Christianity and religion V. V. Rozanova

V.V. Rozanov: pro et contra The personality and creativity of Vasily Rozanov in the assessment of Russian thinkers and researchers. Anthology. Book II I proceed from the fact that Christianity in its evangelical essence, as a religion of unconditional faith and absolute aspirations, is the most deeply internal, intimate, personal religion. The bearer of such faith, such aspirations can only be the human spirit, the human personality, and not any social union - a family, a people, a state. The Heavenly Father is “my” Father, “your” Father, or “our” Father – ours, meaning the unity of believers, the unity of all who have “their” Heavenly Father, but this is not the Father of a family, people, or state. A Christian, accepting Christ the Son of God into his heart, does not know any mediation between himself and the Heavenly Father, he is directly turned to the Heavenly Father: the believer does not look at himself as one of many, socially, popularly, conventionally, but he puts himself in the only intimate relationship with God, before which the whole world and all other people are only the object of his faith and his love. A Christian feels himself at the center of the whole world - God acts not through nature on him, but through him on nature - he also feels himself at the center of humanity, he certainly feels like the savior of humanity (a continuator of the work of Christ), he sees his calling in doing something of God for all people, sacrificing himself to them. It is this universal and universal centrality of the Christian that constitutes the most characteristic thing in Christianity. The Christian, who has the Father in himself, necessarily opposes himself to all nature and all people. Sonship of God is a religious feeling that is significantly different from the pagan feeling of God in nature; Christianity is precisely a religion that is not naturalistic, but human, divine-human. To a Christian, nature does not say anything religiously; on the contrary, he and his Heavenly Father enter into nature, which all, in the fullness of its creatures, awaits its deliverance through him, through the revelation of divine glory in him. In the same way, humanity in its real groups, family, national, state - for him constitutes only the external object of his faith and his love: his task is formulated before him solely in the form of the question of what he can do for the good of the family, the state, the people. In the eyes of a Christian, every human gathering, every social group is not a bearer of internal religious content, but a bearer of external needs. Religiously, God acts in nature and in history only through him: only through his central faith does he move towards divine goals and through his central love does he actively contribute to the achievement of these goals, which for nature and history remain external, objective. The believer himself and only he relates to the final goals from within, they are realized for him and through him, and nature and history serve these goals in their own ways, willy-nilly, good or evil. This centrality of the Christian is strengthened in relation to nature and history by the fact that his faith is in no way conditioned by a miracle, does not require a miracle, but is easily reconciled with natural and historical patterns: the sun shines on the good and the evil indifferently - this means that his Heavenly Father, in His goodness, sends sunlight to everyone, both good and evil; in historical destinies, both evil and good perish, this, firstly, so that everyone is awake and always ready to repent and, secondly, so that believers do the works of God for the good of people, fight against evil and suffering and bring them good. Then, the centrality of the Christian, the intimacy of Christianity is affirmed by the fact that Christianity does not speak anything in the public language, does not pose any special tasks to the family, people, state, does not create any social forms, simply does not have any social appearance, permeates social forms of life without affecting them. A Christian, with his religious view of the world, with his hidden last aspirations, walks among the social movement as if with a “closed door”, not touching social forms, being indifferent to the laws of their development. The intimacy of Christianity finds its polar counterpart in the conventionally external, objectively natural nature of the forms of social life - family, national and state. Each social group acts precisely as a group, regardless of the intimate mood of its members: although each of them can interfere in the direction of social development, this development nevertheless moves by its own interests, according to its own laws. A group association is not just the sum of individual characters, but in such an association people necessarily enter into action not from the intimate, but from the external side: through organic social life they create their own special interests and evoke special feelings. Thus, a family, a living and prosperous family, does not develop in the direction of the resultant intimate character of one and the other spouse, but awakens in them unique feelings that equally captivate them, and is driven by its own special interests. These interests can unite spouses of different religious sentiments: each of them can highlight the final goals of life in their own way, but the immediate family tasks will be common to them. The same applies to larger groups, the people's and the state. Intimately religious, internally absolute life and conditionally social life, divine and earthly, are two heterogeneous forms of life - and in this very heterogeneity lies the final foundation of their highest harmony. This can be most clearly illustrated by the example of the modern economic liberation movement. It sets itself the goal of such an economic and social system, which at the same time is also the immediate external goal of Christianity: this is a system in which there would be no classes of the oppressed and disadvantaged and classes of the idle and privileged, which would implement the principles of justice and equality. And at the same time, from the inside, the economic liberation movement finds itself in decisive confrontation with the religious-Christian worldview and mood. The confrontation is generated, on the one hand, by the fact that the socialist movement is based on economically materialist theoretical foundations, which are absolutely irreconcilable with Christianity: there is no place for Christianity where everything comes down to economic reasons, where earthly happiness is placed above all else. On the other hand, the desire of the disadvantaged and oppressed to win equality with other classes, to achieve economic freedom and security from within has nothing in common with the internal motives of Christian love, giving and sacrificing: the desire of some to achieve and receive and the desire of others to share and sacrifice, coinciding in external immediate results, radically diverge from each other in their inner essence. And when these two spheres are mixed, they inevitably come either to the denial of one of them - some reject Christianity in the name of socialist ideals, others reject the economic liberation cause in the name of Christian ideals - or they come to a compromise, to the development of Christian socialism, which is equally disgusting both to socialists, since it interferes with the freedom of the liberation movement, and to Christians, since it cools the absoluteness of Christian love with the lukewarmness of the social form. And in essence, the same is the dual attitude of Christianity to the family, the nation, the state, to science, art, and the same is the compromise in these areas, which marks the entire past path of church history. But one has only to recognize the heterogeneity of these spheres, personal-religious and social-conventional, in order to eliminate the essential need for conflict between them and bring them to complete harmony: the sphere of personal religious-absolute attitude to the world and the sphere of the material structure of earthly life are heterogeneous spheres, emanating from completely different internal sources, but coinciding in the immediate external results. Dostoevsky more than once expresses the idea that, with the loss of faith in God, with the loss of afterlife aspirations, people will direct all their conscious efforts to the organization of earthly life, earthly happiness, community life, and will achieve enormous results in this area. But for this there is no need to lose faith in God - for this it is enough to be convinced that the area of earthly interests is entirely the area of earthly means, that the arrangement of one’s happiness is entirely left to man himself, limited in this regard only by nature and other people, that people can consciously organize their life, their earthly happiness according to the principle of earthly interest, that the desire for earthly happiness and the natural socio-historical development of forms of life should be revealed in complete freedom from external religious instructions. And conversely, this matter of earthly dispensation should not have its own, economic-materialistic, religion and its own, evolutionary-egoistic, ethics: it should be entirely an external economic matter. In this case, the economic and political structure cannot come into significant conflict with spiritual religion. There is no need to cover up an earthly cause with any transcendental goals; let it appear in all its truth. On the other hand, Christianity does not declare any ready-made forms of economic-social affairs, does not declare a Christian system of state and family, does not have any points of contact with the unique natural development of economic and social relations, although from the inside, from the side of ultimate goals, from the side of attitude towards people, their sorrows and joys, it is included in all earthly interests. A Christian has a completely different attitude towards the external forms of a social movement and its internal interests; his different attitudes towards a social cause are external and internal-heartfelt. Economic-political language is the language of external relations, common to people of different religious beliefs, uniting them regardless of their religion and not expressing Christian content. But personally, a Christian is interested from within in the change of social forms, in their development: without religiously interfering with the freedom of their historical development, he is not indifferent to how man and society live at one or another stage of historical development. From the side of his heart, he closely accepts every social form, every historical stage, because behind every form and at every stage he sees the suffering and joy of his neighbor, for whom he is ready to lay down his soul - because he looks at every form of social life and every stage of social historical movement as a means of realizing his personal Christian ideals. These ideals are personal in their original origin, but they are social in their objective results. As far as social forms, in their externally objective aspect, are far from Christianity, a Christian is personally close from the inside to the social cause, from the inside is interested in historical progress. He speaks in different languages ​​when he speaks as a member of the party to which he adheres, and when he speaks to himself or in the company of two or three gathered in the name of Christ. The first is the language of conditional goals, temporary programs, the second is the language of an absolute attitude towards the world, the latest world goals. The first language he has in common with all those who are thirsty and hungry, the downtrodden and powerless, in the second language he speaks only with the Heavenly Father, in prayer, shutting himself up in his room. Only with this view is it possible to avoid violence on both sides, both the external violence of religion over social development, over various forms of community life, and social-state violence over a person’s religious conscience. It is necessary for social and legal consciousness to develop completely free from transcendental instructions, according to its own laws, in accordance only with its conditional tasks, and for a person’s personal religious self-consciousness to stand outside of any external, public control. Just as sectarian fragmentation of society, breaking it into hostile alliances, is undesirable, the principle of personal religious freedom stands just as high and firmly. Sectarianism is undesirable as a stop halfway, as a vague indication of religious freedom - the true bearer of religious absoluteness can only be an individual and, as for the intimate side of religion, its real experiences, which cannot be the subject of either teaching or regulation, then the ideal is as many religions as there are believing individuals. We thus arrive at the formula: freedom in religion, solidarity in public affairs and necessity in natural-historical life. Of course, social life is progressing and every step in historical progress is an attempt to realize the highest ideal in social life. However, the absoluteness of the ideal certainly cannot move from within the individual into the realm of social forms: the implementation of the ideal is inevitably conditional. Life always turns towards the ideal, and this is the condition for the possibility of personal and religious participation in public life, but as soon as the direction of life towards the ideal is fixed in the social system, it immediately turns out that the personal ideal of social life again rises above its direction. For example, the modern socialist movement strives for the decisive elimination of class inequalities and class struggle, but we are already being warned that the class struggle is being replaced by a new struggle of professional groups. Absolute striving for the ideal is possible only in personal will, while the social realization of the ideal is necessarily conditional. Religion is an eternal perpendicular to the direction of social life and, no matter how this direction goes, it will have its own perpendicular. The polarity of personal absoluteness and social convention will never disappear from our lives. I see my theological and literary vocation in drawing the dividing sword of Christ along the modern strip of life: I consciously draw the boundary between evangelically pure, spiritually absolute personal religion and conditional social life, developing according to its natural and historical laws - I draw this boundary in order to make possible the highest harmony between them, just as glass, delimiting the elements, serves condition of the battery's electrical operation. To introduce religion into the very depths of life, to reconcile its ideals with the very conventionality of family-national-state relations, to reach a complete and final synthesis that opens up the broadest prospects for the fight against evil and victory over it, is possible only on the basis of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe heterogeneity of the personal-religious and social-conventional spheres of life. My first task was to reveal the pure evangelical, spiritual-absolute character of Christianity, to cleanse it of all historical deposits and to clarify its heterogeneity in relation to the earthly tasks of social development - I mainly established a glass separating the elements, in the full hope that the necessary combination of them would follow by itself. I see in historical reality a natural tendency to unite the poles, and I see the task of the philosophy of religion to be to introduce a dividing line so that this connection does not become a premature confusion. Personal effort must be directed towards separation between elements, because the tendency towards union is always given in living reality. Whatever they say about the historical past of the church, no matter how Byzantine is characterized, the entire past of the church seems to me to be a continuous history of the symbolic sanctification of life: in this symbolism, which is only complemented by asceticism, is the very essence of the church, the church’s relationship to the world, both in the past and in the present. And when I hear the speeches of modern publicist-preachers, blasting the centuries-old church isolation from life, calling for the sanctification of all aspects of life with Christian light, pointing out in the gospel itself the foundations for love of life, for bright joy, I cannot help but say to myself: this preaching speech, since the time of the Apostle, who called on Christians even to drink and eat for the glory of God, has been heard in the church for nineteen centuries, essentially remaining unchanged - and I am surprised at the injustice in relation to the past church centuries of our publicist-speakers, who unreasonably claim originality. They break into the open door. What is new in their preaching speeches is a certain frivolity, which allows them to see in the gospel itself the foundations for the joys of life and makes the path of higher synthesis extremely easy for them. There is no ennobling tragedy in their words, there is no depth in their understanding of the Gospel truth, their attitude towards the polarity of life is too superficial: they are ready to say that it was in vain that Christ spoke about the cross and self-denial, that the whole history of the church was a complete misunderstanding, that everything is resolved in their superficial knowledge. On the question of the immediate goals of church policy, they are quite right, and if all religion were exhausted by this policy, their word would be sufficient, but they do not even come to the essence of the religious question, the Christian problem. So that their practical program is not the program of one of the political parties, completely divorced from religious foundations, it is necessary to breathe religious tragedy into their words, it is necessary to spiritualize their speeches with the dividing sword of Christ. I see the roots of the Christian problem in the depths of the Gospel, the entire church-historical path seems to me to be an inevitable path to achieving a religious synthesis; I do not consider the task of reconciling absolute religion with free life to be a purely theoretical task of the individual mind, but for me this is a question of some rebirth, about some transitional moment in the history of Christianity itself, therefore the theoretical pre-solution of the Christian problem turns out to be a religious matter. In the closest way, this is the degeneration of the symbolic-ascetic sanctification of life into a free combination of the religious spirit and earthly life with its joys and sorrows, earthly forces and natural-historical laws - the degeneration of the church’s attitude to natural-historical life, inevitably symbolically ascetic by the very concept of the church, into a personally religious attitude. From this side, the very establishment of pure gospel truth is important, in its removal from the conventional church-historical vestment. But the roots of the Christian problem go even deeper, it reaches to the very depths of the gospel, to the mystery of the relationship of the Son to the Father. The work of Christ, which flowed from His divinely-filial self-consciousness, even from a real-historical point of view, has world-religious significance. Christ filled religious life with love alone - in its two forms - love for God the Father and love for people. His heart was warmed by all-encompassing, boundless, absolute love, and He instilled this love in all of humanity that he had reborn. And now our heart beats in a burst of this same Christian love: pity for man, an all-encompassing thought about the human race, about all people - have become our second nature. Let this Christian principle bear far from equal fruit in different hearts, for many it is drowned out by the weeds of base interests, for others it opens only by chance, in moments of uplift, for others it barely glimmers, so be it, but there is no doubt that it has taken root in our hearts, that it is ineradicable in us, that our attitude towards man, in spite of everything, is completely different from what it was in the pagan world - and this change in the nature of our soul began with Christ. We are now so accustomed to this new character of spiritual life for the pagan world that we often forget about its connection with Christ, it seems to us primordial, natural, worldly, it flutters on the banner of fighters for human rights who have consciously broken away from religious Christian foundations, but this does not in the least shake the historical fact that this new life of the human soul began with Christ, that He is the “master and finisher” of the new spiritual life of the Christian humanity. This world-historical work of Christ is a strictly religious work: just as He accomplished it in God’s filial self-consciousness, so God became His Father and the Father of man. Christ revolutionized religion; He revealed God as the Father of people. Beginning with Christ, the Son of God, pre-Christian naturalistic and folk religion was reborn into a divine-human religion - and this, again, let’s say, is a real historical fact that cannot be disputed. The religious work of establishing new relations between God and man, the work of theanthropic love, the work of saving the world, penetrated to such depths into the soul of Christ, the Son of God, delighted Him to such heavenly heights, carried Him away with such strength that He was saturated with it, lived only with it, rose above all the natural, everyday surroundings of life, barely touched the earth with His feet. He recognized Himself as being sent into the world to accomplish a specific work of God; alien to the world and its interests, His soul yearned towards heaven, towards the Heavenly Father. He was all prayer, all sacrifice of love. The same divine spirit inspired the first society of His disciples: they eagerly awaited the revelation of the day of the Lord, they ardently desired to renounce the world and go to God and Christ, they walked the earth with their eyes constantly directed toward heaven, alien to the earth, like temporary guests on it, accidentally staying longer than they expected. They were intoxicated by the spirit of God, the spirit of divine all-encompassing love, the thirst for self-denial and sacrifice, the hope of being perfect, as the Heavenly Father is perfect, of living a pure divine life. And long later, when the fact of the long existence of Christianity was already revealed and the Christian religion symbolically sanctified worldly life, the absolute heavenly character of the Christian spirit was reflected in asceticism, which covered up and even distorted the truth of the Gospel. And even today, preachers like Tolstoy, who have internalized Christianity with one mind and have not felt it with their pagan hearts, repeat in abstract, dead words about the unearthly heights of Christianity, and their belated words, like a distant echo, reflect the truth of Christ and His closest disciples. And in order to understand this truth of Christ and His disciples, we only need to imagine all the novelty of the truth of God’s Fatherhood revealed by Him, all the decisiveness of the revolution that Christianity has brought about in humanity. According to the power of his new birth, the new birth, a person had to live for some time with only a new spirit. Just as Christ Himself, as soon as He was named the Son of God in baptism, was immediately carried away by the spirit into the desert and spent forty days there, tasting nothing, so the reborn humanity, blinded by the brilliance of the new truth of sonship with God, carried away by the prospect of divine perfection, lived these centuries as if in a religious desert, far from life. These were centuries when regenerated humanity lived under the one indivisible power of Christ - the Son of God, when God exalted Christ and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that before His name every knee would bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, when everything was put under His feet. But in the same word of God it is foretold that the exclusive kingdom of the Son of God will have an end when “He gives up the kingdom to God and the Father. For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet... When God the Father has put all things in subjection to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, so that God may be all in all” (and Cor. XV, 24-28). And we see that the prophecy of Scripture about the kingdom of the Son has already been fulfilled in these Christian centuries, because these were centuries of the unlimited and undivided power of the Son of Man over humanity, the dominion of His spirit - the spirit of love and heavenly aspiration. But has not now come the time for the Son Himself to submit to His Father? Isn’t it time for Christianity to emerge from the desert of “pure” heavenly impulses and place its feet on the solid soil of the earth? Hasn't the time come when Christianity, defined in its heavenly purity, must “serve the earth,” be combined with life, and sanctify not symbolically, but from within and effectively the entire course of natural-historical life? That this has become necessary for our time is obvious to anyone who does not deliberately close their eyes: for, behold, the exclusive kingdom of spirit and love has reached the point that their confession, the most ardent and artistic, takes on noticeable features of “idle talk.” That this confession is sincere, that our nature has been reborn according to this spirit, that pity decisively prevents us from being bold admirers of our egoism, from crushing and destroying everyone, this is so; but everything is limited to one dead and deadening emotion, and the trembling of the heart does not give the strength to actively serve the good. It has now become clear to observers of Christian life that “whoever speaks of his abstract love for humanity almost always loves himself alone.” And this will not happen when the Christian love deeply ingrained in our hearts enters the system of living life, when the gospel salt becomes the seasoning of history, when the Son, the bearer of love, submits to the Father of life, the Ancient of Days. This submission will not be a return to paganism, an abolition of the entire work of Christ: Christ will submit to the Father as the beloved Son. And in the new kingdom of the Father of life, the religion of love will occupy the most honorable place of the religion of the Beloved Son, but spiritual love will no longer hover over life, fearing touching it, it will be the adornment of life, its need, its flourishing... This coming synthesis will not be a simple equation, a flat indifference, a similarity of forms; no, with the internal unity of the Father and the Son, a certain tragedy of filial obedience will always retain its place: “not my will, but yours be done” - the duality of currents will always remain - the naturally necessary and freely rational, the kingdom of filial love and absolute aspirations will never dissolve in the natural kingdom. This tragedy must be recognized as lying in the very essence of human life. However, this tragedy only says that the work of the Son has universal significance, that it introduces a “countercurrent” into world life itself. A person’s calling is not to show childish obedience to established rules, but to solve some kind of world problem, to bring something new into the kingdom of the Father. The most important thing is that this tragedy does not represent an impassable abyss, an insurmountable division, but, relying on the heterogeneity of the spheres of the father and son, it leaves the possibility of their harmonious combination. Here, of course, the matter cannot do without filial obedience: the Father of life is greater than the Son. Nevertheless, this is not slavish obedience.” accept the life of the Father into the work of the Son as your most precious adornment. The love of the Son must be for life, the spirit for the earth, but life becomes good only from filial love, the earth is justified by the spirit... Before my eyes are two volumes of V. V. Rozanov’s last major work, “Near the Church Walls” (1906). The book is of exciting and irresistible interest, and this is not only due to the well-known bright talent of the author, but also due to the diversity and vitality of the church and religious issues that are discussed in it. What is also striking is the, so to speak, lively biographical or autobiographical nature of the discussions. These are not abstract dissertations on logically distributed issues; but the author’s speech constantly introduces either a description of a specific case about which a question arises, or the answer of some “friend,” or an objection, or the confession of some suffering soul. These “confessions of the heart” are especially curious - about issues of Christian cult - the confession of an iecceo-Protestant-Stundist, about the negative and sorrowful attitude of the clergy towards the world and its pleasures - the confession of a priest, about the motives for the complete rejection of any religion in general - the confession of an unbeliever, letters from two Catholics about Catholicism. In general, there is enough for everyone here to think about: these words of the author about his book are fully justified by its content. And most importantly - not just for thought, but everywhere here “languorous bewilderment about the entire expanse of our faith, which cannot but present itself to everyone who has long and thoughtfully wandered and is wandering through the pastures of this faith.” Here, stone-hard answers to ancient questions are not given - these formulas are already too boring for everyone, they set the teeth on edge, and, like peas from a wall, they bounce off our hearts. Here questions are posed, as life itself now poses them, an ardent heart, a searching mind. And you can agree or disagree with the answers, but these languid perplexities can only be alien to those whose hearts have turned to stone... I will not convey the contents of these books. I will say only a few words about the religious direction of V.V. Rozanov, which would help the reader navigate the material of these books. V.V. Rozanov is a deeply religious person, but his religion is not in concepts, not in teaching, but in feeling - living, moist, juicy, his religion is “twisted in physiology”, has its roots in it, is deeply immersed in the bosom of nature, embraces everything living, green, joyful, growing - bright stars in the sky and cheerful flowers on the earth, the smile of a child and the mystery of life under the heart of a mother. He has no interest in abstract dogma, but he prays on the green lawn that surrounds the church - he, like Alyosha Karamazov, loves sticky leaves and kisses the wet earth. “He doesn’t stop on the porch (of the church), but goes down. His soul, full of delight, longs for freedom, space, and breadth. Above him, the heavenly dome, full of quiet shining stars, overturned widely and immeasurably. From the zenith to the horizon, the still unclear Milky Way appears in two. The night, fresh and quiet to the point of stillness, hugs the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral sparkle in the yacht sky. Luxurious flowers in the flower beds near the house fell asleep until the morning. The silence of the earth seems to merge with the heavenly one, the earthly mystery comes into contact with the starry one... He stands, looks, and suddenly, as if knocked down, he falls to the ground. He doesn’t know why he hugs her, he doesn’t give himself an account of why he so uncontrollably wants to kiss her, kiss her all over, but he kisses her while crying, sobbing and pouring his tears, and ecstatically vows to love her, to love her forever and ever. in “her blood”, in her fragrance, in her joy and flowers - he understands nothing, nothing about religion. Rozanov’s religion and theology are two different planes; but it is close and understandable to children, pregnant mothers, and family people. The serving priest, dressed in “iconostasis” vestments, is his opponent by necessity, but the same priest, as a family man, is inevitably his friend, and all of them together - children, mother, family - with their joys and sorrows, defenseless, but safe in this defenselessness - are indignant at the dead, eunuch monasticism, indignant at the “dry, skinny, ugly eunuchs”... V.V. Rozanov sleeps during the “theological reading”, is bored in the church, but “near the church walls”, in the temple of nature, he prays enthusiastically - and he calls here everyone who loves life, to whom joy is dear, and here everyone can come to terms with him, be they Christians or pagans, for everyone there will be a common natural religious thing. “I am a free Christian and there is room for me everywhere.” V.V. Rozanov is as free a Christian as he is a free pagan. And this middle ground between Christianity and paganism, pagan or universal in Christianity - this is most understandable to him. It is on this basis that his love for the church develops, which has complemented and continues to complement the Gospel with its lights at Easter, Trinity birches, a white shirt at baptism, and his hostility to church-historical monasticism, which “wants to strangle all joy and life.” All the author’s arguments from this point of view about holidays are deeply poetic and religious. To bring nature into the holiday, thus creating everyday joy for children and mothers of families who do not run around on visits and do not sit in taverns, and to keep the fathers themselves with their families and make their joys purer - such is his call... But in speeches about holidays, he has to express pia desideria 1 more, complain more than rejoice at reality. However, most of all he complains and is indignant at the lack of religion in the phenomena of conception and birth - in these phenomena, mainly religious, because here most of all man continues the creative work of God, the work of nature 2. And it must be said that Rozanov’s entire religious metaphysics revolves around “sex” and its mystery; the joy of marriage, the protection of the family from church and state cruelty are the main subjects in his journalistic activities. These include his essays “The Family Question in Russia”, “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved”, “Religion and Culture” and a number of articles in the magazines “New Way” and “Questions of Life”. Here are the main thoughts from these books and articles: “The birthing depths of man have a transcendental, mystical, religious nature... Religion in almost all its existing fullness flows from the floor: these are the prayers of fathers for children, mothers for them; prayers of children repeating words after the nanny. Here and there are prayers of gender, that is, having gender in their hidden depths. Are they cold? are they pretending? There are no deepest, no most passionate prayers!.. There is no higher beauty of religion than the religion of the family. But then the family, that is, in its blood, in its carnality, in its obvious bodily dependence and coherence, is not also, mutually and in return, religion? T. That is, if religion so obviously flows from carnal relationships, then vice versa - isn’t there religiosity in carnal relationships themselves? in their invoice? All this is silently and imperceptibly expressed for everyone in the very institution of “marriage”: it is the theitization of sex... If “marriage” is or can be “religious”, then, of course, because and only on the condition that “religion” has something “sexual” in itself... The remarkable sinlessness of the baby follows from here. In essence, around an infant, every adult (civil) virtue is diminished and limited, and the further a person moves from the moment of birth, the darker he becomes. In the radiance of the baby there is a noumenal, other-worldly holiness, like the moisture of an other-worldly light that has not yet escaped from his eyelashes. A house without children is dark (morally), with children it is bright; Looking at or communicating with a baby for a long time, we correct ourselves, return to kindness and truth... The family is the “I Am” of each of us; “holy land” on which human feet have stood since ancient times. This is a whole tangle of mysteries; a knot from where the threads that connect us begin, limiting our arbitrariness, but in such a way that only here we joyfully submit to such a limitation: that is, the beginning of religion, the religious connections of man with the world. This is our real spiritual fatherland, without which each of us is a spiritual waste. Family must be understood as work, as tireless care for each other, as the only subject for which work is not difficult and care does not tire; a way of such connectedness of people, where they already love each other without “Moral Theology”, shed sweat for each other and are ready to shed, and sometimes shed, blood... Birth and everything around birth is religious; it resurrects, and even resurrects from such desolation of denial as our nihilism. Nihilists are all young men, that is, those who have not yet given birth; nihilism is all outside the family and without the family. And where the family begins, nihilism ends... “It’s hard to resist continuing these wonderful thoughts, skillfully revealed in the above-mentioned books and mainly “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved”... Some of us have made noise that Rozanov says immoral things, that he “profanes religion”, “corrupts theology”... In such cries, perhaps, there is less hypocrisy than a simple lack of religious feeling. Rarely is anyone as chaste in his words as Rozanov is in his speeches. “To take a priest onto a ship instead of serving a farewell prayer,” to sanctify all nature with religion, to sanctify the very passions and thereby revive religion, make it a real force, transfer it from the sphere of concepts and words to the sphere of life, experiences - that’s what he wants. Isn't this chastity? However, this is not the whole of V.V. Rozanov - and anyone who thinks that all of Rozanov is here, and surrenders to his religious call without any conditions, without any delays, may find himself in a truly tragic position. The matter of Mr. Rozanov’s attitude to Christianity in its essence is the main subject of the books mentioned above. The fact is that Rozanov is fundamentally hostile to Christianity - and hostile not only to historical Christianity, but also to any ideal-heavenly impulse; he wants physiology to be the only basis of religion and ethics. His religion coincides with the church-everyday surface of Christianity and here, on this surface, he speaks “to the heart” of the Christian family. But his religion goes deep into his religious metaphysics and in this depth rebels with all determination against Christianity. We are accustomed to encountering disdain for the church cult, the everyday side of Christianity, and respect for the moral side of Christianity, with which the entire moral character of European history is undoubtedly connected. But Rozanov accepts the Trinity birches, lamps and incense and with all decisiveness rejects the evangelical essence of Christianity, Christian morality. Rozanov’s paganism is not a joke, it is not just about everyday joy, which others seem easy to combine with Christianity, for the gospel also speaks of the beauty of the lilies of the field (oh, how naive that is! Painfully naive!), it is deeper and more serious, it reaches the point of subterranean tragedy, it is fundamentally not reconcilable with the evangelical psyche. This does not weaken our interest in Rozanov; it only increases. But in the book we are talking about, this element of Rozanov barely appears, as if deliberately covered up, hidden. Here or there, the glimpse of this deepest religious essence he has dropped may elude the inattentive reader. “Sometimes it is thought that there are two religions and there are and should be two cults, two categories of worship: black or dark - as a response to grief and the metaphysics of grief, and light, white - as a continuation, decoration and further development of the joys, delights, raptures, and happiness that are also innate to us. The first one already exists: this is our Church. No one even has a thought about a second Church. For a youth, for a young man, for a warrior-husband, for a bride-girl, what do we have except eternally dirge-like choruses, besides icons with the yellow-parchment faces of elders? Nothing – except fright, frightening!”... “Sometimes I think” - what a distraction of the eyes, what a softening of tone, throwing a shadow, as if covering a wolf’s pit. And suddenly we have “nothing but fear, frightening”: think about all the horror of these words, all the hatred that is heard in them. And here’s another dropped word. “Humble patience... passive beauty, touching Tolstoy, touching me for a long time - but now I fear it, like my death, the people’s, the world’s! This is the beautiful form of Moloch (Spirit of Nothingness and Destruction), poison in a golden vial, “native” fingers taking you by the throat... “ This means: I fear Christianity as I fear death! Listen and understand this, you who naively dream of reconciling pagan joy with the gospel spirit. For V.V. Rozanov, religion is light and joy. In the book under review, he approaches Christianity from this side. In this case, he lovingly (and repeatedly) dwells on one priest of our day, a very famous preacher and publicist, who “points out and proves by references that the gospel does not condemn the rational, appropriate enjoyment of the blessings of nature.” Apparently, such an interpretation of the Gospel represents the most practical solution to the religious problem, and it really has value in the sense of combating historical asceticism, modern scribes and Pharisaism. But in an essentially religious sense, in the sense of solving the Christian problem essentially, it is frivolous. This is precisely utilitarian preaching, and not philosophy, journalism, and not religious thought... I want to say: Mr. Rozanov accepts this interpretation of Christianity for the purpose of promoting his idea and is completely out of interest in the essence of Christianity. He has his own religion - and all he would like from Christianity is for it to cease being a religion of sacrifice and become a religion of joy and “prosperity”, not caring in the least that in this case Christianity will perish, and even wanting exactly this. To interpret Christianity only as a rational enjoyment of the blessings of nature simply means to deny Christianity, to pass by Calvary with a joke, and not to think about the deepest mystery of the gospel, about the innermost needs of the human heart. It is a good thing to enjoy the blessings of nature rationally, but man does not live by bread alone, his heart wants, besides the rational enjoyment of bread, and heavenly achievement. The Gospel speaks only of heavenly life. This was ascetically and one-sidedly explained in such a way that man lives only a heavenly life. Such one-sided (historical) asceticism must be fought, but for this there is no need and no possibility of frivolously reinterpreting the gospel. His words must be accepted in all their depth and severity, and it is precisely for such a gospel that we must look for places in our lives. This is a new task of our time, our religious-historical task - and it cannot be solved without some kind of religious turning point. And there is no need to gloss over this turning point, it is necessary - as V.V. Rozanov says elsewhere - “it is better to look the danger straight in the eye.” V.V. Rozanov himself, only in these articles, in journalistic forms, accepts a superficial interpretation of the gospel, concealing within himself his explanation of this “historical” phenomenon... But in the essence of the gospel, in the essence of the evangelical, eternal religious method, the struggle against modern scribes and pharisaism, hypocrisy is not enough. Just as the gospel, alongside such a struggle, with the denunciation of bigots, opened up a deepening into the “primordial” truth of religion, into the eternal revelation of God in the nature of man and his heart, so the religious reform of our days should not stop at the easy victory for our time over scribes and Pharisaism, but should deepen the historical surface of Christianity into the distance of nature and the heart, bring and introduce the “spiritual” gospel life into the bosom of broad real life... This is our religious problem. In the excellent article “Askochensky and Archimandrite. Feodor Bukharev" 3 on the topic "about the combination of reality with the ideal of religious holiness" several letters from Anna Sergeevna Bukhareva 4 to V.V. Rozanov are given. In one of these letters, A. S. Bukhareva complains to V. V. Rozanov: “By the way, I want to tell you how outraged I was by Prof.’s article. Tareev “On the moral significance of Christ’s Resurrection” 5, where he decisively rebels against the belief in the Resurrection of Christ in the flesh. Mainly I was outraged by his spiritualism, with which he wants to obscure the broad horizons that are about to open with the development of the doctrine of the Incarnation... How our bright Holiday would have dimmed if our Orthodox idea of the resurrection of Christ corresponded to the spiritualistic idea of Tareev. (Mr. Rozanov instructs me, recalling his years as a teacher at the gymnasium), our soul does not die... Why does the professor need this teaching? He elevates the spirit at the expense of the body, that is, by humiliating it (monastic tendency): and Anna Sergeevna, merging her personal feat and the truth of her husband (break with monasticism), rebels for the rights of the body...” In Europe, some are still convinced that in Russian cities bears walk the streets... Similarly, some of our secular writers think that all academy professors are monks... That in the resurrection of Christ there was the resurrection of His soul - I not only did not say this, but this is precisely what I denied, considering “an elementary position in biblical theology the truth that the spirit is not the second (spirit and body) or third (spirit, soul and body) part of human nature, but the spirit is the divine principle of human life, the divine principle in man”... I will not talk at all about the monasticism of the academy professors and about their own monastic tendencies, as well as about the bears on the streets of Moscow. That's not the point. The fact is that Bukhareva complains about me (the most convinced Christian) to Rozanov (the most convinced pagan) on the issue of the Incarnation - and they seem to understand each other. “Yes,” says Rozanov, “the resurrection of the body... and further - the recognition of birth, family, marriage - this is good...” Also in another place, Rozanov praised monasteries: “monasteries are good... like our proverbs and fairy tales...” And the Incarnation of God is a sweet fairy tale for him. The monk will not throw himself on V.V. Rozanov’s neck for this “fairy tale” - Anna Sergeevna Bukhareva’s complaint is also comical. After all, you need to understand Rozanov’s tactics and his psyche. Here are his words, which essentially express his attitude towards Christianity: “Today, our day in faith, is simply ours and only our day.” We celebrate christenings. The sacrament is over, the font is brought out, an abundance of food is placed on a large table covered with a white tablecloth, the joyful father seats the unmasked priest and the gathered relatives and friends... Enter V.V. Rozanov. “Oh, how good it is for you... The font has already been taken out: this, of course, is naivety. The sacrament of baptism - cute fairy tales... But look how much fun you have. White shirt... on the table everything is delicious. This is the most important thing - to be happy. This is what you and I have in common. We are brothers."... - But, excuse me, Vasily Vasilyevich! How are you talking about baptism? And why are you doing this?.. If you just congratulated me on the newborn and sat down to a meal, how glad I would be. – But you are talking about baptism... You have confused us... Do you understand that we cannot take this so lightly? “The Resurrection of Christ? – says Vasily Vasilievich. - These are, of course, fairy tales... But look - the resurrection of the flesh: what a sweet idea! This means birth, family and marriage are also “there”... - Oh, Mr. Rozanov, this is... serious with us... And A. S. Bukhareva: how is she so quick and... so frivolous with you... I cannot so easily accept Rozanov’s joy, precisely because I am a convinced Christian. For me, the joy of family, a white children's shirt, and a green birch tree are just as precious as they are for Rozanov. But the gospel is also dear to me... And therefore, for me, the whole religious problem comes down to the question of reconciling “real reality with religious holiness,” of reconciling the gospel with cultural progress and worldly joys. All my theological writings revolve around this problem. The same issue was resolved by Archimandrite. Feodor Bukharev. But he resolved the issue of the relationship of “Orthodoxy to modernity” dogmatically, based on the idea of ​​​​incarnation... On the dogmatic path, Arch. Theodore cannot be justified in free paganism - this is the true path of symbolic asceticism. In fact, if we are waiting for the resurrection of the flesh, glorified in Christ, then the whole task of our life is to prepare our flesh for the resurrection, and we can prepare it only by fasting, prayer and vigil, that is, by “while still in the flesh living the life of the disembodied.” This is the actual principle of one-sided asceticism - the general archimandrite. Theodora with Askochensky. In order to make this deviation towards symbolism impossible, I start from the Gospel idea of ​​​​divine spiritual life and define the relation of the Gospel to the world and the flesh according to the principle of complete freedom. My idea is that there is no external or formal relationship between the Christian (religious) spirit and pagan flesh: these are two incommensurable areas that touch only in the depths of the human soul. The Gospel cannot determine either the carnal life of a person or the social life of society - these areas are subject only to natural laws and humanitarian ethics. The religious (divine) spirit fits into the depth of the individual mood, and here also receives complete freedom. Thus, I recognize the simultaneous existence of sacred personal religious creativity and external natural and social necessity. And so, in order to master this principle, I elevate church dogmatism to evangelical absolutism, to the idea of ​​pure spirituality, religious absoluteness. This is the method of the gospel itself. Christ told the Jews: “You follow the law. The law says: “You shall not commit adultery.” But if you do this for God, then you should not even look at a woman with lust. The law defines the form of divorce - do not divorce at all. The law forbids killing - don’t even get angry.” Thus, the law is raised to absoluteness, in which it is itself destroyed and replaced by freedom. Following this method, I say to the Askochenskys: “Christ does not need barometers and steamships. You are right about this. But he doesn't need all the flesh either. He needs only the pure spirituality of the divine life. But pure spirituality, as a free and personal matter, gives complete freedom to the flesh. Pure spirituality, pure gospel, is dear to me, because in this way the spirit (divinity) and the flesh (nature) are reconciled.” By restoring the purity of the gospel, I, as it were, decompose its “water” into its constituent elements in order to make possible their living union with the composition of our nature. The Gospel in the church-historical wafer of symbolic asceticism allows only an externally formal relationship to the world (church and state, etc.) - and only the pure Gospel is united in the depths of individual life with the natural necessity of carnal life. That's why I need pure spirituality. This is not at all the same as symbolic asceticism. However, now it’s not about me, it’s about Mr. Rozanov’s book, which I reproach for being unclear and unclear. I am talking about this in order to present the religious problem more clearly. In the same article, under the special subtitle “Division of Life,” V.V. Rozanov cites a letter from Archpriest. A. Ustinsky 6 on the issue of family Christian life, warning readers that “Fr. A. Ustinsky writes more firmly and clearly than I (i.e. V.V.R.), on many topics common to both of us.” The letter is remarkable in the sense of posing the question - indicating that our family life is not sanctified by Christianity, which is exactly what the author wants. He expresses the final conclusion of his discussions about the family in the words of Pressanza 7 (“The Christian Family”): “What does it mean to serve God in the family? To serve Him in the family is to strive to glorify Him in all these sweet, dear relationships before thinking about our own personal happiness - to give the family a noble, sublime goal that is outside of us - to teach it that it, like an individual, should not live for itself, that its end and purpose is in God. This way Fr. Ustinsky thinks “to make family life one indivisible ray of Christ’s light.” I believe that this way does not solve the religious problem of the family at all and that from the point of view of V.V. Rozanov, these words of Pressanza are naive babble - which, to put it differently, again V.V. Rozanov does not finish in his book. From an ascetic point of view, the most difficult thing is to reconcile the filth of the male-female union with Christianity. For the evangelical point of view, this difficulty does not exist at all, since in the gospel there is not even the remotest hint of natural defilement. The Evangelical Heavenly Father created at the beginning “husband and wife”... The ascetic view of marriage is the fruit of pagan dualism 8. But the family, according to the Gospel teaching, can become an obstacle to eternal (absolutely divine) life in another respect - namely from the side of family egoism, the most obvious form of which can be called family property. To understand the full difficulty of this clash, one must appreciate, on the one hand, the entire height of the absolute gospel ideal and, on the other, the entire depth of family egoism. “Leave father and mother, wife and children, give away all your property”: this is the gospel requirement. Family egoism, on the other hand, is portrayed as follows by V.V. Rozanov: “Property is labor, and the question of its necessity is a question of the necessity of labor: that is, this is complete and precisely immoral idle talk, hiding behind higher morality. The feeling of property will not only be alive, but also ardent in everyone in whom the feeling of family, the feeling of home is alive and ardent; you can be poor - and understand it, unselfish - and preach it; there is gambling, that is, vile property; but there is property as quietly flowing tireless work for one’s neighbors (i.e. family) - and this is holy property.” In general, the denial of unnecessary asceticism is Rozanov’s “explicit” task... In the future, family egoism leads to nationalism, to popular exclusivity. For Rozanov, Jews are the ideal people-bearers of the family principle, and not a single people has cultivated such disgusting hatred and contempt for other peoples, for which they were deservedly hated and despised by all peoples. But Rozanov sweeps away as rubbish the disgustingness of this hatred for everyone and the suffering of this hatred from everyone: he sees in this nationalism God’s work... With love for the family and his people, with sacred property, he connects all culture, everything dear to man - and at this point he diverges from the gospel to the point of pain, to groans. Remembering the Gospel words about family division and enmity between households, he exclaims: “Why such terrible sacrifices? And who, is it not God the Provider, has comforted our existence with children, and family, and, finally, with Pushkin, and even with the sonorous songs of Hellas? Where is Providence? Who is God?.. The idea of ​​the Father and Provider, the universal Guardian of the world, was cut by the idea of ​​sin and redemption. If it is a sin, then a sacrifice is needed, not only Pushkin and Hellas, but also these children and wives are a sacrifice... And mentally I suffered. This is a global issue." There is no externally formal point of contact between the gospel and family (and national) egoism, and by moralizing the family it cannot be reconciled with the gospel: the ideals of Pressanse-Ustinsky are hypocritical from the evangelical point of view and ridiculous from the Rozanov-pagan point of view. Rozanov, a representative of the religious family principle, consistently and from the bottom of his heart hates the evangelical spirit as the spirit of destruction and non-existence. The family can only be sanctified by religion if religion takes under its protection family egoism, which was the case in Judaism and paganism and what Rozanov wants. On the contrary, there cannot be a Christian-holy family, a Christian state, a Christian people, because Christianity lies precisely in the destruction of the borders of the family, state, and people. It goes without saying that family selfishness is not necessarily debauchery and despotism. They not only put up with him, but they require family purity, nobility of relationships, and the beauty of raising children. The entire culture of the family grows solely out of family egoism... But the whole point is in a certain pass: until the family moral culture has crossed this pass, it remains the fruit of family egoism, it is completely resolved in it, and as soon as it has crossed to another slope - the slope of the Christian spirit, the separation of the family begins. When God calls a family man to some Godly work and he blesses his family, entrusts it to God and good people, and he himself goes to heroic work, torture and death and lays down his soul for God’s truth, for love for people, then only he will prove himself a Christian 9. If this call does not yet exist, then a Christian family is no different and should not be different from a good pagan family. A family man is a Christian only in the sense that he carries within himself this ability to respond to the call of God, but this difference from a materialistically minded person cannot in any case be seen or appreciated from the outside. From this side it is better not to judge people. Only God knows His own. It can be decisively argued that the application of the gospel directly to the forms of worldly life - to the structure of the family and the state - must inevitably give disastrous results: a family organized only according to the gospel (of course, imaginary) will inevitably be worse than a pagan one, 10 and a state (imaginary) organized only according to the gospel gives rise to despotism with all its cultural consequences. For the prosperity of a family, a freely developing natural (pagan) warmth is inevitably needed, and for the prosperity of a state, a freely developing correlation of its constituent forces. At the same time, again, it goes without saying that pure evangelical Christianity can only be carried in the soul, and in order to apply it to forms of life, family and social, it is necessary to put it in a symbolic form - “crowning”, “anointing for the kingdom”. It is this formalism, sufficient to weaken the pagan instincts of a healthy life, but insufficient to make life inspired, that creates what V.V. Rozanov calls “watery” Christianity. “Is there,” he says, “realism, reality, a realistic moment in Christianity itself? Take the picture. The same pattern can be drawn with pencil, ink, watercolor, or oil paints. I think Christianity is the truth drawn in pencil, and at most in watercolor, and in no case with oil paint. Bloodless and juiceless - that’s what our religious concepts are. It’s even wild to say: “concepts.” Why should religion be a concept and not a fact? The book of “Genesis”, and not the book of “discourses” - this is how the old theology began. “In the beginning? "The Word" - this is how a new theology began. The Word diverged from being, the "Word" - from the clergy, and being - from society "... V.V. Rozanov raises this discrepancy to the “metaphysics of Christianity” in its difference especially from Judaism. “The metaphysics of Christianity lies in the tomb, death and monasticism. Death is horror... Death is as metaphysical as conception. This is the other pole of the world, black, opposite the white pole - circumcision. Jews bury their dead disgustingly... Christianity transformed death into a coffin. The coffin is poetry, not naked horror... The monastery is the long robe of the coffin... Just as the "coffin" is the transformation of death into "poetry", so the monastery is the transformation of the coffin into an entire civilization - poetically sad, melancholy sublime... The monastery is the whole soul and all the poetry of Christianity, its real metaphysics... Where there is no monastic spirit and monastery, there is no Christianity; where it is, Christianity is present and active 11 ... The New Testament relates to the Old as death to conception, funeral to birth, monastery to family, harem (in David and Solomon) and square (bazaar).” These are the most powerful words in V.V. Rozanov’s book, hidden, however, in the invisible last article, under an unattractive title and printed in small font. In order to fight the church and Christianity, this is the most destructive and irresistible thing that has been said throughout the centuries... 12 If the church and Christianity are nothing more than a religion of death, then it is a temporal-historical phenomenon, artificially grafted onto European humanity and already experienced by it. Monastic religion is now met only with hatred and contempt. But... the characterization given by Rozanov refers to Asian Buddhism, and not to Christianity. Is there any difference between Buddhism and Christianity? Buddhism is the religion of non-existence and annihilation, the bliss of nirvana, and Christianity is the religion of divine love and eternal life. Love and life are the words that fill the entire gospel. A presentation of Christianity in which, like V.V. Rozanov, does not contain the words “love and life” is a decisive lie. This is from the verbal side. And in essence, universal love, the impulse to embrace all of humanity, to break the bourgeois shackles of one’s egoism, personal, family and national, the thirst for heroic achievement is a fact of our life, ineradicable and ineradicable from the nature of the homo sapiens type. Connected with this fact is everything noble, superhuman, divine, which alone makes the animal homo sapiens a man. Christianity is this impulse, this universal love elevated to religion. Next to love, death is also indelibly written in the gospel. But it is called here solely as a condition for the absolute nature of love, as “death for people.” The poetry of death is decisively absent from the gospel, and Christ shuddered before death to the point of bloody sweat, as no pagan sage, starting with Socrates, shuddered. But evangelical love is love unto death—and this alone is its divinity. Because of this absoluteness, the gospel comes into too close contact with dead asceticism. There is no need to be embarrassed by this: everything great has its own caricature. Dead asceticism is a caricature of evangelical Christianity 13. Draw a straight line. Then draw another straight line from the same starting point in the same direction, but with a slight slope: the two straight lines will diverge to infinity. This is how the religion of death diverges from Christianity. In evangelical Christianity, love does not stop before death; in asceticism, dying itself, mortification becomes an ideal: that’s the only difference. But these days the infinity of difference has been revealed. Now, on the one hand, the abomination of cowardly vegetation, bourgeois complacency, and the beauty of free exploits and selfless love for people have been revealed in the consciousness of mankind - now the “bliss, the like of which the earth has not yet created, is realized and comprehended - to work for people and die for them.” On the other hand, today asceticism has declared with amazing frankness, almost impudence, that it does not care about love, that it is not of the evangelical nature. This needs to be assessed and understood. Our time is a laboratory in which pure Christianity is being revealed, freeing itself from the historical vestment of symbols... If the symbolic shell leads to the formal application of Christianity and is necessary for such application, then, on the contrary, there is no place for pure elements in nature, and wouldn’t “pure” Christianity be essentially useless? Freeing Christianity from the historical shell of symbols, restoring its purity, we must see this as only half the task, albeit an important one. It is then necessary to find a new point of support for Christianity instead of symbolic forms, new “combinations.” And this is a colossal task of modern ethics. She must introduce pure Christianity into the system of real life, connect it with the earth, nourish it with “blood and juices,” make it strong with natural force. The task of modern ethics is to understand Christianity as the truth of life in the most empirical, living sense of the word. The highest ethical principle, like the highest good, is life. The instinct of life is the only moral force; the joy of life is an immanent moral reward. This life is, first of all, animal, physiological, with its irresistible strength and its indestructible truth. Its laws contain the “original” word of God, His original will. Then human life is social life with its historical laws that educate people and form them into a universal brotherhood. But physiology and public life do not exhaust the life of the “new” humanity: it is, finally, a spiritual and creative life, a life of superhuman feat in the name of the highest divine freedom. A person needs feat for the sake of the fullness of his life, for the sake of its final joy, its highest blossoming... In this way, the divine, “Christian” principle is woven into the organism of earthly life with its juices and highest delights. Life reconciles everything within itself - it is multifaceted, it gives everything human a place within itself. About life in abundance (ἐγὼ ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσι καὶ περισσὸν ἒχωσιν), about life by more than bread alone (οΰκ ἐπ᾽ ἄρτῳ μόνῳ ζήσεται ἄνθρωπος) exactly how the gospel teaches about the New Testament principle. But until now we have accepted the gospel only as a historical phenomenon; our attention was absorbed by the historical fact in the form of which spiritual life was revealed to humanity. Meanwhile, the free life of the spirit, born in the Calvary tragedy, has long become the natural heritage of the new humanity, although it is not yet clear to our consciousness. To understand the divine spirit as a natural part of real life, full and free, is the latest task of moral philosophy. The first (theological) part of it is to bring pure evangelical Christianity to the sources of life, to its roots. The second part of moral philosophy is the revelation of the beauty of life itself in its sources, in its rich fragrance, in its original and eternal moisture, in its continuous reproduction and inexhaustible joy... This “half of the matter” was accomplished with brilliant talent and artistic perfection by V. V. Rozanov. And those who value the “gospel” in life will gladly extend their hand to this “lover of life,” hating the symbols that separate the divine spirit from life. But let the “lovers of life” expand the boundaries of life and, along with physiology, give place in it not only to the social principle, but also to the highest spiritual feat... Let them understand that just as life is needed for the idea to be embodied, and flesh is needed for the spirit to be realized, and paganism is needed for Christianity to be alive, so carnal paganism needs the Christian spirit so that it is not vile flesh... The one-sided culture of the spirit, which Christianity was hitherto and which replaced the divine spirit (= the power of life) with spiritual incorporeality, has brought the bitter fruits of false asceticism. But this was not a religious aberration, it was a necessary historical “day” of Christianity, in agreement with the plans of Providence, which revealed its pure idea and carried it through the ruins of ancient paganism. Now the era of the divine spirit is opening not outside of life, but for life... V.V. Rozanov calls us “back, back as soon as possible” from Christianity to paganism, but “history knows no returns” and “there is no path to the irrevocable.” The sun of flesh has darkened for us forever - “paganism is dead and cannot be resurrected after Christ: all Aphrodites and Dionysuses are unspeakable nonsense.” We feel a beautiful body, begin to feel, see or begin to see God’s creation in it, but we cannot worship it religiously, we have lost the feeling of the religious fragrance of the flesh, physiology cannot transport us to the transcendental world - a beautiful body and its physiology is nature for us and nothing more. A new sun has risen for us and we have a new religion, we know heavenly delights inaccessible to the ancients, we know new paths to the kingdom of God. Not back from Christianity, but forward with Christianity: this is our path. Our religious thought must begin with Christianity, from the heights of the Gospel. To reach the flesh and life through Christ is our task. The divine spirit as a spirit for life, for its sanctification - this is our salvation. Only the flesh is paganism; only the spirit is historical Christianity; spirit for life is our future. Whatever you say, ancient paganism perished, collapsed due to internal necessity (“the weakened flesh blossomed in the last vices, saliva and pus were drained from the dying”), and its resurrection is an empty dream. We can sanctify our flesh not in the ancient pagan way, but only in the new Christian way - not by the religion of the flesh, but by introducing absolute value into life - and this is the value of the individual. We need to understand, and we already understand, the divine feat and sacredness of the individual as a requirement and flowering of life itself, without which life seems vulgar and bourgeois to us. And this introduction of the divine spirit into the depths of life itself should sanctify all its layers, and should also sanctify carnal life. Raising a family - this highest shrine of carnal life - in the ancient pagan way, through the religion of the flesh, circumcision, is beyond our strength and taste, but we can raise it through the path of a holy person - the absolute value of a wife and child. We need God's nature, pure flesh, in the freedom of its passions from all false shame, as the living basis of life; but our rise, our religion is not of the flesh, but of the spirit. “This is your sister in Christ, so do not defile her with carnal union”: this is what Tolstoy said, like the last echo of the ascetic past. “This is your sister in Christ, so let your union with her be holy, sanctify this naturally sweet union with the thought of a child”: this is what the future prophets will say. The holiness of the individual has its own absolute. Depicting (“In a world of unclear and unresolved”) Jewry “as a religious-sexual partnership, a blood tribe not of imaginary (we), but of true brothers, sisters, brides, grooms, fathers, mothers,” V. V. Rozanov explains from here why a Jew cannot rape a Jewish woman (“she is ours, one of us”), will not go to a bad home (“he would offend Israel”), and further writes about Christianity: “at us, raping - I rape empty, nobody; and by going to a brothel, I defile myself, and not the Russian tribe."... Against this, one can say: for a man of the evangelical spirit there cannot be an empty woman, for him every person is holy - and this is absolutely, not as a word, but as a real feeling... Of course, this feeling does not capture the lackey, although he is recorded in the register books, but this only means what I say - Christianity does not create a culture, a nationality, it must be free from all formulas and give complete freedom of culture, while it remains undeniable that the sanctity of the individual is our only path to the religion of marriage and family. Here is my first thought: to understand the divine impulse towards universal love, alien to the ancient boundaries of family and nation, alien to the boundaries of philistine complacency - to understand this impulse not as an external commandment and a heavy sacrifice, not as a path to death, but as the flowering of life itself, this means to sanctify all life with the divine spirit. To carry this divine possibility within oneself means to sanctify both social relations and physiological connections. My second thought: heterogeneity of vital elements - physiology, society and spirit - is necessary for their harmonious combination. That “heterogeneous elements (like soul and body) are united into unity, while homogeneous elements are mixed” is an ancient word. Therefore, for us there are no two religions - the religion of the flesh and the Christian religion, there is only one religion - the religion of the spirit, one absoluteness - spiritual. Heterogeneous elements - natural physiology, human society and the divine spirit - precisely because they are heterogeneous, combine harmoniously according to the law of complete mutual freedom and incomprehensible internal relationships. Our God is the God of life, and our highest principle is the principle of life. As life is dear and high, birth is the beginning of life. But rational human life is revealed only in society. And this is not enough. It happens that a person can live only under the condition of the highest freedom both from the shackles of the social environment and from the boundaries of family and nation. What can be said against this divine impulse and highest love, as long as it is for life, for its highest flourishing and beauty? But the flesh and family are always “what it is, and not what we think about it.” The difference between ancient paganism and the newest philosophy of V.V. Rozanov is that there was spontaneity and simplicity of feeling, while he had a word, albeit a brilliant one, “extensively developed philosophy.” Therefore, there, until the time was fulfilled, protection from the abominations of the flesh was in life itself; and now the artificially (in words) religion (absoluteness) of the flesh is in no way protected from the “abyss” of the flesh, in which the holy family melts 14... The holy “many-read” flesh is silent... For us, this holy silence of the flesh is lost, the spontaneity of natural feeling is irretrievable - and the only condition for the “theitization” of sex for us is that a person in his spirit can be above sex, that he is not all in physiology. This does not mean that physiology (and society) can be built based on the pure foundations of the spirit - natural power is always given in its inexhaustibility and requires only freedom and sanctification from the other elements of life. This does not mean that in the sphere of nature one can be without religion, without God. But there must be a continuous descent and ascent 15 , as in the vision of Jacob and the contemplation of Christ; the church must have a door, a sanctuary and a holy of holies (nature, society and personality). This is the completeness of religion... The courtyard (and the sanctuary) is not like a backyard where rubbish is dumped, but as an enclosure or enclosure of walls and a garden, an absolutely necessary condition for the internal “holy of holies”, which turns into an empty place when exposed, into an empty sound. And it is necessary to insist both on the fact that only enclosure makes the inner shrine a real force, gives it a fulcrum, saturates it with juices and blood, and that the sanctifying light comes only from within, that only here is the absolute. This equally goes against one-sided asceticism and against the religion of the flesh: there can only be one natural type of life (long-term) - marriage, but marriage is sacred only because it gives life to a person - gives life to a child, “saves” his wife and makes him “alive”. With a good family, the only “convergence” is that giving and sacrificing love is limited to a circle of objects, and this creates a fresh psyche of modest deeds and gentle joy; when either a family (for example, an overly well-fed, self-satisfied, self-absorbed one) begins (even without any disorder and “resentment” in the marriage relationship itself) to vulgarize a person, destroys him, or some “extra-family” matter becomes an internal need for him, he has the right to break the family, because the highest thing is that “the person lives.” And it seems that this possibility, sometimes turning into necessity, of breaking up one or another family (not because of natural oppression, or from people, or adultery, but for the sake of the kingdom of God, for the sake of human life) will not humiliate the family at all, but will elevate and sanctify. “The nine months of pregnancy lay the foundation for the soul of the future newborn; and, in the end, among the entire population - they lay, form and somewhat educate the soul of an entire people. “As goes to the cradle, goes to the grave,” - this was decided by 1000 years of observation. Aren't these months of special mood for expectant mothers? And couldn’t we, couldn’t religion, yielding at least to my words, impart to them at this intensely important time an intensely elevated mood? Further, if we have (in St. Petersburg) a “Cathedral of all the guards”, a “Cathedral of all the artillery” with banners hanging on the walls, with cannons near the porch, with prayers for “military” and “victories”, then why not have a separate church and some special prayers, with their own chants, with the contemplation of special wall paintings (biblical paintings) for mothers, for pregnant women, for beginners?! where everything that is ascetic would be completely excluded and everything that is life-creative, family-domestic would be expanded and expressed! A completely permissible thought, which the already famous Bishop Porfiry Uspensky (Porfiry Uspensky (1804–1885) - bishop, archaeologist, theologian, researcher of Orthodox antiquities of the East dreamed of while traveling to Athos. Author of numerous works, including: “The First Journey to the Athos Monasteries” (1877), “The Second Journey to the Athos Monasteries” (1880), “The Book of my existence" (8 vols., 1894–1902)). It is easy to guess that the soul of a person, so inseparable from his physiology, from the mysterious special composition of his body, being woven into one ball with religion in physiology itself, would generally become more sensitive and impressionable to everything that is not here, to everything beyond the grave, to everything above-worldly. For what is the “song of the Angel” that man “heard and half forgot, but did not completely forget” before he was born?! Of course, these are only the mother’s moods, which are especially transmitted to the child! The child, even from his dark grave, sees his mother’s soul from such a special side that is not open to anyone, and she herself does not know everything about herself. Everything that we call “innate ideas”, pre-temporal premonitions - God, the afterlife, the final judgment, sin and truth, the ideals of patience and achievement - everything “innate” is simply the experiences of the mother, her thoughts and songs, songs and prayers, and the fear of the possibility of death (in childbirth), which were peculiarly reflected on the fetus in her womb, pushing it, caressing it, warming it... Here religion, through appropriate reading, rituals, services, music, painting, and finally, through created legends and memories, could create motives wonderful in height and tenderness for the spiritual life of pregnant and expectant mothers! And instead of later becoming (upbringing, court) noble - instead of being accustomed to nobility - people (babies) would already be born noble, with a natural (innate) inclination towards good and an aversion to evil... It seems to me that this is already instinctively sought now; mothers at this time avoid bad impressions; Relatives, neighbors, friends are afraid to frighten or upset the pregnant woman. But... Why doesn’t religion powerfully come to their aid, to meet them?.. There is only one answer to this: yes, the Church has never thought about the family and has never cared about it, for it is virginal, monastic, ascetic, scopal, anti-marriage and anti-family!”... I have never seen anything more deeply heartfelt and religious than these lines in all the literature of our days. You need to think about these lines for years and you can be moved for years. Article “Askochensky and Archimandrite. Feodor Bukharev" first appeared in the newspaper "New Time" (1902. December 12 and 17) under the title "An Interesting Episode of Our Mental Life", and was later included in the book "Near the Church Walls" (vol. 2). Bukharev Alexander Matveevich (1824–1871), in monasticism, Archimandrite Theodore is a theologian who developed an original teaching about the rapprochement of the church with everyday life (i.e., the opposite of Tareev) based on the idea of ​​​​the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Rozanov noted that the teachings of A. M. Bukharev, who was forced to resign his rank and leave monasticism due to attacks on his teaching, had a huge impact on the topics of the Religious and Philosophical Assemblies (On the resumption of Religious and Philosophical Assemblies // New Time. 1907. September 8). O. Pavel Florensky, who worked on a book about Bukharev, highly valued the disgraced theologian, published his works and materials about him, arguing that the true understanding of the archimandrite. Feodor Bukharev is still to come. Bukhareva (nee Rodyshevskaya) Anna Sergeevna is a fan of the ideas of Fr. Theodora and then, after his dismissal, the wife of A. M. Bukharev, who devoted her life to the propaganda of his teachings. Chapter from my “Philosophy of Gospel History.” Precisely Fr. A.P. Ustinsky drew Rozanov’s attention to the figure of Bukharev and persistently recommended that he write about this half-forgotten but important thinker. Pressa Edmond (1824–1891) – Protestant pastor, politician, publicist. V.V. Rozanov repeatedly speaks about this in his book “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved.” He writes: “The beginning of the actual flesh and carnal man’s “cleaving” to man is not only not hostile to Christ, but one can say that Christ entered this human cohesion as if into his shadow, taking man everywhere, not in the radiance of his clothes, not in the decorations of the tomb, but in the joy of the family hearth, at the cradle. Against this general coloring of the Gospels and the Face of Christ, fleeting and perhaps apocryphal pendants like “it’s better not to marry,” “if you give a virgin in marriage, she does well, and if you don’t give, she does better,” are completely powerless... The Mystery of the Incarnation: “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” Thus, the fundamental outline of Christianity is not only not “sexless”, as some people think, not “densely”, but it is precisely this religion, with the “incarnation” at the center, that is the true worship of the divine flesh that has become... It’s not that Christianity is only about “torture and death”, only about breaking up a family, but they clearly express the characteristic aspiration of Christianity. If a complete life is in the rhythm of ebb and flow, then “pure Christianity” is one ebb, it is only a moment in the totality of life. Read the books by V.V. Rozanov “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved” and “The Family Question in Russia.” Special attention to A. S. Bukhareva and Archpriest A. Ustinsky. The books of V.V. Rozanov contain many internal contradictions: articles from different periods have not been brought into agreement. The same thing, by the way, is found in the question of the attitude of Christians to death. Proving that all Christianity is in the cult of death, all the poetry of Christianity is the poetry of the grave and that this is the difference between Christianity and paganism and Jewry, V. V. Rozanov (in the article “Our Beloved Departed”) reveals the idea that “the poetry and religion of one’s corner for the grave is eternally inherent in a mortal. From eternity we will love the deceased. This love, respect for the ashes is one of the cornerstones of the beauty of the human image. Only Christians look at the dead like dogs: “should they be burned?”, “lowered into the ground?”, “in their homeland?”, “in a foreign land?” - “Eh, it doesn’t matter, somewhere...” I’m saying that Christians have no respect for the dust, or at least less than the ancients and modern pagans...” This inconsistency in the book of newspaper articles from different times weakens the impression of the book and shakes the author’s main conclusions. One cannot help but recall the following words of V.V. Rozanov in Art. “Missionary work and missionaries”: “What does the gospel say about death and burial? The only thing: “leave the dead to bury the dead.” Nothing more. Who, if not the Church, invented, and, moreover, invented again, on its own initiative, and not on the basis of the Gospel, the two-night reading of the Psalter over the deceased, the washing of his body, as if anointing him and preparing him for the transition into something pure; and, finally, funeral chants, marvelous in depth and sound, which no person can hear indifferently. Did this develop from the words: “leave the dead to bury the dead”? Of course not, of course, with a silent bypass of these words! "... Cf. above is a note from the book “In a World of Obscure and Unresolved” about the general flavor of the Gospels and the Face of Christ... There are even such thoughts there: asceticism “began long after Christ: Christ did not condemn the Jewish family anywhere.” These are not empty words, and Mr. Rozanov will not dispute them. However, it is difficult to say where is “higher” and “lower”. You might be interested in: