About creatureliness

The world was created by God, it is a creation and has the beginning of its existence in the Creator: “Thy hands create me and create me,” “I am thine” (Ps. 118), says the consciousness of creation through the mouth of the psalmist. In the face of the world's unexplorability, the boundlessness of the world's spaces and the vastness of the world's times, the immeasurability of the world's depths and the immensity of the world's vastness, it sounds, this wonderful voice, powerfully whispering: the world, in all its immensity, does not belong to its existence - it is given to it. And in a person’s heart one can hear the same incessant whisper: you do not have the root of your being in yourself - you are created. This voice may not be heard, or it may be silenced with authority and anger, for faith is free and knows no coercion. And then, inevitably, the voices of the world coming from the depths will inspire a different, opposite consciousness: the world is not created, but has its own basis in itself, it is its own creation, there is no higher being than the world, and there is nothing that would be higher than being. This is the ultimate intuition of religious self-consciousness, and in it is the basic axiom of faith, which is accepted or rejected in the deepest depths of the integral religious spirit, before any reflection and before any philosophy; the latter identifies and implements various possibilities inherent in an already made decision, gives it a philosophical transcription, doing this either in the direction from the periphery to the center, or vice versa, in an ascending and descending direction. God creates the world - in the Absolute Superunity, the relative and plural, the cosmic ἕν καὶ πᾶν, incomprehensibly arises. This emergence cannot be thought of in the category of causality, the world is not a consequence, and God is not its cause, and this is not only because God, understood as a cause (even as a primary cause), is included in the causal chain, in the realm of the relative, and must himself have a cause (cf. the previous chapter), but also because causa aequat effectum, the cause explains the effect only by being on the same plane with it, while in creation we have μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος, a leap from the Absolute to the relative, and a causal explanation is not at all useful here. The idea of ​​the creation of the world in the sense of immanent, empirical causality, it leaves it in this sense unexplained and incomprehensible; This is why the idea of ​​creation does not fit into scientific thinking at all, based on the immanent continuity of experience and the universality of causality, is useless for it and alien to it - it is in this sense a deliberately unscientific idea. The transition from the Absolute to the relative is not accessible to understanding, because it rests on an antinomy, which can only be realized, but does not thereby become understandable for immanent, continuous thinking. The idea of ​​creation reveals the nature of the relationship between the Absolute and the relative, the nature of the relative in the Absolute. The doctrine of the origin of the world due to the emanation of the Absolute, religious monism, sacrifices the plural or relative in favor of the Absolute, requires the suicide of the relative, its ἕν καὶ πᾶν. It does not allow real multiplicity and equally real relativity: for it πᾶν is only an appearance or a misunderstanding, while reality belongs to the motionless, inert, all-consuming unity of ἕν. But then the question arises with all force about the independent meaning of the plural and relative, about its origin: how does this foam, waves and ripple arise on the surface of the Absolute? Let us even assume that it is enough for the relative to dive deep into the Absolute in order to disappear in it, but the question is how could it appear on this surface, what meaning do these moments, flickers, splashes have in themselves? If we say that being, i.e. relative in all its multiplicity, is a set of modes of the Absolute, i.e. That is, that the Absolute has in itself the relative, like modes (the teaching of Spinoza), then one can doubt the clarity of such an answer and see in it rather evasiveness. If the relative is an illusion, then the question again arises - whose illusion? who's dreaming? about what? what is the nature of these dreams? Is it possible to think of them completely outside and apart from the Absolute? but then it is not absolutely Absolute. Or we must assume that the relative is omitted, posited by the Absolute itself, and then we come to the idea of ​​creation. The world is real in its divine basis, since its being is being in the Absolute - in this the ideas of both creation and emanation converge. But in creation the world is posited, at the same time, outside the Absolute, as an original relative. Between the Absolute and the relative there is a line in the creative, let it be, and therefore the world is not a passive outflow, an emanation of the Absolute, like foam on an overflowing cup, but is a creative, proactive, directed and realized emanation 1, or relativity as such. Emanation, divine energies in the world, belong to eternity in it, and what belongs to the world itself in its process exists only in the relative: the world rests in the womb of God, like a child in the womb. It lives its own life, its own special processes take place in it, which belong specifically to it, and not to the mother, but, at the same time, it exists in the mother and only by the mother. The concept of creation is therefore broader than the concept of emanation, it includes it, so creation is an emanation plus something new created by the creative “let there be”! The Absolute is superabundant, it is an inexhaustible source of abundant being, which is the outpouring of its richness and fullness, and this is the truth of the idea of ​​emanation, which is entirely included in the idea of ​​creation, but the latter is not exhausted by this. In the teaching of emanation (for example, in Plotinus), the non-existence that receives this emanation, the darkness surrounding the light, remains completely passive, reflective, mirror-like, dead, it constitutes only a certain minus, it is a defective state of the Absolute. The world necessarily arises, but at the same time, metaphysically it is accidental, because it has no task or meaning in itself, it is in its being only a victim of conniving fullness, to a certain extent its reverse side. It does not lie outside the absolute, but it is itself; the world does not receive its originality, does not settle in it, but remains only a shadow of the absolute. In creation, it is precisely non-existence, “nothing”, from which the world was created, that is arranged and given life. Creative “let it be!” makes it not a random receiver or passive darkness, but something world-forming with its own special created center, “becoming absolute,” the image and likeness of God. Therefore, when contrasting creation and emanation, the main question and disagreement is not about God, but about the world, not about the divine basis of the world, but about its created nature: is the world only a passively scattering and weakening medium for the paths of divine light, or does it collect, reflect and glorify them in its own way? Is there a special focus of the world, is peace possible along with the Absolute, or how and in what sense is peace possible? What is the world and is there a world? The absolute, without losing its absoluteness, posits within itself the relative, as an independent being, as a real, living principle. Thus, it introduces duality into the unity of indiscernibility, in which coincidentia oppositorum then reigns: in the Absolute the difference between God and the world appears, it becomes relative to itself, as relative, for God is relative to the world, Deus est vox relativa 2, and, creating the world, the Absolute posits itself as God. This self-division of the Absolute, as absolute-relative, forms Grenzbegriff in the true sense - the ultimate antinomian facet for thought. Here, reverent silence befits the incomprehensible mystery taking place in the depths of the Absolute, and there is nothing more tastelessly rationalistic than the various “deductions” of creation, the claims of “gnosis,” whether metaphysical or mystical 3. But without pretending to comprehend the mystery, it is possible, however, to state its presence: we are necessarily led to this by the logic of life and thought, as to the only interpretation of the riddle of our own being. In the depths of his spirit, a person is aware of the metaphysical consequences of this, so to speak, event (so to speak) of an event in the Absolute or the creation of the world by God, as the duality of his nature, as his absolute-relativity. For how does a person feel? a relative being, a grain of sand, plunged into the immensities of space and time, and in this limitation he bears the stamp of his relativity and the curse of his insignificance. But he finds in himself such an elastic consciousness of his absoluteness, eternity, divinity, an undoubted feeling of himself in God and in himself of God, which cannot be flooded by the ocean of time and extinguished in the whirlwinds of space. Man, as a living icon of the Divine, His image and likeness, is this god-world, absolutely relative, although only still in consciousness, in its potentiality. The Absolute leaves the undisturbed peace of its absoluteness, positing another center within itself, introducing into itself the principle of relativity. It itself thereby becomes its own potency (or “meon”), giving in itself and through itself a place for the relative, however, without losing, at the same time, its absoluteness. Creation is, therefore, a victim of the Absolute by its absoluteness, not caused by anyone or anything (for there is nothing outside the Absolute) and, in this sense, free and causeless, not rationally explainable. Of course, super-reason here does not mean counter-reason or meaninglessness, as the reverse rationalists blaspheme: Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Drews. For them, the emergence of the world is a consequence of a blind and absurd act of will, a mistake of the absolute, which entailed the world process and plunged the absolute itself into the “tragedy of the suffering God,” and this whole story will end with the traceless destruction of the ineffectual universe and a new immersion of the absolute in its dull and sleepy peace. The creation of the world by God, the self-division of the Absolute, is the sacrifice of the Absolute for the sake of the relative, which has become “other” for it (ϑάτερον), a creative sacrifice of love. Golgotha ​​was not only pre-established at the creation of the world as an event in time, but it also constitutes the metaphysical essence of creation. The divine “fulfillment” proclaimed from the cross embraces all being and refers to the entire creation. The free sacrifice of self-sacrificing love, Calvary of the Absolute, is the basis of creation, for “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son,” He sent Him “not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16–17). The world was created by the cross, raised by God in the name of love. Creation is an act not only of the omnipotence and wisdom of God, but also of sacrificial love and its joy; it is performed for the sake of enjoying the existence of the “other”, becoming, in the name of the created, “good”, boundless love for creation. For God is love, and the life of love and its greatest joy is sacrifice. Love has meaning, purpose, and reward only in itself and therefore does not know a rational why - there is nothing holier and more blissful than love. Therefore, creation is absolutely free, having meaning and basis only in itself, an absolutely original movement of divine love, love for the sake of love, its holy madness. Dieu est fou de l'homme - Schelling recalls the boldly penetrating expression of the French writer: with the madness of love, God wants a “friend” (another), and this friend can only be a person. It is impious and absurd to talk about “tragedy in God”, by the logic of its occurrence, as if by some kind of “divine fate” with necessity leading to the world process. Creation is freedom from every why and how, the joy of peace on the cross freely accepted by God. Tragedy is associated with doom, lack of freedom, forced necessity, even the highest. God is free to introduce himself into the tragic process of world history, remaining free from it in himself and for himself, therefore in the Absolute itself there is no place for tragedy, which is rooted in the confrontation of the fragmented forces of relative existence. Creation is therefore also an act of immeasurable humility of the Absolute, which is subtracted from its actuality: love-humility, this ultimate and universal virtue of Christianity, is also the ontological basis of creation. Giving within itself a place for the world with its relativity, the Absolute in its love humbles itself before creation - the depths of divine love-humility are truly unfathomable! What is the world made of? what is the basis of creatureliness? God created the world from himself, from his being - answers J. Boehme 4; the world is a mode of absolute substance, - J. Bruno, Spinoza, pantheists and monists of different shades answer in different ways, but in the same sense; consequently, the world does not exist in its originality and relativity; only the Absolute exists. The world was created out of nothing - the Christian revelation teaches - between God and creation, the Absolute and the relative, nothing lay. Nothingness is the basis of creation, the edge of existence, the limit beyond which lies a dull, bottomless nothingness, “pitch darkness,” alien to all light. This feeling of immersion in nothingness, the consciousness of one’s ontological insignificance, is creepy and painful - a bottomless abyss inspires horror even in fairy tales (this motif is also found in Russian folk tales). You can save yourself from this horror of non-existence only by moving away from the dizzying abyss and turning your face to the Sun, the source of all completeness, by moving your existential center from yourself beyond yourself, into God. Then non-existence recedes into non-existence, disappears like a shadow, dissipates like a ghost; there is no longer any non-existence, but there are only triumphantly, graciously pouring rays of existence.” But when the sunlight fades in the soul, when the creature again closes in on itself and ceases to feel itself in God, a chilling trembling rises again, nothing begins to feel like a deathly, gaping hole or like a snub-nosed death, and then you begin to seem to yourself only an empty shell, without an existential core. “If you hide your face, they will be troubled; if you take away their spirit, they die and return to their dust; If you send forth Your spirit, they will be created, and You will renew the face of the earth. May there be glory to the Lord forever! (Ps. 103:29-31). Knowledge of nothingness, as the basis of being in its selfhood, is the subtlest intuition of a creature about its creatureliness. You were created - this means: everything was given to you, even you yourself, it belongs to you, only this underground of non-existence came from you, affectionately and carefully covered with the roses of existence. Oh, the underground is not just psychology or sociology, it is metaphysics, and what a metaphysics it is! The underground is an ontological noumenon of the self, an imaginary value that has received real meaning, all creation has an underground, although it may not know about it, not descend into it, and this ignorance is the privilege of childhood and the achievement of holiness; descending into it, everyone experiences the terrible cold and dampness of the grave. To want oneself in one’s own selfhood, to affirm oneself in creatureliness as absolute, means to want the underground and to affirm oneself on it. And therefore, the true hero of the underground is one who has loved himself as a god, established himself in his own selfhood and fallen into captivity of his own underground. In his nothingness, he wanted to have the divine everything, and should see in the underground not the kingdom of Hades, inhabited by ghosts and shadows, but the palaces of the bright god. The beauty of Lucifer and the demon, which deceived Byron and Lermontov, is only a pose, fraught with deception and bad taste, like expensive and luxurious clothes from someone else's shoulder, dressed on dirty linen, like a luxurious life on debt and without any hope of repayment, like brilliant mediocrity; That’s why it’s so easy for a fairy demon to turn into an ugly and vulgar devil with a hoof and a runny nose. However, is it possible to talk about the existence of non-existence, about nothing? After all, the ancient elder Parmenides said: “This never exists anywhere, so that it does not exist; Keep your thoughts away from this path of testing." 5 Parmenides teaches that only being exists, and non-being does not exist at all; True, he had in mind his motionless, absolute One, the substance of the world, to which alone existence belongs, and outside of it there is nothing. When applied to such a concept of the absolute, the idea of ​​non-existence obviously has no meaning. However, this is not so simple when applied to the action of the absolute, to the creative act, by which it brings into existence something that did not exist before, that is, non-existence, creates out of nothing. Here we need to once again dwell on the analysis not as applied to creatureliness. There may be two meanings of this not, two meanings of created nothingness, which correspond to two types of Greek negation: οὐ and μή (ἀ privativum does not apply to this case at all): the first corresponds to the complete negation of being - nothing, the second only to its unidentification and uncertainty - something 6. This second type of non-being, μὴ ὄν, in fact, rather belongs to the realm of being. Meon, as the possibility of possibilities, is the universal mother of being, through which all being passes through the lie (it is not without reason that even such champions of the universal deduction of all being, like Hegel and Cohen, with his doctrine of “pure origin”) resort to the help of μὴ. Therefore, all wealth and all the fullness of being belongs to Maeon, although potential, not revealed. Therefore, one can speak of it as non-existence only in relation to already manifested being, but by no means in the sense of emptiness, the absence of being. Something is, a meon exists, and between nothing and something there lies an incomparably greater gap than between something and that, just as a greater gap separates infertility from pregnancy than pregnancy from birth. Meon is pregnancy, ukon (οὐκ ὄν - infertility). In order for something to arise from non-existence, the ukon must become a meon, overcome its emptiness, free itself from its sterility. So, in what sense was the world created from nothing: from ukon or from meon? This dismembered formulation of the question already outlines two possibilities, corresponding to the duality that emerged when considering the question of the meaning of created not. If we assume that the world arose from the divine meon, this will mean that it was not created at all, but was generated or emanated, in general, one way or another, realized in God. The line between the world and God is erased, the world is only the meon of God - we come to pantheism with either acosmism or atheism arising from it. Another possibility, the only one acceptable for us, is that the world was created from nothing in the sense of the law, and therefore the first, main and essential act of creation was the endowment of it with meon; this transformation of the law into a meon is the creation of the general matter of creation, this Great Mother of the entire natural world. In this fundamental and ultimate act of creation, we are dealing with complete incomprehensibility, because it is impossible to understand how the meon arises in the law; here again is the limit for thought. The creature cannot comprehend its own creation, it will always remain a riddle, a miracle, a secret for it, but to recognize what has happened is quite accessible to human consciousness, and this analysis of the self-consciousness of the creature necessarily constitutes a task for thought, which must diligently unravel this knot of ontological plexuses without breaking its threads. Here again the ancient elder raises his voice, testifying that only the existent, τὸ ὄν, exists (and in its composition, as its state, μὴ ὄν), but the non-existent, οὐκ ὄν, does not exist. How and in what sense can something that does not exist serve as the basis of creation? Yes, in the Absolute One there is no place for non-existence, there is no place for decree - the wise old man is right. But, we must add no less insistently, in the Absolute there is no being, which is relative to non-being, is conjugate with it and does not exist outside of non-being; the latter, after all, is the only thing posited in being, against the background of being, as its edge. The absolute is higher than being, this is what Parmenides did not know, thanks to which he was drawn into the dialectic of the relative, i.e., being. In creation, God posits being, but in non-being, in other words, by the same act by which He posits being, He also posits non-being, as its boundary, environment or shadow. Omnis definitio est negatio, every being consists of yes and no, according to the brilliant expression of J. Boehme. Therefore, although Parmenides remains right that in the Absolute, which is above being, there is no non-existence, but God, positing the relative, i.e. being, indirectly gives being to non-existence. God is the author not only of being, but also of non-being; this formula, dizzying in its boldness and profundity, belongs to none other than the mysterious author of the Areopagitik and its commentator, St. Maximus the Confessor, the pillars of Orthodox theology 7. They rely, of course, on the work of ancient thought and, one must think, first of all on Plato, who in his amazing Parmenides, as well as the Sophist, gave the workshop an analysis of the question of the connection between being and non-being 8 . This analysis, in part, was adopted in modern philosophy by Hegel 9 and in general constitutes an integral property of philosophical thought. Is pure non-existence, outside any positive relationship to being, an absolute law, accessible to our experience or thinking? You can chase after it like your own back or your shadow; non-existence exists for us only as a facet of being, establishing its limitation and relativity. Existence is immersed in non-existence and is washed by its waters on all sides. Outside of a direct relationship with being, non-being, ukon, can be thought not directly, but only indirectly, by a certain “illegitimate judgment” - ἁπτόν λογισμῷ τινι νόϑῳ, according to Plato’s famous expression about matter (Tim., 52B). The same Plato notes that “what does not exist, as such, can neither be correctly pronounced, nor expressed, nor thought, but it is also meaningless, and ineffable, and inexpressible, and absurd” 10. The absolute zero of being, as its pure possibility alone, without any actualization, remains transcendental for the creature, which is an indecomposable alloy of being and non-being. But this “utter darkness,” naked potentiality, in the underground of creatureliness is, as it were, a second center (false center) of being, competing with the Sun of the world, the source of the fullness of being, and for the heroes of the underground it has a peculiar attraction, causing in them an irrational, blind will to nothingness, a dizzying desire into the abyss, the like of which is experienced when looking down from a great height. In reality, hell, the kingdom of nihilism, the cult of nothingness, exists only due to the positive forces of being, ontological theft. But is it possible, nevertheless, to do without the being of non-being, or without juxtaposing together with being and non-being? Is it possible to put being outside of its relativity, to admit, as they say, absolute being? This is just as impossible as it is impossible to do without shadows and half-light when perceiving space or geometric bodies. Non-existence, nothingness, shines through everywhere in being, it participates in being, just as death, in a certain sense, participates in life (temporal, existential), or darkness in light and cold in heat. Everything that exists is permeated through and through with the dialectic of being and non-existence, everything is and is not at the same time, begins and ends, arises in non-existence and is immersed in it, it happens. According to Hegel, being and non-being are synthesized in Werden, becoming, being: ailes wird, is im Werden, πάντα ῥεῖ - everything flows, declared the ancient Heraclitus, everything just happens. Hegel has a brilliant formula for this: “dass es nichts giebt, das nicht ein Mittelzustand zwischen Seyn und Nichts ist”; and also: “das Werden ist das Verschwinden von Seyn in Nichts, und von Nichts in Seyn, und das Verschwinden von Seyn und Nichts überhaupt; aber es beruht gleich auf dem Unterschiede derselben" 11 . Being (τὸ γιγνόμενον - in Plato’s Timaeus) is that mysterious, creative synthesis of being and non-being, the emergence in the law of the meon, which expresses the essence of createdness, everything relative. – Creation is – first of all and in its essence – meon, being – non-being, and in this sense we must understand the meopal primary matter, materia prima, in which the entire fullness of created being is already contained, everything is seeded. But, at the same time, in the cold of death, as well as in the scorching breath of the “fiery wheel of being,” one feels the abyss of death, the edge of being, pitch darkness, looking out from everywhere with its empty eye sockets. This “dark and difficult form” (χαλεπὸν καὶ ἄμυδρον εἶδος), as Plato dubbed the world’s primary matter, was subjected to an incomparable analysis by him in Timaeus 12. Matter-mother – meon, is the necessary basis of being, emergence and destruction. If something happens, then it must arise from something and return somewhere, because the airless region of pure non-existence remains beyond reach. Consequently, a mother’s womb is necessary, which is both a womb (Plato’s ἐκμαγεῖον) and a grave. In other words, this is the Great Mother Earth, whose face the Greeks honored under the name of Demeter (γὴ μήτηρ); This is the Earth that the Lord created “in the beginning” during the creation of the world (together with “heaven”), and which, having been seeded with creativity, let it be! expels everything that exists from its womb, and accepts back into its maeonal depths everything that “is the earth,” that was born or emerged from it. Great Mother, damp earth, in you we are born, in you we feed, in you we trample under our feet and in you we return. Children of the earth, love your mother, kiss her ecstatically, shower her with your tears, water her with sweat, water her with blood, fill her with your bones! For nothing is destroyed in her, she keeps everything within herself, the silent memory of the world, giving life and fruit to everything. He who does not love the earth and does not feel its motherhood is a slave and an outcast, a pathetic rebel against his mother, a fiend of non-existence. Mother earth! From you was born that flesh that became false for the incarnate God; from you He took His most pure Body! in you He rested for three days in the tomb! Mother earth! From you grow the grain and the vine, the fruit of which becomes in the most holy sacrament the Body and Blood of Christ, and this holy flesh returns to you! You silently store within yourself all the fullness and beauty of creation... Nothingness, being-non-being, meonality is the specificum of creatureliness, its - strange to say - privilege and ontological difference. We are the sons of heaven, but also children of the earth, we have our own mother, who shields us from the all-scorching fire of the Absolute and gives birth to the originality of the createdness of existence. Nothing, separating the creature from the Absolute, forms its own photosphere around it, as it were, giving it an existence known to itself and in itself. The world is real and original precisely because it is contained in nothing, created out of nothing. It is remarkable that as soon as the specific feeling of creatureliness, creation from nothing, is dulled, and at the same time the world is deified, becoming a mode or hypostasis of the Absolute, it simultaneously becomes illusory, devoid of originality, and pantheism (or cosmotheism) is punished by acosmism. Indeed, if nothing is removed from thought and feeling as the basis of creation, then the difference between the Absolute and the world, the Creator and the creation, disappears, the world is already presented as the Absolute or, what is the same, absoluteness is attributed to being itself, which is relative to non-existence, and therefore generally relative. It is obvious, however, that if we consider the universe as the Absolute itself, “substance” or deity, then it cannot be revered as such in its existential face, that is, in being, Werden, and the latter must then inevitably be denied in its ontological authenticity, the real all-unity is sacrificed to the all-consuming, abstract unity. The prototype of such philosophizing is given in the teaching of Parmenides. In the new Philosophy, this most applies to Spinoza’s teaching about a single substance, “the nature of which is inherent in existence” (Ethics, theory 7), and all multiple being turns out to be “modes” of this substance. In a certain sense, J. Boehme’s system also applies here (see above). It is even more instructive to observe the same thing in G. Bruno, in whose worldview monism fights the Christian worldview, and there are no features of the geometric consistency of Spinozism. For this nature enthusiast, precisely where this enthusiasm is directed towards pantheism and leads to the identification of the world soul with the Divine, the world with its plurality loses its reality, which takes on the meaning of accidents of a single motionless substance. 13 The entire non-originality of the opposition of the one and everything, contained in the concept of all-unity, remains until we take into account that being exists in nothing and is associated with non-being, relative by its very nature, and the idea of ​​absolute being therefore belongs to the number of philosophical misunderstandings, despite all its vitality. The Absolute is above being, it creates being, and this creation is creation from nothing, the position of being in non-being 14. The philosophy of monism, which recognizes only the One as a closed substance within itself, does not know motherhood (and therefore, of course, does not know fatherhood either): for it nothing is born into existence, and the furious, all-consuming Kronos eternally eats his children, again returns his seed to himself, not allowing it to pour out as a fruitful rain on nothingness thirsty for fertilization. The Absolute here does not reveal itself in creation, does not become the father of all things, just as nothing becomes the mother, maeon of everything, but remains in the “utter darkness” of the absolute law. And vice versa, if the Absolute, positing within itself the relative, or being, becomes the “Father of all,” then nothing, the bearing basis of creation, becomes the mother, the meon, containing everything, the potential unity of the world. We are the children of the heavenly Father, but He was not born directly from Himself - let such heresy be far from us, for motherless birth from the Father belongs only to His Only Begotten Son - we are born from Mother Earth, in the meonal universe. The independence of the world from God, its non-divinity or relativity, is established precisely through nothingness, as its basis, through the connection of being with non-being. In the Absolute there is no non, one eternal YES; in the relative, every yes has its non. The mystery of creation, revealed in the antinomy of creatureliness, consists in the fact that the creative forces of being, having their source in the Absolute itself, poured into nothingness. The world was created by the word of God and lives by the power of God 15. The entire fullness of existence belongs to God, is His goodness. Everything in the world is, in its positive basis, divine, the world abides in God, for God, as the Absolute, embraces everything within himself. And although it is impossible to draw the opposite conclusion, which is made in pantheism or cosmotheism - namely, that God is the world, it is fair to assert that the world is contained in God and God acts in the world, i.e., world existence is divine existence, or, in the bold expression of Nicholas of Cusa, ornais creatura sit quasi infinitas imita aut Deus creatus 16, the world is “created God.” The world is the unity of the absolute and nothing, the absolute in the relative or the relative in the absolute; the absolute suspends, cancels its actual absoluteness, makes it potential in order to give place to the relative, which thereby joins the absolute. By creating from nothing, the Absolute establishes, as it were, two centers: the eternal and the created; in the depths of self-sufficient eternity, the “becoming absolute” appears - the second center. Next to the super-existent Absolute, existence appears in which the Absolute reveals itself as the Creator, is revealed in it, is realized in it, and in this sense the world is the becoming God. By creating the world, God thereby plunges himself into creation, He makes himself a creation. God is exhausted into nothingness, turning him into material for his image and likeness. He gives him complete freedom to actualize in creatures, becoming potential himself. Without knowing envy, He wants to live in creatures and become in them. He honors the nature of creation, which is nothing, above its own power, for He wants Himself in creation, in it, in another, wanting to have a friend who is independent in relation to Himself, although he owes his existence entirely to Him. God knows how to wait, for the fulfillment of the times when the Son will subdue everything to the Father and God will be “all in all” is separated from the original omnipotent – ​​let it be! a long historical process, which is the gift of God's omnipotence to human freedom. As the primary source of existence, God is always in the world, holding everything with His right hand, but the world at the same time remains outside of God, far from him, immersed in created self-existence, that is, in nothingness. The result is the ultimate cosmological antinomy: God, as the Absolute in itself, has the fullness of His life, to which absolutely nothing can be added or subtracted (just as mathematical infinity, ∞, cannot be changed - increased or decreased - by any finite quantity, which itself turns to zero in relation to the infinite). God is an unchanging, all-satisfied and all-blessed being, and nothing is added or subtracted from the world process. But, at the same time, God is also the Creator of the world, He lives and acts in the world, to which, as the creation of God, belongs not a modal or accidental, but a completely real, non-ghostly existence, for it is real with the reality of its Creator. And, consequently, God in the world and through the world himself becomes, undergoing a process, and such a God is not completed, since the world is not completed, and is not absolute, for he is not yet “all in all.” It is relative to the creature, which, by virtue of its freedom and its nature, can move away from God into its nothingness, close it from Him, so that God remains only its life basis, remains potential for it, but not actual. The cosmic process is theocosmic or theogonic, and the cosmos is theocosmos or kosmotheos. But this cosmic theogony does not exclude, but at the same time presupposes that the world, as a revelation of the Divine, is a theophany. Therefore, the theophanic and theogonic nature of the World process are not mutually exclusive, but therefore determine each other, rather, theogony is a real theophany - the birth of the Eternally Existing One. Here we directly come up against a cosmological antinomy, which represents, as it were, a watershed: from its crest there are slopes in both directions - to pantheistic monism and to Manichaean dualism, which accepts, next to God, an anti-god, a demiurge, an independent and evil principle of the world. Both directions are generated by the desire to rationalize the super-rational: both monism and dualism are equally products of rationalism (even if mystical), in which God is conceived according to the schemes and categories of material existence. Therefore, only an alternative either-or is allowed here, where the voice of religious consciousness authoritatively says: both-and. God is both the Absolute, and the Creator of the world, and the super-existent Being, and God is the basis of all existence. In the central dogma of Christianity about the unification in Christ of two natures, Divine and created-human, inseparably and unmerged, this thought receives a frankly antinomian and at the same time divinely inspired Formula. The Lord Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, in Him “dwells all the fullness of the Divinity bodily”; like God, absolutely. In His own way, He is completely transcendental to the world, supreme, but, at the same time, He is also a perfect Man, possessing all the fullness of created, world existence, truly a world-man, the very relative, and deity and humanity, in a mysterious and incomprehensible way for the mind, are united in Him inseparably and unmerged 17 . An attempt to rationally master and express the unthinkable mystery of the Divine, to make Him understandable inevitably leads to contradictions or obvious simplification and removal of the problem (as in monism); This is why there has never been and never will be a consistent rational metaphysics dealing with the ultimate problems of world existence. Philosophy must consciously take into account in its constructions the initial antinomies of religious self-consciousness. – Is God transcendental to the world? No, for He abides in the world, by Him we live, we move and we are; He gave us a promise to be with us always, now and ever, and forever and ever. But does this mean that God is immanent in the world? Neither does He, for He lives unapproachable in the light; between Him and creation lies a bottomless abyss of nothingness. Further, is God subject to temporality, does change occur in Him, is anything added to His fullness by the creation of the world? No, nothing is added, for He is absolute completeness and perfection. But is divine fullness realized in this world, is God involved in the world process with its accomplishments, times and deadlines? Yes, for the world is not yet complete, and God himself took up the cross and became incarnate for the salvation of the world through man. Further, does the world limit God, existing outside of Him and along with Him? No, because God, as the Absolute, has nothing outside of himself; yes, because God rules the world, but does not reign in Him, the Kingdom of God has not yet come in power, the world lives its own, extra-divine life, etc., etc. The cosmological teaching about God breaks down into such antinomies, and there is no need to explain this by the defectiveness of this or that structure and hope that the difficulty will ever be overcome. The task of thought here is to expose the antinomy, run into its impasse and accept its super-reason as a feat of humility of reason, and this will be its highest act here. It is not difficult to see that the indicated cosmological antinomy is only a further disclosure of the basic religious antinomy outlined by “negative theology.” God, as his “negative theology” knows, as the Absolute, is completely transcendental to the world and every being, but, as God, He is correlated with the world, becomes involved in being, is. Antinomy: Absolute - God in cosmology receives the expression: all-blessed and self-sufficient God - Creator of the world. However, the “cunning of reason”, having realized an insurmountable difficulty, tries to circumvent it, to accomplish the already familiar technique of replacing antinomy with dialectical contradiction, antithetics with dialectics. In this case, this goal can be achieved by interpreting God the Creator as a certain position in the Absolute, as a moment in the dialectic of this latter, or as a mode of some divine primal essence. However, this dialectical-mystical focus, removing the antinomy, also destroys its problem, which it wants to solve, because for dialectical monism there is neither God, nor the world, neither the Absolute nor the relative. This is especially clear in the teachings of Meister Eckegart, when he “asks” to break through for God, “to free ourselves from God,” obviously contrasting the Absolute and the Creator. The latter is for him only a limited stage in the Absolute and, in essence, not God, but a kind of demiurge, a cosmic hypostasis of this Absolute. This teaching of Eckeghart is a heresy and a lie. The same question about creation, about its theogonic and theophanic meaning, is subjected to deep philosophical study by Schelling in his latest system (in “Philosophy of Mythology” and “Philosophy of Revelation”). Here Schelling, on the