II. Вокруг книги «Столп и утверждение истины» 263

Ep. Theodore 264. Rec. on the book: “On spiritual Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy" (“The Pillar and Ground of Truth”). Book of the Holy P. Florensky. M., 1912) Those interested in new products on the book market are probably familiar with the book that appeared not so long ago. Pavel Florensky under the title “The Pillar and Statement of Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy in twelve letters." We consider it necessary to note that the book we are considering and this latter, although similar even in the titles, are not identical in the scope of their content. The last one, that is, the one we are considering, lacks, in comparison with the first, as many as four large chapters, with notes and explanations to them. We mention this solely for the purpose and reason to prevent the possibility of someone identifying these two books, of which the one we are considering was published back in 1912, and “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” only in 1914, especially since these chapters missing from our book are especially interesting from a theological point of view, and can provide, as it were, a starting point for a certain assessment of the entire book, from a theological point of view primarily. Opinions have already been expressed in the press about this book from theological and philosophical points of view. We hope they are known. Let us only note that the center of gravity of judgments and opinions about this book was not at all focused on those chapters that our book lacks, but mainly on those that are included in our book and constitute its exclusive content. Thus, we can rightfully say that in the book under review, the author has already expressed the essence of the matter, and therefore everything characteristic of his religious and philosophical thinking in it is obviously expressed by him. This is true in reality. The author wants to talk in the book we are considering “about spiritual truth,” wants to find “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” as can be seen from the very title of the book. He carries out this task completely in the seven chapters of which this book consists (Chapter 1 “Doubt”, Chapter 2 “Trinity”, Chapter 3 “Light of Truth”, Chapter 4 “Comforter”, Chapter 5 “Contradiction”, Chapter 6 “Sin”, Chapter 7 “Creation”, with the addition of an appeal to reader and notes), so that the reader remains completely satisfied with the completeness of the work itself, and the completeness of the disclosure of the questions raised by the book. Another thing is whether he remains satisfied with the essence of the author’s judgments themselves and those basic provisions that the author establishes in the book, and the same question is whether the reader is ready to recognize as indisputable the very course of the author’s judgments and the final conclusions to which he comes in his book. This is, of course, a matter of personal taste and opinion, as with any other book, as with any other thing in general. Book about. Pavla is surprisingly original and unique in content, structure, and style. Here's my first impression of her. The title of the book undoubtedly determines the purpose of the book, and undoubtedly also determines, in any case, it is natural to determine the content of the book. So, at least, the reader is accustomed to expect this, and this, it seems, is what every author usually does. U o. Paul, the originality and originality of the book begins from here. “On Spiritual Truth”, otherwise “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”, that’s the name of his book. This is fully consistent with the task of his work, clearly indicated by the author himself, in his address to the reader. “Living religious experience as the only legitimate way of learning dogmas - this is how I would like to express the general desire of my book,” says the author (p. 3). Of course, it is unnecessary for an Orthodox person, especially a theologian, to explain that dogmas are revealed Christian truths, to which the name spiritual truths primarily applies, in contrast to any other human, scientific or everyday truths. It is also known that this is spiritual and strives spiritually, according to the Apostle, and that only a spiritual person accepts what is from the Spirit of God, and that all knowledge of God is the lot of moral purity (the pure in heart will see God). Therefore, when starting to read a book with such a specific title as the book of Fr. Paul “On Spiritual Truth”, anyone can be fully satisfied with such a precise definition, corresponding to the title of the book. on the part of the author, the task of his work in the future cannot expect anything other than reasoning about Christian dogmas, and about religious experience as a path to their knowledge. The task of the work, we repeat, is indicated by the author on the very first line of the book, in full accordance with the title. Further, among the Christian dogmas, there is a dogma about the Church, so if the title of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is understood as a more specific definition of the task of work, in comparison with what is given in the title “On Spiritual Truth”, then the reader has the right to expect in the future from the author a discussion about the Church in the same way as the very expression “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”, applied by the Apostle to the Church (1 Tim. 3:15), to it and can only refer to Christian thought. The very content of the book should show whether the author talks about the Church as one of the subjects of dogmatic Christian teaching, or as one of the spiritual truths, and the knowledge of this truth through living religious experience, or whether he talks about the Church as a treasury and confirmation of truth, according to the thoughts of the Apostle and the Holy Fathers. One way or another, the reader has the right to expect from the book that it will talk about the Church. And the author himself does not remove the idea of ​​the Church from the reader’s consciousness, but, on the contrary, gives every reason to think that he will talk about the Church as the repository of those “spiritual treasures” (the author’s expression), which are cognized by living religious experience, to which church dogmas also belong (see: To the reader, p. 1; cf. 1st and 2nd chapters). So, religious experience, Christian dogmas, the Church of Christ, these are the main points that seem to be clearly defined by the author himself, as the task of his work in the titles of the book itself, and in its first lines. The reader also has the right to expect disclosure. And yet, in the author’s work, there is no special speech either about dogmas or about religious experience, the kind of speech that we are usually accustomed to hearing or reading in works devoted to specified topics. That is why, perhaps, the author himself, later re-reading his work, and comparing everything said in the book with its title, and with what he said about the task of the work in the first lines of the address to the reader, then in the afterword to another - “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” which differs from our book only by four new additional chapters, and mainly of a theological nature, in particular concluding judgments about the Church (see “Afterword”), had to admit, that from the point of view of content, his book performs a different task, namely, it solves the question, “how is reason possible? " “The entire present work, in its entirety, represents an attempt to answer the question posed,” says the author himself. And that the author is absolutely right in this statement regarding his book, and that the opinion we expressed above about its content is not unfounded, and so as not to impose our thoughts on him, we refer the reader to the “Afterword” of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”, where the author’s entire train of thought is conveyed concisely, but quite definitely, consistently and accurately, and he himself gives, as it were, a brief outline of his work, mainly in the appendix to the first seven chapters of the work, common to our book. “Now, at the end of a long journey,” the author begins his afterword, “it is appropriate to look back, and from the height we have reached, examine our path and point of departure.” What does he see “from the height he has reached,” and what is the path taken by his thought? “There are two worlds,” says the author, “this one and that one, the first completely crumbles into contradictions if it does not live by the forces of the second... These contradictions are antinomies in our being, as in all creation, they are in our will, in feeling, in reason... Let us consider our reason. It is not whole, it is scattered in antinomies, and there are as many of them as there are acts of reason... However, in their essence, the antinomies of reason lead to a dilemma: finitude or infinity... in reason, its statics and dynamics exclude each other, but at the same time they cannot exist without each other... The first is the law of identity... and as one of the norms of reason, requires stopping thought, the second is the law of sufficient reason, and as the norm of reason, requires unlimited movement... Reason equally needs both of its norms, and not without one, i.e., without the beginning of finitude, nor without the other, i.e., without the beginning of infinity, cannot work. It cannot work, however, even when using both of them, because they are incompatible. Standards of reason are necessary, but they are impossible. Reason thus turns out to be thoroughly antinomic in its subtlest structure.” How is reason possible? “Reason is possible not in itself, but through the object of its thought, and precisely in the case when it has such an object of thought in which both contradictory laws of its activity, i.e., the law of identity and sufficient reason, coincide.” Otherwise: “Reason is possible if absolute actual infinity is given to it.” Such an object of thinking,” which makes reason possible, is, according to the author, the Trinitarian Unity. Trinitarian Unity is the “root of reason,” and reason is possible because there is a Tri-radiant Light, and insofar as it lives by Its light. The author's further task was to find out what the formal and real conditions for the givenness of such an object are. The question of “the faith of the believer has turned into the question of the faith of the believer,” to the image of its emergence. Having found out what faith is (i.e., the Trinity as an object of faith) and how (i.e., proving that the Trinity can be perceived only by faith and not by reason), the author was brought face to face with a new question - about the conditions for the emergence of faith. “Gehenna,” or “feat of faith,” tertium non datur, 265 is what determines the emergence of faith, according to the author. But both means have at their core the dual nature of having to believe. It was this duality that now needed to be addressed further. The author does this mainly in the last two chapters of his work, under the titles “Sin” (6th chapter) and “Creation” (7th chapter), explaining the movement of human consciousness towards the Tri-radiant Truth. We deliberately, partly in the words of the author from the afterword of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” outlined the outline of his work in order to avoid, perhaps, a less accurate presentation of exactly the same thoughts of the author, according to the text of the contents of chapters 1–4 of the work we are considering, and in order to show the main points and questions on which the author’s thought rests, and in this there is justification for the impression we expressed. This is a schematic presentation of the course of his thought; we need it further, since we will have to deal with the content of the book itself. So, the question of reason is in its basic norms of activity. and in his relation to the truth, and the question of faith perceiving the truth, this is what constitutes the main content of the author’s book. But why is it that, putting forward the idea of ​​the Church in the title of the book, the idea of ​​Christian dogmas as spiritual truths, and the path of spiritual experience to their comprehension, in the book itself he seems to shy away from this task? After all, in fact, what he says directly about the Church in the book cannot be considered a presentation of the theological teaching about the Church. Moreover, the author, having quite definitely mentioned in his address to the reader about the Church as a repository of spiritual treasures, deliberately and consciously puts a seal of silence on his lips, and recommends only spiritual direct experience as a path to knowledge of these treasures (p. 3). Of course, the author could then talk about the Church from the point of view of his own spiritual experience, or someone else’s, which he knows about, because if there is this spiritual experience, as a kind of vital wealth, then, undoubtedly, one can speak and reveal this very experience, in any case, something can be said about this experience, in application to the idea of ​​the Church. “But who am I to write about the spiritual,” says the author. “Neither I nor anyone else,” he continues, “will be able to define what churchliness is.” However, in his opinion, “churchliness is a special new life given to man, but, like any life, inaccessible to reason.” Even more precisely: “Churchfulness (according to him) is new life in the Spirit (of course, in the Holy One), and the Church, according to the Apostle. is the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). The author even indicates the criterion for the correctness of this churchliness as a new life, namely, beauty (p. 7). It seems that from these definitions of the author of the Church and churchliness, as from well-defined theological ideas, in essence. completely Orthodox and dogmatically faithful, it was possible to proceed to the construction of an entire theological concept of the Church. However, the author, on eight pages of his address to the reader, repeatedly, and with increasing insistence, continues to assert that the concept of churchliness is inaccessible to the human mind, that it is impossible for him to define and reveal it, and that the only possibility of comprehending it is by accepting the element of churchliness itself into one’s life. “True churchliness—Orthodoxy—is shown, not proven,” says the author, and he decisively refers anyone who wants to understand Orthodoxy (i.e., true churchliness) straight to spiritual experience. With this indication of the necessity of experience, he so far limits his judgments both about spiritual experience itself and about churchliness. All this is undoubtedly true, and from the Orthodox point of view it is not only acceptable, but it cannot be otherwise, but it does not relieve the reader from the intrusiveness of approximately such questions and perplexities. If churchliness is a special, new life in the spirit, then isn’t it possible to make this life the subject of theoretical consideration, based on the data of one’s own or someone else’s spiritual experience? Is the process of this life and its laws inaccessible to disclosure? Is there no other, more definite criterion for the correctness of this life than the spiritual beauty put forward by the author, which is capable of being discerned? according to the author, only special masters of this matter? Just as every human life is formed with the participation of all the available powers of the human spirit, so in the application to churchliness there must be, and undoubtedly there is, the fullness of participation in it of all the forces of the human personality, theoretical and practical, why in the Church there is a frank teaching, about which the commandment is given: “As you go, teach all languages...”, there is also a Creed, as a criterion of true churchliness, there are also partial indications of these signs of the truth of the Orthodox faith of the instruction that gives Apostle John: “Everyone who does not confess Jesus Christ, having come in the flesh, is Antichrist,” and the works of life are proven or shown as nothing other than a confession of faith (as the apostles James and John say), and life in the spirit can be perceived not only as beauty, but also as truth and goodness, which can be a criterion for spiritual beauty itself, and which themselves have a criterion of their truth in revelation and reason church And yet, we repeat, the author himself, having given the movement of the reader’s thoughts in the indicated directions with his definition of the idea of ​​the Church and churchliness, decisively refuses to further apply and continue his judgments about the Church, as even a useless matter (pp. 5 and 6). What was said in the application to the idea of ​​the Church can (entirely) be applied to the idea of ​​spiritual truth, as the subject of the author’s research. The author does not define what he means by spiritual truth, as opposed to non-spiritual truth. The definition of truth: “Truth is intuition-discursion” (p. 39), for him, is not at all the result of spiritual experience as applied to Christian dogma, on which (i.e., experience) he insists. Outside of this same experience stands his purely Orthodox construction of the concept of truth, “that truth is an essence of three hypostases” (p. 45). The author uses Christian terms in application to the question of truth, somehow unexpectedly for the reader, exploring reason in its norms and in its relationship to truth, assuming “in advance,” in the author’s word, in the reader the ability to understand and fill in what was left unsaid by him. The reader is left to guess for himself that the truth, defined by the author in the formula of Christian dogma (trinity), but deduced as a logical construction from consideration of the norms of reason, becomes, or can be called, spiritual because it is perceived by faith in an atmosphere of hope and love, or rather, given by the Holy Spirit (Chapters 3, 4, and, especially, 5). Of course, here it would be appropriate to talk about Spiritual experience, as a process of life that clarifies the truth, and about the trinity, as the spiritual truth that the author is looking for. However, he speaks here of spiritual experience as a way of learning dogmas - spiritual truths, not in the sense of an integral process of life, but means clarifying the basic Christian sentiments of faith and hope. love, in their attitude to the acceptance of truth. Moreover, hope is only mentioned in passing, and speech about spiritual truth is replaced by judgments about objects related to spiritual life (chap. 5–7). Thus, the theological thought of the reader, accustomed to starting from well-known, definite theological terms, in the direction of also definite theological ideas, must do unusual, different work in the author’s work in order to still recognize together with the author, at the conclusion of his work, that the goal of the work has been achieved, that is, spiritual truth has been shown, and the pillar and affirmation of truth for human consciousness is clear. And we really can, despite everything said above, after reading the book about. Paul and having taken a completely unusual path for theological thought, to say: the author wrote about what he wanted to write about, and what he expressed in the very title of the book. He established and clarified in our minds the absolute value of spiritual truth (namely, the trinity, as the main Christian dogma), and established the Church in our minds as a single statement and pillar of absolute truth. And if we were asked why the author did this in a somewhat unusual way, we can explain by indicating to whom the author actually intends his work. “If I attach some meaning to my letters (i.e., to my book consisting of letters), then exclusively preparatory, for the catechumens, 266 until they have direct nourishment from the hands of their mother, meaning as catechetical words in the church yard” (see p. 5: “To the Reader”). Yes, for those still standing in the church yard, you can talk about the spiritual, and explain this spiritual only in the way that the author says in the book. It is possible, as if descending to them, accepting what they take for certain, in particular, reason, as the absolute monarch in the matter of truth, to destroy those supports of their life on which they are affirmed, one can show the absurdity of their hopes and, as it were, using the purely Socratic method, help them to be born for the highest truth. The author literally takes, as it were, these catechumens, with all the weakness of their intellectual wealth, onto his shoulders, already strengthened in the spiritual sense, and unexpectedly for them, in ways familiar to them, leads them to renounce their imaginary truth to the acceptance of the tri-radiant light. The author, as it were, feeds them with milk so that they grow up to accept solid food, because you cannot speak to spiritual ones in the language of developed theological concepts, you need to prepare them for this so that they can no longer look back. The author did this perfectly in his book. This is the originality and originality of his book; we repeat that the author, having indicated a specific task in the title, then, as it were, deviates from it, and as a result gets exactly what he wanted to do. Let the reader not succumb, as we thought at first, to the easy explanation that suggests itself based on the author’s words, that his book consists of sketches written at different times and under different moods (p. 3), and that the author simply forgot his goal. This, however, was reflected in some way in the book, but not at all in the sense in which we have said so far. We would even like to say that the author’s book illustrates, as it were, that law of identity or self-identity in its highest form, which he talks about in the 1st and 2nd chapters of his work, in particular on p. 43 that A, being not A, in this finds its affirmation as A. So in his book: the subject of his writing, as if ceasing to be the subject of the content of his book, asserts itself with all clarity. Perhaps this is one of the many antinomies that the author talks about, which he so successfully resolves. That's not all. Let us turn to the very content of his book. We have already outlined the outline of his work in the words of the author himself. The author develops this scheme over almost three hundred pages of the book, into an extraordinary wealth of philosophical and theological concepts, very subtle philological observations and conclusions from them, into a subtle analysis of the laws of logical thinking, and a unique unification of the various products of the thoughts of ancient philosophers and the thoughts of the holy fathers. The author has all this amazingly welded into the unity of the intended purpose of the work, and imbued with a living feeling of the most sincere conviction. And it is only due to the author’s modesty that his statement in the book, “that he only sketches out his thoughts, seems to feel more than express” should be attributed: “I am afraid to assert,” he says, “but prefer to ask” (see pp. 121 and 123). If this is true in any sense, then it is only in the fact that the author really analyzes and exposes the elements of theological and philosophical thought in his work rather than building a consistent system, and yet, as a result, he gets a completely definite concept of thought, conceived by the author, felt and thought out deeply. In revealing the scheme of his work, especially in its first half, the author chose the path and method of logical analysis and philosophical concepts, and there is not much theological element in the first chapters of his work. Undoubtedly, this is explained by the purpose of his book for the “catechumens”, accustomed to worldly philosophy, to logistics and to the philosophical method. This is also explained by the fact that he had to first speak in his book about reason, in the direction of the question he posed: “how reason is possible.” And only further, from chapter 3, does he have a theological element and a theological way of thinking. Of course, this question of reason, in its being and in relation to the knowledge of truth (the author, as we will see, is, in fact, engaged in assessing reason from the side of its knowledge of truth), it was possible to give a solution in the form of a theological concept primarily; it was also possible to philosophize in application to it, standing on the basis of purely Christian ideas and the basic principles expressed by St. fathers, especially since the author does not shy away from them at all. The author probably knows that Rev. Isaac the Syrian, whom he himself repeatedly quotes in his work, contains very deep discussions on the issue of human knowledge, deeply philosophical reasoning, but based on Christian ideas. These are mainly his words about the “three knowledges” (pages 25–29, ed. MDA, 1893), which explain both the nature of rational knowledge and the value of this knowledge. This is exactly the topic for the author, but for some reason he completely omitted the thoughts of this Christian philosopher in his book. We hope that the author knows another great Christian theologian and thinker, who has no less valuable judgments about the rational knowledge of man than the Rev. Isaac the Syrian, this is St. Maxim the Confessor. After all, he has almost the same attitude towards reason, as a way of knowing the truth, as the author does, i.e., he explains the complete insufficiency and imperfection of rational knowledge. And it is noteworthy that, like Rev. Isaac and Maximus, this theory of knowledge is revealed from the Christian idea of ​​the Fall, and hence the distortion of man, and so our author, although he shows the insufficiency of reason in the matter of knowing the truth from itself, that is, from reason itself, but ultimately points out the reason for this insufficiency also in sinful corruption. And yet, for some reason the author again bypasses St. Maxim the Confessor. Isn’t this, for example, the judgment of this saint on the topic of the author? father: “Know that the primordial Adam was created by God without imagination. His mind, pure and formless, being a mind in its activity, did not itself take form or image from the influence of feeling, or from images of sensory things. Without using this lower power of imagination... he, using the highest power of the soul, that is, thought, purely, immaterially and spiritually contemplated only the pure ideas of things, or their mental meanings. After the Fall, Adam was cast down from this mental, equal-angelic, pure, rational and ugly life into this sensual, multi-component, multi-formed, immersed in images and dreams. With this imaginative dreaming, a person is led into all sorts of delusions. Moral teachings were filled with various deceptions, philosophy with many false teachings, theology with obscene and absurd dogmas and fables, and not only the ancients, but also the newest thinkers, wanting to philosophize about God and about divine simple and inaccessible to the imagination sacraments (for in this work the highest power of the soul - the mind - must work), instead of the truth they found lies, and thus, instead of theologians, they appeared fables, having indulged, according to the Apostle, in “the mind is unskilled” (Rom. 1:28)... that is why, if you want to receive divine light and truth, strip your mind of all imagination and memory of things sensual, bad and good” (see: Invisible Warfare. Ed. 1904, pp. 114‒116). It seems that the author is all about the topic, in particular about memory, 267 to which he devotes quite a lot of attention in Chapter. 6 of your labor. We understand that the author wrote for the catechumens, and therefore had to introduce into their consciousness the elements of theological thought and Christian revelation with wise gradualism. This is the rationale for his abstract philosophical and logical concept, and the justification for what we have indicated, as it were, an omission. But nevertheless, the author, in the course of his judgments about reason and about truth, had to, in order to explain the fragmentation of reason and all being, put forward the idea of ​​sin, a purely theological one, acceptable, of course, by faith, and not by reason, and thus made a logical break in the course of his rational concepts, and introduced here elements from another, theological, world of concepts. Perhaps here is some illustration of the inevitability of antinomies in this world, everywhere, which the author speaks about so well in his work. But it seems it’s time to move closer to the content of the author’s book. The main idea of ​​the author’s book, to which its entire content boils down, and which guides the entire course of the author’s judgments, can ultimately, in our opinion, be expressed in theological language in the following, known to every study of the Savior: “If you continue in My word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). It is clear, of course, that here the necessity of faith in Christ and His teaching is affirmed (acceptance and abiding in His words, i.e., in what He said), as a path to the knowledge of the truth, and further affirms the consequence of this knowledge of the truth - freedom. In what way the Lord called for faith and proved its necessity, we, of course, know from the Gospel. How they brought St. to faith. The apostles, we know little about how their preaching of Christian truth was structured, but we still know the basic nature of this preaching based on the instructions given by the apostle. Paul, noting about his preaching that it “was not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power” (1 Cor. 2:4) and that Christ sent him to preach: “not in the wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ be made void” (1 Cor. 1:17). Of course, the contemporaries of Christ and the apostles also had a thirst and search for truth. This was even a characteristic feature of the Hellenes, who, according to the words of the Apostle, “seek wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:2). And yet, neither Christ nor the apostles stood on the path of wisdom in the matter of revelation of truth, but, on the contrary, denied this path. Only free faith was required in the words of a sermon, outside of its logical premises and evidence, since the Truth itself went far beyond logical constructions, and expressed not the ideal structure of the theoretically cognitive powers of the human mind, but a single real being that gives meaning to the human personality (“I am the way, the truth and the life,” says Christ), and faith was established not as a theoretical-epistemological principle in application to the truth, but as ontological beginning, as even birth for a new being, as a force that really introduces a person into a new relationship with being, and is effective, including miracles. The same idea about faith as the only path to knowledge of the truth, and about the truth that gives us freedom, with an extremely strong and vivid explanation of the fulfillment of the words of Scripture in the wise of this age: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and reject the understanding of the prudent,” is affirmed by the entire book of Fr. Paul, but is revealed not in the style of this formula, which we have given in theological language, but in another, scientific, philosophical shell, which gives some originality and peculiarity to the author’s main judgments. “It is not intuition or discourse that gives knowledge of truth,” says the author on p. 90 of your book. – It arises in the soul from the free revelation of the Trinitarian truth itself, from the gracious visit of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of such a visit is a volitional act of Faith, absolutely impossible for human selfhood, and accomplished through attraction by the Father who is in heaven” (John 5:44). 268 If these words of the author are supplemented with what he says in relation to the words of the Gospel on p. 19 that “the knowledge of the truth makes a person free,” free from all sin, i.e. from sin and in the field of knowledge, from everything that is untrue, that does not correspond to the truth, then in them one can have a brief accurate expression of the content of the author’s book, in his own concept and formulation. The author knows, as the preachers of Christianity knew this, the general desire for truth, and the need to have it (see p. 9), knows that truth is sought, and was sought through rational knowledge and rational constructions, for they recognize reason, and seeing in reason the final basis of all truth, here in its laws they affirm the criterion of truth (chapter 1). And while a person believes in his reason as a possible way to achieve the truth. It is impossible for him to abandon this reason and take a different path of perception of truth - the path of faith. The author knows this too, and knowing well that reason can never lead to truth, to the one, divine and absolute truth (see 9 and 10), he tries, first of all, in his book to strike reason to death (as he says, p. 50), so that those very “catechumens and those standing in the church yard” for whom he writes his book would leave this reason as unfit for knowledge of the truth and be renewed mind through the feat of faith, and in this faith they received knowledge of the truth. How does the author amaze and overthrow human reason from the pedestal of its greatness, which claims to have a monopoly of truth? Consideration of the norms of its activities. Reason can accept something as truth if the conditions for the reliability of truth are met. “The reliability of truth (according to the author) is an intellectual feeling of acceptance of the pronounced judgment as true” (p. 19), and is expressed by the person possessing the truth in a state of complete satisfaction... “This state is achieved by satisfying a judgment about something with a known position, called the measure and criterion of truth” (ibid.), so the question of the reliability of truth comes down to the question of finding a criterion of truth. There are two such criteria of truth in rational thinking: the law of identity - intuition, and the law of sufficient reason - discourse. These are the two basic norms of the activity of the mind on the path to comprehending the truth. Can they really guarantee a person the truth? “No, they cannot,” says the author, and he proves this through the most subtle logical analysis of these basic norms of reason. According to the law of identity-intuition, the whole power of thinking consists in distinguishing every A from non-A and firmly adhering to this distinction. Only that which is isolated from the environment of other things, that does not mix with the rest, that is closed in on itself and is self-identical (p. 25), says the author, can be contained in the mind and meets its requirements. This is the static plane of reason. According to the law of sufficient reason - discourse, every A must have its basis in not A. The essence of any proof is precisely in bringing A to something that itself is not A, to not A, for otherwise the explanation would be identical. This is the dynamic plane of the mind - the plane of its aspiration to substantiate the concept (p. 29). To think clearly and distinctly means by A to mean A, and nothing more. To explain and prove means to go beyond the limits of A to not A. To think clearly and distinctly means to stand on A and not stray from it to not A (the law of identity). To explain, that is, to define and prove, means going from A to B, to what is not A (the law of discourse - sufficient reason). But in order to explain and prove A, one must first think about it clearly and distinctly, and in order to think clearly and distinctly, one must understand this A, that is, one must explain this A, i.e., define, prove, one must establish A as not A, but for the latter, again, one must establish A as A. So, the process goes on to infinity. One function of the mind (?) presupposes another, but together one excludes the other. Any clear and distinct thinking establishes the identity A = A; every non-identical explanation leads A to not A. The affirmation of A as A, and the affirmation of it as not A, these are the two main points of thought. On the one hand, there is a static plurality of concepts, because each of the many A is fixed in its opposition to all others, on the other, their dynamic unity, because each of the many A is brought to another, this to a third, etc. (see Chapters 1 and 2). The law of identity-intuition alone, as a criterion of truth, is insufficient. He says only one thing: every given thing is itself, every A is an A, but he does not answer why. And therefore, from is, it is impossible to deduce necessity in any way (p. 22). If the present is the criterion, then it is so everywhere and always. Therefore, all mutually exclusive A, as given truths, are all true. But this leads to zero meaning of the law of identity (p. 23), and the rational, according to the law of identity, is, at the same time, inexplicable, for to explain A means to lead A to not A, to derive A from not A. But if A really satisfies the requirements of reason and is self-identical, then it is thereby irreducible to another, inexplicable (p. 25). So, intuition, the law of identity, in its givenness and reality is blind and unreasonable, and cannot give certainty (p. 26). And the law of sufficient basis for discourse is also insufficient in the sense of the criterion of reliability. According to this law, the reliability of a judgment rests in its reducibility to another judgment. In another judgment, the given is, as it were, justified in its truth. Reason moves from the given to the justifying judgment, and this latter must be justified in another, and so on without end, precisely without end (p. 37). The author especially insists on this infinity of discourse (bad infinity, as he puts it), and tries to prove this thought of his, drawing from here the conclusion that discourse, as a criterion of truth, is insufficient, for it is only a possible value, and not a given, although reasonable, i.e. satisfying the mind (p. 28). So, one law of reason - intuition, the law of identity, creates a blind unreasonable givenness, and discourse gives reasonableness, but only possible, and not given. Ultimate intuition and boundless discourse are Scylla and Charybdis on the path of reason to certainty, says the author (p. 29). On the path of reason there is no way out of this situation, and the result is skepticism, reaching the point of its own denial (pp. 32‒33). Let us note, by the way, that these pages of the book, where the author proves the powerlessness of the laws of reason in the matter of truth, and speaks of the final results of skepticism, are filled with extreme beauty and power. What next to do with reason as a way of knowing the truth? If the mind, by virtue of the law of identity, must always stand on the given with the multiplicity of individual concepts, stand on the individual and finite, i.e. limited, and by virtue of the law of discourse - sufficient reason, must go to every given, i.e. singularity and limitation, for every explanation requires an infinite series of evidential links, each of which violates the self-identity of the concepts of the thing being explained, then it is clear that in the mind there are two completely contradictory norms, of which one requires stopping thought (the law of identity), and the other requires unlimited movement (the law of sufficient reason). But all the norms of reason are reduced to these two laws, and reason equally needs both of them, and cannot work either without the beginning of finitude or without the beginning of infinity. But it cannot work when using both of them, because they are incompatible. The norms of reason are necessary, but they are impossible, and reason thus turns out to be antinomic. How to continue the search for truth? The author categorically states that “to search for truth, we need to be outside of reason, to go beyond its limits, and reason itself forces us to do this, since it still refuses to serve” (p. 38). And so, out of necessity, guided no longer by philosophical skepticism, but by the feeling and hope of getting rid of the torment of ἐπоχὴ, and finding the truth, we have to take the path of probabilism and make a problematic construction, bearing in mind that perhaps it will turn out to be reliable. Thus, the search for truth from the soil of speculation is transferred to the area of ​​experience, actual perception, but one that must also combine internal rationality (p. 38). The author does this problematic construction of the concepts of truth. Truth is intuition-discourse (p. 39), i.e. truth is intuition, which is provable, it is real rationality and rational reality, or infinite finitude and finite infinity (ibid.). A new law is being established: “spiritual identity” (p. 48). A probabilistic presumptive construction leads to the affirmation of truth as a self-proving Subject, a Subject that is comprehended and proven through itself (p. 40). This is possible only when the Subject of truth is a relationship of three, and truth is a single essence of three hypostases (p. 41). This is how the author comes to the affirmation of the basic Christian dogma of the Trinity as the basis of truth. “The Trinity is consubstantial and inseparable, the unit is trinitarian and co-essential - this is the only scheme that promises to resolve ἐπоχὴ, if only the question of skepticism can be satisfied,” says the author (p. 47). “Found,” according to the author, “the only possible idea of ​​truth for reason (?).” But does it exist at all, and can we think of this truth as a self-proven subject? For reason, this idea of ​​truth does not, and cannot have, meaning. Formula “Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity.” means nothing for him, says the author (p. 55), “And, however, the very norms of reason, the law of identity and sufficient reason, lead to such a formula and such a combination of terms,” and reason itself demands that this position be the starting point of all knowledge. Condemning itself, reason demands the Trinity in Unity, but cannot contain It (p. 55). Reason on its own would never have come to the possibility of such a combination. Only the authority of “one who has power can be a reference point for the efforts of the mind to build a new norm of activity for itself and become a “new mind” (p. 55). This is done by a free feat of self-denial, self-overcoming, done by faith in such a way that if “the fearless heart of truth is at all achievable,” says the author, “then the path to it is the Gethsemane feat of faith” (p. 56). So, truth can be achieved subject to liberation from the captivity of reason and in obedience to faith, otherwise - destruction in ἐπоχὴ (p. 57). But this is how one must reason if truth exists. How can one obtain knowledge not about the truth, but knowledge of the truth itself? Also by faith. We need to either die in agony on our edge of the abyss of skepticism and ἐπоχὴ, or go to chance and look for a new land on which truth lives, says the author. This painful hesitation must be resolved by the beginning of a new faith in the truth. “I don’t know if there is Truth, but I feel with all my gut,” says the author, “that I cannot live without it. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I love it and treat it as if it exists, and by overcoming the threefold feat of faith, hope and love, the inertia of the law of identity, my destiny, reason, the very soul of the whole search - the requirement of authenticity,” I entrust to the truth itself and enter into living, personal communication with it” (p. 62 and 67). Perhaps we have stopped too long on the presentation of the author’s thoughts, in his critical analysis of reason, but this is essential, since the author wants to lead human consciousness to the recognition of the necessity of faith and to Christian truth through this purely logical process. Reason must reject itself, because it cannot contain the truth that would correspond to its own standards. And in order to obtain the single and absolute Truth, on which human consciousness could rely, faith is needed. And the Truth itself, corresponding to the norms of reason, but at the same time exceeding them, is the Christian dogma of the Trinity. This is the author’s statement, revealed mainly in the first three chapters of his work, and supplemented in the disclosure by the 4th and 5th chapters. I would like to pose to the author a number of questions that involuntarily arise when familiarizing yourself with the course of his thoughts and judgments. Why didn’t the author make a deliberate note anywhere in his work, or, even better, a deliberate premise, in which he would have outlined, albeit briefly, and on the basis of psychology generally accepted in science, how one should look, and how he himself looks at the human mind and reason. What is reason and what is reason? This is what is left, in our opinion, without sufficient explanation. The author resolves in the essay the question of how reason is possible, and, of course, the reader needs clarity in establishing the concept of reason, and a strict distinction between the terms “mind,” “reason,” and “reason,” in order to avoid some, perhaps even unnecessary, perplexities. Meanwhile, the author uses these two terms - reason and understanding, as if without sufficient differentiation. In some cases, he seems to understand reason in the sense that fallen reason is reason. But then why in other cases does he himself distinguish between them and always talk about reason? Yes, and we are used to distinguishing between them. In any case, the author should have explained his definition and understanding. Chapter 1 of the author primarily talks about reason and the norms of judgment. Here it is as if reason is opposed to reason. What is rational, says the author, is unreasonable, not in accordance with the measure of reason. reason is contrary to reason, just as this latter is contrary to the first” (p. 25). Let us note that before this the author did not make any comments about reason, as he understands it, and how it is necessary to establish its relationship to reason, about which he nevertheless, more or less, makes it possible to formulate a concept on the basis of the previous pages (1‒24). The author says something completely different about the mind on p. 26, understanding by it the activity of the mind: “I now turn to mediated judgment, i.e., to discourse, for here the mind is discurrit - it moves on to some other judgment,” “the mind moves on to a justifying judgment.” And such places where the terms “rationality”, “rationality”, “mind” and “reason” are used interspersed, without sufficient explanation, can be indicated in the book on almost every page (see, for example, pp. 37, 38, 43, 47, 54, 55 (especially), 59, 60, 63, 64, 68, 69, 132, 153, 163, etc.). However, the gap indicated, in our opinion, in the course of the author’s judgments can be applied not only to this point, the main point in the work, about reason, but is, perhaps, characteristic of the author’s book in general. Deeply experiencing Christianity and understanding everything that relates to the field of theological terminology, he seems to forget that he is writing for those who have little understanding, the catechumens, and uses these terms somehow unexpectedly, assuming them to be understandable, for example, he speaks about “spiritual life” (p. 70), “about intelligent mental light” (p. 91), about “spiritual experience” and “feat” and so on, as about things that are completely understandable, not revealing them. This is the first thing the author would like to notice about his judgments and analysis of the human mind. Next. If the basic laws of the activity of reason cannot guarantee a person the final result except skepticism and ἐπоχὴ, then what value can the judgments of the author himself, which are undoubtedly constructed not outside the laws of reason, have? Can they (these judgments) even have the value of probabilism that he himself wants to recognize for them when composing concepts of Truth? If one can free oneself from skepticism and from the torment of ἐπоχὴ, if only they are proven indisputably, by embarking on the path of faith in Christian Truth as the only remaining probable Truth, then is it possible to step on the path of hope, although not logical, as the author puts it (p. 36), that in Truth, as the author defines it (truth is intuition-discursion), one can find satisfaction of the requirements reason about Truth. There, indeed, complete disappointment in reason and a thirst for Truth can create a psychological necessity for faith in Christian truth, but here the author, going beyond the limits of reason in the probabilistic construction of the concept of Truth (p. 38), and at the same time showing that reason itself requires such a construction, and itself, standing in its judgments, undoubtedly on the basis of the laws of rational activity, takes away, it seems, both the logical and psychological necessity of faith. Logical because probabilism can never create it and cannot oblige reason to itself, for it requires logic. Yes, it is unlikely that the author himself desires such faith, judging by what he says on p. 60, and throughout the first two chapters. And psychological because in the author’s own construction one can find the opportunity to defend the rights of reason, to seek its affirmation in a variety of new probabilistic constructions of truth. So, if the reader accepts the author’s judgments about reason and their results as true, then he must really deny reason as a criterion of truth, and if, having become convinced through the author’s judgment of the truth of the denial of reason, he wants to be consistent, then he must deny the judgments of the author himself, i.e. he should have affirmed reason. It seems that the author does not resolve this antinomy according to the type in which he seeks to resolve the antinomy of the laws of reason in the supreme law of identity (p. 43). We find it somewhat difficult to understand what kind of necessity of faith the author asserts: purely logical or psychological. Judging by the fact that he builds the very idea of ​​Truth based on the basic laws of reason, and seeks a formula that, although it would go beyond the limits of reason, would satisfy it in its main irreconcilable aspects, then one can think that the author is looking for the logical necessity of faith. But then why does he repeat repeatedly on the pages of his book that both faith and knowledge of the Truth are from God, from the Holy Spirit, etc.? And what would be the advantage of this faith then, and its difference from any other faith, epistemological, scientific. If the author wants to show the psychological necessity of faith, then why does he strive to see the laws of reason implemented in the features of Truth, and to proceed from these laws in constructing the idea of ​​Truth? In the first case, the Truth, which is higher than reason, is rationalized, and yet the goal is not achieved. In the second case, those logical constructions of the idea of ​​truth that we find in the author become unnecessary. Perhaps the author intends to understand the necessity of the presence of both, but it is unlikely that the field of logic can, within any certain framework, coexist with psychology, especially with the psychology of feeling (see pp. 37, 36, etc. of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd chapters), which is so diverse in its origins, and it is hardly possible to affirm at the same time the freedom of the feat of faith. Next, the author examines the law of rational cognition, the process of judgment and the formation of concepts, and builds the concept of Truth in the direction that this idea of ​​Truth, although it goes beyond the limits of reason, satisfies its laws: “So, if there is truth, then it is intuition-discursion,” says the author (p. 39); “Such is the absolute Truth, if it exists: the law of identity must find its justification in it,” he continues (p. 40). So, the laws of epistemology, let us note - lower epistemology, the reason of fallen man, are elevated, as it were, into the laws of ontology, and they determine the real face of the immortal and most luminous Truth. Is it too daring to penetrate with reason into the nature of the Absolute Truth - the Trinity Unity, based on the analysis of reason? Perhaps this is why the author falls into some kind of circle or contradiction. Constructing the idea of ​​Truth so that it would realize an ideal combination of the laws of reason as criteria of truth, he had, on the one hand, to construct this idea so that it would not fit into reason, otherwise reason would be affirmed, and the Absolute Truth would be recognized as acceptable and comprehensible by reason, and faith would be rejected. On the other hand, to build in such a way that this Truth would be, as it were, closely connected with him, would even be the object of his thinking, as he himself says that reason is possible if it has such an object of thinking in which both contradictory “laws of its activity coincide.” Thus, wanting to explain, and thereby establish reason, the author resolves the contradiction in it, which concerns the norms of its activity as criteria of truth, by creating an object of thought in which this contradiction is destroyed, and which, nevertheless, cannot be perceived and thought by reason. Thus reason is both affirmed and destroyed at the same time. True, the author reconciles and resolves this antinomy by affirming the “new supreme law of identity” (p. 48), which seems to be still unknown to science. If this is so, then perhaps this is the author’s enormous discovery in the field of epistemology. If the author admits that the Absolute Truth - the Trinity, cannot be an assumption of the mind (p. 102) and a conclusion from the analysis of the mind in complete ignorance of it, but it can be given as an internal fact of life by the grace of Christ, then, it seems, it would be easier to illuminate and evaluate the laws of rational knowledge with it, and establish their proper place. True, the author has a different goal: to lead through reason to faith, but then, perhaps, that antinomy would not be artificially attributed to reason, which does not exist in its own activity, but which is actually revealed in the light of Christian Truth, which really contradicts reason, and categorically denies it, and is definitely denied by it as madness and violence. The measure of reason in relation to Christian truth is completely inapplicable, which is why Christianity requires a renewal of the mind, and the abolition of reason is expected. I would like to ask the author: is reason itself antinomic only in relation to the Absolute Truth and when compared with it? Speaking about reason in its basic norms, doesn’t the author illuminate it in advance with another, already shining light for himself - Truth, and only, as it were, hides it from the “catechumens”? In fact, where does he get the antinomy of his mind? Reason, as a certain ability, acts according to its own laws, as it should, and it is not he who is split, but the whole person, as the author, we will see later, admits this. The spirit and mind of man is split. Reason replaced simple knowledge, pure contemplation by the mind of