Spiritual foundations of life

Contents Preface Part One Chapter 1. About Prayer Chapter 2. About sacrifice and alms Chapter 3. About fasting Part Two Chapter 1. About Christianity I. The whole world lies in evil (1 John 5:19). II. The meaning of the world (John 1:1–3). III. In that life is, and life is the light of man (John 1:4). IV. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it (John 1:5). V. Revelation of the universal meaning (Logos) in Christ (John 1:14; 1 John 4). VI. The essence of Christian sacraments. Chapter 2. About the Church Chapter 3. About the Christian state and society Conclusion The image of Christ as a test of conscience Reason and conscience expose our ordinary mortal life as bad and untenable and demand its correction. A person immersed in this bad life must, in order to correct it, find support outside of it. The believer finds such support in religion. The business of religion is to revive and sanctify our life, to combine it with the divine life. This is, first of all, the work of God, but it cannot be done without us: our life cannot be revived apart from our own action. Religion is a divine-human matter, a matter for ourselves. But in any case, you must first learn the unchangeable basic techniques and actions, without which you cannot go further. And religion necessarily requires such initial actions. They are not chosen by us randomly or arbitrarily, but are determined by the very essence of the religious matter. The task of religion is to correct our perverted life. For in general we live godlessly, inhumanly, in slavery to the lower nature. We rebel against God, separate ourselves from our neighbors, and submit to the flesh. But for true life, as it should be, the exact opposite is needed: voluntary submission to God, unanimity (solidarity) with each other and dominion over nature. The beginning of this true life is close to us and not difficult. The beginning of voluntary submission or agreement with God is prayer, the beginning of unanimity between people is charity, the beginning of dominion over nature is liberation from its power through abstinence from low desires and passions. So, in order to correct our lives, we need to pray to God, help each other and set a limit to our sensual attractions. Prayer, almsgiving and fasting - all personal or private religion consists of these three actions. But a person lives not only a personal life, but also a common life - he lives in the world. Living in the world, he must live in the world. But how can we live in peace when discord reigns over the world, when the whole world lies in evil? First of all, you don’t need to believe in this evil, as if it is something immutable. On the contrary, it is false and corruptible. It is not the meaning of the world. The meaning of peace is peace, harmony, unanimity of all. This is the highest good when everyone is united in one comprehensive will, everyone is united in one common goal. This is the highest good, and this is the whole truth of the world. In discord, in separation, there is no truth. The world stands and holds and exists only through the voluntary or involuntary unity of everyone. Where is that being, where is that thing in the world that can stand in its individuality? And if nothing can stand in its individuality, then this individuality is untenable, which means it is not true, which means that the truth is in the opposite: in universal and universal unity. This unity, one way or another, voluntarily or involuntarily, is recognized by all seekers of the truth. Ask a natural scientist, and he will say that the truth of the world is in the unity of the universal mechanism; ask an abstract philosopher, and he will say that the truth of the world is in the unity of a logical connection that embraces the entire universe. The complete truth of the world is in its living unity, as a spiritualized and God-bearing body. This is the truth of the world and this is the beauty of it. When the variety of sensory phenomena comes together, this prominent harmony is felt by us as beauty (κόσμος - peace, harmony, beauty). So, in the highest sense of the world (as the world) everything that we seek is united: goodness, truth, and beauty. It is impossible for the comprehensive meaning of the world to be only in our thoughts. The unity by which the universe is held together and connected cannot only be an abstract idea. It is the living personal power of God, and the all-unifying essence of this power is revealed to us in the divine-human face of Christ; in Him all the fullness of the Divinity dwells bodily. Apart from Christ, God has no living reality for us. Our entire personal religion gravitates towards Christ, and the general universal religion is based on Him. God has no reality for us apart from the God-man Christ; but Christ cannot be real for us if He remains only a historical memory: He must reveal himself to us not only in the past, but also in the present; and this real revelation must be regardless of our personal limitations. Such a reality of Christ and His life, independent of our personal limitations, is given to us in the Church. Those who think that they personally and directly possess the full and final revelation of Christ are probably not ready for such a revelation and mistake the phantasms of their own imagination for Christ. We must seek the fullness of Christ not in our personal sphere, but in His own universal sphere, which is the Church. The Church itself in its true essence represents the divine reality of Christ on earth. But in the person of Christ the Divinity combined with itself both the purely human and natural principles. This combination of three principles, accomplished individually in the person of the spiritual man Jesus Christ, must be accomplished collectively in humanity spiritualized through Him. The purely human free element of social life, represented by the state, and the natural element of this life, represented by the people or the land, must be internally connected or coordinated with the divine element, represented by the Church itself. The Church must sanctify and, through the Christian state, transform its natural, earthly (or zemstvo) life of the people and society. In this fulfillment of public religion our personal religion finds its completeness. Personal prayer must be determined and supplemented by church service; personal charity must find support in the institutions of the Christian state and through them be connected with public charity; finally, only a Christian organization of material (economic) life can give us the means to significantly correct our attitude towards earthly nature, in order to achieve a beneficial influence on all creation, which, through our fault, groans and suffers to this day. To the extent that we, through the untruth of our will, participate in the untruth of the reality around us, to the same extent our correction improves this reality. In any case, it is our will, relying on God’s help, to fulfill the duty of conscience in all our affairs, internal and external, private and public. So, personal and public religion, in the closest connection with each other, address each person with the following commandments: pray to God, help people, control your nature, conform inwardly to the living God-man Christ, recognize His real presence in the Church and set as your goal to conduct His spirit into all areas of human and natural life, so that the theanthropic chain of the universe is closed through us, so that heaven is united with earth. When we have felt a heartfelt disgust from the evil that dominates the world and in ourselves, when we have made efforts to overcome this evil, and have been convinced by experience of the powerlessness of our good will, then the moral necessity arises for us to seek the help of another will - one that not only wants good, but also possesses good and, therefore, can impart to us the power of good. There is such a will, and before we look for it, it already finds us. She makes herself known to our soul in faith and unites us with herself in prayer. We believe in goodness, but we know that there is no goodness in ourselves. So, we must turn to the existing good, we must give our will to it, make a spiritual sacrifice to it, we must pray to it. He who does not pray, that is, does not unite his will with a higher will, either does not believe in this higher will, does not believe in good, or considers himself the sovereign owner of good, considering his will to be perfect and omnipotent. Not to believe in goodness is moral death, to believe in oneself as the source of good is madness. Believing in the divine source of good and praying to Him, giving Him your will in everything, is true wisdom and the beginning of moral perfection. If we really want a free and perfect life, then we must trust and surrender to the one who can free us from evil and give us the power of good, who himself eternally possesses both freedom and perfection. For our soul is only capable of becoming free and perfect, but in itself it has neither freedom nor perfection, it only has the possibility of both. This virgin ability of our soul can become the mother of a new good life in us. But for this, that is, for the actual birth of a new life, the action of something that already has a positive creative principle, or the seed of this new life, is necessary. The divine ability of our soul, in order not to remain sterile, but to become the mother (matter) of a new spiritual life, in order to freely act and create, must surrender to its liberator and ruler, the Father of new life. Surrendering to him in faith, she unites with him in prayer. For the first act of faith, the first movement (or first feat) of the new spiritual life in which God acts together with man is prayer. Faith without deeds is dead, and prayer is the first work and the beginning of every true work. Believing in God, we must believe that in Him all goodness is completely and completely, otherwise He would not be God. And if all goodness truly exists in God, then, consequently, we cannot do any good and true work on our own: it is in our power only not to oppose the goodness and grace that comes from above, and by this non-opposition, this consent to grace, to promote it. Grace turns us to God, and we only agree with our will to such a conversion, and this is the essence of prayer, which is already some kind of good and true deed: here we act in God, and God acts in us. This is already the beginning of a new spiritual life. We already feel its first movement within us. We know that this life in us is the best part of ourselves. But we also know that it is not from us. If we were true creators and owners of this new life, we would not suffer and struggle, we would not be suppressed by the consciousness of our evil and our weakness. The reality of the new good life that we felt in ourselves was not created by us, but was given to us - it is a free gift. And if this gift is good, if the feeling of this new life elevates and enlightens our soul, then the gift of this life can only come from above, from the Father of lights. This life is not from us, but from the Father above; but it is in us, it is ours, and the Father of this new life is our Father. Our Father who art in heaven... If we ourselves have not felt the new heavenly life in ourselves, if we live only the old life, which is all weakness, sin and death, then these words “Our heavenly Father” have no meaning for us, for the heavenly Father is not the Father of weakness, sin and death 1 . Having felt Him truly as the Father in the movement of the new life that we have from Him, we truly believe in Him, we believe that in Him is all good and all light and all life, that He is the only true and worthy being, the only goal and object of desire. He who truly believes in God cannot desire anything other than God. But what does it mean to desire God? When in our natural life we ​​desire something for ourselves, this desire can be of three kinds: either we want something that does not yet exist to come into being (as, for example, parents desire the birth of children, artists desire to produce their creations); or we want something that already exists, but does not belong to us, to become ours or to become our property (which are all selfish desires); or, finally, we desire to change or correct what exists in ourselves or others (which are all desires for improvement or improvement). It is clear that none of these desires applies to God in Himself, but each of them applies to Him in His relation to us. We cannot desire God for ourselves as some object; we cannot desire that anything be accomplished in the all-perfect Godhead himself, in whom everything is already accomplished, but we must desire to perfect ourselves in unity with God. God eternally exists in Himself, but we must desire that He should begin to exist for us; for as long as we live according to our own and worldly will, God does not seem to exist for us. God is the Almighty, containing everything within Himself, and we ourselves belong to Him. But we must belong to Him not only by the power of His dominion, but also in the name of His divine perfection - for His own sake, as the highest good, the only good: we must belong to Him freely and voluntarily. God is unchangeable in Himself, but we must desire that He change for us, that is, that we ourselves change in accordance with Him. Thus, from time to time, the unchanging sun receives new strength for the blind man who has received his sight, because he himself changes and receives new strength, becoming light-receiving. So, desiring God, we must desire, firstly, that He would reveal Himself to us and say His name, that is, communicate the concept through which we recognize Him, distinguishing Him from others. Secondly, having known God, we must truly accept His revelation or acknowledge His name; for it is possible, having known God, not to recognize Him as God (Rom. 1:21); and thirdly, having recognized and acknowledged God, we must become conformed to Him, so that His name may be hallowed in us. Hallowed be Thy name. To desire God means to desire to voluntarily belong to Him. This inner voluntary affiliation with God constitutes His kingdom in us, and we already prayed for this inner kingdom when we said: “Hallowed be Thy name.” But if we really want this, then we must want God to reign not only in the secret of our heartfelt feeling, but also clearly in deed; and this will happen when not only individual souls, but also all beings surrender to God and form His real kingdom. There is no such kingdom of God in the world yet; but, believing in God, we also hope for the triumph of God’s work in the world. It is about this manifest and universal kingdom of God that we pray when we say: Thy kingdom come. We do not say: let it be created or let your kingdom be created, but let it come. Only what is already there can come. The Kingdom of God in itself already exists, for everything is subordinated in its essence to God the Almighty. But we must desire that the kingdom of God should be not only over everything that already exists, but also in everything, so that God would be everything in everyone and everyone would be one in Him. God is goodness that knows no boundaries, goodness that knows no envy; therefore He wants to communicate with everything, His will is to be all in all. And since He is the only good and good, it is only by desiring the fulfillment of this His will - to be all in all - that we wish good to everything. And the only obstacle to this lies in the will of beings, which does not correspond to the will of God, which does not accept divine good into itself. Will is the own power of every being, the beginning of every action and every reality; therefore, until our will accepts God, He does not exist in our reality. Only in its own will can a being resist God, separate from Him, exclude Him from itself. Therefore, the will of God requires from us not some external actions, but our own will - so that we ourselves want to fulfill the will of God; therefore, as long as we ourselves do not want this, then the will of God is not fulfilled in us. Until our world itself wants to be the kingdom of God, until then God does not reign in it, and this world remains an earth separated from heaven, an earth on which there is no will of God. Beings who voluntarily and completely submitted to God, who themselves opened Him access to themselves and made their will only the form and fulfillment of the will of God - such beings constitute the divine world, heaven or the kingdom of glory. There the will of God is fulfilled by the will of all, and therefore the kingdom of God has already come. And, desiring his coming to us on earth, we must desire that the will of God be on earth just as it is in heaven, that is, not in contradiction with the creation’s own will, but in complete agreement with it, so that all creation itself wants only what God wants. Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth. With this prayer, we ourselves give our will to God, and equally for all creatures, for all creation, we call for a free union with the will of God, in which all is good for everyone. With this prayer we desire the one true good for everyone and embrace the entire universe with one love, and through this we not only call upon, but also fulfill within ourselves the will of God, which is love. By saying: “Thy will be done,” we give the will of God the opportunity to act through us. But we still need to think about those actual conditions under which the union of our will with God feminine can take root in the soil of our heart. For the early and late rains are needed so that the seed of spiritual life received from above can bear fruit. Although we have surrendered to the will of God and truly want this one will to be fulfilled in us and through us; but three kinds of obstacles stand between our desire and our reality. These obstacles that we inevitably encounter are: firstly, in the corrupted sensual nature of man (our present); secondly, in our previous bad deeds (our past); and thirdly, even if we had reckoned with our past and overcome our present evil, more difficult obstacles appear in the form of the secret influence of hostile forces ahead of us (our future). To want the will of God to be done means to want to remove these triple obstacles. So, we must desire: first, the taming of our nature (by abstinence); secondly, atonement for our sins (with righteousness) and, finally, thirdly, protecting us from upcoming misfortunes (with spiritual strength). Give us this day our daily bread. In two cases, our sensual nature becomes an obstacle to the work of God in us: when we completely reject its power, falling into spiritual pride, and when we completely submit to it, falling into spiritual slavery. However, the first case ultimately comes down to the second; for no matter how much we reject the power and significance of the sensory nature (flesh), we cannot get rid of it; therefore, in fact, by denying the power of the flesh, we only justify our inaction in the fight against it and ensure its victory over the spirit; so that our imaginary freedom leads to an increase in real slavery. We will see this more clearly when we talk about temptations. And now let us only note that asking for our daily bread today points us to our proper and true position regarding the needs of nature - a position equally far from the pride of false spiritualism and the baseness of practical materialism: “our daily bread today” means what is necessary for our nature at any given time. The needs of spiritual and material nature are not separated here. And in fact, they are inseparable for us - spiritualized animals and incarnate spirits. We want the beginning of spiritual life that has opened in us to be supported, because it is surrounded by sensual nature and the elements of the world and without support can be absorbed by matter. But we also want the sensual nature to be satisfied, so that it can serve as the environment and instrument of our spiritual life. Both our lives, spiritual and physical, need food or daily bread; the first for yourself, and the second for the first. The daily bread for the spirit is all those influences from above and from without that support our good will and nourish our spiritual life. We ask for this super-essential ύπερούσιον bread because we know that the source of our spiritual life is not in ourselves, but above, and that separated from this source it will dry up. But we also ask for our daily bread έπιούσιον for our flesh, that is, for everything that ensures our material life; because we know that our flesh is the earth from which and on which the tree of eternal life must grow, the earth that God wants to make blooming and fruitful. “Give us this day our daily bread.” We believe that both material life and the entire order of nature ultimately depend on Your will. We know that even the smallest conditions of our existence are embraced by the comprehensive plan of Your Wisdom. And, thinking about what is necessary for our life, we only want to fulfill Your will, confessing You as the beginning and source, as the foundation and goal of our entire life. By asking for our daily bread, we sanctify our material life and unite it with the will of God. To say that God does not care about our material needs means to justify godlessness by limiting the Divine. If our material life cannot be connected with the will of God, and meanwhile we cannot separate ourselves from our material life, which is the basis of our entire existence, then it means that we remain alien to the will of God and live without God. Our material life is from the world, but the world lies entirely in evil, and evil is alien to God. But what lies in evil is not evil in itself. The evil of our material life is not in it itself, but in the way our soul treats it in its will. Evil is not in material pleasure, but in the spiritual desire that is connected with it. Desire is such a free movement of our soul by which we seek material pleasure for its own sake and surrender to this pleasure in full power, with the loss of all self-control, truly becoming slaves of the flesh. Here the satisfaction of the flesh becomes a goal in itself, and through this the life of the flesh is separated from the life of God, in which there is one true goal. In this separation of natural life from divine life, a separation accomplished through the desire of the soul, lies essentially the evil and sin of the flesh. God, as an unconditional goal, is the determining beginning of our life; separated from God, set as a goal in itself, our material life loses any limit, receives the character of boundlessness and insatiability, an unfillable emptiness in which it becomes torment and evil. In God is the limit of matter. Separated from Him, it is a bad infinity, an unquenchable fire, an unquenchable thirst and eternal torment. But it is through our prayer that the fatal separation of material life from God is abolished, this life is brought to its limit, relates to its goal. “Give us this day our daily bread” is, first of all, a vow of abstinence: only what is necessary is allowed, everything unnecessary is excluded. But by simple abstinence, our material life is stripped of its sinful character. By agreeing to abstain, we testify that material life in itself, that is, separated from God, is not a goal or good for us. If it were the goal and the good, then abstinence would have no meaning: then the greater and more complete the satisfaction of the flesh, the better it would be. But we desire only what is essential and only today: the word “essential” sets a limit to carnal desire, and the word “today” sets a limit to carnal thinking. By limiting our entire material life only to what, according to the will of God, is necessary for us at a given time, we give this life the conditional and subordinate character that it should have. Asking for our daily bread today shows that material satisfaction, the life of the flesh, no longer constitutes for us the essence and goal and the proper object of our will, but is desired by us only as a means and a necessary condition for fulfilling the will of God through us and for our service to the cause of God on earth. In this petition, the human will, freely subordinating to the higher will all the lower aspirations and needs of material nature, introduces our current reality into the eternal plan of divine action, relates it to God and connects our daily life, our present, with God. But our present cannot be truly united with God while the deeds of our past, done without God, weigh heavily on us. To begin to live according to God, we must first fulfill all righteousness. We are bound by former untruth and must untie ourselves from it in order to connect our lives with the work of God. Before acquiring a new good, we are obliged to pay off the old debt. This is a demand for truth. We cannot fulfill this requirement simply by doing the truth and living according to God in the future, for this is what we already owe, this is not the payment of a previous debt, but only the fulfillment of a present obligation. We cannot pay our old debt and must resolutely admit our insolvency. We must expect both the revival of our present and the redemption of our past only from God. And forgive us our debts. But even in this remission or remission of our sins, the requirement of truth must not be violated - that we do unto others as we want to be done unto us. So: “forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors.” These words do not have the power so that, by forgiving other people’s debts, we ourselves redeem or balance our own; for such balance it would be necessary that we owe the same thing as who owes us, which usually does not happen. But for the Heavenly Father, all humanity is one family, and what we release to one of the brothers (our moral feat of forgiveness), the Heavenly Father can use for the benefit of the other. What is important for Him is not the external correspondence between action and retribution, but our inner spiritual action itself. Forgiveness, as a secret movement of our heart, has effective force even when external action is no longer possible. Forgiveness washes away the consequences of past offenses and cleanses our past of sin. In order to protect our future from sin, we must turn to its very cause. The cause of all evil in us is not something random and external, not this or that deed or event, but our very corrupt nature, which we inherited from primitive man. In the depths of our being, in the very basis of our soul, sometimes quite unconsciously for us, the power of original sin lurks and operates hidden - a dark, insane and evil power. This is the very force that separates us from everything and everyone, closes us within ourselves, makes us impenetrable and opaque; it is a meaningless force and the beginning of all madness, for, separating us from everything, it breaks for us all connection with the world of God, deprives us of communication with everything and closes from us that our true relationship to everything, which constitutes the rational meaning (ratio) of our life. Separated from this meaning, torn out from the general world of God, obeying this dark force, we imagine for ourselves our own special world, and, mistaking this imagination for reality, we fall into madness. But the dark and senseless force that makes us mad also makes us evil. For, separating ourselves from everything, we oppose ourselves to everything, and, opposing ourselves to everything, we deny everything in the name of ourselves and strive to subjugate and suppress everything, and break and destroy what resists. This all-consuming fire is only covered by the ashes of our flesh; the laws of natural life (sexual desire, the birth of children) only limit and bind the action of this evil force, but do not change its properties. Its property is in internal separation from everything, and, therefore, it is abolished only through our internal connection with everything. But we can unite with everything only in the one in whom everything is one. Only by turning internally to God the Almighty, in whom there is no division and therefore no darkness, in whom the meaning (λόγος) of everything initially resides and who is love, only by turning to Him internally do we change the dark, insane and evil element of our nature in ourselves. Having bound ourselves by faith to the beginning of all good, we receive freedom from the coercive power of the sinful principle over us. We cease to be slaves of sin as soon as we recognize the will of God over us. The will with which we are born, the will of our flesh, is subordinate to nature, and nature is subordinate to the sin that dominates it. So, as long as we act only from ourselves or from our own will, we inevitably act from sin, we act as slaves and slaves of sin. To have only our own will means for us to have no will, to be unfree. For our will is already subordinated to sin, subordinated by birth, that is, involuntarily. Natural man does not himself, not of his own will, subject himself to sin, but sin already possesses him, against his will, as its inheritance. And while we act only on our own, we remain in the power of that one principle that already owns us, that is, in the power of sinful nature, or innate sin, we constitute the indivisible property of this principle. In fact, we are no longer free and the possibility of liberation for us is only in such a force that goes beyond the fact and connects us with what does not yet have a tangible reality for us. Such strength is faith. By faith we recognize for ourselves another principle other than our actual nature, subject to sin. By virtue of faith, we get the opportunity to act not from one principle, which actually owns us from birth and to which we are slaves, but from another principle, to which we ourselves submit, receiving freedom in this voluntary submission. Only by believing in the invisible God and acting by faith from God, our will turns out to be truly will, that is, a free principle, free from itself, that is, from its given factual state; here the will no longer acts as a psychological phenomenon only, but as a creative force that precedes every phenomenon and is not covered or exhausted by any fact, i.e., essentially free. Such radical liberation through the power of faith is available to all people regardless of religion. For the moral feat of faith is possible even with the most insufficient knowledge of the true God. The meeting of the human heart with the grace of God that seeks it can take place far from the direct line of consciousness, but wherever this meeting takes place, only through it do we receive real freedom. We are born only with the possibility of freedom; in fact, our will (the will of natural man) is already occupied and bound by those limited and external objects for us that nature makes us want. In this desire we are doubly not free: firstly, because we do not want here of our own accord, but are forced to want by an alien force of nature; secondly, the very objects of natural desire - limited things and conditional states - bind and limit our will. We achieve real freedom only when, beyond natural desire, we begin to want what God wants, that is, we ourselves give our will to God. In this way we become doubly free; firstly, because, giving our will to God, we act ourselves - this is not a fact innate to us, forced and obligatory for us, but an internal action or movement of our soul, in which we ourselves constitute the beginning of the movement; secondly, what God wants (the object of our new will) is, first of all, a moral, internal good, moreover, infinite and perfect, in which there can be nothing exceptional, no external boundaries that bind and suppress our will, like objects of natural desires - there is nothing like that in God and cannot be, therefore, by uniting our will with the will of God, we receive perfect freedom - perfect in principle, but not yet in execution. The movement of our will, by which it rises above itself, that is, above its actual natural state or slavery to sin, and gives itself to God, deciding to want things that are not God’s, this movement is only the first beginning of a new life, and not the end of it. Already at this beginning our will is truly free, but the former slavery to sin still remains for it as a possibility. Previously (before the spiritual revival) slavery was a reality, and freedom was only a possibility - now it’s the other way around. For a newborn spiritual person, sin is no longer a fact that inevitably weighs on his will, but only a possibility for his will. In order for the sinful principle to move from this possibility into reality and again take possession of a person, it needs to be excited. A person who has been spiritually reborn, that is, who has recognized God with faith and subordinated himself to the will of God, can no longer by himself, by his direct action, arouse the dark element of his soul to actual sin. For such a person, the triggering cause of sin will be an action from the outside, what is called temptation. Temptation occurs only for spiritual people, or people of God. A godless person does not need temptation to do evil: he does it simply by virtue of his corrupt nature, according to the law of sin, which already possesses him. But the man of God is directly innocent of the law of sin. Sin, like sin, has no power over him and does not act on him; he can be carried away by sin only when sin presents itself as sinless and evil takes the form of good, which is the power of temptation. We know three main types of sin: the sin of the sensual soul or lust (sin of the flesh): “lust, when conceived, gives birth to sin, and committed sin gives birth to death”; further, the sin of the mind is conceit or self-aggrandizement, which leads to error, and persistence in error gives rise to lies and deception; and, finally, the sin of one’s own spirit – lust for power, which leads to violence, and violence ends in murder. So, the point of temptation is to present these sins as not sins for a spiritual person. First of all, there is the justification of lust, that is, the desire of the sensual nature, which gains predominance over the mind and will. A tempting voice says: “You are a man of God, a spiritual man, and for you the lust of the flesh is not terrible; You have already internally conquered the sinful nature within yourself, and therefore any external manifestations of it are no longer important to you. For a spiritual person, everything is permissible: you are above the difference between good and evil; and can there be evil in the purely external actions of the body, which constitute the natural manifestations of its material nature? This is the first temptation. It is especially strong at the beginning of spiritual life, when the desires of the flesh have not yet resigned themselves to the newborn spirit and want, like the snakes of Hercules, to strangle him in the very cradle. Followers of pseudo-spiritual, mystical sects usually fall under this temptation, in which exaggerated and self-satisfied spirituality is replaced by complete revelry of sensuality, and freedom of the spirit, turning into freedom of the flesh, ends in slavery of the flesh. To overcome this temptation, we need spiritual strength, which we do not have within ourselves, but must receive it from the source of all strength, and we turn to him with a prayer: do not lead us into temptation. The help of divine power attracted by this prayer will protect our soul from darkness and temptation and will arm our mind and conscience against tempting sophisms with the following reasoning. The spiritual man's response to the first temptation: You say that the lust of the flesh is not terrible for me, because I have overcome the sensual nature or flesh by the power of the spirit; but if I had really already conquered the flesh, then the desire would not have acted in me, and the temptation itself would not have existed. If it appears, if I feel the desire of the flesh, then this is a clear sign that the sensual nature has not yet been conquered by me, that it is still terrible and dangerous for me, and that I still need to fight it. Next you say that I have become above the difference between good and evil. But how can I believe this when I still experience the difference between pain and pleasure, turning away from the first as evil for me and seeking the second as good for me? And if I had actually already achieved such perfection that I could not distinguish between pain and pleasure, then with such dispassion I could not have a carnal desire, which is precisely the desire for some kind of pleasure - then there would be no place for the present temptation. If you are now tempting me with carnal desire, it means that I have not yet achieved dispassion and am fully susceptible to the difference between good and evil. Finally, you say: there is no evil or sin in the satisfaction of sensual aspirations, because this is only an external fact, an action performed by the body alone without the participation of the soul, but if this were so, then the soul would not desire this fact; allowing lust into herself, she desires him, and this desire expresses precisely the participation of the soul in the sensory fact, and, therefore, it is no longer only an external fact in the life of the body, but also the internal action of the soul, its sin. Having thus refuted the temptation of the flesh, the spiritual man encounters the temptation of the mind. “You have learned the truth, true life has been revealed in you. This is not given to everyone. You see that others do not know the truth and are strangers to true life. Although the truth is not from you, it is yours, it belongs to you primarily before other people. It was not given to them, but it was given to you - which means that you yourself were already better and higher than other people, and therefore received what was hidden from them. The spiritual life that has been revealed in you is your advantage over others, and this advantage proves your personal superiority over them. True life elevates you and makes you better, but you receive this life because you were already better and higher than others before. You yourself are already the chosen one, having the right to exceptional significance. If the truth has become your personal property; and advantage, then it means that your opinion, as your own, is already the truth and should be recognized by others. Possessing the truth, you cannot fall into error; you are infallible.” Having allowed such a suggestion, our mind falls into conceit, and conceit leads to misleading and lies. For, enjoying the thought of its superiority, our mind begins to value the truth no longer as the truth, but as its own, but thereby it loses any criterion between truth and error, for both error and every lie can be its own. But even if we refrain from that ultimate madness, so that every opinion and imagination, for the sake of the fact that it is our own, is accepted and presented as the unconditional truth due to its imaginary infallibility, then nevertheless, the sin of conceit or mental pride that we have committed inevitably multiplies in our soul and gives rise to other related sins in it - vanity and envy. For the opinion of one’s superiority, being only a claim, certainly requires someone else’s recognition. Since conceit does not mean our being in truth, but only our significance, it is not satisfied if we do not mean as much to others as we do to ourselves. The desire to matter to others or to have an advantage in someone else’s opinion is vanity. The dissatisfaction of this desire, when someone else's opinion denies us exclusive recognition and puts others on an equal footing or above us, certainly arouses in the vain a hostile feeling of rivalry, jealousy and envy. This temptation of the mind by conceit is especially strong in the middle of the spiritual field, when the mind has already gained dominance over the feelings. People who have already achieved some significance and merit usually fall into the temptation of conceit. Such, by God's permission, then become founders of sects or heresiarchs and leaders of popular movements, but often also fall into insanity and die in a pitiful manner. But if a spiritual person at the beginning of this temptation does not rely on the strength of his mind and turns to God with the prayer: “Do not lead us into temptation,” then he will receive strength of mind and will be able to remove the sophistry of conceit. The spiritual man’s answer to the second temptation: Truth is in itself eternally, limitlessly and completely. It cannot be anyone's private property, property or advantage. Our mind can cognize the truth only by becoming involved in the truth, that is, participating in infinite perfection, and for this it must renounce and renounce its personal limitations, from seeking its own and thinking about its own. In truth there is no one’s own and someone else’s, in it everyone can have only one part, in it everyone is in solidarity; therefore, when, in the name of my imaginary possession of the truth, I oppose myself to others and am proud of my advantage in the truth over them, then I only prove that I am not yet in the truth, and that I have nothing to be proud of. Truth is unconditional, independent and self-sufficient; Therefore, if I vainly seek other people’s recognition and care about people’s opinions, then I show that I myself am alien to the truth and that I have nothing to glory in among people. Finally, real truth, as the fullness of good, does not allow envy; If I compete and envy others because of the possession of the truth, then I show that I do not have the truth and that I have nothing to be jealous or compete for. There can be no boundaries in truth; therefore, while our mind seeks its own and stands on its own, that is, it distinguishes between itself and not itself, it itself is limited and separated from the truth, and the truth is not in it, and it cannot cognize it from itself. But he can and must recognize this limitation of his and humble himself before the boundless mind of God and turn from himself to the truth itself and become transparent to the divine light. So, we find truth not with our own mind, but despite our mind, in the mind of God. But such knowledge of the truth, based on the humility and self-denial of our mind, can no longer be a source of pride, vanity and envy; and even though these vices could not be immediately destroyed, but by internally renouncing false conceit in favor of the real truth, we undermine the root of these mental sins and, protecting ourselves from mental errors, we strengthen and grow in spiritual life. But here we face the third and most dangerous temptation. When the lust of the flesh is overcome by purity and the deception of the mind by humility, when I do not consider sin allowed for myself and do not succumb to it, when I do not put my opinion instead of the truth and do not fall into error, then there is a great temptation for the spiritual will. “You have freed yourself from the slavery of the flesh and, through self-denial of the mind, you have assimilated the truth of God and come to know that it is the only true good. But the world rejects this truth and deprives itself of this good and lies in evil. Being in evil, he cannot accept the truth through mental conviction - he must first of all be practically subordinated to a higher principle. You are a representative of this higher principle, not by your own merits and strengths (for you have already renounced self-conceit), but by the power of God’s grace, which has made you a participant in the real truth. Not for yourself, but for the glory of God and for the good of the world itself, out of love for God and your neighbor, you must want and make every effort to conquer the world with the highest truth and lead people to the kingdom of God. But for this, you must have in your hands the necessary means to successfully act on the world and in the world: first of all, you must gain power and supreme authority over other people, subjugate them to yourself in order to lead them to the one saving truth. So, you should seek in every possible way for power and might in the world.” Great and strong people fell to this great and strong temptation, and it led them to many bad deeds. But if a spiritual person, having successfully passed through the first two temptations, wants to resist this too, then, again protecting himself with the prayer: “Do not lead us into temptation,” he will say this: The spiritual man's answer to the third temptation: It is true that I must take care of the salvation of the world through practical submission to its divine principle; but it is not true that for this I must seek power in the world. If I really desire power not for myself and not in my own name and not arbitrarily, but in the name of God for the work of God and according to the will of God, then I should not and cannot seek this power myself, I should not and cannot do anything on my own to achieve it. I believe in God and desire the completion of His work and hope for the coming of His kingdom and, as far as I have been given, I serve Him, but I do not seek more: for I cannot know the secrets of God’s economy and the ways of His providence and the plans of His wisdom; and I don’t quite know myself yet. I cannot know whether it will be good for me and for others if I now receive power and might. Although I have become involved in the truth of God and spiritual life has opened up in me, it does not follow from this that I am fit to rule people. Perhaps, having received power, I will not only find myself incapable of building others in the spirit of God, but I will also lose my own spiritual dignity, and if I seek power, then I have already lost it, for I have fallen into the sin of lust for power. If I do not expect to accept my assignment from God, but seek power from myself, then I must resort to human ways and means in this matter. But human ways and means for obtaining power are well known, they are: deceit and deception in the beginning, violence and murder in the end. By doing such things you will not bring others closer to the kingdom of God, but you will move away from it yourself. So, I must serve the glory of God and the salvation of the world in what is given to me as my lot, patiently awaiting the fulfillment of God’s judgments on myself and on the world, trying with meekness and kindness to soften the evil of others, without multiplying it with my own. General answer to temptations: By believing heartily in God and feeling the action of divine grace in ourselves, we have the beginning of a new spiritual life. The deception of temptation lies in the fact that this beginning is taken for the achieved end, and the origin of spiritual life is presented as its perfection; the deception is that spiritual life is understood as something at a time and completely given, not requiring growth, in a constant process of improvement within and fulfillment outside; It is believed that a spiritual person is a simple, whole and complete being. But in fact, two living forces continue to reside and operate in the spiritual man: the firstfruits of a new grace-filled life and the remnant of the former sinful life, and the purpose of temptation is to use the still fragile firstfruits or pledge of the spirit as a plausible cover or mask for old sinful aspirations and thereby justify and internally strengthen them and completely surrender the whole person to them. But at the beginning of temptation, if we seek support not in our own, but in God’s powers through prayer, we will easily reveal all the deception and say this: Let us assume that we are people of God and live in God, but we cannot think that submission to carnal desire, that vanity or lust for power that we notice in ourselves, is from God and is good. So, although we are in God, there is still something in us that is not from God, and that is not good, therefore, when such unkind aspirations attack us, then we must recognize this as an attack and, without yielding to them, pray: do not lead us into attack, and in no way justify carnal vices with our quality of a spiritual person. Without a doubt, for the pure, everything is pure, but the question is: are we completely pure, and to this question the conscience of the tempted one gives a clear answer: we live not under the law, but under grace, we are spiritual people. So be it; but it does not at all follow from this that everything that we do or happens to us is also grace-filled and spiritual: for example, when we experience hunger and thirst, it is not by grace and not because we are spiritual, but because we still have animal nature; but in the same way, when we, although spiritual people, have unclean thoughts, or a desire for someone else’s praise, or a desire for power, then this happens not because we are spiritual, but because we are not yet spiritual enough; and it is so insufficient that at the end of the temptation our very spiritual qualities become only pretexts for not spiritual at all, but carnal and sinful aspirations: thus, at the end of the first temptation our imaginary spiritual freedom turns out to be only a pretext for real slavery of the flesh, at the end of the second temptation our imaginary spiritual wisdom becomes an excuse for pride and vanity, and, finally, the third temptation leads to the fact that spiritual zeal for the glory of God and good neighbors as a pretext for lust for power and despotism. So, in every attempt to connect the weaknesses and vices characteristic of man in general with our quality as a man of God or a spiritual person - in every such attempt and in every such suggestion we must see the evil deception and pray: deliver us from the evil one. The crafty spirit of self-love, the father of all lies, deceiving our mind with its sophisms, achieves a double goal: it not only weakens our will in the fight against real temptation, but also gives our soul in advance to the power of all passions, vices and crimes. A person possessed by unbridled pride not only falls, accidentally committing one sin or another, but has already lost the stability of his moral balance, and his whole life turns into complete sin. A person obsessed with pride will inevitably be unfair in relation to others, but limitless in his own needs. Our soul has within itself the power of infinity, and once it has mastered this power, our egoism finds no limits and knows no saturation. Immense demands cannot be satisfied; dissatisfaction breeds bitterness; impotent anger produces despondency, and despondency leads to despair. So, when pride takes over in our soul, the logical outcome will be insanity or suicide. And if such an end does not befall all those possessed by that moral illness, then this should be attributed to the special mercy of God and the prayers of others. Delivering us from the evil one is a matter of true wisdom, which exposes and destroys all deceptions and sophistry of self-love and equips us not with our own, but with God’s powers. Thus, our spirit receives an irresistible strength in temptations. Spiritual strength in temptations imparts to us justice in actions and moderation in feelings. And with such moral balance, pure love, constant hope and firm faith in God and eternal life take root more and more in the soul. True prayer has two main properties: selflessness and effectiveness. The prayer that Christ taught His disciples possesses these properties to the fullest. This prayer is completely disinterested; for in it we do not pray for any good for ourselves exclusively, nor for any good that would separate us from others. The real purpose of this prayer is for God to be all in all. This purpose is directly expressed in the first three petitions: “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven and on earth.” The subjects of the remaining petitions express only the means or conditions for the implementation of that highest goal, insofar as it concerns us. For God cannot be all in all if He is not also in our personal lives. And so we first of all give our material life to God. Praying for our daily bread, we no longer consider ourselves the masters of our material life, but subordinate it to the divine life. Praying for forgiveness of debts and leaving our debtors for the sake of God, we do not seek our own truth, but recognize the truth of God, which alone is true; finally, praying for ignorance of temptation and deliverance from the evil one, we do not believe in our own ways to avoid the overt and secret actions of the evil inclination, but we choose the one true path of God’s leadership. Being completely disinterested, the Lord's Prayer is at the same time completely effective. Each of her petitions, pronounced with faith, contains within itself the beginning of its fulfillment. When we say with faith: “Hallowed be Thy name,” the name of God is sanctified in us; By calling on the kingdom of God, we thereby recognize ourselves as belonging to this kingdom, i.e. it is already coming to us. Saying: “Thy will be done,” that is, giving our will to God, we thereby fulfill His will in ourselves. Then, to the extent that we reduce our material needs to the minimum (in prayer for our daily bread today), we make it more possible to satisfy them. Further, by remitting to our debtors, we thereby justify ourselves before God, and, finally, by praying for God’s help in the fight against the temptations and obsessions of evil forces, we thereby receive the most effective help, for this race cannot be driven out by anything other than fasting and prayer. Our heavenly Father, the founder of the new good life in us! Hallowed be Thy name, that is, the truth, by our faith. Thy kingdom come is our whole hope. May Your will be done, the one love of all and uniting everything, may it be not only in the world of spirits submissive to You, but also in our nature, which has self-willedly separated from You. And for this, take our carnal life and cleanse it with Your life-giving Spirit. Take our rights and justify us with Your truth. Take all our strength and all our wisdom, for they are not enough for us in the fight against invisible evil; You, in Your faithful path, lead us to perfection, for Yours is the kingdom and power and glory forever and ever. Chapter 2. About sacrifice and alms A person, morally uniting with God in true prayer, unites with Him not only himself, but also others; he becomes one of the connecting links between God and creation, between the divine and the natural world. The human will, freely surrendering to the will of God, is not absorbed by it, but is combined with it and becomes a new divine-human power, capable of doing the works of God in the human world. In this way, true prayer, as a gracious-moral connection with God, differs from all other human relationships to the Divine. For there are other relationships to the Divine on the part of the believer, and not every relationship of the believer to the object of his faith forms a living moral connection and true union between them. If the Divine really exists, then a person living outside Him must feel Him, not only as an external alien force that can always absorb and destroy him. God, by the very concept, is always an omnipotent force above us, but this omnipotence itself has different expressions: for a slave of nature living outside of God, it is expressed as a consuming fire, as an all-consuming, all-destroying force. With such a power, terrible and unknown, moral union is impossible; a person cannot give it his inner essence - what he is, he can give this external force only his external existence - what he has: his physical life, his children, part of his body, his animals and slaves. The fiery devouring power of the Deity requires sacrifices. According to the testimony of St. fathers, those demonic forces that took the place of God for the pagans needed sacrifices primarily to maintain their own lives: they fed on bloody vapors. But the real God of powers, who revealed himself to the people of Israel in his fiery property, first demanded physical sacrifices so that the “stiff-necked race,” incapable of internal union with God, would at least outwardly submit to the higher will. The believer always devotes himself to the object of his faith, and religion is always based on sacrifice. But the quality of the sacrifice differs, depending on how a person understands himself and his God. So far, only his physical being is open in a person, and God can appear to him only as the same physical being, only more powerful, and he can surrender to such a God only by giving him all or part of his physical existence. For primitive 2 humanity, which lived by murder and alien blood, religion began with the shedding of one's own blood, with suicide, complete or private, real or symbolic. Voluntary human sacrifices in India, the burning of children in Syria and Phenicia, self-castration of the Phrygian Gauls (priests of Cybele), etc. - this is the real religious soil of ancient paganism, which was hidden from us by the later flowers of Hellenic-Roman mythology. The first religious feeling is fear. Fear that does not give birth to gods, but is generated by gods. The first representation of the Deity is an invisible hidden fire, an all-consuming force that can turn everything into chaos, the first cult is a bloody sacrifice. There is nothing false or arbitrary about this. This is how it should be as long as a person lives outside of God, as long as evil and dark passions dominate him. And until now, for a person who is aware of his imperfection, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, and people, even united with God with the best part of their soul, must sacrifice the worst part of it. But man, although not yet free from the dark desires that bend him to the ground and make him tremble before the invisible ruler, can still raise his forehead to the sky and look at the world's luminaries. For a person contemplating the image of the world, the power of God that forms the world appears as the light of the world. Here he is no longer afraid of the Divine, but marvels at him in the wonderful structure of the universe. The omnipotence of God is here no longer an all-consuming fiery force, but an all-illuminating idea, an all-encompassing and all-illuminating mind. Here there are no more bloody sacrifices, no fire of Moloch, no wild screams and frenzied dancing of the Corybantes, imitating the chaotic movement of elemental forces, but peaceful contemplation of universal beauty (cosmos), quiet singing, harmonious music, as an echo of the universal order, wise conversation and a bloodless meal... Here, not the life of the flesh, but the life of the mind is given over or dedicated to the Divine. At this second stage, the religious feeling of fear turns into surprise or awe, in the religious concept, fiery power gives way to the light of reason, and bloody suicidal sacrifices are replaced by pure contemplation. asceticism. But a religious person cannot stop there. After the eyes of his mind have opened and seen the Divine in light and reason, his moral being wants to open up to a living, not speculative, but real and essential union with the Divine, wants to break the bonds of private existence, to join his close heart to the all-encompassing heart of the universe. The deepest essence of a person is his moral freedom or will, and to unite essentially with God means for a person to freely give him his will. This is done in true prayer, which is entirely concentrated in the decision: Thy will be done. Here the Divinity is revealed to us in its own quality, as an infinitely good, perfect will, as a spirit of love, all-pervading and revitalizing, fiery and bright at the same time. At this third stage, the religious feeling passes from fear and reverence into love, the power of God is revealed in the spirit of goodness and love, and the cult consists of spiritual sacrifice and the free combination of the human will with the Divine will in pure prayer. But, uniting his will with the Divine as the beginning of his entire existence, positing in true prayer a new beginning of a grace-filled, spiritual life, a religious person cannot stop at this beginning. Having risen to the pinnacle of pure religion, having concluded a moral union with the Divine, he must, enlightened and renewed, descend to the world and enter into a new religious connection with people. The commandment of this new union is perfect love (“a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another”), and it is expressed in a visible way, first of all, in charity, or almsgiving. True almsgiving is a purely moral, gracious attitude towards one's neighbor, just as true prayer is a purely moral, gracious attitude towards God. “I want mercy, not sacrifice” - this prophetic word, confirmed by Christ, marks a turning point in religious understanding. At the lower levels of religion, a person, making his sacrifices, thought that God needed them, that God wanted these sacrifices from a person just as the person himself wants mercy from God. According to this understanding, the Divine not only gives us life, but also lives at our expense. The word of God is directed against this: “I want mercy, not sacrifice,” that is, I want not what you give Me, but what I give you. And when, at a higher level of religion in true prayer, a person brings to God the highest spiritual sacrifice, the sacrifice of his will, and unites it with the will of God in the decision “Thy will be done,” then he thereby assimilates the word of God for his activity: I want mercy, not sacrifice, that is, I want not to take from my neighbor, but to give to him, not to live at the expense of another, but for the other to live at the expense of me. Due to the combination of human will with divine will, the expression of the all-good will of God becomes the rule of the human will: I want mercy, not sacrifice. On the other hand, God can accept the spiritual sacrifice of human will not in any way for the sake of the sacrifice, not in order to absorb it, but in order to, combining this will with Himself, make it a free conductor of His grace or mercy. And a person, morally united with God, must relate to people other than God; he must treat others as God treats himself. Freely have you received, freely give; give your neighbor more than he deserves, treat your neighbor better than he deserves. Give to whom you do not owe, and do not demand from those who owe you. This is how the higher powers act with us, and this is how we should act among ourselves. The course of action between people arising from this commandment is as superior to all other rules of community life as the feat of prayer is superior to bloody sacrifices or abstract thoughts of God. The principle of charity or almsgiving is the highest development of society. At the lowest level of society, in the so-called state of nature, relations between people are determined by the opposite principle: force and violence. A person who makes sacrifices and is even devoured by divine (demonic) forces, and he himself treats others as a force, as far as he can, devours others, lives at the expense of someone else’s life. War and slavery are the main factors of primitive society. But war cannot be a continuous state, and slavery is possible only between unequal or heterogeneous forces. Forces that are equal or at least homogeneous cannot remain in a one-sided relationship of domination and subordination. Colliding with each other, they can neither absorb nor suppress each other, but must necessarily limit each other. This mutual limitation of social forces is raised to a general form and becomes a law. The law does not introduce any new positive principle of life into society: it only marks the extreme boundaries of free forces and thereby prevents more violent clashes between them; the law saves a strong person from the need to experience a violent restriction of his freedom, showing him its limits in advance. The law expresses only quantitative, mathematical justice: action is equal to action, equal for equal, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Since my power does not violate the external social balance established by law, it constitutes my right. Here the right is the same power, only within legal limits. But where do these limits come from? Not from the law, because the law does not create, but only affirms the existing social equilibrium. If the limits of a given force come only from someone else’s strength or from the totality of someone else’s forces, then they are unstable, random and do not express any justice in themselves. Then law is only generalized violence. Legality does not in any way guarantee justice, for there can be, and admittedly are, unjust laws. It is also impossible to assume justice in social solidarity, in the fact that the will of everyone is equally binding for everyone. For “all” here means “many,” and many can be in solidarity in an unjust cause, for example, when the majority of a people persecutes a minority because of differences in beliefs and passes cruel laws against it, which in this case are direct violence. The principle and quality of my actions do not change at all because other forces set a limit to my strength. The essential meaning here still remains with force, and law is only a form without any independent content. Such formal truth is content with the fact that everyone stands for his own right. But if I stand only for my right, then for me it’s not all about the right, but about mine, that is, I simply stand for myself, for my strength, for my interest. And if everyone in fact stands only for himself and for his own, then common law or social truth turn out to be one abstract concept. Meanwhile, we have not only an abstract mental concept of justice, as the balance of particular forces, but also a living moral sense of justice, and this feeling significantly changes the very principle and quality of our actions. According to this sense of justice, we stand not only for ourselves, but also for others, not only for our own, but also for the rights of others; and only here it really turns out that for us the right itself - justice itself - matters. Standing up for your even indisputable right may be wrong, for this can come from selfishness and partiality, but standing for every right, and in any case as your own, is a matter of direct justice. But let's move on. If I stand for someone else’s right as well as for my own, then it means that someone else’s is no longer my limit, another being appears here no longer as a limit, but as an object of my activity. And this is absolutely fair. According to the concept of justice, there must be equality between me and others, I must treat others the same way as I treat myself, and my attitude towards myself is quite definite: I inevitably and invariably love myself (“no one hates his own flesh, but it nourishes and warms it”). So, justice requires that, loving myself, I love others as myself; I love myself in any case and in spite of everything, therefore, I must love others in any case and in spite of everything, therefore, I must love my enemies. But love, as a feeling, cannot be a duty; I cannot demand or dictate that I feel love when I do not feel it. The internal fulfillment of love is a work of grace, the growth of which in us does not directly depend on our good will. The moral law obliges us not to feel love, but to deeds of love. In justice, I am directly obliged to do good to others, as much as I want good to myself. But for myself I want (and, if possible, I do) every kind of good without end. So, I must do every good thing to every neighbor, give everyone everything I can and everything he needs. Thus, the idea of ​​justice leads us to the commandment of mercy, which is superior to ordinary justice. Give to the one who asks, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Freely you received, freely give. Give your neighbor more than he deserves and treat him better than he deserves. For you yourself take more than you deserve, and treat yourself better than you are worth. Giving to the one asking, without asking about his right to receive something, means doing something that is not God’s, for the power of God, coming to our aid and saving us, does not ask whether we have the right to help and salvation. As God treats our prayer, so we should treat the request of the needy: true almsgiving is the extension to others of the grace that we ourselves receive from God in true prayer. Together with this religious significance of alms, it constitutes, as we have seen, the highest principle of social life. Society, starting from the kingdom of power, passing through the kingdom of law, must come to the kingdom of alms or beneficence. In the kingdom of strength, the weak are completely sacrificed to the strong, the strong live at the expense of the weak, feed on their labor; The kingdom of law does not want to know either the strong or the weak; it allows everyone to stand for themselves within certain limits and does not care about anyone outside these limits. So, in practical terms, the kingdom of law is the same kingdom of force, only limited and balanced. (However, it goes without saying that neither a pure kingdom of one force, nor a pure kingdom of one law can exist, and we are only talking about the dominant, predominant principle at one or another stage of social development). In the realm of beneficence, the strong and rich voluntarily sacrifice themselves to the weak and poor; these latter live at the expense of the former and feed on them. Some - giving for the sake of God, others - asking and receiving for the sake of God, preserve and fully demonstrate their moral dignity, equally rising above the arbitrariness of brute force and above the indifference of the law. Wherever a person manifests the beginning of his inner spiritual life, wherever he rises above physical strength and above the formal law, almsgiving is recognized as one of the fundamental religious duties. This is how it is recognized by Brahmins and Buddhists, Jews and Muslims. This principle reaches its perfect expression and sanctification in Christianity, where absolute power and absolute wealth (the fullness of goodness) - God has sacrificed and continually sacrifices Himself to our weakness and poverty, feeding us with His body and blood. Here is absolute almsgiving and together absolute sacrifice (Greek eucharist means charity, or thanksgiving). But it is precisely in the Christian world, which has received the perfect ideal of alms, that there are opponents of all alms, who want to completely exclude the principle of charity from social relations. The two categories of these enemies of alms apparently have opposite goals, although they are guided by the same anti-Christian and anti-religious spirit. Some are unconditional supporters of the economic freedom that exists today, others are its opponents, socialists. Some don't want to give, others don't want to ask. Some reject charity because they do not want to share anything of their own; others – because they want to take someone else’s property themselves 3 . Of course, neither one nor the other directly expresses their motives, but seeks out other, more plausible ones. The first, speaking as defenders of the existing system based on capital and labor, present alms as an encouragement of idleness and an encroachment on the sanctity of labor. Justice, in their opinion, requires that everyone live by their own labor, therefore, charity appears as something unfair or, at least, as something superfluous, unnecessary. To socialists, on the contrary, it seems somehow insufficient. And they also refer to justice, and in their view justice requires that everyone has the right to an equal share of material goods with everyone else, and they invite all the disadvantaged to claim their right, without waiting for the rich to fulfill their duty. The answer to all this from a religious and moral point of view is completely clear. We must say this to the first opponents of charity: if you sincerely reject alms in the name of work, then first of all you must take care of all those who cannot work - the elderly and children, the sick and crippled; Moreover, you must try to save everyone else from unbearable or harmful labor, i.e., in other words, before declaring the commandment of mercy unnecessary, you must fulfill it. As for the socialists, before connecting truth with violence, they must at least prove that the poor classes, having forcibly taken possession of all public property, will dispose of it fairly and evenly divide it among themselves. It seems impossible to prove this; on the contrary, for any impartial mind it is absolutely obvious that rebellion and robbery are a bad school of justice and that the have-nots, having robbed the haves, will certainly begin to rob and oppress each other. In order for a social revolution to satisfy the truth and constitute the moral success of society, it must be disinterested, must come from above, not from the demand for imaginary rights, but from the fulfillment of real duties. The haves have a real religious and moral obligation to care for the have-nots, the strong for the weak, and it is the duty of the ministers of religion to encourage them to do this by all possible moral means. Many in modern society, hesitant to outright reject the very principle of charity, rebel against its simplest and most tangible form. “True almsgiving,” they say, “is not about giving money.” Of course it is: true almsgiving is giving what is needed, giving what is asked for: “Give to the one who asks, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” If it is absurd to offer money to a person in need of moral support, then it is even more absurd to offer moral consolation to a hungry or sick person who primarily needs money for bread or medicine. All those sophisms with which they want to get rid of the commandment of mercy are a stone instead of bread and a snake instead of a fish. This also includes the fairly common reasoning that alms instead of good often bring evil. True almsgiving - not only for the sake of one's neighbor, but also for the sake of God - is a continuation of God's grace and cannot lead to evil. And there is no sincerity in that reasoning, because it is resorted to only when one needs to give to another, and not when one needs to receive oneself, while the possibility of future harm must be recognized as the same in both cases. Stinginess and hypocrisy are quite common vices of human nature, and the objections to charity inspired by these vices are not surprising. But it is very surprising that there are Christian states in which the law prohibits asking for alms, and further narrows those “eyes of the needle” through which the rich have to enter the kingdom of God. But in this way the Christian state undermines its own foundations. For it exists not to patronize private vices (avarice and hypocrisy), but to care for the common good, and its highest task is connected precisely with the commandment of mercy: to help the weak, to protect the oppressed, to do good to the poor, and to spread the gracious action of God on earth. The religious state should serve not the natural, but the purely moral or beneficial order of the world. The natural order rests on the mutual extermination or, at best, on the mutual limitation of people. The moral or gracious order is based on mutual solidarity or unanimity, and the first initial and simplest expression of this moral order is free help, selfless charity or simply alms. Having received the grace of God in prayer, we pass it on to our neighbors in almsgiving, that is, in every matter in which we treat them in a non-Godly way, as our faith obliges us. But our responsibilities are not limited to people alone. We are in debt to all that creation, which for the sake of our sin groans and suffers to this day. If we become conductors of God’s grace, then we must extend its action to our animal nature and to our entire world: for it is impossible to set limits to the divine-human power. Just as God incarnate saves humanity, so humanity reunited with God must save all nature; for just as humanity in the image of the Church is the living body of Christ, so the entire natural world must become the living body of regenerated humanity. All creation must be redeemed and brought into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God. Taken together, this is a universal matter, a world-historical task. But each has his own direct personal responsibility: for each in his own body can contribute to the redemption of the universal body. We know that not only the human soul, but also the body of the universe is in a perverted position under the power of sin and death. It is not without reason that it is said that the world lies entirely in evil. The evil is that the soul resists God, and the body resists the soul. Our soul does not want to be possessed by God, and therefore it itself cannot possess either its own body or the body of the world. The Divine should freely control our soul, attracting it with the power of his perfection and imparting to it the power of his omnipotence over the outside world. God, in whom everything is one and in agreement, is the highest good for our will, unconditional truth for our mind and perfect beauty for our feelings. By accepting this completeness of perfection as the limit of our desires, thoughts and feelings, we achieve true infinity. But we want a different kind of infinity. Having the right to own everything through communion with the internal beginning of everything, we instead want to become the beginning ourselves and, separating ourselves from everything, take possession of everything from the outside. We want to become the beginning and indeed become the beginning of sin, illness and death. Instead of desiring one highest good, in which everything is, in which everyone is morally united, everyone is in solidarity with each other, we desire many benefits exclusively for ourselves, we separate ourselves from everyone, looking for our own in everything, and cannot stop at anything. Instead of having in mind the whole truth, in which all objects and ideas are connected by an internal rational connection, our mind stops at individual objects, analyzes, decomposes them, not in order through distinction to better understand their unity, to bind them more tightly in our knowledge, but in order to not return to the whole at all, to further and further crush our object to infinity, turning the entire universe into a dead accumulation of infinitely small and particles that are not internally connected in any way. Finally, our sensual soul, instead of serving as a support and instrument for the activity of the spirit, instead of embodying the content of good and truth in the sensual realm, giving it the image of beauty, our sensual soul indulges in the blind and immeasurable striving of carnal life, which has an internal goal, and only one external end - in death and decay. Instead of receptively turning to existence, giving it a place in ourselves and reproducing it, becoming a new living image of its fullness, we concentrate in ourselves and, sharpening all our spiritual powers, seem to turn them with this edge against existence, producing only destruction and decomposition. Our will strives for dominance instead of unity, our mind, instead of understanding the all-unity of existence, indulges in arbitrary reasoning about infinitely many objects; finally, our sensual soul, instead of reviving matter with spiritual forces, strives only for the meaningless enjoyment of matter. If our soul retained its inner limit, having divine perfection as the subject and goal of its life, it would not need any external restrictions and would enjoy the fullness of true freedom and infinity. But, turning away from the Divine, it perverts its nature, is filled with bad content, acquires meaningless skills and is carried away by false infinity: boundless self-love, aimless speculation, immensity of sensual desires. In view of this, before restoring our soul to its true position between Divinity and nature, we must cleanse it of acquired evil. The false immensity of our soul must be moderated and limited by the action of grace combined with our good will. In relation to our perverted nature, this action is expressed negatively: in the obligation of abstinence or fasting in a broad sense. This is our initial, fundamental duty towards our nature. Wherever there is an immense insatiable desire of natural forces, abstinence, self-restraint or fasting is necessary. There is spiritual fasting: abstinence from selfish and power-hungry actions, renunciation of human power and glory. This post is especially necessary for public figures. His rule: do not seek power and domination; if called to power and dominion, see it as service. Every time you have to declare yourself, show your superiority and strength without benefit to your neighbors, refrain from doing so: do not give food to your pride. There is mental fasting - abstinence from one-sided activity of the mind, from the fruitless and endless play of concepts and ideas, from endless questions, proposed to no avail and without purpose. This post is especially necessary for learned people who forget the saying of old Heraclitus: much knowledge does not teach intelligence. The rule of this mental fast: do not seek knowledge without benefit for your neighbor and for the cause of God. Don’t look for novelty and originality in your thoughts. Whenever you have to express a view that is not related to the common good, refrain from doing so. Do not attach exaggerated importance to scientific knowledge; for science always has two inevitable limits: in the preconceived opinions of scientists and in the incompleteness of scientific material. Subordinate mental activity to moral requirements. In a word: do not give food to idle speculation. Finally, the third, in the proper sense, fasting is the fasting of the sensual soul, that is, abstinence from sensual pleasures that are uncontrollable and unmoderable by the consciousness of the mind and the power of the spirit. The main and most important type of physical fasting has always rightly been considered abstinence from bloody food, from the meat of warm-blooded animals, for this kind of food directly contradicts the ideal purpose of our physical activity. The true task of our sensory life is to cultivate the garden of the earth - to transform the dead into the living, to impart to earthly beings greater intensity and fullness of life - to give life to them. The direct opposite of this is to kill living beings, especially where life reaches its greatest strength and intensity, as in warm-blooded animals. While we are not yet able to give life to dead nature, we should at least kill living nature as little as possible. Thus, the initial duty of physical fasting is aimed not only at limiting our sensual pleasures, but also at correcting our direct relationship to external nature. We cannot immediately correct these relations, we cannot completely get rid of the need to kill in order to live; but we can and must gradually weaken and reduce this need. If this evil cannot be completely destroyed, then in any case the less of it, the better, and we should, as far as possible, reduce it to the smallest. Therefore, the wisdom of St. The Church, without requiring unconditional abstinence, recognizes many degrees and types of physical fasting. The general rule of physical fasting is: do not give food to your sensuality; set limits to the murder and suicide to which the pursuit of material pleasures inevitably leads, purify and regenerate your own corporeality in order to prepare yourself for the transformation of the universal body. Prayer, almsgiving and fasting are the three main actions of personal religious life - the three foundations of personal religion. He who does not pray to God, does not help people and does not correct his nature by abstinence is alien to any religion, even if he thought, spoke and wrote about religious subjects all his life. These three main actions of religion are so closely related to each other that one without the other has no force. If prayer does not motivate us to do good and does not tame our sensual nature, then such unkind and powerless prayer is not true prayer - it contains some admixture of self-interest, lies or pride. Likewise, when almsgiving does not involve prayer and is not accompanied by abstinence, then it expresses more weakness of character than true love. True almsgiving is the highest justice, and therefore it must be based on the highest grace. Finally, fasting, undertaken selfishly for the exercise of self-control, or out of vanity, even if it gives strength, is not for the good; and fasting, even if combined with prayer, but not dissolved by mercy, remains that sacrifice about which it is said: “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” In the combination of these three: prayer, alms and abstinence, the single grace of God acts, which not only connects us with God (in prayer), but also likens us to the Divine - all-good (in alms) and in need of nothing (in abstinence). These three main actions of religious life are at the same time the main duties of a religious person. We can only be obligated to what is in our power. It is not in our personal power to unite ourselves entirely with the Divine, to save humanity and regenerate the nature of the world. Therefore, religion does not tell any of us personally: merge with the Divine, save humanity, revive the universe. But it is in our power to pray to God, help our neighbors in need, and correct our own nature through abstinence. This is in our power and this is our responsibility, the personal responsibility of each of us. In the fulfillment of the three religious duties, the three religious virtues are also embodied. Pray to God with faith, do good to people with love and conquer your nature in the hope of a future resurrection. This exhausts our relationship to the grace of God within us. But the grace of God is also revealed outside of us - in the life of the world and humanity. A real separation between internal and external life, between an individual person and his collective environment cannot exist, and therefore we must recognize the essence of historical revelation and those new, no longer personal, but social responsibilities that it imposes on us. I. The whole world lies in evil (1 John 5:19). Christianity appeared as good news of salvation to the whole world. For the world lies entirely in evil. Christ opened the path of salvation from this world-ruling evil with His feat and His teaching. Humanity has embarked on this path, but few have followed it, and to this day universal salvation remains only good news. And to this day the world lies in evil. And the vital meaning of Christianity was first turned by the leaders of humanity into an abstract teaching, and then almost completely disappeared from the consciousness of progressive people and disappeared into the dark depths of the people’s soul. The meaning of Christianity cannot be clear to those who feel good in this world. For such people, the preaching of Christ was a silent word, because they did not see the evil from which Christ came to save the world. But they did not see it and do not see it because they themselves are from the world and are completely obsessed with the world’s evil. Those who feel the burden of this evil and seek salvation, thereby show that they are not from this world, but from God. Truly the whole world lies in evil. Evil is a universal fact, for all life in nature begins with struggle and malice, continues in suffering and slavery, and ends in death and decay. We consider a universal fact to be a law. The first law of nature is the struggle for existence. The entire life of nature takes place in the continuous hostility of creatures and forces, in their evil violations and seizures of other people's existence. Every creature in our world, from the smallest speck of dust to man, with his entire natural life says one thing: I am and everything else is only for me, and, when faced with another, it says to him: if I exist, then you can no longer exist, you have no place with me. And each one says this, each one makes an attempt on everyone and wants to destroy everyone and is itself destroyed by everyone. The life of nature, insofar as it is based on egoism, is an evil life and its law is the law of sin 4. According to the same law, sin inevitably leads to its retribution, causing one evil to cause another. For if each creature acts hostilely on others and displaces them with itself, then others are just as hostile towards it, they also crowd it out, and it must inevitably experience this hostile influence. Such a test is suffering - the second type of world evil. Just as everything in nature sins one against the other, so one inevitably suffers from the other. Due to his egoism, which separates him from all others, every creature appears in an environment alien to him, which presses and crushes him from everywhere, hostilely invades his being and subjects him to a lot of suffering. The whole life of a natural being is in this struggle with an alien and hostile environment, in defending oneself from it; but it cannot defend itself from the pressure of other people’s forces: it is one, but there are many of them and they must overcome. The opposition between each and everyone