Человек и грех

1. History and the Second Coming So far we have viewed the world as a great drama of forces, collisions and equilibria. However, it is also something more: drama insofar as history is dramatic. The horizontal time axis intersects with the vertical axis. True, we are in the area of ​​Greek thought and, moreover, at the beginning of Byzantine thought, and therefore we have no right to look for in St. Maximus an interest in the historicity of being similar to what we find in the master of the kingdom of God 87 - as well as the pathos of formation that overwhelmed Gregory of Nyssa. Θεωρία Φυσική (“contemplation of nature”) is not accompanied by contemplation of history. Yet: if for St. Dionysius the dimension of history is completely absent, as if it were absorbed by the great unified moment of time of the universe, permeated by the Divine, then for St. Maximus the history is purely “axiological”: the panorama is enlivened under the influence of both the Cappadocian mysticism of becoming and, at the same time, Aristotelian teleology. The ahistorical Neoplatonic whirlpool of outflows and return entries, flowing and resting often only within the divine living being, in St. Maximus takes on a more precise form of world movement from όυναρς (force) to ενέργεια (energy), even if the realized entelechy 88 only at the goal becomes what it is, and thus reveals its true source. So, here, in any historical reflection, pure contemplation of natural existence and genuine immersion in the constantly renewed diversity of historical pragmatics are balanced in a special way. The focus is on three great key moments of the drama: firstly, a sharp change in the flow of time as a falling away from the original unity: the Fall; then, the suppression of movement into nothingness, undertaken and directed by God Himself: the incarnation of God; finally, the completion of the course of events as a reunion in the initial unity: the Second Coming of God into the world. And these key moments themselves are considered not as processes extended in time, but as essential states of historical existence, man and the world, which in a mysterious interpenetration are realized in the process of becoming and thus become visible thanks to it. St. Maximus is little original when it comes to the theology of the Fall as a historical fact; he is trying to reconcile the opinions of his predecessors. What is new for him is inherent in the way in which falling away is considered as inherent in any present. The Parousia (Coming) of Christ as the final moment of history almost does not occupy him; he views it only as an open proclamation coming from God of the now hidden presence of a new eon. Even in Christ, he is less interested in His very historical personality and individual earthly actions and sufferings than in considering the inner essence of incarnation, one might even say, its “formal structure.” Although this fact may be a consequence of the influence of Christological disputes about the most precise formula for expressing the mystery, it corresponds no less to the need of such thinking itself to consider the history of phenomena only as something at once concealing the Divine reality and pointing to it. The general concept of Parousia remains the fundamental historical and philosophical category of Greek patristics. The earthly paradise interests St. Maximus only as the starting point of the world movement, as the place of the Fall. And here his gaze follows exclusively the semantic direction of formation: he hopes to find the lost original state, based only on the final goal, and not on retrospect. The first text can give us guidelines: “If anyone wants to say, perhaps, that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a creation belonging to the world of phenomena, then let him not be deceived, for it essentially communicates passion and suffering to those who partake of it.” The first man had to eat from this tree only after gaining strength for the true contemplation of nature, which is called upon to become a spiritual revelation for all who have true vision, and for all who are bound by sensuality, a reason for fall. “Thus, God postponed eating from this tree, so that first man, as befits, realizing his own origin through grace-filled participation, would be strengthened by the grace of immortality in dispassion (απάθεια) and constancy (άτρεψία) and would become a god through deification, so that he could then safely contemplate God’s creations together with God and gain their understanding as God, and not as man, in accordance with the idolizing transformation of spirit and sensuality, possessing by grace, like God, the same understanding of essences, that is, wisdom” 89. In this way, a person would maintain a balance between the spiritual and sensory worlds, viewing both from the transcendental realm of God. And yet, did St. Maxim ever regret that world history began because of the disobedience of the first man? He, of course, opposed the extremes of the Origenists, who believed that in the “experience” of evil (πείρα) lies the metaphysical necessity for the soul to ultimately cleave to the Divine Good. The Monk Maximus preserved alive the idea of ​​St. Gregory of Nyssa about the inexhaustibility of this good, about the blissful unity of the highest, intense aspiration and the highest fulfillment of all desires in the act of contemplation of God. But what Greek Christian since the time of the holy martyr Irenaeus of Lyons could free himself from the thought that the path of humanity from Adam to Christ and right up to the end of the world means progressive development and maturation (for St. Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, Adam and Eve were children who hardly knew what they were doing), means the implementation of the “seminal logos” of God in the world? And that, therefore, in the “fall” at the same time lies the guarantee of a radical “beginning”? But was it not something like a reversal of the natural order that Adam from the beginning acquired nature only from God in accordance with God’s view? Doesn't man's road to God lead rather through nature? The Monk Maxim also knows the second interpretation of the dangerous tree, “more mysterious and sublime, to which we could express our respect by keeping silent about it” - this is the interpretation given by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, closely following Origen. According to him, there is an identity between both trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge,” so that access to life could ultimately be obtained only through the knowledge of good and evil 90 . Thus, St. Maximus, being a conscientious Greek, embarks on a dangerous path (which he will follow to the end) - the path of “gnosis.” The ancient interpretation of the dynamic tension between “image” and “likeness”, coming from the hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons and Origen, now reappears now in classical guise 91: “Those who mystically interpret Divine utterances and consequently honor them in high thoughts, tell us that man was originally created “in the image of God,” in order only in proportion to his freedom to be born of the Spirit, and that he in the