everything cognizable. Cognition has become a process, and not a simple act of knowledge, as St. fathers. And of course, the idea of ​​Absolute Truth, the idea of ​​infinity, the idea of ​​unity, etc., these are no longer ideas of reason, but of something else, maybe the human spirit, or his mind, or reason, whatever. Where, in fact, did the author get the dynamic moment in his mind with a plan to infinity? On the contrary, in this dynamic plane, reason itself seems to want to bring everything to finitude, to bring each judgment through another, without fail, to its final clarity and validity. Each intuition, if it is not clear, can be explained through another, but as a result, find it exactly. And his dissatisfaction does not occur at all because he strives for finitude, only he does not really find such a first or (as you like) the last clear, solid and lasting, to which everything can be led, as to the final foundation of truth, but because he finds that he takes on an impossible task - to reduce infinity to finitude, to become above himself. And yet, in fact, although erring, reason, in its dynamic plane, is sometimes not infinite. He makes, as it were, an instantaneous run through the chain of judgments, and always has the intuition, one way or another, explained, that is, he carries out intuition-discourse, albeit of the lowest standard. The errors of reason (various philosophical and religious teachings) consist in the fact that it has always sought the embodiment of intuition-discourse in the finite and false, and Christianity discovered true intuition-discourse in the Triune God, in the combination of knowledge and life, in the living personal Truth of Jesus Christ. We think that the author himself involuntarily recognizes the dynamic plane of reason not into infinity, but precisely into finitude, in fact, into finitude, which is what reason always desires. Based on the analysis of reason in the construction of the idea of ​​truth, the author, it seems, introduces finitude into that process of “three” by which actual infinity is realized, namely: A finds itself in B as A, albeit proven. The process ends with finding or contemplating oneself through another in the third, but this third is the proven first. What can be deduced from here as an application to Christian truth seems to be clear without explanation. It seems to us that reason is not antinomic in itself, but only when compared face to face with the Christian truth of the Trinity, etc., and only in relation to it. Moreover, the main basis for their differences, i.e. human reason and the mind of God, in that our reason proceeds from the difference of what is distinguished by it, introducing this into the law and norm of being (hence the need for discourse), and the reason of God, revealed in dogma, recognizing the difference of what is distinguished, affirms along with this, and proceeds from the identity of what is distinguished and what is different for reason, having this as the norm of the highest being, and the subject of knowledge and contemplation in faith, and not through the rational cognition. And if the human mind recognizes, as it were, innate ideas of truth, infinity, and so on, then this, perhaps, is an explanation for the eternal dissatisfaction of the mind in its knowledge of truth. And the presence of antinomy in man should perhaps be seen between reason and understanding, in their demands. Perhaps we are mistaken in these judgments, but they involuntarily arose when reading the author’s books, mainly in the first half. “And who are we,” let’s say in the words of the author, “to write and speak with confidence about philosophy and philosophical wisdom.” “I am aware of my poverty and I despise it with my conscience and my thinness of mind; Moreover, this great matter is much burdensome for me” (see p. 5 “To the reader”). However, let's move on to specifics. In the first chapter (“Doubt”), the author searches for Truth, or the reliability of Truth, from the point of view of reason, and exposing, one might say, the very roots of rational activity, he finds in reason only one contradiction, and its complete unsuitability to lead a person to Truth, not some particular truth, but the eternal Truth, one, divine and absolute (see p. 9). The result of rational activity in search of Truth is only one: absolute skepticism and complete ἐπоχὴ from any judgment, whether it be an affirmation or denial, abstinence even from affirmation, and the expression of skepticism itself. We would like to ask whether the author in the first chapter means to show that the human mind cannot, according to its own laws, achieve and receive knowledge about the truth, or the Truth itself. After all, the author himself distinguishes between these two things, as can be seen further, very strictly. So, in ch. 5 (“Contradiction”, claiming that the Absolute Truth is proclaimed to creation, and therefore to the human mind, by the Holy Spirit, the author says that knowledge of Truth (the word “truth” with a capital T), i.e. That is, its assimilation by the creature in time and space becomes knowledge about the Truth, and knowledge about the Truth (truth with a capital T) is truth (truth with a small T, p. 136). So, in the first chapter the author is looking for Truth, or knowledge about it, that is, truth? It seems that the definition of Truth that he gives on p. 39: “Truth is intuition-discourse” (truth with a capital T), or what he gives on p. 45: “Consequently, Truth is a single essence of three hypostases” (truth again with a capital T), is still a position of the human mind, albeit probabilistic at first (according to the author, see pp. 37-38), which means that there is already a judgment about Truth, an expression of human knowledge about Truth, and, therefore, there is already truth (truth with a small T), according to the statement of the author himself on p. 136, like, we hope, every Christian dogma is knowledge of the Truth. This is how the author himself understands the dogmas (chapter 5, see pp. 136‒140). And, however, the author, having put forward in the 1st chapter. the question of absolute Truth, from the point of view of finding it by the mind, and then constructing the concept of Truth, everywhere writes this word with a capital letter, obviously not meaning knowledge about the Truth, but presuming to speak and seek the Truth itself. This, in our opinion, still needs to be explained by the author. Тем более что во 2-й гл. he already speaks only about the idea of ​​truth found for reason (truth with a small T) (p. 47). Next. “The truth of Truth is certified by reliability,” says the author (p. 11), “and reliability is the intellectual feeling of accepting a known judgment as true. This feeling (satisfaction, as it should be called) is achieved by the conformity of the judgment with the criteria of truth (p. 19). So, isn’t subjectivism introduced into this area where truth should be born, because where is the objective and general measure of whether the criteria (the law of identity-intuition and sufficient reason) in this case acted correctly for a known person? The feeling of satisfaction is so subjective and changeable that appealing to it, especially in the search and acceptance of a single truth, is risky, which is why the probabilistic construction of the concept of truth made by the author may not be the only way out of skepticism and ἐπоχὴ, but, depending on the state of the mind of the thinker, another construction may be accepted as true, at least for the time being. And the author seems to be in a hurry to impose this concept of Truth on the reader, as if considering it the only possible probabilistic construction; even moreover, he imperceptibly seems to make a logical inconsistency, namely: having constructed a probabilistic concept of Truth on p. 38‒39, he is this probabilism, relating only to the concept of truth, right there, on p. 39, transfers it to its existence: “So,” says the author, if Truth exists, then it is real rationality and rational reality” (p. 39). This means that now the question should be whether this truth exists, and not whether the author’s probabilistic construction of the concept of Truth correctly defines this Truth. She takes on what is, as it were, undeniable for further revelation of what the Truth is. And although the author repeatedly mentions experience as a way of perceiving Truth (p. 38:39), here in Chapter 1, the definition of truth is not the result of experience, but the result of dissatisfaction of feelings and dissatisfaction of reason, with an appeal to the need for faith, based on the love for truth living in a person (p. 30) and the hope that it exists (p. 36). On this basis, undoubtedly, the author, as can be seen in the 2nd chapter. (“Trinity”), a new, in comparison with the previous, attitude towards the concept of Truth he created is determined. “The only possible idea of ​​Truth for reason has been found,” the author writes, “however, don’t we risk being left with only one idea - that’s the question. The truth is, undoubtedly, what we said about it (of course, in the previous chapter), but whether it exists, we do not know” (p. 47). Thus, the author no longer doubts that Truth is what was previously said about it, the question is only about its existence. And this question, just like the question of the truth of the very concept of Truth, is resolved by the requirement of faith, which, in this case, must sacrifice the human mind and all its riches. “I entrust my destiny, my mind, the very soul of my quest - the demand for authenticity - into the hands of Truth itself,” says the author, “through faith, in its very existence” (p. 64). Let us note, by the way, that this 2nd chapter of the author is extremely strong and colorful, and such a psychologically deep clarification of the need for belief in the dogma of the Trinity, and clarification of the relationship of reason to dogma, can hardly be specified in anyone. The author’s judgments here about the merits of St. also deserve deep and serious attention from theologians. Athanasius the Great in the fight against Arianism, the author’s analysis of the terms ὑπоστаσις and оὐσίа; ὁμо-оύσιоς and its revelation of the process of faith, starting from the stage at which it, that is, faith, speaks first in the words of Tertullian: “Credo quia absudum est”, then with Anselm of Canterbury: “Credo ut intelligam”, and finally ends with the author: “Intelligo ut credam” (p. 57‒58). Thus, demanding faith in the existence or givenness of the Truth and overcoming with the help of God (p. 64) the threefold feat of faith, hope, love “the law of reason” (p. 63), the author not only comprehends his faith (p. 58), but also enters into living, personal communication with the Truth (p. 66, chapter 3), according to the word of Scripture that “faith is the realization of what is expected and confidence in invisible" (Heb. 4). The third chapter of the work (“The Light of Truth”) is dedicated by the author to clarifying the question of love as a way of knowing the Truth, and the basic statement that the knowledge of the Truth, revealed in the mystery of the Trinity, is impossible outside of Christ (p. 102). “Knowing the Truth,” says the author on p. 90, - arises in the soul from the free revelation of the Trinitarian Truth itself, from the gracious visit of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of such a visit is a volitional act of faith, absolutely impossible for human selfhood and performed by “the Father who is in heaven” (John 5:44). So, the path of accepting the Truth is faith, and the path of knowing (experientially) the truth is love. “Having made an effort on myself for the sake of love for the Truth,” says the author, “I entered into personal, living communication with the Truth (I will reluctantly add: if it exists at all). In love I found the initial stage of a long-desired intuition” (p. 66; cf. p. 85) (that is, reasonable intuition, not blind; self-proven intuition). And since God, or Truth, is love (p. 67), then in love a new path of practical knowledge opens, which can and should be called a feat of personal experience (p. 67). The author, in our opinion, perfectly manages to clarify this basic position, “that only in love is real knowledge of the Truth conceivable, and equally, that knowledge of the Truth reveals itself to be love” (p. 69). In a theological sense, this chapter is extremely interesting and valuable as it clarifies the divine nature of love, as the essence of Christianity, and as the beginning of divine life and Truth. At the same time, the author himself insists that he understands love not in the “subjective-psychological” sense, but in the “objective-metaphysical” (p. 86), which is why his judgments about love end in this chapter with the revelation of the beginnings of that spiritual life, which arises in the sphere of love, leads to communication with God the Truth, to the intelligent Light, but only through the feat of life, through purification and rebirth, accomplished on the ascetic path (pp. 94-95 et seq.). We would like to make just a small remark to these wonderful and profound arguments of the author. If the author in the previous chapters reasoned in the sphere of Christian concepts and on the basis of already believing Christian thought, then nothing would be strange if in the 3rd chapter. immediately spoke about God as love, and about living communication with God the Truth through love, suggesting this was already acceptable for the Christian believing mind. But, firstly, he speaks of communication with that which has not yet been proven in existence, and he himself stipulates this with the words “if only there is truth.” Secondly, his statement: “If God exists - and for us this becomes undoubted (?) - then He must necessarily be absolute love” (p. 66), is not justified in the previous one, because there love, in fact, was spoken of as a person’s subjective psychological mood in relation to the truth, and not as an objective-metaphysical living principle that introduces a person into real communication with the Truth and into the life of the Truth. This became necessary for the author in order to substantiate a new epistemological principle - moral personal experience, revealed in Christian love. All this, we repeat, is perfectly understandable and acceptable in the sphere of revealing theological concepts for believing thought, but in the course of the author’s judgments it seems like some methodological incorrectness. The author himself should somehow get to those basic Christian concepts that are suddenly put forward as given, and only then explained in the direction that his previous work determined. Moreover, there is always a noticeable tendency to consider everything from the angle of the law of identity, as its overcoming or spiritualization, as if all processes of Christian life can be reduced to epistemology, and the most spiritual revival can be seen in liberation from ἐπоχὴ (p. 80 et seq.). And why, again here, the author, recognizing the triad of basic moods in the spiritual feat of a person in relation to the truth: “Believe in the Truth, hope in the Truth and love the Truth” (he says), completely omits both here and in the following the question of the meaning of hope (see p. 67 et seq.). Perhaps we should try to find a place for it in the application to the question of the ascetic path, to which the author, essentially, pays a lot of attention in his work, and let’s even say that throughout his entire work he preaches asceticism, deeply understands and reveals it, so that for the science of asceticism, the work of Fr. Paul provides excellent material, indicating the way to establish the very foundations of asceticism as a fact of life and asceticism, as a science about this spiritual art of the arts (p. 94). It seems that the author himself on p. 122 (Chapter 4: “The Comforter”) very definitely expresses his intimate feeling, in which Christian hope is affirmed as the reassurance of the believing heart, in relation to the future destinies of the Church, giving firmness to the feat of spiritual revival, in particular, it is affirmed as if by a premonition of the fullness of the grace-filled life of the Church of Christ in the Holy Spirit. But still, the author limited himself to this feeling only in relation to Christian hope, in the sense of indicating its object, and devotes chapter 4, one might say, exclusively to the question of the third hypostasis of the Holy One. Trinity, that is, the Holy Spirit, as the perfecter of grace-filled life in humanity, enlightening man with the light of Truth and transforming all created nature (p. 105). The author, by the way, in this chapter draws his attention to the fact that in the Christian church consciousness and in the history of theological thought, the idea of ​​the Holy Spirit as the third hypostasis is less disclosed in comparison with the idea of ​​the Son of God as the second hypostasis, and gives an explanation for this. To this end, he makes a very interesting overview of historical theological thought in the person of its most prominent representatives (Tertullian, Origen, Justin the Philosopher, Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nyssa) or written monuments (Hermas, St. Clement of Alexandria, etc.), as well as ascetics (Simeon the New Theologian, Maximus the Confessor), and states a constant, “obvious, as it were, reticence, or timidity of theological thought, in relation to the question of the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity). The author himself explains this by saying that the fullness of times has not yet arrived in the life of the Church. The earthly Church is making its militant path, and so far only individual spirit-bearing individuals at the end of their thorny ascetic path have received the illumination and knowledge of the Holy Spirit, and the fullness of the general Church revelation of the Holy Spirit and its knowledge will be accomplished with the fullness of the entire renewed body of the Church, when there will be no more time, i.e. history, but there will be a new earth and a new heaven, i.e. beyond this and the world (see p. 104, 105, etc.). At the same time, the author perfectly understands all the inconsistency and lies of the people of the so-called “new religious consciousness”, purely chiliastically awaiting some era of the Paraclete, i.e., the fullness of the revelation of the Holy Spirit, within the limits of earthly, historical existence (pp. 119, 126‒127), and protects (the author) the Church from the dirt with which they throw it (see p. 122). All these wonderful thoughts of the author, in our opinion, would require a little proofreading for greater clarity. The very idea of ​​the Holy Spirit bringing about in man the knowledge of the Truth and life in the Truth (pp. 1 and 4), i.e. asceticism, in the course of the author’s thoughts, seems to be insufficiently defined in its delimitation from the idea of ​​other hypostases of the Holy. Trinity. Only before this the author on p. 91 said that Truth as the “light of reason” shone to the world with the Nativity of Christ, which is why it is sung in the troparion: Your Christmas, Christ our God, shine in the world's light of reason... Why is Christ called “Quiet Light”, “True Light”, etc. Further, what do the author’s words actually mean, that less is known about the Holy Spirit as a Hypostasis in comparison with what is said about the Son of God as a Hypostasis? What does it mean to “know as about the Hypostasis” (see pp. 112, 116, 117, etc.)? The existence of the Holy Spirit as a Hypostasis is constantly affirmed in the Gospel, and especially in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, in the Creed, in the works of St. fathers, especially among ascetics and in liturgical books. If the author refers to the service of Pentecost as proof of his thought, then why does he not take into account the stichera and troparions of this service, but only the prayers at Vespers, why does he not take a special service to the Holy Spirit? If, in his opinion, “the image of the procession of the Holy Spirit remains inexplicable,” as Basil the Great says, and Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the “incomprehensibility of the procession of the Holy Spirit,” then the same saints. fathers and many others, and “the birth of the Son from the Father” was called “ineffable.” And what Gregory the Theologian says in his “Dogmatic Poems” is precisely his words: “And the Savior also said that we will be taught everything by the descending Spirit... Here I include the very Divinity of the Spirit, clearly revealed later, when this knowledge had already become acceptable and comprehensible, after the glorification of the Savior” (p. 130), it seems, does little to confirm the author’s thought, although it is cited by him to confirm his thought. We think that in relation to the third Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity in the history of church consciousness, the situation was this way. At first, all Christians were charismatics, experienced the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and communication with Him was a fact of inner life, and therefore they spoke about it (especially the apostles in the Epistles) constantly and simply, as a common and undoubted phenomenon in Christian life. Then charisma declined, and ascetics 269 became charismatics (as the author says - p. 231). And in general, special favored chosen ones of God, who also spoke about the Holy Spirit, constantly experiencing it in personal experience (which is why all ascetic creations are full of speeches about the Holy Spirit). For the majority of the church body, the Holy Spirit remained in consciousness and in teaching only almost as an idea of ​​the Christian worldview, and it is indeed very difficult to reveal this idea in logical formulas, since the Holy Spirit is fanned more than logically revealed, for it is “life”, “life”. The situation was different with the idea of ​​the Logos, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity,” embodied and made human. Doubts immediately began in relation to it (Gnostics, etc.), the Divinity of Jesus Christ was denied, etc., because the very idea of ​​​​the incarnation of the Divine seemed unacceptable, and this could not be made a fact of internal experience, like the experience of the Holy Spirit. It was difficult to believe in Jesus Christ as God, but without faith in Him the Holy Spirit was not given, and with the scarcity of grace-filled life from the Holy Spirit, doubts immediately arose about the basic dogmas of Christianity, i.e., about the Divinity of Jesus Christ. This is how in the first centuries there was a rich development of the teaching about the Second Hypostasis, and the Holy Spirit is always received by a life of grace, which was especially the case with the first Christians and now with spirit-bearing people, and then no theoretical teaching is required, 270 but only a statement of the fact itself, which was and is now, as the author himself states in this chapter and in the previous one (see pp. 95-101, 132-135). However, the author’s 4th chapter about the Comforter does not have the goal of a special examination of this issue, from his historical-dogmatic point of view, and what is said here by the author, and what is said, we repeat, is excellent, and essentially indisputable, is directed towards affirming his main idea that knowledge of the Truth is given by the Holy Spirit, and this is a spiritual feat accomplished in the Holy Spirit, which all Christians are obliged to acquire, and in the fullness of this acquisition already “contemplate” the truth face to face. In the process of this spiritual creativity and only in it alone, all the contradictions of his thoughts, in relation to the truth, and the contradictions of life itself can be resolved for a person. After all, the Truth itself,” proclaimed by the Holy Spirit to man, being perceived by his consciousness, becomes knowledge of the Truth, that is, the truth, and in the structure of the human mind it turns out to be full of contradictions. The fifth chapter (“Contradiction”) is dedicated by the author to clarifying the question of “how the divine Truth appears to the human mind” (p. 137). Reason is now taken into consideration by the author not from the side of its basic laws: identity and sufficient reason, but from the side of its structure, in its comprehension of the Truth, in the process of its knowledge of the Truth. Knowledge is given to the mind in the form of a certain judgment (p. 138) and such a judgment about the Truth, in which its knowledge is given to the mind, is Christian dogma. Christian dogma is the truth revealed to the human mind about the Truth. It is also antinomic (p. 140), and should be antinomic from the point of view of reason, since the feat of faith, the act of self-denial of reason, can only begin with antinomy, after all, only it can be believed, and everything else can either be accepted or denied. “Our salvation begins with dogma,” says the author, “for only by being antinomic does it give place to free faith” (p. 140). The author perfectly explains in this chapter the reason for the general antinomy of reason, making references from the history of ancient and modern philosophy, in which the idea of ​​antinomy has always been inherent, and then moving on to the soil of Christian thinking, explains this antinomy of reason in relation to truth by the fragmentation of the human reason itself, moreover, by the fragmentation of being itself, including reason here (p. 152). The reason for this fragmentation of existence is the sin of the creature. That is why a dogma, unacceptable by the sinful mind, as contradicting its structure, in a state of grace, cleansed from sin of the soul, is perceived by the grace-filled mind in the sphere of prayer and ascetic endeavor as a self-proven truth and axiom (pp. 152-153). Here the author stands entirely on the basis of Orthodox patristic teaching on the need to purify the mind in order to comprehend Christian truth, and, as we have already indicated, one can only regret somewhat that he did not use the excellent judgments on this subject of Isaac the Syrian, Maximus the Confessor, what is written, for example, in “The Invisible War,” etc. But for the purposes of a book written for the catechumens, it may be even better that the author, through his philosophical analysis of the logical laws of thinking, comes to the same thing that the holy fathers came to through the spiritual experience of life. The idea of ​​sin, which explains the fragmentation of existence and the human mind in particular, forms the content of the next two chapters of the work, of which in the first (6th chapter “Sin”) the author specifically discusses sin and its essence, and in the 7th chapter. “Creation” reveals the beginning of the grace-filled renewal of created existence. The author's judgments about sin, in the sense of analyzing the essence of its nature and actions, are beautiful and deeply psychological; in the theological sense, they are very valuable for Moral Theology, and, especially, for asceticism as a science. Moreover, all these judgments are based on the data of divine revelation (in particular, the message of the Apostle John the Theologian) and patristic reason. Essentially, we do not find anything to say against these judgments of the author. The peculiarity of some of the author’s judgments is determined here, as in other places in his book, by his main task - to look at everything from the point of view of the human mind, in its nature and structure to see data for affirming the truth and necessity of Christianity in its integrity. That is why the author, defining sin in accordance with St. John the Theologian, “that he is lawlessness” (John 3:4), and explaining that in its ontological depth (p. 162) there is “nothing,” only “imaginary existence” (p. 163), is the cause of all fragmentation, when applied to man, he explains this sin as a reluctance to leave the law of “identity” of the Self (p. 170). Thus, the author, as a manifestation of sin in man, according to his plan, considers human reason, takes it, as it were, only in application to the laws of thinking, and in sin sees the kingdom of the law of identity, and only that alone, and therefore unreason (pp. 170‒171). True, even among the eastern St. Fathers sin is considered as a person’s deviation from contemplating only God, from thinking only about Him as the One in need, a deviation towards the path of many thoughts, and above all, towards the path of self-affirmation. At St. fathers, only this does not have that special logical or epistemological coloring, like the author’s, but more moral and psychological. But perhaps this is the merit of the author, who translated the explanation of the actions of the mystery of sin into the structure and nature of our mind. In connection with this bias in considering sin, the author also defines the essence of “that structure of the soul”, which is opposite to its sinful state; this is chastity (p. 173:177) in the sense of integrity, the soundness of the individual (p. 173). The essence of chastity from the subjective side, as the experience of a chaste soul, is bliss “in the sense of a peaceful and moderate heart” (p. 185), and objectively, ontologically, as “a moment of God’s life” (p. 185), it is “the memory of God,” “eternal memory,” which is usually sung to the deceased, for to be in the memory of God means to be in eternal existence (p. 187)! Let us note again that the author, in his judgments on these points, has a lot of very subtle observations, and unexpected comparisons and conclusions that very well explain some particular aspects of Christian teaching and Christian psychology, in particular the origin of heresies. We only think that if the author defined chastity parallel to sin, as a characteristic moment of the state of mind, then bliss should have been defined more in the same direction to the mind, and not as the pacification of “heart whirling” (p. 181). He somehow combines the elements of the mind and heart in the concept of bliss, as it really should be, but lacks some clarity, in the sense of consistency with the main thought. “Bliss is like a rest from tirelessly greedy and never satisfied desire,” says the author on p. 182. On the other hand, “bliss can be obtained only by transforming thoughts into higher contemplation” (p. 183). So, in bliss there are elements both in relation to the mind and heart, but their intimate connection is not sufficiently revealed, at least here, it can rather be seen from the last chapter, where the author talks about the importance of the heart in our life. And then, if bliss is tranquility, then how are “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” blessed? This phenomenon is infinite, because truth itself is infinite. It must be said that the ascetic feat as a path to bliss is much broader than the author outlines it here, and covers all aspects of a person’s being, and as only individual moments or aspects, what the author speaks about enters into the spiritual life, and does not fit into them at all. The author himself thinks so, saying in conclusion of his judgments about bliss: “Chaste living is the integrity and unspoiledness of the human being” (p. 195) (and not just the mind). On the ontological plane, chastity is “the eternal memory of God” (p. 185, 186, 187, cf. p. 177). Already in human cognitive activity, memory, according to the author, is evidence of our transtemporal nature (p. 194). It is the creative principle of thought that dominates time (p. 195). But God’s memory and God’s creativity are identical (p. 195), and therefore to be in the memory of God means to be in communion with His existence, to be in paradise. But if “eternal memory” is the objective side of chastity, subjectively expressed in bliss, then why do we remember and ask for “eternal memory,” especially for sinners, but we no longer remember saints? But aren’t sinners who do not seek chastity in the memory of God? Finally, is it possible, in essence, to attribute to God memory, which is a phenomenon within the limits of temporality and is connected with this temporary existence, and according to the teaching of St. Fathers is a manifestation of a lower, sinful system of activity of the human mind? Yes, it is hardly fair to consider it an expression of a creative, active principle. It has its own laws, each fact of mental life is connected with another law of association, and therefore memory is characterized by more passivity than activity. And when knowledge is abolished and knowledge and contemplation come, then memory will also be abolished, as unnecessary, as associated only with sinful existence. Let's move on to the last, 7th, chapter of the essay “The Creature”. The subject of this chapter is the author's disclosure of the process of renewal of creation, as a transition from sin to a chaste state. The author takes for consideration here not the whole of creation, but the human personality itself, on the basis, quite legitimate, that the renewal of creation depends on the renewal of man, according to the words of St. Paul (Rom.8:14) (see p. 206). What is a chaste person, and how is this achieved, this is essentially what the author is talking about here. This chapter, so to speak, is predominantly ascetic, and introduces the reader to the circle of phenomena of spiritual experience and mysticism. Here the author beautifully reveals some aspects of Christian anthropology, for example, the importance of the heart in spiritual life. Along the way, he exposes the falsity of any asceticism outside of Christianity, and its significant difference from the first, exposes modern chiliasts, modern preachers of the “holy flesh” (p. 224, 226, etc.), deals a decisive blow and mercilessly criticizes any worldview outside of Christianity, proves that science itself became possible only with the presence of Christian ideas. It seemed to us that in this chapter there was only some inconsistency of particular provisions with those expressed earlier. For example on p. 197 the author, distinguishing between evil and sin, defines the first as a spiritual distortion, and sin is everything that leads to such, i.e., a reason or a means, as if earlier, in Chapter 6, he defines sin precisely as a distortion of being, lawlessness. Here, apparently, he means a simple sinful act. In this chapter, chastity is understood exclusively as purity of the heart, and not a state of mind (p. 202), and the heart is put forward as the center of spiritual life, and church mysticism is called the mysticism of the chest, and is distinguished from the mysticism of the belly (inherent in the orgiastic cults of antiquity) and the mysticism of the head (Hindu). We think that church mysticism is not the mysticism of the chest or heart, but certainly the united mysticism of all aspects of the human being: the mind, the heart, the will, and the body, if you like, otherwise the result is the phenomenon of Khlystyism, so common now, or spiritual delusion. Let us remind the author that St. Fathers always indicate eight main passions, 271 of which each relates to a certain area of ​​​​the human soul or body; by fighting them, either the body (fornication, gluttony), or the mind (pride, vanity), or the heart (sadness, despondency), or the will in its mood, anger, love of money) is made healthy and chaste). The heart comes forward in spiritual life because in the process of volitional activity it, with its feeling and desire, determines the completion of a deed or action, the most important incentive for sin and good in their implementation, and most importantly, the heart area is the complete property of a person. The mind can be polluted involuntarily from the attacks of the enemy, but the heart can only be polluted by the willing will of a person, for which he is responsible. You need to remember the moments of development of passion and all sin, and then it will be understandable. Is it possible, for example, to purify the heart without purifying the mind? At St. For fathers, the mind is recognized as the helmsman, and the structure of the soul depends on its appeal to God and purity. We repeat, in the spiritual Christian life everything is holistic and united, and this is how it should be according to the author himself, for where sin is destroyed, integrity is restored. By recognizing this integrity in man, restored through heroism, as the goal of his life and its highest foundation and reason, and through man the integrity and beauty of all creation, the author ends his book. What can I say about her in conclusion? As a catechetical word for those standing “in the church yard,” and as the author himself asks to look at his book (p. 5), the book is beautifully executed. A complete apology has been made for the Christian faith, as the only truth, and done in the way and in the sphere of thought in which the admirers of human reason believe the final reason for all truth, and everything is said in their native language of reason, logic and philosophy. The author, as if generously for their sake, descends “to the treasures of Canaanite thoughts” (see the canon of Andrew of Crete), from which people of reason think to draw and drink the water of truth and shows that the truth is not in these treasures, but in the Stone of faith - Christ, from Whom flow rivers of living water and streams of wisdom flowing from faith. integrity in man, restored through feat, as the goal of his life and its highest foundation and reason, and through man, the integrity and beauty of all creation, the author ends his book. As a theodicy, the book about. Paul can satisfy the most demanding tastes, sophisticated in philosophy and theology. The entire transcendental depth of Christianity is revealed, its necessity for man is illuminated by the light of Christianity and the highest meaning of life and the existence of the world is clarified, and everything - both the particular and the fundamental in Christianity - is revealed with extraordinary clarity in its highest meaning and unity. I don’t know if there is anything similar in the West, but in Russian literature there is no such experience of theodicy, and in this sense, the book of Fr. Paul is an exceptional phenomenon. In our opinion, it perfectly complements what is said in the book by Prof. Nesmelov “Science of Man”, but in a different level of execution. As a theological and philosophical work, the author's book is Orthodox from beginning to end. The author overthrows the dominance of reason in life and its claims to the monopoly of truth, affirms the necessity of the Christian faith, affirms dogmas, affirms spiritual achievement, affirms and defends the Church, reveals the lies of ancient and new heresies in their essence, condemns the “new religious consciousness” of the modern intelligentsia, Khlystyism, chiliasm, and the cult of the flesh. Confessing sin as the cause of evil, he, in the grace of the Holy Spirit, affirms the power that overcomes sin and renews creation. In our opinion, the author, in those few words of his address to the reader, in which he touches on the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and Protestantism, says much more for understanding Orthodoxy than in a special article by one professor, published in an American magazine to clarify this issue. Book about. Pavel is highly scientific; it is difficult to say in which area of ​​scientific knowledge the author did not prove himself to be an expert in this book. He knows ancient philosophy and the ancient world very well, has studied modern philosophy perfectly, has shown himself to be a philologist and mathematician, and has shown tremendous erudition in patristic literature, theological, foreign and Russian literature. The author's notes alone (62 pages) in themselves, without our words, can speak for the scientific merit of his work, and their value can only be understood by specialists like the author himself. But the author everywhere remains free from the overwhelming influence of this scientific baggage; he is everywhere the creator and master. Reading the author’s book, you feel that you are growing spiritually with her, and not just acquiring knowledge in some area. Yes, you need to grow up to it in order to understand. It seems that it will be read with interest by people who are theologically educated, philosophical, and simply intelligent. Even if some temptation 272 in the author’s book is the unusual style of writing, a method of expression not accepted in theological writings, a special syllable and structure of speech. This only reflected the author’s individualism and the personal peculiarities of his psyche. You simply don’t need to pay attention to this when reading his book, and it does not essentially detract from the merits of the author’s book. S. S. Glagolev 273. Review of the book about. Pavel Florensky "On Spiritual Truth". M., 1912 274 The book, a review of which I must now offer to the attention of the Academy Council, is an exceptional phenomenon. Everything in it is unusual, original, everything is captured by the exceptional individuality of the author. The author offers “The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy.” How many such experiments have been proposed over the space of centuries! But I don’t know of another experience that would have been written according to such a plan, in such a young language, and with the involvement of such diverse and original material. For those who know about. Paul personally and intimately, his book should show what an exceptionally broad and deep education he possesses. It is difficult to point out a thinker in Europe or America who would have such brilliant preparation for posing and solving philosophical problems and, in particular, for solving the most difficult problems of the philosophy of religion. In the experiments of religious philosophy of James, 275 Wundt, 276 Boutroux, 277 Geffding 278 the unsatisfactory theological preparation of their authors is clearly felt, and what is even more strange, ignorance in the field of the history of religions is manifested. Our author is theologically educated in a way that a theologian is rarely educated. It’s not just theology courses that he knows, he has mastered, absorbed Orthodox worship, he has realized Orthodoxy and lives by it. And he attracts to his leaders and assistants, first of all, not theologians, but those who lived by faith. He uses the lives of simple saints not as historical, but as highly ideological material that provides the key to resolving the most difficult questions of knowledge. In the field of the history of religions, O. Pavel Alexandrovich’s knowledge is amazingly extensive. He knows various religions not only in their schemes, but in their details, in the details and trifles of their cult, and uses these measures to clarify the natural religious aspirations of the human soul. He searches in his book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” and finds it in the Church. He resolves an epistemological problem into a religious problem. In order to give such a formulation and such a solution to the question, he has scientific knowledge in an amazing breadth and completeness. A mathematician by profession, deeply studied mechanics and physics, well-versed in the field of biological sciences, he knows philosophers in the original and originals, and from the mass of their creations, with amazing sensitivity and depth of analysis, extracts what is valuable in the eyes of an Orthodox thinker. For his experience of theodicy, he makes extensive use of philology. Dead words come to life in his analysis. In words, in their roots, he sees the expression of the aspirations of the soul, seeking and anticipating the truth. For Kant, his most important work, “Critique of Pure Reason” (“Kritik der reinen Vernunft”), and his last monograph, “Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone” (“Religion innerhalb Grenzen der blossen Vernunft”), are essentially incomprehensible. 279 For him, epistemological skepticism and religious faith turn out to exist together and completely separately. Many people have adopted this point of view. But it seems to me that Fr. Paul, departing from Kant, with his book makes a turn towards the more correct view of Descartes. 280 For the Cartesian thinker, veracitas Dei 281 was a guarantee that man could know the truth. Book about. Pavel Alexandrovich, in essence, treats the religious foundations of authenticity. Between being and thinking, Fr. Pavel Aleksandrovich sees a contradiction. The world is a process, there is a continuous movement. Our thinking can only operate on the immobile – on facts, objects. At every moment our thinking pinpoints a flying arrow to a specific point, and Zeno’s paradox remains in full force to this day, 282 that a flying arrow is motionless. There is an inconsistency in the very principles of thinking. The law of identity requires that A be equal to A. The law of sufficient reason requires that A be equal not to A, the law of sufficient reason reduces A to B. The resolution of these contradictions is o. Pavel Aleksandrovich also finds the law of identity in the highest form. And he eternally rejects himself, and in his selflessness he eternally receives himself. In the beginning, A is A because it excludes everything from itself; in the end A becomes A because he assimilates and assimilates everything to himself. Obviously, the intermediate link, the mediating moment, is a negation, A becomes not A. The highest identity is truth. Truth is contemplation of oneself, through another in a third. Father, Son, Spirit. Oὐσιа 283 truth is the endless act of the Three in Unity. Truth is a single essence in three forms. According to Fr. Paul, truth is intuition, that is, it is given directly, and at the same time, truth is discourse, that is, it is subject to proof. Truth is intuition-discourse. On many pages of his book, the author develops and substantiates the thesis that truth itself prompts a person to seek truth. Truth is given to the soul, and only for this reason do we seek it, clarify it, justify it, and strive to affirm it. The Trinitarian Truth itself attracts us to itself. “I don’t know,” the author writes, “whether there is Truth or not. But I feel with all my heart that I can’t live without her. And I know that if she exists, then she is everything to me: reason, goodness, strength, life, and happiness. She may not exist, but I love her, I love her more than everything that exists. I already treat her as if she exists, and she, perhaps, who does not exist, I love with all my soul and with all my thoughts. For her I give up everything, even my questions and my doubts. I, the doubter, behave with her like one who does not doubt. I, standing on the edge of nothingness, walk as if I were already on the other edge, in the land of reality, justification and knowledge. Through the triple feat of faith, hope and love, the inertia of the law of identity is overcome. I cease to be I, my thought ceases to be my thought, by an incomprehensible act I renounce the self-affirmation I = I. Something or Someone helps to get out of my self-isolation... Something or Someone extinguishes the idea that I am the center of philosophical quests, and I put in this place the idea of ​​Truth itself. Being nothing but the only one given to me, I, given to myself, incomprehensibly for myself, renounce this only property, I bring to the Truth that only sacrifice that is given to me, but I also bring it not with my own strength, but with the power of the Truth itself. Just as previously the sinful self put itself in the place of God, so now, with the help of God, I put myself in the place of God, still unknown to me, but cherished and loved. I give up the fearful fear of what will happen to me, and with a decisive stroke I perform the operation on myself. I leave the edge of the abyss, and with a firm step I run onto the bridge, which, perhaps, will collapse under me. I entrust my destiny, my mind, the very soul of the entire quest - the demand for authenticity - into the hands of Truth itself. For her sake, I refuse proof” (pp. 63‒64). In order to know the truth, you need the light of truth. To acquire it, you need love for the truth. Love o. Pavel Aleksandrovich means this in the sense of an ontological act, and not in the sense of a psychological state. The knowledge of God is manifested in active love for creation, and manifested love is beauty. For the author, knowledge of God and love for God are inseparable. No love, no knowledge, and vice versa. The light of truth is not only spiritual light, it can become visible light. Moses' face shone with rays. O. Pavel Alexandrovich gives similar examples from lives. But he warns against trusting the light of heretical and non-Christian mystics. For someone who has truly cognized dogma, it is the “eye of the mind.” And St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who learned and defended the Dogma of the Trinity, St. Gregory the Theologian calls it “the holy eye of the divided one.” “The universe revealed the truth to them.” The assimilation of the Holy Spirit, the perception of the Comforter, is the beginning of immortal life. "St. fasting is the beginnings of body enlightenment; St. the relics we kiss are glimpses of the resurrection; St. sacraments are sources of deification” (p. 127). Now the kingdom of God, through the assimilation of the Holy Spirit, comes to individuals. In the future it will come to all who are in the truth. Just as creation exists alongside God, so alongside the substantial, living Truth, truth exists. Truth, according to our author, is antinomic. He points out that in questions about the Divinity, the natures in Christ, about man’s relationship to God, about sin, judgment, retribution, final destiny, in questions about the merits of grace, faith, and the coming of Christ, we have a number of antinomic statements. These antinomies are resolved at the highest stage of religious development, resolved by superconsciousness, superlogic. The path that a person should follow should be the assimilation of the truth. But there is another way - the path of sin. Father Pavel Alexandrovich analyzes the definition of sin as lawlessness, according to the teachings of the apostle. John. Opposed to it is the path of the law, the path of righteousness, which is characterized by the term “chastity” (holistic wisdom). This path leads to eternity. When asking about eternity, the author raises the issue of memory, which he defines as “the creation in time of symbols of eternity.” Man goes to eternity together with the God-created creature. The author examines the creature both in its historical appearance and in its ideal. To his research about. Pavel Alexandrovich attached a book of notes and notes. He gave 470 notes to his work. In these notes the reader will find indications of works that discuss the provisions established by our author, or provide material to substantiate these provisions. O. Pavel Aleksandrovich does not give vague instructions; he comments on quotes, emphasizes their meaning, and points out their inner nature. He offers readers clues to the works he cites. The book of quotations is extremely important for those, of course, few readers who will analyze the capital work of Fr. Pavel Alexandrovich. These quotes will reveal to us what the author studied and read in his still very short life, and these quotes give us some opportunity to find out the genesis of his views. Book about. Pavel Alexandrovich should not be read, but studied; it contains too many important and valuable statements. But at the same time, the importance of the subject, and the deep significance of these statements, encourages the reader to be careful when reading this book, and not rush to add his “yes” to the author’s statements. It seems that the author himself, when he begins to republish his book, will find it necessary to change something in it from the outside, and something from the inside. I said that the book is about. Paul treats the religious foundations of authenticity. The author himself entitled it “On Spiritual Truth.” So, does the author’s spiritual truth relate to truth in general, as a specific concept relates to a generic concept? What other kind of truth is there? Carnal truth? But such truth does not exist. Living Truth is spiritual. Truth, as a correct statement, is immaterial. Yes, finally, our author treats of the criterion of truth in general, and not of the criterion of spiritual truth. In the author's address to the reader, we find the statement that Orthodox churchliness is indefinable (p. 7). But he talks about this churchliness. Is it possible to talk about the inseparable? And then everything that exists can be presented and defined. The only being that is unknowable and indefinable is that which does not act on us. But such a being does not exist for us; for us it is non-existence. The author finds the solution to many perplexities in the mystery of the Trinity, but, probably, his reasoning about the Trinity will cause more perplexities than solve them. Apparently, the author sees in the number “three” some basic category of life and thinking; he seems to assert that numbers cannot be deduced from anything else. Things are phenomena of absolute, transcendental numbers. I think that numbers are not something absolute at all, but only a device of imperfect thinking. The existence of numbers presupposes the existence of gaps in existence, and the existence of identical objects. Neither one nor the other exists in reality. And we constantly come across irrational values. Determining quantities by numbers is usually an approximate, imprecise technique. If the author understands different numbers, then he should have expressed himself more clearly, and this theory, which is just emerging, is more of a question than a theory. In space, the author must find the number “three”, because space is three-dimensional. I think it is convenient to show the fictitious value of the number “three” in space. In nature, only bodies exist, and surfaces and lines are only abstractions from bodies. The new natural geometry puts the matter in such a way that there is one type of spatial being, and not three types. The author’s number “three” rules the world. 287 The simplest family for him should consist of father, mother and child, who is the center of the family. If in fact this simplest family were a normal family, then, according to my calculations, humanity, under the most favorable conditions, would cease to exist in 900 years. 288 I do not think to dispute the author’s thoughts that the idea of the Trinity deity is not given to us only from the outside, but is inherent in our nature. But to clarify this thesis, the author needed to dwell longer on religion, and especially on the Egyptian religion The author considers our thinking antinomic. He gives us a series of antinomies (pp. 157‒158). No doubt he could multiply them endlessly. But maybe the point here is not antinomy, but simply the limitations of human thinking and knowledge! It was not superintelligence that destroyed the antinomies in the space of centuries; they were destroyed by scientific discoveries. Before the discovery of Neptune 289, the movement of Uranus and the law of gravity were antinomic; before the discovery of the action of capillary forces, a needle that does not sink in water and Archimedes' law 290 were antinomic. Now all this is in good agreement. The author is Orthodox, Orthodox deeply, internally, but this does not justify his relationship to Catholicism and Protestantism. “For Catholicism,” he writes, “(of course, I take both Catholicism and Protestantism in their limit, in their principle) any independent manifestation of life is non-canonical, but for Protestantism it is unscientific” (pp. 6-7). In fact, the author takes Catholicism and Protestantism here not in the extreme, but in caricature. Does Catholicism absolutely deny freedom, and does Protestantism absolutely want to regulate man’s relationship with God in a scientific way? I cannot imagine any limit to Protestantism. A Protestant can be a Catholic and almost an atheist. This “almost” can be very small. A Protestant can almost be both a Buddhist and a Mohammedan. Historically, Protestantism moves towards the denial of any religion, but in principle, the beliefs of a Protestant can approach any religion. Catholicism produced people like Francis of Assisi and Pascal. Did they represent a retreat from the Catholic ideal, and not an approach to it? There is no doubt that even in the Jesuit order there is a gradual emancipation of freedom, and not enslavement, and this, from the point of view of the principles of Catholicism, is not at all a departure from the limit. The author, in his judgments about forms of faith that are alien to him, succumbs to weakness, justified by his deep religiosity, but not justified by the truth. He considers his confession in its ideal, and other confessions not only in the ideal, but also not in historical manifestation, but in caricature. Asking about. Pavel Alexandrovich to be more lenient towards Catholics and Protestants, I would ask him, meaning his book of notes, to be more lenient towards readers. With his quotes he refers the reader to mathematical theories Bugaeva, 291 Nekrasova, 292 Alekseeva, 293 to the biological hypotheses of Korzhinsky, 294 Hugo de Vries, 295 to the philological studies of Curtius, 296 Prellwitz and Boisac, to ascetic and patristic works, to liturgical and church-historical studies, to fine literature, to the works of philosophers, etc., etc. d. He quotes both great and small writers from the originals. But there are few people who could easily move from St. Gregory of Nyssa to Laplace's theory of probability 297 and from Couture's Algebra of Logic 298 to St. John Climacus. Then, there are few people who would have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with many of the things quoted by the author. In his quotes, our author very rarely distinguishes the essential from the unimportant, the important from the unimportant, even at times, the worthy of attention from the unworthy. He emphasizes and comments on the thought of the quoted source. And that's all. But what is the most important thing to read from the many books and articles the author has read? There is no answer to this. Meanwhile, for the very cause defended by the author, it would be very useful if he indicated the most important works that led him to the positions he affirms. It's not easy. But oh. Pavel Alexandrovich knows how and loves to work. In conclusion, I will say the following. Much can be disputed, and even denied, in Fr. Pavel. But all this does not detract from the exceptional significance of this exceptional book. And it will have not only scientific, theological or philosophical significance, but also a deeply vital one. The question of whether this essay deserves an academic degree and which one, master's or doctorate, this question even seems awkward to me. There are books that rise above the school ladder of academic degrees, a book about. Pavel Alexandrovich is one of them. In it we find a complete and original worldview of a man, young in age, but mature in spirit. Young, in his book he is completely and uniquely formed. In this respect I will compare him with Eduard Hartmann, who gave his philosophy of the unconscious when he was 29 years old. But Hartmann gave a sad and hopeless worldview, and our author, with his heartfelt, deep, Orthodox book, will always reward people with faith, hope, and love. Let's reward him for his book as best we can. B.V. Yakovenko 300. Philosophy of Despair 301 Here the mind loses itself, is lost in a formless and unsettled abyss. There is feverish delirium and stupidity running around here. Priest Pavel Florensky. 302 1. The state of despair is one of the most difficult and unbearable conditions, if not the most difficult and unbearable, in the life of the human spirit. To not have any support under your feet, to feel that you are flying into an unknown abyss, not to see the outcome and salvation from a situation that has become completely unbearable, this is a horror that, truly, has no equal for a person with a sufficiently developed individuality and a sufficiently intense pulse of life. At such moments, a person suffers incredibly, worries and suffers endlessly, and makes supernatural efforts to save himself. He frantically searches for solid ground, rushes back and forth, catches the slightest opportunity with a greedy gaze, and frantically rejoices at any straw that he manages to grab onto, and which at least in some way promises him freedom and salvation. And often, too often, it happens that frantic joy immediately completely takes possession of a person’s soul, hungry and too receptive, taking possession with the same force with which the cold horror of hopelessness had just possessed it. Then the straw, as if by the wave of a magic wand, suddenly turns into indestructible granite: the horror of what has just passed, and the irresistible desire to prolong the present, are transformed into reality in the human soul. A dream, an object of aspiration and thirst, by the power of these latter turns into an object of faith. And just as boundless and unbearable was the despair before recent reality, just as irrevocable and unshakable is this faith in an illusion, this conviction in the stone fortress of a straw. From a dying swimmer, a man becomes a triumphant hallucinant, from Hamlet - Don Quixote. This process of despair and its imaginary overcoming, so often observed in the everyday and social life of a person, is not alien to more specialized areas of it, in particular, the philosophical area. A person is a person everywhere. And that this is so is convincingly demonstrated by the standard work 303 of our current religious and philosophical movement, the philosophical confession of the priest. Pavel Florensky, characteristically marked by a central, imperious and pretentious title: “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” 304 It should be said from the very beginning that this confession is one of the most outstanding works of this kind. Both the boundlessness of theoretical despair at the beginning, and the power of philosophical and religious jubilation at the end, reveal a great personality touched by the depths and heights of knowledge and faith. The very process of transition from the first to the second is furnished here with the most extensive material in some respects, which accordingly joins the highest effort of the philosophical-religious struggle for truth. There is no doubt that this “Pillar and Ground of Truth” is an impressive, very striking composition, imperatively compelling everyone who gets acquainted with it to experience it in the most intense way, and is capable of leaving indelible marks on the soul and mind of the reader. But at the same time, one cannot help but admit that this creation is all the more unbearable and unacceptable for a person who is not so emotional and nervous as to lose his mind in a vain search for truth, but is accustomed to being steadfast, calm and clear at the most critical moments of his spiritual existence. Excessiveness is always painful and abnormal, but excessiveness in despair and jubilation sometimes smacks of hysteria and sharply repels oneself. 2. Let’s start at least with the outer skin in which the priests are clothed. Florensky's main experiences of his confession! After all, all these symbolic pictures, as if blessing each chapter for the work, the diligent and meaningful selection of special colors on the cover, the church seal, the construction of phrases with a bias towards the ancient Slavic, and the mass of words of an ecclesiastical nature, all this exotericism in the interpretation of the question of how reason is possible, an attempt to give an answer to which, according to the author himself (487), his entire work as a whole represents, that this is all, if not an obvious attempt to hypnotize and yourself, and your readers, unnoticed by yourself and them, contribute by the power of the most external visual and auditory environment to bringing both yourself and them into a miraculous state of jubilant faith, instantly and easily liberating you from the unbearable oppression of theoretical despair? Or this unsystematic manner of presentation and justification, depriving the “work” of sacredness. Florensky's theoretical centers, all aimed at emotionally striking, capturing, enticing, preliminary and incidentally entertaining the attention with a mass of excerpts and borrowings from sacred books, and from theological interpretations, and from philosophical sources, and from individual sciences, especially linguistics and mathematics, as well as an endless repetition of the same insufficiently ordered, and in some kind of whirlwind, thoughts and experiences. (so much so that the venerable author himself was able to indicate only the most general and schematic, and therefore almost meaningless plan of his interpretation (487 ff.), what is this if not the most clear detection of that restless, unstable, rushing in all directions, and waiting for help from everywhere, state of mind, which fundamentally characterizes deep theoretical despair and emotional overcoming it? And these screaming external contradictions are at every step! The dedication of the entire work to the “All-fragrant and Most Pure Name of the Virgin and Mother,” which makes one think that the author considers his “work” to be an important and significant phenomenon, values ​​it as his best creation, and his definite statement: “For I am aware of my poverty and I despise my conscience and thinness of mind” (5:360). The presentation of his work for an academic degree makes one think that the author sees in him some really great merits, and his statement that he recognizes in his “letters” only preparatory knowledge (5), that if there are any “his views” in them, it is only from “thoughtlessness, ignorance and misunderstanding” (860), that the important tone in the book, where it is, is only “from my stupid ineptitude” (14), that he is afraid to assert and prefers to “ask (129), and that he only sketches out thoughts that he feels more than he can express (128). This means terrible humility on the one hand, and considerable claims on the other! And further, with all the humble statements, what a harsh tone, sometimes likened to abuse, in relation to one’s opponents, for example, in relation to Tolstoy (64, 65, 91, 129:292), German rationalists (158, 650, 714:736), seekers of a “new religious consciousness” (134), the intelligentsia (293, 295, 296, 299, 699:746). How to reconcile the flood of labor with linguistic calculations, clarifications, so that it begins to seem as if this is the very essence of justification, and the deep disdain for this scientific branch, which sounds so clearly in the author’s statement that the philosopher listens to the teachings of the linguist “more out of politeness than seriously” (786)? An unconditional recognition that the only way to comprehend the truth is to “live” with it (8), that is, to live the truth and in the truth, and a whole series of schemes, evidence and arguments contained in this “work” and placed in it for the sake of continuing the path to the truth (and it comes to the need to provide an index of the laws and formulas of logistics, pp. 600‒603)?! Complete and irrevocable denial of reason, and constant use of it on the widest scale?! Isn’t it clear that in all the contradictions there is a fundamental presence of genuine despair, that same despair with the outpourings of which the author begins his “work-confession”, and to the expression of which he often returns again and again (3, 5, 9 ff., 67, 71, 109 ff., 260 ff., 319, 393 ff.)? Isn’t it clear that by its very outer clothing this creation is a direct product of such despair? 3. Let us now move on to the content, and we will be irrevocably convinced that despair here is not a superficial subjective coloring of an objective construct or experience, but the main systematic factor guiding all this “work” and representing the central core of this entire “confession.” Indeed, following the initial, personal-subjective revelations of despair (9 ff.), the author directly turns to the presentation of theoretical, fundamental and in this sense subjective despair (25 ff.), thereby opening his work to clarify the “Pillar and Ground of Truth.” Neither the directly obvious reality of intuition, nor the calculations and deductions of reason, provide, he declares, the slightest image of truth. 305 After all, any intuition (be it sensory perception, the transcendental reality of intellectual experience, or mystical contemplation - it makes no difference) is blind and suffers from unjustification. When asked why what she gives is exactly what it is, she answers simply, “because it is like that,” i.e. gets off with a reference to the law of identity A = A. This says it all, namely: knowledge is limited to conditional judgments, or simply: be silent, I’m telling you” (26). But this is not enough! Direct experience shows that, concentrating absolutely in itself through self-identity, each given thing is separated from all others, being their direct negation, negates them, and thereby introduces terrible fragmentation, complete disintegration into being and experience, and indirectly destroys its own significance, for it realizes complete isolation, “The law of identity is the spirit of death, emptiness and insignificance” (27). On its basis, everything turns out to be true, and therefore nothing is true. In the same way, reason destroys itself in its search for truth, for it seeks a reason for every situation, and this continues ad infinitum. “Reasonable proof only creates a dream of eternity, but never allows us to touch eternity itself” (32). In a word, “formless content and contentless form, finite intuition and limitless discussion, here are Scylla and Charybdis on the path to certainty” (33). Thus, doubt involuntarily arises, very quickly reaching extreme limits, because the gaze does not find refuge anywhere. Each time the idea of ​​obtaining certainty, establishing and proving necessity is broken with hope, and each time it again encounters the skeptical question of whether its initial position has been proven? And again the Scylla of incoherent and self-negative reality and the perpetuum mobile of reason appear before her. What results is “a frantic stamping on the spot, throwing from side to side, some kind of inarticulate philosophical cry” (37). “I don’t have the truth, but the idea of ​​it burns me. I do not have the data to assert that there is Truth at all, and that I will receive it... However, it is also unreliable that I expect Truth. Maybe, and this only seems, And besides, maybe the punishment itself is not a punishment? Asking myself the last question, I see into the last circle of skeptical hell - into a department where the very meaning of words is lost. Words cease to be fixed and are torn from their nests... Here the mind loses itself, is lost in a formless and unsettled abyss. There is feverish delirium and stupidity running around here” (38). Isn't this complete despair? How can it be! “I don’t know whether there is Truth or not. But I feel with all my gut that I can’t live without her” (67). An unquenchable thirst for Truth lives within me, and it is so great that it overcomes despair, and hope always continues to glimmer in me. It is this hope, growing out of man’s boundless love for the Truth, that one must cling to, says the priest. Florensky. Perhaps, after all, a series of unreliable and questionable positions will lead to the reliable, to the Truth (39)? If you ask about how this “maybe” itself is justified, then you will have to answer that, perhaps, nothing, and all the more clearly emphasize the problematic nature of your position. “If there was Truth, then we could look for it. Maybe we will find it, walking some path at random, and then maybe it will declare itself to us as such, as the Truth” (40). And so “I walk gropingly, all the time remembering that my steps have no meaning. I will try, at my own risk, to grow something at random, guided not by philosophical skepticism, but by my own feeling, and while the weather permits, I will incinerate it with pyrrhonic lava. Inside myself, I have a secret hope - hope for a miracle, here the lava flow will recede in front of my sprout, and the plant will turn out to be a burning bush” 307 (41). So, go ahead - at random, and at the risk of breaking your neck, but with inner hope for a good outcome! Let's try to understand what the Truth should have been if it existed. Perhaps our construction will be consistent with experience? After all, in desperation you have to clutch at the first straw you come across! Truth must be absolutely real and at the same time absolutely proven, reasonable, and is “intuition-discourse.” In other words, it is “finite infinity and infinite finitude, or actual infinity. Infinite, conceived as an integral Unity, as a single, complete Subject... She is the unity of the opposite” (42‒43). And so, if such a Truth turned out to actually exist, then the law of identity, which destroys itself on the basis of reason, would receive new life and complete justification. Namely: “Carnal, dead and life-giving in its statics, it can be spiritual, alive and life-giving in its dynamics. To the question “why A is A,” we answer: “because A is A, because, eternally being not A, in this not A it finds its affirmation as A (47). From here it is clear what the essence of Truth is: “Truth is the relationship of the Three,” “the endless act of the Three in Unity” (49). In all these overlaps and reasoning, the theoretical despair of our venerable author is revealed with even greater force than before, and is really beginning to turn into emotional despair, not on paper, but in reality. And above all, he uses in the most energetic way the same reason on which he has just decisively imposed his veto. 308 After all, according to his own assurance, the characteristic property of reason is conventionality, problematism, and yet he makes a conditional construction. And what guides him in doing so? Yes, by his own admission, some kind of vague confidence, hope for a successful outcome. Well, it’s kind of like if a person took poison, and then, guided by the vague hope of being saved, he took it and took it again and again. What would we say then? Why, this man lost all understanding in despair, and that’s all! And you can’t say anything more in this case, since no matter how many conditional constructions “at random” or “with a bang” you do, you will still stagnate in the sphere of “rational sterility, emptiness and insignificance.” All statements about the possible essence of Truth, and the possible justification of the law of identity as a product of reason, are “empty”, “sterile” and “dead”, they are “ill-fated schemes”, nothing more. But not only that, but the author’s probabilistic construction, leaving aside that it is a fruit of reason and that it is conditioned by the unproven existence of truth, is still subject to doubt in itself and as such. Each of its constituent statements has not yet been proven as such, but when attempting to prove it, it inevitably entails either an endless regressus in infinitum, 309 or a stop at blind intuition, i.e., it leads to exactly what gave rise to the author’s initial skepticism. But our author’s despair is so great that he turns a blind eye to all this. Like an ostrich in mortal danger, burying its head in the sand, it dissociates itself from the reality represented by its position and seeks salvation in a sweet dream. 5. And, of course, it immediately produces results! If truth exists, then it is beyond reason, inaccessible to reason and blind intuition, and is the One Trinity: “Truth, contemplation of Oneself through another in the Third: Father, Son, Spirit” (48). “Therefore, reason on its own would never have come to the possibility of such a combination,” and this is after exactly how it all was constructed probabilistically. This is the theoretical salto mortale. 310 Only the authority of “He Who Has Power” can be a reference point for efforts. Having trusted and believed that here, in this effort, is the Truth, the mind must renounce its limitations within the limits of reason... become a “new” mind. This is where free feat is required... Self-determination is needed, faith is needed (60). While bleeding, I will say in tension: credo quia absurdum est. 311 I don’t want anything, I don’t want anything of my own, I don’t even want my mind. You are alone - You alone. Die animae meae: salus tua Ego sum! 312 However, not my will, but yours, be done. Trinity One, have mercy on me! (61). Faith is the bridge that should lead to the Truth. I don’t know whether he will lead to it, but I believe, I hope that he will, that the Truth will be revealed in this way, and thereby make me understand himself as the Truth (61 ff., 66 ff.). And so, “I leave the edge of the abyss, and with a firm step I run up onto the bridge, which, perhaps, will collapse under me. I entrust my destiny, my mind, the very soul of the entire quest - the demand for authenticity - into the hands of the Truth Itself. For her sake, I refuse proof” (69) and only believe, believe... And, of course, the bridge does not fail, for “faith always succeeds” (72). “It is not intuition or discourse that gives knowledge of the Truth. It arises in the soul from the free revelation of the Trinitarian Truth Itself, from the gracious visit of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of such a visit is a free act of faith, absolutely impossible for human selfhood and accomplished through attraction by the Father who is in Heaven” (95). “Only by having dogma in our consciousness, that is, an analysis communicated by God himself, can we see in the Divine light the implementation of this dogma” (107). “The intelligent light is the light of the Trinitarian Deity Himself, the Divine essence, which is not just given, but is self-given” (96). Thus, theoretical despair, brought to the maximum, is transformed into confidence brought to the maximum: the “philosophical cry”, combined with life’s horror and suffering, is so painful and unbearable that it gives rise to a passionate desire for something else, and the desire is correspondingly so strong that it gives rise to an answer and justification from itself. When a person is hungry and he really wants to eat, he can forget himself for a while, imagining, and precisely thanks to his strong desire, various dishes. However, the path is sacred. Florensky is even more similar to the behavior of a dervish, who, in order to break away from the bustle of the world, begins to spin and jump furiously, and does so until complete exhaustion plunges him into half-sleep, characterized by a trance. Well, he too is then transported to another world, full from the point of view of the earthly mind, of contradictions and inexplicabilities, but in itself, when experienced through experience, it is undoubtedly emotionally integral and rich. And perhaps some thinker will someday decide to invite himself to elevate himself to this experience in order to free himself from the Scylla and Charybdis of the earthly mind. Well, may God grant him success. It is quite understandable that, having established himself on such an emotional plane, and finally brushing aside the doubts that were devouring him, the priest. Florensky finds it possible to calmly affirm the givenness of Truth, correcting it only into self-givenness (and this after recognizing any givenness, blind, finite and powerless), and recognizing rational intuition as the organ of its perception (96) (and this after rational intuition was rejected by him in principle, and with disdain (33)). Further, one should not be surprised that our author’s reason gets a lot of work in the future, either constructing a logical “theory of antinomies” (148 ff.), or working on explaining various basic problems of theodicy - sin, Gehenna, creatures, etc. (although, in the author’s words: “it began to seem that it was necessary to throw away everything of one’s own, and print only church works” (5). It is quite natural that joy unexpected salvation after a seemingly hopeless situation “his eyes are clouded and his mind is clouded”! 6. But, perhaps, nowhere is this darkness from despair and joy reflected with such clarity as in the historical and philosophical assessment that the author expresses regarding the central teaching of his book - regarding the doctrine of the Trinity Truth and the law of identity. True, in general he is inclined to speak about his book with extreme modesty: he himself testifies that it is based on the “dogmatic system” of St. Athanasius the Great (348 ff.), and that its content is only a retelling in philosophical terms of what he read in the Holy Scriptures (222). But this does not in the least prevent him from declaring that the proposed doctrine of the law of identity is “the main discovery of Fr. Archimandrite Serapion Mashkin" (47). In itself, such a statement does not contain anything incredible or amazing: why not Fr. S. Mashkin and not create anew a wonderful teaching, or even a new wonderful religious system? You never know, even now there are almost forgotten or little-known thinkers who have made an enormous, but not yet properly appreciated, contribution to philosophy (or to religious philosophy). Take, for example, Maimon 313 or Rosmini. 314 Who knows, for example, the name of this last one? And yet, this colossus is equal to Fichte and Hegel. But what is amazing and incredible is that St. Florensky recognizes the proposed doctrine of the law of identity, which he borrowed from Fr. S. Mashkin, for the “main discovery” of this latter, while it is entirely contained in Fichte and Hegel. Some passages treating this topic seem straight out of the works of these thinkers, but only in their own words. And all this, not with silence (at least) about the philosophy of German idealism, but with the indiscriminate recognition of it as a rational, dead and schematic philosophy, suffering from precisely the same deficiency, which the priest has to heal. Florensky intends to borrow from Fr. Mashkin’s teaching, borrowed by the latter, in turn, undoubtedly, from the German idealists. In the same way, being at the mercy of his philosophical and religious emotions, our author does not notice his close kinship with German idealism and in a number of his other teachings and answers. So, for example, his presentation of how reason must be surpassed, and Truth revealed on its own, is extremely reminiscent of Fichte’s teaching on the “annihilation of the concept.” In the same way, Fichte builds his “scientific teaching” according to the scheme of a probabilistic technique. And the teaching about Truth as love, which the saint dwells on so thoroughly. Florensky, contained entirely in Fichte. The doctrine of Truth as a “self-proving Subject” was developed in detail by the American idealist Royce. 315 Etc. Yes, it is dangerous to follow the guidance of feelings, desires and hopes in the inquiries of philosophy. After all, it is so easy to get into trouble and commit blatant injustice in the assessment! 7. Finally, in everything stated there is a sacred. Florensky has another side that reveals the despair that controls him, perhaps not quite clearly and directly, but certainly in a tragic way. This is his very religious faith, on which his entire book is built. After all, from everything said by St. P. Florensky, it clearly follows that the path of knowledge of the Truth is the path of faith: “Only by believing in the Son and receiving in Him the promise of the Holy Spirit, the believer will know who the Father is” (95), only faith is the revelation of invisible things, only faith is the Trinitarian Divine Truth revealed. Why then is a significant part of his book occupied not with preaching the unartificial Christian faith, not with a simple and accurate broadcast of the Gospel, but with a complex and intricate network of rational proofs, directed mainly against reason? After all, the author himself, regarding all the essential aspects of the Divine Truth, comes to the assertion that these are mysteries, incomprehensible and inaccessible to the rational mind of man, and he himself is convinced, for example, that “the power of the Gospel is that it is accessible to everyone, does not require interpretation” (418). Why all these convulsive attempts to rationally show a person the essence, necessity and path of faith? The answer is already completely obvious, the author’s faith is not so strong as to stand on its own feet alone, so as not to be afraid of reason, and not constantly think about the danger on its part. The author's faith needs, strange and suicidal as it may seem, confirmation by reason, rational proof of the inconsistency of reason and the need for faith. This is not a bright, crystalline, naive faith of spontaneity, knowing no hesitation, and imperiously directed upward, but a faith of rational probabilism, and therefore probabilistic faith. The origin of faith, as depicted in his work by the priest. Florensky, which is at the same time both a confession and a treatise, that is, both a subjective recognition and an objective analysis, not only spontaneous, but forced - forced first by theoretical, and then by practical and general spiritual despair. Reason shows rationally its complete inconsistency, and points to faith as an outcome from despair. This is the only reason why the priest speaks. Florensky: let there be faith! But this is a complete dominance of reason, and, moreover, a reckless one! 8. Creation of the Holy Florensky, as was already said at the beginning, is the standard work of our newest religious and philosophical movement. It represents him more centrally, more fundamentally and more characteristically than anything else. And it is clear that it most powerfully expresses the main motive of the movement - the terrible, stunning mental despair that gave birth to it, and which completely controls it. The remarkable external fate of some of the ideas of this teaching is the fate of forever wandering, moving from one decision to another, and not finding peace anywhere. It is precisely this wandering that is recorded by the priest. Florensky theoretically: eternal painful oscillation between faith and reason, reason and faith, eternal life in their endless quarrel. Here primitive healthy stability disappeared without a trace; There is no trace of, so to speak, theoretical integrity here. All the bolts of spiritual life here have become loose, the nuts have become unscrewed, the organism of the spirit has relaxed and settled down. And the only way to push yourself, and find at least a momentary deliverance from hopelessness, is the ability to set yourself up so rationally that it seems as if reason has been defeated, to set yourself up so religiously that it seems as if the object of faith has been proven. Doubt is generally not a bad thing in life; it is always useful to doubt a little. Doubt in philosophy is a very good thing, even necessary. But in philosophical doubt one must know when to stop. Or rather, going to the end in it, you need to not lose your head, not relax and not get unscrewed, but always keep the reins in your hand, always remain the helmsman. As bad and harmful as in life and in philosophy is dogmatism, alien to any doubt, characteristic of both some religious thinkers and a number of representatives of the so-called scientific philosophy, just as bad and harmful both there and here is unbridled and unprincipled despair. The path of reason and philosophy follows these circuitous and unhealthy paths. Neither blind Sovereignty nor the spasms of despair are known or loved. Calmly and seriously, he gives himself the deepest account of everything he encounters, including himself, and thereby achieves the highest - critical confidence. All thinkers have followed this reasonable path, but among them no one has yet walked it more consciously, more completely and systematically than Fichte and Hegel. N. A. Berdyaev 316. Stylized Orthodoxy (Father Pavel Florensky) 317 “The Pillar and Ground of Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy in twelve letters” by St. Pavel Florensky, the book is one of a kind, exciting, seductive. Until now, Russian theological literature has never known a book so refined and refined. This is the first phenomenon of aestheticism on the basis of Orthodoxy, which became possible only after the refined aesthetic culture of the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Every word is sacred. Florensky bears the stamp of experienced aesthetic decadence. (This is an “autumn book”, 318 in it the rustle of falling leaves sounds.) Exquisite flowers of Orthodoxy St. Florensky are possible only in the era when Huysmans became possible in Catholicism. 319 Unfortunately, it must be said that the priest. Florensky's aestheticism is not always accompanied by good taste. In some places, the spiritual rhetoric of the language of this book is tasteless, this is “I lit myself as nothing more than a splinter, or a penny candle of yellow wax”, “a flame trembling in unaccustomed hands”, “like fragrant dew on a fleece, like heavenly manna, the grace-filled power of a God-illuminated soul came out here”, “lighting up with the darkness of those and leodres of sparkling leodres, sparkling”, iridescently playing glances, shimmering with ravens of luminous splashes, the treasures of the Church bring my poor soul into awe,” etc. No matter how distant the priest is by nature. Florensky is from the “spiritual” world, but still the indelible stamp of “spiritual” eloquence lay on his manner of writing. At the priest's Florensky has no naivety (or spontaneity) in anything. How naive and (directly) the Orthodoxy of the Slavophiles was in comparison with the Orthodoxy of the priests. Florensky! In “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” there is nothing simple, immediate, not a single word that comes directly from the depths of the soul. Such books cannot act religiously. This exquisite book, so intelligent, so learned, is devoid of any inspiration. Priest Florensky cannot say a single word loudly, forcefully, or with inspiration. There is too much sense of reckoning with oneself, running away from oneself, fearing oneself. Everything seems to be holy. Florensky is a detached decadent, and therefore calls for everyday simplicity and naturalness, a spiritual aristocrat, and therefore calls for church democracy, because he is full of sinful inclinations to Gnosticism and occultism, and therefore so irreconcilably destroys all Gnosticism and occultism. One might think that as soon as he gives himself a little freedom, he will immediately give rise to an innumerable number of heresies, and chaos will be revealed. Artificiality and art are felt in everything. Such people should not preach. Priest Pavel Florensky is a brilliant, gifted, exquisitely intelligent and exquisitely learned stylizer of Orthodoxy; he does not have a single thought, not a single word that has not gone through stylization. His Orthodoxy is not living, not immediate, but stylized, not naive, but sentimental (in the Schiller sense). 320 This is the Orthodoxy of complex and refined aesthetic reflections, and not of direct creative life, the Orthodoxy of a period of decline, and not of flourishing. The whole spirit of the book is sacred. Florensky, there is stylized archaism, stylized primitivism. In the 20th century there cannot be anything archaic or primitive, and this stylization reaches the highest levels of art. Priest Florensky is an Alexandrian, 321 close in spirit not to archaic Greece, but to the late Hellenistic world. I do not dare to suspect the sincerity and depth of the religious life of the priest. Florensky, I don’t even think it’s possible to talk about it. I have no doubt about the authenticity and significance of the religious experiences of the author of “The Pillar and Statement of Truth,” but identifying these experiences in the form of archaic Orthodoxy is stylization. As a philosopher and theologian, as a writer and preacher, he is a stylizer of archaic Orthodoxy, he is a decadent. In this gifted and exquisitely subtle decadence lies the charm and seductiveness of the book. But this stylized simplicity, stylized quietness, stylized humility emanates an eerie deadness. A large and subtle mind, deep and refined scholarship - and creative impotence. How many artificial flowers, lifeless flowers, are planted by the priest. Florensky. How painful is this deadening restoration of the archaic style of Orthodoxy. The decadent isolation from the archaic Orthodox life is too felt, and therefore the stylization of this archaic life. Priest Florensky subtly thinks about love, but does not convey any love directly. There is so much traditional Orthodox malice towards people 322 and towards the world in his book, but in the form of a stylized, aesthetic indignation against heretical life and heretical thought. There is no living, hot indignation in his words. One senses in them a decadent, aesthetic indifference to evil and good. There is not a single line in his book that would breathe living, hot, real indignation against the evil of the world, would be a militant denunciation of evil, resistance to evil, untruth and injustice. In the writings of St. Florensky, a complete lack of a sense of world citizenship (not in the political, but in a much deeper sense). He is metaphysically asocial. With such stylized quietness and humility, one can open heresies everywhere, one can anathematize and be hostile to everything that is not “one’s own,” but one cannot passionately expose evil, be indignant against the evil of life and fight against it. Priest Florensky very consistently does not like the heroic principle; here he maintains the style, idealizing everyday, everyday life as more genuine and pleasing to God. For him, the heroic is only effect and panache; the heroic is not ontological; he does not see in the heroic a way out of “this world” into another, higher, genuine spiritual life. The denial of heroic life, and the aesthetic rapture of everyday life, the provincialism of life, the quietness of everyday life is very stylish for the archaic Orthodoxy of the priesthood. Florensky. It's all facing backwards. But no matter how hard he tries to style himself in the manner of simplicity, he has less simplicity than any of the Gnostics, for example, than Jacob Boehme, who had great simplicity of heart, spontaneity. In the humble aspiration of St. Florensky to present not “his” views and not “his” system, but the views and system of the Church, is a special pride and difficulty. “If here, in my work, there are any “my” views, it is only due to my thoughtlessness, ignorance or misunderstanding” (p. 360). At the priest's Florensky has very interesting views on overcoming Gnosticism, on the antinomy of truth, on Gehenna, on Sophia. There is a lot of his originality in these views, and it would be much more humbling if he were even proud of these views of his than with stylized humility considering them his “thoughtlessness and misunderstanding,” or passing them off as the voice of the Church itself. If he sincerely, not only for the sake of humility, considers all his views to be only “foolishness, misunderstanding and ignorance,” then there was nothing to philosophize and theosophize, there was nothing to write “the experience of Orthodox theodicy.” Every philosophy and every theosophy is essentially anthropological; it is always a revelation of wisdom in man and through man. A philosopher is always (in the literal sense of the word) a heretic, that is, a free chooser. Spitting on a person in himself, his own thoughts, his own understanding and his own knowledge, for a sustained style of humility can turn out to be humiliation more than pride. Priest Florensky offers us his “experience of Orthodox theodicy,” which he thought out and was uniquely substantiated, and there is no need to talk about his work as “thoughtlessness” and “misunderstanding.” This insults human dignity. Some of the priest’s “own” views. Florensky could be considered approaching genius if they were not so stylized. Stylization, alas, can be very talented, but it cannot be brilliant. Everything ingenious is immediate and simple, although perhaps incomprehensible to most. There was brilliant simplicity in Khomyakov’s ideas about the Church, to which the priest. Florensky is far away. He crushed within himself a wonderful scientist, mathematician, 324 philologist, perhaps a researcher of occult sciences. It addresses the particular rather than the universal. He loves fine, artistic, filigree work, detailed research, scientific miniatures. He is a jeweler. The creative synthesis in it is weaker. There is depth in it, but there is no flight, no width. A scientist, in the best sense of the word, and a kind of artist-stylizer, prevails in him over a thinker and philosopher. He flirts with his jewelery philological research. He has more literature than philosophy. Just as literariness in painting is unpleasant for someone who lovingly seeks pictorial revelations, so literariness in philosophy is unpleasant for someone who lovingly seeks philosophical revelations. Priest Florensky is still a scholastic, although in a more subtle, non-seminar sense of the word. There is no freedom and flight of a philosopher in him. There is Orthodox theodicy,” there is self-salvation imposed on oneself and on others, a bridle, and not a free search for truth and divine wisdom. There is no freedom in his ways of knowing. The most painful and unpleasant thing in the book of St. Florensky, his dislike for freedom, indifference to freedom, misunderstanding of Christian freedom, freedom in the Spirit. Even the word “freedom” is hardly used anywhere. Here in relation to the freedom of the human spirit, the priest. Florensky is a real “foolishness”, “misunderstanding” and “ignorance”. His religion is not the religion of freedom; the pathos of freedom is alien to him. This leaves a stamp on the entire book. “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is a stuffy, hothouse book. You can suffocate in this atmosphere of an underground church with low arches, hot, filled with the smell of wax candles and incense. When you read this suffocating book, you want to escape into the fresh air, into the vastness, into freedom, into the creativity of the free human spirit. At the priest's Florensky has some kinship with Pascal. This kinship is what makes it an interesting phenomenon. The chapter on doubt is the most brilliant and remarkable in his book. The epistemological description of the torments of skepticism, or what he calls ἐπоχή, is very strong and reminiscent of the description of hellish torments, the beginning of hell on earth. Only a person who himself has experienced the hellish torments of ἐπоχή, for whom overcoming skepticism is the most pressing and vital task, can write this way. He writes well and powerfully about these torments, and in this there is less stylization, for this exposes his skeptical nature, akin to Pascal. The epistemological transcription of the psychological experience of doubt is not as universally binding as the sacred one seems. Florensky, for not everyone is so sensitive to the captivity of the mind, which gives rise to the torment of ἐπоχή. I don’t even think that the pangs of doubt were so acute in our era. In our religious quests we are very free from reason and from ἐπоχή, from the delay of doubt. Analysis of doubts among the priest. Florensky, there is more brilliant psychology than epistemology. This is a wonderful study on religious psychology. Then psychology turns into theology for him, and a theology that is not free from the most fundamental scholasticism. He overcomes the pangs of doubt with the Trinity, the Triune Truth, and overcomes psychology with theology. According to sacred Florensky, every immanent path of knowledge, discursive or intuitive, equally leads to hell. He condemns to hellish torment everyone who follows the path of knowledge without accepting the transcendental Trinity. “It (the Trinity) is the last resort. If the Triune Truth itself does not exist, then where can we look for it?” (p. 69). He postulates the Triune Truth as the only way out of the torments of hell; he accepts the Triune God out of despair. Oddly enough, but the method is sacred. Florensky is reminiscent of Kant’s moral postulation of God, so alien to him. He accepts the hypothesis of the triune Truth and the triune God, transcendental to knowledge itself and to spiritual experience itself, in order to be saved from hellish despair. He does not know, but is saved. He admits the hypothesis of the Trinity, and only with this transcendental assumption is it possible to escape from the immanent torment of ἐπоχή. But the triune Truth and the triune God are not revealed in immanent spiritual life. Divine Truth is completely transcendental to spiritual experience. This, as will be seen, predetermines the attitude of the priest. Florensky to mysticism. He postulates the dogma of the Trinity as external to mystical experience, not revealed immanently in it, not as internal light and illumination, but as a transcendental saving hypothesis. Thus, epistemologically, he already affirms the external, transcendental nature of Divine Revelation to any spiritual, mystical experience. In the epistemological language of St. Florensky must be understood in such a way that it is impossible to immanently obtain light, truth, that every immanent, internal path of knowledge, even in the transition to mystical experience and higher spiritual life, leads to hell, to the devouring fire of ἐπоχή. If St. Florensky wanted to say that the light of Truth (not truths) is obtained through sacrifice, self-denial, crucifixion of rationality, then he would be sacredly right. The Last Truth is revealed through the One who said to himself: “I am the Truth.” To see this Truth, you need to give everything to Him, lay everything at His feet in order to receive everything from Him, renounce for Him - the Truth, all truths. But this is the immanent path of spiritual life, the path of the birth of Christ in the soul. Priest Florensky says otherwise. He does not want sacrificial transcendence, as a moment of religious experience, as a birth to a new spiritual life, he wants an absolutely transcendent, external revelation, he wants a transcription of religious experience in terms of transcendental ontology. In mystical life there is a passage through free death, an atoning sacrifice, Golgotha, but this is an immanent experience that does not know anything completely external [transcendent] for itself. And the triune Truth and the Triune God are holy. Florensky are completely [transcendent] in appearance. This strengthens the selfish psychology of religious immaturity. The method by which St. Florensky's proof that Truth is the Trinity turns out to be fatally scholastic. Refined religious psychology in his work turns into scholastic theology, the dogma of the Trinity as external, transcendental to mystical experience, inevitably turns out to be theological. Theology always rests on the idea of ​​external revelation and is [opposite] (different) from mysticism, as resting on the idea of ​​internal revelation. Theology is transcendentalism, mysticism is immanentism (in a deep sense). Priest Florensky is not at all as free from theological scholasticism as he would like and as he should be free. He only introduces disguised scholasticism from a different entrance. This is an inevitable punishment for any admission of dogma, both before and outside the spiritual life of mystical experience. Priest Florensky, as a refined person, wants experienced theology. But experienced theology cannot postulate external dogma and revelation transcendent to the human spirit. It sees the birth of God in man; it is no longer theology, but theosophy. [Theology has always been an expression of religious immaturity, authoritarianism, external transcendence in religious consciousness.] In the priest. Florensky's dogma of the triune Truth and the triune God is outwardly transcendental both in relation to the experience of knowledge and in relation to the experience of love, since both knowledge and love are possible only after the acceptance of this dogma. But if you completely free yourself from all authoritarianism in accepting dogma, then dogma will turn out to be only a transcription of internal religious experience, the internal path of love and knowledge, the path of passing through sacrifice with rationality and renunciation of self-affirmation by describing mystical encounters. It should also be noted that the epistemological teaching of St. Florensky that Truth is the Trinity gives rise to great epistemological difficulties. In fact, ἐπоχή is overcome not only by the Trinity. In essence, ἐπоχή is always overcome by an act of choosing and cutting will, cognitive eros. This cognitive will to Truth in many great philosophers produced light without direct acceptance of the Trinity. There is a priest here. Florensky is doomed to the [scholastic] imposition of the Trinity through experimental knowledge. Scholastic epistemology, although it began with living experience, fatally affected the attitude of the priests. Florensky to the Church and mysticism. He carefully stylizes himself in the manner of [purely Semitic] fanaticism. Church fanaticism has always been a manifestation of the Semitic spirit in Christianity, the spirit of division and self-praise: only “with us” everything is good and true. Priest Florensky exposes all heresies. But in his fanaticism there is no spontaneity and simplicity, he is incapable of passionate indignation, he is fanatically hostile to heresies for the Orthodox style, for the consistent system [of church Semitism] (orthodoxy). The attitude of the priest is very unpleasant. Florensky to quality. This is a repetition of Slavophile asses. It’s already awkward to repeat phrases that here, in the Orthodox East, everything is fine and prosperous, while in the West they have nothing but corruption. Priest Florensky himself knows very well that everything with us is [extremely] (very) unfavorable and unseemly, that factual, real Orthodoxy has too little in common with the ideal Orthodoxy of Khomyakov. And Khomyakov himself already knew this, but he still had naivety, everyday spontaneity, which there is not a trace of in the priest. Florensky. Yes, and too much has been experienced since the good Slavophile times, spiritual revolutions separate us from those times, too much has been revealed and laid bare. Now our untruth walks naked through the squares. But the whole style is sacred. Florensky does not want to know the religious realism of history. In any case, it is impermissible to consider all Catholic mysticism as the mysticism of the belly - as opposed to Orthodox mysticism, as the mysticism of the chest or heart. The memory of Francis's sacred heart rebels against this. [It is difficult to believe the authenticity of such a Semitic aversion to the “goyim”]. Priest Florensky cannot, in the depths of his soul, have this attitude towards the great saints and great mystics of the Western world, the world of “holy miracles.” Meanwhile, in his stylization of Orthodox [Orthodox-Semitic] fanaticism, he reaches such ugly phrases: “Here is the deep difference between Orthodox mysticism and heretical mysticism, always possessed by the spirit of fornication and corruption” (p. 342). If we take into account that it is not the heretical, church mysticism of the priest. Florensky reveres Orthodox mysticism only in the narrow and precise sense of the word, for example, St. Simeon the New Theologian or St. Macarius of Egypt, 325 then such righteous and pure mystics as Eckhart 326 and J. Boehme 327 [people of holy life], although without the official mark of holiness, will be possessed by the spirit of fornication and corruption. И святого Франциска, и св. Catherine of Siena 328 will have to be accused of fornication and corruption, since their mysticism is not Orthodox, that is, heretical. Such expressions are too careless and cannot be tolerated. Transcendental epistemology of the sacred. Florensky, which was mentioned above, leads him to an extreme exaggeration of the importance of dogmas in religious life, dogmas as appearance. Here we come to the fundamental flaw of the entire religious philosophy of the saints. Florensky, his entire concept of the Church. As a new and subtle person, priest. Florensky, of course, recognizes only experimental theology; he is turned to spiritual life, and cannot help but despise seminary scholasticism. But here he gets confused. On the one hand, dogmas are revealed in spiritual experience, in spiritual life, on the other hand, dogmas are a criterion for healthy and correct spiritual experience, spiritual life. Dogmas are immanently revealed in spiritual experience, and dogmas are transcendentally imposed on spiritual experience. Priest Florensky is very suspicious and suspicious of spiritual experience, of life in the spirit; he demands tireless church-dogmatic testing of the spirit. The spiritual may turn out to be spiritual, the divine - human, arbitrariness and self-affirmation. And so I ask: where are the formal signs of spirituality for the priests? Florensky, how does he know what is truly spiritual and what is not? For him, the religious criterion of spirituality and life in the spirit is church, dogmatic consciousness. But from the very first pages of the book, St. Florensky is clear that, following Khomyakov, he does not recognize any external, formal criteria for churchliness. “The indefinability of Orthodox churchliness is the best proof of its vitality... What is churchliness? This is new life, life in the Spirit. What is the criterion for the correctness of this life? – Beauty” (p. 7). But if churchliness is life in the Spirit, and if the criterion of correct church life is Beauty! then why, for example, was J. Boehme not in the church, why did he not live in the Spirit? According to the external, formal criteria of churchliness, J. Boehme was a Lutheran and a Gnostic heretic before the court of official Catholic and Orthodox consciousness; according to the criteria of Spirit and Beauty, he was a genuine church Christian. Why, according to the internal criteria of Spirit and Beauty, should many mystics, people of righteous life, genuine life in Spirit and Beauty, who do not fit in according to external, formal, official criteria, be excommunicated from church life and recognized as heretics? I think that Khomyakov’s understanding of the Church as life in the Spirit, in love and freedom leads to very radical consequences. Khomyakov’s concept of the Church does not allow for any external authority, any materialization of unexplored spiritual life on the physical plane, no obligation for spiritual life not only by the voice of the pope, but also by the voice of the synod and patriarchs. In Khomyakov's concept there was an eternal, enduring truth, exceeding the temporary, historical appearance of Slavophilism. But the priest Florensky sits between two chairs, and his consciousness is torn apart by painful duality, not antinomy, but duality and ambiguity. Churchliness does not have any external, formal signs and criteria; it is life in Spirit and Beauty. This is one thesis of the priest. Florensky. His other thesis, which he uses throughout the book, sounds like this: only that life in the Spirit and Beauty is religiously permissible, correct, justified, which is churchly according to the formal, external criteria of churchliness. Everything non-Orthodox in the literal, religious, external formal sense of the word is suspicious, unhealthy, all delusion and even fornication. But here I strongly suggest St. Florensky must choose between these two theses, not sit between two chairs. As a new man, a modernist, a sophisticated mystic by design, he values ​​the first thesis, and complements Khomyakov’s understanding of churchliness with the criterion of Beauty. As a stylist of archaic Orthodoxy, a guardian of antiquity, the faith of our fathers and the way of life of our fathers, as one who is being saved, he also clings to the second thesis. He is not capable of heroic choice, like any decadent, and is not capable of creative synthesis. He finds a stylistic way out. The spiritual elders, so to speak, “have become skilled” in recognizing the good quality of spiritual life. The taste is Orthodox, the Orthodox appearance is felt, but it is not subject to arithmetic calculation. Orthodoxy is shown, but not proven” (p. 8). [Alas, not only Orthodox taste is felt, but Orthodox tastelessness is too often felt, felt, probably, by the priest himself. Florensky]. He imposes his aesthetics on everyday, actual Orthodoxy. And it’s a great pity that the priest himself. Florensky became skilled at recognizing and exposing heresies. Behind any exposure of heresies and anathematization, it is too easy to reveal not only ill will, but also malice, the Muslim spirit in Christianity. True gnosis only begins when interest in heresy and orthodoxy disappears. The direction of the will towards the preservation of orthodoxy and the exposure of heresy closes the path of gnosis for the church consciousness. Orthodox faith degenerates into a completely external, formal criterion, hostile to any movement of spiritual life. Transcendentism degenerates into formalism, into an external barrier to inner life, into a police measure against immanent spiritual experience - the experience of love and knowledge in spiritual freedom. Priest Florensky, of course, admits that dogmas are of experimental origin. Dogmas - facts, mystical encounters. Dogma is not an external revelation, not an external reality, but an internal revelation, an insight immanent in the human spirit. Dogmatic formulas provided only an ontological transcription of religious experience; they were a democratic expression and consolidation of stable and eternal elements of religious experience. And in dogmas there is absolute, eternal truth. But that dogma is deadening, in which statics are directed against dynamics, some elements of religious experience destroy other elements, that is, experience ossifies, is absolutized statically. Transcendentism - the non-divinity of man and the world, the distance between man and God, the world and God, is an inevitable moment of religious experience, an inevitable passage through splitting, polar division. And only the experimental transcription of transcendentalism is true. Any ontological transcription of transcendentalism, any absolutization of it contains the danger of a static delay in religious experience. Absolute transcendentism is [religious Semitism] the Old Testament. The New Testament is immanentism, the Gospel message is the message about the immanence of God to the human spirit. And a purely transcendental ontology in Christianity is still an Old Testament heritage. (Abstract) transcendentalism is a religious immaturity. The entire transcendental teaching about the creation of the world and man, the entire orthodox theology, cosmology and anthropology of Christianity is biblical, Old Testament [Jewish] (Judaic), and not New Testament. The antinomy of the transcendental and the immanent is removed in the mature Christian consciousness and overcome in the new Adam. (The transcendental exists, but it is given in immanent experience, it is only transcendence). The most valuable thing in the book of St. Florensky, this is his doctrine of antinomy. 