is inevitably resolved by the death of each - the hostile environment finally dissolves his existence and forces him out of life - the struggle ends in death and decay. And rightly so. The creature itself admitted in its egoism that it could not live with others, it excluded itself from everything and posed a hellish dilemma: either I or others. Opposing itself to everything, it itself will call upon itself the power of everyone, which in the end crushes it. The entire life of a creature engulfed by alien forces was only delayed decay. Death only reveals the secret of life in reality - it shows that the life of nature is hidden corruption. This is the fiery wheel of existence that the apostle speaks of; This is universal evil, one in its essence, threefold in its types. Such is the tree of life in a decayed nature: its root is sin, its growth is disease, its fruit is death. II. The meaning of the world (John 1:1–3). The essence of world evil lies in the alienation and discord of all beings, in their mutual contradiction and incompatibility. But this is also the meaningless (irrational) existence of the world. We call meaningless everything that does not fit in with anything and does not go well, that contradicts everything and is incompatible with anything. So, evil and senseless are essentially the same thing. That same thing, namely the egoism of everyone and the discord of everyone, which is evil from the inside (for the will), is the same thing outside (for the mind and in the imagination) that is meaninglessness. Hence our practical task is to make the external environment permeable to our will or obedient to us, and our theoretical task is to make the same environment transparent to our mind, clear or understandable to us - both constitute the same task. And to fulfill it, first of all, we ourselves must become bright and permeable to everything. Otherwise, only external and violent, evil and senseless submission will be possible. And if the evil discord of everyone constitutes meaninglessness in the world, then the meaning of the world will be the opposite, that is, universal reconciliation and harmony. This is also true in the meaning of the word, for peace or peace (cosmos) means precisely agreement and harmony. In the sense of the word “world” the meaning of the world itself is shown to us. And this meaning is not our arbitrary demand, a subjective ideal, but is revealed to us, although not completely, by reality itself. Although the basis of world life is discord and discord of all - chaos, although all beings and forces in an evil and senseless desire are at enmity and collide with each other, oppress and persecute each other, but still, against their will, despite the general division and contradiction - the world exists and lives as something united and consistent. On the dark basis of discord and chaos, an invisible force brings out the bright threads of universal life and harmonizes the disparate features of the universe into harmonious images. Peace is not an empty word; There is meaning in the world, and it looks out everywhere and breaks through the nonsense that dominates it. Despite its egoism, no being can stand in its individuality: with an irresistible force it is drawn and gravitated towards another and only in connection with “everything” does it find its meaning and its truth. This universal meaning, which is what truly is, manifests itself primarily in the law of universal gravitation, which forms the material solidarity of the world. To what extent the actual existence of each contradicts everything else and is; nonsense, so its meaning appears as a desire or attraction to another, and this attraction, despite the universal discord, inherent in everyone, binds everyone into one and shows that the meaning of the world is unity. Creatures retreat from this meaning, asserting themselves in their individuality; but they cannot completely escape from it, for this is the essential meaning of their existence: they can only strengthen themselves to establish themselves separately from others; in this effort they become active forces, and the unity that constitutes their meaning is revealed in them as another force, as an external necessity, or a general law. So, on the one hand, there is egoism as an effort to isolate oneself and take over life exclusively for oneself, from which comes the intense discord of all, universal evil, darkness, chaos and meaninglessness; on the other hand, there is the involuntary attraction of a unifying force, through which everyone relates to everything and in this respect (λόγος, ratio) finds its own meaning and reason (λόγος, ratio). This meaning, as the real truth of everything, counteracts the world's nonsense. Founded as a hidden force in universal chaos, it strives for discovery, wants to break out of material darkness, fights the hostile beginning of discord and gradually overcomes it. Delivering the suffering nature of the world (the world soul) from the evil power of discord, this unifying meaning takes possession of it and is born from it in various images. The force of gravity, which attracts everyone indifferently to each other and forms one great body from the universe, is followed by the physical forces of heat, light and electricity, in which parts of the world body become accessible and permeable to each other to varying degrees; Next comes the force of chemical affinity, introducing the elements of the world body into certain combinations with each other; then a plastic force appears, reducing the most heterogeneous substances to the unity of a living organism, and, finally, in these very organisms the power of the generic instinct is revealed, overcoming the separateness of individuals. Everywhere the active truth of unity overtakes and binds the false aspirations of discord and even in phenomena of extreme egoism shows a meaning contrary to egoism. This meaning is visible even in the mutual extermination of creatures, when each creature wants to absorb others and actually absorbs - feeds on them. It cannot live without this. This means that it cannot stand in its individuality: in order to be this, it must feed on others, and this constant dependence on another fills its entire actual existence: it lives on others. The scattered, meaningless existence of creatures is only their false position, illusory and transitory; They have true existence only in unity with everything. The primacy of being belongs not to individual parts, but to the whole. The unconditional origin and source of all being is the absolute wholeness of all things, i.e. God. This wholeness of everything, abiding in itself in the unchanging peace of eternity, is revealed and manifested in the all-unifying sense of the world, so that this sense is the direct expression or Word (λόγος) of the Divine, the manifest and active God. It determines all real being; from the smallest particle of matter gravitating towards other particles, and to complex species of animals absorbing other organisms in food or uniting with their own kind in the birth act, the eternal meaning of being, the original Word of the beginningless God, manifests itself and acts everywhere. This Word prohibits any separate incoherent existence, connects one with the other with indissoluble bonds and each with all and forms a single world from a chaotic multitude. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was to God, and God was the Word. This is from time immemorial to God. All that was, and without Him nothing would have happened. III. In that life is, and life is the light of man (John 1:4). The Word of God, which forms the meaning of the world, is not an abstract idea, but a real and substantial force that embraces and determines the entire life of nature. For particular beings of nature, this definition of common life appears as a fatal force, as an involuntary and unconscious law. The most complex and perfect creatures of nature - animals, know nothing about the universal meaning that governs their lives; this meaning is not their own goal. It manifests itself from their senseless actions, against their will or even contrary to it; He is revealed through them, but not for them. The law of universal meaning, which requires from every being solidarity with all others, this law, which, both through the instinct of nutrition and through the instinct of reproduction, tells the organic individual: you must renounce your individuality and isolation, you must look for yourself in everything - this law directly contradicts the egoistic aspiration of the individual itself. This contradiction is actually resolved in nature by the death of the individual - a truly unsatisfactory resolution. If the evil and meaninglessness of world life consists in the fact that every being sets and asserts itself against everything, then meaning and good cannot consist in the affirmation of everything against everyone, in the sacrifice of the particular in favor of the generic; because this is only the other side of the same evil and the same darkness - only a different point of view on general discord. Everyone wants to eliminate everything - this is evil and nonsense, but it itself is eliminated by everyone - this last fact is the same evil and is just as contrary to the world’s meaning as the first. The individual is at enmity against “everything” and therefore perishes from everything - in this apparent justice there is no good, there is no truth in it; because if everyone perishes, then in “everything” there will be nothing abiding; if each is only a current phenomenon and a disappearing ghost, then everything consisting of these same disappearing ghosts will be the same ghost. If the world's meaninglessness consists in the discord of all, and the meaning lies in the unity of all, then this requires the preservation of everyone, that is, the preservation of everyone, because otherwise there will be no what should be united. And if, despite this, every being in nature is not preserved, then this means that the world’s meaning, although it acts in natural life, is not realized in it, does not completely overcome, but only limits the darkness underlying the world. Meaning struggles with it in natural life, but does not yet triumph here in its victory. In nature, the particular involuntarily and only externally unites with everything, but is not reconciled with it internally; for this everything with which he is connected and pulled by the fatal force of life is unknown and alien to him. A natural being does not know everything and, therefore, cannot desire union with it on its own. His only feeling towards everything is fear and enmity precisely because it is unknown and alien to him. With malice the animal tears apart its prey; in meaning it is united with her, but it does not know this meaning, it knows only its hunger. And uniting with the common life in the generic instinct, the individual involuntarily and blindly sacrifices itself for the race, loses itself in it. In the sexual act, according to the meaning, the individual renounces himself in favor of the species, the general generic existence affirms, but even here it does not know about the meaning of its action: it knows only a blind attraction to another individual, and this attraction for it is so close to enmity. Such an involuntary reunification of an individual with the genus is its negation, its death. In order not to perish in another, a being must unite with it from itself, 5 and for this it must know both about itself and about the other. But knowledge does not exist in nature. Although the entire life of nature is determined by a single meaning, for nature itself this meaning is dark. In the world there was no world and the world was not known. This dark meaning, which makes up the life of nature, but unknown to it, becomes the light of knowledge in man - and life is the light of man. “Everything” acting on animal nature as an external force receives internal reality for man as an idea. Man himself, being really only “this,” embraces “everything” in the idea. The meaning of the world becomes a person's own meaning. Man himself has meaning because he understands everything in unity, that is, he understands the meaning of everything and in this human understanding the world meaning receives the opportunity for its full implementation; because each person, with his personal consciousness, can assimilate the world’s meaning and, therefore, can on his own (voluntarily) unite with it, and such an internal and free reunification of everyone with everything is the true realization of the world’s meaning. But as long as this is only a possibility, as long as the unity of everything remains only an idea for a person, as long as the contradiction of world life is not eliminated, but only takes on a new, deeper form, from the external it becomes internal. IV. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it (John 1:5). The natural duality of meaningless chaotic existence and the external law of unity becomes in man an internal split between his own meaning and his meaningless nature. In man, his meaning, by which he cognizes everything in unity (idea), is in contradiction with his dark life, in which he, like other creatures of nature, stands for his private, random existence, for the sake of it, colliding and fighting with others in the animal struggle for existence. The life basis of natural man and humanity remains the same egoism, the same senseless and evil life of nature. The light of consciousness, the idea of ​​world unity shines in this dark life, but only exposes its darkness, and does not penetrate into it and is not accepted by it. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not embrace it. The light of the divine Logos shone in the darkness of primitive paganism, when the power of God appeared to human feeling in fire and stars, in the beneficial action of the visible sun and in the law of tribal life. The divine mind shone more clearly into the human mind in the religious views of the historical cultural peoples of antiquity, mainly Hindus, Greeks and Jews. In India, the human soul is for the first time liberated from the power of cosmic external forces, as if intoxicated by its freedom, the consciousness of its unity and unconditionality; her internal activity is not bound by anything, she dreams freely, and in these dreams all the ideal creations of humanity are already contained in the embryo, all religious and philosophical teachings, poetry and science, but all this is in indifferent uncertainty and confusion, as if in a dream, everything merges and gets confused, everything is one and the same and therefore everything is nothing. Buddhism has spoken the last word of Indian consciousness; everything that exists and non-exists is equally just an illusion and a dream. This is the self-consciousness of the soul in itself, because in itself, as pure potency apart from the active divine principle that gives it content and reality, the soul, of course, is nothing. But freed from the material content of life and at the same time recognizing itself as nothing in itself, the soul must either renounce existence or seek new immaterial content. In principle, the Indian and Eastern consciousness in general settled on the first solution; classical humanity took the second path. In the Greco-Roman world, the human soul is no longer free not only from external cosmic forces, but also from itself, from its internal, purely subjective self-contemplation, in which it is immersed among the Hindus. Now she again perceives the action of the divine Logos, but no longer as an external cosmic force or dimiurgic force, but as a purely ideal, internal force; here the human soul strives to find its true content, that is, unified and general, not in the empty indifference of its potential existence, but in objective creatures that realize beauty and reason - in pure art, in scientific philosophy and in the rule of law. The creation of this ideal sphere, this “world without blood and tears” is the great triumph of the supreme Reason, the real beginning of the true unification of humanity and the universe. But this unification is only in the idea, this is the revelation of the idea as truth over actual being, and not its implementation in this latter. The divine idea appears here to the soul as its object and highest norm, but does not penetrate into the very essence of the soul, does not take possession of its concrete reality. In knowledge, in art, in pure law, the soul contemplates the ideal cosmos and in this contemplation egoism and struggle disappear, the power of the material chaotic principle over the human soul disappears. But the soul cannot remain in contemplation forever, it lives in factual reality, and this life of its remains outside the ideal sphere, is not captured by it, the idea exists for the soul, but does not penetrate its reality. With the revelation of the ideal world, two orders of being appear for man - material, factual existence (ή γένεσις) which is improper or bad, the root of which is evil personal will - and the impersonal world of pure ideas (τό όντως όν) the realm of the true and perfect. But these two spheres in the classical worldview remain opposed to each other and do not find their reconciliation here. The world of ideas, the ideal cosmos that constitutes the truth of this worldview in its highest expression - Platonism, represents an absolutely unchanging existence, it resides in the undisturbed peace of eternity, high above the world of material phenomena, reflected in this world like the sun in a muddy stream, but leaving it unchanged, without purifying or enlightening it. And from a person such a worldview requires only that he leave this world, emerge from this muddy stream into the light of the ideal sun, so that he frees himself from the shackles of bodily existence, as from a prison or a coffin. Thus, the duality and opposition of the ideal and material world, truth and fact, here remains unresolved, there is no reconciliation. If what truly exists is revealed only to the contemplating mind as a world of ideas, then, consequently, a person’s personal life, the area of ​​his will and activity remains outside the truth, in the world of false material existence; but in this case, a person cannot really and completely leave this false world, because this would mean leaving himself, from his own soul, which lives and suffers in this world. The ideal sphere, with all its richness, can only, as an object of contemplation, distract a person from his evil and suffering will, and not extinguish it. This evil and suffering will is a fundamental fact that cannot be abolished either by the Indian consciousness that this fact is an illusion (because here too it is an illusion only for consciousness, but for all life it remains as before a fact), nor by the fact that a person will temporarily move away from this fact into the region of ideal contemplation, because he will still have to return from this bright region to an evil life again. The divine principle can be experienced in three ways by the human principle separated from it and established in the evil will: it can be felt as suppressing it, but it can only suppress the manifestations of the evil will, and not this will itself, which, as an internal, subjective force, cannot be destroyed by any external action. Therefore, the external perception of the divine Logos by man, which we find in natural religion, is insufficient, inconsistent with the goal of the internal reunification of humanity with the Divine. The cult of natural religion limits the self-affirmation of the human principle, forces him to involuntarily submit to the higher forces operating in nature, forces him to make sacrifices to these forces, but the root of his life, his evil will, the material principle that has rebelled in him remains untouched, as alien and inaccessible to these external natural gods. Closer to the goal, but also insufficient, the second type of interaction between the divine principle and man, namely ideal or enlightening, should be recognized. The possibility of this action is determined by the fact that the human soul is something greater than its given actual state. If in this latter it is an irrational principle, like a blind force of self-affirmation, then in potential it is a rational principle, a desire for internal unity with everything. And if in the form of suppressive action (in natural religion) the divine Logos relates to the irrational principle of the soul as force to force, then, stimulating the rational potency of man, he can act in it as reason or inner word; namely, he can distract the soul from its actual reality, make the latter an object and show the soul the illusory nature of its material existence, the evil of its natural will, revealing to it the truth of another existence corresponding to the mind. This is the ideal action of the divine Logos, which we find primarily among the cultural peoples of the ancient world in the highest era of their development. But this action, although internal, is incomplete, one-sided. To be aware of the insignificance of one’s actual reality as an object in contemplation does not mean making it insignificant in being, does not mean actually eliminating it. As long as truth as an idea is opposed to personal will and life, immersed in untruth, life remains essentially unchanged; an abstract idea cannot overcome it, because personal life will, even if evil, is still a real force, while an idea not embodied in living personal forces appears only as a light shadow. So, in order for the divine principle to truly overcome the evil will and life of man, it is necessary that it itself appears to the soul as a living personal force that can penetrate the soul and take possession of it; it is necessary that the divine Logos not only influence the soul from the outside, but is born in the soul itself, not limiting or enlightening only, but regenerating it. And since the soul in natural man is real only in the plurality of individual souls, then the real union of the divine principle with the soul must have an individual, personal form, that is, the divine Logos is born as a real individual man. Just as in the physical world the divine principle of unity manifests itself first in the force of gravity, which blindly binds bodies together, then in the force of light, which reveals their mutual properties, and, finally, in the force of organic life, in which the formative principle penetrates matter and, after a long series of formations, gives birth to the perfect physical organism of man, so in the process that follows this, the historical one, the divine principle first, by the force of spiritual gravity, binds individual human beings into a generic unity, then enlightens them with the ideal light of reason, and, finally, penetrating inside the soul itself and organically, concretely connecting with it, is born as a new spiritual person. And just as in the world the physical appearance of a perfect human organism was preceded by a long series of imperfect, but still organic living forms, so in history the birth of a perfect spiritual person was preceded by a series of incomplete, but still living personal revelations of the divine principle to the human soul. These living revelations of the living God are recorded in the sacred books of the Jewish people. Every manifestation of the divine principle, every theophany, is determined by the property of the environment that perceives this phenomenon, in history, first of all, by the property of the national character, the peculiarity of the people in which this manifestation of the Divine occurs. If the divine principle was revealed to the Indian spirit as nirvana, to the Hellenes as an idea and an ideal cosmos, then as a person, as a living subject, as “I,” it had to appear in the Jews, because their national character consists precisely in the predominance of the personal subjective principle. This character is manifested in the entire historical life of the Jews, in everything that was created and is being created through this people. So, from the side of poetic form, we see that the Jews gave something special of their own only in the kind that represents precisely the subjective, personal element of poetry: they gave the sublime lyricism of the psalms, the luxurious idyll of the Song of Songs; They could not create either a real epic or drama, such as we find among the Hindus and Greeks, not only during their independent historical existence, but also in later times. It is also remarkable that Jews excel in music, that is, in that art that primarily expresses the internal subjective movements of the soul, and have produced almost nothing significant in the plastic arts. In the philosophical field, the Jews in their flourishing era did not go beyond moral didactics, that is, an area in which the practical interest of the moral personality prevailed over objective contemplation and thinking of the mind. Accordingly, in religion, the Jews for the first time fully recognized God as a person, as a subject, as an existing “I”; they could not stop at representing the Deity as an impersonal force and as an impersonal idea. This character - the affirmation of the subjective element in everything - can be the bearer of both the greatest evil and the greatest good. Because if the power of the individual, self-affirming in its individuality, is evil and the root of evil, then the same power, subordinating itself to a higher principle, the same fire, imbued with divine light, becomes the power of world all-encompassing love: without the power of a self-affirming personality, without the power of egoism, the best in a person is powerless and cold, appears only as an abstract idea. Every actively moral character presupposes the subordinate power of evil, that is, egoism. Just as in the physical world, a known force, in order to really manifest itself, to become energy, must consume or transform into its form a corresponding amount of previously existing (in another form) energy (for example, light is converted from heat, heat from mechanical movement, etc.) etc.), similarly, in the moral world of a person who has fallen under the natural order, the potential for good contained in his soul can really be revealed only by consuming or transforming into itself the already existing energy of the soul, which in a natural person is the energy of self-affirming will, the energy of evil, which must be translated into a potential state in order for the new power of good to pass, on the contrary, from potential to act. The essence of good is given by the action of God, but the energy of its manifestation in man can only be the transformation of the power of self-affirming personal will, mastered and transformed into a potential state. Thus, in a holy man, actual good presupposes potential evil: he is so great in his holiness that he could also be great in evil; he overcame the power of evil, subordinated it to a higher principle, and it became the basis and bearer of good. That is why the Jewish people, showing the worst sides of human nature, a “stiff-necked people” and with a heart of stone, this same people is the people of the saints and prophets of God, a people in which a new spiritual man was to be born. The entire Old Testament represents the history of personal relations between the appearing God (Logos or Jehovah) and representatives of the Jewish people - their patriarchs, leaders and prophets. In these personal relationships, which constitute the religion of the Old Testament, a succession of three degrees is noticeable. The first mediators between the Jewish people and their God, the ancient patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, believed in a personal God and personally lived this faith; the following representatives of Judaism: Moses the God-seer, David, “a man after Jehovah’s heart,” and Solomon, the creator of the great church, receiving tangible revelations of the personal God, try to carry the meaning of these revelations into the public life and religious cult of their people; in their person Jehovah makes an external covenant or agreement with Israel, as person to person. The last rank of representatives of Judaism, the prophets, realizing the insufficiency of this external union, foresee and proclaim another internal union of the Divine with the human soul in the person of the Messiah, the son of David and the Son of God, and they foresee and proclaim this Messiah not as the highest representative of Judaism, but also as the “banner of the tongues,” as the representative and head of all reborn humanity. If in this way the environment for the incarnation of the divine principle was determined by the national character of the Jews, then its time should also depend on the general course of history. When the ideal revelation of the Word in the Hellenic-Roman world was exhausted and turned out to be insufficient for the living soul, when man, despite the enormous hitherto unprecedented riches of culture, found himself alone in an empty and meager world, when doubt about the truth and disgust for life appeared everywhere, and the best people turned from despair to suicide, when, on the other hand, precisely because the prevailing ideal principles turned out to be radically untenable, the realization arose that ideas were generally not enough to combat the evil of life, there was a demand that truth be embodied in living personal power, and when external truth, human truth, state truth, was really concentrated in one living person, in the person of a deified man - the Roman Caesar - then the truth of God, prepared by the Old Testament revelations to the patriarchs, leaders and prophets of Israel, appeared in the living face of the incarnate God Jesus Christ. V. Revelation of the universal meaning (Logos) in Christ (John 1:14; 1 John 4). The meaning of the world, and in it is the truth of God, is the internal unity of everyone with everything. In the form of a living personal force, this unity is love. Just as by the power of external law the universal meaning suppresses and binds the dark life in man, just as with the light of its truth it reveals and condemns the darkness of this life, enlightening human consciousness, so with the infinite power of love the same meaning penetrates into this darkness, takes possession of the very being of man, regenerates his nature and is truly embodied in him. And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us. When the first intelligent being appeared on earth, after many millennia of spontaneous and cosmic struggle, in which world meaning was revealed only as the fatal force of external law, it was a new revelation - the revelation of world meaning, as an idea, in consciousness. When then, after many thousands of years of human history, the first spiritual man appeared, in whom the natural life of the flesh was not only illuminated by the divine meaning of world life, but also sanctified by it as the spirit of love 6 - this was a new revelation of the same meaning as a living, personal force that could attract to itself and assimilate the living force of matter. If the first, natural man was the image and likeness of God, then the new spiritual man is the true God, because in him the being of God, which constitutes the true meaning of everything that exists, first appeared in the world by itself, showed itself to the world as what it unconditionally is. For God himself is neither a fatal law weighing on the natural life of matter, nor reason only illuminating the darkness of this life and in its light showing its untruth and evil: God is greater than this and can do more than this, and Christ showed this greater in practice, showed that God is love, or an absolute personality. The incarnation of the divine Logos in the person of Jesus Christ is the appearance of a new spiritual man, the second Adam. Just as by the first Adam, the natural, we mean not just a separate person along with other persons, but an all-individual personality that contains all of natural humanity, so the second Adam is not only this individual being, but at the same time a universal one, embracing with itself all of the regenerated spiritual humanity. In the sphere of eternal, divine existence, Christ is the eternal spiritual center of the universal organism. But since this organism, or universal humanity, falling into the stream of phenomena, is subject to the law of external existence and must, through labor and suffering in time, restore what it left in eternity, i.e. His inner unity with God and with nature - then Christ, as the active principle of this unity, for its real restoration had to descend into the same stream of phenomena, had to undergo the same law of external existence and from the center of eternity become the center of history, appearing at a certain moment - in the fullness of time. The evil spirit of discord and enmity, eternally powerless against God and at the beginning of time overpowering man, must in the middle of time be overpowered by the Son of God and the Son of Man, as the firstborn of all creation, in order to be expelled from all creation at the end of time - this is the essential meaning of the incarnation. Before talking about the work of Christ, for which the incarnation took place, it is inevitable to answer two questions: 1) about the possibility of the incarnation itself, that is, the real union of the Divine with humanity and 2) about the method of such a union. Regarding the first question, of course, incarnation is impossible if you look at God only as a separate being, located somewhere outside the world and man. With such a view (of deism), the incarnation of the Divine would be a direct violation of the logical law of identity, i.e., a completely unthinkable matter. But incarnation is just as impossible from the point of view (pantheism) according to which God is only; the universal substance of world phenomena, the universal “everything,” and man is only one of such phenomena. With this view, incarnation would contradict the axiom that the whole (everything) cannot be equal to one of its parts: God here cannot become a man, just as the water of an entire ocean cannot, while remaining all water, at the same time be one of the drops of this ocean. But is there a need to understand God either as a separate being or as the general substance of world phenomena? On the contrary, the very concept of God, as whole or perfect (absolute), eliminates both one-sided definitions and opens the way to a different view, according to which the world, as a set of limitations, being outside of God (within its boundaries), as material, is at the same time essentially connected with God by its inner life or soul. This connection consists in the fact that each being, asserting itself within its own boundary, as an ego, outside of God, at the same time is not satisfied with this boundary, strives to be everything, that is, strives for internal unity with God; Accordingly, in our opinion, God, being transcendent in himself (being outside the world), at the same time in relation to the world appears as an active creative force, willing to communicate to the world soul what it seeks and strives for, that is, the fullness of being in the form of unity, willing to unite with the soul and give birth from it to a living image of the Divine. This determines the cosmic process in material nature, ending with the birth of natural man, and the subsequent historical process that prepares the birth of spiritual man. Thus, this latter, i.e., the incarnation of the Divine, is not something alien to the general order of being, but, on the contrary, is essentially connected with the entire history of the world and humanity, it is something prepared and logically following from this history. What is embodied in Jesus is not the transcendental side of the Divinity, not the absolute, self-contained fullness of being (which would be impossible), but God the Word is embodied, that is, a principle manifested externally, acting on the circumference of being, and its personal embodiment in an individual person is only the last link in a long series of other physical and historical realizations - this appearance of God in human flesh is only a more complete, perfect theophany among other incomplete ones, preparatory and educational theophanies. From this point of view, the appearance of spiritual man, the birth of the second Adam, is no more incomprehensible than the appearance of natural man on earth, the birth of the first Adam. Both were new, unprecedented facts in world life, and both seem miraculous in this sense, but this new and unprecedented was prepared by everything that had previously existed, constituted what all previous life desired, strived for and went towards: all nature strove and gravitated towards man, the whole history of mankind was directed towards the God-man. In any case, when talking about the possibility or impossibility of the incarnation of the Divine, the main thing is how both the Divinity and humanity are understood; and with the concept of Divinity and humanity that we have indicated, the incarnation of the Divine is not only possible, but also essentially included in the general plan of the universe. But if the fact of the incarnation, i.e., the personal union of God with man, has its basis in the general sense of the universal process and in the order of divine action, then this does not yet resolve the question of the method of this union, i.e. about the relationship and interaction of the divine and natural human principles in the divine-human personality, or about the fact that there is a spiritual man, the second Adam. In general, in man there is a certain combination of the Divine with material nature, which presupposes three constituent elements in him: divine, material and connecting both - actually human; the combination of these three elements constitutes a real person, and the actual human principle is reason (ratio), i.e., the relationship of the other two: If this relationship consists in the direct and immediate subordination of the natural principle to the divine, then we have primitive man (the first Adam) - the prototype of humanity, imprisoned, not yet separated from the eternal unity of divine life; here the natural human principle is contained as an embryo, potentia, in the reality of divine existence. This possibility is at the same time the possibility of sin: unwittingly subordinated to the Divine, primitive man can freely emerge from this subordination. Then he becomes a natural or external person, whose reality belongs to his material principle, he finds himself as a fact or phenomenon of nature, and the divine principle in himself only as the potential of another being. The third possible relationship is that when both Divinity and nature equally have reality in man, and his own human life consists in the active harmonization of the natural principle with the divine, or in the free subordination of the former to the latter. This attitude constitutes a spiritual man. From this general concept of spiritual man it follows: firstly, in order for the coordination of the divine principle with the natural to be a reality in man himself, it is necessary that it be accomplished in an individual person, otherwise there would be only a real or ideal interaction between God and natural man, and there would be no spiritual man; In order for there to be a real union of the Divine with nature, a person is necessary in whom this union would occur. Secondly, for this union to be a real union of two principles, the real presence of both of these principles is necessary, it is necessary that this person be an actual God and an actual natural man - both natures are necessary. Thirdly, in order for the very harmonization of both natures in the divine-human personality to be a free spiritual action, and not an external fact, it is necessary that a human will participate in it, distinct from the divine and, through the rejection of possible contradictions with the divine will, freely subordinating to it and introducing human nature into complete internal harmony with the Divine. Thus, the concept of a spiritual person presupposes one divine-human personality, combining two natures and possessing two wills. 7 The primitive direct unity of the two principles in man - the unity represented by the first Adam in the paradise state of his innocence and broken in the Fall, could no longer simply be restored. The new unity can no longer be immediate, innocence: it must be achieved, it can only be the result of a free deed, a feat, and a double feat - self-sacrifice of the divine and human; for for the true union or harmonization of two principles, the free participation and action of both is necessary. The interaction of the divine and natural principles determines the entire life of the world and humanity, and the entire course of this life consists in the gradual rapprochement and mutual penetration of these two principles, at first distant and external to each other, then converging ever closer, penetrating each other deeper and deeper, until in Christ nature appears as the human soul, ready for complete selflessness, and God - as the spirit of love and mercy, imparting to this soul the fullness of divine life, is not in power connecting, not only in illuminating intelligence, but in life-giving goodness. Here we have a real divine-human personality, capable of accomplishing the double feat of divine-human self-sacrifice. Such self-denial appears to a certain extent already as the entire cosmic and historical process: for here, on the one hand, the Logos of God, through the free action of his divine will or love, renounces the manifestation of his divine dignity (the glory of God), leaves the peace of eternity, enters into the struggle with the evil principle and is subjected to all the anxiety of the world process, appearing in the shackles of external existence, within the boundaries of space and time; then appears to natural humanity, acting on it in various finite forms of world life, which conceal rather than reveal the true being of God; on the other hand, both worldly and human nature, in its constant languor and desire for more and more new perceptions of divine images, continuously rejects itself in its given, actual forms. But here (i.e. in the cosmic and historical process) this self-sacrifice on both sides is not perfect, for for the Divine the boundaries of cosmic and historical theophanies are external boundaries that determine his manifestations for another (for nature and humanity), but do not in the least concern his inner sense of self 8 ; on the other hand, both nature and natural humanity in their continuous progress reject themselves not by a free act, but only by instinctive attraction. In the divine-human personality there is a divine principle, precisely due to the fact that it relates to another not through an external action that sets boundaries for another without changing itself, but through internal self-limitation that gives another a place in itself - such internal union with another is a real self-sacrifice of the divine principle; here it really descends, humiliates itself, takes on the image of a slave. The divine principle here is not closed only by the boundaries of human consciousness for man, as was the case in previous incomplete theophanies, but itself perceives these boundaries; not that it has completely entered into these boundaries of natural consciousness, which is impossible, but it actually feels these boundaries as its own at the given moment, and this self-limitation of the Divinity in Christ liberates His humanity, allowing its natural will to freely renounce itself in favor of the divine principle, not as an external force (which self-denial would not be free), but as an internal good, and thereby actually acquire this good. Christ, as God, freely renounces the glory of God, and thereby, as a man, receives the opportunity to achieve this glory of God. On the path of this achievement, human nature and the will of the Savior inevitably encounter the temptation of evil. The divine-human personality represents a dual consciousness: consciousness of the boundaries of natural existence and consciousness of one’s divine essence and power. And so, truly experiencing the limitations of natural existence, the God-man can be subject to external temptation to make his divine power a means for goals arising from this limitation. Firstly, for a being subject to the conditions of material existence, there appears to be a temptation to make material good the goal, and one’s divine power the means for achieving it: “If you are the Son of God, these breads will be the bread of stone,” here the divine nature is “if you are the Son of God,” and the discovery of this nature – words (“rtsy”) should serve as a means to satisfy material needs. In response to this temptation, Christ affirms that the word of God is not an instrument of material life, but is itself the source of true life for man: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word of God.” Having overcome this temptation of the flesh, the Son of man receives power over all flesh. Secondly, the God-man, free from material motives, is presented with a new temptation - to make His divine power an instrument of self-affirmation of his human personality, to fall into the sin of the mind - conceit: “If you were the Son of God, looking down, it is written that His angel commanded You about You, and they will take You in their hands, lest You dash Your foot against a stone.” This action (looking down) would be man’s self-confident challenge to God, man’s temptation of God, and Christ replies: “It is also written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” 9 Having conquered the sin of the mind, the Son of man gains power over minds. But here the third, last and most powerful temptation appears. Slavery of the flesh and conceit of the mind are eliminated: the human will is on a high moral level, recognizes itself above the rest of creation; in the name of his moral height, a person may want dominion over the world in order to lead the world to perfection; but the world lies in evil and will not voluntarily submit to moral superiority - so, you need to force it to submission, you need to use your divine power as violence to subjugate the world. But such use of lawless violence for the purposes of good would be a recognition that good in itself has no power, that evil is stronger than it, it would be worship of that principle of evil that rules over the world: “And she showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and said to him: I will give all this to you if you bow down to me.” Here the fatal question is directly posed for the human will: what does it believe in and what does it want to serve - whether it is the invisible power of God or the power of evil that clearly reigns in the world. And the human will of Christ, having defeated the temptation of specious lust for power, freely subordinated itself to true good or goodness, rejecting any agreement with the evil reigning in the world: “The verb to him Jesus: follow me, Satan, for it is written: You will worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” Having overcome the sin of the spirit, the Son of Man received supreme power in the kingdom of the spirit; having renounced submission to earthly power and the goal of dominion over the earth, He acquired for himself the service of the heavenly powers: “And behold, angels came and served him.” Thus, having overcome the temptations of the evil principle, which inclined his human will to self-affirmation, Christ shows the inner agreement of this human will with the divine will, deifying his humanity following the incarnation of his Divinity. But this does not exhaust the feat of Christ. Being fully human, Christ has in Himself not only one purely human element (rational will), but also a natural material element: He not only became human, but also became incarnate - σάρξ έγένετο. Spiritual feat - the internal overcoming of temptation, must be completed by the feat of the flesh, that is, the sensual soul, enduring suffering and death, which is why in the Gospel, after the story of the temptation in the desert, it is said that the devil departed from Christ for the time being. The evil principle, internally defeated by the selflessness of the will, not allowed into the center of su= human society, still retained its power over its circumference - over sensory nature, and this latter could also be delivered from it only through the process of self-denial - suffering and death; and after the human will of Christ freely submitted to His Divinity, through this it subjugated His sensory nature and, despite the weakness of this latter (prayer for the cup), forced it to realize the divine will in itself to the end - in the physical process of suffering and death. This restores in the second Adam the normal relationship of all three principles, disrupted by the first Adam. The human principle, having placed itself in the proper relationship of voluntary submission or agreement with the divine principle, as an internal good, thereby again receives the meaning of a mediating, unifying principle between God and nature, which, having been purified by death on the cross, loses its material separateness and heaviness, becomes a direct expression and instrument of the Divine spirit, the true spiritual body of the resurrected God-man. By His life, death and resurrection, Christ revealed that God incarnate in Him is above the law and above reason, and that He can do more than suppress evil with His power or expose it with His light, that He, as the infinite spirit of life and love, regenerates and saves perishing nature, turning its lies into truth, its malice into good, and in this work of all-conquering love finds His glory. And we saw His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten from the Father, filled with grace and truth. That natural carnal life, not only in its crude form of animality, but also bound by the forms of human society, is an evil and false life - this was known before Christ. The Indian sages - Brahmins and Buddhists - knew this, and the Greek philosophers - Plato and his followers - knew this. But it is not enough to know and condemn this bad life, it is not enough to even think about another true and good life, which Platonic philosophers pointed out in the ideal world of self-existent truth, beauty and goodness; it is necessary to actually show that this life exists, it is necessary to introduce it into man and nature, revealing in them the subject of this true life. And if this is true life, then it cannot be powerless and inactive: it must defeat false and evil life and subordinate its evil law to its grace. The foundation of carnal life is evil, and its end is death and corruption. The beginning of true life is love conquering evil, and its end is resurrection conquering death. If death and corruption are invincible, then the law of carnal life, the law of sin and slavery, is the only law in the world, then it means that carnal life is real, true and there is no other in reality, but only in the imagination and thoughts of men: then in truth there is only a flow of matter, and everything else is empty dreams, and if so, then we will live in the present moment, we will drink, eat and have fun today: everything of yesterday has died and is not will return, and tomorrow we will die. And if another spiritual life is not just a dream, then it must reveal itself not in feelings and desires alone, not in thoughts and words only, but in reality, in the real victory of the spirit over material nature. And such a victory of spiritual force over matter must have a completely different character than the victory of one material force over another in the natural struggle for existence, where the conquered is sacrificed, absorbed and destroyed. The spiritual principle, precisely in its victory over hostile nature, must show its superiority, not destroying or absorbing this defeated nature, but restoring it in a new and better way of being. Resurrection is the internal reconciliation of matter and spirit, with which it here becomes one, as its real expression, as a spiritual body. The ultimate and distinctive truth of Christianity is the spiritualization and deification of the flesh. Nothing is more contrary to this truth than one-sided spiritualism. The incarnation and resurrection of the divine Logos in Jesus Christ is a triple triumph: here the three principles of existence - divine, material and human - reveal their unconditional significance. God is glorified in the world because he is revealed as a real all-powerful and infinite being, who not only limits the alien power of matter and not only distinguishes its untruth from himself, but also penetrates into its deepest essence as into his own, internally subordinating and likening it to himself and being realized in it. This same thing is the fulfillment and triumph of material nature. For before the appearance of spiritual man, the natural force in every being, its special life will, striving for infinite existence, is suppressed by the generic law, under the yoke of which every individual perishes; and although natural man can already penetrate into the realm of eternal existence, but only in contemplation, his personal life remains subject to the same law of material existence, the work of death and corruption, as the life of other creatures. Only in the incarnation and resurrection of the God-man does the natural being in the form of the human organism for the first time satisfy its infinite claim, obtaining for itself the fullness and integrity of the divine life. It is not the death of a natural individual that is the resolution of the world contradiction between the particular and the general, but its resurrection and eternal life. And thirdly, this permission is obtained through the rational and free action of the human will. The condition of resurrection is a feat, that act of the divine-human personality by which Christ renounced the law of sin and submitted to the absolute will of God, making His human beginning a conductor of divine action on material nature. When the root of world evil was thus undermined, then its fruit, death, was abolished by the resurrection, in which, therefore, together with God and matter, the human principle that united them also triumphs. The perfect incarnation of the divine meaning in Christ frees the human principle for new activity. If ancient humanity only sought God and therefore could not live without God, then for the new humanity, to whom the true God has already been revealed in Christ, it becomes the duty to live according to God, that is, to actively assimilate and grow the seed of divine life that has been revealed in it. There is no longer any need for him to seek truth - the truth is given: he must realize it in reality; and since this truth is absolute, infinite, it must be realized in all reality, in all the fullness of human and natural existence, which should no longer represent any boundaries for this truth, so that God is all in all. The ancient world was content to contemplate the Deity as an idea; the new world, which has already seen the Divine as a real phenomenon, cannot limit itself to contemplation; it must live and act by virtue of the divine principle revealed in it, re-creating itself in the image and likeness of the living God. Humanity is obliged not to contemplate the deity, but to become divine itself. According to this, a new religion cannot only be passive worship of God (θεοσέβεια), or worship of God (θεολατρεία), but must become active action of God (θεουργία), i.e., a joint action of the Divine and humanity to recreate this latter from the carnal or natural into the spiritual and divine. This is not creation from nothing, but the transformation, or transubstantiation, of matter into spirit, of carnal life into divine life. VI. The essence of Christian sacraments. The material life of man, which he has in common with other animals, comes down to two main functions - nutrition and reproduction. Natural nutrition is basically murder - the transformation of a living being into dead material in order to preserve its mortal life. Natural reproduction for the person reproducing is suicide - turning oneself into material for producing mortal life in another. Both are murder, only in nutrition the killer is the individual, and in reproduction the killer is the genus. This cannibalism of natural life in humanity is affirmed and sanctified by natural religion, which itself is in essence cannibalism 10 . The deity of natural religion devours humanity - devours in the form of bloody human sacrifices, which we find at the basis of all pre-Christian religions, devours in a phallic orgasm, where the rush of tribal life carries away personal consciousness and drowns man in the dark stream of nature. The God of this world, who is the killer of man from time immemorial, feeds on the flesh and blood of man and his vital spirit, because he is an external God and alien to man, just as in nature every creature is external and alien to another. The revelation of the true human God in Christ transforms the very basis of religion. Here God no longer feeds on man, but, on the contrary, gives him Himself as food. Having transformed his material (mechanical) body into a spiritual (dynamic) body through a divine-human feat, Christ gives it as food to humanity. If the animal and vegetable bodies on which we feed can, being mortal, preserve only our mortal life, then the body of Christ, spiritual and immortal, gives us immortality and eternal life (John VI, 27:32:33:35:48–58). But for this it is necessary that we ourselves transform this spiritual body into our own lives (John XV, 1:4). For if the material likening of food to our body is accomplished by a dark process of nature, apart from our consciousness and will, which is why our body, supported by such nutrition, remains dark, not submissive to our spirit, but opposed to it, then spiritual nutrition, on the contrary, must be accomplished as our free and conscious action and must produce a body permeable and obedient to our spirit. Penetrating both its soul and body with the spiritual corporeality of the God-man Christ, humanity creates within itself a divine-human body. And just as the completeness of natural nutrition leads to natural reproduction, so the completeness of spiritual nutrition should lead to spiritual reproduction, i.e. to the spread of immortal life to all dead and decayed nature, which must be reunited with humanity as its living body; and in humanity itself, its spiritualization should lead to the union of the physically living part of it (the visible church) with the physically dead part (the invisible church). Such a reunification of the three now separated parts of the world - its spirit, the invisible church or spiritual world, its soul - living humanity, or the visible church, and its body - external material nature, will be the restoration of everything to unconditional integrity, or universal healing. Such a fully triune reunited or healed world will be the true and complete image and likeness of the triune God, His real kingdom, the expression of His power and glory. The complete reunion of the healed world with God, or the perfect embodiment of the absolute meaning in the world as a living organism of the Divine, where God will be all in all, constitutes the end of that work, the beginning of which was the embodiment of the same Divine meaning in the individual being of Jesus, the firstborn from the dead and the cornerstone in the creation of the living universal church. In this matter, humanity must cooperate with God, for without such assistance there will be no reciprocity or complete internal union, the combination of God with creation, and the meaning of existence will not be expressed; for this meaning is not simply unity, but the agreement of all or all-unity. Humanity’s assistance to God in this work of universal healing must consist in the gradual, free and conscious transformation of carnal life within and outside of itself into spiritual life - the materialization of the spirit and the spiritualization of matter, the reunification of these two principles, on the separation of which carnal life is based. Since natural religion was the extreme expression of the carnal life, Christianity must represent in its fundamentals the direct opposite of this religion. Instead of cannibalism and fratricidal sacrifices - brotherly love (άγαπή), the grace of the Eucharist; instead of a symbol of animal strength and physical passion - a cross, a sign of spiritual strength that overcomes all suffering, and, finally, instead of a frenzied orgiasm in which the free-rational personality of a person is conquered and absorbed by the meaningless life of the race, instead of this triumph of blind nature, perpetuating death and decay - the resurrection of the dead and (αποκατάστασις των πάντων), i.e., the triumph of living meaning over dead matter, the perpetuation of the human personality by the subordination of blind physical forces to the rational will of man. In natural religion, man, sacrificing his meaning, became the material of nature; in Christianity, man, sacrificing his senseless aspirations, makes blind nature the matter of his meaning, and himself the living organ of God’s universal meaning. This is the task and vital meaning of Christianity. By its implementation, world evil in its three types is defeated. By the free and conscious activity of humanity reborn in Christ, the deadly tree of the old nature, whose root is sin - growth - disease and fruit - death, must be transformed into an immortal tree of new life, which is rooted in love and brotherhood, grows through the cross of spiritual struggle and bears the fruit of the general resurrection. The proper relationship between Divinity and nature in man, achieved by the person of Jesus Christ as the spiritual center or head of humanity, must be acquired by all humanity as His body. Humanity, reunited with its divine beginning in Christ, is the church - the living body of the divine Logos, embodied, that is, historically isolated in the theanthropic person of Jesus Christ. This body of Christ, which appears at first as a small embryo, in the form of a small community of the first Christians, little by little grows and develops so that at the end of time it can embrace all of humanity and all of nature in one universal divine-human organism; because the rest of nature, according to the apostle, awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to vanity not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subdued it in the hope that the creation itself would be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God; for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. This revelation and glory of the sons of God, which all creation awaits with hope, is the complete implementation of the free divine-human connection in all humanity in all spheres of its life and activity; all of them must be brought to the divine-human consonant unity, must be part of a free theocracy, in which the universal church will reach the full measure of the age of Christ. Thus, based on the concept of the church as the body of Christ (not in the sense of a metaphor, but a metaphysical formula), we must remember that this body necessarily grows and develops, therefore, changes and improves. Being the body of Christ, the church is not yet His glorified, completely deified body. The present earthly existence of the church corresponds to the body of Jesus during His earthly life (before the resurrection), - although the body showed in particular cases miraculous properties (which are now inherent in the church), but in general it was a mortal, material body, not free from all the weaknesses and sufferings of the flesh - for all the weaknesses and sufferings of human nature were taken by Christ; but just as in Christ everything weak and carnal is swallowed up in the resurrection of the spiritual body, so it must be in the church, His universal body, when it reaches its fullness. Then in it everything spiritual will be fully embodied and everything material will be fully spiritualized. But even now she, as the living body of Christ, already possesses the beginnings of a future perfect life. Although the spiritual life of mankind is a higher level compared to natural life, it necessarily has some common properties with it that belong to all life. Every real definite life requires a definite form corresponding to it; so, for example, the physical life of a person cannot manifest itself in the form of a mollusk or a tree, but requires the form of a human body. We find life in a living body; it is not a simple aggregate of individual parts and elements (cells, fibers, tissues), but represents a known way of combining all these elements, due to which each of them, in a certain connection with all the others, receives its place and life purpose. Thus, in any living body we distinguish: 1) a set of individual parts and elements from which this body can be composed; 2) an organic form that forms a real body from them; 3) the most active force of life, expressed in all the functions and movements of parts subordinated to the unity of the whole. Without this active force we would have only a dead body, but without a formative form we would have no body at all. The religious life of Christian humanity, like all life, requires a certain form and finds this form in the church. According to the word of God, recognizing the church as the living body of Christ, we distinguish in it: 1) the plurality of individual people from whom it is composed; 2) a single formative form that connects them into one whole, and 3) the unified action of the Spirit of God, by which this whole lives and moves in the interaction of all private gifts and ministries. It is clear that if the church cannot exist without people and without the Spirit of God, then in the same way it cannot exist without the formative form through which the Spirit of God acts in people as members of one whole, apart from their personal limitations. Those who accept this universal and unchangeable form of divine action, are formed by it into Christ or enter into the living body of Christ, cannot, by their particular and transitory shortcomings, violate the eternal dignity of the church as a whole. Even in the physical body, individual members of it can be affected and paralyzed, but the whole body lives and acts, and through the influence of its life can heal even the affected members. The body necessarily dies only when its main parts are damaged - the head and heart. But the head and heart of the church - Christ and the Mother of God - are in eternal peace and cannot be struck. A holy and immaculate whole cannot arise from vicious components: and if the church were only a collection of individual people, then it could not be holy and immaculate, since sinless people do not exist on earth. But the visible church receives its life and strength, apart from sinful people, from Christ himself, in whom all the fullness of the Divinity dwells bodily, through the mediation of the Most Holy All-Immaculate Virgin and the entire invisible church of saints: therefore, our human imperfections cannot in any way abolish the holiness of the church. And then for us, people who belong to the church, but do not form it, there is a moral task to try to conform and conform our life with the divine life, the first fruits and image of which we receive through the sacred forms of the visible church. This is the goal of Christian activity - the fulfillment of the church in people or the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. We should not take this goal for reality, for in reality the kingdom of God on earth has not yet been fulfilled, and God reigns more over people than in people. To achieve the goal - the kingdom of God on earth, can a person, should he rely on his own strengths, on impulses of personal feeling, on his individual interpretation of sacred texts, etc., or should he rely on something stronger, more powerful and more perfect than himself and others like him? Is it necessary to answer such a question? As long as man remains and is established in his limitation and isolation, there is no God in him; and in order to get out of this limitation, he must turn to what is greater and higher than himself. Man finds this greater and higher than himself in the church from the side of its divine foundation and form. Everything that a person takes or gives as his own, that is, as coming from himself, is necessarily conditional and limited precisely because it comes from a conditional and limited being; on the contrary, everything that is given by the universal church thereby has an unconditional form (the form of unconditionality) precisely because it is not personal, but churchly, that means Christ’s, that means God’s. The Kingdom of God must be achieved through God's ways, and the church opens these paths to us. To realize the kingdom of God on earth, a person needs: 1) true faith in God, 2) a righteous attitude towards all people and 3) expedient power over material nature. But in order to have true faith in God, one must be in the truth and have the mind of Christ, and an individual person, remaining and establishing himself in his own individuality, is not in the truth and does not have the mind of Christ: therefore, in order to have true faith, he must coordinate his thoughts and opinions with the doctrine of the Church, which bears the mind of Christ; The universal formula of revelation, precisely as universal, is the unconditional form for our faith, vouching for the reliability of what we believe in it, for both in the origin of this formula and in its acceptance by us, the necessary moral condition of true knowledge is fulfilled - the self-denial of the individual carnal mind and its communion with the mind of Christ, i.e., the real truth. Further, for a righteous relationship between all people, that is, for an unconditional form of society, it is necessary that the basis of social organization should not be any human arbitrariness, and this is achieved only in the hierarchical structure of the Church, where each of its members has its place and fulfills its purpose not in its own name, but in the name of the one who sent it, and this entire system goes back in a direct way to the source of all truth, to Christ, the only true (genuine) High Priest and King. Finally, in order to expediently rule over material nature, transforming it into a living shell and environment of higher, spiritual and divine forces - into the body of God, a person must already have in himself the firstfruits of this body of God, the seed of a new higher nature and life (spiritual body), and this seed of purity and lightness, the unconditional form of transformed matter, lies only in the body of Christ, and only by communing with it mysteriously can we accept this into ourselves the embryo of a new life, in which Christ’s power over all flesh passes to us. Otherwise, in our own perverted nature, which is the “body of sin,” we will not find any basis for the restoration of a bright and holy corporeality, and without this bright and holy corporeality we will always be slaves and not masters of the material world, even if spirits from all seven spheres strive for us. So, professing the conciliar universal creed, we accept truth independent of the human mind; recognizing the divine authority of the apostolic hierarchy, we submit to a social form that is not subject to human arbitrariness - we submit to the truth of God; finally, by partaking of the holy sacraments, we receive a source uncontaminated by our body of sin and the incorruptible seed of a new, perfect life. In general, by joining the one Church of God, we heal and replenish our fragmented and limited existence with the wholeness and fullness of the Divine, we expand our limited mind to the mind of Christ, we correct our perverted will with the righteous will of Christ and we restore our sensual nature, enslaved to sin, as the spiritual body of Christ, having power over all flesh. We are sanctified by the holiness of the Church, but the Church is not defiled by our sins, for its holiness is not from us, but from God through Christ, and it itself is not us, although it consists of us (just as our body consists of tissues and fibers, but its essence is not in them, but in their organic combination in the form of one whole). The Church is not only a collection of people (believers), but first of all that which gathers them, that is, an essential form of unity given to people from above, through which they can be involved in the Divine. Thus, the main religious question is: do we recognize a morally obligatory, superhuman principle and form of divine action in the universe that is independent of us and for us - or not. Recognition of such a superhuman form in religion, that is, recognition of the Church and submission to it, is on our part a moral feat of self-denial, in which we lay down our soul in order to acquire it. This self-denial, which among simple people, among the people, is, as it were, a natural property, and for intelligentsia people is a very difficult matter, but all the more obligatory for them, because in their enlightenment they have more mental means to recognize the truth - this self-denial undermines the innermost and deepest root of sin and madness in man; but our entire evil and unreasonable nature cannot be reborn at once: and this requires a long and complex process throughout all of humanity. Therefore, calling ourselves Christians and members of the Church of God, we do not have any claim to moral perfection and justice, we do not think that the Divine already dwells in us, that we already possess the Divine. We do not attribute such dwelling and possession, of course, to special servants of the Church - priests and bishops. Recognizing in them God-established conductors of the grace-filled action of Christ and desiring that their moral quality correspond to their mystical service, we do not, however, connect the grace-filled action itself with their personal holiness, for we know that the power of God is perfected even in weakness. You must not confuse conductors with conductors, or riverbeds with streams. And in our physical body, in order for it to move and act in accordance with our moral will, a whole system of motor nerves is necessary, as conductors of our will into the material composition of the body. However, no one thinks that our will dwells in these nerves themselves, that their nodes and fibers themselves have a moral nature; on the contrary, these nerves themselves are the same material formations as the rest of the body. But just as our moral action remains moral even with material conductors, so exactly the action of God remains divine and holy even with sinful human conductors, for it is independent and only through them, and not from them. The Church, founded by the God-man Christ, also has a theanthropic composition. But the difference is that Christ is the perfect God-man, and the Church is not yet perfect God-man, but only one in progress. Christ’s own humanity, inextricably united in His person with the Divinity, has already reached a glorified state in His bright resurrection, so that now in the resurrected and ascended to the right hand of the Father, the Son of God and the Son of Man, all that is human, while remaining such, is in every possible way corresponding, or completely consistent with His Divinity, so that in Him all the fullness of the Divinity dwells bodily. The Church of Christ has not yet reached a glorified state, and although its humanity is connected internally with the divine, it still does not express it in everything and does not fully correspond to it. The Church is holy and divine because it is sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit; that which directly proceeds from this principle that sanctifies the Church is divine, immaculate and unchangeable; the deeds of church people, according to humanity, even if performed for the sake of the Church, represent something very relative and far from perfect, but only being improved. This is the human side of the Church. But behind the changing and turbulent stream of ecclesiastical humanity there abides and forms the very Church of God, the eternal and endless source of divine grace, the continuous action of the Holy Spirit, giving humanity true life in Christ and God. This gracious action of God has always existed in the world; but from the incarnation of Christ it entered into a visible and tangible form. In the Christian Church, the divine is not only an internal, elusive action of the spirit, but also appears in some already realized form or physicality. There were forms in the Old Testament church, but there they were only allegorical prototypes or omens; all the sacred forms of the New Testament Church are real, authentic images of the Divine presence and action in humanity. Due to the imperfection of the human elements included in the Church, these divine forms appear only as the beginnings or pledges of divine life in humanity, which must reach their fullness only in the New Jerusalem - in the glorified God-manhood. But even now this New Jerusalem - the city of the living God - exists not only in the thoughts, desires and inner feelings of Christians: those divine forms of the Church that we are talking about already constitute the actual stones of its foundation, on which the entire divine edifice will be erected and mysteriously already being continuously erected; so that although not everything in the visible Church is divine, the divine in it is already something visible. These visible stones are unshakable, unchangeable, and without them there is no Church. So, first of all, we have in the Church the divine principle (or beginnings) not as something only mental or mental, but in bodily, real, visible and tactile forms. But this divine, sanctifying the Church and constituting its unconditional and unchangeable foundation, does not completely penetrate and form the entire life of the earthly Church at a given time. This means that next to this divine we have here human reality, which does not correspond to it. But precisely because the Divine itself is already given as something real, the Church receives the direct task of adapting its humanity more and more to the Divine, introducing this latter more and more into its flesh and blood, which is the true life of the Church. To participate in this life, three conditions are necessary (thus): 1) to recognize the real and independent existence of the Divine principle in the Church and to know what it is (in what forms) it consists; 2) recognize the human element in the Church, clearly distinguish it from the divine in all ecclesiastical appearance and know where their discrepancy lies; 3) try in every possible way to eliminate this discrepancy in yourself and others, so that everything human in the Church, as far as possible, becomes in accordance with the Divine, so that the name of God becomes more and more holy in people, so that the kingdom of God spreads wider and wider in the world and so that the will of God is accomplished just as on earth as in heaven. If the first of these conditions is fulfilled, that is, if we recognize the divine beginnings of church life, then with good will the fulfillment of the other two conditions will easily follow. For, knowing correctly what is divine, we do not confuse the human with it; we will see their inconsistency in our reality, and understanding in what way they are incongruent, we will also see how to eliminate this inconsistency on our part. So, the main thing is to recognize the divine in the Church. We know that the Church is supported by three formative bonds on its Divine foundation. Christ said: I am the way, the truth and the life. And if Christ is constantly and completely inherent in His Church, then He is inherent in it as the way, truth and life. Hierarchical succession, coming from Christ, is the way by which the grace of Christ spreads throughout His entire body, that is, the Church; faith in the Theanthropic dogma, confession of Christ as a perfect God and a perfect man, is evidence of the truth of Christ; the holy sacraments are the foundations of the life of Christ in us. In the hierarchy, Christ Himself is present as the way, in the confession of faith as truth, in the sacraments as life; By combining these three, the kingdom of God is formed, whose ruler is Christ. These three are sufficient for the formation of the Church of God. A society that has a correct hierarchical succession from Christ and a true confession of faith and authentic sacraments has everything to be a Church; a society deprived of at least one of these three cannot be a Church, which is already clear from their close connection with each other, due to which the absence of one prevents the actual existence of others. Thus, the absence of Christ’s hierarchy not only deprives society of legal governance and order in spiritual affairs, but, of necessity, abolishes in it the grace of the sacraments performed by the priesthood, and with such an absence of grace-filled life, that is, essential communion with the Divine, the very confession of faith becomes an abstract and dead formula. So, the inextricable connection of these three determines the essence of the Church as the kingdom of God, and here we must find the expression of its Divinity. For God and in God, therefore, and for everyone who is already in God, for the blessed spirits of the invisible Church, the kingdom of God has already been created, that is, in their eyes the entire hierarchical structure of the universe in all its complex perfection, all the depths of true knowledge and all the fullness of the living and mysterious communication of the Divine with creation - all this three-part whole appears as one perfect, in all its parts definite and purposeful organism of god-creation or body God's. And in the historical existence of the visible Church, this divine body is already given from the very beginning, everything, but not everything is discovered or revealed, but is only gradually revealed or discovered. According to the Gospel comparison, this universal body (the kingdom of God) was originally given to us as a divine seed. A seed is not a part or separate organ of a living body; - it is the whole body, only in possibility or potency, that is, in a hidden and inarticulate state for us, gradually revealing itself. With this opening, only that which in itself, as a formative form and living force, was already initially contained in the seed, is revealed in the material phenomenon. Thus, when a tree grows, only its visible state changes and improves, and not the essential form of this tree itself, which was initially already contained entirely in its seed. Likewise, the divine form of the Church, in itself (i.e. in God) perfect and unchangeable, grows, develops and improves in us, and this progressive course of its appearance forms the history of the Church. But just as it is impossible to doubt this historical course, it is also certain that from the very beginning of the Church, its divine element in its triple composition was already really present in the Church, as the living seed of the Spirit of God embedded in it, and because of this, further modification and improvement occurred not through the mechanical application of new forms from the outside, but through the organic growth of the divine seed, which gradually transformed human soil into its own. the body embodied in natural material its divine forms, which were originally hidden in this very seed. In other words, the Church’s own essence, which has always formed it, has not always been clearly recognized and accurately defined by Christian humanity; in the history of the Church, this divine essence, which has resided in it from time immemorial, does not immediately, but only gradually, from its hidden and unconscious state pass into the clear consciousness of the visible Church and is defined in it. Therefore, although in the Church there have always been visible forms of the divine, at first these forms were very simple and imperfect, just as the visible form of a seed is very simple, imperfect and far from being consistent with the full form of a plant, although it contains the latter potentially. But how unreasonable would be the one who, not seeing in the seed either a trunk and branches, or leaves and flowers, would conclude that all this is then only artificially and externally attached, and does not come out by the power of the seed itself, and on this basis would reject the entire future tree in order to always preserve only the bare seed - just as unreasonably does anyone act who rejects the more complex, that is, more revealed forms of God’s grace in the Church, and certainly wants to return to the image of the primitive Christian community. However, just as in the smallest seed of a plant the most important foundations of future forms can be discerned (such as division into shares or layers, a sprout, etc.), so in the very first embryo of the Church, in the apostolic community of Jerusalem, the presence of three formative connections of the universal body of Christ is already clearly discernible. Firstly, hierarchical succession (the path of Christ) already exists there in the person of the apostles chosen by the Savior Himself. That this election was not just one of the actions of Christ’s earthly life, but also some permanent path for His actions in the Church and after His ascension from it and the beginning of an endless succession, this is clear from the event of the election, at the proposal of Peter, of a new apostle in the place of Judas Iscariot. Here, in addition to the event itself, the method of election is also very noteworthy. The apostles did not decide the matter either by their own arbitrariness or by the will of the entire community; the apostles and the community only presented the worthy ones: “and set two.” The election itself took place in the following way: “And having prayed, I decided: You, Lord, know the heart more than all, show that you have chosen him from this two single lot to accept the lot of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas fell, to go to his place. And he gave the lot, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was quickly numbered among the ten apostles.” In this first act of the new Church, the apostles, led by Peter, act not on their own and not in their own name, but submit to the action of God, which occurs through them. They do not choose, but Christ chooses through them. Thus, we see already here that the structure of the Church is not aristocratic (as if the apostles - these best people of the Church - acted with their own personal authority in the name of their preferential rights), and also not democratic (as if the matter was decided by the vote of the entire community), but directly theocratic, divine; Moreover, the action of God was not imposed on the community from the outside, but was called upon by the voluntary consent of the disciples of Christ themselves, so that here too the structure of the Church appears in its full definition as a free theocracy. Along with the hierarchical succession of the path of Christ, the apostolic community, from the very first days of its existence, also presents to us the testimony of Christ’s truth in the conciliar confession of the new faith, which we find in the speech of the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost. At the conclusion of this speech, the Apostle Peter expresses in brief words the most important essence of the Christian faith: “God raised this Jesus, of whom we are all witnesses. The right hand of God has ascended and received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, pouring out this, which you now see and hear. Therefore let all the house of Israel understand that God created this Jesus both as Lord and as His Christ, and Him you will crucify.” This confession, of course, could not assume those dogmatic and theological questions that only later arose and were resolved by the Church, but the primary foundation of Christian truth and wisdom - faith in the actual event of the resurrection of the God-Man Christ - is already expressed here with complete clarity and firmness. Standing on the path of Christ and confessing the truth of Christ, the Apostolic Church possessed the life of Christ and not only in the totality of the gifts of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost, but also in a certain form of church sacraments, which here, first of all, are the two main sacraments established by Christ in His earthly life - baptism and communion. So, a sufficient foundation for the whole Church was already laid from the beginning; but it would be strange to demand that nothing be built on this basis. How the hierarchical order of a small community of several hundred or several thousand people living in one city could not remain unchanged when the Church embraced millions of people and spread throughout the world; just as naturally this order, preserving the same beginning, had to develop it and take on more complex forms, in the same way the Christian consciousness - the confession of the true faith, no matter how strong and intense it was in the primitive community, could not, however, have perfect