same way assumed the character of “likeness” due to the constancy of God’s commandment, so that, while remaining the same man, he could be at the same time a creation of God by nature, and a son of God by grace, and even God himself thanks to the Spirit. But for created man there was only one way to manifest himself as a son of God and a god through grace-filled deification: first of all, by his free decision to be born into the Spirit thanks to his naturally inherent divine ability for self-determination” 92. By this, St. Maximus does not at all want to say that in Adam grace follows only freedom. But then both “trees” - the natural-worldly and the grace-deifying - must be commanded to him at the same time: “Still, in a free decision one should transform oneself into an alloy with God, becoming one spirit with Him, or with a harlot, becoming one body with her; he chose the latter in his blindness” 93. This situation of Adam is in every way similar to the one he possesses according to St. Augustine: on the one hand, the offered mercy (as adjutorium sine quo non (Latin) “help without which it is impossible” - Trans.), on the other hand, the unconditional need to choose between two possibilities that allow this will to be replenished and satisfied. For both for St. Maximus and for St. Augustine there is more need for free will than for independence; free will is a spreading, seeking greed (ορεξις ζητητική “inquisitive desire” - Trans.) 94, which must receive its food from one of the “trees”. One of them gives a person “the food of that blessed life: the bread that comes down from heaven to give life to the world, as the true Logos Himself says in the Gospel; but the first person did not want to approach him” 95. If he had chosen this bread, he would have trusted himself to the highest dependence, but would have received divine fruitfulness: he, born of God, could be divinely born 96 and realize his own deepest law, since the tree of life is “wisdom appropriate to the spirit” 97 . But he chose sensual nature as food for the spirit 98 and thereby, instead of depending on God, fell into dependence on sensuality and matter. Thus, both “trees” directly point to both laws, or rather to both value criteria of human nature. “Both trees, according to the meaning of Scripture, are the powers of discernment for certain things - for the above-mentioned spirit and sensuality. Thus, the spirit has the ability to distinguish between spiritual and sensory, temporary and eternal things; it is the gift of discernment of the soul, which advises it to devote itself to one thing and to abstain from another. On the contrary, sensuality has the criterion of bodily pleasure and pain; more precisely, it is that power of the animate and sentient body, which, in addition, forces one to be captured, and, on the contrary, to avoid it” 99. Emphasizing the freedom of choice of a person, which can be decisive in determining one or another law of his existence, St. Maximus thereby understands the first sin as a rebellion against a higher law and therefore as disobedience, as pride. It does not contradict this that the perversion of order for him, as for many Greek fathers, is at the same time a sin of the flesh. To obey the law of the flesh means 100: “turning your spiritual eyes away from the light” 101, putting pleasure above use and benefit. “For, of course, God created these things and gave them to man for use (χρήσις). And everything that God has done is good and has been ordained for our good use. We, in our weakness and carnal way of thinking, preferred the material commandments to love” 102. But this other love, which St. Augustine calls concupiscentia (Latin “passionate desire, desire” - Trans.), for St. Maximus and his contemporaries consists of two inseparable, almost equivalent elements: love for material things and egoism, which is φιλαυτία (self-love) 103. This sliding of spiritual egoism into the area of ​​low sensuality, this necessary movement of all sin in the fall - for Greek monastic theology is more than just a consequence and indication, it is its very essence. But as a perversion of order, it is “the desire to take possession of the things of God without God and before God and without being commensurate with God” 104. This desire meant giving spiritual nature sensual, temporary, transitory food, poisoning it from the inside and putting it to death. For something opposite to what Adam expected had to happen: instead of the assimilation of sensuality by the spirit, which was only possible and foreseen in God’s dispensation, sensuality assimilated the spirit. “[Adam] gave all nature over to death to be devoured. Because of this, death lives throughout this entire time and eats us like some kind of food; we, we never live, we are in transience, and decay consumes us” 105. The place where sin has banished us is “the present world of transience and the mutually dependent fall of things” 106. But, on the other hand, isn’t this transience the natural law of things? Can it be so unambiguously traced back to original sin? “The true word,” says St. Maximus, “mysteriously helps to understand that man, the master of the entire visible universe by the grace of God, his Creator, perverted through abuse the natural structures of his spiritual being and turned his impulses to the unnatural, thereby, by the righteous judgment of God, bringing upon himself and the entire present universe the variability and transience that now reigns” 107 . Death and frailty of nature are mysteriously tied to original sin. “Because of sin, this universe has become a field of death and destruction” 108, a field of πάθη (“passion”, cf. “pathos” - Trans.) 109, for passion and death are analytically related. “I will repeat what the great Gregory of Nyssa taught me: as soon as man fell from his perfection, πάθη appeared, developing in the unreasonable part of nature” 110. St. Maximus follows St. Gregory to the last conclusion: only with this new law, which did not exist in the beginning, did that method of conception appear, which is necessarily (φύσει) connected, on the one hand, with carnal lust, and on the other, with death 111. “For, according to the original will of God (προηγούμενος σκόπος, voluntas antecedens “original, previous will” - Trans.), we should not have been born from a transitory way of carnal intercourse; marriage was born only by a crime of the law” 112. Thus, conception is truly connected with the “lex peccati” 113, which is henceforth characteristic of love. But isn't there a contradiction here? If πάθη arose in the body of Adam only as a consequence of sin, if before that, instead of carnal conception, there was another, spiritual way of procreation, which did not have frailty and death as a logical opposite, if Adam’s body was generally not built from ordinary properties and elements (such as cold and heat, moisture and dryness), but was in an unchanging calm constancy “without inflow and outflow”, in a “grace-filled immortality and imperviousness to decay,” if Adam, although he was by no means incorporeal, lived in a more subtle corporeality, without ignorance and therefore without wavering will (γνώμη “opinion” - Trans.) and auxiliary skills (τέχνη “art, craft, science” - Trans.), - how could he then feel the law of sensuality and place it above the spiritual criteria? 