"Eschatology and Progress"

“In the days of our youth there was no more burning question than the problem of progress. At that time, we were convinced that a good pattern reigns in history, which leads humanity to happiness on earth and universal bliss. What is the theory or idea of ​​progress? Progress from the point of view of irreligious worldviews is, in essence, a kind of grandiose bloody sacrifice, where people must play the role of “sacrificial animals” where generations who have lived and are now living are doomed to death and disappearance without a trace in the name of a “bright future.” With this understanding of “progress, the living are sacrificed for unknown, unborn generations. Progress - in this understanding - is vulgarity and cruelty. A. I. Herzen laughed evilly and aptly at this vulgarity of the rationalistic, irreligious understanding of “progress” in his time. The evil cruelty of the vulgarity of such an understanding of the idea of ​​progress is now being tragically extinguished in the USSR, where millions of living people are doomed to suffering and destruction in the name of the “good” of future generations. The theory of progress in its usual, mainstream understanding suffers from obvious limitations, which are especially clear in the light of the religious understanding of the destinies of man and the world, since it excludes from progress the activity and complicity of forces located beyond the boundaries of this life; she suffers from insensibility of sin and the tragedy of life associated with the presence of sin in the world. Nevertheless, the idea of ​​progress contains some internal self-evidence: man is not a separated, isolated being, but a generic being, each person has a common destiny with all of humanity. The theory of progress answers the question about the fate of humanity, forming a complex unity, multi-unity. The idea of ​​the connection between the fate of man and the fate of nature and the unity of the destinies of the human race is an essentially Christian thought. Unity is not only causal (causal) but also purposeful (teleological). 1 In this unity of the destinies of humanity, together with causality, as an inevitable connection of consequences arising from given causes, the goal that is defined and intended for the world and humanity operates. This goal from within determines the development of the destinies of the world and humanity, acting among the causes as a guiding, leading principle. The unity of the destinies of the human race is not an accident arising as a result of the combined action of external causes, but an internal, purposeful rationality. Rationalistic theories of progress - the legacy of the 18th century, “the flattest of all centuries”, limited the understanding of human life to this-worldly in its isolation. The question of the otherworldly fate of man fell out of their sight. From here grew that easy, vulgar reconciliation with death, which is characteristic of these theories. The problem of death did not seem to concern the theory of progress. The attitude towards the problem of death in rationalistic theories of progress was limited to the frivolous consolation that science would ultimately “defeat” death and solve the problem of “infinite” life. Of course, to a certain extent, death is technically surmountable; or rather, the moment of actual death can be pushed back to some distant future. But mortality, the subjection of all existence to the beginning of destruction, decomposition, death - technically cannot be overcome. The idea of ​​technically overcoming death is the crown of a godless attitude towards history and life. Technical overcoming of death cannot resurrect previously dead people: medicine can prevent the living from dying, but it is not in its power to resurrect those who have long since died. Moreover, given the existing tragedy of life, it seems unreasonable to artificially continue life, or to give immortality to people unworthy of life. The tragic nonsense of the death of all living things remains unresolved in irreligious theories of progress. Herzen was the first to sense the unfoundedness of the rationalistic interpretation of progress and exclaimed: “The king is goal.” Some truth of the theory of progress, as has already been pointed out, applies to all humanity as a whole, since people are all connected by one common destiny. From a Christian point of view, this common destiny of humanity can be called the divine-human destiny. The merit of the theory of progress lies in the fact that it seeks sufficient grounds for the fact that the world will not perish, will not decay, but will be realized in its entirety and entelechy. 2 This means that there is a force in the world that rejects personal, personalistic freedom. Here we contrast personal freedom and the Sophia 3 foundation of the world. Freedom is what brings about unity. Freedom is always “how” will be realized, and not “what” will be realized. The “what” of the world is given by its divine basis, which is immutable and is the task of freedom. Freedom can realize the theme of life always in new possibilities. Life is always new and eternal life is eternal creativity, but the content of life is Sophia, not freedom. Freedom only develops life's themes. Relationship between time and eternity Is eternity something completely different from time, something transcendental to time? Time turned to eternity ceases to exist for us, since eternity, as it were, incinerates time. All my life I have been looking for an answer to the question of the relationship between progress and eschatology. I once addressed this question to one of the authoritative Russian hierarchs and theologians. He answered me something like this: “You see these walls, they will collapse so that nothing will remain of them. So is “progress” – everything will be destroyed.” This is a “classic” response to some “trends” in Christianity, which asserts the destructive influence of eternity on time. In support of this, they usually refer to texts about “fire”: “The fire will try everyone’s work, what kind it is” (1 Cor. 3:11-15). But the fire spoken of here does not destroy time, but divides, separates “the wheat from the chaff”; in this testing fire, time will not be burned, but melted. We must accept and affirm the idea that the history of mankind has a Christian content associated with time. Among the sacred books of Christianity, the Apocalypse gives the Christian theory of progress. Progress is the history of mankind, some historical achievement, the alternation of eras and events. The Apocalypse is a symbolic image of “progress” as human history, understood as the history of the Church, as the history of Christ’s humanity. The first property of this story is its connection with time - it takes place in time. Another property of human history is tragedy, expressed in clashes and struggle. In history, there is a clash of negative and positive forces; in this clash, man, the beast, the false prophet, Christ, martyrs and angels act. The historical process is tragic because its completeness is not an idyll and paradise on earth, but the end of world history. This is not an external end, but an internal one: it will come when history is ripe for its end. The maturation of history is progress. Its end belongs not to this, but to another plane of existence; we must recognize the action of otherworldly forces in history, the participation of the dead in the history of the otherworld. (In the Apocalypse, the martyrs ask for vengeance and this expresses the participation of the world of the dead in history). The apocalypse resolutely excludes the idea that history can only be closed “on this side.” The pattern in the history and destinies of mankind is not understandable rationally, but only to the extent that everyone seeks the will of God in their lives and the Kingdom of God in their deeds. The idea of ​​the positive significance in life and in the history of the entire world of death and the post-mortem state is extremely important. Usually death and posthumous existence are considered only from the perspective of hope or fear. Of course, if there were no original sin, then there would be no special state beyond the boundaries of this life, since there would be no death, but now death is the definition of God and the punishment of love. Now human life includes the afterlife. Although Revelation is silent about the afterlife, we must accept that the spirit lives out the experience of life there. Here is the basis of prayer for the dead; the deceased seem to absorb our prayers and grow with them. Saints also participate in our lives: although this side of life is closed to us, it is nevertheless real. It belongs not to eternity, but to time, time and “ours” - as long as there is mutual communication between these two worlds, but also to another time, since disembodiment - the separation of the soul from the body through death - places human life beyond this existence in other conditions of time and space. It is in this interaction that history moves towards its end. The end of history will come when we don't expect it. There can be no predictions about this coming, since this is the action of God over man, which does not fit into human consciousness. But this does not mean that this action of God has no relation to the inner maturity of humanity. What is the positive content of the times and periods of humanity's maturity and what should progress be like as a historical accomplishment? There is no answer to these questions in this life, “on this side.” We constantly see that the strongest and best people leave us for another life to complete their destiny in another world; in our calculations about the meaning of progress we encounter constant contradictions. Our business is creative action - activity. Activity can be guided by temporary and selfish goals, and then it does not belong to progress; only that activity whose goal is eternal values ​​belongs to progress. In human creativity for progress, there are two sides - one divine, relating to eternity, to life in God, to prayer, to the grace-filled nourishment of the spirit from the Divine, the other side relates to creativity for oneself, to the revelation of one’s human talents - the human side of creativity. (Parable of the Talents). Only God knows when history can and should end. In this sense, progress is “bad infinity” because “on this side” its positive content is not revealed, but at the same time it is “good infinity”, because time in it is not empty, but creative, and eternity realizes itself in this time. Human death and the analogous death of the world are a new creative act of God. A thought that exceeds our experience - for us a transcendental thought - is expressed in the Apocalypse in symbols that seem deliberately vague and contradictory. The words: “there will be no more time” do not mean the destruction of time, but a different experience of time. Temporality belongs to the category of createdness. Creation is not characterized by completeness, which is “fulfilled”—filled with content—and this fulfillment is eternal life. The relationship between eschatology and history is that full spiritual maturity is a harbinger of the coming of Christ. The Second Coming will take place, as it were, in a new “eon” in another, new “age”, which is separated from ours by the brink of death. Here it is appropriate to remember the name N. F. Fedorov and his “Common Cause”. Fedorov believed that as a result of spiritual maturity and mastery of nature, humanity would reach a state in which everyone would become actual children of God. The will of mankind and the will of God will meet. God and man will meet, as it were, in a tunnel in which they made a passage towards each other from two different sides. Fedorov’s problem is the transition from this world to the other world not through Divine mediation, but through evolution. His thoughts about “resurrection” are naturalistic and ultimately boil down to the idea of ​​mastering the human body, but the mystery of the human being, the connection between body and spirit, the experience of the spiritual world, the divine education beyond the grave necessary for resurrection, all this is completely ignored in his philosophy. There is one common dogmatic basis why we cannot eliminate progress, as one of the preconditions of eschatology - this is the question of the royal ministry of Christ, which is not completed, because the kingdom of God, although it is within us, has not yet come. This coming is spoken of in the Apocalypse as a long process, when the Son will hand over everything to the Father. There is a positive connection between human history and the eschatological accomplishment - the fullness of times and periods is a precondition for the eschatological accomplishment. As much as the prayer “Come, Lord Jesus” is not silent in us, we are turned forward, calling on Christ, His action, not ours, but about us, for us and constantly belongs to us, as prayer, as hope, as the only outcome worthy of a Christian. From Greek ό τέλος the end, the final goal. “Entelechy” - “entelechy”, “entelechy understanding of the world” - from the Greek word έν τέλος “to the end” “meaning the end” - the statement that all processes taking place - both in the natural and in the spiritual world, have their own internal task, which is the final, final goal of this process. Everything that happens does not happen by chance, but rushes consciously or unconsciously - towards its final, final goal, towards its destination. This “goal”, the internal task facing both each individual phenomenon of life and the world as a whole, determines the direction of life from the inside, is the “guiding” “internal cause” of what is happening. Entelechy is the providence of what a given phenomenon, a given event, a given process should be in its final full, ideal disclosure, in ideal completion. Everything that exists and develops is not only given, but also given: it strives towards its “prototype”, towards “ultimate perfection”, towards the “ideal plan of the world” in its whole and in its parts. “Sophia” (Σίοφία – Wisdom) “sophia’s understanding of the world”, “sophia of the world and man” - such a religious and philosophical understanding of the world, which asserts that in the depths of the world - visible, changeable, transitory, subject to the laws of fluidity of time and space, the law of causality, lies the ideal divine spiritual basis of being, an unchanging basis, inexhaustible in its creative power, endless in its freedom from the boundaries of space and time, entelechyally determining the development of the world, both as a whole and in individual forms of being. Sophia connects the world into one living organic whole, makes it a living “all-unity”. It is the final goal and at the same time the essence of our knowledge, since in knowledge we move from the random and particular to the knowledge of the eternal and general (“laws”, “ideas”). Sofia is the beginning of beauty - beauty in the world is the radiance through the temporary and changeable of the eternal and unchangeable Sofia foundation of the world. Artistic creativity in all its manifestations (poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.) d.) there is a revelation in sensory-tactile (visual, sound, auditory) forms of this ideal beauty, the revelation of Sophia. Sophia is the basis and source of living and life-giving force in nature, the eternal impulse to life and creativity, the cause of causes that moves the world and together directs the world towards its completion towards its ideal “prototype”. Sophia is the basis and consubstantiality of humanity. The unity of humanity, manifested in the unity of the laws of thinking, in general - the laws of mental and spiritual life, in the unity of spiritual principles, in the natural “sociality” of the need for “worldwide unity” - is the revelation of Sophia as the ideal basis of human existence, as “humanity as a whole”, in its consubstantiality. This is how we can briefly formulate the foundations of the “Sophian” understanding of the world. Among the fathers and teachers of the Church, the “Sophian” understanding of the world is revealed with particular strength and brightness by St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor. Of the Russian poets and writers, the sense of the Sophia basis of the world is given by Lermontov, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, Blok. Of the Russian thinkers and philosophers, the doctrine of Sophia was and is being developed by V.S. Solovyov, St. P. Florensky, Fr. S. Bulgakov, V. V. Zenkovsky, N. A. Berdyaev and others. The doctrine of Sophia “in itself” - understanding Her in Her inner life, in Her relation to God - the so-called “sophiology” is formulated differently by different thinkers. Now, in terms of “Sophia”, “Sophianity”, many are judging something terrible, they are even talking about some kind of “Sophian” heresy. To avoid misunderstandings and at the same time so that every thinking and understanding person can see that Sophia’s understanding of the world does not contain anything “terrible” and “heretical”, the editors of the “Vestnik” allowed themselves to provide the article with such a long note.