Глава вторая Бог в душе человека

1. How does God reveal himself in a person’s soul? Why do animals, some of which are gifted with considerable intelligence, not see God in nature and do not show any signs of worship? Peaceful animals are affectionate only to humans and serve him as a master. Why does only one person see God in nature? Because the soul of man is significantly different from the soul of animals, because man is created in the image of God, and since only like can understand like, then one person sees God in His wondrous creations of the world and in himself and strives for Him. Just as the highest of inanimate objects on earth, plants, strive upward towards the sun with the power given to them, so man, the highest of living beings on earth, strives with his soul towards the spiritual sun - the Lord God. What is the image of God in man? God is the highest Spirit, therefore the image of God is imprinted in the human soul, although the high qualities of the spirit are reflected in the human body, therefore not only the soul, but also his very body is directed towards heaven. The image of God is imprinted in the properties and powers of the soul; it was the Lord who gave man an immortal soul that has no end to its existence. God has neither beginning nor end of existence, and the soul has no end of existence. God gave man a rational, free soul with a loving heart. Just as He Himself is the Almighty of the universe, so man is the king of the creatures of the earth. These are the features of the image of God in man! We talked about the immortality of the human soul earlier (in the book “From the Realm of the Mysterious”), and now let’s talk about how the image of God is imprinted in the three main powers of the soul: in the mind with which a person knows, in the will with which he desires, and in the heart with which he feels. How is the image of God imprinted on the human mind? The Lord God is the highest Mind, and He gave man such a mind that has the ability to develop unusually quickly and be filled with knowledge; We see that youths and youths, over the course of seven or eight years, acquire the basic knowledge of everything that exists in the world, knowledge that was acquired by many generations over the course of entire millennia, but the human mind, developing and improving, the more it acquires knowledge, the more it sees that this knowledge is still imperfect and incomplete, and, moving forward and forward, it does not see the limit in achieving the completeness of knowledge. While the knowledge of animals is limited to very narrow limits and relates only to the satisfaction of their bodily needs, man strives to know everything, for knowledge is food for his mind; he is not content with knowledge of earthly objects necessary for his bodily life, he invents and arranges various complex tools in order to penetrate the secrets of the distant star world; seeing the dependence of some objects on others, ascending from consequences to their causes, he strives to know the first Creator of all things, and this desire is embedded in the very essence of his spirit. The human soul not only thinks, desires and feels, but also, as in a mirror, sees its thoughts, desires and feelings. This is human self-awareness. Although man consists of body and soul, and although the actions of body and soul are very diverse and heterogeneous, they are all reflected in his single consciousness, and man attributes all these actions to himself alone. Therefore, he, aware of a single principle in himself, and also seeing harmony, order and general forces and laws in the world, recognizes a single Author and Ruler of the universe. Man sees that what dominates him is the mind. Through the mind he not only knows himself and the world around him, but also controls himself, controls his body, which is only an instrument of the soul, through the mind he controls the objects of the visible world and reigns over animate creatures, he does not take a step without a goal, without a mind, therefore he represents God as nothing other than the highest Mind, who created everything with wise purposes, and in fact comprehends many of the goals and intentions of the Creator in His creatures. The Psalmist says: He who made the eye will not see? It is natural to ask: is not the one who created a rational person a rational Being? The Lord did everything so that man would recognize His existence and know Him; He gave man a high mind, but at the same time, calling him from non-existence to existence, he imprisoned his spirit in a small body, dependent on the surrounding world, and placed him in the midst of a vast universe that amazed him with the grandeur and wisdom of its structure. However, in order to have confidence in the existence of the highest Being - the all-wise Creator of the world, very little knowledge is not required. God arranged it in such a way that even though people had far from complete knowledge about the objects of the world, this knowledge, accessible even to uneducated people, can and does awaken the thought placed by the Creator Himself in the depths of their souls about Him as an all-perfect, highest Being; a person from the beginning sees from afar that highest Being, to Whom he must strive and approach with his mind, will, and heart. We would call anyone crazy who would argue that the houses in which we live, the churches in which we pray, and other objects constructed by human hands for various purposes were created by themselves from soulless matter. Even more insane are those who claim that this wisely structured world with its heterogeneous and, finally, rational creatures appeared by itself from matter (Heb. 3:4). Non-recognition of the existence of God is not only madness, but also a grave crime and a great sin, for which those who fall into it will be judged. In one place, thieves stole the horses of the peasants, but the peasants caught up with them and said: “You stole our horses.” "No! - they answer, “they themselves ran after our horses.” But the peasants say: “This horse is ours, and he is put in your cart.” Then one of the thieves, after a pause, said: “Yes, he harnessed himself.” The peasants presented them to the authorities, and the court sentenced the kidnappers to punishment. All the more subject to condemnation are those who claim that man and this wisely structured world were formed by themselves, that there is no one in the world higher and more intelligent than man on whom he would depend, and they say this because they are not now being punished by God for this. But there will be a judgment against them, in which they will be unanswerable. This is what the Holy Spirit says through the mouth of the Apostle: 36 (Rom. 1:20). How is the image of God revealed in the will of man? God is an all-free Being, but loving and doing only good, He is an all-holy Being. And man is given such freedom that to some extent he can resist even the will of God. But since man’s bliss depends on freely becoming like the Lord God in good deeds, God gave man an internal legislator; this legislator is a moral feeling, or conscience. Conscience does three things: first, it legislates, or shows what a person should do and what not to do; just as the mind shows him what is true and what is false, so conscience shows him what is good and what is evil. Conscience in relation to God commands love and reverent veneration; in relation to your neighbors, he commands you not to do to them what you do not want for yourself; secondly, conscience judges a person’s deeds that he has done, and thirdly, it rewards him with approval and peace of mind for good deeds and punishes him with remorse and torment for bad deeds. It is obvious that all this is characteristic mainly and primarily of the Lord God. Just as the human mind represents God as the highest Mind, so conscience, this wondrous reflection of the Divine in man, speaks of God as an all-holy and just Being. In the visible world, God is only a wise Legislator, and not a Judge and Giver of Rewards, for His laws are fulfilled by inanimate nature and animals not freely, but steadily and unchangeably, and in a free person God for the first time on earth, precisely in his conscience, is an all-holy Being, a just Judge and Giver of Rewards. The judgment of conscience in a person cannot be explained by anything other than the fact that there really is God, the Judge and the Rewarder, who has deeply implanted a sense of conscience in a person’s soul to constantly remind him of the real judgment of God over people that is about to take place. How great and irresistible the effect of conscience is, this is evident from the fact that the most brutal criminals often, with little evidence and even voluntarily, at the mere prompting of conscience, reveal their grave crimes to people. The strength of conscience is also seen in the fact that all peoples have concepts of good and evil, and these concepts are comparatively purer and more consistent with each other than mental ideas about the Divine Himself, which for many are very distorted. The fulfillment of moral laws, which are based on the truth of the existence of a just God, confirms the peace of the virtuous, the well-being of human families and societies, and it cannot be that the good of nations is based on lies, as those who do not believe in God think. Fulfilling the law requires great internal struggle and is often associated with external sorrows. And who could impose the yoke of moral duties on peoples if they were not placed by God in the very essence of the soul and if the thought of God, the Judge and the Giver were not rooted in it? To overcome the aspirations of his lower nature, which attracts sin, a person uses great efforts. What happens in it is similar to what happens in a plant. A seed buried in the ground is enveloped by it; in addition, it is drawn down by the force of gravity, but with its inner strength it tries to break out, upward, and therefore bypasses various obstacles on the way, and if it breaks out into the light, then true life begins for it, otherwise death threatens it. So a person, with the spiritual inner strength invested in him, tries to overcome the aspirations of the lower nature, which draws him to the earth, and rushes to heaven, for there is true life for him. Now let us turn to the third main force of the soul, the heart. Whether we love or not love with our hearts, we feel the beautiful, the pleasant and the unpleasant. God is Love, is the highest spiritual beauty. God is an all-satisfied and all-blessed Being. The love of God is the reason for the creation of rational beings for eternal bliss, and this bliss can be achieved by creatures only through love for God. A person’s love for God is the main all-animating principle in all aspects of spiritual life, due to the great influence of the heart on the mind and will of a person. Love in the heart of a person begins from the knowledge of the mind about God, but when the heart loves God and strives for Him, then the knowledge about God increases and becomes stronger in the person. Whoever loves someone constantly thinks about it. Love for God and thought of God are inseparable. Only true love for God with a pure heart is able to comprehend “the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10), as far as this is possible for a created being. The Savior Himself said: “Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). And the holy Apostle Paul wrote: “Whoever thinks that he knows something, still knows nothing, as he ought to know. But whoever loves God has been given knowledge from Him” (1 Cor. 8:2-3). A heart that loves God strengthens a person’s will and consoles him on the difficult path of fulfilling his moral duty, encourages him to do good to both his neighbors and his enemies; only love is capable of amazing feats of selflessness. But man is damaged by sin, and the first sin mainly occurred from the heart, which was seduced by the beautiful fruits of the tree of paradise and desired to delight in Divine perfections. And now the main root of sin is in the heart. The Savior said: “from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy” (Matthew 15:19). It seeks only pleasures, without distinguishing between permitted and unlawful pleasures, and without distinguishing between the means to satisfy the thirst for pleasure. It is mainly the source of the gravest of sins - atheism. The thought of God, the Judge and the Rewarder is heavy and bitter for a heart defiled by sins; he would like to judge others. A damaged heart will not go where they talk about God. It does not love God, but fears Him. It tries to darken and obscure the eyes of the mind, which clearly sees God, it tries to drown out the voice of conscience, speaking loudly about God, and often succeeds and drives a person to madness, as the holy King David said: “The fool says in his heart: there is no God” (Ps. 13:1). The Lord endures for a long time, for real life is a time of education and testing. He even wants to convert an unbelieving heart to Himself with good deeds, but it is even more forgotten. Finally, the Lord begins to heal the heart greedy for pleasure with bitter medicines; He will strike the heart of the wicked more than once or twice with sorrows and troubles, and it is partly rightly said: trouble alone does not go away; this means that one beat does not soften a hardened heart. The stricken heart begins to look around: in fact, is there a higher Being above it; addresses the mind, and the mind has long been ready to talk about God; in the mind there are often thoughts and thoughts that are opposite, that is, both for a known object and against it; this also happens in relation to the existence of God; but thoughts that speak against the existence of God, weak in themselves, first pleased the heart, and it approved of them, willingly put them together, inclined the mind to place them in the foreground and acted so imperceptibly and cunningly that it seemed to the mind as if it itself had reached the point of conviction in the non-existence of God. This often happens between people: a person believes that he acts according to his own mind, according to his own conviction, and yet, in a certain matter, his mind was directed cunningly and cunningly from afar by others. So, when the heart, stricken by troubles, wants to learn from the mind the very truth about the existence of God, then those thoughts and knowledge that speak about God and which were hitherto in the shadows will appear in the mind, and since they are incomparably stronger, then the mind and heart will see God, and conscience will speak to the heart: all these troubles are for you because you have forgotten God and sinned against Him, and here is an unbeliever, not acquiring new knowledge of sciences, without relearning, one becomes different, a believer in God. Of course, not every heart is enlightened by disasters, but for many they have a beneficial effect; This is evidenced by experiments not only with many individuals, but also with entire tribes and peoples. In the second half of the last century, unbelief developed in France and spread throughout Europe, but the Lord God from the same France raised a storm of military disasters. It swept far to the east and returned again to where it originated, causing many troubles and sorrows to the peoples of Europe, but the darkness of unbelief weakened for quite a long time. So, according to the words of the wise King Solomon, who did not deny his heart anything and thereby caused many troubles to his kingdom, let us “keep our heart above all else, for from it are the sources of life” (Proverbs 4:23). Let no sources of death flow from it for us. If we subordinate his desires to the voice of reason and conscience and kindle in him the flame of love for God, then God will be with us and in us. Through consideration and study of objects of visible nature and the powers of the human spirit, we not only become convinced of the existence of God, but also cognize the properties of the Divine nature. The general laws of gravity, light and heat operating throughout the world, harmony and order in the universe speak of the unity of the Creator and Provider of the universe. The innumerable number of heavenly bodies, their enormity and distance from us striking the minds of natural scientists, testifies to the omnipotence of the Creator of the worlds. The wise arrangement of the objects of the visible world, and finally, the high intelligence given to man, loudly speak of the highest, wise and omniscient mind of the Creator of creatures. Life everywhere on earth, in the earth, in the air, in the waters, and in small drops of water clearly testifies to the goodness of the Creator. Freedom and conscience of man assure that the Lord God is an all-free, all-holy and just Being. The heart speaks of Him as of all-perfect love, as of an all-blessed and all-satisfied Being. Let us thank the Lord for the fact that He created us in His image, gave us the strength to know Him, made us kings and priests of nature, so that from ourselves and from all foolish creatures we offer Him prayers, praises and glorifications and, becoming like Him with good deeds, achieve eternal glory in heaven. (See: Sergius, Archbishop of Vladimir. Conversations about the foundations, truths, holy rights, faith.) 