329 Religious life is essentially antinomic; it contains for the mind incompatible and contradictory theses, and mysteriously removes these contradictions. 330 The antinomy of the transcendental and the immanent is rationally insoluble and irresistible; it is lived out in religious experience and removed there. In the highest insight, opposites are combined. Everything that the priest says. Florensky on antinomy, excellent, these are the best pages of his book, very deep in places. But he himself does not consistently pursue this antinomy and strays onto a completely different path. Thus, the extreme absolutization and dogmatization of transcendentalism is already a betrayal of that antinomian religious life, in which weighty transcendentalism is mysteriously united with immanentism. Priest Florensky wants to traditionally and orthodoxly resolve in transcendental ontology and dogmatics what can only be resolved in religious experience. Transcendentism and immanentism are antinomic moments of religious experience, and not ontology, not metaphysics, not dogmatics. Priest Florensky is too platonist, and therefore a dualist. Church platonism [is] (may turn out to be) an absolutized, statized dualism, establishing a stop, a delay, a boundary in spiritual experience. Heavenly, divine reality turns out to be transcendental to earthly human reality; there is no movement in spiritual life, in religious experience, which does not know absolute barriers and obstacles. There is abyss and distance everywhere. Platonism was great and luminous for the pagan world, but for the Christian world it [is dangerous and bitter in its fruits], and can give birth to materialism as the reverse side of Platonism. Platonistic dualism creates a fearful and suspicious attitude towards spiritual experience. Only that spiritual experience seems sacred. Florensky authentic and healthy, which has the official mark of holiness. But what should we, poor sinners, do? Are we able to dare to live a higher spiritual life? Every initiative in spiritual life, every boldness to live in the Holy Spirit. Florensky suspects pride and human arbitrariness. But holiness, which later received official recognition and was statically revered in the iconographic faces of saints, was at one time a daring initiative. Priest Florensky involuntarily strays into formal, official criteria of holiness. As a stylist of archaic Orthodoxy, he prefers the “humility” of everyday, everyday life in sin - the “pride” of spiritual ascent, the daring of too long spiritual voyages, the style of the Russian elders, who taught to bear the burden of obedience to the disasters of sin, to humble oneself before the “world” so lenient towards the philistine middle of human life 331]. The doctrine of sin degenerates into hostility towards the spiritual movement, spiritual ascent. Where is spiritual life for us, sinners, for us little ones? What is needed is humility, and not an increase in spiritual life, not the discovery of other worlds; what is needed is bearing the burdens of the “world,” and not overcoming the “world,” not liberation from the “world,” and not the creation of a new life. This is the line of spiritual democratization of Christianity, hostility to its spiritual aristocracy.” This is the adaptation of Christianity to the middle of humanity to the “world.” This is Christian exoterism, to which St. Florensky cannot by nature surrender to the end, and which he connects with some allusions to Christian esotericism (see p. 418). But he goes too far in his stylization of democratic, everyday, archaic Orthodoxy, further than he himself would like, because he himself is different, and he is drawn to something else. The duality of the sacred is felt all the time. Florensky: a spiritual aristocrat styles himself in a democratic way. The degeneration of humility carries with it a great religious and moral danger; it stands as an obstacle to the fulfillment of Christ’s covenant: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This false humility retards spiritual growth and leaves us in the lower planes of life. This is not the Gospel, not the New Testament pathos of the infinite closeness of man and God, and endless movement in spiritual life, this is the pathos of infinite distance, the transcendental abyss between man and God. The final limit of this humility, this belittling transcendental dualism, must be vital materialism and positivism, the gap between religion and life. Priest Florensky is very well aware that the nature of the Spirit has not been sufficiently revealed in Christianity. “In general, on average, in the ordinary, the personal life of a Christian, outside of its highest ascents, and the everyday life of the Church, minus the chosen ones of Heaven, know little, vaguely and dimly the Holy Spirit as a Person. And with this is connected the insufficient, not always constant knowledge of the heavenly nature of creation” (p. 111). “This is not an accident of the history of theology, but an immutable sequence in the fulfillment of hours and deadlines, a necessary and indispensable discovery of the relatively dim revelation of the Spirit as a Hypostasis, which was lacking in life itself” (p. 118). “Like some kind of fabric, like some kind of body from the finest star rays is woven in the world’s foundations: something is waiting. There is something missing, something the soul is yearning for, wanting to be resolved and to be with Christ” (p. 128). Priest Florensky is a new soul, and he cannot help but have these aspirations, these expectations and quests. (He is also waiting for a new revelation of the Spirit.) But he is so afraid of himself, and so stylizes himself in an Orthodox-archaic manner, that his search for the revelation of the Spirit is timid. He is too frightened by the impotence and failures of the “new religious consciousness.” He is afraid of every initiative in the revelation of the Spirit, of every human boldness in spiritual life. But the spirit is revealed in man and humanity through man and humanity. The revelation of the Spirit cannot be a transcendental voice from above and from without, it is an immanent voice within, in the depths. The Spirit cannot reveal itself outside of human activity, outside the tension of human nature, for life in the Spirit is theanthropic life, the joint action of God and man. Priest Out of fear, Florensky condemns a person to passive waiting, to which no end is in sight. He consoles himself with the fact that a new revelation of the Spirit is already beginning in St. Seraphim, from Elder Ambrose 332 and other Russian elders, and does not want to put on himself the burden of revealing the Spirit, to accept responsibility. The saints and elders must act for us, but we can only wait passively and humble ourselves. But with all the desire, Elder Ambrose and other elders cannot find “new, hitherto almost unprecedented, pink rays of the coming Day of the Unfading.” Elder Zosima has this in the brilliant creative insights of Dostoevsky, but not in the real Ambrose [who bore the burden and burden of the “world” and was not free from dull everyday life]. Face of St. Seraphim is the only bright one, but it is difficult to connect him with new aspirations. At the priest's Florensky does not even have the beginnings of that genuine new consciousness that the world is now entering an era of anthropological revelation, the initiative of which must be taken upon himself by man himself, at his own risk and fear, that divine revelation passes inside man and continues through him. This is entering the age of religious majority. Priest Florensky clings to religious minority, to church democracy. He is terrified of breaking away from churchliness, such as it is revealed on the physical plane of existence. He wants to retain and protect physical corporeality, the materiality of religious life, i.e. to remain and to leave others in the childhood period of Christianity. He deliberately turns a blind eye to the deep fluctuations and upheavals of the physical plane of existence, the physical corporeality of life, the materiality of human life. In the global, cosmic process, a person outgrows that relative stability of physical, material life, which seemed absolutely stable. This physical plane of life turned out to be not being, but being. The painful crisis of the transition of material, physical manifestations, and symbols to the identification of a higher spiritual life affects all spheres. This is a global crisis. It has a painful impact on the life of the church. The authoritarian church system, strengthened on dualistic, transcendental, platonic metaphysics, supported (often) the materialism of everyday life in the ways of educating humanity. Nowadays the Church is decomposing its physical, material flesh, its manifestations on the physical plane, always historically relative. In the life of the Church, a world turning point is mysteriously taking place towards the revelation of the Spirit in man, the turning to the spiritual flesh. And the inert physical flesh of churchliness is at enmity against any search for a higher spiritual life, detaining a person at the lower, infantile levels. Materialistic churchliness reveals the face of a baby, wrinkled with age. But mystical, hidden traditions have always been alive in the Church, and behind the materialistic, democratic face of the Church there has always been hidden an eternal, absolute, mysterious face, which the gates of hell cannot overcome. In the era of fluctuations and stratifications of the physical plane of existence, in the era of the cosmic whirlwind, scattering all material and everyday stability, the spiritual flesh of the Church, its eternal face, its innermost essence must come to light. But the priest Florensky doesn’t want this, he’s afraid of it. He stylizes himself surprisingly consistently and with restraint in the manner of materialistic churchliness. He is for “peace” and “naturalness” against excessive spirituality, for the way of life of the fathers against liberation in the Spirit. He is the enemy of the spiritual thirst to be freed from the “world”, from physical sexual life, from meat food, from all the burdens of materialistic life. It is good to abstain from sexual life, but it is bad to be spiritually free from the physical life of sex, to overcome it with spiritual love. It's good to fast, but it's bad to be a vegetarian. How characteristic is this idealization of folk-organic life in contrast to everything intellectual and cultural. But what was natural among the Slavophiles was stylized among the priests. Florensky. After all, there is no longer an organically beautiful way of life for peasants, merchants, and nobles. This is too late a romance. Everything decomposes and disperses in material-clan life; there is nothing to protect in it. With Old Testament pathos in everything and always sacred. Florensky defends the law and the legal, and most of all he fears spiritual freedom. For him, the cosmic is the natural, the complete. He is so afraid of the old flesh of the world that he remains under the law, in obedience to the consequences of sin. But no matter how the priest styles himself. Florensky is a type of orthodox right-wing Orthodox, he cannot escape accusations of heresies, freethinking, and innovations. The old, external, materialistic churchliness will not accept the teachings of the saints. Florensky about Gehenna, about Sophia and many others. Priest Florensky is too original, really original. I would even say that St. Florensky is an original in his entire way of thinking, reaching almost to the point of eccentricity. This is interesting about him, at times cute, at times repulsive. But [orthodox] (official) churchliness cannot tolerate anything original; she is offended by any spiritual independence. The teaching of the priest. Florensky's account of Gehenna is positively original, interesting and, probably, unorthodox; in it one will still find elements of hated Origenism, a kind of Gnosticism, and a denial of the orthodox torments of hell. But no matter how brilliant the teaching of St. Florensky about Gehenna, no matter how it rises above the too crude ideas of church materialism, it still contains the absolutization of individual moments of religious experience, the transformation of the religious path into ontology. The experience of the horror of death and the thirst for salvation are stages of the religious path, moments of religious experience through which the Christian soul must pass, and not an absolute and final ontology. The psychology of death is possible, but the ontology of death is impossible, just as the ontology of absolute transcendentalism is incorrect. The question of Gehenna is a question of the journey of the soul. There is simply no Orthodox church solution to the question of the origins of the soul and the destinies of the soul, of the soul’s accompaniment to the cosmic process; there is an empty place, a yawning abyss at the beginning and the end. Priest Florensky is too smart and subtle a person not to feel this. And he timidly and cautiously speaks of some kind of pre-existence of the soul, 333 although he is afraid of the very word “pre-existence” as compromised by Origen. But he did not connect the eschatological question of Gehenna with the question of the pre-existence of the soul, its origins. А это ведь один и тот же вопрос. Priest Florensky is a miniaturist in the study of individual issues, and he lacks synthesis. It must be said frankly that in the church consciousness the question of reincarnation and the connection of the soul with cosmic development has not been completely resolved. It is only clear that the Eastern teaching about karma is unacceptable for the Christian consciousness, since the law of karma is the fate of an unredeemed soul that has not received the free grace of Christ the Redeemer. But the Christian reworking of the doctrine of reincarnation is the task of Christian gnosis. Through Christ's grace the soul is freed from the law of karma, and its achievements exceed all natural evolution. The question of Gehenna must be transferred from the phase of infantile transcendentalism to the phase of mature immamentism. But the priest Florensky deliberately turns a blind eye to this, and yet he cannot escape accusations of heresy, for any independent and free expression is “heretical.” The final chapters of The Pillar and Ground of Truth deal with friendship and jealousy. In letters about friendship and jealousy, all the pathos of the book. The priest sees friendship. Florensky the purely human element of churchliness. He says a lot of good and beautiful things about friendship, but it is immensely far from Orthodox reality, in which it is difficult to find the pathos of friendship. This is from the priest. Florensky completely individually, lyrically, he justifies ancient feelings. In fact, in [Orthodox] (official church) life, the pathos of ill will and condemnation is much stronger than the pathos of friendship and love. And this is not because human nature is sinful, but also because degenerate forms of quasi-Orthodox consciousness carry with them a destructive hostility towards man and everything human. But this ill-will does not make the divine triumph in the least in life, rather the opposite. Only positive goodwill towards man and the human helps to reveal the divine in man. It is very significant and significant that St. Florensky ends his book with an apology for jealousy. In this pathetic apology there is an element of originality, but the praise of zeal is internally necessary for the consistency of the spiritual style of the book. The pathos of jealousy is [Semitic pathos] (Old Testament), jealousy in its religiously in-depth understanding has a [Semitic] (Judaistic) nature [and a Semitic source. The pathos of jealousy is necessary for the style of Semitic churchliness]. Jealousy is fanaticism, a sense of ownership, the will to divide. 334 In everyday life, jealousy wants to have an owner only for itself, loves only its own, its own circle, its own home. In religious life, jealousy gives rise to the claim that the spirit does not breathe where it wants, 335 but only among “us.” 336 Jealousy in church life was an eternal source of fanaticism, hatred, and malice. This was a manifestation of [the Semitic spirit in Christianity, the old] spirit of jealousy of Yahweh towards his people Israel, and the people of Israel towards their Yahweh. [In religious zeal there is always a sense of religious immaturity, as in religious fear]. But humanity must go through this. Jealousy should not be confused with a knightly sense of loyalty and militant defense of one's truth (a feeling that is more Aryan than Semitic). Spiritual style of the priest. Florensky should sing the praises of jealousy, but he is hostile to the spirit of chivalry. Our church life has too little chivalric nobility and too much false jealousy, false fanaticism, false condemnation. Fanatical jealousy, often combined with betrayal, replaces positive religious feelings and an instructive spiritual life. In jealousy and fanaticism there is a false hysterical excitement [which is so terrifying in our “true Russian” people]. In contrast to the priest's apology for jealousy. Florensky, I would like to write an apology for nobility. We need the pathos of nobility most of all. For the noble origin of a person obliges. We must choose the path of perfection, similar to the perfection of the Heavenly Father, of spiritual development, the path of the Gospel, the path of the great mystics, which reduces the distance between man and God, or the path of false humility and obedience, which increases the distance between man and God, detaining us in the lower classes. The first path is more spiritual, the second path is more soulful, only the first path is divine-human, presupposes the creative activity of man, and the nobility of the human spirit. Book of the Holy Florensky is a wonderful book, it is read with captivating interest. Her despondent spirit is not immediately and easily recognized. [Deeply] (Very) hostile to the new religious life, the creative spirit. Priest Florensky, with enormous spiritual efforts, suppressed the sprouts of a new life in himself, killed the new soul within himself. For him, the stylization of Orthodoxy is a serious constraint, a serious self-restraint, and not an aesthetic pleasure. Why his (complex) spiritual experience did not find adequate and direct expression is the mystery of his individuality. What remains known is that St. Florensky wrote an elegant and stylized book for the few, inaccessible and obscure. Stylized Orthodoxy is unlikely to satisfy him in the old Orthodox world, immersed in material life; it is unlikely to be understandable to this non-spiritual “spiritual world.” “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is probably the last experience of “Orthodox theodicy” on the threshold of the birth of a new religious life. The artificially stylized and poisonous flowers of the “Orthodox theodicy” for those seeking the highest [point] (of life), now have value only by contradiction. Book of the Holy Florensky [nobody needs it, it] is just a document of a soul running away from itself. [Religious] (spiritual) coming of age, spiritual liberation is coming. And the priest The spirit of freedom is so alien, so unknown to Florensky. His book, which deals with the basic questions of Christian consciousness, does not even touch upon the religious problem of man, of man’s creative vocation in the world, of anthropological revelation. (this book says almost nothing about Christ.) For the priest. Florensky Christianity is still not a divine-human religion; it still has a monophysite bias characteristic of Orthodoxy. It is also necessary to note the wonderful chapters about Sophia. Priest Florensky is a representative of the sophiological movement in theology, coming from Fr. Sergius Bulgakov. In the main part he continues the tradition of Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, i.e. struggles in his own way with the idea of ​​eternal hellish torment. This could not please official theology, but in this Fr. Florensky is a typical Russian. One can only grieve that the great natural gifts of the sacred. Florensky [cannot give] (gave little) fruit that a person who has done enormous spiritual work is so powerless to create: he is a victim of irreligious paths of life, fleeing in horror on archaic, already lifeless, religious paths. But he cannot be held back from his spiritual movement. Archaeological restoration can never be true life. In Orthodoxy there is an eternal, imperishable shrine. But this shrine does not need external protection and stylized restorations. She will mysteriously move into a new creative religious life. E. N. Trubetskoy 337. Light of Favorsky and the transformation of the mind 338 Regarding the book by priest P. A. Florensky “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” Ed. publishing house "Path". Moscow, 1914 I. In the Gospel there is a wondrous image that vividly personifies the ongoing bifurcation of the earthly life of mankind. On Mount Tabor, the chosen apostles contemplate the bright face of the transfigured Christ. And below, under the mountain, amid the general confusion of “an unfaithful and corrupt generation,” a demoniac is gnashing his teeth and foaming, and Christ’s disciples, “due to their unbelief,” are powerless to heal him. This double image of our hope and our torment combines perfectly into one whole picture, which Raphael tried to convey on canvas several years ago. 339 There, on the mountain, that radiance of eternal glory appeared to the chosen ones, which should fill both the human soul and external nature. This glory cannot remain forever in the other world. And in the same way, all human souls and faces should shine like light in Christ, just as the whole physical world should become the bright robe of the transfigured Savior! Let the ever-present light come down from the mountain and fill the plain. In this, and in this alone, is the final path to the real and complete healing of a raging life. In Raphael, this thought is expressed by the raised finger of the apostle, who, in response to a prayer for the healing of the demoniac, points to Tabor. The same contrast that is embodied in this picture constitutes the main motive of Russian religious creativity. On the one hand, the great Athonite ascetics, and after them the ascetics of the Russian Church, never ceased to proclaim that the Light of Tabor is not a fleeting phenomenon, but an enduring, eternal reality, which already here on earth becomes apparent to the greatest saints, crowning their ascetic feat. On the other hand, the higher the saints and ascetics climbed into the mountain, the further they went from the world in their search for the Tabor light, the more strongly the dominance of evil was felt below, in the plain, the more often the cry of despair was heard there. "God! Have mercy on my son: he rages on new moons and suffers grievously; for he is often thrown into fire and often into water” (Matthew 17:15). All over the world there is this irreconcilable opposition between the upper and the lower, the mountain and the lowland, but perhaps nowhere does it manifest itself so clearly and so sharply as here. And if there is a soul torn, divided, tormented by contradictions, then this is, predominantly, a Russian soul. The contrast between transformed and untransformed reality, one way or another, appears everywhere, but in countries where European civilization dominates, it is somehow obscured by culture, and therefore less noticeable to a superficial observer. There the devil walks “with a sword and a hat,” like Mephistopheles. With us, on the contrary, he openly shows his tail and hooves. In all those countries where at least relative order and some everyday well-being reign, Beelzebub, one way or another, is put on a chain. In our country, on the contrary, he was destined to rage for centuries in the open air. And perhaps it is precisely this circumstance that causes those extraordinary upsurges of religious feeling that the best disciples of Christ experienced and are experiencing in Russia. The more boundless the chaos and ugliness of the restless plain existence, 340 the stronger the need to rise to a higher region, to the motionless peace of unchanging, eternal beauty. Until now, Russia has been a classic country of everyday troubles; isn’t that precisely why it is the land where the ideal of universal transformation shone especially brightly in the religious inspiration of the elect! I am not only talking about those highest apostles who were given the opportunity to see the Light of Tabor face to face. In Russia there was no shortage of those lesser disciples of Christ who did not see the Transfiguration with their bodily eyes, but anticipated it with mental contemplation and faith and awakened this faith in others, announcing in the plain the healing coming from above. Following the ascetics, great Russian writers sought the light of Tabor. The Apostle, in response to a prayer for healing, pointing with his finger to the mountain and the Transfiguration, thereby expresses the deepest thought of Russian literature, both artistic and philosophical. Pure abstract speculation, as well as art for art’s sake, detached from life,” have never been popular with us. On the contrary, both from thought and from artistic creativity, Russian educated people have always expected a transformation of life. In this regard, we have such antipodes as Pisarev, with his utilitarian view of art, and Dostoevsky, with his slogan “Beauty will save the world.” Our creativity, artistic and philosophical, has always thirsted for truth, not abstract, but effective. The greatest thing in our literature was created in the name of the ideal of integral life. Consciously or unconsciously, the greatest representatives of the Russian folk genius have always sought this light, healing from within and transforming life, both spiritual and physical. General healing in general transformation - in various modifications we find this idea in our great artists: in Gogol, Dostoevsky, even, albeit in a distorted, rationalized form, in Tolstoy, and among thinkers - in the Slavophiles, in Fedorov, in Solovyov and in many of the latter’s successors. And the search for the Tabor light has always been evoked in our writers by a living, painful feeling of the power of evil reigning in the world. Whether we take Gogol, Dostoevsky or Solovyov, we will see from them the same source of religious inspiration: the contemplation of suffering, sinful and raging humanity, this is what causes the greatest upsurges of their creativity. Before us is not just one sick person, but a great national whole - a country that is purely suffering, periodically possessed by a dumb and deaf spirit, incessantly calling and demanding help. This feeling of hell reigning in our earthly reality prompted the exponents of our religious idea to various deeds and exploits. Some fled away from the world and climbed the mountain, to those highest peaks of spiritual life, where the light of Tabor actually becomes tangible and visible. Others, remaining under the mountain, mentally anticipated this vision from below, and prepared human souls for it. But, one way or another, the object of religious quest, the main source of religious creativity, was the same among ascetics, artists, and philosophers. II. This source has not dried up even today. A striking proof of this is the recently published wonderful book by Father Pavel Florensky, “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” Father Paul is not the founder of any new trend among us, but a continuer of Christian tradition, which in the life of our Church dates back many centuries, and in Russian literature, both artistic and philosophical, has already found many talented and even brilliant exponents. But his book mentioned is a deeply original and creative continuation. We have in it a work of remarkable talent, which constitutes an outstanding phenomenon in modern Russian religious and philosophical literature. The movement of his thought is determined by the same basic contrast that determined the entire course of development of Russian religious thought. This, on the one hand, is an abyss of evil, a sinful world, internally disintegrated, “scattered in contradictions,” and on the other hand, the “light of Tabor,” in the enduring reality of which the author is deeply convinced. This is still the same ideal of perfect integrity of life, which already existed before Fr. Florensky was repeatedly embodied in the works of Russian religious thinkers. “Sophia” is the Wisdom of God, the prototype of the integral creation, the Most Pure Virgin Mary is the clear embodiment of this wholeness, the deified creature on earth. Finally, the Church as a manifestation of the same integrity in the collective, social life of humanity. All these are ideas long ago adopted by Russian religious thought, which have come into use among us, and therefore are well known to the educated Russian reader interested in religious issues. Fr. himself Florensky wants to be an exponent not of his personal, but of objective, church wisdom, and therefore, of course, does not claim the novelty of the basic principles. According to him, his book “comes from the ideas of St. Athanasius the Great" 341 (p. 349), and is completely alien to the desire to present any “own system” (p. 360). On the part of a religious writer, of course, this desire to abandon his own system for the sake of the higher Divine system of revelation is quite understandable. And yet, it is in vain to think about. Florensky, as if all those “his own views” that are in his work come only from “his lack of thought, ignorance or misunderstanding” (p. 360). His book, obviously, can claim not the absolute value of revelation, but only the relative value of human interpretation of revelation. And here, in this subordinate area of ​​human creativity, what is expressed is, of course, no less valuable due to the fact that it is one’s own. In this sense, the valuable thing that Fr. gives us. Florensky, lies, first of all, in the unusually bright and strong depiction of the opposition, which has hitherto determined and is determined by the search for our religious thought. On the one hand, a clear and deep consciousness of the eternal reality of the Tabor light - the highest principle of the universal spiritual and bodily enlightenment of man and all creation, and on the other hand, a fascinating illumination of the chaotic sinful reality, that raging life that comes into contact with Gehenna. In the latest religious and philosophical literature, I do not know of an analysis equal in depth to that internal split and disintegration of personality, which constitutes the very essence of sin. In the literature of past centuries, the same theme is developed with incomparable brightness in the confession of St. Augustine, and in this regard, Fr. Florensky can be called his student. But its main source is not any literary examples, but one’s own painful experiences, verified by collective, church experience. “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is the work of a man for whom Gehenna is not an abstract concept, but a reality that he experienced and felt with his whole being. “The second question about death,” he says, “is a painful, sincere question. Once, in a dream, I experienced it with all specificity. I had no images, but only purely internal experiences. An impenetrable darkness, almost materially dense, surrounded me. Some forces drew me to the edge, and I felt that this was the edge of God’s existence, that outside it there was absolute Nothing. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I knew that one more moment and I would be cast out into outer darkness. Darkness began to pour into my entire being. Self-awareness was half lost, and I knew that this was absolute, metaphysical destruction. In final despair, I screamed in a voice that was not my own: “From the depths I cried to You, Lord. Lord, hear my voice." The soul then poured out in these words. Someone's hands powerfully grabbed me as I was drowning and threw me somewhere, far from the abyss. The push was sudden and powerful. Suddenly I found myself in an ordinary environment, in my room, it seems, from mystical oblivion, I found myself in ordinary everyday life. Then I immediately felt before the face of God, and then I woke up, all wet from cold sweat” (p. 205‒206). That sin is “a moment of discord, disintegration and collapse of spiritual life,” the Apostle Paul said with incomparable eloquence, although in different expressions. 342 The merit of our author here lies only in the remarkably vivid disclosure of the vital meaning of this formula, in the subtle psychological depiction of the sinful state. In sin, “the soul loses consciousness of its creative nature, is lost in the chaotic whirlwind of its own states, ceasing to be their substance: I choke in the “mental stream of passions”... “In sin, the soul eludes itself, loses itself. It is not without reason that the language characterizes the last degree of a woman’s moral decline as “lostness.” But there is no doubt that there are not only “lost” women, that is, those who have lost themselves, their godlike creativeness of life, women, but also “lost men.” In general, a sinful soul is a “lost soul,” and lost not only for others, but also for itself, because it has not kept itself” (p. 172). The sinful state is primarily “a state of depravity, depravity, i.e. depravity of the soul: the virgin soil of the personality is torn up, the inner layers of life (which should be hidden even for the Self itself - this is predominantly gender), they are turned outward, and what should be open - the openness of the soul, i.e. sincerity, spontaneity, motives for actions, this is what is hidden inside, making the personality secretive.” “Here we receive a face, and, as it were, a personality, a side of our being that is naturally faceless and impersonal, for it is a generic life, although it occurs in the face. Having received a ghostly resemblance of personality, this generic basis of personality becomes independent, and the real personality disintegrates. The generic region is separated from the personality, and therefore, having only the appearance of a personality, ceases to obey the dictates of the spirit, becomes unreasonable and insane. And the personality itself, having lost from its composition its generic basis, i.e. its root, is deprived of the consciousness of reality, and becomes the face not of the real basis of life, but of emptiness and insignificance, i.e. an empty and gaping mask, and not covering up anything real, it is itself recognized as a lie, as an act. Blind lust and aimless deceit are what remains of a personality after its corruption. In this sense, depravity is duality” (pp. 181‒182). It is the decomposition of personality that begins even before Gehenna.” Doubt about the Truth, and, finally, its loss, is only a type of general sinful state, a particular manifestation of that internal disintegration of personality, which constitutes the very essence of sin. 343 A fascinating description of this mental anticipation of Gehenna by Fr. Florensky, again, involuntarily makes him remember everything about the same example, obviously floating before the author - about the “Confession” of Blessed. Augustine. “I don’t have the truth, but the idea of ​​it burns me.” But doubt brought to the last line makes us doubt this very idea, and our search for it. “It is also unreliable that I tea the Truth. Maybe this is just what it seems. And besides this, maybe the testimony itself is not a testimony? By asking myself the last question, I enter the last circle of skeptical hell, a compartment where the very meaning of words is lost. Words cease to be fixed and are torn from their nests. Everything turns into everything. Each phrase is completely equivalent to every other, and any word can exchange place with any other. Here the mind loses itself, is lost in a formless and unsettled abyss. There is feverish delirium and stupidity running around here.” “But this extremely skeptical doubt is possible only as an unstable balance, as the limit of absolute madness, for what else is madness if not madness, if not the experience of the lack of substance, the unsupportability of the mind. When it is experienced, it is carefully hidden from others, and once experienced, it is remembered very reluctantly. From the outside it is almost impossible to understand what it is. Delirious chaos bursts out in clubs from this ultimate boundary of the mind, and the mind is killed by an all-pervading cold. Here, behind a thin partition, is the beginning of spiritual death” (pp. 38‒39). The completion of these earthly preludes to spiritual death is genuine Gehenna itself. “The sowing wind of sins will reap in that century a storm of passion, and captured by the sinful whirlwind, will not stop spinning by it, and will not break out of it, and he will not even have the thought of breaking out of it, for there will be no dispassionate point of support” (p. 241). Already here on earth, this burning in fiery hell takes place in reality. In this about. Florensky sees the very essence of obsession or demonic possession (p. 206). III. The more painful the feeling of Gehenna, the more understandable becomes that passionate impulse towards the Truth, which is heard in the words of the prayer: “From the depths I have called to you, Lord.” It contains that direct transition to the Tabor light, which was once depicted with fiery features by Blessed Augustine: “You struck my weak vision with your mighty rays (radians in me vepementer), and I shuddered with love and horror, and saw that I was far from You, staying in a region alien to You, and as if I heard Your voice from on high: I am the food of the strong; grow and you will feed on Me. And you will not turn me into yourself, as you turn your fleshly bread, but you yourself will turn into Me.” 344 This transition is accomplished not by a process of logical reasoning, but by a passionate impulse of the human soul. Evigilavi in ​​te. I have awakened in You, 345 - says Bl. Augustine. And this awakening is impossible by human forces alone. It is a miracle of grace over human nature, and Fr. understands it in this sense. Florensky. “To come to the Truth, one must renounce one’s self, one must get out of oneself, and this is absolutely impossible for us, for we are flesh. But, I repeat, how exactly in this case can one grasp the Pillar of Truth? We don’t know, and we can’t know. We only know that through the gaping cracks of human reason, the azure of Eternity is visible. It's incomprehensible, but it's true. And we know that “the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and not the God of philosophers and scientists” comes to us, comes to our beds at night, takes us by the hand and leads us in a way that we could not even imagine. This is impossible for men, but with God all things are possible” (p. 489). What is the “Pillar and Ground of Truth” to which we thus arrive? “The Pillar of Truth,” our author answers, “is the Church, this is authenticity, this is the spiritual law of identity, this is feat, this is Trinitarian Unity, this is the Light of Tabor, this is the Holy Spirit, this is Sophia, this is the Most Pure Virgin, this is friendship, this is again the Church.” And all this multitude of answers in his presentation is one whole. For Truth is all-one. According to the prayer of Christ, the same unity that has been realized in the Holy Trinity from time immemorial should reign in the enlightened creature. This is precisely the transformation, the deification of creation, which, through the action of the Holy Spirit, fills it with the light of Tabor. This transformation is the same as the adequate embodiment of “Sophia” in a creature. But “Sophia” appears on earth, first of all, in the perfect virginity of the Mother of God and gathers humanity into a single church of God - the Church. The highest level of churchliness is the realization of “friendship,” more precisely, the perfect friendship of people in God. And the general healing of the creature is expressed, first of all, in the restoration of perfect integrity, or chastity. 346 In all these provisions one must see, of course, not some “new teaching” of Fr. Florensky, and his original attempt to bring the faith of the fathers closer to the consciousness of people is that ancient Christian tradition, which, fortunately, managed to become a tradition in Russian religious philosophy. In this regard, Fr. Florensky takes one new, and extremely important step, which had never really been taken by anyone before him, except perhaps only outlined by Vl. S. Solovyov. He makes an attempt to use for religious teaching that centuries-old religious experience, which was expressed in Orthodox worship and in Orthodox iconography. Here he finds and reveals an amazing wealth of inspired intuitions that complement religious understanding with new features that have not found expression in our theology. I remember how the late Vl. S. Solovyov, in oral conversations, liked to point out the amazing backwardness of Orthodox theology from Orthodox worship and icon painting, especially with regard to the veneration of the Holy Mother of God and Sophia. 347 I was especially pleased to find in the book Fr. Florensky, who obviously did not know about these oral conversations of Solovyov, is an almost literal reproduction of the same thought. “Both in the iconostasis and in the liturgy, the Mother of God occupies a symmetrical place, as if equivalent to the place of the Lord. We turn to Her alone with a prayer: Save us. But if we turn from the living experience given by the Church to theology, then we feel ourselves transported to some new area. Mentally, undoubtedly, the impression is as if school theology does not speak entirely about the One whom the Church magnifies: the school theological teaching about the Mother of God is disproportionate to the living veneration of Her, the school theological awareness of the dogma of virginity has lagged behind the experienced experience of it. But worship is the heart of church life” (p. 367). Lately, our eyes have begun to open to the wondrous beauty of old Russian icon painting. 348 so far this is only a revival of aesthetic interest. Father Florensky’s defense lies in the fact that he showed how much these beauties, both icon painting and divine services, can give to deepen the religious and philosophical understanding of faith. In his book, “the heart of church life” really came closer to the mind of a modern educated person. This is a major merit, in comparison with which everything else is more or less interesting details. Unfortunately, I cannot go into these details, although extremely valuable, due to the necessarily short length of this article. I wanted here mainly to introduce the spirit and mood of Father Florensky’s book, and also to think through with him one religious and philosophical problem, which, it seems to me, did not receive a completely satisfactory solution from him. IV. Father Florensky sees the mark of a truly religious spirit, and in particular of the Russian folk religious genius, “not in cutting off, but in the transformation of the fullness of being” (p. 772), and it is impossible not to agree with the correctness of the formulation of the main religious task here. But has this task been thought through by the respected author to the end? Is he clearly aware of all the requirements arising from it? Here I have some pretty significant doubts. That spiritual transformation, which in the next century is destined to become physical, must embrace the entire nature of man”: it must begin in the heart - the center of his spiritual life, and from there spread to the entire periphery. And it is from this point of view that I decide to pose to Father Florensky a question arising from reading his book. After all, to human nature, in addition to the heart and its bodily composition, which must be resurrected, the human mind also belongs. Is it subject to transformation or cutting off? Does Father Florensky believe in the transformation of the human mind, does he recognize in this transformation a necessary moral task, or does he simply think that the mind must be cut off, like the tempting “eye of the right hand,” in order for the person “himself” to be saved. And is it possible to speak of the salvation of “the whole person” if his mind is destined to remain “in outer darkness” to the end, at least even within the confines of this earthly life? I have no doubt that the complete, final transformation of human nature must be completed in that life. But it must begin and be preceded here. Should the human mind actively participate in this preliminary process, or is it required to simply renounce all activity from what constitutes its necessary law? It seems strange to pose these questions to a person whose book represents, in any case, an outstanding mental feat, and yet I am forced to pose them. For, paradoxical as it may seem, the writer, who has worked so much and fruitfully to solve the problem of transforming the mind, does not clearly understand what it is. The human mind, in its earthly reality, suffers from that very painful discord and division that constitutes the common stamp of all sinful life. This, as we have seen, is shown with great clarity and clarity by Father Florensky in his chapter on doubt. But if so, then the transformation of the mind should be expressed precisely in the healing of this sinful decay and division, in the restoration of its internal integrity in the unity of Truth. Is this what we see in Father Florensky? Unfortunately, it is precisely at this point that the truth, generally so clearly recognized by him, suddenly becomes obscured, and seems to be twitched by some kind of cloud. Instead of a clear solution to the question posed, we find in his book only unclear and contradictory answers, like an unresolved struggle of opposing aspirations. This is reflected in his doctrine of antinomianism. Here in his thought two not only irreconcilable, but also irreconcilable positions collide with each other. On the one hand, antinomy, that is, internal contradiction, is a property of the sinful state of our mind. From this point of view, it is necessary to seek reconciliation, a synthesis of contradictory principles, a blessed illumination of the mind in which contradictions are eliminated, although “not rationally, but in a super-rational way” (pp. 159–160). 