The Resurrection of Christ and modern consciousness

(It was published in the Easter issues of the Kyiv newspaper “People” (1905) and the St. Petersburg weekly “Vek” (1907) In the book “Acts of the Apostles,” which tells how the apostles preached the faith that had been revealed to them in Christ, as the Savior of the world, who accomplished the work of salvation with His death and resurrection, the episode of the sermon of the apostle is especially close and understandable to modern people. Paul in Athens, the capital of culture of that time, the center of philosophy, art, literature (Acts 17). Whoever in our time, having accepted the truth of the Gospel in his heart, would like to speak loudly about this faith, feels himself to have come with a wild and strange to modern ears, “unscientific” and unnecessary sermon, representing “madness for the Hellenes,” as if to Athens, “this city full of idols,” upon entering which even the great Apostle was “disturbed in spirit.” In terms of the invention of idols, modernity turned out to be sharper, more inventive, and subtler than Greek Athens, because it also created abstract, ideological idols, in the form of all kinds of “scientific” and non-scientific theories, in which the modern soul is helplessly entangled: in the pantheon of modern Athens there are political, socialist, aesthetic, and scientific idols. And this is no longer that naive, simple-minded idolatry that was characteristic of the pre-Christian world; here one can feel a sharper, more conscious and persistent spirit of resistance and idolatry, armed with the power of knowledge, abstract thought, and subtle feelings. The late, predawn hour casts sharper and denser shadows than the early, twilight hour. “All the Athenians and the foreigners living among them did not spend their time more willingly than in talking or listening to something new,” a trait that has been completely preserved among the Athenians of today, who are so greedy for all kinds of aesthetic and mental entertainment. Therefore, the Athenians brought St. Paul to the Areopagus and they said to him: “Can we know what this new teaching is that you are preaching, for you are putting something strange into our ears. Therefore, we want to know what it is?” However, when ap. Paul expounded before them the doctrine of God and Christ; the Athenians, having sufficiently satisfied their curiosity, when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed, and others said: “We will listen to you about this at another time,” so the apostle. Paul “went out from among them,” and only a few “came to him and believed.” One should expect no different reception from modern Athenians if we seriously and sincerely talk to them about the resurrection of Christ, in which lies all the power, the whole essence, the whole content of Christianity (“if Christ is not risen, our faith is in vain”). However, even in modern Athens there are some who have already lost their mental balance and are vaguely looking for a way out of the labyrinth of modern thought, although sometimes they do not admit it even to themselves. And one can say about them what the apostle began his sermon to the Athenians. Paul, who said this: “Athenians, I see from everything that you are somehow especially devout. For, passing and examining your shrines, I also found an altar on which is written: “to an unknown God.” This, which you ignorantly revere, I preach to you.” Modern Athenians, close to us, namely our dear, dear Russian intelligentsia, connected by blood to our hearts, are indeed “especially devout.” She serves her faith, her religion selflessly, to the point of martyrdom, to the point of heroism. She is holy regarding her faith, but she got lost precisely in this faith, lost her way in the dense forest and, not finding a path, not knowing where to selflessly and completely cleave, where to give the heat of her soul, she turned entirely into languor, into pain, into torment, into languor. In her sick and restless heart, she constantly erects altars on which continuous sacrifice is performed, but she herself does not know to whom to dedicate her altar, she does not know the name of her God. And her altar turns out to be dedicated to the “unknown God” - God, but unknown, - unknown, but God. Thus, this truly religious thirst is combined with the poverty of religious knowledge and faith, until the time when the true name of the unknown is finally revealed! Worship of the unknown God is expressed today in the service of one vague idea, one spiritual idol: the idea of ​​progress, which represents, as it were, a special case of the world law of evolution. Infinite, and, therefore, unknown, unexplored progress for man, endless evolution - this is the Zeus and Olympus of modern Athenians. And regarding this idea, this altar to the “unknown God” one can also say in the words of St. Paul: “This which you ignorantly revere, I preach to you.” For the teaching about progress and world evolution is a vague, unconscious preaching of Christ’s Resurrection, and the preaching of Christ’s Resurrection includes all the truth that is contained in the teaching about evolution and progress, if only these teachings are put within their proper boundaries and given the correct interpretation. How is this? Humanity has never considered and does not consider its life, which lies in evil and sin, poisoned by hatred and crime, distorted by weakness and limitation, as the proper, normal lot of the human race. Without believing in the Savior, it retains the need for salvation and faith in salvation. It now believes that if an individual person, a separate generation is not and cannot be saved, then