114. St. Maximus represents his unity with God even so sublime that it was immediate (ούδέν μεταξύ “nothing between” - Trans. ) a vision that is higher (ύπεράνω) than the contemplation of God through created things (φυσική θεωρία “natural contemplation” - Trans.). With such an exaggerated idea of ​​the original state, must not the entire “heavenly reality” of the Bible be reduced to weak symbolism? We have already seen that the tree of paradise is a pure symbol for St. Maximus 115, and in the same way the serpent 116 and the nakedness of Adam 117. Shouldn’t this circumstance, at the same time, be a myth in all its glory described above, like that of St. Gregory of Nyssa? Of course, not in the sense of a fictitious false reality, but in the sense of a prehistoric, supra-historical reality, of which the historical primordial state was only a phenomenal reflection and even a “falling away.” Elsewhere we will try to show that the statements of St. Gregory of Nyssa with their apparent contradiction could only be connected in one way 118. St. Maximus names two great attempts to penetrate into earlier times: Origen's, according to which the ideal, transhistorical primordial state meant a heavenly incorporeal existence, from which souls through sin fell into earthly bodies - a concept that he rejects on both ontological and anthropological grounds 119 - and the attempt of St. Gregory of Nyssa, according to which God is in foreknowledge (κατά πρόγνωσιν) of the sin of human nature brought directly into the act of creation the consequences of disobedience: sensuality, especially sexual 120. But while St. Gregory of Nyssa’s attempt at a solution boils down to an unbalanced compromise between the mythological nature of Origen and the historicity of the Antiochians and to resolve the riddle of the Fall with the paradox of reverse causation (the consequence of sin is at the same time its root cause), St. Maximus leaves the circle of ideas of St. Gregory and approaches Scotus Eriugene, for whom creation and the Fall are distinct mentally, but coincide in time. “Simultaneously with his entry into being” (άμα τω είναι) 121, “simultaneously with his becoming” (άμα τω γενέσθαι) 122 “man, because of sin, leaves behind his own origin,” “turns his spirit to the sensual.” Saint Gregory of Nyssa still preferred to look back at the original paradise rather than at the true and, in some way, historical homeland of humanity. For St. Maxim, with the beginning of being as such, the gates of the Divine Motherland irreversibly slam shut and only the parameters of the future, formation, and fulfillment remain, at the end of which, at an unthinkable turn, there will be a new return to the origins. “In seeking the end, a person meets his beginning, which, in essence, is where the end is... For, as I said, one should not look for the source that is behind, but explore the goal that is ahead. Thus, thanks to the end, man had to recognize the abandoned source after he had failed to recognize the end based on the source” 123. 4. Existence as a contradiction And so, the face of original sin changes again. A gaze turned away from God and directed toward the sensual, which coincides with the moment of falling away from God, henceforth becomes a natural, albeit sinful, source of the long and painful journey of humanity in search of God. “Through suffering [of perishable material nature] and through the inferiority caused by it, the soul had to come to the knowledge of God, achieve a vision of its own dignity and, thanks to voluntary submission, find the right position in relation to the body and to itself” 124. Through the “turmoil” of material nature and its “chaotic nature,” wise providence brings into proper order “our reckless craving for the transitory.” Thus, there are no longer two laws governing man, but inseparably there is one and only aspiring love, which, breaking through the labyrinth of foreseen wanderings in the worldly, gradually breaks through to God and to itself: “When God created the nature of man, He did not create in its sensory beginning both pleasure and pain, but put into its spirit a certain capacity for desire, as a result of which it inexplicably acquired the ability to rejoice in Him. This ability - I mean the natural desire of the spirit for God - the first man immediately, upon his creation, turned to sensuality and thus, starting from his very first movement towards an unnatural desire, transferred it through his bodily abilities to sensual things. And the One who cares about our salvation, in His providence, as to some extent a manifestation of punishment, added pain to it, through which the law of death was wisely grafted onto the physical nature, and thereby He limited such a frantic and disorderly attraction of the spirit to the sensual” 125. The contradiction becomes painfully complete when sensuality is considered and affirmed not one-sidedly, only as arising as a result of a (foreseen) fall, but exclusively as nature; however, serious consideration of such a statement might later pave the way out of the controversy. Only in one of the later works - in the great teaching letter of 641 against Monophysitism to the treasurer John - is this natural aspect fully revealed. Man appears here as a “synthetic nature”, consisting of parts, of body and soul, not only arising simultaneously, but also “necessarily mutually embracing each other and interpenetrating.” “For the soul does not by free decision receive dominion over the body, but rather it also has dominion over it (ύπ αύτοΰ κρατούμενης); she involuntarily gives him life simply because she abides as a being in him and naturally (φυσικώς) participates in passions and suffering due to her inherent receptivity in such things (δεικτική δύναμις)" 126. By the way, St. Maximus, defining this natural interexistence body and soul in "synthetic nature" as a participation in the beauty of the universe, concludes this, as far as can be understood, with the statement that it as such has nothing to do with sin. Is it possible to say that with this text the Reverend refutes the earlier statements of his main work? Can we say, on the contrary, that he does not refute them, but, through the ultimate identification of the natural aspect with the aspect of guilt, carries them to heights where pure contradiction is permitted? Both are hardly compatible with the ethics of this thinker, whose main approach never included contradiction, but always the reconciliation of opposites from a higher point of view. Therefore, we can accept that he himself considered the text cited last as a way out of the tragic picture of the world, to which Christological reflections again contribute in a remarkable way. (“Synthetic nature” is described in order to distinguish it from the free “synthetic” Person of the Savior.) Consequently, the good Creator created a good nature, for the passivity of the soul attached to the body was not initially sinful; but only this first natural “composition” unnecessarily tempted the soul to sin. Then the Monk Maximus should have speculatively separated nature and guilt, although he usually considered them objectively and concretely in their inseparable fusion, from which he deduced the corresponding consequence of a Christological-anthropological nature, namely that God Himself created this nature praeviso peccato (Latin “originally, previously sinful” - Trans.). Be that as it may, it cannot be denied 127 that here a certain shadow of Platonism obscures the Aristotelian bright Christian picture of the world, forming and conveying the feeling that the Byzantine Middle Ages is defined in the same way as the new Russian religious philosophy, “Sophianism.” "Sofia", which Fr. Sergius Bulgakov considers it as a strange iridescent mediating being between God and world nature, with one face turned towards eternity as a kind of eternal creation, as a supra-mundane and yet already passive, feminine world of ideas, and with the other face turned to the world as its root and foundation - this “Sophia”, which was given honor by Boehme, Schelling, Baader, Soloviev, came to them through Byzantium from the ancients Platonic-Gnostic sources. Eastern thinking has always been characterized by a certain ineradicable distrust of the independent, objective, preceding all grace-filled participation, not only mental, but also bodily nature, and even of the fundamental analogy between God and creation, which allowed it to feel as related all forms of philosophical sublation, resolution, transition from the finite to the infinite; This is a common heritage, from the Far East to Neoplatonism: religious thinking with dual characteristics of the impersonal (hence the tendency towards identification) and the destruction of the world (hence the tendency to identify guilt with the finitude of the world). St. Maximus set himself the goal not only of avoiding the shortcomings of Eastern thinking by turning to Western personalism, but of decisively clarifying this thinking as a whole by turning to personal Christology. With such an elevation of the impersonal into the sphere of the personal, a monstrous load had to be lifted; it is not surprising, since even through what has been clarified, the faces of destruction shine through again and again - demonic faces that show their unchangeable features to this day, for the Asian cannot be overcome once and for all, neither in its individual features, nor all at once in a certain era 128. St. Maximus was not the first to take upon himself such a gigantic task - to clarify the Asian origin. Both Origen himself and Evagrius did not strive for anything else. They did not want and could not be content with the external comparison of natural world religion and supernatural Christianity, and took the contradiction upon themselves in order to clarify it from the inside. For Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus, the sensory world of phenomena with its suffering and death is both a punishment and a blessing from God. According to Origen, who quite often praised the beauty and orderliness of this sensory world, despite this, it is generally a consequence of spiritual sin; however, not a direct consequence: rather, God created the variegated diversity and diversity of created beings, creating the harmony of the world, as a “good” imprint, the best possible “expression” of the primordial falling away from unity and the different stages of this falling away. Thus, according to the teachings of Evagrius, the creation of the world is inseparable from “judgment and foreknowledge” (κρίσις και πρόνοια) 129, so in the anthropology of St. Gregory of Nyssa, sexual characteristics are simultaneously the (initially foreseen) consequence of sin and a means to fetter the self-destruction of the creature and ensure the preservation of the human race; so in St. Maximus the sensory universe can take on this double appearance: to be the good and best creation of God’s creative act and, nevertheless, to deeply accept into itself the influence of the Fall and death of man. If we understand the East as a single and unambiguous phenomenon, that is, without its dependence on Christianity and in addition to Christianity, then it should be said: the rhythm of such a picture of the world, taken in its full sequence, can only be ecstatic, and even irrational and emotional, since the object of the highest approval is ultimately identical with the object of decisive condemnation, for not the manifestations of nature, but its very essence bears a sign of grace and rejection, like a red-hot brand. Enthusiastic world rejoicing in the work of St. Gregory of Nyssa “On the Constitution of Man” and at the same time his spiritualistic curse of sensuality are the prerequisites for the ecstatic kissing of the earth and the angelic and dispassionate essence of Alyosha Karamazov. But then this rhythm is inevitably seductive, since its amplitude lifts the human to its “heights” and casts it down to its “depths.” However, it is precisely this pure soaring from pole to pole and even the apparent reconciliation of extremes thanks to their impulsive rapprochement that hides the “truth” of createdness, since this truth is built on the basis of measure and distance, on which created nature is based. What must be understood in the pre-Christian world is the charisma of the Greeks and the birth of the Western world; This is precisely what was religiously inspired by Christianity (which carried the heritage of Judaism) and was finally overcome by the adoption of man to God the Father. This excursion was necessary in order to correctly understand St. Maximus and his anthropology, based on the broad context of the entire system of Eastern thought. His doctrine of the primordial state, according to which in one instant formation and fall, exit from the fundamental principle and deviation from “spirit” to “phenomenon” can take place, and which therefore allows us to separate the mythical-supernatural divine homeland and the earthly paradise initially darkened by future sin, belongs to the tradition of Eastern gnosis. But what gives St. Maximus a special position within this similarity is emphasized again and again; this is his approach to a clarified concept of nature, to primordial innocence and therefore to the eternal positive meaning of the single spiritual-sensual and bodily-mental state of the creature; this concept develops from the dual, but still unified Hellenistic root of the Areopagite sense of distance in relation to the eternally unapproachable supersubstantial God and from the Aristotelian-Stoic isolation of the physical-spiritual world. As soon as it becomes apparent how much for St. Maximus the doctrine of the primordial state of the world was reduced to the doctrine of the state of present man, this means that he is trying to understand this state of man between rejection and grace, between the two “laws” of the Apostle Paul, as a concrete position of man, and not as his metaphysical essential structure. And in this sense, the rhythm of the contradiction between sensuality (sexuality) as “sin” and as “nature” and even “good deeds” is softened to the level of a reassuring phenomenology of a person’s specific situation, in which God extracts the good even from sin and is able to transform the obscure into the bright. The distance of God from all world