one hand, strongly insists on the complete transcendence of God to the world and, in this sense, His complete freedom in the creation (or non-creation) of the world. God, in whose power it is to put or not to put extra-divine being, God, in cuius potestate omnia sunt (namely omnia quae praeter ipsum existere possunt), this God is complete (der Ganze) God, not only the image (Gestalt) of God, but God as an absolute person 18. But, on the other hand, the process of peacemaking is, in Schelling’s eyes, also objectively theogonic (as he repeatedly defines it), it is in it that the “potencies” in God are “strengthened” (Spannung), which, in their manifestation through the world, correspond to the three hypostases of the Holy One. Trinity, in other words, in the theogonic world process, God is born for himself as trinitarian. In particular, “the beginning of creation is, at the same time, the beginning of the birth of the Son” (323), (and, consequently, the emergence of a separate hypostasis of the Father). One can speak about the eternity of the Son only in the sense that “He was foreknown and loved by the Father. But the Son, in this sense, is only the Son existing for the Father; He has not yet emerged from the Father, has not yet been placed outside of Him as the Son. This separation of the Son, which can actually be called birth, can only be thought of where there is talk of separation at all, that is, at the beginning of creation” (321). Schelling deliberately argues against the idea of ​​the eternity of the birth of the Son, seeing in this an echo of the disputes with Arius, who had in mind another question, namely about the creatureliness of the Son. “Eternal birth,” Schelling declares with rationalistic self-confidence, “is a contradictio in adjecto, for there is no birth that does not presuppose a relative non esse” (331). “The second image (Gestalt) of divine being, through the fact that it stands out from this being, receives the opportunity to be a special person in itself” (333). “Consequently, the second potency, singled out for itself, cannot yet be called God, it is restored in its divinity only when the first and third potencies are restored again in themselves, that is, their unity is restored - at the end of creation, and since through overcoming the opposite being it also becomes the master of this being, as originally only the Father was, then she also becomes a person, just as the Father was originally only one person, she is the Son, who has equal dominion with the Father. But the same applies to the third potency, which, when by the action of the second, what exists outside itself is completely overcome and exhausted, is also restored into being again” (333-334) 19. This suggests a direct conclusion that St. The Trinity does not yet exist, for it is only being created or born in the world process. The era of St. has not yet arrived. The Spirit and the era of the Son have not ended, and therefore the second has not been fully born, and with it the first hypostasis, and the entire Trinitarian Deity is im Werden. “During the process of creation there is multiplicity, but only of potencies, not of personalities. God as the creator, although there is plurality, is only plurality (Gott als Schöpter ist zwar Mehrere, aber nicht mehrere Personen)... On the contrary, at the end of creation (but only at the end), when the second and third hypostasis realized itself by overcoming the opposite being, there are really three persons and yet not three Gods” (337). Schelling takes on the divine hypostases, in his own expression, “die Natur und Funktion kosmischer, demiurgischer Kräfte” (340). Leaving aside the particular teachings of Schelling about the Trinity 20, it is necessary to recognize that with this teaching he introduces a process into the deity itself and thereby runs into contradiction with his own affirmation of the transcendence, and therefore the absoluteness of God. Although Schelling ascribes to God complete freedom in world-making, it turns out that, having abstained from the latter, the Divinity itself remains, in actus purissimus, close to potentiality, and is not born not only for the world, but also for itself. This denies the intra-Trinitarian, intra-divine life in the Divinity outside of creation; such incompleteness and defectiveness is attributed to the Divinity that it must be filled by creation, which is, at the same time, the self-creation of the Divine. Schelling thereby eliminates the transcendence and absoluteness of the Divine outside the world and takes the path of monism, a dynamic world-theology, which he rejects, for which the world is a becoming or potentializing God (i.e. turns out to be similar to the teachings of Hartmann and Drews, which are definitely hostile to Christianity). With all the depth of thought and exegetical skill of Schelling, we have to admit that he introduces opinions about the Divinity and St. that are completely unacceptable for Christianity. Trinity, and his entire “deduction” of the trinity is a sad attempt at presumptuous speculation, that same treacherous “mystical rationalism” for which he rightly reproaches Boehme. Schelling wants to “explain” and “deduce” what both the voice of religious feeling and philosophical criticism equally command to accept as a fact of divine life, established in religious experience and revelation. Of course, this fact can be interpreted philosophically, giving it a metaphysical expression, a logical transcription, revealing its philosophical depths - this can and even should be done by a philosopher, but he cannot, together with Schelling, who here sadly approaches his rival Hegel, claim to establish “Philosophical Necessity” (317), to reveal the secret and genesis of the threefold life in the Divine. This is rationalistic bad taste, which one would least like to see in Schelling, and he pays for it not only with heresy, but also with self-contradiction. He quite rightly states that “the idea of ​​trinity in God is not, as it were, a separate dogma, a separate position in Christianity, but even its premise or something without which Christianity would not exist in the world” (316), but this is precisely because God is eternally the Holy Trinity in His absolute transcendence, and to this fullness and absoluteness of intra-Trinitarian life nothing can be added or subtracted by peacemaking. God, as an Absolute, therefore, self-sufficient or all-satisfied, all-blessed being, can have neither gain nor loss; such an assumption would immediately reduce God to confusion with the world, would lead to world-theism or “monism.” By introducing the process into the Divinity itself, Schelling seeks to reveal the seal of trinity in the universe, which is visible to any concentrated mind, even outside of Christian revelation. The image of the Trinity is present in the human spirit (Blessed. Augustine), - and how else could the Savior’s promise that St. The Trinity comes and creates an abode in the soul of those who fulfill the commandments, the seal of the Trinity lies on all of nature (as J. Boehme speaks about this with special energy), the seal of St. The Trinity also lies on world history, for the divine hypostases are revealed in a sequence of times, and now we live in the era of the Son, who revealed the Father to the world, but we expect the revelation of St. Spirit, the “third covenant.” However, it is precisely that which can be revealed in time that must exist from eternity, and Schelling, instead, time itself, that is, the world process, introduces into the depths of the Divinity, and defines Him by it. This brings us face to face to the main question that arises when clarifying the nature of creation—namely, about eternity and temporality. The mystery of creatureliness is manifested in the creature's contradictory self-awareness about the eternity and temporality of its existence. Time is the actual synthesis of being and non-being, being, Werden. The present, which is always absorbed by the past and rushes into the future, is, as it were, a non-dimensional point moving in the ocean of meonal existence, half-being of the past and future, already-non-being and not-yet-being. In the intuition of temporality one senses the antinomy of creatureliness - the divine principle immersed in nothingness and fertilizing it with itself. For, if time is the transience and insignificance of everything that exists, and at the same time the possibility of everything that happens, the πάντα ῥεῖ of being, then the very consciousness of temporality, with its burning and acuteness, is generated by the feeling of supertemporality, the non-temporality of life, will be born only when looking into time from eternity. The envious Kronos jealously devours his children, kills, depreciates, overthrows everything; life is universal triumphant dying. Poets and sages of the whole world have given so much inspiration to hardly any other subject than to the cries and lamentations of temporality - whoever wants to feel this gloomy lyricism with the greatest force should become familiar with the majestic “rite of burial”, inscribed with the name of the inspired hymnologist John of Damascus 21 . But from the depths of despondency, among the sad silence, an incessant whisper is heard, timid and quiet, but at the same time, confident and unmuffled: you are eternal and only born for time - it is in you, and not you in time, you unroll and twist its scroll in the memory of your spirit, connect moments of time into its continuous flow, see the past and future in every moment of the present. Time and eternity are correlative: time would not be felt in its flow, would not be summed up from individual broken moments, if this were not done by the supertemporal subject of time. Time is juxtaposed with eternity; it is nothing other than eternity, extended into being, creatively declaring nothingness. Therefore, temporality is a universal form of being, a quality of creation, to which all creation is subject: angels, humans, and the whole world. At the same time, time can have different properties, temporality is expressed in specific, differently qualified times, time for angels, presumably, is different than for people 22, and for humans is different than for animals. The destructive force of temporality, corruption, can develop, but also be overcome in time, reduced to potentiality, and then time becomes only what Plato considered it (in the Timaeus), namely “a certain moving image of eternity” “εἰχὼν δ’ ἐπινοεῖ κινητόν τινα αἰῶνоς ποιῆσαι" (37 D). Evil time, the “inflamed circle of being,” is a fiery wheel, caught in the grip of a greedy nothingness, but as this grip unclenches and becomes insensitive, nothingness becomes a powerless potentiality, the hidden basis of being, and then the victorious heavenly music of “eternal life” sounds, which is the subject of Christian hopes and promises and is led empirically by the saints. Eternity lies not behind time or after time, but along with it, above time, as an ideal for it, and under time, as its basis, which is felt by time only through the prism of nothingness, non-existence. In every moment of existence, in every moment of it, eternity shines through, integral and indivisible, in which there is no present, past and future, but everything that happens is timeless. Vertical sections of time penetrate into eternity, which is why nothing that flashed only once in time can disappear, turn into oblivion, because it has some kind of projection into eternity, it itself exists in one of its infinite number of faces. In this freedom from temporality, in this indestructibility of what was once the joy of being, but in it also lies the fear of eternity, its threat. What is time? Is it only a subjective form of consciousness, as proclaimed by Kant? Yes and no. Being a universal “transcendental” form of experience, like a prism of consciousness, time is essentially connected with non-existence, with the immersion of the creature in nothingness. Temporality expresses only the state of createdness in its various modalities and belongs to the “transcendental subject”, expresses his view of the world. However, the subjectivity of time does not exclude the ontological and completely objective nature of this state; time does not only seem, but it exists, and it is precisely created being. In other words, it has not only a subjective nature, but a subjective-objective one; createdness is realized in it, and an attempt to think through the idea of ​​time leads to the same antinomy as the idea of ​​creation (see the previous chapter). This will be revealed as soon as we raise the question of the beginning of time; did time begin in time and what precedes time? Even the contemporaries of the blessed one were interested in these difficulties. Augustine, who posed tempting questions about what God did before the creation of the world, and Augustine examines them in the XI book of Confessions, which provides a hitherto unsurpassed analysis of time. Augustine thoroughly answered his co-questioners that “before the creation of heaven and earth, God did nothing, for before the creation of heaven and earth there was no time, is it appropriate to ask what God did then? Without time it is unthinkable even then” 23. “You do not precede time with time, otherwise you would not precede all times. But You precede all past times with Your beginningless eternity, always inherent in You, and with it You experience all future times, which as soon as they come, immediately turn into the past, while You are the same, and Your years do not become scarce” 24. “So, there was never a time when you remained inactive, because time itself is your own creation. And there is no coeternal time for you, because You always remain the same, unchanged, and time would cease to be time if you did not change” 25. Therefore, “the word before is not applicable where there is no time, and their very words, that You did not create anything before,” have no other meaning than that Your creation is not in time. “Let them understand that there could be no time before creation, but with creation times themselves came into existence” 26 . Dionysius the Areopagite 27 speaks on this issue in approximately the same sense as Augustine. The question of the time of origin of time inevitably arises if we pose the problem of time in the plane of logic of time, which necessarily requires before and after, such are its categories in which it can never stop in its run. Every moment of existence longs to attach itself to some before in order to rest on it, but this before inevitably turns out to be after, looking for its own before, and so on ad infinitum in both directions. Time always seeks its end and beginning, but cannot find them, for such is its nature 28 . The question of the beginning of time, as a beginning without beginning, or as an after without any before, leads to an irreconcilable antinomy, and one can get away from it only by leaving time. Temporality must go out and become weak, the time line must merge to the point when “there will be no more time,” as the angel swears in the Apocalypse, only in this way can the antinomy of time be resolved 29 . And, however, temporality, as an image of creation, contains shoots of eternity indestructible by time. God, by His power calling the world into being, is also present in time, for a theophanic process takes place in him, which is at the same time theogonic. And the question that occupied the contemporaries of Blessed. Augustine, precisely about what God did before the creation of the world, thereby expands into a more general question about the relationship of the Creator to creation or about His real presence in time, about the self-abasement of the Creator through entering into temporality, as if withdrawing from eternity. We are commanded not only by abstract considerations, but also by the specific content of the Christian religion to recognize the full reality of this entry, in which the robe of eternity is covered with the rubbish of temporality. For is it possible to deny the reality of time, when in the fulfilled times and periods God became incarnate, the birth of Christ took place, His earthly life passed, His resurrection and ascension took place. If eternity is clothed with temporality, then time also turns out to be pregnant with eternity and gives birth to its fruit. It is therefore necessary to accept that there is a direct correlation between time and eternity - time is grounded in eternity; but, at the same time, there is also a hiatus between them, for eternity is transcendental to temporality, it resists becoming. The presence of God in creation, eternity in temporality, must be understood as a theophany, a refraction in the prism of time of the eternally existing, which sends light and warmth to everything, like the sun, without itself needing anything, without accepting or losing anything. To talk about any profit for God from creation - in the sense that Schelling teaches about it, or in any other - means to allow the completion of eternity by time, that is, to deny this eternity, and thereby temporality. The temporary can only drown in the ocean of eternity, pouring into it, but cannot add anything to its fullness. However, nourished by it, it has genuine existence, not unfounded, for its basis is in eternity, but real and original, for here the creative power of God operates, nothingness erecting the world, and in world-making, in theophany, theogony occurs. God, remaining his being (οὐσία) above the world, his creative power (ἐνέργεια) is present in the temporary process, is born in it; At the edge of the sword of antinomy rests this relationship between eternity and temporality, revealing the general antinomy of createdness. It also finds another expression in the antinomy of freedom and necessity. This very opposition of freedom and necessity is associated with the limitations and relativity inherent in the creature. Freedom is a relative concept, absolute freedom is as contradictory a concept as absolute being. Perfect freedom merges with perfect necessity, and in this merging this difference itself is extinguished; in this sense, the Absolute is transcendental to both freedom and necessity 30 . Their distinction is generated by the common basis of creation, nothingness, meon, which, in turn, has a hidden basis in the pure nothingness of law, in the infinity of non-being, ἄπειρον. By the fact that πέρας is posited for ἄπειρον and meon is created from law, the distinction between freedom and necessity is established: the negative freedom of emptiness is bound by the facets of being, which form a law for it, as an internal necessity. The positive basis of being is, first of all, the world of divine ideas, God in creation; these ideas are impregnated into nothingness, into infinity, and the latter becomes the basis of independent existence in its independence and freedom: everything exists through God and from God, but precisely in this way it receives the power to be in itself and for itself, outside of God, like non-God or the world. In the positive basis of its existence, the world is absorbed by God, extinguished in the rays of His omnipotence; the world does not have an existence that belongs to itself, for otherwise it would be a god or an anti-god; only that which receives and gives birth belongs to it: nothing in isolation, but thanks to this negative basis of its being, the world receives an extra-divine, independent existence. This freedom, ontologically, in its source, is not free at all, is not causa sui, non-substantial, for it is entirely determined from the creative let it be; cosmologically, as the basis of world existence, it is precisely that in which the creature feels itself. Created creativity, which is the actual expression of created freedom, is not creativity out of nothing, but creativity into nothing from the divine that. In this freedom of creation, based on created nothingness, the divine principles of being exist not in their power and glory, not in the face of eternity, in which they do not know development and replenishment, for they do not need them, but in temporary formation, as the theme and at the same time the task of the world process, its givenness, which provides the most accurate formula for defining both created freedom and created creativity. What the creature recognizes in itself as the task of creativity is put into it by God, in other words, this task is pre-eternally resolved, but it must be resolved in time. The freedom of the creature consists precisely in the realization or non-realization of the potentialities of being, in overcoming its nothingness and reducing it to potentiality, or actualizing it. Therefore, the freedom of a creature is essentially connected with the inferiority of its existence. Since the world is immersed in God with its existential roots, it is alien to freedom and the various possibilities associated with it, chance and infidelity; but since it is created and immersed in nothingness, it stands under the ambiguous sign of the category of possibility, choice, diversity. As a manifestation of divine forces, the world is reality itself and completeness, but the world in its created freedom is a task, a play of possibilities, an endless possibility of possibilities. The world cannot fail at all, in other words, the created meon cannot already decompose into ukon, into infinity - ἄπειρον, non-existence cannot splash up in its waves to the sky and absorb the divine fullness, however, the world can linger in its meonality, not reaching the highest degree of being. Here you will not get a round zero, which even pure potency, a completely unrevealed meon, is no longer, but here there can be a difference in the degree and image of becoming, for what is pre-eternal and has no degree in God is freely realized in the world. This freedom must also be thought of with all reality, like time: if in time each moment is a window into eternity, its point, then in becoming through freedom we have a real touch of eternity, birth for it. Created freedom, however, is necessarily limited, and, moreover, in two senses. Creation is a total unity in which everything realizes itself through multiplicity, and for it unity is a task or a norm. The environment of nothingness differentiates all-unity into multiplicity, therefore, each individual thing finds itself embraced by other thats, into which everything falls apart - in other words, it finds everything as an external boundary for itself or a forced given, which opposes, is an object for mastery and overcoming. This results in conjugation and mutual conditionality of the basic definitions of world existence; freedom and necessity, regularity and creativity. Therefore, a person should neither exaggerate nor underestimate his freedom and responsibility, which is determined by the measure of his positive power. The freedom of the creature rests on nothingness as its foundation: by the fact that nothingness, divine power, is called into being; limited itself, giving room to the freedom of the creature. Divine self-exhaustion in favor of created nothingness forms the positive basis of created power and freedom; God's omnipotence and omnipotence seem to outline the circle of his deliberate inaction, the area of ​​created freedom, giving place to nothingness as the principle of being-non-existence called to life. By the act of divine humility-love for the creature, the sphere of its freedom and power is unshakably affirmed. However, the power of the creature is not limitless, and its freedom is not limitless. The creature is called into being by a creative, timeless act that reveals itself in time and time. Just as it is impossible to conceive of time outside of eternity and in isolation from it, so it is impossible to allow that even in one moment of time the divine creative act would be absent, having ceased as unnecessary, for this would mean the metaphysical destruction of creation, the decomposition of the meon into law, the plunge of creation into its original, dark insignificance. The world is indestructible, although not absolute, it is infinite, although not eternal, since time itself is the face of eternity turned to the creature, a kind of created eternity. Therefore, one cannot imagine God as a creator only starting from a certain time, which is preceded (and therefore in time) by the non-creative state of God. The Lord is the creator always, now and ever, and forever and ever, therefore, in a certain sense, creation is co-eternal with the Creator, just as light is co-eternal with the sun, although for it eternity exists only in temporality. No matter how great the freedom granted to a creature, it relates only to the disposal of the divine gift of being, but not to self-creation (absolute idealism of a Luciferic hue, such as, for example, Fichte’s “Ichphilosophie,” is opposed to this idea). Envious rejection of this truth is Satanism. The relevance of God in the world makes time real and thereby establishes the times and timing of world events, lays the foundation for history, and at the same time eliminates the possibility of a deterministic understanding of the world as a mechanism in which everything is automatically predetermined in advance. On the contrary, as a constantly evolving creation of God, as a living robe of the Divine, the world is not lawful - in the sense of mechanical determinism, the world law established by science has a pragmatic and schematic meaning only for a given period of time and, moreover, ceteris paribus. There is nothing in the “laws of nature” that would make them the only possible ones; they exist because they exist, by force of fact, until they are abolished or changed by God’s omnipotence. The only absolute law of the world is God's will, i.e. a miracle, the world is not lawful in any deterministic sense: mechanical, occult or metaphysical, but miraculous. “The laws of nature,” the idea of ​​universal determinism, the perpetuum mobile of the world, are a necessary auxiliary tool of knowledge, its pragmatic crutches, relying on which a person expands his power and realizes this freedom. However, these “working hypotheses” are valid only for the world of phenomena, for the periphery of being, and, moreover, they themselves have a basis in the deeper layers of being. And especially false is the extension of natural determinism to the very being of God, which is the sin of the physics of God in J. Boehme or in modern philosophy of occultism (Besant, Steiner, etc.). Undoubtedly, everything in nature is full of divine meaning, all of it is a symbol of God (as Carlyle felt with particular vividness); delving into this symbolism generates the pathos of poets, natural philosophers, mystics, and magicians. But nature, equally externally manifested, empirical, and internal, noumenal (“ewige Natur”, natura naturans), does not express, does not exhaust and therefore does not limit God, who in His absoluteness and transcendence is free from all nature and from all regularity, from all physics and history. Law exists only for creatures and only one - the will of God. Being indestructible for creation, it in no way affects or limits the creative absoluteness and omnipotence of God: God is not this or that, for He does not exist at all, being above all nature. He is not some chemical mixture of “sour, bitter, tart, sweet,” etc., as is established in Boehme’s physics; He creatively posits nature and, therefore, creates its regularity. Therefore, God’s creativity is limitless, inexhaustible, inexhaustible, immeasurable, and God deems “Sabbath rest,” rest from one’s deeds, to be His will. However, God addresses created being not with immensity, or rather, not with His super-dimension, but by placing a measure, a pattern, vested with the power of compulsion in everything. By calling nothingness into existence and giving freedom to the creature, God renounces his omnipotence in actu and enters into cooperation with the creature. This combination of God's omnipotence with created freedom, which does not exist outside of limitation, is the basis of created existence. Creation is, therefore, also a “providence” for creation; the Almighty is also the Provider. However, this providence should not be understood in the sense of mechanical predetermination, which destroys creativity and freedom and turns the world into a clockwork, a self-acting machine, and the Divine into a willful and capricious tyrant, creating living toys for himself. There is no pre-establishment in the course of the world process and in the destinies of people, because time is real, and what happens in it is created in time and in this originality cannot be limited or paralyzed in advance at any one point in the past: all moments of time are ontologically equivalent and equally real, although this does not destroy their difference, on the contrary, it is even affirmed. Therefore, if you look from the past and present into the future, and generally consider the world in time and from time, it appears as an indefinite set of different possibilities, of which only one is chosen and realized by created freedom. And divine providence, once it allowed created freedom and entered into real interaction with it, influences the world not with a mechanically pre-established pattern, but creatively, always original and in accordance with the action of created freedom. Providence acts with absolute resourcefulness and ingenuity, directing every creative combination of creation towards good with the greatest expediency. The ways of Providence are incomprehensible and unexplorable for us, but we must believe in their absolute fidelity and infallibility. Only in exceptional moments does the hand of Providence become felt and visible in the personal and historical life of mankind, although for the enlightened eye of the saints the world is such a continuously occurring miracle. However - alas! – only as a postulate of the logic of faith does this good news sound to us, and only in selected moments of spiritual upheaval does the soul hear how the Lord knocks on the doors of the human heart, it sees His merciful and punishing hand, and tremblingly cries out: You are right, Lord, and Your judgments are right! But in everyday life, in the desert of despondency and lack of faith, the mechanical regularity of the world, the crust of nature, closes divine Providence for us, and only with the blood of the heart we have to extricate from it the feat of faith and its obedience! Therefore, the happening of the world can in no way be understood as evolution, or the deployment and identification of forces invested in it and fundamentally subject to exhaustive accounting, forming a closed and continuous chain of immanent causality and fundamentally not allowing anything new. This explains the fundamental possibility and even necessity of eschatology, which is invariably present in most religions. It gives an appropriate place to creative-catastrophic moments of existence, which are in the life of an individual his birth and death, and in the life of the world - his creation and end, or new creation (“I make all things new,” Rev. 21:5). The Gospel says that no one knows about the end of the world except the Heavenly Father (not even the Son, as he is involved in humanity). Here God acts creatively, let it be (or let it not be), and “what is impossible for man is possible for God.” Man, by his own will, cannot add even an ounce of growth to himself, he is given to himself, and only the One who created him is able to free him from the bonds of this givenness, to create him anew, although at the same time the indestructible basis of creativity remains the freedom of the creature: it is the boundary for this new creation that is not its weakness, but the direction of the will, free aspiration. In view of this, the principle of evolution also receives its relative strength, i.e. performed on the basis of the freedom to reveal the energies invested by God, and this is equally applicable to both the individual and the world. God does not violate human freedom. This axiom forces us to admit that neither an individual life nor the world’s existence ends catastrophically as long as something remains unsaid, unidentified, undefined, although the very definition of such a moment is inaccessible to human knowledge. Providence knows how to wait, sparing the freedom of the creature, but it does not allow useless delays or slowness. Therefore, evolution within its natural limits is inviolable and inviolable, since everyone carries within himself the law of his own existence and accomplishment, but, at the same time, it cannot be recognized as the only and universal law of existence. In reality, evolutionism is subordinate to catastrophism or regularity to miracle, and continuity presupposes discontinuity. In this sense, we must also understand the fundamental possibility of the apocalypse - promises and prophecies, which seems to contradict freedom with its indeterminism, the multiplicity of different possibilities. The Apocalypse reveals, on the basis of the immanent, evolutionary law of the world, the future contained already in the present, but it is not limited to this, for it also contains the revelation of what God will create with the world by His providence and His omnipotence. Only revelation, that is, supernatural knowledge (in its expression naturally taking the epistemological form of the world) can the transcendental, divine side of the world process be accessible, for “nobody knows God’s message, but the Spirit of God.” But the question arises: after all, the immanent-evolutionary side of the world process presupposes created freedom and, therefore, the presence of various possibilities, therefore even its paths are inaccessible to foresight. However, this must be recognized only for the creature, and not for the Creator, for time, and not for eternity. Created freedom extends only to the difference in methods or ways of solving world problems, but not to the very essence of creation - it is not given to it to destroy or even significantly spoil creation. God created the world for sure, with unmistakable fidelity, and not with the fortune-telling possibility of success or failure; the world cannot fail, otherwise its Creator would be powerless and imperfect, because in this case something new and unexpected would be revealed to Himself, which He could not foresee. Such a thought does not at all reconcile with the absoluteness of God, for it admits that God also learns something through the world process, receives some kind of profit from it, develops and matures in it. Then we will have to further admit that time exists in itself, that is, in isolation from eternity, and is not just its existential, phenomenal face, since something super-eternal can really happen in time, which can even fill eternity with its novelty. This absolutely cannot be allowed. For in eternity, in the transcendental depth of God, everything temporal is grounded, and there is no present, past and future, everything is motionless, supertemporal, in connection and fulfillment (and this connection grounds the objective order of temporal formation, concrete time - “times and seasons”). That is why human freedom remains transparent for the Divine, the future is open and there are no different possibilities in it, but only reality, the real destinies of the creature. This in no way denies or diminishes the reality of freedom in its true realm, for it belongs entirely to the temporary, created world and is inextricably linked with necessity, that is, with the limitations of creation, its non-absoluteness. In the eternal basis of creatureliness, the very difference between freedom and necessity, which has complete reality for the creature, is completely absent; it is transcendental to the freedom of necessity 31 . Therefore, divine revelation, drawing from eternity, is equally possible about the past as about the future, for it is the work of God and corresponds to His providential purposes. Therefore, one cannot talk about the fundamental conditionality or hypothetical nature of prophecies, consider them only religiously-pragmatically, and not ontologically (N.O. Fedorov’s favorite idea, however, not his alone). Prophecies are understood here as pedagogical means, threats or warnings, and ultimately depend in their implementation on human freedom. In Eternity, everything exists, being not predetermined in time, but determined by an existential being, equally both before the creation of the world and after it (“them you foreknew, those you predetermined”), but this does not apply to temporary life, in which, on the contrary, nothing is predetermined or decided, for freedom operates here, and salvation or destruction depends on it. We again come across the antinomy of eternity and temporality that lives in our soul. The world is the revelation of God, and creation was created for the knowledge of God. Creativity is therefore the ontological basis of religion, as an actual connection between the Creator and creation, a revelation taking place. The possibility of religion presupposes this dualism, which establishes a double conditionality: revelation on the one hand and the organ or religious consciousness that perceives it, on the other. A person must have an eye to see light, this is a creating eye (for in a certain sense, the organ is created by the function and the eye by light). Like is known by like, and in order for a person to know God, he must himself be the image and likeness of God, God in the world. No matter how distorted and obscured by sin this God-likeness of man may be, he still remains inherent in a certain inalienable nobility of spirit, a natural God-bearing quality. Vital knowledge of God is the most sacred gift of man, belonging to him already by virtue of the fact that he is called to become “God by grace,” and it is the highest and only goal of human life, as it generalizes everything in itself. Therefore, anyone who, under the pretext of the truth of “negative theology,” would begin to reject the possibility and necessity of “positive theology,” would fall into practical atheism (which, for example, deism falls into), for he would deny the Creator and His revelation in creation. However, here again we are faced with a “transcendental” temptation, which in essence, however, takes us far beyond the limits of transcendentalism. Human knowledge of God will necessarily receive the coloring of humanity and will suffer from “anthropopathism” or, speaking epistemologically, “psychologism.” The smell of “human, too human” cannot be removed here with any epistemological acids, and is this not a critical verdict pronounced on religion? The general doubt about whether religion is possible and how it is possible receives a more definite and more poisonous formulation: can we eliminate anthropopathism in religion? It is known that L. Feuerbach, and in a different way Guyot (in Irrtligion de l’avenir) make an attempt to completely anthropomorphize religion - psychologically or sociologically - to reduce it to a misunderstanding, which only needs to be revealed and explained. God is, according to the teachings of Feuerbach 32, man's own being, projected outward. The falsity and illusory nature of this projection must be realized, and God for a person should not be a fantastic supermundane being, but a person 33. Already in the ancient world, psychological doubt in religion was also well known; it is enough to recall Xenophanes of Colophon and Euhemer. In response to this skepticism, it is necessary to fundamentally and “critically” affirm religious anthropology, that is, human likeness to God and the ability to recognize God in man based on it: homo sum et nihil divini a me alienum esse puto 34. For those who accept the basic dogma of Christianity about the incarnation of God, anthropological skepticism cannot have any force. Onus probandi, in any case, lies here with those who deny this right. Итак, на очередь сама собой выдвигается проблема религиозной антропологии, которая и составляет настоящий ключ к «положительному богословию». Но предварительно должна быть исследована положительная основа мира: за раскрытием тварного ничто должна быть показана софийность мира. This will form the subject of the next chapter. Sometimes they try to connect the difference between creation and emanation with the opposition of freedom and necessity in God. The freedom of God in the creation of the world is especially defended by Schelling, who sees in this idea a necessary feature of theistic philosophy: Phll. d. Offenb. II, III, 310. “The starting point is the absolute freedom of God in the universe. In His power stood that principle of the beginning, which was in him as a simple possibility and, therefore, without His will there is nothing, that principle of the beginning, which in the depths of his being He sees as a simple opportunity to preserve in a latent state or raise to reality. This God, in Whose freedom contains the possibility of putting within himself the existing of His being as an opposite, as being separate from itself and existing from itself, this God is complete God, God in all unity, not only existing in itself, for this one would not be free for itself. The freedom of God has a basis only in His indestructible unity.” Schelling returns to this idea more than once in The Philosophy of Revelation. The opposition of freedom and necessity in God often sins of obvious anthropomorphism (or what is the same, “psychologism”) and should, in any case, be especially protected from this reproach. To a certain extent, the construction of the book is also subject to it. E.N. Trubetskoy (in his “Worldview of V.S. Solovyov”), for whom the opposition of freedom and nature in God also plays a significant role, in connection with the assumption of unrealized possibilities in the freedom of God. The absence of a preliminary analysis of these basic definitions gives the entire structure of the book. E.N. Trubetskoy’s character is incomplete, and at the same time, he is much closer to Schelling (of course, “Philosophy of Revelation”) than he himself thinks. Quote at Schelling. Darstellung des philosophischen Empirismus, Ausgew. Werke, Bd. III, 549 ff. It is interesting that we find this definition of Newton almost verbatim in St. Gregory the Theologian: “the name Θεός is a relative name, like the name Lord” St. Gregory the Theologian, ed. 3, part 3, pp. 78–79. Migne, 36, 152). Vl. is also guilty of excessive “deduction” of creation and, therefore, of rationalism. Solovyov, who discusses this as follows: “If the absolute remained only itself, excluding its other, then this other would be its negation, and, therefore, it itself would not be absolute” (Organic principles of integral knowledge, collected works, vol. 1, ed. 1, pp. 320–321). But this “other” is completely absorbed and excluded by the concept of the all-unity, the absolute, and there is no need (metaphysical) for this other, which in some incomprehensible way limits it, for the absolute, according to its concept. “Other” can only be created quite spontaneously, and not posited out of metaphysical necessity. “God made things out of Nothing, and that same Nothing is He Himself, as the living pleasure of love in itself” (IV, 309, § 8). “We cannot say that this world was created from anything, only desire arose from free pleasure, which groundlessness, as the highest good or essence, as the eternal will, contemplates in pleasure (Lust), as in a mirror” (IV, 424, § 7). Οὐ γὰρ μήποτε τοῦτ’ οὐδαμῇ φησίν, εἶναι μὴ ὄντα, ἀλλὰ οὑ τῆς δ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ διζήσιος εἶργε νόημα (as this text is given in Plato’s Sophist: 237, A). “Χρὶ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ’ ἐὸν ἒμμεναι, ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι, μηδὲν δ’ οὐκ εἶναι" (V, 43–44). In the new philosophy, the development between μή and οὐ is most clearly expressed by Schelling in his “Darstellung des philosophischen Empirismus”. (A.W. II, 571): “μὴ ὄν is a non-existent, which is only a non-existent, in relation to which only actual existence is rejected, but not the possibility of existing, which therefore, since it has existence before it, as the possibility of existing, although it is not existing, however, not in such a way that it could not exist. But οἰκ ὄν is completely and in every sense non-existent, or is something in relation to which not only reality but also existence in general is denied, and therefore its possibility. In the first sense, through the expression μὴ ὄν and even the negation of being is posited” (I, X, 283). Schelling explains the difference between οὐκ ὄν and μὴ ὄν with the French words rien - pure nothingness, and neant - relative nothingness. According to Schelling's own thought, defended in this treatise, the world was created by God out of nothing in the sense of οὐκ ὄν, but not μή ὄν. Unfortunately, he does not remain completely faithful to it in the “Philosophy of Revelation,” where the idea of ​​God creating the world from himself is developed, albeit in a hidden and complicated form (II, III, 284 ff.). In the work “On the Divine Names” by St. Dionysius the Areopagite says that “if it is permissible to say, the non-existent itself strives for the good that stands above everything that exists, and tries to somehow be in the good” (καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ μὴ ἴν ἐφίεται καὶ φιλονικεῖ πως ἐν τἀγαϑῷ καὶ αὐτὸ εἶναι) (De d. n. IV, 3, Migne, III, 647). Likewise, not only everything that exists strives for beauty, but “even he decides to utter the word that even non-existent things participate in goodness and beauty, for they too become goodness and beauty when they are “glorified in God”” (Τολμήζει δὲ καὶ τούτο εἰπεῖν ὁ λόγος, ὄτι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὄν μετέχει τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ ἀγαϑοῦ, τότε γάρ καὶ αὐτὸ καλόν καὶ ἀγαϑὸν, ὅταν ἐν Θεῷ... ὔμνῆται (De d. n., IV, 7, Mg.III, 704). “Everything that exists comes from goodness and beauty, yet everything that exists is super-essential, abides in goodness and beauty” (Πάντα τὰ ὄντα ἐν τοῦ καλοῦ (De d. n., IV, 10, Mg. III, 708). Maximus the Confessor directly says: “God himself is the author and nothing, for everything, as a consequence, follows from Him, according to the causes of both being and non-being, for nothing itself is a limitation, for it has existence due to the fact that it is nothing from the existing αὐτὸς οὔν καὶ μηδενὸς αἴτιος πάντων αὑτοῦ ὑστέρων ὄντων, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι αἰτιαν καὶ γὰρ αὑτὸ τὸ μηδὲν στέρησις ἐστιν ἔχει γὰρ τὸ "(S. Maximi scholia in lib. de div. nom., Migne. IV, 260-261). Further St. Maxim compares created being and non-being with the Divine NOT-that of negative theology: “and the non-existent exists through being and non-being, being everything as a creator, and being nothing, as transcendent, or rather existing transcendentally and super-existently καὶ μὴ ὤν ἐστι διὰ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ ὑπερεῖναι, πάντα ὤν, ὡς ποιητὴς, καὶ μηδὲν ὤν, ὡς ὑπερβίεβίηκὼς μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ὑπεραναβεβηκὼς καὶ ὑπερουοίως ὤν". In the dialogue of Parmenides, in this “divine play” of a genius who knows his power, the inseparability of being and non-being, the being of not only being, but also non-being, as well as the non-being of not only non-being, but also being, is revealed dialectically. “There is one non-existent (τὸ ἕν οὐκ ὄν), therefore if the non-existent does not exist, if it loses something of its being in favor of non-existence, it will suddenly become existing (ὄν). Consequently, in order not to be, it must be bound in non-existence by the being of non-existence (δεσμὸν ἔχειν τοῦ μὴ εἶναι τὸ εἶναι μὴ ὄν), just as what exists, in order to fully be, must be bound in being non-existence of non-existence (τὸ ὄν τὸ μὴ ὄν ἔχειν μὴ εἶναι), thus, the existing will be to the greatest extent, the non-existent will not be, when the existing will participate in the essence of being existing, but will not participate in the essence of being non-existent (μετέχοντα τὸ μὲν ὄν οὐσίας τοῦ εἶναι ὄν, μὴ οὑσίας δὲ τοῠ εἶναι μὴ ὄν), if it completely has to be, and when the non-existent will not participate in the essence of not being non-existent (τὸ δὲ μὴ ὄν μὴ οὐσίας μὲν τοῦ μὴ εἶναι μὴ ὄν), but will participate in the essence of being non-existent (οὐσίας δὲ τοῦ εἶναι μὴ ὄν), if the non-existent has completely not to be. Therefore, since the existing partakes of non-existence, and the non-existent partakes of being, then it is necessary for the One, even if it is not, to be participatory of being in relation to non-existence (εἰς τὸ μὴ εἶναι).” (Parmenid., 162 A–B). Much attention is devoted to the study of the relationship between being and non-existence and their connectedness in the Sophist, the non-existent, “by joining the existing, also becomes existing” (ὅτι μετέχει τοῦ ὄντоς, εἶναι τε καὶ ὄντα) (Sophist ., 256 Ε). This analysis is brought here in connection with the doctrine of the relativity of being, by virtue of which every being is in one respect being, in another - non-being, which is shown in the analysis of the movement of change. “We do not share the opinion that negation indicates opposition, but only that the particles oὑ or μὴ placed before the words that follow them (ὁνομάτων), or rather the things to which the words pronounced after the negation refer, indicate a certain otherness.” (257 V-C). About all kinds of being, both together and separately, we can say that “in many respects they exist, but in many they do not exist” (πολλαχῇ μὲν ἐστώ, πολλαχῇ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν) (259 V). For Hegel, “das reine Seyn und das reine Nichts ist dasselbe. Was die Wahrheit ist, ist weder das Seyn, noch das Nichts, sondern dass das Seyn in Nichts, und das Nichts in Seyn – nicht übergeht, sondern übergegangen ist.” (Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik. I, 73). ... φϑέυξаστϑаι δυνατὸν ὀρϑῶς oὒτ’ εἰπεῖν oὒτε διανοηϑῆναι τὸ μὴ ον αὑτὸ καϑ’ ἁυτό, ἁλϑ’ ἒστιν ἀδιανοητόν τε καὶ ἄρρητον καὶ ἄφϑεγκτον καὶ ἄλογον (Sophist. 238 C). Hegel. Wissenschaft der Logik, I, 101, 103; (italics mine). But as a philosopher of immanentism, Hegel extends being, and therefore non-being, to God and, apparently recalling Boehme, says: “Es ware nicht schwer, diese Einheit von Seyn und Nichts in jedem Beispiele, in jedem Wirklichen oder Gedanken aufzuzeigen. Es muss dasselbe, was oben von der Unraittelbarkeit oder Vermittlung von Seyn und Nichts gesagt wergen, dass es nirgend im Himmel (sic) und auf Erden Etwas gebe, was nicht Beides Seyn und Nichts in sich enthielte ". Hegel then directly applies this to God: “So in Gott selbst enthalt die Qualitat Thatigkeit, Schopfung, Macht u.s.w. wesentlich die Bestimmung des Negativen, – sie sind ein Hervorbringen eines Anderen” (ib., 76). J. Boehme should also be found guilty of the same sin—extending the category of being to God—from whom one should, of course, not expect philosophical clarity. However, the doctrine of emergence in Nichts-Etwas, as well as the entire doctrine of “nature in God” with its spiritual-physical dialectic, can only be understood in this sense. Plato's famous discussion of matter is closely related to the doctrine he developed about the creation of the world. Timaeus is Plato's only dialogue where the world is viewed as the creation of a good, “envy-free” Creator. Plato distinguishes here (28 D) “always existing and without origin” (the world of ideas), then, “always existing, but never existing” (world of phenomena) and, finally, a “difficult and dark” species, the purpose of which is to be “the substrate (ὑποδοχήν) of all origin (γενέσεως), as if a nurse (τιϑήνην)." “It should be said about the essence that accepts all kinds of bodies that it always remains identical (ταὐτὴν), because in no case does it emerge from its ability (δυνάμεως). It always accepts everything into itself, never, in any way, assimilates a form similar to that which enters it; for it is by nature a container (ἐκμαγεῖον), set in motion and shaped by the one entering, and thanks to him it appears differently at different times” (50 V–S.). “That which receives can be likened to a mother, that from which (it is received) can be likened to a father, nature, which occupies an intermediate place between them, is by birth” (50 D). “We will not call this mother and substratum (ὑροδοχήν) of everything that has appeared visible and sensually comprehended in every possible way, neither earth, nor air, nor fire, nor water, nor that which came from them or from which they themselves came; but let us not be mistaken in saying that it is a kind of formless, ugly, all-accepting, somehow inexplicably involved in conceivability and elusive” (51 A). Finally, “matter is also defined as a kind of space (τὸ τῆς χώρας), which does not accept destruction, giving place to everything that has a birth, while itself, inaccessible to the senses, is caught by a certain counterfeit judgment, difficult to believe” (52 AV). In direct relation to the teaching of Timaeus about matter stands the teaching on the infinite (ἄρειроν) and the limit (πέρας) of Philebus. It is known how Plato’s doctrine of maeonal matter was taken up by Aristotle in his doctrine of primary matter (πρώτη ὕλη): the latter is devoid of any definition, concept and form (ἄμορφος, ἀειδὲς, ἄγνωοτος, ἀόριοτος, ἀῤῥύμιστος). See Metaphysics, book VI, 3. On the issue of being and non-being in the teachings of Plato, the study of Nicolai Hartmann deserves serious attention. Plato's Logik des Seyns Giessen, 1909. Despite the Cohenian mission of this book, it contains subtle explorations of the most difficult problems of Platonism and in this respect even surpasses the major work of Natorp Plato's Ideenlehre. Leipzig, 1903. Both Natorp and Hartmann dwell on the least studied sides of Platonism, on what can be called “transcendentalism” in it, and this is the undeniable merit of the Marburg School. D. Bruno in his treatise “De la causa, principe e uno” in the fifth dialogue characterizes the World Soul or the Universe as the One, motionless, absolute, standing above differences and contradictions (in particular, he clearly relies here on the doctrine of the absolute of Nicholas of Cusa), but then asks the question: “why do things change, why does matter constantly take on new forms?” I answer that every change tends not to a new being, but to a new kind of being. And such is the difference between the universe itself and the things in the universe. For it embraces all being and all types of being; each of them has the whole being, but not all types of being, and cannot actually have all the definitions and accidents... In the infinite, motionless, i.e., substance, essence, there is a multitude, a number; as the mode and diversity of essence, it does not become more than one, but only a diverse, multi-species essence. Everything that forms difference and number is only an accident, only an image, only a combination. Every generation, of whatever kind it may be, is a change, while the substance always remains the same, because it is only one, divine, immortal essence... This being is one and constant and remains always; this one is eternal; every movement, every image, everything else is vanity, as if nothing; yes, precisely nothing is everything outside of this unity. The relationship between the one and the many, the universe and its phenomena is defined in such a way that the latter “are, as it were, different ways of manifestation of one and the same substance, an oscillating, mobile, transitory manifestation of the motionless, abiding and eternal essence, in which there are all forms, images and members, but in an undifferentiated and, as it were, curled state, as in a seed the hand is not yet distinguished from the hand, the tail from the head, the veins from the bones. But what is generated by separation and differentiation is not a new and different substance; but it only brings into reality and fulfillment certain properties, differences, accidents and stages in each substance... Hence, everything that gives rise to the difference of genera, species, that creates differences and properties, everything that exists in emergence, death, change and change is not essence, not being, but the state and determination of essence and being, and this latter is a single infinite, motionless substratum, matter, life, soul, true and good. Since the essence is indivisible and simple, ... therefore, in no case can the earth be considered as a part of the essence, the sun - as a part of the substance, since it is indivisible; It is impermissible to talk about a part in a substance, just as it is impossible to say that a part of the soul is in the hand, another in the head, but it is quite possible that the soul is in the part that is the head, that it is the substance of the part or is in the part that is the hand. For a part, a piece, a member, a whole, as much, more, less, as this, as that, than this, than that, according to, different and other relations do not express the absolute and therefore cannot relate to substance, to the one, to the essence, but only through the medium of substance to be with the one and the essences as modes, relations and forms... Therefore, the opinion of Heraclitus sounds good, who argued that all things are the essence of one, which, due to changeability, has all things in itself; and since all forms are in it, then all definitions apply to it accordingly, and so are the provisions contradictory to each other valid. So, what constitutes plurality in things is not the essence and the thing itself, but only a phenomenon that appears to the senses, and only on the surface of things” (quoted from Lasson’s German translation, pp. 100–105). Pantheism fatally leads Bruno to the recognition of the phenomenality of the world, i.e. acosmism. The aporia experienced in determining the relationship between a single absolute universe and relative being would have been revealed with even greater clarity if Bruno had moved on to clarify the nature of the human personality and individual spirit, which, in the name of consistency, would also have to be recognized as an accident, mode or phenomenon of a single substance (to which apersonalism the logic of pantheism usually leads). The problem of the reality of the relative, when being absolutized as a single thing, becomes hopeless and insoluble. This question was the subject of a dispute between the Italian thinkers Rosmini and Gioberti, with the former defining God precisely as absolute being, while the latter distinguishes between being and existing. (cf. V. Ern. Rosmini and his theory of knowledge. Moscow, 1914, “The Path”, pp. 172–173). As Nicholas of Cusa says: “Nam videtur quod ipsa creatura, quae nec est Deus, nec nihil, sit quasi post Deum, et ante nihil, intra Deum et nihil, ut ait unus sapientium: Deus est oppositio nihil, meditatione entis; nec tamen potest esse et non esse composite” (De docta ignorantia, Lib.II, cap. II, p. 71, quoted from the new Italian edition of Paolo Rotta, Bari, 1913). De docta ignorantia, Lib. II, cap. II, p. 73. Here we read: “Si consideras rem ut est in Deo, tune est Deus et unttas, uon restat nisi licere quad pluralitas rerum exoriatur eo quod Deusestin nihilo” Nam tolle Deum a creatura et remanet nihil (ib.78). This makes understandable, as far as we can talk about intelligibility here, all the paradox of church hymn, monstrous for the mind, which directly laughs at rational thinking: “in the grave carnally, in hell with the soul like God, in paradise with the thief and on the throne! with the Father and the Spirit, fulfilling all things indescribable.” Philos, der Offenb., I, 311. “It was in the power of God to constantly retain this possibility of being outside of himself, which appeared to him only as such (an sich selbst), this possible otherness (Andernheit) as only a possibility. But the one in whose power this possibility was, it was characteristic of this possibility, which in fact is the secret of his deity (!!), to reveal freely, not so that thereby an extra-divine being would arise, denying God, but so that it, as actually manifested, would be clearer and more obvious, and therefore would be consistently overcome and transformed into a God-positing, God-conscious” (ib. 304). If the “noble spirit of man” feels the need to be understood by others, and how much more such a need - the only one and nothing more than the Divinity that does not need - to put before itself something else in order to turn it into one that knows about itself... Therefore, it becomes, as Plato says, “the envy-free deity not to remain in that actus purissimus, which we could call the eternal theogony and which is absorbing (verzehrend) in relation to everything outside itself, but to make this actus purissimus an intelligible, discernible fact (Vorgang), all the moments of which should be united and harmonized in the latter, reduced to the unity of consciousness” (ib. 304). “I ask you,” Schelling summarizes, “to consider the following as established: 1) The essence of what N.Z. calls the Son, is eternally in God as absorbed in the actus purissimus of divine life, itself with God, ϑεός. 2) From the moment (von da) the Father sees in the images of his being the possibility of another being, or from the moment these images appear to him as potencies, that is, from eternity, from the moment he is the Father, the second potency appears to him as the future Son, he, therefore, already has in it the future Son, whom he recognizes in it in advance, in which he actually accepts the plan (Vorsatz) peace. That's why the ap says. Paul: “in Him all things were created” (Col. 1:16) here the Son is only in the Father, has not yet departed from the Father; but, 3rd, and outside (praeter) of the Father - first as potency - he is posited only with the beginning of creation, but he is the actual Son only after he has realized himself by overcoming opposites, therefore, at the end of creation; as a Son, he is externally (before the world) declared at an even later moment.” (ib. 332). Ed. Hartmann. Schelling's philosophisches System. Leipzig. 1897, pp. 135–136, not without reason, points out, for example, that Schelling still fails to deduce the three hypostases, because the three positions or phases, in the development of the Divine, are not hypostases. The modalistic nature of Schelling’s teaching is also noted by Pfleiderer, who remarks regarding the teaching in question: “es ist das jedenfalls eher montanistischehe oder sabellianische als kirchliche Dreienigkeit” (I. p. 35). I will give a few excerpts for readers less familiar with Orthodox worship. Samoglasny, ch. I. “What worldly sweetness is not involved in sorrow? What kind of glory stands on earth and is immutable? The whole canopy is the weakest, the whole sleepy room is the most charming; in one moment, and all this death accepts... Ch. 3rd. All human vanity does not endure after death; wealth does not endure, nor glory descends; for when death came, all this was consumed... Ch. 4th. Where is worldly attachment? where is the temporary dreaming? where is gold and silver? where are there many slaves and rumors? all the dust, all the ashes, all the shade... Ch. 5th. I remembered the prophet crying out that I am earth and ashes, and when I looked at the graves and saw the bones exposed, I said: for who is a king, or a warrior, or rich, or poor, or a righteous man, or a sinner? Stichera. Is Jacob our belly? color and smoke and morning dew indeed. Come, let us see clearly on the tombs: where is the physical kindness? where is youth? where is the essence of the tow and the sight of the flesh? All withered like grass, all consumed... - Come, brothers, in the tomb we will see ashes and dust, from it we are created, where we go now, what will happen? who is poor or rich, or who is the ruler? Whose freedom? and isn't it all ashes? Bend away the kindness of your face, and the whole flower of your youth fades away to death. – Truly, all this life’s vanity and corruption is inglorious and inglorious; We will all disappear, we will all die: kings and princes, judges and women, the rich and the poor, and all human nature; Nowadays, people who sometimes live are thrown into graves... - All bodily organs are now seen idle, which before were little moved, all are inactive, dead, insensible: the eyes are closed, connected to the nose, the hand is silent, and the hearing is with them, the tongue concludes in silence and is abandoned to the grave; Truly all human vanity is vanity.” Blessed One also testifies to this. Augustine, who says: “Although the spiritual world (of angels) is above time, because, being created first of all, it precedes the creation of time itself; despite, however, the eternity of the Creator himself reigns above it, from whom he, through creation, received his beginning, if not according to time, which did not yet exist, then according to the condition of his existence. So, the creations of this world are from You, our God, but they are not at all like You, and their being is completely different from Your being. For, although we do not see any time either before them, or in themselves, because they always enjoy the sight of You and never deviate from You, so that they are not subject to any change: however, variability is inherent in them (inest ipsa mutabilitas), as a result of which they could be darkened in the knowledge of You and cool in love for You, if they were not illuminated by Your light. (“Confession”, book XII, chapter XV) (quoted from the edition of the Kiev Spiritual Academy, Works of St. Augustine, part I, Kiev. 1907). Si autem ante caelum et terram nullum erat tempus, cur quaeritur, quid tunc faciebas non enim erat tunc, ubi non erat tempus (Augustini Confessiones, XI, 13). Neс tu tempore tempora praecedis: alioquin non omnia tempora praecederes. Sed praecedis omnia praeterita celsiludine semperpraesentis aeternitatis et superas omnia futura, quia ilia futura sunt, et cum venerint, praeterita erunt; tu autem, idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficient (XI, 13). Nullo ergo tempore non feceras aliquid, quia ipsum tempus tu feceras. Et nulla tempora tibi coaeterna sunt, quia tu permanes; at ilia si permanerent, non essent tempora (XI, 14). Videant itaque nullum tempus esse posse sine creatura et desinant istam vanitatem loqui. Extendantur etiam in ea, quae ante sunt, et inteilegent te ante omnia tempora aeternum creatorem omnium temporum neque ulla tempora ubi esse coaeterna nec ullam creaturam, etiatn si est aliqua supra tempora. Wed. Dionysius the Areopagite: “God is the king of ages... and He was not, nor will be, nor became, nor becomes, much less is, but He Himself is the being of beings (τὸ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσιν), and not only beings, but also the very being of beings, from pre-eternal (προαιωνὶως) of existence” (de n.d., V, 4, col. 817). “All time and eternity are from Him” (V, 5). “He has abundant existence and superexistence (τὸ προεῖναι καὶ ὑπερεῖναι πρоεχων καὶ ἱπερέχων), He established being as such (αὐτό φημι καϑ’ αὑτὸ τὸ εἶναι προυπεστήαατο)” (V, 5. col. 820). “God must be glorified both as eternity (ὡς αἰῶνα) and as time, as the author of all time and eternity, as the ancient of days, as before time and above time (πρὸ χρόνου καὶ ὑπὲρ χρόνου) and the appointer of times and seasons.” (X, 3, col. 910). Wed. Schelling has similar arguments about time in Philosophie der Offenbarung, I,. 506–509, II, 108–109. “Time is not a subject, but an idea. It will go out in the mind,” says Kirillov in Dostoevsky (Demons). Some modern writers consider time as the "fourth dimension"; (27. L. Uspensky. Tertium organum. Well. The fourth dimension. 1914. Hinton. The fourth intention and a new era of thought). Assuming the possibility of spatial perception of time, we do not yet see here the teaching about the metaphysical nature of temporality in its relation to eternity. Therefore, the distinction in the Divine itself between “nature” (i.e., necessity) and freedom, which underlies the construction of the book. E.N. Trubetskoy (op. cit.), seems to me to be illegal anthropomorphism, transferring the categories of creatureliness to the Creator. Thus, we get a relationship that is the opposite of what we have in Kant: for him, freedom exists only for the noumenon and does not exist in the world of experience; necessity reigns entirely in it; according to our understanding, freedom exists only where there is necessity, that is, in created self-consciousness, it cannot be attributed to eternity, just as necessity cannot be attributed to it. See my essay “The Religion of Man-God in L. Feuerbach” in the collection “Two Cities” and in a separate publication. A version of Feuerbachianism in our time is presented by Hartmann and Drews, under the pretext of fighting anthropomorphism or psychologism in religion, who deny the personality of the Divine. For those who are looking for the beginnings of religion in animals in order to discredit it for humans, regardless of the very reliability of these facts, it can be pointed out that if they have it, it is only due to and to the extent of some of their humanity (and not vice versa, as they think that it exists in humans due to their animality), for the lower is explained from the highest, and not vice versa, as it always seems to evolutionism. See the last section of this essay.