world, perceived only more widely and deeply; and no matter how far we go in such knowledge, no matter how high we climb the ladder of “initiations,” it still remains within the boundaries of our world, immanent to it. What is comprehended here is transcendental only epistemologically, i.e. due to our limitations, and not in essence (just as trigonometry is transcendental to us until we have learned it, or rather, until it has not yet been awakened in our consciousness: the immanent nature of mathematical knowledge in this sense was so forcefully indicated by Plato in his Phaedo). On the path of occult knowledge, like any knowledge in general, with constant and endless deepening into the realm of the divine in the world, it is impossible, however, to meet God; there is infinity in it - bad in the religious sense, i.e. leading away from God, because it does not bring us closer to Him. And this is the deep difference between the occult and religious paths, which can, under certain conditions, become the opposite, and in any case cannot be mixed, replaced, given out one after the other, as is often done now. Thus, although the immanent: “world” or “I”, macrocosm and microcosm, and within itself has stages of relative transcendence, given, but not yet given, nevertheless it is opposite to the transcendent, as such, Transcendent ϰατ’ έξοϰήν, as a religious category, 6 does not belong to the immanent: “world” and “I”, although it concerns him. There is no path to methodical ascent to it (for the path of religious achievement does not have knowledge in mind and is not guided by cognitive interest), it is beyond the reach of a person, one can strive and strive for it, but one cannot go systematically, methodically. The path of religion in this sense is necessarily the path of miracle and grace. God is Transcendent. He is super-peaceful or super-peaceful. He is the only and genuine Non-I, and since the I (Fichtean) includes everything, the whole world, He is also the Non-World, and this Non-I is by no means supposed to be our own I, as in Fichte, and is not in this sense a sub-I, but is an absolute and genuine non-I, i.e. super-I, higher-I. This basic polarity of religious consciousness, the tense opposition of the transcendental and the immanent, can be expressed in different terms: God and the world, God and nature, God and man, God and I and under. Between the world and God lies an absolute, insurmountable distance for the world, which, if overcome, is irregular, discontinuous, free, miraculous, grace-filled. Every immanence of the Transcendent, the touch of the Divine, is an act, truly miraculous and free, an act of mercy and love, but not of law and necessity. God, as the Transcendent, is infinitely, absolutely distant and alien to the world, there are and cannot be any natural, methodical paths to Him, but that is why He, in His condescension, becomes infinitely close, is the closest, the most intimate, the most internal, the most immanent in us, is closer to us than we ourselves: 7 God is outside of us and God is in us, the absolutely transcendent becomes absolutely immanent. That is why there is not and cannot be any “spiritual knowledge" based on a method for knowing God (and not just the divine). For before absolute distance, before infinity, every finite value and every path is destroyed: God can send His Angel to Balaam’s donkey, scorch with fire and light the appearance of His accursed sinner, can overtake His persecutor on the way to Damascus and thus no less remain inaccessible to the most intense methodological efforts. For God is Miracle and Freedom, and all knowledge is a method, a necessity. By saying this, we only deny the obligatory nature of the vision of God for those who seek Him. But the search for God, the preparation of oneself, the revelation of the divine in oneself is accomplished by human effort, which God expects from us - “The Kingdom of God is forced by force.” All asceticism testifies to this. It is possible that in a certain era of human life or for a certain spiritual structure, both philosophy and “spiritual knowledge” turn out to be prepared in this way. However, only the Transcendent above the world, recognized in religious experience, opens the eyes to the transcendent in the world, in other words, only the direct feeling of God makes it possible to see the divine in the world, to cognize the world as the revelation of God, and teaches us to comprehend the transcendent in the immanent, to perceive the world as God becoming and revealing. The logic of religious consciousness requires that God be found as an absolute non-world, and the world as an absolute non-God, in order to then see the world in God and God in the world. (Of course, we are not talking about a chronological, but a transcendentalological relationship.) The same world appears before us either as a mechanism, monstrous in its evil infinity, deafly silent about its meaning, or as a revelation of the secrets of the Divine, as a source of knowledge of God. And knowledge of the world - whether it be natural science (in the broadest, comprehensive sense of the word) or “spiritual knowledge” - in the light of faith in God receives a completely different meaning. The decisive moment remains the meeting with God in the human spirit, the contact of the transcendent with the immanent, the act of faith. God exists, that is what is reflected in the human heart, the poor, small, childish human heart; God eats - the sky, the earth, the abysses of the world sing; God exists, the abysses of human consciousness and creativity respond. Glory to Him! If the main given of the religious in general is the transcendental, then the main form of religious knowledge ϰατ’ έξοϰήν is prayer. Prayer still remains insufficiently understood and appreciated in its religious and “epistemological” meaning, as a source of religious experience. What is prayer in its transcendental composition? first of all, the aspiration of all the spiritual forces of man, the entire human personality, towards the Transcendent; every prayer (of course, sincere and ardent, and not just external) carries out the command: transcende te ipsum. In it, a person makes an effort to get out of himself: in prayer, the transcendent becomes an object of human aspiration, as such, as God, non-world, non-man, something absolutely otherworldly. And at the same time, when the prayer is “heard”, when it is ardent and inspired, when its aspiration is achieved - to touch the Transcendent, to breathe with it, then it contains sufficient and even the only possible confirmation of the existence of the Transcendent and His condescension to people: it receives the Transcendent as immanent, at which it becomes co-inherent in the name of God, by which the Transcendent is invoked. The name of God is, as it were, the suppression of two worlds, transcendental in the immanent, and therefore “name-glorification,” in addition to its general theological meaning, is in some way a transcendental condition of prayer, constituting religious experience. For God is experienced experientially in prayer, the heart of which is the invocation of the Transcendent, the naming of Him, and He, as it were, confirms this naming, recognizes this name as His own, not just responding to it, but also really being present in it. A religious genius is certainly and necessarily a great man of prayer, and, in essence, the art of prayer alone is taught by all Christian asceticism, which has as its highest goal unceasing (“self-propelled”) prayer, the “Jesus Prayer” or “smart work,” 8 i.e. the ceaseless search for the transcendental Divinity by the immanent consciousness. He prayed to the Lord, often and for a long time, sometimes joyfully and solemnly (“I praise Thee, Father of heaven and earth”), sometimes intensely and painfully (Gethsemane Prayer), and he taught the Lord’s prayer to his disciples (as John taught his). The thunderous fact of prayer, both in Christian and in all religions, must finally be understood in terms of its philosophical significance. In the ability to pray, a person has, as it were, a special organ of religious perception, its tentacles. It corresponds to the sense of beauty or the ability of aesthetic judgment in aesthetics and the moral will in ethics. It cannot, however, be confined to any particular aspect of the psyche, for it is connected with the very basis of the human personality in its indivisible whole. Where there is no prayer, there is no religion. 9 Moreover, one should not confuse prayer with its theosophical surrogates: “concentration, meditation, intuition,” which, after all, deal not with God, but with the world, immerse a person not in the Transcendent, but in the immanent, they want to replace God with the divine - deception or self-deception. Moreover, in the occult path, the goal of ascent is always the nearest hierarchical level, in the order of “evolution.” Prayerful boldness - and this is the miracle and grace of prayer - goes straight to the throne of the Most High, bypassing all the “hierarchies”. Turning to the saints for help is done not as intermediate hierarchies filling the gap between man and God (for this abyss is unfillable by any “evolutionary” process and by any hierarchical ascent), but only as to those close to us and, together with us, the forces that stand before the throne of the Lord. The creature of God, stagnant in sins and darkness, boldly speaks directly to the Lord in prayer, and the Lord deigns this boldness. And all the “hierarchies,” as far as they matter in prayer, shine only with the reflected light of the Sun of suns. This is the prayer. Anyone who wants to examine religion in its “transcendental” characteristics with an unprejudiced and truly critical eye must ask himself: what is prayer? And, if he does not succumb to the crafty temptation of ratio ignava et obscura and does not declare all this to be psychologism or psychopathism, and does not brush it off with a dismissive gesture, then he will ask himself: “how is prayer possible”? However, the critic Kant, lege artis, did not want to ask about this, declaring the prayer “Abgötterei”,.., Afterdienst", etc. He was followed by Fichte, who saw in prayer only the humiliation of human dignity. In comparison with such a lack of religious taste, it is impossible not to note greater insight in Hegel, who in the “Philosophy of Religion” gives a high assessment of the meaning of “cult”, and, of course, it included prayer, although its general point of view of radical immanentism, of course, was not conducive to understanding the constitutive significance of prayer for religion. The uniqueness of religion is based on the fact that religion has its own way of identifying the Divine, an organ of the transcendent, its own identity, or, if we extend the concept of experience to the area of ​​religious life, as James did, its own special experience. “The heart has its own laws, which the mind does not know,” said Pascal, referring to this special nature of religious evidence and certainty. Usually this religious recognition is called faith, which therefore receives such central importance in the epistemology of religion: analysis of the nature of faith is a kind of “criticism of religious reason.” To evaluate the meaning of faith, one must first of all accept that faith, although it does not submit to the categories of logical, discursive knowledge, is not thereby reduced to the level of subjective belief, taste or whim, for such an interpretation contradicts the very essence of faith: it would be an unbelieving faith. In its own way, it is as objective as knowledge. “Is there a God?” “God lives in my soul.” "No, is there a God? He is in my soul." I cite this dialogue (which actually took place in 1903 in Stuttgart between me and P. B. Struve) as characteristic of posing the question of faith. The faith on which religion is based cannot be limited to the subjective mood, “God in the soul,” it asserts that God exists, as a transcendent thing, is outside of me and only therefore is in me. 10 In faith, it is not man who creates God, as unbelief says (Feuerbach), but God reveals himself to man, and therefore man finds God in himself or himself in God. Faith from the objective side is a revelation, in its content depending as little on the subjective mood as on the construction of science, and is only distorted by subjectivism. 11 But is it not, the voice of skepticism is heard, that this objectivity of faith is an illusion, a hallucination, a psychologism? But in this case, isn’t it, let’s ask a cross-question, the same illusion of this sea that I see, this noise of it that I hear, this blue of the sky that I contemplate? Of course, it is possible to admit that I may be mistaken in my sensory experience, it is possible that it is not the sea or its noise, but it just seemed to me, and that there is in reality no beauty, and I was mistaken, but I can be convinced of this only by relying on sensory or aesthetic perception, correcting and deepening it, but no one can weaken the immediate power and persuasiveness of my impression with logical arguments. In the same way, the arguments of reason cannot destroy the immediate evidence of faith as an independent source of religious perception; it can be extinguished, weakened, but not dissuaded. This was also reflected in the use of words in the Russian language, which calls religion faith. You cannot drive faith out of faith. Reason accepts as truth only what can be proven, discovered as a necessary link in a causal connection. Logical necessity is the basis of knowledge. Faith is the path of knowledge without evidence, outside logical knowledge, outside the law of causality and outside its persuasiveness. Faith is a hiatus in logic, a crazy somersault: “be foolish in order to be wise” (I Cor. 3:18), it says to man. Faith is free from the yoke of rationality (I don’t want to say reason, for it is an expression of higher rationality); reason despises, at best ignores and does not understand faith. Such a situation would be unbearable and would completely split and weaken our consciousness if faith and reason had the same task, the same object. But, in reality, this is not the case: what can be believed in, cannot be known, goes beyond the limits of knowledge, and what can be known cannot and should not be believed. Who believes in the multiplication tables or the Pythagorean theorem? they know her. And who knows God, including Him among the subjects of scientific knowledge? In Hero one believes and knows by faith. Faith, according to the definition of the Apostle Paul, is “confidence in the invisible as seen, in the expected and hoped for as present.” That which does not exist and cannot be given for rational knowledge, faith can know and is accessible to it. This implies a practical maxim: everything that can become the subject of knowledge must be knowable. Faith is not at odds with knowledge; on the contrary, it often merges with it, passes into it: although it is “the announcement of things that are hoped for, the proof of things unseen” (Heb. 2:1), but what is hoped for finally becomes reality, the invisible becomes visible. Faith in this sense is an anticipation of knowledge: credo ut intelligam, although now not based on sufficient grounds: credo quia absurdum. Faith always jumps over the law of sufficient reason, logical self-accountability: its reasons are insufficient, or completely absent, or are clearly exceeded by conclusions. And yet this does not at all mean that faith is completely indifferent to this unfoundedness of itself: it is animated by the hope of becoming knowledge, of finding sufficient grounds for itself. 12 Anticipation of possible experience and exceeding the grounds does not at all mean neglecting them. In faith there is freedom, but there is no arbitrariness at all, faith has its own “lawfulness". And, first of all, faith never arises without some, although for the approval of its content and insufficient, but for its origin, sufficient experience or knowledge in the objects of faith. Faith in God is born from the inherent feeling of God, knowledge of God and, just as an electric car cannot be charged with one lecture on electricity, but at least the weakest charge is necessary, so faith is born not from the formulas of the catechism, but from an encounter with God in religious experience, on the path of life. And faith believes and hopes precisely in the expansion and deepening of this experience, which constitutes the object of faith, both invisible and hoped for. But man himself must make this effort, this aspiration, therefore faith is a life task, a feat, for it can always become colder or fiery, poorer or deeper. And therefore the object of faith—its dogmatic content—always exceeds the actual religious experience. It is the greatest misconception to think (together with the Doukhobors, Quakers and related imantidogmagic and anarchic movements in mysticism) that only the real content of existing religious experience or personal revelation constitutes the subject of faith, while any tradition, written or oral, liturgical or ritual, as such already contradicts living faith. Those who reason in this way under the pretext of mystics completely eliminate faith for the sake of empirical religious evidence; with this peculiar mystical positivism (which, however, most often turns out to be illusionism), the feat of faith, the effort of faith, the task of faith, in a word, faith itself, and, consequently, hope and love inextricably linked with it, are completely eliminated, the place of which is taken by outright conceit. On this basis, one can and should learn faith, and right faith, right dogmas, “Orthodoxy” is the task of religious life, and not just its empirical reality. Of course, if these dogmas remain at the level of abstract propositions that do not have persuasiveness for the mind, but also do not receive the vital force of faith, then this is just dry straw. But they acquire vital significance because they become the subject of active and living faith, hope and love, the regulator of religious life. Therefore, the content of faith always exceeds personal religious experience; faith is daring and hope. (Below, in connection with the doctrine of dogma, we will also have to touch upon the question of the meaning of tradition for faith). As elsewhere, substitutions are possible here too. Faith is easily replaced by unbelieving dogmatism, i.e. irrational rationalism, the product of laziness of mind, inertia and cowardice of thought. The fight against knowledge under the pretext of faith stems precisely from this attitude towards dogma. Faith does not limit the mind, which itself must know its limits and not stop where it can still walk on its own feet. Although the proper domain of faith is the over-knowable, transcendental Divinity, it also extends to that which is not fundamentally inaccessible to knowledge, but inaccessible for a given moment: such are events that have not yet occurred, but are about to occur, the future in general, or past and lying events beyond human knowledge - the past. Finally, the present is also accessible to faith, since the matter concerns its laws inaccessible to reason. 13 However, all private beliefs related to the area of ​​the immanent, here world, stem from the central content of faith, are its applications and ramifications; and the main, in essence, the only subject of faith remains one thing: ESI, “But it is fitting for him who comes to God to believe as He is, and He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). And that which constitutes the proper object of faith, by its very nature, can become knowledge. Faith is a function of human freedom; it does not force, as the laws of nature force us. The external compulsion of the truths of faith would not correspond to the basic requirements of religious consciousness, and it would not correspond to the dignity of the Divine, who honors our freedom, to rape our personality, even with logical violence, the violence of knowledge. Knowledge belongs to “this world”, is immanent to it, religion is based, as we know, on the polarization of consciousness, an intense sense of the opposition between the transcendent and the immanent, God-consciousness and world-consciousness. Religion marks not only the connection, but also the distance of man from God. In this sense, she herself is a symptom of the world’s sinful falling away from God, of a damaged consciousness of God. Faith is a function not of any separate aspect of the spirit, but of the entire human personality in its depth, in the inseparability and integrity of all the powers of the spirit. In this sense, religion is a highly personal matter, it is a constant creativity. It cannot be communicated externally, almost mechanically, like knowledge; it can only be infected by the mysterious and unsearchable influence of one person on another: this is the secret of the influence of religious personalities - prophets, saints, the God-man himself in His earthly life. God does not impose himself and does not force. He “knocks on the door” of the human heart to see if it will open, but He, in all His omnipotence, cannot open it by force, for this would mean destroying freedom, i.e. the person himself. Only in the kingdom of the next century, when “God will be in every way in everyone,” will become immanent to the world, and therefore the very possibility of religion, as a damaged consciousness of God, will be abolished, only then will human freedom no longer be given the ability to know or not know God. Faith will become obvious, like a natural necessity, and all that remains for freedom will be to want God or not to want, to love Him or be hostile to Him. It follows that faith is given only to those who seek it. Anyone who is completely satisfied with this world and does not hunger spiritually does not understand faith at all and is organically alien to it. This alienation from faith is one of the striking features of our era, thanks to which some, coarser minds, see in faith a kind of mental illness, others - “psychologism,” subjectivism, mood, but do not want to take into account the epistemological significance of faith as a special source of knowledge, and see in religious experience only material for “religious psychology” or psychiatry. This state of modern humanity has its own spiritual reasons, but thanks to it it is now difficult to be understood or even just listened to on the issue of faith. However, if faith is born only to those who seek it (and, moreover, not always: the modern spirit is characterized precisely by the loss of the ability to find faith, but not to seek it, for our era is full of searches), does this not really mean that faith is psychologism and subjectivism? But does this give grounds for such skepticism? After all, even scientific or philosophical truth is not revealed to people alien to mental life, and artistic creativity is inaccessible to people deprived of aesthetic perception. Faith is not only born in freedom of quest, but is also, so to speak, nourished by freedom. Therefore, it is dynamic, because it does not give once and for all certain knowledge, like worldly knowledge, but has varying intensity, from simple probability to complete evidence, from the main post of an idea to an overwhelming reality. According to a comparison often repeated in asceticism, God is like fire, and the soul is like metal, which can remain cold, alien to fire, but, when heated, can become as if one with it. Faith has its degrees and ages, its ebbs and flows. Everyone knows this from their own experience, and this is also evidenced in religious writing. 14 In religious life there is no stagnation and immobility, there are no inalienable achievements and dead points, here everything is in motion, up or down, forward or backward, and therefore there is no place for dead, calm dogmatism. So, faith has two sides: subjective aspiration, the search for God, religious thirst, the question of man, and objective revelation, the feeling of the Divine world, the answer of God. In faith, God descends to man, a ladder is established between heaven and earth, and a two-sided, divine-human act is performed. And this objective content of faith has complete certainty for the believer; it is his religious knowledge, however, obtained through revelation. Faith presupposes mystery as its object, and at the same time as its source. This is not the area of ​​the mysterious to which superstitious people, often alien to faith, are greedy; it is not an area of ​​mysteries or secrets that are kept from the uninitiated ("Geheim wissenschaft" or "secret knowledge", for which, strictly speaking, there is in principle no secret); this is a mystery absolutely inaccessible to man, transcendental to him, and therefore necessarily presupposing revelation. “God lives in an unapproachable light, which no one has seen, and that no man can see below” (1 Tim. 6:1b). “God is seen nowhere, the Only Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, that confession (John 1:18).” He “showed the Father,” “revealed His Name to men” (John 17:6). The mystery is the transcendental; it can be revealed only to the extent that the transcendental enters the immanent, an act of self-discovery, the revelation of the transcendental. 15 Revelation enters as a necessary epistemological element of faith. Knowledge, no matter how deep and wide it may be, is ultimately self-knowledge. When a person cognizes the world, he essentially cognizes himself, for he himself is this entire world, a microcosm. And at the same time, there is no fundamental difference between the most elementary act of cognition and its latest achievements. Knowledge is strictly monistic, within its limits, which are at the same time the limits of the immanent, epistemologically there is no place for faith, it has no ontological basis here. As far as the transcendental is the “transcendental object of religion,” faith is its irreducible and insurmountable basis. The transcendent is recognized as such only by faith. The transcendental always lies beyond the limits of knowledge, outside it, on top of it. It is therefore a mistake to think that faith corresponds only to the childhood state of religious consciousness, and in a more mature age it is replaced and supplanted by knowledge - philosophy and science (albeit “spiritual”), gnosis in general. The relationship between faith and gnosis belongs to the most subtle issues of religious epistemology. Faith does not deny gnosis, on the contrary, it generates it, fertilizes it: “love the Lord your God with all your heart yours, and with all your soul (i.e., will), and with all your understanding (i.e., gnosis),” (Matthew 22:37) and, of course, the spirit, ignited by faith, will bring its fire and light to all areas of its creativity. However, the motive, nature, orientation of faith and gnosis are quite different. Faith is an act of freedom, madness, love and courage: 16 it is throwing the end of the thread of life into the sky, in the confidence that it will hang there without any strengthening. Faith deals with the unattainable: “believe what your heart says, there are no guarantees from heaven.” Faith is a feat of the heart, of believing love. “Deposits” and guarantees are not needed, they would contradict its essence, for it wants only God, loves only God, rejects the world, i.e. of all that is given, for the sake of the ungiven, the transcendental. It is the highest and final sacrifice of a person to God - of himself, his mind, will, heart, his whole being, the whole world, all evidence, and is a completely selfless feat, giving everything and demanding nothing. This is a person’s love for God exclusively and for the sake of God himself, this is salvation from himself, from his givenness, from his immanence, this is self-hatred, which is love for God. This is a silent, pleading, searching gesture, this is one aspiration: sursum corda, sursum, sursum, sursum, excelsior! This is not a method of knowledge with its correct, calculated step, this is madness for this world, and God wants it. And this sacrificial act invisibly taking place in the soul, this continuous sacrifice of faith, which says to the motionless stone mountain: throw yourself into the sea, speaks not for experiment, but because this stoneness and the immobility of the world do not exist for it - such faith is a primary, irreplaceable act, and only it gives religion the aura of a tragic, sacrificial, free surrender of oneself to God. And the heroes of faith are great precisely because of this sacrifice, the immensity of their bestowal. And St. commemorates them. the apostle Paul in his hymn of faith (Heb. ch. 2). They are considered saints by the Church. And only this sacrificial death is followed by Sunday, as night is followed by day: the joy of faith, its victory, the rediscovery of one’s lost soul. Outside of this moment one is not born into religion: it may be possible to be a philosopher, theologian, mystic, gnostic, occultist, but at the same time... not believe in God without experiencing this free surrender of oneself. In the history of philosophy, the concept of faith was sometimes given an expanded epistemological meaning; this name is used to call any intuition that establishes transsubjective existence, whether of the external world or of someone else’s self. The meaning of faith in this sense was put forward in a polemic with Kant already by Jacobi, who considered the realm of faith not only the existence of the divine world, but also the empirical one, and thus profaned or, so to speak, secularized the concept of faith. 17 This formulation of the question resulted from Kant’s doctrine of experience, understood as subjectivism or illusionism. In order for conceptual schemes to be filled with vital content, and for real and not imaginary fish to be caught in the net of the mind, it is necessary that knowledge has an organ of such identification, a sense of reality, which is not decomposed into individual signs of a thing, but connects them in its existence. This empirical sense of reality, based on intuition, is sometimes called faith or “mystical empiricism.” 18 So, for example, Vl. Soloviev, in his first theory of knowledge, developed in the “Critique of Abstract Principles,” speaks of faith as establishing the existence of an object and consolidating empirical evidence and their logical connection: an act of faith is present in every cognitive act.19 A similar point of view is developed in his epistemological works by Prince S. N. Trubetskoy (especially in “Foundations of Idealism”). Thanks to the terminological confusion, it may seem that in both cases - if we mean the intuition of empirical reality, and as religious faith - we are talking about the same thing. Meanwhile, strictly speaking, between religious faith and mystical empiricism "there is just as little in common as there is between faith and knowledge in general, in the composition of which intuition is, indeed, a completely irreducible element. It is true that any reality, whether it be someone else's self or the external world, is established not rationally, but intuitively, and the intuition of reality has roots in the sense of effectiveness, not epistemological, but praxeological. 20 For reason (“pure reason”) this certification is “mystical”, established by “faith,” but this only shows the conventionality and insufficiency of the rational understanding of knowledge, for the root of knowledge is pragmatic and the concept of empiricism must already include in advance the sign of effectiveness, sensing things and distinguishing idealities from realities (Kant’s “thalers” in the imagination and in your wallet). This praxeological motive establishes an existential judgment. One can, of course, call this intuition both faith and “mystical” empiricism, but one must not forget the main difference that exists between this intuition and religious faith: such intuition remains entirely within the limits of empirically given reality, the region of “this world.” She is subject to all the compulsion of this reality, its necessity; It does not at all depend on my will, on my personality, whether I “believe” or “do not believe” in the existence of this table: it is enough for me to touch it or knock on it for the table to appear before me in all its indisputable reality. Likewise, it does not at all depend on me whether to believe or not to believe in the existence of the person who wrote this essay, which is unsympathetic to me. And this revelation of the external world (in Jacobi’s unfortunate and false expression) is equally compulsory for any normally organized consciousness. On the contrary, religious faith confirms the existence of another, transcendent reality and our connection with it. Consequently, its object is qualitatively different. It is recognized not by the coercion of external feelings, not by force, but by the free, creative aspiration of the spirit, the search for God, the intense relevance of the soul in this direction. In other words, the element of freedom and personality, i.e. creativity, cannot be eliminated from religious faith: I appear here not as an abstract, average, impersonal, “normally” constituted representative of the species, but as a concrete, unique, individual person. Faith requires love, strong-willed concentration, and the efforts of the entire person. My faith is not a passive perception, but an active coming out of myself, stripping myself of the weight of this world. If we look at how people who walked the path of faith, for example, Blessed, describe their spiritual struggle. Augustine (Confession), Thomas Carlyle (S. Resartus), Pascal (Thoughts), L. Tolstoy (Confession), Dostoevsky (Pro and contra in “The Brothers Karamazov”), etc., if we look into our own soul, yearning for God amid the darkness of doubt, mental weakness and heaviness, we will understand what relevance faith requires, and not only in the first moments of its origin, but also every moment of its existence. Its tremulous fire is always ready to weaken and go out, and only at the peaks, among the ascetics of the faith, does it burn with an even, fearless light. That is why, generally speaking, it is so difficult to determine the moment of belief or loss of faith, because, strictly speaking, belief is always and continuously accomplished, it is a single act extended over time, and unbelief always lurks like a dark quagmire, every wrong move, every hesitation on the path of faith. 21 What has been said provides a basis for judging the limits of religious gnosis, or in general about the Gnostic direction in religion, which has always existed, but currently manifests itself with the greatest force on the one hand in metaphysical rationalism, and on the other in the so-called. theosophical movement, more precisely in modern occultism. Metaphysical Gnosticism received its most extreme expression in the philosophy of Hegel. Hegelian panlogism is at the same time the most radical immanentism that the history of thought knows, for in it human thinking, having gone through the purifying “Phenomenological” path, becomes no longer human, divine, even the deity itself. If logic, according to the well-known expression “Wissenschaft der Logik”, is “die Wahrheit wie sie ohne Hüllen, an und für sich selbst ist” and in this sense “die Darstellung Gottes ist, wie er in seinem ewigen Wesen vor der Erschaffung der Natur und eines endlichen Geistes” ist”, 22 if dialectics is a fairly reliable bridge leading a person to a super-human existence, to the absolute spirit, then it is obvious that the world is this very spirit, at only different stages of its dialectical self-development. Therefore, religion with its imperfect forms of “idea” and faith is only a stage in the development of his self-awareness, which must be surpassed, moreover, precisely in philosophy. Hence Hegel’s well-known view, expressed by him already in the Phenomenology of Spirit, that philosophy is higher than religion, because for it, in the perfect and adequate form of logical thinking, the secrets of God and the world are known, more precisely, it is the self-consciousness of God. Here, however, it is not yet asserted that man is God (as Hegel’s disciple Feuerbach proclaimed); on the contrary, man must overcome his empirical humanity, strip himself of himself, becoming the eye of the world mind, the absolute spirit, merging with his self-thinking. But at the same time, the process of this phenomenological purification and panlogical ascent is characterized by continuity and coherence at all stages; it can be carried out in all directions, just as from any point on a circle we can go through the entire circle and return to the starting point, or from the center we can draw a radius to all points of the circle. There is no polarity of the transcendental and the immanent, there is no place for superlogical revelation, superknowledge or ignorance of faith, its “docta ignorantia” (in the words of Nicholas of Cusa), there is no mystery here either in heaven or on earth, for man holds in his hands the beginning of the closing chain of the absolute, or rather he himself is its link. Hegel's panlogism should be understood only in the sense that for him knowledge, world- and self-knowledge, is at the same time knowledge of God. Religion, the connection between a person and a deity, does not mean for him a connection between two worlds, but only expresses a certain stage in the development of the spirit. 23 In this respect, the religious philosophy of occultism is undoubtedly related to Hegelian immanentism. The main idea of occultism, namely, that the area of possible and accessible experience to a person, both quantitatively and qualitatively, can be deepened and expanded through appropriate mental training, “development of higher abilities,” does not in itself necessarily lead to immanentism, Occultism is only a special area of knowledge, qualitatively different from faith, 24 but all knowledge is self-knowledge, i.e., immanent. Man is considered here as representing a combination of several shells or “bodies” and belonging as such to several worlds or “planes”. However, in connection with this, another thought slips through: moving from one lower world to a higher one, a person ultimately reaches the divine world. For theosophical Gnosticism, for the “Ceisleswissenschaft”, everything, God and the world, is fundamentally knowable, just like for Hegelianism. There is no place left for faith and revelation here, and even if one can speak about the revelations of the higher spheres in the sense of “initiation,” then this initiation, expanding the area of ​​experience, does not qualitatively cross it, for these hierarchies also belong to the “world,” to the area of ​​the immanent. We must distinguish between the expansion of our experience, which opens up new worlds to us (it makes no difference whether it is a world discovered by a telescope or astral clairvoyance), and its breakthrough, which is contact with a principle transcendental to the world, i.e. with God. Entry into new planes of the world, of course, breaks the previous limitations, it is destructive for crude materialism (although, perhaps, it puts in its place materialism that is only more refined), but apparently sometimes it can be (and occultism, in fact, is) atheistic, since, expanding the world, it closes it even more within itself. In general, the path of occult and even mystical achievement of the world is by no means necessarily a religious path, although it can be combined with it. Theosophy claims (in its more frank confessions) to be a replacement for religion, its Gnostic surrogate, and at the same time turns into a vulgar pseudoscientific mythology. It exploits the mystical curiosity, the Luciferic inquisitiveness of the cold, unloving mind. Communication with beings of other worlds, if it is really possible and accomplished, in itself not only does not bring one closer to God, but can, on the contrary, extinguish religious faith in the soul. The principle of hierarchism, which is persistently put forward here, would have basis only if God was included in the same hierarchy, was at its top, so that it would represent a real and natural ladder of ascent to God. But such a teaching is pantheistic immanentism, evolutionism, which constitutes the original sin of occultism. The world (or worlds) for him represent the real evolution of the deity himself; the deity is included here in the mechanism of the world and is accessible to discovery and comprehension in a methodical, natural way, although this requires other methods than for studying, for example, the microscopic world. In this state of affairs, occultism with its hierarchies of worlds steadily leads to polytheism, and the occult Olympus has a number of steps and gradations, to which polycosmism and polyanthropism correspond: worlds change, so does man. The present corresponds only to the present stage in the development of the earth; the previous stages of his existence are spiritually and physically different from the present; this must be said even more about subsequent world eras: man is only a link, he did not exist and he must be overcome; evolution does not lead to a superman, but from man and for man. This evolution has no end or limit; The absolute exists for this radical evolutionism only as the possibility of limitless movement, i.e. “bad infinity,” while religion deals with positive infinity, with the transcendental and absolute God, who gives us eternal life, calms us down and saves us from this heated wheel of “bad infinity,” this frantic, insatiable “evolution.” Consistent Gnosticism, despite all its predilection for the mysterious, is radical immanentism, in this it coincides with Hegelianism. Here the characteristic difference between faith and knowledge is erased: the temptation of occultism lies precisely in the complete overcoming of faith by knowledge (eritis sieut dei scientes bonum et malum, hence the cult of Lucifer, more or less common to all shades of occultism). “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29), these words of the Lord to Thomas do not reach the ears of the Gnostics; for them this is not bliss, but, at best, a childish state, a lower spiritual rank, “the faith of a coal miner.” But faith does not differ in nature between a coal miner and a philosopher. Heroes of faith, religious ascetics and saints, had different cognitive abilities and sometimes were not at all gifted in this regard, and yet this does not prevent their pure hearts from seeing God, for the path of faith, religious knowledge, lies above the path of knowledge, 25 even occult, “the wisdom of this age.” Faith is characterized by childishness, not as a lack of maturity, but as a certain positive quality: the kingdom of God belongs to children. “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as a child will not enter it” (Luke 18:17). In his “Speeches on Religion to Educated People Who Despise It,” Schleiermacher, in order to convince these “educated people,” ultimately drowned the masculine nature of religion in feminine sentimentalism. As is known, Schleiermacher's main idea is that the proper domain of religion is a feeling that is religious in nature. True, Schleiermacher’s rhetorical and vague presentation, especially with the further development of his thought, allows for various interpretations, bringing him either closer to Spinozism (Frank), or to Christian orthodoxy, from which he personally did not deviate and especially approached it in his later writings. In some places, next to the feeling, he also has intuition (Anschauung), which, however, as Pfleiderer notes, 26 disappears without consequences. But what interests us here is not the shades of Schleiermacher's teaching in its details, but its central idea - Gefühlstheologie. Let us recall the main features of Schleiermacher's teaching. Religious life, according to Schleiermacher, is the third side of life, existing next to the other two, knowledge and action, and expresses a feeling, for “this is the original area that I want to devote to religion, and, moreover, entirely to it alone... your feeling... this is your religiosity... this is not your knowledge or the objects of your knowledge, and also not your deeds and actions or various areas of your action, but only your feelings... These are exclusively the elements religion, but at the same time they all belong here; there is no feeling that would not be religious (my italics), or it testifies to a painful and damaged state of life, which should then be revealed in other areas. From here it naturally follows that, on the contrary, concepts and principles, all without exception, are in themselves alien to religion. For if they must have meaning, then they belong to knowledge, and what belongs to the latter lies in another, non-religious area of life. (Speeches on Religion, trans. S. L. Frank, p. 47) “Religion has no relation even to this knowledge (i.e., that in which “natural science ascends from the laws of nature to the highest and universal Ruler” and in which “you do not know nature without at the same time comprehending God”), its essence is comprehended without the participation of the latter. For the measure of knowledge is not the measure of piety” (35). "For religion, it is true, reflection is essential... but it is not directed... at the essence of the highest cause in itself or in its relation to the fact that there is both cause and effect at the same time; on the contrary, religious reflection is only (!) immediate consciousness that everything finite exists only in the infinite and through it, everything temporal in the eternal and through it. To seek and find this eternal and infinite in everything that lives and moves, in all growth and change, in every action, suffering, and have and to know in direct feeling life itself only as such a being in the infinite and eternal - this is what religion is... And therefore, of course, it is life in the infinite nature of the whole, in the all-one, in God, life possessing God in everything and everything in God. But it is not knowledge and cognition of either the world or God; it only recognizes such knowledge, without identifying itself with it" (36). So, feeling is the proper domain of religion. "So it (piety) asserts its own domain and its original character only by the fact that it completely goes beyond the limits of both science and practice, and only when it stands next to the latter is the general sphere of the spirit completely filled and human nature from this side is completed" (38). “True science is complete contemplation; true practice is spontaneous development and art; true religion is a feeling and taste for the 6-infinite” (39. My italics). In this sense, Schleiermacher repeatedly compares religion to music, art without words, pure moods (53, 62 – 3). “A person should not do anything out of religion, but should do and carry out everything with religion; continuously, like sacred music, religious feelings should accompany his active life and nowhere and never should he lose them.” Religion shares with music its illogicality; the concepts of true and false are not applicable to it. "Directly in religion everything is true; for how else could anything arise in it? Directly only that which has not yet passed through the concept, but has grown only in feeling" (56). Even the ideas of God and immortality, which Schleiermacher considers “elements of religion,” are not the main content of religion. For only that which is feeling and immediate consciousness can belong to religion, but God and immortality, as they are found in such teachings, are concepts (101). "So," continues Schleiermacher, can anyone say that I depicted the din of religion without God, when I precisely studied the immediate and primary existence of God in us by virtue of our feeling? Isn't God the only and highest unity? Is it not in him alone that everything private disappears? We do not claim to have God in feeling otherwise than through impressions aroused in us by the world, and only in this form could I talk about Him... anyone who denies this, from the point of view of his feeling and experience, will be an atheist" (102, op. further 103). Therefore, Schleiermacher has a bias towards adogmatism, which constitutes a conclusion from his general religious not only anti-intellectualism, but also antilogism. "What we feel and perceive in religious experiences, there is not the nature of things, but its effect on you. What you know or think about the nature of things lies far away from the realm of religion: to perceive in our life and to be inspired in these influences (of the universe) and in what they awaken in us, not individually in isolation, but in connection with the whole, everything limited not in its opposition to the other, but how? That is what religion is and what wants to go beyond these limits and, for example, penetrate deeper into; the nature and substance of things, is no longer a religion, but in some way strives to be a science... Undoubtedly, the whole essence of religion consists in feeling everything that determines our feeling in its highest unity, as something single and identical, and everything individual and special as conditioned by it, i.e. (!!) to feel our being and life as being and life in God and through God" (50 - 51). In all these definitions it is striking that the religion of feeling, based on the feeling of infinite, cosmic unity, does not at all contain the idea of ​​God, which is nevertheless constantly implied by Schleiermacher and introduced by means of "i.e.", as in the above tirade, and Spinoza's deus equation is made sive nature. But what is natural for the rationalist Spinoza is completely unacceptable for the anti-intellectualist Schleiermacher, who here makes a philosophically unjustified borrowing from his pastoral worldview, which, by the way, is generally teeming with in “Speeches on Religion.” This is masked by the undeniable personal religiosity and religious temperament of Schleiermacher, who is himself undoubtedly more religious than his philosophy, which is (like the Jacobian doctrine of faith) simply a pis aller, an attempt to save ancient piety from the onslaught of rationalism and criticism. Schleiermacher's agnosticism is nothing more than a protective coloring adopted by some animals, mimicry, or apologetics, guided by a pious desire to captivate “educated people who despise it” with religion, perhaps in an easy way. Hence all the contradictions, smoothed out rather than aggravated in these speeches. Hence the confession of faith, which, strictly speaking, is pure atheism, emotionally colored by religiosity - Haeckel, Ostwald, and the “union of monists” can easily subscribe to this confession. “The usual idea of ​​God as a separate being outside the world and behind (?) the world does not exhaust the universal subject of religion and is rarely a pure and always insufficient form of expression of religious consciousness... The true essence of religion is formed not by this, nor by any other concept, but only by the direct consciousness of the Divine, as we find the Divine equally in ourselves and in the world. Among the finite, to merge with the infinite and to be eternal in every moment - this is the immortality of religion” (110 – 11). It is impossible not to admit that Schleiermacher’s teaching bears clear features of duality, which allows him to be interpreted both as a philosopher of subjectivism in religion (as we understand him here, following Hegel), and as a philosopher of faith. The dual influences of Kant and Jacobi reflected on the young preacher, inconsistent and unreconciled. On the one hand, he shared the fear of Kant, characteristic of the era, who blocked man in the world of phenomena and proclaimed religious agnosticism or skepticism on new principles. On the other hand, he, along with many others (later Fichte) fled from Kant to the opposite extreme, to the Jacobian philosophy of faith, in which the true features of religious faith were erased by its excessively wide application in all cognitive acts. Therefore, the philosophy of feeling takes on the features of either the “Critique of Practical Reason”, in its postulates, or the teachings of Jacobi. What is interesting for us here is that side of his teaching in which he is most original, and this is his religious epistemology of feeling. And over all his “Speeches on Religion” there emanates the skeptical pantheistic confession of Faust: half-faith, half-disbelief under the pretext of unknowability. Zu sagen: glaub'ich ihn nicht? Der Allumfasser, der Allererhalter Fasst und erhält er nicht dich, mich, sich selbst?... Nenn's Glück, Herz, Liebe, Gott! Ich habe keinen Namen dafür! Name ist Schall und Rauch! If we admit that, indeed, feeling, in all its uncertainty, is the main or essential organ of religion, then this would mean not only to deprive religion of its central, sovereign significance and to place it next to and on an equal basis with science, morality, aesthetics, and in fact even below them, but, most importantly, to make religion blind sentimentality, to deprive it of words, to impose adogmatism and alogism on it. A feeling can break through, but in itself it always constitutes the music of the soul, only accompanying this or that idea, volition, in general this or that content of consciousness. Meanwhile, the intention of Schleiermacher’s teaching is precisely to assign religion to the realm of feeling in its isolated existence. Schleiermacher’s theory, expressed in modern philosophical language, is a militant psychologism, for “feeling” is affirmed here in its subjective psychological meaning, as a side of the spirit, according to Schleiermacher’s persistently repeated definition (see. below), and at the same time, here all the time it is said about the comprehension of God by feeling, in other words, an epistemological meaning is attributed to it, i.e. religious intuition, 27 namely this is a mixture of epistemological and psychological and. is now defined as psychologism. Of course, this means leaving religion in clair-obscurity, somewhere on the border of consciousness, in sweet uncertainty. But this uncertainty and illogicality of religion is a complete nonsens, an unrealizable utopia, and no matter how much Schleiermacher himself refrains from making any statements about the subject of religion, he inevitably produces, although minimal and vague, but still by no means illogical dogmatics, which brings him closer to Spinoza, then to Pietism: he alternately or immediately speaks about the feeling of the infinite, about the cosmic feeling, about the feeling of divinity (in later works he appears, as a main feature, a feeling of exclusive dependence - “das schlechtinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl”). Only the complete lack of certainty and consistency of the main point of view masks all the helplessness and, most importantly, all the irreligiousness and atheism of the Gefühlstheologie. For feeling in itself, pure feeling, is completely incapable of giving that without which there is and cannot be religion: to feel God, the connection with whom is religion. If we should see the most hopeless immanentism and psychologism anywhere, it is in Schleiermacher’s Gefühlstheologie, where religion is consciously and deliberately replaced by religiosity, “mood.” This is religious decadence, impressionism, which may appeal to many lovers of “mystical anarchism.” Schleiermacher’s “mood” is the sauce for hare stew, before the hare itself is caught, according to the well-known comparison in Dostoevsky (Shatov’s conversation with Stavrogin in Possessed). This is not naive, but refined atheism (I mean here, of course, not Schleiermacher’s personal religiosity, which is beyond doubt, but the religious philosophy of his Speeches). In general, in the history of thought, this is the limiting point of the humiliation of religion under the guise of its defense, for it is more courageous and natural to directly admit that there is no religion and that it is generally impossible, rather than hiding religion in the darkest corner of consciousness, taking advantage of its twilight. Historically, of course, the Speeches on Religion became an event and were a matter of courage and enthusiasm on the part of their author, who, however, was subject to the influence of German romanticism, and even more so of German pietism. In essence, Schleiermacherian subjectivism is only one of the varieties of Protestant subjectivism (for Protestantism in general is the victory of immanentism, and, consequently, subjectivism) and in one form or another continues to live in Protestant theology. The ego is generally manifested in her anti-dogmatism, which she confuses with anti-intellectualism and preaches under the pretext of fighting elements foreign to religion. This is, for example, the most influential and typical trend of German theology - Richlianism. According to Ritschl’s main idea, only “values” established by “judgments of value” belong to the realm of religion, and this religious pragmatism is combined with a very skeptical attitude towards dogma, considering it “metaphysics”, prohibited by Kant. In general, “mood,” “experience,” 14 understood in a completely immanent sense, dominates the religious life of Germany in the 19th century; it is enough to name two modern representatives of immanentism in religion - Troeltsch and Hermann. 