humanity as a whole will be saved, in the person of future generations, who constitute, as it were, the goal of history, the outcome from its tragic labyrinth. The path of progress is the path to the salvation of humanity, progress is its salvation. This is how modern humanity thinks, feels, and believes. In the name of this faith, in the name of the salvation of humanity through progress, sacrifices are made, life, peace, and freedom are given. The salvation of humanity in progress is the guiding light of modern humanity; deprive it of this faith, extinguish this fire, and it will remain in impenetrable darkness, and it is the most valiant, the purest, the most faithful who will not withstand this darkness. But is there really salvation in progress? Will they save humanity from darkness, sorrow, humiliation, and fall? Is anyone saved, and can anyone be saved by it alone? We answer these questions three times: no, no and no. What is living reality, what lives: human individuality or abstract humanity? Is it possible to talk about humanity as an existing reality, if at the same time individuals are constantly destroyed or devalued, if humanity itself turns into only a simple alternation of generations and individuals? Meanwhile, the concept of humanity has only this meaning in modern eyes. The curse of homelessness and the mutual alienation of generations inevitably falls on people as soon as we begin to think of humanity this way. A part cannot replace the whole - after all, if in today’s society capitalists enjoy all the material benefits, we cannot say that modern society is prosperous, and if we accept that indeed at the end of time the last generations will prosper, whose representatives will be the happy heirs of all historical progress, then there is equally no reason to think and say that in their person humanity has been saved, historical tragedy has been defeated, a way out of life’s contradictions has been found. Both those and other capitalists, both these consumers of surplus value in the economic sense, that is, the products of other people’s labor, and these consumers of surplus value in the historical sense, are not free, and should not even be free from reproaches of conscience, from the consciousness of a certain parasitic nature of their existence. A self-satisfied capitalist who does not care about his loved ones, in particular his workers, can least of all be an ideal example, but the citizen of Zukunftsaat can serve them just as little if he complacently forgets about our suffering, about the price with which this Zukunftsaat was bought in history. In ideas about the state of the future, about humanity being saved by progress, one inevitably has to oscillate between two possibilities: either future people with a more sensitive conscience, with a more developed sense of universal human solidarity and love will be tormented by the consciousness that their well-being was bought at such a high price, and then they will... a thousand times more pitiful and unfortunate than us, and are absolutely not suitable for the role of the lucky ones of the future crowning world history, or, in the opposite case, if they forget about everything and attribute everything to themselves, then we have simply disgusting, repulsive ugliness, the mere thought of which makes one sick and sick, the thought that for the sake of the bourgeois contentment and well-being of these gentlemen such a price was paid, martyr’s blood was shed. It always amazes me how those who profess the religion of progress, those who hope for Zukunftsaat, do not notice all the internal hopelessness of their situation, all the illusory nature of their ideal. No, the idea of ​​progress does not and cannot provide an outcome from the tragic contradictions of life; a person cannot be saved from them through progress. But progress is not salvation also because it does not defeat the main enemy, which devalues ​​and makes life meaningless - death, this terrible nihilist that destroys all values. Sometimes they try to win a philistine victory over death, dulling its tragic edge, inventing a means to make it painless and peaceful. This means, as L.N. Tolstoy once rightly put it (in a personal conversation) regarding the theories of Prof. Mechnikov, to ensure that a person lives like a cow. The fact of the existence of death devalues ​​life not only by turning it into something temporary and accidental, but it also destroys the very connection of humanity and puts a stamp of fragmentation on its entire spiritual life. What is conceived in the concept of “eternal life” presupposes a new, qualitatively different way of perceiving existence, a special completeness, in contrast to the fragmentation of the temporal. And the thirst for complete absolute knowledge and feeling that we experience in our soul, although we are powerless to satisfy it, requires for its satisfaction precisely a special, qualitatively different life than the one we know, eternal life, and only in it can the riddle of the human spirit be resolved. We cannot satisfy this hunger for eternity; we must not drown it out, for this would mean extinguishing the fire of Prometheus within ourselves, committing the greatest spiritual crime against ourselves, betrayal of the Holy Spirit. And for future generations the same dilemma remains: either this mystery, inconsistency, insatiability and insatiability of the spirit, like ours, only bigger, sharper, more painful, or the philistine stupid complacency, which will not happen! What does the teaching about the resurrection of Christ and the future general resurrection based on it, the transformation of the world and us in