349 On the other hand, on a number of pages of the same book it is argued that truth itself is antinomic (i.e., truth with a small letter, and not with a capital letter, the truth about Truth), true religious dogma is antinomic; contradiction constitutes a necessary stamp of the truth in general. “Truth itself is an antinomy and cannot but be such (p. 17:153). And accordingly, our author vacillates between two radically different attitudes towards human thought. On the one hand, it must enter the mind of truth, become whole, like the God-bearing minds of holy ascetics (p. 159). On the other hand, it must be brought to silence, that is, simply cut off, as fundamentally contradictory, essentially antinomic. The very desire for “reasonable faith” is the beginning of “devilish pride” (p. 65). Is it possible to affirm at the same time that sin is antinomic and that truth is antinomic? Doesn't this mean, translated into simpler language, that the truth is sinful, or that sin is the real truth? It may be objected to me, of course, that here we have some kind of “antinomy about antinomy,” that is, a necessary contradiction. Therefore, here it is necessary to take a close look at the contradictory theses of Fr. Florensky, do we really have in them an objectively necessary antinomy or simply a subjective contradiction of the individual mind? Thesis about. Florensky that the antinomies of our mind represent a property of its sinful state must be recognized as completely true. “From the point of view of dogma,” he says, “antinomies are inevitable. If there is sin (and with knowledge of it, the first half of faith), then our entire being, as well as the whole world, is fragmented” (p. 159). “There, in heaven, there is a single Truth, we have many fragments of Truth, incongruent with each other. In the history of the flat and boring (?!) thinking of the “new philosophy”, Kant had the audacity to pronounce the great word “antinomy”, which violated the decency of imaginary unity. For this alone he would deserve eternal glory. There is no need if his own antinomies are unsuccessful, the point is in the experience of antinomy” (p. 159). Without sharing this harsh review of Father Florensky about the new philosophy, I think that he diagnosed the disease of the human mind absolutely correctly. But from this point of view, it would seem that it is precisely these internal contradictions, this antinomy that constitutes an obstacle for our thought to comprehend the Truth, and distances it from God. However, to my greatest surprise, Father Florensky’s antithesis says just the opposite. Truth itself is an antinomy: “only antinomy can be believed, but any judgment that is not antinomic is simply recognized or simply rejected by reason, because it does not exceed the boundary of its egoistic isolation” (p. 147). According to Father Florensky, the very saving power of dogma is determined by its antinomy, thanks to which it can be a fulcrum for reason. Our salvation begins with dogma, for only dogma, being antinomian, “does not restrict our freedom, and gives full place to voluntary faith or crafty unbelief” (p. 148). To assert that antinomianism is the seal of the sinful split of our reason, and at the same time to think that it is precisely in it that the power that saves us lies, means to fall into a contradiction that is not at all rooted in the essence of the matter, does not have the character of an objective necessity, but should be entirely blamed on Father Florensky. Just to the question about the antinomy of revelation, we have a very unequivocal answer from the Apostle Paul: “The Son of God Jesus Christ, preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not “yes” and was not “no,” but in Him there was “Yes” (for all the promises of God in Him are “Yes” and in Him “Amen,” to the glory of God, through us" (2 Cor. 19:20). How reconcile with this text the assertion of our author that the secrets of religion “cannot be put into words except in the form of a contradiction, which is both yes and no” (p. 158)? After all, if it is indeed true that every mystery of religion is both yes and no, then we must recognize as equally true both that there is God and that He does not exist, and that Christ has risen and that He has not risen at all. Father Florensky, in any case, will have to introduce some limitation into his statement and admit that not all, but only some, religious mysteries are antinomic, that is, contradictory in form. However, this understanding of “antinomianism” does not stand up to criticism. First of all, the question is, what is actually contradictory or antinomic - is it the dogma itself, or our imperfect understanding of the dogma? On this subject, Father Florensky’s thought wavers and doubles. On the one hand, he claims that in the Trisiac light revealed by Christ and reflected in the righteous, “the contradiction of this age is overcome by love and glory,” on the other hand, for him, contradiction is “the secret of the soul, through prayer and love.” “The entire church service, especially the canons and stichera, are filled with this incessantly seething wit of antithetical comparisons and antinomian statements” (p. 158). In addition, the book under review contains a whole table of dogmatic antinomies. But it is precisely from this table that it becomes clear what the main mistake of the respected author is. He simply uses the words “antinomy” and “antinomy” in two different senses. As a characteristic feature of the sinful state, antinomy always means contradiction. In relation to reason from this point of view, antinomianism denotes its internal inconsistency. On the contrary, when the author speaks of the “antinomy of dogma” or church hymns, this should mostly be understood in the sense that dogma is a certain unification of world opposites (coincidentia oppositorum). It is not difficult to see that it is precisely this confusion of the contradictory and the opposite that is responsible for a number of examples of “dogmatic antinomies” by Fr. Florensky. In fact, we do not have antinomies in them at all. So, for example, contrary to the respected author, the dogma of the Holy Trinity is not at all antinomic, for there is no internal contradiction in it. Antinomy would exist here if we expressed contradictory predicates about the same subject in the same relation. For example, if the Church taught that God is one in essence, and at the same time not one, but three in essence, this would really be an antinomy. But in church dogma, “unity” refers to the Being, and “trinity” refers to the Persons, which from the point of view of the Church is not the same thing. It is clear that there is no contradiction, that is, no antinomy, here: “yes” and “no” do not refer to the same thing here. 350 The dogma about the mutual relationship of the two natures in Jesus Christ is also not antinomic. There would be an antinomy if the Church affirmed at the same time the separateness and inseparability of the two natures, and their fusion and non-fusion. But in the doctrine of the “inseparability and non-fusion” of two natures there is no internal contradiction and, therefore, no antinomy, for inseparability and non-fusion are logically not mutually exclusive. Here we have concepts that are opposite (opposita), not contradictory (contraria). Using these examples, one can clarify not only the error of the book being analyzed, but also the essence of the correct understanding of antinomies and antinomianism. We have already seen that these dogmas in themselves are not antinomic, but for a flat mind they inevitably turn into antinomy. When crude human understanding turns three Persons into three Gods, the dogma really turns into an antinomy, for the thesis that there is one God cannot in any way be reconciled with the antithesis that there are three Gods. Likewise, that crude understanding, which understands the union of two natures in the image of a material union of bodies, turns the dogma of two natures into an antinomy, for it has absolutely no idea how two materially conceivable natures can unite into one and not merge. Antinomy and antinomianism are generally rooted in the rational understanding of world mysteries. When we rise above rational understanding, the antinomies are thereby resolved - the contradictions turn into a unification of opposites - coincidentia oppositorum, and the resolution is accomplished to the extent of our ascent. This is the real answer to the question of the solvability of antinomies in general, and religious antinomies in particular. O. Florensky gives a negative answer to this question. “How cold and distant, how godless and callous that time of my life seems to me when I considered the antinomies of religion solvable, but not yet resolved, when in my proud madness I affirmed the logical monism of religion” (p. 163). In such a generality, the overly harsh formula of the book being analyzed is a combination of truth and error. To dream of a perfect and final resolution of all antinomies in this life is, of course, as crazy as imagining that we can be completely freed from sin in the earthly stage of our existence. But to assert the final unsolvability of all antinomies, to deny the very legitimacy of attempts to resolve them by thought, means submitting to the sin of thought. Just as the fatal necessity of sin in this life does not exclude our duty to fight sin, and with God’s help to free ourselves from it if possible, so the inevitability of antinomianism for us does not abolish the duty that lies upon us, to strive to rise above this sinful darkness of our rational consciousness, to try to illuminate our thought with that unity of ever-present light in which all our earthly contradictions are abolished. To think differently means to affirm the plane of rational thinking not only as a fact of our life, but also as the norm of what is proper for us. 351 Dichotomy and inconsistency are the actual state of our mind, this is the very thing that constitutes the essence of rationality, but the true and genuine norm of reason is unity. It is not without reason that Blessed Augustine saw in this search of our mind, in this aspiration, its formal likeness to God, the search for a connection with the One and the Unconditional; truly the One is God. Augustine quite correctly notes that in all the functions of our reason the ideal of unity is presented to it: both in analysis and in synthesis I want unity and love unity (unum amo et unum volo 352). And in fact, the ideal of cognition, realized to a greater or lesser extent in every act of cognition, is to connect the cognized with something unified and unconditional. Here it is necessary to explain one paradoxical phenomenon, which seems to contradict what was just said. When a person, in the spiritual ascent of his earthly improvement, begins to approach the Truth, the number of contradictions that he sees does not decrease at all. On the contrary, as Fr. quite rightly notes. Florensky, “the closer to God, the more distinct the contradictions. So, in the Jerusalem above there are none. There’s a contradiction in everything.” “The brighter the Truth of the Triple Light shines, shown by Christ and reflected in the righteous, the Light in which the contradictions of this age are overcome by love and glory, the more sharply the world’s cracks blacken. There are cracks in everything." Observations about. Florensky’s ideas here are psychologically completely correct, and yet his understanding of “antinomianism” is not only not confirmed by them, but, on the contrary, refuted. Contradictions are revealed and seem to multiply as our mind enlightens, not at all because the Truth is antinomic or contradictory, quite the contrary, they are exposed in contrast to the unity of the Truth. The closer we are to the Truth, the more deeply we realize our sinful division, the clearer it becomes for us how far we are from it. This is the fundamental law of both moral and mental enlightenment. In order to realize that you do not have clothes in order to enter the bridal chamber, you must at least see this palace from a distance with your mental eye. So it is in the knowledge of the Truth. Here, as in the process of moral improvement, the higher a person rises from stage to stage, the brighter the one and complete Truth shines for him, the more perfectly he realizes his own incompleteness - the internal contradictory nature of his mind. But to recognize sin means to take the first step towards liberation from it, just as to recognize rational antinomies means to some extent to rise above them and above our rationality itself and take the first step towards overcoming it. To this we must add one more significant consideration. Not only in the future, but also in this life of ours there is a multitude of being, and accordingly with this, many stages of knowledge. And while the process of our improvement has not yet ended, while we rise spiritually and mentally from stage to stage, the very antinomies of our mind do not all lie on the same plane. By ascending to a higher level, we thereby overcome the contradictions inherent in the lower levels. But on the other hand, new tasks are opening up before us, and, therefore, new contradictions that were not visible to us while we were lower. For example, for a person who has outgrown that level of understanding at which the three Persons of the Holy Trinity are mixed with the “three Gods,” the antinomy in the dogma of the Holy Trinity thereby disappears or is “removed.” But all the more clearly do other deepest antinomies of our misunderstanding appear before his mental gaze, for example, the antinomy of human freedom and Divine predestination, the antinomy of God's Justice and forgiveness. Generally speaking, antinomies form a complex hierarchy of levels, and in terms of depth they represent many differences. On the one hand, Kant's antinomies remain antinomies only for that undeveloped, flat mind that seeks the unconditional basis of phenomena in the order of temporarily conditioned causes. These antinomies are easily overcome by the independent powers of thought as soon as it rises to the realm of the supertemporal. On the other hand, deepened religious understanding reveals such contradictions, the resolution of which exceeds the entire depth of knowledge that has hitherto been accessible to man. And, however, what turned out to be inaccessible before can become accessible to a person at a different, higher level of spiritual and mental ascent. The limit to this rise has not yet been indicated, and no one should take the liberty of indicating it. This is the main objection to those who assert the final undecidability of antinomies. According to Fr. Florensky, reconciliation and unity of antinomian statements, “above reason” (p. 160). One could perhaps agree with this position if it were not ambiguous, that is, if the concept of understanding were clearly defined, which would exclude the possibility of using “intelligence” in different meanings. Unfortunately, our author, like many other supporters of the same view, understands reason either as a synonym for logical thinking in general, or as a thought clinging to the plane of the temporal, unable to rise above this plane and therefore flat. If we understand reason in the latter sense, then the thought of. Florensky is absolutely correct. Of course, the resolution of antinomies is above the temporal plane, and therefore lies beyond the limits of “reason.” Moreover, in order not to fall into this plane of rational understanding, a certain act of self-denial is required from our thought, that feat of humility by which thought renounces the proud hope of drawing from itself the fullness of knowledge, and expresses its readiness to accept the revelation of the superhuman, Divine Truth. In this, and only in this sense, one can agree with Fr. Florensky that “true love” is expressed “in the renunciation of reason” (p. 163). But, unfortunately, in other places in the book under review, the same demand for “renunciation of reason” is received from Fr. Florensky has a different meaning, from a Christian point of view, of course, unacceptable. He demands that for the sake of God we abandon “monism in thinking,” and it is in this that he sees “the beginning of true faith” (p. 65). Here at Fr. Florensky is not talking about any metaphysical monism at all. The logical monism that he rejects is precisely the desire of reason to bring everything to the unity of Truth. This is precisely what he sees as “diabolical pride.” According to his thoughts, “monistic continuity is the banner of the seditious reason of a creature that is torn away from its Origin and root, and crumbles into the dust of self-affirmation and self-destruction. On the contrary, “dualistic discontinuity is the banner of reason, which destroys itself for the sake of its Beginning, and in unity with It receives its renewal and its strength” (p. 65). It is in these lines that the fundamental error of the entire teaching of Fr. Florensky about antinomianism. To renounce “monism in thinking” does not mean to renounce the sin of our thought, but its true norm - the ideal of unity and completeness, in other words, the very thing that constitutes the formal God-likeness of our mind. And to recognize “dualistic discontinuity” as a banner means to normalize the sinful division of our mind. at In general, the attitude of Fr. Florensky's approach to reason is hardly consistent with his essentially Christian worldview. This is clearly revealed when we compare it with the criterion by which the Apostle John teaches us to distinguish the spirit of God from the spirit of error. Both for religious life and for religious thought, the absolute norm is given in the form of Christ who came in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3). Does the teaching of Fr. Florensky about the mutual relationship of Divine and human nature in the knowledge of God? The unity of the Divine and the human, revealed to us in the form of man, is not violence against human nature. The basis of our hope lies precisely in the fact that nothing human is cut off here except sin. A perfect God is at the same time a perfect man, and therefore, the human mind participates in this connection without violating its law and norm. He undergoes transformation, not mutilation. The fact that in Christ the God-man is an accomplished fact must become an ideal and norm for all humanity. Just as the unity of two natures in Christ was not violent, but free, so the union of the divine principle and the human mind in the knowledge of God should be free. There should be no place for any violence here. The law of human reason, without which it ceases to be reason, must not be violated, but fulfilled. In the unity of Truth the human mind must find its unity. And no distinction between Truth with a small letter and a capital one does not abolish for us the obligation to strive precisely for this goal - to seek the unity of truth. For the truth that bears the stamp of our sinful division is not truth, but error. Monism of thinking in Christ must be justified, not condemned. Error o. Florensky lies precisely in the fact that in him the suitable attitude of the human mind to the Truth is replaced by a violent one. He confronts us with an alternative - either accept the truth of the Holy Trinity, from his point of view antinomian, that is, contradictory, or die in madness. He tells us: “Choose, worm and nonentity: tertium non datur” (p. 66). Christ, who wanted to see his friends in his disciples, and not slaves, addressed their consciousness in this way. He, who showed them in practice the Trinity, who showed in His face the Heavenly Father, in response to Philip’s doubts, made this mystery intelligible to them, understandable to the lover, for He compared it with that love that brings about unity in plurality - “that they may be one, even as We are” (John 17:11). Such an appeal to human consciousness convinces, and does not force; it heals not only a person’s heart, but also his mind, for in it our mind finds the fulfillment of its norm of unity. In this discovery of the trinity for our thought already here, in this life, the antinomy of unity and plurality is removed. The multitude appears to him not torn or split, but united and connected from within. O. Florensky can still object to me that this resolution of antinomies occurs on the other side of our reason, but in this statement there is a dangerous ambiguity that must be eliminated. I repeat that if by reason we mean a thought attached to the temporal, then Fr. Florensky is absolutely right, for Truth is supertemporal. If the meaning of the doctrine being analyzed is that the resolution of antinomies occurs only on the other side of human thought in general, then this meaning is certainly unacceptable, because thereby the human mind is plunged into outer darkness, deprived of participation in the joy of universal transformation. V. Inextricably linked with the question of the Christian attitude towards the human mind is the question of the Christian attitude towards the representative of the mind in human society - the intelligentsia. Here again I cannot be satisfied with the decision of Fr. Florensky. His overly passionate and sometimes cruel judgments about the intelligentsia and intellectuals, these, as he calls them, “graceless” and “earthed” souls, sound like a sharp dissonance in his deeply Christian book. In the very excess of denial, one can feel the sore point of the work being analyzed, and of its author. As we have already seen, Fr. Florensky recalls that “godless and callous” time in his own life, when he, like an intellectual, believed in the logical monism of religion. The former intellectual is also felt in his fascinating descriptions of the skeptical hell he once experienced. Generally speaking, the “intelligentsia” for our author is an internal enemy, not an external one. The hated intellectual whom he denies still sits within him. This is the reason for the immensity in denial, which excludes the possibility of justice. In some places it even seems that not only the “intellectual”, Fr.’s own human thought. Florensky, for him there is an enemy from whom he disowns. It goes without saying that such an attitude towards thought and towards the “intelligentsia” cannot be crowned with complete victory. Doubts of thought cannot be overcome by the denial of logic, by a leap to the incomprehensible and unknowable. To overcome them, you need to think them through. Likewise, the intellectual can be defeated not by denial, but by the satisfaction of his legitimate mental demands. The truth of revelation must become immanent in thought; only under this condition can it triumph over irreligious thought. When the content of a religious teaching is persistently affirmed as external, otherworldly than thought, then thought is affirmed in a state of isolation and renunciation from religion, and therefore is doomed to disorder. Thinking, ejected from the realm beyond religion, inevitably remains “intellectual” in the bad sense of the word, that is, rational, meaningless. Original sin book about. Florensky lies precisely in this dependence on the “intelligentsia” that he denies. It is precisely “antinomianism” that is a point of view that is very typical for a modern intellectual, and therefore extremely popular. This is nothing more and nothing less than undefeated skepticism, a division of thought elevated to a principle and a norm. This is the point of view of thought asserting itself in its contradiction. Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, there is the closest affinity between rationalism and “antinomianism”, moreover, a direct logical and genetic connection. Rationalism elevates a self-sufficient thought into a principle, drawing knowledge of truth from itself, and antinomianism frees the same thought from the religion and norm immanent to it, from that commandment of unity, which constitutes the likeness of God in it. He declares that the property of truth is what in fact is the sin of reason - its internal decay. In fact, “antinomianism” is a purely rational point of view, for it affirms the contradictions of our reason as ultimately insoluble and invincible, moreover, it elevates them to religious value. U o. Florensky, as a deeply religious thinker, does not carry this alogism, which is fashionable in our time, to its extreme consequences. A typical representative of this trend today is N. A. Berdyaev, who finally broke with the point of view of objective revelation, and from the entire teaching of Fr. Florensky sympathizes almost exclusively with his “antinonism, that is, the weakest thing that is in him. For Fr. For Florensky, this sympathy should have served as a warning. It contains an indication that antinomianism, raised to a principle, fundamentally contradicts the religious point of view. This is a dangerous deviation of thought, the natural end of which appeared in N. A. Berdyaev as decadent amateurism, giving itself the appearance of victory over rationality. VI. Decline is the inevitable fate of thought that has lost its immanent criterion. Having freed herself from the logical norm of unity, she inevitably falls into captivity, into slavish dependence on illogical experiences. Having no criterion to distinguish the higher from the lower, the superconscious from the subconscious, she uncontrollably gives in to all sorts of suggestions of passion, mistaking them for prophetic intuitions. The elevation of the “captive thought of irritation” to the principle of philosophizing is the most characteristic feature of modern decadent philosophy. Taken to its end, this trend inevitably leads to the denial of objective revelation, to a rebellion against any religious dogma as such. And this is for the simple reason that every dogma has its own strictly defined, mental, logical composition, which consolidates the content of faith. Each dogma contains a precise logical formula that strictly separates the true from the untrue, worthy of faith from error. This places a limit on affect in the area of ​​religious life, and gives the believer firm guidance for distinguishing truth from falsehood in subjective religious experience. Those dogmatic definitions, by which a believer is denied the opportunity to confuse Truth with something extraneous and alien to it, are often examples of logical elegance, and Father Florensky knows this. Moreover, he glorifies St. Athanasius the Great, who was able to “mathematically accurately” express the truth of consubstantiality, which even in a later era has eluded precise expression for the minds of the intelligentsia (p. 55). It is clear that for modern religious decadence, which defends freedom of affect against thought, such a subordination of religious feeling to rigid logical definitions is absolutely unacceptable. It was precisely for his admiration for the mathematically precise “dogmatic formulas of the Church” that Fr. Florensky was subjected to fierce attacks from N. A. Berdyaev. 353 Undoubtedly, the valuable side of the latter’s objections is that they pose Fr. Florensky is faced with the need to more sharply dissociate himself from that decadent alogism, the typical representative of which in religious philosophy is N. A. Berdyaev. Affirming the unlimited autocracy of subjective carved experience, N. A. Berdyaev attacks Fr. Florensky precisely for his desire to subordinate this experience to some objective principles, in other words, for what he invests in mental holding, independent of the internal experience of the individual. He reproaches Fr. Florensky for the fact that he affirms external revelation and “wants a transcription of religious experience” in terms of transcendental ontology.” From the point of view of N.A. Berdyaev, all this is rational scholasticism that should be abandoned. Refined religious psychology Fr. Florensky “transitions into scholastic theology. The dogma of the Trinity, as external, transcendental to mystical experience, inevitably turns out to be theological. Theology always rests on the idea of ​​external revelation, and is opposed to mysticism, as resting on the idea of ​​internal revelation. Theology is transcendentalism, mysticism is immanentism.” According to N.A. Berdyaev, the “disguised scholasticism” of priest P.A. Florensky, there is “inevitable punishment for any admission of dogma before, and outside of spiritual life, mystical experience” (cited article, p. 114). The principle that N.A. Berdyaev opposes to Fr. Florensky, there is absolute freedom - “cognitive eros”, not restrained by dogma, logic, or any objective principles at all, or more precisely, the boundless arbitrariness of subjective mysticism. According to N.A. Berdyaev himself, a characteristic feature of his “new” religious knowledge is the conviction “that now the world is entering an era of anthropological revelation, the initiative of which must be taken upon himself by man himself, at his own risk and fear, that divine revelation passes inside man and continues through him. This is entering the age of religious majority (121). For a reader who is at all familiar with the history of Christian, in particular Protestant, religious sectarianism, there is hardly much that is new and significant in this “new” religious consciousness. But as a warning to Fr. Florensky, the point of view of N.A. Berdyaev retains a certain significance, as a result of which we have to dwell on it a little here. It is obvious that this unlimited freedom of the human individual, “at his own risk and peril” to determine true revelation, actually means the final abolition of the latter, the complete loss of any common religious principles that bind people together. Where the criterion of truth in revelation is only the subjective “religious experience” of the individual, there are obviously as many contradictory revelations as there are people. It is clear that such a point of view destroys itself. In the eyes of N.A. Berdyaev, does his subjective revelation deserve more respect than the objective revelation of the Church, against which he rebels? In the name of what, and on what basis? After all, N.A. Berdyaev’s references to his “intuitions” cannot have external authoritative significance for other people. And for the person who experienced the “intuition,” there is always a possibility of doubt whether it was a genuine revelation, a subjective hallucination, or the appearance of Satan in the form of an angel of light. Who denies, like N.A. Berdyaev, any objective criteria in religion, such doubts are certainly insoluble. The weakness of N. A. Berdyaev’s religious point of view is thus more than obvious. And for Fr. It would not have posed a serious danger to Florensky if he had quite consistently and firmly stood on the point of view of dogmatically definable and definite objective revelation. But, unfortunately, in the church views of Fr. Florensky has an inconsistency, thanks to which he becomes defenseless against the objections of N.A. Berdyaev, and the latter’s religious subjectivism grows into a serious danger for him. The source of danger lies precisely in the above-mentioned inclination of Fr. Florensky to alogism, in his passion for that currently fashionable trend of religious philosophy, which proclaims the subjective experiences of individual “religious experience”, not verified by thought, as the highest criterion in religion. He makes an extremely significant concession to this trend precisely at the point where religious subjectivism should have met its strongest point on its part - in the doctrine of the Church. And this is precisely what makes it possible for N.A. Berdyaev to win an easy victory over him. As we have already seen, when it comes to questions of Christology or the mutual relationship of the persons of the Holy Trinity, Fr. Florensky insists on the need for such “mathematically precise” dogmatic definitions that would exclude the possibility of dogmatically contradictory religious interpretations from the point of view of “individual religious experience.” Whatever the “experiences” of this experience, it does not depend on the discretion or “inspiration of the individual” whether to consider the Son of God “consubstantial” or similar in essence,” whether to recognize one or two natures in Him, to believe or not to believe in the inseparability and non-fusion of these two natures. This, it would seem, should be the point of view on the Church. And here we need a firm dogmatic definition that would teach people to distinguish the true church from the false, and would set some limit to subjective “boldness” in this regard. But, due to a strange inconsistency, as soon as the topic of the Church comes up, Fr. Florensky is attacked by some kind of fear of thought, and he becomes an apologist for logical, and in this case, dogmatic formlessness. He finds that the Church, as the fullness of Divine life, “cannot be placed in the narrow coffin of logical definition.” “Let,” he says, “neither I nor anyone else could, cannot, and, of course, will not be able to define what churchliness is! Let those who try to do this challenge each other and mutually deny the formula of churchliness! This very uncertainty of churchliness, its elusiveness for logical terms, its ineffability, does not prove that churchliness is a special life, a new life given to people, but, like any life, inaccessible to reason” (p. 5). When Fr. Florensky speaks of dogmatic definitions concerning other mysteries; he is not misled by the ambiguity of the word “definition.” He knows well that to “define” dogmatically does not mean to exhaust the religious mystery with a rational formula, to put it completely into concepts. He is not embarrassed by the application to these mysteries of such concepts as “Being”, “essence”, “Person”, “nature”, etc., because he understands well that in this case the concepts do not at all pretend to be an exhaustive expression of what they mean, but play only the necessary role of milestones for thought, protecting a certain content of faith, against its possible confusion with something untrue or impure. Why, when it comes to the Church, does he deny the need for these milestones, and considers it possible to leave here the religious feeling of the individual, without any divinely sanctified, dogmatic support? In relation to the Church, he replaces this dogmatic criterion with an aesthetic one. 354 According to him, the only criterion of churchliness is beauty. “Yes, there is,” he says, “a special spiritual beauty, and it, elusive to logical formulas, is at the same time the only true path to determining what is Orthodox and what is not. The connoisseurs of this beauty are spiritual elders, masters of “the art of art,” as the holy fathers call asceticism. The spiritual elders, so to speak, have become skilled in recognizing the good quality of spiritual life. The taste is Orthodox, the Orthodox appearance is felt, but it is not subject to arithmetic calculation. Orthodoxy is shown, but not proven. That is why for anyone who wants to understand Orthodoxy, there is only one way - direct experience of Orthodoxy.” This is where the question arises: where is it, this direct experience, and how does each of us, an imperfect and sinful person, distinguish it from indirect? Since Christ alone, apart from sin, even the experience of the greatest saints cannot be recognized as infallible. And finally, where are those holy elders whose “Orthodox taste” I should trust, in our church, in the Roman Church, or among the schismatics and in which particular sect? If it is in our Orthodoxy, then isn’t there a vicious circle here, because only from the “experts” and “elders” do we know where true Orthodoxy is! If we begin to test the experience of these “experts” with our imperfect experience, we will probably never know for certain where the true “Orthodox taste” is - among the Old Believers, among the name-glorifying people, among Catholics or among the Holy Synod? The aesthetic criterion of Orthodoxy cannot give us anything other than an infinite number of contradictory answers. But he gives N.A. Berdyaev the opportunity to pose a question to Father Florensky, to which the latter cannot give any satisfactory answer. “If churchliness is life in the Spirit, and there is a criterion for correct church life - Beauty, then why, for example, was J. Boehme not in churchliness, why did he not live in the Spirit? According to the external, formal criteria of churchliness, J. Boehme was a Lutheran and a Gnostic heretic before the court of official Catholic and Orthodox consciousness; according to the criteria of Spirit and Beauty, he was a genuine church Christian. Why, according to the internal criteria of Spirit and Beauty, should many mystics, people of righteous life, genuine life in Spirit and Beauty, who do not fit in according to external, formal, official criteria, be excommunicated from church life and recognized as heretics?” (cited article, p. 117). And N.A. Berdyaev accuses Father Florensky of internal contradiction. Churchliness does not have any external, formal signs and criteria; it is life in Spirit and Beauty. This is one thesis of the priest. Florensky. Another of his thesis, which he uses throughout the book, sounds like this: only that life in the spirit and Beauty is religiously permissible, correct, justified, which is churchly according to the formal, external criteria of churchliness. Everything that is not Orthodox in the literal, religious, external formal sense of the word is suspicious, unhealthy, all delusion and even fornication” (p. 117). Thought about. Florensky was subjected to some stylization here, but in fact in his book there are fluctuations between two diametrically opposed criteria of churchliness - the subjective, aesthetic, passed on to him from the “new” religious consciousness, and the objective - given by the Church itself. I wholeheartedly agree with the proposal to make a choice between one and the other, and I think that the aesthetic criterion, as it is decisively inconsistent with Orthodox theodicy,” Fr. Florensky, should be given entirely and exclusively to N.A. Berdyaev. It is the duty of the Orthodox theologian to clearly understand and accurately formulate that objective criterion of churchliness, which would make it possible to understand the shaky and contradictory evidence of individual “religious experience” and taste. Otherwise, we risk losing the very consciousness of the unity of the Church. The eclipse of universal consciousness, and the anarchy of individual experiences instead of church unity, this is the inevitable logical end to which the criterion of “Orthodox taste” leads. Signs of this beginning anarchy are evident in the “audacity” of N. A. Berdyaev. Unfortunately, Fr. Florensky does not give him a strong enough rebuff. In some of its provisions one can also trace a conflict between individual taste and those objective principles and norms in which the Church itself expresses its understanding of ecclesiasticality. Take, for example, the attitude of Fr. Florensky to Catholicism. Following the Slavophiles in this regard, he denies the very presence of spiritual life and, therefore, churchliness among Catholics. “Where there is no spiritual life, something external is needed, like ensuring churchliness. A certain position, the pope, or a set, a system of positions, a hierarchy - this is the criterion of churchliness for a Catholic” (p. 6). This is the assessment of Catholicism from the point of view of the old Slavophiles, to whose teaching Fr. Florensky (p. 608). Meanwhile, it is not difficult to see that this Slavophile “taste” is in complete contradiction with the universal tradition of our Church. The Orthodox Church recognizes the validity of all Catholic sacraments from baptism to ordination. Therefore, in view of the obvious inadmissibility of the blasphemous idea that church sacraments can occur outside the Church, our Church thereby recognizes the Roman Church as the Church. Here is a clear illustration of the gap that can exist in some cases between the objectively ecclesiastical understanding of the Church and the individual taste of individual, even very pious Orthodox Christians. It would not have been difficult for Father Florensky to avoid this conflict with church tradition if in his teaching about the Church he followed the same method that he successfully applied in other areas of religious teaching. In his book, the chapter “On Sophia,” for example, represents a very successful attempt to realize and consolidate in concepts that understanding of the “Sophia-Wisdom” of God, which was really expressed in the life of the Church, especially in its worship and icon painting. Here he is not afraid to logicize church experience, but for some reason, when it comes to the Church, his point of view radically changes. Here, for him, “concept” means the end of spiritual life! Meanwhile, the understanding of churchliness, expressed in the entire life of our Church, in its sacraments, worship and in its relationship to other churches and religious societies, can be logicized, that is, realized and expressed in concepts within the same limits and to the same extent as its understanding of “Sophia” and other religious mysteries. These concepts, of course, cannot exhaust the fullness of the spiritual life of the Church, but in them we will find firm principles for distinguishing and separating the ecclesiastical from the extra-church. The main, objective criterion by which the Church recognizes both was already expressed in Peter’s confession of Christ - the Son of the living God, which, according to the word of the Savior, became the founding stone of the Church (Matthew 16:15-18), and the words of the Apostle John, who teaches us to distinguish the Spirit of God from the spirit of error (1 John 4:2-3). This criterion, the actual, real incarnation of God, is the appearance of Christ the Son of God, who came in the flesh. This criterion, of course, is expressed not in the letter, but in the sense of the sacred texts. This is the incarnation of God, taken in its universal meaning of the content and meaning of all life of humanity and creation. The Church itself wants to be nothing other than the social embodiment of Christ the God-man, His universal body. Where there is this continuous active incarnation of God, there she is, and outside of it she is nothing. Here in grain is the entire teaching of the Church about itself. This is the basis for including in it all those human communities in which the mystery of the incarnation is continuously taking place; This is also the basis for the exclusion from it of all those societies that do not recognize this secret, or for some other reason do not possess it! Closely connected with this is the formal feature by which the Church distinguishes itself from any other purely human organizations. The Incarnation in the Church is performed continuously through the sacraments, and only the apostles and their successors, ordained by them, have the power to perform the sacraments. Therefore, only the Church can be the medium of real incarnation, the body of Christ, which has apostolic succession. Thus, the statement about Florensky that the concept of the Church is indefinable is certainly false. It is determined dogmatically by the Church itself, which in the Creed calls itself “conciliar and apostolic”; The Church, therefore, defines itself in clear logical terms, which make it possible in a number of cases to accurately distinguish the ecclesiastical from the non-church. And these definitions, these external formal signs, although they do not exhaust and do not pretend to exhaust the vital content of the Church, nevertheless necessarily logically follow from this content, forming together with it one inseparable whole. The Incarnation, God-manhood, the deification of humanity, the sacraments, the mystagogue hierarchs, these human intermediaries in the theanthropic mystery taking place in the church, all these are different expressions of the same meaning, links of one inseparable vital, and at the same time logical system, for the logical and the vital in the Church are one and the same. From this it is clear how unfounded Fr.’s fear is. Florensky defines the Church in terms of concepts. And conciliarity, and apostolate, and succession - all these concepts are not only definable, but also strictly defined. Anyone who knows church teaching can accurately convey their meaning, and the Church, which knows nothing about the “aesthetic” criterion of Fr. Florensky, is not afraid to express his life essence to them. If we are told that the dogmatic definitions that the Church gives itself are incomplete and imperfect, that they leave many questions concerning the Church without a sufficient answer, for example, the question of the foundations and limits of the dogmatic authority of conciliar decrees, then this will not be an objection to what has been said here, but an indication of the need for new dogmatic definitions, and therefore, a new task for church thought. Pointing out the incompleteness of an existing definition does not mean denying its existence, but demanding its completion. In any case, to demand a definition of churchliness in terms of word and thought means to affirm it, and not to sin against it. Since the Word, which became flesh, expressed itself in human language, combined itself with human word and thought, it thereby sanctified both. And the vain fear of thought must be abandoned. That alogism that denies the incarnation of the Word of God in human word and thought thereby sins against the mystery of the Incarnation, therefore it, like many other errors, must be cut off in the name of the criterion of the Incarnation. It is especially important for us to establish here that this criterion, which distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian, the church from the non-church, is not transcendental, but immanent in thought, that is, in it we have not only a vital, but also a logical criterion. Since the deification of all human nature takes place in the Church, it is experienced by thought itself. Thought becomes divine without ceasing to be human. Therefore, no violation of her laws, that is, logical laws, is required from her in this act of deification. That superhuman, Divine that she is called upon to express in herself is the accomplishment, and not the abolition of the logical. Logism is precisely one of the characteristic differences between the church understanding of religion and the religious consciousness that calls itself new. While N.A. Berdyaev teaches to accept the “intuitions” of religious experience without any mental testing or consideration, the criterion of St. John, which guides the Church, subjects all “revelations” of subjective experience to the court of discursive thought. “Beloved! Believe not everything in the spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God: for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The meaning of these words could not be clearer. Every spirit, both foreign and our own, must be mentally tested by comparing its testimony with the appearance of Christ who came in the flesh. To do this means not to be content with evidence of “Orthodox taste,” but to subject this evidence to the strictest criticism. Everything that, according to research, turns out to be in obvious and irreconcilable contradiction with the mystery of the Incarnation of God, must therefore be rejected. Criterion of St. John contains an indispensable requirement that God-manhood be the beginning of the logical connection of our thoughts about faith. And in the implementation of this requirement lies that mental anticipation of the Tabor light, which constitutes the highest task of the human mind. I can leave it at that; but in conclusion I would like to repeat once again that my criticism comes from a positive and deeply sympathetic attitude towards the book of Fr. Florensky. Its meaning boils down to the wish that Fr. Florensky thought through to the end the deep idea that lies at the heart of his book. Truly, the Light of Tabor is not a fleeting phenomenon, but an enduring reality in which all our earthly sins, sufferings, and contradictions find healing. And it shines not only on the other side of the universe, but “enlightens every person who comes into the world” (John 1:9). Therefore, already here, in this life, that universal transformation begins, which will be completed and become apparent in the future resurrection of all creation. Already here, through the prayer of the apostles, Christ came down from the mountain and demonstrated in practice the healing of a raging life. This light of Tabor, coming from above, brings with it not only physical healing, but also spiritual healing. The entire composition of a person must restore its lost integrity in him - spirit, body, heart, and mind. With all his nature he must participate in this ascent to the mountain, and therefore with his thoughts. Doesn’t our thought share the common fate of that sinful life, which periodically rages “and suffers grievously, for it often throws itself into fire and often into water”? (Matthew 18:15). It was only through their “unbelief” that the apostles could not heal these contradictions in life. In the same way, it is only because of our unbelief that those contradictions of thought that are expressed in its varied leaps and tossings remain unhealed. Complete faith, rising above doubt, must proclaim that universal healing, which is expressed not only in the transformation of the heart, not only in the spiritualization of the flesh, but also in the enlightenment of the mind. In this revelation of the holy ascetics of our Church lies the fulfillment of the aspirations of Russian religious thought. In him Father Florensky found his “Pillar and affirmation of the Truth.” Let us wish him to continue to build on this foundation, so well and firmly laid. Archimandrite Nikanor 355. Review of the book: “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” 356 The book with the written title is of interest to the author of this bibliography primarily as a dissertation submitted for competition (according to the generally accepted understanding, plus the understanding fixed in the law) for the academic degree of Master of Theology (of course, Orthodox). 357 We did not hesitate to express this statement, although the official documents caused by the dissertation of Fr. Florensky, 358 and the review of the dissertation (of the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Bishop Theodore), which had previously become known to the general public, which appeared on the pages of the “Theological Bulletin” back in May 1914 (p. 140‒181), 359 call this latter differently, namely: “On spiritual Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy" ("Pillar and Statement of Truth") (M., 1912). There are a number of reasons for allowing such boldness. 1. Just a verbal difference, or, in the words of the eminent author of the above-mentioned review, 360 “similarity” between the titles of both books. This will become especially clear a little later, as it will conveniently explain in the best sense, first of all, for the Right Reverend, the difference in the dates of 1912 and 1914. 2. Identity of their content. The whole point is just “in volume”, 361 especially since, according to the same admission, he is clearly interested in demarcating the two-pronged book of Fr. Florensky, person, 362 although opinions about “The Pillar” “were expressed in the press from theological and philosophical points of view,” “the center of gravity of judgments and opinions about this book was not at all focused on those chapters that our book lacks, 363 but mainly on those that are included in our book, 364 and constitute its exclusive content, as a result of which “we can rightfully say that in the book we are considering, 365 the author has already expressed the essence of the matter, and therefore, everything characteristic of his religious and philosophical thinking in it (sic!) is obviously (sic!) expressed by him.” 3. Elementary thinking that concludes like this. If part of the book, which, we hope, is indisputable for everyone, is “On Spiritual Truth” in relation to the “Pillar”, provides the dissertation author with the required degree, then he will receive it three times for the whole book. And conversely, challenging the author of “The Pillar” of the justice, in a broad sense, of his scientists’ claims in this case, lowers the corresponding level of the book “On Spiritual Truth,” especially agreeing with the previous extracts from the printed review of this latter. 366 4. It is necessary even for those warning others of the very “possibility of someone identifying these two books 367 to turn to the “Pillar and Ground of Truth.” 368 Be that as it may, however, the Imperial Moscow Theological Academy, at a meeting of its Council on May 19, 1914, crowned Fr. Florensky. The noted fact, already as such, is some kind of misunderstanding. In fact, the Higher Theological School, regulated in its activities by the Charter, which was also recently published, awards an academic degree, and this latter is sought after by a person who, with ease, although not without self-contradiction 369, declares 370 in his dissertation itself: “If for the peace of the reader a judgment “from science” is certainly required, then, as far as we are able, we will satisfy him with at least the reception of Sacchari albi - in wafer (“certainly 1/2 hour after eating!”).” This is (undoubtedly) why, quite expressively for the corresponding characteristic, the author notes, 371 he makes references in a certain tone to etymologies that are recognized as doubtful, or at least not fully clarified, and also why he would not find it difficult to “refer to such provisions of linguistics (sic!), which they (in the text by us) in their time, and in their place, were or will be refuted. 372 However, these, like many others, places are not found in all copies of the Pillar. But submitting a dissertation to the Academy not in the form in which it was released 373 to the general public, without removing responsibility from the Academy, which is trying here to be like Pilate, just as the water did not wash it away from the hands of the ruler of Judea, quite deepens us into the essence of the dissertation author’s methods. Indeed, one practicality about. F. is far from being exhausted by the previous. Let us leave aside moral norms, sacrificed here to everyday considerations, in the broad sense of the word. Even despite the special explanations that exist on this matter, known better than anyone else by Fr. F. as a member of the Academic Corporation, for a master's degree, he submitted a candidate's essay, published under the title “The Pillar and Statement of Truth (Letters to a Friend)” at one time not only partially (letters I – VIII) in the II edition of the collection “Questions of Religion” (M., 1908, pp. 223‒384), 374 and also in the “Theological Bulletin” for 1911 (letters X - XI), but, if we are not mistaken, even completely. True, the candidate's work about. The title was “On Religious Truth.” However, if we do not enter into a dispute about words, 375 the most cursory acquaintance with this latest work, which is only possible based on Prof.’s review of it. S. S. Glagoleva, 376 will testify to us the indicated identity, reaching such, for example, curiosities that it was reprinted verbatim in 1914 (p. 206) the following, found in the 1908 edition (p. 336), phrase: “Now almost four years have passed, 377 but I shudder at the word about death and the second, 378 about outer darkness and about the eruption from the Kingdom.” To circumvent the law, academic practice has developed the cliché that although a well-known book submitted for a master’s degree is written on a topic (in this case, the difference is only in the topic) common to the candidate’s essay, it nevertheless represents a significant revision of the latter. What does the corresponding technique, attached to the book of Fr., give? F., when is the difference between comparable quantities reduced to two or three points? After all, in essence, what is different, to be precise to the point of punctuality, is, first of all, the wording of the titles. Further, with relatively minor exceptions, what is new is the “notes and minor notes” that occupy p. 605‒809 neat printing. However, this kind of short story is rather intended to increase, for obvious reasons, the book in weight and volume, as well as to excite through this the corresponding feelings, especially in inexperienced readers. 379 Such an explanation, at least, can be given to “notes of the third kind”, serving as a bibliographic aid to the reader who would like to independently consider one or another issue discussed in this work. 380 It seems that their author should also agree with our view of “notes of the third kind,” who, having deliberately limited their scope in favor of Russian literature, 382 immediately makes a reservation about it: “At the same time, it was not in my mind to pursue exhaustive completeness of instructions. Only a few books are mentioned for the immediate (emphasis added) acquaintance with the literature of the issue.” 383 Which (first, second or third) category of notes do the references about. F., which have not yet come out of the printing press into the light of God, 384 or even even from the head of the author 385 his own works 386 or other persons, but firmly, not without benefit for himself, captured in the hands of Fr. Florensky, 387 answering such a question is not always easy. But that they, although to a small extent (and after all, “everything is the same for a naked man” and “a penny saves a ruble”), lead to the same goal, this is self-evident. Finally, it is permissible to ask, from the indicated angle, about that note (746 to p. 421, see note 20 to p. 20), where the “name-worshipping” literature is listed in more or less detail, and only in parentheses is the “Synodical (sic!) Message and articles of Arch. Nikon, Anthony (sic!), and E. (sic!) Troitsky.” However, all this will be explained later. Until now, if you like, it was more funny, but now, while continuing to be funny, it becomes bitter. We mean the references to Fr. that breathe evil irony. F. 388 for the candidate's works of Academy students, stored in the Academic Archives, and receiving them from there is easier for professors than even for the authors themselves. Thank you o. F. is it that, using such things, he at least quotes them. Justice, however, requires that we generally pay respect in this regard to Fr. F., who is so “correct” that he does not leave without quotes even his conversations with former teachers, current colleagues, or with anyone else, especially if it is necessary to confirm any new, or even completely dubious, idea. 389 To properly note, under the present circumstances, the overt borrowings of Fr. F. from second hand, 390 or not quite common in literature, although understandable in his position, references to hectographed publications, 391 as well as negligence 392 in the general desire, despite impudence, 393 scrupulousness, etc. 394, is hardly necessary. Rather, what deserves attention is the unceremoniousness with which Fr. Florensky increases the volume of “Pillar” before the second release. To do this, you just need to refer to the “Table of Contents” of the book. From here the reader will see that “explanations and proofs of certain particulars that were supposed to have already been proven in the text” relating to p. 59, and with the exception of the last paragraphs, which are a literal reprint of p. 262‒268 of the first edition of the “Pillar”, follow those to p. 61, and concerning p. 153 and 266, are set aside much lower (placed on pp. 582 and 587) apparently relating 395 even to the whole book, the latter (i.e. to p. 266) are completely embedded with some kind of wedge into the text of the “Table of Contents” and eo ipso of the book. 396 “Not without interest,” especially in certain parts, and from a certain point of view, these “clarifications.” Two of them (“Pascal’s Amulet” and “Homotypy in the structure of the human body”) represent, although a reprint of someone else’s, not always convenient, due to censorship conditions in a theological dissertation, 397 the third (“The Heart and its significance in the spiritual life of man, according to the teaching of the Word of God”) is deprived of this “environment,” as Fr. F., being a literal extract from an article accessible to everyone (in the “Proceedings of the Kyiv Theological Academy”, 1860, book 1) under the same title by P. D. Yurkevich. O.F. does the same in a number of notes. 398 Having expanded, mainly from the external side, the dimensions of the Pillar” with the help of notes, Fr. F. follows the beaten path further and performs, but much more accurately, a similar operation with the text itself. So how to safely reach the top of the “Pillar” of Fr. Well, leaving aside everything else because of the single font in which the book is printed, a considerable feat that even a beginner always wants to give up (so great is the power of temptation!), then to illustrate the point we have just made, let’s compare one or two initial “letters” in both editions. Let's take the second letter. Its first two paragraphs in both editions of the Pillar are identical, except for the significant addition of the single word certitudo to the very end of the second paragraph. 399 The following paragraph constitutes a kind of preface 400 to a philological excursion regarding the word “truth”, specifying seven pages of fine print, and from a verbal point of view, representing the novelty in the latest edition of the “Pillar”. Further, in the 1st edition of “The Pillar”, there is a missing paragraph (4 lines), placed on the 24th page of the new edition of the book, expanded in this latter by inserting 4 lines, the paragraph following the one under consideration, and the further one is supplemented with 8 lines. One of the paragraphs on p. 26 of the new edition of “The Pillar”, expanded with a nine-line conversation “with an old servant.” One line is added to one of the paragraphs on p. 27, 39 and 48 (new edition). In addition, another of the paragraphs on page 27 has been expanded and added 2 lines. Several lines are inserted into the middle paragraph p. 28 of the same edition. In the same spirit, paragraphs on p. 30‒32, 34, 40‒43, 47. A seven-line paragraph is inserted on p. 35 approximately the same thing, through brief extracts from Anselm, F. Aquinas and Spinoza, is produced on p. 45. A larger addition to the 2nd letter in the new edition is, in fact, p. 29, with the last few lines on the previous and subsequent pages, and that's it. With the third letter the situation is even worse. The expansion, of course, only touched upon the 1st paragraph of the letter in a few lines - an extract from the bl. Jerome, 1st paragraph 52nd page and p. 54, 62, 66‒67. A two-line excerpt from Macarius the Great is distributed in another paragraph on page 68. What is new, first of all, is the paragraph occupying the end of the 54th page, and the first two lines of the 55th page, and then a small philological excursion on p. 69, which ends the letter. That's the whole difference between both editions of the letter in question. Let us now turn to examples of the author's methodology in a closer sense of the word. O. F., in the course of almost two pages (629‒630) of the close print in which the notes to his book are typed, characterizes, with an extract from Richter, 401 the skeptic Pyrrho, 402 and here (p. 630) he openly admits that “the historical reliability (of the hagiographic 403 image of this philosopher) is very small.” “I thought a lot,” writes Fr. in another place (p. 185). F. over the root word (sic!) μακ ά ριоς μ ά καρ Schelling, 404 and I will briefly present his subtle considerations now. True, modern linguistics does not agree with Schelling 405 and nothing lasts in science. But even if his thoughts were indeed “unscientific”, in life they give a lot for understanding the word (sic!) μ ά καρ. Or: “Based 406 on etymology, although unlikely, 407 we can say that a brother is a brother of the burden of life. 408 However, for Fr. F. often does not represent any significance and more. For example, having settled on Tseretelev’s 409 translation of Heraclitus’ fragment Αγχίρασιη, which was more convenient for himself, with the word “contradiction,” Fr. F. feels that this translation is one of a kind. 410 Then he resorts to the classical method, which is applicable anywhere, but not in science, and at once ends it with himself, on his own initiative, making excursions into the corresponding area. “No matter how this difficult question about the fragment “contradiction” is resolved,” he writes 411, “if such a fragment did not exist, then “il faudrait Tinventer.” Or, for example, Fr. F. is not embarrassed, and even openly declares 412 that it is a social 413 norm. Paul (1 Cor. 14:40) he gives 414 ontological 415 significance. In the same spirit, a remark by Fr. F. 416 something like the following: “According to the teachings of Vl. Solovyova 417 (“Ros. and Vs. Ts.”) 4 (book 3, chapter III - V, pp. 325-353, esp. see pp. 326-327, 328, 331-332:349), Sophia is not only the ideal personality of the Creature, but also the “Substance of the Most Holy. Trinity" (did Solovyov mean to say 418 "common energy" or "common grace"?). Chef d'oeuvre 419 in this regard, perhaps, a note. 724 (to p. 399): “Words (of Aristotle): “τò φιλει̃σθαι ἀγαπα᷉σθαι ἐστιν αυ̃τòν οι αυ̃τòν,” by the French translator (his “Rhetoric” 420) are conveyed through the phrase: “Etre aime signifie etre cherie pour son merite personnel,” that is, exactly the opposite of our transmission, although it is almost certain that the translator wanted to say the same thing as in our translation” (sic!). Also from the field of translation. “Extract in the text (p. 99),” notes Fr. F., - in approx. 236 made from memory. Having now consulted the text, I see that the translation made, although most likely, is not obligatory” (sic!). In general, in handling sources Fr. F. is a kind of libertine, and he is frank to... nes plus ultra, which, however, was not difficult to notice earlier. “Monument 421,” let us explain what has just been said in the own words of the author of “Pillar” 422, “which I intend to cite now, almost does not relate to my primary task 423, but I cannot resist conveying these infinitely sweet lines of correspondence between Ignatius the God-Bearer and the Blessed Virgin... Who in home life, in everyday (sic!) communication was the ap. Peter is a model and the highest embodiment of imperishable beauty, a meek and silent spirit." They say that “perhaps” this correspondence is apocryphal, but no one has proven the inauthenticity of the Letter, although with someone on the next and subsequent pages Fr. F. is polemicizing on this issue. 424 Here is another similar confession 425: “for example, (of dogmatic antinomies) a table of some antinomies, chosen, however, quite randomly” (sic!). 426 Sometimes o. F. does not hesitate to clearly contradict himself. The position that in Christianity “attention has moved from elemental force to the rational regularity (sic!) of nature,” he, by the way, proves 427 this way: “The famous Hymn to Christ the Savior” 428 by Clement of Alexandria, 429 dedicated, however, to humanity, 430 and not to nature, breathes a new idea of ​​​​creature.” Having cited the 431 mentioned hymns in the text, Fr. F. in note 432 states that all this was done “based on a not entirely accurate translation by Rev. Philaret 433, ep. (sic!) Chernigovsky. 434 Argues about. F. his theses, sometimes in extraordinary ways. “Situation,” we read in the notes. 41 (to p. 38), - indicated in the text, 435 can be substantiated by a lot of data. But for me personally 436 this idea became obvious after one dream” (sic!). By association, I involuntarily remember a story about how one of the former teachers of the Moscow Seminary, when he was angry about the unsuccessful answers of his students about verbs starting with μι, often hissed out of frustration: “I’ll tell you a hundred verbs starting with μι: εὶμι, φημί, etc.” The strangeness of the motivation in places gives grounds to deny the author’s natural feeling of disgust here. O.F. knows 437 that “recently important revelations have been made by the famous Bykov, 438 who once participated in Khlyst zeal and then actively spread spiritualism,” that “the deceit and charlatanism developing on the basis of spiritualism, especially among mediums, have also been firmly attested.” However, the relevant material about. F. widely involves in his work, and operates with him as with an objectively valid one. Further attention is drawn to the method of using o. F. patristic writing. Recalling on the first pages of his book “how the general Spirit of the work gradually changed in the author’s mind,” Fr. F., by the way, notes the final moment when it “began to seem to him that it was necessary to discard everything 439 of his own and print only church works.” 440 As one might expect, on almost every line of the book, and in “The Pillar” as a whole, the self-contradictory author did not actually realize this intention. Nevertheless, liturgical and patristic literature served its purpose for him. Abundantly in terms of quantity, drawing on both in his book, Fr. F., under this cover, pursues ideas that either have too little or nothing at all in common with the universal church consciousness. 441 The courage of his movements along the “beaten” path is amazing. Having characterized this courage too little by pointing to the fact that the so-called theological opinions, or private opinions of St. Fathers and teachers of the Church are occupied in the book by Fr. F. a place far from typical for them. And it is much more important to note the author’s firmly adopted manner of finding, to put it somewhat imprecisely, support for himself in the most extreme thoughts of individual representatives of the most extreme currents of theological thought, mainly of the ancient Church, 442 moreover, often expressed ad hoc, 443 and passing all this off as the very essence of Orthodoxy, as the voice of the Universal Church. However, this union is only needed for the time being, unless, however, there is a lapsus of the tightrope walker, sui generis 444 of the author. “The word “will be saved” – σωθήσεται, 445 – writes Fr. F. on p. 229 “Pillar” - has been subject to various reinterpretations; but contrary to Chrysostom 446 and the ancient Greek commentators, it should be noted 447 that σώζειν does not mean 448 “preserve” in general, for example, in Gehenna, for eternal torment, as Chrysostom explains, 449 it would then stand τηρήσεται, namely to save 450 in in a favorable sense”, etc. Methodological techniques about. F. modifies (this is a sad but firmly established fact for him), sometimes falling “from the frying pan into the fire,” not only from a fundamental point of view. We illustrate this with the most striking example. The question of the trinity (and not the fourfold, etc.) of the hypostases in the Divinity and their equality, Fr. F. decides under the influence of Couture's ideas. 451 “But,” says Prof. S.S. Glagolev, 452 – Couture’s consistently developed reasoning turns against our author... We think that equality of relationships is possible for four (but no more), and not for only three.” Hence, either the chosen Fr. is not suitable for this purpose. Florensky’s path of following Couture, 453 or for him a greater number of hypostases of the Holy Trinity is permissible, as hinted by the following excerpt from the “Pillar” 454: “Sophia is religious 455 - not rational, almost merges with the Word and the Spirit and the Father, as with the Wisdom and the Kingdom and Parenthood of God.” 456 Reviewing the methodological side of Fr. F., we dwelled more on particulars, mainly illustrating individual points, rather than expressing any general provisions. This is because, firstly, the marked details themselves are characteristic. Then, they quite clearly, from our point of view, outline the appearance of the work in its whole light of knowledge, affirming God (p. 72), and mercilessly condemning rational faith (pp. 64-65), for “dogmas are comprehended by the Spirit” (p. 162), which, however, are not something unprecedented and unexpected in science (p. 508), but “the purified God-bearing (sic!) mind of the holy ascetics is (only) somewhat (emphasis not ours) more complete” than usual (p. 158). In addition, the opposite path was taken by previous reviewers, 457 who pointed out the substitution of the topic, 458 and the confusion of the author’s ideology. 459 This should be the end. But Hume 460 rightly noted that “every book should be as complete as possible, and no book should refer the reader to another book to fulfill its contents.” This is the justification for our intention to use several excerpts to more or less accurately express some of our thoughts. “If,” writes the Right Reverend Theodore, 461, having previously noted (pp. 159‒160) the confusion of Fr. terms and concepts (reason and reason), the reader accepts the author’s judgments about reason, and their results as true, then he really must deny reason as a criterion of truth, and if (sic!), having been convinced through the author’s judgments of the truth of the denial of reason (sic!), wants to be consistent, then he must deny the judgments of the author himself, i.e. reason had to affirm... We find it somewhat difficult to understand what kind of necessity of faith the author asserts: purely logical or psychological." Based on both passages in book 462, “one might think that the author is looking for the logical necessity of faith. But then why does he repeat repeatedly on the pages of his book that both faith (sic!) and the knowledge of Truth are from God, from the Holy Spirit, etc. And what would be the advantage of this faith, and its difference from any other faith, epistemological, scientific. 463 If ​​the author wants to show the psychological necessity of faith, then why does he strive to see the laws of reason implemented in the features of Truth, and proceed from these laws in constructing the ideas of Truth. In the first case, the Truth, which stands above reason, is rationalized, and yet the goal is not achieved, 464 in the second case, those logical constructions of the ideas of Truth that we find in the author are made unnecessary... Next, the author examines the law of rational knowledge, the process of judgment and the formation of concepts, and builds the concept of Truth in the direction that this idea, although it goes beyond the limits of reason, satisfies its laws... So (sic!), the laws of epistemology, we note, are lower epistemology, the reason of fallen man, are elevated, as it were, into the laws of ontology, and they determine the real face (sic!) of the immortal and luminous Truth... Wanting to explain and thereby establish reason, the author resolves the contradiction in it, which concerns the norms of its activity as criteria of truth, by creating an object of thought in which this contradiction is destroyed, and which nevertheless cannot be perceived by reason and cannot be thought.” More decisively he reveals the main contradiction of the book, pendant to which, by the way, is its confused terminology, 465 and the inconsistency of the author, Mr. Berdyaev. 466 As a new and subtle person, priest. Florensky, of course, recognizes only experimental theology; he is turned to spiritual life and cannot help but despise seminary scholasticism. But here he gets confused. On the one hand, dogmas are revealed in spiritual experience and spiritual life, on the other hand, dogmas are a criterion for healthy and correct spiritual experience and spiritual life. Dogmas are immanently revealed in spiritual experience, and dogmas are transcendentally imposed on spiritual experience. Priest Florensky is very suspicious and suspicious of spiritual experience, of life in the spirit; he demands tireless church-dogmatic testing of the spirit. The spiritual may turn out to be spiritual, the divine - human arbitrariness and self-affirmation. And so I ask: where are the formal signs of spirituality for the priests? Florensky, how does he know what is truly spiritual and what is not? For him, the religious criterion of spirituality and life in the spirit is church, dogmatic consciousness. But from the very first pages of the book, St. Florensky is clear that he, following Khomyakov, does not recognize any external, formal criteria of churchness 467... Priest. Florensky sits between two chairs, and his consciousness is torn apart by painful duality, not antinomy, but duality and ambiguity. Churchliness does not have any external, formal signs and criteria; it is life in Spirit and Beauty.” 468 This is one thesis of the Holy. Florensky. Another of his thesis, which he uses throughout the book, sounds like this: “Only that life in Spirit and Beauty is religiously permissible, correct, justified, which is churchly according to the formal, external criteria of churchliness. 469 Everything that is not Orthodox in the literal, religious, external formal sense of the word is suspicious, unhealthy, all delusion and even fornication.” 470 But here I strongly suggest St. Florensky must choose between these two theses, not sit between two chairs. “In the course of the author’s judgments,” his Eminence reviewer 471 “seems to be some methodological incorrectness” of the direct transition made by Fr. F. in a well-known place in the book, to a speech about God as Love. It is not only impossible to disagree with such a qualification, on the contrary, it must be strengthened to the proper extent so as not to fall into the sin of “silence.” “If there is a God... then He must be absolute love.” 472 Why love, after all, God and spirit, etc.? Yes, of course, for the simple reason that Fr. F.'s definition of God seems to him most useful for building a system, 473 i.e., for creating under the name of “Orthodox theodicy” a new experience of school theology that he hated, and, alas, with everyone, according to Fr. F., defects characteristic of the works of this latter. 474 In a word, ratio, or reason, appears on the stage again. But, in essence, “Holy. Florensky (only) postulates 475 (and the very) Triune Truth (and that only) as the only outcome from hellish torment; he accepts the Triune God out of despair.” Oddly enough, but the method is sacred. Florensky is reminiscent of Kant’s moral postulation of God, 476 so alien to him. He accepts the hypothesis of the Triune Truth and the Triune God, transcendental to knowledge itself and to spiritual experience itself, in order to be saved from hellish despair,” 477 despair of a spiritual person, and not a spiritual one, based largely on the intellectual. 478 After all, contrary to the Gospel, Fr. Florensky, let us explain his thought, affirms the practical convenience of the existence of Truth. “I don’t know,” let’s say in his own, summing words 479, “whether there is truth or not. But I feel with all my gut that I can’t do 480 without her.” Phenomenalistically (italics by O. F.), according to the statement of our author, 481 “religion itself is a system of such actions and experiences that provide salvation for the soul” (ibid.). Thus, pragmatism sui generis, the refined utilitarianism of method, whether in a literal or figurative sense we will use this last concept, little by little seeped into the very content of the book, to which we now turn. How non-Orthodox the corresponding works of Orthodox authors of Russian theological systems are is another question. But what is the book about? F. - “a bouquet of incompatible heresies”, 482 this is a fact. Even from the point of view of Mr. Berdyaev, 483 “no matter how the priest stylizes himself. Florensky is an orthodox, right-wing Orthodox type, he cannot escape accusations of heresies, freethinking, innovations,” 484 because, Prince rightly thinks. E. N. Trubetskoy, 485 his book, especially in some places, is not entirely Christian in spirit. 486 Thus, the idea, the revelation of which, one might say, even begins the book of Fr., is unacceptable for the church consciousness. F., his statement, according to which the duality of not the whole person, which the author comes to later, but the mind, to express it not entirely precisely, is the norm for this latter, and not an accidental, factual state. Nevertheless, let us assume a logical conclusion from this about the antinomic nature of the dogmas. Meanwhile, Fr. F. considers inconsistency to be proof of their truth, 487 obviously, to be consistent, 488 sinful in its essence, 489 for antinomianism, according to the destroying previous statement of our author, is “the seal of a sinful split in the mind.” Further, on p. 49, o. F. writes: “Truth is a single essence with three hypostases... However, with all this, hypostasis and essence are one and the same. 490 This position, which is poorly justified historically, is clearly untenable from a dogmatic point of view, as long as we are talking about Truth. Then he finds a place for himself in “Pillar” 491 and the Uniate “per Filium”. 492 In certain parts of his book 493 the author interprets Revelation (“knowledge of the Truth”) as continuous, or, more precisely, as not yet stopped. The fact is that the Truth is Trinitarian, and a review of the relevant literature and the current state of affairs, 494 in the opinion of the author, 495 give him the right to recognize, “present even to this day,” the knowledge of the Holy Spirit as a Hypostasis, and eo ipso all Revelation at a given historical moment in life is incomplete. That's why, believes Fr. F., “as long as history continues, only moments and moments of illumination of the spirit are possible (and moreover) ... The fullness of acquisition is (still) inaccessible to believers, (even) as a whole 496 ... (although) just as before Christ 497 there were Christ-bearers (sic), so before the complete 498 descent of the Spirit there were spirit-bearers (sic!). By the way, “a living preliminary (emphasis added) manifestation of the Spirit on earth, a type of pneumatophania (italics by F.)” - the Mother of God (p. 355). Hence the need to “pray... for the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.” 499 Based on this understanding, which brings Fr. F. with sectarian mystics, 500 he, in contradiction with historical facts, conditions the receipt of Revelation by the individual, and, of course, by the human [?] perceiver, and represents this very act as a personal matter. The Church, as a vessel into which the grace of the Holy Spirit was once poured out and which alone preserves and exudes it to those who require it, moves from the golden categories, one feels, into the meager category. The Old Testament Revelation, it is not enough to say, is diminished in its power and significance, 501 especially in comparison with the New Testament, and even more so with the expected author of the Third, but it is simply difficult to fit in with the starting provisions of Fr. F. In fact, if Revelation is the knowledge of Truth (i.e., Absolute), Absolute Truth, both from a dogmatic point of view and from the deep conviction of Fr. F., Trihypostasis, then, obviously, the knowledge of such Truth is penetration into the mystery of the Trinity, in other words, into the relationship (not only external, but also internal) of the Hypostases. 502 Meanwhile, according to our author, “only by believing in the Son and receiving in Him the promise of the Holy Spirit, 503 the believer learns that there is a Father 504 (Luke 10:22), only in the Son of God does he recognize the Father as Father, and therefore he himself becomes a son; through the Son he receives the Holy Spirit, and then in the Comforter he contemplates the inexpressible beauty of the essence of God.” Our author is completely consistent in his views when, in particular, he understands Revelation in the sense of the still individual illumination of the soul with “intelligent light,” “the light of Tabor.” But hardly beyond “any doubt” 505 “the term illumination, 506 as well as others like it, indicates the uncreated Tabor light - the energy of the Triune Divinity.” 507 “The idea of ​​the blessed light” becomes one of the few basic 508 ideas of the entire divine service, 509 if, outside of the historical perspective, almost absent from our author, especially here, “it is directly or indirectly associated with the teaching on this subject, most clearly and consistently expressed by the Athonite hesychasts...”. 510 Charismatism Fr. F., however, is not slow to show up in the private judgments of our author. At least against the general background of the “Pillar”, the meaning of the sacraments of ordination, and most importantly, repentance, is unclear, if it is true that “the spirit bearers (sic!), who know the mysteries of God, hold the keys of the City” (Matthew 16:17-19; Rev. 3:7-9; Matthew 18:18, etc.), 511 if the “essence of power” is knitted and decided “in spiritual knowledge (italics Fr. F.) the mysteries of the kingdom, in the comprehension of the spiritual world and the will of God”, in “gnosis (the same), “spirituality” (the same) of the disciples of Christ (p. 421). Then the remark of Fr. F. regarding the surrogate, if so possible, and even then incompletely expressed, character of the church teaching on grace. “After all, (already) later, and instead of the Holy Spirit, they imperceptibly and gradually began to talk about “grace,” that is, about something completely impersonal.” 512 Finally, for even for the ascetic fathers, the “Holy Spirit” is the “Spirit of Christ,” the “Spirit of God,” “a certain sanctifying and purifying impersonal power of God.” 513 Such a characteristic of the church teaching on grace is curious not only in itself, but also in another respect. This is another illustration of what Mr. Berdyaev called the seat of Fr. F. between two chairs. Spiritual experience is “the only legitimate, in the opinion of our author, way of learning dogmas” (p. 3). In fact, there is distrust of church mystics (p. 121). So, the whole matter comes down to the personal discretion of Fr. F. in the matter of choosing even ascetic fathers, that is, the same thing that we talked about a little higher. The solution to pneumatology defects. F., he himself gives, recognizing 514 that “both at the basis of Tolstoyism, 515 and at the basis of the “new consciousness” lies a true idea.” 516 The author, one would like to think, thereby at the same time explains the “rozanovism” 517 in his book, a touch, as usual, obscured, and in order to avoid suspicion, in addition, covered with ideas and expressions borrowed from some of the fathers. The point here, of course, is not Saltykov-Shchedrin’s assessment 518: mutual gravitation about. F. and V.V. Rozanova 519 reveals their inner affinity most closely in “issues of the flesh.” Expressions like: “the brilliance of the holy transfigured flesh”, “the value of the flesh” already appear in the letter entitled “Comforter”, 520 where the eschatology of Fr. F. What the author wants to say by this will become clear if we turn our attention to his phrase: the saints of the End of History 521 “are no longer half 522 monks in the narrow sense of the word.” 523 Not monks, of course, from the angle of the author’s ideas developed in the letter “Creature”. Here they are, without needing any special comments, to be extracted. 524 “The body is something whole, something individual, something special.” “What is usually called the body is nothing more than an ontological surface, 525 and behind it, on the other side of this shell, 526 lies the mystical depth 527 of our being,” not the soul in the usual sense, but the soul (?!) of the body, or, as Fr. F. expresses himself, “body 528 in the body.” This is one thesis. But now it’s a step, or at least half a step back. “All that we call “external nature”, all “empirical reality”, including our “body” here, is only the surface of the division between two depths of being: the depths of the “I” and the depths of the non-I, and therefore it is impossible to say whether our “body belongs to the I and to the not-I”. 529 However, the author quickly recovers and on the next page, following Peladon, 530 Wilder, Foltz, Oken, Spix and others, up to and including the ancient Egyptians, “they already notice the symmetry of the upper and lower parts of the body, the so-called homotypy 531 of the upper and lower poles. The bottom of a person is like a mirror image of his top.” “The ontological focus of the body is not this or that limb, but the center of homotypy, i.e. middle 533 part of a person.” “If the chest is the center of the body, then the heart is the center of the chest.” “Church mysticism is the mysticism of the breast.” 534 Hence, in the future, the “idea of ​​the holy body,” between which and the “idea of ​​deification” expressed by some, and certainly not by a host of 535 church writers of Christian antiquity, Fr. F. puts an equal sign. 536 And then, under a similar, but weaker, 537 cover - a statement about the image of God, precisely in the body 538 of a person.” Such an understanding of the image of God,” it turns out, “is characteristic,” 539 by the way, “of the Russian people (sic!), which was expressed most clearly in the unanimous struggle against barber-shaving, 541 sanctified, by the way, by the Church and the Old Testament, 542 and the Christian, adopted, like everything else of this kind, following others under the protection of our author. 543 For the sake of consistency, unfortunately, of course, our Fr. F. is little noticed everywhere, it would not hurt him to recognize “mpufeism” (sic!) as characteristic of the Russian people, and by the way, to endow this latter with a rationalistic spirit. 544 In fact, the Old Believer schism in Rus' is a fact, and one of the bishops 545 seems to be completely on the side of Fr. F. As for the Russian Church, in the fight against the schism, in essence, it will only find itself in the position of a “divided kingdom,” and its theology will appear wandering, even from the point of view of an Orthodox priest. 546 “After all, from the point of view of Fr. F., 547 every book is (F.’s italics) a part of the soul of its author, or at least should be (his) such, and therefore, no matter how carefully it is prepared, it nevertheless has thousands of still living nerves and blood vessels connecting what is said with what remains unsaid.” Our author is logical, on the other hand. “The body,” he believes, 548 “this common boundary between man and other creatures, connects them together.” If the flesh is holy, if the human body contains the image of God, then, obviously, there is 549 “the eternal and holy side of every creature, including here even demons and enemies of the Truth, that is, demons.” 550 After all, the creature, argues Fr. F., “in itself, or by itself, or about itself... - Sophia,” 551 creations are the work of God’s humility, self-abasement (sic!) of God. This latter, says our author, manifested itself “in the creation of the world, that is, he explains his thought, in placing an independent (sic!) existence next to Himself, in granting it the freedom to develop according to its own laws, and, consequently, in the voluntary limitation of Himself.” 552 Based on this series of thoughts about. F., with good reason one can affirm the presence of the Image of God in all creation and, therefore, in demons. Creation, as a whole, turns out to be created in the Image of God. When Fr. F., on the basis of previous judgments, 553 decides the question “whether there will be a universal restoration in bliss” in a positive sense, 554 he is right. But at the same time answering “yes” to the question “will there be eternal torment,” he is mistaken, especially thinking that “only the view expressed here (i.e., in his book) satisfies the spirit and letter (NB) of Holy Scripture and the spirit (NB) of patristic writing.” 555 It is not for nothing that in the book “On Spiritual Truth” the chapter “Gehenna” is missing, although the letters “Sin” and “Creation” are present. 556 The Church does not know “yes” and “no” in dogmatic questions, for “Jesus Christ Himself... was not “yes” and “no,” but in Him there would be “yes”” (2 Cor. 1:19), and as she at one time spoke about the corresponding views of Origen, Fr. F. is sure, at least he heard. By the way, the Origenism of the new formation, like any copy, is weaker than the original, unless there are traces of the corresponding theosophical teaching of Hinduism. In fact, if a person “must 557 be saved,” 558 then both creation and demons must equally be saved, for the saving principle is inherent here too. This is the first one. Further, if a person “must be saved,” then she is either completely, and in all respects, not free, 559 and, therefore, not a person, or free, therefore, moral, with all the consequences arising from this. As for the distinction made by our author between personality and character, this latter, doubling things, 560 nevertheless does not satisfactorily resolve the issue. Character, as a system of actions, is not a personality, and as a system, either cannot be subject to torment, or constitutes, sui generis, a personality. In the latter case, a person is still subject to torment, albeit of a second, from the point of view of a moral ideal, but of essentially the same order, i.e., the same person, but for his negative actions, which is what we needed to prove, of course, but not Fr. F. Let’s even assume that Fr. F., for whom it is not difficult to leave a position once taken, will agree to the eternal torment of the Divinity Himself, reflected in the human person. 561 This still will not improve our author’s position. He will fall into patripassianism, 562 unless they have already sinned by saying 563: “God loves His creation and is tormented for it, tormented by its sin.” In "Origenism" there are 564 o. F. may also be the reason why the corresponding pages of the Pillar are very reminiscent of the Catholic teaching on purgatory. Finally, our author will hardly dare to dispute that he is interpreting, in fact, restoration, and not resurrection, and, moreover, by fire. For Fr. F., if you like, it is permissible to deny the very right to raise the question of Gehenna, or, at least, to give it a solution not in the Origenistic spirit. The Trinity of the Divine, in the opinion of our author, corresponds to forgiveness, hence “tripheism,” which he, from the indicated angle, characterizes as “relaxing.” 565 In the secret confidence of final forgiveness in such a state of affairs, “indeed, as Fr. F., there is inevitability.” 566 So, Gehenna has no place theologically. No - or even now, if, following the teaching of the Church, this latter is recognized as possessing, from the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, all the fullness of Revelation necessary for the work of building our salvation, or, according to Fr. F. the Church receiving the Revelation of the Holy Spirit. There is equally no Gehenna, and in essence the worldview of Fr. F., because for him “Gehenna is the negation of the dogma of the Trinity.” 567 This last one is from Fr. F. has a pronounced epistemological overtones, therefore, Gehenna, “which (after all, only) is in us, and whose tongues, breaking through the cracks of the soul, lick (only!) consciousness,” has the same properties. 568 But since the fundamental denial of the Truth is impossible for physically normal people, 569 then, obviously, Gehenna is only theoretically conceivable, I would say, imaginable as a concession to dreamers and ignoramuses, but impossible. Now we have to go back a little, the same amount to coordinate the order of our work with the book of Fr. F., how many and for proofreading reasons. True, even following the dissertation of Fr. F., from our fragmentary presentation of it, it is impossible not to notice the inconsistency in the author’s definition of the concept “Sophia”. 570 But in all its glory this, plus the discord that is unacceptable from a dogmatic point of view, will appear when compared with these two definitions of Sophia and a number of others. So, Sophia is a creature in her essence, 571 and religiously she almost merges with the Word and the Spirit and the Father.” 572 And now we will write out in order from the book of Fr. F. definitions of Sophia, which hardly require any explanation to justify our thought. Sophia is the Wisdom of God realized (in creation), the Great Root of the whole 573 kupnoi (sic!) of creation, i.e. complete (sic!) 574 creature. In relation to creation, She is the Guardian Angel of creation, the ideal personality of the world, forming the mind. 575 In relation to God, Sophia is “the formed content of God-Mind, “His psychic content, eternally created by the Father through the Son, and completed in the Holy Spirit 576. Sophia, further, the Eternal Bride of the Word of God. Outside of Him and independently of Him, it has no existence and crumbles into fragments of ideas 577 about the creature, but in Him it receives creative power. One in God, it is multiple in creation, and here it is perceived in its concrete phenomena as the ideal personality of man, 578 as his Guardian Angel, 579 i.e. as a glimpse of the eternal dignity of the individual, and as the image of God in man, 580 Sophia participates in the life of the Trinitarian Divinity, enters the Trinity bosom and partakes of Divine love” (= fourth created Person). “From the point of view of the Hypostasis of the Father, 581 Sophia is an ideal substance, 582 the basis of the creature, the power or force of its being. If we turn to the Hypostasis of the Word, 583 then Sophia is the mind of the creature, its meaning, truth or righteousness. And, finally, from the point of view of the Hypostasis of the Spirit, we have in Sophia the spirituality of the 584 creature, its holiness, purity and innocence, that is, its beauty. 585 In relation to the economy, Sophia ... is the firstfruits and center of the redeemed creation, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, 586 that is, the created nature perceived by the divine Word ... or the Church, in its heavenly 587 aspect. Then, Sophia is the Church, in its earthly aspect, 588 Spirit, 589 Virginity, 590 as a heavenly force that gives virginity. 591 “If,” our author argues, 592, “Sophia is the entire Creation, then the soul and conscience of the Creation – Humanity, is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is all of Humanity, then the soul and conscience of humanity - the Church - is Sophia par excellence. 593 If Sophia is the Church, then the soul and conscience of the Church - the Church of the Saints - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church of Saints, then the soul and conscience of the Church of Saints is the Intercessor and Intercessor for creation before the Word of God, who judges creation and cuts it in two (sic!), the Mother of God is “the Purifier of the world,” again there is Sophia par excellence.” 594 Finally, “Sophia is beauty. 595 But, our author notes, “these are only some of the aspects of Sophia in their relationship” (sic!). The final addition is: “Sophia... the memory of God, 596 in the sacred depths of which there is everything that exists, and outside of which there is Death and Madness. 597 This formula about. F., keeping silent about Plato’s “world soul,” considers the most suitable for an abbreviated expression of pantheistic ideas: Vl. S. Solovyov about the Feminine Principle and O. Comte 598 about the Great Being, 599 developed by our author mainly in a letter entitled “Sophia”. Statement about. F., as if his entire work is in spirit (NB) antinomy against the conciliatory philosophy of Vl. Solovyova, 600 “The great being” of our author 601 “is not the one to whom O. Comte prayed, 602 but truly great,” 603 hardly guarantees the good quality of Fr. F., with its external coincidence with the letter of individual places, or works of liturgical and patristic writing of the Church, passed through the prism of their personal understanding or interpretation by our author. Yes, not church writers, leaving aside the particulars that Fr. F., laid in the very foundation of the erected island. F. "Pillar". In part, our author names them incidentally, or in other places in his book he himself, having obviously taken not only into account, but also into action what was once said by Fr. F. wish 604 “to mark some of your allies on certain issues [Couture, book. S. N. Trubetskoy on the issue of pagan religions, Erna - on the issue of the shepherd Hermas (Living Life, 1907, No. 1]). “It seems to me,” he writes regarding Pascal’s “Amulet,” 605 that the thoughts I develop in this book, and the theory of increasing types, provide the keys to understanding this rich (sic!) piece of paper.” 606 Sometimes for about. F. the sources of “his” ideas are revealed by others, 607 perhaps sometimes to the displeasure of the author, for, as if anticipating such trouble, he made in advance, albeit weakly, attempts to divert. 608 Thus, the ideological dependence of Fr. F. from church writers from Bl. Augustine, from the secular - from the Slavophiles, Vl. S. Solovyova and others, 609 and also from V.V. Rozanov. 610 Leaving aside smaller ideological connections, it is impossible not to emphasize, especially in view of the viewing of early reviewers, the undoubted influence exerted on Fr. F., in the relevant sections of his book, Merezhkovsky. But this is not the main thing, because it is incomparably more important to solve even the hitherto unposed question about the true creator of the “Pillar”: is he the one whose name is emblazoned on the cover of the book, crowned with master’s laurels, showered with flowers of praise, and from whose person the speech is conducted everywhere in the “Pillar”, or is it another person?! We personally lean towards the latter statement, considering the actual author of the “Pillar” to be the one who opens, from the point of view of Fr. F., discovered by Fichte and Hegel, Archimandrite Serapion (Mashkin), to whom, in addition to repeated mention in the text of the book, Fr. F. devotes the 26th note to its 23rd page and with the teachings borrowed from him, borrowed by this latter, in turn, undoubtedly, from the German idealists, he tries to heal the philosophy of German idealism, which suffers from rationality, deadness and schematism. 611 For the purpose of self-justification, let us pay attention, first of all, to the internal similarity of the title, too vague, if not ambiguous, 612 of Fr. F. “On Spiritual Truth” and the candidate’s essay by Fr. Serapion "On Moral Credibility". However, not only the titles, because, in the words of prof. S. S. Glagoleva, 613 “book of Fr. Pavel Alexandrovich, essentially treats the religious foundations of authenticity.” Further, and discharged Fr. F. 614 the subtitle of Serapion’s adaptation for the master’s degree of the said work is “An Experience in the System of Christian Philosophy,” and in almost similar terms made by Prof. A. I. Vvedensky 615 characterization of his candidate’s work as “an experience in constructing Christian philosophy” is involuntarily associated with the very subtitle of “The Pillar” - “The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy,” not to mention the content of this latter. And now it remains for us to cite in extenso the mentioned review by Prof. Vvedensky, as the best proof of the degree of independence of the “Pillar”, for you are literally amazed at the usability of this review of the essay “On Moral Credibility”, written by Fr. Serapion, to the “Pillar” of Fr. F. The author is looking for forms of conceivability for Christian truth - he strives to develop the main content of Christian religious and moral teachings in a coherent system of speculative concepts. From this point of view, he examines various issues of Christian knowledge, and thus his extensive work (586 pp.) turns out to be at the same time very informative. He speaks in it about a wide variety of issues: about the criteria of truth, about the nature of our knowledge, about space and time, about the essence and structure of matter, about movement, about the origin of the world, about its purposeful structure, about the nature and life of the soul in a normal and pathological state, about the foundations of morality, community life, etc. But the focal point towards which all his research is directed is the question of the criteria and methods of knowing the truth (the question, in the technical language of philosophy, is epistemological). The author is not satisfied with the generally accepted criterion of truth - evidence in its two main forms: experimental and logical evidence. Even moral certainty in the form that Kant and Renouvier taught about it, 616 he recognizes as an insufficient principle of knowledge on the grounds that this principle does not translate beyond the world of phenomena. Subjecting the views of Kant and Renouvier to witty and deep criticism, the author makes a remarkable attempt to radically rearrange the question of the criterion of truth, and recognizes religious experience, religious intuition, or, as the saints put it, as such a criterion. ascetic fathers, “smart light” (from 9 onwards). The truth must be known first of all experimentally, in Christianity, in life according to its teachings and rules, and then it will free our minds from the clutches of skepticism, so that we will be able to develop it in a system of speculative concepts. The author speaks in detail about this path to knowledge of the truth in God through Jesus Christ, and outlines individual moments or stages of ascent along this path. However, he doesn’t stop there either. According to the author, individual efforts and individual experience are not enough to know the truth. We need guidance from St. The Church, established on the unshakable foundation of St. Ecumenical Councils... This is the task, composition and general direction of the research of Fr. Serapion. As for now the fulfillment of this task, we should, first of all, admit that the author is fully at its level. His extensive reading in patristic, mainly ascetic, literature, good acquaintance (from the originals) with philosophy, and solid knowledge in the natural sciences (the author took a university course in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics before entering the academy), all this allows him to enter into such areas of human knowledge and touch on such issues that require special preparation, and which, therefore, not everyone dares... The author's generally serious and thoughtful thought sometimes reaches a remarkable depth of speculation and amazes with its subtlety. The work is replete with pages that are imbued with such a strong and definite thought, such a healthy sense of animation and love of truth, such originality that, resting on them, the reader seems to forget about the efforts that he had to spend on understanding adjacent, more difficult and darker passages of the work due to the unclearness of the presentation. Here, in these pages, the author is clearly visible as a deep thinker, a philosopher by nature. But what especially puts the reviewer in favor of the author is the extraordinary seriousness and sincerity of his attitude to the issues discussed. Reading his work, you clearly feel that this is not an ordinary student’s work, conceived and completed solely with the help of a book. No, here we present painful questions drawn from life, questions that the author himself came to the solution of, through the experience of his own life, reflection and intense struggle with doubt. (The Pyrrhonists gave a powerful impetus to the author’s thoughts and had an enormous negative significance in the development of his worldview.) The work clearly reflected, on the one hand, traces of the tension and torment experienced by the author when he slowly and with obstacles emerged from the clutches of skepticism, and on the other, the triumph of the spirit, which had calmed down, achieved unshakable confidence in Christian truth, and dissipated in its light darkness of doubt. To complete the picture, let us take the liberty of making, with appropriate comments, one or two excerpts from the interlinear 618 speech of Fr. F. on the same issue. “Somewhere in my papers,” says Fr. F. 619 – about. Serapion remembers how, even in childhood, he was drawn to basic questions about the origin of the world,” etc. Isn’t it in the same spirit that Fr. F. 620 at least his sleepy experiences of the question of the second death? But can’t or, more precisely, shouldn’t this Fr. be applied completely to the “Pillar”? F. 621 characteristics of the second edition of the master's thesis about. Serapion, that the latter “requires from the reader constant tension of thought, and this tension increases from a multitude of symbolic formulas, similar to mathematical ones, which concentratedly embody entire metaphysical theories and form the basis for further speculation”?! Is it even necessary to note the verbal coincidences of both authors, 622 which coincidences, expanded, plus and in-depth, would have increased in number if Fr. F., from many years of promises to publish Serapion, got down to business. After all, even Fr. F. unable to hide 623 “his joy that most of the thoughts in the second letter and partly in the third and fourth letter he can rely on the authority of Archimandrite Serapion (Mashkin). 624 In the form presented here, our author continues, many ideas are taken from his manuscripts, but which 625 exactly - let the reader who is interested in issues of ideological ownership determine for himself when the original works of Fr. Serapion. As for me, the thoughts of the late philosopher and mine turned out to be so similar and merging with each other that I no longer know where Serapion’s ends and where mine begins, especially since the commonality of our starting points and knowledge inevitably caused homogeneity of further conclusions. Interest in a system that would begin with absolute skepticism, and cover all the basic questions of humanity, would end with a program of social activity, until the death of Father Serapion, imperiously fettered his attention.” 626 Here is an explanation of the seductive features of the book about. F., which include “an unusual style of writing, a method of expression not accepted in theological writings, a special syllable and structure of speech” 627 and the epistolary form of the “Pillar” itself, the most convenient for fixing the incoherent.” As for the moral rehabilitation of such scientific and literary experiments by Fr. F., then it was “given” by our author himself, who openly declared 628: “You can tell a great lie about yourself in many volumes of works. 629 The only difference is in the objective attitude towards this lie, which, of course, is far from exhausted, even in our overly prolonged review, although it is partly compensated by our predecessors in work. 630 But here tempora mutantur 631 is for the better. According to Fr. F., 632 “processed about. Serapion, his candidate's essay" was submitted for a master's degree to the Moscow Theological Academy. Prof. Alexy Iv. Vvedensky, who looked through it, returned it back with a proposal to make amendments, “to correct, in part, the purely external shortcomings of the presentation, such as length, repetition, ambiguity, and partly in essence.” 633 V. N. Ilyin 634. Priest P. Florensky. "The Pillar and Ground of Truth" (Paris, 1930) 635 Under completely unusual circumstances, the second edition of one of the remarkable works of Russian philosophical and religious thought is being published. The beginning of the 20th century for Russia means a kind of spiritual and cultural renaissance. The comprehensive and rapid flowering of the Russian Space began, and immediately rose to dizzying heights. From these heights, boundless horizons opened up, but bottomless chasms also became visible, from which a pernicious cold wafted, strangely mixed with tropical perspiration. All this means that for the Russian Spirit the time has come for Gnostic speculation. The dialectic of Westernized nihilism and the Slavophile organism, which made itself felt so clearly in the middle of the 19th century, receded into the background, and with it the philosopher of history receded into the background. Poets, prose writers, and philosophers all greedily attacked gnosis. This is quite understandable, for the genius of the Russian spirit in this area was immeasurable, and the obstacles to its discovery constantly made themselves felt, and were for the most part crude and insurmountable. The official state Synodalism, shallow revolutionary materialism and positivism, the clear and distinct perspectives of the Slavophiles, sometimes undoubtedly of a Protestant nature, all this could not contribute to the flourishing of gnosis. But powerful soil for it had already been created. This includes the natural-philosophical metaphysics of Tyutchev and Fet, the tragic philosophy of Dostoevsky and the peculiar philosophical romanticism (and novelism) of Vl. Solovyov, who for the first time staged, albeit extremely seductively, the great Sofian theme. To this we must add the collective-liturgical pragmatism of N. F. Fedorov, which is extremely characteristic of Russian soil. 636 From this mighty soil A. Blok and Vyach grew. Ivanov, V.V. Rozanov, V.A. Ternavtsev, 637 N.A. Berdyaev, o. S. Bulgakov and Fr. P. A. Florensky. Despite all the enormous differences and diversity of these titans of the Russian Renaissance, they have one thing in common. They are all Gnostics. Dogmatic gnosis, this is the main theme of the main work of Fr. P. Florensky “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” The subtitle, “Orthodox Theodicy,” is fully realized and justified to the end. In fact, the attentive reader of this work immediately feels: despite the enormous encyclopedic scholarship, its author breathes and lives in the patristic spirit. However, not even that. It would be even better to say that the entire encyclopedicism of the “Pillar” is concentrated and based on the Holy Scriptures and patristic literature. In this, and only in this sense, perhaps, one can recognize his connection with that wing of Slavophilism, which is represented by I.V. Kireyevsky. Both the internal and external manner, the style of the entire work is cleared of official oil. True, there is some mannerism in the style, and even baroque in some places. With all this, the language is generally beautiful, and the presentation is quite transparent, despite the excessive complexity of the dialectic and the abundance of material. Among the positive aspects of “Pillar” we must also include the absence of an artificial school system. This systematic approach often turned even not entirely bad works of Western and Eastern theology into written answers from the first student. For a real, genuine system, the time has not yet come, and for Orthodoxy, God willing, perhaps it will not come, for this means the cessation of creativity. In this sense, perhaps, “The Pillar” could be given the following subtitle: “The main problems of Orthodox theodicy.” These problems are the following: These twelve problems are interpreted in the twelve letters of the “Pillar”. Although the problems are not located in the order that, at first glance, common sense would require, the connection between them is extremely strong, natural and organic, with the possible exception of the last two. The idea of ​​antinomianism runs through the entire work, and it alone creates an atmosphere of intense and acute intellectualism and densely saturated density. Perhaps no one feels occult issues as keenly as the brilliant author of “The Pillar.” This is especially acute in “Sin”, “Gehenna”, “Creature” and “Sophia”. This property of theological gnosis of Fr. P. Florensky, is highly promoted by his enormous mathematical talent and excellent natural science school. The entire work is based on the highest metalogic of consubstantiality (omousia). This metalogic, in connection with the higher logic of antinomianism and occult clairvoyance, makes intellectualism and natural philosophy about. P. Florensky is the fiercest enemy of rationalism and naturalism. Metalological intellectualism and transcendental natural philosophy Fr. P. Florensky, like two wings, hold him on the surface of the most terrible, unsteady swamps along which he walks, piercing into their depths with his clairvoyant gaze. In this respect, he has similarities with one great medieval thinker, namely Albertus the Great (Doctor universalis). Not only ascetics and ascetics, but also thinkers have to walk the path of the “dark night” (we use the expression of John of the Cross 638). But for both of them, the star of Bethlehem is their guide; both of them go to the dawn of a non-evening day. The glare of the uncreated sun lies on the best pages of the “Pillar”, and on them the consciousness rests, tormented by the antinomian tragedy 639 and occult mists. Walking a sometimes scary educational path, Fr. P. Florensky explores the dark depths, but never responds to their invitations. Orthodox whiteness never ceases to shine upon him. That is why his gnosis captivates, but does not entice. This also explains the cleansing work that this thinker-theologian accomplished in the teaching about Sophia. We can say that he created it anew. Properties of the theological and philosophical individuality of Fr. P. Florensky was also reflected in the characteristic shortcomings of the “Pillar”. Like all intellectualists, he begins with doubt, although one cannot begin with doubt. To doubt, you need to have what you doubt. This is the artificiality of the position of Cartesianism, and of all idealism in general. This non-Orthodox current in Russian thinking, Fr. P. Florensky did not overcome it. Another drawback associated with the incompleteness and incompleteness of the doctrine of Sophia is the lack of a thorough formulation of the problem of freedom. 