oppositions, indicated by the Areopagite, and His subsequent close proximity to each of the opposite poles, can miraculously untie a tragic coincidence of circumstances, the Gordian knot of sinful fate. The mutual involvement of the destructive and purifying forces of suffering and death, conceptions and births, formations and disappearances appears from this point of view no longer as the insurmountable demonicity of existence, but as a drama and dialogue of human obstinacy and Divine mercy, which is played out on the stage of an organized and justified nature and in its language 130. The doctrine of πάθη shows the desire to preserve nature in its inherent state. An attempt is made to separate both aspects of πάθη: “nature” and “sin”. Thus, the definition of the law of sin reads: “Its power consists in the unnatural state of our will, which adds a passionate component to the passive part of our nature (έμπάθειαν έπεισάγουσα), directing it to relaxation or overexcitation” 131. “Pathos” is thus rooted, on the one hand, in natural possibilities (παθητόν), on the other hand, it is determined by a free-willed decision. Accordingly, initially a person would have chosen, by his own decision, the “law of the first creation” 132, carnal conception as a possibility of his sensual nature. But in the same way, sin could “grow in the bosom of nature itself” 133 and at the same time “paint” the whole of nature in the colors of sin, as if like a tincture that seeps everywhere and has its effect on everything 134. This law still remains “attached externally” and is not able to accompany us into eternal life 135, no matter how it is imprinted in our nature as a “concomitant phenomenon” (άναγκαίον παρακολούθημα), from which it is not able to get rid of even with the most perfect purification 136. The passions are not “blameworthy” 137 in their natural aspect, being “natural movements” and “satisfactions”; they are only a call to action that guarantees the very presence of nature 138 . True circumcision is only the purification of those passions that hinder the true fruitfulness of the soul 139. In this purification, πάθη become subject to and useful to the soul itself (καλά γίνεται και τά πάθη): greed becomes aspiration (εφεσις ορεκτική), lust becomes taste divine grace, fear - a healing and saving fruit, sadness - contrition of the heart. “So all these things are good when used by those who have subordinated all their thoughts to the service of Christ” 140. The tension (τόνος), which concerns the irritable part of the soul, and the aspiration, which affects its thirsty part, are communicated through a kind of sublimation to the whole spirit as a whole 141; there is “wise greed”, as well as “wise anger” 142. Since all these impulses are naturally characteristic of animals, how could they be considered bad (ώς φυσικαι οΰτε κακαί) 143. Thus, Divine love itself is rooted in the ability to desire and in emotionality, based on them 144. “The soul quenches its thirst in the pursuit of the things it seeks, and its anger and emotions in storing and cherishing them” 145. But nevertheless, although passion may be the root of the highest spiritual abilities, it cannot be completely shifted into the realm of spiritual values, into the realm of the “sinless.” Although not actually being bad (άπλώς κακόν), it is, however, in an indissoluble connection (πρός τι κακόν) with that sensual egoism (φιλαυτία), which forms the basis of sin. “It is clear: whoever has self-love also has all the passions” 146. Although this self-love may be naturally inherent in animals, it should not be present in a spiritual being who was created for the knowledge of God, and therefore is subject, along with the law of his sensory well-being, to a second, spiritual law due to his receptivity to the Divine. The ontological duality of human nature necessarily passes into the realm of the cognitive and the sensory. “Man is composed of soul and body, therefore, he is moved by a double law: the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit” 147. “For reason and sensibility by nature act oppositely, because their objects have the most acute difference and dissimilarity” 148. Thus, evil, even before it enters into action, is potentially inherent in the non-identity of the rational and unreasonable parts of a person, since the law of unreason can be obeyed by a person only when reason is included, and therefore, by nature, is not subordinate to it 149. Are we not thus falling back into Gnosticism and even Manichaeism? Are not disharmony and sin inherent here again in being? St. Maximus gives a preliminary answer to this objection, without offering a final solution. The scholia of Dionysius first of all emphasize repeatedly and persistently that matter is rather a relative “non-being”; therefore it is in no way the cause and place of evil. Incorporeal demons are sufficient proof of this 150. If πάθη should mean the direct expression of evil in a person, then one should clearly distinguish between them as dual: the violation of moral balance itself and the physical consequences of this violation: “voluntary sin” and “physical sin.” “Consequently, the condemnation of Adam’s voluntary sin was the transformation of nature into passion, transience and death, ... into physical sin” 151. In the same sense, one should distinguish between “curse” as a direct ethical manifestation of sin and as a natural punishment 152, or the temptation of voluptuousness, which is fraught with sin, and temptation as an attack that avenges sin with suffering 153. This difference is revealed in the light of the doctrine of the Incarnation: the Savior was able to take upon himself, without a shadow of sin, the “physical” side of punishment, to become “sin” and “curse” for us 154. But how do these two sides relate? Are they easily separated? The question of their unity is answered by the philosophy of gender. It turns out that the phenomenon of sexuality actually contains the center of the entire problematic of passions. In the central sin of self-love, two things occur: selfishness and passionate, carnal desire. Everything sinful is a rejection of the Kingdom of God, selfish desire, and that is why for two it is a slippage into the world of sensual desires 155. But this dual element also hides the internal contradiction of sin, which immediately turns into its immanent retribution. The spirit seeks an egoistic replacement for its devotion to God in sensual desire: therefore, this devotion locks it into its own egoism instead of uniting it with its beloved. Lust “breaks the unity of human nature into a thousand pieces 156: and we all, partakers of the same nature, tear ourselves and each other into senseless shreds like wild beasts” 157. Self-love divides even the one God into many idols, just as it tears apart nature, and “for the sake of lust, self-love hardens our ability to be angry with each other” 158. This “deceitful and destructive love” 159, “repeated, in every possible way protracting lust” 160 gradually devastates our flesh - “the flesh of all people is a valley, washed away by many streams of passions” 161, and it ends with “the disgust that follows it and covers the entire previous period” 162. But the flash of pain in no way came from outside; rather, it was hidden in the first impulse of desire. “For the torment of pain is mixed with sensual desire, even if it seems to be overcome by the one over whom it dominates” 163. Even when this torment is described as a legitimate punishment for the abuse of thirst, 164 nevertheless this punishment, on the other hand, is inherent in the distortion of nature itself: “In the same extent, nature punishes those who try to dominate her, in which they give themselves up to an unnatural way of life, and she makes it so by nature that such no longer possess the fullness of natural powers; they are damaged in their integrity and thus punished” 165. Death itself is the end of these torments and their effects (έν οίς και έξ ών ό θάνατος) 166 - nothing more than the natural (φυσικώς) revelation of the essence of this pain 167. However, since these two fortresses - lust and death - were once erected against each other, we are drawn into the ruthless dialectic of gender. “In trying to escape the aggravating experience of pain, we fall into the arms of lust, and while we try to soften the anxiety of pain with lust, we only intensify its attacks on us, unable to have a desire separate from pain and pain.” 168 “Fear of death” 169 is the hidden sting that drives us to perpetuate our nature through reproduction. But from this source only a further victim of death can arise. Such tragedy lies at the heart of every worldly concern: “Since the whole nature of bodily things is transitory and always ready to disappear, even if someone tries to somehow lead it to endure, he will only increase its transience; against his will, he must always tremble for what he loves, and contrary to his intentions, he unconsciously strives for what he loves for what he does not love - this is internally connected with natural inconstancy” 170. The immanent sorrow of sexual desire is nothing more than a contradiction dimly felt within itself. “So, since through the Fall [physical] sin penetrated into human nature, and through sin the passion of reproduction, and since through the passion of procreation, which depends on sin, the first Fall continued to act along with others, there was no hope of deliverance. Nature was chained with fatal bonds to her own free will, for the more she hastened to secure her own extension in time through generation, the more she became entangled in the law of sin, since the first fall remained alive and active in its passion." The circle is hopelessly closed between the love of life and the fear of death and the slavery of lust 172; the perpetuation of life that a person strives for is the perpetuation of death 173. Without a doubt we have entered here into the sanctuary of the East. From the pathos of the same experimental observation arose the teaching of the Buddha: the rotating wheel of births and deaths is tragic and does not carry salvation. “Everything in life is a mixture of lust and torment” 174, for death is potentially inherent in becoming as a judgment on nature 175. The cursed land is a barren desert 176, “from which one can be nourished with much torment and sorrow and reap only meager joys” 177. Isn't sexual intercourse, marriage, a sin here? Not at all, answers Reverend Maxim. “If marriage were bad, then so would the natural law of procreation, and if this natural law of birth were bad, then in the same natural way the Creator of nature, Who gave it this law, should have been legally accused by us. But how then to repel the Manichaeans?..." 178. However, a thing, perhaps naturally good or indifferent, can nevertheless be assigned to us as a punishment, 179 as soon as it becomes an external sign, a stigma of our internal tendency to sin and at the same time creates a restraining bond of this tendency in relation to its object. In this sense, one could call greed and ardent passion “the sacrament of sin” to the extent that here, too, the indifferent sign itself becomes an external, effective symbol of sin. But even if these bonds are the punishment of a righteous God, aren’t they still good, since they come from God and fulfill the possibilities of nature itself? Perhaps they at least serve as “education” 180? Life experience that needed to be acquired in order “to finally learn through the suffering that life causes us in the present how much harm love causes us and how much more useful it is for us to distance ourselves from it than to unite with it” 181? But the role of gender is not limited to this denial. Yet, being a positive form of unity, it is a path and education. Sexual synthesis is the first degree of progressive synthesis, through which the world will enter into unity with God and will be perfect. In the sexual duality of man, the extremely developed differentiation and dispersion of the world acquires the first appeal to unity. After all, man, thanks to his ability for unity (ή πρός ενωσιν δύναμις), is a mediator between the world and God (φυσικώς μεσιτεύων). That is why man was created last, because he is the center of the world, in which the entire totality of created things is capable of gathering, starting with his own non-identity of the sexes, in order to gradually reunite 182. In this unity lies the first, still vague premonition and idea of ​​unity and the all-pervading love of God, although false and inverted. “A man may err, but he seems inclined to turn to the good part and to realize a union in tender love with his fellow-frailty; and although it is nevertheless only a distant and weak image of Divine Eros, it is only for the sake of good that he cleaves to the chimeras... Thanks to the very form of unity and love, he unconsciously inclines towards the good part” 183. Thus, the true meaning of lust becomes obvious: “The basis of fornication is laid in the impulse of lust, which is contrary to common sense. But lust itself is a beneficial force: this force helps rational beings to ascend to the true good, while for unreasonable ones it is useful for the instinct of self-preservation” 184. Of course, in a person who is at the same time a spiritual and sensual being, lust must produce both of these actions: the sensual union receives its true completion precisely through the release of the spirit's desire for unity. “For those who have not first come to agreement with God cannot agree in a single intention.” 185 Thus, the savagery and bestiality of lust does not come from itself, but from a spiritual discrepancy with the true and only principle of unity - God. But even in this very discord (as the Areopagite already defined it), the flickering sparks of the divine do not completely go out. John gives this interpretation: “And even the tendency to discord and fickleness is driven out by the faintest glimmers of peace; for those who are pursued by passions and strive in their ignorance to satisfy them believe that they will rest in peace” 186. However, the shadow of the world is not yet the world itself. The double law in man always remains at the human level as tragic dualism. “Since it is impossible for the spirit to penetrate into the spiritual objects corresponding to it in any other way, except through the consideration of the sensory objects located in them,” and they incline him with their own desire to linger on them, then because of this desire he reaps “sorrow and pangs of conscience”; when the spirit, on the contrary, “tears off the imaginary shell of real things,” then it acquires “with spiritual joy” “sensual sorrow, from which its natural object has been taken away” 187 . Thus, even in St. Maximus, because of the Christian ideal, the Platonic heroic ideal of the “eternal struggle” between appearance and idea as the ultimate position of man emerges. “That is why, perhaps, the current dominance of anomaly has been established in us, so that a strength of spirit is revealed in us, preferring virtue to everything else” 188. This tragic imbalance is not destiny, but a sign of original sin in humanity. Now it is clear that this imbalance is described not only as “natural sins”: in the concept of “punishment”, which, among other things, condemns us to seek the infinite and timeless where, in fact, only the transitory can exist, the concept of “guilt” clearly appears, which is given to us in the form of this inclination and which - in nobis sine nobis (Latin "in us without our participation" - Transl.) - fetters our will. Here again the previously described tendency of St. Maximus to make a direct transition from ontological to ethical content is manifested. The existential tragedy of the double law in man - Platonic, given in the bare fact of the dualism of soul and body, and Christian, given in the original violation of order - passes directly into moral tragedy. And, since this tragedy is overcome by the free decision of man and is rooted in the order of things in nature, man is unable to eliminate it. The resolution of this contradiction can only be expected from God, from that world in which all worldly bitterness fades away - and has even already been completely smoothed out. With almost geometric rigor, St. Maximus builds his doctrine of anthropogenesis on the anthropology of original sin 189. The incarnation must be the restoration of a state (understood historically or mythologically-transhistorically) in which a person would remain forever: εις άφθαρσίαν άποκατάστασις 190 (“restoration of immortality” - Trans.). This restoration should restore balance, trampling the spirit of pride and exalting the flesh, exhausted by passions and death 191. To destroy the dialectic of sin, two conditions were required: death, which is not a natural reward for passion 192, and therefore, birth from a Virgin. Saint Gregory of Nyssa in his “Large Catechism” already put forward this demand and some Monophysites exaggerated it to the point of necessity, however, denying the possibility of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary 193 . All this is not included in the plans of the Monk Maxim; The “necessity” that he describes is not read out and phenomenologically seen from the facts of the history of God’s economy as the internal cause of the Divine plan of Salvation. Only where the tragic motives of the spiritual and historical tradition begin to predominate in him does he himself approach pessimism. Monophysitism remains for him, as for anyone who is oriented towards Alexandrian theology, a significantly dangerous area. Nevertheless, Christology, with its emphasis on diphysical and diphelitic theology, counters this danger in anthropology with its decisive and effective advantage. The “necessary” path of salvation, evident from the human condition, first requires, therefore, the internal and radical elimination of this situation through the free removal of “natural sin” and death, of all natural compulsion 194. Man by himself cannot do this, and therefore a superhuman man (ύπέρ άνθρωπον άνθρωπος) 195 is needed, whose superhumanity would be as effective and real as his humanity. Such one must take upon himself the “rejection of the sin of the voluntary Adam,” all natural sin 196, but because of the innocence of his sufferings, at the same time carry out judgment in the judgment of the court (κατάκρισιν κατακρίνη) 197, “the true curse of the oath” 198. St. Maximus always describes the death of Christ as a judgment on sin 199 and thereby as a genuine, albeit hidden, Last Judgment. In this death the judge and the defendant are the same, and thanks to it the same thing happens to every Christian. Since the second birth in baptism, the authentic image of the death of Christ, destroys the guilt of the first birth and anew restores the original spiritual origin from God and in God, once shamed by Adam, torment and death lose their sting 200. The inevitability of death for sinners includes the free choice of such death 201. “And since life is impossible without death, [Christians] think of the death of life as the renunciation of that concern for the flesh through which death invaded life, so that in finding death for death, one can no longer live in death, but die in a death that is honest before the Lord, a true death in power, and dooms corruption itself to corruption” 202 . Through this death the true productive power of the soul 203 finally awakens; she now not only herself conceives and is born in the spirit 204, as once at the beginning of creation 205, but even she herself conceives and gives birth in her womb to the Eternal Word Himself, “when Christ tirelessly desires to be mysteriously born, to be incarnated from the saved and to transform the giving birth soul into a mother of virgins” 206. She becomes a mother, passive as “conceiving and bearing”, as a “receiving womb”, active as “nursing the Logos with the breasts of contemplation and effective virtue” 207. Thus, by fulfilling this, she transcends the mystery of sex. The sexual synthesis of St. Maximus remains, like most of the Holy Fathers, too burdened with tragedy and the dialectic of despair of original sin, and does not find a positive place in the Christological synthesis. “For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female” (in the original Latin - Transl.). Of course, in St. Maximus the unity of man and woman retains that radiance and reflection of Divine love that the Areopagite already found in him. However, the Monk Maxim did not recognize the final, final meaning behind it; at this point he retains the Eastern tendency of thinking, which plays a major role for him. And as soon as the personal sexual synthesis fades away, the possibility of bringing it into the Christological synthesis disappears: instead, metaphysics must retain a systematically monastic character. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in his great synthesis, St. Maximus does not leave a prominent place for the Virgin Mary as the New Eve and Bride of Christ 208. The sexes were too tightly chained to time and the transitory 209; they were too closely chained to sin. And if, from the Gnostic point of view, man from the very beginning entered into existence as having fallen away and therefore having sex, then the work of Christ is more necessary than the restoration of the original state, which belongs to the “first eon” 210 - it becomes a synthesis of paradise integrity and the mortal state into something third, higher: “Uniting both with Himself in a perfect way,... He effectively removed the weaknesses of both sides: He made the second, dishonest state salutary and renewing for the first, honest, and made the first justifying and forgiving the second... He made reproduction redemptive for created being, paradoxically restoring through his passion the permanence of creation; He made creation a justification for reproduction, healing the passion for reproduction with the sinlessness of creation.” 211 This refers to St. Augustine. – Per. Entelechy (Greek) “outflow” – Trans. Qu. A. T., Prolog // PG 90, 257D-260A. Ibid // PG 90, 260A and beyond. As already in a similar treatise from the Cappadocian circle, see PG 44, 1327–1346. Amb. // PG 91, 1345D; Wed Cent. Car. 3. 25 (Centuries about love) // PG 90, 1024ВС; Cent. Gnost. 1, 13 // PG 90, 1088ВС. Qu. A. T. 43 // PG 90, 41 FOR. Qu. A. T. 43 // PG 90, 412D. Lib. Asc. // PG 90, 916D‑A. Hausherr J. Philautie. De la tendresse pour soi à la charité selon St. Maxime le Confesseur // Orientalia Christiana Analecta. 137. Roma, 1952. Qu. A. T 62 // PG 90, 653A. Epistulum 10 (hereinafter – Er.) // PG 91, 449B. Qu. A. T. 65 // PG 90, 740V. It is known how untranslatable this word is, the meaning of which ranges from actively sensual (angry or lustful) passion (affect, emotion, passion) to suffering doom and “passivity” in relation to fate, intruding through defenseless sensuality. The fact that both of these poles of the concept of “passion” (“pathos”) constitute such an indissoluble unity (much more indissoluble than in the French passion, in which “affect” and “suffering” nevertheless branched out synonymously almost as two different meanings), says more about Greek thinking and about the thinking of the Fathers than entire books can explain. No matter how hard the Fathers tried to neutralize the stoic, even platonic origin of this merger; Maxim - in that he mostly contrasts “pathos” as “sinful doom” with the neutral παθητικον (μέρος) τής ψυχής as “sensuality” - however, this word remained a constant threat, even fate, for at its root is the identification of sensuality and passion, and poet. – since the ideal of the spirit was actio and actus (lat. “action” and “activity” - Transl.) - overcoming sensuality (destruction of “passions”) as the path to one’s “I”. Wed. Introduction to “Sotnitsy about love”. Qu. A. T. 1 // PG 90, 269A. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 632B. Qu. et Dub. 3 // PG 90, 788AB. Qu. a. T. 49 // PG 90, 457. Lex peccati (lat.) “law of sin” - Trans. Qu. a. T. Prologus // PG 90, 257CD; Ibid 26 // PG 90, 348D, ibid 64 // PG 90, 696A. Ibid., 63 // PG 90, 669B. Wed. Urs von Baltasar H. Présence et Pensée. Essai sur la Philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse. Paris, 1942. – P. 44–61. Amb. // PG 91, 1325D and onwards. Qu. a. T. 59 // PG 90, 613C. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 628A. Sherwood P. St. Maximus the Confessor. The Ascetic Life. The Four Centuries on Charity. Translated and annotated Ancient Christian Writers XXI. London, 1955. – P 64. Qu. a T 59 // PG 90, 631D. Qu. a T. 61 // PG 90, 628AB. Ep 12 // PG 91, 488D. Sherwood (Sherwood R. St Maximus the Confessor. - P. 35), drew attention to this important text. “Three suspicions” that Sherwood cannot hide (Op. cit. - pp. 65 et seq.) 1) the suspicion that passions are given to nature due to subsequent sin, 2) the suspicion that the soul is, in spite of everything, independent of the body, and its correlation with the sensible is connected with the Fall, 3) the suspicion that sex is internally especially associated with sin. In St. Gregory of Nyssa, this is also expressed by the thought that formation, transition, death as such are based on the nature of the creature itself and therefore can be considered as “punishment” only from the perspective of heavenly grace (see “On the Constitution of Man”). Wed. Metaphysik und Mystik des Evagrius Ponticus // Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystic Innsbruk, 193. – S 35 f, and Die Hiera des Evagrius // Zeitschrift für katolische Theologie Innsbruk, 193. – S 103 ff, especially S 195. Ibid // PG 91, 1276B. On whether sin in paradise was of a sexual nature, see Asenio F. Tradicion sobre un pecado sexual en el paradiso? // Gregorianum. No. 31. Rome, 1950. – S. 375 (about Maxim). Qu. a T. 61 // PG 90, 628B. Ibid; Prooemium // PG 90, 249A. Ibid., 55 // PG 90, 541 V. Ibid., 48 // PG 90, 441 S. Ibid., 1 // PG 90, 269B. Expos. or. Dom. // PG 90, 896C. In Div. No. 4 // PG 4, 292C. Ibid // PG 4, 296 V. With particular clarity, the doctrine of the ability to sublimation is developed in “Centuries of Love”, 3, 67, 71, 98. Qu. a T. 49 // PG 90, 449B. Ibid., 55 // PG 90, 544A. Cent. Car. 3, 8 // PG 90, 1020AB. Er. 2 // PG 91, 397A et seq. Qu. A. T. 33 // PG 90, 373С. In this parallelism of body-soul and flesh-spirit (understood both as νους “spirit, mind”, and as πνεύμα - actually “spirit”) lies a danger that can threaten Eastern religious anthropology. Similar to John of Scythopolis: In Div. No. 4 // PG 4, 276C. Qu. A. T. 42 // PG 90, 408CD. Ibid., 62 // PG 90, 652С. Expos. or. Dom. // PG 90, 908BC. Qu. A. T. 42 // PG 90, 405C-408D. Ibid., 58 // PG 90, 596B, where, obviously, there is a narrowing σχεδόν “almost.” Read τμήματα instead of τιμήματα. Qu. A. T. Prooemium. // PG 90, 256V. Ibid., 48 // PG 90, 428B. Qu. A. T. Prooemium. // PG 90, 256A. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 628B. Qu. A. T. 61 // PG 90, 628V. Ibid // PG 90, 629D-632A. Ibid., Prooemium. // PG 90, 26 °C. Ibid., 21 // PG 90, 31 FOR. Er. 7 // PG 91, 437С-440А. Qu. A. T. Prooemium. // PG 90, 256D. Ibid., 47 // PG 90, 424B. Ibid., 47 // PG 90, 424D. Ibid., 5 // PG 90, 277С. In Div. No. 4 // PG 4, 281 AC (text origin disputed). In Div. No. 11 // PG 4, 397D. Qu. A. T. 58 // PG 90, 596D-597B. Fragment IX, see Epifanovich S. L. St. Maximus the Confessor and Byzantine theology. Kiev, 1915. – P. 28. Qu. A. T. 42 // PG 90, 408A; Wed Ibid 26 // PG 90, 349ВС; Ibid. 64 // PG 90, 648AB. Ibid., 47 // PG 90, 425A‑D. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 628С-628А. Julian of Halicarnasse (Juliani Fragmenta bei Draguet, Julian d'Halicarnasse et sa controverse avec Sever d'Antioche sur l'incorruptibilité du corps du Christ Lowen, 1924), Fragmente 17, 20, 29, 71, 82, 85. Qu. A. T. 63 // PG 90, 663С. Qu. A. T. 43 // PG 90, 408C. Ibid., 62 // PG 90, 652B. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 633D; Ibid., 63; 90, 684A; 685V. Ibid., 61 // PG 90, 632С, 633D. Ibid // PG 91, 1348A – S. Qu. A. T. 61 // PG 90, 636С. Expos. or. Dom. // PG 90, 889C. This did not happen unconsciously: St. Maximus resisted the exaltation favored at that time in the veneration of the Mother of God and was denounced as an enemy of the Virgin Mary. Acta Sanct. Aug. T. 3. 1867. – P. 107. Jungmann J. A. Die Abwehr des germanischen Arianismus und der Umbruch der religiösen Kultur im frühen Mittelalter // Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie. 1947. No. 69. – S. 49. Expos. or. Dom. // PG 90, 889D. Qu. a. T. 54 // PG 90, 52 °C and explanatory scholium No. 22; PG 90, 532C. Amb. // PG 91, 1317A – S. The translation was made by students of the Russian Orthodox University Y. Maksimova, K. Mikhailov, L. Naryshkina, M. Pershin, A. Fokin, M. Chernyaeva, V. Shevelev and D. Shkatov, edited by M. Zhurinskaya.