expression in this community, which consisted exclusively of Jews and for the most part of uneducated Jews; it could not and should not have remained with the same primary expressions or formulas when people who possessed all the wealth of Greco-Roman enlightenment later entered the Church; Christian truth, while maintaining its content and essence, had to develop into a more complex system of concepts and be expressed in more precise and distinct definitions. Finally, if the sacraments are ways of living communication between the Divine and believers primarily in the main events of their lives, then it was impossible for all these ways to be immediately revealed in the visible Church in all their separateness. Naturally, in the original Church, which consisted of a small society, some of the sacraments had not yet received their usual expression and did not have a definite and distinct existence in the visible life of the church. If mysterious communication with the Divine cannot take for an infant those separate and distinct forms that it receives for an adult, then it does not follow that an adult should always be limited only to those forms that are suitable for an infant. Likewise, if in the Church, as it grows internally and externally, the celebration of St. the sacraments received a more complete and at the same time more definite and separate form than what it had in primitive Christianity, then this was completely appropriate and legal. So, the Church, not only in its material composition and external distribution, but also in the manifestation of its formative forms, grows, develops and improves. For although the divine element of the Church itself is unchangeable, since the method and degree of its discovery depends on the method and degree of assimilation of this divine element by the human element, changeable by nature, then, consequently, the manifestation of the divine in the Church in this regard changes, determined by a greater or lesser correspondence between its divine and human sides. Such growth, development and improvement of church forms in no way excludes the unchangeable foundation of the Church, not only in itself, but also in its visible manifestation. For, firstly, no matter how the forms of the hierarchy, the formulas for the confession of faith and the rites of performing the sacraments changed and became more complex, it never happened that there was no correct hierarchy, a true confession of faith and real sacraments in the Church, and, secondly, all the modifications and complications in these three areas did not abolish, but, on the contrary, preserved and affirmed the former, being only its greater revelation. So, for example, the ordination of priests by bishops did not contradict the apostolic ordination and did not abolish it, but, on the contrary, it came from it and was adhered to by it, it was only a necessary application of the same unconditional and divine principle of hierarchy to the more complex composition of the Church; the symbols of Nicene and Constantinople did not contradict the confession of the Apostle Peter and did not abolish it, but were only its more complete disclosure, etc. In the growth of a tree, the root is not abolished by the trunk, but, on the contrary, is nourished and preserved by it, just as it itself preserves and nourishes it; in the same way, the trunk is not abolished by branches, leaves, flowers, etc., but all this together in its entirety forms one perfect plant, living not by replacement, but by the mutual preservation of its parts. So for the visible Church, the true situation is not that nothing new appears in it, but that the new that appears in it does not contradict or destroy the old, but affirms and reveals it. The Church has always followed the right path of hierarchical succession, but this path can expand for it; The Church has always contained truth in the confession of faith, but this truth can find more accurate and complete expressions over time; finally, the Church has always possessed the life of Christ in the sacraments, but this life can be more fully perceived and further lived out. As according to the teachings of St. Paul in the compatibility of the one Church, in the scope of the one body of Christ, the same Spirit of God inherent and active in it does not act equally in all its members, but changes its action in accordance with the property and purpose of each member, just as in the succession of times and generations, the same eternally abiding Spirit of God in the Church reveals its presence to varying degrees and in different ways in accordance with the historical position and calling of each era and generation. So, if an indispensable condition for churchliness is that nothing new contradicts the old, then this is not in the name of the fact that it is old, but in the name of the fact that it is the product and expression of the same Spirit of God, which continuously acts in the Church and which cannot contradict itself. From here it is easy for us to see that in the Church there is something divine and unchangeable. We accept and honor the faithful in the Church not only because it is betrayed - for there are also bad traditions - but because we recognize in the faithful not the product of a known time, place or some persons, but the product of that Spirit of God, which is inseparably present always and everywhere and fills everything, which in ourselves testifies to what was once created by Him in the ancient Church, so that we recognize the previously expressed, but always one truth by grace by the power of the same Spirit who then expressed it. Therefore, every form and every decree, even if expressed at a certain time and through known persons, but if these persons acted not on their own behalf and not in their own name, but on behalf of the whole and in the name of the entire Church, past, present and future, visible and invisible - such a form and such a decree, according to our faith, comes from the Spirit of Christ present and active in the whole Church and should therefore be recognized as holy and unchangeable, as truly emanating not from any parts of the Church in place and time, not from its individual members in their particularity and isolation, but from the entire Church of God in its indivisible unity and wholeness, as containing the fullness of divine grace. So, the distinctive sign of divinity in the Church is the internal wholeness and catholicity of her path, her truth, her life: wholeness not in the sense of the arithmetic and mechanical totality of all parts and members, which external totality does not have real existence at any given moment, but in the sense of the mystical (superconscious) connection and spiritual moral communication of all parts and members of the Church among themselves and with the common Divine Head. At the same time, the obvious organs of this connection and this communication in the visible Church at every moment of its existence can be individual persons or collections of a few persons, onto whom, due to the internal connection of the entire living body of the Church and universal mutual trust, the thought and will of all can be transferred and concentrated in them. This will, precisely by the power of such selflessness and such impersonality, attracts the action of the divine Spirit, and through a few He reveals the grace secretly inherent in all; so that true catholicity is not conditioned by the completeness of number through the external gathering of individual units, but by the fullness of spiritual integrity through the rejection of all selfishness and isolation in each unit. Divine in the Church is everything that has a universal or catholic character, and this character has everything in which there is no pride and isolation - personal, national, local and any other. The hierarchical path of the Church is catholic and divine, for according to it not one of the mediators and organs of grace has its own title as a personal privilege separating it from others, but they all receive a sacred advantage from the one and for all common source of holiness - Christ, through uniformity and continuous succession, by virtue of which they are not separated from everyone, but through their ministry all are visibly united with the divine foundation of the entire edifice of the Church. Every person, by virtue of the Incarnation of Christ, has the opportunity to unite with the Divine, but in order for this opportunity to be the sons of God to become a reality, it is necessary first to renounce the already existing anti-God (sinful) reality of man, the root of which lies in egoism or selfishness, i.e. precisely in the effort to place and establish oneself outside of God and against God; therefore, a person who desires a real reunion with the Divine must first of all renounce his self-affirmation, he must recognize that in Him is the source of goodness, truth and life, and in no case should he speak and act for himself and in his own name, so as not to obscure divine grace through his selfish means. But it is the hierarchical structure of the Church and only it that eliminates and makes impossible any selfish and self-willed mediation between God and creation, for in this hierarchical structure (and only in it alone) no one receives the grace of God by himself or in his own individuality, but everyone has it only from the divine whole through others who also have not received it themselves. So all the laity do not receive grace on their own, but through the priest, but the priest does not perform the sacrament by himself, but by virtue of dedication from the bishop; the bishop does not give it of his own accord and does not take his hierarchical authority from human arbitrariness, but through senior bishops, through successive succession through the apostles, he receives it from Christ Himself, whom God the Father sanctified and sent into the world for our salvation and who Himself did not His own will, but that of Him who sent Him. So, in this wonderful chain of grace-filled action there is not a single link tainted by human self-affirmation, in this great society there is not a single figure from its Divine Head to the last clergyman, there is not a single figure who would testify to himself or would put himself as a conductor of grace and witnesses of truth. Therefore, whatever the human deeds of a hierarch (or a whole series of hierarchs), and even if in his personal character he reveals the highest degree of pride and arrogance, his holy service is still based on humility and self-sacrifice, for he did not put himself in the hierarchy, he does not act in his own name and does not preach his own. On the contrary, all the founders and teachers of the sects that separated from the Church, even if some of them were humble people in personal character, their service is based on self-affirmation and pride, for they testify about themselves, do and preach their own. The church hierarchy, not by the deeds of its members, but by the perfection of its beginning, by the purity and integrity of its catholic form, is holy, immaculate and divine. The truth of the Church is catholic and divine in the conciliar confession of faith, not because it finally expresses the entire fullness of the knowledge of God and not because it is affirmed on the collective opinion of all members of the Church, but because, firstly, from the point of view of its subject, this confession, and without revealing all the particulars of divine truth, represents such essential features of it that are internally connected with everything else and, therefore, implicitly contain the whole truth, and, secondly, from the side of its origin, this confession was approved by people who were true representatives of the entire universal Church in the sense that they did not mean their personal or someone else’s private opinions, as such, but the teaching that the whole Church always and everywhere firmly, even if not quite clearly, adhered to; they wanted to define not their own (their party, locality, their time) teaching, but the catholic, God-devoted teaching. The fathers of the ecumenical councils, whatever their personal properties and no matter how they behaved in other respects, when defining the dogmas of faith, acted not on their own, but on the integrity of the Church, in which God abides, and whoever believes in this abiding cannot reject in such definitions the genuine revelation of Christ’s truth through the influx of the Holy Spirit. In fact, their entire history testifies to precisely this character of ecumenical councils. At the same time, it would not be difficult to show, and has already been partly shown both from the theological and philosophical sides, that those affirmed at the seven ecumenical councils (i.e. before the separation of East and West) dogmas, namely: the consubstantiality of the Word and the Holy Spirit with God the Father (I and II Ecumenical Councils), the unity of the Theanthropic personality in Christ (III and V Councils), two natures in His one person (IV Council), two wills and two actions in Christ (VI Cathedral) and, finally, the holiness of the bodily human image assumed by Christ (VII Ecumenical Council) - all these dogmas constitute, by reason (logically), the only correct disclosure and definition of Christian truth, while those heretical opinions about these subjects, against which councils were convened and which were condemned at these gatherings, undermined the very foundations of Christianity. So the self-awareness of the Church declared at the councils actually allows for complete logical justification, and the universal truth witnessed by the councils was not only the truth of the Christian faith, but also the truth of the Christian mind. The Ecumenical Council does not consist of full numbers; for even if a meeting of representatives of all churches from all over the world, much larger than all ecumenical councils, were to meet, but if each of them carried with him and tried to express only his personal opinion or the human opinions and desires of the societies he represented, then such a meeting would not be an ecumenical council, and its definitions would not be divine dogmas. Divine dogmas are proclaimed in the Church only when representatives (no matter how many of them there are in this case), putting aside all human opinions, their own and those of others, care and are zealous only about clarifying the truth of Christ, laid down in the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit who descended on it. By voluntary and conscious rejection of everything human - temporary, local and personal in the name of the eternal and unchangeable, catholic principle of the kingdom of God, representatives of the Church cause a new discovery of this principle and, stimulating in themselves the growth of the divine seed, attract a new action of the same Holy Spirit, which then speaks through their lips, as the organs of all catholicity. The church confession is also catholic because it contains truths that are equally significant and important for all people - learned and ignorant, simple and educated, for these truths speak to the whole person and determine the fate of all humanity, and do not relate only to the thinking of the mind or to any particular cognitive ability. God is the Almighty, Christ is the Savior and His Theanthropic feat, the life-giving Spirit of God and His action in the one universal Church through baptism and other sacraments, finally, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century - all these dogmas, due to their deepest meaning and perfect rationality, can be developed into the most complete philosophical system, and, however, they are not abstract theoretical speculations, but vital and practical truths, accessible to everyone, showing everyone one path of salvation and direct entry into the kingdom of God. The mystical life of the Church in the holy sacraments is catholic and divine, because these sacraments, even if performed on a certain occasion over one person, by their purpose never stop at the transient human phenomenon, at the separate existence of each person, at that false position of isolation and isolation in which natural man finds himself - but have as their goal precisely to lead man out of this false position, to truly, spiritually and physically connect him with everyone and through then restore the wholeness of true life in God. This is the property of all sacraments in general and each one in particular. The sacrament of baptism is catholic and divine, for, invisibly cleansing the natural man from the hidden, but undoubtedly inherent infection of original sin, which at the very beginning separates him from the unity of divine life, it gives him the opportunity to again enter into the universal body of God. The sacrament of confirmation is catholic and divine, for sanctifying the entire spiritual and physical formation of man, as the extreme form of the Holy Spirit, it destined him in all this composition to serve not his personal spiritual goals, but the universal work of God on earth. The sacrament of repentance (second baptism) is catholic and divine, because in it a person, renouncing with his own voluntary consciousness and being resolved by the grace of God from everything that was done in his personal life in the sinful spirit of self-love, separating him from God and people, again becomes capable of uniting with their wholeness, already with his personal participation. Catholic and divine is the great sacrament of the Eucharist or communion, in which a person, bodily and essentially perceiving the all-one body of Christ (in which the whole fullness of the Divinity dwells) and physically, although invisibly uniting with it, truly becomes a participant and communion of the divine-human and spiritual-corporeal wholeness. The sacrament of marriage is catholic and divine, by virtue of which the fullness of physical life is sanctified for a person by the fullness of spiritual communion, on the basis of the mystical (in Christ and in the Church) combination of two heterogeneous beings, which should be expressed in everyday life by their mutual self-restraint and self-sacrifice - as a result of which a person, restored to his integrity, enters into the chain of universal life as a complete and closed ring. The sacrament of ordination or priesthood (spiritual patronymic or childbearing) is catholic and divine, by the action of which one person becomes for many a conductor of the universal grace of Christ, “from His fulfillment we all receive and receive grace.” The last sacrament of unction or unction is catholic and divine, in which the entire Church, through a council of its ministers, in view of the illness threatening death, solemnly both in word and mystical action testifies to the sick person that he is an integral member of that sacred whole, which embraces not only the entire visible, but also the entire invisible Church - so that even if the sick person dies, his spiritual-physical connection with the universal body will not be broken. All the sacraments in the Church are catholic and completely divine in the sense that they embrace and sanctify not only the moral and spiritual life of a person, but also his physical life - moreover, they sanctify and reunite with the Divine the beginnings of material nature, the entire visible world. So in baptism the Spirit of God, at the beginning of the peacemaking, hovering over the waters 11, again connects its mysterious action with water as the primordial element of the material world, and in it with other elements. In anointing and consecration of oil, the plant element in its purest works is sanctified and becomes a conductor of the grace-filled action of God on the human body, and in the Eucharist, through the special mysterious action of grace, the most important nutrients for human life - bread and wine - become species under which the true glorified body of Christ itself is essentially and effectively communicated to humanity and nourishes it. Finally, through the sacrament of marriage, the ancestral direction of animal life is purified, spiritually comprehended and sanctified in man. In these sacraments, thus, the union of the Divine with the firstfruits of the whole creation is restored, and the kingdom of God reveals its truly catholic, i.e., all-embracing character, the full implementation of which in the coming glorified Church will embrace not only the new heaven - blessed and saved spirits, but also the new earth - the regenerated spiritual corporeality of the whole world. This, in brief, is the image of the universal Church, catholic and divine not only in its eternal beginning and invisible prototype, but also in its visible forms. These forms are catholic in their very essence and purpose, which is to heal humanity and the whole world by restoring its unity with God, so that all creation becomes a true image of the Divine. In these forms, everything particular, isolated and exclusive is eliminated, every human arbitrariness is eliminated, and, consequently, the beginning of every sin and every imperfection is abolished, so that catholicity, as an internal perfection, in the very essence of the matter is divine, and not just an external sign of divinity. And although, until the healing and rebirth of all creation is accomplished, the seed of the kingdom of God grows in the world and changes in strength, degree and volume of its manifestation, all these changes concern only human perception, while the divine action itself, in all degrees and types of its assimilation by man and nature, remains internally whole, united in all and in particular manifestations retains its catholic essence, in which it is expressed divinity. So, everything in the Church that, by its very meaning, is catholic, free from any self-affirmation, arbitrariness and exclusivity, that takes a person out of his isolation and gives him a form of wholeness, is thereby divine and forms the eternal and unchanging essence of the Church. A true theanthropic society, created in the image and likeness of the God-man Himself, must represent a free coordination of the divine and human principles, and this is determined both by the active power of the first and by the cooperating power of the second. It is therefore required that society, firstly, preserve in all its purity and strength the divine principle given to it (the path, truth and life of Christ), and, secondly, fully develop the beginning of its human self-activity, aimed at the final realization in the lower ones of what is given from above. The world is reborn in Christianity, and through this, as it were, the birth of Christ in the world is completed. If through the overshadowing of the human mother by the active power of God the incarnation of the Divine took place, then through the fertilization of the divine mother (the Church) by the active human principle the free deification of humanity must occur. Before Christianity, the natural principle in humanity was given (fact), the Divinity was sought (ideal) and, as the sought, acted ideally on man. In Christ, what we sought was given to us, the ideal became a fact: “the unattainable became an event, and the unspeakable was accomplished here.” The active divine principle appeared materially. The Word became flesh, and this new spiritualized and deified flesh remains the divine substance of the Church. Before Christianity, the motionless basis of life was human nature (the old Adam), the divine was the beginning of change, movement, progress; after Christianity, on the contrary, the divine itself, as already embodied, becomes the motionless basis, the element of our life, and what we are looking for is humanity, corresponding to this divine, capable of independently uniting with it, assimilating it. As sought after, this ideal humanity becomes here the active beginning of history, the beginning of movement, progress. Just as in the pre-Christian historical course the basis, matter was human nature or element, the active and forming principle was the Word or Divine Mind, and the result (generation) was the God-Man, i.e. God, who took on human nature, so in the process of Christianity the basis or matter was divine nature or element, the active and forming principle was the human mind, and the result should be a deified man, i.e. i.e. a person who has accepted the Divine. But man can perceive the Divine only in his true integrity, in inner unity with everything; therefore, a truly deified person, or a true man-god, is certainly conciliar or catholic - pan-humanity or the universal Church. A person who on his own, in addition to the Church, wants to achieve divine significance, such an individual man-god is the embodiment of a lie, a parody of Christ, or the Antichrist. The God-man is individual, the true man-god is universal: thus the radius of the circle is the same for the entire circle, equally determining the distance from the center of any of its points, and, therefore, he in itself is already the forming beginning of the circle, while the points of the periphery can only form a circle in their totality. Outside this totality, that is, outside the circle, taken separately, they have no certainty, but the circle without them is invalid. In humanity, such a circle is the Church. In the combination of the human personality with the Church, a person is healed, receives true healthy life, and the Church is fertilized, becomes active, but before becoming the fertilizing principle of the Church, the human mind moved away from it in order to develop its powers in freedom. Only by experience having become convinced of the deceptiveness of this freedom and of the weakness of its powers, separated from the power of God, can humanity enter into a free combination with the divine foundation of the Church and from this free combination be reborn in the image of universal God-manhood. Chapter 3. About the Christian state and society The appearance of a new spiritual man in Christ is the focus of world history. The end or goal of this story is the manifestation of spiritual humanity. The ancient world gravitated towards spiritual man, the new world gravitates towards spiritual humanity, that is, towards Christ being imagined in everyone. This goal is achieved in two ways: through personal moral improvement and through improvement of social relations. If humanity were a simple sum of equal and independent units, then the second way would be unnecessary: ​​as individuals improve, the society consisting of them would also improve. But in fact, there is a mutual dependence between a person and society. The genus really exists only in individuals, but individuals really exist only in the genus. Society is composed of individuals, but individuals live only in this composition and die alone: ​​humanity is formed from people, but not by people. Basic social connections do not depend on personal arbitrariness; on the contrary, personal life is determined by these connections. Therefore, it is just as impossible to improve humanity by one private personal action, that is, by direct action on individuals, as it is to heal a sick organism by acting on each of its cells or fibers separately: the patient will die many times before such treatment makes any progress. In the same way, humanity would have perished many times before each person achieved moral perfection. The only man of truth, in himself, who alone possessed perfection and had no need of public truth, was He who was God before becoming man. The whole truth was in Him, but we can learn this truth not individually, but only together, with the whole world. Without this communication or solidarity, our very human principle could not hold out and maintain its independence among nature, and even more so God-manhood would be impossible. Individual man would be individually absorbed by natural life; only collective man can fight with nature and freely turn to the Divine. To revive all of humanity, Christianity must penetrate not only its personal, but also its social elements. The divine-human connection must be restored not only individually, but also collectively. Just as the divine element has its collective expression in the Church, so the purely human element has a similar expression in the state and, therefore, the divine-human connection is expressed collectively in the free combination of the Church and the state, and this latter appears as a Christian state. In general, the state represents the foundation of humanity against external elemental forces acting on it and in it. For such a foundation, the unification of human forces themselves is necessary, and unification presupposes submission. Therefore, the state, while expressing human independence in general, at the same time demands strict subordination of private forces. This has always been and will be, and the whole difference is only in the property and image of this subordination. Pre-Christian history showed us two types of state: the eastern, based on slavery, and the western (Greco-Roman), conditioned beyond slavery by the constant struggle of the masters themselves. In the East, the state meant only domination (also in Russian: gospodar, sovereign, state). This domination was either patriarchal or based on conquest. In both cases, the power of the sovereign and the subordination of his subjects were limitless and unconditional: neither children with their father, nor prisoners of war with the winner can compete for rights, for them unconditional obedience is mandatory. The tribal principle and the facts of conquest had, of course, force in the West, but here they were joined, as the main formative factor, by the constant internal struggle of political forces. In the East, due to the mental makeup and worldview of the people there, political struggle could only be an accidental phenomenon. A quietist and fatalist by nature and by conviction, interested mainly in the eternal and unchangeable side of existence, Eastern man is unable to insist on his rights and stubbornly fight for his private interests. He who is strong is right; to resist the strong is the work of a madman. The rulers of the East can compete and fight with each other, but each time this fight is short-lived and does not change the general state of affairs. The first sign of preponderance of power on one side decides the dispute, and subjects rush to submit to the stronger side, seeing in it an instrument of fate or higher will. Hence the frequent change of despotism while despotism itself remains unchanged. But the “daring clan of Iapetus,” who argued with the gods, based their political system on struggle. Hence, in the West there is a completely different type of state than in the East. In the confrontation of more or less equal political forces, of which none could gain unconditional dominance, the state can no longer be domination, but must appear as a state of balance of many forces. This balance is expressed in law. Each of the contending forces puts forward its own right, but these rights, which are in themselves indefinite and limitless, and therefore mutually exclusive, can only be combined and balanced under the condition of a limit common to all of them. This general limit of all rights, before which everyone is equal, is the law. The Western state, as a balance of contending rights, is primarily a state of law. It is known that the beginning of the formation of Greek polities was marked by the legislation of Lycurgus, Solon, etc., which arose directly from the need to put a limit to the fierce struggle of parties, securing their balance with the formula of the law. But the pre-Christian state of the West finds its full expression in Rome. Roman statehood was developed in centuries of continuous struggle for rights between patricians and plebeians and was always clothed in the form of precise and strict legislation. But this legal state reached its completion at the moment when the fighting parties came to a final equilibrium through complete equalization of rights. This moment was marked by the creation of the empire. If the state is a balance of living real forces, then it cannot be represented as one abstract, dead formula of law. The law must be implemented. The embodiment of the law is power. Power, as a living, real force that equalizes everyone, must be concentrated in one living person. Power, or empire (Imperium), has real practical meaning only in the emperor. Thus, the Western state, at the end of its development, came to the same thing that the East held from the beginning. But the huge difference between the Western Empire and the Eastern despotisms - a fatal difference for the West - consisted precisely in the fact that the Roman Empire was the end and completion of the entire historical development of the ancient classical world - that extreme goal towards which the daring family of Iapetus unconsciously gravitated and strived in its thousand-year struggle, in its wanderings and exploits. For the eastern peoples, their despotic state appeared as a necessary evil, as one of the painful but inevitable conditions of earthly existence - nothing more. But for Western paganism, with its purely human religion, the state, as the embodiment of human reason and human truth, was everything; in him he put his whole soul, in him he saw both the highest standard and the highest goal of his life. And now the goal has been completely achieved: a complete, comprehensive state has been created, an invincible and all-conquering state, the state par excellence - the worldwide Roman Empire. And as soon as it is created, the complete emptiness of this formal greatness, the hopeless poverty of this embodied mind is immediately revealed. I had to ask the question: what is all this for and what next? There was no one to answer: the oracles had been silent for a long time. And such a terrible melancholy took possession of the rulers of the world that even the burning of Rome itself was for them only a moment’s entertainment. When the embodiment of the human mind - the empire - turned out to be completely untenable, then the time came for the embodiment of the divine Mind. Christianity, having come into the world to save the world, also saved the highest manifestation of the world - the state, revealing to it the true purpose and meaning of its existence. The difference between the Christian and the pagan state is that this latter thought to have a goal in itself and therefore turned out to be aimless and meaningless; the Christian state recognizes over itself the highest goal that is given by religion and represented by the Church, and in the voluntary service of this goal, that is, the kingdom of God, the Christian state finds its highest meaning and purpose. The Christian state combines the features of an eastern and western state. According to the Eastern view, Christianity relegates state life to a secondary place, putting spiritual or religious life in the foreground; but on the other hand, together with the West, Christianity recognizes a positive task and an active progressive character for the state: it not only calls on the state to fight the evil forces of the world under the banner of the Church, but also demands from it that it introduce moral principles into political and international life, gradually raise secular society to the heights of the church ideal, and recreate it in the image and likeness of the Church of Christ. In the Christian state there is everything that was in the pagan state, both in the East and in the West, but all this receives a different meaning and is renewed in the spirit of truth. There is domination in the Christian state, but domination not in the name of one’s own strength, but in the name of the common good and in accordance with the instructions of church authority. There is subordination in a Christian state, but not out of slavish fear, but out of conscience and voluntarily, for the sake of that common cause, which both ruler and subjects serve equally. There are rights in a Christian state, but rights that flow not from the infinity of human egoism, but from the moral infinity of man as a god-like being. There is a law in the Christian state, but not in the sense of simply legitimizing actual relations, but in the sense of correcting them according to the ideas of the highest truth. There is supreme power in the Christian state, but not as the deification of human arbitrariness, but as a special service to the will of God. The representative of power in a Christian state is not only the owner of all rights, like the pagan Caesar, - he is, mainly, the bearer of all the duties of Christian society in relation to the Church, that is, to the work of God on earth. State power, by the nature of its actions and by its origin, is completely independent of spiritual power. Therefore, their attitude can only be free, moral - according to faith and conscience. The main question is whether the secular government believes in the Church or not. The government of a Christian state is obliged to believe in the Church. By virtue of this purely moral, and not legal, obligation, it must voluntarily subordinate its activities to the highest authority of the Church, not in the sense that this authority would interfere in worldly state affairs, but in the sense that the state itself subordinates its activities to higher interests and does not lose sight of the Kingdom of God. In the Christian West, the Church once sought to be embodied in state forms, but in the Christian East, on the contrary, state power concentrated in its hands not only secular, but very often also the highest church government. In the ideal of a free theocracy, both aspirations are combined in a new moral sense. Here the Church is embodied in the state only insofar as the state itself is inspired by Christian principles, the Church descends to worldly reality along the same steps by which the state ascends to the ecclesiastical ideal. The state is idealized and spiritualized through serving the highest religious interests and, moreover, through free service. The highest religious interests emanating from the Church and which the Christian state must serve under the leadership of the Church come down to the following three (in order from external to internal): 1) the spread of Christianity in the world, 2) in Christianity itself the peaceful rapprochement of peoples, 3) in each nation the organization of social relations according to the Christian ideal. To explain this last task, we can take the field of criminal law, or the attitude of the state and society towards the criminal. In a Christian state, this attitude, instead of the pagan principle of intimidation and instead of the Old Testament - retribution, should be determined by the Christian principle of pity for the victim and those who can suffer from crimes, but also for the criminal himself: protecting itself from the criminal and in no case justifying the crime, the Christian state should not forget about the human soul of the criminal, capable of rebirth. The state itself cannot directly deal with the correction and transformation of criminals, just as it cannot itself treat the sick. But it establishes hospitals and helps with material resources the institute of doctors who devote themselves to this work by vocation. Patients with contagious diseases, without a doubt, bring great harm to society, but the state, in addition to this harm to others, also sees the patients’ own misfortune and therefore does not limit itself to removing them from society for the benefit of society, to protect it from infection, but transfers them to doctors for the benefit of the patients themselves, for their own healing. In the same sense that the state cares about people's health and fights disease, in the same sense it should care about people's morality and fight crime. So, here, too, the state police measures themselves, for all their practical importance, have only an auxiliary, service value. And just as the matter of physical treatment is carried out not by the sanitary police, but by medicine, so the matter of moral healing or correction of criminals belongs (in a normal system) not to the court and prison, but to the Church and its servants, to whom the state must give the material opportunity to act on the criminal. This moral and educational action of the Church on the criminal begins where the action of the state ends, which must trust the Church in this matter just as it trusts the medical institute in medical matters. However, I introduce this whole comparison of crime with illness not at all to say that crime is only an illness for which the patient himself is not to blame. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to recognize and distinguish three sides to a crime: firstly, a crime is an unlawful act arising from the evil will of the criminal - there is sin or guilt in it; secondly, a crime is harmful to others - to the victim and to the whole society; and thirdly, it is a misfortune for the criminal himself, as a person. Accordingly, three qualities must be recognized and distinguished in the criminal himself: he is a guilty person, he is a harmful person, and he is an unhappy person. The state must restore the law violated by the guilty, and it must also protect society from a harmful member; both of these ends are achieved by punishment, which, justly and necessarily, consists in depriving the criminal of his freedom and civil rights and in removing him from the rest of society. But beyond the satisfaction of these first two interests - legal justice and public safety - there still remains the question of the criminal himself. Pagan Sparta threw its crippled children into the abyss. A Christian state cannot do this with its morally crippled children. The question about the criminal himself, about the criminal as an unfortunate person, about his future fate exists for a Christian state; but, being unable to resolve this question by its own external police means, it must transfer it to the jurisdiction of the church. The Church should no longer be concerned with judging or punishing a criminal, but with his salvation, just as it itself is based on the economy of salvation. The Church looks, mainly, not at the lawlessness of the criminal and not at his harm to others, but at his own misfortune, at the totality of internal and external, mental and physical conditions that led a person to sin. If the Church cannot always destroy the force of these conditions, then she can always weaken it; although the Church cannot always return a criminal to the world morally healed and regenerated, it can and should experience the effect of a better environment on him, rid him of bad influences and temptations (whereas now prisons and jails usually lead to exactly the opposite result, often turning random criminals into inveterate and incorrigible villains). Without in any way disputing the legality of those public and private interests that are protected by the criminal court and the police, it is necessary to recognize that the final goal of the Christian state in relation to criminals is their own moral healing, that is, a goal in achieving which the state can only serve the Church. A similar service is required from the Christian state in other tasks of its activity. It serves the Church by introducing into international relations the principle of Christian solidarity instead of national rivalry and enmity; it serves the Church, spreading Christian culture to barbaric and savage peoples, humbling the proud, disarming predators, helping the oppressed. From the Church the state receives the highest goal and positive meaning of its activities. In the pre-Christian world, the state, that is, the balance of social forces, was a goal in itself. The ancient world gravitated towards an absolute state and found it in the Roman Empire. But humanity could not stop there; even if the equilibrium found was unconditionally stable (which, of course, in reality could not be), then in any case the question arose: what should these balanced, these controlled social forces do, what, what purpose should the state serve? Until a positive task for social forces is set, until the highest goal for the state is indicated, until then state and social activity, despite its practicality, European omnipotence over the individual is, for the thinking mind, aimless and meaningless vanity. This is exactly how the last representatives of the ancient world—the Alexandrian philosophers—looked at political activity. Only the Christian religion gave meaning and meaning to the state precisely because it rose above the state. The higher the sun is above the earth, the more it illuminates and warms the earth. By comprehending the state, Christianity at the same time creates society. While the state was everything, society was nothing. But as soon as the goal of life was placed above the state, the living forces of society are liberated and cease to be slaves of the state. They are no longer content with external balance, but strive for the highest ideal of free, internal, moral reciprocity, for which the state itself, with its external forms and framework, serves only as a transitional intermediate stage. In the ancient world there was no actual society. On the one hand, the main social class - rural or agricultural - was represented as slaves, on the other hand, free citizens, not having any unconditional goal for their common life, not knowing anything higher than the state, were bound and absorbed by this latter. Where economic labor was humiliated, where the land was cultivated by slaves, and religion was administered by state officials, there public life, devoid of its most essential interests, material and spiritual, was entirely limited to formal state interests, legislative balancing of private forces. This does not in the least contradict the high development of ancient philosophy, for this philosophy treated ancient life not organically, but critically, and constituted the transition from paganism to Christianity. In their positive ideals, classical philosophers did not rise above the external truth of the state (Plato’s Republic). In the ancient world there was neither a people nor a church, but only a city that coincided with the state (πόλιζ, civitas - city and state). Even where the city was ruled by a few families, they did not constitute an aristocracy in our sense, they were not a special class independent of the state and living outside the city, they were only the first citizens. Christianity, by elevating religion above the state, creating the Church, thereby frees society from state omnipotence and forms a free, independent society. On the one hand, it creates a people in the strict sense of the word, that is, the lowest and at the same time the main class of society. Without the formal abolition of slavery, by the mere recognition of slaves as religiously full members of the Church, Christianity introduces them into society and gives this latter its real basis. By becoming Christians, former slaves become part of society - the peasantry. On the other hand, free citizens (free relative to their slaves, but themselves slaves of the state), becoming members of the Church, thereby cease to be exclusively members of the state, are freed from its omnipotence and, developing in themselves a personal principle suppressed by the state, form a higher social class. Thus, society, in the ancient world, bound from below by slavery, and suppressed from above by the absolutism of the state, receives freedom and movement from Christianity. True human society is composed only of free individuals. In the ancient world there was no real society because there was no real individual. True, the ancient West, in its philosophy, in its art, and in its politics, gravitated towards the idea of ​​man, but in all this it could only achieve the form of humanity. The fullness of a human being requires unconditional freedom, but unconditional freedom cannot belong to a person outside of God - it belongs only to the God-man. With the appearance of the God-man in Christianity, humanity receives a fulcrum above the world in the truly unconditional realm and is thereby freed from the world. A free man and the possibility of a free, divine-human society appear. This opportunity given in Christianity must be realized by humanity itself. A person, internally liberated by the grace of Christ, must apply this freedom to the work of creating a Christian society. Human society is not a simple mechanical collection of individuals: it is an independent whole, has its own life and organization, and the task of Christianity from this side is to introduce into the life and organization of social forces the Christian principle of moral solidarity or true brotherhood. The structure of human society in its essential features is extremely simple and completely reasonable. It is determined by three main conditions, which correspond to the triple composition of society. Human society must first of all stand firmly on the ground, must ensure its material existence, must live a natural life. But since the given natural life of humanity is not perfect and does not contain its own goal, then society must, secondly, have the means to change its life, move and develop its strengths. The conditions for such mobility and variability (development and progress) are developed by the so-called civilization, which forms the artificial life of society. But the changes and movements of civilized life should not be aimless and meaningless. Social progress, to be truly progress, must lead society towards a certain goal, moreover, to a goal that is absolutely worthy, ideally perfect. Society must not only live and move, but also improve. Thus, with the supernatural life on earth and the super-artificial development of urban civilization, society must live a third, spiritual life - it must, with its best forces, develop those highest benefits for which it is generally worth living and acting. According to this threefold life, society itself appears to us in three component parts or classes: the people in the narrow sense - the rural or agricultural class par excellence; then the urban class and, finally, the class of the best people, public figures and leaders of the people, indicators of the path, otherwise: village, city and squad. These three main formative elements of society in the ancient world were bound by the absolutism of the state; Christianity liberated them and the task of Christian politics is to put them in the correct positive relationship to the Church, to the state and mutually to each other. This correct attitude directly depends on the class of the best people, the ruling class, leading society, possessing the initiative for all activities. For the people themselves have always treated the Church, the state, and other classes correctly, they have always fulfilled their purpose, cultivated the land for the common benefit, fully maintaining their solidarity with the highest religious and civil interests; the urban class, by its very purpose, is intermediate, secondary, and in the direction of its activities it was always guided by the example of the upper class, and it is not its fault if it did not receive a good example. Generally speaking, the best men in Christian society have hitherto fallen far short of their purpose. The general nature of their activities in European history was often expressed, on the one hand, in the oppression of the people, on the other hand, in criminal rivalry with state and church authorities. Instead of being leaders of the people, free servants of the state and the Church, they too often wanted to be masters in everything and over everything. This direction of activity is in direct contradiction with the purpose of the “best people” in Christian society, with their calling in the common Christian cause. In this matter of creating a free theocracy, the “best people” play the most important and most honorable, but at the same time the most responsible role. Freely bowing before church authority, accepting from the Church the unshakable principles of truth and goodness, the “best people” of Christian society must, in accordance with these principles and under the protection and patronage of the state, direct and lead all social forces towards their highest goal. And this goal is not arbitrary and random, not set by people. This goal is immutably determined by the Church, the state also serves it with its compulsory organization, and the Christian people also desire it in the depths of their souls. This goal is the realization in reality of what we believe in, the re-creation of this human and worldly reality of ours in the image and likeness of Christian truth, the embodiment of God-manhood. The image of Christ as a test of conscience The ultimate task of personal and social morality is that Christ, in whom the entire fullness of the Divinity dwells bodily, is imagined in everyone and everything. It is up to each of us to contribute to this goal by imagining Christ in our personal and social activities. Everyone agrees that the framework of the legal law does not in any way determine the activities of a person striving for perfection. You can never kill, steal or break any criminal law, and yet be hopelessly far from the Kingdom of God. The legal law does not have the direct goal of the perfection of man and humanity - its task is only to protect their external earthly existence as firmly as possible while it is needed for higher goals - to more firmly hold the carnal person at least at the first, lower levels of society, from which the real goal is not even visible yet, but without which it cannot be achieved. But the framework of the moral law and the Gospel commandments themselves, accepted as separate external instructions - in letter and not in spirit, are also insufficient for positive guidance towards improvement. Even the highest and all-embracing commandment of love can be understood and accepted in a false sense - and not only can it, but it has been and is happening. Some say that evangelical love is, first of all, love for God, and in the name of this love they consider themselves to have the right and even the obligation to torment their brothers, who do not profess faith in God like them. Others argue that evangelical love requires uniform, dispassionate benevolence towards one and all and therefore does not allow any forced protection of peaceful and innocent people from murderers, rapists and predators. Some, in the name of love for God, disgrace the name of God with their fanaticism, others, in the name of love for their neighbor, would like to freely hand over many of their neighbors to destruction. That these people deliberately go against their conscience, I do not dare say; but that they did not properly check their conscience is clear. And the best and only test is so close. Before deciding to take any action that is significant for your personal or social life, you just need to evoke the moral image of Christ in your soul, concentrate on it and ask yourself: could He perform this act, or - in other words - will He approve of it or not, bless me or not to do it? I offer this test to everyone - it will not deceive. In any doubtful case, if you only have the opportunity to come to your senses and think, remember Christ, imagine Him alive as He is, and place the entire burden of your doubts on Him. He had already agreed in advance to accept this burden with all the others, not, of course, in order to give you a free hand to all sorts of abomination, but so that you, by turning to Him and leaning on Him, could refrain from evil and become conductors of His undoubted truth in this dubious matter. If all people with good will, both private individuals and public figures and rulers of Christian nations, now began to turn to this sure method in all doubtful cases, then this would already be the beginning of the second coming and preparation for the Last Judgment of Christ, as the time is near. That is why Christ on the cross, having become a curse for us and accepting, although without his own guilt, the consequences of common human sin - weakness and death, no longer calls God Father as before, but together with all creation, which groans and suffers to this day, exclaims in mortal sorrow: “Eli, Eli, Lama Savachthani.” I say “primitive” in a relative and purely historical sense. There are solid reasons to think that the bestial image in which humanity appears to us on the threshold of history is only a perversion of the original image of God in man. The exception is those few socialists who, being rich themselves, strive to enrich the poor. Their desire is selfless, but they must remember that as soon as they instill this selfless desire in the poor masses (which is directly included in their task), it immediately ceases to be selfless. They can avoid this contradiction only by taking directly the point of view of almsgiving, that is, sharing their wealth with the poor, and not inspiring them to rob others. How evil appeared in the world and sin became the law of world life is not discussed here. The corruption of nature is, first of all, a fact for us, and this fact is presupposed by Christianity, as a religion of salvation. For then the union will be his own action, a fulfillment, not a sacrifice of his individuality. Whoever gives his soul with his own good will gains it, and whoever wants to keep it in selfishness will lose it. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and what will be holy will be called the Son of God. This definition, arising from our concept of “spiritual man,” or the second Adam, is certainly identical with the dogmatic definitions of the ecumenical councils of the 5th–7th centuries, developed against the Nestorian, Monophysite and Monothelite heresies, each of which represents a direct contradiction to one of the three existing logical conditions for the true idea of ​​Christ. To explain this with a comparison from the natural world - man, as a comparatively higher being, acting on some lower animal, cannot appear to him in the fullness of his human life; but those organic forms in which, for example, a dog perceives the appearance of its owner, belong only to the mind of the animal, without in any way limiting or changing the own existence of the person perceived by it. These words are sometimes understood as if Christ were saying to the tempter: do not tempt Me, for I am the Lord Your God. But this would not make any sense, because Christ is tempted not as God, but as a man. In fact, Christ's second objection, like Nervous, represents a direct response to what is proposed by the tempter; it is proposed to tempt God with a bold action, and against this, as against the first proposal, Christ refers to Scripture - in the present case, to that saying of his that prohibits tempting God. In the area of ​​pre-Christian religions, we find one significant difference: either a person slavishly worships the actual foundations of natural life, seeing in them the direct action of a higher power, or, on the contrary, he resolutely denies natural existence as evil and a lie and, ascetically suppressing material life within himself, seeks God in abstract contemplation. Only the first kind of religion (purely naturalistic) is the direct opposite of Christianity, and I now have them in mind. The second kind of religion is only a preparation and transition to Christianity. It is known that the Hebrew word, translated by us as “hovering” (above the water), means actually hatching (chicks), as a result of which Ev. Basil the Great in his “Six Days” likens the Spirit of God to an eagle that hatches and hatches its children. The dove image of the Spirit of God is probably connected with this.