it, about a new heaven and a new earth, about a new Jerusalem, about a new Jerusalem, in which “nothing will be cursed any more,” in which “God will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more death, there will be no more crying, no crying, no more pain, will be given to us, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21, 22), and “time will be no more.” will it happen? It provides the only possible and conceivable outcome from these tragic contradictions, it affirms the only reasonable and acceptable “theory of progress”, and those hints that timidly and hesitantly break through in the aspirations of modern humanity, it proclaims with a solemn victory hymn: Christ is risen - it proclaims to the world. Christ has risen - in the mystical center of the world there has already been a decisive clash of good and evil, good has already won a decisive and unconditional victory, and Christ has risen - this is the absolute fact that Christianity announces to the world, in which it lays its foundation (and not at all in a new moral teaching, as modern Tolstoyans of Russia and the West want to interpret it, where such an understanding, or rather, misunderstanding of Christianity is increasingly spreading among representatives of Protestantism). The Resurrection of Christ is a covenant and promise of the preservation of all values ​​and, above all, the absolute value of human individuals, mercilessly mowed down by death, the restoration of everything eternal and valuable that happened in history; this is the salvation of spiritual goods, the true values ​​of culture, the introduction of historical humanity to world creativity, to participation in the universe. This also gives an answer to the question, what is human history after Christ, why are we condemned to torment and languish in this vale of sorrow, when eternal truth has already won the final victory and it has already been said: “Take courage, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The universe and its crown - humanity, the soul of the world, with its history, is a divine-human affair, not only divine, but also human, into which human efforts, aspirations, and activities are invested. Humanity can neither be saved nor transform itself and the world on its own, but it should not be saved by force, like a child, it must achieve inner maturity through freedom of temptation, it must complete the historical process. And this process in the Christian faith receives an absolute, although beyond itself, goal - it prepares the world and humanity for a universal transformation, for the meeting of the Coming One in glory and power. Whatever this process may be in its immediate content and earthly results (according to the Christian faith, it does not at all lead to heaven on earth and the eternal Sabbath, as our contemporaries imagine, on the contrary, it leads to an aggravation of human tragedy and in the sense of eudaimonistic results will be reduced to zero), but in any case, in its ultimate goal it is progress, for there is a path forward to a motionless absolute goal, to a new Jerusalem. And, therefore, participation in the historical enterprise, in the implementation of progress, is not only a mandatory task, but also full of deep, indisputable meaning, although not determined by immediate earthly results. And no work of creative achievement, the gift of the Holy Spirit, is swept away or destroyed by death, but is preserved as a bridge to the future, as subject to perpetuation and growth in the upcoming Transfiguration and Resurrection. And peoples will be resurrected in their historical-psychological individuality, with what is immortal in them, what is from the Holy Spirit, and dead individuals will be restored, without which the world is empty, all questions will be resolved, and we will understand not as “a mirror in fortune-telling, but face to face.” The dream of a New Jerusalem, a premonition of the salvation of the world and the general resurrection and transfiguration, lay deep in the souls of those who rejected faith in the Savior. Salvation is a real accomplished fact, and its presence in people's lives cannot be eliminated. From here are born theories of progress, dreams of Zukunftsaat, this faint reflection of the unearthly light of the New Jerusalem, but how pale and perverted these ideals are, after they are torn off from their religious roots and transformed from the ideals of universal preservation and restoration of all values ​​into a boring, aimless dream of the short-term earthly happiness of later generations, purchased at the cost of the blood, suffering and lives of previous people. How everything, the most cherished and dear, degenerates and withers, torn from its birth trunk! Truly, “without Me you can do nothing.” But we already hear how the main logical idol of our time is being put forward against us - “scientificness”, before which many even brave minds give in, bow their knees, we hear the hoarse, creaking, deathly voice of the oracles, saying: how can you talk about the resurrection, about miracles, in general about such things that have long been abolished by science and classified as outdated superstitions! Let us seek refuge under the shadow of one of the most important mental idols located in the idol of science - the idea of ​​evolution. This teaching, which also represents an echo of a forgotten Revelation, states that everything develops, new forms of being, new forms of life are created. Through evolution, the first living cell arose from dead matter, and by the addition of these cells the animal world was formed, and the evolution of the animal world created Plato and Darwin, Newton and Shakespeare. This theory, like all scientific theories, denies the miraculous - although its supporters do not delve into the true, philosophical meaning of this concept, considering a miracle, out of laziness of thought, only a direct denial of the laws of nature - introduces us, without noticing it, into the world of miracles, into the world of new continuous creation, into the world of constant transformations. It is the theory of evolution that brings us close to the idea of ​​general resurrection and transfiguration. The theory of evolution establishes only the order of becoming, of new creation, and by describing these conditions, it makes us insensitive to the fact that we live in an atmosphere of continuous miracle (again, if we do not give this word the vulgar meaning imposed on it, on the one hand, by religious mystifiers, and, on the other, by dark and uneducated scientific specialists). Isn’t it a miracle, not a new creation – the emergence of life on our planet, new species, and finally, culture? Rub your eyes and look around! Isn’t it a miracle that from a dark mother and father, performing a precisely described type of fetal development, a great genius and luminary of humanity will suddenly be born, bringing a completely new message to the world? Our time most loves to use the concept of “natural necessity,” scientifically cognizable and formulated in the laws of nature, contrasting it with the understanding of the world as the embodiment of creative ideas, as a continuous miracle. Philosophers of this school see only one type of natural necessity - the natural necessity... of a miracle, a new creation, a new life. For example, in Marxism it is argued that due to scientifically known, natural necessity - the development of productive forces, at a certain stage of this development a miracle occurs - social transformation occurs, Vorgeschichte ends and Geschichte begins, or, as this idea is otherwise formulated by the same Marx, after the kingdom of necessity the kingdom of freedom begins. Instead of the evil, unhappy human world torn apart by enmity, a bright kingdom of man-gods is suddenly created, full of harmony and joy, history begins, a wonderful butterfly flies out of a dirty, ugly cocoon, a dirty egg bursts, and a bird of paradise appears in it... And on the basis of the same concept of natural necessity with which modern scientific thought operates in Darwinism, Marxism, and evolutionism in general, we postulate and affirm the necessity of a miracle - the Resurrection of Christ, and after it the general resurrection and transfiguration, as the highest and final link of cosmic evolution. The center of the question is precisely where to look for the world demiurge who creates this “natural necessity?” Should we see it in a semi-fantastic, semi-mythological, completely alien to our inner, direct experience, concept of living matter, or life-giving economic necessity, as with the Marxists, or should we see it in the bright power of the human and world spirit? These initial philosophical and religious premises cannot be given by science, which does not exceed its competence, and “scientificity” (which, at least in quotation marks, I deliberately oppose to real science, as a philosophical superstition to accurate and true knowledge), they are drawn by the human spirit in its depths, in philosophical and religious consciousness. For Christianity, death is not a physical, but a moral necessity, a consequence of sin, an improper relationship between flesh and spirit, while the corresponding physical processes are only the external implementation of internal moral necessity. And, if a sinful person inevitably turns out to be mortal, then immortality belongs to a sinless person, of perfect holiness, with “natural necessity.” “It was impossible for Death to hold Him,” this is what the apostles said in their sermon about the Risen One after the descent of the Holy Spirit. “One of two things: either the Gospel Christ is a myth, i.e. Either he did not exist at all, or the historical Christ in reality is very different from the Christ of the Gospel (both opinions are widespread in our time), or such a Righteous One, if he had ever walked on this earth, could no longer become a prey to corruption, and to admit the opposite means to generally affirm the powerlessness of the moral principle in the world, to fall into such boundless pessimism, in which life seems like a devilish invention, and dreams of progress, of duty - stupid childishness. “If Christ had not been resurrected, if Caiaphas had turned out to be right, and Herod and Pilate had turned out to be wise, the world would have turned out to be nonsense, a kingdom of evil, deception and death. The point was not about the termination of someone’s life, but about whether true life, the life of a perfect righteous person, had ceased. If such a life could not defeat the enemy, then what hope remained in the future? 1 In the resurrection of Christ, the question of the meaning of the world, life, history, and the truth of the world was resolved. In Him everything would die, and with Him everything is resurrected, filled with light and meaning, becomes luminous, and even that theory of evolution and progress, with which humanity is now fenced off from religion, receives the highest meaning and significance. “If Christ is not risen, our faith is in vain,” history is in vain, progress is in vain, culture is in vain—all is vanity, corruption, nonsense. V. S. Soloviev. Easter letters. "Christ is risen!" Collection cit., vol. VIII, 107. Cf. his letter to L.N. Tolstoy, published in “Questions of Philosophy and Psychology,” 1905, IV.