28 Schleiermacher's religious alogism, which is a consequence of his immanentism, provoked angry and sharp criticism from the representative of the opposite, panlogical pole in immanentism, namely Hegel, for whom religion is covered by the area of ​​logical thinking. Hegel in his “Philosophy of Religion” subjected Schleiermacher’s teaching to severe, but in many ways fair, criticism. Hegel’s radical rationalism, of course, leads him to a complete disregard for feeling (as well as direct experience in general - remember the first chapter of “Phenomenology of Spirit”), in it he sees only subjectivity. A feeling can have the most varied and, moreover, random content: “God, if he reveals himself (ist) in feeling, has no advantage over the worst, but in the same soil, royal flowers grow next to the weeds” (Hegel’s Religionsphilosophie, Diederichs, 75). “Therefore, if the existence of God is proven in our sense, then it is as accidental as everything else to which existence can be attributed. This we call subjectivism, and in the worst sense." Feeling, according to Hegel, is common to man with the animal, which has no religion (and Hegel, of course, adds that Gott ist wesentlich im Denken, and since thinking is characteristic only of man, then religion is also characteristic of him). "Everything in man for which thought is the basis can be clothed in the form of feeling: right, freedom, morality, etc. d..., but this is not the merit of the feeling that its content is true... It is a mistake to attribute truth and goodness to the feeling” (77). Hegel's argument is reproduced and, in some respects, deepened by E. v. Hartmann in Die Religion des Geistes from the point of view of his metaphysical teaching. The main reproach that Hartmann makes to Schleiermacher's theory is religious alogism, blindness and amorphousness of naked feeling. "No matter how true it is that religious feeling constitutes the innermost grain of religious life, yet a truly religious feeling is only one that is aroused by religious ideas of objective (even relative) truth. Religion cannot exist without a religious worldview (emphasis added), and this latter without conviction in its transcendental truth (31). "In order to become a coherent truth, ideas that are a prerequisite for religious feelings must be extracted from their dark, unclear connection in feeling, correlated with each other and brought into a systematic connection - in a word, developed and processed into a religious worldview” (32). Hartmann distinguishes abuses resulting from the one-sided development of feelings in religion of three types: sensual, aesthetic and mystical. By the first, he means excesses of sensuality in religion, by the second, the replacement of serious religiosity with aestheticism, and by the third, mysticism. Hartmann's remarks regarding modern aestheticism as a symptom of religious impotence are extremely apt and fair. "It is characteristic of eras of the uncontrollable decline of a certain religion that the performances of religious art flourish here as never before under other circumstances, while the creative ability to create religious works of true greatness and real depth fades away along with the unclouded trust and unshakable strength of faith. For example, classical church music has never been performed more zealously and more captivatingly than now in our non-church times, and, moreover, this is the case precisely among non-church classes imbued with unbelief” (37). “The zealous and enjoyable pursuit of Christian art not only does not indicate a positive attitude towards its religious content, on the contrary, it testifies to such alienation and distance from its living religious content that the tendency to opposition against the art associated with it has already disappeared and has given way to an objective historical-aesthetic attitude” (41) “Therefore, an aesthetic religious feeling is not a genuine and serious religious feeling” (39), although, of course, this The auxiliary role of art for religion is not denied. Especially ardently, in accordance with his general intellectualism, Hartmann attacks mysticism, by which he means the one-sided predominance of the mystical feeling. “The mystical feeling is the most indefinite, unclear of all feelings; ineffability and ineffability, which, in the final analysis, are characteristic of every feeling, are not characteristic of any to such a degree as the mystical. Whoever is immersed in his mystical religious feeling seems to be looking into a dark abyss in which he cannot distinguish or recognize anything; or, what is the same thing, he sees a seemingly all-filling brilliance of absolute light, blinding his vision. The mystical feeling has the consciousness that it contains in itself the whole religious truth and is not mistaken in this, but it contains it exclusively as an affective feeling, therefore, as unconscious and accessible to consciousness only through the affect of feelings "(44). A religion that stops at mysticism and is indifferent to religious knowledge is defective and tends, on the one hand, to eudaimonism, to the pleasure of its own mystical ecstasy, and on the other hand, easily falls under the influence of any church orthodoxy (in Hartmann’s eyes, a mortal sin). However, this does not prevent Hartmann from believing that “the mystical and religious feeling is actually the creative principle in religion, like the aesthetic feeling in art” (44). Hartmann's general conclusion (to the chapter Die religiöse Funktion als Gefühl) is this: “The value of religious feeling lies not in the feeling as such, but in the unconscious process of motivation in which it signals as a symptom of resonance in consciousness, and the value of this process of motivation lies in the actual result which it produces” (53). Feeling, therefore, is on the threshold of religious consciousness and prepares the content of its acts; it is, so to speak, the fuel for the operation of the apparatus, but not the apparatus itself! What has been said does not, of course, exhaust the general question of the religious meaning of feeling. Here we only meant to distinguish and contrast the doctrine of feeling, as the basis of religion, with the doctrine of faith, whereby the main difference we see is in the subjectivity, formlessness, amorphism of religious feeling, its illogicality, turning into antilogicality, in its adogmatism and religious blindness. If it is fair to compare feelings in religion with music, then music is not the highest form of art and activity of the spirit, for it is wordless, meaningless, and illogical. Therefore, bringing another art that has its own word to music would mean belittling it (although this is extremely common these days). It may seem surprising that in faith we would place Kant next to Schleiermacher. However, whatever they may be in theoretical philosophy, in understanding the nature of faith they come closer. If Schleiermacher recognizes feeling in general as the domain of religion, then Kant considers moral feeling, which is the organ of faith, to be such a domain. True, the moral will is called by Kant “practical reason”, for which it establishes its own special canon, and this reason “postulates” religious truths: the existence of God, freedom and personal immortality, but no matter what name we call faith, its essence will not change from this: only she pronounces ESI, the postulates only postulate, but are powerless to affirm the existence of God, which, of course, is a matter of faith. And Kant himself says 29 “about the faith of pure reason” (no matter how contradictory this phrase is, for reason does not believe, but proves, and faith, although not contrary to reason, is beyond reason). The closeness of Kant to Schleiermacher lies in the fact that Kant is also religious, i.e. he strives to give moral feeling an illogical or, in his language, a practical character. Into the realm of concepts, i.e. “pure reason”, nothing should leak through the well of faith, which opens through practical reason. Kant falls into religious alogism, i.e. g is essentially an antilogism. It goes without saying that antilogism is a logical utopia, something impossible for the human spirit, enlightened by the light of logos, an impossible task for thinking: to reason as if God, recognized by practical reason, did not exist at all for theoretical reason. In fact, Kant, after God was found, no matter in what way and with what “reason” he would have to cross out his entire “Critique of Pure Reason”, as built outside the hypothesis of God and even with its exclusion, and write his philosophical system anew. So water, no matter through which crack it bursts in, fills the entire closed room and penetrates into all the voids and pores. Kant wants to hold religious faith to the degree of consciousness in which “practical reason” can accommodate it and, making it blind and illogical, reduces it to the level of Schleiermacherian feeling. Of course, this is facilitated by the rationalistic prejudice of Kant’s doctrine, according to which faith is “reason,” albeit of the second class, or practical, and is subject to the control and despotic government of theoretical reason, which fetters the rights of faith and limits its competence. Such a demarcation of reason and faith contains an intolerable contradiction, which is resolved either by the rejection of faith, that is, the entire structure of the Critique practical reason” (the path of most neo-Kantians), or its primacy in all areas, and in this case one cannot take the “Critique of Pure Reason” seriously. Kant’s teaching about “rational faith” suffers from half-heartedness, it is half-faith, half-reason: although it crosses the realm of what is cognizable by reason, at the same time reason does not want to give up its dominance and control in this alien realm. 30 We have defined the essence of faith as the revelation of the transcendental world, or the experience of the Divine. Whatever our judgment about faith in essence, the content of faith in itself is precisely this: outside the sense of reality and objectivity of what is experienced, there is no place for faith. Faith necessarily feels itself, recognizes itself as a revelation, and, moreover, radically different from the knowledge that is obtained within the confines of this world. Revelation by its very concept presupposes that what is revealed has a certain content. Faith contains the recognition not only that the transcendental exists, but also that it is; it cannot be limited to a bare existential judgment, but also includes some content; some predicate, at least of minimal content, is added to the ESI, and a predicate is added to the subject. The Divinity is revealed to faith not in general, but concretely and qualitatively. In other words, the act of faith brings with it and leaves behind itself, as its trace in consciousness, individual and collective, not only an existential, but also a meaningful judgment - however, a purely existential judgment without any content would even be impossible, because it would be subjectless. Such a being, emptied of all content, would inevitably turn into non-being, as Hegel showed it, and in order not to be subjected to the purifying and murderous karma of the further dialectical process, to which Hegel’s being, abstracted from any content or quality, is doomed, it is necessary from the very beginning to save it from turning into nothing by a definite what. This is what faith does. Therefore, it is completely unfair to characterize faith according to which it is limited only to an existential judgment, as is done by some epistemologists and representatives of mystical empiricism. Faith is not abstract, but concrete: this means that faith will necessarily give birth to a dogma of one content or another, or, conversely, dogma is the formula of what is recognized by faith as transcendental being. An act of faith leading to the birth of a dogma, positing a certain dogmatic content, necessarily claims the quality of objectivity or transsubjectivity; with all his energy he denies psychologism or subjectivism; it is suffered as truth, sought by all the forces of the soul, and is not at all some kind of whim or caprice. In our age, it is difficult to convince people that faith is a way of seeking religious truth that is alien to self-will, subjectivism and caprice, and that what is obtained along this path has all the compulsion of objective truth, requiring selfless service. Without this quality of objectivity, faith would completely lose its serious and difficult character, its severity, which sometimes brings a tragic break in the life of the heroes of faith: this is not how people become capricious, this is how the momentary “moods” of irritated fantasy are not experienced. The heavy and gloomy aura of “fanaticism” that surrounds faith, the endless history of martyrdom and torment for the faith become completely incomprehensible if faith is understood in the spirit of modern decadent “moods.” Faith is, perhaps, the most courageous force of the spirit, collecting in one unit all spiritual energies: neither science nor art possess the power of spiritual tension that can be characteristic of faith. And, of course, this is only possible because. that the quality of objectivity is inherent in it to a completely exceptional degree: the harsh and majestic truth itself looks through it with its eternal, motionless eye on man. The strength of faith, its, so to speak, genius is measured precisely by the degree of objectivity that the religiously revealed truth receives in it: such faith is called upon to move mountains, it is required to place its objectivity of religious truth above the objectivity of empirical knowledge, which says that the mountain is motionless: crede ad absurdum, such is the postulate of faith. “You of little faith!” The Savior said to the apostles who were frightened during a storm on the lake. But it was quite natural for them to be afraid, for the immediate danger of drowning was in fact great. A conflict between the contents of faith and knowledge, turning one into absurdity for the other, may or may not occur, but the objectivity of faith is such that the possibility of such a conflict is completely ignored. This consciousness of its uniqueness is an inevitable quality of objectivity: truth is not truth if it admits another truth next to it or in its place; objectivity is jealous and, if you like, “fanatical,” strong as death and as love; Yes, it is love, for truth cannot be known without loving it: it reveals itself only to love. On the other hand, faith is, in its essence, nothing more than love, but striving, unquenchable, burning love, incinerating everything alien to it. “I have come to bring fire onto the earth, and how I wish it would already be kindled” (Luke 12:49). Fire burns, this is its natural and inalienable quality, and it would be strange to reproach it for this burningness or wish that it would lose it. Jealousy is the power of love (p. Florensky), love cannot be non-jealous, although love turned into jealousy loses its softness and tenderness and becomes demanding and harsh. 31 “I am a consuming Fire,” “God is an avenger,” God says about Himself in the Old Testament. Usually they praise “fanatics of science”, but are hostile and contemptuous of the “fanaticism” of faith, but the truth is intolerant and intractable, and the tolerance of lukewarm, neither cold nor hot indifferentists is not worth much. It is too easy to preach tolerance and be tolerant without having anything in common, but try to be tolerant with a fervent belief in a certain truth. They will say that the truth is not afraid of competition, but it is not she who should be afraid, but we who should be afraid, we, before whom in a disorderly heap lies all this “diversity” of religious experience, this entire pantheon of gods and religions, this assortment of truths offered to the amateur to choose from, where our truth lies next to all kinds of lies, externally, formally equal to it. One must be a knight of truth, always ready to fight for any belittlement of the honor of the Beautiful Lady. So-called tolerance can be a virtue and is a higher virtue than intolerance, only when it is nourished by non-indifferent “pluralism”, i.e. unbelief, but when it synthetically contains relative and limited half-truths and descends to them from the height of its greatness, but by no means equating itself with them, without reducing itself to the position of one of the many possibilities of the “diversity of religious experience.” Let's take the relation ap as an example. Paul (see especially the epistle to Rom. 62) to Judaism, which nurtured him and left him: here is an example of positive tolerance and positive intolerance. Love is not tolerance. Wasn’t it the Teacher of love who said: woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, brood of vipers, drowned tombs - all these angry and merciless words, precisely merciless in their truth? Is this tolerance, in our bittersweet, pluralistic sense? After all, this is “riotism”, “fanaticism”, for the taste of preachers of tolerance... God, send us jealous intolerance in Thy holy truth! Since the content of faith is characterized by the quality of objectivity, it also receives the attribute of universality and pan-humanity - catholicity, which is only another expression of objectivity. If in faith the truth itself is revealed to me, if I come out of my shell of subjectivity and come into contact with something immeasurably huge, then, obviously, I come into contact not with what is individual and special in me, but with what is universal, universal, catholic. As a tribal being, as a person, I stand before the Divine; the human essence, man in general, feels itself in me in this act. This is a peculiar paradox of religious perception: being of all life’s acts the most individual, personally suffered, personally conditioned, it at the same time turns out to be the most universal - a clear sign that there is no opposition between the individual and the universal; the truly individual is the truly universal, or, conversely, the truly universal exists and is cognized only as the individual. You cannot possess the truth individually: of course, in fact, it may at one time or another be accessible to a limited number of persons or even to a single person, but he, this one person, has the truth not as his own, but as a universal one, to which he only became involved. And if individual truth is generally a contradictio in adjecto even in the field of knowledge, then even more so in the field of religions, where each individual, in the face of God, feels himself as a person or as humanity. Religion, religio, is a connection not only between man and the Divine, but also between man and humanity, or his final and ultimate affirmation in his humanity, moreover, this connection is stronger, more ontological than any other: therefore, “religious individualism” is hot ice, a round square. This universal nature of religion is often not understood by sociologists who believe that humanity is socialized by political, legal, economic communication, and do not notice that before all these particular connections arise, in order for them to become possible, humanity must already be held together and cemented by religion, and if nationality is the natural basis of the state and economy, then it itself is first of all faith. Only religion is truly social, and in this capacity there is the basis of sociality, although, as the deepest basis, it is least often noticed. Even when they consciously want to free themselves from it, they still retain the ideal of “man” created by it and belonging to it, so that they can receive a “citizen” from it. On the other hand, individualism in religion is a sign of immaturity or a painful decline. At the present time, when the taste for a serious and courageous religion is generally lost and the whims of subjectivity with its whimsically changing moods are valued more than a harsh and demanding religion that does not tolerate childish self-will, religious individualism is in special honor: those who still condescend to religion most often agree to have it only individually; individual self-will is clearly mixed with freedom, which is achieved precisely by victory over self-will. Protestantism is completely sick with such individualism, which eats away at it like a worm and religiously weakens it. The most difficult thing is to believe the truth, that it is the truth, i.e. requires self-admiration and self-sacrifice; it is much easier to perceive this truth as my opinion, which I believe to be the truth: “an evil and adulterous generation” even makes the truth a means to please my little self. Religious truth is universal, i.e. catholic (ϰαϑὅλον in accordance with the whole, and not with particulars); according to its inner aspiration, in truth everyone is found as one, or one in all: “let us love one another, that we may confess with one mind,” and as a result of this it is conciliar; for conciliarity is only a consequence of catholicity, its expression, but by no means its external criterion. It is very important to distinguish catholic conciliarity from collectivity or external society, precisely in view of the fact that this confusion is very common. The fact is that the proclamation of the truth, according to Orthodox doctrine, belongs to the council, which, however, acts and is authorized by the Church not as a collective, a general diocesan congress or church parliament, but as the organ of the “Spirit of Truth” itself, the Holy Spirit (hence the conciliar formula: “it pleases the Holy Spirit and us”). The conciliar proclamation of the truths of faith follows from unity in the whole and whole-purchasing truth: here it is not the majority of votes that decides (even if outwardly it is used as a means of discovering opinions), but some vital unity in the truth, inspiration by it, communion with it. Therefore, the quantitative criterion is not of decisive importance here: hardly at least one ecumenical council was truly ecumenical in the sense that it included representatives of all local churches, and, on the contrary, the council, which had external signs of an ecumenical council, turned out to be “robbery” and heretical (Ephesus). And now, when the Christian Church is split into at least two parts, does this mean that the catholic truth cannot be proclaimed at all, even outwardly and not at an ecumenical council, but internally feeling itself to be ecumenical? Catholics are by no means wrong in not considering dogmatic development to have stopped because of the external schism of the churches - otherwise one would have to admit that it is very easy to block the path of the Holy Spirit’s action on the church with human squabbles and quarrels. Their sin and guilt against catholicity is not in this at all, but in the fact that they distorted the very idea of catholicity, connecting it with external authority, as if with a church oracle: they replaced conciliarity, mechanically understood as external collectivity, with the monarchical representation of this collectivity - the pope, and then isolated themselves from the rest of the Christian world into this fence of authority and thereby changed catholicity, the whole-buying truth, church love. But those of their antagonists who consider the schism of the churches a sufficient reason to stop the search for dogmatic truth under the pretext that an ecumenical council is now impossible and therefore can sleep peacefully have an equally Catholic or outward understanding of catholicity. From the concept of catholicity (corresponding to the immutable promise: “where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them,” and therefore, the mind of Christ rests in them, i.e. truth itself) it follows that the external scale of conciliarity matters more for recognition than for its discovery or proclamation: an ecumenical council, not only in name, but in reality, is possible and now no less than before. If a meeting of “two or three believers” feels truly catholic and in fact will be so, then the seed of an ecumenical council has already been given, and its recognition is a matter for further church history. 32 So, true universality, catholicity does not take into account any external forms and institutions, which are created by people and for people and have nothing indisputable or unchangeable in themselves. The betrayal of catholicity lies precisely in the exaggeration of its external attributes. “God does not give the spirit by measure,” and when tongues of fire kindle above our heads, no matter what external circumstances they ignite, it is certain that religious consciousness becomes universal, catholic. Of course, I am speaking entirely theoretically and by no means mean to undermine the importance and necessity of church discipline or to endorse the tendency towards dogmatic libertinism into which religious amateurism easily falls. There is nothing easier than inventing new dogmas, mistaking the irritation of one’s own imagination for the spirit of the spirit. A certain distrust of modern dogma-makers should be considered a requirement of religious taste, commanding, like the Newtonian maxim: hypotheses non fingo - to be guided by the rule: dogmata non fingo. However, fictitious dogmas are always short-lived and, like a toy, quickly cease to interest even the authors themselves. From catholicity, as a formal quality of religious consciousness, it follows that in religious consciousness, by its very, so to speak, transcendental nature, the idea of ​​churchliness is already given, just as in epistemological consciousness the idea of ​​the objectivity of knowledge is given. The search for churchliness, for true catholicity, constitutes an inescapable feature of religious consciousness, and this is the search for the true Church: one is inextricably linked with the other. Religious consciousness is ecclesiastical in nature. The idea of ​​the church was not born in Christianity; it existed before and outside of Christianity. Therefore, one should (at least in this formal and, so to speak, religious-transcendental sense) talk about the Jewish church, the pagan church, the Buddhist church, etc. Each religion, as soon as it becomes not the property of an individual person, its founder, but is communicated to others (and it strives to communicate uncontrollably), organizes a special community; There is no religion, there is not even the most insignificant sect, which would not be organized into an ecclesia or ecclesiola. These provisions are of extraordinary importance for understanding the historical development of religion. They establish the legitimacy and irremovability of church tradition, this established catholicity, in other words, they outline the path to positive churchliness: religions are not composed according to abstract schemes by a lone thinker, but represent a kind of historical monolith or conglomerate that has internal coherence and integrity. Existing religions are, as it were, ready-made systems of dogmas or original dogmatic organisms living their own special lives. The creator of a new religion puts his personal religious experience as its basis, then it is overgrown with the consonant conciliar experience of his followers, every religiously living person brings pebble by pebble for this building, collectivity is degenerated into catholicity, melted into churchliness, religion, “faith” arises. The religious experience of each individual person does not allow one to feel the fullness of religion, but usually a living contact with religious reality, which is given by faith, in one place, is enough, and then it is accepted as a postulate, as hope, as a path, and all the rest of the content of religion, all its promises. Whoever met Christ the Savior on his personal path once and felt His divinity, he simultaneously accepted all the basic Christian dogmas - about the birth of the Virgin, and about the Incarnation, and about the coming in glory, and about the coming of the Comforter, and about the Holy Trinity. Therefore, there is absolutely no need for everyone to have the entire content of a given religious teaching in their personal experience of faith, just as there is no need to comprehend the nature of science to go through the entire scientific path of humanity in their personal experience; it is enough to know it in any particular case. What has been said leads us to an understanding of the historical in religion. The dual nature of religious faith, its intimate and individual character, due to which it can be experienced only in the deepest depths of personal experience, and its ardent desire for supra-personal catholicity, establishes a dual attitude towards religious empiricism, towards historically specific forms of religiosity. They can acquire vital significance only after an intimate, personal-religious experience reveals their living meaning, and the catholic nature of religion encourages a special reverence for historical tradition. Every religion is characterized by some kind of Old Believers, an attachment to antiquity; “An iota of the law” should not be changed arbitrarily, according to personal whim or taste, without prophetic boldness. That is why old churches, old books, old utensils, old icons inspire a natural feeling of religious reverence and awe. Old age is a fortress, a power of catholicity, which seems to be concentrated over time on individual objects. Therefore, religion is historical by its nature, or rather, it elevates the historical to the catholic, and the one who does not know this, who disdains historical empiricism under the pretext of freedom of inspiration, is a ignoramus in religion. Such idiots were, by the way, the “enlighteners” who invented and continue to invent a “natural”, anti-historical religion. They do not notice that today’s “natural religion” will become historical tomorrow, and even more so, to a certain extent it already becomes so at the moment when it feels objective and catholic. Likewise, all the persecutors of the traditional rite do not notice that in reality they are only introducing... new ritual; Thus, the Quakers, who rejected any appearance of prayer, actually introduced the ritual of bare chapel walls and “silent meetings”; Thus, Protestantism, having raised its bold hand to the age-old and aesthetically beautiful Catholic rite, only replaced it with another, poor and dry, prosaic rite, within which, however, one can be an Old Believer no less than with the most magnificent ritual; This is how our sectarians replace the divine beauty of Orthodox liturgics with boring and mediocre “psalms” and dry Protestant rites. “Natural”, abstract, ahistorical religion is Unding, something non-existent, a negative concept that does not have positive content, but draws it only from the concept it denies. This is the leading invention of religiously mediocre eras, already familiar to antiquity with its “euhemerism” and syncretism. “Religion in general” does not exist, there are only certain, specific religions. A special type of natural religion or “religion in general” is the so-called. theosophical doctrine, according to which all religions have a common content, say the same thing, only in different languages, and it is necessary to distinguish between the esoteric teaching, known only to initiates, and the ocoteric teaching, existing for the profanum vulgus; differences in symbolism and ritual, due to historical reasons, exist only in the second, but not in the first. This teaching is based on bold analogies and identifications, and especially on the convergence of moral teachings, in which, generally speaking, it is easier to find this similarity. Thus, the own colors of historical religions are discolored, everything concrete goes into exotericism, and the doctrine of the Theosophical Society, so concerned with the spread of the universal religious Volapuk (in reality, under the guise of religious Esperanto, promoting Buddhism and Hinduism in general on European-Christian soil, but preferring, instead of open speech and direct struggle with Christianity, a roundabout tactics of its assimilation and neutralization). The concreteness of a religion is established by its positive content, or more precisely, by the revelation that it contains (or at least believes that it contains). Religion is not based on a vague and indefinite sense of the Divine in general, or the transcendental world in general, to which it is reduced, on the one hand, by adogmatic mysticism and Gefühlstheologie, on the other, by rationalistic enlightenment, but on some very definite knowledge of this world, the self-revelation of the Divine. Every religion is dogmatic; it establishes a relationship not to the Divine in general, but to a specific God who has his own “name.” In this sense, dogma is an integral part of religion. What is dogma? This concept can be distinguished in a narrower and broader sense. In the first sense, dogma is a formula that crystallizes a religious judgment in images or concepts. The logical boundaries established by such a formula usually have a practical origin. Their proclamation is most often caused by the need to combat some heresy. It is therefore not only a doctrinal definition of the Church, but also its action - the condemnation and cutting off of heresy (for example, the Nicene formula had an anti-Arian character, the IV Council against Macedon, VII - an anti-iconoclastic character, etc.). But the dogmatic formula is only an approximate, and, moreover, inevitably one-sided due to its indicated origin, an attempt to express religious content in concepts. Therefore, it is not the dogmatic formula that gives rise to dogma, but the religious content, the living dogma, that gives rise to the dogmatic formula (or formulas). If the divine or transcendent world really opens up to religious consciousness and the transcendent becomes immanent in human consciousness 33 in some dogmatic certainty, then obviously there must be a bridge connecting both worlds; there must be writing in which divine revelations are written, and a language in which they can be expressed. But if our words usually serve for the concepts of this world, its objects and relationships, then how can they turn out to be suitable for the contents of another, transcendental world? Doesn’t this transcendence entail both ineffability and unthinkability for man? We have already said enough that the divine world cannot be the subject of discursive knowledge and is comprehended only by faith. Dogmas, if possible, are not in the sense of logical and dialectical conclusions, but as religious knowledge. To understand the nature of this knowledge, we should recall the birth of artistic images in art. The artist is a prophet of some otherworldly reality, which is revealed to him in artistic images. The bearer of religious revelation (he can be individual or collective) comprehends the highest reality through religious images, which are similar to artistic ones in their spontaneity, but differ from them in their religious character. They are connected by imagery and symbolism, but what distinguishes them is the content of this symbolism and its source. Religious images that realize and express religious content represent what is usually called myth. Myth in religion plays a role similar to that characteristic of a concept or judgment in theoretical philosophy: the assessment of religious-dogmatic consciousness depends on its understanding. So, what is myth as a transcendental category? First of all, we should set aside the common understanding of myth, according to which it is a fantasy, a fiction. Supporters of such an understanding of myth do not even think of such a simple question: what was the myth for the myth-makers themselves, in whose minds it arose, what did they themselves think about the myth being born in them? Or, perhaps, they will say that they deliberately invented it in order to later deceive others. (after all, they seriously argued that the priests themselves invented the religion and, therefore, established it on a conscious and deliberate deception). However, in this case, they would first of all have to deceive themselves, for they themselves believed in myths, attached objective significance to their content, and did not consider it merely a product of poetic fantasy. Only with this assumption does the role of myth-making in the history of mankind become clear, where the “Dichtung” of myth often explains the full-fledged “Wahrheit” of history. So, we must first of all recognize that myth is inherent in all that objectivity or catholicity that is characteristic of revelation in general: it expresses the actual content of revelation or, in other words, the revelation of the transcendental higher world takes place directly in myth, it is the writing with which this world is inscribed in the immanent consciousness, its projection. We can say that myth is a synthetic religious judgment a priori, from which a posteriori judgments are analytically derived. It contains something new, hitherto unknown, and affirms its content as a self-evident truth. This self-evidence is generated by the experimental-intuitive nature of its origin. Myth has its own special authenticity, which is based not on evidence, but on the strength and persuasiveness of direct experience. The myth states the meeting of the immanent world - human consciousness (no matter how we expand and deepen it) and the transcendental, divine world, and the transcendent, while preserving its own nature, at the same time becomes immanent, and the immanent is dissolved, giving place to the transcendent. Myth must be characterized by activity, a certain initiative on the part of the transcendental, which wants this meeting, and in the reality of this meeting lies the power of myth’s persuasiveness. It is therefore an event that takes place on the verge of two worlds that come into contact in it (Vyach. Ivanov). It is something “graceful" (taking the concept of grace in the general and formal sense). If a myth is an event, then it must be thought of in a purely realistic way: in myth we are not talking about abstract concepts, but about the realities themselves. The content of a myth is always concrete, because it is not about God in general and man in general, but about a certain form of a certain theophany and revelation of God. The subject of a myth, its subject, can only be designated “proper”, and not “common”, generic name. Myth is, or should therefore be, the negation of any subjectivism or psychologism. On the contrary, it is only the consciousness that a superhuman force enters a person and events that exceed his own measure take place in him that creates the vital persuasiveness of the myth. It is not man who acts or “believes” (setzt), as is the case in subjective idealistic constructions, but in man what happens, is believed, and speaks in him from higher beings and forces. The desire of occultists through meditation to hear the voice of the things themselves, Hegel’s belief that in thinking, after he has overcome the lower phenomenological stages of self-consciousness of the spirit through philosophical meditation, and the Logos itself acts, formally akin to “myth-making". In particular, Hegel wanted to be a true myth-maker in logic, for he strove to ensure that in it and through it he acted itself is logical, for man in his subjectivity it is transcendental. The pathos of Hegel’s logic lies precisely in the experience of such a meeting of the transcendental Logos and immanent thinking, in their merging or transcending the immanent and the immanentization of the transcendent, and logic itself receives a clearly theurgic, superlogical meaning. This myth-creating pathos of Hegel perhaps best explains why he placed philosophy above religion, only philosophical knowledge for. it became a true myth, and only philosophy became a true mythology. For him, logical contemplation becomes an eye for comprehending the noumenal world (hence Hegel’s hostility to Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself and its unknowability, and in general the sharp and pathetic immanentism of his teaching). The weak side of Hegelianism from this point of view boils down (as indicated above) to the fact that in myth-formation all its energy belongs to the person - the myth-maker. Hegel’s philosophy is self-fertilization, a parody of seedless conception, myth-making in the immanent (for it is enough to go through the natural art of phenomenology and enter the realm of logic, and the Logos has already been achieved). On the contrary, in Kant’s philosophy, it is precisely in his doctrine of “ideas” as ultimate concepts, as well as in the doctrine of the distinction between the judgments of practical reason and theoretical reason and the “power of judgment” that implicitly lies the whole theory of myth-making, albeit with a negative or agnostic content. According to this theory, Ding an sich, although transcendental, is still imprinted in consciousness as an idea or ultimate concepts. However, these ideas differ from myth in that not only do Kant not testify to the real presence or revelation of the transcendental, but they contain less reality than experimental knowledge, they are essentially diagrams, shadow traces, nothing more. We already know what consequences this leads to in Kant’s theology, where he treats everything mythical without any understanding and with malicious contempt, limiting himself to immanent moral theology. And yet, even in this teaching of Kant about ideas as immanent projections of Ding an sich, there is a precious grain of the theory of myth-making: Ding an sich, transcendental to theoretical knowledge, is still knowable in a special way, not immanently experiential; Kant's postulates of practical reason, his “rational” faith, are also nothing more than mythology. In epistemological language, myth is the cognition of what is Ding an sich for reason, and Kant’s doctrine of the unknowable thing in itself is therefore a kind of philosophical myth of agnostic content. The philosophical inconsistency of this Kantian teaching has always been noted: Ding an sich is simultaneously transcendent and immanent to reason, for it it is both nothing and something. However, this inconsistency becomes completely natural if we understand Kant’s teaching in its proper sense, not as a philosopheme, but as a myth or religious comprehension, for the definition of the transcendental-immanent, Ding an sich, which is contradictory for philosophy, precisely expresses the very essence of religious experience. Religious myth-making must be distinguished from related areas of comprehension. In particular, artistic creativity has the closest affinity with it, since it is based on a genuine “smart vision”: for the artist, images have in their way the same objectivity and compulsion as myth. Images possess the creative self-awareness of the artist; he must master them in his work, creatively consolidate them in the immanent world. His task is to see and hear properly, and then to embody what he saw and heard in an image (no matter what: colorful, sound, verbal, plastic, architectural); a true artist is bound by the greatest artistic truthfulness - he should not compose anything. 35 Strictly speaking, there is no difference between an artist and a myth-maker in terms of the “transcendental” nature of their knowledge. The distinction here is made by their field or subject. We have already indicated that the transcendental, in its correlation with the immanent, has different levels or different depths, and, in addition to the transcendental in its own sense, i.e. realm of the religious, there are still many layers of the relatively transcendental, revealed in the immanent, and formally and epistemologically in all such cases we have the presence of mythical insight, myth-making. Various natural elements (goblin, water, mermaids, elves, gnomes, etc.) reveal themselves in myth, and folk tales, to a certain extent, are such natural myths, arising, of course, at the time of greatest spontaneity and sensitivity to voices from the beyond. Nature speaks with many voices in dark legends and beliefs, in fairy tales, folklore, in the “fantasy” of the artist; sometimes it speaks with its mystical depth (this is how the mysticism of nature arises in both ancient and modern times; its representatives include, for example, a thinker like Yak. Boehme, the myth-maker of nature, who should therefore be called not divinely inspired, but nature-inspired. Such is the poetic clairvoyant of “chaos” Tyutchev). In general, the types of “revelation”, as well as its objects, can be different: natural, divine, and demonic (the so-called “prelest” among the church fathers); it can come from different worlds and hierarchies, therefore the “revelation” itself with the myth that expresses it, understood as a formal epistemological concept, can have different content: both good and evil, and true and deceptive (for after all, Satan also takes the form of an angel of light), therefore, the “revealed” or mystical character of this teaching itself speaks only about the intuitive method of receiving it, but does not say anything about its quality. In principle, the possibility of error and deception is not at all excluded here. This is the danger of being seduced by false revelations, accepted as truth only because they epistemologically have the character of revelation and are intuitive. Revelation, myth-making, is the form in which the revelation of the Holy Spirit takes place, but it is not yet connected in itself with this form, as such, for it is quite possible that even with all the formal semblance of “revelation" it turns out to be empty, devoid of truly spiritual content. Therefore, caution, verification, guarantees in both mysticism and revelation are needed no less, if not more, than in discursive knowledge. It is necessary to verify personal intuitions according to church tradition, since the Church has already been identified as “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” and not to verify church tradition according to personal intuition. And here again comes the enormous significance of the already crystallized, cast into dogmas, cult and way of life, church tradition, the historical church, which always moderates self-proclaimed claims in the name of the “mystical church,” i.e. often on behalf of one’s personal mysticism (or, what happens even more often and especially in our time, only a mystical ideology accepted as genuine mysticism). Here, as in many cases in religious life, we come across an antinomy: naked historicism, external authoritarianism in religion is the ossification of churchliness, self-willed mysticism is its corruption; neither one nor the other is needed, but both are needed together: both church authority and personal mysticism. Finding the right measure, for which there are no external criteria, but only internal ones, is “spiritual art,” guided only by the criterion of spiritual taste. a sense of spiritual proportion... The content of a myth is a judgment that asserts a certain connection between the subject and the predicate. In what language is this content expressed, is it the language of concepts that are subject to philosophical processing not only in their meaning, but also in their very emergence, or are they signs of a different nature and structure, which are related to philosophical concepts in the same way as images of art: you can philosophize about them discursively, but in their being they are already given to thinking. Obviously, the same is the nature of the images of religious myth, its symbolism. The content of the myth is expressed in symbols. What is a religious symbol? Here we encounter a question that is especially close to Russian literature (Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely). Symbolism can have different meanings. So, in rationalistic use, a symbol is taken as a conventional sign, an abbreviation of a concept, sometimes a whole set of concepts, a constructive diagram, a logical drawing; he is a convention of conventions and in this sense something that does not exist; it is pragmatic in its origin and illusory beyond its pragmatism; it arises for a specific reason, clings to things only at predetermined points, its realism is partial, accidental. This is the symbolism of mathematics, this is the symbolism of scientific concepts. In this sense, all science is symbolic, and symbolism here turns out to be synonymous with pragmatism, subjectivism and, ultimately, skepticism or illusionism. Being pragmatic, science is psychological in its nature; all of it is a huge psychologism, although it has a basis in objective essence. 36 The opposite of this symbolism of conventional signs and pragmatic schemes is the symbolism in religion and art, which equally use the symbol (which indicates their mysterious closeness). Symbolism, according to the excellent definition of V. Ivanov, goes a realibus act realiora, from όν to όντως όν, which is why psychologism is alien to him. In contrast to the pragmatic-conditional nature of scientific concepts, the content of a symbol is objective and full-fledged, in contrast to “shell” concepts that do not have their own content, or words that are internally alien to the word. You cannot lie artistically, just as you cannot distort your soul in a myth-creating way: it is not man who creates the myth, but the myth that is expressed through man. This is the epistemological significance of myth: next to thinking and scientific creativity, next to artistic creativity stands religious myth-making, as a special, self-legitimate area of ​​the human spirit; myth is a tool of religious knowledge. It goes without saying that what is deposited in the consciousness in the form of myth, entering into the general human consciousness, affects all the abilities of the soul, becomes the subject of thought, scientific study and artistic reproduction. But the skeleton of a myth, its essential content, is not created by thinking and is not created by art - it is born in religious experience. The content of the myth relates to the realm of divine existence, which, however, comes into contact with the human. It is possible to gain insight into the divine through the shell of the empirical, to look at it not from the outside, but from the inside. In this case, history, without ceasing to be history, is at the same time mythologized, for it is comprehended not only in its empirical, temporal vesture, but also in its noumenal, supertemporal being; the so-called sacred history, i.e. the history of the chosen people of God is such a mythologized history: events from the life of the Jewish people are revealed here in their religious meaning, history, without ceasing to be history, becomes a myth. But the only example of its kind of such a combination of the noumenal and the historical, myth and history, is undoubtedly represented by the Gospel events, the center of which is the incarnate God - the Word, He is, at the same time, the man Jesus born under Tiberius and suffered under Pontius Pilate: history becomes here an immediate and greatest mystery, visible, however, only through the eyes of faith, for which history and myth coincide, merging in the act of incarnation. Myth arises from religious experience, which is why myth-making presupposes not an abstract tension of thought, but a certain escape from oneself into the realm of divine existence, a certain act of God - in other words, myth has a theurgic origin and a theurgic meaning. At the same time, myth-making is not a single, but a repeatedly repeated act. By its theurgic nature, myth has a necessary connection with cult, as a system of sacred and theurgic actions, deity and worship. Hence the paramount importance of cult for religious consciousness, and not only practical, but also theoretical, even epistemological. A cult is an experienced myth, a myth in action. Hence the universal significance of worship, worship in every religion, for its living, real symbolism is not only a means of piety, but also the heart of religion, feeding it, and at the same time the eye of it, the organ of myth-making. The iconoclastic tastes of our century, associated with its abstraction and rationalism, have completely obscured for modern man, accustomed to pronounce the word ritual with proud and blind disdain, the religious and religious-gnoseological meaning of the cult. This all depends on the same basic sin in the understanding of symbolism in general and cult in particular - anthropomorphic subjectivism or psychologism. This understanding of the cult leads to the fact that in its symbolic action they see only arbitrarily established allegorical symbols, or theatrical gestures that arouse a certain mood or express a certain idea (the ritual has received almost the same meaning in modern Protestantism, where even the Eucharist is understood as such a symbolic action). With this understanding, worship takes on the meaning of a religious performance in which didactic plays are “presented.” The lost taste for the aesthetics of the cult makes, moreover, these “ideas” tiresome and incomprehensible; rationalism declares war on the cult for its pomp, beauty, imaginary theatricality (these were the dominant sentiments of the entire Reformation, especially in Calvinism, Puritanism, Quakerism). In the cult they see either theatrical ceremonies or “pagan” magic, “mystagogy” (it is enough to read modern Protestant theologians, for example, at least the history of Harnack’s dogmas). Orthodoxy, as a primarily liturgical church, is subject to special attacks in this regard, even in comparison with Catholicism, which, despite the greater pomp of its cult, has a not so rich liturgics. To understand the meaning of a cult, one must take into account its symbolic realism, its myth-creating energy: for believers, a cult is not a theatrical performance with the purpose of creating a mood and not a set of arbitrarily chosen symbols, but a completely real act of God, an experienced myth, or the mythologizing of reality. True, it is limited by place (church, sacred places), objects (shrines) and time (worship, sacred times), it therefore forms only theurgic points on the line of time, but this partiality corresponds to the nature of religion: although religion strives to have God as “everything in all,” to merge the transcendental and immanent into one and thereby overcome their mutual polarity, but it itself arises precisely from this tension and exists only by it and together with it, and in this sense, religion is a certain transitional state - it strives to overcome itself, it itself feels like the “Old Testament”. When God becomes “all in all,” there will be no religion, there will be no need to reunite (religare) what is separated, there will be no special cult, for all life will be divine worship. It is not for nothing that in the Apocalypse we read about the New Jerusalem that came down from heaven: “But I saw no church in it, for the Lord God Almighty is his church and the lamb” (Rev. 21, 22). The cult creates a preliminary and partial experience of the divine in the empirical, moreover, like everything in religion, not abstractly, not “in general,” but qualitatively, specifically, in connection with a certain myth - dogma. Therefore, worship, cult, is living dogma, myths and dogmas in action, in life. This explains the universal prevalence of the cult, for there is no religion without a cult, this can be put forward as an axiom; and the diversity of religions corresponds to the diversity of cults, and the migration of religions is accompanied by the migration of cults. At the same time, the cult is also a means of constant dogmatic teaching, the revival of dogmatic truths. We can say that only what is in the cult is alive and vital in religion, and what is not in the cult is dying or not viable. At the center of the service, obviously, is prayer, the significance of which for myth-making is clear from the previous one. The life of prayer receives development and expression in liturgical creativity, in which church tradition accumulates precious pearls of prayerful poetry and inspiration. – From here it is clear the paramount importance of liturgics in general – church chants, prayers, rituals for myth-creating self-awareness; other aspects of the symbolism of the cult have the same meaning, except for that expressed in the word. Iconography should come first here; in addition to the religious significance of the icon as such, this myth-thing in which mysteriously empirical thinghood is united with a transcendental essence, it always has a very definite content, it is mythology in paint, stone or marble. Hence the paramount importance of iconography for the development of religious life and self-awareness, equally in both Christian and non-Christian religions. Iconoclasm and the decline of iconography for the most part mark the decline of religion. In general, myth takes over all the arts for its implementation, so that the written word, a book, is, in fact, only one of many means for expressing the content of faith. Along with liturgy and iconography, one should put symbolic actions that have theurgic meaning: the rite of worship, sacrifices, sacraments. In the liturgical ritual that naturally arises around every religion, the content of the myth is symbolically experienced; dogma becomes not a formula, but a living religious symbol. The most central place in the cult is, of course, occupied by the sacraments. The mysterious character, according to what has been said, belongs, strictly speaking, to the entire divine service, but this mystery is condensed and, so to speak, crystallized in individual acts, which constitute sacraments in the proper sense. A sacrament does not at all mean the communication of any mysteries or secrets and has nothing to do with “intimate knowledge,” occultism and magic. The sacrament is as necessary and even, so to speak, epistemologically inevitable attribute of religion as prayer; therefore, in addition to their religious comprehension, one should also understand this epistemological meaning. Religion stems from a feeling of a gap between the immanent and the transcendent and, at the same time, an intense attraction to it: a person in religion tirelessly seeks God, and heaven kisses the earth in response. In order for religion to be possible not only as a thirst and a question, but also as a quenching and an answer, it is necessary that this polarity, this tension sometimes give way to saturation, so that the transcendent becomes perceptible, and not just sought, and joins with immanent reality. The mysterious element in the sacrament lies in vital communication with that world that remains closed to us, and the local world is felt as the container of that other world; in short, the sacrament is the experience of the transcendent in the immanent, the communication of “grace” to creation in certain mysterious acts. And since this feature is inherent in the sacrament in general, it obviously constitutes the most intense point in myth-making. The whole difference between a sacrament and “magism” is clear: magic is the expanded, refined and deepened power of man over the natural world with the help of his higher knowledge; magic is the same as science, only at a different level, with different methods. Like it, magism is limited to the realm of the immanent, it is cosmic and natural, there is no “grace” in it in the proper sense of the word, other than the natural one, diffused throughout the world; and it is humane, since it relies entirely on the power of man, on his strength and energy. On the contrary, the sacrament is entirely based on grace, carried out by the outpouring of a transcendent, supernatural principle into the natural world. This feature distinguishes true sacraments from false ones, which are nothing more than varieties of magic (natural sacraments). The Christian must believe that in the pagan world, although the need for sacrament is felt, for it cannot be eliminated from religion by its very essence, there were no true sacraments, “feeding into eternal life”; they appeared only in Christianity, after the incarnation of God the Word, who gave His Flesh and Blood into the eternal belly. Their preludes were in the Old Testament church of Israel. At the same time, it is known that there were sacraments in paganism. It remains either to see in them, together with theosophists, “occult schools” or to understand them as natural, graceless sacraments, imparting only the grace of nature, i.e., in essence, the same magic. A dogmatic formula is an attempt to express the content of a religious myth in words, describing it in concepts. Dogma in the sense of a formula always comes after the myth; it is not born in the formula and together with the formula, but is only fixed by it, entered into the inventory. Dogmatics is the accounting of religious creativity, and its formulas are products of reflection on religious reality. The history of dogmas shows that the reason for their establishment and proclamation was most often one or another heresy, i.e. deviations not only in religious thought, but also, above all, in religious life (after all, it is obvious, for example, that Arianism is a completely different perception of Christianity than the Orthodox Church). Dogma, rejecting false wisdom, puts in its place its right formula, and this formula is the logical edge, the fence of dogma. It defines its external boundary, beyond which it is impossible to deviate, but it is by no means adequate to the dogma, does not exhaust its content, primarily because any dogmatic formula, as already said, is only a logical diagram, a drawing of an integral religious experience, an imperfect translation into the language of concepts, and then also because, usually arising in connection with heresy, “separation” (αίςεις - division), it has predominantly formal-critical and even negative in nature, “unmerged and inseparable,” “one Divinity and three hypostases,” “one in trinity and trinity in one.” Omnis definitio est negatio, this formula of Spinoza is especially applicable to dogma, for here the reason for definitio is most often negatio, striking dogmas like sparks from stone: the number of possible dogmatic definitions in Christianity could be much greater than those formulated at the councils. Dogmas, born from a dispute, have the character of volitional statements. They differ in this sense from theoretical knowledge and are psychologically close to what is called “beliefs.” 37 The forms in which they take on, their logical clothes are borrowed from the dominant philosophical doctrine: for example, of course, not without the special will of God, in the history of Christian dogmatics the influence of Hellenic philosophy is very noticeable and beneficial. However, it does not in any way follow that they are generated by it (as Harnack and others believe). Belief in the Resurrection of Christ, “madness to the Greeks, temptation to the Jews,” as the main theme of Christian preaching, could only emerge from the fullness of religious revelation, as a “myth” in the positive meaning of this concept, and only later did the system of dogmas of the teachings of the church grow from this seed. Dogma is the immanentization of the transcendental content of religion and this entails a whole series of damages and dangers of substitutions; With this logical transcription of the myth, scholasticism (or “seminar theology”) inevitably arises, i.e. rationalistic processing of dogmas, adapting them to rational thinking, in which their taste and flavor are often lost, and “theology” turns into “a science like all others,” only with its own special subject. True, these other sciences, proud of their immanently experimental origin, always look askance at the poor relative, seeing her as a hanger-on, and this position in the world is not cheap for theology itself. However, it cannot be denied that in this “scientific” work of theology there is a certain benefit of inventory and the honesty of Martha, who ceases to be Mary. Between the living religious myth-dogma and its dogmatic formulation there is therefore a deliberate discrepancy, similar to the one that exists between the catalog of an artistic repository and the very works collected in it, or the program of a concert and the musical performance itself. This discrepancy depends not only on the inexpressibility in words of the entire fullness of religious experience, but also on the inadequacy of concepts to what they are intended to express here. For the concepts that arise when categories are applied by discursive thinking under the assumption of spatiality and temporality here have to express the objects of another world. We have to talk about God in numerical, temporal, spatial definitions that belong to our empirical world. God is one, God is threefold in persons: one, three are numbers subject to all numerical limitation (with the help of one it is absolutely impossible to express the one Divinity, for one exists only in plurality, and three in the Holy. The Trinity is not three at all in the sense of counting: one, two, three or one - one - one, or one - two). Number expresses here what is supernumber and supermagnitude, time - what is supertime, eternity, and space - what is superspatial, everywhere. For many, this deliberate inadequacy of the categories of reason to the subject of religion serves as a motive for dogmatic agnosticism (Kant and his school). But this consideration would be valid if dogmas were a direct instrument of religious knowledge; For such a purpose, concepts would, of course, be an unsuitable means. God is inaccessible to reason as an object of knowledge; for it there is a Ding an sich, beyond the reach of its categories. 38 But dogmas do not claim this; they state the already accomplished fact of revelation in religious myth and only translate its content into the language of concepts. The experimental origin of dogma, a kind of religious empiricism, making dogma invulnerable to criticism of rational knowledge at the same time leads to the fact that its expression in concepts gives rise to contradictions and absurdities from the point of view of rational thinking. These are not almost all the basic dogmas of Christianity, and it is not for nothing that they are rejected with such contempt and indignation by those who consider rational testing to be the highest and only criterion of religious truth: an example is L. Tolstoy. His rational criticism of dogmatic theology is irresistible if one recognizes reason as the supreme judge, but turns into a regrettable misunderstanding if this premise is rejected. Dogmatics receives from religion a raw mass of dogmas, which it must assimilate, classify, and systematize as far as possible. The desire of reason for unity, its “architectonic” style, “scholastic” inclinations (after all, scholasticism in a certain sense is the virtue of reason, its conscientiousness, reason must be scholastic) leads to the fact that this dogmatic mass is given one or another, mostly external, system arising from pedagogical needs; In this way we get what are “dogmatic theologies”, “systems of dogmatics”, “summae theologiae”. However, if this is precisely the relationship of dogmatics to mythics, then it is possible to ask oneself, what value does such a rational inventory of super-rational revelations have? Are dogmatics and dogmas necessary at all? Isn’t dogmatization rather a disease of religion, a rust that forms on it, and isn’t it necessary to declare war on dogma in the name of religion? Is it possible to express the inexpressible, and is it necessary to express it? Haven't rivers of blood flowed because of dogma, hasn't the church been torn apart because of an iota? These are the popular objections to dogma, religious, philosophical, everyday. To the extent that they come from indifference and mental laziness, one can ignore them: of course, it is calmer and easier to live without being interested in the objects of faith, even interpreting this indifference as superiority. He who has no convictions, who does not profess any truth that he would feel obliged to defend with all the strength of his soul, will always be an opponent of dogma, treating the “fanaticism” of dogmatists with Epicurean frivolity. There is nothing to talk about with this adogmatism of unprincipled and indifferent people: they are below dogma and below religion, and although, due to their quantitative predominance, they now set the tone in public opinion, there is no ideological power or ideological content behind them. Others reject dogma in the name of religious chastity: it seems to them that faith expressed in a dogmatic formula is no longer faith, just as “a thought expressed is a lie.” But they forget that if in a certain sense this saying is true, then the opposite is also true: the inexpressible is not a thought, and therefore cannot become truth and the negation of lies. Everything that we experience in mental life becomes a thought, passes through a thought, although it is not only a thought and is never completely expressed in words. Religious experience, which in its completeness shakes our entire being, and not just its mental nature, inevitably passes through thought and strives to be expressed in words. Every experience of God necessarily gives rise to a corresponding thought about God, although it is never just a thought. Myth in its entirety is not a thought, just as the symbolism of a work of art is not a thought, however, it also asks for thought, becomes a thought, clothed in words. Ineffability is not a synonym for wordlessness, illogicality, anti-logic; rather, on the contrary, it is continuous utterability, giving birth to verbal symbols for its embodiment. Without this same generation, it is an unembodied thought, something premature, not exceeding thought, but not reaching it. II just as nothing can hide from the rays of the sun, so nothing can hide from the light of reason. One side of every experience is also mental. Everything becomes an object of thought, and in this sense everything is a thought, everything is a word, and has the stamp of the hypostasis of the Logos. In this truth, although distorted by one-sidedness, lies the truth of Hegel. And this conceivability of everything that exists, which in no way contradicts its unthinkability, is an immanent norm of the life of the spirit, which cannot be violated even by those who reject it in words, for agnosticism is always some kind of dogmatism, some positive dogmatic teaching about God, albeit of minimal content. Thought is prior to our mind, “in the beginning was the Word,” and although our present mind is not at all something higher and final, it can and must be surpassed, it is no longer possible to surpass thought, for it is the ontological definition of cosmic existence, corresponding to the second divine hypostasis of the Logos: “all things were, and without it nothing came into being” (John 2:3). Therefore, we contrast the cowardly and little-conscious, but in our own dogmatic adogmatism, with conscious (and in this sense, “critical”) and principled dogmatism. Religious experience is imperfect, incomplete, until it is expressed in words, myth is not distinct until a thought is born from it. For only in thought, in the word, does religious experience receive certainty, sentimental vagueness is overcome (Schleiermacher), myth is given its final stamp, only in thought and through thought is its objectivity and catholicity finally recognized. Therefore, dogmas constitute the precious wealth of religion, its “spoken word,” itpoeopixoc. Religious consciousness naturally and irresistibly strives for dogma, and isn’t the search for dogma, the “formation of beliefs,” the “search for a worldview,” a constant worry for every living soul that cannot be satisfied with the spiritual prematurity, the amorphous ineffability of feeling? And from here not only the skeptical Pyrrhonists or Kantians are no exception (no matter how meager their dogmatics may be), but also the seemingly anti-dogmatic “mystics”: this is evidenced by their writings, in which we usually find a more or less revealed mystical system, i.e. a set of “dogmas,” and is it even possible to convey in words something that is completely alien to thought? The objective, catholic character of religious experience, which distinguishes it from the music of mere moods, from subjectivity with its psychologism, precisely requires dogmatic crystallization. The catholic nature of the dogma is also revealed in the fact that only in the word and through the word can religious experience be initially communicated to other people, thanks to which the preaching of religion, the “ministry of the word,” is possible. The courageous and stern nature of the dogma commands us not to become numb in the sweet languor of mystical experience, but to preach and teach: “As you go, you will all learn languages” (Matthew 28:19), the Risen One commanded his apostles. Saul, of course, could not fully express in words what he experienced on the way to Damascus, but from this inexpressible experience the ap was born in Saul. Paul, who went to preach the Crucified Christ, became the first Christian dogmatist. And raptured into the third heaven, even there he hears verbs that, although they cannot be spoken in human language, are, in principle, still verbs. Based on what has been said, it should be recognized that dogmas are the wealth of religion. Their positive significance, which redeems the centuries-long dogmatic struggle, which only pauses in times of decline in religious life, lies in the fact that dogmas represent, as it were, milestones set along the path of a correctly proceeding religious life, its normal growth. Dogmas are the hieroglyphs of religious mysteries, revealed only in religious experience and to the extent of this experience. They are therefore the norms and tasks for this experience, not individual, but church-catholic. One can never say about a person who has really touched the life of the Church that for him dogmas are only teaching or rational schemes, logical symbols, for this touch precisely means a real meeting of God with man in living personal experience, personal myth-making. From this experience, always partial, but allowing for indefinite and immeasurable growth, is drawn the general indication that dogmas really testify to religious realities, and therefore show the way. No one can ever say to himself that in his personal achievement he has embraced the fullness of the church experience outlined in the dogmas, but no one can touch church life outside of any personal experience, even minimal. Therefore, the church’s wealth of dogmas, as a task, always exceeds the availability of religious experience, but at the same time it always enters into it and determines it. This is where the primary regulatory significance of dogma and the pedagogical significance of teaching the truths of faith arise, no matter in what form it is carried out. In this way, the apparent contradiction between the personal nature of religious experience, which eliminates this dogmatics from the outside (for dogmatics is not geometry), and the objective system of dogmas, which expresses the superpersonal (and seemingly impersonal) catholic consciousness of the church, is eliminated. The opposite point of view, which denies dogma under the pretext of personal religious experience, fundamentally destroys the idea of ​​conciliarity for the sake of religious individualism, anarchism, and impressionism. In the concepts of dogma, thus, both moments are dialectically connected: personal and superpersonal, internal and external, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith. Thus, the fundamental possibility and necessity of a “symbol of faith” is established. Dogma is a signaling by concepts of that which is not a concept, because it is above logical thinking in its abstraction; at the same time, it is a formula expressed in concepts, a logical transcription of what is given in religious experience. Therefore, dogma, entering into thinking, is foreign to it and in this sense transcendental to discursive thinking, is not its conclusion and generation. The dogma violates, or rather does not take into account the basic requirement of logical discourse (so clearly formulated by G. Cohen), namely continuity in thinking (Continuität des Denkens), which is based on the generation of its object (reiner Ursprung). Thinking itself creates an object and a problem for itself. The difficulty of the philosophical problem of dogma lies in this inconsistency of its logical definition: on the one hand, it is a judgment in concepts and, therefore, belongs to immanent, self-generating and continuous thinking, and on the other, it is transcendental to thought, introduces discontinuity into it, disrupts its self-generation, falls like an aerolite onto the rolled field of thinking. The question of the relationship between philosophy and religion confronts us in all its complexity. Is religious philosophy possible and in what sense? Is the dogmatism of religion compatible with the most sacred heritage of philosophizing, its freedom and the search for truth, with its rule - to doubt everything, to test everything, to see in everything not dogmas, but a problem, a subject of critical research? Where is the place for philosophical quest if the truth is already given in the form of dogma - myth? Where is the place for freedom of research if its guiding norm is fidelity to dogma? Where is the place for criticism if dogma reigns? Such are the prejudices against religious philosophy, thanks to which the very question of the possibility of religious philosophy, or, what is the same, philosophical dogmatics, is most often resolved negatively (at the same time, the formula of scholasticism is ironically recalled: philosophia est ancilla theologiae, with ancilla invariably understood as a serva, not a servant, helper and ally, but a slave). The fundamental difference between philosophy and religion is that the former is a product of the activity of the human mind, seeking truth on its own, it is immanent and human, and at the same time it is inspired by the desire to outgrow its immanence and its humanity, joining the supernatural, superhuman, transcendental, divine being; philosophy thirsts for truth, which is the main and only incentive for philosophizing. The philosophical idea of ​​God (whatever it may be) is in any case a conclusion, a product of the system or esprit de système, it exists only as a moment of the system, its part. Philosophically, God is certainly defined and proven on the basis of the system, its structure, its development. The “proofs” of the existence of God, whatever they may be, are all from philosophy and only by misunderstanding end up in dogmatic theology, for which God is given and is above or beyond the proofs; in philosophy, for which God is given as a conclusion or generation of a system, the idea of ​​Him is brought into connection with all the ideas of philosophical teaching, and exists only through this connection. And the logical place of the Divine in the system is determined by the general character of a given philosophical teaching: from this point of view, compare at least the system of Aristotle with his doctrine of the divine first cause - the prime mover, with the system of Spinoza, no less religious in its general aspiration, or compare Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel in their teachings about God. For philosophy, God is a problem, just as everything for it is and should be a problem. In its fundamental problematism, it is free from the givenness of God, from any purely religious experience; she explores, doubts, questions: dubito, cogito, deduco! Of course, philosophy inevitably strives for the absolute, for unity, or for the Divine, as far as it is revealed in thinking; in the end, it has its only and universal problem - God, which is also theology, or more precisely - the search for God, the study of God, the thinking of God. Philosophy, as far as it deserves itself, is imbued with Dei intellectualis, a special piety of thinking. But for philosophy there is only the abstract absolute, only the postulate of the concrete God of religion, and on its own, without leaping over the abyss, philosophy cannot step over from the “intellectual God” or “intellectual love for him” to living love for the concrete God. Amor intellectualis lies in the fact that its subject becomes a problem for thought. Problematicism is the nature of every object of philosophy; love is expressed here in philosophical doubt and reflection, in a question mark placed over a given concept and turning it into a problem. The self-reliable basis for philosophy, about which it no longer has the opportunity to doubt and problematize, therefore fundamentally non-problematic, but dogmatic (for dogmaticity is the philosophical antithesis of problematicity), is, undoubtedly, thinking: cogito - ergo sum, says philosophy about itself. Thinking in its self-reliability is an object of faith for philosophy; thinking for it is more reliable than God and more reliable than the world, for both God and being are weighed, verified and verified by thinking. Thinking is the Absolute in philosophy, the light in which both the world and God logically arise. In its problematism, philosophy is essentially an unquenchable and always inflamed “love for Sophia”; having found satisfaction, it would freeze and cease to exist. The object of her aspiration is outside her possession, that is, “ewige Aufgabe” (G. Cohen). And this, first of all, is because Truth is not at all the theoretical truth that philosophy is looking for. Truth in its divine existence is “the Way and the Belly.” Like life, it is ineffable and indestructible in its fullness. Truth, as the highest reality, is thereby both Good and Beauty, in an indissoluble trinity. God is Truth, but it cannot be said that truth is God (Hegel); God is Good, but it is not true that Good is God (Kant); God is beauty, but it is not true that beauty is God (Schiller, Goethe). Truth, as a subject of theoretical speculation, is no longer a living truth; it is only one aspect of it, “abstracted” from an indecomposable unity. Truth itself is transcendental to philosophy, which knows only its reflection, its aspect - truth, as the eternal search for Truth. Finding, living communion with the Truth would also be an overcoming of philosophy, for philosophy itself stems from that splitness of being, its untruth, in which thinking turns out to be a separate region of the spirit. But if philosophy is really accessible not to Truth, but to truth, theoretical participation in super-theoretical Truth, this establishes not only its origin from the sinful splitting of spiritual existence, but also a real connection with this Truth, which is revealed in philosophy and speaks to the philosophizing mind in a language accessible to it. At the basis of true philosophizing lies a special kind of revelation, an “intelligent vision” of ideas, as Plato forever proclaimed about philosophy. The main motives of philosophizing, the themes of philosophical systems are not invented, but are realized intuitively, have a super-philosophical origin, which definitely points the way for philosophy. In its intuitive basis, philosophy is close to art, the intuitive nature of which is not contested; philosophy is the art of concepts. Philosophizing is the reflection of the mind on its perceptions realized as true, playing the role of initial axioms, and together with objects of reflection, critical research, analysis, and evidence. The basic ideas of philosophy are not invented, but are born in the mind as seeds, as embryos of future philosophical systems. The daytime consciousness of the philosopher is fertilized by the night dreams of the dreamer. Philosophy is also not alien to a kind of logical myth-making, and the basis of truly original, creative philosophical systems always lies - horribile dictu - philosophical myth. The myth-creating character of philosophy finds open expression in Plato, who, with an indifference that is seductive for philosophers and as if with deliberate disorder, moves from the heights of dialectical research to myth and often expresses even his most basic ideas in myth, leaving commentators to decide how to treat this kind of exposition, whether Plato is speaking seriously or joking. He uses this manner in almost all the most important dialogues of his mature period (the only exceptions, it seems, are Parmenides, Philebus and the Sophist); His most intense philosophical speculation is replaced by myth, which occupies by no means an accidental place of literary ornament, but a definite role in the development of thought; sometimes the most basic statements are expressed in the form of myth, playing the role of a necessary argument. (Let us recall the teaching about Eros in the Symposium, about the creation of the world in Timaeus and Politics, about the heavenly origin of the soul in Phaedrus, about the afterlife in a number of eschatological myths in the Republic, Gorgias, etc., about immortality in Phaedo.) This paradoxical feature of Plato constitutes a real “scandal in philosophy,” which everyone copes with in their own way, 39 and most often the myths are rejected with a disgusted or condescending grimace. Meanwhile, it is impossible to understand and accept Plato otherwise than by looking directly in the face of this fact. The fact is that for Plato, pure philosophizing and dogmatic theology are inextricably linked, covered by one dome: Plato always remains at the same time - and this is the paradox of his philosophical image - a mythologist and a philosopher, a dogmatist and a critic, while those who cling to the toga of the founder of the Academy timidly or disgustedly brush aside everything “mythical”. Based on what has been said about philosophy and mythology, it is easy to give a general answer to the question: who was Plato and how to understand his duality? He was a philosophizing theologian, i.e. a dogmatist, a mythologist, for whom the myths he expounded represented theological truths of varying value, accuracy and indisputability. Plato treated the myths he expounded completely seriously and with faith, this is what must be stated with all frankness. But regarding the truths proclaimed in these myths and in connection with them, Plato also philosophized, and these pieces of his τοῦ διαλέγεσϑαι formed the treasury that our time is increasingly learning to appreciate. Therefore, Plato completely lacks a system and esprit de système, and that is why he is the father of free philosophical dialectics. Plato is not systematic, but thematic and dialectical, hence the fragmentation of his philosophizing, for each of his dialogues, with all its artistic perfection and musical form, for the system of philosophy is only a fragment, an etude, an article, nothing more, without the need for rounding off, making ends meet in a single integral system, for which Plato does not even have an attempt or taste. Plato is a philosophical essayist who does not want a system, loves philosophizing and does not like philosophy. It is extremely instructive to compare him in terms of the type of philosophical creativity with Aristotle. Although it is impossible not to see the religious motive of philosophy in the latter, 40 however, Aristotle is not at all a theologian, dogmatist and mythologist. Aristotle is a philosopher par excellence, Philosophus, as he was called in the Middle Ages, while the “divine” Plato always had an aura of the prophetic, the mysterious, the mystical. If Aristotle’s philosophizing leads him to the doctrine of God, then this is only due to the logic of his philosophizing, and not to myth-making bias. Aristotle's doctrine of God is primarily a conclusion from his philosophy. There is not a single feature in it that is not logically justified or proven in one way or another. Next to the myth-maker Plato, Aristotle is a representative of pure philosophy, with its desire for a system, architectonic completeness, and the immanent continuity of rational thinking. And Aristotle’s God is only a philosophical idea, a postulate of Divinity, “proof of the existence of God,” without any personal relationship to Him. And Plato’s very teaching about ideas, as the basis of knowledge, can be understood as a teaching about the mythical structure of thought: myth, touching the transcendent, “smart being,” precedes logically, provides the basis for abstract rational knowledge. All knowledge in Plato is thus mythologized, subject to myth-making, to which the management of transcendental ideas is available: The interpretation of Plato’s teaching about ideas in the sense of myth-making sheds light on the most central and dark problem of Platonism, which has been so acutely posed in modern research (Natorp, N. Hartmann and the Marburg School in general): should Plato’s ideas be understood in a transcendental-critical sense, as the formal conditions of knowledge and its ultimate boundaries (Kantian ideas), or in the transcendental-metaphysical sense? What is Plato's “anamnesis”? Is this of course a formal-logical a priori, manifested in each individual act of cognition, or is this a real recollection of myth-creating knowledge, and of secondary importance for resolving this question is the question of when the meeting with the transcendent took place: in this life or beyond? If what has been said about the intuitive roots of philosophy is true, then we can and should talk about the religious roots of philosophy, as well as about the natural and irreducible connection between philosophy and religion. However, even with this affinity, a fundamental difference between philosophy and religion remains. The latter is based on the revelation of the transcendent, on the experience of the Divine. This experience is qualitatively different than in philosophy, for it does not exist in the form of theoretical comprehension, but in its concreteness, as life perception, experience, and dogmas are the expression of this experience. The revelations of philosophy are for it only themes and problems that do not have any philosophical significance before critical research. The religious significance of a dogma does not depend on verification: it is given in its authenticity. Religious certainty cannot be replaced by any philosophizing, which can only prove the conceivability, possibility, even logical necessity of the Divine, but does not give the experience itself, just as no theory of the sun can replace its ray for me, which affected my vision and touch. Philosophy and religion can therefore never replace one another or be considered as different stages. Here we again come across Hegel’s unique and fundamentally interesting teaching on the relationship between philosophy and religion. 41 For Hegel, there is no doubt at all that God, the subject of religion, is also the only worthy subject for philosophy. 42 "The subject of religion, like philosophy, is the eternal truth in its very objectivity: God and nothing but God and the explanation of God. Philosophy is not the wisdom of the world, but the knowledge of the non-worldly (Nichtweltlichen), not the knowledge of external measure, empirical being and life, but the knowledge of what is eternal, what God is and what stems from his nature... Philosophy therefore explains only itself, explaining religion, and by explaining itself, it explains religion. As the pursuit of eternal truth, which exists an und für sich, precisely as the pursuit of the thinking spirit, and not of arbitrariness or special interest in this subject, it is the same activity as religion... Religion and philosophy coincide together in reality, it is religion, for it is the same refusal of subjective whims and opinions in the pursuit of God. (Beschäftigung mit Gott)“ (Religionsphilos., 7). The philosophy of religion refers to the general system of philosophy in such a way that “God is the result of its other parts. Here this end becomes the beginning" (12). "Philosophy therefore considers the absolute, firstly, as a logical idea, an idea, as it exists in thought, as its content is the very definitions of thought. Further, the absolute is revealed in its activity, in its products; and this is the way of the absolute to become a spirit for itself. Thus, God is the result of philosophy, about which it is known that it is not only a result, but also eternally reproduces itself, is what is happening." The difference between "positive" religion and philosophy is fundamentally erased in the eyes of Hegel because "two minds and two spirits cannot exist, a divine mind and a human, a divine spirit and a human, which would be completely different from each other. The human mind, the consciousness of its essence is the mind in general, the divine in man, and the spirit, insofar as it is the spirit of God, is not the spirit above the stars, beyond the world, but God is present omnipresent and as spirit in all spirits. God is a living God, who is active and active. Religion is a creation of the divine spirit, not an invention of man, but a matter of divine influence and influence on him. The expression that God rules the world as reason would be unreasonable if we did not accept that it also applies to religion and that the divine spirit acts in the determination and formation of the latter... The more a person forces the thing itself to act for itself in rational thinking, renounces its isolation, treats itself as a universal consciousness, its reason does not seek its own in the sense of the particular, and the less can it fall into this contradiction, for it, reason, is the very thing, the spirit, the divine spirit.” (17). "Religion exists only through thinking and in thinking. God is not the highest sensation, but the highest thought" (38). The idea of ​​"revelation" and "revealed" religion is also understood in this sense: "revealed (geoffenbarte) religion is obvious (offenbare), for in it God has become completely obvious. Here everything is in accordance with the concept; there is nothing secret in God" (48). 43 Compared to thinking, the lowest form of religious consciousness is what is usually called “faith” and which Hegel characterizes as knowledge in the form of “representation” (Vorstellung); it bears the stamp of subjectivity, the unresolved duality of subject and object. “Representation means that the given content is in me, mine” (66). “Faith is something subjective insofar as the necessity of content, proof is called objective, - objective knowledge, cognition” (67). And the so-called “direct knowledge is nothing more than thinking, taken only completely abstractly” (69). Direct knowledge of God can only say that God exists. But since being, according to the definition of Logic, is “universality in the empty and most abstract sense, a pure relation to itself without any reaction inside or outside” (70), then “this meager immediacy, which is being, the pinnacle of dry abstraction, is the most empty, meager definition” (ib) (It is obvious how the strength of this argument is connected with the strength of Hegel’s Logic: the central question about the nature and the content of faith is decided by a certificate with a paragraph on “being”!) Hence Hegel concludes that “the meager definition of direct knowledge of religion... does not stand outside the realm of thinking... belongs to thought.” (70). 44 Hegel’s main idea about the difference between religion and philosophy is, as we already know, that “religion is true content, but only in the form of representation” (94), “my representation is an image, as it is already elevated to the form of universality of thought, so that only one basic determination is retained, constituting the essence of the object and presented to the representing spirit” (84.). In representation, abstraction struggles with imagery, “the sensuous is raised to thinking only through abstraction” (86), and in this duality and inconsistency lies the need for a transition to philosophy, which does the same thing as religion in the form of thinking, while “religion, as, so to speak, an involuntary (unbefangen) thinking mind, remains in the form of representation.” Only in thinking is achieved "that identity in which knowledge posits itself in its object for itself," it "is spirit, reason, objectified for itself" (121). "Thus, religion is the relation of spirit to absolute spirit. Only in this way does spirit, as a knower, become known. This is not only the relation of spirit to absolute spirit, but absolute spirit itself relates itself to what we have put on the other side as difference; and above religion there is, therefore, the idea of the spirit, which relates to itself, is the self-consciousness of the absolute spirit... Religion is the knowledge of the absolute spirit about itself through the mediation of the finite spirit 45 “... (121) “Philosophy has the goal of cognizing the truth, cognizing God, for He is the absolute truth; insofar as nothing else is worth the trouble in comparison with God and His explanation. Philosophy cognizes God is essential as concrete, as spiritual, real universality, which is alien to envy, but communicates itself... And whoever says: God is unknowable, says: he is envious” (394). (The entire insufficiency of this argument is obvious, which can rather be brought forward in defense of the idea of revelation than in confirming Hegel’s general point of view: for him, God is given in thinking, there is thinking, and at the same time, strictly speaking, there is no one and nothing to be revealed to, and if Hegel himself speaks of revealed religion, he does so in his usual manner of using empirical data to string them onto a panlogical scheme.) “In philosophy, which is theology, the only thing that is at stake is about showing the reason of religion” (394). "All the forms discussed above: feeling, idea, can, of course, have truth as a content, but they themselves do not constitute the true form, which is necessary for true content. Thinking is an absolute judge, before which it must validate itself and authorize the content. Philosophy is reproached that it places itself above religion. This is already factually incorrect, because it only has this same content, and not a different one, it only gives it in the form of thinking; it thus becomes higher than the form of faith; the content remains the same" (394). "Philosophy is theology insofar as it depicts the reconciliation of God with himself (sic!) and with nature" (395). A distinctive feature of Hegel's philosophical and religious point of view is that thinking is completely adequate to truth, even more, there is self-consciousness of truth; the thought of deity, deity itself and the self-consciousness of deity are one and the same. Human consciousness in objective thinking not only outgrows itself, but directly transcends itself, becomes not human, but absolute. All tension between the immanent and the transcendent, the knower and the knowable, man and the deity is “removed,” overcome by divine monism, free from the separation of the world and man: logic is “all God in all.” It is obvious that philosophy, thus understood, ceases to be philosophy, but becomes God-action, God-being, God-consciousness. This is not even a religion, for religion presupposes a tense dualism of the immanent and the transcendent, corresponds to a damaged, God-seeking and, as it were, God-forsaken existence, no, it is a super-religion, what is on the other side of religion, when religion is abolished. Interpreting religion intellectualistically, Hegel takes it only as a type of thinking, as philosophizing, and in this capacity assigns it a lower place for the fact that it recognizes truth only in the form of “representation,” i.e. dualistic opposition of subject and object, man and deity. Panlogistic idealism here brings to the end the main idea of ​​subjective idealism: namely, esse-percipi. In Hume it had a subjectively human meaning, “to be for man,” while in Berkeley it took on the meaning of the actions of the Divine in human consciousness; in Hegel it was already transposed into the language of divine existence: the thinking of thinking is itself absolute, united in being and consciousness. 46 This Luciferic ecstasy, which defines the pathos of Hegelianism, is amazing: besides Hegel himself, who can experience this bliss of God-consciousness and God-being, experiencing his Logic? If he himself really experienced it, this is, of course, an extremely important and interesting fact, a religious document of great significance. One of two things: either the aroma of eternity, the divine world, is so inherent in theoretical thinking that its servant, through thinking, felt this world in its immediacy (which, frankly speaking, we do not allow), or, on the contrary, we have here an example of extreme doctrinaire, leading to self-blinding and self-hypnosis, a typical state of “prelest.” Hegel's logical pantheism stems from the main feature of his worldview, his extreme intellectualism, thanks to which he was destined to say the last word of rationalism in the Form of idealistic speculation. Since thought, conceivability, thinking constitute, in the eyes of Hegel, the only true being, yet the entire illogical side of being, its entire remainder beyond thinking, is a series of misunderstandings, subjectivism or, as they would now say, psychologism, then being for Hegel is replaced and exhausted by the concept of being, and God by the thought of God. Armed with the “dialectical method,” which supposedly captures the very life of thinking, he turns it into a kind of logical magic that connects, posits, sublates, overcomes everything, and imagines in his logical mysticism that the entire past, present and future, living and dead nature, are accessible to him. In fact, we know that this philosophical deduction of earth and heaven is accomplished through actual borrowings from empirical being, which by no means agrees to be only a concept. 47 For all the value and fruitfulness of Hegel’s individual constructions and remarks, his system can serve as an example of the complete abolition of religion. For Hegel, philosophical certainty is higher than religious certainty; more precisely, it constitutes its highest level, being on the same plane with it. This opinion of Hegel stems from his general conviction that an absolute system is possible, which would not be philosophy, but Sophia itself, and it was for this that he revered his own system. The tragedy of philosophizing has been overcome, the knight has found his Beautiful Lady (unless he mistakenly mistook the portly Dulcinea for her), the mind has achieved transformation and healing from its antinomies; for Hegel, his system is the Kingdom of God, the power of which is in thinking, this is the church in its logical glory. This conviction fully reveals the Luciferic disease of this type of philosophy, and Hegelianism is in some way the limit for this trend. In modern German idealism, these same motives sound hidden and hesitant, although neo-Kantian immanentism, which also eliminates the tragedy of thought, is a timid repetition of Hegel. In general, “philosophy” in an abstract understanding, and therefore claiming to be absolute, rationalistic immanentism in isolation from the integrity of the religious spirit, is a specifically German creation, with its roots in Protestantism. In fact, contrary to Hegel, religious authenticity is essentially different from philosophical authenticity, since faith is different from discursive thinking, and mythologem from philosopheme. Therefore, it is even wrong to raise the question of which of them is higher or lower - they are not comparable or are comparable only as different types of reliability. Of course, for philosophy, religion should seem inferior to it, as non-philosophy, but this, so to speak, professional assessment does not change anything in the hierarchical position of religion, which deals with the whole person, and not just one side of him, and is a vital attitude towards the divine world, and not just thinking about it. However, perhaps more important than this difference is the affinity and connection between philosophy and religion. Returning to our initial problem, is religious philosophy possible and how is it possible, we must insistently point out that if, indeed, the basis of philosophizing is some kind of “smart knowledge,” a direct, mystical-intuitive comprehension of the foundations of being, or, in other words, a kind of philosophical myth, only without the brightness and colorfulness of the religious, then any genuine philosophy is mythical and to the extent religious, and therefore, irreligious, “independent,” “pure” philosophy is impossible. The latter was invented in our days by people who, although they “practice philosophy,” are sophisticated in philosophical technique, sharpen the formal instrument of thought, but are themselves alien to the philosophical spirit, deprived of philosophical eros and therefore replace the basic questions of the philosophical worldview (metaphysics) with philosophical methodology and epistemology; no matter how honorable and important these questions are in themselves, but, of course, they alone do not constitute a philosopher. To the extent that they rise from technical questions to general and fundamental ones, then they also fall under the same law - the religious quality of philosophy, although it is not always easy to discern it. 48 Only when studying “scientific” questions of philosophy can it seem that philosophizing is autonomous and independent of any extra-philosophical quality; the basis will always be a metaphysical premise, which is only an expression of an intuitive worldview. Such, in particular, are epistemology and epistemological philosophy, this is the favorite brainchild of modern times, such, in particular, is the teaching of Kant, the recognized “philosopher of Protestantism.” If we keep in mind this axiomatic or mythical basis of philosophizing, then philosophy can be called critical or ideological mythology and the history of philosophy can be presented not only as the history of the self-development of the concept (according to Hegel), but also as the history of religious self-consciousness. These general considerations provide an answer to a more specific question: is it possible to have a religious philosophy of a certain type, for example, Christian (or even more specifically: Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant philosophy). This question is resolved without any difficulty in the affirmative sense. For, if in general philosophy, no matter how critical it may seem, is fundamentally mythical or dogmatic, then there can be no reason to fundamentally reject a certain religious-dogmatic philosophy, and all objections are based on a prejudice about the imaginary “purity” and “independence” of philosophy from prerequisites of an extra-philosophical nature, which, however, constitute the true themes or motives of philosophical systems Of course, this or that construction can be successful or unsuccessful, this is a matter of fact, but a bad system of Christian philosophy does not at all indicate that it cannot be good or that Christian philosophy is generally impossible. The main fear that arises in this case among its principled opponents is that here the freedom of philosophical research and, so to speak, philosophical sincerity are endangered, thus the main nerve of philosophy is killed, a bias is created that devalues ​​philosophical work in advance. However, do those who assert this take sufficient account of the fact of universal intuitive validity, and therefore, in this sense, the inevitable bias of philosophical systems? And aren’t they themselves in a certain dogmatic prejudice? After all, it is man who philosophizes in his ontological fullness, and not a fantastic “transcendental subject,” which is only a regulatory idea, a section of consciousness, a methodological fiction, although perhaps a fruitful one. And they always philosophize on a certain topic, and only conscious or unconscious hostility to Christianity forces Christian dogmas to be excluded from the list of possible topics for philosophizing. But for philosophy, these dogmas become just themes, motives, tasks, problems, in it they must become a conclusion, the end result of philosophizing. Philosophical thinking has nothing to do with dogma, which is immediately given in forced completeness; it binds it; it must be, with complete philosophical sincerity, turned into a problem of philosophy, into the subject of its research. Christian “apologetics” or dogmatics are persistently and persistently mixed with Christian philosophy. The first is completely devoid of philosophical eros and, by quasi-philosophical means, strives to achieve not a philosophical, but a religious-practical goal, which is why it is not philosophical, but polemical and pragmatic in its very essence; Dogmatic theology is not at all a philosophical study of dogmas, even if it uses philosophy in its presentation, but an inventory of them. If for philosophy dogma represents a terminus ad quem, then for dogmatics it is a terminus a quo. Philosophy, as has already been indicated, is the art of concepts, which has its own artists, and in this art it is impossible for the servant called by it to lie artistically, which would be the case with deliberate, non-philosophical dogmatism in philosophizing - this would be, first of all, a manifestation of bad taste, an aesthetic sin. They readily admit that a Christian artist can be no less sincere in his artistic quests than an artist who does not choose religious themes, but why do they find it difficult to admit the same regarding the artist of concepts, i.e. philosopher? It follows that religious philosophy requires freedom of research, and, consequently, theoretical doubt to exactly the same extent as any other philosophy; On her side she even has the advantage of acute critical vision, because she is aware of her religious conditioning and knows its dangerous sides. Freedom is the nerve of philosophizing. The dogma of faith does not put pressure on the freedom of philosophical research because its religious significance lies on a different plane and is not called into question by philosophical doubt. In philosophical development, what matters is not what, but how, not the theme that is given, but the execution that is given. The freedom of philosophical creativity is also expressed in the fact that different philosophical systems on the same topic are possible, different systems of Christian philosophy are possible (and in fact exist), and this in no way undermines its fundamental significance. For there is no single, absolute philosophical system that would contain absolute truth. If only truth is accessible to philosophy, and not the Truth itself, which is revealed to man in the symbols of religion, then its path is constant comprehension, without final comprehension, “ewige Aufgabe”. The means of philosophy are subject to historical development; they are changeable, which is why different epistemological and metaphysical approaches to the same topics are possible. They see the dogmatic conditioning of philosophy as a threat to its freedom because they completely misunderstand in what sense and how dogmas are given to the philosopher; it is believed that they are imposed from the outside, forcibly prescribed by someone who has or has appropriated the power. Meanwhile, the perception of dogma is also a matter of freedom, the internal self-determination of a person, his self-creativity. Therefore, dogma fertilizes, but does not force, for this is a person’s faith, his love, his sense of life, he himself in his free self-determination. Therefore, the freedom of philosophy is not the freedom of emptiness and lack of motive, creativity from nothing or from Hegelian being, which is also nothing, from abstraction, not distracted from anything, not fertilized by anything. The freedom of philosophy lies in its special path, search, and comprehension. What the philosopher knows as a religious dogma, he wants to know as a philosophical, theoretical truth, just as a sculptor seeks the same thing in a marble statue. The work of philosophy is done seriously, with a non-lazy mind, and only under the condition of intellectual honesty - honest searching and conscientious doubt: you cannot deceive yourself, your own mind. Christian philosophy is the philosophizing of Christians who strive to philosophically understand their religious consciousness, just as any philosophy is the philosophy of someone and about something, and “philosophy in general” is a ghost and prejudice, a Hegelian phantom. Therefore, freedom of philosophizing determines not the content, but the quality of philosophizing, its tone. Philosophizing, like any creativity, requires courage from a person: he must leave the shore and set off on an unknown voyage, the result is not guaranteed, he may not return to the shore, get lost, or even die in the waves. But only such a journey promises any discoveries. Freedom to philosophize, like any freedom, carries with it a certain risk, but freedom is where its royal dignity lies. To religion, in philosophy, the co-worker (ancilla) is valuable, but the slave is useless. After all, religious faith and myth-making cannot be abolished by any philosopheme, and religion exists with greater dignity outside of any philosophy than with unfree, and therefore insincere philosophy, which seems to want to show with its “apologetics" that religion itself needs an apology. The task of apologetics, which imagines itself to be a religious philosophy, is therefore generally a false task, equally unworthy of both religion and philosophy, for it combines lack of religious faith and free philosophical spirit. Of course, religious philosophy can also have an “apologetic” use; more precisely, it is a powerful means of religious enlightenment, but only when it does not set this as its immediate practical goal. True philosophy is, after all, the “food of the gods,” and any utilitarianism, even the most sublime, contradicts its freedom and dignity. So, only with complete sincerity, achievable only with complete freedom, is religious philosophy possible. And only such a philosophy has value for religion. One can, however, pose the question: if in myth religion has a revelation of the Truth itself, accessible to the eye of faith, then what is the significance of philosophizing about the same thing? Doesn't it become a clever uselessness, the arrogant wisdom of this age, which must be contrasted with childish simplicity? This consideration is often heard precisely from those who are far from this simplicity and childishness and want to pass it off as laziness and coarseness of mind, obscurantism or despotism. For the childish simplicity of the children of God, who live by direct contemplation of heaven, has nothing in common with this mannered, false-philosophical simplicity, which, in essence, does not renounce philosophizing, but wants to have it at a cheap price. Philosophy has its own demands, which it cannot and should not compromise. You can stand outside of philosophy and above it; in general, being in religion, you can do without philosophy at all, but, moving into its own area, you have to leave this insipid simplism. In this humiliation of philosophy, one thing is true, namely, that philosophy does not replace religion, but it has its own independent task, the importance of which should not be exaggerated, but cannot be underestimated. The truths of religion, which are revealed and take root in a child’s believing consciousness, in a direct and in this sense miraculous way, are then lived out by man in his own human element, in his immanent self-consciousness, regenerating and fertilizing him. 49 And the richer, more ramified, deeper this experience, the more vital is the religious truth, which otherwise risks remaining a seed without soil or leaven without dough, freezing from disuse. From our understanding of religious philosophy as free art based on religious motives, it follows that there cannot and should not be one canonically obligatory type of religious philosophy or “theology": dogmas are unchangeable, but their philosophical apperception changes along with the development of philosophy. Religious dogmas are looking for ever new embodiments in philosophical creativity. Therefore, the tendency of Catholic theology is aimed at making Thomism, as it were, the norm philosophical creativity, imposes on Catholic philosophers the burden of unnecessary and harmful dogmatism, which inevitably leads to hypocrisy. The practice of the Hellenic, as well as the Jewish, religion was wise in this regard, who preferred not to have official theology at all and were content with direct doctrine in myth, cult, and sacred books. But religious philosophy can also be considered as a special religious service, and its development and successes serve as one of the indirect evidence of vitality. religion. And let them not point out that there was almost no religious philosophy in the classical era of religion - in the age of early Christianity, for this short time of the first faith and joy, illuminated by Pentecost and flooded with its radiance, is the golden time of childhood, which will not be repeated in history. Already from the 2nd - 3rd centuries, an era of theological work of enormous intensity began and it continues, now dying out, then igniting again, to the present day. So, faith does not condemn the philosophizing mind to hibernation and inaction as unnecessary and does not place the philosophizing mind under suspicion, but it sets its own task for it, creates a special incentive for activity. Logically, the realm of faith begins where reason stops, which must make every effort to understand everything available to it. The boundaries of the mind are indicated not by external authority, but by its own self-consciousness, comprehending its nature. That is why philosophy does not proceed from the dogmas of faith, but leads to them as the implied and necessary foundations of philosophizing. 50 Therefore, the type of religious philosophy is critical dogmatism or critical intuitionism. Only truth liberates, and reason, having comprehended its nature, its natural dogmatism, is able to understand and properly evaluate its freedom, therefore the critical dogmatism of religious philosophy is, or rather, can and should be the freest and most critical philosophy. The words of the apostle can be attributed to general philosophy. Paul about the natural God-consciousness of the pagans, for philosophy is "pagan", natural, immanent God-consciousness and self-consciousness: "When the Gentiles, who do not have the law for themselves, by nature do what is lawful, then, not having the law, they are a law unto themselves. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts; as their conscience testifies, and their thoughts, sometimes accusing, sometimes justifying one another" (Rom. 2, 14 – 5 ). Philosophy marks the search for God by man, left to his own powers, his immanent divinity. For God “made of one blood the whole human race... that they should seek God, lest they should feel Him and find Him, although He is not far from each of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:26-7). In the royal freedom granted to man, at the crown of his sonship with God, he is given the very existence of God to make a problem, to seek Him philosophically (and, therefore, is given the full opportunity not to find and even to reject Him, i.e. next to philosophical piety lies the possibility of philosophical impiety), to experience the labors of seeking and the joy of finding. So, we distinguish: 1) extra-philosophical, religious myth-making; 2) dogmatics, which represents the external systematization of dogmas; 3) religious philosophy as philosophical creativity on religious topics; 4) “general” philosophy, which is a search for the “natural”, pagan mind, but, of course, always fertilized by intuition; 5) the canon of philosophy, its poetics and technology, which includes various branches of “scientific philosophy” (epistemology, logic, phenomenology, science). In our “scientific” age, the science of religion has received special development and importance, noticeably displacing even religious philosophy or replacing it. This testifies to the development of the spirit of science in general, and, at the same time, to the creative decline of religion, in which collecting other people's treasures makes one forget about one's own poverty. 51 To determine the attitude of the science of religion to religion itself, one should pay attention to how religion is perceived by science. It is obvious, first of all, that only the empirical phenomenology of religion is available to her, which is studied like the facts of ethnography or history, recorded, classified, schematized. In accordance with the special interests of this or that science, this or that religious-historical preparation is produced, and religious-historical museums are full of such preparations - dried plants and flowers, crushed and disassembled parts of organisms. The sophistication of attention, of course, achieved in this case is enormous, but the basis of all this scientific study is the vivisection of religion. Therefore, it is possible to study the science of religion, with a certain methodological training or school, without internally having any religious talent, treating the facts of religious history like a collector, for example, collecting Brazilian butterflies or rare beetles. Science undeniably expands knowledge about religion and thereby, albeit mediocrely, influences religious self-awareness. However, this knowledge about religion remains external: religious understanding of the facts being studied may be completely absent. Science studies religion with an unbelieving eye - from the outside, this is its advantage (from the point of view of the goals of scientific knowledge), its impartiality (Voraussetzungslosigkeit), but also its limitations. Of course, through the external, the internal also shines through. When the purely scientific task of systematically collecting material on the history of religion ends, which, of course, immensely expands the limited experience of each individual person, then the task of religious deciphering and religious-philosophical interpretation of the collected facts inevitably arises. In the mainstream scientific (religious-historical) direction, religious contraband is usually carried under the flag of science: representatives of science bona fide present their own religion and religious philosophy in their uncritical dogmatism as the conclusions of “scientific” research. The fact is that science is built according to known tasks, it poses only certain problems for itself, and accordingly focuses its attention only on known phenomena, sweeping aside others (for example, it is obvious that all religious-historical science, with its fundamental and methodological rationalism, is built on the fundamental denial of miracles, and therefore all the elements of the miraculous in religion, without which, perhaps, it is impossible to understand the latter, it relates to the realm of legends and fairy tales. Therefore, The current religious-historical doctrine is an indivisible mixture of truly scientific, critically produced research in the field of phenomenology of religion and certain religious-philosophical teachings. The main fact that is stated by the science of religion comes down to the multiplicity of religions, with the presence of a certain affinity between them, external and internal proximity. Both, diversity and affinity, constitute one of the important problems of religious philosophy. And only based on a certain religious worldview is it possible to answer the question about the religious meaning and significance of this fact. Science, in principle, stands on a non-religious and non-confessional position (I say in principle, because in fact this fundamental requirement is never fulfilled and is impossible to fulfill, because the ministers of science, scientists, are both confessional and have their own religious or anti-religious beliefs). They treat religious monuments as folklore, ethnography or “culture”. The triumph of the scientific-critical method as applied to sacred writing, in particular to the Old and New Testaments, was their philological and literary study, in which texts, forms, and in general their entire external, historically conditioned, concrete shell (not to mention such work as the critical establishment of the text) are subjected to a comprehensive analysis. And, of course, from this point of view there is not, and there should not be, the slightest difference between any literary and historical monument and, for example, the Gospel. But at the same time, it is clear that, although the sophistication of scientific attention makes it possible to better study the text of the sacred books, that, of course, this does not remain in vain for their religious perception, however, no scientific analysis will reveal in the Gospel that eternal religious content that is given to the believing heart. There is a fundamental difference in the attitude towards the Word of God on the part of science and faith, which is even established, so to speak, methodologically. The fact is that if science is characterized by a method of disbelief, cold, rationally questioning criticism, then religion is characterized by a method of reverence, incompatible with this cold and rational criticism, and it may not see what exists for religion. The same Gospel, which is studied at random by critical science, also has a liturgical, liturgical use: it is read in church or in solitary prayerful silence as the Word of God. Therefore, for example, the story of Christ’s walk on the waters, as a subject of critical study and as the content of the “day’s Gospel,” are largely different things, or the critically studied story of the Resurrection of Christ, with all its hopeless disagreements, “Auferstehungsberichte” and the joyful news of Easter Resurrection are far apart. Whoever believes in the Resurrection and has spiritually joined it, for that the options and disagreements of Auferstehungsberichte disappear like grass growing in front of Mont Blanc and visible only to someone bending over it. However, science has to talk about this invulnerability of faith only with great reservations. Weak religious life and powerful scientificism, colliding with each other, often cause a loss of religious balance. The difference between the methods of criticism and reverence does not prevent their rivalry in the human soul. Words and writings, written in human language with all historical specificity and conditionality and for the scientific consciousness being only a literary-historical monument, for the believing consciousness they really are the Word of God, the historical shell only covers their divine content. These words were transformed by the Holy Spirit into the Word of God; they have a religious-symbolic nature, i.e. they have a religious reality. The Word of God is a religious myth in the written word, constantly radiating its divine light. However, this light may not be visible to a scientific researcher, but is revealed only to those who partake of the Word of God to the extent of their religious age. Therefore, the depth of the content of the Word of God is infinite and completely incommensurable with the depth of human books, although the latter sometimes surpass it in the luxury of their verbal vestment, which, according to the providence of God, in the sacred books is modest, and at times wretched. This idea has been repeatedly expressed in distinguishing the double or even triple meaning of sacred scripture: literal (which actually corresponds to the subject of scientific study), allegorical (the meaning of which, although hidden, is visible to the human eye) and mysterious, mystical, which is revealed only with grace-filled enlightenment. The Bible is at the same time simply a book accessible to scientific study, and a monument of Jewish writing, and the Book of books, an eternal Symbol, revealed only by faith, only by prayer, only by reverence. Persons experienced in spiritual life testify that the Word of God has an endless and constantly deepening content. In the same way, dogmas, as Dogmengeschichte studies them, are only doctrinal theses, Lehrsätze, historically conditioned in their emergence, but for religious consciousness they are symbols of meetings with the Divine, religious realities. Regarding the science of religion, it is appropriate to pose the same question as regarding religious philosophy: is the science of religion necessary for religion, does it have a positive religious meaning or value? And this question can only be answered in the affirmative. Once science with its methods has already appeared, it would be unnatural if, due to one or another dogmatic bias - clerical or atheistic orthodoxy, it closed its eyes and turned its hands away from such an essential field of scientific study as the phenomenology of religion. From the side of science, this would only be an expression of complete religious indifference and even nihilism, and, conversely, the scientific study of religion is an expression of a kind of scientific piety. Science brings to the altar the gift that it has: it does not know how to believe, does not know how to pray, the love of the heart is alien to it, but it also knows the amor Dei intellectualis, and it is inherent in the virtue corresponding to this love - intellectual honesty, together with tireless toil, asceticism of work and scientific duty. And she brings her burden of the law as a gift into the kingdom of grace. Scientific interest in religion can be a manifestation of religious creativity, like religious philosophy. The fact that scientific research is often associated with sentiments hostile to religion should not obscure the fact that in science religion receives a new area of ​​vital influence. If you look from this point of view at the magnificent development of the science of religion over the last century, then initially you may get the impression that science is completely irreligious, even sterile for religion. However, this judgment will be short-sighted: one must look beyond the random and transitory trends of a given moment, which are quickly replaced by other trends, and evaluate the fact of the development of the science of religion in its vital significance. Then it will appear in the proper light, namely as a special manifestation of religious life, although dry and rational, as an intense thought about religion associated with its study, and after all, both thought and scientific comprehension are also life, and do not take place outside the human spirit. We do not at all see in science the highest manifestation of the human spirit. But since science exists at all, then scientific piety is also possible, 52 which to a certain extent is the science of religion (and precisely because of this it can become wickedness if it deviates from its straight path for the sake of hostility to religion). Abgötterei im praktischen Verstande ist noch immer diejenige Religion, welche sich das höchste Wesen mit Eigenschaften denkt, nach denen noch etwas Anderes, als Moralität, die für sich taugliche Bedingung sein köone, seinem Willen in dem, was der Mensch zu thun vermag, gemäss zu sein (Kr. d. Urt., 358 – 9, Anm). “Twice Born” by Jens. The importance of pessimism and the need for redemption is pointed out with particular insistence by the philosophers of pessimism Hartmann and Drews (in the eyes of the latter “alle Religion“ ihrem Wesen nach ist Erlösungsreligion”), and for religious and philosophical research the task is therefore set to show, “wie das religiöse Verhältaiss gedacht werden muss, um dem However, the excessive emphasis on this motif in their constructions is entirely due to their religious metaphysics. We are pleased to note that Max Müller comes to an experimental interpretation of religion as a result of all his colossal study of religions (in various works, see, for example, Natürliche Religion, Leipzig, 1890, lectures II–V). His formula is as follows: nihil est in fide, quod non ante fuerit іn sensu (by the latter Müller means the experiential nature of religion, although, of course, this experience differs from sensory experience). This is rightly pointed out by Hartmann, in whom we generally find an extremely clear statement of the problem of religion in its general form: he establishes that "every object of a religious function is God; God is not a scientific, religious concept; science can deal with it only insofar as it is the science of religion. We can therefore define the religious function as the relationship of man to God. This definition seems to lose its power when atheism denies the existence of God and at the same time, like Buddhism, remains extremely intense religion; but it is not difficult to recognize that this appearance stems only from a biased realistic view of the being of God, which does not fit with Buddhist absolute illusionism. And in Buddhism, nothing is both) the absolute foundation of the world, namely the positive cause of the illusion that posits the world, 2) the absolute being (albeit nothing), which underlies the phenomenal world, 3) the absolute goal of the world, towards which the world process strives and in which it finds absolute redemption, and 4) the bearer and source of the religious and moral world order, which represents the only true and constant in illusion and only which makes the illusory world process a real process of salvation. Nothing in each of these four respects is an object of religious function or an object of religious attitude. Thus, Buddhism is atheism not in the sense that it denies God, i.e. an object of religious relation, but only in that it is nothing, a privativum, that makes him a god. If he did the first, he would cease to be a religion: but since he does the latter, he remains a religion and only poses to us the problem of how it is possible to deify nothing" (E. Hartmann. Die Religion des Geistes, 3-te Autl., 4 - 5). Therefore, Buddhism does not violate the rule that “kerne Religion ohne Gottesvorstellung” (6). Philosophers may protest why we use ambiguous and, moreover, philosophical terms “transcendental” and “immanent” when applied to religious experiences. They will be right in their reproach, if only they themselves do not forget that these concepts and for them do not contain any specific meaning - the latter is invested only by this philosopheme; in other words, the problem of the transcendent (and the immanent correlating with it) represents the last and most general problem of philosophy, and therefore includes the entire system. Therefore, there is no specific terminological meaning associated with the expressions we use, and we are free to use them in our own special sense, provided, of course, that we firmly adhere to the once accepted meaning. Religion, unlike philosophy, does not end with the transcendent, but begins with it, and only in further self-consciousness does it gradually develop its meaning and significance. Transcendent in the most general sense, i.e. exceeding any measure of human experience, consciousness and existence, in general “this world”, is given in the primary religious experience, since it contains the feeling of God, this is the basic music of religion. It is possible, of course, to create a new term to designate this feeling, but, it seems to us, there is no need for this, because in its formal definition, the transcendent of religion is not yet different from the transcendent of philosophy: it is more a logical gesture than a concept (which, however, will inevitably be any logical concept of the transcendent, that is, that which is above concepts). This idea is expressed with particular vividness in the mystical literature of Eastern church writers by Nicholas Cabasilas (14th century), and of Western writers by Thomas a à Kempis (On the Imitation of Christ). Both say this especially regarding the union with Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist: “Christ stands even closer to those who have received the sacrament of the Eucharist than they do to themselves, since He becomes different for them, more perfect - their own Self” (Bishop Alexy - Byzantine church mystics of the 14th century. Kazan 1906, p. 61). The works of church asceticism are full of teachings about prayer, for example, the works of Sts. Macarius the Great, Simeon the New Theologian, John Climacus, Isaac the Syrian, Tikhon of Zadonsk, church writers: bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Feofan the Recluse and many others. See the collections: Philokalia in 5 volumes, “Patristic instructions on prayer and sobriety”, compiled by Bishop. Feofan; Similar collections exist in the Catholic Church. Church literature on prayer can be said to be literally inexhaustible, and this also includes the liturgical riches of the East and West. Even for a superficial "psychological" study of religion, all this provides the most precious material, however, almost untouched. The phenomenological analysis of prayer (for which abundant material is given in religious literature) is completely absent. However, among people who live religiously, there is little taste and interest in such an analysis; among non-religious people there is no sufficient understanding and also little interest. It is not for nothing that self-made, even “atheistic” religions strive to have at least some kind of cult, and, consequently, prayer practice. In particular, for example, A. Comte was guided by a completely correct religious instinct when he established a cult for his deity “Grand être”; I had to attend the service of the “Humanitarian Church” in London - it seems that it is also sometimes called the “atheistic church”, where prayers were read to humanity, and, judging by the Prayer-book, ceremonies of baptism, marriage and the like were established. The concept “is” as applied to God is used here only in a preliminary and conditional meaning, in opposition to subjectivism. Later we will see that the category of being is not applicable to the Divine in itself. "Faith is always a consequence of revelation recognized as revelation; it is the contemplation of an invisible fact in a visible fact; faith is not just belief or logical conviction based on conclusions, but much more. It is not an act of one cognitive ability, detached from others, but an act of all the powers of the mind, captured and captivated to its last depth by the living truth of a revealed fact. Faith is not only thought or felt, but, so to speak, it is both thought and felt together; in a word, it is not just knowledge, but inquiry and life.” (A. S. Khomyakov. Works, II, 62). Thus, the coming to earth of the Savior of the world was an object of faith for Old Testament humanity, but this is how the New Testament servant of the Word speaks about it: “about what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, about the Word of life (for life was revealed, and we have seen and testify, and we proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father and was revealed to us); We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard” (1 John 1:1-3). In chapter 2 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, faith is interpreted in both senses: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is visible was made out of things that are visible” (v. 3), while the further content of the chapter speaks of faith as the basis of actions that are not motivated by reason and justified only by faith (see this entire chapter). In the book of Hebrews, Christ himself is called the author and perfecter of faith. To him belongs to the highest degree the feat of faith: “for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the Throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Of course, the mystery of the Incarnation remains inaccessible to the human mind, how the incarnate God could so close His Divinity with His humanity so as to be able to accomplish both the feat of faith in God and experience human feeling God-forsakenness, but this shows the deepest humanity of faith, its exceptional significance and indispensability specifically for man. In this sense, the definition of faith is given by St. Maximus the Confessor: (Diversa capita ad theologiam et oeconomiam spectantia, centana II, 12 – 13, Migne, patr. curs, compl, ser. gr. XC, 1225). “Faith is unprovable knowledge (ναπόδειϰτος γνώσις); if knowledge is unprovable, faith therefore exceeds nature; with its help, in an unknown way, but clearly, we enter into a union with God that surpasses understanding (νόησιν). When the mind enters into direct union with By God, the power of thinking (τοῦ νοείν ϰαί τοῦ ναέςδαι) is completely inactive. But to the extent that it comes out of it and makes any of the divine things the subject of reflection (τών μετά ϴεόν), this unity, which is above understanding, is dissected, and in which, being in union with God, through participation in the Divine, he himself becomes God and lays aside the natural law of his own nature.” According to the definition of Nicholas of Cusa, “credere est cum ascensione cogitare,” “posse credere est maxima animae virtus.” "Durch den Glauben wissen wir, dass wir einen Körper haben (!) und dass ausser uns andere Körper uod andere denkende Wesen vorhaoden sind. Eine wahrhafte, wunderbare Offenbarung (!!)" (Jacobi's Werke IV, I, 211). Lossky in “The Justification of Intuitionism,” however, this term belongs to Schelling: Philosophie der Ofienbarung, I, 115 – 19, 130, 143). This theory was analyzed by Prof. A.I. Vvedensky in his collection “Philosophical Etudes” in an essay entitled: “Soloviev’s mystical theory of knowledge.” Wed. my “Philosophy of Economics”, chapter on “The Nature of Science”). From this it follows, by the way, what an illusion some Protestant sects (Baptists, Methodists) are in, instilling in their followers confidence in their already accomplished salvation; and how much wiser Orthodoxy turns out to be here too, which warns against this confidence as a disastrous illusion (“delight”) and points out the need for a constant struggle with the world of “salvation” but not “savedness.” Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Theil, 2nd Anfl. Berlin 1841, p. 33. Fichte was also infected with a kind of intellectualism, and not only in the early period (“dispute about atheism”), but also in the late period, the era of “Anweisung zum seligen Leben” of 1806. It is in this work that we encounter a completely Hegelian idea that religion represents a preparatory stage for philosophy, which crowns the spiritual development of man: "für sie (Wissenschaft) wird genetisch, was für die Religion nur ein absolutes Factum ist. Die Religion ohne Wissenschaft ist irgendwo ein blosser, demohngeachtet jedoch unerschütterlicher Glaube: die Wissenschaft hebt allen Glauhen aur und verwandelt ihn in Sehauen” (V, 472). As an example, here is one of many judgments of this kind: “Secret knowledge” is subject to the same laws as all human knowledge. It is a mystery to the average person in the same sense in which writing is a mystery to those who have not learned to write. And just as everyone can learn to write by choosing the right path for this, so can everyone become a secret student and even a teacher if he chooses the appropriate path for this "(Steiner, The Path to Initiation, p. 45. Italics mine Compare his Die Geheimnissenschaft, passim.) The immanent character of occult knowledge is expressed even more clearly in the following words of Steiner: "The occultist studies spiritual laws in the same way as a physicist or a chemist studies material laws. He does this in the same way and with the same rigor as is appropriate in the spiritual field. But the development of humanity depends on these great spiritual laws. Just as oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur will not come into combination in any future contrary to the laws of nature, so, of course, nothing will happen in spiritual life that is contrary to spiritual laws. And whoever knows these latter can thus gain insight into the pattern of the future. For one who understands this real point of view of occultism, the objection also disappears that because the state of things is in a certain sense predetermined, any human freedom becomes impossible. Only that which is subject to some law can be determined in advance. But it is not at all determined by law; the establishment of the conditions under which this law can operate may depend on the will of a person. So it will be with future world events and the destinies of man. As a secret investigator, you see them in advance, although they must first be caused by human arbitrariness. The occult researcher also foresees precisely what will yet be accomplished by human freedom... Only one essential difference must be made clear to oneself in predestination through physical science or through spiritual knowledge. Physical science rests on rational understanding, and therefore its prophecy is also rational, based on judgments, conclusions, considerations, etc. The prophecy of spiritual knowledge, on the contrary, comes from actual higher vision or perception. The mystic examiner must even strictly avoid any ideas based on mere reflection, consideration, speculation, etc.” (Steiner. From the Chronicle of the World. Moscow 1914. “Spiritual Knowledge.” Pages 138 – 9). These are the features that describe the religious knowledge of one of the lamps of faith. "Man has in one soul both mind, and word, and one feeling, although according to the five natural needs of the body it is divided into five senses. In relation to the body, it is inseparably divided through five private senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and being changeable, it invariably shows its effectiveness... In relation to the spiritual, there is no need for this common feeling to be divided into five senses, as if into five windows... but being entirely one feeling, it has with itself and in itself five senses (or, more precisely, more), since they are all one in essence... So, when the one God of all things appears through revelation to a single rational soul, then every good is revealed to it and at the same time is contemplated (felt) by all its senses together. This one and every good thing is both visible and audible, and delights the taste, etc... So, whoever is known by God knows that God also sees him. But whoever does not see God does not know that God sees him, since he himself does not see Him, although he sees everything else well. So, those who have been worthy to see at once with all their senses, as one of many senses, this all-good, which is both one and many, since it is all-good, I say, those, I say, because they have known and are cognizing every day with different feelings of a single sense the different goods together, as one, do not recognize any difference in everything that has been said, but contemplation is called knowledge, and knowledge is called contemplation, hearing by sight, and sight by hearing" (Words Venerable Simeon the New Theologian, I, 475). O. Pfleiderer. Geschichte der Religionsphilosophie, 3te Aufl. Berlin, 1893. p. 309. Cp. in general, the entire chapter is about Schleiermacher. Only this duality and obscurity of Schleiermacher’s teaching could give Frank a reason to interpret “feeling” as a religious intuition, and not a “side” of the psyche (preface XXIX - XXX) and thereby ontologize Schleiermacher’s psychologisms, and portray the representative of subjectivism and immanentism as a herald of “religious realism” (V). Troeltsch's views are set out in a number of his articles in various Protestant encyclopedias and in the 2nd volume of his complete works: Ernst Troeltsch. Zur religiösen Lage, Religionsphilosophie und Ethik. 1913. To characterize Hermann's views, see. Herrmann. Ethik. Himself. Die religiöse.Frage der Gegenwart (in the collection Das Cbristenthum. 1908). “To recognize the existence of God... is a subjective moral necessity, i.e. need, and not objective, i.e. not a duty, for it cannot be a duty to acknowledge the existence of any thing (this applies only to the theoretical application of reason). By this we cannot understand that it is necessary to recognize the existence of God as the basis of any obligation in general... This recognition for theoretical reason can be called a hypothesis, and in relation to the understanding of the object given to us by the moral law (the highest good), it means in relation to the need for a practical direction, faith and, moreover, the faith of pure reason, for only pure reason (both in its theoretical and practical application) is the source from which it arises” (Kant . Criticism of practical reason, trans. N. M. Sokolov, pp. 130 – 1). The inconsistency and duality of Kant’s ideas on the question of faith is characterized by the chapter of the “Critique of Practical Reason” under the title “How is it possible to think about the expansion of pure reason in a practical sense, without expanding its knowledge as speculative reason?” Here "theoretical knowledge of pure reason does not yet receive an increase. The increase here consists only (?) in the fact that these concepts, previously problematic (only thinkable), are now assertorically recognized as those that actually have objects, since practical reason inevitably needs the existence of these objects for the possibility of its own, and, moreover, almost certainly necessary, object of the highest good, and through this gives theoretical reason the right to presuppose them. But this expansion of theoretical reason is not an expansion speculation, that is, does not give the right to make positive use of these concepts in a theoretical sense (??). For what practical reason does here is that these concepts become real and actually receive their (possible) objects. Although we are by no means given their contemplation, on the basis of this admitted reality of them no synthetic judgment is possible. Consequently, this discovery gives us absolutely nothing in the speculative sense... But theoretical knowledge, although not of these objects, but of reason in general (?), here nevertheless expands, precisely insofar as these ideas, through practical postulates, are given objects, and through this thought, only problematic, receives objective reality. Consequently, this is not an expansion of knowledge about these supersensible objects, but an expansion of theoretical reason and its knowledge in relation to the supersensible in general, since this prompts us to admit that there are such objects, although we are not able to define them more precisely, means to expand our knowledge of objects. This success, therefore, is due solely to pure theoretical reason, to which all these ideas are transcendental and have no object. Here they become immanent and constitutive, since these are the foundations of the possibility of making valid the necessary object of pure practical reason (the highest good). Without this, it is only the transcendental and regulative principles of the speculative reason, which impel it not to allow a new object outside experience to continue its application in experience to the fullest possible extent. And if experience receives this expansion, then the speculative mind with these ideas can only approach the matter negatively, i.e. not expanding the concept, but clarifying it" (ibid., 140 - 1). Is the scope of reason expanded or not expanded by the gains of its practical ability? Kant becomes entangled in contradictions, thanks, on the one hand, to the reluctance to recognize the general cognitive significance of the "postulates", and, on the other, not being able to reject them. "Put me, (says love) like a seal on your heart, like a ring on your hand: for love is strong as death; jealousy is fierce as the grave; its arrows are arrows of fire; it is a very strong flame. Great waters cannot quench love, and rivers will not drown it" (Song of Songs, 8, 6 - 7). Isn't St. Athanasius the Great, with a handful of his supporters, was not the bearer of the true catholic consciousness of the Church at a time when its numerical majority persisted in heresy? Wed. Schelling: Gott ist nicht, wie viele sich vorstellen, das Transzendente, er ist das Immanente, d. h., zum Inhalt der Vernunft gemachte Transzendente (Schelling. Philosophie der Offenbarung, I, 170, WW., 2. III). Wed. interesting work by E. Brunner. Das Symbolische in der religiösen Erkenntniss. Beiträge zu einer Theorie des religiösen Erkennens. Tübingen, 1914 (This work became known to us after the preparation of this chapter). I cannot help but cite here as an illustration what I heard from L.N. A thick story about one Pushkin contemporary who recalled how Pushkin himself, in a conversation with her, admired Tatyana for treating Eugene Onegin so well at their last meeting. Wed. characteristics of science in the chapter on the “economic nature of science” in my “Philosophy of Economics”. Wed. Schilling. Philosophie der Mythologie, II, 104: "Dogma bedeutet bekanntlich, wie das lateinische decretum, das ja ebenfalls von Behauptungen, vom Lehrsatzen gjsbraucht wird, einen Eatschluss und dann erst eine Behauptung. Dogma ist eiwas, das behauptet werden muss, dass sich also ohne einen Widerspruch (einen Gegensatz) nicht denken lässt“. For more on this, see the next chapter on “negative theology.” Wed. about this (priest) P. Florensky. Universal human roots of idealism. Sergiev Posad, 1909. This is well illustrated by Otto Gilbert. Griechische Religionsphilosophie. Leipzig 1911, pp. 356 – 456. Hegel’s Religionsphilosophie (quoted from Diederichs, edited by Arthur Drews). Wed. Hegel's Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. I Th. Logik (W. W., VI, 2-te Autl.), SS. XXI – II, 3, etc. The idea that there is no mystery in God, that He is completely knowable, appears more than once on the pages of Hegel’s philosophy of religion: pp. 334, 335 – 6. In note 39 (p. 419) A. Drews rightly notes: “Hegel forgets here that the being of logic designates only the pure concept of being, and not this being itself, that the statement: God is universal can only justify the logical, ideal, but not the real existence of God.” It is not for nothing that Hegel sympathetically quotes his mystical predecessor in immanentism, Meister Eckegart: "das Auge, mit dem mich Gott sieht, ist das Auge, mit dem ich ihn sehe, mein Auge und sein Auge ist eins. In der Gerechtigkeit werde ich in Gott gewogen und er in mir. Wenn Gott nicht ware, ware ich nicht, wenn ich nicht wäre, so wäre er nicht (139). To these general arguments should be added the consideration that if religion is the lowest level of philosophical consciousness, then it is canceled and abolished as unnecessary after its highest achievement, and only inconsistency allows Hegel to keep religion, corresponding to the “representation,” in its independent meaning next to philosophy, corresponding to the “concept.” Hartmann already points to this: Philos, d. ReL, 85. A. Drews quite rightly notes in his notes to Hegel’s philosophy of religion: “Hegel identifies conscious being not with the conscious side of being (Bewusst-Sein) or ideal being, but directly with the real and thus arrives at the monstrous assertion that it is possible, through finite, discursive, conscious being, to think through the process of absolute, eternal, preconscious and superconscious thinking directly as such. Hegel forgets that the being of logic designates only the pure concept of being, and not this being itself, that the statement: God is universal can only substantiate the logical, and not the real concept of God.” Anm. 39, S, 419). So, for example, it is not easy to see under Cohen’s “pure logic” the hidden edge of neo-Judaism. Hartmann, among the newest philosophers in Germany who displays the greatest understanding of religious and philosophical issues, defines the relationship between general philosophy and religious philosophy as follows: “religious metaphysics differs from theoretical metaphysics in that it draws conclusions from the postulates of religious consciousness and develops the necessary metaphysical prerequisites of religious consciousness from the relationship inherent in religious psychology, while theoretical metaphysics follows the path of scientific induction. Religious metaphysics is, therefore, the metaphysical part of the religious worldview and should, according to the above, coincide with the metaphysical part of the theoretical worldview, although it is acquired in a different way; their agreement should be the more accurate, the more important the metaphysical part of the worldview is for religious consciousness, the less it contains religiously indifferent points. (Hartmann. Philosophie der Religion, III). The understanding of the relationship between philosophy and religion developed in the text gives a different interpretation and largely removes the very question of the difference between religious and general metaphysics, for in essence they coincide and may differ more in methods of presentation. The peculiarity of Hartmann’s “philosophy of the unconscious” is that it imagines itself to be built on induction and, therefore, considers itself the completion of science. Wed. Schelling’s definition of the relationship between faith and “science” (by which he means, first of all, philosophy): “Faith should not be presented as unfounded knowledge; on the contrary, it should be said that it is the most grounded, for it alone has something in which all doubt is defeated, something so absolutely positive that any further transition to another is cut off. It is from this that it follows that science cannot begin with faith, as many teach and preach. For certainty that eliminates all doubt (and only this can be called faith) is only the end of science. First the law, and then the gospel. Reason corresponds to the law, faith to the Gospel. But just as the apostle says that the law was a teacher to Christ, so a strict school of science must precede faith, although we only through faith, i.e. through the possession of certainty that eliminates all doubts, we can be justified, i.e. to become truly perfect... Faith thus does not cancel the quest, but requires it, for it is the end of the quest. But the end of the quest must exist.” (Schelling. Philosophie der Offenbarur.g, 2-ter Th.15). This importance of the development of the science of religion was noted by Hegel. “If the knowledge of religion is understood only historically, then we must consider theologians who have reached such an understanding as clerks of a trading house, who keep accounts only for the wealth of others, work only for others, without acquiring their own property; although they receive payment, their merit is only in servicing and registering what constitutes the property of others... These theologians have nothing to do with the actual content, with the knowledge of God” (Hegels Religionsphilosophie, 22 – 3). Already in the “Phenomenology of the Spirit,” Hegel gives the following apt description of the “historical” trend in German theology, which has become so influential in our days: “The Enlightenment (Die Aufklärung) invents regarding religious faith that its reliability is based on certain individual historical evidence, which, if considered as historical evidence, could not, of course, provide for its content the degree of reliability given to us by newspaper reports about some event; further, its reliability is supposed to be based on the accidental preservation of this evidence - preservation, on the one hand, through paper, and on the other, thanks to art and honesty in transferring from one paper to another, and, finally, on a correct understanding of the meaning of dead words and letters. In fact, it is not at all characteristic of faith to connect its reliability with such evidence and accidents; it is in its certainty an independent relation to its absolute object, a pure knowledge of it, which does not interfere with letters, paper and copyists in its consciousness of the absolute being and is not mediated by such things” (Hegel’s Phenomenologie des Geistes, Jubiläumausgabe, Phil. Bibl. Bd. 114 pp., 360 – 61). Scientific piety, which distinguishes the new era, is a complete analogy to artistic piety, piety in art and through art. Art, too, is not religion and in no case can it replace it, but it, becoming religious, can serve religion, and eras of religious upsurge are naturally and inevitably imprinted by the rise of religious art. Of course, art is deeper than science and therefore stands closer to religion, but for our analogy this difference does not matter.