640 One even gets the impression that sophiology is crowding out the problematic of freedom, and the reproaches, in this sense, made by N.A. Berdyaev to the sophiology of Fr. P. Florensky, are completely thorough. 16 years have passed since the first edition of The Pillar. These years are worth a good two centuries of the St. Petersburg period. By the unnatural violence of war and revolution, the decomposed corpse of materialism and the vulgar false wisdom of Marxist historio-a-sophia are galvanized on an ugly, absurdly large scale. The black reaction turned out to be worthy of the red action, and the obscurantism of the first has now completely merged with the obscurantism of the second. This is the terrible judgment of history. And hatred of Florensky, flaring up in the most unexpected places, is the banner of a united obscurantist front in the “black night” that has now surrounded humanity. G. V. Florovsky 641. Paths of Russian theology 642 The most characteristic monument of the pre-war era remains the famous book by Fr. P. Florensky “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” (1914). It shows most sharply all the ambiguity and instability of the religious-philosophical movement. 643 Florensky's book is deliberately and deliberately subjective. And it is no coincidence that it is built in the type of friendly philosophical correspondence. 644 This is, of course, a literary device. But he very subtly conveys the very tonality of the spiritual type; this is how Florensky should theologize in letters to a friend. He has too strong a pathos of intimacy, a pathos of psychological esotericism, almost snobbery in friendship. Florensky talks a lot about conciliarity and churchliness, but it is conciliarity that is least in his book. This book is by a very self-contained writer. In his thoughts and reasoning, loneliness is always felt. He can free himself from it only in friendship, in some kind of romantic “brotherhood” or twinning. And the very conciliarity of the Church disintegrates for him into a multiplicity of intimate friendly couples, and the dual unity of personal friendship psychologically replaces conciliarity for him. He always lives in some secluded corner, and there he wants to live in some kind of esthete retreat. He leaves the tragic crossroads of life, takes refuge in a cramped but cozy cell. However, in his early years he participated in the “Christian Union of Struggle”, in this strange experience of religious-dreamy revolutionism... Florensky does not feel history, he does not live in history, he has no historical perspective, he has no organic sense of process. In the historical past, he feels like in a museum, he aesthetically enjoys it, admires it, contemplates it, and always according to his personal choice or taste. Florensky was reproached for being partial to theologumens, to private theological opinions. And this is a very important observation. He really has more taste for theologumena than for dogma, which is too conciliar for everyone, too loud and obvious, and he prefers the vague whisper of personal opinion... And the experience that Florensky talks about in his book is precisely psychological experience, a flow of experiences. In words, he renounces everything beyond his own, and promises only to convey the common, all-church. But in action he refutes his word. He always speaks for himself. He remains subjective even when he would like to be objective. 645 And this is its ambiguity. He presents the book of personal elections as a confession of the conciliar experience. There is a very clear touch of theological charm in all of Florensky’s constructions... There is a mysterious discrepancy in Florensky’s book: as if two incommensurable passages were forcibly integrated into one whole. Florensky's book begins with a letter about doubts. The path to truth begins not even just with doubt, but with outright despair, it begins in some kind of pyrrhonic fire. And then, in a painful labyrinth, somewhere unexpected, lightning of revelation suddenly flashes (Florensky notes his closeness in this matter to Arch. Serapion Mashkin and his unpublished book)... Here one could also recall Pascal... What kind of experience and path are we talking about here? About the tragedy of an unbelieving thought? Or about the dialectics of Christian consciousness? In the second case, the question is posed in such a way that the most important thing is to save yourself from doubts. And it turns out that it is inevitable to come to God through doubt and despair. Florensky's entire religious epistemology almost boils down to the problem of conversion. He goes no further: how is knowledge possible? And the question sounds psychological: Florensky reduces everything to experience. The book begins in tones of Kantian skepticism and semi-skepticism. And Florensky joins Kant in his interesting doctrine of antinomies. Truth itself turns out to be an antinomy for Florensky. But the entire second half of the book is written in the tones of Platonism and ontologism. How to combine and harmonize Pyrrhonism and Platonism, antinomianism and ontologism? The doctrine of Sophia and the sophia of creation means the complete logic of the world, in which antinomies are therefore impossible, by its very nature. For reason must be adequate to being and commensurate with it. Eug. once drew attention to the excessiveness of antinomianism in Florensky. Trubetskoy, 646 but did not develop his objections to the end. He correctly noted one thing: this antinomianism in Florensky is only “undefeated skepticism, splitting of thought, elevated to a principle and norm.” But in Christianity the mind “is subject to transformation, not mutilation.” Sophia, according to Florensky’s definition, is “a hypostatic system of God’s peacemaking thoughts”! How then does the last secret thought turn out to be not a system, but an antinomy?.. The doctrine of sin does not resolve this aporia. For, according to Florensky, not only weak and sinful consciousness is antinomic, but also truth itself - “Truth is antinomy.” The choice between “yes” and “no” turns out to be completely impossible. Why does the Christian mind remain captive and poisoned by ignorance? Strangely, when speaking about Sophia and sophia, Florensky never remembers antinomies. 647 The mind is saved from doubts in the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, Florensky speaks about this with great passion, and reveals the speculative meaning of the Trinity dogma as the truth of reason. But in a strange way, he somehow bypasses the Incarnation, and from the Trinity chapters immediately moves on to the teaching about the Comforter Spirit. There are simply no Christological chapters in Florensky’s book. And the experience of “Orthodox theodicy” is somehow built past Christ. The image of Christ, the image of the God-man, is lost in some vague shadow in the background. And isn’t that why there is so little joy in Florensky’s book, and all the beauty of his constructions is only autumnal, dying, sad beauty? For Florensky does not so much rejoice at the coming of the Lord as he languishes in anticipation of the Comforter, in the longing for the Spirit. He languishes and does not rejoice at the Comforter who has come, but he longs for more. And he certainly does not feel the persistent presence of the descended Spirit in the world; the church command of the Spirit seems vague and dull to him. He feels the revelation of the Spirit only in a select few, but not in the “everyday life of the Church.” It’s as if salvation had not yet taken place: “a wonderful moment flashed dazzlingly and... it was as if it were not there.” It’s as if the world still remains dark, and only from the outside are some warming, pre-dawn rays illuminating it. Florensky's book says surprisingly little about the sacraments. Florensky is not in accomplishment, but in expectations... His heart yearns for the unprecedented, and therefore Florensky is sad in history, a certain languor of sadness takes possession of him, and his whole soul is drawn out towards a moment that has not yet come. Some unexpected rehash of either Merezhkovsky or Novalis. And here one involuntarily recalls one of A. Bely’s early poems, dedicated to P. A. Florensky (“Sacred Days”, 1901): Melancholy! Oh, listen to the melancholy, my brothers! Sacred melancholy in these fatal days!.. Epigraph taken from Mark 17:19: “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been seen since the beginning of creation...”. In his early years, Florensky also wrote poetry, and they surprisingly resemble A. Bely, especially his “Gold in Azure.” “The air is becoming rarer. And drunkenly swaying, the world is spinning, tilting...” There was a unity of lyrical experience here. 648 In the second testament, Florensky feels somehow cramped and stuffy. After all, Logos is precisely the “universal law of the world.” And therefore, the revelation of the Second Hypostasis does not liberate the world; on the contrary, it fetters it into a pattern. For Florensky, the revelation of the Logos grounds scientificity, therefore the Christian world is a harsh world, a world of law and continuity, and beauty and freedom have not yet been revealed in it. 649 And it remains unclear what Pentecost means for Florensky. He is waiting for a new revelation, and not just a fulfillment. And at the end of time he waits not for the Second Coming of Christ, but for the Revelation of the Spirit. In any case, Florensky does not feel and does not stipulate the absoluteness of the New Testament Epiphany. It definitely doesn’t satiate him, and he still languishes and waits. The fatal poison of romanticism possesses him... And again there is an undoubted inconsistency. Melancholy is strangely mixed with glee. For on one level the world has not yet been transformed, but on another, in its eternal root, it is divine. “There is objectivity - it is a God-created creature” (cf. the very interesting interpretation of Platonism in the sketch “The Meaning of Idealism”, 1914). Florensky’s hope is not that the Lord has come and opened new paths to Eternal life, but that from eternity, and by its very nature, “creation goes into intra-Trinitarian life.” In its original reality, the world as a kind of “Great Being”, 650 is already a kind of “fourth person”, a fourth Hypostasis. Florensky speaks more harshly and harshly about Sofia than Vl. Soloviev. And he sees the highest revelation of Sophia in the Mother of God, whose image is somehow separated from the Infant God, and even obscures him. 651 In Florensky’s theodicy, strangely, there is no Savior. The world is “justified” somehow bypassing Him... Florensky’s book is characteristically important precisely as a psychological document, as historical evidence. It contains a lot of interesting things, there are good pages and series of thoughts. But Florensky could not give more than a literary confession. This is a very bright, but not at all strong book, dreary and depressing. And Florensky does not come from the depths of Orthodoxy. In the Orthodox world he remains a stranger. In its internal meaning, this is a very Westernized book. A book by a Westerner dreamily and aesthetically escaping in the East. The romantic tragedy of Western culture is closer and more understandable to Florensky than the problems of Orthodox tradition. 652 And it is very characteristic that in his work he retreated back into Christianity, into Platonism and ancient religions, or went sideways into the teachings of the occult and magic. He also asked students about this topic for their candidate essays (about K. du Prelet, 653 about Dionysus, on Russian folklore). And he himself intended to submit a translation of Iamblichus 654 with notes for the Master of Theology competition. Already in 1922, a prospectus for his new book “At the Watersheds of Thought, Features of Concrete Metaphysics” was published. The least likely to be guessed here is a book by a Christian philosopher. The book was not published... Florensky uniquely combines aestheticism and natural mysticism, as often happens in late romance. And he does not have a genuine development of thoughts, but just some kind of weaving of aesthetic lace. Hence all the ambiguity. Berdyaev correctly noted: “People who believed in Sophia, but did not believe in Christ, could not distinguish between realities.” He said this about Blok and other symbolists. 655 But we have to partly repeat these words about Florensky, and about Solovyov himself. There was an undoubted dregs in the religious experience itself, a dregs of double thoughts and double feelings, a dregs of erotic charm... An aesthetic temptation, like the former moralistic one, was approaching Russian theology, and Florensky’s book was one of the most striking symptoms of this temptation. Published according to the first publication: Theological Bulletin. 1914. May. P.140‒181. Archimandrite Theodore (in the world - Alexander Vasilyevich Pozdeevsky, in the schema Daniel; 1876 - late 1940?). He graduated from the Kostroma Theological Seminary (1896) and the Kazan Theological Academy (1900). In 1900, he was tonsured a monk and ordained a hieromonk. He taught basic, dogmatic and moral theology at Kaluga Seminary (1901); Master of Divinity (1902); rector of the Tambov Theological Seminary (1904); archimandrite (1904); rector of the Moscow Theological Academy (since 1909); Bishop of Volokolamsk. In 1917, he was dismissed from the rectorship and appointed manager of the Danilov Monastery as abbot (he managed the monastery until its closure in 1930). Works: Ascetic views of Rev. John Cassian, 1902, On the question of Christian asceticism. Kazan, 1903. See about him: Bulletin of the Leningrad Theological Academy. 1990. No. 2. P. 49. In another source (Complete Orthodox Theological Encyclopedic Dictionary. B/g. T. 2. Column. 2411) the author’s surname is indicated as Pozdneevsky. Tertium non datur – there is no third option (lat.). Catechumens are people who have received the catechumen (communication of Christian teaching to those entering the church) and acquire the right to receive the sacrament of baptism. Below, Florensky’s understanding of memory is once again criticized. According to Bishop Theodore, memory is not a creative principle, but rather a passive one. The reviewer does not accept the cultural-historical attitude towards memory and remembrance (against the background of Plato’s “anamnesis”), characteristic of the author of “The Pillar...” and “Philosophy of Cult”. The interpretation of faith as an “ontological principle” is associated in Russian theology with a long tradition: from A. Khomyakov and V. Nesmelov to N. Berdyaev and sophiologists. Charismatics are representatives of a doctrine that holds the view that the just cause of faith is carried out by prophets and religious leaders. Hardly ep. Theodore is right here. And the church tradition has accumulated a lot of information about the Holy Spirit [the author gives it in “The Pillar...”; Wed book by I. M. Kontsevich (1893‒1965) “The acquisition of the Holy Spirit in the ways of Ancient Rus'” (Paris, 1952)], and secular philosophers tried to build a cultural study of the Holy Spirit (N. Fedorov, D. Merezhkovsky, N. Berdyaev, G. Fedotov), and in heretical movements these searches found their place (Doukhobors, Khlysty "pigeon-like") Eight main passions - see, in particular, chap. XXII (36) “On passion and activity (energy)” in the book of John of Damascus “An Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” Temptation - cf. Berdyaev’s definition of “The Pillar...” as a “seductive” book. S. S. Glagolev. Glagolev Sergei Sergeevich (1865‒1937) – professor at the Moscow Theological Academy in the department of apologetics. Works: On the origin and primitive state of the human race (master's thesis). M., 1894; Supernatural revelation and natural knowledge of God is not the true Church. M., 1900 (doctoral dissertation). He created the following works: “On the conditions for the emergence of religious faith” (1892); “Archpriest F. A. Golubinsky” (1898); “Essays on the History of Religions,” Part I (1902); "Islam" (1904); "Kant's Religious Philosophy" (1904); "Religion in Japan and Korea" (1904); “Tasks of the Russian Theological School” (1905); "Matter and Spirit" (1906); "Truth and Science" (1908); "Mysteries on the Banks of the Congo" (1909); "Greek Religion", part 1 (1910); “Oh gr. L. Tolstoy" (1911); "Three Ways of Life" (1911). Published according to the first publication: Journals of the meetings of the Council of the Imperial Moscow Theological Academy for 1914. Sergiev Posad, 1916, pp. 76‒85. James William (1842‒1910) – American philosopher, one of the founders of pragmatism, psychophysiologist, founder of positivism in psychological science. Op. (trans.): Scientific foundations of psychology. St. Petersburg, 1902; Variety of religious experiences. M., 1910 (SPb., 1993); Pragmatism. St. Petersburg, 1910. Wundt Wilhelm (1832‒1920) – German psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, linguist. Founder of experimental psychology. Op. (trans.): Foundations of physiological psychology. St. Petersburg, 1880‒1881. T. 1‒2; Essays on psychology. M., 1912; Natural science and psychology. St. Petersburg, 1914. Emile Boutroux (1845‒1921) - French philosopher, representative of spiritualistic positivism. Op. (trans.): On the randomness of the laws of nature. St. Petersburg, 1910. Geffding (Höfling) Harald (1843‒1936) – Danish philosopher and psychologist. Op. (trans.): On the principles of ethics. Odessa, 1898; Philosophical problems. M., 1905; History of modern philosophy. St. Petersburg, 1909; Philosophy of religion. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1912. Unremovable - unsuitable. Rene Descartes (1596‒1650) is a famous French philosopher and scientist, the founder of modern European rationalism. Veracitas Dei - the truth of God (lat.). Zeno (Eleatic, c. 490 - c. 430 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher. There is still ongoing controversy around Zeno’s aporias (“Dichotomy”, “Achilles”, “Arrow”, “Stages” (see: Questions of Philosophy. 1966. No. 3; 1971. No. 7; Yanovskaya S.L. Methodological techniques of science. M., 1971). Oὐσιа – being, essence, being (Greek). Bossuet (Bossuet) Jacques Benin (1627‒1704) - bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, French religious thinker and fiction writer, Augustinian, ideologist of absolutism. Works: “Discourses on General History” (1681); "Politics Extracted from the Holy Scriptures" (1709). Author of many sermons (“On ambition”, “On Providence”, “On Death”, “On secular honor”, ​​“On justice”, etc.). Fenelon de Salignac de la Mothe Francois (1651‒1715) - Archbishop of Cambria, French religious thinker, ideologist of absolutism, object of criticism by Bossuet. Op. (trans.): The true politics of noble and noble persons. St. Petersburg, 1737; Telemachida. Per. V.K. Trediakovsky. St. Petersburg, 1766; The existence of God. M., 1809; Favorite spiritual creations. M., 1820‒1821. Parts I - III; Telemachus. St. Petersburg, 1839. Part 1‒2. ...in my book “A Guide to the Study of Basic Theology” - a textbook by S. S. Glagolev, published in Moscow in 1912. The author’s number “three” rules the world. – Florensky showed special attention to the ideological and aesthetic possibilities of number. See: Florensky P. A. Pythagorean numbers. Works on sign systems. Tartu. 1971. Issue. V. See also: Lotman Yu. M. Semantics of number and type of culture. Lotman Yu. M. Articles on the typology of culture. Tartu, 1970. I. C. 58‒63; Toporov V.N. On the semantics of trinity (slav, “funeral funeral”). Etymology-77. M., 1979; On numerical models in archaic texts. Text structure. M., 1980. P. 3‒58; Bychkov V.V. The origin of medieval aesthetics of number and rhythm. Philosophy of art in the past and present. M., 1981, pp. 67‒123; Ulyanova O. N. Number in the dialogue of worldviews. Ed. A.N. Georgian SSR. 1985. No. 4. P. 43‒48; Number in the history of aesthetic experience. Philosophy science. 1986. No. 5. P. 147‒151; Isupov K. G., Ulyanova O. N. Number in the history of the utopian genre. Old Russian and classical literature in the light of historical poetics and criticism. Makhachkala, 1988. P. 37‒47; Isupov K. G. Number as a metaphor for history (Borges and Khlebnikov). Problems of method and poetics in foreign literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Perm, 1989. Number in its mystical and structure-forming aspects was carefully studied by symbolists. See: Chistyakova E.I. Symbol as a number in the theory of symbolism. Philosophy and sociol. thought. Kyiv, 1983. No. 6. P. 92‒96; Isupov K. G. Russian aesthetics of history. St. Petersburg, 1992. There are now 1500 million people on earth. Assuming that every two will produce one, we find that in each subsequent generation the number of people will be halved. Before the discovery of Neptune,.. - the planet Neptune (distance from the Sun 4500 million km, orbital period 1648) was identified by analyzing disturbances in the movement of Uranus in 1846 during the theoretical studies of Le Verrier (Urban Jean Joseph, 1811‒1877) and Adams (John Couch, 1819‒1892). Following Le Verrier's instructions in 1846, the planet was discovered by the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Halle (1812‒1910). Archimedes (c. 287‒212 BC) – ancient Greek scientist, mathematician, engineer. Bugaev Nikolai Vasilievich (1837‒1903) – Russian mathematician, professor and dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University. See about him: Shevelev F. Ya. Notes to the “Brief review of the scientific works of prof. N.V. Bugaeva." Historical and mathematical research. M., 1959. Issue. XII. Nekrasov Pavel Alekseevich (1853‒1924) – Russian mathematician, professor at Moscow University. Works: Moscow School of Philosophy and Mathematics and its founders. Nekrasov P. A., Lakhtin L. K., Lopatin L. M., Minin A. P. Nikolai Vasilievich Bugaev. M., 1905. T. 1. Alekseev Vissarion Grigorievich (1866‒?) - Russian mathematician. Korzhinsky Sergei Ivanovich (1861‒1900) – Russian botanist, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1896). Independently of Hugo De Vries, in 1899 he substantiated the mutation theory of evolution (heterogenesis). Hugo de Vries (Vries Hugo de; 1848‒1935) – Dutch botanist, one of the founders of the doctrine of variability and evolution. Curtius Georg (1820‒1885) – German researcher of the languages ​​and culture of antiquity, etymologist. Here and further, Florensky mentions the authors of etymological dictionaries, references to which in the full edition of “The Pillar...” see p. 613‒614 (note 12‒13 to p. 16). Laplace Pierre Simon (1749‒1827) – French astronomer, mathematician, representative of mechanistic determinism. Works: “Analytical Theory of Probability” (1812); “Treatise on Celestial Mechanics” (1798‒1825); Presentation of the picture of the world. L., 1982 (translated from French). Couture Louis (1868‒1914) – French philosopher, logician and mathematician. Works: In defense of logistics. New ideas in mathematics. Pg., 1915, No. 10. Florensky more than once refers to the well-known “Algebra” of Couture (Odessa, 1909), for example, in the article “Term” (1917‒1922). The reviewer’s remark (“there are few people who could easily move from St. Gregory of Nyssa to Laplace’s theory of probability...”) accurately reflects the opposition to that positivist “reversed seminarianism,” which is expressively described in the memoir: “Arrogance developed from science, one might say murderous arrogance, because from the point of view of scientific dogmatism, everyone not involved in it was regarded as almost not even human. Laplace and Lyell, Darwin and Hegel and others occupied places in the soul that did not essentially belong to them, and, having occupied them, they clothed themselves with the attributes of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church. But the worst thing was that, with a hot head and a stirring thought, all these views, adopted very firmly and violently for use ad extra [from the outside (lat.) - K. I.], in the soul, as an object of one’s own use, did not meet with an internal response and remained, despite the power of their external expression by me, on the periphery of the soul. There was a seminary topsy-turvy. There, the dogmatic concepts of the Church remain on the periphery, and the deeper spiritual life is guided by materialism, evolutionism and mechanism. Here hidden in the soul is the perception of the world as living and spiritual, all the natural symbolism of nature, all the emotions, moral and tender. There was no place for this in the realm of thought...” (To my children... P. 165). Hartmann Eduard (1842‒1906) - a German philosopher who in his own way combined the ideas of Schopenhauer and Schelling, influenced Vl. Solovyova. Op. (trans.): The essence of the world process... M., 1873‒1875. Vol. 1‒2; Modern psychology. M., 1902; Truth and fallacy in Darwinism. St. Petersburg, 1909. Yakovenko Boris Valentinovich (1884‒1948) – Russian philosopher, historian of philosophy. Some other works of B.V. Yakovenko were also marked by polemics with Florensky. See, in particular, his “Essays on Russian Philosophy” (Berlin, 1922. P. 111‒115) and the article “Towards a critique of Russian intuitionistic ideal-realism” (Scientific works of the Russian People's University in Prague. Prague, 1929. T. 2. P. 35‒50). Published from the original publication: Northern Notes. 1914. March. P.166‒177. Epigraph from “The Pillar...” (p. 38). Standard work - typical business (English). Priest Pavel Florensky. The Pillar and Ground of Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy in twelve letters. M.: Put, 1914. ...do not give an image of the truth. – apparently, the verb “are” is more appropriate here. Perpetuum mobile - perpetual motion machine (lat.). The burning bush is a burning bush from which Yahweh spoke to Moses (Exodus 3:2‒5; Acts 7:30). On the Orthodox symbolism of the image, see Bulgakov S. N. The Burning Bush. Experience of dogmatic interpretation of certain features in the Orthodox veneration of the Mother of God. Paris, 1927 (Vilnius, 1990). Regressus in infinitum - departure to infinity (lat.). Salto mortale - deadly jump (lat.). Credo, quia absurdum est - I believe, because it is absurd (lat.). Die animae... is a formula from Christ’s Gethsemane prayer. Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon, 1135‒1204) – Jewish Neoplatonist philosopher, author of The Guide of the Undecided. He had a significant influence on scholasticism in the 13th - 14th centuries. Rose mini-Serb at Antonio (1797‒1855) - Italian Catholic philosopher and theologian, public and church figure. See: Ern V. F. Rosmini and his theory of knowledge. M., 1914. Royce Josiah (1855‒1916) - American philosopher, influenced by Comte and, especially, Hegel, author of works on mathematical logic. See about him: Yakovenko B. Philosophical system of D. Royce. New ideas in philosophy. St. Petersburg, 1914. Sat. 17. Berdyaev Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1874‒1948) – Russian philosopher, publicist, literary critic, public figure and publisher. For an extensive panorama of the perception of Berdyaev’s legacy in Russia, a bibliography of his works and research about him, see the first volume of the “Russian Way” series carried out by the Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute: N. A. Berdyaev: pro et contra. Anthology. Book 1. Comp., intro. article and notes A. A. Ermicheva. St. Petersburg, 1994. 573 p. From works covering the relationship between Berdyaev and Florensky, see: Neretina S.N. Berdyaev and P. Florensky: On the meaning of the historical. Questions of philosophy. 1991. No. 3. P. 67‒83; Kazin A.L. Berdyaev and Florensky. Revival of Russian philosophical and religious thought: Conference materials. St. Petersburg, 1993, pp. 16‒17. See also the publication of correspondence between two Philosophers: Beginnings. 1993. No. 4. P. 95‒98 [ed.: noise. Andronik (A. S. Trubachev) and S. L. Kravets]. In “Self-Knowledge” (published in 1949), Berdyaev recalled this article against the backdrop of important memoir evidence: “In Moscow, I met P. Florensky at Bulgakov’s, a man of very original and great talents; This is one of the most interesting figures in intellectual Russia of that time. S P. Florensky, we had an initial mutual repulsion, we were too different people, hostilely different. Our topics were different. What repelled me from Florensky was his magic, the initial feeling of the enchantment of the world, which evokes not rebellion, but passive melancholy, the absence of the theme of freedom, the weak feeling of Christ, his stylization and decadence, which he introduced into Russian philosophy. In Florensky I was struck by the moral indifference, the replacement of ethical assessments with aesthetic ones. Florensky was a sophisticated reactionary. There was no real tradition in it. For this article (“Stylized Orthodoxy.” - K.I.) I was attacked a lot. Florensky’s book felt the melancholy of autumn, of falling autumn leaves. Florensky was a universal person; he was a talented mathematician, physicist, philologist, occultist, theologian, and philosopher. The psychological side of the book seemed to me the most valuable, the most remarkable chapter on doubt. But I do not find that he had a specific philosophical gift. In him one can find elements of existential philosophy, or at least existential theology. With great talent, one felt great weakness, a powerless struggle with doubt, an artificial and stylized defense of conservative Orthodoxy, lyricism that paralyzed energy, and the predominance of the elements of religious compunction. There was something hothouse in Florensky and his mental structure, a lack of free air, suffocation. He was a stylist in everything, he spoke in an artificially quiet voice, with his eyes downcast. In his book, he struggles with himself, settles scores with his own elemental nature. He once said in a moment of frankness that he was struggling with his own boundless Dionysian element. At one time he drank. There was something seductive and seductive about Florensky. In this he was like Vyach. Ivanova. He was the initiator of a new type of Orthodox theology, not scholastic theology, but experimental theology. He was a kind of Platonist and interpreted Plato in his own way. Plato's ideas took on an almost sexual character with him. His theology was erotic. This was new in Russia" [cit. by: Berdyaev N. A. Self-knowledge (Experience of philosophical autobiography). Comp., preface, prep. text, comment. A. V, Vadimosa. M., 1991. S. 161‒162]. About the trip to Zosima Hermitage: “The service was long, lasting a significant part of the night. Behind me in the church stood P. Florensky, not yet a priest. I turned around and saw that he was crying. I was later told that he was going through a very difficult period” (ibid., p. 188). For the first time: Russian thought. 1914. Jan. Published according to the edition: Berdyaev N.A. Collection. op. T. 3: Types of religious thought in Russia. Paris, 1989. P.543‒566. According to the publisher’s explanation, “the changes made by Berdyaev in 1944 are indicated by round brackets, and the original text is enclosed in square brackets” (Berdyaev N.A. Sobr. soch. T. 3: Types of religious thought in Russia. Paris, 1989. P. 5). Autumn book - Florensky’s book is permeated with the mood of autumn, which is also noted in G. Florovsky’s review. We have before us evidence of the “late autumn of the New Middle Ages” - an era that, according to B. Pasternak, understood itself through the “autumn twilight of Chekhov, Tchaikovsky and Levitan.” Wed. the mood of “Fallen Leaves” by Rozanov. In unison with Florensky’s “autumn” remarks [like: “Let the pages of the book be the dried flowers of that autumn” (“Pillar...”, 110)], N. A. Berdyaev could say: “The autumn of culture is the most beautiful and refined time. The late flowers of culture are its most exquisite flowers" (Collected works. Paris, 1990. Vol. 4: Philosophy of Inequality. Letter XIII. - On Culture. P. 563). Huysmans Maurice Karl (Georges Charles Marie, 1848‒1907) - French symbolist writer. Works: Complete. collection cit.: In 3 vols. M., 1912 “Berdyaev dedicated the article “The Refined Thebaid” (Religious Drama of Durtal-Huysmans) to Huysmans (Russian Thought. 1910. July). The name of Huysmans became for the philosophers of the “Silver Age” a symbol of the possible rebirth of the godless soul along the path of seeking truth. See in the article by G. P. Fedotov “On the Holy Spirit in Nature and Culture” (1932): “From the abyss (1a has) the path opens through Golgotha ​​(en route). In this way, from Sodom to Golgotha, predominantly the modern godless soul goes, unable to wash away the seals of forgotten baptism” (Vopr. Literature. 1990. No. 2. P. 213). ...sentimental (in the Schiller sense). – In the light of the theses of Schiller’s article (1759‒1805) “On naive and sentimental poetry” (1795‒1796), “daytime” poetry (ancient, objective, natural) is opposed to “sentimental” (modern, subjective, reflective). See in Schiller’s letter to Goethe dated May 5, 1798: “The ideal embodiment of the real is a completely different operation than the real embodiment of the ideal, and yet the latter is a genuine case of the play of free imagination” (I.V. Goethe, F. Schiller. Correspondence: In 2 vols. M., 1988. Vol. II. P. 9). “Alexandrian” - Florensky’s contemporaries assessed their era by analogy with Alexandrian Hellenism, so “Alexandrianism” became a kind of autoepithet and common place. Young A. Blok perceived the poetry of Vyach in terms of “ancient Alexandrism” and “Hellenistic twilight”. Ivanov (“Creativity of Vyach. Ivanov”, 1905); Vyach. Ivanov, in turn, devoted most of his article “On cheerful craft and smart fun” (1907) to defining the historical meaning of modernity as “a new, Alexandrian period of history.” See also the assessment of “Alexandrian Songs” (1906) by M. Kuzmin by A. Blok (“Letters on Poetry”, 1908). Reproaches for aestheticism, which Berdyaev labels in expressions such as “orthodoxy of aesthetic reflections,” will appear in him regarding Vyach. Ivanova (The charms of reflected cultures. V.I. Ivanov. Exchange statements. 1916. September 30. See: Berdyaev N.A. About Russian classics. M., 1993. P. 285‒293). There is so much traditional Orthodox hostility towards people in his book... - cf. in the article “Orthodoxy and Humanity” (Prot. G. Florovsky Paths of Russian Theology. Path. Paris, 1937. No. 35): “In his Byzantine Orthodoxy there is no truly human being. Oddly enough, G. Florovsky has a formal similarity with Fr. Pavel Florensky, they both are characterized by moral and social indifference, but Pavel Florensky has great spiritual sensitivity” (Berdyaev N.A. Collected works. Paris, 1989. Vol. 3. P. 673). ...aesthetic rapture in everyday life... - this remark of Berdyaev is valid only in the clarifying sense that Florensky knows the Orthodox aesthetics of the sanctified, eros-filled folk love of God, life, with all the inevitable elements of a pagan and semi-pagan worldview [see. the article “The universal human roots of Idealism” and the works that open the first volume of the Paris collected works (1985)]. Berdyaev, who so persistently declared his hatred of everyday life (which did not go well with his love of comfort), connects this aesthetics of “externalization” with the external perception of the dogma of revelation and salvation [see. below: “Dogma is not an external revelation, but an internal revelation, an illumination immanent to the human spirit” (p. 555)]. See in the book “On the Purpose of Man” (1931): “In religion, standing under the sign of social everyday life, there is always a utilitarian element. Only mysticism is free from it, rising to the point of selflessness” (Berdyaev N.A. on the purpose of man. M., 1993. P. 229). If Berdyaev had known the works that followed Florensky after “The Pillar...” (in particular those published under the general title “From the Theological Heritage” (Theological Works, 1977. Vol. 17. P. 87‒248)), most of the comments addressed to the Russian theologian might have been removed. His articles on “Symbols of Infinity” in “The New Path” were very remarkable, where he developed the doctrine of potential and actual infinity. Macarius of Egypt (the Great, ca. 301‒391) – saint, ascetic desert dweller, author of moralizing works. Eckhart Johann, Meister Eckhart (c. 1260‒1327/1328) - German mystical philosopher. Op. (trans.): Selected Sermons. M., 1912. Boehme Jacob (1575‒1624) – German mystical philosopher, representative of the Eckhartian tradition. Op. (trans.): Aurora, or Morning Dawn in Ascension. M., 1914 (1990); Christosophia, or the Path to Christ. St. Petersburg, 1994. Catherine of Siena (1347‒1380) – saint, author of mystical works in the genre of “visions”. ...his doctrine of antinomy. – Berdyaev, the author of the “monodual” picture of the world, could not help but be impressed by the fundamental antinomianism of Florensky’s epistemology. According to the explanation of a modern researcher, the antinomianism of the author of “The Pillar...” developed in the form of a unity of two mutually exclusive attitudes: the attitude of antinomianism and the attitude of sophia: “This necessary interconnection of two alternative relations of consciousness to the Unconditional Truth, implied by the fundamental and paradigmatic picture of the two-dimensional structure of consciousness for Florensky, was completely misunderstood by his critics. E. Trubetskoy, and later Fr. G. Florovsky, stating the presence in the “Pillar...”. at the same time, both the attitudes of Sophianism and the attitudes of antinomianism saw here an internal contradiction and serious inconsistency, which they criticized at great length, and Fr. George and very sharply. Florensky’s acceptance of the dichotomous structure of consciousness necessarily leads to the recognition of the necessity of both positions, both sophic and antinomic” (Khoruzhy S.S. Worldview of Florensky (From the book). Started. 1993. No. 4. P. 104). I defended the antinomy of religious consciousness, which is the madness of this age, in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom.” Very characteristic in this regard is the “Description of the life of the Optina Elder Hieroschemamonk Ambrose” of blessed memory, compiled by Archpriest S. Chetverikov, which is painfully striking in the adaptation of Ambrose’s Orthodoxy to the bourgeois middle. Ambrose (in the world – Alexander Mikhailovich Grenkov; 1812‒1891) – hieroschemamonk, elder of the Optina Hermitage. Works: Collection of letters. 2nd ed. Part 1. Sergiev Posad, 1908; Part 2. Sergiev Posad, 1909. For literature about him, see: Theological Works. M., 1988. T. 28. P. 344. ... timidly speaks of some kind of pre-existence of the soul... - Cf “below: “The Christian reworking of the doctrine of reincarnation is the task of Christian gnosis” (p. 563). The ideas of anamnesis and metempsychosis, which greatly occupied Berdyaev and his contemporaries, became a fashionable topic after becoming acquainted with Nietzsche’s texts about the “eternal return”, “eternal circulation” and the transmigration of souls. As is known, biblical Christian historicism condemned the essentially pagan belief in the eternal cycle of times (Christ appeared into the world once, which is attested and dogmatically affirmed in the Creed), so the Russian religious renaissance makes truly heroic efforts to preserve the poetic charm of the ancient mythologemes of pre-existence and metempsychosis as part of Christian anthropology. In 1936, the collection “Transmigration of Souls” was published in Paris (republished in Moscow in 1994), which included articles: S. Frank. The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul; S. Bulgakov. Christianity and Steinerism; N. Berdyaev. The doctrine of reincarnation and the problem of man; V. Zenkovsky. Unity of personality and the problem of reincarnation; B. Vysheslavtsev. Immortality, reincarnation and resurrection; G. Florovsky. About the resurrection of the dead. N. O. Lossky dedicated his book “The Doctrine of Reincarnation” (early 50s) to polemics with the authors of the articles in the collection: Lossky N. O. The Doctrine of Reincarnation. Intuitionism. M., 1992. P. 86‒100. Later, Berdyaev associated the “affect of jealousy” with the right of ownership, and spoke even more sharply: “The fact that Fr. P. Florensky ended his book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” with an apology and praise of jealousy, there is a moral condemnation of his book” (Berdyaev N.A. On the purpose of man. M., 1993. P. 193). ...the spirit does not breathe where it wants... – a reference to John 3:8 (“The spirit breathes where it wants”). One subtle person put it this way about the book of St. Florensky. Trubetskoy Evgeniy Nikolaevich (1863‒1920) – Russian religious philosopher, prince. Organizer and participant in famous societies (Psychological at Moscow University, Religious and Philosophical named after V. Solovyov), initiator of the creation of the philosophical and religious publishing house “Put” (1910‒1917) and one of its authors. Works: Slavery in Ancient Greece (Master's thesis). Yaroslavl, 1886; Religious and social ideals of Western Christianity in VB. Part 1: Worldview of St. Augustine. M., 1892; Religious and social ideals of Western Christianity in the 11th century. Part 2: The idea of ​​the Divine Kingdom in the works of Gregory VII and the publicists and his collaborators (doctor, dissertation). Kyiv, 1897; The Philosophy of Nietzsche: A Critical Essay. M., 1904; History of the philosophy of law. M., 1907; Plato's social utopia. M., 1907; Encyclopedia of Law. M., 1908; Worldview Vl. Solovyova. T. 1‒2. M., 1913; The national question - Constantinople and Hagia Sophia. M., 1913; War and the world task of Russia (War and Culture). M., 1914; Patriotic War and its spiritual meaning. M., 1915; Metaphysical assumptions of knowledge. Experience of overcoming Kant and Kantianism. M., 1917; Two animals. M., 1918; The meaning of life. M., 1918 (Berlin, 1922); From the past. M., 1918 (Vienna, 1925); Memories. Sofia, 1921; The meaning of life, M., 199. See about him: Lopatin L. Vl. Soloviev, book. E. N. Trubetskoy Questions of philosophy and psychology. 1913. Book. 119, 120; 1914. Book. 123; Berdyaev N. A. About earthly and heavenly utopianism Russian thought. 1913. Book. 9; Shane Louis. S. N. and E. N. Trubetskoy. Russian religious and philosophical thought of the 20th century. Ed. N.P. Poltoratsky. Pittsburgh, 1975. pp. 333‒345. A report under this title was read by E. N. Trubetskoy at a meeting of the Religious and Philosophical Society in February 1914 and was soon published in the form of an article under the same title (Russian Thought. May 1914). This publication, prepared by S. M. Polovinkin and Abbot Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), contains correspondence between Florensky and Trubetskoy, fragments of which we use below (in parentheses the page of the journal publication is indicated). In the “Preface to the publication” there is a significant remark regarding Florensky’s “antinomianism”: “The antinomianism of P.A. Florensky comes from two sources: 1) various philosophical movements that subjected the activity of reason to criticism or rejected it as the highest criterion of life for the sake of other principles of man; 2) patristic thought, which connects the insufficiency of reason with the sinfulness of man. The tradition of “criticism of reason” started by Kant (P. A. Florensky highly valued Kant’s discovery of the antinomy of human reason) is very characteristic of post-Hegelian philosophy” (100). Of the two versions of the “Theses” of Trubetskoy’s abstract, we present the shortest (from a letter dated January 13, 1914): "I. The Transfiguration (the Light of Tabor) as the main motive for the quest of Russian religious thought (the ascetics are on the mountain itself), and below - under the mountain, the lesser apostles pointing their fingers at the mountain (Russian artists and philosophers), but who cannot themselves heal the demoniac (like Raphael). II. You have an awareness of that main motive (the contrast of Favorsky’s light and the raging life of Gehenna). III. The need to further deepen this topic in the question of the transformation of the mind and a somewhat more precise formulation of the question of antinomianism than you have; The drawback of your book, I see, is that you use these concepts in different senses; Antinomies for you mean either contradictions or antitheses...” (104‒105). To characterize the atmosphere in which the discussion of Trubetskoy’s abstract took place, the memoirs of his student, Nikolai Nikolaevich Fioletov (1891‒1943) are important: “In his abstract, Ev. N. Trubetskoy spoke in defense of reason against the antinomianism of Fr. P. Florensky, whose features clearly appeared in the latter’s unusually interesting book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” Reason, from the point of view of Father Paul, is always antinomic; it is split between two mutually exclusive positions, and in each of them reflections of truth shine through. A person stands helplessly in a dilemma, not knowing what to grab onto, and then from the depths of the abyss of doubt opening before his intellect, faith, the conciliar religious experience of the Church, which is for him the only solid support - “The Pillar and Establishment of the Truth” extends a helping hand to him. E. N. Trubetskoy, objecting to Father Paul, emphasized in faith, like lightning illuminating the bottomless depths of the abyss into which a person looks with horror, not a contradiction to reason, but the light of a higher reason, in the highest synthesis of rational knowledge overcoming the antinomies. It is not reason that is antinomic, but reason with its constraint by the logical laws of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle. Reason, rising above these laws, is dialectical: affirming the relative truth of every yes and every no, it reaches the pinnacle of knowledge where these relativities are extinguished in a synthesis that combines yes and no in the highest unity, the act of the final, last affirmation of the highest, super logical, but not counter-rational truth belongs to faith. In a dispute between Fr. Pavel and E.N. Trubetskoy Nikolai Nikolaevich Fioletov sided with the latter. Faith for him was always not the Tertullian credo, quia absurdum - I believe, for it is absurd, in which he saw the cry of the soul of a desperate man, but the Anselmian credo, ut intellegum - I believe in order to understand, and by understanding he meant not the knowledge of the finite world through reason, but the comprehension by the mind of that Absolute Principle, which lies at the basis of all finite and relative being. “Science considers the things of the finite world from the point of view of their connection, from the point of view of the sequence of processes occurring (“why”); religion - from the point of view of their final foundation and meaning (the questions “what” and “why”) - this is how he formulates the thoughts he subsequently expressed in his youth about the relationship between faith and reason, religion and science” [Fioletov N.N. The Story of One Life. Preface V. Keidan. The past: Historical almanac. Paris, 1990 (M., 1992). T. 9. pp. 25‒26. Preliminary publication – Bulletin of the RHD. 1978. T. 126]. Published in: Questions of Philosophy. 1989. No. 12. P. 112‒129. ...Raphael tried to convey something other than the canvas. – We are talking about the large altarpiece “Transfiguration” (Vatican Pinacoteca), which Raphael Santi (1483‒1520) did not have time to complete, it was done by Giulio Romano. The theme of the Transfiguration, which formed an important plot in the dialogue between Trubetskoy and Florensky, was subjected to polemical commentary in the later book of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov. Here we define “our answer to the question about the “transformation” of the mind, posed by the book. E. N. Trubetskoy regarding the views of Fr. Pavel Florensky about the antinomic nature of reason. The question here is whether reason, the conditionality and relativity of which are revealed in the antinomy of its structure, is subject to grace-filled transformation along with the whole world. Transfiguration can be subject to something that deserves perpetuation or immortality, therefore illness, deformity, and in general anything associated with temporality and sinfulness are not subject to transformation - here transformation could simply consist of destruction. Beyond the gates of transfiguration, much of what is now integral to our existence will remain and die a final death. And in our mind there is something that belongs to death, which will not reach the kingdom of transfiguration, will not cross these gates. What is mortal in it is precisely what makes it logical, transcendental, discursive, but, of course, its sophic root, located in the general coherence of thinking and being, is immortal. In other words, in the mind everything that is sophic in it belongs to eternity, but that which is outside or antisophic, that is, the Kantian-Laplacian or Fichte-Hegelian reason, is subject to death. And reason itself, in its highest rationality and sophistry, in the light of the Logos, rises above logic, sees and knows its conditionality, relativity, and therefore mortality” [Bulgakov S.N. Light of the Never-Evening. Contemplations and Speculations (1917). Prep. text and comment. V.V. Sapova. M., 1994. P. 198‒199, footnote]. ... the chaos ... of lowland existence... - Wed, the metaphysics of the Russian landscape in the essay by F. Stepun (from the series “Thoughts about Russia”): “National-religious foundations of Bolshevism: landscape, peasant philosophy, intelligentsia” (1926); For reprint, see: Russian Philosophy of Property. XVIII – XX centuries St. Petersburg, 1993, pp. 333‒340. St. Athanasius the Great (293‒373) – Father of the Church. Works: Works of St. Athanasius the Great. T. 1‒4. 2nd ed. Sergiev Posad, 1902‒1903. Most of the reviewers of “The Pillar...” drew attention to this bright page with a description of the internal experience of death. Works on the essence of sin (see, for example: Veltisov V. Sin, its origin, essence and consequences. M., 1885; Vvedensky D. The Old Testament doctrine of sin. M., 1901) in the later tradition are more engaged in developing the ontology of good and evil (N. Lossky, S. Bulgakov, L. Karsavin, S. Levitsky, V. Zenkovsky, N. Berdyaev). Wed. especially with. 350. It is known how much the image of St. gave to his teaching. Sofia in Novgorod. See his article “The Idea of ​​Humanity in O. Comte,” vol. VIII (1st ed.), p. 240‒241. ...the beauty of old Russian icon painting... – E. N. Trubetskoy’s works on the Russian icon (Speculation in Colors. M., 1915; Two Worlds in Old Russian Icon Painting. M., 1916; Russia in its Icon. Russian Thought. 1918. Books I and II) are collected in the books of this author: Three essays on Russian icon painting. Paris, 1951; Three essays about the Russian icon. M., 1991. Trubetskoy’s theological and aesthetic experiments were influenced by Florensky’s ideas about the symbolism of color in an iconic perspective. Further development of this tradition belongs to L. F. Zhegin (The language of a pictorial work. Conventions of ancient art. M., 1970) and B. A. Uspensky (On the study of the language of ancient painting. Ibid. P. 4‒34). On the ambiguity of Florensky’s use of the term “reason,” see the review by Archimandrite. Nikanora. My opponent, who saw “Hegelianism” in these words, apparently forgot Hegel. It is Hegel who teaches that all our thinking moves in contradictions. From his point of view, therefore, the dogma of the Holy Trinity is contradictory, or antinomic. I just assert that there is no contradiction in it. It’s remarkable that Fr. Florensky, faced with the antinomy of Divine justice and mercy, does not remain with the apparent contradiction of its thesis and antithesis, but tries to find its solution. Wed. my work: The religious and social ideal of Western Christianity in the 5th century. Worldview 6l. Augustine. M., 1892, p. 56, 57. Stylized Orthodoxy. Russian thought. 1914. Jan.. P. 109‒126. Among the many reproaches Florensky heard at different times regarding “replacing the dogmatic criterion with an aesthetic one,” it is worth noting Vyach’s remark. Ivanova: “The collective body of Christ of the Church of saints, the sacrificial sacraments, catholic dogma, sacred and liturgical tradition, the spirit of feeling for God, preserved in the continuity of the heartfelt experience of the fathers, all this is worthily called Orthodoxy. But wrongly are signified by the same name - everyday tradition, cultural style, psychological structure, external routine of church society. Let me mention by the way that the aesthetic criterion of churchliness, which Florensky speaks of in his thoughtful book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” seems to me dangerous because of its erudition; it is undoubtedly justified in the depths of mystical life and at the heights of Platonic consciousness, but it can turn out to be detrimental in a cultural-phenomenological interpretation" (Vyach Ivanov. Living Tradition. Response to N. Berdyaev’s article “Epigones of Slavophilism.” Stock Exchange Gazette. 1915. February 18; Rodnoe and Vselenskoe. Articles 1914‒1915, 1917 M., 1918. P. 58). Archimandrite Nikanor (in the world - N.P. Kudryavtsev) - there is almost no information left about his life. Author of the works: Analysis of the teachings of the Bespopovtsy about the spiritual priesthood. M., 1913; The idea of ​​Logos in the Gospel of John. Kharkov, 1914; Morality based on democracy. Kharkov, 1914; On the right of the Church to change the ritual aspect of religion. M., 1914; Judgments about the split. M., 1914; How to understand this? M., 1915; Who did he do a favor for? Pg., 1915. From the diary entry of Fr. Pavel: “February 6, night (1916) On the 4th a surprise came from Fr. Archimandrite Nikanor (N.P. Kudryavtseva). 06 I heard him vaguely before about this trick against me, and the rumor came from the Most Reverend. rector His article is a criticism of “The Pillar”. O. Hilarion told me that this criticism visited different editors, but was rejected everywhere; By the way, Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov rejected its publication in “Faith and Reason.” This last one spoke a lot against me verbally; but this is the second time he has patronized me. About the article about. Nikanor I will only say: “It is good for me, for you have humbled me.” I've been praised so much that it's time to scold me. The only bad thing is that the article was written with undisguised malice; I don’t understand this last circumstance, because, really, I don’t find myself guilty before Fr. Nikanor, who has already repeatedly made various attacks on me both at the Academy and outside it. But yesterday I tried to pray from my heart for this man. It may very well be that his anger is largely due to his asthma. However, may the Lord have mercy on both him and me. “It is good for me, for you have humbled me” [cit. according to the article: “Andronik” abbot (A. S. Trubachev). Priest Pavel Florensky is a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and editor of the Theological Bulletin. Theological works. M., 1987. T. 28. P. 309]. Priest Pavel Florensky. Pillar and affirmation of Truth (The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters). M.: Put, 1914, p. 812. Published from the first publication: Missionary Review. 1916. No. 1. pp. 89‒97; No. 2. P. 237‒257. The dissertation was presented and defended in one of the Russian theological academies, as is known, all Orthodox and entitled to award academic degrees, in particular the Master of Orthodox Theology. See: Journal. collection Sov. Imperial Moscow Spirit. acad. for 1914, p. 35‒85, 153‒154; Theological Bulletin, 1914, July-Sept.; See also: Church Gazette, ed. at St. Rights Sin., 1914, No. 37. To this review, Rev. Theodore, in order to avoid fragmentary citations, only references will be made in the future. That is, “About spiritual truth.” The relationship between the “Pillar” and the book “On Spiritual Truth”, established so far dogmatically, from the angle of “Inaugural dissertation”, will hardly dare to reject Fr. F., who gave one of the members of the Academic Corporation (each of them by law receives a copy of such publications) the book “On Spiritual Truth”, to others - “The Pillar”, but with an ink note on the cover (we convey the contents approximately): “The 253rd page is submitted for the degree” [by the way, this is where the questionable for the Orthodox consciousness begins in the book, which was so confusing to Prof. A. I. Vvedensky and the reworking of which he especially insisted from a certain point, but without success, in essence, in vain, for the letter entitled “Gehenna” was simply thrown out of the work “On Spiritual Truth”, although the letter entitled “Creation” was placed, despite the fact that in the “Pillar” follows “Gehenna”, equally thrown out of the book “On Spiritual Truth” and all the letters following in “Pillar” for “Creature”, although they, with the exception of the one entitled “Jealousy”, existed in Fr. F., and a year (in 1911) before the book “On Spiritual Truth” appeared in print, two of them, “Sophia” and “Friendship”, were even published on the pages of the “Theological Bulletin” (January March, May, July-August), the third - “Pillar” without any reservations. See ep. Theodora, op. cit., p. 140. About the internal self-contradiction of Fr. Florensky, as well as about his posing in general, speech, and even detailed, below Ibid., p. 785. Our review as a whole serves as justification for the thought just expressed. Right there. True, oh. F., as “a philosopher, more out of politeness than seriously,” listens “to the teachings of the linguist” (ibid., p. 786). But theological academies do not award philosophical academic degrees, and he himself is not looking for this academic title. It should not be overlooked that the book in question was published by the Moscow publishing house “Put”, largely consisting of members of the Religious and Philosophical Society named after Vl. S. Solovyov, who as a whole dedicated a special meeting to the “Pillar” (with an abstract by Prince E.N. Trubetskoy), and in individual members, mostly sympathetically (orally and in print) at different times and in different places spoke to her address. Judging by the review quoted below by Prof. S.S. Glagoleva, and the candidate's work of Fr. F. was submitted half in printed form, half in manuscript. Compare “On Religious (our italics) Truth” and “On Spiritual (our italics) Truth” (the official title of Father Florensky’s master’s thesis. Journals of meetings of the Council of the Moscow Theological Academy for 1908, Sergiev Posad, 1909, pp. 129‒135. By the way, the significant defects in the work of Fr. Florensky has not been corrected even now. According to the author, his book is of a “public nature”: p. 607. “Firstly, because Russian bibliography in general is relatively poorly developed, while for foreign bibliography there are numerous reference books, and secondly, because (sic!) the books I indicate, both in language (sic!) and in place of publication, are more accessible to the average reader” (ibid.). O. F. is rigorist here to such an extent that, quoting (note 737 to p. 411), for example, the work of P. Sokolov “Agapes, or the Supper of Love in the Ancient Christian World” (Sergiev Posad, 1906), he completely mentions the corresponding (English) book of Keating, literary plagiarism, which is the work of Mr. Sokolov, which was not awarded a master’s degree for this reason (see reviews about her: Journal of Sessions. Sov. MDA. 1910, Sergiev Posad, 1911), although Fr. F. in the same note refers to Kraus's dictionary and to the same dictionary entry Seclercq'a. However, the retreat of Fr. F. from voluntarily occupied positions (p. 607) begins much earlier. Pointing in notes. 127 (to p. 96) review of Mr. Papamikhail’s dissertation on Gregory Palamas in “Echos d’Orient”, Fr. F. does not say a word about the detailed and extensive review of the same book by Prof. I. I. Sokolov in “Journal. Min. n. n." (1913, April-July). Or for Fr. F., apparently, there are not two entire editions of the Russian translation (Radlov) of Aristotle’s Ethics, which is quoted only from the original. But whether they will ever come out, one can doubt it, keeping in mind, not to go far, the experiments of Fr. himself, which have not yet been successful. F. even began publishing a course of lectures on the subject he taught at the Academy, translating Sohm, etc. Should I mention something that was certainly disadvantageous for Fr. F. this promise back in 1907‒1908. publish the handwritten works of Fr. Serapion (Mashkin). See, for example, approx. 718 kp. 395. See, for example, approx. 20 (to p. 20), 182 (to p. 127). 585 (to p. 755). Here we mainly mean the use of o. F. handwritten works by archim. Serapion (Mashkin), a more or less similar clarification of what question will be given some space below. See, for example, approx. 16 (to p. 17), 495 (to p. 279). See, for example, note. 168 (to p. 119), 268 (to p. 175), 476 (to p. 272 837 (to p. 486). By the way, on one occasion (note 161 here over Fr. the Russian proverb “Don’t believe every rumor, for the Donikon edition of the “Additional Investigation of the Holy Penticostia”, does not know that asymmetry, which I.V. Popov pointed out to him. For example, note. 16 (to p. 17), 91 (to p. 76), 94 (to p. 77), 99‒100 (to p. 81), 119 (to p. 92), 191 (to p. 137), 648 (to p. 364), 781 (to p. 435), 8 (to p. 466), 944 (to p. 552), 1018 (to p. 583), 1024 (to p. 584), 1051 (to p. 598). For example, note. 162 (to p. 115), 451 (to p. 263), 593 (to p. 334), 63 (to p. 349). For example, note. 42 (to p. 41), 250 (to p. 168), 373 (to p. 216), 5121 p. 287), 685 (to p. 381), 750 (to p. 425). See, for example, note. 966 (to p. 563), rep. 808 (to p. 458). I mean “Pascal’s Amulet” (pp. 577-581), the appearance of which in the pages of “The Pillar” is due to the fact that the author of this latter “seems” (p. 577) that “the thoughts developed by him (in the text by “me”) in this book, and the theory of the increase of types provide the key to understanding this multi-content (sic!) and meaningful (sic!) piece of paper” (i.e. so called Pascal's Amulet). They occupy a place between the “explanations to p. 7, 99, etc.,” and the same “to p. 50, 223". We mean only due to lack of space, the author admits (p. 587), an abbreviated “explanation” under the title “Homotypy in the structure of the human body” (p. 587-592), and in it especially “Table 1: homotypy of organs” (p. 588), positively arousing unpleasant feelings, and contrary to the assurances of Fr. F., that “the bottom of a person is like a mirror image (our italics) of his top” (p. 266), which from a medical point of view represents only free analogies, free parallels. See for example note. 40 (to p. 35), 115 (to p. 90), 984 (to p. 570). By the way, the end of the first is completed in the same way, starting on p. 48 paragraph, 49th of the new edition of “The Pillar”. (Then we will more specifically explain this endless act of Life - italics are ours; cited pages of the 2nd ed. Preface - foreword (English). Richter R. Skepticism in philosophy. Per. with him. V. Bazarov and B. Stolpner. 1910. T. I. Book. I, ch. I, III. pp. 62‒65. Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360 - c. 270 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher, founder of the skeptical school, and apologist for the principle of “epoch” developed by Florensky. The adjective from the noun is found in the same place in the book about. F. In the same way, Fr. F. plays with the words: “miracle” (p. 122), “chastity” (p. 180 et seq.), “sacrament” (p. 457), liturgy,” calling (p. 460) a type of liturgy marriage (sic!). Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm (1775‒1854) is a representative of classical German idealism, who had a noticeable influence on Russian Philosophy, especially on the metaphysics of unity. Works: Philosophy of Art. M., 1986; Works: T. 1‒2. M., 1987‒1989, See app. to Russian lane books by P. Tannery “The First Steps of Ancient Greek Science”, St. Petersburg, 1902. See: “Pillar”, note. 231 (to p. 155). Chef d'oeuvre - masterpiece (French). The italics of the paragraph, except where otherwise noted, are ours. As it happens, we add their selection from Farrar (“The Life and Works of St. Apostle Paul”), the partial (cf. note 243 to p. 164) use of which Fr. F. was reduced to the addition of 5 antinomies, and 4 1/2 of them are not annexed. Paul, perhaps according to the book of Bovon quoted by our author (Theologie du Nouveau Testament. Vol. 1. Lausanne, 1893). Clement of Alexandria (Titus Flavius, 150‒215?) – teacher of the Church, second (after Panten) mentor of the Alexandrian Christian “Didascalia”. Bibliographical information prot. I. Meyendorff: “There are no Russian translations of Clement of Alexandria” (Introduction to Patristic Theology. 2nd ed. M., 1992. P. 355) is not accurate. In Yaroslavl, the following texts were published in Korsunsky’s translation: “Which of the rich will be saved?”; "Admonition to the Gentiles" (1888); “Teacher” (Yaroslavl Diocesan Gazette. 1888‒1889, “Stromata” (1892). With what has been said in this entire paragraph, cf. note 626 (to p. 353), 636 (to p. 357), 803 (to p. 443). Philaret (in the world - Gumilevsky, Bishop of Chernigov; 1805‒1866) St. Rev., Church historian, author of a textbook on patrolology (1859). For a description of his church activities, see: Florovsky G. M. Paths... (according to decree). Works: Review of Russian spiritual literature. 3rd ed. St. Petersburg, 1884. Issue. 1‒2. Extremely skeptical doubt is possible only as an unstable balance, as the limit of absolute madness (F. F.’s italics), for what else is madness if not madness (F. F.’s italics), if not the experience of the lack of substance (sic!), the unsupportability (sic!) of the mind.” Compare, without going far, the confession of Fr. F. on p. 5: “If I... attach any significance to my Letters, then it is exclusively preparatory, for the catechumens, until they have direct nourishment from the hands of the Mother; the meaning of “catechetical words” in the Church courtyard.” See cit. review Ep. Theodora (pp. 148‒149, 160, 179‒180). “..famous Bykov... - V.P. Bykov, author of brochures: “Where to look for salvation?” (M., 1911); “Go to someone else’s sadness” (M., 1911); “What does this day indicate?” (M., 1911); “What do life events tell us?” (M., 1914). More details about this point of view about the ideological side of the book are somewhat below. pp. 134–135, for example, especially clearly explain the method of using o. F. works of Gregory the Theologian, even within the excerpts extracted by our author; see also cit. review Ep. Theodora, s. 1, 2‒3. The idea of ​​the pre-existence of the Church among the apologists of the first centuries (see note 602 to p. 338). Sui generis - of a kind (lat.). Of. 320) to the Father of the Church Cremera (meaning “Biblische Theologischer Worterbuch der Neutestamentliches Giacitat” Compare the analogue, on p. 222 “Pillar”. This refers to his “Les principes des mathematiques” (Paris, 1905), which book is also available in Russian translation. Couture by Louis - see note. 23 to the article by S. S. Glagolev in the present. ed. He says in the previously cited review of the candidate’s essay about. F. (pp. 133‒134), literally reproduced in this place by the master’s thesis of the same author, even if it is possible to distinguish between the books “On Spiritual Truth” and “The Pillar” (see the citation of Bishop Theodore, ibid., p. 158). Was it not consciousness that dictated this? F, the following lines in his Additional Notes on the Trinity, p. 593: “We did not at all intend to prove that there can be only three hypostases (italics not ours), neither more nor less.” However, the consciousness, so to speak, is subterranean, because in the text it remains, “a hedgehog” back in 1908. Italics o. F., for whom (p. 1) “living religious experience is the only legitimate way of knowing dogmas” (the quotation marks of Fr. F. borrowing from him must be from Fr. Serapion Mashkin), R.: Zhurn. Sov. Moscow acad. for 1896, p. 173, review by prof. A.I. Vvedensky about the latter’s candidate’s essay. Wed. With. 8, as well as Letters 2 and 3 and rev. Ep. Theodora: ibid., p. 142, 143, 145‒149, 157, 160, rep. 168. We leave the question of the degree of acceptability of the ideas of “Sophia” for an Orthodox theologian for the time being (see below), although this excerpt from “The Pillar” immediately brought it to the forefront. We mean mainly the Right Reverend Theodore, Prince. E. N. Trubetskoy in the above-mentioned abstract, published in the May, for the current year, book of “Russian Thought”. With. 25‒54 second, account, and N. Berdyaev (Stylized Orthodoxy. Russian Thought, 1914, January, pp. 109‒125, second, account, esp., in this next meaning, representation p. 13 et seq. 116 et seq.). Contrary to its intended purpose, the book does not treat the religious experience of Christian dogmas, the Church of Christ, but about “how reason is possible” (see “Afterword” to “The Pillar” and the citation of Bishop Theodore, pp. 141‒149). On the one hand, Fr. F., according to the book. E. N. Trubetskoy (see the cited book “Russian Thought”, pp. 34-35), admits that the elimination of contradictions is the goal of climbing Mount Tabor, but here [he] declares that the contradiction itself constitutes the stamp of truth, and “how cold and distant, how godless and callous the time of his own life seems to him when he considered the antinomies of religion solvable, but not yet (italics not ours) permitted” (“Pillar”, p. 163). We quote from Lesevich’s book “What is a Scientific Philosopher” (St. Petersburg, 1891, p. 55). David Hume (1711‒1776) – English skeptical philosopher, forerunner of positivism, historian, economist. Lesevich Vladimir Viktorovich (1837‒1905) – Russian philosopher, positivist. Соч.: Этюды и очерки. St. Petersburg, 1886; Collection cit.: T. 1‒3. M., 1915‒1917. O.F. “builds the very idea of ​​Truth (sic!), based on the fundamental laws of reason, and seeks a formula that, although it goes beyond the limits of reason, would satisfy it in its main irreconcilable aspects” (Op. cit., op. place). A decisive and merciless condemnation of this faith by Fr. Ф. вынес особо с. 64‒65 of his book (our note). Ведь, по мнению самого о. F. (p. 51), the possibility of “satisfying the question of skepticism is extremely conditional and too problematic” (our note). In addition to the above, noted Rev. Theodore (p. 106) of absurdity: Does the author mean in the first chapter to show that the human mind cannot, according to its own laws, achieve and receive knowledge about the truth or the Truth itself? E. N. Trubetskoy (op. cit., pp. 37-38) mixing two things into one pile, by this word he means both a violation of logic and a simple combination of two opposites. Here Mr. Berdyaev has an extract from page 7 of “The Pillar”. Italics are not ours. The danger that lies in this “inclination of Fr. F. to decadent alogism,” the “fear” of his thought, “as soon as the topic of the Church comes up,” which, not without self-contradiction (cf. “Pillar,” p. 55), makes our author in this case an apologist for dogmatic formlessness, and the inconsistency, in addition to the uncertainty of the aesthetic criterion, with Orthodox theodicy, are clearly emphasized by the book. E.N. Trubetskoy (ibid., pp. 47–51), as well as the absolute incorrectness of Fr. F. about the indefinability of the Church, refuted by his own lengthy arguments about churchliness (see review of the materials of the dissertation of Fr. Prof. S.S. Glagolev: Journal collection of the Soviet. Imperial Moscow Spiritual Academy for 1914, p. 82), and yet once again expressed in a speech before the defense of the dissertation (Theological Gazette, 1914, Sep., pp. 86‒98): “In the Church there is no one (italics by F.) criterion that would guarantee the churchliness of a given person; but life itself, next to (the same) trials, weeds out the faithful from the unfaithful” (ibid., p. 95). For clarification of the criteria for churchliness, see the memoirs of S. Fudel. There, p. 170, see also previous page. Wed. Ep. Theodora, ibid., pp. 169‒170. Fr.'s point of view F., because of which, in fact, the fuss caught fire, i.e. “the “Pillar” was required (cf. Berdyaev’s quoted review, p. 116, report 108:110), best explained by two excerpts from his book. “The speech of faith is not at all the same as the speech of theology” (p. 336). The Orthodoxy of textbooks... in reality is false Orthodoxy, which is a bunch of incompatible heresies” (p. 59). See also p. 335‒336, 366‒367. Italics throughout the excerpt are ours. Since, according to Kant, “a moral being who has power over everything is called God, conscience should be thought of as a subjective principle of responsibility before God for one’s actions” (Kant I. Works: In 6 vols. M., 1965. Vol. 4, part 2. P. 378). Berdyaev, ibid., p. 113. An excellent addition here are the following lines of the review of the Right Reverend Theodore (p. 167): “In the truth of the Truth, reliability certifies,” says the author (11 pages, i.e., of the book “On Spiritual Truth”), and reliability is the intellectual feeling of accepting a known judgment as true; this feeling (satisfaction, as it should be called) is achieved by the conformity of the judgment with the criteria of truth” (19). So (sic!), isn’t subjectivism introduced into this area where Truth should be born, for where is the objective and general measure that the criteria (the law of identity-intuition and sufficient reason - discourse) in this case acted correctly for a known person; the feeling of satisfaction is so subjective and changeable that appealing to it, especially in the search and acceptance of a single truth, is risky, which is why the probabilistic construction of the concept of truth made by the author may not be the only way out of skepticism, and depending on the state of mind of the thinker, another construction may be accepted as true, at least for the time being.” The author, rightly, the Reverend reviewer further argues, “makes a logical inconsistency” when, “having built a probabilistic concept of truth on p. 38‒39, he is this probabilism (Probabilism (from lat. probabilis - probable), in scholasticism and late Western European Christian ethics, a moral system that examines the conditions for making decisions about possible actions in controversial cases. Skeptics of the New Platonic Academy were also called probabilists [meaning Carneades (214‒119), who synthesized epistemological terms with behavioral probability]), relating only to the concept of truth, right there, on p. 39, already transfers to its existence (italics not ours)... And although the author repeatedly mentions experience as a way of perceiving truth (p. 38:39), here in the 1st chapter, the definition of truth is not the result of experience, but the result of dissatisfaction of the mind, with an appeal to the need for faith on the basis of living in a person, love for the truth (p. 30) and hope that it exists (p. 36). Is this not where the fatal contradiction of the whole book comes from? P. 67, see the entire contents of the Letters entitled “Trinity” and “Light of Truth.” Quote speech to the defense dissertation, ibid. With. 87. Quote op., see above on note. In the opinion of Mr. Berdyaev, the teaching of the priest will not be accepted. Florensky about Gehenna, about Sophia and many others. To what extent is the dissertation of Fr. F. theological, in addition to what we said above, we will deliberately say here in the words of the Rev. Theodore, confirming plus some of our earlier theses (op. cit., pp. 150, 152, see also 159). “The question of reason in its being and in relation to the knowledge of the truth (the author (sic!), as we will see (sic!), is, in fact, engaged in assessing reason from the side of its knowledge of the truth), it was possible to give a solution in the form of a theological concept primarily; it was possible to philosophize in application to it (sic!), standing on the basis of Christian ideas and the main provisions expressed by St. fathers, especially since the author does not shun them at all... We understand that the author wrote for the catechumens, and therefore had to introduce elements of theological thought and Christian revelation into their consciousness with wise gradualness; This is the reason for his abstract philosophical and logical concept, and the justification for the omission we have indicated. But nevertheless, the author, in the course of his judgments about reason and truth, had to, in order to explain the fragmentation of reason and all being, put forward the idea of ​​sin, a purely theological one, acceptable (sic!), of course, by faith, and not by reason, and thus made a logical break in the course of his rational concepts, and introduced here an element of a different, theological, world of concepts.” Here the follower of Couture has mathematics inside out, because in reality, the falsity of the theorem is proven by the method of reduction to the absurd. But the ultimate goal is to reach the top of Tabor. Wed. thoughts of this paragraph with reasoning on the same issue of the book. E. N. Trubetskoy (cited article p. 35‒43). Per Filium - through the Son (lat.). Archim. Nikanor is referring to Florensky’s remark: “Through the Son he (the believer. - K.I.) receives the Holy Spirit” (“Pillar...”, 95), which gives the reviewer a reason to accuse the author of “Pillar...” of Uniate heresy. At the Council of 1438, the Latin doctrine of the descent of the Holy Spirit “and from the Son” was discussed: “The Greek fathers raised this question on canonical grounds and argued that the Latin Church acted wrongly when it introduced into the Nicene Creed, contrary to the positive prohibition of the Third Ecumenical Council to make any additions to the Creed. The Latins, on the contrary, argued that the Latin Church in this case did not introduce a new teaching, but only revealed that which was contained in the Symbol” (Complete Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia. Reprint, ed. in 2 volumes” M., 1992. Vol. 2. Stlb. 2449). P. 95 and the next, as well as the entire letter under the title “Comforter.” Lack of certainty (by the author) of the very idea of ​​the Holy Spirit, the clarity of the conclusion of Fr. F. (“What, in fact, means that they know less about the Holy Spirit as a Hypostasis in comparison with what is said about the Son of God as a Hypostasis? What does it mean to know as a Hypostasis?”), its inconsistency and fraud were thoroughly exposed by His Grace Theodore (op. cit., pp. 172, 173, rep., regarding the 129th page of “The Pillar” (about the prayer of the ancients and our era), by Prof. S. S. Glagolev in his quoted review of Fr. (cf., for example, pp. 111, 122, 133 and 136:137), on the mixture of subjective-gnoseological (p. 110) and subjective-metaphysical points of view. P. 112, see p. 111, as well as what we said in the text below. Italics in the quoted excerpt, except where otherwise noted, Fr. F. Therefore Fr. F. is kind to the ancient version of the Lord’s Prayer according to the Gospel of Luke, which is found in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor: “May Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us” (p. 137). It is sometimes very easy to confuse “spirit” and “Spirit” (p. 130), on the contrary (p. 124), “it is difficult to draw a line” and “to distinguish when (sic!) the holy fathers speak about the Spirit (italics o. F.) and when (sic!) about the spirit (italics o. F.)”, but ipso mystical sectarianism is psychologically natural, and it is no longer a pathological phenomenon, and therefore, fighting it is fundamentally difficult. The prophets did not have the fullness of concrete experiences of the Word and the Spirit (p. 130), the author asserts, believing, however, that “the knowledge of the Truth arises in the soul from the free revelation (emphasis not ours) of the Trinitarian Truth itself, from the grace-filled visitation of the soul by the Holy Spirit” (p. 95). We read something slightly different in relation to the first position in al. Peter (2:1–21): “The prophecy did not come by the will of man, but the Holy Spirit enlightened the words of the holy man of God.” However, later (pp. 272‒273) Fr. F. “not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and truth” testifies to the opposite: “For prophecy was never uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:21). Compare: “Knowledge of the Truth, i.e. consubstantiality (sic!) of the Holy Trinity” (Kyrsiv our), p. 110. “It is He, the Spirit of Truth (John 12:26), who testifies in the soul itself... about the Lord, i.e. about consubstantiality" (sic!; italics O. F.), etc. d. Ibid. Italics until the end of the paragraph are ours. Note 127 k p. 96. If “beyond everything,” then, without going far, how is it even possible to “understand ... the equation (in 1 John 29:1) as metaphorical,” which our author energetically protests against in the note. 113 to p. 88?! In the 1st antiphon of the 2nd tone. Isn't this the second reason for stopping Fr. F. in his time (see p. 71. Above, p. 241) on the concept of God as love. This testing and similar utilization is not the only one of our author. So, for example, on p. 332 o. F. is aware that “the given passage (from the work of Count M. M. Speransky) is colored with a sharply pantheistic coloring; expressions: separation of a part of the Son’s own being, etc., of course, are not Orthodox. But apart from these, the main idea of ​​the passage is not in conflict either with biblical teaching or with the patristic interpretation of the latter." Speransky Mikhail Mikhailovich (1772‒1838) – Russian thinker, statesman. Works: Sat. "Memory gr. M. M. Speransky "" 1772‒1872 ". St. Petersburg, 1872; Projects and notes. M.; St. Petersburg, 1901. Wed. P. An. Psychological riddle (Tser. Obshch. Vestn., 1914, No. 20, P. 5). She's in the book about. F. from Rozanov" (ibid.). O. Florensky, paying little attention to chronological dates, classifies Rev. Simeon the Theologian and Seraphim of Sarov, as well as the Optina elders: Leo, Leonidas, Macarius, Ambrose. Elders of the Optina Hermitage: 1) Leonid (in schema – Leo, in the world Lev Danilovich Nagolkin; 1769‒1841), known as the author of the book about Hieroschema Macarius (M., 1861; 1881); 2) Macarius (in the world – Mikhail Nikolaevich Ivanov; 1788‒1860). See about him: Theological works. M., 1989. T. 29. P. 328; 3) Ambrose (in the world - Alexander Mikhailovich Grenkov; 1812‒1891). See about him: Theological works. M., 1987. T. 28. P. 344. For a summary of materials, see the book: Kotelnikov V. Orthodox asceticism and Russian literature (On the way to Optina). St. Petersburg, 1994. This is also very characteristic: the body (not anything else) in the body. Peladon and others. References to the anatomical observations of these authors are given by Florensky (“Pillar...”, 804‒805, note 1031‒1034). This statement of the author is extremely characteristic, although he almost immediately corrects it through an intermediary judgment, in the sense that “from ancient times all the attention of church mysticism was directed to the heart.” Behind him one can feel, at best, the parity of soul and body, or rather, heart and chest. Meanwhile, as Right Reverend Theodore rightly notes on the basis of ascetic writing (p. 179), “Church mysticism is not the mysticism of the chest or heart, but certainly the united mysticism of all aspects of the human being... otherwise, we get the phenomenon of Khlystyism, so common now, or spiritual delusion.” Here (p. 293) with Fr. F. happens almost the same as when proving (note 41) the position (p. 38) about madness as the experience of lack of substance, the unsupportability of the mind (see above, p. 15). Indeed, from the point of view of the author (p. 292), only the saying is damaged by heretics (sic!): the idea of ​​the holy body. Of the fathers”, in essence, only Tertullian is cited “in the works of the Montanist period” (note 538 to p. 198) with Augustine, despite the presence in his “Confessions”, VI, 4 (according to pp. I, 130), and in silence the fathers who taught the diametrically opposite are passed over, although, according to F., some of them developed the idea of ​​the holy body. Tertullian Quintus Septimius Florence (c. 160 - after 220) - early Christian theologian, one of the most influential teachers of the Church in the West. Works: Works of Tertullian. St. Petersburg, 1847; M., 1994. The Montanistic period of creativity, which is mentioned by Archimandrite. Nicanor, dates from 207, when Tertullian became an adherent of the Montanist sect, which argued that in Christ there is no fullness of Revelation, although it is now in the process of completion through the action of the Holy Spirit. The founder of the sect is the Cataphrigian Montanus (mid-2nd century), his followers deny episcopacy, preferring the charismatic leadership of prophets and prophetesses. See: Ranovich A. B. Montanists. Ranovich A. B. About early Christianity. M., 1959. Augustine Aurelius (354‒430) - blessed, one of the most significant fathers of the Church of the Christian West. Augustine's influence on Western Christian thought was decisive until Thomas Aquinas. Works: Confession. M., 1991; About the City of God. M., 1994. Italics or, more precisely, printed, like few other places, in bold type by Fr. F. “Typical” with a tendency to “reasonably”, and not only from a human point of view. Pay attention to this abundance of excerpts in the notes. 537 (to p. 298), their selection and partial comments. The author’s choice of “historical” evidence here, especially from the angle of his “methodology,” is so unfortunate that it can only be explained by a lack of awareness of history, in particular literary history, especially barber shaving in Russia. See: Numbers 8:7; Mez.5:1; Wed Lev.14:9. See, according to Euhol. Gohar., Greek. requirements, starting from the 9th century, as well as Punishment. lists of the cathedral code of 1551 Regarding the well-known remark of Archpriest Avvakum “unfazed” Fr. F. notes: “In such monstrous false teachings one can hardly see only a verbal (italics by F.) error of an insufficiently educated schismist. Its tripheism is an unconscious expression of the general rationalistic spirit generally characteristic of schism” (note 57 to p. 53). Most likely, for this reason, the “Arianism” of Pavel Velikodvorsky and Onisim (Arseny) Shvetsov was promptly protested even by the Old Believer hierarchy. Avvakum (in the world – Petrov; 1620/1621‒1682) – archpriest, founder of the Russian schism. Works: The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, written by himself. Irkutsk, 1979. See about him: Demkova N. S. Life of Archpriest Avvakum. L., 1970. Rev. Porfiry (Uspensky), who problematically concluded the historical influence of Arianism in this regard, saw on one of the iconographic images of the Ecumenical Councils heretical monks “in the kind of hoods that our Old Believer monks wear, and the Orthodox have Greek hoods, low, in shape (only) approaching ours.” See also there. Porfiry (in the world – Uspensky; 1804‒1885) – bishop. Chernigovsky, figure of the Russian Orthodox Church, historian, archaeologist. Opened Codex Sinaiticus Bible-IV. However, the reviews cited above about. F. about the “Orthodoxy” of textbooks (p. 59, etc.) hardly go far from similar judgments in the confiscated book of the Old Believer F. Melnikov entitled “The Wandering Theology of the Orthodox Church.” Quote speech to the defense diss, ibid., p. 86. Demons are obviously not the same as demons. P. 318 and partly a special letter under the same title. In fact, that is, in The Pillar, the letter entitled “Gehenna” precedes the letter entitled “The Creature,” rather than following it. The italics in this excerpt are ours, and its explanation is partly ours on p. 16‒17 and in notes. to her. See also what we said in approx. 8. Thesis for Fr. F. is unprovable, because it contradicts his concept, although our author strays in one case (pp. 214-215) into the doctrine of a kind of predestination. Wed. Aristotle's corresponding argument against Plato's doctrine of ideas. Wed. the corresponding doctrine of the will of Schopenhauer. Patripassianism (from the Latin pater - father and passio - suffering) is a third-century heresy that argued that the suffering of the cross should be attributed not only to God the Son, but also to God the Father. Origenism - in this case, the reviewer is referring to a number of points in the teachings of Origen (185‒253 or 254) and his followers, which are traditionally criticized by Orthodox theologians, in particular, that evil is not an independent force, but only a weakening of divine emanations in the world; that every creature and Creation as a whole will be restored and saved, even the devil (the so-called apocatastasis). The last thesis in Origenism denies eternal hell, as evidence of the failure of Creation, with which not only Florensky, but also S. Bulgakov readily agrees (On God-Humanity. Part III: Bride of the Lamb. Paris; Tallinn, 1945. P. 407‒621 - about apocatastasis in St. Gregory of Nyssa specifically and about predestination in Blessed Augustine) and N. Berdyaev (The Meaning of History. M., 1990; On the Purpose of Man. M., 1993. P. 228‒241). To complete the voice picture of the dispute about “fiery hell”, it is important to hear A. Zhuravsky here [On the issue of eternal torment. Christian thought. 1916 (department of publishing: Kyiv, 1916)]. Quote speech before the defense of the dissertation; there, s. 87. In all likelihood, this is the reason why our author turned to the sorcerer’s confession for the appropriate evidence (ibid.). P. 318, n. With. 344, 391, and we have higher p. 248. As such. Sophia, of course, precedes the world (see p. 332). Same. By the way, “Guardian Angel of the World” and the Mother of God (p. 356). It remains, despite all the denials of Fr. F. from Catholicism, sometimes even at the expense of its curious humiliations (see, for example, p. 267; note 400 to p. 232), recommend that our author take the initiative to introduce the Feast of Corpus Christi, or at least this latter under his protection. After all, in places Fr. F. is already embarking on a similar path in relation to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (see note 639 to p. 358) with mutual, by the way (see also: Sl. Tserkov., 1915, No. 28, p. 635), at this point the sympathy of the Old Believers (cited magazine for the same year, No. 21. P. 493). Same. Here at Fr. F. is curious about pneumatology: “The Holy Spirit reveals Himself in creation as Virginity (italics by F.), as inner chastity and humble purity.” Italics o. F. Along the way, our author develops the doctrine of the Mother of God in even more detail than in our text. This last from the most diverse points of view, and especially from the angle of certainty, is characterized by the following lines of “The Pillar”: “Sophia is Virginity (italics by O. F.) as a heavenly force that gives virginity. The bearer of Virginity – the Virgin (Fr. F.’s italics) in the proper and exclusive sense of the word – is Mariam, the Virgin of Grace, Graced (Luke 1:28) by the Holy Spirit, Filled with His gifts, and, as such, the True Church of God, the True Body of Christ: from Her, after all, came the Body of Christ.” So our author writes on p. 30 and in notes. 652 (to p. 366). Having further noted (p. 356) “the closest connection between the idea of ​​the Mother of God and the Jerusalem on High,” he defines the Mother of God twice as “the heart of Jesus,” “the heart of Christ” (Catholicism again?!), although on p. 355 calls the Heart of the Church. Hitherto excerpt from p. 350. The reader, however, would fall into a big mistake if he stopped, perhaps in amazement at the novelty and unheard of, at this definition of the Church by Fr. F. – The Church, according to him, is not only Sofia. If not synonymous, then ontologically almost interchangeable names in relation to the Church are also Heaven and the Virgin Mary. So on p. 367. On p. 421 already “The Name of Christ is the mystical Church,” while on p. 338 She is the pre-existing eon of the world. Given the presence of such an understanding of the Church, the meaning of the sacrament of baptism fluctuates, since the prayer “Christ, the true light, sanctify and illuminate every person who comes in the world (italics F.) ...” contains ... an indication of those who are born in this world, who “goes (italics F.) into this world, but, even before coming here, is already enlightened and sanctified by the grace-filled light” (p. 339). And all this is said despite the author’s awareness (note 602 to p. 338) regarding the history of the emergence of the idea of ​​​​the pre-existence of the Church, and also that She is the Pillar and affirmation of the Truth, turned by Fr. F. into some kind of shapeless mass. Wed. With. 356, where the Mother of God is no longer “Sophia (and even) par excellence,” as here, but only the “Bearer of Sophia.” Should one distinguish between the instability of the foundations on which Fr. F. builds his teaching about Sophia as the Mother of God, on his reference to the notorious service of Sophia (detailed in our article entitled “Random Edition”, or the message of such new items that Sophia is celebrated in Vologda on August 15 (pp. 388‒389). To what extent the author’s statement regarding the memory of God is consistent with the spirit of patristic theology, see the quoted review of Bishop. Theodora (pp. 177‒178). Comte Auguste (1798‒1857) – French philosopher and sociologist, founder of positivism. Works: Course of positive philosophy: T. 1‒2. St. Petersburg, 1899‒1900. Prof. S.S. Glagolev (see cit. review of F. F.’s candidate’s essay, p. 134). Kinship o. F. with Pascal is also noted by Mr. Berdyaev (op. cit., p. 113). “...Being at the mercy of my philosophical and religious emotions,” Fr. F. does not notice his close kinship with German idealism... in a number of his teachings and answers. So, for example, his presentation of how reason must be surpassed, and Truth revealed on its own, is extremely reminiscent of Fichte’s teaching on the “annihilation of concepts”; in the same way, Fichte builds his “teaching of science” according to the scheme of a probabilistic technique. And the teaching about truth as love, which Fr. Florensky, contained entirely in Fichte. The doctrine of truth as a “self-proving Subject” was developed in detail by the American idealist Royce. Etc." (Yakovenko B. Philosophy of despair. Northern Notes. 1915. March. P. 166‒177). Royce Josiah - see note. 13 to the article by B.V. Yakovenko in the present. ed. See, for example, above. Book E. N. Trubetskoy (op. cit., pp. 27, 29, 30, 32‒33, 45:50). Wed. cit. review by prof. S. S. Glagoleva about the master's thesis about. F. (p. 82). See his review of Fr.'s dissertation essay. Serapion (according to the “Journal of Sov. Moscow Spiritual Academician” for 1896, pp. 173‒176, in this case p. 173 is important). Renouvier Charles (1815‒1903) - French neo-Kantian philosopher, head of neo-criticism. See about him: Vvedensky A. Essay on modern Frankish philosophy. Kharkov, 1894; Lapshin I. I. Neocriticism of Ch. Renouvier. New ideas in philosophy. St. Petersburg, 1914. Sat. 13. Italics throughout the extract from Prof. A.I. Vvedensky this latter. Wed “authenticity certifies” Fr. F. (p. 15) and what we heard according to Serapion’s legend “the will can be willed, but cannot hunt.” See note. 836 kp. 484. Ep. Theodora cit. review. P. 181. They completely omitted, however, the name-worshipping tendencies of Fr. F. (see esp., note to p. 106, etc.), most prominently prominent when compared with the following excerpt, borrowed from p. 566 “Pillar”: “It is not because Sophia appears with a blue environment because the sky is blue, but because the sky is blue because Sophia has a blue environment,” and so on. Tempora mutantur – times are changing (lat.). The italics in the entire excerpt are ours. Ilyin Vladimir Nikolaevich (1881‒1974) – Russian religious philosopher, theologian, critic and publicist. Regular author of “The Way” (in particular: Profanation of tragedy. Utopia in the face of love and death. – 1933. No. 40. P. 54‒65; Great Saturday. On the mystery of death and immortality. 1938. No. 57. P. 48‒57). From the latest reprints: Apollo and Dionysus in the works of Pushkin. Pushkin in Russian religious criticism. M., 1990. P. 309‒316; Venerable Seraphim of Sarov (fragment from the book). Homeland. 1990. No. 8. P. 61‒64; Russian Renaissance, or “Wine Seen from Prison.” Decorative art in the USSR. 1990. No. 3. P. 40‒42. Published from the original publication: The Path: Organ of Russian Religious Thought. Ed. N. A. Berdyaev and with the participation of B. P. Vysheslavtsev. 1930. Feb. No. 20. P. 116‒119. ...collective-liturgical pragmatism of N. F. Fedorov. – V. N. Ilyin found a very precise formula for determining the aesthetic meaning of the “philosophy of the common cause”, in the light of which N. F. Fedorov’s project can at least somehow be reconciled with Orthodox churchliness. Florensky also drew attention to this side of the Russian thinker’s teaching in “The Pillar...”. Ternavtsev Valentin Aleksandrovich (1866‒1940) – Russian religious publicist and public figure. John of the Cross (1542‒1591) – Spanish. St., revered in the Catholic tradition, mystical poet; belonged to the Order of Discalced Carmelites. See: Arsenyev N. Mystical poetry of St. John. Cross. Bulletin of the RHD. 1957. No. 44(1); Antonio Sicari. Portraits of saints. Milan, 1991. T. 2. Antinomian tragedy - in approximately the same intonations V.N. Ilyin evaluates the antinomianism of N.O. Lossky in an essay about the latter’s work (see: Vestnik RKhD. 1977 (II). P. 61‒68, esp. 65). ...the lack of a thorough formulation of the problem of freedom. - Wed review by N. Berdyaev of “The Pillar...” (1914). Florovsky Georgy Vasilievich (1893‒1979) – Russian theologian, historian of Orthodox thought and culture, publicist. Priest in exile since 1932, professor of patristics at the Paris Orthodox Institute (1926‒1939), professor at Harvard University. Works: see his articles in the collections “Exodus to the East” (Sofia, 1921), “On the Paths. Affirmation of the Eurasians" (Berlin, 1922); "Petrified Insensibility" (1926). Started. 1922. No. 1; “Did Christ Live?” (1929); Eastern fathers of the 4th century. 2nd ed. Paris, 1990; Eastern fathers of the 5th – 8th centuries. 2nd ed. Paris, 1990. There is an English multi-volume Collected Works in English (published since 1972, not completed). About G. Florovsky, see: The religious world of Russian culture. Essays in Honor of G. Florovsky. The Hague, 1975. Vol.11; Khoruzhy S.S. Russia, Europe and Father Georgy Florovsky. Started. 1991. No. 3. P. 22‒30; Blaine E. Florovsky's will. Question philosophy. 1993. No. 12. P. 80‒86. The remarkable work of G. Florovsky underwent a lot upon its release. N. O. Lossky talks in his memoirs about his attempt to publish a review of “The Ways of Russian Theology”: “My review was not published. It turns out that in Paris it was decided to suppress the book about. George, due to his negative attitude towards new trends in Russian religious philosophy. Berdyaev alone placed in “Puti” a whole page about “Paths of Russian Theology” (Vopr. Philosophy. 1991. No. 12. P. 113). By “whole page” we mean a rather long review by N. Berdyaev “Orthodoxy and humanity: Prot. Georgy Florovsky. “The Ways of Russian Theology”, published in “Put” (1937. No. 53). See: Berdyaev N. Works. T. 3: Types of religious thought in Russia. Paris, 1989. pp. 668‒683. G. Florovsky's review of the Paris reissue of “The Pillar...” is published according to the edition: G. B. Florovsky. Paths of Russian Theology. 2nd ed. Paris, 1981. pp. 493‒498. The published fragment of the book is a revised version of the earlier review “Vargument of the Spirit” (Put. 1930. No. 20. P. 102‒107). Below in the notes we present the missing fragments of the 1930 review, indicating in brackets the page of the journal publication. Pass: “About the book by Fr. It’s difficult to talk about Pavel Florensky – it means talking about the author and his personal religious path” (102). ...in the type of friendly philosophical correspondence, - Florensky appreciated the possibilities of dialogical freedom of speech and writing in the genre of “philosophical letters”: “... I am talking about the typical, although almost unprovable. That’s why I’m writing letters to you instead of composing an article, which I’m afraid to say, but prefer to ask” (“Pillar...”, 129). On the Russian-European tradition of this genre, see: Isupov K. G. On the genre nature of “Philosophical Letters” by P. Ya. Chaadaev. Modern problems of method, genre and poetics of Russian literature. Petrozavodsk. 1991, pp. 80‒88. Pass: “This is strongly reflected in his attitude towards church tradition. He himself admits that he chooses or selects his references and examples. He approaches the church past not as a historian, but as an archaeologist. And for him it is divided into many monuments of antiquity and antiquity, among which he wanders, as if in a museum. The scroll of church tradition somehow rolls up for him; he does not distinguish between eras. Perspective's story is unreal to him. All legends for him are a single tablet, and this tablet is a parable, a symbol of the immovable...” (103). ... drew attention to Evg. Trubetskoy... – See E. N. Trubetskoy’s treatise “The Light of Tavor and the Transformation of the Mind” and a commentary on it, published in the present anthology. Pass: “And at the same time it is revealed to him as a system of reason. As if in the final accomplishment the antinomies would be resolved, or at least stopped in eternal balance. However, in the consciousness of the Church this balance has not yet been achieved. So the fight against rationalism leads Fr. Florensky to symbolism in dogmatics" (104). Florensky began his journey with the poems “In Eternal Azure.” Sergiev Posad, 1907; the mood of 1904 is reflected in the poem “Eschatological Mosaic”; the second collection of poems for the Step,” prepared in Tiflis (1905), has not yet seen the light of day] and ended with poetry: he tried himself in the genre of the poem (“Oro”), begun in Transbaikalia in 1933 and partially completed, the first part in the year of his death on Solovki [see. collection “Among other names” (M., 1990)]. See: Olekseenko A. I. Man and the world in the late work of P. A. Florensky. Revival of Russian religious and philosophical thought. St. Petersburg, 1993. I. S. 8‒11. Florensky began writing a review of A. Bely’s collection “Gold in Azure” (1904) in the summer of 1904 (for the publication of the text, see: Context-91. M., 1991. P. 62‒67). This remark by G. Florovsky should be recognized as very insightful. Indeed, Florensky gives preference, so to speak, not to the second, but to the third hypostasis of the Trinity, reflecting the awareness of the contemporaries of their era in the eschatological perspective of the Holy Spirit: “The property of science is the world pattern, harmony and harmony of the world. This law of the Universe, this World number, this harmony of the spheres, bestowed upon created being, is rooted entirely in God the Word, in the personal peculiarity of the Son and in the gifts inherent in him. But everything that is not based on this peculiarity, that is associated with the deliberate gifts of the Holy Spirit, is not subject to the knowledge of our science - the science of the solitary Logos. Inspiration, creativity, freedom, feat, beauty, the value of flesh, religion and much more are only vaguely felt, occasionally described” (“Pillar...”, 126‒127). This is very close to the intuitions of the “theology of culture” of G. P. Fedotov (1886‒1951) with its “pneumatology” as the sphere of creative self-development of the Holy Spirit in nature and culture: “In the inorganic world, law reigns. In astronomical spaces, as well as in the kingdom of crystals, the rationality of the Logos, the mathematically ideal basis of the world, is imprinted. But in the organic world there is a place for the unexpected, the intermittent, what is called the creative impulse. In the light of the general symbolism of the Holy Spirit (the image of a dove), it would not be too daring to see the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit not only in the human, but also in the animal, and in the plant, and, perhaps, in general in the cosmic, in the world soul" (Fedotov G.P. About the Holy Spirit in nature and culture (1932). Issues of literature. 1990. No. 2. P. 205). The Great Being is the term of O. Comte. See note. 2 to the text by V.V. Zenkovsky in the present. anthologies. Omission: “He speaks about the Mother of God and the unspeakable Nativity only in passing, in epithets and subordinate clauses. In any case, the Mother of God is somehow separated from Christ for him. And about the union of two natures in the God-man, he speaks hollowly. Florensky talks a lot about the spiritual type of church mysticism, from the formal side, as about the gathering of the spirit, as about the duality of the soul. But in terms of content, his mysticism is least of all the mysticism of Christ. Rather, the mysticism of primordial creation, the mysticism of Sophia’s virginity. And even the Church for him is more the realization of the worldly wisdom than the revelation of God-manhood. That is why he leaves Christian history into some kind of dreamy captivity... We can say that in the consciousness of Fr. P. Florensky, Augustinianism and Pelagianism are intricately intertwined: the psychological pathos of distance: faith in the nature of creation... Another motive is connected with this: in essence, humanity is peacefully divided into many incommensurable genera and types; with particular sharpness this thought about. P. Florensky developed it in his remarkable sketch “On Types of Growth” (in “Theological Bulletin”, 1905, July-August). And everyone has their own pre-worldly path - oh. P. Florensky places higher value on precisely this innate purity than on the holiness of achievement. And the highest of the “kinds” is the spiritual type of the Mother of God... Florensky is acutely aware of the problems of conversion, and has little sense of the pathos of rebirth. He expects the manifestation of Sophia's foundations, but does not talk about the resurrection. In virginity, and not in ascension, the final fate of the creature is revealed to him, and he is somehow closed in the circle of Sophia’s immamentism” (106). Skip: What is least visible in Florensky is the Orthodox restoration, the stylized Orthodoxy. In the Orthodox world he remains a stranger, only he tries to assimilate the Orthodox way of life, and then aesthetically, that is, as a stranger. You can rather see in about. P. Florensky belated Alexandrian. In any case, a man of the pre-Nicene era. This is the narrowness and non-conciliarity of his religious consciousness. Florensky does not accept and does not accommodate church-historical completeness; he selects archaic motifs from it. And, moreover, not the joy of apostolic early Christianity, but the ashen sadness of dying Hellenism. Florensky repeats the fate of Origen: for both, Christianity is a religion in general, and not of Christ. This determines the entire architectonics of the philosophical and religious system. In the church synthesis, the exclusivity of Alexandrinism was removed, and at the same time its true insights were realized. Florensky would like to decompose this synthesis again and return to the ambiguity of the 3rd century. And this attempt at restoration is doomed to failure. Way o. Florensky is taken into the dead end. This shows his sadness. This book is a book about the past, about the tragic past of the Russian spirit returning to the Church. The face of the God-man has not yet been revealed to us. And therefore the creative path has not yet opened” (107). Du Prel K. (1839‒1899) - French mystical philosopher who tried to create an esoteric discipline of magical “new natural science” based on the synthesis of the Occult and the methods of the natural sciences. Iamblichus (c. 280 - c. 330) - ancient philosopher, founder of the Syrian school of Neoplatonism, student of Porphyry. Op. (trans.): About the Egyptian mysteries. Transl., intro. Art. L. Lukomsky, comm. R. Svetlov and L. Lukomsky.. M., 1995. See about him: Losev A. F. History of ancient aesthetics. Last centuries. M. 1988. Book. 1. P. 122‒301. Composite quote from N. Berdyaev’s article “Muddy Faces” (1922). See: Berdyaev N.A. About Russian writers. M., 1993. P. 317‒324.