2. The doctrine of the existence of God by St. fathers, presented in the form of questions and answers Question. A person, reflecting on his being, cannot ascend to faith in God? Answer. St. John Chrysostom says: “If a look at the beauty of the world excites a well-minded contemplator to glorify the Creator, how much more does this rational animal, man, reflecting on his structure, on the high honor given to him, on the great gifts and unspeakable benefits, can constantly praise the Author of these blessings and lift up all possible praise to the Lord” 37 . St. Basil the Great says: “Accurate knowledge of yourself will provide you with sufficient guidance to know God. For if you delve into yourself, then you will not need to look for the Creator by examining the structure of the universe; but in yourself, as in some small world, you will see the great wisdom of your Creator. From the incorporeality of the soul that is in you, conclude that God is incorporeal. It is also not limited by place: since your mind does not have a specific residence in any place, but only because of its connection with the body is contained together. Believe that God is invisible, knowing about your soul that it is also invisible to the eyes of the body, for it has neither color, nor appearance, nor any bodily outline, but is known only from actions. Therefore, do not try to see God with your bodily eyes, but, trusting your mind, comprehend Him mentally” 38. Question. Is a person capable of fully knowing God in this life? Answer. St. Basil the Great says: “It must be noted that the greatness of God and glory, as an object not comprehended by words and not comprehensible to the mind, cannot be imagined and depicted in one word or thought. In many of the words we use, God-inspired scripture, as if through a glass darkly, says something fortune-tellingly only to the pure in heart. For face to face sight and perfect knowledge are promised to those who are worthy in the age to come. And now, whether Paul or Peter, although he truly sees what he sees, and is not deceived, and does not dream, he nevertheless sees as through a glass darkly and guesses, and now accepts it with thanksgiving somewhat and in part, but expects complete pleasure in the next century. And those knowledges that now seem perfect, in comparison with the knowledge that will be revealed to the worthy in the future age, are so small and so dark that they differ more from the bright knowledge of the future age than there is a difference between seeing through a glass darkly and fortune-telling and seeing face to face, for everyone always lacks something towards perfection until we achieve what is perfect, “when that which is in part is ceased” (1 Cor. 13.10)" 39 Question. Didn’t God communicate to people knowledge about Himself throughout the entire visible world? Answer. St. Anthony the Great says: “Why was man created? So that, when looking at God’s creations, he contemplates God and glorifies the One who created them for man” 40. St. John Chrysostom says: “Imagine how many creatures have been created in order to know God - not what He is in essence, but that He exists. So Paul says: “Now it is fitting for him who comes to God to believe, just as he is” (Heb. 11:6). All creatures proclaim about Him - “from the majesty of the beauty of creatures, their creator is comparatively known” (Wisdom 13:5), - the very structure of man, the honor granted to him by God, punishments, benefits, orders foretold by the prophets, various miracles; and after all this, the Only Begotten Himself came and completed the wondrous and terrible economy of our salvation. And yet, there are people who do not yet know such a clear truth! So you say you don't know God? No, I know that He exists, that He loves mankind, that He is good, that He provides, and everything else that is said in the scriptures; but what He is essentially, I don’t know.”41 St. Ephraim the Syrian says: “Everything cries out for God, daily proclaims His glory; and dumb creatures do not cease to praise Him. “The heavens will tell the glory of God, but the firmament will proclaim the work of His hands” (Ps. 18:2). The earth proclaims His praise; the sea preaches His wonderful power. You will not find anything that does not glorify the Lord your God. And the insignificant mosquito proclaims the glory of his Lord" 42. Question. What knowledge about God is given to us in the Holy Scriptures? Answer. In the Holy Scriptures it is revealed to us that the very essence of God is incomprehensible, not contemplated by anyone, although God showed Himself to people in various images; that God is one in essence, but threefold in persons or hypostases; that the properties of the being of God are the following: 1) God is an incorporeal Spirit, although human members and bodily actions are attributed to Him; 2) He is the purest, the most holy; 3) He is the highest, most excellent over everything; 4) He is original; 5) all-satisfied, all-blessed; 6) eternal, this; 7) unchangeable; 8) omnipresent; 9) omniscient; 10) wise; 11) omnipotent; 12) all-good; 13) Creator; 14) Almighty and incomprehensible Provider and 15) just and holy. Question. Does not God, by his incomprehensible being, resemble anything visible or invisible? Answer. St. Dionysius the Areopagite says: “God has no resemblance to anything that exists” 43. He also said: “The incomprehensible Deity, by His highest nature, surpasses and surpasses all other beings; nothing that exists, actually and completely, can be called similar to Him” 44. Question. During visions or revelations of God, did the very being of God appear to people? Answer. St. John Chrysostom says: “How did John say: “No one has seen God anywhere” (John 1:18)? It is clear that all the visions were only adaptive, and not visions of the very essence of God: for if pious men saw His very essence, then, of course, they could not see it differently; because it is simple, has no form, is indescribable, does not sit, does not stand, does not walk, since all this belongs only to bodies. How God adapts to man, only He Himself knows; and about this adaptation he speaks through the mouth of the prophet: “I multiplied visions, and became like in the hands of the prophets,” i.e.: I adapted to them (Hos. 12:10), but did not show myself in my whole being” 45. St. Macarius of Egypt says: “As God Himself favored and how useful it was, He appeared to each of the holy fathers, otherwise to Abraham, otherwise to Isaac, otherwise to Jacob, otherwise to Noah, Daniel, David, Solomon, Isaiah and each of the holy prophets, otherwise to Elijah, otherwise to Moses. Whatever He wants is convenient for Him, and, diminishing Himself as He pleases, He brings fruit and transforms Himself, becoming visible to those who love Him, out of great and inexpressible love; in the unapproachable glory of the light, being worthy, in proportion to the strength of each” 46. St. Ephraim the Syrian says: “You say: why did the Gospel say: “No one has seen God anywhere” (John 1:18)? No one saw the greatness or nature of God; but the saints saw God in symbols: Moses in the bush fire, Job in the storm, Isaiah in the cloud, Paul in the light, all Israel in a voice; and now the saints see that they are guided by actions, as if by something in between” 47 . Blessed Theodore, Bishop of Cyrus, says: “I multiplied the visions, and became like them in the hands of the prophets” (Hos. 12:10). He does not say: we saw, but we became like. The likeness of an object is not the very nature of a visible object; for example, a portrait of a king, no matter how striking the resemblance of the image to the face depicted, does not represent the nature of the king.”48 Question. What secret of God's being is revealed to people? Answer. God is one in essence, but three in persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. “And Jesus was baptized, and went up from the water: and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and in the sight of the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and coming upon Him. And behold a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, and in him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17). And Jesus Christ Himself said to the apostles: “Going... teach all languages, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). St. John the Theologian says: “There are three who testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one” (1 John 5:7). St. Athanasius of Alexandria says: “When the Spirit is in you, then the Word giving the Spirit is in you, and in the Word is the Father. And thus the spoken word is fulfilled: “I and the Father will come and make our abode with Him” (John 14:23). For where there is light, there is radiance, and where there is radiance, there is effectiveness and luminous grace. And teaching this also, Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his second letter, saying: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13). For the grace and gift given in the Trinity is given from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, because just as the grace given by the Son is from the Father, so there cannot be a fellowship of giving in us, except in the Holy Spirit; Having received Him, we have the love of the Father, and the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit Himself” 49 . He also says: “The three hypostases must be presented as inseparable from each other, as we imagine people physically, so that we, like the pagans, do not introduce polytheism; but representing, as it were, a river, which, starting from the source, is not separated from it, although there are two types and two names. For the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, because the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Father’s Son. Just as a source is not a river, and a river is not a source, but both are one and the same water, flowing from the source into the river: so the Divinity from the Father is not merged and does not remain separate in the Son, as the Lord says: “I departed from the Father... and I go to the Father” (John 16:28). The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father, always remains in the hands of the sending Father and the bearer of the Son, and with Him He fills all things. The Father, having being from Himself, begat the Son, but did not create it - He gave birth, like a river from a source, like a plant from a root, like radiance from light, yet we see this inseparably in nature” 50 . St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, says: “The one dove and the holy bride (the Church) confesses God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit - the perfect Father, the perfect Son and the perfect Holy Spirit, the Trinity consubstantial, the Trinity not merged - the Son, truly begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, not alien to the Father and the Son - an ever-essential Trinity, without never increment, not containing in itself anything lower and being raised to one unity and one principle of God and the Father" 51 . St. Maximus the Confessor says: “There is One Divinity, beginningless, simple, essential, neither complex nor separate. It is one and at the same time Trinity. The Godhead consists of three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; but both in the Father, so in the Son, equally in the Holy Spirit, there is one essentially Divinity. The Divinity is not separate: because the Father is not incomplete God, neither are the Son and the Holy Spirit... But the entire Divinity is entirely in the entire Father, and also entirely in the entire Son and, finally, entirely in the entire Holy Spirit. Consequently, the whole Father is wholly in the whole Son and Spirit, and likewise the whole Son is wholly in the whole Father and Spirit; likewise, the Holy Spirit is entirely present in all the Father and the Son. None of the three persons of the Godhead exists or can be imagined separately from the other” 52. On the African coast, in the city of Ippon, Blessed Augustine wrote his thoughtful book about the Holy Trinity. Tired of the extreme tension of his mind, trying to penetrate the deepest of secrets, the great writer went out to the seashore for a walk. Enjoying the evening air, from time to time directing his gaze now to the sky, now to the wide sea, Augustine, however, did not let the subject of his research out of his thoughts. Suddenly he noticed on the seashore a youth of extraordinary beauty, who was scooping water from the sea with a small silver spoon and pouring it into a small hole. This is the occupation of the blessed youth. Augustine at first considered it an ordinary childish prank, but a secret feeling prompted him to approach the youth. When asked what he was doing, the boy answered: “I want to scoop up this sea and place it in this hole.” “But this is clearly impossible,” said Augustine. “Of course, it’s impossible,” the boy answered, “but I would rather scoop up this sea with my spoon and place it in this hole than you would penetrate with your mind the unknown secret of the Holy Trinity and place it in your book.” So the boy said and instantly became invisible 53. Appendix A. Testimonies of philosophers, scientists and writers about the existence of God True scientists have always been very careful about all kinds of denials, and even more so about the denial of God. They always understood that the direct duty and purpose of science is to seek and seek explanations for everything that is incomprehensible to it. All facts and phenomena, no matter how mysterious and wonderful they may seem at first glance, cannot be rejected by science; It would be a complete departure from the very fundamental purpose of science to deny an unexplained fact or reject an incomprehensible phenomenon, for in the end, sooner or later, they all must receive their scientific explanation, thus becoming completely clear data of science. Leibniz directly warns everyone against the mistakes of denial. He says: “I have always found that most teachings have been true in what they affirm, and almost always wrong in what they deny,” i.e. in what they recognized as absurd. In these simple words one can clearly see the comprehensive thoughtfulness due to which Leibniz separates great thinkers and people truly devoted to science from amateurs and the half-educated crowd. It is usually customary to judge in the opposite way: to call smart people those who like denial, who can find the funny side in everything, who scold everyone, who do not approve of anything, but only deny. These individuals completely lose sight of the fact that every statement - perhaps not entirely accurate or even completely erroneous - is still a product of thought or research, which still has some basis, while simple denial, without a serious and thorough refutation, is always a product of ignorance and misunderstanding. True science has never expressed itself in the sense of denying God; No one can show us such an example, because it never happened. On the contrary, the deeper a person’s knowledge, the more definite his concept of knowledge of the Divine; In this sense, at least many scientists spoke out, and even Newton said: “The further a person penetrates the secrets of nature, the more clearly the unity of the eternal plan is revealed to him.” For greater clarity, we present the true expressions of great scientists. 1. Anaxagoras was the first in philosophy to express the opposition between sensory matter and rational Spirit (Historical philosophy of Bauer). 2. Socrates concluded his famous speech, delivered after the death sentence was announced, with the following words: “Now it is time for us to part, for me to die, for you to live; but which of us awaits the best fate is known to no one except God” (Apology of Socrates). 3. Plato argued that the concept of the existence of God is inherent in every person and that it excites and captivates our souls with the consciousness of our affinity with Him. “God,” he says, “is the One Being, embracing all others and containing in Himself the cause of everything that exists in heaven and on earth. God is the highest idea." From whatever point of view we look at Plato’s cosmogony, whether we accept that God created the idea or that He only transformed formless matter according to the model of ideas - in both cases, according to the teachings of Plato, God is the highest Idea of ​​all being, He is the Great Reason, the Source of all reason - the Sun, by whose light the world is illuminated. God is perfection, He is always the same, envy is alien to Him, and He always wants only good things. It is impossible for mortals to know God perfectly; one can only have an approximate idea of ​​Him or of what He is related to. He must be good because he is pleased with Himself, just as the world must be beautiful because it was created by Him. But why did God create the world? Because God is alien to envy and wants everything to be as similar to Him as possible. By bringing order to chaos, God turned it into Beauty. (Lewis, vol. 1, p. 215.) 4. Descartes taught: “In order to know the nature of God, as far as it is accessible to my nature, I must only think about each thing, the idea of ​​which I have in myself, whether it would be perfection or a defect to own it. I can be sure that everything marked by any imperfection is absent from Him, everything perfect is found in Him. Thus, in Him there cannot be doubt, inconstancy, sadness and similar things, which I would be glad not to have. Further, I have ideas about many physical and sensory things, for although I assumed that I was in a dream state and that everything I saw and imagined was a deception, I had to admit, however, that these ideas were really present in my thoughts. But, knowing very clearly that in me the rational nature is completely separated from the bodily nature, and considering that any composition testifies to dependence, and dependence is clearly a deficiency, we conclude that to be composed of two natures would not be perfection for God and that, therefore, there is no such composition in Him. And if there are any bodies, minds or other natures in the universe that do not have perfection, then all of their existence must depend on His power, so that without Him they could not exist for one moment. Finally, if there are still people who are not convinced by the above arguments of the existence of God and their soul independently of the body, then let them know that all other things in which they perhaps believe more, such as that they have a body, that there are stars, earth, and the like, are less reliable.” (M. Lyubimov. Philosophy. Descartes. pp. 117–119.1886.) 5. Lord Bacon of Verulam found that the doctrine of God should not be separated in a person’s views from the religious concept that the Church instills; just as we must obey God’s law against our will, so we must also adapt to faith where it contradicts our nature. The more supernatural the divine mystery appears, the more glory we give to God when we believe in it. (Bauer. History of philosophy.) 6. Newton in his “Optics” says this: “The original structure of such extremely skillful parts of animals as eyes, ears, brain, muscles, heart, etc., also the instinct of animals and insects - all this cannot be the work of anything other than the wisdom and art of a powerful, ever-living Actor, Who, being in all places, can move bodies and thus form and transform parts of the world much more easily than we can move parts at our will our body. We do not, however, look at the world as the body of God and the parts of the world as parts of God. God is a monotonous being, devoid of organs, members or parts, and they are His creatures, subordinate to Him and serving His will.” “The sense organs do not serve to perceive the images of things, but only to bring these images to the senses, but God has no need for such organs, since He is everywhere inherent in the things themselves.” (Fears. The world as a whole.) 7. Leibniz considered the correct concept of God inevitable and necessary; for if there were not in God, the Creator of the world, a sufficient reason for the existence of the latter, and moreover, if there were not sufficient conditions and certain ways in us for the management of everything that exists, then one could ask with complete justice why “nothing” is not better than “something”? God, who serves as the basis of all existence, existing solely by His inner necessity, must naturally unite in Himself all reality, all perfections; He is a limitless being, alien to any negation, absolute intelligence; That’s why there can only be one God, He alone is completely sufficient.” (Bauer. History of philosophy.) 8. Kant: “We postulate the existence of God as the basis of a moral pattern of action.” (Lange. T. 1, p. 272.) “Two things,” he says at the conclusion of his work (Kr. der. pract. vern., 194), “fill me with ever-new and growing amazement and fear, the more often and longer I think about them. This is the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. I should by no means think of both as hidden from myself in some kind of darkness or lying in infinity beyond my horizon; I really see both of them before me, and my existence is directly connected with their existence. The stellar world begins from the very place that I occupy in the external sensory world, and expands my connection with the surrounding into the boundless extent of worlds upon worlds and systems upon systems... The moral law has its beginning in my invisible self, in my personality, and makes me a member of another world, truly infinite, but accessible only to rational knowledge. And in this new world I find myself no longer a random link, but in a necessary and common connection (with other creatures similar to me). A glance at the starry sky with its infinite worlds destroys all my significance as a physical being; it reminds me that I will have to give to our planet (which itself is only a point in an infinite world) my body, in which a small part of the substance for a short time and in an incomprehensible way received vital force. But a glance at the moral law inherent in my personality again and endlessly raises my importance, and precisely as a rational being. This law opens up a new life for me, independent of my animal nature and even of the entire sensory world, at least insofar as I expediently submit in my actions to this moral order, not limited by the conditions and boundaries of this life, but extending to infinity.” 9. Pascal: “The divinity of Christians does not lie simply in God, only in the Creator of geometric truths and systems of elements - this belongs to the pagans. It does not simply lie in God, who influences the lives and well-being of people in order to give a happy passage of life to those who bow before Him - this is the lot of the Jews. But the God of Abraham and Jacob, the God of Christians, is the God of love and consolation; this is God who fills the chosen soul and heart, God who makes them feel their moral poverty and His infinite mercy; finally, God connecting with their soul and filling it with bliss, joy, trust and love. The God of Christians is the God who makes the soul feel that He is its only good, that all its peace lies in Him and that its joy is to love the Creator, Who at the same time makes it hate the obstacles that hold back and do not allow it to love Him with all its might. Self-love and lust, which hold back the soul, are intolerable for Him. God makes her feel that although she fundamentally has self-love, He alone is able to heal her from it. This is how you need to understand God in a Christian way; but in order to recognize Him, you must at the same time be imbued with your moral poverty and your vileness and know that you need a mediator in order to get closer to Him and unite with Him. Such feelings should not be separated, because in this case they are not only useless, but also dangerous. Knowing God without understanding our moral poverty gives rise to pride. The knowledge of our moral poverty without the knowledge of Christ produces despair, because in Him we find God, our poverty and the only way to improve it. We can know God without knowing our weaknesses, or know our weaknesses without knowing the means to get rid of them; but we cannot know Christ without knowing at the same time God, and our weaknesses, and the remedies for them, because Christ is not only God, but he is the God who corrects our weaknesses. Thus, those who seek God without Christ do not find a satisfactory or truly complete light for themselves, because either they do not reach the consciousness of God alone, or if they do, it is useless for themselves, because they find means to get closer to God without an intermediary, just as they knew Him without an intermediary; consequently, they fall either into atheism or deism - two things that are almost equally not recognized by the Christian religion.” (Thoughts. pp. 244–246.) 10. Kepler, having discovered three great, amazing laws on which modern astronomy is based, exclaims at the conclusion of his work “The Harmony of the World”: O Thou, Who, through the light of nature, made us desire passionately the light of Thy mercy, in order to reveal to us the light of Thy glory: I thank Thee, my Creator and God, for allowing me to be amazed at Thy creations and to love them. I have now completed the feat of my life, fully confident that the Creator gave me the strength to accomplish it. I told people the glory of Your creations as far as my mind could understand their majestic infinity. My feelings turned to finding the truth; and as far as it was possible for me, I sought her out with all justice and sincerity. If I, an insignificant worm before You, born in sin, have expressed something contrary to Your good intentions, may the Holy Spirit inspire it in me so that I can correct it. If the wondrous beauty of Your creations has elevated my soul, and if I have sought glory among men as I have advanced in my work, destined only for Your glorification, then forgive me according to Your goodness and mercy and cause all my works to tend to Your glory and contribute to the good of people. Glorify the Lord, O heavenly harmonies, and you who comprehend earthly harmony, glorify Him! May my soul glorify the Creator throughout my entire life! In Him and in Him exists everything that we comprehend and that we do not yet comprehend, because there is still much work to be done on what we leave unfinished!” 11. Wallace. “It is a great step forward that, instead of all this complex theory, which gives rise to countless dilemmas and contradictions, we can propose a much simpler and more fundamental opinion, namely: matter does not exist as an entity distinct from force, and that force, in turn, is a product of the spirit.” Philosophy has long shown that we cannot prove the existence of matter, as it is usually understood, and at the same time it assumed, as proven for each of us, our own, self-conscious existence. Now science has arrived at the same result as philosophy, and this agreement should give us confidence in what they teach us together. 12. Darwin, regarding the gradual improvement of the eye at various stages of the organic ladder, says: “Let this process take place over millions of years and during each year in millions of individuals of different species; Can’t we believe that a living optical instrument could in this way become as much more perfect than a glass instrument as the works of the Creator are more perfect than the works of men?” (Orig. of spec, VI edit., p. 146.)—On the last page of this work (Vol. IV, p. 429) we find the following words: “There is greatness in the view of life with its various powers, according to which it was originally breathed by the Creator into a few or into one form.” 13. Karl Vocht in “The Natural History of the Universe” (trans. Palkhovsky. Moscow, 63, p. 18), speaking about celestial bodies, ends the chapter with the following words: “How great and how simple this whole process is! Only the Divine could conceive and carry it out; a person can only reflect on it and explore it. And, of course, through this we approach in a direct way to our Majesty Father, Who can plan everything - we are co-present with Him and remain on His advice; if this is not possible, then fall into the dust and pray silently.” 14. Linnaeus, having completed his observations on the organization of plants, exclaimed: “The eternal, infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God passed by me. I did not see Him face to face, but the glimpse of the Divine filled my soul with silent wonder. I saw the trace of God in His creation; and everywhere, even in the smallest, most imperceptible of His works, what power! What wisdom! What indescribable perfection! I observed how animate beings, standing at the highest level, are connected with the kingdom of plants, and plants, in turn, with minerals that are in the depths of the globe, and how this very globe gravitates towards the Sun and in an invariable order revolves around it, receiving life from it. I saw the Sun and all the other stars, the entire solar system, the endless starry sky moving in space, supported in the void by the will of the incomprehensible prime mover, the Being of beings, the Cause of causes, the Ruler and Sustainer of the world, the Lord and Creator of every creation... All things bear the stamp of divine wisdom and power; they contain our goodness and the source of our happiness. In the benefit they bring to us, I see the goodness of their Creator, their beauty shows His wisdom, and their harmony is the continuation of their existence, their precise size and inexhaustible productivity show the power of this great God! Isn't this what you call providence? Yes, this is providence; it alone explains the structure of the world. So, it is fair to believe that there is God, an infinite, eternal Being, not originating from anyone, not created, without Whom nothing exists, Who created and arranged the world. He is invisible to our eyes, which he fills with the rays of His light; we only mentally comprehend Him, and His greatness lurks in the deep sanctuary of our spirit.” (God in nature. Flam. Page 5.) 15. M.P. Pogodin (about fashionable talk, pp. 25–26) says: “In nature there is an omnipresent, invisible, hidden force that produces... Here is a grain, here is a drop... How will a palm tree, a rose, an orange grow from this grain, or from this drop - a camel, a nightingale, a man?.. You don’t understand, philosophers, but you admit it, because you see this origin with your own eyes. And tell you - God, you deny Him. Is there no God? What is there? You are. - Where are you from? Did you create yourself, were you created, did you happen by yourself? Could there be anything more absurd than such positions that you run into when following the path of mental logic? Were you born by chance? Live somehow and die at random? And does this philosophy satisfy you? Does your mind present no more demands? Can you live in peace? Do you even want to live? Man arose by itself - and so the chicken created itself, was created, arose by itself and began to lay eggs. But where did the rooster fly up to her and offer his services? A chicken lays eggs, but doesn't it hatch from an egg? So, the egg came before the chicken? Where did this first egg come from? How did it happen? Does your science indulge in such simple questions and considerations? You attribute the entire creation to some kind of force: well, this is God. The word is just different. Or does your power have no consciousness, that is, does it perform miracles of wisdom, being itself insane? The audacity or narrow-mindedness of those philosophers who try to explain the inexplicable and feel helpless to explain everything is amazing. Moles dig in the ground, reason and argue about the sun, and between them there are wise men who offer evidence that there is no sun, and there cannot be. Ignorance applauds! Unfortunate! Much similar evidence could be found from various equally learned people, if not in their scientific works, then in their memoirs, in private correspondence and other works, for their biographies show that many of them were people of deep faith, such as: A. Humboldt, Boyle, Clerc, Ferme, Montepuis, D'Alembert, Liebig, John Vernoul, Buffon, Galileo, Haertley, Dalton, Bosuet, Copernicus, Cuvier, Lavater, Paracelsus, Priestley, Zöllner, Brehm, Helmholtz, Quetelet, Pasteur, Tylor, Faraday, Stahl, Berkeley, Fachner, Hellenbach, Reimarus, Charles Bonnet, Jean Reno, Dupont de Nemours and many others. As the reader can see, we present here the names of only highly outstanding scientists above the general level, whose names are written in indelible letters in the history of human knowledge. It would seem that such strong evidence from great scientists should serve as strong argumentation in favor of the opinion that the true meaning of human knowledge cannot lead to unbelief and the denial of God. It would be strange, of course, to draw their knowledge of God from the above testimonies of scientists, for to each of them their science revealed only an insignificant and infinitesimal part of the wisdom of God, from which they could only reach the conscious recognition of the entire necessity of faith in God and in His holy care for the world and people. – And this is already a great step and the most beneficial influence exerted by science in the history of the moral development of people; the very teaching about the greatness of God can, of course, be drawn only from the teaching of the Church, which constitutes the only correct teaching about God, above all scientific and philosophical attempts to recognize Him. B. Evidence of the existence of God 1. There is an immediate confidence in God in our spirit. We cannot think about the world, we cannot think about ourselves, without involuntarily connecting with this the thought of God. Through everything visible and finite, our thoughts rush to the highest, invisible, infinite, and their movement does not calm down until they reach their goal. We must necessarily think about God. The consciousness of God is as essential an element of our spirit as world consciousness and self-consciousness. The thought of God is an internal necessity of the spirit. Shouldn't we conclude it from internal necessity to the reality of its content outside of us? We cannot do otherwise. To think about God means to be confident in God. We cannot help but think about God and cannot think of Him otherwise than as truly existing: this is a necessity of our mind. 2. Because of this, it is also universal. It is not just any one person who has religion, but all people have it. “There is no such rude and wild people that would not have faith in God, even if they do not at the same time know His essence,” says Cicero. This classic saying states only an undeniable fact. It has been confirmed by the experience of thousands of years. Since the time of Cicero, more than half the world has been discovered, and traces of worship and religion have been found everywhere; There is not a single people who do not have the consciousness of God. It would be desirable for atheists to find a people consisting of pure atheists. But all their efforts in this regard were in vain. The blacks of Africa, the black New Hollanders, the savages of America - they all recognize a Supreme Being. Wherever people meet, religion inevitably appears there. Where, apparently, something opposite turned out to be, there it was only the consequence of superficial observation. Of course, the forms of religion seem infinitely different, and sometimes we can only find very pitiful traces of it, or it generally exists only in the most terrible distortion, but nevertheless, even in this distortion we can still catch its primitive features. Even if a people or a certain tribe falls almost to an animal degree of savagery and darkening of spirit, so that in it, apparently, all the nobility of human nature is completely extinguished, nevertheless, even in such a state, the memory of God does not disappear completely. But what is so universal, on which everyone agrees, cannot be false - as Cicero already proved this in his time, because it is necessarily rooted in the very essence of man. It was this truth that the apologists of the first centuries constantly put forward against the pagans: “We bear witness to God in our souls, we cannot help but know God and not be confident in Him,” they argued. One can, of course, deny this confidence in God, from which one still cannot free oneself. But in this case, you can only convince yourself not to recognize what, however, a person cannot help but know. Atheism is not a necessity of thought, but a matter of will, and precisely an arbitrary matter of it. The grounds given in his favor usually serve only to cover up his real motives. And how often do atheists go no further than the well-known argument of that Hindu who challenged the existence of God before the missionary only on the basis that he does not see Him, to which the latter rightly objected to him that he, too, does not see the mind of him, the Hindu. 3. Evidence of the existence of God has existed for a long time. We meet them already in pre-Christian philosophy: in Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. Christian theology and speculation took them only from there and developed them further. Their goal is not to prove what is still unknown, but only to justify immediate certainty also before the thinking mind, and their essential task is to indicate everywhere the traces of God, Whom we already know and recognize in our Heart. (Luthardt, An Apology for Christianity, pp. 27–30.) Let us present here in more detail the proofs of the existence of God: a) Historical proof of the existence of God. It is based on the universal recognition, dating back to prehistoric antiquity, of the invisible Supreme Being who dominates the visible world and man. We find evidence of the universality of such recognition among writers of the classical world, and confirmation of it among many modern ones. However, the strength of the proof lies not so much in the universality of the recognition, but in its inexplicability from external experience alone, which forces us to attribute to it a mental origin, i.e. see in it a statement of the rational nature of man. 54 b) Cosmological proof of the existence of God. Of all the proofs of the existence of God, based on considerations, demands and conclusions of our mind, the most generally understood, popular and generally convincing is cosmological, i.e. represented by the structure of the visible world. Due to its simplicity and obviousness, it requires almost no development. If a person does not look at the world through the eyes of an animal, seeing, apparently, only individual objects, and, moreover, closely related to his animal interests, namely from a reasonable point of view, and, moreover, in the integrity of the picture of the world that is possible for him, then he will see and recognize rationality and its manifestation only in the highest, astonishing degree of completeness, breadth and perfection. Hence the direct and inevitable conclusion that the world is the work and manifestation of the highest and all-encompassing Reason, inseparable from equally unlimited power. It is this infinitely intelligent and powerful Actor and World-Builder that faith calls God 55. c) Teleological proof of the existence of God. So, the completion of the cosmological proof of the existence of God constitutes a teleological proof. Its essence is the following: the invisible world-building principle, which reveals its existence and its rational nature in the structure of the whole world, manifests both more clearly and more clearly in that feature of the world order, which is understood by the word expediency. Let us define the fact that it expresses, limiting ourselves this time only to the earthly world, as it is known to us closer and more experienced. It is known that it represents a long and complex series of formations - from dead mineral masses to animate beings, from the simplest elements to the finest and most complex tissues of the human body. Between lower and higher, between the simplest and most complex formations, such a relationship is generally discerned that the former constitute the condition for the origin, existence and life of the latter and serve their interests - without realizing it. It is this relationship of the lowest types and forms of being to the highest, the simplest to the most complex and most perfect, a relationship similar to how in rational human activity material and formal means relate to its proposed goals, this relationship is what is meant by the term expediency. And just as in human activity conscious purposiveness serves as a sure sign of the reasonableness of the actor, so in the world purposiveness and planfulness, visible in everything, from the immense whole to the infinitely small, testifies to the all-encompassing and all-pervading Mind of the world-building 56. d) Psychic proof of the existence of God. Its essence is the following: delving into our mental life from its lower, only conscious manifestations - to the highest, moral and mental, we must come to the firm conviction that it is not a consistent modification of physiological life, but reveals the existence of a special principle, different from the organism, which we call the soul. Hence the inevitable question: what is the origin of this special principle? If it is not a direct product of a corporeal organism, then it is self-evident that it is not a product of material nature. That it is not an original principle is revealed even more clearly from its temporary and conditional appearance in the body. Where does it come from? There is only one answer to such an inevitable question: there must be some original and immaterial Origin, not identical with the world, but entering the world, acting in it and giving birth to a new world in its depths - rational-psychic and immaterial. e) Moral proof of the existence of God. The moral proof of the existence of God is based on the generally accepted fact that in addition to the external laws decreed in civil societies by the legislative branch, there is an internal law within man himself, which prescribes or prohibits many things that external legislation does not concern, leaving it to everyone’s own conscience. The requirements and prohibitions of this law are not recognized by people with the same clarity and strength, and therefore are often violated, especially under the influence of hobbies, passions, generally moral instability and unbridledness, and sometimes simply ignorance (as external law is also often violated); but there are not many who would not recognize it at least from time to time, and even fewer who would not recognize it at all. The most notorious villains sometimes expressed consciousness and recognition of it. Since ancient times, the fact of the existence of internal law has been understood in such a way that, in addition to human legislative power, there is another, Higher one, declaring its commands and prohibitions directly in the human soul: Divine power. Even in pagan antiquity, there were people who understood the suggestions and convictions of conscience precisely as the voice of the Divine, directly intelligible to the human soul. (A. Znamensky, professor of theology. “Notes on the subject of Orthodox Christian doctrine,” pp. 14–29.) One well-known Western apologist says the following about the undoubted fact of the existence of conscience in the human soul: “There is nothing more certain than conscience. To deny this fact would be to overthrow the basis of all certainty. This would mean, at the same time, to destroy the entire moral edifice of the world, because it ultimately rests on conscience. It would be absurd and vain to make a habitual exercise of thinking out of conscience. She, of course, can be mistaken and indeed often is. But does it follow from this that in general it is a delusion and a deception? It is the highest truths that are most susceptible to abuse. It must be developed: does it follow from this that it does not exist at all, but is only grafted in? Isn’t the spirit also subject to development in general? Can we therefore say that it does not exist? If we wanted to deny it, we would find ourselves in contradiction with the very fact of its existence. So, in the same way, if we wanted to deny conscience, we would also find ourselves in contradiction with the fact of its existence. We cannot deny conscience in good faith. Even when we try to deny it, it makes us feel its presence in us, punishing us internally. We cannot deny it without deceiving ourselves. Conscience is an undeniable fact. Being an actual force, conscience at the same time represents a majestic authority before which everyone bows. We can ignore her orders, but then we must hear her punishing voice. You can harden yourself against this punishing testimony, but you cannot ensure that it does not reverberate within us at all. Conscience is independent of our will. We cannot arbitrarily dispose of it, we cannot command it, but on the contrary, it commands us. We cannot correct and direct it at will, but on the contrary, it corrects and punishes us. We stand not above her, but below, and on the contrary, she stands not below, but above us. It follows that it does not come from our will and not from our thinking. It is not a product of our own spirit. It is the product of the moral Spirit, standing above and outside of us. And the voice of this Spirit speaks to us through conscience. Conscience is the last highest authority to which we appeal, the highest, decisive moral law in all things. It is, therefore, the product of the highest Spirit, the highest legislator, the unconditional moral Will. The fact of conscience serves as proof of the existence of God. The content of conscience is also evidence of God. The content of the testimony of conscience is that it exposes the moral law to us as the will of God and binds our will with the will of God. Therefore, Cicero already said: “The conviction of all truly wise people has always been that the moral law is not something invented by people or introduced by nations, but something eternal, according to which the whole world should be governed. The final foundation therefore rests in God, Who commands and forbids. And this law is as old as the Spirit of God. Therefore, the law on which every obligation is based is truth and, above all, the spirit of the supreme Deity.” Kant proved the existence of God from the necessity that an equation must take place between duty and inclination, between virtue and happiness, which in real life so often find themselves in conflict with each other. Hence, obviously, there must also be a higher equalizing Power. This argument expressed the base moral contemplation: there is a higher moral point of view that sees the reward in virtue itself, and does not expect any other special reward. But the truth underlying Kant's thought is the idea of ​​justice. There is justice, and at the same time there is also retribution. Or would it really be the highest truth to imagine that reward is given without reason, happiness without merit? This would be impossible, and our inner moral consciousness speaks against it. The highest being is that in which inner truth and outer reality are in harmony with each other. The present earthly existence is full of contradictions between truth and reality. We demand and desire that these contradictions, which so painfully affect our moral consciousness, find resolution in a harmonious, moral existence. This is our faith and our hope, without which we cannot do: they find and will finally find complete resolution in the faith of Christ from God the Judge, in the afterlife. (Luthardt, An Apology for Christianity, pp. 37–38.) f) Logical proof of the existence of God. Logical, or more precisely, abstract logical proof of existence is based on a direct conclusion from the obvious conditionality of everything given in experience, to the existence of the Self-Existing and Unconditional, the experience of the inaccessible, but undoubted for the thinking mind. In fact, a number of conditional reasons, i.e. those that are determined by other reasons, although it seems to the observer to be infinite, cannot really be infinite. Otherwise, he would all turn into something beginningless and causeless, he would represent the circumference of a circle without a center. This means that there must be something self-existent, original, conditioning everything conditional; such self-existent, primary, conditioning everything conditional is only God, Whom our thinking requires by its very nature. Thus, everything that makes man superior to animals: instinctive belief, common sense, moral sense, self-awareness, and finally, strict thinking, all irresistibly confirms us in the great truth of God’s existence. (Compiled by: A. Znamensky, professor of theology. Notes on the subject of Orthodox Christian doctrine, pp. 14–31; Luthardt. Apology of Christianity, pp. 37–38.) B. The best proof of the existence of God Of the experimental proofs of the existence of God, the strongest is the consciousness in oneself of the action of God when a person leads a God-like life. He who lives piously, according to the will of the Supreme Being, through the communication of his mind, heart and will with the highest truth, holiness and the highest good of his spirit, constantly becomes closer, more familiar, so to speak, with Him. And this rapprochement, this experimental interaction, on the one hand, attracting the power of God, on the other, giving it; on the one hand, a question, on the other, an answer, on the one hand, a quest, on the other, satisfaction; this rapprochement with God will make absolutely impossible any doubt about His existence. Just as a sensual person cannot doubt the existence of the air that he constantly inhales and exhales, so a spiritual person cannot doubt the existence of God when he draws his life from Him. Through constant elevation to God and revitalization by Him, a person receives so much light, life, firmness in all his actions, so much dominion over himself that he tangibly feels the existence of the Giver of these blessings. My own existence will be destroyed if my faith in God is taken away. Further, whoever continually follows the holy law with increasing clarity and more faithfully, from hour to hour becomes straighter in his spirit, more sincere, stronger in resisting all the seductions of evil, and thus, the further, the more he is transformed into a living, speaking image of the Divine; such an image, as indicated by self-consciousness, will hour by hour more clearly, more conveniently and more faithfully represent the Prototype to which it is similar. When in a person, guided in life by this highest principle, the divine is reflected more beautifully from day to day: how can he doubt that there is something above him that is reflected in him, that he contemplates in himself? Constantly raising his spirit above everything perishable to the imperishable, from day to day he learns more and more to feel peace and peace in the imperishable God, i.e. From hour to hour, he not only becomes better in his moral actions, which are open to bliss, but even on earth he anticipates eternal life. How can he doubt that there is eternal life and the Lord of this life? Eternal life has its foundation only in God. So, whoever, in temporary life, reveals in himself the beginnings of eternal life, has in them the guarantee of inner assurance in the existence of the Perfecter of eternal life. Whoever lives this way receives new messages from day to day with the powers of God and, strengthened by them in the correct use of the received gifts, becoming more and more God-like, he sees from whom these messages come to him; does not attribute them to himself or to any other conditional and final causes, but makes sure that God is the highest good, loving to communicate Himself. For him, God is revealed as a necessary, undoubtedly existing good, as the Author of truth and the Giver of true knowledge, as the highest holiness and truth, the Giver of holiness and truth and the giver of holiness, and, finally, as the highest bliss both in Himself and for all created beings. So, the best way to confidence in the existence of God can be contained in these few words: live as if you lived in the eyes of God, and you will not doubt that there is a God; make yourself the image of the Divine, and you will see the Prototype in the image. (Compiled from: F. Golubinsky, archpriest. Lecture on speculative theology. M., 1868) D. Criticism of pantheism and materialism as systems of godlessness, the most widespread in our time A. CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM The essence of pantheistic false teaching. Pantheism has different forms, but one common basic idea, and this basic idea from which it emerges is the following: at the heart of the diversity of this world and its individual phenomena lies something common, which constitutes the unity of this world, and this common thing is God. This is not a conscious personal God, it is only the universal life living in everything, the universal being contained in everything, or the mind in all things. We just call it God. This God does not exist independently by himself, He exists only in the world, the world is His reality, and it is only His truth. Such pantheism already existed in pre-Christian times. It lies at the basis of the pagan religions, these religions of intoxicated natural feeling, it produced the philosophical worldview of India, this worldview of dreamy fantasy; it also had philosophical representatives in various schools in Greece, and even the apparent monotheism that emerged at the end of the ancient pre-Christian world was not able to completely free itself from it. In the Christian world, its most influential representative was Spinoza. And when it had apparently been buried for a long time, Lessing again drew everyone’s attention to it in his “Conversation with Jacobi,” but most of all Schelling resumed it again and then Hegel developed it further, and from there it moved into general everyday thinking, often appearing where its presence is not suspected. At the basis of everything, as Spinoza taught, lies one eternal substance, which comes to actual manifestation in the twofold world: thought and matter filling space. From the depths of this substance, as an ever-generating nature, individual forms emerge to be again absorbed by the flow of life. Just as the waves of the sea rise and fall, so individual life rises to return again to that universal life, which is the death of individual existence. Eternal absolute existence, Schelling taught in an earlier period of his philosophizing, constantly passes into the double world of spirit and nature. The same life passes through all of nature and ends in man. The same life appears in the plant and in the tree, in the sea and in the rock. It acts and produces creative work in the powerful forces of nature, and, enclosed in the human body, it produces thoughts of the spirit in it. The Absolute, Hegel taught, is the universal mind, which is first buried in nature, there, as it were, freed from itself, then in man it is revealed as a self-conscious spirit, in which the Absolute, at the end of its great process, again comes to itself and understands itself in unity with itself. This process of the spirit is God; Man's thought about God is the existence of God. God has no being and no existence in itself. He exists only in us. God is not aware of himself, only we know about Him. Man, thinking and knowing God, invents and knows God himself for himself, and this is what God is: God is the truth of man, and man is the reality of God. Thus, in the end, man becomes God. The refutation of pantheism is already: 1) in its most practical consequences: a) Pantheism destroys religion. His God is not a personal God with whom I could have a personal relationship, whom I could love, whom I could rely on, and whom I could pray to. It is only the force of necessity before which I can bow, the universal life into which I can immerse myself; but I cannot enter into a mutual relationship with such a God and address Him as a person. b) Pantheism undermines the very foundations of morality, because, according to it, all the opposites of good and evil are only phenomena of one and the same absolute. From this point of view, with logical consistency they cease to be real moral opposites: what we call evil is, in essence, just as necessary as good. And in this case, how can we condemn something that exists out of necessity? c) Pantheism destroys hope. Just as a flower dies in the fall, so as not to come to life again, so a person drowns in the stream of life, so as never to float to its surface. You can, of course, transfer the flower to a herbarium; You can then preserve the person in memory, but, in any case, he no longer exists. It is only crude egoism, pantheists say, that makes us not want to plunge into the sea of ​​non-existence. But to this we must say that it was God who put this “egoism” in our hearts, and as a result of this, such egoism must contain truth at its core. These consequences themselves already constitute a sufficient refutation of pantheism. But they may object to us: such a refutation is unfounded; one must judge not by the consequences, but by the case itself. Although the matter is manifested in the consequences, let’s not even look at the consequences. Then the case itself will also serve as a refutation, because pantheism is a threefold contradiction of reason, conscience and our heart. 2) It is a contradiction to reason. After all, he talks about God and at the same time denies Him. a) The God of pantheism is something infinite, but this infinite exists only in the finite, which means that this infinite itself is invalid. After all, how can the infinite be equal to the finite? If the finite is its reality, then it means that the very reality of its being does not exist, and therefore the infinite itself does not exist. Thus, pantheism, while presupposing the infinite, itself denies it. b) And then: how can the finite be equal to the infinite? The God of pantheism is either nature from which spirit arises, or spirit from which nature arises. But nature is unconscious, and spirit is conscious. How can the unconscious produce consciousness from itself? An old rule of logic says that an effect cannot contain anything that was not previously contained in the cause. Consciousness is something completely new and different in relation to the unconscious. How can it come from it? c) Thinking requires an unconditional personality. The desire for personality runs through the whole world. From the lowest level of existence, life strives to rise to the personal level. In man, being reaches the level of personality. Where does this personal tendency of life come from if it is not the law of the world? And where does this law come from if the principle of the world is impersonal? But humanity unites into an integral organism of the kingdom of God, which also again seeks its personality in order to have its completion in it in the absolute personality, in God, in whom everything finds its completion. Thus, therefore, thinking also requires the personality of the unconditional; Pantheism is, therefore, a contradiction of reason. 3) It is no less a contradiction of conscience. Our conscience requires the dominance of the moral law, and the dominance of the moral law requires a personal God, because only He can be the supreme Lawgiver, only He can be the supreme Judge. Universal consciousness says that the moral law must rest more than on human authority, that it must rest on the highest divine authority. True, civil law can be a product of human will, changeable will. But the moral law is eternal; it has an eternal basis, a superhuman culprit. His indisputable authority is based only on this. Consequently, only God can be the supreme Lawgiver and only God can be the supreme Judge. We demand the highest justice, which cannot be mistaken, like human justice - such justice that the guilty could not evade, just as he can evade human justice. There must, therefore, be a higher authority to which the innocent appeals and from which the guilty cannot evade. They may perhaps say: “Conscience itself is the legislator and the judge.” But what if she is not a legislator? What if she is not a judge? It can be darkened, weakened, dulled, it can become silent, you can finally close yourself against it. Where then will there be justice, which, however, is the fundamental law of earthly life? Thus, in essence, there is no conscience itself. But, in this case, there appears to be a need for an immutable, inexorable and inevitable conscience, that is, an unconditional conscience, which is God; He is the highest conscience of the world. 4) Pantheism contradicts the demands of our heart. God is the demand of our conscience and at the same time the demand of our heart. We were created for piety, for faith, for love, for hope, for blessedness. Should the world be the object of our faith, our love, etc.? The world is something constantly changing; How can we find peace for ourselves in it? Faith and love are personal relationships, and we are created for personal relationships. Can a person be the highest object of our love? Where love truly exists, there we love in a person more than the person himself. All earthly love points to something above the earth. Only love for God can be completely worthy of a person and can completely satisfy him. But love is a personal relationship. Love of God requires a personal God. If we reject the person of God, then we will reject all the best, the most beautiful and the highest that is in us: faith, hope and love, and what appears in their place is only despair - not quiet and peaceful devotion to the will of God, but cold, dull despair, which worships only because it must bow, which bows not before love, but before power, which, closing its eyes, plunges into eternal death, where the end comes for us, for all our best being, for all our personal existence. Pantheism destroys our personality because it destroys the personality of God. His God is the God of the dead and not of the living, because He Himself is not the true and essential life. In a word, pantheism is an absolute contradiction to our inner being, our inner personality, our inner needs, a contradiction to reason, conscience and heart. Whoever recognizes man in his actual existence must also recognize God. And whoever recognizes God must also recognize a personal God, since, recognizing his own personality, he must recognize another person with whom he can enter into mutual communication. This then determines the entire direction of our thinking. (Compiled from the book: Luthardt. Apology of Christianity. pp. 41–46.) The essence of materialistic false teaching. A direct consequence of pantheism is materialism, i.e. the doctrine according to which material nature is the only one that exists, and it is in the full sense of being that it is. Materialism denies the spirit, both unconditional, divine, and created, human; according to him, only from matter and the force of movement associated with it do the world and man come into being. The first can be called physical materialism, and the second can be called psychological materialism. Physical materialism is old; already in Greek philosophy it was in use, although still in a naive form. Already from that time, the mystery of nature aroused inquisitiveness in the human spirit for research. Researchers posed the question of the original basis of things and looked for it, like, for example, the Ionian naturalists - philosophers, in nature itself and its elements, in water and air, or in chaotic primordial matter. But others, the so-called atomists, like Democritus, put atoms in place of the primary substance, i.e. extended, but indivisible material particles, which, being unchangeable in themselves, however, through their various combinations and distribution in empty space, created all the variety of phenomena. But if the question arose about what exactly set these atoms in motion and connected them, then the answer was: necessity or chance. True, the deeper philosophical spirit of Greece recognized that in order to explain the dominance of reason in the world, it was necessary to accept a higher reason, which, although not creative, was still at least world-educating. Since the time of Anaxagoras, many great Greek philosophers have developed this idea. But Epicurus returned to atomistic teaching. According to his teaching, the world with its forms arose from a random combination of atoms. From here he then concluded that the correct and most reliable instrument of knowledge is feelings, and the goal of life is not the fulfillment of a moral task, but happiness, i.e. in pleasure, although in a nobler and more moderate pleasure. These provisions already contain all the essential elements of modern materialism. When Christianity and its worldview conquered the mental world of the human spirit and established its dominance in it, the materialistic worldview was suppressed for a long time, until it reappeared in modern times, when it again made great strides. Opposition to everything historically existing, and especially to everything ecclesiastical, as it prevailed in the last century in France, turned into the consistent materialism of La Mettrie and the notorious “system of nature.” There is nothing but matter, there is no spirit different from matter - this is the main position of this materialism. The trend of our time, which is one-sidedly devoted to the care of material interests, has greatly contributed to this view. Thus, in our time, it has found many defenders, quite shamelessly, in such philosophers as Feuerbach, Vocht, Moleschott, Buchner, Haeckel, etc., and more cautious and serious in many other natural scientists. Despite the philosophical justification that Feuerbach gave it, here we are not dealing with a scientific theory, but with a decisive practical tendency. What is meant here (at least, this is what determined and conscious materialists want) is to eliminate the spiritual and especially the religious and moral foundations on which the current structure of our society rests. We are talking about the existence of the Church, from which the very right to it is being taken away, through materialistic teachings they are trying to cut the ground out from under its feet, as, for example, Karl Vocht once expressed this with his usual unabashed frankness, when he directly said: the time must come when what is called the Church will completely disappear from the earth. These materialists now teach: matter is everything, and besides it there is nothing; it is eternal and imperishable, “the fundamental principle of all being”; all life and all creation is only material change; only forms change and disappear; atoms enter now into this and now into another combination and, thus, represent an eternal flow and an eternal change of infinitely different forms in which matter appears to our senses. “The same carbon and nitrogen that plants extract from carbonic and humic acids and ammonia gradually becomes grass, clover and wheat, animals and man, to finally turn back into manure and ammonia. This is the whole miracle of the cycle of existence”: this is what Moleschott teaches in his “Circle of Life”. Refutation of materialistic false teaching 1) Materialism contradicts common thinking According to this teaching, therefore, the fundamental principle of everything is matter. But where does this substance come from? To this they say: it is eternal and imperishable. But this does not mean answering the question, but eliminating it. They say: matter is eternal. How do we know about this? They respond to this by pointing out that such an assumption is necessary, since otherwise they would have to assume a Creator, and they do not want to do this. But how can the property of eternity be contained in itself in the essence of matter? Force is associated with matter. Where is this last one from? There can be neither matter from force nor force from matter, because they are both of a completely different nature. But force also cannot come from itself, because it does not exist on its own, but in connection with matter. Materialism wants to solve the riddle of existence and begins with two mysterious inexplicable quantities. Matter supposedly arose from an infinite number of atoms, that is, indivisible material particles. How does materialism know about these atoms? From experience? No, because they cannot be observed. No one has ever seen an atom and no one can see it. “The boundary of sensory experience,” says Focht, “also coincides with the boundary of thinking.” Meanwhile, atoms are beyond the limits of experience! These atoms come in various combinations, continue the representatives of materialism. By what law? According to the law of affinity? But can these atoms, devoid of any properties, have affinity? And even if they have it, where does the very movement in these atoms come from? After all, matter itself is something motionless, and any change in it requires an external cause, as Kant teaches. By the law of attraction? But where does the very orderliness of movement come from, due to which completely regular and uniform forms arise? Obviously we must demand a higher power which brings bodies into a relation of mutual attraction, and an intelligent will which governs the formation of matter according to law and order. 2) The materialistic view does not explain the appearance of the organism If only external mechanical combinations existed, then, for example, one could be satisfied with the recognition of simple mechanical force. But where does the organism come from? In vain they tried to reduce it to a simple physical process. No matter how we imagine atoms, they, in any case, turn out to be insufficient to explain the appearance of an organism. There is a significant difference between crystallization and organic form. What distinguishes an organism is the living interaction of its internal parts and the reciprocal relationship into which it enters with the bodies surrounding it, through which at the same time there is a constant change in its condition. Here, not only the world of causes, but also the world of goals opens up to observation. The highest study of nature is that which seeks to cognize the law of expedient relations in it. But this leads us to a higher mind. Spinoza's pantheism and modern natural science began to fight against this idea of ​​“teleology”: it would be “madness” on the part of “an insignificant person, this one-day-old insect” to encroach on the consideration of infinite nature according to its goals. But the law of purpose is the law of our spiritual nature, and that is why we seek and find it also outside of us. It is presented to us everywhere, both in individual being and as a whole. Each organism is based on a special thought. This thought exists before its implementation, and its idea dominates everything. Cuvier determined the construction of even primitive animals from individual bones: so much so that the idea of ​​the whole also dominates all the individual parts. This idea works for the future, the eye for light, the ear for sound, etc. But the eye is formed in darkness, the ear in silence. Only after they have received their education do they enter into a relationship with light and sound. We see that purposeful activity is taking place here, which, taking us beyond all external causes, points to a formative, goal-setting thought. And this dominance of thought, manifesting itself in individual parts, does not it equally extend to the whole? The whole world is based on thought, a plan and its progressive implementation from lower to higher levels until the highest goal is achieved, so that all development is obviously under the dominance of the idea of ​​the highest level. The last is before the first, the whole is before the individual precisely in the idea. Thus, therefore, the ideal force dominates both the development of the whole and all individual parts. Can this fact be explained when we recognize only matter and force, or unconsciously acting nature, and not the creative power of the world-forming Mind? Yes, even if it were possible to get by with this view in explaining the present activity of nature, would it be possible to explain the first origin of organic life with it? Can organic life arise from inorganic life, living from lifeless? Strauss, however, in order to avoid accepting the creation of man, wanted to explain the origin of people in the same way as, in his opinion, the tapeworm, often up to 20 feet in length, arises, namely, through the so-called generatio aequivoca, i.e. through independent origin from simple matter, without the mediation of a living being. But exact natural science knows nothing about such a superstition as this spontaneous generation. All the best researchers now come, without exception, to accept the unconditional rule that living things arise only from living things. No matter how much we refer to chemical and physical forces and imagine nature as a great chemical laboratory, however, despite all the successes made by chemistry in recent decades, it has not yet produced a single living cell and will never be able to produce one. And Faust’s Wagner is still waiting for the homunculus (man) to emerge from the chemical retort. Let us even assume that nature is a great chemical laboratory that can even produce living things: but where is the chemist who works in this laboratory?! In a word, materialism is something like a thin sheet of ice that breaks with every step taken on it. Is it possible to build a worldview on it? 3) The assertion of materialists that the Christian worldview falls in the face of the facts of astronomy and geology has no scientific basis a) As for astronomy, you can often hear that it serves as a refutation of Christianity. The Copernican system allegedly made the Christian worldview absolutely impossible, and new discoveries only completed this sentence on it. According to the Christian worldview, the Earth is the focal point of the universe, because man lives here, the goal of all creation; here the Son of God became man, for the purpose of deliverance, the influence of which extends to the entire universe, and the future fate of the whole world is connected with the future fate of man and his Earth. Meanwhile, the Copernican system teaches us that the Earth is the most insignificant point in the universe, one of the smallest satellites of one of the most insignificant suns. Infinite space is filled with solar systems, compared to which our system is nothing. In the visible Milky Way system alone there are more than twenty million suns! And our Milky Way system is just like a small island in the great ocean. In the most distant spaces everything is filled with worlds, and what a distance! If we traveled 42 miles per hour by rail and traveled day and night, it would take us 400 years to get to the sun, and since the nearest fixed star is 269,420 times further away, it would take us 108,000,000 years to reach it. How, then, can one look at the Earth as the center of the universe, this speck of dust in the sea of ​​the world as a whole? What can we say to all this? Of course, the Copernican system is a triumph of truth and spirit. But is it really incompatible with Christianity? At least Copernicus himself was not of this opinion. We know that he combined the pious duties of a clergyman with the research of an astronomer, and it was his religious outlook that led him to the great discovery. The two greatest heroes in the field of this science, namely Kepler, and with him Newton, were humble and sincere Christians. But they can say: it was the great founders of the new astronomy who had not yet seen all the consequences of the discoveries they had made. Only subsequent science has made these further conclusions. But let us pay attention to the essence of the matter. To the stated astronomical view, we will first of all answer: quantity is not yet a measure for quality. Doesn’t the smallest space often hide the greatest miracles? If the telescope shows us that our world in the universe is only like a grain of sand, then, on the other hand, the microscope shows us in almost every grain of sand a special new world. The meaning of a thing does not depend on its external parameters; Quantity and quality often stand in precisely the inverse relationship to each other. Already in Psalm VIII this idea is expressed when it says how man, being an insignificant atom in comparison with the greatest bodies of the world, is at the same time the image of God. The smallest organism stands higher than a huge inorganic block, a rose in a valley higher than a heaving bare stone rock, and the spirit has more significance than all matter, and therefore the place in which the spirit comes to its development has more significance than the vast space that serves only as a threshold for this spiritual development. Our Earth provides striking evidence in favor of this. The earth is intended to be, of course, the homeland of man, not of whales. And yet its surface is 2/3 covered with water. And of this 1/3, a large space again turns out to be uninhabited due to cold, heat, sand and swamps, or, in any case, it was created in such a way that, apparently, nature seemed to want to test how capable a person would be of development under the most unfavorable conditions, as Herder says about the Eskimos. And then he also has to share this share of his on Earth with all kinds of predatory animals and with all kinds of reptiles who also challenge his place! Consequently, the external scale of quantity cannot be of significant importance. “The quantity of space is certainly indifferent to the manifestation of the spirit, which often contains the greatest miracles in a small space.” Just as a small human body is not unworthy of the spirit, which nevertheless embraces the whole world, so the small Earth is not unworthy of God so that He may manifest His revelation on it. On the other hand, it would be strange to even raise the question of how many square miles a planet should have in order to be completely worthy for the incarnation of the Eternal. Nevertheless, we can also recognize, as far as at least we can judge this, that our Earth in our solar system, although not in an externally mathematical sense, but in fact and in its qualities, occupies a central position, so that it is, if not a sensory, then, in any case, its spiritual focus. None of the bodies in our solar system are as adapted as our Earth is to be a place of organic life. For example, on the Sun the weight of its mass is so great, and the connection of matter is, as a result, so much stronger (28.5 times) than ours that, as Medler says, “our Hercules, transferred to the Sun, would turn out to be like weak, pitiable creatures incapable of acting with their members,” if even the molten state of the Sun did not generally exclude any possibility of habitation and organic life on it. But the further we move away from the Sun, the more unsuitable all material conditions become for humanoid existence. Leaving aside the most distant planet Neptune, since the conditions there are the most unfavorable, already on Uranus, located at a distance of 2,702,000,000 miles from the Sun, the light of the latter is so weak that the eye must be built almost like the eye of a night owl in order for it to recognize anything in this sad twilight. Of course, the Creator could have designed the eyes of the creatures living there in exactly this way. But the Sun appears so small there (barely three times larger than Jupiter appears to us) that it is almost completely lost among the other stars, and since the sunlight there has only 3/1000 the intensity of light in comparison with our earthly sunlight, the very difference between day and night, morning and evening turns out to be barely noticeable, and everything is constantly shrouded in a monotonous twilight. Under such conditions, obviously, no truly spiritual life is possible. When the axis of Uranus then enters the level of its current, the Sun always stands for half of the year (equal to 42 Earth years) above the northern half, and for the other half of the year - above the southern half! The relationship of the seasons on Saturn, with an axis tilt of 40 degrees, is better, and the Sun appears larger on it; but it is highly probable that its surface, by its very nature, does not provide room for human existence: the density of its soil is equal to only 1/10 the density of the Earth, therefore barely the density of a balsa tree, so that no other planet represents such a loose mass. And the ring, or rather a series of rings surrounding it (from 3 to 4), casts its shadow, several million miles long, over the winter half of the planet for 15 years, so that its supposed inhabitants must wander in the dark for all 15 years. Jupiter, this giant of the solar system, has an erect axis, therefore, there is no change in the seasons and the duration of its rotation is not even 10 hours, so that the day, therefore, consists of only some 5 hours, given the shortness of the day we can hardly associate the idea of ​​a higher human cultural life. Venus, in its properties, comes very close to the Earth, but, with an axis tilt of 72°, it has too sharp a change in the seasons. Then, from the cloudlessness of its atmosphere, they also conclude that it is anhydrous and, therefore, unsuitable for organic life. As for Mercury, whose surface is 1/3 of the Earth’s surface, it is too small for a person: “his fatherland should be larger.” In addition, on this planet there is 4 times more heat and light than on Earth, which for us, who experience significant heat in the summer months, would be completely unbearable. Thus, we see that only in the Earth is the idea of ​​a planet fully realized. Other planets are only gradual attempts at this; The earth is a planet in the proper sense of the word, the goal and central point of the planetary system (as far as we can judge at least), the only body in our solar system that is suitable for the development of higher organic life, like human life. We know almost nothing about the world of fixed stars located outside our solar system. We can assume that our world is a complete system, surrounded by the light walls of the Milky Way, and has a center, which, according to Medler (1846), is located in the Pleiades group (approximately in the star Alcyone, although the latest researchers declare this unlikely). In this world of fixed stars, our solar system is located in the region that is poorest in stars, like an island in the ocean, although not in the middle, but close to the middle “as if still on a spacious area” of a great world city, just like our Earth in the solar system. And if there were still new worlds on the other side of our system of fixed stars, who would be able to explore them and who could measure their boundaries? In this regard, we have only assumptions and nothing more. b) Let us now turn to the question of geology. Are the Bible and geology really in conflict and disagreement with each other, as materialists claim? If we notice in our old, much-tested friend, or hear something about him that we cannot understand, then will we certainly conclude that he has gone astray, or will we condemn him, but, on the contrary, would we rather withhold our verdict until later time gives us the necessary explanation? Such an old, much-tested friend is, first of all, the Bible for us. If we encounter mysteries and contradictions that we cannot resolve, then it is better for us to withhold judgment and wait for an explanation from the future, rather than immediately pronounce a final verdict. Are we sure that we really understand it correctly, exactly as we should understand it? Might not the future shed another, clearer light on it for our minds? When Copernicus proposed his system, some, in the interests of the Bible, found it necessary to oppose him. This opposition, of course, ceased over time, and the Bible for believers even after Copernicus remained as indubitable as it was before him. After all, it does not at all have as its goal to teach astronomy, but only to show the way to salvation; it speaks about the movements of celestial bodies in the simplest, everyday language, as soon as people were able to understand it and as we still talk about them now. In the same way, over time, one or another misunderstanding in the understanding of the Bible could arise, although through this it by no means lost its meaning. But, treating the Bible in this way, there is no need for us to treat with fearful distrust the investigations of human reason and believe that we must suppress it by the external authority of Scripture. In the human spirit itself, as well as in the will of God, lies the need for man to explore. History shows that he could not do without it, even if they wanted to prohibit him from doing so, and there is no doubt that real progress is being made in knowledge. If only the research is carried out in the spirit of a sincere and humble search for truth, then it is not without the blessing of God. A sincere and conscientious researcher can fully hope for God's help. Of course, the path of the human search for truth often leads through error. This latter must always have its place in human research. It is the most thorough researchers in the field of natural science who are most likely to admit that something that is now recognized as undoubted will sooner or later turn out to be a fallacy. Only a superficial and frivolous mind passes off as established truths what is only a fleeting opinion. And it would only be a morally shameful abuse of science if, from its real or imaginary knowledge, researchers forged weapons for themselves in order to overcome religious faith. True science itself has nothing in common with such abuse, just as its true and actual representatives have nothing in common with it. The more we delve into the field of geological research, the more we come across hypotheses, unresolved problems and diversity of views. The rapid haste with which one experience of explanation is supplanted by another after only a few years, the great uncertainty and diversity of views which still prevail on fundamental questions, must be recognized by all. We will only point out some of the most important ones. aa) Cuvier, as is known, thought to explain the formation of the earth's crust (the disordered state of rocky layers, rises and depressions, elevations and depressions of the earth's surface) only by the theory of strong earth upheavals that could be produced by other forces different from the current ones, although their sequence, nevertheless, made it possible to recognize the purposefully acting hand of the Creator, which theory was widely adopted and was especially developed and substantiated Agassiz. bb) On the other hand, the school of Lyell, an authority which is now accepted by most geologists, teaches that from the very beginning the same laws and in the same way acted as at the present time, and in consequence of this it assumes vast ages in order to find the space in which these quietly and slowly acting forces could produce those many and great changes of which we find monuments in the bowels of the earth. c) While some - for example, Darwin and his school - derive the entire diversity of organisms from one or several few basic forms, through gradual modification over vast spaces, through various stages up to man, others see in this only an “arbitrary” and non-scientific “hypothesis”, for the proper substantiation of which there is a lack of facts. (Let us point out, for example, Virchow, who repeatedly stated and proved that Darwin’s hypothesis is devoid of any scientific justification.) d) While only a few years ago it was considered certain that the great flood, which, according to geological research, preceded the present form of the Earth, took place even before the appearance of man and had nothing in common with the universal flood about which the legends of peoples and Holy Scripture report, and that this last legend does not find any confirmation in natural science, now, thanks to the latest discoveries in Abbeville or the discovery of bones near Aurignac and etc., researchers were forced to admit that at the time of this flood people were already on earth, so that the very legends found scientific confirmation and only in time belong to an earlier period than suggested by the Bible. dd) But regarding the very time of human existence, such a fluctuation prevails that while Fraas, Pfaff, Behr and others go not far beyond the biblical time reckoning, determining the time of the flood at approximately 7,000 years, others, such as Cotta, consider from the time of the first appearance of man at least 80,000 years, some (like Vivian and others) raise this figure to 250,000 years, and some (like Frank Calvert and others) already resort to millions of years to determine the antiquity of our species! These examples show quite clearly how much is still missing so that in geology and paleontology it is possible to come to absolutely undoubted results precisely on those issues in which they come into contact with the Bible. And while such results have not yet been achieved, it is impossible to finally make comparisons between natural science and Holy Scripture, and this premature experience of comparing them can only hinder rather than contribute to the search for truth. Thus, we must limit ourselves only to what is possible for us in the present state of things. In this case, first of all, it is necessary to establish the correct point of view. It can never be superfluous to repeat the truth that the Bible is not a textbook on astronomy or geology, but a document of religion; that it is not intended to give answers to the questions of natural scientists, or to anticipate their research, or even just to facilitate them, but has as its goal the satisfaction of religious needs. Thus, what she says about the creation of the world, she offers not as a natural science abstract, but as a religious edification. Thus, one cannot at all look for something in it that is not contained in it. a) The first thing it draws attention to is that the world was created by God. Geology begins with chaos, in a state of ferment and movement. Geology does not know where this chaos comes from. Holy Scripture goes beyond the chaos of geology and says that God created the very first substance, from which this well-ordered world, rich in forms, was little by little formed. This is a position that geology does not touch at all, which, given its means, it can neither substantiate nor reject, since it lies beyond the scope of its scientific competence, but it is a position that has a religious significance and, therefore, enormous importance. b) Then Holy Scripture says that life on Earth, the world of plants and animals, received its beginning precisely through the interaction of natural forces and the creative activity of God. God says: “let the earth produce,” “let the water be gathered,” “and God created.” Natural science also tells us nothing about the beginning of organic life, and it even refuses, at least in the person of its most serious representatives, to explain it otherwise than through the assumption of a higher creative power. c) Further, Holy Scripture says that the Earth, in its gradual transition from the universal to the particular, from imperfect to perfect, from unfree to free, came closer and closer to man, until in him she found the crown and goal of her forms. This story has a deep religious significance, since it shows that man was the goal of God’s creation, was also the true and last, and therefore the first thought of God, that when creating the world, God had in mind man and His attitude towards him. Natural science knows nothing about this, and cannot know anything, because it is a matter of religion. But she amazingly confirms the assumption that earthly forms were formed in a consistent gradual manner up to man, and every further step of her research is at the same time a step in this confirmation. If, according to the teachings of St. Scriptures, the Earth was first covered with water and then mountains and land appeared, this latter was decorated with vegetation, the water was filled with fish, the air with birds, then earthly animals followed and all this was completed by the creation of man, then this chaos of development (although, of course, only in general terms and large outlines, and only the main members are indicated, leaving aside the secondary ones) is revealed to us by geological research. In one respect only, natural science appears to be 57 right when it requires for the production of the most important forms of earthly formations longer time periods than the traditionally allowed time, limited to six 24-hour days. It is enough, for example, to point out the large coal deposits that were formed from a huge plant world, and, for example, in northern America alone, according to Lodgers’ calculations, they occupy an area of ​​6,250 square miles, and in the Saarbrücken region they reach 19 or 20 thousand feet below sea level; or on a huge carboniferous layer belonging to a later time (moreover, for example, Hartig determines the antiquity of one colossal fossil cypress trunk at 3,100 years, and meanwhile, there are at least 13 such coal layers one above the other). Taking into account all this and much more, even if we do not resort to the help of billions, as Lyell’s school does, then, in any case, we will have to allow for very long periods. This is, in any case, how geology looks at this matter. As for theology, it has not yet said its final word on the issue of days, since the very concept of a day in the Bible does not have any certainty, and it speaks of days that existed even before the Sun. Will we understand by them great periods, since a thousand years before God are like one day, and one day like a thousand years, so that by them we could understand not ordinary human days, but great world days, or periods; or we will look at days only as a certain form of expression in which the object itself must be subjected to the closest human consideration; No matter how we understand this, one thing is certain: in the biblical narrative the question is not so much about days, but about the deeds themselves. For religion, it is not the time that is important, but the subject itself; and the subject in question is that God created the world by the power of His will in free love, in a gradual succession of separate forms down to man himself, in order to find in him the purpose of His creative works and to enter into a union of communion with him in the spirit. If the world was created for man, then it is not something alien to us, but in it there appears a life related to us, and it has a close relationship to us. We feel that life, which is intended for us, is agitated here; We alone can express the whole mystery of existence, therefore all the voices of nature find an echo in the human breast and man is, so to speak, the language of all creation. The universe is reflected in his spirit, and he expresses its mystery. But the result of the knowledge of his spirit should become in his mouth a word of praise that glorifies the Creator of this world. (Compiled from the book: Luthardt. Apology of Christianity. pp. 51–69.) - “His (that is, God’s) invisible things, His eternal power and Divinity, have been visible since the creation of the world through viewing creation, so that they (that is, the pagans who did not know God) are unrequited" - On the book of Genesis conversation 14, part 1, page 228. St. Petersburg, 1851. Christian reading. 1823. Part 9, pp. 95 and 96. Christian reading. 1823. Part, 10 pp. 35, 36 and 37. Right there. 1821. Part 1, p. 257. Conversations on psalms. Page 398 and 399. St. Petersburg, 1860. Creations of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Part 6, p. 223. Moscow, 1851. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. About the heavenly hierarchy. Ch. 11, § 3. Christian reading. 1837. Part 3, pp. 6 and 7. St. Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 5, p. 39. Moscow, 1852. Creations of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Part 4, p. 173. Moscow, 1850. Christian reading. 1846. Part 1, p. 43. Creation of St. Athanasius of Alexandria. Part 4, p. 49. Moscow, 1853. Right there. Part 1, pp. 163 and 165. Moscow, 1851. Sunday reading. 1840–1841 No. 41, p. 365. Christian reading. 1835. Part 1, pp. 11, 12 and 13. Sunday reading. 1837–1838 No. 37, p. 311. The solution to the objection of non-believers to the inner meaning of the very fact to which the historical proof of the existence of God refers. The historical proof of the existence of God, referring to the universality of belief in the Divine, assigns to this belief a native mental origin, i.e. its root is seen in the rational nature of man. Therefore, unbelief, denying the first, i.e. the universality of the idea of ​​​​the Divine, consistently denies the latter, i.e. the mental origin of the idea, and in order to justify his view of the subject he refers to: a) the non-existence of any innate ideas and b) the possibility of explaining the prevalence of the belief in question, in addition to innateness, from other reasons, such as fiction, fear, creativity of the imagination and so-called animism. Let's answer in order: a) As for innate ideas, the doctrine of them, which was once in vogue, has now really lost credit; but - in what sense? In the sense of certain ready-made concepts, and not in the sense of a predisposition to compose them through thinking. Such predispositions, which precede conscious activity and then influence its direction, cannot be denied. In this sense, the idea of ​​​​the Divine must be recognized as innate to man. b) Let us assume (although there is no reasonable reason to admit this) that fiction on the part of some individuals for whom religious beliefs could be useful or necessary, such as rulers, ancestors, priests, legislators, could influence the formulation and details of these beliefs; but it is impossible to imagine that the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe invisible Divine power could be the fruit of an unfounded invention, it is impossible to imagine how such an idea, without suggestion from the outside world (as the unbelievers claim) and without a predisposition to it in the human soul, could come to the mind of its supposed inventors. It is even less clear how an idea, not based on anything, and yet painful for the willfulness of people, could spread everywhere and take root for thousands of years that no revolutions in the life, fate and history of peoples could eradicate it. Ideas about the Divine have changed, become coarser, and distorted, but the basic idea of ​​Him as the supreme, invisible Power remains unshakable in such a huge majority of humanity that, in comparison with it, the number of its deniers is minimal. c) It, say the deniers, was and has been maintained until now especially by the feeling of fear of menacing natural phenomena, ignorance of their natural causes and the creativity of the imagination, which created instead of them fantastic figures, one or many. Let us admit the influence of fear on the imagination, and what is called creativity, and ignorance. But still, some of the natural producers of phenomena are known even today to the most superstitious people in the crowd, and were known in ancient times, but producers who acted arbitrarily and deliberately were not noticed. Why were they assumed everywhere and are still assumed? And modern deniers think to find the answer to this question in the theory of so-called animism. What is animism? d) This, they say, is the predisposition of a naive person, especially an ancient one, to animate the inanimate, to personify the impersonal: a predisposition that has left numerous traces in ancient languages ​​and is also noticeable in modern ones. Let us, perhaps, admit such a predisposition, but how can we reconcile such a predisposition, such an idea about the existence of freely conscious and living agents in the external world, with a theory that denies all mental predispositions, all ideas that have their root in the soul? If such ideas have a place in human nature, then the first right to this place, of course, will belong to the idea of ​​​​the Divine, since its rationality is fully justified and confirmed by the most respectful mental considerations and requirements. Of course, teachings that deny such a conclusion have existed for a long time and still exist, partly with various variations. Approximately their essence is as follows: it is necessary to assume some building principle that brings strength and harmony to the composition of the world; this cannot be denied. But for it, this beginning, to stand, so to speak, outside the world itself, determine its structure from the outside and exist as an independent mind, as an omnipotent divine personality, there is no reason to assert this. It - this beginning - can be assumed in the world itself, in its primary, atomistic elements, which, due to their inherent special properties, enter into certain combinations and relationships with each other, on which the structure of the world is based and maintained. This explanation has not the slightest reasonable basis. The question is: what is the origin of the elements themselves and their special properties that determine their primary combinations? By what law did these elementary combinations receive that quantitatively and qualitatively diverse complexity, the result of which is the organic world - from plants to humans? Where does this law come from? Is it really from dead, unconscious matter itself? And yet, it apparently exists. This is the law of expediency, on which the new proof of the existence of the Intelligent Builder of the world is based; this proof is teleological. The well-known modern theory of natural self-development, or evolutionism, rejects such a view of the relationship of lower producers to higher producers as means to predetermined ends. According to her understanding, the higher develops from the lower, not because the first was the deliberate goal of the latter, but according to the strength of the properties hidden in the latter, which develop by themselves and are revealed in the higher. Moreover, the lower does not always transform into the higher; just as often the opposite is true. The youth of an organism is followed by old age and its death. Is there any visible expediency here, they say? We have neither the opportunity nor the need to follow the development of the notorious theory from its first provisions to its latest conclusions, and we will limit ourselves to only two proofs of its inconsistency: a) The first is that its main provisions (i.e., about the identity of the elements and their properties) are completely arbitrary and, not satisfying the requirements of thinking, not relying on experience, require blind faith. b) This shortcoming of the theory could be reconciled to some extent if it compensated for it, at least, with satisfactory conclusions. But this is far from it. She promises to explain - in addition to the reasonable World Builder and His wise plan - everything in which common common sense sees the stamp of His wisdom, but it turns out to be powerless to fulfill its promise. Without delving into the secrets of the great whole called the world, without again pointing out its wondrous harmony (which has already been discussed), it is enough to look closely and think about what is closest to us, i.e. into our own body in order to be convinced of the unsuitability of this theory to explain it. And here again we will limit ourselves - so as not to expand too much - to one nervous system. The anatomy of the human body knows the structure of this system: its branches, fibers with their coverings, centers, functions and organs of both motor and sensory nerves. Then organic, or animal, chemistry is not unknown to some simple elements that make up the nervous substance. Let the representatives of both sciences indicate those properties of the elements, by the power of which these latter supposedly should have united here by themselves exactly as they were united, and by their combination produce precisely those wondrous and varied phenomena and functions that are characteristic of the nervous substance! Let them explain from the same beginning the structure of, for example, such a complex organ as the eye. But not a single serious scientist or specialist in the study of the nervous system has dared to do this and never will. It turns out to be inevitable the need to assume either such an elusive figure who appears in the body, but does not develop from its elements, namely a mental figure, or, at least, such a choice, selection and combination of elements that cannot in any way be explained from their properties alone, or, rather, both. What does the theory of spontaneous development have to do with it? Isn’t it clear that if development occurs, it is according to a plan predetermined and directed towards the implementation of a higher goal? And that such a goal really exists and determines the entire structure of the human body, this is clearly revealed from the fact that such an organization of the human body, which is not at all explainable from natural self-development, in turn, constitutes a condition for the development of mental, aesthetic and, finally, religious life in the body. No one will dare deny this anymore. After such an obvious manifestation of reasonable expediency in the organization and nature of man, not a single sensible contemplator of the world will doubt the expediency of the entire world order - from the system of great cosmic bodies to the smallest works of earthly nature. We deliberately emphasize this word, since there is still a question: can this concession be made to natural science? Prot. G.D-ko. You might be interested in: